Transcript of #2254 - Mel Gibson

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Showing my day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

Alright. We're rolling. What's cracking?

Oh, man. My back just now. It's just oh, these chairs. It's fantastic.

What is going on with your back? You you've you have, like, you've had back issues in the past. Right? We talked about that the last time you came on.

Well, I was born scoliotic. You know? Yeah. So it's like I bought just I just bought my own pen along so I could click the shit here. Here.

Take all devices away from it. You remember. You remember clicking on the pen? That's hilarious. Oh, yeah.

I'm I'm a fidget, you know, so I, let me take everything off. So it's it's not good. Oh, yeah. Born born slightly scoliotic, and then, of course, I banged myself up over the years, you know.

Of course. What can you what when the do they do anything other than surgery for people with scoliosis?

They do because I don't wanna do surgery. Once you start opening stuff up and fooling with it Yep. There's no going back.

Especially the back. Yep. Backs are rough. I've never met anybody that had, like, fusions or anything where it turned out good.

No. And like Hippocrates, you know, the father of medicine, he said, in any ailment, look first to the spine. And it was like, he's kinda right. It emanates from the from the core.

Well, if your back is fucked up, everything's fucked up. Yeah. You know, no matter how strong your arms and legs are, if your back is fucked up, you're you're in trouble.

Yeah. That's true. Your brain. Everything everything goes to hell. Yeah.

But you're in pain all the time. Yeah. People with back problems, like, they can't think straight because you're always like, you know, it's always There's a

gift to not thinking straight.

Tell me tell me more. I wanna know.

Well, it actually takes you down some pretty weird paths, you know. If you're happy all the time, I don't know, you don't have you you don't have to strive to find thoughts to make yourself happy.

Right.

So it's like, it's a good it's a good, it's a good predisposition, I think.

I agree to that. Yeah. I think being happy all the time is, it's kind of an unlikely scenario.

No. Nobody is. Yeah. No. But we all want it.

You notice we all yearn for it. There's this that's the only thing we all want. Right? Right. Just happiness, little peace.

Well, it's also we're shown it, like, in, you know, television, movies, like, we're we're shown happiness as this goal, like, seek happiness. Sure. Should be happy all the time. Happy. Should never be upset.

Yeah. Well It's not realistic.

It's completely unrealistic. However, it's nice to have those little journeys through art where you can actually explore those things. You can explore your ids. You can explore happiness, and, so you'd experience the opposite. I look at situations around me, and I I generally feel pretty grateful, from what some people go through.

I'm grateful. And everybody's got their crap, you know. But, like, this morning, for example, I would be surprised if my home is still there.

Yeah. We were just talking about that. The Palisades is on fire. Yeah. My friend, Tom, Tom Segura, his house is gone.

Yep. It was where he used to live. He sold it luckily.

Yeah. I have a son. He's in a a sort of volunteer fire brigade, Milo. I call him the mayor of Malibu, and he's running around. I asked him, how's things looking there, Milo?

He says, not good, Pops. He says, your neighborhood. And he sent me a a video of my neighborhood, and it's in flames. It looks like an inferno. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you

think this will get you out of California finally? Yeah. Maybe. You know? Where are you gonna go?

Oh, I don't know. I got a place

in Costa Rica. I love it there.

Yeah. Costa Rica's nice.

Yeah. I bought there many years ago.

And it's it's,

it's in a real nice spot. It's not too touristy or, you know, dirt roads. So it's

Oh, nice.

Off the beaten.

Does it feel safe out there?

Pretty safe. I think, look, it no place is safe. I mean, you got the Dauriang down there, you know. What's that? It's kind of in the, what's the next country down?

Panama.

Mhmm.

And you and and there's this no man's land where the Colombians come through and it's like, you know, all kinds of dirty dealings in the jungle with, you know, who knows, you know, drugs and mules and

Yeah.

You know. Yeah. So, you know, it can be dangerous and I've heard of danger happening there. You know, you hear about somebody getting chopped up by a machete. And Costa Rica is act it's actually a cool place because it it never had a culture of death like a lot of the Central American countries did.

They have a culture of death, you know. Even Mexico, I mean, they used to, you know, tear people's hearts out and peel it. Aztecs. All that sort of stuff. Yeah.

Aztecs were like the Romans. The Mayans were like the Greeks, but they all sort of dabbled in some stuff. The Costa Rica always had a policy where they was like the Switzerland of Central America. They emphasized education and health and everybody's literate and it's it's kind of interesting in that way, but it deals with its own little troubles. Yeah.

Well Like every country, you know, Kazakhstan.

Anywhere down in that part of the world.

Mhmm.

It's just like there's so much sketchy shit going on all around you. Yeah. There can be.

Yeah. Yeah. 1 has to, be forewarned, forearmed, all that, you know, so I have a nice place down there.

Yeah. I have some friends that have a place in Mexico, and I'm always like, don't you ever worry.

Yeah. I worked in Mexico a couple of times. I was down there and it was it was in Veracruz. And apparently, you know, people were rolling heads into bars and stuff like that, you know, rival gangs and stuff, and they said, I'd go for a walk. You know?

And they'd say, you're crazy going for a walk. You'll get kidnapped. I said, I'm not gonna get kidnapped. I'm the guy that pays. You are gonna get kidnapped and I'm not gonna pay your ransom.

So it's like, I never felt insecure in that way. And, you know, if something's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. Yeah. You know, if your number's up. I know I used to watch guys who do what I do for a living and they have a phalanx of bodyguards around them, you know, and, like, for security and stuff.

But and I used to have that stuff for a little while, but, yeah, it doesn't make any difference. You're gonna be okay Okay. Or not.

Or not. Right? Until you're not. Until you're not. And everybody's gonna be okay until they're not.

Yeah. I got into a dodgy situation 1 night, and I acted crazy.

Yeah? Yeah. What happened?

If you act crazy, everybody leaves you alone.

Especially if you are a little crazy. You know? If you know

You're in a stress mode, so you actually get angry. I if if I feel like I'm threatened, I get angry, which is what happens. And then you get really in people's faces and they think this guy's crazy. But all the old cultures thought that, like, when there were people traveling across the great plains to go west, you know, if you acted nuts, they'd leave you alone because they didn't want your evil spirits.

Oh, so what happened with you?

Nothing. They left me alone.

But where was this?

Oh, man. I was in a bad neighborhood. I was it was when I first got into LA and I was to go to dinner with Kosta Gavras. He was a Greek director. I, went the wrong way and it was before they had, you know, phones with, like Right.

You know, all that stuff. So The Thomas Guide. It was the Thomas Guide. Anyway, I wasn't guided well by Thomas. I ended up in the wrong place, and then my muffler fell off.

And I was driving a Mercedes, you know, pretty nice sporty car, you know, And I thought, and I had the wife in the car. I pulled into a side street. The sun was going down. And as I got out of the car, I thought, oh, I gotta fix this muffler. I can't just drag it.

People started coming from houses, and they came up to me and and, I saw them coming in the rear view mirror. And, I jumped out of the car and got in their face, and I said, what the fuck do you want? Because I thought I felt threatened.

Right.

And and the guy said, man, I'm just looking for some money. You got any money? So I was being mugged. And it was like, I thought I'll think about it when I'm fucking finished, like, you know. And I opened the trunk.

And this is the weird part, Joe. I I will never quite understand this. I opened the trunk to see what I could find to help me put the muffler back on. And sitting there, the only 2 things in the back of the trunk was a pair of wire cutters and a coat hanger. It's exactly what I needed, and I don't know why it was there.

That's weird, isn't it?

That's very weird. So you use the coat hanger to wire up your muffler?

Yep. I cut a piece of wire, wired them off her up. The whole time, more guys are coming. Jesus Christ. Behind me, and I'm feeling like, oh.

And, anyway, I get up. I finished the muffler, slammed, and I'm acting mad and crazy the whole time. And I think this guy's nuts. And I get back to the car, and my wife gives me a handful of cash. And I thought, what's this?

She says, it's just fives at once. Give it to her. So I threw it and drove off. But it was like it was looking hairy for a minute. And you never know.

What year was this?

Oh my god. Back in the nineties.

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So things are more dangerous now? I think they are.

Yeah. I think so for sure.

Yep.

Yeah. We were just talking about the wildfire situation and how crazy it is that they spent 24 $1,000,000,000 last year on the homeless.

Yeah.

And what do they spend on preventing these wildfires? 0.

Zip. Zip. Zip. And in 2019, I think Newsom said, you know, I'm gonna take care of the forest and maintain the forest and do all that kind of stuff. He didn't do anything.

Didn't do anything. And then on top of that, they cut the water off.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. It's all funny. And then I think all our tax dollars probably went for Gavin's hair gel.

I don't know, but it's like, you know, it's sad. It's like the place is just on fire.

Well, the whole state is just so poorly managed. It's so it's so frustrating and confusing, and then he gets on TV and pretends like everything's great.

Mhmm.

And I'm California is the best we have the best state. We have the most amazing economy.

I'm like, you're out of

your fucking mind, dude. You've ruined the state. It personally ruined it.

Well, it's the same team that was up in San Francisco, and I came down to LA and they're doing what they did in San Francisco. And Yeah. San Francisco is kinda like apocalyptic now, you know. Yeah. I went there and this is like people, you know, homeless, you know, it's just it's a mess.

It's just unbelievable that society can crumble that quickly. Mhmm. It's just unbelievable.

It doesn't take long. No. Yeah. I read a book once by Jared Diamond called Collapse. Mhmm.

You ever read that

book? Yeah. Yeah.

Crazy. Right? It says all the things you need for a civilization to cave in and collapse. And a lot of the things are present. All those earmarks, the precursors of a collapse, they're present in our time.

So it's it's an interesting observation. Yeah. And we're no smarter than our grandparents, I don't think.

Well, that brings me to 1 of my favorite movies of yours is Apocalypto.

Oh, yeah.

You know, when the Mayans were running things, like, who could have ever thought when they had such an incredibly sophisticated society, unbelievable construction, like the stuff that they had built that 1 day you just walk through there and there's nothing.

Nothing. Nothing and nobody. In fact, there's something because it's interesting. Somebody was flying by what they thought was a volcano in the thirties, some buzz boy, and he thought, hey, that's somebody built that. Wait a minute.

There's 4 by 8 foot bricks. That's not that's man made. And it is literally the biggest pyramid in the world. It's bigger than the ones in Egypt, and it's in Guatemala.

Yeah. We talked about that the other day. Yeah.

It's a recent discovery. Right? Well, not that reason. I was, maybe 20 years ago, I visited. I went down there with the with the, archeologist, a guy named Richard Hanson, who's from Idaho or someplace.

And he's down there with his family. He's been working tirelessly for, like, 30 years trying to extract this pre classic city from the jungle, and there's not a bunch of tourists. All the pyramids in Tikal would fit inside the 1 big pyramid in El Mirador. Really? Yeah.

It's a monster. And so that tells you that the pre classic civilization was bigger and grander and more sophisticated than the civilizations that came after it. Yeah. Pretty interesting.

Well, it is unbelievable how, like, when when you the accounts of, like, people that visited Mexico and visited the Aztecs, like, what the markets looked like and how insane it was and how gorgeous it was and then just

Yeah. Disease. Yeah. Disease or I don't know if it was disease or what. I think the people were pretty dissatisfied.

It would have been hard for, Cortez with his limited numbers to actually take over a civilization like that unless they kind of happened upon a civilization that was pretty dissatisfied with the way things were going. Yeah. So I think they had people to help them sort of rebel.

When when you're making a movie like Apocalypto, I mean, that's a crazy undertaking. You're making an entire movie where there's no English in it at all and it's a blockbuster.

Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. It was fun.

That's 1 of the best movies, man. It's a fucking great movie.

Well, because I think it's scary because nobody's speaking your language. And you're looking at indigenous peoples who you and because they're not speaking the language, you totally kind of buy it. And you can buy the horror and and the primal nature of of the story you wanna tell. And and really, it's just a series of fears 1 after the other, you know, being chased by, you know, scary guys or eaten by wild animals or, you know, hit by blow you know, blowgun. It's all like a a series of these things, but I think, basically, what I was doing was trying to talk about our time now and the civilization that we live in and how close are we to collapse, And what are the things that lead to collapse?

You know? It's environmental stuff. It's, human sacrifice. Yeah. I mean, we do that.

Kinda. We do. Yeah. Yeah. We do.

We just dress it up. Yep. And when you find out medications are killing people and they keep prescribing them and they do it for money, that's kind of sacrifice. When you find out that wars are irresponsible

They're not just wars.

Not just? No. They're they're for money?

We send our young people over there to to die. Mhmm. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for not. I mean, I have I love this I love the warrior. I do.

I love the warrior, but I hate the war. Yeah. And, you know We

hate we hate an unjust war.

Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's a, yeah, it's a mess.

But the human sacrifice aspect is is alive and well in our society, I think.

It really is. It's just dressed up in a different way.

Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Rhetoric around it. But they've always been able to justify it.

Like an apocalypto was like, yeah, so the crops will be better. Hey, we'll just, you know Yeah.

Kill a few people.

Yeah. And then I had all these people come out of the woodwork. Hey. We're we're archeologists and scientists, and that never happened. So there's this revisionism about it too that it didn't happen.

But there are accounts from the time where, yes, people did witness these things. And, and, of course, I had a bunch of battery of archeologists and scientists and professors on my own that say, yeah, well, this stuff did happen. Here's the here's the, you know, the depictions of it in paintings and images and, you know, so it's like it did happen.

So When you when you set out to make a movie like that, like, what first of all, what brings you to that? Did you get the script first? Like, what what did was it an idea that you had in your head?

It was, it just came from in here. And I was working on something and a buddy of mine said, so so what do you wanna do next? I said, ah, man. I wanna direct something, and I always wanna direct a chase film. He said, what kind of chase?

I said, a foot chase. He said, what? I said, yeah. People chasing you. I mean, there's something kind of primal and scary about a foot chase.

And I think in order to have a foot chase, you can't have a society where there's any kind of cars or anything like that. Otherwise, you have a car chase. But I wanna film a foot chase like it's a car chase. And, he said, oh. I said, what are you thinking?

I said, well, I'm thinking if you go back before Columbus discovered America. You know? And it's like, people assume that Columbus discovered America and then life began. I said, I wanna know what was happening right before he got there before he got there. And I said, so I had this idea that you see all this stuff going on and there's no time period on it, and then all of a sudden you date it by the arrival of Europeans.

And I thought it's kinda like the Rod Serling, you know, planet of the apes.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like it's kind of a cool cool ending. And he said, oh, wow. And he said, where do you think Columbus landed? I said, why the hell? Let's look.

So I looked up and the first peoples he encountered were Mayan trading canoes off the coast of Honduras. And I thought, cool. What was happening in Honduras? You know? And you look at these towns and and pyramids and temples and stuff at that time.

And then the story was born from there. And, of course, then we read the book by Jared Diamond, Collapse. I read the Mayan Bible, the Popol Vuh, and, you know, tried to delve into what they believed and and and what their civilization was like. And they had concepts as we do of, heaven and hell of punishment or reward, you know. It was a little different, quite a bit different actually.

In fact, when I went down to, the archeological sites at El Mirador, they dug something up and it was like, well, what is it? And I said, we don't know. It could there was this carved image in the stone of this Mayan warrior drinking he had a ear spool. And it was like so they dug further and further, and it went, like, 26 meters down. And it was the entire story of the Popol Vuh, of the twins going into hell and getting their father's head and swimming back, and it's it's this crazy story.

And it, kind of dated that book because I think it was almost 3000 years old, this this, mural, this carving. So it tells you the story is pretty old. And they thought initially it was probably back in the 1300, but this confirmed that it was at least 2,600 years old, something like that. Yeah. So it's pretty cool that to be there when they're digging that stuff up is mind blowing.

Well, they're missing so much of the Mayan history. It's a very very interesting I

want the water. That's water. Water.

They're missing so much of the Mayan history, you know, because everybody's gone. But, 1 of the you you ever see that very bizarre carving where it looks like there's a guy who's sitting in a cockpit of a spaceship Yes. Like looking through some sort of an an eye thing?

Yeah. They got some weird stuff. It's like Weird. Yeah.

Where there's fire underneath the chair, like, what is that?

They got dudes that look like Europeans. They have these guys with red beards and helmets and stuff. Yeah. It's like these Phoenician guys who probably traveled over there early on. Yeah.

Probably maybe in the 6th century or something like that. So they it wasn't that long a boat ride, so they probably went over there and made contact. And they they thought they were gods or something, and then they went away again. And they said, well, wait for them to come back. And, of course, they did come back, but it didn't work out the same.

No. No. No. Well, there's so many accounts of, you know, people visiting the especially when you get into the Amazon.

Sure. Oh, I don't know about the Amazon.

Oh my god.

What's tell me about that.

Well, first of all, the Amazon used to be filled with people. Yeah. And most of the Amazon is man made. The jungle in the Amazon is agriculture. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. The jungle in the Amazon, they didn't even know this until fairly recently. Mhmm.

And they now know from flying over, they use light lidar, which is this, light emitting radar. So they so when they use this laser radar shit, when they fly over it, they're finding all these grids and pathways and cities in the jungle. So the jungle had consumed all these cities. I think there was millions and millions of people living in the Amazon. Yeah.

And that Europeans came over, diseases, everybody dies, jungle consumes the city. People come back 200 years later looking for it like the lost city of z, Like that, that story.

You're right. Yeah.

They go back to look and there's there's nothing left.

Yeah. Guns, germs, and steel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Great. Yeah. Wow. That's fascinating. I don't have to look into that thing.

And we're going through all those things right now, guns, germs, and steel.

Oh, yeah. Oh my god. Yeah. Germs. Yeah.

The germs I had I'm just just on the tail end of some hideous flu that was go I don't know if Did you

get the h 5 n 1 or whatever the fuck

it is? I don't know what the hell it yeah. I've had that. That was the swine thing. I had swine flu 1 time.

I got it. In 2009?

I yes. Yeah. It was around then. Yeah.

Yeah. It was a it was an epidemic, a a pandemic, whatever you wanna call it, but it didn't have the same sort of press releases

Yeah. That COVID did. Sure. I got the swine I acted more like a pig. You know?

Terrible. Terrible. Wallowing in my own mud.

So, I like Flight Risk. It's a fun movie.

Oh, it's a hoo. You know, it's a it's a hoot. I mean, I think the first thing you gotta do with any film, and I think it's incumbent upon all directors, artists to entertain first in some fashion. Even if it's a heavy story, you have to find some some aspect of it that entertains. And, and I think this for entertainment sake is just fun and it's quick.

I'm I'm not subjecting you to 4 hours of, like, watching autism dry. Right. It's like it's like, you know, it's 85, 90 minutes. Yeah. And they're out.

Good time. Yeah. And Mark is insane.

Yeah. He's great in it. He plays a good psycho.

Oh, he's a psychopath. Mark's got a good dark side. There's some there's some dark stuff there that he was able to draw from. And every now and then, he'd let it out. I can't even repeat some of the stuff he'd say.

In fact, we had to cut most of it out. It was, like, really sick, but, we we hint at it. Anyway. When you make

a movie now I mean, you've had such a career.

Yeah. When you

make a movie now, like, what motivates you at this point in your life? Like, how do you how do you decide? Let's hit the green light on this 1.

Yeah. There are things that speak to me, and and they speak for a for a long time. It's, I remember when I was a a kid in high school, I was studying English. And then, well, where did the English language come from? And they talked about, wow, it came from this old guttural German, old Norse that the Vikings brought across.

And I was thinking, wow, that's cool, the Vikings, you know. And then immediately, I start thinking that somebody should make I wanna make a film about Vikings, and they only speak in old Norse because if if if they say if they say, you know, if they speak English all of a sudden Right. You're not buying it. If they're speaking some guttural language Yeah. You're sort of scared by them.

And it's like, that's scary to me. And then I said to myself, I'm 17 years old. Why am I thinking about making films about Vikings? I don't know anything about making films and not much about Vikings. So why the hell am I even thinking about that?

But that was something that was early on was like a a drive, I guess, to sort of depict things like that. So I did films in other languages, if Mayan and in in Aramaic and in Latin. Yes. You know? So Yeah.

And there's a power to that. I noticed when I was young, I used to go and watch a lot of foreign films. I watch French movies. Right? Or German or whatever they were, Spanish.

I'd watch them and I think, wow, the acting's great in those and it seemed better because of the subtitles. Right. Yeah. Yeah. More believable somehow.

I don't know.

Right. Because you're not you're not hearing insincerity in their voice because you don't even understand what they're saying. No. Yeah. You just feel the emotions in the words.

And it also it has to take your attention because you have to do another function. You have to read. Yeah. Which is another thing that sort of maybe blinds you to the flaws in the filmmaking perhaps. So, you know, hey, it's a great trick.

Yeah. It's obfuscation.

There's a there's a thing about reading it while you're watching it. It's like an added element of concentration. Mhmm. You know, like subtitled movies. You feel like you're a smarter person watching a movie where you're reading it and it's well.

Yeah. And there's yeah. There's something about the written word. It's like it's a pretty interesting thing to throw into the mix. I know when I first started, it was kinda confusing, but then I got really good at it.

And I think, especially with something like what the passion that I did, the written word was very important

Mhmm. Because it

was you know, you got all those books, the Bible. You know? You've got the the different gospels and stuff that people are quite familiar with. Half the time, they didn't even need to read the subtitles. They could look at it and know what was going on.

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That was a crazy movie because, it was a great movie. But Yeah. It seemed like there was resistance to that movie.

Oh, yeah. No. There was

a Which, I've I've I've thought was very straight. There was, like, Hollywood resistance to that movie. Like, people didn't like that you were making it,

it seemed like. Yeah. There's a lot of there was a lot of opposition to it. And, I don't know. It's I think if you ever hit on that subject matter, you're gonna get people going because Of course.

It's big subject matter, and it's like, you know and my contention is, you know, when I was making it, it was like, you're making this film and the idea was that we're all responsible for this, that his sacrifice was for all mankind and that for all all our ills and all all the things in our fallen nature, it was a redemption. So, you know, and I believe that, you know, I I actually am, you know, I was born into a Catholic family. I'm very Christian in my beliefs, you know. So I do actually believe this stuff to the full. So depicting that was an honor, but it was also yeah.

You got the you got the daylights beat out of you for it.

Yeah. Because there's there's resistance, first of all, from secular Hollywood

Mhmm.

Where for whatever reason Christianity is the 1 religion that you're allowed to disparage.

Yeah.

Christianity is the 1 religion where people the the all these progressive, open minded, leftist people, they'll embrace all these different religions until it comes to Christianity. And for whatever reason, that represents, like, white male, you know, what whatever it represents, co colonialism

Mhmm.

You know, whatever, you know, whatever it represents, it's negative.

Yeah. Sure. It's gotten a bad rap, and they people do feel free to beat up on it. Mhmm. Even I do when I see it's like, you know, when it's not fair or I think it's off.

Right. Like, you know, when they appoint some cardinal in some diocese and he's been covering up for, like, people who are child molesters Yes. You know, like Theodore McCarrick or Cardinal Wuerl or those kind of guys. I mean Or the pope. Yes.

Yeah. Absolutely.

I'm I'm Benedict.

Oh, not Benny. Well, he was covering up but, like Yeah. So is the guy now.

Is he really?

Well, yeah. Yeah. It's it's not great.

I thought he was, like, the more progressive pope.

Oh, he's very progressive. Yes.

But he's covering up for some as well. Well, they they all are. I mean, it's a it's a a dark institution in a lot of ways because it's history. Mhmm. You know?

Well, you know, the institution, it was instituted by Christ, you know, but that doesn't mean that it can't be flawed. And there's a school of thought that says it isn't what it purports to be anymore. It's it's moved away from what it was intended to be and what it is. Almost like a guy called, Bishop Vino who says it's a counterfeit parallel church and it's it's running an entirely different religion. I actually don't I don't adhere to a post conciliar church.

I adhere Can

you define what that means?

Okay. There was an event that happened in the in the sixties. First, there was an event in the Vatican where they elected John the 23rd pope, right, in 1958. I was 2 years old. Right?

He was elected, and it was a very funny thing that happened in the conclave. You know, usually there's white and black smoke that goes out of the the chimneys to tell you, we have a pope. You know, have them as papa. You know? And the white smoke came out.

And everybody cheered and they went crazy. And then about a half an hour later, black smoke came out. That never in history has that happened, that the white smoke came out and then the black smoke

So white smoke means we found a new pope. Black smoke means no pope.

That's right. They'd have votes or there'd be 1 reason or another they'd have a round in the conclave, and black smoke would come out many times, many times maybe. Maybe it would take 2 weeks. But never was it known that white smoke came out, then black smoke came out.

So what was the scenario?

That somebody was elected and that maybe something else happened, and he was pushed aside that someone else was put in.

Uh-huh. So it was Power struggle.

Some kind of power struggle. And, of course, the man who came out was a man called Angelo Roncalli, and he was John the 23rd. Now it's interesting to note that never had a pope taken the name of another pope ever before in history. But this man took the name of a known anti pope from the 15th century that Cosimo de' Medici put in there as his own man. I'll get you on the chair and then everything will be rosy.

You know? Everything will go good for business. You know? Whatever he was putting him in there for some corrupt reason. But, and there have been corrupt men in that place before.

I mean, there's Alexander the 6th and Julius the second, the 6th is the 4th. I mean, some of these guys are you know, they're not saints. So he took the name of a known anti pope from the 5th century who actually said, yes. I'm an anti pope. Sorry.

I'm not the right guy because there was more than 1, and he confessed to being and he wanted to, you know, square things with with the almighty, I guess, so he confessed to being an anti pope. And, so he took the same name as that guy, John the 23rd. So it's interesting, don't you think? I mean, I why would he do that?

Well, whenever you have that kind of power, like, I'm sure you've been to the Vatican. Right?

Yeah. It's stunning. Yes. It's huge.

It's so when you're walking around, you see just a massive amount just a dollar value in the art that they possess.

Yeah. It's fucking insane. It's crazy. Yeah. And, you know, it's a very small country.

It's a country Yeah.

It's a country inside of a small city. Yeah. Because Rome's not the biggest city. No. And then it's got a country inside the city Yeah.

With with walls around it

Sure.

And you can't extradite people.

Yeah. Pretty weird.

How convenient.

Yeah. Even Ratzinger, he didn't drive from the Vatican to the other place. He flew. Oh. And it was only a little while because who knows why?

I don't know.

Well, he was wanted. Yes. Yeah. I mean, he had done 1 of the things that he had done was he had moved a priest that had molested a 100 kids and he moved him to some new place where he molested deaf kids. Yeah.

Yeah. Boy. Yeah. Yeah.

I know.

That's the the dirtiest, most evil practice that the Catholic church has been accused of.

I think so. And many institutions as well, but that is a very bad 1. And, I think it's all part and partial of the same corruption that crept in. And when you asked what's the difference between pre Vatican 2, so Vatican 2 happened and, of course, they they took the church and they they reformed it and they changed things in it, and it didn't necessarily agree with everything that went before it. And up to that point, yeah, you could find it agreed with itself.

But all of a sudden, you got something else to the point where now I mean, I mean, we got a pope that brought a a South American idol into the church to worship. Really? He did. The Pachamama. He bought the south

and he got What it

I don't I don't know what that is. It's a it's kinda like a South American god Pachamama. It's just Why would he do that? Good question. But he did.

Did he have an explanation for why he did it?

Yeah. It's kind of a weasel worded thing of, like, oh, all religions are just as good as 1 another. But, you know, if that's his contention

You shouldn't be the pope.

No. I mean How can you be

the pope if you say all religions are just as good?

Yeah. We all worship. You know? So yeah. That's the Pachamama.

There you go.

So he brought that in?

Yeah. Into the Vatican. Then the higher he the hierarchy even worshiped today the ceremony around it outside. What? Well, that constitutes apostasy.

Yeah. It's that's an apostasy move. Alright?

Worshiping false gods.

Yeah. That's number 1 on the Mosaic hit list. Yeah. Moses goes up on the mountain. He comes back down.

People are worshiping him in a golden calf. Yeah. You know? It's it's that. Yeah.

So you can't do that. And, for me, that's a a departure from what you you know, that's called apostasy. Right. It's a falling away from it. And the very nature of apostasy means that you have to be part of it to fall away from it.

Mhmm.

So it's an inside job.

So what do you think there's a motive behind these things?

I don't think you no. Probably.

What do you think it is?

I don't know. But it isn't good. I think look. I think we're we're we're looking at a world where and this is the in the next film I'm gonna do, I'm gonna try and tackle this question That there are big realms, spiritual realms. There's good, there's evil, and they are slugging it out for the souls of mankind.

And my question is, why are we even important? Little old flawed humanity, why are we important in that process where the big realms are slugging it out over us? And I think there's bigger things at play here. And institutions that purport to touch on the divine are necessarily going to be affected by that slugfest that's going on between good and evil.

Right. And And sometimes good gives up ground.

Yeah. And maybe not on purpose. You know, maybe there's some deception involved or self deception.

Co opted.

Every morning when I wake up, I actually pray that I don't deceive myself, you know, because it's like, you know, your mind is a very funny place. I mean, there's, I've always said, you know, it's your second thought and your first action that that you're responsible for. Your first thought, throw it away. You know?

Right. Upon consideration. Yeah. 2nd thought is what you're responsible for. Yeah.

That's the difference between first degree and second degree murder.

There you go. Right? Right? There you go.

The first degree, like, I'm plotting this out and we we take that into consideration when we sentence people.

Sure.

Like, if you're a person who just you're all of a sudden, you're in a fight with a guy, you didn't expect it, and you stab him and kill him, 2nd degree murder. Yeah. But if you're like, I'm gonna kill this motherfucker. I wanna find out where he is. Yeah.

And I'm gonna go get him, 1st degree.

Sure. I've planned a lot of murders in my life, you know. Yeah. You may all have. Yeah.

In your head, you plan the murder and you think, well, that's not a very good idea. But I think I could get away with it.

Right. Here's the second thought. Yeah. That is interesting that we take that into consideration. Yeah.

That we do. Like, if you've had time to think about it, you're a different kind of person than person that acts in the act.

Sure. Yeah. You're in your animal passion. Yes. And I found this out.

I actually spent a long time in my animal brain, which is a very horrible place to be. And,

when you say that, what do you mean by you've spent a long time in your animal brain?

You're in flight or fight Right. All the time. You don't even sleep. It's, like, really not a good place to be. And if anybody looks at you the wrong way, you wanna bite them.

Yeah. And sometimes you say and do things that are socially unacceptable. And, you know, I went and got a brain scan by this guy called Daniel Amen, who's this brain guy. He's against all psych meds and stuff, but he thinks, like, let me have a look at your brain. And you put a radioactive tracer in me.

Woah. And to photograph my brain. He works for a while. Right? Yeah.

He works a lot of football players and guys who got brain injury. Man, he's thirsty in here. But, so he he looked at my brain and he was like and he opens the file and I'm in there with the guy and he looks up and he goes, are you okay? And he goes, first no. First, he went like this.

And I said, what? And he went, are you okay? Like that. And I said, yeah. I think so.

And he he came over and he sat next to me, but very slowly and cautiously, and he says, no. You're not. And I said, what do you mean? He says, you got the worst case of PTSD I have ever seen. And I said, Liam, you mean, like, even worse than guys in war and shit like that?

And he goes, yeah. And he says, you're not okay.

Jesus Christ.

And I was like and I and I start I started to well up, you know, like, no. No. I'm not. Oh, boy. And it was, he had a very miraculous and, great remedy for it, which was to eat a bunch of fish oil, vitamin b complex, and get into a hyperbaric chamber for 40 sessions, but make sure you do at least 2 or 3 a week.

Oh. It fixed my head. Really? Yeah. It got me out of that wacky place.

You know?

So it was something to do with nutrition and oxygen and Yeah.

And your brain is neuroplasticity. He explained neuroplasticity to me and how, okay, you could get brain damage and, like, holes in your head and all, you know, concussion. I used to play rugby. I've been knocked out on the field a couple of times. You know?

That explains a lot.

You know? Yeah. And, so it actually you can actually heal the holes in your head. It'll make Swiss cheese. It's like horrible.

There's a lot a lot of these football players get like

that too.

The poor guys, I mean, they get depressed and they Oh, yeah. You know? Oh, yeah.

Hormonal imbalance, pituitary glands fucked up.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Not producing testosterone or human growth hormone correctly?

That's correct.

Yeah. Depression, low energy Yep.

Irritability. Irritability, you wanna kill somebody, you know,

it's, like, terrible. Yeah.

You know? And, and it's just not socially acceptable. Plus I don't wanna go to prison.

Yeah. Well, the rugby, I bet. That's a a giant factor.

Yeah. I I played from, like, 13 to probably in my late teens, and and you get knocked around

a lot. A 100%. Yeah. Yeah. There's no if, ands, or buts about that.

No helmet. No. You know?

Well, people don't realize, like, even shots to the chest cause brain damage.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That's what people are realizing now.

Yeah. Sure. I mean, you know, and, like, I'm addicted to the UFC. Right? I love it.

But I know that these guys are I I feel kind of sorry for him.

I do as well.

And and 1 of the guys I I knew 1 of the guys fairly well. And usually, I'm pretty immune to, like but, like, he was in there and he was fighting against Volanovsky. It was Brian Ortega, and he was getting his ass handed to him in 1 fight. He almost got him a couple of times, but, like Yeah.

I almost submitted him twice.

Yeah. I know. But because I knew Brian, it was like my it was like my son was in there. I I almost started crying. I was like and it got to me.

I was like, I should probably feel like this about all these guys, but I don't know them as well.

It becomes a problem for me when I'm friends with a guy. And then and then also I see when they're on the tail end of their career and they can't take shots anymore. And then when you talk to them, you recognize the speech patterns are slurring. Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. I met Muhammad Ali when he was in the chair, you know. And, and I don't know if I could even tell this story. What he said was so funny, but he was still in there and he was still a little devil.

And he was like, and he was still he was still fucking with people.

Of course.

But it was like, I I can't tell this.

You can't? No, man. Okay. Footnote it. Tell me later.

I'll tell you later. It's funny. But it was my assistant, you know, is what he said to my assistant. It was, like, so funny. And, and and then he said it and we all were like, woah.

And then I looked at him and he was just he laughing. He was laughing his ass off. So he was still all in there, but it was hard. I guess he had the damage of being punched out.

Trauma related Parkinson's disease. Yes. Very common for fighters.

Oh my god.

Oh, no. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not good. No. I got knocked out when I in a fight when I was, like, 20, and it was, like, knocked out, like, out.

And it was, you know, I woke up in the hospital. Not good.

No. Well, a few of those will explain a lot.

Yes. It does.

Yeah. And we didn't know that, you know, back then. That's why it always drives me crazy in a movie when someone gets hit over the head with a gun and knocked out, and then 5 minutes later, they're fighting and they're fine. You know?

Or shot Yeah. In their arm. You know? Like, I'd kill you. You know?

That always makes me laugh too, but we used to do it. You know?

Well, you kinda have to. Right? Yeah. It's like part of the whole thing of telling a movie. You gotta Sure.

I mean, Michelle of disbelief. Michelle Docker even brains Mark Wahlberg with a fire extinguisher at 1 point. It's Yeah. He's back. You

know? Brains him, shoots him.

Oh, yeah. He's a cockroach. You can't kill him. It takes a lot more. We'll you'll find out.

Yeah. But, we're you know, people used to think that concussions are just something you recover from. Like, no big deal. You get a concussion, take a break for a little while, you'll be fine. You might not be fine.

No. You're not. Yeah. I got a concussion at my daughter's wedding. This is really weird.

Okay? So she's getting married. Married a great guy. They got a great family. And a buddy of mine from Australia comes to the wedding, and he goes, hey.

He comes up, and I I go to hug him. And he he ducks down, and he comes up, and he puts his shoulder into the point of my chin. The guy weighs 240, and he puts his shoulder into the point of my chin and knocks me the fuck out.

Jesus Christ. I'm

like, ah. And, like, for the next 4 months, I'm messed up. I have to get, like, a guy to work cranial, sacral, you know, fix me up and stuff like that. It really messed me up.

Fucking Australians.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Wild folk.

Worse than Germans.

Yeah. They're just wild ex prisoners.

Yeah. Yeah. Wild prisoner of mothering. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway So this this story that

you wanna tell about good and evil, like, do you have a script or

is it just

a thing in your head? Like, what is it?

Yeah. It's it's it's the resurrection story. And it but it's it's, it's not just it's not linear because you can't really it's hard to understand. So it's gotta be put in a framework where you answer a few other questions as well, and you have to juxtapose the event itself against everything else so that it makes some kind of sense in in a bigger picture, which is a hard thing to do. And it took my brother and I about and and a guy called Randall Wallace, plus my brother and I.

Took us 6, 7 years to write it.

So are you doing this with historians as well? Are you trying to make it

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Historical stuff. Well, I regard I regard the gospels as history.

It's verifiable history. Some people say, oh, it's a fairy tale. He never existed, but he did. And there are other accounts, verifiable historical accounts outside the biblical ones that also bear this up that, yes, he did exist. And, and and the other aspect of that is that the all the evangelists, the apostles who went out there, every single 1 of those guys died rather than deny their belief.

And nobody dies for a lie. Nobody. Right. So that's part of what I'm doing. It's like showing nobody dies for a lie.

Yeah. Well, the resurrection is the 1 that is the most difficult for people to swallow. Yes. That that's the 1 that requires the most faith.

The most faith and the most belief. Yeah. Resurrection. Yeah. Who who who gets back up 3 days later after he gets murdered in public, who gets back up under his own power.

Buddha didn't do that shit.

Right. You know? So You believe that was a real event?

Yeah. I do. Yeah.

What brought you to that belief? Is this something that you've always had, or is it something you you studied it and you've come to this conclusion because of the historical accounts? And

Yes. I think as a child, you know, 1 accepts things on faith because, you know, you're raised by people who are nice to you and they believe it. And my dad was a pretty smart guy. He was, like, men saw smart. You know?

Like, real smart. Like, back in 1968, he won Jeopardy. Right? And then Really? And then they brought all the Jeopardy winners back, and he played all the winners, and he beat all of them too.

So he had a mind like a steel trap. And his memory was practically photographic. My memory is pornographic, but it's like it's like his his was like, I don't have that that kind of mind.

Right.

But I'm more like he did math and, you know, I can't add. But, so as a child, you learn, these things and you accept them on faith. And I still have that faith, but as I got older, I came to it through intellect and through reading and putting things together and accounts and then occurrences like in my own life. You know? I mean, just recently, they verified the Shroud of Turin.

Have you seen that?

I've been reading about it, and I know that there's some contention. There's some some discussion and debate about it, but they used to think that it was only a couple 100 years old. Yeah. And now they've they've changed that.

Yeah. They've said no. It's back then.

They also don't understand how it was made, which to me is very fascinating because it's not paint. It's not they don't know what caused the image itself and how that technology would have even been available

It wasn't. Yeah.

A couple 1000 years ago.

An intense light. I mean, atomic to leave almost like a photographic imprint on a piece of cloth. Yeah. And It's wild. Pull that up.

Pull the

shrouded turn up. Oh, yeah. It's wild to look at because it's it's so interesting.

Oh, yeah. And you can see it that it depicts a 1st century Hebrew male because the hairstyle was from the 1st century and a Hebrew hairstyle that he was about 6 feet tall, that he was completely scourged all over his body. He was crucified.

That's right there. The 1 on the left is it the 1 on the right is just like an artistic rendition.

That's the face.

Yeah. Click on that 1, the face the face. Yeah. That's good enough. Get that large.

That's fucking crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. Scourged, beaten Yeah. A crap the the wounds on the the thorns, the hands, the feet, and and the scourging, and the the the hairstyle was from the 1st century. And the pollens that they found in the cloth were from that region.

Yeah.

Also, the weave was a 1st century weave that was typical. And another guy, an archeologist who I knew who actually translated the passion in Aramaic, told me that if you look close, you can see that that the image of a Tiberius coin marks on the eyes. Now I don't know if that's real or not. I've never actually checked that, but that there's images of Tiberius on the coin.

So they would put the coins over the eyes? Yeah.

So that would date it. But they have now verified that it does actually go back to that time period. For a while, they were testing pieces that had been repaired in the 13th century or

Right. You know? What is the latest on that, Jamie? Can you see, like I I was trying to get that. I have 2 different articles from within the last 6 months

saying off of things.

So

Yeah. Office of course.

They didn't know which 1 sounded the most accurate. Well, it's such a crazy thing to even try to verify. Yeah. What do you like, what are you saying? You're saying that this is really the shroud that Jesus was covered in.

So you're saying Jesus historically absolutely did exist and we think that this is the shroud that covered them. That just that alone People Yeah. Incredulity, people's immediately their their their their hackles raise, like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

And they just instead of, like, looking at it objectively, they almost always wanna look at it from a point of view of dispute disproving it immediately, dismissing it immediately.

But that's, you know, that's science, isn't it? You have to sort of, you know, you play the devil's advocate. Yeah. And that's okay.

Go for it, you know. Do you are you aware of Graham Hancock? Oh, no. Graham Hancock is, is sort of a historian that has a very, he's got a a series on Netflix. He's a fascinating guy.

And his his career started because he was investigating this these accounts in Ethiopia Mhmm. Of the Ark of the Covenant. Right. And that they believe the Ark of the Covenant is in this 1 church that's protected by all these monks that wind up getting cataracts and radiation disease and sickness, and they think that it's because they're protecting this ark of the covenant, this this actual thing, that it's an actual physical thing that's there.

And if you touch it, you get zapped. Yeah.

Yeah. And that even being in its presence fucks these people up.

Maybe. Maybe. Who knows? I mean, there's gotta be some place. Right?

They buried it. They lost track of it. Yeah. But, man, it used to be. And and all the stories are if you even touched it, you fall over.

Mhmm.

You know? Because it was instructed electrically somehow.

Yeah. Like, what is that? What's in there?

Yeah. What why

is it giving people cancer if they're really protecting it?

I think it's the actual structure of the container it's in that that is the problem. That's my thought. I could be wrong. But I think inside it, they have things from, like, when Moses was, like, manna and, you know, stuff like that that they they managed to keep from like, for example, they they say that, that Golgotha, the place where the crucifixion happened, it's called Golgotha, the place of the skull because that's where Adam's head is buried. Really?

Yes. And that that it's also perhaps the same place. And and it it tells you it's kind of in the same area where Abraham almost sacrifices Isaac. Oh. So it's interesting.

Yeah. And it's, and and the cross when in any artistic depiction at the foot of the cross underneath it is the skull, representing the skull of Adam. So it's interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. There it is. Yeah. That's the skull of Adam,

Yep. Wow. Place of the skull, memory myth in the chapel of Adam.

What did you, find on the Shroud of Turin, Jamie? Both those articles just asked, like, 1 person. Like, 1 researcher thought it was. Another researcher, based off of their research, said it wasn't. Can you put it to the 1 that thought it was?

So the 1 who thought it was is our, like, a nuclear researcher. A nuclear researcher. Jesus Christ. 1 was like a AI artist from Brazil. Yeah.

So I don't I don't I don't know who has the most. So it says study published in the journal heritage. The authors conducted dating work on a sample from the shroud coming to the conclusion that it may be a 2000 year old relic. The shroud was long been the subject of intense scrutiny, features a faint image of a man some believe is the body of Jesus miraculously imprinted onto the cloth. While the latest study does not discuss the question whether or not the artifact was indeed Jesus' burial burial shroud.

Specifically, the authors did find its age is roughly consistent with his time.

Yeah. Yeah. I think isn't the Smithsonian guy all for it? I don't know. Maybe that's him.

I don't know. But, yeah, there's foreign against. There's always been.

Yeah. Always. But it's just

But the but the but the image is like

Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. Whatever it is is pretty crazy. And the fact that they don't know how they made it is also pretty crazy.

Yeah. It's not a painting. Nope. And then not not exactly sure how it even came about.

Yeah. It had to have been some kind of intense light.

Well, the the thought was that even trying to replicate something like that today would be incredibly difficult to do.

Sure. It's like an x-ray vision. Yeah. It's it's like an x-ray. That's what they you only see you really see it in the negative only.

Right. You know? Right.

It's like a negative.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey. I buy it, but but but that's not the only reason I buy it. I mean, I think, you know, there's other logical reasons why I why I believe.

So

Like, what are those?

Oh, okay. Stuff that happens in your own life. The results you get from actually appealing to a power greater than yourself. You know? And, I mean, I don't think it's any secret.

I am flawed in the fact that I am, by nature, born an alcoholic. Right? I did drugs. I did alcohol. So and there was nothing that could stop me from doing that.

Nothing. So I was really kind of on you're on a downhill run. So I regard the fact that I was able to appeal to something greater than myself to help me and actually stop me doing that. I think that's a miracle. It is.

For me, it is. And for many. You know? So

Well, that is the thing about AA. Right? It's it's a part of the whole process is appealing to a higher power.

Sure. It's a spiritual program. Yeah. Because you're suffering your spiritual malady. You know?

Yeah. So it's a spiritual cure. And that's, the essence I think of why it works. Because you can't explain it otherwise. I mean, it's you well, you kinda can, but I think what you're being asked to do is to think about other people and other things more than yourself because it's kind of an ego disease.

Yeah. So if you

That is the problem with addiction. Right? It's very narcissistic.

Very narcissist.

You're constantly thinking about yourself and what you need. Mhmm. I need a drink. I need a bump. I need a lot you know,

I need something. Sure. I need it or Yeah. And no matter what you need, it's never gonna be enough.

Right. Right.

So you actually have to appeal to something outside that you consider bigger and better than yourself, which instantly kind of pushes you more in the direction of humility because because you're not the center of the universe anymore Right. And that you can't do it. And the first step in any of that sort of stuff is accepting that you are powerless over it. That's the first that's the first that's the most powerful step you can do is that you're powerless. When you realize that, you're like, okay.

Yeah. There's fuck all I can do about this. I have to appeal to something better than me, and that to me is a miracle. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's a very uniquely human thing, the ability to course correct and also just the the concept of addiction in the first place.

Sure.

You know, it's a very uniquely human thing that we all know there's dark roads our mind can go down, and then we wonder, like, what is the purpose of these dark thoughts?

Mhmm.

What is the purpose of this destructive behavior that we're we're all prone to in some way, shape, or form?

What is the purpose of everything? Yeah. I mean, like Right. I mean, why am I here? What's the meaning of this?

Yeah. I'm looking for purpose and and, what is it we're here for? I think, you know, we have to leave some stuff, but you have to leave some good stuff. You can leave plenty of bad stuff, You know? And it's, and we're all prone that way.

I often think about, you know, the human race as a whole. You know, you think about guys like, you know, Stalin or Hitler or Chairman Mao or and I'm I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna be sharing a cell in the afterlife with those guys. You know? Right. I don't know where I'll be on the ladder.

But,

Depends on how you end up. Right?

Well, that's it. Yeah. It really is. It's it's like, you know and we're allowed to make mistakes, and we do. We are so flawed.

And I'm I I'm more flawed than anyone. You know? But it's, something that you I think and it's pretty safe to say I'm in the 3rd act now. You're in act 2. Right?

Because it's tight. But I'm I'm like, I'm in the 3rd act, man. So you can't you have to think about the other side. Yeah. Think about what comes next.

Is there a next? Yes. There is. I believe there is. And I think it's, depends on how you live now.

And, and the beauty of believing is that even for your transgressions, you can be forgiven and you can be redeemed, but it's all up here. Right.

You know? Is the true acceptance and understanding of what you've done and what you should do?

Sure. You have to look at yourself honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. Honestly, you have to be able to accuse yourself and and understand that there is there's it's a great deal of mercy involved in the fact that I believe that God sent His Son down to tell us, okay, I'm gonna ransom you people from your fallen nature, and, and I'll give you a road map on how to do it. And and people do it. There's even people that do it that have never even heard of it. You know, some guy in the jungle someplace, I'm sure.

Right. You know? Because the creator is above the law. I mean, it's an interesting fact to note that the first canonized saint you know who it was? No.

The first ever confirmed canonization as a saint was Dismas. You know who Dismas was? No. He was hanging he was the thief on the cross next to Jesus. Oh.

And he says to him, you're gonna be okay. This day, you'll be with me. I'm baptized, criminal, all that stuff. So Wow. The lawmaker is above the law.

So there's a lot of mercy.

What about people that never experienced Christianity? What about the the uncontacted people?

That's right. That's what I'm saying. Sometime in the jungle. Yeah. It's been known that, it's called invincible ignorance because they don't know what the truth is.

Mhmm. You know? It's possible that they can be saved as well, you know.

So what are your thoughts on evolution?

Wow. The Darwin thing? Yeah. I don't really go for it. No?

Yeah. I say to dinosaurs, you know, what did they turn into? I mean, things became extinct at some point. I don't think I was some kind of, like, you know, legless thing that crawled out of the ocean. I don't think I came from that.

I think I was created.

Do you think other things were legless things that came out of the ocean? Do you think, like, multi celled organisms came out of single celled organisms and there was some sort of a natural selection and random mutation, and it led to everything else but us?

Sure. Look at gain of function. Right. You can, like, you can make stuff happen. And I'm sure stuff did happen, but I think it's all part of creation.

I think it's all ordered. I think anyone left anything left to itself without some kind of intelligence behind it will devolve into chaos. And so that there has to be some big intelligence that orchestrates everything. Not that we don't have chaos in the world, but I think that's our own making.

But what do you think separates us from all the other creatures?

Wow. I think we have a soul. We're created with a soul. And, you know, I went to a restaurant last night. It was a steak house in Austin, and it was interesting because all the pictures on the wall are pictures of animals that look resentful, like cows and steers staring at you, looking angry as you rip into a steak.

But, I just believe we we are higher than those creatures because we have a soul, we have an intellect above theirs, and, and we aspire to to higher things. We have we have aspirations.

Right.

And, you know, this is part of why people drink and smoke and do dope and all this kind of stuff is because they're looking for a a spiritual experience. They're looking for like, they actually call alcohol spirits. I mean

Right.

It's they're looking for something higher. And I think we all have that yearning in that we wanna be happy, and, we wanna be at peace, and we want everything to be hunky dory. So there's this yearning in building all of us for that to aspire to something greater. And that's why we're inspired by stories, I think, because it's like, you know, hero stories. You know, Joseph Campbell stuff, the hero with a 1,000 faces and stuff.

It's like these stories inspire us. I met I I was at a party the other day in in, in Tennessee. And you think, Tennessee, what's gonna happen there? It's gonna be squeal like a pig. No.

Man, there's some people live in Tennessee. Sure. But, like, amazing people. And I found myself in a conversation with 4 tier 1 dudes, all of who did something extraordinary. And it was that Tom Slatersley guy who's a Black Hawk Down guy.

There was Sean Ryan who's he's got you probably heard of this guy. A friend of us. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

There was a guy called Christian Craighead. You know who that guy is? No. Woah. And then there was, Eddie.

They wrote a book about him. Eddie Gallagher? Gallagher. Yeah. Eddie Gallagher.

I was talking to 4 of these guys at the same time, and I didn't know who did who do you even talk to? But their stories are amazing, especially and the 1 guy I ended up talking to was an SAS guy, British SAS. He just looks like a bank teller, but he did something extraordinary and in incredibly brave and and with no regard for himself, only regard for other people. And it was like, wow. You hear these stories and it's sort of just like it pumps you up.

You think, would I could I do that? Could I be that person? I don't know if I could. I don't in in in a way, I don't even wanna ever find out because you have to be in an extreme situation. Right.

But, but hearing about other people and how they behave in situations that are difficult is very inspiring. So, you know, it's, yeah, there's so many of those stories around and through history.

Well, that's another unique thing about human beings is that we learn from others in a very extraordinary way, and that's 1 of the reasons why we like stories.

Yeah.

Why we like myths and fables because there's there's lessons you can apply to your own life without having to actually go through those things.

Yeah. Well, that's right. I made a film about that guy, Desmond Doss, you know. I don't know if you saw it. It was like Hacksaw Ridge.

It was this film and it was about a medic who figured so much killing going on, he's gonna go into the battlefield and save lives. And he didn't have a weapon, and he was in the worst place on earth. And he he got a a a congressional medal of honor because he kept going in to the worst place possible and dragging wounded guys out with no regard for himself. I mean, who does that kind of stuff? Right.

And over and over again, he didn't just do it once. He did it hundreds of times. He finally got, you know, hit with shrapnel and a bunch of other stuff, but he lived to be an old man. But wow. And it was just pure faith, you know.

So, you know, those guys that those kind of stories inspire the hell out of me. Anyway

So when back to this, idea of evolution. So

Mhmm.

Do do you believe that evolution exists in animals? Or do you think there's some sort of a natural selection process? Or do you think that it is all intelligent design?

Well, I think everything was created. Right? And maybe things do move on and adapt and change through time, but I think that that's a function of an intelligence also. And, I mean, look at the fires in LA, you know. I mean, what's that gonna do?

It's gonna give me a new house, you know. Maybe. Maybe. And, Or a new place to live. Yeah.

Something. Yeah. I'm just not totally convinced. I feel it in my and and I can't really I'm sorry. I can't intellectually tell you why I don't believe in evolution, but I don't.

It's just a feeling. I don't think I was some ape or I don't think my ancestors were. I think they had to be pretty smart to survive.

So what do you think all these prehuman hominids are that they keep discovering?

Like, what tell me what a prehuman hominid

Like, australia pithic is

Alright.

Or some of the other human like creatures that never made it, like Denisovans, Neanderthals.

Yeah. Yeah. Stuff like that. Okay. Well, they've got something called zynganthropus.

You remember him? No. Zynjanthropus, man. And he was like, he he looked kinda like this. But it was like they they looked at it and they did some core samples on it, and it was put out there by people advocating evolution, and they discovered that it was a human skull attached to the jaw of an ape.

Oh, I do remember.

So it was a hoax.

Yeah. There's been some hoaxes. Yeah. Yeah. But there's also been real stuff.

Really? Yeah. You don't think so?

Yeah.

Maybe. Well, what Well,

you know, like I don't know. Tell me.

Well, what was that 1 that we looked at the other day that was 1 of the first, prehumans that buried their their their young or buried their dead rather? Was it homo ninaldi? What was it? Remember that? I can't remember how to say it, but Lady.

No lady. Yeah. The pre prehuman hominid, very small creature that buried their young or buried their dead rather. I keep saying bury their young. They buried their dead.

You know, australopithecus, there's there's a bunch of different, you know, the Lucy skeleton. There's a bunch of different prehuman hominids.

Yeah. Maybe they're monkeys. I don't know. You know?

Yeah. Well, there was they're similar to us, just not where we are. Yeah. They're on the road to becoming what what it means to be a human being. Yeah.

I don't know. I

don't know. What do you think those are?

I don't know. They could be animals or they could be like look at today. I mean, you can get some mosquito can bite you and and your kid can be born with a malformed skull or something. It's like, you know, they have those, you know.

Yeah. But this is like a like a genetic thing. Like, they've done they've mapped the genome of these creatures.

Oh, they have?

They're different. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I don't know how to explain those, Joe. I don't know. But

But you do think that human beings were created

by God? I do. Yeah.

When do you think that happened?

When? Oh, probably and not that long ago. Really? No. Not really.

Like, what do you mean by not that long ago?

Probably only about 8 1000 years ago. Really?

Yeah. So what do you think things like Gobekli Tepe are when they find these constructions that are dated carbon dated to 11,000 plus years old?

I question carbon dating. Really? Yeah. Well, that that makes things simpler. Well, yeah.

They they're yeah. Well, there's a lot of money. In in in, you know, claims and Really? Water.

Water's there. Yeah. Well, carbon dating seems to be pretty rock solid studies.

Yeah.

I mean, science the science behind radiocarbon dating and then detecting carbon isotopes. It's like that's pretty Yeah. Pretty legit.

Yeah. I don't know. I can't square it.

Yeah. Well, you don't have to.

And and I don't have to. And I and what difference is it gonna make to me?

Yeah. That's the thing. It's, it doesn't make a difference in terms of your experience in this life on earth. No. Like, you you can have your faith and your ideas and live a great life from beginning to end, and it might not suit you to really ponder evolution and all the puzzles and problems.

No. It doesn't. You know?

Yeah. And I just, like you know, I look at all sorts of stuff like that. Like, you know, the, you know, the icebergs melting and the water overflowing.

It's not.

Ever having a glass full of ice and watch it melt? Did did you ever see the glass flow over? No. Takes up less room. You know?

Yeah. You know, the the hot greenhouse, whatever. I mean,

I don't Well, there's a lot of horseshit that's involved in climate change for sure. I've studied that, and I've had many discussions over the last 4 years. The problem with anything is that once a narrative gets established and then there's a profit attached to the solution to that narrative. Yes. And that's green energy and green energy bills, and there's businesses that are wrapped around there.

And then there's also this fear that they love to pump into people about climate change that, you know, they terrify the shit out of young people that we're gonna destroy the world. And climate change, you must act now. And then you become beholden to the political party that it's espousing these ideas, and then they're your enemy is the deniers of this science even though you don't even understand the science.

Yeah. Yeah. And did you

see the Washington Post, article that they published recently about, temperature change on Earth? No. Well, there's a down the like, what they've realized is over the last, you know, x amount of 1000 of years that the temperature on Earth is plummeting Yeah. And it's dropping. And then when they look at the the dips, this is the most important thing for anybody that's really freaked out about climate change.

There's no static temperature of earth ever. Mhmm. There's never been a time where it maintains a temperature until human beings came along and fucked it all up. Mhmm.

That

is just not real. Mhmm. Before human beings ever existed, if you trust these core samples, there's been a giant rise and fall and this constant dip.

I see. There it is.

Yeah. Scientists have captured Earth's climate over the last 485000000 years. Here's a surprising place we stand now. Look at the dip at the end. Woah.

That's where we are.

Yeah.

That's that's reality.

Okay.

And then if you look at the course of history, you look at the rise and fall, like, it's never a straight line. Way before human beings ever existed, if you believe these silly people. Way before human beings had ever existed. There's always this rise and fall, and this idea that the whole thing is based on carbon emissions from human beings is total bullshit.

Mhmm.

It's not true. We might be having an effect, but we're having a small effect, a very small effect. And the other things are completely outside of our control, including solar activity, the distance between the earth and the sun. Mhmm. You know, there's a lot of factors.

There's there's all sorts of factors involving natural activities like volcanic emissions, you know, which devastate, you know, the the entire human race was knocked down to a few thousand people

Yeah.

At 1 point in time because of the Toba volcano.

Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. No light.

Yeah. No light for years. Yeah. Good luck.

Yeah. Yeah.

Good luck. And the people that survive are fucking barbarians. Yeah. This most savage. And then they it takes a long time before they can figure out civilization again after that.

It's like dinosaurs. They just stop. Mhmm. So what did they evolve into? Chickens.

I guess. Birds, raptors.

Well, they think a lot of dinosaurs had feathers now. Yeah. That's the the newest thing.

Yeah. Maybe.

You don't think so?

I don't know. I need to take a pee. I'm so desperate.

Let's take a peek. Let's take a peek. We'll take a break.

We'll bring it back. Take a piddle. It's a nice picture. It's that's gotta be a moment in

your head where you're just like every now and then just go fuck. Yeah.

Yeah. It is funny. Yeah. But it was a good picture. The only thing that was going through my head was okay.

I I just can't look bad. And I didn't have anything no grooming implements, so I just tried tried my best to not look too bad. There you go.

Yeah. You talk about humility. Mhmm. Like, what gives you more humility than being publicly humiliated?

Sure. Yeah. Public humiliation. And it's you know what? Most for most people, it is their number 1 fear.

Sure. It's public humiliation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Public speaking and because of that, public humiliation. Sure.

Yeah. Happens all the time.

Because we're so concerned about other people's opinions of us.

I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Because we're not Countless our own opinions of anyone. Well, we've been through a lot.

Well, so have you. Yeah. I mean, I remember, you know, I think they were they were giving you a grilling once for taking horse worm medicine.

Yeah. Funny.

Which yeah. Funny how

that works.

Yeah. Funny how that works. Funny how funny how that does work.

Yeah. What's really funny is, how that was that a part of the demise of mainstream media. Mhmm. Because people are like, well, this is crazy. This doesn't make are you guys really the news?

Like, what is this?

Yes. I know. You know? They seem to be they seem to be complicit with a A 100%. And, you know, you think, well, why?

But why?

Because of money. I think this is what we're talking about before that there is good and evil. Yeah. And sometimes it manifests itself in a very clear and obvious way. Mhmm.

And I think that's what that was. That was evil. That was putting people's lives second and putting money first.

Well, I don't know why Fauci is still walking around.

How is that guy still walking around? I don't get it. If just people understand the history of the AIDS crisis and what that guy did back then.

Did you read that book? Yeah. Yeah. I read the book. I listened to it.

Yeah. I did too. I drove up to San Francisco, and I listened to it, and I had road rage. Oh, yeah. And it was like, woah.

How is he still there?

How was first of all, people that don't believe it, how come RFK Jr. Didn't get sued? Yep. How come there's no lawsuits?

Mhmm.

If there was lies, there would be lawsuits. No.

But that's true.

You'd be publicly humiliated instead. They kept that book off bestseller lists. That book sold millions of copies.

I know.

They hid it. That's when you find out the bestseller lists are actually curated. It's not really bestseller.

Yeah. It's censored. It's all censored. Everything's censored. You

know? But that book is an accurate depiction of what Anthony Fauci did during the AIDS crisis, which probably was an AZT crisis. Yeah. No. No.

No. Was an AIDS crisis.

I mean, it's it's fairly incontrovertible now that he is fooling with gain of function.

100%. And,

you know, it's, you know, what are the is he still around? Right. Or at least free.

Right. Right. And no repercussions.

Yeah. Whatever happened to that story where, you know, the wombat and the and the weasel got together and they're horsing around and a bat pissed on with the golden shower. Yeah. You know, it's like and all of a sudden, it was in a wet market. Yeah.

Very wet market. You got

you know? Complete total horseshit. Totally. The scientists that we're supposed to to trust were pitching that horseshit. It

was like the AIDS thing. Some green monkey bit of Juarez Stewart on the ass. Then he went around the world and got everybody sick, and it was, like, you know, ridiculous.

If you wanna go to the AIDS rabbit hole, look up a guy named Peter Dewsberg.

Oh, yes. I know. Yeah. I read that book. Yeah.

That is crazy. Yeah. He's telling the truth. This is the fucking COVID crisis times a 1,000. Mhmm.

Yeah. I had him on the podcast way back in the day. It was 1 of the earlier guests that I had. It was, like, way back in, like, 2010. It was 1 of the first times I got openly attacked for someone being on the podcast.

There was, like, blood is on your hands. I'm, like, first of all, no, it's not. It's 2010. Who's dying of AIDS? 0 people.

So stop. It's not blood's on your hand. Like, if this guy's correct, he's a tenured professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is, like his work on cancer is, you know, everybody thinks it's groundbreaking work, brilliant doctor, but he was a heretic. He was a guy who stood outside of Fauci's

The narrative.

Doctrine in the narrative, and he said, I don't believe that HIV is what's causing this when all these people that are having these immune systems are all heavy drug users. Yeah. That's true. He's like, I think this is a disease of a decimation of the immune system due to heavy drug use. And then on top of that, you're prescribing this chemical, this AZT that kills people.

Yeah. Would not they they stopped using it for chemotherapy because it was killing them quicker than cancer was.

I was in the Sydney Theater Company in the nineties, and I was going to a funeral once a month of friends. They were all dying. It's crazy. And then in in the eighties nineties.

And they were all getting AZT.

Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. I don't know.

Well, the ones that were getting AZT, even the ones that were asymptomatic Yeah. Like Magic Johnson. They were giving Magic Johnson AZT. He had to stop taking it. Yeah.

Because he was making him sick. He was killing him.

Yeah. Yeah. I read it. And, like, it's even with RFK's book, and and he's an amazing guy. People say, oh, he's kooky.

He's crazy. He's not crazy. He's not. He's he's 1 of the most erudite. You know, he's they say he's an anti vaxxer.

He's not. He's not. He's like, he's he's he's a very shrewd. He's never lost a case, I don't think, when he brings something to suit. I don't think he's ever been defeated.

But that book is not just him. It's him and about a 1000 highly qualified scientists and physicians commenting on Yes. The whole situation. So when you read it, it's it's a pretty convincing document. And you're right.

Nobody sued him for it. Yeah. You know? It's pretty scary.

Well, not not only did they not sue him, their their response is to try to ignore it. They don't wanna debate him on it. They don't wanna do anything. No. They wanna just ignore it and hope it goes away, but it doesn't go away.

And the more people talk about it, the more people read it. And when you do read it and you go, if this is true, what the fuck is going on? And how is that monster still loose? Yeah. Oh, well.

And he seems like a monster. The way he talks about things, he just seems well, first of all, there's so many instances of him lying. There's so many, like, where he said 1 thing, 2 years later, it turns out to be a lie. Said 1 like, whether whether it is the, the mask thing Yeah. The mask thing, whether it's these natural spillover, you know, the the the lies about gain of function to congress, You know?

I'm sure. When he was lying to Rand Paul about whether or not they did gain of function research. Like, how is that not perjury? How is he not in trouble?

Yeah. Well, well, hey. Other mysteries. You know?

Well, then the Biden administration is now talking about taking that guy and and giving him a full pardon. It's like Yep. Fucking crazy.

Yeah. They might. You know? I gave you gave Hunter a pardon.

Yeah. But but Hunter's

Hunter didn't need a pardon. Was he indicted?

Well, I mean, he was in trouble for tax evasion.

Oh, I see.

There's a lot of tax problems. He's he he definitely did some uncool things, and then there's the Burisma thing. But the crazy thing about his pardon is it starts at the time of him being involved in Burisma. So it's from 2,011 all the way to today.

Right.

That's that's what he pardoned him. It's the the biggest sweeping pardon that anyone's ever received ever. And Biden's pardoned more people than anybody ever too. Yeah. He was already over 8,000 people pardoned.

Yeah. A lot of criminals on death row and stuff.

Well, there's that and but then there's also people that like the kids for cash judges. Mhmm. You know, they where they were locking up kids and putting them in child detention centers because they wanted money, and they were doing it for kickbacks.

Yeah. I saw that. Evil. Documentary.

Yeah. Evil. Again, what we're talking about, good and evil. Yeah. Like, there these are real things and rational people that profess themselves to be intelligent and secular, they don't wanna believe in good and evil.

They don't think that they're they just think people do bad things. People have motivations. They do bad things, but they don't wanna believe in the concept of good and evil because these are biblical concepts.

They are. Right? Yeah. And I you know, they've been around since the beginning.

And people wanna pretend they're smarter than the people that sort of embrace these biblical concepts. Right.

Or yeah. I think, that goes into evolution. It just doesn't. Yeah. Are we smarter than our grandparents?

You know? I don't know.

Well, we are about some things, but we can't survive the way they did. Nope. They're obviously intelligent.

Yeah.

It's just they didn't have access to information the way we do, but there's a difference between information and intelligence.

Sure. Yeah. I don't have many devices for information. I read books. I read mostly history books.

Yeah? Yeah. Oh, I gotta recommend a book to you.

Okay.

It's fascinating and it's, I it's called The Frontiersman and it's about a guy called Simon Kenton. You ever hear this guy?

No. Woah.

And it was written by a guy who's now deceased. His name is Alan Eckert, and it is really about opening up Ohio and Kentucky and places like

that

with this guy, Simon Kenton, who was just an Irish immigrant. He wasn't much for farming and stuff, but he thought he killed a guy. And so he ran away because he thought he'd be indicted for some crime or something, and he ended up being this frontiersman. And it is it's a very interesting document because you get the history of what was going on at the time when the country was opening up Mhmm. Between the settlers and the Indians, you know, the Shawnee.

Mhmm. 1 of the most brutal books I've ever read.

Really?

Oh, it's it's very well done. And it has a narrative, but it's reconstructed from his you know, all kinds of historical documents and letters and diaries and all this kind of stuff. So I think the guy took about 15 years to sort of compile all this stuff and write it. And the first half of the book is about this guy, Simon Kenton, and the second half is about Tecumseh, you know, the chief. Really great book.

1 of the 1 of the most fascinating books I've read. You can't put it down. Really? Yep. Because it's just like it's like little chapters.

I'm gonna get that right now.

Yeah.

Have you ever read the Empire of the Summer Moon? Nope. Empire of the Summer Moon is, about the Comanche.

Oh, yeah.

And it's all about the settling of this area. Right. It's fucking incredible. And, again, 1 of the most brutal books ever. So this is The Frontiersman?

The Frontiersman by Alan Eckert. Yeah. I'm

gonna check that right now just so that I make sure that I have it.

Yeah. And it's all in little bite sized chunks. And it actually for a history book, it has this incredible narrative with heroes and villains and and, all the players. Very interesting document.

I'm getting it right now. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Don't read it before bed. No? No. It gets pretty it gets pretty dark.

Why why are you, so drawn to history?

I don't know. I think because maybe I'm trying to learn something. It's been about 80 years since the last big war.

Mhmm. Alan Eckert. Got it.

I think I just wanna learn. You know? I mean, my dad went to World War 2. He went to Guadalcanal. Right?

He got bit by mosquitoes. He had, you know, malaria, which is interesting to note that he used to take hydroxychloroquine and they get a malaria attack. Crazy? And then when I tried when my doctor recommended I get it when I had COVID, they gouge me 800 it used to cost him $30. They wanted $800 for for they were gouging.

Well, not only that. When Trump talked about it, then all of a sudden, they demonized it.

Yeah. Yeah. They laughed.

Yeah. Which is crazy because it's an antiviral. It works. Yeah. It works on malaria.

Yeah.

Yeah. And people have been taking it forever.

Sure. Pregnant women can take it if they have the flu, and it doesn't hurt the baby. You know? It's pretty safe. It's like Ivermectin.

You know?

But that's what's so bizarre about the time that we just went through because there's more information now available to people instantaneously than ever before.

Yeah.

You look it up on your phone, you instantly know, oh, Ivermectin, the guy who created it, won the Nobel Prize.

Yeah. 2014. Yeah.

15. Yeah. For use in human beings.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what the fuck is going on? Yep. Like, how who's running this thing?

And it's harmless. And it wasn't made for horses. It was made for people, and then they used it for horses. Right. Right?

So Well,

it's like saying penicillin is for horses because they use that on horses too. Like, that's stupid.

They told me it was for moldy bread.

That's what it was from. Yeah.

Yeah.

But, I mean, there's a lot of medications used on animals too. You can't say it's a veterinary medication just because it's also used on animals.

No. That's

true. It's been used on literally prescribed billions of times on human beings.

Yeah. It's like the stem cell stuff. They started using it on horses with emphysematic lung conditions, racehorses, because they would bleed. And they got the stem cells from the from the umbilical cords of their offspring injected, injured them, and it healed their lungs, which is part of my story.

Mhmm.

Because I smoked for 45 years and I couldn't stop. And I read this silly book by Alan Carr, not the little guy who, you know, managed the village people in the caftan, the little fat guy, but, no, this other guy, Allan Carr. And he wrote this book, and it's the only thing that made me stop. So it worked like crazy. But the book

made you stop? Like, what was

The book made me stop. What is the book? It was the book called The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, and it's a silly title. Right? And it sat on my son gave it to me.

He said, stop smoking, dad. Here here's this book. I left it on. I used to walk past the bookshelf and go, dumb book, dumb title, you know. And then I finally my doctor said, you have first stage emphysema.

And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. He said, yeah, you gotta kick this muscle. I said, yeah, I better read this book. So I read the book and I stopped. Right?

So it was, I think it was like neuro linguistic programming or something like that. You read it and you're kind of self hypnotize yourself, but it worked.

What did the book tell you?

Like, it said, it didn't tell you you're bad. You're, you know, you're gonna die. It didn't tell you all that sort of stuff. It was like I mean, they had things like maybe maybe I'm blowing it, but, they had a chapter where it says, okay. We focused on the negative aspects of smoking.

Now we're gonna talk about the good aspects of smoking in the next chapter. And then you turn the page and the

page is empty.

You know? And it's just a trick. It's a mind trick. The whole thing was a mind trick, but it worked. And I don't know why it worked.

But it was sort of sort of like self hypnosis while you're reading the book. And it wasn't a negative thing. Like, I gotta stop this. It's bad. It's bad.

I'm I'm scared. It wasn't even that. In fact, if I hadn't had the stem cells afterwards, my lungs completely healed from that, by the way.

Did he do it intravenously?

Yeah. Intravenous. And it gets stuck in your lungs. And it

Was this doctor

Reardon? That was Reardon.

Yeah.

That we talked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It worked.

Stem cells are incredible. And the fact that you can't get them the way they can get them in overseas,

the way we can get

it in Panama where Reardon has this clinic and Tijuana. They're getting better here. They're getting better, but there's so much resistance because the FDA.

Yeah. Sure.

And the resistance is purely because of money. It's, again, it's an evil thing. It's not because they're they're not effective. It's not because they're dangerous.

Mhmm.

It's just because of money.

I think so. And, you know, there's an agenda. I think, you know, pharma wants to keep you on stuff. Yeah. I wanna sell you something.

So if there's a a surefire cure for something, it's not necessarily hailed.

No. Well and then there's also the problem with the media. The media's lockstep in with these businesses that are promoting these things.

Yes.

And they're not giving you information. They're giving you propaganda before they're giving you information. Propaganda is more important to them than information. Yeah. And that's what's crazy.

It's like we we're counting on you guys, and you fucked us. You fucked us for 4 years with this COVID thing, and now you expect us to listen to you about the fucking swine flu or the bird flu or whatever other thing you're trying to freak us out about, which always coincides with some sort of a political event. Like, here it is, the inauguration of the new president, and, oh, look at this. There's a new disease.

What do we got now? What is it? No. Do you think there will be? Be?

Well, there is.

There's this fucking swine flu.

H 5 n 1 whatever.

I thought it was bird flu.

1 bird flu. 1 person died. 1 person in America, 1st person died. 65 years old with a bunch of comorbidities.

Yeah. Okay.

And which is usually what it is. But by the way, 65 people with a bunch of comorbidities die all the time of nothing. They die of anything. Any I mean, this is like a car that's falling apart and you run over a nail and, oh, the nail killed the car. No.

That car was falling the fuck apart. Yeah. Like, the the nail you ran over was the last nail in the coffin, but the thing was falling apart.

I got COVID from my gardener, and he had it first, and then I got it. And I was like, ah, did I grab the hose or what? You know, what was I don't know. But, it was, it was I knew the guy for 20 years, and we both went to the same hospital. And he died and I didn't.

Jeez. I think we both got remdesivir, which is not good. Not good. Not good. Causes kidney failure.

I know. I I couldn't walk for 3 months after I had that stuff. Really? Because it kills you. I found that afterwards, it kills you, and that's why I wonder about Fauci.

You know? Oh, you should wonder about that guy.

When meanwhile, they were trying to stop people from getting monoclonal antibodies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They've restricted monoclonal antibodies, which is fucking insane because they wanted to promote that vaccine because they wanted a profit off of it, which brings us back again to evil.

Evil's real. It's real. Putting money over human lives is evil.

I agree.

It's a it's a real thing, and there's a there's a temptation to do it too, which is even more crazy. Yeah.

I don't believe that there is anything that can afflict mankind that hasn't got a natural cure for it. I think that there has to be. It just makes sense to me. Now I couldn't prove that but I just believe that. Yeah.

That there's gotta be something that cures things. And I'll tell you a good story.

Okay.

I have 3 friends. All 3 of them had stage 4 cancer. All 3 of them don't have cancer right now at all, and they had some serious stuff going on.

And what did they take?

Yep. Jesus. They took some what you've heard they've taken? Ivermectin. Fenbendazole.

Bendazole. Yeah. That's Yeah. I'm hearing that a lot. They drank hydrochloride something or other.

There's studies on those now where people have proven that

they drinking methylene blue and stuff like that.

Yeah. Methylene blue, which was a fabric dye.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was a textile dye. And now they find it has profound effects on your mitochondria.

Yep. Yeah. This stuff works, man.

There's a lot of stuff that does work, which is very strange

Mhmm.

Because, again, it's profit. When you when you hear about things that are demonized and that that turn out to be effective, you always wonder, well, what is going on here?

Mhmm.

How is how is our medical institutions? How have they failed us so that things that do cure you are not promoted because they're not profitable? That they can't control it. They don't have a patent on it, whether it's vitamin d, k 2, and magnesium. Yep.

You know?

Well, yeah. I'm Zinc and course it too.

I do all that stuff.

Yeah. Did you do the breaker thing? Yeah. Yeah. Me too.

I lost

I do all

that £30. £30. Right?

That's fantastic.

I was talking to Dana, and he said, oh, you know, I was a and he and I said, yeah. I gotta do something about this. I'm like, I'm 5 10, 235. You know? That's too fat.

Yeah. So I had to I had to sort of roll it back some. Now I'm under 200, which is about

That's great.

Should be. You know? But and it was that, breakfast stuff.

Mhmm. No. Gary's a national treasure. Yeah. And he's shit on all over the place too.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Go in a sauna, but I feel better.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I do all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Cold plunge, sauna.

I'm ritualistic with it.

Yeah. That's

good. It's part of my everyday life.

You I hear your your cold plunge is, like, 30, 40. I don't understand that, though. I mean, dude, I'm 34 degrees. Yeah. Woah.

Yeah. It's cold.

That's hardcore.

Yeah. You get accustomed to it. It to me is not. I mean, it sucks. Every time I do it, I'm like, don't do it.

Don't there's, like, the part of me that's, like, my inner bitch. It's like, oh, we don't have to do this. We don't have to do this. But luckily, the general is stronger than the inner bitch. The general is always telling, shut the fuck up and

get in

there, and I just get in there

every day. But I do, like, 48, man.

That inner bitch is always talking, though. He never shuts up. No. Never shuts up. Don't ever think that it like, even though I do it every day, anybody's like, I don't know how you do it.

I don't know how I do it either, but I fucking do it. I make sure I do it. I just I'm the boss.

Yeah. Do you do the saunas too? Oh, yeah. Do the red light bed?

I have a red light bed. Yeah. I have a sauna, red light bed. I have a hyperbaric chamber. Wow.

I have everything.

I have baric chambers of

the basement.

It's incredible. Incredible. I gotta get back in there.

I feel like I got

more holes in my head.

It's phenomenal for just overall recovery of for everything. And it's it's also been shown to lengthen telomeres. They did a study out of Israel. Yeah. They gave people a protocol over 90 days.

You do 60 sessions of 90 minutes over 90 days.

Yeah. And

it's shown the length in telomeres and decrease your biological age. Okay. And you just feel fucking great.

That makes sense to me.

Yeah. Yeah. You're flooding your body with oxygen. Most diseases, a lot of them come from a lack of oxygen. You know, your body not having enough oxygen is very bad for you.

Yeah. I used to have a Qigong master. This is what kinda blows my mind about medicine and about ancient stuff.

Mhmm.

This guy is from Shanghai. He didn't speak much English. Right? A little bit. His wife would translate for him, and he'd come in and he could, like, point at you, right, from this far away and you'd feel it.

But, like, feel it, like, to the as palpable as someone pushing you around. It's like Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not kidding. You're like

What year was this when this is happening?

Oh, shit. I met him when I was, like, 40. Yeah. He only just passed away. Damn.

Too bad. I'd like to meet that guy. Oh, no. There's people like him. There are others who like it.

Oh, yeah. He's not the only 1. He learned it from somebody, and I think he I think he imparted some knowledge. But, you know, he would get you and he could he could, like, point at you and stuff like that. It it makes you wonder, like, how did they build the pyramids, you know.

I mean, if if he can use his mind and kinda get into quantum physics and move shit around with thought and with energy. There's actual energy coming out of his fingers. They could have built the pyramids like that. I don't know. Maybe somebody had that down somewhere.

But Well, I'd like to hear a better explanation.

Me too. Well, it's it was really weird. I he, 1 time, he was working on me, and he was working on my liver. He said your liver's blocked because he looks at you. And if you look at him, he looks away, and his wife engages you while he checks you out.

And then he gives you a little body map and he puts x's all over it and you go, yeah. That's right. I got a pain here and a thing there. And, you know, he knows where everything is. He knows exactly what's going on.

Did you

ask him what he's is he seeing your aura? Like, what is he seeing?

Everything. He sees everything. He was an allopathic doctor first. He went to medical school. He could write your prescription.

He could do all that stuff. He was a doctor. And then he saw a chikung master, this old guy, and people were lining up getting cured, and he thought that's really interesting. And he learned that on top of being an allopathic doctor. So 1 day, he's at me on my back and he's pushing and I can feel my back and I'm at the wall and there's a poster of a film on the wall, you know, my office.

And I'm looking at and I can see him in the background and he's like down like this, like, ah, like like kung fu pointing pointing rays of energy at me. And he hit me. He started yelling at my organ, at my liver, like, get out. You know, whatever. And I I went up the wall and there was, like, 8 inches of air under my heels.

And I was up the wall and I was like, woah. And I came back down. It freaked me out. And he I looked at him and he just went, he said, don't I? It's just science like that.

Just science. Okay. Just science? Yeah. Just science.

And I was so freaked out. I went to a priest. I said, is this guy demonic or something? Because he's lifting me off the wall. And the priest was like he was an old Jesuit.

Right? A traditional old guy. And he was he was a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Elmer Fudd, you know. That's that's the way he sounded. And I said, is this anything, like, demonic about this guy?

Like, putting he says, woah. Woah. Woah. Did did he heal you? Like that.

And I said, why? Yes. He did. And he said, that's alright then. And he says, I have no trouble with something like that because it was it was within the realm of possibility that somebody had power like that, and then it's inexplicable, but that it works.

And it did work. He, yeah, he just passed away. He was pretty old.

There was a a a place that you know, I bought a comedy club out here. And before, the building that we bought was the Ritz Theater on sixth Street.

Mhmm.

But before that, I was under contract to another building, and this other building was owned by a cult. And this is a crazy story. The cult was awful, horrible. It's there's a documentary on it. It's called Holy Hell.

And this guy who was a gay porn star and a hypnotist, he was a yoga instructor, got a bunch of people in in West Hollywood and then eventually moved them all out here to Austin. But what this guy was doing, 1 of the things that he would do to his disciples is he would do a thing called the knowing, and they had to be chosen for it, they had to earn it. And when he would get them and bestow the knowing upon them, he would touch their head, and they would have this incredible experience where they said they contacted God. Now all these people denounced him eventually. They left the cult.

They all said he was a con man and this and that, but they all talked about that experience, and they said it was the most profound experience of their life that they really do feel like they came in contact with God. And it's like, what can a person if a person truly believes and this other person truly believes that they can do this to them and they have this moment and something does happen, like, what is is that all inside of us? Do people have ways of pulling that out of you that we've lost track of that we don't know? And even an evil person who's running a cult and manipulating people and exploiting people, he still has this thing that he was able to do to them that even after they've admitted that this guy exploited them, they say that was the most profound moment of their life.

That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Because I think, yeah, there are party tricks that you can get.

Right. But is that that party trick if it really is a pathway to connect you at least temporarily with God, that there is a thing inside of of us?

Well, that's why I went to priest because I thought Right. Because I'm off the floor. Right. So I thought I gotta check this out because this is too weird. And he said, did he heal you?

And I said, he did. And he said, that's alright then. Because the guy wasn't trying to get anything out of me.

Right. In

fact, he never charged me. Really? The first time I went to see him, he charged me. And it was like, okay. And then he never charged me again.

And he used to call me when I was sick. Really? I wouldn't call him. He knew when I was sick. He'd call me.

He said, I need to come see you. I'm like, okay.

So he had, like, some sort of a direct line with your energy.

Something. Pretty amazing. Yeah. And and and he could oh, this is the other thing. He could teach you martial arts, like, quickly without you having to know what to do.

It was a weird thing. He did it firstly with my son who he got him for a couple of weeks and, like, he said, I'm about to show you something. And I went out there and he blindfolded me. He had these 2 swords and he was doing all this, you know, this crazy stuff. I'm like, what the I said, how did he how did he learn that so fast?

He said, it was in him. I'm like, woah. And then he started to he started to do a thing that he taught me how to harness this energy and to actually begin what seemed to be almost like involuntary movement and depending on the hand mode you took, it would create a style of of kata or self defense. I mean, I used to do, like, some I used to do a crude martial art, not crude, but like a a hard martial art. What was it?

Kyokushinkai. Okay. Yeah. You

know, way back. Kyokushinkarate. Yeah. Yeah. I

think it's Korean.

It's Japanese.

It is? Yeah. I can't remember. But it's like, you know, I didn't stick with it. But it was, but but he he he got this whole other approach of breathing and visualizations that would actually draw energy into your lower chakras and then you'd, you know, you'd release the energy and it would create this kind of movement.

And I showed it to a friend of mine who was a martial artist. And I said, tell me about the footwork I'm doing here and what I'm doing. And he looked at me, he says that looks really good to me. I said, it's it was kind of like, what's that really soft kind of martial art?

Tai Chi.

It was like that. I was doing stuff like that. It was crazy. And it was really a great release, but it was about visualization and breath. Yeah.

And the release of those that energy that you pent up from all around that you visualized coming manifesting itself in you.

There's gotta be something to all that stuff. People have been practicing Tai Chi for a long time. Yeah. They wouldn't be practicing the same movements for all these years if it didn't do something.

Yeah. Pretty interesting. Yeah. It keeps people young and healthy. They do it in China.

You see groups of people out in in Asia sort of out there in groups doing all in unison. It's like, it's a good thing. Exercise. Yeah.

What do you do now for exercise?

Oh, gosh. I'm terrible. I've been I've come off I'm falling apart. I got this I got dead dead guys parts in my shoulder. I've got, you know, cadaver parts.

This shoulder fell apart. This shoulder fell a hip, a foot, terrible. I couldn't walk for about a year almost.

Really?

And so, you know, you fall down. That's partially why I had to go and see Breckett. I sort

of Mhmm.

Get the couch potato stuff off. But, you know, I I lift weights and I do some, you know, walking and stuff like that, like, really get your heart rate up and stuff like that. So, you know, I'm trying. Hey. I'm I'm, you know, I'm 69 years old, so it's like it's getting to be, like, 7 decades or if, you know Yeah.

But I wanna stay fit if I can. And I I banged myself up a little too much on my early life, so I'm paying for it now. And, like, in your sixties, man, you're not there yet, but stuff starts, like, giving up on you. Yep. It's like No.

I feel it in my fifties.

Oh, yeah. How how old are

you? 57.

58 is when it starts, man. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. That's what I that's what I that's that's when I first noticed it. It was like, oh, what's going on with this here?

The shoulder. And and I went down to Reardon, of course. Mhmm. We shot it up with stem cells, and it was good for, like, 2 years. You know?

You just gotta keep going back.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't go back often enough.

That's the thing. I think it's just your body's just not gonna heal the way it did when you were younger unless you consistently get therapy for that.

Yeah. Yeah. You're in good shape, though. Yeah. I mean yeah.

So I was in reasonable shape at 58, and, I think I'm in reasonable shape now. But I'm I'm just, you know, it's just trying to push the old man off and use various methods to do it. You know?

Yeah. That's what it is. Keep the body as young as you possibly can. Yeah. Yeah.

And demand a lot from it. That's what I do. Yeah. I just demand a lot and make sure I recover.

I think a lot of it's about meditation too. Mhmm. You know? You can actually, get into a good headspace that kinda cools you out and stops the stress even no matter what's going on. I'm gonna have to do it tonight when I find out whether I still have a home or not.

You know? Yeah. So Well, if anything looks demonic, it's the fires in Los Angeles.

Yeah.

I remember, 1 time we were filming Fear Factor, and we had to drive home. We had to cancel a shoot or end it early and drive home because the fires had hit, and this was like up, we were off to 5 and driving home for 50 minutes on the highway. The right side of the highway was in flames. Yeah. Like Lord of the Rings, like Sauron is coming over the top.

It looked fucking insane. It look it's biblical. Yeah. It looks insane.

And you gotta be careful too because you could die

in something else.

Breathe? I mean

If you can't breathe or if the cars in front of you catch fire and the wind blows this way and all the cars catch fire and you can't get off the road because the to the right of you is on fire, to the left you is on fire, and the fire is coming up the highway.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. People have died that way.

And it can happen in an instant. Yep. I got I got hung once by mistake. I I and it was I was on a a film set and I was I had my neck in a noose and I and I was directing the film. So I was I'm on a ladder and I'm like, so I'll just be hanging here like this.

And then the next thing I knew I was waking up, I was on the floor, you know. And there were all these people standing over looking at me and I'm saying, what are you people doing? Get to work. You know, it was like and they said, well, you hung yourself. I said, woah.

You're Kidding me. It happens in an instant, and you don't know it. It wasn't painful. Nothing. I was just gone.

Well, you probably got choked out.

Yeah. Choked out by the by the noose, and then they grabbed me by the legs and got the rope off. And Jesus. Like, during Braveheart, it was Oh, really? Oh, wow.

It was funny. So I've I found out what it was like to sort of go into the next realm. But, of course, we we did, I I was fortunate enough to work with with Horian Gracie 39 years ago. Yeah. You know, he'd just come from Brazil.

Well, I remember when you were doing lethal weapon. It was the first time I'd ever seen jiu jitsu in a movie.

A leg choke on film. Yeah. He taught yeah. Horian taught me the leg choke. He used to know you grab your foot and you Yeah.

Okay. And it was, it was cool, but it was, now my girlfriend does it, and she's like a purple belt. So I've learned Really? Yeah. I've learned not to talk back.

Legit. Yeah. She's legit.

Purple belt's legit. Purple belt is basically a black belt. You just need a little bit more time.

Yep. If you

can get I always tell all jiu jitsu students, if you can get to purple belt, you are a black belt. You're gonna be a black belt.

Oh, she will.

You just gotta stay on that path.

No. She is. She's obsessed with it. Yeah. And she's, you know, as I say, I don't talk back to her.

I think the purple belt is the hardest belt to get to. It is. Because it's just like in the beginning, you're just getting crushed.

Mhmm.

That's jujitsu, especially for women. It's so difficult for women because they don't have the physical strength that the men have.

Yeah.

It's you can kinda get away with a lot. If you're a big strong guy, you can get away with a lot of shit. But then by the time you get to purple belt, like, man, you have to have real technique and you have to have a real understanding of what's going on.

She got a good mind, and I think she's like like a chess player.

It is like that.

Because I know from fighting with her. She she wins arguments when she's wrong.

So Sometimes you let them win, though. Right?

Yeah. You have to.

It's just like you gotta walk away.

Oh, yeah. Sometimes it's like

You gotta go, okay.

It's my second thought and my first action.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. But she got the purple belt.

That's amazing. Yeah.

Good for her. Yeah. It's good for her.

Yeah. Yeah. A woman black belt, that's an unbelievably exceptional woman. Mhmm. They can get to that because they have to roll with men, and it's just this

Oh, she does.

Disadvantage. Big dudes and stuff.

And she's like, you know, she Yeah. She's done some exceptional things I've heard. So it's like, yeah. It's pretty good.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't follow it up.

You can still do it.

No. I'm a more baseball bat gun kind of guy. You know? I'm a trouble agent, like, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Well, be careful with that in California. You could wind up being in jail.

Yeah. That's true.

You wind up using it to protect yourself and to lock you up.

Yes. It's,

Which is also evil.

Mhmm. Yeah. That happens a bit. Yeah. Mhmm.

Oh, well, it's yeah. There's a perverse nature in in our society right now with the law.

You know, when you look at your life now and you're on your 3rd act as you're saying, like, what what do you look forward to these days? Is it creating things?

It's creation. Yeah. Yeah. I think it is. It's about creation, and I figure, I'm not I'm I'm pretty average at most things, but I'm good at a couple of things.

You know? I I know how to tell a story on film. I know how to do that. I don't know what that's a weird place to be, but I think, a lot can be achieved by art and image, and you could convey a lot without actually having to say it. You can do things to affect people emotionally or spiritually even without being overt.

I always I always like to reference a, just a shot that and it's in a Ridley Scott movie. Right? And you don't know why it works, but and or why it's effective on some level, but it's it's kind of a profound effective shot. Mhmm. And it's that first shot in the Gladiator movie where he's running his hand over the wheat.

Mhmm. Right? Mhmm. With that music and stuff. Stuff, why does that work?

I don't know. You can't explain it, but it works.

Well, Ridley Scott is a master. Yeah. And there that's a that's a visionary human being. Mhmm. He sees things.

He knows how to shoot. Yeah. Yeah. And that and that is that's really good. It's it's a valid pursuit, I think, in storytelling if you can do that.

Everything every time he goes out there, it's a it's eye candy. It's a feast for the eyes. You know?

Do you have different goals with, like, different projects? Like, obviously, flight risk is entertainment. It's fun. It's entertaining. Entertainment.

Yeah. And, yes, different goals. And it was the other thing too is it's like we're living in a different time now in the film world. I mean, everything's upside down and and you have to compete in a medium where you have less time, less money, Do it fast. Do it now.

And it's like, wow. Can I do that? I always had the luxury of, like, you know, big budget and 3,000 people on horses and all this kind of stuff or you know, and and was able to take my time with stuff. But I had 22 days, And here here you gotta tell the story in 22 days. So I felt the challenge of being able to do that and being able to make something that really got people, like, they could watch it and enjoy it.

You know? And I'm glad you saw it. I'm glad you liked it. And that's all I want. I just want people to have a nice little ride, a fun ride, entertainment.

But, yes, you have different goals with things. I mean, the next thing I'm gonna tackle is more profound for me. It's gonna take more out of me.

This is the resurrection story.

Yeah. And I I even have to change my entire life

to do it. How so?

You can't go into a project as profound in nature as that without somehow preparing yourself for it. It's like it's like preparing for a fight. You know? It's like you have to be fit for the fight. And yes.

So you have to spiritually prepare yourself for that and, and that's that's gonna take some sacrifice. And, because, you know, well, you know, I profess this and I profess that. I'm not a great example of Christianity, you know. I'm just, you know, I'm flawed and I make a lot of mistakes, but I have to try and be better somehow in order to go in and make that film. So what does that mean?

I think I know what it means, you know.

Well, 1 of the things that I thought was fascinating was reading, and listening to Jim Caviezel talk about his experience playing Christ in your film. Yeah. Just truly changed that guy's the course of his whole life.

Well, it was fascinating to watch him work actually. And most of the time, I just, like, backed away because he was doing something that and I've seen a lot of people portray Jesus in films. Right? And I never buy it. You you can't quite buy it.

Right. Something creeps in the color that's not something something's not right or discordant. And some of them are pretty good, but you never quite believe it all the way. What was

the Willem Dafoe movie?

Oh, that was a Scorsese film.

Right. What was that, called?

The Last Temptation.

That's right. That's right.

Which interestingly enough, I was in a hotel in the Savoy and I had food poisoning. I was near dead from I ate a bad oyster in London, and I was dying in a hotel room, and I couldn't even leave. It was the worst. I think it was like salmonella or something. And I saw this cord on the side of the bed and I pulled it, and all of a sudden a door opened up and a butler like Jeeves came in.

He says, yes, sir. And I'm like, woah. And I said, I'm really sick. I said, what do you think I should eat? Might I suggest some warm consomme and a cup of tea.

I said, okay. So this butler took care of me in this hotel. But while I was there, Scorsese calls the room and she says, come here. I wanna talk. So I go in and talk to Martin, and he's in his room and all the windows, the screens are drawn.

He's got 18 different TVs going on at the same time in this dark room. And he's talking to me about Last Temptation of Christ, and he wants me to play Jesus. And I said, woah. I'm not doing it. And I I sort of got out of there.

And then I went back to my room, and they changed my room. Now this is really weird. They had changed my room and moved my stuff, and they told me they were gonna do it, but I forgot. So I'm using a key to get into my room and it won't work. And the door opens up all of a sudden, and it's Keith Richards in this underpants standing there staring through me like like and it and there's a girl in a mink coat walking around it.

Mink coat and nothing else, walking in the background. And and Keith Richards is standing there in his underpants with a spliff. And I'm like, I I tried to explain that I thought it was my room, but it wasn't. And, you know, it was ridiculous. I'm 26 years old.

And he just looks at me like shuts the door in my face. I thought, well, that was my that was my meeting with Keith Richards. He slammed the door in my face. I was like, fantastic. You know?

Anyway, but what were you talking about?

Cavizo please Christ.

He did something, I think, that nobody else did, and I think he pulled it off because I took I totally, like, believed it.

I believed it too.

And it was, like, what did he do? He emptied himself out. Yeah. And he invited something else in, and he left it. He he just he didn't try anything.

He just he emptied himself out, and he meditated, and he let Christ in.

And that role seemed to have had a profound effect on him It did. As a human being.

Oh, absolutely.

And kind of fucked him up in his career A little bit. Because people associated him entirely with that film, and then they associated him with Christianity, and then they associated him with right wing politics. And

Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, he he got sidetracked by a few guys. I mean, there's some people out there who are like they get in your ear, and it's like it's like Cassius, you know, talking Right. And they get you out, just make a speech somewhere, and

they say,

you know, it's like, you know, people throw an egg at you. Yeah. And you wonder, you know, should I even be saying this? And, so he stepped on a bunch of land mines. But, yeah, it did have a profound effect on him.

But I think he was all he's he was already mostly there anyway. And I noticed that because I when I was trying to cast it, I thought who could play this? And I saw the opening shot from Terry Malek's film, which was The Thin Red Line.

Mhmm.

And, and it was just a big close-up of Caviezel. And there was something otherworldly and childlike going on there in the close-up. And I thought, who's that guy? He's amazing. Of course, he couldn't keep the blue eyes.

He had to he had to trade them out. So I I changed the color of his eyes to brown and and all that stuff. So it looked like he came from the region. Right. But, amazing.

What he already had a quality, an ethereal kind of other world in this space cadet quality Yeah. That and he's he's still kinda like that. He's still like, wow.

Yeah. He's you know, I I want I wish I had met him or I haven't met him still, but I wish I'd seen him before and then after. You know, to see, like, what did that role change him? Because it seemed to have strengthened his faith. Sure.

It did. Yeah. Yeah. He got he got in real tight with it, and I think he had some experiences while he was doing it. He suffered a little, you know.

And,

didn't he get struck by lightning?

Well, there's 2 times there was these lightning strikes happening on the set, you know. And there was this guy with him. He was a young fellow, 1 of the assistants on the film. His name was, Jan. And old Jan was like, he's like 6 foot 2 Italian northern Italian guy.

You know? If he tripped in the street, women would slide under him. You know? It was that kind of stuff. The guy was like a babe magnet.

Right? And, and I think he was taking full advantage of the gifts he had. But he got hit by lightning the first time getting people. We were out on the hill and there was a lightning storm, like, with the crosses and stuff.

Oh, Jesus.

And, and the the this guy called Cieppo, he was a grip and he never spoke a word to me the whole time. He's just a quiet kind of guy. And I figured, oh, he doesn't know English, you know. But he came up to me, and in perfect English, he said, you know, I think you should get all the people off the hill. We could be struck by lightning.

And I thought, oh, that's a good idea. Let's get off the hill. So we're moving off the hill. Everybody's getting off, and this kid gets hit through the umbrella, this yawn guy. He gets zapped by lightning.

Right? But he's 22. And he goes to the disco all night, and dad you know, he's doing the whole, you know, 22 experience. And he he comes back the next day, and he's like, yeah. It was great.

And then he was with Jim the second time it happened. But this time, I found him in a Fiat bambino with his knees up around his ears, like, waiting for the 3rd strike. He was like, this this just doesn't happen twice in the 3rd strike. And he says, I have to change my life. Yeah.

Like so it was pretty funny.

That movie must have had a profound effect on a lot of people. Right?

It did. Yeah.

Because you were you were doing something that wasn't just a film. It was

Yeah. Verite kind of

Yeah. And it was strengthening people's faith. That film was a I mean, profound success and a lot of people dismissed the idea of it even. Yes. You know, especially in Hollywood.

I mean, you had to self fund all that. Right?

Yes. It was self funded, and, and it was a a very strange experience, that 1, because I and I put the money in. I thought, well, maybe I'll break even. And it was, then I got these messages back. All the majors wouldn't distribute it.

So I was like, nobody will distribute it. Okay. I guess I've I've lost, you know, the money, but it was worth the experience. And, so, 1 guy was left in the room at the end when the when the dust settled. It was some guy.

He said, I'll distribute. And he he had a little company called Newmarket, and they distributed, like, 1 or 2 films before. And, I think it was a Charlize Theron movie called a monster about that horrible serial

killer. Yeah.

And and, he said, I'll do it. And, you know, it was just really basics. I went and I met the exhibitors. And, you know, and this guy was like the distributor. This little company was just him and a a toothless dog and a fax and an assistant.

And it was like, okay. What's all the smoke and mirrors about this with between the distribution exhibition? I met I made handshake deals with all the exhibitors. Yeah. We'll show this.

I said, okay. And then we put it out there and it went out. Nobody expected it to do much, but it did phenomenally well. And, and there was this kind of thing in town in the town. They said, did anyone just see that?

Anyone just see what that guy did? Can't let that guy do that again. And Yeah. We don't want anyone doing that, you know, because it sort of walked around the entire system Yes. And scored.

Right.

So there was 2 things. There was resistance to the Christianity aspect of it and promotion of Christianity. Mhmm. And then there was resistance to the fact that you went outside the system.

It was outside. Well, I had no alternative. Right. Because no major would back it.

Because of the Christianity aspect of it.

I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Rupert Murdoch said, you know, he wanted to, and then he said, nah. And then somebody advised him and said he'd be out of business in 5 years.

Rupert Murdoch. Wow. In 5 years if he distributed that if he yeah. And I was like, wow. If he's scared, what's I'm like, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna crash and burn here.

But it actually did alright.

It did phenomenal.

Yeah. And then, again, I tried to, then I went I went with the studio on Apocalypto, but, man, it didn't work out so well. It didn't? No.

In what way?

Well, it was interesting. The the film was a film with it had no stars. It was in another language and it came out on a weekend with another film that had Leo Leo in it and another film that had Cameron Diaz in it. And, so those 3 films came out on the same weekend and the 1 with no stars and without the language won the weekend monetarily. It won the box office by a narrow margin on the other 2.

And, the 2nd week out, Disney pulled the screens. Really? Yeah. So I thought, oh, that's funny. Well, screens are gone.

I guess there's another agenda because that was another self funded 1.

Did they pull the screens because they had movies that they had already made deals with?

I think so. But, you know, it's just it's just politics and Mhmm. You know? And I think perhaps the distribution deal on that wasn't as good as

Right.

Something else or you know? So it's, you know, it's all business.

It's a phenomenal movie, though.

It's a great film. Yeah. And it did better afterwards.

In DVD and streaming and all that?

Yeah. Yeah. I did well.

Yeah. Yeah. I watched it again, like, 2 years ago. Yeah.

I hadn't seen

it in a while, and I watched it again. And I had forgot a bunch of aspects of it. Goddamn. It's a good movie.

It's just primal. Yes. And I think I love primitive stuff, you know, and primal emotions. I mean, basically, it's a guy just trying to get back home to save his wife and kid, and and he's got a lot of obstacles in the way, like jaguars and bad guys chasing him and trying to skin him and trying to rip his heart out. It's pretty cool.

Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

And I sat in a room with my assistant. He said, what do you wanna do next? Chase movie? I said, he said, well so we found out where the Mayan canoes and Columbus and all that, and then we just started making the story up in the room, and we wrote

it. Wow.

And yeah. Some assistant, man. He actually wrote. He actually tapped it out. Crazy.

So when you're making this resurrection movie now, you you also have this obligation. There's this you you're doing a very similar thing that you were doing with The Passion of the Christ where this is this is a profound story.

Yes.

When you put something like that together, how do you choose who's gonna be the next Jesus?

You use him again. Cavizo. Yeah. I know. It's 20 years later.

It's 20 years later, but it's Yeah.

But it's the right guy.

Yeah. But it's it's supposed to be 3 days later, but he got 20 years older. And I think, I have to use a few techniques that they've started to get really good with the

CGI and yeah. Oh, they can do amazing things now.

You can actually Yeah. Get some of the same people.

And by the time you film, it'll be even better. Yeah. When are you gonna start filming?

I'm hoping, next year sometime. It's there's a lot required because it is, I'll just tell you this. It's an acid trip when we wrote it. It is like I've never read anything like it. And my brother and I and Randall, all sort of congregated on this.

So there's some good heads put together, but there's some crazy stuff. And I think in order to really tell the story properly, you have to start with the fall of the angels. Right? Yeah. Which is you're in another place.

You're in another realm. You know? You need to go to hell. You need to go to Sheol. So you're

gonna have hell? You're gonna have Satan? All that?

Yeah. Woah. Sure. You gotta yeah. Right.

You gotta have his origin.

How do you rep how do you depict that?

This is a good question. And I think, I have ideas about how to do that and ideas about how to evoke things and emotions in people from the way you depict it and the way you shoot it. So I've been thinking about it for a long time. So it's, it's it's not gonna be easy, and it's gonna require a lot of planning. And, and I'm not wholly sure I can pull it off to tell you the truth.

It's really super ambitious, but I'll take a crack at it because that's what you gotta do. Right? Walk up to the plate. Right? So I I think I can get it, but it's not about me.

You know? Right. It's about something else.

Well, if anybody can do it, you can do it.

Well, I hope so. Yeah. It's it's, it's trying to find the way in that's not, like, cheesy or obvious, but that actually it's almost like a magic trick in a sense. It's diversion. It's obfuscate this, show that.

Look over here. You know? I don't know. Yeah. It's,

do you have a title?

Yeah. It's just like the resurrection of the Christ. Mhmm. Yeah. It's like, so that's a title.

And yeah. It's, it's very ambitious. That's all I'll say. It just it took a long time to write. It's really ambitious and it goes from like the fall of the angels to the death of the last apostle.

Do you have a start date?

I don't have a start date. I just have to begin preproduction and see what happens, and it's it's just gonna roll in its own time. It's taking its own time. I thought it was late. I think, oh, taking too long.

It's taking too long, but it's probably just right. Yeah. It's when it's supposed to be.

Yeah. Well, if you believe that, that's true.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I hope you're right.

I think I'm right. My instincts are that I'm right. Yeah.

Yeah.

And if I was gonna trust anybody with that story, it would be you.

Yeah. I don't know. It's a a massive thing. And theologically, it's it's something that you have to really look at and make correlations that that ring true because it's not all written.

Do you consult with someone like a biblical scholar?

Oh, yeah. Yeah? Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, you know, there's your own thing that comes into it from having read the the book a few times. You read the book a few times, and it's amazing how your memory, how there's these recessive files somewhere in the background, how you can correlate this piece to that piece over there. And that's important because juxtaposition is everything with this story.

And, what it means in a bigger picture. Yeah. So it's it's hard to explain, but it's it's it's quite involved.

Yeah. Well, I can only imagine.

Yeah. And I don't know that you can do it in a foreign language because the concepts are too difficult now. Mhmm. So that you may have to, resort to the vernacular so that, that at least is clear.

Is that up for debate right now with you? Yeah.

It is. I'm thinking like, but, like, look. Have you seen these apps now where they have this AI stuff where the guy's talking German and then he switches to French and then he's Spanish and then Yeah. Chinese and

Yeah.

Have you seen that? Yeah. And his mouth moves, and it's the same voice. I mean, it's crazy what they do. So so

you're gonna use that kind of a tool, do you think?

You could. Will you

begin it in Aramaic or in Hebrew?

Maybe. Yeah. Aramaic is is really the kick, isn't it? But, you know, I think, I think I'll write I've written it in English, but I wrote the last 1 in English too and and translated it. But and then the people had to learn to speak it because there was I think there's only about 400 people that actually speak Aramaic still.

Wow. And apparently, they understood it. So I was happy about that. Wow. So that was good.

Yeah. 400,000 people. Sorry.

Oh.

In the world.

That makes more sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. 400 people. Yeah.

I've, like, preserved those 400 people.

Yeah. Not many people speaking Latin still, but but that's quite well known.

Well, I can't wait to see it, man. Yeah. And, I just wanna say I I appreciate you very much. All all the stuff that you've done, you've made some really awesome pieces in your life. You really have.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

Done some great stuff.

Yeah. I'm I'm blown away by where you got to with this, which is like, didn't you start off just smoking a spliff on a couch with a guy? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

It's amazing.

Yeah. It's pretty bizarre. Yeah. I'm not exactly sure how it happened. No.

That's good.

I just kinda kept doing it.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a fan. Thank you.

I watch it all the time. Thank

you. There was no plan to it. I'll tell you that. No. There still kinda isn't.

I still kinda do it the same way.

Okay. Every day you wake up?

Yeah. I just look at my phone. I would go online. I say, who do I wanna talk to? Yeah.

This guy might be interesting.

Yeah. Yeah? Okay.

That's really it.

Who's next? You get some pretty interesting people. Yeah. I was amazed at that. I can't remember his name.

Terrence, what he was all into

Terrence Howard? Yeah. Yeah. The actor? Yeah.

Yeah.

Brilliant guy. Had a bunch of stuff going on. I was like, woah.

Yeah. Oh, he's out there. Yeah. Yeah. He's out there.

But, I mean, you have to be Mhmm. To be 1 of those guys.

You do.

Well, listen, brother. Thank you very much for everything. Appreciate you coming in here.

Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Your new movie's great, and, all your stuff's great. I'm a I'm a big fan. So Yeah.

Tickets on sale, do they?

Yeah. When does it come out?

Oh, god. On the 25th? 24th. 25th. Yeah.

24th. I think.

Okay. So soon.

Yeah. It's fun. It is fun. Yeah.

I enjoyed it.

Yep. Alright. Thank you very much. Bye, Joe. Bye, everybody.