Transcript of #2440 - Matt Damon & Ben Affleck

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That's wild. I went in because I came in from... I am here. I think I was leaving at the time. I went in and I'm sitting in the waiting room and it was on a Sunday because I was like, I'm only in town for you. Stan was like, I'll come into the office. I'm like, Thank you so much. I had to have a filling or whatever I needed. It was an emergency. I'm sitting in the thing and I'm not getting called in, but the ladies are just... No, there's not even a receptionist. Stan comes out with a mask. No, the first thing I hear is, Big fucker, fucking, mother of cocks, fucking pig fucker. I'm like, What is happening in there? It's in the other room. Stan comes in with his mask on. He goes, Sorry. He goes, I'll be with you soon. He goes, I got Hunter in the chair. He goes back. I hear, Listen to Hunter Thompson swear for 15 minutes. I'm like, This is amazing. Then Stan goes, Okay, come on back. Hunter's getting out. He goes, Oh, you're sitting down with this guy? He's a fucking assassin. Then he goes, and he's got this jug of clear fluid.

He's like, You're going to need a sip of this. I'm like, Oh, my God, this is fucking Hunter S. Thompson's moonshark.

I'm like, This is fucking amazing.

I'm talking to this dude for 30 seconds and I'm getting a sip. It was 10: 00 in the morning on a Sunday. Was it? Yeah. He was halfway through the jug. It was just pure burn, like catch fire.

Where was this?

In Beverly Hills. Yeah. Brentwood. Brentwood was standing in the office.

Oh, my God. That's amazing.

It really was amazing. I had probably a total of seven minutes with him, and it was like… I could not have been a better seven minutes.

That's incredible. I went to the Woody Creek Tavern just to go there because I know he used to go there. You could feel him in the building Loathing. There's all the pictures on the walls. It's a cool little place.

I mean, those books, Fucking Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing, it's some of the best writing. He really had his own voice. Rum Diary, spectacular. It was really descriptive and punchy and fucking interesting and fucked up. And he also just lived that life. It was like- Fear and Loathing changed my life.

Like, reading that book was like, What the fuck? What is this guy doing? This grown men out there, balding, grown men with spectacles running around with a...

There's lizards in the fucking lounge. You got to listen in.

He's got a day trip bag filled with acid. Like, what the fuck are you doing, man?

And it's great shit. You feel like you're on the adventure with him. Yeah.

No, it's interesting to watch the evolution of his writing, too. I read Hell's Angels, and it's very different.

That's early when he was restrained. For that, I think it was edgy for the time. You're like, Oh, you're going to get beaten, chain-whipped and stomped by the angels. And that was really edgy. And by the time they got to what it was, Fear Loathing in '72 or something like that, he was just out there.

Yeah, he was gone.

He found his voice. He did find his voice.

He was supposed to be covering a race for Sports Illustrated. That's a fear and loathing when I write a book about how I fucking lost my mind.

Great. It's great, Hunter.

We'll take it. Well, hey, it's very nice to meet you guys. I met you before, but it's very nice to meet you. It's a pleasure, man. Thank you very much. I love the fucking movie. The rip is great. It's really good. It's so original and it's so different. I love those movies, but it's not like any one that I've ever seen before. Really solid movie. Thanks, dude. It was awesome.

So much better than you're hating it in the sense.

Interviews where they're like, So I saw the movie. Anyway, how you guys been?

We've had a lot of those. The press junkets where they come in and the first thing that you know the movie sucks. If they don't ask you anything about the movie, they come in, they go, So how you been? You're like, Oh, shit, this is going to be bad.

Is it weird? The transformation of the film industry seems to like a lot of it is moving towards these big streaming movies now.

Absolutely. I mean, look, it's because where most people have gone to watch them. It used to be the only place you'd go see movies in the '40s. Every American went to the movie every week, basically. But it was because it was that or watch the cows walk by. That was the only... And then TV It comes around, it's little, and you see these little cereals. But what happened was now, this is why it's totally changed the whole thing because you got 300 million people, 30, whatever it is, watching Netflix. And it's a lot harder to get people to go into the movies. There's also YouTube. There's also TikTok. My kids, it's hard to get them excited about a movie. That's what we had.

Yeah, that was our... I mean, our teen years, every weekend, we're at the movies. There's just no question about it. You were going to go and usually not get into one because there were too many people, and then you just see what else is playing and go to that.

Well, it seems like it was slipping away because so many people were watching streaming already, and then COVID came around and everyone was locked down and no one was going to the movie theater, and then it just set in.

I had this drama that was coming out right when COVID hit. I really like the performance movie. It's an alcoholic guy who's kid, who a kid dies and becomes an alcoholic. It's a dark movie, but I loved it. I could tell we're fucked. No one's going to go to the theater, see this movie. It wasn't even that streaming really blew up, of course, during COVID. Look, they rushed it onto streaming. People actually saw it. I was like, All things being equal, I'd like people to see it. And it's not like my dad had an 11-inch black and white TV, and that's what was TV viewing now. It's $200. You got a fucking 65-inch flat screen and good sound. So of course, people are willing to... And then streamers also started making great shows. You have adolescents. I don't know if you saw it. I think that's one of the best things ever done.

I haven't seen adolescents.

It's unbelievable. What is it? Oh, my God. I don't want to spoil too much of it. It's only four episodes. They're all one shot. They're all one shot. Each episode is one entire shot. So the cast, they took, I think, I talked to the director about it, that the cast took, I think, a week to rehearse each one. It It took them a week to shoot it. So they do it twice a day. It's the full hour they would choreograph the entire thing. It's a feat on itself. Yeah, it's really- And then the acting is great. But that's... I mean, just dismiss that. You could even call it a gimmick. It's not in in this case. But the performances and the writing and what it's about, it's as good as anything you'll see. It's phenomenal. What is it on?

Netflix. Netflix, yeah. It's not even an anomaly. There's Baby Reinger, there's fucking succession, there's Game of Thrones, Ozarks. It's just like, okay, well, they're doing great shit out there. It's not like this implied thing before was like, yeah, well, TV is not as good, not as interesting.

When we started, there was a It was different. Like George Clooney, for instance, there was a big thing. He very famously became this superstar on ER. That show, 40 million people a week were watching that show. It was the biggest thing, right? Because there were only a few channels to tune into, and that show was the biggest one. And George never renegotiated his contract. He wanted to work in movies, and it was like, you can't go from TV to movies. Very few people can do it. And he really strategically and patiently, he joked that on In the last episode he was on, Anthony Edwards, his co-star, was making a million bucks for the episode, and he was making 20 grand or whatever his deal was. He could have renegotiated, but he would have had to give more years.

The point was that's how bad he wanted to get off TV and do movies.

That's how bad he wanted to get off the biggest TV show in the world because there was such a big level change between features and TV.

Well, it was a giant difference in quality. It was also the breaking it up for commercials. It was just a different experience.

There's all these rules. You can't say this, you can't do that, you can't swear, not all that. A can of violence and all the things people want to see in movies. Also, it wasn't as interesting. Then now that's tethered to these schedules and all the stuff, or as you get this shit, you don't have a schedule and you can take a bunch of risks. And that started happening. And then it was like, well, this all is just as good, if not better, than what's in the movies.

And so it went away. Then movies started to move towards more IP.

Because it was hard to get people to come to the movies, everyone got scared and thought, well, you It has to be a sequel or a superhero movie.

And so an interesting little movie. In the '90s, when we came onto the scene, there were a lot of really good independent movies that were being made. It was a really great time to be making movies. They were making daring movies, and then everyone just got way more conservative because it's huge. The business is so different theatrically and streaming, because to put out a movie theatrically, you have to put so much more money behind it to publicize. You're trying to get everybody- You're basically spending about what the budget was to make it to advertise.

Because you got 50% of the theatrical.

Yeah, because you split it with the movie house, right? Through the Exhibit.

$25 million movie to break in. You got to make $100 million.

And you got to get everybody to not only know about the movie, but to show up that Friday night, that specific time for that specific movie, and to cut through all the noise that people are contending with.

It becomes about risk. And nobody wants to take the risk. They don't want to make something new because it's such an investment. We're going to lose our fucking money. And the streamers have stepped into that. You're not going to have to necessarily have a star. You could try something more interesting or it didn't have to be a superhero movie, whatever it was. And also, I think it's, frankly, people my age, first of all, it's expensive. You take your family, it's $100. You're on a streaming service, $20 a month. You can watch all you want. So you can't be Cavalier about... You're just going to price it however the fuck you want and expect everyone to be indifferent to that. And then Also, the idea of for me, there's a lot of stuff. I make that decision. Do I want to see The Odyssey on a big screen? Fucking death. I went to the theater to just watch the trailer for that movie. And did I? At one battle, after another, I wanted to go see in the theater. But there's movies of people that I really like and respect where, yeah, and I got a good system and shit, but I'm like, look, I'll watch and I might get tired, or I want to pause it and take a piss, or the kids, whatever it is, that's conducive to my lifestyle.

And most people's lifestyle. I even see a few. I think most people Yeah, but there is the experience of seeing it with a bunch of other people.

When you see an awesome movie with a bunch of other people. It's like a shared experience.

A hundred %. I always like an attention. Way more attention. When I went to see one battle on IMAX, that feeling, there's nothing like that feeling. I took two of my kids and two of my nephews and my wife, and we all went. And you're with a bunch of strangers, the people in your community, and you're having this experience together. I always say it's more like going to church. You show up at an appointed time. You know what I mean? It doesn't wait for you. Versus the experience of watching at home, I think. You're watching in a room, the lights are on, other shit's going on, the kids are running around, the dogs are running around, whatever it is. You know what I mean? It's just a very different level of attention that you're willing to... Or that you're able to give to it. And that has a big effect. And it also ends up having an effect or is starting to have an effect on how you make movies. For instance, Netflix standard way to make an action movie that we learned was you usually have three set pieces, one in the first act, one in the second, one in the third.

And they ramp up in the big one with all the explosions, and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act. That's your finale. And now they're like, Can we get a big one in the first five minutes to get somebody? We want people to stay tuned in. It wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialog because people are on their phones while they're watching. You know what I mean? Then it's going to really start to infringe on how we're telling the story.

But then you look at our lessons, it didn't do any of that. It didn't do any of that. It was fucking great. You know what I mean? I think it's dark, too. It's tragic and intense. It's like a guy who finds out these kids accused of murder, and there's long shots in the back of their head. They get in the car, nobody says anything. I think there are those... Look, there I wish that were that.

It feels more like the exception. It's so masterfully made that it feels a little more like the exception.

I hope it's not-My feeling is just that it demonstrates that you don't need to do any of that shit to get people. You know what I mean? I think, yes, the town had the action thing in the beginning of the first five minutes. You know what I mean? It's a common trick that you would go, Let me grab them and get them invested. It's like the movies that start with the hero hanging from the cliff, and now we're going to flash back to the beginning and tell you how they got there. I always feel like complaining about it makes me feel like one of these guys was like, When I was a boy, you always want to freeze the culture at the time when you, I don't know, felt more like, We used to have these phones. Who the fuck are all these phones? And everyone's looking at their phone. I get it. Yes, it's true. Also, it's like supply and demand. People want to look at their phone, they can look at TikTok, they're going to do that. I think what you can do is make shit the best you can, make it really good.

People can still go to the movies. I think we have this idea that's like an existential threat. Everything that comes along is going to destroy everything. Instead of what history suggests is that there's marginal encroachments, things shift. Yep, as television came along, there was less theater going. That's still going to happen. People are still going to go to the movies because of what you said. It feels like a cool thing to do. I'm going to go see The Odyssey, I guarantee you, in a theater, no matter what. A viewer of them, you could argue, that's because I have more choice or whatever it is. It's hard to fight supply and demand. That's the trick. If people want to watch a bunch of stuff at home because they invest it in TVs and cost us money, they will. So okay. But the upside of that is, I can try to do something, hopefully, that actually doesn't need to have the most urgency to get you to come to the theater with your family, that's a little more experimental or risk-taking or whatever in that way.

Well, you got to adapt. I mean, there's no way you're going to change people's viewing habits now. No. What percentage of Netflix is actually watched on phones? It's got to be pretty high, which is insane.

Even watching a laptop for me, it sucks. Yeah, it sucks.

That's a joke that I like to make with every director I work with. When they're really puzzling over a shot or really grinding out something, I go, it's not going to look as good on the phone. Just everyone gets angry.

No, that's going to look great. This fucking big. But keep fucking around and lighting that.

It is weird, though, the concern for the algorithm, making sure that people watch. Like, look, we've got data that shows within the first five minutes when this happens, they tune out. My buddy Tony Hinchcliff, he's got Kill Tony, and now it's on Netflix. And so they're giving him notes now, and they can give him... But they're not telling him what to do, but they're saying, this is when people are tuning out. Just so you have that data, now decide how you want to edit things. That's like, oh.

Yeah. Slippery slope. It is because it's like the bar for Walking out of a movie theater is a lot higher than from just changing the channel. Right. And oftentimes, directors will want to make a movie that is challenging and upsetting. I remember Terry Kinney, my friend, great actor, and he told me about the experience of seeing Taxi Driver in New York for the first time in '76 or whenever came out. And he said, What I remember, he's not only the movie, but I remember standing at the back because I had got up. I got up of my seat and I went, but I couldn't bring myself to leave because I was so invested. But I was standing at the back by the door watching the movie, and he goes, And there were two other people standing next to me who were doing the same thing. Just because they were disturbed? Because the movie was disturbing them so much. Wow. Which is not a bad thing, right? So had that been on Netflix or Amazon, if somebody says, Oh, I'm disturbed, and they change the channel, that doesn't mean you shouldn't make Taxi Driver. Right.

That's true. The investment of going to a place is much greater.

Yeah. One of the values of that is that you look at movies from the '70s. The first act was 25, 30 minutes. The verdict for this is a great movie. Takes a long time to get going. Look at the Deer Hunter.

Oh, yeah.

You're right. What you're saying, the threshold for walkout is real. Any scene like, I want to watch Naked alone. You flip the fucking... So you are battling that.

I watched Le Monde the other night, Steve McQueen, and no one talks for five minutes. There's no talking. It's just a bunch of getting done. Just a bunch of people doing things. And it's like, wow, you could make it different. You could let it air out back then. They had a different respect for what it was. You were telling a story and you're going to let it air out.

Well, they also knew where their audience was. They were in a theater that they- Part of it was they wanted to come there.

I mean, this great story I like is the first time they they debued a movie, guys with a projector in a room full of people. It was a movie of a train pulling into the station. So they They put the reel up and they did the demonstration, and they showed the people, and everybody missed it because they were turned around staring at the projector. They never fucking seen anything like that. It's like the technology is upstaging. But you come for an event, come for a thing. We're all going to be here. That's part of it. I don't know. There's competing arguments. You can think, well, what do you get to do? And some people just go ahead and fuck it. Jim Cameron's the avatar. I'm going to make my three-hour movie, and people are going to come, and great. You know what I mean? People say, Oh, well, you can't have a three-hour movie. He's like, Well, I'm I'm Cameron, and I actually got the number one and two in movies. I think I got this. He goes ahead and does it. The history is full of people who got told a bunch of conventional wisdom, and we're like, Yeah, but we're going to do something different.

And as it turns out, that's actually what people want, too. It's not for you to just repeat the other shit that's been done before or worked before.

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Yeah, hopefully it's successful.

I think it's a fucking great movie, man. It's a fun movie.

But It's good, but it's not like fucking we're saints or a philanthropist. It's completely self-serving, in my opinion, because in order to do the job well, everybody who's working on it has to be really invested and give a shit about the result, not their paycheck only. Sometimes you're with a crew that just happened to be great anyway, even though they don't really have to care about it, and they do. What we saw was like, that makes your movie better. Then there's just the thing of the business is changing. You see these strikes and work stops, all these fucking questions. In order for this, I think, to survive and to be a good middle class fucking artist, artisanal craftsman job, we got 1,200 people that need to have reliable jobs. And part of the in our negotiations is always like, Yeah, but we're all going to get fucked. We have no participation. I used to work on movies and it happens to have actors, too, where you go, Oh, we all invested. It was really hard, and we fucking put in the extra effort. Somebody else walked away with all the success. And my theory with Matt was we were like, how about where let's say, okay, it's just fairness, right?

If this thing actually blows up and does really well, you should benefit from that. People have been given promises of participation back and haven't come true. This is like everyone got their rates, everyone got their hourly, no one cut anything. This is just an exercise in actually proving that it's not bullshit, that if there's success, you'll get some extra. A little success, a little extra, a little more, a little more.

But also, like you said, because it's fair. It's fair. In success, the people who made the movie should participate in that. And also with this one, which was important to us, they delineate above the line and below the line, above the line being us, the director and the producers. Basically, the cast. And below the line being the more blue collar side of our industry.

Like painters, grainsmen, camera, be able to switch everybody else's drivers.

We believe when we When we started this company, we were like, Look, we know who makes our movie better. This has been mispriced the whole time. The economics have been wrong. When there's a big success, everybody who had a hand on it- Because you see a great director that people rely on or an actor that's considered bankable, they're all going, Okay, I need all my people with me. Yeah, every great director I've worked with, and I've worked with a lot of them, they have their regular crew members that ride or die with these people. Because you said it to me when we were starting in the company. You were like, those department heads who are each handling your camera department, your grip department, your electric. Those people are ultimately the people who make the movie good. They make a demonstrable difference in how good your movie is.

And imagine once you get a good flow with a great crew, you got the band. There's no need to bring in new band members. Let's do this again.

And then you have the situation where they all are filmmakers, too. Everybody knows what we're trying to do. So then what makes it... You're trying to get something special, something interesting, something fucking magical in some moment. You have to... If people are tight or they're bent out of shape or it fucks up the environment. People aren't relaxed. Actors can't do their best work. And that does make a difference between something that's good, average, great, whatever. And I think that if you say... It makes cognitive sense to people. But if you look around, what's his name? Colin Anderson, camera operator. He's unbelievable. Not the cinematographer. But I would tell you, I think he's the greatest camera operator there's in Hollywood. If you want evidence that he shot Marty Supreme, he was a camera operator in one battle after another. You look at his resume and you're like, Oh, that's interesting. These are all fucking great movies. Now, is he personally responsible for all of it? No, because it's a collaborative medium. There is no... You can be a painter and paint by yourself. You can be a novelist and do that, sing, write music. You can't do this job alone.

There are a lot of people that go into it. Even when I realized Matt was the lead in the last movie I did air that I directed, having somebody so fucking good in your movie who also shows up, does his job, is friendly, isn't fucking around or playing games or being weird, that sets this tone. Everybody else goes, Okay, what's Damon like? Oh, I see. We're taking it seriously, but nobody's going to be a dick. We're all going to do our job. We're not going to take ourselves too seriously, but we're going to take the job really seriously. Immediately, everybody snaps into that. That trickled-out effect goes across the whole thing. And I think the best thing that I know how to do as a director is just create an environment where people feel like they show up, people like me, they're rooting for me. I can fucking embarrass myself and be bad, and it's not going to be in the movie, and it was going to make me feel self-conscious.

I'm listening to my ideas.

And if I have something to offer, they're going to go, Oh, that's a good idea. You know what I mean? And that's the trick, in my view. And then you're depending on the gifts of all these people, every single one of them. Guys, it's Some woman's assistant prop master is coming up with the stuff that Phil Knight found, his Waffle from the shoe. They found it on eBay. That's an extra mile. You know what I mean? If you make people feel like it matters and you give a shit and that they're contributing, and, Oh, cool. Let's do a closeup of that. That's really fucking cool. They'll die for you. They'll go all the way, and it changes the whole-And if you bonus them.

It's not just all... There's an actual codified bonus structure to say, we- This is the way of recognizing that shit.

It's in your paycheck, too. It's not just shit. That's very real.

You guys developed this? Is this something that you... Kudos to you guys for addressing this, first of all, and recognizing it and having that attitude because it's so important and so easy for big movie stars to just think about themselves and their own career.

We're communists, Joe. We're from Cambridge.

Keep the car running.

No, but each deal has We've had this... Each deal that we've done so far has been different because we've made deals with different studios and platforms and stuff like that.

And it just involved us basically retroactively going, Hey, we came in under. We did a great job. There's extra money. Here you go. This is the first time that we're able to actually create a schedule where it's like... And by the way, we wouldn't have been able to do that without Netflix going, Okay, cool. You think you can make this work? We'll give you a shot. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to do it. So we had to say, Look, we're not asking you to take a cut. But we can tell you, if the movie is watched as many hours in the first 90 days as this movie A, that you all know what it is, then that's 20% of your salary, let's say. You just take a hit. So it's like, yeah, you make more money, your bonus is more. It's all just pegged to where you're at just because that was the most fair idea we'd come up with.

So they gave us five different levels, right? The first couple, hopefully we can hit, and maybe the third, maybe we get. And then it got to the fifth level.

It's like single, double, triple home run.

Home run, fucking grand slam. The fifth one was 110% of all Netflix viewers or something like that. So it's everybody who has a Netflix account watches it, and then 10% of them watch it again. And we were like-It's like K-Pop demon. This is the biggest K-pop demon. But that's what happened. We were laughing, and then K-Pop demon Hunters came along and actually did that. That's the first movie that's ever- Jesus. Yeah.

Well, I think a lot of autistic kids watch that over and over and over.

I haven't seen it, but I mean, somebody's watching it over and over. Oh, yeah.

Dude, people love it.

It's The value of it is the biggest... Before this, one of the big things and everybody's fighting over in the strike is like, We'll share your check. There used to be residuals, right? The residuals, and it was only for SAG and a few other things, but it was like, and you knew if you had a line in the movie and there was a certain number at the box office, Where are you going to get another 2,000 bucks? And that was a big deal. You get that check in the mail and like, Okay, I can pay the rent for another month. I can do that shit. But then there was this ill... What constitutes success? Because streamer doesn't actually sell another ticket if you watch that movie. It's hard to tell, why did you sign up for this service? So for a while everyone's looking at the first thing that you looked at when you subscribe to somebody, okay, you're going to go buy Hulu? What did you watch first? The Bear. Well, The Bear must be creating value for us. But you can't assign a strict numerical value to it because it's like a box office where you can go, well, Oppenheimer is a billion dollars or whatever, and that's another billion dollars on our balance sheet because streamers are doing a subscription model.

Whether it's like a gym membership or in the first of the year, you're like, I'm going to work out again. I'm going to buy that annual membership, and you go twice or you go to the gym every single day, you're paying the same amount.

Also, the weird thing is with streaming, when you're opening up Netflix It's not like you're going to the movie theater and there's seven movies playing. You're opening up Netflix and you have an unlimited option list. It's insane how much content. You could waste the rest of your life sitting in front of Netflix and then die and have millions of hours more to listen to or watch.

You're right. When we start researching that and built our own data to pull people and examine all this stuff, it's actually all the library stuff that people are watching all the time. If you said the news stuff is theoretically what keeps people with the subscription or whatever. But in terms of volume of time, I think it doesn't come from them, but it looks a lot like we're going to watch Orange is the New Black and the episode of Suits and the Old Seinfeld and Friends and Cupcake Wars. That's what's because Americans watch 6 Hours of TV a Day.

That's crazy. And then the other 6 Hours, they're on their phone. How does anything get done? When you start It's hard to make this film, what is the process? How did you guys agree on it? Did you guys have it written first?

Before you knew you were going to Netflix with it? Yeah, he came to us with the script, and we've known Joe for a really... He did His first movie was called Narc. I don't know if you ever saw.

Yeah, that was a great movie.

We met him way back this, 25 years ago or something like that. We met him back then. Ben did a movie of his in '04, I think. We've known Joe for a really long time and been in touch with him over the years. He just sent this to us. We read it and we thought it was great and bought it for the company. Then we started talking to Joe about how he wanted to do it. He suggested that we actually do the movie. We were like, Yeah, why don't we do it? It seems.

Basically because we like it. We like it. We're not trying to just do our movies. We want to be doing movies with all the people that we like, respect, and Then the way we set it up is such that to try to get... Historically, the way it's worked is a studio will own an IP or a script or whatever, and then they'll say, Okay, we want you to do it. Okay, well, how much? Well, how much did you get for the last one? And you go, Then what's the budget? And then that's how they assign a value to it. But my belief was, well, especially when these streams are coming into the market and chasing stuff, is like, this movie may be worth more, it may be worth less, and that We're all just subject to that. So we'll try to get the best price for it, and we'll all share it pro-rata. Essentially, that was the same process. We've done eight, I guess, movies or so now, and we took it out, and people wanted it. And then one of the things that was really appealing about Netflix was that they were open to this idea that we've been trying to institutionalize.

I was like, Okay, great. That's really meaningful because ideally, it becomes a template that other people go, Hey, we want to do that thing. And I'm going, Oh, here's the paper.

Yeah, that's the thing. A lot of people say that they would want to do it, but now the template exists. So it's like plug and play. So if you're not full of shit and you really do mean that, then guess what? Just take this and it'll do it.

And it also is going to let you, I hope, manage the risk. In other words, the argument you always have is like, Well, shit, we got to invest all this money in the movie. So you can't have your protagonist be too objectionable, that's too edgy, or can't be R-rated because it costs this money. I get it, right? You're going to put all your money into it. You don't want money to fucking disappear. You want to make money? Okay. So when we wrote the first movie, Good Will hunting, it was like, we knew that had to be a cheap movie. People talking in rooms to each other because no one's going to put a bunch of money into a movie.

And do a movie with us.

Two assholes that no one heard of. So it was like, okay, what can we do that's interesting and try to keep it as inexpensive as possible so that we can make the argument that someone should make the movie. That same logic carries through every time you're asking somebody to invest in something. So what I'd like to have happen is to say, okay, now that we know there's a reliable system where we understand that in success, we'll actually benefit, we can lower the price up front for you so that you can have a low fucking barrier to entry so that you can take the risk so that we can do something really interesting that's an original idea, that's an Amandama or a Sinners or a fucking Marty Supreme or whatever it is. And then if it's successful, we're not still sitting here like assholes where you guys walk off with all the money. And you can have that happen in an ongoing way so that you can make more insurance.

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A lot of the stuff that was going on with the strikes was Senator around AI and what AI is going to do to the business. Where do you feel is going to be the biggest problem with AI? Is it going to be with people's likenesses? Because there's a lot of that where they want to use extras and own their digital rights forever, essentially be able to recreate them in any film. But then there's also you're going to have films that are written by artificial intelligence. You're going to have scenes that don't involve people. And it gets weird, right?

It gets really weird, but there's actually an area of expertise for him.

Yeah, we've been spending time looking at this. My belief is, what's going to happen with electricity? Well, a lot of shit is going to happen with electricity. Some of us are going to be good, some of us are going to change stuff, some of us are going to be like, is it going to be shit that kills a bunch of people. It's opening a door that you can't say, well, talk about in a blanket way. But I think with what I see is, for example, if you try to get ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini to write you something, it's really shitty. And it's shitty because by its nature, it goes to the mean, to the average, and it's not reliable. I just came to Stan to see what he writes. Now, it's a useful tool if you're a writer and you're going, What's the thing? I'm trying to set something up where somebody sends someone a letter, but it's delayed two days and gets... And it can give you some examples of that. I actually don't think it's very likely that it's going to be able to write anything meaningful, and in particular, that it's going to be making movies from Wholecloth, like Tilly North.

That's bullshit. I don't think that's going to happen. I think it actually turns out the technology is not progressing in exactly the same way they present it. And really what it is, is going to be a tool, just like visual effects. And yeah, it needs to have language around it. You need to protect your name and likeness. You can do that. You can watermark it. Those laws already exist. I can't sell your fucking picture for money. I can't. You can sue me, period. I might have the ability to draw you, to make you in a very realistic way, but that's already against the law. And the unions are going to, the guilds are going to manage this where it's like, okay, look, if this is a tool that actually helps us, for example, we don't have to go to the North Pole. We can shoot the scene here in our parkas and whatever it is, but then make it appear very realistically as if we're in the North Pole. It's going to save us a lot of money, a lot of time. We're going to focus on the performances and not be freezing our ass off out there and running back inside.

That's useful. Just like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn used to be driving their car and there's a wind blowing a painting behind them and look goofy. Now, people use a lot of computer-generated stuff, and some of it is going to replace just that. Instead of 500 guys in Singapore, making $2 an hour to render all the graphics for a superhero movie, there's going to be able to do that a lot easier. There's already laws around and guild guidelines around how many union extras you have to use. But also we've been tiling extras. There weren't a million orcs in Middle-earth. You know what I mean? There weren't an invictus. There weren't all those people in the stadium. That's something we've been doing. It feels to me like the thing we talked about earlier, where there's a lot more fear because we have the sense of this existential dread. It's going to wipe to keep everything out. But that actually runs counter, in my view, to what history seems to show, which is, A, adoption is slow, it's incremental. I think a lot of that rhetoric comes from people who are trying to justify valuations around companies where they go, We're going to change everything.

In two years, there's going to be no more work. The reason they're saying that is because they need to ascribe a valuation for investment that can warrant the CapEx spend they're going to make on these data centers with the argument that, Oh, as soon as we do the next model, it's going to scale up, it can be three times as good. Except that actually ChatGPT 5, about 25 % better than ChatGPT 4, and costs about four times as much in the way of electricity and data. So when they say that it's plateauing, the early AI, the line went up very steeply, and it's now leveling off. I think it's because, and yes, it'll get better, but it's going to be really expensive to get better. And a lot of people were like, Fuck this. We want ChatGPT-4, because it turned out the vast majority of people who use AI are using it as companion bots to chat with at night. Instead, there's no work, there's no productivity, there's no value to it. I would argue there's also not a lot of social value to getting people to focus on an AI friend who's telling you that you're great and listening to everything you say and being sycophantic.

That's a side issue. I think for this particular purpose, the way I see the technology and what it's good at and what it's not, it's going to be good at filling in all the places that are expensive and burdensome and they make it harder to do it. It's always going to rely fundamentally on the human artistic aspects of it.

Well, I think the more it becomes ubiquitous, the more people are going to appreciate real things that are made by real people. You still appreciate a handmade table. You're going to appreciate... Did you see The Beast and Me, Claire Daines?

No, I didn't. Fucking great. Yeah, I heard it was great.

That lady, That's terrific. When she's in a scene, you're just like, Jesus Christ. Great, great actress. Her fucking lips are quivering. You believe everything that she's saying.

But you're right. People want that. You can't fake that.

I'll say, I did this interview I did this interview with Dwayne Johnson because when people are in these awards things, they sometimes have other actors interview them. I did this interview with Dwayne, and I asked him, there's this scene in the smashing machine where he's overdosed on drugs and his buddy comes to see him in the hospital. It really walloped me this scene. I thought it was so great. I asked him, and I was just like, Can you just tell me about this scene? Did Benny Safty directed it? Did Benny write that? Did you work on that scene with them? He goes, No, we actually worked on it together. I go, Well, how did that scene come to be? Dwayne goes, Well, my father was an alcoholic. I don't remember if he said substance abuser or alcoholic, but I didn't know the man. I don't want to impune him, but he had a substance issue, whatever it He goes, And when he would talk to me, that's how he would defend himself. It was almost a bargaining thing because there's this thing when this guy comes to him, he's overdosed. And Dwayne's amazing in this scene.

He's going like, Yeah, isn't it crazy? And then I woke up and thought, I could hear him, but I couldn't really hear him. And you see him and he's tap dancing. And his friend finally holds his feet to the fire. And at that moment, Dwayne literally starts to burst into tears and just He pulls the hospital sheet up over his head. I'm not doing it justice if you haven't- I've seen it. I know you've seen it. I've seen it. It's amazing. Yeah. But he said, Yeah. So he explains that about his father. And then he goes, and when my mom was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer, I was with her when the oncologist came in and she was lying in the hospital bed. And when he gave her the news, she pulled the sheet up over her head. And I looked at her and she just looked like a little kid. And I was like, all right. So that is two traumatic events from this guy's life, from his life experience. And the actor in him sees this scene, goes into his memory, pulls these two things out, understands that they're appropriate for this scene, and he can marry them together in the scene, and then he goes and performs it that way.

And a dude walking in off the road, goes to the movies, sees this, understands somehow that it's fucking real. I didn't know why. That's why I wanted to ask him, How did that scene come to be? I genuinely didn't know. And made me tear up. There's no fucking AI that can do that.

No. It's a whole lot more than photorealistic images.

Yeah, Johnson. You could have an AI understand Dwayne's face and move his face into different... No fucking thing could ever do that.

The complications of real life experiences, relayed.

That is a completely human... That is an artist. That's a piece of art that comes Out of a lived human experience.

That movie gave me so much anxiety. There's moments where Emily Blunt is arguing with him.

She's so fucking good in that movie. I really said, I think that's the best she's ever been. We live in the same building in New York. She's a very dear friend of mine, and I I was like, I really think that's the best she's ever been. Then I blurted that out to Chris Nolan, and he stopped and looked at me like, he didn't say it, but he was like, She's pretty fucking good in my movie, too.

Well, she's great, period. She's great, period. She's great, period. But there's something about that. Well, I knew Mark. I met Mark in '97 when he was fighting in the UFC. I knew the whole journey of him. I was so happy for Dwayne because it was a film where instead of being this fucking superhero blockbuster Hulk of a Man, he gets to be that, but be a great actor. And you can't really get a person to look like that, to express emotions. He was Mark Kerr. I know. If you know Mark, it was fucking great acting.

I completely forgot it was him. Somebody who had seen it before told me that was going to happen. I was like, All right, we'll see. It was like from the second it started.

It didn't get the credit it deserved in terms of the amount of people that went to see it. But I think overall in time, people appreciate it.

That's what people go back to.

Because it's a movie about MMA. So a lot of people are like, I don't want to see a movie about a bunch of fucking meat heads, but it's not. It's just a movie that happens to be around MMA, but it's a great movie. The scenes are fucking fantastic. The acting is so good. And even the fight scenes, they're so realistic, man. I saw all those fights. They've recreated those fights about as good as you can get. And just his crazy struggle. And you know the story behind the documentary, the Smashing No. The Smashing Machine? No. So the Smashing Machine was made when Mark was at the height of his powers and pride, and he was the most terrifying guy in the world. He was 265 pounds of solid muscle just blowing through people, didn't even look like a human being. Everyone was terrified of him. No one knew he was a drug addict. No one knew. And he spiraled out as they were filming, and he let them film him. Let them film him shooting up. Let them film him bringing this giant bag of pills with him and all this shit everywhere and just completely falling apart.

While they were supposed to be capturing this hero movie of the greatest fighter in the world, he's falling apart, like live in front of the documentary. It was fucking amazing documentary. I got to see it. It's It was really good. But I was so happy that they put it in a film, and I was so happy that it gave Dwayne a vehicle to show what he's really capable of because he's so limited by a lot of just the parameters of the roles that he was in.

Yeah, and by Galactic success, too. Yes. He had to and will continue to have to push for that because it's what he wants and not because What they are going to continue to want him to do is the thing that mints them money.

Yeah, but I suspect that his experience and feeling about this movie.

From the conversations I've had with him, yeah, this has changed him.

Well, it's this thing that these superhero guys have to do, where it's like something has to change because otherwise you're going to be boxed. And with a guy that looks like that, it's so easy to put him in that box. And so you see him now, he's thinner, he's lost a lot of weight. Dave Bautista went through a very similar thing, too. He wanted to have more range, he wanted to have more opportunities to do exciting and different challenging things.

Well, I think also coming from where he came from, right? It's like you talk about going from TV to movies in the old days. Try coming from wrestling to the biggest movie star in the world, right? It's incredible that he did that. And now he's in this place where he's got this leverage because he's so beloved that he can tailor what he wants from here on out.

It's hard to bring the audience with you. I know you like this thing, but let me show you something else. It's like you go to the concert, the band wants to play the new songs. I'll play the fucking hits. He's a little gilded gaze. All right, fuck it. Satisfaction. No, I love the song, too. You know my my acoustic thing that I did in the Yeah, I went to see the Stones when they were here in town, and there was a few songs they played that were like new songs.

Oh, really? See the audience is like, Okay, okay. They go get a beer. They're going to get the other one. Yeah. But every artist, I guess, has to make that choice, and he's made it. It was an amazing vehicle, too, because he still kept that superhuman hulkish frame, but also showed, God, there's amazing depth there. Yeah.

That's the thing that's, I think, especially because it's collaborative, it happens with other people, that's what movies do that other shit doesn't do. It's just create, you feel for people. It's empathy. It's all made up. That's not him. It's all an illusion. It's all bullshit. But if you do it really well, somebody that seems to really be feeling something all of a sudden, I think what it does, it touches these things in ourselves. It has that same effect that Dwayne went through, articulated to you about these moments that were burned into his memory, then really the best movies are almost blank screens that we project our own fucking like, Oh, yeah, my father died, or I went through this with my kid, or I feel fucking alone, and and miserable. And here's this hopeful moment that someone has to go, Maybe I can do something. They inspire you, they touch you, they move you. And it's the thing to go for. The other thing is to tell a lighter story, to go the more typical tropes of it all.

And it's either way, you're in somebody else's perspective for a few hours, and hopefully it breeds compassion.

When it's done right, there's a magic to it where you forget that it's happening and you're there. The most amazing trick is when it's done by famous people. I was talking to Ethan Hawke about this. There's a scene with him and Kevin Bacon in that movie with Julia Roberts about the End of the World. I forget the name of it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, something. People find it. But it's great fucking movie. But there's this scene where he's talking to Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon has got a gun to him. I know that's Kevin Bacon. I know that's Ethan Hawke. It doesn't matter. You're fucking locked in. You're locked in. I was like, Oh, shit. That's the magic. And he was like, But I'm locked in, too. It's like a hypnosis. It's like everybody is in the scene in a very bizarre way. You have the lines, but you're living it. That's either done or it's not done. When it's not done, you could tell someone's just performative.

You feel it when you're watching. Yes. If it does that thing and it pulls you in, then it's happening.

That's the magic It's like a film.

Sometimes you trick people, I guess, but for the most part, you don't. If you're feeling it and it's really happening, it's much more like other people are feeling it, too.

Other human beings recognize human beings experiencing real shit. Yes. They really do.

It's like these mirror neurons. I know what sorrow looks like without having to fucking, I can't break it down for you. We all know what like, Oh, he's a little anxious right now, or did I maybe offend him? All these little things. In the rare moments, when these big feelings or the things happen, you feel it, too. Usually, an example, this is an old saying about actors try to cry, people try not to cry. Because when you're really experiencing that shit, you don't want people to see it. You want to hide it. No, I'm okay. I'm fine.

You want to pull the sheet up over. Yeah, exactly. But the other thing that's really interesting from our side of doing it, because he and I have talked about this a lot, and I've always said publicly, great actors are good enough for both of you. When you're in a scene with a great actor, that thing that Ethan's talking about, that hypnosis or whatever you want to call it, that energy, that place where you go, right? They're bringing you right with it. It's like a fucking tractor beam. They will suck you right in with them. And as quickly as you look into their eyes and you're like, you're just there. And it's like riding the easiest wave you've ever ridden in your life. It can be the hardest thing in the world, and it can be the easiest thing in the world. When you're with a great actor, if the scene's a good scene.

Yeah, that's the real paradox. All the stuff that I'm the most proud of, the weird thing about it has felt very easy at the time. The shit where you're banging your head against a wall, trying to get blood from a stone and killing yourself and the whole thing, and it ends up fucking feeling empty. The thing about the stuff that I'm proud of is my insecurity is like, It should be harder than this, right? Are we working hard enough? And learn to just trust that. It feels good. Let's just keep going.

Well, there's some scenes in this movie without giving too much away, where there's conflict between you two guys. It seems so real. And that's even harder to recreate because you guys are good friends and you're making the movie together. And you've got this scene where you're acting in this and with the conflict with the two of you guys in the movie. But it's very fucking real.

The reason that it was real, I like that scene. The reason it works, I think, is because he's coming at me and he really needs to know something, and I'm completely blanking him. Like, I'm just... He's going, You got to tell me what's going on, man. He's like, It's awesome. What is the thing? And I'm just literally blanking him in this bizarre way, which was really frustrating him in real life because he was... That feeling of like, It's fucking tell me, dude. It's you. And he finally goes, he screams out, I don't trust you right now. That's a fucking problem, right? Which is like what you would say to an old friend, what are you doing, man? What are you doing?

The betrayal is that you are lie to me or tell me the truth. Lie to me or tell me the truth. Don't fuck to me and step outside our whole relationship and all of a sudden act like- Give me this weird look of just like, I don't know.

You know? And so we were doing the scene. It was really fucking pissing him off. I could see him getting like- The one line that wasn't written that I saw that I didn't remember doing was, I would have never fucked you like this. I would have never fucked you like this.

Which I didn't even remember saying. I like that. Keep that thing. I wouldn't have fucked you. And I thought, what is he? And I still watched the playback. It was in those rare moments again. It was like where it was that thing of you doing all the work by not doing anything, which I didn't expect that to be the choice that you made. And it just was confusing and felt like just leaving you out in the fucking cold. I think the only thing I could rely on is like, I wouldn't do this to you.

In those moments where you You're adlibbing a line where a line comes. Is it just that feels like that's what you say?

It's just like you couldn't stop from saying it.

But you have to be working with somebody that makes that okay. You know what I mean? Because the part of your brain that will to govern you or tell you something's not okay, we'll step in if it's like, Listen, I expect you to fucking do this box. And there's directors and writers who really do, really care about every word precisely, and that's how they do it. And that's Fine. That could be great, too. For me, I find it becomes more interesting, and sometimes better stuff happens. If you actually feel like you don't have to say any of the lines. I don't have to say any of the lines in the scene, then I'll tend to say the ones that feel right. But it's that fake thing that never happens in life, which is I'm never sitting here talking to you and think, what's my next line? What am I supposed to say and how should I say that?

And it's not about the lines ever. It's not about the words. It's about what's the scene about? What's happening in the scene?

It's one of the reasons why Curbier enthusiasm is so great because Larry David just gives you a place to get to. Yeah.

He gives them a loose agenda of what's going to happen.

And then films a bunch of stuff and everybody figures it out.

And a lot of times that shows about The awkward shit when people are missing each other or not not sure of themselves. Always. And a little embarrassed.

Fucking genius show. It really is. And people talk like we're talking. You occasionally talk over each other. There's a stumble. There's no one. Like, what? What the fuck are you talking? There's weirdness.

Because what's also happening is that forces you to really listen. And that is the hardest thing to learn for young actors, I think, is it's really all about listening. And I did a bunch of movies with Paul Greengrass, and that's how he works, where you just know the agenda going in. You know some basic things that... You know what your guy needs going in. Like, I was playing a chief warrant officer, and I had to go through a door, and there was a guy, and I needed to interrogate him. And this is what I needed to know from him. I needed to secure the house with my guys, and I needed to get to this guy. We needed to make sure everybody here was secure. And he put me with a bunch of real combat veterans, and we fucking went in, and they're the extras.

Which is another thing that does your job for you.

It's just being around the real people.

Joe putting the cops from Miami on these parts. And it's just like by osmosis, you feel more legitimate. The thing feels more authentic to the audience. You don't know why because you don't know what the fucking culture is of the tactical narcotics team in Miami. But when you see the real guys, you're like, Yeah, that seems right.

Miami is a perfect place to have it, too. Miami is such a fucking nutty place.

It's also specific to this because based on this real tactical narcotics team in Miami. The guy who ran that, this guy, Chris Casciano, is Joe's friend, and he's the guy that my character is based on. Chris, we We rode along with Chris down there. We went with that team and watched them operate and then hung out with them. Then they came up and they were all in the movie. Chris was around as a technical advisor the whole time. So any question, little details. All right, how do I go through this door? What do I do? What What do you do here? What's the protocol here? All of that stuff was overseen by him so that it was how they really do it.

That whole fucking town is so... Did you ever see Cocaine Cowboys? Yes. It's the entire fucking graduating class of the police academy one year either wound up murdered or in jail.

That's what happens. All of a sudden, you push so much fucking money into something. Before they even figured out There wasn't even a lot of stigma. It was like, cocaine, whatever. It's rich guy's fun drug. But there's just some statistic about the amount of money in the banks in Miami was the same as the rest of the country.

More banks, more capital in Miami than anywhere else in the country because they were just laundering money, and they got away with it. They literally got away with it.

Have you ever flown over Bimini? No. So if you ever fly over Bimini, there are all these Cessnas underwater, all these planes around the island. Because what they used to do, Bimini is like the closest, it's 50 miles off the Coast of Florida. They would come in with a plane full of drugs and just crash the plane into the water. They would land it. On purpose? On purpose. Because there's no runway on Bimini. There's no- It's like, fuck it.

We're going to dump the plane the way we're trying to bring it out.

They would have 10 cigarette boats, like a flotilla of boats waiting. They would crash the plane. They'd offload the drugs as the plane was sinking. And then they put it. The Coast Guard figures that they're always coming for them. That's why they have 10 boats. They throw the drugs into one of the boats, and they got a one out of 10 chance of making it. They just scatter. And the Coast Guard goes after one of them in hopes they get the right one. And not just like, No, it's just taking a cruise tonight. What's the problem, officer? But the planes are still all submerged. The water is still clear. You can see.

How many fucking... Oh, wow. There you go. That's crazy. How many fucking planes are out there?

I flew over it probably 20 years ago, but I mean, there's...

That wasn't a...

I don't know how long. But if you think of probably the cost of one of those little Cessna's, probably wasn't... I mean, with the amount of drugs they were moving on. Yeah, there you go.

Fucking wild.

They're landing where it's shallow.

Yeah, they land and it's like 5 to 10 feet of water. And what do they land at whatever, 55 knots. So you just try to- It looks nice, too.

Yeah, sure. You're about to...

Wow. It won't be comfortable, but... I mean, Sully landed at 7: 37, whatever it was in the water.

Yeah. Fucking wild. What a crazy part of our culture that that happened. The whole cocaine run during the '80s, in particular, Miami Vice, all that shit. It shaped the entire country.

For sure. Oh, yeah. I just remember that one guy in that documentary who was, I think he was from Boston, and he the pilot, and he had figured out the route, and he was like, Man, we could have gotten away with this forever.

Somebody talked, and he knew that's the only way we would have been caught.

He was like, I had it all. He was clearly really smart.

A ton of guys did, too. You know what I mean? There's a whole lot of people out there that were like, Yeah, we had a nice run. That's why I got eight houses.

Oh, yeah. That's one of the real crimes that people got away with, was bringing cocaine into this country. There's a lot of people that got very wealthy, including banks. Which is just really crazy.

Banks with the jewelry companies. There was more Jaguar dealerships in Miami than everyone else in the country. It was like, doesn't pay to ask questions. So, yeah, I guess a lot of people like our cars here.

You don't say all cash. Sure.

Yeah, we can make you a deal. Sure.

How many backyards in Miami still to this day have bags just buried somewhere that nobody knows about?

It's probably worth just checking.

When you buy a house in Miami, just dig the yard up.

Well, at least find out who owned it before you. Oh, he's a pilot. Get Get a truck. Get a tractor. It's time to dig up the backyard. I mean, one of those guys in the film had millions of dollars just buried in his backyard. They had nowhere to put it. They were making so much money. They just had to bury it places.

That's fucking crazy.

Well, that's why it's a perfect backdrop for the film because the situation that the cops, without giving away too much of the plot, but the situation that the cops are dealing with is a very real situation. I mean, so many DEA agents turn dirty. So many cops turn dirty. It's because it just can get confronted. There's so much temptation.

You take these people, you got like six, seven people. They fucking work for a living. They have the same bullshit they have to deal with. And there's $20 million. It makes for a great drama, too. Even in the performances because all of a sudden somebody's thinking like, okay, how are they going to react? Who's the first person to say, I'm going to have to turn this all in? And getting to play that shit. And for me also, without being sanctimonious or preachy, because I really think movies, we're talking about what they do well. What they do very poorly is deliver messages or lecture. As soon as you get into that thing, the audience is like, I'm going to go to church for that or fucking school. I don't need that shit here. But I like that what was underneath it is like, this is a fucking hard job. And that there's a lot of value. These characters, the ones that are trying to do their job are trying to get through the day. And just at the end of the day, they have done their job like they said they were going to do, adhere to the fucking ethics that they're supposed to, and at the end of the day, be able to sleep at night and believe there's some value in not fucking stealing the money or flipping somebody over, you know what I mean?

And doing all that shit. And that's the win. The win doesn't have to be get away with the bag of money or fucking save the world from the evil scientists laser beam or whatever. It's like, at the end of the day, if you can fucking live with yourself and say, Look, I quit myself according to what the fucking expectations were and what am I true to my I think that affected me. I found that moving. You can't do it if you create, to credit to Joe's script, just two-dimensional characters. I'm the hero, I'm the villain, or this person would never do that. They don't have to be real people. It would be subject to temptation. Money just represents whatever that thing is you think you want, or that's going to make your life better. It's something different to everybody. But especially when you're facing the conflict, the custody thing or the sick relative or whatever it is, it's a real thing. Nobody's immune to that temptation. Sometimes I think it's Cavalier to be like, Oh, well, you're dirty. Putting people in a very tough situation a lot of times, particularly if they're feeling undervalued, like the woman, the scene where Catalina is like, I get fucking pissed, I get yelled at, I get shit on.

You know what I mean? I'm out here grinding every fucking day. It's a lot to ask. I I think it's worth making that heroic without indicating too much.

No, it's really well written because there's no suspension of disbelief moments. That's hard to do in a big blockbuster action movie. There's always one moment in a movie, we were like, What? Come on. How do you do that? No, that was convenient. You guys don't have any of those. There's none of that. I loved it. I loved that aspect of it, too, where it felt like all of it was like, I believed it. I believed it.

That's really a credit to Joe and his taste. That's why we really thought, this guy knew how to make narc. He obviously understood this world and understood that above all, it has to feel real. That's why he was open to, okay, whatever happens, you throw in a line, maybe it's good. Can't get you feeling hurt if it's not. But you got to be able to take that shot. We're all down trying to spend time with people. I feel for this. This cop is a bunch of actors to send on you and they're like, What sweatshirt is that?

It was like that Michael J. Fox, James Woods movie. Remember that movie? I forget what it was called, but he's Michael J. Fox as an actor, following around James Woods. He's studying him for a character, and James Woods is a real leg detective, and he's just like, Get this guy away from me. I kept thinking of that. Got to hair gel you. Yeah, exactly. All these questions. But they were very tolerant of us, which was nice and really, really helpful because it's always details. It's always details. It's like, How How fastidiously do you mind for those details? Because I've always been convinced that an audience, it's like you were saying, they don't analyze why they don't believe something. They feel it. They just don't believe it. And it's usually because those details, you don't get those.

And that's the only thing. I'm not great at imagining something. Let's invent this. Everything that I've done that I like has been a result of something I found in research. For the town, I went down and just went through all the prisons out there, Massachusetts, federal prisons, state prisons, and sat down and talked to guys who robbed trucks and banks. Sometimes you want to know. And then sat down with the FBI guys and was like, What are they like? The great shit for me is that I'm in wet wallpull or I'm in the prison in Dedham or whatever. And some guy said, after talking for two hours, I was like, Is anything just fucking weird ever happened or fucked up? Anything you remember? I was like, Yeah, one time, we were coming out of this thing. We robbed this truck and we had the mask, we got the switch car, we drove around the corner and whatever. We pull up, we get out with fucking guns, the mask, all things, and we look over, and it's this cop sitting there doing construction duty. I was like, Right then, didn't even tell me a story. I was like, Oh, shit.

I was like, What happened? He goes, No. He looked at us. We looked at him. He looked the other way. I was like, Really? He goes, Yeah. He didn't want to up on the wall at the VFW.

These guys with full automatic weapons, masks on, switching cars. I was like, I'm putting that in the movie. It's a great moment in the town, in the movie, because they all jump out of the things. I remember that scene. Oh, yeah, here it is. Exactly. It was like... It's great. It's this awkward... They just stop. And this dude, he sees them. They see him.

He's like, Fuck, we're going to have to kill this Nope.

He turns away.

Okay.

Wow.

It's such a great... But that's straight from research. I always loved that story. Then the line is here. He put it here.

He wanted to put the wall at the wall of the VFW. Yeah. It was a great line. It was a great line. It was such a simple explanation for what do you think he did and why? And that's exactly what it would have been. That guy, The next day's picture would have been up in the wall at the VFW. And he knew it, and everybody knew it. He said he didn't want to do it like that. That stuff is, I don't know, it's very human calculations and it's in a very extreme version of it, but it also doesn't happen. Sometimes it's not dramatic at all. It's like, Yeah, that was an easy decision. And the guy never says anything, I didn't say anything. And can't really blame him.

The Town was a great fucking movie, too. And I I knew a lot of people like that, from boxing gyms and stuff. I knew a guy who was a hitman for Whitey Bolger. I knew a guy who was a friend of a brother of mine who went to jail for that, for murder, for killing people. What town did you grow up in? I lived in Newton. You did? Yeah, I grew up in... I lived in Jamaica Plain for a little while. I lived in Newton, but I spent a lot of time in Boston because I was fighting. It was mostly training. And so I was around a lot of these very shady characters who were in the world, and a lot of them had backgrounds in crime. One of the guys that I trained with, he went to jail for a little while, and then he got arrested because a guy got killed, and they broke every bone in his body with a hammer and kept injecting him with cocaine to keep him awake while they were doing it. And then they cut his hands off and cut his head off. And this guy that I used to train with got arrested for that.

Jesus. Yeah. He didn't wind up going to jail for that. He's dead now, but he was somehow or another, at least peripherally involved. Yeah.

Well, I didn't do any fighting, but I went around and found a lot. The one of things about being an actor is people will talk to you, which is a fucking It's a crazy gift. Even if somebody's like, Oh, yeah, I killed guys. They'll just come out and it's the rules all of a sudden don't apply. Like, these guys in the prison, what the fuck are they going to talk? You know what I mean? But they're interested in it for whatever. So you avail yourself of that. And then I We had people around that movie who everybody knew, Yeah, he did that job. He never got arrested. So I had people meet and talk to him. It's interesting because it's such a good lesson for doing this job, which is that they're never how you think they're supposed to be, like the murderer person. There's always something a little... I remember one guy was supposed to be this really violent, loose cannon fucking guy who supposedly had done all this shit, stabbed killed two people, Faneu Hall, and shot these guys in a robbery. And he shows up with his polo shirt, tucked in. He's like, How's it going?

Just like, I never would have fucking put this guy on, fucking killing four people. You know what I mean? They got to have a good time. I love that one movie, and you're just thinking, Fuck, man. It's a really good lesson for... We tend to read a script and, Okay, this guy's the tough guy, and he's going to be the... It's like you work with this... I had the opportunity to train with these Delta guys. It's the most elite Special Forces combat fucking operators in the world. I mean, I suppose Seals will take a perception to that, but just numerically, right? I think there's been less than 900 guys ever in the history of Delta. You meet them, and they're not the biggest guys. They're not the toughest guys. They're not trying to fucking be hard. And they're the most relaxed, at ease. I found myself just being like, finally, I was like, Can I just ask, what do you think makes somebody qualify for the Delta Force? What's a good Delta operator? He's like, problem solving. Problem solving? The guy was, Yeah, it's probably like your job. I was like, No, let me tell you, notice.

It's really not like my job. I appreciate it. Very big fucking difference. He's like, Yeah, you solve problems. He was like, No, you're trying to kill me. That's the thing. But that was the closest insight I got to, which was, I've always thought this about a guy like braided or something. There's guys that just don't get tight. And that they are able to problem-solve when the problem is like, Well, that helicopter has crashed, and we're 200 miles inside Afghanistan, and we're outnumbered fucking six to... How do you think we should get home? Just having your wits about you to make that calculation while, by the way, you're in a fucking gunfight and things. I'm sure that does make... Because those are the people where I'd be in a fucking panic and have no idea what to do. And you get attracted to the person who seems to have a... Hey, it's good. We're going to be okay. Everybody get your shit. We're going over here. You'll just follow that guy. You know what I mean? Yeah. But it's not always the most... Maybe it's just because they're so confident. They're not like, I don't need to prove that I can kick anybody's ass.

I don't even get in fights. I have a weapon. It surprises me how those kinds of extraordinary experiences in people or extraordinary people don't always manifest themselves and how they show up.

But we have caricatures in your head of what these tough people are like. You see that about MMA fighters. There's a lot of MMA fighters. You meet them, they're the sweetest, nicest, friendliest people in the world.

I remember going to one of the events in LA, I think it was Staples, and I was backstage and was talking to one of the lawyers for the UFC. We were talking about Conor McGregor, and he was telling me a great story about him. And this guy walks up and he's in a Like Chinos, like khaki pants and a blue button up business shirt with spectacles. And he's very small. And I don't really regard him. And I'm still hearing this story. And then Padgett goes, Matt, do you know Henry? And I turn and it's Henry Sehudo. And I'm like, this fucking guy could wreck me right now.

Absolutely fucking destroy me.

And he is the guy that some dummy would try to pick on.

Yeah, You know what I mean? Yeah, right. Exactly.

He's not carrying himself. He just is the thing.

Find out a little bit too late.

Yeah, don't find that one out late.

A lot of guys do, unfortunately. Well, they don't have to prove themselves, right? They do it all the time. The same with Delta Force guys. This idea, this outwardly brash, tough guy, usually that machismo, that's bullshit. You're using that because you're insecure. The secure people are very calm and genuinely very friendly.

Really nice. Yeah, that's been my experience.

Yeah, it's crazy, right?

It's beautiful, too. I'm like, what a great guy. And you feel like, that's nice of you to be so sweet to me because you obviously don't have to be. I'll just give you my watch if you wanted that.

Yeah. No, it is a fascinating thing. It's like we have these ideas in our head, these caricatures of what a tough man is, what a good woman is, what a this is, what a that is. I think one of the beautiful things about film when a film is really good is you see these complex characters and it reformulates in your mind what a person actually is.

Yeah, it's seeing all kinds of different people. Yeah, I completely agree.

Look, the fundamental challenge, I think, in life is to find some humility, which means actually thinking you might be wrong about the shit that you're pretty sure about. It means that you I have to assume somebody else might have a point. It's not like just writing everybody else off who disagrees with you because, Fuck him, he's an asshole. Those are things that actually take work to get to because the first instinct, because you just defend your idea or whatever. It's easier is to just-That it's a zero sum game somehow.

Yeah, exactly. That two competing ideas can't exist.

Somebody can't be a good person.

And believe it.

If you can disagree, we don't believe it. I don't know. What about this? What about that? But once you find yourself relying on, well, I need to zero out this person's humanity in order to defend my idea, I think that's a pretty good indicator that there's something wrong with the way you're thinking, because it can't be that you're right about everything and everyone else is bad? Who disagree with me?

I think that was one of the most interesting things about the Sopranos, is that the main character, the guy that you loved, was a fucking murderer. He would murder his friends. He was a complete mobster and a thug, but you really loved him.

I loved the shit out of that guy.

It was so complicated.

I'm rewatching it with my daughter right now. Jim was so good at doing the part that you found yourself being like, I don't know, I think he probably has to kill him now. Probably got to kill him.

That's also a great actor. There's a very famous story about Marlon Brando when he did Streetcar Named Desire. And Tennessee Williams, who wrote it, like, freaking out because he was making Stanley Kowalski. He was making people empathize with Stanley Kowalski. And Tennessee Williams was like, But I wrote him as a brute. He was like a two-dimensional brute who just came and beat up his wife and was supposed to be this dark looming force over the play. But Brando was like, No, he's a human being, and I'm going to play him like a fucking human being. And it changed the play. But Williams in all of his writing-That's so much more reflects life in the real world.

Yeah, exactly. Everybody's the hero of their story. Everyone has the reasons for why they're doing... People don't set out to be like, I'm just going to hurt someone or dominate the world. You think, well, I got to protect what I have. It's like, not to bring it back to this movie, but it's like what I liked about Rip was it was the slippery slope. The first time, you take a little money, and then, well, I got to cover that. I don't want to go to jail. I didn't like my reason why I did that. But now I've told a lie. Now I got to cover that thing. And now you have guys who both live by this code that's very, hey, you protect the people who are with you, and you got to have this fucking... And so now it's very similar, by that on a slippery slope, ultimately find themselves, kill one another. I don't believe in that one choice. It's more, how do you find yourself? You dig yourself in a fucking hole because you're just covering up, trying to fix the last problem that's arisen. And everybody thinks, of course, it roots for themselves.

It's like empathize with themselves. That's what we have to be concerned with ourselves, our needs, our families, our basic shit. It's hard to expect people to go like, All right, and what about what they think? And I think it's a much more honest evaluation of people, and it allows for complexity and forgiveness and fucking all the shit that's beautiful about people rather than this notion of, well, we're going to be binary, good or bad, perfect or not, whatever. And any infraction, then it's permanently stains you. Right.

That's what we were talking about earlier about people that have been canceled, that This idea that one thing you said or one thing you did, and now we're going to exaggerate that to the fullest extent and cast you out of civilization for life.

In perpetuity.

It's fucking crazy.

Because I bet some of those People would have preferred to go to jail for 18 months or whatever, and then come out and say, No, but I paid my debt. We're done. Can we be done? The thing about that Getting excoriated publicly like that, it just never ends. And it's the first thing that it just will follow you to the grave, I think.

It's also this problem that people have with people that are in the public eye. They have this desire to chop them down always. And anybody that stumbles in the public eye, they want to destroy their life, and they want to just pile on. And you're not there with them. You don't feel the empathy. You're not talking to... They're not a human being. It's just text on a screen.

It's just like, like I was saying, that sixth-grade instinct to be like, oh, he's in trouble. We have dark fucked-up instincts, too, sometimes to isolate people or get joy out of someone else. They're in trouble, maybe because part of it's saying, Hey, it's not me. So if you can point the finger, everyone's looking over there, we feel safer. But it's like, yeah, and to take any forgiveness out of it is a really fucked up thing, because then it makes it impossible, A, to actually go, All right, yeah, I did that. Fuck shit. That was wrong. I get it. Because it doesn't matter. Once you've said you've done it, you become like an outcast. And I don't think anybody wants to think the sum total of who you are is your worst moment. I think you want to be judged as well. Are you capable of doing something good or something beautiful? It's not to say to forget. There's people that just over and over and over doing horrible shit, don't care. I get it. No one's trying to absorb of that. But you remove the ability to forgive people or look at them in a complicated way, or else it's become those things.

It's like, get one of ours or one of them, the instinct to get a team, tribal-oriented. It just becomes a sport.

It's also like, who wants to live in a world with no forgiveness and redemption? That's crazy. That's just denying the very nature of human beings and that people do things that they regret, and then they become better people because of it.

To Some of the people I would rely on the most, trust my kids with the most, have done shit that they really regret. And it was, yeah, objectively wrong. Other people have been like, I shit. I did that. Whether it's addiction, I got myself down this fucking ride. I did this, I did this. They're able to go, I did it. I'm sorry. It's real. I shouldn't have done it. It was wrong. Actually, those people can become someone that's very trustworthy because you're like, this motherfucker will say if they've done something, they'll actually look at their own behavior. They'll acknowledge it, and then you feel good and you feel much... Versus someone who tells you, I always get it right. Everything's perfect.

It's about evolution, right? And in our own personal evolution, and we're all on our own path towards that. The idea of attacking someone is like, Oh, so you ace the test? Like, put your pencil down? Like, you nailed being human? You're done.

If you nail being human, that's not possible because you forgot about the part about forgiveness.

You haven't nailed it by definition if you're out there throwing stones.

It's most of the people that I find, especially when there's someone that's publicly in trouble for something. Most of the people that I know that have attacked people have a lot of questionable shit in their past. And it's almost like they're trying to hide that by going on the attack.

That's the thing. If I can point my finger, it's like, who's going to be?

Oh, he's a good guy. Ben's a good guy. He's calling them out.

Yeah, exactly.

Meanwhile, you You were telling me to see Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out movie. That was great.

I watched it. I really liked it. I thought it was a really interesting... I'm not a religious guy. I'm aware of all the like, okay, there's the religion, then there's people who are supposed to be rational. I thought it was a really beautiful movie about what's the role of grace in life? And the really honest examination of that, sitting side by side with, yeah, okay, you don't believe it. But It's not about whether you're going to argue over fucking evolution. It's about how graceful are you in your life? How much fucking dignity can you afford other people? I know you're willing to recognize and see that there's maybe something bigger than yourself and that there's a reason to try to find that grace, to get better. That was really beautiful and rare and really surprised.

I was really surprised, too. I put it on and not thinking I like it. I still say murder I mean, yeah, I loved it.

Yeah, I loved it, too. I think it's one of the best of the three.

It was my favorite of the three.

Those are great. Daniel Craig is great in that role. He's fantastic. Yeah. He goes from James Bond to that and so many other things as well.

It was Josh O'Connor who played the priest because I first saw him on the ground.

Yeah, I liked him a lot.

Man, what an actor he is. Really, really good.

How much film do you guys consume? Do you spend a lot of time watching films? Do you consider it?

It depends. If we're working on it, we're watching cuts after cuts and going to the editing room. There's a lot of work around all the stuff that we have going that eats into a lot of time.

Mostly, it's trying to keep up with what people are doing. My issue is really that we've developed this pattern where all these movies that come out are more interesting, they're all jammed out at the last fucking month of the year. And so all of a sudden, you're trying to race all these movies. You got homework. I got really lucky. Like, recently, my son, he was 13, decided he wants to watch movies. And I give him shit. I'm like, What are you fucking doing? We always look on TikTok and shit. Like, Let's watch a movie. And he's blowing me off and rolling his eyes. And you're like, I mean, if you're a dad, you're an asshole fundamentally. Like, come on, you don't know what's going on. You know what I mean? He told me one time, he was like, Dad, I said, Let's watch this movie. I played in the trailer. I can't remember what the movie was. It was a good movie, and the trailer was good. He just looks at it and goes, You know what you guys ought to do? You guys ought to work with some of the TikTok editors.

I was just like, Wow. I went and told the editors.

I told Billy and Chris that, guys, I got news for you. But now he's like, All right, let's watch. What are some movies I should watch? You got Letterbox, you got into that thing. I said, Okay, what are the great movies? I'll give you a list. I start giving them a list. They started watching them. This is like heaven for me. So it's like, Okay, what are you watching? King of Comedy. Last week, I watched Backs You Driver, King of All, these Scorsese movies. It really was like, oh, man, because in my mind, I'm like, Sure, I've seen that movie. I know. I watched them again. I could realize how much better they were than I even could appreciate When I watched it when I watched it when I was younger. It was just the most beautiful fucking experience for me to watch my son taking an interest. The older two have always been a little bit like, Yeah, dad, no, great. But, Hey, you guys want to come to the premiere? No, not really. You guys want to come to the set? No, I'm good.

Well, it's just too much familiarity. You grow up with a dad who's a movie star. Just like, yeah.

The kids got in. And I get it. You got to be your own person, do your thing. They have all their own shit. So I never expected it from my son. And I don't know that he's going to... And I wouldn't want to lean on him like, Hey, get into the family business. Most of the time, it's just like we go to like, basketball games, baseball, all that type of stuff. But this was a really... It was like, It was so joyful. You know what I mean? I sit there and watch movies with my kid. I was like, this doesn't get better. This is the happiest I may ever be in my whole life. Right here, watch this movie, and he's like, Well, he's telling me what he thinks. Honestly, the rest of it, you can fucking keep it.

That's awesome.

That's the best.

Well, it's great that you guys still love film. It hasn't become just a job. It hasn't become a thing that you do, that you really enjoy it and love it.

Yeah, it was never a job. I mean, it was an absolute dream from the time we were kids. We did fucking high school theater together.

That's crazy.

It was like, we're lucky to get it and lucky to... The whole idea that you could even... The goal is to make a living, to not have to be like, Well, I'm an actor, a waiter, contractor, dental assistant, whatever the fuck it is. Like, actually, I can earn money. And we always figured, I don't need that much, especially if we now have kids. Okay, we make a living, or maybe it's fucking going to be dinner theater, or maybe it's going to be right, or maybe it's going to be- There'll be a job somewhere that we can find where we can do this and keep doing it.

Yeah.

Well, there's something... I love when people love things. I spend time on YouTube watching people of like, fixed watches. I don't know why, but I love when people make furniture. I love watching people do things that they really love, that they're invested in. I think we all have that thing in us where we see someone who's got a passion for something, someone who really loves it. And that's what everybody really wants in life, to be lost in the thing you love, to have a purpose. Yeah.

And it's beautiful. I agree. Even watching someone else with true purpose. Yeah.

It's hypnotic. It reminds me of Joe versus the volcano. He goes in to buy It's one of our favorite scenes. Do you like Luggage, sir? He was like, Luggage is the central preoccupation of my life. He's a luggage salesman, and he fucking loves.

He loves nothing more than luggage.

And it's the greatest scene.

I asked Tom Hanks about that when I Saving Private Ryan. I was like, Can you tell me about that scene? Because we love this scene so much. He named the actor. He was a Broadway actor, I guess, the guy. He came in. He worked for one day in this scene, and he's so good in that movie. Then at the very end, he's showing him all the luggage. Tom Hanks has unlimited He had limited money to spend. He thinks he's dying. And so he basically goes like, Well, what's the best luggage? He goes, Well, if I had the means, sir. And he opens up this thing and there's this trunk and it's like this music plays and he opens it. Tom Hanks is like, I'll take two of them. And he goes, may you live to be a thousand years old. This is the greatest day of his life.

That's amazing.

You guys have been in some fucking bangers, man. Saving Private Ryan, that opening film, The Storming of the Beach. Unbelievable. That might be the most realistic depiction of war that's ever been made.

I remember reading the script and there was all this dialog, all this stuff that was written. I came late because he shot it chronologically, and I'm only in the last was the last act of the movie, basically. He told me on set, I was saying, How did it go? The beginning, there was all that dialog with them on the boat coming in. Steven goes, he Jack goes, I cut all of that out. He goes, No talking for the first 27 minutes of this movie. And that was when I was like, Oh, my God, this movie is going to be fucking unbelievable. I think Tom says, I'll see you on the beach or something. Guys are puking. Let's look at the man next to you. He's not going to live to it. That was the script, right? Remember that? It was, Look at the man next to you. He won't live. He's going to die. Two out of three of you are going to die. Look to your left, look to your right, and feel bad for those two sons of bitches because they're not going to make it. It was stuff like that. And Steve was just like, No.

No. No. No. These guys are puking. It's like the things up. You could just hear, and then just boom, and you're into it. Also, they did this It was incredible. Cinema changing. Open the shutter. Open the Shutter all the way.

It took all the motion blur. It skipped the bleach process in developing the film.

I don't know if they're going to 22 or 23 frames anywhere in there, maybe. But I just remember, maybe it's just the open shutters.

It just means that instead of the motion blur is what makes something that moves across the frame quickly. If you look at each frame, it's like a blurred thing. And when you roll those in 24 frames, it gives you the illusion that it moves across fluidly. If you basically open the shut up so you get much more light, each frame takes a super sharp picture. And when you run those together, like the piece of dust goes...

And so the mortar explosions are going... And you get that feeling that you're adrenaline and you're seeing, you know what I mean? And it's just... And nobody had ever done it.

It's just the master of the thing. He understood how to use the tools and combined with the great idea. And that's just masterful. That's just how you do it. There's nobody who directs movies who doesn't go, It's Spielberg. That's how you do it. This is like you say, one of those things, a guy that's passionate and also caring about something with that much passion is connected to greatness. And it's, I think, why we love to see that, whether it's sports, fucking fighting, or whatever it is, there's something that makes you love being alive and also love that person when you go, fuck, when you see Michael Jordan, there was that The whole movie that we did air is really all about, what does it mean to be great? And how does it touch everybody and change everybody and make people want to fucking improve their own lives? Because somebody's just better at that thing than anybody else in the world. It's transfixing. I find that really fascinating. People who are great at something and the mystery of, well, what does that like? And what does that do to your life? And how did you get that way?

And what does it take?

And what's the cost? Because to truly be great at something, you have to almost abandon everything.

I've seen that in various ways. In that just empirical personal study, I haven't seen anybody who I think qualified guys for that, who didn't also seem to be really suffering. A hundred %. And you're like, damn, you should be so happy. You're the greatest. And the interviewer is always, how do you feel right now? There's that sense that it's never finished or it's never enough or they can't enjoy it or they're carried. It's a line we put in there where it's like, you have to be that thing. You have to be that thing. It's a bird, too, in a way.

A hundred %.

And I just see that. And that's why we want these heroes and people who are great to, I don't know, flourish, have their life and have it all in hand. There's all this tragedy and all this stuff that happens, too. Yeah, that's like you said. There seems to be a real cost.

There's always a massive cost in personal relationships because there's no way you have the time for other things. And the obsession that you have to be the best at something, you have to abandon almost all your concern for everything else. You have to have this single-minded focus. And that comes with a cost for the rest of your life because you damage relationships, you feel like a piece of shit.

And you see that up close and like, that's not admirable. You don't give a fuck about anybody else? No, I do. I just care about this more. Imagine that. You're making the sacrifices and it's causing injury to people and you know it and you don't want to hurt them, but you can't help it. And you're getting rewarded for it. It's complicated.

It's crazy because you inspire all these people that don't know you and you ruin all your relationships.

Maybe that's why I said, don't meet your heroes.

There's something to it, man. There really is. But it's just we all grow from it. There's a fuel to watching greatness. There's a thing that hits you and lights you up where you want to do more, you want to be better, whatever it is that you can do, whatever it is you do, you become more... Whether it's a great game, a winning, a breakdown, whether it's a great film, a great song. Yeah, it inspires you. Yeah, it lights you up. And it's the fuel that we all live off of that we consume to make our culture move forward. Yeah.

There's like a sacrificial element to it, the people that do it, and we all feed off of it. And it feels like, well, that's the person that doesn't get enough out of it.

Right. But in great film, I mean, how many lives have been changed by decisions made after great films? When I was a kid, I think I was seven or eight or something when Rocky came out, and I saw it immediately ran around the block. I've never run in my life. I was eating raw eggs. I'm like, this is going to change my life. There's things that happen when you see something truly great that it makes you want to be better as a human being.

I remember where I was when I saw Denzel Washington play Malcolm X. Went to the movie, watched that movie. I remember leaving, I was 19. I'm thinking, I want to be a better man. I thought that in my mind because of what I had seen this actor do and this way. That was the only real conscious thought I had, but I remember having it and being surprised by it. It does. That shit can really touched me, a lot of people's work. That's why you get that... You see people and you want to let them know, you know what I mean? Tell them. I I always think people come to go, Hey, I love that movie. I always feel like, You don't have to say that. You know what I mean? It makes me uncomfortable. I don't ever put myself in with those figures who I think are like, No, but there's these towering giants who have done this. I don't know. I finally arrived to a place where I was like, there was a couple of people, Oh, I saw a good one thing. It made me want to go out to Hollywood and write a script.

I think, Oh, shit. I don't want to have that. You know what I mean? Sorry.

All right, man.

At a certain point, I figured, okay, you know what? Whatever it is, great. That's the thing that- The cost of your Fame.

There's going to be a bunch of people that are going to come up to you and they want to say those things to you. And wanting them to say those things to you is the opposite of the mindset that you need to make those things. Right, exactly. Which is so counterintuitive. You think once you become really successful, you make a bunch of great things, it's going to be awesome having all these people come up to you. Like, no, no, I'm doing something else right now, and I can't be all wrapped up in the fact that I'm changing your fucking life.

I can't be satisfied or take any fucking joy in that because I don't think I'm good enough. I need to fucking, you know what I mean?

Right. Never satisfied. You can't. And that's the darkness of trying to do something great. You'll never be satisfied.

You see it in a lot of the fighters, the same thing, the great, great fighters?

Well, also, fighters have a very small window of greatness. There's only a certain amount of years we can burn the RPMs at red line, and then eventually the knees go, the back goes.

Is it earlier than other sports? It must be. Yes.

I think so, because Tom braided is still elite. I bet he could probably play football right now. How old is Tom now?

He's probably 47 or eight now.

I bet he could still play.

Yeah, I mean, that's a very specific skill position in the way he played it.

Right. But running back, no. But at the elite levels of MMA, especially with USADA testing and now drug-free sport testing. When they are making sure that people aren't on testosterone and growth hormone and all these different things, you have nine years. You have nine years at peak performance. That's legitimate.

How long has Jon Jones been going?

Jon Jones is a freak of all freaks because Jon Jones beat Daniel Cormier when he was on coke. That was one of the funny things he said in the press conference for the rematch. Daniel was talking shit. He goes, I beat you when I was on coke. I mean, he was getting arrested. He was partying. When he fought Gustafson, he beat Gustafson, and he didn't train at all. I talked to his trainer. He's like, he didn't even show up at the gym. He was fucking never there. He was never training. He could just show up and beat everybody's ass.

I saw a thing on my Instagram feed of a fighter, and I don't know who it was, but he was a heavyweight. And he goes, I had the chance to spar with Jon Jones, to work with Jon Jones. And he goes, I knew about it months ahead of time. He goes, I got my nutrition. Everything was absolutely flawless. I got my sleep. Everything was on. He goes, I show up at the gym that morning. He goes, It's me and five other guys. He goes, he comes in. I think he went to sleep at 4: 00 in the morning or something. He was out all night. He goes, he ran through all six of us.

That's my buddy, Brennan Schaub.

Is that who was? Okay, yeah. It was the funniest story. He goes, And then I just knew. There's levels. That's a level. But imagine being that elite and realizing there's another level.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Brandon was a top 10 heavyweight, and John wasn't even a heavyweight. John was a light heavyweight. It was a lower weight class, and he just beat everybody's ass. He said, This is his warmup. He just get in there. He just fucked everybody up. I mean, he has a unique aptitude for MMA, but also he had two brothers that were super athletes.

Chandler Jones. Yes.

They played for the Patriots. Arthur. These guys are super athletes, and so they're beating the shit out of each other all the time. So they're constantly in competition with elite athletes from the time he was a child. So he was just so tuned in to competition, and he was so intelligent. His fight IQ was above and beyond everyone's, and he would study tape meticulously.

That spinning kick that he did.

Steep Emiocha.

Where he said he, and I think he thanked his Taekwondo coach, and he said He had been working on this one specific kick from both sides because of something he saw on the tape. And he got it off and hit this guy so hard, not even on his liver side. He hit him on the other side, and you see it shatter through his entire organ structure.

Yeah, his heel was deep into his body cavity. It was all the way up to his fucking spine.

It was so gnarly. But he just practiced this one specific... And he was He even said it is a devastating shot. There's not a human being who could take that.

No, it's like getting hit by a car. Yeah.

But getting hit by a car in one spot is your body.

You know what I mean? The size of a foot, the size of a 13 foot. Oh, yeah, here it is. Watch this. He sets him up.

Boom.

It's like, yeah, now it's over. It's over.

And this is John moving up to heavyweight because light heavyweight wasn't a challenge anymore. He decided to become a two division champion. I mean, John was a freak. You see it rumbling through. By the way, that was almost a little bit glancing because he caught him with a bent leg. It wasn't even fully extended, which was even more devastating. But John realized that as a heavyweight, he didn't have the power that he had at light heavyweight. So he said, The most powerful kick is a spinning back kick. So I'm just going to work on that kick over and over again because that's the one tool that I have that can knock a heavyweight out with one shot.

Wow. Okay.

That's just- It's not just the physicals. He's also like a genius.

He's a genius. He's also like He's the most meticulous when it comes to game planning and study. He will not take a short notice fight. Even a guy that he can fucking beat any day of the week. You can wake him up at three o'clock in the morning. He can fuck that guy up. He will not take that fight unless he gets a full training camp to prepare for that fight. Well, it's just greatness. But John's troubled. John's been arrested a bunch of times and DUIs and all kinds of crazy shit. He's a wild fella. And that pursuit of greatness, I'm sure, has It cost him a lot of shit in his personal life. But when he knocks Deepay out and then did the Trump dance in front of the whole world, for that moment, he's on top of the world. But then, again, it's the same thing. As soon as you get back, what's next? There's another challenge. It doesn't matter how many people love you now. It's not good enough. There's someone else looming. You got to beat this guy.

That seems like an agonizing thing to both have the complete compulsion to have to get to the next level, and the next level keeps fucking moving the goalpost.

I'll never forget. I interviewed Matt Hughes after he lost a BJ Pen. He lost the welterweight title to BJ Pen, and I'm interviewing him inside the octagon. He said, I'm going to be honest with you, it was actually a relief. And he goes, The pressure of being the champion and having someone chasing you, ever in the whole world chasing you. He goes, I'm going to be honest. I thought it was an incredibly brave moment for a guy to say that, who is just this fucking amazing human being, this warrior, to say, I just got to be honest, it's a relief. Losing my title feels like a relief. And I was like, wow, that is so brave to be that honest in front of the... Because everybody's like, You just got your ass kicked. It's like, this is a relief. I took a burden off my bag. I'll be back. I'm going to regroup, but I needed that. I needed to just step off the fucking top of the hill for a little while. Jesus Christ.

You got to be a great, actually, relief to be able to say something like that. It's a gift. Instead of feeling like you got to hide or pretend it and go, Yeah, I'm high. It was like it was a lot to carry.

Well, the thing about fighting is everything you try to hide gets exposed. You're exposed completely during camp because they're doing these round... Will they take like- Sorry, I was here. Yeah, smoke up. They're taking five guys and they're rotating them in with you. So you're doing five rounds with fresh guys. So you got one guy who is fucking warmed up, getting ready for you, and then you're fucking out of breath. They'll give you a 30-second break instead of a minute. And then they're throwing in these monsters. And you're exposed. You're getting beaten in training. You're getting smothered in training. You're exhausted. You're always reaching your limits because the only way to surpass those limits is to hit them. You got to hit them, and then they got to figure out where that limit is. Okay, next week, we're going to do one extra round. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. We're going to do more strength and conditioning. We're going to push you past wherever your capacity is right now. So you're always breaking. You're always at the point where you can do no more because it's the only way. And you can only maintain that.

The condition that they get in when they step into the octagon It's not possible to maintain that.

No, right. You can only get to it. You have to aim at that one moment.

Yeah, you have to peak. And then if you fuck up and overtrain, which a lot of those guys do just because they're such savages, they never want to leave the gym, then they don't peak right. And then they come in and they're exhausted. They didn't recover properly. And then in between rounds, they're too tired and they can't go out for the next round. They're too beat up. That happens, too.

I imagine that level of exhaustion has to be just insane when you overtrain in an actual championship.

And you realized you can't bounce back, and this guy is fucking blasting your legs with kicks and hitting you with punches, and you can't get out of the way anymore.

Who was it? Was it Habib who said that they should just do 25 minutes?

A lot of people said that. I mean, that's a... What? Is this a song? What's going on?

The Tessky brothers playing in my pocket. That's hilarious. Sorry about that.

Well, Hoist Gracie always said that. That was how he fought in the early days.

They just straight 25 minutes.

Because he was like, look, he goes, if we're on the ground, he goes, I don't want them to stand back up again and go in between rounds. And he goes, I need time to cook them. That's what he would say. Yeah, I mean, that's what jiu-jitsu is all about. Jiu-jitsu is all about staying one step ahead of you until you become exhausted, and then they eventually finish you.

Like a... You're just fucking... Oh, a constriction.

Yeah. I mean, that's But there's this balance of making it interesting for people to watch. I've been a proponent of no stand-ups. Don't ever stand anybody up when a guy takes you down. You get an advantage at the beginning of the round anyway because a striker gets to be standing up when you didn't earn it. So you should never get stood up in a fight. I don't care if the guy's doing nothing. If he's holding you down and you can't get up, that's how it should be. So it's more realistic, but it's the balance of it being a sport. People want to watch. Yeah, making it... Because when people grab someone and take them to the ground, nothing happens. People go, Boo. You hear it in the audience, and then the referee gets a little motivated and he stands people up, and I'm always like, Don't stand them up.

I never thought of it that way, that the beginning of the round starts it to the advantage of the- Always.

You're in a position you didn't earn. You never got back up. I think they should put them right back to where they were at the end of the round because it's one fight. It's not five fights. So if you start it standing up at the beginning of each round, that's a new fight.

Yeah, right.

In a way, it's at least a new aspect.

You're pitching, how quickly would the UFC go out of business? Real quick. 30 seconds, they're on the ground, and then it's 24 and a half minutes.

Dude, I'm a terrible businessman. I would give the fighters more money. I would fuck up the whole business model. I I would get rid of the cage. I would have them all fight in a basketball court. Just put mats on the ground in the basketball court. I don't think you should have a cage. I think the cage gets in the way. It becomes a way to get back up because you press your back up against the cage.

You press your back up.

You use it to stand back up again. And you're in the middle of the center of a mat. It's very difficult to get back up. And that's realistic. You're using a foreign object to help you perform. Yeah, right. But there's the whole macho thing about people fighting in a cage, and it's like they lock you in Clinch, cage match. Yeah. But I mean, in terms of inspirational performances and things that when you see the human spirit elevated to the highest possible place, when two very skilled men or women are fighting in a cage where they prepared for this for three fucking months. And then the referee is like, Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's go. And it's like that moment. It's not like anything else in all sports.

I think that's the moment that people show up for because they build the intense. It's the same with the Tyson fights or whatever. Now it's going to happen. You can't help but have that feeling once it... And yes, some fights end up being disappointing, whatever. But that moment is always there.

Well, Tyson was a crazy example of what we were talking about with greatness because you could dedicate your whole life. You could fucking get up in the morning at the right time. You could eat all the right foods. You could do all the right training. But then you see that fucking guy. You're like, Oh, no. He was going to smoke for 13 seconds. There's nothing I can do. I have no chance.

You know what? By looking at him, so he had just a look in his eye. He was one of the only fighters where you just see the other guy was scared. Usually, they at least hold himself together where they come off like, oh, I don't know. This guy looks pretty tough. Guys would fight Tyson and just would start and they'd feel that moment, too. Oh, shit. They're letting this tiger out and here he comes.

And it was like- Well, we're old enough to remember when he was in his prime and those fights were like executions. You didn't want to pay for the pay-per-view because they were so fat.

I remember when he fought Alex Stuart. I swear. I mean, Jamie might be able to prove me wrong, but I'm pretty sure that they cut to Alex Stuart and they cut to his wife and she was crying. And this is when they're coming to the center of the ring and she But by the way, for good reason, this man might kill my husband. You know what I mean?

We're certainly going to beat the fuck out of him. And she knows it and the world knows it.

And the guys were ready to quit. Remember that dude, Hurricane or whatever? White kid who fought him? He's McNeely? When he came in. His guy couldn't wait to throw the towel in. He had it ready. He was ready to go, All right, that's it.

The bell rings. He picks up the towel. You got one job.

Save your guy's life. You know what I mean?

Mcneely is fucked up now, too. When you hear him talk, it's rough. It's rough to hear. Oh, really? Yeah. I saw him get interviewed recently. That's the dark side of the sport, of MMA and of fighting. I had Johnny Knoxville on here yesterday, and Johnny Knoxville was knocked unconscious 16 times. Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's what I said. I'm like, Holy shit, man. And he seems normal. Like, It doesn't seem like he's got brain damage. Now, when you're talking to guys and you know they have brain damage, they're slurring their words and they're still fighting. Their words all mumbled together. You have no idea how much they're struggling. And they're going to be struggling in a downhill slope for the rest of their life. It's not going to get better. It's going to get way worse because the real brain damage occurs like ten years after the injuries. That's when it really sets in. Really?

It just keeps astropheding. It just keeps getting worse.

I mean, there's some therapies that they can do now. They do, and Knoxville did some of it, this magnetic therapy that they do that restimulates neuron growth. And, broadly enough, mushrooms, like psilocybin has been shown to regenerate-ushrooms all of a sudden cure a whole bunch of shit. I know. Well, probably always has.

All of a sudden, they're acknowledging it.

Well, one of the things that's opening the doors for them to acknowledge it is soldiers, because it's always been a left-wing thing to be into psychedelics. But all these soldiers are coming back with PTSD and drug addiction and a lot of CTE from bombs blowing up and IEDs and concussions. The only thing that's helping them is psychedelics. In Texas, former governor Rick Perry has started the Ibogaine initiative. So they're using Ibogaine to help all these different soldiers, which is, ironically, the drug that Hunter S. Thompson claimed Ed Musky was on when he was running for President. Oh, really? Yeah. Remember when he sang Ed Musky?

What is Ibogaine?

It's from the aboga tree, and it is a psychedelic that is in no way recreational. It is a very difficult experience. It's not fun for anybody. It's like a 24-hour trip. I haven't done it, but my friends that have done it say that it's basically like you see your entire life play out before you. You see where all your problems come from. You see where all of your emotional hitches are. Jesus. Yeah. And with addictions, it has an 80%, I think it's 84% with one treatment, they quit whatever they're hooked on. What? Not only that, it rewires the brain. So the physical pathways to addiction, like someone who just stick to opiates, gone, completely severed. So you literally don't have a physical addiction to opiates anymore. So with one treatment, 80 plus % of people. That's incredible. With two treatments, it's in the '90s. That's amazing. It's amazing. And it's been illegal since 1970 in this country. The sweet thing, psychedelic stuff.

You said Rick Perry has a clinic or whatever that stuff.

But Rick Perry, Because he's worked with soldiers and because he's worked with a lot of veterans, and he's a very compassionate and intelligent man, he realized, okay, maybe I'm wrong about all this psychedelic stuff. And so he started getting behind this I began initiative. They passed it in Texas, and now they're doing it with soldiers, and they're going to do it with police officers. Police officers experience more PTSD. I have a good friend who was a cop in Austin, and he was also in the military. And he said, What I saw in the military was nothing compared to what I saw as a police Really? Because I was seeing death and violence on a daily basis. When you're deployed, he goes, Yeah, you're going to see some horrible shit, but you're going to see some horrible shit mixed in over a course of time where you go out and things go Live. It was like every day.

Every day you're going directly to somebody who's having the worst moment of their life.

Every day you're pulling someone over and they might shoot you. You have no idea. You're pulling up to tinted windows. You don't know what the fuck is going on. You're running the plate. The license is expired. You have no idea who's in the car. You don't know anything. And you've seen all the videos. We've all seen videos of cops getting shot down, like when they're pulling over a car. We've all seen it. And so these guys are living with this fucking PTSD all the time. And then And they have to live in real life. They're supposed to go home, and they're supposed to just be a normal dad and a normal neighbor, and their fucking head is just a hurricane of chaos. And Ibogaine has been very beneficial for those people to just come come down and try to find the root of all this stuff and get them off pills and get them on the straight.

That's great.

It's amazing. I don't know why we got on the mushrooms. Well, I began because during the trial During the presidential elections, he started spreading these rumors, and it's in the documentary. What is that documentary? Is it Fear and Loathing? Gonzo. That's right. In that documentary, Gonzo, he talks about it. So he's getting interviewed by Dick Cavet. And he goes, Yeah. He goes, There was a rumor running around that Ed Musky was on Ibegaine, and I knew about it because I started that rumor.

But he made the guy- That's so good. I sold it to him.

So the guy completely cracked. So this guy was like a front runner for the President, and he fucking completely cracked because everybody thought that he was on drugs because Hunter S. Thompson was just running around saying there's this Brazilian witch doctors who are coming in to treat this guy. It's crazy shit. That's great.

They were like, and Hunter would know.

But it's crazy that he chose Ibogaine, too, because Ibogaine is like, it's not a recreational drug, and it's not a drug of addiction. It's literally a drug that stops addiction.

But he was the guy that would have the full... The whole book's full of these fucking esoteric drugs you never heard of.

They mentioned a really casual way.

Of course, four of us stopped to get Ibegaine at the one gas station that sold between needles and now it's big. Sure. No, of course, you did.

But it does It's supposed to help people that have brain damage as well. It's supposed to cause some neuroregeneration. Neuron stimulation. Yeah. There's stuff out there that can help people, but a large percentage of these fighters are silently suffering, and we don't ever hear about it.

They say it's supposed to be that the argument is because they're not using a glove, that football is supposed to be. Wasn't that the rationale that you were going to have less impact in boxing because the boxing gloves No, but remember, it's all the subconcussive blows.

It's not necessarily the one shot knocking you out as much as the repeated small little bit of brain blepharoplasty.

I'm sure they're all bad for you. You know what I mean? Like a version of getting your head cracked in over and over.

Nox to the head are not a good thing to be avoided.

It's also what you take in training, too. We're only considering what happens during a fight. If a guy has 40, 50 MMA fights, that's 40.

How many rounds does he have right in the gym?

Training camp is fucking brutal. And depending upon how intelligent your camp is, some people are really smart and they'll spar where they're not hitting each other hard. And then maybe one day of the week, they go live. But you do it with trusted... They're very close to you. These are people that you care about and love, so they're not going to try to hurt you on purpose. But sometimes not. Sometimes you're in a hostile gym and you got to spar with people you don't even know. They're from other countries. You have a big name. They're trying to take you out. But the amount of What does these guys take? I don't know if football is better or worse. The thing about football is the big impacts are way worse because when you've got a 300-pound super athlete that's fucking full tilt all the way from across there. Boom. Running start.

Yeah.

You're getting hit by a truck. But that doesn't... It's not targeted necessarily at your head. So it's like, what is better and what is worse? Boxing is bad. You have less options. Mma is slightly better because especially if you're a grappler, you can take guys down and you can beat them up on the ground. But ultimately, you're paying a price.

You can make a fucking living, for sure.

But for that glory, for that one moment when they win and the fucking 16,000 people are on their feet screaming, there's probably no drug like that that could ever reproduce it. And those guys chase that high for their entire life. And then after it's over, they feel detached.

Nothing ever rises to that level again.

You can make films until you're 100 years old. You can make great films forever. You can do the thing that you love forever. They have a little window, a little window of greatness.

That's the really tough thing about being an athlete We were talking to Pete Sampras that time we met Sampras some years ago.

He was like, we were probably, I don't know how we were, 30. He was 32 or something like that. We were like, oh, my God. He had all these fucking wins and grand slams, and he had it vaguely like, Yeah. He was like, yeah, you guys look, I'm about to retire. I'm finished. And we were young guys.

Just getting started. You know what I mean? Also, the thing is you get better at your job the more you do it. It's that thing with the athlete. I was having this conversation the other day. It's like you have all the physical skills at the beginning, but you become better at your sport as your skills are declining.

The body just doesn't want to do it anymore.

You got to just It's like, become Greg Maddox and compensate with all the tricks and location. And that's why that drama of the aging athlete is so powerful. It's like, Do we still have it in me? Can I still do it? Is what I've learned enough to compensate for what I've lost.

Well, there's an interesting story about Vitor Belfert. So Vitor Belfert, he won the UFC heavyweight tournament when he was 19 years old. That was the first event I ever worked at, 1997. I mean, he was one of the all-time greats for sure. But as he was getting into his 30s, he was starting to decline. Then the UFC allowed fighters to use testosterone replacement therapy. And boy, did he fucking use it. I don't know what his levels were, but they were superhuman levels. And there was a moment in time for a few years where they allowed him to use testosterone therapy. And people refer to it as the TRT Veto-er years because he was fucking He came terrifying because he has the mind of a veteran, incredible amount of experience, but now his body is moving like a 25-year-old. And so he was just annihilating people, just lighting people on fire.

So they're not allowed to use testosterone Hormone?

No, they can't use anything. No.

How about peptides? Can they use peptides?

Nope, not even peptides. They're trying to take that and reform that. But there's a lot of ignorance about peptides, what they actually do. All it's allowing you do is soft tissue injuries, heal quicker and optimize your body's ability to produce hormones. So instead of adding exogenous hormones, you're allowing your body to produce them more naturally, and it just makes you more healthy. For a very unhealthy job where you're getting hurt all the time, it's going to be better for the sport, better for the athletes to allow them to all use it. And it's also there's no long term damage that's going to do, steroids, where it shuts down your endocrine system. So I hope they reform it. But the idea was that there's so many fucking loopholes and so many people cheat. Big camps used to hire scientists. So they had a scientist on staff that was not only- What did he do? Yeah, exactly. Not only procuring stuff that would You're going to flip by the test because there's the Balco stuff with the clear. There's stuff probably right now that people are using that's slipping through. And there's a lot of experts that have...

One of the things is animal-derived testosterone. So testosterone, they use a carbon isotope test, I think. I believe that's what they use to figure out where the testosterone came from. So if your testosterone is at a very high level, they test all your other ratios. They go, Well, no, it all seems likely. He's an outlier. He just has naturally high testosterone. But testosterone that you get from synthetic testosterone is derived from a wild yam, believe it or not. Really? Yes. It's not animal-derived testosterone. So the composite of it varies when they run the tests on it and they can determine- They can determine that it's a yam-based testosterone. It's exogenous, not endogenous. It's a yam in their fighting.

It's not happening.

But if they could figure out a way to... And there's a lot of proof of concept of this. Can they figure out a way to extract testosterone from animal sources. Bull testosterone. Something like that. Well, the taurine. That's what they used to inject Hitler with taurine. Hitler was like a fucking guinea pig for this one doctor who tried a bunch of shit on him. And one of the things they did was inject him with bull testicles and stuff to try to keep viral. Yeah. But there probably are athletes right now that are using some shit that they haven't figured out yet. So to give them any loopholes at all, they're like, No, no, no, no, no loopholes, no IVs, no nothing. No IVs.

No IVs. No IVs.

It's vitamins. Right. But the problem with IVs is you can mask testosterone and mask steroids by over flooding the body with liquids. So if you overfloat- Oh, I see. So then when you piss- So the ratio is high because you add more water Yes. You would just fill them up with saline. And then when they go to piss, like, No, clean.

Because it's like so much water is being processed through the body that it doesn't have time to show the test.

So there's a way to mask it, especially with things that you would add to the IV. So there's no... It's only food and approved supplements through really high level labs, like Thorn, like Thorn supplements, where it's third party tested. So they can't do anything. But for a while, they let them do it. And those TRT Veto days were my favorite fights to watch.

Did they stop doing it, fighting because they thought it was like, adventuring certain people or they should happen that they're like, this is fucked up?

Look at the difference. That's TRT Veto on the left, and that's him on the right when they made him get off of it. Look at the difference. Jesus. I mean, that's fucking stunning. On the left, though, dude, that motherfucker was terrifying. When Luke Rockhold fought him, he told me, he goes, Dude, when I stood next to him at the fucking weigh-ins, he had on his teeth. He goes, This fucking dude was so jacked. He was so scared. I was like, What the fuck is he on? Because he knew he was on something. It's cheating. It really is, because you can jack your levels way above a normal human human beings because that's what a lot of guys... There was a few fighters that were pulled from cards because say if a really high levels, like 1100, they were testing like 1800, 1900. They were people that have never lived before. They were like a science project.

They had different species.

And they were had insane confidence. This person was mostly testosterone. Insane confidence because they were essentially like a raging gorilla. They were just insanely confident and it's just so fired up. They couldn't wait to smash somebody because they were just fucking maniacal. They were a beserker. It's not a person anymore. Now you're a science project. There are rare outliers, like Tyson when he was in his prime, it's rare physical specimens. That's part of the game, but that's God. That's nature. This is not Balco Labs. And so they won't allow them to do anything anymore. And that's why. It's because too many... And Vitor was one of the guys that tested way over the line, and then they just decided- The guys were pushing it like, no.

But that's what they're going to do.

If you say, okay- If you say it's legal, they're just going to take as much as possible.

Some are a little good, more is better. Yeah.

If you say, Oh, you did one CC a week. They're like, I heard five. I heard five CCs. And these guys are just training five times a day, and they never get tired, and they recover like that. And they never have to worry about soft tissue injuries because they heal like you're a fucking six-year-old. You just your body just like- You're like fucking Wolverine. Oh, yeah, man. Well, that's the thing about peptides, too. The Wolverine stack, BP157 and TB500. I don't know if you ever get injured. If you ever get injured, get immediately on BP 157 and TB 500.

I didn't hear about TB 500. What's that one?

Thymuson beta 500. In conjunction with BP C 157, it is a fucking phenomenal stack, and it just really helps injuries.

I didn't know they called it the Wolverine That's what they call it, the Wolverine Stack.

Because you fucking heal incredibly well. I was talking to a pro football player. He pulled his hamstring. He's like, Dude, I shot that shit right into my hamstring for two weeks, and I was right back on the field. I was like, That's nuts. I go, What is a normal rehab? He goes, Three months. He goes, In two weeks, I was back on the field. I go, What the fuck? He goes, I don't know how bad the injury was. He goes, But to me, it's like, Fuck. I pulled my ham string. I'm fucked now for X amount of days. He goes, In two weeks later, I was playing full tilt. I'm like, That's nuts.

And going right Right into the area of the injury.

Right into it. Some people think you don't have to do that. They think it's systemic, so you just stick it in your fat on your side. But he's like, No. And most athletes will tell you the best benefit is local. Shoot it locally into the area. And it just has- Like cortisone or whatever.

What is the- Yeah, cortisone.

But cortisone just masks it. That numbs it or whatever. Not only that, it has a tendency, if you do it too many times, to weaken tendons. Yeah. And so it could actually exacerbate the problem because it takes away the pain. It's like an emergency measure. It takes away the pain. It takes away the pain. But I mean, then there's the enhanced games that are coming out in Vegas this year. I know.

My friend had that idea a long time ago. He was like, You should just do the drug Olympics for cash. He goes, Do it in Vegas for cash. And then the enhance game is going to be Scott Burns. They're doing it. I sent them a day. I was like, they're doing it. I'm down. I love it. It's the science experiment game.

Let's see what a human beings do. That's what I think. I mean, look, when Barry Bonds and Sammie Sosa and those Guys were cracking out home runs. It was one of the most exciting times of baseball.

It was pretty exciting.

That's why they didn't do anything. They knew it wasn't a fucking mystery to anybody. But Avery is tuning in. The Basch brothers, they had baseball on a strike. They almost fucking destroyed that league. And then people started watching because guys were eating home runs. And then Bonds is like, Well, these two fucking guys are hitting this many home runs. I'm the best player in baseball, which he was. And when he did it, it lights out. You know what I mean? He had a year where he only swung and missed 26 times. 162 games, three and a half at-bats a game, only swung and missed. I mean, that's just... And yeah, Maguire would just move his wrist to get the ball out of the park. And it was like, it was fun to watch.

And when people say steroids don't make you a better athlete. Oh, they maybe don't make you a better athlete. But if you're a fucking Barry Bonds- If you're already an elite athlete, yeah, it makes you feel- If you let John Jones do all the juice he wants, he'd be fighting until he's 50 and fucking people up. If When you say, John, we've really come to our senses. This sport's all about excitement. I want to give the people what they want. Let people make informed choices based on their own discretion. Oh, it's like that. Welcome back. Welcome back. Then all of a sudden, John looks like Vitor in that picture.

He'd be undefeated.

By the way, John beat Vitor when Vitor was in his prime, and Vitor caught John in a full arm bar, totally locked his arm out, hyper extended, popped it, went backwards. You could see the video of it. His elbow is going that way. He wouldn't tap and then beat him in the next round. With one arm. Yup, one arm. His arm was fucked for a year after that. Yeah.

Give that man some steroids. Let's see what he can do.

Steroids. Let him be the king of the world.

The dream team. It's like, remember the first time the pros went to the Olympics, whatever, that year's '90s? Oh, yeah. I won every game by 70 points. It wasn't close, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

The argument for that made sense, though, because these other people are being compensated in their countries.

Oh, yeah. I had no problem. Then And by the way, now it's got more of that. Last Olympic Championship, that was a great game against France. That was fabulous. I mean, yeah, they're going to wreck some smaller countries and stuff. But okay, you're playing pros, they're playing pros. The whole definition of amateurism has gotten a little bit like... Yes. People find a convenient definition of it, according to what's there. You see in college, sports is changing and stuff. I got no problem if you're going to apply the rules evenly, but sometimes when it feels like it's just an excuse for the NCAA to make a billion dollars off What do you deal with? No, you guys, you're getting an education. It's a little bit like, Yeah, you're getting an education. You guys make a lot of money because people want to see Nebraska play.

It's exploitation. Yeah. I'm glad they've changed that with college sports because these guys are the reason why you're filling up the seats, and they deserve that money.

Not even one of them is going to be in the NFL. You know what I mean? Some of them, that's their window to make that money. You know what I mean?

It's hard. It's hard. And the risk of catastrophic injury is always there.

It's constant. Constant. Yeah. And the metrics, it's like, what is it? A two and a half year career or something. Depending on your position. But I mean, it's such a long time.

That seems just fair and obvious. You pay a kid to flip a cheeseburger out of college, but not to... Come on.

Well, that's a great thing about doing something where you're not relying on your body like acting. You could do it forever.

Keep going until you lose it. It's great. And it's got its own competitive aspect. But Okay, great. If you're willing to bet on yourself and then the expectation is, well, I got to do something that's interesting enough that people want to watch it, that's the proposition anyway.

How do you guys decide on projects that you choose? I'm sure you have so many options now. What makes you say, This is what I'm going to spend the next six months doing?

There are a bunch of different factors. The director is being the most important one. But if you read a script, and we've read so many thousands and thousands of scripts and written so many scripts and worked on so many movies that if we read something, and it's that thing we were talking about earlier, you get that emotional. Something happens when you read it. You go, Okay, well, then you pay attention to it, maybe read it again, go, Wait a minute. If it moves you in that way, ultimately, the big decision is saying yes, because you're going to spend...

It's the last point of which you I have total control. Then you're in. Then you're in.

You're in, whether it's good or bad. I've been on those movies where I knew a month into a six-month shoot that this is not going to work. That's the worst.

What is that like?

That's the worst, man. I came to think of that. It happened to me.

You're going to shoot us all when it comes out.

It's all bad. It's going to be 80, 16 hour days in a and then a postproduction period that's going to be pretty fraught, and then it's going to come out and we're going to get fucking crushed.

Then you're going to have to sell it.

You're going to have to walk the fucking plank and sit down with access. You know what I mean? Like, so No, the movie.

It's really terrible. How important is that stuff still today? Like the press stuff. Is that still important?

It is. I don't know to what degree each specific thing is.

It's ironic because we were talking about coming on this show today. I remember we were saying, I was like, doing this show, it would be more meaningful than the rest of the shit we do in aggregate to promote this movie.

We spent this whole week in New York doing, I don't know how many interviews, the quick ones with all the outlets.

A hundred and five-minute interviews, all the evening shows, the day shows.

All that stuff. And just given how many people listen to the show will be more meaningful. We were speculating.

Historically, if you look at it, because they've changed to all It feels produced, enforced, and advertised, and people have become resistant to anything that feels like a gimmick and a shtick, and you go on and you do your song and dance, and they say the thing, It looks great, and nobody cares. They're looking to go either because somebody they know says it's interesting or somebody that they is trusted. A trusted person is in, like you said, your feed, right? It's your friend or your cousin, or they affix that to somebody which has become a more rare thing, who's a legitimate neutral arbiter, right? Who I can't predict what they're going to say before I go there. There are a few of those, fewer and fewer of those people in the world, even those are proliferation of more and more voices. It's paradoxical. The form of entertainment is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. So you're like a seven-second... We're an advertising company. We do most of the spots that we realize, like 15-second spots, 6-second spots for social, the ones most people see. And then there's this one form, which is long-form discussions that are, whatever, two hours long.

And the amazing thing to me is, in a world where it seems like you can't get people to pay attention more than a few seconds, there's a a hunger for that. So there's this form, and that's why you see these are getting more popular. Obviously, you have this massive audience, and it's flying in the face of the whole other trend. And I think, and I don't know, that it probably has something to do with who do I think is authentic? And am I actually going to willing to extend my two hours of my time to sit there and listen through. And an argument that people probably do appreciate and understand conversations that have context and nuance and where there's like a back and forth. They're just much more selective about who they're willing to give that voice to in their life.

It's also the voice of the public, too, because when people start talking about things online and things go viral online and people just start saying how great they love the film or how great this album is or something like that, it just takes off organically now.

That has more weight than anything. If you feel like somebody else who obviously has no dog in the fight is going, Hey, this is great. You should see it. I'm the same thing. If I hear somebody tell me who I respect, Hey, you got to see that thing, that means more to me than anything, because I believe that. If the closer you can get to that, which is why I think the act of, A, telling the same story about you should go see the movie to a a bunch of people with a certain limited reach, it's just not that efficient, but you have to because it's like, Well, we sat down with our own in Trisha's Anaka and talked about the movie, and you do that ostensibly because it means a little bit more in that market. But I think ultimately, it's like more and more people realize they're being sold to, see through the fucking act and this bullshit. They recognize that you go out and sell every movie, you know what I mean? The good and the bad. And then we got decide, well, which one? And who can you count on? Well, it's mostly going to be that like the word of mouth, your friend.

And now you can see that person in your media experience.

Yeah. I think it's also we know that when you're sitting down with extra or all these things, that's just their job to sit down with people. They're not doing it because they want to.

They got told, go talk to that person.

Exactly.

And we got told, go talk to them.

So we go do the ritual. And they say the thing they say, and we say the thing we say. And everyone goes home and says, We did our job.

That's the benefit of an independent podcast is that with me, I don't talk to anybody I don't want to talk to. It's just like I literally do the whole thing on my phone. I go, Oh, yeah, that sounds cool. And that's it.

But that, I think, means a lot. At least this person is making this choice. And I've listened to it a bunch, and I actually find myself agreeing with it a lot of the time. So all right, I'll give it a shot.

I think also this format, at least I know why I started listening to the podcast was Because in the world, the divisive, the way everybody was talking, these sound bites and all this shit. And it was just the ability to just listen to human beings talk often who had different points of view, but had a civil conversation was such a welcome thing given the hysterical frenzy of divisiveness It's just feels like if I open my phone and look at the news, I feel like, Fuck. It's like, put it down. I feel my cortisol level go up. And to actually hear people, listen to people I know I don't agree with, but listen to them and just think about it. You know what I mean? Approach life with a little bit of humility. Hold on to what you believe, obviously, but keep listening.

Also, there's not a lot of opportunity is in the real world to have long conversations with people. So people are starving for that. I know.

Isn't it funny that this has become the shared cultural? We listen to that podcast and then actually experience that. Why don't people trust the media? Well, because the media doesn't do that because they compress it and because the truth, it's money. Because actually doing that is not with money. It's just ratings and the perceived idea that, well, if you simplify it or you position it one way or the other, you engender outrage. That's or just pure one-sided ideas that are simple. But the news used to be, the idea was, look, here's the SEC. We're going to let these networks broadcast their shows and make money on it. But here's the deal. You got to give an hour of that and lose money on that hour to tell the news and try to tell it objectively. Then it started to be, no, you got to make money for that hour, too. If you're going to make money, that's a different incentive than tell the Truth or report news or any of those things. People try to hybridize them. But at the end of the day, you're a more successful reporter if more people watch you because advertisers pay more, and then they're doing the same thing, looking at their data, grand, what are people watching, what kinds of stories?

And I think this is a simple answer because you just He's making it into a profit game. Those incentives are not aligned with just trying to get down to even reporting basic facts.

Yeah, it was a weird time. It was like we have more access to information than ever before, but so much of it is just horseshit. It's hard to stay balanced. I think that's why it's good to listen to people just talk. And then you recognize the flaws in their thinking. You feel ego, you feel deception, bullshit.

It's true. People will reveal themselves. We actually don't need that many editorialists to be constantly telling us what to think and how to think. People actually have pretty good instincts. If someone's bullshitting, you eventually they'll hang themselves. Like you said, you'll get that vibe. I After a while, he started repeating his shtick, and I didn't really talk about what I was wondering about. That's like forming your own judgment.

Pete Buttijage actually talked about that being dangerous on podcast. He's like, because you go on there and you have your points, but you'll get revealed over the course of a few hours. You can only stick to these lines.

You can only be talking points and bullshit. And then what happens is people just... There was an art to look at how great they're communicating. They stick to the message and they do their points. Okay, 30 seconds, 60 seconds. But any longer than that, it just starts to look like a fucking robot on. And like I said, what we need to follow through with... I saw you did the same hand gesture and the same bit with that, but Sometimes you find out they're full of shit just by having them talk about other things.

Tell me, do you like cooking? Then you just see some concocted- They're thinking, what makes me look good about cooking?

Exactly. Well, I'll tell you what, because what would the focus group say?

That's exactly it.

Do I cook or do I not?

Does that make me feminine or does it make me open to cultural?

It's just like, What do you like to cook, man?

I don't cook.

Well, that's the other thing about people that are online too much is they're so concerned with other people's opinions that they don't have enough time to formulate their own. They're just so concerned with how people are going to perceive everything you say that you're handcuffed. You're terrified to miss speak.

Right.

I think that, in general, is a real fucking danger. We were talking the other day. We were saying about one of the benefits of getting older and doing this for a long time is you realize nobody really gives a shit as much about you as you thought. Nobody remembers.

You spend your 20s and 30s thinking, This is really important. And then you realize no one cares.

I'm not going to come off. What's going to be?

No one actually cares. It's not that big a deal.

Most people are mostly worrying about themselves in their life. There's this illusion that they pay a passing moment attention or it's in some story. It's like you're fucking staring at it because it's about you. You said that about me. Nobody else really fucking cares.

And if they do, they're usually fucked up. Something's wrong. Why are you concentrating on this other person's life. That's right. It's really madder. Probably trying to ignore your own bullshit. Well, listen, man, your movie's fucking awesome. I've loved so much of your films over the years, so it's been really cool to be able to have you guys in here and talk about this. It's been great. It's been fun. It's been fun. Thank you very much. Two very normal, nice movie stars. You guys are cool as fuck.

Give us a couple more hours.

Yeah, exactly.

I enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed the rip. It's fucking great. Everybody, go see it. It's great. I loved it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for being here. All right. It's a pleasure. Bye, everybody.