Latest / NO FILTER / Joe Rogan Experience _2407 - Billy Bob Thornton

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Joe Rogan Experience _2407 - Billy Bob Thornton · NO FILTER

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
• 0:08
  by night, all day. It's working so far. Right? Right?
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: I told my wife the other day, I said, if
• 0:21
  I live to 85, I'm going to go to Long
• 0:23
  John Silver's every day for lunch. I'm just going to
• 0:27
  eat shit that, like, everything that I dream of right
• 0:30
  now that I can't eat, I'm going to eat all
• 0:32
  of it. I'm going to drink whiskey all day long
• 0:34
  and just eat everything I want.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fuck it. You're at the end of the ride. Yeah. Unless,
• 0:39
  that's the problem, is like on your deathbed, they come
• 0:42
  up with some new shit that fixes everything.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, I know, right? That'll be my luck.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: New stem cell stuff that regenerates every cell in your
• 0:49
  body to a 25-year-old.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly. I know.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: That'd be a real problem, like a 70-year-old brain and
• 0:56
  a 25-year-old body. You would have a lot of knowledge.
• 0:59
  For sure. You'd have a giant advantage.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. I fantasize about stuff like that. I fantasize
• 1:06
  about being able to, like I imagine, you know, like
• 1:09
  my version of heaven. It would be like, if I
• 1:12
  could go back to when I'm 12 years old, live
• 1:17
  through junior high and high school again.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, you'd be the king.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: And have the knowledge I have now and just, I
• 1:25
  would know exactly how to navigate everything.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know what I mean?
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: But that's the fun of, Growing up and the not
• 1:34
  so fond of growing up.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Because you don't know what the fuck is going on
• 1:37
  and you're so confused. And then you get older and
• 1:39
  you go, man, if I could just go back, I'd
• 1:42
  fucking kill it.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I think about it all the time.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: You know, your lovely co-star Demi Moore, that movie that
• 1:50
  she did, The Substance, is fucking crazy. That's a great
• 1:55
  piece on this whole fear of aging thing.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: That movie is wild.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: It's so crazy. But it's like, you know how many
• 2:06
  women would agree to that deal? It was realistic enough
• 2:13
  where you're watching like, I know a lot of ladies
• 2:15
  who would agree to that.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of ladies.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Have you seen that South Park episode where they– It
• 2:25
  was about that type of thing, but it was about
• 2:28
  how they have all these apps that you can make
• 2:30
  yourself look better in. You know what I mean? It's
• 2:34
  like filters that make you look younger and all this
• 2:37
  kind of stuff. And they had this episode about that
• 2:40
  where like all these girls who aren't like the hot girls,
• 2:45
  but their Instagram stuff, they are. And they actually start
• 2:51
  to think. And so all the guys start going for
• 2:53
  these girls, even though when they're in front of them,
• 2:55
  They're not like that. But that's what they look like
• 2:58
  on there. And, yeah, it's pretty crazy.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: It's probably accurate, too. As long as a couple people
• 3:05
  start doing it, a couple guys start going for those girls,
• 3:09
  then everybody else will as well.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Which is most of our world.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Most of our world is some fucking idiot decides bell
• 3:16
  bottoms look good. And then we're all like, shit, I
• 3:21
  got to get bell bottoms. I want to get laid.
• 3:23
  I want to be cool.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I had bell bottoms when I, you know, because I
• 3:27
  was playing in bands and stuff. So whatever was trendy,
• 3:29
  you know, we wore that stuff. I can remember those
• 3:32
  bell bottoms that were so big you couldn't see your shoes.
• 3:36
  It just looked like a pair of jeans walking down
• 3:38
  the street. It was so dumb looking.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: It's a crazy thing that lasted for a little while.
• 3:48
  Like regular jeans. Somebody invented that shit in like the 1800s.
• 3:51
  And everybody's like, yeah. You nailed it. Yeah. And it's
• 3:55
  like a Jeep. A Jeep still looks like a Jeep.
• 3:57
  They made a Jeep in like the 1950s. Right. They
• 4:00
  made a Jeep in 2026. You can see the difference. Exactly.
• 4:03
  It's a little bit more advanced, but that's a Jeep.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Jeans, they nailed it. Bell bottoms are like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:10
  What the fuck were we doing?
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, I had shirts with like bell sleeves on. With, like,
• 4:19
  pictures of sailboats and stuff on it. It's like, are
• 4:21
  you kidding me? I mean, you know, like lime green
• 4:24
  and orange and shit like that.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Remember the Elvis-style collars?
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. Giant collars.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Like, what happened? I know. I have a theory. Because
• 4:33
  all that stuff happened after they passed the sweeping psychedelic
• 4:37
  Schedule I Act in 1970. And I think they cut
• 4:40
  everybody off from mushrooms and acid and anything that makes
• 4:46
  you think. And then they started giving them Coke and
• 4:49
  no one knew what to do. And they were all
• 4:51
  just like, and it was disco and the music kind
• 4:54
  of sucked and everybody got real weird.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: I think that's what happened.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't doubt that at all.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: That's when the clothes get really fucked up.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It's the exact time.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Because before, like there was like a hippie style, you know, like.
• 5:11
  Hendrix and, you know, Clapton, a lot of guys. It
• 5:15
  was like a flowy hippie, but it looked good. It
• 5:17
  was kind of cool. But something happened in the 70s
• 5:20
  where it just lost all perspective. Oh, I know.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, when you look at some of the 70s,
• 5:25
  like especially like sort of late 70s, you know, the
• 5:29
  disco era and stuff like that, and you look back
• 5:31
  at some of these TV shows they had and you
• 5:33
  see a lot of these bands and stuff on there,
• 5:36
  and it's like, Who thought that looked good? I mean,
• 5:39
  who said this is the thing now? It looked like shit.
• 5:43
  I mean, horrible, horrible stuff.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I talk about this all the time, but it's the
• 5:48
  cars too, man. I love 1960s muscle cars, but I
• 5:54
  check out around 71, and I only allow a 71
• 5:58
  Barracuda and a Challenger in that group. Everything else after
• 6:01
  71 is useless to me.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Except Corvette. Corvette still stayed cool looking. They stayed cool
• 6:06
  looking deep into the 80s.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. I'm a muscle car guy. I've got
• 6:11
  a 67 Chevelle 396.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, nice.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: And muscle cars are my thing.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I have a 70.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, do you really? Yeah. I would like to get
• 6:21
  a 64 GTO the first year they were made. That's
• 6:24
  what I'm looking for. But to get one that's perfect,
• 6:27
  they're pretty pricey.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: They're very pricey.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: And I grew up poor, so I don't like to
• 6:31
  buy stuff for myself. I buy my kids stuff all
• 6:34
  the time. And I don't mind how much money I
• 6:37
  spend on my family. But for me, I just don't
• 6:40
  spend money on myself.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Old habits die hard.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they really do.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: When I was a kid, my sister's boyfriend's brother, the
• 6:49
  older brother, was the cool guy in the neighborhood. He
• 6:51
  had a 65 GTO convertible. Oh, yeah. And I worked
• 6:55
  at a gas station, and he would drive by the
• 6:57
  gas station. We'd all go like this, like, oh.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I can't believe he owns that. That's really his car?
• 7:04
  He was the coolest guy in the world.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. We had those.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Jerry Red.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There was a guy named Mike Page in our town.
• 7:13
  He was older than my group. You know, when we
• 7:17
  were seniors, he was probably already 25, 26, something like that.
• 7:22
  And you never really, because, you know, cruising was a thing.
• 7:24
  And you'd cruise through Sonic or whatever it was, you know,
• 7:27
  and see who was there and all that crap. And
• 7:30
  everybody parks on the bank parking lot. And you'd drink
• 7:33
  beer and then the cops would come by and you'd
• 7:35
  hide all your shit, you know. And, I mean, it
• 7:38
  was literally like the American graffiti days, you know. And
• 7:44
  so this guy, Mike, he had a 65 candy apple
• 7:48
  red vet. And he had a mustache. Remember Chuck Negron,
• 7:52
  singer in the Three Dog Night? Yes. The one with
• 7:54
  the mustache?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: He looked like Chuck Negron.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: So, yeah.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: We would see him pass by. And he was like
• 8:02
  Harrison Ford was in American Graffiti. It's like you'd just
• 8:06
  see him in his car, you know. And so he
• 8:11
  was like seeing Elvis Presley go by. And everybody would
• 8:15
  go like, wow. And that's actually how the Boxmaster's name
• 8:20
  came about.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: How?
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Well, in the South in those days, there was a–
• 8:29
  There are two stories how the boxmaster's name came about.
• 8:33
  There's the politically correct one and there's the one that's not.
• 8:39
  And the one that's not is if somebody was a
• 8:43
  playboy type, you know, it was called a boxmaster. And so.
• 8:51
  And we had a.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I would have never guessed that.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: And then the old days, people would say, oh, look,
• 8:58
  there goes the box master when Mike would pass by
• 9:00
  because he was new. But you only saw him driving
• 9:03
  his Corvette up and down cruising. You never saw him,
• 9:05
  you know, actually doing stuff. And he never got out
• 9:07
  and drank beer with us or anything.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: He was just making an appearance.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Just letting everybody know. Look at this. Second generation Corvette. Yeah.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: 65.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: I have a 65 convertible.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: I love them.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Awesome cars. I mean, yeah, muscle cars are the thing
• 9:23
  to me. Do you remember, uh, there, there are two, uh,
• 9:30
  sort of car, uh, times that confused me. Uh, I mean,
• 9:36
  first of all, how can a Mustang ever not be cool?
• 9:38
  But remember in the late seventies, early eighties, there were,
• 9:42
  It may as well have been a Ford Fiesta. Yeah,
• 9:44
  they were garbage. What was that?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: It was the gas guzzler crisis, the gas crisis. Oh, okay.
• 9:49
  That's what it was. So they had to make all
• 9:51
  these cars gas efficient, so they got rid of V8s.
• 9:54
  They started having these like very economical on gas V6s
• 10:00
  and like really shitty engines. And they made the cars
• 10:03
  plastic and lighter and cheaper. And yeah, they fucked everything up.
• 10:08
  They fucked everything up. Like, the fact, whoever, imagine working
• 10:12
  at Ford in 1969. You know, you got the Mach 1,
• 10:16
  which is like, you just look at that and you go, God, dang.
• 10:19
  Every time, to this day, I see one of those
• 10:21
  on you. God, they just nailed it. Like, you just
• 10:25
  stare at that car, just walk around it for hours
• 10:27
  just looking at it. And then 10 years later, they
• 10:30
  got something that you would never want to own.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: No.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: This is a hunk of shit. This is a fucking box.
• 10:35
  It's literally like a box that a washing machine comes in.
• 10:40
  It's garbage.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: People didn't even want to steal them.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Crazy. Imagine being the CEO of that company and going,
• 10:46
  what did we do? What the fuck happened? We had it.
• 10:48
  We had magic. Right. Like legit magic.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Remember the Tornado and the Riviera?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're talking about different looking.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But they were cool.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: They're very cool.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Very cool. Weird and huge. And huge. Yeah.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: And the opposite end of the spectrum was AMC. What
• 11:10
  were they thinking?
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: They were weird. That was a weird car to own. Weird.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: All of those. Yeah. They had one that looked kind
• 11:16
  of okay, but, you know, they had the Pacer and the...
• 11:22
  What was that other weird looking? The Gremlin.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The Gremlin.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: All those kind of things. I mean, it was like,
• 11:29
  what in the hell is this?
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: It was a strange company. It was almost like a
• 11:33
  fake company.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Like it didn't make any sense.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It didn't make any sense at all.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: It was like an Australian. Remember like Mad Max? He
• 11:39
  drove that Australian muscle car. I remember watching. I go,
• 11:41
  what the fuck is that thing? It was an Australian
• 11:44
  muscle car. I don't know what it was. Still to
• 11:46
  this day, I don't know what it was. But that's
• 11:47
  like what those AMCs were. Oh, yeah. Weird looking. Oh, yeah.
• 11:52
  Just off.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, strange.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: From a different timeline or something.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There was a movie called, it had Raquel Welch
• 12:03
  was in it and Donald Pleasence and all these people
• 12:05
  called Fantastic Voyage where some politician or scientist or something,
• 12:16
  I guess it was an assassination attempt, but there was
• 12:18
  a brain thing. So they shrink all these scientists down
• 12:23
  on a little you know glass thing whatever those things
• 12:27
  are called for chemistry or whatever they shrink the cats
• 12:30
  down and their little submarine thing and they shoot them
• 12:36
  into the guy and yeah that that well see that's
• 12:40
  a pacer you know i go It's a damn pacer.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so they go through the guy all through
• 12:49
  his veins and arteries and stuff and get to the
• 12:51
  place where they need to fix it and all this
• 12:52
  kind of stuff. But antibodies kept attacking them and all
• 12:55
  this kind of stuff. It was weird. I saw it
• 12:57
  in the theater and I was pretty impressed actually.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I remember that movie. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. Shrinking people down.
• 13:08
  What's wild is how many ideas were burned up in
• 13:12
  movies by the time like the nineties rolled around. If
• 13:16
  you just stop and think about the fact that movies
• 13:18
  really were only like, well, movies I think are the
• 13:22
  absolute best mirror into the culture. It's like a time machine.
• 13:27
  Like you could read a history book and you can
• 13:29
  kind of get a rough understanding of how people behaved
• 13:32
  back then, but you still think of them in a
• 13:34
  current context. You think of them like today, but you
• 13:37
  watch a film, you know, watch a, like a James
• 13:39
  Cagney film and you're like, whoa, man, this is a
• 13:43
  different world.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Nobody knew shit. Right. Nobody had any idea what was
• 13:47
  going on in the world. You got all your news
• 13:50
  from the newspaper. So these dudes who own the newspapers
• 13:52
  essentially control the narrative for the entire world. And it's
• 13:58
  people behave strange.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Open domestic violence. Domestic violence is normal.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Shut up.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: She would kiss him and like it was crazy.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Nuts.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Well, my wife, who was raised in the. Bay Area,
• 14:14
  you know, around San Francisco and Marin County there. When
• 14:17
  I first told her what my dad did to me,
• 14:21
  she was like, oh my God, that's like, and honestly,
• 14:25
  that's what everybody's dad did. It was like, you know,
• 14:28
  if he was working graveyard shift and you started making
• 14:31
  a bunch of damn noise at noon, you got your
• 14:34
  ass beat with a belt. And she was just, she
• 14:37
  couldn't believe it. I said, oh no, it was like
• 14:39
  every day almost, you know, and You know, not that
• 14:44
  it was good, but it was just part of our life.
• 14:48
  We didn't know any better. We really didn't.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: No, no one knew any better. And we're only figuring
• 14:53
  it out now.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: It was like canceling people retroactively for stuff they did
• 14:58
  in the 80s. Like, okay, that's a different world. You
• 15:01
  weren't even alive then. That's a different world. When people came, like,
• 15:06
  you got to realize, like, your parents, like, think about
• 15:09
  it this way. People were coming over on a boat.
• 15:12
  from other countries with no knowledge of what was over here.
• 15:16
  They just got told, oh, there's jobs in America, you know,
• 15:20
  and you got on a boat from fucking Europe. Like
• 15:23
  my grandparents came over here in the 1920s. Like they
• 15:26
  had no idea. They come over here and there's, a
• 15:30
  bunch of people that also did the same thing. They're
• 15:33
  basically just savages. They're basically one or two steps above
• 15:38
  absolute savages. They're savages with metal. They've got metal and rubber.
• 15:45
  And they're raising kids. And of course, they're going to
• 15:47
  raise kids in a rough way because the world is rough.
• 15:50
  It's like everybody got beat up. It was normal. Bullying
• 15:54
  was not, there was no anti-bullying campaigns. You just had
• 15:58
  to fight for yourself. Like, that's just how it is.
• 16:00
  This is life. This prepares you for life. It sucks,
• 16:04
  but this is life.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. We have guys in our town that you just
• 16:09
  stayed away from.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, guys who were, you know, relatively the same age.
• 16:13
  And I lucked out because I was a skinny, long-haired
• 16:17
  little hippie and playing in bands and stuff. And for
• 16:21
  some reason, I always liked hanging out with, you know,
• 16:26
  the guys who are a few years older than me.
• 16:28
  They had more fun than we did. And so I
• 16:33
  remember the first time I ever, well, the first time
• 16:37
  I ever had a drink of beer, my Uncle Don,
• 16:40
  he drank Schlitz. And this was back when you had
• 16:42
  to have a church key and you opened both sides
• 16:43
  of it. Oh, wow. And he would pour it in
• 16:46
  our glasses. Like I said, we were pretty poor. We
• 16:49
  all lived at my grandmother's house. And it was the
• 16:52
  jelly jars. When you finished the jelly, that became the
• 16:55
  glasses we drank out of. And he would have a,
• 16:57
  jelly jar glass of beer, and it just looked like
• 17:00
  apple juice to me. And I would always ask him,
• 17:04
  you know, I'm six years old. I'd say, hey, can
• 17:08
  I have some of that? And he goes, you don't
• 17:09
  need any of this. Well, finally one day he goes, yeah, here,
• 17:11
  have a drink. Tastes like apple juice. And I'm like, oh,
• 17:14
  God almighty. But the first time I got drunk in
• 17:18
  my life was on Boone's Farm wine, apple wine. And
• 17:25
  these two guys... Gary and Eddie were their names, and
• 17:30
  they were just trouble. And Gary had a 64 GTO.
• 17:34
  That's probably where I got that thing from. But, I mean,
• 17:38
  we rolled it one night. No seatbelts. I mean, we
• 17:41
  never even thought about a seatbelt. And so they took
• 17:47
  me to the Dairy Queen, and we were going to
• 17:52
  get a hamburger or whatever it was. Well, they ended up, like,
• 17:55
  hanging me out the window just puking all over the
• 17:57
  Dairy Queen parking lot, you know, because I drank an
• 17:59
  entire bottle of this and never been drunk in my life.
• 18:02
  I was 12, 13. And so these guys, I just— I
• 18:07
  was fascinated by them. They were all James Dean and
• 18:11
  Elvis Presley to me, right? And there were a few
• 18:15
  guys in town that everybody knew not to mess with
• 18:19
  at all. It's like they will— literally pull your eyeballs
• 18:23
  out of the sockets. They kind of consider me a mascot.
• 18:29
  And they all protected me. So the other guys who were,
• 18:35
  you know, pricks or whatever, you know, if one of
• 18:38
  them messed with me, there was a guy named Calvin,
• 18:41
  a guy named Billy Bob, actually, who was probably 10
• 18:44
  years older than me, and a guy named Harry, and
• 18:50
  whose family came over from somewhere, they were like, you know,
• 18:54
  from the Czech Republic or somewhere, but they grew up here,
• 18:58
  you know, so they didn't sound like they were from
• 19:00
  someplace else. Harry was about five, six, and stocky, you know,
• 19:07
  and there was this dude who was just mean to everybody.
• 19:14
  Excuse me, but somewhere in between our age you know,
• 19:20
  when we were teenagers, 17, 18. And Harry and Billy
• 19:25
  Bob and Calvin and those guys, they were like 30.
• 19:30
  And there were these other guys who were the mean
• 19:33
  guys in town who were in between those ages. And
• 19:36
  they were the real problem because they were just assholes.
• 19:38
  The other guys were cool as long as you didn't
• 19:41
  mess with them. One night, this guy, two of them
• 19:49
  were both named Steve, who were the real pricks. And
• 19:54
  one of the Steves got me by my hair and
• 19:58
  drug me around, beat me up a little bit. And
• 20:00
  I was a fighter. I wasn't bad. I fought a
• 20:04
  lot of guys. I quit fighting in my early 20s.
• 20:07
  But back then, it was just a way of life.
• 20:10
  And this cat roughed me up a lot bigger than me.
• 20:15
  And Harry found out about it. Well, we had a
• 20:17
  bonfire party out of the guy's trailer home that night.
• 20:22
  And so this cat that had beat me up showed up,
• 20:24
  and Harry had heard about it. And Harry's, you know,
• 20:26
  I'm like Harry's little mascot guy, right? So the guy
• 20:32
  gets out of his car and comes over there. Now,
• 20:34
  we got a big bonfire going on, right? The guy
• 20:37
  comes over. Harry didn't say a word to him. He
• 20:40
  walked up to him. This guy's like a foot taller
• 20:42
  than Harry. Harry reached up, got him by the hair,
• 20:47
  hit him one time, broke his jaw, and threw him
• 20:51
  in the bonfire. Whoa. And a bunch of people had
• 20:53
  to put him out. I mean, this was just like
• 20:56
  a Friday night in Arkansas.
• 20:59
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  That's drinkag1. com slash joerogan. Oh, my God. That's a rough
• 22:34
  part of the world, man, especially back then.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: You know, Malcolm McDowell, he wrote a book where he
• 22:42
  was talking about why certain populations, like certain parts of
• 22:46
  the world, are rougher. And he was talking about certain
• 22:49
  parts of America where they were settled initially by people
• 22:54
  that came from a herding community. So they were like
• 22:59
  sheep herders in other countries. And when they came over
• 23:02
  to America— When you have a flock of sheep, someone
• 23:06
  could steal all your food in the middle of the night.
• 23:08
  They can just take all your sheep. If you're growing corn,
• 23:11
  you know, it's hard to pick all that fucking corn.
• 23:14
  You got to throw it in a truck, drag it out.
• 23:16
  You could just steal someone's sheep. So they're accustomed to
• 23:19
  extreme violence to protect their sheep. And they're accustomed to
• 23:24
  acting fast and doing things quickly and violently. And so
• 23:28
  that's how you got the Hatfields and the McCoys. That's
• 23:31
  what that shit's about. People are like, why are those
• 23:32
  people such fucking psychos? They came from a psycho community
• 23:38
  in Europe. And then when they made it over to America,
• 23:40
  they just kept that tradition going.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, people talk about,
• 23:46
  you know, the Irish and the Scots.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Did I say Michael McDowell? Did I say Malcolm? Malcolm Gladwell.
• 23:51
  That's what I meant. Malcolm Gladwell. Sorry, Malcolm. Malcolm Gladwell.
• 23:57
  It's early.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: But that's, you know, we still to this day, we
• 24:01
  talk about, oh, yeah, those Irish cats and the Scottish guys,
• 24:04
  the English guys. If you're in the, you know, like, say,
• 24:07
  South London or whatever, some rough guys over there. Where
• 24:10
  do you think we came from?
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I did one of those tests
• 24:14
  about my genealogy and all that kind of stuff. And,
• 24:18
  you know, you hear stuff from your family growing up
• 24:21
  that I grew up thinking I was part Italian and
• 24:24
  Native American and all these different things.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: And then I do this thing, it's like I'm a
• 24:29
  full-on English Scottish guy. It's Irish, English, Scottish, almost all
• 24:36
  of me, except for as my daughter says, she goes, Daddy,
• 24:38
  why aren't we randomly Swiss? I got a little bit
• 24:41
  of French Swiss. It's like 11%, something like that. And
• 24:45
  the rest of it's just that stuff. So all those
• 24:47
  people come over here, and North Carolina or Tennessee, Arkansas,
• 24:54
  all these places, There are words that we use, you know,
• 24:59
  which we call the hillbilly language, which actually wasn't considered
• 25:05
  a hillbilly language in England, you know. But that language
• 25:10
  was left over. Like we say, reckon you want to
• 25:13
  go do something? Reckon, over there, they still use it.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Aaron, meaning one. It's like if you said to me, hey,
• 25:24
  can I have a beer? And I say, I ain't
• 25:25
  got Aaron. You know, it's A-I-R, I ain't got Aaron.
• 25:30
  And all that stuff came from England and Ireland and Scotland.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the idea of the Southern accent, right? The
• 25:36
  Southern accent is an English accent that's just morphed. Yes.
• 25:40
  In a new place.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: And morphed particularly probably because of the climate. Like the
• 25:47
  climate changed a lot. You know, one of the weirder
• 25:50
  things about these stereotypes about the South is the hookworm thing.
• 25:55
  Do you know that thing?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: No, tell me about that.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: This is crazy. So for a long time, a giant
• 26:03
  percentage of people that lived in the South had hookworm.
• 26:08
  And hookworm is a parasite that you get in your
• 26:10
  feet from walking around barefoot. Okay. And hookworm affects your
• 26:15
  cognitive function in a massive way. It makes you slow
• 26:18
  and stupid. And so this myth of the Southern person
• 26:24
  being slow and lazy and stupid... was all because they
• 26:27
  were infected with hookworm. Like a giant percentage of these
• 26:32
  people had hookworm. Throw that into our sponsor, Perplexity, and
• 26:36
  tell me how much hookworm was in the South.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna cancel my therapist.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: The phrase hookworm southern drawl refers to historical connection between
• 26:45
  hookworm infections in the American South and certain stereotypes about Southerners,
• 26:49
  including the way they spoke and behaved in the late
• 26:52
  19th and early 20th century. Hookworm infestations were rampant with
• 26:56
  estimates suggesting that up to 40% of the people in
• 26:59
  the region were infected. So hookworm causes symptoms like severe fatigue, anemia,
• 27:04
  and mental fog, which led to slowness in speech and thought.
• 27:08
  This contributed to the stereotype of Southerners being lazy or slow-witted,
• 27:12
  often associated with the Southern drawl. How did they fix that?
• 27:16
  Like what medication did they use to fix that? Some
• 27:20
  sort of a dewormer? Health campaigns.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've heard of hookworm, but I had no
• 27:33
  idea that it had any association with this.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't either. When I found that out, I
• 27:37
  was like, oh, that makes sense. Right. That makes sense.
• 27:42
  Rockefeller Sanitation Commission surveyed infection rates 40%. Mobile dispensaries travel
• 27:47
  throughout the region. Free deworming medications and educating local doctors. Okay,
• 27:51
  so they use some sort of an antiparasitic.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: All measures including latrines to improve sanitation, educating communities about
• 27:59
  the risk of soil contamination, and encouraging the routine of
• 28:02
  wearing shoes. Isn't that nuts that shoes probably fixed it
• 28:06
  more than anything? People wearing shoes.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Probably so, yeah. Yeah.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: So that's where it all came from. That's the hookworm thing.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: That's wild.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Isn't that nuts?
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: It is nuts.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Because when I was a kid, I mean, to this day,
• 28:17
  if someone wants to make a stereotype about someone being stupid,
• 28:22
  they use a southern accent.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: All the time.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I grew up with that. I mean, there was
• 28:27
  a prejudice in Hollywood when I first got out there.
• 28:30
  There still kind of is. I can't, I mean, especially
• 28:35
  coming up now, I mean, you know, once you reach
• 28:37
  a certain level, you know, you can walk into Universal
• 28:41
  Studios and say, I want to play Betty Davis. And
• 28:45
  they're like, hey, that's a great idea. But, you know,
• 28:49
  but when you're coming up, you know, I was— the first
• 28:54
  thing I ever auditioned for in L.A. was a student film.
• 28:57
  It was like one of those USC student films. And
• 29:01
  I go in there, and the part was some guy
• 29:05
  that just got off the turnip truck from Alabama. And
• 29:08
  I thought, well, I've probably got this. And so— and
• 29:14
  I was broke and everything and it wasn't going to
• 29:17
  pay anything, but I didn't care. I was like, well,
• 29:19
  maybe I get my foot in the door. Cause I
• 29:20
  didn't go to be an actor anyway. I just thought, well,
• 29:23
  try this stuff. And, uh, I go in there and
• 29:28
  I think the casting person and the director are both
• 29:31
  East coast people like New York or somewhere. And I
• 29:36
  did my little audition and they said, uh, can you
• 29:41
  do it more southern and I'm like are you shitting
• 29:44
  me it's like you got to be shitting me I
• 29:49
  said well what you have to understand is I actually
• 29:52
  did just get off the truck from back there and
• 29:55
  this is how you talk you know and of course
• 29:57
  my accent is not as thick as it was then
• 29:59
  but They just said I wasn't Southern enough. And it
• 30:02
  was like, oh, I see what they're getting at. So
• 30:07
  they wanted the foghorn leghorn, you know, now over here,
• 30:11
  what we have is, and I never heard anybody talk.
• 30:13
  I grew up down there. I never heard that. And
• 30:15
  so that's what they would do. There are a lot
• 30:18
  of performances over the years where people who are not
• 30:21
  from the South played the part that actually use that
• 30:24
  accent and they win Academy Awards and stuff. And I'm like,
• 30:29
  So anyway, I didn't get this part. And the guy
• 30:31
  who got the part literally sounded like he was in
• 30:33
  the Bronx. But he was doing that thing, you know.
• 30:37
  I thought, wow, this is going to be tough out here,
• 30:39
  you know. But Southerners don't often get picked or even
• 30:47
  noticed for things like, let's say you're doing a gangster
• 30:50
  movie in the 30s in New York. You know, even
• 30:55
  if you can do the accents, you know, whatever. but
• 31:01
  people from New York can get parts playing Southerners. That
• 31:05
  still goes on.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: That's so weird. Yeah. It's such a weird stereotype. You know,
• 31:10
  it exists in music too, doesn't it?
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Like Southern bands, until Skinner came along, Southern bands got
• 31:16
  no respect.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Skinner fucked that up just because they were so good.
• 31:21
  They were so good, everybody was like, all right, man.
• 31:24
  Freebird is Freebird. That guitar solo, you're like.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: God damn!
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: It's ridiculous.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: I've known those guys a long time, those guys in Skinner. Yeah,
• 31:36
  you're right. And also, anybody that was from the South
• 31:40
  got lumped into the Southern rock thing. And they weren't
• 31:46
  all just people that sounded like Charlie Daniels. I mean,
• 31:50
  they were very, very... different types of bands the Allman
• 31:52
  Brothers combined jazz and blues and rock and pop and
• 31:59
  everything and their music they were literally masters the Allman
• 32:02
  Brothers Allman Brothers live at the Fillmore East probably the
• 32:05
  best live album ever made but they just say they're
• 32:08
  all southern rock bands it's like it wasn't really like
• 32:11
  that you know.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Very different styles very different styles the Allman Brothers were
• 32:15
  masters they were you know Midnight Ride are still one
• 32:18
  of my all time favorite songs oh it's awesome If
• 32:20
  I used to have to do radio when I lived
• 32:22
  in L.A., I'd do morning radio. I'd smoke a joint
• 32:25
  before I left the house, you know, because it's like 5.30 a.m.
• 32:27
  and I'd listen to Midnight Rider.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: In the dark. Oh, yeah. On the way there, like, oh.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's a brilliant song.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's so good. It just gets you in the mood.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: And country guys, you know, back in those days when
• 32:38
  country was actual country music, they would hear some of
• 32:43
  these songs by those kind of guys like the Allman
• 32:46
  Brothers or Marshall Tucker, whoever it was, and cut them.
• 32:50
  You know, for country albums like Waylon Jennings did Midnight Rider. Oh, yeah,
• 32:54
  that's right.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Great cover.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, but yeah, it's it's kind of odd,
• 33:00
  you know, being raised in the area of the country
• 33:03
  that people look at as the armpit. And then, you know,
• 33:06
  and like I said, once you overcome that. And it's
• 33:11
  not like they like you any better. You know, it's
• 33:14
  just that they can use you to make money with.
• 33:16
  And once, you know, that happens, then, you know, you
• 33:19
  can go in and play Betty Davis.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: That's the stereotype of the coastal cities, right? That's the
• 33:25
  stereotype that comes out of New York and L.A., where
• 33:28
  it's like everything else is stupid.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Like you're in New York or you're in L.A. and
• 33:32
  all these retards in the middle, that's the flyover states.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I literally would call it the flyover states. Yes. And
• 33:38
  when you're in control of casting all the great films
• 33:43
  and all the great television shows and you decide what
• 33:46
  the great albums are, you dismiss like this people that are,
• 33:51
  it takes like a Stevie Rave on. It was like
• 33:54
  an undeniable talent where they go, okay, I don't give
• 33:57
  a fuck where that guy's from. Let that guy fucking play.
• 34:01
  Like that guy's got voodoo in his hands. Like whatever
• 34:03
  he's doing, I don't care where he's from. But other
• 34:06
  than that, you would like, they would look at these
• 34:08
  places like they were less than, you know, or that
• 34:12
  the people were not as bright. And, That stereotype still
• 34:16
  exists today. I remember one of the good things about
• 34:20
  traveling and doing the road a lot as a stand-up
• 34:22
  is you get to perform all over the country and
• 34:25
  meet all these different people. And, you know, when I
• 34:27
  would talk to people about Texas in particular, I'd be like, dude,
• 34:30
  I fucking love it there. They're the most fun people.
• 34:33
  It's like it's so fun. And they're normal. They're normal people.
• 34:36
  They're not Hollywood people angling to try to get some
• 34:39
  sort of a social relationship with you so they can
• 34:42
  progress their career. They're just cool people, just regular fucking people.
• 34:47
  And the problem is that these people in these coastal
• 34:51
  cities are the ones who don't know that, and they're
• 34:54
  dictating the narrative for the entire country based on some– Like,
• 34:59
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• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. I mean, it happens all the time.
• 36:26
  And people ask me, there was a very famous singer
• 36:30
  movie star person. This is a long time ago. It
• 36:34
  was when I first started getting invited to the parties,
• 36:37
  you know, and I didn't know anything about this stuff.
• 36:38
  And I, What year was this around? Well, it was
• 36:42
  around the time of Sling Blade, you know. I mean,
• 36:44
  I was working and had done some stuff that had
• 36:46
  been noticed, like one false move and, you know, done
• 36:48
  a few things. But this was around that time. And
• 36:54
  it wasn't even out yet, I don't think, but screenings
• 36:56
  had started happening and there was a buzz about it, right?
• 37:00
  So I get invited to a party and it was—
• 37:05
  It was out at David Foster's house. It was always
• 37:07
  real nice to me. At the time, he was married
• 37:10
  to Linda Thompson, who was a Memphis girl. She always
• 37:14
  made Southern food. She kind of took a liking to
• 37:16
  me and said, Hey, I want to invite you because
• 37:18
  you're from the South and we always have the Southern
• 37:21
  food at our parties and stuff. So I go out
• 37:24
  there and there were a lot of big people there.
• 37:27
  I found myself outside having a smoke. I was standing
• 37:32
  there in a little group of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mel Gibson.
• 37:37
  And I think maybe Dan Aykroyd was there. And I remember, uh,
• 37:41
  Lionel Richie was in there playing piano in the living room.
• 37:44
  And I'm just like, wow, wait, this is crazy. And, um,
• 37:48
  but I felt it's like that poor kid from the
• 37:51
  South syndrome. Like I don't really belong here. So I
• 37:54
  was real shy and you know, that kind of thing. Well, this,
• 37:58
  I went into the kitchen to get another drink and, uh,
• 38:03
  Like I said, I won't name her name, but a
• 38:06
  very famous singer and actress from back in the 60s
• 38:10
  and 70s. And she very seriously said to me, she said,
• 38:18
  so this Sling Blade, so sorry, she goes, it's fascinating
• 38:25
  to me. A lot of people who didn't know me
• 38:29
  before that thought that I was actually that guy It's
• 38:33
  like this mentally challenged guy made a movie and everything
• 38:36
  like that. And they would meet me and they'd go,
• 38:39
  you're the guy in that?
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: So anyway, but she said it was fascinating to me.
• 38:45
  And she goes, and you came out here from what
• 38:46
  is it, Alabama or something like that? And I said, Arkansas.
• 38:49
  And she goes, Arkansas. And with a straight face said
• 38:53
  to me, what do you people do down there? I
• 38:58
  was like, wow. And I said... thinking she'd get the joke,
• 39:06
  I said, uh, we mostly lay around on the porch
• 39:09
  with our hound dog and swat flies. She goes, Oh, interesting. Interesting.
• 39:15
  It's like, babe, I was, I was fucking with you there. Uh, and, uh,
• 39:20
  but that was one of the moments where I realized
• 39:23
  that I really was an outsider out there. And people
• 39:28
  ask me about my longevity in this business. And I
• 39:32
  always say it's because I stay out of it. I
• 39:36
  tell people, do your acting on the red carpet, not
• 39:38
  in the movie. They said, well, you're so natural and stuff.
• 39:41
  It's like, that's from ignorance. I don't know anything about acting.
• 39:44
  I didn't go to Shakespeare school and stuff. You know,
• 39:47
  I look at the thing, I'm playing Tommy Norris in
• 39:49
  Landman or I'm playing the guy in Goliath or Fargo
• 39:52
  or Sling Blade or Monstrous Ball, whatever I was in.
• 39:55
  I just go out there and do what it says,
• 39:58
  you know, and be myself in whatever role it is.
• 40:02
  And because, you know, people want to think there's a
• 40:07
  trick to everything, that you can learn everything. And it's
• 40:11
  kind of just not true. I mean, I believe artists,
• 40:14
  whether they're musicians or novelists, actors, whatever they are, I
• 40:20
  truly believe that you're born with most of it. I'm
• 40:24
  not saying that you can't learn and that you can't progress.
• 40:27
  You can't get better. I mean, just repetition makes you better.
• 40:32
  I mean, you know, just the more you do something,
• 40:34
  the more comfortable you get with it. But, uh, you know, if, if,
• 40:39
  if you say, like, if you were to ask me,
• 40:42
  what is my process? hell i wouldn't know what to
• 40:46
  tell you i don't know my process is it's like
• 40:48
  my process is started when i was born i'm just
• 40:51
  i used my life experience and i do this stuff
• 40:54
  i had lived a very eclectic life and uh i
• 40:58
  just remember all this stuff i don't need to go
• 41:01
  in the hallway before a scene and think about when
• 41:04
  my dad ran over my cat or something right right
• 41:07
  and you know start you know gobbling like a turkey
• 41:09
  and you know yelling and screaming and punching the wall
• 41:12
  still like that and trying to get all this sense memory.
• 41:15
  My sense memory is here on the edge of my
• 41:19
  skin every fucking minute. And I mean, if you were
• 41:23
  raised where I was, it was like, uh, you know, I,
• 41:26
  I don't forget any of that stuff. And I've lived
• 41:27
  50 different lives, so plenty to draw on. And I
• 41:32
  just believe that people want, it sounds like you're smarter
• 41:37
  if you say, well, here's how I learn lines. Uh,
• 41:41
  I take this and then I have this mathematical formula
• 41:44
  and I imagine these letters as numbers and stuff like that.
• 41:49
  And it's like, because the press loves that because it's like,
• 41:51
  what a genius. You know, they don't respect, hell, I
• 41:57
  don't know, I just go out there and do it
• 41:59
  as much because people want to believe that anyone can
• 42:03
  do this if you get in the right school, if
• 42:06
  you get the right, you know, teaching from someone, if
• 42:11
  you go study Shakespeare, whatever it is.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: And, you know, I just don't believe that's true. I
• 42:17
  believe you either have it or you don't have it.
• 42:21
  Like in music, you can learn to play guitar. You
• 42:24
  can learn to play piano. You can learn to play drums. No,
• 42:31
  I'll take that back. You can get better at playing drums,
• 42:34
  but if you're not born a drummer... You're not going
• 42:37
  to be able to do it. My brother, God rest
• 42:38
  his soul, had passed away at 30. Jimmy, he was
• 42:41
  a brilliant musician, played every instrument in the world, except
• 42:45
  when he got on my drums and he looked like
• 42:47
  he had some muscular disorder. It was like, he was
• 42:52
  just like, he goes, how do you do this? You
• 42:55
  use all both legs and both arms. That's crazy.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: You can play everything else. Everything.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: And he just couldn't play drums. Drummers can get better
• 43:04
  and they get to be experts, but the thing in
• 43:08
  music that you can't teach is feel. You can't teach
• 43:13
  a vibe or a feel to people. Eric Clapton could
• 43:16
  play a lick on a guitar, give it to another guy,
• 43:21
  he plays the same exact lick, it's going to sound
• 43:23
  different just because of their feel.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I like that Miles Davis quote about
• 43:29
  hitting notes that everybody can hit the same notes but
• 43:34
  it's the attitude of the motherfucker that's the important thing
• 43:38
  the attitude of the person singing the notes is everything
• 43:41
  that's most of it yeah and you either have that
• 43:44
  or you do not no doubt about it and some
• 43:47
  of it's genetic and some of it's just learned experience
• 43:50
  in your environment and how you grew up yeah but
• 43:53
  yeah you don't got it you don't got it.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: I mean levon helm who was a friend of mine
• 43:57
  you know played drums with the band uh He and
• 44:02
  Richie Hayward, who was with Little Feet, Frank Beard and
• 44:08
  ZZ Top, you know, especially on their earlier records. And,
• 44:13
  you know, Charlie Watts and Ringo and those guys, they
• 44:16
  all had feel. They had a thing. And then there
• 44:20
  are these other drummers in these sort of, you know,
• 44:22
  I call them science bands, you know, where the drummer
• 44:25
  has like 75 drums. And they can do shit that
• 44:30
  seems humanly impossible. But what happens after the song's over?
• 44:36
  It doesn't stick.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean?
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: But Levon just playing on a little four-piece kit, just
• 44:44
  had that feel, and he played the song. So anytime
• 44:49
  musicians start thinking it's all about their thing, Like if
• 44:53
  you're doing movies, the prop people think you need 11
• 44:56
  watches on each arm. It's like about your department, everything.
• 45:00
  Five briefcases and watches everywhere and shit. And it's like, no,
• 45:04
  I'll just take an old Timex with a round face.
• 45:07
  I'm good, you know. But when musicians start thinking that
• 45:15
  they have to make their part cut through and be noticed,
• 45:20
  the best drummers, you don't really... Notice them. You hear
• 45:25
  the song. If you go in there and dig deep
• 45:28
  and listen to them, if you isolate them, you know,
• 45:31
  and just listen to that, you're like, oh, okay.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Listen to that cat. But in a perfect world, all
• 45:39
  you hear is the singer singing and telling you what
• 45:41
  they're trying to say. And the music is so good
• 45:44
  behind it that it's just part of it. Yeah. You
• 45:47
  don't really notice it.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Yeah. And you can't teach that. Yeah.
• 45:52
  It's the feel thing.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: And you know it when you hear it. When a
• 45:56
  song just, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It just gets in there.
• 45:59
  You're like, you guys nailed it. Yeah. You put it together.
• 46:02
  You fucking nailed it. And the amazing thing about bands,
• 46:09
  and how long have the Boxmasters been around now? You've
• 46:11
  been around for- 20 years. 20 years.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: The most amazing thing is that people get together and
• 46:16
  they stay friends for that long. And with all the
• 46:20
  conflicts and all the ego and all the bullshit and
• 46:23
  you hang out. That to me, when someone makes great music,
• 46:28
  the most impressive thing is not just that you make
• 46:31
  great music, but you make great music with people that
• 46:33
  all get along together. With all these different creative minds
• 46:37
  and egos and weirdness. Everybody's weird. every fucking creative person
• 46:41
  i've ever met is out of their fucking mind oh
• 46:43
  yeah and you get all together and then you show
• 46:45
  up for practice at the same time you know and
• 46:47
  you rehearse together you actually do it and you show
• 46:50
  up for gigs and you perform you hit your notes
• 46:52
  on stage you can all stay friends like that's the
• 46:55
  most important thing and the most rare thing and the
• 46:58
  most impressive thing.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: Absolutely and and with our band in particular i mean
• 47:02
  before that i you know played in a million bands
• 47:04
  and uh had a solo band that did four major
• 47:07
  label solo records, and that's where I met some of
• 47:10
  the guys that rolled over into the Boxmasters. J.D. Andrew, specifically,
• 47:17
  he and I are the longest-running members. We started the
• 47:20
  band together, and he and I still run it. We're
• 47:27
  the opposite of what normally happens. Normally, a band, when
• 47:32
  they're younger... They hit it for a while, three or
• 47:35
  four years, maybe have a couple of hits or at
• 47:38
  least some things that people know about. And then as
• 47:42
  the years go on, you start to dwindle a bit,
• 47:46
  you know. I mean, unless you're the Rolling Stones or
• 47:48
  the Who. We just opened for the Who on our
• 47:50
  last tour, which was awesome. Really?
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: And so this band has started as, you know, it's like,
• 48:01
  You know, I got this crap about it's always an
• 48:03
  actor who wants to be a musician just like this
• 48:05
  guy and that guy. And it's like, no, no, I
• 48:08
  was a musician who came to L.A. to play music,
• 48:10
  accidentally became an actor. Next thing you know, I made
• 48:14
  $ 381 on an episode of Matlock with five lines. And
• 48:16
  I'm like, I'm broke. I better do this. That's how
• 48:19
  I became an actor.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: And so one way or the other, we started out
• 48:25
  fighting that stigma for years. you know, 10, 12 years.
• 48:30
  And then all of a sudden it started to go
• 48:31
  away because we got more and more fans and became
• 48:33
  a big underground band. And in the last five or
• 48:37
  six years got really popular. So here we are, old
• 48:39
  guys who are still making it, who are still on
• 48:43
  their way up at our age. And so it kind
• 48:47
  of went the other way around with us. And you're right.
• 48:51
  I mean, to stick around that long, especially when it
• 48:55
  took us a while to get success. to make any
• 48:58
  money at it and to get the fan base we
• 49:01
  have now.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Is there a weird thing, too, about people like critics
• 49:06
  or people that pay attention to the music that don't
• 49:08
  just listen to the music and see you guys perform? Instead,
• 49:13
  they think, oh, that's Billy Bob, the movie star who's
• 49:15
  trying to be a musician. So there's this stigma to it.
• 49:18
  So instead of looking at, you and go, oh, it's
• 49:21
  a cool band. Oh, I like them. This is great.
• 49:23
  They're like, oh, that's that fucking Sling Blade guy. Billy
• 49:27
  Bob's trying to do something different. He wants to be
• 49:28
  a rock star.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's what we put up with for about
• 49:33
  half of our career with the Boxmasters. Not as much anymore.
• 49:37
  That kind of goes away. It goes away with the public,
• 49:40
  with the audience, with some of the critics. It's still
• 49:45
  there because they want to say that about you. It
• 49:49
  has nothing to do with your music. It has to
• 49:51
  do with here's my angle for this article.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: My angle in this. I mean, I did an article
• 49:58
  with a magazine one time that was kind of more
• 50:00
  of a men's magazine, you know, talked about music the
• 50:03
  whole time. And talked about sex for about three minutes.
• 50:07
  The whole article's about sex. You know what I mean?
• 50:10
  So that's just what they do because that's their vibe,
• 50:13
  you know? So anyway, when they say this stuff, they're
• 50:21
  saying it because they want to dig at you. And
• 50:25
  if musicians, you know, famous musicians are at one of
• 50:28
  our shows, unless it's, you know, ones who are friends
• 50:32
  of ours. If they want to come back and meet
• 50:35
  us after the show and say hello, they'll come back there.
• 50:38
  And most people wouldn't take this as an insult, but
• 50:41
  it is. They'll come back and they'll say, hey, it
• 50:44
  looks like you're really having fun up there. Which means, oh,
• 50:49
  isn't it cute? You got a little hobby and you're
• 50:51
  having fun up there and you get to be a
• 50:53
  rock star. That's what they mean by it. And I
• 50:55
  just kick them the fuck out of the dressing room.
• 50:58
  I mean, I'm not joking. There was a very famous
• 51:01
  guy who came back to see us in Dallas one time.
• 51:04
  And he came back and he goes, you know, it's
• 51:05
  really nice you get to do this. I said, get
• 51:08
  to do what? And he said, you know, get to
• 51:11
  go out on the road and stuff and, you know,
• 51:13
  get this part of you and get to have fun
• 51:15
  up there and stuff like that. I said, well, you know,
• 51:17
  I have some songs about suicide. I said, so you
• 51:20
  think that's fun? I said, it's not fun. I'm writing
• 51:23
  about shit for my soul that I grew up in.
• 51:27
  I'm also writing things that are hopeful songs. I'm writing
• 51:29
  a lot of stuff here. We write original music and
• 51:34
  perform it and people love this band. I said, so
• 51:37
  don't ever fucking come near me again. Don't ever come
• 51:39
  to one of our shows again. If all you want
• 51:41
  to do is come back here because you're pissed that
• 51:46
  we just had a record on the radio.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? And then you were in
• 51:51
  a band from, you know, 30 years ago and now
• 51:53
  you're playing, you know, places that are smaller than where
• 51:57
  we are. So don't come back there and start that
• 51:59
  shit with me. And I actually, he said, oh, no, no, dude,
• 52:02
  I'm just saying it really looked like, I said, get
• 52:04
  the fuck out of here.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: I don't care who you are. Wow. And so.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Well, you know when someone's digging at you.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: You know when someone's saying that was a great show.
• 52:13
  It looks like you guys are having fun. They're smiling
• 52:15
  and laughing. That was fucking great. I loved it. I
• 52:17
  loved it. And then, you know, oh, it looks like
• 52:19
  you're having fun up there. Yeah, right. Oh, you're a cunt. Yeah, right. Oh, okay. Okay, cunt. Yeah.
• 52:26
  Some people just love to do that. They just want
• 52:29
  to dismiss.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: And fans think you're so dumb and you have no
• 52:33
  memory that some of the people who come to your
• 52:36
  shows to get stuff signed, which, you know, a lot
• 52:39
  of them, they're not even, well, they're selling them, you
• 52:42
  know what I mean? Right. And in certain cities, like
• 52:46
  in Kansas City, we're like the Beatles. I mean, there
• 52:48
  are just certain cities where we sell out the second
• 52:51
  it goes on sale and stuff like that. You got
• 52:52
  good places and places that aren't as good, you know.
• 52:56
  No rhyme or reason to it sometimes, but there are
• 52:59
  people who come up to me that I've seen at
• 53:02
  shows before. And I mean, if it's a guy that's
• 53:06
  just this average looking guy, you may not remember them.
• 53:11
  But if it's a guy who's 6'11 and has red
• 53:14
  hair with like this giant nose and two teeth, you
• 53:17
  remember that guy. I saw this guy last year, you know.
• 53:21
  And so I've actually had them come up to me
• 53:23
  and say, one of their favorite things to say is, oh,
• 53:27
  it's so funny. We can't wait to come see your
• 53:29
  show tonight. We didn't even know you had a band.
• 53:32
  They love to say that. It's like, well, you obviously
• 53:35
  didn't see every TV show we've done. You didn't see
• 53:41
  me talking about it on the Today Show or whatever
• 53:44
  I'm on. This has been going on a long time. Yeah,
• 53:47
  you knew that. But they want to say that to you.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Right, to dismiss you.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: And so I've actually had guys on this tour, a
• 53:54
  guy came up to me who's been to three of
• 53:56
  our shows. I know he was there. And he's always
• 53:59
  in the front. On the third time, he comes up
• 54:03
  to me and he goes, yeah, man, this is really
• 54:05
  cool and everything. Will you sign these bunch of pictures
• 54:08
  from Bad Santa? I didn't even know you had a band.
• 54:11
  It's like, well, the first time you came, maybe you didn't.
• 54:15
  But then the second time you came, I think you
• 54:17
  probably remembered. And then last year when you were here,
• 54:20
  and now you're here today. So I think you probably
• 54:22
  do by today that we have a band. But people love,
• 54:27
  we're in a society now where nobody wants to, it's
• 54:34
  a get me society. They're going to get you. And
• 54:38
  however they can get you, they want to get you.
• 54:41
  And nobody likes to see people succeed Like when I
• 54:45
  was playing Carl in Sling Blade, every critic in the
• 54:51
  world loved me. And then all the other ones, a
• 54:54
  simple plan, I'm playing this poor, pathetic wretch and all
• 54:57
  this kind of stuff. The second I got to have
• 55:01
  a love scene with somebody and I was a leading man,
• 55:05
  all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, you're
• 55:07
  not one of us. Where did the hump on your
• 55:10
  back go and all that shit? It's like, And it's like,
• 55:13
  you actually look better in this movie than you did that,
• 55:15
  you know, what did you have, plastic surgery or whatever
• 55:17
  it is. Right, right, right. And so once you start
• 55:20
  to succeed, that's when they start to want to say
• 55:23
  shit to you.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. People love watching people fail at things. Yeah. Because
• 55:29
  it takes away the pressure that they have in their
• 55:33
  own life, their lack of success. If they could watch
• 55:37
  a great man fall. What's a funny thing is like,
• 55:41
  The dismissal of your music. Like they can't dismiss you
• 55:46
  as an actor or your accomplishments. So they try to
• 55:50
  dismiss you as like, oh, like this is a thing
• 55:53
  you're kind of doing. You wish you were a rock star.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: You can't possibly be also a musician. Oh, yeah. You're
• 56:00
  just an artist and you do things that are cool
• 56:02
  that you enjoy doing. No, that's not possible.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: Why is this ugly fuck married to Angelina? You know,
• 56:09
  that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah,
• 56:12
  I mean, and, you know, not that I disagree, but
• 56:16
  it's normal. I get it.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I would be thinking that way, too, if I was 16.
• 56:20
  You know, if I was a kid, I'd be like,
• 56:22
  fuck that guy. Yeah. You know what I mean?
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: I remember when I first saw pictures of you with
• 56:28
  Angelina Jolie. I didn't think that, though. I was like, fuck. Yeah, dude.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: We're supposed to root for each other.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Yes. You know, you can look at something and be like, oh,
• 56:39
  fuck that guy. Or you could look at the same
• 56:43
  thing and go, fuck. Yeah. Way to go, dude.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. And then you feel good and he feels
• 56:49
  good and everybody feels good. And maybe you're inspired to
• 56:53
  do better for yourself. Like, you know what? I wish
• 56:55
  I was a little bit more like that guy. I
• 56:57
  got to maybe discipline myself a little more, get my
• 57:00
  shit together. Get something going. You know? But instead of, fucking,
• 57:04
  that guy sucks. He's fucking overrated. That guy fucking sucks.
• 57:07
  He's a joke. Oh, yeah.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Fucking Sling Blade. Oh, he played a retard. You're all right.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: The beautiful thing about Sling Blade is you did that
• 57:16
  on your own. Like, you did that, and you broke out. Like,
• 57:21
  you're like, look, nobody's giving me a chance. I was
• 57:23
  going to do something. And then everybody's like, oh, my God,
• 57:27
  we love you. We love you. You did this on
• 57:29
  your own. Yeah. But even then, you try to do
• 57:33
  something different. You try to just be a normal human. No, no, no, no.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: You've got to be a retard.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: We like you as a retard.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: You're getting a little too big. I liked it when
• 57:48
  you were underground. I liked it when nobody knew about you.
• 57:51
  I bet the box masters get that too, right? Like
• 57:53
  I liked you in the beginning before you guys made it.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We have people who like the first two or
• 57:58
  three albums back when we first started, which were kind
• 58:01
  of experimental albums. But yeah, that's a thing. It just is.
• 58:07
  It's a human thing. Yeah. And we do like more
• 58:10
  than ever to see people fail, I think. I mean,
• 58:13
  there was a time when we rooted for people. I
• 58:15
  think there's also too much exposure now. I think, for instance,
• 58:23
  when we were growing up, especially in my era, if
• 58:28
  we were going to see Jimmy Stewart, we were only
• 58:31
  going to see him in the movie. And it was
• 58:33
  on film and it had literally a film over it.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: Right. That.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: Made it look like you were watching something magical. Now
• 58:42
  you got digital where you can see every fucking mole
• 58:44
  on your face and shit, you know, and, and everything
• 58:48
  is a behind the scenes. Oh, and you know, the
• 58:50
  studio's doing this and now this group wants to come
• 58:53
  over and they're going to do a whole thing and
• 58:56
  they want to see you on the set. And so,
• 58:58
  but if I see Mel Gibson sitting in a director's
• 59:01
  chair dressed up like he was in Braveheart talking about
• 59:03
  the movie, it's like, it takes away something from that.
• 59:09
  It's like, we've had too much of a peek behind
• 59:11
  the curtain, I believe. And I think we're too exposed.
• 59:16
  There's too much access to people. When I was growing
• 59:19
  up in this business, I wouldn't have dared. If I'd
• 59:23
  seen Bob Dylan or Jack Lemmon or whoever it was
• 59:26
  on the sidewalk, I wouldn't walk up to him to
• 59:30
  say Jack Lemmon, punch him in the shoulder and say, hey, dude,
• 59:32
  let's get a picture. I mean, in a million years,
• 59:36
  I wouldn't have done that. There's a respect. These are
• 59:39
  my elders. They're my heroes. And probably wouldn't have approached
• 59:44
  them at all. But if I did, I would be,
• 59:46
  you know, very apologetic and say, I'm so sorry, but
• 59:49
  I'm such a huge fan of yours. And you still
• 59:51
  get that every now and then from decent people. But
• 59:54
  now cats will come up to me literally and just
• 59:58
  you know, just come up and like grab me by
• 1:00:00
  the arm and say, dude, let's get a picture. The
• 1:00:02
  worst ones are, this is usually guys, usually more guys
• 1:00:05
  than women. They come up and they'll say, hey man,
• 1:00:10
  you're supposed to be famous or some shit. And my
• 1:00:12
  wife said, you know, you're like some famous dude, you know,
• 1:00:15
  so I don't really give a shit about that stuff,
• 1:00:16
  but can we get a picture? And it's like, I've
• 1:00:19
  put up with it for 30 years. In the last
• 1:00:23
  couple of years, I started saying, How about when you
• 1:00:26
  do give a shit, come back and we'll get a picture?
• 1:00:30
  Because after a while, you just can't take it. I'm
• 1:00:34
  kind of a codependent guy, so I'm nice to everybody
• 1:00:37
  I can be. It's just every now and then you
• 1:00:40
  get a ringer and you get drunk people, men and women,
• 1:00:45
  who just come over. They'll come to the bus when
• 1:00:48
  we're on tour and just start banging on the door
• 1:00:50
  and saying, Hey!
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Hey!
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: You know, come out here. We got some whiskey. Take
• 1:00:54
  a shot with us. And you're just like, can you
• 1:00:56
  imagine doing that to Jimmy Stewart?
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: You know, first of all, back then, that would have
• 1:01:01
  just thrown you in jail, you know. But there's something
• 1:01:06
  about having heroes that are unattainable for you. That way
• 1:01:10
  they can stay in that magic spot. So I think
• 1:01:13
  we've lost magic and mystery and all these things.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Well, it certainly happens when you hear actors talk about politics.
• 1:01:19
  When actors become activists, it's like, okay.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Oy.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: Oy. I donate to a lot of charities, mainly children's stuff,
• 1:01:28
  but nobody knows it. I don't go to the award
• 1:01:32
  show and talk about it when I'm getting my award.
• 1:01:34
  It's like Ricky Gervais said in that skit of his.
• 1:01:37
  He said, look, come up here. Accept your little award
• 1:01:43
  and fuck off. Yeah. You know, I think, first of all,
• 1:01:49
  unless you have really studied stuff and really know about
• 1:01:53
  a subject fully, who the hell would want to listen
• 1:01:57
  to an actor or a musician talk about politics? You
• 1:02:00
  know what I mean? It's like, are we supposed to
• 1:02:03
  follow this? I mean, if we are, what if they
• 1:02:07
  lead you down the wrong road? And, you know, and politically,
• 1:02:10
  I'm not a I call myself a radical politician. moderate
• 1:02:14
  I'm like very strong in my opinions but my opinions
• 1:02:19
  don't belong to any political party and you know I
• 1:02:24
  just look at what makes sense and I think we
• 1:02:26
  need a common sense party in this country that's actually
• 1:02:29
  what I think we need just figure it out it's
• 1:02:32
  pretty easy to figure out what this is all about.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: A non ideologically captured party that just is like okay
• 1:02:41
  what do we need to do here instead of it's
• 1:02:43
  us versus them. You're seeing this a lot right now
• 1:02:48
  because Mom Donnie won in New York City and people
• 1:02:51
  are screaming, we're winning now, we're winning. What is this
• 1:02:54
  we shit? It's supposed to be we are all Americans.
• 1:02:59
  You are all New Yorkers. You're all we. You decided
• 1:03:03
  who's going to run your city. Now we should all
• 1:03:05
  root for this guy to do a great job.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: And this idea that now fuck all these other people
• 1:03:11
  that didn't vote for him. It's not a tribe. It's
• 1:03:14
  not a gang war. Okay. It's an election to see
• 1:03:17
  who governs your city. And once someone wins, everybody else
• 1:03:21
  should be like, okay, well, let's hope this guy's got
• 1:03:24
  some good fucking plans and it works out great for everybody.
• 1:03:27
  And if you don't think like that, you're part of
• 1:03:30
  the problem.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, people are pitted against each other so
• 1:03:33
  much these days that it's, it's gotten kind of ridiculous.
• 1:03:37
  And you're right. It is almost like gang warfare, you know, and, uh, and, uh,
• 1:03:42
  And here's the other thing. It's like we could also say,
• 1:03:45
  let's all get along. Well, that's never going to happen
• 1:03:48
  because not everybody is going to get along with everybody.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, even on a personal basis. I mean, you
• 1:03:54
  could pick any, you know, 20 people, put them in
• 1:03:57
  a room and let's all hang out together for a
• 1:04:00
  week and all live in the same house. You're not
• 1:04:02
  going to get along with everybody. But at the end
• 1:04:05
  of the day, our basic principles as humans, those should
• 1:04:10
  all be the same with all those people. Yes. You know,
• 1:04:13
  which that to me, that's getting along.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: That's attainable.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: It is attainable. And I think that we like even
• 1:04:21
  somebody that maybe you don't agree with their their principles.
• 1:04:26
  If it's just two of you sitting at a bus
• 1:04:29
  stop talking, it's hard to not just in a one
• 1:04:34
  on one basis with people. it's hard to dislike someone
• 1:04:38
  that you're stuck with for a couple hours. Right. I mean,
• 1:04:40
  you start talking and then you find out, Oh, well,
• 1:04:42
  this cat doesn't believe anything I believe. But then all
• 1:04:45
  of a sudden you say something like, you know, remember
• 1:04:48
  when we used to drink Tang, you know, and then
• 1:04:51
  the guy goes, yeah. And then the guy goes, yeah,
• 1:04:55
  we used to drink Tang. The next thing you know,
• 1:04:57
  you're having a conversation because you grew up as just
• 1:05:00
  kids and humans, you know?
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Right. Right.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It, I think it's all because of social media
• 1:05:06
  is a big part of it.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, I totally agree.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: It's because the division when I was a kid, you know,
• 1:05:11
  I remember like the Reagan days, like there was a
• 1:05:14
  lot of people didn't like Reagan, but it was never evil.
• 1:05:18
  It was never like this vile hatred of someone that
• 1:05:21
  you see today for different political parties and different politicians.
• 1:05:26
  And just the way we looked at one side of
• 1:05:29
  the country versus the other side of the country, it
• 1:05:30
  wasn't divided like that. Like I always had relatives that
• 1:05:34
  were some of them were conservative and some of them
• 1:05:36
  were liberal and real liberal. And everybody was like you disagreed,
• 1:05:40
  but they didn't fucking disavow each other because you voted
• 1:05:44
  for the wrong person. Like this is bizarre. And I
• 1:05:47
  think that sort of insanity is just accentuated by these
• 1:05:51
  weird little. echo chambers that people exist in that are
• 1:05:55
  also infiltrated by bots. So they're not even real people,
• 1:05:59
  half of them. So this one FBI analyst, he estimated
• 1:06:03
  that it might be as high as 80% of the
• 1:06:05
  people that are communicating online are bots on Twitter, which
• 1:06:11
  is fucking insane. Because it's 80% of the people getting
• 1:06:15
  all these other people riled up aren't even people. It's
• 1:06:18
  either AI chatbots that are run by China or Russia
• 1:06:21
  or even our own government.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: And then there's actual farms of people that are being
• 1:06:27
  told to do these things.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. I mean, now people get jobs in
• 1:06:31
  the entertainment business because they're in charge of, I mean,
• 1:06:37
  at studios and things, you know, some 22 year old
• 1:06:40
  who's in charge of seeing who has the most followers.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: And they take someone and make them into a star
• 1:06:47
  because they got all these followers and it's like, but they,
• 1:06:50
  they can't do jack shit. It's like, You know, the
• 1:06:53
  talent comes, the talent is created as opposed to someone
• 1:06:57
  who's talented and given the opportunity, you know. And I
• 1:07:02
  think you're right. I mean, social media has really, I mean,
• 1:07:05
  it sounds like the old guy chasing kids off their lawn,
• 1:07:08
  but it's just the truth. I told my wife when
• 1:07:12
  the Internet first became a thing, way back when it
• 1:07:15
  first started, I said, watch and see. I said, this
• 1:07:19
  is going to ruin everything. people's view of each other.
• 1:07:23
  It's going to ruin our society. I promise you.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: You really thought that way back then?
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: What made you feel that way?
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: Once you start opening it up to, well, it's like,
• 1:07:36
  it's like, well, now everyone has an opportunity. They look
• 1:07:39
  at that as equality, as an opportunity for everyone, that
• 1:07:43
  everyone can get on the internet and now everyone can
• 1:07:47
  do something. That's great for the people that, actually had
• 1:07:51
  something to say or do. But then you got another 80%,
• 1:07:58
  you know, have an opportunity and all of a sudden
• 1:08:00
  there's someone because they decided to, you know, like take
• 1:08:03
  pictures of themselves in the bathroom or something, you know.
• 1:08:08
  But I swear to God, I saw it all coming.
• 1:08:11
  And it was, I mean, it gets out of control.
• 1:08:16
  And then AI, for Christ's sakes, yeah, it's fun to
• 1:08:19
  watch Me in a sling blade talking like Carl, but
• 1:08:25
  it's a little baby trying to order French fries. You know,
• 1:08:28
  it's funny. But if it's used for that or if
• 1:08:31
  there's some medical ways that they can use it, that's awesome.
• 1:08:34
  But once you start taking jobs away from people, I mean,
• 1:08:42
  the workforce is going to be destroyed because of that stuff.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: And and that's to me not cool. Unless you're going
• 1:08:49
  to find a way to take care of people because
• 1:08:52
  it's going to ruin the workforce. I mean, pretty soon
• 1:08:54
  you won't need it.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: For sure. Yeah, and it's going to be interesting to
• 1:08:57
  see how we navigate that. But I'm just shocked. that
• 1:09:00
  you picked that out early on because I looked at
• 1:09:02
  it the other way. I said, this is going to
• 1:09:04
  give people that were outside the system, sort of like
• 1:09:06
  you were when you created Sling Blade, this is going
• 1:09:08
  to give people an opportunity to show their talent that
• 1:09:12
  maybe would have never gotten an opportunity to be hired
• 1:09:15
  by somebody, that they'll be able to create something completely
• 1:09:18
  on their own. And I read all these blogs by
• 1:09:21
  people that were really interesting. I was like, OK, I
• 1:09:24
  would have never read this guy's book if I just
• 1:09:26
  saw it in a bookstore. I wouldn't buy it and
• 1:09:28
  pick it up. But I'm reading this guy's and he's
• 1:09:30
  got very interesting insights. And he's just some guy who's
• 1:09:33
  a computer coder who lives in Missouri. And somehow or another,
• 1:09:38
  he's just smart enough to. figure out how to say
• 1:09:41
  things in a way that resonates with me. And I
• 1:09:43
  would have never seen this guy's words before. And I
• 1:09:45
  was like, Oh, this is like good because it'll make
• 1:09:48
  it much more of a meritocracy. It's like, if you
• 1:09:50
  have good stuff, if you have good things, good ideas,
• 1:09:53
  those ideas will get out.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I agree with that still to this day that
• 1:10:00
  that's true. And in the beginning, I felt that too.
• 1:10:03
  I felt this is great. What I was afraid of
• 1:10:07
  was it becoming a runaway train.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: Well, clearly you were right.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: You know, and so it was, I did love the
• 1:10:14
  opportunity to discover people I wouldn't have otherwise. And I
• 1:10:17
  still feel that way. I still discover people on the
• 1:10:19
  internet all the time that it's like, wow, I would
• 1:10:22
  have never known that. So that does exist. But out
• 1:10:26
  of those, you know, 20%, like I said, there's another
• 1:10:31
  80% that, for instance, when I was coming up as
• 1:10:34
  an actor, we had like 30 critics to worry about.
• 1:10:38
  You know, it was, you know, Rex Reed and Siskel
• 1:10:42
  and Ebert and Jeffrey Lyons and all these people. And but,
• 1:10:46
  you know, there was a not a finite number, but
• 1:10:51
  semi finite number of critics. You know, I mean, you
• 1:10:53
  had the local ones, you know, and all the states,
• 1:10:56
  but and internationally. But now some guy named Daryl who
• 1:11:03
  doesn't like you, you know. can just write a bunch
• 1:11:08
  of shit about you and people believe it.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: You know, I've been on lists before. I mean, you
• 1:11:13
  can ask people I work with on a set. Like
• 1:11:16
  I said, I'm codependent. I'm probably nicer to the crew
• 1:11:20
  even than I am, you know, the director and the
• 1:11:23
  producers and stuff. I mean, not that I'm not nice
• 1:11:24
  to them too, but I love, like, the Landman crew.
• 1:11:28
  Best crew I ever worked with. And I go out
• 1:11:32
  of my way to make sure that they're okay every day.
• 1:11:36
  And they'll tell you that. I mean, I've always been
• 1:11:39
  a decent guy on set to people. I've blown up
• 1:11:43
  maybe two or three times ever, and that was always
• 1:11:45
  when I was directing. But somehow, you look at something
• 1:11:51
  on the internet, you could be looking up, how do
• 1:11:54
  you make blueberry muffins? And some fucking way, I'll eventually
• 1:11:58
  get to something that says what an asshole I am.
• 1:12:03
  And when you see that thing pop up, And it's like, oh,
• 1:12:06
  he eats blueberries every day. And that was related to
• 1:12:08
  the blueberry muffin thing, in which I do eat blueberries
• 1:12:11
  every day. And it's been said publicly. But then the
• 1:12:15
  blueberries turns into, oh, and he's also weird because he's
• 1:12:18
  afraid of antiques. And then it's this and that and
• 1:12:20
  the other. Next thing you know, I'm on a list
• 1:12:23
  of the top ten actors, and I've seen this a
• 1:12:26
  couple of times, who are the most difficult to work
• 1:12:29
  with on set. And I'm like, how the hell did
• 1:12:32
  this even happen? I mean, that's not true. But somehow
• 1:12:37
  somebody said something that then became widespread. And then all
• 1:12:43
  of a sudden I end up on one of these lists.
• 1:12:44
  And the people I work with would say, God, that
• 1:12:48
  could be further from the truth.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: Once again, people love to find out that someone's secretly
• 1:12:52
  an asshole.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They want that. They don't want like, oh, he's
• 1:12:56
  the sweetest guy. They want, oh, he's a piece of
• 1:12:58
  shit behind the scenes. Like the Ellen thing. Like, you know,
• 1:13:01
  like Ellen was all like laughy and smiley. And then
• 1:13:04
  when everybody found out she's actually kind of mean, they
• 1:13:08
  were like, oh, good. Yeah. Fuck her.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like they wanted that to be true.
• 1:13:13
  They were excited that it was true.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: People love to see that. And yeah, I mean, I
• 1:13:20
  don't know.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Rumors can just get they just light fire. Remember the
• 1:13:26
  Richard Gere gerbil rumor? Oh, yeah. I grew up in Massachusetts,
• 1:13:30
  and my buddy grew up in L.A., and I was like,
• 1:13:33
  when did you hear that rumor? And he was like— and
• 1:13:35
  it was the same time. I'm like, so this fucking
• 1:13:37
  rumor burned across the entire country. Probably no basis whatsoever
• 1:13:41
  in truth that Richard Gere had to go to the hospital,
• 1:13:44
  get a gerbil removed from his ass. And everybody talked
• 1:13:47
  about it. And poor Richard Gere is probably at home
• 1:13:48
  going— What the fuck? Right. How did that happen? Yeah.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: It's like I haven't, I've never even been near a gerbil.
• 1:13:54
  I mean, it's like, but.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: And every time anybody would see Richard Gere, he would go, oh,
• 1:14:00
  that's the guy with the gerbil up his ass.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: And they're stamped that way forever.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: Nobody ever forgets it. And now with the internet, it
• 1:14:08
  doesn't go away.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: And if I want something taken down off the internet,
• 1:14:14
  I have to prove it's me. But the person who
• 1:14:17
  put it up there doesn't have to prove anything. who
• 1:14:20
  they are.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: Right. You know what I mean? Right, right, right.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: Which seems kind of odd to me. But, yeah, that
• 1:14:25
  whole thing with Richard Gere, they want it to be
• 1:14:30
  true so badly that everybody you talk to who's got
• 1:14:35
  the news, you know, who said, hey, guess what happened
• 1:14:38
  with Richard Gere, you know, and then he went to
• 1:14:40
  so-and-so hospital and, you know, whatever it was. And then
• 1:14:45
  you say, nah, come on. I mean, seriously, really and truly.
• 1:14:48
  And they go, no, no, no. My neighbor's cousin's a nurse.
• 1:14:52
  You know how many fucking nurses were working there that night? Thousands.
• 1:14:57
  Thousands of nurses were on duty. And I know somebody
• 1:15:00
  who knows one of them all across the country.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: Well, they want it to be true. They want it
• 1:15:07
  to be true because he's too handsome. Yeah, exactly. Too handsome,
• 1:15:10
  doing too well, too good of an actor. You know, like,
• 1:15:13
  fuck that guy. Oh, he, like, gerbles up his ass.
• 1:15:17
  Makes sense. Yeah. And then the idea is that, like,
• 1:15:20
  you get so much pussy, you just, like, you get bored. Oh, yeah.
• 1:15:23
  You start sucking dicks, putting things up your ass. Oh,
• 1:15:25
  for sure. Like, going to the hospital with G.I. Joe
• 1:15:27
  stuffed up there. Oh, yeah. It's just some kind of
• 1:15:31
  a fucking rumor. Always. Yeah. It's, you know, it's unfortunate.
• 1:15:36
  It's unfortunate people think like that. They want... They want failure.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: And the thing with me is I like people. I
• 1:15:42
  really do. And people tell me, I sign a lot
• 1:15:46
  of things and take a lot of pictures of people.
• 1:15:49
  And my friends will say, I have friends who won't
• 1:15:51
  even look at them, you know, in the entertainment business.
• 1:15:54
  They're just like, fuck, these guys just walk right by them.
• 1:15:57
  And I'll go through these press lines. I'll sign stuff
• 1:15:59
  all day. And people ask me, they say, why do
• 1:16:02
  you do that? I say, A, they put my kids
• 1:16:05
  through school. That's why. You know, I owe them you know,
• 1:16:09
  some attention, you know? And, uh, the other thing is,
• 1:16:13
  it's like to them, it means something, you know, uh,
• 1:16:17
  50 years from now, somebody's grandkid is going to have
• 1:16:22
  an autograph by somebody that means something to them. I mean,
• 1:16:26
  it's different than the people selling them. I'm talking about,
• 1:16:28
  you know, actual fans who want you to write it
• 1:16:30
  out to uncle Albert or whoever it is. And it
• 1:16:33
  means something to them. And, I love my fans. I mean,
• 1:16:37
  I always have. And I cherish them. I feel blessed
• 1:16:40
  every day. And I don't. It's I mean, it's emotionally
• 1:16:47
  exhausting sometimes, you know, because, you know, everybody wants to
• 1:16:51
  talk to you for a half hour apiece and you
• 1:16:53
  can't do it. But I try anyway to talk.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: It's a weird position to be in.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: It's a very weird position to be in where they
• 1:17:02
  know you and you don't know them. And everywhere you go,
• 1:17:05
  that's the case. Any restaurant you walk into, oh, Billy
• 1:17:07
  Bob's here. It's like people want to say hi. They
• 1:17:10
  want to come over to your table and shake your
• 1:17:12
  hand and talk to you while you've got a mouthful
• 1:17:14
  of food. And it's like, oh.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, they always want to buy you stuff.
• 1:17:19
  When I was broke, starving to death, most of my
• 1:17:24
  life until the last 35 years, nobody ever bought me shit.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: You know, now everybody wants to buy me a drink.
• 1:17:32
  And I'm like, well, no, let me buy you guys
• 1:17:34
  a drink. It's like, I don't need you to buy
• 1:17:36
  me a drink now. But then I kind of figured
• 1:17:39
  out that what it really is, it's a connection. It's
• 1:17:41
  not really about buying the drink.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: It's more about, it's an offering. It's a friendship offering.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And that's why, you know, you take it, you know,
• 1:17:50
  you take the drink and you appreciate it.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: And And occasionally you meet really cool people that way.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. I meet cool people all the time.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: All the time.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: All the time. Yeah. The problem is it's just like
• 1:18:03
  social media comments. Like if you read 10 great things
• 1:18:06
  about you, but then you read one, like that guy's
• 1:18:08
  a piece of shit. He yelled at the crew. Like, oh,
• 1:18:11
  fuck you, man. And then that ruins your whole day.
• 1:18:13
  Like 10 people saying you're the nicest guy they've ever met.
• 1:18:16
  We love him. He's so, so talented and so authentic.
• 1:18:20
  And then one fucking person and that person gets stuck
• 1:18:22
  in your head. That's the same with meeting people. You know,
• 1:18:25
  you can meet 10 amazing people. This is great. And
• 1:18:27
  one guy was like, I don't give a shit. My
• 1:18:29
  wife says you're somebody. Fuck you. And that's what you
• 1:18:33
  think about. Yeah. You sit in your hotel room smoking
• 1:18:35
  cigarettes like that guy.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: Right. Oh, it's amazing how people get under your skin.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: It is. You know, that's why they do it.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's that's why I always tell comedians post and
• 1:18:47
  ghost post something then get the fuck out of there.
• 1:18:49
  Don't read anything about yourself. Don't, don't read the good
• 1:18:53
  and don't read the bad. Don't read any of it.
• 1:18:55
  You don't want to know, let them talk, let them yap.
• 1:18:58
  Who cares?
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: I quit reading it, you know, several years ago. I
• 1:19:01
  don't do it anymore. And you know, I just don't even,
• 1:19:06
  I don't care about awards anymore.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: Good for you.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: I got plenty of them. And because I kind of
• 1:19:12
  got in under the wire when awards were kind of
• 1:19:15
  real still, you know, and I've won a couple recently,
• 1:19:19
  but these days I just look at it as like, Oh, okay.
• 1:19:23
  We're going to go over here and, you know, have some,
• 1:19:26
  you know, dry chicken breast and green beans. And, uh,
• 1:19:34
  We'll listen to people get up there and pontificate about
• 1:19:36
  how awesome they are. And, you know, but see, those
• 1:19:40
  are the ones that get me. It's like, how about
• 1:19:43
  if you're going to get one of these things and
• 1:19:46
  you truly are honored by it? Well, you honor the
• 1:19:51
  people who gave it to you. Just them. And don't
• 1:19:55
  go up there and talk about saving, you know, the
• 1:19:58
  badgers in Wisconsin or something. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:20:01
  It's like. You know, there's a time and place for that,
• 1:20:03
  I believe. And, you know, you should just stick to
• 1:20:08
  what it is. And people would argue and say, well, no,
• 1:20:12
  because I have a voice and because everybody knows me,
• 1:20:15
  this is a great platform for me to put this
• 1:20:17
  out there. Well, how about this? If you have a
• 1:20:20
  billion dollars and you want to save the badgers, fucking
• 1:20:25
  save them. I mean— You got plenty of money to
• 1:20:29
  save the badgers. Trust me. That's barely going to cut
• 1:20:32
  into your budget.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: If that's really your cause, talking about it is just
• 1:20:37
  going to annoy people. And everybody knows what you're really doing.
• 1:20:40
  You're just saying how awesome you are because you care
• 1:20:42
  about things.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: You're saying how special you are because you're really concerned
• 1:20:45
  about people in Sudan or whatever the fuck it is.
• 1:20:48
  And it's like a flag that you carry with you
• 1:20:50
  to let everybody know that you're an amazing person.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're going to do it, just do it.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: I've always felt like, I mean, it's easy to say
• 1:20:57
  someone's never won an award, but I always felt like
• 1:20:59
  awards for art are stupid. Stupid. Because I don't.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: The concept is stupid.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: If people enjoy it, that's the reward. That's the award.
• 1:21:08
  You got it. You won. People enjoyed it. You did something.
• 1:21:12
  They enjoyed it. Congratulations.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: And everything else is just jerking off. You know, like it's.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: Well, they become shows. Yeah. Now it's just about the show.
• 1:21:22
  And you may as well be watching what's the one
• 1:21:26
  where all the pretty people live in an apartment together
• 1:21:29
  and that kind of stuff. Right, right, right. My buddy
• 1:21:32
  Rick Overton. You know Rick?
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: I know him very well. I go way back with Rick.
• 1:21:37
  And Rick did a thing, a voiceover thing for an
• 1:21:40
  album of ours years ago. And he said, he goes,
• 1:21:45
  when did a dude, a regular dude sitting in a
• 1:21:51
  hot tub with six models become fucking reality. But anyway,
• 1:21:59
  it's just.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: Big brother, right?
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah. But they're all shows now. And if you.
• 1:22:07
  They also look you in the eye. The ones I
• 1:22:08
  don't dig are... Like if you didn't like... Let's say
• 1:22:12
  you hated Landman and you tell me that. You say,
• 1:22:15
  you know what?
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: I don't get it.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: I just don't get it. I can accept that. You know,
• 1:22:20
  I go, okay, sorry you don't dig a jump. We're
• 1:22:22
  having a great time on it. And, you know, a
• 1:22:24
  lot of people like it. But, you know, I respect that.
• 1:22:27
  It's the ones who say, hey, I love your, you know,
• 1:22:30
  this is with journalists mostly. They'll say, oh, it's the
• 1:22:34
  best show on TV. Then you read their article in
• 1:22:37
  their paper, wherever it is, in Sweden or wherever the
• 1:22:40
  fuck it is, and they just rip you a new asshole. Yeah.
• 1:22:44
  And it's like, that's what I don't respect. It's like,
• 1:22:47
  if you don't like it, tell me you don't like
• 1:22:48
  it right now. Don't get me to say a bunch
• 1:22:50
  of shit about it.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: And then take the piss out of it. You know,
• 1:22:55
  that's what's, what's wrong. And I'll tell you, here's one
• 1:23:00
  screen actress guilt. I've been in the screen actress guilt
• 1:23:04
  since the mid eighties. I mean, a long time. I've
• 1:23:08
  done so many Q and A's for, uh, SAG audiences. Uh,
• 1:23:15
  out of all this, and these are your peers. Now,
• 1:23:17
  maybe if there's an organization that gives out an award,
• 1:23:20
  maybe it's political, maybe I don't get it because they
• 1:23:23
  don't like me or whatever it is. Okay, I get it.
• 1:23:27
  All the actors at a SAG thing will come up
• 1:23:30
  to me or any other actor-based or entertainer-based award where
• 1:23:36
  it's actually your peers voting for you. If you go
• 1:23:41
  to the cocktail party after the Q & A, They
• 1:23:45
  couldn't be further up your ass. Then, guess how many
• 1:23:50
  SAG awards I have in all these years? I think one.
• 1:23:57
  And it was like a group, an ensemble deal. And
• 1:24:01
  I think I've been nominated twice, maybe three times, in
• 1:24:06
  a 40-something year career in this. They have given me
• 1:24:11
  the least notice. My own cats... who want to be
• 1:24:15
  in the movie with me. Hey, see if you can
• 1:24:17
  get me in Landman. You know, who you're voting for?
• 1:24:20
  Adrian Brody. You know, whoever it is. Whoever they voted for,
• 1:24:24
  it wasn't me. Now, I don't give a shit. I
• 1:24:27
  really don't care. When I do these Q & As now,
• 1:24:30
  I do it because I like talking to actors and
• 1:24:32
  kind of giving them some information about what we do,
• 1:24:35
  hearing what their questions are, what they want to know about.
• 1:24:37
  That's why I do it now. It has nothing to do.
• 1:24:39
  I actually have, I told an audience in Boston last year,
• 1:24:44
  I said, do me a favor. Please don't vote for me.
• 1:24:47
  I said, I'm not here to beg you for an award.
• 1:24:50
  So if you don't want to vote for me, don't
• 1:24:54
  let me change your mind today. Because this is just,
• 1:24:57
  I'm just talking to you guys right now. And I
• 1:24:59
  mean that. You know, I'm not just saying.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a healthy perspective. That's a good way to
• 1:25:03
  look at it. The award thing is a weird thing.
• 1:25:06
  I think one of my favorite award show moments was
• 1:25:08
  Marlon Brando. when he didn't want to accept his Academy Award,
• 1:25:12
  so he brought up this Native American woman. Talked about
• 1:25:15
  the plight of Native Americans in America. And then it
• 1:25:17
  turned out that wasn't really a Native American woman. She
• 1:25:20
  was a crazy person. Her sister outed her. She wasn't
• 1:25:24
  at all Native American. She was just fucking nuts. She
• 1:25:27
  came up with a completely fake name. Just went up
• 1:25:30
  there and just was a nut and just got all
• 1:25:34
  this attention. And she tricked Marlon Brando and she tricked
• 1:25:37
  all those people and everybody's like, you're amazing. She's amazing.
• 1:25:41
  And to me, that's Hollywood. That moment is what it's
• 1:25:44
  really about. Oh, yeah. That and when they gave Will
• 1:25:47
  Smith a standing ovation after he smacked Chris Rock.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: Like, okay, this is you guys. You're fucking insane. You
• 1:25:54
  guys are nuts. You have no idea which way is north.
• 1:25:58
  Someone says it's that way. You're like, it's that way.
• 1:26:00
  And everybody runs in that direction.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: People have been given awards that didn't actually win because
• 1:26:05
  they fucked something up, you know. And they can't go
• 1:26:08
  back and say, well, actually, you know. And, you know,
• 1:26:13
  it was on the show. It's got a stick, you know,
• 1:26:15
  and that kind of thing.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: But, yeah.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: It's like you reminded me of something that I thought
• 1:26:20
  was hilarious with with the woman being a nut. Remember
• 1:26:25
  when there was a cat who was I think it's
• 1:26:27
  happened more than once now. But the original guy I saw,
• 1:26:30
  I think I don't remember exactly. It might have been
• 1:26:33
  somewhere in Africa, but some politician or somebody was giving
• 1:26:36
  a speech. And there was a cat acting like.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: The sign language guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: He was doing stuff that looked like he was dancing
• 1:26:45
  like James Brown. It was like it had nothing to
• 1:26:48
  do with sign language. He would literally flip around and
• 1:26:51
  do things like this. It's like, I don't know sign language.
• 1:26:55
  I know that wasn't fucking sign language.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: Well, sign language is also different everywhere you go. There's
• 1:27:01
  American sign language. There's English sign language. It's a completely
• 1:27:04
  different language. Yeah. Which is really weird. Yeah. Yeah. It's
• 1:27:08
  very strange.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: My buddy Moshe Kasher, his parents were deaf. So he
• 1:27:13
  can sign. And he explained to me the whole thing
• 1:27:15
  and how unique it is. Yeah. And he can have
• 1:27:18
  full conversations with sign language, both alphabetically and with words.
• 1:27:23
  He can do anything. But it's American sign language. So
• 1:27:25
  if he went and tried to talk to someone in
• 1:27:28
  some other country, even if they speak English, they have
• 1:27:31
  a totally different kind of sign language.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: So it's just like actual language, where if you and
• 1:27:35
  I go to China, we're not going to know what
• 1:27:36
  the fuck to say.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: Sign language is an important thing. That's a good thing
• 1:27:42
  that's happened over the last couple of decades, is they
• 1:27:45
  actually do, when there's important information, they always have a
• 1:27:51
  signer there.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lawsuit right now to make the
• 1:27:56
  Trump administration... bring sign language people back to those White
• 1:28:01
  House press briefings.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I read something. See if you can find that.
• 1:28:04
  I read something about that today. I'm like, why would
• 1:28:06
  they take that out? Why would you remove sign language thing?
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: I've had them on comedy shows sometimes. Like if you
• 1:28:13
  perform at some theater and like there's some sort of
• 1:28:15
  a mandatory requirement for a sign language person. Right. And
• 1:28:19
  so there's someone that has to keep up with the
• 1:28:21
  jokes and explain sarcasm while you're in the middle. Wow.
• 1:28:25
  Like it's very weird.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: That's a hard job.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I always fuck with the person, too. Because I
• 1:28:30
  was like, this is so crazy. You have to try
• 1:28:33
  to decipher that. Here it is. Judge orders White House
• 1:28:37
  to use American Sign Language interpreters at briefings. Yeah. So
• 1:28:41
  were there not ones ever before? No, it says they
• 1:28:44
  stopped when. They stopped during the Trump administration?
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: They stopped in January.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's crazy. Well, that's not smart.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: I don't remember it much when I was growing up.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: I don't remember it at all.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: I don't remember it at all. I knew it was
• 1:29:01
  a thing, but I never saw it at speeches or
• 1:29:04
  anything like that. But yeah, it's important.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: So can I ask you a comedy question? Sure. Because
• 1:29:11
  it's always fascinated me. I mean, people have said to
• 1:29:15
  me before, especially if I get on a roll and
• 1:29:17
  I've had a few beers, they say, you ought to
• 1:29:19
  do it just for one night. Just do a stand-up
• 1:29:24
  in L.A. or New York or somewhere or Texas, wherever.
• 1:29:27
  And I'm like, it's the scariest thing in the world
• 1:29:31
  to me. Like, if you and I are just hanging out,
• 1:29:34
  you know, all of us, you know, having a beer.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe I can be kind of funny sometimes.
• 1:29:40
  But to get on a stage, and here's the reason
• 1:29:44
  I'm afraid of it, is because if you're doing a play,
• 1:29:48
  if you're doing a, you know, cat on a hot
• 1:29:52
  tin roof or whatever the hell it is, You don't
• 1:29:54
  really know the reaction from the audience. I mean, it's
• 1:29:57
  like they either love the shit out of this or
• 1:30:01
  they don't get it or whatever, but you don't know
• 1:30:03
  in the moment. If you're a standup comic, you have
• 1:30:06
  one reason to be up there and that's to make
• 1:30:09
  them laugh. So if you don't make them laugh pretty soon,
• 1:30:15
  you're fucked. And I mean, I can't imagine bombing as
• 1:30:19
  a comic. And I think about different people over the
• 1:30:23
  years that had a very different type of comedy, you know.
• 1:30:29
  And like Stephen Wright, for instance.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, perfect example.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: Stephen Wright, who walks out there, doesn't say shit to
• 1:30:37
  the audience for a minute, takes a drink of water
• 1:30:39
  and then he goes, so last night I accidentally put
• 1:30:47
  my car key into my door at my house and
• 1:30:50
  started my house up. I drove it around the block.
• 1:30:53
  cop pulled me over and said, where do you live?
• 1:30:55
  I said, right here, you know, or he goes, he says, um,
• 1:31:01
  I bought some powdered water only. I don't know what
• 1:31:03
  to mix it with. I mean, you know, that kind
• 1:31:05
  of stuff. So this is very sort of like, nobody
• 1:31:09
  ever did that before until he did that. And I'm like,
• 1:31:12
  what was it like in the beginning for that guy
• 1:31:14
  where people just going, the fuck are you talking about?
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting with him. He existed in, there's
• 1:31:21
  a great documentary on comedy in Boston called When Stand-Up
• 1:31:24
  Stood Out. This guy, Fran Solomita, who was a comic
• 1:31:27
  in Boston, created it. And it's all about, there's a very,
• 1:31:30
  Boston was a very unique environment in stand-up where all
• 1:31:35
  these comedians were just doing stand-up for Boston audiences. They
• 1:31:40
  just They didn't travel. They just stayed there. And they
• 1:31:43
  were some of the best guys that have ever done stand-up, ever.
• 1:31:47
  But a lot of it was regional, and a lot
• 1:31:48
  of it didn't translate when they left Boston. But they
• 1:31:52
  were so fucking good. And there was just a giant
• 1:31:56
  group of them. And some of them, like Lenny Clark,
• 1:31:58
  broke through, and Jay Leno, of course, and Louis C.K.
• 1:32:01
  came out of there, Bill Burr. A lot of guys
• 1:32:03
  broke through, right? But there was a core group of
• 1:32:06
  guys that were a part of this group. There was
• 1:32:10
  a group that would perform at this Chinese restaurant that
• 1:32:13
  was also a comedy club called the Ding Ho. And
• 1:32:15
  the Ding Ho– I started in 88, and it was
• 1:32:18
  already closed. It had closed by, I think, 84, 85
• 1:32:20
  or something like that. The guy was a gambler, lost
• 1:32:23
  all the money, lost his fucking Chinese restaurant. The place
• 1:32:26
  went under. But the scene still stayed, and everybody was
• 1:32:31
  just about– The art. There was no way to be famous.
• 1:32:35
  It was impossible. You were locally known, you know, so
• 1:32:39
  you could perform at a club and people go, oh,
• 1:32:41
  Steve Sweeney's going to be there. We'll all go see him.
• 1:32:43
  But when Stephen Wright got on The Tonight Show, it
• 1:32:48
  fucked it up for everybody because everybody's like, why him?
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: Why not me?
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: And they got mad because Stephen Wright had this very bizarre,
• 1:32:57
  absurdist act that translated perfectly to like a seven minute
• 1:33:02
  late night You know, Johnny Carson said. And he was
• 1:33:07
  the guy that broke out. He was the guy that
• 1:33:10
  broke out. We're all these fucking killers, man. And this
• 1:33:14
  one guy who's just like weird and absurd with his
• 1:33:16
  fucking crazy hair and all fucked up and looked a
• 1:33:19
  little strange. I used to work at a fire hydrant factory.
• 1:33:23
  you couldn't park anywhere near the place. It was like
• 1:33:27
  those kind of jokes.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: And he created a lot of resentment where these guys
• 1:33:34
  were upset that this guy who didn't do as good
• 1:33:37
  as them on stage was on The Tonight Show. What
• 1:33:40
  about me? And it changed the thing that they were doing.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing. It was like when Steve Martin first
• 1:33:47
  came out. I worked as a roadie for a lot
• 1:33:51
  of bands when I was a kid. And, uh, so,
• 1:33:56
  you know, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, those guys, they created
• 1:33:59
  a thing we hadn't seen before, you know, uh, from anybody.
• 1:34:03
  I mean, Richard Pryor doing his as like stories, they
• 1:34:07
  weren't jokes. They were just, he would just start talking
• 1:34:09
  about these people he knew and then, you know, go
• 1:34:11
  through the stories and Carlin, you know, coming up with
• 1:34:14
  all the, that witty stuff, you know, here's some partial
• 1:34:18
  baseball scores, one, three, seven, you know, like that. And,
• 1:34:24
  So I was privileged as a kid to watch new
• 1:34:28
  brands of humor come out on TV that we could see.
• 1:34:32
  And I was roadieing a couple of shows for the
• 1:34:37
  Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who I still kind of keep
• 1:34:39
  in touch with. And their opening act was Steve Martin
• 1:34:42
  because he plays banjo. So he played banjo before the
• 1:34:46
  Dirt Band came out. This is when I'm a teenager.
• 1:34:48
  And he did the arrow through the head, the whole thing.
• 1:34:51
  But he had kind of longer curly hair and he
• 1:34:54
  wore buckskin clothes and played a banjo. And there was
• 1:34:57
  a front of house guy named Danny Smith who I
• 1:35:00
  worked for, you know, with this sound company. And I
• 1:35:04
  was back there at the front of house console with
• 1:35:07
  him and I see this guy come out and I
• 1:35:11
  lost my mind. I was screaming, crying, laughing, you know,
• 1:35:16
  with some of the shit he did because He just
• 1:35:19
  came out and just said, I'm going to do the
• 1:35:21
  stupidest shit you've ever seen in your life. And people
• 1:35:24
  are going to laugh.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, and what he would just
• 1:35:27
  do the whole excuse me or whatever, you know.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: And so here's a guy coming out being over the
• 1:35:34
  top and putting arrows through his head. And people couldn't
• 1:35:38
  get enough of it. And before he did that, nobody
• 1:35:42
  else had ever done that.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, here you got a guy that,
• 1:35:46
  you know, is doing it. And that became. more the
• 1:35:49
  norm for a while. You know, it's like it spawned
• 1:35:52
  a lot of other people. You know, it's like when
• 1:35:54
  we did Bad Santa, there hadn't been anything like that.
• 1:35:59
  And the next thing you know, after Bad Santa, there's
• 1:36:01
  bad moms, bad teachers, bad grandpas, bad next door neighbors,
• 1:36:05
  you know, bad guy who works at the dry cleaners,
• 1:36:08
  you know. And so and those will last for several years,
• 1:36:12
  you know, where people are kind of getting that in
• 1:36:15
  their heads and naturally they're influenced by it. And that
• 1:36:19
  brand lasts for a while.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: Like Yellowstone. There's probably a lot of Yellowstone type ideas
• 1:36:25
  that get pitched after that.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: Steve Martin got so big that he decided to quit.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: So he was doing standup and he was like, I
• 1:36:35
  lost all touch with the audience because anything I said
• 1:36:38
  was funny. I lost like what's real and what's not real.
• 1:36:42
  He was too big. And so he decided to not
• 1:36:44
  do it anymore. Which is insane. Right. Because you really
• 1:36:48
  think about it like this, the thing that he loved
• 1:36:50
  and he was at the time, like one of the
• 1:36:53
  only acts that was doing arenas. I mean, he was
• 1:36:56
  probably one of the first comedians of all time to
• 1:36:58
  do these huge places and people would come to see
• 1:37:01
  him and it's just, variety act. It was part, you know,
• 1:37:04
  King Tut, you know, the King Tut song and let's
• 1:37:08
  get small. Like it was like, it was just so unique.
• 1:37:13
  And he just decided to step away from it and
• 1:37:15
  just do movies.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: And it's so wild because, you know, when you mentioned
• 1:37:18
  that thing about the big arenas and stuff, another thing
• 1:37:23
  that's scary to me about comedy is like, if you're
• 1:37:26
  not in a room where everybody gets every nuance and,
• 1:37:29
  That would scare me. I mean, to be, you know,
• 1:37:32
  of course, he was that big. And it was a
• 1:37:34
  big thing where people could see the big movements and stuff. But,
• 1:37:38
  you know, Louis Black, right?
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: Louis Black was, we played, this is probably, you know,
• 1:37:44
  at least a decade ago, probably more. And we played
• 1:37:49
  in Milwaukee at County Stadium. And it was a biker
• 1:37:55
  rally deal we were playing at. And we came on
• 1:37:59
  before Kid Rock. So we play our set. There are 250,000
• 1:38:05
  people at this thing. Wow. And it was like, you know,
• 1:38:07
  half of Woodstock. And so we went out there and,
• 1:38:11
  you know, had a great show. We come off and everything. Well,
• 1:38:14
  Lewis was there. So aside from the main giant stage
• 1:38:19
  where the concerts are going on, they have one of
• 1:38:22
  those blow-up tents, you know, the ones where the sound's
• 1:38:25
  never good in there, you know. And you know, it
• 1:38:28
  looks like, you know, the Dallas Cowboys training facility tent
• 1:38:31
  or whatever it is like that. So Lewis comes by
• 1:38:34
  the bus to say hey, and we talk for a
• 1:38:36
  few minutes. And I knew him from the Sunset Marquee.
• 1:38:40
  He would be in the bar there sometimes in L.A.
• 1:38:43
  And so we're talking, and I said, yeah, man, it's
• 1:38:47
  huge crowd out there. He goes, no, you guys are awesome.
• 1:38:50
  He goes, you don't have anything to worry about out here.
• 1:38:53
  They loved you. He goes, try doing comedy in a
• 1:38:55
  blow-up tent with people in folding chairs. He goes, that's
• 1:38:59
  not fun. You know, and especially with a guy like him,
• 1:39:03
  whose whole thing is about anger and, you know, that
• 1:39:05
  kind of stuff. And you've got people in their little
• 1:39:07
  folding chairs in the blow-up tent, you know, with probably
• 1:39:10
  some shitty microphone, you know.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Those shows are always hell. There's like festival shows
• 1:39:17
  or shows where they have like a bunch of different
• 1:39:19
  things going on simultaneously. There's a band over there and
• 1:39:21
  there's a comedy tent over here. I've done a few
• 1:39:24
  of those.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: It's horrible.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: They're always hell. Yeah. You always do it.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: Different stages. So you've got like five bands and you
• 1:39:30
  can hear every one of them and you're trying to,
• 1:39:32
  you know, be funny.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's not a good environment for comedy.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've done a lot of different kinds of plays. comedy,
• 1:39:40
  like arenas, theaters, comedy clubs is really where it's supposed to. Right.
• 1:39:46
  Everybody agrees with that. Oh, yeah. Because I think what
• 1:39:50
  comedy is, is you're performing, but you're also hypnotizing people.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: What you're doing is you're getting them to think the
• 1:39:56
  way you think. Right. You're putting people into your mindset.
• 1:39:59
  When I watch a comic that's really good, when they're
• 1:40:01
  on stage, I let them think for me. I'm like,
• 1:40:03
  go ahead, think for me. Take me on a trip.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: Take me on a trip to the way you think
• 1:40:06
  of things. Right. You lock in with these, and it's
• 1:40:09
  much easier to do that. It feels like as an
• 1:40:14
  audience member, it's much easier to get locked in if
• 1:40:16
  there's only a hundred other people in the room with
• 1:40:18
  you or 200 other people in the room. But as
• 1:40:20
  soon as you get to like 16,000, it starts getting weird.
• 1:40:24
  It starts getting, it's a different thing. Now it's a show.
• 1:40:27
  It's a big show. And you're not like, the only
• 1:40:30
  exception is the round. The round is weird because the
• 1:40:35
  stage is like this little circle and And everyone's around you.
• 1:40:39
  And it's oddly intimate. Even if there's like, even if
• 1:40:43
  I've done the round in Madison Square Garden. So there's
• 1:40:45
  like 16,000 people in there. But because they're all looking
• 1:40:49
  at each other, everyone sees everybody's face. It's intimate now.
• 1:40:53
  Now it's not a separation between the crowd and the
• 1:40:57
  performer who's on the stage. Now we're all in this together.
• 1:41:00
  It's like a big hug. It's very weird.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting point.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: We've played shows with the band. like that in certain theaters.
• 1:41:09
  Of course, for a loud-ass band like we are, sometimes
• 1:41:12
  we're a little big for the room, but that's an
• 1:41:16
  interesting point, especially the thing about people being able to
• 1:41:18
  see each other because then you don't want to be
• 1:41:22
  the dick that everybody's going, I wish that guy would
• 1:41:24
  shut the fuck up.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: It's like they're right there because in a coliseum, these
• 1:41:30
  cats in the back just hooting and hollering and shit,
• 1:41:33
  not paying any attention. It's a different thing. Can I pee?
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll pause right here. We'll be right back,
• 1:41:38
  ladies and gentlemen.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: I can throw this in a cup.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter. Unless you want to. Oh, I don't care. No,
• 1:41:46
  it doesn't matter. Bud Light's cool. They sponsor the UFC. Yeah.
• 1:41:52
  And we're back. Where were we? What were we talking about?
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: Well, we were on comedy, and then I just talked
• 1:41:58
  about Louis Black.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were talking about fear. Yeah. Fear of performing.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: And hypnosis, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's kind of like hypnosis. Yeah.
• 1:42:08
  So it's a weird art form. But, yeah, the bombing
• 1:42:11
  is horrible, but it's also the killing is the greatest
• 1:42:14
  feeling of all time. So it's like the only way
• 1:42:16
  you get one is with the possibility of the other. Right.
• 1:42:19
  You know? The only reason why you're willing to go
• 1:42:21
  through the bombing is because you know how great it
• 1:42:23
  feels when you're not bombing.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: You know? And killing is so great because you know
• 1:42:28
  that it doesn't have to work out. It could be terrible.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: But it's a weird art form, and it's a very
• 1:42:38
  new one. I think, in my opinion, real modern stand-up,
• 1:42:43
  you could trace back to one guy. It's Lenny Bruce.
• 1:42:46
  Without him, I don't think there is. It probably would
• 1:42:49
  have been invented eventually. But he's the guy. We have
• 1:42:53
  one person, and we have film of him. It's not
• 1:42:56
  like the first guy to pick up a guitar. Who's
• 1:42:59
  that guy? Try finding him. Who invented the fucking drums?
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: Good luck. Because they didn't really, like you said, before him,
• 1:43:08
  that wasn't. I mean, he made comedy performers, stand-up comedians,
• 1:43:15
  like rock stars, you know. It was before that. And
• 1:43:19
  all the controversy and all that kind of thing. Because
• 1:43:22
  before that, it was like variety shows. If you had
• 1:43:24
  Bob Hope and those guys, they're always on some TV show.
• 1:43:27
  It was usually them and someone else. Yes. You know. And, yeah.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: Did you ever know Rodney Dangerfield?
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: Yes. I didn't know him well, but I did meet him.
• 1:43:37
  And funny enough, when I was 19, I worked as
• 1:43:42
  a security guard at Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts.
• 1:43:46
  It's like this amphitheater in Massachusetts. And Rodney was performing there.
• 1:43:51
  And it was at the stage of Rodney's life where
• 1:43:53
  he only wore a bathrobe on stage, buck naked with
• 1:43:57
  slippers and a bathrobe. And I saw Rodney. When I
• 1:44:01
  was working there, I was like, by the backstage area.
• 1:44:04
  And I saw Rodney walking in the hallway pacing with
• 1:44:07
  his fucking bathrobe on. I'm like, this is the greatest
• 1:44:10
  thing of all time. This guy's just gonna go out
• 1:44:12
  there in a bathrobe? This was 1986. Wow. Yeah, and
• 1:44:18
  so he went out there with his fucking bathrobe and just.
• 1:44:22
  Murder. I mean murder.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: The poor people were falling out of their chairs, dying laughing.
• 1:44:28
  And I was like, this is the greatest thing I've
• 1:44:30
  ever seen in my life. This guy's in a fucking bathrobe.
• 1:44:32
  You want to talk about not giving a fuck? He
• 1:44:34
  really didn't give a fuck anymore. And I wish I
• 1:44:38
  had known him where I could have asked him why
• 1:44:41
  the bathrobe. Like, what was it about that? But I've
• 1:44:44
  got to think that it was like the ultimate. Not caring.
• 1:44:48
  The ultimate relaxing. When are you ever more relaxed than
• 1:44:51
  when you get out of the shower, you just put
• 1:44:53
  on a fucking bathrobe, your dick swinging out there in
• 1:44:56
  the wind, and you just walked out in front of
• 1:44:58
  the whole crowd like that? Yeah. 15,000 people watching Rodney
• 1:45:02
  in a bathrobe just murder it.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: Nick Nolte used to do that.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: Did he really?
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: Nolte would do press junkets and interviews with his pajamas
• 1:45:11
  on and a robe. Wow. Did it for years. Yeah.
• 1:45:15
  And Nolte just was like, man, I just want to
• 1:45:17
  be comfortable, you know. Nolte had one of the greatest
• 1:45:21
  sayings for when somebody would come up to him who
• 1:45:26
  was a fan or whatever, you know. And he was
• 1:45:31
  just messing with him. It wasn't serious. But somebody would
• 1:45:35
  come and say, Mr. Nolte, I don't want to bother you.
• 1:45:38
  And he'd go, too late.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I met Nick Nolte in the 90s because I
• 1:45:46
  was on a show called News Radio. And one of
• 1:45:49
  the stars of the show was Vicki Lewis. And Vicki
• 1:45:52
  Lewis was dating Nick Nolte at the time. So he
• 1:45:54
  was always hanging around.
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: I knew Vicki.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: And I got to know him. He was a really
• 1:45:59
  fucking nice guy. And then one time I'm in Fry's
• 1:46:01
  Electronics going to get a motherboard. That was back in
• 1:46:05
  the days where I would make my own computers. I
• 1:46:07
  would– build my own computers and play video games on them.
• 1:46:10
  So I would get great motherboards and a really good
• 1:46:13
  video card and all that jazz. And I see this
• 1:46:16
  dude with glasses on who's going over this box and
• 1:46:21
  I go... I go, hey, man, what's up?
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: He goes, oh, hey, Joe.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: And it was like, to me, it was the coolest
• 1:46:26
  thing in the world that Nick Nolte knew who I was.
• 1:46:29
  Outside of the set. Like, outside of the set, it
• 1:46:31
  was normal. Inside the set, rather, it was normal. He's
• 1:46:33
  there with Vicky. Like, he says hi to everybody. But, like,
• 1:46:37
  to meet him in an electronics store, I was like,
• 1:46:39
  this is the craziest thing of all time.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: I'm, like, 27 at the time. I'm like, this is
• 1:46:43
  just so nuts. I know Nick Nolte. This is fucking insane.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. I knew Vicky, too. Yeah. Skinny little red-haired gal.
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: Crazy voice.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, right.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. Could she sing?
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. Powerful voice.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: It's like a talent. Like, wow. That, to me, is
• 1:47:04
  one of the most impressive things, when someone could just
• 1:47:07
  sing their fucking ass off. Because I can't sing at all.
• 1:47:11
  So when I hear someone sing like that, I'm like, God,
• 1:47:13
  what can you do with your voice? That is insane. Yeah.
• 1:47:18
  The beauty of a good song is like, man, it's
• 1:47:22
  one of the most misunderstood things that we love. Because
• 1:47:27
  I think it's an art form that creates a response
• 1:47:33
  in people that's just like a drug. Like if there's
• 1:47:36
  a drug that you could take that made you feel
• 1:47:39
  like when Midnight Rider comes on the radio. And it's
• 1:47:43
  just the right time to hear it. Like maybe you
• 1:47:46
  just had a shot. you know, and your buddy tells
• 1:47:49
  you something, you're like, oh, yeah, man, that was fucking great.
• 1:47:52
  And then all of a sudden, do-do-do-do-do-do, fuck yeah.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: It's just, it's like, oh, yeah. And everybody's like, woo!
• 1:48:01
  It's amazing. It's a drug.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: It really is a drug. And some songs are made
• 1:48:06
  for the car.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: And then other songs are made for at home. Yeah.
• 1:48:11
  Just laying around, like, especially back in my hippie days.
• 1:48:13
  You know, it's like you weren't going to listen to
• 1:48:15
  King Crimson or Pink Floyd in the car.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: You'd run off the road, you know. right but midnight
• 1:48:21
  rider oh.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: Midnight rider is the car song that is the car
• 1:48:25
  that and radar love.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah radar love oh i saw those cats live
• 1:48:30
  really golden earring they opened.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 3: For uh.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: Wow. A Dutch band.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That's wild. That was a song I used
• 1:48:44
  to listen to when I'd go to visit my girlfriend.
• 1:48:46
  She was in western Massachusetts. It was like an hour
• 1:48:48
  and a half drive. I listened to Radar Love.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: Been driving all night, man. Way on the wheel.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: It's one of those songs that make you think you
• 1:48:59
  are the guy in the song.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. You're the star of the song. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:49:03
  There's songs like that, like Shooting Star by Bad Company.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: You know, everybody wants to be that guy.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: Everybody, you're like, yeah, that's me, man.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be a superstar. Then I'm going to
• 1:49:14
  die young and everyone's going to miss me.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. It was like in the John Lennon documentary
• 1:49:20
  where that cat, that homeless hippie cat comes up to
• 1:49:22
  his door. You know, and he's kind of starving and stuff.
• 1:49:25
  And he says, I don't know if you ever saw it,
• 1:49:27
  but he's obviously been living in the bushes, you know.
• 1:49:32
  And he thinks that one of Lennon's songs was about him.
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, no.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: I think he probably had a little schizophrenia or something,
• 1:49:39
  you know. And Lennon answered the door, you know, and
• 1:49:42
  was talking to him. It's in the documentary. And he says, well,
• 1:49:47
  when you were singing that, I mean, it was like
• 1:49:50
  I felt that, you know, you were singing about me.
• 1:49:52
  And it's like my. And Lennon just says, no, he goes,
• 1:49:55
  I only write songs about me. He said, I, he said,
• 1:49:58
  I don't know about your life. He goes, I, I just,
• 1:50:01
  all I write about is my experience with stuff. So
• 1:50:03
  it's not about you, but he said, are you hungry?
• 1:50:05
  And the guy goes, yeah. And next thing you know,
• 1:50:07
  he invites a man and they eat and stuff like
• 1:50:09
  that at his house. But, um, sometimes, you know, some
• 1:50:15
  art form can influence people so much that they identify
• 1:50:18
  with it so much that it becomes that to them.
• 1:50:21
  I mean, uh, Especially people who have some mental issues
• 1:50:25
  or something like that can really speak to them.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, sometimes in a negative way. I mean,
• 1:50:32
  once again, John Lennon, that cat, you know. I mean,
• 1:50:36
  Red Catcher in the Rye.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: Catcher in the Rye. He thought he was that cat
• 1:50:42
  in there, you know. Yeah.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: Well, people are very malleable. Mm-hmm. And some people, mentally
• 1:50:47
  ill people, extremely. Yeah. something, one song, one book, one
• 1:50:53
  movie can, I mean, how many people went nuts after
• 1:50:56
  they watched taxi driver?
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: I'd like to know that. Like how many people thought
• 1:51:00
  they were Travis?
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: You know, for sure. Yeah. That was, that was a
• 1:51:05
  fucking intense performance.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: De Niro in the early days. God damn that guy.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He was great. Really great. You know, it's a, And,
• 1:51:17
  you know, it's funny how many comedies he does now
• 1:51:20
  playing a dad or a grandpa.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, angry grumpy grandpa. Yeah. Meet the Fockers.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that kind of stuff.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: It's so funny. You know, Duvall, my mentors, you know,
• 1:51:35
  were Duvall and Bruce Dern.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: And guys like that. And the fact that... not only
• 1:51:44
  did I get to meet them, but work with them
• 1:51:47
  several times apiece, and once you know everybody, you start to,
• 1:51:56
  sometimes you hate to hear yourself talk, because I'll be
• 1:51:58
  talking to some younger actor, you know, like 25 or 30,
• 1:52:02
  and they'll say, oh yeah, I really love that movie,
• 1:52:06
  So and So, with Robert Duvall, and I go, yeah,
• 1:52:10
  well he's my mentor, he brought me up, and it's like, And, yeah,
• 1:52:15
  I watch some of the old movies, too. You know, like,
• 1:52:18
  I always thought Lauren Bacall was so hot. Yeah, I
• 1:52:20
  knew Lauren Bacall. And it's like, then you start to
• 1:52:23
  sound like an asshole.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: But it's just a fact. You do know them.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: It's a different reality, though, for you.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: It is a different reality. And you get used to
• 1:52:32
  it to the point where you just look at all
• 1:52:38
  of these legends who you know.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, I knew Gregory Peck very well, Elizabeth Taylor,
• 1:52:43
  all of them. And, uh, Roddy McDowell. And I got
• 1:52:49
  so used to it that I, I, I would forget
• 1:52:51
  most of the time, you know, and then every now
• 1:52:55
  and then you go, I'm talking to fucking Lauren Bacall.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: Bogart's wife. Yeah. I mean, are you shitting me? And, um,
• 1:53:08
  so I still pinch myself sometimes. I mean, I've been
• 1:53:11
  really blessed, uh, to have met a lot of great
• 1:53:15
  heroes of mine, you know, and, and become friends with them.
• 1:53:18
  Right now I'm working with Sam Elliott. Sam and I
• 1:53:20
  have known each other since probably the late eighties, somewhere
• 1:53:24
  in there. Worked together twice before, but a couple of
• 1:53:28
  scenes at a time, Tombstone in 1883. But, uh, kept
• 1:53:33
  up with each other over the years. And he was
• 1:53:35
  another guy who was more of a mentor from a distance.
• 1:53:38
  I just always admired Sam. And now I work with
• 1:53:41
  him every day.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: That's wild.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: And it's amazing.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: It's got to be weird, right?
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: It's so wild that he's such a sweet man, such
• 1:53:49
  a great actor. But when he and I do scenes together,
• 1:53:53
  it's literally like you and I talking right now.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: It's that natural just to, we're, we've essentially... talk to
• 1:54:03
  each other off, you know, when they cut, it's no
• 1:54:07
  different than the scene we just did. You know what
• 1:54:10
  I mean?
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's when he's been doing it so long.
• 1:54:12
  He's so good. It's just he's so relaxed that even
• 1:54:16
  though you know it's Sam Elliott, you believe he's whoever
• 1:54:18
  the fuck he's playing. Because there's a naturalness to it.
• 1:54:23
  Like you were talking about with yourself. There's a naturalness
• 1:54:25
  to it. And that translates... when people are watching a
• 1:54:31
  film or watching a television show with that, which television
• 1:54:34
  shows aren't even really television shows anymore. Like, I don't
• 1:54:37
  think Landman's a television show. It's a long movie.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: It's a 10 hour movie.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's just, it's like, what is, which is the
• 1:54:43
  beautiful thing about streaming. You know, that's really when you
• 1:54:47
  got shows like Ozark and stranger things. And it really
• 1:54:50
  started with the Sopranos where you're doing, it's essentially like
• 1:54:53
  a really long film. It's not, I mean, it's on television,
• 1:54:58
  but it's, What does that mean anymore? Fucking everything's on television.
• 1:55:02
  Most people watch movies on television. What does that mean anymore?
• 1:55:05
  It's just a distribution device for whatever art you're doing.
• 1:55:09
  And on those kind of shows, it's so important for
• 1:55:16
  you to buy it. You've got this character. It's not
• 1:55:20
  just one guy in a film like, oh, I'm not
• 1:55:23
  buying that guy. He sounds like an actor. Versus 9, 10,
• 1:55:29
  11 episodes in, second season. I've got to believe that guy.
• 1:55:36
  For sure. The naturalness is the thing. There's a great
• 1:55:43
  scene in Landman where you're explaining... which I loved, you're
• 1:55:48
  explaining windmills and what green energy and how much fucking
• 1:55:52
  horse shit this all is for you to feel good
• 1:55:55
  about yourself. I fucking love that scene. But I know
• 1:56:00
  you're Billy Bob Thornton, but in that scene, you're that
• 1:56:04
  fucking dude who works for an oil company who's like,
• 1:56:07
  shut the fuck up. Do you know what the fuck
• 1:56:11
  you're even talking about? It's because of that naturalness that
• 1:56:15
  that works.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was, that scene was, I mean, it became huge.
• 1:56:21
  I mean, it was all over the internet, that scene.
• 1:56:23
  And I mean, when I run into an oil guy,
• 1:56:27
  wherever it is, I mean, you know, mainly Texas, but
• 1:56:30
  wherever I am, they always bring that scene up and
• 1:56:34
  thank me and, you know, thanks for showing people what
• 1:56:38
  this is.
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: And, you know, I do get.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: Questions, you know, obviously because of the nature of the show,
• 1:56:43
  people try to politicize everything. And The fact of the
• 1:56:46
  matter is that Taylor, with that show, is not taking
• 1:56:52
  a side. He's just saying, here's a look behind the
• 1:56:55
  curtain at how this works.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: And it's about how are the people who work in
• 1:57:03
  that industry, whether you're on the suit side or you're
• 1:57:07
  out there in the fields, and if you're the family of,
• 1:57:10
  like I have the family in the show, it's just,
• 1:57:15
  this is how it works. And this is how it
• 1:57:18
  affects the people who work in it. This is how
• 1:57:21
  dangerous it is. Here's how much of a gamble it is.
• 1:57:25
  And here are all the other crazy people circling your world.
• 1:57:28
  In my case, the family, you know, and, uh, it's, um,
• 1:57:34
  when I did that scene, I was committed to it,
• 1:57:36
  you know, because when I read it and Taylor's very
• 1:57:40
  good about writing gigantic monologues for me. And, uh, when
• 1:57:47
  something makes sense to you dialogue-wise, it's easy to do
• 1:57:52
  a long monologue. If you don't know what it means,
• 1:57:57
  it's harder to learn the dialogue. If you understand what
• 1:58:00
  the person has written, I'm not saying if you agree
• 1:58:03
  with it or disagree with it, but if you understand
• 1:58:06
  what they're saying, it's actually easier to do a monologue
• 1:58:10
  than it is to do a back and forth scene
• 1:58:11
  with people sometimes. I bone more lines on a back
• 1:58:15
  and forth conversation than I do when I'm just sitting
• 1:58:18
  there telling somebody something. Like Jerry Jones' scene. You know,
• 1:58:22
  Jerry was telling his life story. I mean, it wasn't,
• 1:58:25
  Taylor wrote something there for him You know, because he'd
• 1:58:29
  heard the story before from Jerry. But if it had
• 1:58:35
  been written and Taylor said, you got to write, you know,
• 1:58:37
  you got to say these words, Jerry probably wouldn't have
• 1:58:40
  done it, been able to do it. But the fact
• 1:58:43
  that Taylor said, just tell that story you told me. Yeah.
• 1:58:46
  It's his story.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: It'd be like if I ask you, tell me your
• 1:58:49
  life story.
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: You can do that.
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: And if you get a person who's not an actor
• 1:58:56
  to be themselves... They're better than actors. You know, I've
• 1:59:00
  always found that. I've cast people in movies that have
• 1:59:03
  never been in one before. I just don't tell them
• 1:59:05
  we're rolling.
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: I really don't.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: In Sling Blade, the guy Rick Dial, who played the
• 1:59:11
  guy that ran the fix-it shop, the kind of big guy,
• 1:59:14
  I went to school with him since the third grade.
• 1:59:17
  And I always thought, this guy could be an actor,
• 1:59:19
  you know. And when we did the first scene with
• 1:59:22
  him there in the, in his shop, when, uh, Jimmy
• 1:59:25
  Hampton brought me over there and said, this is Carl.
• 1:59:27
  He's going to work all this stuff. You know, I
• 1:59:30
  just went to Rick and I said, dude, and Brent
• 1:59:32
  Briscoe who played scooter, the guy could never fix anything. And, uh,
• 1:59:38
  I said, look, Rick, the camera crew, they don't have
• 1:59:40
  their shit together. You know, I said, they're going to
• 1:59:42
  have to get some marks and do a bunch of stuff.
• 1:59:44
  So this is not on us. So we're going to
• 1:59:46
  run this scene, but we're not really filming it. Just,
• 1:59:49
  say the dialogue. If you fuck something up, don't worry
• 1:59:51
  about it. He was letter perfect. Once we started saying
• 1:59:57
  action and shit, then all of a sudden it got
• 2:00:00
  a little different. Most stuff in Sling Blade was the
• 2:00:03
  first take.
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, uh, cause he's relaxed.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The pressure of the moment. Action. Action is a
• 2:00:10
  crazy word.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: I hate it. I don't even, usually when I'm direct,
• 2:00:14
  I don't direct much anymore, but when I do, uh, uh,
• 2:00:20
  I just kind of say, well, you know, you guys
• 2:00:24
  go whenever you're ready, you know? And, but then you
• 2:00:27
  have ADs and PAs out there on their radios and shit,
• 2:00:30
  and they're all screaming shit. And it's like, yeah, don't
• 2:00:33
  disrupt the flow here. Just let the cats do it.
• 2:00:36
  You know? I mean, Clint Eastwood has been known to say, uh,
• 2:00:39
  you know, jokingly, but, uh, uh, instead of cut, he
• 2:00:43
  was sometimes an actor I know worked with Clint and,
• 2:00:46
  He said when Clint was satisfied with the scene, he
• 2:00:49
  just goes, okay, that's enough of that shit. Instead of cut.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: What was the process of deciding to do Sling Blade?
• 2:01:04
  You're obviously trying to find a vehicle for yourself, and
• 2:01:07
  they're not offering it to you, so you create it yourself.
• 2:01:10
  What was the process? How did you decide to do
• 2:01:12
  that guy? What was it?
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: It's, it's a story that nobody believes. I've told it
• 2:01:19
  a couple of times and nobody believes it. And it's
• 2:01:22
  the absolute truth. Um, I was doing one scene. I
• 2:01:30
  think there were two scenes, but it was, uh, uh,
• 2:01:34
  one of them was cut out of the thing. It was,
• 2:01:36
  I think it was an HBO movie or something that
• 2:01:38
  starred Val Kilmer. And I was playing a railroad conductor
• 2:01:43
  in the 1920s. It was, uh, uh, based on an
• 2:01:46
  old movie with Paul Muni, uh, called, uh, I'm a
• 2:01:50
  fugitive from a chain gang, uh, old movie from, I
• 2:01:53
  guess the thirties. And, uh, they remade it and called
• 2:01:57
  it the man who broke a thousand chains. I played
• 2:02:00
  a railroad conductor who had to like a wool fucking
• 2:02:03
  thing on for the twenties. And I had the, you know,
• 2:02:06
  the whole twenties haircut with the side sides pretty much
• 2:02:10
  shaved off, you know, and that kind of stuff. And, uh,
• 2:02:14
  We're shooting in Riverside, California at this old railroad museum.
• 2:02:18
  And an old director named Daniel Mann, who directed Tea House,
• 2:02:23
  The August Moon with Brando and some other movies, he'd
• 2:02:27
  come out of retirement to do this. He was an
• 2:02:29
  old cat. As a matter of fact, he was so
• 2:02:31
  old school that when I went to read for him,
• 2:02:34
  there was a casting director named Kathy Henderson who was
• 2:02:36
  always good to me, so she'd always get me in
• 2:02:38
  to see the director. And he was sitting there behind
• 2:02:41
  the desk, He had a little gray goatee and glasses and,
• 2:02:45
  and I just talked to him for a few minutes.
• 2:02:47
  And then I read a couple of lines with him.
• 2:02:49
  It's just being him. And he literally said, uh, kid,
• 2:02:57
  I got a pot for you in this picture. And
• 2:02:59
  it was like, what am I?
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: Louis mayor? Who the fuck was I just talking to?
• 2:03:03
  You know? And so they put me in the thing
• 2:03:07
  and this was in the eighties. And, uh, uh, I'm
• 2:03:11
  burning up, you know, Riverside, California, it's hotter than shit
• 2:03:15
  out there. It was in the summer. So I'm in
• 2:03:17
  a wool suit with a conductor hat on and just
• 2:03:20
  sweating my ass off. And, uh, I go in and
• 2:03:24
  this was in the days when I was still in
• 2:03:26
  a honey wagon. So there's just a little tiny room,
• 2:03:28
  you know, a little bathroom and a little couch, just
• 2:03:30
  like that wide. And, uh, at, at lunch I went
• 2:03:35
  in and I put the air conditioner on. I took
• 2:03:37
  that conductor hat off and I looked at myself in
• 2:03:43
  the mirror and I thought you sorry son of a
• 2:03:45
  bitch you're never going to make it doing any of
• 2:03:47
  this shit music movies nothing you're just you know why
• 2:03:51
  are you out here you know to make you know
• 2:03:53
  three or four hundred bucks for a day and Val
• 2:03:56
  Kilmer's a big star and you're just some idiot with
• 2:03:59
  a couple of lines you know and I literally made
• 2:04:02
  that face in the mirror at myself made the face,
• 2:04:07
  and I started talking in that voice because I was
• 2:04:11
  so in a moment of self-loathing that I literally started
• 2:04:16
  going at myself in the mirror. I did that monologue
• 2:04:22
  to the girl that's the college student who comes to
• 2:04:26
  interview me in the beginning of the movie. It's like
• 2:04:28
  a nine-minute monologue. I did that monologue in the mirror
• 2:04:32
  to myself right there and never wrote it down And
• 2:04:36
  I can remember it to this day because I have
• 2:04:40
  all these weird afflictions. You know, I have terrible anxiety
• 2:04:44
  and have obsessive compulsive disorder really bad. And I grew
• 2:04:49
  up dyslexic and, you know, kind of an edge of
• 2:04:52
  the spectrum kind of guy. And I always had the
• 2:04:56
  ability to remember stuff. I have a photographic memory. I'm
• 2:04:59
  dumb as a bag of hair in every other aspect
• 2:05:02
  of life. But I have a photographic memory. And even
• 2:05:07
  if it's not something I read on a page, it's
• 2:05:10
  up here. And so I remembered that monologue. And then
• 2:05:15
  I realized that I was talking about certain things that
• 2:05:19
  were actually in my life. The idea of him living
• 2:05:22
  out back in this shed, just sleeping in a hole
• 2:05:26
  back there, and the family would bring him his food
• 2:05:28
  and stuff like he was a creature and stuff like that.
• 2:05:31
  That was based on a guy in Alpine, Arkansas. lived there.
• 2:05:37
  The story was that his mother was scared by a
• 2:05:41
  snake when she was pregnant. You know, old southern lore shit.
• 2:05:47
  Or the father was drunk when he was conceived. But
• 2:05:50
  actually he had polio. And that's what the real deal was.
• 2:05:57
  He walked funny, he talked funny and everything. So Carl
• 2:06:00
  is largely based on a combination of this guy, Ed,
• 2:06:05
  in our town, and Frankenstein, you know, Frankenstein and the
• 2:06:12
  kid and the, you know, the sort of not knowing
• 2:06:15
  any better, you know.
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 2: And, you know, it's like, well, I was told by
• 2:06:21
  the parents in the Bible, it says, you know, if
• 2:06:24
  you see some, you know, like sex is bad or
• 2:06:27
  whatever it was, he sees his mother with his cat,
• 2:06:30
  Jesse Dixon, and he, kills her. She told him to
• 2:06:33
  do that, you know? So that's where it all came from. And, uh,
• 2:06:38
  I started doing it as part of a one man
• 2:06:40
  show in the theater back in the late eighties. And, uh, uh,
• 2:06:46
  from that one man show that, that whole character was born.
• 2:06:50
  And then, uh, uh, I wrote a short film and
• 2:06:53
  we did that. And, uh, that's why I got best
• 2:06:57
  adapted to screenplay Oscar was from that. It wasn't, uh,
• 2:07:02
  I mean, it was my original screenplay, but it was
• 2:07:04
  adapted from my own thing. And so that's, that's how
• 2:07:08
  that came about.
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: So when you went to do a one man show,
• 2:07:10
  did you ever think that you want to make it
• 2:07:12
  into a film or was it just like, I want
• 2:07:13
  to put this on its legs and just whatever this
• 2:07:16
  idea I have in my head, I want to make
• 2:07:18
  something out of it.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: At that time when I was doing in the theater, uh, I,
• 2:07:25
  I didn't think much beyond that. Uh, couple of years
• 2:07:29
  later I started thinking about it and uh I thought
• 2:07:32
  that that's the story and I knew the story before
• 2:07:35
  I ever wrote it I wrote it in nine days
• 2:07:37
  and my my oldest son Willie was actually on my
• 2:07:40
  lap most of the time while I was writing on
• 2:07:43
  paper because I don't know how to type and um
• 2:07:47
  so uh I just wrote it on you know paper
• 2:07:52
  like a tablet like that you know and eventually, you know,
• 2:07:58
  we made that little short, and then these guys that
• 2:08:01
  made the short wanted to make it into a feature,
• 2:08:03
  but they had this whole other idea about it, about
• 2:08:06
  they wanted to show what happened when I was a
• 2:08:08
  kid and show me murdering the mother. I said, yeah,
• 2:08:10
  that's the wrong thing to do, so I made it myself.
• 2:08:13
  And I directed a documentary on Widespread Panic, the band
• 2:08:17
  out of Athens, Georgia, and Colonel Bruce Hampton, but that's
• 2:08:22
  the only directing experience I'd had, and I didn't know
• 2:08:25
  shit about it. But I knew the story, and I
• 2:08:29
  got Barry Markowitz, my DP, and got some guys and
• 2:08:35
  asked John Ritter, who I was working with at the time,
• 2:08:37
  you want to play a gay guy from St. Louis
• 2:08:39
  who moves to a little town in Millsburg? And he goes, yeah,
• 2:08:42
  I'll do it. None of us thought this thing was
• 2:08:44
  going to do what it did. I thought my mom
• 2:08:47
  and my brothers and people like that would see it.
• 2:08:49
  And that was it. And it became iconic.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, how weird was that? Very weird.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: Very weird. Yeah. I mean, uh, when they say overnight success,
• 2:09:02
  that literally was the moment. I mean, I had a
• 2:09:05
  name within the movie business from this movie called one
• 2:09:07
  false move, uh, that we did in 90 or so,
• 2:09:11
  89 or 90. But, um, So people already had made
• 2:09:16
  deals to write screenplays for various studios and stuff. And
• 2:09:20
  I was getting acting work here and there. But when
• 2:09:23
  I did Sling Blade, it literally, I woke up one
• 2:09:26
  morning and I was not only a millionaire, but hugely popular.
• 2:09:31
  And it freaked me out. I mean, I appreciated every
• 2:09:35
  moment of it. But really, when you're going through those times,
• 2:09:40
  it's such a blur sometimes. you know, how, how quickly
• 2:09:44
  it happened and everything that, uh, I mean, to this day,
• 2:09:49
  I think back on it, you know, I think, how
• 2:09:54
  the fuck did I get here? And, uh, I don't
• 2:09:59
  think you could get that movie made now. I don't,
• 2:10:00
  I think a lot of movies that I've done, you
• 2:10:02
  couldn't get them made now. I don't think there's an
• 2:10:05
  audience that would either tolerate it or, uh, be interested
• 2:10:10
  in it you know because most of my writing is
• 2:10:12
  based on novelists and not screenwriters I've stayed out of
• 2:10:16
  Hollywood my whole career pretty much you know other than
• 2:10:19
  the high profile relationships maybe you know other than that
• 2:10:23
  I haven't associated with Hollywood much and it was just
• 2:10:31
  you know thinking back and going how did I become
• 2:10:34
  a movie star shit.
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: I think you could do it today Because I don't
• 2:10:39
  think anybody had ever done it when you did it.
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 2: No, that's true.
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 2: That's true. But I think because maybe, well, see, Sling Blade,
• 2:10:54
  first of all, it's not a comedy. There's funny stuff
• 2:10:57
  in it. But a lot of people come up to
• 2:11:00
  me and they say, man, that Carl, he's funnier than shit.
• 2:11:03
  And it's like, well, if you think about what it's
• 2:11:05
  really about, it's not that funny. But I just think
• 2:11:12
  because of the climate, you know, it's like, well, is
• 2:11:16
  he making fun of a mentally challenged guy? You know,
• 2:11:20
  you know, bad Santa. I mean, it's like you can't
• 2:11:22
  be that crass anymore or whatever.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: And I think you still can.
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think if you do, people will
• 2:11:30
  go to see it. It's just you'll get a lot
• 2:11:33
  more pushback now because people think that they can. They
• 2:11:36
  can stop things and cancel you and all that jazz.
• 2:11:38
  But the reality is if it's entertaining, if it resonates
• 2:11:42
  with people, they want to see it. It's just nobody
• 2:11:44
  wants to find it. That's like comedies have died. When
• 2:11:47
  was the last time there was a really good comedy movie?
• 2:11:50
  It's hard to make because of all this pushback, all
• 2:11:55
  these people that freak out about things. If you don't
• 2:11:57
  like it, don't go see it.
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 2: That's my opinion.
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: If you don't like rap music, you don't like people
• 2:12:02
  talking about that, don't listen to it. You don't like this?
• 2:12:05
  Don't go see it.
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. That's exactly what I believe. I actually think that
• 2:12:10
  critics maybe should only do reviews on things they like.
• 2:12:19
  I mean, because.
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: What good— Right. What are you trying to do?
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 2: What are you trying to do with the terrible review?
• 2:12:26
  So they claim that they're trying to protect the public
• 2:12:31
  from this atrocity.
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 2: And I don't understand why they think that they are
• 2:12:38
  the savior of everybody's 15 bucks or whatever it is.
• 2:12:42
  That it's like, you know, I can't believe I, you know,
• 2:12:46
  saw this movie. It like wasted two hours of my life.
• 2:12:49
  I'll never get back. It's like, you know, when people
• 2:12:52
  storm out of a theater. Yeah. I stormed out of
• 2:12:55
  the theater, you know. It's like because of a fucking movie.
• 2:13:00
  I mean, seriously.
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, just.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 2: Go in there, and if you don't dig it, you
• 2:13:04
  don't dig it. Don't worry about it. Just tell the public, hey,
• 2:13:09
  I'm nobody, but I saw this movie recently that's pretty
• 2:13:11
  fucking good. You might want to go see it. As
• 2:13:14
  opposed to this vile piece of shit, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:13:19
  It's like to have that type of arrogance to think
• 2:13:24
  that you are informing them That they should stay away
• 2:13:29
  from something. Like, you know shit, you know. So I
• 2:13:31
  don't get that part.
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: Well, because you're not gross. It's a gross profession. I mean,
• 2:13:38
  do you remember when Siskel and Ebert were like the— if
• 2:13:43
  you didn't get two thumbs up, you were fucked.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: Fucked.
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: Those two guys had so much goddamn power. And now
• 2:13:48
  we know they're both twats. They both hated each other.
• 2:13:51
  You ever see the videos of the two guys just
• 2:13:54
  bitching at each other? Talking about, don't fuck this up. Like,
• 2:13:57
  you fucked up the last one. Oh, you just fucked
• 2:13:59
  that up. Like, these are the guys? You have the
• 2:14:03
  worst fucking personalities. And you're telling everybody what's a good film,
• 2:14:07
  what's not a good film?
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 2: Fortunately, they liked me.
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 3: There's certain things that are undeniable.
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: But it's like that one of the things I think
• 2:14:16
  is great today is audience score. Like audience score of
• 2:14:19
  a film versus critic score. And they're oftentimes completely lopsided. Yes.
• 2:14:25
  Like I pay attention to the audience score. Like do
• 2:14:27
  people like that movie? If critics like the movie and
• 2:14:29
  people hate it, maybe they're not getting it. Maybe it's
• 2:14:34
  just esoteric. Maybe it's weird. Maybe I'll really like it then.
• 2:14:38
  But generally speaking, like the critic score is not as
• 2:14:41
  interesting to me as was the audience score.
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: That's what it's made for. Absolutely.
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. That's who I pay attention to.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 2: I want the fans. I want the audience, you know,
• 2:14:52
  because critics, like I said earlier, you know, there are
• 2:14:56
  so many critics now.
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 2: That, I mean, critics to begin with are generally not,
• 2:15:03
  no human is qualified to judge any piece of art.
• 2:15:07
  I mean, to start with. I mean, it's like if
• 2:15:10
  you don't like something or it doesn't strike you or
• 2:15:13
  you see some really silly shit that's kind of not
• 2:15:15
  made well or whatever. That's fine. But how can you
• 2:15:21
  have a profession where individuals can tell everybody in the
• 2:15:28
  world what they should think about something? It's a bizarre
• 2:15:31
  world to me. And like you said earlier, like with awards,
• 2:15:36
  it's not like sports. You know, how can you win
• 2:15:40
  an award that is an intangible thing?
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, if.
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 2: If you run a hundred meter dash in the Olympics
• 2:15:50
  and you're the first son of a bitch that breaks
• 2:15:52
  the tape, you won. Yeah. How in the hell do
• 2:15:57
  you know if I won? You know what I mean?
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: A movie. Oh, a movie. Versus that movie versus this movie. Oh, yeah.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: And God forbid you're in a year where there's some
• 2:16:08
  sort of socially conscious film that has to win. If
• 2:16:14
  it doesn't win, then who are these monsters that are voting?
• 2:16:17
  You didn't vote for the socially conscious film? Like, how
• 2:16:20
  dare you?
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 2: And, yeah, the socially conscious film and also the one
• 2:16:24
  with the music that tells you exactly what you're supposed
• 2:16:27
  to feel every moment.
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: Yes. That's the weirdest thing that we've all accepted about
• 2:16:31
  films is that there's music and scenes. That is a
• 2:16:34
  weird thing.
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: It just happens and it's normal because we've been around it.
• 2:16:39
  You know, Darth Vader comes out.
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: It's always been like that.
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 2: It's like here comes the shark. We see the fucking shark, dude.
• 2:16:51
  It's like the shark is about to eat Robert Shaw. Yeah.
• 2:16:55
  We're scared already.
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: There's something eerie about a film that doesn't have music now.
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 2: There is.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: This seems too real.
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: Like at least when there's music playing and psycho. You know,
• 2:17:08
  it makes it like a little more palatable.
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: The other issue with critics is that they don't want
• 2:17:15
  to be critics. I don't think anybody wants to criticize
• 2:17:17
  other people's art. They just don't have anything to contribute.
• 2:17:21
  Like if they did, they would probably stop being critics
• 2:17:24
  and be novelists or be screenwriters or whatever it is.
• 2:17:28
  So generally speaking, the people that gravitate towards that don't
• 2:17:32
  have something to contribute to art. So they're just professional haters.
• 2:17:36
  So most of– that's why they love to write bad reviews.
• 2:17:40
  And they write the most vicious, I'm going to destroy
• 2:17:45
  his career. The way he portrayed that role. They just
• 2:17:49
  try to find the most biting way to dismiss you
• 2:17:53
  and just shut you down. But it's the individual, the
• 2:17:58
  type of human that's doing that for a living. It's
• 2:18:01
  not necessarily anybody you want to aspire to be.
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 2: No, and that's why, like you said, it's the audience.
• 2:18:08
  That's who you're doing this for. You're not doing this
• 2:18:11
  for organizations or award shows or critics or whoever it is.
• 2:18:16
  You're doing this for the audience. Those are the people
• 2:18:19
  that go pay a ticket price or sign up for
• 2:18:22
  Paramount Plus or whatever it is to watch these things.
• 2:18:27
  And that's who you want to please. I mean, I
• 2:18:30
  don't particularly give a shit if the actor guys I've
• 2:18:36
  run across in my lifetime like my shit or not
• 2:18:39
  I mean it's like you know I'm not really doing
• 2:18:42
  it for them unless unless you love movies unless you
• 2:18:45
  love good work you know then you know those cats
• 2:18:48
  are you know viable but I just don't uh I'm
• 2:18:54
  I'm in a a good place right now and so
• 2:18:59
  I think because you know my daughter Bella's going to
• 2:19:03
  Cal Poly up there and she's doing great she's 21
• 2:19:06
  years old my sons both have jobs in their own
• 2:19:09
  places that are doing well. I love my wife. Uh,
• 2:19:14
  I'm doing a show. I love with a crew and
• 2:19:17
  a bunch of cats and actors that I love. I'm touring,
• 2:19:22
  you know, once or twice a year, making a couple
• 2:19:24
  of albums a year. I just don't let that shit
• 2:19:29
  bother me anymore.
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: Good for you.
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 2: It's like, I don't, I honestly don't give a fuck.
• 2:19:33
  And you know, People say that sometimes as a reverse
• 2:19:36
  psychology kind of idea, you know. It's like, oh, I'm
• 2:19:40
  never going to win this. And I tell my wife
• 2:19:43
  every time I'm going to win an award or lose one,
• 2:19:45
  win or lose, you know.
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 2: Because I know. I've gotten used to it and I
• 2:19:52
  can follow the trend and I go, huh. And she'll go, oh,
• 2:19:56
  my God, you're going to get the Golden Globe or
• 2:19:58
  the Academy Award or whatever it is. I go, no, no, no.
• 2:20:01
  That guy right there is going to get it. She goes,
• 2:20:03
  how do you know? I said, trust me. Watch and see.
• 2:20:06
  I was nominated for a Golden Globe for the first
• 2:20:09
  season of Landman. We went over there, and I knew
• 2:20:13
  instantly it wasn't going to happen because they had us.
• 2:20:17
  If you were in a stadium at a concert hall,
• 2:20:20
  and your seat was, here's the stage. Your seat's right here.
• 2:20:25
  It's going to take you 30 fucking minutes to get
• 2:20:28
  to the stage. We walked in there and saw our table.
• 2:20:31
  I'm like, Jesus fucking Christ. I said, we're sitting back
• 2:20:34
  here by like the staff. I said, we're not, you know,
• 2:20:38
  the people bringing out the fucking food, you know. And
• 2:20:42
  I said, it's not going to happen. And she said,
• 2:20:44
  who's going to win then? And I'd been telling her
• 2:20:46
  this and she didn't believe me. She goes, you still
• 2:20:48
  believe that? I said, the guy from Shogun. I said,
• 2:20:51
  I promise you that guy wins. I mouthed it to
• 2:20:56
  her as it was happening. I couldn't pronounce his name,
• 2:21:01
  but I said, the Japanese guy from Shogun. I literally
• 2:21:06
  said it. They have panels of each one of you
• 2:21:08
  when they announce it and shit, because they want to
• 2:21:11
  see the other guys. You know what I want to
• 2:21:13
  see one day? I want to see somebody. Let's say
• 2:21:17
  the three of us are nominated for something, and it
• 2:21:20
  shows you, and it shows me, and it shows you,
• 2:21:22
  and you're trying to act nonchalant like you don't give
• 2:21:24
  a fuck. One day, I want to see somebody just go, fuck!
• 2:21:31
  You know what I mean? In one of those things.
• 2:21:34
  That would be awesome.
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: I've only been to the Emmys once, and it was
• 2:21:37
  when Phil Hartman died, and he was nominated. So we all,
• 2:21:41
  as a cast, went. And I'll never forget this, because
• 2:21:45
  he didn't win. And Dave Foley looks over at me,
• 2:21:48
  and he goes, what the fuck does he have to
• 2:21:49
  do to win?
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 2: Right. Right. Exactly.
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: It was so funny in the moment. The guy just
• 2:21:58
  got fucking beloved guy got murdered. This big, giant, horrible thing.
• 2:22:03
  His wife kills herself afterwards.
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: And we're all sitting there and he just looks at
• 2:22:07
  me and goes, what the fuck does.
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 2: This guy have to do to win?
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: I'm out forever. I don't want to come back. Leave
• 2:22:14
  me alone. It's like, keep me out of this fucking chaos.
• 2:22:17
  And the worst thing you could ever do is get
• 2:22:19
  sucked into it and then play to that and then
• 2:22:22
  do stuff specifically to try to win awards. Like, ew. Like, ew.
• 2:22:29
  What have you become?
• 2:22:30
  Speaker 2: Ew.
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: I know. They got you.
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: They got you. And they can get you. They can
• 2:22:36
  get any of us. Just like crack. Crack can get anybody.
• 2:22:38
  All you have to do is smoke it a few times. Yeah.
• 2:22:41
  It'll get you.
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: And the thing... I think it's kind of crazy with
• 2:22:47
  you because you're one of the most legitimate overnight successes ever.
• 2:22:52
  Like a lot of people were overnight successes, but it
• 2:22:54
  was kind of like a slow drip and then something
• 2:22:57
  kicked in. Oh, wow. Now it's something big. It's like, man,
• 2:23:00
  Sling Blade came out and all of a sudden you
• 2:23:02
  were all over the fucking news. It was like everywhere.
• 2:23:05
  It's like, and, That's the wildest ride that anybody can
• 2:23:10
  be on because also this is the ride before the internet, right?
• 2:23:14
  So there were not nearly as many famous people. Sure.
• 2:23:17
  That's the thing. If you think about a movie star
• 2:23:21
  back then was so different than a famous person today. Right.
• 2:23:25
  Because there's TikTok celebrities and reality TV celebrities and it's
• 2:23:30
  just There's so many famous people. It's like an unprecedented
• 2:23:36
  number of people clamoring for attention. So to be a
• 2:23:41
  Billy Bob Thornton when Sling Blade came out was a
• 2:23:44
  crazy spot in life because there's only like 20 of
• 2:23:47
  you motherfuckers out there. Yeah. There's like 20 famous actors.
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: Like maybe 50. Oh, yeah. That you could get people
• 2:23:54
  to name. And you're one of the 50. Like, holy shit.
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 2: Back then, if you were number 18 on the top
• 2:24:01
  20 list of actors, you're pretty far down the fucking row. Right.
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right? It's crazy, right? If you think about it. Oh, yeah.
• 2:24:09
  Because being famous then was a very different thing than
• 2:24:11
  being famous now. It was.
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 2: It was very famous. I mean, now people are famous because...
• 2:24:16
  They're socialites. They go to parties and stuff.
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: Or they're the Kardashians. Famous for being famous. And no
• 2:24:22
  one can explain it. Yeah, but it's like that bizarre world.
• 2:24:28
  There's no class you can take to navigate that. No
• 2:24:32
  one can help you. No one can tell you what
• 2:24:36
  to do and what not to do. First of all,
• 2:24:38
  it's a new thing. Like literally new. By the time
• 2:24:42
  Sling Blade, what year was Sling Blade?
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 2: Made in 95, came out in 96.
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: So films are much less than 100 years old. So
• 2:24:54
  films are really like real films where people know who
• 2:24:58
  the actor is. Who's the first film star? Buster Keaton
• 2:25:02
  is silent. Then you got Charlie Chaplin.
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: It's real fucking recent, man.
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: It's real recent in the zeitgeist of the world.
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: And then you're one of them. And no one, what
• 2:25:15
  the fuck is this?
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 2: It's unbelievable. I mean, when I would work on sets
• 2:25:22
  early on with people that I grew up watching, you know,
• 2:25:27
  and I'm just like, wow, you know, I'm standing next
• 2:25:30
  to Andy Griffith or whoever it was, Robert Redford, you know.
• 2:25:35
  And now you start to realize that you're in a
• 2:25:42
  group in an age group of actors, who are looked
• 2:25:47
  at by 20-year-olds or 30-year-olds like I looked at those guys,
• 2:25:53
  because they say this stuff to me. I've been watching
• 2:25:56
  you since you, I was a little kid, you know,
• 2:25:58
  and all this kind of stuff, and it's an odd feeling.
• 2:26:04
  The only thing is, and maybe I'm off base here,
• 2:26:07
  but I think because, and once again, social media has
• 2:26:12
  a lot to do with it, I believe. I don't
• 2:26:14
  think that because of our lack of, younger generations' lack
• 2:26:23
  of history, their knowledge, how far history goes back to them.
• 2:26:29
  I don't think 100 years from now, generations will look
• 2:26:35
  at us the way we looked at Humphrey Bogart and
• 2:26:39
  Frederick March and all these different people, Spencer Tracy, Betty Davis,
• 2:26:44
  you know, whoever it was. I don't think it's as important.
• 2:26:47
  It goes back to too much access, too much exposure.
• 2:26:52
  And I just don't believe that in the history books,
• 2:26:57
  you know, 30 years from now, let's say, they'll look
• 2:27:01
  at me or Quaid or Costner or whoever it is
• 2:27:09
  as the Bogarts and the Tracys that we revere, only
• 2:27:15
  because society's changed so much.
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: But is that a bad thing? Because people love you,
• 2:27:21
  and they still love Costner, and they still love Quaid,
• 2:27:24
  and they still love all these people. It's just you
• 2:27:26
  know them more that they're human beings now. Right.
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think that's a bad thing.
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: It's a different thing.
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 2: It's a different thing.
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: It's a different thing.
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 2: It's a very different thing.
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: A movie star back then, like Clint Eastwood in his prime,
• 2:27:38
  that's a different thing. thing. You never saw that guy outside.
• 2:27:43
  It wasn't like he was doing YouTube videos and sitting
• 2:27:48
  down talking to people.
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the difference is with Eastwood or any
• 2:27:51
  of those guys, Duvall, but you'd be surprised how many people,
• 2:27:55
  if I named, Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman, how many
• 2:27:59
  people I talk to who don't know who they are.
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 2: I worked with a 35-year-old costumer, and I said, we
• 2:28:06
  were doing a photo shoot. At the time, we had
• 2:28:08
  four guys who made the records who were in the band.
• 2:28:11
  And I said, hey, there's four of us here doing
• 2:28:16
  a photo shoot. Which one of us would be Ringo?
• 2:28:19
  And this girl, she's 35 years old. And this is
• 2:28:23
  not that long ago, 10, 12 years ago. And I said, Ringo?
• 2:28:31
  She goes, what's that? I said, the Beatles. She goes, oh,
• 2:28:35
  I've heard of the Beatles. And I'm like, yeah. Yeah,
• 2:28:39
  it's like hearing of George Washington. But anyway, and I said,
• 2:28:46
  can you name any of the Beatles? And she goes, no,
• 2:28:49
  but weren't they like some kind of, and I said,
• 2:28:52
  they were a band. who started every fucking thing we
• 2:28:55
  do nowadays. And I couldn't believe it. And she was
• 2:28:58
  like a hip girl with like orange hair and fucking
• 2:29:00
  nose rings and cheek rings and everything else. But it
• 2:29:04
  just seems to me that people's history is, it's kind of,
• 2:29:08
  it's become different. Like our history, when I was, you know,
• 2:29:12
  listening to, you know, whoever, Cream or Jimi Hendrix or
• 2:29:17
  Traffic or whatever, I still knew who Billie Holiday and
• 2:29:20
  Jimmy Rogers the singing brakeman were, you know. Now, a
• 2:29:25
  lot of people think Ozzy Osbourne was just a guy
• 2:29:26
  on a reality show. It's like, no, he was in
• 2:29:28
  a band called Black Sabbath way back in the late 60s.
• 2:29:33
  And I think history is important for us. I think
• 2:29:39
  if you don't know where shit comes from, I think
• 2:29:43
  it's part of what you put into your art or
• 2:29:46
  your influences and also to see what they went through
• 2:29:50
  to get.
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: Where they were.
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 2: You know, I just think it's important. I mean, with anybody, politicians,
• 2:29:56
  how many people know that Benjamin Franklin, you know, Benjamin Franklin, oh,
• 2:29:59
  he's the guy who flew a kite and, you know,
• 2:30:01
  discovered how to make electricity come to some other place
• 2:30:04
  or whatever. But, you know, they were fighting over states,
• 2:30:10
  you know, when there weren't that many states. And it's like, well,
• 2:30:15
  wait a minute. We're in New York. We got way
• 2:30:17
  more people than you do in, you know, Virginia or
• 2:30:20
  whatever it was. And so we get more representatives and senators,
• 2:30:25
  you know, than they do. You know, they only get
• 2:30:28
  one or whatever. Well, Benjamin Franklin comes in, who's one
• 2:30:30
  of my heroes. He made sense about shit. He comes
• 2:30:34
  in and he says, tell you what, how about you
• 2:30:38
  have more state representatives than they do because you've got
• 2:30:42
  more people in your state, but how about in terms
• 2:30:44
  of the Senate, everybody gets two, and then you get
• 2:30:47
  more representatives. And they're all like, oh, okay, you know.
• 2:30:51
  Makes sense. I mean, those are the kind of guys
• 2:30:54
  I like, you know?
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, history is important, but I think one of
• 2:30:59
  the problems with people today is, like, there's so much
• 2:31:02
  information coming at you that everybody has TikTok brain, and
• 2:31:06
  young people in particular. Like, it's very difficult for them
• 2:31:09
  to get a sense of history when they're being inundated
• 2:31:11
  by very short attention span content all day long. They're
• 2:31:15
  just getting fed nonsense. So it's hard for them to
• 2:31:18
  actually read something. Or sit down and have the attention
• 2:31:22
  to get into something and really get fascinated by it.
• 2:31:25
  Or watch a good documentary on somebody. Right. Or read
• 2:31:28
  a book on somebody. They're just checking their phone all
• 2:31:32
  the time. They're always checking their goddamn phone. They're addicted
• 2:31:35
  to these fucking things. And growing up that way, like
• 2:31:40
  you and I grew up without it. So you get
• 2:31:42
  to see it and how it's affecting the way people
• 2:31:45
  view the world. And it's not good. It's not good.
• 2:31:49
  It's certainly not good for creating future versions of Ringo
• 2:31:53
  Starrs and John Lennons because it's like, what do you
• 2:31:56
  have to say if you don't have any understanding of
• 2:31:59
  what's going on and what's ever gone on?
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 2: And it's addictive, like you said earlier, because I put
• 2:32:05
  these things down and yet I've got the fucking thing
• 2:32:08
  with me all the time. And if I get out
• 2:32:11
  in the middle of the desert in California someplace and
• 2:32:15
  don't know where the fuck I am, You know, I'm
• 2:32:17
  like trying to call home and shit, you know, whatever. But,
• 2:32:22
  I mean, I lived most of my life without that.
• 2:32:27
  And having to see if you had any fucking change
• 2:32:30
  left because you had to call somebody to pay phone.
• 2:32:34
  We had a thing in L.A. called the Thomas Guide.
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: I had that.
• 2:32:38
  Speaker 2: You had the Thomas Guide where you had to look
• 2:32:40
  up shit. It had all of L.A. County, San Bernardino County.
• 2:32:43
  All of it was in there.
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: It's a book, big old book in your car.
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 2: Big old book. And you had to look on these maps,
• 2:32:48
  which are confusing and shit. And if you took a
• 2:32:52
  GPS away now from people, nobody would ever get to
• 2:32:56
  work on time. Nobody would find the fucking place they
• 2:32:58
  were supposed to have a meeting because you also can't
• 2:33:02
  stop at a gas station anymore. I mean, you know,
• 2:33:05
  remember when you didn't know where the fuck you were
• 2:33:07
  and you'd stop over at the gas station and you'd go, Yeah,
• 2:33:11
  I'm trying to get to 1625 Wilson Street. You know
• 2:33:15
  where that is? It's supposed to be by, like, the sawmill.
• 2:33:19
  You know, some guy would go, yeah, okay. Yeah, what
• 2:33:22
  you going to want to do?
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: People take pride in being able to give you directions.
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 2: Right, absolutely.
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a big thing. Like, a guy who
• 2:33:30
  could give you directions to a place, that's a cool guy. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:33:34
  I'm going to tell you how to get there. This
• 2:33:36
  is what you get. You get on the 405. You're
• 2:33:38
  going to get on exit 16. All right.
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they knew that shit.
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, now, I mean, I know L.A. inside and out.
• 2:33:44
  I could be a cab driver there, but, or I
• 2:33:48
  should say Uber driver.
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: Now, I guess. Yeah, there's no cabs anymore.
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 2: But one way or the other, you know, if you're
• 2:33:56
  someplace else, I mean, you know, I use it too.
• 2:33:58
  It's like, but if you took GPS away, it would
• 2:34:02
  run people batshit crazy.
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: Yep. You know? And if you took away the ability
• 2:34:08
  to just press someone's name on your phone to call them,
• 2:34:11
  if you had to remember their number, we had to
• 2:34:14
  remember numbers.
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 2: I still remember numbers.
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: Well, you have a great memory.
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 2: From my hometown. I mean, I still to this day,
• 2:34:24
  I rarely, in other words, I can take my phone
• 2:34:30
  and I can type in the people that I call
• 2:34:32
  on a regular basis. I can type in their numbers.
• 2:34:34
  I know their numbers, but It is true that if,
• 2:34:39
  like my wife, she'll say, well, I don't have so-and-so
• 2:34:42
  in my contacts or whatever, you know, and be somebody
• 2:34:44
  we know really well. I'm like, learn the damn number.
• 2:34:48
  I told our daughter, I said, look, when you're at college,
• 2:34:51
  you need to have my number in your head all
• 2:34:55
  the time and your mother's, you know. Yeah. Know the numbers.
• 2:34:59
  Speaker 1: Especially if you get arrested.
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 2: For sure. You got one call, dude.
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 1: Nobody knows how to do that anymore. I know, right?
• 2:35:07
  Who am I going to call? I have fucking no idea.
• 2:35:11
  I know like three people's numbers. Yeah, it's like being
• 2:35:15
  an overweight person that's addicted to food because you have
• 2:35:19
  to eat to stay alive. So you're going to have
• 2:35:21
  to do some of the thing you're addicted to no
• 2:35:24
  matter what. It's not like gambling.
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: You're a gambling addict. Stay out of the casino. You're
• 2:35:29
  going to be okay.
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? But, like, if you had
• 2:35:32
  to still go to the casino every day and gamble
• 2:35:34
  a little, but you're a gambling addict, that's a crazy
• 2:35:38
  fucking problem to have. And that's a problem that every
• 2:35:41
  young person has with their phone. They're all addicted to
• 2:35:44
  their phone.
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 2: They're completely addicted.
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 1: And, you know, all of us, too. I'm addicted to
• 2:35:47
  my phone. And you're using it every day because you
• 2:35:52
  have to get places. You have to call people. You
• 2:35:54
  have to text. You have to check your e-mail. So
• 2:35:57
  it's always there and you just have to develop some
• 2:36:00
  sort of a relationship with it. That's not crazy.
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. And, and people, it goes from mild
• 2:36:10
  addiction to severe addiction to internet creating, uh, uh, this
• 2:36:17
  environment where people actually kill themselves.
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's that big a spectrum, you know
• 2:36:24
  what I mean? And, uh, People talk about getting canceled
• 2:36:28
  all the time on this stuff. It's like, how about
• 2:36:31
  if you don't give a shit? I'm not on social media.
• 2:36:36
  I don't deal with it. The band has an Instagram,
• 2:36:43
  but I don't run it. They put pictures of me
• 2:36:46
  taking the garbage out. That's what people want to see.
• 2:36:51
  They don't want to see your picture on stage.
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: They want to see.
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 2: That you're just this regular dude with your ass crack showing,
• 2:36:57
  taking the garbage down the hill.
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: Normal shit. Eating chicken fried steak. They love that.
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 1: Normal shit. Yeah. That's true. Well, they want to know
• 2:37:06
  that you're fucking normal.
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 2: I'm subnormal.
• 2:37:10
  Speaker 1: But there's also the problem where people are putting up
• 2:37:12
  stuff to make themselves look cool. Like everybody's trying to
• 2:37:15
  look cool online. Oh, yeah. What a weird thing to
• 2:37:20
  try to do all the time.
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 2: And they got Liquify. That's one thing where you can
• 2:37:24
  make yourself skinny. Oh, boy.
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: That's a problem. Yeah. That's a problem, too, with a
• 2:37:29
  lot of young ladies because they see that and then
• 2:37:32
  they think that that's attainable right and then what's wrong
• 2:37:35
  with me I look normal and you realize like well
• 2:37:38
  she looks normal too she's got some crazy fucking program
• 2:37:42
  turning her into this bizarre form of human that doesn't
• 2:37:46
  exist in the wild absolutely yeah yeah Jonathan Haidt wrote
• 2:37:50
  about that where you see as the– in the beginning
• 2:37:54
  of social media, you see almost instantly rather a giant
• 2:37:59
  amount of young ladies that experience self-harm, cutting, depression, suicidal ideation,
• 2:38:06
  actual suicide. It all ramps up at the same time
• 2:38:09
  that social media does because you're comparing yourself to someone's
• 2:38:12
  life that's a very distorted version of reality. Yeah. distorted,
• 2:38:17
  like rose-colored glasses, propaganda version of reality that this person
• 2:38:23
  wants you to know how cool they are. Look at me,
• 2:38:25
  I'm with a girl in a bikini and I'm sitting
• 2:38:27
  on a Ferrari, the stack of hundreds, fuck you.
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 2: You're like, wow.
• 2:38:33
  Speaker 1: How am I not that guy? I'm just a loser.
• 2:38:36
  I should jump in front of a fucking train.
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 2: And there's a face. You know, when you're feeding a baby,
• 2:38:42
  There's something, I guess it's from our, you know, it's
• 2:38:45
  in our DNA or something, but you feed a baby
• 2:38:47
  and you go, you open your mouth. And they say
• 2:38:50
  that that probably came from you're showing the baby what
• 2:38:53
  to do.
• 2:38:54
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 2: But it's, you know, somebody yawns, you yawn, right? And
• 2:39:00
  you feed the baby like this. There's a thing with
• 2:39:05
  these selfies that people take on the internet that they
• 2:39:10
  can't not go.
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: That face yeah it's that face yeah you know it's
• 2:39:18
  very bizarre I did a bit about that in my
• 2:39:21
  act about imagine seeing a photo from like the early
• 2:39:25
  1900s where a girl's like this right like what is
• 2:39:28
  she's a fucking time traveler this is so strange like
• 2:39:32
  the invention of the selfie exactly my daughters are on
• 2:39:35
  snapchat and they snap each they snap all their friends
• 2:39:39
  so they this is how they communicate they rarely text
• 2:39:42
  They just make Snapchats and they just have, like, in
• 2:39:46
  front of the camera.
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 1: And then they take a picture and they're like, oh,
• 2:39:48
  my God, so bored.
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: You know, whatever.
• 2:39:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 2:39:51
  Speaker 1: Whatever it is. This is how they're communicating with each
• 2:39:53
  other through selfies.
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 1: Very weird.
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Everything is in snippets.
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 2: And the fact that, you know, if you have a
• 2:40:02
  TV service that has, you know, 1,800 channels, and I
• 2:40:10
  find myself doing it. I sit at home. I got
• 2:40:13
  in on the Cincinnati-Pittsburgh game. I watch a few minutes
• 2:40:20
  and it's like, okay. It's first down. They're on their 18.
• 2:40:26
  Flip it over to the Chargers game. You know what
• 2:40:29
  I mean? Just go back and forth. I grew up
• 2:40:32
  with three fucking channels. You know? You had to watch
• 2:40:37
  everything all the way through. And I'm convinced that that's
• 2:40:42
  the reason that trivia is easier for people that grew
• 2:40:48
  up with very little because you remember every fucking bit
• 2:40:52
  of it. Right. Now you're only, you're only, you've only
• 2:40:56
  got like a few seconds on each thing. And it's like,
• 2:41:00
  I mean, now it's like you're watching, even if it's
• 2:41:02
  your team, something else happens. Did somebody text you to
• 2:41:06
  start doing that next thing you know, Like, you know,
• 2:41:09
  I'm a Colts fan, you know, doing this and everything.
• 2:41:11
  Next thing you know, oh, the game was, oh, yeah,
• 2:41:13
  that's right. There were only three and a half minutes left.
• 2:41:15
  I didn't see the end of the game.
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:41:17
  Speaker 2: You know? Or I changed it over to, you know,
• 2:41:21
  rawhide on the old guy channel or whatever for a
• 2:41:24
  few minutes. You know what I mean?
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was thinking about that once about podcasts, that
• 2:41:29
  the podcasts are one of the only times where I'm
• 2:41:33
  never distracted by anything but the conversation. Right. And I
• 2:41:36
  think it's one of the reasons why I like it
• 2:41:37
  so much. Yeah. And the same thing is when I
• 2:41:41
  do commentary for the UFC, I'm talking about the fight.
• 2:41:44
  So I can't be looking at my phone. I'm not
• 2:41:46
  answering texts. I'm not like checking emails. I'm not looking
• 2:41:50
  at TikTok. I'm just locked in on what is happening
• 2:41:53
  for six hours. Oh, yeah. If you could find a
• 2:41:58
  thing where you can have a break, escape from the
• 2:42:02
  clutches of all the information that's in the rest of
• 2:42:05
  the world coming at you, all the fucking bad news
• 2:42:09
  and all the guns and tits and everything that's coming
• 2:42:12
  at you from all over the world, it's very beneficial.
• 2:42:17
  It's good for your brain.
• 2:42:18
  Speaker 2: And I love the fact that your show has– you
• 2:42:22
  sit for a few hours. When do you get a
• 2:42:25
  chance to do this? I mean, and that's, you know,
• 2:42:27
  I came late to podcasts, but I remember doing, God,
• 2:42:34
  I can't remember. I did Norm MacDonald's podcast. And I did,
• 2:42:39
  one other guy did his podcast. And then those were
• 2:42:44
  the first ones I did. Kevin Pollack. I did Kevin's.
• 2:42:49
  I didn't even know what it meant at the time.
• 2:42:52
  And since then, you know, I've done a few, but
• 2:42:55
  I like them too. It's literally like the only place
• 2:42:58
  you are where the interviewer doesn't check their fucking phone. Yeah.
• 2:43:04
  I mean, I literally, I do interviews with people who,
• 2:43:08
  while I'm answering what they just asked me, they text
• 2:43:12
  somebody back or look at it for a second. And
• 2:43:15
  it's like, hang a second. It's like, How important is
• 2:43:18
  this to you that it's more important to let Mitzi
• 2:43:21
  know that you'd rather have spaghetti tonight?
• 2:43:24
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 2:43:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Fucking hell.
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: Well, it's also you're completely breaking whatever bond that you
• 2:43:30
  have in the conversation. It's two people exchanging information, talking
• 2:43:36
  to each other. And you have to look at each
• 2:43:38
  other in the eye. You got to feel with this person.
• 2:43:40
  It's a dance. And if you stop in the middle
• 2:43:43
  of the dance.
• 2:43:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:43:44
  Speaker 1: Like if you were on a date with someone and
• 2:43:46
  you were telling them some crazy story and it's really
• 2:43:48
  important to you and they're just like, yeah, wow. Amazing.
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 2: That's good for your ego, right?
• 2:43:54
  Speaker 1: This is over. There's no sense in continuing any further
• 2:43:57
  with this relationship.
• 2:43:59
  Speaker 2: Right. It's like, honey, were you serious when you said
• 2:44:04
  you love me more than anyone else? Yeah.
• 2:44:07
  Speaker 1: Hold on. Yeah.
• 2:44:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what were you saying? Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. I
• 2:44:11
  love you more than anybody I ever loved.
• 2:44:13
  Speaker 1: I just barely love anybody.
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 2:44:15
  Speaker 1: And I'm kind of mildly interested in everybody. And that's
• 2:44:19
  sort of what's happening today. Right. I know. We're mildly
• 2:44:22
  interested in everybody. Right. And we love almost nobody. Right.
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 1: It's weird.
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 2: That is weird.
• 2:44:28
  Speaker 1: It's a weird time. Yeah. But the only way we're
• 2:44:32
  going to get through it that makes any sense is
• 2:44:35
  you've got to to say things like that. We have
• 2:44:37
  to figure out how to navigate it. It's new. You know,
• 2:44:40
  just like I was saying that when you were a
• 2:44:42
  movie star, the first time you became a movie star
• 2:44:45
  through Sling Blade, that's a new experience, just period in
• 2:44:50
  human civilization. Becoming a movie star is very recent. It's hard.
• 2:44:55
  And this is... thing of everything being online this thing
• 2:45:01
  of everybody having access to all this fucking information coming
• 2:45:05
  at you all this media all this all these opinions
• 2:45:09
  and all this stuff to watch and car accidents and
• 2:45:11
  animal attacks and this is new this is a completely
• 2:45:16
  so almost like the shit that you had to go
• 2:45:19
  through when you became famous through Sling Blade the whole
• 2:45:23
  world's got to go through this new type of thing
• 2:45:26
  with phones and with social media and with the internet
• 2:45:29
  in general. And we're not ready. We don't know how
• 2:45:33
  to do it yet. And people are giving classes on
• 2:45:35
  how to manage it. And there's apps that can limit
• 2:45:38
  your time on certain things. You can cut yourself off.
• 2:45:42
  We don't know what we're doing. This is fucking new
• 2:45:44
  as shit. And just like fame, a lot of people
• 2:45:48
  are going to get wrecked by it.
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 2: Yes. Totally.
• 2:45:52
  Speaker 1: It's a completely alien way of being. Like a person
• 2:45:56
  that becomes especially– I'm friends with Ricky Schroeder. I've known
• 2:46:00
  Ricky for like 25, 30 years. And there is no
• 2:46:05
  way anybody becomes famous at like six and makes it
• 2:46:11
  out okay.
• 2:46:12
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 1: It's not possible. Right. Like the way I– I liken
• 2:46:16
  it to making cement but you don't put enough water in.
• 2:46:20
  Like you– so– It's always going to be fucked.
• 2:46:23
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 2:46:23
  Speaker 1: There's a part that's never... You had a normal life
• 2:46:28
  and then... Or semi-normal, whatever normal means.
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 2: I wasn't normal, but I wasn't a movie star.
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: You weren't famous. And then became famous. But if you're
• 2:46:35
  famous from the time you were a fucking baby and
• 2:46:39
  your whole life... You're in the public eye growing up.
• 2:46:43
  That's insane.
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 2: It is insane.
• 2:46:45
  Speaker 1: Whether it's Miley Cyrus or, you know, you look at
• 2:46:48
  poor Britney Spears losing her fucking marbles.
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 2: All that stuff.
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 1: What do you expect? Nobody gets through that okay.
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 2: What happened to those? Remember the kids that did that show?
• 2:46:57
  Was it different strokes? Mm-hmm. And like a couple of them.
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 2: Like one girl, she, you know, robbed a liquor store
• 2:47:05
  or something and then became a dope addict and a hooker.
• 2:47:08
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 2: Then, you know, dies young. And one of the guys
• 2:47:12
  on there also, you know, I think he got a
• 2:47:15
  gun on drugs and then eventually died some of them
• 2:47:18
  kill themselves it's i'm i'm really happy that my success
• 2:47:24
  in terms of being famous anyway came at a later
• 2:47:29
  age uh i i actually really relish that you know
• 2:47:36
  that I did not become famous when I was 19
• 2:47:41
  or 16 or whatever it was. Because at that point,
• 2:47:45
  with my state of mind in those days and just
• 2:47:51
  doing everything I wanted, you know, I would have been
• 2:47:54
  dead by now.
• 2:47:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:47:55
  Speaker 2: There's no doubt about it. I would have never made
• 2:47:58
  it to 30.
• 2:47:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you did, you'd have so much regret.
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 2: What did I do?
• 2:48:03
  Speaker 1: The fuck did I do? Why did I do that?
• 2:48:06
  Because you lost your mind. Because you were famous at
• 2:48:09
  eight years old.
• 2:48:12
  Speaker 2: It's kind of an old guy thing to say, but
• 2:48:17
  everything I got, I earned it, and I'm glad I did.
• 2:48:21
  I'm glad I didn't have a hell of a lot
• 2:48:22
  of help along the way that I just persevered and
• 2:48:26
  did this stuff. But I think that knowing what work
• 2:48:31
  is before you get famous really helps you out in
• 2:48:35
  your life. I mean, you know, I worked at a sawmill,
• 2:48:37
  a machine shop. I hauled heavy equipment, hauled hay when
• 2:48:40
  I was 13. You know, I did all that shit.
• 2:48:43
  And I mean, stuff that looking back on it, it's like,
• 2:48:47
  I don't even know how I did it half the time.
• 2:48:49
  I worked as a carpenter's helper. And so if I
• 2:48:55
  hadn't done all that stuff, if all I had known
• 2:48:59
  was the entertainment business, I think that would drive any
• 2:49:04
  fucking body crazy. You know, I don't think I would
• 2:49:07
  have made it through that. If you know, like looking
• 2:49:11
  at the, the real world out there from a place
• 2:49:14
  where you never experienced the real world.
• 2:49:17
  Speaker 1: Right. Right.
• 2:49:18
  Speaker 2: Like you're talking about Ricky and all that stuff. It's like,
• 2:49:21
  if your only experience has been people getting your fucking
• 2:49:25
  juice box for you, you know, or whatever it is, then,
• 2:49:31
  and you get used to that shit too. I'm telling
• 2:49:33
  you these days, my wife thinks I, I'm the most
• 2:49:38
  helpless son of a bitch in the world. And in
• 2:49:40
  some ways I am, I mean, I get into an
• 2:49:42
  airport and I'm, I used to go to fucking airports
• 2:49:45
  before I was famous. I knew where to go. I
• 2:49:47
  knew where to put my shit, you know, now I'll
• 2:49:50
  go in there and I look like I'm, it's like
• 2:49:52
  Logan's run. I look, I get out and I'm like,
• 2:49:55
  where the fuck are we now? You know, And I'll ask,
• 2:49:59
  you know, my assistant or publicist or somebody. I'm like, well,
• 2:50:04
  can I take this bag on there? Or is this one?
• 2:50:07
  Where's the thing we go through? Do I need to
• 2:50:09
  do this?
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 1: Do I need to do that?
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 2: You know? And it's like, I know fucking well what
• 2:50:13
  I have to do.
• 2:50:14
  Speaker 1: But you're used to people doing things for you.
• 2:50:16
  Speaker 2: You get used to it. Yeah. I mean, you get
• 2:50:19
  used to somebody driving you someplace. I'm a driver. I
• 2:50:22
  grew up. I raced fucking cars. I'm a muscle car guy. Now.
• 2:50:27
  We go someplace, I ask my wife to drive. Maybe
• 2:50:31
  it's because I'm old. Because when I walk up and
• 2:50:34
  down stairs now, it's a psychological thing. Physically, I'm very fit.
• 2:50:39
  I mean, I can do shit, whatever I want to.
• 2:50:41
  If I've got to run in a scene or whatever,
• 2:50:43
  I'm fine. Something psychological happens to you when you get
• 2:50:47
  like 68 or 69. And Tom Mayhew, our tour manager
• 2:50:53
  for the band, he and I were talking about it.
• 2:50:56
  We were talking about how now when we get in
• 2:50:58
  the shower, you know, like we're in a hotel and
• 2:51:01
  you get in a shower, you grab the fucking handicap
• 2:51:04
  rail and you go really slow. I don't have to,
• 2:51:08
  but I do because something up here tells me, here's
• 2:51:12
  my age now. If I fall, I'll be dead in
• 2:51:16
  six weeks because I'll break my hip and then I'll
• 2:51:19
  get pneumonia and I'm done. And I'm like, I don't,
• 2:51:22
  I feel 19. But for some reason, Going downstairs now,
• 2:51:28
  I don't just hop down the stairs anymore. I take
• 2:51:31
  it one stair at a time, you know. It's not real.
• 2:51:35
  And it's not real that I don't know how to
• 2:51:37
  get around a fucking airport. None of that shit's real.
• 2:51:41
  And yet something happened to me where I think now
• 2:51:47
  I'm just this helpless fucking old man who, you know,
• 2:51:50
  is going to have to have my caretaker fucking, you know,
• 2:51:52
  get me to the gig, you know. And then I
• 2:51:55
  go on stage and I'm just like, you know, it's like,
• 2:51:58
  wait a fucking minute, you know, walking up the steps
• 2:52:01
  to the stage. I'm just like, you know, and I
• 2:52:04
  get up there and fucking go out to the edge
• 2:52:05
  of the stage and slap hands and shit. If I
• 2:52:07
  fell off that fucking thing, it'd kill me instantly, but
• 2:52:10
  I do it. So none of that shit's real. It's weird, right?
• 2:52:15
  Speaker 1: Well, it's weird when people defy it, right?
• 2:52:17
  Speaker 2: No.
• 2:52:18
  Speaker 1: Like I saw the Rolling Stones when they came to
• 2:52:20
  Austin a couple years ago at CODA. So it's like 100,000
• 2:52:24
  people or something out there. It was nuts. And I
• 2:52:26
  swear to God it was like an out-of-body experience because
• 2:52:27
  you can't believe you're actually seeing Mick Jagger.
• 2:52:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:52:30
  Speaker 1: You're like, that's him? That's really him. He's really up
• 2:52:33
  to it. But he's fucking, he's a thousand years old.
• 2:52:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:52:36
  Speaker 1: Button your lip, baby. He's dancing and moving around. He's
• 2:52:41
  got two fucking trailers. Two trailers that he brings with
• 2:52:44
  him everywhere he goes. It's just workout equipment.
• 2:52:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:52:47
  Speaker 1: That motherfucker gets after it every day, they say.
• 2:52:50
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 2:52:51
  Speaker 1: Every day. He's like, this is the only way. If
• 2:52:52
  you don't do that, it'll fall apart, and then you
• 2:52:54
  got nothing.
• 2:52:54
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 2:52:55
  Speaker 1: But he's out there like he's 30 years old. Oh, yeah.
• 2:52:58
  It's nuts. It's really amazing to watch.
• 2:53:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, like I said, we just opened for the Who.
• 2:53:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right?
• 2:53:05
  Speaker 2: And Roger and Pete are, you know, they're 80, 81, whatever.
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 1: Crazy. You know?
• 2:53:10
  Speaker 2: And they're the fucking Who. Still up there singing their
• 2:53:15
  ass off, playing their ass off, you know?
• 2:53:17
  Speaker 1: That's another new thing. Like when we were kids, there
• 2:53:20
  was no old rock stars.
• 2:53:21
  Speaker 2: No.
• 2:53:23
  Speaker 1: They all died.
• 2:53:24
  Speaker 2: Most of them were dead by 29. Right, 27.
• 2:53:25
  Speaker 1: 27 was the year.
• 2:53:26
  Speaker 2: Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. They all died at like 27. Yeah.
• 2:53:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow. Kurt Cobain? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they all died young.
• 2:53:39
  So when we were kids, there was no touring bands
• 2:53:41
  that were like 70 years old out there on the road.
• 2:53:43
  Fuck no. Killing it.
• 2:53:45
  Speaker 2: And we're more popular than we've ever been. It's all bullshit.
• 2:53:51
  Speaker 1: It's all in your head.
• 2:53:52
  Speaker 2: It's all in your head. And not only were there
• 2:53:57
  not rock stars when we were growing up that were
• 2:54:00
  even many over 40.
• 2:54:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:54:03
  Speaker 2: Aside from the ones who died. age has changed a
• 2:54:08
  little bit. I mean, like, you know, if you look
• 2:54:10
  at my dad's high school yearbook, these motherfuckers, when they
• 2:54:15
  were 17, they looked like they were 55. You know
• 2:54:19
  what I mean?
• 2:54:20
  Speaker 1: Hard living. Yeah.
• 2:54:22
  Speaker 2: And like a man in those days, my dad died
• 2:54:25
  at 44 years of age. I thought he was an
• 2:54:27
  old man. Wow.
• 2:54:28
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 2:54:29
  Speaker 2: And when I think of 44 now, it's like, are
• 2:54:33
  you shitting me? That's like babies. And, but, But 50
• 2:54:38
  and 60 and 70 meant something different when I was
• 2:54:42
  growing up. Now 70 is kind of like, I mean,
• 2:54:45
  you know, a guy like Sam or Duvall, they look
• 2:54:47
  at me and I'm still like a kid to them
• 2:54:49
  and shit, you know.
• 2:54:49
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 2:54:50
  Speaker 2: And 70-year-olds, you know, I think a lot of it is,
• 2:54:53
  you know, I eat real healthy. I actually had a
• 2:54:57
  holistic doctor tell me that because I'm allergic to a
• 2:55:01
  lot of shit. It's not like I've got something against
• 2:55:03
  eating cows. I'd love to. But I have type AB
• 2:55:07
  negative blood, means you don't have many digestive enzymes. And
• 2:55:11
  so I just get fucking, you know, indigestion and get
• 2:55:14
  all fucked up and bloated. I just grew up, because
• 2:55:17
  I ate everything growing up. I mean, shit in Arkansas
• 2:55:19
  and Texas. And I just grew up thinking that when
• 2:55:25
  you eat, you feel like shit. I just thought that's
• 2:55:27
  the way it was. I thought, this thing's overrated. Fuck,
• 2:55:31
  I feel like hell, you know. But now I eat
• 2:55:34
  really healthy and I eat fish and turkey and, you know,
• 2:55:37
  vegetables and fruit and beans and rice and stuff.
• 2:55:39
  Speaker 1: So it's a red meat issue with you?
• 2:55:41
  Speaker 2: I can't have beef or pork. I can have turkey
• 2:55:46
  and fish. They digest easier. But I think, you know,
• 2:55:51
  people are, and especially if you're in the entertainment business,
• 2:55:55
  you kind of keep a younger mind and also eating
• 2:56:00
  healthy and but this, but this holistic doctor I was
• 2:56:03
  talking about, uh, I was talking about the, and this
• 2:56:07
  is really unpopular to say, uh, but, uh, not my words.
• 2:56:13
  I was actually told this and I was saying, look,
• 2:56:15
  you know, I don't smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.
• 2:56:18
  I smoke probably three quarters of a pack, you know, unless,
• 2:56:21
  you know, we're on the road and I'm on the
• 2:56:23
  bus with the guys, you know, not smoke like an
• 2:56:25
  old Buick sometimes, but, um, You know, I drink light beer.
• 2:56:30
  I don't drink hard alcohol, stuff like this. And this
• 2:56:33
  holistic doctor said, you know, stress is one of the
• 2:56:37
  worst things in the world for you. If smoking a
• 2:56:40
  few cigarettes a day don't have chemicals in them, and
• 2:56:44
  you're drinking light beer, which, like I said in Landman,
• 2:56:48
  you know, has less alcohol than fucking orange juice, you know,
• 2:56:53
  you have a few of those a day and have
• 2:56:55
  a few smokes. And if that... alleviates your stress, especially
• 2:57:00
  me being high anxiety, he says probably healthier for you
• 2:57:04
  to just keep doing that.
• 2:57:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they say that's one of the worst things ever.
• 2:57:08
  You're rising cortisol. stress, anxiety. It wears on your nerves,
• 2:57:14
  your nervous system. And then loneliness. They say loneliness is
• 2:57:18
  worse than smoking for your overall health. If you smoked
• 2:57:22
  a pack and a half a day, you'd be way
• 2:57:24
  better off Just doing that than being lonely.
• 2:57:28
  Speaker 2: Look how many spouses die a few months after their
• 2:57:34
  husband or wife died.
• 2:57:35
  Speaker 1: My grandfather, that's what happened when his wife died. When
• 2:57:38
  my grandmother died, he died like within a year he
• 2:57:40
  was gone. He was fine before that. He was actually
• 2:57:43
  her caretaker. He was taking care of her. And then
• 2:57:45
  when she's gone, he was dead in a year. Yeah,
• 2:57:47
  happens all the time. Died of grief. Yeah.
• 2:57:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that old saying, you can die for a broken heart.
• 2:57:53
  I believe it.
• 2:57:53
  Speaker 1: That's real. It's real. It's real sadness. And also it's like,
• 2:57:58
  why am I still here? She's gone. I'm 90. Like,
• 2:58:01
  what is this? What are we doing here?
• 2:58:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:58:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Let's, let's call it a quit. Call it a show. Um, listen, man,
• 2:58:11
  we just did three hours.
• 2:58:12
  Speaker 2: So cool.
• 2:58:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you. That was a lot of fun. I really
• 2:58:15
  appreciate you. Thank you for doing this.
• 2:58:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I hope I didn't fuck anything up.
• 2:58:18
  Speaker 1: No, it was great, man. It was great. It was awesome.
• 2:58:21
  I love your show. I love everything you've done, man.
• 2:58:23
  So it was, it was a pleasure.
• 2:58:24
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a pleasure to be here.
• 2:58:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much. All right. Bye, everybody.