Alan Ritchson

0:01I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other. FX is the bear. The final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+. Late night bites with friends? Already hard to beat. That first too hot bite of fries you couldn't wait for, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Now that hits different. Suddenly, the energy kicks back in. The night goes longer, and the laughs don't stop. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment.

0:50Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. People, I think, are a little bit afraid of me because they're like, he's a loose cannon. And I'm not. I'm just saying the s*** that everybody should say if they give a s*** about humanity. You know? And why am I the exception to the rule? Everybody else speak up. You are all feeling the same thing, you idiots. Like, get loud and stop, like, kowtowing to the wrong people. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins.

1:52No. this man, no holds barred conversation. He's the best. We'll get to that in a second. First up, a reminder, patreon.com slash happy say confused is your friend. If you like what I do, if you want to support what I do, if you want to see more of what I do, go over there, patreon.com slash happy say confused, early access, bonus content, autograph, merch, all the cool fun stuff. Come to our live events in New York and LA. All the information is there. Check it out. Okay, so as I have already teased, Alan Richson, of course you know from Reacher. It is about to debut its fourth season in a few weeks.

2:28He's already about to start shooting season five. More to come on that phenomenal hit show on Prime. But he was here to talk mostly about his great new film. It's Motor City. I highly recommend this one. This is a fun, wild, stylized action film. Virtually no dialogue in the film. Alan is front and center. He's avenging. He is revenging. He's doing all the engines on behalf of his wife, played by Shailene Woodley. Bad guy, played by Ben Foster. He always delivers too. Well worth checking out. Motor City, highly recommended. This conversation, though, goes in many different areas because Alan is so unfiltered in the best possible way, talking about his remarkable arc of his career in terms of coming of age and kind of being a late bloomer in some ways as an actor.

3:19his early days on Smallville as Aquaman, having success, but then kind of having it pulled away from him. Obviously, his work that really kickstarted with Reacher back when he was cast in 2020 and all the opportunities that have come since then and his philosophy on kind of like taking the bull by the horns and really trying to make the most of his career. He's clearly a workaholic. He's clearly a very passionate guy about many things. He goes there in terms of talking about politics and ambition and what he is just incensed about in the world. And I respect him for it because not a lot of actors speak their mind like Alan Richson.

3:56He's funny. He's smart. He is unique in the best possible way. So I'm so thrilled to share this one with you guys. Enjoy with your eyes and ears, the one and only Alan Richson. Oh boy. It's the star of Reacher and Reacher's Reacher and Motor City. Reacher's Reacher's back, baby. We're back in business, man. Alan Richson, welcome to the podcast. It's such a pleasure to be here. It's good to see you, man. It's good to see you too. You're kind of the busiest man always in showbiz. I know this from hounding your team. Is Alan around? He's working. He's always working. I do have an obsession with the kind of work that I'm able to do.

4:30But the thing is, I was in the business for 18 years before - Where was I then? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I'm still the same guy. But I was in the business for so long. and you dream of getting to the place where you can start to curate your work, right? Like I would like to do this next. I would like to play this character, tell this story. And when it arrives, like, oh my God, pinch me. It's rarefied air. I'm grateful for it. And I want to seize that opportunity to go like, this is what I want to bring to Hollywood and to audiences. There's so many kind of derivative or risk mitigated sequels.

5:10You know, and this is nothing new now. It's almost a trope to talk about it. But I said when I did my first look deal with Amazon many years ago, you probably dig this up on the Internet. I want to create original high concept, original IP, new adventures for people to fall in love with. And if a sequel comes out of that, great. Like we've made something generational. Right. But that's really hard to do. And I meant it. And here we are, like, you know, getting to tell fresh new stories. And I'm so excited by that. And there's more I want to do. There's a lot I want to do. I mean, you're getting at like one of the constant kind of conversations I have with folks on the podcast, which is kind of that crazy shift when like you go from like the actor that's like, I'll take anything.

5:48I just need to work. I just need a job. Yeah. To like the luxury of choice and then to where you're at where you can really steer your own ship to a degree. And that's a crazy shift, I would imagine, in your brain. It is a crazy shift. And, uh, you know, then it becomes about, um, really knowing that the marriage that you're about to make to a project is worth the fact that you're going to lose sleep in a family and, and have no time off and, and take you off the board for other things that might come out. the board for the yeah you gotta know yeah and so you know i i worked with uh a bruckheimer on ministry of ungenerally warfare and some people asked him in an interview about working with me you know is he the next big star whatever and he was like you know i've seen a lot of them come and go and a lot of the ones that i thought were it you they disappeared and he was you know he he he followed it up with the fact that it's about the project you choose and i remember somebody sent me that interview and I was like, wow.

6:45And he's right. And I kind of have always intuitively known like both how to pick a project and how important it is to me. I read faster than anybody in town. I'm the one that makes the choice. You know, we make team decisions, but like, I know what I want and what we're looking for and the deep emotional threads, even if it's like a sci-fi thing, like War Machine is a good example. I knew exactly, I knew that moment. I was like, this, we're going to make a hit because the emotional threads were like sacred and eternal and something we all understand and can relate to and enjoy wrapped in something scopian fun for everybody.

7:17And so I just had those ingredients for me. And I'm looking for those things all the time. And so like to Brockheimer's point, it's essential that I have the taste to pick the right projects and then the ability to execute bringing those to life. And so that jigsaw puzzle, that puzzle, that burden, that responsibility, that privilege, all of it, it's where the fun is for me. How quickly did that shift happen for you? So you get you get Reacher, it debuts, it's immediately a hit. Like, did you immediately start getting scripts sent to you? and it that was immediate yeah that was immediate um but uh you know now i'm now so at that point i'm sort of like a servicing actor sometimes a producer these projects usually have been around the block you know it's like uh motor city is a good example this is what i would love to talk about today at some point yeah this amazing film um that i felt like was a masterpiece the moment I read it and did everything I could to champion it and bring it to life.

8:19And I learned through the course of producing that, that it had been around for 18 years. It's one of those famous Blacklist scripts. It was a famous Blacklist script. In Hollywood, everybody knew this script and was like, oh man, oh, Motor City. I remember reading that when I was a junior agent at CAA 10 years ago. You're like, no, I have to discover that. I know, I know. And so then you start to go like, why didn't it get made? You know? I realize now, you know, that film in particular sits at the intersection of art and commerce in a big way where it's a very commercial action film, but with no dialogue, very artistic Shakespearean drama that is so gripping.

8:50But it's, that's hard to make, you know? So, so anyway, the, the, the, the scale and quality of things that have come in has, has, has like really changed over the last year or two. Yeah. But at first it was like, would you like to act in this thing? It's a cool movie. And that happened overnight. I mean, I like Reacher season one was released, I think like Thursday at midnight or something. and by Saturday we had record numbers by Monday I had like 40 offers in my inbox but um but now it's like now we see manuscripts before they're published publishers are bringing us IP before anybody else sees it we're one of a we're like there are maybe five camps in town that get to see things first screenplays and ideas and uh I'm you know I've just been very fortunate that like we're able to because people are starting to be able to trust in my taste and ability to execute with my team, that we can deliver 100,$150 million movies, sell them, set them up, and there'll be amazing experiences for audience.

9:45And so we have access. That is fun. So when this script comes around, this famous blacklist script, which maybe you didn't realize when it arrived to your desk had been around for a minute, do they tell you, I hope they tell you, like, by the way, don't go in counting the lines because you're going to be very disappointed. I had no context. I had no context. I opened up the script. And, you know, when you I read hundreds of scripts a year. Right. And they're all similar in presentation. I mean, you see the scene action, which is a set of longer lines. And and then there are shorter margins. Right.

10:15For dialogue. And so you sort of you're used to it laying a certain way on the page. And you don't want a lot of black because readers can get bored and lost. And so, you know, you know, you want scripts to be efficient for the reader as much as you want it to be efficient for the audience so that you sell these things and engage people. and so when I opened it up and it was all scene action I was like what the hell I'm a little better than this guys is there a formatting mistake here because this is really like somebody's got no discipline right and then and then you realize like oh this is different when is the and I kind of flip ahead and I'm like there is no dialogue in this movie yeah and I flew through that script probably faster than any other which is also an indication to me of a good script if you get if I'm like rereading a lot because my mind is wandering or I'm having trouble following the a sheer volume of characters or exposition, that's a bad sign.

11:02If I'm racing through a script, especially with my severe ADHD, that is a good sign. And I finished, the script was 87 pages, very short for a drama. And I got through it in probably 87 minutes, you know? So it was like, I knew there was something special about it. So the challenge for you as an actor must be like juicy, like must be very exciting because you have to obviously convey a lot with very little dialogue as discussed. There's one thing to kind of think about that in advance. Then when you're on set, does it become a different kind of set of challenges you hadn't anticipated? Well, a lot of people don't know this about me, but I have a whole business in producing.

11:43Right. I have distribution deals around town. I love being at the very genesis of the creative. Right. process. And I feel like I'm pretty decent at it. So when I come in as an actor, especially one, like, you know, for context, Motor City has virtually no dialogue. And, you know, that relieves me of a lot of my duties where I don't have to memorize lines. And that's just a time consuming process, making sure that everyone's authentic and necessary and, you know, capturing the subtext properly or whatever um that was without having to dedicate time to that i could spend more time understanding the emotional threads of the film and through line um but i wasn't so i wasn't so much challenged by the performance as much as i was challenged by uh the many producing hurdles that we we ran into uh this was not a studio picture i had taken it to town yeah and the studios or the studio that i brought it to first felt like there were a couple huge fans and there was enough people on the green light committee there that was like who's gonna watch a film with no dialogue how do you keep people engaged i mean like that's that is the problem but we have a plan to overcome that right it's a filmmaker driven film an excellent cast and um you know their music is a character in this film it's got one of the best soundtracks of the year um there are ways to there are the dialogue is not the only tool in the toolkit and i think this teaches people that watch any mad max movie like george miller's like the king of this like yeah you're not tuning into that for tom party's imagination and let's and let's also show people that like maybe there are other ways that we can play with uh the many tools that we use the devices that we use and explore storytelling in new unique ways i think the audience is everywhere ready for that but but uh it was like you know the studios like this they're about mitigating risk right and yeah they can't comp this to anything else so of course it's about the looking in the rearview mirror what just worked how do we do that right and that's not what that's not the business i'm in right and so you know i had to make this in a more circuitous way and so that you know you start putting together indie financing and um that's hard because it falls through suddenly somebody's check doesn't clear escrow is empty when it's not supposed to be we were actually set up to shoot some of this in on sound stages in dubai because they were they They were giving like really incredible incentives and co-financing to have us come over there and do some work.

14:17And we got over there. My production designer, Burns Burns, who's a good friend of mine. We've done a lot of work together. He went over there ahead of me just to like – I was like just help us get a feel for what this is. And he's like safety concerns. Safety. There ain't no show over here, dude. This is Safety Concern Central. And this place is not fit for like business. It's like the dangerous environment to work in. Sure. Just the like the architecture alone was like not unsound, unfit for people to be working in. And it wasn't ready for it wasn't ready for what we were going to need to do.

14:53And that was like, well, now we got to go back to the drawing board. But we are in hard prep, you know, and so we, you know, we we brought all that soundstage work back to the States. Anyway, it was just so you're constantly battling the realities and difficulties of making cinema, especially cinema that is totally unique and not really been explored before. And the way that we solved a lot of those problems was Patsy Ponsoroli, the director and I, who I'm just the biggest fan of. And he really made this movie what it is. But we would have nightly calls. And I'd hate that when I saw his name line up at like 9 p.m., I'm like, no, no, what did we lose?

15:33And I'm like, hey, what's up, Patsy? And he's like, OK, let's do it. And I'm like, what did we lose? and he's like$450 ,000 from the junior loan that fell through or whatever. I'm like, I got it. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. He's like, this is what we're shooting this week. This is my idea for what we can cut to manage this. And a lot of times, you know, he'd be like, I think it's a drama first and Shakespearean like romance and it's about the love triangle. So I think we lose the elevator fight scene. And I'm like, absolutely over my dead body. And by the way, that scene, the elevator fight is so good.

16:02I think this will be something that is like referenced as like peak action material and worth the price of admission alone. Everybody should come see this movie. But like when that happens, the audiences I've seen it with, it is so satisfying to hear people's reaction to that in the movie theater. When it's anyway. So I fought for that kind of thing. Right. To the point where I was like, I'm going to pay for the scene myself. It's that worth it to me. Audiences. This will make the movie and satisfy audiences more than anything that we're doing. It's got to stay. um talk about let's talk about other ideas and so we'd find a way to cut 100 extras or move a scene from inside a disco with billions of people to outside in an alleyway or something um it was so it was more efficient to shoot um and uh and and those compromises you know um i think we always were able to protect the best you know the integrity of the film in the best way but that to take a long-winded way of saying to answer your question that consumed 95 of my energy And then I'd show up on set and we'd do the scene, you know, where I just sink into those, usually rage, sink into those emotions.

17:06I mean, it is a bit of like, for more context, a little bit of a throwback, right? It's like 70s set, Detroit. It's like, I feel like back in the day would have been Clint or Steve McQueen or something like that. Like, you know, man of few words that is out for justice. 100%. Um, it's like, I was very impressed. Like it's, you know, it's funny how you can tell kind of like you're in safe hands right from the start of a movie, like opening images of the film. Like, yes, like you throwing a guy over a roof in front of a neon sign. Like it's like the imagery is there. One of the coolest cold opens too, by the way, like the movie, you're just thrust into the middle of something, a guy running across a rooftop in, in a Detroit in 19th, in the seventies with a guy who has a leg missing, still sort of bleeding from a fight.

17:51And then he hurls the body off into a car and we're in and you're like, what happened? Let me catch up with this madness. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, um, man, I love this movie. So when you're in the middle of these fight scenes, do you have to resist the urge to like improvise a line? Like, cause the body, don't you want to say something? And like, of course, and I'm very improvisational, you know, like that's why a lot of people bring me on to projects because they've, you know, they're like, oh, you know, just want to keep it loose and see what you can find, you know? and you know I'm always looking and listening in every moment listening hard for something that inspires some thought that that character is having right my job is to to make sure that thoughts that come from the ether belong to the character knowing it well enough to like for those things to be his but fresh in the way that we listen be listening the way that he would listen right that's my job and and it makes it very easy to improvise when those thoughts belong to the or appropriate for the character, time and setting and all that, his experiences.

18:53And so naturally, verbal communication usually is, there's a wellspring of that, like when I'm having these thoughts. And I had to show a little more restraint than normal, where usually I would just say something. But we wanted to honor the fact that this was the brainchild of Greg Silverman, who was the president of Warner Brothers, maybe 20 years ago. and he wanted to make a movie that could be a universal shared experience between all movie goers and all cultures all languages right there's no language barrier where somebody has to read captions subtitles and other people get to experience because they understand the language uh we could all just watch the drama unfold and and uh and he he gave the mandate to chadst john who's an incredible writer and absolutely crushed this and this is what chad cooked up and and so So we did have to show some restraint.

19:44And I would say like the proposal scene, there's a scene where I propose to my character, proposes to Shailene Woodley's character. And it was terrifying to work through a proposal without saying anything. How do you do that? And so I had to fill it with a lot of inner turmoil. Right. And the questions and the stress of that moment, is this the right time? It's the right place? She's cooking scrambled eggs right now. I don't know if maybe I should do this. Maybe she's good. Maybe she should say no. Like maybe I didn't know, like all those things. Right. And then that leaves you sort of in a place where it makes sense.

20:15And you just had to trust that it's going to land and look authentic, you know, but it's what great fun we had. We'll be right back with more Happy, Sad, Confused. So some of you may think what you see and hear on the podcast is the total me. The truth is I get super stressed like everybody else. Work challenges, the health of a loved one. It can all feel pretty overwhelming. That's why I'm so happy Rula is an ongoing sponsor for happy, sad, confused. It's one thing to find a therapist you like, but then you learn the problem of actually making sure that they take your insurance. Then there are all those online therapy platforms, right?

20:53But the truth is that many of them don't work with insurance. And then you're looking at huge out of pocket costs. So guess what? Now you can add money stress to the rest of your problems, not with Rula. Their average copay is just 15 bucks per session. And that's because they partner with over 100 insurance plans. And it's real therapy from licensed professionals. This should be how insurance works after all, right? You use your insurance benefits to maintain your physical health. Why shouldn't you do the same for your mental health? And Rula knows that in order to provide you with the best care, they have to consider your goals and preferences and backgrounds so that you can get a curated list of licensed in-network therapists who are actually aligned with what you need.

21:33Because finding the right therapist can make all the difference. No wait lists. Appointments are available as soon as tomorrow. And you're not on your own, guys. Rula sticks with you throughout the journey. They check in to make sure that your care is helping you as you move forward. So go to Rula.com to get started today. That's R-U-L-A.com for quality therapy that's covered by insurance. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit Rula.com to get started. And after you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them.

22:07Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's Rula, R-U-L-A dot com slash happy. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. No, stop. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other. FX's The Bear, the final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+.

22:50My guess is you're probably very good in a pitch meeting. You're such a passionate advocate for your vision, for a creative vision, working with a team. I mean, and clearly, as much as you love acting, you've talked about this already. Like you get off on the whole process. So I see an opportunity to create tomorrow's best TV and film. I see a path to what is what I am here to service audiences needs before they're expressing exactly what it is. Right. Like taking a temperature of what's in the zeitgeist. What are people looking for? I want to be the defender and deliverer of that that content now right we have to start now because it's going to take me a few years to get this film into the into the eyes of of movie going audiences that's a fun job like I love my job and I think I have the the taste to deliver like really high quality stuff and so you know finding it finding the right partner whether that be classical theatrical distribution or streamers which is a great way to access a lot of content these days that maybe normally wouldn't get made.

24:00Finding those partnerships and championing these things in a way where they trust that you can execute. And then you're working on this new startup, which is going to be three years of your life. They transfer in$100 million and you got to deliver a new business and it's got to work. You get one product to sell one time and you got to hope it works. But it's a challenge that both keeps me up at night and keeps me from getting bored. I mean, the way you're talking about all this reminds me back in the day. of someone that you worked with relatively recently, which is Arnold. Like Arnold was so strategic and so smart about the business as much as he is about the performance and just inhabiting like a persona.

24:38Did you guys talk about this kind of stuff? All the time. All the time. He's a super savvy businessman. He also really wanted me to get into politics because after we got to know each other, he was like, man, you need to do this. I'm not ready to retire yet so I can do that. Did he plant the seed? Is this down the line? Are we talking politics? I, you know, I look, I just want to help people, you know, like there's going to come a time when I feel like maybe I'm either well-resourced enough or I don't know, um, visible enough to like, you know, to really make an impact in many people's lives. Right.

25:12And I care deeply about the outliers, the maligned people who have very difficult lives, people who are forgotten and overlooked and unwanted and unloved. Like I care deeply about making the world more fair and free for those people. and a lot of politicians have lost the plot. And there is a desire for justice and fairness in me that is, look, I just found this. I work with an ADHD coach now. Because ADHD has made my personal life, it's in shambles. My career is amazing. And that is ADHD in a nutshell. You're a millionaire and you have no one in your life that loves you. High functioning, low functioning.

25:54Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, um, and so it'd been working, I've learned a lot about ADHD and rejection sensitivity dysphoria is something that ruins relationships. And I suffer from that deeply. Um, it's hard to feel like I've let somebody down. And, uh, I, I was having a conversation about the business in this regard because I, it's, I get so, um, I get mad when I'm like, I don't feel seen, heard, respected as a creative who continues to prove with like number one hits across the board that I know how to do this and I know what audiences want and people are going like I don't know I don't really see it that way I don't think you're like ah you know like and and and um feels unfair or whatever I mean that's a bad example but like uh but I was like I just want to I just want more peace and emotional maturity clarity in the business place so that I don't feel these like huge ups and downs this roller coaster of of volatility and she's like well the examples that you've given me and what's causing that is another umbrella of ADHD and I'm like great there more like it gets worse injustice sensitivity and that is so I'm like wow that makes a lot of sense because I have put myself I had somebody shoot themselves in the leg while I beat their ass for breaking into my car because I was like well I'm gonna go take care of this group of of people there's a group of people breaking into the car and starting starting in on my house and they didn't know that I was in there and I went after him and um and a guy shot himself in the leg trying to like, you know, like fend me off.

27:22And I never, I, there wasn't one second where I was like, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. I was like, this is exactly what I need to be doing. And this is exactly what this guy gets. Um, and I like, so I, there's nothing, it's very reacher. Like there's nothing in me that hesitates or gives a shit about like people taking on people who, uh, uh, deserve it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't like that gene doesn't exist. And, but it also makes life very frustrating. I live with a lot of contempt at the way things are because I I see unfairness and injustice everywhere and I'm frustrated by it.

27:50And so anyway, in working with this coach, I've learned that that's a thing that I really want to manage. And that informs my politics. That is where it is for me. So like people who like think they're doing God's work while they're creating monsters, telling themselves this story that there are monsters among us that should be kept apart and separate. That ain't it, dude. And there ain't no true religion in the world that would support that idea. so you gotta you gotta be introspective and check yourself and make sure who's talking points you're listening to if you start to hate others or separate yourself or create division like like red flags red flags and i don't see it that way and i so like if i got into politics i would i would have to be ready to hang it up for a minute in the business that i'm in i'm not there yet but um i would go full i would make a full-throated effort to um to make the world a more fair place um and and you know clean up the law so that it's harder for people who are corrupt and wanting to abuse the system, take advantage of it to do so.

28:49I respect literally everything you said and the passion behind it. And I also respect the fact that like, as you well know, there are a lot of actors that are afraid to kind of like speak their mind and kind of like give a shit. I told you, I'm missing that gene, dude. I need that because it's honestly, it's a, it's a, everybody's scared around me for what I'm going to say. Everybody's saying my publicist right now is like, I say she's like biting her nails. Her nails are, she bites her nails down to the cuticles. They're just tiny little cuticles left. And so what is this idiot going to do? It's I just have to.

29:19She actually showed me her beautiful nails right now. You know, it's like people I think are a little bit afraid of me because they're like, he's a loose cannon. And I'm not. I'm just saying the shit that everybody should say if they give a shit about humanity. You know? And why am I the exception to the rule? Bitch, everybody else speak up. You are all feeling the same thing, you idiots. It's like, like get loud and stop like kowtowing to the wrong people. Stop bowing down to people that like have power. You got power too, man. And power in numbers, dude. You know what happened if like everybody felt like me?

29:55Everybody felt like, I just thought, I was just, I see, I got to be careful. I left Dax Shepard. I just did armchair expert with Dax Shepard. I went on a goddamn rant that I left. Like, I was like, that's just not, man, it's just not me. I shouldn't be, I shouldn't say those things. Cause people are going to start to get like, he's scary. No, I, you know, but I just like, dude, if every he goes he goes i love dex i had the best time on his show and he goes um maybe you should let go of that stuff and i'm like let go i was like everybody else should have it everybody should feel like i feel the world is on fire yeah like oh mad about the way things are and the abuses that are happening every the epstein files the fucking epstein files god damn it where are they it's a fucking law bitch show it you fucking pedophiles i shouldn't say fuck because i'm a christian and people are gonna go like how can he say he's a christian because that is something that should make you want to say you know sorry god i'm sweating now i just this is my politics dude i would railroad these i would get those epstein files out in two seconds yeah dude i two seconds move out of the way like get out of there i don't care what room they're in move like give me the manila envelope i will get you the epstein files I got my vote whatever you want to run for you got it don't you want to see what's in there so that we can hold people accountable these fucking rapists we're just cool with it that bitch has the keys to the nuclear he's like all up into 13 year olds like dude go to jail alright what are we talking about you were a big Jim Carrey fan growing up I love Jim Carrey his work in Sonic the Hedgehog is just it's truly transcendent okay I'm sweating we're good but this is ADHD also like this is a justice this is how I feel and this is why my family is like maybe we shouldn't be a family anymore you just you're better on the road we want to live in the place that we live now by ourselves was this Alan growing up if I met you at 12 years old is this basically the same guy like in terms of his vibe yeah but just the things that made me mad were different like the fact that like you know like Nintendo wouldn't work the controller wouldn't work sometimes I used to think that people were actually watching us play from behind the TV monitor like the Nintendo people were like controlling everything I was like you want me to fail you know and I'd throw the controller if you throw another controller so anyway maybe the anger matters more now I don't know were you you were both artist and jock growing up were those both sides of you yeah well I'm still artist and jock i would say like you know it's um like what did the family make of of alan of my i will say look to the there's a lot of you know when you grow up the son of a narcissist there's going to be c c c ptsd diagnosis in your future and you're gonna have to do a lot of work transcranial therapies and you know like i've got to do a lot of work to like you know learn what love should look like um but i will say this you know for for for all the challenges i've faced growing up um my parents were super supportive and my you know my dad especially like really he he really went to bat to make sure that we could explore ourselves in whatever way we needed and we didn't have a lot of money and i remember he was chief master sergeant in the air force which is a very hard rank it's uh it's more rare than other high ranking officials in other branches of the military, less than 1 % of the Air Force becomes chief.

33:30So it's a well-respected rank. And that's kind of how I knew him. He was a leader. And he took a job at a little tiny local airport as a night security guard because we were trying to do so many things, track, chorus, you know, entre nous, these like social clubs, things that travel, traveling baseball. Like we were involved in everything and didn't have the money to do it and so he so he would work all day come home nap and then he'd go as work as a night security guard at this place so that we could afford to do all the things that we wanted to do including the arts yeah and he will forever be my hero for that like i want to cry thinking about it because um that that's a man that's a man serving his family doing whatever it takes and i so respect that and he eventually stopped doing it one because it was taking a toll on him obviously the time but he also like a lot of the lower ranking um you know people in the air force that would see him would kind of like you know tease him you know what the fuck are you doing here chief are you working at night you know the thing and he's like man i'm just all the youngsters are like they don't you know they make fun of me and um you know so he stuck it out for for long enough to help us get our goals met for that year um anyway so hats off dad and uh you know mom for support and my exploration of like art when we were growing up in the south and everybody thought i was uh like the gayest dude that they've ever met because i would rollerblade to chorus practice and then go pole vault you know i was a paradox wrapped in a conundrum and uh i just like trying things yeah you know i did ballet i have a degree in ballet did you know that i think i did know that uh associate arts degree associate of arts degree in ballet um because when i quit my music theater program i had enough and i left and that's what it was i just wanted to go out and live life and explore more and experience more but um it was harder for me to go through those experiences because i was like i hope nobody sees me here than it was for him to support me right in that way when you start to make that transition we're not gonna have time to go into everything but obviously like i mean minefield we could go into the modeling i know this was a horrible experience for you What a dark underbelly of life that is.