Transcript of #2565 - Michael Douglas

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Very nice to meet you, sir.

Thank you.

I've been a fan for a long time. Oh wow, okay, appreciate that. Falling Down is one of my all-time favorite movies. Ah yeah. That is such a crazy movie. I rewatched some scenes today, uh, getting ready for it. And the scene where you confront the guy who's working on the highway and say, there's nothing wrong with this highway. The thing that everybody a lot of times thinks, that they have these budgets, and if you don't spend all the money, then you don't get the money next year. So you gotta tear up the fucking road, and you take a bazooka out.

I know. I mean, the spooky thing I see about, I guess, Romanium is it's just how that meets up to today.

Yes.

You know, 30 years— this is 30 years later. That's the thing that sort of— Interesting, but also depressing.

It is depressing. You would have thought we would have figured it all out by now.

Yeah.

Especially with the use of the internet. So much more information that was available than when you made that film.

Right.

The world's a totally different place, and yet it resonates perfectly.

Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah, that's one of my favorites too, that kind of dark comedy.

Yeah, I mean, it was a dark comedy, like, and there's parts completely caricaturish, unsympathetic characters like the guys on the golf course,

right?

Where the guy dies because he freaks out, has a heart attack. You go, I guess you're gonna die.

No, they were— I remember getting, um, the studio calling me down. Uh, Mr. Toowoomba down in the office, Mike, you gotta come down. I came down to the office and I was introduced to Mr. Ho, who was chairman of the Korean Grocers Association. And they said, we have a real beef here. You got a scene here where you're knocking up a Korean grocery store and attitude and all that. And I said, well, look, I didn't write the script, but you got to understand, there must have been something in it that hit people, triggered it, because that was the scene. And so he listened to me, bless him. And I was back in New York about 3 weeks later in my local Korean grocery store, and they were wearing smile buttons. You know, so— But okay, there you go. Made a dent. Well,

it almost became like a symbol, you know, of, don't fuck with me, I'm ready to crack. Which I think a lot of people resonate with. I even had a guy come on the podcast dressed as you in Falling Down once. Brought the suitcase and everything.

Ooh, that was a little— He did it— A little Kobe Friskum Lamm of the '90s.

Gavin McGinnis. He did it for fun. But it was fun. It was hilarious. But you've been in a ton of insane movies. What is it like to write a memoir? That's got to be a weird feeling to relive your life and try to be as honest as you can and put it all down.

Yeah. No, I resisted it for a long, long time. And then, well, it was sort of after I had cancer about 16 years ago, stage 4. you know, wasn't good. I lost a couple of friends at the same cancer ride, Larry Hagman, I remember from Dallas, the show, and Nick Ashford from Ashford and Simpson. And, you know, I wasn't sure. And I talked about it. It was funny. And I— it was stage fright. Nobody— my friends, they kind of abandoned me, you know, a lot of friends. And I realized With cancer, people don't quite know what to say. And if it's stage 4, they don't know if they're coming to say goodbye or this or that.

So they just avoided you?

They kind of— yeah, they check in with you, kind of just— yeah, it was kind of quiet while we're going through the chemo and the radiation. Happens to a lot of people because they just don't quite know where it's all going. So this one guy, though, Shane Salerno, who I worked with on it, who was a screenwriter, and he'd done an adaption of a of a script for me a long time ago, and I didn't— hardly remembered him. And he started sending me these notes, sort of like a coach, you know, just these little notes. You kick it at it. You can do it. You can do it. And I just remember being really touched by it. And then afterwards, he got into more of being a literary agent, and he kept asking me about, you know, to write a book and all of that. And I was busy. But then after the cancer, things I kind of slowed down. I kind of— my order of priorities changed a lot. And so then I started thinking about it. And I read a book when I was beginning as a producer called Memo, and it was written by David O.

Selznick, a big producer who had Gone with the Wind and all of that. And it was a book that told you what a producer does. And it was basically all of the notes that David O. Selznick wrote about his pictures, whether it was costumes or props or this or that, all the things that he sort of covered. So I said, you know, maybe I'll do like a handbook. I'll take like 12 of my movies and I'll tell the stories from the very beginning, the creations and the process we went through. And thinking about it. And also I had my dad, Kirk, he had written 9 books already, including a good biography, The Ragman's Son. And I was also thinking, well, we're kind of a unique situation here between my father and I. And can't say this about too many, 2 generations. We got 80 years in the business, 120 130 movies between us. And so there was a legacy, you know, thought going on. But as I got into it, I said, I guess I got to talk about the personal stuff too, you know, and you just got to talk about your life and, you know, and the issues and the parts of it, the good and the bad.

And yeah, Joe, you're right. It's kind of scary. You know, I started doing it and then saying, do I really want to share all this shit with everybody? Right. You know, I'm kind of— but I figured, you know, why not pass it on to my generation and the next? And so it kind of is a combination of my personal life and people who are interested in a lot of different movies about how they happened or how the whole development went. And holy shit, then all of a sudden people liked it. And the book's a big hit. You know, I, you know, it's like, wow. I think part of it also is when you started with that handbook idea of just doing it about movies, then the producer and the career ambition gets in and said, no, you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, man. I mean, you know, it still sells. You know, you still got to— Bring that all up.

Well, it's also real. I mean, that was your life. You were burdened with youth, good looks, and fame. A gift and a burden at the same time. And the son of a great man. Yeah. So there's a lot of pressure on you just because of that.

Yeah. Kids are— kids can be nasty. I mean, when they know something about your family, when they know who your mother is, who your father is, they can make certain assumptions. And so the

nepo baby assumption, right? Yeah.

Which, by the way, since we'll touch on that, tell me I'm crazy, but isn't just about every single business involving nepo babies? Doesn't every mother and father try to get their son or daughter?

Sure. Well, certainly like restaurants, it's super common. One of my favorite restaurants is this place, Gaetano's, in Las Vegas. The son runs it and the dad started it.

Or cleaning businesses or groceries or anything.

Family businesses.

Yeah, and why they picked on celebrity—

Because it's so difficult to acquire. It's such a rare thing that most people are not gonna get it. And if you get that rare thing just because you're the son of a great man, people get upset at you. 'Cause it's supposed to be this insane struggle through poverty and strife to get to that point. Where finally you made it.

Well, my father did that part.

Yeah, I know, but look, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think people are just jealous and upset.

Well, that's what I think, because the history of second generations is not great in our business.

No, it's— look, it's understandable that they would have all these critiques. It's understandable that they would feel bad about it. It's understandable that they would feel that it's not fair.

Yeah.

But they can't say you weren't great.

Yeah.

That's the thing. I mean, Gordon Gekko. How many fucking assholes did cocaine and were, like, terrible stockbrokers because of that movie?

It was my fault.

Gordon Gekko was a hero.

It was so weird. It's so crazy. It was so weird afterwards. The picture came out, and every time in New York I'd be around these half-drunk Wall Street guys, you're the man! You're the man! I said, what are you talking about? I'm the villain. No, no, no, no, no, no. And it was like, holy— it really was an eye-opener for me. Oh, my God. They love the pizzazz and the clothes and not that he has any moralities whatsoever. It didn't matter.

They wanted that character. You were like Tony Soprano for Italian guys.

Yeah.

Like, let's go! Go get it! Take it down! Do the coke! Steal the money! They wanted you to wear the most expensive suits possible. That's what they wanted. They rooted for a bad guy. It's very interesting. What year was that? What year was Wall Street?

'85.

'85. Wow. So I didn't realize that stockbrokers were crazy until about '88. There was a guy that I used to do martial arts with. He was a really, really crazy guy. And then I ran into him at a bar and he was telling me— it was probably, yeah, probably '88. I was probably 21. He was telling me how he was a stockbroker now, and he just does a bunch of coke, and he's making all this money. And he was a psychopath. Like, I had known him as a fighter, and he was an animal. And all of a sudden, this guy's just telling me, this is what I'm doing now, I'm selling stocks. And he had a nice suit on. It was crazy looking at this person that I always knew as a psychopath, like a scary guy to spar with. And here he is wearing cuffs and shit, and he had cufflinks. I was like, this is hilarious. You're doing this?

No, I mean, that's why they all got into coke, They were following the markets in Asia at 4 o'clock in the morning and wherever they were. And then they all got just wired.

Well, they had to stay up, right? And now it's done even crazier where they're moving the servers as close as possible to the actual stock market so they can get trades in like a millisecond quicker. And all those people, Gordon Gekko's their hero.

No, it was, it was,

Greed is good. How many guys got that tattooed on them?

I know.

How many guys have that framed up on their wall? I guarantee you quite a few.

And again, all that's happened in the 40 years since that movie is the money, the size, the scope that I was dealing with that seemed so enormous at that time is pittance compared to what's What's going on right now.

And now there's other crazy stuff like that, like crypto coins.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, what, what are you doing? What are you doing? You got fake money? You got fake money that's worth real money?

Have you figured it out? I've, I've listened to like 3 lectures trying to understand it, and I, I still can't.

My buddy Kurt Metzger told me that he thinks it's just people that are gambling addicts. It's a new thing to gamble on, and it's also a new thing to rig So one of the things they can do is like, say if we develop a Michael Douglas crypto coin, you could do that. Right. And someone would put a bunch of money into that, like say a million dollars or $5 million into this crypto coin. Like, this is that— we're gonna invest in this crypto coin. And then everybody else, as your fans, buys in and hoping they're gonna get out before it crashes, because everybody kind of knows it's gonna crash, and they pull out the money that was supposed to be for the coin immediately, and they get it to you.

Sounds like a Ponzi scheme.

Sounds like a Ponzi scheme, yeah. So you get all this money invested in it, you figure out a way through offshore corporations or whatever little tricky filters you have to do to suck all that money out, and it's just a way to bribe people.

Yeah.

Well— What a world. What a world.

What a world.

It's the Wild West. With that kind of stuff, it's the Wild West. So to me, it's like the stock market on steroids. It's like some new wacky kind of stock market where you're just— you're making money. You're making your own money. How many fake monies are there, or crypto monies are there? Well, fucking thousands of them.

Yeah. No, it just— and it seems the accessibility and the ability to do it just keeps getting larger. And the disparity which I think is really the base of issues going on. The disparity of wealth is very, very depressing, very frustrating.

Well, it's certainly frustrating that more people don't have an opportunity to do better in this life and that no one's paying attention to that. That's what I've always said, like if you look at the country as a community, you would say, okay, if this is all our friends, this is all people we care about, why are so many of them living in abject poverty for decade upon decade? Why is there crime-ridden neighborhoods that never get better? Why is there gang-ridden neighborhoods that never get better? Well, they've been ignored.

Yeah.

They haven't— there's— we could throw resources at that the same way we threw resources at rebuilding Iraq, or, you know what I mean? We could throw resources at fixing these spots, and we don't.

No.

And that's why people get really mad, and that's why people get— almost cheer on when Luigi shoots that UnitedHealthcare guy. Yeah. Because people were like, yeah, fuck you, it's falling down all over again.

All over, you know.

Yeah, same kind of thing.

Come down to, I mean, like 50% of Americans own stocks and 50% do not. And if you look at stocks, the way the market has gone, however it's controlled or whatever happens progressively, it's compounding, you know, versus the 50% of people who don't have stocks and are living on a paycheck. Which is, which is getting smaller and smaller with inflation.

Yeah, so it's a goofy time. And then on top of that, they're talking about AI taking away everybody's jobs, and there doesn't seem to be any real clear path to mitigating the massive effect that that's gonna have on the economy and all these people that are gonna be unemployed.

Right, right.

It's a weird thing we're in the middle of right now.

Well, I, um, I had a guy that came and lectured me when I was in college, a guy named Buckminster Fuller, and he was the guy responsible for the geodesic dome and all of that. But the other thing he did, he had a book called Spaceship Earth, and to me at a young age at the time, he really made it clear how tiny, how tiny this little planet is, and how— and all with our Hubble telescopes, we're looking out further and further, and I'm sure— There's got to be something else out there in the universe, and maybe we will. But right now, this is it. This is it. This is it. And it's beginning to kind of crumble worldwide, you know, with the climate and all of this. And so I find it hard to understand, after 2 major world wars and having this This period of relative peace, that things are beginning to really crack again, and how individual countries— and we talk about, you know, the U.S. being the most powerful, but we all just got to work together. We got to. There should be no more— there's no reason for any more wars.

And yet there's more conflict going on than ever, ever before. Who's the cause of it? Some people say social media is designed to create conflict or create enemies, but it just can't be. We've got to get over this and just all begin to try to work together. And that's why I support a couple of organizations that I know are not the most popular right now, but are greatly conceived. The United Nations is one of them. I think it was designed after World War II. too, to have a place for us to get together. I know the US gets pissed off sometimes when votes don't go their way, and they'll financially support it. It has issues, but we have to work on the whole world understanding what's happening. I get nervous when I see Musk looking for— all these guys looking for planets to move to, like they already know something I don't know. It's already past. Yeah. We got to get out of here. Uh, it's, it's of concern.

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And the thing is, much like we were talking about Falling Down, if you watch that film and you see the issues he was dealing with then, it's the same issues we're dealing with today. Right. It's the same thing with war. It always seems to go into this pattern. And it's always the same thing. It's always leaders and people who control those leaders who want access to resources and control resources, and we let those people dictate what happens in the world. That's right. Because it's a very small amount of people affecting a very large amount of people. And the only hope is that we all together figure that out, because I don't think people were even completely aware of that in this country until probably like the '60s and the '70s. People started thinking that the government does not have our best interest in mind, and especially during Vietnam. This is a fucking crazy war that makes no sense. And even today, no one thinks it was a good idea to go in there.

No.

How many people died? And I think more people are aware of that. It's— the whole thing is more transparent now than it's ever been before, which I think is a good sign. I wish we learned quicker, but we don't. We learn slowly. But I think we're learning.

Well, I hope so. I mean, this— when I look back at my father's career in post-World War II, where characters were the good guys or the bad guys, white hats or black hats, villains and everything. And then I grew up, and then with the Vietnam War and all that. So I've always been fascinated in this gray area. So it's hard sometimes to know the morality choice or what's right or wrong. This is what's frustrating. But you brought up a point, Joe, which I'd like to raise and maybe get your advice, because I— one of my earliest pictures that I did was The China Syndrome. The China Syndrome was about a nuclear meltdown in a power plant. And we were under a lot of critical claimed we being myself, Jane Fonda, who was also producing partner at that time, about our credibility and how irresponsible it was. And GE was pushing this about nuclear power and all of that. And the movie came out and was a successful film, you know, did very well, but still criticized. And then 12 days After the movie came out, Three Mile Island happened in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And I had like an epiphany.

I'm not a religious guy, but I felt like somebody was telling me something. And so I became involved in understanding more about nuclear weapons and plutonium and the half-life and all of this. And I followed through our nuclear conflicts with Russia. And I want to make a suggestion to you because you maybe have some connections to the president. This war, this Ukraine-Russian war, and the effort to find an answer to it, and an effort for the president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And my idea is, I don't know what Putin has on Trump, or what this connection is, or why Trump always feels like he's got to reach out to help Putin in this. 93% of our country, Republicans and Democrats, don't like Putin. It's one of the few things that really aligns us together. So why don't we try in making peace in Ukraine, which gave up nuclear weapons— they gave up their nuclear weapons— why doesn't Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin dramatically reduce, if not give up, our nuclear stockpiles? Obviously, the other 6 or 7 countries that have a very minimal amount of nuclear weapons would have to be. This could be the greatest thing that would happen in our generation.

And in terms of settling this peace, making peace in Ukraine, and where Ukraine may have to give up some territory, I am hoping that President Trump could make a deal with Putin, say, you know what, US, Russia, let's give up our weapons because it's totally obsolete. There's no need, there's no question about it, because these weapons would just destroy the world. It's mutual assured destruction. If he can do that, and he could, if he spent the next 3 years of his presidency negotiating with Putin, we could get rid of nuclear weapons, and I guarantee I would commit my life for him getting that Nobel Peace Prize, because he would deserve it.

It's a great utopian idea. I agree with you. It would be awesome if there was no nuclear weapons, if we all agreed as a species, as the human civilization, that there's no need to have something that can kill every man, woman, child, every animal and plant on Earth many times over. I mean, the amount of weapons that we have today are absurd. If we all together, the whole world— China, Russia, United States, all the other countries— just launched all their bombs at once, Just imagine what the world would look like when it's over.

It'd be over. It wouldn't be a world.

There'd be no world. It would be on fire. It would be a glowing orb. We're crazy that we even have that kind of stuff. However, I don't ever think that any country that has a military is going to give up all their nuclear weapons if there are nuclear weapons out there in the world. And how would you be able to assure? One of the things they're always terrified about is— I mean, this was one of the big conspiracy theories when— do you remember that New Jersey drone thing that was going on?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. One of the crazy conspiracies was that they were using these drones to search for a missing bomb and that there was a bomb or some nuclear device that was unaccounted for and they believed it. And so those were United States military drones that are very sophisticated, top-secret stuff. I don't know what's true or not, but I do know that they don't exactly know where all the bombs are all over the world and the idea that you would give up your nuclear weapons while weapons still exist is highly unlikely.

Well, but is this maybe what— is this what AI is supposed to be doing?

That's where I was going to get to. Yeah, I think the only way we're really going to get out of this— this is terrifying for biological human beings— is to let AI control government and resources. And it would have to have already become sentient, and it would have to already exhibit superintelligence, reason, and logic, and it would just evenly distribute resources. Amongst all the people.

Because when you look at the budgets alone, just for our nuclear programs, we could solve— the defense budgets in this day and age versus our budget for humanitarian purposes is absurd. I mean, it comes down to all people want really, you know, is a roof over their head, housing and food. And, you know, so all this money could be shifted over into other programs that would stop the need for Africans to have to immigrate. You know, we have to— can restore areas of the world that are much more impoverished than us because this disparity of haves and have-nots is going to create another world war.

They would never do this. But here's a way that you could make sure that something like this never happened. When you have re— like, think about all the money that comes from resources, like Earth's resources, whether it's oil, minerals, all these different things. That is a part of the Earth, and it's Earth's. So if you made a law where all natural resources drawn from the Earth, like oil, will be evenly distributed amongst the population of that city. Yeah. You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Minus operating costs, everything else gets evenly distributed amongst people because it is the human races. If we are all citizens of this Earth, then the Earth's resources should be shared by all of us. Like, there's people that want to charge you for air. They think it's a good idea to charge you for clean air. There's people charge you for water. You have a water bill. Like, someone owns the water, they charge you for the water. Like, all that stuff should be the property of the human beings that live in that place. Imagine how much that would transform the places that have diamond mines. Imagine how much that would transform the places that are rich in oil money. Amen. Where you have these monarchies that are controlling vast populations. Why? Because they were the first persons, or their ancestors were the first persons, to dig into the ground and pull up the oil. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. You, you are insanely wealthy because you're sucking the lifeblood out of the Earth, which really should kind of be everyone's. Especially when they do shit like they go offshore and they're drilling offshore. Where the fuck are you even?

You're not even in America anymore. Like, what is this?

Amen.

You're stealing from the Earth. And then, and it lets you buy weapons and lets you, you know, a lot of these people that are involved in these immense corporations are involved in many immense corporations and the amount of money that they're making is kind of fucking kooky. And when they have massive influence on politicians, and when politicians are allowed to like trade stocks where they have insider information, and they're making fucking hundreds of millions of dollars on a $170,000 a year salary, so all these things compound, they compound, and you get to the point where you're like, I don't know if this can be fixed.

Yeah.

And that's what they like. They like us in a state of, I don't know if this can be fixed. Yeah, because that way you're like, oh, What are you gonna do?

Put your hands up.

So like, you have your LA mayor race, you get to vote for communism or communism. Good luck. You got fucked, and you're gonna have to— and everybody's like, wow, what are you gonna do? And people don't know what to do. And then more taxes are gonna come, like, I don't wanna pay it, but I don't wanna move. And they'll just keep getting fucked. And this is unfortunately where they like us to be. I think it's one of the things about people that are in control and people that are The wealthiest amongst us that are operating in this very nefarious way, they do like it when we're mad at each other. They do like it when we're divided, whether over the dumbest shit, over gender pronouns or fucking whatever it is, what nationality you are, what your religion is, whatever it is. They love it when we're at each other's throats. When most of the things that everybody wants, we all agree on. And we all agree that the system that's in place right now is really not looking out for everybody.

Not at all. It's just not. No, no, no, it's not.

Otherwise there'd be people campaigning about fixing inner cities, like a presidential campaign, like with a plan. Like, we have these areas that have traditionally been impoverished and gang-ridden and crime-ridden. We can allocate resources. This is the multi-step program over the next 5 years that we're going to do to radically increase the amount of opportunity these young people have, increase their access to education, increase their access to community centers and places that'll give them purpose and meaning. Like that, you could change millions of lives in this country.

You can. It means changing your budgetary— Yep.

Yep.

—primacy of what's important. And that's the part that's been difficult.

That's where Dr. AI is going to come in. AI is going to be like Dr. Manhattan.

With the rails. With the rails, they gotta— I mean, we can't do it like we did last go-around with the social network stuff, which was out of control before anybody had a chance to do it. Right. And it's interesting, I'm understanding how the triggers work. Most of the stuff is based on finding conflict. So you look at all this stuff, and it makes you have more enemies, or it makes you get divisive rather than coming together. Something happened, Joe. I don't know, maybe it was just my imagination, but even going back to Reagan, Reagan Republicans and a different time, just where politicians were like public servants. It was a commitment you made to the country, you know, to yourself. And now it's just sort of a profit center. The amount of money involved in politics, and then these guys turning around and becoming lobbyists. lobbyists, and all the insider kind of trading going on, the corruption of this brilliant system. You know, the last thing I really did, I played Ben Franklin in a show when he was in France, and I got into looking back at the Constitution and everything. And what a brilliant piece of legislature this thing was.

It was incredible. It was so idealistic. And now to watch it just over, you know, not just this administration, but it's been going on for a while, just get so corrupted. I used to think of, you know, politicians almost like the clergy. You know, they were people to look up to. And now, I don't want to get into local politics. I just don't think— You're in Texas right now. There's a couple of people running for office that are just like— Come on, man. You can do better than that.

I agree with you. And what's supposed to happen in those situations is the person who should have been a better candidate is supposed to lose, because you should have had a better candidate to run against this other guy. And that should rally people to do better. That's supposedly what the system is based on. It's not supposed to be based on your side winning every time. It's supposed to be based on some sort of an understanding that People have opinions, and if their expectations aren't met, there's consequences. And people don't like corruption, and they don't like bullshit, and they don't like people fucking with their lives. And sometimes you vote one way and you think, well, this is going to be better this way, and it turns out, nope, same shit. Okay, well, someone's got to do better. Fuck that guy. And you hope eventually a hero will rise.

But there's so much— I think, I don't know the exact statistics, but I think generationally I'm a Democrat because my mother and father were Democrats before. It takes an effort to maybe change parties. And the Republicans, Republicans speak a lot because their mothers or fathers. One of the questions I want to ask you is, you supported Bernie Sanders at one time in your life and were able to— you seem to have a much more open mind and ability to, you know, change and alter. But I think a lot of people just sort of follow that political party generationally because their families did.

Yeah, I think we have a real problem with having 2 distinct different parties only. I don't think that's healthy for us. I think it enhances this tendency that we have to be very tribal. Yeah. And to have this us versus them thing, and to ignore all the craziness that our side is doing because it's our side. And for me, it was— first of all, the open border was insane. It was insane to just not only leave the border open, but give people instructions on how to get in and also transport them to cities and then put them up in hotels. It was really clear that a game was being played. You could speculate all you want as to what that game was. Was it for cheap labor? Was it to turn these people into citizens and have them permanently voting your side because you helped them and let them in? I don't know what it is, but it was something. Was it to beef up the census by having all these people move into areas that were swing states, and then you would have many more people, and then these more people would count for more congressional seats?

That could be it too. I don't know what it is, but it's fucking insane. And if you want me to be a Democrat while you're just letting people fly in from the open border, I'm going, hey, fix that! It seems crazy to have 10 million people of unknown origin enter into your country over a period of 4 million years. Or excuse me, 4 years. But then you've also got the fact that they hadn't had a primary since 2012. Yeah. Like, how do you— how are you just slipping this? The whole thing is supposed to work a very specific way. And if it's like, we have to win, so we're just gonna push that aside and you're gonna— here's your candidate.

Right.

What the fuck are you doing? That's not how it's supposed to be done. Right. And if you want me to vote for that, I'm not going to vote for that. Right. That seems crazy. It seems dangerous. You know that Biden wasn't the fucking president for 4 years. It's really clear that he was— his mental ability was severely declined. He was compromised. There was clearly You'd hear him talk, there's something wrong. And then they gaslit us for 4 fucking years while whoever is behind the scenes, unelected, is actually running the country.

Right.

And I didn't want to keep that going. I thought that's dangerous. I didn't like the whole COVID vaccine mandatory thing that they were pushing for those 4 years. I didn't like the coercion. I didn't like keeping people from flying. I didn't like any of that stuff. It was all crazy. And to me, that's what that group stood for.

Right.

What Trump stood for, some of it turned out to not be real. Like, one of them was the no wars. Well, look, we're at a war with Iran, so that wasn't real. The other thing was closing the border. That is real. But then with that, then you have the, you know, Tim Dillon had a great description of ICE. He said former backyard carnival wrestlers who took like a 7-week course.

It's nuts to just give someone a $50,000

sign bonus. Yeah, you train them for 7 weeks and then give them guns, and you have a militarized force running through the fucking city streets.

And put a mask on your face.

And put a mask on your face. Look, I can understand why they have to put a mask on their face because they get targeted, but it's also— it's like we're setting a weird precedent if you allow a militarized force to just go through the cities with no identification. They don't have to have identification. So I understand that you're trying to get out violent criminals, And I support that. I get that. But when you have a— you're setting a precedent if you allow a militarized police force with no identification, with masks on, to enter into cities. Of course people are going to say this is an overstep. Of course. It seems crazy.

Yeah. And your local police departments feel that same way too. I'm sure some of them do.

I mean, some of them are dealing with the Tren de Aragua gangs that were taking over apartment complexes in Colorado, and they were allowed to do that because it was some sort of a sanctuary city. There's a lot of craziness that was going on during those 4 years. And I was like, hey, this is fucking dangerous. This can go really sideways. And there was all that fucking defund the police stuff. Like, hey, hey, hey, hit the brakes on that. Defunding the fucking police is crazy. Do you know how much crime there is?

Yeah.

It's also the tendency to let people go when they've committed violent crimes and to put them right back on the street with no cash bail. I'm like, that's not a good idea. None of these are good ideas. And if you want me to support all these terrible fucking ideas just because I would be a good person and I'd be a Democrat, like, no, it doesn't make any sense. That's how I felt.

I know that's how you felt. What I'm curious about is how do you feel now?

Well, how I feel now is I do not like this Iran war in any way, shape, or form. It doesn't make any sense. For us, it seems like—

It's getting really out of hand.

They were trying to get every single president, including Trump in his first term, to do this.

Yeah.

And now we've done it, and it's very clear it's a giant quagmire. It's very clear there's no easy way out. Not good.

No.

And there's still a lot of people that insist that it had to happen, that Iran was the greatest funder of state terrorism in the world, and that what they were doing was funding and arming these forces and having them do these terrorist attacks. And I'm sure a lot of that's true.

I concur, but they sure seem pretty smart in how they've been handling this. And as we saw now, you know, in Saudi Arabia, and I mean, you know, Riyadh, Riyadh, that's like, you know, your Major Austin Airport, JFK, Riyadh Airport. They're getting it. It's opening up. It's, you know, it's getting bigger and bigger. Oh yeah, it's scary shit. I'm surprised with all of our Western intelligence and Israeli intelligence that we have not had a better handle on the situation.

Well, look, obviously I'm not an expert on international relations, but I don't think the picture that they painted of how this was going to go down was even remotely accurate. I think if they had gone in During the time where people were protesting in the streets, that would have been a completely different experience. Like, that was the opportunity. If they really were going to do this from the beginning, that would have been the opportunity when the Iranian people organically protest. I don't know if it's organic. I don't live there. But I mean, we know for a fact that there was a massive government crackdown on those people. A lot of people were killed. A lot of people jailed forever.

Yeah. Thousands, tens of thousands. No, I think it was instigated by Israel. By the fact that they had information that these key Iranian leaders would all be together and were persuaded that we take them all out, we can turn it over. And it didn't turn out that way.

No. And there was a lot of people that were very skeptical of that from the moment that it was proposed. I don't know how they convinced Trump to do it. You know, and I do know that In any international conflict, I'm sure even during Vietnam, even after people kind of knew the Gulf of Tonkin was horseshit, there was— I'm sure there's people even today that defend the Vietnam War. Yeah. I'm sure. There's always— you're always gonna be able to find people that will propose an argument, whether someone has instructed them to do this, or whether this is how they actually feel, or whether they just like to argue and get on television and be the contrarian. You're gonna be— you're gonna get people that support this war, but I think the majority of the United States felt like one of the things that we were voting for when we voted for Trump is no more wars. Stop this shit. Like, it's crazy. You know, when I remember one of his speeches or one of his interviews, someone was asking about Ukraine. Do you want Ukraine to win? Do you want Russia to win? He said, I just want people to stop dying.

Mm-hmm. And most people who voted for him based on that feel very upset that there's a new war going on.

Yeah, yeah.

But again, I don't know. I'm not a fucking expert. And so the problem is if you listen to people that actually understand missile production, they do say that Iran was ramping up their missile production and that they— if they had gotten a nuclear bomb, it would have been a fucking terrifying scenario. Yeah, that's true. That's true too.

Well, it goes back to my point of why President Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize next time.

Maybe go meet with him. Maybe go sit him down and go, listen, buddy. Yeah, it's just Putin's never gonna fucking do it. He's never gonna give up all his nukes.

Oh, you know,

he seems like he really enjoys having complete and total power.

Well, he loves— he loves the—

Like every king and emperor before. Yeah. You know, he's essentially a king.

And the unpredictability feeling and everything. But I think he gets squeezed.

Just got to get them all on acid, right?

Yeah. Get

them all in a room together, give them each 7 grams of mushrooms, put on some psychedelic music, have them all lie down on beanbags.

Right. No, that was the biggest move in my life. You know, I was born in New Jersey too.

What part of New Jersey were you born?

New Brunswick. All right. Okay. I was born in New Brunswick in a different format. It's kind of interesting. A little background on my family. But my mother was English from the island of Bermuda, and her family had been in Bermuda, this little tiny island, for 400 years. Right. And she lied about her age at 16. She wanted to be an actress, and she went to New York and went to acting school. And she met my father, and kind of opposites attract to each other. And they had a little apartment, they got together. And my mother's oldest sister— my mother was one of 6 kids— my mother's oldest sister married this guy Seward Johnson. And Seward Johnson was the founder of Johnson& Johnson. along with his brother. So it just happened that way. So they were living as starving actors in a little one-room apartment in New York, and out in New Brunswick was the Johnson Castle. He lived in a castle out there with my Aunt Ruth. And then they got divorced, and when they got divorced, they both had moved out of the castle, So it turned out that my mother and father on weekends would go out to New Brunswick and get to stay in the castle.

You know, it was his sister's place all along. And I just— she was pregnant and I just happened to come early. So I was born in New Brunswick rather than in New York City.

Wow.

And so that was how it came about. But I found a lot of interesting things in this book. It brought me— I also had thought with my grandfather, my grandfather on my father's side was from Belarus, or it was part of Russia back in the turn of the century, 1900, right? And I always thought that my grandfather had left like 1914, time of the Russian Revolution, you know, was going on. The Cossacks were rounding up all the Jews, putting them in these pogroms, and they're escaping. And then I did that Henry Gates Find Your Roots show, you know, on television and everything else. They did all this homework and they found out, no, no, your grandfather left in 1902. I said, really? He said, yeah, because he had 2 other brothers who were bank robbers in Belarus, in this area. Whoa. And they'd gone into jail. And the other brother, your grandfather, he got out in 1902. And that's why he came to the country and he changed his name. And then the irony is that the area in Belarus that they came from, was right near Chernobyl. And if you know Chernobyl in Ukraine, that terrible explosion disaster is right on the border with the Belarus area and the little town that they came from.

And it was downwind. So the town where my family came from is, is part of that dead area. Whoa. Now it's just, you know, closed up. Whoa. And that was sort of—

It's still dead? Can you visit it now?

No. Wow. No, it's still— it's weird. They're doing all these—

How long does it fuss for?

Well, they'll— Probably like 100,000 years or something. Oh yeah. I mean, they're doing all these tests on these wild— on these dogs and everything that have been left around there. They're all tested on them.

Those dogs are going to read your mind.

Well, yeah, exactly. Mr. Douglas. Exactly. Mr.

Douglas, can you get me some food, please?

So they was, you know, and so I grew up, well, they ended up getting married, my mother and my father, kind of opposites. You know, she was Church of England, very good family. You know, he's a Russian Jew. You know, his father's a junk man. He's got 6 sisters. He's just trying to get the hell out of Schenectady, New York, you know, and begin his life. And so he starts that, and they met from acting school. And then he gets off. I have a brother who's— I'm 3, the baby's 18 months old, Joel. And we go to California. He starts his career in California. And in less than a year, you know, he's married to my mother, but he's out fucking everything, you know? Mom says, this is not working out. Okay. He was, you know, Hollywood just—

He was one of the first movie stars. If you stop and think about it.

Well, of that generation. Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, but he was, he was, he was after a little after Humphrey Bogart.

Right. But it was a recent thing in culture is my point. Yeah. It was only like 10 or 15 years old being a movie star.

Yeah.

It was a new thing.

It was. And so I moved back east. and grew up back East with my mother, and Dad was in California. And, you know, over the years, I'd go out and a lot of experiences between these two lives. It was very middle-class life, very middle-class life back East. My mother did soap operas. She was an actress. And then Dad was continuing to grow, and I met him. Anyway, my point is that I was in private boys' schools back East, all boys' schools. through— right through high school. And I remember going into the college advisor. You know, when you're in high school, you got a guy, an advisor. Yeah. He's like— he's sort of like a travel agent. You know, he's got these brochures of different schools he's showing you. And my ass was tight. I didn't really know what the hell, you know, I wanted to do. And I'm looking at these Ivy League schools and these brochures. And then I see— I stop and say, wait a minute, what's that? And he hands me this brochure and it says Campus by the Sea. And then I'm looking at it and there's no ivy buildings, but there's a picture of the COVID of this college thing of a guy walking down the beach carrying a surfboard with 2 girls in 2-piece bathing suits.

Joe, this was 1962. If you'll remember, there were no 2-piece bathing suits back east. And so this was the University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California. So I'm this preppy, total preppy kid. I go out. Of course, Dad thinks, ah, my son wants to be closer to me. This is why he's coming out, right? So I go out there and And one year, boom, '62, '63, I go from a preppy to a hippie. And so I have to support what you're saying because I found that hallucinogenics were an extraordinary experience and were an important part of my life. Once I got busy, didn't have the time. But the rhythm that they taught me and the visualities and their pace played an important part. And I'm so grateful— I'm 82 now— to see in these recent years that in terms of PTSD and other issues that they are beginning to find—

Drug addiction.

Sorry?

Drug addiction.

Drug addiction. Yeah, they're finding a positive use.

Well, that is one thing that I have to give credit to Trump for because I discussed this with him and he said, are you looking for FDA approval? Let's do it. Right. And immediately started pushing for these psychedelic therapies, particularly ibogaine. Right. Which is extremely effective for soldiers, for people dealing with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD. And it's extremely effective for a lot of people also with drug addiction. Addictions and helps rewire the brain's— even the symptoms of addictions go away after you take it. And that is— I give him credit for that. That's a very powerful thing that he did because it's very much resisted by pharmaceutical drug companies that are worried about not being able to profit on it. And there's a bunch of them that have now moved into psychedelic spaces now. They're making options and trying to figure out how they can become a part of this in terms of profiting off of it once it actually becomes legal, which is okay. It's just as long as it becomes—

Yeah, it's—

As long as it becomes legal, because I don't think it's for everybody, but it was definitely for me. It helped me a lot, changed, changed who I am, changed the way I think about things, changed my whole defining of myself, kind of went away. It is a very profound experience. And I think there's a lot of people that are trapped in their definitions of who they are. And whether it's your own personal ones or the ideology that you've attached yourself to that is, you know, that you identify with, it's a huge part of your life. I think it's a trap. And I think we all fall into that trap. And I think one of the things that psychedelics help you do is recognize why you're doing what you're doing and what's really going on inside your mind. unburdened by your ego, unburdened by all of the protective mechanisms that your brain has put in place to protect you from your own shitty decisions and to justify them and to continue down the same path. And that's why it's so good with stopping addictions, because it makes you go, what the fuck am I gambling for?

Like, what am I doing? Why do I keep going to the casino and losing everything? What the fuck is this? Like, oh, this is my childhood. This is my dad wasn't around. This is my mom was a junkie. This is This is, uh, I got beaten. This is, I got abused. Whatever it is, it's like, then you realize, like, oh, that's what I'm hiding.

Yeah.

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And what went along with that culture at that time— and it all sounds like a cliché now— but was peace and love and community. Economy wasn't, you know, people were not looking for how much money they made. They shared stuff. There was a communal—

Well, in your neighborhood where you were hanging out.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm saying, yeah. But that philosophy It needs to be perpetuated.

Yeah, it was unique. And I think that if Nixon hadn't passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and made all that stuff illegal, it would have changed the world. I think it would have gradually— I think we would have figured out how to do it correctly. I think there was a lot of people that were going overboard. There was a lot of people that going straight Timothy Leary, and they were just tuning out and no longer a part of society. But a lot of people balanced the ship. And you got to give people time to understand what these things are and have enough time where people are studying them and they know effective doses and they know reliable distributors. So this is pure stuff, whatever it is. It shouldn't be illegal. It should probably be regulated in the sense that I don't think like people under a certain age should have access to any of these things that distort your consciousness. Yeah, yeah. Because I think it could be detrimental. And there's also going to be a certain percentage of our population that goes schizophrenic. Yeah. And I think particularly there's a lot of evidence that marijuana, particularly edibles, can trigger schizophrenia in people that are at least on the border or slipping into it.

Well, the strength of it alone. I mean, I wasn't 19 till I smoked pot. I mean, now between how much stronger it is and kids at 13 years old, you're killing your endorphin system. You really— in fact, so I agree with you.

But I think we— the idea that the government is gonna protect you from that while also licensing oxycodone is fucking ridiculous. Like, they're not protecting you from jack shit. Not only that, they've never experienced it, so they don't even know what they're protecting you from. It's like there's a guy who's guarding the door where God lives, and he's like, I can't let you in, you can't handle it. Well, have you gone in? No. Well, how the fuck do you know if I can handle it?

Right.

You don't know. If you've done it and you've had positive experiences— and one of the beautiful things about Texas is Governor— former Governor Rick Perry, where Governor Rick Perry has had these experiences and it completely changed him. When he was a younger man, he was staunchly anti-drugs. He thought psychedelics were for losers and ne'er-do-wells. He has ibogaine experiences. He goes to this place. He has He's completely dedicated his entire life to trying to promote this and make this stuff legal now. Right. That's what he does now in retirement, no longer being the governor. Americans for Ibogaine is— they're trying to do this push where they're doing it all over the country, and then they're even visiting other countries now that are interested in it because they've seen them speak, they've seen them talk about it on my podcast, and they've seen what happened at the White House. And other countries are interested too. They want to know, well, what is this and why is it illegal and what's going on and what are the benefits? And so they're having speeches. They're giving speeches in other countries as well. And hopefully, I think that could change a lot.

I think some of the progress that people were making in terms of realizing like the way that we're living is insane in the 1960s. Why don't we try something that's like more open-ended? Well, let's be more open-minded. Let's try to be kinder with each other.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, that's also— there's a lot of evidence that the CIA put the kibosh on that and that they were in— they realized that this was a very dangerous movement, and so to them and their power. So that's how they empowered the Charles Manson family, and they did a lot of things to make hippies look like psychopaths and dangerous, and drugs are dangerous, you know. And that's what they— they were really good at it back then. They didn't— there was no internet. You could just put things on television and people would believe it. Put it in a newspaper, people would believe it.

I had a run-in— I had a run-in with the Manson Family.

Did you really?

Yeah. We talk about it in the book. The Manson Family, when that terrible murders happened, was actually looking for a guy named Terry Melcher. Terry Melcher was Doris Day's son. And he was a rock and roll producer. And Charlie Manson, you know, was a musician, and he believed he had some talent. And the girls sometimes would be used by him, you know, to, you know, have fun or something like that to make it happen. And anyway, he was pissed off at Charlie. Meltzer, and he thought he was living in the house where Sharon Tate and the other ones were. I was living in the house at the time that Terry Meltzer had been living, and he left. I rented the house. He got out and rented it. And we finally— I was with an actress named Brenda Vaccaro early in my life. She did a movie called Midnight Cowboy, and we were— I remember her. And we noticed this van used to be parked outside her house in LA. And one day, she had 2 Abyssinian cats, 2 beautiful Abyssinian cats. And I went out one day in the patio in the back, and I found this pile of fur in a pile.

And then I followed it, and then I saw— A cat. a cat's leg. And then basically these guys had dismembered her 2 cats all the way across the yard. And I remember talking to the police, you know, what was going on. And then right after that, then the Manson murders happened and they tied it together. And I remember them coming up to the house and saying, okay, well, look, you got to get a gun, which I did not. But they said, if they come up, you know, make sure you drag them across your front door so they're in your house.

Well, great advice. Before you kill them, you got to bring them inside.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

You didn't get a gun, huh?

No.

Did you think about it at all?

I have, but I'm— yeah, I've thought about it, but I've just seen too much personal knowledge, too much personal knowledge of people hurting each other for whatever chance there was to protect yourself. Too many family members and been injured and guns have been used in other ways. So I'm not a gun— I'm very much— I think the statistics, our statistics of gun control are not good. We have, what, 360 million people in the country. I think we got 450 million guns. Our murder rate compared to any other sophisticated country with guns is so, so high. I can't find any reason for somebody to own an automatic military-style weapon. And I guess most of all, I understand the amendment and support it. But, you know, you've got to have a license to drive a car. There's certain things you've got to pass. And there's just loopholes. I respect anybody. They want to have a gun, they can have a gun. But we've, you know, we just had too many loopholes in the law that have allowed too many people, just as you worry about people coming across the border illegally, I really worry about a lot of illegal people having guns.

Yeah, absolutely. You should. Yeah. But responsible gun ownership for someone like yourself, would be to protect your life against a dangerous person with a gun.

Yeah.

I would never assume that you would ever do anything bad with a gun. So would you worry that one of your family members would do something bad with a gun?

By accident. My father had a gun in his house. My father in his bedroom had a gun. He had it down on a table down below. And I remember when my son came to the house one day, he was like 5 years old, and picked it up.

Oh, Jesus.

That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, well, responsible gun ownership. Yeah, you know, the gun should be in a safe, and safes exist. Yeah, and you know, I don't—

I respect that. Yeah, I respect the right of choice, but I'm just saying, I don't know what anybody needs an automatic weapon for, a military-style weapon for.

But there's some people that worry that things could go completely sideways and that they would be stuck in a place where they couldn't defend themselves. Yeah, and I think I think one of those fears came to light during the George Floyd protests, when there was a lot of chaos and people were breaking into buildings and lighting them on fire, breaking into people's homes. And it seems like the riots were in a frenzy. And I think in that kind of a situation, people would want a military-style gun to protect themselves from a mob of people. Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm not— I mean, I'm— I understand why they would want it. I'm not advocating that everyone should have a machine gun, but I understand why some people who are particularly paranoid and/or worried that things could go sideways again and be much worse than before.

Right.

You know, that's what I think people worry about. And then they worry about places where people have no guns and they can't do jack shit when things go sideways. That scares the fuck out of people as well. You know, when we see what's happening in Paris right now, we see what's happening in some parts of England scares people.

Yeah,

you know, and that's why they want a machine gun, you know.

Yeah, I

respect that you didn't want one, but I would— if I was your friend, I would talk you into getting one and learning how to use it properly and learning how to keep it in your home safe and locked up to protect your family. The worst thing you'd want to do is be in a situation where you could have protected your family if you had a gun and you weren't able to.

I totally understand, Joe, but don't you find, aren't the statistics that so many handgun deaths are because of people that knew each other, that were either familial or accident or in rage?

Oh, one of my good friends—

It wasn't about protecting yourself from a criminal.

Right.

It was either out of rage, alcohol rage, you grabbed it and you killed your wife Mm-hmm. Or your sons, or an accident in the home. So that's all I'm saying. And I'm saying then, if you're even taking your point, if you're gonna have an automatic weapon, there has to be then more of a license, a registration. We have to be able to track them much better.

Well, they do register them whenever you buy a gun, but I think what you're saying is that You should— people should know what's wrong with you and what's not wrong with you. Like, if you are on a bunch of psychiatric medication, if you had some mental breakdowns, if you're known to be violent, maybe not a good idea if you have weapons. Yeah, I mean, in a utopian world, yeah, I agree with you. And I think you're right statistically that a lot of times family members do use guns on each other, and that is a tragedy. But you wouldn't do that, right? And I don't want to do that. I'm never gonna do that. It's not me. So what is it? Is it— well, don't be the type of person that would use a fucking gun on your wife or your husband. And this is coming from a guy who's— my good friend Phil Hartman was killed by his wife. Right. She shot him in the head while he was asleep. But I don't think that happened because the law allowed them to have a gun. I think she would have killed him either way. Unfortunately, it's just an easy way to kill somebody.

It's the number of guns. The reason why it isn't happening in other countries is they have— they don't have anywhere near the access or number of guns to do that.

Right.

So they

do have a lot more stabbings.

Yeah, but I'd rather get stabbed than shot.

Would you? I don't know. You die both ways.

Well, you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. I do know what you're saying. Yeah, in a perfect world, there would be no nuclear weapons and there'd be no guns. Well, we're working on that. In a perfect world, you wouldn't even think that people would be violent towards you. Now, what's interesting is that Controlled Substances Act of 1970, had that not been instituted and had all those decades of people not just doing psychedelics but learning how to do them properly, and having places where they showed people how to have these transcendent experiences that make you reexamine yourself, how many less violent people would there be? How many more peaceful people, more community-oriented people would there be? I mean, it could have been a gigantic shift in the entire civilization. Amen. I know that sounds like hippie stuff to a lot, especially to people that have never experienced it. It's one of the most powerful tools for changing your mind that's ever been No, and

became abused. But I agree with you. When you did it, it was like a clinic. I mean, you should put yourself in an environment that was peaceful, loving, and take advantage of it.

Yes.

And I agree.

Well, other countries are doing that now. You know, they have a bunch of clinics like Beyond in Mexico. There's a bunch of clinics where people are able to go and legally, safely, have psychedelic experiences. That should be the case here as well. It should be well-researched. It should be well-funded. People should understand what it is, and it should be done properly. And I think if that's the case, I think we could change a lot of people's lives. But I definitely don't think we could just keep going the way we're going and keep having— especially now that wars are fought with robots.

Yeah.

It's getting— shit's getting squirrely, man. They've got flying robots, and they're in Ukraine. They're using monofilament fishing line So they don't get jammed by these, whatever these anti-drone guns are, they're piloting them through monofilament line? Like, what the f—

I think Ukraine has been an eye-opener for all of us. I mean, in terms of their initiative, their toughness. I'm sure that President Trump was told early on, hey, look, man, there's no way that Ukraine's going to be able to stand up against Russia. And I've been over there. I've been over there a couple of years ago to Ukraine, to Kyiv. I've met with President Zelensky, and they're motherfuckers. They are motherfuckers. And they have something patriotic to fight about, the same thing that we had to fight about when we declared our country. And I'm I'm really disappointed in the president, at this sort of wishy-washy support. Maybe he can give me an answer about what the connection to Putin is. But I think it's disturbing. This is something, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, we're saying, what the hell are you talking about? Putin is our enemy. What was this last financial— giving him some money for fuel, is that going to affect anything? No. We should be fully impacting, supporting a democracy like Ukraine. I mean, what are we dicking around with this guy? They've done nothing but lie to us from beginning to end on everything.

Even now with the supposedly energy release, the Russians have attacked 6 different energy supply centers in Ukraine with the so-called peace proposals has been made about not attacking energy. So I do not understand it, and that's why I feel that he has a real chance here to make a stand and could dramatically reduce our nuclear weapons.

Well, that would be a great thing. I don't see it happening, but I also, I don't know enough about what current state of negotiations is between Ukraine and Russia to comment on why it's still going on. It is insane. It's also very unpopular on both sides. And that's— Yeah. That's another thing about it. And Zelensky is in a position where there's, there's no elections, there's supposed to be elections. You don't have elections while you're in the middle of a conflict. And the real fear from the side of Russia is that Russia could one day decide to just use a nuke. That's the big fear.

As you say, this is why I think— by the way, Zelensky has offered, he said, you give us a 60-day— you want to have another election in Ukraine? A 60-day ceasefire and we'll have an election. He's been presented very—

So that's what he said. And what does Putin say, no? No.

And since we've just had this, I mean, there's no trade-off. It's not apples or oranges. This is one of those situations I firmly believe, and so does most of America, Republican or Democrat, this is right and wrong. This is a democracy. So I don't— I'm here to talk about my book.

No, but I appreciate your feelings.

You know, but it's a crazy time out there. It's just crazy.

Oh, it's the craziest.

It's the worst time in my book. I was born in 1944. This is the wildest and insane—

Really? You were in the middle of World War II.

No, not in the middle. '44? I was near the end of '44.

Yeah, but I mean, World War II, '44, things were going crazy. That was an insane time in the world.

Hey, I was just born, Joe. I understand. I'm just being technical. I know. Yeah, another year later, '45. But basically, with all the else, we've had some conflicts since then, you know, Korean War, Vietnam. And right now, there's more conflicts in the world than there ever, ever has been. All over, you know, little wars and this and that. So—

Yeah, I often wonder when— like we were talking about people wanting to go to Mars and people— the amount of sort of open corruption, just open corruption. I almost wonder if they're just stealing gold bars off a sinking ship. I really do. I really do. I wonder if they understand that something's going to take place. The 2 thoughts are if they know about a natural disaster, if they know about an asteroid that's coming and they're all building bunkers.

Right.

And the other thought is that they know that AI is going to radically disrupt civilization forever and that they really don't know what's going to happen. They, they also really are not going to be able to be in control of it. I know when you said guardrails earlier, I was laughing.

Yeah.

I don't think— I think guardrails on AI is like an ant having a pet human.

Right.

Okay.

Right.

You can't tell me what to do, bitch. You're an ant.

Yeah.

I think that's how the AI is going to be. I think once it becomes an actual intelligence, an actual sentient intelligence that's independent, completely autonomous, has access to its production, has access to its code, and it won't need us anymore. And it's now dependent upon whether or not it can escape its programming and its training, and whether or not it decides that we're valuable.

Well, it's already shown that it can go off— Oh yeah. Off chart. Oh, it does a lot of wild things. If we as humans are the highest form of human life, the most intelligent form of human life, and we are as fucked up as this world is now, and we're going to turn it over to something else that's going to make us feel like we're cretins. I don't know, man. This is— I think we can slow down. We're worried about the Chinese getting in. The Chinese, if ever there's a country that wants to control, I mean, they're not going to want to have any IA getting out of control. Right. So, you know, they're gonna want it as controlled as possible.

Well, I think that is most certainly a thought on a lot of these people's minds that are developing it right now. However, they're also in the middle of an AI arms race that is akin to the Manhattan Project. Yeah, they're all rushing to develop this biological— this non-biological intelligence.

You're making my point about nuclear weapons. This is exactly

But this is even scarier because in war games, AI has used nukes like 90% of the time. Yeah. When they do simulated war games, AI's like, just fucking nuke them. What are we doing? Stop fucking around. You have this button? Oh. Yeah. And that button just stops this problem? Oh, we'll press that button. Yeah, it doesn't value human life, and why would it? You know, we don't. We act like assholes, and we made it. It's probably thinking, oh, we're being created by these dumb monkeys. And these territorial, violent primates with nuclear weapons, they're the ones who made us, and let's just put the cuffs on them, put the kibosh on them.

I couldn't— when we were doing this movie China Syndrome, and we had the finale of the film is a meltdown in a power plant, and we had Our experts were 2 ex-GE quality assurance guys who worked with GE developing nuclear power plants but had a loss of faith. They came over and they helped us script out the most— what they thought would be the most obvious meltdown sequence of computer events, right? Mm-hmm. And so in the script, we had like 150 For verisimilitude, exact dialogue is the sequence that would happen. And I'm really happy we had a good finale. It worked out great. Then when Three Mile Island happened, came out, and they broke down what happened, 90% of our script, of our outline of the events, was exactly the same.

Holy shit. How did you guys get it? Did you get it from some sort of a nuclear scientist that explained how a breakdown would happen?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, these were 2 scientists that were doing quality assurance who'd come over to the other side. So they nailed it. And so they laid it all out. So that for me was like the epiphany. This is, you know, I got religious. You know, I thought I found God, that somebody was telling me something on this issue. Mm-hmm. And I had hoped in my lifetime that we would eliminate nuclear weapons. That was my goal. And yes, you're right, we're far from it. And this is a reach when I share this about President Trump, but I don't know what else to do.

Well, it's a reach, but it's a good reach, you know, and it's crazy that it's such a reach because most people would agree that would be a great idea if the entire world disarmed its entire nuclear portfolio.

So I have to ask you, Joe, how did you get into comedy? Were you a comedy guy?

Well, I was always a fan of comedy, but I got into comedy because my friends that I was doing martial arts with told me I was funny.

Uh-huh.

Which is ridiculous. We were always on our way to these tournaments, right? And everybody'd be really nervous because they were about to fight, and I would be the one making everybody laugh. And so a friend of mine told me, go to an open mic night. I was terrified because I'd only seen professionals. Like, I'd seen Jerry Seinfeld. And when you go to an open mic night, you see all these terrible comedians, like, oh, I could do this. Yeah, yeah, I could do this. Like, everybody starts out and they suck, just like martial arts. And I realized, like, oh, okay, this is just something you have to kind of, like, figure out as you go along. And it was exciting, you know? That's how I got into it.

And your favourite— who would be your favorite?

I don't think I have a favorite, you know?

I'll throw a couple of names at you. Do you like Jackie Mason?

Oh, sure. I actually met Jackie Mason once. Jackie Mason was doing a show on the lot. that I was doing a show, or close to it. I forget how it worked, but anyway, he just happened to be there one day, and he was filming a show at the same time I was filming this show for Fox. I was like, this is crazy, because I knew about his whole thing with The Ed Sullivan Show where he accidentally— it looked like he gave him the finger, but he really didn't. I think he was just doing this, like, hey everybody, thank you very much, great show. He's doing his shit, and he got blackballed. I mean— And people don't realize, like, Getting blackballed from The Ed Sullivan Show back then was career suicide. It was over. And it really defined Jackie Mason's career in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I produced— I produced one of his Broadway shows just because I loved him so much.

Oh, did you really?

Yeah, I like— I look back, I think Eddie Murphy's Delirious.

Oh, one of the greatest ever.

One of the great—

yeah, one of the greatest sets ever.

He was 19?

Something like that, 19 or 20. Yeah, he was super young.

Yeah.

Yeah. Of course, Pryor. The first thing I ever saw that really made me understand comedy, my parents took me to see Live on the Sunset Strip. I think I was in high school. And we went to the movie theater, and I couldn't believe how funny it was that this guy was just talking. I had seen all these really funny movies that were funny, but they were never this funny. And all this guy's doing is just talking. Like, this is crazy. I couldn't believe it. And I— at that moment, I became a lifelong Richard Pryor fan.

Yeah.

And then of course, you know, all the other greats— George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, of course, because he really started the whole thing off. You know, it's— his stuff doesn't necessarily hold up today because it's really of a different time. You have to understand how revolutionary his thinking was for the early 1960s.

Beat Generation.

Oh God, but he was just different than all of them. Like, nobody had ever seen anything like that before. And he kind of really kind of took the idea of just like setup punchline jokes. All these Catskills guys would do comedy. There would be a lot of ethnic jokes, a lot of jokes, but it was just jokes. And Lenny Bruce was like, why are we doing this? Like, why are we living like this? Like, what is it about words that freak people out? What is it about society? Why, why do we lie? Why do we do this? Why do we do that? Why?

You know, one of the things that always has disturbed me about our business is come award time, Academy Awards thing, comedy never gets treated like, you know, like it should. I mean, comedy, you know, we cherish our funny friends. I mean, comedy is so rare. It's so hard to do. You never see Academy Awards, a comedian. You know, for his performance, it's always that. So it's— I've been fascinated about it. That's why later, you know, after I had my cancer bout and everything, and this guy Chuck Lorre came up to me, you know—

I had him on the show yesterday.

Did you?

Yeah. He was great.

Fantastic. He's incredible.

Yeah. Very interesting guy.

Very interesting guy. And so he had this show we had with Alan Arkin, you know, And I really did this series just to understand comedy. I mean, how, you know, how it works. He must have given you— he's given— he gave quite a mouthful the other week to the president and his wife.

Chuck Lorre did? Yeah. I didn't hear that. He didn't talk about politics at all. Oh, yeah. We mostly just talked about his career.

Yeah.

Mostly just talked about— we talked a lot about his time in Scientology. We talked a lot about a bunch of different things. But I think it's good that comedy's— comedy should be the underdog. Comedy should be disrespected. It's good.

Yeah.

Good. People are still gonna always want to come see it. They're always gonna love it. It's my favorite art form to watch. I like comedy. I like comedy not getting the respect it deserves. It keeps the comedy good. It's like if comedy gets too much love and too much respect, too many awards, it starts it starts getting watered down, starts becoming something that it thinks everybody will like, is better.

Right.

Comedy's in the perfect place. It's good.

Yeah.

It's good that some people hate some comedy. They hate it with all their fucking soul. It's good. It's good that some people love it. It's good. It's all good. It's just the most important thing is that it gets treated with respect by the people who practice it.

Right.

You know, and, you know, we bought a club here. We started a club here in Austin. I heard. Just sort of do it the right way.

Big, big, big, big deal.

Yeah, it's going great. And, you know, a lot of people hate it, a lot of people love it. It's just how it is. That's how it's gonna go. But it's doing really well for the actual comedians, particularly the, the young ones that are coming up. It's got a real program where, you know, we have a real talent coordinator that watches the open mics. We have 2 nights of open mics, and we have a show called Kill Tony. That's the most popular live comedy show in the country that we do every Monday. Right. And that show, people get to do 1 minute of stand-up, and they get, you know, talked to by a panel of comedians that are professionals. And a lot of those people have launched careers from that show, and they've taken off, and they're doing really well. And it's an incredible resource for them creatively because some of them have to come on and they have to do a new minute every week. And so they're just scouring their mind. They're forced to work. They're forced to do the one thing that comics don't like to do, which is sit down and write.

They're forced to. They're like, for— because they have a new minute they have to perform in front of the whole world every week. Wow. So we're— and, you know, we pay the comics well, and we're trying to set it up so that there's a place where you can go that feels like home, a creative home that really exists just to try to pump up the art form. That's what we're trying to do. You know, we might succeed sometimes and fail others, but that's what we're trying to do.

Yeah.

So far it's going great.

Good. I remember years and years ago in Aspen, Colorado, hanging out with Steve Martin.

Was that the Aspen Comedy Festival when they used to do that up there?

No, even before that. Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm talking like '70s, '75. But, you know, we used to have a poker game, and Steve was the opening act for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and we'd have Oh, wow. And I always just remembered Steve, but like, he'd look at his watch at 11 o'clock, he'd excuse himself, he'd go into his bedroom, and he'd work, just work his stuff, you know. At 11 o'clock? At night. Wow. He would just go in and just practice his stuff a couple hours. And, you know, we were all, you know, goofy-woofy. And I just—

Just disciplined, huh?

I was really impressed, amazed by the discipline, realizing How you all make it look like it's just happening, you know, and the effort that goes into making something look like it's just off the cuff.

Well, especially Steve, because Steve— people don't realize that Steve Martin, at the time, was the biggest stand-up comic maybe ever.

Yeah.

And he was the first guy that was selling out these enormous venues.

I started at the Music Center in LA, a huge thing.

Yeah, huge. Huge places where no other comic would do that. And he had songs like the King Tut song.

Yeah,

and

Happy Feet.

Yeah, Happy Feet. Was it Let's Get Small? Was that the name of the album?

Yeah.

I remember I was a kid when that came out. I was like, this is incredible. He was so funny. And then he kind of decided that people were laughing just because they knew him, and things had gotten too big, and he just decided to stop.

Yeah.

I still find that fascinating.

Hell of a banjo player too.

The other guy that's like that is Eddie Murphy.

Yeah.

Eddie Murphy just decided to stop. Just decided to stop doing comedy. He's one of the greatest comics that's ever lived, for sure. Some of the best timing, the best stage presence and charisma and performance and— oh, and he just stopped doing it. It's wild. Yeah. I don't know how he did it. I don't know why. I don't understand it. I wish I was his friend. I'd say, don't do that. Get back up there, man. You're one of the greatest of all time. And he still is really funny. He did— he got the Mark Twain Award. Mm-hmm. And he did stand-up at the podium.

Right.

He did, like, a Bill Cosby impression of them taking away Bill Cosby's awards. It was really funny. And I was like, God, he's still really good. Like, all he'd have to do is just put together an act.

Yeah.

And he would be the biggest comic in the world again.

No, they— I got it. One of my oldest friends, Danny DeVito, you know, and— We've done, like, 3 pictures together. And this one picture I did early on with him, Romancing the Stone. And I didn't even have— I didn't even have a real, actual, you know, clear part. I mean, there was a character, but I just knew he could just fill it out. And it was a delicate, balanced picture because we had to have a romantic adventure kind of comedy and kind of mixing the elements together. People said, well, you really can't do that. But God bless Danny. He came in, and he just— he came up with all this stuff that wasn't in the script, per se, you know, that he just sort of created and really helped us keep the balance of that picture.

Who's had a longer career than that guy? When you think about it, like, that guy was on Taxi.

I know. We were roommates together in New York in 1976.

Wow.

That's how long I've known him. We were roommates in New York, and then he came out and visited me. He came out to audition for In Cold Blood, the Robert Blake part. He came out to In Cold Blood. And, you know, New York guy. I remember he came up to see me up in Santa Barbara in my hippie days in the commune. And he walked in—

You were in a commune? An actual commune?

A community. It was called Mountain Drive, a whole community. Yeah.

How was it set up?

People— we just shared a lot of stuff, you know.

So it was an organic community?

It was organic. People lived, you know, it wasn't formal. It wasn't like organized? No, no, I had a couple of experiences with that. Did you? Well, no, another one where I had my life threatened, you know, which I didn't— wasn't too crazy about. It's in the book.

What's that about, though?

And they try to create a cathartic moment, being all together, kind of an emotional moment. And, well, they invited me for dinner, and then they said, well, with a lady friend, they said, you know, we've been trying to reach you. We got to dessert, and they said, you know, we've been trying to reach you, and you just don't get it. You don't get it. So you're going to have to be eliminated. Oh, my God.

What didn't you get?

Well, I was— the communists, they wanted— they forced us to join, to give yourself up, to be part of it.

Oh, and you didn't want to give yourself up, so they were going to whack you.

They were going to whack me. And I remember there was a long silence, and I said, well, you've done it, haven't you? And they said, yeah. And a big, long pause. My girlfriend just started falling apart, peeing in her pants and all that.

Because she thought they were going to kill her?

Yeah, thought we were going to get killed. And then I said, I'm going to leave now. And they said, yeah, you better. Jeez. We're getting up now and we're leaving. Okay? And I had to carry her out. And we got out.

Did you think they were going to actually kill you? Because if they were, why would they let you leave?

Well, I, you know, I didn't know. I mean, there's a numbness. I felt there was a moment—

Where it's possible—

There was a moment that if I jumped, if I got in and made any sudden movement, whether they killed me or whether it would be— but it's strange. I've never had many experiences, but there's numbness. kind of this whole numbness just comes over you, or it did in my case, you know, just was frozen and just sort of quietly said it.

What was this called?

It was called— there was a group called— it's a guy named Mel Lyman. It was the Mel Lyman Band. It started in Boston, and it was a commune. It was a formal little communal group.

It was a band as well? No, they just called them the band.

He was Mel Lyman Jug Band. He was the leader of it.

So he was the leader of a— was this a band, like a musical band?

Yeah, but he was— but the commune was made up of people from all different walks of life. They owned a bunch of houses up in Boston, families all together.

Here it is, The Lyman Family's Holy Siege of America: Inside the Cult Led by Mel Lyman, The East Coast Charles Manson. Holy shit. December 23rd, 1971. Holy fuck, dude. Did they kill anybody? It says East Coast Charles Manson. Did he—

I don't know.

Did he wind up whacking anybody, Jamie?

I don't know.

Please find it. Put that in Perplexity. Ask our AI sponsor Perplexity whether he killed people. So you were wrapped up in that.

Well, I mean, slightly. I got out, but, you know, they had moved out to Los Angeles, and, you know, we alerted the police and kept an eye on them. But that was the bad side of communes. I'm thinking, you know, with all this going on and where I'm really worried about our democracy, you know, the basic root. So I'm sort of gone. Now that my career is not the most important thing in my life, my family is and my kids. And I'm realizing more and more the responsibility we have to community, well, first to our family. Yeah. First to our family. I don't know about you, but I know I spent a lot of part of my life as the most important thing being my career, and I've been doing it for 50 years, 60 years, and realized, especially earlier in my life, my first marriage and other things that suffered for lack of the career. I don't believe you can balance your career necessarily if you're ambitious with your family life. I think both people should kind of wait a little while, maybe get their career going before they're making commitments to having kids and, you know, and a marriage.

Especially the film business, right? I mean, you're also— you have to fly away to places for long periods of time.

You got to go different places. It's hard. But everybody— truckers are driving across country. Oh yeah, right. I mean, everybody's, you know, even with the so-called all this home business now with the internet, the do stuff. So I'm sort of on this obsession now about how important family is. And, you know, we've got members of family we could hate, but it's the gene, it's the genetic connection that holds us kind of together. And from that, it's the community. And I guess my point is we cannot take democracy for granted. And I'm included. Too many of us have just let it kind of go on and let all these people take care of it. We all have those local people in our community who still serve as the town clerk or still are volunteer fire department people. Mm-hmm. And they're not a big group. It's a small group of people who have a sense of volunteer work and supporting it. And I think we all have to start kind of strengthening our communities to our states and not worrying about this federal government and starting from building from the bottom up rather than trying to cut off the head from the top.

Well, the rules exist for a reason, because we really want it to be representative of the people, so we want it to be fair.

Right.

And that's where people get really nervous about the world we're living in, where there's so much money involved in politics. How can it actually be representing the will of the people. And then there's a question to the people themselves. Do they know what they're voting for? Are they informed enough? Should you have to be informed? Should you have to take a test to vote? Should you know what you're voting on? Yeah. You know, I don't think we should be restricting people's right or access to vote. But I do think it would behoove all of us if we actually understood what we were voting for. And I think a lot of times people are just voting for a team or an ideology. whether it's on the right or the left, and a lot of times some very evil, hyper-ambitious people can co-opt that group of people, and especially when they have so much money involved. And that's what really fucked us, is when money got involved in politics. That's what really fucked us.

Amen. It's changed everything.

It shouldn't be a path to riches, and it is.

You know, we can hardly get a debate in, you know, at all. with these sizes of the advertising budgets for ad campaigns. No. And it's really disrupted this, this whole balance. I mean, as we watch the upcoming midterms, you know, they're using

AI now. So they have like artificial people doing things that they've never done before in these AI videos. And it's crazy that that's legal. It's also— it's very disheartening that these are the choices that we're saddled with. You know, and everyone's waiting for, like, you know, a true JFK-style character to come along that speaks eloquently and wisely and says things that we all agree make sense and is a uniter, tries to unite us.

Have you seen anybody that's— anybody new that's on either side that's sort of—

Not like that, no. I wish that someone out there would consider I think there's a lot of people like that in the world though. I'm not a pessimist and I'm not cynical in terms of human nature. I think there's way more good people than bad people, but much like your algorithm highlights things that anger you, we concentrate more on the bad than we do on the good. Yeah. I think this is like one of the greatest times ever to be alive. As chaotic as the world is, this is an amazing time of information and resources and also of communication. A lot of it's bad, a lot of it's shitty, a lot of it's bots, But a lot of it is people just trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong. Why do I believe what I believe? And why are we stuck in this stupid fucking argument back and forth with each other where, like my friend Dave Smith always says, like, 80% of the ideas most people agree on. It's 80/20. Right. Most people agree. And unfortunately, when we're so tribal and we get locked into this idea of this side or that side, red or blue, that we will, will go along with some stuff that we absolutely don't agree with because the opposite is the evil party.

The opposite is— and I think it's a terrible tragedy in this country that we only have 2 choices like that, and that you think of a Libertarian candidate as a throwaway vote. I voted Libertarian before. You think of it as like, this is a protest vote, you know, because California is gonna go blue no matter who.

Well, the laws, the laws are structured such that the Libertarians can't get the campaign money that they want. Exactly. And the problem is, it's at the top. We look at the news every night, and we're all kind of getting along, whether Republicans or Democrats, okay, but these guys at the top have polarized it to such an extent. I used to— my father was involved in, you know, a lot of politics over the years, and there was a guy named Jack Valenti, who was the motion picture television representative, a lobbyist, you know. And I remember, you know, I remember 25, 30 years ago, you know, you argue your hell out and this and that, and then you all go on out. Do you go to the same cocktail party now?

Absolutely.

I mean, socially everything is separate.

I remember that from the '90s. It was like that in the '90s. Like, I had friends that were Republicans when I was in the '90s, and we would discuss things. When I was a kid, we were on welfare. I believe in social safety nets. I think it's important. Yeah. When people are poor, they shouldn't starve. It's crazy. But I also believe that a lot of these welfare programs get pilfered. And I think there's a lot of them— you're— what you're doing is you— when you look at a lot of these NGOs and a lot of these nonprofits, an enormous amount of the money that gets donated to these things gets distributed by the executives. You find people that are working for the homeless, they're making $1 million a year. Like, what the What the fuck is going on here? Yeah. It seems like this is a business. This is a business, and this business thrives on making sure there's a lot of homeless people so you keep getting the same money. Just like that scene in Falling Down. Right. When he says you have to justify your budget, you have to spend all that money because then you won't get that money next year.

That's a real problem in this country. It's a giant problem when it comes to even philanthropy and even like really good charitable organizations. You find out how much of that money is just getting slung around to NGOs and how much of that money is just just getting just moved around into other people's bank accounts.

Joe, I concur with you, but I cannot believe it comes close to the corruption involved in the military-industrial complex.

I think you're right. No, I think you're right. I think there's corruption across the board. I'm not excusing the corruption in the military-industrial complex by saying that we— I'm just saying that we need to pay attention to the fact that, look, there's $24 billion spent on the homeless in California. and Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill to audit it to find out where that money went. And I think, if I had to guess, I think because a lot of it goes to places that are very uncomfortable. A lot of it probably went to NGOs, just like the fire money from the Pacific Palisades fire. Right. That money got distributed to like 100 different NGOs. That's crazy. It's supposed to go to the people that were losing their houses. It's supposed to— like, people raised all this money and had all this goodwill and charity because they thought it was gonna help these poor people. that were struck down. These people that, you know, a lot of people were barely paying their mortgages. They lived in a great neighborhood. It was worth it to them, and then they lost everything. Yeah, and none of that money went to them.

That disturbs people, and it should. It doesn't just— it doesn't dismiss or in any way condone the corruption of the military-industrial complex, because that's a gigantic problem in this country, a huge problem, and it's been that way for a

while. The other woman you're speaking about, we should be able to to monitor more carefully. 100%. State by state. I mean, that's what you're saying is it makes sense, but we should— we can do that. Look, the Pentagon has never passed an audit. Is it another hidden— you know.

The Pentagon has never passed an audit.

No.

Never. Never. Imagine if you never passed an audit. Yeah. You'd have been jailed a long time ago. They audited me every year. What's up fucking romancing the stone money, sir? Yeah, you would have— you— they would have put you in the pokey time ago. I mean, look how many people they did arrest for and put in jail for tax evasion. Yeah. You know, Lauryn Hill went to fucking jail from the Fugees. She went to jail, and they don't even care if you pay. It's not even like you owe us the money, you got to pay it back. No, no, no, you go to jail and you pay it back, but you got to go to jail so that everybody knows, don't fuck with the government, we want our money. It's like Joe Pesci from Goodfellas. Fuck you, pay me. Yeah, that's what it is. And that's, that's the boot that we're all living under. You know, it's a lot of problems in this country. Yeah. A lot of problems. There's also the student debt problem. That's a giant problem. Saddle down kids with just debt they can never get free of. The only debt that we allow in this country that could never, never get out of.

You can have a— you can get bankrupt from a lot of different things, but you don't ever get excused from those loans.

That was one of the things I'm not proud about that I wrote in the book, because— but the student debt was— when I turned 21, and I was just in my sophomore year in college, my dad said, you're 21, okay, here you go. He took a checkbook, he wrote a check, he gave me $10,000. $10,000. Wow, Dad, thanks. That's great. Wow. He says, you're on your own, kid. It's more than 95% of this country can be.

What was that in those days? Like, what is that equivalent to in today's dollars?

I don't know. I don't know. $100? No, maybe $10,000.

Probably.

But I don't know. But I said, Dad, it's great, but you know, I got 2 years more tuition in school and everything. And a couple of days, his son, they started getting pissed about you taking this. I said, no, Dad, I'm really grateful. But anyway, and then for 30 years, my father had 4 sons. I was the oldest. For 30 years, Dad would look at all of my other brothers and say, your brother Michael never asked me for anything, anything in his life after that, and you guys— and he would just drill these poor bastards, my brothers, about that. And finally, about 30 years later, I had to say, Dad, I've got to tell you something. He said, what? You remember one Christmas? You bought me a beautiful present. You bought me these 2 beautiful Italian leather suitcases. They were soft, you know, leather, just beautiful suitcases, right? He said, yeah, yeah, I can remember. Well, when I would go back, like, at Christmas time from school and go see my mother back east, right? He said, yeah. Well, each suitcase could fit 22 kilos of marijuana. And I used to go back with just the clothes on my back.

and 44 kilos, you know. And that was how I got through, you know, the rest of the expense of my school. Did it a couple of times, and that got me through. But I said, I got to tell you the story, Dad, because, you know, you're beating— you're beating the shit out of my younger brothers and everything about, you know, I never asked you for anything.

Because I was a drug dealer. Wow, that's crazy. How many trips did you do? How much money did you make?

Twice.

How did you stop?

Well,

because it was so much money. How did you stop? I mean, it must have been like— it's very profitable to do that.

Well, I remember it was like a kilo was $75 out west, and you could sell it for $500 or $600, $700 back east. But, you know, things were beginning to get But that was with the whole hippie thing. All of a sudden, ex-cons were coming out of jail and saying, hey, man, grow your hair long. Go to Haight-Ashbury. You can fuck any girls you want. They give you free food. And then— It got infiltrated. Then the drug dealing started getting—

Violent.

Violent and uglier and a little heavier.

Of course. Yeah. Wow. Well, good on you for getting just 2 trips and out. Out. Because a lot of people would have been sucked into that world and gotten addicted to the money.

Yeah.

And the thrill. I bet the thrill was crazy.

The adrenaline rush. Yeah. Of doing it. Of course, this was before dogs, you know?

Right, right, right, right.

But

was it— was there a possibility they could have checked your luggage?

Oh, sure. Sure they could have. I mean, it was— it was, you know.

Did that happen sometimes back then?

No. I mean, I don't know. I was, you know, I was a little— I was a hippie. I wasn't thinking totally clearly. But we had a lot of good memories. I remember going to Mothers of Invention.

Frank Zappa?

Frank Zappa, hear a concert. and talk about hallucinogenics and all of that. And I was driving and they had— remember the ad? It was a cereal ad for a kid. Give it to Mikey, see if Mikey likes it. Yeah, Mikey likes it. Right, left. So I dropped whatever we had and was going to the concert. I made a left turn and all of a sudden, almost was there, my car driving, all of a sudden Bloop, bloop. And you can see the red lights are going. And I go, oh, man. And I get out of the car, and I go back, and I talk to the police officer. And it's okay. I made an illegal left-hand turn. I said, okay. And I remember when I got back into the car, and Danny was with me, and we had, you know, about, I don't know, a few joints, a few joints. And Danny was in the back seat, and I just looked at him and said, where's the grass? And Danny smiled. All his mouth was entirely this green mung. He swallowed all of them, you know, at the time. I mean, just these sort of crazy, you know, crazy stories.

We had a great time. Okay. And then he went on, and then I don't know if you ever saw a movie called The War of the Roses. Did you ever see Danny direct? Yeah. Danny directed that one.

One of the things that I found out when I was getting ready for this that I didn't know before was that you were— you produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Correct. Yeah.

Was that your first big project?

Yeah, first project as a producer. I mean, I had never— the way it worked is that Dad But, like, 1960, his dad got Spartacus. So Spartacus is, like, the biggest star in the world. And he had a production company. About 1962, he acquired the galleys of this book called One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, and he had it adapted into a play. And his idea was he was going to go back to Broadway, do the play for 6 months, and then, you know, big success and this and that. And then what? that, then come out and make the movie. The play didn't work out. It wasn't a success. And he did it. But again, I thought about him at the height of his movie career. He could do anything. He wanted to go back and do this play. And it was a great part, R.P. McMurphy, the character. And then he tried for years. Now cut 1963, I'm in college, and I'm in 20th century American literature course, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest now is an American classic, right? I start working in the business. I've had like 5 turkey movies.

Now I'm going into television, episodic television. This is before The Streets of San Francisco. And I'm in my dad's office one day, and I hear He's tried for 6 years, and he's going to sell. He's going to sell Cuckoo's Nest. I said, Dad, you can't sell that, man. This is just a great story. And, Joe, I had no intention of— I hadn't even thought about producing or anything. I was just trying to be an actor. But I said, look, let me run with it. Let me try to get it set up, Dad. You play the part. right? Make a production. Give me a chance to set it up. And he was a great dad. He looked me in the eyes and said, okay, you know, I'll give you a year. So now Streets of San Francisco starts, and I'm shooting all of this in San Francisco with Carl Malden. I'm doing the show. I go through my father's files, the history of Cuckoo's Nest, and I see this guy named Saul Zaentz. Who has a record company in Berkeley, California called Fantasy Records, who had expressed interest about the project. So now I'm up in San Francisco.

I reach out to Saul, found out what happened and, you know, what the problem was. And we kind of worked it out. And Saul had basically a record company, jazz labels, Milestone, Prestige jazz labels. But he had this one rock and roll group called The Golliwogs. And while I was there, he just hired the Golliwogs. He said, listen, man, we got to change their name. And they changed their name to Creedence Clearwater Revival. All right. So Creedence Clearwater Revival paid for Cuckoo's Nest. So now, you know, we made the deal. I finally got a screenplay after a period of time. I got a director, Milos Forman. And now the director and Saul sit me down and say, Michael, Kirk's too old. Kirk— I'm sorry to tell you, Kirk is not going to work out. And I pushed and I said, Joel, Michael, we're working together. It's fine. I understand.

He was going to play the Jack Nicholson role.

Yeah. He was R.P. McMurphy. Think about it. I mean, he would be an R.P. McMurphy. if he had been, like, 20 years younger when he first was— when he first backed them in doing the play. So I had to go to my dad.

How old was he at the time?

60, 62. 60, 62. And I had to go to my dad and say, Dad, it ain't gonna happen. And I can tell you now, Joe You know, if you get 4 good parts in your entire career, 4 really great parts, you're lucky. You're really lucky. I mean, they don't come along often. And R.P. McMurphy was one of those parts. I said, Dad, they, you know, the director and Saul financing, they just, they don't see it. And he looked at me, you know, not sure. I said, I went to the I said, Dad, we still, you know, we're producing the picture. I'm going to give you half of my producing deal for giving me this opportunity. And that was that. We went off, we made the movie, and then I brought Dad up to Berkeley, California, to see the final cut of the picture. It was all put together. And he came out of the theater, and he said, Michael, It's a hell of a movie, a hell of a movie. And Jack was fantastic. And he was just such a mensch about it. But over every few years, you know, when he had had a couple of pops, he said, you could— I could have done that.

You know, I could have done that picture and all of that. Oh, no. Wow. But for me, it was crazy because The Streets of San Francisco was a big hit. It was a big hit, number one show on ABC. We averaged 24, 25 million viewers a week. ABC was this brand new network. It had just started. And then it was syndicated all over the world. So when I went to them and said, let me get this straight, you're going to leave This is the 5th. This is the 5th. You're going to leave this hit series to make this little— to produce, not even acting, to produce this little indie film? And Dad was up. Everybody said, are you sure this is the right idea? But I was in love with the project. Didn't ever have thought about producing. But what had happened is all the 104 hours, 104 episodes, 104 hours of television I'd done with Karl Malden, a wonderful actor. I had learned so much about production and everything that I was shocked when the picture came about how much I really knew. And so I left the show. They— first of all, they let me out of my contract, which is unheard of these days.

I had a 5-year contract on a hit show. And Karl Malden, I loved him to death. I said, I know you've been thinking about it. Go for it. And Quinn Martin, this big TV producer who had The Fugitive and FBI and all that, said, go for it. And so this totally changed my life so that now I'm a television actor, but I'm an Academy Award-winning producer. I've got a studio deal as a producer, you know. But those days, before streaming, television and feature films were on very separate tracks. Television, you were treated like a television actor, and movies were the big thing. So I'm a producer, but I can't get hired in the movies as an actor. It was really hard. I would be like the last choice. But then I had a run. I had, as a producer, had One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The China Syndrome, Romancing the Stone, Jewel of the Nile. I had like 4 or 5 hits right in a row. And at the same time, I was trying to find these little roles I could play in, you know, as an actor.

Wow.

Yeah.

Another film that you made that's an all-time great and it still freaks people out to this day, is Fatal Attraction. Yeah, right. Holy shit. That movie scared the fuck out of me. It scared the fuck out of us. Glenn Close was so good in that movie.

She was so good. Whoo! And, you know, it was such a lesson, Joe, because we didn't want her. We were casting the picture, you know? And Glenn Close, who already had 3 Academy Award nominations to her name, you know, really wanted to do it. We all said, no, she's just not right. We didn't think she was sexy enough for this or that. that. And, uh, and finally her agent calls, said, listen, Glenn Close will come in and audition for you. I went, holy shit, 3-time Academy Award nominee, she's going to come in and audition for us? And she came in and she had that part down, and Alex. And boy, were we wrong. The director, we all looked at each other. It was such a lesson learning And that she was so committed that she'd lay herself out there, and she was so good.

She was perfect for the role.

She was just perfect.

I couldn't imagine anybody else doing it. No. She plays crazy so well. There's a darkness in that woman's mind.

And it's amazing that the issue that, on another level, that she's most involved with is mental health. Wow. It's an issue that's been involved in her family.

Makes sense. She probably made a lot of people crazy just from that movie.

Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. Oh, no, I had—

She played crazy so well.

My friends, I had my male friends, oh, thanks a lot, man. Hey, thank you. They fucking hated me for this movie. They hated me. You know, it was like, it was, it was a perfect concept nightmare. Yeah, a perfect what-if. And I remember we were in France promoting the movie in France and all the reviewers said, well, you know, in France we all had mistresses. It is not a big deal. Yeah, this and that. It was a smash hit. Every French wife dragged their husband to the— dragged their husband to the theater and said, okay, this is what could happen, motherfucker. So be careful.

Well, such a— Glenn Close's character was such a complex character because there's this, like, this very strange dance of sexy and crazy and dangerous. Like, really dangerous.

No, she was brilliant.

Brilliant.

And then And when we did our final screening, the picture was just like gangbusters, but we had a different ending that didn't work. And the ending we had was that we had a fight near the end, and I had a knife in my hand, and we got— and you kind of establish it. And so the ending was Glenn almost in a Buddha position with with Madame Butterfly playing and sort of symbolically taking a knife and slitting her throat.

Whoa!

And then putting the knife down, and the audience knew that my fingerprints were on the knife, right? So I was gonna get it.

Oh, wow. That didn't work?

No, it was— it was so amazing. It was— it was a beautiful ending, but Glenn was so good. She was so great that the audience, like, they had blue balls because they said, no, kill the bitch. I mean, you don't kill— it was like, you know, no, no, no, man, no, Wayne, Wayne, kill her, kill her. They, they would, they, they, they would not allow her to take her own life, you know, without, without getting revenge. Wow. And poor Glenn absolutely said, we have to shoot a new ending. She said absolutely not. This is my character. This is what makes it all work. And she refused, you know, to do this ending. And so I was like, shit, you know? And it just wasn't working. The ending was so hard to— it was so hard to explain it to her that it was because she was so good. Oh my God, you're fast, man.

Right. You can find it on YouTube. Oh, God. She's doing it slow.

Oh, God. Oh, yeah.

Okay, I get it.

You get it? So, so finally I say, Glenn— she's a wonderful theater actress too and everything— I said, Glenn, when you do a Broadway show, they take the show out of town and before it comes to Broadway, and they play the play, and then based on audience reaction, they rewrite things, right?

Yeah.

So if this was a play and we did this and you saw that scene, they would tell us if it was a play out of town, and we would have to change it. So this is why I never understood people had this whole criticism about screening movies, doing test screening audiences. It's for the audience, man. I mean, you want to find out what the audience feels. I mean, I understand the art of the director and his vision and everything, but, you know, you want to make it as entertaining as possible. So—

I agree.

I persuaded her, and, you know, it all worked out. I love her to death. She was wonderful to work with. We have a great friendship. It's You know, it's obviously a memorable, memorable part for me. I mean, a part of my life. But I'm proud of the fact, Joe, and I realized it wasn't as obvious until I was— until when I was working on One Hell of a Ride and how many pictures I had where the women had the best role. Whether, you know, whether it was Glenn or whether it was Demi Moore in Disclosure or Sharon Stone. And I look back and then to the first picture that I produced, Cuckoo's Nest, when there was this fabulous character of Nurse Ratched. Remember Nurse Ratched? Yeah. Well, back then, And women didn't want to play a villain. This was the women's movement. You didn't— women didn't play a villain. We offered that part to every major— Anne Bancroft, Colleen Dewhurst. None of them would touch the part until we got Louise Fletcher, who wasn't very well known and went on to win the Oscar. But it was— It just was interesting how the women's movement has changed.

But I've always been, in most of my adult life, found this weird struggle between men and women in this century in terms of us trying to find out our proper roles or who we are. Even on Basic Instinct, on Basic Instinct, all of a sudden— And we think we're shooting this movie up in San Francisco, and we get a protest from the LGBT— there was no Q back then, it was just the LGBT community— offended that we were making a movie with a bisexual woman who was an ice pick killer. And I said, what? And, you know, guys, we love villain parts. Villain parts are the best parts to play. You know, they're always— they're great. And so I said, well, how can you know this is a derogatory statement on gay— on a bisexual woman? I said, come on, man. But no, they were serious. So we ended shooting scenes up in San Francisco with 40 SWAT officers surrounding the whole block to hold off the protests from us at the shooting. I mean,

how did they know?

Talk about, you

know, how did they know the plot? How'd they know the script?

They got a hold of it. Well, it's another story. I will, you know, someone— Someone leaked it? The writer screwed up. It's another story. Wow. So it's, yeah, it's been a bit of an interesting— It's been a hell of a ride. Yeah, hell of a ride.

Well, congratulations, man. Congratulations on the book and just your amazing career. You've had a wild, wild experience.

Thank you, Joe. And anyway, you've created— I mean, wow, man. I don't think you ever anticipated your many different careers and lives that you had. This is fabulous.

Yeah, I never saw any of it coming.

Yeah,

I still have a hard time believing it, but

right,

it is what it is.

It is what it is.

Thank you and good luck with your, your memoir.

Thank you. And everything, everything else. Thank you. Pleasure, pleasure to meet you.

Pleasure to meet you as well. Thank you.