Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day.
Speaker 2: All right. Jamie's very geeked out. I want to let
Speaker 2: you know. He didn't want to say it. Shawshank is
Speaker 2: his all-time favorite movie. So he was kind of freaking
Speaker 2: out when he met you.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Jamie.
Speaker 2: No problem.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: It's all-time. I mean, you're a part of one of, like,
Speaker 2: easily one of the greatest movies in the history of people.
Speaker 1: I know. It's such a gift. I mean, when people...
Speaker 1: Come up and say something about it. It usually is
Speaker 1: coming from a pretty deep place. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you didn't like that movie, there's something– you should
Speaker 2: go to a doctor. You need medication. There's something wrong
Speaker 2: with you. It's an amazing movie. And weird that it's
Speaker 2: a Stephen King movie too. That guy is arguably one
Speaker 2: of the most prolific guys in the history of fiction.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And in the same novella, there was Stand By
Speaker 1: Me too.
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. It's so weird. His stuff varies so much.
Speaker 2: He had to do like a pseudonym at one point
Speaker 2: in time. Remember? He did Richard Bachman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because he was churning out so many books. They're like, hey,
Speaker 2: we can't keep selling these fucking Stephen King books. And
Speaker 2: he's like, well, how about I come up with another name?
Speaker 2: Like give me a fake name. And he just started
Speaker 2: killing it under a fake name. Just got to keep
Speaker 2: writing it.
Speaker 1: Got to, got to, got to. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wild. Wild guy. Yeah. Just a very unusual human. You know,
Speaker 2: they exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Totally met him once.
Speaker 2: Really? Yeah. Did you meet him like when you were
Speaker 2: filming the movie?
Speaker 1: Around the premiere time. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he's out there, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, during his early days, I'm fascinated by his
Speaker 2: early days because his early days he was off the
Speaker 2: rails with cocaine and alcohol and some of the best
Speaker 2: shit that he made. Really? He doesn't even remember writing it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I think Cooch, I think it's one of the books
Speaker 2: his wife took out of the garbage bin. Cause he
Speaker 2: threw it away. He's like, fuck this book sucks. It was,
Speaker 2: it was Cujo or one of the classics.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And she was like, are you out of your fucking mind? Like,
Speaker 2: this is incredible. And he was literally going to throw
Speaker 2: it out. Cause it was just out of his mind.
Speaker 1: He wrote the shining, right? Yeah. So what was it? Carrie? Yeah.
Speaker 2: He threw Carrie away.
Speaker 1: Crazy.
Speaker 2: Crazy.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Yeah. Shining was a big movie from a book,
Speaker 1: big book for me. I was, you know, working in a,
Speaker 1: Nine to five job and in between colleges and it
Speaker 1: really like woke me up to all kinds of great
Speaker 1: possibilities in writing.
Speaker 2: Well, he hated the movie, which is so crazy because
Speaker 2: he felt like Jack Nicholson got insane too quickly. Really? Yeah,
Speaker 2: because in the book– I read the book too. It's
Speaker 2: very different, similar but different. It's more of a drawn
Speaker 2: out process of him becoming possessed by the property. Slower rollout.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He like Jack Nicholson was kind of kooky already, like
Speaker 2: right away, which, you know, it's Jack Nicholson. It's also
Speaker 2: Stanley Kubrick. It's like, he's got to do his interpretation
Speaker 2: of it. You just got to accept that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's some scary shit in that.
Speaker 2: Fuck man. His books are insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like, What is going on inside that guy's– or
Speaker 2: was going on inside that guy's mind when he was
Speaker 2: writing that?
Speaker 1: God knows.
Speaker 2: I think once he got clean, he kind of changed
Speaker 2: and straightened out and different human now. But boy, I'm
Speaker 2: fascinated by the off-the-rails days because the books were so nuts.
Speaker 1: Was Shawshank during that time?
Speaker 2: I don't know. It must have been. It must have
Speaker 2: been because I don't think he got sober until– it
Speaker 2: was decades after his career began.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Some of the great stuff, like I think all the stand,
Speaker 2: I think all that stuff, he was out of his
Speaker 2: mind and he was writing all those.
Speaker 1: But in the midst of all that madness, there's a tenderness,
Speaker 1: you know?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Oh, great humanity to it all. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, but also just a true understanding of the
Speaker 2: darkest nature of humans and, and how they're influenced. And
Speaker 2: then of course, you know, demonic possession and, Salem's lot
Speaker 2: and all that other crazy shit. It was like, he
Speaker 2: was just so good.
Speaker 1: But then the idea that a library can be the, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in Shawshank that the library can be the liberation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it was amazing. Amazing movie. Um, we were
Speaker 2: talking about your new show silo, which I did not new. Um,
Speaker 2: it's been around for three seasons. I just started watching it.
Speaker 2: So it's new to me. I watched the first two
Speaker 2: episodes last night. It was fucking great and very original
Speaker 2: and interesting. And I was telling you before that it
Speaker 2: made me think of this place that they discovered fairly
Speaker 2: recently in Turkey called Derinkuyu. And Derinkuyu is this underground
Speaker 2: city that's massive. I think it could hold 20,000 people.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Something nutty like that.
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of it.
Speaker 2: Found completely by accident.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So some guy lost one of his chickens, went through
Speaker 2: a hole in the wall and never came back. And
Speaker 2: he was trying to figure out where this fucking chicken went.
Speaker 2: So he broke down the wall to see what was
Speaker 2: going on. And then they realized that there's this insane
Speaker 2: underground city.
Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, underneath this town in Turkey. And it's massive. Just
Speaker 2: absolutely massive. They have no idea who made it. There's
Speaker 2: no historical record of it.
Speaker 1: Any idea of when?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, they make guesses based on stuff they
Speaker 2: find there. But it's when you carbon date an object, right?
Speaker 2: So you could go visit the pyramids today, right? And
Speaker 2: you could leave behind some stuff, right? And then everybody dies.
Speaker 2: Humanity dies out in a cataclysm. And then 100,000 years
Speaker 2: from now, people start looking through the piles of some
Speaker 2: of these sites and the pyramids will probably still be there.
Speaker 2: And if there was any organic material left, like a
Speaker 2: book that you left or a leather-bound book or some
Speaker 2: piece of wood, they could carbon date that. And then
Speaker 2: that would say the time that you were there. But
Speaker 2: it wouldn't say the time that the actual structure was made.
Speaker 2: So who knows how long people– show me some more
Speaker 2: pictures of that, please. I was looking up when it
Speaker 2: was made. Do they know? No, definitely don't know. They
Speaker 2: didn't even know it existed. I mean it was– when
Speaker 2: was it found? I feel like it was found in
Speaker 2: the 20th century.
Speaker 1: There must have been some kind of hostile force that
Speaker 1: they built it to escape from. Exactly.
Speaker 2: Or something going on outside.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And not just hostile but environmental. So 1963, rediscovered in 1963.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. It was in his fucking house. Even today,
Speaker 2: only 10% of it is accessible to tourists. The rest
Speaker 2: is still being explored. That's how nuts it is. So
Speaker 2: how many people do they think it held when it
Speaker 2: was operational? I think it's something like 20,000 people. That's
Speaker 2: how big this place is.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: So they don't know when or why. And depending on
Speaker 2: how– around 20,000 people.
Speaker 1: Plus livestock.
Speaker 2: Plus livestock and food stores.
Speaker 1: Really? How'd they farm down there?
Speaker 2: Who fucking knows? I don't know. But they had grain storage.
Speaker 2: They had all kinds of stuff down there.
Speaker 1: Oil presses.
Speaker 2: 18 levels reaching 85 meters. So 280 feet deep into
Speaker 2: the ground with ventilation shafts, wells, stables, wine and oil presses,
Speaker 2: storage rooms, chapels and school rooms. Plus a half ton
Speaker 2: circular stone doors that could be rolled shut from the
Speaker 2: inside only. So they were obviously either fighting off some
Speaker 2: sort of an army or the outside air was hostile.
Speaker 2: There was something going on.
Speaker 1: Got too hot or something.
Speaker 2: Could have been.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, there's been many moments in the time that human
Speaker 2: beings were alive where there have been cataclysms. There's this
Speaker 2: thing called the Younger Dryas Impact Theory that's around 11,800
Speaker 2: years ago. There's all this evidence that there was massive
Speaker 2: asteroid impacts all over the earth, comet impacts.
Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
Speaker 2: And they think that it was probably a reset of civilization.
Speaker 2: And so this could have been post that. It could
Speaker 2: have been how some people survived in these areas.
Speaker 1: Human beings have an amazing ability to survive.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean– Which is Silo. I mean it's really–
Speaker 2: Silo is a modern version of Darren Cooley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And here I was in the middle of
Speaker 1: lockdown when I received those scripts. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is actually talking about right now. Yeah. This is
Speaker 1: about a controlled society where information is censored and where
Speaker 1: compliance is necessary. And if you don't comply, you get
Speaker 1: sent out into the hostile environment. It was all too
Speaker 1: familiar metaphorically for me.
Speaker 2: Perfect timing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, perfect timing.
Speaker 2: Because you got to think that he must have written
Speaker 2: that before, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, many years ago.
Speaker 2: So it was just– Got lucky.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Here we go.
Speaker 2: Synchronicity.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've been blessed that way in my career. Yeah.
Speaker 2: What do you think that's about? Do you ever wonder
Speaker 2: why you're so lucky? Obviously, you're very talented. Thank you.
Speaker 2: But it's also– there's a lot of talented people that
Speaker 2: don't– nothing ever happens for them.
Speaker 1: I think it comes down to the ability to say
Speaker 1: no at crucial times when I was facing down either–
Speaker 1: I remember when I first had my first child and
Speaker 1: I was broke and I got offered this comedy that
Speaker 1: was dumb and it was a million bucks and I
Speaker 1: needed the money. And I also had an opportunity if
Speaker 1: I waited. Robert Altman was trying to put together The Player.
Speaker 1: So I threw caution to the wind and said, no,
Speaker 1: I can't do that stupid comedy.
Speaker 2: What was the stupid comedy?
Speaker 1: Do you remember? Yeah, it was called Folk. I remember
Speaker 1: flying out to L.A. to meet on it. And I'm
Speaker 1: with Alan Arkin. And he was the guy that was
Speaker 1: going to play my father in this thing. And he said,
Speaker 1: what the fuck are you doing this script for? I said,
Speaker 1: I need the money. He says, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I want to do this thing. I was like,
Speaker 1: thank you, Alan Arkin, for confirming what I was thinking.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so I said no. And then player came
Speaker 1: through and shifted my whole career. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a matter of following that voice in your head,
Speaker 2: the instinct, the one that's telling you this is the
Speaker 2: right way to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Even though there's all sorts of influence that want to
Speaker 2: lead you into the other direction.
Speaker 1: There was a period of time about 10, 15 years
Speaker 1: ago when I got offered in the course of seven months,
Speaker 1: I got offered to play the head of the CIA
Speaker 1: three times. Did you ever wonder what that's all about?
Speaker 1: I couldn't even imagine. I mean, for some reason, that was,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have no idea. And then a
Speaker 1: couple of years after that– and again, you're looking down
Speaker 1: at your bills and your mortgages and stuff and you
Speaker 1: need the money and just have to– I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, right? Then a few years after– a
Speaker 1: couple of years after that, I got offered in the
Speaker 1: course of a couple of months, one, to play the
Speaker 1: head of FIFA. which is a corrupt organization. But in
Speaker 1: the movie, it was– they were the best people in
Speaker 1: the world, right?
Speaker 2: Propaganda.
Speaker 1: Not to mention that the head of FIFA was a
Speaker 1: Brazilian and I had– but they were offering a ton
Speaker 1: of money and basically it was FIFA producing a movie
Speaker 1: about itself.
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
Speaker 1: And after that, I got an offer to play the
Speaker 1: head of the Chilean mine that was– had just had
Speaker 1: this huge disaster. And it turns out the mining company
Speaker 1: was– they were really nice people according to the script. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It wasn't bad management or anything or, you know, that
Speaker 1: made the disaster happen. So I realized that, that the
Speaker 1: oligarchs are starting to make movie about themselves. It's got
Speaker 1: oligarchical cinema. It's like they produce movies that make themselves
Speaker 1: look really good.
Speaker 2: And you can get away with it.
Speaker 1: Oh, hell yeah. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. And they think
Speaker 1: they can buy anybody and they almost bought me. But
Speaker 1: I just, I have to, at times I just have
Speaker 1: to look, you know, face it down and say, listen, it,
Speaker 1: it's not right in my heart. I can't, I can't
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, that's great. You've got that North star.
Speaker 1: It's great that I had the luxury.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, oftentimes people don't have that luxury. Right.
Speaker 2: And one bad decision can pigeonhole you in a bad
Speaker 2: direction and then you'll never get the ones that you
Speaker 2: really want. Yeah. These movies about you playing CIA had,
Speaker 2: did they ever get made?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Yeah. There were TV shows and movies. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Was any of it any good?
Speaker 1: I remember when we were doing movies like, you know,
Speaker 1: The Day of the Condor, you know, which was like
Speaker 1: critical of the CIA. And I think now we have
Speaker 1: the rogue CIA agents that are actually good guys. And,
Speaker 1: you know, listen, CIA, you know, whatever it does, nobody
Speaker 1: really knows the extent of what they do. But they
Speaker 1: do have a lot of good guys. portrayals in the media.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's good people that are in the
Speaker 2: CIA as well. And I think that it's necessary. I
Speaker 2: just think that they obviously have unchecked power and they've
Speaker 2: done some really fucking shady shit, you know, in the
Speaker 2: name of this is the right thing to do right now,
Speaker 2: including selling drugs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, I remember that Iran Contra. I remember that.
Speaker 2: That's one of the, I mean, I remember that because
Speaker 2: I was, I guess I was either right out of
Speaker 2: high school. It was like in that area. Where the
Speaker 2: whole Oliver Stone thing was on television all the time.
Speaker 1: Oliver North.
Speaker 2: Oliver North, excuse me. Oliver North and Ronald Reagan. And
Speaker 2: there was this guy, Jimmy Tingle, hilarious Boston stand-up comedian
Speaker 2: who had a great joke about it. Where they're interviewing
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan and they say, Mr. President, did you ever
Speaker 2: sell arms to people who hate us? And he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't remember. He goes, well, in the future, if
Speaker 2: you sell arms to people who hate us, Jot it down.
Speaker 2: Make a note of it.
Speaker 1: He goes, put a post-it on your refrigerator.
Speaker 2: Today, I sold arms to Iran.
Speaker 1: I remember that was in the 80s. I did a
Speaker 1: play about it. I wrote a play about it. Really?
Speaker 1: We performed it with the actors gang, yeah.
Speaker 2: There was a meme that was on social media recently
Speaker 2: that was– it showed Oliver North during the whole Iran
Speaker 2: concert trials. When they got caught selling drugs in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles to fund the Contras versus the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Speaker 2: And then he goes to jail. And then the same
Speaker 2: guy you see later on Fox News as like a
Speaker 2: war analyst. And it's like this hilarious meme. Like if
Speaker 2: you told me in 1980, whatever the fuck it was,
Speaker 2: where he got in trouble, that he would eventually be
Speaker 2: the guy that they call upon for expert advice. On
Speaker 2: what's going on overseas.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a deep connection that goes back years. All
Speaker 1: the people that get it wrong, particularly Iraq war, anyone
Speaker 1: that got it wrong got promotions. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And no one got in trouble.
Speaker 1: No one got fired. People in the media as well.
Speaker 1: They promoted it. They got better jobs.
Speaker 2: Well, this is kind of the only time in our
Speaker 2: lifetimes where there's actual real independent media. where there's independent
Speaker 2: journalists that are not connected to any major corporations that
Speaker 2: are operating either on Substack or online or on YouTube
Speaker 2: or on X. It's fascinating because they're the ones that
Speaker 2: are exposing all these connections that the media and the
Speaker 2: Central Intelligence Agency and all these other government organizations have
Speaker 2: had where they've all been working together forever, spinning narratives
Speaker 2: on TV. And so like anytime something like the Iraq
Speaker 2: war happens where they go, oh, we've got weapons of
Speaker 2: mass destruction. We've got to go in there. No weapons
Speaker 2: of mass destruction. No one goes away. No one gets
Speaker 2: in trouble. And the same people are on TV telling
Speaker 2: you about some new thing that you have to pay
Speaker 2: attention to. It's like, this is nuts. This episode is
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Speaker 1: Well, some people get in trouble, people that come out
Speaker 1: against it. And there's never any apologies. I did. I did. I,
Speaker 1: you know, I risked, you know, a lot to do
Speaker 1: it and, you know, wound up. being right but no
Speaker 1: one ever said hey you were right you know and this.
Speaker 2: Was during the iraq war yeah um what.
Speaker 1: Did you say i uh i i was one of
Speaker 1: maybe five people that were famous that came out against
Speaker 1: that wolf um went on you know in various television
Speaker 1: shows and made a couple speeches i got my uh,
Speaker 1: appearance at the baseball hall of fame for bull Durham
Speaker 1: 15th anniversary or something like canceled, uh, by the head
Speaker 1: of the, the baseball hall of fame. It was real, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it was funny because I was,
Speaker 1: I was doing a show at the time and, uh,
Speaker 1: I heard about it and I had, I was sort
Speaker 1: of writing a response, but, it was already printed by
Speaker 1: the time I had my response. Right. So I got
Speaker 1: the next day, I got a bunch of, um, people
Speaker 1: contacting me. I hired a crisis PR person for the
Speaker 1: first time in my life and, uh, wound up getting
Speaker 1: my letter to Dale Petroski, the head of the hall
Speaker 1: of fame out there with the, uh, with the press release.
Speaker 1: They were basically ambushed trying to, you know, to call
Speaker 1: me a traitor and all this stuff. And, um, So
Speaker 1: I pushed back and the publicist that I had hired
Speaker 1: was very smart. He said, we're going to send this
Speaker 1: to all the sports writers. And it was the sports
Speaker 1: writers that wrote the articles defending freedom of speech.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: At the time. So it was– What year was this?
Speaker 2: Is this right after 9-11?
Speaker 1: This was right when we were cooking up the war, 2003.
Speaker 1: So– and I remember– and I also wrote a piece
Speaker 1: about that called Embedded. that we performed for the first
Speaker 1: time three weeks after Bush landed on that aircraft carrier
Speaker 1: with a mission accomplished thing. So that wound up playing
Speaker 1: across the country. We toured it and played in New
Speaker 1: York Public Theater and played in London. But it was
Speaker 1: attacked when we went to New York. They sent someone
Speaker 1: from– there wasn't a theater critic while we were still
Speaker 1: in previews and published this thing in– I think it
Speaker 1: was the New Republic. Basically calling me a conspiracy theorist, anti-Semite,
Speaker 1: all this stuff to try to discredit this play that
Speaker 1: was playing at the– How did.
Speaker 2: They connect anti-Semite?
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. That's what they throw out. There was
Speaker 1: nothing anti-Semitic about the play. Of course. It was just–
Speaker 1: it's one of the things they used to discredit people.
Speaker 2: What did you know about– so what made you compelled
Speaker 2: to come out against the war?
Speaker 1: I was reading foreign press. I was reading stuff from
Speaker 1: Europe and what they were writing about the weapons of
Speaker 1: mass destruction and that there wasn't any evidence and it
Speaker 1: wasn't being covered like it was here. It was more open,
Speaker 1: more– transparent, the reporting. And so I was trusting that
Speaker 1: and trusting sources that I had trusted in the past
Speaker 1: and realized that when I did question, the attacks were vociferous.
Speaker 1: So that usually is a tell, like in poker. That's
Speaker 1: like a– it usually means you're on to something.
Speaker 2: You're over the mark.
Speaker 1: If they– when I came out against that first war
Speaker 1: in Iraq in 91– I remember the elder Bush said, well,
Speaker 1: this is a democracy. People have the right to oppose it.
Speaker 1: And that was their response. But this one was like
Speaker 1: you're a traitor. You're a Saddam supporter, terrorist, sympathizer, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. They really attacked. And that told me that
Speaker 1: I was probably over the target.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That had to be– a very disturbing moment because look,
Speaker 2: it turns out you were right. And not only were
Speaker 2: you right, but now today in 2026 is universally accepted
Speaker 2: that there were no weapons of mass destruction. That was
Speaker 2: a terrible war and it was not something that should
Speaker 2: have ever happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Universally.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you said it today, it's not even remotely controversial.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's the way it works. They finally admit
Speaker 1: the truth later. You know, I think they're doing that
Speaker 1: now with COVID, you know, the Fauci is going to
Speaker 1: do his thing tomorrow. I'm very curious to see what
Speaker 1: happens with that.
Speaker 2: Well, they don't give you a universal pardon for 10
Speaker 2: years if you didn't do something. I mean, you don't
Speaker 2: campaign for that if there's not some smoke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a very scary time. You know, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, to come out when people, when the media
Speaker 1: is attacking you, it's a very scary thing. But the
Speaker 1: great good fortune I had in 2003 So I was
Speaker 1: living in New York at the time, right? So I
Speaker 1: would have to walk my kids to school. And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, oh, my God, what's going to happen? Are
Speaker 1: there going to be people yelling at me, et cetera?
Speaker 1: And that wasn't the truth. The truth was that people,
Speaker 1: if anything, said, you know, way to go. Thanks for
Speaker 1: speaking for us. And if they disagreed, they said, you know,
Speaker 1: you have the right to do it. That's the way
Speaker 1: generally people are in this country.
Speaker 2: And should be.
Speaker 1: And I usually would take– every year I would take
Speaker 1: my kids to the Final Four. And that year it
Speaker 1: was in San Antonio. And I remember thinking, oh, my God,
Speaker 1: I'm going down to Texas and they're going to yell
Speaker 1: at me down there. And no one said a damn thing.
Speaker 1: So the reality on the ground was a lot different
Speaker 1: than the reality they were creating. The reality they were
Speaker 1: creating was to intimidate other people into silence.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a based on any kind of real reality
Speaker 1: of people being angry at me. It was more, uh,
Speaker 1: them trying to intimidate others. And so that same thing
Speaker 1: kind of happened. I recognize that same smell, uh, when
Speaker 1: COVID was happening, when people came out, uh, and started
Speaker 1: asking questions and were deplatformed or, um, marginalized or canceled. And, uh,
Speaker 1: You know, I followed what you were going through with
Speaker 1: the ivermectin, which was a drug that I had taken. And,
Speaker 1: you know, I had lost my sense of smell and
Speaker 1: a day later it was back. So I knew there
Speaker 1: was something going on with that. And, you know, in
Speaker 1: an emergency, why not find whatever you can treat until
Speaker 1: your magic potion arrives, you know?
Speaker 2: It wasn't just that. It was like the completely disingenuous
Speaker 2: characterization of it as a veterinary drug. and calling it
Speaker 2: horse paste or horse dewormer, which is crazy. It's crazy
Speaker 2: because maybe that would have worked in 1980 when people
Speaker 2: would have to go to the encyclopedia to find out
Speaker 2: what ivermectin really was. But when you're trying to do
Speaker 2: that in 2020, it's just too easy to look up, oh, look,
Speaker 2: it got a Nobel Prize for use in human beings. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's great for yellow fever and dengue fever and river blindness. And, oh,
Speaker 2: this has been used billions of times. Oh, it's one
Speaker 2: of the– Wait a minute. It's in the World Health
Speaker 2: Organization's essential medicines list?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is crazy. But yet on television, it's horse dewormer.
Speaker 2: And even the Rolling Stone had an article where they
Speaker 2: showed people waiting in line. They said that people in
Speaker 2: Oklahoma were waiting in line at the emergency room with
Speaker 2: gunshot wounds because they couldn't get in there because so
Speaker 2: many people were overdosing from ivermectin, which is just fake.
Speaker 2: And it's in the Rolling Stone. You're like, What is
Speaker 2: going on? This is insane. Even the photograph was fake.
Speaker 2: The photograph showed people wearing winter coats because really the
Speaker 2: line was people waiting for a flu shot. That was
Speaker 2: the actual line. And they were trying to say that
Speaker 2: these are people waiting in line to go to the
Speaker 2: emergency room for a gunshot. It was like, first of all,
Speaker 2: how many fucking people are getting shot in Oklahoma? What's
Speaker 2: going on over there?
Speaker 1: Are you going to have.
Speaker 2: Gunfights on the streets?
Speaker 1: There was some wild stuff going on at the time. Disinformation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And just– Orchestrated propaganda. Orchestrated, organized with big money
Speaker 2: behind it.
Speaker 1: Wild.
Speaker 2: Wild to watch.
Speaker 1: I suspect that that whole period of time was another
Speaker 1: way to divide us in the larger picture. Orchestrated chaos
Speaker 1: masquerading as a revolution. There's been so many of those
Speaker 1: things over the past five years. Mm-hmm. you know, alliances
Speaker 1: that you're building and then all of a sudden there's
Speaker 1: a new crisis and now you don't like those people
Speaker 1: that you were building alliances with. And it's just one
Speaker 1: after the other. And ultimately, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I think it's all about division. It's all about dividing
Speaker 1: us and making us argue with each other, not finding
Speaker 1: common ground. And that's ultimately the strategy that's been used
Speaker 1: from time immemorial, you know, for the power to stay
Speaker 1: in power. How do you get people fighting with each other? Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: People don't like to hear that, but that's, that's a
Speaker 2: strategy that's been used all throughout history and it's a
Speaker 2: good one and it works. Yeah, it works. And especially
Speaker 2: in today's day and age when you have social media
Speaker 2: and then you have not just our government, but many
Speaker 2: governments that have fake accounts and these people just get
Speaker 2: outraged about things or attack things or, you know, have
Speaker 2: a narrative that they push. And you don't know if
Speaker 2: it's real people. You don't know what it is. It's
Speaker 2: just a bunch of accounts. You go to the accounts,
Speaker 2: a guy's face. It's a woman wearing a dress, holding
Speaker 2: a book. She seems normal. Meanwhile, it's a man somewhere
Speaker 2: with a bank of computers that are all connected to
Speaker 2: the internet that's typing in these different responses with a
Speaker 2: bunch of different– or now it's AI automated. You tell
Speaker 2: this bot to be a right-wing nationalist that's like attacking
Speaker 2: anything that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy. It's on both sides and it's nuts.
Speaker 1: I was over in London– doing a project, and I
Speaker 1: noticed this was during their lockdown, and I noticed by
Speaker 1: my hotel there was this protest, and I went down
Speaker 1: to check it out, put my mask on. I was
Speaker 1: very compliant at the start of all this. And I
Speaker 1: noticed what they were portraying as national front right-wingers was
Speaker 1: actually hippies and homeopaths and free speech activists, and I
Speaker 1: talked to them. And I tweeted, hey, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a right-left thing here. And hundreds of attacks, whether
Speaker 1: they're bots or an organized army of righteousness, I have
Speaker 1: no idea. But at that point, I was like, fuck it.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to put my foot in this water.
Speaker 1: These people are nuts. This is a crazy, crazy time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was crazy not just from the propaganda perspective
Speaker 2: but from actual people that I knew that were really
Speaker 2: terrified that got caught up in it all. And it
Speaker 2: was mass formation psychosis is what some people called it.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good description. Robert Malone I think
Speaker 2: termed that or got that from somebody else. But that's
Speaker 2: really what it was. Like everybody just kind of went
Speaker 2: nutty and there was people that were doing the government's
Speaker 2: job for the government or the pharmaceutical drug company's job
Speaker 2: for them. They were the ones that were enforcing all
Speaker 2: these things. And they were doing it because they wanted
Speaker 2: to be– they wanted a solution. They wanted to be correct.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, there's a lot of people in this world
Speaker 2: that don't experience much real adversity. And when real adversity
Speaker 2: comes to them, they fall apart and they don't know
Speaker 2: what to do and they get scared and they lump
Speaker 2: up together in teams and then they reinforce each other
Speaker 2: and repeat the same things and And they all want
Speaker 2: to be a part of the right side of history
Speaker 2: or the right side of whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And also they're being led to believe that that's the
Speaker 1: virtuous thing to do. Right. And so it's not like
Speaker 1: they're– their intentions are good.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And because of that, you know, I've had a similar
Speaker 1: experience where, you know, friends of mine and people I
Speaker 1: love that, you know, fell into that as I did.
Speaker 1: I fell into it for a while, you know, that
Speaker 1: kind of fear-based kind of behavior. And I just, I've
Speaker 1: come to understand that. in my later years that one
Speaker 1: of the things that's truly liberating is the ability to say,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah. And I may have been wrong.
Speaker 1: These are two things that have led to such great
Speaker 1: discovery for me. Um, it's, it's, I really don't trust anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't trust virtuous experts. I don't, I don't think, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think experts are, are, are, I don't believe
Speaker 1: in experts. I think if you consider yourself an expert,
Speaker 1: you're done learning. You're done speaking with others. You're done
Speaker 1: challenging yourself. And when we put our faith and trust
Speaker 1: in people that are deemed experts, ultimately, throughout my experience,
Speaker 1: it's led to bad things. The experts that talked about
Speaker 1: weapons of mass destruction, the experts that Talk about various
Speaker 1: things that have led us to violent altercations throughout the world.
Speaker 1: I don't trust them anymore. I trust the idea that
Speaker 1: there are many sides to a story and that there
Speaker 1: is very– there's a lot to be gained from having
Speaker 1: dialogue with people you disagree with.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean there are experts in some fields and
Speaker 2: we do need them. It is important. Like if you
Speaker 2: want information about the Large Hadron Collider, you don't understand
Speaker 2: like what are you guys doing over there? Like you
Speaker 2: need to talk to someone who actually understands it who's
Speaker 2: an expert on particle colliders. It takes a long time
Speaker 2: to develop that sort of knowledge base and have an
Speaker 2: understanding of what they're actually trying to accomplish. What is
Speaker 2: the Higgs boson? What is this particle that is a
Speaker 2: part of that? What? It's the earliest stages of the universe.
Speaker 1: OK. OK.
Speaker 2: You're going to measure it?
Speaker 1: I'll be in the bar.
Speaker 2: It exists for a quarter of a second or something
Speaker 2: like that? What? What are you guys doing? Yeah. But
Speaker 2: the problem is, like, to bring it back to COVID,
Speaker 2: one of the things that Fauci said that was so wild,
Speaker 2: he said, when you are criticizing Anthony Fauci, you're criticizing science. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: that is– just the fact that he felt so confident
Speaker 2: that he could say that, that is such a crazy
Speaker 2: thing to say. And then science became like an object.
Speaker 1: It became a religion.
Speaker 2: Well, science is supposed to be data. It's supposed to
Speaker 2: be measuring data and it's supposed to never be settled.
Speaker 2: And it's always supposed to have a bunch of people
Speaker 2: from various positions of viewing down on this thing, analyzing
Speaker 2: it with new studies, new data, new tests, new hypothesis,
Speaker 2: working out and communicating with each other. It's not supposed
Speaker 2: to be a brick. Like this is a brick. If
Speaker 2: you question the brick, like no, no, no. This is
Speaker 2: a fucking fluid thing that exists only if you allow
Speaker 2: people to ask questions. The moment you stop questioning data,
Speaker 2: then like– and even real experts, like guys from MIT
Speaker 2: and Harvard were getting deplatformed off of Twitter because they
Speaker 2: didn't believe it. They were saying, look, I don't think
Speaker 2: this lockdown idea is a good idea. I think it's
Speaker 2: bad for children. I think Children aren't even really susceptible
Speaker 2: to this disease. Like why are we doing this? Like
Speaker 2: what's going on?
Speaker 1: It became a faith. It became dogma. And if you
Speaker 1: question the dogma, you were a heretic. You were kicked
Speaker 1: out of the religion. It was a scary time and
Speaker 1: still is scary. You know, we deal– the Actors Gang,
Speaker 1: my nonprofit in Los Angeles, we have education programs. And
Speaker 1: we've been dealing with the ramifications of that lockdown for
Speaker 1: the last five years, you know. this kids that are,
Speaker 1: you know, had two years robbed of them from socialization
Speaker 1: and education.
Speaker 2: And that was your senior year of high school.
Speaker 1: Oh my God. You know, fuck. And we're, we're dealing
Speaker 1: with the, the, the, the after effects of that. And, uh, gratefully, uh,
Speaker 1: the kind of work we do brings them out again and,
Speaker 1: you know, get some expressing emotions, making eye contact, uh,
Speaker 1: having experiences with other children and that are productive and,
Speaker 1: The good news is you can get out of that funk,
Speaker 1: but that was– it was really scary to see those
Speaker 1: kids walk in to classes after that lockdown because they
Speaker 1: wouldn't make eye contact looking at the floor. It was
Speaker 1: kind of de-socialized and traumatized and it was really scary.
Speaker 2: Critical development time for them. Absolutely. Yeah, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden they're wearing– imagine being a toddler and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden everyone has a mask on.
Speaker 1: It's weird.
Speaker 2: You don't want to wear the mask. They keep trying
Speaker 2: to take it off. People yell at them, put it
Speaker 2: back on. So it's like terror and anxiety and confusion. Also,
Speaker 2: you're not reading people's faces, which is like an important
Speaker 2: part of the developmental process. You get to know people.
Speaker 2: You read faces. You see how people talk. Also, everyone's
Speaker 2: wearing a mask. Everyone's robbing a bank like this is crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know. I've tried to approach
Speaker 1: it all with just openness and compassion for people that
Speaker 1: went through that. I don't attach blame. I don't– everyone–
Speaker 1: there was a pretty sophisticated propaganda machine that was happening
Speaker 1: and I have great compassion for people that fell into that.
Speaker 1: I just want us to not do it again. I
Speaker 1: want us to have the knowledge and the– the consciousness
Speaker 1: to not fall for that again. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hopefully it's just, it was very eyeopening that it was
Speaker 2: so easy to pull off, you know, that it was
Speaker 2: so easy to get people to just gang up like that.
Speaker 1: It was just, it said it, it was, it said
Speaker 1: a lot about us.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately. And, um, you know, uh, I, I, I hold
Speaker 1: faith in humanity but that was a tough one.
Speaker 2: I do as well and I think it was a
Speaker 2: learning moment for a lot of people whether they admit
Speaker 2: to it or not, whether they're public about it or
Speaker 2: not because I know a lot of people that just
Speaker 2: weren't public about their dissent but they really didn't like
Speaker 2: any of it and they just didn't really have a
Speaker 2: position to talk about it and they wanted to keep
Speaker 2: their job and wanted to keep their– place in the
Speaker 2: community or whatever it was that they were trying to
Speaker 2: protect and they kept their mouth shut but you'd get
Speaker 2: a couple of drinks in them when they were alone
Speaker 2: they would tell you.
Speaker 1: Well that begs the larger question is you know is
Speaker 1: it freedom of speech if when you freely speak your
Speaker 1: job is threatened right your future is threatened is that
Speaker 1: are we living in a free society you know right
Speaker 1: um And that's still– that's not just COVID. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of things.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of things. It's almost everything. And it's
Speaker 2: one of the most important things that we do is
Speaker 2: we disagree. We talk. You have conversations.
Speaker 1: It's the only way to learn.
Speaker 2: And you get exposed to information that maybe you didn't
Speaker 2: know before you establish this opinion that you're arguing.
Speaker 1: Do you know what was the big problem? tragedy, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, during that time period is that we totally
Speaker 1: lost the water cooler conversation, that accidental conversation that happens
Speaker 1: at work with a co-worker who you don't necessarily agree with,
Speaker 1: but it's a human being expressing something to you in person.
Speaker 1: And you have to deal with that person and their
Speaker 1: opposing viewpoint. We got into our own... silos of thought
Speaker 1: and algorithms of thought. And everything we experienced during that
Speaker 1: period of time was an affirmation of what we believed
Speaker 1: rather than a challenge to it. And so the water
Speaker 1: cooler was completely eliminated. The idea that the accidental conversation
Speaker 1: at a bar, um, where you're, you know, watching a
Speaker 1: game on the television and someone sits next to you
Speaker 1: that It's not necessarily of your belief system. But you
Speaker 1: buy him a beer and you watch the game together.
Speaker 1: All these moments of meeting up that were eliminated. And,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what I love about sports. I love
Speaker 1: that you can go watch a game and not think
Speaker 1: about politics or not think about your differences and think
Speaker 1: about the team that you like and support them together.
Speaker 1: Same thing with theater or any kind of gathering of individuals, music.
Speaker 1: What I love about the theater that we do is
Speaker 1: that we're able to take people to a common emotion.
Speaker 1: And we never want to have a completely... We don't
Speaker 1: want audiences that think the same, right? You want a
Speaker 1: disparate amount of people, different beliefs... That you can get
Speaker 1: them to share a common emotion, get them to laugh together,
Speaker 1: get them to feel something and cry together. That's the
Speaker 1: community you're able to build when you're doing a show,
Speaker 1: as you know. What really pissed me off was that
Speaker 1: when we have a theater in Los Angeles, two years
Speaker 1: we had to be closed. And a year and a
Speaker 1: half in, we were told we could open, but we'd
Speaker 1: have to change. vaccine passports at the door and I
Speaker 1: talked to some people at the theater and we agreed
Speaker 1: it was no we can't do that because what that
Speaker 1: is doing is it's basically saying the only people allowed
Speaker 1: in our theater are people that agree with what the
Speaker 1: government wanted And that for me is not a theater
Speaker 1: that betrays the whole purpose and function of what a
Speaker 1: theater should be. It's a gathering place for the community
Speaker 1: that might think differently to bring them together. And this
Speaker 1: was saying basically, if you agree, you can come in.
Speaker 1: And that, so we waited another six months before we
Speaker 1: opened the theater until everyone could come in. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Um, There was a time where you had to have
Speaker 2: a vaccine passport in order to perform. And there was
Speaker 2: an exemption in New York. And you had to have
Speaker 2: a vaccine passport if you wanted to go to a show.
Speaker 2: But you didn't have to have one if you were performing.
Speaker 2: And I did Madison Square Garden. So the whole audience
Speaker 2: had to have vaccine passports. But I didn't. And so
Speaker 2: there was a senator. I forget who it was. that
Speaker 2: was proposing a new law based on me sneaking through
Speaker 2: the loophole that performers should have to be vaccinated as well.
Speaker 2: And he was upset that I didn't have– that I
Speaker 2: wasn't vaccinated and that I was performing.
Speaker 1: You could have infected the entire Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2: I could have been a super spreader, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, in London– because they spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time over there the last five years. But their
Speaker 1: West End rebounded immediately. unlike Broadway. And the reason it
Speaker 1: did is because during that time period, you could show
Speaker 1: a vaccine passport, but you could also show a negative test.
Speaker 1: So they didn't demand that you have a vaccine. So
Speaker 1: they didn't lose their audience. Their audience came right back.
Speaker 1: And in Broadway, they basically told a third of their audience,
Speaker 1: you're not welcome. And so I can see why it
Speaker 1: might have been a struggle to get those people back
Speaker 1: into the theater.
Speaker 2: It was great. It didn't make any sense. Like if
Speaker 2: the people are negative, they're negative. What do you give
Speaker 2: a shit if they're vaccinated? Also, what about people that
Speaker 2: got COVID and then recovered from it who have far
Speaker 2: superior immunity, seven X superior immunity to people who are vaccinated? Like,
Speaker 2: what do you, what are we doing here? Like this
Speaker 2: is you, are you, you're doing the pharmaceutical drug companies
Speaker 2: work for them and you're making people follow along. In
Speaker 2: lockstep and it's just nuts. It just didn't even make
Speaker 2: sense that people were going along with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm glad that's in the rearview mirror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for now. But I feel like it's a case
Speaker 2: study in a lot of– if there are people that
Speaker 2: are manipulating society and I think there are, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of lessons that they learn from how we behave
Speaker 2: in society. And relatively speaking, without making light of the pandemic,
Speaker 2: relatively speaking, a fairly mild pandemic in terms of like
Speaker 2: the bubonic plague and all sorts of other things that
Speaker 2: have happened throughout history, the Spanish flu have killed way
Speaker 2: more people. Like it could have been way worse, right?
Speaker 2: So just one that was just twice as bad as
Speaker 2: the flu got people to behave like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the good news is though the uptake wasn't– you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people took it because they had to.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like enthusiastically taking it. We did a play
Speaker 1: called Topsy Turvy, which was about lockdown. And we performed
Speaker 1: that in Eastern Europe. And it was really interesting to
Speaker 1: see their response there because I would, one of them
Speaker 1: said afterwards, you know, I asked, you know, what was
Speaker 1: the uptake on the vaccines in, in Romania? And they
Speaker 1: said something like 40%. I said, well, how do you
Speaker 1: explain that? And they said, well, you know, we lived
Speaker 1: under the Soviet Union for many years, so we know
Speaker 1: how to look like we comply when we're not complying.
Speaker 1: And I said, what else reminds you of the Soviet Union?
Speaker 1: They said, without a doubt, cancel culture. I said, why?
Speaker 1: I said, well, Soviet Union used to keep files on
Speaker 1: all of us, right? So as long as you're a
Speaker 1: good party member, there wouldn't be a thing said. But
Speaker 1: once you stepped out of line, They brought out that
Speaker 1: old file. Now that affair with your secretary from 30
Speaker 1: years ago is going to ruin your life. They're going
Speaker 1: to ruin your family. They're going to kill your career.
Speaker 1: And they're going to make a big public display of
Speaker 1: it to show other people to stay in line. And
Speaker 1: they felt like cancel culture was basically operating in the
Speaker 1: same way as the Soviet Union did. And it was
Speaker 1: really interesting to see that perspective in Eastern Europe. People
Speaker 1: that have lived under that kind of oppressive situation and
Speaker 1: their perspective on modern day.
Speaker 2: That must have really made you think about what happened
Speaker 2: to you during the Iraq War.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That in particular because back then there's no real social media.
Speaker 2: There's no real way to get your message out.
Speaker 1: Oh, man. They lied. They made up things. They made
Speaker 1: up this– I was doing this play Embedded at the time.
Speaker 1: At the public theater and we'd go out afterwards and
Speaker 1: the New York Post wrote that I was making out
Speaker 1: with a woman under a palm tree at this club.
Speaker 1: And they just made it up and cut me and
Speaker 1: didn't really help my marriage at the time. They just lie.
Speaker 1: They basically lie. They'll attack you.
Speaker 2: They just decided you were an enemy and they were
Speaker 2: going to pull out whatever stops they could.
Speaker 1: They're going to discredit you in whatever way they can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a powerful thing when it hits you and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: my God, the truth doesn't matter here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's what's so scary about it is that
Speaker 2: in this country where freedom of speech is supposed to
Speaker 2: be one of the cornerstones of our society, it's one
Speaker 2: of the most important things we all recognize. It separates
Speaker 2: us from everywhere else in history. Like this is the
Speaker 2: first country where really it's written into the doctrine of
Speaker 2: the country. You're supposed to have the freedom, the ability
Speaker 2: to express yourself, and that this is– being attacked and
Speaker 2: suppressed in all sorts of different ways, not just stopping
Speaker 2: your ability to express yourself but attacking you in a
Speaker 2: concerted effort and lying about you, just lying about you
Speaker 2: in order to scare other people. It's very Orwellian and
Speaker 2: it's very un-American. And the fact that like the New
Speaker 2: York Post would do that to you or whoever it
Speaker 2: was from the New York Post would do that, like
Speaker 2: what the fuck, man?
Speaker 1: Well, the good news is there's no gulags. They don't
Speaker 1: arrest you in the middle of the night and force
Speaker 1: you into some kind of prison thousands of miles away.
Speaker 2: Sure. It could be worse. Yeah. But it's not along
Speaker 2: the line of the American way of life. And if
Speaker 2: you are a person who really does appreciate what this
Speaker 2: experience and this experiment in self-government, which is the United States.
Speaker 2: It's supposed to have free discourse. That's a big part
Speaker 2: of it. The founding fathers recognized that. You've got to
Speaker 2: have the ability to talk about things.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And if you don't, we're fucked because if someone can
Speaker 2: tell you what you can and can't say, that's step one.
Speaker 2: And then everything else falls in line after that. The
Speaker 2: next thing you know, you've got a dictatorship.
Speaker 1: Right. And there's people that have lost opportunities or– In
Speaker 1: show business recently, including my ex, Susan Sarandon, who was
Speaker 1: against what was happening in Israel and lost her agent
Speaker 1: and having a hard time finding work. This is nuts.
Speaker 2: And especially someone like Susan Sarandon, one of the most
Speaker 2: respected and established actors of many generations. She's been around forever.
Speaker 2: The fact that a take on something that if you're
Speaker 2: just looking at it, like what is– how could you
Speaker 2: defend that? Like how could anybody defend that? I don't
Speaker 2: even know how many people are dead. You have a
Speaker 2: complete wipeout of a city. Like 90 percent of Gaza
Speaker 2: is gone or whatever the percentage is. You look at
Speaker 2: the buildings. You look at what it used to look like.
Speaker 2: You look at what it looks like now. This is defensible?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And I think the point of it is
Speaker 1: to make a show of it and to say, see,
Speaker 1: we could do that to her. So we could do
Speaker 1: it to you. So shut the fuck up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Especially the timing of when you do it, right? If
Speaker 2: you're against Gaza now, it's safer than being against what
Speaker 2: happened a year and a half ago, say. Especially close
Speaker 2: to October 7th. If you're one of the– like Roger Waters,
Speaker 2: one of the early people talking about this is– You're
Speaker 2: watching genocide in real time and they came for that guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And, you know, more people see it the way he
Speaker 2: sees it now. And just like what happened to you
Speaker 2: with the Iraq war, you're 20 years from now, it's
Speaker 2: going to be a universally accepted opinion. I bet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, that's just. It's crazy to go through something like
Speaker 2: that and for you to have gone through it like
Speaker 2: really early on, for you to have gone through that
Speaker 2: in 2003. I guess it really does inform your opinions though.
Speaker 2: Like when you see things that are happening today, you go, OK,
Speaker 2: I've seen this before.
Speaker 1: What I started looking for after that was a way
Speaker 1: to be someone that was more involved with– something that
Speaker 1: could affect change. In other words, I used my nonprofit
Speaker 1: We started a prison program 20 years ago. And we
Speaker 1: see the change that happens. We have people that go
Speaker 1: in and basically offer rehabilitation in the form of theater.
Speaker 1: And not doing plays or anything, but getting people to
Speaker 1: play emotions through characters that we introduce to them. And
Speaker 1: in doing so, unlocking emotions that have been suppressed for many,
Speaker 1: many years. So in prison, there's one go-to emotion. It's anger.
Speaker 1: That's your survival face. That's your mask on the yard.
Speaker 1: You have to be a badass or you're going to die.
Speaker 1: But sadness is compromising. Fear is compromising. And happiness is
Speaker 1: genuinely not encouraged either. So we get these guys in
Speaker 1: a room, we introduce them to these stock characters from
Speaker 1: the Commedia dell'arte, and then they have to express their
Speaker 1: emotions and make choices with their emotions in improv. And
Speaker 1: what they find is that if someone approaches them in
Speaker 1: anger in an improv, the facilitator will encourage a different
Speaker 1: emotion in response to anger than anger, right? And what
Speaker 1: they come to understand is that they don't have to
Speaker 1: respond to anger with anger. There are other choices. And
Speaker 1: in fact, in real life, they can do that too
Speaker 1: if they can do it in an improv. And so
Speaker 1: what happens is these people tap into long dormant emotions
Speaker 1: and start to understand that they are more than the
Speaker 1: worst act that got them there. They tend to create
Speaker 1: bonds across gang ties, racial lines. When we're putting together
Speaker 1: a group, we ask that rival gangs are in the
Speaker 1: same room with each other.
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
Speaker 1: And, um, what happens is these bonds are made through
Speaker 1: the sharing of emotion. Like we get these guys into
Speaker 1: an improv where they're all putting a flower on a
Speaker 1: grave of someone and saying something under their breath about
Speaker 1: the person that's deceased. And then at some point the
Speaker 1: facilitator will say, now look at each other and they're
Speaker 1: looking at each other with these eyes of sadness and
Speaker 1: they realize they have a lot in common, you know,
Speaker 1: in that shared emotion. I had two guys come up
Speaker 1: to me, one black guy, one white guy. They said,
Speaker 1: we've got to tell you what happened two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Our shot caller said, you know, we're going to have
Speaker 1: a fight on the yard. And so, you know, you
Speaker 1: never question the shot caller. And so you know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. And so what they did was they
Speaker 1: found each other, these two guys. And they rolled around
Speaker 1: on the floor acting like they were killing each other.
Speaker 2: Wow. How convenient.
Speaker 1: So it looked like they were participating, but they weren't
Speaker 1: hurting each other.
Speaker 2: Oh, wow. That's a good solution.
Speaker 1: It's amazing what happens when you experience something like that
Speaker 1: in person, when you see the transformation happen. And we
Speaker 1: see this in our school children as well. That's something that.
Speaker 1: It's deeply inspiring. You know that you've had something to
Speaker 1: do with a real change, right? Whereas for years I
Speaker 1: was asked to attend fundraisers and various causes. And it's
Speaker 1: great that they're doing that and it's great that they're
Speaker 1: raising money for these organizations that need it. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you don't really feel like
Speaker 1: you did anything other than go to a dinner. And
Speaker 1: this was a way to get my hands dirty and
Speaker 1: really get in the struggle of it. And I found
Speaker 1: it to be so much more satisfying as far as
Speaker 1: whatever inclination I had towards activism was really fed by
Speaker 1: this as opposed to hopping from fundraiser to fundraiser. It
Speaker 1: just felt more real. It felt like something that I
Speaker 1: could– Take that experience and then I could say to
Speaker 1: my group, let's expand. Let's get into more and more prisons.
Speaker 1: And now we're in 18 prisons in the state of
Speaker 1: California doing these programs.
Speaker 2: Did you have to develop a curriculum like how you
Speaker 2: begin to reach out to these guys and how you
Speaker 2: set it up?
Speaker 1: It took a couple of years, kind of pilot program
Speaker 1: in one prison in Chino and Norco in Southern California.
Speaker 1: Trial and error. You know, what's the way to do it?
Speaker 1: What's the way not to do it? Of course, you
Speaker 1: go through a training with the prison system of certain
Speaker 1: things to watch out for. And, you know, you develop
Speaker 1: these lines where you say, you know, we're here to
Speaker 1: do this, not to talk about your case. You know,
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of things you learn how to avoid
Speaker 1: the distractions that will derail the program. But essentially it's
Speaker 1: a very physical way of working and it's also– there
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun in it. So those two
Speaker 1: things together allow the entry for these guys that are–
Speaker 1: they're in the room because they want to be there
Speaker 1: but it's weird stuff we're asking them to do. And
Speaker 1: if they can have a laugh about it and then–
Speaker 1: something about it shifts some kind of consciousness inside them,
Speaker 1: that means something to people. You've got to remember these
Speaker 1: people are, you know, when we started, there was only
Speaker 1: one other program in the state of California that was
Speaker 1: offering rehabilitation through any theater. So there was a couple
Speaker 1: music programs and two theater programs, and now we're able
Speaker 1: to lobby the state to, get more funding for arts
Speaker 1: and corrections because art is a transformer. You know, it
Speaker 1: is something that can shift consciousness. I truly believe that.
Speaker 1: I've seen it with my own, the work that I've done.
Speaker 1: You know, I've seen how people can think in a
Speaker 1: different way after they see something in the theater or
Speaker 1: in the movies or, you know, a good stand-up can
Speaker 1: do the same thing. You know, how George Carlin used
Speaker 1: to shift my consciousness every new special because he would
Speaker 1: always be challenging me. Sure. It wouldn't be like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're all in the same club. It would be, yeah,
Speaker 1: you thought we were in the same club. But here's
Speaker 1: a little thought. And you realize he's talking right at
Speaker 1: one of your hypocrisies. And that was his genius. It
Speaker 1: was his ability to really tap into we can be better. Right.
Speaker 1: We can all be better.
Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you by Visible. It's officially summer, folks,
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Speaker 2: Terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's been a few guys like that throughout history that
Speaker 2: really figured out a way to embed humor into social commentary.
Speaker 2: George Carlin is probably the most known for it. But
Speaker 2: do you know about Bill Hicks?
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So he was probably– in my generation, he was the
Speaker 2: one that twisted people the most. Like a lot of
Speaker 2: comics would watch him and go, what am I doing?
Speaker 2: Why am I doing what I'm doing? This guy is
Speaker 2: doing something that's like so much more meaningful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Who was it in Apatow's documentary about Carlin? There
Speaker 1: was a comedian that said George Carlin was basically– In
Speaker 1: the early part of the century, in 1900s, philosophers debating
Speaker 1: used to be a huge deal, right? Like hundreds of people,
Speaker 1: thousands of people come watch people debate two different points
Speaker 1: of view. Sure. He said that's what the current philosophers
Speaker 1: of our generation are, the better stand-up comedians, the ones
Speaker 1: that test your belief system by saying something that might
Speaker 1: be controversial or challenges your world view. That's the great
Speaker 1: purpose and function of a philosopher or a stand-up comedian
Speaker 1: is to take your worldview, shatter it a little bit
Speaker 1: and make you rethink.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And Hicks was sort of– for our generation,
Speaker 2: he was like the first guy that really did that
Speaker 2: in a way that– like some of the things that
Speaker 2: he said weren't even designed to be funny at all.
Speaker 2: It was just designed to make you think about things
Speaker 2: differently and then he would hit you with some funny
Speaker 2: things after that. To keep you occupied.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Provocative statements that, you know, the first reaction is, fuck that. No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. Fuck that. And then you realize, oh shit,
Speaker 1: he's bringing me there. And it's like a great play
Speaker 1: can do that too. A great movie can do that too.
Speaker 1: Provoke you and challenge you and then make you refocus, rethink.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just amazing how... little of that we have
Speaker 2: today and how much content we have today. Did you
Speaker 2: ever see the documentary– God, what is it? The documentary
Speaker 2: with William F. Buckley and the other– Yeah, you know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Gore Vidal?
Speaker 2: And Gore Vidal, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Where they had these– it was– I guess it was NBC,
Speaker 2: I think it was. And NBC was failing in the ratings.
Speaker 2: I was going to say Relentless Enemies, but that's the lion. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the lion. Best of Enemies. Best of Enemies, yeah. Great documentary.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they had a series of these debates on television,
Speaker 2: Gore Vidal being a progressive and William F. Buckley being
Speaker 2: a conservative. Very interesting. Interesting. because this kind of hadn't
Speaker 2: happened before on television where you have these long form
Speaker 2: discussions where these two guys just intellectually jabbing at each other. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it was great. It's like the documentary is really amazing. I, uh,
Speaker 2: I was friends with Gore. Oh really?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, he, uh, I, he, uh, agreed to do
Speaker 1: my first film, Bob Roberts, which is about a right
Speaker 1: wing folk singing candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania. And, um,
Speaker 1: Gore agreed to play Brickley Pace, my Democratic opponent, right?
Speaker 1: And so he played a politician, which is something he
Speaker 1: always kind of flirted with in his real life. And
Speaker 1: so I got to be quite friendly with him. And
Speaker 1: I actually did a documentary that I'm editing right now
Speaker 1: about four soldiers from World War II that became great writers. Gore,
Speaker 1: Kurt Vonnegut. Norman Mailer and Howard Zinn are all in
Speaker 1: this documentary I filmed it many years ago shelved it
Speaker 1: and now I'm in the final stages of putting it
Speaker 1: together I'm opening a new website on September 1st and
Speaker 1: this is one of the many things that I have
Speaker 1: in my vault and my storage units that I've just
Speaker 1: been getting out over the past year and finding all
Speaker 1: this crazy stuff that I have that I've never finished
Speaker 1: because I've been going from project to project to project
Speaker 1: so I slowed down a little bit and just opened
Speaker 1: up some sealed boxes and it's, it's been really fun.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things is also, I used to
Speaker 1: fuck around on film sets with this, you know, when
Speaker 1: I had enough money to buy a video camera for
Speaker 1: the first time. And so I started making these little
Speaker 1: short films on, on movie sets. And one of them
Speaker 1: is there's two films from when I was doing Howard,
Speaker 1: the duck. And, you know, one of those, Endless productions
Speaker 1: just went on and on and on. So I just
Speaker 1: started amusing myself by making my own little short films, including,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure illegally using the duck itself, you know,
Speaker 1: which I made a character in one of the films.
Speaker 2: I forgot about Howard the Duck.
Speaker 1: It was crazy. We walked on the set.
Speaker 2: What a fucking weird movie that was.
Speaker 1: I know, right? We walked on the set. I walked
Speaker 1: on the set. The first day I knew we were
Speaker 1: in trouble.
Speaker 2: Why did you know we were in trouble?
Speaker 1: The puppet. It wasn't ready. And it was a little
Speaker 1: too cute. If you look at the comic book, Howard
Speaker 1: the Duck was not that cute.
Speaker 2: No. He was a cigar-smoking, kind of shitty, mean duck.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Kind of Fritz the Cat-ish-like, you know, like really kind
Speaker 1: of borderline obscene.
Speaker 2: It was a Marvel comic, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so do you have an image of the old
Speaker 1: Howard the Duck from the comic? Yeah. That guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I walked on the set and I saw that
Speaker 1: cute duck. I was like, uh-oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was always with chicks.
Speaker 1: He was always with chicks, yeah.
Speaker 2: Which was very weird. Like, hey, lady, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: You're fucking a duck? What's going on here?
Speaker 1: Bestiality?
Speaker 2: Like, what is this? What is his charm got you? Like,
Speaker 2: what's the message there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It was a strange character.
Speaker 1: Very strange. And I don't think they had the technology
Speaker 1: to pull it off.
Speaker 2: Maybe they need to try again now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be good. They could take the old
Speaker 1: film and animate it. But I spent six weeks on
Speaker 1: that film doing an ultralight chase that lasted maybe two
Speaker 1: minutes in the film.
Speaker 2: What's an ultralight plane chase?
Speaker 1: You know the ultralight planes? Basically it's you and the
Speaker 1: wings and a motor. And so there's a chase sequence
Speaker 1: at the end that's about two and a half minute,
Speaker 1: three minute long.
Speaker 2: Did you actually have to get in one of those things?
Speaker 1: No. I mean, I got in like a fake one. Good. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: you have to fly it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You have to. That's fake, of course, right?
Speaker 2: The duck's real.
Speaker 1: Looks so legit. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Was that one of those ones where your little voice,
Speaker 2: you didn't listen?
Speaker 1: No, not at all because that was early in my career, right?
Speaker 1: So it was George Lucas, I remember. That was George Lucas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd just done Star Wars. Whoa. So it had to
Speaker 1: be good, right?
Speaker 2: He went from Star Wars to Howard the Duck.
Speaker 1: Well, he produced Howard the Duck.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Okay. But he had just produced Star Wars. So, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like, hell yeah.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It doesn't make sense on the page, but.
Speaker 2: He'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: He'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. I was
Speaker 1: so lucky to, again, blessed because I got a movie
Speaker 1: called Five Corners that was with Jodie Foster and John
Speaker 1: Turturro right around the same time. So I was I'd
Speaker 1: already done that movie. When Howard came out. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of saved my ass.
Speaker 2: You already had one in the chamber.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You had a good one on the pipe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank God.
Speaker 2: It's just I wonder why George did it. Like it
Speaker 2: seems so odd to try to do a movie with
Speaker 2: a talking duck.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, maybe it made sense when they imagined it.
Speaker 2: Maybe they were on acid or something. It seems weird.
Speaker 1: I just remember those poor puppeteers, man. They were trying
Speaker 1: to make this thing work. I don't think the technology
Speaker 1: really existed.
Speaker 2: It was like 86 or something?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were trying so hard. I felt for everybody,
Speaker 1: including the director. I felt he tried his damn best.
Speaker 1: It was just betrayal by puppeteering. And it wasn't the puppeteers.
Speaker 1: It was the actual puppeteers.
Speaker 2: Well, it's kind of– if you think about Star Wars
Speaker 2: in particular, it's kind of amazing. They were able to
Speaker 2: pull that off with the technology that was available at
Speaker 2: the time to have this crazy movie where– like the
Speaker 2: cantina scene. Yeah. There's all these different fucking creatures from
Speaker 2: different planets and like they did not have very good
Speaker 2: technology back then. Like if you watch that cantina scene now, like, whoa.
Speaker 2: It looks terrible.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It looks so clunky. Like the masks don't move. Like
Speaker 2: everyone's got their faces stuck.
Speaker 1: It's almost like looking at claymation around that time. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Amazing what they can do. But I do like the
Speaker 1: old school. I do like the kind of analog version
Speaker 1: of it. Because with the CGI and everything, it's all
Speaker 1: so sophisticated and so– They can do anything now and
Speaker 1: you almost want them not to be able to do everything.
Speaker 2: Oh, 100 percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Just want a little roughness around the edges. It
Speaker 1: really helps.
Speaker 2: Well, there's also a thing about CGI where the part
Speaker 2: of your brain that is looking at it recognizes that
Speaker 2: this is not a real thing happening. Like as good
Speaker 2: as it looks, there's something about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Which is why a lot of the movie special effects
Speaker 2: guys like the monster guys like Rick Baker and along
Speaker 2: those lines who did Star Wars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: American Werewolf in London, that thing outside, the wolf that
Speaker 2: you see in the hallway. Yeah, yeah. That– they wanted
Speaker 2: to make sure that it looked like a real thing, right?
Speaker 2: It was a physical object. So you had a– so
Speaker 2: in order to make it a physical object and obviously
Speaker 2: CGI wasn't even available back then. But you see it
Speaker 2: and you know it's a real thing. Whereas like later on,
Speaker 2: they did The Wolfman and Rick Baker did that as well.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of CGI in there and the
Speaker 2: transformation scenes. And this part of it is just like
Speaker 2: your brain's like, this isn't really happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't like it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's kind of the same way in music too.
Speaker 1: Like when they correct everything and make the auto tuning.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Great music has a little bit of mistake in it. Yes.
Speaker 1: It has a little bit of like human error. When
Speaker 1: you're hitting a chord on a guitar– There's a way
Speaker 1: to play it perfectly, but there's also a way to
Speaker 1: play it a little messed up.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And I kind of prefer the little bit messed up.
Speaker 2: Like when Hendrix did the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There was something about it. It was like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was immediate. It was being done at that
Speaker 1: moment with full danger, which is great.
Speaker 2: Thing to listen to yeah this it's really happening yeah
Speaker 2: it's not polished and edited and sent through a machine.
Speaker 1: And you get the feeling that maybe that was the
Speaker 1: second or third time he'd played it. Right.
Speaker 2: Ever.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe the first. Right, right, right. Which would have
Speaker 1: been even more insane. But, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why people like records. They love listening to
Speaker 2: the scratches and the pops and then you hear the voice.
Speaker 2: Like this just pure recorded voice. There's no auto-tune. There's
Speaker 2: no nothing messing with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Especially like an old record.
Speaker 1: I have one of those 78s where you have to
Speaker 1: crank them up. Oh, wow. And they have the little,
Speaker 1: you know, cone that amplifies it. Oh, you have one
Speaker 1: of those.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. 1920 or 1910 or something like that. And
Speaker 1: I just imagine, you know, living on the prairie and
Speaker 1: Ordering this from Sears Roebuck, right? And getting your first,
Speaker 1: you know, record and putting it on and hearing this,
Speaker 1: a voice coming from this acetate. It must have been magical.
Speaker 1: It must have been like, you know, transformative to, you know,
Speaker 1: this amplified song that you can dance to or fall
Speaker 1: in love to right in your living room.
Speaker 2: When did they first figure that out?
Speaker 1: I think it was early part of the 20th century.
Speaker 2: Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison? Yeah, they had like a little cylinder.
Speaker 1: But when they started mass producing them in... Oh, like
Speaker 1: just records?
Speaker 2: Yeah, when was the first record?
Speaker 1: I think in the 20s maybe?
Speaker 2: They might have mass produced those because people had them.
Speaker 2: Just a way different player. Let's ask perplexity. What was
Speaker 2: the first record? What was the first actual record disc
Speaker 2: that you could play with a needle? Like a real record.
Speaker 2: I want to say like 1919. I'm just taking a
Speaker 2: wild guess. There's a famous viral video of a guy
Speaker 2: dropping that time I said it. 1931. 12-inch, 33-and-a-third RPM
Speaker 2: disc was pressed in Victor's vinyl-based Victrolac.
Speaker 1: But that's 33-and-a-third. What about the 78s? Is it called, say,
Speaker 1: a 78? I don't think so, yeah.
Speaker 2: 23 minutes per side versus roughly the Shellac 78. 48.
Speaker 2: Vinyl LP. Arrived in June 21st, 1948. Columbia Records unveiled, oh,
Speaker 2: 33 and a third micro groove, long playing record. So
Speaker 2: was that it?
Speaker 1: But in the 20s and 30s, there was a micro groove.
Speaker 2: 47, you got the 45. Oh, okay.
Speaker 1: So the little one singles. 31 first vinyl disc. Wow.
Speaker 2: So 31 for the first vinyl disc, 48 for the
Speaker 2: first real album. Which is really nuts because if you
Speaker 2: think about like all the amazing albums of the 60s,
Speaker 2: you're talking about a technology that didn't exist 20 years prior.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's weird.
Speaker 2: Nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Nuts, right? So like when you listen to Voodoo Child,
Speaker 2: like that technology 20 years ago didn't exist.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the magic of watching it for the
Speaker 1: first time? Like when you put that thing down when
Speaker 1: you're a kid and you put it on the thing
Speaker 1: and this music starts coming out?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Well, I remember the ones where– look at that.
Speaker 2: Look at the vinyl grooves around 1,000X magnification. You see
Speaker 2: the waveforms of the music itself. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 2: That those little weird– imagine if you were like from
Speaker 2: another civilization and you saw these things. You'd be like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck is this? Like what do they have here?
Speaker 1: How did they figure that out?
Speaker 2: What is this? You'd be like, what? That's– they figured
Speaker 2: out how to make music out of that and you
Speaker 2: could hear a harp. You could hear banjo. You could
Speaker 2: hear– You could hear drums.
Speaker 1: An orchestra.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could hear jazz joplin all in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: How'd you do that?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And if it scratches, it skips?
Speaker 1: I'm really encouraged that vinyl's making a comeback. I'm really
Speaker 1: very excited about that.
Speaker 2: People love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's all the difference.
Speaker 2: People love wood tables. As the world gets more digital,
Speaker 2: people want things that are organic, something that a person made,
Speaker 2: something that seems like... It makes more sense.
Speaker 1: I've been finding in my search for my archive and
Speaker 1: everything cassette tapes that I put on. They sound amazing.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: Yeah. They sound really good because there's more information in
Speaker 1: a little cassette tape than on a– whether it's MP3
Speaker 1: that's been compressed and compressed and compressed and compressed. But
Speaker 1: reel-to-reels obviously sound still great, but the cassette tapes really survived.
Speaker 1: I've been digitizing everything, of course, just to make sure
Speaker 1: that they don't decay. But it's been really interesting. A
Speaker 1: lot of my dad's music he recorded on cassette tapes.
Speaker 1: He was a folk singer. They did five albums as
Speaker 1: the Highwaymen, but he was a classical musician and did
Speaker 1: choral music and so he had a group and he
Speaker 1: would record on these cassette tapes and so we've been
Speaker 1: digitizing those because we're I'm going to put them all
Speaker 1: on my new website this thing called Robbins Radio which
Speaker 1: will be my dad my granddad my brother and myself
Speaker 1: the music that we've done over the years kind of
Speaker 1: playing on a constant loop when you come onto the
Speaker 1: website oh wow yeah so I was to honor my
Speaker 1: dad I've been digitizing also his scores and you know
Speaker 1: he wrote music by hand and so I've got boxes
Speaker 1: and boxes of that that I'm trying to transcribe and
Speaker 1: make available probably in about six months we'll have that
Speaker 1: archive up.
Speaker 2: Oh that's awesome when did they figure out how to
Speaker 2: put things on cassette tapes that happened that was around
Speaker 2: when I was in high school I remember I had
Speaker 2: a cassette deck on my car.
Speaker 1: And there was pretty good technology you could buy really
Speaker 1: good microphones And plugged them into a pretty good cassette player.
Speaker 2: Well, 8-track was the first, right?
Speaker 1: I think so, but those were so impractical.
Speaker 2: Well, they were huge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, plus they'd stop in the middle of a song
Speaker 1: and then go to the next track.
Speaker 2: Oh, really?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember driving with my friend Frank, who lives
Speaker 1: in Austin right now. And we were driving back up
Speaker 1: to school, my first school, college, Plattsburgh. And there was
Speaker 1: an 8-track of Bread playing. You remember that band Bread?
Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
Speaker 1: And this was around 1977. And he rips it out
Speaker 1: of the 8-track, rolls down the window, throws it out.
Speaker 1: We're never listening to that again. It's punk rock from
Speaker 1: this point forward. And it was like a defining moment
Speaker 1: in my musical life was like Frank saying, no more Bread.
Speaker 2: No more Bread. No more Bread. He's going to put
Speaker 2: his foot down.
Speaker 1: It's Sex Pistols now.
Speaker 2: That's hilarious. I remember my first introduction to 8-track. My
Speaker 2: friend Javier, when I lived in Florida, his mom had
Speaker 2: an 8-track player. And she had, what is that song?
Speaker 2: Who sings it? When my baby, when my baby smiles
Speaker 2: at me, I go to Rio de Janeiro. Remember that song?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't remember who sings it. Pablo Cruz.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah. And she had a Pablo Cruz 8-track in
Speaker 2: her car. I'm like, this lady is a wizard. She's
Speaker 2: got her own music. Because before then, I think I
Speaker 2: had only seen people play stuff that was on the radio.
Speaker 1: Right, right.
Speaker 2: And she put it in there and she pressed the button.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is crazy. She gets to pick
Speaker 2: what songs are on the radio in a car? I
Speaker 2: thought it was the wildest thing I'd ever seen in
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That was right. It was eight-track first, then
Speaker 1: the cassette, and then the CDs.
Speaker 2: The cassette was so much better. You had to flip
Speaker 2: it over, though, pop it out, flip it over to
Speaker 2: the other side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but those things are cooked in the sun, though.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, I lost a bunch. I used to
Speaker 2: have one of them big books with cassettes in it
Speaker 2: and these little vinyl things. You leave it in your car,
Speaker 2: and they get fucked, and then it gets stuck in
Speaker 2: the tape machine, and you had to do it with
Speaker 2: your finger. You had to try to wind it back
Speaker 2: with your finger.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Which I did like a month ago with one
Speaker 1: of the old cassettes.
Speaker 2: You had to stick your pinky in there.
Speaker 1: I just did that last month trying to re-spool it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody knows what the fuck we're talking about today. Well,
Speaker 2: then VHS tapes was the next one because that was
Speaker 2: the first time where you could choose to watch a
Speaker 2: film at home.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Yes. And a huge deal too. I mourn the loss
Speaker 1: of video stores.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Because it's a great experience.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because you could go and you say, you know,
Speaker 1: I just saw this film and there was someone that
Speaker 1: really loved film there.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And he could say, well, if you like that one,
Speaker 1: check this one out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was that's now been replaced by an algorithm.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And I'm not trusting that algorithm is going to find
Speaker 1: it's going to show me the way to Battle of
Speaker 1: Algiers or any kind of these great movies. I just
Speaker 1: if the personal was lost. Same thing with record stores.
Speaker 1: You could go in and like what's new and hear
Speaker 1: what's playing and talk to the guy and get what
Speaker 1: his opinion was and bookstores too. It's like if you
Speaker 1: told me 30 years ago that it would be– it's
Speaker 1: very hard to find a bookstore, a record store or
Speaker 1: a video store, I would say you're crazy. But now
Speaker 1: it's all like very convenient. You have access to everything
Speaker 1: but you don't have– the arbiter that is a person
Speaker 1: you have the arbiter that's almost a machine.
Speaker 2: Right you get a little bit of that with people
Speaker 2: online recommending stuff yeah just kind of cool you know
Speaker 2: someone says hey i just saw the show it's fucking
Speaker 2: incredible that's true you get a little bit of that
Speaker 2: and then you get imdb and rotten Tomatoes scores, which
Speaker 2: I think does something. They're a little manipulated occasionally, but
Speaker 2: there's something to it where you get to see what
Speaker 2: people think about it. That helps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's nice. I think Silo is like 100% Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker 2: Is it really?
Speaker 1: Yeah, right now it is. That's nice.
Speaker 2: Once you said that, though, you put it out there.
Speaker 1: I know. Now it's dead.
Speaker 2: The assholes are going to come.
Speaker 1: I just killed it.
Speaker 2: They're going to bomb it.
Speaker 1: They're going to bomb it into oblivion.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah? 100%? We'll see about that. But there's almost
Speaker 2: too many shows. You know, there's just too much. I
Speaker 2: just got into The Agency. I just finished season two
Speaker 2: of The Agency on it. Michael Fassbender. It's a CIA
Speaker 2: series that's on Paramount. It's fucking incredible. It's so well written.
Speaker 2: It's so well acted that it makes so many other
Speaker 2: shows seem really clunky because it's just– it's so good.
Speaker 2: It's got so many layers to it and it's subtle
Speaker 2: and it's brilliant and it's– and Fassbender is one of
Speaker 2: my favorite actors. He's fucking incredible.
Speaker 1: He's great.
Speaker 2: He's so good. He's so good in this. He plays
Speaker 2: this CIA spook.
Speaker 1: So many– Things to choose from.
Speaker 2: Too many.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Almost.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean– Maybe.
Speaker 2: Essentially, you could waste your whole life just being entertained.
Speaker 2: Like it used to be difficult to be entertained, which
Speaker 2: I think there's something to that. You had to go
Speaker 2: to a place. You had to pay. You could buy
Speaker 2: your popcorn and sit down.
Speaker 1: You had to make an active choice in your life.
Speaker 1: Now it's just like– Yeah, steps along the way.
Speaker 2: They've made it more convenient to be entertained. But then again,
Speaker 2: it's like there's something lost in that. Like, oh, the
Speaker 2: movie starts at 7.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 2: We got to get out of here. We got to
Speaker 2: go park. We got to get there. We got to
Speaker 2: get there in time. There was a lot to it.
Speaker 1: Or the idea that if there's only three choices, you
Speaker 1: might stumble into something you wouldn't have watched. Right. And
Speaker 1: be surprised.
Speaker 2: Oh, all the time. You'd go, what do they have
Speaker 2: at the movie theater? Like, what's this?
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Well, there's no more Star Wars tickets left. So we
Speaker 2: could go see this. You want to see this? What
Speaker 2: is it? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This guy's in it though. I like him. Like, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's check it out.
Speaker 2: And you would just take a guess. That's the crazy
Speaker 2: thing about Shawshank is that it wasn't a big hit
Speaker 2: in the movie theater initially. No. Which is really hard
Speaker 2: to believe now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, but nobody
Speaker 1: went to see it.
Speaker 2: That's nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe it was a title they didn't understand or
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was. I was in two
Speaker 1: films that year, one, Hudsucker Proxy and Shawshank Redemption, two
Speaker 1: really challenging titles. But like what's it about? Hudsucker? I
Speaker 1: don't know. What's it about? I had people coming up
Speaker 1: to me and saying, I really liked you in that
Speaker 1: Scrimshaw Reduction. I'm like, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2: Especially if they don't plan on meeting you and they
Speaker 2: run into you at a restaurant. Like, Tim Robbins, that movie, the.
Speaker 1: Shawshank, Trimshaw. Shimshank. Shimshank, Shawshank.
Speaker 2: What did it come out against? What other films were
Speaker 2: out at the same time as Shawshank? Was there other
Speaker 2: like big movies? Forrest Gump. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Jurassic Park.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Pulp Fiction. Oh, Jesus.
Speaker 2: Ace Ventura. Oh, my God. Ace Ventura, too? That's one
Speaker 2: of the best years for movies in history. Oh, my God.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Pulp Fiction.
Speaker 1: Oh, my God. But, you know, it made its way,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, because... So Ted Turner was running Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: at the time, right? And Warner Brothers produced Shawshank Redemption.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: When he sold the rights to it for television, he
Speaker 1: sold it to himself at the lowest cost possible. So
Speaker 1: basically you had a film nominated for seven Academy Awards.
Speaker 1: It was getting sold like it was beach blanket bullshit.
Speaker 1: And so it didn't cost him anything to put it
Speaker 1: on his channel. So he put it on again and
Speaker 1: again and again, was getting all those advertising dollars that
Speaker 1: come with playing something on his TV channel. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why it caught on because it was ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: It was always there. It was always something you could see.
Speaker 1: And so eventually people understood what kind of movie it was.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so that's a good example of where someone's business
Speaker 1: acumen or– Greed or whatever you want to call it
Speaker 1: winds up producing something quite lovely, something that actually I'm
Speaker 1: really grateful for because so many people know that film.
Speaker 1: And it's been like number one on IMDb for the
Speaker 1: last 15 years, 20 years.
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: And that was one of those movies that also took
Speaker 2: off like wildfire once it got into video because once
Speaker 2: people could watch it at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was– even though if it didn't do as well
Speaker 2: in the theaters as it should have, on video it
Speaker 2: did fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is why I really– I always remember that
Speaker 1: when I'm in a movie and it doesn't quote-unquote perform.
Speaker 1: I'm the turtle. I know the turtle can win the race.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's– That was something that was lost also
Speaker 2: during the pandemic, and I was really worried about that,
Speaker 2: that it wasn't going to come back. It seemed like
Speaker 2: it was so easy to stream films at home that
Speaker 2: people just– for a while, it was hard to get
Speaker 2: people to go out to movie theaters.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the experience is very different.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's very different.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's been a struggle. And I think also a
Speaker 1: lot of producers in Hollywood– or studios lost faith in
Speaker 1: their adult audience, even before the pandemic. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were producing movies for teenagers and, you know, there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that, but, uh, because they can be, that
Speaker 1: can drive an economic engine. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, films like Shawshank Redemption would not get made
Speaker 1: today because they're about something that isn't about the, the whole,
Speaker 1: huge multi-platform experience of an action movie. And that's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of migrated into streamers. People, adults that
Speaker 1: like to watch stuff tend to watch these longer form things.
Speaker 1: And that's a nice thing in a way because it's
Speaker 1: allowing filmmakers to make 10-hour films. You know, when you
Speaker 1: think about it, a season of a show is 10 hours.
Speaker 1: And so you can think in this like kind of
Speaker 1: long form of telling a story, which is a nice thing,
Speaker 1: which would have been impossible in old Hollywood. You've got
Speaker 1: to keep it under two hours. So now you have
Speaker 1: the opportunity– creators have the opportunity to create long form entertainment.
Speaker 2: Well, that I think is one of the beautiful things
Speaker 2: about some of these Netflix series is that you– like
Speaker 2: things like Stranger Things. You essentially have a 30-hour movie.
Speaker 2: Or however many episodes it is. And like Ozark is
Speaker 2: a great example of that. It's like a fucking amazing show.
Speaker 2: And it's essentially like a movie every week. And the
Speaker 2: story continues to progress. And you get a chance to
Speaker 2: really stretch something out. But you get the quality of
Speaker 2: like a great film. But you get it extended. You know,
Speaker 2: these huge budgets, the fact that they're able to do this, like,
Speaker 2: So because of streaming, it has opened up this long
Speaker 2: form aspect of storytelling that I think is really difficult
Speaker 2: to do in a movie. Like Kill Bill kind of
Speaker 2: did it a little bit.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 2: You have two episodes of it.
Speaker 1: It's nice also as an actor, like with Silo, I've
Speaker 1: had three seasons. The first two seasons, my character represented something,
Speaker 1: which is … It completely shifts in season three.
Speaker 2: Oh, spoiler alert. Don't tell me.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not telling you what it is. I can't
Speaker 1: believe you did that. I'm just telling you that.
Speaker 2: You fucked it up for me. Now I'm going to
Speaker 2: be looking for that.
Speaker 1: You won't even be able to guess.
Speaker 2: Okay. Oh, good.
Speaker 1: Good. It's such a profound– and it was fun to play.
Speaker 1: It was like this kind of like– and I was
Speaker 1: told about this at the beginning. The creator said, you know, listen,
Speaker 1: wait until season three.
Speaker 2: That's interesting because I always wonder how far they map
Speaker 2: these things out. Did they even know that they were
Speaker 2: going to be picked up for season three when he started?
Speaker 1: No, but they knew at the end of season one
Speaker 1: what the trajectory of two and three was.
Speaker 2: So if it got picked up, they had a plan?
Speaker 1: Well, if they were going to get picked up, they
Speaker 1: would have to tell the studio what two and three are. Right?
Speaker 1: So the other thing that you have to consider is
Speaker 1: that if you're an asshole, they'll fucking kill you.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 1: Right. Writers don't, you know, writers don't, you know, if
Speaker 1: an actor is like trouble, right, right, right. They'll kill him.
Speaker 1: I've heard it. I've heard, I've been told about, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the, one of the guys I
Speaker 1: worked with was, uh, I won't say his name, but
Speaker 1: you know, when I was directing for television, um, uh,
Speaker 1: I did a couple episodes on this show and, He
Speaker 1: told me about a show that he was doing where
Speaker 1: there were three actors that were giving him a real
Speaker 1: hard time. And one of them was getting in trouble
Speaker 1: because of sexual inappropriateness. One was getting in trouble because
Speaker 1: of– they were too much in their head and the
Speaker 1: other was something else, something about another– basically they shot
Speaker 1: them all in the anatomy that was associated with what
Speaker 1: their problem was. Yeah. All three of them were shot
Speaker 1: in the finale. Oh, no. He said, well, we allowed
Speaker 1: a couple of them to survive, but one we really
Speaker 1: killed off. So, you know, you don't mess with the writers.
Speaker 1: They're in television. They wield a lot of power.
Speaker 2: Not only that, they're also looking for angles, different places
Speaker 2: to take the character.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And if you're a douchebag, you're like, let's.
Speaker 1: Fucking kill this guy. Yeah, that'll be a good show.
Speaker 1: Let's figure out a way to kill this guy off.
Speaker 2: Let's turn him into a pedophile and then we kill him. Basically,
Speaker 2: you can do whatever you want. Here's the twist. I
Speaker 2: didn't see this coming. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Watch out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Be nice.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, there's a lot of fear in Hollywood
Speaker 2: when it comes to AI and replacing writers and replacing
Speaker 2: actors and just replacing this whole human created thing of storytelling.
Speaker 2: And I think writers in particular are really terrified because
Speaker 2: you could kind of, you know, with with. AI engines today,
Speaker 2: you could kind of take a few films, right? Like
Speaker 2: you could kind of take like Bullet and Heat and
Speaker 2: a few– and they say, make me John Wick meets
Speaker 2: Bullet meets Heat. And this is the protagonist. This is
Speaker 2: what he's facing. These are the issues. And AI can
Speaker 2: churn it out in a few minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then you could say make it more like Quentin
Speaker 2: Tarantino would do it and then it will do that.
Speaker 2: It will fix it in that way.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: And then you say, OK, I want it more like
Speaker 2: Kubrick aspects to it. I want some weirdness to it,
Speaker 2: some real thought, some Easter eggs, some hidden aspects to
Speaker 2: it that people connect later. It will do that. It
Speaker 2: can do stuff instantaneously based on– and it's kind of stealing, right?
Speaker 2: But it's not, right? It's making an original thing but
Speaker 2: it's not. because it's inspired by everything else that's already
Speaker 2: been made, but that's kind of what people do, but
Speaker 2: not in the same way. And we don't do it
Speaker 2: that quick either. And so for writers, it's fucking terrifying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And who do you sue? I mean, you can't sue a.
Speaker 2: Well, artists are having a real problem with that.
Speaker 1: I have a real problem with it. Yeah. I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't like it at all, but I also have
Speaker 1: faith in the individuality of the human, um, experience and, uh,
Speaker 1: What I– like I'm writing a companion piece to the
Speaker 1: player right now and what would happen if that character
Speaker 1: was alive today. And so I have my perspective that
Speaker 1: only I'm going to bring to that. I don't think
Speaker 1: you could plug that into it.
Speaker 2: No, no, no.
Speaker 1: So I think talented people will figure out a way
Speaker 1: to be individual and apart from AI and But I
Speaker 1: also really don't like the lack of protection that the
Speaker 1: guilds and the unions are offering their membership. There should
Speaker 1: have been a hard line for the actors union and
Speaker 1: there wasn't. The hard line should have been you cannot
Speaker 1: use this to replace actors.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Or writers. But there was compromise and– or writers for
Speaker 1: the writers union. I don't think that that protection was
Speaker 1: held up at the last negotiations and I think that
Speaker 1: we're going to see the ramifications of that unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what's scary is that ultimately economics has a
Speaker 2: major impact on the decisions that they make and it's
Speaker 2: way cheaper to do it that way. It's way cheaper
Speaker 2: to use AI to write things than screenwriters, especially really
Speaker 2: talented screenwriters, even though it's kind of drawing on the
Speaker 2: past creative work. Of really talented screenwriters.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They don't get compensated for it. I think ultimately people
Speaker 2: are going to want and appreciate something that's made by
Speaker 2: a human being because it's one of the things– it's
Speaker 2: what we really– not just be entertained. We really love
Speaker 2: the fact that someone made something.
Speaker 1: Well, my girlfriend, Reed Morano, has been advocating for a
Speaker 1: seal to be put on projects that are made without AI.
Speaker 2: That's a great idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That is a very good idea.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 2: I like that a lot. I think– yeah. Instead of
Speaker 2: like the parental warning.
Speaker 1: AI-free. Yeah.
Speaker 2: AI-free, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No GMO foods, bitch. There's something to that. I think
Speaker 2: that's a great idea actually. I think that might be
Speaker 2: the way– that might be the solution is a seal.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like that a lot. Makes sense. People– When you
Speaker 2: see a great something that someone made, one of the
Speaker 2: things that you really like about it is that it
Speaker 2: came from a human being's creativity. Did you see Obsession?
Speaker 1: No. It's fucking great.
Speaker 2: It's so good. It's so crazy and so creepy and
Speaker 2: so weird and so brilliant. And like no one in
Speaker 2: it is famous and it's phenomenal and it's really original
Speaker 2: and creepy. And one of the things I loved is
Speaker 2: like this is– what is it, like 25 or something
Speaker 2: like that?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he's 25 years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Who, you know, had done a bunch of YouTube stuff.
Speaker 1: I love it. It's a complete accident. Huge hit.
Speaker 2: Has this amazing idea. And you got these people who
Speaker 2: they're relatively unknown, but really talented.
Speaker 1: We're craving that. Yes.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: We don't want the formula. Right. We never have wanted
Speaker 1: the formula. And it's so maddening to try to set
Speaker 1: a movie up right now in Hollywood because what they
Speaker 1: want is they want... Someone, an actor that's worth $ 20
Speaker 1: million and they'll give you $ 10 million to do the film.
Speaker 1: You get the guy that, that they normally would have
Speaker 1: to pay $ 20 million and you get him to do
Speaker 1: your film for, you know, 300,000, you got a film.
Speaker 2: Good luck.
Speaker 1: There's no gamblers anymore.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: There's no risk takers. When I was coming up, you know,
Speaker 1: you had these guys that like, actually Joe, you know,
Speaker 1: Joe Roth gave me the money to do cradle will
Speaker 1: rock this, It was basically like, here you go, kid.
Speaker 2: Do it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, really? I get to do this? I don't
Speaker 1: wound up with final cut and everything. They used to
Speaker 1: do that. They used to invest in the risk, right?
Speaker 1: Because only will the risk produce something genuine and new
Speaker 1: and fresh. If you don't gamble– you're, and you're, you're
Speaker 1: measured and you're on a formula and you got your stars.
Speaker 1: It's going to, the audience is going to know it. Yep. They, they,
Speaker 1: they know it's, Oh, this is prepackaged and pre-programmed for
Speaker 1: my demographic. Yeah. And I kind of resent it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, whereas something like that obsession is like coming
Speaker 1: out of left field. No one is predicting it, programming it.
Speaker 1: It's just an accident and people love it. Yeah. That's what,
Speaker 1: It's exciting about– it's like when you're trying a new
Speaker 1: material in a club and you're like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is going to work, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: fucking do it. And it gets the laugh. That thrill
Speaker 1: is what it's all about, right? That's the moment where
Speaker 1: you go, I gambled and it paid off.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's– I don't know how much we have that
Speaker 1: experience anymore in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's just because of the extreme cost
Speaker 2: that's involved? I mean just to promote a film, like
Speaker 2: if you have a film and it's got a budget,
Speaker 2: like especially– I think is that– it's probably why so
Speaker 2: many superhero movies get greenlit, right? Because it's one of
Speaker 2: the only gambles. Like if you're gambling on an Avengers movie,
Speaker 2: like you can't miss. Get the Hulk to smash a
Speaker 2: bunch of shit. Captain America comes in. You're good.
Speaker 1: You're good.
Speaker 2: You're going to make your money back. And so you
Speaker 2: kind of have to– you know, like if you're a
Speaker 2: money person, if you're not a creative person, you're just
Speaker 2: a money person who happens to be in the movie business,
Speaker 2: which I'm sure a lot of them are. They're just
Speaker 2: looking at it as a return on investment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I, you know, that's always been that way
Speaker 1: to some degree, but, um, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know why it became such a risk to try new stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, because they're not putting that much money into it.
Speaker 1: You know, those Marvel movies, they're costing $ 250 million, $ 200
Speaker 1: million to produce. Right. There's independent filmmakers that are proven
Speaker 1: independent filmmakers that are asking for like $ 5.
Speaker 2: Million, $ 4.
Speaker 1: Million to do a film. So if they put some
Speaker 1: advertisement in it, maybe it's going to cost them $ 14 million,
Speaker 1: all told. And, you know, can they make that back?
Speaker 1: Is the marketplace going to? Support that. Who knows? I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be an investor, but I also, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a nostalgia for a time when Robert Altman
Speaker 1: could make a film, you know. Yeah. And it could
Speaker 1: just blow people's minds. And then the next film he made,
Speaker 1: you know, as he would gleefully tell you, they're going
Speaker 1: to hate this one, you know. And I love that,
Speaker 1: you know, that. And people would either love it or
Speaker 1: hate it, but he was making his own films. He
Speaker 1: was making distinctive films that were him.
Speaker 2: Is it more difficult or easier to get a film
Speaker 2: released today if you make it yourself?
Speaker 1: Because you don't have distribution, really. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: suppose in the future there's going to be some form
Speaker 1: of distribution that will be more egalitarian. But right now
Speaker 1: it's a huge risk.
Speaker 2: How does distribution work? Like say if you decided You're
Speaker 2: going to get a bunch of investors together and put
Speaker 2: together a film. Do you have to get distribution before
Speaker 2: you even start producing?
Speaker 1: Yes. You have to have foreign sales in place.
Speaker 2: Whoa. Foreign sales.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like I think basically the economic model right now
Speaker 1: is the investors want to be paid and not be
Speaker 1: losing money by the time they start shooting. In other words,
Speaker 1: they're not going to lose money. They've already sold it
Speaker 1: for more. Then they've paid. And so there's really no risk,
Speaker 1: no gamble. Then if the movie catches fire at a
Speaker 1: film festival, then they'll put the money into advertising. If
Speaker 1: it doesn't catch fire at a film festival or with critics,
Speaker 1: they'll just, you know, okay, I already made my money.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll just sell it to, you know, DVDs, whatever.
Speaker 2: God, what a fucking shitty environment to create something.
Speaker 1: It's hard. It's hard. Yeah, my gal's struggling with that
Speaker 1: right now. I checked out of that hotel a while back.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't want my heart broken like that.
Speaker 1: So I've just been doing things on my own. I've
Speaker 1: been producing things on my own, shooting them, editing them.
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons I wanted to do this
Speaker 1: website was because I've got all this stuff that is
Speaker 1: unreleased and– Just going to start releasing it slowly.
Speaker 2: Is that more satisfying to do it that way?
Speaker 1: No, it's more satisfying to go to Cannes and win
Speaker 1: Best Actor. I mean it's much more satisfying when you
Speaker 1: have a machine behind you that's supporting it. It's great.
Speaker 1: Mystic River, that kind of like you have Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: like we love this film. We're going to make sure
Speaker 1: that people see it. That's what you need. You need
Speaker 1: your sponsors that get it, that want people to see it,
Speaker 1: that see the value of it. And they'll put money
Speaker 1: into advertising and that's a great experience to be in.
Speaker 1: The other thing is just pretty lonely. It's just you're
Speaker 1: trying your best. I was in three movies after I
Speaker 1: won the Oscar for Mystic River that I've considered three
Speaker 1: of the best movies in my career. But nobody has
Speaker 1: seen them. Secret Life of Words, Code 46 and Catch
Speaker 1: a Fire. And they're all excellent movies. But they came
Speaker 1: at a time where the producers or the people that
Speaker 1: were distributing them didn't really want to risk the money
Speaker 1: that it would take.
Speaker 2: See, that's where there's a room for like a Siskel
Speaker 2: and Ebert type character today that can find those films
Speaker 2: and say, hey, this one slipped under the radar. But
Speaker 2: this is really– an actual person that's a giant movie
Speaker 2: buff that can go back and watch these and comment
Speaker 2: on them. And we don't really– Back then, Siskel and
Speaker 2: Ebert were the guys. If they gave you two thumbs down,
Speaker 2: you were fucked.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You were fucked.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And, you know, they were very catty with each other.
Speaker 2: It was a fun thing. It's fun to watch the outtakes,
Speaker 2: how much those guys actually didn't get along.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I was lucky with them. They gave me
Speaker 1: great reviews.
Speaker 2: It was good. They had good taste.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They did. And they loved film.
Speaker 2: Yes. They clearly loved film and they loved all aspects
Speaker 2: of it and they would talk about it The great
Speaker 2: understanding and great passion, the subtleties of the performances and
Speaker 2: what really– and how it was put together. Even they
Speaker 2: talk about the score. Yeah. They loved it.
Speaker 1: And they'd spend like 15 minutes on each film too,
Speaker 1: which was– never happened.
Speaker 2: And it was a hugely successful show, which is like
Speaker 2: really confusing why there's not something like that today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because there's so much content. Today, if you were like–
Speaker 2: it's not like what's out in the movies right now.
Speaker 2: Like today, fucking there's a million shows that are streaming.
Speaker 2: There's so much shit going on. There's so much content
Speaker 2: that if you had a trusted source, a person who's
Speaker 2: like a real good critic of stuff, really– not even
Speaker 2: a critic. An appreciator is a better word. Like someone
Speaker 2: who's a real passionate enthusiast of film and of– you know,
Speaker 2: different creative works. They could just talk about something and
Speaker 2: recommend stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But then there's the burnout of that too. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I would talk to some of these guys
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, you know, for every one of
Speaker 1: those good films, we have to see like 10 dreck,
Speaker 1: you know, and the time spent watching these things kind
Speaker 1: of mind numbingly painful for some of these people, you know,
Speaker 1: imagine having to, you know, Weed through the muck to
Speaker 1: get to the gems.
Speaker 2: I guess. But can't you just walk out of the film?
Speaker 2: Just like you walk out of a movie theater and
Speaker 2: you're like, this movie sucks. I've done that a few times.
Speaker 1: Me too.
Speaker 2: It's a terrible place to be.
Speaker 1: Me too.
Speaker 2: You're like, I can't believe I'm leaving.
Speaker 1: Hard to do in the live theater though because when
Speaker 1: they know you're there. Right.
Speaker 2: That's different. But if you're watching it at home, I
Speaker 2: mean it's really what you're trying to do. You want
Speaker 2: to be the one of the person that says, this
Speaker 2: is the worst fucking movie I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 2: And that's what you're doing. But if you want to
Speaker 2: be a person who's just an enthusiast of great stuff
Speaker 2: and just keep it on the positive side, there's so
Speaker 2: much great stuff to review and so many great things
Speaker 2: from the past that people haven't seen before that you
Speaker 2: could sort of turn people on to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that would be great.
Speaker 2: It's kind of weird that there's not someone like that
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: It is weird. It is weird. I think maybe you
Speaker 1: should do that, produce that.
Speaker 2: No, I'm busy.
Speaker 1: You should produce that.
Speaker 2: But I mean it just doesn't even make sense that
Speaker 2: there's so many different– like there's so much content but
Speaker 2: yet there's not that one thing that was a really
Speaker 2: big part of the movie experience when we were younger.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the– that idea that there's some exciting movie
Speaker 1: coming out on Friday and we're going to go to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was huge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was huge. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And a movie was coming out. Like I guess you
Speaker 2: have it right now with The Odyssey.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of people are– it's like one of
Speaker 2: those movies that's so big people are scrambling to go
Speaker 2: see it in the movie theaters and it's getting people
Speaker 2: excited about it. Along with a lot of the culture
Speaker 2: war controversies that everybody that I know that's seen– I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it yet. It says fucking throw all that away.
Speaker 2: The movie is amazing.
Speaker 1: That's what I hear. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They're just like– it's almost like a good way to
Speaker 2: bait people into getting really confrontational about it. Aren't you
Speaker 2: getting tired of that though? Oh, yeah. Real tired of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like– It's not correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's just– I'm tired of it from both sides. I
Speaker 1: don't want to hear judgment.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I just– help me. I don't want to be in
Speaker 1: the middle of this fight constantly. It's the only– I
Speaker 1: feel like this is, again, what we were talking about before.
Speaker 1: It's the– as long as we're fighting with each other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then we're fighting about films that are coming out.
Speaker 1: I was like, come on, guys.
Speaker 2: It's so stupid.
Speaker 1: Calm down. Calm down.
Speaker 2: Like I don't care. It's just– is it entertaining? Is
Speaker 2: it good? It doesn't have to be correct. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean anything to me. There's never been a time in
Speaker 2: history where correct was important to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or indicative of great art.
Speaker 2: Right. It's just make it good and by all accounts,
Speaker 2: everyone that I know that's seen the movie says it's
Speaker 2: fucking incredible. I'm going to try to see it soon.
Speaker 2: But the culture war part of it is like at
Speaker 2: the very least, it got people excited to see it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And either to hate it or– but I know a
Speaker 2: lot of people that wanted to go hate it because
Speaker 2: they were upset. But Elliot Page played this person.
Speaker 1: I understand that.
Speaker 2: Helen of Troy is a black lady. Like who fucking cares?
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. Not only that, it's a made-up story.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's a myth to begin with.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It apparently might actually be based on a real
Speaker 2: place though. They used to think that Troy was not
Speaker 2: a real place and then they discovered it. I think
Speaker 2: that was– was it in the 70s? When did they
Speaker 2: discover Troy? Because they used to think that it was
Speaker 2: completely mythical, that it was just fiction, a work of fiction.
Speaker 2: And then they found the actual real city.
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh.
Speaker 2: Like that's the weird thing about really old stories is
Speaker 2: that like there's so– it's so ambiguous as to what
Speaker 2: was the root– what was the origin of the story?
Speaker 2: Was this a real event? Have you ever.
Speaker 1: Stood on the stage of an old Roman amphitheater? Yes.
Speaker 1: That's something else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's history in those stones. And, you know, we were
Speaker 1: doing a show over in Lyon, France, in one of
Speaker 1: those theaters. And we found something out because we were
Speaker 1: doing rehearsal. And when you're talking to the other actor
Speaker 1: like this, You can't hear it out there at all.
Speaker 1: And so it told us that what they were doing
Speaker 1: was this, you know, back in the old days. They
Speaker 1: had to perform out because you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: hear if you were doing realistically talking to someone making
Speaker 1: eye contact.
Speaker 2: That's what's weird about early film is that early film
Speaker 2: you have stage actors who are used to doing it
Speaker 2: with no microphones projecting now doing it on film. So
Speaker 2: it looks odd. It's like there was this transitionary period
Speaker 2: and then Brando came along and Brando just did it real.
Speaker 2: And everybody's like, what the fuck is he doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like he's acting like a real person. This is crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Montgomery cliff too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was a huge step forward for all of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To take the onus off the theatrical and get more
Speaker 1: into the real.
Speaker 2: And again, if you really think about it, not a
Speaker 2: whole lot of time between the invention of film and
Speaker 2: then movie stars and all these things happening. Like this
Speaker 2: is a completely new cultural thing. Like from the early,
Speaker 2: like what was the first film? Like the first film
Speaker 2: with sound. What year was that?
Speaker 1: 1920s.
Speaker 2: Wow. So think of that. So you have from 27
Speaker 2: and then just a few decades later, you have on
Speaker 2: the waterfront, you have the hustler, you have these, these
Speaker 2: incredible movies that, Do they just have to figure out
Speaker 2: on the fly how to– Citizen Kane. They have to
Speaker 2: figure out on the fly how to do this.
Speaker 1: But also the– if you ever watch the first films,
Speaker 1: like the silent films and the ability to tell a
Speaker 1: story without words, which was a whole other talent. I
Speaker 1: mean you watch those Chaplin films. That man was insanely talented.
Speaker 2: Well, Nosferatu. The original Nosferatu?
Speaker 1: I love that film.
Speaker 2: I saw that at a public library in San Francisco
Speaker 2: when I was a kid. They had a night where
Speaker 2: they played it, and I went to see it. I
Speaker 2: was like, this is nuts.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 2: Incredible film. What year was that film?
Speaker 1: 1922. 1922.
Speaker 2: And then Metropolis.
Speaker 1: Was a little bit.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That's a crazy movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I love that old stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's great. Those movies are great. And at the time,
Speaker 2: you've got to imagine– Like the experience of going to
Speaker 2: see that where no one had seen movies before. This
Speaker 2: is like a new thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Seeing things moving around on a giant screen like this
Speaker 2: is mad.
Speaker 1: Alchemy. Yeah. Crazy magic. Satan.
Speaker 2: And you had to read what they were saying to
Speaker 2: each other on the screen. Yeah. And then music would play.
Speaker 2: They had a guy with an organ that was playing
Speaker 2: music along with it.
Speaker 1: What? Yeah. Super cool.
Speaker 2: It is super cool.
Speaker 1: I would love to. If you could time travel and
Speaker 1: go to one of those movie theaters back there. There
Speaker 1: he is.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the best vampire movies of all time, too.
Speaker 1: And the lighting is just so good. German expressionist. Did
Speaker 1: you ever see M? Peter Lorre.
Speaker 2: It's just M?
Speaker 1: It's called M, yeah.
Speaker 2: The letter M?
Speaker 1: Isn't it? 1931. Yeah, 1931.
Speaker 2: No, I never saw it.
Speaker 1: It's really good.
Speaker 2: What is it? What's it about?
Speaker 1: About a murderer that's stalking a bunch of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a huge fan of that whole genre of filmmaking.
Speaker 2: Well, there's something so exciting about it because when you
Speaker 2: limit the sensory input, like you have to read the
Speaker 2: words and it's all black and white and there's music playing.
Speaker 2: It's like it's a totally different thing that you're taking in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like it's almost like half reading, half watching.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, like you're reading like you don't hear their voices.
Speaker 2: You have to create their voices in your head. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you're feeling in a different way because of the
Speaker 1: you know, it's black and white. So it's not real,
Speaker 1: but it is real. And so, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a great, great form. We should have more of those.
Speaker 2: It's just hard to imagine that this is only 100
Speaker 2: years old. That from there to now, this is 100 years.
Speaker 2: That's a blink of an eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when you think about human history, like when we
Speaker 2: think about like the 1500s versus the 1600s, we kind
Speaker 2: of think it's basically the same. If you're born in
Speaker 2: 1520 or 1620, it's fucking exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But if you're born in 1920 or 2020, it's a
Speaker 2: fucking completely different world you're living in.
Speaker 1: Huge.
Speaker 2: 1920, you have Nosferatu. 2026, you have the Odyssey. Right.
Speaker 2: You have Dune. You have these insane films.
Speaker 1: Right. Not to mention the technology you personally possess.
Speaker 2: Yes. Right.
Speaker 1: In your pocket.
Speaker 2: Right. Any moment in time, you could stream a movie.
Speaker 1: I could see Nosferatu right now on here. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or the Robert Eggers one, the new one, which
Speaker 2: is fucking fantastic. But it's just instantaneous. Everything's instantaneous and
Speaker 2: everything's right there for you. So it's great in that
Speaker 2: sense that you will be entertained. There's something to watch
Speaker 2: no matter what.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 2: You're missing something on the specialness of having to go
Speaker 2: out and go to a place, even go to a
Speaker 2: video store and go get it. There's something missing.
Speaker 1: I think that that's really at the core of it
Speaker 1: though is the– I've decided this is what I'm going
Speaker 1: to do today, the whole thing, like pre-this. I am
Speaker 1: going to be an active participant in my life. It's
Speaker 1: when I first moved to L.A. that I first understood
Speaker 1: this in the late 70s. L.A., as opposed to New
Speaker 1: York where I grew up, L.A., you have to make
Speaker 1: a choice to find your fun. New York, a little
Speaker 1: drop in your lap, right? If you walk down the street,
Speaker 1: something will present itself. But in L.A., when I first
Speaker 1: moved out there, I realized you got to drive there.
Speaker 1: You got to drive and find your fun. And you
Speaker 1: have to be an active participant in your life. cultural life.
Speaker 1: And once I understood that about L.A., I could understand
Speaker 1: how to live there. It was at first very frustrating
Speaker 1: because it was very boring, right? It wasn't happening, you know,
Speaker 1: when I walked out on the street. There was no
Speaker 1: street to walk out on. It was just too big.
Speaker 1: But it's that kind of– I have chosen this weekend
Speaker 1: to drive 30 minutes in that direction to see this
Speaker 1: punk rock band. And I will be an active participant
Speaker 1: in that. And once you do that, you're liberated. Then
Speaker 1: you know anything is possible. But now it's like I
Speaker 1: want it in my backyard.
Speaker 2: Not only that. Now that thing interrupts you while you're
Speaker 2: taking something else in. Right. It constantly wants your attention.
Speaker 2: It's like a puppy. It's like, hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 1: Watch the movie. I want to be fed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's constantly– demanding your attention or at least enticing you
Speaker 2: to take a look at it, vibrating in your pocket,
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you ever thought about trashing it?
Speaker 2: I've gotten off social media for weeks at a time.
Speaker 2: I've done that. But I need it for work too much.
Speaker 2: I need it for emails. I need to– I can't
Speaker 2: always just be in front of a laptop.
Speaker 1: Do you have a– like a flip phone?
Speaker 2: No. No.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about getting one.
Speaker 2: I have a computer that I write on that's not
Speaker 2: connected to anything. My writing computer is just a Lenovo ThinkPad.
Speaker 2: I never use it for anything other than writing. If
Speaker 2: I go online, it's just to research something, like ask
Speaker 2: a question like, what is this?
Speaker 1: How does this work?
Speaker 2: I never surf the web. I don't look at any websites.
Speaker 2: I don't do anything with it. And that helps a
Speaker 2: lot for that. But for phones, I have too many
Speaker 2: friends that are sending me funny things. There's always like
Speaker 2: some funny thing and I'm like, all right, I guess
Speaker 2: I'm back on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Check it out.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, Jesus, this is crazy. There's too much coming
Speaker 2: at you. And the problem is if I put it down,
Speaker 2: which I do often for like the whole day, when
Speaker 2: I pick it up, I'll get 70 text messages to
Speaker 2: go through.
Speaker 1: I know. I know.
Speaker 2: And then I don't respond to some and some people
Speaker 2: get mad and they're like, I'm sorry. It's like it's
Speaker 2: too much. Yeah. It's too much coming in. And then
Speaker 2: there's so much. Hey, look at this. Hey, check this out.
Speaker 2: Have you seen this? What do you think about that?
Speaker 2: You think this is real?
Speaker 1: And then the people that you don't respond to can
Speaker 1: oftentimes take the lack of response as basically you saying,
Speaker 1: fuck you. And that's not the case at all. You
Speaker 1: just don't have the time to do it. Right. And
Speaker 1: you read it and you liked it and you smiled
Speaker 1: but you didn't put a smiley on it.
Speaker 2: Right. You have to put a little heart. You got
Speaker 2: to double click it.
Speaker 1: It's a very strange social dynamic. I'm not sure I'm
Speaker 1: very good at it. No. No.
Speaker 2: It's probably a good sign.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It demands too much. That's the problem. As much
Speaker 2: as it is interesting, if you have a wide social circle,
Speaker 2: it demands too much of your– if you have 100
Speaker 2: units of attention that you have for– use throughout the day.
Speaker 2: It demands too many units.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's just too much coming at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it'll take away from other things that you do.
Speaker 2: And that, that's, that's a real problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like sitting in my garden.
Speaker 2: Is that your thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a really good, I, I, I've,
Speaker 1: I've been gardening. Yeah. That's, that's the real thing. That's
Speaker 1: my peaceful place.
Speaker 2: That's a real thing. It's real.
Speaker 1: It's dirt. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Real plant grows out. Life comes from it.
Speaker 1: Yep. You can eat stuff from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You need stuff to do, right? You need, a
Speaker 2: thing that can take you away from the other things?
Speaker 1: Something to make more beautiful every day. Something to, you know,
Speaker 1: something to care for. It's, you know, whether it's the garden,
Speaker 1: I have a garden in Los Angeles that, you know,
Speaker 1: I grow herbs and I, you know, to walk down
Speaker 1: and put that, those herbs, those fresh herbs in the
Speaker 1: omelet you're making, you know, it's a, it's not, it's
Speaker 1: a small thing, but it's huge. And then I have–
Speaker 1: back east, I planted a garden with my son this year,
Speaker 1: like a vegetable garden. And he's– I haven't been there,
Speaker 1: but he's been saying the tomatoes are coming like crazy
Speaker 1: and the cucumbers. That's such a– yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: It's a– I really love this. I love the idea
Speaker 1: that we can– the earth has so much to offer us.
Speaker 1: All it needs is water and sunlight and it will
Speaker 1: produce all these beautiful things.
Speaker 2: Well, there's built-in human rewards for growing things too. There's
Speaker 2: a human reward system. That we have had in our
Speaker 2: DNA for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. When
Speaker 2: you grow things and they produce fruit and they produce vegetables,
Speaker 2: like it's exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because you're going to eat.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You're going to survive.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then when you're doing your harvest in the fall,
Speaker 1: you have an abundance, right? And then I learned how
Speaker 1: to pickle.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: And that's a joy because now you're set for the winter, right?
Speaker 1: Now you've got a refrigerator full of pickled stuff. And,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to bite into a crisp
Speaker 1: pickle that you grew as a cucumber in the summer
Speaker 1: in December, it's like, you know, this is how they survived.
Speaker 1: You know, this is those, you know, the storage of
Speaker 1: crops and how you how you make them survive through
Speaker 1: the winter. It's a skill that, you know, that. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why we're still here.
Speaker 2: And then you find out that pickling and fermented foods
Speaker 2: and all these things are fantastic for your body.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 2: In a way that other foods just aren't.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And helps your microbiome and helps your gut.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then you can, you know, use the extra
Speaker 1: pickle juice for a martini.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And it's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Or you can just drink it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do that too.
Speaker 2: Actually buy pickle juice. I have a company that sells
Speaker 2: you these little packets of pickle juice and you drink
Speaker 2: it because it's a probiotic beverage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have many jars of. pickles that, or there's
Speaker 1: no more pickles in, but I keep the juice for,
Speaker 1: for drinking. It's, and, you know, fermented foods and, you know,
Speaker 1: I've learned, you know, so much about the, the gut
Speaker 1: biome and, and, and how to make that healthier. And
Speaker 1: all these challenges we're up against with all the poisons
Speaker 1: in our food and how to get around them and
Speaker 1: how to clean, clean, clean yourself out and, I just
Speaker 1: did a cleanse, one of those master cleanses I just
Speaker 1: did 14 days on where you don't eat anything for
Speaker 1: 14 days. And it's amazing how great you feel at
Speaker 1: the end of it.
Speaker 2: 14 whole days, no food at all?
Speaker 1: No food at all.
Speaker 2: Wow. What did you drink?
Speaker 1: Water? Lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup. And that
Speaker 1: will get you through the day. But every morning you're
Speaker 1: doing a purge, right? So you're cleaning out. You're cleaning
Speaker 1: all the poisons out. I do that a couple times
Speaker 1: a year.
Speaker 2: 14 days is a long time with no food.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: What's the first thing you eat when it was over?
Speaker 1: You got to ease your way back in, like clear
Speaker 1: broth first, then soups, then vegetables, then get to the
Speaker 1: next thing.
Speaker 2: Over how long?
Speaker 1: About a week re-entry. Yeah. Whoa. I mean, you're eating,
Speaker 1: but you're not going for the steak first thing. Right, right, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so you have to kind of ease your system
Speaker 1: back into it.
Speaker 2: Do you experience mental clarity when you do that?
Speaker 1: Total mental clarity.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've never done it. The most I've done is a day.
Speaker 1: First three days are tough. But then once you get
Speaker 1: past the third day, it's pretty– your energy level is
Speaker 1: like constant throughout the day. And you can work. I
Speaker 1: play sports with it. It's– around 10 days, you should
Speaker 1: stop doing the physical stuff. Too much exertion. I could
Speaker 1: still take a bike ride and stuff.
Speaker 2: But you were working out three days of no food?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: You have to, you know, everyone's going to have their
Speaker 1: own reaction. So, you know, I'm not advocating even to
Speaker 1: do it. Right. Because, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be responsible for that. But for me personally, it's really helped.
Speaker 1: Because it also, it restarts your system. It basically, you
Speaker 1: get rid of toxins. You're certainly not drinking. You're not
Speaker 1: doing any kind of. abusive shit to yourself. And, uh,
Speaker 1: and basically your body is, is thanking you by the
Speaker 1: clarity it gives you. Like you, you really like, and
Speaker 1: the other thing that happens is I'll just start cleaning shit. Right. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm on a cleanse, I'm going to
Speaker 1: clean a closet because you're not only cleaning yourself, you're
Speaker 1: cleaning your environment around you. And, um, it's, uh, it, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I, I just, I just did it two
Speaker 1: weeks ago. So, Yeah.
Speaker 2: How do you decide when to do it?
Speaker 1: Usually when you've been a little indulgent and you're not
Speaker 1: feeling too good. And, you know, you put on a
Speaker 1: little weight and just like, I don't feel good. I
Speaker 1: want to, you know, clean out.
Speaker 2: You must lose a ton of weight doing that. How
Speaker 2: much have you lost doing 14 days?
Speaker 1: 25 pounds. Whoa. About two a day.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then your body is running completely on ketones, right?
Speaker 2: Because your body is running on fat.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so your body is burning fat and ketones. When
Speaker 2: you run on– I've been on ketogenic diets in the
Speaker 2: past and then I've been on the carnivore diet, which
Speaker 2: does the exact same thing, where your mental clarity is
Speaker 2: just so much better. Like everything just runs smooth. It's
Speaker 2: just like you were saying. You have this level flat
Speaker 2: energy throughout the day. There's no highs and lows like
Speaker 2: crashing after a big meal.
Speaker 1: Or caffeine pumps or all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But staying up till, you know, midnight and fine.
Speaker 1: The energy is fine. And you'll sleep less too. You
Speaker 1: need less sleep for some reason. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: Also, I think it's probably good to give your digestive
Speaker 2: system a little break too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Let it relax. I mean, it's constantly work. Especially if
Speaker 2: you eat all throughout the day, if you're a snacker
Speaker 2: and then you have a late at night, you have
Speaker 2: a little bite to eat, wake up in the morning,
Speaker 2: you have breakfast, like your digestive system is just constantly
Speaker 2: grinding out this food and digesting everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The real, the real poison for me is,
Speaker 1: is sugar. You know, it manifested in alcohol for a while,
Speaker 1: but I don't drink that much anymore. But sugar is the,
Speaker 1: is the, is the big.
Speaker 2: For everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a tough one. It's a, it's a very
Speaker 1: addictive and, and you know, you think, oh, it feels
Speaker 1: great when you, Yeah, first have it, but then it
Speaker 1: makes you pay.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also with modern diets, like the kind of
Speaker 2: sugar that we have available today really never existed in
Speaker 2: the past before.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: For most of human history, if you wanted something sweet,
Speaker 2: you had to eat fruit.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Now, all of a sudden, you've got candy bars. You
Speaker 2: have stuff that comes to you in this insane form
Speaker 2: where you have 100 grams of sugar in something that
Speaker 2: you can eat.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Or a drink. You get one of those– What is it,
Speaker 2: Baskin-Robbins Blizzard? Is that the one that has alcohol?
Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
Speaker 2: That thing?
Speaker 1: Those things will mess you up.
Speaker 2: Oh, you get a headache after you're done.
Speaker 1: I know. It's like alcohol.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's that expression? Candy's dandy, but liquor's quicker. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: liquor's just concentrated sugar. It's just like, you know. But,
Speaker 1: you know, I try not to be too much of
Speaker 1: a zealot about any of this stuff. But I have–
Speaker 1: like my mom was introducing us to natural food in
Speaker 1: late 60s. So she had read a book called Poisons
Speaker 1: on Our Food and started taking processed food out of
Speaker 1: our diet.
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
Speaker 1: White bread. This was early on, like 1967. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: she was a real– she really was a homeopath before
Speaker 1: it was called a homeopath. And wound up getting cancer
Speaker 1: and was told she had to have chemo and said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it. And kicked it herself, you know,
Speaker 1: with changing what she was putting in her body. And
Speaker 1: so I've always, you know, had her as a kind
Speaker 1: of guidepost for my health. She used to always say
Speaker 1: the body is a temple and that the body can
Speaker 1: heal anything. And a lot of it has to do
Speaker 1: with How you approach it in your mind. And if
Speaker 1: you believe that you can heal yourself, you can heal yourself.
Speaker 2: Is she getting this from books?
Speaker 1: I think she got it from a combination of books
Speaker 1: and her faith in Catholicism. I think every religion has
Speaker 1: a fasting day for some reason. That seems to be
Speaker 1: something that is common to all religions. It's important that
Speaker 1: you not eat one day a week. She wouldn't do
Speaker 1: that with us. You know, as kids, she wouldn't starve
Speaker 1: us for a day. But she did have a holistic
Speaker 1: approach to the way that she viewed illness. And I
Speaker 1: remember her drumming it into our heads that if you
Speaker 1: ever get told by a doctor anything, you have to
Speaker 1: challenge it. Go to a different doctor and see if
Speaker 1: they say the same thing. Always, always, always. She lost
Speaker 1: her father and her brother within the course of a
Speaker 1: year to medical malpractice in the 50s. And so she
Speaker 1: had a serious distrust of the medical profession. And back then,
Speaker 1: it was like there was no one even thought about
Speaker 1: suing for malpractice. It was like, that's the doctor. He's
Speaker 1: an authority. figure. You can't mess with him, right? So
Speaker 1: she always approached it with a healthy level of questioning
Speaker 1: whenever she was given advice by doctors.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting. She's always been, you know, I've always
Speaker 1: kind of wondered how she would have reacted to this
Speaker 1: recent thing and all that. Um, but, uh, I, I, I,
Speaker 1: have you ever done ayahuasca? No.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I, I've done DMT, which is the, that's
Speaker 2: the actual compound that's active in ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is an
Speaker 2: orally active version of DMT. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was, uh, You know, when they tell you
Speaker 1: to go in, when I did it, they tell you
Speaker 1: to go in with an intention. And my intention was to,
Speaker 1: you know, I was frustrated with feeling anger about what
Speaker 1: was going on in the world. And I said, I
Speaker 1: want to release that. I don't want to be consumed
Speaker 1: by that anger. And so I wound up in this,
Speaker 1: you know, the heavy duty, you know, journey that ayahuasca is.
Speaker 1: And my mom showed up.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And she's– it's not like you actually hear a voice,
Speaker 1: but you hear a voice, right? You basically– if she's there,
Speaker 1: you know it's her. She's saying something to you. And
Speaker 1: what she said was, you're injured. You're a warrior and
Speaker 1: you're injured and you need to rest. But the fight's
Speaker 1: not over. Wow. That was what she told me in
Speaker 1: response to my intention. Whoa.
Speaker 2: What were you battling?
Speaker 1: I was battling my frustration with the dissolution of society,
Speaker 1: people being angry at each other over ridiculous things, long
Speaker 1: friendships being affected. people being canceled for expressing their opinion,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. And I wanted out. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be absolved of that. I didn't want to be engaged
Speaker 1: in it. And what she told me in the course
Speaker 1: of this thing, believe it or not, you know, I
Speaker 1: understand people will be, oh, that's woo-woo and you're just
Speaker 1: tripping and whatever. But I definitely felt her presence there.
Speaker 1: It was no doubt. I went through a whole journey
Speaker 1: with her. I saw things from our lives together. There
Speaker 1: was one moment where I was, you know, I was
Speaker 1: always been curious about something that happened in kindergarten or something.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. And she, you know, at one point
Speaker 1: I felt her presence and she said, you were right
Speaker 1: about that. I'm sorry we didn't listen to you. You know,
Speaker 1: and this kind of really profoundly deep experience. And, um,
Speaker 1: but at the end of it, I felt completely lighter
Speaker 1: and completely, you know, uh, relieved to have been through
Speaker 1: the experience and a great, great connection with my mom,
Speaker 1: you know, just like a beautiful, like, ah, she, she
Speaker 1: gets it. She, she's still around. I've had quite a
Speaker 1: few experiences in this realm. Um, And my mom, in fact, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, she, she, my father died, uh, when
Speaker 1: he was 80 and my mom was 78 and, um,
Speaker 1: she wasn't sick, but my dad had been dying for
Speaker 1: a while. And, uh, we all got down to say
Speaker 1: goodbye to him. They were living in Mexico at the time.
Speaker 1: And we went to the funeral and my mom was
Speaker 1: very stoic and, and sang very strongly my father's favorite
Speaker 1: song at the funeral. And, She didn't cry and we
Speaker 1: were all concerned about her. We hired a couple of
Speaker 1: people for when we left to take care of her.
Speaker 1: And she was really agitated the last night and she
Speaker 1: was– I was there and she said, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't trust these people. I don't know if they're going
Speaker 1: to talk about you or, you know, and your fame
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. I said, Mom, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just here to get you stuff if
Speaker 1: you need it. Don't worry about it. I go off.
Speaker 1: She wakes up the next morning. She says to my
Speaker 1: sisters who are still in the house with her, everything
Speaker 1: I said last night, don't worry about it. And they said,
Speaker 1: what happened, mom? She said, I had a dream. She said,
Speaker 1: I was in my childhood home in Westwood, California. And
Speaker 1: there was something in my living room and I couldn't
Speaker 1: look at it. It was a stone figure. I couldn't
Speaker 1: look at it. And it was disturbing me. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to look at it. But then I look out
Speaker 1: the bay window and then coming down the street, I
Speaker 1: see led by my first friend in life, a group
Speaker 1: of people coming towards the house. And it didn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. There were people from my childhood, people from
Speaker 1: my choral society, people from my work. But they were
Speaker 1: all there and they all came to the door. And
Speaker 1: when they showed up, I realized everything was going to
Speaker 1: be fine. And I realized, oh, my God, that was
Speaker 1: the departed that had come to say it's going to
Speaker 1: be OK. And so my sisters left. Three days, four
Speaker 1: days later, we got a phone call. My mom has died.
Speaker 1: She wasn't sick. And then my sister talks to the
Speaker 1: woman that was taking care of her. And she said
Speaker 1: it was really strange. You know, the night before she died,
Speaker 1: she said, he's here. And they said, who's here? And
Speaker 1: she said, Gil, my husband. He's here. He's come to
Speaker 1: get me. And they said, no, Mary, he's not. He's
Speaker 1: not there. And she said, oh, no, he most certainly is.
Speaker 1: And he looks very strong because he died feeble. Goes
Speaker 1: to bed that night and passes. Whoa. So even the
Speaker 1: most cynical person in the world that doesn't believe in
Speaker 1: afterlife or anything, how do you explain that? How do
Speaker 1: you explain whatever chemicals were going on in her brain
Speaker 1: to bring her to that passing where she was going
Speaker 1: to join the person that she loved her entire life?
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful thing, regardless of how you look at it.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any value in being cynical about
Speaker 2: these experiences. And even the ayahuasca experience, like this idea
Speaker 2: that you're hallucinating and that that's what this is, doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: It's the same experience. If you really did make contact
Speaker 2: with your mother in the afterlife and you really did
Speaker 2: have this communication versus whatever the fuck hallucination means, I
Speaker 2: don't know what you mean by that, it's the same experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there's no value in being cynical about it. Like
Speaker 2: you get a– you get– There's something that you experience
Speaker 2: from it that's tangible. It's real. You feel it. It
Speaker 2: changes your perspective. It changes the way you feel about
Speaker 2: the world. Like that's a real thing.
Speaker 1: That's a real thing.
Speaker 2: Just because you can't put a measuring tape to it
Speaker 2: or you can't put it on a scale, don't say
Speaker 2: it's not real. That's silly.
Speaker 1: There's so many ways of being that we haven't even
Speaker 1: studied or have no idea about. How people can communicate
Speaker 1: over 2,000 miles. Like a mother wakes up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night knowing something's wrong with their child
Speaker 1: and five minutes later the fucking phone rings. What the
Speaker 1: hell is that?
Speaker 2: Or twins. Twins who have some sort of very strange
Speaker 2: connection with each other.
Speaker 1: When I was– my grandfather, who I was very close to,
Speaker 1: he was– had been dead for two months and I
Speaker 1: had a dream about him. And I woke up like
Speaker 1: startled and I heard his voice. And he said basically,
Speaker 1: don't worry. I'll take care of it. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know what the hell it meant, but it was very clear.
Speaker 1: It was like, I'll take care of it. Fifteen minutes later,
Speaker 1: I get a phone call from Susan. And my son, Miles,
Speaker 1: who was six years old at the time, had run
Speaker 1: out into the middle of Seventh Avenue. And she said
Speaker 1: it was the weirdest thing. It was like something stopped
Speaker 1: him like that. And a car goes behind him and
Speaker 1: a car goes in front of him. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what. just happened. He, he was, he,
Speaker 1: whatever that is, whatever energy he could muster in, in
Speaker 1: whatever phase of being he was, he fucking saved my
Speaker 1: son's life heroically. I'm no doubt about that. Why would
Speaker 1: he show up and say that to me? He said,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I'll take care of it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So I, I, I totally believe this stuff. I believe
Speaker 1: that we, That life, death, there's other planes of existence
Speaker 1: that we can get to through various means. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be ayahuasca. If you're open to listening in
Speaker 1: different ways, there are great things available for you. It's
Speaker 1: like the idea of an accident. Is it an accident
Speaker 1: that you run into that person that you've been wanting
Speaker 1: to talk to and all of a sudden now they're
Speaker 1: right in front of you? Right. You know, that's not
Speaker 1: an accident. It's, it's divine, whatever, you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: divine is for you. It's, there's, there's another level of
Speaker 1: energy that is going around. We haven't even studied how
Speaker 1: the heart communicates. There's that Spanish or Portuguese cardiologist that
Speaker 1: talks about the realm of communication in the electromagnetic field
Speaker 1: of the heart and what that means and how the
Speaker 1: heart can communicate and has an impact. parts of the
Speaker 1: heart have more neurons in parts of the brain. And
Speaker 1: what is that all about? And it's such that we don't,
Speaker 1: we don't think that way. You know, we don't want
Speaker 1: to experience, we have a, it's a heart is a
Speaker 1: meat pump and that's, it just runs in your entire life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't, this guy's suggesting, no, it's electromagnetic energy.
Speaker 1: It's what makes us live longer if we're with someone
Speaker 1: else or with a pet, you know, that some, that
Speaker 1: people that are, isolated and alone are hurting and they're
Speaker 1: not having that electromagnetic connection with other people. That's why
Speaker 1: we crave crowds. That's why we want to be in
Speaker 1: groups of people. It's a natural thing. It keeps us alive.
Speaker 1: It keeps us activated in a community. But we don't
Speaker 1: study that. We don't study what that is and I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of magical.
Speaker 2: That's why solitary confinement is such a cruel punishment.
Speaker 1: So cruel, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean there's a lot of people that think
Speaker 2: it's actual torture.
Speaker 1: Of course it is. Yeah. Of course it is. You've
Speaker 1: got nothing to interact with. And it's why that lockdown
Speaker 1: was cruel. The scope of that loneliness is just immense
Speaker 1: that some people had to deal with.
Speaker 2: Especially people that were already struggling. Some people were already
Speaker 2: filled with anxiety and they already had suffered from depression.
Speaker 2: They were already weird socially. And then all of a
Speaker 2: sudden they're just completely isolated from everyone else for a
Speaker 2: year or a year and a half depending on where
Speaker 2: you lived. So it's weird this desire that people have
Speaker 2: to define things as real or not real and also
Speaker 2: to let everyone know, oh, I'm not falling for that nonsense. But, God,
Speaker 2: I mean at one point in time do you have
Speaker 2: to say, well, all these stories, all these experiences that
Speaker 2: people have, Maybe there's something to it and maybe this
Speaker 2: closed-mindedness is not benefiting me in any way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean there's magic. There's magic in the world.
Speaker 1: I mean there's this old way of thinking. I became–
Speaker 1: do you know what the– there's a book called The
Speaker 1: Nature of Things by a guy named Lucretius written in
Speaker 1: 350 BC and it's Epicureanism. And Epicureanism now is about
Speaker 1: you like food, you like wine, whatever. Back then it
Speaker 1: was like the whole purpose of this philosophy or religion,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, was that all of
Speaker 1: life is a miracle. Everything that you're seeing in front
Speaker 1: of you is the first time it's happening and will
Speaker 1: never happen again. It's a collision of atoms in a
Speaker 1: particular way. They don't call them atoms, but they call
Speaker 1: them the smallest particles that create unique experiences every moment
Speaker 1: of your life. And the whole purpose of life is
Speaker 1: to seek the pleasure of that and avoid pain. And
Speaker 1: the pain can be either living isolated or without the
Speaker 1: idea of magic or indulging in something where it creates pain.
Speaker 1: Too much pleasure creates pain. But this philosophy in this
Speaker 1: beautiful long-form poem written by Lucretius in 350 B.C., is
Speaker 1: all about magic. It's all about this idea that look
Speaker 1: how lucky we are to wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and see that freaking cactus blooming. You know, that's like
Speaker 1: when we get so inured from that, so, you know,
Speaker 1: anesthetized from the magic and it's all just the doldrum
Speaker 1: every day is the same. That's robbing yourself of so much, right?
Speaker 1: That the idea that What if you just woke up
Speaker 1: and said, hey, it's fucking magic. This is amazing. First
Speaker 1: of all, I'm breathing. Second of all, look at that
Speaker 1: sun coming in the window. This is going to be
Speaker 1: an amazing day. Instead of like, ah, shit, I got
Speaker 1: to get up and do my fucking thing.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: That's also relative because if you were dying in a
Speaker 3: hospital– And you had this opportunity to say, okay, all
Speaker 3: you have to do is say these magic words and
Speaker 3: you'll be transported back to health.
Speaker 2: In your home with a completely new perspective and a
Speaker 2: completely new appreciation for just being healthy and alive.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's just hard for people to shift that perspective and
Speaker 2: think like that all the time. But if you could
Speaker 2: force yourself just as an exercise to say, I am
Speaker 2: so lucky to be above ground. I am so lucky
Speaker 2: to be healthy and alive. mobile if I am and
Speaker 2: I could just go do what I want to do
Speaker 2: and live my life and go say hi to people
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And the idea that you can also– even if things
Speaker 1: are bad, that if you approach life that way, then
Speaker 1: you– there is a possibility of making everything better and
Speaker 1: it has to do with humility. It has to do
Speaker 1: with being able to say I can forgive somebody for something.
Speaker 1: I can also ask forgiveness for something I've done. It's
Speaker 1: all about humility. It's all about humility in the face
Speaker 1: of not only your own personal experience but in how
Speaker 1: you view the universe. Like I– either I'm lucky to
Speaker 1: be here or what a blessing to be able to
Speaker 1: have this life I've had. I want to give. I
Speaker 1: want to– I had this beautiful experience yesterday. When I
Speaker 1: was going through one of my darkest periods, this woman
Speaker 1: showed up. And I'd met her once in my life,
Speaker 1: this Tibetan woman. She's a great singer. And I said,
Speaker 1: why are you here? She said, you're in trouble. I'm
Speaker 1: going to take care of you. And I didn't even
Speaker 1: know her. And I said, all right, OK. And so
Speaker 1: she's here. She did this Reiki healing on me. She sang.
Speaker 1: She wrote incense. And I didn't understand it. I didn't
Speaker 1: understand why she was there. She makes me a meal
Speaker 1: that evening, the first evening. She's done all this healing
Speaker 1: on me. And she says, you know, she makes the
Speaker 1: meal I'm eating. I finish eating. I start taking the dishes, right?
Speaker 1: She says, what are you doing? I said, well, you
Speaker 1: cooked all clean. She says, sit down. That's the problem
Speaker 1: with you people in the West. It's all a business deal.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this for you. Can you just accept that?
Speaker 1: I'm taking care of you. Can you accept that? And
Speaker 1: she said, you will never know how to give love
Speaker 1: until you know how to receive love. And it blew
Speaker 1: my mind. Because at the time, I realized I was
Speaker 1: engaged in that kind of transactional way of looking at relationships.
Speaker 1: That the idea that giving completely is so much better,
Speaker 1: you actually get more out of it than you do
Speaker 1: receiving it. And once I understood that, it kind of
Speaker 1: transformed everything for me because– and that was a person
Speaker 1: that was a total stranger and she showed up just
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. And I said finally at the end
Speaker 1: of it, I said, why are you here? And she said,
Speaker 1: you have done good things. for the world. We need you.
Speaker 1: And she left. And, you know, so I'm, I didn't
Speaker 1: plan that. I didn't, there was, I had no idea
Speaker 1: that was going to happen, but it made me realize
Speaker 1: there are angels in this world. They are manifested as
Speaker 1: human beings, but there are certain kinds of people who
Speaker 1: That are there for you if you are open for it.
Speaker 1: If you are closed off and cynical, you will not
Speaker 1: see your angels. But if you are maybe sometimes just
Speaker 1: completely wiped and you have no, you know, you're just
Speaker 1: ready to receive it. And maybe the fact that I
Speaker 1: was able to receive that I think really helped me
Speaker 1: and helped me shift everything. It's always a struggle, of course.
Speaker 1: That lesson doesn't mean that I'm that way forever. But
Speaker 1: it's a reminder. It's that there is another energy in
Speaker 1: the world that is actually an energy of good. We
Speaker 1: are consumed by the bad all the time. There's all
Speaker 1: these negative forces that are trying to bring us down.
Speaker 1: And I think that sometimes we get so Defeated by
Speaker 1: those things that we are not open to the energy
Speaker 1: of the angels, the good. And when I say angels,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: Mean– I know what you mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Super positive people. Something– some pure expression of love and
Speaker 2: compassion and generosity.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this is the real problem with social media and
Speaker 2: algorithms in particular is that it really highlights the things
Speaker 2: that make you upset.
Speaker 1: It does. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that kind of energy is like really is that
Speaker 2: affecting your everyday life? Well, it is if you dive
Speaker 2: into the negativity all day long and you're engrossed in
Speaker 2: social media and getting upset about things rather than experiencing
Speaker 2: the life that's actually in front of you and doing
Speaker 2: it from a positive perspective and not concentrating on all
Speaker 2: these external things That could be making you angry or
Speaker 2: making you frustrated or filling you with anxiety. You're actually
Speaker 2: poisoning yourself with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are. And it's a constant battle because that
Speaker 1: damn thing is buzzing all the time. But I have
Speaker 1: gotten better with it. I will not look at it
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, it's much like we were talking about like film
Speaker 2: and records being a new thing. This is a really
Speaker 2: new thing and this is very invasive. It's a very
Speaker 2: new thing and very invasive. And it's going to take
Speaker 2: a while for people to figure out the right way
Speaker 2: and the wrong way to use it. And what are
Speaker 2: the ramifications and the consequences of using it incorrectly? Because
Speaker 2: no one's teaching that. They're not teaching children that in school.
Speaker 2: There should be a course on this is the negative
Speaker 2: aspect of social media. These are the negative aspects of interaction.
Speaker 2: This is what it's doing to your consciousness. This is
Speaker 2: what it's doing to your focus. It's stealing your joy.
Speaker 2: It's stealing your appreciation of the moment.
Speaker 1: Right. And it's leading you into conflict constantly.
Speaker 2: Constantly.
Speaker 1: And, you know, that's a negative thing. That's a force
Speaker 1: of evil. Yeah. Strong word, but, you know.
Speaker 2: It's the right word, though. You know, it's, again, there's
Speaker 2: these words, good, evil, angel, God. They fuck with people
Speaker 2: because they're like, oh, what is that? It's, I think.
Speaker 2: got to kind of abandon that way of thinking and
Speaker 2: just go, well, there's certainly positive and negative. There's certainly
Speaker 2: love and evil. Those are real things. And there's good.
Speaker 2: There's good in the world. And also, the more you
Speaker 2: concentrate on other things, the more your life is defined
Speaker 2: by those other things, whether it's good or bad. So
Speaker 2: if you're constantly thinking about bad things, like, well, you
Speaker 2: can't have a very loving and amazing life if you're
Speaker 2: constantly inundated with thoughts about negative things. And on the
Speaker 2: other side of it, if you're thinking in a positive
Speaker 2: way and enjoying love and friendship and community and just
Speaker 2: doing stuff that you actually find value in, well, this
Speaker 2: has got to give you better energy. And also the
Speaker 2: way you interact with other people will be different. So
Speaker 2: you'll affect the way they feel and that will have
Speaker 2: that butterfly effect out to the rest of the people
Speaker 2: they come in contact with.
Speaker 1: Not to mention it's really good for your health. Yes.
Speaker 2: Well, like you were saying before, one of the worst
Speaker 2: things for your health is loneliness.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it'll kill you.
Speaker 2: Tim Robbins, you're a cool motherfucker.
Speaker 1: Thank you, man.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. It was great.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Goodbye.