Interview

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To understand Josh Brolin, to really get inside his skin, it helps to know that in addition to being an actor-and a fine one at that-he really knows how to pick his stocks. In fact, a few years ago, when the marquee roles weren't coming as fast and furious as they are now, Brolin sold his ranch in Northern California and focused his energy on day-trading-the idea being that if he could supplement his income by playing the market, then he wouldn't have to take acting jobs simply in order to make a living. Brolin was good at trading, making his moves from a computer in his home office, like Gordon Gekko in sweatpants. This was all, of course, before Robert Rodriguez cast him in Grindhouse (2007) and Ridley Scott put him in American Gangster (2007) and the Coen brothers handed him the bulk of the screen time in No Country for Old Men (2007). It was before Josh Brolin-former teen star of The Goonies (1985), journeyman thespian, husband of Diane Lane, and stepson of Yentl (his father, actor James Brolin, is married to Barbra Streisand)-became the Josh Brolin that we have before us today: a guy who has all the markings of an old-model actor, the rugged, roguish kind who looks like he belongs on the back of a horse in a Sam Peckinpah movie and seems to lack that 21st-century gene that makes movie stars care about whether you like them or not.

But back to the stock market: Soon after selling his old ranch, Brolin found himself shopping for a new one, a fact that has as much to do with his ability to negotiate the bulls and the bears as it does his innate understanding of the science of choice-those intangible forces that make people do what they do, and the internal logic that drives them. Indeed, in Brolin's last few films, he has been hard to like but easy to love, and things aren't about to get any less complicated: Brolin spent much of this past summer in Shreveport, Louisiana, shooting W., Oliver Stone's new biopic of George W. Bush, in which he plays the outgoing 43rd president of the United States. He also stars alongside Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant's upcoming Milk, a film about gay rights activist and San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk; Brolin plays Dan White, a political rival of Milk's from a working-class district who would go on to assassinate both Milk and Mayor George Moscone, shooting both men at close range at City Hall in November of 1978. (During his trial, White's lawyers would put forth the now-famous "Twinkie defense," claiming that their client, a lifelong fitness junkie, suffered from severe depression at the time of the killings, evident by the fact that he stopped exercising and begun consuming large quantities of Twinkies.)

In addition to all of this, Brolin has also taken part in The People Speak, a forthcoming TV miniseries based in part on the best-selling book A People's History of the United States by political scientist and historian Howard Zinn. The series features music by, among others, Brolin's interviewer here, Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder. With this cleansing moment in American history upon us and a historic presidential election in the making, the 40-year-old Brolin and Vedder sat down to surmise the state of the union, the bullish upturn of Brolin's career, and the lengths to which some people are willing to go for their art. So, how to explain Brolin's recent windfall? It's the economy, stupid

EDDIE VEDDER: I just finished touring, and I'm on a detox thing. It's a heavy detox, so nothing in my belly except water, salt, and cayenne pepper.

JOSH BROLIN: You're drinking the lemon water and the cayenne and all that?

EV: Yeah, I'm doing the master cleanse, which also means I'm not smoking. I haven't smoked for four days. This is probably the first phone conversation I've had in 10 years where I haven't had a smoke. It's like trying to talk without using adverbs.

JB: Right. I just lit up. Sorry. Where are you?

EV: I'm back in Seattle.

JB: We were just at the DNC [Democratic National Convention] in Denver, doing The People Speak. I didn't see Howard [Zinn] there, but he was telling me over the phone the whole deal with you in Boston and how you put the spotlight on him in the middle of the show.

EV: Yeah. His wife [the artist Roslyn Zinn, who died of ovarian cancer on May 14 of this year] was the best. She made Ruth Gordon look kind of like a dim bulb. So I put her picture in the program, a really beautiful picture of her and Howard, and we dedicated a tune to her. She was one of those people . . . When she passed away, I felt her presence around me.

JB: Hugely. Me, too. The last time I saw her was in Boston when we did The People Speak performance at the Majestic Theatre with Viggo [Mortensen] and all those guys. She was really sick at the time, but the great thing with her was that you never knew it, man. She was incredible.

EV: Well, the timing of it was just absolutely stunning, that she made it out for that performance. So you were at the DNC?

JB: I was. I saw Cindy Sheehan speak [at the Open the Debates rally], and then spent some time with her after that. I guess she's trying to run against Nancy Pelosi for her U.S. Congressional seat. And then I saw Sean [Penn] speak and about half of [Ralph] Nader's speech. Sean was fantastic, man. He's incredibly well-spoken and passionate. I know that the guy gets so much shit about speaking out, but it's amazing. He's the most empathetic guy, so I'm always blown away when he gets up in front of people.

EV: Well, there's this thing that you hear a lot these days. People say, "I'm tired of hearing about the war in Iraq. I'm tired of hearing about it." And it makes me realize how few people have deeper connections with it, as far as knowing people who have come back paralyzed or who have died, or families that have been affected . . . If they had a connection to it, then they wouldn't be tired of hearing about it.

JB: It's almost like a denial process. It reminds me of when the AIDS epidemic first started. There were people who said, "Well, if there weren't gays, then we wouldn't have this problem. It's got to be because of them-let it be them instead of us." But when you educate yourself about it, you can't help but realize that we're all affected by it. I think that things like that just become too daunting for people. That's what's great about Howard Zinn. Here's a guy who says, "Look, democracy doesn't come from above-it comes from below." The only way change will ever happen is if we speak up, and we have to know that it actually has an impact. Because we have a lot more power than we think we do, I think.