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The Joe Rogan experience.

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Thank you for doing this. This is a huge honor for me. I'm a giant fan, forever. Since I was a kid.

Well, are we going?

Yeah, we're live. For me, there's certain people I meet where it's like, whoa, okay. And you're one of those.

Well, I have a very different experience. I only know about you what I've heard. I've never heard your show. I had to ask you, are you Joe? Because somehow I knew you were in the fitness and everyone out there seems to be a weightlifter, and you're out, or even Danielle, seems like she did lower body today. So it's nice to meet you. And people are... Some people are very, very excited that I've come down here to be on your show.

So Well, you're an interesting guy.

Other people are concerned for me. Oh, really?

Are they? Legitimately?

I don't know. I don't know why it's a weightlifter thing because I have no predisposed... I have no premonitions. But when I walk in here and I see I got to look at that. What is that green?

That's the local racetrack. That's the Circuit of the Americas where Formula One races. It's my friend's place. So he gave me that.

Okay. Yeah, I walked in, I saw these Hunter Thompson things, I felt automatically like, okay, well, this guy can't be a complete disaster. And then I walked down the hall and there's Hunter wearing a hat that I gave him.

Oh, that hat with the gun?

Yeah. The one where he's in a cockpit, it looks like. Yeah. That's a dog hair hat. That's dog hair.

It's made out of dog hair? Yeah.

And he got such a kick out of it because when it rains on you or snows on you like it would in Woody Creek, you come in the house and you smell like a wet dog. And he loved doing that to people. The people go, what in the hell? Oh, the wet dog. That's the dog right there.

Yeah.

Are you filming this, too? This is whatever you do?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, there he is. There's that dog. It's got big tie things. You could tie it under your chin. What year was this? This is... I Wow.

Look at that one.

Lawyers, guns and money.

Jesus. Those are later ones. Yeah, he didn't have scopes for a long time.

That was... He had hearing protection then, too. He was learning.

86? Well, no. We're all learning something about. Maybe. What, that one there? Is it 86? With the dog? Yeah. Yeah, that's probably. Yeah, it was earlier. Blind bat. Where's that? That's funny. It's a historic piece, I guess.

When did you meet him?

I met him. Let me drink your magic coffee here. Whose coffee is this?

Laird Hamilton's Magic Coffee. Laird Hamilton's Superfoods.

I met him. It was one of those years. Maybe it was after my first real year on Saturday Night Live, maybe it was 1977, like the spring, summer of '77. I was asked by Lorne Hills, the producer of Saturday Night Live, if I would... I had to go to... Our season was head-end. I'd gone to California. And he asked if I would drive his Volkswagen convertible bug back cross country for him. I'm like, yeah, Sure. Well, a week or two later, it was like, Where's my car? I'm like, You didn't give me a time limit. So I visited people on the way. So I made some stops. I visited my friend John Thompson in Reno, biggest little city in the world, and we threw our cups off the roof and stuff like that. Had a really nice time there. And then I wanted to go to Aspen. I'd never been to Aspen before. And so I went to Aspen and stayed at the Jerome Hotel. I can talk like this because the show is endless. So went to the Jerome Hotel, which was the place to go back then. And it was off-season, which is the best time here to go to any resort town.

It's like when all the tourists are gone and the citizens regained control of their town for a while. So the Jerome Hotel, which would have been full of like, knucklehead skiers from anywhere, was only full of the people that worked the town and lived in the town. And they took over the bar and they took over the swimming pool, which was outside. So I was there, and it was just I remember being there, and they were like, beautiful girls and this really funny guy. And I didn't know who he was. And we just had the most fun making girls laugh. That's what may or may not have been the reason I was brought here. So we just had the most fun doing it. And then we had this episode where we did an escape act, and it had consequences. I started talking about an escape act, underwater escape act, and I felt like I could do it. You really think you could escape underwater? Oh, no. And I said, yeah, I think I could do it. I think I could do it because So I agreed to be a subject. And you have to know, I did not know who this guy was.

I just thought he was a funny guy. And we were showing off for girls and stuff and being stupid. And it was fun. We were just having fun. So I was tied with socks to a lawn chair and lowered into the pool. But just before I went, I said, Hey, just in case I want to take a breath while I'm untying my sock knots, move me over here to where it's like six feet. So if I have to stand up, I can take a breath and go back down and continue my untying. So I went in and I was untying and the guy could tie some knots, even with socks. So after a little bit, I thought earlier, I was like, maybe I'll just take a quick breath and go back down. Well, I stood up. Well, try it, Joe. Lash yourself to a chair and try to stand up. Yeah, it's hard. Well, I'm a little over six feet, but if you're tied to a chair, you don't get to fully extend your calves any more than that. So tied to a chair, I'm only like five.

You couldn't get out of the water. Five, eight or something like that.

It was funny to see that camera shot of like, there are people up there and I can't reach them or speak to them because I'm still underwater. So that's when I started I worked more fervishly on the knots, and I was going, Hey, hey. I'm leaning with my head like, push me down to five feet instead of six feet. But he was strong enough. And because I was in the water, he just picked up the chair out of the water. So I lived through it. But it was a funny way to meet someone. And the next day I found out that this was Hunter S. Thompson.

He never asked him his name?

No. He never asked me my name. I don't know that he knew who I was either. I think he thought I was just a funny guy, and we were holding court and being funny.

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You probably don't even have email, do you?

No, I have these things now. But if you have children, you have to get a cell phone because they will not answer a telephone, but they will answer a text. So that's All right. I had to break down.

Yeah. But you've managed to stay blissfully detached in some way.

Yeah. My email is aol. Com. Is it really? Yeah. That was my concession to it.

One of my favorite things you did with Hunter was when... It was a feeling of some a documentary or something, or is in a documentary, the footage is. And you're going around trying to convince people that Nixon got a bad rap?

Yeah, that was good. We were trying to write something funny. I was with my friend Dick Lisucci on that one. And I can't remember. They're like two or three of us that were trying to write this thing. And we rented a like a Cleeg light, like a big Hollywood premiere, one of those giant lights that flash up in the sky. You don't even see him very much anymore. And we were just outside the Chateau where Hunter had a room at that moment. And we were doing... We were excited because Nixon's back, and we were interviewing alleged people on the street, men on the street saying, what do you think about this? Because it was after Watergate, and Nixon had basically burrowed down. And Hunter had a powerful hatred of Nixon, really He didn't like Nixon, of course. But I just remember Dick Blisucci saying, I'm excited.

He's tanned, he's rested, and he's ready.

I still say it all the time. I say it about myself all the time because I think it's funny. How are you, Bill?

I'm tanned, I'm rested, and I'm ready.

But saying it about Richard Nixon, I thought, was a really brilliant thing to say. Well, ask that.

It became a common phrase. People use it all the time to this day, probably not even knowing the origin.

That's right. It's Dick Blisutti who did it. And we weren't there for like 45 minutes before like... I work in the industry and I know you have to have a permit to have that light on. I mean, there were people, they came at us. We were going concerned for about one hour tops. And that was with professional argumentative people like Hunter, myself going, that is a fabulous watch you're wearing. Where did you get that? Just anything to keep this thing going and to keep the cameras rolling on our super stuff and demands. But yeah, that was one of the things. I had a lot of fun with the guy. He really was a lot of fun. He really could make a lot of fun.

I really wish I met him. He's one of those people that Just really wish I met him.

Well, you can still read it. There's still so much more stuff that I hadn't even read then. It just keeps appearing. There are things that are so beautiful that he wrote that are good. People text me things and say about what's going on, how so prescient he was about things a long time ago.

Yeah, dead on about so many things. I mean, you could take a lot of his commentary on politics from 1976 and apply it easily to today. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is one of the best books ever on the American political system, just like what it's like when people are running for office.

I agree. Yeah. To me, it's a better book than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is really fun. But Yeah. The campaign trail book is so insightful about America and about Americans. It's great reading.

The movie was fun. Fear and Loathing was fun. It was a great introduction to a lot of people, maybe, that weren't aware of Hunter. Maybe then you'll start reading his stuff. But it wasn't all chaos and acid and seeing lizard people in the bar. Even there's moments in Fear and Loathing, the movie, where there's this one thing where Johnny Depp is at the typewriter. Or is that in the movie or is that in the documentary? Where is that the typewriter? He's talking about how the 1960s, there was this great wave of change, Yeah, the high watermark.

You see it on the mountains. It's a beautiful piece of writing.

Oh, my God. It's amazing. When Johnny Depp is saying the way he's saying it, it's so beautiful and melodic.

Jimmy, when is he even going to find it? It's about the most famous. It's the most famous line in the road. It's beautiful.

Grab the headphones. Let's take this in.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six It seems like a lifetime, the peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle '60s was a very special time and place to be a part love, but no explanation. No mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world, whatever it meant.

There was madness in any direction.

At any hour, you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful the wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West. And with the right eyes, you can almost see the high watermark, that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

God damn, that's good. That is just an amazing piece of writing that so perfectly captured that very strange moment in time where the anti-war, the peace, love movement just got drowned out by the Nixon administration.

It's a beautiful piece. It glistons your eyes to see it, not just the thing you have Hunter and the words that he said, but seeing Johnny and how close Johnny and Hunter became, how much they loved each other and how much they shared with each other. It's really a beautiful piece. Thank you.

Yeah, it is a beautiful piece. It's just so fucking perfect.

It just perfect Yeah, he got it. He really got it. Yeah.

It just encapsulates that time. Thank God there was a guy like him around to document it from that perspective, to give you this insight in that the way he did it with gonzo journalism, where he just would have real facts mixed in with fiction. You couldn't tell what was what, and you had to be in on it to understand what he was doing.

Yeah. You had to enter the event to comment on it. You had to be a part of it. You played him.

I did play him. We were talking about it before. I loved it. Were you in Buffalo Room?

Yeah, we're in Buffalo Room?

Was that weird to play your friend?

It was a lot of responsibility. Yeah. It was any actor that has to play either a living person, especially a living person, or a famous person has a real responsibility to that person, you can't just be that person for 90 minutes. You have to realize that person was that person for 60 some odd years or 70 or however many years the person was. You've got to try to get all that into your hour a half or two hours. You've got to try to take in as much as you can so you're not lying. At least you're giving the best you can to say, this is who I think he was. This is who I think that person was, she was, he was.

Did you run any of it by him? Did you try to talk to him as him?

Well, he was living in the guest house.

So you were around him all the time?

Yeah. So I would go to work and I would come home, and then we would stay up and just an hour or so before, maybe an hour and a half before two hours before dawn, he'd have a Nyquil and Scotch in the hot tub and then go to sleep. And then I had to get about 90 minutes, and then the Teamster was knocking on the window saying, Bill, Mele. Then I'd have to go to work. That's what it was like while we were shooting the movie. Wow. And he appears in the movie briefly. He appears in the movie briefly. I can't remember all of it, but he appears in the movie briefly, and we did together. We wrote a scene. I was always constantly changing. John K wrote the script, but I was always playing with it because I was always being informed more. And that's what I did anyway. I just Pretty much I felt the freedom to change anything. But we did write a scene, Hunter and I wrote a scene that was late in the movie. Pardon me. They gave me these beautiful massive things. Cough drops? Yeah.

No, thank you.

Yeah. So he was in on a lot of it and the editing of it. We We can secretly say that, too. And it was a lot of... He was really involved.

Very nice. Good shot. So you're saying he wrote a scene? You guys wrote a scene together?

Yeah, we wrote a scene together, which was encountering Nixon in a urinal because he did have a moment with Nixon where- Yes, in the limo. Remember? Yeah. And he was told he could not speak politics. They could only talk NFL football, which Nixon was rather knowledgeable about. Hunter Kopt, it was like, yeah, the guy really studied it. And George Allen, it's in the book. But Nixon even designed a play that he gave to George Allen, who was the coach of the Washington Redskins back then. And they lost like 10 yards or something on the play. But Allen actually ran the play, Nixon's play.

That's crazy. It's just also insane that they would let Hunter get in a limousine with the President. Just that alone. Who Who greenlit that? Who thought that was a good idea?

He was on the campaign trail. He also, for whatever he was, the people who knew, and secret Service guys, you were running into them. They read people for a living. This is what they do. They read people, and they can really burn a hole through your head and your body just looking at you. They'll give you this one. They'll just really burn you. And he'd been on the tour. The tour. He'd been on the road with them. They knew who he was. They knew what he was after hours, and they knew what he was during hours, where the people who were really smart knew this guy's really smart. This guy's really smart. He knows politics. And you can't try to dumb down. You can't try to big time him because he'll kill you. He'll chop you. He's got the words to answer, and he has the intelligence. So he was a forest. People knew who he was, even Even to get information, you got to go into the people who work for the guy. So the people that work for the guy know who he is, and they've already established that they have a relationship with him.

They can speak with him. He's talking a certain way. There's a reality check. If you're running someone's political campaign, you have the best jokes about the campaign, not Hunter Thompson, maybe. You have the best jokes because you've seen it all. You know how stupid things get. If you can be realistic and savvy about those things, then people trust you.

Well, it's still pretty extraordinary that they also got him to agree, or at least thought he would agree that he would only talk about football.

Well, he knew if he blew it, that was it, and that was going to be the end of it. And that was going to be the end of it. And it was only, I don't know what month it was, but...

There's more coffee in this, I feel like.

Oh, is that your stuff?

No, that's everybody's.

Okay. Well, we'll try to finish it off. It's hot.

I just feel like yours is probably.

It doesn't have to be super. I keep coffee for days, at least two days. If it's not hot, it's got ice in it.

You just keep drinking?

I just keep drinking.

Yeah.

That smells good. What kind is that?

Black rifle coffee. Where does that come from? It's an American company, veteran-owned company made by real coffee nuts that travel around the world and find different blends and different-It smells good.

It's very good. It's a lot of coffee you can't even smell. It's excellent.

It's very good coffee. It's just That meeting in the limousine is one of my favorite meetings because you could feel how weird it must have been for Hunter to be sitting in a limo getting a ride with Nixon, and they're just talking about football, and then they can find common This has been happening in my life anyway, and I'm sure it's happening in everyone's life for the last got to be 10 years, where you meet people, we have something in common, we've got something we got to get done.

But if we talk politics, we're leaving the rails. We're not going to get anything done. We're never going to be friends. And it could be worse than We could be adversaries or even enemies. You mentioned it. It's like I go places where, and I'm sure you do, too, where you just can't talk. You just I want to talk politics with people because there are people that are, whose politics can be the exact opposite of yours, completely 12 to 6. And yet there are people that have lived lives that are so extraordinary and so enormous in terms of what they give to the world and the planet. And you think, why would I ever want to get... It's a mystery. It's a mystery, but If you don't value that first instead of your political handkerchief, you're making more of a mess. That's what I feel a lot about what's going on in anywhere, everywhere, that people are leading with their handkerchief and not with their whole self, what they understand about what living is.

I agree 100 %. I think that we're just too tribally divided. People look at it like it's us versus them. They enjoy the comfort of being a part of a tribe. They lock on to whatever ideology the tribe support, and then anybody who opposes is somehow another enemy. It's a division tactic that's been used by the people that actually run the government, the actual world itself. The real people of this world, especially the people of this country, have mostly share the same common core needs. You want to be healthy, you want to have a good family, you want to be able to make a living, you want to live in a safe place. You want your kids to be able to go to a good school. You want everybody to prosper and have a good time. That's most of what life is. All this other shit that people get so goddamn caught up in, most of it has very little to do with you. You get locked into it like it's 100% of your identity, and the next thing you know, anybody who opposes you is Hitler. It just gets...

That's true.

It gets so toxic.

His name gets bandied about a lot lately, doesn't it? Yeah, it's a good one. But you started it by bringing up that quotation of hunters, which is so... And I think about that all the time. I can not... But I think about it regularly. Like, what was that, that force that that movement had, that anti-war movement, whatever that was? It wasn't perfect. It wasn't perfect. I think the thing that if I had to regret anything or anyone regrets anything about it was the hostility that was shown towards the actual servicemen, most of whom were drafted to fight. Those service people had an experience that I will never have. I was in a military movie. That's as good as it ever got for me. But the thing about being in war together with people is everybody hates war, and who could hate it more than someone that was there. But the camaraderie that you had is an experience I'll never have that. I'll never have that thing that Rambo had. I'll never have that thing. And I don't think that... I I think that there could have been more vision about who we're talking to or who we're talking to about whatever change you want to make.

And so that the agents of it are not necessarily the architects, like you say, the people who are making this tribal thing. They're not the agents of it. They're the architects of it. And how do you jump over or how do you excuse or not excuse isn't the word, but how do you-Unite? Miss the people that are the agents who are just people that have a job or whatever it is. They're doing their work to survive and live, whatever it is. How do you get to the architects with whatever you feel is what could be a shared experience and get them to dissolve the creation of the tribal world? I think you ask a great question. You I have people on here, I guess, that know or think about those things and have the ability to do something about it. I don't think I have the ability to do anything more than something for myself, mostly. But you do because you have the ability to express yourself and you're an example.

A lot of times when someone is a very reasonable, intelligent person like you and you express yourself, other people get inspired to maybe re examine the way they're looking at things.

Well, that's a nice hope. I hope that maybe that will happen.

I think that's maybe one of the only things.

Right back at you then. Okay. Thank you.

Because part of our problem in this country is that we're in competition every two years. Every two years, you have midterms. It is crazy. Elections every four years. We don't get a break. No, we don't get a break.

We don't get a break from these people.

No, we don't get a break. We don't get a break from division. We don't get a break. We don't get a break from propaganda. We don't get a break from new threats. We don't get a break. Every day, it's a new thing. It keeps us completely in this constant state stress and anxiety and also this fear of being overcome, like your side is going to lose. If I fall asleep too early tonight, I'll- The bad people are going to- We're going to lose the internet.

I'm supposed to be on watch or something.

Yeah, it's very stressful, and it's not healthy for human beings to be constantly in this state of competition and stress. It's bad for... And then on top of that, you have most people are addicted to social media, so you're constantly getting inundated with the worst fucking things in the world all day long, and you're freaking out. It's terrible for you.

It's fucking terrible for you. I mean, that footage made me cry. Now you're going to make me cry. Okay. But it's true. There has to be some a new... I don't know if it has to be a club, but there's got to be some new... It used to be music. I think music played such a big part of whatever that movement was, whatever you call the peace movement or the hippies or whatever it was. It It was an extraordinary moment in time, and the music was part of the experience and it brought the message, and it crashed through everybody's brain. There wasn't a side to it. It's like, what were the soldiers listening to in Vietnam? Jimi Hendrix. We were all listening to the same stuff no matter where you were. No matter where you were, you were listening to the same music, no matter what your thing was, the music told a story and suggested a possibility.

And the music was so much different than the music of the past.

Yeah.

And it was like you go from 1959 to 1969, you're dealing with a completely different dimension. And it's because it was all psychedelically inspired. And that was another thing that the Nixon administration did. They passed that sweeping schedule one psychedelics act, made everything illegal, and just threw water on the whole movement. And then everything changes. Then you have the '70s, music starts getting weird. The '80s, it completely falls apart. Cars start looking like shit. People start dressing stupid.

Now you're talking. It got weird. It's a real language. I never tied it all to that sweeping thing. But when you revisit that, you realize how much harm that did, that lawmaking. But let's all agree that the cars don't look as good as they used to. They look like dog shit. Who are those people that say they're the really good problem solvers? I see them every once in a while, and they go like, How does he do it? He said, Well, first, I say, what can we agree on? Okay, so we can agree that cars don't look so good no more. Well, they look good now. It used to be that every single year, every single car looked different than it looked the year before. Yes. And that's mind boggling nowadays to think about that.

And even now the cars are made of, I don't know, plastic?

What are they made of? They're made of shit.

They're made of nothing. They're not made of steel. They did it with steel back then. Right. And now they're made with some carbon something or other. And you would think they would be able to... I don't know what a 3D printer is, I have to confess. I have no idea. We actually talked about it yesterday. I have no idea what it's really- The biggest one is four feet long. The biggest one is 4 feet long?

Yeah, that's what Elon was saying. Can you make a table out of this?

You can't make anything bigger than 4 feet.

I don't think so. But Maybe there's some super- Car parts now are...

I mean, if you have a car, if you have a vendor-bender, there's seven parts that you have to replace panels and panels and panels.

But that's also because they're better structurally with sand impact. They have these crumple layers and they're designed in a way that makes it safer for you. They're a lot safer than old cars. I fucking love old cars.

And the sound systems are better. Yeah.

But new cars look great. New cars are awesome. There's a lot of really good-looking American cars, a lot of really good-looking German cars. What happened in the 1970s and the 1980s was a drop-off, a significant drop off from the '60s. The '60s cars were some of the best-looking cars of all time. I got a '65 Corvette. What a greatest-looking cars the world's ever designed.

I was a '62 Corvette.

Oh, those It was beautiful, too. Model 1, the first one, Generation 1. But the Camaros and Barracudas, they made beautiful, wild-looking cars back then. I think a lot of that had to do with just the The way creativity was encouraged in the 1960s. It was more free flowing. The music was completely radical and different. Politics was radical and different. That's why they passed those laws. They passed those laws to stop the anti-war movement. It was a civil rights movement.

The guy they put in charge was a man who had absolutely no qualifications, who had no qualifications to do any of it. I've got someone, a friend that's been trying to get me to I'll do a movie about it. But the person responsible for making all the laws was someone who had absolutely no background in any of the fields, no knowledge whatsoever, just a total huckster that got himself out in front.

Well, they probably had a mandate. They gave him a mandate. This is what we're going to do. This is the plan. We're going to lock up all these hippies.

I'll carry the flag. I'll carry the flag, whatever it is. I'll run up the hill.

Exactly.

Well, I heard that Buick is going to make a car, and this could be wrong, but I heard they're going to make a car next year that's not going to look like any car ever. It's going to be like a brand new, whatever the hell, 25 or 26 Buick, and it's not going to look like the 24 or five. It's going to look like its own individual thing. They're going to try to recommence the idea of making a new car every year.

You didn't hear No, like a completely new model? Yeah.

Like the idea that you would make a car that didn't look like every... I mean, you can look at a car and go like, that's a Volvo, but that part of it looks like a Mercedes. That part of it looks like an Infinity. That part of the car looks like a Toyota. You've heard probably the story about the... What's that car called? The Ford that's got a animal name. Mustang? Taurus. Taurus. Now, there's a story. Now, it could be apocryphal. That the Ford Taurus You never heard this one? No. I thought you were like this guy.

Taurus is a piece of shit. I don't care about Taurus.

Well, the Taurus is not the most beautiful car in the world, but it was a huge seller for Ford. They sold a lot of them, and And the story is that these guys at Ford designed a car, and they took the rear quarter pedal from this automobile, the fender from this, the backfender from this, the rear windows from this, and just did a composite of all these different cars. Because the car was, This car is bullshit. And we'll call it the Taurus. And they presented it to Ford, who went, We love it. And then proceeded to sell hundreds of thousands of them. And this is a story. Where's your phone calls here? Faye, call her number one. You heard about this? No one's ever heard this story? You've never heard this one?

I've never heard that. No. But I believe it. It makes sense.

You can believe it if you look the cars that are now, that they are absolutely like, look at that damn Volvo. It looks exactly like a three-year-ago Mercedes or something like that. They just really just steal.

Jamie, pull up 2024, Shell a Shelby Mustang Super snake.

So there's still some cars. Better yet, Jimmy, roll it in here.

Just check out what this looks like. There's cars that they make today that are unique-looking and look badass.

I wish I'd bought a Shelby back when I first had a paycheck. Oh, yeah. They're such a That's a beautiful cars.

Look at that.

Come on. Well, that funny. When I first look at it, it looks a little Chevy to me.

It does a little bit. It could be like a Camaro.

I mean, look at that. That looks like Chevy.

I mean, that's a beautiful car, though, right?

Well, you could photograph either of us from a certain angle.

No, I've seen that one in real life. That's a beautiful car. That's a beautiful car.

That's better.

Oh, and it sounds amazing. I hate to hit anything with that thing. In what way?

I would hate to bump into anything. It looks like I'd I would have to.

Yeah, you'd have to replace a lot of shit. That's true.

Can you big up that picture there? What's the rear look like? It's got a spoiler?

Yeah.

Come on.

How do you feel about spoilers? Fucking badass. That thing looks awesome. That looks amazing.

Well, I think the original one is like the super coolest car. Oh, yeah.

Oh, no doubt. I mean, if you go back and look at... Like, pull up a Boss 429, 1969, Boss 429. This, to me, is the pinnacle of muscle car design, is the Boss 429. That is just spectacular. That's pretty good. Look at that.

Well, that's pretty close. Well, that's got that scoop in the front. That's pretty close to the bullet year, right? The Bullet car?

68. Yeah, Bullet was 68. I actually have a recreation of that.

I was watching it. They found the original Bullet Card.

Did you know that? Yes.

I was reading about that this week. It was on TV last week. And I've watched it a lot of times, that movie because I think Steve McQueen is pretty damn good. But when you watch the movie, it's obviously the roaring through San Francisco and all that stuff it's famous for. And then there's the ending where there's... The story ends with a flaming crash. It's not really an ending in a way. But watching at this particular time, it was all the moments in between all that that really make the movie. Yes. All the quiet in between where he's in the grocery store, he's in the girl, he's in the mailbox, he's seeing these people and these people. And he has this very quiet inner self that's dealing with people very respectfully. And his blood pressure only moves The needle only starts to move when he gets with the bad guy Chalmers, who's obviously a fraud of some sort. And he's got him like, you see him not just as an actor keeping his cool, but as a cop keeping his cool with a person he knows is trying to use him. And just watching that part of the performance and that part of the story was much more interesting.

The first time I saw all that as its own weave through it. Yes. The car stuff had very little to do with what I was getting from the people. The car stuff was nothing. And his boss was a great actor, Simon Oakland, I think his name is. He was great as his boss who said, I'm going to hold this till Monday morning.

That the guy. There was some great acting in that.

It's a really beautiful American movie like that.

I'm so glad you brought that up because it's one of the things that I love about that movie and Le Monde's another great Steve McQueen me, is that he had these moments, and you could do that in a movie back then where no one was talking for minutes and minutes at a time.

There's a lot of quiet in the bullet. There's a lot of quiet. Yeah.

It's just you're taking in this story, but very compelling. Sometimes there's not even any music. Like in Le Mans, the whole first part of it, there's no talking at all for quite a while. It's just like you're getting the sounds and the feeling of being this race car driver, and he's driving his 911 down this country road. It engrosses you in a different way. It pulls you into the story.

Is that bullet where he's writing? What movie is he driving like a dune buggy? Is that What, too? No, that's the other one, the one in Boston. That's a pretty good movie, too.

Which one's that?

Oh, come on. They remade it. Thomas Crown Affair. Yeah. And obviously, he's having time. How about we shoot some stuff in a dune buggy? Basically, they had a whole day. Yeah, this. And he's having a time. And meanwhile, he's got Faye Dunway, and they're going, I hope that's Faye Dunway anyway, roaring around. And he could really drive, right?

The guy could really drive a car. Really drive. You could really flip one of these fucking things if you're driving like him, you don't know what you're doing. For sure. Yeah, he's going sideways.

She is having the time of her life. Look at that, spinning it out in the water.

With a movie star who doesn't even have a seatbelt on, probably.

No, they didn't have seatbelts back then. Jesus Christ. Well, she might have a seatbelt. She looks like she's belted. But that was cool.

He was like the archetypal archetypal movie star. He was a movie star. That guy was a movie star. There was something about him that was compelling. He lived his life in this wild, renegade way and drove race cars, and he was a man's man. And when you saw him in a movie, you believed it.

Well, I've been watching. I've come to be watching all the old cowboy shows on a satellite. I watch all the old cowboy shows and Wanted Dead or Alive was always a super cool show. And I've been watching it just to say, what the hell is he up to? Man, he is just... No one was getting away with that. No one was doing what he was doing, which was so small and so slight. He was really preparing himself to be a movie actor because his performance is so controlled. He's so in his skin, and he's always got a piece of business to do. He always had a piece of business to do, like something to do, like the way he strapped on his Goofy, saw it off, rifle and stuff. You keep thinking it's a saw it off shotgun. It's a saw it off rifle. So just all his moves were very little. His face gave very, very little away. He would do a half pout stuff. And it's just fun to watch him see how little he could do and get it done, get it across. I like that about him. But he always had...

He challenged himself to do something physical, like So if he'd be talking to you, he'd have just even that, even something like that to be like, come in here. The way he did it was a guy who had a real natural way with his body. It was fun.

Yeah. Well, he would just draw you in. In all of his films. In a way that was... It was just different. It's just like it was a different presence on screen.

Here's that guy.

Sawed-off rifle.

See, it's a sawed-off. It's not a shotgun. It's a rifle. When he had, see that little stick? He's got it so it locks in and then swings back. So he could actually, if he wish to, you better hope he better not wish to against you two. He could just swivel it and fire while it's still attached to his Waste Man.

I never saw this show. I didn't even know it existed. You never saw this show? I didn't know it existed until right now. What citizen are you? I'm a little younger. That's all it is.

That's all it is. Well, you can find this. There's these new cowboy shows channels. There's like four channels I have direct TV, and so you can go and watch. God, that's a famous guy. Oh, God. Oh, who's that? Oh, that's killing me. I know who this guy is. Well, I don't know who he is, but I I'll look it up. Help me somebody. Who's that guy?

Jamie will find it.

Anyway, there's a few channels. There's one called INSP. There's also the Cowboy channel. There's also channel 360. 54, 304, 323, 81. Direct TV? What is it? Direct TV. And I just go through going like, what have I got to find? So I can see the rifleman.

Oh, yeah. Did you ever see the rifleman? Oh, yeah. I remember that.

That was a great show. Also a rifle guy, but he had a full length rifle. And that was Chuck Conners, who once upon a time was a Chicago Cub. He was a baseball player. Oh, really? Yes. And allegedly did some art films. But also he was good, too. Chuck Conners was good. The Lone Ranger.

Oh, yeah, sure.

And that was... God, come on. Why can I not remember his name? But there were some Lone Rangers. The Lone Ranger came on, and then the guy... I didn't realize it because there's some Lone Rangers where it's not our Lone Ranger being the Lone Ranger, who wasn't as good as our Lone Ranger. And then our Lone Ranger comes back, and it turns out, I finally figured out that he went on strike. He said he wanted a contract raise after the first season or something. They said, no. They went ahead and made a season with this other guy, and people went, when are you going to kill off the Lone ranger? No offense to that man's family. I'm sure it paid for somebody's college. But, come on. I almost had it.

Is that the guy's name? Yeah. Jamie will find it.

Jamie, you got a lot on your plate. I switched over to the Lone Ranger.

I was looking at people that were listed here. I'll give you this one. There's a few people listed here as guest artists.

I actually saw him someplace.

He came to a jewel. Is he one of these names? Michael Landon. Landon, Warren Oates. It's definitely not Coburn.

No, it's none of those guys. Lone Cheney is misspelled, but it's not those guys. Coburn is in there twice.

Lone Rancher here.

One of these guys, maybe?

No. All right. I'll try to answer. See, it started on radio first. That's what you're getting. You're pulling up radio. That's how far back you're going. Clayton Moore. Clayton Moore. Thank you. I saw Clayton where he came to a jewel food store near us. The Lone Rancher was going to appear, but he was not allowed to wear the mask for contract, whatever the hell. So there he was, and I'm like, Mom, that's not the Lone ranger. Whatever the hell it was. It was funny to see Clayton wear without a mask on.

Imagine a contract saying, you can't do personal.

Well, no, it was like the Lone ranger was copyrighted nine days from Sunday, so he could go and be right on an elephant. I think I may have seen him riding on an elephant in a parade once, but also without the mask on. But I should talk about movies because I'm supposed to be talking about movies. Yes. Since we started talking about movies.

Tell me about your movie.

I got two movies. I have three movies. I'll work backwards from the one which is least Which is farthest away. I did one with Wes Anderson called the Finesian something. That's the title. I'm sorry, Wes. You know what it is? The Finesian Scheme? The Phenitian Scheme. And I have a lot of trouble with names nowadays. But the guy who did the set design, can you figure that out? This guy is the most famous. He's the best there is now. These are the most beautiful sets I've ever seen in any movie. Come on. It's coming. I'm sorry, everybody, but I just haven't been getting enough sleep. No worries. Anyway, that's a great movie. We shot that in Berlin, and there's great people in it. It's got, I want to say to Mifuni, but it's not. It's the guy who played Jay. Come on. Don't. Come on, help me out here. All right, for you, look it up, Jim. You get back to us with this. Anyway, that movie is coming in a bit. Benito. Yeah. Benito's really good. He's really good and he's really cool. And Michael Serra, right? Is he the third?

Did you say Benicio?

Benicio Del Toro. Benicio Del Toro. Benicio Del Toro. Yeah. I said Benito. You said he's great. He's great. He's great.

If you're in clothing as well. He was awesome in that.

He's great.

He's great in everything.

We got on good. And then the daughter of Kate Winslet, who is really wonderful. So the three of them are extraordinary in the movie together. And her name is like Cupid or Eve or something that's crazy. What's it about? I have no idea. What's her name? Mia. Thank you. See, I told you, Cupid, something. Mia, I have no idea what it's about. You're going to have to pay the money. There she is right there.

A dark tale of espionage followed a strained father-father-daughter relationship with a family business.

Yeah, Willem's got a good part, but it's really those... Keep going, keep going.

Benedict Cumberb Yeah, they're all fine.

Michael Serra. Michael Serra is huge. He's fantastic. Yeah, he's a really good guy. Michael Serra, Benicio, and Mia are really the muscles. Brian Cranston. They're great. Anyway, that's going to be really good. People are All his movies are like they are. They're all great. And that one's going to be very good. That one's going to be funny, too. Then I made a movie called The Friend, which stars... What's her name? Naomi Watts and a dog. There's a huge dog. Are you a dog guy? I love dogs. Okay. So there's a massive, really big dog. It's pretty much as big. There it is. There's Naomi, and there's the dog. The dog is that big. See how big it is? It's fucking huge. Yeah. That's the words for it.

That's a great Dane.

Isn't it? It's an amazing dog, and the script is great. It's from a book written by a woman named Sigrid Nunez. And can you pop up on the titles there, maybe? I know the other thing. Yeah, these guys directed it. These guys, Scott McGeehe and David Siegel, and they wrote the script from this book, and it's a great script.

Nobody can hear you over there, unfortunately. Nobody can hear you over there. You're going to have to come back.

Scott McGeehe and David Siegel wrote the script and directed it, and they're great. I love those guys. They made a few good movies, and this one's really good. And this Sigrid Nunez is a big deal author. People know who she is that read lots of books.

And what is The Friend? What is it about?

The Friend? Well, there you go. So that's the question. Well, that's the puzzle, a little bit of the puzzle of it. So who is the friend? Is the friend the friend or is the friend the dog? The dog represents something. It's a little deeper than a lot of the ones we get to, but it's really good. It's really good. I like it. It's been a film festival, and people laugh and cry and the whole thing.

How do you pick things to do now? You've done so much. You've had this insane career.

I'm going to tell you that, but let me finish the last one because today... Now, is your show live?

No. No, it comes out tomorrow. It's dead.

Tomorrow. Okay, so that's why I wanted to ask, because the third movie opens today, which is yesterday, and it's called Riff Raff. And this is a movie that you have to see. You have to see this. I will see it. This is really something. This is a movie you should take 10 of your friends to and go see Riff Raff. I guarantee you this one's a party.

Tell me what it is.

Well, There's a trailer for it up there. See, there's-Let's play the trailer.

Okay.

We can do it.

We'll play the trailer.

There you go.

Slap some headphones on.

No slim jumps. Past you hours, you've been passing gas like a very sick infant. I got to breathe all day. I'm sorry, Lefty. I had a lot of coffee, okay? It's all right. And then you use my name. Jesus Christ, Lonnie. Yeah. She said my name. You catch our names by any chance? Yeah. He called you Lefty, and you called him Lonnie. Well, I overreacted.

Okay. Son, we got to talk about Lefty. What did you do?

You killed his son.

You're going to kill us.

What are you doing?

I get horny when I'm scared. I'm married.

Who cares?

It's just us in this shitty wildlife. This is our son. We're too young to be grandparents, all because your son couldn't pull out in time. We've got house guests.

I would categorize these as a must kill.

What are we?

Family. Oh, my God.

Can I get you anything? I'd sell my left tit for an Advil and a cup of coffee.

You said what?

Who was first? There was this food incident, Rocco, with pubes in my Wanda soup.

If it's okay, I would just really like to torture him a little bit, if it's okay.

Shouldn't have done that, Rocco.

Yeah, knock yourself out. Oh, my God. Are we all going to die?

You don't have all night.

Wait for me before you two start hitting each other.

Once you start killing it, it becomes your de facto solution for every problem. What? Get off of me. I'm not going to. I'm not going to, Ruth.

What's that? Shame. We're going to put something that hard to waste.

That looks fun.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, they gave you too much as far as I'm concerned.

They always do, though, right?

I don't know. Sometimes. Not always. Not always.

But it's- It's common.

It's nicer to see as a surprise.

Oh, should we not have seen the trailer?

It's okay. What are you going to do? But some people will think, I must see that. But I guarantee you this is a movie that's really, really funny.

I love a movie where I don't get to see the trailer. I really do.

I have no idea how it goes down. You could say, yeah, you could not show the trailer. That would be okay. I saw one that was just the first part of that, and then they just added this. And I was hoping that was what it was. This makes it seem like a little bit I can't put an S guy. It's just a little bit too much stuff in it. A little bit too much stuff for me. Maybe. Let's think about it. But anyway, it's good. It looks great. Yeah. So Jennifer Coolidge has got some unbelievable incredible things to say in the movie. She got some amazing things to say. And Ed Harris is really good in the movie. Pete Davidson, who I had no idea about. We were sidekicks in the movie, and we had a very good time, did some good stuff. It's Louis Pullman, who is Bill Pullman's son, is really good. I mean, and Emanuela, she got an Italian, Pustakini, like that. She's just wonderful and beautiful. And Gabby Union, I call her Gabriele Union. And Miles, who's the last name, I can't remember it because I just want to call Miles Davis.

But that little kid in there, he plays the voice of the electric A Junior Bunny show or something like that on Nickelodian or something like that. He does like weird cartoon voices.

Oh, yeah?

If you watch a lot of Nickelodeon cartoons.

I don't anymore. My kids are teenagers now. Oh, really? I used to. I used to. I used to be-I could tell you all about Nihau Kailan.

See, I don't know that one. I guess SpungeBob. My brother plays the Flying Dutchman on SpungeBob. Oh, really? Oh, wow. So I watched a lot of that, but that's about it. I don't know. I'm way behind.

How do you decide what projects to pick?

It's really just what... Well, there are certain people, like with people that I've worked with before, there's some, I think Wes Anderson is one and Jim Jarmish, and Sofia Coppola are others. And those three people call and say, I got something. I just say, okay, when? Because I know that they know what I can do, and they know they look out for me, and they treat people well. I love them as people, and I love them as artists. So that's just a thing. But the other ones are more like You have to read the script because people... If the script is not there, I can always help improve a script. But if the basic thing isn't there, it's like, I was scratching it the other day and I'm writing, I'm going, what the hell am I doing this for? This is just terrible. Every page is like... But if it's not good, and usually, you know in five pages, whether or not to even continue reading the script at all.

So a lot of it's based on relationships and people that you trust and know.

Those are very few. There's only very few people that I have those kinds of relationships with. And I've done multiple jobs with them, and they kill every time. They're good. They're really good. So when they call, it's like, you don't have to waste my time telling me the story. Just send me the thing. You don't have to waste any time I'm in. You can count on me. That's awesome. So that's it. I love that. Yeah, I do, too.

God, that's such great feeling when you trust someone that much and you're so enthusiastic about working with them.

Yeah. It means great. And people make the making of a movie part of their living. West is probably the most extreme example in that. We all live in a quasi dormitory. We take over a small hotel in some city, and all the actors and And the key crew live in the hotel. And you come down for breakfast in the morning and people pad down in their slippers and their jammies, and they have coffee and stuff, and they look at the newspaper and say, what are we doing today? And then they pad back up the stairs and get on their clothes and they go to work. It's cool. It's really nice. It really is like what you always thought it would be in the old days. What if we all lived in a dorm and we were just being funny all day? Like that.

Yeah. What was it like working on King Pen?

Well, those guys have more fun making movies than anyone. They really make it fun. I remember in between shots on Kingpin, we'd be on the side of a road somewhere And it would be like, everybody's got to pick up a rock, and we got to throw it at that telephone pole. Who's going to hit the telephone pole with a rock? So we would sit there and, I don't know, a dollar, $10, $100, whatever it was, we're throwing, and somebody's got to hit the rock. And then people like, I'll pull out cash and pay because it's just like, we just got to keep this thing going. We're not going to let the energy of this thing drop.

Just fun.

Keep the fun rolling. Fun, yeah. And just creativity and always being loose and always being physical, always being connected, attached, not just attached, but connected and entertaining, entertaining each other, really making this fun. God damn it, we are going have fun or else. If you don't have fun making a comedy, you've just made a bad movie that's not funny.

Yeah. Well, it comes off in the film. The film is so fucking funny. It's so good. And it's one of those films, like you tried making that today, it would be an uphill trudge.

Well, and that's like one of those things. They had a moment on Saturday Night Live, an in-memorium thing. They said, Oh, I was there the week of the thing. They said, yeah, so-and-so is working on the in-memorium. And I'm thinking, who's gone? Which reminds me. Who's gone? And no, it's not who's passed away. It's what we can't do anymore to be funny. It's all these kinds of jokes. And so it was just a whole clip. I didn't even see it, but I saw a little bit of it being assembled, but it could be 40 minutes long. Just all the sketches that people would get, Internet responses. We're going to burn down the city of New York.

It could be hours long today. Yeah.

Hours long. Yeah, I'm short with 45. But some of the funniest things ever done. Like head wound hairy, which was one that not many people think about. But how somebody would object to a dog eating a brain wound, like licking the blood coming out of someone's skeleton wound. But someone told me on the way here, a friend of mine, a musician named Mike Zito, who said he listens to your show. He said that you knew Phil Hartman. Yeah, very well. What did you do with Phil Hartman?

Newsradio. It was a sitcom we did together.

Okay. I didn't really watch much in newsradio.

It was 94 to 99. What were you doing on it? I played the maintenance guy in this radio station, and Phil was the lead anchor.

Did you resent him because you were doing maintenance and he was the lead anchor? No. What do you mean? No, I'm just joking. And was it on CBS? Yes. Nbc.

Nbc, of course. Yeah.

In the '90s. And he was the news anchor. Well, he's got that crazy voice, right?

He was great. Yeah. We became really good friends. He was a wonderful guy. We actually played one of his clips the other day. We had to take it out of the show, but it was a clip from SNL that you could never play today about a doctor who decided that every child was female, and he had to do operations on all of them. And we were like, Holy shit. Holy shit. And And it's like 90 % of his births involved in operation. It turned into a girl. They were all girls. That's funny. It was insane. He was great.

Yeah, he was really good. I worked with him. I mean, I did Santa Live, I guess, when he was there. But he was in the movie we made called Quick Change, and he was like sterling silver. It was like every single take was just perfect. It was so much fun. And you just go, Phil, that was so great. He was so modestly proud of like, Yeah, I felt pretty good about that, too. It was really nice. He had real modesty.

Yes, he did. Well, he was a guy who made it late in his career, late in his life. Before, he was an artist. We have one of his albums out there in the other room.

He was a musician?

No, an artist artist. Oh, I'm sorry. He was a musician as well. He did music as well.

Why did I say musician? He did album covers. You said one of his albums. I was looking at vinyl today, so that's why it went into my head.

It was a cover of an album that he drew. Oh. Yeah. He was an illustrator. He was brilliant. Like, really, really good. I love to see that. Then he was on Peewee's Playhouse.

Yeah. May he rest in peace.

That guy, right? May he rest in peace. That guy was fucking great, too.

And the lady, I didn't really watch a lot of Peewee's Playhouse, but he was a funny guy, that guy. And his lady's sidekick died this week or something. Who was his lady's sidekick?

I don't know. On Peewee's Playhouse?

I'm not up to date on anything. I didn't see that.

But... Hey. Lynn Marie Stuart.

Who? Lynn Marie Stuart is her name. Yeah.

So Missy Vawn, I believe. All right. Lynn Marie Stuart.

Lynn Marie Stuart. Lynn See, I didn't... I guess I'd recognize her if her face were a bigger head.

So I think Phil, because of the fact that he made it late in life, he was just so happy to be there.

He had perspective.

Yeah. I I think he was 37 or something when he got SNL. So it's the point where a lot of people start thinking, Hey, this is never going to happen for me.

And then he was a hero. He could do a lot of things. He had a lot of chops. He had a great voice, and he could play straight. And doing comedy is the ability to play straight, and he could He could really do it. He could really do it. Yeah. Well, I missed that guy. He was good. He was a good guy.

Yeah, I missed him terribly. That was a crazy one because I knew the whole family. I knew the wife. I knew the whole situation. And he had tried to divorce her a few times, tried to leave a few times. It always went back.

Yeah. And that's also the guy. He would go back and keep trying to make things work.

Yeah. I mean, he was a very unusual guy. And what a fucking professional. He would make me feel like I wasn't doing enough. All of his scripts would have tabs for all the scenes that he was in. And then he'd have notes underneath each thing, and everything would be organized. He had a three-ring binder. He would put the script in.

Well, that's going too far.

He would hole punch the moment he got the script, put it in the three-ring binder.

Oh, yeah. See, I didn't have that much faith in the script. I knew they were going to change a lot from Wednesday to Friday. If it was a big scene, I knew they would rewrite it. In the next two days. Well, there was a lot. Because it's hard to unlear.

Yes.

So I would not learn. Because unlear is really hard. If you have a sketch that's this long and all of a sudden it's this long, you got problems.

Have you ever met Dave Foley?

I think so. He was one of the guys from... Yeah, I saw him. He goes out with my brother Joel, and he sings. They do an improv thing called Whose Line Is It Anyway. So I only met him recently. I met him recently. I finally saw my brother's show that he goes out with Whose Line Is It Anyway. Right.

With Greg Proops and all those guys.

And they kill. I knew they were going to kill because I know how good my brother is as an improviser. If you get good at it, and my brother is really good at it, far better than I ever was or could hope to be, because he's really kept at it. And so he really goes and goes hard at it. He's really good at it. I knew that they would kill it. I didn't realize how much fun the show would be from an audience perspective. They drag a lot of people up on the stage, and I think, well, that can go any way at all. And they managed to get... I mean, the show I thought they had people in the audience that probably should have been hired. That was funny. But there's something about the uncertainty of bringing up someone from the audience that raises the energy level and the expectation and the possibility. And the crowd goes crazy for it. And the actors, the performers go crazy, too, because it's like, God damn, they just killed us. They just came up here and murdered us. And that's where the real fun is. So they They are enjoying themselves.

Well, it's a tight show. They've been doing that show for so long. Their muscles are very developed. Their comedy improvisation muscles. They're just so sharp. When you do a show like that on the road constantly, you develop a feel for how to improvise and how things can go.

Well, you're fearless. And certainly, anyone that's ever been in that rack knows you can't be afraid of dying. So if you're not afraid of dying, let's go. Here we go. And there's a handful of you. So it's like the Magnificent Seven. If I don't kill you, he will. If I don't kill, he will. So it's fun to watch. It was really fun to finally see it live. I I've only seen it on television. To see the live show was cool. I recommend it, too. They're coming to a town near you. It's a great show.

It's a great show. You should definitely go see it if they're coming to you. Dave Foley, who was on Kids in the Hall, he was also on news radio.

Oh, okay.

He played the manager of the station who was in charge of right reigning- What was on that show. So I- Steven Root from Office Base and a Million Other Things, Andy Dick, Mora Tierney, Vicky Lewis, Candy Alexander. I don't know a lot of those people.

Yeah.

That was the show.

Well, that was... So it ran five years. Yeah.

Well, around four years, and then Phil got killed.

That's what ended it?

John Lovets, who was a good friend of is. Trying to take it over? Took his place. Trying to take it over? Well, not take it over necessarily. It was a real ensemble. They changed it. I mean, Dave was really the main star. Dave Foley was. But it was for whatever reason. I think the John Lovets ones were really funny. They were really good.

It was just- It's just different funny.

It was just the end of the line. The show was over and it got canceled after the fifth year.

Yeah, there's something about... It was like that. I said, I love the fifth year is like, wait a second. High school is only five years. Why should this show be anyway?

Five years is a long time. It's a long time.

I know. It's amazing to think. We thought like five years, this is it. We're done. Goodbye, everybody. That was 45 years ago. Who the hell thought that would happen?

Is it the longest running show ever in television?

I think the Today Show is the longest running show. Oh, is it really? Well, interesting. If I had to guess.

Certainly the longest running show that's actually entertaining. I mean, SNL has been around for so long.

Don't tell Al Roker that, buddy. Can I take a break for a second? Yeah. Take a leak.

Be right back.

You're in charge. Okay.

I'll do a little bit. See you in a bit.

You have so much cool stuff on the walls. A lot of art. Do you do shows where you walk around and show all the stuff?

No. Really? No, no, no, no. It's personal. Well, this is for us, for us and the guests.

Well, there is a photograph in the men's room. I didn't check.

Which one?

It's Presley, and it looks like it's a mug shot.

It's a fake mug shot. So what it is, is he went to the White House and he met with Nixon.

Okay, the gun thing where he gives Nixon, he gives him a revolver. He gives him a automatic pistol.

Yeah. What did he give him?

And Nixon gives him a drug badge to be a drug agent. You don't know that part? That's right.

I forgot about that part.

He He gave Presley a gun badge.

Because Presley would talk shit about all these guys who are doing drugs. Meanwhile, he was high as fuck.

Well, he was in pain. He was in pain. He had physical pain.

What was the physical pain? What was wrong with him?

I think he did the splits a lot of times. You know, like Chevy hurt himself falling. Oh, yeah. People have pain. I don't remember all the facts, but Presley had physical pain. And he I don't know what his back or something like this, sacrileac or whatever the hell.

And they got him hooked.

And so he had pain killers.

But it's just hilarious that he was the drug guy.

It is hilarious. Yeah. It's like good fun. It's like a great American It's a second story. You just see the picture. There's a photograph that exists of Nixon handing him the badge, and you can laugh looking at it going, right. That's exactly right. Yeah. But But yeah, there it is. And there's the damn badge. Special Assistant. Special Assistant. You know what I did see the other night? Did you ever see Frost and Nixon?

No.

It's a movie that was made. And back in the day, after Watergate, is his name David Frost? He was a British interviewer cat. And he had this idea He was trying to like, he lost his place in the universe of England anyway, or the world. And he came up with this idea somehow, if he could somehow get an interview with Richard Nixon. And it's a pretty well made movie. It's a very well made movie about it. And they paint Frost pretty much as maybe what he was like, what the perception, my perception is what he was like. Not a perfect person, but Certainly not, but certainly got some juice, certainly has some idea of something going on. That sounds very small, but he was a little complicated. That's the cheating word. And Nixon, too. And I just wanted to say that Frank Langella, who I only know from doing... He was like a Broadway guy, and he did some horror movies. He's really good as Nixon. Very, very Very good as Nixon. And it's just a really well made movie. And I was up in New York, and I thought, I'm going to find Frank Langella.

There it is right there. And tell him so. There's the guy. I don't know what this man's name is who plays for us. I can't recall anything, but he's good. And There's Langella playing Nixon, and Langella is really good as Nixon. And Nixon's not easy to do.

Does he do the voice well?

He does him well. And when you try too hard...

I'm going to hear a little bit of this.

Your personal lawyer came to Washington.

Yeah.

There you go. Yeah.

He's pretty fucking good. It's good.

Yeah, he's really good. So I never got around to finding out where Franklin Joe lived in New York or calling him up. But maybe someone who knows him, listens to your show, will say, Hey, Frank, you got a shout out today in Texas.

That guy's great. He was great as Dracula, too. Yeah. That whole Nixon Watergate story, I used to think about it very differently until Tucker Carlson broke it down for me. Bob Woodward was an intelligence agent, and the first time he ever gets a job as a journalist, he's covering Watergate. The FBI, all the people that were involved in the break-in, FBI people, it was a complete intelligence operation. Nixon definitely did the things they accused him of, but the whole thing was coordinated by the intelligence agents to get Nixon out of office. Apparently, what the story was, I could play you the Tucker thing if you'd like to see it. But apparently what the story was, it sounds crazy.

But the story was that Nixon was digging into who killed JFK.

One of the things that they wanted to set up when he was running for president is to make sure that Gerald Ford was his vice president. Gerald Ford was also on the Warren Commission. He was digging into it, and they wanted to remove him from office. They set this up. They framed him. He did it. They got him out of office. Gerald Ford gets in.

Okay, I got a shorter version. Okay. You're going to take me down to the Kennedy Road. Where are we going there with that one? I got Richard Belzer tape so I can play for you.

Oh, I'm a fan of Belzer. I met Belzer. Belzer and I talked UFOs.

The new guy is going to- Bigfoot. The renew guy is going to bring out all the Warrant Commission stuff, supposedly, release all All the stuff that was supposed to be- Allegedly.

Yeah, allegedly is right. But my question is, what the fuck is going to be in there?

It's not going to be, Hey, this guy did it. Here it is. No, here's the way I see the Bob Woodward story. See, what did Let me say first about Nixon, about your way of looking at Nixon. The way I look at Nixon, and part of it is seeing this, I like this way. I love the way Langella did this.

I thought it was really well done and it made a character of him, a person of him. But to me, here's what I feel about Nixon.

He was hard to care for. He ran against J. Fk, who was everybody's my hero. And my father actually pushed me into John F. Kennedy in 1960. Just pushed me into the crowd. It just pushed me up so I bounced up against him. Now it had been wrestled to the ground, but back then, you could do that. Anyway, I felt like Nixon was, and certainly knowing Hunter and knowing all of the history of Nixon and whatever. Nixon wasn't my guy.

Oh, agreed.

He was not my guy.

No, I'm not defending Nixon in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I talked about Nixon before that I think he's the problem with the whole psychedelics drug legalization Act.

We can agree that. But however, when I read Wired, the book written by what's his name, Woodward, about Balushi, I read five pages of Wired, and I went, oh, my God.

They framed Nixon.

All of a sudden, I went, oh, my God, if this is what he writes about my friend that I've known for half of my adult life, which is completely inaccurate, talking to the people of the outer circle getting the story. What the hell could they have done to Nixon? I just felt like if he did this to my friend like this, and I acknowledge I only read five pages, but the five pages I read made me want to set fire to the whole thing. Jamie, see if you can find that. Those five pages, I went, If he did this to Balushi, what he did in Nixon is probably soiled for me, too. I can't take it. And I know you say, well, you got to have two sources and everything like that. But the two sources that he had, if he had them for the Wired Book, were so far outside the inner circle that it was criminal, cruel. And the reasoning for it is that the most famous person ever to come from Wheaton, Illinois, is John Balushi. The second most famous person to come from Wheaton, Illinois, is Harold Red Grange, the football player.

And the third most famous person to come from Wheaton, Illinois, It's Bob Woodward.

Really? Wow.

So there's all my controversy for today. That's all I got. I got a bone about that one. I got a bone for Woodward ever since I read that.

Well, what Once you see it from something that you know, once you see propaganda or bullshit from someone that you know, and you see a distorted perception, it opens your eyes to the fact that a lot of the things you read are horse shit.

Balushi made people's careers possible. He made people's careers possible. Mine would be one of them. All the people that he dragged to New York, he went to New York first. He broke into New York. He took over New York, and he dragged all of us from the second city to New York. He's the one that got everyone there. And there are musicians, and lots of them, that will thank Balushi for the creation of the revivification of the Blues, and for the fact that there's a house of blues chain that blues players can go and play. And there are all these venues that wouldn't have existed without Balushi. Yeah. He did a lot of things for people. He did a lot of... There's a lot of people that slept on John Balushi's couch. There's a lot of people that stayed for free at his house until they made it in New York. And I'm one. He died in an unfortunate way. But the man, when he was still the best stage actor I ever saw, he was absolutely magnetic. You couldn't take your eyes off him. And he did a lot of wonderful things for each other.

He was a short hitter. A guy could only drink four beers, and he drunk. So the idea that he died of an overdose is hilarious. That's what my brother said. He said, What, do you have four beers? He's John Stead. What, do you have four beers? Because he was not really much of a drinker.

But it was drugs, right? It was drugs, yeah. Was it a speedball?

It was a speedball.

Yeah.

What was that?

And it was this, I believe, to my knowledge, was like the first speedball he ever had.

Jesus Christ. So what was the Woodward interpretation? What was his version?

Oh, he was I'm talking to people like, wait a minute. You're telling me that that guy over there, that guy who's that far away from the center of things, is telling you the facts about John Balushi? That guy way the fuck over there is telling you who John Balushi is? I was like, wait a minute.

And he didn't contact any of you guys?

I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I would have nothing to do with it. It smelled funny from day one. And Judy wanted people to talk. I was like, sorry, I know where this is going. And it wasn't exactly where I thought it was going. Even worse than where I thought it was going. Just the title alone. It was cold.

So it was just exploitation of his death?

You would have to hold me down and burn my feet to make me read more of it.

So I couldn't say that it's exploitation of his death. But guys that write books come up with... If I Obert's got a new title every 45 minutes for another book. It's a very disturbing thing.

It's just tough.

In those five pages I read, he tore down my friend. I didn't see any... There was no compensation. There was no balance in the five I read. And maybe I was unlucky, but But certainly, if that much was, to me, was disturbingly ugly and like, irresponsible to report, and then I can't imagine that I got So they only found it by.

Yeah.

You know what? I'm sure he does other things. I've seen him on TV, and he can be smart and everything. But he's going to have to answer for that sometime for something. I think. It's just like you don't get a free ride for... Not with my friend.

No. But you can get away with things a lot more back then when he wrote that book as well. There's no other venues for people to express themselves. Back then, it was like, he writes the book, he does the interviews for the book. This is the narrative.

Yeah. And Bob Woodward, one of the squarest guys in the world, gets to tell the story of what it was like to live in New York City in the '70s. Really? In the late '70s and '80s? Like he knew what the story was? Come on.

It must have been a magical time.

It was cool. It was really fun. It was a smaller city in a funny way. There was a lot more freedom. When I got there, the town was broke. The town was falling apart, and the subways were rough, and To me, it was exciting.

I didn't what the hell I know. I came from Illinois, from Chicago, from the suburbs of the city in Chicago. Chicago was pretty... It was a city, and it had its own hazards. There were some more hazards. Where I lived in Chicago was more dangerous than where I lived in New York ever.

But the city was the economic part of it and the infrastructure was like the subway People complain about the subways now.

I was like, wait a second. These subways are air-conditioned and the windows close.

Those windows were open summer and winter, and you either froze or you had like metal shavings dust flying through in the summer with no heat, with no air conditioning.

And if it's 97 degrees out, it's even hotter inside of a crowded subway car.

That was also back when Timesquare was timesquare. Time Square.

And it was cool. Yeah. Time Square is just as weird now, but it's just a different weird. They tried to sanitize it, and it's stupid.

I mean, now there's a lot more lights and everything.

There's more signs, but the signs were always cool. When they were neon, they were cool. Now, there's just these glow lights, and they just keep moving and dancing. People with vision problems shouldn't be out. Who are the people that are supposed to watch out for strobe lights? Yeah, epileptics. Yeah, epileptics can't walk through Times Square. And 42nd Street is blah. It's like dull. It's an applebees. Back then, it was like, wow.

It's a giant applebees. It's a giant applebees with huge ads, giant LCD ads.

But it was cool back then. You could see stuff. There was real stuff to see. Not that it's still real, but it's just a different real. There's a lot more... It's a whole international world now, which it wasn't back then. Back then, it was just like the street survivors of the city at the very, the physical center of it. And you saw some amazing things, and it was alive, certainly alive. Now you're crashing into Not exactly like, prize-made parties, but like there's people with flags and people dragging people around and stuff.

Well, there's always a lot.

There's a lot to see. There's still a lot to see. It's still New York City, New But back then, having that experience, being in that wild New York of the 1970s and then getting on SNL, how old were you? Twenty-six.

Wow. That had been a fucking bizarre experience.

Yes, it was a great experience for sure. You Your life just changed dramatically from being barely able to pay your rent or a car, a telephone, anything like that to having a credit card. That was a big thing, credit card and a credit card. Because they wanted a safe, we had this cab account with a thing called Skulls Skulls Angels. There was a company within the yellow cab company called Skulls Angels, and you could call them and they would pick you up anywhere in the city and take you wherever. And it was just you just signed your name. You didn't have to have any money. And I had a credit card and that account, and that's all. And I just lived for a couple of years like that. Basically, all you were doing was going to work and going to sleep. And then in between, when you'd have 12 or 15 hours where you didn't have to do anything, you go like, okay, let's go. Anything could happen. Anything could happen. And you could go anywhere in the city. And you had a a thumbprint of Okay. You could go into any place and people would be like, come on in.

I probably could have done I've gotten more out of it, but I certainly got a lot. I put a lot into it. I got a lot an amazing education. I got an amazing education. But I guess that gets back to I got to put my education to use is what I should say. In this new challenging environment, I got to put what my education had to that point had been to use.

What was the adjustment like going from being broke to all of a sudden having money, being famous, living in New York City, trying to make sense of this new reality that you live in?

Well, I'll try to do them in order. Well, being broke Was... Oh, I should tell you, I'm here in Austin, Texas. This is a William Murray golf shirt. I brought you... Somehow I got involved with these clothes. The clothes got involved with me, and that's me. That is I in that person right there. And I brought you a pair of shorts.

Oh, thank you.

I also brought licrish, which you don't want.

He's a licrish dealer.

I don't know what to make of you.

Trying to pass out licrish.

Anyway, the shorts are very, you're not too chubby, but the shorts are very forgiving. These are golf shorts? I've been traveling. Well, they're, they're golf. So are you gray? Are you a gray guy?

I can wear a gray. Yeah, sure. I'll wear that. That's That's what I thought.

I thought you'd be a gray guy. Those are for you.

Thank you very much.

They've got my name on. So if they get lost, they'll be returned to me.

Nice. Thank you very much. I'm excited.

And wait, I got your shirt. I thought you might like this shirt because this has the range of possibility on it. Oh, yeah. It has a lot of... That has a studious look for you.

There's a lot going on in that.

There's a lot going on. Thank you. There you go. Thank you very much. Yeah, you're welcome. I had I have long pants, too, if you want some long pants. But I think you're more of a shorts guy.

Yeah, I'm good. Thank you, though. Jamie's a gigantic golfer.

Oh, yeah? Are you a long... You're tall. How tall are you? 6'1. 6'1? Well, it's not that tall. Let's see. So we're the same, and so you like white or blue or black? Those are shorts. Hold on. Are you a shorts guy or long pants guy? I like it all.

It's usually hot in Texas.

You love it all, huh?

It's hot out here to play golf in Texas.

It's hot?

Texas gets hot and you're playing golf?

Usually. I bet. Well. But you can play all year here. How chubby are you? I'm not. I don't think it. Okay. Well, the pants are pretty good. You want the shorts?

Yeah, give them the shorts. These are black.

Nice. And that's the Murray Tartin right there. That's the family Tartin there. There you go.

Is that from your family's seal? Huh? The Tartin is a special to your family?

Yeah, that's the Murray Tartin. Really? Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah. Okay. And then so here. And then so you want a shirt? Sure. Let me see. I should show off this shirt. This is a shirt because my brother has something to do with this one. This has got all this stuff from Chicago on it.

Oh, nice.

It's got... I haven't even looked at this yet.

Guitars.

Well, there's guitar.

It's like a pizza place.

I don't know why there's tambourines and stuff on it. I have no idea. But there's always a glass of beer for some reason.

There's a drum.

But There's a bunch of references to people we know and things we did in Chicago. And I see there's the names of some character, a movie I played. And then there's Sluz place. That's my friend Jeff Slueman, who's a golfer. I think you're going to like this shirt here, Jamie. How's that for you?

Oh, that's perfect. That's Jamie. Okay.

What color pants did I throw at you? I got some black shorts over here.

Perfect. Black shorts, dark blue shirt. You're in.

You can pull that off. There you go. Way to go high for that one.

When you stop Tony Hinchcliff in this inevitable Yeah, let's go. You wear that. Be perfect.

There's that.

How long you been golfing for?

Well, the question is, how long have I been catting for? So I started cadding when I was very young. Our eldest brother, Edward, started catting.

So Caddy Shack must have been a lot of fun for you then.

Yeah. Well, Caddy Shack came... My brother Brian was the... Brian wrote it with Doug Kenny, one of the really great funny guys from Nash Lampoon and Harold Ramis, who ended up directing the movie. But all the golf stuff is all Brian's memories of catting. The whole golf story comes from Brian. I mean, they all write jokes, but Doug was in charge of all the fancy lad stuff. His dad was some tennis pro sometime, rather than Ohio. And Harold wrote the jokes that were left and shaped it and directed it.

So you started off catting?

Yeah, I started as a A shag boy, which doesn't even exist anymore. What is that? There's a thing called a jam boy, which I don't know if it really exists. My friend Duff insists that back in the day there was a thing called a jam boy who walked around. I think it was a slave or something like it, who walked around covered with jam to draw the insects away from the golfers. Now, I don't know if that's true or not. We should ask your listeners. But I didn't have it that bad, of course. But a shag boy was Golfers had what they call a shag bag, which was like a small bag of golf balls, like 100 golf balls or something like that. And they would dump them out on the practice tee, and you would run out there with the bag, and you would be the target. Okay, go on about 70 yards, 60 yards, and then they start hitting. You ever wear that? No, but see, that would be safer than what I was wearing. We didn't have that. But I was just out there. See, can you... Yeah. But I was definitely out there, and they would aim at you.

And The thing was it would last for an hour or so. And you're only... I was 10 when I started doing this. So your mind would wander, and occasionally you'd hear a ball land next to you or really close. I never got conkt exactly on the head, but I definitely got hit on one bounce on any number of times. But you were just a target. Then he'd wave in the next club and you go seven aren't. So he'd have to back up a little farther and then farther. And the bigger the club, the wider the aversion of the ball. So you had to run back. You really had to run to catch up to where this bad golfer was hitting the golf ball. So that was when I was 10. And then a year or so later, I became a caddy. And then I caddied all the way through high school. Pay my way through high school.

When did you start playing?

Well, if you showed up to caddy on Sunday, you were allowed to play golf on Monday morning. So probably I didn't really play golf golf like that until really 12: 00 12, maybe. Maybe a little sooner or later. But we used to play golf across the street from our house. It was like a line of telephone poles planted in grass, and we would play from phone pole to phone pole. And that was the pin. So that's it. And then I didn't really play. I mean, once I made it through high school, I didn't play for a long time until I made some money. And then all of a sudden you can play golf again Because golf, if you're not catting, it takes money to play. You got to at least play and be organized and have a set of clubs and stuff. So I picked it up then, and now I like it. I was going to give it up a few years ago, but then all of a sudden, my son started playing golf. I was like, that's what you got to do. So now I'm having more fun playing, and I've gotten smarter.

Do you ever play golf?

No. Never? No. Never. No, I'm scared of it because I think it'll eat up all my time because I get addicted to games. I play pool a lot.

Do you have a pool table here?

I got a couple of pool tables here. I got one at home. Yeah.

And what game do you play? Do you play straight pool? Nine ball, 10 ball. Nine ball? Yeah. I should work on nine ball. I have a pool table. I mostly play with-The thing about it is I know everybody who plays golf gets fully addicted to it loves it to death.

And I just don't have the time to get fully addicted to another thing. And just being friends with Jamie and seeing Jamie's addiction. See what's happening. Over the last few years, he's become a maniac. He's got a golfing simulator in the back and drives balls and Oh, yeah.

A trackman. It's in here? Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. He has it set up in the garage. Do you live here?

Do you guys live in this building?

No, it's a big building, but we don't live here. We could. We definitely could. Maybe that's the next one. Maybe the next one will set up dorms.

Maybe. Yeah. There's always the rooftop.

Yeah.

Well, I don't want you to get addicted.

Well, I just I've heard you're a very good golfer. That's why I'm asking.

Well, just keep that light going. But I can play okay. I've hit a lot of golf shots.

What's your handicap? Jamie will know what that means.

Now it's about twelve. The lowest I ever was was about seven. Very good if you can play. Yeah. It means I can play a little bit. And now it's actually What's the word diminishing? It's going lower because I've figured something out. There's a great book, these ladies. I got Pia Nielson and Lynn And Pia Nielson is an easy one to remember, but Lynn, whatever Lynn's last name.

They wrote a great book called Every Shot Must Have a Purpose. Do you read that one? Well, I should talk about them because they really are onto something, and it's about quieting your brain when you play. I, which I always thought I'd get better as my brain softened. It seemed to be happening. My brain was softening. It was maybe getting better, but not fast enough for me. And then I started following what these ladies had to write. They were Anakas features at one time, Anika Sorensdam. She's a famous golfer.

Okay. Swedish. Every shot must have a purpose.

There it is. And there's the forward by Anika.

Anyway, Lynn Marriott. How can see? I'm blocking that because it's a hotel name.

And I And I didn't used to be a member of Marriott Club.

But okay, so that's a great book, and they've written a bunch of that. They know some stuff. So what does it- You should try that one, Jamie.

What does it change? It made me enjoy. I enjoy golf.

I've always had a lot of fun, but that made me enjoy golf even more.

How so? What is it?

It's decluttering. It's like when you do it in your life and you talk about... You mentioned distractions at the very beginning. You think about all the things that can catch you to distract you. And if you're trying to do something that's pretty straightforward, whether it's stir grits or sew a line of something or play a game of golf, which ideally you only have to swing, hit the ball 75 times. Everything that distracts you from that is a problem. So it's the ability to just pull the weeds out of your head, as I read a Japanese man say once, and attend to it when you attend to it. It's a few hours to play a run of golf, like you say, it takes all time. But the actual playing of the game is only minutes. The actual hitting of the ball is only minutes. Like an NFL game could take like three hours on TV, but it's like 20 minutes of action. Right? Right. So it's similar to that in golf or anything that you have to return to yourself to hit the ball. You got to come back, get it back together to hit the ball or do anything.

And so you set You have the freedom in between the shots to move and to speak and tell jokes and smoke cigars and whatever you want to do. But when you want to hit the ball, this is about you're going to think, make a little plan, and you separate that.

You inculcate that, you take it in, and then you separate that and you step up and you hit the thing. And hitting the thing is only hitting the thing. And if you can do that, then you start having real success That's with the actual hitting. And the joy of the mind-body connection and all this esthetic, all the almost spiritual things about a mind-body exercise, a game, come to you. When you're a great athlete, say they're in a zone, they're not in a zone. They're really conscious. They're really connected. They're really aware. It's more than a zone. It's like the ideal place to be.

Right. And what is it about their writing that helped you? What is their philosophy that helped steer you more towards being able to do that?

Well, for an example, it's like some Something that can keep you in your body because you have to stay in your body.

I believe that anyway. I already believe that. So you've got this dreadle here, right? Imagine it's a golf ball. One thing that they say was like, you would just in between shots, you would just take your golf ball if you're on a putting green or if you have a spear in your pocket, and you just toss it up and catch it. Toss it up and catch it. That keeps you physically aware of I've got to do this and this and that. I've got to do these two things, so I've got to have my attention in my body. I've got to stay home. So if you can stay in your body, it all begins in the body. Everything we are, everything we hope to be, everything we dream about, it's all within the skin. So you got to stay within the skin. So if you can make yourself come back, if you can get yourself back inside, you don't have so far to go to achieve your intended goal. You don't have to drag yourself back from outer space. You're not dreaming over there. I'm in my body already, so I'm close. Does that make sense?

Yes. And I've had some discussions with Pia, and she said, well, that's what the great golfers are doing. They are pulling themselves back into this thing. That's why they hit so many good shots. It's because they're home. So that's what I got out of her. And I learned and believe that from other venues, but I never had it put in with practical applications like she gives, they give for golf. You think of golf as like, oh, I can be willy-nilly out here. I can be fun, or I can be aggressive, or I can be competitive, or whatever the hell. All that stuff is real. That's emotion thing. But if you're not in the body, good luck. And it's only luck then.

Well, there's a great joy in things that take you away from the rest of the world because they require so much of your attention. That's what I get out of pool, and that's what I get out of archery, too. I practice archery, but there's things that require so much focus while you're doing them, and you have to be in your body. You have to be synchronized.

I would imagine archery would be one of the more challenging ones.

Very challenging. It's very challenging because you're supposed to have as little movement as possible upon the execution of the shot. So there's all these strategies.

They started televising it lately.

It's really cool to watch. It's very cool to watch.

And they've got them. Cameras are right on their face and just the torse, just like this. And you're like, God, dang, that's beautiful. That's as good a closeup as any Robin hood movie ever had. It's just great.

No, I love watching it. I watch it on YouTube all the time. There's these Las Vegas shootouts where they have three targets and they have 30 different shots. So they're trying to get an X 30 different times. And they're standing next to the best archers in the world. Everyone's at probably like 20 meters, and they're all just focusing, like dead still, completely calm, focusing, focusing. What's that?

Where do you find that?

You could find it. Go to Lancaster Archery The Vegas. And they have what they call a Vegas face. So a Vegas face is three targets. Do people watch that live? Do you go live? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they got to have big screens because you can't see the faces from a distance, right? No. You don't want to get between the arrows, of course. No, you definitely don't. People bring binoculars. Oh, yeah. All the archers have binoculars, and they all pull them up after each shot because they're looking for precise distances, and then they'll make slight adjustments on their scope and their sight and move. And then he'll take a breath.

But it's just- Do you have one of those massivo- Yes, this is exactly what it's like.

Those things don't even look fair.

So these guys are all on this line, and they're all firing. And the amount of pressure is insane because really, the guy makes money out of this thing is the guy who wins first place. Everything else is not so good. There's not a lot of money in archery. Look at the audience.

It is like about 60 guys.

Yeah, not a lot of audience, right?

Yeah, it's not a crowd, please.

So this is just for real, complete archery fanatics who are absolutely lost in this connection between your mind, your body, and the flight of the arrow, the mystical flight of the arrow.

Can you go back and freeze that?

There.

Can you lose the line on the bottom? So that's just interesting to me to look at their weight balance, just to look at who's on his half his front foot. So it's interesting. They have a little bit more weight on their back foot.

Is that right? Well, we're catching this in mid-draw. So he might settle. See that guy that you were looking at who was like that? That's guy Brazier on his back. Watch. He'll settle. So he'll draw. And as he draws, he arches back. And now watch, he'll settle forward. See, he was settling as the angle change of the camera shot. But they want to ideally be about 50/50, and you're just staying calm, keeping it as steady as possible.

Is that guy in the wheelchair shooting, too?

Yes. There's a guy that shoots with just his feet, the guy who doesn't have arms, and he's unbelievably accurate. I've never seen that guy. Yeah, he shoots with his toes. So what these guys are doing is it's just a perfect balance of technique and focus and attention And they're actually trying to get what's called a surprise shot. They're not executing the shot like you would like a rifle trigger. Most of these guys use what's called a hinge. And so that's what they're going for. So with a hinge, you don't make the release go off like with a button, where you press a button. It's just a rotation of the handle, and you don't know when it's going to go off. So you draw it back like this.

So you're not letting go with your fingers? No.

You have a metal release in your hand that has a hook, and the hook is attached to a sear.

And by just torquing your wrist, rotating it?

It breaks. And so the hook breaks. Or some of them use a thumb, like that guy with the yellow and black, that guy. So he's got a thumb trigger. So what he's doing is he's setting the trigger, the barrel, the trigger right where his thumb is, and he's just using the pulling of his arm to make it go off. He's not executing it with his thumb. Now, there's a small select group.

That's why they all look different on the release.

Yes. I wonder why they all- It looks like it exploded. Their arms all fly backwards. If you watch, see how their arm moves backwards? That's indicative of a surprise shot. That means they're executing it perfectly. So as they're pulling back- So the surprise is that they don't know when it's going to go. Exactly. They're just executing the technique, which is the pull with the back muscles. You're pulling with your rhomboids, and then it slowly goes off. So now, like that chubby guy right there. See, like that guy with the hat, the black hat? Watch. See his fingers? How it's crawling? See how it goes off? So that's just from his hand, crawling. That's making the shot go off.

But they get it to the position or the area where it's going to go.

Yes. And they've got to be right.

They've got to be poised forward. But the idea is if you think about it going off and you make it go off, there's some a recoil. There's some an anticipation of that recoil. When you're shooting that precisely, that anticipation of that recoil might make a difference of an inch or two left or right. Yes, that tension.

You try to not anticipate, so it's really not going to surprise you.

When you are doing that, you do not think about anything else. It clears your mind. When you are just concentrating on that target, you cannot think about your build.

So you do it. Yes. When a thought does come into your head, you don't hit the target.

Yes, but it doesn't come in your head. It can't. It's too The process of aiming is so engrosing when you lock in place and you're aiming and then you're pulling back with the shot. You're all in. You're all there, especially if you're good. If you're good, that is the only thing you're thinking of. And there's a moving meditation aspect to at a cleansing of your mind. Your worries go away. Your thoughts, the things that are bugging you, and I got to do this, and I got to call that guy back, and all goes away because it's so engrossing. It requires so much of you.

How do you affect that yourself?

How do you move that away from the incidental thoughts that pop in?

Well, it's just the difficulty of it. The difficulty of it actually facilitates your meditative mindset, because if you're going to do it right, there's no other way to do it. You literally can't be thinking about other things while you're doing it.

Well, it's not Don't like golf. If you're thinking about what you got to pick up on the way home, you're not going to hit a good goal.

Exactly. Same as pool. When I play pool at a pretty high level, I bet that book would be very beneficial to me. I bet there's some techniques and strategies of how to focus yourself and completely remove yourself from the rest of the world and just think about this mind-body connection and the execution of this thing that you're trying to do.

All right, I'm going to try to do that. I don't play enough pool, but I had to shoot some pools in Groundhog Day. So I got with a guy who's a pool expert, and he just gave me drills to do.

Do you remember his name? No.

But if he remembers, he should say hi. Anyway, he taught me a bunch of things, and I'm still very disappointed because when we actually shot the scene, I think I made... I think I sank. I I think I shot, I think I think like nine balls, seven balls, eight balls in three shots. And I went, we got that? And the center target was like, well, let's set it up. I'll I brought up a different shot. I said, what are you talking about? He had half of the table.

Oh, no.

I'm going to take a lead.

Okay. You want to wrap it up? We can wrap it up. No, that's okay. Okay. All right. Take a lead and come back. All right.

I keep asking him any suggestions. They say, well, tell some stories.

You should never ask for a suggestion.

So where do you come from?

I was born in New Jersey, went to high school in Boston, lived all over the country, lived in San Francisco for a while when I was a kid, Florida.

Were you military or something?

No. Mother got divorced, married my stepfather. He was going to school, went to San Francisco for that, and then Florida, and then eventually, Boston.

Well, that's pretty good. I mean, I think I always wanted to live in San Francisco.

Well, I was in San Francisco during the Vietnam War, in the height of the hippie days when I was a little kid. It was pretty wild. It was a very interesting time to be there. It was a crazy place.

Yeah. Well, that's what Hunter is talking about. My brother was there, too. He went to school out there at St. Mary's in Maraga. But it turned out he was spending a lot of time in Berkeley.

Yeah.

He wasn't doing that much studying, but But what a life he had out there. What a fantastic time to have been there. And my other friend went to high school at that time somewhere around there. And I envied that. And I really like San Francisco. And I was there recently. I saw Dr. Not Dr. Father Guido Sarducci.

Oh, wow.

And had dinner with him and Roman Coppola. And we went to an old place called Macaroni? Or something like that. Old Italian place. And it was really delightful. I just love San Francisco. And I have friends who were like, and we started talking about politics a long time ago. For political reasons, they say, oh, San Francisco, they've I'm in San Francisco. And so I was there. And I know there's homeless people in San Francisco now, lots of them. And there's homeless people in Los Angeles and Santa Monica and anywhere that it's warm. And California is the most populous state, But I don't think it's a political choice. I mean, I think, isn't it? I don't know the stats, but these people don't... It's more of a mental health thing.

It's definitely a mental health issue.

So it's not anybody's politics that are making people crazy. Well, it's- But it's not making people live on the street. But I know, I'm sticking up for San Francisco saying it's still... I mean, San Francisco survived the Beatniks. It survived the hippies. It survived It survived the earthquake. It survived AIDS. It survived everything. It's like a resilient, extraordinary place.

It still got a lot of extraordinary aspects to it. The problem is they encourage people to sleep on the streets and shit anywhere they want, and they didn't do anything about it. They just got a lot of crazy. Why?

Do you really think they encourage people? Well, they definitely make it financially viable for them to do it.

They give them money to do it. That sounds like they're paying them the shit on the street. No, they're paying them so that they don't have to be poor or homeless. I mean, they have a tent and they'll help them. They'll subsidize this existence. What they need is more mental health care. It's a mental health issue. It's drug addiction and mental health. That's the real problem. When you don't address it and then you just allow people to camp any way you want, you're almost encouraging mental health problems to be everywhere all throughout and just be throughout the entire city. It's just a lack of empathy for the people. If you're empathetic for them, you don't let them just camp out and shit on the street. What you do is you try to say, Hey, obviously, a real problem. This needs to be addressed for the greater good of the city and for these people. They need mental health care. They need addiction care. It's a real problem that needs to be addressed. You can't just leave them out in the street and let them do whatever they want and become a hazard for everybody else, then it makes the city fucked up.

Well, I don't know what the...

When you speak, it sounds like more of a political choice.

No. Someone's saying, well, it sounds like you're saying they're being paid to shit on the streets and become mentally ill.

I'm not saying they're being paid to shit on the streets.

They are mentally ill. I always felt like mental illness happened first before living on the street.

Unquestionably. It's all during the Reagan administration when they opened up the Mental Health Institutes and just let people out in the streets.

Well, it started before that in New York, and that was my experience in New York was like Rockefeller way back when, and I could be wrong, but this is how it was attributed, opened closed up the mental health hospitals and pushed these many, many, many people out on the streets that had nowhere to go. And it wasn't a poverty situation, although it looks like it when you look at it, it's really a mental health situation. And a great number of these people have no interest in going into a place. They would just as soon live on the street. Their life is like an interior monolog that they can't control. And And living in a home is no different than living on the street. The thing is still going on. The conversation is still going on inside the brain.

But there has to be a solution for it.

Well, okay. So I don't disagree that there has to be a solution, but I don't think to people. This is where I'd like to think about, let's not talk politics. Let's agree what we can agree on. So that solution is like, this is where the great minds of California or the United States need to come together and say, okay, why don't we solve these problems that are common to every state has a city that has X number of people living on the street, whether it's Yankton, whether it's Minneapolis, whether it's Louisville, whatever. Everyone's got a street scene situation that's rough like that. And it's hard to say, let's You say there's got to be a solution. Where is that going to come from? And who's going to believe it if it comes from this direction or that direction or this side or that side? How do you evaporate the walls of separation and say, how do we get the right people with the right minds to solve these questions? These are real things. And people argue about them. You and I are arguing, but we're talking about, and neither one of us is sleeping on the street.

We both feel compassion for it, empathy for it. But how do you get people that are far removed? We could say we're far removed from it to allow the solution to take place.

From one side or the other.

From one side, any side. Who gives it them? Who's got it right?

Well, it has to be a completely bipartisan thing. We have to look at it in terms of the health of human beings in our community. This country is supposed to be our community. These people that are on the street, they are sad, sick people in our community. And some real effort has to be taken to try to change that instead of just enabled them to keep doing it. That's all I'm saying. I just don't think that the solution is let them camp wherever they want, let them shit in the streets.

You can't argue. There's no argument to what you're saying.

No, no, no.

There's no argument.

So you were in this situation.

You had this, people call it a platform or a A place where you invite people to come here that can speak to lots of people. How many people watch your show? A lot. So there's lots of people watching your show. And when there's people that make sense, you hear it, it rings a bell. It sounds like that. I wish I knew the answer to solving these things. And occasionally, like I said, you see people who are these problem solvers, and the problem solvers come. But people want to choose their own problem solver. There's also money in being a problem solver.

That's the problem. One of the big parts of the problem in California, in particular, is that there's an enormous budget to deal with the homeless. So you have these people that work in these departments that are making quarter million dollars a year that are just working on the homeless problem, which keeps getting worse every year. There's no incentive to fix anything or change anything. And it's a bunch of bureaucracy. There's a lot of bullshit that gets involved in the business. A buddy of mine who's a lawyer who went to San Francisco, and he was disturbed by it all. He was like, This is so crazy. What is missing? Do we need more funding? And they're like, No. And this guy explained to him, No, they literally have an incentive to keep the homeless problem. There's an enormous number of people that are making a fantastic living and dealing with the homeless issue.

Who's making money on the homeless?

There's a giant list of people. We could pull it up if you want to see. We don't need to I'll call them out, but there's a bunch of people.

Just tell me, who makes money on the homeless?

The people that are involved in these organizations that are dealing with the homeless, whether it's in Los Angeles or in San Francisco. You mean are they government?

Yes.

They're all government? It's government jobs. Yes. It's all funded by the state. There's real jobs, real money. And nothing gets done, nothing changes. In fact, it gets worse every year. Something needs to be done that shows results. What is that? I think it's got to be compassionate. It's got to be something that both the left and the right can agree to.

So I'm trying to follow you. God knows I'm trying.

Are you having a hard time? No. We were talking earlier about the agents versus the architects or something like that.

You used a word that explained the people who are coming up with this thing. I was watching something, and I've really tried to avoid watching the news lately, but I saw someone talking about, and it was someone that works. And you say the The word bureaucracy, and it's a loaded word. We all hate bureaucracy. There's just a word of it. It gives you a creepy feeling. Frustrating word. Yeah. And so it's like being on hold for Amtrak or whatever the hell it is. There's someone Oh, please God, come back. Okay, so please God, come back.

So this person was talking about the cuts that are going to come and to talk about eliminating a bureaucracy.

And I don't know what particular department this person was in or not.

No, that's not what this person was talking about. But she was saying- Oh, you're talking to a different person.

It's just a different person. I don't know what your person is. This is my person. My person is saying, The bureaucracy is like the bureaucracy gets fed from above somehow or other. It's fed by these people that are the architects of one side or the other. But the actual bureaucracy includes the people that can solve the problem. Like, encased in this bureaucracy are people that can solve the problems. And that if you just, I'm not saying this is the case, but if you just like, zip a bunch of the bureaucracy out, you run the risk of zipping out some of the people that actually have the brains to do the solutions. And what this person said was the solution to the bureaucracy is within the bureaucracy that is Is finding the people that know what can be done because they really do have the data. They really do work. They actually do show up for work, and they actually have the data on how to do this thing. But because it keeps being fed from above all the time, there's just all this extra debris and noise that keeps coming down that causes more clutter and more splitting and more something.

Yeah.

So I'm not going to suggest that I could solve the question of bureaucracy today, but I think there's something about what we have. We have the people. I'm going to go off on tangents now, but I always had an objection to Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, because I thought, damn it, that's not my generation. How do they get that? But I did start reading some of it recently, and to his credit, he's He's finding people that are very singular in that generation.

Which generation is he referring to?

He's talking about the generation that won World War II. Okay. And that generation was formed by the Great Depression Cession. That was part of what they had. And then they had a world war that lasted five years. And it's really hard for people of a certain age to understand. You think you have problems with your relationship. Have your lover go away for five years and see how well you're doing upon that person's return. See what the hell that's like for five years. You didn't answer my letter. My letter?

Your letter?

What letter? Your letter never came. I was under fire, whatever it was.

And then they come back shell shock.

And then you come back with shell shock on top of it. And then back then, the... I don't want to say it a macho thing, but back then people just didn't want to talk about it, which to me is part of what created the hippie generation was kids couldn't get their parents to talk about anything that they thought mattered. What their parents were talking about was like, huh? Wait, what about the Pee's Love What's so wrong about peace, love, and understanding? Right? Right. And they couldn't get to that because even the idea of peace was a completely different concept to someone that lived through a world war or lived through a depression. So these kids were like, I don't even understand who these people are. I know they're flesh and blood, but I don't know that. I don't know what the hell they know and why they're this way. But he chose people that lived a very intention functional purpose during that very, very difficult, challenging time where they just went, I don't know what I don't know. I don't know what all this is, but I do what I do know. I do know what I do know, and stay through that.

And And I guess that I don't know how this relates me to this idea of bureaucracy, but people that do know the facts have got to stay with the facts, even in the face of all the blunderbusting above about there's this and there's that. You've got to be really dedicated to what you do know and realize that there's lots that you don't know. But if you give up what you know in the name of jostling over here, then there's even more lost.

Yeah. No, I agree. And I think most people get involved, particularly if they get involved in something like homeless or any charitable organization, most of the people get involved aren't doing it cynically. They're not doing it to get that big paycheck. Their initial reason for being involved in something like that is to help. The problem is sometimes when they realize it's just a big clog and you're not going to be able to do any meaningful good. Then things get weird, and then you just exist off of this system that's not doing anybody any good. This is his argument about why so many people are working on this and nothing's getting better.

So who's this?

My friend, Colian Noir. This is my friend who's a lawyer who went to San Francisco and saw all this and had a conversation with someone who's actually in government in San Francisco and was explaining what the problem actually is.

And the government people say it's the government that's just clogging?

No, they just say there's no incentive. There's no incentive for them to do a better job. And there's a very compassionate perspective in the city. They're very kind people, and they don't want to take these homeless people and remove them. And that this suicidal empathy that they have for the people in their city is causing this rash of tents everywhere and crime. And you have to leave your fucking car unlocked, otherwise they're going to smash your windows. And it's just that's what his perspective is. There's no real incentive to do anything different because these people are still getting paid to keep it the way it is. The amount of money they make is not based on how much good they do. If they're financially incentivized to, you get paid more if more people clean up, seek seek treatment, get on medication, get to a mental health institution. If you can show some progress, it'll affect how much money you get and vice versa. If you have no progress and nothing gets done and the problem actually gets worse, perhaps you're not doing a good job.

Well, that makes sense, doesn't it? It does. You get results. You get encouraged by getting more money. So does this remind you of anything?

It reminds me of everything. It reminds me of the government itself. What does it remind you of?

Well, I feel like there's something hanging over our heads here that's this situation, and maybe it's just a continuous situation of a world that gets more and more people all the time. And And more people want to have a voice, and there's just more people shouting all at once. And there's not quite the same agreement. We don't have an ideal that we're all working for. I guess not not to cheat, but the greatest generation, they had to fight a war to maybe save the structure of Western civilization. There is that argument that if the Nazi Party had defeated England, life would be different. Life would have been different. And if that dictatorship world had gone further, it would have been a different world. It wouldn't have grown the way it is. But now it's grown. There's this freedom. The war was fought. I believe there was a great quote in one of those books, like There's no such thing as a bad piece or something like that. There's all kinds of different. But I feel like there's no idea that we can agree, that people can agree that's the source of a reason for our being.

Well, it's a very uniting thing to be all together against a common enemy that is real, like World War II. There's a real purpose to life. People understand that this is a very important mission. This is something that, unfortunately, it's one of the best ways to unite people is a threat from the outside. That's all we've come up with. Well, that's what happened after 9/11. Do you remember 9/11 everywhere in LA, people driving around with American flags on their car. I'll never forget 9/11, what it was like to walk down the streets of New York after 9/11.

There was nothing like I've ever experienced in my whole life.

It was bizarre, but it was also very united. People were together. People looked into each other's eye.

You walked by someone on the street, and every person on the street looked right in your eyes. And that lasted for weeks. People in New York walk with their head down. They look like they're reading a paper. But people just looking by like, Okay, we're in this. Yeah, together. I think some people actually obviously hated the act of what happened, but loved the way people reacted and how people felt with each other.

It did feel different. New York City felt friendly. It felt united. It felt like people were proud to be American. We were all together. There's bad people out there. They did this to us, but we're all together. Well, okay. So what we have here with the situation of just using San Francisco as the idea.

It's like it's just a gentler version of something that we could all say this is something that we have to go to war about. Yeah. Or it's a task. Any a problem that we have as a group that we all are affected by or care about. Well, it's too easy to ignore. It's too easy to just say, Oh, there's the tents. Let's go this way.

The reality is the health of the community, it's dependent upon the health of the lowest members of the community on the social rung. The lowest members are the people that are sick. If you don't take care of them, if you don't take care of the people that are mentally ill, that are homeless, that are addicted to drugs, that are on the street, that are desolate, that don't have friends, don't have love, don't have structure, don't have anything that they can call upon, horrible childhood, the whole deal. If you don't look at them, then your society is sick because this is the foundation of the society is the people. If you got a group of people that are part of your community and you're completely ignoring their plight, that's That's not good for anybody. It's not good for big business. It's not good for the common folk. It's not good for people in the neighborhood. It's not good for anybody. And it's gotten so far because it's so big now. The problem is so enormous. It's almost too big to tackle. It's almost like, Hey, you're dealing with LA. You're dealing with 100,000 people living on the street.

That's so many fucking people. That's the entire population of Boulder. That's Boulder, Colorado, in tents on the street in LA. That's crazy. It's almost too big. And I I went to Mayor Adler, who was the mayor of Austin at the time when I first moved here. He had a bunch of plans in place to help the homeless people, and they did an amazing job because it got pretty bad here during the pandemic. I remember they're being homeless here. They got hotels, they put people up, they put together programs, they got people jobs. There's a company that we've had... What is his name? Alan that we had in here. Alan Graham? From Loves and Fishes, who we went. Went and visited his community that he set up. He has this community where they build houses for these people. They bought an enormous piece of land outside of Austin, and he sets up work programs for these people, gives them a sense of purpose. It's an amazing It's an amazing place to be. They're doing art and selling art. It's working? Yes, it's working. I mean, it doesn't work with everybody, but it works with a lot of them.

These people, they have a sense of community. They all live in a safe area. And we walked around. I brought my kids. We walked around There it was like the whole thing was really nice. It was really wonderful.

It was really cool what he's doing. Well, how did that... So that guy, his plan, his way of working needs to obviously get out there. It's got to get around.

So How did he make it? He lives there. And this is a guy who has money.

He lives in the community with those people.

The way he did that, this man must be deputized. Well, he's a Christian, like a real Christian, in the greatest sense of the word. He's a guy who really believes in reaching out to people and helping people. This is Alan right here. He's just a wonderful guy, a really beautiful person, and lives with these people. They're his neighbors, and they're constantly bringing people in. He has all these different programs that people can sign up for to learn arts and crafts and learn how to sell things that you've made. It's really cool. He's doing his part. It's small in relation to the problem of San Francisco, but you need people like that that really dedicate themselves to it. I've heard of Loves and Fish.

I didn't know all of this about it. It's pretty amazing. It's a pretty amazing place that he's got, and he's expanding it.

They're building new ones right Now, so there's these small houses that these people live in, and they have a community kitchen where they can go and barbecue and grill outside. And there's an arts and craft center. These people, they make cool chest pieces, and they sell them. They make paintings, and they sell them. Jewelry. They're doing all these different things, and it gives them a sense of purpose.

You got to get this guy to San Francisco.

Yes. Well, you need more people like him. That's what it is.

It's just he's a very unique guy.

There must be people like him. There must be. But it's a lot. He lives with them. He's in the community. He has one of those little houses in this giant area filled with people, and he's with them for encouragement. It's a beautiful thing.

It sounds really amazing.

Yeah, it's beautiful. Okay. Should we wrap it up, Bill Murray? Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I'll get you so long.

No, it was amazing.

It's an honor to meet you. I really enjoyed it very much. And I appreciate talking to you. Thank you. And thanks for the shirt.

And thanks for the shorts. Yeah.

Well, I'm going to wear those.

Okay. But I will just say that those shorts are very... They're forgiving shorts. So if you've had a big meal. Good. Beautiful. They still fit you. I like that.

They're good. Can people buy these?

Can they?

Are they available for sale?

Yeah, they sell them.

Where do they go? It's called William & Murray Golf. They sell them online a lot. And I know they sell them in the golf shop, some places, in some stores. There, that's that side right there. That's it. Beautiful. That's it. William Martin.

Look at that guy. Look at that. Look at that handsome fucking model. Yeah, that's a model.

That's a good looking fella.

Let's get loud. All right.

That may be a model, too. Hey, he's definitely a model. He's beautiful. Well, thank you very much.

I really enjoyed it. Stay here. Thank you. Enjoy it. All right.

Thank you for having me.

Bye, everybody. See you soon.