The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2191 - Russell Crowe

00:00:12.000 What's happening, man?

00:00:14.000 Pleasure to meet you.

00:00:15.000 Nice to meet you, too.

00:00:16.000 It's always so odd when you've seen someone in so many movies and you meet them in real life.

00:00:20.000 You're like, eh, real person.

00:00:22.000 You know?

00:00:23.000 It's strange, isn't it?

00:00:25.000 Yeah, well, I do have that same thing myself.

00:00:29.000 When I meet somebody whose work I dig or whatever, I'm still just the same fan that I was before I even got into the business.

00:00:40.000 I met Daniel Day-Lewis in a Motel 8 in Canistoga, New York State.

00:00:48.000 A guy saw us and he said, You know, do you mind if I take your photograph?

00:00:54.000 So we went out into the car park of this motel aid and this guy took a photograph and about, I don't know, seven or eight months later, A copy of it arrived at my house in Australia, and the guy had basically just written Russell Crowe Australia and sent it to me.

00:01:11.000 So I have a copy of it, and it's a funny thing, you know, it's like I was there, it was the Boxing Hall of Fame.

00:01:19.000 I was there with Angelo Dundee, and he was there with Barry McGuigan, yeah.

00:01:26.000 Oh, wow.

00:01:27.000 Yeah.

00:01:28.000 That's awesome.

00:01:31.000 It was just unexpected.

00:01:34.000 It was a cool thing.

00:01:36.000 He was such a nice fellow, too.

00:01:40.000 Daniel Day-Lewis is a real legend because he's one of those guys who just disappears for a couple of years and makes shoes.

00:01:45.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:01:45.000 Just a real artist.

00:01:47.000 Just quirky stuff.

00:01:48.000 Just gone.

00:01:49.000 And suddenly comes back with a vengeance and a fury.

00:01:52.000 Oh, my God.

00:01:52.000 Look at that.

00:01:54.000 Some of us have to work for a living, mate.

00:01:57.000 He's probably got independent wealth.

00:01:59.000 He's just a different kind of human.

00:02:02.000 Any guy who can just walk away like that and just decide to make shoes, that's the real deal.

00:02:09.000 It's pretty special.

00:02:10.000 Some people try to pretend to be quirky.

00:02:12.000 They try to pretend to be eccentric, and then there's the real thing.

00:02:16.000 Then there's the actual eccentrics.

00:02:17.000 Yeah, the actual eccentrics are so fascinating to me.

00:02:21.000 And yeah, to meet a guy like that, he's one of those odd ones.

00:02:25.000 But you are too.

00:02:28.000 It's interesting to hear from a person that is a guy like you that still feels weird to meet people that you've admired their work.

00:02:37.000 I always feel the same way.

00:02:39.000 I always feel like this is going to go away.

00:02:41.000 And then I'm like, nope, Russell Crowe.

00:02:42.000 Oh, wow.

00:02:43.000 I met Dennis Quaid the other day.

00:02:44.000 Same thing.

00:02:45.000 He's like, oh, it's Dennis Quaid.

00:02:46.000 It seems so strange.

00:02:49.000 Yeah, I... If I was to explain to my childhood self, my 10-year-old self, what was in front of me and the people that I would meet and the things that I would experience and the contacts that have come along in my life,

00:03:11.000 my little brain would have just exploded.

00:03:14.000 There's just no way I could have possibly imagined that this life was going to unfold in front of me.

00:03:19.000 How could you?

00:03:20.000 I mean, you'd have to be so ambitious.

00:03:22.000 You'd have to have the most crazy expectations possible.

00:03:25.000 Yeah.

00:03:26.000 My first thing when I was leaving school is just don't have a boring life.

00:03:33.000 Just don't find some way of being able to express yourself.

00:03:40.000 My first job out of school, my first official job, was working for an insurance company, commercial union insurance, inputting the details of policies.

00:03:51.000 Oof.

00:03:52.000 So not off to a great start.

00:03:54.000 Oh, man.

00:03:55.000 But it was a funny thing, though, because I learned a lot in my short time there.

00:03:59.000 In the summer before, I'd worked as a nightclub DJ. And I got fired because I couldn't talk.

00:04:07.000 I was too nervous to talk on the microphone.

00:04:10.000 Wow.

00:04:10.000 So after like five or six weeks, they shuffled me off.

00:04:13.000 And the guy really dug what I was playing and how I got the dance floor moving and everything.

00:04:18.000 But he says, you know, I need to sell toasted sandwiches, man.

00:04:22.000 You have to tell people that the kitchen's open.

00:04:25.000 LAUGHTER So, you know, I left school partway through the last year.

00:04:31.000 In New Zealand, they have a different thing where you have a bursary year after normal high school finishes, and in your bursary year, if you achieve to a certain degree, you get money towards your university degree, you know?

00:04:42.000 But it was clear to me in that last year my dad was out of work and I wasn't going to be able to go to university.

00:04:48.000 We couldn't afford that sort of thing.

00:04:49.000 It only would have cost three and a half or four grand or something like that back in the day.

00:04:53.000 But that was beyond our means as a family.

00:04:58.000 I started working at this insurance company and I was the only person in the building of a big insurance company.

00:05:07.000 Who had actually passed matriculation into university.

00:05:12.000 And the general manager of the company sat me down to tell me that one day.

00:05:16.000 You're the only person with the higher school certificate, what they call university entrance in New Zealand, in the building.

00:05:24.000 And I just watched this thing unfold.

00:05:32.000 We're good to go.

00:05:50.000 And in the time that I was there, I watched those new shoes get age on them and start cracking at the side and stuff like that, you know, because he obviously used them a lot, did a lot of walking around talking to people, you know.

00:06:04.000 And just as I was leaving, I overheard a discussion where he was planning on getting some new shoes again.

00:06:11.000 And I was like, yeah, I definitely, definitely don't want to...

00:06:14.000 Don't want to be that guy?

00:06:15.000 I don't want to be here.

00:06:15.000 I don't want to be that guy.

00:06:17.000 I had a similar situation when I was driving limousines.

00:06:20.000 We were driving limos, and it was one of my jobs that I was doing when I was trying to make it as a stand-up comedian.

00:06:25.000 And you would work long hours.

00:06:27.000 Like, if you tried to leave after eight hours, they'd yell at you.

00:06:30.000 Like, they wanted you to work 12, 16 hours a day.

00:06:33.000 And there was this one guy, and he had a Cadillac.

00:06:35.000 And the boss pulls us aside and says, look at this guy over here.

00:06:39.000 He's got a Cadillac.

00:06:40.000 He makes $60,000 a year. 1.00

00:06:42.000 And he doesn't have to bust his ass. 0.99

00:06:44.000 You know, he's sitting down all day in a nice car and driving people around, and this could be you too. 1.00

00:06:50.000 I was like, I gotta get the fuck out of here. 0.95

00:06:52.000 That was my first thought, because I knew that guy was working 16-hour days. 0.98

00:06:55.000 That's all he did.

00:06:56.000 All he did was work.

00:06:57.000 And yeah, he had a nice car.

00:06:58.000 I'm sure he had a nice house. 0.78

00:07:00.000 I was like, I gotta get the fuck out of here. 0.93

00:07:01.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:07:02.000 I gotta get the fuck out of here. 0.98

00:07:03.000 Sometimes people like that are good for you. 0.99

00:07:04.000 They're like, the universe puts them in front of you just so you can say, this is a trap.

00:07:09.000 Yeah.

00:07:09.000 Well, here's your example.

00:07:10.000 Yes.

00:07:11.000 Yeah.

00:07:11.000 So what do you want?

00:07:13.000 Option A or option B? Did you ever meet anyone who was an actor?

00:07:17.000 Did you know of anyone that had made a living doing that?

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00:08:01.000 We're good to go.

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00:08:34.000 Well, all through my life, for sure, because my parents, at a certain point in time, were caterers on film sets.

00:08:44.000 So that's how I got my first job.

00:08:46.000 My mom's godfather was a TV producer who's famous in the Australian industry.

00:08:54.000 Not so much anymore, because the generations passed.

00:08:58.000 But he was the tightest producer to work for. 0.84

00:09:03.000 The cheapest bastard on the block, you know what I mean? 0.96

00:09:06.000 And he was famous for that. 0.98

00:09:08.000 I mean, I still know Jack Thompson today.

00:09:11.000 I did a scene with Jack Thompson when I was six years old.

00:09:14.000 Did my first line of dialogue on camera.

00:09:16.000 Wow.

00:09:17.000 I made a movie with him playing his son when I was...

00:09:23.000 25 or 26, something like that.

00:09:26.000 I bought a property near where his property is in the bush because he was kind of like a mentor.

00:09:36.000 I'm still talking about an hour's driveway, but in the bush that's nothing.

00:09:42.000 And I still know him today and he's in his 80s now.

00:09:48.000 So I had people like that.

00:09:51.000 When I was 12 I went to a...

00:09:53.000 So I did an acting job when I was 6 and another one when I was 8. And then I kind of forgot about it for a while.

00:10:02.000 And then I went on a school tour of a TV studio.

00:10:06.000 And it was a TV show called The Young Doctors that was being made in that studio.

00:10:11.000 And there was a bit part actor, a guy called Roy Harris Jones, who had been on a couple of shows that my parents had done and I liked him a lot and blah blah blah.

00:10:22.000 I hadn't seen him for years and there he was on that show.

00:10:26.000 And while the other kids are there going on their tour, He goes, are you here for an audition?

00:10:32.000 I said, no, I haven't done anything like that for ages.

00:10:35.000 And he goes, come on, let's go down the corridor and meet the casting director.

00:10:38.000 So I split away from the tour.

00:10:41.000 All the other kids go off.

00:10:42.000 And this is a camera.

00:10:44.000 This is a control room.

00:10:45.000 They're doing all that stuff.

00:10:46.000 And I go down and the casting director had a minute.

00:10:48.000 So she sat me down and talked to me and all that sort of stuff.

00:10:51.000 And two weeks later, I was back in that building shooting a character on the TV show.

00:10:56.000 Wow!

00:10:58.000 And then that kind of reignited that part of my imagination.

00:11:04.000 But coming out of school and everything, I really thought that I was simply going to...

00:11:10.000 I was going to go into music.

00:11:12.000 That was my thing.

00:11:13.000 If I was going to pursue anything, it was going to be music.

00:11:15.000 Basically, I would accept any job that allowed me to be in a position of entertaining people.

00:11:21.000 So that's why I went into the nightclub thing with being a DJ. And my first night, the second time, because obviously I'd failed the first time around and been fired because I couldn't talk.

00:11:35.000 The second time around, I'd auditioned for this place, but they hadn't given me the job they gave to somebody else.

00:11:40.000 But they ended up firing him after two nights because him and the guy that ran the club didn't get on.

00:11:44.000 So they called me up on a Sunday afternoon and they said, are you free tonight?

00:11:48.000 Can you come and DJ at the club?

00:11:50.000 We've got a bunch of 1950s records because it's a 1950s music-only club.

00:11:55.000 Have you got a turntable?

00:11:58.000 And I said, I've got one.

00:12:01.000 So I went in that night with an orange plastic sharp turntable, plugged it in through the headphone socket, And played these records.

00:12:14.000 But I had one turntable, so I couldn't switch.

00:12:17.000 So I have to talk.

00:12:20.000 Because every time a song finishes, I have to pick up the needle, the arm, pick up the record, get the next one, put it down.

00:12:28.000 It was just a crazy circumstance.

00:12:32.000 It was created to make sure that I absolutely broke through whatever that fear was immediately now that I had another chance.

00:12:40.000 I ended up staying and working pretty much full-time for about four years in that job, but it expanded a whole bunch of other stuff because The guy started getting me to perform on stage, you know, the guy that I was working with, once he started hearing my songs and everything,

00:12:56.000 he said, all right, okay, in the third set, at the end of the night, you come on, just do your songs, though.

00:13:00.000 You're not allowed to do songs people know.

00:13:02.000 Oh, wow.

00:13:03.000 So I have to go out.

00:13:04.000 People have been listening to these old classic 1950s songs all night, and now there's some... 0.99

00:13:10.000 Young pimply bloke in front of them, singing bullshit. 0.99

00:13:13.000 They're like, what are you doing? 1.00

00:13:15.000 But it was a real baptism of fire.

00:13:17.000 He also had me tour with him.

00:13:20.000 So we would be on Thursday, Friday, Saturday in Auckland, in the big city.

00:13:26.000 And then Sunday through Wednesday, we're in a truck and a car and everything, and we're touring.

00:13:32.000 We're going playing in these other pubs and stuff.

00:13:34.000 And he fancied himself, you see, because it's an anachronistic thing, you know.

00:13:40.000 His whole life, this guy that I was working for was about the 1950s.

00:13:43.000 He wore blue suede shoes or winkle pickers, stovepipe trousers, drape coats.

00:13:47.000 You know, he had a Cadillac, probably the only Cadillac in New Zealand at the time, you know.

00:13:52.000 And he had this thing about, like, you know, Elvis used to have a comedian opening for him, so somebody should go out and tell jokes before I come on, right?

00:14:03.000 And so part of my job was to walk out and tell a joke that he had told me to tell.

00:14:11.000 I couldn't make up my own material. 0.99

00:14:14.000 And these jokes were fucking terrible. 1.00

00:14:18.000 They were just trash and trying to make that thing work. 0.99

00:14:24.000 One night I said to him, why don't you let me just go out and say something actually funny or whatever? 0.96

00:14:29.000 He goes, because I want people to be happy to see me.

00:14:33.000 Oh my God, he set it up on purpose.

00:14:36.000 Absolutely.

00:14:36.000 He actually said to me at one point in time, never ever, as a performer, never ever bring somebody on stage who's better than you.

00:14:45.000 And as I was a guest for him on stage every night of the week, I was like, oh, right, so you're telling me I'm shit. 0.99

00:14:53.000 The only reason I've got the job is because I'm shit, because I make you look better. 0.99

00:14:58.000 But in my own sort of performing life over time, I changed that rule completely. 0.98

00:15:04.000 I only ever bring somebody on stage who's going to absolutely shred the room.

00:15:09.000 Over time, with the live performances, we've had guests like Elvis Costello, Sting.

00:15:16.000 Last year, Michael Buble got up with us.

00:15:19.000 He did an Elvis song at the end of a show.

00:15:21.000 The Sydney Opera House actually killed the room.

00:15:24.000 Rita Ora got up last year.

00:15:26.000 RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan.

00:15:28.000 He's a mate of mine, Bobby Diggs.

00:15:30.000 We got up in like a 350, 400 standing room only little pub in Balmain, an area of Sydney.

00:15:39.000 And then suddenly, bah, the RZA's on the stage.

00:15:41.000 Wow.

00:15:42.000 So I learned a lot from him, but I didn't learn the things he was trying to teach me.

00:15:48.000 That's a great philosophy to have the best people going in front of you.

00:15:52.000 We have a similar problem with that in comedy.

00:15:54.000 A lot of big name headliners like to bring terrible opening acts so they're like a hero and they rescue the show.

00:16:01.000 I have the exact opposite.

00:16:02.000 I have your approach.

00:16:03.000 I try to bring the best people possible.

00:16:05.000 It makes it more fun.

00:16:06.000 It's more fun for me too.

00:16:07.000 It's more fun for the audience too.

00:16:09.000 That's the whole thing about live performance is catering for the audience.

00:16:14.000 Yes.

00:16:15.000 The energy of the show.

00:16:16.000 Yes.

00:16:16.000 Do you enjoy one thing more or do you enjoy both things?

00:16:20.000 That's a very difficult question to answer without pages of nuance.

00:16:29.000 I enjoy nuance.

00:16:31.000 Well, I'll give it a go.

00:16:34.000 The bottom line is I love my job.

00:16:37.000 I love working on films every single day that I'm walking towards the camera.

00:16:42.000 I will have a plan.

00:16:44.000 I know what I'm about to do.

00:16:45.000 And I chose to be here.

00:16:49.000 I work with lots and lots of actors who just took the role because of blah blah.

00:16:53.000 They're not really there because of the work.

00:16:57.000 When you know the job and you know that you're talking about 4 a.m.

00:17:01.000 starts, you're talking about minimum 12 hours a day, you're talking about working in extreme conditions and stuff like that temperature-wise or somewhere kind of whack to get an amazing shot.

00:17:15.000 When you know the job and you know how hard it is, You really got to have your reasons for being there.

00:17:21.000 You know what I mean?

00:17:22.000 So I'll read scripts and I will generally do the one that got under my skin.

00:17:30.000 You know?

00:17:31.000 It can have a great pedigree.

00:17:33.000 It can be a wonderful director.

00:17:34.000 It can have a great cast.

00:17:36.000 But if I read it and I don't get personally attached to it, I just don't do it.

00:17:42.000 And then I'll read something else that everybody else is like, ah, it's kind of...

00:17:45.000 Dodgy or whatever.

00:17:46.000 But there's like, oh, that scene.

00:17:48.000 It gets me.

00:17:49.000 That one.

00:17:50.000 I want to do that.

00:17:51.000 I want to be the guy doing that dialogue, you know?

00:17:53.000 Yeah.

00:17:54.000 And so, you know, I know exactly why I'm at work.

00:17:58.000 So when it gets hard and it gets difficult, it doesn't worry me because I chose to be here, you know?

00:18:05.000 So I don't have that thing that some actors have of like getting disgruntled with it.

00:18:12.000 Sure, it's my employment.

00:18:14.000 It's how I pay for everything.

00:18:17.000 And all of those things.

00:18:18.000 But it's also like a deep, deep passion.

00:18:22.000 And stepping into the shoes of other people and experiencing, to a degree, things of somebody else's life or learning a new skill or whatever it happens to be.

00:18:32.000 This is exciting for me.

00:18:33.000 And I'm 60 years old and I still dig it.

00:18:36.000 You know what I mean?

00:18:38.000 Because that one simple thing, I know why I'm there.

00:18:43.000 At 4am when it's like a ball-busting wake-up time because you had a big day the day before, I know why I'm there.

00:18:50.000 So it's sort of like my motivations and stuff are very clear in that respect.

00:18:55.000 Now with music, It in itself is its own reward.

00:19:01.000 To play a song, to sing a song, to be with a group of musicians and to sort of gel on something together.

00:19:07.000 It's just like, thank you very much.

00:19:09.000 That's the reward.

00:19:10.000 To then put it in front of a crowd and then have that immediate response.

00:19:15.000 Obviously, I've worked with a lot of actors over the years that come from a theatre background, and even though I've done a lot of theatre, I come from a rock and roll background.

00:19:22.000 I come from out of clubs.

00:19:24.000 I come from standing on that stage, singing my dweeby 16-year-old songs, authored by a 16-, 17-year-old.

00:19:32.000 To me, that's my reset place.

00:19:37.000 People will talk to you, like Anthony Hopkins, I was working with him.

00:19:40.000 He'd done a series of films, this is way back in the 90s, and I think he was off to do a season of King Lear and he was really happy about it because for him that's a reset.

00:19:50.000 You go back into that place where you came out of and you get all the benefits of doing the same performance over and over again so you get to squeeze all the different character parts that you can and enjoy it.

00:20:05.000 That's his reset.

00:20:06.000 But for me, walking out onto a rock and roll stage, guitar in hand, where I do not know exactly what's going to happen that night, because every audience takes things in a different direction, that's my reset.

00:20:20.000 That's me jumping out of a plane, and I love doing it.

00:20:24.000 Yeah, they have different buttons they push.

00:20:28.000 Yeah, I mean, it's performance, but, you know, there's a visceral thing that happens in front of a live audience, you know, that just doesn't happen in the sterile environment of a film set, you know?

00:20:42.000 And you can have wonderful creative relationships on a film set and great collaborations and all that sort of stuff, the same that you can have in music, you know?

00:20:50.000 But there's that other part of it.

00:20:52.000 There's that...

00:20:53.000 Thing that sort of, I don't know, it gives you something back, man.

00:20:57.000 It fills you back up again.

00:20:59.000 Yeah.

00:20:59.000 Well, you're creating an experience for people, and they're enjoying it in the moment, and you're all sharing that moment.

00:21:06.000 I always feel bad for people that have never done something like that, never performed in front of a live audience and gave everybody a great time.

00:21:14.000 Yeah, I actually understand what you mean, because it is...

00:21:19.000 It is something to have in your DNA. It's a rare gift that a person gets to live their life doing that a lot.

00:21:30.000 I was thinking about what we might talk about and there's a story I like to tell if you're into it.

00:21:41.000 It's quite a long story though.

00:21:42.000 Please.

00:21:45.000 So back in the 90s, the thing about this story is it sort of like just casually shows you how much of a circus the film industry can be, you know what I mean?

00:21:54.000 And part of the attraction of it when I was a young actor and, you know, later in my 20s moving to Australia and doing theatre and stuff like that and then looking at film people as sort of like a rare breed, you know?

00:22:11.000 And then you get into it and you realise you've got to be pretty much crazy to do this.

00:22:18.000 Over time, it's gotten definitely safer, more insurance conscious and all of these things.

00:22:26.000 But back in the day, not so much.

00:22:28.000 Everything was about just getting the shot.

00:22:31.000 So...

00:22:34.000 92 was the first time I'd go to Los Angeles.

00:22:37.000 But I'd already made a bunch of films in Australia and I'd been to the Cannes Film Festival so my first time travelling outside of Australia and New Zealand was 1991. So I was like 27 or something like that.

00:22:51.000 And then the year after I went to LA and got an agent.

00:22:57.000 But I'd won a bunch of awards in Australia and my films had been around to different film festivals and stuff so There was awareness of what I was doing in the industry, so to speak.

00:23:09.000 And I got this phone call to go and meet Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director who won the Oscar for The Last Emperor.

00:23:18.000 Fantastic director.

00:23:19.000 He also did Last Tango in Paris and a bunch of other films.

00:23:25.000 And I was really excited.

00:23:27.000 I was like, wow, fantastic.

00:23:28.000 So I get to Bernardo's house.

00:23:32.000 And he's watching a football game.

00:23:34.000 It's Italy versus Brazil, right? 0.65

00:23:36.000 He's got a bunch of people over to watch the football.

00:23:39.000 So I'm sort of just, oh, you know, because I thought we were having a meeting.

00:23:41.000 I didn't realize there was a football game on.

00:23:44.000 And Italy didn't do very well.

00:23:46.000 They got beaten by Brazil.

00:23:47.000 So I never had a conversation with Bernardo because after the game...

00:23:51.000 He just went off to his room or something to have a cry, I'm not sure.

00:23:57.000 But I met his wife, and her name was Claire Peplow, and she was a film director.

00:24:04.000 And she said, look, I encourage Bernardo to invite you to the house, because I know he wants to talk to you about something, but I want to talk to you as well.

00:24:14.000 I've had this script, and she gave me this script, and it was called Miss Shumway Waves a Wand.

00:24:19.000 And I was very much in the independent film world at the time, so that sounded like a good title for an independent film.

00:24:29.000 And I read it, and it was pretty good.

00:24:30.000 It was based on this book, and I liked the character, so I sort of responded to it.

00:24:37.000 Eventually ended up doing it, and Bridget Fonda was signed on as the female lead, so that was cool.

00:24:42.000 She was pretty happening at the time.

00:24:45.000 I have a funny thing that goes on with my brain if I'm faced with I'm reading something and there's a difficult moment in something that I'm liking, where my brain just goes, hmm, to be dealt with later.

00:25:00.000 I'll worry about that when I have to.

00:25:03.000 And there was this scene where a spider would crawl into the mouth of the character I was playing.

00:25:13.000 I was thinking, hmm, I wonder how they're going to do that CGI or something like that, you know?

00:25:20.000 Anyway, so off we go on this adventure and we're shooting in Guatemala and Mexico and it's an extremely disorganized shoot.

00:25:30.000 We don't have...

00:25:33.000 Nothing's right.

00:25:34.000 At one point in time, for seven days, we lived on refried beans and rice in Guatemala because they hadn't made any arrangement with any kind of catering company or anything.

00:25:44.000 And that was the only thing that they could get easily.

00:25:47.000 So it was breakfast, lunch and dinner, refried beans and rice.

00:25:51.000 And at the end of that week, one of the guys on the film crew found this cafe that sold some form of grilled meat and we all just went there in the middle of this rainforest and ate this meat and realized later on it was more than likely we were eating the monkeys that were running around the trees around us because everybody got really sick.

00:26:12.000 Anyway, so we're going through this experience and we eventually get back to Los Angeles.

00:26:21.000 And we've got a couple of weeks shooting in LA. We go out to a place called Lancaster, I think it was.

00:26:32.000 There's an old film studio out there.

00:26:34.000 And I see on the call sheet, oh, it's the spider scene.

00:26:36.000 You know, cool.

00:26:37.000 So as I arrived at the studio, this guy, this producer comes out to meet me.

00:26:42.000 And, you know, Russell, everything good?

00:26:46.000 And I said, yeah, cool.

00:26:47.000 So we're shooting the spider scene today.

00:26:48.000 And he goes, yes, it's going to be great.

00:26:51.000 Yeah.

00:26:54.000 So everything, you're fine?

00:26:55.000 I said, yeah, cool, but how are we going to do this?

00:26:59.000 Is this going to be like a CGI thing or whatever?

00:27:01.000 Oh, no, no, the tarantula man is here. 0.99

00:27:05.000 The fucking what? 0.99

00:27:08.000 The tarantula man's here, and he has shown a variety of creatures to the director, and she has chosen the largest. 0.99

00:27:17.000 It's going to be a great day.

00:27:18.000 Anyway, good luck with it, and off he tots.

00:27:21.000 So I go inside, and they show me, look, here's a piece of carpet.

00:27:23.000 You're going to be lying down here.

00:27:24.000 The carpet matches a place where a hotel room would shot in.

00:27:30.000 And so what's going to happen is you're going to lie down here.

00:27:33.000 They're going to place the tarantula on your chest. 0.97

00:27:36.000 The tarantula wrangler will give it a little tickle.

00:27:39.000 And as long as you keep your mouth open, it will head directly for your mouth.

00:27:44.000 They always look for places to hide.

00:27:46.000 So you've just got to keep your mouth open.

00:27:47.000 It'll tickle, tickle, tickle.

00:27:49.000 The tarantula will run up here and into your mouth. 0.70

00:27:52.000 And then the guy will pluck it out of your mouth, you know.

00:27:58.000 I'm like, okay, cool.

00:28:01.000 So they turn on all these hot lights, right?

00:28:04.000 I lie down on the ground.

00:28:06.000 The tarantula gets put on my chest.

00:28:08.000 Now, tarantula.

00:28:12.000 Bigger than my hand, right?

00:28:14.000 It's a serious spider.

00:28:16.000 Now, obviously, I've lived in Australia most of my life or whatever.

00:28:19.000 I'm used to spiders, you know?

00:28:21.000 That was a large one, right?

00:28:22.000 So on my chest, tickle, tickle, up it comes, up it comes, into my mouth, right?

00:28:26.000 And boom, the guy plucks it out.

00:28:28.000 Done.

00:28:29.000 And I'm thinking to myself, good little spider.

00:28:32.000 One take wonder.

00:28:34.000 Fantastic.

00:28:34.000 Did everything we need.

00:28:35.000 And I'm like, cool, so that was good.

00:28:37.000 They go, oh, no, no, we're just going to shoot it again.

00:28:38.000 We just have to adjust the lights.

00:28:41.000 Second take, third take.

00:28:43.000 Now, one of the things that the producer had said to me in the car park, right, looked me in the eye and said to me, it's not dangerous to use the tarantula because before doing something like this, they milk it of its venom.

00:28:56.000 So it's perfectly safe, you know?

00:28:59.000 So I've taken that on board, right?

00:29:01.000 So we take two, take three, take four, right about after the fifth take.

00:29:06.000 Now, these lights in that room are very, very hot and my body is starting to Really warm up.

00:29:11.000 And we're taking a long time between takes, resetting lights and all that.

00:29:16.000 But after about the fifth take, I get a moment to talk to tarantula men.

00:29:21.000 How you doing?

00:29:22.000 All that sort of stuff.

00:29:22.000 Pretty cool that you can milk the venom from the tarantulas so they can do things like this.

00:29:27.000 And he just looks at me really confused.

00:29:29.000 You can milk the what?

00:29:32.000 Okay, so what I thought was my only safety net, gone, right?

00:29:37.000 So take six, take seven, and I'm starting to really get hot.

00:29:42.000 I wouldn't be surprised if they're all Klieg lights, you know, because it didn't look like anybody had used this studio for a long, long time, you know?

00:29:49.000 And I'm heating up, and at one point in time, it was about, take seven or eight, and the spider just stops on my neck and starts to sort of like spread its legs out and just sort of like grab at me, you know, and it's sort of pulsing,

00:30:05.000 you know, and then I'm sort of like just lying there going, and then the tarantula guy tickles it, up it goes, you know, and I'm kind of like, well, what was that?

00:30:14.000 How long does it have to sit in your mouth for?

00:30:16.000 It's only just a couple of seconds.

00:30:18.000 As soon as it started going into the mouth, the guy would just grab it out, you know, because they can cut around that.

00:30:23.000 As long as they see it going in, then they can cut around it to make it look like it's disappeared in there, you know.

00:30:29.000 So take eight.

00:30:31.000 That happens.

00:30:32.000 The tarantula stops on the neck.

00:30:35.000 Take nine.

00:30:35.000 We're done for the day.

00:30:37.000 So nine takes with a live tarantula crawling into my mouth.

00:30:42.000 The next day, I wake up and I've got a rash all over me.

00:30:47.000 My legs and my chest and my arms.

00:30:50.000 So I call production.

00:30:52.000 They call a doctor who knows about these sort of things.

00:30:55.000 He comes over to see me.

00:30:56.000 He goes, ah, okay.

00:30:59.000 All right.

00:31:00.000 See, were you hot yesterday?

00:31:04.000 I said, very hot, you know, the lights and stuff like that.

00:31:06.000 He goes, right, right.

00:31:07.000 And the spider stopped.

00:31:08.000 Yeah, right.

00:31:09.000 He goes, okay.

00:31:10.000 See, tarantulas on their legs have these very fine hairs.

00:31:15.000 So fine, in fact, that they can easily go through a pore in human skin.

00:31:20.000 So currently, what you have going on is your body is full of tarantula venom, but not enough to hurt you or even make you just going to have this rash.

00:31:32.000 So here's this ointment.

00:31:33.000 Take this pill.

00:31:34.000 A few days from now, you'll be right.

00:31:37.000 And the reason that I wanted to tell you this story... 0.98

00:31:42.000 And your listeners is because, and you can check this, you can Google away, I'm pretty sure in the history of cinema, I'm the only Academy Award winning actor who's ever been fucked in the neck by a tarantula. 0.98

00:31:59.000 Was that what it was doing? 0.99

00:32:01.000 Apparently.

00:32:03.000 It just decided that was a good spot?

00:32:04.000 It just decided I was moist and juicy and it was going to have its way with me.

00:32:09.000 Yeah, I know about those fibers.

00:32:12.000 Those fibers are nasty.

00:32:13.000 They cause a real problem with people.

00:32:16.000 I was hoping you weren't going to say you were allergic to tarantulas.

00:32:20.000 No, but I did find out I was allergic to one of the things that they tried to fix it with.

00:32:27.000 It comes up quite a bit.

00:32:28.000 Every time I've had major injuries and stuff, there's, I can't even remember the name of it now, but there's the go-to thing that they inject into you to take away the initial pain.

00:32:40.000 Cortisone?

00:32:40.000 Yeah, cortisone.

00:32:41.000 I'm allergic to cortisone.

00:32:42.000 Oh.

00:32:43.000 Yeah.

00:32:44.000 Oh.

00:32:45.000 Yeah, odd, isn't it?

00:32:46.000 Yeah, that is odd.

00:32:47.000 That could be a real problem.

00:32:49.000 Especially if you don't know.

00:32:51.000 Yeah, well, that's when...

00:32:52.000 It was around about then I found out. 0.99

00:32:57.000 God damn, man. 0.99

00:32:58.000 So, is that like the most uncomfortable you've ever been in a scene? 1.00

00:33:02.000 Oh, hell no.

00:33:04.000 Really?

00:33:05.000 Oh, no.

00:33:06.000 I had to go into the water on the southwest coast of Iceland shirtless for a Darren Aronofsky movie.

00:33:16.000 You know how cold that water is, man?

00:33:17.000 Oh, yeah.

00:33:18.000 You know, 15 minutes, you're dead. 0.73

00:33:19.000 Yeah.

00:33:20.000 And I was just walking in there and I had to drop into it chest first, right?

00:33:23.000 You know, Noah collapses into the water or whatever it was.

00:33:27.000 But it was weird.

00:33:29.000 I hit that water and like I'm, you know, splayed out like that.

00:33:33.000 But every muscle in my body contracted.

00:33:35.000 It was like I hovered back out of the water.

00:33:37.000 You know, it's like I hit the water and I came straight back out.

00:33:40.000 Back onto my feet.

00:33:41.000 I don't know how I did it, but it was so cold.

00:33:45.000 But, you know, I mean, temperature's one thing, you know, and you tend to in the film business, you know, if the script says it's bright and sunny and you're in the Bahamas, you're probably going to end up shooting that somewhere far away from the Bahamas and it's going to be freezing,

00:34:03.000 you know.

00:34:04.000 It's always like that, you know.

00:34:08.000 It's like a given that whatever it says is going to be the opposite for it.

00:34:12.000 Whatever the most comfortable way of shooting that scene might be, there'll be something that makes it uncomfortable.

00:34:19.000 But in terms of discomfort on film sets, physical discomfort...

00:34:25.000 When you're doing fight sequences or things like that, you know, because they can sometimes take a long, long time.

00:34:33.000 I shredded both my hamstrings while I was doing NOAA. I flew back to Australia to watch a football game, actually.

00:34:43.000 My football team that I bought in 2006 had finally made a preliminary final after many years of trying.

00:34:49.000 And I wanted to be there to witness it.

00:34:50.000 We ended up losing the game, so it was a waste of money.

00:34:52.000 But I flew back to Australia, and it also coincided with my youngest athletic day at school.

00:34:58.000 And I was doing Noah.

00:35:00.000 I was fit as a bull, strong as an ox, absolutely.

00:35:02.000 So I rock up to the little athletics day, you know.

00:35:06.000 And they asked me if I would step in and do this little running race thing.

00:35:10.000 So I said, yeah, yeah, cool, you know.

00:35:12.000 So one of my son's friends was in the race and he was coming last.

00:35:16.000 So I ran up behind him and I was talking to him about going fast or whatever.

00:35:20.000 But I had to really sprint to catch up to him because I was a long way back.

00:35:24.000 And I hadn't really noticed that all the kids, because I was up behind him, had got really excited.

00:35:28.000 They jumped up and they were all standing on the finish line.

00:35:31.000 And so I got up behind him and I let him just pass me so he could win.

00:35:36.000 They all go crazy and stuff like that.

00:35:38.000 But then I have to put the brakes on.

00:35:40.000 I put the brakes on, and my hamstrings went...

00:35:42.000 I'm lying on the ground, like vibrating.

00:35:47.000 And my little boy's there, and he's only like seven or something at the time.

00:35:52.000 He's like, hi, Dad, that was fun.

00:35:53.000 And I couldn't talk.

00:35:56.000 It was like unbelievable, man.

00:35:58.000 And there was a teacher who'd seen what happened, and he went, Hamstrings?

00:36:03.000 And I said, I think so, man.

00:36:04.000 And he had some tape.

00:36:06.000 So I just taped my legs up under my shorts.

00:36:09.000 And then he helped me stand up.

00:36:11.000 And I had to get on a plane that night and go back to the film set on Long Island and run to the Ark with 5,000 extras, you know, 50 times with, you know, I mean, I think, you know, we had a...

00:36:28.000 A rain tower set up that's the biggest in the history of cinema for that, you know?

00:36:32.000 So I'm getting rained on with these gigantic drops.

00:36:35.000 I've got 5,000 extras around me.

00:36:36.000 Actually, no, not 5,000.

00:36:37.000 Maybe about 1,000 extras around me.

00:36:40.000 And I've got no hamstrings.

00:36:42.000 And the scene requires me to run.

00:36:44.000 And because I've taken time...

00:36:47.000 Off the set, I can't tell anybody that I've injured myself.

00:36:50.000 I just have to get on with it.

00:36:51.000 You know what I mean?

00:36:52.000 I didn't want any insurance problems or anything else, you know?

00:36:56.000 So that was crazy.

00:36:58.000 And that sequence went on for days.

00:37:00.000 So it was like...

00:37:01.000 And I literally meant was just getting...

00:37:03.000 Like, KT tape and just taping them up.

00:37:07.000 Jesus Christ, both hamstrings blown, having to run, that's insane.

00:37:11.000 Yeah, but at your skids, your cool, you know, your kids' athletics thing, it was like, that's just such a cliche. 0.98

00:37:19.000 It's, like, ridiculous.

00:37:23.000 But I think it was to do with the fact that, you know, even though I warmed up that morning and I went to the gym and I went on a bike ride and everything, and I got there...

00:37:31.000 You know, in good shape.

00:37:33.000 It must have just been the hour sitting around watching the races and everything.

00:37:36.000 It just cooled me down too much and then having to stop so suddenly just to make sure I didn't barrel into those kids.

00:37:42.000 But yeah, that was definitely uncomfortable.

00:37:45.000 What are the rain towers?

00:37:46.000 How do they do that?

00:37:48.000 Well, they basically get big cranes and they hoist up grids that are laid with hose pipe and the pipe It comes down the tower to a water tank and at a certain point they turn on the pump and they operate like sprinklers basically.

00:38:09.000 But if you imagine like a metal grid in the air where every joining point of pipes is another sprinkler head And I think we had two and a half football fields worth of,

00:38:25.000 you know, where we could soak at the push of a button.

00:38:31.000 All the rain starts and, you know. 1.00

00:38:33.000 Holy shit. 0.96

00:38:34.000 Yeah, because you see the, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie, but there's these big wide shots of all these people running towards the ark and there's rain falling. 0.96

00:38:41.000 So we had that whole area had to have rain.

00:38:43.000 So here it is.

00:38:44.000 Yeah, right.

00:38:44.000 That's incredible.

00:38:45.000 That's all done with towers.

00:38:47.000 Yeah.

00:38:49.000 That's after I've already, I think I've already run in at that point.

00:38:54.000 It was such an intense movie because the story is so crazy.

00:38:58.000 Yeah.

00:38:59.000 It's the time old story of the savior of the human race after God's wrath.

00:39:08.000 Yeah.

00:39:08.000 It's a lot of weight playing a role like that.

00:39:10.000 Yeah, a little bit.

00:39:12.000 Yeah.

00:39:14.000 What I thought was the funniest thing with that stuff is when that movie came out, all of this sort of pushback press about how, you know, look at this, Darren Aronofsky, this New York elite, has made Noah into a story about the environment.

00:39:35.000 It's always been a story about the environment.

00:39:37.000 What are you talking about?

00:39:38.000 This is about a flood, mate.

00:39:40.000 Literally.

00:39:42.000 It was just so weird.

00:39:44.000 And it was like article after article pushing back as if he had done something against Christianity or whatever by acknowledging that this is a story about our environment and how we treat our environment and blah,

00:40:00.000 blah, blah, you know?

00:40:04.000 I quite enjoy the film, but it's harsh.

00:40:10.000 It's a harsh telling.

00:40:12.000 But he did promise me, Darren, at the beginning of that experience, he said never at any stage, which I thought was funny, because he was riffing off a thing that Ridley Scott did.

00:40:21.000 Ridley Scott said, I promise you don't have to wear sandals, and I promise you, you never have to lie on a couch and have somebody feed you a grape.

00:40:28.000 So let's do a Roman movie.

00:40:31.000 So Darren's version was that never at any stage will I have you at the prow of an ark flanked by a giraffe and a lion.

00:40:46.000 The funny thing with Noah, man, is most people think they know what's in the Bible, but in reality, what most people know is what they read in the Golden Circle children's book of Noah.

00:40:58.000 They've never read the very few mentions that there are in the Bible or the other mentions.

00:41:05.000 Religious writings which cover his story because there are other writings from pre-biblical that never made it into the Bible.

00:41:15.000 The Epic of Gilgamesh is a very similar story.

00:41:18.000 Right.

00:41:18.000 There seems to be some sort of a historical tale that is repeated through many cultures of a great flood.

00:41:27.000 I don't think there is an ancient religion that doesn't have a flood story.

00:41:32.000 Right, yeah.

00:41:33.000 And we can see it.

00:41:34.000 We can see and date it and everything with how we can view our world now with the science that's come along.

00:41:44.000 So there's no doubt that there was a flood, or has been many floods probably.

00:41:52.000 The real hardcore people think they've located Noah's Ark.

00:41:56.000 They've located the remains of it on Mount Ararat.

00:42:00.000 Yeah.

00:42:00.000 Yeah, there's this bizarre feature in the rocks that they believe is where apparently it matches the Bible's description of the actual size of the Ark.

00:42:12.000 Yeah, it's odd, isn't it?

00:42:14.000 Because if that's there, we should then be able to have definitive proof.

00:42:18.000 It seems like somebody should have gone there and figured that out yet.

00:42:21.000 Right?

00:42:21.000 Yeah, it's probably been discredited.

00:42:23.000 You ever familiar at all with the work of Randall Carlson?

00:42:27.000 Do you know who he is?

00:42:28.000 A little bit more context?

00:42:30.000 Randall Carlson is an expert in asteroid impacts, and he kind of specializes in this theory about the Younger Dryas impact.

00:42:41.000 The Younger Dryas impact is somewhere around, they think there's multiple times this happened, somewhere around 11,800 years ago, and again somewhere in the 10,000s.

00:42:51.000 That this is what happened that caused the end of the Ice Age.

00:42:55.000 This is what caused the great flooding across North America.

00:42:58.000 That date coincides with what would be the end of Gobekli Tepe, right? 0.95

00:43:05.000 Yes.

00:43:07.000 It coincides with that and it also there's a lot of physical evidence of it with core samples and this used to be kind of a fringe theory but they started doing core samples and they found a high level of iridium which is very common in space very rare on earth during that same time period but what's really interesting about this guy is he got this idea when he was overlooking this enormous canyon while he was on acid and And it occurred to him that this is because of not just a river that ran through this

00:43:37.000 for thousands and thousands of years.

00:43:38.000 He felt like it was one immense event that took place.

00:43:43.000 He just had this bizarre vision of this immense event that took place.

00:43:48.000 And now they're talking about...

00:43:59.000 Yeah, immediate.

00:44:03.000 Exactly.

00:44:04.000 Yeah, his work is absolutely fascinating.

00:44:07.000 Very controversial, of course, because it goes kind of against the conventional idea of what happened with the Ice Age.

00:44:13.000 The Ice Age ended almost immediately.

00:44:15.000 That something slammed into the ice caps, which were, at that point in time, between one and two miles high in a gigantic chunk of North America.

00:44:24.000 And that these asteroids slammed into it, and that's where these features that you see where it looks like...

00:44:30.000 I don't know if you've ever seen some of the overhead features, but it literally looks like over massive amounts of space, Huge water had risen.

00:44:39.000 You know how water, when it goes over the sand, it leaves these kind of humps and ridges where the water washed over?

00:44:45.000 Well, there's physical evidence of this all throughout, like the Pacific Northwest.

00:44:49.000 You can find these things.

00:44:51.000 And he thinks that's what ended the Ice Age, killed off 65% of the megafauna in North America, and that it happened like that.

00:45:00.000 It happened very quickly.

00:45:02.000 And that's the Noah's Ark story.

00:45:03.000 I mean, that is it.

00:45:05.000 That is the story, which is why it's so interesting that people want to dismiss biblical stories.

00:45:12.000 You know, they say, oh, well, it was an oral tradition for a thousand years before it was ever written down.

00:45:17.000 Like, right, right.

00:45:18.000 But what was it based on? 0.98

00:45:19.000 What the fuck happened? 0.98

00:45:21.000 Something happened. 1.00

00:45:22.000 Every culture has a story of something like that happening.

00:45:25.000 Yeah.

00:45:25.000 Very likely something happened.

00:45:27.000 When I was doing the research, building up to it, I was quite surprised because in my naivety, I actually had considered it was only like a Christian thing and I didn't realize it was touched on everywhere until I was doing that film.

00:45:45.000 Was there any hesitancy in taking on a religious character like that with such significance to it?

00:45:52.000 No, that was the exciting bit.

00:45:59.000 It was a very busy year.

00:46:01.000 It was 2012. In that year, I played Superman's dad the year before and I was the fittest I'd ever been.

00:46:10.000 I worked with a guy called Mark Twight.

00:46:12.000 You ever heard of him?

00:46:13.000 No. 0.92

00:46:14.000 There was this company for a while called Jim Jones and they were considered to be the hardest asses in the physical training business.

00:46:22.000 It was very, very difficult to become a Jim Jones trainer and stuff.

00:46:25.000 Mark was the guy that trained the trainers.

00:46:28.000 And he got assigned to me, oh my god, the things that he put me through. 0.97

00:46:34.000 But it was all great and we remain strong friends now because we did some shit together. 0.96

00:46:42.000 I like that kind of mateship. 0.97

00:46:44.000 You've been in the trenches or whatever.

00:46:47.000 And so the following year, I played the mayor of New York in a thing called Broken City with Mark Wahlberg.

00:46:58.000 It's funny, that's one of those performances that people just haven't seen, but I quite rate that performance.

00:47:06.000 And then I did Les Mis with all that beautiful cast and sort of spent Three or four months on that.

00:47:16.000 And then straight into NOAA. So I was exhausted before I started.

00:47:23.000 You know, I'd had three really big jobs in a row.

00:47:25.000 And then to drop into that, which was a lot of...

00:47:31.000 Physical stuff on that movie.

00:47:32.000 And Darren shoots a lot.

00:47:35.000 So those big, wide shots, you're still doing the same action as you do when you're close in, so you're sort of working pretty hard.

00:47:44.000 But I think, if anything, I was really excited by the fact of being able to delve into that.

00:47:51.000 I would have preferred what I'm getting at is a little more time.

00:47:55.000 Because it's the quiet contemplation that really fills you up for the thing that you're about to do.

00:48:00.000 And when you're coming straight off one film set pretty much onto another, I think I had a gap of about two or three weeks.

00:48:06.000 It's not quite enough.

00:48:09.000 What would you do if you had all the time that you wanted to do?

00:48:13.000 Go and talk to people.

00:48:15.000 Go and talk to people who've got a perspective.

00:48:17.000 I would have probably wanted to spend a little bit more time with some Jewish scholars because there's a lot of writings adjunct to the Torah about Noah.

00:48:29.000 I get to the bottom of that, but I really didn't have the time, so I just had to sort of...

00:48:35.000 Plow into it with what I had, which is a beautiful two-volume Old Testament and New Testament that Darren got me.

00:48:47.000 So that was the beginning of the research.

00:48:50.000 But there's not really much else you can do because you can't go and look up old photos or anything.

00:48:56.000 So you're pretty much stepping into that world, trying to understand Darren's perspective on it and what he was trying to show that, you know, there had been a big civilization already.

00:49:06.000 So there was a civilization prior to Noah.

00:49:09.000 So you're already talking about, you know, a post-apocalyptic world that they're living in and another apocalypse is coming, you know, and it's all based on...

00:49:19.000 You know, human behavior and what have you.

00:49:21.000 There's a sequence in the film that some people miss where, like, Noah is looking into these people who are all, you know, sort of the ones who've allowed themselves to give in to their base desires or what have you.

00:49:36.000 And within the group of people, he sees a man who looks like a rat, you know, gnawing away at the body of something, possibly another human.

00:49:47.000 And it's him.

00:49:49.000 So he sees himself on the other side of that.

00:49:52.000 So Darren had a lot of cool things going in the movie, a lot of great ideas.

00:49:58.000 And, you know, Outside of America was a huge hit, a massive hit in places like Russia or Brazil or whatever.

00:50:06.000 But I don't think it's really considered to be a hit because it didn't hit the box office in the United States.

00:50:11.000 But...

00:50:13.000 I don't know, it's three or four hundred million or something.

00:50:15.000 It's bizarre that there's controversy attached to it being that it is about the climate.

00:50:20.000 It's bizarre that that's become a weird political point and that it's so ideologically connected that people either oppose it or go with it with no information other than the fact that my team believes this.

00:50:34.000 Yeah, it's a bit odd. 0.85

00:50:35.000 The fucking environment, the very thing we live in, that's a political angle? 0.99

00:50:41.000 It's so strange. 0.99

00:50:42.000 It is so strange because there's a whole lot of different things that I think, not necessarily on the money, but the bottom line that the burning of fossil fuels is having an effect on On our air quality and how we receive sunshine,

00:51:02.000 etc.

00:51:02.000 That's an irrefutable fact.

00:51:04.000 You can't make up your own opinion on that because there's just too much stuff to prove that that's going on.

00:51:11.000 And it has been going on in our entire lives and it's just been getting worse.

00:51:15.000 The same things.

00:51:16.000 We're being talked about in the early 70s when I was in primary school that are now actually physically happening.

00:51:24.000 But some people just want to see it as yet another game or whatever, and it's really much more important than that.

00:51:32.000 It's strange because it also – the problem with having this ideology attached to it is it stops the real research to actually be able to objectively understand what has the most effect.

00:51:44.000 Like what is the thing that's driving us the most and what is the thing that we can do to mitigate that?

00:51:49.000 See, I think things like the cows farting, I think that's misinformation that just gets thrown out there to sort of spread the blame or whatever.

00:52:02.000 Because we are told over and over again...

00:52:06.000 That there were so many more animals on this planet at a certain point.

00:52:10.000 Okay, so if we've killed off, you know, 80% or whatever of the animals that existed, what about their farts?

00:52:20.000 That was a dinosaur fart compared to a cow fart, you know?

00:52:24.000 Well, the thing is, what we're doing is very unnatural, right? 0.99

00:52:28.000 So we're serving them grain, and we're keeping them in pens, and then all the pig shit and all that stuff gets into the water.

00:52:37.000 It's very different than a regenerative farm, an actual real farm where cows are grazing, and then their manure fertilizes the land, and it actually sequesters carbon. 0.89

00:52:47.000 A real regenerative farm is carbon neutral.

00:52:50.000 Yeah.

00:52:51.000 That's not the issue.

00:52:52.000 I run 220 Angus on my place in the bush.

00:52:56.000 And, you know, over time, I sort of learned that all of those factory farming processes are just the absolute wrong thing to do.

00:53:09.000 You know, I mean, when I first had land and cattle...

00:53:14.000 I used to love getting up in the dawn, you know, in the darkness, cowdy hat on, stock whip, and getting out and, you know, hurting them and all that sort of stuff.

00:53:24.000 And then over time, started to realize that That's not good for them.

00:53:31.000 That sort of stuff's not good for them.

00:53:32.000 So we developed this system at my place where we have a single laneway and all of the other paddocks where the cattle will be go onto that laneway.

00:53:43.000 And the paddock can be 100 acres or whatever.

00:53:48.000 You can muster one man, soft voice, handful of grain.

00:53:53.000 Just open the gate, you call out a couple of times, they come towards you, you can get every cow in that laneway, then you get up behind them, walk behind them, and you walk them straight to the yards.

00:54:03.000 Now, we've taken all the fun out of it, but it's just a lot more...

00:54:06.000 It's, you know, safer, easier, sensible.

00:54:10.000 And we don't use, you know, hosepipes.

00:54:13.000 We don't use stockwhips anymore.

00:54:14.000 We don't muster on ATVs, you know.

00:54:18.000 It's either on foot or horseback.

00:54:20.000 And we still use working dogs, but...

00:54:25.000 The cows don't get upset by the working dogs.

00:54:28.000 They don't get freaked out by the same way as they get freaked out by an engine roaring up behind them.

00:54:34.000 And the reason for that kind of pastoral care is because at the end of the day, 100% true, the steak tastes better.

00:54:45.000 If you don't adrenalize the cattle, if you don't abuse them, it's just better.

00:54:51.000 It's more tasteful.

00:54:55.000 Really adrenalized meat gets a very gamey quality, and the steak that we serve on the farm.

00:55:05.000 I only do all this.

00:55:06.000 I don't operate it as a business.

00:55:07.000 I started to operate it as a business for a while there, but kind of found out that everybody in the butchery game is similar to working with people that sell used cars, and they're only looking for the story.

00:55:19.000 They don't really care about the animal.

00:55:22.000 I do.

00:55:25.000 I was laughed at for many years in the valley that I live in because of the way I care for their cattle.

00:55:32.000 But I can't do it any other way.

00:55:36.000 They've got to have a great life.

00:55:37.000 It makes sense.

00:55:38.000 It's smarter.

00:55:39.000 It's less karma.

00:55:40.000 It's a better situation for them.

00:55:43.000 Yeah.

00:55:43.000 They just feel healthier.

00:55:46.000 I went fully organic at one point.

00:55:48.000 It took us five or seven years to get the certification.

00:55:53.000 But then I would walk amongst the cattle and because we couldn't douse them because they're organic cattle now, things like buffalo fly and other little things were just all over them.

00:56:10.000 I thought, man, that can't be good either.

00:56:12.000 It's like having a kid and never giving the kid Panadol if it gets a fever.

00:56:18.000 By the time that kid's 14, it hasn't overcome it, and it's not the biggest, best, strongest.

00:56:24.000 It's this weedy little bloke in the corner.

00:56:26.000 He spent most of his life sick because he never got the medicine to make it easier for his body to recover.

00:56:32.000 And that kind of was happening to the cows. 0.89

00:56:34.000 They lost a lot of weight and they just looked in distress.

00:56:37.000 So I keep my pastures organic.

00:56:43.000 But I do topical treatments for the cattle, so they don't have to deal with ticks and buffalo fly and things like that.

00:56:51.000 Where my place is, it's still considered coastal, so we get all of the bitey things that can affect them negatively.

00:57:00.000 And now I have that balance.

00:57:02.000 I can't sell them it as organic meat, but they're hand-raised organic pasture.

00:57:09.000 And as I say, they don't get adrenalized through their life.

00:57:12.000 So when we do cull them, the meat is a profound experience.

00:57:18.000 Do you sell it online?

00:57:20.000 How does someone get it?

00:57:20.000 No, no.

00:57:21.000 I don't sell it.

00:57:22.000 You don't sell it at all?

00:57:23.000 Well, occasionally there's one butcher near me that I trust.

00:57:28.000 He's really into what he does.

00:57:30.000 And he will ask if he can have a couple of beasts and I'll let him have it.

00:57:35.000 We do sell to some neighbors that we know are needing a little bit of assistance.

00:57:45.000 I don't want to put it in any other terms, but we sell it to them, but we sell it to them for less than it costs to produce and way less than they would be spending if they went to the supermarket.

00:57:59.000 But basically, I have the cows to feed my family.

00:58:04.000 So my kids are very snobby about steak.

00:58:08.000 Because they've grown up with, you know...

00:58:10.000 The best.

00:58:11.000 The best you can...

00:58:13.000 Well, anyway, the most humane way to produce it, yeah, for sure.

00:58:17.000 How did you get started doing this?

00:58:19.000 It seems like you're a very busy person to be starting a regenerative farm.

00:58:24.000 Well...

00:58:26.000 It comes from when I was getting a little bit of success, I could see things coming along and I sort of had a choice.

00:58:34.000 I only had enough money to either buy a small apartment in the city or some land.

00:58:42.000 And my mum and dad weren't in a great place and I hadn't really spent a lot of time with them in the previous decade because I'd been out trying to establish who I was and I didn't really go home very much.

00:58:53.000 And So what I did is I decided instead of buying an apartment in the city, I'd buy 100 acres in the bush and my mum and dad could go and live there and basically they could start fresh and have a sort of a new experience.

00:59:09.000 I bought 100 acres initially, but I think I've got 1,700 acres or something now.

00:59:15.000 But once I had the land, then I started feeling like, well, you've got to do something with it.

00:59:20.000 It can't just be 100 acres of a garden.

00:59:25.000 And there's also that thing, too, of you're walking into farmland.

00:59:30.000 You want to see a horse, you want to see a cow, you know, you want to have something.

00:59:34.000 So over time, I started, I experimented by holding some cattle for a friend, you know, and I got used to what you had to do and stuff like that.

00:59:46.000 And they were big longhorn beasts and they were quite difficult to deal with, so that made me decide to go with Angus.

00:59:52.000 But, you know, here's another story, you know.

00:59:55.000 I had 20 little calves down in the yards that were being picked up the next day.

01:00:00.000 And at this stage, I was living in a caravan because I hadn't started building or anything on the property.

01:00:08.000 And so I go to bed and at about 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm woken up because it's raining.

01:00:15.000 And I'm trying to get back to sleep. 0.97

01:00:18.000 But all I can think of is these 20 little calves down in the yards and how the floor of the yards will turn into muck and these guys are being picked up the next day and they'll spend the whole night slipping over and sort of covering each other with shit and they'll be in great distress and blah, 0.98

01:00:35.000 blah, blah. 0.95

01:00:36.000 So about 2.30, I got up, got dressed, went down to the yards trying to figure out how to get them out of the rain.

01:00:45.000 I had a shed down there.

01:00:46.000 But it was about 30 metres away from the edge of the yards.

01:00:51.000 And I looked around in the shed and I had enough bits and pieces to make a fence for one side.

01:00:58.000 So I could make one side of this alley.

01:01:00.000 So then it's just me on the other side.

01:01:01.000 So I got these big, long pieces of wood.

01:01:04.000 And then what I had to do was I had to get them running towards me.

01:01:08.000 Then I had to redirect them along that fence line so they would go inside the shed.

01:01:13.000 Now while this is happening, it's pissing down rain.

01:01:15.000 Absolutely tropical rain.

01:01:18.000 And it took me about, I don't know, 40 minutes, something like that.

01:01:23.000 So it's deep in the middle of the night now to fix the fence.

01:01:27.000 And then I got them running and they're coming towards me.

01:01:30.000 I could see one was about to jink away so I had to sort of dance along with my...

01:01:34.000 but it was amazing.

01:01:36.000 You know, I stopped that one little bloke and he rejoined The rest of them, and then they just went like clockwork, just so smooth, straight into the shed, right?

01:01:45.000 So then in the shed, I laid out some hay and stuff, and I left a little light on. 1.00

01:01:53.000 You tell stories like that to farmers, and they think you're an absolute idiot. 1.00

01:01:58.000 What are you doing, mate? 1.00

01:01:59.000 You had to learn how to do it some way, but I think that's... 0.99

01:02:02.000 Just for me, the next day when the truck came to pick them up, they were all happy and healthy and not covered in brown shit. 1.00

01:02:11.000 So I'm not really a farmer, but I've got land. 0.99

01:02:16.000 You kind of are, though.

01:02:18.000 I mean, that sounds like at least a practicing farmer.

01:02:22.000 I mean, you actually did it.

01:02:24.000 Yeah, well, we still do.

01:02:25.000 And we still turn the meat out.

01:02:27.000 But when I looked into it in terms of a business, you have to really have about $25,000 ahead to make it a business.

01:02:34.000 That covers you for when sometimes the price of meat goes down or whatever, or the costs around culling go up.

01:02:42.000 And I just didn't want to do it that way.

01:02:44.000 I didn't want to have to be responsible in my heart for $25,000.

01:02:50.000 Right.

01:03:06.000 Right.

01:03:06.000 And it's also the humanity of it all just gets so distorted when you have these factory farming operations that you're not even allowed.

01:03:14.000 We have ag-gag laws in America. 0.73

01:03:16.000 You're not even allowed to film there because the conditions are sometimes so horrific that it damages the business.

01:03:22.000 We give grain to our cattle because there is a nice texture and stuff that comes to the meat beyond being grass-fed.

01:03:31.000 But we never put them into a feeding pen situation.

01:03:34.000 And I think that that's also the best part of the balance because, you know, they're still walking around on their home range.

01:03:42.000 You know, this is where they're used to being.

01:03:44.000 And then here's a pile of grain over here.

01:03:46.000 So they supplement their grass with the grain as opposed to just being fed grain purely to put on size.

01:03:51.000 So what we turn off, Ben, and I think it's partly to do with the fact that they stay active and everything, we get a natural 7% to 10% fat ratio, which is the bottom end of the scale.

01:04:06.000 But therefore, to me, you're getting more protein.

01:04:09.000 And therefore, what we're giving you when we give you a steak is like an absolute protein pill.

01:04:14.000 It's a hit.

01:04:16.000 It's better for you, too, physically.

01:04:18.000 I think so.

01:04:18.000 It is.

01:04:19.000 It's been proven that the nutritional balance of grass-fed animals is just much better.

01:04:25.000 They're not supposed to live entirely on grain.

01:04:28.000 Just like humans are not supposed to live.

01:04:29.000 But I think, again, that balance thing of their life on grass and then just before You cull them.

01:04:35.000 You give them a little bit of grain.

01:04:37.000 It finishes them off and gets them sort of ready to be consumed.

01:04:43.000 But you still have the same benefits of the grass-fed because you've never stopped that.

01:04:48.000 But you have the thing of them being fit because you've never made them stand still in a pen.

01:04:55.000 Right.

01:04:55.000 It's got to be a cool feeling, too, to consume only the animals at your place that you've actually raised.

01:05:02.000 Like, you know every step of the way.

01:05:04.000 We occasionally will have a fresh guest that's never been there before.

01:05:10.000 And we'll do things like, oh, you're going to love Buttercup.

01:05:15.000 She is such... 0.81

01:05:18.000 It's just an Australian sense of humor.

01:05:20.000 We just put somebody off their meal just as they're about to eat.

01:05:24.000 Yeah.

01:05:25.000 But I did used to name them, but I stopped naming them because that was an extra level of pain.

01:05:30.000 Yeah.

01:05:31.000 And plus, when you've got 20, they can all have a name.

01:05:34.000 But when you have 220, it's a bit difficult.

01:05:37.000 Yeah, you don't want to be naming something you're going to eat.

01:05:39.000 It's just too weird.

01:05:40.000 It's weird enough for me.

01:05:42.000 People are so disconnected from where their food comes from already.

01:05:45.000 Just the concept of killing it themselves seems abhorrent.

01:05:47.000 But the concept of living without meat seems terrible too.

01:05:51.000 Just we're completely disconnected from the act of how it gets to your plate.

01:05:55.000 Yeah.

01:05:55.000 We just go and see it wrapped up nicely at the butcher shop and we pick it up and, oh, 16 ounces.

01:06:01.000 Thank you.

01:06:02.000 Bye.

01:06:02.000 And that's your entire involvement in the death of a living creature.

01:06:06.000 Yeah.

01:06:06.000 I definitely think people need to, you know, have an awareness of it, you know?

01:06:12.000 Yeah.

01:06:13.000 Because, you know, we're sharing the planet, you know, and they're helping us survive.

01:06:17.000 So the very least a little due respect is in order.

01:06:22.000 Yeah, and that's what we don't get from factory farming. 0.92

01:06:26.000 We get the opposite.

01:06:27.000 We get the worst elements of human nature that kind of put into this very bizarre food supply system that we have where, you know, at every corner in almost every city, there's a place where you can get a quick piece of meat.

01:06:41.000 You know, a quick, cooked piece of meat of unknown origin.

01:06:45.000 Who knows how they raised it?

01:06:46.000 Who knows where they got it?

01:06:47.000 And we just trust in the fact that it's still consumable.

01:06:50.000 And it's just bizarre that you can get a cheeseburger for $1.39.

01:06:54.000 How much work was involved in this?

01:06:56.000 Absolutely.

01:06:57.000 That's what I mean.

01:06:58.000 I know the dollar it cost me to produce the steak at that level.

01:07:04.000 And there's just no way on the normal chain of how the business works that it's acceptable to have spent that much to produce it.

01:07:13.000 Right.

01:07:14.000 Do you cook yourself?

01:07:15.000 Oh yeah.

01:07:16.000 My mum was a caterer. 0.98

01:07:18.000 So I love cooking, absolutely.

01:07:21.000 How do you prepare a steak?

01:07:23.000 With farm steak, I use black pepper and I use Lowry's garlic salt.

01:07:33.000 There's lots of garlic salts around, but that one's good.

01:07:38.000 And it used to be available when I was a kid and then they stopped selling it in Australia for years.

01:07:42.000 We'd have to, you know, a friend was coming over, we'd say, oh, grab some garlic salt, but you can buy it again there now.

01:07:48.000 But yeah, it's really simple, just salt and pepper, you know?

01:07:53.000 I don't do anything extreme.

01:07:55.000 What kind of grill?

01:07:56.000 I open flame and I make it as hot as possible.

01:07:59.000 And I've actually put oil onto the flame to make it go crazy for a while.

01:08:05.000 Because I like to have color on the steak.

01:08:09.000 Did someone teach you this method or is there something that you devised over time?

01:08:13.000 Over time, yeah.

01:08:14.000 I did for a while there.

01:08:16.000 I was a short order cook and I cooked steaks.

01:08:18.000 That's what I did.

01:08:20.000 Every Monday night.

01:08:21.000 This is like when I was working in clubs and my name was in the paper every week and my photograph was in the paper and stuff.

01:08:30.000 But my mother said, you still have to make a contribution to the family.

01:08:34.000 So if you're in town on a Monday night, you have to cook in the restaurant.

01:08:38.000 So I'd cook 150 steaks on a Monday night if I was in town.

01:08:43.000 And just over time, I cook it to my own taste, obviously.

01:08:51.000 Do you use charcoal, hardwood?

01:08:52.000 What do you use?

01:08:53.000 I use gas most of the time.

01:08:56.000 Do you throw oil over the gas?

01:08:57.000 Yeah.

01:08:58.000 What kind of oil?

01:08:59.000 Olive oil.

01:09:02.000 Because I just want that absolute heat so it sears the steak, particularly when you first put it on the grill.

01:09:08.000 So it hits the grill and it's actually surrounded in flame.

01:09:13.000 That's your method.

01:09:14.000 Yeah, well that's, you know, that only lasts for a few seconds, but that's going to give you the colour that you want, because when I put it down on the grill, I want the colour on that side, because generally I'm only going to turn it once.

01:09:25.000 Really?

01:09:26.000 Yeah, I want that first hit to sear the outside of the steak, and that's the side that gets presented to the person that's going to be eating.

01:09:35.000 Are you cooking a thin steak, a thick steak?

01:09:38.000 Doesn't matter.

01:09:39.000 But normally, we only cook, you know, sort of restaurant cuts.

01:09:45.000 So our eye fillet, I think, is your tenderloin.

01:09:52.000 Our port house is your New York cut.

01:09:55.000 Well, we have porterhouse, too.

01:09:57.000 You do?

01:09:57.000 Yeah, one side of the porterhouse is the tenderloin, one side of the porterhouse is the filet mignon, and the other side is the New York strip.

01:10:05.000 Yeah, see, that's a scotch fillet.

01:10:06.000 Oh, okay.

01:10:07.000 Interesting.

01:10:08.000 Funny, we have different names for the same bits of meat.

01:10:13.000 But, yeah, so a New York strip is a porterhouse where I come from. 0.97

01:10:19.000 Oh.

01:10:20.000 Really?

01:10:21.000 A porterhouse on this side of the pond always has bone in it.

01:10:25.000 Right.

01:10:25.000 Pretty much.

01:10:26.000 Yeah.

01:10:26.000 You guys don't?

01:10:27.000 No.

01:10:27.000 That's a T-bone.

01:10:28.000 What's your ribeye?

01:10:31.000 What you call ribeye, I believe, is tenderloin, right?

01:10:36.000 No.

01:10:36.000 So that's our eye fillet.

01:10:38.000 It's a rib steak.

01:10:39.000 Okay.

01:10:40.000 Yeah.

01:10:41.000 The tenderloin, it's like filet mignon, and then there's beef tenderloin.

01:10:44.000 It's like this stuff along the back and underneath.

01:10:47.000 Yeah.

01:10:47.000 And then the rib meat, like right where the rib hits that portion, the very fatty rib steak, that's the rib eye.

01:10:55.000 Or a tomahawk.

01:10:56.000 You get it with the rib bone on it.

01:10:58.000 It's a tomahawk.

01:10:59.000 Right.

01:11:00.000 Yeah.

01:11:01.000 Well, our sort of T-bone is half...

01:11:07.000 New York steak and half, I fill it.

01:11:11.000 Okay.

01:11:11.000 Right.

01:11:11.000 Yeah.

01:11:12.000 Yeah, we have that too.

01:11:13.000 Right.

01:11:14.000 Yeah.

01:11:14.000 So, yeah, I'm not 100% sure of the top of all the different names for meat in America, but they tend to be quite thick cuts.

01:11:26.000 We don't really do any of our steak in a thin cut.

01:11:30.000 The first time I ever ate a steak in Australia, this was like a long time ago, but before I really understood the difference between grass-fed meat and grain-fed meat, I was like, this is different.

01:11:39.000 It tastes weird.

01:11:40.000 It tastes weird.

01:11:41.000 It tastes like richer.

01:11:43.000 At the time, I don't even think I liked it.

01:11:45.000 At the time, I was expecting an American-style steak, and I got this rich, red, grass-fed steak.

01:11:53.000 I was like, wow, a weird steak.

01:11:54.000 It tastes like American meat.

01:11:58.000 When was the first time I went to Australia?

01:12:00.000 It was for a UFC. It was quite a few years ago, at least a decade ago.

01:12:04.000 Right.

01:12:05.000 Yeah.

01:12:05.000 What do you think of this one championship thing?

01:12:08.000 It's great.

01:12:09.000 Yeah.

01:12:09.000 Yeah, look, I like all of these organizations.

01:12:12.000 I'm happy that there's more options for fighters.

01:12:15.000 One championship is huge.

01:12:16.000 I started watching a doc about that guy the other day.

01:12:18.000 I didn't finish it, though.

01:12:19.000 Chautry?

01:12:20.000 I like the idea that he's creating heroes.

01:12:23.000 That's a line he said.

01:12:24.000 That's pretty cool.

01:12:26.000 I've got a project that we're going to do at the end of this year.

01:12:29.000 It's called The Beast and Me.

01:12:31.000 And it's about that sort of mixed martial arts fighting.

01:12:35.000 Really?

01:12:37.000 And he's come forward as a potential sort of partner and what have you.

01:12:43.000 And hooking up with him will give the film great production values because we'll be able to shoot at one of his fights and stuff.

01:12:53.000 So you'll have a crowd of 15,000 or whatever that you haven't paid for, which is good for a film.

01:13:02.000 And I did a...

01:13:05.000 A rewrite on the script last year and it's really full of heart now.

01:13:14.000 So many times when people approach fighters, particularly in that sort of mixed martial arts or whatever, everybody's insane.

01:13:24.000 You know what I mean?

01:13:24.000 And that's just not really the truth.

01:13:26.000 You know what I mean?

01:13:28.000 Yeah, there certainly are insane people.

01:13:30.000 But in their hearts, they have their own reasons for doing things and their own morality.

01:13:37.000 And so they would never think of themselves as insane because they're on a journey.

01:13:40.000 They're on a pursuit.

01:13:42.000 And that's why I think the script now has a real beating heart.

01:13:47.000 So I think it's going to be a good project.

01:13:48.000 Daniel McPherson, young Australian actor, he's going to be the lead in that.

01:13:51.000 This is a good time for a real good MMA film.

01:13:56.000 You know, there's been some real good boxing films.

01:13:59.000 The one that you did.

01:14:01.000 Yeah, it's one of my favorite experiences, actually.

01:14:03.000 Cinderella Man.

01:14:04.000 Yeah, and the story of Braddock, that's an amazing story.

01:14:08.000 Great story.

01:14:08.000 Incredible story.

01:14:09.000 Yeah.

01:14:10.000 We met, like, funny resistance here with the release that people couldn't get their heads around the fact that a movie called Cinderella Man was about a boxer.

01:14:20.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:14:21.000 Fucking America. 1.00

01:14:22.000 It was like... 1.00

01:14:25.000 Really?

01:14:26.000 That's funny.

01:14:27.000 It's that hard to get?

01:14:29.000 It's a classic thing.

01:14:31.000 Cinderella story is a thing that is always used in sports. 0.90

01:14:33.000 Yeah, but she's supposed to be a chick, right? 1.00

01:14:34.000 But it's used for men in sports all the time.

01:14:37.000 Well, it was some famous American writer, Damon Runyon or whatever, who coined the phrase.

01:14:43.000 He wrote that the story of James J. Braddock is a Cinderella story.

01:14:48.000 That's where he got the nickname.

01:14:51.000 But sometimes you're playing characters that you don't really...

01:14:55.000 Great as a person or whatever or sometimes playing very negative characters.

01:14:59.000 Earlier this year I did Nuremberg where I played Herman Goering.

01:15:06.000 So that's going to be coming out soon.

01:15:09.000 Looking forward to people seeing that.

01:15:12.000 But Braddock was such an experienced man because everything that I read about him, the stories I heard about him, I just liked him more and more.

01:15:21.000 Which can be a bit of a dangerous thing As an actor, I try not to fall in love with the character.

01:15:28.000 What I say is I'm in love with the job.

01:15:31.000 So my job is to show you who that person is, whether it's positive or negative, because it's kind of weird.

01:15:39.000 You can't fall in love with Hitler if you're playing that role. 0.51

01:15:44.000 So that's how I keep the objectivity.

01:15:49.000 I met Braddock's family and stuff like that, and they kept telling me stories that just made me like him more and more.

01:15:56.000 So it was an honor to be able to play that role, really, and bring him back to a consciousness because people had forgotten about him.

01:16:05.000 Yeah.

01:16:06.000 What was the physical training like?

01:16:08.000 It was Angelo, man.

01:16:10.000 It was Angelo coming in.

01:16:11.000 Okay, kid.

01:16:13.000 Angelo Dundee.

01:16:14.000 Yeah, there's one rule.

01:16:15.000 One rule around here, and that is you.

01:16:17.000 Listen to me.

01:16:17.000 That's how we do it, right?

01:16:19.000 I talk, and you listen.

01:16:20.000 And then I'm going to teach you to open anybody up.

01:16:25.000 Open them up like a can of tomatoes.

01:16:27.000 Let's go.

01:16:28.000 Wow.

01:16:29.000 He was a great guy, man.

01:16:30.000 I mean, what an incredible privilege to be given that beautiful man in my life, you know, with all his experience and his stories and, you know, and his attitude to things, man.

01:16:43.000 He was like, you know, I mean, occasionally, if you're asked about somebody that he had a negative experience with, you know, he would sort of like see who's around or whatever, and he would just tell you the pure truth.

01:16:57.000 But for the most part, anybody you asked him about, he was like, ah, what a great guy.

01:17:03.000 And I asked him about it one day, and he was like, life's too short for the negatives, man.

01:17:08.000 It's too short to have grudges or opinions, negative stuff.

01:17:13.000 Just let all that go.

01:17:15.000 But then in reality, he would have an opinion.

01:17:17.000 But the public part of that was to just be positive.

01:17:23.000 And he'd worked with so many fighters and so many different pursuits and And under different pressures and what have you, Ali and Sugar Ray, you know, 15 world champions he coached.

01:17:37.000 That's incredible.

01:17:38.000 And the beautiful thing happens, you can see it in Cinderella Man, there's a moment towards the end of the movie, right, where Braddock's won.

01:17:47.000 He's won the world championship.

01:17:49.000 And I'm standing in the ring and I'm walking towards my corner, right?

01:17:52.000 And this little bald man walks towards me, right?

01:17:56.000 And this shot, I start laughing and I bend forward and I kiss him on his head, right?

01:18:02.000 Because he's walking towards me in the ring and he was going, Number 16, baby!

01:18:08.000 Number 16!

01:18:11.000 And that's what he called me for the rest of his life.

01:18:14.000 Whenever I saw him, he would introduce me to people as, this is my friend Russell, number 16. Wow.

01:18:20.000 Cool, man.

01:18:22.000 But, you know, I mean, a normal day, training for that film, you wake up in the morning, you go for a walk, you know, probably about 5Ks, right?

01:18:33.000 Then we'd go and do yoga.

01:18:36.000 Then we'd go and do the first boxing session, which would take us to lunch.

01:18:41.000 We'd have a little bit of lunch.

01:18:41.000 Then we'd do the second boxing session.

01:18:43.000 After the second boxing session, we'd do weights.

01:18:46.000 Then you'd have about 90 minutes off.

01:18:48.000 Then we'd have dinner, and then you'd go for a walk.

01:18:51.000 And the next day, it would start all over again.

01:18:53.000 It was full on.

01:18:55.000 Whose idea was the yoga?

01:18:57.000 His.

01:18:58.000 Really?

01:18:58.000 Yeah.

01:18:59.000 That was the thing about Angelo.

01:19:00.000 He had all the old stuff, but he was aware of all the new stuff as well.

01:19:05.000 Yoga's the oldest stuff.

01:19:07.000 Just sitting...

01:19:08.000 But for boxing?

01:19:10.000 We did yoga, but he only thought of it as stretching.

01:19:15.000 But it was yoga.

01:19:17.000 He set the schedule and pace on everything for that film.

01:19:22.000 Wow.

01:19:23.000 I had him in my working life for six months, man.

01:19:27.000 That's incredible.

01:19:28.000 That's just gold.

01:19:29.000 Did you think about having a fight?

01:19:32.000 Oh, we had a few.

01:19:33.000 Real ones?

01:19:34.000 Yeah.

01:19:35.000 Like in the gym?

01:19:35.000 There's real ones in the movie, mate.

01:19:37.000 Really?

01:19:37.000 Yeah.

01:19:38.000 You get to a certain point.

01:19:40.000 Five and a half thousand, six thousand choreographed moves.

01:19:44.000 You get to a certain point, how do you accelerate this?

01:19:48.000 How do you change the rhythm?

01:19:51.000 So, the fight with Troy, which I think is the The last fight before the championship, that's 100% the two of us in the ring beating the piss out of each other.

01:20:08.000 Really?

01:20:08.000 Yeah.

01:20:08.000 Jamie, see if you can find that.

01:20:09.000 And he's really good.

01:20:10.000 What would be the scene that we look for?

01:20:12.000 It would be right towards the end of the film, and it's just sort of like little sharp cuts.

01:20:20.000 That's Mark.

01:20:21.000 Some of those scenes, no, not that one.

01:20:23.000 That's the end fight.

01:20:25.000 So just prior to this, he goes through a series of fights.

01:20:31.000 I'm currently forgetting the man's name.

01:20:34.000 His first name is Troy.

01:20:35.000 I can't remember his surname.

01:20:36.000 He went on to become light heavyweight champion of Canada.

01:20:40.000 And a couple of these guys are Olympians and stuff that were in the fight.

01:20:46.000 Hardest hit I've ever received is in that fight with Troy.

01:20:50.000 Because he was a southpaw and we both went in the same direction.

01:20:54.000 We clashed heads. 1.00

01:20:55.000 Fuck me. 1.00

01:20:56.000 And we just kept going with the scene. 1.00

01:20:59.000 But I'm like literally seeing stars.

01:21:02.000 It was like somebody had put a piece of metal through my temple.

01:21:08.000 We both moved to get out of the way and we just smacked heads.

01:21:12.000 Yeah, this fight.

01:21:12.000 That's all real.

01:21:13.000 There's no choreography.

01:21:15.000 Wow.

01:21:16.000 And he was good, man.

01:21:17.000 He was fast and he was like on me all the time. 0.99

01:21:22.000 Dude, you were fit as fuck back then. 0.99

01:21:24.000 A little bit, you know. 1.00

01:21:25.000 Goddamn, man. 0.99

01:21:26.000 I was 40 at the time. 0.98

01:21:28.000 So I weighed the same in the opening sequence of Cinderella Man.

01:21:35.000 I weighed the same as when I left high school.

01:21:38.000 Wow.

01:21:40.000 It was a great movie, man.

01:21:42.000 You did it justice.

01:21:44.000 Well, that's the thing.

01:21:45.000 When you're playing somebody that's real, you've got to respect them, man.

01:21:49.000 You've got to put that effort in to honor them.

01:21:56.000 Yes.

01:21:57.000 Yeah.

01:21:59.000 Especially someone as legendary as Braddock.

01:22:01.000 Yeah, and the thing is, you know, you have to dial into his body, you know, his body language.

01:22:07.000 You know, he used to do this little foot flick thing, right, to get himself around, you know, where he always, like, he would move his front foot first.

01:22:16.000 He wouldn't cross his feet over at all, you know, so he's just sort of crabbing up on somebody and going back, you know.

01:22:22.000 Learning that, getting that drilled into my head because it felt so unnatural.

01:22:28.000 But it's there.

01:22:31.000 After a while, you get it.

01:22:33.000 You can move quite fast.

01:22:36.000 But that natural instinct is to cross your feet over, but that leads to all sorts of problems.

01:22:42.000 It was a very interesting experience during that movie.

01:22:47.000 And Ron Howard, as the director, you know, I'd worked with him the year before on A Beautiful Mind, and he's a very exacting guy, and he likes to do things over and over again, you know?

01:22:57.000 So when we first started that shoot, I don't know if you know this, but I subluxated my left shoulder.

01:23:04.000 I was doing a little fight with a guy called Wayne Gordon, another Canadian Olympian, and he just caught me on the point of my elbow and just put my shoulder out, you know?

01:23:17.000 But because I was so fit at the time and so strong, it went out and back in.

01:23:21.000 But it came back in with such force that it broke the bone.

01:23:26.000 So I had to go and have an operation.

01:23:31.000 I tore the labrum tissue and broke the bone.

01:23:34.000 So I had an op and the normal recovery is like three and a half months or something.

01:23:41.000 But I was making a movie.

01:23:44.000 I couldn't do that.

01:23:47.000 And they were going to cancel the film.

01:23:49.000 They were going to just shut it down and all that.

01:23:51.000 And I was like, no, no, no, no.

01:23:51.000 I've waited for years to do this film.

01:23:53.000 And I've already done the training, so we've got to finish this.

01:23:58.000 Just give me, you know, X amount of weeks.

01:24:01.000 And you're allergic to cortisone.

01:24:02.000 Yeah, which was, you know, really problematic on that situation, you know.

01:24:07.000 But 20 days, on the 21st day of rehab, I stepped in the ring and did 10 three-minute rounds.

01:24:16.000 On the 21st day after the operation.

01:24:18.000 So...

01:24:18.000 But that has led to ongoing problems, which the doctor did say at the time.

01:24:23.000 If you try and cut this short, the arthritis you're going to experience when you get older is going to be mind-numbing.

01:24:29.000 And he's absolutely right.

01:24:31.000 Have you ever gotten stem cells into it?

01:24:33.000 No, I've been starting to talk.

01:24:35.000 I've got a friend in England who's actually from Austin.

01:24:38.000 How long are you in town for after this?

01:24:41.000 I leave tomorrow morning.

01:24:42.000 What time tomorrow morning?

01:24:45.000 About 10 or 11 or something.

01:24:46.000 I might be able to get you treated before then.

01:24:48.000 Really?

01:24:48.000 There's a stem cell clinic I work with in town, ways to well.

01:24:51.000 Incredible.

01:24:51.000 This is the thing.

01:24:52.000 I think it's the family of the guy I'm talking about.

01:24:54.000 Really?

01:24:55.000 Yeah.

01:24:56.000 I met him here.

01:24:58.000 I don't know if you know this, man, but way back in the day, Austin was my place.

01:25:02.000 Really?

01:25:03.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:25:03.000 We came here in 2000, 2001. August 14 or 15 is 30-odd foot of grunts day.

01:25:09.000 As Governor Rick Perry at the time, he declared that because we brought so many tourist dollars into town.

01:25:17.000 In the middle of August, bringing 2,000-plus people who have flown in, got a motel, and they're going to go to a rock and roll show over at Stubbs.

01:25:25.000 You know?

01:25:27.000 Yeah, that was the thing.

01:25:28.000 And it's funny because we haven't sold out this time.

01:25:31.000 We're here.

01:25:32.000 We play tonight, but we haven't...

01:25:36.000 Where are you at tonight?

01:25:37.000 Stubbs.

01:25:37.000 I love Stubbs.

01:25:38.000 Yeah.

01:25:39.000 We did shows there, Dave Chappelle and I, during the pandemic.

01:25:42.000 Okay.

01:25:42.000 Yeah, when everything was shut down.

01:25:44.000 We tested the entire crowd and did outside shows.

01:25:46.000 It was awesome.

01:25:47.000 Oh, cool.

01:25:48.000 Yeah, I went there first just to have some barbecue with an Adam, a conversation with...

01:25:57.000 Rodriguez, the director, you know, who lived here.

01:26:00.000 And then, you know, a year and a bit later, I'm walking on that stage.

01:26:04.000 It was unbelievable.

01:26:05.000 I was here to record at Willie Nelson's place.

01:26:09.000 And we said, why don't we do on Fridays?

01:26:12.000 We'll just do little shows in town, right?

01:26:14.000 Cool.

01:26:15.000 So we booked to play at Stubbs because a friend of a friend knew Charles Atal and the boys that set Stubbs up.

01:26:23.000 And while I was in England working on another thing before coming here, They just said, hey, these tickets are going crazy, so can we go outside?

01:26:33.000 So we came here.

01:26:35.000 I think we were here recording for a month and every Friday night, we'd go and do a full house outside at Stubbs.

01:26:42.000 Wow.

01:26:42.000 It's cool.

01:26:43.000 And then we came back the year after in 2001 and raised some money for like an abused girls' shelter.

01:26:54.000 But I haven't been here since 2001, man.

01:26:56.000 Wow.

01:26:57.000 Lots changed.

01:26:58.000 This place has exploded.

01:26:59.000 It's exploded.

01:27:00.000 There was 250,000 people back then.

01:27:02.000 Yeah.

01:27:02.000 You know, it's nearly a million now.

01:27:04.000 It's a million in the city and another million in the surrounding areas.

01:27:07.000 Yeah.

01:27:07.000 But coming in from the airport, I was like, I can't even, I don't know where I am, you know?

01:27:12.000 Yeah.

01:27:13.000 Your viewpoint on landmarks and everything has just completely changed.

01:27:17.000 And, you know, before arriving, just yesterday, you know, I had an absolute picture of Right.

01:27:42.000 Well, it's changed a lot in the four years that I've been here.

01:27:44.000 Right.

01:27:44.000 It's exploded.

01:27:46.000 Yeah, look at all the cranes downtown.

01:27:47.000 It's crazy.

01:27:48.000 It's still going.

01:27:48.000 Yeah, it's bizarre.

01:27:49.000 I think that's a mistake. 1.00

01:27:50.000 I think they're kind of fucked. 1.00

01:27:52.000 I think they're kind of overestimated. 1.00

01:27:54.000 Because the real estate market has cooled down considerably.

01:27:57.000 Yeah, because whoever was going to move here moved here.

01:27:59.000 Right.

01:28:00.000 You know, and then it's like everyone was expecting that the boom would keep going.

01:28:04.000 But it hasn't kept going.

01:28:06.000 It hasn't kept going at all.

01:28:07.000 It's gotten to a stall point.

01:28:09.000 A million is a good size for a city.

01:28:11.000 It's about perfect.

01:28:12.000 Yeah, you can get everything you need, and you get it at the speed that you want it at, and there's competition in all areas.

01:28:20.000 But you can still get around.

01:28:21.000 As long as your transport system is good, you can still get around.

01:28:25.000 Yeah, the traffic here is so easy.

01:28:27.000 People complain about it.

01:28:28.000 I'm like, you guys are adorable.

01:28:29.000 This traffic is cute.

01:28:31.000 This is cute traffic.

01:28:33.000 Living 25 plus years in L.A., I know what real traffic is like.

01:28:36.000 And even L.A., I moved there in 94. It was nothing like it is now.

01:28:40.000 Now it could be 2 o'clock in the morning and you're in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour and a half.

01:28:45.000 Yeah, but look at New York, man.

01:28:47.000 I was shooting Beautiful Mind once.

01:28:50.000 We had a late night, 2.30, 3 o'clock in the morning.

01:28:53.000 I'm in a tunnel coming back from Jersey, and we just stopped.

01:28:57.000 Mobbed.

01:28:58.000 We're there for an hour in the tunnel.

01:29:02.000 What's going on?

01:29:03.000 That freaks me out, by the way. 1.00

01:29:05.000 Something about that fucking river being right above your head. 0.99

01:29:07.000 I know they know how to fix it. 1.00

01:29:09.000 I know they knew how to build it.

01:29:10.000 It's been there forever.

01:29:11.000 I know.

01:29:11.000 But there's going to be that day, right?

01:29:13.000 There's going to be one day.

01:29:13.000 You've seen enough movies to know.

01:29:15.000 I've seen enough movies. 0.99

01:29:16.000 It's going to spring a fucking leak and we're all done in the worst way possible. 1.00

01:29:21.000 Fuck. 1.00

01:29:22.000 I don't like it. 1.00

01:29:23.000 Get me out of here.

01:29:24.000 The moment I'm in the tunnel, I'm holding my breath.

01:29:26.000 I'm like, get me the fuck out of here.

01:29:29.000 We're on the other side. 0.97

01:29:30.000 I don't like it. 1.00

01:29:31.000 I'd rather be in a helicopter than be in that fucking tunnel. 0.99

01:29:33.000 Well, it's funny that you should bring that up because on that shoot, after that night, I said, if we're going over there all the time, I'm living right next to the Liberty helipad in Chelsea. 0.99

01:29:45.000 Just a 10-minute trip. 0.87

01:29:47.000 Get me out of the freaking car. 0.98

01:29:48.000 Because that movie was so... 0.99

01:29:51.000 It was a lot to carry around. 0.87

01:29:53.000 The freaking mindset I had to be in all the time for that. 0.53

01:29:56.000 And so they ended up agreeing.

01:29:59.000 So I would literally walk to the helicopter pad, jump in a helicopter, 10 minutes.

01:30:04.000 That's pretty nice.

01:30:05.000 That dropped me off in New Jersey.

01:30:06.000 That's pretty nice.

01:30:07.000 Yeah, it was pretty cool.

01:30:08.000 That was a fantastic movie.

01:30:09.000 It really was.

01:30:10.000 Beautiful Mind was one of my favorite movies.

01:30:12.000 Cool.

01:30:12.000 Just the mind of a person like that.

01:30:17.000 Like, playing a guy that's so troubled and brilliant, I mean, how difficult is that to train for?

01:30:25.000 Like, how do you get yourself into that mindset?

01:30:27.000 The relief when that movie was over was huge, you know?

01:30:31.000 Because you do tie yourself in knots a little bit when you're playing a character like that.

01:30:35.000 And that's part of the job, and you just go with that flow, you know?

01:30:40.000 But yeah, I was very, very happy to put all of the detail of those diseases aside.

01:30:46.000 Because the guy that wrote it, his mum and dad treat people with schizophrenia.

01:30:51.000 So he had a lot of first-hand knowledge that he could pass on to me.

01:30:57.000 And a lot of that was to do with physical tells.

01:30:59.000 And when the physical tells happen in the course of somebody's connection to the disease.

01:31:05.000 The thing about Beautiful Mind is it has a device in the film.

01:31:10.000 The film begins, you believe everything that's unfolding in front of you, and then there's that click when you realize, hold on a second.

01:31:19.000 Have I been watching him, or am I inside his head?

01:31:24.000 That's the thing.

01:31:26.000 Worldwide, that trick works.

01:31:28.000 I saw that movie at a few premieres around the world, and there's this gasp that comes out of the audience.

01:31:35.000 It's only 15, 20 minutes in when they go, and they realize that they've been inside the head of a sick man, as opposed to watching some spy drama unfold.

01:31:46.000 Right, right.

01:31:48.000 That was far out.

01:31:50.000 I read that script here.

01:31:52.000 Really?

01:31:52.000 Yeah.

01:31:53.000 I was doing the shows at 2000 Stubbs.

01:31:57.000 I'd rented a beautiful house over there on the other side of the river.

01:32:00.000 I don't know why I'm pointing that way.

01:32:02.000 I don't even know which direction the river is from here.

01:32:07.000 Jeffrey Katzenberg busted my nuts about reading it.

01:32:10.000 I was like, man, I'm doing the band shows.

01:32:12.000 I'm recording with the band.

01:32:13.000 I just want to be in this space because I need you to read it now.

01:32:18.000 And he'd been part of the Gladiator so I read it and I ended up ringing him and thanking him because the experience of reading the script was just fantastic.

01:32:31.000 One of the best scripts I'd ever read and it had that device on the page.

01:32:33.000 So that wasn't a trick added by the filmmakers later.

01:32:37.000 The same experience of reading it is the experience you have when you're watching in the cinema.

01:32:43.000 Yeah, man.

01:32:44.000 So it was about, I don't know, 2 o'clock in the morning sitting on the back porch of that house.

01:32:49.000 It was still over 100 degrees.

01:32:52.000 It was really hot.

01:32:53.000 And I read it in one go.

01:32:57.000 I thought to myself when I sat down to read it, I was like, I'll read 10 pages.

01:33:01.000 It'll put me to sleep, right?

01:33:02.000 And it didn't get me awake. 0.99

01:33:05.000 And I remember putting that script down and walking and jumping into the swimming pool, you know, at three or four in the morning or whatever, going, I'm absolutely doing that fucking movie. 0.99

01:33:14.000 Wow. 0.99

01:33:14.000 100%. 0.99

01:33:15.000 Wow.

01:33:16.000 So that's exactly what you're talking about, the kind of film that just gets in your skin.

01:33:20.000 Yeah.

01:33:21.000 I've said it lots of times, but it's a physical response.

01:33:25.000 It's like goosebumps.

01:33:26.000 It's like I'm reading it and just a thing happens and I'm not even thinking about it.

01:33:31.000 I just pick up a pen and I start writing down what I'm going to change in that bit.

01:33:35.000 Yeah.

01:33:37.000 I just start working on it immediately.

01:33:39.000 And if I work on it when I read it, that's the one I'm going to do.

01:33:42.000 And I've stuck true to that.

01:33:45.000 Even, as I was saying before, sometimes it can be a really imperfect document.

01:33:50.000 But there's just a couple of things that resonate.

01:33:55.000 So it's like, okay...

01:33:57.000 I have to do it.

01:33:58.000 My joke is that in that way I respect the gods of film.

01:34:03.000 It's like I'm only there because I have my reasons and I need to be there.

01:34:10.000 And that way now it doesn't always work out.

01:34:12.000 But you can do the greatest pedigree movie and it tanks.

01:34:16.000 You can have A-lister number one, A-lister number two, A-lister director.

01:34:21.000 Great subject matter.

01:34:22.000 Nobody goes and sees it.

01:34:24.000 There's sort of a type of alchemy, you know?

01:34:27.000 And, you know, I came out of an independent film world and then suddenly a couple of those independent films got successful and it led me to another place, you know?

01:34:37.000 But I still like to work in an independent world because, you know, if one hits, that's the one that's going to be...

01:34:43.000 Fun and important or whatever if it comes out of nowhere.

01:34:48.000 Studio films, it's great if it's the right situation.

01:34:55.000 I'm not saying that there's a negative in doing that.

01:34:58.000 If you know what I've done, I've done all sorts of big studio budget films.

01:35:06.000 I'm Superman's Dad in DC. I'm Zeus the God of Gods in Disney Marvel and I'm Kraven the Hunter's Russian father in Sony Marvel.

01:35:26.000 The experience of doing those films is the same for me as other things.

01:35:32.000 I go to work, I have a particular character thing in mind, this is what I'm trying to do.

01:35:37.000 The thing about my job, man, In reality, most film directors you work with are genius.

01:35:44.000 They're genius people.

01:35:45.000 Male filmmaker or whatever.

01:35:47.000 The person that has worked to the point of getting to helm a feature film where you have to cover all of the aspects, from the production design to the sound to how you're shooting or what lenses you're using.

01:36:01.000 You know, the people that you're working with, where you shoot it, you know, all of those responsibilities come on the film director, you know?

01:36:08.000 So the joke I often make about working with Ridley, it's like, I get to hold the paint palette for Titian. 0.78

01:36:16.000 While Titian's doing his shit, and he turns to me and goes, Russell, I need more blue. 0.90

01:36:20.000 And I go, right you are. 0.99

01:36:21.000 I'll give you some blue.

01:36:24.000 It's a good gig, you know what I mean?

01:36:26.000 Being able to work with super smart people, you know?

01:36:29.000 That's incredible.

01:36:29.000 Super creative people.

01:36:31.000 I love the thought of appeasing the film gods.

01:36:34.000 That attitude is the right attitude.

01:36:38.000 I know I say it as a sort of a witticism, as a joke, but it's actually what I fundamentally believe.

01:36:44.000 Yes.

01:36:45.000 Yeah.

01:36:45.000 I think it's real.

01:36:47.000 I think there's something to it.

01:36:49.000 But if you approach everything like that...

01:36:52.000 Yes.

01:36:52.000 Everything.

01:36:53.000 Yes.

01:36:53.000 Yeah.

01:36:54.000 Yeah.

01:36:55.000 I don't know if they're gods or...

01:36:57.000 I don't know what it is, but there's something.

01:36:58.000 There's something there, man.

01:36:59.000 Something real.

01:37:00.000 Something there.

01:37:00.000 And I've been talking to whatever that is all the way through my life.

01:37:04.000 I actually say this on stage at the moment because I have a song called Michelangelo's God which relates to an experience I had recently with my mum.

01:37:14.000 I decided that when I heard that they were making another gladiator that I was going to take my sons to Rome so they get to experience what I've experienced since that movie came out with the people of Italy and the people in the city of Rome.

01:37:30.000 In terms of the privileges that they give me and the experiences that they give me and the regard and what have you.

01:37:37.000 And I thought, you know, before there's another one and that water's muddied, you know, I'm going to take my kids over so they can really experience it.

01:37:45.000 So I was talking to my mom and my father had just recently passed away and I said, why don't you come with us?

01:37:50.000 And initially she said that because she'd only ever been to Rome with my dad, that she didn't want to come because she thought it would just make her sad, you know, because that city connected her to him.

01:38:06.000 And I said to her, Mum, listen to what you're saying.

01:38:10.000 This is a place that connects you to my father.

01:38:14.000 You have to come.

01:38:16.000 So she came along and we were doing all the normal family stuff together, touristy stuff, Spanish Steps, Fontana de Trevi.

01:38:24.000 I took the kids to see the old office, the Colosseum.

01:38:27.000 Just normal family stuff.

01:38:31.000 And then I got this call from a guy at the Vatican, and this is all based on that movie, right?

01:38:39.000 I heard you're in town with your family.

01:38:41.000 Would you like to come and walk through the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel by yourselves without any tourists?

01:38:50.000 Now, I've done the tourist thing, you know, a thousand new special friends and you in the Sistine Chapel, natural light, I've done that.

01:38:57.000 So the idea that we could walk in there by our side, absolutely, absolutely.

01:39:02.000 And I've taken my mum, and because it was such a big walk, she's in a wheelchair, right?

01:39:06.000 So I'm pushing her around, but every corner we get to something of immense beauty, I can see her remembering.

01:39:14.000 When she was there with my dad and what he said or a friendship he made or whatever.

01:39:19.000 He was a chatty fellow, my old man.

01:39:22.000 He used to make friends very easily.

01:39:26.000 We went through that and I could see it affecting her.

01:39:34.000 They took us into the Sistine Chapel.

01:39:36.000 It's unbelievable, man.

01:39:39.000 I'll do it exactly the way I do it on stage for you, man, because it's a funny moment.

01:39:44.000 This guy comes up and he goes, Russell, for you today, I will turn on the lights of the Pope.

01:39:52.000 I said, sorry?

01:39:53.000 Well, the Pope, he likes to come to the chapel to meditate.

01:39:57.000 He likes to see all the beautiful colors.

01:40:00.000 So we put in some lights, and he turns on these lights.

01:40:05.000 I mean, that ceiling is amazing in natural light when it's got like 16 spotlights on it, man.

01:40:11.000 And you can see the real color of the light blue of the sky and the reds.

01:40:16.000 And, you know, you can almost, with that much light on it, feel like you can see the paint strokes.

01:40:21.000 So you're there under Michelangelo's genius in the light.

01:40:25.000 And I said to the guy, that was amazing.

01:40:27.000 You know, why did you do that?

01:40:29.000 And he goes, Russell, please, Massimo.

01:40:32.000 You are the eighth king of Rome.

01:40:37.000 But so, later in that same visit, he took us to this little balcony, and to get onto this balcony, not the one on TV, it's another meditation balcony right on top of the museum.

01:40:46.000 To get there, we have to go in this very small little elevator, you know?

01:40:50.000 So, I'm there, just me and my mum, say, how you going?

01:40:55.000 Enjoying it?

01:40:56.000 And she just starts Floods of tears, man.

01:40:59.000 Crying, crying.

01:41:00.000 She goes, I can't explain.

01:41:02.000 I just feel your father so close to me.

01:41:06.000 We get up on that balcony, right?

01:41:08.000 In the distance, I can hear some music.

01:41:10.000 So I asked our man, what's the music?

01:41:13.000 And he says, well, it's a Wednesday.

01:41:14.000 The Swiss Guards Band is rehearsing.

01:41:16.000 They only play ecclesiastical music.

01:41:20.000 But I can hear what they're playing, and so can my mum.

01:41:22.000 And it's that old Irish folk song, Danny Boy.

01:41:27.000 The reason that that comes into the conversation we're just having is we played that at my father's funeral.

01:41:34.000 So here it is, this moment.

01:41:39.000 How does that timing work out?

01:41:40.000 Where's the coincidence factor of that?

01:41:42.000 What's the odds of that?

01:41:45.000 They never play anything other than ecclesiastical music, but on the day that we're in a place where we can hear a private rehearsal of the Swiss Guards Band, they just happen to be playing the song played at my father's funeral.

01:41:58.000 When I've gone through this whole process of convincing my mum to come with us, and she says she can feel my dad all day, she was saying that and shedding tears from it, and there we had that moment together.

01:42:11.000 Wow!

01:42:12.000 So I don't know how it works.

01:42:15.000 I don't know really.

01:42:16.000 What I do feel is that All religions are simply a human way of trying to explain the inexplicable.

01:42:26.000 There is definitely, because I have examples of it in my life, if you offer, and we can call it prayer, or you could call it just an introspective conversation, if you focus on using your imagination and your personal energy to change things around you,

01:42:46.000 they will change.

01:42:48.000 You can do a lot of things with simply the power of your beautiful mind.

01:42:58.000 So that's kind of where I sit with it.

01:43:01.000 I don't know what it is, but I know it's available, so I use it.

01:43:05.000 That is as close to a miracle It's a thing that happens occasionally in a person's life and that moment will touch them forever.

01:43:18.000 Too many things lined up.

01:43:21.000 Too many things lined up so perfectly.

01:43:23.000 How's this even possible?

01:43:25.000 How's it possible?

01:43:26.000 Did you talk to the band?

01:43:27.000 I would want to talk to them.

01:43:28.000 To the Swiss Guards Band?

01:43:29.000 Yeah.

01:43:29.000 Did you guys ever play this before?

01:43:31.000 Did you guys have a wild thought?

01:43:33.000 I did, actually, because they wanted me to go and see their armory.

01:43:39.000 Again, another experience that you would never have, right?

01:43:42.000 So I get taken down, and here's the history of the Swiss Guards and their connection to the Pope, and here's all of the armor.

01:43:50.000 That's been worn by the guards over the centuries.

01:43:53.000 Here's all the weapons and the swords and all that sort of stuff.

01:43:56.000 And I did ask them about the Danny boy and the first guy I talked to was like, no, they wouldn't have played that if misheard it because they only play ecclesiastical music.

01:44:09.000 But apparently they were building up to some performance for some visiting dignitary and that was the choice of song for that thing.

01:44:19.000 It's just too many things.

01:44:21.000 Too many things, man.

01:44:22.000 The guy called me at that time.

01:44:24.000 We make the thing on that date.

01:44:25.000 I've convinced my mum to come.

01:44:28.000 The Pope's lights.

01:44:30.000 All of that.

01:44:32.000 The lights of the Pope.

01:44:34.000 There's something undeniable about just being in the Vatican itself.

01:44:39.000 St. Peter's Basilica to this day is one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had just walking to that place and just trying to imagine the worksmanship, the artisan, the artistic ability to duplicate the kind of The incredibly intricate designs that are in that ceiling and how uniform they are and how gorgeous they are and how many hundreds of years it took to accomplish.

01:45:07.000 How many people were involved?

01:45:09.000 The first time that I walked in there, which was 1991, And this probably sounds a bit weird, but I got sort of offended or something.

01:45:19.000 It was so over the top and so incredible.

01:45:25.000 And I thought about it from the perspective of this is a group of men trying to build a mountain to show you they're as powerful as God or something like that.

01:45:36.000 You know what I mean?

01:45:36.000 So I was probably a little more...

01:45:42.000 Idealistic or whatever at that age.

01:45:45.000 But I remember being like, it was so overwhelming, it shocked me.

01:45:51.000 And I got kind of pissy about it.

01:45:53.000 I was like, man, that would trick a lot of people.

01:45:55.000 It would trick a lot of people if they walked in there and they saw all that beauty.

01:45:58.000 They'd go, oh, these guys must have a direct connection to whatever's going on.

01:46:02.000 These are the guys I should hang with, you know?

01:46:04.000 But they probably do, which is how they made it.

01:46:07.000 But that is the trick of being a person who walks into there and who's a devout religious person.

01:46:15.000 You experience something that seems like a representation of the divine.

01:46:19.000 Because that's what the art looks like.

01:46:21.000 It's so incredible.

01:46:22.000 Well, you know, there's that, I forget the name of it, but there's a statue there.

01:46:27.000 It's carved from marble.

01:46:30.000 And it's like of Mary holding the body of Christ.

01:46:35.000 Yeah, we were just talking about that the other day.

01:46:37.000 Incredible.

01:46:37.000 And it's got that veil.

01:46:39.000 Yes.

01:46:40.000 And it's carved.

01:46:41.000 Yeah.

01:46:42.000 It's just insane.

01:46:43.000 Unbelievable.

01:46:44.000 Again, that thing of the incredible privileges and experiences that the Italian people give me.

01:46:51.000 That's behind glass.

01:46:53.000 And you're 20 foot from it.

01:46:56.000 I walk into the chapel.

01:46:58.000 This guy taps me on the shoulder and says, come here.

01:47:01.000 And...

01:47:04.000 I could stand next to it.

01:47:07.000 He took me inside the room where it's in.

01:47:09.000 Wow.

01:47:12.000 And it's just when you think, I mean, how old is this?

01:47:16.000 What year was this?

01:47:21.000 1498, 1499. Unbelievable.

01:47:24.000 And just the level of detail of the anatomy.

01:47:28.000 Like, look at the ankle.

01:47:29.000 Go back to that larger photo again, Jamie.

01:47:32.000 Look at the ankle.

01:47:33.000 I mean, look at all the detail and the toes and everything.

01:47:37.000 I mean, it's just unbelievable.

01:47:40.000 How do you go about...

01:47:42.000 I have this sort of thing with a lot of art, you know.

01:47:46.000 How do you go about looking at a rock...

01:47:50.000 Grabbing a chisel and a hammer and getting to that.

01:47:55.000 Right. 0.91

01:47:56.000 What the hell? 0.98

01:47:58.000 You know? 0.98

01:47:59.000 Yeah.

01:47:59.000 It's like when I see, you know, a painting by Arthur Street or something and he's painted a glass.

01:48:06.000 How do you do that?

01:48:07.000 Right.

01:48:10.000 Yeah.

01:48:10.000 It's like, it's insane.

01:48:12.000 Yeah, it's insane.

01:48:13.000 It's insane that, well, there's levels.

01:48:15.000 To every game, right?

01:48:16.000 And the level of that game was like every other sculptor had to look at that and go, oh my god, what am I doing?

01:48:22.000 Yeah, you know, it was damaged between the wars, I think, by a Turkish guy who was either born in Australia or had been living in Australia, and he went to Rome. 0.99

01:48:34.000 And back then they used to be able to walk right up to it, you know?

01:48:38.000 And, I don't know, he hit it with a hammer or something like that and damaged it.

01:48:44.000 Here we go.

01:48:45.000 Oh, he broke the arm off.

01:48:46.000 Did they have to...

01:48:48.000 How did they...

01:48:48.000 Hold on.

01:48:48.000 What's it?

01:48:50.000 72. Hungarian.

01:48:52.000 Oh, yeah.

01:48:52.000 Sorry.

01:48:53.000 Hungarian-born.

01:48:54.000 Hungarian-born Australian.

01:48:55.000 That was the top.

01:48:56.000 Attacked the sculpture with a geologist's hammer while shouting, I am Jesus Christ, I have risen from the dead.

01:49:02.000 With 15 blows, he removed Mary's arm at the elbow, knocked off a chunk of her nose, and chipped one of her eyelids. 0.95

01:49:08.000 How did they repair it?

01:49:10.000 That's the thing, right?

01:49:11.000 It's perfect now.

01:49:14.000 So...

01:49:14.000 Wow.

01:49:15.000 Painstaking restore returns.

01:49:16.000 Can you show me the photo of what it looks like now?

01:49:20.000 Oh, now?

01:49:20.000 Yeah.

01:49:21.000 Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

01:49:23.000 Like, imagine.

01:49:24.000 Look at that.

01:49:24.000 They repaired that.

01:49:25.000 How?

01:49:26.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:49:28.000 Good fucking job. 0.99

01:49:29.000 But look at that material, man. 0.99

01:49:30.000 Look at that.

01:49:30.000 Yeah.

01:49:31.000 On the bodice of her costume there.

01:49:32.000 It's all of it.

01:49:33.000 It's incredible.

01:49:34.000 The way his fingers grasped in between the two fingers, grasped the piece of the cloth.

01:49:38.000 Yeah.

01:49:39.000 Insane.

01:49:41.000 Yeah, so I was able to just walk right up to it and walk around it and at one point in time, the guy says, you can put your hand on it if you want.

01:49:49.000 So I did.

01:49:50.000 Wow.

01:49:51.000 Yeah, but that was, you know, I just wanted my kids to experience a little bit of that because it has been an incredible relationship I've had with that country.

01:50:02.000 Oh, I'm sure.

01:50:03.000 Just based on a film. 0.99

01:50:04.000 Yeah, but it's based on a fucking amazing film. 0.99

01:50:09.000 It's not a bad one. 1.00

01:50:10.000 It's a fucking amazing film. 0.98

01:50:12.000 How much training did you have to do physically for that? 0.98

01:50:15.000 Oh man, I had to start so...

01:50:17.000 It was heavy because I had done a film called The Insider with Michael Mann.

01:50:23.000 Yeah, I was going to ask you about that too.

01:50:24.000 Whether you started smoking cigarettes before or after that film.

01:50:26.000 Way before.

01:50:28.000 And I know all about the negativities involved in the process, and it doesn't stop me.

01:50:32.000 So it just goes to show how potent it is as a drug.

01:50:38.000 Yeah, so I basically just stopped all exercise to try and sort of get into the shape of the guy that I was playing.

01:50:46.000 And I met Jeffrey Weigand, the guy that I was playing.

01:50:53.000 And it was a funny thing because...

01:50:56.000 Michael Mann was convinced that Jeffrey was an expert golfer.

01:51:01.000 And so I'd been doing these golf sessions and stuff.

01:51:05.000 And I met him at a golf course and took him to the driving range.

01:51:10.000 And he was not an expert golfer.

01:51:12.000 And I asked Michael, where did you get that impression from?

01:51:14.000 He said, well, the way he talks about it, I said, ah, cool, cool.

01:51:17.000 So I used that too as part of the personality of the guy.

01:51:22.000 The guy thought his golf game was way better than it really was.

01:51:26.000 It's just an interesting little...

01:51:28.000 You know, details.

01:51:29.000 So there's one conversation where golf comes up and you can see there's like a little colour comes up in his cheek because he wants to defend himself or beat himself up or whatever.

01:51:37.000 It's just absolute minor detail.

01:51:40.000 No concern to anybody else except me, but it amused me, you know.

01:51:44.000 But in that conversation, you know, and I asked him some pretty tough questions.

01:51:48.000 And, you know, probably, you know, at my age now, questions I would never ask somebody in that situation.

01:51:54.000 But, you know, I was younger and, you know, had that kind of confidence.

01:52:03.000 And I kind of crossed into some territory that wasn't comfortable for him and I made him cry.

01:52:09.000 And he didn't want to cry, but he was sitting opposite me and he was sort of like emotionally affected.

01:52:14.000 And I was like, man, I have to honor this man.

01:52:18.000 I have to put every effort I can into making sure that I tell his story the right way around.

01:52:28.000 Then I met Ridley, and I was coming off that film, and I'd made a decision at the beginning because we kept cutting my hair and dyeing it.

01:52:37.000 We've bleached it seven times, but it wouldn't behave like an old person's hair. 1.00

01:52:42.000 We could comb it into place, and then the next day it would go...

01:52:46.000 We took the hairline back, shaving the hair back and everything. 0.83

01:52:52.000 I mean, I just looked so fucking weird.

01:52:54.000 And at a certain point, I just said to Michael Mann, I said, just get me a wig. 0.88

01:52:59.000 This is just crazy, you know?

01:53:00.000 I'll shave my head, just get me a wig, I'll wear the wig, because then my hair's going to be exactly right, you know?

01:53:05.000 And that's what we did.

01:53:06.000 So when I met Ridley, I was maybe 35 or 40 pounds heavier than I'd been on L.A. Confidential, which was the last movie that he'd seen me in.

01:53:20.000 I was bald, and I had a really weird sort of suntan because of wearing the wig.

01:53:27.000 So my face had some, but my head was white, you know?

01:53:30.000 And I don't know how he could possibly have ever seen me as the character.

01:53:36.000 But yeah, that first conversation I had with him, and I said, when are you starting?

01:53:39.000 And he's like, January.

01:53:41.000 And I was like, that's about three months, you know?

01:53:44.000 So he's 35 pounds.

01:53:46.000 Yeah, and find muscles.

01:53:50.000 So the first thing I did was I went back home and I went on a motorcycle ride.

01:53:56.000 For about 10 days.

01:53:59.000 And I sent a guy ahead of me in a van with a cooker.

01:54:04.000 So wherever I decided I was going to stop that night or whatever, I could only eat his food, you know?

01:54:10.000 And it was just really, really basic, just sort of salads and beans and stuff like that, you know?

01:54:16.000 It's changed so much over time, the knowledge we have for nutrition and everything.

01:54:22.000 Back then, you're pretty much working off some really dodgy information.

01:54:27.000 At one point in my life, everybody was told the Mediterranean diet is the key, so eat pasta every day, just like the Italians do. 1.00

01:54:36.000 Cut to a whole bunch of big people.

01:54:39.000 The thing being is the food production process is not the same necessarily in other countries outside of Italy.

01:54:47.000 Italy or France, whatever they have, food production methods that are like artisan methods that have been used for a long, long time and pretty much most of the places you go that food has It hasn't necessarily been affected in the same way as it might in a more westernized country like America,

01:55:05.000 like Australia.

01:55:06.000 We borrow your food production methods, so we've got corn syrup up the Jaxi and everything now as well.

01:55:17.000 New wheat.

01:55:20.000 So I had three months to get ready.

01:55:24.000 I don't think when we started, I don't think I was ready, but by the time we're halfway through the film and my shirt's coming off and all that sort of stuff, I'd had enough time and enough focus on it to get it to a certain place.

01:55:34.000 So did you have to train while filming?

01:55:36.000 Yeah, constantly.

01:55:38.000 You know, because it was...

01:55:39.000 Yeah, I mean...

01:55:43.000 Training in that, you know, at the top step of the third tier of the Coliseum, there's a room that's got gym gear in it.

01:55:52.000 Or you're in the middle of the desert and there's an extra tent and that tent is a gymnasium, you know.

01:55:58.000 And, you know, I had to sort of...

01:56:00.000 Share the space.

01:56:01.000 There's a whole bunch of gladiators.

01:56:02.000 This whole bunch of guys are desperate to work out and everything.

01:56:05.000 So I just let everybody use the space as well. 0.99

01:56:08.000 Just on the proviso that if I'm coming in and I've got 15 minutes between things and I need to be on the bench, just get off the fucking bench. 0.98

01:56:14.000 And everyone's like, yeah, cool, man. 0.97

01:56:16.000 So it was quite a good collaboration, actually, with all those guys.

01:56:22.000 Wow.

01:56:23.000 So had you ever wielded a sword before?

01:56:26.000 Did you have to learn how to do all those moves?

01:56:29.000 Yeah, I took it upon myself because I didn't get to go to drama school.

01:56:34.000 I just started working.

01:56:37.000 I was working, as I said, in clubs and stuff like that.

01:56:39.000 And when I started moving into doing more acting stuff...

01:56:45.000 I was born in New Zealand.

01:56:47.000 I moved to Australia when I was four.

01:56:49.000 Moved back to New Zealand with my parents when I was 14. Then at 21, I moved back to Australia by myself because I considered Australia to be my home.

01:56:58.000 I'd lived there between four and 14. That's your formative years.

01:57:02.000 I never felt like New Zealand, even though it was the land of my birth.

01:57:06.000 It was really home.

01:57:07.000 So I went back to where I felt comfortable.

01:57:10.000 I went back with the idea that You know, I've been doing all these clubs and bands and stuff like that, but I'm going to sort of change the priority.

01:57:18.000 I'm going to focus more on acting and put the music, you know, underneath it.

01:57:24.000 And one of the things that I'd planned on doing was working enough, saving money to then go to NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, and get a piece of paper that says I know how to do my job, right?

01:57:38.000 The year was 88, I think.

01:57:40.000 I'd been in Australia for a couple of years by then.

01:57:43.000 I had an agent.

01:57:44.000 Things were going really, really well.

01:57:47.000 Solid work, being able to save money.

01:57:50.000 And I was doing a show at...

01:57:55.000 This theatre and a guy called Bruce Applebaum, who had been my brother's biology teacher in high school, but who had become a friend of one of my uncles.

01:58:07.000 And he came to see the show, and he came backstage.

01:58:10.000 And at that point, he was the technical director for the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

01:58:15.000 So he said, so what's your plan?

01:58:16.000 And I said, well, I've got the money in the bank.

01:58:19.000 I'm auditioning for NIDA in October or whenever it was.

01:58:22.000 And he goes, what?

01:58:25.000 You're going to go to drama school?

01:58:28.000 I said, yeah, I want to do it.

01:58:30.000 He goes, I walked into this theatre tonight.

01:58:32.000 As I was walking to the theatre, there's a banner that says the name of the show.

01:58:36.000 Above the name of the show is your name.

01:58:41.000 It's too late for you to go to drama school.

01:58:43.000 You already do what you're supposed to learn at drama school.

01:58:48.000 The only thing that you'll pick up is bad habits.

01:58:51.000 So in that one conversation...

01:58:53.000 This dream I'd harboured for about four or five years just disappeared.

01:58:58.000 But it was absolutely the right advice for me to receive at that time.

01:59:03.000 It would have been probably a big waste of my time to go into a drama school situation at that point.

01:59:11.000 Acting is one of the strange things that some people have an ability to do. 0.96

01:59:15.000 Like there's athletes that have gone into films that, you know, just play an athlete in a film and do a fucking amazing job.

01:59:22.000 Like, who was in Uncut Gems? 0.90

01:59:26.000 Was it Kevin Durant?

01:59:27.000 No.

01:59:28.000 Kevin Garnett?

01:59:29.000 Amazing in it.

01:59:30.000 He's good at it?

01:59:31.000 Amazing.

01:59:31.000 He plays a professional basketball player.

01:59:33.000 He is a professional basketball player.

01:59:35.000 But there's that thing, right?

01:59:37.000 There's a simple thing to understand that you're just going to inhabit the character.

01:59:43.000 Yes.

01:59:45.000 And you kind of operate yourself a little bit like a puppet master emotionally or whatever.

01:59:50.000 And as you're saying, some people can just accept that and they're fine with it.

01:59:54.000 Other people find it very hard and they sort of put a performance on which does not being driven from inside.

02:00:04.000 And you feel it.

02:00:05.000 They're doing something that they've constructed that they think, oh, people will think I'm that guy if I do this thing over here.

02:00:12.000 But they're not actually experiencing what the character is experiencing.

02:00:16.000 Therefore, it's not coming across as real.

02:00:18.000 Right, it doesn't resonate.

02:00:19.000 Yeah.

02:00:19.000 It doesn't, whatever it is, and you see it sometimes, like you'll see one actor stand out, like, oh, he's faking it.

02:00:25.000 Right.

02:00:26.000 Yeah, and it takes you out of it.

02:00:27.000 But just like the same way you see the opposite.

02:00:29.000 Yes.

02:00:30.000 Where you see that guy walk in the room, turns his head, and you go, oh, I'm with that guy.

02:00:34.000 That guy's, you know, he's fantastic, you know.

02:00:37.000 When you're doing a character, whether it's Braddock or The Gentleman from The Insider, and you're playing an actual human being, that must come with another level of responsibility, right?

02:00:50.000 Especially The Insider.

02:00:51.000 That was the first film where I had saw that kind of changed my perspective on things and made me openly consider the idea that a corporation would have someone assassinated if they were going to affect their business.

02:01:04.000 And I saw that movie.

02:01:06.000 I remember seeing that movie going, Jesus Christ.

02:01:08.000 And it took me down a rabbit hole of reading about the history of the tobacco industry and lobbyists and what they had done to try to obscure the fact that it was causing cancer and addicting people and all the chemicals they'd put into those things.

02:01:23.000 You're playing a guy who risked his life.

02:01:26.000 To tell us, to let everybody else know, hey, there's some nefarious forces involved in this business.

02:01:33.000 It's not as simple as they're just selling you cigarettes. 1.00

02:01:35.000 They're doing some shit. 0.99

02:01:39.000 Yeah, well, like, the responsibility is the right word. 1.00

02:01:41.000 You know, that experience that I was sharing with you, where I sat in front of him and asked him some tough questions, and I pushed a button emotionally.

02:01:49.000 What was it about?

02:01:50.000 And I could see he was still affected by it.

02:01:51.000 And it was about his family and the question, you mean?

02:01:55.000 Yeah.

02:01:57.000 It was about the effect of the situation on his family.

02:02:00.000 And that took him to a place, and I could see him just get, you know, emotional.

02:02:05.000 I realized he's still, all these years later...

02:02:08.000 Is carrying this around, you know?

02:02:10.000 That was a big thing for him to do.

02:02:12.000 As you say, he risked everything in his life.

02:02:15.000 Risked his professional reputation, the health and safety of his family, you know, to put that information in front of us.

02:02:21.000 The weird thing for me about all of that is that this legal loophole kind of situation you get into where If you admit something is unsafe, then you're liable for the fact that you peddled something that was unsafe.

02:02:35.000 Because there's a whole lot of things that you can do to make these less...

02:02:44.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:03:01.000 And it opens up a whole bunch of more legal bullshit. 0.90

02:03:05.000 But, you know, it's a funny thing. 0.97

02:03:07.000 I don't want to be an advocate for cigarette smoking.

02:03:10.000 But there are, you know, there is a long, long history of us and, you know, wanting to smoke things.

02:03:20.000 Well, there's been a lot of great work that was written on nicotine.

02:03:24.000 A lot.

02:03:25.000 Every major mathematician, every major scientist, they all smoke.

02:03:30.000 There is something in that nicotine opening neural pathways that they might not have access to normally.

02:03:40.000 I think it's the delivery method, too.

02:03:42.000 Because there's different ways of doing it.

02:03:43.000 There's pouches, but there's a very different thing that happens when you smoke it.

02:03:47.000 Right.

02:03:47.000 Yeah.

02:03:48.000 All my friends that can't quit cigarettes say the same thing.

02:03:51.000 Yeah.

02:03:52.000 It's a different thing.

02:03:54.000 I use Redman plug on long-haul flights.

02:03:58.000 Yeah?

02:03:58.000 That's how much of a nicotine addict I am, mate.

02:04:03.000 I got a great Norm MacDonald story.

02:04:05.000 Norm MacDonald and I, just by luck, sat next to each other on flights on two different occasions. 0.97

02:04:11.000 Just total dumb luck. 0.71

02:04:13.000 Norm said, like, Norm, what's up? 0.97

02:04:15.000 We're talking, and he's telling me I quit smoking.

02:04:18.000 He's telling me this whole thing about I quit smoking.

02:04:20.000 Yeah, it was terrible.

02:04:21.000 It's the hardest thing I ever had to kick.

02:04:23.000 Yeah, I loved smoking, but you know what? 0.99

02:04:25.000 It's fucking terrible for you. 0.99

02:04:26.000 I had to quit. 0.99

02:04:26.000 So he's telling me about this. 0.99

02:04:27.000 The moment we land, he runs into the gift shop and buys a pack of cigarettes.

02:04:32.000 And he's lighting them before he gets.

02:04:34.000 I go, what are you doing?

02:04:35.000 I thought you quit.

02:04:35.000 He goes, yeah, I did.

02:04:36.000 But then we started talking about it.

02:04:38.000 I wanted a cigarette.

02:04:39.000 And he's lighting it before he even gets out the door.

02:04:42.000 He just couldn't wait to get it back in him.

02:04:44.000 Well, there's a funny thing, though, right, that somebody sort of said to me once, and it's a true thing, is like, you know, when you haven't had a cigarette for a while and you get a craving, right, that's all you have to deal with.

02:05:00.000 Right.

02:05:01.000 At that moment.

02:05:02.000 Yeah.

02:05:02.000 It's not like other things that might get deeper and harder and more difficult or whatever.

02:05:07.000 It's only ever going to be that craving.

02:05:11.000 So you just have to sort of walk past it and, you know.

02:05:15.000 But also to satisfy that craving, when you do satisfy that craving, it's an immediate release of one of the most pressing physical things that's bothering you.

02:05:26.000 The most pressing physical thing that's bothering you is you want a cigarette.

02:05:29.000 In the times when I've tried to give up, what I've found is that my brain doesn't work the way I want it to work.

02:05:38.000 Right.

02:05:38.000 I find it quite hard to make decisions.

02:05:41.000 Right.

02:05:42.000 And so it's sort of like I've had experiences where, you know, for an extended period of time, I'm in this battle of trying to completely get rid of it out of my life.

02:05:54.000 But all of these other things are being negatively affected because I'm not making decisions.

02:05:58.000 My businesses are starting to wobble.

02:06:01.000 My bank account's not looking good.

02:06:02.000 You know what I mean? 1.00

02:06:03.000 And so I've just gone, fuck it. 0.99

02:06:06.000 Get everything back in line. 1.00

02:06:08.000 Well, it's a significant nootropic.

02:06:10.000 You know, it really is.

02:06:11.000 It does affect, in a very positive way, cognitive performance.

02:06:16.000 It's undeniable.

02:06:17.000 Yeah, well, as we said in that film, it breaks through that blood-brain barrier.

02:06:23.000 That's why it's so addictive and so hard.

02:06:25.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:06:27.000 And why it's so effective, too.

02:06:29.000 It's just too bad it's terrible for you.

02:06:31.000 Yeah, and I'm feeling it, man.

02:06:32.000 At the age of 60, having smoked since I was a kid, 100%.

02:06:37.000 No, it's like a short course for me.

02:06:40.000 When you were playing Braddock, did you smoke all through the training?

02:06:43.000 I smoked in the ring.

02:06:46.000 There's photographs.

02:06:47.000 I had a guy because you can't take your gloves off.

02:06:53.000 Right, right, right.

02:06:54.000 And so I used to just go over to the corner.

02:06:56.000 He'd stick it in my mouth.

02:06:57.000 I'd go, pop. 0.80

02:06:58.000 Wow.

02:06:59.000 But then we developed a set of gloves that were Velcroed.

02:07:04.000 So they had the laces on the outside, but they're actually Velcro.

02:07:06.000 I could get them out so I could have a cigarette.

02:07:09.000 Oh, wow.

02:07:10.000 Yeah.

02:07:10.000 Not constantly, but we'd be...

02:07:15.000 You're doing a shooting day in the ring. 0.99

02:07:18.000 You're in the ring all fucking day. 0.98

02:07:21.000 So you're going to be in the ring doing boxing stuff for 12 hours. 0.96

02:07:24.000 So when we started that film, Ron Howard's idea was to do the first 35 days of boxing and then do the scenes afterwards.

02:07:33.000 But after we did the first fight, which took six or seven days, I said, you've got to rethink that.

02:07:40.000 I'm rehabbing from the shoulder.

02:07:44.000 35 days in a row.

02:07:45.000 It's like, it's going to break down, man.

02:07:47.000 We have to.

02:07:48.000 So we redid the schedule and we cycled back into the boxing.

02:07:52.000 So I'd box Mondays and Tuesdays and then basically Wednesday would be off physically and then I would start the prep gearing up for the next boxing day.

02:08:02.000 And what was good about it is that it kept me in shape through the whole shoot.

02:08:08.000 If we'd done 35 days of boxing and then stopped and then done another 30 shooting days where I didn't have to box, James J. Braddock would have changed shape during the course of the film.

02:08:19.000 It was because I was cycling back into the boxing that I stayed in shape and kept improving because we had gaps in between so I'd learn a little bit more from Angela or whatever and would be able to adjust something.

02:08:30.000 So it was a really good choice to make because it made, and it was because of doing that that Ron was able to clearly see we need another gear change between now and the championship.

02:08:42.000 And that's when we came up with the idea, well, the only way we can have a gear change is if we just do it for real.

02:08:48.000 Wow.

02:08:48.000 But when I did the real fight, I did it with the fellow Troy, who was a really lovely bloke, great boxer, great athlete, incredible on the ropes, on the skipping rope, just superior.

02:09:01.000 I did it with him because I wanted the challenge of doing it.

02:09:05.000 If we're going to do it for real, I want to do it with him.

02:09:09.000 And we were chasing each other around that ring.

02:09:12.000 It was...

02:09:14.000 Incredible experience, but it's just that thing, he's a good, solid guy, and I know he was never going to kill me.

02:09:23.000 There was a couple of blokes in that cast.

02:09:26.000 If he gets the opportunity, he's too feral. 0.86

02:09:30.000 He'll just take my head off. 0.98

02:09:31.000 If I give him half a freaking break, he'll just put one through.

02:09:36.000 Did you have any experience boxing as a young man?

02:09:39.000 A little bit.

02:09:40.000 A little bit.

02:09:42.000 I did martial arts when I was a kid.

02:09:44.000 So I started off with Karate Budokan.

02:09:46.000 I would have started that when I was 12. Then I did...

02:10:00.000 Zendikai.

02:10:00.000 And then I did a street martial art thing as well.

02:10:06.000 I'd get to halfway up the belt ladder and then I'd move on to something else.

02:10:14.000 But it's funny because all of that training comes into play later on in my life.

02:10:22.000 Funnily enough, I always say to people, It's actually my musical theatre background and dance routines that make my fight sequences so sharp.

02:10:32.000 Because it's sort of like you're working with a rhythm.

02:10:35.000 And if you're working with a camera and the camera's trying to catch something, if you have that rhythm, then you can display the stuff that you want the camera to capture and the audience to see.

02:10:47.000 But a lot of people think I'm joking when I say it, but it's for real.

02:10:51.000 Are you aware of Vasily Lomachenko?

02:10:54.000 No.

02:10:54.000 He's a Ukrainian boxer.

02:10:56.000 He's one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world.

02:10:57.000 Didn't he just win a big fight the other day?

02:10:58.000 Yeah, he beat Kambosis from Australia, who's also an elite fighter.

02:11:03.000 But he was trained by his father from the time he was very young, and his father made him take two years off of boxing to learn Ukrainian dance to help his footwork.

02:11:13.000 And he has the greatest footwork of all time.

02:11:14.000 There you go.

02:11:15.000 His footwork is impeccable.

02:11:16.000 You have to see, pull up just a highlight reel of the way this guy moves, because it's so bizarre.

02:11:22.000 He moves differently than any other boxer on the planet, and he's by far, he has the best footwork and the most elusive.

02:11:30.000 He cuts angles and does movement and misdirects in a way that no one else does.

02:11:35.000 I got that list wrong. 0.95

02:11:35.000 I did Budokan to start with, then I did Sir Daw, which is a kung fu, and then I did Zendikai after that, which is more of a street fighting thing, which is headbutts and shit. 0.95

02:11:44.000 Oh, okay. 0.80

02:11:45.000 Yeah.

02:11:46.000 Well, it's like, you know, it's a get this done.

02:11:49.000 Like a Krav Maga type deal.

02:11:50.000 Yeah.

02:11:50.000 But it's like, let's make this short and sweet.

02:11:52.000 Yeah.

02:11:53.000 And just, you know, get it done.

02:11:56.000 Yeah.

02:11:57.000 Who's your favorite boxer over time, do you think?

02:11:59.000 Or a group of favorite boxers?

02:12:00.000 I don't know.

02:12:01.000 I don't know if there is a one.

02:12:02.000 This is Lomachenko.

02:12:04.000 Right.

02:12:04.000 Just watch how this guy moves.

02:12:06.000 Like, his foot...

02:12:07.000 Look at that.

02:12:07.000 Yeah, look at that.

02:12:08.000 That footwork is fucking insane. 0.99

02:12:10.000 There's no one like him. 0.99

02:12:11.000 There's no one like him.

02:12:12.000 He's so elusive.

02:12:14.000 And the punches come from angles that you don't expect them to come from, and he's moved up multiple weight classes.

02:12:20.000 I think he's the quickest man to ever win, because he had an unbelievable amateur record.

02:12:25.000 I think he's the quickest man to ever win a world title.

02:12:28.000 I think he won a world title in like four bouts.

02:12:31.000 Incredible.

02:12:32.000 Yeah.

02:12:33.000 I used to love watching Costa Zoo.

02:12:34.000 Oh, yeah.

02:12:35.000 He was amazing.

02:12:36.000 Yeah.

02:12:36.000 He was fantastic.

02:12:37.000 And his son, he's got two boys, and they're both up-and-comers at the moment.

02:12:41.000 Yep.

02:12:41.000 Yeah.

02:12:41.000 Tim just lost for the first time.

02:12:43.000 Yeah, I watched that fight.

02:12:44.000 And Nikita.

02:12:45.000 Yeah.

02:12:45.000 That was crazy, that fight.

02:12:46.000 Yeah.

02:12:46.000 Crazy fight.

02:12:47.000 Crazy fight.

02:12:48.000 Costa Zoo was a murderous puncher.

02:12:50.000 Yeah, he was fantastic, man.

02:12:51.000 Yeah.

02:12:51.000 He knocked out Zab Judah one time.

02:12:53.000 I remember that.

02:12:54.000 Oh, my God.

02:12:55.000 I've never seen that happen before.

02:12:57.000 And that was when Zab Judah was Zab Judah. 0.93

02:12:59.000 He was the thing.

02:13:00.000 Yeah, he was the thing.

02:13:01.000 And everybody was counting down how many seconds is it going to take for him to end Costa Zou's life.

02:13:06.000 And it simply didn't happen.

02:13:07.000 Well, he was so slick and so elusive himself.

02:13:11.000 And Costa Zou just planted one on him. 0.91

02:13:12.000 Well, he planted a couple on him, but one big one that really rocked him.

02:13:16.000 And he had that little rat tail.

02:13:17.000 That was his thing.

02:13:18.000 Well, that's the thing with Costa.

02:13:19.000 I think he had nearly 300 fights or something as an amateur to start with.

02:13:23.000 He did the consequences of him hitting you.

02:13:25.000 He was just such a murderous puncher.

02:13:29.000 That even if a guy was slick, it was just you needed to make one mistake.

02:13:33.000 Boom, there it is.

02:13:36.000 And he got up and his legs were just complete rubber.

02:13:40.000 That's the only time I've ever seen that in a boxing...

02:13:43.000 Well, he made a mistake there.

02:13:45.000 He should have just stayed down.

02:13:47.000 It was his ego that made him jump up to his feet.

02:13:49.000 He should have taken a knee, wait to the count of eight rows.

02:13:53.000 Play that back again because he's got that one big right, but then it's a two-punch combination that really puts him into that situation, right?

02:14:02.000 Yeah.

02:14:04.000 Bang there.

02:14:04.000 One-two, that hurt him, and then bam, that's the big one.

02:14:09.000 See, if he just stayed down, he probably would have got his legs back in eight seconds.

02:14:14.000 Because by then, he's okay.

02:14:16.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:14:17.000 But who knows?

02:14:18.000 He would have probably got caught again.

02:14:20.000 That's the tricky thing about boxing.

02:14:22.000 I was at the Costa Zoo Ricky Hatton fight when I got a mate who's a lawyer who says, you have to be careful with it.

02:14:30.000 Befriending boxers. 0.99

02:14:32.000 Because there will be that night when it's just all over.

02:14:36.000 And it was in Manchester.

02:14:40.000 And Hatton was jacked, man.

02:14:43.000 His body was chiseled in a way I'd never seen his body before.

02:14:48.000 And from my perspective, it looked like he was...

02:14:52.000 Laying in some shots under the belt.

02:14:55.000 But in an audience like that in Manchester, which was all about Ricky, they were all for him.

02:15:04.000 He didn't have a lot of dissenting voices.

02:15:07.000 But I was in the dressing room holding Costa over a bucket while he pissed blood for about 20 minutes after the fight.

02:15:16.000 It really made me understand what the boxing world really is.

02:15:24.000 Every one of those takes something away from that fighter forever.

02:15:28.000 They'll never be exactly the same.

02:15:30.000 I don't think he fought again after that.

02:15:32.000 He had that big, long, storied career and multiple world championships and all of the things that he achieved.

02:15:38.000 He just knew that that was the end of that for him.

02:15:43.000 Well, good for him for recognizing that.

02:15:45.000 That's one of the hardest things for fighters to recognize when it's over because their entire identity is based on this one thing that they do.

02:15:52.000 And then, who am I if I don't do that thing?

02:15:54.000 And your whole life from the time you were young.

02:15:56.000 It's like all sports people though, isn't it?

02:15:58.000 I think for fighters, it's more difficult.

02:16:01.000 Oh, it's much more intense as a fighter, for sure.

02:16:02.000 It's also, you have to have this ridiculous belief in yourself that you're the best of all the elites out there.

02:16:08.000 You're the number one.

02:16:09.000 You're the guy that can get it done.

02:16:10.000 Yeah.

02:16:11.000 Ricky Hatton in his prime was a bad man.

02:16:13.000 Yeah, he was great.

02:16:14.000 Oh, he was a mauler.

02:16:15.000 A lot of boxer.

02:16:16.000 Mauler, too.

02:16:17.000 Just so hard-nosed.

02:16:18.000 Yeah.

02:16:18.000 Just come at you.

02:16:20.000 Just, you know, which is why, you know, some of his loss, the Floyd Mayweather one example, it just shows how great Floyd was.

02:16:28.000 Right.

02:16:28.000 Was able to weather that and figure out the openings.

02:16:31.000 Yeah.

02:16:32.000 And then Manny Pacquiao after that.

02:16:34.000 Pacquiao, what a fighter.

02:16:36.000 Yeah.

02:16:36.000 He just fought again.

02:16:37.000 He just had an exhibition fight in Japan, which is ridiculous.

02:16:41.000 Didn't look that good.

02:16:42.000 I used to like watching Oscar De La Hoya as well.

02:16:46.000 Oh, in his prime.

02:16:47.000 He was amazing.

02:16:48.000 He's off the reservation now, though.

02:16:50.000 See what he posted on his Instagram today?

02:16:52.000 Him and his girlfriend in their underwear dancing around.

02:16:55.000 And it looks like he's on a pound of cocaine.

02:16:58.000 He's got a jockstrap on. 1.00

02:16:59.000 He's bouncing his dick around. 1.00

02:17:01.000 She's bouncing her ass around. 1.00

02:17:02.000 It's... 0.99

02:17:04.000 It's something that if somebody else filmed, you're like, don't post that.

02:17:07.000 Right.

02:17:07.000 Do not post that.

02:17:09.000 Meanwhile, he put it on his own fucking account. 0.99

02:17:11.000 You got it, Jamie? 0.99

02:17:13.000 It's been taken down.

02:17:14.000 It's just having a summer.

02:17:15.000 What do you mean it's been taken?

02:17:16.000 He took it down?

02:17:17.000 It says that when I looked for it, it's been scrubbed from Instagram, so I found it.

02:17:21.000 That's it in the corner.

02:17:22.000 In the right-hand corner, you can see what the two of them are doing.

02:17:27.000 So she's dancing.

02:17:28.000 Well, they're blurring him out because he had some little G-string around where his dingling was bouncing around. 1.00

02:17:34.000 She's shaking her enhanced ass. 0.99

02:17:38.000 The whole thing is just, I mean, what drugs? 1.00

02:17:41.000 He definitely needs to go and do some Ukrainian folk dancing lessons.

02:17:47.000 Yeah, not the best footwork.

02:17:48.000 I mean, in his prime, the guy moved like a butterfly, but, you know, things have changed.

02:17:52.000 He was an amazing fighter in his prime.

02:17:54.000 Absolutely.

02:17:54.000 Unfortunately, it gets overshadowed by activity, like we just witnessed.

02:17:58.000 What do you think of this Jake Paul fellow? 0.99

02:18:01.000 I always say that if Jake Paul was not a YouTube star, if people just looked at him like an up-and-coming boxer, you would say, this kid's got a lot of fucking talent. 0.99

02:18:09.000 He's dangerous. 1.00

02:18:10.000 He's dangerous. 1.00

02:18:11.000 I think his strength is that people, for whatever stupid reasons, they underestimate him because of what his background was. 0.98

02:18:19.000 And they think there's no way that some guy who became famous off of YouTube is going to be an actual legit boxer. 0.64

02:18:25.000 But if you look at what he's done, the time that he's put into it, and the ability that he has, just the sheer ability, he's a very good boxer.

02:18:31.000 Yeah.

02:18:32.000 Very good.

02:18:32.000 He seems to treat his body the right way too.

02:18:35.000 Yeah.

02:18:36.000 Trains hard.

02:18:37.000 I mean, I've watched a lot of his training footage.

02:18:39.000 I've watched all of his fights.

02:18:42.000 He can fight.

02:18:43.000 What do you think of the thing with Mike though?

02:18:47.000 58 is 58, no matter what.

02:18:49.000 No matter what you're taking and what they're doing for you, you're still 58. But 58-year-old Mike Tyson is not 50-year-old Mike Jones that lives down the street.

02:19:01.000 It's a different kind of human being, and he still can knock your fucking head into another dimension if he can catch you. 0.94

02:19:07.000 The thing is, can he catch a 28-year-old guy who's at the top of his career who's winning legitimate boxing matches? 0.99

02:19:14.000 I mean, he's beating former UFC world champions like Tyron Woodley.

02:19:18.000 He had that very good fight with Tommy Fury, who's a legitimate boxer, which was a very good fight.

02:19:26.000 He just beat up Mike Perry, who's a bare-knuckle champion.

02:19:30.000 It's a...

02:19:31.000 He's a real fighter.

02:19:32.000 He can fight.

02:19:33.000 And if Mike Tyson and him are fighting and Mike can't catch him, and Mike has bad knees, if his back's bad, I mean, I don't know what's going on with him physically.

02:19:43.000 It's hard to tell from a guy just hitting pads.

02:19:46.000 When he's hitting those pads, he looks great.

02:19:49.000 Like, yeah, if he can do that, if he can actually do that for eight rounds or ten rounds, however long this fight is.

02:19:54.000 Well, that's going to be the key, isn't it?

02:19:56.000 Yeah.

02:19:56.000 Can he do that?

02:19:56.000 I don't know if he can do that.

02:19:57.000 I mean, he had to pull out of the first fight because he had an ulcer.

02:20:00.000 Right.

02:20:02.000 The thing is, I was quite enjoying the second phase of Mike's life.

02:20:09.000 He was terrifying as a boxer.

02:20:12.000 Terrifying.

02:20:13.000 I met him at one point backstage at a stadium at a fight, and I was like, I'm still terrified of you.

02:20:21.000 From watching you.

02:20:22.000 But then that guy he started becoming where he became more explorative and he was looking into the meaning of life and having a smoke every now and then and stuff like that.

02:20:33.000 I was like, I'm enjoying this, Mike.

02:20:35.000 I'm liking the evolution.

02:20:38.000 What bothers me with this whole thing is that he's got to kind of slide back to that warrior.

02:20:47.000 And...

02:20:48.000 I'm just not sure he needed to do it.

02:20:51.000 Yeah.

02:20:52.000 He's the reason why this table is so wide.

02:20:54.000 Why is that?

02:20:55.000 Because I was going to make the table more narrow and be closer to the guests.

02:20:59.000 I had him on once when he was retired and he was much heavier and he was smoking a lot of weed and he was contemplative and interesting and philosophical and just a fun guy to hang out with.

02:21:11.000 And then I had him on again when he was about to fight Roy Jones Jr. And he had lost about 60 pounds.

02:21:16.000 He looked shredded.

02:21:17.000 He had muscles bulging in his arms.

02:21:18.000 He was very intense.

02:21:20.000 It was like a completely different human being.

02:21:22.000 And he was terrifying. 0.99

02:21:22.000 Just being in the room was fucking terrifying. 0.99

02:21:24.000 And I said, you know what? 0.97

02:21:25.000 This table needs to be a little wider.

02:21:27.000 I'm glad it wasn't only me.

02:21:29.000 Yeah, I just don't want to be that close to him. 0.99

02:21:30.000 He fucking scares me. 0.98

02:21:31.000 I felt his energy. 0.99

02:21:33.000 Even Jamie said it after he left.

02:21:35.000 Jamie was like, that's a totally different person.

02:21:37.000 Right.

02:21:37.000 Because Jamie was here for the first one and the second one.

02:21:39.000 He was so fired up.

02:21:42.000 He had reignited that thing inside of him that existed when he was the best in the world.

02:21:48.000 And that force that caused him to try to achieve greatness was back.

02:21:53.000 And he was fit.

02:21:54.000 He was in the middle of training.

02:21:56.000 And he was all in on this Roy Jones Jr. fight.

02:22:01.000 I just hope for the both of them.

02:22:03.000 That it transcends the sort of circus-type atmosphere that's around it, you know?

02:22:08.000 Yeah.

02:22:09.000 But it's a legit fight, and they both do well, and nobody gets hurt.

02:22:13.000 That would be nice, but it's probably not going to happen.

02:22:16.000 It's probably going to be one of two things. 0.98

02:22:19.000 It's either going to be Jake Paul's going to find out that 58-year-old Mike Tyson is still a motherfucker, or we're going to find out that 58-year-old men are 58-year-old men no matter what they look like. 0.96

02:22:28.000 And Jake Paul is a 28-year-old athlete in the prime of his life. 0.96

02:22:32.000 Yeah.

02:22:33.000 I mean, if you just do it to yourself, right?

02:22:35.000 You know, me at 60 versus me at 28?

02:22:38.000 Right.

02:22:39.000 Forget about it, man.

02:22:39.000 Yeah, it's different things.

02:22:41.000 All of it.

02:22:42.000 Yeah, and also there's an accumulation of injuries that everyone has.

02:22:46.000 Tell me about it.

02:22:49.000 No avoiding.

02:22:50.000 But I do want to get you in.

02:22:51.000 I guarantee you stem cells will help that.

02:22:54.000 I've had tremendous success with stem cells.

02:22:56.000 In shoulder joints?

02:22:57.000 Yeah.

02:22:58.000 I was told by a doctor that I was going to have to have shoulder surgery.

02:23:02.000 He said, well, he did all of these exercises.

02:23:04.000 He pushed down on it, and we did an MRI. He's like, it's so torn.

02:23:07.000 He goes, you could try to rehabilitate it.

02:23:10.000 No, it was a little bit of labrum, but I had a full-length rotator cuff tear.

02:23:13.000 Okay.

02:23:14.000 And he's like, it's going to have to be repaired.

02:23:16.000 So I had another guy in Vegas, this guy, Dr. Roddy McGee, and he's like, let's try stem cells.

02:23:21.000 And he was doing them for the UFC. And, you know, this was, they could do some pretty potent stuff.

02:23:27.000 This is before some of the new regulations have come into place.

02:23:30.000 They're constantly trying to regulate this stuff because it's very effective.

02:23:34.000 Well, I went in.

02:23:35.000 He shot me up.

02:23:36.000 I took it easy on him.

02:23:38.000 I did the rehab.

02:23:39.000 I started doing all these bands.

02:23:41.000 I used these crossover symmetry bands, and I started doing all these exercises to build my shoulders back up.

02:23:46.000 And then I started feeling pretty good, and I started working out again and just being real careful.

02:23:51.000 As soon as I feel pain, I'm going to stop.

02:23:53.000 I went back to him in six months and got an MRI. Right.

02:23:56.000 He said it was the most extraordinary thing he's ever seen.

02:23:57.000 He said, the tear is gone.

02:23:59.000 He said, I've never seen this before.

02:24:00.000 He goes, I've never seen this.

02:24:01.000 In all my years of being an orthopedic surgeon, I've never seen a tear in a rotator cuff completely disappear.

02:24:07.000 What's happened with mine now is that it's full of arthritis.

02:24:13.000 So if they were going to repair it now...

02:24:16.000 They've got to cut it.

02:24:17.000 They've got to pop the bone up, shave the top of the humeral head off, cut it off, put some plastic bit in there. 0.98

02:24:26.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:24:26.000 Don't do that yet.

02:24:27.000 11 months rehab.

02:24:29.000 Yeah, don't do that yet.

02:24:31.000 Don't do that yet.

02:24:32.000 This is why I don't do that yet.

02:24:33.000 Because there's breakthroughs right now where they're regenerating cartilage.

02:24:37.000 There's several studies.

02:24:38.000 I believe one of them is out of Australia and another one.

02:24:41.000 My friend Brigham, who runs ways to well, I actually sent this to him.

02:24:44.000 I'll send this to you, Jamie.

02:24:46.000 But there's a new study that came out that's showing that they're able to regenerate cartilage tissue.

02:24:52.000 And this is very, very promising.

02:24:54.000 So when they're able to do this kind of stuff now, if you could just hang in there...

02:25:00.000 Here you go, Jamie.

02:25:01.000 If you could just hang in there for just a year or so, I guarantee you they're going to be implementing this stuff on people.

02:25:07.000 See, I've got no cartilage in my big toes.

02:25:10.000 No cartilage left.

02:25:12.000 Because all the sports, I used to do lateral movement sports.

02:25:15.000 Turf toe, yeah. 0.99

02:25:15.000 But also, you know, sometimes things shit goes wrong in a stunt and you've got to stop or you die. 0.99

02:25:23.000 Right. 0.99

02:25:23.000 So this is it. 0.99

02:25:25.000 Insulin-like growth factor one in articular cartilage repair for osteoarthritis treatment.

02:25:29.000 Right.

02:25:30.000 So, they're able to do this signaling pathway that's been implicated in articular cartilage repair.

02:25:37.000 IGF-1 is a member of the family of growth factors.

02:25:40.000 Structurally closely related to pro-insulin can promote, I don't know what that word is, chondrocyte prolification.

02:25:50.000 Enhance matrix production and inhibit catabolism.

02:25:56.000 Moreover, we discussed the potential role of IGF-1 in OA treatment.

02:26:00.000 Of note, we summarized the recent progress on IGF delivery systems.

02:26:04.000 Optimization of IGF delivery systems can facilitate treatment application and cartilage repair and improve OA treatment efficacy.

02:26:11.000 So there's this and there's another one that's in Australia where they're using it on sheep right now and they're able to regrow cartilage on sheep and they're about to begin human trials on that as well.

02:26:21.000 Healing and discovering animal models consuming to new human therapies.

02:26:26.000 So this is the next stage, right?

02:26:28.000 Because right now there's nothing they can do about cartilage.

02:26:31.000 What stem cells have been really effective at is soft tissue injuries.

02:26:36.000 Tendon repair, things along those lines, and a lot of neurological disorders that people have, especially IV versions.

02:26:42.000 They've done a lot with Dr. Neil Reardon in Panama.

02:26:45.000 He's had some great results with that.

02:26:47.000 And great results.

02:26:49.000 Mel Gibson came in and talked about his experiences with that and his father.

02:26:53.000 His father was in a wheelchair when he was 80, 10 years later at 90, was walking around.

02:26:59.000 And this is after stem cell.

02:27:01.000 They can do some pretty extraordinary stuff, especially outside of the country, because outside of America, America has the FDA, and the FDA is very strict on this stuff.

02:27:10.000 But if you can go to Tijuana, there's a place called the Cellular Performance Institute.

02:27:13.000 They send a lot of UFC fighters down there.

02:27:15.000 They had amazing results.

02:27:17.000 Amazing.

02:27:17.000 They're shooting them into people's discs and growing disc tissue on people that have...

02:27:22.000 Disc degeneration issues.

02:27:24.000 It's just we're real close.

02:27:26.000 We're real close to being able to regenerate all kinds of stuff.

02:27:29.000 So just gotta hang in there.

02:27:31.000 Hang in there.

02:27:32.000 But I guarantee you what the stem cells can do is help heal what can heal in that area, reduce inflammation, give you more range of motion, and give you a much more pain-free experience.

02:27:43.000 Because I've got that situation with my toes, right?

02:27:46.000 I've got grade four tears in both Achilles.

02:27:49.000 I've got shin splints.

02:27:50.000 I've got bone marrow edemas under both knees.

02:27:53.000 Jesus.

02:27:54.000 I've got one disintegrating hip.

02:27:57.000 Oh, boy.

02:27:58.000 And I know exactly what fall that was from.

02:28:00.000 What movie?

02:28:01.000 Gladiator.

02:28:02.000 Of course.

02:28:03.000 And then you go on my back.

02:28:05.000 I've got ribs that pop off. 1.00

02:28:07.000 I've got, you know, both shoulders are shit, but the left one is particularly shit. 0.99

02:28:11.000 And it's like, you know, like even on this tour we've been doing, because we've been traveling like 35,000 kilometers or something on this tour, and, you know, sometimes it's in a plane, but other times it's in a, you know, hopefully a bus, but most of the time just a car, 0.99

02:28:27.000 or at one point we were traveling around in a pet transport van.

02:28:32.000 You're doing it old school.

02:28:34.000 Yeah, well, the thing is, the band doesn't generate cash like my day job.

02:28:38.000 Right.

02:28:39.000 So I've got to work to what the band earns.

02:28:43.000 Right, right, right.

02:28:43.000 So it definitely makes it a little more difficult, for sure.

02:28:49.000 But it's also real.

02:28:50.000 You're doing it like a real touring band.

02:28:52.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:28:52.000 Yeah.

02:28:53.000 Lining up in funky little airports.

02:28:56.000 Yeah.

02:28:57.000 Yeah.

02:28:58.000 And most of the flights have been once the tour has begun.

02:29:01.000 Have been, you know, economy flights and blah, blah, blah.

02:29:05.000 Well, I'm going to try to get you in the morning before you take your flight out of here.

02:29:09.000 All right, cool.

02:29:09.000 I bet I can.

02:29:10.000 Okay.

02:29:11.000 Yeah, I'm 99% sure.

02:29:12.000 And they can just go bing, bang right then?

02:29:13.000 Yeah, they'll just start injecting you in the morning.

02:29:16.000 They'll give you an IV of stem cells.

02:29:18.000 They'll inject them into the areas that are hurt.

02:29:20.000 Interesting.

02:29:21.000 Yeah, it'll help you.

02:29:22.000 Guaranteed it'll help. 0.99

02:29:23.000 You know, it sounds like your shoulder's pretty fucked, but like I said, hang in there. 1.00

02:29:28.000 This shit's coming. 1.00

02:29:29.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:29:29.000 So I'm kind of, probably doesn't look like it to you, but I'm actually in the process of that 10 years of allowing myself to be in a certain shape and playing all sorts of roles for that. 1.00

02:29:41.000 But when I finished Nuremberg in April or so, I just said, okay, that decade's over and I'm going to go back the other way.

02:29:50.000 So I was 126 kilos.

02:29:52.000 When I came off Nuremberg, I'm currently 112 and a half.

02:29:55.000 Nice.

02:29:56.000 Just slowly and slowly.

02:29:57.000 That's the right way to do it. 0.94

02:29:59.000 But what I'm looking forward to is that all of the guys that are 10 years my junior, they're going, mate, you fucking let yourself go, haven't you? 0.93

02:30:10.000 Okay, whatever. 0.87

02:30:12.000 I'm going to just be passing them on the escalator as I go down.

02:30:16.000 I go, enjoying yourself?

02:30:17.000 Yeah.

02:30:19.000 I feel even if I start working less, which is something that's also in the back of my mind, if I'm going to spend more time for myself and not working, then I want to be in a particular place so I can enjoy it a little bit more.

02:30:34.000 Sure.

02:30:35.000 Yeah.

02:30:36.000 Just physically, you'll feel a lot better just moving around.

02:30:39.000 But it has been a very interesting decade, you know?

02:30:42.000 And it's funny in my business on how much it can affect your friendships, what you look like. 0.84

02:30:49.000 Really?

02:30:50.000 Oh, for sure.

02:30:51.000 Absolutely for sure.

02:30:52.000 In what way?

02:30:53.000 Well, just who stops calling you and stuff.

02:30:54.000 They stop calling you if you gain weight?

02:30:56.000 For sure.

02:30:58.000 Really?

02:30:58.000 Oh, those aren't real friends.

02:31:00.000 Well, that's exactly right.

02:31:01.000 So it's been a lovely process of just cleaning a few things out.

02:31:06.000 How bizarre.

02:31:08.000 I don't know where I'll get to, but in my mind, I'm aiming for about 104, 105. Nice.

02:31:14.000 You'll get there.

02:31:15.000 Come on, man.

02:31:15.000 That should be relatively easy.

02:31:18.000 But for me, fighting weight's 80 kilos.

02:31:22.000 Can you get there?

02:31:24.000 I don't think so.

02:31:25.000 Why not?

02:31:26.000 I bet you can.

02:31:27.000 Well, it's just the thing is, I can't, because of all the damage everywhere, because what I used to do is just outrun my, you know, go through a period of, you know, abusing yourself and then just outrun it.

02:31:38.000 And I simply can't do that anymore.

02:31:40.000 You know, I just can't outrun the years of, you know, of abuse.

02:31:45.000 Can you use an Airdyne?

02:31:46.000 An Airdyne bike?

02:31:47.000 Yeah, I've got them. 1.00

02:31:49.000 Yeah, those are the shit. 1.00

02:31:50.000 I did that stupid thing today. 1.00

02:31:53.000 That's torture. 1.00

02:31:53.000 Yeah, but what I'm trying to do is actually make the adjustments without relying on Olympic-level physical preparation. 1.00

02:32:02.000 I'm just trying to bring it down purely through...

02:32:05.000 Diet and the fact that I've been losing weight while I'm on a tour like this where you don't have consistency in the way you can exercise and the food that's available to you at 2 o'clock in the morning after you've finished a gig is pretty hairy.

02:32:20.000 The fact that I've actually still been able to come down is amazing.

02:32:23.000 I've never been on a tour with a band in my life and I've been doing this stuff since the early 80s.

02:32:43.000 I don't know what the rules in Australia are for peptides.

02:32:46.000 Do you know what kind of regulations they have there?

02:32:49.000 I'm pretty sure that they're available, but you can't use them in a professional sense, which doesn't affect my job, but sports people can't use them.

02:32:58.000 Right, sports people can't use them here either, unfortunately.

02:33:01.000 All they do is help you heal, especially things like BPC-157. 0.98

02:33:05.000 They just help heal injuries, and they've recently banned that here for some fucking stupid reason. 0.98

02:33:10.000 None of it makes any sense. 0.98

02:33:11.000 What you can get versus what It has not shown any adverse side effects.

02:33:17.000 But then you have to go through this insane process to get it legalized that takes forever and costs insane amounts of money.

02:33:23.000 That's what they're in right now.

02:33:25.000 But peptides can help you tremendously.

02:33:28.000 Tremendously.

02:33:29.000 It helps you heal.

02:33:30.000 It helps your body regenerate tissue.

02:33:32.000 It helps you lose weight.

02:33:33.000 It can help you in a lot of ways.

02:33:36.000 Yeah.

02:33:36.000 There's a lot of different things you can do, but I'll connect you with these ways to well people.

02:33:39.000 They can help you a lot.

02:33:40.000 And also, just eat nothing but steak.

02:33:43.000 Just eat only your steaks.

02:33:45.000 Get on a carnivore diet.

02:33:47.000 High protein, low carbs.

02:33:49.000 You just lose weight quick like that anyway.

02:33:51.000 Because your body's easily satisfied.

02:33:54.000 If you're only eating meat and protein, you only eat so much and then you're done.

02:33:57.000 Your body knows how to regulate exactly what you have.

02:34:00.000 And also then you'll be in a state of ketosis a lot of time.

02:34:03.000 Now that I've made the decision, it's quite interesting what's happening to my...

02:34:09.000 Just the food intake.

02:34:13.000 Yesterday, I was eating a steak.

02:34:15.000 I was really enjoying it, but I didn't finish it.

02:34:18.000 I got to a certain point when actually, I'm good.

02:34:22.000 It's just a funny thing.

02:34:24.000 We've talked before about the power of the imagination or whatever.

02:34:27.000 I've now made the decision that I'm going the other way.

02:34:31.000 And as long as I'm clear about that decision, then you just start to fold in under the decision you've made.

02:34:43.000 Yeah, you move into that direction.

02:34:47.000 I'm just sort of taking the attitude.

02:34:49.000 I'm not slavishly weighing myself every day.

02:34:56.000 It's not schedule specific, which has been so much of my life.

02:35:00.000 I'm prepping for a thing that happens on a certain date.

02:35:02.000 You've got X amount of time to get to that place.

02:35:06.000 I'm really taking it on board as a decision I purely made for my own reasons.

02:35:13.000 And that is, you know, when it's summertime, I like taking my shirt off by the pool, you know?

02:35:19.000 Right.

02:35:19.000 So it's like, alright, I've had 10 years without doing that, so now I'm going back the other way.

02:35:25.000 What exercise can you do that doesn't hurt?

02:35:28.000 Oddly enough, I would never have thought this, and it doesn't seem logical, but when I got to a point with my Achilles that was affecting everything that I was doing, and they set me up, I did You know,

02:35:45.000 full blood injections, platelet-rich injections, did all of that stuff, you know.

02:35:49.000 And then you're banging yourself with painkillers because it's such a heavy hit when you do that sort of thing, particularly with the Achilles, you know, and the moon boot and all that, you know.

02:35:59.000 And it just wasn't working, man.

02:36:00.000 And I was doing the rehab exercises and everything, and I could feel that with the rehab exercises that they were re-damaging the area.

02:36:10.000 They weren't making it better, you know.

02:36:12.000 So I kind of said to the guy that I was working with, that's just like, I gotta stop.

02:36:16.000 I gotta stop.

02:36:16.000 Because every time I see you, then I limp the next day.

02:36:20.000 But if I don't do the exercises, after a certain amount of time, the limp gets less.

02:36:25.000 So I have to come up with some other way of doing it.

02:36:28.000 And he said I was crazy at the time or whatever.

02:36:30.000 Then I started going out with a girl who loves playing tennis.

02:36:37.000 I used to like playing tennis when I was younger, so cool, let's play tennis.

02:36:42.000 Our romance is based on the fact that the first time I played tennis, I couldn't beat her.

02:36:49.000 I've got to keep you around and play you enough times until I work out how to grind you into the dirt, young lady. 1.00

02:37:05.000 Wow.

02:37:20.000 That would be the last thing I would suggest.

02:37:22.000 I would think that that springing would be the recipe for disaster.

02:37:25.000 But because it's like a momentary movement.

02:37:29.000 But with tennis, if you're getting to the ball, you've got to use 100% of yourself.

02:37:35.000 You're going for that ball and it's all in.

02:37:37.000 But it's three or four steps.

02:37:39.000 And then you have a little bit of a break or the next shot.

02:37:43.000 You don't have to put so much effort into it or whatever.

02:37:45.000 And it just seems to...

02:37:46.000 I have...

02:37:48.000 You know, I had years and years, man.

02:37:50.000 I'm talking about from 98 onwards, right?

02:37:55.000 So that's through all of those movies we were talking about, like Gladiator, like Martian Commander, like Cinderella Man, Noah, whatever...

02:38:04.000 The problem with my Achilles is always present.

02:38:06.000 Always present.

02:38:08.000 But since the last five years, it's gone away.

02:38:13.000 I don't think about it every day.

02:38:14.000 And I walk without a limp now.

02:38:16.000 Wow.

02:38:17.000 And it's just tennis.

02:38:18.000 I wonder how much of that is the same thing, like the direction.

02:38:21.000 You've made this direction to beat this woman at tennis. 0.98

02:38:24.000 You've got to get good at tennis and your mind is saying to your body, all right, you've got to fix this fucking problem with the Achilles. 0.99

02:38:30.000 I'm going to need those. 0.97

02:38:31.000 Yeah, we're going to need those.

02:38:32.000 We're going to need to fire up all the resources.

02:38:34.000 It could be also, too, that those platelet-rich injections and stuff that they were doing in the timeline that they were considering to be the right timeline is incorrect.

02:38:42.000 The timeline is, in fact, a lot longer.

02:38:44.000 You know, perhaps.

02:38:46.000 Yeah.

02:38:46.000 And I think if you look at the tennis thing, it actually recreates the rehab exercises.

02:38:52.000 Sure.

02:38:53.000 But you're not doing, you know, five sets of ten.

02:38:55.000 Right.

02:38:56.000 You're doing a little bit and then the next day you might do that same move again or whatever, you know, but it's not wearing it down at the same time.

02:39:05.000 Right.

02:39:05.000 That's what I found with the rehab exercises, that it felt to me As I said, I think that I was re-injuring.

02:39:12.000 They would stretch, stretch, stretch to a certain point.

02:39:14.000 That's good.

02:39:14.000 Then you do that one set of them too many and you feel that little click again and you know that it's re-taunt.

02:39:21.000 Yeah, that makes sense.

02:39:23.000 It's like limited plyometrics.

02:39:25.000 That's what it's like.

02:39:26.000 It does make sense.

02:39:28.000 But it's funny that that's the thing that got you healthy again.

02:39:32.000 Crazy, right?

02:39:35.000 Yeah, so opposite of what I think anybody would recommend.

02:39:38.000 It doesn't seem to, you know, bear logic, but here it is, you know, sort of.

02:39:43.000 And, you know, I've started riding bicycles again now and everything because it got to the point, man, where the pain, you know, if you went on a mountain bike for 15 or 20 k's, it's just white hot pain in the back of my heels, you know?

02:39:56.000 Yeah.

02:39:57.000 But now I'm enjoying it again and, you know, having fun with it.

02:40:00.000 So, you know, it's cool.

02:40:03.000 That's a beautiful thing.

02:40:04.000 Yeah, so love.

02:40:06.000 Yeah, love.

02:40:07.000 Love and the ability to decide that you want to beat this person.

02:40:12.000 Yeah.

02:40:13.000 And I did, I ended up, there was one time in Melbourne we played indoors on the practice course they have for the Open.

02:40:23.000 Six love.

02:40:24.000 And I never let her forget it.

02:40:26.000 She still will beat me quite regularly. 0.95

02:40:28.000 But I do have that one pure moment of victory that I recall for her.

02:40:34.000 That's hilarious.

02:40:35.000 The motivation.

02:40:37.000 It's interesting how motivation is such a massive factor in success.

02:40:42.000 Like, what are you actually enthusiastic about?

02:40:44.000 It's just that the direction that your mind will put your body through when you've made a decision like that.

02:40:51.000 Have you got kids?

02:40:52.000 Yes.

02:40:52.000 What are their edges?

02:40:54.000 I have a 28-year-old.

02:40:56.000 I have a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old.

02:40:59.000 Okay.

02:40:59.000 Yeah.

02:41:00.000 Cool.

02:41:01.000 And that...

02:41:02.000 You dig being a dad? 0.96

02:41:03.000 I mean, that's a silly question.

02:41:04.000 Yeah, I love it.

02:41:06.000 It's bizarre.

02:41:07.000 It's a bizarre education in who you are as a human being.

02:41:10.000 Absolutely.

02:41:11.000 The reflection you have on these...

02:41:12.000 But possibly that greatest human privilege.

02:41:16.000 Yeah.

02:41:16.000 Right?

02:41:16.000 I used to think...

02:41:20.000 I used to think differently about it.

02:41:23.000 When I first started having kids, I felt like everybody should have kids.

02:41:26.000 I don't think that now anymore, but I think that for me, it's been one of the most impactful and powerful things ever in my life.

02:41:37.000 It's changed me as a human being in so many different ways.

02:41:40.000 Dave Chappelle has a great phrase about it that I always repeat.

02:41:43.000 He said, not only did it increase the amount of love I have, it increased my capacity for love.

02:41:50.000 For me, it also made me change the way I think about people.

02:41:53.000 Because I used to think if I met a guy and he was 50 years old, I was like, that's a 50-year-old guy.

02:41:57.000 Now I meet him and I go, he used to be a baby.

02:41:59.000 I used to be a kid.

02:42:01.000 I used to be a little kid.

02:42:01.000 I think of the whole path of that person becoming an adult now.

02:42:05.000 I never used to do that before.

02:42:07.000 Well, I'm at that place now where my eldest is in university and my youngest is about to finish high school.

02:42:15.000 And we've...

02:42:18.000 It's just, you know, it's amazing.

02:42:20.000 We had a funky life in that, you know, there was divorce involved and things like that, so we haven't always been together, you know?

02:42:30.000 But I can honestly say they're my two favorite people to spend time with in the world, you know?

02:42:36.000 And the things that we can do now, you know, with this little head that was nothing but just, you know, a bundle of blankets...

02:42:46.000 I can now have these incredible discussions with you.

02:42:50.000 My eldest went into university to do an arts degree.

02:42:55.000 Didn't find it challenging.

02:42:57.000 So without any discussion, just flipped his degree and he's now doing Latin and Ancient Greek.

02:43:04.000 Whoa.

02:43:05.000 Yeah.

02:43:05.000 And I'm like, that's a big change.

02:43:08.000 And he's like, well, I just worked out how to make the education system work for me.

02:43:15.000 And I'm like...

02:43:16.000 This guy.

02:43:18.000 Wow.

02:43:19.000 He's so impressive.

02:43:21.000 And it's like, I remember the first time he said a word, and now he has the intellectual capacity to realize that this is a moment in his life if he grabs what he can in terms of his education.

02:43:37.000 And he's looked at Latin and Greek and gone, if I can nail Latin and Greek, every language is available to me.

02:43:43.000 So it's like, it's just, you know, I mean, to sit back and be impressed with your kids at that sort of level.

02:43:50.000 That's amazing.

02:43:51.000 Yeah, you know.

02:43:52.000 And look, I think they're both really creative, but you know, the navigation aspect, how you help people, you know, your children navigate the world.

02:44:01.000 Don't help too much.

02:44:02.000 Yeah. 0.95

02:44:02.000 Yeah, but how do you explain some of the bullshit that goes on politically and stuff? 0.95

02:44:08.000 Because I remember being extremely idealistic when I was like, you know, my teen years and very politically focused. 0.80

02:44:14.000 And I just got to a point where I was like, you know... 0.99

02:44:19.000 Everyone's a bullshit artist. 0.98

02:44:20.000 There's not one of these guys that I can really say that I'd follow into battle. 0.99

02:44:25.000 So I'll just stop worrying about politics and go on to something else.

02:44:29.000 But you see the same processes going on with them.

02:44:32.000 They're trying to reach out to someone to believe in and somebody that they believed in.

02:44:36.000 You know, has a policy or whatever that, you know, is completely abhorrent to the way of thinking.

02:44:43.000 So you can see them having to come to grips with, you know, it's very hard to find a hero.

02:44:48.000 Yeah.

02:44:48.000 You know, particularly in that world.

02:44:50.000 Particularly in that world. 1.00

02:44:52.000 But that world is set up for fools. 0.99

02:44:54.000 It's set up for people that can just become a figurehead. 0.97

02:44:59.000 I don't know who said it first, but it was used in the Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice musical, Evita.

02:45:07.000 Politics is the art of the possible.

02:45:10.000 So it's not really connected to anything.

02:45:14.000 It's like, what can we get away with?

02:45:15.000 Right, what can we tell you that we're going to do and then never do it?

02:45:18.000 It's the art of the possible.

02:45:20.000 Well, you're seeing that now in American politics more than ever because the person that's actually in office is saying what she's going to do if she gets into office.

02:45:26.000 Right.

02:45:27.000 Which is just like...

02:45:29.000 You're there.

02:45:30.000 You're there.

02:45:31.000 This is madness.

02:45:32.000 And people are like, yeah, she's going to do it. 1.00

02:45:35.000 She's been in there for three fucking years. 1.00

02:45:37.000 What are you talking about? 1.00

02:45:38.000 This is crazy.

02:45:39.000 But people want to believe so badly.

02:45:42.000 We want someone to be the person that rescues us from whatever situation we're currently in.

02:45:47.000 And that's always been the case.

02:45:48.000 The unfortunate thing is, and it affects Australia as much as it affects here, we have such an aggressive media situation and the media's need for new information, new stories, whatever that timeline is.

02:46:05.000 You're just not going to get people of quality stepping into that world anymore.

02:46:11.000 No.

02:46:12.000 Who'd want to put themselves through that?

02:46:13.000 There's probably hundreds of potentially incredible presidents in this country, but they're too smart to walk that way.

02:46:24.000 Yeah.

02:46:24.000 It's a real problem.

02:46:25.000 It's a real problem that's only going to get worse. 0.98

02:46:28.000 And our desire and our hunger for bullshit and to focus on what did he do when he was in high school? 0.97

02:46:35.000 You know, what did she say when she was on Twitter when she was 22? 1.00

02:46:38.000 Like, what the fuck are you talking about? 1.00

02:46:40.000 Like, we have to put that shit aside, recognize that people are just human beings and stop dragging out old shit just to make your party win because it ruins the entire system. 1.00

02:46:50.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:46:50.000 Well, that is the thing, isn't it? 1.00

02:46:52.000 It's just like picking a color, and no matter what happens under the banner of that color, you're just sticking with the color.

02:47:00.000 And it's like, well, that's not really going to help any of us.

02:47:02.000 No.

02:47:03.000 That's not the way.

02:47:04.000 It's kind of good.

02:47:04.000 I don't know what your political system's like, but we're completely trapped in this two-party system.

02:47:08.000 Yeah, we have the same sort of situation.

02:47:10.000 But we have a very interesting thing that's happening in Australia at the moment, which is the rise of independence.

02:47:16.000 And it's happened federally and also at a state level too, but also in city government as well, where non-party affiliated people are standing.

02:47:29.000 And so now you have a situation where in the parliament you have a group of them.

02:47:34.000 I don't know the exact numbers, 10 or 15 or something independents.

02:47:37.000 So the main party has to deal with the fact that those independents are going to bring a non- Party-line series of points to the argument.

02:47:50.000 And it's working well.

02:47:53.000 It's working for us in that it's making both of the main parties re-examine who they are and what they stand for.

02:48:02.000 We could use that here, for sure.

02:48:04.000 Because people are just so sick of that color choice. 0.99

02:48:09.000 They're reaching for something else.

02:48:11.000 Well, it's also people recognize that a lot of us that claim to be on one side or the other really are somewhere in the middle.

02:48:19.000 But most people have opinions that are a little bit of a conglomeration of both conservative and liberal perspectives, especially like liberal socially, fiscally conservative.

02:48:27.000 There's a lot of people like that.

02:48:28.000 And they're not represented.

02:48:30.000 Not at the moment.

02:48:31.000 No, not at the moment.

02:48:32.000 In this country, it's the worst that's ever been in terms of the polarization of the two sides. 1.00

02:48:38.000 You think of the other side as an idiot, no matter what. 1.00

02:48:41.000 No matter what, that person's got to be a moron. 1.00

02:48:43.000 They think differently than I do. 1.00

02:48:45.000 They support this side.

02:48:47.000 I support that side.

02:48:48.000 And I'm all in on my team.

02:48:51.000 It's a tribal thing.

02:48:53.000 As tribal as any other thing that we have in the world.

02:48:57.000 And in this country, it just doesn't work.

02:49:00.000 And we just get captivated by corporations because of that.

02:49:04.000 And it's also the money in politics is so extraordinary, which is something that should have never been allowed to happen.

02:49:18.000 We're good to go. 0.96

02:49:32.000 It's ridiculous. 0.98

02:49:33.000 It's like these apocalyptic two-minute blasts that come out of your television. 1.00

02:49:37.000 It's just all bullshit. 0.99

02:49:39.000 But if you're leaning that way, then it helps your outrage. 1.00

02:49:42.000 It helps you confirm that, yes, I'm against that.

02:49:47.000 But when it's just a series of exaggerations and lies, it just doesn't help anybody.

02:49:53.000 Well, in this country, Kamala Harris recently got caught because the campaign was using articles and they changed the article.

02:50:01.000 They changed the titles of the article.

02:50:03.000 They put out fake positive articles.

02:50:07.000 And the fact that you can do something like that, you can persuade people to think that people are writing about something when you're actually putting it out there, which is just bananas.

02:50:16.000 It's just a complete manipulation of the zeitgeist.

02:50:19.000 We've got a situation in Australia at the moment Where politicians are suing people for, you know, what they say is the loss of their reputation or whatever, right?

02:50:34.000 Because that person might have commented somewhere on social media or something and said, you know, X person is X. And so now, you know, certain politicians have worked out, oh, I can make money out of this.

02:50:46.000 Oh, Jesus.

02:50:47.000 So they're using their privileged position To then go and destroy somebody's life who might have called them a name on social media.

02:50:55.000 Jesus Christ.

02:50:56.000 Really, mate?

02:50:57.000 It's a bit much.

02:50:59.000 Yeah, you've got to put a stop to that.

02:51:00.000 If you're in the public eye, you've got to recognize people are going to throw rocks.

02:51:03.000 Absolutely, man.

02:51:04.000 As you're standing for Parliament or Congress or whatever, it goes for the territory, mate.

02:51:10.000 Yeah, and it also stifles free speech because it scares people into censorship.

02:51:14.000 Right, and that's where it gets really dark.

02:51:17.000 Yeah.

02:51:18.000 So now you're saying that you can't make a negative comment about somebody who's in power because they will now take your house away.

02:51:27.000 Yeah.

02:51:28.000 That's crazy.

02:51:29.000 That's dark.

02:51:30.000 Yeah.

02:51:30.000 Well, in the UK, there's a lot of people that are getting jailed too.

02:51:34.000 It's a very bizarre time for free speech when we should have the most.

02:51:37.000 We have the most access to information that's ever been available.

02:51:40.000 Because of that, people are now weaponizing that access.

02:51:44.000 Right.

02:51:44.000 Instead of, you know, it's not like there's someone in the pub listening to you say something negative about a politician.

02:51:50.000 But when you say something on Twitter or on Facebook to your group of friends, you think of it the same as you saying something in a pub.

02:51:56.000 Right.

02:51:57.000 Like, this is my opinion. 1.00

02:51:58.000 Fuck that guy. 1.00

02:51:59.000 Right. 1.00

02:51:59.000 And all of a sudden you're in a lawsuit with that guy? 1.00

02:52:01.000 Right.

02:52:01.000 It's not good.

02:52:02.000 And you don't have any money?

02:52:03.000 Do you use Twitter and things like that?

02:52:06.000 Occasionally, yeah.

02:52:08.000 I do what I call post and ghost.

02:52:10.000 I post it, and then I don't read nothing about what I said.

02:52:14.000 Just get out of there. 0.77

02:52:15.000 I don't want to be involved in anybody else's opinions.

02:52:17.000 I used to like it, man.

02:52:19.000 I was probably a relatively early adopter of it, but for a while there, it was like, oh, this is the thing that we've been looking for in that I can put a A post up here saying that I'm going to do a show in Germany and I don't have to spend a dollar on advertising or do the interviews and stuff.

02:52:43.000 And for a while there, it was really potent, but it's definitely dropped off.

02:52:49.000 It seems like there's a whole lot of people, the people that you'd want to be reading your stuff, that have just decided, you know, my life's a lot better if I don't.

02:52:56.000 Yeah, that's the problem.

02:52:57.000 If I just get away from this negativity.

02:52:59.000 Well, there's so much negativity because, you know, first of all, the algorithms.

02:53:03.000 So the algorithms enhance what you get involved with.

02:53:07.000 And for the most part, people like to get involved with things that infuriate them.

02:53:11.000 They like to get involved with things that make them upset.

02:53:14.000 That's what...

02:53:24.000 I do feel we've got so many people around the world, places like Australia, like New Zealand, like England, like here, you know?

02:53:34.000 Anger is all based on misinformation.

02:53:39.000 They've had their morality rewired because they've been pummeled so much by somebody who doesn't care what their response is.

02:53:50.000 Doesn't care whether what they're publishing is true.

02:53:54.000 They just don't care.

02:53:55.000 I don't know if you ever saw it, but I played Roger Ailes in a TV series called The Loudest Voice.

02:54:01.000 Mm-hmm.

02:54:01.000 Which basically is the beginning of Fox.

02:54:04.000 And Roger had been a political pundit.

02:54:09.000 He'd worked on television in the 60s, but then he met Richard Nixon and became an advisor to Nixon.

02:54:16.000 And he tried to set up a White House news service back in the late 60s.

02:54:23.000 Tried it again in the 70s, tried it again in the early 80s, but the technology just wasn't there.

02:54:27.000 And the money wasn't there.

02:54:29.000 But then he met Rupert Murdoch and explained to Rupert that all you need to do to attract 50% of the news audience is just make a decision politically.

02:54:41.000 Because that's half the available audience.

02:54:45.000 I can't remember all the figures and everything, but the way he set up Fox News, it just became an absolute cash cranking machine because they got it into the affiliates and stuff like that by offering it at a lower price.

02:55:03.000 And then, you know, got to his, you know, subscriber numbers that still had it making money between advertisers and subscribers at that lower price.

02:55:14.000 So when that first deal then changed after 10 years and people were then charged, you know, the subscribers were paying a regular price, all of that was profit.

02:55:25.000 Because he already had it working at the lower price.

02:55:29.000 I think it's something like it was $10 a head in an atmosphere where it was normally $33.

02:55:37.000 So then when that first contract finished and it went to the normal subscriber rate, you've got that difference in 77 million subscribers times an extra $23.

02:55:47.000 And that's the beginning of opinion-based news coverage.

02:55:50.000 Fox is, yeah.

02:55:51.000 Yeah, because that's when things get very polarized.

02:55:54.000 Where truth is one publishable option.

02:55:56.000 Yeah.

02:55:58.000 And then you have a real problem today on social media where you have bots, where there's a really unknown number of entities that are commenting constantly in one way or another about political issues.

02:56:13.000 That aren't even real people.

02:56:15.000 It's computer bot farms.

02:56:17.000 It gives the impression that there's more people for a particular situation than there is in fact in actual reality.

02:56:26.000 There was an FBI analyst that he made an estimation that it could be as many as 80% of the people on Twitter are bots.

02:56:35.000 This makes the whole thing useless then, doesn't it?

02:56:37.000 It kind of does, in a way.

02:56:40.000 But also, there are real people.

02:56:41.000 You just got to find those real people.

02:56:43.000 And there's plenty of interesting people to find.

02:56:45.000 And anything that's free and open is going to be messy. 0.93

02:56:48.000 What I used to do is just if anybody got on my timeline and chucked in some negative shit, I'd just block them. 0.97

02:56:56.000 Just get them out of there. 0.98

02:56:58.000 That's a good move.

02:56:59.000 And for a long time, it kept that sort of village of people in a sort of a comfortable place because it just got rid of those voices.

02:57:07.000 But now you have this situation where there's ads running and stuff on your timeline and you're not allowed to block it anymore.

02:57:14.000 You can't stop yourself.

02:57:16.000 You can't stop the ads.

02:57:17.000 Yeah.

02:57:17.000 But it's funny because they're running like ads or they're popping up as ads, but it's kind of...

02:57:24.000 It'll have something dark in there that then, because it's on your timeline, will attract more darkness, but you can't get rid of it anymore.

02:57:33.000 You can't just block it and chuck it out.

02:57:36.000 I mean, you can do it with individuals, but that's just a strange little thing that's happened.

02:57:41.000 Yeah, it is a strange little thing that's happened.

02:57:44.000 Like I said, I just don't engage.

02:57:46.000 I only post things.

02:57:47.000 I never got into Facebook, so I don't understand it, and I don't really understand Instagram either.

02:57:53.000 We use it for stuff to inform people about gigs with the band, but Twitter was the only one that I was interested in because it was whack, it was funny, and you're connecting to people all over the world.

02:58:05.000 I've had some really funny situations arise because of something I commented on and then somebody gave me another piece of information about or whatever.

02:58:16.000 I've learned a hell of a lot out of it, but just the last year or two, it's gotten worse.

02:58:21.000 It's gotten to kind of a harsh place.

02:58:24.000 Yeah, it's going to continue in that way, too.

02:58:26.000 That's how you get engagement, unfortunately.

02:58:28.000 There's also a lot of fun stuff.

02:58:30.000 I mean, memes.

02:58:31.000 I laugh harder at things that I find online today.

02:58:34.000 I mean, I think there's more comedy online today than there's ever been before.

02:58:38.000 There's more funny memes.

02:58:40.000 I mean, it's like a completely new form of art.

02:58:43.000 Yes.

02:58:44.000 Images with funny titles and funny captions.

02:58:48.000 Yeah, there's a few of me around.

02:58:49.000 I'm sure.

02:58:50.000 I'm sure.

02:58:51.000 There's one particular one that comes up all the time.

02:58:53.000 It's a shot from Les Mis where I'm looking in this doorway and I'm in, you know, police uniform of the time and I just kind of go, slide into this doorway.

02:59:02.000 And people apply it to so many different situations.

02:59:05.000 The animated gif, like when Homer Simpson melts into the bushes.

02:59:09.000 It's like that.

02:59:11.000 There's a ton of those.

02:59:13.000 You know, I mean, I think it's fascinating because it's a new thing.

02:59:16.000 I think all this information that's being exchanged online, even though it's messy, even though it's kind of negative, I'm very hopeful because I think we're going to figure all that stuff out eventually if we don't kill ourselves.

02:59:31.000 And it's going to get to a better place of understanding human beings because you're gonna be human beings just interacting with human beings in a pure sense without Forming our narratives from mass media without forming our narratives from television You're gonna get dissenting opinions people to give more nuanced perspective on things and if you follow the right people And you read the right things and you do kind of shy away from a lot of the more polarizing arguments and the ideological stuff.

03:00:00.000 You can learn a lot of shit. 0.99

03:00:02.000 I think I'm very hopeful about it. 1.00

03:00:05.000 Right.

03:00:06.000 Well, I always try not to see us at our worst.

03:00:13.000 There's always something that I can find that gives me a little bit of hope with people.

03:00:19.000 Yeah.

03:00:21.000 But it's just funny because to me it felt like the beginning of the future.

03:00:30.000 That we're now connected and information exchange was open and I thought this is going to lead to great changes.

03:00:40.000 And it has led to changes but they're not so great.

03:00:44.000 Yeah.

03:00:45.000 Even with a little operation like my band, somebody just pops up, they start selling fake tickets, fake meet and greet experiences.

03:00:55.000 They take money and orders for merchandise that they're never going to produce.

03:00:59.000 It's just crazy.

03:01:03.000 And there's nothing in there stopping them from doing it.

03:01:06.000 Right.

03:01:07.000 That is a problem.

03:01:09.000 I'm optimistic.

03:01:11.000 Even in the face of all this stuff, I'm optimistic.

03:01:13.000 I think we're moving to a greater place of understanding each other.

03:01:17.000 It's just going to be a wild ride.

03:01:21.000 Full contact by 2027, is that what they say?

03:01:24.000 I don't know.

03:01:25.000 What do you think?

03:01:26.000 I don't know, man.

03:01:27.000 I don't know.

03:01:28.000 But I like reading all that stuff.

03:01:30.000 Yeah, I do too.

03:01:31.000 I get too involved in it.

03:01:33.000 But I try and shy away from coming up with a definitive opinion because then you're sort of out on the edge of that limb and you're going, well, it looked like that to me.

03:01:43.000 Yeah, exactly.

03:01:45.000 Exactly.

03:01:46.000 But it just would be...

03:01:48.000 It'll be interesting the next couple of years, for sure.

03:01:52.000 I think I'm a little worried about America in the next little while.

03:01:57.000 I haven't been here for five years, man.

03:01:59.000 In 2019, I finished The Loudest Voice, and I went home, and then COVID hit.

03:02:04.000 And I had kind of an incredible experience where I said to my boys, look, you're cool in the city with your mum and everything, but...

03:02:13.000 I might go up to the bush and be with my parents because, you know, they're older and everything's going to change for them and stuff like that.

03:02:20.000 So I ended up, you know, I've owned my place in the bush since 96. But 2020 was the first time I'd seen all four seasons of the same year at the farm, you know.

03:02:32.000 And I got this thing where, you know, my dad dies in March 2021. And so often you talk to people and they say, you know, I wish I had one more dinner, one more hug, one more conversation or whatever, you know.

03:02:43.000 But when I looked at it, because it was a surprise when he died, it wasn't expected.

03:02:48.000 He was 85, but he seemed to be quite healthy.

03:02:54.000 And in reality, when I looked at it, it's like, well, I got a whole year.

03:02:57.000 I got a whole year of having dinner pretty much every night with my mum and dad and asked him a million questions and stuff.

03:03:05.000 Not because I thought he was about to pass away.

03:03:07.000 It was just because We had the time together.

03:03:09.000 And I took him on a few adventures.

03:03:11.000 I was digging a huge dam on my place to try and make it drought-proof.

03:03:21.000 So I now have a 70-megaliter lake in the middle of my place, which gives me enough water to feed the cattle and stuff for seven years, something like that.

03:03:31.000 One day we went out, I went out to show him what was basically a hole in the ground at the time, about a football field size hole in the ground.

03:03:41.000 I took him out in a buggy and the clouds came over and it started pissing down with rain.

03:03:47.000 So I've got an 83 year old old man who doesn't move too fast or whatever, I've got to put him back in the buggy. 0.55

03:03:54.000 And by the time we got halfway back to the house, it was absolutely torrential rain.

03:04:00.000 We were just getting covered in it.

03:04:02.000 I was so worried.

03:04:03.000 I thought, oh my God, I'm going to make him sick or whatever.

03:04:06.000 I got him back to the house and I said, I'm so sorry about that.

03:04:09.000 He said, are you kidding?

03:04:10.000 That's the most fun I've had in years.

03:04:11.000 Yeah.

03:04:12.000 These people, referring to my mother and the other people that are there to help him out, he goes, these people don't let me do anything.

03:04:21.000 So we just had little moments like that where we just got to share some stuff.

03:04:26.000 And then my schedule has been extremely busy since COVID, but I've been working in other places, Thailand, Malta.

03:04:35.000 Hungary, England, you know, just constantly working.

03:04:39.000 But because of what we learned with COVID in terms of being able to just drop in on a TV show, my studio on the farm, we now push a few buttons and I can be live on, you know, a New York Tonight Show.

03:04:54.000 So I've restructured what I do with press.

03:04:58.000 You know, I do my junkets at my house, you know.

03:05:01.000 And I might have a nice shirt here, but just like today, I've got shorts on underneath, and I walk out of, you know, a day of press, and I'm in the bush, you know?

03:05:11.000 I've got the horses and the cows and the dogs, and I'm, you know, cool.

03:05:14.000 So it's still changed my life, but it's meant I haven't been here.

03:05:17.000 So it's been a five-year gap, you know, to flying into New York the other day.

03:05:22.000 And it's a palpable difference in the way, you know, people regard each other and the way they talk and the fears they express.

03:05:33.000 Surprisingly, though, New York felt friendlier.

03:05:37.000 Really?

03:05:38.000 Yeah.

03:05:38.000 Interesting.

03:05:39.000 It might have something to do with the weed shops.

03:05:41.000 Everybody was just a little more chilled.

03:05:45.000 But there's a fear in everybody at the moment here.

03:05:48.000 I'm just not sure where that's going to go.

03:05:51.000 It doesn't feel healthy.

03:05:53.000 Yeah, it doesn't feel healthy for me either.

03:05:56.000 Here's the thing with America, right?

03:06:00.000 You've got to remember that it is the beacon of freedom for everybody in the world.

03:06:05.000 It's a huge responsibility.

03:06:08.000 And if people are looking for something to change in their life or something positive, the vast majority of people will look towards America and say, well, that's the beacon.

03:06:18.000 I want to live like that, where people can say what's on their mind and people can have differing opinions.

03:06:25.000 People can be of all different races, religions or whatever and still be in the same community.

03:06:31.000 It's so important that America remains healthy into the future for everyone, not just for Americans.

03:06:39.000 Agreed.

03:06:41.000 Thank you very much, man.

03:06:42.000 Thanks for being here.

03:06:43.000 I really enjoyed our conversation.

03:06:44.000 My pleasure.

03:06:44.000 It was beautiful.

03:06:45.000 Thank you for everything.

03:06:45.000 And my son, Tennyson, is going to be so happy that when he sees my name come up on the list of things, he's going to be very happy.

03:06:53.000 And I want to just thank you on his behalf.

03:06:58.000 For being a voice that accepts different opinions and doesn't push a particular agenda, you've definitely helped his brain expand and helped him become curious.

03:07:14.000 So thanks for that.

03:07:18.000 Beautiful.

03:07:18.000 Thank you.

03:07:19.000 Cool.

03:07:19.000 Thanks for everything.

03:07:20.000 Cheers, man.

03:07:21.000 Say hi to your son.

03:07:24.000 Bye, everybody.

03:07:25.000 Thank you.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 20, 2024

Joe Rogan Experience #2191 - Russell Crowe

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