Transcript of #2232 - Josh Brolin

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Hey. Oh, Little Bo Peep. She needed the money.

Oh.

Oh. Remember how great that was?

Oh, yeah. When I first met him, it was like one of those weird things where, you know. You know, I mean, you've met a lot of famous people. Some of them, you meet them, you're like, really? It's weird. Oh, there's bummer, too. Yeah, the bummer ones. That sucks. When you meet someone, they suck. You're like, oh, no, you suck.

I know, Exactly.

Some people just. Just not talk. They should only do what they do. Act and sing.

But then you get to know them. Like, I don't know. Like, I'm pretty good at this now. Where you don't. Where you see people that you, like, looked up to, Like Eddie Vedder. I had a pretty close relationship.

Oh, really?

Yeah. But I was drinking, and then I would grab his balls like that. And then it was like, I don't want him around. I don't want Josh around.

Yeah.

I don't like that anymore. I don't want my. You know. And I think Sean Pen appreciated like that. Like, wow, somebody has the balls. It's not even a little chaos. It's like somebody has the balls to, like, call me on my. Like, not everybody's afraid of me.

Oh, right. Yeah. He's probably used to people constantly being afraid of him.

Like, oh, I can't with him.

Right. Well, he does wild. Like when he went down to Mexico, met with El Chapo, like, Jesus Christ, dude. That's wild.

And I do think that that's organic, but I think that that's also. You just have that thing where you just go, you know what? Shit's getting boring. Right. The weather's just too nice here.

Weather's too nice. I'm too famous. Let's go meet a mobster.

Yeah, let's go some up. Let's do something. Let's do something.

Let's do something really rough.

Resonate for at least a year.

Yeah. That whole El Chapo thing was so crazy, though, because that kind of is one of the things that got him caught.

It was.

Yeah. Yeah. Because they, you know, they track your cell phone data.

Yeah.

They know where you go. And if you're bringing your cell phone, you're basically bringing a tracking device to go find one of the most notorious gangsters alive today.

Then most. I mean, who's. Who was the guy with the football team back in the day? Like, Pablo Escobar Think about it. It's our days. This time's Pablo Escobar.

Yeah.

Sean Penn golden hangs out Spicoli. Because you know what? Hey, who wants to come with me and find this?

Did he go solo?

I think so.

I think he went solo. Well, he knew that lady who was, like, a reporter, you know, there was.

Like, this really hot skin girl.

Yeah, yeah, he knew her.

Was he dating her?

I don't know, but I think she had a thing with El Chapo after that. No.

Like, did Sean introduce them properly?

I don't know. I think he knew her and she knew him. She knew El Chapo.

Oh, right. That's how he got. That was the connect.

And El Chapo's like, I like the meat.

Yeah. I love you.

Yeah. I really enjoyed you in colors. And then next thing you know.

What's the most dangerous thing that you do now? What do you think?

Dangerous?

Yeah. Like, we're talking about Sean going out on a limb. Do you find it necessary to go out and do things that. That, like, challenge you? In a way, yes. Challenge your psyche?

Yes.

In what way?

Elk hunting is probably the most exciting.

What is?

Elk.

Elk hunting. Why? Because it puts you in danger?

Well, no, it's just really difficult. You know, you're bow hunting in the mountains, right? And it's just you in the mountains and just.

Do you stay up there for days and days and days? And do you quarter your. Your kill?

Pack it out?

Yeah, see, that's a different thing. You know, people say, I don't like hunting, personally. I grew up in a very red part of California. Everybody hunts that I grew up with. And I would shoot and I would hunt with my dad, and I would, like, fucking think about it and dream about it for three weeks.

Oh, yeah, I love it. I love it. I love eating.

No, no, no. I'm saying that I would, like, spiral.

Oh, you get negative with it.

Not even. It was negative. Yeah, I guess it would be negative. But it made me think of the kids. They were going like, mom, mom, are you there? And I just killed the mother. It's like the Bambi kind of thing, right? But I eat meat. So that hypocritical thing of like, I don't want to kill anything, but I want you to kill it for me so I can eat it, because I really like the way it tastes.

Well, that's the anthropomorphization of animals that Disney has kind of done a number on people with, you know, like, Bambi and Yogi Bear and all that. Kind of cartoons and teddy bears and we have a very, you know, living in. When you live in urban areas and cities and people, you know, streets and concrete and people just get a very distorted idea of nature and our relationship with nature. And when you're a kid and you're just, these are sweet, cute things and then all of a sudden you're supposed to go, murder one. Like, it's all fucked up, but it's. What's up is the cartoons, I mean, they're cute and everything because they depict.

It in a way. How?

Well, it's just completely distorted. You have these animals that are talking to each other and the hunters are always assholes. And like, if it wasn't for hunters, there would be no humans. We'd have never made it this far. If we were all just eating tubers and grapes and we would have never made it.

Do you like garbanzo beans?

They're not bad.

I don't. Have you ever hunted one?

No.

It's wild.

How do you do that?

You get. You take a bunch of acid. You take a bunch of acid? It's possible. Yeah. Yeah. What about the sexual connotations of Disney? Like, you know, did you ever hear that thing that Disney, Walt Disney had like the biggest porn collection of all time.

Really?

That's what I heard. I don't know how much of it is true.

Have you ever seen how there's like.

The Rod Stewart thing and there's. You know what I mean?

I don't know if it's right.

I don't know. Google it.

Jamie. Did Walt Disney have a gigantic porn collection? I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of people that are like really into kids stuff and like sweet wholesome stuff.

They.

Did they.

That other of slant.

Yeah. They need or eventually flip maybe. Maybe it's a cover or maybe it's like they're so cutesy with the completely wholesome stuff that they have to balance it out with some bonded up, some guys getting kicked in the nuts ball.

Why is it that people feel that people in Hollywood and Texans are like that? Like, I know people that have moved to Texas and they. And they've called me. There was one guy that I used to work out with in Venice and he started. He moved here and he called me and he'd be like, hey, man, you know, the list is coming out. And I'd go, what list? And he goes, you know, the list.

The list.

And I go, am I on the list?

Oh, no.

And he goes, no, you're clean, you're good. But I know you know who's on the list. I'm glad. I know I didn't do anything wrong. Even though I didn't do anything wrong. And I said, but why are you, like, a twofold thing? Why are you under the impression that everybody in Hollywood lives under the same roof? Like, we all live in the same apartment. Apartment complex.

It's they.

It's they.

Yeah, they.

They.

They are out there.

They're out there doing that thing.

Yeah.

And then what would. Why. How could you possibly think that. That a guy who's a trainer at Gold's in Venice would have the list? Why was he chosen?

Well, he goes on Reddit, and that's how you get the list. That's how you get the list.

I still am waiting for the list. Yeah. I think I'm gonna see him when I'm. When I'm here. We started communicating again.

Well, we have things like the Epstein client list that doesn't get released. Then it fuels these kind of conspiracy theories about there being a list.

So why is that list not released?

That's a very good question. Well, for sure, someone has the list. Elaine Maxwell's in jail. Right. So she must have talked, like, there must have been conversations.

Right.

And there must be a bunch of very powerful people that are on that list. And, you know, are all the powerful people in cahoots?

Was something that I learned, like, when I played. When I played W, I played a senator W. What is it like playing.

A guy who's still alive? Did you meet with him? With him at all?

Scary. I mean it. No, I wanted to.

Did you ever meet him?

No.

God, that's weird.

Right? I had the opportunity to meet him afterwards, and. And there was something about him that was more. Remember when he was, like, giving candy to Michelle Obama and.

Yeah.

It was like a really friendly, kind of a mischievous thing. And I was like, I would like to meet him. And then I saw his paintings of his dogs, and I said, I don't want to meet him. I just don't like. It was something attractive for a moment.

What's the paintings that got you?

I don't know. And I love paintings. I don't know what it was.

But you didn't like the paintings?

No, it's not that I didn't like the paintings.

Something in the paintings there was.

I don't know what it was.

You know, something in the paintings is, I killed a million people with fake weapons of mass destruction. You know, there was. We had a fake story, and I used that story to Justify an invasion of a country, and now a million people are dead.

So that's the question.

I'm haunted every night.

Totally paint dogs that are staring like that. Like, your face right now is exactly how every eye is in his dog's paintings. It's so funny.

That guy must be medicated. They must put him on some things so he could sleep.

Is that that look, I think, does he put into his dog's eyes? The look that he has always. Or at least that he feels that he has.

Like there's a haunted.

His lens, his real look. It's his Len.

His eyes. Yeah.

How he sees the world, how he experiences.

What is it like running around knowing that you did that? Not just that you did that, but that there's no culpability. Like, no one went to jail for that. No one even got brought up on charges.

Well, that's what I was bringing up, because when I would meet these people, I would. You know, I went to the Senate floor and I met a lot of these people, and then I met a lot of rich people, which is when I met Trump, actually, the 21 Club, back when I knew a lot about him, I was fascinated by the whole.

What's the 21 Club?

21 Club is a place that he used to go a lot. And it was like, you know, yeah, you have a chance to meet this billionaire, this Bill Trumpet, Eyes Wide Shut type. Yeah. So he. What was I gonna say? Is he. Oh, meeting these people, especially getting them drunk, you know, where people get super honest.

Right.

You know, where they go, you know. You know, I mean, I trust you, I trust you. And you're like, here it comes, here it comes. Whereas before that, they were like, you know, I'm not sure. And I just said what I think is, you know, and then they finally go, I just fucked her. I fucked her. I got it. You know, and you're like, oh. Or they tell you what's going on. But the thing that I learned, and I'm really curious about, like, what we were talking about Hollywood, and the perception of them all being in it together is, don't you think, the rivalries and all that. Not entirely, but that all politicians are basically under the same roof. They all know what each other's doing, and that there's more of an agenda of power to keep the public thinking a certain way. Well, there's not brainwashed.

There's certainly a benefit to that.

Of course there is.

Yeah. There's a benefit to that. And then there's also the underlying factor is money. Of course. Like, there's so much money and influence. There's so many special interest groups. There's so many lobbyists.

That's what I mean.

So many massive corporations that are donating to campaigns. Yeah. So there's. There's always going to be this desire to sort of color a certain life.

Pacify.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then treat you like you're a baby so they can continue making insane amounts of money. Like, if you're someone like Nancy Pelosi and you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars and you make $170,000 a year and there's no fucking explanation. Yeah, like, just that alone. Like, you have to kind of keep people in the dark. You have to kind of like keep dancing, and otherwise you're going to jail. Like, someone's going to start investigating and they got to go, hey, what you did is not legal. And you're going to be in real trouble.

What's your relationship like with money?

In what way?

Just in what. You made a certain amount of money for a long time.

I don't think about it.

You don't think about it?

No, no. What I like about money is to not think about it. That's what I like.

Do you like spending it?

I like buying stuff.

Me too.

I have a nice car, drove here. I drove a 69 Camaro.

See, but that's different.

Yeah, I like that.

That's different. That's character.

I like fun, Stu, but fun stuff, for the most part, I'm not interested in it, like, as a goal, you know, I just. I don't. What I like about money is not having to think about it. My friend Brian Callan said this to me once. He said, he goes, real freedom is when you can go to a restaurant and not worry about anything costs. He's like, everything else is bullshit. And it really is, everything else is bullshit. When you just go to a restaurant, get a nice steak, you know, order a bottle of wine, have a good time, and not think about the bill.

What I think happens is, and be grateful for it and to remind yourself to be that that exists. To be grateful for and not be taken advantage of. And I think that's one of the hardest things about money slash power, is you start treating things as if they're underneath you, you know, where you go, God, I'm so glad I can go anywhere in the world right now and get a meal and I don't have to think about, how am I going to pay for this? Am I going to be in debt on My credit card. But when you start saying, excuse me. Oh, I said. I said 204 degrees, not 190.

Right?

Read my lip. You know?

And you're like, that's just gross.

That is gross. But it happens.

Taking. That's just taking advantage of this relationship that everyone knows where service people have to be nicer than they really would be normally, like a regular person. So people hoping for a tip, hoping.

For one of your many hundreds.

Yeah, it's gross.

Thousands or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Disgusting. It's a gross way to treat people. But some people want to get rich so they. They could do that to people. Maybe someone did it to them when they were younger and they're like, I can't wait to do this to other people.

I mean, when you said nice car, and you were like, I thought you were gonna say. I was like, oh, please, no. Like Lamborghini.

No, I don't have any of those. And then, no, I like muscle cars. I like old muscle cars. That's my favorite.

It's like, me at 37, knucklehead. And people say I had an affectation. I know you're friends with momoa or whatever. I go, no, man, I've been rid motorcycles since I was three and a half years old.

They're fun.

They're not only fun. There's something on us. If you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mates, which is the only book that's ever been written, that's kind of gets close to the kind of spiritual place, if you're a true motorcyclist, whether you're riding with your son or whether you're riding with a grid of guys or whatever, that beautiful, thunderous hum when you're in it, when you're in a group of guys who really know what they're doing, and you're an absolute fucking sink. And yes, your arms are up here and your arms are pretty numb at that point, but you're soaring. You're an eagle on a jet stream.

You ever heard Hunter S. Thompson in, you know that documentary they did, Gonzo? Yeah, like that. In the documentary, the Very Beginning, he talks about riding a motorcycle.

Oh, I don't remember that.

Coast Highway.

I don't remember that.

Oh, it's fucking great. See if you can find that. He talks about riding a motorcycle. About like that. The lines begin to blur.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you just. You're just on the edge and how alive you are. It's a fucking story.

We don't have to get into this book, right? Away. But there was. I wrote. They came to me. It's the only story that I wrote that somebody asked me to write for the book. And they were like, well, you're really into motorcycles. Why don't you write a story about motorcycles? And I tried, and it was just bad and bad. And everything I wrote was, like, so forced and bullshit. And finally I said, I can't do it. I'm not going to write it. And the minute I said, I'm not going to do this, I started writing. It just kind of started to come out, and it's good.

Do you write by hand?

I do, yeah. Most.

Do you feel more of a connection?

No. Write any which way, whether it's on the phone, whether, you know, I remember people saying, like, I write, you know, by hand. I handwrite because it's. It's the way it used to be. And I was like, yeah. Also used to be under candlelight, which fucked your eyes up.

Also be. Used to be people had slaves.

Yeah.

You can only get around caves and shit.

Why don't you go paint on a cave, tell me a story, try to get it published. Yeah.

Get a witch doctor.

I don't how it comes out. I think real writing is anywhere, anytime, however you can get it out. I don't think there's a muse that's needed. I think it's work, man.

It is work. I think the muse is like. It's a concept. Right. Have you ever read Pressfield's the War of Art?

Yeah, of course.

Great book, Great book. I think he's right, though, when he says, you summon the muse when you sit down to work, but that's also just like an intention thing. Like, you have so much time and effort put on a thing, and when you do that, your mind gets more in sync with creativity. Yeah, but if you treat it like it's a muse, it actually does work. Like, if you show up every day and like, say, click into that, pay respect to the muse. I'm sitting here and I'm ready to write, and I'm a professional and I'm ready to go and treat it like you're summoning the muse. It actually works. There actually is an effect that happens. I don't know if there's an actual muse, but you can understand why someone would think that there's a muse.

Because why do people chant? Why do people meditate?

Why people.

That. That's the muse. Whatever the muse is, it's talking about God. What's God? I don't know. It depends on who you're talking to.

Yeah.

God is a feeling.

Yeah.

Something that. That fucking thing that keeps you inspired. That keeps the gasoline at a high octane.

Well, it's something.

That's how I see it.

It's something that gets you away from your ego. Like with writing. Something that gets you away from your ego and into your mind, into your consciousness, into, like, your. Your perceptions of things and your ability to express it. And it's just a. It's a focus thing. And the more you focus on it, the more that muscle grows, the more you get adapted to it.

Because your e ego is worried about how people are going to perceive you.

Right.

And that's not right.

Yeah. You want to look cool.

You want to look cool. People are like, yeah. Yeah. I read that book that you wrote, man. Holy. I had no idea. You're amazing.

That's the grossest conversation ever. Cocktail party in Hollywood. Some guy comes up to you and tells you you're amazing. You are a genius.

I had. And it's always with those.

So incredible.

I had no idea.

Meanwhile, that guy's trying to sell you on some multi level marketing scheme or something. There's something he's trying to tap into you with.

I want to buy that book. I want to option your book.

I also have a script I'd love you to see.

Yeah. Is it a Disney? Is it about. That's about animals talking.

I really love about living in Texas is there's no Hollywood. There's no show business. I don't have to deal with any of these people with, like, alternative agendas.

We just moved to say. We just. I want to go back to that. But we just moved to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara.

Awesome.

Santa Barbara. It's funny. Why does everybody think that it is Montecito?

I love it out there.

So pretty.

Because it's beautiful.

Because it's beautiful. What about the people?

Oh, I'm not a little elitist. There's a lot of elitist.

Okay. That's a perfect place for me. So I grew up in Santa Barbara. I was in Paso Robles, which is ranch country, about two hours above Santa Barbara. And then we moved to Santa Barbara when I was 11 and it was Montecito, but it was a very different Montecito. Like, yes, there were a couple rich people. Yes. My dad was doing okay by then. He had done Marcus Welby. He did. At that time, he did Amityville horror. So he had a little bit of money. But we bought, you know, what would now be a $35 million home in Montecito right? He bought for $600,000. Same fucking house. Right? You know what I mean? So it was a different Montecito. And then whatever group I grew up with. But I went to. The point is, I went to jail there a lot.

I just did.

I just liked it. Instead of the museum, I went to jail. I was like, no, Mom, I'm going to go to jail today. And then so in la, Venice Beach. I love Venice Beach. But Venice beach has even changed. You know? Used to know everybody, and everybody kind of coexisted beautifully. And then Venice beach changed. It got totally randomly violent being little kids. Very dangerous little kids. Okay. So we moved to Malibu. We're close to Laird. I know Laird and Gabby and all that thing. But it never landed. So we were always talking about moving. Even though we were kind of building a house and we're finalizing everything. We're always talking. And we talk about Texas. My mom's from Texas. We were talking about East Coast. We were talking about Europe. All these places. But never Santa Barbara. I would never move back to Santa Barbara. Because, by the way, honey, if we move to Santa Barbara, which you love so much and you think is so beautiful. Beautiful. Our little girls will eventually for sure go to prison. That was in my mind.

Why?

Because in my mind. Totally.

Huh.

Most of my friends that grew up in Montecito are dead. Like, 36 out of 50.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

From what?

Heroin epidemic. Punk rock.

Oh, God.

Driving accidents. 36 out of 50 out of 50.

Wow.

Best friend, Jason Sears, who was the lead singer of Rich Kids on lsd, rkl, which was a big punk band that influenced a bunch of people. Nirvana, you know, Pearl Jam, all these people.

Rich Kids on LSD is a great name for a band.

Look it up. Can you look it up? Jason Sears, Rich Kids on lsd. We got a tattoo. At the same time, I got a tattoo from Freddy Negretti that's gone now because I removed it. But it was a big Jesus with blood coming out of the hands. And Jason, that same night, got. The same night, got Eat shit on his ass. See if you can find Jason's ass that says Eat on it.

Wow.

You're gonna put that in Jason Sears. Eat. Yeah. Where is it? Oh, you gotta just keep looking. Yeah, it'll be there. So why was that? Oh, so eventually, when we finally said, look, we're not moving, we should be grateful. We're not grateful enough. That's the problem. We're not grateful enough. But Malibu just didn't kind of Sit. And then one day.

What didn't you like about Malibu?

I love Malibu. It's just remote, you know, like we already are remote in Paso Robles. We have a place in Paso Robles. A place where I grew up. Not the ranch I grew up. It's about three miles down the road. But that's remote. And a remote that I love. I love remote, but I love extremes. I don't want to be sort of next to Santa Monica, and it's 20 miles away and it takes two and a half hours to get there.

Right.

You and I were talking about that. I don't want to sit in traffic for half my life.

Right.

I just don't want to. If I want to be somewhere, I want to be somewhere. So Santa Barbara represented a place where you kind of had your own piece of property, but everything was 10 minutes away. You got dance class for the girls. You got soccer. You got this.

Right.

You know. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

So that was the thing. But. But never I would never was I going to go back to Santa Barbara. I finally put on Zillow Santa Barbara. One house came up, and that's the house that we bought. And it was Joe Walsh's old house. Oh, wow.

That's incredible.

Incredible.

Which I was stoked.

And I asked him. Anyway, I have to finish. The story is that I was so freaked out about moving up to Santa Barbara. I still hadn't made the kind of transition that I contracted a mild case to Bell's palsy. Really? Yeah. Like, literally was stressing out. My wife was like, you gotta. And I'm not a stress guy. And she was like, you gotta mellow the fuck out. I'm like, yeah, but you don't know what's gonna happen when we move up here. It's like, it's gonna be.

So your face started life, sadly.

So literally, I'm washing my face, I'm doing this. And it just started going.

When was this?

Four months ago.

Okay. That's a side effect of the vaccine, too. That's one of the side effects of COVID 19 vaccines.

I've also heard that speech impediments of host. I've heard a lot of things. Kids taking vaccines and things happening.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That vaccine in particular, that one, the MRNA one.

Yeah, Yeah.

I know quite a few people that develop Bell's palsy from them. Well, whatever you want to call.

Are you serious?

Yeah. Facial paralysis. Yeah. I know two people specifically. Wonderful facial. Like, droopy face.

Because when my older kids went away, when my Older kids were young, there were what, 17 vaccinations. And now that my younger kids are young, there's 50, 72. Yeah, yeah.

It's a series of them, but it's ultimately 72 shots.

Yeah, yeah. And Scary prospect, man.

Well, the fucked up thing is if you talk about it, you're an anti vaxxer and you're talking about anything, but that's a big one because they've done a really good job of demonizing anyone who questions a medicine that might be correlated with a bunch of fucking serious diseases.

Yeah.

And for whatever reason, profit, they've, they've just done a great job of gaslighting people.

Yeah.

And scaring the shit out of people by labeling anybody who did like, look what they did to Jenny McCarthy. Do you remember when Jenny McCarthy had a kid and her kid had autism and she thought that autism had possibly come from vaccines and they basically ran around of Hollywood.

But why would they do that? What's the reason?

Money.

What do they benefit? Money.

Well, the thing is, for money, during the Reagan administration, they, the vaccine companies, pharmaceutical drug companies that are making vaccines, they said, we are unable to make these vaccines if we're liable, because if we're liable, there's too many lawsuits that are going to come our way because vaccines cannot be completely safe and effective just by virtue of the mechanism in which they work. You know, you have an irritant, you have this virus, this dead virus. Your body sees the aluminum or whatever it is, it reacts to that in a negative way and it finds the dead virus, it develops antibodies just by the way they work. When you vaccinate an enormous amount of people, you're going to have a certain amount of people that have a negative reaction. If we have lawsuits for every person that has a negative reaction, we're going out of business. So they made them immune. They made them immune. And you know what happened? Immediately they're like, well, you need a vaccine for this and you need to go vaccinate that.

And knowing that there was no drawback.

Hepatitis B, vaccines, babies right when you're born. Right when you born.

Right when you're born.

You know, there's also doctors that say it doesn't even really work for babies. But what you're doing is you're conditioning the parents to accept the fact that your child is going to get regularly vaccinated. My doctor, fortunately, our pediatrician wanted to put the kids on a different schedule, a slower schedule, and he didn't want them to have any vaccines until they were two.

Your doctor In California, yes.

But it was not like a quack. He was like, I think the way to do it, I mean, there's a schedule of vaccines your kids have to get unless you have religious exemption.

But let's not assault your children with a potential poison, because everybody is different. If I take a bong hit, I might end up under the table. If you take a bong hit, you actually may feel smarter and clearer. I remember Dean Potter, who was a climber, and he was like, I stopped smoking pot for four months, but when I started smoking pot, I could feel the hold at 2,000ft.

Oh, yeah.

Sheer cliff, nothing underneath, no ropes. But I felt more confident. And for me, I go, if I took a bong head up there, I could be four feet up and be freaking out.

Right.

It's different for everybody because everybody has different brains. It's like psychopharmaceuticals. Let's just give them all lithium or let's give them all that. You have to experiment. And the idea of experimenting with that shit is super scary.

It is. It is super scary. And it's also super scary when you're not liable for any of the repercussions. And you're just pushing it on people because you're a corporation and corporations just want to make money. Their thing is just unlimited growth. They just have a. They have an obligation, their shareholders. Every quarter they want to make more money and they just keep ramping it up.

Yeah, I remember Seinfeld talking about that. He was like, I remember back in the 70s and comedy, you know, green rooms and all that. We'd all be fucking with each other. And it had never had anything to do with money because nobody was really making money. Like, money, money, like tons of money. It was just about, what set are you going to do? What are you trying out, right? Are you going to fail? Are you not going to fail? You know, but it was this community again. And I think that things have grown into. Not that I wanted to talk about this or they even thought about it before, but the money thing is a very interesting thing to me, you know, and if you want to take it back to the book, which we can talk about later, money is the anti celebrity. It's like, how do you stay grounded? How do you stay accountable? And why would you stay accountable? Because I actually give a fuck about people instead of just being in it for myself.

Yeah.

And I think that's the difference.

Well, I think one of the things that happens to people with money is you didn't have money when you were young. Now all of a sudden you have money and you get really scared about losing money. Yeah. You get scared it's going to go away because now you realize, oh my God, it's so much better to not have to worry about your bills and so much better to have some money to buy things.

Yeah.

And then you start thinking only about money and start making decisions only for money. And then you go down the weird road and it, you know, really distorts artists. It fucks a lot of people up. You know, you see it in a lot of bands. They start making like poppy songs when they used to be like raw and gritty. When they were younger, these be used to be like authentic. And then also they're making like theme songs for films. It's like weird fucking romance songs for rom. Like Aerosmith went through totally. Bunch of that shit.

Totally.

Where to me as an Aerosmith, you know, lover as a kid, to see them, you know, go from like dream on to like the they were.

And I wonder with like drug addiction and all that, I wonder if that's like, if the parallel is I went back to heroin at that point because I just couldn't fucking deal. Do you know what I mean?

I think it's when they get off heroin, they start wanting to make money. I need to make some money. I spent all my money.

But look at, I wonder if there's any connection, like with member Philip Seymour Hoffman, like one of the greatest actors that ever lived. And I've known his mother since I was doing theater in Rochester, New York. It was like a 20 year old, 21 year old. And she would come up to me and she said, I think you're a fine actor. And I go, oh, thank you very much. And she goes, you know, my son just moved to New York. He like, he wants to be an actor. And I said, oh, what's his name? Phil. Phil's his name. Oh, well, tell Phil good luck. Good luck to Phil in the. You know, it's like every anybody who wants to be an actor, just the odds of it happening, it's just not gonn. And then Phil became this guy, 22 years of sobriety, who had an inkling in the beginning and said, you know what? I don't want this to control like my thing. So I'm not going to do it. I'm going to give everything I am to acting and I'm going to try to make the best career, theater career, movie career, whatever. And then, you know, and I again, I have it in the book Where I see him on the street and I'm crazy, and I've gotten into a fight with my wife, and I'm walking down Columbus Avenue, and I have cords on, I have no shoes, I have no shirt on.

My women out of my head. And I look to my left and I see Nick Nolte at a cafe, and we lock eyes, and I've never met Nick Nolte. I've never seen him. And it will happen that I actually will have a relationship with him later on. But we lock eyes, and the moment is he's seeing in me what he used to be or seeing in me what I'm to become. I'm seeing in him what I'm to become later. Right?

Right.

Then I see Philip Seymour Hoffman, who's standing there talking. I go, hey, Phil, it's Josh. What's up? You're doing so well, man.

Fuck.

Good for you, dude. No shirt. No shirt, no shoes. And he's standing there with one foot pointed toward me and another foot pointed in the direction that he wants to go. You know how people stand there and they're like, good to see you, man. Yeah, good, good.

Oh, no.

Now, how is that. The guy that died of a heroin.

Overdose, did he get injured? No, no, he just got back on it. Because sometimes it. What happens is people get injured.

I know. And they have surgery, and then they have back, and then they get on.

I know quite a few people.

I know a lot of people that. That's kind of been the trajectory to me. There's another parallel. And the parallel is, I just want to make money finally. I'm sick of doing independence. I'm sick of doing this and not making any money. And then you start doing, you know, whatever he was, Hunger Games or.

And then you feel hollow. And then you want to fill yourself up, right? You want to numb yourself up because you feel like a. You feel like a. Yeah.

It's like there's one thing about, like, actually finding solace and saying, hey, man, I'm older. I'm going to do this movie. I get it. I would like, you know, I got college coming up for my kids. And you justify it in a way that's okay. And then there's one thing about. You've identified yourself so much as an artist that to release yourself from that identity in other people's minds again, going back to the ego that you just fucks you up.

Right. And then you want to escape from your reality.

Exactly.

Yeah. You want to numb yourself. Yeah. Well, that is a real fucking thing. Man. And if you've ever done a project where it's like, really?

Aw.

I did a really bad sitcom once, and I remember you acted it. Oh, yeah, it was terrible. And I remember while I was doing it, I was just imagining, like, what if this is my life? What if this stupid piece of shit sitcom goes for like 10 years? 10 years and have to keep. Because there's sitcoms that inexplicably are very successful. Or were the 90s.

Yeah.

And very successful. And they were terrible.

Terrible.

They're terrible.

People love them.

Well, people want to be eating ice cream. They just want to slack jaw, sit in front of the computer or whatever the TV and eat SpaghettiOs. Just fucking numb themselves to some mundane bullshit. And if you're doing that kind of a thing, you live in hell. And a lot of those people that do those things, they wind up doing drugs because they just feel very lost.

Do that. And you're doing. You live in hell.

Yeah, you live in hell.

Which it is, to me, it sounds.

Crazy to a person listening. Oh, you're making $50,000 a week. How you living? You're living in hell. Like, what are you talking about?

No, no, no.

Most people would be like, that's great. That would be amazing. But if you want to do a thing, if, like, you want to be a great comic or you want to be a great actor and you're doing.

Something, you have to have incentive, right?

You have to have. You want it. You have to want to create something really good, right? And when you can't create something really good and you're just doing it for money, you feel trapped and you feel like shit. And then you have to reward yourself for this stupid fucking thing you do.

Yeah.

So what do you do? You go out and buy a nice Mercedes. You get a fucking house in Malibu. Now you have a large monthly nut that you have to cover. But when you take people over your house, like, look how long. Yeah, look at this ocean view.

Come on. How much of this house do you use? Nothing.

Almost nothing. But I always say to my friends, my young comic friends that are coming up, your house is just your house. I remember when I first got a nice apartment or moved to North Hollywood in 1994. I got a loft apartment and that pool table in it and a nice stereo. And I was like, this is incredible. I have a nice apartment. This is amazing. And then after a while, it just became my house, became where I live. And I realized at that moment, like, oh, this is. It's all the same feeling like all you need in a house is it to be comfortable.

Yeah.

You need a TV in a kitchen, and that's not supposed to be.

It's the place that you sleep.

Yeah. It's a place where you relax, where.

You live the entirety of your life.

You can relax almost anywhere that's comfortable and set safe. That's all you need. And then everything else is kind of. Yeah, it's kind of the things that you get for your money. It's like there's a lot of things that people spend a lot of money on, and they're not really worth it. You don't really get anything out of it.

That's why it was interesting walking in here and, you know, man cave. I hate that term. Man cave. Man cave, you know, it's a gay cave, you know?

Well, it's man cave because no woman would ever let me decorate this place this way.

But it's not that no woman wouldn't like it. I think there's. There's something.

Well, my wife likes it when she comes here. She just doesn't want to live in it.

She doesn't want to live. Do you want to live in it?

No, I wouldn't want to live here.

Well, there you go.

But I might. If I was, like, a single guy, I might decorate my house like this.

But it's things. The point is that there's things. When I walked in here, it made me smile because I started seeing things that inspire, and you like to surround yourself. Like if somebody comes in and does an interior design of your office.

Yeah.

And they go, we brought in this amazing fabric from Paris. And you go, but I don't like it. And I remember when we were doing our house, we were like. I said, look, man, you can get things from Target. I don't want to feel that people have to take. I don't want anybody to feel that they have to take their shoes off. That's what I don't. I want them to feel that they can scuff up the floor, because that's the mark that they made when they walked in my house. And maybe I don't even like the scuff. I don't like that they walked so heavy. But it's their mark. Right? We are leaving our mark.

Right.

So I said, that's how you feel about this table.

That's why this table has all these stains on it.

Seriously, it's good. It has character.

Yeah, it's a lot.

And that's the thing is, like, when we built our. The ranch, I said, There were shelves. I said, I want linoleum, or what is it? Famica? Linoleum on the shelves. And we have 150 year old Barnwood, but along with linoleum, because linoleum reminds me of like trailer parks and just makes me smile. So I saw this thing when I walked in because I have one, and that is Ralph Stedman's print that you.

Oh, okay.

The Hunter story. So. So Ralph Stedman, Johnny Depp gave me Ralph Steadman's number because he was close with Hunter and my son was graduating. My son's an artist and he was obsessed with Steadman, right? And I called Ralph Steadman. He's. Hello. And I said, hey. I said, listen, you don't know me. I'm a friend of Johnny's. And this. I said, you know, my son's graduating and like the greatest gift I could ever get him, and this is not just to throw Stedman under the bus, because it comes full circle. But he says, I said, my son's graduating. Can you do like a little thing? I'll pay you for it. Can you do just draw a little thing for him for his graduation? There was a long, long pause and he goes, why the fuck would I do that? And so that conversation went nowhere. I was like, what the fuck? What an asshole. And then 20 years went past and my book is designed by one of his proteges.

Oh, wow.

And then, so Joey Feldman, he called me one day and he said, he said, ralph wants to send you a print. And I said, no way does he know or that we have like a history. And he said, no, I don't think so. So I sent him a voice memo of the history, and I said, I never held it against you. I totally understand it. Especially. So he sent me one for my side and one for me, and I have it hanging up in my house.

That's cool.

I love having that thing, man.

He was an interesting artist.

He is very interesting artist.

Yeah, I should say is, but I mean, the. The stuff that he did, it's like, that's also in that gonzo documentary where it talks about how Hunter gave him acid and mushrooms and he just started writing.

Yeah.

Drawings. Really crazy.

Yeah.

And like the thing for. Do you remember the thing he did for the. The Kentucky Derby is decadent.

That was like the first thing, wasn't it? Yeah, I think that was how they got together.

See, if you find that the Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved.

Yeah, it's a really good article, actually. Well, that Was fast, dude. Yeah, but look at that.

That article is amazing.

It's amazing article.

Favorite Hunter pieces.

And I don't think that they spent a lot of time together, but I think. No, I don't.

There's a lot of it in the documentary where they're hanging out together.

Really?

Yeah. He picks him up at the airport and his VW bugs.

No, I know it exists, but I don't think that they spent the amount of time that you would think, given that they collaborated so much. I think Ralph was back in Britain and Hunter was. I know. See, that's the kind of. Do you miss that? Like, as part of driving your car and all that?

That's the thing from the. Put your headphones on for a second.

Yeah. Take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. So good. Wavering, alcoholic, off the wagon. But in a matter of minutes, I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, surf booming up on the seawall, and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit and no cooling it down around the curves. I love seeing the sand in the road.

Yeah.

Then into second gear. Forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. 35, 45. Then into third. Not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loading. Now there's no sound except the wind. The needle leans down on 100 wind. Burned eyeballs strain to see down the center line. No room at all for mistakes. H. That's when the strange music starts. That's great. The edge. There is no honest way to explain it, because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over the others, the living are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it and then pulled back or slowed down. But the edge is still out there.

That guy was amazing.

It's great. It was great. It's amazing. What do you love about his writing and what type? Like Fear and Loathing.

Well, I was just reading Hell's Angels recently, actually.

That's the book that I go back to most.

Well, that's really him when he was starting. Right. That was the beginning of the sort of gonzo journalism stuff, because he was kind of mixing in fiction with reality. And that's one of the things that pissed off the Hell's Angels is that he took a lot of liberties with the truth to Try to, like, paint a picture.

Right. Which was his deal, which was his style later on is, like, exaggerating and kind of romancing his own life.

Oh, he was out of his fucking mind.

Out of his mind. But he was also one of the most brilliant technical writers that ever was. And that's what. That's what's forgotten. Like, even people talk about Kerouac, and Kerouac was like. You know, he wrote on the Road, and he was on the Road, and it was S. Thompson type of thing. And you're like, you know, he edited on the Road for seven years.

Oh, wow.

And nobody knows that because Kerouac kind of like, you know, he put forth this thing of, like, first thought, best thought, don't edit, don't. It was again, like. It's total horseshit.

Oh, wow.

That's why I say it goes back to writers. It's a labor.

Yeah.

You sit down and you write all the time.

My friend Ari on his laptop, he's got a little piece of paper above the keyboard that says the first draft of everything is.

That's. And it's true. It's Hemingway.

Yeah. Hemingway wrote that. Yeah.

You know, his first book. Hemingway's first book was lost by his wife.

What?

Yeah, she lost it. Yeah. She. She had grabbed it for him and was on a train, and then she went to the bathroom and actually left the satchel on the seat. When she came out of the bathroom, it was gone.

Oh, my God.

Never to be found again.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, I know. Can you imagine?

Oh, my God.

All that work.

Did that marriage work out? Out?

I don't think so.

I bet you did it on purpose that maybe.

She did it on purpose that.

Yeah, man, I love writing. I love when someone's a really good writer, because you just get these, like, moments where you're like, yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's it.

Yeah.

These moments. And Hunter had a lot of those moments where you're like, God damn it, that's good.

You have so many people who were great young, and I know that there's a danger and a chaos within, like, the vortex text within which they lived, but it couldn't survive. Do you know what I mean? When Hunter got. He was just too alcoholic.

Yeah.

And. And Dylan Thomas became too alcoholic. And it's one of those things that you go. You were literally writing things that aren't possible. You were putting together, like, wordsmithing things that are.

That Magic.

Magic.

Yeah. Yeah, man.

How he was describing. It's that thing, whatever it is, you're Doing. How do you get to that place which most people can't touch?

Well, you can't neglect your physical health. That's the problem is that in this chase for the muse, in this dance you do with the drugs and the alcohol and the wild writing and you know, I'm sure you've seen Hunter S. Thompson's. There's a thing that a reporter, he hung out with Hunter S. Thompson and detailed what a day in the life of Hunter S. Thompson is.

Who was it?

Well, there's a band called Beardy man and Beardy man took me and Greg Fitzsimmons reading off Hunter S. Thompson's routine, his daily routine before he writes and made a song out of it. It's fucking incredible. See if you can find that. Because the routine was so insane and this was like really what he would do. He would wake up like a discipline in the afternoon.

No, no chaos. Okay, great.

Full on chaos. Here, let's put this. Put that phone. Start from the beginning.

Beardy man.

3:00Pm Rise. Shivas Regal with morning papers. 3:45 cocaine. Another glass of Shivas. Another Dunhill. 405:00pm by the way, first cup of coffee and a Dunhill. 415 cocaine. Another Dunhill.

4:30.

Cocaine.

Cocaine.

Cocaine, coffee. Dunhills, 6:00.

Smoking grass.

Take the edge off the day. 7:00pm Lunch, margaritas, carrot cakes. Okay. 9:00pm Start snorting cocaine. Seriously. 11:00pm I don't know what that is. Cocaine and grass. Cocaine, etc. Etc. 12 midnight.

Underest.

Thompson is ready to write. 6am in the hot tub. Which champagne. 6am In THE hot tub with champagne. 6am IN THE hot tub with champagne. So this is like a electronic dance music song that plays in clubs sometimes.

Super funny. When did you do that?

Oh, it was a long time ago, many years ago.

Did you ever live like that?

No, no, I've never even done coke.

Wow.

Yeah, I've never around with coke. I like psychedelics, I like weed. I like a little alcohol every now and then. But I don't around with anything that's gonna kill me. I'm not interested.

Yeah.

And I'm not interested in anything that helps my ego, that boosts it up. Makes me. I'm not interested in any of that.

Yeah.

I like things that make me scared. I like things that make me nervous. Like that's what I was talking about early on.

What do you.

I like to feel vulnerable. I like it.

You like to challenge yourself.

Yeah.

I think your perception and how you perceive certain things.

I think I like voluntary adversity physical voluntary adversity, but also, I think, mental voluntary adversity. And I think that's what I like about, like, psychedelics. I think there's like a. You have to go on like a journey and you can't control it. It's you. It takes you somewhere and then when you're back, you realize, like, you ain't shit. Just get all that ego stuff out of your system. Relax and just be appreciative and enjoy life. Life. And try to spread as much positivity as you can. That's what you're here for. Do your best at everything you do. That's what you're here for.

And how do you find yourself doing that once you're not on it? The incorporation of it into your life.

Remember? You know, I just, I. There's profound moments where I think, you know, change you forever. And those. If you can hold on to them. Some people don't hold on them, but it's a matter of intention, right? It's a matter of, like, what are you trying to do? Do? You're trying to be better at life. Well, if you're trying to be better at life, you can hold on to it. If you're not. If you're just trying to, like, be the man or, you know.

Exactly.

You know, and get all the accolades or, you know, win a Grammy or whatever you're trying to do. Like, if that's your real goal, like, you're gonna get lost because it's a shitty goal.

How old were you when you took a hallucinogen for the first time?

30.

I was 13. Whoa.

So that's a little too early. I wouldn't recommend that.

I wouldn't recommend it either, but. But it changed my life. And I had, by the way, I took it twice in a 24 hour period. Whoa. So I took it 13, had the greatest trip ever. Like, still affected by it.

Wow.

And then I took it again that night and went to hell.

Oh, no.

I don't know.

Got cocky.

No.

Psychedelics. Wanted to bring it down a notch.

It just did what it did. It did. It did. And I truly believe that psychedelics. I don't do psychedelics anymore, but I. I did, but I do breath work. I do shit like that. And you go, can you get there? And I go, yeah. I've had some of the most amazing hallucinations I've ever had. Most profound hallucinations I've ever had. Holotropic breathing, breath work with Laird going off. And if you do it long enough you just reach a place or if you're in a sauna at 240 degrees for an hour doing breath work.

Oh, yeah.

You're going to go places.

Yeah, no doubt. Sensory deprivation tank, you don't need anything. Trip balls. If they could give you in a pill form, what the experience you get from a sensory deprivation tank, it would be a very popular drug.

Yeah.

And it's completely safe and a productive drug. Yes, very productive.

So there's sensory. You say the sensory deprivation tank, but I just saw. You can see it online or whatever, where people literally put a thing. They go into a room and they're silenced. It's not like a, you know, where they don't talk, a meditation retreat or whatever, but they literally go into a room by themselves. They don't see anybody else. They put a thick mask on and they're in for four days, five days. Have you seen that?

I have heard of people doing stuff like that.

Yeah. What about that?

Well, I think being alone with your thoughts is uncomfortable for people, and I think a lot of people avoid that. They avoid really thinking and you're forced to really think. You know, when you're in those sort of situations, you're forced to be alone with your thoughts, you know, scary. Well, we're always distracted.

You know, we're distracted, especially now.

People and devices and input and news and. And social media and there's like constantly stuff coming in and sometimes you don't like, how do I feel about everything? Like, what do I even know? Have I ever really considered things? Like, you need time alone, you need time to think. You know, that's what I really like about. That's why I work out by myself. That's why I like.

You work out by yourself?

Yeah, yeah.

You don't like having a trainer?

I mean, I've had a lot of trainers. I appreciate them, them for technical advice and stuff like that, but this is a meditative aspect of working out by myself that I think is very important. It's also discipline. Like, I don't. It's easy to go somewhere and a guy tells you, okay, 10 reps. But I write my own workouts out.

And based on that day.

Yeah, well, I know what I want to do. I, you know, I'm pretty good at it. So.

It's funny, I haven't heard many people say that, but I feel. And it's not just some, like, affectation, rebellious thing when I'm with it. And I appreciate trainers too, and I've had, I've worked with some great trainers but they make me want to do less.

Why?

You know, they go, do 10, and I go, but why?

Oh, no, you're one of those guys.

I'm one of those. But I will actually push myself and say 12. Just for a random word, a random number. 12 is my limit. I'm good at pushing myself to 15. Or Jeff Cavallari. Do you know who that is?

No.

Athleanx.

Oh, yeah, I've heard of that guy.

Super smart guy. And we would go back and forth, and I'd be like, look, if I'm in, if I'm, you know, if I'm at my last three reps, why do we have to rest for two minutes? Like, who said that? Who made that up? Is it really a recovery thing? Two minutes before you can go back into 12 more reps? What if we just rest 30 seconds, and then you're right back into that thing almost immediately? And those are the things that are tearing the tissues and growing the muscle and all that kind of stuff. So just experiment, experimenting with it all again. This all goes back down to what we watched of, like, what are we doing to just live a little more vividly. How are we pushing ourselves? How are we changing our perception? How are we pushing our perception?

Well, it depends on what you're trying to do. Right. If you're just trying to get, like, conditioned. Yeah. Give yourself the minimal amount of rest and do it for as long as possible. And then take time off afterwards for your body to heal. And then as a base after.

It's just a base, but it depends.

On what you're trying to do. If you're trying to get strong, I always recommend taking out, like, long, long periods of time in between sets. I take, like, five minutes, maybe even more in between sets to come back.

In at your strongest. Yeah, but your body workouts.

My workouts, like, two hours, sometimes two and a half hours, because I have these long breaks in between. But because of that, it's. You know, Pavel Tatsolini is. No, he's one of the godfathers of kettlebells. He's one of the first people that introduced kettlebells to America from Russia and their. Their philosophy. His philosophy, strong first philosophy, is that strength is a skill, and you don't work on a skill when you're tired. So it's all about how many repetitions you do. And that's what builds strength. So it doesn't mean you have to do 10 in a row, like, say if 10 is your max. Say if you pick up a weight and you can do 10 cleans and presses. And on the 10th one, you're like. His philosophy is, do five, do five, wait a long time, do another five. So you've got the 10 in, but you've got the 10 with perfect form.

Right.

And then you're still getting the same amount of repetitions, but you're not breaking yourself down to the point where you might get hurt or where you're doing it incorrectly or perform. So that's how I talked.

I talked to me, too. I talked to my wife a lot about that. My wife would say, because I got. I'm all about form.

Yes.

Because otherwise you just get hurt. You get a certain point.

Yeah. I rarely get hurt from lifting weights.

And have you ever gotten hurt in jiu Jitsu?

Oh, yeah, A lot.

Everybody tears and.

Yeah. Surgeries and bulging disks and torn this and torn that. Yeah. You have to. It's sports trying to kill each other.

It's true.

You try to get really killing people with your body. So other people are doing that to you.

I had sciatica for a year and a half. Bad sciatica. Nine millimeter slip between S5. No, L5 and S1.

How'd you get rid of it?

And they wanted to do surgery. And I had had surgery when I was really young because I had a slip disk between C5 and C6. And they took out part of my hip, and they went in through my neck. They moved everything over and they replaced my. My disk with part of my hip. Back when they used to do that.

They used to play replaced your disk with part of your hip.

They would chisel out a part of your head bone. Yeah.

And that's what your disk was. Now a piece of bones. Now, that doesn't even make sense. You're just supposed to be spongy.

I know. I don't understand why they put a.

Piece of bone in there.

Yeah. And it worked. It actually worked. Yeah. Dr. Della Martyr. I never forget his name.

Jesus.

Yeah. And then they use cadaver bone for a while. And now they use what?

Well, it depends. There's artificial disks. I know a couple people that have artificial discipline.

Then it worked.

Yeah. My friend Eddie got it done in his lower back. He was basically bone on bone, constant inflammation. So you got a titanium articulating disk that's in his back. What is this? Surgeon may take a small piece of bone from the hip called an autograph, to use in a neck surgery called interior cervical dissectomy and fusion. The bone is placed between the space between the Vertebrae to stimulate bone healing and promote fusion. Oh, so you got your neck fused?

Yeah, they call it a brolin graft.

Oh, really?

No.

Wow. So, yes, that's different. That's. You got your hip, your neck fused.

Fused.

Yeah.

Which they probably don't even do fusion.

They do.

Well, if it's a, if it's a massive break or something like that.

Yeah. I don't recommend it. There's other ways you can heal bulging disks and one of them is there's a process called regeneratine. And regenerative is. I had that done in la, in Santa Monica. They used to do it in Germany. Used to have to go to Germany to do it. And like Kobe Bryant went over there and Peyton Manning went over there and what they do is they take your blood out. It's like platelet rich plasma, but it's a more advanced, it's more advanced version of it. And they spin your blood in the centrifuge and they add some stuff to it and it turns it into like one of the most potent anti inflammatories. And then what they do is you lie down there and they inject it in your back. They have like these little needles. I think there's an Instagram post of me getting it done on my lower back.

Did you have a slipped disk in your lower back?

Bulging.

Bulging.

Know it's, it's essentially a bulging disk. But it can go back. Bulging disk can go back.

But that was my experience.

You also have to have traction, like decompression.

Yeah.

So there's a bunch of. There it is. So that's my back.

I had that done.

So they take that and they stick all that. But all.

They drill that, don't they?

They just.

That's a drip.

No, it's just, it's.

No, but it's. I know it's needles, but it's not like acupuncture. They actually drill that, then they put the needle in, don't they?

No, no, they just shove that needle in place. It's just like a syringe on each.

Side of your spinal column.

Yeah, it's like a syringe. And then inside the syringe they pump in the regenicine stuff.

Yeah.

And then it, it fills your, those, those areas up with this platelet rich plasma that's been enhanced and it just heals everything.

And did you feel like it helps?

Oh yeah, absolutely. It, it helped my neck. So my neck, my neck was. So I was getting numb fingers and pain in my elbow.

How about that?

Now, do you really?

Yeah.

You should go. Go to that place.

Yeah. And when I ride motorcycles also.

Yeah.

I have my hands up. Like, I mean, I have shoulder issues, but I have a. That slip disk was a 9 millimeter slip.

Why not do this? Why this?

Because that looks cooler.

Does it not to me.

It looks super cool when you're doing it right now.

This looks retarded. This looks good. This looks like. You can put it up super high.

You can move super high.

This is like.

That looks retarded.

Turn.

Yeah.

Like, how are you going to turn like that? You're not going to do a good job.

You look like a gorilla.

This is better. This is better.

What about that?

This is better.

What about this?

Well, with Ducati's, I mean, that's like. You're down, like.

That's right. That's when I finally crashed. Was it Ducati?

Oh, really? You went crazy?

No, I didn't go crazy. I didn't do anything differently with parlies. You go slower, right. You ride. It's about.

And it's loud, so you don't know you're there.

Thank you.

That's.

It's huge.

They have electric bikes now. I'm like, do you want to die fast? They're so fast. But do you want to die.

Nobody can hear you. Nobody riding in a grid of 16 guys.

Yeah.

Every. Because everybody thinks Hell's Angels. I go, there's nothing about it that's trying to emulate Hell's Angels, Mongols, any of that, you know, 1 percenter thing. But when you hear that rumble coming down the road.

Yeah.

You can't wait to get the. Out of the way.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And that helps.

That definitely helps you stay alive. Yeah, yeah. Loud pipes save lives. I've heard that many times.

So to finish that thought, I. What I did was, is I went to. I started instead of resting, which is what doctors normally say. They say, do surgery, do surgery. Rest, sleep, See if that helps. If it doesn't help, do surgery. And I did the opposite, which later, you know, Laird was like, anytime you get hurt, Laird will be like, movement, movement, movement, movement. But this was before all that. But I started working out, and it got worse, and it got worse, and it got worse, but I continued to work out and I started running and I started doing pistol squats and all this kind of. And then one day it was gone. And it never came back. Really Never came back.

So you just beat it out of you?

I beat it out of me.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah. Movement is everything. You need circulation, and you need blood.

In there, which is why they do prp, which is why they do stem cell work or what? Whatever.

Yeah. And if you're just sitting there, the problem is you're also gonna. Your body's gonna atrophy, you're gonna lose strength, and then it's gonna make whatever injured that area in the first place.

That was always promoted by doctors. Why would that always be promoted by doctors? Again, whether it's politicians or whether it's doctors or whether it's. They're telling you this is. You gotta eat from the four food groups, man. You're gonna die otherwise.

Well, you know that. There's a lot to that stuff, but the four group for food group shit is a lot of. It's people just not knowing what the fuck they're talking about.

That's what I mean.

And also there's different perception back then of like, what was healthy versus now. But it's also a lot of these doctors, they're not athletes and they don't really understand, like, what's possible with the body. They just know how to fix things when they break. And then for the average person, they say, just rest. Because the average person is not going to fucking do what you're doing anyway. So it's like, why? Why tell them, like, what you really need to do is movement, constant movement, and just beat that injury into submission.

That's right.

And no one's going to tell you that.

How do I feel? Better. Lose some weight.

Yeah.

Like go do that uncomfortable thing. Start walking, start slow. Maybe jog a little bit. Maybe lift a little something. That's why when you see those videos of these guys, that just for whatever is in their personality, they've had fucking enough. They're £400 and they go, that's it. Buck stops here.

Yep.

I'm going to start doing my shit.

Yeah. They hit rock bottom.

They hit rock bottom.

Yeah.

And then you see this again, what we were talking about before incentive, where they just go, I don't give a.

Wasn't that the same with everything? Like, isn't that how you quit drinking? You just hit rock?

Yeah, but you don't. I don't. I hit rock bottom when I was 15. You know, shooting coke at 15. So, yeah, the thing that you didn't want to try. I did want to try, but that was that group. That's why so many of those guys died.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? So when I look at Hunter S. Thompson, who I love as a writer, when I look at Dylan Thomas, who I love as a writer and all these guys that had this kind of amazing life. And I feel too paralleled. I had an amazing life, except nobody cared about mine. People really cared about theirs. I was just Josh that you wanted to stay the away from. Like that motherfucker is great to spend like an hour with. And then once it hits 10 o'clock and the moon comes out and the clouds part, you don't want to be anywhere around. Yeah. But then you get to that point where you go, when did Hunter S. Thompson. When did these guys just become like some kind of clown mask of themselves?

Right.

Do you know what I mean?

Well, in the end, Hunter was definitely that. Did you ever see when Hunter was on Conan O'Brien's show?

No.

It was horrible. He could barely talk. You barely could understand him because everything was mumbling. Was every. It was real weird. And you know, he was. He got in a gunfight with his neighbors. He's like shooting at his neighbors.

That's what I mean is at what point does.

He was full on drunk. But it wasn't just that. His body was like rapidly deteriorating. He had hip replacement surgery. And.

And he was only 67, I think. That's not old.

No, no, not that old.

That's young.

Not that old for.

How old are you?

57.

I'm 56.

Yeah.

Like my mom died at 55. The whole thing this book became was my mom dying at 55. And me thinking back then, she lived a nice long life.

Isn't that crazy?

It's crazy. And then it turned out that I was 55 when I wrote the book, which had never even. The book kind dictated itself. And then I went, holy, I'm 55.

Wow.

I'm super young. Super young like this. I have some joint issues, but I'm young. Right. For the most part.

For the most part, yeah. You're physically healthy. You're not falling apart.

Right.

You just have a few issues.

Yeah.

Which is just wear and tear of life.

That's it.

Yeah. But there's some people that if you don't take care of yourself and you don't eat well. And there's also a lot of other factors. Factors. Genetic factors. But you could fall apart pretty quick. But if you're a guy like Hunter that's doing coke and drinking every night, you can't do that.

No, you can't.

It just won't. And the writing was bad. Like his. The only time he wrote anything good in later years was 2001. Right after 9 11. Right after 9 11. He wrote this great piece. I want to say it was, like, for Sports Illustrated. It was. I forget who he wrote it for, but he wrote this really great piece talking about what happens next after the Twin Towers fall. It's like he wrote this thing about waking up in the morning, seeing the Twin Towers fall, and then realizing what. What's. What's ahead for us.

Right.

It was very prescient. It was very good. It was very. It was.

Was it accurate?

I mean, now that it's dead on. It was dead on and it was vintage Hunter. It's like he tapped back into it again. It's on espn. Espn. That's it.

Espn. This is the article?

Yeah, this is the article.

Would you send me this article if it's an article I would love?

Yeah. This is. You know, this is the whole thing.

I mean, what's so great is it when you go. I mean, this is kind of popping all over the place. But when you go back and you look at all the politicians, whatever side, you know, whatever. Whatever red, blue they lean toward, it didn't matter because Hunter was there, kind of looking for something different. And it wasn't all about him. When it came down, they all describe Hunters. This, like, crazy. It was so much fun to hang out with him, but there was never a lack of. He was super intelligent.

Yes.

And wanted the best for everybody.

He wanted real patriot.

He was a true patriot.

Yeah. Well. Did you ever read Fear and Loathing on the campaign Trail?

Yeah.

That's one of the more interesting pieces because you got this guy who's following around the campaign trail, and he knows he's only in it for this one time. So he's not like any of these other reporters. He's just writing a book.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, exactly. And not only that, you can't. Because he's going to write a book. Like he's writing a book you can't fire.

Whether you like it or you like.

It or not, he's writing that book, but, you know, he's dropping acid, he's talking these guys into drinking. Like, he's taking all these, like, fucking nerdy political reporters, and he's introducing them to a perspective that they. They're not aware of. They don't know anybody like that. And the book is fucking incredible.

But when you see Gonzo, when you see. It's funny how much we're talking about Hunter Thompson, but when you see Gonzo. I don't know if it was in Gonzo or another documentary, you see how they're affected by it. You see a humanity in them because of him that you don't normally get to see. Don't you agree?

Yes. Yeah. He made you question a lot of things.

Yeah.

And when people question things, they're like, what am I doing? Like, what?

Yeah. Why am I here? What is my purpose? Or did I have a purpose when I was young and I just fell into this political status quo?

And he even was questioning, like, in the documentary. He was like, I don't even know what people want anymore. They want Hunter S. Thomas Thompson, or they want Gonzo. Like, that's not even me anymore. It's like I'm a prisoner of this thing that I've created.

Yeah.

And that's. That's the thing that happens to people where they. They develop this sort of image and Persona. Yeah. And then you feel like you're trapped by it.

Yeah.

You. People have expectations when they meet you. Kenison talked about that.

Did you know Kinison?

No, unfortunately. Did you?

I did.

No shit.

Yeah. And not because of drugs, just because I was a. Around.

What year was this?

When did he die?

A 90ish. Two. 92, maybe. I was in New York, so it had to be pre 94.

Probably 90 somewhere around then. I would say 90. I knew him 90.

91.

It was through a friend that I met him, and then he liked me.

Wow.

And sweet. Incredibly sweet guy.

He was a dude.

Mother.

We just got a. This guy does bottle cap art.

Yeah.

Go to my Instagram, Jamie, and see that photo. This guy just made this insane bottle cap art piece of Kinison for my comedy club, and we put it up last night.

Is he a hero of yours?

Oh, yeah, he was one of the first. There it is. That's all bottle caps.

Oh, no.

Yeah, those are bottle caps. If you.

Wow, man. Yeah, that's like in prison when they use. They use cigarette packs and dudes. Patricia Arquette gave me a piece of art with a bunch of cigarette packs.

Oh, really?

Yeah, they make frames. That was a. Oh, wow. Same kind of.

Yeah. This guy, his name is Jam. Bottle cap art. Jam. Bottle cap art. He does a bunch of different pieces with bottle cap art. Yeah, he's really good. It's really, really cool stuff.

You need my picture outside? I saw all your mug shots.

I'd love to have a bug shot of you.

I'll send you.

Good. How up do you look?

I pretty up. I got a smile on my face. When somebody smiles during a mug shot, I always find that really funny.

So when you met Kinison, was it at a show? Was it just.

No. Oh, it might have been the comedy club.

Okay.

I'd only been. Sorry. Comedy Store.

He was out of there by then. He was out of there by 90.

Well, what's the one down the road by where Green Blots used to be?

Factory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You like those?

I do love very much.

The Laugh Factory.

The Laugh Factory. It might have been that. Yeah.

He got kicked out of the Comedy Store I think in like 87.

Then it wasn't there.

Yeah, it's probably the Laugh Factory, cuz.

But that's not where I met him. I met him at a house.

Okay.

I met him at a house. And I never went to a lot of those parties. I was not just not part of. Invited and. But I. But I. I met him and I would. He just. He was really sweet, man. He would like mellow out. It wasn't like a thing. It wasn't an act all the time.

Right.

You know, but he was a prisoner.

To that thing that he became for sure. Yeah. His brother wrote a great book, it's called Brother Sam. It's really, really good book describing like the ascent of his career and how it him up and what happened to him.

And what do you think it was? I mean, was drugs.

Drugs and partying and just.

And stratospheric. Wasn't it instantaneous?

Quick. So in 1986, he's on Rodney Dangerfield's Young Comedian Special, and then he does an insane, to this day, holds up HBO hour. And then those two things and then an album that he made called Louder Than Hell. And those things are the best things he ever does. Everything after that becomes like a significant drop off. And in the end, he was basically a caricature of who he used to be.

Yeah, a caricature of himself. Exactly.

And he just was captured.

Yeah. But it's also imprisoned.

There wasn't anybody to tell you how to do it back then because there was only a few, like massively famous comedians back then. There wasn't a lot of us. It wasn't. It wasn't like today. Today there's like a giant community of comedians. We all talk to each other and figure it out together and everybody's just about making better stuff.

Yeah.

It's not about like getting hugely famous. The ones that just want to get hugely famous, they're all mentally ill and usually their. Their career drops off, their comedy starts to suck. They're trying to do the wrong thing.

Yeah.

So in Kinison, in the beginning, he just wanted to be the best he could be. He just wanted to be really good at comedy and coming from this, you know, tent preacher. So he's like this revival tent preacher, and then he gets into standup comedy, and he has this charism and this ability to deliver that's so different than everybody else. And he's this short, fat guy. So when he talks about being married and living in hell, like, he kind of, like, empathizes. Like, this guy's amazing and revolutionized comedy, changed comedy. He was the first guy that I ever saw that made me think I could do comedy. Because before then, I loved comedy. I always loved stand up, but I loved it because it was funny. I would just like to watch, you know, Jerry Seinfeld on tv. Oh, these guys are so funny.

Isn't that funny? Because you're so different than he is, and yet he was the one that you paralleled with that, like, liberated you.

Yeah, well, he was wild. That was the thing. I never felt like I fit in. I always felt like I didn't want to be around polite people. I didn't want, like, you know, if a girl wanted me to go over a house and have dinner with her parents, I was like, oh, Jesus, they're fucking crazy. But I was a kickboxer. You know, I was a kid who had. I went from, you know, when I was 15 years old, I got, like, deeply involved in martial arts. My entire social life, up until, like, 21, 22, was just traveling around the country fighting. And so my. I was feral. Like, my mindset was just. I just didn't fit in. I couldn't wear a suit jacket and pretend to be the guy. Did you ever notice I wasn't that guy? Right.

Hello.

Things that I.

Great to meet you.

Things that I thought were funny, other people would think were fucked up, but my fucked up friends would think were funny. And those are the ones who talked me into doing stand up, but they were equally fucked up.

Did you start stand up back then.

In Boston in 88?

In 88?

Yeah.

Right on.

Yeah. And. And I went to Kinison in 89. I got to see him live in 89. I got to see him three times. One time when I was working, I was working at Great woods center for the Performing Arts, and he was performing there.

Wow.

And I got to see him live. I was a security guard. It was this place in Mansfield. Yeah. This. The whole taekwondo team that I was a part of.

Is that what you got? Yeah, that's what I used to compete in.

Oh, no kidding?

Yeah.

Where'd you compete?

Out of Jun Chong.

Where was that?

La.

Okay.

Taekwondo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I fought in LA when I lived in Boston. I fought in Anaheim in the nationals.

Right on.

I. I traveled all over the country competing. That's all I did. And one of the guys who work with us, one of the guys who trained with us, got a job as a security guard. And, you know, the guy was like, hey, do you know any more guys who know how to fight? Like, we need more guys like that to work for us. They just hired a bunch of us, Right. And so we got to see all these crazy concerts. Like, I got to see Bon Jovi. I got to see Bill Cosby, which was kind of crazy in retrospect. Yeah, I saw Rodney Dangerfield. And Rodney Dangerfield was. There was this backstage area, and Rodney Dangerfield was naked with a bathrobe on. And that's how he would go on stage. And the end of his career, like, Rodney would go. And, by the way, murdered. I mean, I was. Had people crying, laughing. He was probably. I don't know how old he was in 89, but he was old. And this guy was just on stage with a bathrobe on, naked, killing it. Giant hog, like, hanging out of his pants. And he was just.

Just hanging out, smoking pot. And then he would go on stage with a bathrobe on.

Yeah.

And just kill. But he. Because he wanted to become comfortable.

How did other. How did other comedians feel about him?

Oh, they loved him.

They loved him.

Everybody.

Everybody loved him.

Rodney was one of the most universally loved comedians ever because he helped other comedians. Yeah, Like Rodney Dangerfield. He did these things, the Rodney Dangerfield specials, like Rodney and Friends. And so he would have. He introduced the world to Dice Clay, Sam Kinison, Robert Schimmel, Lenny Clark, Dom Herrera, like, some of the greats. And they all came out of his Rodney Dangerfield and Friends specials. There were some of the greatest specials ever, because he would have all these guys that he thought were worth seeing, and he would put them out there to the world, and they all became superstars. I mean, that's how Sam Kinison launched. Yeah, he launched from Rodney.

From Rodney.

And so Bill Hicks. A lot of people launched from Rodney. And so everybody loved Rodney. He was just loved.

I know he's your buddy, and I. You know, because comedians. I used to listen. I used to have six albums, and one was about bloody red vinyl. Remember the red albums? Sure, yeah.

Yeah.

And it was sick. And I don't know where I got them. I think I got them from, like, a flea market or something, but they Were Lenny Bruce.

Oh, yeah.

And that was the beginning.

He was the first.

He was the first.

He was the first real modern standup comedian. Everybody else just told jokes like two guys walking to a bar, like that kind of totally. He was the first guy that was like, why do we do this? And why is that?

What is questioned. It questioned authority.

And people would come to see him because in the 60s, everybody was so confused as to how to think, like, what. Yeah, what are we doing? And this guy was like this.

And how do we treat each other? And then you'd literally point people out and he'd go, he and Kike.

People would go, what the.

At the most tense time. And then he'd bring it around and he. That's why it reminds me of Chappelle, because Chappelle would get so seemingly or ostensibly inappropriate and then somehow bring it around.

Yeah. And you go, dave's a master.

Master.

And he's a real artist. That's a guy like, you know, I talk about, like, people that only start thinking about money.

Yeah.

That's not him. That dude lives in Springfield, Ohio, and just travels around and just does a lot of shows for no money. He does a lot of shows, shows up and performs. One time I was in Denver and I get off stage, it's first show, our second show Friday night. So it's 10 o'clock show, show's over. I get off stage, I go into the green room, Dave's there. I go, dave, what are you doing here, man? I thought I'd come out and visit you. Just hops on a private jet and flies to Denver because he knew I was there, didn't even tell me. Just shows up. And then I go, do you want to go on stage? He goes, oh, shoot. I go, fuck, yeah. So I ran out while the people were leaving. Show was already over. I go, everybody tell everybody on the stairs, come back, Dave, Chappelle's here. So they all come back in and sit down again. And he does like 45 minutes. And it was right around when Trump was doing, when he got caught saying, grab him by the.

Yeah, yeah.

So he had like 10 minutes about. Grab him by the. Like, it was genius. It was so good.

Off the top of his head, though.

Oh, no. He. I mean, I don't know exactly how.

Designed it is material, Dave.

I think what Dave does is spends a lot of time thinking and listening to music and coming up with ideas and he writes some stuff down. But a lot of what he does is just performs constantly. He's constantly on Stage working these, you.

Said it earlier, Artist.

He's a real artist.

That's the difference between somebody who's just good at what they do and somebody who is an innate artist.

He's a real artist.

He's a hero.

He gets, he's a hero of mine too. He's a good friend. But he gets these giant deals with Netflix where he makes a lot of money, which is great, but he dies. Doesn't do it for money. Yeah, he's doing it.

No, but what you can tell is he gets these like, oh, he turned down $50 million, he went crazy, moved to Ohio or whatever the fucking story is that you want to make up. But then he comes back, he makes these 20 million dollar deals with Netflix, but it's never in place of his agenda.

No, it's all about the art.

It's all about this wins, this wins. This is the priority.

Why he left his show because they were twisting it, distorting.

I know why he left his show because I've been in that position where you go, this is turning into some corporate version of what you like. You love what I do now. You can't wait to put your fingerprint on it.

Exactly.

That's it.

That's exactly what it was.

So you can take, so you can go, you know, that was me.

And he gave him million when no one was giving.

Nobody would.

Then he quit doing comedy for 10 years. And you know what he would do? He would occasionally show up in a park with like a speaker and just show up and do standup. Yes, he did, he did in Seattle. I know he did in Seattle. Cuz a friend of mine was on the show. He shows up, he, he goes, dave Chappelle just shows up in this park and he get a speaker with a microphone and he just starts talking and people just gather around.

Respect.

He was just doing these like shows, these impromptu shows. He would show up in a bar, can I go on stage? And they would go, okay. And he would just knowing in his.

Mind that he would eventually come back. No, that was just the moment.

I think this is being an artist, just being an artist for the pure sake of being an artist. So he had the money that he did make off Chappelle show and he decided to like live frugally and take that money. And he didn't do anything for money for like 10 years.

He just raised his.

And then he started coming back. And then when he started coming back, I remember him coming around the Comedy Store again and we had some conversations about it and he Just, you know, he just decided to start doing comedy again.

And then you see people getting canceled now, and it's devastating to them. And yet that's what that was. He just did it himself. Himself, Right. He canceled himself.

Yeah. He canceled the greatest sketch show of all time.

Of all time.

Yeah, of all. And it only did two seasons. It's still the greatest.

But that's not something that you see very often if somebody who just can't help but beat to their own drum.

Right.

But the art wins in the end.

The art wins for him. Well, it's obviously when you see him, he's so good.

He's not malicious. He seems there moments where you think he's malicious. And again, he brings it around.

Well, the maliciousness is just a heighten the humor. It all just like brings it in. It also accentuates, like, some thoughts that you might have about whatever he's talking about.

But it's what everybody's thinking.

Yep.

It's so terrified to say. That's why everybody's thinking, even me.

Yeah.

I'm watching it. And I'm the inappropriate guy, you know, and my dad goes, how the do you say what you say? And I don't understand. I go, you know, I said, honestly, do you want to know? Because I'm not ultimately mean. I don't want. I don't want to fucking hurt. I don't want people to feel less than I do.

Right.

But I watch Chappelle, and even me, I'm like, whoa, wow.

Yeah, he watched that line. He gets out there and walks out line. But he dances around it and he makes it beautiful comedy.

I appreciate it so much because without him, we're all fucked.

And he's a way to find out if a comedian's a cunt. Like, if a comedian doesn't like Chappelle, they start shitting on Chappelle, like, oh.

Okay, then you know he's a cunt.

You're a piece of shit. You're a piece of. You're just a garbage human.

Have you ever met anybody like that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of these.

He's not a real comedian.

There's a lot.

He's an asshole.

Yeah, there's a lot of, like, that's not comedy. Activist comedians. And what they are is really not talented. So they've glommed on to this idea of, like, being like, socially conscious. And that's more important than the humor itself. But nobody wants to hear you preach. Nobody. Nobody thinks that your opinion is better than theirs. This is what I always say, like, if you go on stage, you have an opinion. Opinion. Like other people have an opinion, too. Like, if you go on stage and say, you know, I think Kamala Harris would be the greatest president of all time. A lot of people, like, well, I don't agree, but you have to have a way to make it funny so that they laugh. The people that disagree with you laugh. I don't even think this guy's correct, but God damn, that's funny. And that's a way you can introduce an idea into someone's head that maybe would never accept that idea. It was just opinions. So if someone's on stage and they're just saying, opinions, opinions, like, you could. You could disagree with that opinion. It'll frustrate you. And you. You can't talk. You don't have you.

But if that guy can take that opinion and that perspective and make it funny and you're forced to acknowledge that he has a point. Yeah, like, there's something in there. Like, I don't agree with that, but God damn, that was good. God damn, that was good.

And that's the Liberates, man.

That's the real Chappelle art.

That's what I mean. Not that we'll stay on this forever, but remember Eddie Murphy when he did what? Not the first, not raw, but delirious. Delirious, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Well, he was a powerhouse, man. To this day, that is the guy that. I just wish I was friends. I was friends with his brother Charlie.

Yeah.

But I wish that guy. I wish he would come back, you know, I know he got like some weird stuff where he got arrested with transsexuals in his car and something. Whatever.

So did other people.

Whatever. He's just too good. He's too good. He's too good. Do you ever see when he. He gave a speech, he got like. I think it was like one of those Mark Twain Awards or something like that. And he did stand up, like, where he hasn't done stand up in forever. But he was talking about Bill Cosby having to give his awards back and. No, because, you know, he does an amazing Bill Cosby impression. And so he. He. He did stand up, and it was as sharp as ever. And like, God damn, if this guy came back. He was.

And it was just off the cuff. It was something.

I'm sure he prepared.

No. I'm sure he prepared, but. No. Really knew he was going to do it. Right.

He knew he was going to give a speech.

Right.

And his speech was essentially stand up you know, his acceptance speech, like 20 minutes or 15 minutes, and it was great. And there was all these rumors that he was going to start doing it again. I remember Charlie told me that Dave was thinking about doing it again or that Eddie was thinking about doing again, but he never did it. He never did it. Never. I think it's just too heavy.

We need comedians. I mean, that's like the theme of this whole thing. It's whether you're talking about Hunter, whether you're talking about this, it's just too bad that they self destruct, whether it be from drugs or fame or whatever. And you know what I mean?

It's hard, man, It's. It's hard to maintain. And then once you make it, there's.

These weird pressures, but it breaks up the status quo of this contraction, especially that we're feel. I know that's why people move to Austin. It was just like, I'm sick of being told to think a certain way.

Well, that's why comedy in Austin works well.

Yeah.

Because we all moved here at the same time. We all moved here in 2020. Like, I was. I was here because, well, Ron White moved here first, and Ron White is a dear friend of mine and he moved here before the pandemic. And Ron was like, I don't want to live in LA anymore. I fucking love it here. There's no traffic, food's great, people are nice. I can travel, I fly. I'm in the center of the country. I can fly anywhere real quick. And I was like, damn, could I live in Texas? Like, I don't know about that. And then Covid came and. Right. Like my wife was kind of interested a little bit, but then when the riots started happening in la, then she got really scared. She got very like. It's a lot of like home invasions. It was a lot of crazy that was happening.

Where is she from originally?

She was from Colorado.

Okay.

Yeah.

So not an LA born.

No, no, no. And so she lived in LA with me for a while and we. We were happy. Happy. You know, we lived in Bell Canyon, which was like outside of la. It's nice, peaceful. Had a little Land Hawks and. Yeah, well, for me it was okay because I had quiet where I lived. And then I could drive into the Comedy Store.

Yeah.

And I loved it. But then when they shut the Comedy Store down, they shut everything down. Then the rice and I was like, baby, they're not going to let us go back. This is like, these have control now. And that's what they like. That's why they became politicians in the first place. They like telling people they can't work. They have a grip on society and they're going to fucking keep this grip. We got to get the out of here.

So did you move side unseen? Did you move just, did you just come, did you find a place or did you. You came and you hung out for a while.

Looking to see if I could deal with it. We took like a few days off and we flew to Austin with some friends who were also thinking about doing it right. None of them wound up moving here. A couple of them moved to Dallas. But we, we came here and then one of the things that helped. My daughters were 10 and 12 at the time. They were real young and they were real confused about what was going on in la. It was spooky, you know, you had to wear a mask everywhere and that freaks kids out. Like, it's just, it's freaky. We came to Texas, no masks. You go to restaurants. And we had this great real estate lady and this great, She's a good friend now and she took us to see, we wanted to see this house. And she took us on a ride on a boat. She had a friend to take us on lake. We go on the lake, people are playing Leonard Skinner, they're jumping in the water, they're laughing and singing. And in la, everybody's thinking like, the world's gonna end. There's dem.

I was in, I was in New Mexico and I was out on a hundred thousand acre ranch, right? And we were doing Outer Range. We were doing the first season of our show and we were tested every morning. And when I was out in the middle of nowhere, nowhere, I mean, with like good 15 mile an hour winds, you'd have somebody come up. If I put my mask down to talk, you'd have somebody go, yeah, yeah. And I'd be like, there's no. We're in the middle of nowhere.

Also. It doesn't even work.

It doesn't work.

It's stupid.

The mess. I'm not even saying that I have a certain belief system or anything, but in that moment.

Yeah, Provable. That they don't work.

Provable.

Yeah. And people lost their minds and it was a stress test. And so we came out here, I bought a house like quick and I was.

Is it still the same house you have now? Really?

Yeah, we, we looked at the house in May, I was living in it in August and we were here. And then my kids started going to school out here. They loved it. I loved it right Away. We were performing and then we were doing shows inside where everybody's like, this is crazy. You guys are doing shows indoors? Because Texas didn't give a. They like do shows like, like couple months after Covid. They're like, eh, open it up.

And so what are the numbers of people who got Covet? You know, I've never had covet.

You never got it at all?

No.

That's crazy.

I never got it. I don't know if that's a blood type. I don't know. What is that?

Maybe you're healthy.

Maybe I have it right now. I have a cold right now.

Maybe I have. The new Covet is a joke. It's like, well, we used to test every day. We still like everybody that came in because I wanted to be compliant. I wanted people to feel safe. People are flying out here to do podcasts. I wanted to make sure that. And so we tested everybody before every show. And one time I came in and I had the sniffles and I was like, maybe it's Covid. Maybe it's Covid. And the nurse was like, actually, you have Covid. I was like, no way. I'm like, this is Covid. But I had it once and like famously got in trouble for saying that I didn't get vaccinated, but I got healthy. And it was the CNN attacks and all that. And then the second time I got Covid, it was literally sniffles and it was gone in like a day or two.

So were the numbers different in Texas than any anywhere else?

I don't know.

I'm curious.

The numbers were all like, the. The real people that got sick are the people with comorbidities. That was the real issue. It wouldn't expose.

It's not that it didn't exist. It did because I have a brother in law who was in New Orleans in the epicenter of it, and it was the beginning of his residency and all that. And he was like, oh, bro.

Oh, it exists.

It was gnarly.

Yeah. If you're really unhealthy, Covid, you up.

You up.

If you're really fat in particular, there was something about the way it reacted.

African Americans too.

He said, that's a vitamin D thing.

That's a vitamin D thing.

Yeah. Well, you know, African Americans, the reason why they're so dark, the melanin is to protect them from the sun and melanin in white people, the reason why they're so pale is because it acts as like a fucking solar panel for vitamin D, Right? So the melanin actually protects them from the sun's damage and. But it also makes it more difficult for them to get vitamin D. So my friend did his residency in New York, and he said during the wintertime, we would do blood panels on people and they would have undetectable levels of vitamin D. And this is the reason why people get sick in the winter. You're covering up. You're indoors most of the time. You're not getting any vitamin D, you're not getting any sun if you're not supplementing. And not just with vitamin D, by the way. You have to mix vitamin D with K2 and magnesium. That's the most effective way for your body to process it. If you're not doing that, your immune system is shit.

It's not that you're giving. You're not a living petri dish, and you're giving each other the thing. Because you would do that in the summer, too. But the minute you go outside and you get that vitamin D and you get that sun, it's burning it away.

Yeah, well, you're out in the sun, protecting you. You're healthier. You're supposed to be outside. We're not designed to be locked up in fucking cubicles and fluorescent lights all day. It's not normal. So it's not healthy. And if you don't do something to mitigate that, the counteract that your metabolic health is going to suffer if you're not fit, if you're not healthy, if you're overweight, if you're not eating well, if you're not taking vitamins. All those things are a huge factor that was completely ignored. And the narrative was like, no, you need this novel injection that we haven't tested on anybody. We're going to shoot it in every baby, every kid, every pregnant woman.

Did you ever take one?

No. I almost did. I didn't think it was a bad thing. Look, this whole pandemic is through education and talking to doctors and also through my experiences. It completely changed my concept and my thought about the medical system. When the vaccine was first available, I was more than willing to get it. In fact, the UFC allocated, like, 150 vaccines for other employees. And we were doing these Covid shows where there was no audience. So we would do it at the apex in Vegas, where the UFC has their own small arena, and we'd have the fights there. And you'd go and get tested. I'd get tested in Austin. I'd fly to Vegas, and then they test me again. Again. And you weren't supposed to go anywhere. You just stayed in your hotel and then you showed up and did the fights. And then they got the allocations for the vaccine. And I called up the doctor and I said, hey, I'm here for the fights. Can I get vaccinated? They said, sure, come on in. And then when I got there, I called the doctor and said, actually, you have to go to the clinic. We have to do it at the clinic.

Can you go on Monday? And I said, I can't. I have to go back to Austin, but I'll be back in two weeks for the next fights and we'll do it then. He said, great. In that two weeks, they pulled the vaccine because people were getting blood clots. And then also during that two weeks, two people that I knew had strokes. Like, one guy was in his 50s and one guy was in his 40s.

Immediately following the vaccination, within days of.

The vaccine, got strokes. And I had a bunch of friends that had complications. One friend who has a pacemaker, I have a second friend now that has a pacemaker. And there was all these things that just kept happening.

Pacemaker that they'll have for the rest of their lives.

I don't know. It depends on whether or not your heart heals, like how bad the damage is, what it. But his heart would stop. It would stop beating for like nine seconds at a time.

Wow.

And he would just faint and he was falling down. And you know, Dr. Drew's talked about this, about. He believes that's what happened to a lot of people that got boosted. A lot of people, like after the booster, like there's something that would happen where your heart would just stop beating for a while and you'd black out and then it would start up again. And it.

Because it wasn't proven. It wasn't a proven thing. But then again, how many of them are proven? Because. Right, let's. What you said what, 72, 73 shots?

Yeah. Well, that's a different kind of vaccine.

No, but I understand that. But they're still vaccines.

Yes.

Why so much more now? Is there that much more money?

I think it's money. I mean, I'm not an anti vaccine person, but like, I subscribe to Robert F. Kennedy's perspective. Like, they should all be tested, they should be safety tested, and they're not.

You know, but it comes down to this thing, like we were talking about working out. It comes down to this thing where you go, listen, the medical community, I can use for certain things. The holistic community, I can use for Certain things. Why do I have to deny one just to be full in on the other.

Right, exactly. Well, it's just a narrative that they put out there that medicine and pharmaceutical drugs are the most important thing and everything else is bullshit.

Everybody should take OxyContin. Everybody should be on.

Yeah, OxyContin. Help you feel better. You'll feel feel better just like, oh, I feel better.

Yeah, you don't have to do anything. It's helping feel bad about it.

So when we came here, that was the thing was, like, everybody who came here was kind of like this. And then there were so many of us that Ron talked me into opening up a comedy club. I remember.

You opened your own.

Yeah. Ron went on stage, like, for the first time in, like months. Like, I think it was eight months. And he grabbed me by the shoulder, shoulders, like right after. God, I mean, he crushed. He goes on stage, there's this giant standing ovation. He crushes and he comes off stage, he grabs me by my shoulders. Whatever the we have to do, we're gonna keep doing this. He goes, you gotta open up a club. I go, okay, I'm gonna open up a club.

Yes, sir.

And then I just started looking at club spots.

How often do you do it?

Almost. I mean, every week, but every week. Last night, three times I went out. They did three sets last night.

Wow.

Yeah, it's constantly working. Yeah.

Do you know Robert Rodriguez, the director? Yeah.

No, I don't know him personally.

That's surprises me. Yeah, that's who I'm doing. I'm at the Paramount Theater tonight.

I love that guy.

Yeah, I love him. I've done one. I've known him for 30 years.

Oh, I'd love to meet him.

Yeah.

But no, I love his work though.

Yeah. Super good guy.

Yeah.

And he plays at Antoine's a lot.

Oh, yeah, Anton's.

Anton, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's still there.

Peter's place, is it? Yes. My friend Gary.

I didn't know. So my wife knows Gary's wife really well.

Oh, my wife knows Gary's wife really well.

Dude. I met somebody on the plane who sat next to me, so I flew to New York.

They. They sent a picture to my wife. No. Yes. Yes.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Bentley.

I don't know the guy's name. I don't know the guy.

No, no, no, no, no. The guy that I met on the plane today, he said, what are you here doing? I said, oh, I'm gonna see Rogan this afternoon. I'm doing Paramount Theater tonight. And he said, oh, that's so funny. And he didn't talk to me the whole flight. And he said, my son Bentley went out with Rosie.

Yes, that's for a year. Yes, that's what it is. So he sent a photograph to my wife. Yeah.

Because I took a photograph of him.

So I saw today, right when I was leaving, my wife shows me the photograph.

Funny.

It's crazy.

That's crazy.

Small world.

Really Small world.

Super, super small world.

Yeah.

But, yeah. So, yeah, Gary's wife and my wife are good friends.

Yeah. So I've never met Gary.

Oh, he's the best, man.

I love him.

He's the best.

I mean, that's.

That's another real artist.

A true artist.

That's an artist. I mean, he's an artist.

Another true artist. I was just with him. I did his video. I was asked to do a lot of videos and I've never done a video because I've never wanted to do a video. The idea of doing video seems weird to me. You're like, you know, singing somebody else's song or something like that. But Chris Stapleton, who's been a long time. So we were in together. Has he.

Yeah, I love that.

One of the greatest guys, he and Morgan, one of the greatest people. So, yeah, we were together over the weekend in Marfa, Texas.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, it was awesome.

Yeah, there's. I mean, and Gary's another guy that I knew back in la. I met Gary at the Comedy Store.

Doesn't he still live in la?

No, he lives here.

Oh, he does.

Full time. Yep. And that's the same thing. Like, when I talked to Gary about it, I go, why'd you move to Texas? And this was back when I was still living in la. Because, man. Man, that. Right, that place. Everything about that place I don't like.

I told you, we just moved there out of. We haven't moved to Austin. I've spent a lot of time here. I love it here. My mom's from Corpus Christi. I've spent a lot of time in Texas. I'm gonna eat whataburger while I'm here. And. But I, you know, we moved to Santa Barbara recently and it's one of those things. It's just like, there's the thing about LA when you don't need. Because you can do so many things remote, remotely. And you go, why am I here?

Right, right. Why am I here?

Like, I embrace this staunch thing of. I'm a Californian and I loved going to New York and seeing how proud people were in New York. And I'd go back to California and I'd say, I want to be the one proud person that's in California.

There was proud people in LA for a while.

There were.

We were all proud that we were LA comics.

Yeah, there were.

LA comics were like a different thing than New York comics.

Right.

Because New York comics were all like, for themselves. They were all kind of shitty. And backstage, Abby and at the Comedy Store, we had a real community. There was like.

And that's the best thing. And what you've done is recreate it. Like, even when I talk about a chopper community, that's what it is. It's a community that you can rely on.

Yes.

Regardless of belief system or anything like that. You go, but that guy has my back.

Yes.

That guy will walk through fire from.

Yes.

That guy wants me to do well.

That's your people.

That's my people.

Yeah.

And that's the same thing with all.

My people move out here. They moved out here with me. So we had like 16 top shelf comedians move out here in the first two years.

Not many.

There's so many clubs out here. There's five clubs on the street where my clubs are.

That's crazy.

I bought the old Ritz Theater.

Yeah.

So that's the Comedy Mothership now. And down the street there's a Sunset Club that my friend Brian owns. And that's a club that's like five doors down from me.

So all these are new clubs that's happened in the last four years.

The Vulcan was already there. That was the club that we started working at when we came here. That's down the street from me. That's only like a block away. And then there's the Creek in the Cave, another comedy club that's only like two blocks away. There's a bunch of them just on this one street.

What if I move here and open a club and just do monologs? Do you think people will come?

Sure.

Ladies and gentlemen, this one's from Sicario.

If it's good, people would go. They might. Look, man, it's a fucking. You really have a.

This is the weird artsy city, which I love.

Artsy city. It is, it is. There's a lot of fake artists I.

Know there, but there is everywhere.

Yeah, there's a lot of posers, but that's all people that just like. Like the idea of them being the one who decides what's real and what's not real. Just goofs. You're always going to have that. There's a lot of that. They hated us when we came here, but really what they didn't like is that you couldn't just around anymore. The real killers were here now. The real top shelf, like national headliners, guys like Tom Segura and Tim Dylan and these animals moved into town.

So this is like a new hub.

It's the hub of the world for comedy. The comedy mothership is the hub of comedy in the world.

That's wild.

Yeah. And I just, Just opened two years ago.

That's cool.

It's packed every night. It's. It's awesome. Like, Dave came down, like, opening week. It was incredible. And no one knew he was there. So I did a set. And then after I did a set, I. I introduced him and everybody just went apeshit. And we're like, it's up. Like, the club's rolling now. Now it's really happening. And then all these people were coming in from all over the country and a bunch of people moved here, and there's people moving here constantly. Shane Gillis moved here and all these guys moved here.

So it's still happening.

Oh, yeah.

Migrating. And we've talked.

We're talking about opening up another club because it's. We're so packed every night and we have so many comics. We almost have too many comics and not enough. Enough room.

Has the place grown a lot in the last four years? I mean, other than people. Yeah, but you see a gentrification of it or just like things that you got.

No, you see a lot of tech bros have moved here because, you know, Google moved here and Facebook.

And I remember when Jesse James moved here, which was a while ago.

He moved here a long time ago.

A long time ago.

Yeah.

I remember when he moved from Long Beach.

Yeah.

And he called me and he was like, it's great.

It's great. It's better.

Yeah.

I just never will live in a place that has traffic ever again. I'll never live in a big city. Austin's like a million people. It's a million on the outside and a million in the city. It's nothing. It's easy. It's easy to get around. People are friendly. They're, they're, they. They're just like real people there. There's no one here that's, like, connected to that machine. That, that, that forced compliance.

Why do you think that feeds into your art? Like, to me, being in la, when everybody's talking about, what's your status right now?

What's your status? All people care about is, are you killing? Are you going on stage and killing? Are you doing your best work?

Are you doing it, period? Are you doing your best work? Like, do you care?

Do you give a shit? Are you really working on it?

Are you really just another affectation?

And if you're at that club, you have to be working on it because there's too many people that are working on it. Yeah, there's too many kill. You can't just be lazy.

Yeah.

You won't survive. There's too many killers.

I want to go to this club anytime.

Go tonight.

Cool.

If you want to come tonight?

Well, I got this thing.

What's your thing? What time is it?

I don't know. Eight, seven.

We have a 7:00 show and a 10:00 show.

Really? Maybe I'll come after.

Come after? Come hang out. Jelly Roll was there last night.

Really? Was he really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's cool.

Jelly Roll's the man. He's here all the time. He's always hanging out here.

Do you have my book?

I do not.

You don't?

No, I do not know what it to me they did it probably went to a publicist or someone.

I was going to bring a book for you.

I'll buy it. Josh Brolin from under the truck. Why from under the truck?

What do you think Is that's where.

You were drunk, passed out?

That's where my mom's boyfriend was drunk and passed out. But it has this to me. I chose it because it has a double entendre that when you're under a truck, you're either fixing it or getting run over by it. Hence my life. I mean, they're getting running run over by it or fixing it.

How did you sort it out? Because you're so together now.

Am I?

Yeah, I think you are.

Thank you.

You're fun.

Thanks, man.

Fun people are together. If you can be fun, you're together.

I think I'm at that place. I found a place that you have always been at that I didn't have. I had the opposite. Where you go, no, I didn't do cocaine because. And forget the drugs. It's the mentality. I didn't do cocaine because it kill me. And I would go, oh, that stuff will kill you.

Yeah, let's.

Let's just walk that line. I always wanted to walk that line. And I had a mother that walked that line. The book is very mother heavy. Very, very mother heavy. And it wasn't intended to be. It just turned out that that's why I wanted to fuck. I wish I had a book.

No worries.

I wanted to read you a section of the LSD 13 year old LSD thing. Because it's fun. Yeah, it's juicy. Yeah. You like juicy stuff?

I do.

And I want to read you juicy stuff.

13 LSD is so wild. That's such a crazy mind blowing experience for a 13 year old to have.

Yeah. Can you imagine? Because you look at. I mean I had. I had kids. When I had my first kid, I was 20 years old and I was looking at 14 years in prison.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

So I. That's why I didn't. I would. I missed my shot out there. I was surprised. It's Johnny Cash. There's.

We're gonna order it. Find Josh Brolin's.

Oh yeah. See if it's in there. I think there's a couple.

Get a big mental print of it.

Not metal. Proud of it. But.

Well, it's part of your life and it's why you're you today. Because you've gone through shitty experiences.

Yeah. But I don't know if they're shitty. That's what I haven't. I haven't decided whether they're shitty or whether they're necessary for this person to get to this place. And not everybody gets to that place. So we're talking about all these people. Like Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter S. Thompson is my mother, man. Just did. She wasn't a good writer. But everything that you. The song.

Right.

That was my mom. My mom had a loaded 9 millimeter at her bedside table all the time. She was part of the. What was the scam that went on in the 80s? The pyramid scam. Oh, remember that? She was one of the top five winners of the pyramids.

Oh boy.

She could talk anybody into anything. So she would come home, literally, man. With bags. With grocery bags full of cash.

Wow.

And she'd dump it out and she'd say count Jesus. So I would sit there and.

Wow.

You know what I mean? And she'd put them. And I finally found. I think she had hidden some in her dresser and that there was like a loose board that she took away and put money in there. And I found it and bought some drums.

When my grandmother died, we found stuff like that in her house. Cuz my grandmother went through the Depression.

Oh yeah.

And so everybody was. They all like stockpiled money. So she had coffee cans.

Yeah.

Filled with money that she had like tucked away in like different areas of the house that we found after she died.

Right. Right. It's kind of great.

Yeah.

The mentality of, like.

Yeah, well, the. The mentality you grow up or you literally might starve to death. There's no.

And you become. There's no way that can affect you. And that's the whole point. There's no way. Way that somebody can have that mentality of. Every scent means something.

Right.

And we have to hide it unless somebody else takes it or whatever. With my mother, it was always looking for the most vivid experience. And I don't know why that was. Her parents weren't like that. It's just how she was.

How she was.

And then you either have my brother. I don't know if you have siblings or not, but my brother dealt with it totally different. My. My brother imploded. And so he lives his life as simply as you can possibly possibly live it, whereas me, it was. My reaction was the other way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. So how now and why? I don't know. I don't know. 45 years old. I think it feels like a good age to go. Okay, do I want to. Don't want to go Nick Nolte or do I.

Right, right, right.

And I can do that easy.

You know, Nick used to date Vicki Lewis, who was on news radio with me. Yeah. No way. Yeah, Yeah.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

I remember Vicky well.

Super talented.

Super talented.

Yeah. Sing, could act. She was. She was a firebrand.

Yeah.

And Nick, you used to hang around the set and it was always so weird to me to be talking to Nick Nolte was so strange. Yeah. I remember one time I went to Fry's Electronics because I was going to buy some. I used to make my own computers.

Yeah.

Because I was like, really into, like, computer games. Like build my own computers.

Yeah.

And so I'm there, like, looking at motherships, and I see this old guy with his glasses on and I go. I go. Nick goes, oh, hey, Joe, how are you, man? Do you know anything about these things? And like, I was talking to him about, like, computer stuff, but I just couldn't believe he knows my name. And he remembered me.

He saved my life, man. He saved my life at 25. I was, bro.

There's a terrible movie called Warrior. It's a terrible movie. Terrible movie.

You mean the UFC movie with Tom Hardy?

And that movie sucks.

Yeah.

But he's incredible in it.

He's amazing.

His one scene, this one scene where he breaks down, you know, he's the dad. It's so good. It's so good that one scene. Is worth sitting through the entire preposterous movie.

Yeah. Why do you hate that movie so?

Because it's fake. You can't have. You can't fight like two days in a row.

Wasn't the Tyson Jake fight wasn't that amazing?

Yeah, it's amazing they got paid so much money for that.

25 million and 40 million, I think.

20 and 40, yeah. I think that's what I'd heard, you know, which I'm. I'm happy Mike got the money and I'm happy that he didn't get hurt. That was my fear, that it was going to be a real fight and he was going to get.

You've known him for a long time. I've known him for a long time.

I love that dude.

Me too.

And he was a like, larger than life figure of my childhood.

Truly.

When I was a kid, when he was champ, it was like, people don't understand what a champ he was. Like, he was a. He wasn't just the heavyweight champ of the world, he was an executioner like you. Every fight was just a matter. I don't remember how long was it.

Gonna last, which fight it was that I went to go see a couple of fights and I actually went to go see Julio Caesar Chavez fight. And that's when I met Tyson in the green room. And I met, at the same time Muhammad Ali in the green room.

Oh, wow.

That was a moment.

Wow.

As a boxing fan, that's a real moment. But I remember and I don't know who it was, and I think it was a 90 second fight. And I went to go see this fight and Tyson was fighting and this guy was doing this stuff before and he had this cut. He had built himself into confidence. And Mike came out afterwards, he was the first one, obviously. And Mike came out afterwards and I watched his face. I didn't watch Mike. He would normally watch Mike because he's so charismatic and he's coming. You want to see what he's going to do. And I watched the guy's face and I watched that confidence bleed from his face. Yeah, instantaneously.

Yeah.

He had absolutely lost the fight long before Mike had ever gotten in the ring.

Yeah, I maintain that in the time where he was champion, like the two or three years where he was at his best, he's the greatest fighter of all time.

Of all time.

Of all time. I don't think anyone.

That's why it was so interesting to me as I was watching it and I'm very verbal when it comes to that. Come on. What the. You know, and he was. He's still quick.

Oh, yeah, he's still quick. He's still very quick. But, you know, Mike had, like. He was walking with a cane just like a year and a half ago.

Yeah. But he was really out of shape.

Bad sciatica.

Bad sciatica.

Yeah.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, real bad. You know, it wasn't that long ago that he was, you know, I mean, when I first met him, he was very, very heavy. He was not working out at all. And I asked him, how come you don't work out? He goes, I don't want to ignite my ego. That's because I don't want to ignite the gods of war.

The gods of war. Yeah.

And then the second time he came in was when he was preparing for the Roy Jones Jr. Fight in here. Yeah. And he was a totally different human being. He was jacked and in shape, and he looked super intense, and he was just, like, ready to go. And it was terrifying. It was like. And Jamie.

Wait, when was this?

A few years ago. Four years ago. Four years ago. And so when he came in the second time, I was like, this is. Jamie said it afterwards. He's like, this is a totally different human being than the first time we saw him. He was one of the first guys, like. Like I said with Nick Nolte was like, is that really Nick Nolte? This is crazy. Can't believe he's right there. Mike Tyson is one of the first people that I met, though. I can't believe he's really here. Because just like, he was so iconic. Like, you had to be alive and be a kid during the time where he was the champion to understand. Understand what he was. Because there was after Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, who was a great fighter, but no one liked him because he beat up Muhammad Ali. So people always just wanted him.

Yeah, but is that the only reason there was. There's just a certain air of somebody, and they come along once in a great while.

Yes. But Larry Holmes never got his due. Yeah, he was an amazing fighter.

Amazing fighter.

But. But when he retired, then there was just like a series of boring champions. Like, no one cared about the heavyweight division at all. Yeah, no one cared. And then the COVID of Sports Illustrated, I still. I have it framed in my office at home. It said Kid Dynamite on it. And he was 19 years old. And I was like, who is this guy?

Yeah.

And then I started watching him fight, and then he was fight on, like, abc, Wired, World of Sports. You're like, Jesus Christ.

Do you find yourself going back and watching highlights? Just.

Yeah, I watch Tyson fights all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just. Just watched this fight with Frank Bruno just a couple of days ago. Frank Bruno, oh, my God. Tyson was something just. I just don't think you can maintain that.

You can only do that fight a few years. Never worked out with like. Do you remember the fight with him and Bone Crusher Smith?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Not a great fight.

No, wasn't the best fight because Bone.

Crusher Smith was not a great fighter.

Well, he was a good fighter, but not a great tough guy. Yeah, but, you know, brutal knockout puncher. It just wasn't at Mike's level. Yeah, Mike was at a level that no one was at. It was just. It was an insane combination of discipline, talent, incredible coaching, psychology. You know, when he was 13 years old, he was adopted by a guy customized who was a hypnotist. Cus used to hypnotize him.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, he hypnotized him at the time.

He was 13 and he into being the greatest fighter.

The greatest fighter.

Wow.

And he told him, you don't exist, only the task exists. And the task was just.

Mike tell you that?

Yeah, yeah.

I've never heard him say that. Did he say that to other people?

Oh, yeah, he said it publicly. Yeah. He talked about the hypnosis. They started doing it when he was 13 years old.

So what's the parallel between. And this is the last thing I'll interview you about. What's the. What's the thing between Tyson and Jon Jones, who I met once and I looked at him when I met him on a plane and he didn't give me really the time day, but I was like, I'm a huge fan and I don't say that often to a lot of people.

He probably gets out all day long. I'm sure he does.

There's no doubt special fighter.

It's conquerors. That's what it is. Like they're both conquerors. Like I had this thing that I put up on my Instagram the other day that somebody made. It was a me talking about trying to explain why John exists, that there's people that are just different, they're wired different, and they. They are uncommon amongst uncommon common men. They just, they rise to the top of the top and they just dominate. They just dominate. And that's John. He's just the greatest of all time. He's 37 years old and he's still.

The greatest I mean, watching fight, watching, watching, you know, Tyson or Jake Paul or whatever. Jake Paul, I wouldn't even want to say Tyson. And then going the next day and watching that fight, watching those fights. It wasn't the only fight. The one before was. What was his name? The fight before Jon Jones.

Oh, Charles Oliveira and Michael Oliveira. Yeah. Incredible.

Great fight.

Incredible fight.

Amazing fight.

Yeah. Yeah. John is a. He's a special dude. When he's gone, we're all going to miss him. It's a different kind of. I mean, he's been at the top for 14 years. He won the title. The youngest guy to ever win UFC title. 23.

23.

And Mike was the youngest heavyweight champion, which is really crazy.

Crazy.

But when Jon Jones won that title at 23, it's just been destruction of everyone ever since. Every. Never ducked anybody fought all the best, destroyed everybody, has dominated his division, went up to heavyweight, dominates at heavy.

So why does somebody like that self destruct? Is that a self destruction Wild?

That's how you get to be that good.

Isn't that what we're talking about the whole time is we're taught like whether it's Thompson and this and how you walk that line. Mike Tyson, spence spending whatever, 350, $400 million, going to jail, whatever that is.

Wild, wild. But that's also what makes you so good, that wildness. Jon Jones, when he fought Mauricio Shogun Hua for the light heavyweight title when he was 23 years old, he opens up the fight with a flying knee. Nobody does that. You're fighting a legend Shogun. At that time, when he was the light heavyweight champion, he was a legend. And not just a legend from the ufc, but a legend from Pride. Pride was this gigantic organization in Japan that Shogun really became famous. So he was like a mythical creature almost in MMA circles. That was Shogun Hua. He was a Conor McGregor.

And Jon Jones, Jon's in a different category. It's a different thing.

Yeah, Conor self destructed, you know, in a lot of ways because of money. You know, I mean, he took that fight with Floyd Mayweather, made a ton of money off that, and then took a long time before he came back to mma and it's just not been the same guy since. And I think that's just. It's money, it's a lot of partying, but it's the same kind of thing. It's just a wild. But in his prime, when, when Conor was in his prime, he was amazing. He was a.

But it's that thing that through line of not being able to let go. It's like what you were talking about Chappelle. Chappelle leaves for 10 years, but then he goes to the park and he does a thing. There's a thing that's insatiable, that warrior mentality. Yeah.

But there's a difference, because physically, you can only fight for so long. Comedy, you get better every year. You keep doing. Dave's better now than he was a year ago. He'd be better two years.

You can still be Rodney Dangerfield eventually.

Rodney, when I saw him, was probably 70 years old and he was murdering.

In his fucking bathrobe, naked, with this schlong hanging out.

Yeah, he was. He was still amazing. Because it's not a physical thing. You don't have. Like, your body can only compete at the highest levels for so long, which is one of the things that's so extraordinary about John, because he's 37. He still competes at the highest level.

It blew my mind the other night. Well, it was exciting. It was nice to be excited about something.

Steve A's pass is prime, unfortunately, and he's got a lot of wear on the tires, and it was kind of rough watching him get beat up like that. But that's the game they play. That's the sport.

Yeah. And what's great about UFC, that I never thought would last in beginning. The great thing is anything can happen.

Anything can.

Anytime, anytime.

Frank Fertitta and Lorenzo Fertitta always said that every fight, every ufc, we. We sell holy moments. That's. That's what he said. Like, there's moments in the fight where you're like, holy. You look around at each other and everybody.

Dude, nobody does it better than you when you do this. You go back and you're thinking. You go, oh, your eyes are.

We always did that. But then they started putting cameras on us.

Right?

And I don't know why, when Cormier. Yeah. We always, always did that. Every time something would happen, we would.

Because it's. It's organic. It's like, you can't help it. That's what I'm doing at home.

Yeah.

Holy.

Holy shit. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. There's moments where you just, like, you can't believe it's really happening.

Yeah.

That's the sport. The sport is. It's the craziest sports. The highest consequences of any sport. It's just. It's so raw and dangerous, and you can't look away. It's so crazy. And when someone can dominate it, like Jon Jones or George St. Petersburg or Mighty Mouse or any of the great.

George St. Pierre, another great one.

Greats, when they. When they can do that, it's like that's a different kind of human being. It says, I mean, to be the best of the best people. The best people in the world are fighting, and he's the best of the best people.

Yeah.

And when George was in his prime, it was that same sort of thing. You would see him standing there, like this intense look in his eyes. Just couldn't wait to get his fucking hands on that guy. Like, God damn. I feel very, very, very, very fortunate that I've been able to witness personally so many of those moments.

Yeah.

And be there to watch greatness so many times.

I think it's great that you've continued. It's surprising to me that you. I know you do, and that's why you continue to do it.

I did the first, like, 13 of them for free.

First 13 ever.

Yeah. The first thing I did, the one. No, there was already. It was like UFC 37.

Oh. Oh. When you got into.

I started working@ UFC 12, I did. UFC 12 was the first event that I did in 1997. I was the post fight interview guy.

Wow.

And so I did that for a couple of years, but it was banned from cable. It was basically.

That's why I said it was going. It kind of went like this, and then it was going down.

Boxing did it to them. Boxing and cahoots with Budweiser. Which is funny because now Bud White sponsors the ufc. But they all wanted the MMA thing to go away because it was so exciting and crazy. They thought of it as a threat.

Yeah.

And they. They essentially banished it. It also just had this unsavory look to it. You're fighting in a cage. Back in those days, it was bare knuckle. Bare knuckle, you know, and then it was. Yeah, it was just crazy. It was like they would call it human cockfighting, you know, which I always found disgusting. But me as a martial artist, the question was always, what would happen if you got a judo guy and he fought a wrestler? What would happen if you got a boxer and he fought across? And the UFC is like, let's find out.

Yeah.

You know, so Jorge and Gracie came up with this concept.

That's what I was going to say. Gracie was one of the first judo versus jiu jitsu. Right.

Well, Hoist, you know, and Hoist was the first champion of the ufc, and he was the first guy to introduce that, like, technique is more important than everything. Technique is more important than being big, more important than being strong. Because hoist was, like, 175 pounds. He was very slight and long. And remember the fight, just a jiu jitsu with. And he would get guys on the ground, strangle the fuck out of him. We were like, what happened? This is crazy.

Another holy shit moment.

The big Jack guys tapping, like, what? What happened? And Hoist just opened up the world to Brazilian jiu jitsu, and it made Brazilian jiu jitsu, like, the most popular martial art on earth. Like, his appearances in the UFC changed the entire course of martial arts. His family, the Gracie family, particularly his father Elio, his brother Hickson, his brother Hoyler, they. And Horian, of course, because he created ufc, they changed martial arts forever. Yeah, that, like, more. More development and evolution of martial arts has taken place over the last 30 years than over the last 30,000 years.

Wow.

Yeah. Like, really? That's accurate.

Yeah.

Like, fighting is different. People really understand what works and what doesn't work now.

And watching him was balletic. It was like a ballet.

Yes.

Was like. It was. It was art.

It's real martial arts.

No, it wasn't.

His dad told him, don't hurt these people. Don't hurt them. You don't have to hurt them. Show them the art.

Submit them.

Show them the art. Yeah. So, like, Hoist, when he got on top of people, he wasn't, like, elbowing them, the eyeballs.

Yeah, yeah.

He was just strangling folks. Just armbar folks, making them tap, making them quit. And. And he did it to everybody. And they were all like, what the just happened? And everybody had to learn jiu jitsu. Changed martial arts forever.

Do your kids do jiu jitsu?

Yeah, my kids have done it. Yeah.

Have done it.

Yeah. They don't do it anymore. They do other stuff. I don't push them.

No.

Whatever they're in. If they wanted to do it tomorrow, they said, I'm thinking about doing kickboxing. Let's go where you want to go.

Right.

But I don't believe in. Everybody's different. I don't want them to follow my footsteps or anything stupid like that. I want you to be your own human being. What are you interested in? They're both interested in different things. My youngest is an artist, you know, My other one is a phenomenal athlete. It's like, I think that you should do what you want, want to do, and if you want to do that, I'll bring you. I'll show you. I'll teach you. I'll Help you. But if you don't want to do that, I don't want to push you.

Let me be a good parent and celebrate what my kid is, not what I.

There's so many different kinds of things you could be interested in life. And everyone has a different psychology. So everyone has different things they gravitate towards. It's just like, what is the thing? Is it music? Is it art? Is it your writing? What do you like to do? Find that thing, Chase it down.

How many kids do you have?

I have three. I have a grown. She's 28, and I have a 16 and a 14. Yeah, I feel like you've got to do what. What. What compels you, what drives you. And part of it as a parent is like, there's so many stories of parents, particularly with, like, talented athletes, that were too hard on the kid and put too much discipline on the kid, and the kids burned out. Yeah, I've seen so many cases of that, you know, with these sidelines or that Asian mentality.

Not here, but there.

You know what hoist Gracie's dad used to do? If he lost a competition, he would.

Buy him a present because what was the psychology?

Because they're always going to want to win, meaning the effort.

He bought the effort. He bought the present for the effort.

Like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like, here you have a toy, here's a. Here's a gift, here's a thing. Like, it's like, this is just growth. It's just development. Hoy's dad, Elio, felt like you live the same life over and over and over again until you get it right. He subscribed to that, like, ancient Eastern philosophy of reincarnation. He really believed you kind of Hindu belief over and over and until you get it right. And so his philosophy on do 1%.

Better a day, just do 1%, just give you. It's not about going from here to here. It's not living at 100% all the time.

It's the process.

It's the process.

The process. The constant process of growth.

Yeah.

And through that constant process, I mean, what they did was even more crazy because Elio, along with Carlos Gracie, they revolutionized a martial art. Like they Jiu jitsu is brought over by these judokas from Japan, Maeda and Kimura, who came over to America or came over to Brazil rather, and trained with the races. And then they took those techniques and made them applicable to smaller people, made them applicable to, like. Because ilia was only 145 pounds. But he would have these no rules fights in Brazil. He's huge. Fights that would go for like an hour and a half.

Wow.

Yeah. And he would just beat these guys with technique, so they developed leverage, and they. They figured out a way to highlight the submissions and make things super technical. And they would analyze moves and break them down. And it became the philosophy of the entire family, that one family created more assassins than any other family in the history of martial arts.

They're the nicest people. Yeah.

Yeah. I had hors in here a couple months ago.

He was awesome.

He's so fun.

You know, sassy. No, she's girl. She's with Laird a lot. She's placed a lot.

I mean, they have a clan, bro.

It's a clan, but it's a close clan.

Yes.

And it's a. It's a friendly, familiar clan.

Yep. Yeah, they're very nice people. But that's the thing about Jiu jitsu. It's like you get out all your aggression in the gym and then kills your ego.

And you can go be kind.

You just be a nice person. Jiu jitsu people are some of the nicest people I've ever met.

Me, too.

They're super friendly and warm and normal people. They just are obsessed with this one thing.

Yeah.

You know, and through that thing, it's like a vehicle for developing your human potential because it's so difficult. And when you do a difficult thing, it makes the rest of life a lot, lot easier. Because there's no way whatever you're experiencing during the day is going to be as difficult as someone on your back trying to strangle the blood out of your brain. Like, literally trying to choke the blood out of your head. Like, there's. There's no way. There's no way life could be harder than that.

That's the thing, is the wildness. You have to have something to be a champion.

Yeah.

To be a champion or to be a good person. I think you have wildness, which we've talked about throughout this whole.

If you don't have wildness, if you bring it back.

Honestly, because I have to bring it back to the book. That's what the book is about.

Yeah.

Wildness. Unmitigated.

Right. But you eventually figured out a way.

To eventually turn on you. But most people, it turns around and it bites you in the ass. It's a sad ending, but I think.

Those sad endings are a valuable lesson for the other people.

Power of example.

Yeah. You learn from a lot of. One of the reasons why I never did coke. Is. When I was in high school, my friend's cousin became a cokehead. He was a coke dealer and became a cokehead. And him and his girlfriend would just do coke and hide. They were just like. They had an attic apartment. They were in this apartment just like, doing coke. Yeah, like selling coke. Watching TV and. Yeah. And he, like, withered away. He lost all this weight. Like he got bit by a vampire.

Yeah.

And I remember thinking, jesus Christ, stay the. Away from coke.

Why would you. Why would you want to do that? What would be attractive about that? Nothing, I guess it's the.

I mean, you've done it. I haven't done it. I guess it's the euphoria when you get that hit. You get that feeling that. That feeling of elevation, you know, that feeling of like, you know, you just. No fear and you feel excited. You want to start a business with people and you got plans. Right. We're gonna fucking take over.

Like, in the description of it, the eyes kind of get like this. And the craziness.

Yeah.

And you go, yeah, it's bad for everybody else. It may be good for you for like 15 minutes, but every. Everybody else is miserable around.

The worst thing to me was when I would be high, like, smoking weed, and I'd be like, just chilled and silly, and I'd run into a cokehead.

And like, oh, no, he's trying to talk to you like this.

Just get battered with, like, talk. Get out of here.

It's disgusting.

Yeah, It's a weird drug. It's a weird drug, but it's obviously very popular.

Yeah.

And causes a lot of problems.

Yeah, no thanks anymore. Yeah, no thanks.

I'm not interested in that one.

You smoke your butt, I'll smoke my cigar.

Yeah, I like cigars, too. Cigars are conversational. They are tools for conversation. Yeah, relax. You light your brain up a little bit. Get you a little fired up.

Read this book when you can.

I will.

Seriously. I think you'll like it.

I know I'll like it. I like talking to you.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, you'll laugh. You'll laugh. Not everybody will laugh. They read the book. You will laugh. Because I think you understand absurdity.

How long did it take you to put it together?

Two years. It's non linear. It goes all over the place. In all these years, did you have.

When you sat down, did you have like, a framework in mind of how you wanted to pursue it?

No. No, no. Because I've written probably 90 journals in my life. 90 full journals. And I would go back, and I kind of started to put some of those together, and I'd go, oh, that happened in 88 at. That happened in 76. And that, you know, that kind of stands out as being a milestone moment or whatever. And I'd start to write those down. They were really poorly written. And then that started to instigate one thing and another thing, and it kind of wrote itself. I think it was 450 pages when I finished, and then I knocked it down to, like, 240.

What is that process? Like, the editing process?

That's a good process. That's the hardest process I've ever gone through. But you become a better writer. It's like, do you do it with.

An editor or do you do it by yourself?

I did. No, I did it with an editor because I didn't sell the book right away. You know how memoir, first of all, most memoirs are not written by the people who they're about, which makes no sense to me.

Right.

Because you're writing about yourself, but you're hiring somebody else to do it, but you're taking the money. I don't get it. So I wrote it. I wrote the entire book, then I sold it. So I didn't sell it based on a celebrity. I sold it based on the book. Because you could read the book, and some people hated it. Some people read it and they go, I don't get it. It's too wild. It's too whatever.

And, well, everything is not for everybody.

Exactly. And that's okay.

Yeah, that's not. It's more than okay.

What's wild is when I. When I. When I was in the middle, which I think you would like, when I was in the middle of doing the audible for the book, about halfway through, stumbling through the audible, I go, what the did I do? I should burn any evidence that this fucking was ever even thought about. And then I spiraled for about a month. And I don't spiral. I just don't spiral about everything. Anything. I just. I'm pretty cool with anything that, you know, comes along. And then people started reading the book, and then I got this varied response that was always visceral. It was never like, I really liked your book a lot. I thought it was well written and all, that somebody would go, fuck, yeah. And that's nice.

That means you nailed it.

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. But I do know that the response responses are good.

Well, that's what's important. Yeah, it's working. It. It had a Desired effect. You got out your thoughts, you got out your experiences.

But that editing profit. The editing process is a good process because you, you refine and you clarify and you simplify and yeah, that's cool.

You get to look at it with fresh eyes.

With fresh eyes.

Yeah.

You know, it's the arm bar. You could just grab an arm and then try to bend it as much as you can, or you can figure out how to get in there every. Every time.

Did you.

And tap the guy out.

Did you always know that you were going to do this, you're going to write this book?

No, I'd written two or three books and put them in the corner, in a dark corner and let them accumulate dust. You know, I've never, I never thought I would do it publicly because I was always into that thing of like, oh, you're an actor and like, get over it. You want, you want to be a writer? You want to be a writer. You want to be a musician? Every actor wants to be.

Every actor wants to be a rock star. Exactly.

And I was like, no. And then this lady read this book, this lit agent. She said, I said it the third time and she said, you need to stop saying. Referencing yourself as an actor who's a writer. You're a writer. And a really good writer. Just write. And she was tough on me.

So you feel like you had like, almost like a disclaimer, like, I'm an actor.

Oh, yeah.

That's what you're doing, giving yourself like an escape.

I did. Because there was something about that profession anyway that I always looked at and always thought, why am I, Why do I do this? This is dumb. You know what I mean? And what, like, where's the self importance come from? Like, what happened to the wagon that just went down and like people tried to shoot you?

Doesn't the self importance just come from attention? You get extraordinary amounts of attention. Then people develop self importance because of that. Because I think they deserve that attention.

Because it's a false thing.

Yeah.

And then you start seeing people manifest it. Like, excuse me, I said hot coffee. I didn't say warm coffee. I said, you know, and you go, I don't, I don't understand the mentality. So for me, it's probably another attempt, which I think I've manifested in a bunch of different ways of right sizing. And there's nothing like that will. Right size you like a book, put you right back into. Why are you doing what you were doing? Where do you come from? How do you feel about your kids? Where's your sensitivity? Where's your. Where are things that have become concrete that you need to break in order to feel again? You know? Where are you limiting yourself? And I don't like the idea of limiting myself. Like, what I love to did. I love drinking when I. Yeah, I had so much fun, dude, and so did a lot of other people. But I go, this is now limiting. Well, don't you want to go out and take a drink? I go, fuck no. When you're out with a bunch of people having fun. No, because I'm having fun.

Right. You don't need to drink to have fun. But there's a thing when you're drinking a lot and having fun, you think, this is the reason why.

This is the reason why I'm having fun?

Yeah, It's a trap.

That's the trap?

Yeah, that's the trap. Well, you know, you can have a drink or two and really enjoy yourself, or you could think that the only reason why you're enjoying yourself is because you're having a drink or two.

And that's usually why you have more drinks, because you think, this is the reason people are liking me right now. This is the reason people think I'm funny.

And you keep chasing that drive.

Imagine if you went on stage, and every time you went on stage, you had to have at least six drinks because you go, this is what they want. And then you'd wake up in the morning and your kid goes and wakes you up, and you're like. You know, and you go, that's not worth it.

What's the dude's name from Night Rider? You know, I'm talking about.

Oh, David.

Yeah. You ever see that video?

Of course I did. The kids, the burger video?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the saddest thing ever.

Yeah. It didn't look like a good burger.

Well, he's just hammered and his kid filmed it.

It's awful.

Oh, it's so awful.

It's so cringy.

Yeah. That's what everybody's afraid of.

Yeah.

Becoming that pathetic example.

And you wonder how much that exists. And the video's not going. That. That. That dog daughter videoed that.

Right.

Like, I want you to see what this looks like.

Right.

And supposedly that kind of threw him into sobriety or whatever. I don't know if he's over or not. Did he?

If. I don't know, I will hope he is. If anything would throw you into sobriety, your children filming you, that's the lowest moment possible would do it for you.

Yeah, I Didn't want to be filmed. So I stopped early.

He got off.

I did get the right time the last time.

Yeah.

I drank. Yeah. It was super lame. I was at a. What do you call it? A Del Taco. And I tapped the cab in front of me accidentally when I was moving forward. And he got out and, like, created a thing. And somebody filmed it from the back of the cab.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And I look stupid. You can't fucking. You can't fucking drive. You know how to drive. You're like, oh, dude.

Shh.

Quiet. Don't speak. No, don't speak.

There's nothing worse than being sober and seeing something. Oh, no, I'm so.

Because your perception of it while you were going, you were like, no, man, this is an honorable moment. You're saying I did something that I didn't do.

Right.

And we need to hash this out when the reality is you're just kind of regurgitating.

Yeah. Also, you know how to, like, affect people with your words.

Yeah.

You know how to express yourself in a dramatic way. And you think you're gonna get through this on time.

An actor.

Yeah.

Watch this. I'm going Shakespeare on you.

You know, my favorite movie of yours is what, no country for Old Man.

Why?

Because it's so up.

Because it's so.

Such a up movie. It's. And even the end. The end. When it ends, you're like. Like, what happened? That's the end.

Yeah.

It's like that guy. What's his name? Javier.

What's his name?

God damn, that guy was a good psycho.

He was so good.

God damn, that movie was so. It was just so unusual and intense.

And there was no feeling. And people ask this all the time. There was no feeling that it was a special movie.

Really?

Yeah. I told you. I went back to Marfa, Texas, for the first time in 18 years with St. Stapleton. And the guy running the bank is the first guy that Javier kills in the movie. This is the guy running the bank right now. Chip. Right. And I talked to Chip. I have a picture of me and Chip, and I talked to Chip and I said. I said, buck, you were the first guy you know. Did you think that? And he said, no, that was a friend of a friend who said that they were auditioning people. And the reason I did it is because I figured nobody would ever see it. It seemed like a small. No, that's the proprietor. It's the first guy that Javier killed outside. That was a good scene, though.

What is that dude, like in person?

Javier, The Best. The sweetest human being. One of my best friends.

Crazy. Yeah, that. That's inside of him. That he can.

Well, that's the thing.

That's.

That's what makes him an artist.

Yes, yes.

Because he's one of these guys that literally. He was so depressed. Depressed during that thing.

Really?

Oh, my God, dude.

Because he didn't like doing it.

No. He was like, look at my hair. What the. You know what I mean?

That's depressed him.

Look at it. Look at him.

Oh, my God, he played.

I mean, he's genius.

A good psychopath.

He wore SPF 100. He had an umbrella all the time to keep the sun off him. You see how pale he looks?

Yeah.

But. Yeah, that's the guy. The guy to the left, that's Chip. Can you stand there for a second, please?

So he was really depressed because of his hair?

Yeah. And me and Woody would take him out. We would take him out to the cowgirl. What was it called? Cowgirl Cafe. And we would have drinks with him. We would make him. Because he would stay in his apartment with the drapes drawn and all this kind of shit. He just didn't want to go out. He said, I don't like violence. I don't drive. I don't know why they hired me. Why the fuck did they hire me? Why am I here?

How did he pull that out?

I'm from Spain. Like, this guy's not from Spain. I remember when we worked, we sat in a trailer, and he said in that. That proprietor scene, he has this great line. He goes, call it. Takes the coin and goes like that. And he says, call it. And the guy says, I don't want to call it. And he says, you have to call it. It's destiny calling for you. And we were in his trailer, and Javier says, how do you say it? And I said, call it. Javier kept saying, call it. And I said, no, dude. Caught. Can you hear it? Click for hold.

I'll put the headphones.

What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss? Sir? The most you ever lost on a coin toss? I don't know. I couldn't say.

Call it.

Call it. Yes, for a whole lot. Just call it.

Well, we need to know what we're.

Calling it for here. You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair. I didn't put nothing up. Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life. You just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?

No.

1958. It's been traveling 22 years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say, call it.

Well, look, I need to know what I stand to win.

Everything. How's that? You stand to win everything. Call it. All right. Heads, then. Well done. Don't put it in your pocket. Sir? Don't put it in your pocket. It's your luggage order. Where you want me to put it? Anywhere not in your pocket. What? A little mixed in with the others and become majestic, on which it is. I mean, if you look at that from a different perspective, you say that scene could have been the worst scene ever. It's because of the simplicity of the scene. It just.

The consequences. It's the bloom in the air. It just has, you know that this guy has some sort of weird morals.

Good man.

Yeah. He's got some code that he lives by, and he's about to impose this code on this guy and has no problem putting that bolt through his brain.

No problem. And the guy knows it. And he doesn't even know why he knows it. It's just.

He just knows it. Yeah.

And you sit there and you just kind of. It's a great scene, man.

Yeah. How did you not know that movie was great while you were doing it?

Because it was so. We were just.

The Coen brothers are amazing.

They're amazing. But you were just having. They had done two movies that were sort of bigger than what they normally do. One was with Clooney and one was with Tom Hanks, and it didn't work.

Oh, brother. Harata.

No, that fucking. Oh, brother.

I love that.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Amazing was Lady Killers and what was the one? Well, there you go.

Yeah.

But. Yeah, so I think they just went back to this simple, like burnout. No, Burn After Reading was after no country, which was also really good. Super good. But, yeah, they just kind of went back to this very kind of feral, you know, base place and just said, let's just tell this simple story and let's let it happen. Let's maybe. I don't know. I don't think they're like, how did.

You not know why you were doing it, though? Like this.

It just didn't have scenes. It didn't have that vibe. It was so simple, wild. It was so simple. And. And saw it, though, into the. What? Dude, When I saw. I saw it with my kid, which was probably super irresponsible.

How old was your kid?

He was 16. He was like, that's on The. You know, the cost. But I saw it with him in an editing room on a big screen, and we left and we got in the car and we didn't talk for 15 minutes. And that's never happened.

Wow.

Like, literally not one word. Wow. And then I said, what do you think? And he goes.

Which is a great response.

That's that.

That is that movie. That movie is, you know, you want.

To tie it together, too, in the end. And like a typical Hollywood ending. And Javier and my character go head to head at the end and. And that doesn't happen. So you do something. Which is how it was written in the book. Cormac and I got to know Cormac really well. You know, I was with Cormac the night before he died, and.

Oh, no kidding. Wow.

So. And I.

That guy could write, dude.

Some of the greatest writing, American writing ever.

Yeah.

In the history.

Yeah. There's something about his writing. It's like, Jesus Christ.

That's another one of those guys, artists, where you go, I would. I would ask him about his writing. He didn't want to talk about it ever. And then finally got mad at me one day, and he was. I don't know, man. I just sit down at the typewriter and it comes like, what do you want me to tell you? Wow. All right, man. 87 years old. Relax. But he could write. I mean, he had some. He was tapped into. And talk about a guy who just like, you were like, the muse and do you have a special place and do you have this thing that. No.

Just sits down and writes.

The bed that he was on, it was me, his ex wife, his son, and Cormac. That last night.

Wow.

Always at the edge of his bed was that typewriter that he used for 25, 30 years to write all those novels. And then he had one before that that was exactly the same, but that typewriter was on an old piece of wood at the foot of his bed.

Wow.

And even at the end, he would just grab that thing and wow. Get it out. It's cool.

Yeah. There's rare humans like that, that have that thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. They just tap and they tap into it and they just keep going. They get on that path and they just keep going. It just keeps getting better. Just get better at it.

We've talked about a series of very special people. You know, what makes the. What's the difference of what makes somebody that special, that iconic? Are they crazy?

They're definitely different.

They're different. Yeah.

I mean, it's a resistance to the Norm. It's acceptance of reality. It's a poetic understanding of our place in the universe. There's so many different things that are all sort of coalescing into this, but they see.

They see through a different lens, though. They're just made of a. They're made up of a different.

Well, that's probably why he didn't want.

To talk about it.

He didn't want to fuck it up.

He didn't want to fuck it up.

Yeah.

He didn't want to mitigate. He didn't want to lessen it. He didn't want to. What's the word? Make it. Make it potential pedestrian.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

Yes. He didn't want to try. You know, sometimes magic is just magic. You don't want to, like, figure out what's. How it's happening.

Yeah.

Just know that you can do it and just keep doing it.

Exactly.

You know, just be. Be a craftsman. Be a person who's, like, dedicated to this thing.

Yeah.

You know?

Yep.

He has to know. He had to know. It was really good. I mean, enough people told. Sold him. It was really good.

Yeah. But if you have even a guy like that who wrote the first up until all the Pretty Horses, none of his books sold.

That's pretty crazy.

Like a thousand people bought it. 1500 people bought it. And then it was made into a movie. And then. And then you go back and you're like, all these banned books that we know back in the day, 1984, George Orwell, you know, Henry Miller. All these fucking people. You know, people are like, ew. And then how many, you know, Van Gogh painting. A painting. And all those paintings being outside getting rained on, and now they're selling for $100 million.

Yeah. All after he's dead.

All after he's dead.

Yeah.

He never knew he sold one painting in his lifetime, so he never got to. Not even a little bit. Experience what. Look at what you did.

Right.

Wow. Wow, man.

Well, maybe that's why they're so good. Because. Expression. Yeah.

People paid attention or not who they were and they gave themselves to it.

Yeah.

A thousand percent.

He's an artist.

An artist.

A real artist. Yeah, man. Yeah.

Thanks, dude.

Thank you. It was a lot of fun. Really appreciate it.

I really appreciate it.

I'm going to read your book immediately.

I would like you to.

I will definitely.

You're one guy. Would really like for you to.

I'll get on it.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Bye, everybody.

Bye.