– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

I am Christoph Waltz, and this is my last meal.

Every person has exactly two things in common.

We all gotta eat and we're all gonna die.

Today's guest is a two-time Academy Award-winning actor

who's worked with some of the most

legendary filmmakers of all time,

and he continues that tradition

with Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein

out in theaters October 17th and on Netflix November 7th.

But who are we kidding?

You know him from the 2013 production

of Der Rosenkavalier at the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp.

Christoph Waltz, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for this wonderful invitation.

Of course, of course, anytime.

I'm curious, when you were at the

Universitat fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst.

Whoa, well done.

You studied under a man named Otto Adelman,

who was one of the most legendary

of all time.

I'm curious how that affected your direction

of Der Rosenkavalier.

It did, because I wanted to do everything differently.

And I don't want to study media sciences for three semesters

before I'm entitled to understand what is happening.

So that's my approach.

Had you thought about your last meal before?

Never.

Never? Never.

You know, occasionally you see in movies, a officer comes in

and that asks for orders for the last meal.

Yeah.

And would I care?

We tend to think less about the execution part of this

and more on like the celebration and the retrospective view

of your life and experiences through food.

But you imagined your own execution more or less?

No, no, no, no.

I, just, well, maybe, maybe that's,

no, you see, would I care at all?

Would I order a lot of alcohol?

Yeah. Likely.

I won't need the experience after that.

Did you learn anything about yourself?

Were any of the dishes that you chose

sort of surprising to you?

Actually, those dishes are,

they look simple on the surface.

Interesting.

But simplicity is the most difficult thing to achieve.

Unless, unless you don't care.

And, then it's not simple, then it's slip shot.

Absolutely.

And I hope the chef doesn't hold it against me.

I put a few tripping stones,

tripping stones in there.

Spoken like a villain, booby trapping his own last meal.

How much do you think about death in general?

A lot. Yeah.

And recently, I saw something

that they're trying to allow burials at home,

and one commentator said, no, no, no, it privatizes death.

Whereas traditionally, you know, I mean, look at the,

the big funerals that they had with the long processions

in the whole village or town, or, you know,

they sort of accompany these extraordinary personalities

on what they call their last journey.

Yeah.

So the funeral is really for the ones who stay behind.

Yeah.

Vienna has a very, very big central cemetery.

Have you staked out your plot yet?

No. No.

My children once asked me,

where would you like to be buried?

I said, where? Drop dead.

You know, the rest is your problem.

You ready to eat?

Sure. Let's do it.

Actually, I'm waiting.

Christoph, for the first course of your final meal,

we have a very simple spaghetti pomodoro.

We are inspired by Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce.

So we've cooked down whole canned tomatoes,

picked at peak ripeness, of course,

with a little bit of onion just for the scent.

And then some fresh basil and Parmigiano Reggiano on top.

And then we have the Vitello Tonnato.

Now this is veal loin that we've actually

rolled up, tied off,

and then sous vide to about 145 degrees.

Served with, of course, a tonnato sauce,

plenty of egg, olive oil, capers, blended with the tuna.

Then a Negroni, a classic 1:1:1 cocktail of gin,

sweet vermouth and Campari.

Beautiful color, beautiful color.

That not so much.

Not so much.

Listen, these are your choices.

Please dig in.

Where do we start

and why did these end up on your last meal?

Well, this is something that I learned

from a friend in London about 40 years ago.

No one drank Negroni then.

No.

But there were a few bars in London

where he and I used to go,

and the bartenders there knew what they were doing.

So, very curious.

Well, cheers. If you allow me.

Cheers. Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming.

This is excellent.

Absolutely excellent.

If I may just...

No, no, no. It's not a critic.

I love a hint of the Angostura.

Oh, floated on top. Like on top of the ice.

Like an extra drop.

Are you familiar with a 2016 study

by the National Library of Medicine

that linked enjoyment of bitter flavors

to quote psychopathy, Machiavellianism

and general day-to-day sadism.

That explains a lot.

You and me both, brother.

Once the spaghetti sits, it gets cold.

So please dig in.

I kind of set the bar so high for myself that

now I have to,

it feels like I have to live up to it.

No, no, no, this is your last meal.

Choose to be completely relaxed.

It's a damn good spaghetti.

Yeah. I'm darn.

It's excellent.

I should come more often.

I think you should.

I think you should come for

Frankenstein 2: Electric Boogaloo.

We know it's coming out.

It come without it.

The Vitello Tonnato I found is

one of the most difficult dishes to explain to Americans.

Cold boiled veal with tuna sauce

doesn't exactly sound appetizing.

Are there any dishes that you've found in America

that you think would be very difficult to explain

to your average Austrian?

The concept of American cuisine,

if there is such a thing is burgers.

Sure.

Meaning broiled or grilled meat.

German word in fact,

that has then looped all the way around.

Meat mostly.

Yeah.

And the cliche is not terribly refined.

It's kind of what you would eat on the trek west.

Yeah.

Wagons in a circle.

You make a fire in the middle.

Somewhere out in the prairie,

and you throw a piece of dead cow on that thing

and you have it with baked beans or something.

A pretty good read on American food

it's sort of like that

and then just kind of unfettered capitalism

spreading around the entire globe with...

I actually went to,

I was in Cannes recently and went to a gym out there

and there was a KFC right next to it.

And I got kind of like bummed out

seeing the American exports to this beautiful,

you know, seaside province, Saul Town.

I agree.

Of them just advertising like the double cluck or deluxe.

When Starbucks opened a cafe in Vienna,

I thought the world had ended.

Yeah.

You know, you pass Starbucks and you, oh.

Do you think that people from America perceive your accent

to have a certain severity to it

just because of the media diet that we've been fed

for the last say, a hundred years?

They wouldn't be wrong.

Yeah, of course, it's just me.

Dig into the veal, it's getting room temperature.

The first time we've made this dish on the show,

most people ask for double cheeseburgers.

I'm open to critique.

No, there's no critique.

The sauce is fantastic.

The veal is a little bit on the...

Oh.

A little, a little dry.

It is a little dry, it's a little firm

and it's a little thick.

We're comping this dish from your check.

No, no, no, no, no.

Okay, fine, send him the full bill.

I think the first time that most people in America

were introduced to you was obviously Inglourious Basterds,

but more specifically in the farmhouse scene,

which is one of the most legendary scenes in movie history.

What makes a villain drinking a glass of milk

so uniquely terrifying.

I'm not thinking about these things in these terms.

In what way?

I'm just thinking about, you know,

this is the character and this,

and now I drink a glass of milk

and that distance between is what I negotiate.

Yeah. And that's it.

So do you view yourself more like a single sprocket

or cog in the large clock tower?

Absolutely.

That's kind of awesome.

Yeah.

Well otherwise it would be unbearable.

You know, if I thought it's all about me, it's my art,

it's my, yeah, I don't know.

Sure.

You can do that and everybody will indulge you

because you know they need to get the day finished.

But in the end, not even in the end,

in the beginning and the end and all the while in between,

that's what you are.

Yeah.

So you can make everybody suffer.

I don't really believe that it will enhance the result.

As a matter of fact, I'm almost convinced that it does it,

it's detrimental to the cause.

There is a cause, you know, a story.

Yeah.

There might be a grander metaphor here

that you might agree with or reject,

but like, if everybody sort of just did their one part

and focused on the actual task at hand across say a society,

do you think that would make everybody sort of better off?

Yeah, totally.

And watch the edges,

because that's where you connect to the others.

What do you mean connect to the others?

No, you know, everybody does that.

Oh, certainly, yeah.

Everybody contributes or should ideally contribute their,

whatever it is that they have at their disposal.

It's never irrelevant.

And it be it only that you get out of the way of others,

you know, you need to have that sensitivity too.

What do you think the main cause of people

not being able to just get out of the way is.

Do you think it's narcissism

that everybody wants to feel more important

than they actually are in a certain sense?

Yeah.

How'd you avoid that? Or have you-

Whether that's necessarily narcissism is debatable.

With some, it clearly is,

but it's interesting to see how much damage it does,

you know, socially.

I read a fantastic quote the other day,

it's Voltaire, and he said, change is annoying.

I'm paraphrasing.

Change is annoying, but certainty is absurd.

And I thought that's exactly what you can observe.

Wherever you look, people are so certain of themselves,

of their view of the world, of their opinion,

mostly opinion of what they feel.

If you accept the uncertainty of all of these aspects,

make life worth living.

That needs to be certain.

And if I had been Voltaire

coming up with this fabulous idea,

I would've chosen much harsher words.

How many glasses of milk did you drink during that scene?

Not more than 27.

It's good amount.

Ready to go to course number two?

Cheers. Cheers.

Christoph, for course number two of your final meal.

We have the salade nicoise.

We have the Ceviche with tostadas over here.

And then we have the perfectly clear chicken soup

and a glass of Gruner Veltliner.

May I pour your soup for you, sir?

Oh, thank you very much.

I can't tell you how impressed I am.

You know, I made a few suggestions

what could be a possibility and you made it all.

We almost take that as a challenge, you know,

and truly for you to spend your time being here

means a lot for us in, you know, somebody's last meal.

Although through the artifice of a show,

it is still something that is highly personal.

And so we do take our craft seriously.

Tell me about the Gruner Veltliner.

The Gruner Veltliner. Gruner Veltliner.

Gruner Veltliner.

It's good.

It's no Gewurztraminer but-

No, thankfully not.

But it's not first class.

This is like, this is the local swell.

Yeah, this a little, what is it?

Kremser Wachtberg.

This is really the good stuff.

You can take it home, please.

I will.

Tell me about the clear chicken soup,

because this was the first thing I saw

when you sent us your last meal,

and I was immediately obsessed.

Why the clear chicken soup?

It's another one of these real simple,

immensely difficult things to do.

It is immensely difficult.

You literally have to like grind eggshells and egg whites

with ground meat to create a raft on top

and then slowly skim off the fat through all the scum.

There's kind of the metaphor there of, you know,

the actual time that you spend doing

is maybe 10 times more important and laborious

than the final product,

which at the end of the day is just soup.

Now that's a fantastic topic for a long conversation.

And I actually bothered my children

from a very early age onwards, process versus result.

This here is a very, very result oriented culture.

You mean here as in America in general?

In America or the west?

The west.

But this is, you know, ahead of the rest of the west,

but it is west and the rest will follow.

Sure. No, that's how it happens.

It's all about the result.

We don't care about the process.

Well actually it's exactly the other way around.

It's all about the process.

The result is at the end, speaking of death,

you can't plan your death, I find, you know.

You can live out your years and the death will

as a result of that follow.

Inevitably.

So same thing with, now, I'm really getting excited.

With a job worth doing it's a job worth doing well.

That's the same principle.

It's the doing of it not what you've done.

And government is one of the most difficult

and important process that humans can aspire to.

Yeah.

You don't go for the result and say, well,

you know, thank you very much.

Yeah.

You know, it's people's lives.

Time passes.

People live in this passing of their time until it's done.

I take responsibility for others.

I have to at least, that's the bare minimum,

show interest in your wellbeing.

Yeah. Why? I tell you.

Because my existence will be better thanks to that.

So if we make it at least reciprocal process,

we will inevitably arrive at a worthwhile resolved.

Everything else is, you know, the product counts.

Why? Because you can sell it.

There's nothing for sale, you know?

But people's lives continue.

So, I'm sorry.

Oh, no, no, like genuinely that was beautiful.

But your soup's getting cold

and that's what I was worried about.

We should open a restaurant.

Finally, somebody is worried about the result

and the product that can be developed

from this wonderful human experience.

Christoph, we've never thought about that.

Everybody should get rich.

I'm totally for it.

But I ask with what?

Taking it from you won't do.

I think people don't understand the sort of zero sum game

that we all live on the earth

with a finite amount of resources.

A good segue into Frankenstein.

'Cause one of the central themes,

I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein when I was a teenager,

and it was, you know, have very heavily affected me.

One of the obvious themes is that unchecked ambition

plus unfettered technology equals the scourge of humanity.

Do you think that's a very close allegory

for what we're currently going through with regards to,

you know, AI and everybody just trying

to make a quick buck off of it?

Frankenstein is not in the,

in our canon over there, literary canon.

So we don't read Frankenstein in school.

But it sounds so German.

Well, because of Frankenstein, you know?

But we even say it differently.

Frankenstein.

So did you like grow up knowing that story at all

outside of like the Boris Karloff?

Exactly.

We knew about because the Hollywood's propaganda machine

is infinitely stronger than Mary Shelley's.

USA baby.

Going into playing this part in Frankenstein,

I thought the least I should do is,

or the first as well is read the novel.

I was enlightened in a way.

Yeah. It is.

You shouldn't read it when you're 16.

You don't get it.

The what is generally referred to

as the monster is everything but.

So from then on I decided,

I don't call it the monster anymore,

I call it the creature.

And so does Guillermo by the way.

Yeah.

This long explanation of the creature,

what he expected from being alive

and the discrepancy to his experience.

Mm.

I read it like three times in a row

because I could not believe that a 19-year-old girl

had that width of horizon to even,

to even fathom the necessity to,

at that time, 18, 16, to write this down.

It's a little bit like that one Shylock speech.

Do I not have the right to be like you are?

Do I not have the right

to be taken seriously as a human being?

Do I not have desires?

Do I not have the wish to lead a meaningful,

and he never said happy or prosperous, meaningful.

He wants meaning amongst his fellow men.

I was so touched by this.

Anyway. Yeah.

So another relevance.

Can I offer you some salad?

Thank you.

You know, now that it's so beautifully sitting here

demanding its own attention, the ceviche,

I feel it's kind of misplaced.

We tried to,

we tried to figure out how to course everything

in a sort of timely manner,

and sometimes it gets tough

in the sense of like telling the story of one's life

cannot neatly fit into four courses,

but we do try our best.

You know, it may give rise to another interesting aspect

in terms of process and result and misplaced.

What's misplaced?

It's- Sure.

A little bit of a contradiction,

but there can never be a whole without a contradiction.

Contradiction is part of the whole.

You see, contradiction is what gets

movement into the process.

You can't just do one thing.

You have to consider the contradiction

in order to eventually arrive at something at all.

Oh, please dig into the salad.

Thank you. Thank you.

Of course.

It's just good.

It is just good. It's just good.

But like, there's so much history and storytelling

in like authorship among so many of these.

You seen somebody that's very, very fascinated

by that process.

And I think it really comes through in all the directors

that you've worked with.

It's not just the highest grossing box office directors,

but it's like the who's who

of the greatest authors of our time.

What did you find from Guillermo's process

that really drew you to it?

Joy.

Among all the monstrousness, it's the joy.

Guillermo is one of the most joyful people I've ever met.

Even when he's annoyed, even when he's in a bad mood,

there's still, there's joyous,

life and love embracing personality.

Is that different than you found with other directors?

Like that's...

Who's the least joyful director you've worked -with?

Well, you know, the human mind

has a sort of self-regulating hygienic mechanism.

I forgot.

I'm sorry.

Try the ceviche, please.

See what I mean with misplaced or contradiction.

It's so good.

It is so good.

That it elevates us a lot and is salade nicoise.

It does, it's that existential terror

that makes the laughter laugh harder

and the laughter that brings you back.

It's, you're sort of being pulled

on this string of contradictions.

I want to be a marionette as an audience

in service of the art.

Whether that's movies or that's food.

All I look for in art

is I want to be physically moved against my will.

I don't know.

I may have misheard, but I just had, you know,

a flash in my mind.

I'd like to laugh on my deathbed.

Why is that?

The little limited experience I've had with that was,

it was like a fight.

A fight towards death or a struggle, let's put it that way.

I'd like to laugh myself into, onto the other side.

I don't know whether that works.

Because laughter is not a trivial thing.

No.

Laughter is serious.

That's the best laughter.

You ready to move on to course number three?

Not yet.

I got all day.

I got nowhere to be.

Christoph, for course number three of your final meal.

We have the lamb filet mignon,

with a little bit of red wine and Dijon mustard, demi-glace.

And then we have the crown jewel of Austrian cooking.

The wiener schnitzel, pounded out veal cutlet, egg wash,

breadcrumb, shallow fried and oil, some lingonberry jam

and a little bit of parsley and lemon juice.

And then of course we have the Fleurie,

this is a Beaujolais,

one of my favorite wine regions in France.

May I pour?

Thank you.

Of course.

Decanted served at exactly 57 degrees.

Thank you.

Why is it decanted?

Did you not want me to see the bottle?

We're ashamed of it.

We got it at Target.

Well, which does not mean at all.

That it can't be better than what you-

As we just discussed.

Oh, you'll be the judge of that juice.

Cheers.

I'm not an expert, you know?

I also think I don't need to be an expert.

I need to taste and like, or dislike or have an opinion

or not have an opinion or just pour it down

or sip it through, you know?

Whatever, whatever enhances the enjoyment.

That's interesting though, because like,

Fleurie is like a very specific poll.

We've had guests on the show

who just say a glass of red wine

and then we just sort of guess.

But where did Fleurie come from?

It's oddly what some would consider a minor grape, Gamay.

I really like it.

You and me both.

It's the plum cherry aroma that I just seem to enjoy.

But also that minerality of the old world.

Yeah.

And you don't have to pretend that it's an event.

It's a sip of wine, come on.

It's a sip of wine and it's a lamb filet mignon.

Please dig in. I can't let it get cold on you.

Where does the lamb filet mignon come from?

I like lamb.

I do, I think it's the best animal to eat.

And it has nothing to do with the playful innocence

of the little animal, you know?

What about the veal, Christoph?

Well, same thing, yeah.

No, it's just finer meat.

If you eat meat at all, it should be fine.

Having that bite in my mouth and anticipating

the way that this wine is going to hit my palate after,

tremendously exciting for me.

It's a good combination.

It really is.

This not so much.

Would you eat this with lingonberry?

I wouldn't.

You may.

What do you mean you, when you say you?

No, no, no, no.

I mean, I just, you know,

I think if you want jam on your meat, you know, you can.

A lot of people like it a lot.

Some put a little ring of anchovy with a caper on top.

Sure. Why not?

You can wear it as a hat as well if you want.

You seem like you've lived a very examined life.

You seem like very deep and thoughtful.

Thank you.

I'm still trying.

I'm curious, were you like that when you were younger?

Because I know you grew up in a family

that was very involved in the theater

and you didn't necessarily want to

become an actor from a young age.

And the way you talk about it, you almost seem like,

I stumbled into it or I accidentally became an actor.

But that seems contra to this person sitting before me

who seems to have thought about everything.

No, I haven't.

I wish I had.

I'm not even sure whether I'm...

Retrospectively I feel I missed a lot of crossings

and kept going.

I took it as it came.

Yeah.

You've also referred to acting as sort of

a pubescent fantasy

Yeah.

That a lot of people tend to grow out of,

or if they don't grow out of it sort of leads the problems.

Is it the acting that's the pubescent fantasy?

Or is it the trappings of fame that come with acting?

That's the pubescent fantasy?

Well, the acting is not a pubescent fantasy.

The acting is possibly one of the most

powerful human urges to make an impression on someone else.

Yeah.

I'm not asking you to do it.

You could muster some form of understanding

for certain personalities that are, you know,

have this demon working in them to always impress on someone

and be the best of the, you know,

it becomes this really sick strive for dominance.

Yeah.

Which is so destructive that I shudder to think of it.

Did you ever indulge in that, do you think?

No.

Never at all?

Never.

I mean, yeah, I indulge in destructiveness

and self-destructiveness as well.

Yeah.

But more self-destructiveness,

destructive in relation to other people.

I'm curious how we did on the schnitzel.

So am I.

When it came in, it smelled like the real thing.

Thickness. Okay?

Thickness of the meat, perfect.

Of the breading.

Far too thick.

Far too thick? Yeah. It's like a pancake.

The taste.

You, I believe trained with Lee Strasberg at some point.

And you said something interesting

that teaching acting in other words

is just a way to make money.

Do you sort of view acting as almost

as very like cotillion job?

Like akin to say, being a mechanic or a line cook?

If they didn't pay you, you'd have to, I don't know,

drive an Uber or do something else.

Oh yeah.

Look, I think you can mythologize everything.

Do you think we shouldn't mythologize everything?

'Cause to me, sometimes the myth is the fun of it all.

If it's myth as a necessity, then you have a problem.

You should be self-confident enough

to abandon your certainty

and to explore and to allow contradictions.

There is this German thinker, Markus Gabriel is his name.

I had just happened to have met him at a party

and engaged him, or him, me, I don't know.

He developed a way of thinking that

he and others call new realism.

I immediately felt at home

in that kind of view of the world.

There's not one reality that we have to suffice to at with.

There are many segments of reality.

The shift in perspective is kind of coming down to like

cultural relativism in a way.

In terms of like understanding

where somebody might be coming from,

from a completely different-

Yes. Set of values.

And from even like a constructivist approach of like-

Well, exactly not.

Exactly not- Exactly not.

Because the constructivist approach is that you say,

it's all what we make of it.

No, no. There is a reality.

But it doesn't consist of one thing

that we have to achieve result.

It's not this one thing.

It is innumerous.

Different aspects.

There is a moment,

I believe at the Inglourious Basterds premier at Cannes,

where Tarantino said that you gave him his movie back.

And then you used a very specific word

where you said Tarantino gave you your vocation back.

Why did you use the term vocation specifically?

Well, I didn't wanna call it calling.

So you used the Latin word for calling.

Yeah, to obstruct it a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, but it was, you know,

because I had grown extremely frustrated with the bullshit.

It was the right person with the right thing

at the right time to pull me out of a trajectory

that promise to become very frustrating, very negative.

And I thought acting is for idiots.

And I still do, but only for certain idiots.

The others do it well.

Doing this thing with Quentin

was a very powerful reminder

that maybe I did not necessarily

become an actor for nothing.

Mm.

Do you ever think maybe you deserve

to mythologize yourself and story a little bit more?

Not at all.

You won't indulge- No.

You don't deserve anything.

You deserve diddly squat.

You need to get on with it. Sure.

You ready to get on with the dessert?

Yeah. Let's do it.

Christoph, for the final course of your final meal,

we have the green apple sorbet.

We did and make this in-house

and the espresso with a lemon wedge and some rock sugar,

if you please.

I really thought you can pull this off.

Why?

You hadn't even met us when you made that decision.

Yeah. Sorry.

I had this in Venice once.

With the Calvados poured on top?

Yeah. I would pour it for you,

but how much Calvados goes on there?

As much as you can fit.

This is good. Thank you.

Modest, but good.

And I thought it was the perfect,

because I'm not into cakes and you know,

that's speaking of American cuisine,

this exaggerated obscenity

of sugar and cream and ice cream

and, you know, pile it- Give it all to me.

We forsaken God.

We've hijacked our own central nervous systems.

You know, sprinkle more stuff on it

and then have this, you know,

that makes me sick looking at it really.

And then you see the kids, you know.

I understand, I understand the kids.

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

No, no, no, no.

This is exactly,

exactly the right combination of everything.

So let's try it. Please.

It's a little sweet.

It's a little sweet.

Could you use a little bit more acid in the sorbet?

It's a little sweet.

I would agree.

If you really break down what taste is,

it's a poison verse reward detection system in the mouth.

So we talked earlier about bitterness and psychopathy.

Interesting.

That bitterness is literally nature telling you

this is bad to eat.

And then the sweetness is nature telling you

this is good to eat.

Is there something intrinsic to the human experience

that draws you towards bitterness?

I have to admit,

I did ask myself why am I drawn to bitterness?

And I wondered whether it has something to do

with the medicinal association or with the,

I really don't know.

So, I find it terribly interesting

what you said about bitterness,

that there is a direct correlation to a mental disposition,

I doubt very strongly.

You have been in a disproportionate amount of movies

that deal with the meaning of life, I'd say.

Really?

Do you think about the meaning of life

and does that affect the roles that you take?

If you think about thinking about the meaning of life,

you're already watching yourself

thinking about the meaning of life,

which kind of, as we all know,

that observer alters the experiment.

So you can turn that a few more times

and then write a paper about it.

And I'm sure you'd be immensely successful

if you throw a few jokes in it, but-

Sure.

But it's kind of an academic thing

When you've talked about being like the cog in the clock

created by the clock maker as an actor,

but it does seem like you're sort of seeking out

these people who have very large things

to say about the world,

or is that me sort of seeing that with a retrospective lens

just because they're good.

No, no.

You know, what I know, I know.

Yeah.

I'm interested in what you know.

So I can sit on the few things that I know I can do

and then what.

Like the dragon on the treasure and let no one touch it.

And therefore nothing happens.

I know there's a biblical analogy.

It concerns us and that's why it became a biblical analogy,

not the other way around.

I'm a secular person.

I was gonna ask you, you grew up Catholic,

I believe you were an altar boy at some point.

But none of that was ever able to stick.

No, no, no, no, no.

I was an altar boy for the theatrics.

It's such a theatrical thing to do.

Oh yeah.

No, no, this is Austria, you know,

in the baroque churches with the whole performance

and the costumes and the wine.

So what ultimately do you believe happens when you die

and all cheers to you on your final bitter

psychopathy-laden espresso?

Talk about medicinal.

Well isn't there a beautiful sequence,

an order to it that-

There really is, starting with

the bitter of the Negroni and coming-

And actually now I really like the ceviche

because it was that, you know,

that sore thumb that stuck out.

It was, if you're looking at this,

this meal, like a graph,

it's that one little data point, it's the outlier.

That's exactly what my horoscope looks like.

All my planets are in Libra,

except for Mars, which is in Aries.

I know more about German opera than I do astrology.

Someone did it once for me and drew the graphics

and it looked like a boat.

It was all sitting in Libra.

And Mars was an Aries, exactly opposite.

So it looked like a boat with a mast.

And Venus and Mars were in exact contradiction.

What does it mean to me?

Yeah.

Nothing.

But it looks good.

Sure, I get that.

No, you kind of have this beautiful, both hyper realistic

and then almost hyper abstract thought process,

which I'm sure is only from the outside looking.

And I'm sure it makes tremendous amount of sense to you,

but I kind of love the way that you

draw on the idea of like holistic forms in your mind.

What form does death take for you?

'Cause for some people,

it's just the ultimate fear and terror.

For some, it's an Academy Award-winning actor

calling somebody a schmuck on the beach in black and white.

I don't know.

The trajectory is really what I can't deny

that occupies my mind a lot.

You know, meaning, aging, you know,

the recurring thought that had I known that, you know, 20,

only 20 years ago.

Yeah.

My whole life would've, no,

just from 20 years ago onwards.

But anyway, my wife likes to say better now than never.

And I agree with her.

But that's the kind of thing that I, you know, physically,

I still have that within my control.

My thoughts about death at the moment are still

within the realm of the deliberate

meaning I choose how to think about death.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm very much concerned with life.

What's the alternative to death?

Paying a very handsome but wily scientist

who thinks he's figured out the secret

to everlasting life to harness the power of electricity.

No, we've seen how that turns out.

In movies.

In movies.

Yeah.

Good luck.

You ready to go on the lightning round?

Let's do it.

Who's the one person dead or alive

you'd want to share your actual last meal with?

All these people now flipped by through my head.

Right now I think it's Buster Keaton.

What song do you want to be played at your funeral?

Oh, I want that clarinet solo from 8½ at the end.

Who's the next director that you want to work with

that you haven't yet?

PT Anderson.

Oh god. What a tour de force.

Who's your dream eulogize at your funeral?

Cicero.

If Hans Landa, Dr. King Schultz and Blofeld

were at a dinner party, what would you serve?

Vermouth.

What's your biggest fear?

Losing my mind.

It's gonna be a good test then.

Do you remember the flight number of the Lufthansa plane

that lost your razor?

A razor. A whole, a whole bag.

A number comes in my mind, 2306.

But, it's not, I know it's not.

Finally, Christoph, are you happy?

Not.

Unconditionally.

I think if you were unconditionally happy,

you probably wouldn't be very bright.

You'd be stupid.

Truly. Thank you so much for joining me.

This has been the pleasure of a lifetime for myself.

Thank you very much.

I hope it wasn't the pleasure of a lifetime, but-

The first 33 years, I'll see how the back half goes.

Yeah, well, I hope it'll do better.

If you wanna deliver your last words

to that camera right there.

What? My last words?

What would your last words be?

I shall miss myself.

And I shall miss you too.

Everyone, check out Frankenstein

that's out in theaters, October 17th,

on Netflix, November 7th.

And you got Only Murders in the Building on Hulu right now.

Yeah, this building and others.

You got anything else coming up?

Frustration, disasters.

Everyone check out frustration.

Check out disasters.

They're happening all the time.

Shit. Yes.

Speaking of which.

Watch the full recording

of Good Mythical Evenings: Sloshed in Space on demand

@goodmythicalevening.com.

And don't forget to grab a limited edition tee

while you're there.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
actor /ˈæktər/ B1	noun - a person whose profession is acting on the stage, in movies, or on television
tradition /trəˈdɪʃən/ B2	noun - the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation
legendary /ˈledʒəndəri/ C1	adjective - remarkably great or famous
opera /ˈɑːprə/ B2	noun - a dramatic work in one or more acts, set to music for singers and instrumentalists
curious /ˈkjʊəriəs/ B1	adjective - eager to know or learn something
direction /daɪˈrekʃən/ B2	noun - the control or guidance of a process or activity
differently /ˈdɪfrəntli/ B1	adverb - in a different manner or way
sciences /ˈsaɪənsɪz/ B2	noun - the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment
approach /əˈproʊtʃ/ B1	noun - a way of dealing with something
meal /miːl/ A2	noun - food eaten at a regular time
execution /ˌekskjuːʃən/ C1	noun - the carrying out of a sentence of death
retrospective /ˌretrəˈspektɪv/ C1	adjective - looking back on past events
experiences /ɪkˈspɪəriənsɪz/ B1	noun - events or occurrences which leave an impression on someone
imagined /ɪˈmædʒɪnd/ B1	verb - formed a mental image of
alcohol /ˈælkəhɔːl/ B1	noun - an intoxicating liquid
simplicity /ˌsɪmplɪˈsɪti/ C1	noun - the quality or state of being easy to understand or do
villain /ˈvɪlən/ B2	noun - a wicked person
death /deθ/ A2	noun - the end of life

Key Grammar Structures

• Every person has exactly two things in common.

  ➔ Present Simple tense to express a general truth or fact.

  ➔ The sentence states a universal truth about people. "Has" is the verb in the present simple, indicating a state of being.

• We all gotta eat and we're all gonna die.

  ➔ Informal contractions ('gotta', 'gonna') for colloquial speech; 'gonna' as a future tense indicator.

  ➔ "Gotta" is a colloquial contraction of "got to," meaning "have to." "Gonna" is a colloquial contraction of "going to," indicating future intention or certainty.

• I'm curious, when you were at the Universitat fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst.

  ➔ Past Simple tense ('were') for a past state or period of time; use of 'when' clause to introduce a specific time frame.

  ➔ This sentence uses the past simple to inquire about Christoph Waltz's time at the university. The "when" clause sets the context.

• It did, because I wanted to do everything differently.

  ➔ Past Simple tense ('did', 'wanted') to express completed actions in the past; use of 'because' to introduce a reason or explanation.

  ➔ The sentence expresses a past decision and provides a reason. 'Did' is used for emphasis, and 'wanted' indicates a past desire.

• And I don't want to study media sciences for three semesters before I'm entitled to understand what is happening.

  ➔ Present Simple tense ('don't want') to express a present unwillingness; use of 'before' clause to indicate a sequence of events; passive voice ('I'm entitled').

  ➔ This sentence expresses a personal preference and the condition that needs to be met before an action can occur. "I'm entitled" indicates a right or qualification.

• We tend to think less about the execution part of this and more on like the celebration and the retrospective view of your life and experiences through food.

  ➔ 'Tend to' + infinitive to express a general habit or inclination; comparative structures ('less about...more on'); prepositional phrases ('through food').

  ➔ The sentence compares two different perspectives and describes a tendency. The prepositional phrase "through food" indicates the medium through which the retrospective view is accessed.

• Unless, unless you don't care.

  ➔ Use of 'unless' to introduce a condition that must be true for something else not to happen; repetition for emphasis.

  ➔ "Unless" sets a condition under which the previous statement wouldn't be true. The repetition adds emphasis to the condition.

• Whereas traditionally, you know, I mean, look at the, the big funerals that they had with the long processions in the whole village or town, or, you know, they sort of accompany these extraordinary personalities on what they call their last journey.

  ➔ Use of 'whereas' to contrast two situations; past simple ('had') to describe past events; relative clause ('that they had') to add information; prepositional phrases ('on what they call').

  ➔ This sentence contrasts traditional funerals with modern trends. "Whereas" introduces the traditional aspect, and the rest of the sentence describes the practices associated with it. The phrase "on what they call" introduces a common expression.