Peter Berg and Joe Rogan dive into American Primeval’s grueling 145-day shoot on New Mexico reservations, blending visceral Wild West realism—like the Mountain Meadows Massacre’s 140 victims—with Netflix’s support for emotionally charged brutality. Berg’s boxing gym struggles contrast with Dana White’s UFC’s disciplined success, sparking ideas to unify boxing under a single belt via Riyadh Season collaboration. They dissect fighters like Canelo Alvarez (one punch vs. Berg) and Terrence Crawford’s tactical late-30s dominance, while critiquing the U.S.’s handling of dual citizens like Ksenia Carolina, jailed 12 years for a $51 donation. Berg’s survivalist war film Mosquito Ball—inspired by Tarawa’s horrors—and Yellowstone’s raw historical storytelling highlight how obsession and hardship forge greatness in art and combat, questioning why structured discipline fails outside elite circles. [Automatically generated summary]
I love the way you warm up, you know, because I'm the same way.
I do a long warm-up every day.
And my buddy Ari got me into it and just try and stretch absolutely everything.
And I was telling you, I got thrown off a horse in Africa a month ago.
And when I was in the process of getting thrown off, and I was like in the middle of the air, and I'm about to come down, and I'm like, oh shit, this is going to be a problem.
And I thought about those warm-ups, and I landed and rolled and didn't hurt myself.
I've been waiting for a realistic Wild West series like that forever, and that is, I'll just say it right now, that's the best one that's ever been made.
So Redford plays this city man who goes out west looking for gold and ends up sort of stuck somewhere around Montana and is trying to survive out there.
When the Indians first find him, he's...
He's so inept.
He's trying to catch a fish in a frozen river with his hands.
I mean, he's completely inept that they don't even waste an arrow on him.
They don't kill him.
And by the end of the film, he's a warrior, and he's learned how to survive, and he marries a Native American woman, and his wife gets killed, and he goes on a vengeance.
Spree and kills a whole bunch of people and ends up getting this incredible respect from the Native Americans.
And my dad took me to see Jeremiah Johnson, and that movie always stuck with me.
And I'm good friends with Taylor Sheridan, and we work together a lot, and I obviously know everything he's doing, and I kind of wanted to see if I could play in that space.
But he's doing it so well and so specifically, I kind of thought, well, what if I just did something that was really...
About the survival and I like to call it inch-by-inch filmmaking where you think about how hard it would have been just to go 50 feet and take a piss and how there might have been 15 different things that could have killed you on the way to taking that piss.
Instead of just jumping through those 50 things, let's really try and stretch it out and try and show people and capture the brutality of moment-to-moment living.
Experience of getting to do basically six movies at once, you know, because I directed all of them.
And being able to go that deep in characters and to be able to bring in elements like Brigham Young and the Mormon religion and have big themes circling around just very visceral, violent moments as a filmmaker is fucking awesome.
And it's a...
It's different, you know, because it's not...
Directing an episode of a television show is its own experience, but that's very quick.
Directing a movie is really, really wonderful and very obviously creatively demanding.
But this is six movies all at once.
And having to keep that in my head and kind of figure out how to keep myself...
Functioning and not wasting energy.
And, you know, I built a gym in my house in New Mexico with a nice bath and a sauna.
And I'd get up at four every morning and just have that time for myself to keep myself fit and, you know, mentally and physically ready to go at it.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when you're in the mineral project and you're doing your workouts and your sauna, are you just like constantly going over the show in your head?
I'm a bit of an improvisational filmmaker, meaning I don't like to have everything super planned out.
I think kind of the way you conduct your podcast, you have some ideas, and then you just sort of allow whatever happens to happen.
And I know what I'm going to do that day, particularly with American Primeval because...
We had so many big battles and stunts and kind of dangerous, complex filmmaking that there has to be some plan.
But even within that, I try to loosely think about what I want to do and then get out there and let the actors kind of start doing what they do and see what kind of creative vibe gets going.
And a lot of the cameramen, you know, I just shoot handheld cameras so we have a lot of flexibility.
With how we can work and capture.
And my feeling is rather than plan it all out, go out there knowing kind of what you want to accomplish, but allow kind of creativity, allow that kind of divine magic to enter the process, which can kind of be freaky for like my bosses at Netflix because they're spending a whole lot of money and they're like, what are we doing today?
And I'm like, I don't really know what we're doing today, but we're going to do something.
One of the things that a lot of people have talked about, and I had, you know, the LDS Church issued a statement sort of...
Critiquing the show and critiquing me, which I appreciate and I understand why members of the Mormon community would be offended by the portrayal of Brigham Young and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which was the event that we used as kind of our inciting incident.
For the first episode, which was a real massacre that the Mormons committed on a group of pioneers who were heading out west or a Mormon militia with some Paiute Indians attacked and murdered about 140 men, women and children.
And we present that in the film.
And we present Brigham Young in the film.
And many Mormons, it's interesting to start reading all the debate about it, but a lot of Mormons are saying, yeah, this is exactly what happened, and this is a part of our history.
And no other Mormons, particularly the seniors in Salt Lake City, were saying this is not what happened, this is not fair.
But what I find interesting about the Mormon church and about kind of...
How we present it is I've had a lot of people come to me and go Dude, I never knew the Mormons were such savages.
Brigham Young was, in my opinion, a gangster, a survivor, a warrior.
And for anyone who follows Mormon history, you know, they started in upstate New York with this young kid, Joseph Smith, who found these tablets and basically rewrote the Bible and started getting this following.
And then they moved to Missouri and they got popular and then there was an extermination order.
But it was kill all the Mormons.
So they fled to Illinois and tried to survive up there at this place called Nauvoo that was going to be their peaceful place to live.
And Joseph Smith was murdered and they were run out of Illinois.
And Brigham Young led these dudes, men and women, on foot across the plains in the winter to Salt Lake Valley, which was this...
Desolate wasteland.
And he said, oh, we'll stay here.
They'll never come for us here.
And they started coming.
And Brigham Young basically said, fuck it.
We're not taking it anymore.
He built his own army, the Naboo Legion.
And he said, we're staying here.
We won't mess with you.
But if you come after us, we will fight.
And that point I think is interesting.
And I think Brigham Young...
Who survived longer than all of them.
And if you go to Salt Lake City, he did a pretty good job, right?
I mean, I have a friend who lives in Saudi Arabia.
And a long time ago, I was in Saudi Arabia doing some work.
And I'd asked him, because in Saudi, you can have multiple wives.
And I'd asked him about that and sort of like, wow, that's amazing.
Multiple wives.
That's so cool.
And we were leaving Riyadh Airport and he was walking with me and there was a man in front of us and he was holding like five suitcases and he could barely walk.
And there were four women around him and kids everywhere.
And he just looked like he was about to collapse and fall face forward on the ground at the airport in Riyadh.
And my friend looked at me and said, This is the reality of what having five wives looks like on the ground if you want to see what it really feels like.
So to think about Brigham Young having 45 wives, okay, good luck, I guess.
Right?
Yeah.
But that was one of the issues, the polygamy that...
People that were non-Mormons back in the 1850s were using to attack the religion.
And, you know, that was something that was—the polygamy has obviously been since outlawed, and the church has cut itself off from that policy.
But, you know, the Mormons were—the whole idea that this kid, Joseph Smith, I believe he was a young teenager, 14, when he and his buddy walked into these woods.
Like 14. So this kid at 14 comes out of the woods and says, the angel came and told me that the Bible's almost right, but it's not quite right.
So I'm going to rewrite it, which he did, the Book of Mormon.
And look at where we are today.
It was not that long ago, right?
And in the course of that...
Journey from Joseph Smith coming out of the woods to where we are today with Brigham Young University and the beautiful city of Salt Lake City, Utah, there was a lot of bloodshed.
And Joseph Smith was murdered.
Brigham Young fought another interesting theory that isn't proven, but I believe it holds.
It was what saved the Mormons.
Because in 1857, when you had the Mormon Wars, Brigham Young was fighting President Buchanan, and when the military was coming after him in 1857, and he was holed up and prepared to fight in Salt Lake City, and Buchanan wanted him out.
And then right around 1858, 1859, a little thing called the Civil War popped off, and the entire focus of the U.S. military was...
Not on Brigham Young and Utah, but it was on fighting the Civil War.
The Utah church was able and Brigham Young was able to grow the Mormon church and survive and thrive.
And he was able to politically negotiate a place in the government so that by the time the Civil War ended.
Brigham Young was deeply entrenched and was able to lead the Mormon church to the great power that it is today.
I think if the Civil War hadn't occurred, there would be no Mormonism in the United States.
Look, they have a great sense of humor because the Book of Mormon, when Matt Stone and Trey Parker did that musical, they took out a full-page ad in the playbook.
So they're like, if you want to know more about Mormonism, come visit.
Like, find out the real thing.
So instead of protesting and suing and attacking them, they just took out a fucking ad.
Yeah, we filmed everything on different reservations around Santa Fe.
But if you go to the site of the Mormon Meadows Massacre in Utah...
The Mormons have built a big memorial there honoring 130 pioneers from Arkansas who were killed there.
And the Mormons have owned this event, and they were very willing to talk about it, which is kind of like them buying a full-page ad in Book of Mormon.
They're like, you know, we know you're going to make a film about the Meadows Massacre.
It's probably going to be inflammatory in some ways.
Come visit us.
We want to meet you.
We want to show you.
We want to play music for you.
And I had an incredible time with the Mormons that were involved with us doing the research for Primeval.
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So what is the backlash, though?
If they've admitted that this massacre took place and it's part of the historical record, the book is for sale in this Mormon theater, what is the backlash?
The biggest single issue, if you get into the weeds, and I think it's an interesting point of debate, is whether or not Brigham Young knew and authorized this massacre.
And the way the massacre played out in real life was different how we did it in the film.
In the film, we did it.
In, you know, one swell move.
Like, it just happens.
And, you know, we filmed it in one shot.
And it's, you know, pretty intense, visceral, very fast events.
And then it's over.
In reality, this wagon train was surrounded by the Mormon militia, the Naboo Legion, and some of these Native Americans.
And it went on for about four or five days.
And the Mormons dressed up as Native Americans.
This is where it gets kind of...
Some Mormons aren't thrilled that we pointed out the fact that they were trying to put the blame on the Native Americans.
So they literally, Mormons dressed up as Indians to confuse the pioneers and in case there were survivors to say, oh, it wasn't Mormons, it was the Native Americans that did this.
So they don't love that.
What the Mormons claim, or some in the Mormon church claim, is that during the three or four days that the siege took place, before the actual massacre, and the details of the massacre are really fucked up, because the Mormons pretended they were accepting a surrender.
So they went in with white flags and they said, okay, the men walked this way, the women and children, we're going to walk you to safety because the Indians are going to kill you.
The Mormons said, we're here to save you.
So they started walking them out, and then on someone's signal, they just killed everyone.
Really bad.
But the issue of whether Brigham Young knew about it or didn't know about it, we imply that he knew about it.
We never say that he authorized it, but we imply that he did know about it.
And what many of the defenders of Brigham Young will say is that there was a letter written where Brigham Young said, do not harm these pioneers.
Don't kill them.
But the letter was...
Sent by horse while the massacre, while the event was already occurring.
So I've had people say he knew that that letter wasn't going to make it there in time.
He was covering himself.
Oh, hey, I wrote a letter.
I knew I couldn't get there in time, but I wrote a letter so there's plausible deniability.
No one knows.
It's hard to believe if you really start getting into this, and obviously I did.
I know it's not on the top of everyone's list of things to give a fuck about.
But it's really hard for me to believe that in 1857, a group of Brigham Young soldiers would act unilaterally on their own and commit a crime that's horrible without somebody approving it.
It's hard for me to imagine.
So that's the single issue that tends to, you know, if I do, and I really try not to.
Got, hands down, the worst review ever given to a movie in the history of film reviews.
Please don't pull it up right now.
But feel free, anyone listening, Kenneth Turan's review of my film Very Bad Things in the Los Angeles Times.
Okay.
I read this review.
I literally vomit.
Like, people talk about vomiting.
I don't know if you've ever vomited when something bad happens.
I puked.
I went into, like, shock.
I'm like, he tried to destroy my career.
And he, like, it was, and so I'm telling Jack, and I'm going, pull it up right now.
Pull it up.
And he starts reading it, and he's like, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
I go, don't fucking tell me about bad reviews, okay?
Because I got the worst.
And Kenneth Turan, who, like, after I'd gotten that review, I was in a I was in a bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, getting drunk with a couple of my friends, and Kenneth Turin was in the bar, and I got up and started moving towards him.
Like, I was in a blackout rage.
And my friend Joe and Mike Mendelsohn held me back, because I was gonna get him, you know?
And for three films after that, Kenneth Turan, he just had it out for me, this guy.
Hated me.
And finally on, I believe it was either Friday Night Lights or Lone Survivor, he reluctantly gave me a good review.
But it was more like a broken clock is right twice a day.
But nowadays, as I said to Jack, it's like, okay.
If you – the crazy thing about if you are focusing on how your work is being perceived and it matters and it does matter.
Like I say, anyone who says it doesn't I think is kind of lying.
That, you know, to do, to do, people that do, you know, I was just talking to Dana White about something that I actually want to mention to you.
My love of a guy like Dana is the doer of it all.
The guy who just says, I don't care what the critic says.
I'm going this way.
I am fucking going this way.
And if I win and you're with me on the ride, you're part of me.
If I lose and you're still with me, you're my friend.
If not, I don't give a fuck.
I'm going to do it again.
And I have so much respect for that.
And I'll tell you another interesting thing about my business.
It always surprises me how real it is.
But when you make something, a movie, or you do something, whether it's an American premiere or almost anything I've done, and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, you put yourself on the line so intensely, and you believe in it with your heart and your soul, and you go for it.
And as it's getting ready to come out, There's this weird thing that happens where everybody separates from you.
And you're the one that's kind of, now you're about to be judged.
It's going to be determined to be successful or a failure.
It's going to get reviewed.
And everyone's kind of like, good luck, Pete.
Good luck.
And I could like, like the day or two before it comes out, all the people like, and this is when you know who's got your back.
Because there's a few, you look around, and you're like, wait, all these people were with me for this journey, and I'm all by my fucking, where'd everybody go?
And it's, you know, like, my sister, my best friend, Ari, my dog, my son, there's a few people who are really right there.
And then when it comes out and it works, man, you have a lot of friends.
And that's, you know, just one of the things that you have to do in this business.
And it's why the critics fuck them.
And it's why Dana and people like that, you, who do, you know, create it and build it and make it.
So I spend a lot of money and he starts doing these fantasy movies with Michelle Pfeiffer and it's like bizarre shit where he's like, what is Robert De Niro, one of the greatest actors of all time, doing in these fucking goofy ass movies?
I agree with you that like what I always say is I do a lot of research for my films and you know Went to Iraq with Navy SEAL Platoon and lived on an oil rig and went back to high school for Friday Night Lights.
And I found that if I, whenever I put that work in and I put that research in, and I really, with the exception of Very Bad Things, which was a fantasy about a bachelor party gone haywire, which Kenneth Turin didn't like.
It did hurt me.
It did, that review.
But I was younger.
But if I do stay true to my instincts and my passion and I follow it, A, the work seems to connect much, much better.
And I don't feel if somebody doesn't like it or wants to talk about it or debate it, okay.
And I think one of the reasons that you don't have to read your shit is because you know you're locked in.
You just are.
And that's why you're connecting.
And locking in.
And I say it to filmmakers now because kids are so confused, young kids that want to become filmmakers.
They think they're going to work hard and they're going to make these movies and they're going to put their heart and soul into them and people are going to watch them.
And then they go in and they see TikTok videos that are getting 400 million likes and someone's just live streaming them like making toast.
They're like, wait a minute, what the fuck is happening?
And I say, look, all you can do...
Is control your passion, your work, your discipline, and believe in something and put the work in, and I believe that the results will take care of themselves.
But it's weird for filmmakers today to try and figure out what's going to penetrate and what's not going to penetrate.
You can't be in the business of getting the most attention because human beings...
We are easily distracted, easily amused.
We like a lot of things that have zero quality.
And just because we're watching it doesn't mean it resonates with us.
Just because you're watching the Amber Heard trial doesn't mean it's changing the way you feel about things, really entertaining you.
And not just entertaining you, but stimulating you in a way like, wow, that was a fucking masterful piece of cinema.
There's a difference.
And yeah, there's going to be a bunch of people that just watch people unbox cell phones or eat.
Octopus.
There's weird videos that get a lot of likes.
But you're not in the business of attention.
You're in the business of art.
And I feel like when it comes to paying attention to comments and critics, I feel like if you're locked in and if you're doing your best, if you're one of those people that don't need to be checked on...
Some people need to be checked on.
Some people get off the rails, they get a little full of themselves, and they need a little something to just like set them back.
You need someone to say, that one sucked.
You're like, God damn it.
And then you work harder.
But if you're working as hard as you can...
This is my advice that I give comedians when it comes to comments and things like that and negativity.
You only have so much attention.
And think of your attention as if it was a number.
Like you have 100 units of attention.
Now if you're spending 30 units...
Paying attention to comments and negative articles and criticism, that's 30 units you can't use for something that you love.
And then also it probably bleeds into your thoughts when you're doing those things that you do love, particularly like devastating negative reviews and comments and things that are like really hurt you, that hurt your feelings.
Where do you stand on, and this is something I talk to a lot of writers and filmmakers about, just being quiet is really important.
And being, for me, the most creative...
Experiences I've ever had have come far away from any stimulation, from any controlled thinking, from allowing ideas to come, to have like the divine spirit, the angels that are creativity, that require a certain amount of quiet and space for those to emerge, at least for me they do.
And I try to make space because I so agree with the bandwidth.
You're right.
But more than anything, just turning it all off can be so inspiring for me creatively.
One of the most disappointing things that I've ever done, some of the most disappointing things, is when I sit down from my computer to write and I wind up looking at my phone.
And I just scroll and bullshit.
And then I start writing, but I'm distracted.
And then I get an email or a text message comes through.
I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll text him.
And I'm just distracting myself.
And then I realize, like, after an hour and a half, I just fucking wasted an hour and a half that I could have written something that could have been a new brilliant bit.
It could have been a new thing that I'm really excited about.
Yeah, so my creative process, like, I just wrote a script.
That'll be my next film.
And I wrote it in a very locked-in zone.
I try to find a way of locking myself into a pattern when I'm writing, but it involves...
The key for me is getting up about...
4.45 at the latest, but usually right around.
I'm crazy about it, so I'll set my alarm for 5.45 to the same song every morning that wakes me up.
This script was Van Morrison.
I'll take a piss, and then I'll get a cup of coffee, and then I'll go right to my writing room with no phone, no stimulation, nothing until I put in usually about two and a half to three hours of just pure mental focus.
No distraction, no conversation, no news, no phone, no nothing.
I actually like studying writers and their writing habits.
I believe that if you've had a good sleep, a sober sleep, and an intention sleep, meaning you go to bed with some plan of what you want to write tomorrow.
So I'm making a film about Marines.
I want to write...
The landing at Okinawa in World War II, which is part of the story.
I know I'm going to write the actual landing scene.
I go to bed with that intention.
I might even write that intention down.
You wake up.
Your mind is like at its most fertile.
It's like a calm...
You know, like a mountain pond that's absolutely flat and like glass and reflective and beautiful.
And in the morning, it's at its most calm, your mind.
And then I believe that every bit of stimulation you put into it is like a pebble or a rock being dropped into that water until the water starts getting all churned.
And that's what happens to our minds by, you know, 11 o'clock in the morning.
If you've been, you know, plugged in and communicating, your mind is...
Just a fucking feral, boiling cauldron of acid.
This is how I think of it.
So I like early morning, super calm, I can find the ideas.
And I tend to, if I lock in like that, I write at a high level and kind of to your point about like critic proof.
I know it's good.
Because I know it came from the deepest place I have.
And it's like, well, okay, if you don't like that, then you don't like me.
You know, writing a little bit here, working a little bit there, and then going out to lunch and then sitting in a cafe and, you know, a coffee shop and kind of writing but being on the phone, I just don't think that's deep work.
I have noticed, though, that, like, rappers and a lot of people in the hip-hop community, I've been working on a documentary about Rihanna for quite a while and spent a lot of time with her in the studio.
It's amazing the hours that hip-hop performers, musicians, and rappers keep because they're going into the studio at 2 o'clock in the morning and working till 1 in the afternoon and then sleeping all day.
And that nighttime, and I've talked to her about it, she's just extremely creative late at night.
Yeah, I just start thinking I just try to freestyle with thoughts and the way I write is I just I have a topic and I just start with just essentially an essay And not an essay that I think anybody's going to read.
An essay is just like my thoughts, just rambling thoughts.
And then maybe I'll rewrite a paragraph, but I'll keep the same paragraph above it to reference.
And then I'll rewrite it again in a different way.
I did want to mention, and it sort of related to something I love because I love boxing, and I own a boxing gym in Los Angeles, which was hands down the stupidest thing I ever decided to do in my life, was, oh, it would be cool to have a boxing gym and manage boxers, and, you know, no, don't, don't.
It's awful.
I mean, I love the fighters and have so much empathy, but...
One of my fighters, Chris Van Heerden, his girlfriend is a girl named Ksenia Carolina, who I think I told you a little bit about earlier when we were working out.
And this is just a fucked up story.
She's a 28-year-old American Russian citizen who made a $51 donation to a Ukrainian charity.
She went home a year ago to visit her family in Russia, and Putin got her.
The charity was a Ukrainian charity based in America for Ukraine that she thought was going to give money to children that had been hurt by the war in Ukraine.
She went to visit her parents a year ago in Russia.
And on her, somehow the Russians were able to figure out, like, if anyone with any Russian citizenship, even if it's dual, makes donations to certain charities, they get flagged.
So she came in, got to her parents' house.
Was called to the police station the next day, came in, and they arrested her and said, you donated $51.
This is treason.
And she's now almost a year into a 12-year sentence.
So President Trump has been super cool.
Dana White has been helping, just trying to get like, you know, it's such a crazy chess game, right?
That, you know, someone like, and I hope things go really well between us and Putin, and I think Trump's doing some great things, and I'm glad we're talking.
But the way they do business is different, and they will grab somebody, you know, and they've done it to Brittany Greiner, and they just released this guy, Fogel, who they had gotten for smoking weed.
If they can get you and hold you and use you as a bargaining chip.
They will.
And we don't do that.
You know, it's one of the things that the U.S. doesn't do.
But you end up having to make these kind of crazy swaps.
It's all about swapping, right?
So they get Ksenia and, well, who do we have that's going to, you know, get Putin to say, oh, yeah, I'm going to let her out.
The merchant of death for a basketball player smoking weed.
It's crazy, but, you know, if you love Brittany Griner, or know, like I know Ksenia, and my good friend is engaged to her, and he's in hell, and it's like, we need someone to trade, you know?
And so...
It's not going to feel right.
We're going to have to trade someone that's done some pretty bad things to get this girl out of prison, and that's the game that these guys are playing.
And it's not a game that you ever, ever want to get involved in, and I wish I hadn't, but I have.
And, you know, Ksenia is a beautiful girl, and she's in a really bad way, and she doesn't deserve it.
But, yeah, I mean, it was cool because I got to see his whole journey when he came into our gym, and he was just starting, and I think he was fighting a guy named Lopez, and he was just this little redhead skinny kid, and to see his progression, you know, he's one of, like, The only good stories in boxing.
If you ask me, like, name two good boxing stories.
I'd be like, well, I think Alvarez is a pretty good story.
The stories of, you know, like, working-class boxing gyms, like Churchill Boxing, my gym in L.A., Which I technically don't own anymore because it just was turning into such a headache.
If you could see the day-in, day-out trials and tribulations that these fighters go through, and you know it from UFC, I think that boxers have it harder, I think.
I can't prove this.
But boxing is a more dysfunctional state than UFC, mainly because of Dana and the fact that...
Dana's been able to monopolize it and that there's a system that you're a huge part of that makes sense and that there's good people involved at the top and on broadcasting and all of it.
Boxing has none of that.
And so it's this broken, dysfunctional mess that is just begging for someone, hopefully...
I think Canelo, when he got to 175, when he was fighting light heavyweight, and he still fluctuates between 68 and 75, I feel like he probably weighs 190 when he's walking around.
So he would probably weigh 190, and Jake would weigh over 200. They would probably fight either at cruiserweight or...
Like, if Jake Paul wants to fight for the title, I would like to see him beat top contenders in the light heavyweight division or whatever division he chooses to compete at and then eventually fight for a title.
Oscar De La Hoya and all that's coming with him and Eddie Hearn, who I also like quite a bit, and then you've got Al Heyman and Bob Arum, you know, and is well into his 90s, and it's just going...
That's the problem, is that they're represented by different promoters, and it's very difficult for people to co-promote, very difficult for people to decide, like, who's the A side, who's the B side.
You get ridiculous deals where, you know, this fighter wants 75%, the other fighter wants 25%.
They have to figure out whether or not they can make this happen.
And the fighter's like, fuck that, I want it 50-50.
And then the promoters get involved, and they don't want you to fight that guy, fight the number one mandatory contender.
And then some great fights never take place, or they take place too late, like Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
They fought too late.
I mean, if that fight could have been arranged by Riyadh's season, they probably would have caught them both in their prime, and it would have been chaos.
I have a little regret that I never had a professional fight.
And I was just in Mexico, and my driver started talking about boxing, and my driver told me his son was a pro fighter, and that if I wanted to, and he...
Told me how much it would cost.
I could come have a professional fight, and his son would let me win the fight.
But it would be a sanctioned fight, and I would have a box rec score of 1-0, or 0-1.
I mean, I could have not paid the money and taken the loss, but at least I would have had it.
And I did think about it for like...
About, I don't know, maybe a minute.
And I decided not to do it.
Like you and I were talking, like, I just can't take getting hit in the head anymore.
And, you know, when I was younger and I had the gym, I would spar more.
You know, in Canelo I sparred and that was controlled.
But I sparred Cam Newton once, you know, the football player who's six foot five and he was in the gym and he wanted to work.
And I'm like, well, let's spar and we'll just, you know, spar light.
And he wasn't a boxer and I have, you know.
Basic defensive boxing skills.
But I'm like, well, just let's work, Cam.
And he's like, okay.
And we started, you know, kind of sparring a bit.
And he didn't really know what he was doing, but he's a very, very physical specimen.
And I lightly kind of jabbed at his face and maybe hit the gloves, and he just went insane.
Punching me across the ring.
And I'm just like flashes of white.
I lost all feeling in my hands.
And then I didn't spar any other athletes until Steve Nash came into our gym, the basketball player.
And he wasn't his biggest cabinet, so I'm like, well, alright, I'll spar with Steve Nash.
And he doesn't know how to box, so we'll just gentlemen spar.
So we're sparring a bit, and I hit him, and I underestimate how fucking athletic he is.
He just fucking cracks me hard with a solid right, and my hands go numb.
I see nothing.
And then I'm like, that's what I'm done.
And then Saquon Barkley comes into our gym.
Do you know who Israel Barkley was?
A pro fighter.
His uncle had an incredible career as a pro fighter.
And he started throwing punches and Saquon Barkley could move and counter and had balance and head movement.
I'm like, dude, if you had instead of playing football gotten into this at, you know, 12, 13. Assuming that your brain stayed on, you would have been one of the great heavyweights of all time.
So, you know, I'm doing, my next film's about a football game that some Marines played in World War II, and we're filming it in Australia.
It's called the Mosquito Ball, and in the middle of, it's a true story about this football game that was played on Guadalcanal before the Battle of Okinawa, but these Marines all played it.
These Marines were good college football stars, and then they all died in the Battle of Okinawa, so it's an intense story.
But we need to film this tackle football game.
There was supposed to be a touch game, and the Marines ended up playing tackle.
And legend has it that it was the most violent football game ever played.
So we've got to film a tackle football game in Australia, which is where we're going to make the film.
And, like, stuntmen are tough, but, like, playing tackle football, you know...
It's a fucking painful thing to do, right?
Imagine, you know, even like Turkey Bowl, touch football games on Thanksgiving, like people are in the hospital.
So I was just in Australia, and I had the idea that, well...
Like, Aussie Rules Football.
It's perfect.
We'll just take a bunch of these guys and teach them how to play tackle football, and they'll really do it.
So I just went to an Aussie Rules Football practice in Brisbane, Australia.
And those fucking dudes are tough.
They are tough.
If you ever just watch, like, the highlight reels of Aussie...
They're members of these super successful teams, but they don't have the ego of American athletes, and they don't get the attention, and it's tall poppy syndrome.
The tall poppy gets its head cut off so they stay humble, which I kind of thought was kind of cool, you know, just realizing that I was hanging out with the captain of an Aussie Wolves team and I had dinner with the captain of the...
The New Zealand All Blacks, the rugby team.
And this guy, this was a little while ago, a couple of years ago.
This guy in America, you know the All Blacks, the most popular rugby team.
And the most humble dude ever.
And you go to a restaurant and nobody bothers him.
No security, no nothing.
That would never exist here.
But seeing how hard these dudes hit and trained made me think, well, maybe they're working at the level of athleticism that fighters are working at.
Yeah, he just does it, but it's also because he spent so much time working on the fundamentals and the technique and the movements and counters and positioning, and he understands boxing so comprehensively.
But how much of that, like his trainer, Boheim, I might be saying, I know him.
I know his trainer.
Just like Eddie and Chepo, who's got to have Canelo, they have lots of other fighters.
But, like, Eddie and Chepo have never had another Canelo Alvarez, including all of his brothers.
And I'm like, okay, how much of it is just God-given talent like Terrence Crawford has that's then trained by trainers versus how much credit does a trainer get?
A trainer gets some credit, but a trainer with a bad fighter is never going to create a world champion.
You have to be an extraordinary individual to be a championship-level fighter, no doubt.
And then there are some championship-level fighters that have emerged from gyms that don't have any championships, like Marvin Hager, one of the greatest of all time.
He came out of the Petronelli Brothers gym.
They weren't known for having a giant stable of multiple world champions.
But how much of that skill that makes a great UFC trainer is, okay, if I'm your trainer and I'm getting you ready for a fight, I'm going to study your opponent, I'm going to study your opponent's strengths, his weaknesses, his tendencies, his tells, and I'm going to train you in relationship to that and be right.
So you can anticipate where there's going to be an opportunity and take it.
How much of it is that and how effective is that, like, versus how much of it is, Joe, I gotta keep you fucking ready for anything.
I gotta keep you in shape.
I gotta keep you mentally...
Like, good.
I gotta remove distractions.
And I gotta be like your father, your uncle, your brother, and everything else in between.
You think you're going to hit me with that head kick?
And he actually did hit him with it in the fight.
Because Daniel had a tendency.
And John exploited that tendency.
And he does that with everybody.
Famous for not just doing that, but also not taking fights on last-minute notice.
Like, he's had some opponents fall out, and the UFC offers him an alternative opponent in a short period of time, and he says, no, I didn't train for that fighter.
He goes, I'm the greatest of all time for a reason, and that reason is I'm fully prepared for every fight.
I'm not going to take a fight against someone who I'm not fully prepared for.
Like I said, if you get a person that falls apart in the heat of the moment and just throws it all out the window and starts brawling, yeah, well, then your training has kind of gone to waste.
And then they're relying on instincts and hopefully skill.
If you have a really good fighter and a really good trainer, then you get a Mike Tyson.
And I've just seen different success stories and different ways that coaches have really impacted fighters.
But then I think about, like, why don't life coaches work better?
And, like, I wouldn't mind having a coach that would be like, Pete, here's our enemy, here's our opponents.
And, like, I actually had a therapist for a while when I first started seeing him.
His name's Barry, and he's a great guy, and I love him.
But so much of my relationship with him was unpacking my shit, my parents and my trauma and my fears and all this stuff.
And for years, Barry would, you know, talk to me about my dreams and all this stuff and, like, the dreams that I had that night, not my goals.
And then I started realizing, well, okay, I feel like I've talked about my mom and my grandma and my grandparents and every fucking thing that's ever happened to me.
And, like, Barry, what if we'd start talking strategy?
Like, could you coach me?
And he started coaching me a bit, and I found that, like, with my business decisions, my creativity decisions, like, you're so disciplined.
Like, I don't know.
Do you ever think, like, why don't life coaches work better?
And if you had someone like John Jones Coach in your life every fucking day, would it be better?
Yeah, if you could find someone who could devise a strategy that you could follow and you could help because it's a collaboration, you know, you could collaborate with this person and go, yeah, there's definitely value in that.
Like, don't people ask you or, I don't know, they ask me for, you know, advice and how do you do it?
And I'm like, well, you know, you've got to go to bed.
You've got to get up early.
You've got to have self-motivation.
Have to not make stupid mistakes.
And, you know, sometimes what you don't do that helps more than what you do.
And I'm aware of people struggling to figure out, like, more than ever, especially with, you know, all this perceived success through social media and the glorification of billionaires and all this stuff.
Everyone's like, I'm not happy where I am and I want...
And I'm like, well...
You know, are you following these basic rules?
Like, the basic rules that I believe you follow.
You, Joe, follow.
And people seem to have so much trouble getting on a program.
I had a key to the gym and I could work out any time I wanted because my instructor at some point in time realized that I had potential and made a deal with me and offered me I could teach classes.
And if I taught classes and I taught private lessons, like teaching beginners, like when they first come in, you have to take a certain amount of beginner classes, private lessons, before you're allowed to enter into the group class.
So I would teach people from the very beginning.
And so because of that, I was able to be at the gym all day long.
And whenever I wanted to be there, I could be there.
And I also, from teaching...
Really broke down technique, which is the most important thing.
If you have bad technique, even if you're a good fighter, you have flaws in your...
You can get pretty far with bad technique if you're just tough.
The best have excellent technique, without doubt, especially when it comes to martial arts.
Kicking and jujitsu like it's technique is everything in technique and and drive and training and focus and I realized early on like I thought I was a loser and then until I started doing martial arts and getting really good at martial arts I'm like oh I'm not a loser like I'm really good at this like I have a propensity to it I have a genetic Propensity.
Some people just don't have the discipline, the desire.
They don't have the willpower to push through when they're tired.
They don't have the willpower to show up when they're feeling tired and lazy or when they're uninspired.
You have to learn that.
And you have to learn that through, like, if you want to get great, there's only one pathway.
There's only one pathway.
It's hard work and discipline.
There's no other way.
And you might not get there still.
Because if you're hard work and you have discipline, but you're competing against Mike Tyson, and he also has hard work and discipline, but superior genetics and superior training, hypnotized from the time he was 13, you're fucked.
Him starting to just lightly warm up on a heavy bag felt he was Absolutely exceptional.
And I try to tell other fighters in our gym and other people in general that, like, you don't understand.
It's not something, you know, you see other pro fighters, and I've seen a lot of them come to our gym, and they're talking to people, and they're joking around, and they're sort of, you know, taking a moment or two off.
And then you look at all of them, and these are good fighters.
I mean, these are pro fighters.
But they're not exceptional.
And they don't have that intention.
And when I would see Canelo Alvarez or certain elite...
Crawford's done media days at our gym.
From the moment they walk in, everything about them, the way they take their sweatshirt off and fold it up and put it down.
I'm like, that dude's a world fucking champion.
Has nothing to do with the fighting.
The way they hold their hands out when they're getting taped.
It's almost like every breath from the moment they walk in to walk out is so fucking exceptional.
And I look at all these other fighters and go, no, you don't understand.
Because you might be competing against a guy who has a slightly better strategy and maybe he's better at one thing that sets you off.
Yeah, and you want to beat that guy?
Well, you got to work even harder.
You got to go back and figure out what you did wrong.
You got to figure out where your flaws are and improve upon them, whether it's an endurance issue, whether it's a technique and strategy issue, whether it's pacing, whatever it is.
And I do, I have, I totally agree with you, what you said earlier, that Floyd deserves.
That's a great story.
I just, for some reason...
I have in my life over the years sometimes hated on him a little bit for a variety of reasons, mainly because of how defensive he was.
Now I know how great he is, but I do sometimes look for inspiration in random places, and if I'm feeling like I need a reminder of what excellence is, I'll watch training videos.
From Vegas with Floyd.
Just him and his uncle or his dad just doing the mitts, doing these like 15 minute rounds.
Just so smooth and effortless.
And what does he say?
Hard work, easy work, hard work.
I can't remember what his phrase is.
But the beauty of like Mayweather training in a gym.
You're making a mountain one layer of paint at a time.
And you're competing against other people that are doing the exact same thing.
And unless you set yourself apart from the pack, unless you're a guy like Marvin Hagler that goes to Cape Cod and trains in the winter and runs on the fucking sand, unless you're that guy that pushes it past everybody else, you're not going to be exceptional.
That also, like, I have people asking me, like, you know, we started talking about making American Prime Viejo.
That was 145 days up on a mountain, you know, and standing on ice with clamp on your shoes because we're on ski mountains and there's fucking wind and it's fucking miserable.
And I'm like, people are like, why are you doing this shit?
He said, I used to, when I was younger, I used to give myself an excuse.
So I would party really hard like a week before the fight, which you should never do.
And it's like, well, if I lose, you know, maybe it's because I partied.
But he doesn't do that now.
Now he thoroughly prepares.
And he went through a time when he was the light heavyweight champion, when he was kind of like playing with his food, because he was just so much better than everybody else.
He wasn't threatened by people, so he wasn't putting on the performances that he did when he was younger, like when he won the title against Shogun.
He lost some of that motivation, but then gained it later in life when he went through a bunch of legal struggles, a lot of problems, and realized, like, this could all be taken away from me.
I gotta get back to what made me great.
And then, you know, won the heavyweight title, defended against the greatest in Stipe Miocic, and, you know, now he's the heavyweight champion of the UFC. What do you think?
It's like you're in a competitive environment from the time you're young.
You have incredible genetics on top of that.
Then you go to a place like Jackson Winklejohn that is superior training with world-class sparring partners, world-class coaches, world-class recovery, training facilities, techniques.
You need a perfect storm to be a real, true, all-time great.
Do you think that, because sometimes I think that being fucked up can work to your advantage and having addictive tendencies and being able to harness addictive tendencies into something.
As violent and to be able to apply those to a sport versus just being, well, I'm a well-adjusted human being with no addictive tendencies, not a lot of trauma.
I'm going to fight you.
Oh, no, I'm a fucking beast that grew up in a fight.
And like Mike Tyson grew up, I don't even understand if you grew up inside or outside, dealt with fucking ignited torments, drug addictions, violence, and I will kill.
And I guess that's always interesting to look at how well-adjusted people do versus people that have real trauma when it gets fucking brutal.
I think there's some real value to being out of your fucking mind.
I really do.
And I think some of the greatest artists, some of the greatest athletes, some of the greatest accomplishments were achieved by people that were out of their fucking mind and just had pushed it to a level.
To a level and into an area that other people weren't willing to go.
And that's how they became the best of the best.
And you don't get to be a Michael Jordan unless you're out of your fucking mind.
And, you know, I say that about people ask me about my job or how do I get a job working in Hollywood?
I want to make movies.
I'm like, well, are you sure you want to do this?
Because, like, you're not going to have an office.
You're not going to have a boss.
You're not going to have someone saying, hey, Joe, get up.
Time to get up.
And you're going to have to be totally self-motivated.
You're going to have to deal with...
Yeah, reviews, I feel what you're saying there, but you're going to be judged.
You're going to be only as good as your last job.
You have no fucking job security.
And you're going to be up at four in the morning in some mountain, thumbing someone, cutting someone's fucking head off, having no idea whether you're on the right path or the wrong path.
You have to be willing to go through everything that it takes to get there.
And that is not an easy road.
And it's not an easy road to be a great filmmaker.
It's not an easy road to be a great athlete.
No matter what you're doing, you'd be a great author.
You have to be willing to go down that road, and it is a long road with trials and tribulations and errors and successes, and you have to learn from your successes and learn from your failures.
And not everybody has their shit together enough to pursue a path consistently for a long enough period of time that you achieve greatness.
Yeah, and having the combination of having your shit together and being fucked up.
Because you've got to be crazy, but you've got to be functionally crazy.
I always say delusional thinking because I made the point to people asking me about my job.
I'm like, well, okay, think about it this way.
You have to have the ability to look someone in the eye.
So if I'm a young filmmaker and you're the head of a studio, I have to look you in the eye and say, Hey, Joe, here's the deal.
I need $135 million.
I'm going to make up a story about a bunch of cowboys and Indians fighting in a mountain.
I'm going to bring all these people up there.
Film it and move people around and I'm gonna edit it all together and I'm gonna for your hundred and thirty million dollars I'm gonna build this thing I'm gonna make it all put music on and edit it and make it all I'm gonna put it out into the world and people are gonna stop doing what they're doing And they're gonna watch it and they're gonna love it and it's gonna bring you value But why is it delusional if other people have done it?
unidentified
Because everyone that's done it is a little delusional.
So my dad was a business guy, and I loved my dad very much, but right when I was getting ready to come to Hollywood, he said, Pete, I've secured you a job at Lehman Brothers.
You're going to work on a desk, and you're going to learn about finance.
It's done.
And I had studied theater in college, which was making my dad very anxious because I was starting to get into making these little movies and all this stuff.
And I'm like, I'm in L.A. and I'm getting ready to move to L.A. And he stopped me.
He's like, we're not moving to L.A. I've got you a job.
This guy, Barry Frank, who's a friend of my dad's, knew someone at Lehman Brothers.
And I think they're out of business now, by the way.
Big money company.
And I'm like, Dad, I'm not doing it.
He's like, what do you mean?
I go, Dad, I'm not.
He's like, you're really going to go now?
Fucking bullshit, Hollywood.
I go, I am.
He goes, you're not.
I go, I am.
He said, okay, I'll tell you what.
Good luck out there.
You know what's going to happen?
you're going to end up making them gay pornos.
unidentified
Imagine that's the only thing that can happen if it goes wrong.
Get on an airplane and look to the left when you're getting on.
Can anyone fly a fucking plane?
If your toilet is fucking backed up and you need it fixed, can you just pull anyone off the street or does a plumber have to have a fucking degree, right?
Right.
This is where I say magical thinking.
You want to thrive in a job where all you're doing is talking, Joe.
You're just talking.
Everyone has a mouth and two ears, but you're doing it on a different fucking level.
Because I'm like, dude, if you come, you want to work in, still call it Hollywood, even though it's not really Hollywood anymore, because it's so decentralized, but it's fucking show business, motherfucker.
It's money and art smashing together in this very bizarre way.
Yeah, and you've got to know how to play the money game.
Even when they trust you, you still have to know how to play it.
Even if you're, you know, Tarantino or Christopher Nolan, or you still have to understand, you know, for the most part that...
There's financial parameters and you have to be able to accept that and play that because you're playing in a serious game.
Like, our bosses, they don't give a fuck.
They're all publicly held now and they're looking at stock prices.
And I say to people, bro, if you just want to be like an artist and just pure and think about like, oh, I just, you know, like you actually were when you were doing your podcast.
Like I kind of was when I was in Minnesota making little movies and doing all this idiotic shit that got my dad to say, oh, you're going to make gay porn, you fucking idiot.
This little phase of, oh, I was in Minnesota and St. Paul in this small school, and I'm like, I just fucking love this shit.
Just like your first podcast.
I just loved it.
But I tell people, if you just want to be an artist, go write plays in Oklahoma City and just stay over out there.
But if you want to step into this arena, It's tricky, you know?
The reason I got into directing was I was trying to act and I was having mixed success and I was getting very scared that, you know, you could prepare for an audition for five days and I know everything and I'm ready and I'm all in and I go in and I get 30 seconds of the director's time and...
You find out, like, oh, you look like the dude that the director's girlfriend cheated on him.
And he's like, you were dead before it started.
And I was on this TV show, Chicago Hope.
It was a hospital drama.
And I was kind of getting a little famous.
I played a TV doctor, Billy Cronk.
And people kept calling me Billy whenever I walked down the street, like, hey, Billy, what's up, Billy, Billy, Billy?
And I'm like, oh, my fucking God, this is going to be my legacy is being this TV fucking doctor, Billy.
And I was on an airplane going from L.A. to New York, and I'm sitting there, and this guy walks by me, and he stops.
He goes, hey, Billy.
And I'm like, my name's not Billy.
My wife has this rash.
Show him the rash.
And she pulls up her shirt and she's got this fucking rash.
And she's sticking it in my face.
He's like, Billy, what's the rash?
And the other people on the plane are like, what's the rash?
And I'm like, fuck this shit.
I'm like, I've been busting my ass.
I'm barely making it as an actor.
And people are showing me their rash.
I'm like, I gotta fucking do my own sling blade.
And I did very bad things.
And still got the worst review ever in the history of reviews.
You're going to come into the whatever, if you want really to have success, you're going to see people that work less, that have luck or connections or who fucking soar past you and it won't be fair.
It's a guidebook for creativity and discipline and becoming a professional.
And he really laid it out.
And he laid it out also with his own personal examples of failure, which I think are very important.
You need to know that this struggle that you're experiencing when you feel like you're fucking up, everybody has that.
Nobody is just like gung-ho, the best of the best right out of the gate.
You learn, you improve, it's us.
It's a long, slow journey.
It takes a lot of fucking work.
And if you're not interested in doing that, well, you better find something else.
And there's a lot of people that aren't interested in that.
A lot of people just want to do a job where they make some money, and then at the end of the day, they can go play video games, hang out with their kids.
That's great.
There's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But if you want to do something that's extraordinary, that's very hard, it's going to take extraordinary effort.
It's going to take extraordinary discipline and willpower, and it's going to take objectivity.
Yeah, but that's why when people do succeed and someone can put together something like American Primeval, it's so fantastic because we know how hard it is to do.
And I've done, you know, some of the DMT and the 5MEO and, you know, Mushrooms.
I've had powerful experiences.
But I did have one bad experience on LSD the first time I ever took it.
And none of us had ever taken it before, so we didn't feel it.
So we took another hit thinking that.
So we all basically were a bunch of high school kids in New York City trying to go to a Santana concert.
It just started fucking tripping out.
And it was scary.
It was actually really, really scary.
This movie is experientially, it becomes, and this is something that is one of my strategies when I'm making movies, is I don't want my movie to be a spectator sport.
I don't want you watching it.
I want you participating.
I want to try and grab you by the throat and make you watch.
And be like, come on, bro.
Watch.
Put the fucking phone down.
I want to own your heart and your mind and your pulse while you're watching my films.
That's just a goal.
Sometimes I do better than others, but that's always the goal.
I don't want you kind of sitting back watching.
This motherfucker, Gaspar Noe, he takes you into it in a way that I'm sure a lot of people will hate it.
I mean, there's a part of me like, so I'm getting ready to make a film called Mosquito Ball, this war movie.
And these young kids went through, I don't know if you know, the Pacific Theater campaign and what the battles of Tarawa and Guadalcanal and Okinawa.
These were hellacious.
Awful fucking violent fights.
And the Japanese wouldn't surrender and they believed in Emperor Horihito so they would fight to the death.
You know, Banzai charges and seppuku, they would kill themselves before they would be taken prisoner.
In World War II you had these young American kids who in our movie were college football players who Pearl Harbor hits and they immediately joined the military and they have to go fight these fucking horrific battles.
Just people's throats getting blown out and torturing and killing and suicides from the locals.
And so to me, one of my goals with this next film is I want to try, because there's been a lot of good war films, just like there have been a lot of good westerns, and I always said, well, I never got to make one, so I want to try and make a western that was American Primeval.
There's been a lot of great war films, great war films, but I never got to make one.
So my take is to try and bring people into the experience.
Which is like why Steve, for anyone, like you ask me who I look up to, Steven Spielberg.
He is so far and ahead the goat of my business to think that the guy who did fucking Jurassic Park and E.T., God love both, Close Encounters, then is like, oh.
You know, and Spielberg was always like the good boy of the...
Because it was like he was growing up with like Coppola and Scorsese and Michael Mann and these guys were like...
To answer your question, Spielberg's who I look up to still the most, and I think he's on a whole other level based on the scope of his work.
But Gaspar Noe, if I'm thinking about the thing I got out of watching this film that I would try and use in my own way for Mosquito Ball, for a war movie, is the idea that you want to try and take the audience into what it would have been like to try and get on that fucking beach.
And, you know, in the case of my film, There was a battle of Tarawa and they were trying to get ashore, but they fucked up the tides.
So they came in and the tides were too low.
So those landing craft all got stuck on the tides, on the coral reef.
And they started getting bombed by the Japanese who were hiding in the caves and they brought their big guns out.
So these kids were getting blown up before they even got to the fucking beach.
They were getting killed.
Best friends or body parts are floating in the fucking oceans, and there's sharks, and there's giant surf waves, and they're getting rocked before they've ever even got...
So I'm like, okay, well, how do I want to show that?
And I look at a movie like Climax, and I'm like, all right, different horror, bad acid, bad LSD, but my God, I had to stop watching it.
And I knew I was coming in here today and I'm starting to have an anxiety attack because I want to get sleep to do, you know, to talk to you.
And I'm fucking watching this movie and I'm all worked up because he's taken me into the fucking experience.
And he does his movie Into the Void is about DMT. And he takes you into the experience of DMT. So for anyone who doesn't ever want to experience and, you know, things that you've touched and I've touched, You can watch these movies and you can be like, whoa, I'm getting that feeling.
We do have a bit of a problem culturally because a lot of the films that were created in the early days about the Wild West were very glossy.
They were very whitewashed.
It wasn't an accurate representation of what actually went down.
You know, film in the 1960s and 70s in particular, when it covered that subject, like spaghetti westerns, you know, great films, but it just never really quite captured the reality.
I don't think filmmaking was really ready for that experience because I think the settling of the West...
And making their way across the plains in particular and dealing with the Comanche and the Plains Indians.
Like, it is one of the most brutal experiences in human history.
It's really good about a very unique time when you have this convergence of American, you know, this emergence of these settlers trying to make their way across this country and dealing with the Indians.
And it's just phenomenal.
I mean, it's a crazy time in human history and a very brief time.
If you really think about the impact that the West has had on American culture, we think about Wild West.
Every kid grew up playing cowboys and Indians.
Like, this is a time that was a very short window.
It was only a couple hundred years.
And it really changed the entire world.
Because the successful settling of this country by the Europeans...
Changed everything.
The establishment of America changed everything.
And the only way it was going to happen was you got to get through the Indians.
The next American Primeval is going to be on General Custer.
Yeah, man.
And we're going to focus on...
A period, short period of time leading up to Little Bighorn and how when, you know, because he is a very misunderstood character from American history.
One of the things that was cool about American Primeval and reaction is people are like, whoa, I didn't know that about Brigham Young.
I didn't know this about Jim Bridger.
I didn't understand.
And so you get something that works.
Hopefully it's an entertaining, cool fucking show that's just...
Fucking awesome.
But you're also like, oh, wow, I'm going to fucking learn about the country, right?
So I like the idea of taking moments in American history, not necessarily all about the West, although Custer is something that Mark L. Smith and I are both kind of obsessed with.
And there's so much cool shit around the story of General Custer and Crazy Horse.
Building a fictional story around those characters and having some great actor play Custer is exciting.
But I could see doing the third one on something like the Attica Prison Riot, which has always obsessed me.
And if you followed that, there's an incredible book by Tom Wicker, who was a journalist called A Time to Die, that dissects...
That event.
Because I like events.
You know, like I'm good with events.
If you give me a contained event over a short period of time and I can tell that story and it's emotional and visceral, that's...
And Attica was fucking wild.
And how it started and how it escalated and the players involved and the negotiating to try and calm it down and the corrupt governor, Rockefeller, who wouldn't negotiate because they don't want to appear weak.
And then finally...
It just goes off and everyone's dead.
And it was a great look at the American prison system, racism, negotiations, religion, because the Black Panthers were in there and the Muslim Brotherhood.
So I like the idea of taking moments in American history that are probably pretty fucking violent and sort of presenting them and being like, wow, this is...
Thrilling and deeply entertaining.
But I never knew that.
And with Attica, this might get me to think a little bit about prison reform and the state of incarcerated American men today in America.
Because that story of Attica is deeply rooted in abusive prisoners all over America.
I mean, look, going back to Ksenia, this girl who's now in a fucking...
Working prison camp in Siberia.
We have fucked up prisons.
Russia, South America.
Can you imagine being in a Venezuelan prison right now?
And so I like the idea.
And America has its own unique flavor of fucking hell within prisons.
Not to make light of prison, right?
And I'm not.
But I actually had an idea.
A while ago for a show that I wanted to do, like Survivor or Fear Factor, take three guys, like take the three of us in this room right now, three fucking tough, badass American men, right?