#2508 - Joe Eszterhas

[MUSIC] >> The Joe, Rogan, experience. >> Shroom by day Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. [MUSIC] >> Okay, let's rock 'em all. >> You need the headphones? >> I'm never. >> No? >> Okay, it's okay if it's okay with you, I know I've seen it both ways. >> No, you don't have to wear them. >> Okay. >> You were telling me about your cane, that cane is amazing. >> It's amazing, it's card by the dogon people. We're in Mali, and there's a family that's been doing it for a hundred years. And many of them were killed in the Rwandan Wars. It's heavy, it's beautifully done, I think. And it's been a close companion of mine for many years, it seems to be indestructible. >> It's pretty awesome, Morgan, it looks heavy. The dogon people have a very strange origin story. It's a fascinating origin story that evolves, is it, it evolves like, here it is. I didn't want to misspeak. So here it is, centers on the supreme creator, Amma, and the cosmic journey of the amphibious water spirits known as the Noma. So they have this crazy, cosmic origin story that's a part of their mythology. Amma then attempted to procrate with the earth, but the pairing was flawed. It's like a very strange descendant of the ark, or according to the dogon traditions, the Noma descended to earth from the serious star system and a giant ark like vessel. The vessel contained the eight original human ancestors, along with the seeds and animals needed to populate the world. >> It's amazing. >> It's amazing. >> I didn't know that. It's amazing. >> It's a crazy story. >> My, I have a daughter who is a nature photographer, I mean, does a lot of work in Africa. And she knows all about that stuff. >> So you were telling me, before we got rolling, I said, save this for the air, that Vladimir Zalinski and his wife have seen basic instinct, how many times? >> 15, at least 15, there's a recent biography that said that, that began when they were courting and that they had known each other before and one day she saw him with his tape in his hand. She said, what is in these basic instinct? And they saw it together, and it had such an effect on them, that they played it together many times, at least 15 times, during on their anniversaries. Now, I'm not sure what that says, and I know that some people think the movies had a kind of amatory effect on them, but the other thing that's interesting to me is, if you see it 15 times, does it really fuck you up to the point where you go to war with Putin? I mean, is that the real gita wired happened? >> Well, it has defeced. >> Putin attacked first, right? >> Absolutely. >> And I like Zalinski very much as a figure, and I'm very sympathetic to the Ukrainian because I've got a Hungarian background in 1956, the Russians devastated on green at similar freedom flights. So maybe I'd gave him the balls and the wisdom to go after Putin. >> Maybe just been warning. >> Who knows? Might have nothing to do with the war. >> Why not? >> You made some crazy fucking movies, man. >> No. >> Really did. >> Well, there are 18 of them that have been made, and there have been like 34 scripts that have been made, and I don't know, you know, I get around and I say there's a twisted little man inside and he lives in some spot that I'm not sure where it exactly is. But he's 29, he's born 29, he will die 29. And with anything that has a relatively strong sexual content, he wrote the fucking thing. I'm just an old guy giving him the space. So when the reason deal was made for a record amount of money for basic instinct three, because there was a sequel to it, that was a terrible piece of shit and I had nothing to do with it. But this would be three, and my title for it is basic instinct Jezebel. The twisted little man put together the story that I think people will have fun with, but it continues in that same vein and it seems to be his specialty. So let's see what happens. >> I like how you refer to yourself as like another person. >> Yeah. >> It is the man. >> There is, you know, there's a thing with little kids where they have a companion, an invisible companion, right? And the twisted little man is my main one. I have others, Mark Dwayne is one, and interestingly, Jesus of Nazareth is another, you know, and then these people are very, very close to me. The twisted little man is a darker presence than the others, although Dwayne is a cross between the two of them and I absolutely love him. >> So when you are writing things like basic instinct, do you really feel like you were channeling like another person? Is that what it felt like? >> It felt, well, let me just backdrop the, I wrote it in 13 days. And I felt like it, just poured out of me. There is a background to it and that is the Catherine Tremel character and then the Nick Curring character. Many, many years before in college, I had an affair with a, I was an 18-year-old kid and I had a affair with a faculty member's wife, a series of her and the way we, the, the, the, she was sophisticated, smart, beautiful, sassy, exactly the kind of woman I've always fallen for. And the, and she had a profound effect on me. Now at the end of the, at the end of the year, she moved on and I discovered that there was a different student than she was with each, each year and that her husband looked the other way. >> [LAUGH] >> The, >> How old was she? >> 39. And I, when I was 18, I was a very green 18 because I grew up at the kindergarten kid, the, the, the, the, the, I, I fell in love easily but falling in love easily also meant a lot in terms of learning things because I, I was an immigrant and I really didn't know this country and I was shy and, and I learned a lot sometimes I think more from the, from the women that I was together with, the, the, the, in a, in college and through the rest of my life than, then I preferred the company of women always because they weren't armoured off in, in male macho, but, but, but, anyway, she was stuck there in my memory and then when I was a police reporter, almost a, a decade and a half later, a decade later at the plane dealer and I had a buddy who was a cop that I liked very much, who had been involved into your four shootings. And when we got to know each other and we spent time drinking together and we did a lot of that, I started wondering how, if he really liked the shootings, was it an itchy trigger finger or did he just get off on it? So somehow these two characters were in my head and then, and then I thought about them a lot, but they didn't come together and then I think, thanks to the twisted little man, one day the two came together and, and, and in a love story and that was the, that was a genesis of base against me. And by the time I, I wrote it, I had thought about it subconsciously and then directly for a long time. I would wake up in the middle of the night and, and then jot notes down, which happens to be sometimes when I, when I'm very involved in a script. And I wrote it in, in Hawaii, I went off to Hawaii by myself, I looked at the sun, beating me up, I snorted at some coke, um, the, uh, which I was just an habit in those days, um, and after 13 days of, of all of that. And the other thing I did was listen to the stones all the time. I loved the stones, I loved, I loved the blueish of the time, I was an immigrant kid. And the stones just blew everything else out during that period of time for me. So, I listened to that at the end of 13 days, the, I had the script. Now, then I went, went back home to Marin, um, typed it up, sent it, almost sent it to my agent with the title Love Hurtz. And I was going out the door. The twist of the little man had another thought and I raised back inside and wrote the words basic instinct, sent it to my agents. They auctioned it, um, 10 days later, my main agent, Guy MacCowayne, who became my big brother, and, and, and, and, and, uh, one of the people I really loved in life, everybody bit on it. Um, the, it wound up selling for a record $3 million. Um, and then it became a towering it, to this day it trend, um, the, um, and, and, and, and, and, and I've gotten, the critics at the beginning were critical, the mildly critical, no, actually, the critics were really after the movie. And then through the years, um, the critics have had a change in mind and, isn't that funny? Yeah, it just, the woman named Camille Bagley, it was a named feminist crack, um, who went up against the movie very strongly, recently, not recently, been in the past five or 10 years, has come around and said that, that, that, that the movie is the example of, it's a post. It's feminist classic, she says, and it's about women who don't have to hide their sexuality. That's wild that you made such a turn around. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness. No stickiness. No residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Maybe it's Mabelie. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, did you ever have a conversation with her? No, I've never met her. She teaches somewhere on the East Coast and then she has a towering reputation, but I never met her. I usually don't listen to critics through the 18 films, and I don't listen to critics. I worked with a director, Richard Markwanda, a director at Jagged Edge. And the hearts, excuse me, and the hearts of fire, and we worked on another one together. And Richard said to me that critics should be taking out into the backyard in the shot. Okay. I worked with another director, Mike Figgus, on the one-night stand, who said that critics should be taking out the backyard and headbutted to death. I was sympathetic to both and to both, thanks. And so wild that your views were formed by this relationship that you have when you're 18 with an older, horny, smart lady who's like, you know, kind of wild, and then a cop who might have been a shady cop. Yes. And how the two came together in this twisted thing called creativity, you know, and you may come out of this maelstrom. Now, the other thing I'm sure was an influence is by the time I did that. But I'd been through four years of police-beat experience covering cops, two in date, no I own two in Cleveland and, excuse me, and that consisted of, at that point, driving around in a company car that got the police radio and responding to whatever was going on. On occasion, you got there before the cops got there. And then the one that really just took him I had and got inside me was, there was one when the report of a shooting of Subramin Dayton and I got there. There were no cops there that the front door was wide open. I walked in, I passed the body of a guy who would shot himself and would butt all over the wall. And then a woman was his wife that he shot and I heard someone in the back of the house screaming and crying and I went back there and the thing that was really got to me or she was screaming and crying in Hungarian and it was an old lady who was the mother's mom and then of course I spoke fluent Hungarian and grew up Hungarian and there was something about the scene that that's with me to this day. The other police-beat experience I had showed that was very moving was I covered the Big Lentville urban uprising in Cleveland, it was a big one and there were I think six or seven policemen in the shot and killed. I was crouched behind a car on the street ducking down with ten feet in front of me was a cop bleeding, badly bleeding, moaning and at the same time there were gunshots coming from the department house and I heard that the gunshots were coming from a group of so-called black nationalists led by a man and Fred Ahmed Evans. I knew both men from the police-beat, the cop was Hungarian, his name was Elmer Joseph and he would come around to the little office in the police but all the time and I knew and the black man was named Fred Ahmed Evans and he would come by in his Dishik he sometimes had two in the morning because I worked the overnight show sometimes and we had the greatest talks you know drank a lot of beer and smoked a lot of dope and got to be pals and he was leading the group of black nationalists and we were shooting these policemen and I was behind this car's wheels a few feet away from the whole shit and I found the whole thing so frightening and so disturbing that I pissed my pants so the four years of police because they were rather incidents I covered the urban uprisings in Detroit, two in Cleveland and one in New York. It was very involved in the civil rights movement and I don't think that's what I did I covered whatever was breaking in much of it was dark stuff so by the time that hookup happened between Catherine, Catherine Tremel and Nick Kerr and there was a lot that went into it. Yeah, I could imagine like what the insane life experience to be able to see all those different crime scenes and witness all that and you know what happened was that I happened to pick a field that journalism I thought and so did Hunter, one of the things we became friends, we were both poor kids and we both dreamed of being novelist, novelist, the way that we chose to begin that it was by doing journalism because no one made a living writing novels and we both had to make a living so the underroads it up for the national inquiry and then we were done to Rolling Stone and all of that and I did it on a local level and that put us into a culture that was exploding, the American society was exploding, the black situation vis-a-vis white racism with horrendous, so there was a dynamic in the country that we were on top of because of what we did, so I saw a lot, I saw a lot on the refugee camps because I was in, I began my seven years in refugee camps in Austria and then grew up, dirt poor in an urban city, and I saw a lot of a lot of stuff there as well, that was dark and then moving and profoundly effective. 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Well also so when you're writing, you're writing from real world experience, which is so much more effective and makes sense while your stuff was so dark and wild. Yeah, it doesn't make sense, and the you know I mean when I was a kid in Cleveland growing up we lived in a very poor part of town near West Side and there was a boy next door and the and I slept in the and a couch in the living room to serve overlooked the bar and when one night and I was looking out the window because I always was the neon lights and Puerto Rican ochers and all of that stuff they're really interested a little kid who would spend most of his time playing with my smart train said with this pecker you know it's and so this was all very exciting stuff and the one night I was watching one day and I saw this man on this stab another one to death and fall down and bleed to death. How old were you? 12. Oh Jesus. So there are reasons why the other thing with my scripts is almost everything in my scripts is somehow coming from with some kind of personal die you know big shots which was a little movie that there was very popular with kids came from my son Steve's experience in Marin County with a black friend and how they tried to make that friendship work and that's what the movie is it's a little movie about two kids a white kid and a black kid and try to become friends. The other movie I did called Checking Out, which you have Daniels, and that was about the middle-life crisis. And suddenly now, at the early in the '30s, I was scared to shitless, so I was going to die. You were having that fucking '81, talking about that, yet that '30s something. So there was a comedic thing that came out of that. It really came out of where it did, but there was almost with every one. There was some kind of betrayed, it came out of the notion that at that particular point if you remember, there was all this right-wing craziness where there were militias that were shooting people, and there were jamborees where the right-wingers got together. What was this? It betrayed, which came out in the '80s. There were several incidents in Oregon and northwest parts of the country, which got a lot of publicity. It was before Timothy McVeigh, but all roughly in that same period. So I decided, under Paul's name, to go to one of these jamborees and see what the hell is going on. And essentially, my journalism experience, I went into it, and then out of it, I could collect a distro mess between Deborah Winger and Tom Berencher, but they all had some kind of a tie, telling lies in America, which is one of my favorite little movies, with Kevin Bacon and Brad Renfrow, semi-autobiographical, in terms of the issues I had as a high school kid and bullying, and all of those kinds of things, becoming an American citizen. It was shot, and incidentally, right where I grew up in front of the apartment house where we lived, and I remember hearing a TV reporter and Cleveland interview, and old man was watching the shooting and saying, "Did you know Joe and he grew up here?" And he said, "Yeah, it was a bartender there." And then he said, "Shit, Joe is just a fucking refugee trying to make his way in the world." He nailed it, I mean, that's really not a complicated thing, but that's really what happened. The only, the only other thing, some nice things have been said about me through the years, but the only other thing that I really treasure, and I absolutely love, is I covered an interview at Oath's Reading, the night before he was killed in the plane crash in Cleveland, and we began speaking around midnight after a show at a place called Leo's, because you know, and we began talking around midnight until 3.30 in the morning, and we did a lot of beer, we did a lot of gymbeam, we smoked a lot of really powerful Thai stuff, and had a great time, and at the end of it, when he had to go, he said, "Give me a fucking hog, and I gave him a hog." And he said, "You know what you want?" He said, "You're a fucking white nigger, that's what you are, and I love that." He stayed with me all the time. The only time that he's a force of nature, people said, "It's Shakespeare, we're alive today, it was named B.J.O.S. around, it's "Fuck all that, it's bullshit." What Oath has said, and what the old man said, I thought was really great, you know. Well, here in the office, Oath is writing with such a legend. Oh, he was a great. He died so young, too, hold on. He died, he was really, I was in his 30s, I'm like, listen to this, the interview didn't I went home, the next day at the plane dealer, there was Sunday, and I was working, literally the day after the interview. And so I'm sitting there in this hall like city room, and the I see a city editor, the associated press wire machine started dinging, and in those days, if it had more than like four or five dings, there was some bad thing that happened. So I sit in, I saw a city editor come from the city desk to this dinging machine, and he's staring at it, the fucking thing is still dinging, staring at it, and then he looks at me like in the city room, and then he looks away. So, and I saw that, and I got up and went to the dinging machine, and his plane had crashed, the way it's another gig, and I was probably the last man I really spoke to in it, I liked the office right there, the fucking for the rest of the day, there was a bar across the street, like myself, silly, it went home with the waitress, you know, I just horrible, but I saw a lot to get back to your point, so I did it in a different way, instead of trying to write a movie about all this, it was called Blase of Glory, and the, we put it together, and then in John Appthead it was going to direct it, and it was announced that Cuba Gooding was going to play autism, and the whole thing fell apart at the last minute for financing reasons, and to this day it's never gotten it, but I'm a writer, what else can I do with someone that I love that I meet, I just have to write about them in that way, right? So, anybody who writes interesting things the way you do has to have had some interesting life experiences, you don't get those kind of scripts that you wrote from a sterile environment. You know, I agree with that, sometimes, I'm after my conversion to Christianity later in my life, I wrote three Christian scripts, and none of them were made, and one of them wasn't made because one of the priests involved with potentially getting Christian financing said we need more incense, right, and my response to somebody who interviewed me about it was, I don't like fucking incense, I write flesh and blood, and I was so, no wonder it wasn't made. What did he mean by you need more incense? Well, to make it more him like, to make it a sense of piety, to make it inspire the people so that they become Catholic in this specific case, and that it was too secular, and I think what happened to me with all three is that I fell between views and between so-called Christian films and secular films, and so that's why we never got the finance for all three of them. We say you fell between Christian films and secular films, you mean in the way you were writing it, you weren't writing it specifically as a Christian film or specifically as a secular film? In the way I was writing it naturally, indeed, like you wrote everything else. Yeah, but that political considerations are said, they're logical, it's clerical considerations, I was just writing it for my heart, and that was to gritty to get Christian kind of financing and on the other hand, to religious, to get the secular financing. That's too bad because that bridge is probably what would bring more people to Christianity or they could relate to it. I agree with you absolutely, and my argument was, you know, these could be hit movies, because my movies in a lot of cases have been these could be hit movies, and that's more important than spiking people with the incense. It's interesting how Hollywood has always rejected those kind of religion films, religious films like The Passion of the Christ, for instance. That was a huge movie. Well, it's not just a huge movie, but in my mind, it was like a prayer. You know, I watched it each year Friday, and it was a huge movie beautifully done. It wasn't officially endorsed by the Catholic Church, although I saw in Cleveland a meeting where a priest organized a preview screening of the movie, and they had like 700 people before watching it. There was such an interest in it. But part of the reason I think, you raised a good point because I think part of the reason was such a towering yet, was that it was real. It wasn't a incense filled, it was real, you had a figure who bled and you really show what happened upon that cross and how awful that kind of pain is, and then the movie really reflected that. No, it was horrific. And then there was also that Willem Dafoe film. What was that one called? The Last Intention of Christ. That's right. The funniest chord says it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love Willem Dafoe. I mean, one of my favorite actors and I liked it, and it's also very real, that historically real. Yeah. You know, the notion that Jesus of Nazareth, you know, was a spread roger, a figure who wasn't really a real man, whereas the Bible says he was a true man and true God. The bad show really showed is, that film really showed is human sight. Yeah. And my conception of Jesus who I revered and who was. One of my close friends that I speak to on most days is that he was a true man and true God. He was a Jewish zealot, a freedom fighter against the Roman Empire. He was crucified by the Romans. As a freedom fighter, a young around, blue-collar guys and fishermen and hokers and tax collectors who were the lowest as a low back then, as they should be now. But they were the lowest in the low back then. And those were the people that he'd breed primarily and embodied around with. That's the Jesus of Nazareth. And that side is completely ignored by most films, except the two that you mentioned, specifically, better like that. Yeah, the last time I touched on the Christ, I don't remember. I remember there was some controversy around it, but I was too young to really be paying attention to, like, how. It was the very fact that Jesus had a relationship that was clearly indicated as being sexual with Mary Magdalene, who was depicted as a prostitute. Now, the truth, historical truth, is that Mary Magdalene was a few years older than Jesus. And a woman of means who had advised, advised Roman builders in a city called Seraphim. And then it was one of the people who financed Jesus as he swept through Galilee and in the rest of Judea. There's another scene in the Bible where an unnamed woman goes to Jesus and watches his feet and then watches his feet with his hair. This unnamed woman by a pope in the sixth century, Gregory the Great, was depicted as Mary Magdalene, in a connection with Mary Magdalene. There's nothing that says that Mary Magdalene was a whole curve any kind, and then there's no proof for that in any way. So the fact that the last temptation of Christ did that and brought the two of them together in a sort of semi-bubbed story without, of course, any real sexuality to it on film is why it was so criticized. Of course, as he's house was depicted, and I think the studio at that point was run by Lou Wasserman, whom I knew from Cleveland because he was a. a writer. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabel in New York. Jelly Miss technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabel in New York. Maybe it's Mabelene. Crazy wire in Cleveland before he went, but he was a legendary man. He is house was depicted as well. So was it just Catholic people and Christian people that were upset about this? Mostly, yeah. But it was very unusual for a Martin Scorsese film to be a religious film too. Absolutely. Like a depiction of Jesus. People were much more averse back then. I feel like sometimes religion goes in like peaks and waves and I think there was a wave of atheism back then and Hollywood was very non-Christian to put it mildly. It wasn't that the Christian themes and films were never promoted. Yeah, it was absolutely right. It's not as bad now in that sense as it was in those days. And I think that part of it that frustrates me is that there would be an openness to that and then to Christian films if they were real. If they didn't, if they weren't full of incense and piety. You know, what we've done to Jesus over the years is making a kind of red Roger's figure. You know, he wasn't that. You know, I'm not even sure that Jesus really said, "Do not resist violence." You know, Jesus also said, "If you have a cloak but not a sword, sell the cloak and buy a sword." He also said, "I come not to make peace. I come not to make peace, but with a sword." So there's been a lot of church stuff, especially I think Catholics are more in the guilty of this, the romanticized and sort of cosmeticized the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Well, there's always a problem when human beings add their own interpretation to an ancient story and do it for to fit their own narrative. Absolutely. It's a great problem, but in this case, there is historical evidence on the other side and they simply ignore that and pretend it doesn't happen. The Nazi guys pull them. They are full of so-called revolutionary things and the truth is that the Nazi gospels were written 40 years, 30-40 years after the death of Jesus, whereas the the Nazi gospels, the ones that the churches accepted were written 80-90 years after the death of Jesus. So they had to have been taken second hand from people who said they saw things, where with the previous, there's a shot that people directly saw them. The people in the church gospels were named by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We're not the people who were in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Then nobody knows who wrote them. They took with those names, but they were not those people. Really? Yeah. I had no idea. Absolutely. No doubt. Even the churches admit that at this point. Two thousand years is such a hard time for us to conceptualize, to put it into our head, how much time has passed. Yes. Such a, you know, to try to get an accurate understanding of what was going on back then, this is insanely difficult. I have become a since, since my sort of conversion to Christianity, and I would sound myself a devout Christian, but not a devout Catholic, even though I go to mass, and I love the mass and believe in it. But since, since 2001, when this process really began, I've become a real student of the historical Jesus. And I learned more and more and more and more astounded at what's been done because of the size of this man who was Jesus of Nazareth. Well, it's also he had some of the most profound and insanely resonating teachings, like even today. The words that he spoke two thousand years ago, they're still today. People, I mean, they resonate with people. And if you live your life by the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will be a better person. Yes, you will. It is a great framework to live your life, which is incredible when you think about a person that lived so long ago. He is a much better person to pick as your imagined companion and then Mark Twain. Your imagined companion. Let me ask you this one, because I have a long conversation with Mel Gibson about this. What do you think about the shroud of turn? Well, there was a study done, a major study that was done by the Catholic Church and led by John Paul II, whom I really admired. He read a lot about through the years. This is a scientific study that discovered that the shroud of turn came from 13th or 13th or 13th or 20th. Now, this is a huge controversy about it, and there are those people who feel that that absolutely is Christ, and I must say that when I look at it, when I look at that figure, and I've done that a lot, and in my house, we have several blow-ups of Terence Christ. It's very, very moving. But the evidence what there is seems to indicate that it comes from the 1300s. Yeah, I've seen that as well, but then I've also seen people that say that evidence. There's some controversy about that evidence, and that some of the cloth, they believe dates to far earlier, and it's the type of cloth and the way it's made seems to indicate that it's far older. I don't know how much of the cloth they've carbon-tested. That is also an issue. Whether or not it had been repaired, whether or not there'd been additional pieces. I don't either, but you know what ultimately, when I look at that, when I look at that Jesus, and I've done that quite a bit, that face really moves me. So in a sense, I don't give a shit. At the very least, it's an insanely compelling piece of art, absolutely. At the very least. But there's also a lot of very strange mysteries as to how that was created. created in the first place, because it's not a die, and they're not exactly sure what caused that image to appear. Or if that is a piece of art, they don't know how that art was created. And the fact that they really only could see the accurate representation of it once they saw it as a negative is also very interesting, because who's going to make a piece of art where you can only really appreciate what it looks like when you see it as a negative? Especially when you're talking about something you're doing-- you're making something in the 1300s. Hundreds of years before photography's ever created. So what are you making? And why is it so compelling when you look at it in the negative? And if you're talking about something that was created by an insane burst of energy, which is what the proponents of the Shroud of Turin being legitimate think, they think it was created by this insane burst of energy on Jesus' resurrection. I'm agnostic on it. I don't know idea whether it's real or not real. But I find it fascinating that they have no real explanation as to how it was created. The-- I'm pretty much of a complete ignorance on anything to have to do with science. I've liked algebra and geometry, and even biology, although I caught up with biology from personal experience. But I just don't know. It doesn't matter to me ultimately, because I'm moved when I look at that, when I pray before that image. And I look at it, I'm moved. So as far as I'm concerned, for me, it's real. It may not be for other people. Well, and-- Like I said, it's at the very least it's an insanely compelling piece of moral work. Absolutely. But the thing that I don't want to dismiss the possibility that it's real, because I'm fascinated by just the mystery of how it's-- can you pull up an image of the negative version of it? Yeah, I was trying to look up a bunch of stuff you guys are talking about, though. And there's no answers for any of the stuffers. There's no answers in terms of why I was looking for an accurate recreation. Someone's made, you know, in the last 200 years, and it doesn't seem to be one. No, no one has. Yeah, when you look at the image, and you realize that this is an actual negative of the original shroud, you just stop and think, like, well, what was someone-- if this is the negative, how would you create that as a positive? Because can you show me also the positive image of it? Would it actually look like, OK, so here's-- this is one image. So this is what it actually looks like. This is the actual shroud. And when you look at that, you go, OK, I see shadows that are very interesting. And then switch over to the negative, and it all comes to life. And there's marks from the lashes, from the whip marks. There's blood stains from where the rods went through his wrists. It's very fascinating. Yeah, it's very. And again, this is not die. It's not ink. And they don't really know how it was made. And again, no one has been able to recreate this. Yeah, the cloth was made most likely from a loom that wasn't invented until like the 1300s. OK. That doesn't necessarily mean that's where-- for sure came from though, but-- Right, right. But here's about the image. This is like, how is the image changed for the cloth I asked? Just, you know, does anybody have any idea? I've seen a video where someone gave some sort of scientific explanation. But I don't know if I can remember how to find it right now. Says it behaves like a photographic negative and shows some 3D information, which is unusual for normal artwork. The chemical theories that body heat sweat or vapors reacting with the cloth, example ammonia or lactic acid from sweat may have been proposed, but don't reproduce the shroud's sharp, non-blurry details. Simple heat or scorched theories, likewise, fail to match the very shallow, non-burned discoloration of the fibers. Human or man-made image-- human-made image theories. Painting or rubbing from bass relief has been tested, but studies have not found pigments in the amounts or patterns that would explain the image. And there's no clear brushstrokes. Primitive photography. Some suggest that a medieval camera, using light-sensitive silver salt and lenses, could have projected a body or statue onto the cloth and experimental replicas show that it's at least physically possible, though historically speculative. And now here's the weird one-- radiation bursts of energy theories. Some researchers argue that a brief, intense burst of ultraviolet or similar radiation from the body could have discovered, discolored only the top fibers producing a non-contact image, even where cloth and body didn't touch. Proponent sometimes linked this to Jesus' resurrection, but the needed radiation, billions of watts without burning the cloth, is far beyond anything observed in nature. And this remains a speculative, face-based idea rather than an established physical mechanism. In short, there's no consensus mechanism. The image transfer process is still unexplained. And every proposed method has serious problems when tested against the cloth's measured properties. Wild. Amazing. I mean, there's no other piece of artwork that's that fascinating. Because every other art, Michelangelo's work, and all this incredible art, it's art. You see what-- there's brushstrokes. There's chisel marks. They made incredible sculptures. But it's clearly man-made art. This is a different thing. It's a very strange thing. If you can't recreate it today, if they could recreate it today, people would be doing it. They'd be making their versions of the shroud of time. Absolutely. I don't know if that's been done historically. But whether some nutbag has decided to do business over recreating the shroud of time-- Is there-- did they carbon test it? And what are the arguments that it's older? Because I do know that there have been some very recent arguments that the testing was incorrect and that it's older. See if you can find out what that is. Whether or not AI, whether perplexity or response or has some sort of a bias, the thing is it's like pulling from all these-- when you get an AI response to something, it's pulling from all these articles in the web. And most of the articles seem to indicate that people think it's at least either a hoax or a labyrinth. The only carbon dating seems like it happened in 1988. So I don't know what they're going to do. Supporters of an earlier date argue that the 1988 radio-carbon results, 1988, is a long time ago, sampled an anomalous or contaminated area and that other historical and scientific clues point to a much older cloth. OK, what is the scientific arguments? Contaminated, repaired samples. Some research claimed the 1988 test piece came from a re-woven or heavily handled corner. So its carbon date reflects medieval repairs, not the original cloth. Alternative dating methods X-ray or crystallographic aging of linen fibers has produced dates compatible with the first century. Though these methods are newer and not widely accepted as definitive, pollen and dust. Analysis reports pollen grains and mineral dust consistent with the first century Middle East rather than only medieval Europe, which proponents say supports a much older origin. Image properties, some argue that the image's microscopic features and burst of energy type characteristics require technology or phenomena unlikely in the Middle Ages implying an earlier extraordinary event. Well, why don't they do a retesting? They probably don't want to know that it actually is from the 1300s. I just don't think they want. John Paul, too, really believed in it. He went to see it in Turin several times. He said he even moved by it. And they launched this big Vatican investigation. And he never has said in any way that he agreed with the investigation. It just seemed to drop the whole issue. And then from what I know, it never went any further. But he visited it twice, went out of his way. Where is it? It's in Turin still. Let's start looking up that, too. It's currently in the chapel of the Holy Shroud. But so here's interesting was who found it and when and why or whatever. The earliest undisputed record appears in the 19-- the 1350s, rather, in Leroy, a village in France, where the night, a jaffery, de Charnay, displayed a cloth claimed to be Jesus' burial shroud. How he obtained it and where it was between the first century and the 14th century are unknown. Later theories trace it speculatively through Odessa in Constantin on Lope. Constantinople. I can't never say that. Constantinople. But these links are debated. Interesting. What does it look like? How is it displayed? That's how it's displayed? Constantinople was named after Constantine, who was the first Roman emperor who made Roman Catholicism the national religion. Right. Wow, so you can go check it out. And how big is it? Boy, they got that sucker walled off, huh? I've been my impression, Joe. This was these this was over the length of Jesus's body, right? So it's longer than it then certainly I expected. Well, you could see it's both sides. So apparently it's folded over I wonder when all those markings are those small triangle markings Like what is all that like these things? Yeah One other Picture was pointing those out. They might be with the burn marks that it was saying that there's burn marks on it Man again, it's 2000 years old in theory. It's just imagine if it's real. That's the thing It's like I never want to dismiss the possibility that it's real because imagine if it is real that is I Absolutely agree with you and I in my mind. It's real and I pray to it And you know the and I don't they try not to worry about whether it's real and I know that I moved and that's that's You know that that's good enough for me. What led to your conversion to Christianity? Made from a guy making these wild insane movies. Jamie, can I ask you for some water? This water right here. Oh, great. Thanks This episode is brought to you by Chime Chime is bringing something fresh to banking J.D. Power just ranked them the number one choice for new bank accounts in America and that's not a small thing that means real people millions of them are choosing this over Traditional banks. That's because banking at Chime is fee free no monthly fees no overdraft fees and thousands of free ATMs, but here's the real kicker if you get their chime card It gives you 5% cash back on the category that you actually pick yourself Your savings rate nine times the national average. That's crazy high go to Chime dot com slash Rogan takes a few minutes to sign up chime is a FinTech not a bank banking services and chime card Provided by Chime's bank partners terms and limits apply go to chime dot com slash disclosures for more details How long ago did you convert to Christianity? Well, I grew up Catholic. I was an altar boy when I was a kid The I knew one really great priest in my life who helped me with my life The I became a lab's Catholic and then and when That did they land of living in in L.A. in Malibu actually I was Usually successful. What was the screenwriter? Of course and and The I was big interview it all over the place and people were stealing mail from my mailbox and all that shit and and I should have been overwhelmingly happy with that but something was missing I felt and I couldn't really put my finger on what that was but something was missing in my life The and then I got throat cancer Stage 4 throat cancer The shortly after we moved back to Cleveland, you know the from the from Malibu and then the Cleveland clinic and then a surgeon named Marshall strobe did a surgery that they had never done in this country that done in Switzerland Where they took some they took the name muscle from the left side of your neck and attach it to your larynx Stage 4 was very dicey and then he was very honest with me about how dicey would be and he did it spectacularly and and here I am at 81 the but in the course of all of that when I was when I was terrified and and and and Red really the frightened from one day to the other I ran across the Jesus Reading him and and Barley Naomi's influence because Naomi also grew up Catholic and he she had a a very strong The and they can be very strong faith and then I went to church a couple of times and I and I loved the mass the mass itself I mean in the in the course of recovery and there was about a three-year recovery for for some time I couldn't speak and then I spoke like Brando and then I squeaked the The in the course of my recovery I did everything I could physically to help I I jogged and walked and did all of those things and I recovered And I felt afterwards that there wasn't that the reason I was able to be the stage for cancer at the day with my prayer life and then I started reading voraciously about Jesus of Nazareth the Apostles all all of that ancient Jewish history Catholic history and some of that really moved me as well the the So I started going regularly to church with Naomi and then as the boys were Boardy with the boys as well and as time went by I also started having issues with the Catholic Church. I continued going to the mass because that that was a very special thing to me But I had issues with the history of anti-Semitism in the church And the issue is with the sexism in terms of not allowing women to be priests the Issues with with the Pope making so-called infallible decisions and I just shudden on most of that off although in the process of it Mike Richie and he didn't suffer at all But but sometimes I feel like I was becoming a kind of an agnostic Catholic the And my faith in Christ and And even as all of that happened is unflagged I just fell prey to Jesus very specifically to Jesus And he continues to be a major important to failure in my life So your issues were with the organization? Yes, the Catholic Church. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I respected Martin Luther's Revolution because he revolted against the same kind of issues but the The as I said in the mass continued to hold me worship is terrific and I really believe it I actually then the kind of worship that really moves me is his black spiritual worship full-scale Emotional I give myself to you Jesus kind of worship the and and I felt I didn't want to really switch Switch religions because I had my basic Christianity you know, and that's it continues to be important to me So you you felt moved by like Baptist Yeah, like Baptist said they'd be the old emotional. Yeah, throw up your arms and say okay here. I am take me Lord It definitely seems a lot more fun. It's one. They're having way more fun. It's fun I the I also have been very fortunate to the course of my life to have black friends and and share the black culture I was involved in in the civil rights movement I had a shot. He got stuck in my belly by a deputy who'd been indicted for killings and told to get the fuck kind of the show of a county I had the good fortune to have lunch with the Reverend Martin Luther King. Oh wow And the I knew Stokeley Carmichael. What was that like? Well, there's one thing the most amazing thing he was in town because of a of a the depth of a minister in a protest and And the he was a non-hero that appeared and I think he was partly before He became the towering international figure and the the The he was heading back to the airport. He could have fine. He couldn't find his ride And I happened to be right paired and I said I can I can drive you wherever you drive you every king I looked at the watch and he said okay, so we get new We on the way to the airport. He said are you hungry? I'm hungry. Can we stop someplace as it sure so we did and the What amazed me about the man is that he was more interested almost in hearing about my refugee campus experiences and what that was like and how that worked and all of that They said he didn't know much about it Then he really then he was about he was talking about the civil rights movement. Wow. He was very very moving and a powerful figure The end then I had just drove him to the airport, but The the there was something about the man that was absolutely magnetic You know then and that I felt clearly. Yeah, and then but then I also and when I was in college I had a relationship with the young black woman The and and that brought me much closer to the black culture. I mean as I was an ethnic fucking kid You know in the refugee and I certainly needed license and that old cultural area and I got them I'm and then I sought them out um and When when when I was at the Rolling Stone You knew and was over in Oakland and he would come over sometimes I think part of that part of the suspect, because we had some of the most beautiful women in the world working there. We did have very condition when it got real hot. They didn't wear a top at all, so what about that spread? They were topless when it got real hot. What year was this? This is in the '60s? I was at Rolling Stone from the '71 to '76. That was right in there. In the years where the cultural revolution was exploding, women's revolution was exploding. To be at Rolling Stone at that time was like being in the vortex of all of that. The sexual revolution was at its absolute height, and I've always said to you, I've always really loved Smart Sassy, sexy women, and the whole office was filled with them. I'm sure. What year was the birth control pill? Invented. I have no idea. I guess. '65. '64. Let me guess. I'm just taking a wild swing. I have no idea. I'll prove by the FDA and introduce the market in 1960. '68? '60, '60. '60. Interesting. Yeah, well that had a big factor, right? Yes, absolutely. Because before, you know, women were in a situation where every time they had sex, they could get pregnant. Absolutely. And then all of a sudden, but then you've got this pill that's fucking with the hormones that we've found out now that women that have been on it for a long period of time, they make poor choices in terms of mates, and it does a lot of weird stuff. Well, you're already in trouble learning a lot of weird stuff. Yeah, and also it's very dangerous for them. A friend of mine, his daughter died. She was 17 years old. She was on the birth control pill, and she was smoking cigarettes. And she, I guess, smoking cigarettes and birth control pills for some people can cause blood clots. I don't understand why or what, but that is an issue, right? You're not supposed to smoke if you're on birth control, see if that's still the recommend date. Well, obviously they said, tell you not to smoke period. But I think there's some potential complication. Smoking while taking oral contraceptive that contained estrogen significantly increases the risk of severe cardiovascular events like heart attack, strokes, and blood clots. The risk is particularly- Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day-gum fee grip. Try new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mavily! Particularly hot for women over 35, quitting smoking or using alternative birth control is highly recommended. Yeah. Joe Ann, more fun at Rolling Stone than any other time in my life. I bet you did. I had John Winter in here once. Yeah, I saw him. It was an interesting conversation. He kept looking at his watch. Well, he was, you know, who's John Winter of 2024 or 2025, not John Winter of 1975? Yes, absolutely. You know, not the young one or that was the editor when Hunter Thompson was writing crazy stories. Yeah. You know, different times. People change. You are a big counterfeit and huge, and I know, and so am I, and I wanted to talk about it because I really haven't a chance to talk about it specifically. I'm on to really, I wasn't the cause of my whole huge success, even as a screenwriter. Let me tell you how, the, I was a reporter at the plane dealer and I had read Hunter of course when he was the national observer during those kinds of pieces from Latin America before he discovered Gonzo, the, and, and I covered it, the plane dealer, I covered a, a, an, a, Los Angeles shootout of a, of a bar called Bartos Café in Cleveland. And I wrote a story about it, that the associated press picked up and put on their national wire. The, and I get a note, shortly afterwards, from Hunter Thompson, we had read this story on the AP wire and wrote, be a note that said, I'm barely bare of raising. Pinkfucker, now there are two of us who know what I write about Los Angels. That really pisses me off. All the best on Trent Thompson. Well, that must have been a fun thing to get. Oh, man, I was, I was as excited about that as my two sons were to meet you, Rogan. They really, they really, it was really, really something. So, okay, time goes by. And I get a call from Rolling Stone. I know in the first, I do a couple of freelance pieces for Rolling Stone, one on Kent State, one year afterwards, and the other, I forgot what the other one was, but then I get a call from the managing editor, Paul Scanlon, who incidentally was the, was the backbone of the editorial contents, he'd come from the, from the Wall Street Journal, and he wanted to take on the New York Times for Rolling Stone. So, and they wanted me to do a freelance piece on narcotics agents, corrupt narcotics agents. So I go out there and I discover that, that Hunter had been after them to hire me because of that piece, and they get saying, "Good guy," and all of that. Then when I met Rolling Stone, I write a book called Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse that Hunter loved us by now. We know each other, and we're friends, and then we enjoy each other's company. And then I write this book and Hunter gets me as agent towards the top literary agent in the country, and then gets me as publisher, which is Random House, to, to publish it, and then to, to boot, blurbs it when, when the book comes out. And somebody a united artist sees it, "Oh, and then the book becomes a finalist for the national book court, one of four finalists." Okay. So, somebody a united artist reads the book, reads because she reads all the finalists, reads the book, calls me out of the blue, and says, "You know, you've got really cinematic talent." I thought about writing a script, and I said, "No, I haven't, and I go to meet them, and they hire me, and I write fifths." All of that, which led to my success in screenplay, and the cinema, was nice to Hunter. And the friendship we had was, I never, our friendship was in San Francisco. We lived in Woody Creek, and he would come to town. Our friendship was in town, but we ran a lot together. We enjoyed each other. We drank together, we both liked drinking, and on occasion, we wouldn't, in a good story, we would go down to San Francisco as famous for its stripper bar area. I think, Randall Ferrell's reading stuff, and the idea I went down there, together there was a famous stripper show, one of those clubs, and one of the times we get down there, he, of course, would take acid before every trip down there. I wouldn't do acid, but I did acid once, and underwound up, holding me for an hour. But I was a guy from Cleveland, right, which he always would, you know, say, "Oh, you're from fucking Cleveland, you know." Anyway, the, I would, I would start some lines where we go down there, and we were waiting for about an hour, and, you know, the place is filled, but the girls haven't come out, and until suddenly gets up, her arms is arms up in the air, and it says, "Where's the pussy? We want pussy, right?" I don't know, great memories in my life, you know. Of course, I'd settle them down on all of that, and then when they, when these are coming, very loudly, quite loudly, finally, finally, finally, pussy. He, he was a, you know, the larger than life, no doubt, colorful figure, but, but also what he was, and then I discovered this, and he didn't really share this with that many people. He was very, very well-read, well-read on the, he had a whole other side, there was a very sensitive and un-hipy-like side. I, I saw him was clearly once, and I was married at the time to a, to a former reporter at the plane dealer, who was very, very straight, and really rejected the whole hippie thing, and worked in in California for a small suburban paper, and Hunter, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, never met her, but at her, or, and he said, "I'd be like to meet her." So, he asked him to dinner. And Hunter came to dinner at the, that our small, tiny apartment in the Vato, and, and, and my wife at the time, the, uh, cooked a, a, a, Hungarian chicken and he sat there with us, and what I discovered was that the boy from Kentucky was there underneath all of that firepower, and all of that larger than life behavior. He was sensitive and quiet, and they got along like gangbusters, and actually I'm interested when I drove him back to town. He, for the ride back, he'd be rated me because I was having an affair with what he called a zippy chick. He says, "You have this wonderful wife here, and you're fucking around with the zippy chick." I mean, it's true, he'd be raised in anger and all of that. He had bad sight as well. Yes, he did. If we had breakfast, it was at four in the afternoon, and when he ordered, we were four more agreedosage beers, and maybe toast with scrambled eggs. In that sense, he had more tolerance than anyone that I'd ever seen, and my tolerance in those days, for booze, especially, was also very high, but I'd never seen anybody quite like him. He had a great sense of humor, as many, many years later, what it needs to write to this screenplay for Rum Diary, and I hadn't seen him in a long time, and I had just met Naomi with a question of two whom I've now been very 32 years, and then he wanted me to go to Aspen, so that we could talk about it. And I called Jan, and I said, "Listen, I'd overyose and blood with this woman, and under one's me to go out there, tell me the truth is, we're going to shape as he, and he's sort of pauses, and he says, "Well, he's good, and then he's another pauses, and he says, "But, you know, the stones were in Denver, and Nick and Keith decided to come visit him. So, between gig, so they hired a driver, and they drive up here, and they have a terrific time, but they're about three or four hours, and they've got a gig that night. So they say, "Listen, we've got to go, we've got to gig, and under gets all upset," and says, "Well, you're just caught here," and they say, "I don't know, we've been here four hours," and stuff. He continues to be upset, and he leaves the house, and they're sitting there, and suddenly they are going shots. He had gone out and shot the tires out, and the stone's car. So, I never took me over there, and I was frightened, too frightened to do it. What year was this? Well, let's see, it was in '90, it was in '90, something four, maybe, and then he said somewhere around five, four, five, and then three, three, four, five, somewhere. He had been going hard for 30 years by that point, or at least 20, then the end for him. I've read and heard, and it was very sad, because the sadness wasn't caused by the drugs, it was caused by booze, and he was in the arms' opinion, and then he saw him often in Woody Creek, and in his former wife's opinion, Sandy's opinion, it was the booze that did it. His body began to be gold, and he needed a wheelchair. He could hardly walk, and she drove him into the wheelchair at one time, I think, in New Orleans when they were visiting Sean Penn on a film, he actually fell out of the wheelchair in the middle of traffic, and she couldn't, Anita couldn't really pick him up, and so they'd get help, and cars are going by, and all that shit, and then he also broke a leg when they were visiting Hawaii at the Kahala, so it was, as he said in his suicide note, which I thought was the most, he caught wrenching, but also terrific suicide note, it was no fun anymore, the fun was gone, nothing was fun, no football, no there's no bad, no fun. Well, when the body goes, it's hard to have fun, and that's the problem with booze. Yeah, exactly. Well, the problem with many drugs, but particularly the problem with booze, you know, you're breaking down your body over and over and over again, and with a guy like Hunter, he was doing it every day. There's a famous piece that this reporter wrote when he went to visit Hunter, and he documented Hunter's drug and alcohol use throughout the day, you know, like six in the morning in the hot tub with champagne, like that's the end of the day, and then him sleeping, and then him waking up and doing all the drugs, and then getting ready to write, and what's the guy's name? There's a guy who took me and my friend Greg Fitzsimons reading it out and turned it into an EDM song. Really? Yeah. E.G. And Carol, I think? No, no, no. It meant it says a memorial of Hunter Thompson, where it says "from." Right, but the singer, the song. Yes, the guy, I'm sorry, the guy who wrote the -- Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like an electronic dance music song. We played it before, many times. God, okay. I can't believe it's like Beardy Man. Thank you. This guy, Beardy Man, put it to music, and it's hilarious. I gotta check it out. It's amazing. I mean, it's a tragic story in a lot of ways, but in his prime, the writing that he did, was, in many ways, it was the narration of an era. Yes. It was. And it was genius. You know, the -- there was a thing called the New Journalism, and I practiced that. So people engage at least, and David Elvison and Larry Al King. But then Hunter took that and created an entire New genre that -- the Gonzoi Journalism thing was his. And it was a kind of humor that just knocked you down. And it was totally revolutionary, and the -- the Tom Wolf on the set, who, of course, was one of the people, the founders of the New Journalism, said that he was today's version of Mark Twain in terms of what he was able to accomplish. Two books, especially. I thought the fear-loathing in Vegas, of course, and the campaign book, "The Seppity to a Campaign Book," which in my mind, is the best political commentary, including all of Teddy White's books. No, it's fantastic. No, it's fantastic. Fear-loathing on the campaign trail. Yeah. It's just 72 of you. And he also had this freedom that was very different from all these other reporters because he was a one-time guy. He was going to go in there and follow the campaign for the entire time, and then wrote this book about it. But Joe, these were all stayed, the shoot-tie-wearing reporters, and you turn this creature loose on them and then on the campaign trail. And of course they all fell in love with them and they did, because he was such a free spirit compared to what their lives were going to be like. Of course. Well, imagine you're doing this boring thing, which is following a bunch of fakers, as they're telling you how they're going to change the country, which you know they're not really going to do, because you've been doing this for 20 years. Absolutely. And then along comes the guys, like, "Let's do Asward. Come on. Pussies. You've got this fucking maniac who's drinking and saying "Wild Shit" and writing "Wild Shit" and he doesn't have to be held to the same standards as everyone else, because he knows it doesn't matter if it's never happened back again. It's fine. I'm so sorry that Hunter wasn't here with Trump's time, because that could have been fucking wild and hilarious, but there's also a party that says he would have liked Trump. I know this is heresy to the liberal, you know, who do think that he would absolutely aid him in all of that, but I'm not certain of that, and I think that certainly in terms of his style, he would have liked things about him. Well, I think it would have liked the fact that he's this wild character. Absolutely. Completely wild character that has never existed in all of presidential politics before. There's never been anything like him for good or for bad. There's never been a guy like him. We did today. I mean, he had a shit fit with Netanyahu, and he said, you know, you're fucking crazy. You would have been in jail except for me. I saved your ass. What other president for God's sake has ever spoken like that, not only publicly, but to us. Right. And in that sense, you know, I'm proud of being a deplorable. I'm from Cleveland, you know, the grew up among poor people and blue-collar people, and he's the first president that didn't talk down, but talked directly to us. Yeah. For good or for bad? For good or for bad? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, he is who he is, which is very odd. You know, it's a very odd person. Is that what I am? I have a lot of questions in certain areas. you know, the ice area, the bothers maybe the whole shit with the ballroom and all of that stuff. Well, the ballroom doesn't bother me that much. That's to me trivial construction, like whatever. The ice stuff, what bothers me is we're opening the door for militarized police on our city streets. As many people say, like, look, we've got to get these immigrants out of here that are illegal, there's a lot of criminals in this country, there's a lot of people that are committing crimes. I understand that. I understand that perspective. My perspective is not that you need to get the criminals out. It's that it is a very slippery slope when you give people and they're trained for seven weeks. They're not trained for very long. They're trained for much less time than police officers, much less time than military. And then you have this military militarized police force that has no identification in there on the streets. That's a precedent that you might like it when it's for a cause that you support, but that could easily be for a cause that you do not support. That militarized police force could be going door to door and confiscating guns. That militarized police force that you could you could find other ways where a different ruler could use this precedent in a very damaging way for our free society. That's my perspective on it. I agree with that. When they started calling people like like the woman who was killed in Minnesota and the guy domestic terrorists, you know, the bombination. Which woman is that woman who is shot by ice and Minneapolis. And then the guy afterwards, the week afterwards, there's also shot by ice. Yeah. And then they call them domestic terrorists. But to give credit to Trump, he got rid of Christy, you know. He got rid of that guy who was there. The time home and replaced. Yeah. Well, some home was already in charge. That guy was in a different position. But they did get rid of that guy. That also that guy had a very odd way of dressing. That was very like he wore outfits that were like reminiscent of like Nazi Germany. Like he had this very weird coat that you wear all the time. And a lot of people are saying this is a very odd choice for someone to be wearing who's being accused of fascism. See if you find some photos of that dude, the coats that he was wearing, where a lot of people like I had to make sure that this was an AI. I was like this is real coat that he's wearing? Is it very strange? I mean, not accusing him anything. It's just a fucking coat. But it was a lot of people online were pointing out like this is a very odd wardrobe choice for someone who's in charge of in many ways, othering human beings. The other thing that's a problem with this whole ice thing is and it's not the fault of the ice people or even this administration is that many of these people were encouraged to come here. That's what's so fucked. Imagine if you're living in Guatemala and you're encouraged to come to America. You live in a terrible third world situation. You have a wherever you're living is like the deep poverty. You're told that they'll help you get across the border. They'll they'll literally transport you into America. They'll put you in these cities and you can get on public assistance. If you have a bad back, they'll put you on social security. There's all these different programs that are incentivizing people to come to America. The Red Cross is giving you maps. People are showing you how to do it. They're letting you across the border. They're letting you into the country. Then two years later, you're being chased down. Two years later, you've got masked ice workers that are pulling me. It's like it's very inconsistent. Obviously, this is a completely different administration, but I feel for those poor fucking people that were told that they can come here and that there was going to be a pathway to citizenship. They upend their life. They come to America in the only way they know how. When people say, "Oh, they should do it legitimately." Sure, a lot of people do it legitimately and I understand their perspective that it's a very difficult path and no one should be able to cut that line and they went through it the right way. However, these people, that's not an option for them. If you don't have any money and you're living in a third-world country and people encourage you to come to America, I most certainly would have come to America just like they did. Joe, I did. My parents did. I might personify the American dream in terms of what happened to me. They said in the canvas was the streets of America, a bay with gold. When we lived on Lorraine Avenue and Cleveland, there was a Hungarian poet. That poet, his name was Archimera, who would go up and down Lorraine Avenue and scream in an Hungarian old one, old one, which means where is it? Where is the gold? Right, right, right. Look, I came in here as a kid. I couldn't speak the language. We knew no one. I got into serious juvenile trouble like they did. I got out of that. I studied. I was a total auto hijacked. I wasn't a good student, but I did reading. I went to college. I wanted to be a disjockey for a while. I didn't know Joe Anthony. It was a song to see with the sad, suffering secretary, right? This kind of shit. I went to college. I did a well in college. I won a big award as a senior. I kept working and I also, through the years, kind of terrific amount of help from Americans. I couldn't have done it without them. Beginning with the bus driver named Henry Jackson, a black man who had been adopted by Hungarian parents and spoken Hungarian. Moving on to people in college who helped who I found a great deal of help. I couldn't have done what I achieved without the help of other people, of other Americans. Then to top everything off, you know, the Hollywood and 18 films and all of that. Yes, I think that is the presodification of the American dream. Many of the immigrants who come here are looking for the same dream, and many of them are saying what Mad Atchimera said on Lorraine Avenue, old one, old one, where is it? Right. Yeah. Part of the reason that the stuff in Minneapolis breaks my heart is that. These Latino people are my cousins and brothers in terms of not the killers and not the gang members, but people who are gardeners. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mabelie, New York. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Maybe it's Mabelie. It's a new work in the store isn't trying to make a buck and have kids that they're trying to survive. Well, it's also part of the I story too, absolutely. Part of the I story is that a lot of these officers are Latino, including the two guys that shot Alex Prety. Those two guys were Latino, and they took these jobs because these jobs give you, first of all, you get a $50,000 signing bonus to join ICE. I mean, that's a significant amount of money for someone who's in debt or who's struggling. So this is how this guy dressed. Look how this guy dressed. That's kind of crazy. See that image? Yeah, look at that coat. I mean, come on. That's kind of a crazy World War II military coat. Maybe a little odd when everybody else is, you know, the other thing is the masks. I understand. I understand the need for them that they get doxed. Their families get doxed and it's very organized. This is not organic. These protests are not organic. I understand all these arguments. It's also a very bad precedent. This is the problem with it all. You know, the real thing is you shouldn't be able to have organized paid for protests where you're paying people to protest and you're paying people to cause violence. And then you're also using people as political pawns and moving them into the country so that you could change like when you have congressional seats, it's all based on the census. The more people that are in the town, regardless of whether or not they're legal or illegal, you get more congressional seats. So they use them for political people. Yes, they do absolutely. They're the same old political game. Yeah. It's the same old game and that game should be illegal. That shouldn't be legal. The idea of the America dream is a beautiful dream and they've corrupted it and they've taken this and used it for their own game and you know, and they've weaponized empathy. And it's a real problem. It's a real problem for those poor people that came over here looking for a better life. Listen, I have an idea. Run for president or write your speeches. No, that attitude is really terrific out of that. I think you're right to be concerned. You see it. Listen, I'm 81 years old, but I really see it too. It's a great danger there that I hope. My son's the doughnut. - Military eyes police on the streets for that reason is a very dangerous precedent. But then there's the other question, it's like how do you get all the criminals out? I don't know. I'm not the guy, you know, I'm not the one, but I am very concerned with this dangerous precedent. That's my feeling of it. So I just worry that people accept it because they want this result now and they don't realize that this could set up this being a common occurrence. I mean, we saw some of it during COVID. There was some militarized police on the streets keeping people in lockdown in certain cities. They utilized the National Guard and they did things like that. That scares the shit out of me. That scares the shit out of me when you have a justification for militarized police with masks on that are just grabbing people. And some of these people are American citizens. It turned out a lot of them were American citizens, hundreds of them were. - You know, we had the same syndrome. I covered the Kent State massacres. - Yeah. - I covered that. And one of the things that I saw is the rhetoric that was coming from James Rhodes, the governor at the time and from the Sylvester Del Corso who was head of the National Guard, was absolutely the main thing. And then they created that atmosphere that caused that journey. - Yeah, absolutely. - And today, just sadly, we see many examples of that. - Yeah. - And you know, they're great dangers. - Yeah, you would think that we would learn. But we go through cycles where we learn, we get better and then we repeat the same things again. - Yeah. - You see that with racial tensions, you see that with political unrest. You see that with a lot of different things in this country. It's like we learn for a little while and then we forget. - More tweens wisdom once again comes through. More tweens said, politicians are like diapers and they should be changed often and for the same reason. - Yeah. He also said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. - Ah, yeah. He also said, a little bit of something subject, but I love it. He said, "When the mind and the pecker argue, the pecker always wins." (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, he was essentially the original stand-up comedian. - Oh, you're absolutely right. I mean, you're so right. I've actually been thinking about doing some piece on it. I mean, and suddenly, you know, the history, the bud, but in the beginning, he was a stand-up with the so-called lectures that he did all over the West. And then he wrote some books, the books that he's famous for. But he went bankrupt nearly at the end of his life because of bad investments. And then he did around the world tour of stand-up all over again. And usually, they said he was a poet of the profane. Because he's usually from male audiences. He published a little book called on masturbation, which is about the glories of masturbation. The only thing I've heard that's close is a, is a stand-up by one Joe Rogan, which there's a great line that says, "If you're married and have kids, the only place to find peace, then the way you would say with the pecker is, if you rent a motel room and lock the door." You know, but he had the same kind of, of, of, of, of a verb and love. And in terms of being a stand-up, being outrageous, pushing the envelope. And that, that whole side of Twain has been sort of hidden under the notion that he is the great of his hook, then, and it's "I'm so here," and all of that. Nobody talks of the irreparable cult, but it's from the earth, from the voice of the devil. He wrote another one he called the mysterious stranger, which is about Jesus coming back in a very dark way. And then he wrote one that was published in the '30s that hasn't been republished called Twain, he rupt. You know, so yes, he was so right when you say he would stand up. He was a very straight stand-up. He was the originator, because he was essentially a very witty author who wrote very provocative things, very hilarious things, and then would read them publicly. And when he was doing these speeches, where he'd go and, you know, whatever you'd call it, poetry, whatever it was, there was no stand-up comedy back then. There was no name for it. But he was just riotously funny. People loved them. And they would go to see them because they were funny. And then the initial audiences were mostly male audiences. Right. I think he's a great, he's never been really done. To do a B's, a fictional B's, about Twain, as a stand-up with pushing the envelope with all these things, I think, would be a lot of fun. It would be a lot of fun. The only problem would be the cultural context, or so different back then. It's almost like, did you see Lenny, the Dustin Hoffman show in a great film? I mean, I think Dustin Hoffman fucking nailed it. It was as close to Lenny Bruce, as you're ever going to see someone portray Lenny Bruce. The problem is the world has changed so much since 1960, that a lot of the outrageousness is gone, and it seems very pedestrian. Like the things that he was saying, because he was such a ground-breaker in society, was so locked down and so conservative, and so just the way people communicated was much different back then. The understanding of culture, of race relations, and sexual relations, was very different back then. And so the outrageousness of what he was saying back then, it just doesn't really translate. Because in many ways, I think, stand-up comedy in particular is a window in time. It's a window into the way people behave, films are that way as well. Especially if you go and watch a lot of old films. It's a window into how people perceive the reality back then. There's stuff that's rarely been published from Twain. That hasn't really been seen very much. That was left in places like the University of California Archives that go a step past what we know from Twain. And I think there's so much of it. There's something called Twain's notebooks that hasn't been published in their full forms, certainly. That may still be shocking. And I'm still playing with it because I'm reading and reading and all of that. But even if I never do, it's so much fun reading about him and his life, because he was such an interesting character. I hope you do write something about it, because it would be great for people to see and to get an understanding of them. Because I think a lot of young people, particularly today, just think of him as an author, just think of him as the guy who wrote Tom Sawyer. I'm sorry, I didn't know. He's been pushed into being on with the kids writer. Right. Speaking of stand-up, I want you to know, and I don't think you know, did you know that Sam Kinnison dedicated a CD to me? Did he really? Sam Kinnison, one of his last CD was called the leader of the band, B-A-N-N-N-E-D, and at the end of the flip side of the CD, he'd thank a bunch of people, he'd raise often record people and all of that, and then also Slian Sean Penn. And then after all of that, enlarge your letters than the others. He says, "In the very special thanks to Joe Esterhaus or Wright Egg is letter to Michael Ovitz." That's amazing. What letter did you write to Michael Ovitz? Michael Ovitz was the top dog agent in town, running a CAA. And I was leaving CAA because my best friend, and the rabbi and the business, it was an agent named, Guy McOwen, who had been running Columbia, became an agent again. So I was leaving CAAs and leaving because of my love for God. And I went in to see Ovitz instead of leaving the agency. And Ovitz said, "If you leave the agency, then my foot soldiers who go up and down will share Boulevard will put you under the ground." Oh, Jesus. What the fuck? You know, so I thought about it for a couple of weeks. I said, "Jesus." And I wrote him a letter, which essentially said, "Fuck you." You know, I'm leaving. I'm going back to the prison. It started me in the business in the prison I love. And I turned into a major controversy with headlines all over the place. And all over the place. "Put you under the ground, it's strong words." Oh, man. There was a producer named Bernie Brilstein. I know Bernie. He wrote it in the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. In the same name. I agree. He came out of nowhere. He was so different than anybody else. You know, I was introduced to Kinnison by a girl that I worked with. I was working at a gym called the Boston Athletic Club in South Boston. And it was a girl that worked at the front counter who was hilarious. She was a volleyball player. It's really hilarious girl. And she told me about Kinnison and re-enacted one of his bits in the parking lot of the club, told me what she saw on TV about. He had that bit about homosexual, necrophiliacs, paying money. She's on her stomach laying on the, she was so funny. She was on her stomach in the parking lot going, "Oh, oh, life keeps fucking in the ass, even after you're dead. It never ends. It never ends." And I was laughing so hard that I couldn't wait to go out and get that videotape. And I got that videotape and I was only 19 at the time. I had never even thought about doing stand-up yet. But that was like one of the first times that I was like, "Oh, this is stand-up? I didn't know that this was stand-up." I thought stand-up was like, "Did you ever notice?" Like that kind of stuff. What do you see on the tonight show with Johnny Carson? I had no thought ever that this wild shit was stand-up. And you know, credit to HBO, because before then, you would never be able to see that kind of comedy. The only way you'd be able to see it is in the movie theater. It'd have to be like Richard Pryor, live in the Sunset's trip, which predated that by a few years. And no one had any understanding that there was this kind of stand-up comedy out there, that this wild motherfucker who used to be a priest, he used to be a preacher. He comes to LA and is this wild, coaxed, norton fucking demon comedian who's just different than anybody else before him? And just changed comedy. There's a few people, there's a few characters along the way that have just completely changed comedy. And I think Kenneson is one of the big ones. He was absolutely amazing. I adored him. I thought he was a ground breaker. And when I saw this CD, this CD, oh, he's it. I have two of his albums, two different people have gifted me his first album. God, what is it called? It's not, is it called louder than hell? I think it's called louder than hell. And they're signed. Both albums are signed. Both signatures are totally different. So I don't know which one's real or either one of them are real. And it's a problem. Like people buy stuff off eBay. They want to give you a nice gift. They buy an autographed album and they might not even be real. He was a preacher. And that last conversation when he died with Jesus, when he's conversing, it's mind-boggling. It's mind-boggling. Yeah, he's having literally having a conversation. As he is someone. As he's dying. Yeah. It's obviously Jesus. It's a Jesus figure. I mean, it's a, is it my time? I mean, amazing. Because especially amazing considering where he came from. What, what, what he went through, what he did with comedy and then then that ending. Yeah. There was a movie made, wasn't it? But it wasn't very good. And I don't know about Kenneson. Yeah. I don't know. I think of that. I was a whatever. I was thinking about that too. I have a problem with reenactments of a guy who is that profound. Oh, yeah. Someone's playing him. Yeah, it's like, it's angry. I tried not to watch because it's just the actual work of the guy going back and watching his HBO special and watching his stand-up appearances on Letterman. And listening to his first album, the first album I listened to, it was like, Jesus Christ. This guy is incredible. It was just so different, so crazy. And, you know, and he was the first guy that was like open about doing cocaine, like open about partying. You know, I mean, he was, he was a wild boy. It reminds me. I'm sorry. On turn, turns into being wild about coke. My first story when I was at Rolling Stone was it was a, it was a piece about narcotics, corrupt narcotics agents. And as a result of the, the stories, the guy he was ahead of the narcotics agency in the state of California had to resign. And as a result of that, I started getting plastic baggies full of coke at Rolling Stone from the various dealers who appreciated my work. Now, whenever Hunter was there, I would present him with the back. And he would go, holy, fucking Christ, you're getting these from people. One of the things that's a little bit of adventure. That's hilarious. And that was back when cocaine was actually cocaine. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it wasn't stepped on. You didn't get friends and all. You didn't have to worry about dying of an overdose. It was the only drug besides it, besides smoking dope that I really, really enjoyed. Like I said, I tried as at once and not at all down to me because I was so freaked out. I can only imagine. When I watched Showgirls, I was like, whoever wrote this was doing coke. That's like literally one of the first things I've said. I've always said that's like one of the heightings of cocaine movies. Not anymore, but certainly the memory of it was influenced by cocaine. They didn't even know us. I really loved it. I loved Showgirls. It was a wild movie. And I remember, you know, because it was that girl, was her name Elizabeth Berkeley. Elizabeth Berkeley, who was from Saved by the Bell. Right. So she was like this America sweetheart from this really nice sitcom. And then all of a sudden, you know, she's half naked and she's a showgirl. And she's having a bear with Pulver Oven. Right. It's moved out when his wife is living with Elizabeth Berkeley. Right? Crazy. No. Yeah. Geez. The least wild times. Right? Absolutely fun. Really fun. Jimmy Andrews story because he's the Jimmy Andrews experience. And I wonder whether he had any kind of a Godfather impact on the Joe Rogan experience. Oh, 100%. I stole the name from Jimmy Andrews. Jimmy Andrews story. 100%. That being, when we first started doing the podcast, I was, I would always listen to Voodoo Child on the way to the comedy store. I'd listen coming over Laurel Canyon. That was one of my favorite, that and whole lot of love. Those are my two favorite songs to listen to on the way to the comedy store. I had like a soundtrack that I listened to to get myself psyched up for shows. You'll love this story. And okay, I'm a reporter at the plane dealer. And all of our editors barely know about rock and roll. And as I said, I've loved it all my life. And when Andrews came around, I loved his work. And he's in Cleveland and for an appearance. And the fucking Cleveland cops have gone crazy. And they're saying that this cosmic riot and it's obscene and all of that stuff. And I asked him up to my city editor and asked him, and he told him I'd like to interview with Hendrix and cover his concert. That's the way to do. Cover his concert and his jammed in Cleveland arena and people are loving it. And I've set up a date to interview with him. The next morning I get to Cleveland Hotel. Okay, so the show up the next morning and I am the plane dealer reporter. I've got a tie-on and a sport code, you know. And they go in, I think it's 9/30. And he's up, but he's barely up and he's wearing shorts and T-shirt and his hair is, you remember it's hair, but on this occasion there were a lot of beads and things in his hair as well. And it's totally scruffed up. We talk about rock and roll mostly in his background. And the fact that he had been, I think, as a backup and as a kind of guitarist and Eric Inelsen band that had been in Cleveland a couple of years before then, he'd done this pre-stump before he went out on his own. And we get along. And we began smoking dope of course at 9/30 and by about 11/30 we both got the munchies. And he said, "Man, I'm hungry." You know, and you got any going in any place. I've got a car waiting for me downstairs. So I said, "Sure." And we go down and then Mitch Mitchell and Chas Chandler join us. The other members of the experience. Or equally, he's looking like CD characters, you know, but it's that time in the morning, it's after concert, all of that. So we pile into this limbo. And I direct them to go to Buckeye Road is the center of the Hungarian community in Cleveland. And the center of the Hungarian community on Buckeye Road is a restaurant called the Bolaton. Okay? And I direct them to go to the Bolaton. Now they know me at the Bolaton because I used to live on Buckeye Road, the biggest stretch of the limbo pulls up, the Blake Glass window front, filled with old ladies with Buckeye's and guys very formally dressed. We get out in front of this place and these Martians, three Martians get out of the car. And I lead them in. And then I'm garing and I'm like, "What the fuck? What is this?" You know, they made me the, they're just following me at the end and I say, "Jimmy looking around and shit." So they see us. The major D knows me so he calls me aside and he says, "Who are these people? Who are these people?" I say, "Jimmy Hendrix, big rock and roll story." You know, he's in town and he's at home and Hendrix says, "Jimmy Hendrix." So we sit down and Jimmy says, "You order for me." Right? So I order a chicken paprika, which is the big Hungarian meal. and chasm, and it's a word or something else, but very unclear. stuff on my advice. And interestingly as we're sitting there, the matriety is obviously spoken to people because old ladies are coming around asking him for an autograph. "We meet that end day yesterday with Juato Grande, please, and he's crazy, that's true." But he loves his peppercache and went toward another. At this point we've knocked out two bottles of wine, I think, and we're still rolling from all the dope. So they bring that at the end of this. He had three orders of chicken peppercache. He signed, we had like four bottles of wine. We staggered out of there. He signed, I would guess, ten autographs for people who come around, bowing, we're going to get it. And as we walk out of the restaurant, he takes his fist high up in there and says, "Hongery, hungry." That's my semi-endrix story. That's awesome. Ron White was telling us a story the other night in the mothership green room, the comedy club green room. And he was saying that when he was, I think he said he was 13 years old. He went to see the monkeys. And Jimmy Hendrix opened for the monkeys. He said it was the worst booking of all time. You've got. Exactly. So this is when Jimmy Hendrix was emerging. He really hadn't become Jimmy Hendrix yet. And so he's the opening act for the monkeys. And so you have a bunch of kids that are there to see this really cute band that was, you know, pieced together by corporate executives essentially. You know, the monkeys' fun band, but you know, they had a TV show and it was very clean, sweet TV show. And then you've got this guy opening up for them. Just jam it on the guitar. Wow. And they were freaked out. They're like, what is this? Like what is going on? And he said, nobody liked it. It was terrifying to people. Like, who is this guy with this guitar? Like, what the hell is he doing? Great story. Many years later, I thought about writing or Hendrix movie and working with a producer friend named Ben Miron and Ben rounded up his brother. And we actually brought him from Alabama. And we did. And fortunately, we discovered that the rights were so screwed up in between relatives that there's never been a Jimmy Hendrix movie very because people couldn't agree on the deal of any kind, but it still would be a terrific movie, I think, you know. Oh, it'd be a phenomenal movie. I believe there was at least one. What's there in Hendrix? No, docu drama. Wasn't there, Jimmy? I believe, do you remember it? Yeah, it was Andre 3000 from out. It was on, but they'd like couldn't really use all the music and stuff, I think. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't hear Jamie. He said it was Andre 3000 from outcast. I see. And that they couldn't use all the music. I see. I think it came out. That was an issue back then too. I remember that. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Wow. Also, that the day after you're talking about in Cleveland, there's a recording of the concert. Oh, wow. That's my face. Is that right? I got a few different links to kept taking me to Facebook, but there's a bunch of pictures. Whoa. March 26, 1968. Wow. Then there's a recording of the concert too. So you can listen to the recording from the time I was trying to get in here. There's like, there's an article from his legendary trip to Cleveland. Wow. But I this was like paid wall beside it couldn't get all the stuff behind it. Well, man, he was the nicest guy. I can imagine. Yeah, very nice guy. I just laid back. Well, he was just insane. One of a, not even one of a generation, one of one talent. I mean, to this day, if you ask, most guitarists, who's the greatest guitarist of all time? It's Chandra. Yeah. That's crazy. That one guy who died at 27 years old. And would he die in 1969 or 1970? Yeah, somewhere there. Yeah. That that guy to this day is universally regarded as the greatest guitarist of all time. You know, I interviewed him. I was known as the grim reaper at the plane dealer because I interviewed Hendrix, Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Otis. And they all died. They all died. You know, I did a feature on Jose Poliziano and people would come up to me at the plane dealer and say, what do you have against Jose? Why do you want it? That's crazy. It's just unfortunate that they all died at 27 years old, which is real. Is that right? Yeah. Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison, all died at 27. And who else? Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse. At 27? Yeah. It's all 27. 27 is the magic number for insanely talented people to die young. Yeah. Very weird. You've had an incredible life, man. I, you know, I've been blessed. I've been really blessed. First of all, the fact that I'm still here at 81, considering some of my excesses in the past is miraculous. It truly is. I started smoking when I was 13. Well, stopped when I was 60. Well, then I had to stage four cancer and the Marshall storm surgery saved me. You know, the, I drank two hours most of my life until I was 70. You know, you finally stopped then. Only because I have a heart-edited Italian Polish wife, who said, enough, you're falling down. You're taking 12 pills and you're falling down. No fucking more, okay? Now, shortly after we were married, after literally after we exchanged the vows, she turned to me and she said, she whispered, she says, if you cheat on me, I'm going to fucking hunt you down and kill you, okay? I listen to her. I listen to her. I listen to this one. So something a fond lady. She is. She is and she's I'm very proud of her because at at 67 the mother of four and truly the true head of our family, she's writing her first. She's written her first novel, which is called Dark Church and it's said in Dracula's Transylvania and it's a kind of of gothic thriller. I bring it up because I promised her that I would make this plug and I fear that if I don't, I'm going to be a lot of trouble. Thank you very much. I love that when someone does something like that, when they're in their 60s, just say, fuck it, something I always wanted to do. Let's do it. I think it's fantastic. Thank you. I just love when people do like, fuck your age. Who cares? Just put it out. I read it. I agree. Yeah. But I have lived it. We've been amazing life and I'm very thankful. I've seen a lot. I've come out on the other side. I've seen a lot of darkness too. But when it's all over, Graham Greene who was a writer that I admire and died I think in his late 70s and he said, we get to a point where we see the fence. The fence is there, but we can't see over the fence. But the closer we get to the fence, the more curious we are about what's on the other side of the fence. And there are some people who decide that they're too curious, people like under it, and jump over the fence. I'm not doing that. But I'm approaching the fence. Well, I've lived a terrific life and only once again, only in America. Yeah, only in America. Well, I'm glad you're not jumping over the fence. No, I'm glad we got a chance to talk to you. No, no, I really did admire you. No, no more fun though. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's how he lived. And at the end of his life, obviously it was not fun. No, no. Yeah. But Twain went, keep going back to Twain. This is a good one I think. He said, the orgasm is a God's own payback for all the suffering that he overlooks in the world. That's funny. Well, it's like writers in particular are, they're so important to culture because they can put down thoughts in a way that reshapes the way people view things. And we talked about Hunter in the 60s and the 70s. He was the voice of that generation. Like he was the guy that was this intelligent guy that wasn't a part of the elite establishment that wasn't a part of the rich fat cats, but was also famous and well known, but stuck true to his thoughts and his beliefs. It was able to articulate things in a way that gave you this understanding of what was going on with the people back then to that to this day. If you read Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail or if you read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. or any of his work, you know, the Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved. Like, it's just a phenomenal encapsulation of guys. >> There's a loaner even in some places. >> Yeah, it's so important and we don't have a lot of that today, unfortunately. You know, you got a lot of podcasters and a lot of, you know, people making YouTube videos and TikToks. It's not a lot of like great writing than encapsulates things where there's like one figure that we turn to to read their stuff on things, and Hunter was that guy. >> Yes, he was. As Hemingway was for a previous generation, you know, and Hunter and I talked a lot about Hemingway because of our backgrounds and earning a living and all of that. And I think that the fact that Hunter ended it as he did was sort of taught out many, many years before in front of these Hemingway examples. >> Inspired. >> Yeah, Hemingway, yeah, unfortunately that's how he did it, too. And they both shared in common that they drank to access. >> Absolutely. But you know, when I was a boy, wanting to be a novelist and a screenwriter, I said, boy, the only true today were Hemingway Fitzgerald and Falkner. They all died of alcohol and Hemingway shot himself. Fitzgerald had an art attack at a very young age while working as a aunt colleague with a screenwriter, instead of me. And Falkner fell off a horse, I think, in his early 70s ripped, totally drunk. And these were the idols of young people coming up and, you know, what do you think it is about alcohol and writing that go hand in glove? >> The, the, I, I for a while, I drank a whole day black coffee and a cognac. And then, then later on in life, the, I didn't have my first drink until noon, which Hemingway was 11 o'clock, and I measured it until, and night, and then it was gin before it was white wine. And part of it is that if you're lost in this imaginary world that's in your head all day, you can't get rid of it, you can't make it stop. And the booze makes it stop so that you could continue your normal, familial, daily obligations and schedules without having this, this stuff in your head all the time, trying to crowd it out. The fact that sometimes, excuse me, the fact that sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and take notes of something that the character says or something indicates that I can't get rid of it. With the booze when I was drinking, if I drank enough, I could get rid of it. And begin out again the next day, it's partly freeing yourself, the interesting point, it's partly freeing yourself from something that you've created yourself. So in that sense, you create something that, that, that can hurt you, even if you created it. And when it was, when it was, it was writing a screenplays, I mean, it gives me a terrific amount of pleasure knowing that it's going to take, when people see this, it's going to make their own lives more pleasant for at least two hours. They will enjoy it, they may, they may laugh at it, but it will take them out of their own existence as a pleasant way. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Out of Miss technology, locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day come the grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plum, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. That ain't bad. To be able to do that with people. Oh, it's huge. And that's very important to me. People think of it as trivial, that entertainment is trivial, I don't think it is at all. No, it shapes our perceptions of the world. Exactly. You do the exact same thing. You make people's lives better by enjoying what they're watching. And that's, that is not as important or as dramatic as my daughter-in-law, for example, which has got her medical degree, who literally, literally, saves people's lives. The indincidentally, the classic Hollywood story of the Galisa, and then the Alisa Astoraz works in Texas in our hospital. And she just got her medical degree. But to show the influence that Hollywood has on our culture, the other day she walks into a room and there's a gigantic big guy there who's yelling and screaming, "You know, this is the sweetest person in the world," and has this wonderful smile and really is great with people. And she's trying to calm him down and she's just what's wrong, what's wrong. And she just drives him as a really big man and is screaming and what's wrong, what's wrong, and he yells, "I want Brad Pitt," this fucking Texas, you know, in some hospital, when he says, "You want Brad Pitt?" He says, "I want fucking Brad Pitt," but why do you want Brad Pitt? Because I want to fuck him. As a lack of a confundent about this, "Man, man, what the fuck, Brad Pitt?" One more example, the innate of the powerful effect of the culture. So when I write something, I don't want some guys to read, to see it and say, "Is there a reason why I want Brad Pitt?" Nor do I want, for a lot of me, it was a landscape that started fucking war, but they do want people to enjoy it. Right. That's hilarious. When you say that the alcohol silences the voices, I always thought of it as the other. I thought of it as alcohol releases people from their inhibitions and allows them to tap into this voice sometimes. I think that happens with some writers, but that's never been my problem. It's something about going into a little room wherever you are, and you don't have to be in Hollywood. You'd be anywhere. As long as there's a little room in the house, you can escape to and sit there quietly and make shit up. You think people will enjoy it. As long as that's there, that's all I really need. Now occasionally, I will play music without stop on certain scripts, there's the same way I would like to go and listen to him a lot, and Dylan, of course. I did a movie with Dylan, which was also a funny experience. But sometimes this music, it's not cold anymore, it's not cognac anymore with coffee. I drank so much coffee that finally, one day, we had a call in ambulance because I thought it was having a heart attack, and become allergic to it. It was just caffeine. Ambulance is driving me down and we're in general, and there's a traffic jam, there's construction, right? And they think I'm having a heart attack, and I jump out of the ambulance, and I go on up to the guy with the heart attack, and I never forget, it says, "Breaker off, my name is Breaker off." And I'm yelling at him, "I'm having a heart attack, you motherfucker, get these guys out of the way. I'm dying." Of course, "Oh my God." It's worse than the guy who wants to fuck Brad Pitt, because it gets out of the way. It's crazy, it's just coffee, after all the coke and all the other craziness. Yeah, well, even that guy, so I had to stop. I stopped the coffee as well, the years after I stopped it, I was in New York, and I ordered a decap, espresso, there wasn't decap, and I was up for two and a half days without being asleep, so obviously my system got totally, totally screwed up, but it got reset. Yeah, you lost your tolerance for it. But I never felt it inspired me. Now, with basic instinct, writing it in the sun, in the Hawaiian sun, and of course all through all of this, it was not stopped smoking. Two pack of day smoking, beginning with monkeys and marlbros and moving out to go, was, and occasionally cigars and pipe and all this shit, but so I did do that, but I never felt that the coke was inspirational, it was enjoyable, and it was fucking dynamite, sexually, and that also comes in handy. But it wasn't fueled your writing, it was just recreational, but nicotine did. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, that's also Stephen King said that, that way he stopped smoking was one of the most difficult things that he ever quit, like quitting the booze and quitting the coke and all that stuff was one thing, but quitting cigarettes, he said he really noticed the difference in his writing. Well, yeah, I went through that, I was warned after my cancer surgery by this army surgeon that I liked so much that if you smoke or drink your dead, you know, your dead, understand that. And so I took it seriously, the drinking, my IV, I'm not drinking at that point. We're switching from 10 to 8 white wine, and of course, that got out of hand after we helped you until Naomi jumped into the hole free, you know, so. And now you're completely clean. Totally, I've been first or completely clean. Did this all line up with your conversion to Christianity? Yeah, yeah. Well, I needed Jesus of Nazareth to help seriously to be able to do all that. And then I did a lot of praying, but I still believe in prayer and I believe in worship with a group of people. There's a special kind of inspirational thing that I feel. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think there's something about all those people collected together. Yeah, it's just like when you go to a concert and you feel the music with all the people that are enjoying the music, there's a simple thing that happens at a church. Very simple, absolutely. Well, we're meant to be together. You know, we are tribal people and we're meant to be together. And there's something about groups of people together, especially in a positive way that unite us and connect us in a way that it's very profound. It's different than anything else. It's different than watching it on a screen. There's something about being in the presence of other people that are doing the same thing. Yeah, it's, you can feel a vibe and the vibe goes deep and it's really inspirational. And when it's really working, I feel almost transported. I'm on a different level, you know? And I feel myself being on that level and it's wonderful. Yeah, and you can see all these other people experiencing the same thing. And it's very transformational. I was talking about the park and a lot of church is like the best place on earth. Because everybody lets you go. Everybody lets everybody go in front of them. Everyone's kind. You know, it's, it works. That's what's crazy. Like the teachings of Jesus do work. Like if you follow them, you will be a better person. Yes, he will. But people are very cynical. And rightly so. They're very afraid of people manipulating them. They're very afraid of cults. There you go. You got your cross right on you. That's a nice one too, I like that. Thank you. Because people are very afraid of people telling them that they know things. That they have the answers. Yeah, the, um, I'm not afraid of that sometimes. I'm skeptical of it. But it depends on where it's coming from. And sometimes, I don't know why you are. But sometimes I could feel something very special with someone who is talking about those kinds of things, you know. You can feel the difference. And the difference between that and someone who's not genuine is very apparent. Yeah. You feel that as well. Like it bothers you, you know, like, I don't want to hear this guy talk about this. But you know what, it would be, if you have a shit detector and you do sort of why, if you have a shit detector, you can really feel that and pick it up. Yeah. You can block it out, you know. Yeah, well, I think your shit detector works with virtually everything. I think the audience gets it too, you know, people. I agree. I'd be the, in terms of, if my, if my shit detector advises me to do something, I must always do it. Yeah, yeah. Listen, Joe, it's been an honor having you in here. Joe, it's been such a, it's been such a pleasure. You are truly, what you do is you have redefined in the interview and you made it into a very special conversation, conversation chat between two guys who think they like each other and they, they talk for hours and they're inspired and they come out like each other and you do that to people. And I think that's a great gift. Thank you. I thank you for the Joe Rogan experience. Thank you for being here. It's an honor. It's an honor to meet you and honor to have you on here and I really enjoyed the conversation. It was awesome. Thank you. I did too. All right. [Music]