Lyrical and elegiac even while being rooted in hope and tenderness, director Clint Bentley’s “Train Dreams” moves with the grace of a liturgy. 

The film centers on a logger, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), whose work building railroads tames America’s vast landscape into something manageable. The seasonality of his work means he rarely gets to see his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones), or his daughter, Katy, and his life oscillates between the beauty and harshness of his vocation and the joy of being reunited with his family. 

One day, Granier witnesses and is unable to stop a fellow worker, Fu Sheng (Alfred Hsing), from being the victim of a brutal and racially-motivated murder. In the aftermath, Granier believes himself to be cursed in some way, and it isn’t long before Job-like tragedies befall him. Amidst his hardships, he learns how to make sense of his place in an ever-shifting world that’s all too ready to leave him behind, and in his struggle, he learns to rely on the restorative company of good friends. 

For Bentley and Edgerton, human beings’ abilities to rebuild after loss are something they wanted to celebrate.”It’s a real sign of regrowth when someone, despite their gloominess, finds the joy of living in the moment where they start responding to jokes again and their mirth returns,” Edgerton shared. Likewise, for Bentley, the project was a way to reckon with the inherent finitude of existence, how “you give up something for everything you get,” and that that’s important to remember amidst the “hustle culture we have that’s very in fashion right now in the US.” 

Over Zoom and at a red carpet event, Bentley and Edgerton spoke with RogerEbert.com; about the beautiful unpredictability of working with animals, how the film challenged the false notion of linear healing, and how Granier’s struggle with the industry can guide creatives through the proliferation of generative AI. 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Joel, you’ve had your own formative experience with Denis’ book, having gotten it as a wrap gift from “Boy Erased.” I believe you considered directing an adaptation at some point. Literature can speak to people in so many different ways, so was there any conversation about merging your interpretation of the book with what Clint was trying to bring to life? 

Joel Edgerton: You’re right, a book speaks to different people in different ways. I had read Denis’ book years before Clint reached out to me, and when he did, I reread it, which I usually don’t do. Rereading the book meant so much more to me because when Clint and I started speaking about the movie, I had become a father. This idea of loss and grief was so much more potent for me. 

The novella tells the story of an ordinary person who creates his own heroic journey; I really connected with that idea. The simple things in life, such as love, family, and work troubles, as well as darker experiences like grief and loss, are moments that an ordinary person goes through. It’s epic to live a normal life, but we often don’t see it when we’re in the mire and myopia of it all. 

Speaking of rendering the ordinary with a sense of loftiness, Clint, I’m struck by the ways you depict–and sometimes choose not to depict–violence in the film. We see Apostle Frank get shot from a distance; we don’t see the impact of Fu Sheng’s body when he’s thrown off the tracks. 

Clint Bentley: The interesting thing is that I can say some things that have struck me since, but the thing about making films is that a lot of times what ends up becoming stylistic choices come from just trying to solve problems and limitations. To make these moments of violence look real–especially on an independent budget– it’s easier to showcase them from a distance. 

Especially living in that world, though, I did want to make it feel like death is always just kind of there around the corner; it doesn’t always announce itself in a big way. It just steps in, has its moment, and then steps out, kind of like that scene with the cowboy who walks in, shoots, and then leaves. The proximity of death is true for all of us in life, but it was less sanitized back then, and there was less distance from it than there is now. 

I also think of that scene where the boy falls dead, seemingly out of nowhere, and the narrator says how had he been born a few years later, he would have been fine because the condition that killed him could have been treated. I was trying to get into Granier’s mindset and portray that for his world: a big part of it is the reality that death steps in at every moment, so he’s very accustomed to it. At least in the United States at this moment in time, we’re more separated from that and don’t have to encounter it as much. 

Speaking of “death stepping in,” I think about how you and cinematographer Adolpho Veloso framed Fu Sheng’s death, how there are these men who step into the frame suddenly and then throw him off the bridge. 

CB: Nobody seems to know why this is happening to Fu Sheng, even the guys who are doing it are moving as if there’s a force carrying them along. Going back even earlier, there’s that scene where Granier sees a Chinese family being thrown out of a store, and he’s baffled by the casualness of it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but today, you have groups of men in masks grabbing people off the street, and people are screaming at them and trying to get them to stop. It’s tragic.

To sit with that sequence for a bit, I’ve been chewing on the fact that the first thing Granier says when he sees this violence happen is “What did he do?” It’s such an honest response and speaks to how, as humans, we need to rationalize why bad things happen, when in reality there’s often no good or adequate reason why tragedy strikes. 

JE: One of the great things about the novella in general is that there’s this philosophical and spiritual religiousness around nature itself that’s separate from the classic religion of Christianity. It’s this idea that the bad things we do follow us around, and there’s a counterbalance to one’s guilt or complicity in a terrible act. Robert put his hands on Fu Sheng, then Fu Sheng was killed, and somehow, Robert owes a debt, and the world is going to justice for this situation. He feels like death is coming for him, even if the audience may not judge him or think what happened was entirely his fault. 

We all, since the beginning of time, have tried to make sense of our place in the world. That’s the reason why religion even became a part of our culture; it was to make sense of this world we’re living in and to get close to these questions of “What is life? What’s its purpose? What are we owed and what do we owe as a result of having this privilege or curse of being a person?” There’s something naive in a view of the world that doesn’t try to answer questions, but just poses them, and I think that’s very special. 

It’s made me think about how a film like this is a celebration of the divinity of everyday life. The thing about Robert, though, is that he’s a receiver throughout this film; things happen to him rather than him instigating change. I’m curious about both of you: where is this line in life? How are you discerning when to practice contentment and embrace limits, while also honoring your ambitions for more? 

JE: Clint, you’ve put it really nicely a couple of times. At some point, you realize, you’ve just got to put one foot in front of the other. Unless you make the big choice to give up on life and tap out, you’ve got to keep moving because the world asks you to keep moving; you can’t just sit in one place forever. The question of ambition versus pure existence is an interesting proposition. 

Robert is not someone who is going to take his own life necessarily. So he needs to, as Clint has said, put one foot in front of the other. What’s beautiful is that, like the forest is regrowing itself after a fire, characters like Ignatius Jack and Claire come into Robert’s life, and they’re the soil that helps regrow him by bringing things out of him. They offer him food, company, and warmth, and let him know there’s support. That’s a lofty idea: that, as human beings, while we can drag each other off the street and be part of the violence of culture, we can also be part of each other’s regrowth and rebirth. That, to me, shows the heart of human nature.

CB: That’s a wonderful way to put it. These questions around ambition versus contentment versus acceptance … it’s not an either-or. You give up something for everything you get, and I think that’s an important thing to remember, especially in this ridiculous hustle culture we have, which is very in fashion right now in the US. By pursuing something, you’re giving up time with your family, and by staying home with your family, you may be giving up opportunities. The answer’s different for everybody, but finding your place in all of this and settling into acceptance … that’s the epic journey of your life. 

JE: I was with my kids this morning, and they went through contentment and discontentment about ten times before they went to school. They were drawing a fairy, which was great, but then my son, Jack, drew the wings wrong, and he thought the world was coming to an end. I was trying to teach them this expression: “That day is the first day of the rest of your life.” At any moment, we can slip away from contentment and happiness into the opposite. Life is a constant struggle between good and evil, but rebirth and reset can happen at any moment. 

Clint, I want to follow up on what you shared about the hustle culture we find ourselves in. Constant stimulation is the norm, yet “Train Dreams” invites people into a more meditative, thoughtful mindset. I do think its rewards are evident after first viewing, but it can be a hard wavelength to tap into. How do you contend with the fact that art like this will live long after you, or its benefits may take longer to blossom and be fully appreciated? 

JE: I literally sent a message to Clint last night, telling him that what’s special to me about the film is that I think it will live forever. You can’t say that of every film, but thematically and aesthetically, I feel like it sits on a nice high shelf. It’s a positive message in the world, and ironically, I was watching an Instagram video where a guy was teaching people about how to spend less time on Instagram. He was encouraging people to stop doomscrolling and to find pleasure and stimulation in seeking the opposite of overstimulation and quiet. 

Joel, I could hear the audience swoon and breathe a sigh of relief when they saw you playing with dogs. I’m wondering if you can talk about what working with animals, with all their adorableness and unpredictability, does for you as an actor. With human beings, there can be some form of conversation and compromise about the performance, but you can only control animals so much. 

CE: (Laughs) Well, you can’t really control humans either. 

JE: (Laughs) Yeah, W. C. Fields should have changed his quote to “Never work with animals, children, or actors.” I think it’s actually pleasurable if you just choose not to throw the script away, but to at least ask yourself, “What is the moment you need?” and then explore how you go about finding your own version of that moment with animals or children, who are not robots that can repeat moments or learn lines? That’s the beauty of someone like Clint coming in; he doesn’t sit there saying, “Why won’t this dog or child do what I want it to?” 

CE: I grew up on a cattle ranch worked with horses, cows, and dogs; each animal has their own personality. If you can set up your film in such a way that you can kind of guide them in a direction, and then we can all kind of follow them, that’s ideal. The puppies you can’t control, but they bring so much joy to the work. They brought an element of life you can’t replicate. 

In filmmaking, you can try to control everything about it; you can control the frame, you can try to control the people in it, take out the animals, do everything on a green screen so you can control the way the light comes in, but doing all that means you lose life out of what you’re making. 

To bring life to the audience, you have to put things in there that are unpredictable and that you’re not able to control. It’s about bending with them; something more magical comes from that kind of collaboration. 

JE: I think Granier’s daughter, Katy, gets the biggest laughs in the film because she throws a pot in the river and yells. There are things you couldn’t script. Clint embraces those moments. For a film that undulates through some beautiful highs and some pretty low valleys of life, the reminder of innocence that animals and children bring is kind of extraordinary for an audience, and it just reaches into people’s hearts in a special way. 

It speaks to the ambience you’ve created on set, Clint, that welcomes and invites that freestyling and experimentation. I’m curious about how working on this film has challenged the linear timeline we often place on healing. Robert rebuilt his house after the fire, but he didn’t rebuild the bedroom. Healing, as shown in the film, isn’t always about “going back” to the way things were. 

JE: I’ll tell you, one of the great sounds I’ve ever heard is hearing the laughter of a friend after they’ve gone through a really tough and gloomy period. The first time you hear them laugh or genuinely smile … there’s nothing like that. As human beings, we can often flatline, and our joy goes away. It’s a real sign of regrowth when someone, despite their gloominess, finds the joy of living in the moment, where they start responding to jokes again and their mirth returns. 

It reminds me of the speech in Hamlet where he says, “I have of late, but / wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth.” We find joy again. That’s the one hopefulness we can offer to some people. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. That sound of a person’s first laughter after a period of devastation is quite a special reminder of how we can rebuild ourselves.

That’s why I love the silly debate about the chief wolf and red dog conversation that Ignatius Jack and Robert have by the fire; we are sustained by those seemingly pointless conversations we have with good company. 

JE: Exactly, that’s what I’m talking about. We finally go, “Oh, Robert has a chance. Thanks to a friend.” 

CB: Greg Kwedar and I were writing this script as we were in the midst of and then coming out of COVID, where people had lost their family members and their jobs. I wanted to get across this idea that life is never going to go back to the way it was, and that’s okay. There can still be loveliness ahead, and the way that you heal, to Joel’s point, is through and with other people. They can lift you, and you can also lift them. 

That moment where Ignatius Jack and Robert are sitting around the fire, chitchatting and dozing off together, I could have sat there all night. We were filming that scene at a place that had been wiped out by the Medical Lake Fire a few months earlier. We were in the midst of this very tragic place on this bed of ash, and yet we were filming this wonderful moment between two friends. It felt so special to film, and these are the things I hold onto. You can’t stop tragedy from coming in from life, but you can hold on to these moments. 

A core provocation of the film is the reality that Robert feels displaced in his industry during his lifetime. The world’s resources were being used to fuel growth, leaving people like him on the wayside. It’s made me think about generative AI and how its proliferation is harming not just the environment but also the people in the industry. Robert left logging, but you guys are still planning to act and direct, I’d imagine. How are you finding your place in this industry as it goes through this massive change? 

CB: (Jokingly) Actually, I’m looking for an exit out of this business right now. 

JE: It is interesting. The filmmakers that really impress me are doing things that are new and indelible in their own way. The theory is that AI will learn and absorb everything and start thinking in its own elliptical, cryptic ways. But I just love when I see stories and I go, “There’s no way that this could be created by anything other than a human being, having an elastic imagination.” 

The thing humans do very well is that we’re good at knowing ourselves. What’s important in a story is that we watch it because we want to see human relationships; who’s better to describe, observe, and depict them than human beings? I want to challenge my creativity and create things that are indelible and new; I want to put stories out in the world that people know are bespoke. 

CB: I agree. I think we are doing something now in a medium that’s very specific to our time with cinema, but it’s a very timeless thing where we’re connecting. We’re telling each other stories to help each other, whether we’re just trying to entertain and give a good time, or to share a message that helps other people along. The novel was the vessel for that connection in the 1700s and 1800s, and in the early 1900s, it was an ancient Greek theater. 

With AI, I don’t fucking know… I think we’re looking at the steam engine version of this, and we can’t even imagine what the rocket technology will be if we stick to this analogy. But I do think we will always need that connection to each other through storytelling, in whatever form it takes. 

JE: Clint would actually like the phone number for Tilly Norwood. (Laughs)

I can’t wait to see her in “Train Dreams 2.”

“Train Dreams” is now in theaters via Netflix and will stream on that platform on November 21st. 

In her last on-camera interview, English primatologist Jane Goodall used her platform to uplift others. In a direct address to an unknown audience, she says, “Your life matters, and you are here for a reason. And I just hope that reason will become apparent as you live through your life.” 

Growing up in a family with two parents who studied anthropology and archaeology, one of whom taught a physical anthropology course at the local community college, some of the earliest people I thought of as celebrities were palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist Louis Leakey, as well as his protégés Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. These two women challenged the way we think about primates as social beings who live in communities not all that dissimilar to our own. They showed me, and other girls like me, a path towards living life with passion and dedicating oneself to something greater than oneself.

Fossey had her short but impactful life memorialized by the 1988 film “Gorillas In The Mist,” featuring an Oscar-nominated Sigourney Weaver as the primatologist who was murdered by poachers at the age of 53. Jane Goodall was much luckier with her work, spanning nearly six decades. By the time she passed away on October 1st at the age of 91, Goodall had authored thirty-two books, fifteen of which were specifically written for children, and had been featured in over forty documentary films. 

Born in 1934 in Hampstead, London, Goodall became interested in animals after her father gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee, which she named Jubilee, rather than a traditional teddy bear. This fascination led her to the White Highlands in the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya in 1957. A life-changing meeting with Leakey led to several opportunities for her to study primate behavior and primate anatomy with experts Osman Hill and John Napier, and later to earn a PhD in Ethology from the University of Cambridge. Leakey’s thought was that if they could learn more about the behavior of existing great apes, this would help his work, which sought to understand the behavior of early hominids.

Goodall has said her mother’s encouragement gave her strength as she began her research career in this intensely male-dominated field. Goodall’s trailblazing work, along with her ongoing advocacy for more young women to join the field, has been cited as a factor in the equalization of men and women working in primatology today. 

In her 1999 book “Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey,” Goodall recalled that while observing chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in the 1960s, she initially thought that they were “nicer than human beings,” but later she found, “that chimpanzees could be brutal—that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature.” This, along with her discovery that chimpanzees can make tools, helped redefine everything we thought we knew about both early humans and our primate cousins. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 with the aim of continuing her research, as well as facilitating legal frameworks to protect wildlife habitats. 

Goodall and her work have been the subject of numerous documentaries over the years. Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman’s 1990 short documentary, “Chimps: So Like Us,” features interviews with Goodall as she describes how each chimp has its own unique voice, just like humans do, intercut with footage of chimps in the wild living their lives. That same year, Judith Dwan Hallet’s “In The Life and Legend of Jane Goodall” similarly follows Goodall as she does her job in the wild, observing the animals while teaching what she’s learned to others. In this film, Goodall shares with the audience her feelings about her favorite family of chimps, whom she affectionately calls the “F” troop.

While these early films align with Goodall’s goal of sharing her singular knowledge with the world as a form of preservation and activism, later films about Goodall take a more hagiographic approach, aiming instead to position her into an icon status. However, one recent film stands high above the pack: Brett Morgen’s impressionistic 2017 documentary “Jane,” which features astonishing never-before-seen footage of Goodall’s field work, shot mainly on lush 16mm color film stock by filmmaker Hugo van Lawick, who would later become Goodall’s first husband, that had been hidden away in the National Geographic archives until its discovery in 2014. Morgen’s kaleidoscopic editing style, Philip Glass’s impassioned score, and the love between Lawick and Goodall that shines through his breathtaking footage form a rich portrait of both the trailblazing woman and the sacrifices she made to protect that natural world that had so beguiled her. 

In March of this year, Goodall was interviewed by filmmaker Brad Falchuk for a Netflix series called “Famous Last Words,” intended to be released only after her death. The hour-long special features a candid fifty-minute conversation between Goodall and Falchuk. The two then share a shot of whisky, Falchuk leaves the sound stage, and Goodall faces the camera, addressing the world for one last time. Goodall’s goodbye to people of the world lasts a full five minutes. Her speech ends with an urgent clarion call about the impact of man-made climate change, reminding us that, “as we destroy one ecosystem after another, as we create worse climate change, worse loss of diversity, we have to do everything in our power to make the world a better place for the children alive today, and for those that will follow.”

Goodall lived her life with a purpose, not just rooted in her work with chimpanzees, but also in her mission to conserve our natural world before it’s too late. As I read more and more headlines about the destruction of the world’s oceans, the depletion of resources for A.I. data centers, and the environmental impact of war, I truly hope her life wasn’t lived in vain after all. 

The great comedic songwriter and performer Tom Lehrer passed away at 97 yesterday, outliving one of the writers credited with penning the “advance” obituary that The New York Times had been holding for many years, a phenomenon that sometimes occurs with notable people who live longer than expected. Lehrer might also have been amused by the people who heard news of his passing and expressed astonishment that he hadn’t already kicked the bucket. He released his first album in 1953 and retired from live performance in 1967, never to return, although he continued to write and record new songs in studios for another decade.

Some mistook his withdrawal from public life for having died; A 2003 Sidney Morning Herald profile of Leher began, “Word that we’ve secured an interview has people around the office launching into such unlikely yet infectious ditties as ‘The Vatican Rag,’ ‘Smut’ and Lehrer’s ode to spring pursuits, ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.’ It also has people asking with a surprised tone: ‘Is he still alive?’”

It’s fun to imagine the songs Lehrer would have written about all this. His discography is stocked with all-timers, but only if you’re into novelty songs that riff on things that were happening in the middle part of the 20th century but now require footnotes. The work combines erudite social commentary, boundary-pushing cheekiness, and a piano sound rooted in the music halls that birthed vaudeville.

“We Will All Go Together When We Go” captures the bleak absurdity of mutually assured destruction in the Cold War era, and now feels like a predecessor to “Dr. Strangelove” as well as to Randy Newman’s “Political Science (Let’s Drop the Big One).” “The Masochism Tango” is about what it sounds like it’s about (“I ache for the touch of your lips, dear/But much more for the touch of your whips, dear”). So is “The Elements,” which is set to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Modern Major-General” song, and consists mostly of Lehrer reciting the names of elements on the periodic table, but rearranged to rhyme. “National Brotherhood Week” calls out the hypocrisy of devoting a mere week to brotherhood while giving people who loathe each other the other 51 weeks of the year an opportunity to pretend they’re decent (“It’s fun to eulogize/The people you despise/As long as you don’t let them in your school”). 

One of my favorites is Lehrer’s nonexistent title song for the film adaptation of Oedipus Rex, which includes such verses as, “He loved his mother like no other/His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother!/One thing on which you can depend is/He sure knew who a boy’s best friend is!”

I first encountered Lehrer’s work when my fourth-grade choir performed a few of his songs during a winter recital. One of them was “Pollution,” which is done in the style of a song that the Sharks would’ve sung in West Side Story. It’s a toe-tapping ditty about humanity’s destruction of the environment. It begins, “If you visit American city/You will find it very pretty/Just two things of which you must beware/Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air!” The first chorus goes, “Pollution, pollution/We got smog and sewage and mud/Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud!”  

Memorizing the names of songwriters wasn’t something I did at that age. I made a point of memorizing Lehrer’s after I heard “Pollution” and other Lehrer classics played on The Dr. Demento Show, a syndicated radio program specializing in comedic songs, sketches, and other silliness. Demento, also known as Barret Eugene Hansen, announced his retirement earlier this year. Still, his show ran for more than five decades, introducing established names like Lehrer to new generations while giving up-and-comers a platform to find a mass audience. Demento’s most significant find was “Weird Al” Yankovic, who, as Yankovic himself has said on many occasions, probably would not have existed if he hadn’t grown up listening to Lehrer. 

Lehrer was originally a mathematics professor (first at the University of California, Santa Cruz, then at Harvard) and continued to teach even when his music was at its peak. He was a ferociously nimble pianist and a composer of funny, topical songs that he’d play for friends. It all started in 1953 when, mainly for the heck of it, he paid for the pressing of 400 albums of his original work to give out to friends. A 1997 profile by Elijah Wald sums up his ascent:

The 1950s are often remembered as a cultural war zone, with Eisenhower and suburban conformity on one side, and the wildness of rock ‘n’ roll and beat poetry on the other. Lehrer stood firmly against both, and against decency, compassion, and virtually the whole range of human virtues. His songs, crafted with the care of the great Broadway tunesmiths, were studiedly intellectual and fiendishly irreverent. His idea of a cheerful ditty was “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” His idea of nostalgic sentimentality was an ode to “The Old Dope Peddler.” His idea of romance was “I Hold Your Hand in Mine,” a paean to the woman he has killed, but whose hand he has kept as a souvenir. 

“I think I could get away with that stuff because I was this clean cut college kid in a bow-tie and horn-rimmed glasses, being kind of innocent and smart,” Lehrer said. Fans took the record home on vacations, and orders began drifting in from around the country. “The word spread like herpes,” as Lehrer puts it, and soon he was making nightclub appearances. After a while he graduated to concert halls, then recorded his second studio album in 1959. That same year, he recorded live versions of both albums, one at Harvard and the other at MIT. (His advertisement for a live set said it “contains exactly the same songs, but unfortunately also includes Mr. Lehrer’s tedious spoken commentary.”) 

In reality, Lehrer’s onstage patter was as sharp as his lyrics. “You know, of all the songs I have ever sung, that is the one I’ve had the most requests not to,” he said after performing, “I Hold Your Hand in Mine,” a charming tale of murder and dismemberment, on “Songs by Tom Lehrer.” In that same show, Lehrer said, “I don’t like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn’t as though I had to do this, you know. I could be making, oh, $3,000 a year just teaching.”

Lehrer became a national phenomenon when he was invited to perform his work on “That Was the Week That Was,” a U.S. adaptation of the same-named satirical-musical British series that looked back on the previous seven days’ worth of news. “TWTWTW,” as it was known, ran just two seasons, from 1963 to 65. Lehrer’s work survived and endured, though, probably because each song seemed to exist in its own hermetically sealed universe.

Lehrer declined all requests to return to the keys and unveil new material or play the hits. Part of the problem, he told interviewers, was that he didn’t find much humor in many of the major political developments after his heyday. What was he gonna do, a funny song about 9/11 or the 2008 recession? More than that, “I didn’t feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding,” he said. “To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record.”

However, although Lehrer stopped performing and recording fairly soon into his music career, he was always willing to discuss his work. He did countless interviews over the decades. They produced many amazing quotes, like “If a person feels he can’t communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it,” and “Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize,” and my favorite, “Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”

“I really don’t have anything more to say,” he told Bob Claster last year, in one of his last interviews. “To just come back and stand on a stage and do the old songs again doesn’t really appeal to me, and performing doesn’t appeal to me at all.” He said people used to speculate that he must not have liked performing if he decided to stop doing it. Lehrer would reply that he liked high school, but didn’t want to do that again, either. Then he added that he was grateful for his brief window of fame because it let him travel all over the world and meet interesting people and, more importantly, it “enabled me to do what I always wanted to do, which is teach part time and hang out.” If not for the music, “I would have had to have a real job, god forbid.”