In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with my good friend and writer/producer, John Rocha, to talk about how he got to where he is in his career. We talk about what it takes to be a writer/director, how to get to where you want to be, and how to keep your body healthy and in peak condition.
00:01:19.000And my buddy Ari got me into it and just try and stretch absolutely everything.
00:01:25.000And I was telling you, I got thrown off a horse in Africa a month ago.
00:01:29.000And when I was in the process of getting thrown off, and I was like in the middle of the air, and I'm about to come down, and I'm like, oh shit, this is going to be a problem.
00:01:37.000And I thought about those warm-ups, and I landed and rolled and didn't hurt myself.
00:03:28.000I've been waiting for a realistic Wild West series like that forever, and that is, I'll just say it right now, that's the best one that's ever been made.
00:06:45.000So Redford plays this city man who goes out west looking for gold and ends up sort of stuck somewhere around Montana and is trying to survive out there.
00:06:56.000When the Indians first find him, he's...
00:07:08.000And by the end of the film, he's a warrior, and he's learned how to survive, and he marries a Native American woman, and his wife gets killed, and he goes on a vengeance.
00:07:20.000Spree and kills a whole bunch of people and ends up getting this incredible respect from the Native Americans.
00:07:28.000And my dad took me to see Jeremiah Johnson, and that movie always stuck with me.
00:07:33.000And I'm good friends with Taylor Sheridan, and we work together a lot, and I obviously know everything he's doing, and I kind of wanted to see if I could play in that space.
00:07:42.000But he's doing it so well and so specifically, I kind of thought, well, what if I just did something that was really...
00:07:49.000About the survival and I like to call it inch-by-inch filmmaking where you think about how hard it would have been just to go 50 feet and take a piss and how there might have been 15 different things that could have killed you on the way to taking that piss.
00:08:05.000Instead of just jumping through those 50 things, let's really try and stretch it out and try and show people and capture the brutality of moment-to-moment living.
00:08:17.000Back in, you know, that part of America in 1850s.
00:11:13.000Experience of getting to do basically six movies at once, you know, because I directed all of them.
00:11:20.000And being able to go that deep in characters and to be able to bring in elements like Brigham Young and the Mormon religion and have big themes circling around just very visceral, violent moments as a filmmaker is fucking awesome.
00:12:03.000And, you know, I built a gym in my house in New Mexico with a nice bath and a sauna.
00:12:09.000And I'd get up at four every morning and just have that time for myself to keep myself fit and, you know, mentally and physically ready to go at it.
00:12:20.000I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when you're in the mineral project and you're doing your workouts and your sauna, are you just like constantly going over the show in your head?
00:12:36.000I'm a bit of an improvisational filmmaker, meaning I don't like to have everything super planned out.
00:12:42.000I think kind of the way you conduct your podcast, you have some ideas, and then you just sort of allow whatever happens to happen.
00:12:51.000And I know what I'm going to do that day, particularly with American Primeval because...
00:12:58.000We had so many big battles and stunts and kind of dangerous, complex filmmaking that there has to be some plan.
00:13:05.000But even within that, I try to loosely think about what I want to do and then get out there and let the actors kind of start doing what they do and see what kind of creative vibe gets going.
00:13:21.000And a lot of the cameramen, you know, I just shoot handheld cameras so we have a lot of flexibility.
00:13:28.000And my feeling is rather than plan it all out, go out there knowing kind of what you want to accomplish, but allow kind of creativity, allow that kind of divine magic to enter the process, which can kind of be freaky for like my bosses at Netflix because they're spending a whole lot of money and they're like, what are we doing today?
00:13:50.000And I'm like, I don't really know what we're doing today, but we're going to do something.
00:13:55.000Well, they're pretty good at staying out of the way, aren't they?
00:14:00.000And, you know, I have to give, you know, my boss, there's a woman named Bella Bajara at Netflix, and people talk a lot of shit about Netflix.
00:17:11.000One of the things that a lot of people have talked about, and I had, you know, the LDS Church issued a statement sort of...
00:17:20.000Critiquing the show and critiquing me, which I appreciate and I understand why members of the Mormon community would be offended by the portrayal of Brigham Young and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which was the event that we used as kind of our inciting incident.
00:17:39.000For the first episode, which was a real massacre that the Mormons committed on a group of pioneers who were heading out west or a Mormon militia with some Paiute Indians attacked and murdered about 140 men, women and children.
00:18:01.000And we present Brigham Young in the film.
00:18:04.000And many Mormons, it's interesting to start reading all the debate about it, but a lot of Mormons are saying, yeah, this is exactly what happened, and this is a part of our history.
00:18:14.000And no other Mormons, particularly the seniors in Salt Lake City, were saying this is not what happened, this is not fair.
00:18:20.000But what I find interesting about the Mormon church and about kind of...
00:18:26.000How we present it is I've had a lot of people come to me and go Dude, I never knew the Mormons were such savages.
00:18:36.000Brigham Young was, in my opinion, a gangster, a survivor, a warrior.
00:18:42.000And for anyone who follows Mormon history, you know, they started in upstate New York with this young kid, Joseph Smith, who found these tablets and basically rewrote the Bible and started getting this following.
00:18:55.000And then they moved to Missouri and they got popular and then there was an extermination order.
00:21:14.000And his father could never be president because he wasn't born in America.
00:21:17.000And he was born here in America, ran for president, the whole deal, became governor of Massachusetts.
00:21:22.000But there's still these huge groups in Mexico that are armed to the fucking tits because they're always constantly battling with the cartel.
00:21:32.000And there was a series of murders a few years back where a woman and children, like family, were slaughtered.
00:21:40.000Some confusion as to whether or not the cartel targeted them or whether it was a case of mistaken identity or what happened.
00:21:47.000But, you know, there's been documentaries about them.
00:21:51.000They live in armed compounds in Mexico.
00:21:54.000So it's a similar sort of a situation with them in Mexico now.
00:22:41.000And we were leaving Riyadh Airport and he was walking with me and there was a man in front of us and he was holding like five suitcases and he could barely walk.
00:22:51.000And there were four women around him and kids everywhere.
00:22:55.000And he just looked like he was about to collapse and fall face forward on the ground at the airport in Riyadh.
00:23:01.000And my friend looked at me and said, This is the reality of what having five wives looks like on the ground if you want to see what it really feels like.
00:23:11.000So to think about Brigham Young having 45 wives, okay, good luck, I guess.
00:23:24.000But that was one of the issues, the polygamy that...
00:23:30.000People that were non-Mormons back in the 1850s were using to attack the religion.
00:23:35.000And, you know, that was something that was—the polygamy has obviously been since outlawed, and the church has cut itself off from that policy.
00:23:45.000But, you know, the Mormons were—the whole idea that this kid, Joseph Smith, I believe he was a young teenager, 14, when he and his buddy walked into these woods.
00:24:44.000Like 14. So this kid at 14 comes out of the woods and says, the angel came and told me that the Bible's almost right, but it's not quite right.
00:24:55.000So I'm going to rewrite it, which he did, the Book of Mormon.
00:25:05.000Journey from Joseph Smith coming out of the woods to where we are today with Brigham Young University and the beautiful city of Salt Lake City, Utah, there was a lot of bloodshed.
00:25:32.000Because in 1857, when you had the Mormon Wars, Brigham Young was fighting President Buchanan, and when the military was coming after him in 1857, and he was holed up and prepared to fight in Salt Lake City, and Buchanan wanted him out.
00:25:48.000And then right around 1858, 1859, a little thing called the Civil War popped off, and the entire focus of the U.S. military was...
00:25:58.000Not on Brigham Young and Utah, but it was on fighting the Civil War.
00:26:03.000The Utah church was able and Brigham Young was able to grow the Mormon church and survive and thrive.
00:26:11.000And he was able to politically negotiate a place in the government so that by the time the Civil War ended.
00:26:18.000Brigham Young was deeply entrenched and was able to lead the Mormon church to the great power that it is today.
00:26:25.000I think if the Civil War hadn't occurred, there would be no Mormonism in the United States.
00:27:12.000Look, they have a great sense of humor because the Book of Mormon, when Matt Stone and Trey Parker did that musical, they took out a full-page ad in the playbook.
00:27:23.000So they're like, if you want to know more about Mormonism, come visit.
00:28:03.000And, you know, I told them what the film was about and that the Mountain Meadows Massacre was in the book or was it going to be in our show.
00:28:18.000It is the most beautiful, incredible theater where they have, you know, weekly.
00:28:24.000You know, events and meetings and they took me in there and there's a huge pipe organ and I had a private, you know, concert with their organist.
00:29:39.000Yeah, we filmed everything on different reservations around Santa Fe.
00:29:45.000But if you go to the site of the Mormon Meadows Massacre in Utah...
00:29:51.000The Mormons have built a big memorial there honoring 130 pioneers from Arkansas who were killed there.
00:29:58.000And the Mormons have owned this event, and they were very willing to talk about it, which is kind of like them buying a full-page ad in Book of Mormon.
00:30:08.000They're like, you know, we know you're going to make a film about the Meadows Massacre.
00:30:14.000It's probably going to be inflammatory in some ways.
00:30:41.000For decades, kibble was the only option.
00:30:44.000But as humans have been eating healthier, companies like the Farmer's Dog started feeding dogs healthier too.
00:30:50.000Because when your dog eats freshly made, human-grade food, owners notice a bunch of positive changes, including weight loss and higher energy levels.
00:31:43.000If they've admitted that this massacre took place and it's part of the historical record, the book is for sale in this Mormon theater, what is the backlash?
00:31:53.000The biggest single issue, if you get into the weeds, and I think it's an interesting point of debate, is whether or not Brigham Young knew and authorized this massacre.
00:32:05.000And the way the massacre played out in real life was different how we did it in the film.
00:32:38.000Some Mormons aren't thrilled that we pointed out the fact that they were trying to put the blame on the Native Americans.
00:32:44.000So they literally, Mormons dressed up as Indians to confuse the pioneers and in case there were survivors to say, oh, it wasn't Mormons, it was the Native Americans that did this.
00:32:57.000What the Mormons claim, or some in the Mormon church claim, is that during the three or four days that the siege took place, before the actual massacre, and the details of the massacre are really fucked up, because the Mormons pretended they were accepting a surrender.
00:33:11.000So they went in with white flags and they said, okay, the men walked this way, the women and children, we're going to walk you to safety because the Indians are going to kill you.
00:33:19.000The Mormons said, we're here to save you.
00:33:21.000So they started walking them out, and then on someone's signal, they just killed everyone.
00:33:28.000But the issue of whether Brigham Young knew about it or didn't know about it, we imply that he knew about it.
00:33:35.000We never say that he authorized it, but we imply that he did know about it.
00:33:40.000And what many of the defenders of Brigham Young will say is that there was a letter written where Brigham Young said, do not harm these pioneers.
00:34:12.000It's hard to believe if you really start getting into this, and obviously I did.
00:34:16.000I know it's not on the top of everyone's list of things to give a fuck about.
00:34:21.000But it's really hard for me to believe that in 1857, a group of Brigham Young soldiers would act unilaterally on their own and commit a crime that's horrible without somebody approving it.
00:37:44.000And Kenneth Turan, who, like, after I'd gotten that review, I was in a I was in a bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, getting drunk with a couple of my friends, and Kenneth Turin was in the bar, and I got up and started moving towards him.
00:40:29.000That, you know, to do, to do, people that do, you know, I was just talking to Dana White about something that I actually want to mention to you.
00:40:47.000My love of a guy like Dana is the doer of it all.
00:40:52.000The guy who just says, I don't care what the critic says.
00:41:13.000And I'll tell you another interesting thing about my business.
00:41:19.000It always surprises me how real it is.
00:41:23.000But when you make something, a movie, or you do something, whether it's an American premiere or almost anything I've done, and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, you put yourself on the line so intensely, and you believe in it with your heart and your soul, and you go for it.
00:41:40.000And as it's getting ready to come out, There's this weird thing that happens where everybody separates from you.
00:41:47.000And you're the one that's kind of, now you're about to be judged.
00:41:51.000It's going to be determined to be successful or a failure.
00:42:02.000And I could like, like the day or two before it comes out, all the people like, and this is when you know who's got your back.
00:42:11.000Because there's a few, you look around, and you're like, wait, all these people were with me for this journey, and I'm all by my fucking, where'd everybody go?
00:42:20.000And it's, you know, like, my sister, my best friend, Ari, my dog, my son, there's a few people who are really right there.
00:42:32.000And then when it comes out and it works, man, you have a lot of friends.
00:42:40.000And that's, you know, just one of the things that you have to do in this business.
00:44:18.000So I spend a lot of money and he starts doing these fantasy movies with Michelle Pfeiffer and it's like bizarre shit where he's like, what is Robert De Niro, one of the greatest actors of all time, doing in these fucking goofy ass movies?
00:44:30.000I agree with you that like what I always say is I do a lot of research for my films and you know Went to Iraq with Navy SEAL Platoon and lived on an oil rig and went back to high school for Friday Night Lights.
00:44:45.000And I found that if I, whenever I put that work in and I put that research in, and I really, with the exception of Very Bad Things, which was a fantasy about a bachelor party gone haywire, which Kenneth Turin didn't like.
00:46:07.000And I say it to filmmakers now because kids are so confused, young kids that want to become filmmakers.
00:46:15.000They think they're going to work hard and they're going to make these movies and they're going to put their heart and soul into them and people are going to watch them.
00:46:22.000And then they go in and they see TikTok videos that are getting 400 million likes and someone's just live streaming them like making toast.
00:46:34.000They're like, wait a minute, what the fuck is happening?
00:46:39.000Is control your passion, your work, your discipline, and believe in something and put the work in, and I believe that the results will take care of themselves.
00:46:53.000But it's weird for filmmakers today to try and figure out what's going to penetrate and what's not going to penetrate.
00:48:46.000And I feel like when it comes to paying attention to comments and critics, I feel like if you're locked in and if you're doing your best, if you're one of those people that don't need to be checked on...
00:49:33.000Paying attention to comments and negative articles and criticism, that's 30 units you can't use for something that you love.
00:49:43.000And then also it probably bleeds into your thoughts when you're doing those things that you do love, particularly like devastating negative reviews and comments and things that are like really hurt you, that hurt your feelings.
00:50:01.000You're robbing yourself of your ability to do the things that you love.
00:50:06.000You're robbing yourself of your ability to pay attention to your family, your ability to contact your friends and reach out and to be present.
00:50:15.000Because you're thinking, oh my god, I can't believe he hated my movie.
00:52:19.000Where do you stand on, and this is something I talk to a lot of writers and filmmakers about, just being quiet is really important.
00:52:30.000And being, for me, the most creative...
00:52:34.000Experiences I've ever had have come far away from any stimulation, from any controlled thinking, from allowing ideas to come, to have like the divine spirit, the angels that are creativity, that require a certain amount of quiet and space for those to emerge, at least for me they do.
00:52:58.000And I try to make space because I so agree with the bandwidth.
00:53:05.000But more than anything, just turning it all off can be so inspiring for me creatively.
00:53:13.000One of the most disappointing things that I've ever done, some of the most disappointing things, is when I sit down from my computer to write and I wind up looking at my phone.
00:53:32.000And then I realize, like, after an hour and a half, I just fucking wasted an hour and a half that I could have written something that could have been a new brilliant bit.
00:53:41.000It could have been a new thing that I'm really excited about.
00:54:19.000I'll take a piss, and then I'll get a cup of coffee, and then I'll go right to my writing room with no phone, no stimulation, nothing until I put in usually about two and a half to three hours of just pure mental focus.
00:54:36.000No distraction, no conversation, no news, no phone, no nothing.
00:54:42.000Why do you like to do it in the morning?
00:54:44.000I actually like studying writers and their writing habits.
00:54:48.000I believe that if you've had a good sleep, a sober sleep, and an intention sleep, meaning you go to bed with some plan of what you want to write tomorrow.
00:55:21.000You know, like a mountain pond that's absolutely flat and like glass and reflective and beautiful.
00:55:28.000And in the morning, it's at its most calm, your mind.
00:55:32.000And then I believe that every bit of stimulation you put into it is like a pebble or a rock being dropped into that water until the water starts getting all churned.
00:55:41.000And that's what happens to our minds by, you know, 11 o'clock in the morning.
00:55:46.000If you've been, you know, plugged in and communicating, your mind is...
00:55:50.000Just a fucking feral, boiling cauldron of acid.
00:56:29.000You know, writing a little bit here, working a little bit there, and then going out to lunch and then sitting in a cafe and, you know, a coffee shop and kind of writing but being on the phone, I just don't think that's deep work.
00:56:41.000I have noticed, though, that, like, rappers and a lot of people in the hip-hop community, I've been working on a documentary about Rihanna for quite a while and spent a lot of time with her in the studio.
00:56:56.000It's amazing the hours that hip-hop performers, musicians, and rappers keep because they're going into the studio at 2 o'clock in the morning and working till 1 in the afternoon and then sleeping all day.
00:57:12.000And that nighttime, and I've talked to her about it, she's just extremely creative late at night.
00:57:46.000Yeah, I just start thinking I just try to freestyle with thoughts and the way I write is I just I have a topic and I just start with just essentially an essay And not an essay that I think anybody's going to read.
00:57:58.000An essay is just like my thoughts, just rambling thoughts.
00:58:02.000And then maybe I'll rewrite a paragraph, but I'll keep the same paragraph above it to reference.
00:58:06.000And then I'll rewrite it again in a different way.
01:01:35.000And setting this table, showing up, and then trying to pull these things from this other dimension, just wherever the fuck they're coming from.
01:01:46.000And then I get these little nuggets, and then the nuggets I transfer to my phone.
01:01:51.000I feel bad for people who never get to experience that.
01:03:38.000It's sort of a non sequitur, but I did want to...
01:03:42.000I did want to mention, and it sort of related to something I love because I love boxing, and I own a boxing gym in Los Angeles, which was hands down the stupidest thing I ever decided to do in my life, was, oh, it would be cool to have a boxing gym and manage boxers, and, you know, no, don't, don't.
01:04:02.000I mean, I love the fighters and have so much empathy, but...
01:04:06.000One of my fighters, Chris Van Heerden, his girlfriend is a girl named Ksenia Carolina, who I think I told you a little bit about earlier when we were working out.
01:04:36.000The charity was a Ukrainian charity based in America for Ukraine that she thought was going to give money to children that had been hurt by the war in Ukraine.
01:04:59.000She's an American citizen and a Russian.
01:05:02.000She went to visit her parents a year ago in Russia.
01:05:05.000And on her, somehow the Russians were able to figure out, like, if anyone with any Russian citizenship, even if it's dual, makes donations to certain charities, they get flagged.
01:05:16.000So she came in, got to her parents' house.
01:05:20.000Was called to the police station the next day, came in, and they arrested her and said, you donated $51.
01:05:31.000And she's now almost a year into a 12-year sentence.
01:05:36.000So President Trump has been super cool.
01:05:39.000Dana White has been helping, just trying to get like, you know, it's such a crazy chess game, right?
01:05:49.000That, you know, someone like, and I hope things go really well between us and Putin, and I think Trump's doing some great things, and I'm glad we're talking.
01:05:59.000But the way they do business is different, and they will grab somebody, you know, and they've done it to Brittany Greiner, and they just released this guy, Fogel, who they had gotten for smoking weed.
01:06:11.000If they can get you and hold you and use you as a bargaining chip.
01:06:42.000The merchant of death for a basketball player smoking weed.
01:06:45.000It's crazy, but, you know, if you love Brittany Griner, or know, like I know Ksenia, and my good friend is engaged to her, and he's in hell, and it's like, we need someone to trade, you know?
01:07:02.000We're going to have to trade someone that's done some pretty bad things to get this girl out of prison, and that's the game that these guys are playing.
01:07:10.000And it's not a game that you ever, ever want to get involved in, and I wish I hadn't, but I have.
01:07:17.000And, you know, Ksenia is a beautiful girl, and she's in a really bad way, and she doesn't deserve it.
01:07:25.000And it's so true that we don't do that in America because there's a lot of Russians that fight in the UFC and they don't even get booed.
01:09:49.000But, yeah, I mean, it was cool because I got to see his whole journey when he came into our gym, and he was just starting, and I think he was fighting a guy named Lopez, and he was just this little redhead skinny kid, and to see his progression, you know, he's one of, like, The only good stories in boxing.
01:10:08.000If you ask me, like, name two good boxing stories.
01:10:12.000I'd be like, well, I think Alvarez is a pretty good story.
01:10:15.000He's, you know, stayed with his trainers.
01:11:58.000The stories of, you know, like, working-class boxing gyms, like Churchill Boxing, my gym in L.A., Which I technically don't own anymore because it just was turning into such a headache.
01:12:10.000If you could see the day-in, day-out trials and tribulations that these fighters go through, and you know it from UFC, I think that boxers have it harder, I think.
01:12:23.000But boxing is a more dysfunctional state than UFC, mainly because of Dana and the fact that...
01:12:31.000Dana's been able to monopolize it and that there's a system that you're a huge part of that makes sense and that there's good people involved at the top and on broadcasting and all of it.
01:19:16.000I think Canelo, when he got to 175, when he was fighting light heavyweight, and he still fluctuates between 68 and 75, I feel like he probably weighs 190 when he's walking around.
01:19:26.000So he would probably weigh 190, and Jake would weigh over 200. They would probably fight either at cruiserweight or...
01:20:03.000Like, if Jake Paul wants to fight for the title, I would like to see him beat top contenders in the light heavyweight division or whatever division he chooses to compete at and then eventually fight for a title.
01:23:41.000Well, I saw his fight with Madrimov, who was very difficult, who Crawford struggled a little bit with too, but beat, and Virgil walked him down.
01:23:50.000He was battering him towards the last rounds.
01:23:53.000Why has Oscar De La Hoya offered an opinion on who Crawford would fight?
01:23:58.000Oscar De La Hoya is not Crawford's manager, is he?
01:25:36.000Oscar De La Hoya and all that's coming with him and Eddie Hearn, who I also like quite a bit, and then you've got Al Heyman and Bob Arum, you know, and is well into his 90s, and it's just going...
01:25:51.000That's the problem, is that they're represented by different promoters, and it's very difficult for people to co-promote, very difficult for people to decide, like, who's the A side, who's the B side.
01:26:00.000You get ridiculous deals where, you know, this fighter wants 75%, the other fighter wants 25%.
01:26:05.000They have to figure out whether or not they can make this happen.
01:26:07.000And the fighter's like, fuck that, I want it 50-50.
01:26:10.000And then the promoters get involved, and they don't want you to fight that guy, fight the number one mandatory contender.
01:26:16.000And then some great fights never take place, or they take place too late, like Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
01:26:24.000I mean, if that fight could have been arranged by Riyadh's season, they probably would have caught them both in their prime, and it would have been chaos.
01:26:34.000Yeah, he also had a blown shoulder going into the fight.
01:26:37.000He needed shoulder surgery before the fight even started.
01:26:42.000I have a little regret that I never had a professional fight.
01:26:48.000And I was just in Mexico, and my driver started talking about boxing, and my driver told me his son was a pro fighter, and that if I wanted to, and he...
01:29:55.000And he started throwing punches and Saquon Barkley could move and counter and had balance and head movement.
01:30:03.000I'm like, dude, if you had instead of playing football gotten into this at, you know, 12, 13. Assuming that your brain stayed on, you would have been one of the great heavyweights of all time.
01:30:44.000So I think they were trying to figure out a way to make money to try to pay the government off.
01:30:49.000And the UFC, they contacted, well, this guy, Campbell McLaren, who was one of the original producers of the first UFC before Zufa bought it.
01:35:24.000I don't think it was ever going to happen.
01:35:26.000I mean, I was entertaining it because I think it would be fun if it did happen and Elon said he would do it and Zuckerberg said he would do it.
01:35:32.000I don't know how the guy tweets as much as he does.
01:35:35.000How the fuck could you train for a fight?
01:35:37.000I mean, how do you run SpaceX and Tesla and the Department of Government Efficiency and Starlink?
01:36:22.000Street fights with people who don't know how to fight.
01:36:26.000Or drunk people fighting is funny too.
01:36:29.000But like, you know, okay, Elon and Zucker, Mark, you know, are going to fight.
01:36:35.000Okay, let's say it's going to really happen.
01:36:37.000They both train, but they're not fighters, so however much they train, they're still running their other businesses.
01:36:42.000Now the fight starts, and for about 20 seconds, they're going to have some tactics that their trainers have been, and then it's all going to come.
01:37:22.000Okay, but now Elon's going to come out, and Elon's running SpaceX, and he's got to dodge, and now he's going to take some time and focus on the fight.
01:39:09.000So, you know, I'm doing, my next film's about a football game that some Marines played in World War II, and we're filming it in Australia.
01:39:18.000It's called the Mosquito Ball, and in the middle of, it's a true story about this football game that was played on Guadalcanal before the Battle of Okinawa, but these Marines all played it.
01:39:27.000These Marines were good college football stars, and then they all died in the Battle of Okinawa, so it's an intense story.
01:39:35.000But we need to film this tackle football game.
01:39:38.000There was supposed to be a touch game, and the Marines ended up playing tackle.
01:39:42.000And legend has it that it was the most violent football game ever played.
01:39:46.000So we've got to film a tackle football game in Australia, which is where we're going to make the film.
01:39:52.000And, like, stuntmen are tough, but, like, playing tackle football, you know...
01:39:58.000It's a fucking painful thing to do, right?
01:40:01.000Imagine, you know, even like Turkey Bowl, touch football games on Thanksgiving, like people are in the hospital.
01:40:06.000So I was just in Australia, and I had the idea that, well...
01:43:10.000They're members of these super successful teams, but they don't have the ego of American athletes, and they don't get the attention, and it's tall poppy syndrome.
01:43:20.000They're culturally conditioned to not...
01:43:24.000To not brag and to not boast and to be humble.
01:43:35.000The tall poppy gets its head cut off so they stay humble, which I kind of thought was kind of cool, you know, just realizing that I was hanging out with the captain of an Aussie Wolves team and I had dinner with the captain of the...
01:43:52.000The New Zealand All Blacks, the rugby team.
01:43:55.000And this guy, this was a little while ago, a couple of years ago.
01:44:01.000This guy in America, you know the All Blacks, the most popular rugby team.
01:44:16.000But seeing how hard these dudes hit and trained made me think, well, maybe they're working at the level of athleticism that fighters are working at.
01:44:45.000And if you didn't prepare properly and your opponent did, you're fucked.
01:44:49.000If he's better than you and he's more skilled and he's got better genetics and better training and he comes from a better background and he's more...
01:46:55.000Yeah, he just does it, but it's also because he spent so much time working on the fundamentals and the technique and the movements and counters and positioning, and he understands boxing so comprehensively.
01:47:08.000He knows where the punches are coming from.
01:47:26.000Just like Eddie and Chepo, who's got to have Canelo, they have lots of other fighters.
01:47:35.000But, like, Eddie and Chepo have never had another Canelo Alvarez, including all of his brothers.
01:47:40.000And I'm like, okay, how much of it is just God-given talent like Terrence Crawford has that's then trained by trainers versus how much credit does a trainer get?
01:47:52.000A trainer gets some credit, but a trainer with a bad fighter is never going to create a world champion.
01:47:58.000You have to be an extraordinary individual to be a championship-level fighter, no doubt.
01:48:03.000And then there are some championship-level fighters that have emerged from gyms that don't have any championships, like Marvin Hager, one of the greatest of all time.
01:48:11.000He came out of the Petronelli Brothers gym.
01:48:14.000They weren't known for having a giant stable of multiple world champions.
01:49:36.000But how much of that skill that makes a great UFC trainer is, okay, if I'm your trainer and I'm getting you ready for a fight, I'm going to study your opponent, I'm going to study your opponent's strengths, his weaknesses, his tendencies, his tells, and I'm going to train you in relationship to that and be right.
01:49:54.000So you can anticipate where there's going to be an opportunity and take it.
01:50:00.000How much of it is that and how effective is that, like, versus how much of it is, Joe, I gotta keep you fucking ready for anything.
01:50:23.000But I think for some fighters, every fighter has a different approach.
01:50:27.000Jon Jones is famous for studying tape and devising game plans and strategies that are based on what he sees about his opponent's tendencies.
01:50:56.000Famous for not just doing that, but also not taking fights on last-minute notice.
01:51:02.000Like, he's had some opponents fall out, and the UFC offers him an alternative opponent in a short period of time, and he says, no, I didn't train for that fighter.
01:51:12.000He goes, I'm the greatest of all time for a reason, and that reason is I'm fully prepared for every fight.
01:51:18.000I'm not going to take a fight against someone who I'm not fully prepared for.
01:51:21.000And has he had the same coach his entire career?
01:52:37.000And so it really depends on the athlete.
01:52:41.000Like I said, if you get a person that falls apart in the heat of the moment and just throws it all out the window and starts brawling, yeah, well, then your training has kind of gone to waste.
01:52:49.000And then they're relying on instincts and hopefully skill.
01:52:53.000If you have a really good fighter and a really good trainer, then you get a Mike Tyson.
01:52:57.000What was her trainer, Edmund or Rhonda's trainer?
01:53:12.000I mean, she was very stretched then when that was going on because she was doing movies and she was a superstar and she was constantly being courted.
01:53:48.000Sometimes I think about, like, what I've seen.
01:53:52.000And, you know, I do appreciate a coach.
01:53:56.000And I've just seen different success stories and different ways that coaches have really impacted fighters.
01:54:02.000But then I think about, like, why don't life coaches work better?
01:54:07.000And, like, I wouldn't mind having a coach that would be like, Pete, here's our enemy, here's our opponents.
01:54:14.000And, like, I actually had a therapist for a while when I first started seeing him.
01:54:19.000His name's Barry, and he's a great guy, and I love him.
01:54:22.000But so much of my relationship with him was unpacking my shit, my parents and my trauma and my fears and all this stuff.
01:54:32.000And for years, Barry would, you know, talk to me about my dreams and all this stuff and, like, the dreams that I had that night, not my goals.
01:54:41.000And then I started realizing, well, okay, I feel like I've talked about my mom and my grandma and my grandparents and every fucking thing that's ever happened to me.
01:54:49.000And, like, Barry, what if we'd start talking strategy?
01:54:54.000And he started coaching me a bit, and I found that, like, with my business decisions, my creativity decisions, like, you're so disciplined.
01:55:24.000Yeah, if you could find someone who could devise a strategy that you could follow and you could help because it's a collaboration, you know, you could collaborate with this person and go, yeah, there's definitely value in that.
01:55:56.000And, you know, sometimes what you don't do that helps more than what you do.
01:56:00.000And I'm aware of people struggling to figure out, like, more than ever, especially with, you know, all this perceived success through social media and the glorification of billionaires and all this stuff.
01:56:14.000Everyone's like, I'm not happy where I am and I want...
01:57:58.000Was it someone that gave you shit when you were eight that made you be like, fuck it, I'm going to learn this shit and I'm going to master it?
01:58:05.000Well, when I first started doing it, I just wanted to figure out how to fight.
01:58:10.000And I was very lucky that I found a gym that was filled with incredible fighters.
01:58:40.000I had a key to the gym and I could work out any time I wanted because my instructor at some point in time realized that I had potential and made a deal with me and offered me I could teach classes.
01:58:53.000And if I taught classes and I taught private lessons, like teaching beginners, like when they first come in, you have to take a certain amount of beginner classes, private lessons, before you're allowed to enter into the group class.
01:59:03.000So I would teach people from the very beginning.
01:59:05.000And so because of that, I was able to be at the gym all day long.
01:59:11.000And whenever I wanted to be there, I could be there.
01:59:31.000The best have excellent technique, without doubt, especially when it comes to martial arts.
01:59:37.000Kicking and jujitsu like it's technique is everything in technique and and drive and training and focus and I realized early on like I thought I was a loser and then until I started doing martial arts and getting really good at martial arts I'm like oh I'm not a loser like I'm really good at this like I have a propensity to it I have a genetic Propensity.
02:00:18.000It was so religious that my girlfriend at the time wanted to fuck in the gym because I had the keys and I wouldn't have sex with her there.
02:01:34.000Because if you're hard work and you have discipline, but you're competing against Mike Tyson, and he also has hard work and discipline, but superior genetics and superior training, hypnotized from the time he was 13, you're fucked.
02:02:20.000Him starting to just lightly warm up on a heavy bag felt he was Absolutely exceptional.
02:02:27.000And I try to tell other fighters in our gym and other people in general that, like, you don't understand.
02:02:34.000It's not something, you know, you see other pro fighters, and I've seen a lot of them come to our gym, and they're talking to people, and they're joking around, and they're sort of, you know, taking a moment or two off.
02:02:44.000And then you look at all of them, and these are good fighters.
02:03:46.000You got to go back and figure out what you did wrong.
02:03:48.000You got to figure out where your flaws are and improve upon them, whether it's an endurance issue, whether it's a technique and strategy issue, whether it's pacing, whatever it is.
02:04:08.000I have in my life over the years sometimes hated on him a little bit for a variety of reasons, mainly because of how defensive he was.
02:04:14.000Now I know how great he is, but I do sometimes look for inspiration in random places, and if I'm feeling like I need a reminder of what excellence is, I'll watch training videos.
02:05:00.000You're making a mountain one layer of paint at a time.
02:05:03.000And you're competing against other people that are doing the exact same thing.
02:05:06.000And unless you set yourself apart from the pack, unless you're a guy like Marvin Hagler that goes to Cape Cod and trains in the winter and runs on the fucking sand, unless you're that guy that pushes it past everybody else, you're not going to be exceptional.
02:06:28.000Yeah, and like, and I do think about...
02:06:31.000That also, like, I have people asking me, like, you know, we started talking about making American Prime Viejo.
02:06:38.000That was 145 days up on a mountain, you know, and standing on ice with clamp on your shoes because we're on ski mountains and there's fucking wind and it's fucking miserable.
02:06:51.000And I'm like, people are like, why are you doing this shit?
02:10:09.000And he went through a time when he was the light heavyweight champion, when he was kind of like playing with his food, because he was just so much better than everybody else.
02:10:16.000He wasn't threatened by people, so he wasn't putting on the performances that he did when he was younger, like when he won the title against Shogun.
02:10:23.000He lost some of that motivation, but then gained it later in life when he went through a bunch of legal struggles, a lot of problems, and realized, like, this could all be taken away from me.
02:10:34.000I gotta get back to what made me great.
02:10:36.000And then, you know, won the heavyweight title, defended against the greatest in Stipe Miocic, and, you know, now he's the heavyweight champion of the UFC. What do you think?
02:12:48.000Both of them are NFL players, superior athletes.
02:12:51.000They beat each other up all the time, I'm sure.
02:12:53.000It's like you're in a competitive environment from the time you're young.
02:12:56.000You have incredible genetics on top of that.
02:12:59.000Then you go to a place like Jackson Winklejohn that is superior training with world-class sparring partners, world-class coaches, world-class recovery, training facilities, techniques.
02:13:10.000You need a perfect storm to be a real, true, all-time great.
02:13:16.000Do you think that, because sometimes I think that being fucked up can work to your advantage and having addictive tendencies and being able to harness addictive tendencies into something.
02:13:33.000As violent and to be able to apply those to a sport versus just being, well, I'm a well-adjusted human being with no addictive tendencies, not a lot of trauma.
02:13:45.000Oh, no, I'm a fucking beast that grew up in a fight.
02:13:48.000And like Mike Tyson grew up, I don't even understand if you grew up inside or outside, dealt with fucking ignited torments, drug addictions, violence, and I will kill.
02:14:01.000And I guess that's always interesting to look at how well-adjusted people do versus people that have real trauma when it gets fucking brutal.
02:14:13.000I think there's some real value to being out of your fucking mind.
02:14:19.000And I think some of the greatest artists, some of the greatest athletes, some of the greatest accomplishments were achieved by people that were out of their fucking mind and just had pushed it to a level.
02:14:30.000To a level and into an area that other people weren't willing to go.
02:14:34.000And that's how they became the best of the best.
02:14:36.000And you don't get to be a Michael Jordan unless you're out of your fucking mind.
02:15:52.000And you're going to be up at four in the morning in some mountain, thumbing someone, cutting someone's fucking head off, having no idea whether you're on the right path or the wrong path.
02:16:02.000You've got to be a little fucking crazy.
02:16:05.000Yeah, you have to be crazy to think that you can do it.
02:16:24.000And it's not an easy road to be a great filmmaker.
02:16:26.000It's not an easy road to be a great athlete.
02:16:28.000No matter what you're doing, you'd be a great author.
02:16:30.000You have to be willing to go down that road, and it is a long road with trials and tribulations and errors and successes, and you have to learn from your successes and learn from your failures.
02:16:43.000And not everybody has their shit together enough to pursue a path consistently for a long enough period of time that you achieve greatness.
02:16:51.000Yeah, and having the combination of having your shit together and being fucked up.
02:16:56.000Because you've got to be crazy, but you've got to be functionally crazy.
02:17:01.000I always say delusional thinking because I made the point to people asking me about my job.
02:17:08.000I'm like, well, okay, think about it this way.
02:17:11.000You have to have the ability to look someone in the eye.
02:17:14.000So if I'm a young filmmaker and you're the head of a studio, I have to look you in the eye and say, Hey, Joe, here's the deal.
02:17:25.000I'm going to make up a story about a bunch of cowboys and Indians fighting in a mountain.
02:17:31.000I'm going to bring all these people up there.
02:17:34.000Film it and move people around and I'm gonna edit it all together and I'm gonna for your hundred and thirty million dollars I'm gonna build this thing I'm gonna make it all put music on and edit it and make it all I'm gonna put it out into the world and people are gonna stop doing what they're doing And they're gonna watch it and they're gonna love it and it's gonna bring you value But why is it delusional if other people have done it?
02:17:56.000Because everyone that's done it is a little delusional.
02:17:59.000Because it just doesn't, like, you're right, okay?
02:18:03.000It's not totally delusional, but it's a little bit of magical thinking.
02:18:08.000Maybe take the word delusional out of it and be like, you know, like the idea of magical thinking?
02:19:06.000So my dad was a business guy, and I loved my dad very much, but right when I was getting ready to come to Hollywood, he said, Pete, I've secured you a job at Lehman Brothers.
02:19:16.000You're going to work on a desk, and you're going to learn about finance.
02:19:22.000And I had studied theater in college, which was making my dad very anxious because I was starting to get into making these little movies and all this stuff.
02:19:29.000And I'm like, I'm in L.A. and I'm getting ready to move to L.A. And he stopped me.
02:19:33.000He's like, we're not moving to L.A. I've got you a job.
02:19:37.000This guy, Barry Frank, who's a friend of my dad's, knew someone at Lehman Brothers.
02:19:42.000And I think they're out of business now, by the way.
02:21:46.000There's no barrier of entry for my business or podcasting, meaning anybody in the world can move to L.A. You don't even have to be in L.A. anymore.
02:21:54.000You can be in Austin and be like, I'm an actor.
02:22:10.000If your toilet is fucking backed up and you need it fixed, can you just pull anyone off the street or does a plumber have to have a fucking degree, right?
02:23:17.000Because I'm like, dude, if you come, you want to work in, still call it Hollywood, even though it's not really Hollywood anymore, because it's so decentralized, but it's fucking show business, motherfucker.
02:23:32.000It's money and art smashing together in this very bizarre way.
02:23:35.000And you've got to get so good at art that the money people trust you.
02:23:38.000Yeah, and you've got to know how to play the money game.
02:23:41.000Even when they trust you, you still have to know how to play it.
02:23:45.000Even if you're, you know, Tarantino or Christopher Nolan, or you still have to understand, you know, for the most part that...
02:23:58.000There's financial parameters and you have to be able to accept that and play that because you're playing in a serious game.
02:24:06.000Like, our bosses, they don't give a fuck.
02:24:08.000They're all publicly held now and they're looking at stock prices.
02:24:12.000And I say to people, bro, if you just want to be like an artist and just pure and think about like, oh, I just, you know, like you actually were when you were doing your podcast.
02:24:22.000Like I kind of was when I was in Minnesota making little movies and doing all this idiotic shit that got my dad to say, oh, you're going to make gay porn, you fucking idiot.
02:24:33.000This little phase of, oh, I was in Minnesota and St. Paul in this small school, and I'm like, I just fucking love this shit.
02:25:56.000The reason I got into directing was I was trying to act and I was having mixed success and I was getting very scared that, you know, you could prepare for an audition for five days and I know everything and I'm ready and I'm all in and I go in and I get 30 seconds of the director's time and...
02:26:16.000You find out, like, oh, you look like the dude that the director's girlfriend cheated on him.
02:26:21.000And he's like, you were dead before it started.
02:26:23.000And I was on this TV show, Chicago Hope.
02:31:27.000You're going to come into the whatever, if you want really to have success, you're going to see people that work less, that have luck or connections or who fucking soar past you and it won't be fair.
02:33:29.000You need something that, like, Pressfield had, where he realized he was kind of like 40 years old and, like, half-assed.
02:33:36.000He turned it around and he talks about how he turned it around by deciding that he's a professional.
02:33:41.000Amazing career since then, which is kind of spectacular.
02:33:44.000For anyone that doesn't know Steven Pressfield and they want to do anything, like writing, sports, podcasts, that motherfucker has laid it out.
02:33:54.000And I'm not a big fan of self-help, tell me shit.
02:33:59.000The War of Art, that dude, in my opinion, and I think yours, That's the real deal.
02:34:35.000And if you're not interested in doing that, well, you better find something else.
02:34:38.000And there's a lot of people that aren't interested in that.
02:34:40.000A lot of people just want to do a job where they make some money, and then at the end of the day, they can go play video games, hang out with their kids.
02:35:08.000Yeah, but that's why when people do succeed and someone can put together something like American Primeval, it's so fantastic because we know how hard it is to do.
02:36:22.000And it's about these dancers who accidentally drink a bunch of fucking LSD. And this is the hardest film I think I've ever seen in my life.
02:37:39.000This movie is experientially, it becomes, and this is something that is one of my strategies when I'm making movies, is I don't want my movie to be a spectator sport.
02:38:33.000I mean, there's a part of me like, so I'm getting ready to make a film called Mosquito Ball, this war movie.
02:38:38.000And these young kids went through, I don't know if you know, the Pacific Theater campaign and what the battles of Tarawa and Guadalcanal and Okinawa.
02:38:51.000And the Japanese wouldn't surrender and they believed in Emperor Horihito so they would fight to the death.
02:38:57.000You know, Banzai charges and seppuku, they would kill themselves before they would be taken prisoner.
02:39:03.000In World War II you had these young American kids who in our movie were college football players who Pearl Harbor hits and they immediately joined the military and they have to go fight these fucking horrific battles.
02:39:17.000Just people's throats getting blown out and torturing and killing and suicides from the locals.
02:39:24.000And so to me, one of my goals with this next film is I want to try, because there's been a lot of good war films, just like there have been a lot of good westerns, and I always said, well, I never got to make one, so I want to try and make a western that was American Primeval.
02:39:39.000There's been a lot of great war films, great war films, but I never got to make one.
02:39:43.000So my take is to try and bring people into the experience.
02:40:07.000Which is like why Steve, for anyone, like you ask me who I look up to, Steven Spielberg.
02:40:11.000He is so far and ahead the goat of my business to think that the guy who did fucking Jurassic Park and E.T., God love both, Close Encounters, then is like, oh.
02:40:23.000You know, and Spielberg was always like the good boy of the...
02:40:26.000Because it was like he was growing up with like Coppola and Scorsese and Michael Mann and these guys were like...
02:41:09.000To answer your question, Spielberg's who I look up to still the most, and I think he's on a whole other level based on the scope of his work.
02:41:18.000But Gaspar Noe, if I'm thinking about the thing I got out of watching this film that I would try and use in my own way for Mosquito Ball, for a war movie, is the idea that you want to try and take the audience into what it would have been like to try and get on that fucking beach.
02:41:36.000And, you know, in the case of my film, There was a battle of Tarawa and they were trying to get ashore, but they fucked up the tides.
02:41:44.000So they came in and the tides were too low.
02:41:46.000So those landing craft all got stuck on the tides, on the coral reef.
02:41:50.000And they started getting bombed by the Japanese who were hiding in the caves and they brought their big guns out.
02:41:56.000So these kids were getting blown up before they even got to the fucking beach.
02:42:04.000Best friends or body parts are floating in the fucking oceans, and there's sharks, and there's giant surf waves, and they're getting rocked before they've ever even got...
02:42:14.000So I'm like, okay, well, how do I want to show that?
02:42:18.000And I look at a movie like Climax, and I'm like, all right, different horror, bad acid, bad LSD, but my God, I had to stop watching it.
02:42:30.000And I knew I was coming in here today and I'm starting to have an anxiety attack because I want to get sleep to do, you know, to talk to you.
02:42:37.000And I'm fucking watching this movie and I'm all worked up because he's taken me into the fucking experience.
02:42:44.000And he does his movie Into the Void is about DMT. And he takes you into the experience of DMT. So for anyone who doesn't ever want to experience and, you know, things that you've touched and I've touched, You can watch these movies and you can be like, whoa, I'm getting that feeling.
02:43:07.000And that's a real accomplishment for a filmmaker.
02:43:21.000I can't talk her into watching anything that she doesn't want to watch.
02:43:24.000She only watched American Primeval because I told her it was going to be really awesome, and she loves Yellowstone and 1883, but there was like...
02:43:36.000It's that time period, I think, we do have...
02:43:41.000We do have a bit of a problem culturally because a lot of the films that were created in the early days about the Wild West were very glossy.
02:43:51.000It wasn't an accurate representation of what actually went down.
02:43:55.000You know, film in the 1960s and 70s in particular, when it covered that subject, like spaghetti westerns, you know, great films, but it just never really quite captured the reality.
02:44:06.000I don't think filmmaking was really ready for that experience because I think the settling of the West...
02:44:15.000And making their way across the plains in particular and dealing with the Comanche and the Plains Indians.
02:44:21.000Like, it is one of the most brutal experiences in human history.
02:44:25.000They couldn't look at it in film back then.
02:46:23.000That scene in the first episode when they first meet him and he has to take off his clothes and he's changing and you see the scars all over his body.
02:47:46.000It's because it's not just really good.
02:47:48.000It's really good about a very unique time when you have this convergence of American, you know, this emergence of these settlers trying to make their way across this country and dealing with the Indians.
02:48:58.000A period, short period of time leading up to Little Bighorn and how when, you know, because he is a very misunderstood character from American history.
02:50:17.000But you're also like, oh, wow, I'm going to fucking learn about the country, right?
02:50:20.000So I like the idea of taking moments in American history, not necessarily all about the West, although Custer is something that Mark L. Smith and I are both kind of obsessed with.
02:50:31.000And there's so much cool shit around the story of General Custer and Crazy Horse.
02:50:38.000Building a fictional story around those characters and having some great actor play Custer is exciting.
02:50:44.000But I could see doing the third one on something like the Attica Prison Riot, which has always obsessed me.
02:50:52.000And if you followed that, there's an incredible book by Tom Wicker, who was a journalist called A Time to Die, that dissects...
02:51:15.000And how it started and how it escalated and the players involved and the negotiating to try and calm it down and the corrupt governor, Rockefeller, who wouldn't negotiate because they don't want to appear weak.
02:51:31.000And it was a great look at the American prison system, racism, negotiations, religion, because the Black Panthers were in there and the Muslim Brotherhood.
02:51:45.000So I like the idea of taking moments in American history that are probably pretty fucking violent and sort of presenting them and being like, wow, this is...
02:53:18.000A while ago for a show that I wanted to do, like Survivor or Fear Factor, take three guys, like take the three of us in this room right now, three fucking tough, badass American men, right?