Walter Mosley is an actor, comedian, writer, podcaster, and podcaster. In this episode, Walter talks about the death of his father, how it changed his life, and how he became the person he is today. He also talks about why it s important to chase your dreams no matter how big or small, and why you should chase them no matter what you want them to be. Walter Mosley's story is a great one, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast, and thank you for being a part of this journey with me. I m so grateful to have had the opportunity to do this with all of you. I hope this episode inspires you in your day to day life and inspires you to keep chasing your dreams and chasing your goals. You are not alone in your dreams, and we all have the power to achieve them! XOXO, Kevin McLeod <3 -Kevin McLeod ( ) - . ( ) ( ( . . ( ) ( . ) ( ). ( ), ( , & . . . ( . ) ( ) is a standup comedian, actor, producer, and host of the show and is one of the funniest people I've ever met. (). is a friend of mine, and a great human being. I really enjoyed making this episode and I think it was a lot of fun to make you feel like you re a little bit more grounded than you can get a little more grounded in your own way than you think you know what you re going to get a chance to feel like that way. ) Thank you for letting me know that you re not alone, I hope y'all enjoy the ride! - Thank you, Kevin, I really appreciate the support you're going to have a good day. I love ya'll, bye, bye. -Kev - Kevin :D - Love ya, Kevin - P. ( ) - - I love you, Kristy ( ) . - JUICYO ( ) <3 ( ) :D ( :D) - JK ( ) & JUICE ( , ) - JAY ( ) , , JT ( ) and JEAN JARRELL ( )
00:00:00.000My brother just has this expression where he just kind of gives me the slow nod, which is, he's gone.
00:00:05.000You know, my father was dead, and I went in and I saw him on a gurney and shit, and it was so strange.
00:00:10.000And I go outside, and I was a smoker, like a cigarette smoker in those days.
00:00:13.000I always go to have a cigarette, and Donald comes out, and I was like, oh, this is a shock, and whatever, you know, we were upset and stuff.
00:00:26.000And Donald tells me the story of, like, Dad woke up and had this, like, big reaction, like, just like, I'm hot, I'm hot, and he was throwing the sheets off, and Mom freaked out.
00:00:35.000She's like, what's the matter, what's the matter?
00:00:36.000She told Donald, call the ambulance, call the hospital, and he was gone within seconds.
00:01:01.000And I was like, I mean, is that a figure of speech?
00:01:04.000And he goes, no, he literally, he died screaming.
00:01:07.000And you could see my brother was haunted by it.
00:01:10.000And my father wasn't like a, I wouldn't say he was a butch man or a strong man, but he wasn't a soft man by the stretch of the imagination.
00:01:17.000And I never heard him get real loud or anything like that.
00:01:20.000And the notion of my father dying screaming It changed my life because I was like, even a good man in this world, you play the game, you play it straight, you play it by the rules, you do everything you're supposed to, you're going to die screaming.
00:01:32.000And at that point, I was like, there's no point in not trying to accomplish every stupid fucking dream I've got.
00:01:39.000Even if it's dumb shit like fucking, you know, oh my god, I've always wanted to collect this many fucking Wayne Gretzky cards in one fucking binder.
00:01:46.000Or if it's like, I want to make a movie.
00:01:48.000Or if it's like, I want to put on a podcast.
00:04:48.000So these cats, even when the movies would take off, or I was doing this one or this one, they were never like, oh my god, the fucking, we had no idea you were hidden genius.
00:04:58.000They remained the same exact individuals.
00:04:59.000Did they ever tell you I didn't like that one?
00:05:06.000And they'll let you, like, I brought them on to Mallrats to come work on the movie and stuff, and they made it, they were in it in a few scenes, but they worked beyond the scenes.
00:05:14.000They quit after about two weeks because they're just like, I don't want to do this.
00:05:34.000What makes you think that without them, you wouldn't be you, though?
00:05:37.000What makes you think that without them, you wouldn't have pulled yourself to the ground?
00:05:40.000I wouldn't have had that sense of humor.
00:05:42.000I think my sense of humor largely came from them, largely came from my friend, Brian Johnson and Walter also kind of shaped it to some degree.
00:05:50.000I was funny, like, don't get me wrong, in high school I write sketches for the comedy shows and shit like that.
00:05:56.000But it was their sensibility, married to whatever sensibility I had as one of three kids raised Catholic in Highlands, New Jersey, that clicked.
00:06:07.000That, like, kind of made me the version of me you know.
00:06:10.000The person that you would want to meet or the person like that was different It was like Kev, 18 years old, 17, 18, before he started hanging out with Brian and Walter.
00:06:20.000Those were the cats that kind of helped me define who I was.
00:06:23.000And if you look at Clerks, that movie is, I'm kind of Dante, and my friend Brian Johnson is meant to be Randall, the guy that I most wanted to be.
00:07:31.000I came out, me and my girlfriend, around 1130, and we were walking out the front, and we parked.
00:07:36.000So I'm opening the door for her to get in.
00:07:37.000Out of nowhere, this big, tall, black guy, about 6'2", wearing a fake gray beard, like a Santa Claus beard, that was, like, tied on with white strings and a hat and this big hobo jacket, shoves a gun to my chest, and was like, give me your fucking wallet.
00:08:31.000And then he goes, get in the car, lay on your fucking stomach.
00:08:34.000And he's shoving the gun in my back while I'm laying in the car.
00:08:36.000And I'm thinking like, all right, this is like execution style.
00:08:39.000Like he's telling me to, you know, get in there.
00:08:40.000And then suddenly he goes, lay down to my girlfriend.
00:08:43.000And she laid down on her back because she was just so freaked out.
00:08:46.000And he said, I said lay on your fucking stomach, bitch!
00:08:49.000And he's like just shoving a gun in her back.
00:08:51.000And then finally we're just like both laying there.
00:08:53.000And then he slams the door and then just takes off.
00:08:56.000And so now, the other day I was at the grocery store, and I saw a black guy that was tall, and now I'm freaking out.
00:09:01.000If it was a redhead that robbed me, it would have been the same way.
00:09:04.000But now I see these guys, and I'm becoming a racist from the 50s now, where I'm walking around like, what's he doing on my side of the store?
00:09:24.000I didn't think about anything except my girlfriend the whole time.
00:09:27.000Hearing him yell at her, you think that you're just going to look around and look for a weapon or something like that, but when you're in that big of a shock, you're just like, Defenseless.
00:09:37.000I'm so not the butch dude that's like, where's a weapon?
00:10:38.000And three months before that, or six months before that, I was in Fuddruckers in Burbank, and some guy's stealing this girl's purse and running out the door, and I'm chasing him.
00:15:47.000The dude literally tells a story where him and his troop are out in the fucking woods or something like that.
00:15:54.000And there's a kid sleeping next to him in a tent.
00:15:58.000And this polar bear comes fucking through the tent.
00:16:00.000The kid woke up to, like, wailing and gnashing of teeth and the fucking thing growling, and blood all over its face.
00:16:06.000And the thing bit him on the head, had his head in its mouth.
00:16:11.000A polar bear had this kid's head in his mouth, and he said...
00:16:15.000It bit so hard, they cracked his fucking skull.
00:16:17.000And he heard it crack in his head, and what he also heard in his head, louder than life, sense-around style from the 70s, was growling, because its fucking mouth was over his ear, dude.
00:16:32.000And he starts punching this fucking beast in the head.
00:16:35.000Punching it in the head real hard and shit.
00:16:38.000And finally it lets go enough for him to make a move or something like that.
00:17:29.000Maybe it's just I'm reading more about it.
00:17:30.000Well, we have more access to information.
00:17:32.000I do know that they said with this Yellowstone attack that the last time there had been a death from bears in Yellowstones, it was in the 80s.
00:18:32.000Do your balls ever fall asleep from sitting too much?
00:18:34.000Lately, I think I've been sitting a certain way where it squeezes the blood pressure off of one of my balls and then it feels like my whole crotch is numb.
00:18:42.000That's the inevitable progression to you growing a vagina.
00:20:55.000I remember, like, I'd take a shit, and I'm trying to remember what age this stopped, but I'd be like, I'm done, and somebody would get up, you'd stand up, and they'd wipe your ass for you, and I think I did that until I was, like, seven, which is weird.
00:21:08.000Yeah, but it was pretty good, like, in terms of, like, I didn't really have to figure out how to fucking wipe my own shit until that point.
00:21:15.000And then you had to train yourself to do it from sitting down.
00:21:18.000But I think it's an ever perfected, or an ever perfecting art form, like the art of the wipe.
00:21:23.000It's not, you know, there's no one true measure, and I think it develops as you get older, you learn better technique and stuff.
00:21:35.000Because I've got a lot of back fat, rather than reach around, I'll lean forward and reach through my legs, so I'm wiping almost like my man puss.
00:21:45.000But I clear the balls so it doesn't hit my balls or anything like that.
00:23:25.000It was just an invasion by this plant species living off my poop.
00:23:29.000And it was all clogged up with those little fucking flushable wipes.
00:23:34.000Those flushable wipes don't go anywhere.
00:23:35.000You know how the flushable wipe comes in that little treasure chest and you can just get refills and throw it in there?
00:23:41.000Don't do that for that long because if you look at the taint or the button of the thing, sometimes if you get a second wipe, you might have a little poo on your hand and that builds up.
00:23:51.000If you smell that, it smells like an asshole.
00:25:22.000I've never been punched in the face or choked at or anything fucking cool, but this was the most pain I think I've ever felt in my entire life.
00:30:44.000I go home and it was like somebody shoving their fingernail into your asshole from the inside and just sitting there and twisting it and turning it like a fucking knife.
00:33:15.000We've had a few problems in other countries where they weren't, like, hip on the UFC. You know, Germany wasn't, like, the biggest success when we were over there.
00:36:28.000I mean, when you hear all the different shit that he was on when he died, There's a lot of those don't give a fuck guys that can put in spectacular performances like that.
00:36:37.000Like that Heath Ledger Joker was a fucking pretty spectacular performance.
00:36:42.000When a dude has something like that inside of him, that's an amazing abundance of energy and you're not exactly sure how he's controlling that.
00:36:51.000Not everybody can have that kind of a burst of energy inside of them and put it under control.
00:36:55.000Some people literally aren't capable of that kind of a performance.
00:39:38.000Billy Bob Thornton gives a performance in this movie where he ceases to be Billy Bob Thornton, and you're just like, that character exists.
00:39:45.000The man who is in this movie, there's no connection to Billy Bob Thornton.
00:39:49.000It's literally a dude being possessed of someone else or something like that.
00:39:53.000He changes his look, changes his deliveries, everything.
00:40:34.000I've seen Daniel Day-Lewis get interviewed, and I think he's a brilliant guy who's clearly doing it as an artist.
00:40:41.000He's clearly got a good handle on the whole celebrity thing.
00:40:45.000The guy quit movies to be a fucking shoe cobbler.
00:40:49.000He's this crazy, deep, interesting, weirdo dude.
00:40:51.000That is one of those stories that everybody knows that Daniel Day-Lewis It captured everybody's imagination.
00:40:59.000Whether he was serious about it or not, it may have been his most brilliant fucking move.
00:41:03.000Because for the next ten years, whenever somebody says Daniel Day-Lewis, somewhere in the next minute they're going to go, you know, he quit to be a cobbler?
00:41:21.000But that shoe thing captures people's imagination.
00:41:24.000And you think he probably went to it because it wasn't acting.
00:41:26.000It was the furthest thing from acting, because you're right.
00:41:29.000You look at a dude who gets into a role like he does, he probably does go to someplace fucking dark, and you...
00:41:34.000You know, a crew, a bunch of years of doing that, one after another, maybe going to fucking make shoes in Milan feels good, sounds good, simple, doesn't require much, use a different part of your brain, no darkness and fucking cobbling, you know, unless one of those fucking witches show up.
00:41:50.000Some of his movies where he does go dark are the darkest characters in the history of cinema.
00:44:34.000The way a professional fighter moves is very specific.
00:44:38.000Unless you're some Roy Jones Jr. freak of nature athlete who can keep your hands down and do all kinds of crazy shit because nobody can touch you because you're so fast and your timing is so good, but there's only a few of those guys ever.
00:44:49.000If you look at a classic boxer, they have very simple characteristics.
00:44:53.000The hands are always up high, the chin's tucked, the shoulders are up.
00:44:57.000In a movie, everybody's Their hands are down, they're throwing wild punches and flexing their muscles, and it's my turn to hit you, and then it's your turn to hit me, and it looks very obvious.
00:45:07.000And nobody, they never get into like a 30 second, 40 second hug embrace, kind of like where they have to get split up.
00:45:14.000Well, you can't do it realistically unless you're going to let people hit people.
00:45:18.000And you don't want to do that because you're only going to get one shot at it and people aren't going to like it.
00:45:22.000No one's going to like a halfway fight.
00:45:24.000It's like, I'm going to let you hit me and then I'm going to hit you back.
00:45:27.000We're going to agree that there's a certain amount of times we're going to hit each other and we're going to hit each other realistically hard.
00:45:42.000Other than Daniel Day-Lewis, who has convincingly fought in a movie that earned your respect where you're like, alright, that looks like it.
00:46:11.000And he said that guy would be out there every fucking morning at 7 o'clock, blaring his music in the parking lot, Fired up, and he said he would run up the stairs and he would train like a professional boxer.
00:46:23.000He said he did everything I asked him to do, did it exactly the way I told him to do it, skipped rope, sit-ups, and he's in there every day.
00:46:30.000He literally transformed himself into a professional boxer.
00:46:34.000There's only a few guys who can hit that level, that Daniel Day-Lewis, that Denzel Washington level of commitment.
00:46:40.000There's only a few guys who can do that.
00:47:05.000If I looked at the boxer that Daniel Day-Lewis was and I looked at the boxer that Denzel Washington was, I think Denzel Washington looks like a very good athlete, moves very well, but it looks more like Daniel Day-Lewis is a real boxer.
00:47:19.000If we base it on their movie rules, then Daniel Day-Lewis held out a long time as John Proctor in The Crucible.
00:47:29.000LAUGHTER Denzel Washington, one of the best actors ever, right?
00:47:38.000When they gave him the Oscar for, what was it?
00:47:43.000Was it Malcolm X? No, that was the thing.
00:47:45.000They should have given him to him for Malcolm X. That performance, if you ever go watch Malcolm X footage on YouTube, which you can now, they've got tons of it, nothing but free.
00:48:27.000I remember when they first gave him the award, I hadn't seen the movie.
00:48:29.000I was like, oh, they're making up for fucking overlooking Malcolm X. But then you see his performance in that movie, and what could be a simple programmer or a simple good guy, bad guy...
00:48:42.000So it may have been overdue payback for a fantastic performance he didn't get enough credit for, but I think he earned that 10 on training day.
00:49:24.000Who you worked with that you're like, I've seen someone go to that place?
00:49:28.000On Red State, we were with Michael Parks.
00:49:30.000I don't think I've ever seen Michael Parks and Melissa Lea went to weird places, like incredible places where I'm like, oh shit, this is otherworldly stuff.
00:50:27.000It's like, you have to throw out everything you think of as a Kevin Smith movie.
00:50:31.000Kevin Smith movies are always fun comedies.
00:50:33.000And this movie just gets so fucking crazy so quick...
00:50:39.000And just keeps, and goes, and you know, I really, I appreciate so much about that movie, but what I really, well, the one thing that's staggering right off the bat was that guy who played the preacher, Michael Parks.
00:51:00.000To a 70-year-old man who this business turned its back on a long time ago and clearly has better chops than most of his peers who went on to other things, It means something.
00:51:11.000It may not mean shit to me, like me getting awards, but him, that award means something.
00:51:17.000He comes from an era where it does mean something.
00:51:21.000I wish we could substitute that with the greater opinion of...
00:51:25.000Whatever people, nice people all across the country, people discerning individuals.
00:51:30.000If you watch this movie and don't think this guy's a fucking super genius, all that shit that I said about Daniel Day-Lewis, exact same shit I'm saying about this guy.
00:51:39.000He's one of those very special talents.
00:54:11.000In the opening of this movie, which from Dusk Till Dawn is a fun vampire fucking romp.
00:54:16.000This guy comes in and drops a performance that in a fair, just world would have won a supporting Oscar.
00:54:24.000Like, you know, Judi Dench gets one for Shakespeare in Love, and she's in the movie, what, seven or nine minutes?
00:54:31.000Parks is in From Dusk Till Dawn roughly at the same time and gives a performance that's as electric, as believable, as off-the-charts wonderful, but, you know, it's a genre film, so he don't get the attention and stuff.
00:54:44.000I'm watching From Dusk Till Dawn, 1995 to Lumley Sunset 5. I was like, yeah, fuck yeah, I want to see the vampire movie.
00:54:56.000And I went to go see this vampire movie made by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
00:55:02.000But what I left there was, I have to work with that man.
00:55:06.000I don't know who that fucking man is, that sheriff guy, in the first 10 minutes, who, spoiler, spoilers, the movie's fucking 16 years old, but just in case, he gets killed in the first fucking 10 minutes.
00:55:20.000I walk out of that theater, I go, I gotta work with that guy.
00:55:22.000Just sit at the fucking feet of a Yoda like that, and for a month on a set, Imagine the amount of fucking information you could glean, steal, fucking benefit from.
00:56:49.000And we brought him to the chapel and went on.
00:56:51.000They were still putting the finishing touches on it.
00:56:53.000But he kind of did a laid out like the way you would lay out a dance.
00:56:58.000He essentially kind of didn't say the dialogue out loud, but he would just sit there and you'd watch him kind of moving his arms and stuff.
00:57:03.000And it looked like he was slowly waltzing by himself.
00:57:06.000And then he'd stop somewhere and ask somebody to put a mark here, blah, blah, blah, put a mark here.
01:00:39.000off of me singing and then you go down to another cell and there you are you know and you You're giving away way too much of your movie right now.
01:00:49.000A little bit, but again, I said spoilers, but...
01:02:10.000At one point, we had the whole chapel, everyone in the chapel singing.
01:02:15.000And I said, for some other part of the movie, I said, hey man, while this thing's going on over here on camera, I'm going to push in on you.
01:02:23.000You want to sing one of those gospel hymnals?
01:02:25.000Because he picked the other one, Old Rugged Cross.
01:02:27.000I said, you got another one you want to go with?
01:02:29.000And he's like, yeah, man, I can sing farther along.
01:03:23.000And his grandfather was still fire and brimstone.
01:03:26.000He was charismatic, but he was still strict.
01:03:28.000But his grandfather still also had a sense of humor for the kids.
01:03:31.000So his grandfather would be the one in the kitchen, you know, pulling like a train whistle down with one fist and lifting a leg and farting with the other.
01:07:22.000He goes, I've got to show you my tape.
01:07:23.000I've got to show you my Michael Parks tape.
01:07:26.000And he goes into, you know, he's got big entertainment centers, DVDs everywhere and stuff, high tech everywhere, but he also still has VHS. And the dude lays hands on a fucking VHS tape, almost as if I thought I hit the fucking flux capacitor, because I ain't seen one in a while.
01:07:40.000And there, scribble on the fucking side and marker, because remember, we used to write on the side of our videotapes when we made our own tapes.
01:08:02.000Anytime this dude's going to turn up on TV or gets a video of him, he records from tape to tape or from TV to tape.
01:08:11.000The segments of his performance, everything that involves Michael Parks, and particularly the highlights and shit.
01:08:18.000So what you have is a collection of some of the cheesiest exploitation straight-to-TV movies, about a high school volleyball team or college volleyball team and stuff like that, murder mysteries and whatnot.
01:08:33.000And as he's showing you the clips, even though it's programmers all around him, Michael Parks is still in each one of these scenes that Quentin has pulled off and put onto this VHS, dropping science, performance science, where you're just like, this is crazy.
01:08:50.000Like, this dude's doing Shakespeare in the middle of shit.
01:08:53.000And not to put anybody who made those movies down or off or whatever, but clearly, like, everyone else is kind of like, you know, here we are collecting a check and this is about the furthest we can go.
01:09:13.000They're all TV movies from the 60s and 70s and a little bit into the 80s.
01:09:17.000And that's what Quentin had collected.
01:09:19.000He's got an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema and even bad trash cinema.
01:09:25.000But there is no such thing as trash cinema to this guy.
01:09:29.000He watched that movie and he found gold.
01:09:32.000Like diamonds in the midst of shit that was just maybe simple or fucking programming material.
01:09:37.000And he collected them for years on a fucking VHS tape.
01:09:41.000Long before he ever knew he would be a filmmaker.
01:09:44.000Long before he ever knew he'd meet Michael Parks.
01:09:47.000Let alone become a filmmaker, make movies with Michael Parks in them, direct Michael Parks and inspire me to make a fucking movie where I put Michael Parks in it.
01:11:10.000Whatever it is that you're doing, man.
01:11:11.000I never wanted to see a fucking single UFC fight.
01:11:15.000But when you talked about it on the show, when you came on our show, I was like, you know, I would go see this now.
01:11:23.000When you talk about it with the passion and enthusiasm you do, it translates to somebody who was never sold before.
01:11:29.000And I wasn't even on the fence, really.
01:11:31.000But then when I watch you talk about it, I'm like, this motherfucker's smart.
01:11:34.000He's one of the smartest dudes I ever met.
01:11:36.000Everyone running the organization is intelligent.
01:11:39.000It's a totally different thing than what people expect.
01:11:42.000You hear the term cage fighting, you think, well, there's going to be a bunch of barbaric assholes and mean people beating up other mean people.
01:12:19.000But in the midst of evolution where we find ourselves in this stage along the way from changing from a wild animal to a conscious being, we still got a lot of chimpanzee DNA that needs to be satisfied.
01:12:34.000Either you can suppress it, you can pretend it doesn't exist, or you can give it something like porn or violence on television and movies and in sports.
01:12:44.000You could give it something to live vicariously through.
01:13:39.000It's got to be weird when an entire country looks so similar physically.
01:13:46.000I mean, obviously you can tell the difference between one Japanese guy to another.
01:13:49.000I know a lot of Japanese people, but essentially the vast majority of the people that live in Japan have this one look, dark hair, you know, the Japanese look.
01:14:42.000But it could be a bunch of different things.
01:14:44.000Japanese guys look like Japanese guys.
01:14:46.000If you understand what Asian people look like, Koreans have a different look to them, but it must be interesting to be a part of one of, I mean, how many millions of Japanese people are there?
01:14:59.000And to have such a similar look with all these different people like you that you could be recognized immediately somewhere else in the country.
01:15:06.000I think it'd be awesome to have a culture.
01:16:50.000And for him, the way of the sword was simply the way to be successful, the most successful movements in any given situation as far as what combat is.
01:16:59.000But he equated this combat to artistic integrity, The ability to create things freely, the ability to draw and paint, the ability to write poetry and to elegantly express your feelings.
01:17:13.000It was all one piece of excellence and that is like a guide to live your life by.
01:17:18.000And he had this statement that I read when I was a kid and it always stuck with me.
01:17:24.000Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.
01:17:28.000The idea being that once you find out how to tap into anything, like find out how to be a great movie director, find out how to be a great guy who draws animation, a fucking singer, a chess player.
01:17:59.000There's that same thing when you just tap into the zone where you're just really tuning into whatever the fuck you're doing, and then you let creativity sort of spread it out for you.
01:18:10.000Comes better with age too, doesn't it?