Music clip: "No time for goodbyes anymore. I’m too tired to walk out that door."
Barbara Walters: That was a song from the new Eric Roberts movie, Mercy Streets, and it’s sung by his step-son, Keaton Simons, and it proves that talent is absolutely overflowing in the Roberts family. In such films as Star 80, Runaway Train and The Pope of Greenwich Village Eric Roberts proves that he has a talent and an intensity that few can match. In Mercy Streets he proves it again.
Film clip: “Was it God’s plan that I save your brother’s life? Was it God’s plan that I dragged him from the river?” etc.
Lisa: ...Eric..
[applause]
Barbara: Whoo! [obviously having a hot flash] Lisa just whispered to me “I love Eric Roberts” and so do a lot of other people. His wife is outside, be careful.
[Eric comes out in a white terrycloth bathrobe and Mets cap and kisses everyone.]
Lisa: Are you wearing underwear under that?
Barbara: Are you going to flash us? You are adorable but just a minute...
Eric: Here’s a mets cap. [handing it to Meredith Vieira]
Barbara: A mets cap, and you expect...
Eric: The Mets won!
[Eric takes off the robe, throws it behind the sofa and sits down. He is wearing a gray sports shirt and black slacks.]
Joy Behar: [picking lint off Eric’s leg] You’re all fuzzy...
Eric: I'm all fuzzy. [brushing at the lint]
Barbara: [obviously a Yankees fan] That’s a wonderful way to get my affection I must say! You certainly are cute to come out and play with us but you aren’t cute in this, you’re scary. In Mercy Streets you play a con man who tries to corrupt twin brothers, right? But you said it’s actually about second chances. Like the Yankees are going to have.
Eric: Like the Mets are going to have!
Eric: I’m a professional criminal. Who’s surprised? and at the opening of the movie I go get my partner out of prison. Actually he’s not my partner; he’s my twin brother’s partner and because I can’t find my partner because he’s run off so I try to convince this like twin brother to help me out of a 20 million dollar scam but he doesn’t want to do it but I convince him.
[Actually, the man he gets out of jail is his partner. Then, when his partner disappears, Eric recruits the partner's twin to replace him.] Barbara: We won’t tell you the rest but we will tell you it’s a perfect Eric Roberts part; dark and mysterious.
Eric: Also you only mentioned old movies. You should mention new movies like La Cucaracha It won best film at the Austin Film Festival last year and I won best actor at the New York Independent Film Festival this year. I was so proud .
Joy Behar: It’s about a roach; cucaraca.
Eric: A cockroach, that’s right. As a matter of fact, I have a three-minute scene with a cockroach crawling all over my face.
Starr Jones: You know the movie is about second changes and you had a second chance yourself; in a near death experience. Were you really in a coma for a couple days?
Eric: Well, in 1981 I tried to climb a tree in a CJ5 and...
Starr Jones: What’s a CJ5?
Eric: It’s a jeep.
Starr Jones: It’s a jeep?
Eric: It’s a jeep.
Somebody: So you did that on purpose?
Eric: Actually what happened was I was leaving my then girl friend’s home and her dog jumped in the car with me cause I had off the doors. So I would always take the dog back and forth and I was on the way home and the dog was leaning way out the passenger door so I take my hands off the wheel, cause I know the road so well, and grabbed the dog and take my hands off the wheel and say “Sit!” and I look up and saw a tree and thought why am I headed that way? And basically that’s all I remember for two weeks.
Somebody: For two weeks?
Eric: I was in a semi-coma for 11 days and a hard coma for 3 days.
Somebody: Bless your heart.
Lisa: I have to ask you a question about your sister, Julia Roberts, who is arguably the biggest celebrity in the world.
Eric: Biggest star in the world!
Lisa: Definitely. I read that you’re estranged from her but there was a time when you were very close. Did you help her get into the business?
Eric: I got her her first movie. I got her out of Smyrna, Georgia, which is a real feat, and she did all the rest herself. [pause]
Joy Behar: Enough said about that.
Barbara: I hope that one day you two get together because you’re both so talented.
Lisa: Incredibly talanted.
Eric: I do too.I do too.
Joy Behar: I'd like to ask... Barbara: No, wait. Maybe we can bury the hatchet here. Do you want to give her a message?
Eric: I love her with all my heart. I love both my sisters. But I was such a handful, see, I did drugs for about ten years of my life and I ruined every relationship I ever had and...
Barbara: Oh, Eric, how honest and dear of you to say it.
Eric:...and they were two of the relationships I ruined through that stuff. I’ve tried to get in touch with them for about seven years now but they won’t call me back. And I’ve tried everything I can. I wrote letters, I sent telegrams, I sent gifts, I sent flowers. They really had it with me. It’s not my fault. I mean, it’s not their fault. I guess that’s a Freudean slip.
Somebody: It was.
Joy Behar: I guess it probably isn’t yours either.
Eric: I mean, it’s not their fault and, if there’s any kind of fault to take, it would have to be mine.
Starr Jones: Are you clean now?
Eric: Am I clean? As a whistle. Except I have been known to visit the ganja but I am basically clean as they get.
Starr Jones: That’s not clean. That’s fuzzy.
Eric: Whatever you want to call it. I saw someone hand somebody a bottle over there.
Somebody: I thought that was a river in India.
Somebody: No, that’s the Conga.
Joy Behar: You brought this whole thing about your drug addiction up so, when you play these dark characters, like you were fabulous in Star 80 . You were scary. Eric: I don’t play addicts, I play nuts.
Joy Behar: Yes, nuts, of course, but I’m sure there must be something in your past, in your personality that you draw on as an actor.
Eric: I grew up in a dark home but most of us did so that’s no reason. When I’m wonderful which I have been a few times and I’ve made a lot of movies so that’s not saying much. I find that it’s only when I play people who are way away from what I’m like like Paul Snyder in like Star 80, like Paulie Gaboni in Pope. Excuse me. They’re all light years from me so it’s easier for me. Barbara: [cutting in] Eric the way you talk today and we haven’t heard you talk like this about your sister and about yourself. It is so generous of you and really very impressive and you are not only a fine actor but, I think, a very fine person. We really appreciate your being here. I know it’s not easy. I know it’s not easy.
I want to tell you about Eric Roberts movie. Its called, Mercy Streets. It opens October 31 in select theaters and you can see what a treat he is.
We will be back after all this emotion we will be back with Joy’s comedy corner. Thankyou, Eric.
[Eric kisses Starr Jones on his right and Joy Behar on his left.] [commercial]
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