Josh O'Connor takes the lead in 'Disclosure Day'

about really big things, but most times the little mysteries are the best. Our lost and

“found is currently filled with pants. I don't know what I've never seen this happen. This”

is true. Mysteries have every size each week. This American life, wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air. I'm Tonya Mosley and my guest today is actor Josh O'Connor.

Many of us first came to know O'Connor as a young prince Charles and the Netflix series The Crown.

As a charming washed up tennis player and challengers, and the young priest in the latest knives out film. But for a significant portion of his career, he's also worked in independent film, including the British drama God's own country. This summer, he turns up somewhere different, as the lead and Steven Spielberg's latest blockbuster Disclosure Day. It's Spielberg's return to

“the question that gave us close encounters of the third kind and ET. Are we alone? O'Connor plays”

a cyber security expert who gets hold of the government's proof that aliens are among us and decides the rest of the world has a right to see the evidence. In this scene, we're about to hear. O'Connor's character Daniel has just shown the woman he's seeing played by Eve Hucen video proof. There's more 79 years more. There have been retrieval programs of exotic craft interrogation of non-human biologics, reverse engineering and technology exploitation all of it.

Run by wordx, the Department of Defense and the Defense Industry. It has the highest level of military and private sector classification in American history. They've run it since the early 70s without government funding, too many tax dollars to try and hide and an all-fworld artifacts, a too profitable to leave in the hands of appointed officials, especially after the next thing. Presidents are civilians again after eight years, so there's no longer a reason to read them

and on any of this. I was a part of all that until I saw what you just saw. This all stops now. What are you going to do? Full disclosure to the whole world all at once. Disclosure Day, which also stars Emily Blunt, Coleman Domingo, and Colin Firth, built on the very real folklore of a government cover-up, Roswell, Crop circles, and people who say they've recovered memories of UFO encounters. Joshua Conner, welcome to Fresh Air.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. The details of this film, as I mentioned, kind of like cloaken dagger even for you when you received the script. There's this funny story that you tell, what's the story? Well, yeah, I suppose, you know, I imagine this happens and all for a lot in big blockbuster movies, certainly with the likes of Spielberg and George Lucas,

and those greats. But for me, it was the first time I had experienced this level of secrecy.

I mean, I met Stephen, Stephen and I met sort of three or four months prior to me actually receiving

“the script. But when it came, it was like I was shooting knives out and I just remember there was a”

kind of a motorbike turned up. There was an envelope. I had to read the script and then hand the envelope back to the guy on the motorbike. Thankfully for the motor motorcycle, I read it really quickly. I'm normally I'm a very slow reader. I have dyslexia, but I managed to get through it pretty speedily and that's down to David Kaps, brilliant writing, Stephen's great story telling. But it was terrific. And yeah, the secrecy around it is bizarre. Not being able to tell anyone

that you're doing, Stephen Spielberg, film is difficult. You mentioned maybe this happens for all blockbuster films. But you, this is your first real blockbuster film. You've spent most of your career in these kind of small quiet films. What was it like to walk on a set, a Spielberg set of this size? Well, you know, the strange thing is that I suppose the trappings of maybe like this. And again, you know, this is from limited experience, obviously. But the trappings are different

but the reality is the actual, the day-to-day making of a movie, the collaborative nature of

I mean, I think he ultimately he is the filmmaker's filmmaker. He's always been around cameras

“and storytelling. And so I think at the heart of his process, it's just the same method. It's,”

you know, how do we emot, how do we look at the empathy, how do we portray this story in the best possible way. And so it's really strange. I think he kind of keeps his set small. It feels like a sacred space for performance. And he really cares about actors and performance. And so yeah, he's kind of adopted that atmosphere that feels honestly the same as making a, you know,

a quiet indie somewhere remote, you know. You know, it's interesting as so many of your characters

are quiet characters. They live in what's not said. It's what you bring out. You pull off restraint so well. And Spielberg has this reputation, not every film, but many of his films of being a maximalist. There's the wonder in the awe and this feeling of being out front. How did those two

“sensibilities meet in a room? I think like I, you know, I started in the theatre and that was really”

my, my love of acting of performing was came from the theatre. And the theatre really as an art form,

you know, you can tell a lot, of course, with your, with your face. But really, there is an element

of like your, your, your languages, your body and your language are the words. And so, for me that the voyage of discovery of film came when I started making them. And, you know, I didn't necessarily have a language or an understanding or a way of articulating film growing up. So that language was like something I learned through doing. And one of the things you learn is that it's such an intimate art form, you know, working with a camera, you can tell so much with your eyes

in a way that you maybe can't on stage. And so I guess that's, that sort of happens naturally.

“And I, but well, and also, I think I now appreciate quiet films. I think that they're sort of my,”

that would be my taste at the moment as I like a contemplative performance. I enjoy that. But, I think Stephen has that, too, as you might rightly say, he's interested in wonder. And he's interested in the kind of childlike curiosity to a subject. This character, I mean, he is the, the hero, but he's not a traditional lead man in a blockbuster. You, you built men, you portray so specifically. I've read that you actually make a scrapbook for almost every

character. Did you make one for this particular character, Daniel? Yeah, I did. I mean, it took a slightly different form. I mean, the, the scrapbook thing comes right back from when I made God's own country. So it was a good like 12, maybe 12 years ago now. And the director of that film, Francis Lee, was really kind of formative for me in terms of what my method was, how I wanted to work. I think I was still figuring that out. And one of the things that we

did together was to create this sort of, you'd call it a scrapbook or a kind of character Bible, a kind of, a manual for how to access this character's memory. So if you're sort of struggling with a scene, trying to get into the psychology of this fictional character, it's like, well, let's look at the scrapbook. Let's look at the character Bible. Let's choose a memory that we've we've created together that we can, that can kind of help us access something. So I've used it

for pretty much every character I've played since. But the form of this one was slightly different because we were shooting here in New York and I had an apartment on Manhattan and the day I moved in to the apartment to start pre-production. I had this huge wall and I just started sketching images. I mean, I had this idea that Daniel had a sort of memory somewhere lodged in the kind of recesses of his mind of visions he'd had when he was a child. And so these charcoal drawings

you know, someone who uses art to understand their minds in some ways. And so I did a lot of that

“and I'd put them up on the wall and then I think I invited Eve Huesen over for dinner to meet her”

and to chat about the film and she walked in and she looked so mortified by yes, quite alarming wall with which I'd straight. It looked like a crime scene and so we, I sort of cut very quickly took that out. So it is in a scrapbook but it wasn't supposed to be a scrapbook, it's supposed to be kind of like crime scene wall. But yeah, it exists. They sort of live and die with the film. You talked about getting a note from Spielberg that unlocked this whole role for you except it

turned out that he had an actually met, meant to send it to you. Well, you tell us what happened. Yeah, I've been telling the story but I feel bad, telling it because in some ways it plays that it was the perfect, it was one of the greatest notes I've ever received and I feel bad it being an accident because it makes Steven sound like, you know, the greatest I've ever received was by accident. He also gave a fantastic notes on purpose but so I'll just preface it with that.

Yeah, you know, Steven and I would have these conversations every day really about the scene we, you know, in front of us but also looking ahead in the schedule and going, okay, we've got this moment coming up, like let's talk about that, let's try and analyze that and Steven makes himself so available for those conversations which is tremendous and really helpful.

“And so there was a scene coming up, you know, and I think it was like in two weeks time,”

we were away and we were texting and I was looking at the scene which is essentially Daniel Kellen are being vulnerable in a way that we hadn't, we haven't seen up until this point in the movie. And my question to Steven was like, how vulnerable do we go? Like, how much is he willing to show? How repressed is he? And how much are we willing to show his emotion? What he's really feeling? And we were kind of back and forthing it and, you know, in my head it was like this will continue

every day up until we do this, this scene. But just as I was going to bed, I received this text from Steven saying, "The door is on the latch, just push." And it unlocked the whole scene for me. I was like, that's it. It's like, the emotions, like the doors on the latch, the emotions

“are raw, they're there, just push the door, let it out. And I was like, it's genius, it's beautiful,”

it's poetical, I like came in the next day, I was like, Steven, you're a genius, I already knew

genius, but this is incredible and inspired. And he looked so confused. And bless him, he could have just

claimed it. Right, he's such an honest man that he then looked at his phone, confused, and explained that it was meant for his wife. And it was an instructional text. He was going to bed and he was letting him know that the door was on the latch and just push. But he killed two birds with one stone. And he doesn't mind me telling the story, he likes the story, so it's okay. Well, because it broke through for you. Right, yeah, it worked. It worked. It was great.

Okay, let's talk about the crown for a moment, because for many Americans, the first time we really saw you was as a young Prince Charles. And this man is petulant. He is self-pidying. He is awful to Diana. And you played this role so well, Josh, that I kind of hated you for. I'm sure you heard that. Yeah, I heard that. But you have said that you kept returning to this one idea that Charles underneath everything was basically just a lost boy. And I want to play a scene that

gives us that sense. So in the scene, he has just been made the Prince of Wales. He gives a speech in Welsh about how no one wants to be overlooked or ignored. And he's referring to the Welsh people's relationship with Britain. And the queen reads this translation. And she has a few words for him. In a private conversation, she challenges him about it. And Olivia Coleman plays Queen Elizabeth.

Let's listen. People will always want us to smile or agree or frown or speak.

And the minute that we do, we will have declared a position, a point of view. And that is the one

keep them to ourselves. Because the less we do, the less we say or speak or agree or think.

Or breathe or feel or exist. The better. We're doing that, it's perhaps no easy for me as it is for you. Why? Because I have a beating heart. The character reminded a will of my own. I am not just a symbol. I can lead not just by wearing a uniform or by cutting a ribbon, but by

“showing people who I am. We have a voice. Let me let you into a secret. No one wants to hear it.”

He's talking about the country. My own family. No one.

This is a scene where this show just quietly asks us to love Prince Charles, right? Before season four asks us to despise him. How important was it to you? Because I feel like it was for us to kind of be one over knowing the Charles that we will encounter later. I haven't heard that in so long. It's quite nice to hear. It's sort of a moment in my life playing

“him. I think that scene is so important in terms of the journey, the fictional character of”

Prince Charles in the show. You make a point to say, because so much of this had to be written, we don't know it. Peter Morgan does so well. He takes the kind of paradox of power family in the crown. He tries to put it apart and empathize and understand it. Right at the beginning, I had a phone call from my agent saying they'd like to meet you to play Prince Charles and crown. My initial reaction was no thank you. That was a personal feeling. It came from the fact

“I'm a Republican in the British sense, not the American sense. I believe in a more equal”

society and the construct of a monarchy makes that very difficult. Having said that, I actually really had very little interest. I didn't have an interest in the royal family and necessarily

read much about them. I guess my first where I started from was like, this isn't for me,

but Peter Morgan said this thing to me, which really helped and unlocked a lot for me, which was that he said, see this philosophy in this paradox and this difficulty, which is here is a character who is waiting for his mother to die in order for his life to take meaning. And that was kind of enough for me. That was like, okay, that's enough for me to get my teeth into. And then from there, it was about constantly coloring everything he does with the same sort of textures that you or

I might feel around family, which is how do you get the respect and the acclaim of your parents? How do we please our parents? And so in this particular scene, you know, he's desperately wanting affirmation from his mother. And at the same time, he's very aware that he's in a kind of holding bay. He's the prince, he's in waiting. And in order for him to take that responsibility to take up his meaning, his mama's to die. Our guest today is actor Josh O'Connor.

We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is fresh air. Every episode of It's Been a Minute, MPR's What's Happening in Culture Podcast starts by

At MPR, we stand for your right to be curious. And indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow it's been a minute wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll break down the zeitgeisty topics that are feeling your feed. I read that you found Charles through his body first, that you

“started with his posture. How did you build a man from that, that from the outside, in like that?”

You know, I studied a lot of footage of young Prince Charles and how he maneuvered and how he walked around. But I think after a little bit of that, it was like, okay, I've got the basis of that. Let's try and understand what an exaggerated version of that might look like. But more importantly, where that comes from, is there a sense of him protecting himself? Is he cowering? Because, you know, he's, he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. Did you have any

issues with your back after you were done? I had issues with my back before I started. So they were just worsened for playing for each other. But I think there's, there were a couple of years where

I was trying to get out of that physicality. But that happens with every, there's always this

“buffer period after I play any role where I'm kind of half in, half out. And it's a little”

strange. And I, you know, I had it, did this movie in Italy a few years ago, which was very meaningful to me. And a great friend of mine was talking to me about it recently. And she was like, you know, you wore the suit of the character for a year after you finished that film. And in my head, I just liked the suit. So I was wearing the suit. Oh, the little suit. What was this? It was a movie called Lacquimera. It's an Italian woman. Oh, I mean, yes, yes. And the suit was beautiful, but I just couldn't

take it off. And in my head, it was because I just liked the suit. Now with a bit of perspective, I can look back and go, that was actually just, I don't want to say goodbye to that character. And there is a, you know, there is a grief associated. Even when I was a kid doing like school plays,

I finished the play. And my mum would always be like, you know, he'll be sick, he'll get ill.

And I did, I'd always get ill. And I pretty much, without fail, every job I've done in my career, I get sick at the end. And I think there is, I'm learning that there is a grief that happens.

“You have to fall in love with this character. And you have to combine a bit of yourself and a”

bit of this fiction. And then you live as that character for two, three months, sometimes six months. And then it ends. And there's a, there's a kind of buffer period. And so the, the sort of, the funny side of it is like, you know, dressing up in a suit for a year or, or having a sort of

weird, stooped back with Charles. But the reality is that there is something,

spiritual going on. I kind of kind of sadness. I want to talk a little bit about God's own country because a lot of your characters come from a visceral place. But you played Johnny a young Yorkshire farmer. He's gay. He's closed off. He's getting through life on drinking and casual sex until a migrant worker arrives. And something opens up for him. And to prepare for this, like so many of your other roles, you, you get really deep into it. I want you to take

me to that. What you were actually doing out there day to day, playing this role as a farmer. But you're really being a farmer. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll go back to the fact that Francis Lee, who directed that movie in his friend of mine and still has had a huge perhaps the biggest impact, maybe on my, on the way I work. Francis and I discussed very early on, this felt like a film. I didn't, you know, a character. I didn't want to fake. I wanted to do things for real. And I

wanted to feel what he felt. And I wanted to understand his world. And so Francis helped facilitate that. And that, that, what that looked like is that I moved up to Yorkshire and the north wing Lyndon. I worked on a farm and the farm that we were going to shoot on. I don't know that I was massively helpful to the farmer. But he's, we've become a remain friends to the state. But he, I spoke in the accent. I tried to eat as far as I could as he would have eaten and drink as he

differently now, or the way I approach a role like that. You're being too modest. You were fixing

fences. You were riding tractors. Yeah. I mean, you were working between takes. And you were birthing lambs. Yeah, yeah. The funny story was that there was a day film crew turn up and I'm no longer his farmhand. I'm an actor. I'm doing a play. I have a job to do. But that didn't stop John. You know, John, as far as John concerned, he was like, look at these annoying film guys who've just taken away my farmhand. And so there would be days where I'd be filming, you know, shooting a scene

and then they'd call cut and John would be sort of waiting at the barn door kind of a little hacked off that he'd like lost his guy and he was like, get back to work. And so then I'd, you know, birth a lamb and then wash my hands and do another take. So it's like, it was a confusing, beautiful thing that happened. And it's probably the thing I'm most proud of as a performance it felt vivid and real and felt. But no, it was intense. I mean, you know, you grew up with these,

I always think of like the actors that I looked up to, like, time of day loss. And would you then

“compare to? Well, yeah, I mean, I think the comparison is partly influenced by the fact that I'm”

talking about him all the time. So it's the fact that he's, and you're talking about it, yeah, what is it about his, because he's a method actor. I mean, he really gets himself deep into the characters in the way that you seem to. Well, yeah, and I don't know that he would describe himself as a method actor. And I certainly don't describe myself as a method actor. I'm not far from it, but I think what's more interesting to me nowadays, rather than the method of it. And it's not

just don't do that. So I think a Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jean Wilde, Marl Streep, you know, people that I really look up to. There is an S, there's a sort of magic that happens. And it's very hard to articulate.

“And I don't know that I have the tools to articulate it really. But I think that there is a kind of”

level of the spiritual in terms of a character that is accessed by performers like that. And I don't know it's like that sounds kind of high-faluting and pretentious, but it I don't know how else to describe it. And it's a place that you're trying to get to in your work. Yeah, for sure. And by the way, like rarely have I achieved it. And maybe you don't think so. No, I don't know. I don't really. But it's less about arrival. It's more about the pursuit. And I think I can see that with other

performers as well. You know, I think one of my great friends, Jesse Buckley, who just gave this extraordinary performance in Hamlet, Jesse has that similar quality. I think of someone who's pursuing the spiritual, the kind of the spirit or the soul of a character rather than just replicating something. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is actor Josh O'Connor. He stars in Steven Spielberg's new film, Disclosure Day. This is Fresh Air. On June 11th,

the globe's biggest sporting event comes to North America, the FIFA World Cup. The Super Bowl, and you might say averages something over a hundred million live viewers, but the World Cup final think like five times that much. The favorites, the underdogs and the Americanization of the world's game. Listen now to the Sunday story from the Upverse podcast on the NPR app. You mentioned your

dyslexia a little bit earlier, and I've heard you talk about how school wasn't always easy for you,

as maybe it was for some of the kids around you. When did you come to understand that you

“process information differently than those around you? I remember struggling with reading. I found”

reading harder than, you know, when you're seven or eight and you're reading in class and everyone's taking their turns to read a sentence or two, and I just remember I was struggling with that in a way that I could see other kids weren't. I suddenly remember at the age of 11, 10 or 11, I went and did a test, and they ran this test, and I remember saying to the person who ran the test at the end of it, they said to me, "So, Josh, what do you think dyslexia is?" And I was like,

no, it does not mean you're stupid." She actually said, "It actually means you're intellectually

“challenged," which by the way, I think is worse than stupid. But that's by the bite. But at the”

time, that was the kind of the understanding of it was like, this is a roadblock, and it's hard, things are going to be hard if you. And so that was my kind of notion of what it meant to be dyslexia. I had this great teacher in my secondary school who once said to me, "The gift of dyslexia is someone without dyslexia who needs to get from A to C would go A, B, C." And someone with dyslexia

might go A to E to D, back to B, and then to C. And it's going to take them longer, but they get to see

D in E, in a way that the person without doesn't. And that really unlocked a lot for me in terms of, I guess a realization that whilst things might take longer, there is a process and often a very artistic process that means that it might take me a longer period of time to get to the end goal, but I'm experiencing much more, I'm learning much more, and I'm seeing much more. I'm making it hard for myself, but that's just the way my brain works. And also learning that

so many artists and scientists and brilliant people, I mean Einstein was dyslexic. So you know, it doesn't, it does definitely doesn't mean you're intellectually challenged. It can be a great

“superpower and I think that's what I've learned. I want to talk a little bit more about your”

childhood. You were born and raised in Cheltenham and it's in southwest England. I had a really great upbringing in that town and my dad was an English teacher at my school. My mum was a midwife in the NHS, National Health Service and two brothers who were great and we got on, I mean, you know, as much as the middle child. And I was the middle child and so yeah and we had my grandmother around, it was kind of great. Your grandmother, she sounds like quite a lady. She was an

artist herself, a ceramicist, and it sounds like you too are really close. She was a powerful figure,

I guess in our family. She was a brilliant ceramicist. I wonder if nowadays she might be more celebrated because it's social media or what I don't know. But at the time, she was a sort of,

“it was a different time for women in art for one and but also I think”

ceramics was maybe seen as a craft rather than an art form. Did you spend time with your grandmother while she was making pottery? Did you yourself as a child also participate in that? Well, no, actually. Strangely, it's something I've a great gift of received from my grandmother's, I'm fascinated and I have a love for pottery and ceramics. I also make things but not very good, but enjoy the process of making things. I mean, I sat in a studio many times and would witness

her making these figures. I remember the smell of the clay and I remember the smell of the kiln and the heat from the kiln and the smell of the paint that she used and the glazed that she used. There's a sensory memory of those spaces and those spaces felt exciting. As a child and so I'm sure there's no accident that I have that interest now. You have said though that you are looking forward to spending time at some point in the near future,

at home, doing all of those things, photography, ceramics. Is that a real, are you feeling more settled now or are you feeling that that is something you actually want to take for yourself? That is something I actually want to take for myself, for sure. And yes, it's about being home making ceramics, doing like 65-year-old woman thing, but it is also, it's genuine. I think it's been a busy 15 years, whatever it's been since I became professional actor and I love it. I love my job,

but I tell you six years old now, my friends are married, having kids, which is great,

marriage or kids, but I think maybe I want to be Josh for a little bit and feel what that feels like and that includes gardening. I love gardening. I'll do work on my garden and then I'll get off and not see the fruits of my labor. So there's a little bit of like, I want to be in my garden for about or I want to really work on my practice of making ceramics or I want to see my friends or my family, you know, I think there's just a feeling of excitement around being me for a little bit.

And I think that's a nice thing. This has been such a pleasure to get to know you, Josh O'Connor, thank you for your time. Thanks so much. Josh O'Connor, stars in the new Steven Spielberg film, Disclosure Day in theaters, starting Friday. After a short break, our TV critic David B. and Kooley reviews new documentaries on veteran entertainers, Lauren Michaels, and Martin Short. This is fresh air. You know, every day on our first NPR's

Golden Globe nominated morning news podcast, we bring you three essential stories. At the heart

of each story, our questions, what really happened? What really mattered? What happens next? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow a first wherever you

“get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why. Two new documentaries focus”

on veteran entertainers and are directed by prominent filmmakers. Lauren, which premiered in theaters in April and is now streaming, looks at Lauren Michaels, creator of NBC's Saturday Night Live, and is directed by Morgan Neville. Marty, Life is Short, streaming on Netflix is a biography of comedian Martin Short, directed by Lawrence Caston. Our TV critic David B. and Kooley finds that they have a lot in common. Lauren Michaels and Martin Short both entered show business in the early

1970s. Michaels is half of a stand-up comedy duo, Short as a cast member of a Toronto stage production of the musical "God Spill." Michaels moved to LA, wrote for Rowan and Martin's laugh in in some Lily Tomlin TV specials, then launched Saturday Night Live. Short joined the

Toronto Second City improv troupe, then joined the cast of SCTV, a TV sketch comedy show,

just as brilliant as SNL. Eventually, Martin Short joined SNL for a year, but that was during the five years Lauren Michaels had walked away from the show. Yet their lives intersected soon after, when Martin Short starred as one of the three Amigos in a comedy film alongside Steve Martin and Chevy Chase. That movie was written by Steve Martin, Randy Newman, and co-producer Lauren Michaels.

“In Martin life is short, Lauren's casting, writer and director of the big chill, tells Martin”

Short's story with full access and an easy intimacy. They've been good friends for decades. Morgan Neville, whose documentaries include intimate studies of Fred Rogers and Paul McCartney, finds Lauren Michaels a more elusive subject, so Glean's most of his valuable insights from Lauren's friends and SNL casting crew. Both films are loaded with celebrities, the movie Lauren with interviews, and Marty Life is short with a lifetime of personal family

film footage, where every holiday seems to turn into an all-star comedy and music fest. But there are plenty of interviews here too, including a rather serious vintage one, with late night TV host Tom Snyder that explains the movie's title, Marty Life is Short. You had to handle tragedy when you were alive. You're lost to brother. You talked about my brother David when I was 12. My mother when I was 18. My father when I was 20.

Tough. Being the youngest in the family as well. Right. At that age, or at any age, when you lose someone in family, you have a choice, you actually have a choice. How do I handle this? This is a life lesson. Right. And so do I, do I perhaps do I become defeated forever?

“Or do I actually kind of learn that life is short and have a glass of wine and laugh and fun”

and appreciate these people and never let them go. See, that's I think the great secret.

If you never let them go from your life, then they're always with your life because before you know it, you'll be with them. There is indeed a lot of tragedy in this film, but there's also a constant river of joy. To get together is held by Martin and his wife Nancy seem absurdly overpopulated. Kids running everywhere celebrities in every lounge chair, but also a ridiculous amount of fun. Short photographed many of these home movies himself, but others joined in too.

One frequent guest, Stephen Spielberg, brought his camera and filmed Martin short and another

You know the one. Butch and Sundance are trapped on a cliff, cornered by a posse, and figure their only escape is to jump into the river far below. But in this version, they're on a big boat and Butch and Cassidy are played by Tom Hanks and Martin Short. In character, respectively, as forest gump and Ed Grimley. Marty and Tom got this idea. Hey, let's do that scene from Butch Cassidy in the Sundance Kid.

All very sad about seconds and we're gonna be killed, you know. Just get ready to shoot the bad guys. There's only one way out. So we should jump, but we'll say. I know we'll get shot.

So let's go. My mom always had jumping off clips. It's like not to jump.

Oh, we gotta never know what you might. Like, yeah, yeah, right. Come on, for us, I can't swim. Oh, that's very funny. For having sex before kill us, I must say.

“Marty, life is short, gives you a sense of his love of family and his work ethic and perspective as a long time comic and actor.”

In vintage clips and in new interviews, he's very open about his personal life and feelings. But there also are so many clips here that prove just how versatile and original Martin Short was. As when he portrays the famously overweight, under-prepared celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick, and hits his subject in this case, Mel Brooks, with the most unexpected of questions. "What's your big beef for the Nazis?"

"What's my big beef?"

"Yeah, that seems like you're always--" "What's not my big beef?"

"I was knocking the Nazis, though. It's time for Mel Brooks to knock the Nazis. It seems." Lauren the movie has less of its subject at Dead Center.

“Even amid all the hoopla and TV specials about the recent golden anniversary of SNL,”

Lauren Michaels largely avoided the spotlight. Morgan Neville actually gets into talk a bit about comedy, as when Lauren defends the traditional midweek all nighter endured by the SNL writing staff. "I always say fatigue is your friend. Through exhaustion and through people just being so depleted, the unconscious takes over and suddenly you take way bigger risks and you start to make yourself laugh." "For you, I love it." There's also clever use of animation to tell some parts of Lauren's story,

and an understandable reliance on current and former SNL staffers to tell their own Lauren's stories. Almost everyone takes part from Chevy Chase to Chris Rock. Like this one, from Mike Myers, that explains the strengths of Lauren Michaels with one simple allegory.

"You know, there's a story that Lauren always talks about, which is he was in somewhere in Europe,

and he was driving through pumpkin fields. He came across a guy, and you could get out at any moment, and load your trunk full of pumpkins, and nobody would see you, because we saw these little backgrounds, but he came across somebody selling pumpkins in the middle of these vast pumpkin fields, and so Lauren was curious, and so he got out and he said, "The guy, why should I buy your pumpkins? I could've stolen 7,000, because one of my paying for it, and the guy selling pumpkin says,

"You pay it for my eye. I pick the good pumpkins."

“Marty, Life is Short, and Lauren are very different documentaries, taking very different approaches.”

However, they have at least one thing in common. I really enjoyed watching them both, and learn some things too. Like how Martin Short came up with Ed Grimley's very particular look and voice, and how a Tennessee road trip Lauren Michaels took with Paul Simon, ended up inspiring Simon's Grace Land. Watch for the details, and for a lot of laughs. David B. and Kooley reviewed Lauren and Marty, Life is Short.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Comic Josh Johnson, one of the anchors of the Daily Show. Johnson gets millions of views on his YouTube comedy channel, where he posts his comedy club performances. And he has a new HBO comedy special called Symphony. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, and Marie Boldenado, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thia Challener, Susan Nakundi,

Roberta Sharak directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Moesley.

“Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a question. What happens if we refund”

tariffs? Why are Grocery so expensive? And NPR, we stand for your right to be curious because

the forces shaping our world can be hard to see. Follow NPR's Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts

and start seeing how the economy really works.