Oh, Rob Lowe, here we go. Here we are. What's up, man? It's good to be, I was just saying it's good to be in like a proper studio and- Have you been completely locked down the entire time? Completely. It's outrageous. We're five months in now. When does- Well, what have you ever thought this? And if you just said this is what 2020 is going to have, I mean, you wouldn't have left the New Year's party. You would have never believed it. You would have won. How does this happen? Like, is there a war? Like, what happens? What takes place?
And it's funny how easily, not easily, but it's just, yeah, no, this is what we're dealing with. I mean, I guess everybody, one has to adapt, so that's the good news. Have you been going to restaurants at all? I've gone out to a restaurant maybe three times. Have you gone to the ones where they wear the mask and then the shield over their face as well? Yeah, it's going to do welding in the kitchen.
It's so strange. But it's better than nothing. So you just sort of adapt. I know. I mean, who knows when it'll, I mean, at least some people feel like they're going back to work. I mean, I think we're going to go back on my show on 911 Lone Star pre-production on the 17th. Now, how will they do that? Well, that's the thing is that's a big show. I mean, it's not a game show. It's like adventures and rescues and
pyrotechnics and stunt people, it's just huge in scope. So it really is the thing, if we can pull that off, that'll be good. But I think the plan is, well, one thing that's interesting is just how you run a set is going to change, they tell me. So you'll come in in the morning, everybody will get tested.
And then everybody's segregated. So you go to the set and the director and the actors will rehearse. That's it. Nobody else there. Then they leave, have to leave. And then the lighting crew will come in and they light alone, just the lighting crew. And then they leave. And then all the production teams get their moment to do what they need to do, but they're doing it alone.
Well, they have a test now that the White House is using, and it takes 20 minutes. It's an actual test. You go there, so you could find instantaneously. See, we're doing one here, the one that you got is an antibody test. That takes 10 minutes, and it shows active antibodies, which means you got the disease five, six days ago or whatever, and your body's fighting it off. It's currently in your system, and it also shows another indicator whether or not you fought it off a long time ago.
And then there's the swab. The swab takes 24 to 48 hours, depending on the lab. And then there's real worry and concern like, are you contagious during that time? Like if you just got it today, can you give it to someone today? They don't know. So until this thing happens with the White House, the 20 minute one that they have, until that's nationwide, we're fucked. We're in a weird situation where everybody has to be really careful.
Yeah, and you know, it's funny. I have no issue wearing masks that I don't really get that thing, the people. I mean, I get the freedom. It's definitely better than not going out. Yeah, and listen, I mean, I feel way safer wearing it. Way safer. And, you know, celebrities should be thrilled wear masks.
Yeah, right. I mean, you know, listen, now Leonardo DiCaprio can go out completely, you know, with even better disguises. You'd be amazed at how much people recognize you though, even with a mask on. Especially as soon as you start talking, they'll recognize you. Well, in particular for you, your voice. Yeah. Everybody knows your voice. So you can't get in a, you know,
But I'm a fan of the bandana. I like feeling like a bandit. But does all the bad shit come underneath the bandana? I don't think- You're gonna be sealed at the bottom? A bandana, I do not think is for you. I think it's for other people. And then the droplets, if you're getting droplets, I don't think you're swooping them under. I think you are breathing it through. What am I a doctor?
I know, but you're sounding good. You're like your Fauci of the Ring. Thank you. The Fauci of the Octagon. I don't have one of those N95 Masto. I have hundreds of them. Do you? Hundreds. Are they the best?
I'll tell you what, they're the hardest to breathe in. They are the ones that when you put on your, you definitely notice that you're sucking wind. But yeah, my wife was all over the, like if there's anything to be bought on Amazon at any time for any excuse.
She's the fucking Maven, so the minute this happens, she's bought every M95 mask stockpile. Unclick is very addictive. It is. It's like, maybe I do need 50 boxes of toothpaste. It's right there. It's right there. Why wouldn't I do it? I'll find a place to put it. I'll take that. Yeah. So when your show comes back, people will still be allowed to go home, though, and go places.
Yeah, I haven't heard any talk of, you know, sort of quarantining or 14 day. I haven't heard any of that stuff. Although I have friends who have gone to Europe to do big movies and they've had to do that. Yeah, I've heard that. Like they keep you in a hotel. You can't leave the hotel. Everybody who works in the thing has to only hang out with everybody that's on the project. Here's what I understand. So the NBA is doing the bubble thing.
where they all live in like a commune, a glorified Disney-esque commune, but the NFL isn't gonna do it, apparently. Yeah, it's too hard to get the hose in there. I was thinking, you know, chicken wings. It's hard to get you, when you want those chicken wings, you gotta go out to get them when you do. Yeah, you gotta, whatever you want, if you need something. What you're gonna do. Are you a fan of the baseball with the crowd noise?
I'm not a fan of fake noise. I hate that some cars do that. Some cars with turbocharged engines, they put fake engine noise through the speakers. Oh, Jesus. Exactly. I never knew that. All my illusions are shattered. I think BMW does it. What? I'm sorry to say. Are the speakers on the outside of the car? Are they on the inside? It's through the stereo speakers.
Even if the speakers turned off? Yeah, it's an option that you have to turn off. You have to go into the settings and turn off. See if you can find that. Oh, no, I have a BMW. I know. It's outside. It's like it's enhanced sound. Maybe it's not for your model. I'm pretty sure they do it for the M4 though. Yeah, it's one of the primary complaints of legitimate automobile journalists. The real automobile enthusiasts hate it.
Well, of course they fucking hate it. This is like you tell me that Santa Claus doesn't exist. It's not necessary either. Like I have a Tesla and it doesn't make any sound. It's still awesome. Yeah. Oh, that thing is, the only problem with the Tesla is I feel like I'm every television development executive. Right. When I, you know what I mean? It's the, it's like the, what the Armani suit was in the 80s. Yeah. It means I'm in show business.
Yeah, it's definitely a signal. You're letting everybody know you're also really concerned about the environment. You're a really good person. But the other side of it is you also have one of the most badass pieces of equipment. Would it kill them, though, to do a luxurious interior? Would it kill them? Well, there's about weight. What is that about? That's a good question. I think it's just...
First of all, it's an American made company like everything's made here and I think that Scaling everything up and it's been a real problem. It's been a real problem meeting the demand And I think they just kind of came out with like a reasonable interior and put it together But there's a company called what is that company called again? They make a car called the apex
They essentially they're right next to the Tesla factory and they'll in California and they'll take your Tesla. They bring it over there and they soup it up. They put a wider track. They widen the fenders. They put a better suspension. That's it right there. S apex. So they take it.
and they completely redo that. Look at that. Yeah, dope carbon fiber. What? Oh, okay, there's an interior. That's a car interior. I love that you love cars. One of my favorite subjects. I mean, I love them and I know nothing about them. It's like, I also kind of like watches, but I don't know any, like, I just know what I like. Like the movements. I don't know that I love those dorks. Is it the H65 movement? Is the bezel infused with
Whatever the fuck. So throw that in the other word, bezel. What's the name of the company again? Unplugged performance. So they'll do anything in the interior you want. They'll do a diamond stitched leather. They'll do carbon fiber, replace all the plastic with carbon fiber. Like your car guy? I was impressed with the car collection. A company here. Yeah. Were you ever tempted to get one of those tricked out escalators? The factory's right around the corner from here where the escalators are like a living room. Like I went in there and saw the one they were making for Tom Brady.
And it's like the interior of a private plane, but in an Escalade. Oh, okay. So they do, like, gut it and then just redo it like some very swank interior. Yeah, it's like a living room. It's literally a living room. What I've been looking at lately is earth roamers. Do you know what an earth roamer is?
Earth, Romer. Yes. I have been an apocalypse guy for quite a while. So you're in your all your glory. I have a... This year I told you so a moment. Well, I'm not necessarily, I'm not like a prepper or anything like that, but I'm like, if the shit is left... Wait, what's the difference between a prepper? I don't have enough food.
Okay. I have a free, I have freezers filled with elk meat and stuff like that. So I kind of have enough food, but if the power goes out, I'm kind of fucked. That's an earth rumor. Those motherfuckers you can live in and they can drive like a thousand miles plus. Yeah. And they do the interior. Well, there's different scales, but some of them go up to like $1.5 million and the interior is insanity.
an earth rumor. I'm literally taking notes. You can go anywhere with these. They also have an air suspension that will automatically level your vehicle. So like say if you're on some fucked up like kind of terrain that's not level, it'll level it out so you can sleep well.
The interior is like the interior of a really nice tour bus, televisions, satellite radio, audio, internet. Who makes, I mean, it's companies. It's literally just earth rumour. They make the whole thing. They start, the base is a very large Ford pickup truck. They take like a huge diesel pickup truck and then they put this insane cabin in the back of it and there's a bunch of different levels that they do it. You know, you have like a,
reasonable level for like one person to be like camping and then you could literally bring your whole family and you're living like you're in a private jet. Wow. And it can drive over everything. That's the other thing. It's like a legitimate off-road vehicle. You can go over a fucking mountain and that thing.
We know in Santa Barbara, where I live, we had these terrible fires and floods and mudslides, too. You have the mudslides, killed 23 people. I knew someone had died. Yeah, and as did I. Crazy. Crazy in our house. Yeah, the people, so you imagine you go to sleep at night.
You know that there's gonna be rain, whatever, and you go to sleep at night, and next thing you know, your house is obliterated. Yeah, instantly. The sheriffs came to us to tell us about different evacuation zones. And I said, and then I know all these guys really well, so just level with me. What's like the worst thing that's gonna happen? Like the absolute doomsday scenario you guys worried about. And they're like, well, we're worried about the entire mountain going all the way to the freeway.
Great. Thanks for sharing. We're going to be fine. And that's exactly what happened. And what it taught me was you truly cannot comprehend like the power
of nature. Like when people say, California could fall off into the ocean, you go, that's not good. I'm telling you, it could. We could wake up one day and be like, you know, Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica? Yeah, that's the ocean now. You'd be like, oh, bullshit. That's nothing. I'm telling you, based on what I lived through, the mind, it's an intersection I try by every day, but every day.
If you said, okay, tomorrow night, at midnight, there's gonna be a 45-foot wall right here of debris, of homes, of boulders, the size of a semi-truck cab, you'd be like, well, shit, that's fucking impossible. From where? Where are the boulders coming from? Where's all that? That's what happened. You can't imagine it. Now, were you in your house when this happened?
I was in Vegas with my wife, my son Matthew was home. Whoa. He thought he heard the most radical thunder he'd ever heard in his life. How old is he? He was 22 at the time. And he's like a prepping like, he's an outdoorsman. So if there was any one of the family to be home, it would have been Matthew. That's what I would have wanted there. And also he thought it was daylight. He woke up and thought it was already heat over slept.
because what the fires from all of the propane explosions had lit the sky up so it looked like daylight. And then he called me and I got on the scanner, the police scanner and the stuff that you could hear was just unbelievable. I mean, it was a pandemonium.
Yeah, that's a, it's such a beautiful area. Santa Barbara and Montecito. It's so gorgeous because of those mountains, but that's also what makes it vulnerable if there's a fire, right? Yeah. Because all the stuff that kind of holds the mountain together and keeps the erosion from happening, all gets burnt up. And then that's what they said was, that was the problem. Like this was a one, we had a once in at least a hundred year fire, the area behind our house hadn't burned in over a hundred years.
and a once in probably maybe they think a thousand year rain event, all within six weeks of each other. So one of the things that was fascinating to me was the amount of ash, because I went on a hike afterwards and there was at least six inches of ash. When you see the astronauts footprints on the moon, that's what it looked like all up.
all as far as you can see in the mountains around Santa Barbara. And then when we got that rain with the ash, it created like a viscous lubricant that just pride these boulders out. So that's one of the reasons why these massive, massive, massive boulders that you would think would be soldered into the Earth's core, which is like boop, boop, and just washed out.
It's so hard to imagine because if you drive up the 101 and you see those beautiful hills, you just see beautiful hills. But what that is is evidence that the earth is moving. That's what those hills are. You're safer in Kansas, but then again, you're not because then there's tornadoes. There's no free lunch, man. Oh, look at this. Yeah, I know that house.
Yeah, it's crazy when you see that like six feet of mud literally poured into people's homes. So just like the people that were on the bottom floor of the house were just destroyed immediately. Yeah. I mean, you just... How many people died in this? 23. What a crazy way to go, too. Yeah. I mean, in the stories, everybody's story is more tragic than look at that.
Well, one thing that this pandemic taught a lot of people is that what you think of as being static and unchanging that the world that we live in is basically pretty stable. It's not a small event, and it's not small, but a virus that kills less than 1% of the population can completely obliterate the world as you know it. And that's minor.
in comparison to a solar flare, or an asteroid impact, or a super volcano. Like if Yellowstone goes, that's the real concern. And that's another thing I used to think, ah, that's the stuff I watch at night by the fireplace. It's my ancient alien shit. That's not really happening. And now, based on what I've experienced, anything could happen. Well, Yellowstone definitely could go. They say it goes every six to 800,000 years, and the last time it went was more than 600,000 years ago.
Can you imagine? They would obliterate everybody in the continent. There'd be no one left. The people in like maybe Africa, some in New Zealand, some people would survive, but they would experience nuclear winter. So crops would die off, the temperature would radically reduce, the entire sky would be filled with ash. It's a super volcano.
Those caldera super volcanoes, they've exploded throughout history and killed massive, massive numbers of human beings. They think that there was one in Indonesia somewhere around 60 to 70,000 years ago that killed off most of the population of the world and left as few as 7,000 human beings. Really? Yeah. That's just 70,000 years ago.
Well, you've had like Graham Hitchcock and people on Hancock, right? And Randall Carlson. And that is that part of that narrative, too? Well, they've concentrated on asteroid impacts, and particularly the asteroid impacts that are proven now that they believe ended the Ice Age. And they also believe restarted civilization.
because they think that there was some incredibly complex civilizations that we're not totally aware of other than some of the structures they left behind like go Beckley Tappi and some of the ancient Egyptian structures. But there's a clear indication that something happened both from an archaeological perspective and also from a geologist perspective when they do these core samples, they find that
somewhere around between, you know, somewhere in the 12,000 years ago range, there was a massive impact because in all over the world, because they find this trite night, which is this nuclear glass everywhere. They also find iridium, which is really common in space, but not very common.
on Earth. It's a level they see in this core samples. It's a very consistent level. And they find that nuclear glass, that's the same glass, like when the Trinity Project, when they first blew up the first nuclear bomb, that's one of the things that they found was this nuclear glass. And it's just this incredible force to causes the sand to turn into glass. And they find this all over the world at around 12,000 years.
So there's a lot of awareness today of all the near-Earth objects and when Earth in its orbit comes in contact with these consistent near-Earth objects.
something probably hit Earth in multiple places, like more than one object somewhere in that range and ended the ice age. They think it happened twice. The speculation is it happened somewhere around 12,000 and maybe again somewhere around 10,000 years ago.
It's crazy. It is crazy. I love all that stuff. I live for that shit. I love it too. I live for it, but I don't because I don't want it to happen again. No. So it's like I get excited, but then I don't ever, the worst is if I listen to Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and then I smoke pot and go to sleep. Oh, then the head.
You should record those dreams. Oh, yeah, if you could. You should write them as teleplays. It's terrifying. It's just we're so vulnerable. I mean, we're vulnerable period, right? I mean, I'm 52. How old do you know? 56. You'll look great. Thank you. You too. But we're almost dead. Let's be honest. It's time we got left. If everything goes great.
No, no, we're going to live forever. We're going to have that pill that it's going to be announced next week. That might be the worst thing that could happen. You might want to go quietly in your sleep rather than live for 500 years and see the horrors that humanity turns into. I don't want to like if my body breaks down. I'm so physical. I love doing my stuff. I don't think I'd be one of those people like, you know what? His mind is so sharp, though.
It's like, well, fuck, that's great. Meanwhile, I can't fucking walk. You know, it's like, I want to be able to do my thing. Yes, yes. I want a sharp mind. Let's stipulate that. What do you do to maintain yourself? What do you do to keep the machine working? Well, the number one thing was, you know, I stopped drinking years and years and years ago. How many years? 30. Oh, so you got way ahead of the game. So I'm way ahead. I'm way ahead. So I don't do any of that.
Wow, that's a lot of discipline. But it's not, though, because the minute you realize your discipline has nothing to do with it, that's the only way you can do it. Because the whole point is, if I had one
Let's say you broke out, because I was like, beer. Beer was good. Well, there it is. What do you got there? Whiskey. Whiskey was never my thing. I'd be okay if it were tequila, that'd be a different thing. And also it was the 80s. So if you had a kamikaze, remember those drugs? Yeah, I do remember those. Like it would go.
Then I'd be like, you know what? It would be really good to get. It would be some coke. That would be great. That would be great to bounce it out. Yeah, you just bounce out, and you know that. It's a big deal. It's a big deal, and it's good for you. It's a rock star coke. That's tough, not even bad for you. That's what I'm saying. It's not even bad for you. Mick Jagger does it, okay? Look at Keith Richards. He's fine. Look at Keith Richards. Look at Jack Nicholson. Look at, I mean... Those guys are doing great. Look at their do it. They're the biggest stars in the world. Jack Nicholson is fat, too. How bad could it be? How bad could it be?
It's good for your memory. Probably. And it's really good if you want to talk a lot. And successful people do it. A lot of successful people do it. And it's not addicting. No! They just enjoy it. Yes. So that was what we thought. You know, that's the Gordon Gekko era. And then...
the hounds of hell will be released. Once I got that good little concoction going, that good little mixy mixer, son? Well, it had to be hard to be a young, really famous, really good looking guy during the age of no internet. And, you know, the world was a wild place. I mean, you were really famous in the 80s. I wouldn't trade it.
for anything. Look, all the mistakes that I made, all the things that I learned, got me to where I am today, and I could not be happier, and I needed some fucking comeuppance, and I needed some of that humbling and stuff. On the other side of it is like, what's the point of being fucking famous today?
Really, I don't know if there's a point. It's so dangerous. I know, right? I don't know. I mean, forget the lack of privacy, the lack of like crazy fun, which you can't have. Right. Everybody's lying in wait.
I saw an article written about Leonardo DiCaprio and it was just about how he dates young girls and how gross it is that he's dating and grows 25. Like 25 is a woman you fuck. What is wrong? He's a good looking man. He's wealthy and happy and successful. Oh my God. He dates someone who's young and vibrant. There must be something wrong with him.
Meanwhile, if a woman does it, nobody gives a shit. They celebrate her. You go Cape Beckinsdale. You go take those 21 year olds down. That's right. Rope them, wrangle them. Rope them and go. And then send them off. Kick them in the ass and pack their lunch and send them off. Send them off.
It should be equal opportunity everywhere. That's not though. When it's a woman, they look at it like she's just doing her thing. She's having a good time, but man, it's like he's abusing his power. The Leonardo has power over those young ladies. I figure if you're Leo or Bieber or any of those young, this is part of the coming of age.
Yes. Figuring is figuring out what you want in life. And when you do that, you're gonna do weird shit, good shit, bad shit. Well, if anybody would try to judge someone like that, like Bieber in particular, right? Because he was really, really young when he got famous, man, it's insane. And you know that whole thing, that theory that, however old you are when you get famous, that freezes you in carbonite emotionally and intellectually. Well, that makes sense with child stars, right?
Anybody, I mean, yes, but anyway, it's also that thing of like, if you ever noticed that before like you get famous, the people who were famous to you then,
fast forward 100 years or whatever, and maybe they haven't done as much and you have, but when you meet them, you think they're the most famous, crazy, successful person. It's the same type of thing. If I were to meet Dr. Smith from Lost in Space, I'd be like, no fucking way, doctors. So it's funny how time. I met Lee Majors. That's what I'm saying. I was like, it's a $6 million man. I can't believe it. He's real. Right? Yeah.
Yeah, Cheech and Chong when I met those guys. I was like, I can't believe they're real. Can't believe I'm meeting them.
Yeah. You get frozen in your own perspective. Well, when you get older and you become famous, very few people can have this conversation, right? But when you get famous and you meet famous people, to me, it's still weird. Like when I met you today, I was like, oh, hello, Rob Lowe. I've seen you in movies, but I'm more normal with it than when I was young. When I was young and I would meet, like, I remember the first time I was on the set of news radio and I met Phil Hartman.
I was so weirded out. And I was like, he's right there. This is correct, because I hadn't met a lot of famous people back then, only like a small handful. And so to be like working with him and sitting there, I'm like, I've seen you on TV. By the way, I've seen you in the movies. I'm great with Phil. He was amazing. He was, I had my scariest, one of my scariest professional moments involved Phil Hartman. I was hosting the show on Saturday Live and Phil had a character called Mace.
that he did, reoccurring character. And Mase was a hard-bitten convict, and he lived in it. Obviously, he was serving life. And so whenever they had pretty boy hosts, they would throw, of course, me into a cell with Masey, turn around their chicken legs. So that was the predicate of the... And I just remember Opera Po of Nothing. It was the week that the Lombata dance was a big deal. That tells you how long it was.
I forgot about that. Yeah, so Mason and I were doing the Lombata in a prison cell, and the whole sketch built towards a punchline. And for whatever reason, I blew the setup line. Like blue blew it. Like there's now no end. There we go. Look at him. Hey, look at you chicken legs.
Um, and so there was no, so I had to ad lib something really, really, really, really quickly. It felt like time stretched out and his eyes got huge and I, I ad libs something and it worked and it got a really big laugh. And I think that, um, that's when what sort of sealed my relationship with Lauren Michaels, cause I was able to, I came back backstage and was like, hmm, you're really Houdini, aren't you?
That's gotta be terrifying to do that show, to do it live. It's the best. If I could have been a not ready for primetime player, I mean, that would have been the dream. I think that's the dream. How much preparation do you have to do for that show? How many times do you rehearse one of those sketches?
Well, what people don't really realize about being a host is it's the host show. You can take as much control over it as you want. And most people don't. I've just been stupid and naive did and always did and sat in on the writers all night, right all night with all the different writers going from room to room. It was the fucking heaven. But I was an SNL nerd. So it was like. That's cool. And then you do the dress rehearsal, of course, right before air.
And it's a full show. It's exactly the same show. Full audience, it's the whole thing, and then they cut things or not. One of my favorite things that got cut and Will Farrell and I played on colleges who would deliver the bad news that people had stage four cancer, but only with our mouths full of food.
So be like, that was, that was the, it was, yeah, he'd be like, oh yeah, I'm sorry, I'm eating chili. Woo, woo, this is hot, it's burning the roof of my mouth. Sorry, so sorry. You have stage four cancer. Oh, wow, so hot and spicy. That was the, that was the total predicate of, of the sketch. It was like so weird and so dark. I, it made it to, to air. I mean, to dress. Wow. Really crazy. Must've been a rough week. It's a rough week. I don't think cancer's funny.
Yeah, you got a point there. Phil hated the competitive aspect of the show because he said that people were just mean to each other. That's one of the things that he enjoyed about sitcoms is that everybody was kind of working together. He said one of the things about when you do SNL, everyone's battling to get their sketch on.
So they would sort of sabotage each other and there was a lot of like backstabbing shit going on and he didn't like it. And he was really hesitant to be friendly with people in the set. Like when he first got on the sitcom, it took a while for him to loosen up and realize this other is a different thing because that environment was every man for himself.
Yeah, it's funny. Ensembles are funny that way. There is an element of teamwork. It's like any team. There's an element of teamwork that's intrinsic, and you want, and it's great, and hopefully it's there. But then there's that element of competitiveness, even with your sort of band of brothers, but that gets toxic in a hurry.
With the wrong culture and and maybe the wrong people in it, but but SNL it's like it is what it is There's only so many slots for sketches and there are only so many people writing and The best is when people try to tank them in the read-through like you read all of them on Wednesday a big huge stack of them and People will like laugh really really hard at their own stuff or like roll their eyes It's it's fun to watch
Yeah, that's basically what he's talking about. That always made me really uncomfortable, the fake producer laugh. Like when you'd be doing like the third run through and like, you're dead. But people don't even know what we're talking about. So like when you do a table read or you do a run through. We've done the most unrelatable podcast.
Ever, just now. It's been great. It's famous and young and good looking. Oh, everybody knows. And Doomsday Prepping. And Earth Roamers across the brain box. Earth Roamers, yes. This is great. You know, there's nobody quite like a man of the people, Joe Rogan and Rothlow podcast. Let's face it. When you do a run through, folks, if you do a sitcom, you act out the show. And they want the actors to feel like what they're doing is funny. Because there's nothing weird or then doing something with no audience and not hearing any laughter at all.
So the producers would laugh, but they would do this fake laugh, and it would throw you off so hard, because it's jarring. It's just so phony. I did a sitcom when I was 15.
It was so long ago that there were only 62 shows on television period. Holy shit. 62. That was it. This is like a fucking fox. Not 62 channels. 62 shows. 62 shows. By the way, how do you think I remember that there were because we were number 62? We were literally the lowest rated show on television. What was it called?
a new kind of family. Might add something new with that exciting title. That makes you just... I just sit up and take notice, don't you? A new kind... What kind of family is it? It's a new kind. Oh, well, I'm gonna watch then. What did they mean by a new kind? It was...
a revolutionary concept at the time, that it was two divorced women, pooling their resources. There you go. Look at you. And I'm sprouting a wonderful Karen Carpenter. Look at that hair, bro. It's Karen Carpenter. Look at the wings. I know. Was this your first acting project on television? Yeah, it was 15. Wow. So you never had a normal life? Not really.
So the new kind of family was bad. It was bad. And it was opposite 60 minutes, which was the number one show. And by the way, it was so horribly rated, we would get 19 million people watching. That's crazy.
And it was a disaster. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that insane? Wow. That's amazing. 19 million. That would be the number one show on television today. Oh, there's nothing that even comes close. That's so crazy. Isn't that amazing? That was a huge disaster. 19 million people. Wow. I'm the king of the new normal. Like, I'm on shows that get
bad ratings that then become the new normal. I can't believe it. I'm just right there at those thresholds. You were hitting your app. You could say that to someone and not say what ranking it was and say when I was 15, I was on a show that had 19 million people watching it. They'd be like, holy shit, what was it? I know. That's the biggest show ever. Yeah. It's like a number one show today. What is the top show? Modern Family, is that number one? What's the number one sitcom today?
Do you would have been, well, Big Bang has been off for what a year or two years? It would definitely be big bang. And they'd get like, I think, eight million. I think what it was. It's shocking now. Well, somewhere on Netflix, they're popping up now. Right, that's the problem. Netflix won't tell you shit. They don't tell you nothing.
They say, well, you're doing great. Yeah, or they don't tell you. They don't tell you. Yeah, and then they cancel you. Yeah, they like you. They say, we're really happy. Like, what does that mean? We're really, really happy. We're really happy. And like how happy? Yeah, no one knows. Really happy. It's a lot of guesswork involved. That's insane, though. That's so many people. And it was the last rated show. Crazy.
the last rate of show, and then they figured, they shut us down to rejigger it, because they figured they could make it better somehow and stop the audience's slide. And we came back and that the other family had been replaced. What? Yeah, they replaced it with that saying anything and made it an African American family figure that would be more interesting for the storytelling or what have you. Same name? No, they at least played different people. NCIS, and it gets 15 million. Wow, and that's number one. That's the number one show.
Number one, buy a long shot. Wow. Wow. That's crazy. So when we came back and had the new cast member, the daughter was Janet Jackson, which was fun.
Okay, so you were still on it? I was still on it, yeah. And Janet was all of like 12 or 13 and so she was your sister? She played the other, she was in the other family, the sharing house, yeah. Okay, so there was two families and one was African American and one was your family. Yeah, that was the change that the network made over a week.
And they didn't tell anybody? No, they just, you just turned it on one week. And now what? Why did they do that? Oh, I love network executives. There are people that are making creative decisions that have never been creative in their fucking life. And it's amazing. And they're out there pushing buttons and pulling strings.
No, Aaron Sorkin tells a great story about the pilot of the West Wing, which is sort of, I mean, he wrote a great script, so it's one of the great pilots. And there's a through-line of refugees from Cuba, braving.
All odds on rickety boats to come to America for America's promise. And that's sort of a thread that's playing through it. And so in the White House, we're talking about it and President Bartlett talks about it in a way to inspire people. And it's really, really beautiful. And the network was like, listen, we love it. We think the script is great. But we think at the end that the characters need to get into a boat and go to Cuba and pull them out of the water.
You just know that's true, because you don't just know that like, oh my God. Because really all you guys are doing is talking about it. I mean, don't you think it's more dramatic if it's actually on the wall? And you know, you want to see those people pulled out. You know, we think the script's pretty good the way it is. And what did Sarkin say to this? He didn't do it, thank God. He'd take deep breaths. He never took a network note, not once. Wow, that's why it was good. There was never a representative for the network ever on the set, ever not once, ever.
That's very fortunate. News Radio, the show that I was on with Phil wasn't successful. It was a great show though. We were number 88 in the ratings and my friend Lou Morton, he was one of the writers and every week he would come in with a new t-shirt on where he would write the number on the shirt because we moved around like nine times. And this was pre-internet so you had a look at TV God to find out when News Radio was on.
You know, it's like one night we're Tuesday and then we're Sunday. And so he shows up with a t-shirt on the set 88. I'm like fucking 88. He's like 88. I'm like 88. We're the 88th show. Jesus. I was 62.
Yeah, but 88 was like a million people watching. Back then, it was not. It's not, it's not good. It's not 90 million. And see, but look at all, it led you to where you are today. That's the thing is all that stuff leads, leads somebody if they're, if they're paying attention to where you want to be. If you keep moving.
Yeah. You can't be stuck and you can't be scared. Yes. You cannot be stuck and scared. That's the thing about show business, right? It's like this weird world of, I wonder how this is going to be received. I wonder how this is going to work. Then you're fucked. You're done though. Once you get into that head, you're done. Yeah. Do your best and if it doesn't work, shrug your shoulders. Move on. Keep moving. Yeah. If they let you. Yeah. If they let you.
That's the weird one, right, when you watch a movie and you're like, oh, where the fuck did that guy go? Like, who's that guy from the mummy? What the fuck's his name? Brendan Fraser. Yes, that guy. Fucking guy was huge. Oh, but Brendan Fraser crashed my Saturday Night Live closing. You know at the end of the day, good night, everybody. This has been great. Thanks for watching. And everybody's there. He showed up and was screaming the name of his movie that was opening that weekend.
Bedazzled! Bedazzled! No! I was like, what the fuck? What's happening? Why are you... Brendan Frazier? What are you doing here? Bedazzled! Whoa. Don't know what to this day don't know what it was about. Maybe that's what sunk him. Bedazzled! Maybe that's what it did to him. It could have been. That mentality. Like that's not a healthy mindset. I think what happened probably is they were gonna work him into a sketch that got cut.
to promote bedazzled, probably some studio shit, some back room, smoke filled room shit, and then he was like, well, I'm gonna go out there. And he's probably a little drunk. I'm gonna yell bedazzled anyway. Damn. Dazzled. But that guy was a giant movie star.
He was huge. Massive. Huge. And the mummy was massive. Massive. I just watched it. I told you, my, me and my family watched Tommy Boy. No. We went on, we were doing family movie night because of the quarantine. We watched like almost every night. We watched a new movie. I watched all the Adam Sandlin movies, watched a shitload of Eddie Murphy movies. We watched the mummy, watched a couple of the mummies and we watched Tommy Boy.
How did Tommy Boy stand up? Suckin' holds up. Does it? Holds up. Funny movie, Matt. Funny movie. Oh, that's awesome. Goddamn, Chris Farley was good. Oh, bro. He was an and a great actor. Among all my regrets about Chris' passing was where he would have gone as an actor.
because he was cute, as spades, spades the same. They're acting in that movie, forget the funny, which is great. But they're legitimate acting moments in that movie. Yes. And I think that's why it has the staying power, but Chris was really gonna develop into a real serious actor, a good one I think. He was such a fucking powerhouse. When he would go ape shit, look at you guys. Look at those two idiots.
I like in the part of the movie where Spade looks at me and goes, hey, Lee Harvey. My hair doesn't look like Lee Harvey Oswald. He was awesome, man. That's the cow tipping scene, which I pitched to the writers. They had never heard of it and it made it into the movie. Who was your mom's slash girlfriend again? Oh, Derek. That's right.
Well, that was a great thing because we, you know, she's Bo Derek and her husband, John, famous John Derek, was very protective of her and she hadn't worked in a long time. And he made her cut all her hair off the day before she showed up on the set of Tommy boys. So what? We thought we were getting Bo Derek from 10 with the hair and she showed up with hair that's basically my length now.
because John made her do it. Why didn't he make her do it? I mean, you can do the math. He was like, I want you to keep you up in standing as riding horses with me. Don't need you to be a movie star again. But she was so lovely. She's the best. She's really smart.
really smart, just great woman. And I mean, I got to kiss Bo Derek. I mean, what, you know? I know, for people who don't know, like, what she was. Oh, my God. But she was the original white girl with cornrows. When it was OK, you couldn't get canceled for that. Yeah, she would have been she that she was canceled in the heartbeat. She was the original.
Gigi Hadid. How about that as a reference? Is that my cool and young now? I missed it. I've heard that name before, but Johnny knows her dad got sued because he built a house that's too big. With no permits. Yeah. No, no, I know. No, absolutely no permits.
It's way too big and the neighbors are worried it's going to fall on them. Yeah, exactly. Looks like a UFO. It's still there. Oh, yeah, of course. They haven't even figured out what to do with it. No, no. I think there's lawsuits. Oh, look at Bo back in the day. Whoo. How about the one on the left? Go to that one. Can't nips. Vam. Power Google. I'm going back. I'm going to go back and do a deeper dive on this.
She was hot as fuck. Well, perfect bone structure, right? Yeah, she was amazing. And Tommy, you know, the thing about Farley was he, he and Spade used to fight over me like I was the girl. Probably because my, let's face it, I kind of look like girl in certain lighting. And they'd be like, I heard you were in the Jacuzzi of the Rob last night.
Yeah, well we didn't call me well and they would they would like fight it was it was very funny and and sweet one night I took I took the gang out to Barbarian steakhouse in Toronto great steak. I know they're still there Chris ordered to bone in to bone in state Porterhouse steaks ate both of them but on top of each bite he put a cube of butter and
And when I looked at him like, what the fuck are you doing? He was like, it needs a hat. So if you want to put a hat on your steak, some people just genuinely don't give a fuck. No fuck's given. Yeah, obviously. Yeah, he's a wild man. I met him once on the set of news radio. He's partying with Andy Dick. Oh boy. He showed up gray like wet cardboard. He looked gray and I'm like, hey man,
He was gone. It was sad. It was weird. He had gray skin. And I remember thinking, Jesus Christ, Chris Farley has gray skin. Like, what's going on? Like, he was sweaty and just all fucked up. Yeah, he had major, major demons. And a lot of us really worked.
were worked out, but you know, some people can't, they can't make that leap, man. The thing about him, though, is, fucking, I always wonder about guys like that, that are so powerful. Like, is it the demons that made him so good? He was so good. So good. Where he would go ape shit. I mean, he had the fucking horsepower he had. It was so stunning. Like, when you have these scenes where he would just go fucking crazy, it was so fun.
And you would wonder, like, is that same thing what makes him? I mean, because it was so real. Is that what made him just go crazy with Coke and go crazy with everything else? I mean, I think like normal people, like, I don't see a lot of normal people drawn, but why would any normal person wanna be in entertainment? Right. Why would they? So I think just by default,
damaged people or people with more articulately, people with a hole to fill are drawn to entertainment to fill the hole. And some of the people have other damage too, rage, anger, whatever it is. But without a question, the more normal someone is, I know,
like, unfortunately, less entertaining. Yeah, right. Did you find that though? Yes. You're at dinner or whatever, and they're like, I'm this, and they're like, really, really nice, and really, really decent, and I go, I wish you were crazy and damaged like me, because then you really... We have a fun conversation. Really, buddy, yeah. Well, that's absolutely the case with comedians. Like, my favorite people are all completely fucked up.
Have you ever met? Can you think of a normal, decent, well-rounded, unfucked-up person who's hilarious? No.
I'll tell you real quick. Right? No. No. The humor is a big part of humor is saying things that are radically inappropriate. Right. But maybe accurate. Do you think that the culture where everybody is so sensitive today is, it's got to be hard to be. I think it's harder to be funny. Like you can make blazing sound. There's so many movies you couldn't make now. Right. Or jokes you couldn't tell. Sure. I mean, most of Monty Python's movies.
Well, I mean, so many. We were watching some old Eddie Murphy movies and just movies from the 2000s you couldn't make today. Eddie Murphy is still, I mean, but what a stud. Oh my God, he's amazing. We're talking about Norbit. Norbit is a massively underrated movie. That is a hilarious movie. And if I looked on Rotten Tomatoes, I think I got like 13% or something like that. I'm like,
I don't get it. How did you miss this? I was crying laughing, like wheezing at certain scenes. Nutty professor? Nutty professor two is fucking terrible. And also the clumps? The clumps? That's two, that's the second one. Okay, I'm sorry. Nutty professor's insane. Nutty professor's insane. Nutty professor two's terrible.
All those he plays all those characters. Yeah. Well, he's amazing. It's just the script doesn't work in Nutty Professor 2 and then they got rid of Jada Pickett Smith and replaced her with someone else too. It's like what happened? Yeah, yeah, that was a big part of the first movie. He's so good. The Nutty Professor 1 is excellent, but he's just an understanding. Have you have you revisited the stand-up specials of Eddie's in the leather suits?
I mean, I've seen them all multiple times. I haven't revisited them in the last few years. They're worth having a look at gammas. Smartest greatest of all time. It's crazy that he hasn't done stand-up in 30 years. As long as you've not been drinking, he hasn't been doing stand-up. Jesus. Maybe this too. And they were related. It's just, I used to run with Eddie.
back in the day a little bit. It was pretty fun. He's amazing. I mean, it's really every comic that I know wants him to do stand up again. Every comic. Like there was a thing we talked about in the podcast before, but there was a thing that he did where he was accepting some award and he was on stage and he did this piece about Bill Cosby because him and Bill Cosby always had feuds. Like it was on one of his older specials. I think it was on Raw.
where him and Richard Pryor had a conversation, because Bill Cosby called him and chastised him about delirious, about using bad words. And so he did this whole thing where Bill Cosby called him and told him, and then he called Richard Pryor. Richard Pryor was like, do the people laugh? Do you get paid?
We'll tell Bill to have a coconut smile and shut the fuck up. Yes, I have a coconut smile and shut the fuck up. So he had no choice for him. That was painful because look, every comic was a Bill Cosby fan. Sure. They found out what the fuck he was really all about, but.
So for him to get a phone call from Bill Cosby, instead of saying, you're amazing, I fucking love what you're doing, I'm in your corner, congratulations, go get him. Instead he gets, you should stop saying bad words. And so anyway, years later, he hasn't done stand up and forever and he accepts this award and talks about what, because they took back Bill Cosby's honorary doctorate and all these different, they took awards away from him and he does this whole routine about Bill getting his awards taken away.
fucking brilliant it's pretty hasn't done stand up in 30 years and you look and I'm like Jesus Christ if that guy did stand up right now he'd have the biggest Netflix special on earth and it would probably be an hour of fucking gold just straight gold just isn't I mean talk about doing it he's talked about doing it I bet pre-COVID he was talking about doing it I mean obviously COVID fucked it up for everything it's really hard to do a show now right and
You know, I don't know where it's going to go. I hope he does it though. But he's a special talent, a very unique talent. Yeah, and a wonderful enigma. Yeah. You know, he's so nice, he's so, but he's one of those people like
that people have all of these, like people project things on daddy. Do you know what I mean? Like what he's like, what he is, what he isn't, because he's just one of those guys and he's kind of an enigma. He's kind of unknowable, but he's such a good dude. Well, he's so talented. I mean, we all grew up with him. You know, 48 hours and... Dude, 48 hours is the shit. The shit, him and Nick Nolty. Nick Nolty is so...
I mean, that movie, I mean, that's the ultimate. Buddy cop movie. There's the Danny Glover one with Mel, but to me, it's all about 48 hours. I wonder if you can make a buddy cop movie anymore. Now that everybody hates cops. There they are. Look at them. Could you make a buddy cop movie today with people? They don't want you to. They wouldn't want you to. They don't want you to, for sure. Like cop movies, that's one of the biggest genre.
Right? There's a screening of kindergarten cop that was supposed to be in Portland or somewhere this weekend that was canceled because people said that it was showing cops in a good light or something like that. I hope they get robbed. I hope everybody says they get robbed. Can you imagine? Flocks. You got to watch. You ever see null teams? I don't really hope they get robbed, by the way.
These are just jokes. You ever seen Nolte and Q and A, the movie Q and A? Yes. Yes. Now that I remember that. Yeah. Where he plays a racist cop. Yes. Oh, he's amazing, man. You know, there's a fucking movie that's not that good. It's called Warrior. It's like this martial arts movie.
That was a few years ago and Nick Nolte plays this guy who is a trainer of one of the fighters and he's the father of one of the fighters as well. And he's just alcoholic and he's all fucked up and he has this scene where he breaks down and he's crying and weeping and he just goes, God damn, if you forget, this is it right here. He's so good. He's so good. That outfit, that's the outfit he wears to go to the market in Malibu.
Oh, yeah, man. I ran into him at Fry. Look at him right there. I mean, this scene. That's also how he orders a McDonald's. Screaming red-faced. I ran into him at Fry's electronics. He's always Joe. He was buying some motherboard or some shit for a kid. He's amazing. Yeah, he's amazing. So I got to tell you how much I'm loving your podcast. I love it. It's great. Thank you. I'm a big fan. Thank you.
One of the things I love about, because I'm doing my own now, and I'm learning from the best, and the best would be you, is it's just literally anything and everything that makes you like you're curious about. And I love that. So I know it's been paying attention. I know it's curious about space. Let's talk for a minute, because this week, Elon Musk,
Yeah. And it was fun to watch, but isn't it funny how excited we all are that we just replicated something we did 50 years ago? Well, even better, though. They replicated something in a much more improved way where it can actually come back and land and it's reusable. That's the difference. Don't you think, though, there has to be a secret space program. There has to be. Do you think so?
Okay, let's just go through the logic. This is what happens at nighttime when I have a cigar. Do you want two drugs? Do you want cigar? Do you smoke cigars? I do smoke cigars. Do you want one? I was going to bring one and I forgot, but hell yeah. Beautiful. At least we could get some kind of drugs. I know, let's go. Let's fucking go. By the way, I enjoy watching people take drugs.
I do. Do you? Yeah, because I do about it. I have a very expensive wine cellar. I don't drink. You don't drink at all. You just have the wine for other folks? For guests. Wow. Could you have a glass of wine or are you just a deep-end kind of guy? Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope
The day where you go, you know what? I'm going to live in Europe for a while, and gosh, I mean, a class of red wine at my birthday is not gonna come. I'm not gonna do, I'm not gonna do heroin anymore. That's what brought me to my knees, but a class of red wine, literally, you can put a fucking stopwatch on it. And it might not be in a week, and it might not be in a month, and it might not even be in a year, but I assured you.
You'll read about them in the paper like biting a cop and they're stomach and jumping off of a roof or 100%. I've been in this game 30 years. I've never seen it go any way other than that. Never. I like to believe that someone out there that can do it. Just like I like to believe some people can walk tight rubs between two buildings. Yeah, no people who aren't alcoholics. They can't do it. Fuck yeah. What do we got here, bro? This is good. Okay, why can't I not open this?
There we go, got it. Hell, I would have brought my own. I don't know. Well, I just have this box here for my friend Mike Binder. Oh, you know Mike? He's doing this Comedy Store documentary, and he bought me a box of scars. The company is this. Do you know this company? They're great.
There's nothing better than a cigar when you're fasting Good and fucked up. Are you fasting right now? Yeah, we do the intermittent I do intermittent and then and then I do Every other day a 24 hour really which I got from Kimmel like what like remember that moment where all of a sudden Kimmel like didn't look at Kimmel anymore Lost like 80 pounds and I did and like you know in the commercial breaks the bands playing and people were screaming you yeah
Hey, why do you look so good? And he's like, I don't eat every other day. I was like, that's got to be bought. We're right back. And I never got to like finish the conversation with them. But I've since learned about it. And I did. I've done it. And it's been great. What's the benefits? Honestly, I think at the end of the day, the benefit is just it's just an easy way to keep the calories down. But I find I'm more focused and I actually have more energy.
That's crazy. If you think about taking a whole day off of eating. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. It sounds worse than it is because you eat dinner. So the day goes from dinner to dinner. So there's not an active day that I'm not eating. Oh, OK. It's like a meal a day. It's a meal. That's what Jack Dorsey does. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, he eats one meal a day. And he said he realizes that a lot of that lighter sucks, unfortunately.
Do we have another liner? No, I'm good, right? No, I'm good. We're good to go. This is good. I like this. They're good, right? Yeah, really good. Yeah, I do intermittent. I do either 14 or 16 hours. And then you're like, you know, low carb, low sugar. Mostly meat. Mostly what I eat is meat.
Like almost entirely meat. What a veggies some fruit veggies this whole month. I'm not eating. I'm barely eating any vegetables. What this is animal based August. Animal based August. Yeah, you know plant based. I'm plant based. Well, there's animal based August. Do the vegan army come for you? They've come. They've come for me. I give them hugs.
Look, those animals are going to die. I'll send them videos of wolves eating elk alive. You know, if you want to see that, it's better if I kill them. Trust me. And then you don't live forever. And you do you fish role? Yeah, I love fishing. Yeah, my son, Matthew Lowe is a world class fisherman and fly fishing. No, it's all deep sea. It's all deep sea stuff. Yeah. And we go, we have a boat and we go out and we, I mean, it's like the sashimi fish tacos. He has a commercial fisherman's license.
he's got a law degree in a commercial fisherman's that's fucking balanced it's a well-rounded young man that you did a good job gradually it's gets good shit and then my other son is uh... is is uh... a writer on number one lonestar no kidding yeah wow i know you pulled it off i did so it's the beginning day you get kids being dead is uh...
It's a full-time job, but I love it. I'm one of those people that, for whatever reason, I knew it was what I was born to do immediately, and I devoted every fucking minute to it and loved it, and it paid off, and my boys are, Michelle's a great wife and great partner for me, but I love seeing that kind of time investment.
pay off. Yeah. No, it's beautiful because then they become these sustainable, fascinating human beings. It's a... How old are your kids? I have a 23-year-old. I have a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old. That's kind of what you love going to this, because mine are 24 and 26. So the notion of going back and having another crack at it kind of sounds kind of cool.
It is kind of cool. It's weird about babies and just humans. They're so different right out of the box. There's so much study on what makes a personality, what makes a human being, whether it's nature or nurture. And people who are parents can tell you.
There's certain aspects of a kid's personality that they're just born with. You see them with it as a baby, like right out of the box. And like, you know, one year in they're different. Like, they're so different. It's so, like sometimes my daughters will say something to me. It's just, and I just get so stunned just talking to them. Like this, I remember when you were this tiny little thing, and now you and I are sitting here and we're having a conversation about space.
or about mortality, or about what I think God is, or about why do people act mean? I was having this conversation with my daughter, with my 12-year-old, about mean people. And I'm like, believe me, it seems like they're just mean, but they're only mean because they're hurting. That's why people are mean. They feel terrible, so they want you to feel terrible. And we were just having this weird conversation about
emotions and about where it comes from and, you know, and how some people, you know, their families broken up and because of that, they wish that things were normal so they make up lies or they, when other people are doing well, they get angry at other people like, and we were just talking through this and in the middle of it, I'm talking to her and I'm thinking I'm from
this tiny little thing and now here you are this 12 year old who's like we're having this like intense like conversation about emotions and the development of human beings and how to be more compassionate and how there's this instinct to go fuck her you know and I'm like I know you have that feeling but you got to fight that feeling like nobody has a feeling more than me that fuck you feeling I got a lot of that but you got to keep it locked up it's not good for you that it doesn't do you any good either when you like fuck you that you're just really saying fuck yourself it's not helping you because you're developing anger
Instead of developing forgiveness, like you develop this anger towards a person where it's better, it's hard, but it's better to try to understand why they're that way and why they're lashing out at you. And when you do that, what I was explaining to her is like, it'll be ineffective. Their mean stuff to you will be ineffective. It doesn't work anymore because you know who you are. So if you know who you are, it'll bother you that they're trying to do it, but you won't change your feelings about yourself.
Someone can, if you don't have a good sense of personal sovereignty, someone can change your feelings about yourself. You know, I remember when I was young, someone could insult me and I would think that they were right. I'd be like, oh God, I am a loser. You know what I mean? Like fuck, I'm a loser. Shit. And I'd go home and I'd feel terrible and I'd feel like a loser. But if someone does it to you when you have sovereignty, you're like, ah, that feels gross that this person's trying to make me feel bad, but it doesn't change who I am. I know who I am.
You gain an understanding through struggle and we were having this conversation I remember thinking God is so weird like that people just sort of pop out of vaginas You know you have sex person gets developed they pop out of a giant next thing you know They're 12 and they're sitting across the dinner table. Just you and her just chit-chatting. It's God, so it's amazing. It's amazing
It's true, I always tell my kids that great phrase about bitterness, you know, and anger and bitterness is, it's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to drop dead. Yes, yes, yes, I love that statement. It's a great one, isn't it?
You know, world view, right? Optimism, positivity, rejection of victimhood, all that stuff is so important, I think, in development. They're tools, too. They're tools for success, because there's so many people that contain, they hold onto that stuff. What's that other expression that anger is a poison that kills the vessel that holds it? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, but they do.
you could use them as tools to understand people. That feeling that you get, it's a tool and the understanding of how to manage that is a tool. You can use it and you could understand people better and then you'll recognize it in yourself better and it'll prevent you from making some catastrophic mistakes.
And one of the things about like angry, bitter, spiteful people, it's like they rarely get anything done. They're really accomplishing anything good. They always have this bitter, horrible feeling that they're carrying around with them.
Yeah, I'm a big believer in therapy and personal digging and growth and stuff like that. I mean, it's part and parcel with my recovery. Recovery is not for everybody nor should it be, but I think therapy could and should be. I think it should be like going and getting your oil checked. Do you do AA meetings in the whole deal?
I, you know, it's an anonymous program chair. Oh, you can't say it. The AA Gestapo will come and get me. Well, they really, if you say you go to AA. Here's why. It's in what they call the traditions, right? They're literally like, it's a constitution of AA. It's in the constitution because the theory is, if I were to say AA works, I go to AA. And then God forbid I slip.
than the person who might have been on the fence about going to a well why no that's bullshit that guy was in a a any slipped that's the theory about it that's a weird theory because but i don't know as works right you get in shape and then you can just decided twinkies you get out of shape but doesn't mean exercise doesn't work uh... listen i i
There are people that, you know, true traditionalists don't even like people talking with the amount that I talk about recovery publicly for that reason. But my thing is, in this world, addiction is such a fucking killer. And there are so many families suffering from it.
that and in every teenager is going to have to figure out their relationship with drugs and alcohol. There isn't one who isn't going to have to and a lot of people are going to fuck that up and some aren't but the more that conversation is out there and that people can
can talk about it openly is better. So I kind of am more public about it just because it's, you know, changed my life, saved my life. I don't have alcoholism in my family nor personally, but I admire people who talk about recovery. I think it's important because I think, especially someone like you, because you're a very famous public figure. And when you talk about addiction and your own struggles, people say, well, fucking Rob Lowe,
It has a problem with booze. Like, okay, it's this is like a thing. It's part of being a person. Yeah, for sure. I think it's very valuable. I think you talking about it is very valuable and I think it's honorable. Well, thanks. I mean, I get a lot out of it because inevitably, you know, I meet people who are earlier on their journey and it reminds me of how bad it can be if you don't keep an eye on it. You know what I mean? It's like, because I'm just one of those people, it's like, you know,
if it says take two aspirin, then I immediately think, well, then five has got to be fucking great. That is the way my brain works. Do you think that that's from becoming famous when you're very young? What is the earliest big thing that you did? Was the earliest big project that you did?
I mean, it was probably that Karen Carpenter look-a-like look thing I had going on. But like a big... Well, that was sort of... I mean, you said that was not... Oh, the big knockout... That put me on the teen magazines, though. And that... I went from a theater geek who couldn't... None of the cool girls gave a shit about.
Because I was like, yeah, because I was a theater geek. And no, I was pretty. I didn't look at the fucking football playing. They all wanted the football players and the beach volleyball players and in that culture.
Like youth entertainment wasn't a thing. There was no MTV, there was no Us Magazine, there was no Nickelodeon, there's none of it. So like, it was kind of this like thing that starts to watch in 87. Look at you. 87's late though. I mean, you can roll that thing back to 79 and get some good shit.
Duran Duran. Look at Michael J. Fox. Look at him. The monkeys were still around. What? Duran Duran. You know, it's funny how in Europe, like things that are almost like campy here are still cool. Like Merko Crocop is one of the baddest motherfuckers of all time. This is kickboxer. He used to come out to Duran Duran. That was his walk out song. Come out to Wild Boils. Wild Boils. Wild Boils. Yeah. I mean, he's a fucking straight up killer. He's a terrifying human being.
And he would come out to Duran Duran. That's unbelievable. That's awesome. I loved it. I was like, that is the scariest human being on Earth. That's a fucking Duran Duran fan. Who's the guy? And this is going to be like, who's the baseball player? And he'd be like, Babe Ruth? Yeah, that's him. But who's the fucking gnarly motherfucker from Hawaii? BJ Penn. Oh, yeah. BJ. Yeah. So BJ, when I met BJ, and I don't know anything really much about the sport, he was like, you know that before every match, I watch young blood.
Fuck out of here. What? Are you kidding me? Beach is crazy. He's crazy. He's so crazy. So fucking nuts. That's funny. Yeah, but that I don't think you don't think they're connected. They'll be coming very famous at an early age sort of exacerbates because I would. I would. I would have it up, but you got to have it in you. Okay.
You have to have that in you anyway. Is it a family thing? Is it genetic? It's partially genetics. It's in the family for sure, 100%. It's in my family, both sides of the family. But some people don't have it, some people do. And what exacerbates it is the access, all the stuff that you'd think. It's like fame and money and all that is jet fuel for addiction. And then on the other side of it is there's always in the back of your mind,
that if it works out, if I get this movie or I get this part or whatever, then it'll, I'll feel better about myself. And then you get it and you don't. And then you're really fucked. So that's why when people go, he had it all. I don't understand. I go, I understand. I understand perfectly. Yeah. His dreams came true and they didn't fucking change who he was. Yeah. Did you ever have imposter syndrome? Oh yeah, right.
I have a lot of syndromes. But I'm not sure I've had that one. You think he didn't have it because you were famous early on?
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
to know otherwise, and no one told me different. I'm so grateful that I didn't have someone telling me that 99% of the people in the screen actors gild. These are people who are acting, who've made it. They're in Hollywood and they're acting. 99% of them can't support themselves as an actor. Really? That's a true statistic. That's a crazy number. Now if somebody had told me that,
I might have fucked me up and maybe my vision would have weakened. Yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting, right? Like if someone gives you, like someone made it, you made it. Obviously there's movies, people are making it. Like I said to my kids, listen, I don't know what the odds are, but somebody's got to do it. Why not you? Yes, that's a good way to look at it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was the thing. So I had that, which is both a curse and a blessing, because I didn't have to go through the thing that so many people do where they don't really know where they fit in the world and don't know what their gift is.
I don't know what they want to do with their lives. So you never wavered. You had this idea. How old were you when you figured it out? Eight. I saw a local theater production in Dayton, Ohio of Oliver of all things. My parents must have known one of the actors. And there were kids in it.
And it was literally like out of a movie, like, oh, like the light hit me and the sky is parted. And I went, I want to do that. And there was a sign up sheet for summer kid acting camp or whatever. And I go, I want to do that. And my parents are like, yeah, sure. And I'm sure they thought it was like,
just camp or Little League or any other thing that a kid would, but I knew it was the beginning of a step of what I wanted to do. I was deadly serious about it. Wow, that's incredible. That's very fortunate because then you just have to work towards your path. Like so many people are like 30 and they don't know what they want to do with their life doing something they don't enjoy and like I want to find something that I enjoy.
and they don't know what that is. Those conversations are terrifying to me. I've had conversations with people like, I just got to find what my thing is. I'm like, fuck man. It's hard. And that's my biggest fear for my sons is, as a parent, the goals and issues change with age and where they are now, it's all about jobs. Yeah.
and you know we've had those my favorites so my my youngest son John Owen was the youngest intern at the Eli Broad stem cell laboratory in the University of San Francisco
during his summers in high school. And in fact, was next to one of the scientists that won the Nobel Prize that year. So he gets into Stanford, goes to Stanford, graduates with straight A's. And I'm thinking, this is, I've done it. As a parent, he's done it. And then he comes back and goes, I want to be in show business. And I wanted to kill myself.
I was like, it was worse than wanting, it was actually worse than I want to be in show business, it was worse, because it was, I want to be an actor. And I wanted to publicly disembowel myself. Isn't that crazy? You are a successful actor. You love doing it, but yet,
You didn't want your kid to do it. Isn't it amazing? It is really weird. And there's so much to sort of unpack underneath that. Yeah. Well, I don't think you want your kids to be in pain, right? The uncertainty of it. Yeah. And it's like you, I always used to read about this quote about Henry Fonda, that to the day he died, and he died with the Oscar for fucking on Golden Pond next to him, he thought he would never work again. Whoa.
And I was like, that has to be bullshit. Guess what? It's not. It's not. But then the other thing I would get, and this is the other really weird thing is I'd wake up in the middle of the night and go, Oh, my instinct to beat every creative fucking instinct out of my children is now indicted them and sentenced them to a life of a drone in a cubicle.
ooh, way worse. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like your instinct to protect them from uncertainty has led them to the certainty of doom. And then you realize, you know what, they're going to be who they are and Johnny is a really talented writer and he's found his niche and ironically went right to work, right out of Stanford.
It all kind of works out. It really does. But we do as dads put our own fears and our own shit on our kids. Oh, yeah. There's no doubt. If one of my kids told me they wanted to be a comic, I could be terrified. Right! Plus also, it's like... I don't... There's certain parts of comedy that are so painful, like the bombing.
I don't think I could be there if my kid was bombing. I would feel it as much as them. Do you remember?
A joke that you told once that bombed. Oh, yeah. Really? Oh my God. You remember the joke or age-o. Dude, I've bombed a lot. I just can't believe that. I don't... I talked to George Lopez on my podcast two days ago, and he was talking about bombing, but you're a fucking Fred Rogue. You're a Joe Rogue, and he's fucking... George Lopez, what the fuck? How do you guys don't bomb? You have to come up with new material, and if you're gonna come up with new material, some of them are gonna be duds. That's just how it is.
Yeah, and also you have to take chances if you want to expand like comedy is there's a there's a bunch of things going on right? There's you relating to the audience. There's them liking you. There's these concepts you're trying to flesh out the
And especially in a workout room, like the comedy store, you have to take chances. There's no way around it. And sometimes those chances fall flat on their face. But the good thing is through those painful failures, those are like the biggest springboards to improvement in growth. Like every time I've ever had a bad set, my next set has been amazing. Because you just feel the sting and you prepare better. And also, I think my past bombings have prepared me to not bomb again because of the fact that I know what it feels like to suck.
It's so I always explain it that it's like if someone's a what's bombing like it's like sucking a thousand dicks in front of your mother except There's probably someone out there that likes sucking a thousand dicks in front of their mother. No one likes bombing You know this probably some guy is just really into humiliation But I don't think there isn't just no one out there's into bombing. Oh, man. I just yeah, but because it's like oh well listen listen what what am I? I will bet you that no one is bombed harder than me
Oh, that's not possible. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I
Talk about bombing. My dick's bigger than you dick about bombing. I'm 24. 24 years old. I'm doing my movies. The Academy Awards asked me to do a big opening number for them. I'm like, holy fucking shit. This is. This is a minute. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get pulled off of YouTube. Yeah. Goddamn it. See some other fuckers. So I'll play it for us.
So, before you play it before I get a little context, little context, oh, stop. Stop or I'll bomb again. I'll bomb right now, again. So they say to me, they go, we want you to do, and I'm like, there was a high honor, 86. High honor. High honor. Fuckin' category. Sure. And I should have like probably thought it through, because the idea didn't sound great to me.
But it's the Academy Awards. They know better than I do. It's their show. And the idea is it's going to be an homage to old-time Hollywood. And one of the earliest stars in Hollywood was Snow White, the animated figure. So we're going to have a lot of girl obviously playing Snow White. And we're going to do a duet because it's a big opening musical number. The Oscars always used to open with musical numbers before there were monologues. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yes, this ended it. It's ended it. So, I'm like, okay. Meants know, okay. Meants know, great, okay. And anyway, Marvin Hamlish is going to write it. Marvin Hamlish. I'm like, I know Marvin Hamlish is. You wrote the sting. Well, Scott Joplin wrote the sting, but Marvin Hamlish won the Academy Award for that. He's double Oscar. He's a genius.
And, you know, I'm not going to tell Marvin Hamlet should I think that the lyrics are cheesy. I could do that. So when they get Ike and Tina Turner's proud Mary and change the lyrics to did a lot of work for Walt Disney.
Oh, yeah. Oh, no. It's like I'm saying, it's a bomb. You and I are going to watch this and we're going to pause for the people at home. If you need to if you need to watch this YouTube, Jamie, what is it? What is it? It's on the Hollywood Reporter's website. I don't know why it's there. Probably. What is the title of the actual Rob Lowe bombs? Yeah, it's like that disastrous open. I don't know.
Rob Lowe and Snow White's disastrous Oscar opening February 20th. That's actually the title for the people. It literally says disastrous. Folks at home, Google this, watch it, and then we're going to pick this up after Rob and I watch this. Is that Lily Tomlin at the end? No, that's a truncated version. They didn't give you much of it. But can I tell you something?
We're bad. That was the year that Barry Levinson. I could tell just from the first bar. It was going to be bad when you were saying, did you take scene lessons? Nah, fine. You found the whole thing? It's 11 minutes long. No, it's a lot of minutes of sheer terror. That's on YouTube.
Okay, 11 minutes that ruined Hollywood producer Alan Carr's career forever. Hold on. We'll be right back Hang on folks. I need it. I need this I get it. Okay, so I look out in the middle
I look out in the middle of the audience and I see Barry Levinson. So he's at this, on this Oscars, he's about to win literally 11 Academy Awards. As an actor, there's no one you would want to impress more than Barry Levinson. It's the year of Rain Man. And I look out, Joe, in the middle of this, and I see his face, I'm not kidding, and this is what he literally was going.
What the fuck? You see him actually make this. I see him mouth the words, what the fuck. And so, I'm talking about bombing. And I'm like, but you know, we have to have our actor's denial. Like we can't get through a career without a healthy dose of denial. So I'm like, you know what? Fuck Barry Levinson. What does he know anyway? Fuck that guy. And I go backstage.
And it's in the green room and it's early in the show. And there's an older lady in the corner with flaming red hair. And I'm kind of looking at her. And she sees me. She goes, young man, I didn't know you were such a good singer. Come sit down. It was Lucille Ball. And I went over and we sat down. And she held my hand. And we watched the Oscars together. And you know what? It made it all almost worthwhile. Almost.
Here's why that's not as bad as bombing doing stand up. How is that not as bad? It's not as bad. Because even though a billion people watched it, A, you didn't write it, and B, you knew where you were going. You could just sing the stupid song and get it over with. It's terrible. It's bombing. It's bad. But when you're bombing doing stand up,
You are the writer, you are the creator, you are the performer. You put it together, you edited it, you prepared it, you got it ready, and then you're just up there eating shit. And people are angry at you, they're angry. They're angry because they can talk. Oh, they were angry. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure they were angry. Here's the other thing they did. They never occurred to the academy to maybe that they needed to license the likeness of Snow White.
What? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. And you know how Disney is about likenesses. They're so easy going. Yeah, they're so generous. So generous.
That, see, I would have thought I would have got, I think I would have gotten away with it a little bit in terms of history, had there not been massive lawsuits the next day. Oh. Over the likeness thing, which made. Also then people thought about it. When people went back and went, wait a minute, that fucking sucked way worse than I thought it did. What was the next thing you did after that? I think, let's say, would it have been
I feel like it might have been bad influence with James Spader. One of my favorite movies. That's a great movie. Well, that's a good way to bounce back. Yeah, that was a good one. Let's look at the bright side. Yeah. No, listen. And it is a... Did you consider saying no?
No, a people-pleasing Midwesterner at 24 does not say no to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They don't. And every year, every year I am treated to the honor, the high honor of being on the list of most embarrassing Oscar moments, every fucking year. And my thing is this, is I go, hey, wait, guys.
You couldn't figure out how to announce the best picture two years ago, and I'm the problem! Still?
Well, it wasn't your fault. I mean, no one would have saved that. No one. No one. Not a fucking human being could have jumped up there and sang that and had it made any sense. Maybe Jim Carrey. Yes, maybe Jim Carrey could have done it. But he would have gone full Ace Ventura over the top and people would have been just laughing hysterically at how crazy he is. It's one of my great career low-light slash highlights.
It actually, it actually kind of makes me laugh with the onset of perspective in history. That's the beautiful thing about failures. They eventually become funny and they can get back at them. It only took 30 years. That's great. Like there's some movies, man, that are terrible, terrible movies, but they're really funny to revisit, right? Like showgirls, I think things along those lines.
Oh, I'm a big showgirl. I think they might have offered me showgirls. I think they might offer me the comma comma go off. Really? Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure you would have had sex with Elizabeth Berkeley in the water, that crazy scene where she's spazzing out, always having sex with her. Do you remember that? She's spazzing.
Oh my god, it's one of the craziest scenes ever. It didn't make any sense. Why is she spazzing? It doesn't make any sense. It's like they were on coke when they were doing the movie, writing the movie, performing the movie, and they just, their connection with what's realistic or even entertaining or, or even possible doesn't make any sense. Like if you were having sex with a woman and she was flailing around like that, you kept going. You'd be a criminal. Like she's having a seizure. Give it to your epileptic fit.
She, they were in a pool, and for whatever reason, she starts flopping. I mean, like, they're, they're making out, he's got his arm around her, and she's throwing her body, like slapping it against the water in this, like, insane, like, who, I just want to know, like, who was filming that, and was like, cut! We got it! We fucking got it! We got it! You got that one!
Oh, we got it. Just thought that you could hear the fucking Jackhammer heart rate of everyone filming it because they're all coked up. Have you seen that scene? I find the non porn sites. No, we want to post it so we can watch it. YouTube doesn't have it. The porn sites have it. Why is she top us in it? Is that what it is? Probably.
I don't even remember the top-less part. It's just so ridiculous. Really, there's no nudity in movies anymore, but in the 80s, I had the page 73 rule because that's always the page the nude seeds were on. They were always on page 73. Wow. Because that's the middle of the set. Here it is. So they're making out. Yeah, he's pouring. Oh, there you go. Oh, there's some. Naked. Not on YouTube stuff.
Yeah, ex-videos. So, they start fooling around, and she gets on top of them, and then once they start doing it, she starts flailing. I mean, like, you see it here looks almost normal. What is she doing? This looks almost normal. Almost. She's just crazy, but then she gets really spastic, and she starts throwing herself on the fucking water. Look at this, look at this. Come on, man, what's happening here? What is that?
Is that for real? Yes, it is for real. That was in the movie. And when people have to remember, she's the sweetheart from Saved by the Bell, right? And this was gonna be her break from Saved by the Bell. This beautiful girl.
And he's the guy from, uh... Wow. Fucking... I had blue velvet. I had forgotten. But that... Can you imagine making that movie today? No. Yeah, no. Page 73, that, because it's the middle of act two. And any writer out there knows that the middle of the second act is the Sahara of creativity. That's like, that's when you're, you're like, alone with your thoughts. And you're like, fuck! We got to get to the ending. Someone's got to get naked. Someone's got to get naked. And usually it would have been me. How many times did you show your butt in a movie?
Too many. How many? If you get a guess. It was the 80s. It's what we did. It's what we did. It was my job. This was 90s. That movie was like 90s. It was right at the end, yeah. I was in Hollywood. I was living here. So I moved here in 94. So that had to be like 95, right? 97. Oh, there you go. Because there's also the era where Coke was openly sold on sets. Really? Oh, yeah. Wow. Sure.
It was either the camera department or the prop department. Makes more sense to be the prop department, and their job is to go and get shit for you, right? Yeah. And it was just, you know, when we did outsiders, we were kids, you know, crews, me and Matt Dillon and all this way, all everybody were, we were young. I was 17.
17 turning 18 and see Thomas Howell who played Pony Boy the lead in the movie was 15 and when we would finish shooting we'd get in the vans to get driven back to the Hotel and there would be as much beer as you wanted. He's 15 as much beer as you wanted that and that that's a studio movie. Wait, can you pull that photo up to see our feet? Is it possible because?
That feet, there it is, it's down there. Okay, look it, look it, Swayze, he's standing on bricks, loose feet.
He wanted to be taller. Isn't that great? Swayze is standing on bricks in the back of that. Oh, that's hilarious. That's hilarious. That's my favorite thing. Speaking of Swayze Roadhouse, that's another horrible movie that's amazing. But people, yeah, people love that movie. Oh, it's great. It's fucking great. It's great. He's a bouncer. Yeah. Yeah, he's the baddest bouncer. And that's part of the thing. It's like, I thought you were going to be bigger.
Remember that? That's like one of the lines in the movie, because he's a legendary bouncer that they bring in to fix really bad honky-tonks. The bad problems at the door. It's in a pandemic. People are trying to get in. The VIPs. He grabs someone's neck and pulls their throat out in the movie. I mean, it's so good. Pain don't hurt. That's actually a line in the movie. Pain don't hurt.
Those 80s lines are so good. Oh, so good. That's such a great one because he's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. Swayze wasn't Adonis. He was Adonis. He tried to get us to put that God forsaken song. She's like the wind in young blood. We were like... There it is. He pulls the throat out. He pulls the guy's throat out. And then he hits him with the worst spinning back kick ever in the butt. Watch. He pulls his throat out and look at this.
It's so bad. It's such a bad kick. You probably blew his ACL out doing that. It's so stupid. He was the best man. He might be the most intense guy I ever worked with. Really? Yeah. He'd be up all night writing and doing bodyweight push-ups with his feet up against a wall all night long and then show up at this set, having not slept and wanting you to hear his new demo. He was like, a lot. It was great. It was great.
But no, I remember she's like the wind, and I was like, I don't know how that fits in. We're making a hockey movie, bro. I don't know how that...
that fits in the hockey movie. Why didn't you want that in there? And then, sure enough, what Dirty Dancing comes out, and that movie's in it, and goes to number one. Oh, well, yeah. But that movie, okay, that was a good movie. Dirty Dancing, that was a great movie. Ghost is his big best movie. Yeah. Ghost is a great movie. That's a great movie. Great movie. He did a point break was a great movie. Great movie. He did some great movies.
yeah he said he was in young was in young blood but i thought he was french i thought he was a french-Canadian goalie really i didn't know he was an actor i thought i literally thought he was we hired this amazing french-Canadian goalie i can't believe how young you guys were now that's so crazy they were giving you booze look at county's face it's exactly the same as it is now as john wick here he is just that's john fucking wick look at himself
How great is John Wick? We love those movies, right? We love those movies. Love them. I love those movies. What's all the crazy gun training that people did? It's bad ass, right? I do. I would love to do that. Okay, let's go. I go there all the time. Really? Yeah, I go there like once a week. Really? Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, I'm in. Yeah, it's good to learn how to shoot a gun properly if you're going to own guns, but I mean, Taren, he's the best. I shoot regularly, but you can't do any of that tactical stuff unless you're on a tactical range, obviously. And you really want to do it with someone like Taren who can actually show you how to do it.
Really correctly. Yeah, so I mean I'm on the range all the time, but I'm never it's very very I'd love to get the tactical. That's the great thing about Here's the thing that I learned about guns. It was hilarious is that when I was learning how to shoot properly I was shooting like an actor Because you have to supply the kick
Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right. So all my experience with guns is playing guys who have guns. But blacks have a kick. But it's not like a real good. So like, you want to make it look good in the movies. You want to give it that little thing. So I would get out of the range and I would be doing all my acting. It'd be like getting in a fight and purposely missing you by three inches.
I know how to movie fight. Right, right, right. Like I'd fight you, but I'd miss you on purpose. It's the same with weapons training. Oh, yeah. Well, you'd have to get that out of your system. He would get that out of you quick. The piano goes there. He's there all the time.
I mean, you'd have to, I would think, if you're John Wick, you better stay facile. Yes. Well, that's where he learned. Yeah. Yeah. See, those, those, they're on YouTube, those famous videos where there's the timer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you got to get through all of the... Mm-hmm. I mean... Oh, for the January dude. Oh. Look at him. Look at him. Look at him. Look at him. There it is. Dude, he's such a badass. He's a beast man. He's really good at that shit. Look at him.
I have an entire section in my phone that just says guns. Look at him. Oh, that shoulder hurts. That shotgun. Ooh. It doesn't. It's not that bad. It's not that bad at all. How about that tactical one they have? Oh boy. He's shooting dummies from like two inches away.
Who's, was that Laura Croft behind him? Um, no, there's a bunch of really hot girls that Taren has that he teaches. It's really, that's Halle Berry. Where she got behind her. That's Halle Berry, bro. Jeez.
What's that Jamie? It's a new one? I just clicked on it differently. Yeah, because she's in, I just sent you one. Because she's in, um, John Wick, two or three. She's in three. She's in four. Is two the best one? I like one. One's my favorite. Yeah, because first of all, I don't, I love three, but there's no muscle cars. Chad. Hey, Chad, put the fucking muscle cars back in. Yeah, exactly.
It's fun. See? So he teaches you how to do it. It teaches you a correct form and all the... Look at this. Yeah. It's fun. Me and my buddy, Tom Segura, we go there all the time. I'm dead. I'm in. I'll be so fun. It's fun to learn and it's valuable education and the fact that he's right here, that he's in California. It's amazing.
And he could shoot rifles there, and he's got ranges for long-range stuff. I don't know all kinds of stuff there. Anything active, amen. I mean, I'm the guy that always says yes to everything, hence why the Oscars. I'll say, my default answer is yes. But that's also, by the way, why I think that I've managed to navigate so many changing currents in the industry, because I don't get stuck.
Right. In one place. When I went on the West Wing, it's hard to think now, but in those days, TV was still considered like a lesser medium. Really was. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. People would get upset. Well, he's a TV star. TV. Yeah. I don't do TV. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. I met with a girl I dated and said that to me when I was like, I want to do film. OK.
I mean it was a real thing it was a real perception and now it's it's you know obviously everybody wants to do it but well now it's Netflix is actually better than film because now you could be on a show like
Ozark where it shows great fuck So great, but it's like a film every week and it's concurrently keeps going and Jason's a stud in now He's so good. He's such a stud. He's so good as an actor, but he's so good as a writer a director like Everything he that show is so goddamn good. I knew him when he was on the little house on the prairie. Oh Jesus. I forgot about that. Oh my god. He was on that some little house in the prairie He's so good. Well, just goes to show you you never know
No, you never know. You don't know. No, you never do. You never, I mean... Well, humans are versatile, right? Like, just because someone does one... You know, like, there's so many people that you think, like, oh, that guy's a this, and then he winds up being this amazing musician. You're like, how? What? Like, well, humans are versatile, you know? And it takes people sometimes to... Even within their...
Lane. It takes them sometimes a while to find what they're like really, really special. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like he's really, really special with that guy. I, for me, as I've tried to do it, look at him. Whoa. Look at how cute he is. That's him. Look at that little button. Look at him. Could he be any cuter? Couldn't. Still got the same hair. Basically does.
Man, you're talking about a guy who's been around a long fucking time. Yeah, he knows what's what. Goddamn genius. He knows the lay of the land. He was a fucking Michael Landon. Come on. Yeah. Was Michael Landon Aquaman? Patrick Duffy. Patrick Duffy was off. Man from Atlantis. Man from Atlantis. That's right. I saw the first thing, dude, the first time I ever saw something being filmed in California.
I had just come out from Ohio, it was 1976, and traffic was all blocked off at the Malibu Pier. And it got out of my, and I saw the lights. It was in the daytime, it was so long ago they still had lights for daytime shooting.
and they were about to do a stunt to her. Patrick Duffy is the man from Atlantis. I was gonna jump off the Malibu pier and I was so fucking excited. I used to try to swim like him, because remember the man from my back? Yeah, it was swim like a porpoise. And my favorite thing was what made him from Atlantis was this part of his body had a web. Yes. This is it. Right here. That's all I had. And couldn't he breathe underwater? He could breathe underwater, but this made
That was all I can for with the special effects. A webbing between his thumb and forefinger. I'm so into it. I'm not going to get Lance's guy anyway. Are you really? Oh, yeah. Fuck, I love it. I'm trying to figure out where it was. What do you think? They found it. They think they found something that represents exactly what the depictions of Atlantis were, like these rings, concentric rings. They think that there's some place... Oh, God. I want to say like... I want to say off Spain, off the coast of Spain. But isn't...
Our guy Graham saying the basic Atlantis was the civil the pre-existing civilization and it was not an Island or one place it was all of it. Yeah That's what they think, but you know, it's all speculation
but whatever it was, there's so many different versions of that, so many different versions of this like spectacular seaport civilization that was destroyed in the flood. Like the flood of the Bible, like Noah's Ark, there's also, there's an ancient story called the Epic of Gilgamesh. Yes, of course. Yeah, and that in that story is a very similar story about a flood. And this is one of the things that Graham Hancock points to, that there's all these civilizations that talk about
but had no interaction with each other in theory, and yet they all have the same oral histories. I did a show with my boys called The Low Files, and it was an excuse for my boys and I to run around in a souped-up raptor around the country and explore urban legends. Oh, wow. And it was Anthony Bourdain meets Scooby-Doo.
It was a fucking dream come true. Well, that sounds awesome. It was a dream come true. What network was this for? A&E. They were great that they let us do it, but it couldn't have been a worse fit. When they put us with ancient aliens for one night, we blew the roof off the place. Really? And we got to look for the wood ape. We got to look for Bigfoot. We did poltergeist. Zillow files.
See if you can find the opening credits for the low files. It's one of my proudest moments. What year is this? Like four years ago.
Let's see if they. Give me some volume on this. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Joe didn't see my homage. The very, very end. My homage to Hawaii. Five. Oh, it's a very last 30 seconds of the clip. You have to see it because I'm sure you remember this great shot from Jack Lord's credits in the NFL. Five. Oh, it's right at the end. Go over here right here. Right. Here comes.
Do you remember that shot? The balcony? Yes. I do. I did that. Yes. That's hilarious. I designed that whole credit sequence. I got the song. I did the whole, the whole, it's one of my favorite things I've done. Blue Oyster called Don't Fear the Reap. That's best. It's a great fucking song. So what, what are the subjects? You went for Bigfoot? We did Bigfoot twice. We did Bigfoot up in, in Northern California and in Walnut Creek, the family, you know, the Patterson Giblet film was shot.
We did the turns out the wood ape of Arkansas, Oklahoma.
is the most active place. And that was where we really, where we had some really radical experiences, where I heard stuff and Matthew, oh yeah, I heard like lip popping and like chest beating. Really? Like you really think it was real? I heard chest beating, I don't know. You know who made a great fucking Bigfoot movie, Bobcat Goldway. What? Yup. He made a great Bigfoot movie. Scary Bigfoot movie. What is it called again? Do you remember him?
Willow Creek. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did you remember, have you ever seen... What is this? He did it like a Blair Witch style. I'm writing that down. I love that. It's fucking good, man. We had a great time and we went with all these guys who are like real legit people. They're like regular people and they spend their time out in the woods and they know how many are out there. It was crazy. Matthew, my youngest son's through the thermal imaging. So I'm hiding but like doing the thing with a high by the tree. So you really think that Bigfoot's real?
I don't know. I mean, here's the slogan for the low files was, it's more fun to believe. It definitely is more fun to believe. And that's really where I come down on it. It's like, I don't have a dog in the fight, but it's way more fucking fun.
for sure. Way more fun. I want Bigfoot to be real. I've always wanted to be real. The problem is the people looking at it also want it to be real. They're trying so hard. They see shadows. They think they're Bigfoot. There's some interesting things in terms of like dermal ridges they found on footprints.
And there's a lot of hair samples and shit that come back and they don't know what they got them from. Not really. See, yeah, I looked into that. Oh, tell me, I did. I did a show called Joe Rogan questions everything for sci-fi. And me and my buddy Duncan went up to the Pacific Northwest.
And we brought stuff to real biologists and we actually had samples analyzed. They're all bare. And then when they say that there's some human or primate, primate DNA, it's always contaminated. It's like the chain of custody between the actual piece of hair and getting into the lab is always contaminated. Right. Yeah. There's no one just stops.
No, it's next to their granola bars and their backpacks. They're hiking out. If you touch something, you get your sweat on it and it could show up as human DNA or animal DNA mixed with human DNA. The problem is the people that are into it, the real problem is they want to believe so fucking bad. They just have this crazy confirmation bias and they only look at the good things. Well, my favorite episodes of the low files were the ones where we didn't find shit. They were my favorite. Because that was fun.
Because it's just a dad and two idiot kids, you know, having a blast. The thing about Bigfoot that's interesting is Native Americans had more than a hundred different names for that animal. Yes. And they don't have names for other mythical creatures. And then on top of that, there was an actual animal called the Gigantopithecus.
And it was a huge ape, an ape-like creature, that stood on two legs and walked upright. And it was probably some sort of, looked like a rangutan-like. It probably looked exactly like what we think of as Bigfoot. It was an actual real animal. Have you ever seen the images of that? I have, and it's funny, there's the deep connection between Native Americans and that legend is really, really profound.
In one of the episodes that we did, we talk with some of the elders, and they will say, no, I, one, reached through the window and touched my chest. And like, it's like, you're like, this guy's not crazy. I'm not talking to a crazy person. Right, but they also have peyote.
Well, that's true. Americans have other shit. That's true. That would let you see Bigfoot. Maybe that's the thing. Bigfoot's real, but he's interdimensional. You only see him when you're on drugs. That could happen. That absolutely could be real. If you get on the right psychedelics, you'll meet him. Well, it's funny. As a sober guy, there's part of me that wishes, because I liked mushrooms, but only once or twice a year, because it's so fucking fun. Like you said, you get all that stuff going. Yeah.
I did them last week. Did you laugh a lot? Because all I did was laugh. Post Malone and I did a podcast. We did mushrooms. Oh my god. Yeah, we had a good old time. How long are you tripping? Well, the podcast is four hours long and we were drinking too. So it was like just madness. It was all just like mushrooms. I could feel the mushrooms and I was getting high too. He wasn't smoking pot, but then we were drinking Bud lights and it was a lot of chaos. This is like exactly what my 80s were like.
But I think about people go and do ayahuasca and do those. That really appeals to me. That's different in that you could call it a drug, but it's DMT, which is what ayahuasca brings up. It's the active ingredient. You're still you. You're not drunk. That's what's weird about it. I don't know what it is, but if you wanted to get real woo-woo, you would call it some sort of a chemical gateway into another dimension.
or to another realm that you can't access without it. It doesn't seem like a drug. But how is it not any different than, I got stoned and I saw crazy shit. Well, first of all, it's endogenous, right? So your brain actually has this chemical inside of it. It's one of the more interesting things about this drug is that your body knows how to process it so well. Like if you do Coke, right? Like I'm sure you're coked up for a long time, right? Your body's all fucked up for a long time.
Dymethal tryptomy only lasts like 15 minutes. What? Yeah, your body recognizes what it is, so it brings you back to baseline very, very quickly. So if you do this, it's a 15-minute experience? Yeah, the ayahuasca takes longer because ayahuasca is an orally active version of it. So what ayahuasca is is the roots of one plant and the leaves of the other. So you have DMT in one plant, and then the other plant, you have something called an MAO inhibitor.
MAO is monoamine oxidase, and that's produced by your gut to break down dimethyl tryptamine and a bunch of other chemicals, but it breaks down dimethyl tryptamine because dimethyl tryptamine is in a bunch of different plants. So you could trip just eating faleris grass if you didn't have monoamine oxidase in your gut. So if you ate the grass, nothing would happen because your body would break it down. But if you had an MAO inhibitor, then you would trip balls.
And then the other thing that people talk about with is like, I vomited for five hours. Yeah, that's the problem with ayahuasca. You're gonna blow your asshole out, you're gonna diarrhea throw up. It's disgusting stuff. I don't wanna do that. It's also because you're getting the plant, you're getting all the stuff that's not the active ingredient from these roots and these leaves too. And then also your body's freaking out. Have you ever had any
um, awakening or vision or... I've had a lot of visions on dimethyl trip to mean, yeah. Anything that you could, that you, once you got, um, once you were done tripping, that didn't seem like the ramblings of a madman, or were just stuff that you were like, oh wow, I had a revelation. It's hard to say, um, that all seem impossible to describe to anybody else, other than people that have experienced it.
But what it does make you realize is that the thing that I always felt when I came back is like, how is this possible that you could go to a place like this? Or you could see something that's way more vivid and way more powerful than regular life. Like whatever it is, it's not
It's not like it's dull and confusing and you feel drugged and you feel less. You feel more. You see more. It's more vibrant. It's more powerful. And whatever is over there seems to know you.
It seems to be you're communicating with something, something that's far more intelligent than you, far more advanced and not hindered by all of the things that we're hindered by, like our egos and our nonsense and our insecurities and our civilization and culture. It's some sort of other kind of consciousness. And they joke about things. They make fun of you.
Like, one time I did it and all these gestures, like this, like a...
a geometric pattern of gestures, like a fractal, like infinite gestures were giving me the finger like this. Fuck you, like mocking me. And the message that I got was that I was taking myself too seriously. Like maybe even like, wow, like my intentions going into the trip I was taking myself too seriously. And I remember relaxing on, oh, okay. And they're like, that's right. Like they're nodding their head.
Like, yes. Like, it was a message. Like, hey, stupid. You know, you take yourself too seriously. Fuck you. Fuck you. I like fuck you. And it was gestures, like with a hat and everything. So in your life now, like, let's say you are stressing out about something that's very seriously, you do the fractal gestures, do you remember them? And go, oh, yeah, I had this very, very. But you know what I mean? Like, you bring something back that you can practically use in your, this dimension, this time.
Humility there's a humility that comes from real psychedelic experiences that you just because you know that they are possible It's it makes you it makes you second guess the significance of regular existence Because it seems like the whatever that like that might be where you go when you die, okay?
I was waiting for the moment. So here's I because I don't do drugs, but I've been meditating a bunch and that's one of the things that people have been telling me for years to do. All the people that I admire meditation is a part of their lives and I've every time I do it, I just go to sleep.
Or I start thinking about shit that I can't control, but I've recently started doing it. It's really been amazing and I've definitely noticed some changes and it's also affected the quality of my dreams and I You're familiar with vivid dreaming sure right so Lucid this dreaming video. Yeah, so I've had a number of them and I had I had done some meditating on
And I don't mean to overstay it, but like, what is it all about? Right. Sure. Everybody wants to know that. Sounds cliche. Yeah. And so I did that. And then I had a lucid dream that night. And then a lucid dream. I went to that place.
And it looked like Avatar. It was like a fern gully. It was like Kawaii with the waterfalls and the rainbows. And I was flying. But I was me, but I wasn't me. I didn't have a body, but I could think. And I was definitely me.
And the surroundings were so and the feeling was so full of euphoria and love. Like I started like weep sobbing of happiness. And then I then all of a sudden the voice went, Oh, but what about my family? I'm here now and they're not here yet. Cause it was, it was sort of the theory was that I had gone to
heaven or whatever the fuck it was. And here's the freaky part, is I realize, no, no, they're already there, because time is not linear. So here, my takeaway from this dream, my ramblings of a madman, we're already there.
Well, your brain does produce psychedelic chemicals while you're sleeping. That's one of the things about DMT that's so closely related to dreams is that it's really hard to remember after it's over, but so vivid when it's happening. This I remembered like, and I remember it now, like a witness. And that's what made it different and special. Maybe the improvement in the way your brain was working because of the meditation that you'd gotten yourself into a state where you could access it.
But I think... And I physically asked for it before I went to bed. No, I actively, I actively... Have you done it again since?
I have and I haven't had, I've had smaller fleeting versions of this, but this was like being starring in a movie. It was like, it was happening. I think James Cameron nailed something in that Avatar film that resonates with people in a very strange way, not just that it was an awesome movie, and it was a fucking awesome movie, but
that he, he, he nailed something that made people want to live like that. You know, there was a thing that we're talking about after that movie called Avatar Depression, where people were leaving the film and they were depressed that their life was nothing like Avatar, like Pandora, like living like the novel. Yeah, there was something about what he nailed
He nailed something in that movie was like this spiritual connection. It was very ayahuasca like to. There's this connection to Mother Earth and the nature and spirits and the connection of all of them. There's something about that film. He hit some nerve with people. I've never heard of another film generating depression that, you know, there's no Star Wars depression.
The one you see some of the ones that have recently come out. Yeah, that's depressing. That's what happens when the executives get ahold of us. Hey, you got to go to Cuba and grab the people and put them in the boat. That's right. And then they listen. That's right. That's exactly right. That's exactly what happens. But you know, James Cameron is such a force of nature. You can't really do that to him. He figured something out in those movies.
He figured out how to tap into some sort of elemental area of the psyche that people, it just resonated with people. Like sort of the same way, I think, you know, people that talk about folks that live like a subsistence life, you know, people that have gone to the woods and they just live off the land. They talk about this like deep connection to nature that they get from that and how it makes them feel fulfilled. They don't feel depressed. They feel very engaged and you know, there's a guy named
He lives in the Arctic and vise did this whole series on him called the Heimos Arctic Adventure. And one of the things that he was saying is he came out there like in the 1970s to work for the forestry department. They just lived there for the rest of his life. He's up there right now with his family. He's married to this indigenous woman and they live off the land. He eats caribou and fish and his whole life is like hunting and gathering.
But he's like, this is how people are supposed to, and he's a very intelligent man, very articulate. So when you hear him talk, he's not some weirdo that lives in the woods. He's a guy who recognizes like, there's something about this that resonates with humans, this life, this like being, you're connected in the way that you're supposed to be. And he thinks that what we've done by creating cities and electricity and electronics and
You know social media and all the bullshit that we deal with today that we've disconnected ourselves from the things that that really make us human and that I believe that his his life is more connected to it But there's even a deeper connection and that's how the Navi lived and you know if you read about There's there's many stories about Native Americans where they would especially the command she would kidnap People they would kidnap like young children with that great book
which one under the harvest moon. Oh, okay. Yeah. Do yourself a favor. I will. I will. Empire the summer that I'm talking about. That's the one. Sorry. Oh, okay. Yeah. Same one. Yeah. About, yeah. Cynthia Ann Parker. Yeah. Yes. Do you want my favorite book? There's a photo of her out there in the lobby. That's who that is. Cynthia Ann Parker. Yeah. That's Quanna Parker. That's her son.
That guy over there on the one that's made out of bullet shells. That's one of my favorite books ever. It's fucking amazing. Amazing book. It's amazing. And that's one of the things they said was that she did not want to go back to Western civilization. She's like, you guys live like idiots. Like this is a bullshit way to live. There's something about that movie that tapped into that, but also tapped into this like spiritual realm that exists in psychedelics.
Cameron fucking nailed it man. He nailed in a lot of people like I've never had him on no He's the great first. He's the most humble. I've never worked with him, but my my dear dear dear dear friend who passed away a few years ago Bill Paxton I love that guy. He's the best one of my best He was one of my best friends and he's he and Jim were in Roger Korman's
production mill together. They were both like standby painters. So he's been an average Jim Cameron movie ever, ever made. And he introduced me to Jim. And there was a minute where I was going to play the Billy Zane part in Titanic. And the Jim is, he's like, there's no one like him. There's literally no one like him. The fucking guy went to the bottom of the ocean. So Bill and he went to
Because Bill's a goddamn Jim's taking me down to the Titanic. I'm going next Thursday. And they went down to the Titanic. They had lunch on the deck at a fucking Titanic. What? Yeah. And then Bill came up and everybody was like ashen faced and freaking out and 9-11 had happened.
Bill Paxton was on the deck of the Titanic when 9-11 happened. Which I'm Cameron. Is that crazy? Oh my god. That's insane. Insane.
That's insane. But I'm dying to see these new Avatar movies. I know, when are they supposed to happen? I mean, everyone's all fucked up now because of COVID, right? Yeah, I heard they keep getting pushed and pushed and pushed. But you know, like, he's bet the farm on them. I mean, he's the one guy. He's the guy. Like, there are very few people that could get me to go to a movie theater anymore. Yeah, I'd do anything for that guy's movie. Maybe, Chris Nolan, maybe.
