Rob Zombie joins Jemele to discuss his new album, Three From Hell, and how he went from being a rock and roll kid in a small town in New England to becoming a Hollywood stunt man and director of horror films in Hollywood.
00:03:17.000And then the day we graduated, we were hanging out around McDonald's, and the main asshole jock kid came up, who would be your worst enemy, and he was suddenly like, Hey man, I'm going to college.
00:03:28.000Where do you guys get your cool clothes and stuff?
00:04:17.000Almost all the best fighters in the UFC have some story where someone was fucking with them when they were young and they had to figure out how to fight.
00:04:37.000It is super true, and it's also, it's interesting that you said that you had social anxiety.
00:04:41.000So many people that become entertainers also had some form of social anxiety when they're young.
00:04:47.000Yeah, I had to do this thing last, no, the night before last.
00:04:51.000I was presenting this award to somebody at this event.
00:04:55.000And, you know, I'm picturing, oh, the stage will be really big and high, you know, I can get up there, it's super impersonal, it doesn't matter.
00:05:00.000And I get there, the stage is like lower than this desk, and it's like all the tables with people eating dinner right there.
00:05:38.000Yeah, and then it's crazy that a guy like you winds up singing in front of fucking thousands of people, playing guitar in front of thousands of people.
00:05:46.000I wish I could play guitar, but I will sing in front of the people.
00:06:49.000What kind of music did you guys play in the very beginning?
00:06:54.000Well, when I started, I was living in New York City, and when my first band, White Zombie, started, I was working at Pee-Wee's Playhouse, actually.
00:07:02.000I was a production assistant for Pee-Wee's Playhouse for the first season.
00:07:26.000The only interaction I ever had with anybody was Paul Rubens, and I was standing there, and he walked by, and he goes, where's the bathroom?
00:07:45.000It was weird, because we didn't play any covers, and we sort of, nobody really knew how to play when we started, and we sort of invented sound based upon completely not knowing what you're doing.
00:07:57.000Because that's like any band, like the Ramones.
00:07:59.000It's like, well, we know these three chords, but we understand, they instinctively understand catchy pop songs, even though it doesn't make sense.
00:08:06.000Because when you try to learn a Ramones song, it doesn't make sense.
00:08:09.000Even though it seems like, oh, these are really simple songs.
00:08:11.000Because I've played them before, because I've done this Ramones tribute thing.
00:08:49.000But I got kicked out because my grades dropped too low, because I went from Haverhill to New York, so I was like, I'm just hanging out at Danceteria all night.
00:08:57.000Because Danceteria was amazing, because one night it would be, you know, Run DMC, like, before anyone knew who they were, and then it would be like Nick Cave, then it would be this.
00:09:05.000It was like, I stayed there every night until 4 a.m.
00:09:08.000And then we'd go to school and just, you know, fall asleep.
00:09:11.000Or fall asleep on the train ride home to New Jersey, then try to get back.
00:09:15.000So you never went to school for classical musical instruments or anything like that?
00:13:23.000I can't imagine standing there trying to tell jokes that people aren't laughing, but I also can't imagine standing there playing songs that nobody wants to hear, and they're just looking at you like...
00:13:36.000Well, the thing is, I think it's probably even harder, maybe, with songs that nobody knows.
00:13:41.000Because people will listen to jokes because they make them laugh, but songs that no one knows, and a band that no one knows, like, man, you've got to figure out a way to rope these people in.
00:13:51.000Yeah, that's why I always figured like...
00:13:53.000I was always visually oriented, so I always made sure the band had to look a certain way and act a certain way.
00:14:02.000The way I wanted them to be, you know?
00:14:07.000At least you can go, this is awful, but look at these maniacs where, you know, everybody's hair is down here and they're going crazy and no one else is going crazy in the club, but they are.
00:14:17.000At least it's, you know, an entertaining train wreck to watch, at least, you know.
00:14:22.000What kind of films did you like when you were growing up?
00:14:25.000I mean, when I was a kid, I would literally just get the TV guide because we're talking like, you know, We're good to go.
00:15:18.000Don't you think, and I don't know how this figures into comedy, but I'm sure it does.
00:15:22.000There was something about having to be exposed to everything because there was nothing else that I know as much about John Wayne movies as I do about horror movies.
00:15:31.000Whereas now everything's so compartmentalized that people just, like, if you hear a band, you go, let me guess what your favorite band is.
00:15:38.000The band you sound exactly like because you have no other influences.
00:15:42.000As opposed to a lot of metal bands I know that are huge, they go, well, my favorite band was actually ZZ Top, so we just decided to play ZZ Top riffs really fast, and that's how we created this.
00:15:51.000But now everybody's just so like, I only like this.
00:15:54.000Yeah, you get in those confirmation bubbles, where everybody else likes what you like, and you just...
00:16:07.000But if you're taking influences, stealing things from everywhere, you can put them together in a new way.
00:16:13.000But if you're like, I only like metal, I only guess you sound like metal.
00:16:16.000Well, that's the cool thing about the radio, right?
00:16:17.000I mean, I've been recently listening to Spotify, which I never listened before, but listen to streaming services.
00:16:24.000I get exposed to, you know, there's like a channel.
00:16:27.000Like, there'll be a Rob Zombie channel, and there'll be a bunch of other shit on it as well.
00:16:30.000Like, you know, there's Led Zeppelin Channel, and you hear some weird music that you didn't expect from some bands you didn't even know of.
00:16:47.000You know, and now, I mean, because even as a kid, I mean, I hate talking like this, but I can't help it.
00:16:51.000It's like, you know, like just FM radio is like, okay, the Allman Brothers, then Diana Ross, then Kiss, then ABBA. I'll just listen to all of it.
00:17:16.000Was saying that this, look, this is not, it might have been COZ. It might not have been BCN. Anyway, whoever the DJ was, it was a rock station.
00:17:26.000And they were like, look, this isn't rock.
00:17:39.000And so you're like, okay, I'll take it.
00:17:42.000It's funny how you remember that, because I still remember them one morning brushing my teeth, and they're like, oh, we're playing this new band, The Police, his song Roxanne.
00:17:50.000I thought it was like this, you know, black reggae band until I saw a picture of him.
00:18:03.000The Cars is one of those bands where whenever you don't know what to listen to, you can always listen to The Cars because there's so many good songs and it's so good.
00:18:11.000Yeah, he was such an interesting guy, too.
00:19:15.000So watching them back then, that's when you got the idea?
00:19:19.000Well, I got the idea that I loved it and I wanted to do it, but it was the idea, like, yeah, I want to be an astronaut, too.
00:19:25.000Like, it didn't seem like an idea that was ever going to happen.
00:19:28.000Right, it was just something that you were really into.
00:19:30.000Yeah, and it's really funny, too, this funny, weird thing, because at one time in high school, me and my friends filmed a sequel to Escape from New York, the John Carpenter film.
00:20:50.000They were like, basically this is unreleasable.
00:20:54.000I don't remember word for word, but that was the conversation in a nutshell.
00:20:59.000But at the time, too, you figure there was no horror coming out of Universal.
00:21:03.000They were making like the Flintstones movie, and that was not the image they wanted.
00:21:07.000This really vile sort of backwoods hillbilly murder fest where the bad people win, essentially.
00:21:16.000I mean, horror films were sort of like not even a commercial thing at that point, in a way.
00:21:21.000So then, which is funny now, if you go to Universal Studios Hollywood or Orlando, there's a huge House of a Thousand Corpses event going on in both theme parks.
00:21:31.000I was there for the grand opening, like, that's funny.
00:21:34.000Again, like, it's like a train, it's like, I get fired from here and now, you know, 20 years later, it's a theme park attraction in the exact place I got fired from.
00:21:52.000Again, I think getting to make a movie for Universal Studios was such an amazing experience, but I think I was too naive to understand what was happening.
00:22:02.000It'd be like you did one set of comments like, hey, we're going to put you on tour with George Carr.
00:22:08.000And then it's after like, wow, I didn't really appreciate it.
00:22:11.000It just went down, did I? Not that I took it for granted, but I had...
00:22:16.000I had met with someone at the theme park about doing a haunted maze during their Halloween Horror Nights based on my album.
00:22:24.000And then sort of by being in the offices was meeting people and having just meetings about stuff or I just didn't want to leave once I got in the studio.
00:22:32.000I just loved being there even though I had no business being there.
00:22:34.000And somehow I remember being in the guy at the time, his name was Kevin Mischer, his office Pitching him a movie I didn't have a pitch for.
00:23:24.000I remember once the movie was rolling, I was like, This is who I want to cast, and this is exactly what I want to do, and if you guys don't want to do it, that's cool.
00:25:12.000I wasn't trying to be, you know, no one's trying to be weird, and they're like, oh yeah, I want to be weird and hide away because I'm weird.
00:25:59.000I was always into something that just tore all the normal people apart and just ripped apart all the preconceived notions of what everybody thought was going to happen.
00:26:11.000And then towards the end of high school when I discovered punk rock and you figure out there's an entire form of music where they're just like, go fuck yourself.
00:26:56.000It's been a long journey because when my first movie came out, I think every review basically said something along the lines of, worst movie ever made.
00:27:14.000When our first Geffen, I still remember this, our first Geffen record came out, I saw the first review.
00:27:20.000It was this magazine, Alternative Press, who two years ago gave me this Lifetime Achievement Award, and I had to read the review while I accepted the award.
00:27:28.000The review said, this is the worst band ever.
00:28:27.000But the thing is about music is it's so subjective.
00:28:31.000Someone who grew up wearing the right eyes, odd shirts, hanging with the cool crowd, your music's not going to resonate with them the same way it's going to be with other people that felt like they were outsiders.
00:28:44.000I can only do what I do and I don't know what would be popular.
00:28:49.000I don't understand popular culture in a way because when people are gushing over something, a movie or something, I say, I go, I hated that movie.
00:28:57.000I know it made $500 million and it's everyone's favorite movie.
00:29:32.000Like, I was thinking about the other day about this time in the 90s where, like, you got movies like Napoleon Dynamite and American Splendor, which I thought, you ever see that?
00:29:56.000Look, Napoleon Dynamite, to this day, is one of the greatest comedies of all time.
00:30:00.000As soon as that movie started and the credits were food, I was like, this is like the greatest thing I've seen in a theater in like 20 years.
00:31:56.000Now, when you were a kid, you liked all kinds of stuff, but did you think if you wanted to make films that you would be making the kind of films that you're making now?
00:32:09.000I guess, since the first thing I made was that, and I was into it.
00:32:12.000I mean, I liked, because what happened, too, was when I moved to Manhattan in, like, 1982 or something, I discovered when New York City was all second-run theaters and double features, so I could finally see the laundry list of films I'd never been able to see.
00:32:29.000I remember the first time I, like, 8th Street Playhouse was a good example, where the first time I saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre was on a double bill with Jimmy Plays Berkeley.
00:32:39.000I don't know why that was the double bill.
00:33:00.000You know, because with this new movie, Three from Hell, you know, it's playing on about a thousand screens, so it's not like everywhere.
00:33:07.000Like, you can't walk two feet and it's on five screens.
00:33:20.000Before I could drive, I rode my bike for like three hours to see Night of the Living Dead at a midnight screening because I'm like, I'm going to see this no matter what.
00:33:28.000Because if you didn't see it, it was just going to Evaporate.
00:33:30.000That's one of the things I love about people from Canada.
00:33:51.000Did you study or have you watched a lot of really old horror movies?
00:33:57.000Yeah, I mean, I watch, sometimes I feel like I'm searching for things to watch because I try to watch literally everything and I want to own everything.
00:34:06.000So I have like a vault at home that has, you know, 20,000 movies in it.
00:34:12.000Because I never, if somebody mentions something and I don't know what it is, I'm like, fuck.
00:36:08.000And I remember, it was so funny, me and my friend, my roommate back then, we'd always go to 42nd Street to see movies, because it'd be like, Cannibal Holocaust.
00:36:15.000I would just see the post, like, what the fuck is Cannibal Holocaust?
00:36:17.000And you'd go see this Italian cannibal movie, and you'd go, this is literally the most, I cannot believe another human made this movie.
00:36:52.000And even right till I was recording my album before I moved, I remember walking to the studio, which was like maybe 43rd, and there was a dead body lying there, and they had just found him, and they were just starting to put the sheet.
00:37:03.000So I actually didn't see the violin act, but I saw the dead body.
00:39:17.000Yeah, the only thing I remember, right towards my end of being there, there was the Tompkins Square downtown, and that was where homeless people lived.
00:41:39.000My mom and dad and me and my brother had to work and sell food and stuff and I hated it.
00:41:45.000We used to have to dip the candy apples and hand them to people and they've healed now but I had burns all over my hands because the apple candy would be so hot it would drip on my hand and burn my hands.
00:43:40.000I mean, there's certain ways that you know how to cheat them so that when the guy's showing you how to do it, look, it's so easy to throw it like this, but there's a certain way you can throw it.
00:43:55.000That way, you know, the guy spins it and probably gets something with his foot and it never stops on the number that the guy's got all his money on because he let him win a bunch of times or something.
00:44:02.000So when the fire broke out and people started shooting, who was shooting at who?
00:47:01.000Because anything that's sort of like the pre-code stuff is really amazing.
00:47:05.000We watched the beginning of the Spencer Tracy one because it was so strange.
00:47:10.000There's actually, on iTunes you can watch a preview, but it's not really a preview in its old films because they didn't have previews back then.
00:47:44.000I mean, I don't know how much the stories have been exaggerated by publicity departments over the years, but yeah, I mean, it's just incredible.
00:47:50.000And movies like The Unknown or The Unholy Three, like you can get everything now.
00:47:54.000Forever, it's like impossible to see these movies.
00:47:56.000For a long time, I don't do it anymore, but I used to collect vintage movie posters, and that's what I would go after.
00:48:02.000The Lon Chaney silent movie posters, because a lot of times I'd be like, there's only one of these in existence, and I was like, I gotta have it.
00:48:08.000Then I realize I'm spending too much money on things.
00:48:12.000Those old films, you know, when I was trying to show them to my kids, I was just trying to...
00:48:17.000We were going from the 20s to the 30s.
00:48:20.000There's a movie that's the original horror film that I found out was 1920. It's actually two years older than Nosferatu.
00:48:33.000Yeah, we watched a little bit of that, too.
00:48:35.000But I just wanted to show them how weird it is, like the progression of film, particularly scary films, because when my kids were real little, my wife was out of town, and I said, do you guys want to watch a scary movie that's not really scary?
00:51:18.000I always feel like he's like Brando of that time because everyone else is talking like, yeah, well, they're still doing Vodkaville and they're way over the top and they're too much.
00:51:26.000And he's doing this thing where sometimes you almost can't understand him because of his accent.
00:51:32.000Like, wow, he's in this whole weird head trip and they're doing play.
00:52:34.000And a lot of those movies, another good one is The Black Cat, where the same guy was in Dracula's, and he's so swishing over the top, and Lugosi and Karloff together is so intense.
00:56:18.000Somebody went to all the trouble of getting like a Japanese laser and they cut together a Blu-ray of exactly the movie as it was in 1977. What did he do differently in the new version?
00:56:29.000He added that scene with the digital, you know, Jabba the Hutt.
00:56:32.000And just like, there'll be like the Tauntaun that's like, there's just little robots and bullshit everywhere that wasn't there in the original.
00:56:39.000And now, what seems so badass for effects in whatever it was 2000 now looks super bad.
00:56:46.000But the stuff from 77 still, that's why I always want to, like you watch 2001, you go like, how can this still look better than everything?
00:56:52.000These are literally models shot in 1968 or something.
00:56:56.000Well, Kubrick knew the limitations of the visual format.
00:57:01.000And so he shot things in a way where he wasn't willing to compromise the way something looked to show you something.
00:59:17.000Like, you see actors a lot of time, and I feel bad for the actors, because you see actors that you go, I know these guys are great, but they're awful in this movie, because they didn't train to stand in a warehouse that's green and pretend to look at stuff.
01:00:01.000And he said he was always in a constant state of confusion as to what he was reacting to.
01:00:07.000Well, it's hard, too, when you go back and you look at some of them.
01:00:11.000You know what movie got it right that sort of didn't get enough respect in its time, but in time, as time passed, it's become more respected?
01:01:10.000Yeah, like Godzilla, like when you know it's a guy in a rubber suit crushing things, like if you watch the original one when they cut in Raymond Burr, there's something so dark and fucked up about that movie.
01:03:56.000You see brief glimpses of this thing, like really quick, like one frame, one second of it, and then at the end of it, you see it, even when they kill it in the hallway or in the alleyway.
01:04:10.000That, you know, you only see it for a couple seconds when it stares at her, and then they gun it down.
01:04:15.000Yeah, that was like the heyday for effects.
01:04:17.000Everybody I know who does effects, it was like the thing, American Werewolf in London, or the howling was like the thing that made every...
01:04:23.000And Fangoria when that started, and you started really getting articles and stuff, and like Rob Bottin and Rick Baker became like rock stars to the horror nerds.
01:04:30.000Well, the Rick Baker scene when he transforms into the werewolf in the chick's apartment, when he's in the nurse's apartment for the first time, and he's like, I'm fucking burning up!
01:06:27.000I don't want to name all these names of people, but I remember working on one movie that never happened, and whatever was the number one movie from that weekend was exactly the notes I would get for what we were working on.
01:06:54.000It was another movie that never actually happened.
01:06:56.000And you're just like, this is insanity.
01:06:58.000The uncreative executive that wants to be creative, that is a classic story in Hollywood.
01:07:03.000I mean, that's really like a villain in a film about a guy trying to make a movie.
01:07:08.000Yeah, I mean, I always thought, I will give credit for things, like, I remember working with Bob Weinstein, and I always thought, like, the first thing he would say was spot on.
01:07:18.000Like, they love movies, and they have a good sense of movies.
01:07:21.000And he would say something, he'd be like, eh, that...
01:07:25.000What happens between the second act and the third act?
01:07:31.000But like when he went to the next level of the detail of what's wrong with it, it's kind of like someone going like, that joke's not funny.
01:08:44.000And you just have to feel that way because it's like, okay, well, if we're going to run every movie through the PC filter, then in American History X, Edward Norton can't be racist.
01:08:54.000And now we actually don't have a movie.
01:09:12.000And how else are you going to depict these absolutely possible scenarios?
01:09:17.000Like if we're saying that there isn't homicidal maniacs in real life, that's nonsense.
01:09:22.000So if you're allowed to make a depiction of real life, of course it's going to have to include… Racists, murderers, psychopaths, everything.
01:09:32.000And I just think it's, you know, it's art, and it can go anywhere, and it's always, if it's shocking, that's probably good, and it won't be shocking next year, like how...
01:11:01.000So they basically built a team of tough guys, you know, which is kind of like slapshots almost like the same – I'm too sick to play when we get to Philly.
01:11:26.000They literally go into the crowd and they're fighting with fans.
01:12:01.000And then they just, you know, and Bobby Clark at that time was like the most hated man in hockey.
01:12:06.000I don't know if you're a hockey fan at all, but he was just like, another one of those guys who he had, I don't know, I could go on forever for a movie that didn't make, but I kept trying to make it go and go, and it just never, you could just never, and I went to Philadelphia and I was hanging out with the team and I was in their archives and having access to everything.
01:12:23.000I thought, this is going to happen and just couldn't, it wouldn't move.
01:13:17.000Well, the sport still to this day is such a throwback because it's the only sport where you're allowed to fight in the middle of the sport.
01:13:23.000Can you imagine if they had that with basketball?
01:13:25.000Hockey players are the toughest motherfuckers because I always loved hockey.
01:13:29.000I wanted to be a hockey player when I was a little kid, and that was my thing.
01:13:33.000And for a long time, me and my wife, we had season tickets for the Kings, so we'd go to every single game, year after year after year, and we'd always hang out with the team, and they'd come to our house and then party, and we'd always be with them in Vegas.
01:13:43.000And And they're like football players on skates.
01:13:46.000And they're all for these guys from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and they kick their teeth out and they get crazy in the bar.
01:14:44.000This guy's like six foot five and you put them on skates and they're huge and they're all jacked up and big like football players except they're on skates.
01:14:55.000I think it'll be a hard sell for a lot of people.
01:14:57.000But what's not a hard sell is MMA, which is weird, right?
01:15:01.000Because that's like the darling of so many.
01:15:04.000You go to the fights and Matt Damon will be there and Leonardo DiCaprio and everybody wants to be seen there and Kanye's in the crowd.
01:15:11.000It's one of those things where people have decided, like, that's okay.
01:15:14.000Meanwhile, they're smashing their faces open with elbows on the ground.
01:15:49.000Like, Robin Black did a breakdown of it where some guy got a guy in a clinch and hit him with a hip toss and slammed his head onto the concrete.
01:16:16.000That's an asshole move because that's not even fighting.
01:16:20.000And plus, that guy landed with both of their weights, the guy's on his head, he's out cold.
01:16:25.000I mean, that's like serious, serious fucking brain damage.
01:16:28.000Yeah, I remember one time, one particular incident at the Kings game where the guy was out and it went on forever and the vibe was so heavy in the arena because we're like, is he dead?
01:16:38.000Because, you know, when someone hits and they just stop moving in that way, it freaks you out.
01:16:44.000You pull up some Broad Street Bullies fighting from 1974. Yeah, pull up some of that.
01:18:09.000Do you really think that it's just like they just don't want to be connected to this story?
01:18:13.000Well, there's this guy, Ed Snyder, who was the guy who started the whole team.
01:18:17.000And I thought he was the reason it wasn't going to happen.
01:18:22.000And then he passed away because, I mean, he was pretty old.
01:18:24.000And then we started talking to the newer people and it just, I don't know, you're like, how many years of my life am I going to dictate, you know, put into this?
01:18:32.000And someone said to me one time, well, you got further than anyone else ever did.
01:18:35.000I'm like, how many times have they tried to make this movie?
01:18:37.000Why didn't you warn me about that five years ago?
01:18:40.000Is there any other kind of movie that you're interested in other than something like that?
01:18:45.000Well, yeah, there was this other one that I worked on for a long time that never went either.
01:18:48.000I had bought the rights to this book called Raised Eyebrows, which was about the last few years of Groucho Marx's life.
01:19:26.000And through that, he became Groucho's assistant.
01:19:30.000But Groucho's final years are really dark because he kept having strokes and he was ill.
01:19:35.000And he had this woman, Erin Fleming, who was supposed to be his – they kind of played it like it was his girlfriend, but she was sort of the caretaker.
01:19:41.000And it turns into Sunset Boulevard inside his house, you know, and Steve eventually is put in charge of Groucho because it's a really dark story.
01:20:53.000If you get that book, you'll read it in like two seconds.
01:20:55.000It's always sad when some iconic old figure is being taken care of as he's older and you know he's getting fucked over and someone's waiting for him to die so they can get the money.
01:21:05.000Yeah, and she kept kind of doing this thing like, we're going to make your comeback Groucho and we're going to do a TV special.
01:21:10.000It's going to be like you and Frank Sinatra.
01:21:11.000And Groucho's on his third stroke and can't really talk.
01:21:18.000And a couple of the final appearances of him are pretty rough.
01:23:26.000Because they didn't know if they wanted to make another sequel or just call it Halloween but not have Michael Myers.
01:23:31.000There was no preconceived idea and it was my idea to basically try to reboot it, start over with new people playing all the same roles and do that.
01:25:25.000Because, you know, at this stage, that's what I want to do.
01:25:28.000Yeah, the genre is still so attractive, but there's just not a lot of those examples, other than like, well, your films are probably the most prominent currently.
01:25:41.000Well, I mean, if everything's meant, I mean, horror movies are big business, but if they look at it that way, then they start making them...
01:26:55.000And you're just a little kid watching Evil Knievel and listening to Alice Cooper and watching hockey fights, and that determines who you become.
01:27:05.000I think it was a Rolling Stone piece of his body where they showed all of his x-rays and all of the bone breaks and steel rods that were...
01:27:15.000various bones that were screwed together.
01:28:13.000It's a weird thing to be that guy because there was some people in the past that had done some pretty interesting shit and risked their lives, but He was doing it consistently with an engine.
01:28:50.000But they were showing how out of control it was with the people that showed up and were so drunk and the crowds were fighting and crazy just on their own.
01:29:59.000When you talk to him, I've had him on the podcast a couple of times, and I'm like, how are you the guy that's wanting to climb the face of these fucking clowns?
01:30:08.000And some of them, they're not straight up and down.
01:31:12.000They're fat-ass fingers, and he just can shove them into these cracks and hang on in place.
01:31:17.000He was telling me a story about how he was free solo climbing this one mountain when he realized, you know, like, fucking 300 feet up that he forgot his powder.
01:34:30.000Yeah, but you kind of had to because it's like I figured with a topic like that they have such – the fans are – I mean they're like that.
01:34:45.000When they introduced the team in Philly, I think it was 1967, they had a parade to introduce them because hockey was coming to town.
01:34:52.000They said they had a parade with the players and there was like maybe no one there to watch the parade.
01:34:57.000And even one of the guys goes, all I remember is a guy leaning on the lamppost giving me the finger as the parade went by.
01:35:03.000And then when they won the Stanley Cup, they had a parade.
01:35:06.000Two million people showed up in the streets of Philadelphia.
01:35:10.000And the footage of that, if you can find it while you're over there, the entire, you know, like 100,000 people show up for the Lakers and everyone goes crazy.
01:35:16.000Two million people is four Woodstocks.
01:36:25.000And I went up to this gym and this martial arts, this Taekwondo school, and I happened to be going there right when this guy, his name was John Lee, was practicing.
01:36:34.000And he was a light heavyweight champion at the time.
01:38:59.000And I keep making you pull up hockey clips, but like you see some clips and it's like, the way he's skating compared to everyone else, it's like...
01:39:07.000Did everyone else just learn that day?
01:39:10.000Like, he's just skating around him like they don't even exist.
01:39:13.000It's just like, and as a kid, you're like, this is the greatest person alive.
01:39:17.000Well, that's probably also why he blew his knees out, right?
01:39:21.000Because he was just, he was taking these crazy risks and moving so fast.
01:41:16.000How does this guy rise above everybody else?
01:41:19.000They're just special, because I would read about him and be like, you know, they knew he was good when he was a kid.
01:41:23.000They'd be like, come watch this eight-year-old out skating people.
01:41:27.000Like, he was, I think, I forget, I'm not a Bobby Orr expert, I can't remember things, but I remember being scouted at 14, like he was an adult.
01:43:03.000Like, when you figure out how to do it, you've developed this indomitable spirit because you've managed to make your way through the hardest levels of the game to get to the top.
01:43:13.000It's not like you were just faster than everybody.
01:43:18.000Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can't be, like, pro-bullying, because that's weird, but there is something to it, because, like, real life just bullies you anyway.
01:43:29.000There's something to adversity, for sure.
01:43:33.000Like, whenever someone says, like, what's your advice for, like, you know, doing this, like, being in show business or something, I go, if being told by complete strangers that you suck all day long does not bother you in any way, you know, then maybe it's the business for you.
01:45:08.000Maybe it's the insecurity thing that you don't want to tell anybody what you do because you never think it's good enough as opposed to people that are not good enough and they always want to tell you about themselves.
01:45:19.000The wrong people are talking about themselves.
01:45:21.000Well, it's like, it's human psychology, but I think the thing about, like I was saying about Richard Jenny would say that looking at shitty comics is what inspires people to do comedy.
01:45:31.000We learn from all of the psychological disasters, all the people that think, like all the guys that think they're better looking than they are.
01:47:30.000Didn't Lou Reed finish that one for everybody?
01:47:33.000We're still going to give it a go because it's different when you do heroin or just anything.
01:47:37.000I mean, I never know anyone that learns from anyone's mistakes because you can, even if you're in the business and you go, look, Here's my piece of advice.
01:47:44.000Don't spend that money on that because that's the only you're going to see.
01:48:39.000I mean, I can relate to it because, you know, I've done a different sort of bombing in front of people on stage.
01:48:43.000But you can't really learn from other people bombing.
01:48:46.000I think you kind of – that's one of those things you kind of got to do yourself.
01:48:50.000How long does it take – because I'm always fascinated by it.
01:48:53.000How long do you feel it takes – I mean, this is not really a question I guess you can answer, but – to you find your voice and you go, okay, this is me.
01:50:01.000You've got to put more time and focus and effort.
01:50:03.000It's really dependent almost entirely on how much you do that objectively and your focus, like how you can look at it.
01:50:12.000Some people just don't ever want to, no matter what they're doing, whether they're painting or making comic books, they don't want to ever look at it the way other people look at it.
01:50:19.000They want to think that everything they do is amazing.
01:50:59.000That's certainly, but you also could take the sting of criticism and you get it from way more people than you ever have before.
01:51:08.000Like, if you're someone who puts something up on Instagram and you think it's funny and then the people come at you hard, like, whoa!
01:51:13.000Like, you might, you know, if you're a comic and you've been doing stand-up for five years, you're never going to work in front of, not in normal circumstances, you're never going to work in front of 5,000 people.
01:51:22.000But you might get 5,000 people saying you suck if you put something up on Instagram.
01:51:28.000I mean, I'm sure you can tell when somebody's funny almost instantly.
01:51:31.000You can tell, but some people surprise you.
01:51:34.000Like, some people in the beginning, like, wow, this guy's got it rough.
01:51:37.000But then one day, it just clicks, and they just keep working at it.
01:51:41.000But it's a matter of whether or not they're willing to put the building blocks in the right place, and whether or not they're going to admit that the structure that they have currently is not viable.
01:52:03.000You know, your films are your kind of films, whereas, like, there's other people that are doing, like, these really simple, sweet, you know, chick flicks, and that's for them.
01:52:17.000That's what they like, and there's people that find that, and they think it's amazing.
01:53:18.000It's very confusing because you don't know anymore because you're so spun out from too much information.
01:53:24.000I find most of the time, and that's why I'll defend a filmmaker like Ed Wood and why people still talk about Plan 9 from Outer Space because, yes, technically it's inept, but there's something so specific about this guy's bizarro vision We're good to go.
01:53:48.000Far superior made films from back then that nobody gives a shit about.
01:53:51.000It's just like there's something about keeping that weird, bizarro vision alive and not having the committee ruin it.
01:53:59.000Yeah, if enough people know that it's going to be an Ed Wood movie, they're going to go see it.
01:54:04.000There's enough people that find out about it.
01:54:07.000They're like, yeah, this guy's just weird shit, man.
01:54:10.000How did he make a movie more entertaining in six days with like $300 than you made with $200 million?
01:54:17.000Well, especially after The Taste of Time, because if you look back at it now, I mean, people will gather around and watch it, especially after the Johnny Depp movie.
01:57:27.000i don't know but i would always hear these different weird like that weird that there was weird that he did and i don't know if it's true so i don't repeat it but i always wonder because he's so great yeah but to shoot for six weeks or two months and then be replaced it was a weird thing well he's his scenes there's something about him like like pulp fiction he's so authentic like you believe he's the cleaner He's so great as sport and taxi driver.
01:59:37.000I forget what the exact story was, but some ridiculous shit like that where they were, he was, I mean, it was like, it was corrupt long before he got there.
01:59:44.000He just sort of stepped into the mess of it.
01:59:48.000You know, it's, What you're talking about, your early days in New York City, seeing that guy get beat to death by a cop, that was kind of how police had total autonomy.
02:00:00.000They had so much power and authority back then.
02:02:02.000I mean, it doesn't justify any of the stuff we're talking about, but I can't imagine how you couldn't go crazy in that job with what you see every day.
02:02:09.000Most of them, I think, have PTSD, and it's not addressed.
02:03:03.000But their interactions with humans in real life, boy, if people treated them the way they think about them in the movies, it would be a wonderful time to be a cop.
02:03:11.000It's weird, though, because I remember that time period in New York.
02:03:15.000I have a different relationship now when I see cops, but as a...
02:03:21.000As like a bum kid at 19. Like I remember walking down the street and a cop would cruise alongside, roll down the window and they'd start taunting me, saying shit.
02:03:55.000I mean, they're more accountable now than ever before.
02:03:57.000I think that's one of the great things about body cameras and cell phones.
02:04:02.000Cops are, you know, you just can't rock it that way before.
02:04:04.000But I don't think they get enough counseling, and I don't think they get enough money, and I don't think it's a stringent enough screening process.
02:04:12.000I think there's a lot of people that are, you know, they're powerless twats when they're young, and they want, oh, I just wish everybody's gonna fucking pay me.
02:04:20.000If I could be a cop, and they become a cop for all the wrong reasons.
02:04:23.000And then they're the ones that give the good cops a bad name.
02:04:27.000And if you think about the amount of interactions that people have with police, and this is why perspective is so important.
02:04:32.000There are fucking 320 million people in this country, and cops have millions and [...
02:04:41.000But how many of those interactions are positive?
02:04:44.000The vast majority of them are not police brutality.
02:04:48.000The vast majority of them are not shooting someone and planting a weapon on them or planting drugs on them.
02:04:52.000The vast majority of them are cops doing a really hard job and doing their best.