On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and writer joins us to talk about the life and career of legendary writer Hunter S. Thompson. We talk about his early days in the service, how he got into drugs, and how he became one of the most famous writers of all time.
00:03:53.000We've had a lot of those the press junkets where they come in and the first thing that you know the movie sucks if they don't ask you anything about the movie.
00:04:22.000Like every American went to the movie every week, basically.
00:04:24.000But it was because it was that or watched the cows walk by.
00:04:27.000You know, that was the only, and then TV comes around and it's little and you see these little serials.
00:04:33.000But, you know, what happened was now this is why it's totally changed the whole thing because you have 300 million people, 30, whatever is watching, you know, Netflix.
00:04:42.000And it's a lot harder to get people to go into the movies.
00:07:24.000And he really strategically and kind of patiently, like, he joked that on the last episode he was on, Anthony Edwards, you know, his co-star was making a million bucks for the episode and he was making, you know, 20 grand or whatever his deal was.
00:07:38.000Like he could have renegotiated, but he would have had to give more years.
00:07:41.000That's how bad he wanted to get off TV and do movies.
00:07:44.000That's how bad he wanted to get off of the biggest TV show in the world because there was such a big kind of level change between features and TV.
00:07:53.000Well, it was a giant difference in quality.
00:07:55.000It was also the breaking it up for commercials.
00:08:01.000You can't say this, you can't do that, you can't swear, not all the can of violence and all the things people want to see in movies, you know.
00:08:06.000And then also it wasn't as interesting.
00:08:09.000And then now that's tethered to these schedules and all the stuff, whereas you get this shit, like you don't have a schedule and you can take a bunch of risks.
00:08:24.000Well, then movies started to move towards more IP.
00:08:27.000And because it was hard to get people to come to the movies, everyone got scared and thought, well, you have to have to be a sequel or a superhero movie.
00:08:32.000And so an interesting little movie, kind of in the 90s when we kind of came onto the scene, there were a lot of really good independent movies that were being made.
00:08:42.000It was a really great time to be making movies.
00:08:48.000And then everyone just got way more conservative because it's huge.
00:08:53.000The business is so different theatrically in streaming because to put out a movie theatrically, you have to put so much more money behind it to publicize.
00:09:03.000You're not spending about what the budget was to make it to advertise it.
00:09:06.000It's like 50% of the theatrical movie.
00:09:07.000Yeah, because you split it with the movie house, right, through the exhibit.
00:09:10.000So a $25 million movie to break even, you got to make $100 million.
00:09:13.000And so you got to get everybody to not only know about the movie, but to show up that Friday night, like that specific time, you know, for that specific movie.
00:09:22.000And so and to cut through all the noise that people are contending with.
00:09:52.000So you can't be cavalier about, like, you're just going to price however the fuck you want and expect everyone to like be indifferent to that.
00:09:59.000And then, you know, also, you know, the idea of like, for me, you know, there's a lot of stuff I make that decision.
00:10:05.000Like, do I want to see The Odyssey on a big screen?
00:10:09.000I went to a theater to just watch the trailer for that movie.
00:10:11.000And, you know, did I, one battle after another, I wanted to go see in the theater.
00:10:15.000But there's movies of people that I really like and respect where, yeah, and I got a good system and shit, but I'm like, look, I'll watch it and I might get tired or I won't pause it and take a piss or the kids, you know, whatever it is.
00:10:24.000That's conducive to my lifestyle, you know?
00:10:40.000Like when I went to see One Battle on IMAX, that feeling, there's nothing like that feeling.
00:10:45.000I took two of my kids and two of my nephews and my wife and we all went and it was just, it was like, and you're in with a bunch of strangers, but people in your community and you're having this experience together.
00:10:57.000I always say it's more like going to church.
00:11:00.000Like you show up at an appointed time.
00:11:22.000And it also ends up having an effect or is starting to have an effect on how you make movies.
00:11:27.000Like, for instance, Netflix, you know, a standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you know, you usually have like three set pieces, one in the first act, one in the second, one in the third.
00:11:39.000You know, you kind of kind of ramp up in the big one with all the explosions, and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act.
00:11:55.000And, you know, it wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they're watching.
00:12:53.000And it's like the movies that start with the hero hanging from the cliff.
00:12:56.000And now we're going to flash back to the beginning and tell you how they got there.
00:13:01.000It's, you know, I always feel like, you know, complaining about it makes me feel like one of these guys was like, when I was a boy, like, you always want to freeze the culture at the time when you, I don't know, felt more like, you know, we used to have these phones.
00:14:37.000That's a joke that I like to make with every director I work with.
00:14:40.000Like when they're really puzzling over a shot or really grinding out something, I go, you know, it's not going to look as good on the phone when everyone gets angry.
00:15:41.000And I remember Terry Kinney, my friend, great actor, and he told me about the experience of seeing Taxi Driver in New York for the first time, right, in 76 or whenever it came out.
00:15:52.000And he said, what I remember is not only the movie, but I remember standing at the back because I had got up.
00:15:59.000I got up out of my seat and I went, but I couldn't bring myself to leave because I was so invested.
00:16:03.000But I was so, he goes, I was standing at the back by the door watching the movie.
00:16:07.000And he goes, and there were two other people standing next to me who were doing the same thing.
00:17:17.000Part of it was they wanted to come there.
00:17:18.000I mean, the great story I like is the first time they debuted a movie, guys, with a projector in a room full of people, it was a movie of a train pulling into the station.
00:17:29.000So they put the reel up and they did the demonstration and they showed the people and everybody missed it because they were turned around staring at the projector.
00:17:35.000They never fucking seen anything like that.
00:17:38.000You know, it's like the technology's upstage.
00:17:40.000But like you come for an event, come for a thing.
00:18:06.000History is full of people who got told a bunch of conventional wisdom and were like, yeah, but we're going to do something different.
00:18:11.000And as it turns out, like, that's actually what people want too, is not for you to just repeat the other shit that's been done before and worked before.
00:18:19.000This episode is brought to you by Visible.
00:19:05.000See visible.com for planned features and network management details.
00:19:10.000One of the things I read that I thought was really fucking cool is you guys set it up so that if this film performs well, the entire crew gets bonuses.
00:19:29.000But it's good, but it's not like, you know, fucking we're saints or a philanthropist.
00:19:34.000It's completely self-serving, in my opinion.
00:19:36.000Because in order to do the job well, everybody who's working on it has to be really invested and give a shit about the result, not their paycheck only.
00:19:44.000And sometimes you're worried a crew that just happen to be great anyway, even though they don't really have to care about it and they do.
00:19:50.000And what we saw was like, that makes your movie better.
00:19:54.000And then there's just the thing of like the business is changing.
00:19:56.000You see these strikes and work stops and all these fucking questions.
00:19:59.000In order for this, I think, to survive and to be, you know, a good middle-class fucking artist, you know, artisanal craftsman job, we've got 1,200 people that, you know, need to have reliable jobs.
00:20:13.000And part of the negotiations is always like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but we're all going to get fucked.
00:20:19.000Like used to working on movies and happens to actors too, where you go, oh, we all invested.
00:20:24.000It was really hard and we fucking put in the extra effort.
00:20:26.000Somebody else walked away with all the success.
00:20:30.000And my theory was with Matt was like, how about where let's say, okay, it's just fairness, right?
00:20:36.000If this thing actually blows up and does really well, you should benefit from that.
00:20:41.000People have been, you know, kind of given sort of promises of participation at back end haven't come true.
00:20:46.000So this is like the crew, everyone got their rates, everyone got their hourly, no one cut anything.
00:20:50.000This is just an exercise in actually proving that it's not bullshit.
00:20:54.000That if there's success, you'll get some extra, a little success, a little extra, a little more, a little more.
00:21:00.000Like you said, because it's fair, you know, and in success, the people who made the movie should, you know, should participate in that.
00:21:08.000And also with this one, which was important to us, there's a, you know, they delineate above the line and below the line, right?
00:21:13.000Like above the line being like us, the director, and the producers, and below the line being kind of the more blue-collar side of our industry.
00:21:22.000And like painters, grainsmen, camera babies, everybody else, drivers.
00:21:40.000Like when there's a, when there's a big success, everybody who had a hand on it.
00:21:44.000Because you see a great director that people rely on or an actor that's considered bankable.
00:21:48.000They're all going, okay, I need all my people with yeah, every great director I've worked with, and I've worked with a lot of them, they have their regular crew members that they that are ride or die with these people.
00:21:58.000Because, I mean, and you said it to me when we were starting the company.
00:22:00.000You were like, you know, those department heads, you know, who are each handling like, you know, cinematography, you know, your camera department, you know, your grip department, your electric, like all these, this, those people are ultimately the people who make the movie good.
00:22:14.000Like they make a demonstrable difference in how good your movie is.
00:22:17.000And imagine once you get a good flow with a great crew, like you got the band.
00:22:25.000Because they, and then like you have the situation where they all are filmmakers too.
00:22:29.000Everybody knows what we're trying to do.
00:22:31.000So like then what makes it, you know, you're trying to get something special, something interesting, something fucking magical in some moment.
00:22:38.000You have to like, if people are tight or if they've been out of shape or, you know, it fucks up the environment.
00:23:24.000Like, there are a lot of people that go into it.
00:23:27.000You know, even when I was like, Matt was the lead in the last movie I did Air that I directed.
00:23:32.000Having somebody so fucking good in your movie who also shows up, does his job, is friendly, isn't fucking around or playing games or being weird, like that sets this tone.
00:23:43.000Everybody else kind of goes, okay, well, what's Damon like?
00:23:47.000Oh, I see this is, we're taking it seriously, but nobody's going to be a dick.
00:23:51.000We're not going to take ourselves too seriously, but we're going to take the job really seriously.
00:23:55.000And immediately, everybody kind of snaps into that.
00:23:58.000That trickle-down effect goes across the whole thing.
00:24:02.000And I think the best thing that I know how to do as a director is just create an environment where people feel like they show up, people like me, they're rooting for me.
00:24:11.000I can fucking embarrass myself and be bad and it's not going to be in the movie and it was going to make me feel self-conscious.
00:24:28.000You know, guys was, you know, some woman's assistant prop master is coming up with like the stuff that, you know, Phil Knight found, you know, his waffle from the shoe.
00:25:08.000So is this something that you would like?
00:25:09.000Kudos to you guys for addressing this, first of all, and recognizing it and having that attitude because it's so important and so easy for big movie stars to just think about themselves and their own.
00:25:26.000No, no, but each deal has had this kind of, each deal that we've done so far has been different because we've made deals with different studios and platforms and stuff like that.
00:25:37.000And it just involved us basically retroactively going, hey, we came in under, we did a great job, there's extra money.
00:25:45.000This is the first time that we were able to actually create like a schedule where it's like, because, and by the way, we wouldn't have been able to do that without Netflix going, okay, cool.
00:25:56.000Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to do it.
00:25:57.000So we had to say, look, we're not asking you to take a cut, but if we can, and we can tell you, if the movie is watched as many hours in the first 90 days as like this movie A, that you all know what it is, then that's, you know, 20% of your shout out, let's say, right?
00:26:58.000I mean, it's, you know, the value of it is because before this, one of the big things that everybody's fighting over in the strike is like, well, share your shit.
00:27:08.000And residuals, and it was only for SAG and a few other things.
00:27:11.000But it was like, and you knew if you had a line in the movie and the movie did a certain number, like at the box office, well, you're going to get another 2,000 bucks.
00:27:45.000But you can't assign a strict numerical value to it because it's like a box office where you can go, well, we're going to use a billion dollars or whatever.
00:27:54.000And that's another billion dollars on our balance sheet because streamers are doing a subscription model.
00:28:02.000Whether it's like a gym membership where in the fucking, you know, first of the year, you're like, I'm going to work out again.
00:28:06.000I'm going to buy that annual membership.
00:28:07.000And you go twice or you go to the gym every single day, you're paying the same amount.
00:28:11.000Also, the weird thing is with streaming, when you're opening up Netflix, it's not like you're going to the movie theater and there's seven movies playing.
00:28:18.000You're opening up Netflix and you have an unlimited option list.
00:28:34.000Like when we started researching that and built our own data to poll people and examine all this stuff, it's actually all the library stuff that people are watching all the time.
00:28:43.000If you say like the new stuff is theoretically what keeps people with the subscription or whatever, but in terms of like volume of time, I think, and doesn't come from them, but it looks a lot like, you know, we're going to watch like Orange is the New Black and the episode of Suits and the Old Seinfeld and Friends and Cupcake Wars.
00:29:03.000That's what Americans watch six hours of TV a day.
00:30:08.000We're not trying to just do our movies.
00:30:10.000We want to be doing movies with all these people that we like and respect.
00:30:15.000And then the way we sort of set it up is such that to try to get like the historically, the way it's worked is like a studio will own an IP or a script or whatever.
00:30:26.000And then they'll say, okay, we want you to do it.
00:30:35.000But like my belief was, well, especially when these streams are like coming into the market and chasing stuff, is like this movie may be worth more.
00:30:44.000And that like we're all just subject to that.
00:30:46.000So we'll try to get the best price for it and we'll all share it, you know, pro rata.
00:30:51.000And essentially that was the same process.
00:30:53.000We've done eight, I guess, movies or so now.
00:30:55.000And we took it out and people wanted it.
00:30:58.000And then one of the things that was really appealing about Netflix was that they were open to this idea that we've been trying to institutionalize.
00:31:58.000So it was like, okay, what can we do that's interesting and try to keep it as inexpensive as possible so that we can make the argument that someone should make the movie?
00:32:06.000That same logic carries through every time you're asking somebody to invest in something.
00:32:10.000So what I'd like to have happen is to say, okay, now that we know there's a reliable system where we understand that in success, we'll actually benefit, we can lower the price up front for you so that you can have a low fucking barrier to entry so that you can take the risk so that we can do something really interesting.
00:32:30.000That's a, you know, that's an Omenheimer or a Sinners or a fucking Marty Supreme or whatever it is.
00:32:35.000And then if it's successful, we're not all sitting here like assholes where you guys walk off with all the money, but and you can have that happen in an ongoing way so that you can make more interesting stuff.
00:32:46.000A lot of the stuff that was going on with the strikes was centered around AI and what AI is going to do to the business.
00:32:53.000Like, where do you feel is going to be like the biggest problem with AI?
00:32:58.000Is it going to be with people's likenesses?
00:33:00.000Because there's a lot of that, where they want to use extras and own their digital rights forever, essentially be able to recreate them in any kind of film.
00:33:08.000But then there's also, you're going to have films that are written by artificial intelligence.
00:33:13.000You're going to have scenes that don't involve people.
00:33:31.000Some of it's going to be like, you know, this is going to be, you know, shit that kills a bunch of people.
00:33:36.000Like it's, it's, it's opening a door that you can't, you know, say, well, talk about it in a kind of a blanket way.
00:33:42.000But I think with what I see is like, for example, if you try to get Chat GPT or Claude or Gemini to write you something, it's really shitty.
00:33:52.000And it's shitty because by its nature, it goes to the mean, to the average.
00:33:59.000And it's, I mean, I just can't even stand to see what writes.
00:34:02.000Now, it's a useful tool if you're a writer and you're going, ah, what's the thing?
00:34:06.000I'm trying to set something up where somebody sends someone a letter, but it's delayed two days and gets, and it can give you some examples of that.
00:34:12.000I actually don't think it's very likely that it can, it's going to be able to write anything meaningful.
00:34:18.000Or and in particular, that it's going to be making movies like from Holcloth, like Tilly Nor, like, that's bullshit.
00:34:47.000I might have the ability to draw you, to make you in a very realistic way, but that's already against the law.
00:34:54.000And the unions are going to, I think the guilds are going to manage this where it's like, okay, look, if this is a tool that actually helps us, for example, we don't have to go to the North Pole, right?
00:35:02.000We can shoot the scene here in our parkas and whatever it is, but then make it appear very realistically as if we're in the North Pole.
00:35:11.000It'll save us a lot of money, a lot of time.
00:35:13.000We're going to focus on the performances and not be freezing our ass up out there and running back inside.
00:35:19.000Just like Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn used to be like driving their car and there's a wind blowing a painting behind them and it looked goofy.
00:35:25.000And now, you know, in computer generated, people use a lot of computer-generated stuff.
00:35:30.000And some of it is going to replace just that.
00:35:32.000Like instead of 500 guys in Singapore, you know, making $2 an hour to render all the graphics for a superhero movie, there's going to be able to do that a lot easier.
00:35:42.000There's already laws around and guild guidelines around like how many union extras you have to use.
00:35:53.000In Invictus, there weren't all those people in the stadium.
00:35:55.000Like that's something we've been doing.
00:35:57.000It kind of feels to me like the thing we were talking about earlier, where there's a lot more fear because we have the sense, less existential dread.
00:36:14.000I think a lot of that rhetoric comes from people who are trying to justify valuations around companies.
00:36:21.000They go, we're going to change everything.
00:36:22.000In two years, there's going to be no more work.
00:36:24.000The reason they're saying that is because they need to ascribe a valuation for investment that can warrant the CapEx spend they're going to make on these data centers with the argument that like, oh, you know, as soon as we do the next model, it's going to scale up.
00:36:38.000Except that actually ChatGP5, about 25% better than ChatGPT-4 and costs about four times as much in the way of electricity and data.
00:36:48.000So those may say that it's like plateauing.
00:36:51.000The early AI, the line went up very steeply and it's now sort of leveling off.
00:36:56.000I think it's because, and yes, it'll get better, but it's going to be really expensive to get better.
00:37:01.000And a lot of people are like, fuck this.
00:37:03.000We want ChatGPT-4 because it turned out like the vast majority of people who use AI are using it to like, as like companion bots to chat with at night and stuff.
00:37:16.000I would argue there's also not a lot of social value to getting people to like focus on an AI friend who's telling you that you're great and listening to everything you say and being sycophantic.
00:37:29.000I think for this particular purpose, like the way I see the technology and what it's good at and what it's not, it's going to be good at filling in all the places that are expensive and burdensome and they make it harder to do it.
00:37:40.000And it's always going to rely fundamentally on the human artistic aspects of it.
00:37:45.000Well, I think the more it becomes ubiquitous, the more people are going to appreciate real things that are made by real people.
00:37:52.000You know, like you still appreciate a handmade table.
00:37:56.000You know, you're going to appreciate, like, did you see The Beast in Me, Claire Danes?
00:38:19.000I did this interview with Dwayne Johnson because when people are in these awards things, they sometimes have other actors interview them.
00:38:27.000And I did this interview with Dwayne and I asked him, there's this scene in the Smashing Machine where he's overdosed on drugs and his buddy comes to see him in the hospital.
00:39:52.000And when my mom was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer, I was with her when the oncologist came in and she was lying in the hospital bed.
00:39:59.000And when he gave her the news, she pulled the sheet up over her head.
00:40:04.000And I looked at her and she just looked like a little, like a little kid, you know?
00:40:19.000And the actor in him, right, sees this scene, goes into his memory, pulls these two things out, understands that they're appropriate for this scene and he can marry them together in the scene.
00:40:33.000And then he goes and performs it that way.
00:40:36.000And a dude walking in off the road goes to the movies, sees this, understands somehow that it's fucking real.
00:41:59.000And I was so happy for Dwayne because it was a film where instead of being this fucking superhero, blockbuster Hulk of a man, he gets to be that, but be a great actor.
00:42:12.000And, you know, you can't really get a person to look like that, to express emotions.
00:43:44.000Let them film him like bringing this giant bag of pills with him and all this shit everywhere and just completely falling apart.
00:43:52.000While they were supposed to be capturing this hero movie of the greatest fighter in the world, he's falling apart like live in front of the documentary.
00:44:05.000But I was so happy that they put it in a film.
00:44:08.000And I was so happy that it gave Dwayne a vehicle to show what he's really capable of because he's so limited by a lot of just the parameters of the roles that he was in.
00:44:51.000Well, I mean, it's this thing that these superhero guys have to do where it's like something has to change because otherwise you're going to be boxed.
00:45:01.000And with a guy that looks like that, it's so easy to put him in that box.
00:45:06.000And so you see him now, he's thinner, he's lost a lot of weight.
00:45:08.000Like Dave Bautista went through a very similar thing, right?
00:45:12.000He wanted to have more range, wanted to have more opportunities to do exciting and different challenging things.
00:45:17.000Well, I think also coming from where he came from, right?
00:45:20.000It's like you talk about going from TV to movies in the old days.
00:45:23.000Try coming from wrestling to like the biggest movie star in the world, right?
00:45:28.000It's very, it's like, it's incredible that he did that.
00:45:32.000And now he's in this place where he's got this leverage because he's so beloved and, you know, that he can kind of tailor what he wants from here on out.
00:45:42.000It's hard to bring the audience with you.
00:46:47.000It's the old, it's all an illusion, all bullshit.
00:46:49.000But if you do it really well, like, you know, somebody that seems to really be feeling something like all of a sudden, I think what it does, it touches like these things in ourselves.
00:46:58.000You know, it has that same effect that Dwayne went through of articulate to you about like these moments that were kind of burned into his memory.
00:47:07.000Then really the best movies are kind of almost blank screens that we project our own fucking like, oh yeah, my father died or I went through this with my kid or I'm fucking, I feel fucking alone and miserable.
00:47:21.000And here's this like hopeful moment that someone has to go, maybe I can, maybe I can do something.
00:47:26.000They inspire you, they touch you, they move you, and it's the thing to go for.
00:47:30.000The other thing is, you know, it's a is to tell the lighter story, to go through the more typical sort of tropes of it all.
00:47:36.000And it's a either way, you're in somebody else's perspective for a few hours, and hopefully it breeds compassion.
00:47:42.000Well, when it's done right, there's a magic to it where you forget that it's happening and you're there.
00:47:47.000And the most amazing trick is when it's done by famous people.
00:47:51.000You know, I was talking to Ethan Hawk about this.
00:47:53.000There's a scene with him and Kevin Bacon in that movie with Julia Roberts about the end of the world.
00:49:41.000But the other thing that's really interesting from our side of doing it, because he and I have talked about this a lot, is, and I've always said publicly, like great actors are good enough for both of you.
00:49:51.000Like when you're in a scene with a great actor, that thing that Ethan's talking about, that hypnosis or whatever you want to call it, that energy, that place where you go, right?
00:50:48.000Well, there's some scenes in this movie without giving too much away where there's conflict between you two guys that seems so real.
00:50:54.000And that's even harder to recreate because you guys are good friends and you're making the movie together and you've got this scene where you're acting in this and with the conflict with the two of you guys in the movie, but it's very fucking real.
00:51:06.000The reason that it was real, I like that scene.
00:51:08.000The reason it works, I think, is because he's coming at me and he really needs to know something.
00:51:25.000And I'm just like literally kind of blanking him in this bizarre way, which like was really frustrating him in real life because he was that feeling of like, it's fucking, tell me, dude, it's you.
00:51:40.000And me, like, and he finally goes, he screams out, I don't trust you right now.
00:51:57.000You fuck to me and like step outside our whole relationship and all of a sudden just act like, give me this weird look of just like, I don't know, you know like.
00:52:12.000I could see him like getting there was the one line that wasn't written that I saw that I didn't remember doing was, I would have never fucked you like this.
00:52:17.000I would have never fucked you like this.
00:52:18.000Yeah, which I didn't even remember saying, is George, I like that, keep that thing.
00:52:28.000It was like where it was that thing of you doing all the work by by not doing anything, which I didn't expect that to be the choice that you made, and it just was confusing and felt like just you know, leaving you out in the fucking cold and the only thing I could rely on is like I, you know I would, I wouldn't do this to you.
00:52:47.000So do you have, in those moments where you're you're ad-libbing a line, where a line comes, is it just just that feels like that's what you say.
00:52:55.000It's just kind of like you couldn't stop from saying it.
00:52:57.000Right, you know, but you have to be working with somebody that makes that okay.
00:53:02.000You know what I mean, because the part of your brain that will like govern you or tell you something's not okay or whatever, will step in if it's sort of like you know listen, I expect you to fucking do this box.
00:53:12.000And there's, there's a directors and writers who really do really care about every word precisely, and that you know and that's that's how they do it and that's fine.
00:53:26.000If you actually feel like you don't have to say any of the lines I don't have to say any of the lines in this scene then I'll tend to say the ones that feel right.
00:53:49.000It's one of the reasons why curb your enthusiasm is so great, because Larry David just gives you a place to get to.
00:53:55.000Yeah, like gives them an eject, kind of a loose agenda of what's going to happen and then films a bunch of stuff and everybody figures it out.
00:54:02.000Yeah, and a lot of times that shows about the awkward shit in between.
00:54:06.000People are missing each other or not sure of themselves and a little embarrassed and genius show it really is and and and people talk like we're talking, like you occasionally talk over each other.
00:54:17.000There's a stumble, there's no one know, like what what, what the fuck are you talking?
00:54:22.000Well too, because what's also happening is that forces you to really listen right, and that is that is the hardest thing to kind of learn for young actors, I think is is it's really all about listening and like I did a bunch of movies with Paul Greengrass and that's how he works where, Where you just know the agenda going in.
00:54:41.000You know, some basic things that you know what your guy needs going in.
00:54:45.000Like, I was playing a chief warrant officer, and I had to go through a door, and there was a guy, and I needed to interrogate him.
00:54:51.000And this is what I needed to know from him.
00:54:53.000I needed to secure the house with my guys, and I needed to get to this guy.
00:54:57.000We needed to make sure everybody here was secure.
00:54:59.000So, and it just, and they, and he put me with a bunch of real combat veterans, and we fucking went in and you know, they're the actors.
00:55:07.000That's another thing that does your job for you.
00:55:09.000It's just being around the real people.
00:55:11.000Joe putting the cops from Miami, you know, all in these parts, and it just like by osmosis, you feel more legitimate.
00:55:18.000The thing feels more authentic to the audience.
00:55:21.000You don't know why, because you don't know what the fucking culture is of the tactical narcotics team in Miami.
00:55:26.000But when you see the real guys, you kind of, oh, you're like, Yeah, that seems right.
00:55:30.000And Miami is the perfect place to have it, too.
00:56:41.000But, you know, is there some statistic about like, you know, the amount of money in the banks in Miami was like the same as the rest of the country?
00:56:48.000More banks per capita in Miami than anywhere else in the country.
00:58:17.000I mean, but if you think of probably the cost of one of those little Cessna's probably wasn't, I mean, with the amount of drugs they were moving on.
00:59:00.000I just remember that one guy in that documentary who was like, I think he was from Boston and he was like the pilot and he had figured out the route and he was like, man, like we could have gotten away with this forever.
00:59:11.000Because somebody talked and he knew that's the only way we would have been caught.
01:00:18.000Well, that's why it's a perfect backdrop for the film, you know, because the situation that the cops, without giving away too much of the plot, but the situation that the cops are dealing with is a very real situation.
01:00:30.000I mean, so many DEA agents turn dirty.
01:00:41.000They have the same bullshit they have to deal with.
01:00:44.000And there's $20 million, you know, and it's, I mean, it makes for a great like drama, too, even like the, you know, in the performances, because all of a sudden somebody's thinking like, okay, how are they going to react?
01:00:54.000You know, who'd be the first person to say, you know, I'm going to have to turn this all in, you know, and like getting to play that shit.
01:01:01.000And for me also, I like, you know, without being, you know, sanctimonious or preachy, because I really think movies, we're talking about like what they do well, what they do very poorly is deliver messages or lecture.
01:01:12.000As soon as you get into that thing, the audience is like, you know, I'm going to go to church for that or fucking school.
01:01:20.000But I like that what was underneath it is like, this is a fucking hard job.
01:01:25.000And that there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of value.
01:01:28.000Like these characters, the ones that are trying to do their job are trying to get through the day.
01:01:33.000And just at the end of the day, have done their job like they said they were going to do, you know, adhere to the fucking ethics that they're supposed to.
01:01:39.000And at the end of the day, be able to sleep at night and believe there's some value in not fucking stealing the money or flipping somebody over.
01:01:49.000The win doesn't have to be get away with the bag of money or fucking, you know, save the world from, you know, the evil scientist laser beam or whatever.
01:01:56.000It's like, at the end of the day, if you can fucking live with yourself and say, look, you know, I acquitted myself according to what the fucking expectations were.
01:04:57.000I was saying everything that I've done that I like has been a result of something I found in research.
01:05:02.000Like for the town, I went down and just went through the you know all the prisons, you know, out there in Massachusetts, federal prisons, state prisons, and sat down and talked to guys who robbed trucks and banks.
01:05:13.000And, you know, kind of sometimes, you know, you want to know, and then sat down with the FBI guys and was like, what are they like?
01:05:19.000And the great shit, you know, for me is that, you know, and I'm in like, I'm in like wet wallpaper or I'm in the prison dedim or whatever.
01:05:27.000And I'm to some guy said, like, after talking for two hours, you know, I was like, is anything just fucking weird ever happened or fucked up?
01:07:07.000You know, and he knew it and everybody knew it.
01:07:09.000He decided he didn't want to do it like that.
01:07:11.000You know, that was, and that kind of stuff is, I don't know, it's very human calculations and interactivism and a very extreme version of it.
01:08:00.000And so I was around a lot of these very shady characters who were in the fighting world.
01:08:05.000And a lot of them had backgrounds in crime.
01:08:08.000One of the guys that I went to, that I trained with, he went to jail for a little while and then he got arrested because a guy got killed and they broke every bone in his body with a hammer and kept injecting him with cocaine to keep him awake while they were doing it.
01:08:25.000And then they cut his hands off and cut his head off.
01:08:28.000And this guy that I used to train with got arrested for that.
01:09:11.000And so like, yeah, people, you know, meet, you know, and talk to him.
01:09:15.000And it's interesting because it's such a good lesson for doing this job, which is that they're never how you think they're supposed to be, like the murderer person.
01:09:25.000You know, there's always something a little, I remember one guy was supposed to be like this really violent, kind of loose cannon fucking guy who supposedly had done all this shit, stabbed and killed two people, Faniel Hall, and shot these guys in a, in a robbery.
01:09:39.000And he like shows up with his polo shirt kind of tucked in.
01:10:22.000They're not trying to fucking be hard.
01:10:23.000And, you know, they're the most relaxed, at ease.
01:10:27.000And it, you know, I found myself just being like, finally, I was like, what, can I just ask you, what do you think makes somebody like qualify for the Delta Force?
01:10:54.000But that was the closest insight I got to it, which was, I've always kind of thought this about like a guy's like Brady or something.
01:11:01.000There's guys that just don't get tight and that they are kind of able to problem solve when the problem is like, well, that helicopter's crashed and we're 200 miles inside Afghanistan and we're outnumbered fucking six to one.
01:11:16.000Like just having your wits about you to make that calculation while, by the way, you're in a fucking gunfight and things, you know, I'm sure that does make, because those are the people where I'd be in a fucking panic and I have no idea what to do.
01:11:28.000And you get like attracted to the person who's like, seems to have it, like, hey, it's good.
01:11:52.000It's just, it surprises me how those kinds of extraordinary experiences and people or extraordinary people don't always manifest themselves in how they show up.
01:12:20.000And I was backstage and was talking to one of the lawyers for the UFC about, we were talking about Connor McGregor, and he was telling me a great story about him.
01:12:31.000And this guy walks up and he's in Chinos, like khaki pants and like a blue button-up, like, you know, kind of business shirt with spectacles.
01:13:56.000It's like we have these ideas in our head, these caricatures, you know, of what a tough man is, what a good woman is, what this is, what that is.
01:14:04.000And I think one of the beautiful things about film when a film is really good is you see these complex characters and it sort of like reformulates in your mind like what a person actually is.
01:14:15.000Yeah, it's seeing all kinds of different people.
01:14:17.000You know, and yeah, yeah, I completely agree.
01:14:20.000You know, look, the fundamental challenge, I think, in life is like, it's like to find some humility, which means actually thinking you might be wrong about the shit that you're pretty sure about.
01:14:33.000And it means that you kind of have to assume somebody else might have a point.
01:14:37.000It's not like just writing everybody else off who disagrees with you because, oh, fuck him.
01:15:06.000But once you find yourself relying on, like, well, I need to zero out this person's humanity in order to defend my idea.
01:15:12.000I think that's a pretty good indicator that there's something wrong with the way you're thinking.
01:15:16.000Because it can't be that you're right about everything and everyone else is bad who disagrees with you.
01:15:21.000I think that was one of the most interesting things about the Sopranos is that the main character, the guy that you loved, was a fucking murderer.
01:15:30.000He was like, who would murder his friends?
01:15:33.000He was a complete mobster and a thug, but you really loved him.
01:15:51.000Like there's a very famous story about Marlon Brando when he did Streetcar Named Desire.
01:15:57.000And Tennessee Williams, who wrote it, like freaked out because he was making Stanley Kowalski, he was making people empathize with Stanley Kowalski.
01:16:07.000And Tennessee Williams was like, but I wrote him as a brute.
01:16:10.000He was like a two-dimensional brute who just came and beat up his wife and was supposed to be this kind of dark looming force over the play.
01:16:18.000But Brando was like, no, he's a human being and I'm going to play him like a fucking human being.
01:16:54.000And now you have guys who both live by this code that's very, hey, you protect the people who are with you and you got to have this fucking.
01:17:01.000And so now it's two people who are very similar, like by that kind of slippery slope, ultimately find themselves, you know, will kill one another.
01:17:10.000Because it's really not, I don't, I don't believe in that one choice term.
01:17:14.000It's like more, how do you find yourself?
01:17:15.000You dig yourself in a fucking hole because you're just covering up the let trying to fix the last problem that's arisen, you know?
01:17:21.000And everybody thinks is, of course, the roots for themselves is like empathize with themselves.
01:17:27.000That's what we have to be concerned with, ourselves, our needs, our families, our basic shit.
01:17:31.000It's hard to expect people to go like, all right.
01:17:34.000And what about, you know, like what they think?
01:17:38.000And I, and I think that's, I think it's a, it's a much more honest evaluation of people and it allows for like complexity and forgiveness and fucking all the shit that's sort of beautiful about people.
01:17:50.000Like rather than this notion of like, well, we're going to be binary, good or bad, perfect or not, whatever.
01:17:55.000And any infraction, then it's like permanently stains you.
01:18:00.000That's like what we were talking about earlier about people that have been canceled.
01:18:03.000You know, that this idea that one thing you said or one thing you did, and now we're going to exaggerate that to the fullest extent and cast you out of civilization for you.
01:18:15.000And it's Because I bet some of those people would have preferred to go to jail for 18 months or whatever and then come out and say, no, but we can't, I paid my debt.
01:19:05.000It's just like kind of, like I was saying, like that kind of sixth grade instinct to be like, oh, he's in trouble.
01:19:10.000You know, there's this, you know, human, like, we have dark, fucked up instincts too, sometimes to like isolate people or get joy out of someone else's.
01:19:20.000They're in trouble because maybe because part of it's saying, hey, it's not me.
01:19:23.000You know, so if you can point the finger, everyone's looking over there.
01:19:28.000But it's, it's like, yeah, and to take any forgiveness out of it, you know, is a really fucked up thing because then it makes it impossible, A, to actually go, all right, yeah, I did that.
01:21:31.000If you dead nail being human, that's not possible because you forgot about the part about forgiveness.
01:21:36.000Yeah, you haven't nailed it by definition if you're out there throwing stones.
01:21:41.000It's most of the people that I find, especially when there's someone that's publicly in trouble for something, most of the people that I know that have attacked people have a lot of questionable shit in their past.
01:21:50.000And it's almost like they're trying to hide that by going on the attack.
01:22:21.000I thought it was a really beautiful movie about like what's the role of grace in life, you know and, and the really honest examination of that, like sitting side by side with yeah okay, you don't believe, but like you in and you know so.
01:22:36.000It's not about like whether you're gonna argue over fucking evolution.
01:22:39.000It's about like, how graceful are you in your life?
01:22:43.000You know, how much fucking dignity can you afford other people and are you willing to recognize and see that there's maybe something bigger than yourself and that there's a reason to to like uh, to try to sort of be, to find that grace to get better.
01:22:55.000You know, that was really beautiful and kind of rare and uh, really surprised.
01:23:38.000There's a lot like if we're working as, if we're watching cuts after cuts and going in the editing room like there's a lot of kind of work around all the stuff that we have going that that that eats into a lot of time, mostly trying to keep up with what people are doing.
01:23:52.000My issue is really that, like we've kind of developed this pattern where all these sort of movies that come out are more interesting and very like they're all jammed out at the last fucking month of the year and so all of a sudden you're trying to race movies.
01:24:04.000Yeah right, I got really lucky like uh, recently my son you know who's 13 decided he wants to like watch movies, you know, and I like give him shit like.
01:24:16.000And you know he's kind of blowing me off and rolling his eyes and he's like you know, I mean if you're a dad, you're kind of an asshole, fundamentally like, come on, you don't know what's going on.
01:25:05.000Last week I watched taxi driver kick up all these Scorsese movies and it really was like, oh man I, I because in my mind i'm like sure i've seen that movie, I know it watched them again.
01:25:14.000It was like like seeing, I could realize how much better they were than I even could appreciate when I watched it when I was younger.
01:25:21.000And it really and it was just the most beautiful fucking experience for me To watch my son, like taking an interest.
01:25:28.000And there's the, you know, the older two have always been a little bit like, yeah, dad, no, great.
01:25:31.000But, hey, you guys want to come to the prior?
01:26:46.000And it was like, we're lucky to get it and lucky to the whole idea that you could even, the goal is like to make a living to not have to be like, well, I'm an actor, you know, slash a waiter, contractor, dentalist, whatever the fuck it is, you know, like actually, I can earn money.
01:27:00.000I can, and we always figured, like, I don't need that much, especially if we now have kids.
01:27:04.000You know, okay, we can make a living, or it's, you know, maybe it's fucking going to be dinner theater, or maybe it's going to be renting, maybe it's going to be there'll be a job somewhere that we can find where we can do this and keep doing it.
01:30:11.000Skip the bleach process in developing the film.
01:30:14.000I don't, and I don't know if they're going to 22 or 23 frames anywhere in there, maybe, but I just remember maybe it's just the open shutters.
01:30:24.000Yeah, but it just means that instead of like the motion blur is what makes something that like moves across the frame quickly.
01:30:28.000If you look at each frame, it's like a blurred thing.
01:30:31.000And when you roll those at 24 frames, it gives you this illusion that it moves across fluidly.
01:30:36.000And if you basically open the shutter up so you get much more light, each frame takes a super sharp picture.
01:30:42.000And when you run those together, like the piece of dust goes, and so the mortar explosions are going, and you get that feeling that you're adrenalized and you're seeing, you know what I mean?
01:30:51.000And it's just, and nobody had ever done it.
01:30:54.000And the master of the thing understood how to use the tools and combined with a great idea.
01:31:08.000That's just like you say, one of those things, a guy that's passionate and also, you know, caring about something, you know, it's that with that much passion is kind of connected to greatness.
01:31:19.000And it's, I think, why we love to see that, whether, you know, sports, fucking, you know, fighting or whatever it is, there's something that makes you kind of love being alive and also love that person when you go, fuck, like, when you see Michael Jordan, like that was that whole movie that we did air is really all about, like, what does it mean to be great?
01:31:38.000And how does it like touch everybody and change everybody and make people want to fucking improve their own lives?
01:31:44.000Because somebody's just better at that thing than anybody else in the world.
01:32:13.000Like in that kind of just empirical personal study, I haven't seen anybody who I think like qualifies for that who didn't also seem to be really suffering.
01:34:01.000You want to, whatever it is that you can do, whatever it is you do do, you become more, whether it's a great game, a winning touchdown, whether it's a great film, a great song.
01:35:02.000And I remember leaving, I'm at almost 19 or something.
01:35:04.000I'm thinking, I want to be a better man.
01:35:06.000I thought that in my mind, you know, because of what I had seen this actor do and this performance and the way, you know, that was the only real conscious thought I had.
01:35:15.000But I remember having it and kind of being surprised by it, you know, and it does.
01:35:21.000That shit can, you know, it's really touched me, you know, a lot of fucking people's work.
01:35:26.000And that's why you get that like, you know, you see the people, you want to let them know, you know what I mean?
01:36:11.000That's the thing that's the cost of your fame, you know, that you have to, there's going to be a bunch of people that are going to come up to you and they want to say those things to you.
01:36:18.000And like wanting them to say those things to you is the opposite of the mindset that you need to make those things.
01:36:29.000You think like once you become really successful and you make a bunch of great things, it's going to be awesome having all these people come up to you.
01:37:31.000The elite levels of MMA, especially with USADA testing and, you know, and now drug-free sport testing, when they are making sure that people aren't on testosterone and growth hormone, all these different things.
01:41:10.000He wasn't even fully extended, which, you know, was even more devastating.
01:41:14.000But John realized that as a heavyweight, he didn't have the power that he had at light heavyweight.
01:41:19.000And so he said the most powerful kick is a spinning back kick.
01:41:22.000So I'm just going to work on that kick over and over again because that's the one tool that I have that can knock a heavyweight out with one shot.
01:43:00.000I thought it was an incredibly brave moment for a guy to say that who is, you know, just this fucking amazing human being, this warrior, to say, I just got to be honest.
01:44:57.000And then if you fuck up and overtrain, which a lot of those guys do just because they're such savages and they never want to leave the gym, then they don't peek right.
01:45:04.000And then they come in and they're exhausted and they didn't recover properly.
01:45:07.000And then in between rounds, they're too tired and they can't go out for the next round.
01:45:13.000I imagine that level of exhaustion has to be just insane when you overtrain in an actual championship.
01:45:19.000And you realize you can't bounce back, and this guy is fucking blasting your legs with kicks and hitting you with punches, and you can't get out of the way anymore.
01:46:30.000When a guy takes you down, like, you get an advantage at the beginning of the round anyway because a striker gets to be standing up when you didn't earn it.
01:46:36.000So you should never get stood up in a fight.
01:46:38.000I don't care if the guy's doing nothing.
01:46:39.000If he's holding you down and you can't get up, that's how it should be.
01:46:42.000So it's more realistic, but it's the balance of it being a sport.
01:46:46.000Yeah, making it because people get when people grab someone and take them to the ground, nothing happened, people go, boo, you hear it in the audience, and then the referee gets a little motivated and he stands people up.
01:46:55.000And I'm always like, ah, don't stand them up.
01:46:58.000I never thought of it that way, that the beginning of the round starts it to the advantage of the chief.
01:48:07.000It's just, but I mean, in terms of like inspirational performances and things that you, when you see like the human spirit elevated to the highest possible place when two very skilled men or women are fighting in a cage where they prepared for this for three fucking months.
01:48:26.000And then, you know, the referee's like, are you ready?
01:48:44.000And you can't help but have that feeling once it, you know, and yeah, some fights end up being disappointing, whatever, but that moment is always there.
01:49:27.000They're letting this tiger out, and here he comes.
01:49:29.000And it was like, well, we're old enough to remember when he was in his prime, and those fights were like executions.
01:49:34.000You didn't want to pay for the pay-per-view because they were so fast.
01:49:37.000I swear, I mean, Jamie might be able to prove me wrong, but I'm pretty sure that they cut to Alex Stewart and they cut to his wife, and she was crying.
01:49:47.000And this is when they're coming to the center of the ring.
01:49:50.000But by the way, for good reason, like this man might kill my husband.
01:51:25.000Well, one of the things that's opening the doors for them to acknowledge it is soldiers because it's always been kind of like a left-wing-wing thing to be into psychedelics.
01:51:34.000But all these soldiers are coming back with PTSD and drug addiction and a lot of CTE from bombs blowing up and IEDs and concussions.
01:51:43.000And the only thing that's helping them is psychedelics.
01:51:46.000So it's kind of like in Texas, former governor Rick Perry has started the Ibogaine Initiative.
01:51:51.000So they're using Ibogaine to help all of these different soldiers, which is ironically the drug that Hunter S. Thompson claimed Ed Muskie was on when he was running for president.
01:52:01.000Yeah, remember when he sank Ed Muskie's.
01:53:03.000Well, Rick Perry, because he's worked with soldiers and because he's worked with a lot of veterans that, you know, and he's a very compassionate and intelligent man.
01:53:11.000And he realized, like, okay, maybe I'm wrong about all this psychedelic stuff.
01:53:15.000And so he started getting behind this Ibogaine initiative.
01:53:18.000They passed it in Texas, and now they're doing it with soldiers.
01:53:21.000And they're going to do it with police officers.
01:53:23.000And I mean, police officers experience more PTSD.
01:53:26.000Like, I have a good friend who was a cop in Austin, and he said, and he was also in the military.
01:53:30.000And he said, what I saw in the military was nothing compared to what I saw as a police officer.
01:53:35.000He goes, I was seeing death and violence on a daily basis.
01:53:39.000He goes, when you're deployed, he goes, yeah, you're going to see some horrible shit, but you're going to see some horrible shit mixed in, you know, over a course of time where, you know, you go out and things go live.
01:54:16.000And so these guys are living with this fucking PTSD all the time.
01:54:19.000And then they have to live in real life.
01:54:21.000They're supposed to go home and they're supposed to just be a normal dad and a normal neighbor.
01:54:26.000And their fucking head is just a hurricane of chaos.
01:54:30.000And Ibogaine has been very beneficial for those people to just sort of come down and try to find the root of all this stuff and get them off pills and get them on the straight.
01:55:21.000So this guy was like a frontrunner for the president, and he fucking completely cracked because everybody thought that he was on drugs because Hunter S. Thompson was just running around saying there's these Brazilian witch doctors are coming in to treat this guy.
01:56:13.000There's stuff out there that can help people, but a large percentage of these fighters are silently suffering, and we don't ever hear about it.
01:56:21.000They say it's supposed to be that it's like the argument is because they're not using a glove, like that football is supposed to be.
01:56:28.000I mean, wasn't that the sort of rationale that you were going to have less impact in boxing because the boxing gloves?
01:56:35.000But it's remember, it's all the sub-concussive blows.
01:56:38.000It's not necessarily the one shot knocking you out as much as the repeated kind of like small little bit of brain.
01:56:46.000I'm sure that's like, they're all bad for you.
01:57:06.000And depending upon how intelligent your camp is, like some people are really smart and they'll spar where they're not hitting each other hard and then maybe one day of the week they go live, but you do it with trusted, you know, they're very close to you.
01:57:19.000These are people that you care about and love, so they're not going to try to hurt you on purpose.
01:58:20.000But for that glory, for that one moment when they win and the fucking 16,000 people are on their feet screaming, there's probably no drug like that that could ever reproduce it.
01:58:29.000And those guys chase that high for their entire life.
01:58:32.000And then after it's over, they feel oddly detached.
02:00:21.000I don't know what his levels were, but they were like superhuman levels.
02:00:24.000And there was a moment in time for a few years where they allowed him to use testosterone therapy.
02:00:30.000And people refer to it as the TRT Vitor years because he was fucking terrifying because he has the mind of a veteran, an incredible amount of experience, but now his body is moving like a 25-year-old.
02:00:43.000And so he was just annihilating people, just lighting people on fire.
02:00:48.000So they're not allowed to use testosterone or no, they can't use anything.
02:00:55.000They're trying to take that and reform that.
02:00:59.000But there's a lot of ignorance about peptides, what they actually do.
02:01:02.000I mean, all it's allowing you to do is soft tissue injuries, heal quicker, and optimize your body's ability to produce hormones.
02:01:08.000So instead of adding exogenous hormones, you're allowing your body to produce them more naturally, and it just makes you more healthy.
02:01:16.000For a very unhealthy job where you're getting hurt all the time, it's going to be better for the sport, better for the athletes to allow them to all use it.
02:01:25.000And it's also, there's no long-term damage that's going to do like steroids, where it shuts down your endocrine system.
02:01:54.000There's stuff probably right now that people are using that's slipping through.
02:01:58.000And there's a lot of experts that have, like, one of the things is animal-derived testosterone.
02:02:04.000So testosterone, one of the, they use a carbon isotope test, I think, I believe that's what they use, to figure out where the testosterone came from.
02:02:12.000So if your testosterone is like at a very high level, they test all your other ratios.
02:02:17.000They go, well, no, it all seems likely.
02:02:43.000But if they can figure out a way to, and there's a lot of proof of concept to this, can they figure out a way to extract testosterone from animal sources?
02:03:43.000Because it's like so much water is being processed through the body that it doesn't have time to show the testosterone.
02:03:47.000So there's a way to mask it, especially with like things that you would add to the IV.
02:03:53.000So there's no, you can't, it's only food and approved supplements through like really high-level labs like Thorn, like Thorn supplements where it's third-party tested.
02:04:03.000So they don't, they can't do anything.
02:04:06.000And those TRT Vitor days are my favorite fights to watch.
02:04:11.000Did they stop doing fighting because they thought it was like advantaging certain people or they shit happened that they're like, this is fucked up?
02:04:17.000Well, they like, look at the difference.
02:04:18.000That's TRT Vitor on the left, and that's him on the right when they made him get off of it.
02:04:46.000Because you can jack your levels way above a normal human being's.
02:04:50.000And that's what a lot of guys, there were a few fighters that were pulled from cards because, like, say, if a really high level is like 1100, they were testing like 18, 1900.
02:05:00.000They were like people that have never lived before.
02:08:01.000I mean, look, when Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and those guys were cracking out home runs, it was one of the most exciting times in baseball.
02:09:21.000By the way, John beat Vitor when Vitor was in his prime, and Vitor caught John in a full arm bar, totally locked his arm out, hyperextended it, popped it, went backwards.
02:10:17.000The whole definition of amateurism has gotten a little bit like, you know, yes.
02:10:22.000People find like a convenient definition of it according to what's their, like you see in college sports is changing and stuff.
02:10:27.000Like, look, I got no problem if you're going to apply the rules evenly, but sometimes when it feels like it's just an excuse to like for the NCAA to make a billion dollars off the TV deal, like, no, no, no, you guys, you're getting it, you're getting an education.
02:10:38.000It's like a little bit like, yeah, you're in education.
02:10:46.000Yeah, and I'm glad they've changed that with college sports because these guys are the reason why you're filling up the seats and they deserve that money.
02:10:52.000Not even one of them is going to be in the NFL.
02:11:31.000And it's got its own competitive aspect and it's a lot, you know, but like, okay, great.
02:11:36.000If it's if you really bet on yourself and then the expectation is, well, I got to do something that's interesting enough that people want to watch it.
02:11:44.000How do you guys decide on projects that you choose?
02:11:47.000Like, I'm sure you have so many options now.
02:11:49.000Like, what makes you say, this is what I'm going to spend the next six months doing?
02:11:54.000It's really, I mean, there are a bunch of different factors, like the director is being the most important one.
02:12:00.000But if you read a script and like we've read so many thousands and thousands of scripts and written so many scripts and worked on so many movies that If we read something and it's that thing we were talking about earlier, you know, you get that kind of emotional, something happens when you read it.
02:12:20.000You go, okay, well, then you pay attention to it, maybe read it again, go, wait a minute.
02:12:24.000You know, if it moves you in that way, then, you know, ultimately the big decision is saying yes because you're going to spend the last point over which you have total control.
02:13:40.000Like we spent this whole week in New York doing, you know, I don't know how many interviews, you know, the quick ones with all the five-minute interviews, all the evening shows, the day shows.
02:14:01.000If you look at it, that's it because they've changed to like all of it feels kind of produced and forced and advertised and people have become resistant to anything that feels kind of like a gimmick and a shtick and you go on and you do your song and dance and they say the thing it looks great and nobody cares.
02:14:15.000Like they're looking to go either because somebody they know says it's interesting or somebody that they is trusted and a trusted person is in like your, like you said, your feed, right?
02:14:24.000And it's your friend or your cousin or it's or they affix that to somebody which has become a more rare thing like who's a like a legitimate neutral arbiter, right?
02:14:34.000Who I can't predict what they're going to say before I go there.
02:14:38.000There are a few of those, fewer and fewer of those people in the world, even those are proliferation of more and more voices.
02:14:47.000Like the form of entertainment is getting shorter and shorter and shorter.
02:14:51.000So you're like a seven second, you know, we're an advertising company.
02:14:54.000We do most of the spots that we release, like 15 second spots, six second spots for social, the ones most people see.
02:15:00.000And then there's this one form, which is like long form discussions that are whatever, two hours long.
02:15:08.000And the amazing thing to me is, you know, in a world where it seems like you can't get people to pay attention more than a few seconds, there's a kind of a hunger for that.
02:15:16.000So there's like this form, and that's why you see these are getting more popular.
02:15:19.000Obviously, you have this massive audience.
02:15:21.000And it's kind of flying in the face of the whole other trend.
02:15:26.000And I think, and I don't know, that it probably has something to do with like, who do I think is authentic?
02:15:32.000And am I actually going to willing to extend my two hours of my time to sit there and listen through?
02:15:38.000And that an argument that people probably do appreciate and understand conversations that have context and nuance and where there's like a back and forth.
02:15:47.000They're just much more selective about who they're willing to kind of give that sort of voice to in their life.
02:15:55.000It's also the voice of the public too, because when people start talking about things online and things go viral online and people just start like saying how great they love the film or how great this album is or something like that, it just takes off organically now.
02:16:09.000Yeah, and that has more weight than anything.
02:16:11.000If you feel like somebody else who obviously has no dog in the fight is going, hey, this is great.
02:16:24.000And so the closer you can get to that, which is why I think the act of, A, like telling the same story about you should go see the movie to a bunch of people with a certain limited reach, it's just not that efficient.
02:16:40.000But you have to because it's like, well, we sat down with our own Patricia Zanaka and talked about the movie.
02:16:45.000And you kind of do that ostensibly because it means a little bit more in that market.
02:16:51.000But I think ultimately it's like more and more people realize they're being sold to, see through the fucking act and this sort of bullshit of it.
02:16:59.000They recognize that, you know, you go out and sell every movie, you know what I mean?
02:17:14.000And I think it's also we know that when you're sitting down with extra or all these things, like that's just their job to sit down with people.
02:17:21.000They're not doing it because they want to.
02:17:58.000I think also like this format, at least I know why I started listening to the podcast was because in the world, like the divisive kind of, the way everybody was talking, these sound bites and all this shit.
02:18:12.000And it was just like the ability to just listen to human beings talk, often who had different points of view, but like had a civil conversation was like, was such a welcome thing, given the kind of the hysterical kind of frenzy of divisiveness that's kind of, it just feels, it's just like, you know, it's like if I open my phone and look at the news, I've been like, fuck.
02:19:10.000Isn't it funny that this has become the shared cultural like we listen to that podcast and then actually experience that because and also people, why don't people trust the media?
02:19:19.000Well, because the media doesn't do that because they compress it and because the truth, it's money.
02:19:24.000Because actually doing that is not with money.
02:19:25.000It's just ratings and the perceived idea that like, well, if you simplify it or you position it one way or another, you engender outrage and that's simple or just pure one-sided ideas that are that are simple.
02:19:40.000But the news used to be the idea was, look, here's the FCC.
02:19:44.000We're going to let these networks broadcast their shows and make money on it.
02:21:04.000After a while, he kind of started repeating his shtick and I kind of didn't really talk about what I was wondering about.
02:21:10.000And you form your own, that's like forming your own judgment.
02:21:13.000Pete Buttigig actually talked about that being dangerous on podcasts.
02:21:17.000He's like, because you go on there and you have your points, but you'll get revealed over the course of a few hours.
02:21:24.000Like you can only stick to these lines.
02:21:27.000Yeah, you can only talking points and bullshit.
02:21:30.000And then what happens is people just like there was an art to like, look at how great that communicator stick to the message and they do their points.
02:21:37.000Okay, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, but any longer than that, it just starts to look like a fucking robot on, you know, and like I said, what we need to follow through with, you know, like, yeah, sometimes you can get the same hand gesture and the same bit with that, but I'm, you know.
02:21:50.000Sometimes you find out they're full of shit just by having them talk about other things.
02:21:54.000You know, like, tell me, do you like cooking?
02:21:56.000You know, like, just like, and then you just see like some concocted.
02:22:00.000They're thinking, what makes me look good about cooking?
02:22:18.000Well, that's the other thing about people that are online too much is they're so concerned with other people's opinions that they don't have enough time to formulate their own.
02:22:28.000They're just so concerned with how people are going to perceive everything you say that you're like handcuffed.
02:22:39.000I mean, we were talking the other day.
02:22:40.000We were saying about like one of the benefits of getting older and doing this for a long time is you realize like nobody really gives a shit as much about you as you do.
02:22:50.000You know, you just kind of kind of give a fuck.
02:22:52.000Nobody remembers in your 20s and 30s and thinking like this is really important.