Transcript of #2378 - Charlie Sheen

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

Great to finally meet you, man.

It's great to meet you. It's a trip and, and, you know, walking in and I'm thinking, is there. How is it possible that our paths didn't cross all those years? I mean, it's. It's. It's conceivable we were in the same venue or the same building or at the same party or at least something.

I kind of avoided parties. I avoid basically everything. I avoided parties. I avoided premieres. Any. Anything where there's a red carpet. Like, even if I was in a movie, I wouldn't go on the red carpet. I'd go into the back door.

Seriously?

Yeah. I don't like it.

Wow.

I don't like all that fucking. Look over here, look over here. That is just too fake for me. It just. Whatever allergy I have to that flares and I'm like, I'm going in through the back door. Fuck this.

Yeah, no, I don't. I don't blame you. I don't blame you. They. They stopped showing me where the back door was because I support a similar entrance thing.

It's just too weird.

But it's that. It's. Look over here, look over here. It's that thing. Something happens in that moment.

Yeah.

I think it's like, it's. It brings you as close to possibly sterilization as you can get without, you know, have surgery.

I think it's bad for you. Yeah, I think it's. I think it's like radiation.

Yeah.

Like you could take a little bit of it, but, you know, you don't want to be working the X ray machine your whole life.

No. No. And then there's always that one lady who keeps calling you back to her.

Charlie, Charlie.

Right, right, right, Far left, far left, far left. Yeah. And you've looked at her like seven times already. And then I'm out there thinking, if it took me this many takes to get a scene right, nobody would ever hire me. Yeah, you wouldn't get past the first. The first day.

Well, they want to get a million pictures just to get that perfect one where there's a little bit of side eye to you. Just a little something.

Right.

Little purse of the lips.

That's the one responding to something.

Yeah, that's the one.

Yeah. But then they chew. Which one do they always choose? The one that's absolute dog shit. Yeah.

The one with your mouth open.

Exactly.

Or your eyes Closed.

Yeah. Yeah.

What I really don't like is the people who like it. Not that I don't like them, is that I don't want to ever see that in myself. And so when I'd be around them, I would just go, oh, I got to get out of here.

Right, right.

Freak me out. The trappings, the trails.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, is there. Because it's feels like that system's been in place for over 100 years. Right. Is there another way to do it?

Probably not. People like it. You know, photographers like it. The press likes it. It's a big thing. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of lights flashing. It seems legit.

Right, Right, right.

Yeah.

I just. I can never feel relaxed when everybody's yelling. Right. You know, Totally unnatural. It's completely unnatural.

The only way that would be happening in real life is if, like, you were, you know, like you were being paraded in front of a bunch of people. Jim, there he is. Look over here. You know, it's odd. It's very odd.

Yeah. It's almost. It's a form of a perp walk, isn't it?

A little bit of a perp walk and just a little bit of a mental illness exhibition.

Right.

You know?

Yeah. I just had it for the first time, like, last. It would have been last Thursday.

The first time ever.

No, for the first time in, like, a long time, in like, maybe over a decade. At the Netflix premiere for the doc. Yeah. And it was. It was kind of cool. Like the first, you know, 34 seconds, I was like, okay, I remember this. And then it was like, I fucking remember this. Wow. Damn. And then I, like, I'm in the right. The sun just beating right on my floor, and it's just. I could feel myself start to sweat. Now I'm questioning the whole outfit, you know, the underwear choice, all of it. It's just like every decision I leading up to that was completely wrong. Yeah. And it's all being documented, you know, it's so odd.

Yeah. It's really funny. At the. When I. When you first walked into the studio, you brought up a tweet that I had sent in 2011. I think this is when you were going crazy.

Yeah.

And I think this is also when my friend Russell Peters was doing those tours with you.

Oh, that's right.

I need to get Charlie Sheen on my podcast. I know it's a long shot, but a boy could dream better. He knows him. Help me hook it up. Well, here we are, 14 years later.

You know, it takes when it takes, right?

Yeah. It's funny because back then, I don't think I had no guests. I think I had. Anthony Bourdain was the only, like, real guest that I had had serious time. Yeah, he was 2011 as well.

And how many shows had you done by then?

Not that many by then.

I don't know. So were you just doing solo shows, just, like, covering topics?

I would do it mostly with my friends, mostly with other comics.

Okay.

We just sit and talk shit. And then.

Your house?

Yeah, I was at my house back then.

Okay, so it looked nothing like this.

No, no, no. It slowly had to get out. It's like I had too many weirdos that I had to bring by my house. And I have young kids at the time. They're really young. I was like, this is just too strange. Bring these weirdos.

Yeah, sure.

House. And, you know, it was just too odd. I was like, maybe some people shouldn't know exactly where.

Right.

I sleep.

Right? Right. Yeah. And it's interesting because driving here, I was buried in my phone, just, you know, for. For the right reasons. So I have no idea where we are.

Good.

So it was kind of like the version of being blindfolded with a sack over my head, you know?

Yeah. That's probably how we should do it.

Can you imagine then, like, I'm the guy they're blaming for introducing this.

Just put everybody in a blindfold and put them in the back of an suv, drive to an undisclosed location and.

Make the guy drive a few circles around in, like, some, you know, neighborhood. Right over there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we did it. We're here. Those things that you did with Russell Peters were so fascinating. The whole thing was so fascinating. I watched the Netflix thing. I watched the first episode, and the whole experience of watching the guy from Platoon, the guy that everybody knows is like, this gigantic, super cool movie star hot shots. All these different things to watch. You just not just go off the rails with drugs, but, like, be super open about it. You were like, the first guy super open about it, you know, and everybody just embraced it. Instead of it being like, oh, Charlie Sheen's doing drugs. That's so sad. It was like, we love him.

Keep going.

It was kind of crazy, all the Tiger Blood stuff and winning. Everybody was saying winning all the time. And it.

It was.

What was that like for you? Was that, like, was it the worst kind of reinforcement or what? Or did it let you, like, were you surprised by it?

That's a great way to describe it. It Was it is, yeah. The worst kind of reinforcement. Yeah. It was like unintentionally or otherwise celebrating a guy's demise.

Right.

You know, and I guess the train wreck was so spectacular that there was such a spectacle that, that they couldn't turn away, but they were also being invited in to follow it down the tracks.

Yeah.

You know, and, and somebody asked me about it and I, you know, I don't know if I was the conductor, if I was riding the caboose, or both simultaneously. It was a trip because thinking back on it, it's, you know, some of it just kind of exists in, in just Polaroid snapshots that kind of drift past through the mist. You know, other, other moments are in high def, but kind of seen through a tunnel vision like in it. And, and it's, it was, there was an energy or it was, there was an energy I tapped into that felt like I was playing a role, but I couldn't figure out if, you know, what the move, what the plot was, who my co stars were, where somebody, you know, somebody show up with like a page one rewrite.

Right.

That's what we fucking need, you know. And it got away from me and had it not been encouraged, I think it could have been curtailed, it could have been shut down a lot sooner.

You become kind of captured to the image.

Yes. And there was something that, and just recently something I stumbled onto. It's, I was, in some way, I was being a bully. It had a bullying kind of energy about it, you know, and I've never been that guy.

How so? How so? Like bullying.

The way I was attacking people and the way I was challenging people. I was a tough guy on the block and had all these soldiers. I had this cold cadre behind me and it was like, you know, inviting people into the ring. I've never been in the ring. What are we doing?

You know, you're on cocaine amongst total cocaine behavior.

Among other things. Yeah. And, and I think there was a whole testosterone component as well that was at a hand, just out of control because there's, you know, what do they recommend, like a quarter size dollop and like every other day? And no, I, I, there's a line in the book where I say I was, I was slathering that, that shit on like a fucking Pons commercial.

Oh, so you using the cream?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is hard to measure.

It's not just hard to measure, it gets on other people. Oh, I read this story about this guy who is on TRT cream and his child Started, like, showing signs of premature development.

Oh.

And they realized that this kid's testosterone level was through the roof. Because it's through the dermis. Right. It's through the skin. So he's getting it on his arms and then he's hugging his child and the kid is getting juiced.

Like, what were the kids numbers? Did we know?

We don't know.

Like in the 70s.

I don't think they released that, but they. They said that it probably permanently affected the kid's development.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Because this kid is like experiencing puberty at 3. You know, you're getting bombarded with testosterone.

Sure.

While your dad is holding you.

Insane. Insane. Is that part of the reason they recommend, like an inner thigh application?

I guess then the only person would get it is the person you're having sex with.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Or your horse. Right. It's probably good for the horse. Right.

So there was testosterone and cocaine together. It saved time. That sounds like a combination of hubris.

And a lot of rage.

And a lot of rage.

A lot of rage. But the rage. I think it's interesting because when you finally get some distance from something, you start to realize that it wasn't really so much about what you said. It was about in the moment. And I'm really realizing it wasn't about the job, wasn't about Chuck. It was about all the stuff in my personal life. It was about trying to just be a certain guy at work, be a certain guy at home, and then just never having the time to be a certain guy with me. And I just. I just couldn't. I couldn't find any place to find any refuge or solace or any type of. Just a moment to breathe, just to decompress, you know, that's so important. Yeah. And I. There was a. It's not in the book because I can't really. I don't remember it well enough to put it in the book. And that was kind of how I decided what's in there and what's not right. Or if something just isn't true, it's not in the book. And so. But it. It. You know, I was. I was. I was trying to just kind of, you know, like, you know, I.

I went through two divorces and had four children during. During that run of eight years, you know, and so that's crazy. It's insane. Yeah. And. And they both, you know, they. They fell apart for married reasons and whatever. And. And. But there wasn't time to heal the last one before the next one kicked Off. But that's all on me, you know what I'm saying? That's all on me making those decisions. Yeah, that's one of the through lines in the book, is that it, like, really comes down to really being all about choices, you know, but then. Yeah, and. But it's just for it to be. Just talking about the bullying stuff, you know, for it to be so. So directed at a guy who. Let's like, if you really break it down, what did he really do to me? He created this environment with the dream character in an. In an amazing show. So people tell me, right, that. That that was, you know, the toast of the town. Right. And all he asked for me was just like, you know, just show up, be responsible, know your lines, hit your marks, do your fucking job.

You know that those were the only demands, essentially the stuff I told him before I took the job that I was going to do. So. And then I turn it into that, you know, it's really difficult to really look back on that and figure out why it got that far, how it got that far.

I can help you out.

Okay.

Testosterone.

Testosterone and cocaine. Yeah.

Having all kinds of conversations with people in your head that'll tell you exactly what's. What you're doing is correct.

Right. Sorry I lost you talked to Chuck.

Did you ever like Chuck? Sorry.

Yeah, no, it was. Yeah, no, that was. I was really grateful we were able to do that.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, I was carrying that around for too long. Yeah. He hired me for a show he had a few years ago called Bookie with Sebastian Maniscalco. Right.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

So I came in and did. I played myself, did a few scenes, did a cameo, you know, did some fun stuff and just back on a set with chalk and. And it was like. It was. It just felt like it. Like it. Like it. Like it did in the. In the early part.

Oh, that's. Well, good on him for not holding a grudge too.

Yeah, that's.

That's awesome.

Sorry I lost that thought earlier.

No, no.

Where the hell was I going?

Well, it's complicated thing to think about, like, why did I go off the rails? You know, it's like. And it's very reasonable. Here's the thing. I don't think anybody but Charlie Sheen knows what it's like to be Charlie Sheen. And in my estimation, there are a scant few people that have become massive superstars at a young age and came through it sane. I don't know anybody. Everybody. I mean, I know people that have regained equilibrium and got their footing back, and now they're on the right track, but no one gets through without a hiccup. Everyone kind of goes crazy because you're living in this completely alien world that no one can help you navigate, even.

If you've watched the people closest to you go through it most of your life. And just right over there.

Yes.

In the. In the next room.

Right, right.

You know, or in the same room.

Right. And a bunch of your friends.

Yes.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

Bananas. It's still an alien world that you live in that no one that you run into during the day except the people like that can understand.

Right.

Which is like, people are always like, why do celebrities just hang out with each other? Well, because to them, they're the only people that are normal.

Yeah.

They're the only people that, like, I get it. I can't go to the supermarket either. I get it. I. You know, I get TMZ at the airport as well.

Right.

It's like, it's normal for them because everybody else is like, whoa, it's Charlie Sheen. And they're just captivated. Like, you kind of need to be around people that understand what that life is like. But the problem is they're all going crazy too.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's not. I mean, it's. It's a. It's a. It's a great support group to a degree. You know what I'm saying? I think you can rely on them for the things that you have in common. Right. But maybe take the more complicated. Just. Just right across the street, you know, to. Yeah. To the experts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can't rely on them for everything.

No.

Because they're going through it, too.

Can I just get a tissue? Do you want.

Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Jimmy, you got a box.

Awesome. Thank you, sir.

I'm just. No worries. Getting sweaty. Is it hot in here? Turn the AC on.

No. I'll tell you exactly what happened. I got. I lost that thought. And then I tried to cover, and I realized this is. He's not buying this. And then I started sweating, and I started sweating, so I'm just gonna.

Losing. It's normal, man. Just say you lost your thought. It's all good. Yeah, it happens all the time. It happens to me, too.

Why is that, though? Is our brain already trying to figure out the next thing that's going to attach to it, and by doing so, it took that, the main thing, and just dismissed it?

Perhaps.

Okay.

It's also Brains are just not that good, huh? You know, they're pretty good compared to chimpanzees and dogs and stuff like that, but, you know, they have a lot of issues.

Okay.

Just like we were talking about your memories. Like, my. My memories of my whole life are like a series of blurry snapshots that I can go, oh, yeah. Then we went there. Oh, yeah, that happened, right? Oh, yeah. There's very few memories that I have that are, like, rock solid memories.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, I totally get that. And there's a little thing in the book where I talk about memories are tricky. And. Is it. Is it a story someone told me? Is it. Is it. Is it me in that moment? Or is it. Is it a, you know, creased photo I saw in an old album in the 70s or 80s?

Is it.

Was the memory given to me or did I. Did I create it? Right.

Yeah. And there's also the real possibility that you have false memories. And people do that all the time. And they've even shown that they can introduce memories into people's minds, and then with enough sort of encouragement or revisiting it, that person will accept it as a pure memory that it actually happened to them. Yeah. And they'll talk about it, like, outside of that, and they'll have no knowledge that it was a false memory.

Wow.

Yeah. Because it's just not a good system. It's a system designed to keep you away from scary things. Like, there's the wolf. Oh, get away from the wolf. You know, wolves are bad. I remember.

I remember. Wolves are bad.

That's the spider. That's poison. Get away from that spider. That spider is poison. But, like, day to day, every day, normal. It's like, how much of a memory does it really need to keep. It's just your brain's just not that good.

And then. And then even. And. And then. So do certain. Do certain. Certain memories then get overlaid with a newer version of that? Okay.

Yeah. They get narratives. Then you. And you start repeating the memory, and your memory becomes of you repeating the memory.

Wow.

So it's like you don't even really have the memory anymore. You know how to say it.

Okay. Didn't that happen with. With that one? Kaczynski witness did it with a Unabomber witness. Yes.

Interesting.

Yeah. Because that's why the first composite that was put out really ultimately wound up looking nothing like the actual guy.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, there was a thing that. Yeah, there was a thing where her memory was corrupted by a different description from somebody else.

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Interesting.

Yeah. That's why eyewitness accounts of like murders and chaos. They're really bad, right? They're really bad. Very unreliable.

There's some really, really awful percentage about. Even when they wind up in a, in a courtroom.

Yeah.

Like the, like the determining, like the final nail from the person, that guy. That it's like sometimes it's as high as like 60%. That they're just wrong.

Yeah. And then they'll convince themselves that they're right because they've already said it. So then the ego gets involved and then you know, it's just traumatic events leave you. You're in a high state of anxiety and you're not thinking clearly. You're freaked out. And you know like when, when they have events like, like say like 9, 11. If you were anywhere near that and you saw like people jump off the buildings and fall to their deaths or like your memories of that are probably really clear because it was fucking crazy. But your memories of people that you might have saw that were running away, or maybe you saw a guy in a van and you looked fishy or maybe this or maybe that. It's like. And then a few days go by and you probably haven't slept well. You're all freaked out. Your memory's probably a mess. It's probably filled with the news now. And then there's other people's eyewitness accounts and, and you know, you don't know what the fuck happened, Right?

You.

You know, like, you see someone die, see someone jump off a building, you're gonna remember that. But there's some stuff that. It's just our. You know, this is one of the scariest things about transhumanism is that it's really appealing in the idea that they give you a little hard drive in your brain. And now, from now on, every time you want a memory, you can go just like. You know, you look on your phone like your iPhone on this day in 2017, you're like, oh, look at us. That's cool. You're gonna be able to do that in your brain, you know? And the way that we're gonna buy into it is because our memory sucks.

Because that's how they're gonna sell it to us.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah. Do you mean. Do you remember your phone number when you were a kid?

No, but I remember my address because it rhymed.

That's nice.

Yeah. It was 7212 Birdview Avenue, Malibu.

You used to remember your phone number. What happened? It goes away because your memory sucks, right?

I know my parents number because they still have a landline.

Oh, they're still rocking the landlord.

Yeah, they are. Yeah. And they have an answering machine.

Whoa.

Yeah. During dinner. They haven't really turned it.

Oh, and then people start talking in the background.

Yeah. But it's just part of it, part of the experience.

They're rocking a landline with an answering machine in 2025. That is.

Yeah.

It's probably the way to do it. I used to love the answer machine. Would you come home? The light would be flashing like, someone likes me. Somebody called.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was cool. It's like you had a dog coming home to wait to visit you when you came home.

Like, oh, look, it's like induced Bigelow when it's like he's at his lowest point. The thing in the light is never blinking.

I forgot about that.

You have no. No new messages.

Yeah. That was a wild time where you could get phone calls. This other thing is like, you got famous before the Internet too, which is a different world. It's a different world because there's not that many of you. There's way less famous people. There's way more famous people now. Yeah, you got famous. Like, super duper famous at 21 years old with no Internet trip out.

Yeah, I know.

How does anybody expect you to come out normal?

Jesus Christ. And it's. And you try. You can't really even explain to someone that wasn't around during all that. You can't really explain what it felt like because they, they look at it as the things that were missing and, and there, There wasn't anything missing.

Right.

It was about having to really be engaged in everything you were doing. You know, you had to show up to, to, to, to, you know, to gain. To. To get a. Like you had to enter the building.

Right?

Right. You know, you had to go to. On a talk show. You had to attend to junket you. You know what I'm saying? And you could. And nobody knew. Nobody knew what the behind the scenes of your movie looked like until, you know, years later on the DVD feature or the VHS feature that they finally saw some of that stuff. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't. All access 24 7, 365.

And for some people, they can't leave it alone. They have to live stream during the day. They're live streaming from their trailer. They're live streaming in their car on the way home.

They're like, yeah, what is that about?

They're nuts. They're just locked into this weird new world that we're living in.

But is it. I mean, is it because there's genuinely people that are tuning in with enthusiasm that are looking forward to that live stream in the car ride home or because the person. Or is it a combination?

I think it's those things. And it's also that thing that you said that you didn't ever get. They're scared of you didn't ever get alone time. Just. Just time to decompress and think. Just be by yourself. No phone, no tv. Just fucking sit on the couch and just like catch your breath.

Right?

And they don't want that. That's. They're scared of that. I like, they're just constantly engaged with something.

I like entire days of that.

Oh, that's nice.

Alone on the couch. Yeah. Watching tv. Nice.

It's nice to just shut off, right? It really is. It's all work, no play. Not good.

Not good at all.

Not good. Bad for you and bad for your work too, because it makes you just kind of. It gets dreary. You don't. You don't have the same enthusiasm for it anymore. You know, it's like you need discipline, but you also need enthusiasm.

You know what I was gonna say earlier? Thanks. Okay. All right. The memory just, you know, dropped another token in the, in the, in the, in the slot. Is that now. Now it's, you know, it doesn't even connect.

It doesn't let's find out.

Well, no, then I. I actually forgot it again. How about that? Is that fucking nuts?

It's normal. It's normal. When you. When you first got Platoon, did you have any idea, like, what the fuck was gonna happen?

I didn't. I didn't.

For people today to understand how big that movie was, because it was. It was one of the very first realistic war movies. And I think very importantly, it was done by Oliver Stone, who was actually a veteran of the Vietnam War. You remembering what you wrote down? What you just.

That piece. Yeah. I'm not gonna forget it again. Okay. Pardon?

Sorry, but that. It was. It was a different kind of war movie, you know?

Yeah.

It much in the lines of your dad's movie.

Yeah.

You know, and that. That was a very different kind of war movie as well.

Yeah. Apocalypse from here. Platoon, you know, Boots on the Ground. The script didn't read like it was going to be a masterpiece. The. The script read like. It. Like a kind of like a docudrama sort of movie of the week. It didn't. Didn't read that script and say, oh, wow, okay, yeah, this is the one. People are gonna really. Wow. They're gonna worship this thing. It didn't. The dialog was very clipped and very, very specific. It. It. You kind of never really knew where you were in. In the script, in the scene descriptions. You know, the script was so lean. I think it was, like, barely 100 pages. Really? Yeah. So. But I didn't realize sort of what. What we were doing until we were actually doing it. Usually I can read a scene and get a sense of, you know, what my responsibilities are going to be or how we're going to break it down or at least, you know, how. How I'm gonna see it on the screen. And I couldn't. I couldn't do that with Platoon because all the terrain, all the scenes, everything kind of felt very similar, you know. Really?

Yeah. And the original title was the Platoon. You think it's as big a hit if he keeps the duh?

Yeah.

I don't think it matters.

It's a great movie.

Thank you. Thank you.

Great movie.

It doesn't matter, but we started to feel. Feel it as. As we got deeper into it. And. And. And Oliver did something brilliant where he. He decided to film it in continuity, like from page one, day one, all the way to the final day was the final page. And that. And that gave us a chance to, like, when something was finished, you were done with it, and. And you didn't have to know how you were going to react or how you already reacted to something that hadn't happened yet. Right. And when people died in the movie, they got sent home. They were just like. The next day they were just gone. I guess he wanted us to feel that sense of just someone gone, lost, that sadness. I'm not saying that I would know how that felt in the real thing, but we bonded, really. We were bonded in a way, because we were the only people that we had in the middle of that country, in the middle of that jungle, in the middle of that movie. So you really missed somebody when they were suddenly gone.

I would love to ask. I mean, I've had Oliver on a couple times, but I would love to ask him what it's like to make a movie about a war that he was starring in and, like, what kind of bizarre mental conflicts.

Yeah. He didn't get into any of that stuff.

Not really. I mean, he talked a little bit about his experience in Vietnam, but I don't think we really talked about. Did we? We talk about the making of Platoon. We got so heavy into the JFK assassination, we hardly covered anything else. Especially the last time he was on. The last time he was on was when they were doing that Showtime JFK document. It was a Showtime thing, right? Wasn't it?

I think it was, yeah.

Where there was a multi. Part.

Yeah.

That he put together.

Saw it. Yeah.

His recall is insane. It's insane.

It is.

You have a conversation with him. He's pulling up dates. He's got no. I mean, how old is Oliver at this point in time?

Upper 70s. I just turned 60. So if he was 78. He's 78.

78 years old. Rock solid memory. I mean, rock solid.

Wow.

The dude was just pulling up dates and names and Allen Dulles did this and.

Wow.

Harry. It was just like the entire Warren Commission Report. He's like, citing different passages in it. It's bananas.

That's deep. Yeah. Wow. Has he landed on, like, what. Can he. Can he point to? Or is.

It can point to. But there's a lot of people that wanted him dead. And for sure. There was a lot of fuckery going on with the Warren Commission. For sure.

Right.

There's a lot of nonsense with the autopsies. There's a lot of nonsense with the single bullet going through both him and Connolly and leaving more bullet fragments in Connolly's wrist than that magic bullet was missing, the one they found. It's like the story's filled with bullshit.

Yeah.

And no one really knew how much it was until they had that video that they played of the Zapruder film on the Geraldo Rivera show.

Yeah.

When Dick Gregory came on and who was a comedian, which was pretty wild, came on and had the footage of the Kennedy assassination. Everybody sees Kennedy's head go back into the left, right.

What.

What happened there?

And you immediately apply just simple, common physics to it.

Yeah.

You know, especially anybody who's ever fired a weapon.

Also, it clearly looks like he got shot in the chest, too. Like when he grabs his neck.

Right.

Clearly he got shot right there.

And there's always that talk about doing a trach. They did a trach.

But, you know, there's two different autopsies. There's the autopsy in Dallas that says it's an entry wound. And then there's the autopsy in Bethesda, Maryland, that says it's tracheonomy.

Interesting.

Yeah. Two different autopsies.

Make up your mind.

Yeah. It also looks like by the time they got to Bethesda, they kind of glued his head back together again, or at least put the pieces back to take a photo of it. It's like more was missing from what they were talking about in Dallas than the Bethesda.

That's the shot where the gloved hand is like. Looks like it's pointing.

Yes.

Yeah.

There's a great book called Best Evidence by David Lifton. And he was an accountant, and they. He had some sort of assignment involving the Warren Commission Report, and so he decided to do is read the entire thing. And so in the reading of the entire thing, he finds so many contradictions, so many things that don't make any sense, that he starts becoming obsessed. And then he finds out how many people who are witnesses to the assassination wind up dying mysteriously.

Right, Right.

Off the charts. Yeah, off the charts.

Like 95% of them.

All those people that were hanging around like a giant ton of them.

Right.

Died in car accident. Weird. Fucking.

Who was the guy in the train tower? Guy named Bowers. Right.

Who is Bowers?

He was the guy that saw Badge Man. He saw people behind the knoll. He saw the exchange of the rifle. He saw shit. He died. I think he had a heart attack on a train track. And then, of course, also got hit by the train. I could be wrong, but it was one of those type of things.

But of course.

Yeah. And then. But wasn't it. What was the. Who. Who's the guy who's standing at the. When the curb explodes, like, near the underpass?

Oh, yeah, that's the guy. That's the reason why they had to come up with the magic bullet theory.

Is that Teague? No. What's his name?

I don't remember. Did he die weird?

Probably.

I don't know if he died weird, but he was hit with a ricochet.

Right.

And because they knew that the overpass, that's why they had.

That adds a bullet.

Yes, they had to add that and they were okay. How do we fix this?

Right.

What about we said only one guy did it. It's only three shots. So how do we come up with a reasonable excuse? And they came up with the magic bullet.

Yeah. Yeah. I. I think the. The. The architect of that was. Was Specter.

I think it was our own Specter. Yeah, I think it was his idea.

Yeah.

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And you see all the additional cameras, like Babushka lady, for instance, right? And. And all that stuff just confiscated and never.

Yeah, well, they had the Zapruder film for a long time. I think time life had it and then somehow another Dick Gregory got it.

Was it ever released with missing frames? Wasn't there the jump cut when he goes behind the sign and then it jumps. Because they didn't they take out the fatal head hit at some point and then tried to sell that?

Perhaps they probably did at one point in time. But now obviously you could see the whole thing. And then it's also been AI enhanced. I don't know if you've seen the AI enhanced one?

I haven't, no.

It's grizzly.

It's even more gruesome.

It's gruesome, yeah. I mean, I think he was shot from multiple angles simultaneously. That's what I think. I think he was shot both from the back and from the front. And I think Lee Harvey Oswald, if he wasn't involved, he certainly wasn't innocent.

He.

He was probably the guy they were going to frame it on.

Right.

But I think he was in on the whole thing anyway. I think he killed a cop afterwards as well.

Tip it. No, tippet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever read that thing about. Because Tippetts nickname back at the precinct was jfk. Do you ever read this thing? Then they show the side by side of how much they really look like each other.

Oh really?

So they're saying he was the body they used for the transfer when they flew with the empty coffin. You know all that stuff about. Yeah, it's. I mean it is so there's so many just, you know, warrens to travel down and there's so many angles to explore.

There's too many. There's so many rabbit holes to go down.

We were introduced to it as kids cause dad played both Kennedys. So we were seeing documentaries at like, you know, I would have been 10 or 11. Emilio was 13 or 14. And so we've been involved in this thing for a lot longer than we should have been.

Wow.

Yeah. We had access to this stuff and.

So it was just nuts that no one was brought to justice. And we know for sure more people were involved than Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. There was more people involved.

Yeah.

No one was brought to justice and they got away with it. We don't want to think that they get away with things like killing the President.

But they did in broad daylight. Yeah, yeah.

And blaming it on a lone gunman, a lone nut.

Yeah, yeah. Who? Who? They already had a full description and raption rundown and everything about printed articles.

About him before it was even over.

Yeah.

And then the Jack Ruby thing where Jack Ruby goes completely insane. In jail after he's visited by Jolly west, who is the head of MK Ultra, who is like routine, routinely dosing people with acid.

Yeah.

Jolly west cooked Jack Ruby's brain in jail and just left him Insane.

He's the guy from. What's the book that. It's Chaos From Chaos. Yeah. I actually read Chaos before it got all the attention. Really? Yeah. Friend of mine gave it to me and I was. And I. All right, I'll. I'll read a couple pages. And I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, okay. This is, this is.

Yeah, this one is the best.

Books, different take.

Yeah.

But I'm curious how you felt about the documentary they did about it.

I didn't watch it.

Okay.

I. I thought it was gonna be too quick. 90 minutes, I didn't think was like enough time. It's only 90 minutes. Right.

I thought it was the first episode.

Oh, you.

So I watched it sort of like a data gathering thing that you usually do with the first episode and kind of just seeing where the. What the director's doing and what kind of stuff they're laying out early.

Yeah.

So. And then when it ended and I didn't see that second episode with the timer. Right.

Uh huh.

And I was. Oh, that's. And I thought it was a complete. I thought it radically underserved the book.

Yeah. Maybe they could try again. They need to. That needs to be like an eight part, two hour apiece series.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah. Because it's so nuts. The story is so nuts. Just the provable actual facts are so nuts that very likely Charles Manson was a CIA asset. Very likely they had groomed him when he was in prison and taught him mind control techniques when people were high on acid. Taught him how to be sober, but pretend he's on acid and how to interact with these people that are on acid and shape their mind and even get them to commit murder. All of which is fact.

Yeah. No, it's. I would say it's insane, but so much of it is. I don't want to say provable, but has enough supporting evidence to make a compelling case. And I love that the guy starts out just like just kind of a normal celebrity assignment for Premier magazine. Right. Yeah, I've been on that magazine. I had that cover twice. My story didn't wind up like that.

I think that it was story for a magazine and it was just about the anniversary of the murders.

Exactly.

That's it.

That's what it was. Yeah.

You know, just give us a piece. You know, so people go wow. Crazy. 25 years later.

Wow. Right? Yeah.

And then he gets obsessed and he starts realizing, well, this guy was full of shit and that guy was corrupted. Oh, my God, look at this. And hold on. Who's Jolly West? You know, like, what's MK Ultra? This is real. Freedom of Information Act. Get the documents. Oh, my God. Operation Midnight Climax. The. The government was running whorehouses. They were running whorehouses and using two way mirrors and dosing johns and filming them. And this has to do with Manson, like, what. What the fuck was going on?

Yeah.

And then you realize that it was all a psyop to try to demonize the peace, love and stop war movement. And that what they really wanted to do was stop the anti war movement and do something to curb the cultural change that was happening. And so their strategy was to turn hippies into murderers.

It kind of works.

It kind of works. Yeah, it kind of works.

Yeah. I mean, it's a long way to go, but it. I think it had the effect they were looking for.

Imagine if they didn't do that, like, what kind of cultural change would have taken place? Because if you think about what happened between 1950 and 1960, it's like the world becomes a different place. In 10 years between 1960 and 1970, he's like, what? This world is crazy. The music is crazy, the culture is crazy, the movies are nuts, Everything is wild. It's very psychedelic. And then Nixon comes along in 1970, passes this sweeping schedule. One act makes all mushrooms and LSD makes everything illegal. All to stop the Civil War, the civil rights movement and the anti war movement at the same time when they're doing this Manson stuff. So it was a concerted effort across the board to stop the anti war movement and to stop the Civil rights movement. They were like, we're losing control and power. And so, I mean, it was an evil thing to do, but you kind of got to give them credit because it was pretty brilliant. Like, they. They actually pulled it off. You think of serial killer, you think of Manson, you think of the family. Oh my God, these hippies are murderous. A bunch of murderous freaks on drugs, cutting women's babies out of their stomachs and writing pig on the wall.

Like, this is nuts.

Yeah. And they brought the Beatles into it.

And our own goddamn government engineered it. They engineered, they stopped what was probably one of the most beautiful cultural shifts in this country's history that would have.

Organically still kept evolving into other things that would have. Would have blossomed out of it.

Yeah, we probably would have rethought government, we probably would have, like, rethought the type of people that we want as leaders. We'd have rethought our involvement in foreign wars. There had been no support for it. We would have rethought what psychedelic drugs can do for you versus the bad aspects of them. We would have rethought everything. We would have. The music would have been a lot better. Music took a big dip.

Yeah, it did.

Music took a big dip after they got rid of the drugs that were good and brought in the coke.

But people do point to the death of the 60s occurred up at Cielo Drive.

Yeah. Yeah. It was effective.

Yeah.

I mean, that. That completely demonized any peace, love and, you know, any of that kind of movement. Those people became a real problem now because you're now connected to Mansa.

It was instantly zero tolerance, like overnight kind of nuts.

Yeah, kind of nuts. That it's. That it was really all engineered by the government. You know, it's really. That in itself, in and of itself, is a terrible crime, that they sort of engineered society to their benefit so that they could maintain control. And the way they did it is by getting a horrible con who had been in and out of jail his whole life and teaching him how to run a cult.

Right, right.

A murderous cult.

And setting up at a free clinic.

In the Haight where my wife's mom went. Oh, yes. My wife's mom was a hippie.

You have a connection to this?

Yes. My wife's mom went. She was a hippie in Haight Ashbury, and she went to the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic.

Treated at that clinic.

Yes.

Wow.

You know, that clinic didn't shut down until after Tom Oneills book came out. That clinic would have been running for over 50 years.

So it ran till like 2022. Wow.

When did it close? It closed shortly after that book came out.

We're good. Let's get out of here. I could have gone there while I was reading the book.

Yes. The CIA was running not for any treatment clinic.

What a trip.

That is so nuts. And that clinic also connected to Jolly West. That clinic also connected to all sorts of other marijuana experience. San Francisco is where they were doing Operation Midnight Climax. That's where they had a brothel. These are the people that are supposed to be like, protect and serve. Look out for your best interest.

Right. Yeah.

These are creating Manson and completely shifting society and turning people into whatever the we became in the 70s and the 80s. Yeah. The book came out June 25, 2019. Yeah. And the clinic closed July 2019.

Seriously?

Yeah. Like, we got busted.

That dude read the foreword and was like, guys, we got a problem.

Yeah. That's probably how long it took them just to clear the building out.

Yeah, exactly.

Try to figure out whether they're gonna kill Tom o'. Neill.

Right, right. Has he been on the show?

Yes.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's he like?

He's great. He's great. He's actually my good friend Greg Fitzsimmons. He was his neighbor in New York.

Okay.

When he first started working on this. And then he became his neighbor also in Venice. Like, he's been his neighbor for, like, 20 years. So Greg's followed him from this entire journey. And Greg had been telling me about it for years. I'm like, when's your friend gonna get that fucking book done? And then finally he says. Tells me the whole story, how it took so long, why he's like, you gotta have him on the book is insane. I'm like, let's go.

Wow.

So we had him on. And it was. First of all, I listened to the book first. Before I had him on. I listened to the audio version. I was like, this is nuts. This is nuts. If this is all true, this is fucking insane. And it's all true. So they really did engineer a murderous.

Cult of hippies and almost used the clinic as a casting couch, as an audition process for which girls they thought would be the most moldable, vulnerable.

Yeah, crazy.

Yeah, crazy.

The CIA was doing that.

It's just. I thought they were supposed to just operate on foreign soil.

I know they were, but, you know, sometimes things get messy. But it's like, they. You talk to, like, your average boomer who just watches cable news and reads the newspaper. They never believe this in a million years.

And they'll hear us talking about it, thinking, come on, guys.

Oh, you're out of your mind.

And. But they. But they. But they also will never read the book.

No, never read the book. And then when things get proven, they never apologize.

Imagine that.

Never apologize for your baseless conspiracy theories that all turned out to be true.

Yeah.

Because, you know, conspiracies are fucking real. Okay? This conspiracy theory pejorative that they really started foisting on the American public during the Kennedy assassination was for that very reason. They wanted to make it ridiculous for you to be interested in.

That's where the term was coined.

That's where the term became popularized. Apparently, the term existed before that. We researched this, right? Didn't we Google the original term of conspiracy theorists? It's quite a bit earlier, but it was never like a thing in the public zeitgeist. It became a thing during the Kennedy assassination because a lot of people were questioning it because it looked weird. Even the people that hadn't seen the Zapruder film, everything just seemed off. It seemed off. And there was rumblings amongst people that were there. The big one was the shots from the grassy knoll. Many people. People talked about gunshots.

And that one photo where there's like 15 people pointing to the same spot.

And you see smoke near where the bushes are. And it's not a good photo, but it's good enough that you go. It's just too. It was too uniform. You know, people were. They all were pointing. We heard shots from back there. There is a thing that does happen, especially if you look at Dealey Plaza. Have you ever driven through?

I have, yeah. I've walked the whole crime scene. Yeah. It's weird to be there.

It's so little.

It's. You can't believe how close everything is.

It's real little.

And that they. But that they sent him into that tight turn and put him into convertible pickle jar. I mean. Yeah.

Completely planned.

And you watch the motorcycle cops. Drop back, huh? Just drop back.

Which is.

There's. There's something I read. Did you ever read the man who Killed Kennedy? I think it's Jim Mars. Do you remember Jim Mars?

Yes.

Yeah. Did you ever have him on?

No, I didn't.

Oh, okay. He's. He's. Didn't he pass? I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah. He wrote Sci Spies, which was all about remote viewing. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's a trip. He was deep into everything.

I go back and forth on that. Remote viewing.

I do, too. I do, too. But there's something in one of his books, and I've never been able to find it anywhere else. It's almost like this little detail was scrubbed from the Internet that the. The Morse code signal for Victory right after the fail, headshot went out over every Dallas police radio. Have you ever heard that?

No.

Okay. I read that. This is disclaimer. I'm not coming up with this. This is not my original data. But yeah, when I read that, that was. That was just. That was creepy.

That's crazy.

And I don't know that he would have just added that for color. That's not something you just throw out there.

Yeah, that's a weird thing to add, Victory. Well, a lot of people hated Kennedy back then. It's hard for us to reconcile now. Today. Because we think of him as like one of our greatest presidents. Of course, because he got murdered. We always love him. After they get shot.

Sure.

But when he was alive, this was like half the country hated him. And then there was the Bay of Pigs disaster where we lost a lot of people because Kennedy didn't give him air support. He wasn't told about the invasion until like last moment. And air support was crucial.

Sure.

To its success. He denied air support. A bunch of people died that weren't going to die.

Right.

And so those guys on the ground. My friend Evan has a theory. My friend Evan, who owns Black Rifle Coffee, who was a Ranger himself, I.

Met him, he's the best.

I love dude, I love death. But he said like those guys, those are hard nosed killers. And if they think that they lost their brothers because this piece of shit didn't give them the air support that they deserved, it was Kennedy's idea. And you tell them that you want to get that guy killed, like, oh, fucking sign me up. Those guys would do it.

Interesting.

He's like, those would be the type of guys you would have do something like that. And they would probably tell you this would be a perfect place to do it.

Right? Right.

Tight little turn.

Yeah.

Anybody who says, by the way, because conspiracies get, everybody gets binary on this one way or another. I believe this or I believe anybody says that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't make that shot, has never shot a rifle. You're full of shit. If the rifle's on, it was not that far. I'm not saying he could do it 100 times out of 100.

Right.

But the possibility of him having that rifle ready, he's got a scope, he's got a rest, the, the car comes into view, you roll the sight onto his back, you squeeze off around, squeeze off around, and you get a headshot in there, that's 100% possible.

Sure.

I just don't buy it.

Right.

I don't buy it. I don't think he acted alone. If he did do it, he might have done it. He might have shot at him. He might have even hit him once. There was other people, he was the patsy. And I think when he said, I'm just a patsy.

Right, right.

The way he said it was not like a guy who murdered somebody. The way he said it was like, I can't believe they set me up.

Exactly like, exactly.

So I think he was in on a bunch of it.

Sure.

I just don't think he pulled the trigger.

Right.

Or if he did pull the trigger. He was one of many people that pulled the trigger. That's what I think.

Yeah.

But there was a lot of other people saying, oh, he couldn't have made those shots because the rifle scope was off. That's. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Because I could get your rifle scope to be off in five seconds. Okay. If your rifle scope's perfect, is it zeroed in.

Bang.

I drop it on the ground. Try it again.

Yeah.

It'll be off by misaligned inches at 200 yards.

Yeah, yeah.

You're gonna believe that thing? It's fragile. They require micro adjustments with little Allen wrenches and hex keys and.

Right, right. People.

They don't torque them too much. You get it dialed in perfect on A.

On a 37, on a rifle from 1963. From the back of a magazine.

Yeah. Of course, that thing could get knocked off easy, like almost instantly. You can knock that thing off.

There is a thing about the tree, though.

What about the tree?

That he had to shoot through a tree. Because what they've done and a lot of the reenactments supporting that he was the lone gunman, they did cut out part of the tree that Kennedy's behind.

They cut it out for the reenactment.

Yeah. So he would have a clear field.

Of view, but he had a clear field of view for at least a brief amount of time.

Sure.

And that's all you.

Sure.

That's all you need. If you were good and if you practice, and I'm assuming that if you're going to go shoot the President, you'll probably get used to firing off a few rounds. You probably set up a target. So you're not going to just hope that your accuracy is still there on three years ago.

Yeah.

You're going to practice.

Yeah.

So if you're going to practice, you're going to be even quicker at wrapping a new round.

Sure.

He could have done it. I just don't buy it. It just. None of the evidence seems to point in that direction, including all the evidence that they try to fabricate. Like the magic bullet one is nuts. Anybody who's ever shot anything with a bullet, who looks at that and believes that went through two people and broke bones.

Yeah.

That looks like it shot. Got sent into a swimming pool.

Yeah.

It doesn't look like it ever hit anything.

No. And. And I've had people like, you know, debate me and taking the side of the magic bullet.

They're not there.

And like, look me right in the Eyes and do. And believe it. And I'm just like. Like, okay, well, cool. This is where we have to just.

They're out of their mind.

Yeah. We have to walk away.

They're out of their mind. They don't know. I could show them. Like, let's go. Let's go take a bone from a cow. Let's set up a bone from a cow, and I'll shoot it at 100 yards.

One bone?

Yeah, just one. Just one bone. And let's take a look at that bullet.

Right? Yeah.

It's not gonna look anything like that. It's gonna be all up. And there's the fragments. There's missing fragments from the bullet that are in Connolly's wrist that are more fragments that are missing from the actual bullet. They're attributing to the wound.

You can't.

Yeah, but they did it. That's what's nuts. You know, Talk about it till the cows come home.

You know about the palm print, though. No. Oh, that. That. They linked the rifle to Oswald because of a palm print on the dock.

When they went to visit him in the morgue.

Yeah. They didn't get it till after the autopsy. Yeah. Huh. It wasn't there. And then surprise.

How convenient.

Yeah.

Yeah. And also, like, says who? Says who? His fingerprint was on it. You could just say that back then, 1963, government says, we found the finger, but Oswald doesn't have a lawyer. No one's representing him. He's dead.

Yeah.

You know, no one's gonna say, my client is innocent. He's dead. Okay. Pin it on him. Nobody gives a. And everybody just mourned the fact that the President was dead. And then, you know, all of a sudden, you got Lyndon Johnson full steam ahead with Vietnam War.

Yeah.

It's nuts.

Yeah. If you should. Look. What. Look at what happens after the major event. It. Like, it's.

Things got very different.

Yeah.

They got very different.

That's when you really start to see, like, okay, yeah, Kennedy was trying to.

Be a real president, and they were like, none of that.

Yeah. It was the Federal Reserve. It was Vietnam. It was like all these big, like, really important, big things he wanted to.

Get us out of. He wanted to kill the CIA. He wanted to do a lot of things.

Yeah.

And they were like, not today, sir. Then that's the real argument, is we haven't really had a president since Kennedy. Everything after that has been. The President's been more of a speaker.

Interesting.

The giant machine behind it continues to run exactly as it always has.

Yeah. I mean, and just from where I sit, there's not a lot you can do about it.

There's nothing you can do about it. You can talk, but look, if they haven't done anything about the Kennedy assassination, you can't do shit.

No.

You could put pressure on people, and you definitely can hurt their chances of getting reelected. If people find out that they're very disappointed in you for not supporting this or not telling us about that or lying about this or. You were involved in that. Yeah. But other than that, like, there's not much. Not much you can do.

Yeah. That's why I don't really weigh in anymore. Good. It's probably smart, so, you know, just. It feels like. I don't know, it's wasted energy.

It definitely is a lot of that. But it's also like a show, you know, you could watch the show. Hey, have you heard the. Watch the latest episode of the Epstein Files? Like, what's going on?

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah. It turns into kind of like a show turns into a parlor game also, you know? Right. That's how my dad described the OJ Case. He said, this is like the greatest parlor game ever. Right.

You know, Boy, I remember watching that verdict on TV live in my apartment with this girl I was dating. She was a really sweet girl, and she couldn't believe that he was innocent.

Yeah.

She didn't understand it. She was so confused.

Yeah. Didn't lie.

She was like.

No, no. How?

She just kept. She kept, like, putting her hands on her face. No, no.

It. It completely torqued her. Her whole reality.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was on a. On a mountaintop in Mexico doing a kind of a, you know, low rent sci fi film called the Arrival.

I love that movie. Don't say that was a low rap movie. I love that movie.

Thank you.

Turn me on to that movie. Dave Foley. Dave Foley, who's a good friend of mine from News Radio.

Okay.

When we were on News Radio together, he fucking loved that. Because this is a so underrated sci fi movie. I'm like, okay, cool.

Wow.

And I checked it out. It was great. I love it.

Thank you. Thank you. It was the first film that actually incorporated a mashup of puppets and CGI at the same time, because at that point it was either one or the other, and the other hadn't fully really arrived yet. So that was kind of cool. But no, we were. I was so hoping for the day off to be back at the hotel because everybody knew the night before that the verdict was coming. Right. So we had to Shoot this scene and there was a prop man and he had the only. This is 95, right? He had the only cell phone and it had like half a bar and it's. And then it's starting to rain and he's got his ear. And his buddies got his phone in LA up to the TV when they're about to read the verdict. So we all gather around the prop man and we're watching him and he's kind of leaning to keep the signal, to keep it, to kind of keep, you know, connected. And then we can see when he hears it, he slumps a little bit, right. Takes the phone from his hair and slams it into the mud.

And screams that got away with murder voice like, echoed through the mist. It was gnarly.

That's a wild scene.

That's how I learned about the OJ Verdict. Yeah, wow. Yeah, wow. Dave Anderson was there with me. He's a buddy I grew up with. He's in the book. He's a. He's a two time Oscar winning FX makeup artist, you know, and so, yeah, if you ever run across Dave the Rave Anderson, ask him about the OJ Verdict.

That's just a crazy scene. Imagine a guy reacting like that.

He was our only connection to it, you know, and everybody was so invested in this thing and it was really hard to go. And that was like. Do you remember time of day that might have happened? Kind of late morning, sort of. Or was it in the afternoon? Don't remember.

I don't remember at all.

We still had a pretty sizable day to shoot and it was really hard to regain focus. Yeah. And feel like what we were doing still mattered. Yeah. Because there, there was a. There was a giant just. There was like a murmur in the universe at that point, you know, like something. It felt like something had been taken from us, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Civility.

Did you see the last or the most recent OJ documentary? No, it's. It's Murder, Mayhem and Blood. I think it's got three.

Murder, Mayhem and Blood.

Something. Murder, Mayhem and Lies. Something. I'm probably way off with that title. No, no, it's actually, it's.

But it's the latest O.J. documentary.

Well, I guess Manhunt will be the latest. This. Yeah, this is the one that. That was before that. And. And it's. It's broken down at the crime scene by two, like, expert, veteran recreationists. Yeah, it's. It's a trip. Do you, do you watch any OJ stuff? No, it comes out.

No, no, I try not to.

Because it's just too weird. I. Okay. Do you think there was something else there? No, no.

I think he. He killed his wife.

Yeah.

And he killed Ron Goldman and he got away with it.

Yeah.

And it's just nuts. It's just, you know, it's weird. You watch him on, like, Naked Gun and you're like, that guy.

Yeah.

That guy murdered his wife with a knife. Like, what?

Yeah.

Then he got away with it and he's just golfing.

Yeah. It was a follow up part that didn't really support anything about what he had claimed.

You remember when he was a rapper? Do you remember the Juice is Loose? You remember that?

Oh, gosh. I think. I think I just. I willed that one out of my.

He had like a. Like a. Like a king's robe on and like, there's a bunch of hot ladies.

Okay. It's coming back to me. Yeah.

He made a rap song.

Wow. Wow.

Yeah. He was like, embracing the heel role at one point in time after the. The guilty verdict or the not guilty verdict.

Right, right.

And so he. He got into, like, rap.

I mean, probably just. Just for. Just for a monetary grab, I would imagine.

Let me watch. Play it. Play the Juices. Lose.

Loose.

It's so bad.

Oh, my God.

It's. It's. Is it off of YouTube? That would be hilarious. He had. It was part of a TV show. He had. I saw another clip. Oh, that's right. He has, like a prank show. He was trying to prank people. It's like probably pre Jackass.

Yeah.

But I'm trying to think of the thing they had on MTV that they did with all the celebrities. Oh, punk.

Punk. Got it.

OJ Was doing that. Everybody would just run away screaming.

People. Yeah.

He did it to a lady, like, walked up to her hotel room with a knife. Oh, my God. That was one of his scenes. Jesus Christ. You Got Juice is what it was called. You got juice.

You got Juice. Damn.

But I don't.

I'm trying to find this.

Also the music video had a bunch of. That was Naked Ladies.

Yeah.

It was aired on, like, pay per view, whatever. The Spice Channel or something.

Huh?

SP Remember the Spice Channel? H. Yeah. But that whole thing going from that verdict to try and going back to work picture. It's not something video.

Oh, my. Yeah, look at that.

The musical.

Look at that.

I remember one time we were filming news radio. It was in the middle of that North Hollywood shootout. Do you remember that?

I do. Yeah.

And we were watching it live on tv.

Yeah.

While trying to do a sitcom and we were like, we probably should take some time off here. There's a fucking war going on in the middle of North Hollywood.

Wow. Yeah, that was.

That involved a lot of cocaine and steroids, too.

From. From the brothers.

From the guys.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know they were definitely on steroids.

Yeah.

But I think they were. There was probably some. Or meth, something like.

Yeah, I think meth would have kept them there for a lot longer. Yeah. For.

People don't know the story. These guys. Did they. They rob a bank? Is that what they did?

Yeah, but wait a minute.

Yeah.

Like, could have driven away, could have left with all the.

All the dough, and they decided to get in a shootout with the cops.

Yeah.

And killed cops, right?

Yes.

I mean, and they got killed. A bunch of cops got hit, and the cops were, like, horribly outgunned.

Oh, yeah.

The cops had their nine millimeter pistols. And these guys have machine guns and bulletproof vests.

Yeah. Kevlar helmets and they had face masks.

Yeah.

Yeah. Now, do you support that when the dude finally kills himself that it was a simultaneous sniper shot at the same time?

I never even looked into that. Is that one of the.

That's one. Well, it's just. It's. Yeah, that's one thing that they claim.

That he got shot and shot himself at the exact same.

The exact same time.

It's possible.

But why would they. Like, what does that serve? Like, what does that.

Maybe they were already gonna shoot him and he shot himself and they didn't think he was gonna shoot himself, and they pulled the trigger right when he did.

Got it.

That's what I would guess if that's the case.

But it's not like they have to be let off the hook because at that point, that dude has to be put down.

Yeah. I mean, one of the guys had already been shot, and he was shot in the leg, and they didn't get him any medical help. They knew he was gonna bleed out. You know, I think. I think that was the case. I think he got shot in his femoral artery.

Yeah.

The first guy that says he died by. This is from Wikipedia. He died by suicide via gunshot to the head from his handgun. Simultaneously being hit by rifle fire from LAPD officers with one round striking and severing his spine. Whoa. The other guy got shot 20 over 29 times and died from blood loss.

Wow. I mean, what are the odds that the crazy. That the thing with.

Yeah, well, it sounds like there were a lot of bullets are flying in his direction. Over 2000 rounds were found.

Like, what does that weigh, like, if you're carting that around and you've got a whole duffel of cash.

Yeah. You must have a heavy trunk.

Yeah, yeah.

That is bananas. Half was the police, but wow. Still, imagine being in that neighborhood. They rounds are flying in both directions.

Well, the cops, like went to a gun store, right, didn't they? I think they like right when it started, and they were like, whatever you got, you know, give us your biggest bore rifle. You know, whatever you got, we'll take it. Yeah. How much ammo you got?

I mean, how long did that go on for? About an hour.

Wow.

They had homemade body armor. SWAT team wasn't ready for that. They had to commandeer an armored vehicle to evacuate wounded people. Yeah.

Then they. That's.

That kind of sparked the debate for police to get more power.

Jeez. Yeah, that was it. That was kind of a. That was a turning point moment.

Now if you're a real conspiracy theorist, then you say, oh, MK Ultra trick those guys into doing that so that.

The cops can get better, could get militarized and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, this is the problem with conspiracies. People try. Attribute them to everything.

Right.

Really get down the rabbit hole. Everything's a conspiracy.

Yeah, yeah. But then when they do that, they kind of, they, they, they, they harm the credibility of the ones that. That can really be, you know, considered for. For. For the. For how we know them to be.

Yeah, no doubt.

After all the extensive research.

Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. There's real ones, but I think that's also part of the reason why, you know, some really silly conspiracy theories get pushed. I think they get pushed by bots, and I think they get pushed by.

Paid accounts to water down the real ones. Yeah. To make, yeah.

Make them look stupid. And they're like, attach them. Attach a really stupid conspiracy to one that's legitimate.

Right.

And then it discredits the legitimate one.

Yeah. It's almost like, you know, not to introduce this, but just from afar. It's almost like a lot of the QANON stuff kind of had that effect. Just.

Yeah.

You know, I didn't dig deep into that and don't. You know, and only know just the, Just the basic, you know, talking points about it. But. But one thing I did see that was. Felt like a. A constant was that there was always anytime they'd mention something that was just completely screwy. It was followed up with the ones that we believe to be real.

Right.

You know, it's just kind of this big. Kind of just put them all in the same.

Yeah. A stew of good stuff and bullshit.

Exactly. And just stirred that cauldron, you know?

Yeah. That's a very convenient way to bury Truth. The QAnon documentary on HBO was great. Into the Fire. That was called something.

I didn't see it.

Into the storm.

Okay.

It's really good.

Is it? Yeah.

It's a multi part thing on all the people that were involved in 4chan and the creation of QAnon, who they think the original guy was. And they think another guy took it over after a while and took over the account.

Got it.

And it seems like they were just kind of fucking around at first, but it's not definitive. Like, he's got some really good evidence that points in that direction, but it's just hard to know. And, you know, everyone always thought that it was someone inside the White House. There was some, like, secret person inside the White House. It doesn't seem like this documentary believes that. The guy who made this documentary, he pins it on one guy in particular that's a tech nerd that seems to have all of the attributes of someone who could pull off a QAnon type deal.

Checks every box.

Yeah. A super smart Internet shit poster running 4chan. That's the whole thing over there. It's like, get people to do stuff that's stupid. They got women to free bleed. They started pushing this idea that the patriarchy is making you wear a tampon and your menstrual cycle should just flow in your pants and who cares? And this is a sign of your strong femininity. It was just them being crazy, and then a bunch of women just adopted it. Not for long. It's gross. They were like, this is stupid.

Yeah.

Probably last a couple weeks, but. But a bunch of women. But it's.

That's.

People are really susceptible. You could get people to do that. Not everybody.

Right.

But it's just like the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic thing. Not everybody's gonna join your call.

Right.

But if you open up a free clinic, you're gonna get enough, you know, lost children that come in through your doors.

Well, they're gonna need your legit services to start with. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. You gotta sort it out. It's just nuts. That. That's our government. That's our daddies. Our government daddies. The people that we're supposed to be looking to, to help us lead a prosperous life and secure our standing in the world and make sure we. We grow financially. And these did all that?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, ultimate power, right? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. In any form. Well, they. Bringing it back to stardom, like, that's a weird power to get somebody. It's a. Especially when you're 21 years old. Yeah, it's a weird power. Weird amount of freedom. Weird amount of, like, people expecting you to be kind of wild.

Sure. Yeah. And again, that thing you talked about where you watch it happen to others and then suddenly it's, it's you. It's. It's. It's a lot more. It's a lot more intoxicating. And then I would always think, okay, so why. Why. How were they able to control it? Why didn't, why didn't I see them enjoying it at this level? And it wasn't about, I'm going to show them the way they should have been doing it. It was just about, hey, guys. Okay, cool. No, it's, it's. It. It. It finally made its way over here. And, and it, It. It can go to 11, you know, and, And. And not burn the whole house down, you know, when it was still fun, when it was still creative. And. And because it wasn't about. It was still having to show up and it was still, you know, carving out enough time for the party, but also reserving enough, you know, energy for the job. Right.

You know, that's the balance.

That's the balance.

And some people pull it off. Some people, they're really disciplined and they pull off the work and then they pull off the partying.

Right, right, right. And I was able to maintain that for. For a long time, you know, and even when it flamed out, like those early rehabs and, and there was always, like. There was a job, like the day I got out.

Wow.

You know, scripts showing up in rehab, and it's like, they're just, they're just, they. They want you to get. They want you to get well. Okay. They want you to get better. But, you know, as soon as you're out of here, you know, we got, we got some good stuff for you to look at.

There's also, unfortunately, a romantic notion of a guy getting out of rehab.

Interesting, right? Interesting.

How many cop shows start with a guy who's down on his dumps putting a pizza in a blender for breakfast, you know what I mean? Like, really, like, at his lowest of low points, right? Drinking. And then maybe his daughter cries and he throws the bottles into the trash can. It's like, I'm done. And now he's back. And there's a romantic thing of getting your shit together.

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like Charlie's back better than ever.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah. And it's, it's, you know, everybody's rooting for you again.

Yeah.

You know, and they're expecting the guy to deliver. Yeah.

With passion. Now, real life experience. He was a drug addict.

Exactly. Yeah.

Look at Robert Downey Jr. Now.

Right.

Yeah. People love that. They love that.

But the same thing was happening to Downey when. When he, when. When he was in rehab or maybe when he was even in the pen. When they. What people were bringing him. I think he was. I think they brought him Ally McBeal when he was still in jail. And I don't think. I think he still got high after that, you know, and my dad would always be like, yelling at the television. It's like, stop rewarding his. This behavior. Stop rewarding him. Let him, Let him, Let him sit in those consequences. Not out of judgment or out of punishment or, you know, just out of.

Love, you know, to help him get his shit together.

Yeah.

If you keep letting them fuck up over and over again, they'll continue to fuck up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But if there's always a carrot the day you walk out, you know, something. Something to chase and a soft landing. Yeah. You know, that's what was really interesting about this, you know, this, this, this, this Decades, decade, long timeout that I got that I got put into, you know, which, you know, at some point, the punishment has to sort of fit the crime. Right. And, yeah, it felt like it was a little bit longer than it should have been. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember any murder charges, you know, but at the same time, there's not a chance that I. That I could have done the two projects that I've. That, wow. The book came out yesterday and the doc comes out today. You know, I couldn't have done either unless I had the kind of perspective and distance from all of that that I. That I was able to get to find, you know.

You've been sober for how long? Seven years.

Coming up on eight.

Eight years?

Yeah. Be eight in December.

That probably helped a lot to be away from everything to. For you to achieve that.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was still doing things to, you know, just kind of stay in the mix a little bit. And, you know, I do signings, I do speaking engagements, do stuff like that. But it was also so, like. It's like as soon as I quit drinking, all my kids started showing up again. And, you know, Sam and Lola were living there, and then they'd cycle back with Denise and then Bob And Max would show up, and then they'd. Brooke would come back and like, okay, so he's gonna be here. And then Lola would show back up. So my house was kind of like. It's kind of like this. It was like a clubhouse, you know, And I write in the book that my vacancy sign, you know, for those children always hangs facing out, you know, so it was, you know, being. Being called to a. To a much more responsible and complicated set of responsibilities and order, you know, and just having to do stuff that they. They didn't care about. You know, a writing of a show or response to a movie or any popularity or IMDb, you know, stuff.

They. They were just like, you know, with the basic needs and getting to school and help with this. And so it was really cool to like, suddenly just be that that's the only stuff that. That. That that mattered to the people that matter the most. And so. And, and yeah, but you're right that none of that could have happened if I was away on location or having to be at a studio every week or.

Right.

But, yeah, I think it's. It was about the time that it. That it created, you know, so. And. And it's interesting that. That I'm not. I'm not like. I'm not looking at this as a comeback, you know, it's. It's. I think it's a reset. I think it's a reset, you know, and I didn't. I didn't. I didn't rely on anything that I'd done before. Never written a book, never done a documentary, you know, but to come back with two projects that everybody seems to be really excited about.

Documentary is very entertaining.

Awesome. Thank you.

It's very entertaining.

Thank you.

It's really well done, like, the way it's put together and it's just so. The stories are bananas. It's so bananas as It's. The. The whole thing was just so nuts. But, you know, like I said, everybody loves a story of someone getting their shit together. And that's a great accomplishment of being sober for almost eight years. It really is.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, it's. People are going to yell at me because of how I deal with the AA in the book, and that's fine. I just speak to my personal experiences. I'm not.

How do you deal with it?

That. I tried it for a long time. I. For a combined 21 years and just decided that I had to give this a go on my own.

So you just do it completely on your Own. You don't have any person you call or any.

No, I mean there's people that are sober that I still talk to and.

You don't have a sponsor or something like that?

I don't, I don't, no. No.

I know it does help some people, of course.

And that's why I don't want to say that it's. I'm not recommending that. This is another.

But just saying your truth, this is how you do it. I had a very good friend who was an alcoholic who quit one day. He crashed his car, ran from the cops on foot, got arrested and then he's like, what am I doing with my life? I'm done. He quit like that day that there never had a drink again. I knew him for 20 years after that.

It happened. It can happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but I, I think that I, that I do have the experience of all of that time in and around the rooms, you know, and, and, and that's not to say that I don't still remember a couple of nuggets, a couple of things that still stuck with me that I still thought you still see as valuable. Right. You know, but it's there, there's. There's a line in the book that it's. It's hard to ask for help when somebody else has raised your hand for you interventions pulled into a thing. All you're doing is just counting the days.

Yeah. That's the part of the documentary too. When the first intervention when you got brought into a room and everybody's sitting there waiting for you. You thought it was a party.

Well, yeah. I mean I was a little suspicious because it's 9am why is dad having a 9am birthday for. Unless we're going to Magic Mountain. Right. That's usually the time you leave.

Right.

That's usually for a seven year old. Right.

Right.

Yeah. No, that was wild. That is something that I can still see as it happened on the day really turning that corner in the hallway into my parents living room and like. And my brain is still trying to turn it into a birthday party. My brain insisted that that's what we're there for.

You know, that's funny.

And it just. When it starts to dawn on you, like have you ever taken a sip of something that was in the wrong bottle but your brain saw the label and so your. It takes your body like a half a second. Yeah. To catch up to. That's not. Those don't match. Those don't match.

Yeah.

Yeah. I have a story about that. But I probably shouldn't tell it, but. Yeah.

So that one didn't work. It didn't work that way. You had to do it on your own.

It worked for a year. It worked for a year. But then like as is in, in the dock, I mean, I'm at Cage's house and I on, on the anniversary, on the one year I find that beer in his fridge, I'm like, well, that's there for a reason. This cause to celebrate. That's not an accident. Yeah. And just didn't even think twice.

Wow.

Just was like, ah, finally. Boom.

And now we're off to the races.

We're off to the races. Yeah.

Wow. How did you get sober this time?

I, I'd gotten off the drugs, gotten off the dope. When I say dope, that's always coke, never heroin. Never a heroin guy. I'd been off that. Geez, probably over 10 years, you know, and so, I mean, more than 10 years, like sitting here today. So I had, I hadn't, I hadn't fucked around with any of that shit for a few years. I was just, I was, I just committed to drinking, you know, and then found that to be like the most unmanageable drug that I've ever tried to navigate. Drinking. Drinking. Yeah. Drinking more than cocaine. Yeah. Because there's never a time when you can't get it, you know, and, and when I had made the decision that I, okay, I'm just going to drink, I treated it like, like I did drugs, you know? Yeah. But it, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really kind of, it's very acceptable and it's, it's, it's, it's very socially ingrained, you know, it's like, it's, it's normal. Yeah. It's always Miller time.

Yeah. You want to smoke a joint some in front of someone, they might be.

Like, hey, what are you. What's going on here? Yeah.

You want to have a drink in front of someone completely normal? Everyone does it.

Sure. Yeah. But, so I, I knew the way my body was starting to react and the way I was starting to feel and just, just, it, it just, I, I, I couldn't feel it how I used to, even at like, really, like, powerful doses, you know, I just couldn't. And that, that, that got depressing. That, that wasn't like, I'll just drink twice as much now. That was like, damn. The thing I relied on is now just like, told me. Yeah, yeah, it's.

No, you're Too much of a tolerance.

Our relationship is now different. Different, you know? Yeah. And so there was a day and it's, it's, it's in the book. And, and I, I, you know, I was a morning drinker. I, I loved, you know, spiking my coffee. That's like. For me, it was like the best time to drink. I mean, you're not gonna get shit done the rest of the day. But that's when I felt it. That's when I could still feel it was in the morning, you know, so I'm on like my third Macallan coffee or whatever and. And my daughter Sam, like calls from. She's at the house and calls and says, hey, what time are we leaving? Like to go where she had a hair appointment. And it was a Sunday, I think, or a Saturday. And I've never ever mixed the cups and the wheel, ever. I've never had a dui. How about that?

That's awesome.

That's pretty good, right?

That's very good.

I just decided like, like a long time ago, like when I was like 17, that that was never gonna happen.

Good for you.

And I was living in a limo back then. There was, you know, the occasional cab. But these days, these days, to get busted for drinking and driving with the available transportation that is literally 15 choices in your hand, right? It's. There's no excuse.

Right.

And so I call, I called Tony, I said, tony, you know, I can't drive. You gotta help me get Sam to this thing. And so he was like, I'll be right. He was there in 20 minutes. We got her to the appointment. It went great. And there was. There was a moment in the car driving back, and I describe it in the book, you know, and I could see her in two mirrors, the visor and the side view. And she was just kind of sitting back there. And I'm not saying that I know exactly what she was thinking, but I, I could feel what I. What. I'm pretty sure she was. And it was just this thing about, you know, why it's. Yeah, it's cool that dad did this, but why, why isn't dad driving again? Right? You know, why, why is there always disappointment? Yeah. And it's not nothing with Tony, you know, he's been around forever and, you know, and, and, and it was. So we got, we got back from that and, and I. And it was. There was something that I couldn't shake. It was something that stayed with me. Just the images of her, this little 13 year old kid in the Back seat.

And her dad can't even take her to like a. Just a basic. Just like up the highway to a hair appointment. Like that. That got. That was complicated, you know.

Yeah.

And I was like, what am I doing? And then I just sat inside. I sat inside of that for a while because it didn't feel good. Good. And I. And I thought, okay, what can I do to not to stop feeling like this? The math is pretty simple at that point, you know. And, you know, I wasn't going to do rehab. I wasn't going to do a big, dramatic, you know, life turnaround, or I was just gonna just make a decision and stick to it. And, you know, I took a few Valium, drank a few beers, and then. And the next day, just woke up and said, I'm done. And didn't care. I didn't. I made a decision. I wasn't gonna care how I felt physically. Was just gonna, like, just grit and bear it. Yeah.

How long did it take before you felt okay?

About three days. The story I had written that was gonna be a month was just like that. That. That. That was fake and it was. And so. And then it just coincidentally, it happened to be my oldest daughter Cassandra's birthday. When I quit. December 12th, you know, it was just like, okay, that's all aligned. And then. Then something else happened after that because everybody's gonna get a little squirrely. Like, it can put. The problem with guy like me is that. And people like me is you're able to put things back together really quickly. Right, right. And kind of just kind of reassemble.

The pieces so you're not as scared to go off the rails.

Right, right, right. And. And so then I got a call. This is the post. You know, already had HIV for several years at this point. I get a call that there's a new medicine. Right. This is about a month after the Sam thing. Right. And they're like, look, we want you to try this thing because it's. It's. It's a much smaller cocktail. It's much less toxicity, and. And no very few side effects. We think you're gonna do great on it. Right. They said, but you can't drink on it. The other one, you could drink your face off. Like. Like you could. You could drink like a pirate on the other one. Which they shouldn't have told me that you can, you know. And so. So I said, okay, great. So I tried that one and it was, you know, it was working great. But they said, okay, if you can just stay off the booze, it's going to keep working the light, light, light like it is, you know, so that this other thing showed up in addition to that, like, just in. In concert with it. So now I had a couple things going on, you know, let's keep this thing, this.

This evil stowaway is what I like to call it. Let's keep that thing in the, you know, at bay and let's, you know, rebuild every relationship that matters in your life, you know, while you're still here.

Did you have a revelation after a while, after you were sober for a while, where you stop and think, like, why was I getting so fucked up? Like, what was I trying to avoid? Or what was I trying to enhance or what? What was the purpose? Like, what was I.

What.

What bothered me so much that I couldn't be sober?

Interesting. Yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah, it. I think it was more a void earlier. Like, earlier in life. Like, avoid the pressures of fame, avoid the fears of commitment, relationship, or. Or being exposed as a fraud at some point. You know, I think that was earlier, and I think enhance came later. That. That. Trying to just make situations just feel more exciting or cooler or. Or more, you know, sexier or. You know what I'm saying? Like. Like. Yeah, but it's interesting that you presented both sides of that, you know, avoid, enhance. Yeah, yeah, I relate to both, you know.

Yeah. I think that's a good thing to tell people, too, because everybody wants to hear the drugs. Like, Bill Hicks had a great joke about. Nobody ever hears great drug stories.

Right.

You only hear the bad ones, you know, and it is true. But the reason why people do it is because it's fun. Like, it can ruin your life, but it's also really fun. That's why people do it.

Sure.

This is. It's important for people to know because you don't want them to think you're lying to them, you know, and for them to hear you sober and happy and go, okay, that's possible. You can get there because this guy is admitting what getting high was. You know, like, there's a. There's a scene in the documentary where you're talking about the first time you smoke crack, where this girl's giving you a blowjob while you're smoking crack. It was like the greatest feeling of all time. Yeah, like. Yeah, like, I think that's important to say.

That hasn't been topped. I probably shouldn't say that. I don't care. I don't care. Yeah, that hasn't been topped.

Have you ever Heard Hunter Biden talk about crime crack?

I haven't. No.

He was on that Channel 5 show, and he gives this ode to crack that made me want to immediately go smoke crack.

Seriously? Yeah.

Because Hunter Biden's a very smart guy. I don't think people think of him that way because of the laptop thing, but he's very intelligent.

Right.

And very articulate. So when he's explaining, like, the effects of crack and how different it is and how incredible it is and the euphoria of it, and it's like he's literally saying that he's, like, getting the itch while he sitting there sober, talking, you know, working on his sobriety, trying to keep it together. After all, publicly shamed.

Right.

For being out of control. And talent talking about crack like a lover that you lost in a drowning accident.

Wow. It's.

It's crazy.

I get that. That. I get that. That makes sense.

I bet you do.

There's a moment in the dock.

Yeah.

Where I tell this. The Sandy story. Yeah. And I say, wow, that one actually got me kind of. Yeah. I could feel that. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the problem. The problem is.

That's the problem. Yeah.

Yeah.

The problem is, did you And. No, you don't have to. Did you ever try it, or.

No, No, I never even did coke.

Oh, you never? Oh, nope. Okay.

No. When I was in high school, I have a good buddy of mine, and his cousin was selling coke, and his cousin, who was super normal, I knew him forever. Great guy, super cool guy. All of a sudden, he became weird and pale and lost all this weight, and it was like he got bit by a vampire, and him and his girlfriend were selling coke, and they would just watch TV and do coke, and they had, like, this attic apartment, and it was like he had gotten bit by a vampire. That's how it felt like to me. It was like he just lost his whole life to coke. And then I saw some other kids that had coke problems around me where they were just dying to get coke, and I was like, this is a bad drug. And back then, I think it was actually coke, you know, I don't even know.

At least, like, 80% of it. Yeah.

In the 1980s, I don't know if they're cutting it with anything, but I made a decision at one point in time in my life. No, I don't want to have nothing to do with that one. That one seems to rob people's lives.

And you just stuck to that.

Yeah. It just seemed to me like that one can make You a loser.

And then did you roll in circles over the years where it was prevalent or.

I knew some people that did coke and never worked out. Well, I didn't know anybody who did coke who, like, kept their life together. Everybody who did coke was, like, barely together, barely hanging on, always off the rails.

I think there's, like, one guy.

One guy out there, some superhero.

Well. That maintained it all those years was Jack Nicholson.

Oh, yeah.

I think he's the only guy.

Right?

I mean, do we know of anybody else?

Well, they might not be public about it.

Right.

You know, but what about the rumors.

That Jack always traveled with, like, a doctor? Have you ever heard this shit? Have you heard these stories?

No, no, no.

Oh, yeah. That he had a doctor that carried his Coke or distributed.

That's amazing.

And only gave him just what he needed. Oh, yeah. No, I don't know.

I mean, that's some movie star shit right there.

Exactly.

You get a doctor with a leather satchel to carry your Coke around.

Yeah. And it's just. He's just close.

I'd make him wear a stethoscope. Everywhere you go, bro, hashtag, you need to have a stethoscope on. Everybody's got to know you're legit.

Yeah, but that's like. That's one of the great, like,'80s rumors about Jack.

Funny, I never heard that rumor.

Some guy.

That makes sense.

But then you'd be around Jack. I was only around him a few times, but then, you know, it was cool as hell. And you're always kind of looking like, all right, who's the bag man? Who's his guy? Where is he? You know? Or who's the bag man for that night? You know? Yeah. Like, was it a team of doctors.

That rotated Dangerfield party till the end? He.

Yeah, he did.

He kept that traitor rolling.

Yeah, he did. We lived in the same building for a while.

You in Dangerfield?

Yeah.

No way.

It's that building in the book called the Wilshire. On Wilshire. Oh, wow. Gosh. I maybe saw him twice. I got in the elevator with him one time and. And we. We'd seen each other out, but never really had, like, an elevator moment, you know? And he goes, hey, kid, how you doing? You look great. He's like. He goes, hey, hey.

He goes, look at that.

Yeah.

Wow.

But in the elevator.

Look at. Right. He looks funny. Just in his photo.

Just.

Yeah, just in the photo.

You start laughing, doing nothing.

He was so good. Dude.

I can't tell you what happened that night. I don't know where we were. But it looks like the jacket is definitely a circa 89.90. That looks like a backstage something that's on my jacket, Right? Yeah.

Probably at a Poison concert or something.

Perhaps. So we're in the elevator, he says, hey, kid, what are you, Puerto Rican? Right. And I said, no, I'm Spanish. Irish. And he says, ah, you don't know whether to start a parade or start a war. And it's like doors open and he just walks out. He just had that on standby or built it in the moment?

He probably built it in the moment.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was just like. So I can't really ever describe my heritage without hearing his voice, you know, Start a parade or start a war.

That's funny.

Just like, wow. Just left me with that gold, you know, Know.

We have his handwritten notes at our. Our comedy club in the. Yeah. For one of his Tonight show appearances. We have his handwritten notes framed to all the stuff he's going to talk about.

Okay.

It's pretty cool.

Wow. And, and, and would he, would he stick to.

Yeah, yeah. It's like his jokes and he had like the punch lines, like accented, bold letters.

Oh, seriously.

He wrote it all out darker.

He was like, super organized.

Yeah, super organized. Well, he. He stopped doing stand up for a long time and he was selling aluminum side writing. And then he made it again when he was much older in life. He came back and the thing that happened was from the time he stopped doing stand up to when he went back to having a regular job, he never stopped writing jokes. Like, his brain just worked that way. So he was just always writing jokes.

So when he came back on a treasure trove.

Wow.

Yes.

And he just fucking stormed the gates. When he came back, everybody's like, where's this guy been?

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Wow.

And then he became huge. Back to school and the Ronnie Dangerfield HBO comedy specials. And it's epic. Yeah, he's one of the all time.

So he came back doing stand up.

I think he was in his 40s.

Got some heat again and that. That activated the films.

Yeah, well, the stand up, he didn't have any heat before, but when he quit, you know, he was just like, kind of like getting by, doing all right, and got a job. Quit. I think he might have quit for 10 years.

Wow.

Yeah. And then the whole time he's writing and then he's like, fuck it, I gotta do this. And then got back into comedy.

Wow.

I hope I'm not fucking that story up. But I think I'm. I think I'm accurate with that. See if you can find it. Make sure that's true. I'm 90% sure that's true. But I know that he didn't make it until he was in his 40s. And I told this the other day, but I'll tell it again. I used to work at Greatwood center for the Performing Arts in Mansfield, Massachusetts. I was security guy there.

Okay.

And I was backstage or by the. By the. Outside of the backstage. And Ronnie Dangerfield would go on stage completely naked with a bathrobe on. That's what he would wear. And he was wearing a bathrobe backstage with slippers and just walking around. It's like, this guy's wild.

Wow.

And they're like. He goes on stage like that. I'm like, shut the up.

Was it partially closed at least, or it was just wild?

Yeah, it was close. He wouldn't let everybody see his dick. But if you went in the green room, you were seeing his dick. He would just sit there. His dick would be hanging out. He didn't care. Struggled financially for nine years. One port forming as a singing waiter until he was fired before taking a job selling aluminum siding in the mid-50s to support his wife and family. He later quipped. So the 1960s, he started reviving his career.

Oh, damn.

Yeah. So somewhere close to 10 years. Still working as a salesman by day, he returned to the stage, performing at hotels in the Catskills mountains, but still finding minimal success. He fell into debt. About $20,000, by his own estimate. Could get booked. Dangerfield came to realize what he lacked was an image well defined on stage, Persona that the audience could relate to, one that would distinguish him from other comics. After being shunned by some premier comedy venues, he returned home, where he began developing a character for whom nothing goes right. Isn't that crazy?

Wow.

Wow. Oh, look at this. During Roy's comeback bid. Who's Roy? When he was 19, he was Jack Roy.

Oh.

He had to become Rodney Dangerfield.

Oh.

People recognize.

Wow. I want to use that. Checking in at hotels from now on.

Wanting to distinguish himself from longtime patrons who might have remembered him from the 1940s, Roy asked club owner George McFadden to change his name. He came up with Roddy Dangerfield.

Wow.

He didn't want people to remember him as Jack Roy from back in the day. He didn't like his old act.

Wow. Wow.

He said. I don't know where it came from. McFadden may have taken it from the Jack Benny program on NBC Radio, which first used Rodney Dangerfield as a character's name in 1941. Ricky Nelson also used the pseudonym in a 1962 episode of the Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet. Wow. That's crazy. Ed Sullivan Show, 1967. Wow. That's when he popped again.

That's amazing.

That's nuts.

Wow. Go get him.

Yeah.

Maybe he didn't know whether to start a parade or start a war.

He was a fun guy. I knew a lot of people who knew him. I didn't get a chance to meet him. I saw him once at the Laugh Factor. I ran into him, I said hi, but that was it. I never really got a chance to talk.

So you did have. Have a moment? Okay.

Yeah, it was. He was just leaving the stage. He was outside and he had some. Thank you, hot MILF with him.

Awesome. Thank you.

You go, Rodney.

Why not? Why not?

It was probably his wife. He's. His wife is. Who donated us these. These handwritten notes and also the photograph of them, too. It's pretty cool. It's just there's a few guys, guys like that, that, you know, without them, you always wonder, like, where would comedy be? Like, where would it ever turn up? Like, so many people like Prior and him and Lenny Bruce, so many people that just like changed everything.

Carlin.

Carlin, yeah. So many people just chained Kinison, sure, they just changed the whole thing. But Dangerfield was one of the rare ones that introduced new comics to people like those. That's where everybody found out about Kinison. So everybody found out about Dice Clay, Don Marrera, Lenny Clark, all these guys. Robert Schimmel. They all started out on the Rodney Dangerfield HBO comedy specials.

Wow. Yeah. So he would have, like.

He would, like, have his favorite comedians. He would just have like a show where he would, like, introduce his favorite.

Comedians, but he'd have to scout them at the clubs.

He would go see him.

So he'd just go out and he.

Had his own club in New York City. Okay, Fields.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

But he was, you know, he was interested in promoting comedy too. You know, just a amazing guy. That's such a cool moment you had with him.

I can still. I can see it. I mean, it's like, it's. There's nothing tricky about that memory, you know.

What was it like being with your dad while he's filming Apocalypse Now?

It was. There's a lot of that in the book.

How old were you?

I was. I was. I went there as a 10 year old. Yeah. I had my 11th birthday there, spent a combined total of eight or nine months there. And that. That was going back and forth, you know, it was, it was, it's just, it was. It wasn't just another country, it was another planet. You know, we'd seen, you know, different parts of the world traveling with him, you know, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, places like that, you know, but then you get to the Philippines and it was just, you just got a sense that, wow, this is all going on at the same time that we've been in Malibu, like.

Right.

Kind of, you know.

Yeah.

Having fun and, and just doing. Cool. And, and so you visit a place like that and get in the middle of it and, and, and engage in, in this entirely. Just this, just a new, such a surreal reality. And then. Oh, wait a minute, they're here to make a movie. And it's about a film that. It's, it's. It's about a. It's a film about a war that and barely ended like a year ago, right? Yeah, 14 months ago. When it's Saigon fall is 75, right?

I think so, yeah.

And they're, I mean, it was like right at the tail end of it. And so, yeah, it was. We, you know, we were able to do enough stuff, like, recreationally. You know, there was a lake and you could water ski, you could fish, you could do those kind of things if you didn't want to go to the set with dad. But once you went and saw the set where dad was, you didn't give a. About water sports or fish or anything because what, what, what, what they'd built and what they were trying to create was, was, was mind blowing because, you know, Coppola built Kurt's compound out of practical materials. It wasn't like, you know, like plaster covered chicken wire and rebar. These were like, you know, two ton boulders they brought in and started stacking in the jungle and, you know, and then a lot of it would start sinking. Couldn't build a foundation in a riverbank.

Right, right.

But then just the mix of people and the talent and Dennis Hopper and Brando and Duvall and just. It was. Every day felt completely unique. There was not. There was no. You'd go to the set and you were going to see something completely different than what you saw the day before. It was wild.

Wow.

Yeah. And I gravitated towards this gentleman named Fred Blau, who I mentioned in the book. He was the key makeup artist, artist, you know, FX guy. And so he was building all the prosthetics for all the carnage you see in the movie, you know, so I'd walk into a shop and there'd just be arms and legs and heads and. But I knew it was all fake. You know, as a 10 year old, when you start seeing how it's made and, and you know, so, so gore, I think I write in the book was never gore in movies, was never emotional. It was, it was technical, you know, but, but, but still kept me really curious about, about how it was done and, and just the, the, the, the, the, the artisans behind it that, that could create those effects.

How long were you over there?

For a total of eight months. Wow. Maybe nine. Yeah. And it was, it was three. 10 years old. Yeah, it was three at first and then maybe four at first. And then we went back and then dad has the heart attack and then we went back and stayed for like another four, four months. Yeah. So, yeah, it was. And, and people say so, you know, growing up on sets, you must have like dreamed about being an actor. And I'm like, yeah, until I got to the set that almost killed my dad. You know, that's not a job you're just gonna like wrap your arms around and say, when can I start? You know?

Yeah.

But it also just, the scope of the filmmaking was really exciting and you know, I didn't really understand it as a 10 or 11 year old, but I knew, I knew there was something about it that required a much, you know, closer look. And I had a very keen interest in just, you know, what would it take to like, like build this, you know, this reality, this fake reality. Oh, but wait, the subject is based in reality, but everything else around it is fake.

So that's a very strange experience for a 10 year old.

It is. Yeah.

Such a grand scale.

Exactly.

When it becomes what Apocalypse now became.

Right.

Because it was like a culturally defining moment.

Yeah.

I mean, it was. And it's a movie that, it kind of eclipses all other war movies. It does, it really does.

Yeah. I don't, I don't think there's been a film like it before or since. I think.

No, it's a true masterpiece.

It really is. Yeah. And, and, and there's no computers. There's nothing generated. It's all had to be there on the day. And when you watch, watch that, the, the, you know, when, when, when, when Kilgore Takes the Beachhead, that Chopper Assault, I mean, when you look at the, just what they had, what they committed to.

Yeah.

To bring that to the screen, it's just, it's impossible. And then You. You see some of the documentary stuff about. He was like, those were on loan from the Philippine Army. And then, like, midday, they had to go fight the rebels somewhere else. And they told Francis, we gotta leave now with the choppers. And he's like, I have 18 cameras set up. The whole. The river is filled with bombs. Where are you going? We'll see you tomorrow.

Wow.

Stuff like that. Yeah.

Wow.

Pretty wild.

Yeah. But that must have, like. For you, like, to eventually become an actor in Platoon, that had to be kind of surreal.

How does that happen?

Right?

How does that happen?

How does that happen 11 years later?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or 10. Yeah, yeah. Because I did. I did Platoon at 20. Right? Yeah. So how do I go back to the same country 10 years later? 10 years later with the same subject. Right, right. Narrate the thing, and then it. It's elevated to be on par with the one.

Yeah. Only films that gets mentioned in the same breath as Apocalypse now when it comes to war films.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a much bigger fan of Apocalypse than Platoon, and that is primarily about just the. The scope and the complication and. And just what, you know, difficulty factor.

Yeah.

Difficulty factor. It took forever. Yeah.

How many years did it take?

Take?

It was like eight or nine years. Right.

It. I don't know when Francis conceived. Came out in 79. I think it did. It come out in August of 79.

How many. Let's just Google. How many years?

August 79.

How many years did it take to make Apocalypse Now? I think it went way over budget.

Oh, it did. Oh, yeah. And by today's standards, that's like, you know, that's like a Fox Searchlight budget.

Right. You know, and Laurence Fishburn was like, what. How old was he?

He started the film at 14.

And it came out in 79. Originally due to be released on Coppola's 38th birthday of April 77. So it took two extra years.

Wow.

And imagine when was it. When did the. The project start? I mean, varying times of discussions. Casting started 2-26-76 is when Steve McQueen dropped out. So it's not as many years as I thought it was.

They shot with Harvey Keitel for a few weeks as Willard. Did you know that?

No.

Yeah. Yeah. And then Francis just, what, he made the wrong choice. Harvey was doing it, you know, whatever he could, but Francis just saw it differently and had met dad during the Godfather auditions and said, let me meet with Marty.

Wow.

You can tell people that don't really know my dad that well call him Marty. I run into people on the street. And they're like, hey, give Marty my best. And I'm like, who the fuck is Marty? People call him Martin. No, they know I'm better, You know?

Well, people that pretend to know someone always like to throw a Y on the end of it, make sure you're tight.

Interesting.

You know?

Yeah. So I would be like, chucky, you're still Charlie. Right? Right.

But I would be like Joey.

Joey. Yeah. I could never think of you as a Joey. Yeah, no, but. But imagine this with Apocalypse that. So I spend that much time. There's all that shit that happened. I even brought home, like, props and things, you know, severed hands and if ago jewelry and all this. Right. And all these great stories and then didn't have anything tangible to back any of it. I mean, mom took a lot of photos, but, like, nobody could go to the theater and then see. Oh, yeah, Charlie talked about that. Oh, yeah, he talked. He was there that day. Everybody had to wait when you're that age, you know, waiting two or three years, like waiting a decade. Right. So that was. That was kind of a trip. But when I saw it at the center of the dome in 70 millimeter, you know, and it's like, man, when those choppers, when you hear them, when you hear just they're. They're. They're. They're all around you. A film will never open like that again and have that kind of an impact. I mean. Did you see it at the dome when you first saw it?

No, no. I don't remember where I first saw it. I first saw it, I think, on a regular TV at home.

Oh, shit. Okay.

You know, because. Because I was too little to watch it in 79. Is that what it was? Maybe I saw it when it came out on HBO or something like that for the first time. But when I really got into it was when I got a home theater and I got surround sound and I got Apocalypse. Redo. Apocalypse Now. Redo the newly mastered one.

Got it. Okay.

It's fucking sensational.

So you finally had that experience.

Oh, my God, it was so good. I was like, this movie is wild. It's so well done, and it's just so epic. Like for you to have been there live while they were putting that together and then to see it all pieced together, I mean, that had to be an insane experience.

Well, and, and. And a lot of it was a surprise seeing it on the screen because, like, I talk about in the book, not so much in the doc. It was hard to get close to the action. On a pod Apocalypse. Because the way the sets were constructed, because of the way, you know, Francis had everything lit, it was super claustrophobic, like in, you know, Kurtz's temple and compound and places like that. And. And it was also fucking dangerous to be on that set.

Right.

You know what I'm saying? Snakes and shit and.

Yeah.

Just like a lot of weird people. And so, yeah, Francis was just like, come one, come all, you know?

Wow.

But. But, yeah, so then it's like, I wasn't there for any. Any of the Chopper Assault. I was. I could see Hopper at a distance in that outfit with those cameras, walking with that. I couldn't hear what he was saying. So to then see that scene where, you know, dad first steps off the boat at the compound and Hopper has that incredible monolog.

Yeah.

You know, you got the cigarettes. That's what I've been dreaming about. And it's just like. Like, so to have that. That kind of. That. That. To have been there that long and still be a completely fresh cinematic experience was a trip.

Did you ever get imposter syndrome? Like, when you were doing Platoon, did you ever get, like, how the. Am I here? Because it's so quick between you being 10, right, being in the jungle while they're filming Apocalypse now to you starring in Platoon. Had you settled into that or were you ever like, how the fuck do I deserve this? One of the things that Jon Cryer says in the documentary. All right, he might be on.

Very insightful. Yeah, it's very insightful. Yeah, yeah.

He said that you probably feel like you don't deserve all this, so you fuck it all up.

Sure, he's not wrong. He's not wrong, but. And then I. I had a comment, some interview the other day, and I said, well, what the fuck, John? You could have, like, laid that on me like, you know, a couple decades sooner, man. Great advice, however, a little late. Yeah.

Yeah, but you can't tell anybody that. They have to kind of figure it out.

They do. But the thing about Platoon and when it happened, the good news is that I had done enough film work, you know, not. Not like super memorable films, except maybe parts of Red Dawn, I think, are pretty memorable. Just, you know, what the film kind of, you know, what it stood for, what it's about. I think parts of Bueller were kind of memorable. Ferris Bueller. Right.

Sure.

But. But yeah, so. So was just sort of getting more comfortable in front of a camera. Camera. More comfortable sort of, you know, being able to think on film and actually, you know, Breathe on film. I know that sounds kind of like actor schmactory, but it's actually a thing because you only talk about controlling your breath in every other area of life.

Sure.

Right. And it's the same is true as an actor. Yeah, for sure. Even doing the show. Even doing two and a half for that first scene, I was. I was usually off. I was usually, like, about to make an entrance from somewhere, and I'd be back there and chain smoke and Marlboro reds and just trying to figure out the first scene. But then when you'd hear the. You'd hear the. You'd hear the stage go quiet. Right. Someone else, you know, speeding sound market. And then if I could get that last breath to go to the bottom, I knew this first take was going to be awesome. When the breath stopped about, like, at the sternum, I was.

Shallow breath.

Yeah, yeah. Then you can't. Then you're cha. And then the thing. And then. Yeah. And then that first take is just a pancake, which sucks because that's the first time the audience is gonna see it.

Right.

You kind of want that one to be, you know, if there's a cute girl in the crowd, that's the one you want her watching.

Yeah.

Not the second one where she's already heard the fucking jokes. Right now you're just doing whatever.

Right now you're like, oh, this show sucks.

Exactly. Yeah.

The live performance thing is weird because they don't really do it anymore. I mean, I don't think there's very many shows that still do that kind of a sitcom in front of a live audience. Cameras.

There's very few. I think Tim Allen show still does.

What is that on? Is that on Fox?

I think it's abc. Yeah.

So he still does a traditional.

Yeah, yeah. Because a guy worked with a friend of mine is on that writing staff.

God, they used to be all over the television.

I know.

There used to be tons of them.

Oh, I think Chuck's new show on Netflix, it's called Leanne Lorraine. Shit. Leanne. Yeah. I think that that's a live audience, you know.

Okay. So they're still doing some of them. Yeah, they're fun. It's fun when. When it works, you know?

Yeah.

It's like, it's. It's a missing genre in today's culture.

You're right.

Most of what was on late at night.

Exactly.

At night time.

Right.

When you got done having dinner.

Yeah.

Sit down and watch Friends. Or you would sit down and watch Seinfeld or Two and A Half Men or, you know, Comfort View. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. We, my family binge watched Big Bang Theory. I never watched it when it was on the air. We binge watched it.

Seriously.

It's a good show.

Yeah, they were.

Funny show. I missed it. I was like, ah, it's a corny sitcom. Bullshit. It's good show.

Right on.

Solid show.

Right on. Yeah. That kid, Kid, that, that young man, Jim, right. Had some of the most complicated dialog that anybody's ever been saddled with, ever.

Yeah. He's the first autistic star of an action show or of a sitcom.

There you go. Yeah, yeah.

Where you're kind of celebrating his emotional disconnection.

Yeah. But delivering it like Rain man, you know, and just with laser precision. Yeah, yeah.

It's a really well written show. It's very funny. That guy, Chuck Lord, how many hits that guy's had? A ton of hits.

Yeah.

Maybe more than anybody, probably. Sitcom world.

Probably. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You guys are friends again.

Yeah. So am I. So am I. No, that. That sucked having that out there, you know? You know, I did finally actually remember that fucking thing. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna.

Okay.

Yeah. It's the other component to that frickin tour, to that meltdown, to that thing. There was a moment when I was only in rehab for like, I don't know, three weeks or a month. It wasn't like one of those extended stays. It was just like a. Right, you know, just like a quick little. Quick little. Yeah, like a spin drive, whatever they call it. And I got the call. We want to, we want to renegotiate the giant contract for season eight and nine, you know, and I was on the phone, I said, I. I don't, I don't think so. They're like, what, you don't think you're gonna get paid? I'm like, no, I don't, I don't think, I don't think. I don't think we should do it. I'm not. I think seven is like, you know, mantle war, seven, some other cool sevens, you know, I, I don't think. I think seven is like plenty. I think we've, I think we've told all the stories that we can mine from that, from that Malibu house on the beach with those people. They're like, no, no, you don't understand, man. This is when it all, like, this is when it turns into like a legacy play for your friends, kids and their kids and that.

And then the part they always leave out Is an. And our cut.

Yeah.

And our guy.

Yeah, that's the big part.

Yeah, yeah. And I said on the phone, and Mark and I have talked about that. Talked to me on Mark Berg, my manager. I said, mark, if I go back there, man, it's gonna go really bad. I just know it. He's like, well, you're. You're. You're projecting that. I said, I'm not projecting shit, man. I'm just. I'm just smart enough to know how I feel about it now. Got a little bit of clarity in this month. I'm in the thing. I said if I. If I go back there, I just. I got a. I got a bad feeling.

Mark, why going back to work would send you off the rails?

Just that I had run up against a thing that I. I had lost passion for the show. I'd lost passion for the process.

Okay, so that if you went and just did it just for the money, you would find some ways to stimulate yourself.

Exactly. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That I would have to do something to enhance.

I said that about a lot of guys that got caught on shows that sucked. I knew a lot of guys who got caught on shows where they were getting paid, but they did not like the show. And it was like a bad sitcom. And those guys all went crazy. Those guys all started doing a lot of drugs or they started spending too much money or something. They did something to distract themselves because they did not like what they were doing and they. They didn't feel satisfied, right? Yeah, but they were getting so much money, right? They're like, what am I gonna do? I'm getting a hundred thousand dollars a week. I'm like, right?

God, yeah. What do you do?

You can't quit.

I was. I was making 54,000 an hour. That's pre taxes.

So was I. I said no to season eight and nine. I'd be like, do. I'm saying, dress right.

Well, I'll work.

What do I have to do?

I wore Dangerfield's Ro.

Let's go.

No, but. No, that. That was after I. I got kind of crowbarred into it. You know, why not crowbar? I'd ultimately say yes. I gotta own that, you know, but it was just. I was just the wrong guy in that moment, in that pocket of time to like, give that much money to man.

Right.

You know?

Right, right.

And, like, I'd buy a bunch of cars and then invite a bunch of girls over and then just say, pick one.

And then you did that other thing where you had that other show after that that you got paid like a ton of money in advance for, right?

You talking about anger management?

Yes.

No, supposed to get. It was, it was, it was called a 1090.

Yeah. It was a crazy scenario.

How they suck you into that is they say, look, you're not going to get a ton on the, on the front side, but you're going to be, you know, you're going to own a third of the show. You're like 40, 37, 38% of the show in perpetuity. So we're going to do 100 episodes. And it's the south park model that was the first 1090 that really just blew it up and everybody got fucking rich. So you do these 10 episodes, you do a 10 episode pilot, and then if you hit, if the average number of those 10 episodes comes in at like, I don't know, like a, like A, above a 4 or like a 51 or something that it's like a share, right. Then it activates the next 90. And so then you're doing those 90 to have a sellable syndication package that will just go all over the world and, you know, do what syndicated sitcoms do. And so you've done it, you know. And you know when you say not a lot on, on the front side, you're still, you know, still getting a buck 50 an app, you know, 200, that's pretty good money.

Right, but it's not. But you kind of, you kind of eat it on that side, knowing that it's an investment for the other thing to pay. Gangbusters.

So you did, you guys, you did the 10 episodes and then you got to do all of them.

Yeah. Yes.

So you wound up doing 100.

Yes.

But you did them in a short, a short period of time.

Two and a half years. That's crazy. I know, I know. Yeah. I was not ready to go back to work. Yeah. And that's the thing I talk about in the book. The only reason I did because I wanted to show those guys across town that I was horrible again, you know. Right, right, right. And that is not, that is not any way to any mindset to like lead the troops. And it, you know, again, it started pretty cool. I did the 10. I was, was great, you know, doing some pretty good work and the shows were smart and funny and. And then we got into that 90 and it was about, it was about 20. No, what am I saying? It's probably like, like nine or 11 into it. I started feeling exactly the same shit.

That I felt on two and A half.

Going past that point, I knew my enthusiasm and passion had had a. Had an expiration date.

You couldn't manufacture it.

I tried, but I couldn't. I didn't. I didn't like the show enough. You know, I loved the people I was working with, you know, from. From the writers crew to the actors. They were terrific.

You didn't like the final product?

I didn't. Yeah. And I didn't. I stopped caring. But I still, you know, had enough dough to keep the lifestyle and all that other fun shit going on and just stayed way too fucking high to really engage in this thing. I mean, I was doing this thing, Joe, where I was partying, you know, hitting the fucking pipe. Either girls or porn or both or. Who? You know, whoever showed up. Yeah. Fucking. Yeah. Hey, come on in. Come on in. There's plenty to go around. And then there's this thing. I think I felt like I was time traveling from like 1am to like 7. Felt like 11, I don't know, 15 minutes. Whereas, you know, nine to midnight felt normal. Wow. We had plenty of time to do everything. And then like the, the hours I really needed to like, you know, settle in and enjoy those just vanished.

And then you're back to work.

No, I got someone banging on my door. Dude, you're late. What the. And I'm still sideways.

Wow.

So I'd pop a couple shots or like half a Xanax or something, and I said, I just need. And I would literally do this thing. It was a 15 minute, 20 minute nap where I would just hit the pillow. I'd try to meditate with a body just vibrating from crack all night, trying to meditate. At that point, I'm trying to fucking time travel. I'm trying to levitate, right. But I could feel. Okay, I've. I generated some calmness. And then I would hit the shower and I would. I'd be in the shower and I'd say, okay, I only have to navigate from this shower to the next shower. And that's about 11, maybe 12 hours. It was a shower to shower. Remember that commercial, like in the 70s, wasn't there a, like a deodorant or. Yeah, something called Shower to shower.

Yeah. Like it lasted from one shower to the next.

Yeah. So I'm trying to last from one shower to the next, man. No shit. And then. But I'd get to work and then have that midday drop off. And I wasn't hitting the pipe at work, but I needed to keep some, some fuel in the engine. So I'd be, you know, I start drinking. And then, man, people look at sitcoms like, oh, they're out there having a fun time, man. It is super fucking complicated. Well, you've done them, right? It's like, it's like a dance, isn't it? It's like a. It's like a choreographed thing. And so it is hard enough to do and to do well, completely focused and with all your shit intact, right? You start getting over here and trying to be that specific, just with marks, with jokes, with timing, with other people. And then a lot of my energy is going to. Trying to disguise, like the condition I'm really in, you know, and trying to make excuses, right? Oh, I had a med mix up today. Med mix up. I'm on two pills or the same fucking thing at the same time every day. There's no med mix up. You know, it's like, what are we doing?

And so, yeah, and then that turns into that thing where you just, then they start getting behind and I would just be like, I'll just, sorry for the overtime. I'll just pay for it. And, and you know, they should, they should have not taken the money. They should have said, we're shutting down. You need to fucking go, go. Go get well, or go get just a little better than what you're showing up as. And so that show kind of never really had a chance to be anything really anything special, you know, because I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't really care about it. And the thing that sucks about that, looking back, it's like, think about all the energy and the hard work that all those other people put into it and committed to it. Because I said yes, right?

You know, and there's also, there's a bunch of people that were rooting for you because they, they saw what happened with Two and a Half Men. It was big public disaster. You leave, is his career ruined? Oh, no, look, he's got another show. Oh, Charlie's back.

But did anybody even say, okay, so hold on, what did he do between that, you know, after that last swan dive into the volcano that we all watched, and then he's on the. He's back, he's on another show. Like, what did he do between then and there?

Well, the narrative on you was as an outsider was that you were one of the rare guys who could party like that but still pull it off and have a career.

Right?

And I think your ex wife had said that, that she never worried about you. You would always land on Your feet. Because you were very talented and you were also very loved, you know.

Thank you. Thank you.

Which is one of the reasons why people embraced you when you were talking about how much crack you were doing, you know, when you were saying all that people there was. They weren't mad at you. They're like, he's fucking partying. You know, it was. It was a very odd time where so many people who don't admit that they party, you know, because of their job or because of whatever, they try to, like, keep it hot in a hidden under. Under wraps. And you were doing a live interview with this lady and you're. You're talking to her about smoking rocks and. And she was flabbergasted. Like, you could tell.

Yeah.

She did not expect that kind of candor.

Right.

With discussion of illicit drugs.

Right.

It was just like, nobody ever done that before.

Well, she asked. I mean.

Right. But nobody ever embraced it.

It. Right, right, right.

Everybody else is like, well, you know, it's a terrible time in my life. I was. I got so low. I was doing crack cocaine.

Right, right, right. It comes from a place of shame.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you didn't have any shame? I didn't, no.

Because I'd watched something like a couple days before I sat down with Andrea Canning, and it was this old interview with Charlie Gibson on. On some special they did for abc. Right. I don't even think. It wasn't a Gmail. It was like a more in depth one of those exposes they do, you know, and it was me coming out of rehab and I remember watching myself and just being such a. I was like, that guy's a man. That guy's a. What's wrong with him? Look at him. All that shame, all that embarrassment, like, no, no, no, we're not doing that anymore. So that. That got locked in. Oh, yeah. I remember how. I just remember how I felt watching me doing it their way.

Yeah.

I was like, know. And then, you know, I got all. I got the brain full of, you know, nuclear crazy cream that I'm a fucking. You know, covering myself in. And that's what. Two Ks. That's like the donuts, Right, Right. And. Yeah, man. And. And. And you know where the material came from, right? Those slogans and all that stuff? No, was Brian Wilson.

Wilson from the Beach Boys?

No, the Brian Wilson pitcher for the Giants. The guy they called the Beard.

Oh, yeah.

I was on the phone with him, like, the day. A couple days before that because Tony and I. Tony, Todd and I were watching baseball Highlights. And I'm like, wow, this guy looks. This guy's a trip. Tony, get him on the phone, right? The next day, I'm on the phone with him. I think he was just trying to give me a pep talk. He was like, hey, man, just know that guys like us, you know, we're not. We're not. We're not like a. Everybody else. You know, we're. We're different, man. We got. We got. You know, we got tiger blood running through our veins. We got Adonis DNA. We got, you know, we're. We don't know how to lose, man, because we're always fucking winning, right? So I hear all this, and he's probably thinking, cool, man. I just kind of inspired him maybe just to get to the next moment, you know, that stuff went in there, man, and it stayed on a fucking loop. And I sat down, and the interview doesn't start like that, which is a trip. I'm trying to keep it together. I'm trying to give her the stuff she needs to.

Like, maybe. I don't even know what was the thrust of that story? Being fired or some shit, or I don't remember. So. But there's a moment that's not on film. And Andrea can't deny this. She makes a crack about these two girlfriends that I'm living with, right? And. And expects me to just like. Like let it. Just, you know, brush it off and then answer her next question. And I said, hold on a second. I said, that was really rude. She's like, which part? I'm like, well, what, you just. How. You just address them? You owe them an apology? And she was like, okay, I'm paraphrasing some of this, right? But that. This is kind of. This is the tone of it. It. And so how did she address them? I felt that they were dismissed as just like, porn. Porn chicks, you know, because one was a porn chick, the other was not natty. So she kind of got rolled into that, right? Unfairly, you know? And so. So then they, you know, she. Andrew's like, oh, my God. Okay. You know, I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by that, you know, But I'm over here, you know, with the thing, and.

And I'm not. I'm not letting it go. I. I asked you to apologize. We should have been past it. Now I'm stewing. Yeah.

And so you ramped up now.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's when it turned into. And then I start hearing Brian's stuff, and I'm like, I don't know, man. I. Tiger blood. And. And then it all just. And then it. It got away from me, and I. And I couldn't pull it back. And then everybody's like, okay, well, that was different. I mean, it's kind of interesting and unique and whatever, man. Well, well, let's just. Let's, let's, you know, let's just have a quiet night and. And. And. And we'll see how that plays out, you know, And I wake up into a world of. Is not. Not the world I said good night to six hours earlier, and my friends are banging on the door. People are, you know, sending me, you know, videos and stuff. And he's like, dude, the. The world's on fire with your shit, man. I'm like, all right, what does that mean? And there's, like, there's folk songs and rap songs, people, like, marching in the streets, and there's already T shirts, and there's this just. It has just gone. It exploded.

Yeah.

And so it's not like I could jump on my roof with a bullhorn and say, all right, everybody. Okay, let's just.

You know, UFC fighters were saying they had tiger blood. They were joking around about it.

See? Yeah. I mean, it got. It got.

It got away from you.

Penetrated me.

Yeah. Yeah.

It achieved penetration.

Well, that. No one had ever done an interview like that before.

I did. I didn't. I. Yeah, I. I wasn't thinking about that in the moment. I was just pissed. And I wasn't gonna be Sissy Charles, right. From the 90s, you know.

Right.

It was like this whole convergence of all these elements and all these emotions and all these feelings and. And also the, you know, resentment I had in myself, you know, and just like, all right, I'm just going to pick some targets. And. And. And. And, you know, would have been nice had it been sort of. If I could have just sort of inherited. Just kind of, you know, away from it, you know.

Have you ever thought of what your life would be like if you didn't do that interview?

I. I've started to. No, I've started. I've started to try to walk into that village. Right. But as soon as I take a look around, none of it really makes sense because I can't really imagine it, you know? What do you think it would. I mean, what would. It's hard to kind of even put those pieces together.

I wonder if you had ever would have gotten sober.

Interesting. You mean today's sober? Sober, yeah.

Today's sober.

Sober.

You. You might have had to have that complete chaos, tailspin, free fall, crash.

Right.

Publicly.

Right.

To just eventually, like, gather your together and go, okay.

Right.

All right. Time to learn and grow.

Right.

Obviously that wasn't smart. Let's do it differently.

Right?

Let's get it together and step by step, day by day. And look, here you are almost. Almost nine years later.

Almost eight years later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's you.

You always wonder, like, maybe you have to have. That was your rock bottom moment and it was public. You know, the whole world got to see it.

Like a full cleanse.

Yeah.

Wow.

Just a purging of all of it. And, you know, and still you have to battle with the. This reinforcement because now everybody is loving the fact that, you know, you're winning and that, you know, you're talking about how much crack you smoke and how crazy it is and you got all these hot girls. And I was like, he's winning, he's winning. And so now there's no incentive at all to get healthy.

Right.

Which is kind of nuts. And not only that, financially, you're kind of. It kind of helps you to be like, a little off the rails. And so you're kind of known for that, you know, like, and then you have this big tour and everybody's coming out to see you.

Right? Yeah.

Which. Which was crazy for you to do. Like, the first one where you did it without comedians was just bananas.

Yeah, I went. It was a complete train wreck. Yeah. It was a disaster.

But you guys pulled it together, and that was like, kind of the story of, like your career. When things have fallen apart, people want you to pull it together.

Right.

So even though you had that disaster show and everybody knew it was a.

Disaster show in Detroit, people were still.

Coming out to see the other ones.

Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I. I had an. The option after the Detroit massacre of flying to Chicago or taking the bus, the tour bus. Right. And I said, I need. I need those seven or eight hours on the bus. And they're like, why? I said, because I'm going to rewrite the entire show. And I think. I think Natty was on that trip. I think maybe Rick. I know Shady was on anyway, and I just. I just. There was a place, you know, room in the back, and I just kind of barricaded myself with a pad of paper and a pen and just went to town and just sort of started trying to reshape it. And when I got to Chicago, they were expecting all this, all the special effects we needed from that garbage, you know, all that garbage. I Said we traveled with none of it. I said, here's the new show. They were like, you sure about this? I'm like, just trust me. And that. And unfortunately, that's the night night where it got applauded and kept the train on the tracks was Chicago. You know, but is that weird? I had the wherewithal, like, in the middle of all that, and they still had enough.

Enough something. Enough of that thing to just, you know, maybe that's just pride at that point.

Certainly it's also. That's the impact of public humiliation.

Like, thank you. Yeah.

Enough.

How about that?

Time to get this. Get this thing back on track.

Yeah. And it was. It was just. It was. The curtain comes up and there's two chairs, and I have a moderator, and it's just a conversation. Imagine that.

Yeah.

Didn't reinvent anything.

No.

You know, and I. Oh. Oh. I wrote a letter is what it was. Dear Chicago. And it's like this whole thing, you know, including them. And. Yeah. So I got them. I kind of got them back on my side, and then we sat down. Down.

Yeah. People realized also you were figuring this tour thing out on the fly.

Yeah. It was essentially. It was 21 cities in, like, 24 days with no act. That's what it was, man.

So I know you had Jeff Ross.

Jeff Ross. Yeah.

Who's great at that. Master at off the Cuff.

Wow. He showed up and really?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Perfect guy for that.

He put a shape on it.

Yes. And then you had Russell on some of them, too, right?

Yes.

Who's also a master at off the Cuff.

Yes. And he. And he was so relieved that the two chairs had shown up, because that's when he joined us in Canada. Yeah. No, he was terrific.

Yeah.

Russell's awesome. Yeah. You know, the first night, sitting with him, some dude, like, what's, like the Canadian version of, like, a quarter? What's their dollar? A loony. Okay. But that's dollar.

I think so.

Okay. Is that the heavy one?

Yeah. Someone threw it at him?

No, at me. Oh. Like, we're in the chair for maybe five minutes, and I get. From the balcony, I get hit with one right here. Oh. And it just. It was like getting punched, like someone with a skinny metal hand, you know? And. And I just had to. I had to kind of pause into that, and they got the guy thrown out. Out. But I just thought, wow, I could have lost an eye.

Yeah.

Russell could have lost an eye. And it was just like, wow. All right.

Also, pretty good shot.

Really good shot.

Guy throws a Looney from the balcony and he hits it in the head.

Yeah, that's.

That's impressive. It is, because that's not an aerodynamic thing.

It's not. No. You have to kind of factor in. Yeah, yeah.

It's a lot of flipping of the air.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a boomerang or something.

Yeah, it's a Frisbee. It's a little, tiny Frisbee.

Yeah. So anyway, so that's. There were just moments like that, I guess. Just little cosmic reminders that not everybody was on my side.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Which is important, too.

Hey, can I hit the bathroom?

We can actually wrap it up. We're getting close.

Okay.

You want to wrap it up?

Can we just touch on a couple.

Things before we do a leak and we'll come back?

Okay, cool.

Should we bring this up? I guess we have to. So this just happened. We just found out that Charlie Kirk got shot.

It's awful.

And is he dead? No, I don't think so.

That's what was just.

One of the guys out there just.

Said confirmed in the lobby. Was just.

I was looking. I've been looking. I haven't seen anything that said confirmed.

Whoa. Murder. For having a different opinion from somebody else. Yeah. Different ideology from somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Beliefs that didn't align. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. Rest in peace news. Jesus. 27 years old, maybe 30.

They even have a suspect?

I don't know.

Well, that's why I don't. I don't. I'm literally trying to track it all on Twitter, and it's all.

Nobody deserves. He doesn't deserve that. Nobody deserves that.

So. So were you saying that MSNBC had a crazy take on it? What was their take? I'm literally just reading Twitter, so I.

Didn'T see the video.

I just saw people talking about tweets of it. I'll pull it up, though.

See?

And even now, they could have taken it down. It was a tweet or a video.

I don't.

I. I don't. I don't. I. I'm, you know, doing the show while I'm trying to figure out. Right. No, I understand. I think they were live on the air and people clipped the. What they were talking about. It's not a tweet. It's not on their Twitter account or anything. So it's someone's hot take. Take. I don't think so.

In the.

Live in the moment. Yeah, that's a crazy take. Crazy take. Is that what was the take, that they deserved it? No. That's why I didn't want to pair. Right.

Here you go.

Dave Portnoy reposted this. You found it. All right. Here, put it.

It's only 10 seconds, which a shooting like this happens.

You can put the headphones on, you can hear.

Again, I emphasize what you just emphasized. We don't know anything. The full details of this, that we don't know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration or so we have no idea.

But that's what the crazy thing was. Oh, that's it.

Yeah.

If it was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration. What, Someone shot their gun off in celebration and killed him?

Yeah. You shoot celebration guns in the air. Just what a crazy take.

Like it might not have been someone assassinating someone for the wrong opinion.

Huh? Why does something like that have to be spun?

Their ideology?

No, I know, but I'm just saying, it's like, I mean, they want to.

Try to pin it on a Trump supporter with a crazy Trump supporter with a gun going wacky. We don't know if it was a supporter shooting off a gun in celebration because, you know, they do. A lot of folks are just constantly out there shooting off guns at large gatherings in celebration. Celebration?

Yeah. Fourth of July. You can't leave your house.

What the.

No, that is. That. That. That's a. Wow.

There's going to be a lot of people celebrating this. It's so scary. It's so dangerous, too, to. To. To celebrate or to in any way encourage this kind of behavior from human beings. It's not a violent guy who's talking. Talking to people on college campus offices wasn't even particularly rude. Who's tried to be pretty reasonable with people.

Everything I saw seemed reasonable.

Very intelligent guy.

Yeah.

You know, whether you agree with him or don't, and there's a lot of stuff that I didn't agree with him on. That's fine. You're allowed to disagree with people without celebrating the fact they got shot, but.

You can't disrespect his passion. Yeah.

Well, what you're supposed to do with a guy like that if you're opposing him is debate him.

Right.

Have a conversation where your. Your argument is more compelling than his.

Sure.

That's what people should be celebrating. Discourse. You know, we used to do that.

Do some homework and bring it to the table.

Yeah.

That's horrible.

It's horrible. This podcast has been a lot about violence, man.

It has, but not this kind.

No.

I'M sorry, not. Not something so in the moment right now from someone this current that we see and are aware of daily. Right.

Yeah. I mean, he's one of those young influencers this time from the right who is all over social media, always doing these various shows and debating people and talk to people and giving speeches and.

Sure, yeah.

No one deserves this, folks. No one that has different opinions. No one deserves that.

No.

This is horrible.

No.

But I know people are going to celebrate it because this is a fucked up time and people have really fallen into this trap of us against them.

But it's also going to make people not want to be as courageous or not want to be as. As forthright with the things they believe. It's gonna put people on guard.

It could, it could also could.

It could do the opposite. I get that. But there's also going to be that sort of ingrained thing now.

You're correct. Yeah.

And, you know, and just, you know, going through the whole New York thing, I just, you know, sometimes you're, you know, there's a crowd and it's all love. It's all love. And all they want is, you know, is, is your signature or a photo or this and that. But there's so much of those moments where you're spent looking down. You're looking down the entire time.

Yeah.

And I, I don't think anybody wants to shoot me. I don't. I don't think that that's kind of out in the world, right? No. But it just, it's. It's the type of shit that just lives in, in, in the back of one's mind. Yeah. Because how could it not?

How could it not?

And then the thing like today, and you're like, okay, that, that's why it's in. It's, it's. It's in the back of our minds.

Yeah.

You know.

Well, it's. You know, when we were talking about assassinations earlier, whether it's Kennedy or RFK or, you know, you think of him in the past, you think of them like. You don't. When something happens in the current, like right now with this one with Charlie Kirk, it doesn't seem real. No, it seems very surreal.

It does, does.

It seems like it does. It's going to take a long time before we reference this as something that happened. Like he. Oh, you remember he got shot and killed. Oh, yeah. Like right now, it's just. Doesn't seem real. It seems, it seems so crazy that just, it's not registering.

It's not. No. Is, is he, is he a friend?

No, I met him once. I met him once at a gun range, of all places.

Wow. Wow.

Yeah. He was a nice guy when I met him.

Wow.

It's a fucked up time. People are so divided in this country. So divided. And there's so many people that love it. They love that we're divided and they profit off that division and they stoke the fires and they do it for their own profit. And it's so, so gross. It's so gross. And to encourage this kind of thing is really one of the most horrific things that you could do after someone dies horribly. Like, this is celebrate.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's on. It's unfair.

It should be a wake up call for everybody. Like, this is nuts. This is nuts.

No, it's, it's unforgivable that, that to spend things like that. And because the people they're never thinking about is that person's family.

I think they just, that's just like default with those. They gaslight you by default.

Right.

So immediately they try to find some reason why the whatever the thing is that's in the news is someone else's fault.

Right. Of course.

It's just all gaslighting and that's what they're paid to do. They're paid propagandists masquerading as the news. News. So weird.

No, this is a, this is a, it's a, It's a dark day.

Yeah, it is. Well, one of things. Two things is going to happen. Either people are going to realize how insane this is and we have to have a conversation about being able to have conversations.

Right.

Or it's going to get a lot worse. That's what's scary. Scary. This could spark off some kind of a real violent conflict. You know, that guy had a lot of fans.

Yeah.

People love that guy.

Yeah, I know.

And if they find out that he got killed for something that they vehemently oppose in the first place, it could send people over the edge.

It could, it could. Yeah. There's always that flashpoint moment in any, you know, in, in previous times like this.

Yep.

You know, it's. There's always that tipping point moment.

Like. Like the Rodney King film.

Yep.

Right. Something.

Yeah.

Just like that's it.

Yeah. You know, this also highlights just a little bit of perspective. Like how lucky Trump is. Was.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and it's just like Charlie didn't get the benefit of a head turn or a couple of, A couple of microns or millimeters or you know, and it's just like, wow. Wow. Who, who, who decides that? Yeah. You know, that is just. There's a Trump thing.

It's bananas.

Yeah.

But they talk about clips his ear.

Yeah. Because he makes a reference to something. Yeah. And then it's just. Yeah.

And then it clips his ear where if he didn't turn his head, he'd be dead. And it would have been on live on CNN.

How do we know more about an assassination from 1963. Yeah. Than we do about the Trump one about. Yeah. Eight months ago?

That story's fucked. There's a lot of weird stuff in that story. There's a cell phone that was traveling because of metadata. They know cell phone was traveling from offices outside. Outside of the offices of the FBI in that area all the way to this guy multiple times. He was 20 years old. His apartment was professionally scrubbed. There was no silverware in it. There had no social media presence. He, you know, was regularly training with like military guys. He was regularly training and shooting. Like one guy had remembered him from a range.

Right, right.

Like what, what, he was in a Black Rock commercial.

Interesting.

Two years before.

Right. Like what? His, his, his chosen rooftop is just kind of between the two quadrants that they're assigned to cover. Not only that, it's just, it's just a blind spot.

The, the excuse for why they didn't have officers on that rooftop was it was too sloped. The slope was too steep, which made zero sense.

Wow.

Cuz he climbed up it. He was fine.

Yeah, he did.

What the are you talking about didn't make any sense? Not only that, the, the one where the, the snipers were perched had a steeper slope. Made no sense. No, it was nuts. They found that guy walking around the, the, the grounds a half an hour before the event with a rangefinder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If, if you're not, if you're not on a golf course with a rangefinder.

Yeah. Then you, you know you're gonna shoot something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what they're for. But it's just, man, it's sucks that that to say things like, you know, the, the, the these are the times we, we currently inhabit, you know, and, and that, that there's nothing. That is an absolutely factual statement. Yeah. And it sucks to have to, you know, to exist in, in, inside of that.

Yeah.

You know, it's very strange, man. It's very strange.

Very strange.

Very strange.

It's very strange. And you know, we've talked about it a Bunch of times, but it bears repeating. I think a lot of it is highlighted by bots. A lot of it is people are being inflamed online by people that aren't even real accounts.

Interesting. See, I don't, I don't study any of that.

Oh, there's a lot of that going on. I think, Think it's a giant percentage of all online discourse where people are hating and saying mean things about people's political beliefs or anti Israel things or anti Palestine things or whatever. I just think a giant ton of that is foreign. Foreign governments who are running these bot farms.

Wow.

And it's been proven. They, they know for a fact China actually got caught recently. What was this? The Chat GPT thing? They were using chat, they were using open AI software. Chat GPT blocked a bunch of accounts for multiple countries that had suspicious activity. Yeah. And they were commenting on like, blocking of US Aid money and a bunch of different, like, political subjects and. But what they're basically doing is just getting people to fight. Just, that's what they want. They want constant fighting, constant info. Constant. Like, we have to take action. We have to, you know, there's constantly stoking the flames.

Right, right, right. Wow.

So it's not even organic. Some of it's organic for sure, but a lot of it is being enhanced by foreign governments for sure, and probably some of it by our own government. What they did with the, with the Manson family, you think they stopped there? I think some of that kind of stuff isn't going on right now that we don't know about right now because there hasn't been a Tom o' Neill to write a book about it.

Sure, sure. And then we also never know which stuff was the beta test test for the, you know, for that, for that, you know, specific type of program or that specific type of op to be rolled out.

Yep.

And like, where, you know, okay, let's, let's, let's see how they react to this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, hell yeah. That worked like a charm. Okay. Activate more of those, you know.

Yeah. Jesus.

How do we wrap this up? On a positive note, I don't think we can. No know.

I think it is what it is.

It is what it is.

I think we just have to deal with that.

Yeah.

Well, listen, man, it was great to finally actually meet you.

This was amazing.

It's a lot of fun.

Thank you.

Enjoy talking.

Thank you. Yeah, no, I, I, I think you'll notice now I, I, I always need a few minutes to get warmed up.

Yeah.

Get settled in no, you seem cool.

Right off the bat.

No, thank you.

Great stories, too. Jesus.

Thank you. My. Just my. Sometimes my brain, like we talked about. Yeah. You know, it wants to go somewhere else when I was to trying. Trying to.

It's amazing your brain works as good as it does considering all the things you've done to it.

Oh, that's awesome. Thank you.

If you think about it.

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, there's that part. Yeah, there's that part. Because people are like, you know, hey, man, you should get some laser work on your face. I'm like, dude, I'm lucky this thing is still attached.

Yeah.

So go yourself.

You actually look way better than you've looked at a long time. I think the sobriety suits you. It does.

Thank you.

You look really healthy.

You know, I took a page out of your book, a very specific page, and even if it's a rumor, it worked. I use a sauna blanket, right? This thing called Higher Dose. And I'm not sponsored by them. I just bought one and I fucking love it. I use it at home and then I hear, hey, man, fucking Joe travels with his. Right.

I have one of those sauna blankets.

But do you travel with it?

I do if I know that there's not going to be a sauna.

Okay, okay, okay. So I was.

A lot of times I'll just try to find a place that has a sauna.

Okay. Yeah, I was like, well, it. If he's traveling with him, you definitely can, though.

It's good. They're great.

I'm gonna travel with mine.

Yeah.

So I've had it on this trip I traveled with. It's a pain in the ass. I'm lugging this rolling duffel and who cares? But so, so thank you.

It's worth it, though.

Thank you for the idea. Yeah.

Those are great because those sauna blankets are great because they're portable and you could always just get it in.

Right, Right.

I really genuinely prefer a real sauna if you have one, because I like to stretch out in the sauna.

Sure.

It's the best time ever to stretch.

But as far as time with the portable blanket is like, I tell people it's like a Bikram class without all the yelling and pain. Right. Do you get drenched in that?

Oh, sure. That's a lot of. What Bikram means is, you know, a lot of it is heat shock therapy.

Right.

You know, it's also the yoga and the exercises, which are great. And also the fact that you're more pliable when you're really warm and heated up like that, which really helps. But a lot of what they're. There was actually a study that they were doing at Harvard. I don't know if they completed it, but they were doing it a couple years back about the benefits of hot yoga and whether they're comparable to the medical, the known medical benefits of sauna, which are pretty, pretty, pretty well documented.

And, and what, what, what was the conclusion, Dan?

I don't know. I, I have to think it's got to be similar because I've been in both. You know, I've been in a lot of hot saunas and I've done a lot of hot yoga. And that you, because of the exercise, I think you reach very similar body temperatures.

Got it.

And you, your heart rate jacks up because you're so, you're so hot. You're. You know, you could barely cool yourself off with a glass of water when they let you have a sleep, a sip, like in between things, you're allowed to take a sip of water.

Yeah.

But it's, it's real similar. And it's 90 minutes, you know, which is brutal.

Yeah.

You can get through a real good Bikram hot yoga class. At the end of that, man, you're, you're good.

You're. Yeah, you're. You're gonna have a, you, you have a different day in front of you.

100. We all did that every day. It was like how everyone started their day.

Yeah.

The world be so much more peaceful.

Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right.

It really would.

Yeah, it really would.

It'd be a much, much, much better place. And you don't have to fucking do anything hard in the gym. You don't have to lift weights, you don't have to punch the bag. All those things are great. But just do a hot yoga class for 90 minutes every day. You. You will live in a different world.

Yep. 13 up, 13 down. Right? Yeah.

You'll live in a world of kindness and sweet people and hello, friend.

Right. Because you've already, you've already put yourself through something that nobody else can deliver. The rest of the day. They can't deliver that kind of pain you just inflicted on yourself.

And it's a constant battle to see if you can use a hundred percent effort.

Exactly.

You're constantly battling. Can I hold this pose?

Yes.

15 more seconds.

Yeah. And there's no cheat zone.

Exactly.

There's no. You can't. Right.

Because you're always doing it. 100 of what you can do.

Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. No, I was, I, I was, I was going to his, his studio on, on like Rexford in the early 80s.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, man. We were with that original crew.

Wow.

Yeah. There's one thing that was really cool. Kareem was in there.

Wow.

And you know, a lot of the stuff with the arms above the head, he could only go about here because the ceiling. Yeah. I would come in late sometimes and Kareem would already be in there. And so his shoes would be like next to his locker. So I would put my. Still wearing my shoes inside his shoes just because I just had to. I mean, it's cool as fuck. It's Kareem. Right. And so. But then Quincy Jones is also in there. Right. And so the mirror, you could see the front desk where you check in behind you. Like you could see it, but it was behind us. We're all facing forward. And for about a six month period, you know, Quincy's in a little Speedos and he's giving, you know, he's giving it his all. He'd be in the middle of like the standing bow or the freaking head to knee or something like a triangle or something really complicated. And he'd stop and he'd leave the class. But you'd see him going to the desk and writing shit down. Fucking sweating in his Speedo. Right. He's writing shit down. He's sweating all over the page.

He'd come back and try to, you know, resume what, what he was doing. And then this went on for a while and we came to find out later, guess what he was working on. If you think about the year, if you think about like what, that, how his mind was being expanded. Right. He was producing Thriller. Whoa. Yeah. And he's getting inspired during the yoga, during the Bikram yoga, we were kind of watching in the mirror the. The best, I think the largest selling album ever perhaps, Right?

Probably.

Yeah. It's gotta be up there being built behind us. Wow. Kind of a trip, right? Yeah.

Wow. That shows you how hyper dialed in he is.

Yeah.

Even in the middle of a yoga class. Gotta run out. He's probably thinking about it with every pose.

Exactly. Yeah. Or some. And just how to write it down. How to write it down.

Wow. Because most people aren't allowed to leave the class. Class, but Quincy Jones has to write some down for Thriller. You got to let him leave.

Yeah, yeah. He gets that pass, doesn't he?

Yeah, he gets the pass. Yeah, he gets the pass.

All right, brother, this is so much, this is an absolute pleasure.

Thank you. An honor.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Best of luck for you in everything.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, bye, everybody.

It.