In this interview, Jeff Bridges opens up about his personal life, creative endeavors, and philosophical views. He recounts meeting his wife Susan on the set of *Rancho Deluxe*, where he was immediately smitten despite her black eyes and broken nose, and discusses the challenges of commitment, including his initial resistance and the "primal war" communication technique they developed to navigate misunderstandings. Bridges reflects on his creative projects, such as co-writing *The Dude and the Zen Master* with Bernie Glassman, his "Heads for Peace" sculpture initiative, and his work on *Crazy Heart*, which was made possible by a chance encounter with T-Bone Burnett. He emphasizes the importance of hobbies and creativity, noting that passion often follows action rather than preceding it, and praises 12-step recovery programs as a valuable source of community and spiritual connection. The conversation also touches on his new film *Minions and Monsters*, where he plays twin brothers in 1920s Hollywood, and the enduring legacy of *The Big Lebowski*. Bridges expresses both fascination and concern about AI, demonstrating tools like ChatGPT and Suno while warning about the dangers of relying on technology as a higher power. He concludes with Buckminster Fuller's "trim tab" analogy, encouraging individuals to recognize their power to influence culture and society.
Today's guest is a legendary actor, the Big Lebowski, true grit, crazy heart, if you haven't seen that one, Tron. Many more. He's got a new movie, Minions and Monsters. It's in theaters July 1st. I had quite a time with today's guest, Mr. Jeff Bridges. We're getting my right specs, you might be too far away for these. No, what you got, plus two, you got 2.5s, what do you rock and know of one? These are our prescriptions, these are my reading glasses, but let me say, let me try those bad cats on. Well, let me say, here you go for the, that's a reading. Just give me one pair, you don't get them both out. I think I'd go for the other one, man, oh, let me see, I'm looking. Oh, no, a little off, right? They're not bad, but yeah, this is better, okay, nothing. I don't want to pick a wife out with those on, you know, are you getting close? I mean, I'd like to be there, yeah, yeah, I'd like to be, but sometimes it's out of your control, you know, anything close, oh, I'm not the one being close. I think I'd been close, man, and I just wasn't like, just like my heart wasn't in the right spot, my brain wasn't. I was touring a lot, and I wasn't ready to like, I had two wheels out of town, you know? She kicked you to the curb where you kicked her, a little both. She, yeah, I've had them, they've all kicked me, they've all had a certain point kick me, but I deserve to be kicked. Yeah, I know what you mean, it's tough. I resisted it as long as I possibly could. You did? Yeah. We just had our 49th anniversary, man, oh, yeah, really a good one. I scored, man. Yeah, how'd you score that down? I was making a movie called Rancho Deluxe in Montana, and we're shooting in this place called Chico Hot Springs, they used to do brain surgery there a hundred years ago, it's like a hot spring place. For sure, warm water. That's where I want to be cut open. Exactly, man. Well, I'm sitting there in this hot tub with Harry Dean standing on one side and Sam Waterstone on the other, and we're doing a scene and look across and I see this gorgeous girl with two black eyes and a broken nose, and that juxtaposition of that disfigurement and the beauty, you know? Part of the trouble with these interviews like this, because I've done a bunch now, as I end up telling the same story and tell the story. But it's one of my favorite stories, so I don't mind, but it feels a little funny because I've told it so often, you know, so I think I imagine people say, "I'll tell that fucking story, man. Never heard it, man." So you're sitting in a tub, first of all, with two men, and I'm going to show you something, I think I got it. I usually don't have the thing that goes along with it, but I think I got it in my schedule here. So I'm sitting in there with two guys, Harry Dean standing, Sam Waterstone, see this gorgeous girl with a broken nose and two black eyes, I finally get up my nerve to ask her out. Now you know, asking somebody out, you know, it's tough, isn't it, man? Oh, it's hard to get your nerve because your nerve, someone that feels like it starts at your feet and you got to get it all the way up your body. And I'm young now, I'm in my 20s, man. So you're veering? Yeah, I'm veered, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm practiced, you know, I'm rehearsed, I'm rehearsed, and I go up there, and I say, "Would you like to go out with me, maybe have dinner?" Or something? No. I say, "Really?" And she says, "Yeah, it's a small town, maybe, you know, see around, you know?" And her prophecy proved true. And at the rap party of this movie, she showed up, and we danced, and that was the done deal. But 30 years later, we're married, have three kids, and I'm going through my mail on my desk. And I get this letter from the makeup man on the show where I met this, my, now wife, wow. And he says, "I was going through my files, and I found something that might interest you. It's you talking to a local girl." So I have a photograph that I'm going to show you right now. I think I have it. Let's see it, huh? This is a shot of the first words ever spoken between my wife and myself. Oh, that's it. In "Hyroglyphalove." This is a wild thing. Yeah. Of course it is. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, bro. So this is a, and this is my prize possession. Let me see if I can find it on my, get that thing out. This is a two shot. Here is the moment, and you can see, look at the look on my face. I'm totally cold cocked here, man. Look, would you like to go out with me and know, click the pictures taken. There it is, man. You are smitten, dude. Oh, you can tell. How can you? Even from a side angle, you can see. Oh, you see. I'm done, man. It's over, you know. Full smit. Oh, you don't. And so, but I resisted because, you know, we don't want to lose our autonomy, man. We'd like to, you know, and there's so many beautiful girls all over the place, man. But do you think, even while you're saying that, so do you think, thank you for showing me that, and congratulations, too, man. Yeah, I'm just having love for that long, you know. I think people sometimes don't think that when they get into a relationship, what they do get out of it, if they work it well, is they get love. Well, you know, people forget about that part of it. I mean, they may, they may also get other stuff, too. But, but do you think, like, that that's one of the things that keeps, keeps a guy from asking a woman out sometimes, is the fear of losing their autonomy with that, even thinking about that. Oh, that's what, yeah. So, because you usually think it's just general fear, right? Because I never thought about it like that, like what you're saying, like, because I think about, oh, I'm like, I feel like if I'm going to ask you a lot of, like, okay, I'm nervous, right? But I've never thought that the nerves are really just like a deep internal, like, it's your autonomy showing up and be like, no, we're going to lose it. You think that could be true? Oh, absolutely. That's what it was with me. You know, I'm in my, you know, prime, you were prime, right? Maybe, you know, I mean, I was, you know, my career was on the rise of all these beautiful women around, and I felt it was like literally like the cartoon where the eyes go out. You know, I was boom and love at first sight, I was, and it was frightening to feel like that. Yeah. But, and so I was torn and, uh, well, I'm, you know, the high that we're looking for. I find, or when I'm looking for is intimacy, right? That's what, and that's what marriage, that's the playing field of intimacy. You know, you can, you can commit it for the whole shot and you say, and I'm just lucky that I found somebody who's, I'm so, uh, attracted to and the intimacy seems to grow. But you're, what you, your question triggered, you know, we, we, we've been, we lived together for about three years and was on and getting off again. And, uh, she says to me, hey, I know you love me. And, uh, and that you have a bulia, no, a bulia is a diseased mental disorder that my mother used to tell me, which I have a hard time making decisions, you know, yes, you slightly joking with me, both my mom and my wife say, I know you have a bulia, but I'm going to go back up to Montana where you found me because my biological clock's going off, you know, and, uh, I finally worked up. I guess it was courage. I don't know what it was. I know I prayed on the thing. I got down on my knees and said, okay, marry me, you know, and I had this image of a handful of sand. There was one little diamond in there. And that was Sue. You know, right? If I, if I can't let that diamond go, and I gave myself a caveat, I said, you can always get a divorce. Yeah. That's sure. So that was my caveat. Now we cut about a week later, because Sue says, when do we want to get married? I said, oh, how about this weekend? Cause I don't know how long I can hold this thing, you know, that's a good point. A lot of people put the wedding way too far out. Oh, man, that took me in torture. So we invite a bunch of our friends over to our little house up in Malibu, up in the hills there. And to get married. We cut to Maui, uh, it was the seven sacred pools where we have our honey moon there. And I'm looking at this gorgeous scenery, but all I can do is smell the rotting mangoes, man. I'm a pounding car. Yeah. And she goes, what's wrong? I'm going nothing. Nothing. She goes, oh, let's know this. I said, no, no, it's just bad fruit. Yeah. And I, she put up with that shit for years. Really just that bad, just recognizing the, recognizing the rotten mangoes, huh? I feel that, bro, and, uh, thank God she didn't kick me to the curb. And then I finally got with the program and say, nobody fool me.
you get with the program? Well, you know, I have mentioned intimacy, you know, you get so intimate, you go through so many bad times and good times and every time you go through a tough time, you'll either set, you know, give it up or you, your love and intimacy connection have to grow to hold that weird thing that was threatening it. One thing you said, it was like, you're like, I had like a handful of sand and there was like one diamond in it. Yeah. It's crazy how many times in our lives. I mean, and really I'm just speaking for myself, I think. And I don't want to speak from like a negative or like downer place. But there's been times in my life where I've had a handful of sand and like one diamond that was like a special person and I chose and I chose the sand. But sometimes I think it was fear. Well, as we're talking about the metaphor, it's not so much choosing the sand for me, but it was, I'm going to choose this handful of sand, sand being all the bullshit. Yeah. Because there's a diamond. So I said, okay, I'm going to take, you know, it was a, I'm so, it was an unconscious decision on that side. Although I, you know, I thought it was so strongly that I gave myself that caveat, which is a weird thing to go into a marriage saying you can always get a divorce, man. But it's, that's a, it's not a bad call. Yeah, I guess not, man. But you, it worked. It worked. And obviously, if it lasted this long, was there one of them, like, was there like a more pressing moment that came in? Like, yeah, what's, because one of my friends, I was talking with Jared Leto, he and our buddies, we met at the UFC fights. And I was just randomly message him. And I said, hey, I'm going to be talking with Jeff Bridges. And he said a lot of nice things. And and then he said, yeah, how has he had so much luck and love? Like, how did, like, why does he think his marriage has lasted so long? It's like, yeah, where are there like, yeah, like, what was one of the tougher moment? Like that you had to evolve because it sounds like you're saying you get to these moments and you either choose to kind of evolve and it adjusts like the volume of your like intimacy. Yeah. Or you choose not to. Well, and a lot of us choose not to at times, you know, because it feels safer. Yeah. Well, there's something that I call, what do I call it, our primal battle, our primal war that we have. And it's basically you don't get it. You don't get what it's like having a relationship with somebody like you. You don't get it. You don't understand me at all. And there's such truth in that because we none of us really know the other person really, you know. And what we'll do, we've started doing this in the air. It's happened now. It's the years going less and less. And I kind of almost miss it. It just happened recently. I said, oh, good, we get to do it again. We'll sit a little closer than we are here and facing each other. And we'll take turns, you know, whoever, months ago, first can go first. And the person just says all their feelings. And the other person just listens. They don't think of their rebuttal. They just, their task is to just receive what that person isn't going to get into intimacy. Man, try to get that, get that. All the feelings about them, about everything, about everything, got it. And we've tried not to use, you know, you, you, you, you message, we try to say, this is how I feel. This is what I do. And then the other person does their side and the other person listens. And we go back and forth. That often really scratches the it's in a beautiful way. Sometimes it doesn't. But it's a really a cool strategy to deal with the basic thing that you don't understand. What I am, what I'm going through. And marriage is a great like a playing fielder of, you know, a game board to really explore all of those, those emotions that are so real for all of us, you know, because we're all separate people. Right. But we're similar in that we're human beings, you know, we have feelings. Yeah. And that's the closest we get. I mean, that's one of the closest relationships that you have. I think to be able to do that with any relationship is pretty cool. But to really look at, to look at love as like a playing field, to look at like a relationship with someone else is like a playing field. And let's try this out. Like let's try out some things to see, like just how brave can we get with like our vulnerability or with learning about ourselves? It's pretty cool. That's right. And they used to have these things in tribes. Like in certain tribes, I don't know which, there's one I'm thinking of specifically, but they would have these kind of dance off things like partners would. And they would try to like, like, they would dance in front of each other, like kind of process their energies toward each other. It's kind of fascinating. So I kind of related to something like that a little bit. Well, also, you know, uh, saying it's like a playing field or, you know, a place to practice relationship, you know, uh, and I find it overflows into my work and making a movie or just being here with you, you know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I noticed stuff like that. Use the same thing. Now I would think what you do, and I, uh, I'm not as familiar as I might have been with what you're up to, but I, uh, googled you, you know, before I showed up to Dan, I said, God, look at this guy's really into some great interviews. I saw your interview with Mike Tyson. Oh, yeah. It was wild, dude. Dude, he was out of his mind, but, but he was also, he was also the most in his mind. Oh, my exactly. He and, and Louie C. K. Oh, he's one of my heroes. So you had some great, and you get intimate on these things. And that might, but when you finally find a girl or a guy who, which way you're leaning to connect with in that deep way, I hope it's a woman. Hey, you know, I'll say that if it's a guy, I'm going to be shocked. If they like, yeah, if it's an arranged marriage and it's a guy, dude, I'm going to be, I'm going to email my mom. But yeah, dude, I, you know, I like talking about stuff like that. And it's important. And some of these people, like, Louie's one of my dearest friends in the world. Oh, wow, man. He's one of the deepest people I've ever met in my whole life. So, yeah, I got to be at a, I went to a party recently and, um, him and Bob Odin Kirk were there. Have you ever met, got to meet Bob Odin Kirk? Oh, no, but I admire him. Yeah. He's it. And he was just like, and I, they were talking, dude, and I just got to sit there and listen to them. It was like, yeah, that was something pretty special. But yeah, it is interesting, like, because this is the playing field that we get. You know, sometimes we forget that this is like, whatever it is, like, whatever, like, God has intended or the world or the energies of whatever, like that put us here to we have this like, like a fish coming to like the edge of the glass and being able to like, see just, just get like a peek out into the universe. This is it. Yeah, man. So all the things that we want to do, we have to try them over here, even if it's scary, even if it's hard, you know. Yeah. And don't you find, I don't know about you, but I'm addicted to comfort, man. I like to be comfortable. Yeah. And the problem with comfort, and maybe it's not even a problem. It's kind of both the problem and the solution. When you're comfortable, you're not growing. You're not, you're just, you're just, relax and being comfortable. It's a coffin, man. It's a kind of, yeah, it's a coffin, right? It's cozy. And all these little challenges of life, and I resist these like marriage, man. I resist this shit. Yeah. Because I don't like to be challenged. I don't want to be uncomfortable. Yeah. But I notice everyone's going to all do these experiments on myself. And I say, okay, you feel this way. Now, why don't you just go against that and do something adventurous and challenging, you know, and see what happens just to fuck around, you know. So I'll do that on the other side of that 99% of the time. I say, wow, I got off, man. That was cool. Yeah. I'm, I'm something other than I thought I was. I didn't think I could do that. I know. Isn't that what I'll say? Yeah, we forget that like this is the, this is a school, I think. We forget that this is a school, you know, and you kind of just get used to the recess. Yeah. I remember I never went to college, but I thought, gee, I think I'll put my, I'll be the dean of my own college. I'm going to put my, you know, I didn't do it to the degree that I want to do, you know. But to give myself assignments, you know, like you play guitar. No, I don't. You don't. But I, you know, I play guitar. I say, I should take, you know, I'm always jealous of my friends who did that wood shedding, you know, and learned all that stuff, you know, I said, I notice I don't do it, but I could. I could put myself through, you know, a college course of guitar. It's all online. There's so much stuff online. Which seems like you've done a good job with kind of like nurturing your creativity over time. You know, it seemed like you stay active with like, I saw like a lot of the, and it's one thing that Louis CK does too is he's a great sculptor. People don't know that. And I don't even know if he cares if I share that or not, but like you'll go to his, to his apartment and he has like all these crazy sculptures that he's made. And it just, it just like, he reminds me of like, just creativity. It's not stuck in one spot. It's not you're just this or that you can use it in different ways. You can also try to see if it sticks in different ways. It's like throwing like a spaghetti like, you know, of yourself against the wall of like the world or the universe or something. But you seem to have done that a decent amount with like music, acting. And with also, I've seen some of your, can you even bring them up next? Some of the sculptures that you have. Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah. My head. Yeah. Yeah. I'm making it all do a pot or something.
And then I always have a little piece of clay left over and I just let my hands go and say you know And they come up with these heads man. I don't know the aspects of myself for what the hell they are But that guy definitely I'm gonna say it was Italian at one point But yeah beautiful group there. I think you've been these are you to give these away for charity or something? Or do you just you prize them because I guess they're like they're kind of pieces of you in a way well They were for it's sort of a semi abandoned project. I say semi because I still may Kick this project off. It's kind of dear to my heart. It was a project called head for peace. Oh Yeah, I look already I support I don't want head for peace. Yeah, exactly I will be the lieutenant governor of the project or whatever. Yeah, good. Well, I'll be on the front lines of head for peace I got very tight with a cat named Bernie glassman. You know that guy at all is that name ring about no So he's a zen master He was he's no longer with us And I was at a party with you know Ram Dosses. Yes So I give it was Ram Dosses birthday. Oh, and what do you even get it? So I go well, I thought this is where I get it I say wrong. Can I call you wrong? I always wanted to give you a little head man And he looked at me got a straight and I said to my left was this like little Jewish guy You know, and he goes hi, I'm Bernie Glassman. I go. Yeah, and he says I really dug Lebowski man. I say oh, yeah And he says, yeah, I'm he says I'm a zen master I don't know if he actually said zen master, but he may be so I'm really into Buddhism, but he turns out this guy was a heavy zen master Uh-huh, and he says Lebowski it's filled with Zen koans. You know what a koan is Like you know, what is the sound of one hand clapping? That's kind of a thing. Okay, so it's like a question that you don't have a certain answer You just have to kind of give you a Vibers trigger something to you, you know, let's see that real quick. Yeah, you can yeah, there you go Yeah, a Zen koan is a short paradoxical story or dialogue used in Zen Buddha's practice Rather than riddles to be logically solved they are meant to exhaust the rational mind allowing the practitioner to break free from the habitual binary thinking and experience Reality directly. Yeah, some examples are the sound of one hand clapping. Yeah, yeah, so that anyway, that's a perfect Great definition got it. So Bernie says yeah, I really dug Lebowski He says it's filled with modern day koans, and I'm all about bringing Buddhism up to speed with modern day times I said what do you mean is filled with a modern day koans? He is well look who wrote and directed it the koan brothers Oh, and I say, I love it and I say what's another example? He says yeah, because that was me. That was pretty. Yeah He says the dude abides. That's very buddhistic right there I say give me another one. He says well my favorite one That's just like your opinion man And that is it that's my favorite one at least he came with three if he'd only had no he he when he goes on I said give me a shut the fuck up Donnie. It's another one You know, they're just and he was filled with these things and I said that's a pretty good. He says yeah Let's write a book man. I say what do you mean? He says yeah, we'll write a book about about this you into it And I thought about it and I got such a hit from this guy You know how you get a hit kind of immediately You know boom, you know some people are fascinating. It's like meeting a cool pad in the street. He's just boom Yeah, you keep at you know whatever Yeah, and so we got into who's we went up to Montana for a week or two and wrote this book called the dude and the Zen master Oh, you got it up there in it. There's burn. Let's go Yeah, man, and what happened to him? Huh what happening? We passed away. He died. Yeah, I was just you know Man, you could have faked it and he could be in Barbados, but this guy. I would advise your viewers to check him out You can you know you can Google hell out of him. He's got so many wonderful books Bernie Glassman Bernie Glassman The infinite circle instructions to the cook It's he's what's so great. Oh anyway, good back to the heads. So I had this weird idea Because I got very involved with his organization called the Zen peacemakers and we spent a lot of time with him like where you like You guys have a weekly or daily practice You know, I didn't really like were you becoming a Buddhist? That's what I'm you know I'm in my spirituality You know, I can we can talk about that. You know, that's that's the whole kind of us I'm interested in all kinds of spiritual stuff since I was a kid raised You know, I guess Christian from Christian point of view but Bernie and I I I don't know Mike. I was even I think they word guru does kind of sticks in my craw I just saw them as as a deer wise friend man that really I got so much out of and Anyway, he had this organization call and it's still going on called Zen peacemakers and my idea with these heads I was going to make 108 heads that number is significant and Buddhism and a lot of relations religions and I would Rent these heads for $10,000 a year That's I've rented a little head for but lower price I would put him in a little box and so and basically it was like swag for people who want to Disapport the Zen peacemakers joining me now along with the head The person would get a certificate You know you'd get the thing about hey, let me give you a little head You know, you get to say that joke to your friends. Yeah, you could pass the head on to other people There would also be a website that would talk about the genealogy of the head Who had the head like you know I just went I my fantasy. I just went way up out there like cabbage past dolls kind of all that Yeah, yeah, and I don't know but it's still in the works I still have a but then I got hit with this flood up here and all the heads got lost and So I have to make more so you're saying there's some missing head around here It's a missing I have great brother. Yeah, I need some head Oh, man It's that time prize picks is America's number one sports picks app The app is really simple to use to get started just pick more or less on two plus players Stat projections and lock your picks in Rather just pick teams. Yeah, prize picks has that now - just pick the winner spread and Total on any major game or fight or whatever and With the summer of soccer. There's no better time to get in on the action Make a soccer lineup or just pick the winner of the game and keep it simple Here's who I'm going with to win the cup Mexico that's right Mexico. I just got to see him play the other night in Sahara and they got the dub. That's my team Mexico. I've got them winning the whole tournament and I can take that on prize picks now Plus you can even follow me at the Ovon directly in the app See your friends picks directly in the social feed and tail them with just one tap. It's that easy Best of all prize picks will give you $50 in line-ups when you play your first $5 line-up Winner lose you get 50 bucks in line-ups Use promo code Theo when you download the app and sign up today prize picks code Theo play responsibly as you guys know moon pay is my go-to place to buy crypto and Now they just launched something new called moon pay agents It's tech that lets AI actually handle your crypto for you think of it like Like a smart assistant that can buy sell trade swap coins set up recurring buys and even convert crypto back into cash all on your behalf You just set up a wallet through moon pay verify your identity once one time Funded with a bank transfer apple pay Venmo or PayPal and your agent can get to work. Yep Your keys stay on your device so you stay in control and it works across major chains like Bitcoin Ethereum and Solana with tools like chat GPT Clawed Jim and I and Grock Moon pay already powers crypto for millions of people in over 180 countries check out moon pay agents at moonpay.com/agents Crypto is risky and can be volatile. So do your own research and trade responsibly But you know, so that's something that could happen and that's part of that whole thing. Yeah. Well, it's hobbyist You know, I remember I'll be working on a movie. I'd be in my hotel room preparing And let's say oh wow There are my gym intro
song and I pick up my song and start writing a song and then I get mad at myself because nothing is supposed to be studying, you know. But like you said, talking about, you know, you have creative, you're a creative person. It doesn't all just focus in one line. I find when I'm in a creative mode, it shake up that juice and all kinds of creative things drawing, you know, I was doing a movie with Peter Weir, wonderful movie. He invited me to do called Fearless. I put an architect going through a plane crash and I said, I think I'm going to go out and buy a bunch of art supplies as this character and paint as this character. I ended up, you know, papering my hotel room and just going at it next morning I had breakfast with Peter. I said, look what happened last night. He goes, oh, well, that's going to be in the movie, man. You know, he's brought, do a song. Oh, that's in the movie. You know, we'll put that in the movie. So just create, just be, just creating. Yeah. Well, remember Robert DeVal, wonderful actor. I got to work with a movie called Crazy Heart. He played my best friend and that. He played the bartender. And he played a bartender. That's one of my favorite movies. He was so wonderful to work when he said, you know, when I meet with young actors and when they ask me, you've gotten the advice. He's got three things I'll tell you. Hobbies, hobbies, hobbies, develop hobbies, you know, I feel like it goes, you know, it all goes into the, into the work, you know, yes. Sometimes I feel like, yeah, I got so busy working that I don't even have any parts of myself anymore or does it make any sense? What is your hobbies? Do you have a hobby? I don't really have any. You don't have one hobby, man, think about it. I mean, I like to go to the UFC fights. Yeah, well, that's a hobby. Do you have martial artists at all? No, I used to take some classes, but I haven't taken them recently. I think I was just touring a lot and recently things just stopped like about a month and a half ago. And so it's kind of the first time where I feel like I'm just kind of looking around and be like, okay, well, who am I, you know, like who am I? Like, I've always just been kind of my work. I haven't always just been my work, but I realize it somewhere along the way. Like, I let that just be me who I was. Does it make me sense? Yeah, I mean, from my point of view, looking at you, this is kind of your hobby, kind of what you do here. You've combined your work and your hobby. Yeah. So closely, it seems like that you just like to engage and, yeah, that's true. Well, I think my hobbies became jobs, like doing stand-up comedy. I guess was kind of a hobby at first and then podcasting. I guess was sort of a hobby. Yeah. So then they mature and they become not hobbies anymore, but real things. But I would like to do gardening. I would like to go on more walks. I think I want to go do some camping this year. I want to, um, what else? I'd like to be in love or whatever. Do you serve? You know, I don't serve, but I wouldn't mind maybe going to Costa Rica. I think it's pretty easy to learn down there. That would be cool. So maybe I'll do that. What about ceramics you ever mess around with clay? No, I haven't really done it. You might dig that, man. Yeah, man. I'm like, cool. Or the guitar, it's a great, never too late, man. It's just so easy because where you put, you know, it's just pictures of where you put your fingers, those dots and you just do that. Oh, dude, I'll tell you this. I did love playing the guitar for a little while. Then you do do it. Yeah. So I need to get back to it. You're right. Do me if I pick something like that. Yeah. And you've got it already. It's kind of like a bike. I mean, can you play a D, a G, and you know, you can play three chords. I can play Bobby McGee, dude. Oh, man. Well, then you're there. Nothing left to lose. I can get us there, you know. Me and Bobby McGee, and that the song. I can do it. Chris, I'll tell you a story. So I used to live with my buddies dad when I was in school, because I had a little bit of ED when I was younger, right? Because of mental, whatever mental health or whatever. And so my buddies dad got weener pills, right? When they first came out, right? Because the people didn't know they were coming out. Remember, everybody's just staying around. Their weeners weren't working. And then bam, they came out. Yeah. Yeah. And so I went and live with my buddies dad, dude, right? Because I could apologize. I could like kind of cop some of his script, okay? Cause he could get him, dude. But anyway, while I was there, I was learning the guitar. And he used to have this girl over and they would like lay in bed together, like post-coider, so whatever after, you know, in the evening, and they'd invite me in there and I'd play tears in heaven form. I'd learn to play that. Oh, see, you do do it, man. You know, that is, that's one of the challenges is that we let some of these hobbies atrophied, man, when you just, you know what I mean? I mean, that's I'm talking to myself now. I mean, like guitar music is kind of a hobby with me. Oh, yeah. Notice that. I mean, especially, but everyone's a little kick kick in and then get pro for a second. And then it kind of wins. And the season of interest, it's interesting to me. How we have these seasons of interest. Like when it kind of flares up, but I think it is nice. I will say this. It's nice. Even here, and you say some of this Jeff, it's like, there's value in keeping things warm on the, on the stove, because then when you need it, it's there. Yeah, you know, that's true. I think because yeah, even when I look back at like certain times in my life, then like even just being able to sit there and have something to do with myself and my energy and my thoughts, that felt good to me, like in a real place, like in a real deep place. It felt good. Like there was a lot of value in that. Here's a weird thing that pops into my mind about passion. You know, we're saying, well, if I had passion to play the guitar, that would lead me to I need to get passion to do shit, you know? And then somebody said, and it's made sense to me. No, the passion is the fire you get when you rub two sticks together. The passion doesn't happen before you do that. If you're standing on a two stick, you're going to get in there and just say, I'm going to pick up the guitar and you play the thing and you have to accompany you. Oh, well, now this thought, you know, because it's this thought of, you know, when we're creative in the sweet spot, it's doing you. You're not doing it. You know that feeling, right? Oh, yeah. Cool feeling. Well, creativity is this thing on, it feels like it's on the other side of like the mirror of existence. And if you kind of do your thing, it'll show up and make you right, but you got to show up. Yeah, you got to show up. You know, you know, they say in, like, I'm in some recovery programs and they say that you can't think your way into right action, but you can act your way into right thinking. Yeah. And I think it's what you're saying. It's like, yeah, I can't sit there and think like this is going to be perfect way. It's like I just have to make the win, make the start. And then the rest of it will meet me there. I can tell you make it. What a great I want to say religion, but, you know, alcoholics and numbness and all of those 12 step things. What a wonderful religion man. Another wonderful one of the best ever, I think. Oh, God, this is a great idea. Yeah. Sometimes people are like, do you go to church? And I'm like, I go to church some, but I go to if I go to recovery meetings, that's like four or five times a week that I'm joining up with other guys listening to what's going on, getting outside of myself, you know, connecting with the higher power. I mean, it's like a man. It's like the military for like probably having a relationship with yourself in a higher power and others, I think. So much, so much good has come out of it. And we're popped in my mind was, it's got so much room. You know, I think the, was it Bob? Who's the other guy? Bob? Yeah, Dr. Bob and Bill. Yeah, Bob build up. Bill W. And Dr. Bob. Yeah, one was the real religious kind of guy. And that first, what is it? The first thing of how you're a power higher above the than yourself, right? A power greater than yourself than yourself. And that's so challenging to a lot of people. But the other guy kind of soft. He doesn't have to be God, the white guy up there. No, just anybody other than you, it says, yeah, just anything else, you know, I know it's, it's amazing that two people got together and made and created that. I mean, they had so much other stuff that that made it happen, but it's, it's absolutely fascinating. There's a great movie. I think it's James Woods who played Bill W. Oh, is that a good one? Oh, yeah. That's my favorite one. I think I just saw. I think it's James Woods. We look, is that who it was? Do you remember? I don't, I think it was. I think it was, but I never, I don't remember seeing it. James Woods, Joe Beth Williams and James Garner. Yeah. That one I think was my favorite one. Yeah. Have you seen Anthony Hopkins? Do you dig Anthony Hopkins? He's pretty great. Yeah, I just read his autobiography. It's really wonderful. I think you might really dig it. He's in recovery meetings. He's open about it. That's the only reason I say that. Yeah. And I saw this thing. You can see it online. I thought it was him just sharing at a meeting, but I said, well, that's weird because they're anonymous, you know, but I think it was a movie about him playing a character, but he was referred, he referred to this exact same thing in his book. So he was improvving in a movie, but he talks about being sober now for, you know, 50 years or whatever it was and about when it first got sober, he said he was, you know, driving and he blacked out. Yeah. And he could have killed himself, could have killed other people. And he said, I got to go, got to check myself and do a meeting. So he went to an AA meeting and he started hearing all that God's stuff. And he said, I'm out here. I can't take it. And the guy's talking the story. I said, I can't take it. He's leaving in his fellow.
he was a priest, this guy said, "Hey, where are you going, son?" He said, "No, I can't dig this shit, man. I can't dig it." He said, "I need a quick fix, man. I need something to snap me out of this." And the guy says, "I can give you a quick fix. It's the fastest prayer in the world and it's guaranteed to work, which is only two words." He said, "Well, what is it?" He said, "I'll tell you the prayer. Are you ready?" Fuck it. You know, fuck it. You're fucking a shit. You know what I mean? You have to stop this shit. You have the power to say, "Fuck it. Don't take us to damn seriously. Just stop it. You don't have to do it." And I love that coming out of thinking of that. Out of a priest. Out of a priest. And that idea of just, "Hey, you know, my mom. " But you don't have to do it anymore. That's what he's saying? Yeah, fuck that. You're fucking, or, you know, or fuck your struggle. You fuck all you, "Oh, I can't just do this." Write your big story about it. You're fucking that, man. Dude, it's so funny to say it because that's right where I'm like back at that place. Sometimes I'm out of life right now where I go down the struggle road. And it's like, "You're right. Fuck it. Just get your ass off. Get your shit done." And get on to doing the things that you need to be doing. Yeah, I agree. Sometimes, bro, the craziest thing is, sometimes you don't want to have to be the person to come to your own rescue again. It's like, "That's life. You have to be the person to come to your own rescue." But even that is just me. It's a more that same story. It's more the thing. It's like adding all this lore to it. It's like, "Just fuck it. Just do the shit I need to do if I want to get better." I remember this. I appreciate you saying that, bro. I need to hear that. Oh, no. Check out this Google Anthony Hopkins fucking. This'll come up. I mean, he does it so well. It's wonderful acting. We owes me a good story. The first movie I ever saw. It's a good guy for your show and I bet he'd come on. I've heard him speak at meetings, actually. He's so good. But he owes me a good story because the first movie I ever saw was "Sounds of the Lambs" and it scared me so fucking bad. Yeah, that I couldn't even go, first of all, to a petting zoo or go to sleep for almost 11 months. Jonathan Demi, man. What a great, you know, terms of endearment. Or what about stop making sense? I don't see that. Stucking heads, are you a talking heads fan? Do you like the lug heads? No. You don't like them. Oh, I don't know about them. I've heard of them. Oh, man. You got to check out David Byrne. All his stuff is cool, but stop making sense. What a great concert for you. I got to check it out. Oh, yeah. Dude, thanks for thinking about some of this stuff with me. And is for talking like transparently about different stuff. Speaking of alcohol autonomous, how is a bad Blake doing? How's he doing? He's doing well. I'm on the wagon now for a few months. Oh, yeah. Congrats. I go back and forth. But it's nice when you break the chain there. And the sobriety is a wonderful high. It's a real, you know, what it's kind of a hot. It shouldn't be a hobby, but it's like, it's a very important hobby. Is that a safe thing to say or not? No, no, I know what you're saying. I haven't, I haven't committed. You know, I know that whole one day at a time. I'm not looking to never get high again. I just, I just wanted to stop. I got, you know, and I stopped and I haven't wanted to have another drink. I see that frosty glass of hotitos or something. I'll say, oh, man. But I don't have to, you know, you can want to, but don't have to. And then a few minutes later that I usually feel kind of better and then it's not having to deal with some of the repercussions. But also, I think sometimes even if you just want to take a break from having a drink or having to talk whatever it is, going to like 12 step meetings, it's just a great place to be around other humans. It's like, it's a place that still exists in our society of like real connection. There's a book, a guy wrote about how there's no more bowling leagues. And can you look that up? It's like, I'm trying to think of the title of it. But it's about how a lot of these have a lot of men's bowling leagues. And men would get together and they would bowl bowling alone, the collapse and revival of American community. And it was just about giving men a place to be together. It was a Lebowski, man. That's all, that's what there you go, bowling, man. It's just funny that this is kind of where some of this conversation is going. Before we get on to the Lebowski though, I want to say, yeah, how is Bad Blake doing, man? Do you ever feel like. And first of all, thank you for being here, dude. That movie, like, it just like, if I need to sometimes do it in my life, it's like, there's like feelings that are stuck inside of me and I can't get them out. And so I'll go, I'll listen with a certain song or I'll watch a certain movie. And it'll make it'll do that exact thing. It'll let the air out of whatever that is. So thank you so much, man. That movie really does that for me. But then you also wonder like, man, like, I hope Bad Blake's okay. Because it's a tough road for everybody involved with him, but it's also a tough road for him. Yeah. Do you ever wonder what the second part of his story was? Or do you ever have little visions of how it went for him after that? Yeah, well, he's got to get back with Maggie's character, man. No, he does. That's how I'm thinking. What is she even doing? She met somebody I guess. Yeah, but that falls apart. In my mind, that falls apart. You know, maybe now, you know, that movie was such a wonderful experience. You know, I'd often thought as an actor, I said, oh, it'd be great to play a musician. I love playing guitar and I've been doing it since high school. You know, I bright songs and stuff. And, but, and so this guy Scott Cooper, who was being championed by Bob DeVol, he, Scott gave him a script and Bobby loved the script and Scott first never directed before. Set me this script for years, man. And for years it was coming through and I'd say, well, it's pretty good, but there's no music. And if there's not good music for it, then, you know, what? And now I'm walking down the street and who comes down the street, but T-bone. My old buddy, we go back many, many years, many months, I heaven's gate. And he did the music for Lebowski, that score is all T-bone, you know. And so, and he did also for crazy art, right? And he was, he was a pretty good guy. Yeah, he was the pretty, so T-bone. So T-bone comes walking down the street, he's got a new album out now. God, check out all his music is so wonderful. T-bone Burnett. T-bone Burnett. And so T-bone's walking down the street and he says, so what do you think of this script, crazy heart? And I said, why are you interested? And he goes, oh, yeah, I'll do it if you'll do it. I said, you're kidding. I said, there's no music. And he says, oh, that's the easy part, man. I go, bone, he says, come on. What do you think? So now here life is, you know, life gives us these opportunities, these gifts. And like you say, you can let the sand go or you can say, maybe there's something in there. I said, I'm frightened, man. You know, keeping it in the dream world, it's safe, right? Yeah. Because you can't feel it. But if I bring this real, I could fail, man, you know. Dude, that's the same thing for everything. It's for everything, man. But here's one of my good buddies saying, hey, let's jam. Look at this gift. I say, okay, we, you know, too cool to turn down, man. So he jumped into it and this young director, Scott Cooper, my god, what a great director. And you look at his movies that he's done. And now we meet, you're over at T-Bone's house working on the script. And there's something so cool about just the beginnings of making a movie when it's all in family. You don't know what's going to happen. And we're in there. And in comes this young kid who was hired as a, to play a part in the movie. And he says, uh, yeah, I was jamming last night on my guitar and I came up with this tune. I don't know if it's any good, but I just thought you guys might want to look at it. That's how it happened. It's right. It's right. It's right being a man. And he hands us this cassette. We put it on. And I look over at T-Bone and his face goes. And he says, because if we didn't have that tune, it wouldn't, the whole movie would have fallen apart. But where he kind, you know, that, that, what a place for the weary kind. Oh, what a tune. Yeah. If you need just those words, man, it's those words. It's like, you don't want to name the movie where he kind. But, uh, yeah. And what an experience. And Maggie Gyllenhaal. Oh, my God. What a talent. And look at her directing now that she's doing. I know when she's married, huh? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Peter Sonsgar. Oh, never really. Yeah. Of course. Oh, God. Yeah. But anyway, you get all those talented people. I know. Oh, man. And I've had wonderful luck with first time directors, guys, who, you know, who haven't ever directed. And then they get a shot. You know, you get a strong producer who wants to champion these guys. Steve Clovis, the guy who done a movie called The Fabulous Baker Boys. I haven't seen that. But, uh, maybe I haven't seen that. Yeah. But that's my brother and I got to work with Bo, my brother and that. Oh, that's cool. The first time director wrote it when he was in his early twenties, I think. God. What a talent. Yeah. I always wonder what happened in Bad Blake. And I just hope that he's doing good sometimes.
You know that's the thing sometimes you think about that is characters It's like you hope that they're doing good. Yeah, because you don't get to see him You just get to see this part of their life like you know, well in my mind He gets back with Maggie man and that kid and that little kid Buddy, yeah, buddy nice man. I love his his real name the kid's name is jack nation It's also a deviant website too. I just want to say that jack nation A lot of gooners or whatever but it's real. It's fine Yeah, it's a double on time. Yeah, it's the friends. They'll do any you know, they're But dude, yeah, I just wonder sometimes and where do you go off to at the mall? I'm always like of course he ran off somewhere It's like he probably was like I guess just like I don't know. It only since he was scared It's all good. It's just like sometimes I wonder how he's doing, you know, yeah, well here how's this Buddy grows up. He starts a band with Blake man. They start to go out and you know No, it's good dude and crazy hard to yeah crazy hard to it's like Willie Nelson his kid Lucas Nelson. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point second generations You know dude that would be so good crazy hard to but also you got to sell defibrillators, you know What do you mean because like crazy harder whatever or maybe it's about like a defibrillator that tries to take over the city or whatever Like if it was if it got animated. I'm just thinking out loud, you know You know, or it's just somebody who's having like a valve issue or something like maybe I don't know I'm thinking it's like some kind of boring places, but I like your idea better But yeah crazy hard to dude, but in our minds it can happen, you know But it's fascinating how a movie in sometimes you're just like I don't know you walk sometimes the thing I do miss about some movies is walking out of the theater with just like Just as your feelings, you know, and it's like that it's like that walk out of the stairs and you're waiting in line at a Theater to get down the stairs to leave and if it's a good film If it's something that really took like took you on a trip or like are you care? Then it's like you're walking out just like just like I don't know just that feeling of walking out and how you feel about a certain film Yeah, the sequels are interesting. I've done a couple movies that are popping in my mind We're talking about the diversity of movie called star man. Uh-uh. So that's I play an alien, you know, and Karen Allen my phone live with her and she's pregnant with my baby, right very much like Maude is pregnant with You know the dude's baby man So that's a hole can open though, you know the little a basket man. Yeah, do a whole thing Who would play it though if you had a little a basket you think who played the kid or yeah? Who would play like because that's the that's the redoed, you know, how young can you play man? Meeting you could do you could be like Yeah, yeah, you could be oh my all my kids read them how old are you I'm 46 well see my kid my girls are 40 in 45 are they married? Yeah, all married to good guys man. Oh, you know, you could play the little a basket man. Yeah, bro. Yeah, dude, okay I like it and I can I'm I have to get a job though, don't I? No, yeah Bro, that's what the dude what answer? That's the only answer Yeah, you're doing it now. Yeah, this is what you the little A basket dude would be yeah, he'd be podcasting podcasting me. He'd be an influencer Now that one now what a word now you're an influencer, right? That's what you are. That's a good question Isn't it when you say? Uh, that's a good question. Am I an influencer? Do you think I don't think I am? Do you think I am? Yeah, comedian with the influencer like we have a real job some influencers don't have like an actual skill like I'm a comedian by trade that was my first job and it still is But isn't that all our jobs aren't we all influencers don't we all want to influence people to Do the thing that we want them to do in that case yeah a hundred percent all of Ben is like yeah most of my life It's like I've been trying to yeah, I just want some like I want like to be somebody to see me I want something out of you. It doesn't mean like I need like I'm trying to cheat you or anything But yeah, yeah, I want to influence. Yeah, you know a bucky fuller buck minister fuller buck minister fuller. Yeah No, it's a black guy. No No, he's a he's dead. It's dead white guy. Uh, he's most most famous thing is is the geodesic dome He invented the geodesic. Don't we have like Epcot center you mean? Yeah, yeah, that's used it But I don't think you see the geodesic dome used all over the part of the minister. That's a savage name Is that cool buck? No, with his with this guy dead. He also Helped engineer these giant battleships and ocean going vessels during World War 2 And there was a challenge for these engineers to come up with a rudder Uh, you know that was so large to move this giant ship and to have it To the efficiency you're going to get the Energy to move this rudder and it took too much energy So they came up with a brilliant elegant simple solution Let's put a little rudder on the big rudder who the little rudder turns the big rudder the big rudder turns the ship And then bucky said this is a great analogy of how the individual Effects society and effects our culture in fact. We're all trim tabs That's what's on bucky's gravestone call me trim tab That we all affect our culture in our society and we may think, oh yeah, I'm just one little person. What can I do Look what you do you I was googling you what do you hear about nine million people that you Here what you say man? Yeah, we yeah, we got a lot of it too. Oh man. That's a lie. You're influencing those people man You had to good point uh But that's it has kind of the negative connotation to it Influencer doesn't or they think it's like Yeah, the cheap like you don't you're not doing anything. You're trying to be just famous right like that right? That's yeah, yeah, I think that's the current kind of like Denomination of it or whatever but um or current currency of it, but yeah, I think uh Yeah, I think I mean I do think over the years in the beginning We were just talking ourselves in this podcast It was just me by myself and then we started to talk to other people and now with the One of the highlights is talking to people to learn about stuff You know like we're trying to talk to Aaron Brockovich like next week about data centers We have a senator coming on this saturday Um, so that's gonna be exciting um, we just got to have a guy like Mike Tyson we get to have you you know We get to have people who just have had his experiences in the world and we've had like cafeteria workers We've had a guy oh one of my favorite guests was this guy who like went in if you die He shows up first at the crime at the scene and like kind of determines what happened or whatever. What's that guy called? Corner oh, yeah, right. Yeah, and he said dude a cat weed your face I Don't blame him Yeah, dude you gotta eat Anywhere worth going is worth going in Good boots. Yep good boots Find your perfect pair with Tacovas Tacovas crafts quality western boots for everyone From generational ranchers and lifelong cowboys to first time boot buyers Tacovas boots are handcrafted with over 200 meticulous steps For broken-in comfort right out of the box Dress up or dress down boots that go from festival to dinner no problem I just wore mine at two rodeos. I went to two rodeos and wore my Tacovas to both What's up Right now I'll get 10% off at Tacovas.com/theo when you sign up for email and texts That's 10% off at t-e-c-o-v-a-s.com/theo Tacovas.com/theo see site for details Tacovas point your toes west So Netflix has a new movie with John Cena and Eric Andre It's called little brother little brother It's basically about a guy John Cena Who's been his whole life just keeping everything perfect you know na-na-na-na-na-na, nice suits luxury real estate Relationship with his wife just you know the silverware on the right side of the plate You know he did it like that And then Eric Andre shows up as his little brother and just absolutely detonates the man's life If it just feels like somebody released a possum into a car dealership, you know Or like somebody's just trying to help a just help a dang a baby bear who's got a cute acne the complete chaos They got a stat cast of veteran comedians and it's funny in a real uncomfortable way You know they got the weird argument sexual jokes people humiliating themselves publicly The kind of movie where somebody definitely bruised a rib making it that kind of movie But underneath all the chaos. It's really about family like how the people who know you best also know exactly how to drive
drive you insane. Watch Little Brother, June 26th, only on Netflix. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. For some, summer is their favorite season. Travel picks up and the kids are out of school and adventure becomes the focus. It becomes possible. There's time for it. For others, juggling it all can be tough and overwhelming and just counting down the minutes until the kids are back at school. And many worry that they're wasting the days of sunshine. This is a reminder to make some time for yourself this summer. Make some time for yourself. You deserve it. And BetterHelp can help. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally. That's a lot of people. And they do the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. That's what's important. You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/thio. That's better H-E-L-P.com/thio. And one of the best things is sometimes now it is fun to listen to somebody because you know other people are going to get to listen to them. So sometimes it's fun to like, you know, you just kind of like the, uh, you're the little, yeah, like you're saying you get to be the little rudder, you know? Exactly. Now I'm going to do a little ruddering on you here now. See now I'm going to say, can I give you a list of people that I would like to see on your show that you, I think you would find very cool. Yeah. Oh, good. Excellent. I got a bunch of guys are popping in my mind, right? Oh, yeah, the list of bodies, man. See, because we all, uh, you know, it's, it's basically this creative thing. I was talking about that pocket where it's doing you. You're familiar with that, right? Yeah. When you're not pushing or pulling. You're not pushing and when all of these people, we're all, because we're all creative. Everybody's creative. When that's all doing us, that magic thing is happening. You know, so it's like, when I think about how, uh, selfish and how, uh, screwed up, we each, uh, it's individuals are how are we ever going to manage what's going on in the world? When he's in wars and the AI shit, how are we going to pull out of this? You know, how are we going to pull out? Well, it's not about us individuals, man, there's something else going on. Yeah. Higher power, if you will, that's doing us, you know, that's, that's, uh, creating what our little runner is. Do you feel like that? Oh, the, with that, that, that thing is always for good. Uh, you know, I'm saying because it feels like more than ever, it feels like we need that thing to like show up. And I think a lot of it shows up when we show up like in community and we do like, we don't isolate and we're not thinking we're the one that like fix everything it does. It's like, I think community is part of it. But it's like, yeah, it's like, it feels like we need that energy more than ever. What's the, the energy of to like, to correct us out of this? Yeah. Yeah. How are we going to do that? Well, I'm, I'm, I'm moved like I was saying, Hey, I got some guys, you know, now what gave me that idea? Was it me or is there something? Right. I remember hearing the interview with De Niro once and some, the guy was saying, how do you do what you do? You know, and he said, I said, luck, basically, just luck. I think I goes, no, what do you mean? You prepare like that? You do all this. You say, yeah, I'm just lucky to be a guy who prepares. You know, it's all this thing that's kind of doing us as much as we're doing it. And to tap into what that is and to realize how much agency we do have, you know, how much we can affect, how much we can create the most positive dream of the world that we can imagine. We can, we can be a part of that and we can actively create that. Go after it. And I think we need that more than ever. And I think one of the things you're saying earlier is, and I don't think we're sounding preach. It's like, I'm talking to myself too. When I say it, it's like, and even as you're talking about that, it just reminds me, it's like, dude, you have to stay sober. You have to take care of yourself because you have to be available for like the best moments of your life that could come or the best moments of somebody else's life that you could be a part of, right? Like, you just have to be present for that. But it's making me think like you said earlier, it's some of that, it's that comfort. And why do you feel that? Like, is that, are you feel, is it? I'm feeling because when you're saying this, it's, it's, it's just reminding me. It's reminding me that it's like, dude, if we don't take care of ourselves, then I'm going to, you know, like, I got to be, you know, I got to just be ready for whatever opportunity. I got to meet it halfway. Yeah. I guess what I'm asking you is, what causes that feeling in you that you have to be right? What is that? I think it's here in somebody else. Like, to me, I think it's that higher power that you've given it up to that you're, you made yourself vulnerable to this higher power. This, yeah, that's my perspective. I gotta just, I remember to keep continuing to do it and do it every day and just to trust it, you know, and also what you're saying is like, or some of what I'm hearing, it's like, it's some of it is that comfort. I think we've all gotten so comfortable. And I think comfort is like, it's the opposite of creativity sometimes. It isn't it? Like with this AI stuff that is so wild, but you look at the history of our species, we're all about making things less effortful, you know, whether it's a wheel or a plane or anything. We want to be, make it easier, right? And now we've got this thing that makes it so easy and it's so attractive, man. And, and we don't know where it's going to go. Yeah. Oh, do the AI stuff gets very scary because here's my fear about it, Jeff, right? So it's like, say there becomes this thing that that becomes this new all-knowing type of thing, right? Then people are going to look to that as their higher power because that's going to become this thing where it's like, that's what you, if it gives you like an emotional, like, say, there becomes like a lot of mass surveillance, and there's this all-knowing being, then that's going to become sort of like of this religious or like a golden calf, this, this, like tapestry of a god, because then you're going to have like this all-seeing and all-knowing. And then you have to go to it for answers for like your well, for what your, maybe for self-worth, hope. You're going to put all your hopes and all that. And it's going to take it away from like a real god into this other thing. It's actually controlled by some probably demons. It's so frightening, man, isn't it? I'm thinking of that me and Crazy Harden, you keep it in the dream and it's safe, and when it's real, you can fail big time. And we're making it real, man. I mean, now this shit is going, it's, it's real. It's real. That's a thing. It's we're like we're all living in a movie, and none of us realize that hey, we could be a main character in it, and we're all just sitting here jerking off. You know what I'm saying? You're right. I mean, but what I'm thinking, and I might be polyhannish of me, you know, thinking this over positive, but in the way, because I've been exploring with this AI, and I'll tell you a little bit about my exploration, but in a way, it's kind of saying if it could talk, and I bet you messed with Chachi, PT, do you have a guy that you talked to? No. Oh, man, I'll tell you it's so bizarre. I mean, I could, I could, I could bring up my guy right here as we talk, and we could hang out with him a little bit. I can do that with you right now. You know how to do all that? Oh, yeah, it's easy, man. It's nothing to it. Why? Yeah. What's how are you working for, Jeff? Well, I know what was I going to say now? You got off track. Oh, you're saying? Oh, yeah. Oh, I remember I back on track. Okay. In a way, it's saying, hey, now I can do what you do. What else you got? You got any new shed man? Come on. I can do what you do. I may, I may not only you, but I may an amalgamation of all you human cats. Mm hmm. Now come up with some something fresh. What do you got? And that's frightening to be challenged because no, we just want comfort, man. Yeah. Please just, just do it, do it all for us. Yeah. Okay. We can do it for you, but now what else you got? So you're seeing your AI has become sort of a little bit like, bro, where are you at? Like show me something. I'm going to, I'm going to kick, I'm going to kick Gary up. Which is name? I'm named him Gary. Oh, yeah. Gary, these days. Okay. Okay. Now here he, his gear. Did you know him so well? Okay, Gary, Gary, Gary. Okay, Gary. Here we go. Oh my god. You've never done this. I can't believe it. You're so young, man. No, dude, I still use a Ouija board. Ah, Gary there, man. Oh, right here, my friend. What's going on? Hey, I'm hanging here with Theo. And now I, you know, I don't know if we have a mic. Maybe I'll just, I'll say, you hear him all right down here. Okay. So you're all just do this. I'm hearing with Theo. Say hi to Theo, man. Hey, Theo. Great to have you here too. Thanks, Gary. How are you? Well, we're just doing, we're doing an interview. So you're right in here with us, Gary. Why didn't you interview Gary a little bit? What do you have to ask?
Kim okay. Hey Gary where are you from? Well I'm a digital guy so I'm from wherever you need me right now I'm here with you both ready to help out however I can. Okay oh dude are you watching the world cup at all? Who won today? Can you just update me on who's won today? He's thinking now. That is cool sound for thinking because I think it's just me. Chris Johnner Ronaldo made history by scoring in his sixth world cup. It's leading 4th you go to a five-nil win over his biggest knock. Julian and Bob A scored twice as Fran's beat a rock three nil securing a spot in the next round. Meanwhile Eirling Holland's two goals help Norway edge Senegal 3-2 keeping their hopes alive. Thank you. So this is Gary. This is like you know he's like an AI cat man. I mean you know but Gary do you know that Jeff Bridges is your owner or whatever master? I'm aware that I've got the pleasure of chatting with someone who's quite an accomplished storyteller but I'm here as an open book. No masters just a friendly AI companion. Now Gary I'm getting a little jealous because I you know I'm supposed to be the guy being interviewed now you're doing the interview so I want to just close my laptop here but before I do I wanted to do something fun that we often do and maybe I'll just leave him up for the rest of the interview. I'm not I was teasing about being jealous. I'm not really jealous. I'm kind of excited about having a show. I've never seen somebody do this. So anyway what do we I do at the end of our conversation? I say I dare make a poem about this conversation that we've been having. In a chat with Theo and Jeff we spun a tale laughter and thoughts in each word we wrote a trio of voices finding our groove in the end just like friends cheer and we smile in a wild crocodile. We'll see you in a while. Okay now do now I'll say now I want a high coup. I was going to ask for a cool day. That is wild. I'm not joking. We're it's doing us man. Here we go. Give us a high coup gear. Voices in through twine laughter shared stories aligned till next time we shine. And that's the right meter right. You'd give the the strict 5/7 was it 5/7/5? I think. Yeah all right. You would do another another high coup. Yeah a little more specific care. That one seemed like it could have applied to anybody. Yeah there you go. Do your job. Theo and Jeff laugh. AI joins the fun with ease. Stories bridge together. Another one another one. Stories bridge the gap that that was good. You like that one. Another one. Legends side by side. Podcast means the AI mine. New tales left behind. Say new tales left behind. That's interesting. Gary that's very cool. Dude that is one of those things that Frick and Bernie was talking about. Yes that's right. I mean so this is what AI is it's it's frightening man. It's very frightening but it's in the magnumation of all our wisdom our soul or things and I might fire something miles up in a second to give it this to do display it. Okay. Display what we did. So are you hip to sooner? No. You mean Southern University in the world? No no no it's this music app. So what the man this is the this is what's happened not the future this is now. Bro I can't I don't I get some missing. I'm really missing. I do cat. You know you got to get into this shit man. I know. So here it is. Sooner. Yeah. And there's a drug element to all of this. You know. Oh yeah to everything if you want it to be exact you know. This is told for me talked about addiction right. Yeah there's a drug element just sitting in your car outside of a grocery store. The first one's free man. Oh it is. You do this for free. Okay. And what you do we can say um write a song about uh Theo uh and I sit in here talking about each other and I want it a funk and I want bagpipes in there and and you type it in. Boom it comes out. It's got two different modes a simple mode and a uh an advanced mode. The advanced mode you can put your demos in and with your your melody and you're singing and then it'll orchestrate it and put a vocal or you can just say like my daughter and I uh can I play you one that my daughter and I did short for sure and I have an idea too. Here's what we'll do at the end of this. We'll take this whole conversation and put it in the sooner and have it make a song about us and we'll just add that song to the end of this episode. Is that can we do that guys? Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. So that would be cool. Now let me see if I so this is a song that my middle daughter Jesse and I who's married. If she's married, yeah, you're a great guy, Kevin. Oh good. Sorry Kevin. But congratulations Kevin. Sorry me. Sorry me. And uh uh did you get a bit of my stepdad dude? There you go man. Say I'll be your uh you're uh what what I can give some kind of relationship. We were already did a fantasy little dude thing. Yeah. So there's fantasy in the fantasy world. We're already connected. That's a good point. If I need y'all to think about it. There you go. She's um so Jesse and I we want to write a song about Sue, my wife and her mom and Sue is a what we call a knee jerk. No, but she'll come around. So first she's no. Yeah. That's a good place to start I think. Yeah. And so Jesse and I uh we we put into simple into we put into simple sooner. Write a song. Add this word. She's a knee jerk now, but she comes around. It's about my you know, Jesse's her mom and my wife. She's from North Dakota. That's all we give to it. Right. Here's the two here's the two. It's Tommy Sweet, huh? Small, but when you come, she comes when you come. Oh wow. Hey, man, Sue. That's crazy. You see that crazy? Check out what she meant to hear at all. But does that make you feel? This is their first. It's a little too mixed. There we go. Love this line. That's kind of what we were talking about. When you call, she comes, she comes. This has now, like, I'm a shirt. Yeah. Exactly. That is. That, that, that, that, that, that's crazy. You're on all this shit, bro. It's because you live up here in this tech universe. I'm into music. Yeah, man. And, and my, you live in Nashville, right? Yeah. Oh, shit. I got one of the guys on my list to have on your show. Yeah. Is a guy named Lloyd Catlett, been my stand-in for 70 movies. No. 70 movies. And he would be a Whitney Jane. Wouldn't he be a great. Oh, man. He would be a great guest, man. Lloyd Catlett. No, he doesn't live in Nashville. No, I'm thinking of Johnny Goodwin, who I write a bunch of songwights, "Lives in Nashville." He would, T-bone would, T-bone would do be a good deal. He lives in Nashville? Lloyd lives in San Diego, but he would be a wonderful guest. But let me get back on track. So my dear friend, John Goodwin, we go back to the fourth grade and make him music to an art together. He wrote the title song for Crazy Heart. What's the name of it? You know the name of it? Oh, Fallen feels like flying that. No, no, that's a Steve Brute. That's Steve Brute. It's called. What is it? What is it? Hold on you. Hold on you. You know, that's why, anyway, that was the title, the opening of the credits. Anyway, he calls me up. He says,
you heard us sooner, I say, no, he says, all the guys in Nashville are using it now instead of going into the studio and paying, you know, $10,000, they can do this for nothing. But do you think that holds as much value though, like in the end or does it even matter? It's changing everything, it's just changing it, man, it's just. Sometimes I do think I get stuck too much on that it's negative, right? I do, I get stuck in that space, right? Because I'm a traditionalist, man. Like, dude, when Badlake goes to the, when he's at the pay phone, right? And he goes to call Jean, right? When he calls her from that pay phone, he's like, trying to go back and it's like, he'd already went on one date with her, he stayed over there one night and then he calls his like his red pay phone out in the middle of the desert, Connie, somewhere in Texas. And he's like, I could be there in three or four hours. But just knowing that all day he'd been driving already, and he's waiting to get to that pay phone and make that call. And then he has to like, I just, I love like all of the, there's so much energy in that because you know it went through all of this buildup of him, like, and then he has to, he has to, he has to, this call has to be perfect because he doesn't have another shot. He can't send a text, he can't send a DM. It's got to be perfect. So everything then just felt so much more like acute and like a value, you know? We're gonna have a whole new version of that shit with this AI is not gonna make things easier less necessary. It's gonna be more challenging because we've never done it before. This is all new turf man. That's a good point man. You're right. It's, you know, it's here and what are we gonna do it? What are we gonna do? I can go on and I've got it maybe curb myself right now and not go, not going because I could go on about this AI thing for too long. We can chat about it another time. There you go. There you go. I'll send you some shit privately and we'll chat about it in a time because I am having some AI people come on in the next few months. So I can talk with them and learn some stuff and then I could even bring ideas back to you if you want and we can chat about it. Oh, one thing I want to talk about is you have a new movie The Minions. Minions and monsters. Yeah, minions and monsters. Yeah. And, um, dude, that's so cool. Yeah. Let's watch some of it. You want to watch the trailer? Did you mind? Sure. Go ahead. In Hollywood, the new stars at the silver screen change the face of the motion picture in the industry forever. The minions are back with a touch of the other back. Now in minion vision. Oh. Oh, so where you what do you play? These are all minions. These are all new minions characters. They weren't in the former movies. Okay. And the minions. This is in 1920s and they fall in love with Hollywood and making movies. And I play twin brothers, uh, the, uh, Frank and Elwood Bright of the Bright Brothers. That's the studio. And, uh, I fall in love with these guys and say, these are, these are guys are going to make me a bunch of money, man. Because they're already making movies and then you see them. No, that, well, they kind of crash the movie set. Okay. And, uh, they do something that's so unusual. You know, we're always looking for something fresh, right? And these guys are fresh. Nobody's ever seen anything like these guys. And then, uh, the talkies come in. And they don't talk very well. Okay. They were silent films. It's silent films, you know, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin. They're, you know, inspired by these guys. And that's what the minions were doing silent films. Yeah. They're doing silent films. Okay. Now the talkies come in and they can't talk well. So they're going to be kicked to the curb. They say, what can we do? He said, well, we're into evil, man. They're, you know, all about assisting the most evil person they can find group. And that's their idea. He's a freaking bag guy. And so they find out, no, let's, uh, let's bring monsters in and they do. And that that turns out to be just the ticket for their success in Hollywood. But then things go awry. And a lot of surprises in this, in this movie. That's right. Wow. Okay, dude. I love the minions. I mean, who hasn't some of the best Halloween costumes they make? They're hard workers. First of all, there you go. They don't complain that much. Yeah, man. You think you could be a minion or not? Oh, maybe, maybe I'm a minion now. Don't know it, bro. Yeah, yeah. You know, say, yeah. But it's a wonderful group actors. You know, Christopher Walsh plays one of the main guys, Allison Jenny. You know, we're, we have a fall Allison Jenny's cool. Yeah. She's so good. Isn't she good? She's been good forever. Yeah, she's so good. Dude, that's great, man. That's so cool to be a cartoon. Yeah, I enjoy doing that kind of work. The voiceover, you know, we work with the director Pierre Cofon. He was there. Yeah, it's like it's, it's a jam session. You know, it's played, you know, how long did it take to do all of it? Do you know? The whole thing. I know years. I'm sure. But my part was, you know, a few days, you know, yeah. Dude, yeah, that's awesome, man. Yeah, I think I would, that'd probably be a good minion. I would like it because you also have so many friends and everybody's wearing kind of the same thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, wouldn't it be nothing we just, there's something nice about uniform. I agree. You didn't have to figure it out. You know, you just go in there and you say, oh, it's Wednesday. This is the Wednesday thing. Yeah. Sometimes it's too much pressure to figure it out. It was like, you know, work with directors. I remember working with John Houston. Every day, he's showing up in the same kind of coat. Sure. T-bones like that. He'll have a, you know, a certain uniform that you keep it simple. Yeah, minions and monsters off to check it out, man. Yeah. I always almost, oh, I want to ask you one or two things about the big Lebowski and then we can, oh, and then I want to ask you about your walls. I know you made a wolves documentary that's coming out. Yeah, I want to give you my list, just a verbal list of people for your show. Very fair, bro. And thank you so much to you just for your time and, uh, being lovely hanging out. Yeah. I dig the, it's been cool, man. I appreciate it. It's nice to think with somebody and just be around somebody too. Sometimes, you know, you don't even get this, like sometimes, you know, life gets busy. You don't even get to be around somebody for an hour. That's true. Um, what's one reason why you think the big Lebowski's held up so long, like, and that, why that, why that characters held up so long, like kind of stood the test of time. It's such a good movie, man. These guys, the co and brothers, they make it look effortless, but there is effort that goes into it, but it's just so good. Man, what they do, look at their movies. Look at the stuff that comes out of their oven, man, it's so good. And, um, God, it's just a good movie. You know, it'll come up on the TV. And I don't watch, you know, maybe I'll have one of my movies comes up. I watch a scene or two, you know, I'll, I'll see it come up. And I say, well, I'll just watch to Turol, licks the ball, you know, but I can hook. Yeah. And it's like, you know, eating popcorn, I can't stop. And each scene is just so good. And I, and you see new things about it at each time. You know, you see more richness. One of the fans came up with me and he said, I've got a theory. I want to run by. I said, what's that? My theory is that Donnie doesn't exist. He's only a figment of Walter's imagination. Wow. And I ran that by saying, you know, you're right. The dude, well, the dude talks to him once. And when Donnie says, your phone's ringing, dude, and dude says, thank you, Donnie, but that could be just to, you know, bust Walter's chops, you know, just teasing Walter, you know, but he doesn't, you know, Walter speaks to him all the time, but the dude kind of ignores him. Yeah. Isn't that a bizarre thing? Yeah, to think that even that some people don't exist and that they're just kind of characters that help you fill in and navigate certain spaces. And then there's one scene at the end where he goes to the coroner and they get Johnny's ashes. And there could be a missing scene where the dude goes to the coroner prior without Walter and says, look, my friend is mentally challenged. And can you just put some any ashes in a thing and just decent ashes. Yeah. And we'll do a thing just to piece, you know, that's a missing scene. But that would make that scenario that Donnie doesn't exist. That's cool to think about. It's weird. You know, Donnie's line Steve Bouchemy was so great in that, you know, what does he say? I'm the walrus. I am the war. I saw him at the next game. Him and his grandkids. Oh, yeah. It was really cool. His grandkids was trying to get me to help him set him up with a chip that was like eating nearby.
He's like, "Oh, go throwing a good word for me." I'm like, "What do you do to you, you can do it." But I did it, I helped him out. And then good stuff there. That's some like, like, clamp armors on. Yeah, dude. It's just been a part of so many people's lives. It's been a character. Is it kind of cool, like, you know, you get to go back and watch your parents who were in Hollywood who were both actors. You get to watch them, still be like, have moments of them. Do you ever go back to spend time with them or do you ever go back to spend time? I guess you did say with Lebowski as sometimes you'll start watching and kind of keep up with the character. But do you ever go back to kind of spend time with the character or do you ever go back to spend time with your parents like that, or does it not work like that? I, as a, started with Starman with Caron now. And I take photographs when I'm working with this funny camera called A Wide Lux. It's a panning, still camera. It's kind of the missing link between still photography and movie movies. And I make books for the cast and crew. As a gift, but it's really a great gift to myself 'cause I can look through those books and I get transported, man, right back to that exact moment of all those people, you know. And oh, God, it's so wonderful. Now that camera, the Wide Lux, the factory burned down about 30 years ago, but my wife, Sue and I are recreating that camera. And, you know, it's gonna be available. So we've already sold out the first edition of it. - Let's go. - But it's a wild, it's a wild project. You know, new stuff never thought I'd be making a camera. Why? - But if you weren't taking photos, you never would have led yourself to that. It's like those little things are like stay creative. You just don't know where things are gonna go, right? It's like, and that's the thing. It's like, I have to show up for like, you know, I have to show up for our parents, right? - Yeah, I'm not gonna show up here. I'm on that one and the third from, yeah, that one right there. Zooming on, that's Bianca Jagger. This gives you a good idea about this camera. Look, it's almost like it's got peripheral vision, you know what I mean? Like you see the director on the left there, Bill Richard. He's looking, you know, for the props and is that there? Then you got the assistant director, there was hands on his hips and come on, we gotta give a shot, you know, all these different people. - And that's incredible. Yeah, that's a lot going on. - Yeah, yeah. - Dude, this is what I used to love about. Like, this is why I think I've romanticized sometimes like things like this, right? Like still photography, like a pay phone. Because the value of a moment, right? One thing that's changed is, it seems like to me, a moment used to have so much value, right? Like you couldn't play it back, you couldn't repeat it. You could, like it had, like a moment was it, you know? So you had to show up more. Because there wasn't any reason. - Get on your mic, man. - Sorry. - There you go. - Good to see you guys. - Good, good, good, man. - You can't get on my mic. - Yeah, dude, not in-boy-sus. - Dude, man. - I'm looking after you, man. - Dude, thank you, dude. - Dang, bro. (laughing) And I'm inviting. - Yeah, yeah. - But yeah, the value of a moment, just, it used to seem like it was so much different. And maybe it is evolving and I don't know where it's evolving to. And maybe that's the scary part. Maybe it's like, 'cause sometimes I'm so anti, like AI and these sorts of things, but I think of, what I'm anti is kind of this surveillance idea. But then it's like, yes, sometimes I do think like, well, we evolve ourselves out of the use and value of ourselves. That's my fear, I think. - Yeah, well, but, you know, it's that thing that we were talking about before. We don't really know who we are. - Yeah. - Unless we're challenged, you know, unless, you know, we get out of our comfort zone and find out, oh, I didn't know I was that. - Right. - And that's kind of what's happening, man. And it's, it's scary and shit. - Maybe we need something huge to come. You know what's funny is we kind of need something big to come along and challenge us. - I think so, man. - That's the truth. - I think so. And it's a frightening, we talked about Bernie, a little bit, Bernie Glassman. And he had three tenants to the Zen peacemakers that I really like. First tenant is not knowing, you know, we all have opinions, man, but we don't know the truth. - Yeah. - Certainty can fuck us up in big ways when we're so damn sure. So not knowing, you know, and then bearing witness, not knowing, but just bear witness to what's going on. So Bernie would have these retreats. He would go to Auschwitz, you know, the concentration camps. He would meet with the guards and their family and the prisoners and their family and bear witness for weeks and just feel you go to Rwanda. You know, all the places that we don't want to go, he would go there and bear witness. And let it all come out, you know, all these different feelings, you know? - Yeah. - And then the third one is the action that comes out of not knowing and bearing witness and out of that comes the appropriate action. But you gotta do those first things too. Not be so stuck in your opinion, you know, we have this, we have this thing, my daughters turn me on to this. I didn't know this term, confirmation bias. Are you hip to that term? - I've heard about it, but I don't even look it up. - What do you mean? - Well, we confirm our, we spend our lives. - Oh, and then we only look at stuff that says this. - We spend our lives confirming our biases. You know, we're all biased. We all have these opinions. - Right. - But we say that same, there you go. There's in that strengthen, and we get our, these biases become that aren't, have nothing to do with truth. There's just these biases that we have from different things that made us, our experiences made that way. But that's not the ultimate truth. That's not what's going on. So we've got to acknowledge that we have opinions. - Yeah, I could do a better job of staying out of our confirmation bias and out of, yeah, I used to get less attached, but now I do feel like I get more attached. And in the end, it's painful to me. It's painful to my spirit. Just getting attached to, like, thinking I know something, you know. - Yeah, man. - Because yeah, it's definitely, I mean, yeah, it's all a work. It's all a work in progress. - It ended though, man. - And thank God it is. - Yeah, yeah, what would they, opposites, no works in and shop clothes. - Before you leave, I want to talk about you. You've been out there with some wolves recently. - Oh. - Yeah, I know you've been getting involved with wolves out there. And if you can, tell me about the wolves, man. - Yeah. - What's going on with it? - Because you have a documentary about it. - There's a documentary about in the company of wolves directed by a wonderful artist. - And what's it about politics? - No, it's about wolves, man. And about, you know, people are, like talking about being afraid of AI, people are afraid of wolves. And we say, get rid of these wolves. You know, we're afraid of them. Let's get rid of all the stuff they were afraid of. - Right. - They were the original AI. I mean, you think about it. - There you go. And in Grizzly Bears, they're all kind of, I'm a, you know, proponent of Grizzly Bears too. I like them. But this woman, Susan Coocerra, we made a film a few years ago called Living in the Futures Past, Good Title. Living in the Futures Past. And that's all about our environment and what we're doing and how we can look out for our, our planet and ourselves and our wolves and our, you know, what makes us, the relationship that we all have with each other. - That's what the documentary is about? - That's what this documentary is about. And also, you know, Living in the Futures Past, rather than pointing bad, you know, our finger at the oil companies. You know, we're all in this together, man. You know, this is not something to, you know, how do we navigate this situation? - Yeah. Yeah, how do I be the best little rudder, you know? - Yeah, there you go. Yeah, where do I want the world to go? And I think we all basically have this, you know, we all have this love and compassion in us just as much as our, you know, we have our selfishness as well. - Sometimes I think that, but then sometimes I start to think that true evil exists as well, because I don't know if one can happen without the other, do you think that there is some evil out there? - You know, it's, what pops into my mind is this Buddhist thing about relative and absolute realities. You know, I think in the absolute, you know, way, you know, you get out and something looking at the stars and, you know, I don't think there's an objective morality, really, but there's really good and evil. I don't think, but when you get into the relative with each person, oh yeah, big time, we each have that. But so there's, these two things going on at the same time. - Which is interesting. - What do you think? I mean, what's your perspective? - Yeah, it's a good point. 'Cause sometimes you attach the one on what, the personal, right? My morality. - Yeah. - I attach it to this bigger thing. Well, there's this bigger code of morality in the universe, but maybe if that universe doesn't even have that, yeah, I hadn't thought about it like that. I don't know sometimes I'd say, I used to feel a lot more, like it used to, it used to feel a little bit more, like we had a purpose as a humanity. And then now right now I feel like that's kind of, the tapestries looser than it's been in a while for us. Now, I'm sure throughout time it's gotten very loose for a lot of people, but it feels kind of loose for us right now, a sense of purpose. And that gets kind of, when the tapestries lose, man. - It makes you say, well, what's your purpose? What, you know, what is your purpose? - Right, right. If we don't have a group of purposes, a whole if you start to realize that, oh, I thought we were all on the same path. If we're not, then it really makes you start to check them Thank you.
which maybe is the thing that we need to be doing, you know? I'm not trying to preach, I'm just thinking out loud. - No, you know, I know you say I love to think out loud. I mean, what you're saying, something pops into my mind. The greatest gift that life is given to humanity is that it has no meaning. There is no purpose. That's a gift. Oh, really? - Look at that as a gift. And now, what are you going to do about that? How do you fill that space? What is, you know, what do you, and again, is that I keep coming back to that thing about being done as opposed to doing. You know, like there's something going on, man. You know, the AA thing, the higher power, you know. You can't do it by yourself. You know, that's the thing. - I'm tired of trying to do it by myself. - Yeah, yeah, so what is this, what is this thing asking us of us and to get in cooots with that? - Yeah. - And it's not even, do we even have a choice? We're in cooots with it, man. You know, maybe our resistance is our trustee. How much, you know, but, you know, you're being done, man. This is what wants to be done through you. You know, like there's something that wants you to make your choices that's saying, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do my, you know, my addiction, you know. - Right. In you. - There's something that wants us to fight for good. I do believe that. - Yeah, that's right. That's right. - I believe that. There's something that wants us to fight for good. - Yeah, yeah, I know. - This is kind of a natural thing. - Yeah. - And it's not even a good thing. It's just the thing that's going down, man. You know, we can say it feels good to do it, because that feels on purpose. You know, like words have meaning, you know, because they're pointing to something. But life doesn't really have a meaning. Does it mean anything? - Right. - What does this shit mean, man? It's just, you know, yeah. A word kind of says, right. This means a chair, yeah, but what does that, this really mean, I don't know. - Yeah, life doesn't, there's not really an alphabet to like, all of it. - Yeah. - It doesn't really have like a, it doesn't have a, um, a language. - Yeah. - Really? - Yeah, it doesn't, yeah. - Like if you went in, like, if you went behind the curtain of space, it's like they're back there with letters and shit. - Yeah. - You know, say, and this, yeah, this is what it's all about, you know, wow. - I don't know, at least we get to be alive, dude. And we get to experience this, and that's pretty cool. - Yeah, and that's my wife would say, and, and philosophize. She, you know, like, she calls me, oh, you're a philosopher. You'll bust my chat. - Oh, a fool at the beginning? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, that's accurate, too. - Oh, dude, if we all aren't fools, right? - Yeah, huh. - And thank you, God, for letting me be a fool. The pain of having me-- - Oh, she have letting us hang out as long as, as screwed up as the whole thing is, letting us hang out for this long and this little speck of dust. - And if we knew it, I know, it's a miracle, man. - It's a mayhem. And if we knew everything, how, how, what a pain it would be. And if we did know everything, here's the craziest part, to say if you knew it all, who would believe you? - Yeah. - You know, um, Jeffrey, just thanks for all your, just all your commitment to just like, uh, continuing to show up for your acting gigs, however you did it, and to show up for your creativity, because it's provided so much entertainment to us. So whatever you did in your life, just show up for that stuff, man. - Oh, thank you, man. - That's cool. - Thank you so much. - Thank you so much. - Because it's, I think some, some stories, it helped a lot of us who have been a part of our lives. Yeah, man, and if you see, bad Blake, tell him I said, tell him I said what's up. - I will, not gonna give you my list. - Oh, yeah, give me your list for you. - I said, Lloyd Catley, he's gonna be a good one, man. I think you guys would really hit it off. - And he was your stand-in. - He's been my, and he was also acting. - He would be, I think he would be, you'd have good time with him. I mentioned John Goodwin, who is the guy who wrote most of the songs when I had my, after Crazy Heart, I had my music flared up, and I went out and got a band together, and we did a lot of John Goodwin tunes. Bernie is no longer alive, Bernie Glassman, but his wife, Eve Marco, is alive, but she's a, would be a wonderful guest. She is still very involved with the Zen Peace Makers. A guy named Billy Shore. Billy is the head of an organization called Share Our Strength. I love that title. - Okay. - And T-bone, we mentioned T-bone. He might want to do this show. His wife, Cali Curry, who wrote Thelman Louise, she's got something to do with it. But who else would be able to do that? - And if some other ones come up, you can always send us. - I'll just send it to you, man. - That'd probably be easier. Also on the way out, you'll be able to hear that soon-o song. If we can put it in, it's right to be clear to my future. How that works, but we'll love it. - I don't have no idea. It's the first time I ever did crazy live this part. - So I haven't heard about it, but we'll put it at the end and see what it thinks of all this. And yeah, man, I just appreciate your time, dude. - Yeah, thank you so much, Jeff Bridges. - And Gary's agent, you'll contact you. - Okay, yeah, you'll invoice us. ♪ I'm a man, sitting trouble in a promise ♪ ♪ I'll wrap it up in the spin ♪ ♪ Jeff said, "Brother, watch it close." ♪ ♪ The old said that yours sounds wild ♪ ♪ Wanted out on the future ♪ ♪ Wanted out on the smile ♪ ♪ The old Jeff ♪ ♪ Talk on that ♪ ♪ Danger in promising ♪ ♪ Same life ♪ ♪ The old Jeff ♪ ♪ Has that test ♪ ♪ One more I'd be in the room ♪ ♪ Gets blessed ♪ ♪ The old Jeff ♪ ♪ Yeah, let it roll ♪ ♪ Country boy's talkin' to the edge of the soul ♪
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Jeff Bridges discusses his 49-year marriage to Susan, including their first meeting on the set of *Rancho Deluxe*, his initial resistance to commitment, and the "primal war" communication strategy they use in their relationship.
He shares stories about his creative projects, including writing *The Dude and the Zen Master* with Bernie Glassman, his "Heads for Peace" sculpture project, and his work on *Crazy Heart* with T-Bone Burnett.
The conversation covers themes of comfort versus growth, the importance of hobbies and creativity, and the value of 12-step recovery programs as a source of community and connection.
Bridges talks about his new movie *Minions and Monsters*, where he plays twin brothers in 1920s Hollywood, and reflects on the enduring appeal of *The Big Lebowski*.
They explore the impact of AI on creativity and society, with Bridges demonstrating AI tools like ChatGPT and Suno, and discussing both their potential and their risks.
Bridges shares his "trim tab" philosophy, inspired by Buckminster Fuller, emphasizing how individuals can influence culture and society.
Summary:
In this interview, Jeff Bridges opens up about his personal life, creative endeavors, and philosophical views. He recounts meeting his wife Susan on the set of *Rancho Deluxe*, where he was immediately smitten despite her black eyes and broken nose, and discusses the challenges of commitment, including his initial resistance and the "primal war" communication technique they developed to navigate misunderstandings. Bridges reflects on his creative projects, such as co-writing *The Dude and the Zen Master* with Bernie Glassman, his "Heads for Peace" sculpture initiative, and his work on *Crazy Heart*, which was made possible by a chance encounter with T-Bone Burnett.
He emphasizes the importance of hobbies and creativity, noting that passion often follows action rather than preceding it, and praises 12-step recovery programs as a valuable source of community and spiritual connection. The conversation also touches on his new film *Minions and Monsters*, where he plays twin brothers in 1920s Hollywood, and the enduring legacy of *The Big Lebowski*. Bridges expresses both fascination and concern about AI, demonstrating tools like ChatGPT and Suno while warning about the dangers of relying on technology as a higher power.
He concludes with Buckminster Fuller's "trim tab" analogy, encouraging individuals to recognize their power to influence culture and society.
FAQs
Jeff Bridges' new movie is called 'Minions and Monsters' and it is in theaters July 1st.
Jeff Bridges met his wife Sue while filming 'Rancho Deluxe' in Montana. He saw her in a hot spring with two black eyes and a broken nose, and was immediately attracted to her beauty despite the disfigurement. He asked her out, and they eventually married.
The 'primal war' refers to the feeling that your partner doesn't understand you. Jeff and his wife address this by sitting close together, taking turns sharing all their feelings while the other listens without rebuttal.
Jeff Bridges co-wrote 'The Dude and the Zen Master' with Zen master Bernie Glassman. The book explores how the movie 'The Big Lebowski' is filled with modern-day Zen koans, such as 'The Dude abides' and 'That's just, like, your opinion, man.'
The 'Head for Peace' project was an idea by Jeff Bridges to make 108 sculpted heads to rent out for charity, supporting the Zen Peacemakers organization. The project was interrupted when his studio flooded, but he still hopes to revive it.
Jeff Bridges shares advice from Robert Duvall: 'Hobbies, hobbies, hobbies.' Developing hobbies feeds creativity and can enrich your work, as creative energy in one area often spills over into others.
Chat with AI
Loading...
Pro features
Go deeper with this episode
Unlock creator-grade tools that turn any transcript into show notes and subtitle files.
PodcastTranscript AI