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[00:00:13] [SPEAKER_01]: It was during when COVID was going on, I had remembered this church and I thought, you
[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_01]: know what?
[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder what they're doing over there.
[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I bet they got a room there or something.
[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And so this is where the brides used to, the room I'm in, is where the brides used to change
[00:00:29] [SPEAKER_01]: before getting married.
[00:00:31] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a cool room.
[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_01]: It's right above the chapel.
[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_01]: The chapel's right below me.
[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Is it an active church?
[00:00:38] [SPEAKER_01]: It's active.
[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you bet.
[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And then what else is cool too is they do a Sunday service here, but then they also rent
[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_01]: the space out to monks during the week.
[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So there's just chanting, just like heavy chanting and incense just coming up all day long.
[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty wild.
[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Why did you seek out a church specifically?
[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I knew the building was here and I liked the building.
[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I just figured, I'm just going to go and check it.
[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even know for sure if they'd even have a place.
[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And of course there was no one here and they were hard to get a hold of and then I got
[00:01:19] [SPEAKER_01]: a call and then when they told me what the office rent was, you know, air conditioned
[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_01]: and Heater with the electricity's paid and the Wi-Fi's here and everything.
[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And they told me what the donation, it's a donation.
[00:01:35] [SPEAKER_01]: What the donation is and I'm like, yeah, I'll take it.
[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_01]: You got any bigger ones?
[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_01]: If that's what they're going for, I'll take the whole floor.
[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Give me the whole top floor.
[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_00]: They're actually renting space out.
[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think it's a direct result of the pandemic?
[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't know.
[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I actually, I shot a movie in here.
[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I shot a movie in this church.
[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I rented out a big office.
[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I directed the TSL movie, Ignore Heroes.
[00:02:00] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I rented out one of their larger office baserooms and brought carpenters in
[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_01]: and basically had a set built inside the office.
[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And they were totally cool with it.
[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_01]: They're like, what do you do?
[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I go, I just want to shoot a movie.
[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to bring some carpenters in.
[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to touch any of the walls.
[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be built within.
[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And they were stoked.
[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_01]: The Reverend was up here checking it out and they just.
[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Is it a pretty progressive church then?
[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's pretty.
[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty progressive.
[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the most crucifixes in this building are in my office.
[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're pretty.
[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_01]: They're pretty.
[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a it's like a, you know, a center for spiritual living or whatever.
[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Whatever they're pretty open minded here.
[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_01]: They're pretty, they're pretty open minded.
[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Real more, I think more of it's a lot about positivity and.
[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so.
[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's no, I'm not.
[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_01]: There's no religious right down there praying over me when I walk into the office.
[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty, it's pretty.
[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_01]: They're pretty open.
[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Actually, I had a lady I was speaking to outside.
[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_01]: She was in that she had joined the Peace Corps in 1962 or something early.
[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And she was telling me all about her experiences straight out of high school
[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_01]: and going in the Peace Corps.
[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was, you know, she's old.
[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_01]: This lady's.
[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_01]: She's, you know, in her nineties or whatever.
[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Eighties.
[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I recently started doing some, some volunteer work at a food pantry in my neighborhood.
[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that I really appreciate about it that I didn't expect
[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_00]: is it's just almost like.
[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Like forced interaction with people that you wouldn't necessarily normally
[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: interact with on a day to day.
[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's that's interesting.
[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_01]: See, I'm an interactor.
[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, my girl always says, you know, who the hell are you talking to over there?
[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm always stopping and visiting.
[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_01]: My girl has lived on the same street forever and she doesn't know any of her neighbors.
[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And now, you know, I've been staying with her and now neighbors are stopping by
[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_01]: to say hi.
[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_01]: She's like, why are you talking to all these people?
[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm like a bit, I like going around visiting and chatting up with people.
[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I like people.
[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Fascinate me.
[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I love the stories.
[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I love listening to people.
[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just fascinating.
[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not very good at making like solid connections.
[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I've had trouble with that since I was a kid, but, but I'm good at list.
[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I like listening.
[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I like hearing their stories and seeing them.
[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_00]: What's your sense of the disconnect between two?
[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously you're good at engaging with people.
[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Why doesn't that get to the next level?
[00:04:41] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, you could sit there and talk about, you know,
[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_01]: childhood abuse issues and that kind of thing.
[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I actually directed a film, the first film I directed was a short
[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_01]: and it's called 288 and it's about survivors of child abuse, male survivors
[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_01]: of physical and sexual abuse.
[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, and maybe that's got something to do with it.
[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Who knows whatever it is, but it's just that that exactly we said a disconnect, you know?
[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_01]: But I, but I enjoy seeing it.
[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I like talking to people.
[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_01]: So, but it just.
[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, based on the books you've written, based on the music you put out in the
[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_00]: world, the conversations that you have, the movie that you just the the
[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_00]: TSL movie that you just mentioned, you're not afraid sharing very deep
[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and intimate things about yourself.
[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it doesn't.
[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it doesn't seem to bother me, but I think a lot of it has to do with,
[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, the fact that I'm capable of just separating me from me.
[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_01]: If that's it, like it's almost like there's me and then there's the person
[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_01]: that has done these things that has no connection to me whatsoever.
[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So my girlfriend, I'll tell you, my girlfriend's a therapist, right?
[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's funny because I've been married a couple of times and just,
[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, whatever nightmare.
[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_01]: But this is a good one because because one day I was just totally freaking out
[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_01]: over whatever issue was going on and, you know, just losing it.
[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And I go, nobody likes this.
[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody likes this.
[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And she goes, look, I like it.
[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_01]: She goes, because everything I every time I come over here, I never know
[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_01]: who's going to answer the door.
[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So she's like, you know, I mean, whatever.
[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a good quality to have in somebody your life.
[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Like they, therapists tend to be very patient with you.
[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I like.
[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Like when I'm totally losing it, God, what did I say?
[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I said something today, crazy.
[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_01]: She goes, oh, OK, OK.
[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_01]: It was just, you know, whatever thought it was, whatever thought
[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I was rolling on, you know, I'm going to pack everything up.
[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm moving.
[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm taking off.
[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to, you know, blah, blah, blah.
[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_01]: She goes, oh, OK, OK.
[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_01]: That's all right.
[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the quality that a good therapist has that I don't possess
[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: is the ability to to listen to something
[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_00]: and then not immediately judge it.
[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. See, that's your see, I want it.
[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I want it. I want to judge.
[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I want to tear it apart.
[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I want to solve it.
[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to wait and let them solve it.
[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to sit back and let them come to their own conclusions,
[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_01]: which is really what what it takes.
[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And I it's like, I always say, hey, let's let's look,
[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_01]: look, look, let's let's fix this.
[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's solve this. Let's get to this.
[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_01]: This is the issue.
[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So but yeah, my my girl is way better at it.
[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_01]: She sits back.
[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_01]: She lets people come to, you know, I just I just tell us sometimes
[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_01]: that, oh, look, I can't even listen to you.
[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_01]: You can't tell me what's going on, because it frustrates me
[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_01]: like crazy, you know, just give them their answers.
[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Give me answers. Move on.
[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_01]: But it doesn't work like that.
[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a balancing act, because I had
[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I started seeing a therapist during the pandemic,
[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_00]: as probably like a lot of other people did.
[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I hit that wall and I'm definitely a goals oriented person.
[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's actually part of the reason why I recently changed therapists
[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_00]: is because I just felt like we were just talking in circles.
[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_00]: It's great having somebody to talk to.
[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_00]: This is nice and all, but I actually want to feel like
[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_00]: when I look back on these sessions,
[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_00]: like I've gotten something out of them.
[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. Or have an accent plan.
[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_01]: That's one thing I, you know,
[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a buddy that does and he just gets kid.
[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_01]: He gets students.
[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_01]: He goes, look, all it's really about is me dumping anyway.
[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So I just hire these students.
[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this guy's this guy's a, you know, he's
[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_01]: big producer, whatever the hell.
[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't matter what he does.
[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just saying so he goes and gets kids that are in college
[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_01]: and he just sits down and just basically just pukes for an hour
[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_01]: and then says, thank you and walks out.
[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what he that's what he uses it for.
[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Just somebody to just listen to his crap for an hour
[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_01]: and then he walks out.
[00:09:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, for me, I always want to exit plan.
[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, look, how long am I going to be visiting with you?
[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_01]: When can we see some results?
[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you just tell me how to fix this?
[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Just fix it.
[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I'm going to move on.
[00:09:17] [SPEAKER_01]: But that doesn't work that way.
[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I know, because I mean, you strike me as somebody
[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_00]: who has made a lot of personal progress over the decades.
[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think, yeah.
[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And I, yes.
[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think a lot of it has been,
[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I got sober 35 years ago.
[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of it was been for me just waking up.
[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, like just the fact that I can see what I'm doing,
[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_01]: see how I treated people, see how I was acting.
[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And when you have that awareness, you see, it's like, oh, OK, I'm done.
[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not doing that anymore.
[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's like a crumb on your lip at dinner.
[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Somebody says, hey, you got, you know, and you just get it off
[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_01]: and you're done, you know, but but you got to see it first.
[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So so a lot of that is just me seeing it and just saying,
[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah, I'm going to repair this damage.
[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Bad news. Don't like it.
[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Repairing damages is a good way of putting it.
[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And I know that you do you wrote a book on the recovery process.
[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I think specifically the 12 step process.
[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_00]: How would you?
[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_00]: How do you think your approach to it was different than sort
[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: of the more conventional approach to 12 step?
[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think what's what's what's the interest to me
[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_01]: is interesting.
[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_01]: The the conventional approach is think for yourself.
[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody's in charge, no bosses.
[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Everything is everything can be done a different way.
[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_01]: There's no right way of doing things.
[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_01]: There's a 12 step framework.
[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_01]: But within that framework, multitude of ways, multitude of ways to do things.
[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, that's the original intent of that program.
[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, as the years went on, people started getting controlling
[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_01]: and you get guys saying, well, let me tell you what to do here.
[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, this is the way we're going to do it.
[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_01]: This is how recovery work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And so these days that sounds fundamental, but it's not.
[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_01]: So basically I go back to the beginning of it and say, look,
[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not God.
[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what's going on.
[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what you're supposed to do.
[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what, you know, it's like I'm not going to give you any advice.
[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to tell you what to do.
[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to share with you what I did.
[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Here's how I got out of this.
[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_01]: This is how I clean this up.
[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_01]: This is how I take this on the road.
[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, nobody's in charge of me.
[00:11:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I was taught early on, you know, a lot of people come into recovery,
[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, and they're looking for a mommy or a daddy.
[00:11:47] [SPEAKER_01]: They're looking for a boss.
[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Somebody tell them what to do, a quick answer or whatever.
[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And when I came in, I was taught that, hey, time to grow up.
[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Grow up.
[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_01]: You're your own boss.
[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_01]: But if you're your own boss, you better be taking care of some business,
[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, and learn how to be responsible, learn how to grow up.
[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So basically in the recovery book I wrote, I talk about that.
[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, here's how I did this.
[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Here's how I grew up.
[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Here's how I work this deal.
[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's really I'm a fundamentalist, but compared to a lot of recovery today,
[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_01]: it seems like it's heresy, but it's really not.
[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Especially interesting in the context of me talking to you from a church.
[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, the whole higher power thing is something that a lot of people talk
[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_00]: about around this.
[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Is there a sense in which that is seeking that authority figure?
[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, what's funny is I'm an agnostic.
[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm an agnostic who has an office in a church.
[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like I've not been through the program myself,
[00:12:50] [SPEAKER_00]: but that it can be anything that you choose to sort of invest in.
[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, there are there are things to think about.
[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_01]: It needs to be well, that's hard.
[00:13:00] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a little hard to explain.
[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I laugh sometimes I would hear some people say, well, you know,
[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_01]: make your higher power a doorknob and then somebody would say, oh, that's ridiculous.
[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_01]: But if you look at a doorknob as a symbol,
[00:13:15] [SPEAKER_01]: as a tool to bridge the way into another room, well, that's legitimate.
[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a that's a legitimate way to look at things.
[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So for me, I keep it very I keep it right here, right on this secular level.
[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And if I study, if I'm studying any sort of scripture or do any readings
[00:13:34] [SPEAKER_01]: or whatever, it's it's just I just apply it to how can I be a better servant?
[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_01]: How can I be kind to the people around me?
[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_01]: How can I be more loving, more giving, more helpful?
[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So every thing I read basically just applies to that.
[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I have no idea if there is a God, what God looks like, what it is.
[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have the vanity to say that I know what God is, you know?
[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So I just use those things just to be a better dad, a better friend,
[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_01]: a better bandmate, a better whatever it is to just try.
[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I put a tax on the world and everyone around me for so long
[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_01]: that I'm basically just paying that back.
[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I was reading an interview that you did and paraphrase you,
[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_00]: but this is a little while ago now, but I guess probably about ten years
[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_00]: ago, doing the math, you said I spent the last 24 years
[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_00]: since I was 26 years old paying back what I did.
[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. What what does it mean to pay back?
[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't necessarily know.
[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, sometimes it is just literally paying back, paying back what you took,
[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_01]: paying back, you know, I consider taking power.
[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_01]: That's also taking power from people, you know, returning that,
[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_01]: which was stolen, returning that power to them.
[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Or I know that gets that's kind of a weird concept a little bit.
[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_01]: But basically some of it's been cash.
[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Some of it's been just owning up to what I've done.
[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Some of it's just like repairing wounds, basically making amendments, repairing wounds.
[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what is and not creating anymore trying to be helpful.
[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like that's my goal now is just just constantly be helpful to people.
[00:15:17] [SPEAKER_01]: To just and sometimes just be kind, just to be kind, to be nice,
[00:15:22] [SPEAKER_01]: just a smile, a hello.
[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I had just I just finished a short film and it's called Good Morning.
[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what it's called.
[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's about one word.
[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_01]: The whole dialogue is good morning.
[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_01]: That's it. It's the whole word.
[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's about a man who it starts with him up in an old apartment.
[00:15:43] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's kind of run down or whatever he's there.
[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And you see pictures of his wife and his kids.
[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And he gets himself dressed up, fixed up and he walks outside
[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_01]: and he gets a little way down the street and somebody says good morning to him.
[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And he turns around and he goes back and this plays out throughout the days.
[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes he gets a little further before someone says good morning to him.
[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And then he always stops and turns around.
[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And then on the last day, they never said any walks to a bridge and just jumps.
[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was it. That good morning, that one kind word was the only thing that was keeping him here.
[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm of a few minds of this because there are certain ways in which punk has historically been very earnest.
[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_00]: But also I think that there is this also this compulsion to to view everything
[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_00]: with an ironic lens for some people and to not be to not be too earnest
[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_00]: for fear of appearing to be corny or cheesy.
[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Is that is that something that you had previously sort of fought against being too earnest?
[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I still fight against it now.
[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_00]: What it is that short film is that's a very earnest subject.
[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. But, you know, and saying it with, you know, a little humor,
[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_01]: a little shit talking, a little, you know, it's just like lighting up, man.
[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_01]: OK, here's the global.
[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's not take ourselves too seriously.
[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's not get preachy.
[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's not get, you know, you're not going to catch me giving sermons anywhere.
[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm a firm believer of people's lives or their own to live.
[00:17:18] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not none of my business.
[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_01]: What anyone else does, I just.
[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I try to take things lightly and kind of fool around a little bit and big talk.
[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what we have in a friend.
[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_01]: That's just big talk.
[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You're you're big talk right now.
[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And just, you know, go easy with it.
[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, oh my God, I hated those bands that would get too preachy and to, you know,
[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_01]: like to me, there's something about me that just makes me want to rebel
[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_01]: and immediately when somebody starts acting like that, even if I believe,
[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, what they're saying, I still just, you know, just the other week
[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_00]: last week, I was talking to specifically to my therapist about this about
[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I was talking a little bit about my professional career and I told her,
[00:18:09] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, I'm sometimes worried that maybe I'm not in the place where I would
[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00]: like to be or I'm not, you know, you know, moving up the way I would like to
[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_00]: because I tend to be too jokey.
[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe when you make too many jokes,
[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_00]: but people have difficulty taking it seriously.
[00:18:25] [SPEAKER_00]: But for me and I think this is probably something you can deeply relate to.
[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_00]: But for me, my entire life, like having a sense of humor and being able to tell
[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_00]: jokes is almost this shortcut that I found to just cut, just cut to the quick
[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and to just immediately connect with people.
[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree with you.
[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_01]: But I also thought of do people really take you seriously when you're talking
[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_01]: so much like that, you know, making a lot of jokes and screwing around
[00:18:54] [SPEAKER_01]: a little bit.
[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, humor, I that's funny to say that because I connected with
[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_01]: the guy today like that, that he was a little tight.
[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I was trying to take my motorcycle over to the shop to get it repaired.
[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And I had to get I had to call people up to get a jump, you know,
[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_01]: whatever the hell it was.
[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And the guy showed up and he's kind of real stiff, real tight or whatever.
[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And he goes to put some gas inside the tank and he starts putting it in.
[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I go, that's diesel, right?
[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, well, what?
[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_01]: What?
[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_01]: He stops and he goes, oh, you got me.
[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_01]: You got me.
[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_01]: You got me.
[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And then he started laughing.
[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And then it just opened up a whole situation.
[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_01]: The guy ended up hanging out.
[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_01]: We're having a cold drink together, you know, and just talking about whatever.
[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_01]: But but it was that little bit of humor, that little bit of light
[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_01]: heartedness that, you know.
[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And but sometimes it's funny.
[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be out screwing around and sometimes I'll do that.
[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll smart ask somebody, I'll say something.
[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes they don't buy it.
[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not funny.
[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_01]: They're not OK with it, you know, and my kids always laugh me.
[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_01]: They go, that didn't go over well.
[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_01]: My daughter's laugh about that.
[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I once had a teacher tell me and this is like Jen genuinely changed
[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_00]: my life to a certain extent.
[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_00]: She said, Brian, not everybody gets your sense of humor.
[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And I took that to heart, you know, just like you can't you can't
[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_00]: assume immediately that people are going to kind of be on your
[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_00]: wavelength and understand where you're coming from.
[00:20:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Feel out the crowd.
[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Read the room.
[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I'm not good at reading the room.
[00:20:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Out there.
[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_01]: That's funny.
[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_01]: You say that out.
[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you what a professor once said to me.
[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Did hook sometimes teachers, professors, whoever they say
[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_01]: something I know what mine was.
[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I was screwed around and not taking stuff seriously,
[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_01]: screwed around.
[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I was I was attempting to go back to school, you know, whatever
[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_01]: it is, little college I roll in.
[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_01]: There's like a quiz, like a little thing that morning.
[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_01]: She wants to just see where we're at or whatever.
[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So I just grabbed the book and just blew through it really
[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_01]: fast.
[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And I took it and I was done in a second and I set it down.
[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I walked out, I took off right and I came back
[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_01]: and the next session, you know, she walks in and she said,
[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_01]: you didn't study this material whatsoever.
[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Did you?
[00:21:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And I go, no, no.
[00:21:31] [SPEAKER_01]: She goes, well, you know, you ace that test.
[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of smile like kind of little cocky kind of
[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_01]: smile and she goes, and you have no idea how sad that is.
[00:21:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And then walked away from me.
[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like that little line, you know, made me think so
[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_01]: much how sad that is, you know, what a lack of effort I
[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_01]: have put into things and, you know, how I didn't take
[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_01]: things seriously and how, yeah, that intellect or
[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_01]: whatever gets me here, but where could it have gone?
[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Who could what it could have served?
[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I chose not.
[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And that stayed with me.
[00:22:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Shit, it's been 20 something year.
[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's been longer than that's been 30 something years.
[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Still thinking about it.
[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_00]: That specifically is an interesting lesson, though,
[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_00]: because like at the end of the day, you could have studied
[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_00]: more and you wouldn't have done any better than you
[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_00]: ultimately did on the test.
[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_01]: But I've looked at my life completely like that just
[00:22:27] [SPEAKER_01]: blowing through.
[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is.
[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't have done any better on the test than I did.
[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But that's how I've looked at everything.
[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Just this kind of like, oh, I'm just going to skate in here.
[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to do this.
[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to.
[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_01]: There's no real care put to a lot of things.
[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_00]: You're referring specifically to the relationships
[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_00]: in your life, the art that you make?
[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah.
[00:22:47] [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, like I said, it's close to 30 years ago.
[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_01]: There's a big difference between the way I look at
[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_01]: things now and then.
[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of it was that just skate through,
[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_01]: skate through, skate through.
[00:22:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And just really not know awareness, a lack of
[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_01]: awareness.
[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not very astute when it comes to anything,
[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_01]: basically.
[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I just wander around until somebody stops me and says,
[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, hang on a minute.
[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever looked at it this way?
[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever thought of doing this?
[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever tried to write a book?
[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever really looked at what someone else
[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_01]: wrote and how they wrote it and what went into it?
[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, or you just take everything like this.
[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_01]: It's so really, really started making me see in art
[00:23:29] [SPEAKER_01]: or whatever music, literature, whatever it was,
[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_01]: the amount of work it goes in and the style and the way
[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_01]: thing, way people are.
[00:23:36] [SPEAKER_01]: It just made me just stop for a minute, focus.
[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_00]: To a certain extent, though, I mean, we all require
[00:23:44] [SPEAKER_00]: some sort of external stimulation, especially if
[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_00]: we're going to change course.
[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_00]: But the key to it is being open to that.
[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_00]: The key to it is, you know, is and I find this
[00:23:57] [SPEAKER_00]: incredibly difficult in my own life is like, is accepting
[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_00]: criticism as being genuine and being from a good place.
[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and that's the other thing like critique.
[00:24:08] [SPEAKER_01]: That was something I never wanted, nor am I going to listen to you.
[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's funny that I hunger for it now.
[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, not necessarily during the project when I was
[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_01]: working on the TS Welf film, the Ignore Heroes film,
[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't take anyone's advice.
[00:24:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't listen to anyone.
[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Anything said to me, you know, if you ever deal in the film
[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_01]: world, it's so crazy.
[00:24:32] [SPEAKER_01]: No other art, no other art in the world is like this,
[00:24:35] [SPEAKER_01]: where you can be in the middle of a project and somebody
[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_01]: will let me give you my notes on that.
[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you what I think.
[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, wait a minute, man, I'm just breaking out
[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_01]: the palette. Don't need your notes.
[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, could you imagine that an art if somebody,
[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, stopped, you know, Jackson Pollock said,
[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_01]: no, hang on a minute before you lay down that orange.
[00:24:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's, you know, let me tell you what I think about orange.
[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's crazy.
[00:25:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like there are instances of that in there.
[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I want to say like the Sistine Chapel of, you know,
[00:25:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Michelangelo receiving feedback as he was doing it.
[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And it never, if you interrupt the artistic process,
[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_00]: it never ends well.
[00:25:13] [SPEAKER_01]: No, but in film they take that that's accepted.
[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And everyone looking for their notes, their take on this
[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_01]: thing or whatever, you know?
[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And for me, I'm not a fan of it.
[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, hey, let me do my work.
[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_01]: But then I want to hear what you say after I do my work,
[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_01]: then I'm really going to listen to your critique.
[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Give me where at first, where do you come from?
[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_01]: What's your experience?
[00:25:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Give me what you think of this, you know, something I could look at.
[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And now it's at my age now or whatever I'm doing,
[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I hunger for a critique.
[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Honest, hard, challenging questions about all of it.
[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's how I learn.
[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I need it.
[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as long as the person giving you feedback is genuine,
[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there are instances, you know, music,
[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_00]: being a studio, for example, where it's useful to have people
[00:26:02] [SPEAKER_00]: to bounce ideas off of.
[00:26:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess and no.
[00:26:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I made this.
[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_01]: We're getting to the heart of it now.
[00:26:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_01]: That's all right.
[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_01]: There's that.
[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I was in this band called The Joy Killer and one
[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_01]: of our records, Joy Killer 3.
[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I got the whole band together in the studio before we laid
[00:26:22] [SPEAKER_01]: down one note and I said, I just want to pre-apologize for what
[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to do to you because I knew where that was going
[00:26:31] [SPEAKER_01]: because I had heard it in my head and I heard it and I knew
[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_01]: where it needed to go.
[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And I basically just beat them up.
[00:26:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I beat them all up, you know?
[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, one of the parts was, I'll tell you it was funny,
[00:26:51] [SPEAKER_01]: the guitars in this one section and this song were out of tune
[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_01]: with the piano.
[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_01]: The song's called Ordinary and the guitars were out of
[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_01]: tune from the keyboards.
[00:27:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So the producer and I were listening back.
[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_01]: We said, hey, let's just mute those guitars here because
[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_01]: they're not working right now.
[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So let's just mute them so we don't have to listen to that.
[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And the minute we hit the mute button, this big large chorus
[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_01]: turned into this small intimate chorus with larger verses
[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_01]: because the guitarists were now gone.
[00:27:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, oh my God, there it is right there.
[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_01]: We don't need those guitars.
[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Those guitars are out.
[00:27:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And the guitarist just went crazy.
[00:27:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, he just went, you know, he went ballistic,
[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_01]: but I still believe it was the right move.
[00:27:40] [SPEAKER_01]: It was the right move.
[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_00]: The fact that you're able to distinguish that specific instance
[00:27:45] [SPEAKER_00]: leads me to believe that it's at least like somewhat of an
[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_00]: anomaly in your career to be like that,
[00:27:50] [SPEAKER_00]: to that micromanage or that hyper fixated or that closed off
[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_00]: to suggestion.
[00:27:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, I yes and yes and no.
[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_01]: On the last TSL record we did.
[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_01]: The our keyboard player, Greg Keen said, hey,
[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_01]: we need you to be you.
[00:28:12] [SPEAKER_01]: So don't start playing soft now.
[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_01]: You we need you to be you.
[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_01]: You may not like it because sometimes I don't like it when I
[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_01]: get that way. It didn't feel good, you know, when you're
[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_01]: coming hard like that and just, you know, hey, this is the
[00:28:25] [SPEAKER_01]: way we're going to do it.
[00:28:25] [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do it.
[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't necessarily feel good to me, but sometimes
[00:28:29] [SPEAKER_01]: that's what it takes.
[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it takes somebody doing that, you know, and
[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_01]: and so our keyboardist he just came to me said, look,
[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I know you don't like it, but, you know, you got to be
[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_01]: you. You got to be on this, man.
[00:28:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't don't pussyfoot this.
[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we trust you so be you.
[00:28:50] [SPEAKER_00]: You want to say you, I mean, you specifically there,
[00:28:52] [SPEAKER_00]: there's I think in a certain sense that not caring
[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_00]: about criticism has been almost a superpower for you
[00:29:01] [SPEAKER_00]: over the years that it's it's allowed you to go in all
[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_00]: these all these different directions because you're not
[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_00]: seeking people's approval.
[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, not you know, and that's I mean, that's the bottom
[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_01]: line, isn't it? Who are you making films for?
[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Who are you writing books for?
[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Who are you making?
[00:29:14] [SPEAKER_01]: That was the one thing I learned a lot is because
[00:29:17] [SPEAKER_01]: there was a time period where I was basically trying
[00:29:21] [SPEAKER_01]: to sell myself because I was broke, man.
[00:29:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm living at my mom's house.
[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have anything.
[00:29:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I just, you know, I was I was broke.
[00:29:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I was just slowly peeling away parts of
[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_01]: myself. You know, somebody suggests that might do it.
[00:29:37] [SPEAKER_01]: The record label at the time working with a major
[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_01]: record label and you know, they'd say, oh, we want
[00:29:42] [SPEAKER_01]: this with and I'm giving it and I'm giving it and
[00:29:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm giving it and then hunt sales who played with
[00:29:48] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, Iggy Pop and Bowie and the drummer
[00:29:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Hunt Hunt told me one time he said, Jack, you've
[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_01]: been playing hardball your whole life.
[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't start playing softball now.
[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and and basically he was right.
[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I play hardball.
[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I do.
[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I play hardball, but the stuff that I create isn't
[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_01]: necessarily financially lucrative.
[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not.
[00:30:12] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like it.
[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_01]: So so sometimes just sticking to your guns is kind
[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_01]: of a little bit of a, you know, it's a bitch.
[00:30:20] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, when you can't come up with a bill,
[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_01]: you can't you're homeless again at, you know,
[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_01]: 50 something years old or whatever.
[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And you may have integrity, but you know,
[00:30:29] [SPEAKER_01]: integrity doesn't doesn't pay the bills.
[00:30:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I tell you a funny story.
[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I was on a I was on a panel and a publisher's
[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_01]: luncheon and and it was me and one of the guys
[00:30:43] [SPEAKER_01]: from Toto and a guy from Smash Mouth
[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_01]: and we know it's like whatever.
[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_01]: So in this nice luncheon, you know,
[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_01]: and anyway, so one of the one of the publishers
[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_01]: stood up and they said, well, Jack, is it strange
[00:30:56] [SPEAKER_01]: for you? You're you're the only one at the
[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_01]: table there that's not a multi-million seller.
[00:31:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And the guy from Toto said, yeah, he's also
[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_01]: the only one with any credibility.
[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I thought that was that was we were all laughing.
[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty funny.
[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Credibility doesn't always pay the bills.
[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So that period for you, that would have been
[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_00]: what around like 2005?
[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, shoot, it's been on and off all through
[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_01]: on and off.
[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I bring that up specifically because again, like,
[00:31:26] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, I don't know if I was reading or listening
[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_00]: to an interview that you did, but you specifically
[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_00]: mentioned sleeping in a car and you mentioned
[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_00]: that in the year 2005.
[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, how about two thousand twenty four?
[00:31:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I just lost my apartment.
[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I just lost.
[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I just lost it.
[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_00]: You're dating a therapist.
[00:31:46] [SPEAKER_00]: So so, you know, you're you're that's
[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_00]: a step up from the car.
[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Well, you know, finance your own film.
[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a good way to lose an apartment.
[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's film school.
[00:31:57] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, do Kickstarter and take out loans
[00:31:59] [SPEAKER_01]: and do whatever to finance a film.
[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, basically you take a beating from that too.
[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So but I don't mind, you know, I'm staying at my girl's house now.
[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_01]: All my stuff's in storage.
[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm staying at my girl's house.
[00:32:13] [SPEAKER_01]: My daughters are dividing up anything that's good.
[00:32:16] [SPEAKER_01]: You know what? I still have my office, but I tell you
[00:32:20] [SPEAKER_01]: a funny story one time, I was given a talk somewhere.
[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And and I was homeless at the time.
[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was literally living out of a car.
[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_01]: All my stuff was in a car.
[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I they were introducing the speaker, who was me that night.
[00:32:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And they said, well, our speaker tonight's from
[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_01]: he looks at me, the guy looks me and Smarter goes,
[00:32:40] [SPEAKER_01]: oh, I think he's from our parking lot this evening.
[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was pretty funny to go up and, you know, you go up and give
[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_01]: it. And I thought it was a me I was laughing, you know,
[00:32:50] [SPEAKER_01]: and you're you're going up to give a talk on spirituality or whatever.
[00:32:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you're living out of a car.
[00:32:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but that's exactly the time that people need spirituality
[00:32:59] [SPEAKER_00]: is when they're at their lowest.
[00:33:01] [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. It's a lot.
[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_01]: But here's what's interesting.
[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_01]: People always, you know, they're looking for books,
[00:33:07] [SPEAKER_01]: how to get what you want and be happy.
[00:33:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody wants to read a book.
[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_01]: How to not get what you want and still be happy.
[00:33:14] [SPEAKER_00]: That's not really how to enjoy living out of your car
[00:33:17] [SPEAKER_00]: is probably not. That's right.
[00:33:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Yeah, that's not as easy as sell at the time.
[00:33:22] [SPEAKER_00]: What did what did spirituality mean to you?
[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_01]: A connection to those around me.
[00:33:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's all that's all it was.
[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's that great John Dunn thing.
[00:33:35] [SPEAKER_01]: No man is an island.
[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_01]: We're all promontories and each man's death diminishes me.
[00:33:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I think he was speaking about England.
[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, it's the connection, connection, connection,
[00:33:47] [SPEAKER_01]: connection.
[00:33:49] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm one of those idiots always likes to put something
[00:33:53] [SPEAKER_01]: together, put something together.
[00:33:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I love Charles Dickens when he's writing a Christmas Carol
[00:33:57] [SPEAKER_01]: and this the speech that Marley gives and he says,
[00:34:02] [SPEAKER_01]: mankind was my business.
[00:34:04] [SPEAKER_01]: The common good was my business.
[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_01]: This is the spirit.
[00:34:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Anything outside of me,
[00:34:08] [SPEAKER_01]: the awareness that somebody exists other than me.
[00:34:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, I think there's a funny scene in one flow
[00:34:16] [SPEAKER_01]: over the Cougars nest with Jack Nicholson and he's playing
[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_01]: cards with the guys and Danny DeVito's character Mancini
[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_01]: comes up and he starts talking to him and Jack Nicholson says,
[00:34:26] [SPEAKER_01]: hey, hang on a minute.
[00:34:29] [SPEAKER_01]: These are real people here.
[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_01]: These are real people.
[00:34:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And you know that that he was, of course, he's mentally
[00:34:37] [SPEAKER_01]: ill is characters mentally ill and that but so self-absorbed,
[00:34:41] [SPEAKER_01]: so self-centered that no one exists besides his needs.
[00:34:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And on the extreme, you can watch people.
[00:34:48] [SPEAKER_01]: They'll walk in front of people when they're talking.
[00:34:50] [SPEAKER_01]: They'll walk into a conversation and just start speaking as
[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_01]: if no one there exists other than them.
[00:34:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's, you know, it's awareness of the people around
[00:35:00] [SPEAKER_01]: you and then lately I've been on this thing lately
[00:35:03] [SPEAKER_01]: where self-absorption almost seems to be the price for
[00:35:07] [SPEAKER_01]: awareness.
[00:35:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I was less self-absorbed before I was aware because I was just
[00:35:13] [SPEAKER_01]: operating and never checking myself.
[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Then all of a sudden I come into this awareness like, oh my
[00:35:18] [SPEAKER_01]: God, what are you doing here?
[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing here?
[00:35:20] [SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing here?
[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing here?
[00:35:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's you got a little more self-absorption,
[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess, because you're really constantly checking yourself
[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and making sure there's a certain extent to which you
[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_00]: would think that awareness generally would almost be the
[00:35:37] [SPEAKER_00]: opposite of that because awareness also means being aware
[00:35:40] [SPEAKER_00]: of other people and their needs.
[00:35:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_00]: So that runs counter to self-absorption too?
[00:35:48] [SPEAKER_00]: It does, doesn't it?
[00:35:49] [SPEAKER_01]: That's not the case.
[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm because even the awareness that, hey, all right,
[00:35:55] [SPEAKER_01]: what's happening here?
[00:35:56] [SPEAKER_01]: What's what's going on?
[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_01]: What is he saying to me?
[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_01]: What is what is my part here in this conversation?
[00:36:01] [SPEAKER_01]: You know what's that?
[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_01]: That constantly wondering where do I fit?
[00:36:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Where do I stand?
[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_01]: There's a great line about humility and in the line
[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_01]: that says humility is just an honest appraisal of where I
[00:36:13] [SPEAKER_01]: stand between God and my fellows.
[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, so, so I think when you're aware, you're you're
[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_01]: constantly checking that, bouncing it off, bouncing
[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_01]: out, ping, ping, ping, ping.
[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, what's happening?
[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing?
[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Are you stepping over the line here?
[00:36:27] [SPEAKER_01]: So there is some self-absorption that it's kind
[00:36:30] [SPEAKER_01]: of a bit of a joke to say that.
[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But it's also there's a bit of truth in every
[00:36:34] [SPEAKER_01]: joke also.
[00:36:35] [SPEAKER_00]: One piece of internet culture, one phrase from
[00:36:38] [SPEAKER_00]: internet culture that I've really come to appreciate
[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_00]: is have you heard NPC before?
[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_01]: The like a like a in a game non-play the character.
[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which is which is such a beautiful like idea.
[00:36:52] [SPEAKER_00]: What we know when you apply that to the real world
[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_00]: because that's how that's how most people are
[00:36:57] [SPEAKER_00]: going through life, right?
[00:36:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Most people are going through life as a star
[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_00]: of their own video game and everybody else.
[00:37:01] [SPEAKER_00]: There's just these dialogue characters.
[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, exactly.
[00:37:05] [SPEAKER_01]: That's in the awareness that hey you're not.
[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_01]: These are people.
[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_01]: They have their own lives, their own, you know,
[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_01]: that's why I always stop like if I call somebody
[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I always say, you know, hey am I am I intruding
[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_01]: in this call?
[00:37:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Am I are you doing something?
[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Are you I don't think you're sitting around waiting
[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_01]: for me to just call you, just talk to you
[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_01]: or whatever, you know it's a...
[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I've had that experience though in life
[00:37:30] [SPEAKER_00]: where, you know, obviously you implicitly
[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00]: know that that's the fact.
[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_00]: But then you'll run into somebody you hadn't
[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_00]: seen for years and your almost your system is
[00:37:38] [SPEAKER_00]: shocked by the fact that their life continued on.
[00:37:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Without you.
[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's you know, that's funny that so
[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_01]: in TS Well, my band TS Well, I quit for a while
[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_01]: and I was mad at them that they continued
[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_01]: to use the name.
[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So I was pissed at him.
[00:37:57] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you know, God, look at all the damage.
[00:37:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Look what you've done, blah, blah, blah.
[00:38:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was talking, I wish this guy was still around.
[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_01]: You would have loved this guy.
[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_01]: My friend Alan Rosencrantz, this great
[00:38:07] [SPEAKER_01]: old great old guy.
[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_01]: He was a gangster guy that had gotten straightened up.
[00:38:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, just you know, he's lost a leg.
[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_01]: His legs missy, you know, just like a character out of a movie.
[00:38:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And he said to me one time, he goes, Jack,
[00:38:22] [SPEAKER_01]: so tell me how this went down.
[00:38:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I understand you're very angry, very angry.
[00:38:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, when did they kick you out of the band?
[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_01]: When you kicked out of that band?
[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I go, kicked out.
[00:38:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I went and kicked out.
[00:38:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I quit, man.
[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I walked to he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Now wait a minute.
[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_01]: You walked away, left them stranded and you're angry
[00:38:43] [SPEAKER_01]: because they tried to continue the livelihood without you.
[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Is that what you're upset about?
[00:38:50] Oh, wait a minute, man.
[00:38:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I never looked at it like that, you know.
[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_00]: It just knocks you on your ass
[00:38:56] [SPEAKER_00]: when somebody is able to put things in a context like that.
[00:38:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. Coming from outside like that.
[00:39:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, yeah, I guess not.
[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, looking at it like that, yeah.
[00:39:06] [SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, you know, I understand that
[00:39:08] [SPEAKER_00]: from the standpoint of say you break up with somebody,
[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_00]: but you know, you still you still like the person,
[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, you still got somewhat a relationship with them.
[00:39:16] [SPEAKER_00]: You. Theoretically want them to succeed.
[00:39:20] [SPEAKER_00]: The part of you is like, yeah, you know, you know,
[00:39:22] [SPEAKER_00]: a little bit maybe a little bit like
[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Shodan Fried isn't the worst thing in the world.
[00:39:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. Yeah, I.
[00:39:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's interesting.
[00:39:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm friends with all my exes, all my ex wives,
[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_01]: except for the one that died.
[00:39:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, I literally want,
[00:39:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I literally want the best for them.
[00:39:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I want them to be happy.
[00:39:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I want it. I want them to be if I could,
[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_01]: if there was anything I could ever do for any of them,
[00:39:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I would do it.
[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I'd do it right now.
[00:39:52] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, whatever I could do, I would give to them.
[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_00]: So. Yeah, I guess the part of it,
[00:39:58] [SPEAKER_00]: the part of it that I saw, you know, I'm also,
[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, in friendly with with just about all my exes
[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_00]: and a part of it is like, I just want them to miss me every once
[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_00]: awhile. I'm not saying I want them back.
[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to be in a relationship.
[00:40:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I understand why it ended.
[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I just turn time to time.
[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I want them to to miss me, you know, right?
[00:40:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Think fondly of me. Yes.
[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's that's fun.
[00:40:20] [SPEAKER_01]: So one of the first films I directed was a short film
[00:40:24] [SPEAKER_01]: called 288 about child abuse.
[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And and it all started because I wrote a sort of
[00:40:33] [SPEAKER_01]: love letter basically to the person that had abused me.
[00:40:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And it starts with, I wonder if you remember me.
[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if you fondly recall the times you touched me.
[00:40:45] [SPEAKER_01]: So and it was like, it was that thought of thinking,
[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_01]: hey, does this person miss me?
[00:40:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Did they did they care about me?
[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Did they see me as more than just some physical thing?
[00:40:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Was that could they see any amount of person in me?
[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And basically that that started me on a whole film
[00:41:04] [SPEAKER_01]: about child abuse and a monologue at the end
[00:41:07] [SPEAKER_01]: about whether that person misses me or not.
[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a deeply complex thought that I can't even begin to
[00:41:14] [SPEAKER_00]: attempt to unpack.
[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_01]: It was for me, too.
[00:41:18] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a lot of unpacking.
[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, hey man, you know, it's yeah, very uncomfortable.
[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Very uncomfortable.
[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01]: But it was a thought.
[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a thought.
[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I wonder if this person thinks of me the way I
[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_01]: think of a of a person and the way I think of a relationship
[00:41:37] [SPEAKER_01]: or whatever.
[00:41:38] [SPEAKER_01]: What was I did this person?
[00:41:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, was I literally nothing, literally nothing, nothing
[00:41:45] [SPEAKER_01]: more than a towel, whatever it was, whatever, you know,
[00:41:49] [SPEAKER_01]: nothing, nothing, an inanimate object.
[00:41:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Or do you think back to my spirit?
[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think back to what I was?
[00:41:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Who I was?
[00:42:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have more perspective on that than you did at the time?
[00:42:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I do or not.
[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I think after I created that film, if you get a chance
[00:42:08] [SPEAKER_01]: you'd go it's free.
[00:42:09] [SPEAKER_01]: It's on Vimeo.
[00:42:10] [SPEAKER_01]: You can look it up to 88.
[00:42:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And very it was a difficult piece.
[00:42:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And also the thing about that film is I employed a technique
[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_01]: that it never based as far as I can tell from ever when I talk
[00:42:26] [SPEAKER_01]: to it's never it's never been used before in film.
[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So basically no one who was in that film knew what the film
[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_01]: was about, except for me.
[00:42:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I was, I was some guys shot a small documentary on me
[00:42:46] [SPEAKER_01]: and I went to a film festival and I was watching the films
[00:42:49] [SPEAKER_01]: in the film festival and I was thinking, you know, some of
[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_01]: these are written so well but the acting is so poor.
[00:42:56] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and some of some of you sometimes you stumble
[00:42:59] [SPEAKER_01]: on great actors, but you're not getting, you know, if
[00:43:01] [SPEAKER_01]: you're making small little films, the acting's not great
[00:43:04] [SPEAKER_01]: a lot of most times.
[00:43:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so what I did is I thought I'm not going to tell any
[00:43:12] [SPEAKER_01]: of these.
[00:43:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, here's how the whole thing even started film.
[00:43:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I made a comment on social media one morning, some silly
[00:43:18] [SPEAKER_01]: comment about, you know, I can't I can't start my day
[00:43:23] [SPEAKER_01]: without a cup of hot coffee in the morning, whatever,
[00:43:25] [SPEAKER_01]: just not just little comment.
[00:43:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And then people started commenting on it, you know,
[00:43:30] [SPEAKER_01]: and they, I need it black.
[00:43:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I need it hot.
[00:43:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I need it blah, blah, blah, you know, this kind
[00:43:34] [SPEAKER_01]: of thing.
[00:43:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Then I went back and I deleted the original post and
[00:43:40] [SPEAKER_01]: rewrote the post of a sexual nature and then their
[00:43:44] [SPEAKER_01]: coffee comments all seem to be applying to that post.
[00:43:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And then people will started coming in later and going,
[00:43:53] [SPEAKER_01]: what the hell's with these comments, man?
[00:43:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Who are these people?
[00:43:57] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, go on.
[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so I thought, okay, okay.
[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So then when I went and wrote this movie, this 288
[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_01]: movie, when I wrote it, I got actors.
[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I, well they weren't even actors.
[00:44:09] [SPEAKER_01]: They're just friends.
[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_01]: These were just people I knew, these guys I knew said,
[00:44:13] [SPEAKER_01]: hey, I'm making this film.
[00:44:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to do it?
[00:44:15] [SPEAKER_01]: They said, yeah.
[00:44:15] [SPEAKER_01]: So I came over and I asked them questions.
[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I was seeking honest answers.
[00:44:21] [SPEAKER_01]: So I would ask them, have you ever been betrayed
[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_01]: before?
[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Has a friend ever hurt you?
[00:44:26] [SPEAKER_01]: What did it feel like?
[00:44:27] [SPEAKER_01]: So they're not acting.
[00:44:29] [SPEAKER_01]: They're giving me legitimate answers to that question.
[00:44:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I didn't see it coming.
[00:44:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, it hurt, man.
[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I was, I was heartbroken, man.
[00:44:38] [SPEAKER_01]: This, this guy was close to me.
[00:44:40] [SPEAKER_01]: It was like a father figure, blah, blah, blah.
[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so here were these answers.
[00:44:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Then I took those answers and basically cut them,
[00:44:49] [SPEAKER_01]: took them and then applied them to sexual abuse
[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_01]: and physical abuse.
[00:44:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And so they're giving me honest answers to a question
[00:45:01] [SPEAKER_01]: that wasn't asked of them.
[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's gnarly.
[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I sat at the first film festival that it showed
[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_01]: and I sat in a theater and just listened to people sob.
[00:45:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Sob.
[00:45:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And then the perpetrator that's in the film,
[00:45:16] [SPEAKER_01]: I told him to talk to me.
[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_01]: He was a veteran.
[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_01]: He served in Vietnam.
[00:45:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And I told him to talk to me about in title
[00:45:24] [SPEAKER_01]: ship, like people being entitled, entitlement and kids
[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_01]: days and whether they have any.
[00:45:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And he was saying things like they need to stand on their own two feet.
[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_01]: They got a quick cry and they blame everybody for their problems.
[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Why are they looking at me?
[00:45:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not there.
[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not the problem here.
[00:45:40] [SPEAKER_01]: They're the problem.
[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And so in the film, you hear those that were abused
[00:45:45] [SPEAKER_01]: and then you hear the abuser denying the abuse and attacking them
[00:45:50] [SPEAKER_01]: for what they said and how they're making things up.
[00:45:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And and when you put the two together, it was extremely uncomfortable,
[00:45:58] [SPEAKER_01]: extremely uncomfortable.
[00:46:00] [SPEAKER_01]: And then at the end, it's a monologue of my letter.
[00:46:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that the project is more powerful if people have the fore
[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_00]: knowledge of what you did or just coming in cold?
[00:46:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, sometimes they get mad when they find out what I did because it's so
[00:46:18] [SPEAKER_01]: believe I'm but I'm talking to you because who knows where we get a
[00:46:20] [SPEAKER_01]: chance to speak on this again.
[00:46:22] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, a lot of times they're mad because it's it's like, what do you mean?
[00:46:27] [SPEAKER_01]: There's no unicorn.
[00:46:28] [SPEAKER_01]: There's no.
[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's like they've been shown this thing and they believe it's real.
[00:46:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And now they're told this is not real.
[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_01]: But the interesting thing is out of the people that were in the film,
[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_01]: a few of them actually turned out where they came to me and said, hey,
[00:46:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I was molested.
[00:46:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I was I was hurt like this.
[00:46:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And they were there was only one of the participants that refused to go on
[00:46:57] [SPEAKER_01]: with the film.
[00:46:58] [SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to be pulled out of it.
[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't they didn't want to be part of it, even though it says
[00:47:02] [SPEAKER_01]: that their actors at the start.
[00:47:05] [SPEAKER_00]: When was it revealed to them what the project was and when did they pull out?
[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_01]: When it was the end, when it was done after it had been one of them.
[00:47:16] [SPEAKER_01]: I think one of them kind of had an idea.
[00:47:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't even think he didn't know what the project was,
[00:47:21] [SPEAKER_01]: but I think the questions were becoming very uncomfortable to him.
[00:47:25] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that even though that's not what I was asking him,
[00:47:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that those answers in the his responses that I was looking for
[00:47:36] [SPEAKER_01]: were touching what had happened to him.
[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_01]: If that if that makes sense.
[00:47:42] [SPEAKER_00]: It's an interesting approach for a number of reasons, you know,
[00:47:45] [SPEAKER_00]: one of which is I wonder if you just had the sense before going into it that it
[00:47:49] [SPEAKER_00]: was just such a hard
[00:47:51] [SPEAKER_00]: topic to talk about that maybe wouldn't get people to really discuss it in
[00:47:56] [SPEAKER_00]: that honest and earnest way.
[00:47:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and definitely not the people that were in that film,
[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_01]: not that demographic or whatever it is.
[00:48:05] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you don't get a lot of like tough guys coming out saying they
[00:48:08] [SPEAKER_01]: had been raped or molested, you know, whatever it is.
[00:48:11] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just not very.
[00:48:13] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not talked about.
[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not talked about.
[00:48:16] [SPEAKER_01]: They don't they don't realize that a lot of these victims are not what they
[00:48:20] [SPEAKER_01]: think victims look like.
[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_00]: What gave you that courage initially to talk about it?
[00:48:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Once again, for me, it's disconnection.
[00:48:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It's probably I think that the act itself,
[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_01]: what happened to me created my my ability to not let it bother me.
[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Because you're so you're so separated from that sense of self.
[00:48:44] [SPEAKER_01]: You're gone. I heard this woman really interesting.
[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoyed it.
[00:48:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Nicholas Ray, who was a director, he did Rebel Without a Cause or whatever.
[00:48:53] [SPEAKER_01]: His daughter's a writer, Nika Ray.
[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And she she wrote this great piece and she said that when she had been
[00:49:01] [SPEAKER_01]: hurt like that as a child, she had an easy bake oven.
[00:49:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Her grandmother used to bake.
[00:49:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And so she had an easy bake oven that kids would have.
[00:49:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And her mother used to smoke and she used to smoke.
[00:49:15] [SPEAKER_01]: She would pretend to be smoking and using the easy bake oven.
[00:49:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And so the person
[00:49:22] [SPEAKER_01]: that hurt her, she basically had put it where they hurt someone that was not
[00:49:28] [SPEAKER_01]: a had they didn't have a sense of self.
[00:49:33] [SPEAKER_01]: She was still her grandmother and her mother.
[00:49:36] [SPEAKER_01]: She was not yet herself, which I thought was a really interesting way to
[00:49:41] [SPEAKER_01]: basically separate yourself from the abuse.
[00:49:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Dissociation, I think exactly.
[00:49:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Did yeah, to disassociate.
[00:49:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And the same thing, the first novel I wrote, American Demon,
[00:49:53] [SPEAKER_01]: it's written outside of myself.
[00:49:55] [SPEAKER_01]: It's written from this demon perspective that
[00:49:58] [SPEAKER_01]: they basically it's a trick of disassociation.
[00:50:02] [SPEAKER_01]: It pulls me back, allows me to basically lay it out to tell the truth as I saw it,
[00:50:08] [SPEAKER_01]: to not worry about looking bad, being hurt, whatever, because it's not me.
[00:50:12] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not me.
[00:50:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And in the same way, playing in a band, I did the same thing.
[00:50:18] [SPEAKER_01]: This guy on stage just said to me, it's not me.
[00:50:22] [SPEAKER_01]: When I stopped drinking and had to get back on stage, it was terrible.
[00:50:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It was terrible.
[00:50:29] [SPEAKER_01]: It was so uncomfortable because I'm like an I'm a nerd, man.
[00:50:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just a you know, I'd rather sit around the house and read.
[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't normally even when we play shows, people always go, well, where's Jack?
[00:50:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, he's in the car reading.
[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_01]: We get him five minutes before we're supposed to go on.
[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, whatever the hell in them.
[00:50:48] [SPEAKER_01]: When I first played a show sober, I was so uncomfortable,
[00:50:52] [SPEAKER_01]: so uncomfortable because I'm exposed exposed.
[00:50:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, later on it was I was able to to re dig up how it felt before going on.
[00:51:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was able to separate myself and be that guy on stage versus the guy off stage,
[00:51:07] [SPEAKER_01]: who a lot of people think I'm this real extroverted cat and I'm not.
[00:51:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm completely the opposite of.
[00:51:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I leave a small, little, small couple of friends life.
[00:51:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm the same way.
[00:51:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I do this and I can talk to strangers, but I can't.
[00:51:24] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, my thing is if I go to to a party and don't know anybody,
[00:51:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to sit off in the corner because I for whatever reason,
[00:51:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I just can't one on one.
[00:51:32] [SPEAKER_00]: You obviously don't have this the same exact problem,
[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_00]: but I have difficulty engaging in that setting for some reason.
[00:51:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's really hard for my brain to reconcile these things.
[00:51:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, because that's funny because because when I walk into a party,
[00:51:46] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm playing a part there was a great there was a great.
[00:51:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a big fan of early science fiction, you know, Highline Asimov,
[00:51:55] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, Bradbury, Cutner,
[00:51:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Allison, you know, I love that stuff.
[00:52:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And there was a stounding. Yeah.
[00:52:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I got a I got a stounding to the book.
[00:52:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, there was a great story about this guy walks into a bar and he's
[00:52:11] [SPEAKER_01]: like six foot three and he's big and he's loud and he comes in and the
[00:52:15] [SPEAKER_01]: whole room lights up and they're all like the girls are coming by him
[00:52:19] [SPEAKER_01]: and the guys are glad handing him and he gets a drain.
[00:52:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Mike, the bartender, everybody stoked and the whole room's alive.
[00:52:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And he says, and now I'd like you to meet my handler.
[00:52:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And he stops and he freezes and a door in the back of him opens up
[00:52:34] [SPEAKER_01]: and this little guy crawls out of the back and he's not attractive
[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_01]: and he's not this and he's not everything.
[00:52:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And he gets out and gets a drink.
[00:52:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And when he comes out of the back, the whole room,
[00:52:45] [SPEAKER_01]: quiet's back down.
[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody goes about their business.
[00:52:48] [SPEAKER_01]: He's ignored.
[00:52:49] [SPEAKER_01]: He gets up and gets a drink.
[00:52:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And finally, the bartender says, hey, Johnny, why don't you get back inside?
[00:52:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you get back inside?
[00:52:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And he jumps back inside the big man and the big man comes to life and the room
[00:53:01] [SPEAKER_01]: comes to life.
[00:53:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, when I walk in a room, I walk in as the big man.
[00:53:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, how are you doing?
[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, all right, you know, good to see you on this.
[00:53:11] [SPEAKER_01]: But in reality, I'm not.
[00:53:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm the handler and the little body inside.
[00:53:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Since this is an audio podcast, I should say you're not
[00:53:19] [SPEAKER_00]: you're not holding a cigar right now.
[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder how tied the cigar is to the big man.
[00:53:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I can't I can't smoke in the office.
[00:53:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. But even even holding a cigar, but I feel like that's almost
[00:53:33] [SPEAKER_00]: that's part of the character. Is it not?
[00:53:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. A little bit. Yeah, exactly.
[00:53:38] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I do smoke cigars.
[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I smoke. It's funny.
[00:53:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes sometimes if I'm in the middle of something really working on
[00:53:44] [SPEAKER_01]: something, I'll burn a shitload of incense in here and then I'll fire up
[00:53:48] [SPEAKER_01]: and take a couple of puffs because they can't really smell it.
[00:53:52] [SPEAKER_01]: You burn the sage.
[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_01]: They think you're burning sage in here.
[00:53:56] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's part of it is hey, here I am.
[00:53:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, hey, you know, and
[00:54:03] [SPEAKER_01]: and not at the end, a very withdrawal, very, very sucked up, very small,
[00:54:09] [SPEAKER_01]: small. I used to see myself as five, three, one hundred and thirteen pounds
[00:54:14] [SPEAKER_01]: and I'm I'm six, four, three hundred.
[00:54:17] [SPEAKER_01]: But I would see myself as this small figure constantly.
[00:54:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I remember I had a mentor tell me, look, man,
[00:54:26] [SPEAKER_01]: you you're a big man when you come in, you fill the doorway.
[00:54:30] [SPEAKER_01]: When you walk in, you know, you can't throw that weight around.
[00:54:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You have to be aware of that.
[00:54:37] [SPEAKER_01]: That was something I had to be aware of that I could come in and be
[00:54:42] [SPEAKER_01]: overpowering too, and I had to watch out for that.
[00:54:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Be quiet and then Jennifer Finch from
[00:54:47] [SPEAKER_01]: L7 just said something to me that was pretty interesting.
[00:54:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I learned another new character defect of mine.
[00:54:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I was at a reading.
[00:54:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I was I was supposed to do a reading and I didn't really know.
[00:55:01] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, am I supposed to go backstage?
[00:55:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Why not? I'm not sure where to be.
[00:55:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what's going on.
[00:55:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And somebody said to me, somebody
[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_01]: said, well, you were supposed to be backstage.
[00:55:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I go, I didn't know.
[00:55:13] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I didn't know where it was.
[00:55:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know what's happening.
[00:55:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And then that person walked away and Jennifer Finch said to me,
[00:55:18] [SPEAKER_01]: she said, I play dumb too sometimes.
[00:55:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, oh my God, how many times have I done that?
[00:55:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Play dumb.
[00:55:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, you know, play the victim, the small victim,
[00:55:30] [SPEAKER_01]: the dumb boy, whatever.
