Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, I am Mike Ditka. Today, we have one of my very, very favorite actors and I've not heard him get interviewed a bunch. I'm sure you love them as well. Viggo Mortensen.

Viggo Mortensen is an Oscar nominated actor, writer and director.

I mean, he was fantastic in Green Book a couple of years ago, Lord of the Rings trilogy, and then my favorite captain.

Fantastic. I'm trying to be like Eastern promises.

He has a new movie scored, written, directed and starring Viggo.

It's called Falling. Falling follows John dealing with the early stages of dementia in his conservative father. Now we get into some really fascinating conversations about dementia and the experiences that Faygo has had.

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Today he's in our chat. Are you in Spain? Yes. You're doing a full press tour from your den. I have done some of it in Europe where they were open and then they closed places. And that was great, except for I sort of felt like I was the angel of death because every time I'd leave a country, they would close it down.

Now, I'm an enormous fan, vego. I'm obsessed with all things Sean Penn. I'm I'm obsessed with all things Bukowski, which led me to Sean Penn and then, of course, Indian runner.

But that was his first directing effort, I think. Yeah. And so I sprinted to the movie theater to see that. And of course, that's when I was introduced to you and I promptly fell in love. I think you're so spectacular.

And because I like you, I know that you don't do this, or at least I perceived that you don't do this. You're not much of a publicity machine, are you? Generally, do you do you try to avoid it?

I do do the publicity. I don't do the I'm not a big social media maven. I, I don't know.

I'm not.

OK, so I, I'm surprised that it took so long as it's not like you just were pursuing acting for the last 30 years. You also are a painter and a writer and a poet and a million other things.

So what that tells me is that you are super interested in being a part of the creation of something. So why did it take so long to direct?

Yeah, it wasn't for lack of trying first time, I think I tried to get a movie made that I want to direct from a screenplay I'd written was I think it was about twenty five years ago.

And I've tried many times with different screenplays. I've written over the years. Even the following took me to three times really to finally get enough money.

I didn't you know, when it came right down to it, I hoped for a seven week shoot and we ended up with five and we started shooting knowing where I knew I didn't tell the actors, but that we had enough for two weeks and we were going to keep working and, you know, typical family time and two weeks in, my coproducer came over to me and said, you got a minute?

And I go, Yeah, sure, what's up? And he says, You can finish the movie. I go, What do you mean finishing only because you can finish shooting. I said, Of course we finished shooting. It's kind of good. You know, it's gone really well. And he goes, No, no, no. I mean, you have the money.

Oh, and I completely forgot.

But now sometimes you just have to go for it. I thought, you know, I'm tired of waiting only twenty five years, but it's been a few years with this movie. So I called up the cinematographer Marcel, and I said, let's meet, let's go to Canada, let's go find these places. And I start shooting. Don't you think that's the gift? So there's all these hurdles of having no money and no time, but then I think the silver lining is like everyone is so much more ownership of it because everyone knows what's on the line, like everyone has to show up or it won't work.

And there's some awareness of that. And then I think that just everyone having a stake in it just makes for such a unique experience. It's so special to be on a tiny thing that everyone has to show up.

Yeah, definitely. And especially, you know, when you're shooting in difficult conditions. I mean, we're shooting in the dead of winter in the middle of the countryside, and it was tough.

And nobody's getting rich, you know, so either they're either they're really into it sincerely or they're they're not or they're griping or, you know, but everybody pulled together.

And it was it was really supportive. It was it was a great feeling.

Now you have a really, really interesting childhood in that you grew up in America for a period. Your dad's Danish, and then you moved to Argentina as an infant.

I was born in New York City. And then as an infant, my dad got a job in South America and then he got another job after that. And we stayed down there most of the first decade of my life, I lived in South America.

OK, and so you must have a very complicated identity because so much of my story, I tell myself is like, oh, I'm from Michigan.

This is what we're like in Michigan, the auto industry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But yours is such a quilt. And I just wondered, 010 is really formative. So you identify more with that culture than ours, or is it a weird amalgam because you came back to New York?

Well, kids adapt very quickly. You know, I have two younger brothers, Charles and Walter, but the movie is dedicated to and they change even quicker. I mean, my Walter, the youngest was six. I was 11 and Charles was eight when we moved. And my parents split up and my mom moved back to where she's from, northern New York State. And when we were flying up there with my mom after this kind of acrimonious split and my mom explained to me, you know, we're going to be living with the grant and the grandparents house and now we'll see what happens.

And and I said to Walter, the youngest has said, OK, he had never spoken to me or to my mother or to anybody in any other language in Spanish. Right. Even though he understood English and my mom would complain, she would say to him, I remember one time he was probably about four and I was nine.

And she said, you know, I want your brother to answer me in English. It makes no sense. I know he understands me because I asked him the question in English and he answers me perfectly in Spanish. So I went to him and I said, answer her in English. You know, just it's not that much to ask. And he goes, Now it's a garbage language.

I go, Where did you get these four years?

So it's a garbage language. You told you that. I just everybody knows that I'm lying on the plane. I'm sitting with my brothers.

I go, my mom's asleep or whatever. And I said, we're going to have to speak English. OK, but but within a week, he was speaking perfect.

Yeah, that's slang. All the swear words from that moment, from that time, that place. Perfect adaptation. You know, I adapted to and I thought I was completely in. But every once in a while, some would say that's weird how you write those letters or how you do this or how you use that word. What's that word mean?

You know, I mean, so, yeah, it's true that if I run into Argentine people, I'm like, right back. Yeah. You know what I mean.

Yeah. What I was raised with. So that's true.

Well, I think I've heard you say that, like speaking in Spanish for you is easier to get to the emotional center of what you're talking about than when you're speaking in English.

It depends what it's about, certain kinds of poems or stories or maybe easier in Spanish. It depends. But I also have, you know, for my dad and I live some years there in Denmark, too. I also have that that's a different culture, different sense of humor.

And now you're in the role because you're the older brother. You've got to help out. I've taken four of those trips in the car where we were leaving. Whatever dad just was there. Yeah. And then the little game plan talk. Right. We're going to this place, you know, you're going to go to this goal like. So I'm quite familiar with that. But I was the middle child and I know it was my brother. And I wonder when you're given the speech on the plane, how fearful are you to be going to northern New York on the border of Canada?

Are you afraid?

Part of it seem like an adventure, but part of it was annoying because I had friendships. Yeah. You know, and this is a time we're talking in nineteen seventy. I was leaving behind for good. I mean, it wasn't like now everybody has iPhones. There's, I mean there was no internet. There was no there wasn't even cable TV.

Yeah. Call would have been like eighty bucks for five minutes. Yeah. Yeah exactly. And if you could get through and then on the TV, you know it wasn't like I could email. Yeah. I knew I was saying goodbye for real to a lot of friends your whole life.

You were saying goodbye. Every part of your life, you knew, just certain, the smells, the sounds, the language. Language is important, you know, and you know, things that I cared a lot about, like football, soccer. But you adapt, you know. I mean, I have moved around quite a bit.

Did you play sports when you got to the States?

I started swimming competitively. I like that. That feels like a compromise. Yeah. I'll meet you halfway. How about I swim?

And I also was watching TV one day and I saw something I'd never seen, which was ice hockey. I'm like, what the hell is that? I'm trying to follow it. I'm like, it's kind of like soccer, but with sticks and really fast. And and I got really into it. And at that time, the Montreal Canadiens were amazing. They were in their golden years and I became interested in that. And that replaced soccer for me.

So I became like a fanatical Canadiens fan and still am. Do you hate the Red Wings? No, I don't hate anybody. OK, so you love can we say love?

I'm partial to the original six.

OK, all right. That's fair. But I'm not I'm not even in you know, in Argentina, it's a matter of life and death and it's gotten really bad, you know, so much so that even before the pandemic, you know, you could only have home fans, you couldn't have visiting fans because they would shoot each other. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Goalie got killed very famously. I think when he got home, I saw that game that was in nineteen ninety four World Cup in Los Angeles. I was living there and I went with my son and it was United States beat Colombia and a defender. It just bad. Like a ball went off and ricocheted and goalie couldn't stop it. It was an own goal. And when he got I think you're referring to that, when he got back to Colombia, he was in whatever his hometown is and he came out of a bar and somebody just shot him for having that goal.

And I mean, again, yeah, talk about that's the power of identity right there, the in and out.

But I mean, whether it's sports or any other walk of life, I mean, look what the hell happened in the capital, you know.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that's no different than that insanity.

But whether we're talking politics or sports, I think this thing of my team is extraordinary. It's the best team said, well, it's the team I like the most. But it doesn't mean that I can't admire or even cheer when I see a great play by someone else. I'm with you.

I wear a maple leaf sweater all the time and people get really upset because I'm from Detroit and I love the wings. But I God, I also like the Maple Leafs and they got the best fucking merch.

I wouldn't go so far as to wear their sweater. I'm going to run to you.

And when you see that color in person, that blue, I've seen it.

I've shot in Toronto for David Cronenberg. And one one thing I did on the first movie I did was a history of violence, as I would whenever I had to do some kind of violent thing. And I was off screen.

I would put on the Canadian sweater and the crew would jeer and stuff.

And so on the final day I read, they gave me signed by the entire crew a Maple Leafs sweater. And I had to put it on for the photo.

But I said, the only way I do this, I can wear a cap, a red munchak.

Well, if you're if you're like Merican doing your closet and you want to get rid of it, I'll shoot my address because I'll wear the hell out of it and I'll take all the heat for it.

I don't mind really. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that this thing of the sports fans sometimes do or they take it too far.

It's the tribalism that you and me and we're different because of this. That's where it breaks down for me.

And I think there's one thing I have to say that I feel and it's not just it doesn't just happen the United States, but it's one of the countries where it's noticeably a feature, almost an obligation for all politicians, no matter what state they are, to go on about American exceptionalism. And to me, that is not constructive because it's the same bullshit. It's like, no, the United States is is great. Yeah. But it's not greater than any other place.

It's human beings. It's planet Earth. Yeah. You know, and you have a lot to be proud of. There's people that have come from all over the world that have contributed science, arts, everything.

The scariest moment I ever had in my marriage is I asked my wife what was on her New Year's resolution list and she said nothing. And I said, Oh, so your work is done. I don't I forget all the other stuff about how they compare relative to any other country. It doesn't matter to me. Again, I'm an addict. So it's like you start with. Yeah, fucking I have a ton of character defects. I'm going to try for the rest of my life to minimize those.

So to start with, I'm exceptional is not a place where growth is going to follow.

Right. It means I got my shit together. If you met a gal at a bar and she said, oh, I'm perfect, I'd walk.

Well, it doesn't lead anywhere to go. That's what you're. No, you're saying this. Well, this is the best it'll ever be. If I've already reached perfection, then that's it. We've capped out or we're done with the journey, but while you were talking really quick, I think we had to have had the same a shared experience, which is I did a movie really shortly after you guys wrapped Lord of the Rings. In fact, we had a lot of your hair in costume, which were the most lovely Kiwis, but I got unsatiable for the All Blacks and I had never seen rugby.

But it means the haka, like, what an awesome way to do everything we want to do, the ritualized hypermasculinity, the threats, the shit talk. But it's done in this way. That is like it's been made safe through centuries of the haka.

That's pretty big in Argentina too. So I grew up with that a little bit and that was wonderful to be in during that long shoot. I want to see a lot of rugby and schoolboy rugby, too, and even our crew, you know, the way someone might get out a couple of helmets and, you know, play catch during the lunch break and a crew there, they would grab it. There was always a ball around and they would play rugby and get all muddy and stuff.

And I ain't got shit for one time because I did it in my costume and it was. Now you love language.

Did you ever ask any of the Maori guys what they were saying in the Hauschka? They told me they're saying our dicks are bigger than yours. It's mostly about their dicks, which I was excited to learn. Yeah.

And it's also about fighting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to kill you and I'm going to eat you. You know what?

If I can get this cumbersome penis out of my way and eventually, you know, it's threatening.

It's laying down the gauntlet, basically, but it's beautiful to watch. There was I don't know if you saw the one they played Argentina beat New Zealand for the first time in its history recently, a couple of months ago. And the haka that they performed that day was right after Diego Maradona had died, the great soccer player. Right. And so they came out and they laid down a black shirt like an all black shirt, but with the name Maradona on number 10 on.

And they laid it down in front of the other team, which got them all emotional and, you know, Argentines.

And then they did the most aggressive haka and then they beat them like thirty five to nothing. They kick their ass to say, here you go and boom. Oh, that's kind of a Trojan horse.

The best is when I was down there and the All Blacks played whatever the Tongan team was and they were both teams are doing at the same time. And I'm like, oh my God, if I could, I could have been there to experience it. Coming from both sides would have been something else that's so cool.

And when I first I was like, oh, this is kind of this it seems silly. And then midway through, like there's a little bit scary. And then by the end I was terrified of us on this field.

It's beautiful in rugby. It's kind of like they play really hard. They enjoy each other, but they kind of shake hands. There's something polite about it. Yeah. Yeah, very, very. New Zealand do. So after you went to college, you then lived in Denmark. What you just hinted at in Copenhagen, you drove a truck, you lived in Spain, you lived in England. Do you have wanderlust where you just curious or having split your own life up to that point in two different places, were you on the search for like, where do I want to be or is it just wanderlust?

Well, I like being in Denmark. I just feel I was close to my cousins. We would visit them every couple of years or since I was like two the first time I went there. And, you know, I learned the language and I, I don't know. I had a very good relationship with all my cousins there. There was a connection that I had with my Danish cousins. It was particularly strong and my aunts and uncles and I really like being there.

And since my dad was Danish, it was something I wanted to explore and spend some time there. And I did live there for a few years and worked there and had different jobs. And I like being there. And I continue to go back there like, you know, like when I watch the World Cup, I'm always hoping it'll be I mean, you know, the US sometimes is in the World Cup and Denmark is often in the World Cup.

Argentina is almost always there.

You're kind of lucky. You have a lot of pokers in the fire like most of the games you could enjoy because you've lived there.

That's true. It's like I got a lotto tickets. No, but I mean, I was talking about exceptionalism. US I mean, there are a lot of countries do that, some less than others. But in the US, it seems like it's almost like I was saying obligatory for politicians to use that phrase at some point. And if they don't, what's wrong with them? It's not productive. But anyway, because I've moved around a lot and been exposed to a lot of cultures and languages, I concluded a long time ago that it's more important how you are than where you are.

Yeah, you can make friends anywhere, really. If you try a little bit, you can find something to appreciate about any place, any landscape, any culture. If you're open to it, you know, you only go around once. You might as well learn and. So there's a lot of places, obviously, Argentina, we us particularly, you know, the Northeast, L.A., I lived there for a long time, too. So I have a lot of feelings.

And I've done I've crisscrossed the country road trips in the US and Canada so many times that I know lots of states. There's lots of corners of North America that I but I really like and I'd love to go back to. But I feel that way about a lot of different places. I mean, New Zealand spent so much time there and I drove everywhere. I never flew. I just wanted to. Yeah. Be able to go camping and fishing and do things and get to know people.

And so the more places I go, the more places I feel like, yeah, I could be I could live there. I could I could be happy here.

And what's the longest you ever lived somewhere? We've done that math.

Well, now, I would say I lived in L.A. actually, I lived in L.A. from 86 to 2002. Yeah, there.

What was your pocket where you like a SilverLink person? I want to stereotype you and your being very elusive, but part of the city where you most at home and I was in Venice most of the time.

There we go. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Where do you live? You're in Los Angeles right now. Yeah, Los Feliz. So right next, Silverlake.

Where do you live? Yeah, we live three minutes apart by car and I also just purchased a house that's 20 steps away.

Literally our driveways now connect. How does that feel? Well, I haven't moved in yet.

We have a lot of a lot of renovation to do. So we'll see. We'll see. This is the answer I'm sticking to. We're thrilled about it.

I'm excited. I'm excited. Yeah, we're quite thrilled. My wife and I, this couldn't be better. We're trying to take over a whole pocket of Los Feliz here. Invited.

It seems like I'd invite you just based on this conversation. You don't seem like an annoying neighbor. That's going to trouble me for now.

And I keep to myself a lot.

Yeah, OK. The reason I want to know about all the moving around, because I was going to say I have the opposite reaction to kind of a similar childhood where we moved a lot and I restarted so much that I've been in our current house for 16 years. It's the longest I've lived anywhere by a factor of like eight. And we're just about to move to a new house. My wife's idea, it's only a thousand feet from our old house.

And that's still scaring me a little bit.

And I just never wanted to I wanderlust.

I love going places and having like a month experience or three, but I think I craved the roots and I'm basically being surgically removed from our current house.

Are you homesick for your childhood? Home's only one of them.

I have this very rose colored glasses view of a certain house I lived in in Milford where I met my best friend, where I became who I think I still mostly am. And yeah, that place holds. I would have stayed there forever, maybe.

And I used to have friends. Is you still alive? That guy, he's at my house. He's a thousand feet away. I sent him to treatment last year. He's a years sober. We're back in business. It's fucking awesome.

That's just keeps all the people he likes like within ten feet.

That's the ideal. That's good. Do you have any childhood friends that you still pal around with? Some Argentina?

I did lose touch with them. I know at least two of them didn't make it through what happened in the 70s down there. Oh, wow. I don't know exactly what happened, but there's one that now lives in England that I've talked to and we communicate a little bit. But I lost I mean, that was a real sabering when we went to to northern New York. And by the time communication and Internet, all that thing happened. It was too late.

And it took me a long time before I went back to Argentina many years. I mean, I didn't go back for twenty five years maybe. But when I went back, even though now there were McDonald's and there were all these other things, it still was the same, still smell the same. The people talk that were even on the plane flying back twenty five years earlier. It was exciting. It was, yeah. I stayed up all night just listening to them, you know, talking.

I was like, oh, this is so familiar.

Yeah. It's in your cells and every word. Every aspect. And as soon as I landed. Yeah. This sort of heat, this humidity and the music on the radio and walking around, it was just wonderful. And I found a car from some guy. I was kind of like a half assed rental car wasn't I don't know how much of a company was he probably had like three, two and a half cars, but I got the half car and no spare and kind of iffy.

But I took it and I did a massive road trip, you know, for days and days around the country. And I went to places I remembered going to as a kid farms. We lived on that area and it was it was really wonderful to go back. But it was it was funny that people would say, where are you from, what are you what are you? Because they said, well, you talk like my grandfather and because in twenty five years, my swearwords, all my slang was a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and my sort of sentence structure was that of an 11 year old boy. Right. Thirty six year old man, you know. So yeah. It was interesting. Sorry I went off on a tangent.

No, I love it. What I'm detecting is that you and I have, I think, an opposite batch of fears.

So I think what I, I immediately know about you is you have a comfort with being untethered or it seems like you have a comfort. So does the fact that my best friend Aaron Weekly is a thousand feet away. I am happiest next to him because I remember exactly who either I think I am want to be, whatever it is, I can't live without that. And it goes to the houses in wanting to be in the same place. And I'm thinking of your life and I'm filled with anxiety about how gracefully you whisper around the globe.

And I just can conclude we must have completely opposite fears.

Many I'm not afraid of it. I mean, I have nostalgia. I have.

Are you afraid to be alone? Do you mind being alone now? I crave crave it.

OK, you don't need approval every five minutes like I do.

I can spend two weeks and I've done this many times where I don't even talk to anyone on the phone. And I realize maybe after a few days I haven't said anything.

So then I guess in the song I don't want to lose my voice. No, I don't mind.

I'm happy. But I think that, you know, memory is a tricky thing. And that's, you know, in our movie, that's something that's really important. And I think that what we do with what we remember, it's more a collection of feelings than it is a collection of facts. Because, you know, we think what we present the present is confusing, never more so than now, of course. But but it's always it's it's in flux.

It's kind of develop these it's undefined. The present the future is completely unknown. Obviously, it hasn't happened. So we tend to think, well, at least the past, you know, I've got videos, I've got photo albums, I've got diaries.

But you're telling the story from the point of view. You're taking the picture from point of view. Everything's a point of view and those things evolve. I think we try to control the past without even thinking about it so that we can be comfortable in the present.

And I mean, we're constantly trying to make sense of the present day with this data set from the past, which, as you point out, is the most subjective thing in the world. My brother and I will be arguing about like it happened in a different house. And it's like, how could you not remember it?

It's like it was summer or you weren't even there. Yes, I was. Yes.

And you just start realizing like, oh, this is the most I can't even believe they allow human testimony in a court of law, because I know from my own experience, it's so deeply flawed.

And you're right, I'm more latched on to a version that helps me make sense of why I'm here today feeling this way.

I think everybody does that. I mean, I think to some degree, everybody does that. And you got to wonder with dementia then, if that's not what you're accumulating to define while you're here today, it must be. I can only imagine. It must be terrifying.

Well, dementia is something I mean, there's a couple of reasons. I wanted to write this story, you know, fall. And one of them and I was in fact, I had another screenplay and I was I had read some of the money. I was in the middle of doing that when I got the idea to write this one. And it was right after my mother's funeral, she had had dementia. And that's something I've seen up close and even on a caregiver kind of roll several times, both my parents, my stepdad, three of my four grandparents, aunts, uncles, I've seen it a lot.

And with my mother and father, especially one, when she passed away, I was, as you do, somebody you care about dies. There's a lot of things that are present that aren't normally present on a daily basis, just things she said or images of her. And you're also you're looking at photographs, you're trading stories. And I was hearing stories that I was familiar with. But like you say, it was they're slightly different versions. Yeah.

By a different director, same script in a different direction. You know, we were there. We were all there.

But it's interesting you put it that way and stories I hadn't known. So I thought that's interesting. And I started writing them down on the way home. I wanted to remember these things and it made me think how, like you say, how subjective memory is. When I looked at these notes, I thought, this is an interesting structure for some kind of story, maybe a short story jumping around in time, different people's points of view, what is at stake for one person and a memory that isn't at all important to another person and so forth and all that kind of stuff.

And so I started writing the story and then it it ends up being a fictional family. You know, I started writing and thinking about my mother and it became falling, which is mostly made up. You know, it ends up instead being about this woman and ends up being about a father and son mostly. But for me, that's the heart of the story. Falling is the mother, she's what they're mostly arguing about, how they remember her, how one thinks the other one's disrespecting her or whatever.

And same with Laura Linney, who plays my sister in the story, her relationship with the father. They come, they buttheads or have differences of opinion based on the memory, differing memories of our mother, you know. Yeah. So the dementia aspect, you know, that's what Willis suffers from. The character Lance Henriksen plays. I wanted to with the help of hopefully a really good actor, which I got in 1997. And then the tools that you have in filmmaking.

I wanted to get across what it's like for a person like that, how that looks, but also how that feels to some degree for them as best I could. And even in the really good movies and one or two this year, that deal with dementia as well. And there have been several good portrayals of that dementia, Alzheimer's over the years. But the one thing that I've always felt that I thought we could do something else with or that didn't at least reflect my personal experience was that they generally show these people that have dementia as being confused for the most part.

Right. And if they show their point of view is that of a confused person by and large. And in my experience, the people who are confused are the observers for the most part, they're not confused because they're really seeing, feeling and hearing those things. That is their present, whether you like it or not. They're like they're there, they're happy or sad, but they're they're they're not confused. When they do tend to get confused is if you correct them, you know, like, you know, I can give examples, like, you know, for example, like maybe my father is talking to me and says, you know, I had lunch with Harry and he's not looking so good.

And I know that Harry died thirty seven years ago, and your instinct is to say, well, Dad, you know, he Harry's been gone a long time, you know that. And you're thinking of helping. And then then they get not only confused, but upset because Harry dies again. Oh, right. Among other things. And it's an instinct that you want to correct them, but you have to after realizing that that's not a good idea, that you've only upset them, then you have to ask yourself, who am I doing this for?

Oh, that I'm doing it for me. It's my ego. I want him to be the way he was. I don't want him to make these mistakes, you know what I mean? But now it's a selfish need to correct and it's just a learning experience that you have to adapt in any relationship. You have to adapt to that other person as they evolve. And when someone who has dementia, if you really want to be helpful with them, you have to give up.

You have to sacrifice what you wish they were because they're not going to be that way anymore and make them happy. So. So what do you do? So he's just said, Harry and I, we had lunch and he doesn't look so good. So instead of saying Harry's dead, you say, what did you guys have for lunch? Right. And then you have a conversation. Now you have to give up your mind. That's not real.

And you're lying or it's weird. It doesn't have to be. If they're happy, give the other person what they need in any relationship, but especially someone who has dementia.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

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Ten. I got to say, so the lesson I learned once, thank God and then I got to apply it the second time was my dad died of lung cancer and I was the guy taking care of everything. And I was trying to like, Dad, why are you eating this fucking hamburger? You know, you're not supposed to do that. You know, why are you doing this? I tried very hard to, you know, give them the best shot possible.

And after he died, my only regrets, because I was there, I felt good about the whole thing was just like, why did I waste 30 minutes of that last four months arguing about a hamburger?

What a fucking waste.

Right? Nagging him. Yeah. And then. So then my stepfather died of cancer a year and a half ago. And I approach that one with like this is his deal. He'll pick treatment he wants. I'll have no opinion of that. He doesn't want to do this. That's cool. It's his thing. I'm just here to kind of be present. And it went so much better taking that approach. But I would imagine it's just an extra step harder with dementia because, again, you have the illusion that you be helping.

Like, no doubt Henry's dead. Let's keep it on track here. We've got to you know, you think you're letting someone slip further into this disease. But it's the same thing as arguing about a fucking hamburger. It's silly.

Yeah. And the best thing you can be, but that's any relationship is flexible, right? I mean, adapt to them. Every person is different every day, no matter whether they have dementia or not. And people who have dementia. I've seen like my stepfather was a very soft-spoken, friendly, good sense of humor. He's just he was just easy. Right. And when he got it, he became he was like Gollum from the Lord and he was just like was eyes bulged.

You would need to be very skinny. And he was he was a holy terror. He would and he would do crazy stuff. You would get up in the middle of the night and put on two or three ties and three coats. And then he'd go outside and then, you know, a neighbor would call my mom at 3:00, 4:00 in the morning and say, your husband's here, where he'd be like four blocks away. And he was like shoveling their sidewalk or sweeping.

They're doing something. Yeah, just. But then when somebody would confront him, he would get really angry even at the very end. I mean, she couldn't anymore. We had to find a place for him because my mom wasn't getting any sleep, you know, and we would go there and he was tough. He was tough with the people there. There was a period towards the end he wouldn't eat. He wouldn't let them wash them. We learned nothing and he would let me.

But I had to do tricks. You know, I would show him a picture of my mom, you know, like when they met and he would go on, he's pretty lady, you know, like that. And he'd be looking at her and I would start feeding him cookies or something and actually get him to. And I'd say, yeah. And then I would get him to eat food. And then I would talk to him about whatever I could figure out that he would be interested in.

And so he trusted me to not always, but usually enough to where he would let me wash him and stuff. Yeah, but he would do he would get up happens a lot to man I guess women as well, but especially men, when they lose their inhibitions they get really kind of horny and grabby, right.

Oh yeah. And yeah, yeah. He was famous for it. He would get up. He one night he got into the bed of some lady who had even worse to mention than him.

He got in there and he was it never ends for women. It just never. Right. He was gone for no finish line. You end up in a nursing home. No one's going to want anything to do with me.

And he was all over her and it was noisy. And so a nurse comes in and she was probably twenty three, twenty four young, strong. She came in and she tried to get him out. She grabbed his arm and even though he was literally a skeleton at that point, he was so thin. He just did this move on her. He grabbed her arm and he went like that and he broke her arm.

Oh my God. This tough young woman. And I wasn't there at that moment, but I was right after. And then when I saw her again, she came back to work with a cast on. And I said, I'm so sorry that she goes, that happens. I shouldn't have reached so suddenly. I mean, not everybody would say that. But she was saying was on her because she startled him like you would a dog or something going slow.

Yeah, very kind of her. But he was like that. He was completely nuts. My dad was a difficult character, fun and could be humorous and a good storyteller. But he had a who's not always easy right and material.

We'd call him in the fifties and.

Yeah, and he could be domineering and stuff. But when he got well into dementia, he became very gentle. He was like a child. And he did a weird thing too, even though he'd lived since the 1950s in the United States, mostly Argentina, and then the United States had not lived in Denmark anymore. And he started speaking Danish only. Right. And not just Danish, but. From when he was a kid, so weird old Danish like accent and vocabulary, just like me when I went to Argentina, right?

Yeah, but he was like a kid and it's kind of a crapshoot. You don't know who they're going to remember or not or how they're going to remember them. And he would talk to me and he clearly thought I was his dad sometimes. The thing is, if you're open to it and you're not terrified and you just give up trying to make them be something which we all need to do anyway in life, just let people be who they are.

Try to figure them out then before you start thinking how they should be. And I would learn all kinds of things that I would have never learned. There was a period where he was talking to me, sounded like a little kid. And it's like I didn't I didn't do it. I didn't let the pigs out. And I'm like, what the hell he talking about? He kept going on about this. And I finally I called his sister, my aunt.

Then I said, he's talking about he sounds like he's about 10, 11, maybe that he let some pigs out. What happened? She goes, Oh, yeah, yeah. It was right at the beginning of the war. You know, things were tight as far as, you know, rationing with food and all that. And so the garden, the vegetable garden is really important. And he was alone one day on the farm and he forgot to close the door to the barn.

Pig got out pig sty and destroy the garden in minutes, you know. Oh, boy. But he never copped to it. And this is something that had happened seventy four years earlier. And then one day he goes, I did do it. I did.

You know, he admitted this to me, oh my God, I'm burned themselves.

And I was his dad and I said, it's OK, we're fine. Look, you're fine. I'm fine. We had something to eat. We just had dinner with pigs. Didn't get at all. We're good, you know that. It was like if you're open to it and you're not just like, yeah, weird.

It's almost like a priest, you could absolve someone of this guilt.

But you can also learn things that you'll never learn about your family. I would have never known that story if that hadn't happened.

Well, I think of the stuff I'd tell my brother and not my kids. Yeah, like if my daughter I think my daughter's my brother, at some point she's going to hear some new shit.

My mom told me all kinds of stuff. There was another time where my dad was talking about we can't leave the old people out in the snow and danger. We can't do that. Old people are waiting by the station. I'm like, what station it goes you for? You know, the name of this town? And I was like, so I called my and again, I said, what the hell? What's the deal with this? There's no station in that town.

She goes, Yes, but there was one until early fifties or I don't know, there was a train on a local train that used to go through that. And that was probably because we had visitors from this island where, you know, my grandparents came from and they were coming to visit. And so they'd taken two trains and they were waiting to be picked up the end of the war. They were, you know, gasoline rationing. So they would have gone horse and cart to pick them up wagon.

And so I now I knew what he was talking about, that these people are waiting at the station and a snowstorm. He brought it up again the next night. I said, I'll go get them. OK, so I went out to the kitchen. I made myself a cup of coffee or something and waited a few minutes. And then I went back in thinking, is either going to forgot it, which could happen, or he'll bring it up again.

And he so I walk and he goes, well, what happened? And I said, even though I've been gone two minutes, there's no way I could have gone to the station. Right. So I said I picked them up. It's a long trip. They were tired, but they're fine. They had a couple of sandwiches and some soup. They said they were really tired and they're going to bed and they would see you for breakfast. And he said, excellent, thank you.

So now, you know, but I learned a story about him and we had some fun. And, uh, just because for me, that's not real, uh, whereas it is for him. Who am I to say if we're saying that memory is subjective anyway, why is the present that a person with dementia completely believes in and feels profoundly? Why is that any less legitimate than my view of the present? Yeah.

Yeah, it's wild. Well, thank you for giving so much of our time. I got to say two more things. One, I fucking love Captain. Fantastic. I'm modeling my own parenting after Captain Fantastic. For better or worse, we're going to find out what the level of honesty I was like.

Yeah, that's exactly what I like to do. Like here's what it is, you know, very good writer director Matt Ross.

I can't wait till he makes another movie. He did a great job with that.

Oh, it was so spectacular. I just loved it. And now my very last question, and it's an actor to actor question. So the most famous scene you've ever been in your life, I'm sure, is the naked fight scene in the bath house, which I'm sure you've talked about a million times. I hate to bring it up again, but I watched that go on. Huh. OK, so let's say I had been cast instead of him and we're going to do this.

So I'm going to make up my mind fuck or doing this and I'm going to go all the way. But high probability of failure in that scene, in a way, I mean, it's a big swing and it's unbelievably it's so memorable, you feel so vulnerable in that fight like, oh, this would be the worst place in the worst situation ever to have the fist fight. And I just wonder, your faith in Kronenburg just has to be like, yeah, I trust him.

This is the right scene. I just wondered, was it any harder to commit to that one than other scenes? Or you were like, no, we're fucking doing this.

No, I mean, I remember, you know, we worked out the choreography well ahead of time because we had to I mean, it was like you would with any even when it was written, it just said they have this fight in the back house. And so when we were we showed them the choreography that we worked up, you know, a week or two before and. And I said, you know, I was thinking about the scene, I mean, practically speaking, I can be sitting there like everybody else, you know, in the tower, but that town is not going to realistically stay on in this fight.

So why not just not even try to do that? And he goes, makes sense. I mean, that's just the way when it falls off, whatever, if you do this in continuity, that's where it falls off. And, you know, so it was more just practical concerns about it. And yeah, I would probably do things with him or even stories that are strange, you know, that I might not trust another director with that scene was tricky to orchestrate and perform.

And there was also the practical thing. Once we'd done several takes, he got all these masters basically. Then he said, we do have to do a couple of pick up shots and close shots of some details tomorrow. So we'll have to repeat some of it and then OK. And then the next day I was so bruised and it took them longer to cover the bruises than it did to put all those tattoos on, actually. But those are just logistical things I wasn't really freaked out about or concerned about going in.

I mean, because I maybe, like you say, because I trusted him, but it just seemed to make sense that this would have to be done that way.

I just think I don't know how to articulate it, but the odds are you get a couple naked men fighting. It could just go wrong so easily.

It could be laughable. You could be like, what the fuck am I watching?

That's what I mean by the probability of failure. It was a very fine margin that that scene was pulled off is excellently as it was.

I mean, I think David was committed and I was committed to me. It was like fighting for my life that, you know, it was awesome.

It's the most memorable fight scene ever. It's incredible.

I hope you get a chance to work with him someday. He's a fun person to be around. He's very smart and he's got a great sense of humor. And he's a really good director. I mean, he's a kind of director who will leave you alone. He trusts the people he casts and gives them room and feedback from everybody. So, yeah, I hope you get to meet him.

Well, listen, I've loved talking to you like once I had a hunch I would never bump into you at a Hollywood event.

So I'm glad this happened. You never know small. You know that's true. You don't know. All right.

Well, great luck with Falling Eye comes out February 5th on VOD everywhere. Yes. So everyone should check that out. I'm excited for you, Lance Henriksen.

A performance that will long live in memory. I guarantee you won't regret seeing him whether he horrifies you or not. It's it's an amazing acting job to see the movie for free lance.

If nothing else, I can see it for both of you. I don't have to pay for it anyway. It's nice to meet both you guys. Yeah, take care of you. Go.

Thank you. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

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And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soul mate Monica Padman. We have a lot of housekeeping.

Oh, tons. OK, two big things. All right. We watched separately two big pieces of media this week.

Britney Spears documentary Framing Britney Spears, which is a New York Times documentary.

So it's like it's really tastefully done. I think when I maybe heard of it at first, I assumed it would be salacious. I don't even know what I thought. I just generally, if they make things about her, I'm nervous. It's an incredible documentary. It's on Hulu. Everyone should watch it.

Yes. It's heartbreaking.

It is heartbreaking in this so illuminating the fog in which we all lived in me having lived through the whole thing with today's set of glasses, was just flabbergasted at the level of misogyny that was just commonplace in every interview, people asking her about her boobs. People are asking her if she's a virgin.

Oh, she has to walk this tightrope of being polite and everyone talking about the way she dresses one bad, that is for girls like the wife of like a senator saying she would shoot her if she could and, you know, even back our IP love Ed McMahon.

But even back to her appearance on Star Search when she's like an eight year old little girl and he goes, do you have a boyfriend?

And she goes, No, he knows why. She goes, boys are mean. She's so spunky. And yes, she is. And he goes, What about me? I'm not mean. Can I be your boyfriend? Which was so innocuous back then when I watch stuff like that, I didn't even think about it.

But now I'm looking at this eight year old little girl having to explain to Grandpa why they shouldn't be boyfriend is so.

And then she just says it depends. Yeah, it's so sad, like, oh my God.

And you said it the best. You just you watch this person get chiseled. Yeah. Like from the jump.

Just chiseled, chiseled, chiseled, chiseled until she's nothing.

Yeah. It is so worth watching. I think it's a really good cautionary tale. I mean you had a little bit of this discussion, you know, this idea that everyone has to walk on eggshells and and that there's you could get canceled at any moment for something you say that's wrong. Like, that's scary. And I don't like that. But it is the pendulum swing from that. Yeah. Yeah. And we're not to the middle yet, but I'm glad the pendulum has swung in a way that is going to prevent if someone said what Ed McMahon said to a little girl on TV now, he'd get skewered.

Yeah, there'd be blowback. Yeah. And I'm happy about that. Yeah. Happy that people are dissecting.

Well, even to like this has happened in a few documentaries we've watched recently where they they go back to late night talk show monologues and man, they never they never age that well.

And there is one where the talk show host was saying, like, you know, guys always want to know, like, who should they pick? Should they pick the nice girl that's a good mother or should they pick the little slut or something? And it was said slut. And it's like, oh, my God, oh, my God. Yeah.

And again, I would watch that stuff in that era.

And that didn't even occur to me that that was insane.

And that I guess that's what I like. We have progressed. And I think part of the reason we progress is because people have been put in a corner too little bit. And I am I'm happy about that because the stuff is just so unacceptable. And it's not just men. It was, oh, women, women. It was Diane Sawyer who, I mean, is a legend and amazing. But everyone just lived in that world. It was a society.

That's why I always kind of say, like, you got to look at the systems a little monkeys involved in the systems can only be so responsible for the whole the water. Everyone's swimming.

And this is the problem. Oh, it was it's gut punch me so much of the stuff. And then also when Britney famously attacked that car with the umbrella, I was thinking how different would be if a if it had been me that would have happened years before I would have snapped, like I would have felt from my childhood trauma. I would have felt like I'm about to be molested even though I'm not going to be molested. I would have that same feeling of powerlessness and I will not let someone do this to me.

And I would have snapped years before that. I would have punched. And probably the narrative would not have been I went crazy, it would have been he fought back. Yeah, exactly.

It wouldn't be that I was weak and snapped and was hysterical. It would have been I fought back. Oh, it's so depressing.

It is. And, you know, the whole free BRITTNI movement is interesting. We don't know the details and I don't know whether she needs a conservatory conservator or not, whether she needs one or not. I do think it is another layer of misogyny because there are like, you know, there are plenty of male actors who are crazy.

Yeah, like Martin Sheen didn't take charge of Charlie Sheen. Exactly.

Meltdown, and it's because she's a woman and she was a girl. And we think that women and girls can't handle themselves when they're in the middle of an emotional situation.

It's just the layers.

Yeah, I didn't leave with conviction about whether she should or shouldn't be a part of a conservatorship, conservatorship or conservator.

It's like a legal conservator.

Yeah, I didn't leave with that because as many of the lawyers said, like, you don't know what you don't know.

I don't know if she's tried to kill herself eight times in her life is in danger. Without that, we don't know the details.

But it's also like chicken or the egg, like let's say that's even true. Let's say she has had suicide attempts.

Is it because she's crazy or is it because this made her crazy? Right. Entrapment, you know.

Yeah, but I guess the only reason I brought that up is I don't really have a conclusion because I don't know nearly enough to make a statement like that.

But the documentary is so illuminating outside of that question. Yeah.

And what we accept with this whole paparazzi thing, like the fact that we could all fall in love with someone's talent and light and then say, and yeah, we should live in a society where 350 people should mob that person physically every time there's footage of, like, those paparazzi getting in like crazy fistfights right next door where she almost got hit.

And the notion that we're like we accept that is so crazy to me. I know I'm predisposed to hate that, but I even know that before I had any experience with that, I thought it was grotesque.

Yeah.

And if you just are unaware, I do think this is an enlightening movie to watch or to watch, because literally I had to put my hand up over my eyes because I truly was like, I'm at risk of having a seizure if I stare because of the flashing. Yeah.

And that's me watching a movie. That's her life.

I could not I it's so sickening.

I don't think it's too far to go to say it's an assault like, oh, you were publicly assaulting her.

And we're all like, oh, freedom of the press bullshit. Yeah I know. That was so fucking thin to me.

Freedom of the press on that. And there's a paparazzi in the dock who is interviewed. And I mean, I just I find that so interesting to also simulation better mine. High frequency illusion, ding, ding, ding. Because we had just talked about this recently. We were talking about punkt and how.

Oh, sure. And then where's the line.

Where is the line. Yeah.

And in this guy is on there and you can you can see that his brain is preventing him from seeing the reality, which is that he he was a part of something that ruined a human.

And he has some awareness of it, like, yeah, he comes in.

Yeah, there's a certain level of responsibility he can accept before I think it would shatter his self-image of himself. Yes, exactly. He comes in and out because he's like, well, first he says, like, I don't think when you're in it, you really can understand what they're going through. He says that. But then he basically said it was a mutual.

Oh, yeah, this is the fucking thing I hate the most about paparazzi is they need us and we need that. That's why he's that is not true.

Britney Spears is a fucking star from her singing and dancing, not from you following her.

That what a bogus. You also see on the video, like we see a lot of clips of her being like, can you leave me alone? Can you leave me alone? And then in we cut to the interview and he says she never told us to leave her alone. And that the interviewer says, what about when she said, leave me alone?

And he said, well, she just meant for that day, right? Not forever. Right.

And he, like his brain, has to think that, yeah, it was heartbreaking.

And I wanted to be friends with her. I know. And I started to get really panicked by the end because we were based there basically saying, like, you kind of can't get to her because of this situation she's in where she has these legal guardian. They kind of vet everything, and I was like, oh, my God, like she can't even tell her story. This is like other country shit.

This is not something we should allow in the United States.

It's a very good documentary. I would highly recommend it's not even that it's a good documentary. I think it should be sort of required watching for, like empathy and to see that side of this industry and what we do to people and women.

It's the same as the tiger thing to all these things fall into this narrative where we love to build someone up and then we can't wait for them to crash.

And it's so sick that work or all like that. It is. It is.

It's like there's some part of us that's like no one deserves that much adulation. So now I wanted to swing the other way and them to get humbled. There's something interesting. So I think there's some programming in our brain that wants us to regulate who's getting too much power.

Yeah, that reason. Yeah, I think so. And I think also we're so hardwired to want stories so that we can make sense of things. So like yeah, this is the teen idol story and oh this is the crazy woman story and oh we just need all these boxes and it's so hard to see all the facets of what's going on.

And I also think our brains want so badly to be looking up to someone that we both desire.

We need a modern alpha ha, but then our all our brains check themselves. I shouldn't care this much about them. And so, yeah, it's swings in the other direction. We can't just have any like Modder.

I think we desire a leader like we desire someone that we all trust to defer to. Yeah. But we do not want that that entity to have too much control.

So it's like this bellissimo until we don't exactly you know, as we get into gene editing and CRISPR and all this stuff, I wonder if they'll start experience. I don't know how you experiment on people, but kind of removing some of the stuff that ails us so much because we live so differently than we were designed to live. So the reward center for eating like, well, they will they choose to augment that.

So we don't have the desire to overconsume at all times. Will they fix this status obsession in us because we're social?

Yeah, but it it benefits people to like it's going to it's going to change everything if that were to happen and probably a lot of bad ways. But we do have all this hard wiring that's not serving us anymore, like the fact that we did have to be on high alert all the time when we have this whole nervous system designed to dump cortisol and adrenaline. So you can run from Alliant. Well, no one has to run from a lion anymore.

And so we're carrying all that chemistry around. And people with anxiety is like some of it's there isn't a big threat. So you're looking for a threat. There are threats. There are threats, but not like early man dealt with.

Yeah. I mean, I think if you're walking down a dark alley and you're a woman like that, you need that lion, a quality fear of a lion quality to to be spiked.

I agree. But like point zero zero zero zero one percent of your life will be walking down a dark alley and then you're left with the rest of your life where you're just in your house, in your all that chemistry is working out these fears that aren't really plausible fears.

But I don't think you could just cut out, like fear of lion attacks, like you'd be cutting out fear.

Well, and you can't I guess what I'm saying is, will they be able to dial it to give you an appropriate amount of fear for living in the society?

So only point zero zero one percent are going to get attacked and killed by another human being. Now, thirty percent of people are going to die of heart disease. They're not too afraid of that. Right. So none of it's actually related to the real threats. Where is it used to be? Yeah, and so I wonder if they could dial it.

Maybe. I don't know. You know, if you live in a in a context where you have a 50 percent chance of getting killed by a lion, you probably should be on high alert all day long. Right. But if you live in Beverly Hills in a house and you only go to Whole Foods, you probably don't need to be carrying that level of adrenaline around with you.

But it's just the same body.

Yeah, but the Britney thing kind of connects to the other piece of media that we consumed this week that I could not recommend more in and of itself.

A magic show that's on Hulu.

It was a stage show that ran for like five hundred and thirty four days or something in New York. And then they they they filmed it. Yes. Thank God.

They did a great job filming it, by the way. They did. And that is hard to do, especially a magic show. It is beautiful. It is not your average. Magic show, like it says, it's a storytelling show, it's an identity exploration, it is. It is. And yeah, identity is such a huge theme in it. And what we think of ourselves, what other people think of us, what other people choose to not think about us.

And it tied to the Britney thing for me. I felt like everyone just deserves this one thing and they refuse to look at the whole picture.

Yeah. An archetype. Yeah, it's incredible. It is incredible.

The show, the thing I was most excited about watching, it was thinking how much you are going to like it.

Oh my God. I mean it was just a confluence of all the things I like.

I mean, obviously I love magic and I love the topics he was exploring. And I and also just the way it was that I mean, I was crying for like five minutes in.

I was just crying the whole time.

Magic makes me scared and happy and excited and scared.

Just so much wonder I would give anything to feel about magic the way you do it would be really fun.

It's funny, I was talking about with Kristen afterwards because she loved it so much as well.

And I said, other people are who we are. Like, you can aspire to get rid of some of your character defects, blah, blah, blah.

But we also there are types of people and I am the type of person where and again, because of my history, there is a manipulation. It's not true. And it results in emotion, and that, to me is just a trigger. Hmm. You don't see that magic is a manipulation.

It is a tricking your senses. It's deception. And that's what's cool about it.

And when it's just to go like, oh, cool, that thing disappeared. I didn't think that could disappear. I don't really have any reaction to it. But when it's that that then elicits emotions, it like triggers all this stuff in me.

But you could choose to see it as all of these things that I'm walking around in the world thinking are real and right and exact. Maybe they're not. And that's exciting. That doesn't have to be manipulation. That doesn't have to be scary. I mean, that's like shrooms when you take shrooms and you're walking around and you're like, oh, my God. There is a version of the world, yes, this that's tricking your brain, that's making chemicals released that don't normally release, and it resulted in a lot of emotion for me.

So to me that it's the same thing. It's just like, oh, my God, we're so obsessed with the tangible world in the way we know it.

And there are versions of this world that are magical. And I love that.

It's how I think it's their choice and how you choose to see it.

I totally agree. For me, there isn't magic. So everything that happened was a trick that he performed beautifully. The guy is so talented, but they were all tricks.

None of it was real. And on shrooms, it's the same reality and you are interpreting it differently. You're in charge of the manipulation, not another human being.

Well, I was not in charge. You were your brain. My brain was in charge, but I myself was. I couldn't stop it. If I wanted to stop it, I couldn't do anything like that. Like, oh, I'm not arguing that you had control.

What I'm saying is it was your own brain that was seeing these other layers that do exist.

Like you didn't see anything. What you saw is how light enters your brain. And if it enters your brain in one state, it assembles a bush in this way.

But if your brain is accessed in another part of itself, it assembles it this way.

And you can't say which one's real people have hallucinations on.

Yeah, these things. That's not real. I'm not saying it well, that's the same thing. That's that's an illusion.

That's something your brain is creating in that moment that's not existing in the in in your sober moment is not existing to a person next to me, even if that person is on shrooms, is probably not existing like everyone's reality. I guess I like the fact that it's questioning. It's questioning reality. Huh.

Yeah. Yeah, I that was really cool. It's so beautiful.

I think the message is so beautiful.

Oh yeah. It's beautiful. Can you see what I'm saying about everyone starts crying and they're crying because of a trick you performed. Mm.

And so that's the part that's triggering for me. But I don't see it like that. I see that you see that as a trick.

Everyone, everyone's crying because they've, they think bought into a dream but, but they can choose and they are to not feel like they're being tricked, they can choose to feel like they're being seen. Right. But but that's but but beautiful thing.

There is a reality that they're not being seen.

Do you think they're happier having felt tricked or having felt seen?

Right. So this is all I'm saying. This is why there's so many different people in the world. And some people like you, which I'm envious of, can forget that part and enjoy the emotional part of it, which is beautiful. And then for people like me who were manipulated so often to give me an emotion, that was bullshit. It was a trick. I will always be on guard against that.

But that's kind of the whole point of this whole thing is like you have this identity about yourself. It's it is steadfast and there's nothing that can change it. And it's you. But you have choices. You can decide whether that's the truth about you moving forward. I mean, of course I disagree.

OK, that's like you saying I telling you, you can decide you didn't feel like you were the only brown person in your friendship group. You can't decide that you let me during shrooms.

You said you have a choice in how you choose to experience experience.

Huh? And I felt horrible. And I felt so fearful and so scared and so out of control.

And when you said that, I was like, that's exactly right. I can choose in this moment to override some of that wiring.

Uh huh, yeah. The fear and I did. Yeah. And it was also we have that ability.

I'm not saying it's easy.

Here's here's the thing I'm bumping up against that's making me emotional in this argument is I see you. I see how much you enjoy it and I see why. Yeah. And I'm happy for you. Yeah.

And the way I'm experiencing it is true to me. And you're trying to tell me that. That's my choice in that I shouldn't that I should be doing it different. I'm not saying you should be. I'm saying if you're envious, that means you would want it to be different. And if you want it to be different, I'm telling you, it can be. If you're saying I'm totally content with that, then great, then you can be totally content that you're saying you wish.

Oh, I would love you. Like me.

Yeah, I would love to experience the emotion, but unfortunately, because of my history, I can't I am on high alert for people trying that are trying to elicit an emotion out of me. And that is who I am. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to change that. Just like you hate the idea of anyone talking behind your back more so than other people do. And it's because you had great reason to wonder if when you left your five white girlfriends that they talked about you being brown.

That was a real legitimate thing to wonder, right?

I think maybe that was subconscious. Yeah, but yes, I wiring in that way. Yes. Yeah.

And so I don't think you can choose to not have that feeling about someone.

Absolutely. I cannot choose that. But I can have the feeling and then make a choice after that. Does it mean that people don't like me. Doesn't mean this does it. Or am I getting bamboozled like I can have the feeling and then I can choose what to do with it? I can choose to say that old wiring, I don't need it.

I think we can sum this up really easily, which is we both recognize that the people at the end who are having this beautiful emotion is beautiful. Yeah. And you don't mind how they got there and I mind how they got there. Right. I wish it would have been something that was real. Because I think you can get people to feel that way with the truth, but that's not a magic show, like I'm sure it's so clear that it's so much my baggage, because I don't mind when people watch a movie and they feel like that they're crying at the end and they see they feel seen.

Hmm. Because the movie's clear about the fact that it's fake, like this is a story, this is a narrative, and if you get this feeling out of it, it's great because I just feel like you were up front. You're not presenting it as a documentary. And then that just shows how much of it's my baggage about what's the difference between that magic show in a movie. There's none.

And and it's a magic show. Yeah. It's not like your dad is telling you that has like made a whole trick to it. Yeah. It's a magic show. You are walking in knowing like you want to be there's there. Yeah. You're buying into that experience. Yeah. So you're not getting tricked. You know what you're doing when you go in there.

Yeah. Like I just think the simplest way to say this is it doesn't bother you at all that how they got to that beautiful emotion was through this illusion. And for me it makes me think that emotion isn't real because it was an illusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think we just disagree on a I think illusions can become your reality anyway. I think it's fucking awesome, though. Let me just say that. And I loved how much you and Kristen loved it and were emotional and felt totally connected. And I think that's awesome.

It was I would highlight also on Hulu lots the things I watch on Hulu.

And you know what? Now that I saw his name, I'm almost positive this is the person years ago.

And we interviewed Eira in New York and I saw an amazing magic show there. We were talking to IRA and we were like, oh, we're going to this magic show. Oh, I saw the best magic show last night. And he goes, Oh, yeah, he's fine. But you should really see. And I'm pretty sure.

I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

And I'm so upset I didn't get to see that in person.

You know, what I loved about it is I was like, oh yes.

The thing that Chappelle has done so successfully is happening in magic now, which is so cool, like, like talk about something being funny, but talk about something for real and do magic.

But but tackle something. Exactly. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

Speaking of, I think Chappelle has something new out today. Oh my goodness. Something on the Instagram to look at it yet. Oh my gosh. Your birthday buddy.

Oh wait. Hold on. Ding, ding, ding. Oh Jesus. Tripled in so many ding ding dings because in the magic show, Bill Gates is there. Yeah.

Oh my God. I wanted to just cry harder.

And I love so much. We are doing a book talk. Hmm. We're moderating a panel about his new book.

We're so flattered. Oh, my God. Our names are on this.

Oh, yes, sir. Yeah, that's exciting.

Oh, I don't know. One another update.

You know, when you the last time this happened, where we were talking about another show and you said it's like when people don't like the food you're eating, they won't shut up about it.

Oh, how many people responded? There's a term for that called Don't yuck my yum.

Oh, I like that. Yuck my um. So yeah. So I'm sorry if I'm yanking your yum.

When I share my opinions about anything, it's beautiful that, you know, you're not like them at all. OK.

OK, so we in the late 70s, an international phone call would be like 80 bucks. So. I saw an ad for AT&T and an old National Geographic from the early 60s announcing direct long distance dialing to several countries, I believe calls to the UK where around three dollars per minute. Oh, my God. For the first three minutes, France and Germany were a bit more, maybe three, 60 per minute.

Wow. Yeah, yeah. I remember getting busted all the time in junior high. Would like meet these girls on.

I went to Traverse City once and I met this cute girl and I talked to her on the phone and it would, I would rack up these bills and I get totally busted and then yeah.

The girl Jenny loves once I tell you about the girl I met in England, just a landline back then so we couldn't talk. We had to write letters.

It was just too expensive. Let's sweep the pen pals pen guy. Oh yeah.

Because you were taking too long to write your letter. The rugby player, remember. Oh yeah. And I wrestled with anyone. Oh my God. Ding, ding, ding. What rugby.

Yes. We talk a lot about rugby. Oh yeah. And one of my facts is what are they saying in the Hauschka. So hold on a second.

Jenny Hazelton. There's I know another Jenny. Let us know. It's not. Jenny lives with Jenny Hazelton. I just want to clear that up.

OK, the hoca, they say different stuff. It's say different stuff. But one of them I found says I die. I die. I live. I live. I die. I die. I live. I live. This is the hairy man who fetched the sun and caused it to shine again. One upward step, another upward step and upward step. Another the sun shines. Oh wow.

Yeah they so they say different stuff but that was one of them.

This must be All Blacks because it says all blacks. All Blacks let me become one with the land. This is our land that rumbles. It's my time. It's my moment. This defines us as the All Blacks. It's my time. It's my moment. Our dominance, our supremacy will triumph and will be properly revered, placed on high silver fern, all black silver fern, all blacks.

Yeah. There's only a few teams that do the haka. Oh really? Yeah. The All Blacks do it. Samoa does it. In Tonga does it.

I don't know if there's another one, but maybe Fiji. I don't know, I don't know what they're all the teams are but yeah.

Mm mm. OK, OK, the goalie that got killed, the Columbia goalie. His name is Andre Escobar. I think I think Viggo even called his name. Yeah, yeah, he was killed after the aftermath of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, reportedly as retaliation for having scored an own goal which contributed to the team's elimination from the tournament.

Hmm. Oh, I want to watch the whole Colombia. Oh, sure. I. Isn't that awesome?

It's cool, the first couple of times I saw, I think I said that in the interview when I was in New Zealand trying to watch these games first I was like, this is corny in there about halfway through. I'm like, I'd be terrified.

The unity of the ferocity. Yeah.

I think you also like it because you like group. Did you like group thing. I do. I love group dancing. Synchronized dance. Yeah, I really do. It reminded me of honestly it was like a dance cheerleading. Oh sure. It just looked like a formation to me.

But I really like that the other team was holding hands and holding each other's backs. Yeah.

Mostly it's that right. So ninety nine percent of the teams they play just have to sit there while they intimidate them. But when they play Tonga, Samoa, both teams are doing it.

And that's cool. Awesome. Very cool.

I thought all the stuff that Vego said about dementia was really interesting, super fascinating and stuff I hadn't thought about and what I really liked. Kind of a ding, ding, ding, because. What he was saying is the person who has dementia is living in their own reality, not real. Right, but but why ruin it for them? Don't need the help or just like yukked. You know, I'm not saying that. I'm saying.

But it's real to them. So what's real? Mm hmm. Like, that's the big question. Everything is a perception anyway. So that's real to them. It's real.

Yeah, for sure. And I really ding, ding, ding that really tight.

You tied everything into a beautiful little bow to a rugby ball. But, you know, I tried again and you went too far. You went back to the well, as we say in comedy one too many times.

Oh, kiddo. That was that. That was the fact. That was the fact.

It was mostly just a review of these two great pieces of content we consumed. And I encourage everyone to see, oh, the. And you can buy tickets for in and of itself is also on Hulu. Yeah. Yeah. And the Britanny want us to.

Yeah. They're on Hulu. OK, good job Hulu.

Love you. Bye.