Matt Damon and Ben Affleck dive into Hunter S. Thompson’s chaotic genius, praising Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas while contrasting his raw style with streaming’s demand for instant hooks—like Netflix’s rapid engagement metrics. Their film NARC thrives on real-world research: tactical teams, prison inmates, and unscripted ad-libs (e.g., Damon’s "I wouldn’t have fucked you like this") to avoid contrived morality. They debate AI’s creative limits, citing Dwayne Johnson’s trauma-fueled performance in The Smashing Machine as irreplaceable artistry. Rogan connects their work to MMA’s brutal pursuit of greatness—John Jones’ 25-minute justice training, brain damage risks, and psychedelics like Ibogaine—before praising their film’s authenticity over media’s profit-driven outrage. [Automatically generated summary]
We've had a lot of those the press junkets where they come in and the first thing that you know the movie sucks if they don't ask you anything about the movie.
Like used to be the only place you'd go see movies in the 40s.
Like every American went to the movie every week, basically.
But it was because it was that or watched the cows walk by.
You know, that was the only, and then TV comes around and it's little and you see these little serials.
But, you know, what happened was now this is why it's totally changed the whole thing because you have 300 million people, 30, whatever is watching, you know, Netflix.
And it's a lot harder to get people to go into the movies.
There's also YouTube.
There's also TikTok.
There's also my kids.
Like, it's hard to get them excited about a movie.
When we started, there was a different George Clooney, for instance, like there was a big thing.
He very famously, you know, became this superstar on ER.
That show, 40 million people a week were watching that show.
It was the biggest thing, right?
Because there were only a few channels to tune into, and that show was the biggest one.
And George never renegotiated his contract.
He wanted to work in movies, and it was like, you can't go from TV to movie.
It's a very few people can do it.
And he really strategically and kind of patiently, like, he joked that on the last episode he was on, Anthony Edwards, you know, his co-star was making a million bucks for the episode and he was making, you know, 20 grand or whatever his deal was.
unidentified
Like he could have renegotiated, but he would have had to give more years.
You can't say this, you can't do that, you can't swear, not all the can of violence and all the things people want to see in movies, you know.
And then also it wasn't as interesting.
And then now that's tethered to these schedules and all the stuff, whereas you get this shit, like you don't have a schedule and you can take a bunch of risks.
And that started happening.
And then it was kind of like, well, this is just as good, if not better, than what's in the movies.
And because it was hard to get people to come to the movies, everyone got scared and thought, well, you have to have to be a sequel or a superhero movie.
And so an interesting little movie, kind of in the 90s when we kind of came onto the scene, there were a lot of really good independent movies that were being made.
It was a really great time to be making movies.
They were making daring movies.
And then everyone just got way more conservative because it's huge.
The business is so different theatrically in streaming because to put out a movie theatrically, you have to put so much more money behind it to publicize.
And so you got to get everybody to not only know about the movie, but to show up that Friday night, like that specific time, you know, for that specific movie.
And so and to cut through all the noise that people are contending with.
I went to a theater to just watch the trailer for that movie.
And, you know, did I, one battle after another, I wanted to go see in the theater.
But there's movies of people that I really like and respect where, yeah, and I got a good system and shit, but I'm like, look, I'll watch it and I might get tired or I won't pause it and take a piss or the kids, you know, whatever it is.
Like when I went to see One Battle on IMAX, that feeling, there's nothing like that feeling.
I took two of my kids and two of my nephews and my wife and we all went and it was just, it was like, and you're in with a bunch of strangers, but people in your community and you're having this experience together.
I always say it's more like going to church.
Like you show up at an appointed time.
You know what I mean?
It doesn't wait for you.
Versus the experience of watching at home, I think, you're watching in a room, the lights are on, other shit's going on.
The kids are running around, the dogs are running around, whatever it is.
It's just a very different level of attention that you're willing to, or that you're able to give to it.
And that has a big effect.
And it also ends up having an effect or is starting to have an effect on how you make movies.
Like, for instance, Netflix, you know, a standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you know, you usually have like three set pieces, one in the first act, one in the second, one in the third.
You know, you kind of kind of ramp up in the big one with all the explosions, and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act.
That's your kind of finale.
And now they're like, can we get a big one in the first five minutes to get somebody?
We want people to stay tuned in.
And, you know, it wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they're watching.
My feeling is just that it demonstrates that you don't need to do any of that shit to get people, you know what I mean?
Like, and I think, you know, yes, you know, like, look, hey, the town had the actions in the first five minutes.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's a, it's a common trick that you would go, like, let me grab them and get them invested.
And it's like the movies that start with the hero hanging from the cliff.
And now we're going to flash back to the beginning and tell you how they got there.
It's, you know, I always feel like, you know, complaining about it makes me feel like one of these guys was like, when I was a boy, like, you always want to freeze the culture at the time when you, I don't know, felt more like, you know, we used to have these phones.
The fuck are all these phones?
And everybody's looking at their phone.
I get it.
Yes, it's true.
Also, it's like supply and demand.
People want to look at their phone because they can look at TikTok.
They want, you know, they're going to do that.
I think what you can do is make shit the best you can, make it really good.
And, you know, people can still go to the movies.
Not like, I think we have this idea that's like an existential threat.
Everything that comes along is going to destroy everything.
Instead of like, what history suggests is that there's like marginal encroachments, things shift.
Yep, as television came along, there was less theater going.
That's still going to happen.
And people are still going to go to the movies because of what you said.
Like, it feels like a cool thing to do.
I'm going to go see the Odyssey, I guarantee you, in a theater, you know, no matter what.
Fewer of them, you could argue that's because I have more choice or whatever it is.
It's hard to fight supply and demand.
That's the trick, right?
If people want to watch a bunch of stuff at home, because they invested in TVs and costs us money, they will.
So, okay.
But the upside of that is like, I can try to do something.
Hopefully, that's like that actually doesn't need to, you know, have the most urgency to get you to come to the theater with your family.
That's a little more experimental or risk-taking or whatever in that way.
That's a joke that I like to make with every director I work with.
Like when they're really puzzling over a shot or really grinding out something, I go, you know, it's not going to look as good on the phone when everyone gets angry.
And oftentimes, you know, directors will want to make a movie that is challenging and upsetting.
And I remember Terry Kinney, my friend, great actor, and he told me about the experience of seeing Taxi Driver in New York for the first time, right, in 76 or whenever it came out.
And he said, what I remember is not only the movie, but I remember standing at the back because I had got up.
I got up out of my seat and I went, but I couldn't bring myself to leave because I was so invested.
But I was so, he goes, I was standing at the back by the door watching the movie.
And he goes, and there were two other people standing next to me who were doing the same thing.
I mean, the great story I like is the first time they debuted a movie, guys, with a projector in a room full of people, it was a movie of a train pulling into the station.
So they put the reel up and they did the demonstration and they showed the people and everybody missed it because they were turned around staring at the projector.
They never fucking seen anything like that.
You know, it's like the technology's upstage.
But like you come for an event, come for a thing.
We're all going to be here.
That's part of it.
It's, I don't know.
There's competing arguments.
You can think, well, what do you get to do?
And some people just go ahead and fuck it.
Like Jim Cameron's the avatar.
I'm going to make my three-hour movie and people are going to come and great.
You know what I mean?
And people say, oh, well, you can't have a three-hour movie.
And he's like, well, I'm Jim Cameron and I've actually got the number one and two and movies.
I think I got this.
He goes ahead and does it.
History is full of people who got told a bunch of conventional wisdom and were like, yeah, but we're going to do something different.
And as it turns out, like, that's actually what people want too, is not for you to just repeat the other shit that's been done before and worked before.
Taxes and fees included, all on Verizon's 5G network.
It's the ultimate wireless hack to save money and still get great coverage and a reliable connection.
Got a resolution to save?
Kick 2026 off right now for a limited time.
New members can get the Visible plan for just $19 a month for the first 26 months.
Ring in the new year with code switch26.
Share the savings with a deal that's too good to keep quiet.
Switch now at visible.com.
Terms apply.
Limited time offer subject to change.
See visible.com for planned features and network management details.
One of the things I read that I thought was really fucking cool is you guys set it up so that if this film performs well, the entire crew gets bonuses.
But it's good, but it's not like, you know, fucking we're saints or a philanthropist.
It's completely self-serving, in my opinion.
Because in order to do the job well, everybody who's working on it has to be really invested and give a shit about the result, not their paycheck only.
And sometimes you're worried a crew that just happen to be great anyway, even though they don't really have to care about it and they do.
And what we saw was like, that makes your movie better.
And then there's just the thing of like the business is changing.
You see these strikes and work stops and all these fucking questions.
In order for this, I think, to survive and to be, you know, a good middle-class fucking artist, you know, artisanal craftsman job, we've got 1,200 people that, you know, need to have reliable jobs.
And part of the negotiations is always like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but we're all going to get fucked.
Like we have no participation.
Like used to working on movies and happens to actors too, where you go, oh, we all invested.
It was really hard and we fucking put in the extra effort.
Somebody else walked away with all the success.
And my theory was with Matt was like, how about where let's say, okay, it's just fairness, right?
If this thing actually blows up and does really well, you should benefit from that.
People have been, you know, kind of given sort of promises of participation at back end haven't come true.
So this is like the crew, everyone got their rates, everyone got their hourly, no one cut anything.
This is just an exercise in actually proving that it's not bullshit.
That if there's success, you'll get some extra, a little success, a little extra, a little more, a little more.
They're all going, okay, I need all my people with yeah, every great director I've worked with, and I've worked with a lot of them, they have their regular crew members that they that are ride or die with these people.
Because, I mean, and you said it to me when we were starting the company.
You were like, you know, those department heads, you know, who are each handling like, you know, cinematography, you know, your camera department, you know, your grip department, your electric, like all these, this, those people are ultimately the people who make the movie good.
Like they make a demonstrable difference in how good your movie is.
Because they, and then like you have the situation where they all are filmmakers too.
Everybody knows what we're trying to do.
So like then what makes it, you know, you're trying to get something special, something interesting, something fucking magical in some moment.
You have to like, if people are tight or if they've been out of shape or, you know, it fucks up the environment.
People aren't relaxed.
Actors can't do their best work.
And that does make a difference between something that's good, average, great, whatever.
And I think that if you say like, you know, it makes cognitive sense to people.
But if you look around, like, what's an exact Colin Anderson, camera operator, right?
Not the cinematographer, but I would tell you, he's the, I think, is the greatest camera operator there in Hollywood.
And if you want evidence, that he shot Marty Supreme.
He was a camera operator on one battle after another.
You know, he's, you look at his resume and you're like, oh, that's interesting.
These are all fucking great movies.
Now, is he personally responsible for all of it?
No, because it's a collaborative medium.
There is no, like, you can be a painter and paint by yourself.
You can be a novelist and do that, sing, write music.
You can't do this job alone.
Like, there are a lot of people that go into it.
You know, even when I was like, Matt was the lead in the last movie I did Air that I directed.
Having somebody so fucking good in your movie who also shows up, does his job, is friendly, isn't fucking around or playing games or being weird, like that sets this tone.
Everybody else kind of goes, okay, well, what's Damon like?
Oh, I see this is, we're taking it seriously, but nobody's going to be a dick.
We're all going to do our job.
We're not going to take ourselves too seriously, but we're going to take the job really seriously.
And immediately, everybody kind of snaps into that.
That trickle-down effect goes across the whole thing.
And I think the best thing that I know how to do as a director is just create an environment where people feel like they show up, people like me, they're rooting for me.
I can fucking embarrass myself and be bad and it's not going to be in the movie and it was going to make me feel self-conscious.
Yeah, and if I have something to offer, they're going to go, oh, that's a good idea.
You know what I mean?
And that's kind of the trick, in my view.
And then you're depending on the gifts of all these people.
Every single one of them.
You know, guys was, you know, some woman's assistant prop master is coming up with like the stuff that, you know, Phil Knight found, you know, his waffle from the shoe.
Kudos to you guys for addressing this, first of all, and recognizing it and having that attitude because it's so important and so easy for big movie stars to just think about themselves and their own.
No, no, but each deal has had this kind of, each deal that we've done so far has been different because we've made deals with different studios and platforms and stuff like that.
And it just involved us basically retroactively going, hey, we came in under, we did a great job, there's extra money.
Here you go.
This is the first time that we were able to actually create like a schedule where it's like, because, and by the way, we wouldn't have been able to do that without Netflix going, okay, cool.
You think you can make this work?
Because we'll give you a shot.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to do it.
So we had to say, look, we're not asking you to take a cut, but if we can, and we can tell you, if the movie is watched as many hours in the first 90 days as like this movie A, that you all know what it is, then that's, you know, 20% of your shout out, let's say, right?
Otherwise, you should take a hit.
So it's like, yeah, you make more money, your bonus is more.
It's all just pegged to where you're at, just because that was the most fair idea we'd come up with.
I mean, it's, you know, the value of it is because before this, one of the big things that everybody's fighting over in the strike is like, well, share your shit.
There used to be residuals, right?
And residuals, and it was only for SAG and a few other things.
But it was like, and you knew if you had a line in the movie and the movie did a certain number, like at the box office, well, you're going to get another 2,000 bucks.
And that was a big deal.
Get that check in the mail and like, okay, I can pay the rent for another month and I can do that shit.
But then there was this like sort of ill, what constitutes success?
Because Streamer doesn't actually sell another ticket if you watch that movie, right?
It's hard to tell, well, why did you sign up for this service, right?
So for a while, everyone's looking at the first thing that you looked at when you subscribed to somebody.
Okay, you're going to go buy Hulu?
What did you watch first?
The bear?
Well, the bear must be creating value for us.
But you can't assign a strict numerical value to it because it's like a box office where you can go, well, we're going to use a billion dollars or whatever.
And that's another billion dollars on our balance sheet because streamers are doing a subscription model.
Whether it's like a gym membership where in the fucking, you know, first of the year, you're like, I'm going to work out again.
I'm going to buy that annual membership.
And you go twice or you go to the gym every single day, you're paying the same amount.
Also, the weird thing is with streaming, when you're opening up Netflix, it's not like you're going to the movie theater and there's seven movies playing.
You're opening up Netflix and you have an unlimited option list.
It's insane how much content.
You could waste the rest of your life sitting in front of Netflix and then die and have millions of hours more to listen to or watch.
Like when we started researching that and built our own data to poll people and examine all this stuff, it's actually all the library stuff that people are watching all the time.
If you say like the new stuff is theoretically what keeps people with the subscription or whatever, but in terms of like volume of time, I think, and doesn't come from them, but it looks a lot like, you know, we're going to watch like Orange is the New Black and the episode of Suits and the Old Seinfeld and Friends and Cupcake Wars.
That's what Americans watch six hours of TV a day.
We want to be doing movies with all these people that we like and respect.
And then the way we sort of set it up is such that to try to get like the historically, the way it's worked is like a studio will own an IP or a script or whatever.
So it was like, okay, what can we do that's interesting and try to keep it as inexpensive as possible so that we can make the argument that someone should make the movie?
That same logic carries through every time you're asking somebody to invest in something.
So what I'd like to have happen is to say, okay, now that we know there's a reliable system where we understand that in success, we'll actually benefit, we can lower the price up front for you so that you can have a low fucking barrier to entry so that you can take the risk so that we can do something really interesting.
That's an original idea.
That's a, you know, that's an Omenheimer or a Sinners or a fucking Marty Supreme or whatever it is.
And then if it's successful, we're not all sitting here like assholes where you guys walk off with all the money, but and you can have that happen in an ongoing way so that you can make more interesting stuff.
A lot of the stuff that was going on with the strikes was centered around AI and what AI is going to do to the business.
Like, where do you feel is going to be like the biggest problem with AI?
Is it going to be with people's likenesses?
Because there's a lot of that, where they want to use extras and own their digital rights forever, essentially be able to recreate them in any kind of film.
But then there's also, you're going to have films that are written by artificial intelligence.
You're going to have scenes that don't involve people.
I might have the ability to draw you, to make you in a very realistic way, but that's already against the law.
And the unions are going to, I think the guilds are going to manage this where it's like, okay, look, if this is a tool that actually helps us, for example, we don't have to go to the North Pole, right?
We can shoot the scene here in our parkas and whatever it is, but then make it appear very realistically as if we're in the North Pole.
It'll save us a lot of money, a lot of time.
We're going to focus on the performances and not be freezing our ass up out there and running back inside.
That's useful.
Just like Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn used to be like driving their car and there's a wind blowing a painting behind them and it looked goofy.
And now, you know, in computer generated, people use a lot of computer-generated stuff.
And some of it is going to replace just that.
Like instead of 500 guys in Singapore, you know, making $2 an hour to render all the graphics for a superhero movie, there's going to be able to do that a lot easier.
There's already laws around and guild guidelines around like how many union extras you have to use.
But also, we've been tiling extras.
Like there weren't a million orcs in Middle-earth.
You know what I mean?
In Invictus, there weren't all those people in the stadium.
Like that's something we've been doing.
It kind of feels to me like the thing we were talking about earlier, where there's a lot more fear because we have the sense, less existential dread.
It's going to wipe everything out.
But that actually runs counter, in my view, to what history seems to show, which is A, adoption is slow.
It's incremental.
I think a lot of that rhetoric comes from people who are trying to justify valuations around companies.
They go, we're going to change everything.
In two years, there's going to be no more work.
The reason they're saying that is because they need to ascribe a valuation for investment that can warrant the CapEx spend they're going to make on these data centers with the argument that like, oh, you know, as soon as we do the next model, it's going to scale up.
It's going to be three times as good.
Except that actually ChatGP5, about 25% better than ChatGPT-4 and costs about four times as much in the way of electricity and data.
So those may say that it's like plateauing.
The early AI, the line went up very steeply and it's now sort of leveling off.
I think it's because, and yes, it'll get better, but it's going to be really expensive to get better.
And a lot of people are like, fuck this.
We want ChatGPT-4 because it turned out like the vast majority of people who use AI are using it to like, as like companion bots to chat with at night and stuff.
There's no work.
There's no productivity.
There's no value to it.
I would argue there's also not a lot of social value to getting people to like focus on an AI friend who's telling you that you're great and listening to everything you say and being sycophantic.
But that's sort of a side issue.
I think for this particular purpose, like the way I see the technology and what it's good at and what it's not, it's going to be good at filling in all the places that are expensive and burdensome and they make it harder to do it.
And it's always going to rely fundamentally on the human artistic aspects of it.
I did this interview with Dwayne Johnson because when people are in these awards things, they sometimes have other actors interview them.
And I did this interview with Dwayne and I asked him, there's this scene in the Smashing Machine where he's overdosed on drugs and his buddy comes to see him in the hospital.
And it really walloped me this scene.
I thought it was so great.
And I asked him, and I was just like, can you just tell me about this scene?
Like, did Benny Safti directed it?
Did Benny write that?
Did you work on that scene with them?
He goes, no, we actually worked on it together.
And I go, but how did that scene come to be?
And Dwayne goes, well, my father was an alcoholic.
And I don't remember if you said substance abuser or alcoholic, but I didn't know the man.
I don't want to impugn him.
But he had a substance issue, whatever it was.
He goes, and when he would talk to me, that's how he would defend himself.
It was almost a bargaining thing because there's this thing when this guy comes to him, he's overdosed.
And Dwayne's amazing in this scene.
He's going like, he's going like, yeah, isn't it crazy?
And then I woke up and thought, I mean, I could hear him, but I couldn't really hear him.
And you see him and he's kind of tap dancing.
And his friend finally kind of holds his feet to the fire.
And at that moment, Dwayne literally starts to burst into tears and just pulls the hospital sheet up over his head.
And it's like, and it's, and it's, I mean, it's just, it was, I'm not doing it justice if you haven't.
I mean, I know you've seen it.
Yeah.
But he said, yeah.
So he explains that about his father.
And then he goes.
And when my mom was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer, I was with her when the oncologist came in and she was lying in the hospital bed.
And when he gave her the news, she pulled the sheet up over her head.
And I looked at her and she just looked like a little, like a little kid, you know?
And I was like, all right.
Like, so that, right, is two traumatic events from this guy's life, right?
From his life experience.
And the actor in him, right, sees this scene, goes into his memory, pulls these two things out, understands that they're appropriate for this scene and he can marry them together in the scene.
And then he goes and performs it that way.
And a dude walking in off the road goes to the movies, sees this, understands somehow that it's fucking real.
I didn't know why.
That's why I wanted to ask him, how did that scene come to be?
I knew Mark from, I met Mark in 97 when he was fighting in the UFC.
So I knew the whole journey of him.
And I was so happy for Dwayne because it was a film where instead of being this fucking superhero, blockbuster Hulk of a man, he gets to be that, but be a great actor.
And, you know, you can't really get a person to look like that, to express emotions.
And he was Mark Kerr.
If you know Mark, I mean, it was fucking great acting.
So The Smashing Machine was made when Mark was at the height of his powers and pride.
And he was the most terrifying guy in the world.
He was 265 pounds of solid muscle, just blowing through people.
Didn't even look like a human being.
Everyone was terrified of him.
No one knew he was a drug addict.
No one knew.
And he spiraled out as they were filming and he let them film him.
Let them film him shooting up.
Let them film him like bringing this giant bag of pills with him and all this shit everywhere and just completely falling apart.
While they were supposed to be capturing this hero movie of the greatest fighter in the world, he's falling apart like live in front of the documentary.
And I was so happy that it gave Dwayne a vehicle to show what he's really capable of because he's so limited by a lot of just the parameters of the roles that he was in.
Well, I think also coming from where he came from, right?
It's like you talk about going from TV to movies in the old days.
Try coming from wrestling to like the biggest movie star in the world, right?
It's very, it's like, it's incredible that he did that.
And now he's in this place where he's got this leverage because he's so beloved and, you know, that he can kind of tailor what he wants from here on out.
And that's the thing that's, I think, especially because it's, A, it's collaborative.
It happens with other people.
That's what movies do that other shit doesn't do, which is just create, like, you feel for people.
It's empathy.
It's all made up, right?
That's not him.
It's the old, it's all an illusion, all bullshit.
But if you do it really well, like, you know, somebody that seems to really be feeling something like all of a sudden, I think what it does, it touches like these things in ourselves.
You know, it has that same effect that Dwayne went through of articulate to you about like these moments that were kind of burned into his memory.
Then really the best movies are kind of almost blank screens that we project our own fucking like, oh yeah, my father died or I went through this with my kid or I'm fucking, I feel fucking alone and miserable.
And here's this like hopeful moment that someone has to go, maybe I can, maybe I can do something.
They inspire you, they touch you, they move you, and it's the thing to go for.
The other thing is, you know, it's a is to tell the lighter story, to go through the more typical sort of tropes of it all.
But the other thing that's really interesting from our side of doing it, because he and I have talked about this a lot, is, and I've always said publicly, like great actors are good enough for both of you.
Like when you're in a scene with a great actor, that thing that Ethan's talking about, that hypnosis or whatever you want to call it, that energy, that place where you go, right?
Well, there's some scenes in this movie without giving too much away where there's conflict between you two guys that seems so real.
And that's even harder to recreate because you guys are good friends and you're making the movie together and you've got this scene where you're acting in this and with the conflict with the two of you guys in the movie, but it's very fucking real.
The reason it works, I think, is because he's coming at me and he really needs to know something.
And I'm completely blanking him.
Like, I'm just, he's going, you got to tell me what's going on, man.
He's like, it's awesome.
Like, what, what is going on?
What is the thing?
And I'm just like literally kind of blanking him in this bizarre way, which like was really frustrating him in real life because he was that feeling of like, it's fucking, tell me, dude, it's you.
And me, like, and he finally goes, he screams out, I don't trust you right now.
That's a fucking problem, right?
Which is like what you would say to an old friend, like, what are you doing, man?
You fuck to me and like step outside our whole relationship and all of a sudden just act like, give me this weird look of just like, I don't know, you know like.
I could see him like getting there was the one line that wasn't written that I saw that I didn't remember doing was, I would have never fucked you like this.
Yeah, which I didn't even remember saying, is George, I like that, keep that thing.
I wouldn't have fucked you and I was.
I thought I was like what is he?
I thought what did I?
And I sort of watched the playback.
It was in those rare moments again.
It was like where it was that thing of you doing all the work by by not doing anything, which I didn't expect that to be the choice that you made, and it just was confusing and felt like just you know, leaving you out in the fucking cold and the only thing I could rely on is like I, you know I would, I wouldn't do this to you.
Right, you know, but you have to be working with somebody that makes that okay.
You know what I mean, because the part of your brain that will like govern you or tell you something's not okay or whatever, will step in if it's sort of like you know listen, I expect you to fucking do this box.
And there's, there's a directors and writers who really do really care about every word precisely, and that you know and that's that's how they do it and that's fine.
It becomes more interesting and sometimes better stuff happens.
If you actually feel like you don't have to say any of the lines I don't have to say any of the lines in this scene then I'll tend to say the ones that feel right.
People are missing each other or not sure of themselves and a little embarrassed and genius show it really is and and and people talk like we're talking, like you occasionally talk over each other.
There's a stumble, there's no one know, like what what, what the fuck are you talking?
Well too, because what's also happening is that forces you to really listen right, and that is that is the hardest thing to kind of learn for young actors, I think is is it's really all about listening and like I did a bunch of movies with Paul Greengrass and that's how he works where, Where you just know the agenda going in.
You know, some basic things that you know what your guy needs going in.
I just remember that one guy in that documentary who was like, I think he was from Boston and he was like the pilot and he had figured out the route and he was like, man, like we could have gotten away with this forever.
Because somebody talked and he knew that's the only way we would have been caught.
Well, that's why it's a perfect backdrop for the film, you know, because the situation that the cops, without giving away too much of the plot, but the situation that the cops are dealing with is a very real situation.
Like you take these people, you know, you got like six, seven people.
They fucking work for a living.
They have the same bullshit they have to deal with.
And there's $20 million, you know, and it's, I mean, it makes for a great like drama, too, even like the, you know, in the performances, because all of a sudden somebody's thinking like, okay, how are they going to react?
You know, who'd be the first person to say, you know, I'm going to have to turn this all in, you know, and like getting to play that shit.
And for me also, I like, you know, without being, you know, sanctimonious or preachy, because I really think movies, we're talking about like what they do well, what they do very poorly is deliver messages or lecture.
As soon as you get into that thing, the audience is like, you know, I'm going to go to church for that or fucking school.
I don't need that shit here.
But I like that what was underneath it is like, this is a fucking hard job.
And that there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of value.
Like these characters, the ones that are trying to do their job are trying to get through the day.
And just at the end of the day, have done their job like they said they were going to do, you know, adhere to the fucking ethics that they're supposed to.
And at the end of the day, be able to sleep at night and believe there's some value in not fucking stealing the money or flipping somebody over.
You know what I mean?
And doing all that shit.
And that's the win.
The win doesn't have to be get away with the bag of money or fucking, you know, save the world from, you know, the evil scientist laser beam or whatever.
It's like, at the end of the day, if you can fucking live with yourself and say, look, you know, I acquitted myself according to what the fucking expectations were.
What am I true to my word?
And I think there's so like, that's a, I don't know, that affected me.
I found that kind of moving.
And, and you can't do it if you create like, if it's to credit to Joe Scripp, like just two-dimensional characters.
Oh, I'm the hero, I'm the villain, or this person would never do that.
They all have to be real people, like you would be, subject to like temptation.
And money just represents whatever that thing is you think you want or that's going to make your life better.
You know, it's something different to everybody.
But especially when you're like, you're facing like the custody thing or the sick relative or whatever it is, it's a real thing.
Nobody's immune to that kind of temptation.
I think it's cavalier to be like, oh, well, you're dirty.
Putting people in a very tough situation a lot of times, particularly if they're feeling like undervalued.
Like the woman seemed Catalina's, like, I get fucking pissed.
I get yelled at.
I get shit on.
You know what I mean?
Like, I'm out here grinding every fucking day.
You know, it's a lot to ask.
And I think it's worth kind of making that heroic without sort of indicating too much.
I was saying everything that I've done that I like has been a result of something I found in research.
Like for the town, I went down and just went through the you know all the prisons, you know, out there in Massachusetts, federal prisons, state prisons, and sat down and talked to guys who robbed trucks and banks.
And, you know, kind of sometimes, you know, you want to know, and then sat down with the FBI guys and was like, what are they like?
And the great shit, you know, for me is that, you know, and I'm in like, I'm in like wet wallpaper or I'm in the prison dedim or whatever.
And I'm to some guy said, like, after talking for two hours, you know, I was like, is anything just fucking weird ever happened or fucked up?
Anything you remember?
That guy was like, yeah, one time, you know, we were coming out of this thing.
We robbed his truck and, you know, we had the masks, we got the switch car and we drove around the corner and whatever.
We pull up and we get out with fucking guns and the masks, the whole thing.
And we look over and it's this cop sitting there doing construction duty.
And I knew a lot of people like that, you know, from boxing gyms and stuff.
I knew a guy who was a hitman for Whitey Bulger.
I knew a guy who was a friend of a brother of mine who went to jail for that, for murder, for killing people.
What town did you grow up in?
I lived in Newton.
Yeah, I grew up, I lived in Jamaica plane for a little while.
I lived in Newton, but I spent a lot of time in Boston because I was fighting.
It was mostly training.
And so I was around a lot of these very shady characters who were in the fighting world.
And a lot of them had backgrounds in crime.
One of the guys that I went to, that I trained with, he went to jail for a little while and then he got arrested because a guy got killed and they broke every bone in his body with a hammer and kept injecting him with cocaine to keep him awake while they were doing it.
And then they cut his hands off and cut his head off.
And this guy that I used to train with got arrested for that.
Well, I didn't do any fighting, but I went around and found a lot of things.
One of the things about being an actor, people will talk to you, which is a fucking amazing gift.
Even if somebody's like, oh, yeah, I kill guys.
They'll just come out and like, it's kind of the rules all of a sudden don't apply.
Like these guys in the prison, what the fuck are they going to talk?
You know what I mean?
But they're like interested in it for whatever.
And, you know, so you avail yourself of that.
And then I had like, you know, we had people around that movie who everybody knew.
Yeah, he did that job.
He never got arrested.
And so like, yeah, people, you know, meet, you know, and talk to him.
And it's interesting because it's such a good lesson for doing this job, which is that they're never how you think they're supposed to be, like the murderer person.
You know, there's always something a little, I remember one guy was supposed to be like this really violent, kind of loose cannon fucking guy who supposedly had done all this shit, stabbed and killed two people, Faniel Hall, and shot these guys in a, in a robbery.
And he like shows up with his polo shirt kind of tucked in.
You know, he's like, how's it going?
You know, just like, I never would have fucking put this guy on fucking killing four people.
You know what I mean?
Hey, yeah, have a good time.
So I love that one movie.
And you're just thinking, fuck, man.
Like, this is why.
And it's a really good lesson for like, you know, we tend to read a script and, okay, this guy's the tough guy.
And he's going to be the, it's like you work with, like, I had the fucking, like the opportunity to train with these Delta guys.
Like, you know, it's the most elite special forces combat fucking operators in the world.
I mean, I suppose the SEALs will take exception to that, but just numerically, right?
I think there's been less than 900 guys ever in the history of Delta.
You meet them, and they're not the biggest guys.
They're not the toughest guys.
They're not trying to fucking be hard.
And, you know, they're the most relaxed, at ease.
And it, you know, I found myself just being like, finally, I was like, what, can I just ask you, what do you think makes somebody like qualify for the Delta Force?
Like, what's a good Delta operator?
He's like, you know, problem solving.
Problem solving?
He goes, yeah, it's probably like your job.
unidentified
I was like, no, let me say, it's really not like my job.
But that was the closest insight I got to it, which was, I've always kind of thought this about like a guy's like Brady or something.
There's guys that just don't get tight and that they are kind of able to problem solve when the problem is like, well, that helicopter's crashed and we're 200 miles inside Afghanistan and we're outnumbered fucking six to one.
How do you think we should get home?
Like just having your wits about you to make that calculation while, by the way, you're in a fucking gunfight and things, you know, I'm sure that does make, because those are the people where I'd be in a fucking panic and I have no idea what to do.
And you get like attracted to the person who's like, seems to have it, like, hey, it's good.
It's not always the most, maybe it's just because they're so confident.
They're not like, I don't, like, I don't need to prove that I can kick anybody's ass.
I don't even get in fights.
Like, I have a weapon.
You know what I mean?
It's just, it surprises me how those kinds of extraordinary experiences and people or extraordinary people don't always manifest themselves in how they show up.
And I was backstage and was talking to one of the lawyers for the UFC about, we were talking about Connor McGregor, and he was telling me a great story about him.
And this guy walks up and he's in Chinos, like khaki pants and like a blue button-up, like, you know, kind of business shirt with spectacles.
And he's very small.
And I kind of don't really regard him.
And I'm still hearing this story.
And then Padgett goes, Matt, do you know Henry?
And I turn and it's Henry Cejudo.
unidentified
And I'm like, this fucking guy could wreck me right now.
It's like we have these ideas in our head, these caricatures, you know, of what a tough man is, what a good woman is, what this is, what that is.
And I think one of the beautiful things about film when a film is really good is you see these complex characters and it sort of like reformulates in your mind like what a person actually is.
You know, look, the fundamental challenge, I think, in life is like, it's like to find some humility, which means actually thinking you might be wrong about the shit that you're pretty sure about.
And it means that you kind of have to assume somebody else might have a point.
It's not like just writing everybody else off who disagrees with you because, oh, fuck him.
He's an asshole.
Those are things that actually take work to get to.
Because the first instinct, because you just defend your idea or whatever, it's easier is to just.
Everyone has their reasons for why they're doing it.
And people don't set out to be like, I'm just going to hurt someone or dominate the world.
You think, well, I got to protect what I have.
It's like, even, you know, I bring it back to this movie, but it's like, what I liked about Rip was it was kind of the slippery slope.
You know, that first time you take a little money and then, well, you know, I got to cover that.
I don't want to go to jail.
I think my reason why I did that, but now I've told a lie.
Now I got to cover that thing.
And now you have guys who both live by this code that's very, hey, you protect the people who are with you and you got to have this fucking.
And so now it's two people who are very similar, like by that kind of slippery slope, ultimately find themselves, you know, will kill one another.
Because it's really not, I don't, I don't believe in that one choice term.
It's like more, how do you find yourself?
You dig yourself in a fucking hole because you're just covering up the let trying to fix the last problem that's arisen, you know?
And everybody thinks is, of course, the roots for themselves is like empathize with themselves.
That's what we have to be concerned with, ourselves, our needs, our families, our basic shit.
It's hard to expect people to go like, all right.
And what about, you know, like what they think?
And I, and I think that's, I think it's a, it's a much more honest evaluation of people and it allows for like complexity and forgiveness and fucking all the shit that's sort of beautiful about people.
Like rather than this notion of like, well, we're going to be binary, good or bad, perfect or not, whatever.
And any infraction, then it's like permanently stains you.
That's like what we were talking about earlier about people that have been canceled.
You know, that this idea that one thing you said or one thing you did, and now we're going to exaggerate that to the fullest extent and cast you out of civilization for you.
And it's Because I bet some of those people would have preferred to go to jail for 18 months or whatever and then come out and say, no, but we can't, I paid my debt.
Like, we're done.
Can we be done?
Like, the thing about that, you know, getting kind of excoriated publicly like that, it just never ends.
And it's the first thing that, you know, it just will follow you to the grave, I think.
It's just like kind of, like I was saying, like that kind of sixth grade instinct to be like, oh, he's in trouble.
You know, there's this, you know, human, like, we have dark, fucked up instincts too, sometimes to like isolate people or get joy out of someone else's.
They're in trouble because maybe because part of it's saying, hey, it's not me.
You know, so if you can point the finger, everyone's looking over there.
But it's, it's like, yeah, and to take any forgiveness out of it, you know, is a really fucked up thing because then it makes it impossible, A, to actually go, all right, yeah, I did that.
Fuck shit.
That was wrong.
I get it.
You know, because it doesn't matter.
Once you've said you've done it, you become like an outcast.
And I don't think anybody wants to think, you know, like the sum total of who you are is your worst moment.
It's most of the people that I find, especially when there's someone that's publicly in trouble for something, most of the people that I know that have attacked people have a lot of questionable shit in their past.
And it's almost like they're trying to hide that by going on the attack.
It's like you tell me to see Wake Up Dead Man, the knives at the third knives.
I watched it.
I really liked it.
I thought it was a really interesting, like, you know, I'm not a religious guy.
I don't like that's, you know, and yeah, I'm aware of all the like, okay, you know, There's the religion, then there's people.
Who's supposed to be rational?
I thought it was a really beautiful movie about like what's the role of grace in life, you know and, and the really honest examination of that, like sitting side by side with yeah okay, you don't believe, but like you in and you know so.
It's not about like whether you're gonna argue over fucking evolution.
It's about like, how graceful are you in your life?
You know, how much fucking dignity can you afford other people and are you willing to recognize and see that there's maybe something bigger than yourself and that there's a reason to to like uh, to try to sort of be, to find that grace to get better.
You know, that was really beautiful and kind of rare and uh, really surprised.
There's a lot like if we're working as, if we're watching cuts after cuts and going in the editing room like there's a lot of kind of work around all the stuff that we have going that that that eats into a lot of time, mostly trying to keep up with what people are doing.
My issue is really that, like we've kind of developed this pattern where all these sort of movies that come out are more interesting and very like they're all jammed out at the last fucking month of the year and so all of a sudden you're trying to race movies.
Yeah right, I got really lucky like uh, recently my son you know who's 13 decided he wants to like watch movies, you know, and I like give him shit like.
What are you fucking doing?
We always work on tick, tock and shit.
Like what do you want?
Let's watch a movie.
And you know he's kind of blowing me off and rolling his eyes and he's like you know, I mean if you're a dad, you're kind of an asshole, fundamentally like, come on, you don't know what's going on.
You know what I mean.
Like he told me one time he was like dad.
I said look, let's watch this movie.
And I played him the trailer it was.
It was I can't remember what.
The movie was a good movie and the trailer was good.
He just looks at it and goes, you know what you guys ought to do?
You guys ought to work with some of the tick tock editors.
I went and told the editors, I told Billy and Chris.
I was like, guys, I got news for you, but but now he's like, all right, let's watch.
Like what are some movies I should watch?
You got Letterbox.
He got into that thing.
You know it's like.
So I was like so I said okay, what are the great movies?
I'll give you a list.
I started giving him a list, they started watching them and so I mean this is like heaven for me.
So it's like, okay, what are you watching?
Can comedy like?
Last week I watched taxi driver kick up all these Scorsese movies and it really was like, oh man I, I because in my mind i'm like sure i've seen that movie, I know it watched them again.
It was like like seeing, I could realize how much better they were than I even could appreciate when I watched it when I was younger.
And it really and it was just the most beautiful fucking experience for me To watch my son, like taking an interest.
And there's the, you know, the older two have always been a little bit like, yeah, dad, no, great.
And it was like, we're lucky to get it and lucky to the whole idea that you could even, the goal is like to make a living to not have to be like, well, I'm an actor, you know, slash a waiter, contractor, dentalist, whatever the fuck it is, you know, like actually, I can earn money.
I can, and we always figured, like, I don't need that much, especially if we now have kids.
You know, okay, we can make a living, or it's, you know, maybe it's fucking going to be dinner theater, or maybe it's going to be renting, maybe it's going to be there'll be a job somewhere that we can find where we can do this and keep doing it.
And when you run those together, like the piece of dust goes, and so the mortar explosions are going, and you get that feeling that you're adrenalized and you're seeing, you know what I mean?
That's just like you say, one of those things, a guy that's passionate and also, you know, caring about something, you know, it's that with that much passion is kind of connected to greatness.
And it's, I think, why we love to see that, whether, you know, sports, fucking, you know, fighting or whatever it is, there's something that makes you kind of love being alive and also love that person when you go, fuck, like, when you see Michael Jordan, like that was that whole movie that we did air is really all about, like, what does it mean to be great?
And how does it like touch everybody and change everybody and make people want to fucking improve their own lives?
Because somebody's just better at that thing than anybody else in the world.
Like in that kind of just empirical personal study, I haven't seen anybody who I think like qualifies for that who didn't also seem to be really suffering.
You want to, whatever it is that you can do, whatever it is you do do, you become more, whether it's a great game, a winning touchdown, whether it's a great film, a great song.
Yeah, it lights you up.
And it's the fuel that we all live off of that consumes, like we consume to make our culture move forward.
I remember where I was when I saw Denzel Washington play Malcolm X. Went to the movie.
Watch that movie.
And I remember leaving, I'm at almost 19 or something.
I'm thinking, I want to be a better man.
I thought that in my mind, you know, because of what I had seen this actor do and this performance and the way, you know, that was the only real conscious thought I had.
But I remember having it and kind of being surprised by it, you know, and it does.
That shit can, you know, it's really touched me, you know, a lot of fucking people's work.
And that's why you get that like, you know, you see the people, you want to let them know, you know what I mean?
That's the thing that's the cost of your fame, you know, that you have to, there's going to be a bunch of people that are going to come up to you and they want to say those things to you.
And like wanting them to say those things to you is the opposite of the mindset that you need to make those things.
You think like once you become really successful and you make a bunch of great things, it's going to be awesome having all these people come up to you.
Like, no, no, no.
I'm doing something else right now.
And I can't be all wrapped up in the fact that I'm changing your fucking life.
The elite levels of MMA, especially with USADA testing and, you know, and now drug-free sport testing, when they are making sure that people aren't on testosterone and growth hormone, all these different things.
I interviewed Matt Hughes after he lost to BJ Penn.
He lost the Walter Wade title to BJ Penn.
And I'm interviewing him inside the octagon.
He said, I'm going to be honest with you, it was actually a relief.
And he goes, the pressure of being the champion and having someone chasing you for so ever in the whole world chasing you.
He goes, I'm going to be honest.
I thought it was an incredibly brave moment for a guy to say that who is, you know, just this fucking amazing human being, this warrior, to say, I just got to be honest.
It's a relief.
Losing my title feels like a relief.
And I was like, wow.
That is so, so brave to be that honest in front of the, because everybody's like, you just got your ass kicked.
He's like, this is a relief.
You know, I took a burden off my back.
I'll be back.
I'm going to regroup.
But I needed that.
I needed to just step off the fucking top of the hill for a little while.
And then if you fuck up and overtrain, which a lot of those guys do just because they're such savages and they never want to leave the gym, then they don't peek right.
And then they come in and they're exhausted and they didn't recover properly.
And then in between rounds, they're too tired and they can't go out for the next round.
And you realize you can't bounce back, and this guy is fucking blasting your legs with kicks and hitting you with punches, and you can't get out of the way anymore.
I mean, it's the real, that's, but, you know, there's this balance of like making it interesting for this, for people to watch.
I, I've been a proponent of no stand-ups.
Don't ever stand anybody up.
When a guy takes you down, like, you get an advantage at the beginning of the round anyway because a striker gets to be standing up when you didn't earn it.
So you should never get stood up in a fight.
I don't care if the guy's doing nothing.
If he's holding you down and you can't get up, that's how it should be.
So it's more realistic, but it's the balance of it being a sport.
Yeah, making it because people get when people grab someone and take them to the ground, nothing happened, people go, boo, you hear it in the audience, and then the referee gets a little motivated and he stands people up.
It's just, but I mean, in terms of like inspirational performances and things that you, when you see like the human spirit elevated to the highest possible place when two very skilled men or women are fighting in a cage where they prepared for this for three fucking months.
And then, you know, the referee's like, are you ready?
And you can't help but have that feeling once it, you know, and yeah, some fights end up being disappointing, whatever, but that moment is always there.
I swear, I mean, Jamie might be able to prove me wrong, but I'm pretty sure that they cut to Alex Stewart and they cut to his wife, and she was crying.
And this is when they're coming to the center of the ring.
But by the way, for good reason, like this man might kill my husband.
Well, one of the things that's opening the doors for them to acknowledge it is soldiers because it's always been kind of like a left-wing-wing thing to be into psychedelics.
But all these soldiers are coming back with PTSD and drug addiction and a lot of CTE from bombs blowing up and IEDs and concussions.
And the only thing that's helping them is psychedelics.
So it's kind of like in Texas, former governor Rick Perry has started the Ibogaine Initiative.
So they're using Ibogaine to help all of these different soldiers, which is ironically the drug that Hunter S. Thompson claimed Ed Muskie was on when he was running for president.
Well, Rick Perry, because he's worked with soldiers and because he's worked with a lot of veterans that, you know, and he's a very compassionate and intelligent man.
And he realized, like, okay, maybe I'm wrong about all this psychedelic stuff.
And so he started getting behind this Ibogaine initiative.
They passed it in Texas, and now they're doing it with soldiers.
And they're going to do it with police officers.
And I mean, police officers experience more PTSD.
Like, I have a good friend who was a cop in Austin, and he said, and he was also in the military.
And he said, what I saw in the military was nothing compared to what I saw as a police officer.
He goes, I was seeing death and violence on a daily basis.
He goes, when you're deployed, he goes, yeah, you're going to see some horrible shit, but you're going to see some horrible shit mixed in, you know, over a course of time where, you know, you go out and things go live.
And every day you're pulling someone over and they might shoot you.
Like, you have no idea.
You're pulling up to tinted windows.
You don't know what the fuck is going on.
You're running the plate.
The license has expired.
You have no idea who's in the car.
You don't know anything.
And you've seen all the videos.
We've all seen videos of cops getting shot down when they're pulling over a car.
We've all seen it.
And so these guys are living with this fucking PTSD all the time.
And then they have to live in real life.
They're supposed to go home and they're supposed to just be a normal dad and a normal neighbor.
And their fucking head is just a hurricane of chaos.
And Ibogaine has been very beneficial for those people to just sort of come down and try to find the root of all this stuff and get them off pills and get them on the straight.
So this guy was like a frontrunner for the president, and he fucking completely cracked because everybody thought that he was on drugs because Hunter S. Thompson was just running around saying there's these Brazilian witch doctors are coming in to treat this guy.
And depending upon how intelligent your camp is, like some people are really smart and they'll spar where they're not hitting each other hard and then maybe one day of the week they go live, but you do it with trusted, you know, they're very close to you.
These are people that you care about and love, so they're not going to try to hurt you on purpose.
But sometimes not.
Like sometimes you're in a hostile gym and you've got to spar with people you don't even know.
They're from other countries.
You have a big name.
They're trying to take you out.
But the amount of damage these guys take.
I mean, I don't know if football's better or worse.
The thing about football is the big impacts are way worse.
Because when you've got a 300-pound super athlete that's fucking full-till all the way from across the morning start.
But for that glory, for that one moment when they win and the fucking 16,000 people are on their feet screaming, there's probably no drug like that that could ever reproduce it.
And those guys chase that high for their entire life.
And then after it's over, they feel oddly detached.
I don't know what his levels were, but they were like superhuman levels.
And there was a moment in time for a few years where they allowed him to use testosterone therapy.
And people refer to it as the TRT Vitor years because he was fucking terrifying because he has the mind of a veteran, an incredible amount of experience, but now his body is moving like a 25-year-old.
And so he was just annihilating people, just lighting people on fire.
But there's a lot of ignorance about peptides, what they actually do.
I mean, all it's allowing you to do is soft tissue injuries, heal quicker, and optimize your body's ability to produce hormones.
So instead of adding exogenous hormones, you're allowing your body to produce them more naturally, and it just makes you more healthy.
For a very unhealthy job where you're getting hurt all the time, it's going to be better for the sport, better for the athletes to allow them to all use it.
And it's also, there's no long-term damage that's going to do like steroids, where it shuts down your endocrine system.
So I hope they reform it.
But the idea was that there's so many fucking loopholes and so many people cheat.
Big camps used to hire scientists.
So they had a scientist on staff that was not only procuring.
But if they can figure out a way to, and there's a lot of proof of concept to this, can they figure out a way to extract testosterone from animal sources?
Because it's like so much water is being processed through the body that it doesn't have time to show the testosterone.
So there's a way to mask it, especially with like things that you would add to the IV.
So there's no, you can't, it's only food and approved supplements through like really high-level labs like Thorn, like Thorn supplements where it's third-party tested.
So they don't, they can't do anything.
But for a while, they let them do it.
And those TRT Vitor days are my favorite fights to watch.
On the left, though, dude, that motherfucker was terrifying.
When Luke Rockhold fought him, he told me, he goes, dude, when I stood next to him at the fucking weigh-ins, he had muscles on his teeth.
He goes, this fucking dude was so jacked.
He was so scared.
I was like, what the fuck is he on?
Because he knew he was on something.
It's just, it's cheating.
It really is.
Because you can jack your levels way above a normal human being's.
And that's what a lot of guys, there were a few fighters that were pulled from cards because, like, say, if a really high level is like 1100, they were testing like 18, 1900.
They were like people that have never lived before.
By the way, John beat Vitor when Vitor was in his prime, and Vitor caught John in a full arm bar, totally locked his arm out, hyperextended it, popped it, went backwards.
You can see the video of it.
His elbow is going that way, a wooden tap, and then beat him in the next round.
Last Olympic championship was that was a great game against France.
That was fabulous.
I mean, yeah, they're going to wreck some smaller countries and stuff.
But okay, you're playing pros.
They're playing pros.
The whole definition of amateurism has gotten a little bit like, you know, yes.
People find like a convenient definition of it according to what's their, like you see in college sports is changing and stuff.
Like, look, I got no problem if you're going to apply the rules evenly, but sometimes when it feels like it's just an excuse to like for the NCAA to make a billion dollars off the TV deal, like, no, no, no, you guys, you're getting it, you're getting an education.
Yeah, and I'm glad they've changed that with college sports because these guys are the reason why you're filling up the seats and they deserve that money.
It's really, I mean, there are a bunch of different factors, like the director is being the most important one.
But if you read a script and like we've read so many thousands and thousands of scripts and written so many scripts and worked on so many movies that If we read something and it's that thing we were talking about earlier, you know, you get that kind of emotional, something happens when you read it.
You go, okay, well, then you pay attention to it, maybe read it again, go, wait a minute.
You know, if it moves you in that way, then, you know, ultimately the big decision is saying yes because you're going to spend the last point over which you have total control.
Like we spent this whole week in New York doing, you know, I don't know how many interviews, you know, the quick ones with all the five-minute interviews, all the evening shows, the day shows.
Yeah, all that stuff.
And this, just given how many people listen to the show will be more meaningful.
We think, I mean, that's our, we were speculating.
If you look at it, that's it because they've changed to like all of it feels kind of produced and forced and advertised and people have become resistant to anything that feels kind of like a gimmick and a shtick and you go on and you do your song and dance and they say the thing it looks great and nobody cares.
Like they're looking to go either because somebody they know says it's interesting or somebody that they is trusted and a trusted person is in like your, like you said, your feed, right?
And it's your friend or your cousin or it's or they affix that to somebody which has become a more rare thing like who's a like a legitimate neutral arbiter, right?
Who I can't predict what they're going to say before I go there.
There are a few of those, fewer and fewer of those people in the world, even those are proliferation of more and more voices.
And it's kind of paradoxical.
Like the form of entertainment is getting shorter and shorter and shorter.
So you're like a seven second, you know, we're an advertising company.
We do most of the spots that we release, like 15 second spots, six second spots for social, the ones most people see.
And then there's this one form, which is like long form discussions that are whatever, two hours long.
And the amazing thing to me is, you know, in a world where it seems like you can't get people to pay attention more than a few seconds, there's a kind of a hunger for that.
So there's like this form, and that's why you see these are getting more popular.
Obviously, you have this massive audience.
And it's kind of flying in the face of the whole other trend.
And I think, and I don't know, that it probably has something to do with like, who do I think is authentic?
And am I actually going to willing to extend my two hours of my time to sit there and listen through?
And that an argument that people probably do appreciate and understand conversations that have context and nuance and where there's like a back and forth.
They're just much more selective about who they're willing to kind of give that sort of voice to in their life.
It's also the voice of the public too, because when people start talking about things online and things go viral online and people just start like saying how great they love the film or how great this album is or something like that, it just takes off organically now.
If you feel like somebody else who obviously has no dog in the fight is going, hey, this is great.
You should see it.
I'm the same thing.
If I hear somebody tell me, like, you know, who I respect, hey, you got to see that thing.
That means more to me than anything, right?
Because I believe that.
And so the closer you can get to that, which is why I think the act of, A, like telling the same story about you should go see the movie to a bunch of people with a certain limited reach, it's just not that efficient.
But you have to because it's like, well, we sat down with our own Patricia Zanaka and talked about the movie.
And you kind of do that ostensibly because it means a little bit more in that market.
But I think ultimately it's like more and more people realize they're being sold to, see through the fucking act and this sort of bullshit of it.
They recognize that, you know, you go out and sell every movie, you know what I mean?
The good and the bad.
And then we got to decide, well, which one, and who can you count on?
Well, it's mostly going to be that, like, the word of mouth, your friend.
And now you can see that person in your media experience, you know.
I think also like this format, at least I know why I started listening to the podcast was because in the world, like the divisive kind of, the way everybody was talking, these sound bites and all this shit.
And it was just like the ability to just listen to human beings talk, often who had different points of view, but like had a civil conversation was like, was such a welcome thing, given the kind of the hysterical kind of frenzy of divisiveness that's kind of, it just feels, it's just like, you know, it's like if I open my phone and look at the news, I've been like, fuck.
And it's like, put it down.
It's just, it's like, I feel my cortisol level go up.
And to actually hear people, listen to people I know I don't agree with, but listen to them and just and just think about it.
You know what I mean?
I mean, approach life with a little bit of humility.
Not hold on to what you believe, obviously, but keep listening.
Isn't it funny that this has become the shared cultural like we listen to that podcast and then actually experience that because and also people, why don't people trust the media?
Well, because the media doesn't do that because they compress it and because the truth, it's money.
Because actually doing that is not with money.
It's just ratings and the perceived idea that like, well, if you simplify it or you position it one way or another, you engender outrage and that's simple or just pure one-sided ideas that are that are simple.
But the news used to be the idea was, look, here's the FCC.
We're going to let these networks broadcast their shows and make money on it.
But here's the deal.
You got to give an hour of that and lose money on that hour to tell the news and try to tell it objectively.
Then it started to be, no, you got to make money for that hour too.
And if you're going to make money, that's a different incentive than tell the truth or reporters or any of those things.
And people try to hybridize them.
But at the end of the day, you're a more successful reporter if more people watch you because advertisers pay more.
And then they're doing the same thing, looking at their data, you know, Grant.
What are people watching?
What kinds of stories?
And I think this is simple answers because you're just making it into a profit game.
Those incentives are not aligned with just trying to get down to like even reporting basic facts.
And then what happens is people just like there was an art to like, look at how great that communicator stick to the message and they do their points.
Okay, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, but any longer than that, it just starts to look like a fucking robot on, you know, and like I said, what we need to follow through with, you know, like, yeah, sometimes you can get the same hand gesture and the same bit with that, but I'm, you know.
Well, that's the other thing about people that are online too much is they're so concerned with other people's opinions that they don't have enough time to formulate their own.
They're just so concerned with how people are going to perceive everything you say that you're like handcuffed.
We were saying about like one of the benefits of getting older and doing this for a long time is you realize like nobody really gives a shit as much about you as you do.