Voices In My Head Podcast Episode 315: Guest Stephen Tobolowsky

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. And by the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay. Where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad you could join me here again this week for this very special episode of Voices in My Head. This is gonna be a flashback episode, and this is the first time I've ever done something like this, but it was 2 years ago this week when I had the actor and comedian, writer Stephen Tobolowsky on the show. And a few weeks ago, we had a special broadcast from Temple Shalom here where we talked about the Jewish view of original sin. And there was so much interest in it and so much chatter about that that I thought, you know what, let's further this Jewish conversation about religion. And Stephen Tobolowsky is one that You would know from his work in movies like Groundhog Day. Maybe if you watch The Goldbergs, you've seen him on there as the principal, and probably over 100 shows that he's has been on over the years. But he's also a really great writer, and he wrote a book called My Adventures with God that came out 2 years ago. And it's an excellent book about his return to Judaism and his struggles with the faith and trying to be a person that is returning to that. And I just really appreciated what he had to say and our conversation on that interview. He was so kind to come come on the show and has been such a friend of the show, and I'm so grateful for him and his generosity. So I wanted to just revisit and play this episode again as a flashback. Before I do, I wanted to let you know about some exciting news. If you haven't been following me on social media, whether it be at facebook.com/rickleejames or on my website at rickleejames.com or on Twitter @RickLeeJames— those are the 3 places that I usually post information— I have signed with a new management company, and I'm very excited about that. TMA Management stands for the management agency, and Gary Stripling is in charge of that agency, and he's helping me with some of the day-to-day office work and some of the booking that goes on with that. And I'm just very excited about this new partnership. So I wanted to refer you to rickleejames.com/bookings if you do ever have any needs that you want to have me come out and do some playing for you, whether it be for a worship event that you have or even to come and speak at one of your events, I have some weekend revivals that are coming up. You can contact me through RickLeeJames.com/bookings, and there'll be a link on there for you to visit the TMA agency website. You can fill out what you're looking for, and they are a great help and are there to help you in this. Also, on May 1st, which is coming up very quick, I have a new music video releasing, and I'm very excited to be able to share that with you at 1 o'clock, uh, actually it will be 1 o'clock Eastern time, uh, 12 o'clock if you're Nashville time, on May 1st. It's going to be premiering at my YouTube page at youtube.com/rickleejames. It's the song off my new album Thunder called The Lord Is Our Shepherd, a very personal, uh, very song that's very close to my heart. But with that being said, I'm going to get on with the interview after this quick word from our sponsor, which is actually me today. So anyway, thank you for listening to Voices in My Head, and right after this message there will be our interview with Stephen Tobolowsky, and I hope you really enjoy this flashback episode today. God bless you and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.

This is Rick Lee James, and the music you are hearing is from my new album, Thunder.

The title track, Thunder, is a never-before-released song by the late Rich Mullins. There are also 12 12 other tracks made up of original music, hymns, and readings to guide the listener on a journey.

You can buy Thunder today on clear vinyl and CD, or stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, and almost every other music streaming service.

Thunder, hear it today at rickleejames.com.

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So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code "voices" and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. He's a director, he's an author, he's a musician, a podcast host of The Tobolowsky Files, and he's an actor with over 254 credits including— and listen to this, this is just the short part of that list— Seinfeld, Glee, Silicon Valley, The Goldbergs, Fuller House, One Day at a Time, the new Norman Lear One Day at a Time that's on Netflix, Community, Toy Story of Terror. He's a voice on there. He's a voice on Justice League Action.

So those of us who are comic book nerds are loving that already.

He's been on Boston Legal. He's in the movie Wild Hogs. He was on Deadwood. He was in The West Wing. He was in the movie Memento. And certainly one of his best known and loved roles, Ned Ryerson on Groundhog Day. I mean, who doesn't love that annoying insurance salesman that Bill Murray has to encounter again and again and again? So I'm looking forward to talking with Stephen in just a couple of moments here on the show. He's really an amazing actor, and his acting— as I want to say it this way, how can I put it? He's an amazing actor, and he's done so much work, and he's been such a success. But as good of an actor as he is, He is a wonderful storyteller, a great narrator, and his new book, My Adventures with God, gets my highest recommendation. I don't even know exactly how to classify it. Maybe a theological memoir, um, maybe a memoir with some spirituality thrown in along the way. It's a little bit hard to classify, but if you've ever listened to Stephen and his stories, you're not going to be disappointed in any way by this book. It is a treasure. And so without any further hesitation, I am glad to welcome Stephen Tobolowsky on the Voices in My Head podcast.

I just got off of the Uber and I think I have time for a wash and dry and fold cycle before I get back on another airplane. So this is great.

Oh my goodness. Well, thank you Thank you for taking the time. I know that you're very busy with the book tour right now, in addition to all of your other many endeavors that you have going on. But I'm really excited to get to talk to you. I love the new book, My Adventures with God, and it is, it is just wonderful. I can't wait for the next book. Everyone is a masterpiece.

Thank you. Well, thank you for that.

Well, I already did a bio, as listeners will know that have heard this before, so they're going to be familiar with who you are. But I had a listener write in and I just couldn't resist asking this question on their behalf because there was someone that wrote in that's a huge Groundhog Day fan, which all of us are, I'm sure. And the first question, they said, please let this be the first question today. Did you go pro with that belly button thing?

No, as a matter of fact, I tried the belly button thing once. And unfortunately, I did it in public. And even more unfortunately, I did it before 10,000 people. I was invited to Groundhog Day, the real Groundhog Day of Punxsutawney, where you go out at dawn. And, and it's not like the movie. In the movie, you know, it's very kind of a festive thing with polka music and everybody dancing. It's a lot of fun. No, Punxsutawney, it's a holy moment. It is like 10,000 to 15,000 people show up. There's absolutely no drinking, no partying. When that groundhog comes out, everything gets silent and they wait for the groundhog to give the weather report. Well, someone mentioned, well, maybe you ought to go pro with that belly button thing. So I said, well, sure. So it was about maybe 5:30 in the morning. So I pulled my shirt up, took my glasses off, and stuck it over my belly button to make eyes and a mouth. And Someone took a picture of it and posted it on the internet, and I think it's probably still out there somewhere. But once I saw that, I thought it could ruin lives. Oh no, I thought this could be— this could be— if some people saw this, I mean, it could be one of those things that aliens get a transmission of that and think like, we need to do away with these people, these people don't know what they're doing.

Oh man. So, and that's the unfortunate thing about the internet, once it's out there, it's out there forever for sure. Picture.

So, so I don't want any of your listeners to be looking for that picture, but I'm sure it is out there somewhere.

That's right, listeners, be good. Don't go look for that picture. We don't need to see it tonight. So, well, ever— I'm curious what you think, because you've acted in so many roles and you do such a wonderful job. Obviously you've been a big success, and I wonder why that role in particular has seemed to resonate with people. You have any thoughts about that?

I do.

I actually have a couple of theories. One, the simplest theory is the movie is just absolutely fabulous. It's a great, it's a great movie, and it resonates to people on many, many levels, just as a wonderful, wonderful film. Secondly, I think this is kind of stealth, and I kind of proposed it to some of the folks who worked on Groundhog Day, and that is there's something in the narrative that's very neat about Ned and Bill meeting, and that is Bill is the antagonist of the movie at the beginning, like he's the big jerk until he meets Ned. And when he meets me on the street, suddenly it switches, and since I'm so obnoxious, Bill becomes the protagonist. So it is that switch in the movie where you have the leading character that is both antagonist and then protagonist, and I think that's I think that's one reason why the Ned scene is so memorable too, besides it being just a good scene, is that that kind of cosmic switch happens in our hearts toward Bill at that moment in the movie.

Yeah. Well, and what a unique thing too. I mean, it is a great movie, but there's a lot of great movies that don't become a part of the culture's narrative too. And that's one that, you know, even just on my Facebook page when I was announcing you were coming on, people are just putting quotes from the film, "Bing!" or, you know, things like that all over. What a cool thing. It's almost Seinfeldian in that case, which you've also been on Seinfeld. And by the way, my good friend here in town— speaking of that Seinfeld, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you— my good friend Rabbi Cary Kosberg is a huge fan of that episode of Seinfeld where you play the guru, and it's just one of those comic moments. So you've had a Seinfeldish moment on Groundhog Day where it becomes something that really is part of the cultural language, and you also were on Seinfeld, which has So many of those cultural things.

So many. So many.

Pretty cool thing. Well, I do want to talk to you about your new book, but there are so many interesting things about you, Stephen, and one of them is that you are an accomplished musician. And I also wanted to talk quickly about a couple of musical facts about you because we have a lot of musicians who listen to this show. I'm a musician myself. And two quick questions about music, and then we'll get into your book. Because I really want to do that. But one, I think our listeners will be fascinated to find out that you actually played in a band with Stevie Ray Vaughan. And I wonder if you could talk a little about that.

That, that is correct. But to be more accurate, Rick, Stevie Ray Vaughan played in our band. What happened was we were in a band called Cast of Thousands. It was kind of a folk rock band in high school. We were very, very bad. We had one fellow in the band who was actually musical, Bobby Foreman, who went on to be in the New Christie Minstrels. But we were picked to be one of 5, I guess you would say, garage bands in Dallas to be, and each band was going to do 2 songs on this album. So we, we had picked our 2 songs. We were driving over to record, and Bobby turned around to tell me in the back seat that he asked a kid from the neighborhood, Stevie Vaughn, to play lead guitar with us on our 2 songs. And, and I said, Bobby, We don't need to have some kid. Who's Stevie Vaughn? And Bobby says, well, he's a 14-year-old kid. His brother Jimmy plays the guitar too. I said, a 14-year-old kid? Bobby, come on, we don't have to have children playing on our band. We can play, we can play our own instruments. And Bobby got serious. Said, Stephen, this kid Stevie Vaughn is really good, and he's going to make us seem like we know what we're doing. Okay, Bobby. So we showed up, and Stevie was there sitting on a metal folding chair with his Gibson guitar with the dual humbucker pickups. And we got in there and the engineer said, well, guys, why don't you run the song down once? And so we get an idea what we're doing. And so Stevie goes, yeah, yeah, play, play me a bit of the song. So I see what kind of lead I'm going to do. And so we played— for you musicians out there, I would say we played 2 measures. 2 measures is it. And Stevie held up his hands, goes, okay, okay, hold it, hold it. Okay, I got it. So this is kind of a crappy song. So I think what I'll do is, what if I were to do a crappy kind of lead and then switch into a good lead? And Bobby goes, well, that's fine, that's fine. So we started playing our song, we went through it, we laid the basic track down. I think we did it in one take, uh, like the old Beatles albums. And then, and then the engineer said to Stevie, so you want to do your lead now, son? And Stevie goes, sure. And so They did the playback and Stevie started doing this crappy lead, and then he switched into this absolutely blazing lead, jaws dropping. And we were like, oh my gosh, this guy is so good. And everybody was kind of stunned. And the engineer on the other side of the glass looked into the microphone and kind of turned it on, goes, uh, son, That was pretty good. You got another one in you? And Steve goes, sure, man. Stevie stood up and did another amazing lead from a completely different point of view. Then I could see from my little viewpoint, uh, in the room— I'm the fly on the wall now— the engineer opened the door out to the hallway and he's yelling something out there, and other adults come running into the room to look at what's happening in the room. And then he goes, "Son, got another one?" And Steve goes, "Yeah, I do this all day." And so Stevie laid down another one that had that high wailing guitar going down to those deep bass notes. And everybody had the same look on their face. And the way I describe it is it was the first time anyone in that room had seen the real thing.

Wow.

And by real thing, I mean genius. And the important thing about my brief encounter with Stevie was when you see genius at an early age like that, you're not inclined to be fooled by anything less than that as you get older in life and have more experience.

Sure. Wow, what a, what a fantastic story. And I listened to your podcast too and got to hear the episode where you played that song that you had recorded with him. So what, what an amazing piece of history though, honestly, getting to see the real thing. He was one of my guitar heroes when I was learning to play guitar. Probably always will be my guitar hero. Um, but I have another story that, that I heard you tell one time, and this is actually kind of poignant at the timing today because I just heard that, uh, director Jonathan Demme passed away. And, um, I, I know that this story kind of connects you with, with that director and with the band Radiohead. And you could, in fact, be the reason that Radiohead is Radiohead. I wonder if you could briefly tell a little of that story.

Yeah, I guess the point of that story is I was 19 years old and I was in a movement class at college. And, oh Lord, I just hated that. That was back in the era where you do spiritual exercise, where you breathe in, breathe out, hold hands, and um. You do that kind of stuff. And doing that while you're sober is really difficult. We were out at this retreat, we were all holding hands, and our teacher said, "If you could go in a circle and just say the first thing that comes into your head." And everybody was saying things like Frodo, Hobbit, far out, weed, that kind of thing. They got to me and I hear this sound in my head. I didn't know what I was going to say and I just look across at our teacher and I say, I get that you're not who you say you are and that your real name is MK or ML. Those are your initials. And then we kept going around the circle with Hobbit, Frodo, and all that. Uh, when, when I was leaving the retreat, the teacher stopped me on the way to the car and pulled me aside, said, why did you say that about me? And I said, I don't know. You said say the first thing that came into your head, so that was it. He said, because it's true. I do have an assumed name and my initials are MK, just like you said. Well, that became a cavalcade of experiences with me and my girlfriend at the time, where we would— she would bring people to me and I would listen to the tones that people made and interpret what those tones meant. And a lot of times it was not a fun thing to do, and people were going like, how do you know this stuff about me? It was creepy, so I quit doing it. That was when I was 19. Well, that girl I was dating grew up to win the Pulitzer Prize for the, for the play Crimes of the Heart, and we became friends with Jonathan Dimmie, rest his blessed soul. If you want to talk, here, here's my eulogy for JD. Jonathan Dimmie is the epitome of the Dylan song "Forever Young," because everything about Jonathan, he was always the 10-year-old boy with so much creative energy bursting from every seam and light bursting from him in every direction. He was forever young, forever innocent, forever creative. Well, Jonathan at that time was directing a movie with some group called the Talking Heads. You know, I had heard of them but never had listened to the music. And Beth and I were coming from exercise and Jonathan said, hey, you guys want to come see a rough cut of my new movie? We go, sure, Jonathan. So we drove over to the Academy, which has like 1,900 seats in the theater and huge Dolby sound, all that crazy stuff. The place was empty except for Jonathan and his ex-wife Evelyn. I believe she was there. And then David Byrne and Tina and Chris. And Jerry were there, and that was it. And me and Beth in this enormous theater. And so we saw Stop Making Sense in its pre-cut version, and it was the first time I really heard the music of the Talking Heads, and I was completely blown away. That evening, Beth and I went out with Jonathan and David Byrne, and we ate Chinese food, I think it was. And David was asking me tons of questions about what I hated about the movie. He's always a perfectionist, and I love the movie. There's nothing I hated. Later on, he came over to our house to film. He was shooting a Road to Nowhere with the Talking Heads, the video for Road to Nowhere. And he found out that Beth and I had a swimming pool. And if you go and don't look up the whistling belly button trick, but if you go on to Google and you get Road to Nowhere and you watch that video, the underwater sequences were done in our swimming pool., and that evening after David shot that, he was talking about a new project he wanted to do called True Stories, which everybody in the movie has these fantastic experiences in their life that are absolutely unbelievable but true. And Beth said, well, you should talk to my sweetie because he can hear tones. And David looked at me with great amusement and he goes, you hear tones? So I told the story I told you about what happened when I was 19. Beth and I ended up being the screenwriters for the movie True Stories. We turned it into David, didn't hear a word from David for a year, for like a year.

Wow.

I'm driving in the Hollywood Hills and suddenly there's a knock on my car window as I'm driving, and it's David Byrne on a bicycle, and he's signaling for me to roll down the window. So I roll down the window and he says, are you doing anything later today? I— there's something I need to play for you. I go, "Well, sure, David, come on over the house." So he came over, he says, "Well, I took the script you and Beth wrote and I completely changed it. I think maybe there's a couple lines you guys wrote in there, but I added the character of somebody who hears tones like you, and I wrote a song for him to sing, and I want you to hear the song." And David played Radiohead, which is in the movie True Story, such a phenomenal song. And you could also download that. Go, go on to iTunes and download Radiohead. What a great song. And it made me so happy because it was as if David had captured the beginning of my relationship with Beth like an insect in amber to hear this song. And, and 3 years later, after True Stories came out, the English band On a Friday had a band meeting. They were big fans of David Byrne, big fan of True Stories., and they changed their name from On a Friday to Radiohead. So in a way, they got their name from David Byrne's song, who got the name from the story I told them about when I was a boy, when I was 19.

Wow, such a great story. So cool. So, well, this is— I could talk about music with you for a long time, but I really do want to get into your book, and there are several incredible stories in that book that I know our listeners, if they haven't had a chance to read it yet, they're going to want to go pick it up. So for me to describe it just real quick, My Adventures with God, you— is it's really a story sort of your lifelong relationship to spirituality, to Judaism in particular, but there are some other influences like Christianity too. And in the book you tell tales of growing up in Texas and, and your early years as an actor, and you become a husband, you become a father, and you tell this narrative in a very unique way, I think, using the books of the Torah to narrate the different, the different times in your life. And I just wonder, where does— where did this idea come from for you to try to think about telling your story in this way?

Well, the, the original idea came from Simon Schuster and said— they called me up after my first book and said, well, what people gravitate to in your writing, Stephen, is they love the humor in your stories, but there's this spiritual component in your stories. Do you think it's possible to write another book of true stories like Dangerous Animals Club was my first book? If you could write true stories like Dangerous Animals Club, but if the fabric that ties it together is spiritual fabric of man's relationship to God. And I said, oh yeah, I could do that. Of course, not having any idea how I would do that. And so I sat around thinking, and that's when I came up with that conceit about the Torah and how all of our lives kind of fit into that template, which shocked— I mean, at first it was just a structural device to pin stories on, but as I began to write, it became an inspiring decision, not an inspired decision on my part, but the truth of that statement, the way our lives break down, kept inspiring me to write new stories and more stories that continued on this through line. And I'm— I love the book. I love it. It thrills me every time. I must have read it now 6,000 times, you know, you have to when you're editing it, but it still makes me laugh, it still makes me cry, and I still stand by the idea that our lives break down into the 5 books of Moses.

Well, it's— that's a very, uh, I think that's a really amazing observation actually. And theology was my major in college actually, and so I remember going through those books of the Torah and hearing that. So I like to kind of call your— I like to call this book, I think, almost a narrative, like a theological narrative or a spirituality narrative based out of spirituality. But it's, it's really unique. And I think that your storytelling, it does exactly what you just said. I mean, it does have me laughing, but there are some deep things that actually resonate within my heart on a spiritual level when I read it too. And that's a beautiful thing for you to put into the world, I think, just the way that you've been able to do that. I wonder if you learned anything that maybe surprised you about yourself throughout the process of writing a book like this.

Well, I think the first thing I learned is what a moron I've been in my life. It's like almost at every turn in my life I'm doing something really stupid, and, and almost at every turn where I'm facing catastrophe, I am saved by some kind of love. Love from my mother or a teacher, love from my wife Anne, and a continual and ever-changing love with the divine. However, however you could define that, and this is one of the problems whenever you talk about faith faith or how our lives are shaped by the invisible because everybody has a different concept of what that is. But clearly, I definitely believe all of us are shaped by the invisible in so many ways. And from my point of view, that force is divine and can lead to wisdom and can lead to grace in our life and can lead to the miraculous happening, like it happened, like, you know, it happened to me.

Sure.

And, you know, once you experience something in your life that, for want of a better word, you have to call a miracle— and, and, and you've read the book, so you know what story I'm talking about.

Yeah.

But for me, the, the, the miracle wasn't that I got through that series of catastrophes alive. Now, some people, that would be enough to say that you went through this experience where everybody's going to die and you lived. That's a miracle. That wasn't the miracle. I, I'm a science guy. I love science. And I could say that was a scientific coincidence. The percentage of that happening is so minute, you know, it's a percentage thing and you lucked out, pal. The miracle happened after my life was saved, in which there is a passage in the Talmud, which is the second holiest work in Judaism other than the Bible, which says that sometimes when we have experienced illness or injury, as in my case, or loss or despair. It's not a curse but a blessing that helps us see the world with different eyes, to see a different spiritual context to our lives. And that moment happened to me, where in an instant I went from seeing the world one way to seeing it another way. It had nothing to do with what I was doing. It had nothing to do with coincidence. And all I could see is that it was this force, this thing that surrounds us, and that can lead us if we're lucky and if we can hear, hear what that is.

Well, and when you talk about that, and when you talk about the way that, that everyone seems to experience the divine a little bit differently, immediately what comes to my mind— this is not an exact quote, but I think it was Saint John of the Cross that said something like this. That God cannot be known, God can only be loved, but that way of loving becomes its own way of knowing in some way. And I really, when I think about what you're talking about here, about the divine and kind of making your vision, your eyes see through a different paradigm in life, that truly is the miracle in some ways. And so I appreciate the way you tell that story. In this incredible book, My Adventures with God, you say that when you are telling a story about God, you have an inherent difficulty. It's not a problem of belief, it's a problem with nouns. I wonder if you can elaborate a little bit on that, because I thought that was brilliant.

Well, it's true. You know, we get through our lives using nouns. We know what breakfast is. We know what I'm going to work. We know what our car is. We know what these nouns are. We could describe a narrative. But then there's another group of nouns that are a little more difficult to understand, like we say love. Now, love is something that means something different. We all know what it is, but it cannot be weighed or measured. We know it exists even though we can't see it, but we know it's there. And everybody has a somewhat different idea what love is. And then you go to another layer of nouns which are even more difficult birth and death. We, we know it's true. We know it happens. We only experience them through others. We experience our birth by watching our children being born. We experience our death through the death of our parents. And so these are all secondhand knowledge. And then at the very top of the pyramid, the most complex noun of all is God. And there is a billion images come to mind and no images come to mind. For some people, it may be the old man with white hair in the clouds, like in Michelangelo's paintings. For others, it could— you know, you take a look at brilliant minds throughout human history who were polytheists, like you take a look at Aristotle, and Aristotle talks at great length about the the unmoved mover, and about how there is no body involved and it is everywhere and it is everything. He speaks of it as it's a physical force, but at the same time he is trying to define what is undefinable. Now, I love— now, you said that quote you used was John, you said?

I think it's Saint John of the Cross. I'd have to look it up to be for sure.

I am so not up— I mean, I've read the New Testament a couple of times, 3 times I think, and I haven't memorized those passages, but that was a brilliant description.

Well, and this would be Saint John of the Cross, would be after the Bible actually, would just be one of the church fathers. But yeah, same, that's brilliant, you know, same family.

It's brilliant. There is a thing in the Torah, like if you talk about the 5 books of Moses, the last book that we know as Deuteronomy, but in Hebrew is Devarim, which means, uh, words, or it means things. But in, in Hebrew, it— there are very few words in Hebrew. It doesn't have a big vocabulary, and so there's a lot of depth to the language. So the real meaning of Deuteronomy, Devarim, is that words that become things, that words have the power, if you say those words, to actually become real things. And in a way, that is what— of dealing with something you cannot know, but in loving, in loving, in actually doing this, in performing this love, you are able to turn your words, which I assume would come through prayer, words into things and it becomes a way of knowing. I think it certainly is true with people and with things that aren't as high-minded as God. I mean, when I was in college, which was back in the '70s, a comet was going to fly overhead, the Comet Kahootek. And the word out on the street was when the comet flew over the Earth, it would either lead to the end of the world or to enlightenment. And, and we weren't sure which it was going to be. And there were a lot of arguments, and the comet was going to fly over at 2 AM. So you want to talk about a test of faith. I knew this was going to be nothing, but I was up. I was up at 2 AM. And when when 2:00 AM hit and we were all just as stupid as we were before, we knew it wasn't going to be enlightenment. And the next morning when we were all at Henry's having breakfast, you know, in our diner place, everybody seemed to be kind of disappointed that it wasn't the end of the world either. So, but, but the, the point was that it was better for us to believe in the end of the world than it was to believe in nothing.

Hmm, very interesting. You know, speaking of John again, you know, when you talked about words becoming things, and I know the Gospel of John is actually talking about Jesus, but what Christians teach is that Jesus really is the embodiment of love. And John's Gospel starts right out, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." And so it's an interesting concept when you talk about this idea of of words becoming things and this concept of it being a problem of nouns so often. I love the way that you described that. I think that's a really brilliant way to describe it. And man, I really want to encourage people who are listening because we just don't have the time on a show like this to hear so many of your great stories. But in your book, and I've even heard you tell this before, in your book you talk about your injury to your neck and the miracle that happened to you and sort of this other side of miracle that we may see as a curse. Curse at one point. And, um, and, and I— so I don't want to spend a ton of time on that because I do want people to, um, to read your book and find that story. I heard you tell it for the first time on Mark Maron's podcast a few years ago, and I was so moved by it. I really was. Um, but I, I wonder if we could take a look at a different part of your life that has special meaning to me as, as I read it, because it has to with the Book of Psalms. And this time in your life— and I'm not to be self-promoting of myself, I'm really not trying to do that— but I wrote a book on the Psalms a few years ago called Out of the Depths: A Songwriter's Journey Through the Psalms. And I recorded a live album on— and every song was from the Psalms. And so when you talked about in the book being in the hospital and waiting on surgery and finding that you were gravitating towards the Psalms, I really resonated with that, and it spoke a lot to me. I would love it if maybe you could share a bit about what the Psalms have meant to you, and maybe, maybe even some of that story. I don't want you to spoil too much because I do want people to read your book, but that was just a really special part of the book to me because the Psalms are so formative in my life.

Yeah, at that particular time I was going in and coming out of a triple bypass, and and I had brought a prayer book with me, and it was a mystery to me. You know, the doctor said I could bring something to the hospital, and I'm thinking, what am I going to bring? And the only thing that made sense to me— and you have to understand, you know, I, I'm, I'm not a guy that's always, you know, I'm at, I'm at synagogue quite a bit, but yet, you know, I'm I'm a very secular guy and I'm a very science guy, and I was very surprised with my decision to bring the prayer book. And it's because it was the only thing that made sense to me. It's the only thing that I knew would matter. Now, in, in the Jewish service, the Jewish service is completely put together with Psalms, and, and I, I mentioned in the book at some point that the Psalms, even though they're probably the most famous things in the Bible, uh, question, you know, they're up there, they're up there in the, in the top 10. I still don't think they get the credit they deserve because the Psalms had— these were the, these were the things people would chant to themselves on their way to the gas chamber. These are the things that, that, uh, in France during the French Revolution, people said on their way up to the guillotine. The Magnatine. These are the things explorers would say on the way to the New World. Our entire civilization has been based on the words and the spiritual message of Psalms. "Though my father and my mother leave me." You know, when I was in surgery, the rabbi who came to visit me visit me, said that one of the most powerful Psalms that he uses is the 23rd Psalm when he visits people. And I go, "What, the Lord is my shepherd?" I said, "Really? You know, the walk through the valley of the shadow of death? I would not think that would play so good in a hospital." And the rabbi leaned forward and said, "You would be surprised." And after he left, I said, "Well, you know, I'm going to look that up." And I pulled out my prayer book and I found the 23rd song, and I could not get through it. I could not get through it because I heard it with different ears, and maybe that's what the Psalms are about, is that they've been written from a point of view of such enormous joy and such enormous anguish that a lot of times we hear the beauty of it without really hearing the depth of the meaning, and when we are in those positions of either extreme joy or extreme grief, and we are able— it opens a new door to the Psalms. And once we see what really the feeling was that sprung that poem onto the page, it is overwhelming. And it still is to me this day. Our holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, one of the final prayers we do is the 23rd Psalm. And every, every year we do that, I'm back in the hospital and I'm looking at the— it was like, you know, the, the old stories where the, the tears were on the page. The power of those words in the Psalms are overwhelming. And I think the reason why I have so many different prayer books is I'm very interested in the different translations of the Psalms. I never thought of that before., but that's what it is.

Yeah, well, and, and you know, it's— they are unique in a couple different ways. I think we often forget just because the language is lost to us over time and, and the music is lost, but I think one reason the Psalms are powerful is they were all songs too. They were intended to be sung, and we know that songs can speak to the heart like nothing else. And I think another interesting and unique thing about about the Psalms as opposed to the other books in the Old Testament. So many of the other books and the writings are often the divine word coming to us, but the Psalms are us giving words to the divine, like back to them. And, and we can see in so many ways, um, things that, that we didn't even know we needed to pray at the time. So when, when you say, yeah, the, the way it resonated with you, it's like there's at some point in all of our lives we come to this place where I just don't have the words. I don't know what my heart needs to say right now. And the Psalms are— and, and they're deep and they're gritty and they're tough. I mean, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Things like that are coming from the Psalms. Or to follow up on the one, because I, I use this 23rd Psalm every day in the morning when I wake up, and I always follow it up book, because the 23rd Psalm ends with, "And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." And Psalm 91:12, I go right into, "He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, 'You are my fortress and my refuge.'" And this past year has been a difficult year in many ways for me, and I found myself in the hospital with family members who were passing away and through miscarriages with my family and all kinds of different things. And I found that in those moments, in those hospital hospital places, that those words just began to flow out of me because I had made a daily practice of those things with the Psalms. And I think you're right on in what you say, in the way that they resonate with you in those times.

Yeah, it's, you know, there's beauty on many different levels. I think you said it as well as it could be said, that there's so much beauty. There's beauty on the surface, and probably if they were sung, we would hear a beautiful tune.. But once you— once the Psalms are so succinct, they're not wordy, and you go from one huge idea to another huge idea, and that's often overwhelming for us. And so it carries us almost more than anything that I've experienced. It carries us. My old rabbi used to say you need 4 things to survive. You know, you need the physical, the spiritual, the emotional, and, uh, the intellectual. You need all those. And the Psalms, in a way, embody all four of those. When you read them, you are carried away by physically— by reading them intellectually, the ideas are powerful emotionally, they sweep you away, and spiritually, because the ideas are so succinct, you make leaps leaps of faith going from sentence to sentence, and in those leaps, the leaps could become overwhelming in and of themselves.

Yeah, very true, very true. Well, I really loved that part of the book in particular, and it was towards the end of the book when you were talking about what the Psalms had meant. But I think that everyone who reads this will probably find something that resonates with them. And I'd love to ask you real quick, I know we need to wrap it up, you've been so generous with your time, but because you are an artist and because you are an artist on so many levels, you write, you act, you play instruments, you sing, you do so many different things. I wonder if you think, or what your thoughts are about this. I've been trying to figure out how to word this question all day. Do you think that there are pieces of art that have been created that somehow have the fingerprints of the divine on them? And by that I mean that they transcend what man should be able to do in some way. Can you think of any art that maybe does that in some way?

Well, I certainly can point to art in which the composer and the conductor and the the facilitator of the art, absolutely believed it. Every work Johann Sebastian Bach wrote, he said he wrote it to God, that it came through him to God. Mozart, in his letters, talks about how the— how God has moved him to write this piece or that piece. And you could take a look at the exquisite beauty. I spent time with Jerry Lee Lewis, and when I was doing Great Balls of Fire and I was over at his house and he started playing the piano and he said, Stephen, it ain't me that's ever playing. The only thing that's playing is the Holy Ghost. And I let the Holy Ghost work through my hands. And let's, let's not leave it to just musicians. Besides Bach and Beethoven is another one. Mozart, all writing to the glory of God and all felt moved by God. And it's in their letters. You read their letters and you see that they've dedicated pieces or were inspired by God. How about Isaac Newton? All of modern science is— so much of it is based on the discoveries and the calculus created by Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton, when he was creating these new worlds of math and new ideas of gravitation and how the universe works, in his writing saying this was— he was trying to reveal God's masterwork to man, that he was— that he felt, and everyone at that time period of the Enlightenment felt he was an intermediary, uh, revealing the hidden— the hidden of the divine to man. And you take a look at the way it's lasted, and you take a look at geniuses like Einstein saying, well, Isaac Newton was mostly right. Mostly what he said is right. And, and to, to bring up, uh, that name Einstein— Einstein in his work said that all of us are motivated by the mysterious, and the mysterious leads to science, and the mysterious leads to God. And so the, the works of science and God are complementary and not in opposition to one another.

That's a wonderful way to put that. Beautiful. Really love it. Well, that's— and that's a great answer too. Thank you for taking time to say that. And I really— I do think that there are pieces of art, pieces of music, sometimes even film— I think they're just going to be with us for longer than we can imagine. I think they do transcend at times. And, and you know what, I'll be honest, I think some of your stories, you know, they might last for a good long while because I think the way that you tell them shows a lot of heart. I think your publisher is right in what they say about—

they—

that people enjoy the humor but they enjoy the spirituality behind it. So, and I know you're— you've said yourself, you know, you're a pretty secular guy in most ways, but, but Mr. Rogers comes to mind. I'm gonna— I guess close the podcast on what may seem a little odd way to do it, but I think you'll understand why when I explain the story. I recently read a book called The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers. If you've not read it, I highly recommend it. Really good book. And it talks about how, you know, the Mr. Rogers we all knew and loved from PBS that was just such a gentle person, the book talks about how he really cultivated in his own life a practice that, that he really did strive to be that person that he was on the screen. He really strived to, to be that gentle force in the world, I would say. And one thing that I found fascinating in that book is to find out that before he would go on his television show, he would say this simple prayer every time, and he would just say, God, let some word that is heard be yours today. And, and I think that is so beautiful. And whether you know it or not, Stephen, through your stories that you tell, through the writing, through the stories you tell on the podcast, maybe in some of your, your movies that you've made, the concert films, whether you know it or not, I think that the words of God are being heard many times, maybe even in spite of you at times. But I, I just think that, I just think that the divine The divine speaks to us in ways that we don't even know at times. So I want to tell you how much your writings have appreciated— have meant to me, how much I appreciate them, how much I appreciate your podcast. And as much as I appreciate your acting, and I really do, I want to say on a personal level what your own contributions and your stories have meant to me, and I'm sure to so many others out there, just the way they've resonated. So thank you so much for that and putting that into the world.

Well, thank you very much, Rick, for having the discussion with me. I, I, it makes me feel good. It makes me feel good that, that what I intend is reaching out into the world and making people happy. That, that makes me happy.

Well, and, and one other thing before I, before I let you go to— and this goes all the way back to one of your very first podcasts that you did did. This has been one of my favorite stories, but the story you tell about Davy Crockett, that is a classic story. I mean, it is so good about heroes and the loss of heroes and everything. When I listened to that the first time, I think I listened to it about 3 times in a row throughout the day, and then I played it for my wife. I made her listen to it. I sent it to a bunch of my friends, and then I knew a lot of people who were ministers who, you know, they deal in narrative for their living in their churches, and I was like, you got to hear this, like, this is the perfect story, you have to hear it. So you're just, you're very gifted in that, in that regard. So I really appreciate it very much. What am I, what am I missing? I want to make sure that you have an opportunity before we end, if there's anything that you would like listeners to know about you or any other upcoming projects. We know that your new book is called My Adventures with God, but anything else that we've missed tonight that you'd like to share?

I'll tell you one thing that I think your listeners would love, and that is I'm starting— as soon as the book tour is over, I'm starting season 2 of One Day at a Time for Netflix. If people have not watched that show, it is so beautiful, it is so funny, and so moving. It is, it is absolutely delightful. And I obviously, there are people who come to me with a lot of passion about Groundhog Day and also Silicon Valley. They all have a lot of passions of shows I'm on, but not like the passion of people who have just seen One Day at a Time. They'll come up to me in the theater and they'll say, I was in the hospital. I turned this on thinking it was going to be kind of silly and a couple of laughs. And it moved me to such an extent. It's such a beautiful show. So One Day at a Time. With Netflix, you could, uh, what, binge watch it? I think people do, but it is, it is delightful and funny, and, uh, I can't wait to start season 2.

All right, well, One Day at a Time, sort of a remake of the Norman Lear classic, right?

A reimagining. It is imagining. So you have, you know, you still have a single mom with raising 2 kids, and her mother is living in the house, and the mother's Rita Moreno, and the single mom is Justina Makada. And I mean, the acting is so good on the show. And we said we have Schneider still, Todd Grinnell, who's hilarious. The kids are fabulous. And, and it's just a dear, dear show. And, and you— the joy on the show is so infectious. So, so I, I can't recommend it highly enough.

All right, well, we will definitely have to check that out. Check that out for sure. Well, Stephen Tobolowsky, thank you so much for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.