Joe Mantegna

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: Mummies vs. Zombies, cancer doulas
Let Me Run This By You: Gina has projection issues.
Interview: We talk to Joe Mantegna about Morton College, The Goodman School of Drama, Arthur Lessac, starting his career with HAIR, Dr. Charles McGaw, The Shubert Theater, Morton West High School, André De Shields, Jonathan Banks, Carrie Snodgrass, his close relationship with Bella Itkin, Geraldine Page, Eugenie Leontovich, Patrick Henry, playing Judas in Godspell, Organic Theater, the Grease premiere at Kingston Mines theater, Jack Wallace, Medusa Challenger, Stuart Gordon, the sci-fi play Warp!, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dennis Franz, John Heard, Richard Gilliland, Meshach Taylor, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, Esai Morales, Edward James Olmos, Bleacher Bums, Robert Smigel, winning the Tony, Mandy Patinkin, his approach to ensemble acting, breaking news about Criminal Minds!, House of Games, dealing with David Mamet's language, American Buffalo, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, A Life in the Theatre, William H. Macy, going up on his lines on opening night of Glengarry Glen Ross, Lindsay Crause, Nan Cibula-Jenkins, Vincent Gardenia, and why JOE MANTEGNA PREFERS TALKING TO US OVER THE NEW YORK TIMES! Hopefully, next time we'll get into the Jim Clemente of it all, about Southern Italian miners migrating to the American Southwest, and Wait Until Spring Bandini
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
2 (10s):
And I'm Gina . We went to theater school together. We

1 (13s):
Survived it, but we

2 (14s):
Didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We

1 (21s):
Survived theater school and you will

2 (23s):
Too. Are we famous yet? Which is the horrible,

1 (32s):
Where's their costume. What did she wear? Who was she?

2 (35s):
Zombie cheerleader.

1 (36s):
Love it. Love it. Especially since I'm I'm I'm watching glee. I'm I'm for the first time. And there's the, all about the cheerleaders there. Zombie cheerleader. Perfect. Okay.

2 (47s):
So she's walking around and she's holding these pom-poms out and I'm like, what is she doing? And then I realized she was doing a zombie walk. She's

1 (56s):
Smart. Why

2 (57s):
Do some bees hold their arms out in front of her?

1 (60s):
Oh, that's a great, great question. If there's any zombie experts in his zombie historians in our listener pool, please write to us and tell us why that's great. Like I think it started with mummy's.

2 (1m 16s):
Well, Frank. Okay. Okay. That's what I was going to ask next. I was going to say if there are any zombie historians, please tell us what the origin of it was. So mummies

1 (1m 25s):
It's first in the old movies, old, old movies, the mummies walked like that. So I think the zombies are stealing that look from the mommies, so,

2 (1m 35s):
Okay. And you do something around this time of year. It does get, like I forget about, there's a difference between a zombie and a mummy and then,

1 (1m 43s):
And they're slow zombies. There's fat, some bees, I mean, zombies is a whole genre of everything. Oh yeah. Like, like if you, if you read screenwriting stuff, they talk a lot about not, not all books, but a lot of books when they're talking about genre, it's like the, the, to get really specific. You can't just say zombie, it has to be, are they slow or fast on B? So like in what is it like a world war Z. They're fast Sotheby's but like, I believe in the original day of the dead, Romero's their slows on me. So it's a whole thing. And I know, I only know this because I had a friend that was like a zombie nuts, so,

2 (2m 24s):
Okay. So picture you and I are sitting on a park bench in the apocalypse and we're just still our same normal self. Somehow we've avoided getting effected by the apocalypse. And then this zombie just goes, zipping the thing past us. And we say, yeah,

1 (2m 44s):
The past sappy and then a slow one comes with that's a slow zombie.

2 (2m 49s):
Can you tell, I can see already that's going to be a real slow. What about a medium speed zombie? That's what I would probably be. I'd probably ride,

1 (2m 59s):
I think I'd be on the slower end, but, but I, I think with some training we could maybe get to be fast zombies if we wanted, if we wanted to. Yeah. So did you get your self care in? I did I feel, how do I feel? How to say? Yeah. So it's interesting. I, I am in amongst my group of peers and people, a little younger I've become sort of the, my cousin called it the cancer doula. So when the exact term, yeah. And so I had a friend who was diagnosed on Tuesday with breast cancer and I sort of helped her navigate until she could.

1 (3m 43s):
Cause t...