In this episode, I sit down with writer and TV producer Brian Downey to talk about dyslexia, his childhood, and his new book, The Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life . We talk about how he got his start as a writer and producer, and how he became one of the most successful people in the world. We also talk about his early struggles in school, how he overcame them, and the lessons he learned along the way. I hope you enjoy this episode and that it inspires you to do what you need to do to get the most out of your day to day life. Thank you so much to Brian for coming on the show, and for being so open and honest with us about his journey to becoming a writer, producer, actor, and all-around great human being. I hope this episode inspires you and motivates you to go out there and do the most important thing you can do, which is learn and grow. I know I know it can do the same for you. XOXO -Jon Sorrentino Jon Downey is a stand-up comedian, screenwriter, writer, and podcaster. He has been featured on Comedy Central, The Office, and many other media outlets. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, and is a frequent contributor to The Hollywood Reporter. and the New Yorker. New York Magazine. The New York Post. Jon talks about his new novel, A Curious Mind and much more. . Jon also has a podcast, and he is a friend of mine, and I think he's a really good friend of Jon talks a lot of good stuff. Thanks Jon, Jon is a really great guy. Jonathan talks about all kinds of stuff, too! Jon's work is really good, Jon s work is a lot, too. He's a great guy and he's very funny, Jon also does a good job, too, he's funny and he does a great job, so you should listen to him too. I really hope you like it. - Jon s a good guy, Jon's a very good at it too, Jon has a good one, Jon talks it out in this is great, Jon thinks he's also good, he really good and he also does it well, Jon does it so good, good enough that you should check him out, Jon loves him out.
00:01:30.000And I think we're out in Woodland Hills, which was the fancy part of the valley.
00:01:35.000I grew up in the flats of Sherman Oaks, actually as a little kid going to Riverside Drive Elementary School and then later to Nobel Junior High and then later Chatsworth High School.
00:01:46.000And in elementary school, I couldn't read it all, and they didn't classify it as dyslexia.
00:02:33.000So I found that as that went on for quite a while, around the 4th, 5th, 6th grade, I really looked at people.
00:02:42.000I really looked them in the eyes to learn.
00:02:46.000And I found that by looking somebody in the eyes, you could engage – I didn't know this then, but you engage their heart if you're really – Doing it with sincerity and interest.
00:02:58.000You can engage people and move them and evangelize things.
00:03:01.000Get people to play on your team or you play on their team.
00:03:59.000And every time she said, you're going to go all the way, I'm thinking there's like absolutely no empirical evidence I'm going all the way anywhere, you know?
00:04:10.000Except my parents were always arguing, let's put him back.
00:04:13.000The teacher, Ms. Stegg, said, let's put him back.
00:04:15.000So I just wasn't going anywhere, I didn't think.
00:04:18.000So that gave rise to the fact that I thought, the way I can really learn a lot is have these kind of curiosity conversations.
00:04:28.000And once I graduated college, I did this on a weekly basis, and I still do it to this day.
00:06:06.000I started to learn – just create like an exercise, a discipline, where I could – like as in college, I was able to read – I could force myself to start on the left and go to the right.
00:06:21.000Is there a certain mechanism that's causing you to do right to left?
00:06:25.000Like do they know what the cause of this is?
00:06:31.000Probably something neurological and certainly genetic.
00:06:35.000I mean, I have no genetic trace, but it has to be a letter within your genome, I'm having to guess.
00:06:41.000So you learned how to read, you learned how to figure it out, and then you said you have these conversations at least once every two weeks.
00:06:58.000There's a randomness to them because often you'd have to – it's not like getting on your show where everybody wants to be on the show – I say that with a compliment, of course, but I'm begging people because even though – To sit down with you.
00:07:14.000I'm begging them to sit down with me and I'm groveling and I'm calling assistants directly.
00:07:19.000I still – I have three assistants, but I make all of my own phone calls always because – You know why?
00:07:25.000Because I have this discipline of getting to know assistants and going, hey, it's Brian, is Richard around?
00:07:33.000That's so refreshing from a guy who's as successful as you are, because so many times when people get that successful, you insulate yourself with a bunch of other people who do all the calls for you and open all the doors for you, and you just kind of, you stay insulated and more aloof.
00:08:24.000And I thought, I want artists to like me, relate to me, and I always did everything to create a democratic environment because not that I was such a cool guy, but more like you just get so much more out of a creative person by not intimidating them.
00:08:59.000And I wasn't making these really hardcore action movies.
00:09:03.000I was doing movies that were – they're designed to ignite emotion and feeling.
00:09:10.000In fact, even when I do public speaking, I say, oh, Brian Graves or whatever they might say, but I go – I always say I'm in the feelings business.
00:09:20.000I'm just a – I'm in the feelings business because I feel like that's what we want out of a cinematic experience for me, for the movies I'm interested in doing or TV shows.
00:09:36.000Because I grew up loving those movies of the 70s and I'm captivated by things that move me emotionally and elevate me emotionally.
00:09:47.000So you make these phone calls and you arrange these conversations.
00:09:51.000So you arrange basically a podcast that no one's listening to.
00:11:41.000And I felt like I could do this with many Nobel laureates, with Sheldon Glasgow, who converted the four forces of nature to three.
00:11:52.000And I brought his name up because, well, first of all, I knew that your show, you could do whatever you want.
00:12:00.000And with Sheldon Glasgow, it's like I usually do an hour or two hours, but I hung out with this guy, shut up my whole day down for six hours.
00:12:25.000To get them to say yes or to be in the same city or be willing to say yes and me fly to New York or some other place.
00:12:32.000It sounds like you have figured out the benefit that I've experienced from having podcasts and having these kind of conversations, one-on-one conversations, but you did it Just for your own personal edification.
00:12:49.000I have gotten more out of talking to people like this, and it made me grow more as a person and made me understand more about communication and how to talk to people than anything I've ever done in my whole life.
00:13:51.000But because of this thing called a podcast, because I can share it with all the other people that are listening, I've had this chance to have these kind of conversations.
00:14:00.000And it sounds like you've done the same thing, but without an audience.
00:14:06.000It's a brilliant way that you figured out that this is a great way to expand your own understanding of people by being one-on-one with these brilliant folks.
00:14:46.000And I've even found that I've learned a lot from Uber drivers and baristas and stuff where I But I do reach out to meet people that have really committed to a really intense journey and often have triumphed in it.
00:16:49.000Jay-Z asked me because I knew Jay-Z because he was very obsessed with wanting to do the soundtrack to a movie called American Gangster, which I produced.
00:18:42.000He says things that are very insightful.
00:18:47.000So he wanted to do – after that, we got to know each other and then he said, hey, I'm going to do a festival, a festival with 22 different artists and all different types.
00:19:03.000And it's going to be in Love Park and it's called – we're calling it Made in America.
00:20:38.000In the last 10 years, I've recorded some.
00:20:41.000And sometimes I do FaceTimes, and they allow me to, like Admiral William McRaven, who I really wanted to meet, you know, the Navy SEAL that created SEAL Team 6 and just recently sort of – doesn't speak out publicly,
00:20:58.000but had a point of view about the president and the whole Oval Office and stuff like that.
00:23:05.000And those are rare moments where you're not distracted.
00:23:08.000Where you could just talk about things, you have ideas, and someone brings something up and you consider it, and then you add your own thing and they consider that, and then you just go back and forth and you get a better understanding of each other.
00:23:27.000I mean, see, we're both sounds like open-minded to – as long as we're kind of disrupting our comfort zone, I think, and being open-minded to that, you're then being open-minded to, like, the value of human error.
00:23:44.000Because sometimes some of the – it's not exactly human error, but human error for sure, but it's often the thing you failed at or the ugly thing that happened that sticks in your head and makes a difference in your life,
00:24:29.000Because sometimes you think that's as far as – even if you feel like you've accrued all the facts, you've been able – sometimes you don't know that there's that – going back to Josh, there's this extra level of excellence that exists there.
00:24:44.000There's still more room to go and you realize, oh, I could fill in those inches.
00:25:35.000But there's actually a lot of mental stress and strength that's involved in discipline that you need to have in order to get your body into a position where it can perform like Josh's can on the mats.
00:25:51.000It's very, very hard mentally to do that because you have to have all these battles where you want to quit, you want to give up early, you want to take a break, you want to rest, you don't want to go today, but you know you should.
00:26:04.000You know, all those things must be overcome in order to achieve the level of excellence that he's achieved.
00:26:09.000Yeah, and probably because you've done this yourself, so you know what that feels like when you said you don't want to get exhausted or get tired.
00:26:19.000That probably takes a tremendous amount of focus because you get exhausted when you're nervous, right?
00:26:25.000Because your heart beats faster, you breathe less air, blah, blah, blah.
00:27:36.000You get very, very tired, and you really should be...
00:27:39.000The more conditioned you are physically, like the more strength and conditioning routines you go through, the more your body is in shape, the more you can perform.
00:27:50.000Racing, right, with a race car, but you can actually add horsepower to the race car through discipline, and you can add better tires, and you can add a more supple suspension through thought and activity.
00:28:29.000Yeah, and through repetitive drills, you actually can hone your neuromuscular system to the point where these grooves are cut, so you know exactly how to turn and how to move when you're moving, and you're doing jujitsu,
00:28:45.000and everything sort of goes and flows automatically, and that requires extreme amounts of discipline.
00:30:40.000She had a little nerve damage which – honestly, she had a little nerve damage that is now in her foot.
00:30:52.000So periodically – Her foot will become completely black and blue.
00:30:58.000But she'll get through it because she's really strong mentally.
00:31:06.000She wasn't always that way, but my wife and I have sort of helped her with tough love, like, you can do it, you know, that kind of a stuff.
00:31:16.000um because she's she's uh she's a therapist she's a you know she's a psycho her name is sage grazer on the joe rogan show i mean everyone loves their kids right sure um and so that's so that's what she does she's an actual therapist with with you know like patients well i'm glad to hear that she recovered from that i've never heard of anybody having a stroke from that before that must be terrifying Yeah,
00:32:49.000Okay, so I really thought this guy, he's one of the most well-known and most accomplished police chiefs in America.
00:32:59.000I think there were three of them, and he was one of the three in a century.
00:33:05.000And then Daryl Gates, I knew, was one of the fundamental curator of SWAT. Which was bringing paramilitary tactics to the LA Police Department.
00:33:18.000He started out as a bright-eyed, strong-minded, clean-cut guy working for the police department.
00:33:25.000And because he was sharp, he was the driver to the police chief, which was Chief Parker.
00:33:33.000And then Chief Parker, L.A., there was a riot called the Watts Riot.
00:33:39.000Not the L.A. riots, but the Watts Riot.
00:33:42.000And the police went in, and they were not qualified to be in that situation.
00:33:47.000And they kind of failed at – they felt they failed at it.
00:33:53.000And Daryl Gates was like by the chief's side the entire time.
00:33:57.000And he kind of vowed to himself, I'm not going to let that happen again.
00:34:02.000And when he had the opportunity, because he became later police chief, not much later, became police chief of Los Angeles Police Department, he instituted SWAT and other, you know, paramilitary tactics and a mind discipline that was pretty,
00:34:19.000you know, was like creating, you know, like martial law, people would argue.
00:34:25.000And then we went – that kind of produced an environment that I think many think and I think myself helped – an environment that caused the LA riots because there was a lot of inequity, I think,
00:35:01.000I mean, the reaction, first of all, the reaction to the video, the video was horrible, watching Rodney King getting beaten like that.
00:35:09.000Then you also heard that they had been on a high-speed pursuit.
00:35:14.000And that there was more to that video.
00:35:17.000Like that was the end of their altercation.
00:35:20.000Apparently there's much more physical altercation before that video.
00:35:23.000And maybe if someone saw the full thing, they would understand, well, okay, you're dealing with a wild person who's on PCP and these cops are doing everything they can to detain him.
00:35:30.000But there's a distrust of the police in these communities in the first place because they had seen so much police brutality.
00:35:37.000So that reaction, that riot, was not just because of that one situation.
00:35:43.000It was an accumulation of different events and different interactions that people had had with abusive police officers.
00:36:19.000Ironically, the day of my meeting with him was the day of the L.A. riots.
00:36:25.000So I thought, and it already happened, 2,000 buildings on fire and everything, and my office gets a phone call from Daryl Gates' office confirming my meeting with him.
00:38:00.000I couldn't eat my food, because it was...
00:38:02.000I was so shocked by the whole thing that he had so much, he was impervious to everything that was going down and the city council was on his TV and on the TV out there and, you know, guys, police officers were running and go, Chief, you're on TV right now!
00:38:18.000And they're yelling and he goes, he says to me and to them, ah, this is nothing, they'll never get me out of here.
00:38:54.000So you just have lunch and just pick his brain and talk to him?
00:38:57.000Yeah, just have lunch and ask questions and try to not be nervous or upset about what's going on in the environment and the TVs flashing archival footage that they'd shot days before or the day of and buildings on fire and the Korean shop,
00:39:14.000market, somebody getting killed and all that stuff they were showing on television.
00:39:19.000And he was just kind of matter of fact.
00:39:32.000So anyway, I did think that my kids should know about all this stuff.
00:39:37.000And actually, Charlie Rose, of all people, said, you should write a book.
00:39:41.000And so it got on my mind and I mentioned it to a couple people and they said, oh yeah, you should write a book.
00:39:47.000And so then I thought, okay, I'll write a book because I'm going to write notes on this anyway, these 35 years for my kids so that when I pass, they'll know this was a very big part of my life, beyond my career, but my life.
00:40:00.000And so that's what the first book is about.
00:40:02.000It synthesizes many of the important one-on-one conversations I had over the 30 years.
00:40:08.000And then it connects the synthesis of those stories to narrative storytelling.
00:40:14.000For example, in 1984, I met Sting, you know, the lead singer of The Police.
00:40:21.000Because I thought, wow, he'd be fascinating to meet because he was like a school teacher in England, and now he's like a rock star?
00:40:27.000I just thought that's kind of an interesting transition, like one of the biggest rock stars.
00:40:56.000She was held in a Chilean prison and tortured every single day of her life for 18 months.
00:41:03.000And she went on the Amnesty tour only for a few days as evidence of somebody that can survive, you know, like she was hopeful, you know, still.
00:41:11.000Like most people don't survive torture either from the torture itself or they – sadly, they commit suicide because there's just so much trauma, so much PTSD. So it's just – so she survives.
00:41:23.000I meet her and I say, how do you survive?
00:41:26.000And she tells me that while she's being, she creates a story that she's living in the entire time.
00:41:33.000So there's reality, and then there's an alternate reality.
00:41:36.000The alternate reality is the story that she creates, that she can live in, that alleviates some of the pain and the unpredictable pain of torture.
00:41:46.000So now, that's pretty fascinating to me, and I really sat with those insights.
00:41:55.000Now, many things happened after that that I was able to use that.
00:41:59.000Like I became, when I was stuck on A Beautiful Mind because it wasn't cinematic, I thought, well, how can I make it cinematic?
00:42:19.000So in the movie A Beautiful Mind, to make it really compelling, We started in an alternate reality and made it a thriller and realized, oh my god, there's this epiphany and you realize that was not even reality, right?
00:42:34.000And that's what blew people's minds and that's why the movie kind of worked because it drew you in so deeply into this character that it became like this subjective experience that every audience, every audience member could feel like the pain of that and the insanity of what that must feel like.
00:42:55.000When you say make it cinematic, what do you mean by that exactly?
00:43:02.000Well, Ron and I realized that Ron Howard, who directed it, won an Oscar, and we realized that in order to make it really interesting, you have to see – you have to understand the mind of a schizophrenic.
00:43:19.000So, therefore, you have to see somebody's mind.
00:43:22.000How do you see somebody's mind other than just graphically, you know, or, you know, like through graphic design?
00:43:29.000And we thought that's not very interesting, you know, like the insertion of graphic design or voiceover narration, that makes it kind of a documentary.
00:43:36.000So, but we thought, like, but if you could have an entire story Kind of with the military and paranoia and all that.
00:43:45.000That's exactly one of the dimensions or realities of a schizophrenic's mind.
00:43:51.000So you get to film it with other actors and other people.
00:43:55.000And that's why I mean when I say cinematic.
00:43:59.000So basically when you're seeing the 25 minutes of living in this alternate reality with Ed Harris and all that stuff, craziness...
00:44:09.000It blows your mind as an audience and then you reflect later like, wow, that wasn't even real and wow, is that guy really going to come back?
00:44:17.000You make it seamlessly cinematic with the rest of the narrative of him trying to cope with schizophrenia itself.
00:44:26.000It becomes the merging of an alternate reality and actual reality.
00:44:32.000And the actual reality is when he's – you watch him in that level of pain and just trying to survive, like cope with meds and the wife.
00:44:42.000And then we found the way to make it – You know, kind of worked triumphantly because it was love that was the most powerful force.
00:44:52.000It was that one person decided to stay with this other one person.
00:44:56.000The wife, Alicia, stayed with John Nash.
00:44:59.000That's so interesting that you pulled that from that woman's experience.
00:45:13.000So I found that all of these insights that we're referring to, the ones that you have when you're just getting off stage and you realize, wow, I could talk to my buddies or this new guy for a minute.
00:45:24.000Those random moments that you get to talk to somebody can often produce a story or an insight, an emotional insight that you can transport to something else.
00:45:37.000I found that all these conversations that I was having...
00:45:41.000We're like, kind of like I see these stars behind you.
00:45:44.000They were like stars or a constellation of dots, you know, and that you just have faith that they somehow inform you and make you better and smarter and that they connect someday.
00:45:56.000Well, it's so insightful that you look at these conversations that way.
00:45:59.000Because, I mean, I really have felt that effect on me personally over the years doing this.
00:46:04.000But the fact that you've like sought it out just as an education, just as something that expands you.
00:46:10.000Because we really are a combination or an accumulation of all of our experiences.
00:46:16.000And the more experiences you can have, even if it doesn't feel tangible in that moment, it broadens your perspective.
00:46:38.000Kill Tony is a great podcast that my friend Brian Redman and Tony Hinchcliffe do.
00:46:44.000And this podcast involves comedians going up and doing one minute of material in front of these professional comics.
00:46:54.000And the professional comics either say, hey, that was great, or they shit all over it, or everybody makes fun, there's a band, there's a bunch of chaos, and it's all done in front of a live crowd.
00:47:03.000And Vanessa was on it for quite a while.
00:47:30.000And I think I can tell, and you tell me if I'm wrong, that sometimes you don't know all the answers to that story.
00:47:36.000And I see that you're grabbing things that lived in – that you – experiences or insights that lived in the environment that you have or had.
00:47:47.000Because I watched – A couple of scenes very closely, and I know you didn't have it figured out, and you got the bigger laugh from the thing that you pulled from some place, I thought.
00:48:04.000There's a little bit of recreating that when you're doing that in stand-up, but...
00:48:09.000Oftentimes, it's a combination of all those things.
00:48:12.000It's a combination of actually improvising in the moment and figuring it out in the moment and then figuring it out in the moment and recreating it again and recreating it again the same way you did before.
00:48:23.000But being in the moment and being able to bring it into someone's attention...
00:48:28.000As if you're recreating it or give them the feeling that it's being recreated so that they can experience it.
00:49:28.000And so any great comic, whether it's Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle or whoever it is, when they're on stage and they're killing, you are allowing them to think for you.
00:49:40.000So they're trying to take you on an organic journey of understanding whatever the fuck they're talking about and explaining it to you in a way that's going to resonate.
00:49:49.000Like, this is how you would notice it.
00:49:55.000And then that kind of stuff is like in that moment, it has to feel like you're really realizing that somebody brought a fucking baby to a gun range or whatever it is, whatever you're joking around about.
00:56:27.000So apparently she worked at our house for like almost three months.
00:56:33.000And my wife, she says to my wife, I really like Brian a lot.
00:56:38.000And my wife said, well, have you talked to him much?
00:56:40.000She said, well, I haven't talked to him very much, but every time he speaks to me, He always looks me directly in my eyes and it makes me feel like a human being.
00:56:51.000And I thought of the simplicity of that.
00:57:16.000And then I thought, that's pretty powerful.
00:57:19.000I mean, this is only like two years ago.
00:57:21.000And then I retrofitted back all of those conversations I was alluding to, like 35 years of every week a curiosity conversation.
00:57:30.000And I thought, well, the only reason these conversations were good is I must have been really looking at these people in the eyes and we were really dialed in.
00:57:40.000Otherwise, they wouldn't share these private things or these insights.
00:57:44.000They wouldn't share their heart with me.
00:57:47.000If they didn't feel I was present with them.
00:57:51.000And so that became kind of the thesis of this book and that's why it's just called Face to Face the Art of Human Connection.
00:57:59.000Because then I set all of this I thought to myself, we're living right now in the loneliest time in our generation.
00:58:13.000All statistics point, millennials will admit that One quarter of them will admit that they're incredibly lonely, like where they can't almost cope with their loneliness.
00:59:16.000And when you feel people's feelings, you try not to hurt their feelings.
00:59:20.000Yeah, when you're actually in the presence of them instead of digitally.
00:59:25.000And when you feel people's feelings and you meet them and demystify whatever you think you heard about them, you tend to like them more for the most part and you tend to love as opposed to have war.
00:59:38.000So it really is important in our lives from multiple levels, like just looking at people and going out of your way to connect.
01:00:03.000But it's like, I learn off of it every day because I'm not perfect, but I make sure that when I get into elevators, I... I practice what I preach.
01:02:21.000The people that, like, what you've done, you've practiced this idea of sitting down and talking to people on a regular basis, looking them in the eye and having meaningful conversations.
01:04:37.000Adderall is legal speed prescribed by a doctor.
01:04:40.000If you went to a doctor right now, if you went to the right doctor and said, I just feel listless, I'm having a hard time connecting, I'm having a hard time getting motivated...
01:06:21.000Extremely common with very productive people, very ambitious people, business people, people that do a lot of meetings, people that work 12 hours a day, 13 hours a day.
01:07:05.000I've had people talk about it with a little bit of shame that they would like to not be on it, but they're on it because it helps them be productive and they've got to do what they've got to do.
01:07:12.000But the real revelation was I have a friend who's a journalist and he was talking to me about how many journalists are on it.
01:11:33.000It highlights all the flaws that I find in my own personality, in my own life, whatever things I've done that I'm not proud of or that I think are mistakes.
01:11:44.000It highlights them, and it makes me think more diligently.
01:15:10.000So what the Whoopstrap does is it monitors your sleep, but it also measures heart rate variability, so it tells you whether you're tired or not.
01:15:22.000So if you've had a hard workout and then you're still a little beat down the next day, it'll show you on the application.
01:15:29.000Your heart rate is responding to the fact that you had an extremely stressful, physically stressful day.
01:15:34.000So good stresses and bad stresses, exercise and lack of sleep, all those things are monitored and it gives you like pretty detailed analytics.
01:15:41.000So we're all wearing these straps and we're doing these 10 different classes like we've done tactical gun classes and yoga classes and boxing classes.
01:15:50.000And the whole idea about the month is sort of just helping yourself, like doing things that are good for you.
01:16:47.000And then the next year we had a crazy fitness challenge.
01:16:49.000That got a little out of hand, so we decided not to compete with each other anymore because we were literally going five, six, seven hours a day of working out.
01:20:13.000Well, the motivation for a lot of it was our friend Bert, who drinks way too much.
01:20:18.000And he's calmed down quite a bit, apparently, because of...
01:20:21.000Doing that first podcast where we did go sober for the whole month because we didn't think he could do it.
01:20:26.000Because even during the weight loss challenge, Tom, who won the weight loss challenge, Tom didn't drink anything but water the entire month and worked out like crazy and lost a ton of weight.
01:20:35.000Bert kept drinking the entire month and also worked out like crazy and tried to lose weight.
01:20:52.000Now there's this new, I guess, nutritional exercise or weight loss, I don't want to only call it that, of like, what is it, 16 hours, I don't know, is it 10 hours on, 10 hours off?
01:21:25.000It's about losing weight, but it's also about feeling better and raising your ketone levels, which is one thing that does happen when you go long periods of time and you get your body accustomed to this period of time where you're not eating.
01:21:40.000You know, this timed eating or whatever they call it.
01:22:24.000See, my goal, because I don't know if I could – I'm sure you could prove me wrong, but I'm not sure I could do any of those really strict disciplines of any type almost.
01:22:35.000So I've always thought if I do everything with moderation – I might not have to do one of these things that I might find to be too hard.
01:24:17.000And you write it down on schedule, and you decide, all the month of November, I'm going to work out one hour a day, six days a week, period.
01:29:36.000It's true, it does work on certain people, but it makes people feel bad, and some people think you should protect people from feeling bad, whereas other people think you should tell them that they're fat so they feel bad, so they act on it.
01:33:06.000But I mean, if things like CRISPR and genetic manipulation and things they're working on now, that's probably one of the first things they're going to work on.
01:36:08.000And then pretty soon, you know, I did the rope that had a counter on it with those plastic beads that gives a little weight and a nylon cord.
01:41:36.000Physically, well, okay, so I get in there and I do an elliptical, you know, for me, I do it as high, as hard as you could possibly do it for 20 minutes.
01:41:45.000So it gets everything kind of going and I tore my rotary cuff so it lubes that up a little bit and I have some injuries.
01:43:16.000But there's a lot of different treatments that they can do now for soft tissue tears, things like rotator cuffs and muscle tears and things along those lines.
01:45:13.000Sometimes I go, I have to leave a few minutes early, but like 5 to 9 or 3 minutes to 9. So you run right from the gym straight over to tennis, so no missing time at all?
01:46:16.000Which is the real problem with a lot of folks.
01:46:18.000Sometimes things are fulfilling initially, but then they lose their luster.
01:46:22.000But for you, as many movies as you made, as long as you've been in the game, that you're still getting up at 5 in the morning, pumped up, excited for the day.
01:46:30.000Not feeling like I have to, I just want to.
01:48:44.000And sometimes we get Bob Roth on the phone because he lives in New York and we'll just do it in the backyard and we'll have him on speaker and we'll...
01:48:52.000He'll talk through the framework of it, and then he's quiet and we're quiet and we meditate.
01:50:55.000The Float Labs, the most advanced ones, and they have a place in Westwood and in Venice.
01:50:59.000They have a place where you can go and rent it for an hour.
01:51:02.000But the best thing that I found was inside the tank was to just concentrate on breathing.
01:51:12.000Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, and in through the nose and out through the mouth.
01:51:17.000And that's all I would concentrate on is breathing in and breathing out, breathing in and breathing out.
01:51:21.000And then I would kind of go into this trance when I was inside the tank.
01:51:24.000And so then, when I didn't have access to the tank, I started utilizing that outside of the tank.
01:51:31.000If something's bothering me, if I've got something that...
01:51:34.000Because I'm an obsessive person, so I get a thought in my head about something I'm working on or something I'm trying to fix, and I just start rolling over in my head to the point where I can't get it away.
01:51:44.000So then the way I can cleanse that and put my brain back on a good cycle is to just concentrate on breathing.
01:51:51.000So I use the same method that I would use inside the tank, and I use it outside the tank.
01:51:57.000But I want to try TM. I'm gonna try to do it this month while we're doing these different classes this month.
01:52:27.000But he made – Without saying take it seriously, he describes it in a way that I understood what it was, and he has some authority in him that made me take it seriously, whereas the other times I didn't take it quite as seriously.
01:52:46.000It's kind of important who introduces it to you, I think.
01:52:52.000Yeah, I mean, it's like what you were talking about earlier about people that are really enthusiastic about something and really committed and disciplined about it, that it's very contagious.
01:53:10.000If they're really into TM, you'll get a feeling and then you'll be able to recreate at least some of that when you do it on your own, I'd imagine.
01:53:52.000That's interesting for someone who produces a lot of fiction.
01:53:55.000Well, what I like is, yes, that's right.
01:53:58.000What I've found in my life, for me, the foundational creative ingredients to a creative equation, like making a movie or a TV show or painting,
01:54:17.000So I have found that I'm dreamy enough myself, you know, like I – you know, and I've read, of course, all Joseph Campbell stuff, so I kind of understand formats of myths and the herewith a thousand faces and – And I particularly like underdog stories.
01:54:35.000There's so many types of underdog stories that it's – so anyway, so I have that basic knowledge.
01:54:42.000And then when I learn a subject, let's say I learn the subject of architecture or physics or a little bit of chemistry or whatever the – it's all like from an archaeological perspective because it's all new to me.
01:54:55.000So I found, for example, when I produced the movie 8 Mile, which is about hip-hop, right?
01:55:55.000See, if I pick the video guy that thinks he knows everything about hip-hop, then all the little nuances that are new to the audience's eyes would have never been shot because he'd think, oh, everybody knows that stuff.
01:56:12.000And so sometimes authority on top of authority doesn't work out well.
01:56:17.000And I found that And my career, all I did was write and produce comedies for the first 17 years of my movie career, starting with Night Shift and then Splash and Parenthood and Nutty Professor and Liar Liar and a lot of comedies,
01:56:36.000a lot of 5 Eddie Murphy things, Jim Carrey three times.
01:56:41.000And what I found was Jewish writers...
01:56:49.000In the Jewish words, they go, Jew writers, goyim actor.
01:56:54.000And goyim is like when Jewish people say, it's the Christian, you know, the Catholic guy.
01:56:59.000It's always – I made eight movies, I think, with Tom Hanks, but he's like the Gary Cooper or he's the Christian guy with the Jewish writers.
01:57:45.000You can't really, but I could name, I mean, Judd Apatow, talented Jewish writer, director, usually he's got these guys that are like, they're just not that.
01:57:58.000They're Catholic Christian guys, you know, like girls.
01:58:03.000I mean, who's the chicken train wreck?
01:58:37.000But there was a point like at the end of these 17 years of like, you know, there's a point where I definitely made a lot of, you know, did well financially at making these movies and I enjoy it because when you're around comedy, you're I'm happy.
02:00:55.000Now, this other unit that you, you know, if the movie's broken down into two units, the one is the The masterpiece we're calling of the movie itself.
02:01:06.000And then what are the themes that are giving life to this movie?