#2240 - Roger Avary & Quentin Tarantino

24:28Yeah, because they came in and I'm like, what's been at least 40 minutes every other day? And I expected to see them. And you know, I watched what I watched on TV. I saw what I saw at the movies and then they saw what they saw in the movies. They watched what they watched on TV. We all talked about it and they talked about the videos and then what else we're going to get and that, that, that, that. And if you like that, you're going to like this. About our lives and everything, yeah. So at what point in time while this is all going on, do you guys decide we need to make our own fucking movies?

24:54Well, it was always the case. Well, we were always thinking, well, well, Roger and, and Roger had another friend that, it was a guy that connected me and Roger together. It was a guy named Scott who took his own life at a certain point of time. His father owned another video store that I worked at as well and that Quentin used to come into. But the thing is though that while I was just thinking about making movies, Roger and Scott were like making movies on SuperA. Yeah. And they were making little horror films and little zombie movies on, on, on, on SuperA. Supernatural thrillers. And they're, the word turns is a zombie movie.

25:26Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of, yeah, it's kind of a zombie movie more than after life. Okay, maybe, okay. But, uh, but you're making like legit horror films. I'm just thinking about this stuff and these guys are like Sam reigning it, you know, like Sam reigning. They're making the, they're shutting their backyard and they're working on it for like three months and stuff. Yeah. And, um, you know, like I was friends with all the punk guys because it was like LA punk. And, um, so they were always in my movie. All the, all the punks were in my movies because they were media literate. They loved movies and so they were easy to pull in and, uh, end to be in the film.

26:01So they were always playing like, you know, the gang of punks who beat somebody up or something. So it must have been cool working out a video store though because it's essentially like you have, it's like an education. Well, when the time came where we actually wanted to be making movies where we were talking about making movies. Because I can remember when I think it was, it was around the time of sex lives in videos tape or maybe she's got to have it. No, no, definitely sex lives in videos. But I remember, uh, you coming to me and saying the moment is happening. Yeah, yeah. It's happening. Like small, a small movie is possible to get made like, like it's happening for us for guys our age.

26:37Yeah, I mean, I mean, the one, you know, it was like the sex lives in video tape was sort of like the, uh, like the Seattle band that broke. All right. But I was already looking at, uh, blood simple was my, was my in. Yeah, that's a great movie. Was my in, all right, where it was that was, okay, it's an artistic movie. It's, it's already, it's funny. I can play it, it can play the art houses, you can play the art house circuit. But there's a genre based to it. Yeah. There's a genre based. It's like, you know, it's a thriller. It's a, it's a film noirry kind of thriller done in a certain kind of way, but it's a genre based.

27:17Yeah, I go, that's the way you do an art film. You do it. You make it a genre based art. If you keep one foot in, in, because it's entertaining. Yeah, if you keep one foot in exploitation in some way in genre. If you keep your foundation in genre, then you can do whatever you want. Like, my favorite filmmaker is Stanley Kubrick. I love Kubrick movies. Okay. One can pretty much look at all of his films and say each and every one is a genre film. He's got his science fiction movies, got a horror movie, even Barry Linden as a costume drama at the time. Is it costume genre? Is the genre? That was, that was a solid, bankable genre.

27:52And the book is definitely a, a, a, a pulpy genre. Well, yeah, the book was serialized. It was like, Thackeray wrote them in like, like an episode. It was like a soap opera. But that was a very popular, popular book at that time. Yeah, and so, yeah, it was all, uh, if you can, if you can, and I knew this making my first film, and I know Quentin, you were talking about it. This was the conversation we were actively having of. We have to make sure that we make a movie people want to see, like a genre film. Like, and I was calling them exploitation movies at the time. Like, I want to keep one foot in exploitation.

28:25And then, but at the same time, I'm like, well, I kind of also want to make like, you know, I want to elevate it as much as possible. And so, when the time came for me to make my first, first film, killing so, um, you know, it was like, I knew it was going to be a bank robbery because I wrote it around a location. You know, we, we found this while they were scouting for, uh, reservoir dogs, Lawrence Bender. Uh, or maybe you also had scotted that location. We found this bank location. And Lawrence called me up and he's like, hey, I'm calling all the writers. I know I found this bank location. And if you can, if you have a script that takes place in a bank, we can kick together a couple hundred thousand dollars and make a movie there.

29:04It's like this complete solid, amazing location. And I said, oh my god, Lawrence, this is your lucky day. I happen to have a script that takes place in a bank. And then I just quickly wrote one, based on the location. And as I was writing it, I was thinking, okay, um, you know, I know that it's going to be a bank robbery. It's a bank. And so I know it's going to be a bank robbery. And that's my solid bankable genre that I'm going to, uh, to stick with. But I knew I wanted to do something more with it. And I had just traveled through Europe and, uh, and I had been telling Quentin the stories of traveling through Europe.

29:38He's like, oh, you should do a movie called Roger takes a trip. And, uh, I still think it should have been called. I think it's a different movie. I don't think it's a, uh, you kind of made Roger take some trips. And it bank robbers in it. I had been in, but it still Roger takes a trip. I had been in Paris. I had bumped into a guy that I knew from Los Angeles who was a French guy. And he was like, uh, I'll show you the real Paris. And I went out with he and his friends on reek, John Claude, all the characters from the movie. I went out with him and his friends. And we, uh, you know, he drove me through Paris.

30:10And next thing I know he's doing heroin. And I'm like, and it's heard it with you. No, not with me. I know we do heroin. Yeah, it was like, no, we do heroin. Hold my arm. I did hold his arm. And like I had to reel. Yeah, yeah, I had never seen anything like that. Like he tied his arm off. Is it hold my arm? No, no, no, no. He was the tying on. Yeah, you were the tying on. Roger, hold my arm while I shoot up. Geez. So he doesn't quite know that this is all going to happen. That everything else has been a preamble to this. Yes, suddenly that happens. And then he just needed a heroin partner. Yeah, and his friends are like, oh, drink it to the nose.

30:44Doesn't even affect me anymore. And I'm like writing these lines down like, this is great shit. And so I came back and I till Quentin like about this whole story and about these guys and going, you know, driving around the Shum Sili's A. And this is where the fags show themselves. Now we go into the into the nightclub down below. No, you do more heroin. And I'm like, what about the cops aren't the police going to say anything? It's safer here than you know, you know, you're like, you can do heroin anywhere in Paris. And it was like, no, I work at Le Mans. Like all of it was like basically everything in that movie.

31:21I, you know, was stuff that I'd actually seen. And so when the time came to make it as a bank robbery film, I just, you know, I'm thinking about it. I'm like, well, it's a bank robbery movie, but it's going to be about these guys. And it just became a movie about a guy going someplace and the, and everything that he thought he knew is wrong. You know, like you think, you know, you haven't seen your friend in a while. You go see him. Okay. It's all about that, that kind of friendship and misconception. He's downstairs in the bank. Johnny, you're going to go out of the bad guy's upstairs. Chaos is going upstairs.

31:57He has no idea what's going on upstairs. And so this kind of just became what the movie was about. And so I just quickly wrote the script. And then, you know, we ended up not even using that location to shoot the movie in. It came together later and ended up shooting in downtown LA instead. But it was the seed was planted. The seed was planted. So the idea was, okay, I'm going to make a French film out of it. Because I'm like in LA, I'm making a film. I'm like, what can I do that would be different? Like that would make this more than just a bank robbery movie. And because of the experience I had had just had, I was like, well, I'm going to make a French film.

32:32Okay. I had no business making a French movie. I didn't even really speak French. I just thought it would be kind of cool. I like cool French girl and like greasy, dirty French guys, French criminals. And I always loved, you know, Alondolon and Le Thémurai. You know, the way he wears a suit and the way he carries a gun and the way he walks around. I just like, I, you know, just adored all of that. And so it was like, well, let's put all of that kind of space that's in my brain into the movie. And then the movies tend to take on a life of their own. They tend to be like children. You know, it starts off as a concept, as a conception, has a conception, and then it has an infancy.

33:14And then you're raising that child to become the movie. And along the way, you're really just kind of protecting it and trying to allow it to grow into what it's going to grow into without forcing it to become something that it's not. And it's a little bit of a balance. You have to be a good parent, which means you have to give it a little bit of freedom to grow into something that you don't know what it's going to be. But at the same time, you have to be willing to, you know, be strong with it as well. That's a very underappreciated movie. It's a fucking great movie. I think I'm really good at making underappreciated movies.

33:46I think I've had a, I built a career with an underappreciated movie. Those are the classics that you would look for in a video store. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You look for the movies that were really good that no one knew about. Duck Day Afternoon's not in, but we can get you killing so. My favorite moment in the movie, well, I like it when the guy gets burned alive. All right, you know, the hamburger scene. That was, yeah. But I remember they were trying to talk to you to cut out of it. I go, no, no, you can't cut that out. I'm taking my name off. Yeah, yeah. No, Quinn did that. Actually, Quinn was a great gorilla to have on my side at that time.

34:18But why would they tell you to cut that out? Well, I don't know. Everyone is afraid. Everyone is afraid. Everyone's afraid. Everyone operates out of fear. I think is the director and the actor. Those are the ones who, if everything's working right, you're fearless. It's always executives and fuckers. But it's the scene that my favorite scene is the scene with Sean Huyong -Lon when he walks into the close -up. Oh, yeah. And he's just like, wait a minute. He's like remembering what he heard and he's from, and he realizes. Okay, so that's a good example of, because the movie was shot for. It's fine.

34:56It's fine. It's fine. I will. The movie was shot for very little money. We had no money to make it. So I had to shoot the entire upstairs first and then the downstairs. Because it's like doing a company move. But I had kept, I knew that when writing, and this was sort of a rule that we had was, one, make a genre movie, two. Explain the scene. I'm going to. I said explain the scene. Okay. What you just said about it that moment. The scene was a replacement for another scene that was in the movie that was too expensive to shoot. What is that? What I like. What I replaced it with was, and I had to fight for it, it was a single shot.

35:39Because originally he goes downstairs and he sees a bunch of guys coming in through the sewer. So I'm going to search for a machine getting people in the sewer. Because it was like a little sewer manhole in the bottom of the bank. I was like, well, let's use that. And so I had this whole thing. And the bond company showed up and you're like, you're behind schedule and you've got to like, you know, you've got to cut pages and I couldn't cut anything. And I'm shooting upstairs downstairs stuff. And so it's like, I had to have something because he leaves the scene and then comes back angry. And so I knew I needed to have something.

36:10And originally I had this whole scene where the cops are coming in and he reacts to that. And so I said, okay, I just need one shot. And because it's all I could had time to do because the fucking bond company. And so I set up, which were actually really cool to me. They were actually film finances was great. I just set up a single camera. I asked for kind of a cube bricky and lens. And I just wide like maybe a 14 millimeter lens. And I just had John Hube walk up into a close up. And I just had him do, I said, just walk into a close up and just start looking around and just start seeing things coming out of the walls.

36:47And no, no, no. Is that the shot you're talking about? And he does like a little magic trick beforehand, like. Nope. That's not the one you're talking about? No, that's the great shot. That's a great shot. No, the scene I'm talking about is that's why I wanted you to explain it because I hadn't seen it in a long time. But it was, uh, it is. See, is that the shot? Well, that's the shot. That's the shot I'm talking about. Look, he's looking into the walls. He's while I'm looking around. But I thought the whole idea about it is the idea that I added those lines of dialogue in. No, but I thought the whole idea is, is he puts it all together.

37:24He realized that there's something going on that the cops are doing this or Eric Stoltz is dirty with him. And it all hits him. He's really something else and he walks into a close up and it all hits him. But now we, the audience know what's going on. Yeah. And then he's just like, well, it just shows that sometimes if you can't do what you want to do, what you come up with is better. And this was an example of it rained that day. And I had to use the rain. That's sort of the example. The first thing I heard from me about what you're talking about is like, I don't care how the sausage was made.

37:57I like the sausage. I want to do to talk about the sausage. Well, not the, not the factory.

38:05You don't want to know what's in that sausage. I was. You have no interest in that. I wanted to hear about the Italian sweetness. Well, it was very sweet, but it started off sour. It started off sour because I couldn't do what I wanted to do. And so I just came up with something that was, well, he puts it together in his head. But and I, I mean, I still think that sequence is exhilarating because it's all, it all goes down to an actor's face. Well, I had Tom Savini on the set because, and I couldn't afford Tom Savini, but I found his number. And before I shot and I called him up and in Pittsburgh and I said, Tom Savini is a makeup effects artist who did Don of the dead.

38:40He did all the effects for Don of the dead. Like and not to mention all the great slides Friday the 13th, all the slasher movies. Like he's the superstar of of practical makeup effects of horror films of that era. He was in Vietnam and saw some shit. And every time I'm talking to him about stuff, like he's like, oh, yeah, well, you know, no, if you're bleeding from back hearing, there's only two small veins in blah, blah, because when your head gets knocked off, like he's seen all this stuff. And so this is his way of processing it. But Tom came in and I couldn't afford him. I called him up on the phone.

39:10I was like, hey, can you think I'm a young filmmaker. I'm, you know, I'm your biggest fan. I like to make up a fax blah, blah, blah. Okay, he flew himself out. We had no money to pay him. I think we paid him like some tiny amount. He flew himself to LA, put himself up, worked on the film. And he made that burn makeup on that burned guard in the vault out of Vaseline paint and tissue paper. And I watched him make it was the most unbelievable thing how he made blisters and burn effects. And it was like watching one of the great artists work. Tom is the incredible guy. He's an incredible, incredible guy.

39:53Where you were asking earlier on about, whoa, you're working at a video store. Did you ever think, you know, when did you start thinking about making your own stuff? Well, I was thinking about making my own stuff for like a long, long, long time. But these guys were actually doing it. But there is a truth while I thought about it like for a long, long time. And always figured I would do that eventually. I did fall asleep for a few years. You know, because working at that store, I just got caught up in the little life there. And it's interesting because you spent your 20s going to comedy clubs and building a career.

40:36So I'm selling my 20s there. And well, it's one of those things where it's like, well, this isn't my dream. This isn't what I wanted to do working at a video store for years. I wanted to actually make movies. It's not my dream what I'm doing. But it's dream adjacent. It's close to my dream. It's close to my dream. I get to watch movies all fucking day. I get to talk about movies all fucking day. I don't have to work at a pizza parlor. I don't have to, I'm not delivering pizzas. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not busting ass as a bartender. I'm not busting ass doing menial jobs. I mean, this is the kind of job that, you know, I do if I, I'd go to the store if I wasn't paid to go to the store.

41:25You know, so it's like, you know, but, but for a couple of years, it did put me to sleep. It did kind of put me to sleep. I put my ambitions to sleep for a little bit because I was happy enough. Yeah. I was happy, you know, and just one of these days, I'll... Right, we didn't have the fire. I didn't have the fire. And when I got the fire, when I eventually got the fire back again, and it was a life -changing thing. It was a life -changing day. It was, we had a buddy of ours named Steve O. Yeah. And he was one of... We had different living arrangements. And at one point in time, me and Steve O were living in the same house together, renting in the back of the store.

42:10The dude house. Yeah. It was where everyone would hang out. And... But now Steve O was older than the rest of us. So he was about like almost five years older than us, but he didn't seem like he was a young guy. Yeah, like five years younger mentally. Or emotionally. Yeah, yeah. And... But... So he hits 30. And he starts changing. He starts changing drastically. I mean, he was like one of the funniest guys ever knew. He was just really funny, stoner dude, and really cool. And all of a sudden, he's like angry about things. And now he's not quite as funny, and now he's got this issue. And so we're roommates.

42:57And there's this one night that he's kind of like all... He's kind of disgusted with his life. And he starts ranting. And he's describing a situation that was very common... If you're a kid growing up without a degree or anything in the 80s, especially in California. Where it's like... You can't get any really good jobs. But like you can work at Likerspizza. And if you're an okay employee, you could like work at Likerspizza for a couple of years. And maybe you could even become assistant manager or manager. And maybe they sent you to another store. And maybe you worked there for three years, and that's really great.

43:38But then, you know, all of a sudden, the district manager doesn't like you. You run a fall of somebody, hire up and corporate, and all of a sudden next thing, you know, you're firing you're out in the street. Again, it's management. Yeah. Okay. And so now you've just spent three years at Likerspizza. Now you could get a job at TRW, where some of the places like a real job job, or...well, that was kind of hard to get. But you can work at warehouse records and tapes tomorrow, because you just had three years at Likerspizza. Same thing with Wild West Clothing, same thing with Miller's Outpost, same thing with any of these kind of stores.

44:11Next thing you know, you're 28, and the only jobs you've ever had are minimum wage jobs behind a counter that were designed for kids to pay for their gas. And you've spent your entire 20s doing that. And then you start getting better. And you start getting better. But he was not just better about the job aspect of it. But I knew he...oh my god, he's telling me the truth. I'm learning something here. Because he goes, you know, you know, Quentin, you think that we're this really great team. We're this really great crew. Well, we are. I mean, you know, that time of your 20s, you're a group of friends or your family.

44:54And I'm like, well, we are.

44:59Quentin at 20. I worked at South Bay Cinemas. And I hung out with a bunch of guys just like you. And some girls there too. But with a bunch of guys just like you. And then I stopped working at South Bay Cinemas. Then I worked at Miller's Outpost. And I hung out with a bunch of guys just like you. And we did everything. Just like we do. We went to movies together. We went out and we dated amongst the girls there, everything. Yeah, then I worked at Least for a piece of four years. With a bunch of guys just like you. I wasted my life hanging out with a bunch of guys just like you. And they all go away at a certain point.

45:41And I realized this guy's kind of telling the truth. He's showing me a truth about him. This is coming from somewhere. And then all of a sudden, he's still hung around us. He's still like this. But then he started making it a point to touch base with some of his high school friends. There was still around. So he's not just hanging out with guys four years younger, or five years younger than him. Anyway, I'm turning 25 around this time. So I'm having my own little, okay, well, what have I done with my life so far? So far, fuck, nothing. So I'm having my own little anxiety hitting 25. But I'm seeing what it's like five years from now.

46:23Yeah. When you turn 30. You know, window to the future. When you're two and 30 and you're in this situation.

46:32And there was like one night that I had what I used to call. I would do it every once in a while. I haven't done it in a long time. Thank you, thank you. I would have a quick test fest where I'd stay up all night long. And rather than give myself excuses, I would look at everything that I'm fucking up in my life or everything I'm not doing or whatever. And just not give myself any fucking excuses out. Just like nail it. And I would spend like all night laying out everything I'm doing that's wrong. And then I would spend the last two hours figuring out how I can change it. And as opposed to just doing it and then going to get some sleep and then you forget about it and fall back into your routine.

47:20I decided to change my life. And I was like, look, the problem is that I'm living in the South Bay and even though I drive to Los Angeles, I got to not worry about this job anymore. I got to just move to Hollywood. I got to get involved there. I got to meet other people that are in the business. And then if I have to work manpower jobs, where you just work like four days at this place and four days at that place, well then that's fine. And by the way, I shouldn't be making money until I'm making money doing what I want to do. And I thought that was ever a danger. But then the next thing I knew, I moved out of the South Bay.

47:58And then I couldn't move into Hollywood. I couldn't afford Hollywood, but I could afford Koreatown. And I was close enough. And literally the minute I moved out there, I met a guy who wrote low -budget horror movies. And then through him, I met other guys who wrote low -budget horror movies. And this guy who directs a few low -budget horror. And this guy who produces a couple. And you meet one person and that introduces you to three other people. Now all of a sudden I actually knew people who were actually making movies. And the other thing about it was it was like, also, well if these guys can do what I can do.

48:37Because they went too special. That's the weird realization that you end up having. Yeah. And then literally, it wasn't like everything changed. But within a year and a half, from moving out of the South Bay, moving into the Hollywood area, within a year and a half, I was finally able to make a living as a writer. You know, getting like a $7 ,000 for this rewrite on this script over here. $4 ,000 for this polish over here. Another $10 ,000 for this rewrite over here. Well, shit. I mean, I make $10 ,000 a year through all my 20s before that point. So if I can make $15 ,000 from writing, oh my God, that was the greatest thing in the world.

49:21Wow. It just takes me around people that are actually doing it. So you realize it's possible. Well, it's the realizing it's possible. But it's also a situation where it's like, as opposed to talking to your buddies about comedy in Minnesota, your buddies who like comedy. No, you're at the comedy store and you're dealing with comedians every fucking night. And you're in the place where the shit happens. And you're hearing how the laughs work. But also, you're like, you know what's going on? Oh, Caroline's comedy hour is doing a tryouts for this. And you know, chuckles are doing this thing or that thing.

50:04Oh, and there's this sitcom going on. There's the funny neighbor guy. At any moment. You're in the, you're plugged in. At any moment, there's a circle of people rising in any industry. Yes. And it's a matter of finding those people. And those people will all gravitate towards the same things. Yeah. And they have the thing where it's where we're like, you know, like, Hey, Benny, we have a spot for you that could be really, you know, I can't do it. But my friend Joe could do it. Yeah, how about you give him Joe a chance? Yeah. Okay, well, you back, Joe up. Yeah, I'll back, Joe up. Okay, well, let's call your friend Joe.

50:36Can he be down here at nine? Yeah, he can be down here at nine. Well, that's how you get a fucking gig. This is exactly what we tried to do when we built the mothership here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What we've done. We've decided when we left L .A., like, we need a place where comics have a hub. And when we're all in Austin, we obviously moved to Austin because of the pandemic. Yeah. And all of a sudden, we were allowed to perform indoors. It was crazy. In November of 2020, we were doing shows indoors. And you know, you couldn't go on Twitter because they would call you a bit super spreader, a fucking monster.

51:05But everybody started moving here. And by the time 2020 rolls around, there's like 15, 16 world class comedians that didn't used to live in Austin that are here now. And we were like, let's build a club. Yeah. So we bought the Ritz Theater where, you know, some of your movies have played. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fucking crazy. And when we put it together, the whole idea was like, have a place where people can come. We have two nights of open mic nights. Sunday and Monday night. So there's always a chance to get on stage. There's always a guy. There's a real talent. Adam E .G. is a real talent coordinator.

51:40He's really going to watch you. He's really going to give you advice. And you're around the best comics in the world all the time. And everybody knows it's possible. And everybody treats you the way you would want to be treated if you were starting. So you're just one of us. You're just started. But you're not, we're not better than you. We're not, we're not, there's nothing special about us. We're just telling you. We, we started walking and now we're 15 miles in. You're 15 feet in. Just keep walking. Okay, but let me ask you a question. Because you know, when I watch some of the things on the comedy sternum, because you know, I really love going to the comedy.

52:11Yeah. Yeah. And they treat me really great there. It was really cool. All right. But you know, the mythology of the plays is you go down there and open mic nine. And if you have something to offer. Yeah. You know, then you, you know, you work your way up and then you're the door man. And then, you know, you work your way up. But it seems like that was then. That was a long time ago. Now it seemed like people are almost being ten years. All right. Or eight years before they actually are getting up and getting paid. Not necessarily. Like Tony Hitchcliffe started at the comedy store. He started as a dormant, you know, and he worked his way up to selling out massive square garden two nights in a row.

52:55I mean, it is possible to still be a dormant. I met Tony when he was just a start now. I'm thinking that that's a spot. But it seems like, but if you have to wait five years. Well, you don't get good for ten years. Yeah, yeah. It takes forever. Comedy is like making a mountain out of layers of paint. Well, it takes forever. And you have to fail. Yeah. You have to have the opportunities to fail. Well, there's also no one long to tell you how to do it. Yeah. Like writing a film like you, you know, you have a protagonist, you have the antagonist, you have a plot, you have a, you have a bunch of stuff that you can kind of create and formulate.

53:28Would you really, but would you really say that it takes ten years to be a solid comedian? It takes ten years to be a real headliner. Like a guy who, a real, a little different. Well, that's when you're a real comment. Yeah, you can do an hour. Yeah, yeah. You can do an hour and then you could write another hour. Yeah. Like you, you kind of know who you are. Because it takes years to build that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, you have to be a name of a draw, you actually draw an audience. Yes. Yes. And you don't, you have to, usually you go on the road with a headliner and then the people get to see you.

54:00Oh, I remember he was here when Thompson Guru was in town. Yeah. And he was like, you guys are really good. We saw him then and he did fifteen minutes and now he's going to do an hour. This could be great. And it's sort of that kind of a deal. But it's the same sort of situation where most people don't, like if you're in Pittsburgh, you don't know what to do. You know, you go up, there's a couple of mic nights, everybody sucks. And there's no inspiration. Just that set up for comedy and it's in the fucking pizza plow, you know. Exactly. And it's good on the weekends. And it doesn't work and you go, well, I guess this is not for me.

54:26Right. It's good on the weekends because they'll fly in, you know, great fits him in some headliner. And you get to see a real comic for a weekend. So you get a little bit of an education from that. And maybe if you're lucky, the club owner will let you open for him or do ten minutes on that show. And you kind of like get a feel what it's like to perform in front of a real audience. It's there to see a real comic. But you got to be around, like comedy doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's no great comedian that lives in some small town by himself. Like you could find some great blues artist. Or a great novelist.

54:57Yeah. Yes. Novelist is probably the best one because you have to live in your own head. Yeah. But you have to be around the other people that are doing it, which is exactly why Quentin moved to Hollywood. Yeah. Exactly. You got to wait from these losers. You have to do it. But you really do have to do it. I have to get the dead weight. I recall living in Hollywood as well. Oh, you did. I freaking franklin. Yes, you did. You're from Plumber Park. You're a bit of friend. I just gave you a valuable little piece of information. Yeah, he did. No, very much so. You need those moments. Oh, I knew I was hearing the truth.

55:27And I knew I was hearing a coming attraction because I was already feeling it at 25. I've thrown my topsoil years away. Right. Right. The topsoil. Exactly. It doesn't come back. It doesn't come back. You never get to be 21 again. Let's hit reset. Yeah. Yeah. You get one weird march through this life. And if you don't, if you have a - You get thrown away until 23. But from 24 on, you need to be thinking about what you're doing to the rest of your life. Yeah. Yeah. Get it going. Yeah. Get it going. Yeah. Well, I think these conversations are so important for young people to hear. Because there's a lot of people out there that do have ideas and sometimes they have a little bit of a fire.

56:04And then maybe they have a job that's kind of cool like you as well. And they get sedated. Almost the worst thing that can happen is getting comfortable, which I think is what you were talking about. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, it all worked out. Okay. It all worked out really, really good. And the thing about it was, you know, I did get comfortable. Well, but I got comfortable in a cool place. And ultimately I did have the energy and the wherewithal to ultimately get dissatisfied with it and want more. You know, the alternative would have been me working at a department store for those four years.

56:38Yeah. Right, right, right. And then I would have been like really been miserable. Right, right. Here I'm able to, I mean, you know, in this instance, I'm still involved with - I mean, the part that the sedative part was the idea that it was close enough to what I wanted to do. Right, right, right, right. It was close enough. I could get comfortable. There's guys like that at the comedy store. There's a friend of mine at the comedy store that was - He was a bartender in the back bar. And he wanted to be a comic. Yeah. But he was there. He was like five years after I met him on the way, hey man, you got to quit this fucking job.

57:09Yeah, yeah. Because you're here with all the greatest comics in the world, but you're not going on stage. Because you're - And you're making good money. And that's the - Yeah. You know, that's good over your eyes. Like, I worked on Lords of Dogtown, the movie about Zephyr Surfboards and skateboarding and polyurethane wheels and surfing. And I'm not like, like, a surfer or anything, but my entry point into that movie was Zephyr Surfboards was exactly like Video Archives. And I imagine that this is like this in a lot of places where, you know, you have a shop. They make skate - They do skateboards and they've got a shaper guy there.

57:49You know, Skip Angulum, who's a surfboard shaper and he was sort of like Lance, the guy who owned Video Archives. And he started a shop and he's selling to all the kids locally and all the kids who, like, love surfing, you know, like Stacey Peralta or Tony Alva or guys like that. They would just go hang out there just like we would go hang out at the video store. And so I liked it that and I was like, okay, I don't really know anything about these guys other than growing up in the beach community. But my real entry point was I understand gravitating towards what you love and wanting to be close to it and that if a video story is the closest thing to Hollywood in your town, that's where you go.

58:27Or if it's not a movie theater and so. Well, you know, it was funny because when I first started, when I started at the video store, I'd like, it was great because, you know, like I said, I got to hang out in this place that I enjoyed. And I'm surrounded by movies and talking about movies. Access to all those titles. But then also there was also the situation of, you know, I became like a little film critic in that town. You know, it was like, I was like, the story was my little village voice. And I was the Andrew Saras there. I was like, critic. And people would come in and then at a certain point, I'm like, okay, what should I get?

59:05You know, and the thing is, I'm not just like holding court on my own personal taste. Pretty soon they got a really good idea about my taste. But the thing is, I'm usually gearing it towards the people. You know, I'm not going to, you know, get some housewife to watch some Gonzo movie that I, Gonzo Violet movie that I really like. I'm gaming, I get to know her. Get to Taylor's Taylor. And so I'm, you know, putting something in her hand that I think she's going to appreciate it. And I kind of know what kind of comedy she likes. I know who she likes. And so I'm like, you know, really kind of, you know, gearing it in a certain way.

59:42And that that felt, that felt really good. I felt like I said, I felt like a film critic. Yeah. You know, but one of the things that I forgot was going to, I was going to go somewhere with it. And I forgot, I lost my train of thought. But, but one of the things that ended up happening, and if I, I hope I didn't say it the last time I was here, that ended up happening is we became really famous in the neighborhood. We were the video guys. Yeah. And, you know, our store was a little different than most of the businesses that were in Manhattan Beach. And so everyone kind of knew us. We were the video guys.

1:00:22So in a strange way, it, it was a, a precursor to what it would be like to be famous with the whole world kind of knows about you like that. In Manhattan Beach, I'm like walking down the street and people like, hey, Quentin! Quentin, hey, how you doing? You know, I'm like, I'm at the working at the store. I'm walking to the jack in the box to get a Coke and come back. And then, you know, but we'd walk into the, the man's movie theater. All right, that was by the theater, you know, and me and two of the guys would walk in to go see a movie. And we, we walked down the aisle and we hear, hey, those are the video guys guys.

1:00:59Those are the video guys guys. Oh yeah, I was in San Francisco once, and the guys from Red Cross, the punk band, they were customers of ours. And I was like, oh, they're doing a signing at this local record shop. I'll just go show up. I'll just show up there on hate Ashbury. And I walk in immediately to make Donald Brother guys were like, hey, it's the video store guy. Hey, man, come back. Come back behind with us. I don't think they talk like that.

1:01:30It's good to get that slow drip, get a little bit of a taste of it before you actually get famous. Just get a feel of what it's like. Well, it still doesn't give you the full. It's like, you know, oh, I'm just going to smoke a little weed compared to I'm going to mainline, you know, heroin. All the enough, the thing that it did was it made me feel part of a community, which I had never felt with before. I actually felt part of the Manhattan Beach. I felt part of the Manhattan Beach community. I was part of the Manhattan Beach community. You know, the people knew me there. And I was an upstanding member inside of that community.

1:02:09Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The fame thing is no one can teach you how to do that. There's someone, it needs to be like a group of people to get together with people that are about to get famous and say, hey, listen, where fame is already. Let me tell you how fucking weird this is. I don't know if you were prepared for this. When we were first trying to make tromance, you know, Quentin had this amazing screenplay and it was like, we were going to try to do it at Cone Brothers though. We had just seen Blood Simple and we were like, okay, I'm going to produce Quentin's going to direct. We're going to go out and make this.

1:02:37Our first thought was, okay, we've got this database of doctors and lawyers and housewives in Manhattan Beach. We're going to go to the video store, you know, we ended up not doing that. Well, we're going to go, we're going to have the balls to ask us to ask anybody for money. Yeah, it was. We talked about getting money and actually getting money. We strategized about it a lot, but we never actually. I drew up full partnership papers before that whole dream failed. I'm doing it that way. Yeah, nobody knows what it's like to actually be successful until you are. But in the beginning, did you guys feel like pretenders?

1:03:14Did you feel fake? Did you have imposter syndrome? I didn't have imposter syndrome because I did a movie and I was really happy with the film. But the thing is what I felt like, I'll tell you exactly how I felt. I didn't feel like imposter syndrome. Well, I guess a little bit. There is all that like waiting for somebody to tap you on the show. Yeah. Get out of here. Who would let that guy in? The fuck out. What I had was I felt like I was a reporter deep undercover on the opposite side of the line. This isn't really me. I'm like those people over there. Right, right, right. But I'm deep undercover.

1:03:53I can give you reports from the front of what it's like here on the battle line. Right. Well, maybe that was a good thing though. It was a really cool thing. Because I think that's one of the things you did with your films is you did shit that was very risky. Like we're talking about executives and all these different management people that are going to come in and fuck with your thing and don't do that and cut that out. But you had a sensibility not of a person in management but of a person that I know what I'd like. I know what I like. And I think I can think differently than these people do.

1:04:28Oh, no, no, no. I, one of the things we talked about, we had a little theory about it. Was that gave us a bit of a superpower when we were first brought into, once we established ourselves, the people knew, they read our scripts so you knew we were, we had something to offer. We would walk into rooms and we realized that, and look, I'm not here to make fun of Hollywood executive. Some of those guys, look, look, you don't know how bad some of these movies, these scripts are. They actually, oftentimes they actually make them better. They're really, really terrible. All right. When they go through the sausage factory, oftentimes they get better.

1:05:11Believe it or not. But the thing is though, you'd walk in there and you don't become this super successful executive by being doubling down on your own opinions. You kind of want to get the temperature and get a consensus going on. You're not the maverick. That's not how people establish themselves as executives. The D girl doesn't become the head of the development process by being the punk rock person who's, you know, shooting for the, the, the, the plim souls. They're looking for a rolling stone. But film people, film geeks and film, you know, film buffs. The one thing they have is their opinion and they have spent years defining their opinion.

1:06:13And they almost have nothing to show for their dedication to cinema other than their highly evolved opinion. So you put them in a room and say, well, what would you do? Well, it's about time you asked me and then you, and then all of a sudden you take the strong point of view. And the room, the, the term in Hollywood is he who has the strongest point in the view, he who has the strongest point of view in the room wins. And exactly as don't have the strongest point of view, you know, but the maverick artist who only can hear the sound of his own voice, he definitely has the strongest point of view.

1:06:50But it's refreshing to them. Yes. You know, invariably they hire you because you scare them a little. You're a little scary. And they like to have to, they want to be like a little thrilled by that. Right. But then, you know, like a girlfriend or something they want to change you. They think they're going to make you normal. Exactly. Exactly. And then it falls on you to just stay true to that initial guy who was in the room. I had a, I had a really interesting situation where I had a guy who was an executive who actually directed a movie. And he was talking and they're like, well, I've seen these jokers out there.

1:07:23And, you know, what they do isn't so special. I think I could do it. And so he, you know, so he finds a, finds a book and then they, they adapt it. And now he's doing the movie. And he, he's getting through it. Everything's working fine. He's getting through it. And then, then he realizes the difference between himself and a director because there's, he's dealing with another director about something. Because he's an executive. So he's dealing with another director about another movie. And he asks him a very important question about his movie. And the way he answers it, he realized the difference between him and that director.

1:08:03And he goes, I realized, oh, see, he's a real director. Because he sees the movie. He sees the movie in his head. The question I asked, he went into his head and he saw it. He saw it. And he could actually answer it. Oh, the flower pot is green. Because he sees the entire picture. Yeah. I don't see it. I'm just doing my best. I'm, I see it written. All right. But I don't see the movie in my head. But I'm just doing my best with the written material. He's the Comedy Central executive that thinks they could be a community. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right on. And then he gets on stage and he eats shit.

1:08:48Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you were saying, is exactly what happened to Chappelle? Oh, the Chappelle show. Yeah. Like, they loved him. He's this wild dude. And then all of a sudden, this is too wild. This is becoming really stressful. We can change you. We can change you. They want to stop saying the N word. They want to stop a bunch of different things on the show. And we'll give you all this money if you roll over. They gave him literally the devil's deal. We're going to give you $50 million. And this is what you're going to get. And he's like, no, I quit. I quit everything. And I'm going to go to Africa.

1:09:17I'm going to hang out in Africa for a while. And I'm going to quit stand up for 10 years and come back and still be the best. That is so the right move. Oh my god. Well, look, he's a legend now. But that's the, that's really him. If you're around him, he's an artist in like the truest sense of the world. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So when I was young, one of my first jobs was actually given to me by one of our customers, this guy John Langley, who did that show cops. And so like he was, you know, getting his power turned off and stuff like, you know, constantly. And he was struggling to get buying.

1:09:49He would do these little things with Haraldo Rivera that Quentin and I would work on his PAs every now and then. And the dog one, good exercise video. We worked on the Dothland, good exercise video together. Yeah. We were picking up dog shit in Venice Beach with our hands so that Doth could do aerobics on that little, that's a north. Oh, there he is. And so, you know, I'm like the first, I'm a PA working for him, a driver I'm running around town. My car is like the transmission is going out. I'm trying to figure out what am I going to do. This is not what I want to do. I don't want to work on cops, but like I need the job.

1:10:23And so I'm, I go in and I meet with, with John and he's been a customer of ours and he's fatherly like to me. And I go into his office and I sit down and cops just started. It started because of a writer's guild strike. You know, there was a writer's guild strike and so Fox was like, well, that show has no writers. And so they ordered his thing and he went from nothing to like I'm buying yachts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm collecting vineyards. That's not not only that though. I remember when he first came up with the idea with the partner Malcolm Barber. Yeah. All right. So he comes in and he's like, hey, we've got a really good idea for a show.

1:10:59So he's he's he's describing cops before cops has ever been made. And his first idea was it wasn't called cops. It was called the real Miami vice.

1:11:14The problem was it doesn't scale out to the whole country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, well, they defined it. They've never find it. That's the way I asked him. And I said, John, like you've worked on, you know, in this business a long time. He was an AD for a long time. What kind of advice can you give to a guy like me who's trying to, you know, work my way up? He's like, well, what do you want to do? Ultimately, I said, well, I want direct films. Well, then be a director. Don't work your way up the ladder. Don't try to be a grip and work your way in. Just be a director. And I heard that. And he's like, start at the top.

1:11:49It's the best way to go. Just start at the top and, you know, just tell people you're a director. Put yourself in that. Otherwise, people will just pigeonhole you. They'll just say that's who he is. He's a grip or he's a PA or he's, you'll have to work your way up. Just tell people who you are. So I thought about it and I was like, okay, I quit. And he's like, what? I said, I quit. I'm a director. And I left. I walked out. I mean, I gave him notice. And I walked out and he sat there and he later told me years later, told me, man, I thought that was the most audacious, ballsy thing that I gave you advice and you took it right away.

1:12:35And okay, never mind the fact that it took me years of love just telling people, I'm a director. I directed super eight movies. Like, I was not a director. I was a poser. I was faking it until I made it. But I told people what I was and what I was doing. And eventually it stuck. Eventually, enough people hear it and all those people who you end up going into a room and pitching your idea and they say, no, eventually they see you at can running around, you know, trying to do foreign sales. They're like, hey, maybe that kid is a director. That was all it. It was just believing in yourself. It's funny that guy.

1:13:10When no one else believes what you believe. The guy he's talking about John Langley created cops. It was, it was a really good customer and his wife Maggie was really lonely. She came, she came. Morgan, all of his kids. And I heard the story came back to me later that, you know, when I got the deal to make reservoir dogs, you know, just a little by little through the Manhattan Beach community, they started, you know, hearing, oh, I had Quentin's making his movie. Yeah. Quentin got his movie off the ground. He's actually making his movie. He's not at the video store anymore. He's actually making a movie.

1:13:43Good for him. And who knows what's going to happen to it, but it's happening. And I think they were having a little dinner party at their house and then Maggie mentions to John about what happened. Really? That's actually happened. It's actually happened. Yeah, no, they've got production offices and everything. They're making the movie. Everybody, raise your glass. Yeah. It's a Quentin. He did it. Good for Quentin. That's awesome. That's awesome. I'm getting Terry, I just even thinking about it. You know, I just have to say, John Langley, you know, because I had some shit happen to me in my life.

1:14:21I spent some time in jail. I kind of screwed up my life. But when everything went down, when everyone in Hollywood dropped me like a hot rock, John Langley was there. Our customer, John Langley, because we lost everything. He loaned me some money. He gave me my first job when I got out of jail, writing something for very little money. But he wanted me back in the saddle. I love the things you wrote from jail. Oh, thanks. Yeah. Thank you. They were really good. It was really interesting. It was like this super intelligent writer who's in jail. You know, it's different, different sort of perspective.

1:14:58Roger's working on a book about his jail experiences that is fantastic. I kept a really detailed, super detailed journal about like everything that's going on around me. And, you know, it became a really, I mean, that was a very intense experience being placed into a room, having the doors closed, and you're just left with yourself. And everything, all your things which define you get stripped away, everything gets kind of dropped. And you lose who you are and you're just left with your remorse and regret for why you're there. And you have a lot of time to think about things. And, but having said that as a writer, there was a concrete bench that I could sit on.

1:15:50I had golf pencils. I could buy sheets of paper. And I've never in my life been more productive. I've never wanted to write more than when everything was taken away. And I've never felt more about the world. And I've never, you know, I've, it was a very monastic. I was telling Quentin at one point, it was kind of monastic like, you know, you're, you're, you're in a, you're in a secular kind of, you're in a cell. You're in a cell and you're, you're with a bunch of God dudes and you're writing. You know, it's like you're, I became a scribe. I started, I mean, I was a scribe beforehand, but I really, really, it became my escape being able to write, being able to fall into things and to be able to travel into another world.

1:16:38And then also people find out you're a writer and they're like, he, man, would you write my, yo, essay, would you write my girlfriend? Yo, I want to write her a love letter. I need your help. So I wrote like a ton of love letters. That's actually good practice or dialogue. Oh, yeah. No, totally, totally. No, actually, I heard some amazing dialogue. You're writing your Robinhood script, all right? And there's, so that's your way to get out of the cell is to write his Robinhood script. I, you know, I, well, there's a book cart. And so I'm, you know, everything I need to go through the book cart.

1:17:10And mostly it's like Tom Clancy novels. They love Tom Clancy and stuff like that. And Clyde Barker novels and things like that. But lo and behold, I found this old penguin paperback of, you know, an old, old version of Robinhood written by E. Charles Vivian. And I'm like, oh, man, this is going to be great. And I start reading it. And it's like they get into evil hold, which is like this castle where, you know, Maryens father is being kept. And nobody knows it. And he's there. And he's not a way at crusades. He's in this prison. And Robinhood goes into the prison. And in the moment when he's in the prison, how he sees the other prison, the, the wretches that he has to leave behind because they're too wretched to even come out like how bad the prison is and what he's seeing inside.

1:18:00And his observations, I was shaking after reading it. I'm shaking thinking about the, I mean, the entire experience now. But, you know, it was such a, a vivid depiction. I'm like, well, I'm, I'm adapting this because I'm feeling it right now. I'm feeling like what it's like. I'm feeling what it's like to have a, to have the boot on your, on your neck. I mean, rightfully so, but I never the less. And, and so I started writing, you know, my version of Robinhood and with, you know, pencil and paper. And as I'm writing it, like I was crying as I wrote it. I was like, get the pages the other day. And there's like tear drops like all over it.

1:18:42Like on every page, that's like holy crap. It's like when you're writing like that and you're feeling that much, it's not a bad thing to cry when you're writing. Yeah. It's like, thank God I'm, I'm feeling, like I'm feeling something and it's traveling into the page. And also because I had been a working writer in Hollywood for a long time, just by speed, I had fallen into the very bad habit of composing at my computer at my laptop. Like one of those assholes who goes to Starbucks. And since I was that guy. And so I'm sitting and I had kind of become used to that. Well, writing by hand in, while incarcerated, it reconnected me with like pen to paper or pencil to paper.

1:19:28And it reminded me that not like when you write something down, you have a different relationship with the one. No, I consider the pen is the antenna to God. It is the antenna to God. And also when you type it into the computer, that's a process of rewriting. And so you're losing an entire section. And so it reconnected me with you more. Tell me, explain this more to me. This is fascinating to me because I've heard many people say this about comedy that they have to write on paper. I don't. I write on a laptop. I've always written on a laptop. For me, it's what I like about writing, even writing on paper is that it takes more time to write the word appreciate than it does to think about what it means to appreciate.

1:20:11The word appreciate, you know what it is instantly, oh, he appreciates this, but to write appreciate it takes longer. So there's more thinking and more thinking. I feel like when you have more thinking, there's more little different ways you might alternately branch off with your ideas. I don't think I, uh, uh, that is not false. Not that I've never, not that I've ever written an hour long stand -up comedy show. All right. But I would think that your writing is different than my kind of writing. Sure. You know, it would like, I would think as far as writing stuff down, it's like notes and ideas and a front word phrases or this and that and the other.

1:20:50But then you're working it out. You're saying it. You're saying it. You're saying it. You're saying it. And then you get your story. Right. And maybe you say it into a recorder. Maybe you do this or you do that, but you know, but probably it doesn't even look right when you, when you, when you type it up on a, on a thing, it doesn't look right. No. And so when you tell the story, what I was going to get to is that when you, when I type, I can type quicker than I can write by hand in the problem with comedies, it comes quick and slippery. And also you can do a little bit. You can edit with it. No, that makes it, that makes a tremendous amount of sense.

1:21:20I mean, we're writing stuff that has to hold up on the page. Right. That has to hold up as writing. I'll write a 1500 word essay and I'll use one line. Like there's one thing in there that might be a bit, but I'll write all this other shit on transportation. It's like strip mining. You just pull all that dirt out and just process it. That's exactly what it's like. I've tried to write. So you open up your mind about, okay? A hundred percent. Just let loose on public transportation. Yes. And it's, I'm not even trying to be funny. I'm just trying to write. And then I'll find something funny in it.

1:21:54And then that's the starting point. Now I take that, cut it, copy it into a completely fresh document. Now what is this? Okay, but how do I get to that? Oh, it's really, it's whatever works. It's what is your question is the best. Is it you on either typing or whatever? Is it you doing that a eight page thing on transportation? Or is it more likely that you're just pacing around? No, I'm sitting monologue on public transportation. Well, I'm sitting still, right? That's what you mean. The thing about typing is I type good. So not great, but I don't have to look at the keys. And I type pretty quickly.

1:22:36And if I have a good laptop, like a think pad that has a lot of finger travel, then you really feel it. And I get into like a zone. And then it's just about like, you're actually doing right your notes. Yeah. And then it's just about Trump, but they don't always come out the same way. Because sometimes when you bring them out on stage, the moment lets you know, this is not the way to go. It's this way. And then all of a sudden you're like, God, how did I not see that in front of the computer? Because you weren't in that vibe of the crap. Like it said, you don't do it on your own. You have to do it with them.

1:23:05It's like the one art form that literally cannot be practiced in solitary. Yeah. You have to do it. So when I write, I write like that, but it I also write things down on pieces of paper or I also write it. Like whenever I have an idea, I got to catch it. Well, they're not going to give you that computer in jail. Or maybe that's true. You're going to be forced to write it on pencil. And that's going to be an okay experience for you. But what is it that makes it to you like the hand to God? Like what is it about writing on paper? Well, my little analogy of it is you can write poetry on a computer.

1:23:41Why not? Well, because we're, I'm going for a rhythm. Right. I'm going for, I'm going for, I'm going for a rhythm. And then, and there's like, there's a connection between my chicken scratch and this paper and this pen as opposed to this other thing. And the more unintelligible and only I can read it, the more legit it kind of is. And the thing is, and it's, it's vomit. It's absolutely vomit. Okay. When you write by hand, you overwrite. You way, way overwrite. Yeah. Because you just, blah, you're just getting it out there. You're getting it out there. Then after all the vomit happens, then you sit down with a typewriter or then you sit down with a thing and now you take the vomit and you, and you tame it.

1:24:30And now you make it, now you make the sentences work. And now you, there's more creative, you know, this is a bit of a, okay. Now you make, and now you come up, and now you, I mean, now you make it work like a writer. Now you make the page work. Now you make the sentences work. Can we stop for a second while we're in the restroom? Yeah. Hey, uh, you have cigars, don't you? Yeah, you want to. Yeah, I want to have some cigs. He doesn't do anything fun. On Jorogan's show, I will have a cigar. He doesn't do anything fun. Oh, that is the truth. You don't do anything fun, really? Nothing. Well, then maybe I should talk about this.

1:25:08I should talk about it. Maybe I should talk about, uh, are we on? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I don't do anything fun. Don't do anything fun. No, you know, um, making movies is fun. Well, that's the fun. Where's the cutter? Yeah, I thought that was a cutter. That was cool. I was like, is that a cutter or is that brass knuckles? Um, cool. Where's saying about fun? I don't do anything fun. Well, you know, after, after what happened to me, I, I mean, I should probably tell the one, um, you know, I, uh, I went to jail. Um, for a DUI related incident, uh, that caused manslaughter, and one of my passengers, uh, um, died.

1:25:59And, um, uh, you know, after that and going to jail and whatnot, I, I, I, I... That's kind of what it is. I, you know, if I go to a party or something like that, I, I don't want to be seen holding a drink with, uh, you know, even with water in it. I'm teasing him, but I, you know, I get it. Yeah. Of course. And who wouldn't fucking get it? But then you had the fact that he's a vegetarian. I'm like, all the, all the, all the, your vegetarian. Yeah. What did you do that? Um, wife made it. That happens. Yeah. That happened to a friend of mine. That's, uh, he speaks out burgers every now and then.

1:26:43I, um, I also have a kind of, uh, it's, it's kind of like an animal thing. I had a pig, um, as a, as a pet. Mm -hmm. And man, when you look at those eyes, those are human eyes. They're, yeah. And, yeah, I looked into it and it looked into my, I just, I had chickens before that. And you know what it's like? Right. Chickens are like cats, you know, they want back scratches and stuff. And I just couldn't, like, after a while, I just couldn't do it. Yeah. There's people that are feral. You know, a met a feral person. You don't want to let them sleep in your house. Yeah. You met a wild crazy person.

1:27:19You're in jail. So push that thing up. You had it right. You had it right. Did I? Yeah. Yeah. Push that out. Send the television staff. Look at that. Push it down. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Hey, you, you, you've, yeah. They're great. Foundations are going to shout out. Um, you've, you've been around feral people, right? You don't want feral people living in your house. You don't, you don't want to take some murderer and, you know, give him your car and let them, you know, come and sleep in your room. You know, yeah. It's different. Yeah. I just take you around some wild pigs. No, I've wild, wild pigs are like little demons.

1:27:52They make, they make like orcs sounds. Wild pigs are wild pigs. You know, I get it. You hear a fight with each other. There are people who are like that also. Exactly. That's my point. But you have my point is, domesticated people are awesome. Yeah. Domesticated people like yourself and myself. We're fun to be around. We're nice people. We know, you know, not gonna rob you. No one's going to kill you. It's, there's a difference. What the wild, the wild is. Yeah. It's different. So I understand that you wouldn't want to eat animals, but they eat each other. Yeah. And it's just this bizarre cycle of life.

1:28:26I think it's, it's where you're getting your animals from. Are you getting your animals from, of like a, these mass factory? Well, that's the other part of it. That's the other part of it is, I think there's a line in Highlander 2 where Sean Connorey says, I don't eat anything that I cannot identify. And I kind of feel like that as well. Like I don't have a lot of trust for large industrial. You shouldn't. But you can get meat from like a farm, you know, like you can get it from a ranch. You could go to one of those, you know, they have those, one of those farmers market type deals. Oh yeah. You can go meet a rancher and be brought from them.

1:29:08And I am not. I am not like one of these people who are like, oh, never, never. Like, you know, if I am in the right place in the right environment and the right food is, is there, like if there's, like, if I'm in, on an island in Greece and the guy comes up from the boat with a basket of fish, which one would you like? I'll take that one. You know, sure. Like, do you at least eat eggs? Oh yeah, yeah. Okay, so you digs. So you digs, like they're going out of style. Yeah, that's good. So you're probably getting what you need. Long as you eat eggs, I tell people, like eggs are free. No one's getting hurt, especially if you have your own chickens.

1:29:45That's the greatest thing in the world. We have 15 chickens. There's nothing like eggs straight from a chicken. Oh, it's great. Nothing like eggs from a chicken. It's karma free. Like the chickens are having a good time. No one's getting hurt. Like they're all, they're all like treated like pets, like hey girls. I love chickens. I would, I would, I would, I actually really have, I've always actually thought that an exotic pet would be to have like a chicken. You know, it's like one chicken. Yeah. And it's just like treated like a dog, a treat, that's my chicken, he hangs around. You got to get a couple of them.

1:30:16They need to have a pecking order. Yes. They like to hang out with each other. I think Gerbos figured that one out. Yeah. He was a chicken farmer. Was he really? Oh, yeah. Oh, no, chicken farmer. That's how he worked out all of his policies in the camps is he shouldn't talk about that. Until I connect that to chicken farming. It's just, you know, it's like this, the name eight off, right? You can't use it anymore. You can't have that little mustache anymore. You can't have a chaplain. You can't have that cool mustache. You might have the Jordan tribe for a little while. Yeah. That's how competitive that guy is.

1:30:48Like, fuck that. I can, I can wear that mustache. He had a Hitler for a while. I think I can make it happen. I'll make it happen. He just decided he was going to force it through. You know, as far as writing and jail, I'm just thinking about it right now. One of the other things I had to contend with was they would confiscate anything that I wrote. So, you know, like once a week or once every two weeks or so. Why would they do that? Was it illegal to write? I was considered a security threat by what I was writing. And oh, because you were telling me. That's the truth about what was going on. And then when they sent me in, like I was placing this like solitary confinement thing like in the hole.

1:31:26And, you know, you're in there and like I never been anything like that. It's a four in my life. I was thinking this is like fucking guantanamo except it made me think about it. I've got due process at least. And so I'm in this like crazy Kafkaesque mechanized, talitarian environment. You're in a room where you have no window and the lights are on 24 -7. And, you know, I don't care what anybody says. You go into a room three days deprived of sound and the understanding of time. You go crazy after two days. You're insane. They broke me after two days. I was like, oh, I'll do some yoga. I'll meditate.

1:32:10No problem. No, after a while, if the lights are on 24 -7 and you can't hear it. You go slowly nuts. Is that by design? Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's by design. It's like you're placed into a... And so about once a week, like in when I was in population, about once a week, the middle of the night or, you know, the lights are down. And suddenly the lights come on bright. The lights are always on, but lights come on bright. And suddenly a bunch of guards come rushing in through the doors. You know, they just storm into the tank, into the section. And they pull everybody out of their cells and they strip everybody naked and they put you up against the wall.

1:32:56So you're up there with like, you know, Sancho and, you know, Leroy. And like everybody's suddenly you're all, you know, one moment you're being kept separate. And next thing, you know, you're all naked together, standing up against the wall. And they're going through everybody's cell. And they're just ripping your cell apart, looking for anything. And usually they're looking for tar heroin or a shank or a weapon of some kind or... A works or some kind of... Cell phones, anything. Like they're looking for anything that's considered contraband. Okay, for me, they were looking at my writing. Because when I was in solitary for that time, like literally on kites, a kite is like a requisition form that you send out to the guards.

1:33:35You're not allowed to talk to the guards. They don't want you to... You tell them what you want on a kite and then you give them the kite and then they take it off. And maybe it gets answered. I'd never had one answered my life.

1:33:49And so... They come in, they strip everybody naked, they take all your clothes and they're... Under the guys of where, you know, we're doing a laundry exchange. And so everybody gets a new clothes and you end up with like these big baggy pants and... Or something too small for you. And they would... Look for contraband for everybody. Well with me, they would look for whatever I was writing. Because when I was in solitary, I was writing, you know, like maps. I would map the place. Like a fucking idiot. Like I still was... You know, I'm writing about, oh, Eisenhard the guard. I saw him watching, you know, literally saw him watching on a little TV, Nazi propaganda.

1:34:29Like Triumph of the Will is playing on his TV and he's watching it. I'm gonna write that down. So they didn't want me writing all my stuff. They were like, that guy is a fucking threat. You get whatever he's written. And so I noticed that whenever I was taken out of my cell to shower, to go to yard, to do whatever, that they would come in, just take whatever I had written. So I learned that they couldn't take or open letters to my attorney. And so... Because it's privileged. And so what I would do is I would just write. And then whenever I had to leave my cell, like to go to yard, or if they were raiding the cells and taking everybody out and looking for contraband, I would just quickly seal the envelope.

1:35:09My writing would go in, you know, I always left it when I was working in the letter to my attorney. And then as soon as they would rate it, I would just seal the envelope and then that would go out. And then he would send that letter to my daughter who would then type up the pages that I was writing. So that's how I wrote several scripts was like that. Wow. And yeah, because little... What did you... You said you read some of Roger's writing when he was in prison. What did you read? You... Where did you publish it? I don't remember where I was reading it. Well, was it on Twitter? I had several things.

1:35:44Okay, so first of all, I was placed... I was sentenced to go to a low security, like a country club facility. I went to a low security facility and I went in there and, you know, you have access to stuff. It's more like a camp almost and you're there and you're incarcerated, but it's a light incarceration almost. And I had access to a cell phone and so I started tweeting and these were the early days of Twitter. And so I started tweeting, oh, they found Tar Heroin and so on in Pudgy Cell and they dragged him off. Oh, they... You know, this happened over here. Oh, they... So and so, shake, so and so.

1:36:31Oh, they've rolled up so and so and so and taken away. I was like tweeting this stuff and this is the early days of Twitter. And Roger Ebert, who was like at that time the biggest on Twitter was following me. And he put me on blast. Like he, uh, he suddenly decided that he would tell every and like all of a sudden one day overnight, like the story kind of went everywhere in the world. He put you on blast in a positive way? Well, he just told everybody that this is happening. Somebody is Roger Avery, a government -oriented writer, is tweeting from jail and tweeting from behind bars. Did he, but did he have a...

1:37:10At the time, now it's like nothing. People do it all the time. People like, uh, I've got a... Should nights do in podcasts. I've got a friend who's one of those January 6 guys and he's, he's sensitive to be like tweets all the time. You got a friend who's a January 6 guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got a friend who was a January 6 guy? Well, he's still there. He's like hundreds of days in jail without, without any kind of, without trial. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but like that's not how it's supposed to be. You're supposed to have a due process of some kind of... Well, especially when you watch the actual footage of how it went down.

1:37:47Oh, I watch it live. And there was that guy, that antifa guy, waving people in. You know, like moving them in. Yeah. They were moving the, the, um, the block, stockade, the blockade things. They were moving them out and cops were waving people in. They were opening the doors for people. I watch the thing about it this way. In the most heavily armed nation the world is ever known. Why would you have an insurrection with no guns? Okay, you got to have guns. Machine guns. Those guys weren't planning on an insurrection. No. And then you have the factor that there was agents in, in the crowd. And we don't know how many.

1:38:22There's government agents in the crowd that were inciting people to go in. Yeah. That's what they do. And I wonder who that cop was who shot that woman. Yeah. What about that? Yeah, the whole thing's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. And then this is this thing that cops died. That no, no cops got, died that day. That's not true. Yeah. The cop who died, he died of a stroke. And I believe it was a stroke. It was a stroke or a heart attack. But it was everything. There's a lot of misinformation being given to us by the mainstream media. But it gets attributed to it. You know, sort of like when, you know, anything happens to anyone four years after the vaccine.

1:38:53They attributed to the vaccine. Oh, it was probably the vaccine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could have been the guy just had a fucking heart attack. But this guy who was a cop, he did not die. It was not killed by the protesters. And you watch the video of the, the shaman dude with the fucking Buffalo hat. They're walking him around. The cops are going to kill him. Oh, yeah, no, they're showing him around. They're guiding him. How would you ever think that that is going to let you wind up in jail? How would you ever think that if you're an unsophisticated guy who was wearing fucking face paint and you're kind of a cook, which, and you're part of, you think you're part of a movement, which is really scary, you know.

1:39:25People get a part of a movement and they, it's fucking you. We're all doing it. And then you've got literal government agents encouraging you to do it. Moving barriers. Letting you in, they were playing chess and these idiots were playing checkers. Yeah, and they all got locked up. Yeah, because nobody was doing an insurrection. It wasn't an insurrection. Yeah, you don't do an insurrection without weapons. It's the whole idea is crazy. So there was no presumption that there was going to be any kind of like, that you were going to get thrown in jail for a thousand days. And so my pal, my pal Jake Lang is, he's been there forever.

1:39:58And every now and then I get a picture of him. He's been in like, look, I deserve to go to jail. That guy doesn't. And most of those guys don't. Yeah, I think it was a bad decision, certainly to go into the Capitol. It was a bad decision to smash windows, but I don't know who he was doing. People have been smashing things like for a whole year before that. That's a very good point. It's like we were a culture of smashing things at that point. It's also as soon as you find out there, there were government agents that may or may not have inside it, people to go in. The whole thing fucking changes.

1:40:28Like what are you trying to do? Are you there to serve and protect? Or is there some other weird shit going on? Because it seems like there is. And no one wants to talk about it because you don't want to be that guy. But at a certain point in time, you should be that guy. You should be that guy. Let's go on, man. There comes a point where men of good conscience must stand up. And and and speak out against things that are obviously wrong. Yeah. And that is one of them. Yeah. That is one of them. That's a big one. It's a weird one. And you know, there's all this pushback about Trump getting into office because he said one of the first things he said was he was going to release all the January 6 prisoners.

1:41:09How long do you think they should be in there for? Who's opposing this place? They should at least be going to trial. Yes. You should at least be going to trial. It is unconscionable to hold somebody for over a year, two years. Well, the thing, the government has always had a situation where we talked about when we did our episode on the Andersonville trial. Yeah. You know, is the one charge that the government can put against you where they don't need direct evidence is conspiracy. If they arrest you for conspiracy, that means they don't have direct evidence, but they don't need direct evidence.

1:41:45Well, by the way, when I was in. Oh, yeah, that's true. Right. All right. Well, they knew what Manson had done because they were helping him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I believe that too because. Jerry Kale's books, one of the best. Well, I read every Manson book that they're possibly could read. And then I read that when I throw the rest of them away and fucking trash. K -Oss is fantastic. And he helped me too because my first idea is a friend of his. Bill Clark. Bill. And when I was writing the, the, once upon a time in Hollywood book, I go deeper into the Manson stuff. And so I had a couple of little questions in my head that I always kind of wanted to know the answer to.

1:42:30So I got Tom's number and I called him up and I was able to ask him something really super like direct questions that can really help my book. You know, it's a crazy fucking story. Oh, it's. You know, when I was in jail, they, I found out they record everything. They're just constantly recording. And so somebody's in there and they're like, man, I'd like to kill that DA. Well, that's conspiracy. And so they'll wait and like, oh, you're about to get out and like they'll literally start walking around like, ah, stop. Oh, God. Remember that thing you said about conspiracy? Let's play that back for you.

1:43:01Oh, God. Or what you said about killing the DA? Well, that's, you're going away again. You're going back to trial. That happened a lot. But it's also never talk. They put guys in your cell that gets you talking about shit. Well, yeah, that happened right away. That happened right away. They're trying to get you to incriminate yourself deeper. Constantly. Like a fun game. What a fun game. What a fun game to serve and protect and incriminate you deeper. Well, I, like, I had a, my, as Quentin will confirm, I have my authority issues. I always have. I always have. I'm suspicious of anyone in power.

1:43:41And should be. Yeah, it's intoxicating. Maybe like this. Okay. So when Roger, okay, get part of the thing in our show. I'm getting back to what Roger's saying. I'm not changing the subject. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, when we do our show, you know, the thing is we, when we do our show, uh, uh, we talk about three movies. So I pick three video cassettes. The show we're talking about is the video archives podcast, which is. It was our second season. Patreon .com slash video archives. But the thing is, all right. So it's like, there's like the main movie. Then there's that second movie that's like kind of like the main movie.

1:44:13But probably you don't know that much about them. Some wild exploitation thing that I, you know, this is what the fuck is this? Let's watch it and find out. And one of the things that's about our show is. I don't say, hey, Roger. So find these movies and you watch them and I'll watch them and we'll get together. And we'll do it on the phone too. Well, right. No, no, no, no, we don't do this. All right. You know, we get together to watch the movies together. Part of it is the experience of being together and watching the movie together. So the reason that we came through his eyes, the reason we came up with the idea of the show is like, when we, when we reconnected, we started doing what we used to do during the pandemic.

1:44:47Yeah. And then we sort of like, well, hey, let's come up with a way we can get paid to do this. All right. You know, so me and Roger will get together and we'll, we'll watch three movies and sometimes even four. And then we'll get together and then we have a day off and then we get together on another day and then we record it. And we're always in the room when we do it. But the thing is when Roger comes over to watch the film, I've kind of learned that it's like the Roger. I'm starting, it's three movies we're going to watch. I am starting the first movie 20 minutes after you get here because Roger will just get off on some archaic piece of, of, of thing.

1:45:22There's this flat, there's this flat and the next thing you know, all right, it's been an hour and 15 minutes later. And you're getting further and further and further away. All right, from the, from the, the alchemy we're trying to create with the first movie. So now it's a little in 20 minutes. I'm hitting play. So wrap it up. That's a problem with podcasts. When people come over sometimes we have some of the best conversations before the podcast. So now I have to be rude. I'll be like, stop, stop, stop. I know you're all good. Come on in. It's catch that, Matt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because you got to catch it because it is weird.

1:45:57It's a, it's a weird thing. You know, it's, it's a beautiful thing though because it's so open. You know, there's no one telling like there's no studio people. Oh, no, even the idea, I mean, one, the fact, the idea, the idea that this has replaced the talk show, the talk shows that we grew up watching and then like those guys were the kings. Yeah. The fact that podcast, and you're the king of the, but the fact that that podcasting has replaced that. But also the fact that anybody that it's got something intelligent has got a cool little setup. It's got an interesting personality and it can, it can sell it.

1:46:42It's so an interesting conversation. Theoretically can start a podcast. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the barrier to entry so low. I think it's about the barrier to entry when you wanted to be a director. Oh, yeah. Jesus. It's fucking crazy. Yeah. Normally, normally that, you know, like the old days of television, you know, like Desilu, yeah. We own our content. Like you own your content. Yeah. And never mind that it's a podcast. I'm okay with that. I like the fact that this is something where for the first time in my life, at least, I'm involved with something where there is nobody else. It's me and Quentin who decide everything.

1:47:17And you know, if Quentin wants to do it, we go there. If I want to do it, we go there. Well, I talked to Quentin. If Quentin allows it, we go there. I mean, basically what we're doing is the same thing we used to do. That's true. It is true. We do what we used to do at the video store. We're talking about. I'm completely terrible. I am Bill Switch. But other than that, no, no, I didn't mean it like that. I never used to kill Switch. It was the kill switch is always there. No, I don't really. Not really. Well, I guess theoretically. But you know what? But you want a theoretical chronographically.

1:47:56You know what? Most times when you've used the kill switch, you've used it on your own. I've used it on myself. You've used it on yourself. You actually haven't used it on any of my things that I've wanted to do. Which is really cool. But basically we're doing the same thing we used to do. We used to sit around and talk about movies. And so during the pandemic, you know, Quentin called me up. And we hadn't talked for, I mean, we had bumped into each other. We had bumped into each other a few times. But we hadn't really, we had had a little bit of a... We had a falling out. And I call it sort of a business related falling out.

1:48:30And maybe if I had been a little bit mature, I was young as a filmmaker. And probably unprepared to deal with the complexities of agents and attorneys and Hollywood and money and fame and the press and the press's agenda and all of that. I was just approaching it like I'm a SoCal Gen X punk filmmaker. That was how I approached it. I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want to do. I'm going to make the movie that I want to make and I, with that attitude of, you know, I know what I want and I know what's right and nobody can tell me I'm wrong. Because you have to be a little bit of a mega maniac to be a director.

1:49:08You have to be willing to say, no, I'm right. Even when everyone is telling you you're wrong. And... Is that how Joker 2 got made? I like Joker 2. I like Joker 2. I know you do. I like Joker 2. I haven't seen it. I'm just fucking around. I will defend Joker 2. Yeah, I will defend the movie as well. I can't wait to watch it. I don't think I need more fucking press on that. I'm here waiting to watch it and then talk to you about it afterwards. Because Tim Dillensett is the worst fucking movie that's ever been made. And he's in it. You know, I couldn't... Well, that may have colored his perception though.

1:49:40But Tim thinks everything sucks. That's like the beauty of Tim. No matter what everybody's saying is amazing. Like Tim loves to talk shit about Austin. I gotta tell you, the funniest thing that I've heard for a while on YouTube, what I was listening to you guys talk is... He's a guy I never really listened to his show or anything like that. He's fucking brilliant. But when he was on your thing talking about the election, and when he described Tim Walt as like... Well, that guy's just... That guy's a goofball who just should be at a county fair eating hot dogs. Yeah. I laughed for 15 minutes and played it back about three different times.

1:50:19Because I thought that was such a funny con. He's always funny. He said it sounds like Kamala Harris is doing voodoo curses. She's doing gypsy curses, he said. Like, he speaks in gypsy curses. And he does this show with these fucking crazy glasses on. Like, that's his new thing. If you ever watch his show, it's the best. Because it's literally just him, ranting, and a producer. And the ability to rant as a singleton operator is a fucking lone person out there without anybody to bounce ideas off of him. It's a rare talent. And he's the best at it I've ever seen. Bill Burr is really good at it as well.

1:50:57But Tim Dylan is the best at it I've ever seen. He's so fucking good at it. And he's just basically performing to one person who's his producer. And he's just ranting. And so because of that, he's got this crazy muscle that he's developed from years of doing that. When he just rants about all these different things, but it's fucking brilliant. I like ranting. Oh, yeah, clearly. As you know. Well, that's the great thing about you guys doing a podcast together. What I was going to get to is like, in the beginning, you were talking about replacing the talk show, well, fucking, you guys replaced Cisco and Ebert, right?

1:51:30Because Cisco and Ebert wanted to do that. Thank you. Thank you. That guy was actually the agenda that Quentin proposed to me. Well, both those guys are gone. You know what I love watching is videos of like outtakes of those guys like bitching at each other. They're fucking hated each other. They were so shitty to each other. And then they had to be smiley and what a bullshit way to live. Do you remember when Vincent Gallo wished a stickular cancer on Roger Ebert? And then he got it. Oh, wow. Do you remember that? Okay, I do. Well, you got to cancel a U -Bros. He lost his jaw. He did a remove his jawbone.

1:52:05That was Vincent Gallo cursing it onto a voodoo. He apologized after you. Oh, my God. I didn't know. I think he got it. Well, I think that's what I'm going to like lead him. And Audrey said that brown bunny is the worst film to ever play in the history of Con film. That's exactly what happened. And then he went, he cursed him. And then the curse came true. And then he regretted it. I talked to him. He was like, I wish I had never done that. It's crazy. It really worked. That movie, brown bunny. I wanted to talk about that because that I always thought it's so strange that we can show violence what we can't show sex.

1:52:39And I know they tried to do that. Well, like, you ever see the lines outside the movie theater when Deep Throat came out. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Carson was in line. Yeah, yeah. Johnny Carson went to see Deep Throat in a public theater. Oh, big cross -view. I heard I heard a big cross -view arrive at midnight. Because people didn't know what they were seeing yet. It hadn't been defined as a genre. There was nudie movies that people watched as stag parties. And there was that little moment in 73 where there was Pornosheak. Yeah. Well, still one. And then the one did Italian Stallion? Yeah, but that wasn't a popular thing.

1:53:09This was. Everyone had to kind of see it. And like, oh, hey, maybe this will be a thing. Right, right, right. Maybe this will be a thing now that like, you know, one or three or four porn movies will come out every year. That'll be like kind of considered like real movies. Right. You know, that couples will go see. Yeah. And that was a whole thing. Was promoting the idea of couples going to see a porn film. Like, for sexing for sexing nights. Yeah, not like Travis Bickel. Not like Travis Bickel, doesn't it? No, no, no, no. It's a sexing night now. We're going to have a sexing night. We're going to go out and see.

1:53:50And then we'll go home and we'll take care of business. Right. Yeah. And it didn't really happen. But there was this hope in the early 70s that that could happen. But it's fascinating that it didn't happen. Because what I was going to get to is like violence. We don't have any problem with. But we all agree that consensual sex is way better than someone getting shot in the face. But people get shot in the face in movies constantly. You see heads explode and arms getting locked off. Bread and butter. Bread and butter. Bread and butter. It's constant. I think it's actually gone too far, I think.

1:54:22I mean, it's coming from me. Well, it's not that violence has gone too far. It's the meaningless violence has gone too far. Violence without purpose, almost. And I started to recognize this during walking dead. But really, Game of Thrones though. You mentioned Game of Thrones. It's like, I loved Game of Thrones at first. And then I started realizing, wait a minute. Like, they're getting off on me falling in love with characters. And then the moment I've fallen in love with the character, suddenly they're vivisecting their genitals. You know, it's like, and then the cycle begins again. You fall in love with the different characters.

1:54:58Right. And then they're killing them. And they're just doing it like statistically because there's like, there's nowhere to go other than that. They're just pushing the ceiling higher and higher. Sort of, but also if you were living in that world, that would be reality. Nobody lived forever and became the hero of the fucking movie. There's no heroes back then. Everybody's getting gutted. They're getting usurped. They're torn into a dungeon. People get inside the line. You're out of the picture. You're getting eaten by dogs. And now you hit the fight for the next five years against the rats. They're in the fucking dungeon with you.

1:55:30But television, at least the television I grew up with, was all about like the familiarity of returning to the characters you love. Yeah, but there was plenty of characters. Yeah. And you did get to return to the ones that stuck around and didn't get their heads lost. I just wish I'd killed other characters. But let me give you another, let me give you another example. Everyone talks about how great television is now. It's pretty good. I gotta say. It's pretty good. But it's still television to me. And what's the difference between... What's the difference between television and a good movie? Because a lot of the TV now has the patina of a movie.

1:56:11All right. They're using cinematic language to get you caught up in it. And obviously I'm talking about good shows. For the time I show you your... Ozark. Show that you're compelled to watch. Right. All right. And so, okay, so, okay, I'll use an example of a show. I'll use Yellowstone. I didn't really get around to watching Yellowstone the first three years or so. And then I watched like the first season. And I'm like, wow, this is fucking great. I'm always been a big Kevin Costner fan. He's fucking wonderful in this. All right. And I got really caught up in the show. And everything and all of a sudden I'm having a good time.

1:56:48And, you know, I've got a couple seasons I haven't seen. So I'm watching it. And... And in the first season, I'm kind of talking about... There's like a movie. There's like a big movie. There's like a big movie. And the guy who writes that is a good writer. There's good, like, punchy monologues and stuff. So then I end up watching like three seasons of it. And then I even watched that 1883 where... Oh, this is a good western show. I like westerns. But then... After I've watched like two or three seasons or one season of 1883... Look, why I'm watching it? I am compelled. I'm caught up in it. But at the end of the day, it's all just a soap opera.

1:57:32They've introduced you to a bunch of characters. You actually kind of know all their back stories. You know everybody's connection with everybody else. And, you know, they spend some time selling that out. And then everything else... And then everything is just the compellingness of the soap opera. What's happening to this... And what's different between that and a film? Well, I'll tell you. Because the thing is... If you watch Edge of Night, Monday through Friday, you get caught up in the dramas of the family and everything. But you don't remember it five years from now. You're caught up into the minutia of it at the moment.

1:58:07All right. So the difference between is... I'll see a good western movie. And I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I'll remember the story. I'll remember this scene or that scene. And it built to an emotional climax of some degree. And, you know, one, the story is good. It's not just about the interpersonal relationships. The story is good itself. But there's a payoff to it. But there's not a payoff on this stuff. It's just more inter -connectional drama. And while I'm watching it, that's good enough. But when it's over, I couldn't tell you... I can remember who the bad guy was in the first season of Yellowstone because it was Danny Houston.

1:58:47I remember him in it. But I don't remember any of the details of it. And I don't remember any of the bad guys for season two or season three. It's out of my head. It's just completely out of it. And same thing with 1883, when I watched the whole thing and that was like a... That seemed like a movie. Except I don't remember... Sam Elias, about the only thing I really remember of it when it was finished. But now, Red River, I remember for the rest of my life. Isn't that though because it's a different thing? Right, because when you go to a film, film is designed for one sitting. You sit down in the theater, you're going to get the entire encapsulation of what happens to these characters and the characters.

1:59:27Okay, give me an example of one that is more than a soap opera. And here's a difference. Here's a difference. Okay, because yeah, you could say that. Look, they're in the soap opera business. But I'll tell you one that's not. Okay. If you watch that first season of... Now, here's one that really works like a movie. If you watch the first season of Homeland. Oh yeah. That first season of Homeland. First season is incredible. Okay. Yeah, very good. When it gets to that final episode of the first season, and he's got the suicide vest on. Yeah. And he's in the room. He can kill the guys that he's been waiting for to do it for the whole movie.

2:00:06And you don't want him to die, but you're kind of into him, and you kind of want him to pull it off. And then his daughter calls him on the phone. Before he does it, she doesn't know what he's going to do. But she gets that little sense from him that something's weird to you. Dad, you need to tell me that you're going to come home right now. You need to tell me right now that I will see you later tonight. And the entire series has been built to this scene. And it's one of the most emotional scenes I've ever seen in a movie, any TV show. Oh, I've ever seen drama times. Parties that I've ever seen dramatized.

2:00:42Now, that was a movie. That was not a little offer. That's a huge issue. That well to this moment of him being in that fucking room with the suicide vest on. And there was complexity. She doesn't know what she's asking, but we do, she's stopping this major thing. And she'll never know that. But we do. Right, and he's still committed, but he's more committed to her and we know that. That's, that's just great shit, that's a movie. Right, and you can't, can you do that every week? Not even say you can do it every week, but I'm saying, I'm saying when the seasons over, I need to walk away with more than just the soap opera.

2:01:24An impactful moment. Exactly, and I don't expect you to do that every week, but at the end of the arc, if you're telling you continuing story, at the end of that fucking season, you need to bam, drop the mic. Yeah. You need to tell me a fucking story, not just dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. I see what you're saying. And look, while I'm watching it, I'm not asking for that. But the fact that it all just disappears, right, once it's over, and it's just stand on the beach. Right. It's a different thing though, right? I mean, this is what the weirdness is. Well, here's where it's not a different thing. Part of the thing that makes it different is the fact that everyone's watching these continuing stories, continuing stories, continuing stories.

2:02:10Okay, if it were if it were Bonanza, where it's just a set up story, Charles Bronson shows up, he's a half breed Indian, and he's working at the Ponderosa for a while, and he gets involved in an adventure, and then at the end it's it's done. Well, on that show, you have the episodes are maybe not so good or the episodes are there are whatever they're dreading on one continual story. But then you have this great episode with Charles Bronson, or do they have a great episode with James Cobra? Well, they're almost standalone, so yeah. That could have been a movie. They could have expanded that to a movie.

2:02:49Their stand -alone instead of this long ongoing story. Well, the difference is, that's an ongoing story. It's a long ongoing story that leads to the soap opera aspect. Well, it's episodic, and television now has become completely serialized. And so somebody's going in and they're pitching their show, even a really, really good show like Deadwood. Okay, Deadwood, I know what they probably went in, they pitched, and what they knew that they were going to make was the Wild Bill story. And they've got Caridine, and they know that story, and that show is fantastic, as long as they're telling that story, which is like six to eight episodes.

2:03:27Once he's gone, I don't think they had a plan. That was what they pitched, and it was like they pitched a movie spread out over a number of episodes. But it wasn't even the full season. Yeah, but by that point in time, they have now, they have all the town characters. Well, they've got everybody, but I would maintain that for the rest of Deadwood, after Caridine's gone, it's just things are happening. Stuff is happening, but I don't remember anything about that show. Other than the town and the various actors that I liked on the show, but really, all they had was those first six to eight episodes.

2:04:01I can't remember exactly what it was. And the thing about it is, I don't say all this, and the sum up of it all is useless. It is very compelling while I'm watching it, but it just doesn't compare to a movie, real story that stays with me for the rest of my life, in some cases. Right, I know what you're saying. And like, I mean, I'm like, we'll watch a lot of, I try to watch at least one movie every episode that I haven't seen. And sometimes it's like, well, I haven't seen it since I was 12. Or I haven't seen it since I was 12. Those are actually the scariest ones to watch, because if you loved something when you were young, it's almost like, Well, when I'm expecting not to, I'm tougher on stuff now than I used to be.

2:04:45All right. I was a big champion about it. So now I'm not such a champion. Now I see all the problems with it. All right, but I will watch something that I haven't seen since I was 22, and I felt like the day had opened. And I, you know, and I watch, you know, I watch it again. I think I just love my China thought. Well, actually, I can jump in really quick if you want. You know, one of, one of, talking like I'm stoning, I'm not. Well, yeah, strong cigars. Yeah, strong cigars. One of the movies we saw that we had seen a million times and we didn't even think that it was gonna be anything was a drastic hill.

2:05:19Yeah. Okay, let me set this up a little bit. Yeah, set it up. Yeah, yeah. It was one of those things where we were doing a thing, a special episode with Eli Roth, we were taking, you know, the Italian Jalothrillers and saying, okay, where are the American versions of Jalothrillers? And we figured out there was like four of them. And one of them was Dressed to Kill. Michael Cain. Yeah, and so we get together with Eli, and we're gonna watch these four movies. And then it comes down to Dressed to Kill. And it's like, God, I can't even think about how many times I've seen Dressed to Kill. How many times have you seen it?

2:05:50And how many times have Eli seen it? I mean, we're just huge brine to Palmer fans and gnatsy Allen fans and everything. So it was like, how many fucking times? And so I almost, almost brought up, I mean, do we even need to watch Dressed to Kill? I mean, we've got, we've got, we've had a little Congress about it. We've got three movies, no, okay, let's just watch it, let's just watch it. That ended up being one of the greatest screenings of Dressed to Kill I've ever seen. All right, was in that, in our living room, in my living room watching it with on VHS, on VHS, pan and scan, all right. The old Wonder Brothers video, because we watch them on the actual video cassettes of video archives, all right.

2:06:31Literally the tape that we used to rent and handle and shuffle and put back and forth into the drawers and then rent to customers and has been sitting on the shelves with the number on it and everything for the computer. We've seen the movie a bunch of times but something about watching it with the three of us and then just sitting there and it's so good, but it was Roger who was adding to it. It was Eli that was adding to it. We're seeing it through there eyes. I was adding to them. You know, and like we just had this like appreciation for the movie watching it with the three of us in this situation, the fact that we even considered not even watching it was just like sacrilege.

2:07:05And we saw things in it that we had never seen before. That was the other thing. It's like, I saw things in during that screening because of, because of feeling watching the movie with you guys that I had never thought about before. And so it opened up all sorts of avenues and, you know, most frequently you watch a movie and it doesn't live up. I'm afraid to watch movies again a lot of the time. That was just one of those happy incidences where the movie really lived up. It stayed strong even when we'd seen it hundreds. I know. I mean, you couldn't not, it would be hard to pick a movie that I've seen as much as Jessica.

2:07:46Yeah. See, this is the better version of Cisco and Uber. This is exactly what I'm talking about. They completely unproduced an influenced version. Well, I told Roger that when we finished the first season and I go, you know, Roger, if we do this the right way, in three or four years time, we could be considered like Cisco and Uber. 100%. Yeah. It's just a matter of getting it out there. I think there's just a bunch of people that aren't aware of it. They will come. They will come. They will come. What I love about the way we're doing it now, because our first season, we just, you know, we just put it out and we had a partner with serious XM back then.

2:08:27And this season, you know, they kind of went out of business within their own for their podcasting thing a little bit. Oh, did they? They Pandora now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they kind of turned into a different thing. They just changed their whole podcast deal with the caller daddy chick. Yeah, I think they did. Yeah. So I guess they're trying to get back into it. I think some other people as well. They paid us a lot of money to do it. And like we actually did pretty good for like our little archaic, little movie show that goes on about two hours every day. It's a real niche type. Yeah. And we, can you guys do jaws?

2:08:58Now we don't want to do jaws. But that's the best part of it. Do it over the fuck you want to do. Well, that's exactly it. But the thing is they were like, so we actually had about like two million listeners, which was like, hey, that was pretty good for us. For us to do a little stupid movie show about VHS. And it's all about VHS. It's about the VHS. And we're talking about the box art or VHS tapes. We watch the, we talk about the trailers that are in front of the movie. All right. We talk about the transfer. By the way, the movie VHS is one of my guilty pledges. Oh, that's a good move. The one with the devil lady.

2:09:32Yeah, yeah, yeah. She turns into a devil. The three or four different stories or three different stories. Yeah. But that one is worth it. Just sit through the other three for that one. The devil lady was fucking amazing. But I think they were expecting us to do like a, a citizen came. They were like, you like that shepherd kind of numbers. Right, right. We were never going to do that with what we're doing. Right, right, right. Yeah. And you know, it's a word you could though. People want to see it. They want to listen to it. It's just a matter of just it bidding. They'll realize they wanted it once they hear it.

2:10:05Yeah, yeah. That's what it is. It's like, oh, we want them to only talk about citizen Cain. No, no, no, no. It's got to be whatever the fuck they actually want to talk about. But what we did. And then you'll learn about that movie that you never heard about. Maybe you go see it. And then you'll have a deeper appreciation of why these guys love movies. But one of the things that was interesting when we did it when we, okay, so when we made our deal, we're thinking, okay, well, maybe we'll do it here for two years. And we own the show and then we want to take it to Patreon. So we don't have to do commercials.

2:10:32Right. Okay. And then when I did commercials, I did it with a 70s DJ announcer voice, all right? Because I feel like such a sell out that I'm not going to do it in my voice. Right. And I literally, the, the, the, the Dotson 750 is coming and it's coming soon. Yeah. And I did like the real Don steel. That was my whole thing. And I did like the real Don steel. I just did those readings like myself and people started commenting on Twitter. They were like, man, Roger, every brother, your your placement in a quick week. Like people even get in the first week. They get qualified candidates. Only on zippercrutter .com.

2:11:17Look, I like Sola Stoves. They're great. But like I found myself doing like, you know, stainless steel ads basically and talking about Sola Stoves. And suddenly people on Twitter were saying Roger Avery will sell you sour milk from a sick cow. I don't know if I want to like be shilling stuff like that anymore. You just have to only approve the ads that you want to do. Like I approve ads. I don't like just let them give me every ad. I'm like, I can't do this one. Well, we're not even under that kind of pressure. Yeah, yeah. The thing about it, I thought it would be kind of cool. It is like, we go to Patreon.

2:11:56We'll lose a whole bunch of listeners. But we'll put a 40 minute version of the show out there for free. If you want to get the whole show, then you've got to like, you know, you got to subscribe. And if you just subscribe, you get to show. If you pay $5, you get our show, boom, boom. And if you pay $8, then you get an extra special show that we do. And we're going to. There's still a truncated version of it available for everybody to listen to. You like the first part of it? Come for the rest. But the thing is though is what I like it. And some people are sort of like, I hooked those guys and I think, well, I'll keep fine.

2:12:33All right. And look, I get it. I'm the guy that I'm the guy with it. They're my 20s would go to happy hour at the bar. All right. And nurse a beer while I eat all the pizza and the chicken wings. And that was my dinner. Yeah. So I get that. You know, and by the way, you know, if you want to like wait to the end of our season and then join for a month and listen to all of our shows that way. Yeah. And that's an easy way to do it. You can get everything for free for a month. You can get everything you want in a month. But that's not who we're doing it for. We're doing it for the people who care about the show and are subscribing to it and those people, those are our audience.

2:13:09Right. And then they write on the message board and we write them back and like, so we're doing it for those people. And as long as we can make enough to just do the show, we're cool. Right. And the general feeling is, wow, this is like a $5 film school because you've got a couple of guys talking about movies and talking about how to watch movies, how to appreciate films, how to read a film. And then I know, hopefully, just, and hopefully just genuinely compelling discussions. And using our experiences filmmakers to discuss even, you know, deeper into the movies and to better understand them. And you know, it's largely something has happened in culture where people, they don't know how to argue anymore politely.

2:13:56They don't know how to like enjoy an argument with each other before. And so, Quentin and I, we don't have to like the same, just like Cisco and Ebert, didn't have to like it. But, you know, we can argue about something. And then afterwards it's like, okay, let's go to karaoke now. You know, it's not, it's not a, it's not a recommend show. We want to pick three movies and we want to discuss them. Yeah. And you don't have to like it. Even if we don't like the movie, if there's an interesting, if there's an interesting point of discussion about it, well, that's good. That's all, that's all we need.

2:14:25We just need an interest, we need an interesting, uh, an interesting conversation. Yeah. They have about, it's not about, it's not about, we recommend you watch this movie. Right. Personally, I don't care if anybody watches any of the movies that we talk about. I want them to listen to the show and enjoy, enjoy our back and forth. And if you understand how you appreciate movies. You want to go out and check the movies out afterwards. Fine, go ahead, but I don't care if you do or not. And we have a really like dedicated group of people who have come and they've signed up and they like, like I really, what's funny is I really care about these people now.

2:15:00It's like they're there and they're like in the club. It's like a clubhouse. Yeah, yeah. And the people who want to be there want to be there and they're talking and they're talking, they're on a message board with Quentin and, you know, Eli is, Eli Roth is there and Edgar Wright and like everybody's like, and so it's a, we, we want to, we wanted to create something that was like video archives and that people could come in and talk. And I want to least one of the three movies, not every week, but at least I want to, they're not easy to find. I want to come up with like, well, that's not streaming anywhere.

2:15:32How am I supposed to get this world? It's on VHS, you know, get VHS recorder and buy it on EVA. All right. And now all of a sudden that little group is like, well, maybe we can buy a, hey, maybe if we buy VHS and then we can, we'll burn it and we can trade it with everybody else. Yeah. And now they're all doing the work to do that. Well, good. My daughter, Gala is one of our producers on the show and, and she's on the show with us. And one of her things is like we get together and we watch the movies at video archives and then we know the films and then she has to, she doesn't have that access.

2:16:06She doesn't have access to the, she's not there with us. She's like, she represents one of our, one of the people out there, she's got to find it. So if Quentin finds something that's, you know, pretty difficult to find, she's got to track it down and she usually has a little timetable to do it on. And she kind of is doing her proof of concept on, you can get these, you can find these. She'll find it on VHS, she'll find it however. Yes, it's one of our chiefs tracked it down. And so you can follow her, her guy. It's on YouTube. She'll tell you it's on YouTube. However, when she could, Quentin, I just couldn't track this one down.

2:16:37I go, I'm like, yes. Yeah. I think, I think that's the real reason he likes to do the show. That's right. He shit, god, gotcha. Is that, is that, is that everything on YouTube now? A lot of things. Not everything, but a lot of things. A lot of things. Yeah, there's some certain things you can't find on YouTube still. And if it's up there and it's not there, it'll be up again somewhere. It's like whack -a -mole. Right, right, right. It's like whack -a -mole. There was the Gore Vidal film, the trans -exual movie, with Trevor Kel Welch. Yeah, yeah. Oh, we watched it. We didn't do an episode on it, but I had the video of it.

2:17:16We watched it. It was my re -break -a -match. Yeah. It's a crazy movie. Well, the I - She fucks the guy in the ass. That's the best fucking scene. Well, yeah. She fucks the guy in the ass. That is the best fucking scene. It's pretty wild. I like that movie so much. I read the book afterwards because I thought it was so cool. Okay. I never liked Rex Reed. And I am not gay, but I was actually like, wow, Rex Reed's kind of hot. I guess.

2:17:41Well, that's what he was trying to do. He did. He did. He did it. Gore Vidal was trying to turn you gay. Can you give me that lighter? Yeah. That's one of those weird ones. It's difficult to find. I had to buy a DVD to get it. Well, I like that light. The light she has that keeps building up towards you guys. Which you guys are going to finally show her pussy. She goes, well, it looks like the moment of truth has finally arrived.

2:18:10I think Raquel was just fantastic in that movie. Did you ever see those debates that Gore Vidal did with William F. Buckley? Oh, yeah. Those were almost getting into the fights. Yeah. Incredible. But this is, you know, you used to do it. Gore Vidal always won though. Oh, yeah. Well, he was just, he was right and he was better. Yeah, he's right and he's better. Yeah. I think you have Gore Vidal fighting with like a Norman Mailer. Yeah. Well, they fighting well. Oh, they'll just get on the day. They get them on like the Dick Cavist show together. Yeah, they have. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He would talk to him like a Ponzi bastard and the other one is like, they have like a Nianthorthal.

2:18:43I'm sure they had dinner afterwards. But you used to be able to have those kind of conversations on television, which is really fascinating. Yeah. It's like now they exist and podcast. You know, and like the Siskel and Ebert thing, what I was talking about was like, you can't manufacture a friendship. Yeah. And one of the, and you can't manufacture a real interest. You can't be a guy who was a local news reporter who auditioned for the role of the guy who reviews movies. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Because what's like this thing that you guys have is what this is the whole new media movement is based on authenticity.

2:19:19Right. And this is like the whole thing that you want people to not be able to find these movies. You want to just review movies that you want to review. And that's the beautiful thing about it. It's like the perfect show in that regard. Like for a film review show or a film discussion show, it's the perfect show. And also when a customer used to come into the store, they had basically three requirements. I want something that's new. That was always the first one that's good that I haven't seen yet. And I was like, well, if it's, if you haven't seen it yet, it's new to you. So that takes care of two of those.

2:19:51And no, we don't have that new one. But let's show you something interesting. And so it was always a matter of, you know, well, the thing is one of the things that like and there's a lot of movie. There's a lot of movie shows out there on the podcast and they talk about seven. And the idea isn't for me to just say, oh, we're better than all those guys. We're not coming from that place. But I'll tell you what bugs me about a lot of the other shows is the fact that the people are sincere. They're completely sincere. But their film knowledge is fucking abysmal. They really don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

2:20:28And especially when they're trying to talk about movies from like the 70s or something, they were usually born in the 80s. So they don't know what something was like when it opened up and they don't really have any context. They don't, they definitely don't have context. That's what they don't have. They don't have context. They just know whatever they've learned along the way. And so they just yank stuff out of their ass and just and say stuff that's just wrong. A lot. They just misinformation a lot. We actually backcheck our shit. We re -record it, all right, to make sure that we just don't yank shit out of it.

2:21:05And we, they're a little bit of yanking stuff out of your ass. But when I'm not sure about it, we look it up and then if I'm wrong, then we change it. Well, then also there's the fact that you can count on what we're saying and we're giving you, I consider it as, I consider it as a film expert that, that, that I would be, I would, I, I, I, my ship, my show wouldn't be worth listening to if I don't give, if I don't tell you the truth. Right. But I don't give you factual information that you can count on. Well, so because you were there during the opening of the film and, you know, we're going to, I'm just, I'm context.

2:21:36Yeah, we, we have the context to talk about a lot of these people. They maybe didn't see these movies in theaters. And the thing is, you know, it's like, you know, my, my writing guru as far as like film writing, but I think writing in general was the New Yorker Film Critic Pauline Cale. And she had one, one rule and I, one rule for a, a, a, a film criticism. And I think this could apply to all writing. You have to give the reader a compelling reason to read your writing. It's, it's that fucking simple. It's that, there has to be a compelling reason for you to engage in reading analysis. And the same thing about talking about cinema.

2:22:24You have to give a compelling reason. Now, yeah, I like the guys. That's, that's, that's, that's a good start. I like their personality. I think they're kind of funny. That's, that's a good start. But there has to be something more than that. Well, that's what's more than that. What you just did. This passion for it, right? That's what's more than that. It's just this like severe commitment to it. That's, that's what's exciting. And then when we talk about the Malaysian, we talk about everything that's good about them. We talk about the things that, that aren't good. Right. Honest. Yeah, very honest.

2:22:55And, and, and I can be wrong. I can, I, I don't have to be right about it. You might be wrong about the Joker. I'm not sure. You're being�ed. It's like, you're being�ed. It's like, you haven't even seen it. Have you, you know, you're just talking to a fucking band. I'm just talking shit. The talking shit. I just try to wind you off. I'm just trying to wind you up. Sorry.

2:23:17What's a, what's like an example of a film that you love that other people hate other than the Joker? I don't know if I loved it, but okay. I liked it a lot. I have a ton of those as a matter of fact. I have so many. But when I was younger particularly, I was the champion of the movie that all the critics put down and said was the fiasco. I wanted to do the fact. Is it because you're a contrarian? Can I guess? Is it Ishtar? Well, you like Ishtar? What? He was one of the champions of Ishtar. Ishtar is champion in 1940. Pushing that tape on so many customers. How many of them came back angry? No, Ishtar is a funny movie.

2:24:07It's a funny movie. Is it really? Well, the problem with Ishtar, and we were talking about this a little bit earlier, the problem with Ishtar is that it suddenly became not about the movie but about the production. And so people had informed an opinion about whether they liked it or not. It's a little bit more expensive. Because it was expensive. It's like, it doesn't change your ticket price. No, but that is the kiss of death. If you feel like a film is over budgeted. Especially comedies. Critics have a thing about spending a lot of money on comedies. It seems obscene to them. What happened with this film?

2:24:42Where did the budget go south? Where the budget went south for the most part was the fact that Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman had their full freight on the movie. So Dustin Hoffman got his high -big salary. Warren Beatty got his high -big salary. And so now... And all the accoutrements they go with it. And everything that goes with it. I need a plane to fly me back from Morocco to New York every weekend. If it doesn't, he's just making that up. That's not unrealistic. It would be like if when they did during the time when they did Ishtar, Tom Hanks was famous, but he wasn't the superstar that he is now.

2:25:22So if that had starred Tom Hanks and Peter Scalari, like the two guys from Buzz and Buddy's, well then that movie would have been... It would have cost a lot less. It would have been just as funny. Those guys were terrific together. And they would have been really good in that role. And the film would have been seen for what it is. When a film does get labeled as a bloated film though, that is the kiss of death. Because the general public will turn on it then. But you generally give those movies a couple of years. And certainly there are like these amazing movies. They're like, oh my, well water world is a pretty fun film.

2:25:57Shut the fuck up. I kind of have a great time watching. What was the first laser disk I ever bought? That in days of wonder, I bought the one I said you can't defend Kevin Costner's The Postman. I never saw The Postman. I like the idea of The Postman. I remember the screenplay for The Postman was great. The idea of The Postman. But I actually like Kevin Costner. I actually think that's one of the best movie ever. Kevin Costner is fucking awesome. I love that dude. But you're right about the postman. But I've always been like, it's hard to defend. I love saying you're right about it because I've never seen it.

2:26:27But now that says something that I've never seen it. But I wouldn't mind seeing it. I'll betcha I'll like it. But then there's films that are so bad they're great. Like showgirls. I love showgirls. Showgirls is fucking great. Oh, I can defend showgirls. There's nothing wrong with showgirls. I can absolutely defend. I can defend as an entertainment piece. I am not a so bad as good guy. I'm not a so bad guy. You are a so bad as good guy. I'm not a so bad as good guy. The sex scene in the pool. That's a little ridiculous. But yes, the sex scene in the pool is a little ridiculous. But actually the fact that it's going for a Hollywood movie.

2:27:02It's going there was actually interesting movie. But what I really like, what I really liked her in it. But when she beats the shit out of that guy, that's so fucking cool. When she beats the shit out of the guy at the end. The guy who fucked over her girlfriend and beat up a girlfriend. And then she does these spinning roundhouse kicks and beats the fucking shit out of the guy. I was like, yeah, Elizabeth Berkeley go. What I love about showgirls is normally a movie like showgirls would be made for under a million, go straight to video, star Robert Dovey, and just be this little exploitation movie.

2:27:37And here was an example of that being made for $60 million with Paul Verhoeven directing. Doing whatever the fucking wants. Doing whatever he wants making it as big as possible. And we're releasing it, NC17. Fuck you. It's basically the same as one of those sub -million dollar exploitation films. It still has Robert Dovey in it. He's still playing the same part he would normally play. And so it's this opportunity to see one of those weird little, you know, exploitation movies made in this grand. Fashion in this huge fashion. Showgirls doesn't sit on a special shelf in my heart. All right. But I really liked it when I saw it.

2:28:18I saw it at the theater. I love it. And Elizabeth Berkeley pushes Gina Gerson down this. Is it Gina Gerson? She pushes down the stairs. And like everything about that movie is awesome. I think it's great. I love the film. I love the film. I brought it up to all the, I had a dinner once with Verhoeven and a bunch of the producers that feel nice. I started going off on it. They all sat there at the dinner watching me go crazy over their film. And then at the end of it, somebody, one of the producers said, well, yeah, that's all nice to hear. But really, that movie was just about us doing a lot of cocaine.

2:28:50That's exactly what I was just going to say. I'm so glad you just said that because I always described that movie as a cocaine movie. And I was just casting as Persians with no evidence. But it seems like a cocaine movie. Yeah. Because it seems like they thought it was great while they were doing it. But it's like, what are you doing? You know, it's one of those things where you think it's great because you're on Coke. I have a place in my heart for those big movies like that. I mean, that's not the one that I would make my case on, but I still like it. That's not my case. That's not my test case.

2:29:22But is that sort of an example of what happened when the 80s were a cocaine culture? The world kind of shifted from a psychedelic thing from the 60s and 70s to a cocaine thing in the 80s. And you get movies like that. Yeah, you get a little bit more edgy, a little less trippy. Well, also like a little more ridiculous. But see, look at how big the beginning. It's pretty good. That's what I call an actress dedicated to her role. No, this is where you're losing me. This is where you're losing me. Yeah. Because how are you keeping a heart on? Yeah. And that it's completely off the level. I keep calling it an off -the -world people.

2:29:54The whole thing is. But just watching a loose -foot -burkeley's tits, I write in a big studio movie like this, flopping up and down. Like I'm getting my money's worth. Well, that was huge. Because it was from Save By The Bell. Yeah. But I'm not thinking about it from his point of view. I'm thinking about it from the water hitting her face. I'm thinking about it from her point of view. That's the unrealistic part. That true. The cocaine movies are fun, though. There's quite a few of those that were just like, what is this? Yeah. Like how much coke was going around the 80s? A lot. A lot. When you, it was actually coke, too.

2:30:31It was actually real cocaine. It was like proper cocaine. But there was, I mean, there was, you know, there was this, I mean, it's actually really interesting because it's like one of those things where, uh, uh, remember that customer who used to come in and he would bring in like a rock of cocaine? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Drop it on the couch. Like a rock of cocaine. And you get a voice. The guy with name is Tuddle. The size of, yeah, Tuddle. The size of a coffee mug. And he would bring us these things. It was a cocaine dealer. And the thing is he would rent, you know, we'd let him take the movies and come back whenever he wanted.

2:31:04Whenever you want. Yeah. And he would come in and he'd get his films and then he would like, either open up a little like a, uh, uh, uh, uh, skull can. Yeah. All right. I remember that skull can. Yeah. Boom. All right. There you go, boys. There you go, boys. There you go. That's fun. Are you taking a coke rock? Bam! I throw it on the counter and it bounce off of you. There you go. There you go, boys. Like I see later. See it in a two weeks. Like a baseball. Like a baseball. And you take a calendar. And it just grinded it up. Okay, we got some cure. I feel the first time because we're minimum wage kids.

2:31:42For the first time, we actually had fuck you coke. And we actually had access to coke in a way that we could never afford. Like for about a few months because those relationships don't last that long. No, no, no. Okay, relationships never last. But for a few months, we're like, holy shit, we're in the, we're in the fucking, you know, we're in the power. Well, he, there was a party once that he came to and he brought again a rock of cocaine and a live hand grenade. He put it both down. They usually go together. Yeah. And it was like, okay, it's a dangerous combination. There's a lot of coke usually with a party.

2:32:19And his name was a tunnel and we always describe the excess as tunnel. We're getting, we're getting, we're getting, we're getting to a tunnel situation. Dude, I'm so tuddled. Oh, that's hilarious. It became like you're a fagazie. Yeah. Oh, that's so funny. When I worked at in Boston, the next comedy stop, they would offer to pay you in cocaine or cash. There was guys who just took the cocaine. The certain comics they just wanted to get paid in coke. Yeah. Wild times, you know, that's the 80s. It was the 80s. It was the 80s. Well, yeah, that was actually even kind of an interesting situation because like, uh, it was also one of those things where like, I was actually really kind of proud of us because we all kind of like, woo, we all kind of went nutty for like a little bit.

2:33:03Mm -hmm. With this kind of like, uh, more access to coke than we normally have would have. Yeah, more access to coke than we ever had ever had. Yeah. Just like, you know, I like, because we can't afford that shit. All right. And, uh, so we all kind of went nuts for like a little bit about it. And then we all kind of like, okay, let's. Yeah, enough of that. Yeah. Let's bring it together. Well, that's great. Let's bring it together. And we also saw some other people who were like, who let it get, let it get the best of them. Yeah. And they got really kind of like your friend with the story about being bitter.

2:33:36Yeah. Yeah, exactly the same sort of thing. You go, I know where this is going. And so we all like, okay, let's, let's pull back. Let's get, let's, let's, let's get control of this. And then we all did it. Yeah. We're all, collectively. We all kind of just got our shit together. Mm -hmm. I put it in the river mirror. Right, right. That mean we didn't do it. But we were, we were, we, we, we, we controlled it. We're, we're, we're, we controlled it. We'll say we're, we'll say we're pop. We'll say we're pop. Yeah. Yeah. Well. Yeah. When I was growing up a bunch of people that I knew got hooked on Coke.

2:34:10And that's what kept me from ever doing Coke. I, what stopped, I mean, I had children. And suddenly it was like, oh my God, like I have to be on call 24 -7. Right. It can't be out. Like, yeah, I, like, that, that's not going to last anymore. It gets in the way of, it gets in the way. Mushroom trips. And pretty soon my Saturday mornings became more important than my Friday nights. Mm -hmm. It's pretty simple. Yeah. But my thing about priority was, was I wanted to have access or I didn't, oh, I wasn't that interested in it. Yeah. You want to take it to 12. No, I wanted to have a bit of high a love it and we're doing it all fucking night.

2:34:44Until this is gone. Until, until this, until the straw is bloody. Yeah. You know, okay, now I'm stopping now because the straw got bloody. I think it's like some people don't have the ability to only do that once. Like for whatever reason, some people they have that thing and they do Coke a little bit, then they just want to keep doing Coke. Yeah. That's scary when they do that. It is scary. That's scary when they have because you're captured by a demon. Yeah. And it's literally, and I think it's literally a demon. Yeah. No, I think in the classic gin sense of where it's whispering into your ear.

2:35:17Well, in the sense it does all the things a demon would do. You know, you, you could say the demons aren't real. Okay, but they, they, they, they, they might be real. Look, there's pretty good evidence. I think there's pretty good evidence. There's a lot of, we live like legitimate evil in the world. And where is that coming from? What's that energy? Like what, what begets that? What is the, what is the reason why people are willing to, you know, mass murder? Like what is it? What is it? People are willing to launch missiles in the cities. What is that? Where, where is that coming from? There's got to be like that would be evil if you defined it in the classic sense of the word.

2:35:50You know, when a invading army comes into a village and hacks people, that's not demonic. That's not evil. You're lighting children on fire and throwing them on thatched roofs. That's not demonic. It seems pretty demonic. Like a demon would do that. Whether the, the physical demon exists is almost like not even important. Yeah. It's like demonic behavior is 100 % document. What would Jesus do? Yeah. Right. Right. Just ask yourself. But it's a thing. It's like everybody wants to be smart. It's like everybody wants to be smart. And you want to be secular. And you never want to say that you believe in something that's superstitious or ridiculous.

2:36:26So you don't believe in religion. You're either agnostic or atheist. That's how you get respect. And it's like this weird thing where you're not willing to consider. Like, okay, but what are the actions? What are the actions of good and the actions of evil? Those are the actions are real. Right. And we all know in our heart and our soul, when you do a good thing, how you feel versus how you, when you do, how do you bad thing? How you feel? Like so what is, what are those. What are those. Those are the little pizza apocalypse now when a brand -o's curts tells the story of going into the village and in an inoculating or the children in the village, shooting their arms with flu shots or something like that.

2:37:11You're inoculating them. And then the soldiers came in and then hacked off all the kids' arms. And then there's like a little pile of arms. And Kurt says, you know, so we did all that and then we came back in the village and next day we saw the little pile of all the little arms and they were they hacked them off. And I cried like a baby.

2:37:33Then I started thinking, the genius of that, the genius of that. Because these are not monsters. They're not demons. These are men doing a job. And they had the force of will to take the job and take it to its logical conclusion of what they had to do. All right. You know, I'm not could donate. I'm not condoning what Kurt's is saying. Kurt's is fucking crazy person. Right. You know, but I'm interested in his perspective. But of course, of course, that would be Kurt's perspective. He's speaking about true power. Where he's a god, he's a god, you have worshiped by the natives. Yeah. Clearly lost his fucking mind in the fog of war.

2:38:23He's completely lost his mind in the fog of war. But he's talking like Inga's con. Yes. Exactly. Like they all talk. But this is the thing where you're suspicious of power. Right. Like why you suspicious? Well, you should be because you see where it ultimately leads. It ultimately leads to a Kurt's or it ultimately leads to the way to really do. And you're being controlled by people. Like you have to use violence. You can only use words for so long. Strong men hold civilizations together. That's just a fact of things. Both of us have become friends over the years with John Millius. Yeah. Who wrote a apocalypse now?

2:38:56Who wrote a apocalypse now. And you know, John is the kind of guy who's like, you know, conquerors. Conquerors. You know, the, and he wrote a script about Genghis Khan. And you worked on it. He went into a series, my daughter, and I helped him with it after he had a stroke. And, you know, you look at his Genghis conscript, and he's, you know, he's realistically talking about these horrific atrocities that just, you know, sowing people up and felt and lighting it on fire and throwing them in river. Just, however, you can kill somebody, he figured out a way to do it better. And, but at the same time, you know, he invented paper money and he invented the Silk Road and he, you know, pulled, pulled, you know, that whole region of the world together under one empire.

2:39:49And, you know, over the course of it, you know, you start out as, you know, almost like the, like Conan, Conan the warrior, Conan the conqueror, Conan the king. Eventually, your, by his own hand, yeah, king by your own hand. And eventually you, you start realizing, and John Millais also wrote and directed Conan the barbarian. And so he, you know, he rightly recognizes that it's strong men who conquer, but also who hold together and maintain order. And there's a balance to be had between force and strength and, you know, and compassion as well. Too much compassion, you know, countries fall apart.

2:40:29Yeah. Too much introspection. And countries fall apart. Right. And when things are too good, when things are too good, things are too easy. And you think they're supposed to be easy and understand how they became easy and what keeps them easy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of where we are right now. It's weird times right now. As we are, we're in a Conan movie. Well, it does feel a little, like we're in kind of neo -futalistic times where, you know, there's highway men and, you know, that you have to contend with when you go out and everything's a little more fragile and... Well, there's also this new thing, which is the internet and social media.

2:41:06And there's this new thing that has overcome our minds. And it's affecting everyone in this very bizarre way and it's making people more tribal and more inclined towards echo chambers, more antagonistic against opposing beliefs and views. So what you were saying about, like, being able to sit and have a conversation with someone and completely disagree, but not take it personally, just disagree about the points. We've lost that in our society. It's really important to be able to engage with other people, to disagree with them. Yes. And then to know that that's just that. I know. We can still have dinner together.

2:41:40Oh, no, no, no. We can still be friends. I can... Okay, so I go on a show and I said that I like Joker 2. Well, I say I like Joker 2 and now there's 150 articles that come out on all these cannibalized articles. One person listens to the thing and writes an article about it. And then there's 150 rip -off articles on that. And then you read the comments and say, Man, what's the fucking asshole? That movie's fucking soaked me. He's a fucking asshole for saying that. Why am I a fucking asshole? I just like the fucking... It's a fucking movie. All right, that makes me a fucking asshole. It's crazy.

2:42:14Are you either like the movie or you don't? All right, and I'm not plugging the movie. I'm not doing anything. All right, I'm just saying I like it. Who gives a fuck what I like? Right. What do you care what the fuck I like? Right. And also, other than that, I'll say I didn't see something. Well, he's a fucking asshole. All right, I'm gonna see it. I care what the fuck I see when I don't see it. What the fuck do you fucking care? But there's no one in front of him to say that. He's an idiot alone with his phone. If he just set it out loud amongst reasonable people, they would turn to him, what the fuck are you talking about?

2:42:47But he doesn't get that check. Which is also part of the problem with social media. What does someone say? Well, I think he's fucking missing out. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of shit I can say that. You're missing out on it. I don't care if you miss out on it. Also, you have to be missing out. Otherwise, you don't have a life. How much information do you think you can absorb in a day? How much things do you watch and listen to? You're not supposed to have movies a day, apparently. That's a lot of time, man. You have to miss out. It's going to be shit you miss out on. Well, the other thing is, if you're a film fan today, you're not just dealing with today's films.

2:43:23You're dealing with this insane archive that goes back to Rocky. It goes back to On the Waterfront. It goes back to the 20s. Good Lord. There's so many films to watch. No, no, no, no. A film that I saw that was very meaningful to me this year is I really like the story of Bo -Jesse, the French foreign Legion story. I like French foreign Legion movies anyway. But that's a really cool story. And I really like the whole story of the three brothers in there. And I was familiar with the Gary Cooper version, the 1939 version. I don't understand. But I've never seen the silent version and it was a start Ronald Coleman.

2:44:00And I watched the silent version recently. And I was blown away by it. The storytelling was so epic and was so visually just beautiful. And we have a little micro cinema in the theater. I have one of the theaters I have in Los Angeles, the Vista. And it's like a little 20 -seat cinema that we just show VHS and 16 -millimeter. It's our video archives. Yeah, it's like video archives, the video archives cinema club. And it's like literally, it's like the brick and mortar version of video archives. But like a little Paris back out, back Avenue. It's like a little club house. I mean, it's opened to everybody, but for our core fans.

2:44:38And the thing is, and we showed last week, we showed the silent version of Bo Jast in it. And I wasn't there at that screening, but I asked the guy who is our manager, their man. I said, how did it go? He goes, when you would have really loved to have been there for that screening. And I go, well, what? He goes, it was so moving. The end of it. And it is really moving. And it's just like, nobody was talking. It was just, it was, you could hear a pin drop. And then it was over. And everyone was still kind of in this collective emotional state. And they just all kind of left the theater. And they just seen something emotional.

2:45:14And they all kind of just moved out into the lobby. And in this emotional state. And it was like, that sounds fantastic. That's amazing. I mean, I think one of the most magical things about movies is that it can speak to you at different times of your life. You know, at the different windows of opportunity in your life. So you might see a movie and not like it. And then, you know, people might see Joker 2 today and not really care for it. And then five years from now, revisit it and watch it again. And you're in a different place. Culture is in a different place. Everything's in a different place.

2:45:45And you have a different perspective on the movie. And maybe you like the movie. I hated Blade Runner when it first came out. Did not like the film. I thought it was awful. Really? I thought it was really awful. Like boring, like muddled, like everything that was wrong. Suddenly I'm seeing Kubrick shots in the end from the shining. Like Roger would say, Blade Runner, she'd been called Blade Crawler. No, I was really hard on movies. I was a really angry young guy. And he was such a prick about shit. He's a completely different guy. Now he's like, beds over backwards. They'd be nice about something.

2:46:25Who the fuck is this guy? Hummeled by life. Well, I know, looking, I'm having been a filmmaker and knowing the struggle that goes in to getting something on screen. Look, I know how hard it is sometimes to get what you have up here on to screen and doesn't always work. And sometimes you're faking it by the time it gets to the cut. But it's not an easy thing to... So when I watch a movie now, I'm applying my life experience to it. And I'm like, okay, this movie may not be the greatest movie, but this is somebody's vision. And I'm going to give that... I'm going to value that and give myself to it and try to find in it what I like about it.

2:47:15And so I always give every movie a shake, a good shake. What's happened with our show that I think is really cool again for the fans to follow it and everything is... In our first season, we ended up like covering about 70 movies, you know, all together. We mentioned a zillion movies in the course of a show. But like, you know, we covered about 70 movies altogether, between the three movies that we did over the course of like 26 episodes. And we kind of created new classics, at least amongst the people who followed the show. Because they followed it and they liked it and they watched some old Mexican horror movie like Demonaw.

2:47:55And they're like, hey, that was pretty cool. Demonaw is amazing. And then we put it down. If you try to look at anything about it, it would all be shitty reviews about it and everything. But then we talked about it with passion. And then we gave the right context in which to appreciate the movie.

2:48:13And then the people appreciated it under that right context. Like, because a movie is old and because maybe they didn't have the money to do it, like, super clean or perfect, you know. Actually, that actually has the most best hand effects of the same movie. Well, yeah. That movie in particular is actually a tough one because it's... is this demon... Yeah, that's human life. It's a killer hand, the fuck's in the video. And I think it was the best hand on the loose movie. It's a mixed blood. It's a exploitation movie. Okay, with a Mexican exploitation movie. But one of the... one of the... one, she's fantastic.

2:48:45And it's Samantha Agar. Samantha Agar is... Come one of our heroes. All right. I love Samantha Agar. But this movie looks hilarious. But what's really cool about... about the Mexican horror genre is... they take their tacky horror very seriously.

2:49:10And you appreciate the seriousness that they're delivering... that they're delivering their payload with. And I know how hard it is to do some of the things that they're doing on there. This is like... it's pre -computer graphics. They have a limited budget. No, there's shit in the dark. But their vision is so big. And you're watching it. You're like, oh my god. This is... if you just... like, if you try not to judge it on what a movie looks like today. But not only just that, what's interesting is when you see some of the effects... there's a couple of the effects. Well, how did they do that?

2:49:40Yeah. Because it's all done practical. And then some of it is like, oh well. I can see how they did that. Oh my god, that's so fucking clever. Yeah. They figured out how to do it in such a clever way. I can see how they did it, but that's so neat. Because they just figured out how to do it on camera in a way that sells it. Yeah. And it's a crazy movie also. And it's crazy. It's like you're inside of some sort of crazy Mexican's head. Make an horror movie. It's fantastic. Well, the horror genre is hard to do to not make ridiculous. Yeah. Although the best thing about the horror genre and science fiction is that they're the best vehicles to kind of study culture and sociological issues.

2:50:21Because you have that abstraction layer that makes people think, oh, I'm just watching a science fiction film, or I'm just watching a horror movie. Right. Like you watch Don of the Dead and yeah, you're watching a movie about zombies in a shopping mall. Or are you watching a movie about the vanishing middle class being drawn to the consumer temple because it's what they remembered from their lives. It was an important place to them. Like literally quoting the movie. I'm actually quoting my liner notes that I wrote for the DVD way back when. Let me start and go to the bathroom one more time. The coffee is making me take a picture.

2:50:53No worries. Go for it. We can keep going. Okay. So when you first got into this, like did you have like a film that you aspire to create something like like when you first did you say, you know, like a medium to be like, I want to be the next any more. Yeah, it's it was a composite. It was a composite. I have like a kind of a top three filmmaker. You know, when you're a young filmmaker and when you're a young child, you looked to your parents to learn how to behave. You know, you're a child and you look to them and you're like, they teach you how to be. Sure. And so to at the beginning of your life, you're copying your parents and because that's who you love and that's what you're copying.

2:51:38When you're a young filmmaker, very frequently you kind of copy your parents, your cinematic parents. And so in my case, you know, in many filmmakers like for instance Stanley Cure, you know, Kubrick who is one of my favorite filmmakers who I'm always thinking about his zero point perspective, his reverse tracking shots. I just love the intention of his shots and how he assembles his movies. I like I like everything about his work. A cube. A cube brick huge fan. He, if you love Fritz Lang, you can see that, Oh, Kubrick was, that's how he felt about Fritz Lang. Like when I watch M, I can see the Kubrick shots.

2:52:23That's this Fritz Lang metropolis. Yeah. He did metropolis. He did, I mean, it's like some of the greatest metropolis is wild. Metropolis is a super, super powerful and kind of important movie that's exactly talking about everything that's going on today that people should see. The movie I was thinking about was M, which is his movie with Peter Laurie about the pedophile who's and the movie is made in just just before the Nazis took power. Oh, wow. And so he's making a movie that's really about like kind of the rise of the rise of hit Larry and fascism in Europe. But he's doing it through this movie about a pedophile and it's it's Peter and Peter Laurie is fantastic.

2:53:07And it's actually his first sound movie like Fritz Lang had made a sound movie. And so every single shot in the film is based on sound. So he'll have shadows talking and the backs of people's heads talking or even the device of the movie is Peter Laurie whistling, peer giant.

2:53:28That becomes like the device by which they find the killer. So the whole movie is about sound. So as a young filmmaker, if you want to learn how to use sound in a movie, that's the movie to see. Because every single shot like it used to be, you would show an empty frame and it would just be a shot of nothing. But now Fritz Lang is able to juxtapose like a woman has lost her daughter. She's calling for her daughter. And so she's looking for her daughter and she's looking for her and Elsa. Elsa. And they cut to an empty shot of a stairwell and you hear her. Elsa. And they cut to like, you know, an empty playground.

2:54:10Elsa. And then you see the balloon that she was carrying trapped in something like whipping in the wind. Elsa. And it's super, super intense. But all he's doing is he's using sound juxtaposed with images, which he couldn't do before. Crazy. He just called it M. Yeah, M for murderer. And this is an amazing, amazing movie. So Kubrick, so that's a Kubricky in shot. This is where he's, Elsa or LC. LC.

2:54:59I seem to remember more LC's. But I think I got the wrong. Yeah, it's okay. But anyhow, this is, but so, so Kubrick had his forefathers who he used to. And who he used to watch and that he used to look to. And so those would be like my grandparents in a way. And so there's this like lineage of cinematic grammar and vernacular that gets carried on from filmmaker to filmmaker. And eventually, after you've made enough films, you start walking on your own. You start coming up with new ideas. But for me, it was Stanley Kubrick, John Boreman. He's the guy who directed Excalibur and Hope and Glory and Point Blank and Helen the Pacific.

2:55:41I mean, a number of movies. I don't think Point Blank is such a big fan of John Boreman, some of his films. I think you're a fan of his writing more than you are his film. No, I have nothing but respect for John. Yeah. And John Boreman and then Roman Planski. I think those three guys for me and their work, not the guys, but mostly their work. I am a composite. If you watch my movies, I'm a composite of those guys and other people as well. And those are the filmmakers who are important to me. Those were my parents. So to speak. Kubrick was such an odd one. His films are so different. And he was a weird guy, too.

2:56:17He did complex mathematics in his spare time. I do complex mathematics. Nothing wrong with that. No. He's a weird guy, but he was also, I think, thinking three steps ahead of everybody at any kind of given moment. I mean, to be honest, I was just thinking. I just pulled my script from Eyes Wide Shut. I had a script that was from set and I was reading it over the weekend. And I saw that it has this, I mean, I've known this for a long time, but I started really thinking about it over the weekend. It's missing a narration. It's missing a third person narration that was originally in the movie. That's because the movie was recut and changed after his death.

2:57:08And they will deny it. But as a student of Kubrick, I'm watching the movie and I'm like, well, Kubrick wouldn't do that. Kubrick wouldn't do that either. Kubrick would have trimmed this scene. I didn't know they recut it after his death. Okay. So apparently they finished it. Well, that's the party line. That's the party line. But I think that they changed the notes, the close -ups, the inserts of the notes. I think those are changed. It's missing a narration. It's definitely missing a narration. A third person narration, like that scene where he sees the prostitute who's died. He's at the morgue and he's looking at her and he's like leaning over her.

2:57:45It's a bed for narration. There's this whole thing. What they do instead, because they couldn't say that Kubrick finished the movie because they hadn't done the recording of the narrator yet. And so maybe they just kind of cled it together, except there's an entire thread that's kind of been squashed in that film. And that's the two men that are throughout the movie that are constantly in the background of the film, who eventually, in the final shots of the film, you see like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in that final scene in the Toy Store when she's looking at the Rosemary's Baby Bessonette, which is totally Kubrick saying something.

2:58:23And they never take their eyes off their daughter until the moment they take their eyes off and the final line of the movie is coming up, you see those two guys walking off with the daughter. They're taking her away. They've given their daughter to the pedocult. That's what's happened at the end of the movie. And there's an incident where when they first screened the movie in England, people who were outside apparent, this is all second hand, by the way. There are people who were outside of the theater who could hear inside of the theater, Kubrick yelling at all the executives and saying, it's my movie, you can't cut it.

2:58:58I can't fucking cut my film. Big argument going on. Then he dies like four days later. Oh, God. So somebody went in and finished the movie, but I think when they finished the movie, they hid the film. The movie got changed into something else. And I would love to finish that film. I like, have you ever made an attempt? I've thought about it. And reading the script over the weekend, I started seriously thinking about it. Well, somebody should recut this or somebody should, so it just be a matter of recutting it with narration. Well, yes. And there's obviously missing. There would be missing footage now.

2:59:40There's things have been removed and it takes them down. No, no, unless you crack it open and there's no way anybody would think they would never do. But here's the thing. Now we have AI. Well, I know. That's, yeah, you're one step ahead of me. I'm one step ahead because I've actually been experimenting a lot with, with, with AI. The newer versions are pretty stunning. I've been working on Runway lately, which is, the curve is insane. Like the exponential curve of improvement. I'm literally, as I'm working on things, I'll be talking to the guys and, you know, I'll be saying, well, you'd be nice to be able to move the camera.

3:00:15Okay, we got that tool on Tuesday. We're going to give that to you. And so it's like, literally, whatever you think you can't do, ask us because we probably will be able to do it in a couple of days. And so it's advancing so fast and so rapidly that I, without telling you, Quentin, I made a little claymation version of you. And I, I have them talking and kind of funny looking. I'm sure my version of Runway would be funny. But it's a claymation version of both you and me. I mean, how bizarre that something that would have cost like hundreds of millions of dollars. Like if you wanted to do a film, like a pixel type, you know, one of those crazy movies where you have all this like insane animation, that shit took forever.

3:00:59The best work that I've seen of it. Like, there's the first time I've been kind of ignoring AI and like, I know what it is. It's like form completion with visuals and I get it. I understand what it is. And we'll see. We'll see. But I like tactile, I like tactile and I do. But I worked on bail. If I made bail wolf with Robert Zemakus. And like that was a big, you know, video puppet, two -in -chip CGI, I think. My original. Motion capture. My original plan for that movie, because I was going to direct it myself, was to make it like, you know, in Iceland, you know, under $10 million, you know, just really dirty.

3:01:33I wanted it to be like, you know, like an early Terry Gilliam film, like Jabberwock. Like Jabberwock? That was actually the one Neil and I were thinking about when. Yeah, Neil Gaiman, when my co -writer on that film. And the movie ended up getting made much bigger. It turned, it suddenly, it was like whatever budget I had was probably our craft service budget. There's nothing like making a $100 million movie. It's like, sushi every day, you know, champagne, fly the plane to England, you know, whatever you want. It's like, it's crazy, but that was definitely not the movie I had planned on making.

3:02:13However, when we made it, like, and it turned into this big performance capture thing, it was fun. Like, working with Zemekis and he's such a, like, an excitable, like creative genius, like he's, and even before you were able to do stuff like what he was doing in that film, he was like constantly taking, you know, like when you made contact, oh, we'll take that eyebrow off of Jody Foster and I like that eyebrow thing she does. And so put that on this take. And so he was like messing with her face and doing all sorts of performance stuff. And even when you go back to his earliest film, I want to hold your hand.

3:02:54I want to hold your hand is almost a visual trick, you know, having the Beatles there, but not be there. Not using computer graphics. I think he's just a really super inventive guy and it was so much fun making the movie with him because we were here. Was that inventing technologies? That was 2010. I think we became a... James, we'll be coming up. Bayowolf, let's watch some of them. Well, I want to remember what it looks like. It looks probably like a video game pre -cut scene at this point. That's what's crazy, right? Like, I couldn't make, I thought about taking Bayowolf, importing it into my system, and then just painting over it.

3:03:29That's fucking... Going in which... Which... Let's fucking go. Which by the way, you can do easily. Yeah. Easily. I thought about fixing... So, let's see what this looks like with the Bayowolf, oh geez. Yeah, I mean, it looks like a video game cut scene at this point. Yeah. But it was kind of cool because everybody looked like that, not just the monster. Yeah. That was kind of cool about it. I mean, the difference is that this was actual, like, it's performances, and so we could take, you know, Ray Winstone and have him Ray Winstone doesn't look like that. Like, he looks a little heftier. And...

3:04:09Cuts his arm off. Cuts his arm off. Cuts my arm off. Cut my own arm off. It's funny because my original script was much more modest than this, but then Zemekas was like, okay, boys, it cost a million dollars a minute. Do whatever you want. He stabs a dragon in the heart. Oh no. This movie is kind of a, I mean, it's a little... It's an interesting experience what happened to me on this film, if you don't mind me. Yeah, go ahead. So I was going to make this movie myself. I had set it up initially at Image Movers, with Zemekas producing. And then it fell out, and the rights kind of reverted back to me.

3:04:53I had to cover the turnaround on it. But the rights reverted back to me. And I was going to go make the movie myself for nothing. And I was trying to set it up. And it was really, I was broke at the time. And I was not going to make money. And I had to cover the turnaround expenses myself on the film, which were considerable. But I wanted to make the movie really bad. And I was working on Silent Hill, this other movie I wrote. And I suddenly started getting calls. And it was like the producer of Polar Express, this guy Steve Bing wanted to buy the script. He's like, I want to buy it for Zemekas.

3:05:28And I said, two little, two late. I'm making it now. And I kept saying no. And I was working on this filming Canada. And I'm just trying to finish it. Every hour I'm getting a call from agents at CA. And they're like, Jack Rapdi, right? Actually, yeah, how did you know it was Jack? Did I tell you that? Well, no, because he was Zemekas's agent and became Zemekas's producing partner. And so I was going to call it. And he's the guy who gets shit done. Yeah, he is the guy who gets shit done. Well, I was like, no, no, no, no. And no, I won't. I'm doing it myself. No, no. And Steve Bing, and I said, if another agent calls me, I'm firing the agency.

3:06:08And they're like, well, you will you at least meet with the producer. And so I went ahead and I meet with them. And he says, listen, if I don't make this film with Zemekas with Bob, I'm going to miss the moment. I'm going to lose the movie. It's going to be over. Just what's your price? Just tell me what's your price. And I said, I don't have a price. I don't work like that. He said, listen, everybody's going to price. And I said, well, I may have one, but I'm not going to tell you. And so I looked, what are you just telling me? Just discourage me. So I said, okay, you want me to discourage you.

3:06:38And so I started like making shit up. I need this. I want that. I want this. I want this. I tried to come up with how much money had anybody ever made on a script. Let's add some money to that. I went over the top. He said, well, Roger, that is, and I had grown a beard to make the movie, and like, grew my hair long, like a Viking to learn about, you know, why Vikings had beards, etc. All that kind of stuff. I'm making the movie. I'm a Viking. He said, well, Roger, that is really discouraging, but we have a deal. And I was like, well, okay, and I started driving home, and I started like, I'd never done anything.

3:07:17I'd never done something for money before. I'd always done it because I, for passion, and then the money came. And this was the first time in my life that I had ever made a choice based on money. This Titanic amount of money, and I was understand broke. And I went home and I cried, and then the check came, and nothing diced tears like money. And then Zinnikus invited me into the process, which was really great of him. He really wanted me, me and Neil, to be at his side and collaborate with him. And it was a fabulous experience. But to be honest, I was like, who am I now? What does it all mean?

3:07:52I just gave away something I wanted to do my entire life. I've always been chasing this John Borman film Excalibur. I think it's one of the most beautiful movies ever made about the Arthurian legends. And if you watch Baywolf and Excalibur, they're very similar, actually, thematically. And so, I was like, who am I now? What does it all mean? You know, I don't even care. I don't even know if I want to make a movie anymore. You know, like, what do I have to tell now? Now that I've just completely sold out. And then I was at a dinner and a big dinner. And I was driving home that night. And I was giving somebody who was at the dinner, a lift, my wife was in the backseat of the car.

3:08:41And we were, I told my daughter I was going to be home by midnight. We lived in Ohai. It was dark. So I was speeding. I have a lead foot. And I was speeding to get there without getting into the details of what happened. I lost control of the car. There was another vehicle, but they fled the scene. I lost control of the vehicle. I think my tire blew, but I was going into a ditch. And I knew I was going into this deep ditch, because it was right near my house. It's full of rocks and stuff. And I knew if I go in there, we'll die. And so I turned into the thing. And then I turned away from it to try to the car spun out.

3:09:28And I ended up on the other side of the street, where I knew there was like a cow pasture. And I was like, well, what's the worst thing that could happen there? Well, it was pretty bad. There was a telephone pole. And I hit the telephone pole. My passenger took the impact and my wife was thrown from the car. When I came to, all I could hear was the horn. My hearing's going to have glass in my mouth. And I'm injured as well. I climb out of the car and it's dark. It's really dark. But somebody's already arrived at the XDA from Ventura County, who did all the drunk driving laws and put those on the books.

3:10:07And he was the first person on the scene. I was right near the fire department. They showed up shortly afterwards. But when I jumped out of the car, I came running around to see what happened. I saw my wife on the asphalt. She'd been thrown from the vehicle. And I threw myself onto, you know, onto my knees on the pavement. And I found myself in that moment, asking for the one thing that mattered, which was just life. She looked dead. And I just, in that moment, I dug down, I begged her to come back to life. And I just said, I will give anything for life. Just in any form, I'll take it. And in that moment, she came back to life.

3:11:00It was like, the life came back into her. Okay, it was a completely fucked up scene. My other passenger is dying in the car, or dead. And my, the police are suddenly there. And next thing I know, I'm in jail.

3:11:19And suddenly, you like, suddenly I found myself in jail. I found myself guilty of manslaughter. And something that is absolutely irreversible happening, which is, you know, someone lost their life at my hand. And so after that, I, you know, I ended up, I found myself in jail and doing time. And suddenly, everything that had come was gone. Like, everything that I had made gone, it all went, you know, out. Got all that money you made. All that to the settlement is it didn't have time to spend it. Did you have time to register that it was there and it was gone? Because it does it. It was like it was not real.

3:12:08And, um, and then you find yourself in jail. And, uh, and and suddenly everything is gone. The career is gone. Everybody stops calling. It's over. Two, number two hit films, it doesn't matter. It's all over. In fact, it was right in the middle of the publicity on bail wolf. It was just toward the end of it. And, um, it was, it's the most horrible thing that that has ever happened to me. And I, um, and I found myself then alone in jail, uh, incarcerated. Um, uh, uh, alone with my remorse and regret and, uh, and really getting existential about things. Really like, um, coming to appreciate.

3:13:09You know, simple existence is the best thing there is. It's the people don't appreciate what we have. You don't appreciate it until it's gone. And it is, can go like, first of all, we live in bodies of glass. My wife was horribly injured and, uh, you know, and it has been a decade to, you know, to not just rebuild our lives, but to, you know, for her to come back to health even. Um, what it did though, you know, as, as because I would do anything to to reverse that, to reverse what happened, I would give anything to do it. And I don't say this lightly, but having said that, I'm kind of grateful as well.

3:14:05Because I was, like a sleep walking through life. And, um, it wasn't until that happened that I completely, like, it changed how I see everything. It was like my third eye opened up. I don't view anything the same way. I, you know, once you've been incarcerated and you've been deprived of, of everything and you have a lot of time to think and be existential, you come out of that, at least I came out of that experience and, you know, I, I looked at a tree and I was like, okay, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. I hope I never not feel this way, this, um, this appreciation for a cloud.

3:14:55You know, uh, to be able, like, when you're imprisoned, to be able to pet a cat, for example, it's so simple. It's such a nothing thing, you think. Okay, to be able to pet an animal is like a gift. The simplest things are gifts. When I was in jail, it was also a little bit like a comedy. You know, you have people walking in circles and, you know, everybody's trying to control the outside. So you start really seeing human behavior upfront. I mean, when I was in jail, uh, you know, they're literally during the Academy Awards, it's on the TV and the tank. And I'm watching him win like, for Django.

3:15:38I'm like for Django. So while Quentin is like at the height of things, I'm pretty much at the bar. I'm watching through bars. Not only that, but Greg Shapiro, who produced the rules of attraction for me, my producer, who came and visited me with Robin, Robin Wright in the days that followed. He won for zero dark 30. And so I'm like, they're like, like, to be taken from one point where you feel like you're at the top. And you're like, oh, you think you're, uh, you think you understand things. No, I take you and put you at the bottom. But let me tell you something. In that moment, I was sitting on the asphalt.

3:16:19My wife came back to life. I immediately knew what I had to say as a filmmaker after that. It was like, whatever had, whatever cynicism I had had, you know, uh, about the movie and not making it, it just went away. Right. Yeah. It evaporated. It evaporated.

3:16:47And the ecstatic experiences, and they were ecstatic that I had in jail, were like, I mean, you see things kind of for real. When you see somebody, you know, get hanged by their celly, uh, in a cell. Um, or when you see, when you know that, you know, uh, oh, that El Salvadorian MS -13 Hitman guy, he's going to kill that, that gay dude. He's going to kill him in the yard. I'll go lock myself in my cell. I'm like, literally, I'll go lock myself in. You know, shut the door because you know, shit is going to go down. Jesus. And so like, like, that was like every day. And so suddenly it was like, you know, and, and also you really know who stands with you after something horrible happens.

3:17:39And, you know, and like John Langley, uh, our customer from video archives ended up being like, like when I, like I said, when I was in jail, he loaned me money and he, uh, gave me my first job when I got out. That was our customer who did that. And so, um, like, I value our customers. Yeah. I have to like, and, uh, and, and, and, and especially John and his family and Maggie, who I, like, it really is, I, I talk about John a lot, but really Maggie. She was really my big champion, I think. And so, um, anyhow, I, uh, um, you know, what it taught me actually, because I was a filmmaker and I was up my own ass most of the time.

3:18:28But what it kind of taught me was, you know, be compassionate to other people, because you might not know it, but they might be going through shit in their lives. You know, and God forbid it'd be something health related, which is almost out of your control. But, you know, people are suffering and people are struggling. And I used to be a lot more cavalier about people and kind of fuck with people and, uh, um, and be forceful people. And not really care as much. Now I'm acutely aware of, um, of people and, you know, what they may be going through. It's just to think this is the best way to wrap this up.

3:19:08Perfect. Gentlemen, thank you very much. This is, uh, awesome conversation. This is really great. Thank you for lending us. Three and a half hours. I think it's flew by. Thank you. Oh my god. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I actually thought, oh, I guess he's wrapping it up quick. No, I think it's three hours. I thought it was like nine, nine, minutes and 15 minutes. I thought it was like 90 minutes. No, no, there it is. The video archives podcast, um, on, on Patreon. Patreon love Patreon. Patreon .com slash the video. If you just like a video, head to podcast .com. It'll be beautiful. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.

3:19:42Thank you. Thank you.