419. “Do you want to live?” | Redemption, Rock, and Real Talk with Thomas G. Waites

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Thomas G. Waites:
Love others into being and you will be.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. 

Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And our guest today, in a word, is awesome. His name is Thomas G. Waites. And he is the star of the one-man show currently playing in New York, Lucky Man: A Warrior's Journey, a rock and roll monologue backed by a live band. The show is a raw one-man monologue performed by Tom's band Heartbreak Waites – and that's W-A-I-T-E-S, that's fun – and is produced by Emmy and Golden Globe winner John Goodman. 

Waites has built a decade-spanning career in film, television, and theater, his television credits include Law & Order, The Punisher, Homeland, Oz, NYPD, Blue, All My Children, and One Life to Live. In Lucky Man, he rips the curtain wide open on his wild ride through fame and flame out. The show begins in 1976, just after being kicked out of Juilliard's drama division and rockets ahead two years, when at the age of 23, he hits it big with starring roles in On the Yard, The Warriors, and Justice for All and The Thing, working with icons like Al Pacino, John Hurd, Kurt Russell, and many others before alcohol destroys his career, marriage, and family. 

I'm going to stop right there because I don't want to spoil the ending. But my goodness, we have a lot to talk about, especially getting kicked out of Juilliard's. Tom, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today.

Thomas G. Waites:
Thank you, Dr. Richard. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Yeah, absolutely. I've been excited about this episode for a while when you floated across my inbox. And so, usually, what I do is I say to the person on the Zoom screen across from me is, let's hop in the Tom Waites' time machine. I know we're gonna talk about your story. But even before the events of your monologue, talk to us about what put you on your career track. What was, kind of, the seminal thing that launched what you're doing?

Thomas G. Waites:
Well, similar to you, it was a car accident. I was born on the wrong side of the tracks, and I was headed to the wrong side of the tracks. And the universe, the powers that be, whatever you want to call, I call her Gaia, Celine, but she sent a car accident my way where a car snapped my femur bone in half. As you know, the femur is the strongest bone in the body and snapped it in half to the point where it had to be reconnected by putting pins in your leg. So, in other words, it was a long time in the hospital. 

In my first few days, back then they used to let you smoke in the hospital, which is a crazy thought right? They would shoot me up with the demoral, and I'd light up a marble and look out the window, and be like "Wow, this is bad. But you know, this isn't that bad." So, then, three nights later, they stopped giving demerol, and they give me like these two pills and I'm like, "Wait a minute." So, I start pulling the emergency cord, and I put on this show, Dr. Richard, that was an Emmy Award winning performance of a guy who was in pain from his broken femur. 

And I got away with this caper for about three more days until the orthopedic surgeon came in and said, "Wait a minute, he's not supposed to be on this much medication." And the nurse that had been administering it looked at me and I knew her. She was my neighbor from around back, Mrs. Richardson. She went, "You!" She realized I'd been fooling her. She went, "You! You ought to be an actor." 

And a light bulb went off over my head because up until then, I was just a bad kid headed for prison. The cops had picked me up three times. I grew up in a, sort of, rough area, but I made it rougher for myself, I'm sure. But there's a lot of scuffling, and I talk about that in the play. But my moment of clarity, if you will, was being in that hospital bed and having this woman say something that I knew was the truth. You know, I couldn't be an athlete anymore. I certainly couldn't go back to street fighting. I certainly couldn't do it. They were lucky I lived. I also suffered a severe concussion and brain damage, which I'm sure affects me to this day. 

But that moment, all of a sudden, I changed my perspective of reality, and I started watching films as if I were the main character. And then, I started reading books like literature. You know, Lawrence Durrell and Thomas Mann, you know, the Magic Mountain when I was a really young kid, The Catcher in the Rye.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
How old were you about this time when you had that accident?

Thomas G. Waites:
I was about 14. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Wow, okay. So, that's a lot younger than I thought.

Thomas G. Waites:
Yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, at 14—

Thomas G. Waites:
I was going into my sophomore year of high school.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay. But Mrs. Richardson said that you've got to be an actor, and that was the thing.

Thomas G. Waites:
And that was the moment. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay. 

Thomas G. Waites:
Then, I joined the drama club in high school because that's where all the girls were. And I got fired from my first high school play. And it was called Cabaret. And they said, "You can't sing," even though they already cast me. So, I've experienced rejection and enormous success simultaneously and encouragement. I got a scholarship to Juilliard and then…

Dr. Richard Shuster:
All right. Now, we already kind of teased it, so I have to ask. What happened to Juilliard because you said you got thrown out?

Thomas G. Waites:
First of all, let me preface this. It was a great education. I had the greatest teachers in the world, many of whom I went on to hire professionally after I was out of there and working as a professional actor. I would get them gigs. So, the relationship shifted. But they were still excellent teachers. I was just a problem person. I think I was looking for some sort of authority figure that I could defy and ally with at once. And that cost me a lot of opportunities because that's a psychological problem.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay. So, how old were you when you got kicked out of Juilliard? 

Thomas G. Waites:
Twenty.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Twenty? Okay. So, in your introduction.

Thomas G. Waites:
Twenty-one, no, 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Twenty-one, okay.

Thomas G. Waites:
Twenty-one. I was kicked out and thought I had nothing and no one. I mean, I barely had a couch to sleep on. No more scholarship money. They would give you money to live on too. All that was cut off. I was in New York with nothing and no one. And I just kept practicing my monologues that I'd learned, and jogging every day, and I knew that someday, somehow, somewhere, someone would give me this much of a shot. That's all I needed was this. You get me in the door, I'll take it from there.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Who gave you that shot?

Thomas G. Waites:
A man, wonderful director by the name of Stuart Vaughn. Because all the teachers had maligned me. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Yeah, you were probably blacklisted from the teachers.

Thomas G. Waites:
Right, right. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And what was that movie? What was that first break? 

Thomas G. Waites:
Well, actually, I got two movies offered to me at the same time. One was called Pity the Poor Soldier, a Revolutionary War film for PBS. And the other one was called Snowbound, which Eric Roberts took. It was a two-character film about two kids in a car. But I did Pity the Poor Soldier. It was my very first acting on camera, but it was a movie for Channel 13 rather than a feature film. My first feature film was On the Yard at 22.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay. And then, tell me about The Warriors.

Thomas G. Waites:
So, the Warriors is where my play, Lucky Man, starts with me getting fired from The Warriors. So, this was a much sought-after role. And they came into town looking for the best actors New York had at that time, young actors that were also fit because they knew it was a very physical movie. It's a gang movie. You do a lot of running sometimes in gangs. 

So, they were looking for people that were fit, that were good, and they cast Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Mercy, as the love interest of the Fox. And they cast me as well, but our ultimate experience with the film turned… Deborah's as lovely a person as she is an actress, by the way. And all of this is how the play starts, Lucky Man. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
All right. So, take us through…

Thomas G. Waites:
I'm telling people about this because so many people love The Warriors, you know.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
It's one of the greatest movies. It's got a cult following. I've seen it probably 20 times in my life.

Thomas G. Waites:
I was in Mykonos, Greece, Dr. Richard. Mykonos. And some kid came running up to me and went, "Hey, man, you're The Fox in The Warriors, right?" Selfie. I go to conventions all the time and sign autographs, it's great. But I got fired for being a big pain in the ass.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, when that happened, because there's been a couple themes, right? Like you got thrown out of Juilliard. You were looking to rebel, yet looking for, kind of, that supportive authority figure. You got kicked off the Warriors, in your own words, for being a pain in the ass. What happened next?

Thomas G. Waites:
So, then, I was, of course, confronted with a moment of I had opportunities most men only dream of. So, I started therapy, quit smoking, I joined a very hard style karate class, I did not address the one thing, the main thing, the central cause of my demise, which was my drinking. And in the story of the play, it tells how my drinking progressively as I got more successful and more opportunities in Hollywood, how I *** it up by drinking and how I've recovered from that. 

And it's not a war story in any tragical sense. In fact, people laughed quite a lot because comedy is cruelty, right? And I'm laughing at myself, my younger self. But it's a play about love, loss and redemption then. And then, it has a surprise ending. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay. So, we won't spoil the surprise ending for those that listen to this in the New York area, who have to go check this out. 

Thomas G. Waites:
Yeah. If you're in the New York City area, come, man. It's Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00, Sunday at 3:00 at the Gene Frankel theater, 24 Bond Street, which is like the neighborhood to be in right now. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
We will post. I'll get all the details. We'll post in the show notes, so anybody who finds it on the website will have the address and everything else.

Thomas G. Waites:
And it's backed by a band. My band, it's almost like a rock monologue with music.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
That's very cool. I wanna ask you, because everybody loves a redemption story, and part of a redemption story for people to overcome anything is at the foundation because when somebody has to be redeemed they're basically at rock bottom. And we talked about in the intro, the drinking was ruining your career, it was costing your marriage. What was rock bottom for you? 

Thomas G. Waites:
Well, this also is in the play, Lucky Man, but it was my ex-wife with whom I'd had two children. And she was the love of my life, but because of my drinking, and rightly so, she divorced me and was more reliable and responsible to raise the children. I had shared custody, but I was an active alcoholic and it was terrible. I have a lot of remorse. You know, healthy remorse but a lot of remorse about that. 

Anyway, she has a quality, as a human being, of being such a humanitarian. She loves everyone. And we talk about daily helping, she goes out of her way to find situations. She's a love child, right? So, anyway, we'd been divorced, and she was with someone else, and I was with someone else, and I was drinking again on a relapse in April of 2004. And she picked up a stick. I've never seen this woman lose her temper in all the years I'd known her and raising two kids together. She took a stick from her front yard, and she threw it at me, and said, "I am not your friend. Do not call me. I have to co-parent with you. I'm stuck with you. Other than that, leave me alone."

And that hit me in a place so deeply because here was someone that loved everybody and everything, and I couldn't withstand the loss of her friendship. That would have taken me out. So, it still took a couple of months. June 7th, 2004, I walked into AA, a 12-step program, any 12-step program or not 12-step program, any program that helps you to get sober, I recommend AA just because it has steps and a specific direction to focus your mind. It's Christological-based and that can be challenging for some people, but yeah. So, June 7th, 2004, I had my last drink and that's part of the play, Lucky Man. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, we're recording this on June 10th, 2025. So, your anniversary was just a few days ago. Congratulations.

Thomas G. Waites:
Yeah. And they gave me a blueberry pie after the show, and it was absolutely delicious. And there's one more piece left in there. But I gotta stay skinny because I gotta be on stage, so I'm torn.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I get that. And again, for so many people that struggle with addiction, a lot of times, it's that one moment. For you, it was your ex-wife saying she doesn't want anything to do with you, and that brought you back. So, I'm curious, because we had a massive time jump, because we basically went from the mid-70s up to 2004. What was your life like between that period?

Thomas G. Waites:
Interestingly enough, I was more successful.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
What do you attribute that to?

Thomas G. Waites:
I don't have any idea. What the *** is the universe saying? I booked so much work when I was drinking. And then, I stopped drinking, and the most I could get would be like a commercial here. But my sponsor was adamant, he's like, "You don't get sober to get rewards. You get sober to live. Do you want to live?" All right. First of all, are you an alcoholic? Yes, there's no *** doubt it. I've tried a million times to disprove it. And I can't do it. If I have a drink, I just have to keep on drinking because something in my brain just changes that doesn't happen to normal people. 

And the three questions you have to ask yourself, he said, were, are you an alcoholic? Yes, I am. Do you see the people around you in AA getting better as a result of the treatment from this program? Yes, I do. Now, the third question, and this is your decision, do you want to live? Do you want to live? Because you don't have to want to live. If you don't want to, it's your prerogative. Just you're gonna hurt a lot of people around you, but that's your prerogative. And I said I want to live.

And so, I went through the steps and tried to take other guys through them. And I basically become a completely different human being. And yeah, I'd say a lot more of my life is about service now. You know, as a teacher, I'm an acting teacher. I have my own acting school in the same place where I'm doing the play. And I've been doing that for many years. And that was one of the great discoveries of sobriety. 

But the question you asked me was, what was my life like between, like, let's say, getting out of Juilliard, doing American Buffalo with Al Pacino off-Broadway, doing The Thing with John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, these were like high points in my career, and I had a lot of fun. And it was great to work with those people. John Carpenter especially is a really interesting guy. And Kurt has been in the business his whole life. He's a lot of fun to work with. 

And then after that, it was a lot of episodic TV and plays. I always did plays. You see, if you're a well-trained actor, you will always work. You may not be in the movies your whole life, but you'll get a job doing a play or I also direct. But my life was steadily, progressively getting worse and worse after losing Lisa and the children. I was sober for a little while. I relapsed. I was sober for a little while. I relapsed again. And it took that incident that I just shared with you to wake me up. And I think that people like yourself and Lisa Greenberg are people that are the real heroes of today because we need people to help us and we need help. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, I don't think-

Thomas G. Waites:
As a society we need help. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, this is kind of leading me to my next question because you've got a lot of people listening to this right now all over the world. What lessons do you take from your ups and downs, the relapses, the sobriety? What would you share?

Thomas G. Waites:
Yeah, that's a good question because George, my sponsor, is like, "You have to analyze it carefully, why did you relapse? Stop beating yourself up about it. That's not going to do you any good. That's just more ego. Why did you relapse? What was going on in your mind?" And what it was is that I had convinced myself that everybody was out there drinking and having a great time. It was summer, and you're outside in New York, and the cafes, and everybody's having this great life, and I'm left out.The disease of alcoholism is as imaginative and creative as is its host. So, your brain will find ways to trick you and betray you into believing this sort of ***. 

And another line I had in that period in between doing John Carpenter's The Thing and now, I went and got my degree in writing at the University of Iowa. I got my MFA in playwriting, and drank quite excessively with a wife, a child and another one on the way. And this is very regrettable behavior, but my excuse then was, "I need it to create. You don't understand. You don't understand me." Like Faulkner used to say, "Don't you know who I am?" This was the narrative that my mind was pitching to myself. And I was buying it because it let me off the hook.

As creative a person as one is, as talented as a person one may be, alcoholic people and addictive people tend to be smarter than the average person. I don't know why. And I think that's a sort of fact somewhere, because when we get into things, we really get into them, but we get into things that aren't good for us, and it's hard for us to stop. And we take everyone down with us.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well said. I want to do another time jump with you because we've got 21 years to fill. And the first question I have is, were you able to, once you became sober, reconcile with Lisa?

Thomas G. Waites:
Oh, she's living here now. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, that would probably be a yes. What about your kids? 

Thomas G. Waites:
Yeah. No, it's a funny story about Lisa. The kids, really, I mean, they were the most forgiving because even though I was an alcoholic father, I always paid my bills responsibly, I always flew them out or flew to see them, I kept up on their report cards and so forth. I mean, I was involved. But my son, I probably damaged more than my daughter. But I damaged both of them, I'm certain of that. But they've forgiven me. I have the best Father's Days and birthdays of any guy I know. And Lisa came back for… okay, we were married for 12 years, divorced for 13, she came back for three, she left for seven, and she's been back for two and a half.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
All right. So a bit of a happy ending there, for sure. So now, with that, as part of this, let's talk the past 20 years and how did your story become a play as well, I wanna get to that too. So, let's catch us up.

Thomas G. Waites:
I felt that I was helping a group of people last year at this time by sticking my neck out, and getting a Hollywood name, and raising money to produce and direct a Shakespeare play for them. And they got 21 performances of a play in New York City, which is quite a lot. I mean, even places like Juilliard and NYU, they get two nights or three nights in, if they get anything at all, because space is so ridiculously expensive. 

So, I embarked upon this journey, and it sort of blew up. My effort to help out these people that I loved ended up causing great animosity between us and great misunderstandings and real deep hurt. Like I was heartbroken and felt very much sort of turned on. And I lay there for a while, and I went to all this, I used my own money to help exploit their talent and look what happened. 

And I said, "Well, I'm not going to take this lying down. I'm not going to sit around here and feel sorry for myself for the rest of my life just because I had a bad experience with a group of people. I am going gonna *** tell my story now. I am going to exploit Thomas G. Waites. I've been trying to help others, and that's good, and it usually always pays off, and I love to do it. But this one time it backfired and it caused me to send a message to myself, "No, dude. It's time to put the spotlight back on you. You can, ***, you can hold it. And tell it like it is. You know, tell it like it really is and was." 

And I've had a very interesting life. Not many people have basically lived with Al Pacino for a year. You know, you do eight shows a week with someone, you may as well be living with them. And rehearsals, it's many hours. And Kurt, and John, and Madonna was my neighbor. You know, I mean, I've had a very interesting life. So, it's circuitously, through a series of, kind, of fairy tales, gets to the truth of the matter. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And how did John Goodman get involved with this show? 

Thomas G. Waites:
You know, that's funny. I have known John a long time. He and I came up together and we used to drink together. And we were pals. We did a movie called The Face of Rage. It was a TV movie back in the early '80s. And we were in Dallas for, I think, a week or 10 days. And we were drunk every night together. And we were weeping one night in his hotel room about something or other. We just both started crying about life. 

And it was beautiful, you know. And then, he, of course, went on to become a big, huge, massive success. And I'd bump into him around town. And he'd always, you know, "Tommy, how are you doing?" and give me a big hug. And then, he got sober and became public about it. And so, we reconnected through Facebook. And then, we started talking about being sober and what it was like and like that. And then, I said, "Listen, I wanna do this play. Would you invest some cash and help me? I need about this much. Could you?" And he was the first money in.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Fantastic. 

Thomas G. Waites:
Yeah, he's a good guy, John. He's an amazing actor. I mean he does some of the most memorable performances, you know. But he's a good guy too. And we also knew each other through the actor's studio where he did a reading of my very first play called Johnny that I read. And Pacino was in the audience, and Arthur Penn was there. It was a great first act and a terrible second act. And I knew I needed to learn how to write, but I've known John a long time, yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, it's great that he's involved in your show. I know that it's helping so many people. And again, the show is Lucky Man: A Warrior's Journey. And we'll link to all the information, so that if you're in the New York Metro or taking a trip to the New York Metro, you can get yourself into the theater and see it. 

God, Tom, I could talk to you forever. Our time together has flown by. As you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guest just this one question. What is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today? 

Thomas G. Waites:
Love others into being and you will be. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Love others into being and you will be. I think there's a bumper sticker in that somewhere. Very well said. Do you have a website where people can learn more about you online?

Thomas G. Waites:
Yeah, please follow me on Instagram. My band is called Heartbreak Waites, spelled W-A-I-T-E-S. That's the fastest way to get a hold of me because I'm really propagating my music. And plus they're very tuneful, melodic, '60s type harmonies, really good band. Please follow Heartbreak Waites on Instagram.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
We will have links to Heartbreak Waits on Instagram, the address for the show and everything Tom Waites in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Tom, I can't thank you enough for joining us today. This was such a cool conversation. You bet, man. Absolutely great. 

And to each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to it, if you like what you heard, if you're gonna go watch The Warriors, go give us a follow and give us a five-star review on the podcast app of your choice because that is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post in your social media feeds using the hashtag, #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.