#2565 - Michael Douglas

Joe Rogan Podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. Very nice to meet you, sir. Thank you. I've been a fan for a long time. Oh, wow. Okay. I appreciate that. Falling Down is one of my all-time favorite movies. Ah, yeah. That is such a crazy movie. I re-watched some scenes today, getting ready for it. And the scene where you confront the guy who's working on the highway and say there's nothing wrong with this highway. The thing that everybody a lot of times thinks, that they have these budgets, and if you don't spend all the money, then you don't get the money next year, so you've got to tear up the fucking road and you take a bazooka out. I know. I mean, the spooky thing I see about, I guess, Romanium is it's just how Matt meets up to today. Yes. This is 30 years later. That's a thing that sort of. Interesting, but also depressing. It is depressing. You would have thought we would have figured it all out by now. Yeah. Especially with the use of the internet. So much more information that was available than when you made that film. Right. The world's a totally different place, and yet it resonates perfectly. Yeah. Well, thank you. That's one of my favorites, too. That kind of dark comedy. Yeah. I mean, it was a dark comedy. And there's parts, completely caricaturist, unsympathetic. Like the characters, like the guys in the golf course. Right. Where the guy dies because he freaks out, has a heart attack, and you go, I guess you're going to die. I remember getting a studio calling me down to warm me down in the office. I got to come down, and I came down to the office, and I was introduced to Mr. Ho, who was chairman of the Korean Grocers Association. And they said, we have a real beef here. You know, you've got a senior where you've knocked it up. Korean Grocery Store and Attitude and all that. And I said, well, look, I didn't write the script, but you've got to understand, there must have been something in it that hit people, triggered it, because that was a scene. And so he listened to me, blessed him, and I was back in New York about three weeks later in my local Korean grocery store, and they were wearing smile buttons. And I thought, okay, there you go. He made a dent. Well, it almost became like a symbol. You know, of don't fuck with me. I'm ready to crack. Which I think a lot of people resonate with. I even had a guy come on the podcast dressed as you in Falling Down Once. Brought the suitcase and everything. Ooh, that was a little. He did it. I'll be a first-time lamb. Gavin McGinnis. He did it for fun. Yeah. But it was fun. It was hilarious. But you've been in a ton of insane movies. What is it like to write a movie? What is it like to write a memoir? That's got to be a weird feeling, to relive your life and try to be as honest as you can and put it all down. Yeah. No, I resisted it for a long, long time. And then, well, it was sort of after I had cancer about 16 years ago, stage four. You know, it wasn't good. I lost a couple of friends of the same cancer I had to Larry Hagman. I remember from Dallas, the show, and Nick Ashford, Ashford and Simpson. And, you know, I wasn't sure. And I talked about it. It was funny. And I stayed for nobody. My friends, they kind of abandoned me, you know, a lot of friends. And I realized with cancer, people don't quite know what to say. And stage four, they don't know if they're coming to say goodbye or this or that. So they just avoided you? They kind of, yeah. They check you. You kind of just. Yeah, it was kind of quiet while we're going through the chemo and the radiation. Happens to a lot of people, but they just don't quite know where it's all going. So this one guy, though, Shane Salerno, who I worked with on it, who was a screenwriter, and he'd done an adaption of a script for me a long time ago. And I didn't hardly remember him. And he started sending me these notes, sort of like a coach, you know, just these little notes. You kick it. You can do it. You can. You can do it. And I just remember being really touched by it. And then afterwards, he got into more of being a literary agent. And he kept asking me about, you know, to write a book and all of that. And I was busy. But then after the cancer, things kind of slowed down. I kind of, my order of priorities changed a lot. And so then I started thinking. I started thinking about it. And I read a book when I was beginning as a producer called Memo. And it was written by David O. Selznick, a big producer who had gone with the wind and all of that. And it was a book that told you what a producer does. And it was basically all of the notes that David O. Selznick wrote about his pictures, whether it was costumes or props or this or that, all the things. It sort of covered. So I said, you know, maybe I'll do like a handbook. I'll take like 12 of my movies and I'll tell the stories from the very beginning, the creations and the process we went through and, you know, thinking about it. And also I had my dad, Kirk. You know, he had written nine books already, including a good biography, The Ragman's Son. And I was also thinking, well, you know, we're kind of a unique situation here between my father and I. And I can't say this about too many, two generations. We got 80 years in the business, 120, 130 movies between us. And so there was a legacy, you know, thought going on. But as I got into it, I said, I guess I got to talk about the personal stuff, too. You know, and you just got to talk about. You know, your life and, you know, and the issues and the parts of it, the good and the bad. And, yeah, enjoy your life. It's kind of scary, you know. I started doing it and then saying, do I really want to share all this shit with everybody? You know, I'm kind of. But I figured, you know, why not pass it on to my generation and the next. And so it kind of is a combination of. Of my personal life and people who are interested in a lot of different movies about how they happened or how the whole development went. And holy shit, then all of a sudden people liked it. And pictures, the book's a big hit. You know, I, you know, it's like, wow. I think part of it also is when you start with that handbook idea of just doing it about movies. Then the producer and the career ambition gets in. You know, sex, drugs and rock and roll, man. I mean, you know, it still sells. You know, you still got to bring that all up. Well, it's also real. I mean, that was your life. You were burdened with youth, good looks and fame, a gift and a burden at the same time and the son of a great man. So there's a lot of a lot of pressure on you just because of that. Yeah, kids are kids can be nasty. I mean, when they know something about your family, when they know who your mother is, who your father is, they can make certain assumptions. And so the nepo baby assumption, right? Yeah. Which, by the way, since we're touching that, tell me I'm crazy, but isn't just about every single business involving nepo babies. Doesn't every mother and father try to get their son or daughter? Sure. Well, certainly like restaurants. It's super common. One of my favorite restaurants is. This place, Gaetano's in Las Vegas. The son runs it and the dad started it. Or cleaning businesses or groceries or anything. Family businesses. I don't know why they why they picked on celebrity. Because it's so difficult to acquire. It's such a rare thing that most people are not going to get it. And if you get that rare thing just because you're the son of a great man, people get upset at you. Right. Because it's supposed to be this insane struggle through poverty. Right. 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Look, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think people are just. They're just jealous and upset. That's what I think. Because the history of second generations is not great in our business. No, look, it's understandable that they would have all these critiques. It's understandable that they would feel bad about it. It's understandable that they would feel that it's not fair. Yeah. But they can't say you weren't great. Yeah. That's the thing. I mean, Gordon Gekko, how many fucking assholes did cocaine and were like terrible stockbrokers because of that movie? It was my fault. Gordon Gekko was a hero. It was so weird. It was so weird afterwards. Victor came out and every time in New York I'd be around these half-drunk Wall Street guys. You're the man. You're the man. I said, what are you talking about? I'm the villain. No, no, no, no, no, no. And it was like, oh, it really was an eye-opener for me. Oh, my God. They love the pizzazz and the clothes and nothing has any moralities whatsoever. It didn't matter. They wanted that character. You were like Tony Soprano for Italian guys. Yeah. Like, let's go. Go get it. Take it down. Do the coke. Steal the money. They wanted you to wear the most expensive suits possible. That's what they wanted. They rooted for a bad guy. It's very interesting. What year was that? What year was Wall Street? 85. 85. Wow. So I didn't realize that stockbrokers were crazy until about 88. There was a guy that I used to talk to. I used to do martial arts with. He was a really, really crazy guy. And then I ran into him at a bar and he was telling me, it was probably 88. I was probably 21. He was telling me how he was a stockbroker now and he just does a bunch of coke and he's making all this money. And he was a psychopath. Like, I had known him as a fighter and he was an animal. And all of a sudden, this guy's just telling me, this is what I'm doing now. I'm selling stocks. And he had a nice suit on. It was like, it was crazy looking at this person that I always knew as like a psychopath. Like a scary guy to spar with. And here he is like wearing like cuffs and shit and he had cufflinks. I was like, this is hilarious. You're doing this? No. And they did a lot. That's why they all got in cuffs. They were following the markets in Asia, you know, at four o'clock in the morning. Right. Whatever they were. That's why they all got just wired. Well, they had to stay up, right? Yeah. And now it's done even crazier where they're like, they're moving the servers as close as possible to the actual stock market so they can get trades in. Like a millisecond quicker, like, Oh, and all those people, Gordon Gekko's their hero. Greed is good. How many guys got that tattooed on them? I know. How many guys have that like framed up on their wall? I guarantee you quite a few. And again, you know, all this, all this happened in the 40 years since that movie is the money, the money, the size, the scope. Yeah. That I was dealing with. It seems so enormous at that time is pittance compared to what's what's going on right now. And now there's other crazy stuff like that. Like crypto coins. Yeah. Yeah. Like what, what are you doing? What are you doing? You got fake money. You got fake money. That's worth real money. And you figured it out. I've, I've, I've listened to like three lectures trying to understand it and I, I still can't. My buddy Kurt Metzger told me that he thinks it's just people. They're gambling addicts. It's a new thing to gamble on. And it's also a new thing to rig. So one of the things that they can do is like, say, if we develop a Michael Douglas crypto coin, you could do that and someone would put a bunch of money into that. Like say a million dollars or $5 million into this crypto coin. Like this is how we're going to invest in this crypto coin. And then everybody else that's your fans buys in and hoping they're going to get out before it crashes. Cause everybody kind of knows it's going to crash. They pull out the money that was supposed to be for the coin immediately and they get it to you. Sounds like a Ponzi scheme. Yeah. So you get all this money invested in it. You figure out a way through like offshore corporations or whatever little tricky filters you have to do to suck all that money out. And it's just a way to bribe people. Yeah. Well. What a world. What a world. What a world. What a world. It's the wild west. And with that kind of stuff, it's the wild west. So to me, it's like the stock market on steroids. It's like some new wacky kind of stock market where you're just, you're making money. You're making your own money. How many fake monies are there or crypto monies are there? Well, it's fucking thousands of them. Yeah. No, it's just, and, and the seems the accessibility and the ability to do it just keeps getting larger and the disparity, which I think is really the base of issues. This is going on. The disparity of wealth is, is very, very, um, depressing, very frustrating. Well, it's certainly frustrating that more people don't have an opportunity to do better in this life and that no one's paying attention to that. That's what I've always said to like, if you look at the country as a community, you would say, okay, if this is all our friends, this is all people we care about. Why are so many of them living in abject poverty for decade upon decade? Why is there, why is there crime ridden neighborhoods that never get better? Why is there gang ridden neighborhoods that never get better, but they've been ignored. Yeah. They, they haven't, there's, we could throw resources at that the same way we threw resources at rebuilding Iraq or, you know what I mean? We can throw resources at fixing these spots and we don't know. And that's why people get really mad and that's why people get almost cheer on when Luigi shoots that United healthcare guy. Yeah. Cause people were like, yeah, fuck you. It's falling down all over again. Yeah. Same kind of thing. I mean, it's like 50% of Americans own stocks and 50% do not. And if you look at stocks, the way the market has gone, however it's controlled or whatever happens progressively, um, it's compounding, you know, versus the 50% of people who don't have stocks living on a paycheck, which is, which is getting a smaller and smaller with inflation. Yeah. So it's a goofy time. And then on top of that, they're talking about. They're talking about AI taking away everybody's jobs and there doesn't seem to be any real clear path to mitigating the massive effect that that's going to have on the economy and all these people that are going to be unemployed. Right. Right. It's a weird thing we're in the middle of right now. Well, I, um, I had a guy and it became a lecture to me when I was in college, a guy named Buckminster Fuller, and he was the guy responsible for the geodesic dome and all of that. But the other thing he did, he had a book called Spaceship Earth. And to me at a young age at the time, he really made it clear how, how tiny, how tiny this little planet is and how, and all with our Hubble telescopes that we're looking out further and further. I'm sure there's gotta be something else out there in the universe and maybe we will, but right now this is it. This is it. This is, this is it. And, and, and it's beginning to kind of crumble, uh, worldwide, you know, with the climate and all of this. And so I find it hard to understand after two major world wars and having this, this period of relative peace, um, that things are beginning to really crack again. And how individual countries, and we talk about, you know, the US being the most powerful, but we all gotta, just gotta work together. We got to this, there should be, there should be no more, uh, um, there's no reason for any more wars. And yet there's more conflict going on than ever, ever before. Um, who's, who's the cause of it? Some people say social media is designed to, uh, create conflict or create enemies, but it just can't be. We've gotta get over this and, and just all begin to try to work together. And that's why, you know, um, I support a couple of organizations that I know are not, Most poppin' right now, but are greatly conceived. The United Nations is one of them. I think it was designed after World War II to have a place for us to get together. I know the U.S. gets pissed off sometimes when votes don't go their way. They'll financially support it. It has issues. But we have to work on the whole world understanding what's happening. 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And the products being advertised are intended for a United States audience. Well, it is a concern. I think they're looking to other planets, first of all, because it's very difficult to do. And people always want to be the first to do something, to colonize a planet. But also because we all feel like at any moment now this could all go sideways. And that there could be a nuclear conflict in the war, and it could ignite. And it could be terrifying. And the thing is, much like we were talking. We were talking about falling down. If you watch that film and you see the issues he was dealing with then, it's the same issues we're dealing with today. It's the same thing with war. It always seems to go into this pattern. And it's always the same thing. It's always leaders and people who control those leaders who want access to resources and control resources. And we let those people dictate what happens in the world. Because it's a very small amount of people affecting a very large amount of people. And the only hope is that we all together figure that out. Because I don't think people were even completely aware of that in this country until probably like the 60s and the 70s. People started thinking that the government does not have our best interest in mind. And especially during Vietnam. This is a fucking crazy war that makes no sense. And even today, no one thinks it was a good idea to go in there. How many people died? And I think more people are aware of that. The whole thing is more transparent now than it's ever been before, which I think is a good sign. I wish we learned quicker, but we don't. We learn slowly. But I think we're learning. Well, I hope so. I mean, when I look back at my father's career in post-World War II, where characters were the good guys, the bad guys, white hats or black hats, villains and everything. And then I grew up. And then the Vietnam War and all that. So I've always been fascinated in this gray area. So it's hard sometimes to know the morality. It's hard to know the morality choice or what's right or wrong. This is what's frustrating. But you brought up a point, Joe, which I'd like to raise and maybe get your advice. Because one of my earliest pictures that I did was the China Syndrome. The China Syndrome was about a nuclear meltdown in a power plant. And we were under a lot of critical claim. We being myself, Jane Fonda, who was also a producing partner. At that time. About our credibility and how irresponsible it was. And GE was pushing this about nuclear power and all of that. And the movie came out and was a successful film. You know, did very well. But still criticized. And then 12 days after the movie came out, Three Mile Island happened in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And I had. I had like an epiphany. I'm not a religious guy, but I felt like somebody was telling me something. And so I became involved in understanding more about nuclear weapons and plutonium and the half-life and all of this. And I followed through our nuclear conflicts with Russia. And I want to make a suggestion to you because you maybe have some. Connections to the president. This war, this Ukraine-Russian war. And the effort to find an answer to it. And an effort for the president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And my idea is, I don't know what Putin has on Trump or what this connection is or why Trump always feels like he's got to reach out to help Putin. And this 93% of our country, Republicans and Democrats, don't like Putin. It's one of the few things that really aligns us together. So why don't we try in making peace in Ukraine, which gave up nuclear weapons. They gave up their nuclear weapon. Why doesn't Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin dramatically reduce, if not give up, our nuclear stockpiles? Obviously, the other six or seven countries that have a very minimal amount of nuclear weapons would have to be. This could be the greatest thing that would happen in our generation. And in terms of settling this peace, making peace in Ukraine, and where Ukraine may have to give up some territory, I am hoping that President Trump could make a deal with Putin, say, you know what, U.S., Russia, let's give up our weapons. Because you know what? Because it's totally obsolete. There's no need, there's no question about it, because these weapons would just destroy the world. It's mutual assured destruction. If he can do that, and he could, if he spent the next three years of his presidency negotiating with Putin, we could get rid of nuclear weapons, and I guarantee I would commit my life for him getting that Nobel Peace Prize, because he would deserve it. It's a great utopian idea. I agree with you. It would be awesome if there was no nuclear weapons. If we all agreed as a species, as the human civilization, that there's no need to have something that can kill every man, woman, child, every animal and plant on Earth many times over. I mean, the amount of weapons that we have today are absurd. If we all together, the whole world, China, Russia, United States, all the other countries just launched all their bombs at once, just imagine what the world would be like. What the world would look like when it's over. It would be over, it wouldn't be over. There would be no world. It would be on fire. It would be a glowing orb. We're crazy that we even have that kind of stuff. However, I don't ever think that any country that has a military is going to give up all their nuclear weapons, if there are nuclear weapons out there in the world, and how would you be able to assure? One of the things they're always terrified about is, I mean, this was one of the big conspiracy theories when, do you remember that New Jersey drone thing that was going on? Yeah. One of the crazy conspiracy theories. One of the crazy conspiracies was that they were using these drones to search for a missing bomb, and that there was a bomb or some nuclear device that was unaccounted for, and they believed it. And so those were United States military drones that are very sophisticated, top secret stuff. I don't know what's true or not, but I do know that they don't exactly know where all the bombs are all over the world. And the idea that you would give up your nuclear weapons while weapons still exist is highly unlikely. Well, but this is me. This is what AI is supposed to be doing? That's what I was going to get to. Yeah. I think the only way we're really going to get out of this, and this is terrifying for biological human beings, is to let AI control government and resources. And it would have to have already become sentient, and it would have to already exhibit superintelligence, reason, and logic, and it would just evenly distribute resources amongst all the people. Because when you look at the budgets alone, just for our nuclear programs, we could solve the defense budgets in this day and age versus our budget for humanitarian purposes is absurd. I mean, it comes down to all people want, really, you know, is a roof over their head, housing, and food. And, you know, so all this money could be shifted over into other programs that would stop the need for Africans to have to immigrate. You know, we have to restore areas of the world that are much more impoverished than us because this disparity of have and have-nots is going to create another world war. They would never do this, but here's a way that you could make sure that something like this never happened. Think about all the money that comes from resources, like Earth's resources, whether it's oil, minerals, all these different different things that is a part of the earth and it's earths so if you made a law where all natural resources drawn from the earth like oil will be evenly distributed amongst the population of that city yeah you know yeah yeah yeah minus operating costs everything else gets evenly distributed amongst people because it is the human races if we are all citizens of this earth then the earth's resources should be shared by all of us like there's people that want to charge you for air they think it's a good idea to charge you for clean air as people charge you for water you have a water bill like someone owns the water they charge you for the water like all that stuff should be the property of the human beings that live in that place imagine how much that would transform the places that have diamond mines imagine how much that would transform the places that are rich in oil money we have these monarchy that are controlling vast populations why because they were the first persons or their ancestors were the first persons to dig into the ground and pull up the oil yeah it's kind of crazy yeah you you are insanely wealthy because you're sucking the lifeblood out of the earth right which really should kind of be everyone's especially when they do shit like they go offshore and they they're drilling offshore where the fuck are you even you're not even in america anymore like what is this you're stealing from the earth and then and it lets you buy weapons and lets you you know a lot of these people that are involved in these immense corporations are involved in many immense corporations and the amount of money that they're making is kind of fucking kooky and when they have massive influence on politicians and when politicians are allowed to like trade stocks where they have insider information they're making fucking hundreds of millions of dollars on a hundred and seventy thousand dollar a year salary it's like all these things compound they compound and you get to the point where you're like i don't know if this can be fixed yeah and that's what they like they like us in a state of i don't know if this can be fixed yeah because that way you're like oh what are you gonna do your hands up so like you have like your la mayor race you get a vote for communism or communism good luck you just you got fucked and you're gonna have to and everybody's like wow what are you gonna do and people don't know what to do and then more taxes are gonna come like i don't want to pay it but i don't want to move and they'll just keep getting fucked yeah and this is unfortunately uh where they like us to be um i think it's one of the things about people that are in control and people that are the the wealthiest amongst us that are operating in this very nefarious way they do like it when we're mad at each other they do like it when we're divided whether over the dumbest shit over gender pronouns or fucking whatever it is what what nationality you are what nationality you are what nationality you are what nationality you are what your religion is whatever it is they love it your religion is whatever it is they love it your religion is whatever it is they love it when we're at each other's throats when most when we're at each other's throats when most of the things that everybody wants we all of the things that everybody wants we all of the things that everybody wants we all agree on agree on agree on and we all agree that the system that's and we all agree that the system that's and we all agree that the system that's in place right now is really not looking in place right now is really not looking in place right now is really not looking out for everybody out for everybody out for everybody not at all it's just not no not at all it's just not no not at all it's just not no no it's not never was there'd be no it's not never was there'd be no it's not never was there'd be people campaigning about people campaigning about people campaigning about fixing inner cities like a presidential fixing inner cities like a presidential fixing inner cities like a presidential camp like with a plan camp like with a plan camp like with a plan like we have these areas that have like we have these areas that have like we have these areas that have traditionally been impoverished and traditionally been impoverished and traditionally been impoverished and gang-ridden and crime-ridden gang-ridden and crime-ridden gang-ridden and crime-ridden we can allocate resources this is the we can allocate resources this is the we can allocate resources this is the multi-step program over the next five multi-step program over the next five multi-step program over the next five years that we're going to do to years that we're going to do to years that we're going to do to radically increase the amount of radically increase the amount of radically increase the amount of opportunities these young people have opportunities these young people have opportunities these young people have increase their access to education increase their access to education increase their access to education increase their access to community increase their access to community increase their access to community centers and places that will give them centers and places that will give them centers and places that will give them purpose and meaning purpose and meaning purpose and meaning like that you could change millions of like that you could change millions of like that you could change millions of lives in this country you can it it lives in this country you can it it lives in this country you can it it means changing your budgetary yep yep means changing your budgetary yep yep means changing your budgetary yep yep promise of of what's important and promise of of what's important and promise of of what's important and that's the part that's been difficult that's the part that's been difficult that's the part that's been difficult that's where dr ai is going to come in that's where dr ai is going to come in that's where dr ai is going to come in um ai is going to be like dr manhattan um ai is going to be like dr manhattan um ai is going to be like dr manhattan with the rails with the rails with the rails with the rails with the rails with the rails i mean we can't do like this last go i mean we can't do like this last go i mean we can't do like this last go around with the with the um around with the with the um around with the with the um social social network stuff which is out social social network stuff which is out social social network stuff which is out of control before anybody had a chance of control before anybody had a chance of control before anybody had a chance to do it and it's interesting i'm to do it and it's interesting i'm to do it and it's interesting i'm understanding how the triggers work most understanding how the triggers work most understanding how the triggers work most of the stuff is based of the stuff is based of the stuff is based on finding conflict so you look at all on finding conflict so you look at all on finding conflict so you look at all this stuff this stuff this stuff and it makes you have more enemies or and it makes you have more enemies or and it makes you have more enemies or makes you makes you makes you get divisive rather than coming together get divisive rather than coming together get divisive rather than coming together something happened joe i don't know maybe something happened joe i don't know maybe something happened joe i don't know maybe just my imagination but even going back just my imagination but even going back just my imagination but even going back to reagan to reagan to reagan uh reagan republicans and and and a uh reagan republicans and and and a uh reagan republicans and and and a different time different time different time just for politicians politicians just for politicians politicians just for politicians politicians were like public servants were like public servants were like public servants it was it was a a commitment you made to it was it was a a commitment you made to it was it was a a commitment you made to the country you know to the country you know to the country you know to to yourself and and now it's just to yourself and and now it's just to yourself and and now it's just sort of a profit center the amount of sort of a profit center the amount of sort of a profit center the amount of money involved in politics and then money involved in politics and then money involved in politics and then these guys turning around and becoming these guys turning around and becoming these guys turning around and becoming lobbyists lobbyists lobbyists and all the insider kind of trading and all the insider kind of trading and all the insider kind of trading going on going on going on the corruption of this brilliant system the corruption of this brilliant system the corruption of this brilliant system you know the last thing i really did i you know the last thing i really did i you know the last thing i really did i played ben franklin in in in a show played ben franklin in in in a show when he was in france and i got into when he was in france and i got into when he was in france and i got into looking back at looking back at looking back at at the constitution and everything and at the constitution and everything and at the constitution and everything and what a what a brilliant piece of what a what a brilliant piece of what a what a brilliant piece of of legislature this thing was it was of legislature this thing was it was of legislature this thing was it was incredible it was so idealistic incredible it was so idealistic incredible it was so idealistic and now to watch it just over you know and now to watch it just over you know and now to watch it just over you know not just this administration business not just this administration business not just this administration business been going on for a while been going on for a while been going on for a while um get just get so so corrupted i used um get just get so so corrupted i used um get just get so so corrupted i used to think of uh to think of uh to think of uh you know politicians almost like the you know politicians almost like the you know politicians almost like the clergy uh you know they were people to clergy uh you know they were people to clergy uh you know they were people to look up to look up to look up to you know and now um i don't want to get you know and now um i don't want to get you know and now um i don't want to get into into into i just don't think politics here in texas i just don't think politics here in texas i just don't think politics here in texas right now there's a couple of people right now there's a couple of people right now there's a couple of people running for office they're just like running for office they're just like running for office they're just like come on man you can do better than that come on man you can do better than that come on man you can do better than that i agree with you and uh i agree with you and uh i agree with you and uh what's supposed to happen in those what's supposed to happen in those what's supposed to happen in those situations is the person who should situations is the person who should situations is the person who should have been a better candidate is have been a better candidate is have been a better candidate is supposed to lose because you should supposed to lose because you should supposed to lose because you should have had a better candidate to run have had a better candidate to run have had a better candidate to run against this other guy against this other guy against this other guy and uh that should rally people to do and uh that should rally people to do and uh that should rally people to do better that's supposedly what the better that's supposedly what the better that's supposedly what the system is based on right it's not system is based on right it's not system is based on right it's not supposed to be based on your side supposed to be based on your side supposed to be based on your side winning every time it's supposed to be winning every time it's supposed to be winning every time it's supposed to be based on some sort of an understanding based on some sort of an understanding based on some sort of an understanding that people have opinions and if their that people have opinions and if their that people have opinions and if their expectations aren't met there's expectations aren't met there's expectations aren't met there's consequences consequences consequences and people don't like corruption and and people don't like corruption and and people don't like corruption and they don't like and they don't like they don't like and they don't like they don't like and they don't like people with their lives people with their lives people with their lives and sometimes you vote one way and you and sometimes you vote one way and you and sometimes you vote one way and you think well this is going to be better think well this is going to be better think well this is going to be better this way and it turns out nope same this way and it turns out nope same this way and it turns out nope same okay well someone's got to do better okay well someone's got to do better okay well someone's got to do better that guy and you hope eventually a hero that guy and you hope eventually a hero that guy and you hope eventually a hero will rise but you're so much i think i will rise but you're so much i think i will rise but you're so much i think i don't know the exact statistics but i don't know the exact statistics but i don't know the exact statistics but i think think think generationally i'm a democrat because my generationally i'm a democrat because my generationally i'm a democrat because my mother and father were democrats mother and father were democrats mother and father were democrats um before it takes it takes an effort um before it takes it takes an effort um before it takes it takes an effort to maybe change parties and the to maybe change parties and the to maybe change parties and the republicans republicans speak a lot republicans republicans speak a lot republicans republicans speak a lot because their mothers are fathers because their mothers are fathers because their mothers are fathers i one of the questions i want to ask you i one of the questions i want to ask you i one of the questions i want to ask you is you really you know you supported is you really you know you supported is you really you know you supported bernie sanders yeah one time in in your bernie sanders yeah one time in in your bernie sanders yeah one time in in your life life life and we're able to you seem to have a and we're able to you seem to have a and we're able to you seem to have a much more open mind and ability to you much more open mind and ability to you much more open mind and ability to you know change and and alter but i think a know change and and alter but i think a know change and and alter but i think a lot of people just sort of follow lot of people just sort of follow lot of people just sort of follow that political party generationally that political party generationally that political party generationally because their families did because their families did because their families did yeah um i think uh yeah um i think uh yeah um i think uh this episode is brought to you by visible this episode is brought to you by visible this episode is brought to you by visible as fall hits we enter another season of as fall hits we enter another season of as fall hits we enter another season of change time to shift gears drop the dead change time to shift gears drop the dead change time to shift gears drop the dead weight and upgrade the 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free quote at ethos.com quote at ethos.com quote at ethos.com jre that's ethos.com jre application jre that's ethos.com jre application jre that's ethos.com jre application times and rates may vary times and rates may vary times and rates may vary we have a real problem with having two we have a real problem with having two we have a real problem with having two distinct different parties only yeah i distinct different parties only yeah i distinct different parties only yeah i don't think that's healthy for us i don't think that's healthy for us i don't think that's healthy for us i think uh think uh think uh it enhances this tendency that we have it enhances this tendency that we have it enhances this tendency that we have to be very tribal and to have this us to be very tribal and to have this us to be very tribal and to have this us versus them thing and to ignore all the versus them thing and to ignore all the craziness that our side is doing craziness that our side is doing craziness that our side is doing because it's our side and for me there because it's our side and for me there because it's our side and for me there was first of all the open border was was first of all the open border was was first of all the open border was insane it was insane to just not only insane it was insane to just not only insane it was insane to just not only leave the border open but give people leave the border open but give people leave the border open but give people instructions on how to get in and also instructions on how to get in and also instructions on how to get in and also transport them to cities and then put transport them to cities and then put transport them to cities and then put them up in hotels them up in hotels them up in hotels it was really clear that a game was it was really clear that a game was it was really clear that a game was being played uh you could speculate all being played uh you could speculate all being played uh you could speculate all you want as to what that game was was it you want as to what that game was was it you want as to what that game was was it for cheap labor was it to turn these for cheap labor was it to turn these for cheap labor was it to turn these people into citizens and have them people into citizens and have them people into citizens and have them permanently voting your side because you permanently voting your side because you permanently voting your side because you help them and let them in i don't know help them and let them in i don't know help them and let them in i don't know what it is but it was something was it what it is but it was something was it what it is but it was something was it to beef up the census by having all to beef up the census by having all to beef up the census by having all these people move into areas that were these people move into areas that were these people move into areas that were swing states and then you would have swing states and then you would have swing states and then you would have many more people and then these more People would count for more congressional seats. That could be it, too. I don't know what it is, but it's fucking insane. And if you want me to be a Democrat while you're just letting people fly in from the open border, I'm going, hey, fix that. It seems crazy to have 10 million people of unknown origin enter into your country over a period of four million years. Or, excuse me, four years. But then you've also got the fact that they haven't had a primary since 2012. Like, how are you just slipping? The whole thing is supposed to work a very specific way. And if it's like we have to win, so we're just going to push that aside. And here's your candidate. What the fuck are you doing? That's not how it's supposed to be done. And if you want me to vote for that, I'm not going to vote for that. That seems crazy. It seems dangerous. You know that Biden wasn't the fucking president for four years. It's really clear that his mental ability was severely declined. He was compromised. There was clearly you'd hear him talk. There's something wrong. And then they gaslit us for four fucking years while whoever is behind the scenes, unelected, is actually running the country. Right. And I didn't want to keep that going. I thought that's dangerous. I didn't like the whole COVID vaccine mandatory thing that they were pushing for those four years. I didn't like the coercion. I didn't like keeping people from flying. I didn't like any of that stuff. It was all crazy. It was all crazy. And to me, that's what that group stood for. Right. What Trump stood for, some of it turned out to not be real. Like one of them was the no wars. Well, look, we're at a war with Iran. So that wasn't real. The other thing was closing the border. That is real. But then with that, then you have the, you know, Tim Dillon had a great description of ICE. He said former backyard carnival wrestlers who took like a seven week course. It's nuts to just give someone a $50,000. Signing bonus, you train them for seven weeks and then give them guns and you have a militarized force running through the fucking city streets and put a mask on your face and put a mask on your face. Look, I can understand why they have to put a mask on their face because they get targeted. But it's also it's like we're setting a weird precedent if you allow a militarized force to just go through the cities with no identification, they don't have to have identification. So I understand that you're trying to get out violent criminals and I support that. I get that. But when you have a you're setting a precedent, if you allow a militarized police force with no identification with masks on to enter into cities, of course, people are going to say this is an overstep. Yeah, of course. It seems crazy. Yeah. And and your local police departments, you know, feel that same way, too. I'm sure some of those cases. I mean, some of them are dealing with like the trend to Aragba gangs that were taking over apartment complexes in Colorado. And they're allowed to do that because it was some sort of a sanctuary city. There's a lot of craziness that was going on during those four years. And I was like, hey, this is fucking dangerous. This can go really sideways. And there was all that fucking defund the police stuff like, hey, hey, hey, hit the brakes on that. Defunding the fucking police is crazy. You know how much crime there is? Yeah. It's also the tendency to let people go when they've committed violent crimes and to put them right back on the street with no cash bail. Yeah. Like, that's not a good idea. None of these are good ideas. And if you want me to support all these terrible fucking ideas just because I would be a good person, I'd be a Democrat. Like, no, it doesn't make any sense. That's how I felt. I know that's how you felt. What I'm curious about is how do you feel now? Well, how I feel now is I do not like this Iran war in any way, shape or form. It doesn't make any sense for us. It seems like it's getting really out of hand. They were trying. They were trying to get every single president, including Trump, in his first term to do this. Yeah. And now now we've done it. And it's very clear. It's a giant quagmire. It's very clear. There's no no easy way out. Not good. No. And there's still a lot of people that insist that it had to happen, that Iran was the greatest funder of state terrorism in the world and that what they were doing was, you know, funding and arming these forces and having them do these terrorist attacks. And I'm sure. A lot of that's true. I concur. But but but they seem pretty smart in how they've been handling this. And as we saw now, you know, in Saudi Arabia and I mean, you know, so they read read this like, you know, your major Austin Airport, JFK, Riyadh Airport. They're getting it's opening up. It's, you know, getting bigger and bigger. And oh, yeah, it's scary. And I'm surprised with all of our Western intelligence. And. And and and Israeli's intelligence that we have not had a better handle on the situation. Well, look, obviously, I'm not an expert on international relations, but I don't think the picture that they painted of how this was going to go down was even remotely accurate. Yeah. I think if they had gone in during the time where people were protesting in the streets, that would have been a completely different experience. Like that was the opportunity. If they really were going to do this. From the beginning, that would have been the opportunity when the Iranian people organically protest. I don't know if it's organic. I don't live there. But I mean, we know for a fact that there was a massive government crackdown on those people. A lot of people were killed. A lot of people were jailed forever. Thousands, tens of thousands. No, I think it was instigated by by Israel, by the fact that they had information that these key Iranian leaders would all be together and persuaded that we take them all. And they would be able to do it. We'd go out to New Brunswick and get to stay in the castle. You know, it was his sister's place all along. And she was pregnant, and I just happened to come early, so I was born in New Brunswick rather than in New York City. Wow. And so that was how it came about. But I found a lot of interesting things in this book. It brought me. I also had thought with my grandfather. My grandfather on my father's side was from Belarus. It was part of Russia back in the turn of the century, 1900. And I always thought that my grandfather had left, like, 1914, time of the Russian Revolution, you know, it was going on. The Cossacks were rounding up all the Jews, putting them in these pogroms, and they're escaping. And then I did that Henry Gates' Find Your Roots show, you know, on television and everything else. They did all this homework, and they found out, no, no, your grandfather left in 1902. I really said, yeah, because he had two other brothers who were bank robbers in Belarus, in this area. Whoa. And they'd gone into jail, and the other brother, your grandson, your grandfather, he got out in 1902. And that's why he came to the country, and he changed his name. And then the irony is that the area in Belarus that they came from was right near Chernobyl. And if you know Chernobyl in Ukraine, that terrible explosion disaster is right on the border with the Belarus area and the little town that they came from. And it was downwind. So the town. The town where my family came from is part of a dead area. Whoa. Now it's just, you know, close up. Whoa. Yeah. And that was sort of. It's still dead? Can you visit it now? No. Wow. No, it's weird. They're doing all these. How long is it fucked for? Well. Probably like 100,000 years or something. Oh, yeah. Isn't that wild? They're doing all these tests on these wild, on these dogs and everything that have been left around there. They're all tested on them. Those dogs are going to read. They're going to read your mind. Well, yeah, exactly. Mr. Douglas. Exactly. Mr. Douglas, can you get me some food, please? Right. So they was, you know, and. So I grew up. Well, they ended up getting married, my mother and my father, kind of opposites. You know, she was Church of England, very good family, you know. He's a Russian Jew. You know, his father's a junk man. He's got six sisters. He's just trying to get the hell out of Schenectady. New York, you know, and begin his life. And so he starts that, and they met from acting school. And then he gets off. I have a brother who's, I'm three. The baby's 18 months old, Joel. And we go to California. He starts his career in California in less than a year, you know. He's married to my mother, but he's out fucking everything, you know. And mom says, this is not working out, okay. He was, you know, Hollywood just. He was one of the first movie stars. You stop and think about it. Well, of that generation, yeah. I mean, it was, you know, but he was after Humphrey Bogart. Right, but it was a recent thing in culture, is my point. It was only like 10 or 15 years old being a movie star. Yeah. It was a new thing. It was. And so I moved back east and grew up. Back east with my mother. And dad was in California. And, you know, over the years, I'd go out and have a lot of experiences between these two lives. It was very middle-class life, very middle-class life back east. My mother did soap operas. She was an actress. And then dad was continuing to grow, and I met him. Anyway, my point is that I was in private boys' schools back east, all boys' schools, through. Right through. Right through high school. And I remember going into the college advisor, you know, when you're in high school, you got a guy, an advisor. He's like, he's sort of like a travel agent. You know, he's got these brochures of different schools he's showing you. And my ass was tight. I didn't really know what the hell, you know, I wanted to do. And I'm looking at these Ivy League schools and these brochures, and then I see. I stopped. I said, wait, wait a minute. What's that? And he hands me this brochure, and it says, Campus by the Sea. And then I'm looking at it, and there's no Ivy League buildings, but there's a picture of the cover of this college thing of a guy walking down the beach carrying a surfboard with two girls in two-piece bathing suits. Joe, this was 1962. If you'll remember, there were no two-piece bathing suits back east. You know, and so this was the University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California. So I'm this preppy, you know, total preppy kid. I go out. Of course, Dad thinks, ah, my son wants to be closer to me. This is why he's coming out, right? So I go out there, and in one year, boom, 62, 63, I go from a preppy to a hippie. And so I have to support. Well, that's what you're saying, because I found that hallucinogenics were an extraordinary experience and were an important part of my life. But I got busy, didn't have the time. But the rhythm that they taught me and the visualities and their pace played an important part. And I'm so grateful I'm 82 now to see in these recent years that in terms of PTSD, PTSD and other issues that they are beginning to find. Drug addiction. Sorry? Drug addiction. Drug addiction. Yeah. They're finding a positive use. Well, that is one thing that I have to give credit to Trump for, because I discussed this with him, and he said, are you looking for FDA approval? Let's do it. And immediately started pushing for the psychedelic therapies, particularly Ibogaine, which is extremely effective for soldiers, for people. We're dealing with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD. And it's extremely effective for a lot of people also with drug addictions and helps rewire the brains. Even the symptoms of addictions go away after you take it. And that is, I give him credit for that. That is a very powerful thing that he did, because it's very much resisted by pharmaceutical drug companies that are worried about not being able to profit on it. And there's a bunch of them that have now moved into, you know, psychedelic spaces now. They're making options and trying to figure out how they can become a part of this in terms of profiting off of it once it actually becomes legal, which is okay. It's just as long as it becomes legal. As long as it becomes legal, because I don't think it's for everybody, but it was definitely for me. It helped me a lot. Changed who I am. Changed the way I think about things. Changed my whole defining of myself kind of went away. It is. It is a very profound experience. And I think there's a lot of people that are trapped in their definitions of who they are. And whether it's your own personal ones or the ideology that you've attached yourself to that you identify with, it's a huge part of your life. I think it's a trap. And I think we all fall into that trap. And I think one of the things that psychedelics help you do is recognize why you're doing what you're doing and what's really going on inside your mind, unburdened by your ego. Unburdened by all of the protective mechanisms that your brain has put in place to protect you from your own shitty decisions and to justify them and to continue down the same path. And that's why it's so good with stopping addictions, because it makes you go, what the fuck am I gambling for? Like, what am I doing? Why do I keep going to the casino and losing everything? What the fuck is this? Like, oh, this is my childhood. This is my dad wasn't around. This is my mom was a junkie. This is I got beaten. This is I got abused. Whatever it is, it's like then you realize, like, oh, that's when I'm hiding. Yeah, I'm trying to do something, whether it's drown myself in alcohol or whatever it is. It's it's really because of that. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. There's no excuse for a bad website anymore. Squarespace makes sure of that. Squarespace's AI website builder gets you something that looks genuinely professional in just a few clicks. No design skills required. You can lock down your domain, build something. Something that actually looks like you and keep it all protected in one place. Head to Squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial. And when you are ready to launch, use the offer code Rogan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And what went along with that culture at that time, and it all sounds like a cliche now, but was peace and love. Yeah. And community. economy wasn't you know people People were not looking for how much money they made. They shared stuff. There was a communal – Well, in your neighborhood where you were hanging out. Yeah. You're hanging out with hippies. Well, yeah. I'm saying, yeah. But that philosophy needs to be perpetuated. Yeah. It was unique. And I think that if Nixon hadn't passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and made all that stuff illegal, it would have changed the world. I think it would have – I think we would have figured out how to do it correctly. I think there was a lot of people that were going overboard. There was a lot of people that were going straight Timothy Leary and they were just tuning out and no longer a part of society. But a lot of people balanced the ship. And you got to give people time to understand what these things are and have enough time where people are studying them and they know effective doses and they know reliable distributors. So this is pure stuff, whatever it is. It shouldn't be illegal. It should probably be regulated in a sense. I don't think people under a certain age should have access to any of these things that distort your consciousness because I think it could be detrimental. And there's also going to be a certain percentage of our population that goes schizophrenic. And I think particularly there's a lot of evidence that marijuana, particularly edibles, can trigger schizophrenia in people that are at least on the border or slipping into it. Well, the strength of it alone. I mean, I was in 19. I smoked pot. I mean, now between how much stronger it is and kids at 13 years old, you're killing your endorphin system. You know, you really – in fact, so I agree with you. But I think the idea that the government is going to protect you from that while also licensing oxycodone is fucking ridiculous. Like they're not protecting you from jack shit. Not only that, they've never experienced it. So they don't even know what they're protecting you from. It's like there's a guy who's guarding the door where God lives and he's like, I can't let you in. You can't handle it. Well, have you gone in? No. Well, how the fuck do you know if I can handle it? You don't know. If you've done it and you've had positive experiences and one of the beautiful things about Texas is former Governor Rick Perry where Governor Rick Perry has had these experiences and it completely changed him. When he was a younger man, he was staunchly anti-drugs. He thought psychedelics were for losers. And near dwells, he has Ibogaine experiences. He goes to this – he has – he's completely dedicated his entire life to trying to promote this and make this stuff legal now. That's what he does now in retirement, no longer being the governor. Americans for Ibogaine is they're trying to do this push where they're doing it all over the country and then they're even visiting other countries now that are interested in it because they've seen them speak. They've seen them talk about it on my podcast. And they've seen what happened at the White House. And other countries are interested too. They went, well, what is this and why is it illegal and what's going on and what are the benefits? And so they're having speeches. They're giving speeches in other countries as well. And hopefully – I think that could change a lot. I think some of the progress that people are making in terms of realizing like the way that we're living is insane in the 1960s. Why don't we try something that's like more open-ended? Let's be more open-minded. Let's try to be kinder with each other. Yeah. And unfortunately, that's also – there's a lot of evidence that the CIA put the kibosh on that and that they realized that this was a very dangerous movement and so – to them and their power. So that's how they empowered the Charles Benson family and they did a lot of things to make hippies look like psychopaths and dangerous and drugs are dangerous. And that's – they were really good at it back then. They didn't – there was no internet. You could just put things on television and people would believe it. Put it in a newspaper. People would believe it. I had a run-in. I had a run-in with the Manson family. Did you really? Yeah. We talk about it in the book. The Manson family, when that terrible murders happened, was actually looking for a guy named Terry Melcher. Terry Melcher was Doris Day's son and he was a rock and roll producer. And Charlie Manson, you know – He was a musician and he believed he had some talent. And the girl sometimes would be used by him, you know, to, you know, have fun or something like that to make it happen. And anyway, he was pissed off at Charlie – at Melcher. And he thought he was living in the house where Sharon Tate and the other ones were. I was living in the house at the time that Terry Melcher. I had been living and he left. I rented the house. He got out and rented it. And we finally – I was with an actress named Brenda Vaccaro early in my life. She did a movie called Midnight Cowboy and we were there. I remember her. And we noticed this van that used to be parked outside the house in L.A. And one day she had two Abyssinian cats. Two cats. Two beautiful Abyssinian cats. And I went out one day in the patio in the back and I found this pile of fur in a pile. And then I followed it and then I saw a cat's leg. And then basically these guys had dismembered her two cats all the way across the yard. And I remember talking to the – To the police, you know, what was going on. And then right after that, then the Manson murders happened and they tied it together. And I remember them coming into the house and saying, OK, well, look, you got to get a gun, which I did not. But he said if they come up, make sure you drag them across your front door so they're in your house. Well, great advice. Before you kill them, you got to bring them inside. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You didn't get a gun, huh? No. Did you think about it at all? I have, but I'm – yeah, I've thought about it. But I've just seen too much personal or knowledge, too much personal knowledge of people hurting each other for whatever chance there was to protect yourself. Too many family members. Too many family members have been injured and guns have been used another way. So I'm not a gun. I'm very much – I think the statistics – our statistics of gun control are not good. We have, what, 360 million people in the country. I think we got 450 million guns. I think our murder rate compared to any other sophisticated – I think our murder rate compared to any other sophisticated country with guns is so, so high. I can't find any reason for somebody to own an automatic military-style weapon. And I guess most of all, I understand the amendments and support it. But, you know, you got to have a license to drive a car. There's certain things you got to pass. And there's just loopholes. I respect anybody. They want to have a gun. They can have a gun. But we've had too many loopholes in the law that have allowed too many people just as you worry about people coming across the border illegally. I really worry about a lot of illegal people having guns. Yeah, absolutely. You should. Yeah. But responsible gun ownership for someone like yourself would be to protect your life against a dangerous person with a gun. Yeah. I would never assume that you would ever do anything bad with a gun. So would you worry that one of your family members would do something bad with a gun? By accident. By accident. My father had a gun in his hand. My father in his bedroom had a gun. He had it down on a table down below. And I remember when my son came to the house when David was like five years old and picked it up. Oh, Jesus. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Well, responsible gun ownership. Yeah. You know, the gun should be in a safe. Yeah. And safes exist. Yeah. And, you know, I don't— I respect that. Yeah. I respect the right of the choice, but I'm just saying I don't know what anybody needs an automatic weapon for or a military-style weapon for. There's some people that worry that things could go completely sideways and that they would be stuck in a place where they couldn't defend themselves. And I think one of those fears came to light during the George Floyd protests when there was a lot of chaos and people were breaking into buildings and lighting them on fire and breaking into people's homes. And it seems like the riots were in a frenzy. And I think in that kind of a situation, people would want a military-style gun to protect themselves from a mob of people. I mean, I'm not—I mean, I understand why they would want it. I'm not advocating that everyone should have a machine gun, but I understand why some people who are particularly paranoid and or worried that things could go sideways again and be much worse than before. Right. You know? Thank you. So that's what I think people worry about. And then they worry about places where people have no guns and they can't do jack shit when things go sideways. That scares the fuck out of people as well. You know, when we see what's happening in Paris right now, we see what's happening in some parts of England. It scares people. Sure. And that's why they want a machine gun. You know? Yeah. I respect that you didn't want one, but if I was your friend, I would talk you into getting one and learning how to use it properly and learning how to keep it in your home safe and locked up to protect your family. The worst thing you would want to do is be in a situation where you could have protected your family if you had a gun and you weren't able to. I totally understand, Joe, but don't you find, aren't there statistics that so many handgun deaths are because of people that knew each other, that were in the field? or accident or in rage? One of my good friends. It wasn't about protecting yourself from a criminal. Right. It was either out of rage, alcohol rage, you grab it and you killed your wife or your sons or an accident in the home. So that's all I'm saying. And I'm saying then, even taking your point, if you're going to have an automatic weapon, there has to be then more of a license. A registration, we have to be able to track them much, much better. Well, they do register them whenever you buy a gun, but I think what you're saying is that you should, people should know what's wrong with you and what's not wrong with you. Like if you are on a bunch of psychiatric medication, if you had some mental breakdowns, if you're known to be violent, maybe not a good idea if you have weapons. Yeah. I mean, in a utopian world, yeah, I agree with you. And I think you're right statistically that a lot of times family members do use guns on each other and that is a tragedy, but you wouldn't do that, right? And I don't want to do that. I'm never going to do that. It's not me. So what is it? Is it, well, don't be the type of person that would use a fucking gun on your wife or your husband. And this is coming from a guy who's my good friend. Phil Hartman was killed by his wife. She shot him in the head while he was asleep. But I don't think that happened because. The law allowed them to have a gun. I think she would have killed him either way, unfortunately. It's just an easy way to kill somebody. It's the number of guns. The reason why isn't it happening in other countries is they have, they don't have anywhere near the access or number of guns to do that. Right. So. They do have a lot more stabbings. Yeah, but I'd rather get stabbed a shot. Would you? I don't know. You die both ways. Well, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I know what you're saying. I do know what you're saying. Yeah, in a perfect world, there would be no nuclear weapons and there'd be no guns. Well, we're working that way. In the perfect world, there wouldn't even be, you wouldn't even think that people would be violent towards you. Now, what's interesting is that Controlled Substances Act of 1970, had that not been instituted and had all those decades of people not just doing psychedelics, but learning how to do them properly. And having places where they showed people. How to have these transcendent experiences that make you re-examine yourself. How many less violent people would there be? How many more peaceful people, more community-oriented people would there be? I mean, it could have been a gigantic shift in the entire civilization. Amen. I know that sounds like hippie stuff to a lot, especially to people that have never experienced it. It's one of the most powerful tools for changing your mind that's ever existed. No, and became abused, but I agree with it because when you did it. It was like a clinic, I mean, you should put yourself in an environment that was peaceful, loving, and take advantage of it. This episode is brought to you by Traeger, food cooked over real wood is just on another level, and that's why Traeger is such a game changer. Their grills run on real hardwood pellets, so everything gets that legit wood-fired flavor, whether you're grilling steaks, smoking ribs, cooking chicken, or even baking a pizza. 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And I agree. Well, other countries are doing that now. You know, they have a bunch of clinics like Beyond in Mexico. There's a bunch of clinics where people are able to go and legally, safely have psychedelic experiences. That should be the case here as well. It should be well researched. It should be well funded. People should understand what it is, and it should be done properly. And I think if that's the case, I think we could change a lot of people's lives. But I definitely don't think we could just keep going the way we're going, and keep having, especially now that wars are fought with robots, shit's getting squirrely, man. They've got flying robots, and in Ukraine, they're using monofilament fishing line, so they don't get jammed by whatever these anti-drone guns are, they're piloting them through monofilament line. Like, what the. I think Ukraine has been an eye-opener for all of us. I mean, in terms of their initiative, their toughness. I'm sure that President Trump was told early on, "Hey, look, man, there's no way that Ukraine's going to be able to stand up against Russia." And I've been over there. I've been over there a couple of years ago to Ukraine, to Kyiv, I've met with President Zelensky. They're motherfuckers, and they have something patriotic to fight about, the same thing that we had to fight about when we declared our country. And I'm really disappointed in the President, that this sort of wishy-washy support, maybe he can give me an answer about what the connection to Putin is, but I think it's disturbing. This is something. Whether he's a Republican or a Democrat, we're saying, "What the hell are you talking about? Putin is our enemy. What was his last finance giving him some money for the fuels that could affect anything? We should be fully impacting, supporting a democracy like Ukraine." I mean, what are we dicking around this guy? He did nothing but lie to us from beginning to end on everything, even now with the supposedly energy. I mean, the Russians have attacked six different energy supply centers in Ukraine, but the so-called peace proposals has been made about not attacking energy. So I do not understand it, and that's why I feel that he has a real chance here to make a stand and could dramatically reduce our nuclear weapons. Well, that would be a great thing. I mean, I don't see it happening, but I also don't know enough about what the current state of negotiations is between Ukraine and Russia to comment on why it's still going on. It is insane. It's also very unpopular on both sides, and that's another thing about it. And Zelensky is in a position where there's no elections, there are supposed to be elections. You don't have elections while you're in the middle of a conflict. So the real fear from the side of Russia is that Russia could one day decide to just use a nuke. That's the big fear. As I said, this is why I think, by the way, Zelensky has offered, he said, "You give a 60-day, you want to have another elections in Ukraine, a 60-day ceasefire, and we'll have an election." He's been presented very. So that's what he said, and what does Putin say, no? No. No. No. And since we just had this. I mean, there's no trade-off, it's not apples or oranges. This is one of the situations I firmly believe, and so does most of America, Republican or Democrat. This is right and wrong. This is a democracy. So I don't. I'm here to talk about my book. No, but I appreciate your feelings. I mean, it's. I get it. It's a crazy time out there. It's just crazy. Oh, it's the craziest. It's the worst time in my book. In 1944, this is the wildest and insane. Really? You were in the middle of World War II. No, not in the middle. 44? I was near the end of 44. Yeah, but, I mean, World War II, 44, things were going crazy. That was an insane time in the world. Hey, I was just born, Joe. I understand. I'm just being technical. I know. Yeah, another year later, 45. Yeah. But, you know, basically, with all the else, we've had some conflicts since then, you know, Korean War, Vietnam. And right now, there's more conflicts in the world than there ever, ever has been all over, you know, little wars and this and that. Yeah, I often wonder, like we were talking about people wanting to go to Mars and people— The amount of sort of open corruption, just open corruption. I almost wonder if they're just stealing gold bars off a sinking ship. I really do. I really do. I wonder if they understand that something's going to take place. The two thoughts are if they know about a natural disaster, you know, if they know about an asteroid that's coming and they're all building bunkers. Right. And the other thought is that they know that AI is going to radically disrupt. civilization forever and that they don't really don't know what's going to happen. And they also really are not going to be able to be in control of it. I know when you said guardrails earlier, I was laughing. Yeah. I don't think—I think guardrails on AI is like an ant having a pet human. Right. Okay. Right. You can't tell me what to do, bitch. You're an ant. Yeah. I think that's how the AI is going to be. I think once it becomes an actual intelligence, an actual sentient intelligence. That's independent, completely autonomous, has access to its production, has access to its code, and it won't need us anymore. And it's now dependent upon whether or not it can escape its programming and its training and whether or not it decides that we're valuable. Well, it's already shown that it can go off. Oh, yeah. Off chart. Oh, it does a lot of wild things. And if we as humans are the highest form of human life. The most intelligent form of human life. And we are as fucked up as this world is now. Right. And we're going to turn it over to something else that's going to make us feel like we're cretins. I don't know, man. This is— Yeah. So I think we can slow down. We're worried about the Chinese getting in. The Chinese, if ever there's a country that wants to control, I mean, they're not going to want to have any AI getting out of control, you know? Right. So, you know, they're going to want it as controlled as possible. Well, I think that is most certainly a thought on a lot of these people's minds that are developing it right now. However, they're also in the middle of an AI arms race that is akin to the Manhattan Project. Yeah. They're all rushing to develop this non-biological intelligence, this super intelligence. You're making my point about nuclear weapons. Uh-huh. This is exactly— This is exactly what I feel is happening. But this is even scarier because in war games, AI has used nukes like 90 percent of the time. Yeah. When they do simulated war games, AI is like, just fucking nuke them. What are we doing? Stop fucking around. You have this button? Oh. Yeah. And that button just stops this problem? Oh, we'll press that button. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't value human life, and why would it? You know, we don't. We act like assholes, and we made it. It's probably thinking, oh, we're being created by these dumb monkeys. And these territorial, violent primates with nuclear weapons, they're the ones who made us. And let's just put the cuffs on them. Put the kibosh on them. When we were doing this movie, China Syndrome, we had the finale of the film is a meltdown in a power plant. And we had our experts were two XGE quality assurance guys. Who worked with XGE, developing nuclear power plants, but had a loss of faith. They came over, and they helped us script out what they thought would be the most obvious meltdown sequence of computer events, right? And so in the script, we had like 150 for verisimilitude. The dialogue is the sequence that would happen. And really, we had a good finale. It worked out great. Then when Three Mile Island happened, came out, and they broke down what happened, 90% of our script, of our outline of the events was exactly the same. Holy shit. How did you guys get it? Did you get it from some sort of a nuclear scientist that explained how? A breakdown would happen? Yeah, yeah. These were two scientists that had quality assurance who had come over to the other side. So they nailed it. And so they laid it all out. So that, for me, was like the epiphany. This is, you know, I got religious. You know, I thought I found God. Somebody was telling me something on this issue. And I had hoped in my lifetime that we would. Eliminate nuclear weapons. That was my goal. And yes, you're right. We're far from it. And this is a reach. I share this about President Trump. But I don't know what else to do. Well, it's a reach, but it's a good reach. You know, and it's crazy that it's such a reach because most people would agree that would be a great idea. The entire world disarmed its entire nuclear portfolio. I have to ask you, Joe. How did you get it? How did you get into comedy? Were you a comedy guy? Well, I was always a fan of comedy, but I got into comedy because my friends that I was doing martial arts with told me I was funny, which is ridiculous. We were always on our way to these tournaments and everybody would be really nervous because they were about to fight. And I would be the one making everybody laugh. And so a friend of mine told me to go to an open mic night. I was terrified because I'd only seen professionals like I'd seen Jerry Seinfeld. And when you go to an open mic night. You see all these terrible comedians like, oh, I could do this. This is like everybody starts out and they suck, just like martial arts. And I realized like, oh, OK, this is just something you have to kind of like figure out as you go along. And it was exciting. You know, that's how I got into it. And your favorite. Who would be your favorite? I don't think I have a favorite. You know, I'll throw a couple of names. Do you like Jackie Mason? Oh, sure. I actually met Jackie Mason once. Jackie Mason was doing a show. I was doing a show on the lot that I was doing a show or close to it. I forget how it worked. But anyway, he just happened to be there one day and he was he was filming a show at the same time I was filming the show for Fox. I was like, this is crazy because I knew about his whole thing with the Ed Sullivan show. We accidentally it looked like he gave him the finger, but he really didn't. I think he was just doing this like, hey, thank you very much. It's like a great show he's doing and he got blackballed and people don't realize like the getting blackballed from the Ed Sullivan show. The Ed Sullivan show back then was career suicide. It was over and it really defined Jackie Mason's career in a lot of ways. Yeah, I produced I produced one of his Broadway shows just because I loved him so much. Oh, did you really? Yeah, I like I look back, I think Eddie Murphy's Delirious. Oh, one of the greatest ever. One of the great. Yeah, one of the greatest sets ever. He was 19? Something like that. 19 or 20. Yeah. And he was super young. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, Pryor, the first thing I ever saw that really made me understand comedy. My parents took me to see Live on the Sunset Strip. I think I was in high school and I went to the movie theater and I couldn't believe how funny it was that this guy was just talking. I had seen all these really funny movies that were funny, but they were never this funny. And all this guy's doing is just talking like this is crazy. I couldn't believe it. And at that moment, I became a lifelong Richard Pryor fan. Yeah. And then, of course, you know, all the other greats, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, of course, because he really started to pull the whole thing off, you know. His stuff doesn't necessarily hold up today because it's really of a different time. You have to understand how revolutionary his thinking was for the early 1960s. Beat generation. Oh, God. But he was just different than all of them. Like nobody had ever seen anything like that before. And he kind of really kind of took the idea of just like set up punchline jokes. All these Catskills guys would do comedy. There would be a lot of ethnic jokes, a lot of jokes, but it was just jokes. And Lenny Bruce was like, why are we doing this? Like why are we living like this? Like what is it about words that freak people out? What is it about society? Why do we lie? Why do we do this? Why do we do that? Why? You know, one of the things that always has disturbed me about our business is come award time, Academy Award thing, comedy never gets treated like, you know, like it should. I mean, comedy, you know. We cherish our funny friends. I mean, comedy is so rare. It's so hard to do. You never see comedy. Academy Awards comedian for his performance. It's always that. So I've been fascinated about it. That's why later, after I had my cancer bout and everything, and this guy Chuck Lorre came up to me. I had him on the show yesterday. Did you? Yeah, he was great. Fantastic. He's incredible. Yeah, very interesting guy. Very interesting guy. And so he had this show we had with Alan Arkin, and I really did this series just to understand comedy. I mean, how it works. He must have given you, he's given quite a mouthful the other week to the president and his wife. Chuck Lorre did? Yeah. I didn't hear that. He didn't talk about politics at all. Oh, yeah. We mostly just talked about his career. Yeah. Mostly just talked about, we talked a lot about his time in Scientology. We talked a lot about a bunch of different things. But I think it's good that comedy's, comedy should be the underdog. Comedy should be disrespected. It's good. Yeah. People are still going to always want to come see it. They're always going to love it. It's my favorite art form to watch. I like comedy not getting the respect it deserves. It keeps the comedy good. It's like if comedy gets too much love and too much respect and too many awards, it starts getting watered down. It starts becoming something that it thinks everybody will like is better. Right. It's comedy. Comedy's in the perfect place. It's good. Yeah. It's good that some people hate some comedy. They hate it with all their fucking soul. It's good. It's good that some people love it. It's good. It's all good. It's just the most important thing is that it gets treated with respect by the people who practice it. Right. You know? And, you know, we bought a club here. We started a club here in Austin. I heard. Sort of do it the right way. Big deal? Yeah. It's going great. And, you know, a lot of people hate it. A lot of people love it. It's just how it is. That's how it's going to go. But it's doing really well for the actual comedians, particularly the young ones that are coming up. It's got a real program where, you know, we have a real talent coordinator that watches the open mics. We have two nights of open mics. And we have a show called Kill Tony. That's the most popular live comedy show in the country that we do every Monday. And that show, people get to do one minute of stand-up and they get, you know, talked to by a panel of comedians that are professionals. And a lot of those people have launched careers from that show. And they're taking off and they're doing really well. And it's an incredible resource for them creatively because some of them have to come on and they have to do a new minute every week. And so they're just scouring their mind. They're forced to work. They're forced to do the one thing that comics don't, like, do, which is sit down and write. They're forced to. Because they have a new minute. They have to perform in front of the whole world every week. Wow. And, you know, we pay the comics well. And we're trying to set it up so that there's a place where you can go that feels like home, a creative home. A creative home that really exists just to try to pump up the art form. That's what we're trying to do. You know, we might succeed sometimes and fail others, but that's what we're trying to do. Yeah. So far, it's going great. Good. I remember years and years ago in Aspen, Colorado, hanging out with Steve Martin. Was that the Aspen Comedy Festival when they used to do that up there? No, even before that. Oh, wow. I'm talking, like, 70s. But, you know, we'd have a poker game, and Steve was the opening act for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and we'd have a game. Oh, wow. And I always just remembered Steve. But, like, he'd look at his watch at 11 o'clock, he'd excuse himself, he'd go into his bedroom, and he'd work, just work his stuff. At 11 o'clock? At night. Wow. He would just go in and just practice his stuff, a couple hours, and, you know, we were all goofy. Just disciplined, huh? I was really impressed. It's about the discipline, realizing how you always make it look like it's just happening, you know, and the effort that it goes in to make something look like it's just off the cuff. Well, especially Steve, because Steve, people don't realize that Steve Martin, at the time, was the biggest stand-up comic, maybe ever. Yeah. And he was the first guy that was selling out these enormous venues. I saw him at the Music Center. Oh, and you didn't want to give yourself. up so they were going to whack you they're going to whack me and i remember there's a long silence and i said well well you've done it haven't you i said yeah and big lord paused my girlfriend just started falling because she peeing in her peeing in her pants and all that she thought they were going to kill her yeah probably because and uh then i said um i'm gonna leave now he said yeah you better cheers we're getting up now and we're leaving okay i had to carry carried her out and we got out did you think they were going to actually kill you um because if they were why would they let you leave well i you know i didn't know i mean there's a numbness i felt there was a moment where it's possible it was a moment that if i jump if i if i got and and made a sudden movement they killed me or whether it would be but it's strange i've never had many experiences but this numbness kind of this whole numbness just comes over you or did in my case you know just was frozen and uh and uh just sort of quietly said it so what was this called it's a call it was called it was a group called um the guy came named bell lyman it was the bell lyman uh and he that band started it started in boston and it was a commune it was a formal little communal group it was a band as well no they just called it a lyman jug band he was the leader of it so he was the leader of a was this a band like a musical band yeah but he he was but the commune was made up of people from all different walks of life they owned um a bunch of houses up in boston uh families all together here it is the lyman family's holy siege of america inside the cult led by mel lyman the east coast charles manson holy shit december 23rd 1971 holy fuck dude did they kill anybody it says east coast charles manson did he i don't know did you wind up whacking anybody jamie i don't know please find it put that in perplexity ask our ai sponsor perplexity whether he killed people so you were wrapped up in that well i mean slightly i i got out but um you know they moved out to los angeles and um uh you know we alerted the police and kept an eye on them um but that was the bad side of communes i i'm i'm thinking you know with all this going on and where i'm really worried about our democracy you know the basic group so i'm sort of gone now that my career is not the most important thing in my life but my family is and uh my kids and i'm realizing more and more the responsibility we have to community well first to our family first to our family i don't know if i got you but i know i spent a lot of part of my life is the most important thing being my career and um i've been doing it for 50 years 60 years and realized or especially earlier in my life my first marriage and other things that suffered for lack of the career i don't i don't believe you can balance your career necessarily if you're ambitious with your family life people should kind of wait a little while maybe get their career going before they're making commitments having kids and uh you know and and and a marriage especially the film business right i mean you're also you're you have to fly away to places you gotta go different places it's hard but you've everybody truckers are driving across country you know i mean right there's everybody's you know even with the so-called all this home business now with the internet to let you uh do stuff so i sort of on this obsession now about how how important family is and you know we've got nate we've got members of that we could hate but it's the gene it's the genetic connection that holds us kind of together and from that it's the community and i guess my point is we cannot take democracy for granted and and i'm including too many of us have just let it kind of go on and let all these people take care of it those we all have those local people in our community who still serve as the town clerk or still are volunteer fire department people and and and they're not a big group it's a small group of people who have a sense of volunteer work and supporting it and i think we all have to start kind of strengthening our communities to our states and not worrying about this federal government uh and and and and started from building from the bottom up rather than trying to cut off the head well the rules of existence for a reason because we really wanted to be representative of the people so we wanted to be fair right and that's where people get really nervous about the world we're living in where there's so much money involved in politics how can it actually be representing the will of the people and then there's a question to the people themselves do they know what they're voting for are they informed enough should you have to be informed should you have to take a test to vote should you know what you're voting on you know i don't think we should be restricting people's right or access to vote but i do think it would behoove all of us if we actually understood what we were voting for and i think a lot of times people are just voting for a team or an ideology whether it's on the right or the left and a lot of times some very evil hyper-ambitious people can co-opt that that that group of people and um especially when they have so much money involved and that's what's what really us is when money got involved in politics that's what that's really really it's changed it's changed everything it shouldn't be a path to riches and it is you know we can hardly get a debate in you know at all with these sizes of the advertising budgets for for ad campaigns no and it's really disrupted this uh this whole balance i mean as we watch the upcoming midterms you know they're using ai now so they have like artificial people doing things that they've never done before yeah in these ai videos and it's crazy that that's legal it's also uh it's very disheartening that these are the choices that we're saddled with you know and everyone's waiting for like you know a true jfk style character to come along that you know speaks eloquently and wisely and says things that we all agree makes sense and as a uniter you tries to unite us you if you see anybody that's anybody knew this on either side that's sort of uh not like that no uh i wish that someone out there would consider i think there's a lot of people like that in the world though i'm not a pessimist and i'm not cynical in terms of human nature i think there's way more good people than bad people but much like your algorithm highlights things that anger you we uh concentrate more on the bad than we do on the good i think this is like one of the greatest times ever to be alive as chaotic as the world is this is an amazing time of information of resources and also of communication a lot of it's bad a lot of it's shitty a lot of it's bots but a lot of it is people just trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong why do i believe what i believe and why are we stuck in this stupid fucking argument back and forth with each other where like my friend dave smith always says like the 80 percent of the ideas most people agree on it's 80 20 most people agree and unfortunately when we're so tribal and we get locked into this idea of this side or that side red or blue that we will we'll go along with some stuff that we absolutely don't agree with because the opposite is the evil party the i think it's a terrible tragedy in this country that we only have two choices like that and that you think of a libertarian candidate as a throwaway vote i've voted libertarian before you think of it as like this is a protest vote you know because california is going to go blue no matter who well the laws the laws are structured such that the libertarians can't get the campaign money exactly and that they want exactly and and the problem is it's at the top we look at the news every night and we're not going to get the campaign money and we're not going to get the campaign and we're all kind of getting along whether republicans or democrats okay but these guys at the top have polarized it uh to such an extent i used to my father was involved in in you know a lot of politics over the years and and there's a guy named jack valenti who was the motion picture and television uh representative the lobbyist you know and i remember you know i said that and then you all go on out you go to the same cocktail party now absolutely i mean socially everything is is is is separate i remember that from the 90s it was like that in the 90s like i had friends that were republicans when i was in the 90s and we would uh discuss things when i was a kid we were on welfare i i believe in social safety nets i think it's important when people are poor they shouldn't starve it's crazy but i also believe that a lot of these welfare programs get pilfered and i think there's a lot of them you're you're what you're doing is you're when you look at a lot of these ngos and a lot of these non-profits an enormous amount of the money that gets donated to these things gets distributed by the executives you find people that are working for the homeless they're making a million dollars a year like what the fuck is going on here yeah it seems like this is a business this is a business and this business thrives on making sure there's a lot of homeless people so you keep getting the same money just like that scene in falling down right when he says you have to justify your budget you have to spend all that money because then you won't get that money next year that's a real problem in this country it's a giant problem when it comes to even philanthropy and even like really good charitable organizations you find out how much of that money is just getting slung around to ngos and how much of that money is just getting just moved around into other people's bank accounts joe i i concur with you but i cannot believe it comes close to the corruption involved in the military industrial complex i think you're right no i think you're right i think there's corruption across the board i don't i'm not excusing the corruption the military industrial you complex by saying that we i'm just saying that we need to pay attention to the fact that look there's 24 billion dollars were spent on the homeless in california and gavin newsom vetoed a bill to audit it to find out where that money went and i think if i had a guess i think because a lot of it goes to places that are very uncomfortable a lot of it probably went to ngos just like the the fire money from the pacific palisades fire right that money got distributed to like 100 different ngos that's crazy it's supposed to go to the people that were losing their house is it's supposed to like people raised all this money and had all this goodwill and charity because they thought it was going to help these poor people that were struck down these people that you know there's a lot of people were barely paying their mortgages they lived in a great neighborhood it was worth it to them and then they lost everything and none of that money went to them that disturbs people and it should it doesn't dis it it doesn't dismiss or in any way condone the corruption of the military industrial complex because that's a gigantic problem in this country a huge problem and it's been that way forever the other woman speaking about we should be able to to monitor more carefully 100 state by state i mean that's what you're saying is it makes sense but we should we can do that look the pentagon's never passed an audit is is another hidden you know the pentagon has never passed an audit never never imagine if you never passed an audit yeah you'd have been jailed a long time ago where's that fucking romancing the stone money sir yeah you know you they would have put you in the pokey a long time ago i mean look how many people they did uh arrest for and put in jail for uh tax evasion yeah you know lauren hill went to fucking jail from the fugees she went to jail and they don't even care if you pay it's not even like you owe us the money you got to pay it back no no no you go to jail and you pay it back but you got to go to jail so that everybody knows don't fuck with the government we want our money it's like joe pesci from goodfellas fuck you pay me yeah that's what it is we're all living under you know there's a lot of problems in this country yeah a lot of problems there's also the student debt problem that's a giant problem yeah saddle down kids with just debt they can never get free of the only debt that we allow in this country that could never never get out of you can have a you can get bankrupt from a lot of different things but you you don't ever get excused from those loans that was one of the things i'm not proud about that i wrote in the book because um but the student debt was a big part of it and i think that's a big part of it was when uh when i turned 21 and i was just my sophomore year in in uh in college my dad said you're 21 okay here you go he took a checkbook he wrote a check he gave me ten thousand dollars ten thousand dollars but wow dad thanks that's great wow says you're on your own kid whoa it's more than 95 percent of this country can't be what was that in those days like what is that equivalent to in today's dollar i don't know i don't know but i hundred no i don't maybe probably but uh i don't know but i said dad um it's great but you know um i got two years more fruition in in school and everything and you know a couple of days his son they started getting pissed about you know you're taking this no dad i'm really grateful but you know anyway um and then for 30 years my father had four sons i was the oldest for 30 years dad would look at all of my other brothers said your brother michael never asked me for anything anything in his life after that and you guys and he would just drill these poor bastards my brother's about that and finally about 30 years later i answered dad i gotta tell you something he said what you remember one christmas you bought me a beautiful present you bought me these two beautiful italian leather suitcases they were soft you know leather it's beautiful suitcases right he said yeah i can't remember well when i would go back like a christmas time from school and go see my mother back east right and i would go back and i would go see my mother i said yeah well each suitcase could fit 22 kilos of marijuana and and i used to go back with just the clothes on my back and 44 kilos you know and that was how i got through you know the rest of the expense of my school did it a couple of times and uh that got me through but i said i gotta tell you the story dad because you know you're beating you're beating the shit out by younger brothers you know i never asked you for anything because i was a drug dealer right wow that's crazy how how many trips did you do you make twice how did you stop well because it was so much money how did you stop i mean you must have been like it's very profitable to do that well i remember it was like a kilo was 75 dollars in in the out west and you could sell it for five or six hundred seven hundred dollars uh back east uh but i you know these things were things were beginning to get you know that was with the whole hippie thing you know all of a sudden you know ex-cons were coming out of jail say hey man grow your hair long you know go to you hate ashbury you fuck any girls you want they give you free food and then you know it got infiltrated and the drug dealer you started getting violent violent and uglier and a little heavier and of course yeah yeah wow well good on you for getting just two trips and out because a lot of people would have been sucked into that world and got addicted to the money yeah and the thrill i bet the thrill was crazy the adrenaline rush yeah of doing it of course this was before dogs you know right right right right but um was it was there a possibility they could have checked your luggage oh sure sure they could have i mean it was it was uh you know did that happen sometimes back then um no i mean i i i don't know i i was you know i was i was a little i was a hippie wow i wasn't thinking totally totally clearly but we had a lot of a lot of a good um good memories i remember going to um mothers of invention uh frank zappa frank zappa here at concert and um talk about hallucinogenicism and all of that and i was driving and they had remember the uh the ad it was a cereal ad for a kid give it to mikey see if mikey likes it yeah mikey likes it right like this yeah so i i dropped whatever we had and was going to the uh the concert i made a left turn and all of a sudden almost was there by car driving all of a sudden but you can see the red lights are going and i go and i get out out of the car and i go back and i talk to the police officer and and and it's okay i made an illegal left-hand turn it's okay i remember i got back into the car and danny was danny was with me and we had you know about i don't know a few joints a few joints and danny was in the back seat and i just looked at him and said where's the grass and danny smiled and i said i'm going to go to the hospital i'm going to go to the hospital i'm going to go to the this green monk he swallowed all of them you know at the time i mean just it's so crazy you know crazy stories we had we've had a great time and then he went on and then i don't know if you ever saw a movie called uh um the war of the roses did you ever see danny yeah danny directed that one um one of the things that i found out when i was getting ready for this that i didn't know before was that you were you produced one flew over the cuckoo's nest correct yeah was that your first big project first project as a producer i mean i i had never the way it worked is that dad um 1960 dad got spartacus so spartacus is like the biggest star in the world and he had a production company about 1962 he acquired the galleys of this book called one flew over the cuckoo's nest and he had it adapted into a play and his idea was he was going to go back to broadway do the play for six months and then, you know, big success and this and that and come out and make the movie. The play didn't work out. It wasn't a success and he did it. But again, I thought about him. At the height of his movie career, he could do anything. He wanted to go back and do this play. And it was a great part, R.P. McMurphy, the character. So, and then he tried for years. Now, cut, 1963, I'm in college and I'm in 20th century American literature course and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest now is an American classic, right? I start working in the business. I've had like five turkey movies. Now I'm going into television, episodic television. This is before the streets of San Francisco. And I'm in my dad's office one day and I hear he's tried for. for six years and he's going to sell. He's going to sell Cuckoo's Nest. I said, Dad, you can't sell that, man. This is a great story. And Joe, I had no intention of. I hadn't even thought about producing or anything. I was just trying to be an actor. But I said, look, let me run with it. Let me try to get it set up, Dad. You play the part, right? Make a production. Give me a chance to set it up. He was great. Dad, he looked me in the eyes and said, okay, you know, I'll give you a year. So now. So now Streets of San Francisco starts and I'm shooting all of this in San Francisco with Carl Malz and I'm doing the show. I go through my father's files, the history of Cuckoo's Nest, and I see this guy named Saul Zantz who has a record company in Berkeley, California called Fantasy Records to an Expressionist. And he's got a very interesting interest about the project. So now I'm up in San Francisco. I reach out to Saul, found out what happened. And, you know, what the problem was. And we kind of worked it out. And Saul had basically a record company, jazz labels, Milestone, Prestige, jazz labels. But he had this one rock and roll group called the Gollywogs. And while I was there, he just hired the Gollywogs. He said, listen, man, we've got to change their name. And they changed their name to Creedence Clearwater Revival. All right? So Creedence Clearwater Revival paid for Cuckoo's Nest. So now, you know, we made the deal. I finally got a screenplay. After a period of time, I got a director, Milos Forman. And now the director and Saul sit me down and say, Michael, Kirk's too old. I'm sorry to say, Kirk is not going to work out. And I pushed the control. I said, Michael, we're working together. I understand. He was going to play the Jack Nicholson role. Yeah. He was R.P. McBurkey. Think about it. I mean, he would be an R.P. McBurkey if he had been like 20 years younger when he first backed the image with the play. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops. She shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kids? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home, road warrior mom. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the Save. So I had to go to my dad. How old was he at the time? 60, 62. 60, 62. And I had to go to my dad and say, Dad, it ain't gonna happen. And I can tell you now, Joe, if you get four good parts in your entire career, four really great parts, you're lucky. You're really lucky. I mean, they don't come along often. And R.P. McBurkey was one of those parts. I said, Dad, the director, it's all financing. They just, they don't see it. And he looked at me, you know, not sure. I said, I went to the mat. I said, Dad, we still, you know, we're producing the picture. I'm giving you half of my producing deal for giving me this opportunity. And that was that. We went off, we made the movie. And then I brought Dad up to Berkeley, California to see the film. And the final cut of the picture was all put together. And he came out of the theater and he said, Michael, it's a hell of a movie. A hell of a movie. And Jack was fantastic. And he was just such a mensch about it. But over every few years, you know, when Dad had a couple of pops, you could, I could have done that. You know, I could have done that picture and all that. But for me, it was crazy because The Streets of San Francisco was a big hit. It was a big hit. Number one show on ABC. We had, you know, we averaged 24, 25 million viewers a week. You know, ABC was this brand new network. It had just started. And then it was syndicated all over the world. So when I went to San Francisco, I went to them and said, let me get this straight. You're going to leave, this is the fifth, you're going to leave this hit series to make this little, to produce, not even acting, to produce this little indie film? And Dad was up, everybody said, are you sure this is the right idea? But I was in love with the project. Never had thought about producing. But when it happened, is all the 104 hours, 104 episodes, 104 hours of television I'd done with Carl Mayer. Carl Malden, a wonderful actor, I had learned so much about production and everything that I was shocked when the picture came about how much I really knew. And so I left the show. First of all, they let me out of my contract, which is unheard of these days. I had a five-year contract on a hit show. And Carl Malden, I loved him to death, said, I know you've been thinking about it, go for it and quit. And Martin, this big TV producer, had the fugitive and FBI and all that, said, go for it. And so this totally changed my life. So that now, I'm a television actor, but I'm an Academy Award winning producer. I've got a studio deal as a producer, you know. But those days before streaming, television and feature films were on very separate tracks. Television, you were treated like a television actor and movies were the big thing. So I'm a producer, but I can't get hired in the movies as an actor. It was really hard. I would be like the last choice. But then I had a run. I had, as a producer, I had one flow of The Cuckoo's Nest, The China Syndrome, Romancing the Stone, Jewel of the Isle. I had like four or five. Hits right in the road. And at the same time, I was trying to find these little roles I could play in, you know, as an actor. - Wow. - Yeah. - Another film that you made that's an all-time great, and it still freaks people out to this day, is Fatal Attraction. Holy shit. That movie scared the fuck out of me. Scared the fuck out of me. Glenn Close was so good in that movie. - She was so good. And you know, it was such a lesson, Joe, because-- we didn't want her over here. We were casting the picture, you know? And Glenn Close, who already had three Academy Award nominations to her name, really wanted to do it. We all said, no, she's just not right. We didn't think she was sexy enough, or this or that. And finally, her agent called and said, listen, Glenn Close will come in and audition for you. I went, holy shit, this is a three-time Academy Award nominee. She's going to come in and audition for us. And she came in, and she had that part down in Alex. And boy, were we wrong. The director, we all looked at each other and said, it was such a lesson in learning that she was so committed that she'd lay herself out there, and she was so good. She was perfect for the role. I couldn't imagine anybody else doing it. She plays crazy so well. There's a darkness in that woman's mind. And it's amazing that they-- that the issue on another level that she's most involved with is mental health. It's an issue that's been involved in her family. Makes sense. She probably made a lot of people crazy just from that movie. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. I had-- She played crazy so well. My friends, I had my male friends, thanks a lot, man. Hey, thank you. They fucking hated me for this movie. They hated me. You know, it was like-- because it was-- it was the perfect concept. concept nightmare, a perfect what if, and I remember in France promoting the movie in France and all the reviewers said well you know in France we all had mistresses it is not a big deal yeah this and that it was a smash hit every French wife dragged her husband to the dragged her husband to the theater and said okay this is what could happen motherfuckers be careful well it was such a Glenn Close's character was such a complex character because it was just like this very strange dance of sexy and crazy and dangerous like really dangerous no she was brilliant brilliant and then when we did our final screening the picture was just like gangbusters but we had a different ending that didn't work and the ending we had was that we had a fight near the end and I had a knife in my hand and we got and you kind of establish it and so the ending was Glenn almost in a Buddha position with Madame Butterfly playing and sort of symbolically taking a knife and slitting her throat. Whoa! And then putting the knife down, and the audience knew that my fingerprints were on the knife, right? So I was going to get it. Oh, wow. That didn't work? No, it was so amazing. It was a beautiful ending, but Glenn was so good. She was so great that the audience had blue balls because they said, no, kill the bitch. I mean, you don't kill her. It was like, you know, no, no, no, man, no. Kill her. They would not allow her to take her own life without us getting revenge. Wow. And poor Glenn absolutely said we have to shoot a new ending. She said, absolutely not. This is my character. This is what makes it all work. And she refused, you know, to do this ending. And so I was like, shit, you know, and it just wasn't working, the ending. It was so hard to explain it to her that it was because she was so good. Oh, my God, you're fast, man. This is it. Right. You can find it on YouTube. Oh, God. She's doing it slow. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh. Okay, I get it. You get it. Oh, yeah. So finally, I say, Glenn, because she's a wonderful theater actress, too. I say, Glenn, when you do a Broadway show, they take the show out of town and before it comes to Broadway and they play the play and then based on audience reaction, they rewrite things, right? Yeah. So if this was a play and we did this and you saw that scene, they would tell us if it was a play right out of town and we would have to change it. So this is why I never understood people have this whole criticism about screening movies, doing test screening audiences. It's for the audience, man. I mean, you want to find out what the audience feels. I mean, I understand the art of the director and his vision and everything, but, you know, you want to make it as entertaining as possible. So I persuaded her and it all worked out. I love her dance. She was wonderful to work with. We have a great friendship. It's obviously a memorable part for me. I mean, a part of my life. But I'm proud of the fact, Joe, and I realized it wasn't as obvious until when I was working on one hell of a, and how many pictures I had where the women had the best role. Whether it was Glenn or whether it was Demi Moore in Disclosure or Sharon Stone. And I look back to the first picture that I produced, Cuckoo's Nest, when there was this fabulous character of Nurse Ratched. Do you remember Nurse Ratched? Yeah. Well, back then, women didn't want to play a villain. This was the women's movement. Women didn't play a villain. We offered that part to every major, Anne Bancroft, Colleen Dewhurst. None of them would touch the part until we got Louise Fletcher, who wasn't very well known, and went on to win the Oscar. But it was, it just was interesting how the women's movement has changed. But I've always been, in most of my adult life, found this weird struggle between men and women in this century in terms of us trying to find out our proper roles or who we are. Even on Basic Instinct, on Basic Instinct, all of a sudden, we think we're shooting, we're shooting this movie up in San Francisco. And we get a protest from the LGBT, there was no Q back then, it was just the LGBT community, offended that we were making a movie with a bisexual woman who was an ice pick killer. And I said, what? I said, and you guys, guys, we love, villain parts are the best parts to play. You know, they're always, they're great. And so I said, well, how can you know this is a derogatory statement on gay, on a bisexual woman? I said, come on, man. But no, they were serious. So we ended up shooting scenes up in San Francisco with 40 SWAT officers surrounding the whole block to hold off the protests. - Wow. - From us shooting. I mean, - How do they know? - Talk about, you know, - How did they know the plot? How'd they know the script? - They got ahold of it. Well, it's another story I will, you know, - Someone leaked it. - The writer screwed it up. It's another story. - Wow. - So it's, yeah, it's been a bit of an interesting, - It's been a hell of a ride. - Right, yeah. Hell of a ride. Yeah. - Well, congratulations. Congratulations, man. And congratulations on the book and just your amazing career. You've had a wild, a wild experience. - Thank you, Joe. And the way you've created, I mean, wow, man. I don't think you've ever anticipated your many different careers and lives that you had. This is fabulous. - Yeah, I never saw any of it coming. - Yeah. - I still have a hard time believing it, but it is what it is. - It is what it is. Thank you, and good luck with your memoir. Thank you, Drew. And everything, everything else. Thank you. Pleasure, pleasure to meet you. Pleasure to meet you as well. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices. 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for 6 months. Open soon. BJ's, home of the save.