00:05:29.000Well, you know, they make guesses based on stuff they find there.
00:05:34.000But it's when you carbon date an object, right?
00:05:36.000So you could go visit the pyramids today, right?
00:05:39.000And you could leave behind some stuff, right?
00:05:41.000And then everybody dies, humanity dies out in a cataclysm, and then a hundred thousand years from now, people start looking through the piles of some of these sites, and the pyramids would probably still be there.
00:05:53.000And if there was any organic material left, like a book that you left, or a leather bound book, or some piece of wood, they could carbon date that.
00:06:01.000And then that would say the time that you were there, but it wouldn't say the time that the actual structure was made.
00:07:21.000So 280 feet deep into the ground with ventilation shafts, wells, stables, wine and oil presses, storage rooms, chapels, and school rooms, plus a half ton circular stone doors that could be rolled shut from the inside only.
00:07:37.000So they were obviously either fighting off some sort of an army or the outside.
00:09:09.000Do you ever wonder why you're so lucky?
00:09:13.000Obviously, you're very talented, but it's also there's a lot of talented people that don't, nothing ever happens for them.
00:09:18.000I think it comes down to the ability to say no.
00:09:23.000At crucial times, when I was facing down either, you know, You know, I remember when I first had my first child and I was broke and I got offered this comedy that was dumb and it was a million bucks and I needed the money.
00:09:42.000And I also had an opportunity if I waited, Robert Altman was trying to put together the player.
00:09:50.000So I threw caution in the wind and said, no, I can't do that stupid comedy.
00:10:45.000Even though there's all sorts of influence that want to lead you into the other direction.
00:10:49.000There was a period of time about 10, 15 years ago when I got offered, in the course of seven months, I got offered to play the head of the CIA three times.
00:11:03.000You should wonder what that's all about.
00:11:12.000And then a couple years after that, and again, you know, you're looking down at your bills and your mortgages and stuff, and you need the money and just have to, I don't want to do that, right?
00:11:23.000Then a few years after that, I got offered in the course of a couple months, one, to play the head of FIFA, which is a corrupt organization, but in the movie, it was, you know, You know, they were the best people in the world, right?
00:11:40.000Not to mention that the head of FIFA was a Brazilian, and I had, you know, but they were offering a ton of money, and basically it was FIFA producing a movie about itself.
00:11:49.000And after that, I got an offer to play the head of the Chilean mine that had just had this huge disaster.
00:12:25.000And they almost bought me, but I just, I have to, at times I just have to look, you know, face it down and say, listen, it's not right in my heart.
00:13:55.000I mean, I remember that because I was.
00:13:58.000Gosh, I guess I was either right out of high school or like in that area where the whole Oliver Stone thing was on television all the time.
00:14:09.000And there was this guy, Jimmy Tingle, hilarious Boston stand up comedian, who had a great joke about it where they're interviewing Ronald Reagan.
00:14:48.000And we performed it with the actors' gang, yeah.
00:14:51.000There was a meme that was on social media recently that was.
00:14:55.000It showed Oliver North during the whole Iran Contra trials when, you know, they got caught selling drugs in Los Angeles to fund the Contras versus the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
00:15:46.000Well, this is kind of the only time in our lifetimes where there's actual real independent media, where there's independent journalists that are not connected to any major corporations that are operating either on Substack or online or on YouTube or on X.
00:16:01.000It's fascinating because they're the ones that are exposing all these connections that the media and the Central Intelligence Agency and all these other government organizations have had.
00:16:12.000Where they've all been working together forever, spinning narratives on TV.
00:16:17.000And so, like anytime something like the Iraq war happens, where they go, Oh, we've got weapons of mass destruction.
00:17:50.000I was one of maybe five people that were famous that came out against that.
00:18:00.000Went on, you know, in various television shows and made a couple speeches.
00:18:04.000I got my appearance at the Baseball Hall of Fame for Bull Durham, 15th anniversary or something like that, canceled by the head of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
00:18:15.000It was real, you know, it was funny because I was doing a show at the time and I heard about it and I started writing a response, but.
00:18:25.000It was already printed by the time I had my response, right?
00:18:30.000So I got the next day, I got a bunch of people contacting me.
00:18:35.000I hired a crisis PR person for the first time in my life and wound up getting my letter to Dale Petrosky, the head of the Hall of Fame, out there with the press release.
00:18:48.000They were basically ambushed, trying to call me a traitor and all this stuff.
00:19:11.000This was right when we were cooking up the war, 2003.
00:19:14.000So, and I remember, you know, and I also wrote a piece about that called Embedded that we've performed for the first time three weeks after Bush landed on that aircraft carrier with a mission accomplished thing.
00:19:30.000So that wound up playing it across the country.
00:19:35.000We toured it and played the New York Public Theater and played in London.
00:19:39.000But it was attacked when we went to New York.
00:19:42.000You know, they sent someone from, that wasn't a theater critic, while we were still in previews and published this thing in, I think it was the New Republic, basically calling me a conspiracy theorist, anti Semite, all this stuff, to try to discredit this play that was playing at the Public Theater.
00:20:21.000I was reading stuff from Europe and what they were writing about the weapons of mass destruction and that there wasn't any evidence and it wasn't being covered like it was here.
00:20:33.000It was more open, more transparent, the reporting.
00:20:38.000So I was trusting that and I trusting sources that I had trusted in the past.
00:20:42.000And realized that when I did question, the attacks were vociferous.
00:20:49.000So, that usually is a tell, like in poker.
00:22:52.000I usually would take, every year I would take my kids to the Final Four, and that year it was in San Antonio.
00:23:01.000And I remember thinking, oh my God, I'm going down to Texas, and they're going to yell at me down there, and no one said a damn thing.
00:23:07.000So the reality on the ground was a lot different than the reality they were creating.
00:23:11.000The reality they were creating was to intimidate other people into silence.
00:23:14.000It wasn't based on any kind of real reality of people being angry at me.
00:23:20.000It was more them trying to intimidate others.
00:23:23.000And so that same thing kind of happened.
00:23:27.000Happen, I recognized that same smell when COVID was happening, when people came out and started asking questions and were deplatformed or marginalized or canceled.
00:23:41.000And, you know, I followed what you were going through with the ivermectin, which was a drug that I had taken, and, you know, I had lost my sense of smell, and a day later it was back.
00:23:55.000So I knew there was something going on with that.
00:23:57.000And, You know, in an emergency, why not find whatever you can treat until your magic potion arrives?
00:24:07.000It was like the completely disingenuous characterization of it as a veterinary drug and calling it horse paste or horse dewormer, which is crazy.
00:24:53.000They said that people in Oklahoma were waiting in line at the emergency room with gunshot wounds because they couldn't get in there because so many people were overdosing from ivermectin.
00:25:47.000I suspect that that whole period of time was another way to divide us, you know, in the larger picture.
00:25:54.000You know, orchestrated chaos masquerading as a revolution, you know.
00:26:01.000There's been so many of those things over the past five years, you know, alliances that you're building, and then all of a sudden there's a new.
00:26:10.000Crisis, and now you don't like those people that you were building alliances with, and it's just one after the other.
00:26:16.000And I ultimately, at the end of the day, I think it's all about division, it's all about dividing us and making us argue with each other, not finding common ground.
00:26:25.000And that's ultimately the strategy that's been used from time immemorial you know, for the power to stay in power.
00:26:35.000How do you get people fighting with each other?
00:26:37.000Right, yeah, people don't like to hear that, but that's That's a strategy that's been used all throughout history.
00:26:46.000And especially in today's day and age when you have social media and then you have not just our government but many governments that have fake accounts.
00:26:55.000And these people just get outraged about things or attack things or have a narrative that they push.
00:27:01.000And you don't know if it's real people, you don't know what it is, just a bunch of accounts.
00:28:25.000Yeah, it was crazy not just from the propaganda perspective, but from actual people that I knew that were really terrified that got caught up in it all.
00:28:33.000And it was, you know, mass formation psychosis is what some people called it.
00:28:38.000I think that's a good description of it.
00:28:57.000And they were doing it because they wanted to be, they wanted a solution, they wanted to be correct.
00:29:01.000And unfortunately, There's a lot of people in this world that don't experience much real adversity, and when real adversity comes to them, they fall apart and they don't know what to do, and they get scared and they lump up together in teams and then they reinforce each other and repeat the same things, and they all want to be a part of the right side of history or the right side of whatever it is.
00:29:25.000And also, they're being led to believe that that's the virtuous thing to do.
00:29:29.000And so it's not like their intentions are good.
00:29:33.000And because of that, you know, I've had a similar experience where, you know, friends of mine and people I love that, you know, fell into that as I did.
00:29:44.000I fell into it for a while, you know, that kind of fear-based kind of behavior.
00:29:48.000And I just, I've come to understand in my later years that one of the things that's truly liberating is the ability to say, I don't know.
00:30:36.000Faith and trust in people that are deemed experts, ultimately, throughout my experience, it's led to bad things.
00:30:45.000The experts that talked about weapons of mass destruction, the experts that talk about various things that have led us to violent altercations throughout the world, I don't trust them anymore.
00:31:00.000I trust the idea that there are many sides to a story and that there is very, there's a lot to Be gained from having dialogue with people you disagree with.
00:32:38.000If you question the brick, like, no, no, this is a fucking fluid thing that exists only if you allow people to ask questions.
00:32:45.000The moment you stop questioning data, then like, and even real experts, like guys from MIT and Harvard were getting deplatformed off of Twitter because they didn't believe it.
00:32:57.000They were saying, look, I don't think this lockdown idea is a good idea.
00:33:42.000We're dealing with the after effects of that.
00:33:45.000And gratefully, the kind of work we do brings them out again and gets them expressing emotions, making eye contact, having experiences with other children that are productive.
00:34:03.000Get out of that funk, but that was really scary to see those kids walk in to classes after that lockdown because they wouldn't make eye contact looking at the floor, you know, kind of de socialized and traumatized.
00:36:21.000But you'd get a couple of drinks in them when they were alone, they would tell you.
00:36:25.000Well, that begs the larger question is, you know, is it freedom of speech if when you freely speak, your job is threatened and your future is threatened?
00:36:35.000Is that, are we living in a free society, you know?
00:36:58.000And you get exposed to information that maybe you didn't know before you establish this opinion that you're arguing.
00:37:04.000Do you know what was the big tragedy, in my opinion, during that time period is that we totally lost the water cooler conversation, that accidental conversation that happens at work with a co worker who you don't necessarily agree with, but it's a human being expressing something to you.
00:37:27.000in person and you have to deal with that person and their opposing viewpoint.
00:37:34.000We got into our own silos of thought and algorithms of thought and everything we experienced during that period of time was an affirmation of what we believed rather than a challenge to it.
00:37:50.000And so the water cooler was completely eliminated.
00:37:53.000The idea that the accidental conversation at a bar where you're watching a Game on the television, and someone sits next to you that is not necessarily of your belief system, but you buy them a beer and you watch the game together.
00:38:10.000You know, all these moments of uh meeting up that were eliminated, and uh, you know, that's what I love about sports.
00:38:21.000I love that you can go watch a game and not think about politics, right?
00:38:26.000Think about your differences, and think about the team that you like, and and and support them together.
00:38:34.000any kind of gathering of individuals, music.
00:38:41.000What I love about the theater that we do is that we're able to take people to a common emotion.
00:38:47.000And we never want to have a completely we don't want audiences that think the same, right?
00:38:57.000You want a disparate amount of people, different beliefs, that you can get them to share a common emotion, get them to laugh together, get them to feel something and cry together.
00:39:09.000That's the community you're able to build when you're doing a show, as you know.
00:39:16.000What really pissed me off was that when we're, we have a theater in Los Angeles and it was two years we had to be closed.
00:39:24.000And a year and a half in, we were told we could open, but we'd have to check vaccine passports at the door.
00:39:32.000And I talked to some people at the theater and we agreed.
00:39:37.000Because what that is doing is it's basically saying the only people allowed in our theater are people that agree with what the government wanted.
00:39:49.000That betrays the whole purpose and function of what a theater should be.
00:39:54.000It's a gathering place for the community that might think differently to bring them together.
00:39:59.000And this was saying basically, if you agree, you can come in.
00:40:03.000And so we waited another six months before we opened the theater until everyone could come in.
00:40:11.000Yeah, there was a time where you had to have a vaccine passport in order to perform.
00:40:21.000There was an exemption in New York, and you had to have a vaccine passport if you wanted to go to a show, but you didn't have to have one if you were performing.
00:40:32.000So the whole audience had to have vaccine passports, but I didn't.
00:40:37.000And so there was a senator, I forget who it was, that was proposing a new law based on me sneaking through the loophole that performers should have to be vaccinated as well.
00:40:51.000That I didn't have a vaccine, and that I wasn't performing.
00:40:55.000You could have infected the entire Madison Square.
00:40:58.000I could have been a super spreader, yeah.
00:41:00.000But well, you know, in London, because I spent a lot of time over there in the last five years, but their West End rebounded immediately, unlike Broadway.
00:41:11.000And the reason it did is because during that time period, you could show a vaccine passport, but you could also show a negative test.
00:41:18.000So they didn't demand that you have a vaccine.
00:41:39.000Like, if the people are negative, they're negative.
00:41:40.000What do you give a shit if they're vaccinated?
00:41:42.000Also, what about people that got COVID and then recovered from it who have far superior immunity, like 7x superior immunity to people who were vaccinated?
00:42:14.000But, you know, I feel like it's a case study in a lot of.
00:42:17.000I mean, if there are people that are manipulating society, and I think there are, there's a lot of lessons that they learn from how we behave.
00:42:25.000And, you know, relatively speaking, without making light of the pandemic, relatively speaking, a fairly mild pandemic.
00:42:33.000In terms of, like, you know, the bubonic plague and all sorts of other things that have happened throughout history, the Spanish flu have killed way more people.
00:42:40.000Like, it could have been way worse, right?
00:42:43.000So, just one that was just twice as bad as the flu got people to behave like that.
00:42:51.000Well, the good news is, though, the uptake wasn't, you know, a lot of people took it because they had to.
00:43:00.000It wasn't, like, enthusiastically taking it.
00:43:04.000We did a play called Topsy Turvy, which was about.
00:43:07.000Lockdown, and we performed that in Eastern Europe and it was really interesting to see their response there, because I would one of them said afterwards, you know, I asked, you know what was the uptake on the vaccines in in Romania?
00:43:22.000And they said something like 40 percent.
00:43:26.000And they said well, you know, we lived under the Soviet Union for many years, so we know how to look like we comply when we're not complying.
00:43:36.000And I said, what else reminds you of the Soviet Union?
00:43:39.000They said, without a doubt, cancel culture.
00:43:42.000He said, well, Soviet Union used to keep files on all of us, right?
00:43:47.000So as long as you're a good party member, there wouldn't be a thing?
00:43:49.000Said yeah, but once you stepped out of line, they brought out that old file.
00:43:55.000Now, that affair with your secretary from 30 years ago.
00:43:57.000It's going to ruin your life, they're going to ruin your family, they're going to kill your career and they're going to make a big public display of it to show other people to stay in line.
00:44:09.000And they felt like cancel culture was basically operating in the same way As the Soviet Union did.
00:44:16.000And it was really interesting to see that perspective in Eastern Europe.
00:44:20.000People that have, you know, lived under that kind of oppressive situation and their perspective on modern day.
00:44:29.000That must have really made you think about what happened to you during the Iraq War.
00:45:19.000Yeah, that's a powerful thing when it hits you and you realize, oh my God, the truth doesn't matter here.
00:45:24.000Yeah, well, that's what's so scary about it is that in this country where freedom of speech is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of our society, it's one of the most important things we all recognize that separates us from everywhere else in history.
00:45:36.000Like, this is the first country where really it's written into the doctrine of the country.
00:45:42.000You're supposed to have the freedom, the ability to express yourself.
00:45:48.000Being attacked and suppressed in all sorts of different ways, not just stopping your ability to express yourself, but attacking you in a concerted effort and lying about you, just lying about you in order to scare other people.
00:46:01.000It's very Orwellian and it's very un American.
00:46:04.000And the fact that, like, the New York Post would do that to you, or whoever it was from the New York Post would do that, like, what the fuck, man?
00:46:10.000Well, the good news is there's no gulags.
00:46:13.000You know, they don't arrest you in the middle of the night and force you into some kind of prison.
00:46:28.000And if you are a person who really does appreciate what this experience and this experiment in self government, which was the United States, it's supposed to have free discourse.
00:47:02.000And there's people that have lost opportunities or in show business recently, including my ex Susan Sarandon, who was against what was happening in Israel and lost her agent and having a hard time finding work.
00:47:58.000And I think the point of it is to make a show of it and to say, see, we could do that to her, so we could do it to you, so shut the fuck up.
00:48:49.000It's crazy to go through something like that.
00:48:51.000And for you to have gone through it really early on, for you to have gone through that in 2003, I guess it really does inform your opinions, though.
00:49:00.000Like when you see things that are happening today, you go, okay, I've seen this before.
00:49:06.000Looking for after that was a way to be someone that was more involved with something that could affect change.
00:49:16.000In other words, I used my nonprofit, we started a prison program 20 years ago, and we see the change that happens.
00:49:29.000We have people that go in and basically offer rehabilitation in the form of theater and not doing plays or anything, but getting people to.
00:49:40.000Play emotions through characters that we introduce to them.
00:49:44.000And in doing so, unlocking emotions that have been suppressed for many, many years.
00:49:50.000So in prison, there's one go to emotion it's anger.
00:49:54.000That's your survival face, that's your mask on the yard.
00:49:58.000You have to be a badass or you're going to die.
00:50:01.000But sadness is compromising, fear is compromising, and happiness is genuinely not encouraged either.
00:50:12.000So We get these guys in a room, we get to introduce them to these stock characters from the Comedia dell'arte, and then they have to express their emotions and make choices with their emotions in improv.
00:50:24.000And what they find is that if someone approaches them in anger in an improv, the facilitator will encourage a different emotion in response to anger than anger, right?
00:50:35.000And what they come to understand is that they don't have to respond to anger with anger, there are other choices.
00:50:44.000In fact, in real life, they can do that too if they can do it in an improv.
00:50:48.000And so, what happens is these people tap into long dormant emotions and start to understand that they are more than the worst act that got them there.
00:50:59.000They tend to create bonds across gang ties, racial lines.
00:51:07.000When we're putting together a group, we ask that rival gangs are in the same room with each other.
00:51:13.000And what happens is these bonds are made through the sharing of emotion.
00:51:19.000These guys into an improv where they're all putting a flower on a grave of someone and saying something under their breath about the person that's deceased.
00:51:28.000And then at some point, the facilitator will say, Now look at each other.
00:51:31.000And they're looking at each other with these eyes of sadness, and they realize they have a lot in common, you know, in that shared emotion.
00:51:40.000I had two guys come up to me, one black guy, one white guy.
00:51:44.000They said, We've got to tell you what happened two weeks ago.
00:51:46.000We were, our shock callers said, You know, we're going to have a fight on the yard.
00:51:52.000You know, you never question the shot caller, and so you know what's going to happen.
00:51:57.000And so, what they did was they found each other, these two guys, and they rolled around on the floor acting like they were killing each other.
00:52:21.000It's amazing what happens when you experience something like that in person, when you see the transformation happen.
00:52:27.000And we see this in our school children as well.
00:52:30.000That's something that is deeply inspiring.
00:52:35.000You know that you've had something to do with a real change, right?
00:52:40.000Whereas for years I was asked to attend fundraisers and various causes.
00:52:48.000And yeah, it's great that they're doing that and it's great that they're raising money for these organizations that need it.
00:52:56.000But at the end of the day, you don't really feel like it did anything other than go to a dinner.
00:53:02.000And this was a way to get my hands dirty and really, you know, get in the struggle of it.
00:53:08.000And I found it to be so much more satisfying as far as whatever inclination I had towards activism was really fed by this as opposed to hopping from fundraiser to fundraiser.
00:53:26.000It felt like something that I could take that experience and then I could say to my group, let's expand, let's get into more and more prisons.
00:53:35.00018 prisons in the state of California doing these programs.
00:53:38.000Did you have to develop a curriculum, like how you begin to reach out to these guys and how you set it up?
00:53:47.000It took a couple years, you know, kind of pilot program in one prison in Chino and Norco in Southern California.
00:53:57.000Trial and error, you know, what's the way to do it, what's the way not to do it.
00:54:03.000Of course, you go through a training with the prison system of certain things.
00:54:07.000To watch out for, and you develop these lines where you say, We're here to do this, not to talk about your case.
00:54:16.000There's all kinds of things you learn how to avoid the distractions that will derail the program.
00:54:23.000But essentially, it's a very physical way of working, and it's also, there is a lot of fun in it.
00:54:31.000So those two things together allow the entry for these guys that are, you know, They're in the room because they want to be there, but it's weird stuff we're asking them to do.
00:54:43.000And if they can have a laugh about it and then something about it shifts some kind of consciousness inside them, that means something to people.
00:54:53.000You've got to remember these people are, you know, when we started, there was only one other program in the state of California that was offering rehabilitation through any theater.
00:55:07.000So there were a couple music programs and two theater programs, and now we're able to lobby the state to. get more funding for arts and corrections because art is a transformer.
00:55:20.000It is something that can shift consciousness.
00:55:24.000I've seen it with my own, the work that I've done.
00:55:29.000I've seen how people can think in a different way after they see something in the theater or in movies or a good stand-up can do the same thing.
00:55:41.000How George Carlin used to shift my consciousness every new special because he would always be challenging me.
00:57:32.000Who was it in Apatow's documentary about Carlin?
00:57:36.000There was a comedian that said, George Carlin was basically in the early part of the century, in the 1900s, philosophers debating used to be a huge deal, right?
00:57:49.000Like hundreds of people, thousands of people come watch people debate two different points of view.
00:57:55.000He said, That's what the current philosophers of our generation are the better stand up comedians.
00:58:02.000The ones that test your belief system by saying something that might be controversial or challenges your worldview.
00:58:12.000That's the great purpose and function of a philosopher or a stand up comedian is to take your worldview, shatter it a little bit, and make you rethink.
00:58:27.000Was sort of for our generation, he was like the first guy that really did that in a way that, like, some of the things that he said weren't even designed to be funny at all.
00:58:37.000It was just designed to make you think about things differently.
00:58:39.000And then he would hit you with some funny things after that for to keep you occupied.
00:59:40.000So they had a series of these debates on television.
00:59:44.000Gore Vidal being a progressive and William F. Buckley being a conservative.
00:59:48.000It was very interesting because this kind of hadn't happened before on television where you have these long form discussions with these two guys just intellectually jabbing at each other.
01:00:19.000And Gore agreed to play Brickley Paste, my Democratic opponent, right?
01:00:25.000And so he played a politician, which is something he always kind of flirted with in his real life.
01:00:33.000And so I got to be quite friendly with him.
01:00:35.000And I actually did a documentary that I'm editing right now about four soldiers from World War II that became great writers.
01:00:48.000Gore, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, and Howard Zinn are all in this documentary.
01:00:55.000I filmed it many years ago, shelved it, and now I'm in the final stages of putting it together.
01:01:01.000I'm opening a new website on September 1st, and this is one of the many things that I have in my vault and my storage units that I've just been getting out over the past year and finding all this crazy stuff that I have that I've never finished because I've been going from project to project to project.
01:01:17.000So I slowed down a little bit and just opened up some.
01:01:21.000Sealed boxes, and it's been really fun.
01:01:25.000It's one of the things is also, I used to fuck around on film sets with this, you know, when I had enough money to buy a video camera for the first time.
01:01:35.000And so I started making these little short films on movie sets.
01:01:39.000And one of them is there's two films from when I was doing Howard the Duck.
01:01:47.000And, you know, one of those endless productions that just went on and on and on.
01:01:52.000So, I just started amusing myself by making my own little short films, including, you know, I'm sure illegally using the duck itself, you know, which I made a character in one of the films.
01:05:45.000And it was, they were trying so hard and.
01:05:48.000It just was, it was, you know, I felt for everybody, including the director.
01:05:52.000I felt he would try his damn best, you know, and it was just betrayal by puppeteering.
01:06:00.000And it wasn't the puppeteers, it was the actual machinery.
01:06:05.000Well, it's kind of, if you think about Star Wars in particular, it's kind of amazing.
01:06:08.000They were able to pull that off with the technology that was available at the time to have this crazy movie where, like, the cantina scene and you go in there, there's all these different fucking creatures from.
01:06:23.000Different planets, and like they did not have very good technology back then.
01:06:28.000Like, if you watch that cantina scene now, like, whoa, looks terrible, right?
01:06:33.000So clunky, like, the masks don't move, like, everyone's got their faces stuck.
01:06:38.000It's almost like, you know, looking at claymation around that time, you know?
01:07:19.000Which is why a lot of the movie special effects guys, like the monster guys, like Rick Baker and along those lines, who did Star Wars, American Werewolf in London, that thing outside, the wolf that you see in the hallway, they wanted to make sure that it looked like a real thing, right?
01:11:32.000So 31 for the first vinyl disc, 48 for the first real album.
01:11:37.000Which is really nuts because if you think about like all the amazing albums of the 60s, you're talking about a technology that didn't exist 20 years prior.
01:12:53.000You know, people like, as the world gets more digital, people want things that are organic, something that a person made, something that seems like it makes more sense.
01:13:03.000I've been finding, you know, in my search for my archive and everything, cassette tapes that I put on.
01:13:16.000There's more information in a little cassette tape than on a, you know, whether it's MP3 that's been compressed, you know, and compressed and compressed and compressed.
01:13:27.000But, you know, reel to reels are obviously sound still great, but the cassette tapes really survived.
01:13:33.000I've been digitizing everything, of course, you know, just to make sure that they don't decay.
01:13:39.000But it's been really interesting that my dad's music he recorded on cassette tapes.
01:13:48.000They did five albums as the Highwaymen and You know, but he was a classical musician and did choral music, and so he had a group that he would record on these cassette tapes.
01:13:59.000And so we've been digitizing those because we're, I'm going to put them all on my new website, this thing called Robbins Radio, which will be my dad, my granddad, my brother, and myself, the music that we've done over the years, kind of playing on a constant loop when you come onto the website.
01:14:20.000I've been digitizing also his scores, and, um, You know, he wrote music by hand, and so I've got boxes and boxes of that that I've trying to transcribe and make available probably in about six months.
01:17:44.000That's now been replaced by an algorithm.
01:17:46.000And I'm not trusting that algorithm is going to find it's, you know, that's going to show me the way to Battle of Algiers or any kind of these great movies.
01:17:55.000I just, if the personal was lost, same thing with record stores.
01:18:01.000You could go in and like, what's new and hear what's playing and, you know, talk to the guy and get what his opinion was.
01:18:08.000And bookstores too, you know, it's like, if you told me 30 years ago that it would be, you know, it's very hard to find a bookstore, record store, or a video store, I would say you're crazy.
01:18:20.000But now it's all like very convenient.
01:18:22.000You have access to everything, but you don't have the arbiter that is a person.
01:18:28.000You have the arbiter that's almost a machine.
01:20:29.000Or the idea that, you know, if there's only three choices, you're going to stumble, you might stumble into something you wouldn't have watched.
01:23:17.000And so that's a good example of where someone's business.
01:23:21.000Acumen or greed, or whatever you want to call it, winds up producing something quite lovely.
01:23:30.000You know, something that actually I'm really grateful for because so many people know that film and it's been like number one on IMDb for the last 15 years.
01:24:37.000And, you know, I think also a lot of producers in Hollywood or studios lost faith in their adult audience even before the pandemic.
01:24:48.000I mean, they were producing movies for teenagers.
01:24:54.000And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that, but because they can be, that can drive an economic engine.
01:25:00.000But, At the same time, you know, films like Shawshank Redemption would not get made today because they're about something that isn't about the whole huge multi platform experience of an action movie.
01:25:20.000And that's kind of migrated into streamers.
01:25:23.000You know, the people, adults that like to watch stuff, tend to watch these longer form things.
01:25:28.000And that's a nice thing in a way because it's allowing filmmakers to make 10 hour films.
01:25:36.000You know, when you think about it, a season of a show is 10 hours.
01:25:41.000And so you can think in this, like, kind of long form of telling a story, which is a nice thing, which would have been impossible in old Hollywood, you know.
01:25:51.000You've got to keep it under two hours.
01:25:53.000So now you have the opportunity, creators have the opportunity to create long form entertainment.
01:26:00.000Well, that I think is one of the beautiful things about some of these Netflix series is that you, like, things like Stranger Things, you essentially have.
01:26:08.000You know, a 30 hour movie, or however many episodes it is.
01:26:13.000And like Ozark is a great example of that.
01:28:12.000I've heard it, I've been told about, uh, you know, one of the guys I worked with was, uh, I won't say his name, but, you know, when I was directing for television, I did a couple episodes on this show, and he told me about a show that he was doing where there were three actors that were giving him a real hard time.
01:28:32.000And one of them was getting in trouble because of, you know, sexual inappropriateness.
01:28:38.000One was getting in trouble because of, you know, they were too much in their head.
01:28:42.000And the other was, you know, something else, you know, something about another.
01:28:47.000Basically, they shot them all in the anatomy that was associated with.
01:29:35.000Well, you know, there's a lot of fear in Hollywood when it comes to AI and replacing writers and replacing actors and just replacing this whole human created thing of storytelling.
01:29:49.000And I think writers in particular are really terrified because you could kind of, you know, with.
01:29:56.000AI engines today, you could kind of take a few films, right?
01:30:00.000Like you could kind of take like a bullet and heat and a few, and they say, make me a John Wick meets bullet meets heat.
01:32:11.000But there was compromise or writers for the writers' union.
01:32:16.000I don't think that that protection was held up at the last negotiations, and I think that we're going to see the ramifications of that, unfortunately.
01:32:25.000Well, that's what's scary is that ultimately economics has a major impact on the decisions that they make, and it's way cheaper to do it that way.
01:32:37.000It's way cheaper to use AI to write things than.
01:32:41.000Especially really talented screenwriters, even though it's kind of drawing on the past creative work of really talented screenwriters.
01:33:35.000People, you know, when you see a great something that someone made, one of the things that you really like about it is that it came from a human being's creativity.
01:34:27.000And it's so maddening to try to set a movie up right now in Hollywood because what they want is they want someone, an actor that's worth $20 million, and they'll give you $10 million to do the film.
01:34:40.000You get the guy that they normally would have to pay $20 million, and you get him to do your film for, you know, $300,000.
01:35:57.000That's what is exciting about, you know, it's like when you're trying a new material in a club and you're like, I don't know if this is going to work, but.
01:36:20.000I don't know how much we have that experience anymore in Hollywood.
01:36:25.000Do you think it's just because of the extreme cost that's involved?
01:36:29.000I mean, just to promote a film, like if you have a film and it's got a budget, like especially, I think it's probably why so many superhero movies get greenlit, right?
01:36:50.000And so you kind of have to, you know, like, if you're a money person, if you're not a creative person, you're just a money person who happens to be in the movie business, which I'm sure a lot of them are.
01:37:02.000They're just looking at it as a return on investment.
01:37:48.000I wouldn't want to be an investor, but I also, you know, I have a nostalgia for a time when Robert Altman could make a film, you know, and it could just blow people's minds.
01:38:04.000And then the next film he made, you know, as he would gleefully tell you, they're going to hate this one, you know.
01:38:10.000And I love that, you know, and people would either love it or hate it, but he was making his own films, he was making distinctive films.
01:38:23.000Is it more difficult or easier to get a film released today if you make it yourself?
01:38:32.000Because you don't have distribution, really.
01:38:34.000So, you know, I suppose in the future there's going to be some form of distribution that will be more egalitarian, but right now it's a huge risk.
01:38:47.000Like, say if you decided you're going to get a bunch of investors together and put together a film, do you have to get distribution before you even.
01:39:01.000Like, uh, I think basically the economic model right now is those the investors want to be paid and not be losing money by the time they start shooting.
01:39:14.000In other words, they're not going to lose money, they've already sold it for more than they've paid, and so there's really no risk, no gamble.
01:39:25.000Then if the movie catches fire at a film festival, then they'll put the money into advertising it.
01:39:31.000If it doesn't catch fire at a film festival or with critics, they'll just, you know, okay, I already made my money.
01:39:37.000You know, we'll just sell it to, you know, DVDs, whatever.
01:39:41.000God, what a fucking shitty environment to create something.
01:40:00.000That's one of the reasons I wanted to do this website, was because I've got all this stuff that is unreleased and just going to start releasing it slowly.
01:40:10.000Is that more satisfying to do it that way?
01:40:12.000No, it's more satisfying to go to Cannes and win Best Actor.
01:40:15.000I mean, much more satisfying when you have a machine behind you that's supporting it.
01:40:47.000I was in three movies after I won the Oscar for Mystic River that I've considered three of the best movies in my career, but nobody's seen them.
01:40:56.000This is Secret Life of Words, Code 46.
01:41:05.000But they came at a time where, you know, the producers or the people that were distributing them didn't really want to risk the money that it would take.
01:41:16.000See, that's where there's a room for like a Siskel and Ebert type character today that can find those films and say, hey, this one slipped under the radar, but this is really an actual person that's a giant movie buff that can go back and watch these and comment on them and.
01:41:33.000We don't really back then, Siskel and Ebert were the guys.
01:41:37.000If they gave you two thumbs down, you were fucked.
01:42:02.000And they would talk about it with great understanding and great passion, the subtleties of the performances and what really was put together.
01:42:38.000There's so much content that if you had a trusted source, you know, a person who's like a real good critic of stuff, Really, not even a critic, an appreciator is a better word.
01:42:50.000Like someone who's a real passionate enthusiast of film and of different creative works that could just talk about something and recommend stuff.
01:43:01.000But then there's the burnout of that, too.
01:43:03.000Like, you know, I would talk to some of these guys, and they'd be like, you know, for every one of those good films, we have to see like 10 Drek, you know, and the time spent watching these things kind of mind numbingly painful for some of these people.
01:43:22.000You know, imagine having to, you know, weed through the muck to get to the gym.
01:43:26.000I guess, but can't you just walk out of the film?
01:43:29.000Like, just like you walk out of a movie theater and you're like, this movie sucks.
01:43:43.000But if you're watching it at home, I mean, it's really what you're trying to do.
01:43:46.000If you want to be one of the persons who says, this is the worst fucking movie I've ever seen in my life, and that's what you're doing.
01:43:52.000But if you want to be a person who's just an enthusiast of great stuff and just keep it on the positive side, there's so much great stuff to review and so many great things from the past that people haven't seen before that you could sort of turn people on to.
01:44:43.000Like, I guess you have it right now with The Odyssey.
01:44:45.000Like, a lot of people are, it's like one of those movies that's so big, people are scrambling to go see it in the movie theaters and it's getting people excited about it.
01:44:54.000Along with a lot of the culture war controversies that everybody that I know that's seen it, I haven't seen it yet, says, Fucking throw all that away.
01:48:50.000So, you have from 27, and then just a few decades later, you have On the Waterfront, you have The Hustler, you have these incredible movies that.
01:49:01.000They just have to figure out on the fly, you know, how to do this.
01:49:05.000Citizen Kane, they have to figure out on the fly how to do this.
01:49:10.000But also, if you ever watch the first films, like the silent films, and the ability to tell a story without words, which was a whole other, you know, talent.
01:49:22.000I mean, you watch those Chaplin films, that man was insanely talented.
01:50:50.000About a murderer that's stalking a bunch of people.
01:50:55.000Yeah, I was a huge fan of that whole genre of filmmaking.
01:51:01.000Well, something's so exciting about it because it, like, when you limit the sensory input, like, you have to read the words and it's all black and white and there's music playing.
01:51:11.000It's like it's a totally different thing that you're taking in.
01:51:46.000And when you think about human history, like when we think about like the 1500s versus the 1600s, we kind of think it's Basically, the same.
01:51:53.000If you're born in 1520 or 1620, it's fucking exactly the same.
01:51:57.000But if you're born in 1920 or 2020, it's a fucking completely different world you're living in.
01:57:21.000A thing that can take you away from the other things?
01:57:23.000Something to make more beautiful every day.
01:57:27.000Something to, you know, something to care for.
01:57:32.000It's, you know, whether it's the garden, I have a garden in Los Angeles that, you know, I grow herbs and, you know, to walk down and put those herbs, those fresh herbs in the omelet you're making.
01:57:45.000You know, it's a small thing, but it's huge.
01:57:48.000And then I have, back east, I have, I planted a garden with my son this year, you know, like vegetable garden.
01:58:49.000And that's a joy because now you're set for the winter, right?
01:58:53.000Now you've got a refrigerator full of pickled stuff.
01:58:56.000And, you know, to be able to bite into a Crisp pickle that you grew as a cucumber in the summer in December, it's like, you know, this is how they survived.
01:59:09.000You know, this is those, you know, the storage of crops and how you make them survive through the winter.
01:59:18.000It's a skill that, you know, that, well, that's why we're still here.
01:59:24.000And then you find out that pickling and fermented foods and all these things are fantastic for your body.
01:59:58.000It's, and, you know, fermented foods, and, you know, I've learned, you know, so much about, um, The gut biome and how to make that healthier, and all these challenges we're up against with all the poisons in our food and how to get around them and how to clean yourself out.
02:00:21.000I just did a cleanse, one of those master cleanses I just did 14 days on, where you don't eat anything for 14 days.
02:00:28.000It's amazing how great you feel at the end of it.
02:03:19.000And so your body's burning fat and ketones.
02:03:22.000When you run on ketogenic diets in the past and then I've been on the carnivore diet, which does the exact same thing, where your mental clarity is just so much better.
02:05:33.000But, you know, I try not to be too much of a zealot about any of this stuff.
02:05:42.000But I have, like, my mom was introducing us to natural food in the late 60s.
02:05:50.000So she had read a book called Poisons on Our Food and started.
02:05:55.000Taking processed food out of our diet and oh wow, white bread this early on like 1967.
02:06:01.000Yeah, so she she was a real uh, you know.
02:06:05.000Um, she really was a homeopath before it was called a homeopath and uh wound up getting cancer and uh was told she had to have chemo and said no, i'm not doing it, and kicked it herself, you know, with uh changing what she was putting in her body, and so i've always, you know uh, had Had her as a kind of guidepost for my health.
02:06:32.000She used to always say the body is a temple and that the body can heal anything.
02:06:40.000And a lot of it has to do with how you approach it in your mind.
02:06:44.000And if you believe that you can heal yourself, you can heal yourself.
02:10:00.000I was battling my frustration with the dissolution of society, people being angry at each other over ridiculous things, long friendships being affected, people being canceled for expressing their opinion, all this stuff.
02:10:30.000What she told me in the course of this thing, believe it or not, I understand people will be, oh, that's woo-woo and you're just tripping and whatever.
02:10:39.000But I definitely felt her presence there.
02:10:49.000There was one moment where I was always been curious about something that happened in kindergarten or something I don't remember.
02:10:59.000And she, you know, at one point I felt her presence and she said, you were right about that.
02:11:06.000I'm sorry we didn't listen to you, you know, and this kind of really profoundly deep experience.
02:11:13.000And, but at the end of it, I felt completely lighter and completely, you know, relieved to have been through the experience and a great, great connection with my mom.
02:11:28.000Just like a beautiful, like, ah, she gets it.
02:11:34.000I've had quite a few experiences in this realm.
02:11:39.000My mom, in fact, my father died when he was 80 and my mom was 78 and she wasn't sick, but my dad had been dying for a while and we all got down to say goodbye to him.
02:11:55.000They were living in Mexico at the time.
02:11:58.000And we went to the funeral, and my mom was very stoic and sang very strongly my father's favorite song at the funeral.
02:12:05.000And she didn't cry, and we were all concerned about her.
02:12:08.000And we hired a couple people for when we left to take care of her.
02:12:13.000And she was really agitated the last night.
02:12:16.000And I was there, and she said, You know, I don't trust these people.
02:12:20.000I don't know if they're going to talk about you or, you know, and you're famous and all that stuff.
02:12:24.000And I said, Mom, don't worry about it.
02:12:26.000You know, they're just here to get you stuff if you need it.
02:12:56.000But then I look out the bay window, and then coming down the street, I see, led by my first friend in life, a group of people coming towards the house.
02:13:07.000There were people from my childhood, people from my choral society, people from my work, but they were all there and they all came to the door.
02:13:15.000And when they showed up, I realized everything was going to be fine.
02:13:18.000And I realized, oh my God, that was the departed that had come to say it's going to be okay.
02:14:10.000So even the most cynical person in the world that doesn't believe in afterlife or anything, how do you explain that?
02:14:18.000How do you explain whatever chemicals were going on in her brain to bring her to that passing where she was going to join the person that she loved?
02:14:46.000If you really did make contact with your mother in the afterlife and you really did have this communication versus whatever the fuck hallucination means, I don't know what you mean by that.
02:15:24.000There's so many ways of being that we haven't even studied or have no idea about.
02:15:30.000How people can communicate over 2,000 miles.
02:15:33.000Like a mother wakes up in the middle of the night knowing something's wrong with their child, and five minutes later the fucking phone rings.
02:16:10.00015 minutes later, I get a phone call from Susan, and my son, Miles, who was six years old at the time, had run out into the middle of 7th Avenue, and she said it was the weirdest thing.
02:16:24.000It was like something stopped him, like that, and a car goes behind him and a car goes in front of him.
02:16:31.000And I was like, I know exactly what just happened.
02:16:36.000He was, whatever that is, whatever energy he could muster in whatever phase of being he was, he fucking saved my son's life.
02:17:33.000It's divine, whatever, you know, whatever the divine is for you.
02:17:40.000There's another level of energy that is going around.
02:17:44.000You know, we haven't even studied how the heart communicates.
02:17:50.000You know, there's that Spanish or Portuguese cardiologist that talks about the realm of communication in the electromagnetic field of the heart and what that means and how the heart can communicate and has parts of the heart have more neurons in parts of the brain.
02:19:33.000Then all of a sudden they're just completely isolated from everyone else for a year or a year and a half, depending on where you lived.
02:19:41.000It's weird this desire that people have to define things as real or not real and also to let everyone know, oh, I'm not falling for that nonsense.
02:19:52.000But God, I mean, at one point in time, do you have to say, well, all these stories, all these experiences that people have, Maybe there's something to it, and maybe this closed mindedness is not benefiting me in any way.
02:21:17.000But this philosophy in this beautiful long form poem written by Lucretius in 350 BC is all about magic.
02:21:25.000It's all about this idea that look how lucky we are to wake up in the morning and see that freaking cactus blooming.
02:21:34.000You know, That's like when we get so inured from that, so, you know, anesthetized from the magic, and it's all just a doldrum, every day is the same.
02:21:49.000That's robbing yourself of so much, right?
02:21:52.000That the idea that what if you just woke up and said, Hey, it's fucking magic.
02:22:15.000It's also relative because if you were dying in a hospital and you had this opportunity, say, okay, all you have to do is say these magic words and you'll be transported back to health in your home with a completely new perspective and a completely new appreciation for just being healthy and alive.
02:22:58.000And the idea that you can also, even if things are bad, that if you approach life that way, then there is a possibility of making everything better.
02:23:07.000And it has to do with humility, it has to do with being able to say, I can forgive somebody for something.
02:23:15.000I can also ask forgiveness for something I've done.
02:27:36.000And that kind of energy is like, really, is that affecting your everyday life?
02:27:41.000Well, it is if you dive into the negativity.
02:27:44.000All day long, and you're engrossed in social media and getting upset about things rather than experiencing the life that's actually in front of you and doing it from a positive perspective and not concentrating on all these external things that could be making you angry or making you frustrated or filling you with anxiety.
02:28:04.000You're actually poisoning yourself with that.
02:29:35.000And also, the more you concentrate on other things, the more your life is defined by those other things, whether it's good or bad.
02:29:43.000So, if you're constantly thinking about bad things, like, well, you can't have a very loving and amazing life if you're constantly inundated with thoughts about negative things.
02:29:52.000And on the other side of it, if you're thinking in a positive way and enjoying love and friendship and community and just doing stuff that you actually find value in, well, this has got to give you.
02:30:03.000Better energy and light, and also the way you interact with other people will be different, so you'll affect the way they feel, and that'll have that butterfly effect out into the rest of the people they come in contact with.
02:30:14.000Not to mention, it's really good for your health, yes.
02:30:17.000Well, you like you were saying before, one of the worst things for your health is loneliness, yeah, yeah, it'll kill you.
02:30:24.000Tim Robbins, you're a cool, thank you, man.
02:30:26.000I enjoy talking to you, I appreciate it.
02:30:28.000Great, thank you very much, thanks for having me.