Five Fits With: Actor, Musician, and All-Around Creative Adam Goldberg

Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore

This week, I met up with Adam Goldberg, who has appeared in films like Dazed and Confused, Saving Private Ryan, and (my personal favorite role of his) 2 Days in Paris. What you might not know is Adam is also a filmmaker, photographer, and musician. He is constantly creating, on or off the clock. He posts hilarious Reels to his Instagram profile that feel more like short films than tossed-off content, and he also uses it as a way to showcase his unique style and recent fashion acquisitions.

Below, Adam and I discuss his love of art and photography, the power of shooting film instead of digital, and dressing his character in The Equalizer, the hacker Harry, in Kapital and Visvim.

Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore

I know you have many artistic pursuits, from acting and filmmaking to music and photography. How do they inform one another?

It's always weird to me to be known at all for just one thing. I certainly know actors who are really just actors. I'm not saying that's all they can do, but to be a serious actor is a really immersive process. I haven't really been granted the opportunities, unless I've made the films myself, to put all of myself into those projects. So, while on the one hand it may not have allowed me to express myself completely as an actor, it's allowed me to express myself in many other aspects of my life, whether that's music or photography. Filmmaking to me is the all-encompassing art. Whether I'm acting in it or not, I’m dealing with sound, I’m dealing with imagery, I’m dealing with story. To me, it's really the ultimate art form in its best versions. It's also why it's incredibly difficult. It’s a weird thing, too, because on the one hand, I think I had a real natural facility for it. I remember making my first film and wondering how I knew what I was doing. I didn't go to film school, but it was so intuitive to me from such an early age. But on the flip side, it's really hard to make something that people are going to enjoy. I'm very critical of films, but also super forgiving of the whole process. It's probably on some level why people are gravitating towards making television, because while in many ways you could argue you're making six or twelve one-hour movies a year, you're not. You're making these pieces that you don't have to complete. If you fuck it up one week, you get another week to fix it. Making films is a battle artistically, professionally, and creatively.

What role does photography play in your life?

I've always been a huge documenter. I think of myself as my own Boswell. If you look, I have hundreds of journals that have photographs in them. I stopped doing that because it was just too consuming a process, where I would write in these massive sketchbooks, and put Polaroids, and prints and things in there. I switched to a digital journal. To a gratitude journal, strictly speaking, but I use it to take photos, to put a photo in every day. I set things up, stand back, and observe them either with or without a camera. A lot of the stuff I've been doing recently, since I've been with my wife, Roxanne, has been some kind of weird form of staged documentary. Many of the photos that ended up in that book of my record are indicative of that. She's a muse, but there's something about doing it spontaneously, whether by using selective focus, or multi exposures, in a way that’s more expressionistic.

Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore

What advice do you have for someone who loves photography, but has yet to pick up a camera?

Go get a cheap 35 millimeter camera. When you have an infinite amount of photos to choose from, and you can take an infinite amount, and you're just... Look, I have a digital camera. I shot some musician friends of ours recently, The Chapin Sisters. I shot some on digital, just to make sure I had something. And then shot a roll of film. There was just no question. The film was better. Not just because I like the way it looked but I just had to take more time with it. It's just as simple as that.

You co-star in a show on CBS called The Equalizer, which is just about to air in its third season. Given there is so much television available to watch currently, why should someone devote time to it?

The thing that's interesting about The Equalizer, obviously that's a TV show that had been on before, and certainly as a film, but the idea that there is a woman of color starring in this show—in addition to the fact that she's super strong, both physically and emotionally, and is a mom—is exciting. It's certainly indicative of where we are, at least trying to move in our culture.

It's funny for me, for my entire career the feedback I would get was, "Oh yeah, we're going to go more all-American." Really? Because, I'm German and French, indigenous, Mexican, and Jewish. How much more American could I possibly be? But of course what they meant was blonde white guy. So, the fact that I'm the whitest guy in the show is a hilarious bit of irony. Somebody who's as much of an iconoclast as me playing this character, it's just a fun idea.

Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore

Is there anything that makes this third season special?

It’s becoming a little bit more of an ensemble. My character spends a lot of time in this behind a computer, and I’ve been in hiding. Now I’m no longer in hiding, and trying to reconcile the idea that, while I'm no longer in hiding, I'm still used to being in hiding. Which was, coincidentally, how I felt as a human being in terms of pandemic. I'm more exposed on a day-to-day. I'm more exposed on the set of TheEqualizer, and more interactive with more people than I am in real life. We’ve been pretty hardcore [about Covid] I guess. It’s interesting that my character has this hermetic aspect to him, but he's out much more in this season, and now I'm even contributing—and there were hints of this last season—with music. In fact, I spent yesterday at Power Station recording a song for the show that I'm going to sort of perform, and it was a lot of fun. This idea that everybody's chipping in and working together, since it's not so compartmentalized, is going to give it a different energy.

Your character on the show, Harry, wears some pretty interesting outfits, not too dissimilar from your own style. How much involvement do you have in your character's wardrobe and what does the concept of a wardrobe do for you as an actor?

It's almost all mine. And, when it's not, I'll ask them to get certain things and then they'll get them. I work with the stylist on the show, Jennifer, and she is amazing. She's got a cool sensibility and she's been really open to my contributions. I'm fully self-styled on the show. It’s a lot of me hauling in duffle bags of stuff, and it allows me to wear stuff I wouldn't probably wear all the time. This also felt like a quarantine thing. The longer pandemic went on, the more I was wearing stuff I wouldn't typically wear. Getting dressed was another creative outlet.

Obviously, we didn't want him to just be a guy who wears a hoodie because he is a hacker. It’s just a cool way of expressing himself. Some of the stuff is totally stuff I would wear. And then there's other stuff where I'm like, “Let's get this weird Kapital sweater that I wouldn't ever wear in real life, but that I can appreciate is cool.” Because he really has no other kind of way to express himself, other than fiddling around on the guitar in an old, abandoned subway station.

Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore

What do fashion and style mean to you?

I’ve been really interested in clothes my whole life. My mom was really, really into vintage clothing, which I remember initially thinking, "No, that’s so gross. Other people wore that?" But I was pretty heavy into it as a kid. American Rag opened around the corner from where we lived. I was buying vintage 501s when I was 14 or 15 years old. I always felt like clothing was a way of showing people how you felt. It’s a way of trying to paint a picture for somebody of what you like, and non-verbally express yourself and explain yourself. For a while, I would just buy Wranglers from Sheplers, this big Western store in Oklahoma, online. The only thing I spent any real money on were boots I’d have made. Then I realized that there were all these heritage brands making that stuff, but for $300, and that's why I'm happy to do this TV show.

I remember I was in New York doing another show, The Jim Gaffigan Show, and I discovered Self Edge, and then The Real McCoys, which at the time had a shop next to Blue and Green. Once I went in to The Real McCoys and realized these vintage Western shirts I've been buying, and shopping for… They're making me these incredible versions that actually fit. And, that's just been the end of me. It opened up this whole world of men's fashion, which I really didn't pay any attention to at all prior.

What are some of your favorite current favorite brands, or things you purchased recently?

Well, as evidenced by the photos we took, I love Mister Freedom. Big fan. I love Christophe, and I love that whole world, and his whole shop. Left Field NYC was another shop that I got into really early on. My pals have a shop, Snake Oil Provisions in LA, and they have brands like 3sixteen and Rouge Territory. Those are definitely the brands that I didn't know anything about, but then came to appreciate. There are all the Japanese heritage brands, Warehouse & Co, again, The Real McCoys, Toys McCoy. Indigofera from Sweden.

Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore
Photo credit: Christopher Fenimore

What about Visvim?

Someone needs to really get answers about its cost, I get it. But a loopwheeled sweatshirt from them is made completely differently than the sweatshirts you get at J.Crew. And they're made in small matches; that's just on a whole other level. What doesn't make any sense to me is their engineer boots cost what engineer boots cost, but then, they’ll have a t-shirt that costs $2,000. It just doesn't make any sense. Yes, I have some Visvim slides. And I've got a couple really nice, I forget what you call it. It's not a kimono, but it's…

The Lhamo Shirt.

Yes, I have a denim one. I wore some of that stuff early on in the show. I was actually leaning harder in that direction. I thought, “Let’s have this guy be really comfortable in all this Japanese stuff.” It was a lot more Kapital, too. Then it just started to feel like it was too much. I needed to feel a little bit more comfortable. Some of the boots that I wore today, one was by a Canadian couple called Love Jewels. They made a pair of the zipper boots, and the Chelsea boots were an Indonesian boot maker. There’s all these really, really, small makers that I'm into. Everything that I've been wearing in the last several years are all the things I used to go hunting for when buying vintage. I don't have the patience for it. I know that what I’m buying is essentially a reproduction of vintage design, but there it is, and it's made really well, so why buy vintage? Of course, I know that it's probably much more eco-friendly to buy uncomfortable vintage clothes.

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