The Joe Rogan experience Jamie's very good doubt what you know He was a shoshank cuz it's all time favorite movie, so he was kind of freaking out when you met you Thanks, Jamie I mean, it's all time. I mean you're a part of one of like easily one of the greatest movies in the history of people I know it's such a gift. I mean when people come up and say something about it. It usually is coming from a pretty deep place Yeah, if you didn't like that movie, there's something you should go to a doctor It's amazing movie and weird that it's a Stephen King movie to you know He's that guy is arguably one of the most prolific eyes in the history of fiction.
Yeah, and in the same novella there was stand by me To oh wow, that's amazing. So weird. He writes stuff very so much. He had to do like a pseudonym at one point time Remember he did mr.
Bachman. He's turning out so many books like hey We can't keep selling these fucking Stephen King books. He's like well, how would I come up with another name? Like give me a fake day Yeah wild yeah, yeah, just a very unusual human you know they exist.
Yeah, holy Madam once really Yeah, did you meet him like when you were filming the movie around the premiere time? Yeah, yeah, he's out there man Yeah, you know during his early days I'm fascinated by his early days because his early days He was off the rails with cocaine and alcohol and that's some of the best shit that he made really doesn't even remember reading it Wow, I think kooj I think is one of the books his wife took out of the garbage because he threw it away He's like fuck this book sucks It was what it was koojau or one of the classics Yeah, and she was like are you out of your fucking mind like this is incredible and he was literally gonna throw it out because he was just out of his mind He was a shining right yeah, so what was it Carrie? He threw Carrie away? Crazy crazy.
Yeah shining was a big movie from a big book for me I was you know working in a nine-five job and you know in between colleges and it really like woke me up Yeah, all kinds of great possibilities in writing well He hated the movie which is so crazy because he felt like Jack Nicholson got insane too quickly really yeah because in the book You know I read the book too. It's very different similar, but it's more of a drawn-out process of him becoming possessed by the property Slower rollout yeah, he like Jack Nicholson was kind of kooky already like right away, which you know It's Jack Nicholson like it's also Stanley Kubrick. It's like he's got to do his interpretation of it I just accept that yeah, that's some scary shit that fuck man. His books are insane Yeah, it's like what is going on inside that guy's or was going on inside that guy's mind when he was writing not knows I think what's he got clean kind of changed and straightened out and different different human now boy I'm fascinated by the off the rails days because the books were so nuts was was shoshick during that time.
I don't know I must have been it must have been because I don't think he got sober until It was decades after his career began now some of the great stuff like I Think all the stand I think all that stuff. He was out of his mind He's right in the midst of all that madness. There's a tenderness. Yeah.
Oh yeah great humanity to it all Yeah, but also just a true understanding of the darkest nature of humans and yeah and how they're influenced and then of course You know demonic possession and Salem's lot and all that other crazies like he was just so good But then the idea that our library can be the you know in shoshick that the library can be the liberation. Yeah, yeah Yeah, no, it was amazing amazing movie. We were talking about your new show silo, which I just not knew it's been around for three seasons I just started watching it so it's new to me. I watched the first two episodes last night It was fucking great and very original and interesting and I was telling you before that it made me think of this place that they discovered Fairly recently in Turkey called Daring Ku you and Daring Ku you is this underground city.
That's massive I think it I think it could I think it could hold 20,000 people Wow something nutty like that I've seen pictures of it. Yeah found completely by accident Yeah So some guy lost one of his chickens went through a hole in the wall and everything back and he was trying to figure out Where this fucking chicken went so he broke down the wall to see what was going on and then they realized that there's this insane Underground city. Oh my god. Yeah underneath this town in Turkey and it's massive.
It's just absolutely massive They have no idea who made it. There's no historical record of it any idea of when well, you know They make guesses based on stuff they find there But it's when you carbon date an object, right? So you could go visit the pyramids today, right? And you could leave behind some stuff, right?
And then everybody dies humanity dies out in a cataclysm and then a hundred thousand years from now people start looking through the Piles of some of these sites in the pyramids probably still be there And if there was any organic material left like a book that you left or you know a leather-bound book or some piece of wood They could carbon date that and then that would say the time that you were there But it wouldn't say the time that the actual structure was made So who knows how long people show me some more pictures of that please? Do they know? No, definitely don't know. They didn't even know it existed.
I mean it was when was it found? I feel like it was found in the 20th century There must have been some kind of hostile force that they built it to exactly or something going on outside and Not just hostile but environmental so 1963 rediscovered in 1963. Wow No, that's crazy is in his fucking house even today only 10% of his accessible deterists the rest is still being explored That's how nuts it is. So how many people do they think it held when it was operational?
I think it's something like 20,000 people and that's how big this place is That's amazing. So they don't know when or why and depending on how around 20,000 people Plus livestock and food stores really how they farm down there who fucking knows? I don't know but they had grain storage. They had all kinds of stuff down there oil presses 18 levels.
They were eating 85 meters So 280 feet deep into the ground with ventilation shafts wells stables wine and oil presses storage rooms chapels and school rooms plus a half ton Circular stone doors that could be rolled shut from the inside only So they were obviously either fighting off some sort of an army or the outside air was hostile. There was something going on too hot Yeah, well, there's been many moments in the time that human beings were alive where there have been cataclysm You know, there's this thing called the Younger Dry impact theory. That's around 11,800 years ago There's all this evidence that there was massive asteroid impacts all over the earth common impacts And they think that it was probably a reset of civilization and so this could have been post that It's could have been how some people survived in in these areas Human beings have an amazing ability to survive. Yeah, I mean, you know, which is silo Yeah, it's really a mom silo is a modern version of Daren Cooley Yeah, yeah, and here I was you know in the middle of lockdown when I received those scripts and I was like oh, this is this is actually talking about right now Yeah, this is about a controlled society where information is censored and where Compliance is necessary and if you don't comply you get sent out into the hostile environment It was all too familiar metaphorically for me perfect timing.
Yeah, perfect timing because you got to think that he must have written that before right? Yeah, many years ago. So it was just got lucky. Yeah, yeah, perfect.
Here we go. Yeah, this episode is brought to you by Squarespace If you're thinking about building a website, you should try Squarespace I know because I use it that's right Joe Rogan calm is powered by Squarespace It has all the features that you need to create a standout website like an AI enhanced website builder SEO optimization tools and seamless checkouts with mobile Paylinks head to squarespace calm slash Rogan for a free trial and when you are ready to launch use the offer code Rogan to save 10% off your first purchase Of a website or domain this episode is brought to you by uber eats hockey seasons here and uber eats is delivering game day deals on Favorites like wings pizza fries and snacks and you can order more than food like gear to rep your team or fresh batteries for the remote When your watch party gets hungry or you just need anything Order in and keep everyone's attention on the ice score great deals on uber eats all season long because hockey is for the hungry Terms apply product availability varies by region see app for details. Yeah, I'm blessed that way in my career We think that's about you ever wonder why you're so lucky Obviously you're very talented, but it's also there's a lot of talented people that don't nothing ever happen I think it comes down to the ability to say no At crucial times when I was facing down either, you know, you know, I remember when I first had my First child and I was broke and I got offered this comedy that was dumb and it was a million bucks And I needed the money and I also had an opportunity if I waited Robert Altman was trying to put together the player So I threw caution in the wind and said no, I can't do that stupid comedy. What was the stupid comedy?
Do you remember? Yeah? It was called folks I remember flying out to LA to meet on it and I'm with Alan Arkin and He was the guy that was gonna play my father in this thing and he said what the fuck are you doing this script for? I said I need the money.
I'm not sure I want to do this thing I was like, thank you Alan Arkin for confirming what I was thinking Wow And so I said no and and then player came through and shifted my whole career Yeah, it's a matter of following that voice in your head the instinct the one that's telling you this is the right way to go Yeah, even though there's all sorts of influence that want to lead you into the other direction There was a period of time about 10 15 years ago when I got offered in the course of Seven months I got offered to play the head of the CIA three times I couldn't even imagine I mean for some reason that was I don't know I have no idea and then a couple years after that again You know you're looking down at your bills and your mortgages and stuff and you need the money and just have to I don't want to do that Right then a few years after a couple years after that I got offered in the course of a couple months one to play the head of FIFA Which is a corrupt organization, but in the movie it was you know, they were the best people in the world, right? Not to mention that the head of FIFA was a Brazilian and I had you know But they were offering a ton of money and basically there's FIFA producing a movie about itself Oh, and after that I got offered to play the head of a Chilean mine that was had just had this huge disaster and turns out the mining company was They were really nice people, you know, according to the script Wasn't bad management or anything or you know that made the disaster happen So I realized that the oligarchs are starting to make a movie about themselves is yeah oligarchical cinema It's like they produce movies that make themselves look really good and you can get away with it. Oh hell Yeah, nobody knows nobody cares somebody they think they can buy anybody and they almost bought me But I just I have to at times I just have to look you know face it down and say listen, it's not right in my heart I can't I can't do it. Yeah, well, that's great.
You've got that North Star. It's great that I had the luxury. Yeah, you know Sometimes people don't have that right in one bad decision can pigeonhole you in a bad direction And they never get the ones that you really want yeah these movies about you playing CIA had did they ever get made? Oh, yeah, yeah, there were TV shows and movies.
Yeah, was any of it any good? Oh I remember the I remember when we're doing movies like, you know the day the Condor, you know, which was like critical Of the CIA and I think now we have the rogue CIA agents that are actually good guys and you know listen CIA You know, whatever it does nobody really knows the extent of what they do, but they do have a lot of good portrayals yeah, well I think there's good people that are in the CIA as well and I think that it's necessary I just think that they obviously have unchecked power and they've done some really fucking shady shit Yeah, you know in the name of this is the right thing to do right now including selling drugs. Yeah, you know, I remember that I remember that that's one. I mean I remember that because I was Cuz I guess I was either right out of high school It was like in that area where the whole Oliver Stone thing was on television all the time and it was all over North all over North Excuse me, yeah, Oliver North and Ronald Reagan and there was this guy Jimmy Tingle hilarious Boston stand-up comedian who had a great joke about it with their interviewing Ronald Reagan and they say mr.
President did you ever sell arms to people who hate us and He's like I don't remember he goes well in the future if you sell arms to people who hate us jot it down I remember that I was in the 80s. I did a play about it. I wrote a play about it Really we performed it with the actors gang. Yeah, there's a meme that was on social media recently that was it showed Oliver North during the whole Iron Contra trials when you know they got caught selling drugs in Los Angeles to fund the conscious versus the San Thanista's Nicaragua And then he goes to jail and then the same guy you see later on Fox News as like a war analyst and it's like Hilarious me like he told me he told me in 1980 whatever the fuck it was where you know He got in trouble that he would eventually be the guy that they call upon for expert advice on what's going on overseas Like deep connection that goes back years all the people that get it wrong to get the got pretty little rack or they got anyone They got it wrong got promotions.
Yeah, and no one got trouble. No one got fired. You know people in the media as well You know they promoted it they got you know better jobs Well, this is kind of the only time in our lifetimes where there's actual real independent media You know where there's independent journalists that are not connected to any major corporations that are operating either on sub stack or online or YouTube or on X It's fascinating because they they're the ones that are exposing all these connections that the media and the central The stage seen all these other government organizations have had where they've all been working together forever Spinning narratives on TV and so like anytime something like the Iraq war happens. We go We've got weapons and mass destruction.
We got to go in there. No weapons and mass destruction No, no one goes away. No one gets in trouble. The same people are on TV telling you about some new thing You have to pay attention to it's like this is nuts This episode is brought to you by chime and I know people don't usually get excited about banking But chime is doing something different and it's worth paying attention to in a recent survey They ranked the number one choice for new checking accounts in America That means real people millions of them are choosing this over traditional banks That's because banking at chime is fee free no monthly fees no overdraft fees and thousands of fee free ATMs But here's the real kicker if you get their chime card It gives you 5% cash back on a category.
You actually pick yourself your savings rate crazy high It's nine times the national average they're calling it the most rewarding way to bank go to chime.com slash Rogan takes a few minutes to sign up Chime is a FinTech not a bank banking services and chime card provided by chime's bank partners terms and limits apply go to chime Dot-com slash disclosures for more details. Well, some people get in trouble people that come up out against it And there's never any apologies. I did I did I you know I risked you know a lot to do it and you know wound up being right But no one ever said hey, you were right, you know, and this was during the Iraq war. Yeah, what did you say?
I? Yeah, I was one of maybe five people that were famous that came out against that wolf Went on you know in various television shows made a couple speeches. I got my appearance at the baseball Hall of Fame for Bull Durham 15th anniversary or something like canceled by the head of the Baseball of Fame it was real you know it was funny because I was just I was doing a show at the time and I heard about it And I had I was sort of writing a response But it was already printed by the time I had my response, right? So I got the next day I got a bunch of people contacting me I hired a crisis PR person for the first time in my life and wound up getting my letter to bail Patraski the head of the Hall of Fame out there with the with the press release that they were basically ambushed trying to you know to call me a traitor and all this stuff and So I pushed back and the the publicist that I had hired was very smart He said we're gonna send us all the sports writers and it was the sports writers that wrote the articles defending freedom of speech Wow at the time So it was what here was this is this is right after 9-11 this was right when we were cooking up the war 2003 So and I remember you know and I also wrote a piece about that called embedded That we've performed for the first time three weeks after a bush landed on that aircraft carrier with a mission accomplished Thing so that wound up playing it across the country We toured it and played in New York public theater and played in London But it was attacked when we went to New York You know they sent someone from the wasn't a theater critic while we were still in previews and published this thing in I think was a new republic Basically calling me conspiracy theorist and I semi-ed all this stuff.
Yeah, I just try to discredit this play that was playing You know that doesn't matter that's what they throw out. It was not anti-Semitic about the book Of course it was just it's one of the things they used to discredit people. What did you know about? So what made you compelled to come out against the war?
I was reading foreign press I was reading stuff from Europe and what they were writing about the weapons of mass destruction and that there wasn't any evidence And it wasn't being covered like it was here It was more open more transparent the reporting and so I was trusting that and I trusting sources that I had trusted in the past and Realized that when I did question the attacks were of a syphras So yeah, usually as a tell like in poker. That's like a it usually means you're on to something over the mark If they if you when I came out against that first war in Iraq in 91 Remember the elder bush said well, you know, this is a democracy people have the right to oppose it That was their response, but this one was like your trader your Saddam supporter terrorists sympathizer all that stuff They really attacked and that told me that it was probably over the target, you know, yeah That had to be a very disturbing moment because look it turns out you were right and not only were you right But now today in 2026 is universally accepted that there were no weapons mass destruction That was a terrible war and it was not something that should have ever happened. Yeah universally Yeah, if you said it today, it's not even remotely controversial. Yeah, well, that's the way it works They finally admit the truth later, you know, they're doing that now with COVID, you know the Fauci's gonna do his thing tomorrow.
I'm very curious to see what happens with that So well, they don't give you a universal pardon for ten years If you didn't do something, you know, you don't campaign for that if there's not some some smoke Yeah, that was a very scary time, you know, it was you know to come out it when when people when the media's attacking you It's a very scary thing But the great good fortune I had in 2003 so living in New York at the time, right? so I would have to walk my kids to school and I Remember thinking oh my god, what's gonna happen? You know, are there gonna be people yelling at me etc and That wasn't the truth the truth was that people if anything said, you know way to go Right, thanks for speaking for us and if they disagree they said, you know, the right to do it That's the way generally people are in this country and should be and I usually would take every year I would take my kids to the final four and that year it was in San Antonio And I remember thinking oh my god going down to Texas and they're gonna yell at me down there and no one said damn thing So the reality on the ground was a lot different than the reality they were creating the reality they were creating was to intimidate other people into silence It wasn't a based on any kind of real reality of people being angry at me. It was more them trying to intimidate others And so the same thing kind of happened.
I recognize that same smell when COVID was happening when people came out and started asking questions and were deplatformed or Marginalized or canceled and you know, I followed what you were going through with the Ivermectin which was A drug that I had taken and you know, I lost my sense of smell and a day later. It was back So I knew there was something going on with that and you know in an emergency. Why not? Find whatever you can treat until your magic potion arrives, you know, wasn't just that was like the completely disingenuous Characterization of it as a veterinary drug and calling it horse-paced or horse dewormer, which is crazy Yeah, it's crazy to what because maybe that would have worked in 1980 But people have to go to the encyclopedia to find out what Ivermectin really was but when you're trying to do that in 2020 It's just too easy to look up.
Oh look it got a Nobel Prize for using human beings Oh, it's great for a yellow fever and dengue fever and river blindness and oh this has been used billions of times Oh, it's one of the safest oh wait a minute in the world health organizations essential medicines list Yeah, this is crazy Yeah, but yet on television It's horse dewormer and even the Rolling Stone had an article where they showed people waiting in line They said that people in Oklahoma were waiting in line at the emergency room with gunshot wounds because they couldn't get in there because So many people were overdosing from Ivermectin, right? Which is just fake. Yeah, and it's in the Rolling Stone You're like, what is going on? This is this is insane even the photograph was fake the photograph showed people wearing winter coats because really the line was people waiting for a flu shot That was the actual line, and they were trying to say that these are people waiting in line to go to the emergency room for gunshot Well, it's like first of all, how many fucking people are getting shot?
No, what's going on over there? Are you there was some fights on the streets wild stuff going on at the time? You know, it's disinformation and yeah And just orchestrated propaganda orchestrated organized with big money behind it wild wilder watch I suspect that that whole period of time was another way to divide us, you know in the larger picture Orchestrated chaos masquerading as a revolution, you know, it's it's it's there's been so many of those things over the past five years You know that you know alliances that you're building and then all of a sudden there's a new crisis And now you don't like those people that you were building alliances with and it's just one after the other and ultimately at the end of the day I think it's all about divisions all about dividing us and making us argue with each other not finding common ground and That's ultimately the strategy that's been used from time immemorial, you know for the power to say in power How do you get people fighting with each other right? Yeah, people don't like to hear that but that's that's a strategy that's been used all throughout history And it's a good one and it works.
Yeah, it works and especially in today's day and age when you have Social media and then you have not just our government but many governments that have fake accounts and these people just get outraged about things or attack things or you know Have a narrative that they push and you don't know if it's real people You don't know what it is just a bunch of accounts you go to the accounts of guys face You know, it's a woman wearing a dress holding a book She seems normal Meanwhile it's a man somewhere with a bank of computers that are connected to the internet that's typing in these different responses with a bunch of Or now it's AI automated, you know, you tell this bot to be a right wing nationalist It's like attacking anything that's yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it's on both sides And it's nuts. It's I was over in London doing a project and I noticed this was during their lockdown And I noticed by my hotel there was this protest and I went down to check it out put my mask on I was very compliant at the start of all this and I I noticed, you know what they were portraying as national front right wingers was actually hippies and homeopaths and free speech activists And I talked to them and I tweeted hey, I don't think it's a right left thing here and Hundreds of attacks of whether their bots are organized army of you know righteousness I have no idea, but it was I just at that point I was like fucking I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put my foot in this water These people are nuts. This is a crazy crazy time Yeah, it was crazy not just from the propaganda perspective but from actual people that I knew that were really terrified that got caught up in it All and it was you know, mass formation psychosis is what some people called it Yeah, I think that's a good description of Robert Malone I think termed that or got that from somebody else But that that's really what it was like everybody just kind of went nutty And there was people that were doing the government's job for the government or the pharmaceutical drug companies job for them They were the ones that were forcing all these things Yeah, and they were doing it because they wanted to be they wanted a solution They wanted to be correct and unfortunately There's a lot of people in this world that don't experience much real adversity and when real adversity comes to them They fall apart and they don't they don't know what to do and they get scared and they lump up together in teams And then they reinforce each other and repeat the same things and and they all want to be a part of the right side of history Or the right side of whatever it is and also they're being led to believe that that that's the virtuous thing to do and you know So it's not like they're you know, they're their intentions are good, right?
And because of that, you know, I've had some experience where friends of mine and people I love that You know fell into that as I did I fell into it for a while, you know that kind of fear based kind of behavior and I just I've come to Understand in my later years that one of the things that's truly liberating is the ability to say I don't know Yeah, and I may have been wrong That these are two things that have led to such great discovery for me It's it's I really don't trust anymore. I don't trust virtuous experts. I don't I don't think I don't think experts or I don't believe in experts. I think if you if you consider yourself an expert you're done learning You're done speaking with others.
Mm. You're done challenging yourself And when we put our faith and trust in people that are deemed experts, it ultimately throughout my experience It's it's led to bad things The experts that talked about weapons of mass destruction and experts that talk about, you know various things that have led us to violent Cultications throughout the world. I don't I don't trust them anymore I trust the idea that there are many sides to a story and that there is very there's a lot to Be gained from having dialogue with people you disagree with Absolutely. I mean, you know There are experts in some fields and we do need them it is important like if you want information about the large hajron collider You don't understand like what do you guys do over there?
Like you need to talk to someone who actually understands it who's an expert on particle colliders You know and it takes a long time to develop that sort of knowledge base and have an understanding of what they're actually trying to accomplish What is the Higgs Boson? What was this particle that is a part of that? What it's the earliest stages of the universe? Okay, you're gonna measure it.
I'll be in the bar It exists for a quarter of a second or something like that. What are you guys doing? Yeah, but the problem is like to bring it back to the covid one of the things that fauci said that was so wild He said when you are criticizing entity fauci you're criticizing science Yeah, well that is what that just the fact that he felt so confident that he could say that it is such a crazy thing to say And then science became like an object in a religion Well science is supposed to be data It's supposed to be measuring data and it's supposed to never be settled And it's always supposed to have a bunch of people from various various positions of viewing down this thing analyzing it with new studies new data New tests new hypothesis working out and communicating with each other. It's not supposed to be a brick Like, you know, like this is a brick if you question the brick like no This is a fucking fluid thing that exists only if you allow people to ask questions the moment you stop questioning data Then like well, you're even real experts like guys from MIT and Harvard were getting d platformed off of twitter because they didn't believe it They were saying look, I don't think this lockdown idea is a good idea.
I think it's bad for children I think children are not even really susceptible to this disease. Like why are we doing this? What's going on? It became a faith.
It became dogma. Yeah, and if you question the dogma you were a heretic. You're gonna kick out of the religion It's it's it was a scary time and still is scary Yeah, we do the actors gang my nonprofit in Los Angeles We have education programs and we've been dealing with the Remocations of that lockdown for the last five years, you know, this kids are you know had two years robbed of them from socialization and education And I was your senior year of high school. Oh my god, you know, fuck and we're dealing with the the the after effects of that and Greatfully the kind of work we do brings them out again and you know get some expressing emotions making eye contact Having experiences with other children and that are productive and you know, the goodness is you can get out of that funk But that was it was really scary to see those kids walk in to classes After that lockdown because they wouldn't make eye contact looking at the floor, you know Kind of desocialized and traumatized and you know, it was really scary critical development time for them Yeah, and all of a sudden they're wearing like you imagine being a toddler and also everyone has a mask on and it's weird You don't want to wear the mask you keep trying to take it off and people yell at them put it back on so it's like terror and anxiety and confusion Also, you're not reading people's faces, which is like an important part of the developmental process You get to know people you read faces you see how people talk also and everyone's wearing a mask everyone's robbing a bank like this is crazy Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I I've tried to approach it all with just the openness and compassion For people that went through that, you know, I don't attach blame.
I don't you know, everyone It was a pretty sophisticated propaganda machine that was happening and I have great compassion for people that felt into that and I You know, I just want us to not do it again, you know, I want us to have the knowledge and the Consciousness to not fall for that again. Yeah, hopefully it's just it was very eye-opening. That was so easy to pull off You know, that was so easy to get people to just gang up like that was just It said it was it said a lot about us. Yeah, unfortunately and you know, I Hold faith in humanity, but that was that was a that was a tough one I do as well And I think it was a learning moment for a lot of people whether they admit to it or not whether they're public about it or not because I know a lot of people that Just weren't public about their descent But they really didn't like any of it and they just didn't really have a position to talk about it and you know They wanted to keep their job and wanted to keep their place in the community or whatever it was that they were trying to protect And they kept their mouth shut but you get a couple of drinks at them when they were alone They would tell you oh that begs the larger question is you know, is it freedom of speech if when you Freely speak your job is threatened.
Right. Your future is threatened. Is that are we living in our free society? You know, right?
It's uh, and that's that's not just covered. That's a that's a lot of things. That's a lot of things It's almost everything and it's one of the most important things that we do is we disagree We we talk you have conversations and only we learn and you get exposed to information that maybe you didn't know before you establish this opinion that you're arguing You know what was the big tragedy in my opinion during that time period is that we totally lost the water cooler conversation that Accidental conversation that happens at work with the co-worker who you don't necessarily agree with but it's a human being expressing something to you in In person and you have to deal with that person and their opposing viewpoint We got into our own silos of thought and algorithms of thought and everything we experienced during that period of time was an affirmation of what we believed Rather than a challenge to it. Yeah, and so the water cooler was completely eliminated the idea that the accidental conversation at a bar Um where you're you know watching a game on the television and someone sits next to you that is not necessarily of your belief system But you buy them a beer and you watch the game together.
Yeah, all these moments of uh meeting up that were were eliminated And uh, you know, that's what I love about sports I love that you can go watch a game and not think about politics or I think about the differences and think about the team that you like and And support them together same thing with theater or any kind of gathering of individuals music Um you the what I love about the theater that we do is that we're able to take people to a common emotion And we never want to have a completely I don't we don't want audiences that think the same, right? You want a disparate amount of people different beliefs that you can get them to share a common emotion get them to laugh together get them to feel something and cry together That is that's the community you're able to build when you're doing a show as you know, you know, you What really pissed me off was that when we had a we have a theater in Los Angeles and it was two years we had to be closed Uh and a year and a half in we were told we could open But we'd have to check vaccine passports at the door and I Talk to some people at the theater and we agreed it was no we can't do that because what that is doing is it's basically saying the only people allowed in our theater are people that agree with what the government wanted And that for me is not a theater that betrays the whole purpose and function of what a theater should be It's a gathering place for the community that might think differently to bring them together And this was saying basically if you agree you can come in And so we waited another six months before we opened the theater until everyone could come in Yeah, um, there was a time where you had to have a vaccine passport in order to perform and uh I there was an exemption in New York and you had to have a vaccine Passport if you wanted to go to a show but you didn't have to have one if you were performing And I did Madison Square Garden so the whole audience had to have vaccine passports, but I didn't And so there was a senator I forget who it was that was proposing a new law based on me sleeping sneaking through the loophole that Performers should have to be vaccinated as well and he was upset that I didn't have a that I wasn't vaccinated and then I was performing You could have infected the entire Madison Square Garden. I could have been a super spreader Yeah, but well, you know in London, uh, so I spent a lot of time over there in the last five years But they they're west and rebounded immediately Unlike Broadway and the reason it did is because during that time period you could show a vaccine passport But you could also show a negative test so they didn't demand that you have a vaccine So they didn't lose their audience their audience came right back And in Broadway, they basically told a third of their audience. You're not welcome And so I can see why it might have been a struggle to get those people back into the theater It was great.
It didn't make any sense like if the people are negative They're negative would you give a shit if they're vaccinated? Also, what about people that got covid and then recovered from it who have so far superior immunity seven x superior immunity The people who are vaccinated like what are you what are we doing here? Like this is you are you doing the pharmaceutical drug companies work for them Yeah, and you're making people follow along and lock step and it's just not so just didn't even make sense that people are going along with this Yeah Well, I'm glad that's in a rearview mirror. Yeah for now But you know, I feel like it's a case study in a lot of let me know if there are people that are manipulating society And I think there are there's a lot of lessons that they learned from how we behave and You know relatively speaking without making light of the pandemic relatively speaking a fairly mild pandemic In terms of like, you know, the bubonic plague and all sorts of other things that have happened throughout history It's banish flu have killed way more people like it could have been way worse Right, so just one that was just twice as bad as the flu got people to behave like that.
Yeah. Yeah, well the good news is though the uptake wasn't You know a lot of people took it because they had to it wasn't like enthusiastically taking it We did a play called topsy turvy, which was about lockdown and we performed that in eastern europe And it was really interesting to see their response there because I would one of them said afterwards You know, I asked you know, what was the uptake on the vaccines in in romania? And they said something like 40% I said well, how do you explain that? And they said well, you know, we lived under the soviet union for many years So we know how to look like we comply when we're not complying And I said what else reminds you of the soviet union they said without a doubt cancel culture I said why I said well soviet union used to keep files on all of us right?
So as long as you're a good party member, there wouldn't be a thing said But once you snap that line, they brought out that old file now that affair with your secretary from 30 years ago It's gonna ruin your life. They're gonna ruin your family They're gonna kill your career and they're gonna make a big public display of it to show other people to stay in line And they felt like cancel culture was basically operating in the same way as the soviet union did and it was really interesting to see that Perspective in eastern europe people that have you know lived under that kind of oppressive Situation and their perspective on modern day. That must have really made you think about what happened to you during the Iraq war. Yeah, right?
Yeah, it was down in particular because back then there's no real social media and there's no real way to get your message out Oh, man, they they made up they made up things They made up this I was doing display embedded at the time at the public theater and we'd go out afterwards and The New York Post wrote that I was making out with a woman under a palm tree at this club and I It was just they just made it up and come in you know didn't really help my marriage at the time and you know They just lie they basically lie, you know, they'll attack you they just decided you were an enemy They were gonna pull out whatever stops they just credit you in whatever way they can Why yeah, that's a powerful thing when it hits you and you realize oh my god the truth doesn't matter here Yeah, well, that's what's so scary about it is that in this country where freedom of speech is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of our society It's one of the most important things we all recognize it separates us from everywhere else in history like this is the first country We're really it's written into the the doctrine of the country You're supposed to have the freedom the ability to express yourself And that this is being attacked and suppressed in all sorts of different ways not just stopping your ability to express yourself But attacking you in a concerted effort and mallying about you just lying about you in order to scare other people It's very Orwellian and it's very un-American and the fact that like the New York Post would do that or whoever it was when the New York Post would do that Like what the fuck man? Well, the goodness is there's no gulags. Yeah, you know They don't arrest you in the middle of the night and force you to uh into some kind of prison No thousands of miles away sure it could be worse Yeah, but it's not it's not along the line of the american way of life You know and if you're if you're a person who really does appreciate what this experience in this this experiment in Self-government, which was the United States It's supposed to have free discourse. That's a big part of it and the founding fathers recognize that you've got to have the ability to talk about things Right and if you don't we're fucked because if someone can tell you what you kind of can't say that's step one And then everything else falls in line after that and next thing, you know, you've got a dictatorship Right and there's people that have you know lost opportunities or you know In show business that uh recently that including my ex-susan serendan who you know was against what was happening in Israel and lost her agent and You know, it's hard having a hard time to find it work.
This is crazy This is nuts. Yeah, and especially someone like Susan serendan like one of the most respected and established actors of Many generations like she's been around forever the fact that a take on something that if you're just looking at it Like what what what are you? How could you defend that? Like how could anybody defend that?
I don't even know how many people are dead. You have a complete wipe out of a city like 90% of Gaza's gone or whatever the percentage is You look at the buildings. Look at what it used to look like. Look at what it looks like now Like this is defensible.
Yeah, yeah And and I think the point of it is to make a show of it and to say see we could do that to her So we could do it to you so shut the fuck up. Yeah, yeah Especially the timing of when you do it, right? If you're against Gaza now It's safer than being against what happened a year and a half ago say, you know, especially close to October 7th If you're like one of the early roger waters one of the early people talking about this is this is you're watching genocide in real time and They came for that guy. Yeah, and you know more people see it the way he sees it now and just like what happened to you with the Iraq war You're 20 years from now.
It's gonna be a universally accepted opinion about it. Yeah, yeah well, that's just It's crazy to go through something like that and for you to have gone through it like really early on, you know, for you to have gone through that in 2003 I guess it really doesn't form your opinions though. Like when you see things that are happening today. You go.
Okay. I've seen this before What I started looking for after that was way to be Someone that was more involved with Something that could affect change in other words. I used my non-profit. We started a prison program 20 years ago and we see the change that happens we we you know, we have people that go in and basically offer rehabilitation in the form of uh, fear and not doing plays or anything but getting people to Play emotions through characters that we introduced to them and in doing so Unlocking emotions that have been suppressed for many many years.
So in prison, there's one go-to emotion. It's it's angry It's that's your survival face. That's your mask on the yard. You have to be a badass or you're gonna die but um Sadness is compromising fears compromising and happiness is genuinely not encouraged either Uh, so we get these guys in a room We get to introduce them to these stock characters from commated to laarte And then they have to express their emotions and make choices with their emotions in improv and what they find is that if Someone approaches them in anger in an improv the facilitator will encourage a different emotion in response to anger than anger Right and what they come to understand is that they don't have to respond to anger with anger There are other choices and in fact in real life They can do that too, but they can do it in an improv And so what happens is these people tap into long-dormous emotions and start to understand that they are more than the Worst act that got them there.
Um, they they uh tend to um create bonds across gang ties racial lines We when we're putting together a group we ask that rival gangs are in the same room with each other Oh wow And um What happens is these bonds are made through the sharing of emotion like we get these guys into an improv where they're all putting a Flower on a grave of someone and saying something under their breath about the person that's deceased And then at some point the facilitator will say now look at each other and they're looking at each other with these Eyes of sadness and they realize they have a lot in common, you know in that shared emotion I had two guys come up to me one black guy one white guy Uh, they said we got to tell you what happened two weeks ago We were our shot call has said, you know, we're gonna have a fight on the yard And so, you know, they never you never question the shot caller and so you know what this is gonna happen You know, and so what they did was they found each other these two guys and they rolled around on the floor acting Like they were killing each other Wow, how convenient So, uh, they looked like they were participating, but they weren't hurting each other. Oh wow That's a good solution It's amazing what happens when you experience something that like that in person when you see the transformation happen And we see this in our schoolchildren as well That's something that Is it deeply inspiring? You know that you've had something to do with some some real change, right? Uh, whereas for years I was asked to you know attend fundraisers and you know various causes And uh, you know, it's yeah, it's great that they're doing that and it's great that they're raising money for these organizations That need it But at the end of the day you don't really feel like it did anything other than go to a dinner And uh, this was a way to get my hands dirty and really, you know, getting the struggle of it And I found it to be so um so much more satisfying as far as whatever inclination I had towards activism was was really fed by this As opposed to hopping from fundraiser to fundraiser It just felt more real.
It felt like something that I could Take that experience and then I could say to my group, let's expand let's get into more and more prisons And now we're in 18 prisons in the state of california doing these programs Did you have to develop a curriculum like how how you begin to reach out to these guys and how you set it up? Like how you it took a couple years, uh, you know kind of pilot program in one prison, uh in chino in uh, and norko in uh, South california Um, trial and error, you know, uh, what what's the way to do it? What's the way not to do it? Uh, of course you go through a training with the prison system of certain things to watch out for and you know, um, You develop these lines where you say, you know, we're here to do this not to talk about your case You know, there's all kinds of things you learn how to avoid the distractions that will derail the program But, uh, essentially it's a very physical way of working and it's also, uh, there is a lot of fun in it So those two things together, um, allow the entry for these guys that are, you know, They're in the room because they want to be there, but it's weird stuff we're asking them to do Right, and uh, if they can have a laugh about it and then something about it shifts some kind of consciousness inside them That that means something to people that you got to remember these people are you know, when we started there was only one other Uh, program in the state of california that was offering rehabilitation through any theater So, uh, there's a couple music programs and uh, two, two theater programs And now we've we're able to lobby the state to get more funding for arts and corrections, uh, because arts is a transformer Oh, you know, it is something that can shift consciousness.
I truly believe that i've seen it with my own, uh, the work that i've done You know, i've seen how, uh, people can think in a different way after they see something in the theater movies or you know A good stand up and do the same thing, you know, how george carlin used to shift my consciousness every new special because he would always be challenging me Sure, he wouldn't be like, hey, hey, you know, we're all in the same club It would be like, yeah, we thought we were in the same club, but here's a here's a little thought and you realize he's talking right at One of your hypotheses and that was his genius his ability to really tap into we can be better Right, we can all be better. This episode is brought to you by visible. It's officially summer folks and boy What a summer we are having it feels like one of those good old fashioned summers We just want to enjoy every moment and keep up with the action your best companion this summer visible wireless visible gives you unlimited 5g data And unlimited hotspot powered by verizon for just $25 a month So you can make this the summer of fun and savings visible is more than just a wireless plan It's unlimited wireless designed to always keep you connected with no contract to tie you down Switch today at visible dot com plan start at $25 a month or get our premium visible plus pro plan and save $10 on your first month When you use promo code rogan terms apply see visible dot com for plan features and network management details Yeah, there's been a few guys like that throughout history that really have figured out a way to embed humor into social commentary Yeah, George Carlin's probably the most known for but do you know about bill Hicks? Yeah, for sure He was probably in my generation.
He's the one that twisted people the most it took a lot of comics would watch him and go What am I doing? Why am I doing what I'm doing this guy's doing something that's so much more meaningful? Yeah, who was it in appetizer documentary about Carlin there was a comedian that said George Carlin was basically in the earliest part of the century in 1900s Philosophers debating used to be a huge deal right like hundreds of people thousands people come watch people debate two different points of view sure He said that's that's what the current philosophers of our generation are the better stand up comedians The ones that test your belief system by saying something that you know might be controversial or you know challenges your worldview That's all the great purpose and function of Philosopher or a stand up comedian is to take your worldview shatter it a little bit and make you rethink. Yeah Yeah, and Hicks was sort of For our generation He was like the first guy that really did that in a way that like some of the things that he said We're even designed to be funny at all just designed to make you think about things differently And then he would hit he was some funny things after that to keep you occupied.
Yeah, yeah Provocative statements that you know the first reaction is puck that no, that's not true. Fuck that and then you realize oh shit He's bringing me there and it's like a great play can do that too a great movie can do that too Provoke you and challenge you and then make you refocus rethink Yeah, it's just amazing how little of that we have today and how much content we have today Did you ever see the documentary? God, what is it the documentary with William F Buckley and Yeah, you know I'm talking about Gore vidal in Gore vidal. Yeah, where they had these it was I guess it was NBC I think it was and NBC was failing the ratings It was very less enemies, but that's the well.
Yeah, the line on the best of enemies. Yeah, great documentary Yeah, so they had a series of these debates on television Gore vidal being a progressive and William F Buckley being a conservative very interesting because This kind of hadn't happened before on television where you have these long-form discussions where these two guys is intellectually jabbing at each other Yeah, and it was great. Like the documentary is really amazing. I was friends with Gore.
Oh really? Yeah, he he agreed to do my first film Bob Roberts, which is about a right-wing focusing candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania and Gore agreed to play brickly paste my democratic opponent, right? And so he played a politician which is something he always kind of flirted with in his real life And so I got to be quite friendly with him and I actually did a documentary that I'm editing right now About four soldiers from World War two that became great writers Gore Kurt Vonnegut Norman Mailer and Howard Zinn are all in this documentary I filmed it many years ago shelved it and now I'm in the final stages of putting it together I'm opening a new website in September 1st And this is one of the many things that I have in my vault and my storage units that I've just been getting out over the past year And finding all this crazy stuff that I have that I've never finished because I've been going from project to project the project So I slowed down a little bit and just opened up some sealed boxes and it's been really fun It's one of the things is also I used to fuck around on film sets with this You know what had enough money to buy a video camera for the first time And so I started making these little short films on on movie sets and one of them is there's two films from when I was doing Howard the duck And you know one of those endless productions that just went on and on and on So I just started in using myself by making my own little short films It won't including you know, I'm sure illegally using the duck itself, you know, which I'm a character in one of the films I forgot about Howard the duck. It was crazy.
We walked on this at the fucking weird. We'll be that way I know right we walked on the set I walked on the set the first day I knew we were in trouble It wasn't ready and it was a little too cute if you look at the comic book, right? Howard the duck was not that cute. No, he was a cigar smoking.
Yeah, kind of shitty mean Yeah, yeah, kind of fits the catish like you know like really kind of yeah borderline obscene and was a Marvel comic, right? Yeah, yeah, and so do you have an image of the old Howard the duck from the comic? Yeah, that guy Yeah, so I walked on the set and I saw that cute duck. I was like, oh, yeah, it was always with chicks Which was very weird like hey lady, what are you doing?
You're fucking a duck What is his charm got you? What's the message there? Yeah, yeah, so strange character very strange and I don't think they had the technology to pull it off I remember to try again now. Yeah good I think the old film and animated But you know I spent six weeks on that film doing an ultra-like chase that lasted maybe two minutes in the film What's an ultra-like plane?
You know what the ultra-like plane is basically it's you and the wings and a motor and so there's a chase sequence at the end It's about two and a half minute three minute long. Did you actually have to get in one of those things? No I mean I got in like a fake one good. Yeah, no you'd have to be you have to fly it the guy yeah You have to that's fake of course right the ducks real So legit Yeah, but was that one of those ones where your little voice you didn't listen no not at all because I was early in my career Right, so it was George Lucas.
I remember and he just done Lucas and he just done Star Wars whoa it was good had to be good right he went from Star Wars to Howard the dog Well, he produced Howard the dog, but he had just produced Star Wars, so you know it was like hell yeah, right I don't know it doesn't make sense on the page, but he'll figure it out. They'll figure it out I Was so lucky to again blessed because I got a movie called five corners that was with Jody Foster and John Tetero Right around the same time. So I was already done that movie when Howard came out So it's kind of saved my nice. You already had one in the chamber.
Yeah. Yeah a good one on the pipe. Yeah It's just I wonder why George did it like it seems so odd to try to do a movie with a talking duck Yeah, well, maybe it made sense when they imagined it. Hmm.
Maybe they're on acid or something seems I just remember those poor puppeteers man. They were trying to make this thing work and just I don't think the technology really existed Or I was like 86 or something yeah, and it was they were they were trying so hard and it just it was you know I felt for everybody including the director. I felt he would try to stand best, you know, and it was just the trail by puppeteering And it wasn't the puppeteers it was the right actual Machinery well, it's kind of if you think about Star Wars in particular It's kind of amazing they were able to pull that off with the technology that was available at the time Yeah to have this crazy movie where you like the cantina scene and yeah You know, there's all these different fucking creatures from different planets and like they did not have very good technology back then If you watch that cantina scene now, it looks terrible right so clunky like the masks don't move like It's almost like you know looking at claymation Yeah, yeah Amazing what they can do, but I do like the old school I do like the kind of analog version of because when the CGI and everything it's all so sophisticated yeah They can do anything now and you almost want them not to be able to do everything right? Yeah, just one a little little roughness around the edges it really helps well There's also a thing about CGI where the part of your brain that is looking at it recognizes that this is not a real thing happening Like you as good as it looks there's something about it Yeah, which is why a lot of the movie special effects guys like the monster guys like Rick Baker and along those lines We did Star Wars America where I'm London that thing outside the wolf you see in the hallway yeah that They wanted to make sure that it looked like a real thing right it was a physical object So you had a visit so in order to make it a physical object and obviously CGI wasn't even available back then But you see it and you know it's a real thing whereas like later on He did they did the wolf man and Rick Baker did that as well And there's a lot of CGI in there in the transformation scenes and this part of it It's just like your brain's like this isn't really happening.
Yeah, I don't like yeah Yeah, it's kind of the same way in music too like when they correct everything and make the auto tune it Yeah, great music has a little bit of mistaken. Yeah, it has a little bit of like human error When you're hitting a chord on a guitar there's you know There's a way to play it perfectly, but there's also a way to play it a little messed up Right and I kind of prefer the little bit messed up like when Hendrix did the star-spangled banner at Woodstock. Yeah, you know There was something about it. It was like yeah Yeah, it was immediate.
It was at it was being done at that moment with full danger, you know Oh great thing to listen to yeah, it's really happening It's not polished and edited and sent through a machine and you get the feeling that maybe that was the second or third time He'd played it right ever or maybe the first right right would have been even more insane, but you know Yeah, well, that's why people like records You know they love listening to the scratches and the pops and then you hear the the voice like this just pure recorded voice There's no auto tune. There's no nothing messing with it. Especially like an old record. I have one of those 78s where you have to crank them up and oh wow and they have the little you know cone that Oh wow 1920 or that can tan or something like that And I just imagine you know living on the prairie and ordering this from Sears Robuck right and getting your first You know record and putting it on and hearing this a voice coming from this acetate It must have been magical.
It must have been like you know transformative You know this amplified song that you can dance to or fall in love to right in your living room When did they first figure that out? I think it was early part of 20th century Thomas Edison. Yeah, like a little cylinder Well, I'm sort of mass producing them in just records Yeah, what was the first thing in the 20s? They might have mass produced those because people had them Way different player.
Let's ask for plexidin. What was the first record was the first actual like record? Disc that you could play with a needle like a real record. I want to say like 19 19 I'm just taking a wild guess.
There's a famous viral video of a guy dropping that time I said it's 1931 12 inch 33 and a third RPM disc was pressed in Victor's vinyl based Victor lack But that's 33 in a third. Mm-hmm. What about the 78s or is it called? Yeah, so yeah 48 vinyl LP arrived in June 21st 1948 Columbia records unveiled oh 33 and third micro groove long plane record So was that it but in the 20s at 30s there was a micro groove 47 you get the 45 Okay, so the 31 first vinyl disc Wow, so 31 for the first vinyl disc 48 for the first real album Which is really nuts because if you think about like all the amazing albums of the 60s You're talking about a technology that didn't exist 20 years prior.
That's weird nuts. Yeah nuts Yeah, so like when you listen to voodoo child like that technology 20 years ago didn't exist Do you remember the magic of watching it for the first time like when you put that thing down when you're a kid and you put it on the thing? Uh-huh music starts coming out. Oh, yeah Well, I remember the ones with it look at the vinyl grooves around a thousand X magnification You see the waveforms of the music itself.
That's crazy That those little weird imagine if you were like from another civilization and you saw these things you'd be like what the fuck is this? Like what do they have here? How do they figure that out? What is this you'd be like what that's they figured out how to make music out of that and you can hear a harp you can hear banjo You can hear drums orchestra.
Yeah, you can hear jazz joplin all in that. Yeah, how'd you do that? Like what and if it scratches it skips? I'm really encouraged that vinyl is making a comeback.
I really very excited about that People love it. Yeah, it's all the difference like people love like wood tables You know people like that the world gets more digital people want things that are organic something that a person made something that seems like It makes more sense. I've been finding you know in my search for my archive and everything cassette tapes and they all put on they sound amazing Really? Yeah, they sound really good You know there's more there's more information and a little cassette tape than on a you know what is mp3 that's been compressed You know and compressed and compressed and compressed but you know I reel the reels are obviously sounds still great But the cassette tapes really survived.
I've been digitizing everything of course, you know Just just to make sure that they don't decay but I'm really interesting that like a lot of my dad's music He recorded on cassette tapes, you know He was a folk singer and they did five albums as the high women You know but he was a classical musician and did coral music and so he had a group then he would record on these cassette tapes And so we've been digitizing those because we're I'm gonna put them all on my new website I think called Robbins radio, which will be my dad my granddad my brother and myself the music that we've done over the years Kind of playing on a constant loop when you come on to the website. Oh, wow So I was honored my dad I've been digitizing also his scores and you know he wrote music by hand and so I've got Boxes and boxes of that that I'm trying to transcribe and make available probably in about six months. We'll have that archive up Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.
Yeah, when do they figure out how to put things on cassette tapes? Does that that happen that was around when I was in high school? So I remember I had a cassette deck a white car Yeah, and there was pretty good technology You could buy a really good microphones and plug them into a pretty good cassette player Well a track was the first right I think so but those were so impractical. They were huge Yeah, plus they'd stop in the middle of a song and then go to the next track and really Yeah, I remember driving with my friend Frank who lives in Austin right now And we were driving back up to school on my first school college Plattsburgh and there was a track of bread play you remember that ban bread Uh-huh and and this was around 1977 and he rips it out of the eight track rolls down the window throws it out of this is We're never listening to that again.
This is it's punk rock from this point forward And it was like a defining moment in my musical life was like Frank saying no more bread No more bread Now that's hilarious. Yeah, I remember my first introduction to a track my friend Javier when I lived in Florida His mom had an eight-track player and she had what's that song who sings it when my baby when my baby smiles at me I go to Rio de Janeiro remember that song. Yeah, I remember who sings it Pablo Cruz. Oh, yeah, okay Yeah, and she had a Pablo Cruz eight track in her car I'm like this lady's a wizard she's got her own music because before then I think I'd only seen people play stuff that was on the radio Right, right and she put it in there and she pressed the button.
I was like this is crazy She gets to pick what songs are on the radio I thought it was the wildest thing I'd ever seen in my life. Yeah. Yeah, that was right is eight track first in the cassette And then the cassette was so much better. Yeah, flip it over though In the Sun though.
Oh, yeah, I lost bunch. I just have one of them big books Mm-hmm cuz that's in it and these little vinyl things leave it in your car and they get fucked and then it gets stuck in the In the tape machine you gotta do with your finger. We gotta try to wind it back with your finger Which I did like a month ago with the old disaster. I just did that last month right Really spool it.
Yeah, nobody knows what fuck we're talking about today Well, then you know VHS tapes was the next one because that was the first time where you could choose to watch a film at home Yes, you know, yes, and a huge deal, too, you know, I'm I'm more in the loss of video stores Oh, yeah, cuz great experience Well, yeah, because you could go and you say you know I just saw this film and there's someone that really loved film there right and he could say well if you like that one Check this one. Yeah, that was that's now been replaced by an algorithm And I'm not trusting that algorithm is gonna find it's you know There's gonna show me the way to battle about jeers or and these are great movies I just if the personal was lost same thing with record stores You could go in and like what's what's new and here? What's playing and you know talk to the guy and get what his opinion was and bookstores, too? You know, it's like if you told me 30 years ago that would be you know It's very hard to find a bookstore or a video store I would say you're crazy right now It's all like very convenient you have access to everything but you don't have the arbiter that is a person you have the arbiter That's almost a machine right you get a little bit of that with people online recommending stuff yeah, it's kind of cool, you know, someone says hey, I just saw the show It's fucking that's true you get a little bit of that and then you get IMDB and rotten tomato scores Which I think that does something you know, they're a little manipulated occasionally, but there's something to it where you get to see what people think about it That helps yeah, that's nice.
I think silos like a hundred percent rotten tomatoes. Is it really? Yeah, that's nice. That's what she said that though you put it out there.
I know now it's that's all I just killed it They're gonna vomit Yeah, a hundred percent we'll see about that But there's there's almost too many shows, you know, there's just too much I just got into the agency I just finished season two of the agency and Michael fast fender. It's a CIA Series that's on paramount. It's fucking incredible. It's so well written Yeah, it's so well acted that it makes so many other shows seem really clunky because it's just it's so good Yeah, it's got so many layers to it and it's subtle and it's brilliant and it's and fast fenders one of my favorite actors He's fucking incredible.
He's so good. He's so good in this, you know, he plays the CIA spook so many things to choose from yeah, almost Yeah, I mean, maybe essentially you can waste your whole life just being Like it used to be difficult to be entertained which I think there's something to that you had to go to a place You gotta pay by your popcorn sit down Now it's just like yeah steps along the way. They've made it more convenient to be entertained But then again, it's like there's something lost in that, you know, like all the movie starts at seven come on We gotta get out here. We gotta go park.
We gotta get there. I gotta get there in time to it or the idea that you know There's only three choices. You're gonna stumble into something you wouldn't have watched right and be surprised all the time You go what do they have at the movie theater? Like what's this?
All right? Well, there's no more Star Wars tickets left So we can go see this you want to see this and what is it? I don't know. Yes, this is this guy's gonna throw like him like okay Yeah, let's just take a take a guy That's the crazy thing about Shawshank is that it wasn't a big hit in the movie theater initially.
No, which is really hard to believe now Yeah, no, it was it was it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, but nobody went to see it. That's nuts Yeah, maybe it's a title they didn't understand or I don't know what it was I was in two films at year one hot sucker proxy and shawshank redemption two really challenging titles But like what's it about hot sucker? I don't know what's it about? I have people coming up to me saying I really liked you in that Scrimshaw reduction Yeah, thank you.
They don't plan on meeting you they run into a restaurant What did it come out against what other films were out at the same time as Shawshank was there other like big movies come oh wow Yeah, oh wow Whatever fiction oh Jesus. Oh my god. It's my turn to breath one of the best years for movies and history. Oh my god Yeah, Paul fiction.
Oh my god, but you know it made its way interestingly enough because So Ted Turner was running Warner Brothers at the time, right and Warner Brothers produced Shawshank Redemption and When he sold the rights to it for television. He sold it to himself at the lowest cost possible So basically yeah a film nominated for seven Academy Awards. It was getting sold like it was a beach blanket bullshit And so it didn't cost him anything to put it on his channel So he put it on again and again and again It's getting all those advertising dollars that come with playing something on his TV channel And I think that's why it caught on because it was ubiquitous. It was always there It was always something you could see and so eventually people understood what kind of movie it was wow And so that's a good example of where someone's business acumen or greed or whatever you want to call it Well, it winds up producing something quite lovely You know something that actually I'm really grateful for because so many people know that film and it's been like number one on I am TV for the last 15 years and that's crazy And that was one of those movies that also took off like wildfire once it got into video Because once people could watch it at home.
Yeah, that was even though if it didn't do as well in the theaters as it should have on Video it did fantastic. Yeah, which is why I really I always remember that when you know I'm in a movie and it doesn't quote unquote perform, you know, I I'm the turtle I Know the turtle can win the race Yeah, yeah, it's that how was something that was lost also during the pandemic and I was really worried about that It wasn't gonna come back It seemed like it was so easy to stream films at home that people just for a while It was hard to get people to go out to movie theaters. Yeah, the experience is very different. Yeah, it's very different Yeah, it's been a struggle, you know, and you know, I think also a lot of producers in Hollywood or studios lost faith in their adult audience Even before the pandemic.
I mean we're producing movies for teenagers and you know, there's nothing wrong with that But because they can be that can drive an economic engine But at the same time, you know films like Shoshank Redemption would not get made today because they're about something that isn't about the Huge multi platform experience of action movie and that's unfortunate And that's kind of migrated into streamers, you know, the people adults that like to watch stuff tend to watch these longer-form things And that's a nice thing in a way because it's allowing filmmakers to make 10-hour films, you know When you think about it a season of a show is 10 hours And so you can think in this like kind of long form of telling a story Which is a nice thing which would have been impossible in old Hollywood, you know, right? I've got to keep it under two hours. So now you have the opportunity, the creators have the opportunity to create long form entertainment Well, that I think is one of the beautiful things about some of these Netflix series is that you like things like Stranger Things You essentially have, you know, a 30-hour movie or however many episodes it is and like Ozark is a great example of that It's like fucking amazing show and it's essentially like a movie every week And the story continues to progress and you get a chance to really stretch something out and but you get the quality of like a great film But you get it extended, you know, these huge budgets the fact that they're able to do this like so because of streaming It has opened up this long-form aspect of storytelling But I think it's really difficult to do in a movie like Kill Bill kind of did it a little bit for sure Yeah, two episodes of it was nice also as an actor like with Silo I've got I've had three seasons the first two seasons my character represented something which completely shifts in season I'm not telling you what it is. I'm just telling you You want you won't even be able to guess okay good It's it's such a profound it's and it was fun to play it was like this kind of like and I was told about this at the beginning the creator said you know this in the Wait till season that's interesting.
I always wonder how far they map these things out You know did he have a did they even know that they were gonna be picked up for season three when he started? No, but they knew at the end of season one What the trajectory of two and three was so if it got picked up? Well, if they were going to get picked up they would have to tell you what they would have to tell the studio what two and three are right, right, so The other thing that you have to consider is that if you're an asshole, they'll fucking kill you Right, right writers don't you know writers don't you know if an actor is like trouble right right right? They'll kill him I've been told about you know one of the guys I worked with was I won't say his name But you know when I was directing for television them I did a couple episodes on this show and he told me about a show that he was doing where there were three actors They were given a real hard time and one of them was getting in trouble because of you know Sexual inappropriateness and one was getting in trouble because of you know They were too much in their head and the other was you know something else you know something about Another basically they shot them all in the anatomy that was associated with what their problem was A couple of them to survive but one we really killed off so you know you don't mess with the writers their Intellivision they we a lot of power and not only that they're also looking for angles different places to take the character If you're a douchebag like oh, let's fucking yes, yeah, that'll be a good show Turn them into a pedophile You can do whatever you want here's the twist.
Yeah, I didn't see this coming. Yeah. Yeah, watch out Yeah, be nice. Well, you know there's a lot of fear in Hollywood when it comes to AI and replacing writers and replacing actors and just replacing this whole Human-created thing of storytelling and I think writers in particular really terrified because you could kind of You know with AI engines today you could kind of take a few films Right, like you could kind of take like a bullet and heat and a few and they say make me John Wick meets bullet meets heat And this is the protagonist.
This is this is what he's facing This is these are the issues and AI can turn it out in a few minutes And then you can say I make it more like Quentin Tarantino would do it and then it'll do that it'll fix it that way That's crazy. You say okay. I want it more like Kubrick aspects to it I want some weirdness to it some some real thoughts some Easter eggs some hidden aspects to it that people connect later and they'll do that It'll it can do stuff Instantaneously based on and it's kind of stealing right but it's not right. It's making an original thing But it's not because it's inspired by everything else.
It's already been made But that's kind of what people do but not in the same way and we don't do it that quick either and so for writers It's fucking terrifying. Yeah, and who do you sue? I mean you can't sue AI artists are having real problem with that I have a real problem with it. Yeah, I don't I don't like it at all But I also have faith in the individuality of the human experience and what I what you like I'm writing a a Companion piece to the player right now and you know what would happen if that character there was a lab today And so I have my perspective that only I'm gonna bring to that right?
I don't think you could plug that into no No, so I think talented people will figure out a way to be individual and apart from AI and no But I also really don't like the the lack of protection that the guilds and the unions are offering their membership You know, there should have been a hard line for the actors union And there wasn't the hard line should have been, you know, you cannot use this to replace actors Right or writers, but there was compromise and or writers for the writers union I don't think that that protection was held up the last negotiations And I think that we're gonna see the ramifications of that, you know, unfortunately Well, that's what's scary is that ultimately economics has a major impact on the decisions that they make and it's way cheaper To do it that way it's way cheaper to use AI to write things then screenwriters Especially really talented screenwriters even though it's kind of drawing on the past creative work of really talented screenwriters They don't get compensated for it. I think ultimately people are going to want and appreciate something that's made by a human being Because it's one thing that's what we really like not just be entertained We really love the fact that someone made something well my girlfriend read morano has been advocating for a seal to be put on Projects that are made without a that's a great idea. That is a very good idea. I think that's a great idea I like that a lot.
I think yeah, instead of like the parental warning AI free. Yeah, yeah, I free right? No GMO food bitch It's something to do that. I think that's a great idea actually that I think that might be the way that might be the solution is a seal Yeah, I like that a lot makes sense that people you know There when you see a great something that someone made what what one of things you really like about it is that it came from a human beings Creativity.
Yeah, did you see obsession? No, it's fucking great. It's so good It's so crazy and so creepy and so weird and and so brilliant and like no one in it is famous and it's phenomenal And it's really original and creepy and one of the things I loved is like this is like 25 or something like that Yeah, I mean 25 years old. Yeah, you know I've done a bunch of YouTube stuff.
I love it. It's a complete accident Just he's shit has this amazing idea and you got these people who they're relatively unknown, but really talented. We're craving that Yes, yes, we want the formula right never have what wanted the formula It's so mad and try to set a movie up right now, you know Because what they want is they want someone an actor that's worth 20 million dollars And they'll give you 10 million dollars to do the film you get the guy that they normally would have to pay 20 million dollars And you get him to do your film for you know 300,000 you gotta film No gamblers anymore that's no risk takers when I was coming up You know you had these guys are like actually Joe you know Joe Roth gave me the money to do cradle rock this It was basically like here's the kid do it. I'm like really I get to do this We don't wound up with you know final cut and everything They used to do that they just invest in the risk right because only and only will the risk produce something genuine and new and fresh If you don't gamble you're and you're measured and you're on a formula and you got your stars It's gonna the audience gonna know it.
Yep. They know it's oh, this is prepackaged and pre-programmed for my demographic Yeah, and I kind of resent it Yeah, you know and whereas something like that obsession is like coming out of that field. No one is predicting it programming it It's just an accident and people love it. Yeah, that's what is exciting about you know It's like when you're trying to do mint material in a club and you're like I don't know if it's gonna work But I'm fucking do it and it gets the laugh that's that thrill is what it's all about right?
That's the that's the moment where you go I gambled and it paid off right yeah That's that I don't know how much we have that experience anymore in in Hollywood Do you think it's just because of the extreme cost that's involved? I mean just to promote a film like if you have a film and it's got a budget like especially I think is that it's probably why so many superhero movies get greenlit right because it's one of the only gambles like if you're gambling on An Avengers movie like you can't miss the Hulk smash a bunch of shit Captain America comes in you're good Like this you're good you make your money back and so you kind of have to you know Like if you're a money person if you're not a creative person you just a money person who happens to be in the movie business Which I'm sure a lot of them are they're just looking at as a return on investment. Yeah But you know that's always been that way to some degree, but I don't know I don't know why it became such a risk To try new stuff. I mean because they're not putting that much money into it You know this Marvel movies that cost them two hundred fifty million dollars 200 million dollars to produce right this independent filmmakers that are proven independent filmmakers that are asking for like 5 million 4 million do a film so if they put some advertisement in it, maybe it's gonna cost them 14 million all told and you know Can they make that back is the marketplace gonna support that?
Who knows I wouldn't want to be an investor, but I also You know I have a nostalgia for a time when Robert Altman could make a film You know yeah, and it could just blow people's minds and then the next film he made you know as he would gleefully tell you they're gonna hate this one, you know and I love that you know that and people would either love it or hate it, but he was making his own films He was making distinctive films that were him Is it more difficult or easier to get a film released today if you make it yourself? Because you don't have distribution really so you know I suppose in the future There's gonna be some form of distribution that will be more egalitarian, but right now It's a huge risk what it how is distribution work like say if you decided you're gonna get a bunch of investors together and put together a film Do you have to get distribution before you even start producing? Yes, you have to have foreign sales in place whoa foreign sales. Yeah, like I Think basically the the economic model right now is those the investors want to be paid and not be losing money by the time They start shooting in other words.
They're not gonna lose money. They've already sold it for more than they paid And so there's really no risk no gamble Then if the movie catches fire at a film festival then they'll put the money into advertising if it doesn't catch fire at a film festival Or with critics though just you know, okay, I already made my money, you know, we'll just sell it to you know DVDs whatever fucking shitty environment to create some hard hard. Yeah, my gal struggling with that right now I checked out of that hotel a while back. You know, I was like I don't want my heart broken like that So I've just been doing things on my own.
I've been producing things on my own shooting them editing them That's one of the reasons I wanted to do this website was because I've got all this stuff that is unreleased and just gonna start releasing it slowly Is that more satisfying to do it that way? No, it's more satisfying to go to can win best actor. I mean much more satisfying When you have a machine behind you that's supporting it. It's great, you know, Mr.
Grover You know that kind of like you have one of brothers like we love this film. We're gonna make sure that people see it That's what you need you need your sponsors that are that get it that want people to see it that see the value of it And they'll put money into advertising and that's a great experience to be in the other thing is just, you know Pretty lonely. It's just, you know, you're trying your best. I was in three movies after I won the Oscar for Mystic River that I've considered three of the best movies in my career But nobody's you know, this is a secret life of words code 46 and catch catch catch a fire and they're all excellent movies But they came at a time that where you know the producers or the people that were distributing them didn't really want to risk The money that would take see that's where there's a room for like a siskel and ebert type character today that can find those films and say hey This one slipped under the radar, but this is really an actual person That's a giant movie buff that can go back and watch these and comment on them and we don't really back then siskel and ebert We're the guys if they gave you two thumbs down.
You're fucked. Yeah, you're fucked Yeah, and you know, they're very caddy with each other. It was a fun thing It's fun to watch the outtakes how much those guys actually didn't get along yeah But I was lucky with them they gave me great reviews. It was a good.
They had good taste. Yeah, you know, and they loved film Yes, they clearly loved film and they loved all aspects of it They would talk about with great understanding and great passion the subtleties of the performances and what really and how was put together Even they talk about the score, you know, yes, they spend like 15 minutes on each film. Yeah, yeah Never happened and it was a hugely successful show which is like really confusing why there's not something like that today Yeah, there's so much content today if you were like it's not like what's out in the movies right now like today Fucking there's a million shows that are streaming. There's there's so much shit going on there's so much content that if you had a trusted Source, you know a person who's like a real good critic of stuff really I'm not even a critic an appreciator is better word like someone's a real passionate enthusiast of film and of you know Different creative works that could just talk about something yeah, I recommend stuff Yeah, but then there's the burnout of that too like you know I would talk to some of these guys and they'd be like, you know for every one of those good films we have to see like 10 direct, you know and the time spent Watching these things kind of mind-numbingly painful for some of these people Mm-hmm, you know imagine having to you know weed through the muck to get to the gas But can't you just walk out of the film like it just like you walk out of a movie theatering like this movie sucks I've done that a few times me to it's a born it's a terrible place to be to me like I can't believe I'm leaving hard to Do in the life theater though because when they know you're there right that's different Yeah, but if you're if you're watching at home I mean it's really what you're trying to do if you want to be one of the person says this is the worst fucking movie I've ever seen that's what you're doing But if you want to be a person who's just enthusiasts of great stuff and just keep it on the positive side There's so much great stuff to review and so many great things from the past that people haven't seen before that you could sort of turn people on to Yeah, yeah, oh that'd be great.
It's kind of weird that there's not someone like that right now. It is weird. It is weird I think maybe you should you should do that pretty soon. I'm busy But I mean it just doesn't even make sense that there's so many different Like there's so much content, but yet there's not that one thing that was a really big part of the movie experience We were younger yeah, and the fright you know that idea that there's some exciting movie coming out on Friday And we're gonna go to it yeah, it was huge.
Yeah, it was huge Yeah, the movie was coming out like I guess you have it right now with the Odyssey like a lot of people are It's like one of those movies It's so big people are scrambling to go see it in the movie theaters and it's getting excited about it Along with a lot of the culture war controversies that everybody that I know that's seen I haven't seen it says fucking throw all that away The movie's amazing. That's what I hear yeah, yeah, it's like it's almost like a good way to bait people into getting really Conch, you know Tired of that oh yeah, yeah like oh It's not correct. Yeah, it's just I'm tired of it from both of them I don't want to I don't want to hear judgment right I just I'm Help me that I don't I don't want to be in the middle of this fight constantly, you know, it's the only I feel like this is Again what we were talking about before you know, it's the as long as we're fighting with each other Yeah, and then we're fighting about films that are coming out. It's like come on.
I saw him down come down Like I don't care it's just isn't entertaining is it good. It doesn't have to be correct doesn't mean anything to me There's never been a time in history where correct was important to me. Yeah or indicative of a great art Right, it's just make it good and by all counts everyone that I know that's seen the movie said it's fucking incredible Yeah, I'm gonna try to see its own but the culture war part of it is like at the very least it got people excited to see it Mm-hmm, and either to hate it But I know a lot of people that wanted to go hate it because they were upset, you know This person I just held up Troy's a black lady like who fucking cares. That's a matter.
That's a meetup story like Exactly Yeah, apparently might actually be based on a real place though You know these to think that Troy was not a real place and then they discovered it. I think that was Wasn't it a 70s when do they discover Troy? Because they used to think that it was completely mythical. It was just a fiction a work of fiction And then they found the actual real city and they're like oh like that's the weird thing about really old stories It's not like there's so it's so ambiguous as to what was the root?
What was the origin of the story was this a real event? You ever stood on the stage of old Roman amphitheater? Yes, that's something else Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, there's history in those stones, and you know, we were doing a show over in Leon, France in one of those Theaters and I found something out because we were doing rehearsal and when you're talking to the other actor like this You can't hear it out there at all So it told us that what they were doing and was this you know back in the old days Yeah, they had to perform out because you hear if you were doing realistically talking to someone making eye contact That's what's weird about early film is that early film you have stage actors who are used to doing it with no microphones Projecting now doing it on film so it looks odd Yeah, it's like there was this transition period and then Brando came along and Brando just did it real And I was like what the fuck is he doing?
Yeah, exactly like a real person. This is crazy. Yeah, I'm coming cliff to yeah Yeah, that was a you know huge step forward for all of us Yeah, that to take the onus off the theatrical and get more into the real, you know again if you really think about it Not a whole lot of time but tween Like the invention of film and then movie stars and all these things happening like this is a completely new cultural thing Like from the early like what was the first film like the first film with sound? What year was that?
Wow, so think of that so you have from 27 and then just a few decades later you have on the waterfront you have the hustler You have these these incredible movies that do they just have to figure out on the fly? Yeah, how did the citizen Kane? Yeah, they figure out on the fly how to do this But also the if you ever watch the first films like the silent films and the ability to tell a story about words which was a whole other You know talent. I mean you watch those chaplain films.
It's like that man. Oh, yeah Nosferado the original Nosferado. I saw that at a public library in San Francisco when I was a kid They had a night where they played it and I went to see it. I was like this is nuts incredible That film 1922 and then Metropolis.
Oh, yeah, that's crazy movie. Yeah. Yeah, I love that old stuff That's great. Those movies are great and at the time you got to imagine like the experience of going to see that We're knowing it's seen movies before this is like a new thing Yeah, seeing things moving around on a giant screen like this is mad alchemy.
Yeah, crazy magic Satan You had to read what they were saying to each other on the screen. Yeah, and then music would play They had a guy with an organ that was playing music along with it. Yeah, super cool It is super cool. I would love to like if you could try time travel and go to one of those oh, yeah We theaters back there's there is I mean one of the best vampire movies of all time and so the writing is so good German expressionist GRCM the Peter Laurie It's just Emma's called em.
Yeah, the letter M isn't it? No, I know what is it's about about a murderer that's stalking a bunch of people Yeah, I was a huge fan of that whole genre of filmmaking well something so exciting about it Like when you limit the sensory input like you have to read the words and you want it's all black and white And you know this music playing it's like it's a totally different thing. Yeah taking it Yeah, you know, it's like it's almost like half reading half watching yeah You know like you're reading like you don't hear their their voices you have to create their voices in your head Yeah, and you're feeling a different one because of the you know, it's black and white so it's not real but it is real and so Yeah, it's it's a great great form We should have more of those it's just hard to imagine that this is only a hundred years old that from there than now This is a hundred years. It's a blink of an eye Yeah, and when you think about human history like when we think about like the 1500s versus the 1600s You're kind of think it's basically the same if you're born in 1520 or 1620 It's fucking exactly the same right we weren't in 1920 or 2020 fucking completely different world you're living in huge 1920 you have Nosferato 2026 you have the Odyssey, you know, you have dune you have these insane films right not to mention the technology you personally possess Yes, right in your pocket right at any moment in time you could stream a movie I can see Nosferatu right now, right?
Yeah, or the Robert Eggers one the new one Yeah, this is fucking fantastic, but it's just instantaneous everything's instantaneous and everything's right there for you So it's great in that sense that you will be entertained There's something to watch no matter what but You're missing something on the like the specialness of like having to go out and go to a place even go to a video store and go get it You know, yeah, yeah something missing. I think I think that that's really at the core of it though Is the you know, I've decided this is what I'm going to do today whole thing You know like pre pre this right? I am going to be an active participant in my life It's when I first moved to LA that I first understood this in the late 70s LA as opposed to New York where I grew up LA you have to make a choice to find your phone New York a little drop in your lap, right? If you walk down the street something will present itself But in LA when I first moved out there I realized you got to drive there you got to drive and find your phone and and you have to be an active participant in your in your Cultural life and once I understood that about LA I could understand how to live there It was it was at first very frustrating because it's very boring, right?
It wasn't happening, you know when I walked out on the street. There was no street to walk out on it was just too big but it's that kind of I Have chosen this weekend to drive 30 minutes in that direction to see this punk rock band Right that and I will be an active participant in that and once you do that you're liberated Then you then you know anything's possible, but now it's like I want it in my backyard Not only that now that thing interrupts you while you're taking something else in right it constantly wants your attention It's like a puppy. I was like Hey watch the movie. Yeah, it's constantly demanding your attention or at least enticing you to take a look at it vibrating in your pocket, you know Yeah, have you ever thought about?
Trashing it I've gotten off social media for weeks at a time. I've done that, but I need it for work too much I need it for emails. I need to risk. I can't always just be in front of a laptop.
Do you have a like a flip flip phone? No, no, I'm thinking about getting it I have a computer that I write on that's not connected to anything like my writing computer is just a Lenovo thinkpad It does I never use it for anything other than writing it does it if I go online It's just a research something like ask a question like what is it? I just work it's never I never surf the web. I don't look at any websites I don't do anything with it and that helps a lot for that but for phones I have too many friends that are sending me funny things.
There's always like some funny thing. All right I guess I'm back on Instagram Crazy there's too much coming at ya And the problem is if I put it down which I do often for like the whole day when I pick it up I've got 70 text messages to go through and then I don't respond to some and some people get mad and then like I'm sorry It's like it's too much. Yeah too much coming in and then there's so much. Hey look at this.
Hey check this out Have you seen this? What do you think about that? You think this is real? You know and then the people that you don't respond to you can oftentimes take the lack of response as Basically basically you saying fuck you and it's not the case at all Right, you just don't have the time to do it right and you read it and you liked it and you smiled But you didn't put a smiley on it right have to heart.
Yeah, it's a very strange social dynamic It's I'm not sure I I I'm very good at it. No, it's probably good time. Yeah. Yeah, it's a bad too much That's the problem as much as it is interesting if you have a wide social circle It demands too much of your time if you have you know hundred units of attention that you have for use throughout the day It demands too many units, right?
There's just too much coming at you. Yeah, and it'll take away from other things that you do and that's that's a real problem Yeah, yeah, I like sitting in my garden You think yeah, yeah, I'd be really good. I've been gardening. Yeah, that's that's the real thing That's my peaceful place as a real thing.
It's real start. Yeah real plant grows out like comes from it Yep, you can eat stuff from it. Yeah, you need stuff to do right? You need a thing that can take you away from the other things something to make more beautiful every day Something to you know something to care for It's you know whether it's the garden I have a garden in Los Angeles that you know I grow herbs and you know that to walk down and put that those herbs those fresh herbs in the Amat you're making you know it's it's not it's a small thing But it's huge yeah, and then I have back East I have planted a garden with my son this year You know like vegetable cart and he's you know haven't been there but he's been saying the tomatoes are coming like crazy and the cucumbers You know that's such a yeah, there you go.
It's this it's a I've I really love this I love the idea that we can you know the earth has so much to offer us You know all it needs is water and sunlight and it'll produce all these beautiful things well There's built-in human rewards for growing things to it Look at the human reward system that we have had in our DNA for thousands and thousands and thousands of years when you grow things And they produce fruit and they produce vegetables like it's exciting Yeah, you're gonna survive yeah, and then when you when you're doing your harvest in the fall You have an abundance right and then I learned how to pickle And that's a joy because now you're now you're set for the winter right now you got a refrigerator full of pickled stuff and You know to be able to bite into a crisp pickle that you grew as cucumber in the summer in December It's just you know, this is how they survived you know This is you know the storage of crops and how you make them survive through the winter it's a skill that you know That well, that's why we're still here And then you find out that pickling and fermented foods and all these things are fantastic for your body Incredible in a way that other foods just aren't yeah, and helps your microbiome and helps your gut Yeah, and then you can you know use the extra pickle juice for martini right fantastic. We're just drink it Yeah, I do a couple juice I have a company that sells you these little packets of pickle juice and you drink it That's a probiotic beverage. Yeah, I have I have many jars of pickles that are there's no more pickles in but I keep the juice For for drinking it's uh, and you know the fermented foods and you know I've learned you know so much about the gut biome and and how to make that healthier and All these challenges were up against with all the poisons in our food and how to get around them and how to clean clean yourself out and I just did a cleanse one of those master cleanses I just did 14 days on where you don't need anything for 14 days and it's amazing how how great you feel at the end of 14 Whole days no food at all. Wow.
What did you drink water lemon juice cayenne pepper and and maple syrup? And that'll get you through the day and then but every morning you're doing a purge right? So you're cleaning out you're cleaning every all the poisons out. I do that a couple times a year 14 days a long time But no food it is what it's the first thing you eat when it was over You got an easy way back in like clear broth first then Vegetables and then over how long about a week re-entry.
Yeah, I mean you're eating but you're not going for the steak first right right You know and so you have to kind of ease your system back into it Do you experience the mental clarity when you do that? Total mental clarity interesting. Yeah, I've never done it first I've done as a day first three days are tough, but then once you get past the third day It's pretty it's pretty good your energy level is like constant throughout the day and you can work I play sports with it, you know, it's it's around 10 days. You should stop doing the physical stuff Exertion I can still take a bike ride and stuff, but you were working out three days of no food.
Yeah, wow You have to you know everyone's gonna have their own reaction So you know like I'm not advocating even to do it, right? You know, I don't want to be responsible for that But for me personally, it's really helped because it also it restarts your system It basically you get really toxins. You're certainly not drinking you're not doing any kind of abusive shit to yourself and And basically your body is banking you by the clarity it gives you like you really like and the other thing that happens Is I'll just start cleaning shit, right? So, you know when I'm on a cleanse I'm gonna clean closet because you're not only cleaning yourself you're cleaning your environment around you and it's You know, I just I just did it two weeks ago, so Yeah, how do you decide when to do it?
Usually when you've been a little indulgent and you're not feeling too good and You know you put on a little weight and just like I got I don't feel good I want to you know clean out you muscles a ton of weight doing it. Yeah, how much have you lost doing 14 days? 25 pounds whoa about two a day Wow And then so then your body's running completely on ketones right because your body's running on fat Yeah, and so your body's burning fat and ketones when you run I've been on ketogenic diets in the past and then I've been on the carnivore diet Which does the exact same thing where your your mental clarity is just so much better like everything just runs smooth It's just like you're like you're saying you have this level flat energy throughout the day There's no highs and lows like crashing after a big meal or caffeine pump pumps or yeah, all that stuff Yeah, yeah, but but staying up till you know midnight and fine No energy's fine and you'll sleep last too. You need less sleep for some reason I don't know why but also I think it's probably good to give your digestive system a little break to yeah Let it relax I mean it's constantly work especially if you eat All throughout the day if you're a snacker and you have late at night you have a little bite to eat wake up in the morning You have breakfast like your digestive system's just constantly grinding out this food and digesting everything yeah Yeah, the real the real poison for me is sugar Mm, you know it manifested in alcohol for a while, but I don't drink that much anymore, but sugar is the is the big For everybody yeah, it's a tough one So it's a very addictive and and and you know you think oh it feels great when you yeah first have it But then it makes you pay so well It's also with modern diets like what the kind of sugar that we have available today really never existed in the past before That's true, you know for most of human history if you want something sweet yet eat fruit Right, you know and now all of a sudden you've got candy bars stuff that comes to you in this insane form We have a hundred grams of sugar and something that you can eat right that's nuts Yeah, you know or a drink you know you get one of those what is it?
Baskin Robbins blizzard is that the one oh my god that thing things will mess you up? Oh, you get a headache after you're done I know it's like it's like alcohol. Yeah, that expression Candies dandy, but liquor's quicker. Yeah, you know it's liquor's just concentrated sugar.
It's just like you know but You know I try not to be too Much of a zealot about any other stuff But I have like my mom was introducing us to natural food in late 60s So she she had read a book called poisons on our food and started taking processed food out of our diet Oh, wow, like bread this early on in 1967. Yeah, so she she was a real you know She really was a homeopath before it was called a homeopath and I wound up getting cancer And I was told she had to have chemo and said no I'm not doing it and kicked it herself, you know with the change in what she was putting in her body And so I've always you know had had her as a kind of guide post for my health She used to always say the the body is a temple and that the body can heal anything And a lot of it has to do with how you approach it in your mind And if you believe that you can heal yourself you can heal yourself And she getting us from books. I think she got it from a Combination of books and her faith in you know Catholicism I think every every religion has a fasting day for some reason That seems to be something that is common to all religion that there's an important need not eat one day a week She wouldn't do that with us, you know as kids you wouldn't start for a day But she did have a whole holistic approach to the way that she viewed illness and I remember her drumming it into our heads that if you ever get told by a doctor anything you have to challenge You go to a different doctor and see if they say the same thing always always always She lost her father and her brother within the course of a year to medical malpractice Oh wow 50s and so she had a serious distrust of the medical profession and back then it was like you there was no one even thought about suing from Alpractice it was like that's the doctor. He's an authority figure you can't mess with him, right?
so she she always approached it with a healthy level of Questioning whenever she was given advice by doctors Wow and It's interesting. She you know, she's always been you know I've always kind of wondered how she would have reacted to this recent thing and all that But I have you ever done ayahuasca? No, yeah, I have done DMT Yeah, which is the that's the actual compound that's active in ayahuasca I was good as an orally active version of DMT. Yeah, yeah I was you know They tell you to go in I when I did it they tell you to go in with an intention and my intention was to You know, I was frustrated with feeling anger about what was going on in the world And I said I want to release that I don't want to be consumed by that anger and so I wound up in this, you know the heavy-duty, you know Journey that ayahuasca is and my mom showed up.
Wow. Yeah, and She's I it's not like you actually hear a voice, but you hear a voice, right? You basically if she's there, you know, it's her. She's saying something to you and what she said was you're injured You're a warrior and you're injured and you need to rest, but the fight's not over That's that was what she that's what she Told me in response to my intention.
Whoa. What were you battling? I was battling my frustration with the dissolution of society people being angry at each other over ridiculous things long friendships being affected people being canceled for expressing their opinion all this stuff and I I wanted out I wanted to be absolved of that. I didn't want to be engaged in it and What she told me in the course of this thing believe it or not, you know, I understand people all that's will you just tripping and whatever But I definitely felt her presence there.
It was no doubt. It was I went through a whole journey with I saw things from our lives together and I there was one moment where I was you know, I was always been curious about Something that happened in kindergarten or something. I don't remember and she you know, it's at one point I felt her presence and she said you were right about that I'm sorry. We didn't listen to you, you know, it's kind of really profoundly deep experience and but at the end of it I felt completely lighter and completely, you know, relieved to have been through the experience and a great great connection with my mom, you know, just like a beautiful like ah She she gets it.
She's still around. I've had quite a few experiences in this realm and my mom in fact, you know, she she my father died when he was 80 and my mom was 78 and She wasn't sick but my dad had been dying for a while and we all got down to say goodbye to him they were living in Mexico at the time and We went to the funeral and my mom was very stoic and and sang very strongly my father's favorite song at the funeral and she didn't cry and we were all concerned about her and we hired a couple of people for when we left to take care of her and She was really agitated the last night and she was I was there and she said, you know, I don't trust these people I don't know if they're gonna talk about you or you know in your fame and so and all that stuff I said mom don't worry about it, you know, they're just here to get you stuff if you need it Don't worry about it. She I go off she wakes up the next morning. She says to my sisters who are still in the house with her Everything I said last night don't worry about it and they said what happened mom?
She's had a dream She said I was in my childhood home in Westwood, California And I was something in my living room. I couldn't look at it. I was just a stone figure I couldn't look at it and was disturbing me I didn't want to look at it but then I look out the bay window and then coming down the street I see led by my first friend in life a group of people coming towards the house and it didn't make any sense There were people from my childhood people from my coral society people from my work But they were all there and they all came to the door and when they showed up I realized everything was gonna be fine and I realized oh my god that was the departed that had come to say it's gonna be okay, wow and So my sisters left Three days four days later we got a phone call my mom has died She wasn't sick and then my sister talks to the woman that was taking care of her And she said it was really strange You know the night before she died she said he's here and they said who's here and she said gill my husband He's here. He's come to get me and they said no Mary.
He's not he's not there And she said oh no he most certainly is and he looks very strong as he died feeble Goes to bed that night and passes So even the most cynical person in the world that doesn't believe in afterlife for anything How do you explain that? How do you explain whatever chemicals were going on in her brain to bring her to that passing where she was gonna join the person that she loved her entire life? That's a beautiful thing regardless how you look at it I don't think there's any value in being cynical about these experiences and even the ayahuasca experience like this idea that you're hallucinating And that that's what this is Doesn't matter. It's the same experience if you really did make contact with your mother in the afterlife and you really did have this communication Versus whatever the fuck hallucination means.
I don't know what you mean by that. It's the same experience Yeah, so like there's no value in being cynical about it like you get up you get There's something that you experience from it. That's tangible. It's it's real you feel it It changes your perspective.
It changes the way you feel about work the world Yeah, that's a real thing Just because you can't put a measuring tape to it or you can't put it on a scale don't say it's not real There's so many ways of being that we haven't even studied or have no idea about right We help people can communicate over 2,000 miles like a mother wakes up in the middle of the night knowing something's wrong with their child And I've been slater the fucking phone rings right what the hell is that or twins yeah Yeah, oh yeah strange connection When I was my grandfather was very close to he he was had been dead for two months and I had a dream about him And he and I woke up like startled and I heard his voice You know and he said basically don't worry. I'll take care of it And I didn't know what the hell it meant, but it was very clear. It was like I'll take care of it 15 minutes later I got a phone call from Susan and my son miles who was like six years old at the time had run out into the middle of seventh Avenue And she said it was the weirdest thing It was like something stopped him like like that and a car goes behind him and a car goes in front of him And I was like I know exactly what just happened He was he whatever that is whatever energy he could muster in whatever phase of being he was he fucking saved my son's life Eroically, I'm no doubt about that. Why would he show up and say that to me?
I don't worry. I'll take care of it Wow, so I I totally believe this stuff. I believe that we that life death there's other planes of existence That we can get to through various means it doesn't have to be Iowaska it doesn't there are if you're open to Listening in different ways. There are great things available for you It's like the idea of an accident is an accident that you run into that person that you've been wanting to talk to and all of a sudden Now they're right in front of you, you know, that's not an accident.
It's it's divine whatever You know whatever the divine is for you. It's there's another level of energy that is going around You know that we haven't even studied what how the heart communicates You know there's that Spanish or Portuguese cardiologist that talks about the realm of communication in the electromagnetic field of the heart and what that Means and how the heart can communicate and has and Parts of the heart have more neurons and parts of the brain and right what is that all about and it's not so we don't we don't think that way You know we don't want to experience we have a it's a heart is a meat pump and that's it just runs in your entire life Yeah, but it doesn't this guy suggesting no one's electromagnetic energy It's what makes us live longer if we're with someone else or with a pet, you know that some that people that are isolated and alone are hurting And they're not having that electromagnetic connection with other people. I we crave crowds So I want to be in you know groups of people. It's a natural thing.
It keeps us alive. It keeps us activated in a community Yeah, and but we don't study that we don't study what that is and I think it's kind of magical and it's why solitary confinement such a cruel Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people think it's actual torture. Of course. It is.
Yeah, of course it is you've got nothing to interact with And um, it's why that you know, that's why that lockdown is cruel You know that you know the just the scope of that loneliness was just immense, you know that Some people had to deal with especially people that were already struggling Some people already filled with anxiety and they already had suffered from depression and they were already weird socially then also They're just completely isolated from everyone else for a year or a year and a half depending on where you lived So it's weird this desire that people have to define things as real or not real and and also to let everyone know Oh, I'm not falling for that nonsense, you know, but God I mean at one point in time do you have to say well all these stories all these experiences of people have maybe there's something to it And maybe this closed-mindedness is not benefiting benefiting me in any way. Yeah, I mean, there's magic magic in the world I mean, there's this old way of thinking I became do you know what the uh There's a book called the nature of things by a kind of Lucretius written in 350 BC and it's Epicureanism and Epicureanism now is about you know You like food you like whatever back then it was like the whole purpose of this philosophy or religion whatever you want to call it Was that that that all of life is a miracle all everything that you're seeing in front of you is the first time it's happening And will never happen again. It's a collision of atoms in a particular way They don't call them atoms But they call them the smallest particles that create unique experiences every moment of your life And the whole purpose of life is to seek the pleasure of that and avoid pain and the pain can be either living isolated or without the idea of magic or Indulging in something where it creates pain too much pleasure creates pain, but this philosophy in this beautiful long-form poem Written by Lucretius in 350 BC is all about magic. It's all about this idea that look how lucky we are to wake up in the morning and see that Frickin cactus blooming, you know, that's like when we get so Inured from that so, you know anesthetized from the magic and it's all just a dulgramat every day as the same That's robbing yourself of so much right that the idea that what if you just woke up and said hey It's fucking magic.
It's this is amazing first of all I'm breathing second of all look at that Sun coming in the window And this is gonna be an amazing day Instead of like ah shit. I gotta get up and you know my fucking thing, you know like No, that's also relative because if you were dying in a hospital and you had this Opportunities, okay, I'm all you have to do is say these magic words and you'll be transported back to health in your home with a completely New perspective and a completely new appreciation for just being healthy and alive Yeah It's just hard for people to shift that perspective and think like that all the time But if you could force yourself just as an exercise to say I am so lucky to be above ground I'm so lucky to be healthy and mobile if I am and I can just go do what I want to do and live my life and go say hi to people I love Yeah, and the idea that you can also even if things are bad that if you approach life that way then you there is a possibility making Everything better and it has to do with humility it has to do with being able to say I Can forgive somebody for something I can also ask forgiveness for something I've done these it's all about humility It's all about a hump humility in the face of not only your own personal experience But in how you view the universe like I we're either I'm lucky to be here or What a blessing to be able to have this life. I've had I want to give and I want to I had this beautiful Experience when I was going through my you know one of my darkest periods this woman showed up and I met her once in my life this Tibetan woman great singer and she she Said why are you here? She said you're in trouble.
I'm a takeria and I didn't even know her and I I said alright, okay And so she did this reiki healing on me. She sang Incense and I didn't understand I didn't understand why she was there she makes me a meal that evening first evening She's done all this healing on me and she says you know she makes the meal. I'm eating I finished eating I start taking the dishes right she said what are you doing? I said well you cook dark clean she says sit down.
That's the problem with you people in the West. It's all business deal I'm doing this for you. Can you just accept that? I'm taking care of you Can you accept that and she said you will never know how to give love until you know how to receive love and it blew my mind Because at the time I realized I was engaged in that kind of transactional way of looking at relationships That the idea that giving completely is so Much better you actually get more out of it than you do receiving it Mm-hmm and once I understood that it kind of transformed everything for me because and that was the person that was a total stranger Just out of nowhere and I said finally at the end of it I said why are you here and she said you have done good things for the world We need you and she left and you know that so I'm I didn't play in that I didn't know I did I was gonna happen but it made me realize There are angels in this world.
They are manifested as human beings But there are certain kinds of people that are there for you if you are open for it if you are closed off and cynical You will not see your angels but if you are maybe sometimes just completely wiped and you have no you know you just ready to receive it and maybe The fact that I was able to receive that I think really helped me and helped me shift everything It's always a struggle of course. It doesn't that lesson doesn't mean that I'm that way forever right but it's a reminder It's it's it's it's that there that there is another energy in the world that is actually energy of good We have Consumed by the bad all the time Right all these you know negative forces that are trying to bring us down And I think that that sometimes we get so defeated by those things that we are not open to the energy of the angels They're good and when I say angels I don't mean I know what you mean. Yeah, super positive people like something some pure expression of love and Compassion and generosity. Yeah.
Yeah, and that's this is the real problem that with social media and algorithms in particular Is that it really highlights the things that make you upset? It does yeah, and that kind of energy is like really is that is that affecting your everyday life? Well, it is if you dive into the negativity all day long and you're engrossed in social media and getting upset about things rather than Experiencing the life that's actually in front of you and doing it from a positive perspective and not concentrating on all these external things That could be making you angry or making a frustrated or filling you with anxiety We're actually poisoning yourself with that. Yeah, you are and was I and it's a constant battle because that damn thing's buzzing all the time But I have gotten better with it.
I will not look at first thing in the morning anymore What's much like we're talking about like film and records being a new thing? This is a really new thing and this is very invasive It's a very new thing and very invasive and it's gonna take a while for people to figure out the right way and the wrong way to use it Yeah, and what what are the ramifications and the consequences of using it incorrectly, you know because it's no one's teaching that You know, they're not teaching children that in school. There should be a course on this is the negative aspect of social media These are the negative aspects of interaction. This is what it's doing to your consciousness.
It's doing to your focus It's stealing your joy. It's stealing your your your appreciation of the moment Right and it's leading you into conflict constantly constantly and you know, that's a negative thing. That's a that's a force of evil Yeah, strong word, but you know, it's the right word though. You know, it's again There's these words good evil angel God they fuck with people because they're like oh is that?
It's I think I got a kind of abandon that way of thinking and just go well There's certainly positive and negative and certainly love and and evil. There's those are real things and there's good There's good in the world and also the more you concentrate on other things the more your life is defined by those other things whether it's good or bad So if you're constantly thinking about bad things like we can't have a very loving and amazing life If you're constantly inundated with thoughts about negative things and on the other side of it If you're thinking in a positive way and enjoying love and friendship and community and just doing stuff that you actually find value in Well, this is gotta give you better energy and like also the way you interact with other people will be different So you'll affect the way they feel and that'll have that butterfly effect out to the rest of people They come in contact with not to mention it's really good for your health. Yes Well, you what you're saying before one of the worst things for your health is loneliness. Yeah, yeah, it'll kill you Tim Robbins your cool motherfucker.
Thank you, man. I enjoy talking you. I appreciate it. Thanks very much.
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