'Fresh Air' marks Ringo Starr's 83rd birthday

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Alan Arkin, the Oscar-winning actor who appeared in such films as "Wait Until Dark," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Argo" died last week at age 89. One of his most famous starring roles was in the 1970 Mike Nichols movie version of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22." He played Yossarian, the World War II bombardier who wanted to stop flying dangerous bomber missions. He cornered the company doctor on the airstrip as planes took off loudly all around them and asked to be declared too crazy to fly. But the doctor, played by Jack Gilford, explained why that wasn't so easy.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CATCH-22")

JACK GILFORD: (As Dr. "Doc" Daneeka) There's a catch.

ALAN ARKIN: (As John Yossarian) A catch?

GILFORD: (As Dr. "Doc" Daneeka) Sure - Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn't really crazy, so I can't ground him.

ARKIN: (As John Yossarian) OK. Let me see if I got this straight. In order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.

GILFORD: (As Dr. "Doc" Daneeka) You've got it. That's Catch-22.

ARKIN: (As John Yossarian) That's some catch, that Catch-22.

BIANCULLI: Alan Arkin played both comic and dramatic parts and came from a background that was equally versatile. Before he began acting on stage, screen and TV, he was a member of the folk singing group The Tarriers, who had a hit with "The Banana Boat Song" in 1956, the same year as Harry Belafonte. He was an early member of the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago and won a Tony Award in 1961 for starring in the comedy "Enter Laughing." His movie debut was as one of the stars of "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming," and his later films included him playing Sigmund Freud in "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" and playing opposite Peter Falk in "The In-Laws." On TV, he played a grieving husband in a recurring role on "St. Elsewhere," and at the end of his career was racking up Emmy nominations as a supporting actor in the Netflix comedy series "The Kominsky Method."

He won his Academy Award for playing the foul-mouthed grandfather in the 2006 film "Little Miss Sunshine." The family is crammed into a van for a road trip, and the grandfather, played by Arkin, starts a conversation with the grandson seated silently next to him, while Arkin's son, played by Greg Kinnear, drives and objects.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE")

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) Can I give you some advice? Well, I'm going to give it to you anyway. I don't want you making the same mistakes I made when I was young.

GREG KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Can't wait to hear this.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) Dwayne - that's your name, right? Dwayne. This is the voice of experience talking. Are you listening? [Expletive] a lot of women, Dwayne.

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Hey.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) Not just one woman.

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Dad.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) A lot of women.

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) That's enough, all right?

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) Are you getting any?

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Dad.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) You can tell me, Dwayne. Are you getting any?

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Come on. Please.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) No? Jesus. You're what - 15? My God, man...

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Dad.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) You should be getting that young stuff.

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Dad. Hey.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) That young stuff...

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Hey.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) ...Is the best stuff in the whole world.

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Hey, Dad, that's enough. Stop it.

ARKIN: (As Edwin Hoover) Will you kindly not interrupt me, Richard? See, right now, you're jailbait. They're jailbait. It's perfect. I mean, you hit 18, man, you're talking about 3 to 5.

KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Hey, I will pull this truck over right now.

BIANCULLI: Terry Gross interviewed Alan Arkin in 1989. He told her why he likes to work in different media.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

ARKIN: I keep thinking that when I change media, something new and wonderful is going to happen, and I'm going to break through the limits of my own personality, and it never seems to happen. I look at my writing, and I see the same kind of things I like about my acting and the same kind of things I dislike about my acting. And I feel like my direction has the same assets and liabilities as everything else I do.

TERRY GROSS: Has that been one of the difficult things about performing - learning to figure out and then to accept what your limitations are?

ARKIN: Yeah. I never realized that until recently, but I think that, well, for me, one of the goals is to be something more than what I am. And no matter how far afield I think I'm going, in retrospect, I look back and all I see is me. Even - no matter how many hats I change, no matter how many limps I affect or speech patterns I change, I almost invariably only see me. Actually, that hasn't - there have been a couple of times when I feel like I've transcended my own identity. And those were really enormously exciting times for me.

GROSS: What's wrong with seeing yourself in a role, though?

ARKIN: That's not the idea of doing it. I think originally that is. People - I guess people want to perform initially because they want to be seen - hey, look at me. Look what I'm doing. But then once in a while, you reach something - and it's not just performing, it's almost any field - which is a kind of a epiphany where you're no longer there.

And I achieved that for the first time when I was about 19 or 20, and when I was - had been studying acting fervently. And I wasn't on stage for about 20 minutes. I disappeared. And the - I was - it's as if I was watching myself play the character, and it was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever experienced up until that time. And for the next 20 years or so, I became a junkie to that experience.

Athletes have that experience. They have a term for it now. It's called being in the zone. And once you've experienced that, nothing else will satisfy you anymore.

GROSS: Do you think that the impulse to act comes in part from wanting to get out of yourself, transcend yourself?

ARKIN: Oh, yeah. I think for a lot of people. I don't think they phrase it that poetically initially. I think it's - I think it a lot of times comes out of a kind of self-loathing that a lot of people aren't really aware of at the time - wanting to be any - it certainly was in me. And I see it in the work of a lot of other people too - a desire to be anybody else but who you are.

It also can come out of a kind of a childish thing of imitating other people, wanting to be - seeing your father and imitating him, seeing other people around that look interesting, as if they have interesting attributes you want to adopt and affect. It's - I think that's another way of...

GROSS: When you were growing up, was there anyone in your family or in your neighborhood who was theatrical in the way they live their life? I don't mean that they were necessarily on the stage, but they had this sense of the theater of life.

ARKIN: Yeah. Oh, very much so. There was a guy named Sam Kennedy (ph) who was the husband of my mother's best friend, who was the most flamboyant character I'd ever met. He was right out of Sean O'Casey. And he wore black turtleneck sweaters, woolen ones, without any underwear underneath, and jeans, in the days when nobody was doing things like that - in the '40s and late '30s. And he was about 6'4" and had a mustache and was a merchant seaman and a sculptor and a guitarist and drank like a fish. And he was the most flamboyant person I think I'd ever met. And...

GROSS: You liked that?

ARKIN: Oh, yeah, yeah. But it was very organic. There was nothing artificial about it. It came right from the heart of him.

GROSS: Any really colorful speakers?

ARKIN: Speakers?

GROSS: Mmm hmm.

ARKIN: Well, him. My father was always very good verbally, and my grandfather was - made speeches for the Masons, so he was very literate. I have a vivid memory of him reading a speech, tears streaming down his face, to a plumber who was - the two of them were in the bathroom, and the plumber - all you could see was his feet sticking out from under the bathtub. And he was paying absolutely no attention to my grandfather.

GROSS: (Laughter).

ARKIN: And there he was, reading this passionate speech with tears streaming down his face.

GROSS: So here you were with all of this interest in theater. And when you got - I think it was when you get out of college in around 1956, you were part of the pop folk group the Tarriers.

ARKIN: Yeah.

GROSS: And they had a hit that made it onto the charts, actually, of "The Banana Boat Song" and - what? - "Cindy, Oh Cindy."

ARKIN: Yeah.

GROSS: It seems - it almost seems like you were miscast in that group.

ARKIN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. I felt so myself. I ended up after about two years being on stage at the Olympia Theater in Paris to an audience of about 3,000. We were singing our hearts out. And I looked down at myself and there I was in black satin pants and a sport shirt open to my navel, practically.

GROSS: (Laughter).

ARKIN: And I said, who am I? What am I doing here? And I quit that night and went back to what I wanted to do, which was be connected with film and theater.

GROSS: How did you get into the detour of folk music to begin with?

ARKIN: Well, I had gotten out of college, and I had gotten married and had a small child at the age of 22. And I needed something to do to just get us going. And there was this group that started, and I thought it would only take up my weekends periodically, and we'd make a little spare change to just survive on. And within three months we had an enormous hit on our hands. And so we traveled around the world with that for about two years.

And it just seemed to me that it was the logical thing to do at the time. And I also thought, in my naive fashion, that would be an entree into film and theater, which it wasn't.

GROSS: Well, I think one of your entrees into film and theater was Chicago's Second City group.

ARKIN: Yeah. It was my entree into everything. I feel like I got born there.

GROSS: Second City was an improvisational theater and comedy group. Were you surprised that you were good at improvisation?

ARKIN: Very. Yeah. I had no idea I had any abilities in that area at all. In fact, it took me a month to be funny. I would work out with David Shepherd in the group, and I wasn't funny. Nothing I did was funny.

And then finally, I hit upon one character that was funny. So I just played that character for a long time. No matter what I did as that character, people laughed. And so I said, well, I'll stick with that.

GROSS: What was the character?

ARKIN: I don't remember. It was one ethnic type or another. I don't remember exactly who it was. But then I started adding to that character. I started adding other characters to that character. And I ended up with a library of characters that I played, that I - each of which I felt were very far from what I was as a person, only to find out 10 years later in looking back that they were all exactly like me - every one of them.

GROSS: Who were some of the characters?

ARKIN: Well, I had a Puerto Rican kid, a sensitive Puerto Rican kid who considered himself unable to do anything in society, played guitar. I had an ancient Jewish pretzel vendor who was modeled after my grandfather. I had an Italian laborer. I had a Chinese chef. That was the first four, I think. But I tried to use them in everything. I tried to squeeze them in every conceivable kind of place because they were the only things I felt comfortable with for a long time.

GROSS: So at what point were you ready to, like, leave those characters aside and play comedy yourself?

ARKIN: Well, it was a long time. It really started when Mike Nichols cast me as Yossarian in "Catch-22." And I kept looking at the character and looking at it, and I said, well - I finally asked him, who do I play him like? Who is he - who should I model him after? He said, he's you. Mike said, he's you.

And I thought to myself, well, what does he mean, me? There isn't any me. There's going to be a blank on the screen if I just do me. They won't - nobody will show up. And he finally convinced me that I just had to be myself in that situation. And I had great trepidation about it. I didn't know how to do that.

But I tried it, and I went to the dailies for a week or two with a lot of anxiety, thinking that there was going to be a blank hole in the screen where I was. And to my surprise, and finally, I had to admit, delight, there was somebody there. And I said, hey, there is a me. And I guess in a lot of - in most ways, that was a real transition for me, and seeing that I had an existence, that I did have some weight as myself and that I could afford to let go of those - a lot of the places that I was hiding under.

BIANCULLI: Alan Arkin speaking to Terry Gross in 1989. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE BRUBECK'S "IT'S A RAGGY WALTZ")

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1989 interview with Alan Arkin. The actor and director died last week at age 89.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Let's talk a little bit about your first feature film, "The Russians Are Coming." Earlier you said that when you looked back on this role, you didn't feel like you saw yourself. You saw the character. I want to play a short clip from the movie. And this is a scene from early on, after the Russians have landed in New England, and you've knocked on the door of a family. Carl Reiner's the husband, Eva Marie Saint is the wife. And you're taking them at gunpoint into their home and hoping that they'll help you find a boat.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING")

ARKIN: (As Rozanov) All forgiven. Come, please. I repeat, no harm is coming. All are please being seated.

CARL REINER: (As Walt Whittaker) It's all right, honey. Just take it easy now. Pete, boy, don't be scared. There's no need to be scared.

SHELDON COLLINS: (As Pete Whittaker) I'm not scared.

ARKIN: (As Rozanov) Good. Good boy. Now, to answer some few questions very quickly, please. So that there is no necessity howsoever (ph)...

REINER: (As Walt Whittaker) Whatsoever.

ARKIN: (As Rozanov) Whatsoever, howsoever - so that there is no necessity howsoever for everybody in such a nice American family should get shot to little pieces. You understand? Yes. Good. Now, what else people are in this house?

GROSS: So that's your first feature role. What stage were you in acting then? How did you prepare for that role?

ARKIN: Well, how did I prepare? It was mostly in learning how to speak Russian and thinking a lot about what I wanted to do. I didn't do any research because I didn't know how I could do any research. I wanted this - I wanted to play - I wanted to be very comfortable. It was important to be comfortable. It was my first feature, and I knew I was going to be panic-stricken because it's something I'd wanted to do for 25 years. And it was a big - it was just too big a hunk of my life to relax about.

GROSS: So you actually studied Russian for the part?

ARKIN: Yeah, for months, I studied Russian with an old woman in New York. Nobody had told me what to do or how to do it. I was left to my own devices. So I worked for months with this woman, trying to get the sound. And I was pretty good at languages, but there were sounds in Russian I could not hear. And then finally, after several months, I began to hear the sounds. And I got the lines down in Russian. And I went on the set, and I said my first line in rehearsals proudly. And there were a lot of real Russians on this set. Nobody understood a word I was saying.

GROSS: (Laughter).

ARKIN: And it turned out I was speaking a Russian that no one had spoken for about 50 years. It was totally archaic. And I had to, on the set, start over again from the very beginning, which was very unnerving.

GROSS: Alan Arkin, let's jump ahead to 1985, to your role in the movie "Joshua Then And Now." And you starred along with James Woods in this movie. You played James Woods' father, a small-time Jewish gangster and bootlegger. And I want to play an excerpt from a flashback scene in which you're in a gym with your young son. And you're teaching him about the Ten Commandments.

ARKIN: OK.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JOSHUA THEN AND NOW")

ARKIN: (As Reuben) What do we got here? Quote, "thou shalt have no other gods before me," unquote. Yeah, you see, there was a lot of contenders in those days - other gods, mainly no-account idols, bums of the month - until our God, Jehovah, came in and took the title outright. He made a covenant with our people.

ERIC KIMMEL: (As Joshua) Yeah, I know.

ARKIN: (As Reuben) OK, where was I? Yeah. Thou shalt not commit adultery. That's, well - thou shalt not steal.

KIMMEL: (As Joshua) Thou shalt not steal?

ARKIN: (As Reuben) Yeah, well, you know, there's Ten Commandments. It's like an exam, right? I figure you get eight out of 10 right, you're pretty much at the top of the class, aren't you?

GROSS: Was there anyone you knew in life that you could pattern this character on?

ARKIN: Not a soul, no, nobody I knew. I loved that character. I just - the minute I read the script, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with him, and that was it. I told Ted Kotcheff, the director, who was wonderful to work with - I told him what I wanted to do. And he said, fine, go ahead. That sounds good. And that's what I did. I worked out a lot. I got myself in pretty good shape for it, and scenes they never ended up using so I got into good shape for nothing, for nothing.

GROSS: (Laughter) What a waste of time.

ARKIN: Yeah, it was terrible.

GROSS: (Laughter). I have read about you that in the late '60s or early '70s that you started yoga and also found someone who was something of a guru figure for you. What brought about that change?

ARKIN: What brought about the change was seven years of analysis, on which I worked very hard and which I feel like I really needed. I was very unhappy. And I came to a point where analysis - where I was coming to the end of my analysis, by both my doctor's recognition and my own, and feeling like I'd passed the course and having him say akin to I never promised you a rose garden. And I found myself getting furious at that idea because I saw that there were people that had rose gardens, and I wanted one.

And if analysis wasn't going to do it for me, particularly in some - since I had worked very, very hard at it and had accomplished a lot of what my doctor felt was to be accomplished from it, I felt like I had to look elsewhere. And I started working with somebody who turned out - who I knew immediately was the best person I had ever met. He was the wisest and kindest person I'd ever met. And initially, I didn't know he was a yogi. He was my stand-in on a film, "Popi." And...

GROSS: And he was playing an extra, is that - oh, he was playing your stand-in?

ARKIN: He was my stand-in, which is not a terribly exalted job, as everybody knows. And after about 3 1/2 weeks, I could sense very clearly that he was the center of the entire film. It's not as if he was loud or pushy or taking over anything, but he just radiated something that people gravitated towards. And it annoyed me. So I said, here I am. I have everything. I'm the star. I got 10 times as much money as he's got. I got more attention. And he's the center of this thing. It's not right. So I tried to find out who and what he was.

And he finally revealed the fact that he was a - guru is - has got terribly convoluted connotations this day. We've twisted around and almost destroyed the meaning of that word. Everybody who knows something is now called a guru, which is not what the word means by any stretch of the imagination. It means slayer of darkness, which is ultimately what analysis tries to do and doesn't do. It knocks off a piece of it, but it doesn't get the whole thing. And a great spiritual teacher knocks off your darkness, which is the thing that is keeping you from functioning fully and wholly and completely and lovingly.

GROSS: Can I relate this back to acting and ask you if it's changed the way you act or changed how much you act or the kinds of roles you take?

ARKIN: Yeah, to a degree. It depends on how much money I've got in the bank, in part, I mean...

GROSS: Sure, yeah.

ARKIN: If I'm feeling pretty flush, then I feel more comfortable in turning down things that I don't want to do. But if I'm behind a payment on the house, then I got to be a little bit more generous in my assessment of something. But, yeah, I don't want to play horrible people anymore. I don't want to - it's no fun. There was a time when I had so little sense of myself that getting out of my skin and being anybody else was a sigh of relief. But I kind of like myself now a lot of the times. And I don't see any real necessity or value in playing people that I find abhorrent anymore. That's No. 1. And No. 2, I like to think, if I possibly can be in situations like it, I want my work to be connected with things that somehow serve people in some way.

GROSS: Well, Alan Arkin, I thank you so much for talking with us. Thanks.

ARKIN: Thank you. You're wonderful to talk to.

GROSS: Oh, thanks. I really enjoyed this very much.

ARKIN: You're very easy.

BIANCULLI: Alan Arkin speaking to Terry Gross in 1989. He died last week at age 89. After a break, we listen back to an archive interview with Ringo Starr, who turns 83 years old today. And movie critic Justin Chang reviews the new comedy film "Joy Ride." I'm David Bianculli and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DEVOTCHKA AND MYCHAEL DANNA'S "WE'RE GONNA MAKE IT")

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University, in for Terry Gross. Ringo Starr, as the drummer for The Beatles, released his first recordings with that group more than 60 years ago. Yet there's still at least one more new recording to come, featuring contributions from demo tapes or existing studio recordings by all four Beatles. Ringo is still releasing records as a solo artist and recently wrapped up his spring concert tour with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. The man who was born as Richard Starkey in Liverpool in 1940 turns 83 years old today. He plans to be in Beverly Hills celebrating his birthday the way he has for the past 15 years - asking fans to say, think or post peace and love at precisely noon in their respective time zones. So in honor of his birthday and because The Beatles are still dipping into their recorded archives, we thought we'd do the same. Here's a conversation between Ringo Starr and Terry Gross recorded in 1995, the year of the ABC documentary miniseries "The Beatles Anthology."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Can we talk a little bit about life before The Beatles?

RINGO STARR: Sure, sure.

GROSS: You grew up in Liverpool. What was your neighborhood like?

STARR: Well, I was born at a very early age.

GROSS: (Laughter) Yeah, right.

STARR: My neighborhood was real working-class. I remember being conscious from a very early age that I wanted to get out of there because it was dark.

GROSS: Dark from...

STARR: It was just dark. It was just a dark neighborhood, you know? It was like they needed more streetlights at night. But, of course, it was my neighborhood as a child, and I have, you know, wonderful memories of it. And the thrilling thing is that, you know, my memory of it - because I'd left it for years - was like, you know, this childhood memory that I had all these big avenues that we used to walk down. And then I went back, and there's all these really narrow streets.

(LAUGHTER)

STARR: Well, the memory plays games, but it was a loving neighborhood. I mean, the school was three minutes' walk away. So, you know, it was a real neighborhood. There was a pub on nearly every corner, which I got to a little later.

(LAUGHTER)

STARR: You know, and there was a park I used to walk to. One of my ambitions, which my mother used to tell me often, was I wanted to be a tramp. And so we used to walk everywhere. One of the reasons was, of course, because we couldn't afford to take a car or take a limo in those days or a bus even. So we used to walk a lot. I used to love that. And there was parks around us. So it was a very poor neighborhood, but childhood memories make it quite romantic.

GROSS: I know your father left the family, I think, when you were 3.

STARR: Yeah. He'd had enough.

GROSS: So did your mother have a way of making money?

STARR: Yeah. She worked any job she could find. You know, I mean, I come from a working-class family, but they call it lower working-class when you've only got one parent (laughter). And - but my mother - God bless her - she did anything from scrubbing steps to working in a fruit shop to working in pubs - anything she could to support us 'cause he forgot that part of the bargain.

GROSS: Right. Now, I know when you were young, you had two long hospital stays. When you were 6, your appendix burst, and...

STARR: Yeah.

GROSS: You ended up getting an internal infection.

STARR: Peritonitis, it's called. Yeah.

GROSS: And so...

STARR: And that was pretty dangerous. It's still dangerous today, but in 1947, it was very dangerous.

GROSS: So you were in the hospital for about a year.

STARR: I was in a year because, six months in, I was getting rather well. And I got excited, and I fell out the bed...

GROSS: Oh, no.

STARR: ...And ripped open all these stitches in my stomach. So they had to dive in again and sew me up.

GROSS: Oh, gosh.

STARR: So we're lucky to be here, Terry.

GROSS: Yeah. Well, then you got sick again when you were 13.

STARR: I know.

GROSS: Tuberculosis, was it?

STARR: Yeah. But that was from the area I lived in.

GROSS: Industrial stuff?

STARR: Yeah. Where I lived, like, not every other home, but it was like, you know, six or seven cases in every street where people were just in the living room dying of TB because they didn't have a cure, of course. And again, God, you know, shone his light on me in 1953 or '54 when they discovered streptomycin. And that's what saved me. So they shipped me off to a greenhouse in the country.

GROSS: A greenhouse. That's, like, a sanitarium.

STARR: Yeah, just this huge greenhouse where, instead of flowers, they put all these kids in there and let us breathe some decent air for a change and gave us streptomycin. And a year later, I came out of there.

GROSS: Did you, when you were a kid, think that you were going to die as a child?

STARR: I don't know if that really crossed my mind about I'm going to die. I really knew I was ill, and the doctors felt I was going to die three times, but we proved them wrong. So I was pretty ill, but I don't think I was thinking, oh, I'm going to die. You know, I don't think that came into my mind.

GROSS: So how did you keep busy while you were sick? Had music entered your life yet? Were you...

STARR: Well, that's where...

GROSS: ...Listening to a lot of it?

STARR: That's where it entered my life - was because to keep us busy, besides letting us knit - they used to let us knit dishcloths.

GROSS: (Laughter) Oh, wow.

STARR: It was really exciting.

GROSS: Yeah.

STARR: And then - so some teacher would come in with musical instruments, being drums, tambourines, maracas, triangles - all percussive stuff. And she'd put up this big screen - I'm trying to let you visualize it out there, radio land - big white paper with red notes for the drums and yellow notes for the tambourines and green notes for the triangles. And so she would point to these different colored symbols, and we would either hit whatever instrument we had. Well, I had a drum the first time, the first session. And I really loved it. And so they came back, like, a couple of weeks later, and they tried to give me another instrument, but I only wanted the drum. And that's where I really fell in love with drums.

GROSS: Was that supposed to be physical therapy for you also since it's such a physical instrument?

STARR: Well, we weren't - we couldn't get out of bed too often. You know, it was a big deal after six months in hospital when they said, you can get out of bed now and sit on a chair. So that was the big move. But - so it was just to keep us entertained. They never really came in giving us maths and geography or things like that. They gave us knitting and making things, you know, papier-mache stuff and things like that.

GROSS: So what was it like for you after you were sick to - or while you were sick, even, to be playing an instrument that's so physically taxing?

STARR: Well, I didn't have an instrument for years later. I made my first kit, when I came out of hospital, out of biscuit tins and firewood. And then when I was about 16, I got a bass drum. That's all I had - was a big bass drum. And then when I was 18, I got my first kit. So I'd strengthened up by then.

GROSS: And how old were you when you were actually playing in a band?

STARR: One month later.

GROSS: After you got the kit?

STARR: Yeah (laughter), because I was really lucky because in those days if you had the instrument, you were in the band.

BIANCULLI: Ringo Starr speaking to Terry Gross in 1995. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OCTOPUS’S GARDEN")

THE BEATLES: (Singing) We would shout and swim about the coral that lies...

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1995 interview with Ringo Starr. Today is Ringo's 83rd birthday.

GROSS: So how did the Beatles ask you to join the band after they asked Pete Best to leave it?

STARR: Well, they didn't do it that way. You see, Pete Best was still in the band and I was with Rory. And one day, Pete couldn't make the session, so they asked me to play. And we'd got to know each other in Germany because we were the two bands playing there, the Beatles and Rory Storm. So you know, we really became friends there. And then we get back to Liverpool and Pete couldn't make it one day. And Brian Epstein came and said, would you play the lunchtime session? And I said, sure. And that was it. And then we went for a drink and that was the end of the story. And then a couple of weeks later, he asked me again to play a couple of sessions, a couple of gigs. And I said, sure, you know, because I just happened to have the time.

And then I went away to play with Rory to - it's a holiday comp in England, Butlin's holiday camp, where you go for three months. You play the summer there in the Rock 'n' Calypso hall. And we were the rock band. And Brian called me on the phone. And he said, you know, would you like to join the Beatles? And I said, sure, I'd love to join the Beatles. And I said, when? And he said, today. And I said, well, I can't join today. That was a Wednesday in 1962. And I said, I can't play today because, you know, the band would be out of a job. We'd have to wait until Saturday because by then we could get another drummer. And that's what happened. And, you know, everybody knows the story from then on.

GROSS: Well, an interesting part of the story is that you showed up for the first recording session...

STARR: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: ...Of the Beatles. And the producer...

STARR: George Martin.

GROSS: Yeah, had another drummer all picked out because I guess he didn't know that you had been chosen to be in the band.

STARR: No, he didn't know. Well, he listened to the band with Pete Best and didn't think Pete was going to be on the session. And so he didn't know about me at all. And so he'd got this drummer, Andy White, ready, you know, a professional drummer, a session drummer.

GROSS: (Laughter).

STARR: You know, and I came down and I was just mortified. And he said, oh, we've got this real drummer here (laughter). I said, well, what am I? And he didn't want to take a chance because in those days, it wasn't like you could go in the studio and just spend your time there, you know? The session was three hours. You were in and out and that was it. So Andy played on the single. And of course, then we rerecorded it and I played on the album. And I sort of defy anyone to tell the difference. And that was it. But George Martin has apologized over and over again, because I've made him, for doing this to me.

GROSS: Well, what did you think the Beatles' chances were of really making it? What was your assessment of the band when you joined it?

STARR: I joined the band because they were the best band I'd heard. And that was how I played. I moved my career, through Liverpool, of course, to, you know - if I could get into a better band, I would. And that's how I did it, you know? My aim was to play with good players, and that's what I did. I mean, the aim was not really to, you know, be big and famous. It was just to play with really good people.

GROSS: Did you change your sound when you joined the Beatles?

STARR: No, no, that's why they - you know, they wanted me to play because of the way I could play.

GROSS: So when you joined the band, did you have to do, you know, the Beatles' haircut and the suit jacket?

STARR: Well, that's the famous line. You know, John came on the phone saying, welcome to the band, but you'll have to get your haircut and get rid of your beard, and which I did. I didn't have much of a beard then, but I did have my hair swept back. And we had it cut so it fell forward. It was part of the image. And Brian Epstein was moving them into, like, this image thing, too, making them wear suits and, you know, not drinking and smoking onstage. So it was all part of the deal.

GROSS: Now, in the Beatles, did you have to, like, figure out who you were going to be in terms of your public personality in the band, you know, because everybody in the band seemed to get this, you know, public persona?

STARR: Yeah, I think mine just came in naturally as Mr. Dopey, you know, like sort of, like, the comic clown, you know? John had the outrage. Paul was Mr. Lovable. Well, I was Mr. Lovable, but the young girls loved him. George was just the silent type. And, you know, I was, hi, what's happening? And so that image, of course, especially through "A Hard Day's Night," is, you know - I've had to battle that since that day. Everybody thinks, oh, that's what he's like. And of course, he's not like that at all.

GROSS: Could you give us a sense of what it was like early on when the Beatles fame started getting, like, so extraordinary that you couldn't go places without attracting crowds? I mean...

STARR: Well, you know, we were young boys. And it was exciting where, you know, we'd sort of conquered England. That was the first job, you know? Just to get down to London and get in there was heavy enough, and then we'd do the continent. You know, and we used to have this saying - oh, well, we've done Sweden. We've conquered Sweden.

GROSS: (Laughter).

STARR: We've done France now. We've done Italy, you know? And then, of course, we were invited to come to America. And at that time, we were really worried because we'd had two records out here, or they were coming out, nobody wanted them. And by chance, George came over for a holiday. He was the first one of us to come to America. And of course, he was going into record shops saying, you know, have you got the Beatles? And they were saying - excuse me? - never heard of them. So you know, he came back saying, no, they don't know us over there. And of course, you know, the story goes when Capitol decided to put some money behind us to promote us and we got off the plane to do "Ed Sullivan," we had a No. 1. I mean, you know, you can't plan things like that. This is just how it is.

GROSS: Well, that first "Ed Sullivan" performance is one of the watershed moments in rock 'n' roll history.

STARR: History.

GROSS: What were you - what are some of your memories of...

STARR: Of "Ed Sullivan?"

GROSS: Of that show, yeah.

STARR: Well, Ed, you see, I thought, we come to America - and it was fabulous. And there was millions of people at the airport. And they were lining the streets. And it was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all over the place. And just my mind I have of Ed to this day - and I don't know if it's actually true. But my - just my impression was Ed Sullivan - you know, I'm waiting for Ed to say, you know, they're all the way from England, and that's great. And they're going to be fabulous and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Ed said, here they are, The Beatles. I just - that's just...

GROSS: You probably couldn't comprehend the whole...

STARR: We were just, like, thrown to the lions.

GROSS: Right (laughter).

STARR: So to this day, I've always thought, God, I mean, we could have done better than that, Ed.

GROSS: Well, you probably were unfamiliar with the whole Ed Sullivan phenomenon. I mean, the most...

STARR: We didn't know what it meant.

GROSS: ...Low-key, square person.

STARR: We did not know what it meant. You know, this guy just booked us on a show, and we'd go anywhere for a gig.

GROSS: So when girls started screaming at your performances, did you have - do you have any idea what was going on - like, why? Why the screaming, as opposed to anything else?

STARR: It started in Liverpool. And just...

GROSS: So you actually knew where it started? I mean, I was...

STARR: Yeah. It caught on like wildfire all over the world.

GROSS: Was it frustrating to perform in concerts where you couldn't hear what you were playing because the audience was screaming so loud?

STARR: It got frustrating in the end. At the beginning, it was just fabulous. I mean, you know, if you can imagine you're 22, 23, and you go on stage and all those people are just screaming at you, loving you. I mean, you know, you were selling - making and selling a lot of records and making good records. You know, it was everything you dreamed of. And it just built up and built up. And, of course, right about '65, you know, it started, actually, to get a little tiring because, you know, we were starting to make really interesting records, and we couldn't perform them. And it didn't matter what we did. People were screaming anyway. So no one was listening. And because of that, we were becoming, you know, not the best musicians we would become because we could only play, you know, the actual thing. I mean, for me personally, I - you know, it's very hard to do this on radio, but I could only do the downbeat, you know? (Imitating downbeat). I couldn't do any fills or anything because they would just disappear into the - you know, into the cosmos. So you found yourself - you know, you're just sitting there playing the track, really.

GROSS: Do you have a favorite phase of the Beatles recording years?

STARR: I think - well, you see, the very first record - you know, making the first record was just a thrill. I mean, it was absolutely thrilling. And listening to it on the radio - you know, we would stop the car when we'd be going to a gig somewhere, and you'd know - you know, because they didn't play every 10 minutes. Oh, at 7:45 on Wednesday, they're going to play your record. And so wherever we were going, we'd stop the car - we were usually in a car - and listen to it. And the other thing we did - if it moved up the charts, we would always have a celebratory dinner. So if you look at Beatle photos and Beatle footage, you'd see them getting fatter and fatter and fatter as they were getting more popular because now we could afford food, you know?

But - and then, of course, from "Rubber Soul" on, you know, the records started to really get exciting. You know, the sound - we were really getting into the sound, making sounds, making good sounds. The writing was getting better. You know, everything was picking up. It was really getting good. So, you know, it had a natural progression. So, you know, to say this period or that period - they're all different periods. I mean, I like the White Album. That's one of my favorites just because I felt after "Sgt. Pepper" - which was brilliant, but it just doesn't happen to be my favorite - the White Album, we were getting back to being a band again. And, you know, that's what The Beatles were. We were a really cool band.

GROSS: Being a band as opposed to being artfully produced in the studio. Is that what you mean?

STARR: Sure. Even though we did it ourselves, you know, certainly the - sort of the strings and the brass were taking center stage around the songs instead of the group.

GROSS: My guest is Ringo Starr. It just - something else about the Beatles. You know, the Beatles were such an important part of...

STARR: Life.

GROSS: ...Music, period, you know? And they're really a very small part in your life - I mean, a big part in who you are but a small part...

STARR: Sure.

GROSS: ...In the number of years...

STARR: Sure.

GROSS: ...That you were a Beatle. So I guess I'd like to get a sense of what it means in your life, if you still feel like that is so much a part of your existence or if that's something that you've really tried to move beyond and away from and...

STARR: Well, I don't think you can move away from it because, you know, it was only eight years of my life, but it's the eight years that everybody really associates with - you know, it's like, you know, it doesn't matter I've made hit records and, you know, had hit albums, and I'm on tour and that - it always comes back to these eight years of being a Beatle. And I think I just have to resign myself to that, that that's what people want to know about. But of course, in my life, I've moved on. You know, it's - I've done other things.

GROSS: Thank you so much for talking with us.

STARR: All right. Thank you, Terry.

BIANCULLI: Ringo Starr speaking to Terry Gross in 1995. Ringo turns 83 years old today. After a break, film critic Justin Chang reviews the summer's newest R-rated comedy, "Joy Ride." This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL FRISELL'S "ACROSS THE UNIVERSE")

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The new film "Joy Ride" is an R-rated road trip comedy about four Asian Americans traveling together in China. It's the first movie directed by Adele Lim, a co-writer on "Crazy Rich Asians," and the ensemble cast includes Stephanie Hsu, a recent supporting actress Oscar nominee for "Everything Everywhere All at Once." It opens in theaters this week. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: There's an early moment in "Joy Ride" when you'll know if you're on board with this exuberantly raunchy comedy or not. On a neighborhood playground, a white kid tells a young Chinese American girl named Lolo that the place is off limits to "ching chongs" (ph). Lolo then does something that maybe a lot of us who've been on the receiving end of racist bullying have fantasized about doing - she drops an F-bomb and punches him in the face. It's an extreme response, but also a hilarious and frankly cathartic one, a blissfully efficient counter to every stereotype of the shy, docile Asian kid.

Lolo soon becomes best friends with Audrey, one of the only other Asian American girls in their Washington state suburb. That aside, the two could hardly be more different. Where Lolo is unapologetically crude and outspoken, Audrey is quiet and eager to please. And while Lolo speaks Mandarin fluently and grew up steeped in Chinese culture, Audrey is more westernized, having been adopted as a baby in China and raised by white parents.

Years later, they're still best friends and total opposites. Audrey, played by Ashley Park, is a lawyer on the fast track to making partner at her firm, while Lolo, played by Sherry Cola, is a broke artist who makes sexually explicit sculptures. The story gets going when Audrey is sent on a business trip to Beijing to woo a potential client. Lolo comes along for fun and to serve as Audrey's translator. Lolo also brings along her K-pop-obsessed cousin, nicknamed Deadeye, who's played by the nonbinary actor Sabrina Wu. As they get off the plane, Audrey marvels at what it's like to be surrounded by Asians for a change.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JOY RIDE")

ASHLEY PARK: (As Audrey Sullivan) I don't think I've ever been around only Asian people. I mean, we look like everyone else for once. I think we blend right in.

SHERRY COLA: (As Lolo Chen) Yeah, but people here can tell Chinese Chinese from American Chinese.

PARK: (As Audrey Sullivan) What do you mean?

COLA: (As Lolo Chen) See? Hong Kong Chinese. Bluetooth. Shanghai Chinese. Bougie. Ooh, Taiwanese. Weird but cute.

PARK: (As Audrey Sullivan) What kind of Chinese are they?

COLA: (As Lolo Chen) What the [expletive] is wrong with you? You trying to get canceled? Those are Koreans.

PARK: (As Audrey Sullivan) Oh.

SABRINA WU: (As Deadeye) That's Howdy Fun. It's a K-pop group.

COLA: (As Lolo Chen) Yeah. They all have the same face. That's how you can tell.

CHANG: The script, written by Cherry Chevapravadumrong and Teresa Hsiao, is heavy on contrivance. Thanks to Lolo's meddling, Audrey winds up putting her work on hold and trying to track down her birth mother. But the director, Adele Lim, keeps the twists and the laughs coming so swiftly that it's hard not to get swept up in the adventure. The comedy kicks up a notch once Audrey looks up her old college pal Kat, who's now a successful actor on a Chinese soap opera. Kat is played by Stephanie Hsu, who, after her melancholy breakout performance in "Everything Everywhere All At Once," gets to show off some dazzling comedic chops here. Like Lolo, with whom she initially butts heads, Kat has had a lot of sex, something she's trying to hide from her strictly Christian fiance, but no one in "Joy Ride" holds on to their secrets or their inhibitions for very long. As they make their way through the scenic countryside, Audrey, Lolo, Kat and Deadeye run afoul of a drug dealer, hook up with some hunky Chinese basketball players and disguise themselves as a fledgling K-pop group for reasons too outlandish to get into here.

In a way, "Joy Ride," which counts Seth Rogen as one of its producers, marks the latest step in a logical progression for the mainstream Hollywood comedy. If "Bridesmaids" and "Girls Trip" set out to prove that women could be as gleefully gross as, say, the men in the "Hangover" movies, this one is clearly bent on doing the same for Asian American women and nonbinary characters. Like many of those earlier models, "Joy Ride" boasts mile-a-minute pop culture references, filthy one-liners and a few priceless sight gags, including some strategic full-frontal nudity. Naturally, it also forces Audrey and Lolo to confront their differences in ways that put their friendship to the test. If it doesn't all work, the hit to miss ratio is still impressively high. "Joy Ride" may be reworking a formula, but it does so with disarming energy and verve, plus a level of savvy about Asian culture that we still rarely see in Hollywood movies. Director Lim can stage a gross-out moment or a frisky montage as well as anyone, but she also gives the comedy a subversive edge, whether she's pushing back on lazy assumptions about Asian masculinity or, in one queasily funny scene, making clear just how racist Asians can be toward other Asians.

The actors are terrific. Deadeye is named Deadeye for their seeming lack of expression, but Sabrina Wu makes this character in some ways the emotional glue that holds the group together. You can hear Sherry Cola's past stand-up experience in just about every one of Lolo's foul-mouthed zingers. And Ashley Park gives the movie's trickiest performance as Audrey, an insecure overachiever who, as the movie progresses, learns a lot about herself. Maybe that's a cliche too, but "Joy Ride" gives it just the punch it needs.

BIANCULLI: Justin Chang is the film critic for the LA Times. He reviewed the new film "Joy Ride."

(SOUNDBITE OF RAY CHARLES' "JOY RIDE")

BIANCULLI: On Monday's show, the glory days of the Negro Leagues - we talk with Sam Pollard, director of the new documentary "The League," about the dozens of teams with Black owners and players who played a style of baseball that was fast, aggressive and entertaining long before Jackie Robinson integrated Major League baseball. I hope you can join us. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

(SOUNDBITE OF RAY CHARLES' "JOY RIDE")

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