Speaker 1: Failure is a part of life, an experience to learn from, as we're told constantly by everyone, from school teachers to management consultants. We have our disappointments and embarrassments, and most of us try to learn from them and put them behind us somehow. Some of us make podcasts out of them, and failure, one particular failure is what Connor Ratliff's Dead Eyes is all about. Staff writer, Sarah Larson writes about podcasts for The New Yorker and she spoke with Connor Ratliff last week.

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Sarah Larson: Connor Ratliff is a brilliant and funny comedic performer and actor, who's beloved in the improv world and among his fellow performers. A lot of the funniest people we've enjoyed on TV and in movies in the last few years, Connor's one of the funniest people they know. If he's so great and beloved, why doesn't everybody know who he is?

Connor Ratliff: There was one point I was approached by an agent or a manager. I don't even remember which they were. He said, "What's your story? Why, how come you don't have representation?" I said, "Well, because I have no interest in working in show business. I don't like it."

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Sarah Larson: What could make someone who loves performing and who's so good at it, stop performing? It all begins with Tom Hanks.

Connor Ratliff: I'm a huge Tom Hanks fan and always have been. I was the kid in high school that when people would talk about, this Tom Hanks movie or that Tom Hanks movie, I'd be like, "Do you remember his episodes on Family Ties? Those are really good."

Sarah Larson: You can imagine how excited Connor was when not long after he got out of acting school, he was cast in a small role in the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

Connor Ratliff: Then the news got even better because I found out that Tom Hanks is going to be directing episode five, which is the episode that I was supposed to be in. It just kept getting better and better. I was thinking, this is such a great start. Things are going to start working out for me now because I'm in this Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, HBO prestige production. Then the day before I was supposed to film my scene, I had already had my haircut, my costume fitting. Everything was ready to go. I get a frantic call from someone in my agent's office and they delivered me this message. "Tom Hanks has looked at your audition tape and he's having second thoughts. He thinks you have dead eyes."

I got on a train and the whole time thinking, what do I do? I'm going to have to re-audition in person for Tom Hanks and knowing that he thinks I have dead eyes, and there's very little I can do about it. I get to have feel airbase. I wait, I hear Tom Hanks arrive and I read the scene for him. Then it was over and he was very nice. Then a few minutes later, they said, "We've decided to go another way."

Sarah Larson: It's one thing to get fired. Lots of people get fired. We've all had our disappointments. It's another thing to get fired by the Oscar-winning American treasure, Tom Hanks. To hear that he thinks you have dead eyes. What does that even mean? It sounds terrible. It's like hearing you have a dead soul. Connor did not take it well. I wouldn't have either. He started to doubt whether he had what it took to make it as an actor.

Connor Ratliff: You're like, this is not what I want my life to be.

Sarah Larson: Connor's doing great now, but his path to where he is was circuitous. It involved quitting acting, 10 years working at Barnes and Noble in Union Square. Doing improv at UCB, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and playing a dollar bill in a Whitecastle commercial.

Connor Ratliff: Today, I stand in this 3-dollar bill for value, for variety, for freedom. Introducing Whitecastle's 3-dollar freedom to choose five slider--

Sarah Larson: Throughout it all, he was still haunted by the fact that Tom Hanks had fired him for having dead eyes. He did what any comedian would do. He started a podcast.

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Speaker 2: This is Dead Eyes, a podcast about one actor's quest to find out why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.

Sarah Larson: What was the pitch that you were giving to podcast companies at the time?

Connor Ratliff: The pitch was we'll treat it like a true-crime podcast. We'll act like-- We'll just take it really seriously. Comedically, it will be the most narcissistic podcast in the world, an actor trying to find out, why did this thing happen to me? We'll use that as a way of like pivoting to other people's stories. We use comedic narcissism, but then genuine empathy. I could also talk to anybody famous that I knew, who might be interesting because I knew I would get to their stories of failure and disappointment.

John Hamm: You're like, am I doing anything right? I'm 48 years old. I've been doing this more than I haven't in my life at this point. When you're younger and something like this happens-- I had it happen to me 15 times with pilots to the point where Les Moonves at CBS had told my agents to stop sending me in because, and I quote, "John Hamm will never be a television star."

Connor Ratliff: Wow. What did you feel like when you heard that?

John Hamm: Not great. Then you start, what did I do in the room?

Sarah Larson: One of the great strengths of the show is obviously the breadth and depth of people you talk to. Hearing the stories of all these little moments of triumph and failure in various people's careers and things they tried to do that didn't work out or a dream they had that didn't come to pass, and it humanizes everyone. It reminds you that there are all these stories behind the TV and movies that you love that are just stories of creative misfires and all the things that we all go through that we just don't hear about. How did you know about your potential guests' professional disappointments that they may have had? Did you just assume everyone had them?

Connor Ratliff: I assumed that everyone had them. We've all heard people complaining about how things didn't go their way. The fact that my approach to it is-- Not that I'm saying it's no big deal, but I am saying, it's funny and we should put it in perspective. It's a universal enough thing. The number of emails that I've gotten from people who have no connection to show business who are like, "This is what it's like to work in my office. Like, I'm not being listened to," or, "They're making a decision that makes no sense," or, "This thing happened and it's bad for me, but it's good for the store," or something.

Sarah Larson: Everybody has vulnerability and everybody has professional things that you hope for, try for, are disappointed by, aren't good at, all that stuff. For non-actors, like me and many other listeners, the idea of your body coming into it in such a direct way. What you happen to look like, what you do with what you happen to look like. That being part of whether you get work or not, and the kind of work you get is just horrifying. It's heightened for a lot of listeners.

Maybe we feel some relief and satisfaction that we are not on TV or trying to be an actor. There's [laughs] something-- Oh my God, I just remembered this moment from the Freaks and Geeks Guys episode where Judd Apatow is telling that story about auditioning for Jim Henson.

Judd Apatow: I auditioned and I got a call where they said, "Jim Henson doesn't want you, but he would like to buy your ideas." Jim Henson said that he thought you lacked warmth. It knocked me out to this day.

Sarah Larson: The most devastating thing you can imagine. Also, he doesn't lack warmth. We all know this, anyone who's ever seen, Judd Apatow knows what's great about his work, is his warmth and his generosity. To hear that as a young struggling-

Connor Ratliff: If Jim Henson had lived to the year 2015, he would've had an experience with Judd Apatow. They probably would've worked together. Judd Apatow probably would've produced a Muppet movie. They would've been able to hash it out, but because it happened and then Jim Henson is tragically taken from us, he never gets anything close to closure. He just has to live with that note.

Sarah Larson: I assume that kind of closure was what you were hoping to get from Tom Hanks.

Connor Ratliff: There were a lot of things. Of course, the premise sounds like the most entitled thing in the world. It's just like this, I was wronged and I must have a personal public. Sit down, which anyone who's listened to even one episode of it knows that I never felt, "Well, I deserve and therefore entitled to a sit down with Tom Hanks." One of the goals of the podcast, it wasn't just I wanted to harangue him into being on it. I wanted make a podcast that was good enough that it would make sense that he might want to come on it and that he might have a good time being on it.

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Sarah Larson: From the very first episode of Dead Eyes, Connor's been hoping to get Tom Hanks on the show. We got to get Hanks on this. I cannot wait for you guys to bury the hatchet and become old friends.

Connor Ratliff: What I would like to do ideally, is to get a chance to re-audition for him or even just have him look at my reel. Maybe that would be less nerve-wracking for me. If I could just show him my reel and be like, "Look, do you think these are dead eyes, buddy?" A handful of shows.

Sarah Larson: Getting Tom Hanks' attention is not as easy as you might imagine.

Connor Ratliff: I sent a typewritten letter to his production offices.

Sarah Larson: He's a huge fan of old typewriters and he has a huge collection.

Connor Ratliff: He loves typewriters. I don't know this for certain, but I'm pretty sure Colin vouched for it as this is a good podcast.

Sarah Larson: You have friends in common with Colin Hanks.

Connor Ratliff: Yes. He's done a lot of comedy podcasts with people that I'm friends with and so--

Sarah Larson: It seemed like the path was two of Tom Hanks' kids, Colin and--

Connor Ratliff: Elizabeth.

Sarah Larson: Learned of your podcast, listened to it on their own, and liked it. Told him about it and he was initially skeptical there. No, it's good and then--

Connor Ratliff: I got this email, by the way, this is what the email said, "Connor, not sure how to volunteer my services to you, but joining you on your podcast would be a pleasure. Tom," and then below that it says, "T. Hanks." Then I'm like, is this the email or is this someone pranking me? It was really hard to know, so we verified it. Then I emailed Tom back the next morning and then we're just emailing back and forth, figuring out when do we want to. I was like, would you be comfortable meeting in person?

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Sarah Larson: You should listen to the whole episode. It's beautiful and I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say, the dead eye's incident was not as memorable to Tom as it was to Connor.

Connor Ratliff: Does any of this ring a bell with you?

Tom Hanks: Not a single moment of this rings a bell.

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Connor Ratliff: Two moments in that episode that really stick out, one is when I talk about him being a two-time academy award winner and he says, "Well, those days were long over by the time."

Sarah Larson: That was crazy, but he's talking about the '80s.

Connor Ratliff: Just the idea that by that point, he was no longer-- He was no longer winning Oscars every year. That it was a slight source of even whimsical insecurity. Was very interesting because I'm like, "Oh, everybody has that feeling of like, well, have I peaked or is there something different or are people not--" The other moment that I didn't even notice until we were listening to the tapes and editing through them. It was pointed out the moment where I talk about how excited I was that I was going to get be directed by one of my favorite actors.

Then Tom Hanks's response is he goes, "Boi-oi-oi-ing." He makes the boing noise. He goes "Boing." I asked, I said, "Can you isolate that sound and send it to me?" Hold on, I have it here. Hold on. I'm going to play it. If I take nothing else from this experience, I take this noise, "Boing." That is so funny to me. "Boing." I'll spend the rest of my life unpacking that boing.

Sarah Larson: Season four, the boing, what did it mean? This leads me to another question. The obvious question, which is, is this the end? Are you thinking about a fourth season or?

Connor Ratliff: For people who are thinking, this is the perfect ending, it is an ending and for anyone who wants it to be like the forever end and I disappear forever, you can just not pay attention. If I ever do anything else. It's certainly the end of it as an investigative. Like my Band of Brothers' story doesn't have any--

I don't have any other investigating to do, but I think there will be other versions of this that will have more freedom to do the thing that always felt a little bit like we were cheating or being tricky when we'd be like, "This episode's going to be about this other thing," because a lot of people are like, "I'm so sad that it's over," and we haven't announced that it's over. The number of people who have announced that the podcast is over without me saying that it's over has been very funny to me.

Sarah Larson: Everyone's firing you now.

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Speaker 5: Connor Ratliff's podcast, Dead Eyes, just wrapped up its third season and you can read more from sarahLarson@newyorker.com.

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