The Creator Of Entourage Doug Ellin | PBD Podcast | Ep. 199
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PBD Podcast Episode 199. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Doug Elin & Adam Sosnick.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Why would you pet on Joliet when we got pet David?
Value payment, giving values contagious.
This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to hated.
Ideally running, homie, look what I become.
I'm the one.
Pickleball.
That's a good one.
Everybody's talking about it.
So, anyways, today's guest, special guest, if you ever watched Entourage, my dad and I that's a we watched Laker games together.
We watched Entourage together, and it was mandatory.
And the man who created Entourage is on the podcast today, Doug Ellen.
Doug, thanks for being on the podcast.
Thanks for having me.
Yes, so we were talking about a bunch of different stuff.
There's breaking news.
Tyler's about to tell us something happened on Nancy Pelosi's husband.
We're going to talk about Elon Musk taking over Twitter.
We're going to talk about conditions of Hollywood, LA, California, your thoughts on Kanye.
A lot of stuff is going on.
Back to back to back.
Lots happened.
Yes.
And last night, you said you had a long day at a professional semi-pro pickleball tournament.
Yeah, I mean, this is a real deal.
I mean, Danny Werfel has this charity, Desire Street Ministries, and he put together this event, which is incredible.
Kevin Anderson, who's top five ATP tennis tour in the last five years.
Of course, everyone knows pickleball legend.
Kevin Anderson.
Tennis legend.
I mean, tennis.
By the way, do you know who Danny Werfel is?
The name he referenced for extra cool points.
Anyone?
Anyone?
Wow, in Florida.
Universal.
He was a quarterback.
I think Texas Trophy winner, Florida games.
He's in the Geno Toretta era, right?
He's from when Gino was playing for Miami.
Danny's a little bit younger.
What year did he play late 90s or 2000s?
I would say mid 90s.
Yeah.
Yeah, Gino's early 90s.
Gino's the same era.
Danny, you know, it's probably top five NCA quarterbacks of all time.
And so it was a pro-am, but it was serious.
Rick Barry, Hall of Fame NBA player.
You know, I think he's got a higher shooting percentage from the foul line and Steph Curry.
Yes, he did the underhead shooting.
I mean, by the way, both his sons.
He produced great shooters.
He produced, one of them won a dunk contest.
Brown Barrett, you know, dunking it, I think, from a free throw line.
Free throw line.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a big deal.
He stepped over a little bit.
He's also the only guy to ever win a NBA dunk contest in the warm-ups.
It wasn't in a jersey.
Yeah, that's right.
White boy Duncan from the free throw line warm-ups.
And by the way, I know everyone's going to laugh at pickleball, but trust me, the world is changing.
I've been promoting this for five years, and now it's really coming to pass, and real athletes are getting involved, professional tennis players.
So it's pretty cool.
So Pat should buy a team.
100%.
What are they going for?
It's a million bucks right now, but they're not, like, offering up, you know, 20 of them.
And hopefully we'll – I'm trying to get involved.
So hopefully.
For the professional league, you can buy one for a million bucks.
Yeah, I mean, the professional league started like a month ago.
This thing has all exploded.
LeBron's got one.
Tom Brady's got one.
I'm trying to get one.
We'll see.
Come on.
You could do it.
We'll see.
We'll see.
Maybe off camera.
Maybe it is.
It's a million bucks.
By the way, last night.
Other than going to lunch, you guys, we have to preface what happened last year.
Oh, I believe this book.
Because you're saying pickleball.
Last night we had Antonio Brown here sitting in your chair right there.
Oh.
And we were there for three hours.
And it was, I want to say, the most, I don't even know how to describe it.
The first 45 hours.
I'm saying it was heated.
Like at any point, something could have happened.
It was intense, constant until the last 45 minutes.
For sure.
And we talked everything.
We talked.
Was he enjoyable?
You have to see it.
The climax was good.
The ending was great because we just got to talking.
And it was eventually fine.
But at first, it was extremely interesting.
What was the tipping point of crazy?
It's turning off.
It's just taking the headset down.
We'll stop this thing right now.
I got up, got some water.
We started just, you know, so it was a real podcast.
Yeah, it was dope.
Yeah, but it had to get there because it was, it was, but I will tell you this: the audience, when they see the podcast, they're not, they're going to be glued to the screen saying, what the hell is going on?
You're going to be, no, no, you're going to be so confused for 45 minutes.
You know, you guys got higher budgets than we got because we got a call right when he started acting crazy and said, do you want Antonio Brown on your podcast?
Yeah.
And then he said, all right, we need a bag.
And I was like, a bag?
And they're like, yeah, cash.
And I said, how much cash do you want?
They wanted 20 grand for him to come on the podcast.
He'll be on the podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, he might have done less for you.
You have a bigger audience.
Was it security?
By the way, that is becoming a business model.
The part about the nowadays, people are calling saying, hey, will you be on my podcast for 10 grand?
Will you be on my podcast for 20 grand?
Will you be on people?
Are now paying to get podcasts.
And the bigger gifts, you got to pay more for to have you on your podcast.
It's becoming a business model.
But yeah, he's an interesting guy.
I'll say this about Antonio Brown.
It got real awkward.
I mean, you've done, I even said, I go, because at one point he's like, you don't know where I'm from?
We're like, Antonio, listen, with all due respect, sat down with killers, mafia guys, okay?
The biggest politicians in the world, UFC fighters that kill for a living, like Marines, CIA, with all due respect, like just going to kind of G-Check you for a second.
I get it.
You're a football player, but like.
You know what?
It seems like, you know, they're talking about all the head injuries in the NFL.
And it seems right now we're seeing a lot of them go crazy.
Oh, yeah.
And I don't even make fun of them because it's sad.
That's where the fire.
It's in one minute.
Yeah.
Just because of that, 30 minutes of arguing over that comment right there.
The word CTE came up.
He brought it up before us.
Very sensitive.
And then it just.
You know what?
I'm sure it's a sensitive issue for them because they don't even realize what's happening.
Exactly.
With mental illness awareness right now, obviously you can't excuse his behavior still, but it's sad.
What do you think was going on with because he's still the president of Donda Academy?
Yeah.
Antonio Brown is the president of Danda Academy.
Yeah, that's a different thing.
That's why I want to send my kids.
I definitely want to get them.
So what do you think was going on with Kanye?
I mean, he said a lot of different things, but why was this the tipping point?
What do you think about what's going on with him?
Well, you know what?
I mean, again, getting into mental illness, I don't excuse behavior for mental illness.
And I also, I'm a Jew, but as a Jew, I don't want to make this only about Jews because I think this country is becoming so polarized with everything.
And anytime someone speaks like this, everybody should speak up, whether it's about Muslims, whether it's about police officers.
It's all the same stuff.
And so what do I think is going on with Kanye?
I think he's having some type of bipolar episode, but who gives a shit?
It's like, you know, he's, he, and again, you know, somehow this became a free speech issue.
Speak all you want, and everybody else should speak also.
And I should have the right to not buy your fucking crappy sneakers and do whatever else.
But, you know, it's sad to see because what happens is, and I see it, I have a lot of friends who are police officers in LA.
And there's real world consequences to this stuff.
Kids get threatened at schools and some guy walking down the street gets punched in the face and Nazis are on the 405.
So again, though, just separating it from, because I don't want to just make it all about his comments about Jews.
It's just, you know, like we're in this, we're in this place right now in this state where everybody wants to make the groups even worse.
And I swear to you, it's so nuts that 10 years ago, I thought my kids were going to be in a colorblind world.
I really was stupid enough to believe that.
In the last three years, we have gone backwards in ways that is quite frightening.
Do you think so?
Yeah, oh, yeah.
Tell me why.
How do we get there?
I think the media.
I think the media, you watch both sides of it.
I mean, CNN will put every single day how racist the country is, how awful cops are.
And, you know, of course there are bad cops.
There's bad everything.
There's bad football players like Antonio Brown.
You know, I mean, there's just bad people everywhere.
So, and then Fox on the other side, you know, they put Kanye on.
They cut out all his anti-Semitic comments.
And then, you know, I posted on Instagram.
I really didn't think there was going to be any other side to this conversation.
I just thought, yeah, I just said, everybody unite.
We shouldn't speak badly about any groups, not Indians, not police, not, you know, whatever.
And all of a sudden, I'm getting this, you're a censorship guy, you're this.
And I'm far from a censorship guy.
I mean, I'm interested to see what happens with Elon and Twitter.
But I believe in free speech.
And it's just sad to see a guy with his platform speak like this and endanger so many people, you know, and for what?
What does he get out of it?
I don't know.
Do you think the repercussions he got, you know, Adidas cuts ties?
Okay, that's that cost him a couple billion dollars.
Balenciaga cuts ties.
Vogue Anna Winter cuts ties.
Drop by CAA, Dropbuy's lawyers, all these Spotify up, you know, their downloads are, you know, decreasing.
And Spotify hasn't made a decision to drop them yet.
They're thinking about keeping them, just like they kept Rogan when Rogan was, everybody wanted him to be canceled, restricted from Instagram and Twitter.
Stadium shows canceled, documentaries shelved, $120 million of cash left.
Yesterday, he said he's lost everything and his net worth dropped $2 billion in a day.
What was the tipping point?
Because he said stuff for a while.
He wore the White Lives Matter that drove a lot of people insane when he rolled that a couple weeks ago.
What was the tipping point?
Well, you know, everybody's going to say it's the Jews and we control everything and that's what happened.
So, you know, I don't know what the tipping point is.
And I, you know, I don't believe he's, I don't believe he's got any financial problems and anytime soon.
But you're not thinking about like doing a GoFundMe for the category.
I'm not.
I'm just thinking if you want to come up with the idea.
I paid him, you know, Kanye was on entourage.
I paid him like $1,100.
So he probably still has that in his campaign.
That's all you had to pay him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, honestly, they called us to be on the show.
So that was how it worked with all our cameos they came on.
So but everybody wanted to be on the show.
Like that was the show to be on.
Yeah.
People probably would have done it for free to be on the show.
Yeah, well, the only reason we paid whatever we paid a sell.
But I mean, first year, it was impossible to get anybody.
You know, Mark Wahlberg, I almost, I didn't know if Mark was going to show up for his cameo in the first episode.
I remember.
And he was the executive producer.
Yeah.
I was like, Mark, are you coming?
Are you this?
Busy.
You got $1,100 for me, Doug?
I'm unsure we were when we started.
And then by season two, people started calling us.
But with Kanye, look, it's a long road, and we'll see how long this lasts or whatever.
And again, I'm not trying to keep the guy down.
He's an incredible talent.
And I don't want to just see him come out and go, oh, I'm sorry.
I'd like to get my money back.
And I just, you know, you want to see someone be educated and understand how dangerous it is to lump people into groups and any groups.
You know, I, you know, he's got problems with, you know, some Jewish music executives.
I'm sure there's a million people who do.
But when he talks about controlling the media, Rupert Murdoch is the biggest guy in the media by a million fucking miles.
He's not Jewish.
And you don't normally say, you know, you don't hear, oh, you had a bad interaction with this Catholic guy.
You don't go, these fucking Catholics are killing us.
I mean, I don't know what they're doing to us.
So it's sadly, and why it's so scary for Jewish people is with such a small group.
And somehow it always comes back.
And I've been saying it for years.
You'll see eventually the right and the left somehow comes together and goes against us.
And again, I really don't want to make it just about his Jewish comments.
I think people speaking hate about any groups, you know, speak out against it.
I'm not saying he should be off Twitter.
I'm not saying he should be off Instagram or anything else, but I'm not going to go see his concerts, you know?
And I have before.
I think it all started going downhill when Trump was in.
started wearing the maga hat and that's where all the publicity and everything came in but what makes it like weird is that you don't you don't see oh i've never seen somebody so influential somebody's a billionaire person with such a platform that has a mental illness that people like tmz everybody they just want to see them and hear them yeah You know what I'm saying?
They're just like, put him in front of more and more and more and more.
If you go on TMZ right now, it's just him.
Well, everybody will put him on.
Would you put him on?
Who him?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So, I mean, you know, I'd put him on our podcast if he wanted to come on.
I won't give him a bag, but the biggest thing is, is, you know, guys have made comments before, anti-Semitic comments before.
So for me, when you hear comments being made, you know, and you sit there and you watch it, you're like, okay, Jimmy Kimmel still's got a show.
And back in the days, you know, hey, he dreaded Blackface.
Howard Stern is a rock star.
And you want to see what Howard Stern did one time as a skit years ago?
He's still got a $600 million, whatever, massive contract.
So the hypocrisy is what's the most annoying thing.
I do think it's times.
And I'm never going to say blackface is okay or something.
But I can tell you when I was a kid and I never put on blackface, there's no pictures of me.
I wanted to be Eddie Murphy so badly when I was a child that I would dress up as buckwheat for Halloween.
Now, I did not do blackface, but I can tell you, when I was a 12-year-old kid, I had no idea that this would offend people.
And Howard Stern, again, I'm not going to defend Howard Stern, but Robin has been his partner for 30, 40 years.
And I think Howard Stern is a liberal.
So part of it is, whether you're doing art, whether it's good art, bad art, that's a whole different issue than when you as a person go, I have a problem with this group of people.
I have a problem with Indians.
What are you talking about?
The last three years, everybody's telling me they got a problem with white people.
I mean, they're not being canceled.
You got people talking about they got problems with whiteness and, you know, all these, and I'm not even white.
I'm Iranian.
I'm in the middle.
I'm not black.
I'm not white.
I'm probably the one that gets targeted more being a guy born and raised in Iran.
But you hear these comments being made about whites.
It's totally fine.
But you hear the comments being made about the other side.
Oh, my God.
So I understand what you're saying.
I'm not saying too, I actually didn't make the comment about Kimmel about him getting canceled.
I don't think he needs to get canceled.
I don't think Howard needs to get canceled.
I don't think I'm glad Rogan didn't get canceled.
They almost tried to get that guy to get canceled.
And Spotify stood behind him.
And then eventually they didn't.
So with Kanye here, he's pushing the envelope extremely.
Like to say a comment, what was the comment he used?
He says, I'm going to go DEF CONCON 3 on 3.
Yeah, DEF CON 3.
I mean, yeah, that's not.
You can't do that kind of show.
But by the way, the way you handle that is the way Musk handled it.
And he called him.
He says, hey, what are you doing?
And they had a conversation.
I just had a conversation with Kanye.
He seems sincere.
And, you know, he's going to work on this area.
And boom, he kept him on.
It got worse.
I mean, it got worse.
He goes on everything and says worse stuff.
And again, I'm not suggesting who should cancel.
And the question is, which I was talking to some friends last night about it.
I mean, Adidas, the company has fallen apart as is.
And this was an enormous financial loss for them.
So I'm sure forgetting their Nazi past, which they have, which is to me is somewhat irrelevant, you know, because I don't believe in the sins of your father should be on this.
But I'm sure there were terrifying discussions inside this company and people who are going to lose their jobs and people who have to feed their families and all that stuff.
So it's hard for me to just go, you know, put myself in a position of, oh, you know what?
I can make $100 million today with Kanye or I can just go, you know what?
I'm going to make a stand.
But I'm glad that they did.
And I don't think that's canceled culture.
I think that's going, I don't want you out in front of my company spewing this nonsense and this garbage.
And again, I don't, and I understand as an Iranian what you're saying, but the sad thing is with all the comments when they come after white people and Howard Stern, who is one of my favorites.
I mean, Howard, he used to have Daniel Carver on the racist.
And the Jews were always the lowest group.
We were below everybody.
So the weird thing is we kind of look like we're white, but then we're not really.
So we get into this group where everybody comes after us.
And, you know, but again, I'm just trying to say, as corny as it sounds, it's like enough grouping any group together.
You have a problem with a Jewish guy or an Iranian guy.
That's your problem with him.
100%.
That's it.
I'll make a couple of points.
Point number one.
By the way, just so you guys know, we've made history.
This is the first time in the history of the podcast.
We got two Assyrians and two Jews.
Oh, wow.
That's actually what I was going to bring up.
Oh, ironically enough.
Who's the other Jew?
Adam's Jewish.
Nice.
Who's the other Jew?
Come on, who's the other Jew?
I don't like to, you know, I don't like to stereotype a handsome face like that.
Thank you, brother.
A couple quick points.
Did you see the interview he did with Lex Friedman?
I saw some of it.
So I think Lex is an absolute stud, very just smart thinker, just brainiac, very logical actor.
And I've never seen him get emotionally triggered.
And Kanye did that.
So when you can do that to the kind of a rational, logical guy, it's testament to that.
But he made a very good point.
He's like, and this is where they went back and forth, back and forth.
He's like, listen, stop with the group stuff.
Individuals screwed you over.
Use their names.
That's how you get even.
Bill fucked me.
Rick Rubin fucked me.
Whoever it is.
You can name them.
And that's how you get even.
And that's how you even the score.
It's also so ridiculous.
Jews got me.
I mean, I mean, these African-American singers in the 60s really did get screwed.
How did Kanye get fucked?
He's richer than he was rich.
Well, hire a good Jewish lawyer to read your fucking contract.
Point number two, I think that you talked about like Adidas specifically or Balenciaga or Vogue, whatever.
I think there's a major difference between a full-on brand, a fashion brand distancing themselves from you versus a Spotify.
I'm totally okay.
If Adidas wants to do their thing, Balenciaga, do your thing.
You don't want him representing your brand.
But Spotify, that's his music.
I'm totally against that.
If he's rapping about killing Jews, all right, maybe.
But he's not, that's not what it is.
So I'm fully against that.
Thirdly, and this is what we're talking about Jews and Assyrians.
You've dealt with this before, where you went into a room to get a job to be a part of a company, and they're like, yeah, we don't do business with Armenians or Assyrians.
And you're like, what did I do?
You're like, well, we've had a bad experience.
It's like, judge me by the content of my character, not by da-da-da-da, Martin Luther King.
And I think that's ultimately what we're talking about here.
Absolutely.
You've dealt with this, PBD.
Yeah.
I mean, look, here's the one thing when I was watching AB yesterday.
There's a trend.
There's a difference between being a troll because it works.
The business model troll is very effective.
It's a very, very effective business model to accelerate getting eyeballs.
Look at what Andrew Tate did.
He got under people's skins and boom, the most viral man on the internet.
No one's getting more eyeballs than the guy does an interview.
Boom.
Everybody wants to know what this guy's got to say.
But there's a thin line.
Like Conor McGregor was a very good Smack Talker until he lost the fight to Dustin Podi and says, hey, tell your wife to stay out of my DMs.
And then boom, he crossed the line there when you're talking about trolling.
There's a line for trolling.
You don't cross.
When him and Mayweather were going at it, great.
It sold tickets.
We were all curious.
You know, the fight went, what, nine or ten rounds?
But he was a professional troller.
So was Mayweather.
So was Trump.
So are a lot of these guys.
Jake Paul, major troller.
It's a very, very effective business model.
These days.
It is.
It's generally always been, though.
But the way it was done before was in a different way.
Muhammad Ali and everybody.
They were just.
Robert Maxwell.
Jelaine's father was a troll going after Murdoch and Murdoch was trolling him.
This trolling concept with Onassa's trolling John F. Kennedy.
This is not a new thing.
Right.
But the difference is, if I may, social media has amplified that because now you can do your own distribution.
You don't have to rely on no question about it.
But troll individuals.
And then there is, and then there is like, you know, it's like, you know, sometimes like you're trying to get attention.
You're trying, like, let's just say sometimes a podcast is not doing good or a show is not doing good.
Yeah.
And they're like, man, I got to show some boobs.
I got to show some this.
I got to show some bot.
I haven't been getting a lot of likes on my Instagram.
I got to say some crazy shit to you.
And then he's like, no, man.
Now, now your business model is too reliant on how everybody reacts to you and you lose authenticity.
That's when you get authentic.
That's what I was going to say.
Again, I don't know what anybody else does because I've never had that in my brain.
I've always tried to be as authentic as I can and I try to just speak in a way that hopefully speaks to all groups.
And we're going to keep repeating the same thing.
But, you know, you want to troll somebody, you're pissed at somebody specific, troll them specifically.
But once you start lumping in groups, it's dangerous.
But like I said, it's a long road.
Part of me thinks Kanye is, this is all exactly what you're talking about.
He's trolling all of us.
And while he lost some money at the moment, he'll be back and he'll have an album in a year and it'll be this and it'll be huge, you know, provided it's good.
Well, but before the Jews, which is the, you know, throughout history, they've been a major scapegoat.
But right now, obviously over the last couple years, it's been Asians.
Yeah.
Oh, you're Chinese.
Clearly, you've given everybody COVID.
Like, no.
I'm from Vietnam.
I'm from Hong Kong.
Like, stop grouping me into this.
It's a very slippery slope and it ends up getting where it gets very ugly.
Nobody did that.
Nobody did.
Nobody did what?
Nobody said you're Chinese.
You're the one that gave me the virus.
Are you kidding me?
Stop Asian hate was a real thing.
No, nobody did that.
What?
No, nobody did.
That was a campaign to pin again the same thing he's been talking about the last three years is to pin Biddle X against Weiss, CNN against Fox.
This is the stuff that they make up that you believe and you're like, oh my God, this.
Nobody did that.
I never went to a person saying, yeah, COVID is because of your fault.
You didn't because you're not an idiot.
No, no, but people did do it.
Stop.
This is a real thing.
This is not a real thing.
This is what Asian people have been beat up because of this.
There are actual stories of that.
Real life, actual case examples of these exact scenarios.
But why, though?
But why, though?
Because some people string elements are fucking idiots and they'll take them an inch.
They'll take them off.
Go to the seed.
Go to the seed.
The root of the issue is when a CNN or MSNBC or the media says constantly, this is what's happening.
And then there is reaction to it to get the attention.
That's why we can't sit here and naively think people are going around because somebody from the top says COVID came from these guys and they're blamed.
The same thing can be said when they said COVID is because of Trump's fault.
No, COVID is this person's fault.
COVID is that person's fault.
So we can play that card all we want.
The same story can be said on the other side.
The moral of the story is the best thing that Doug just said is the following.
I said, he says, I feel like we're going backwards.
And I asked, why?
He says, media.
And you turn on the media, everybody's like, everybody hates each other.
We don't.
We don't hate each other.
I mean, we can sit down and have a civil conversation and figure things out.
You know, we can sit down.
Not everything that happens is because people are judging the other person.
One scenario doesn't mean there's a million scenarios where people are being convinced.
One instance of a issue happening is happening a million times everywhere.
It's not.
It's happening here and there.
So the more you promote it, it gets to nine people, 100 people, 700 people, 20,000 people.
That's how this kind of shit gets started.
I don't disagree with that.
I'll say one caveat.
It takes a seed to plant a tree.
Oftentimes, yeah, hear me out here.
Oftentimes, a small story, a real story, an actual case example of an Asian guy getting beat up or a black guy like a George Floyd getting killed.
Like that actually happened.
The media will water it and water it and give it fertilizer and grow that shit and amplify it.
But it did start with an actual example.
Do you remember the thing that was going viral in the streets of New York where kids were going around knocking people out?
And it's called something.
Knockout game, I think it was game game.
Because the knockout game was old people.
Yeah, just fucking.
Whose fault was that?
So say that incident happened 20 times.
Now all of a sudden, everybody is putting it out there.
Now other kids want to go do it.
Now other kids are noticing people are becoming celebrities.
Hey, record me while I'm doing this.
You're feeding the machine.
You're feeding the beast.
Well, the news is, I mean, it isn't even the news anymore.
It's just fear-mongering.
And it's honestly, it's not even new, though.
I remember when I moved to LA and I'm from New York.
I grew up with murders and stuff.
And when I got to LA, everyone's like, they carjack you in LA.
Be real careful.
And I remember in LA, I would drive around Beverly Hills in 1990 and pull up like eight feet from a red light so I could fucking escape if anyone attacked me.
And it is, you watch the news or whatever they want to call the news, and every five seconds they are showing you something that you should be scared of.
And they're not really giving you any way out of it.
They're not giving you like news should be, okay, there's a hurricane coming.
You might want to get out.
You're not, you know, everybody's getting killed every five seconds.
Well, I don't remember.
Doug, you're a little bit older than me, but I don't know if you remember, but news used to be a non-monetizable, monetizable asset.
It was the news.
They weren't looking to make money off of it.
It was a, it was almost like a free thing for society.
And when they started to monetize news, oh, we can make money off this.
Oh, the bigger personalities and the more sensationalized that we can do things.
This is a cash cow.
This is a moneymaker.
Let's get some people that get eyeballs.
And now today with social media and amplification.
It's changed, but and I know everybody loves like Cronkite and stuff, but the reality is it's, it's still, you know, even when you're reporting the news, even if it was 30 years ago, it's skewed by somebody's vision of what they think, of who's being oppressed or who's this, what they want to show, whether it was Vietnam or whatever it was.
So it's a scary thing, but at the same time, we need it because you need access.
And that's why free speech is so important.
But right now, it's also the really hard thing.
I mean, you can just read the New York Times and then you can go read somewhere else something, the exact same story.
And you go, holy shit.
Yeah, that was like, I don't know what to think anymore, except I do know that the Times has got a liberal slant to it, no matter what they want to claim.
So it's a very confusing time and it's a scary time for young people, especially.
And, you know, I think what we're seeing with like the mental illness crisis is because people are so fucked up and they are so kind of lost as to which way to turn and hopelessness a little bit, I think, is entering the equation where you just go, what the fuck is the point?
We can't, you know, have a normal minute ever.
So and don't forget, speaking of like legacy media, back in the day was three major outlets.
Yeah.
ABC, NBC, CBS.
And then Fox showed up in the 90s.
It's like, who are these new guys on the block?
Right.
And now there's 10 billion different channels.
Go get whatever you want.
There's something for you.
Yeah, CNN changed the game.
Ted Turner is a legendary guy who started a business model, which was 24-7 news, and everybody thought that was crazy.
He almost risked it.
He risked it all.
And then next thing you know, he ends up buying the Falcons, buying the Braves.
I don't know who he bought.
He freaking pretty much bought half the world and then he ran for office.
He almost became a president.
So Ted Turner created that model of constant news.
Which seemed really good.
Yeah.
And it was really good.
And now you look at it, but it's weird even with CNN now, unless I'm crazy because I stopped watching it during the pandemic.
I mean, Cuomo and Don Lemon were getting me to the point of like, you know, everybody hates, if one side hates Tucker Carlson, one side hates, I hate both of them.
I just think they are good.
You know, I think they're.
It's a lot better to live that way.
Yeah.
I mean, I just think they are trying everything they can to make everyone hate each other.
And they're laughing all the way to the bank because they get paid to do this.
But CNN, I feel like, unless I'm crazy, I've clicked on a little bit.
I feel like they've moved a little right all of a sudden.
Like suddenly, they moved back to every single day.
But the way they're firing a bunch of people and getting rid of a bunch of people.
But the CNN I'm talking about, if you ever read the book by Ted Turner, I don't know if you've read it or not.
I have not.
Highly recommend it.
He wrote this a while back.
I will, because I love Ted Turner.
Oh, my God.
Dude, you won't be able to put it down.
If you download the audio book and on your flight back, you finish it, you'll be able to finish it at 1.5 speed.
What's the name of the book?
It's called Ted, I think.
They call me Ted.
1.5 speed?
I do 2.0.
I do 2.0, but I do.
This guy would go 4.0 if he could.
I'm going to 2.5.
You can on Spotify 3.5 and it's fantastic.
But going back to this, going back to this, when you hear how it ends, his level of disappointment with CNN, how the book ends.
And this is not a new book.
Can you pull up the book?
Just type in what the Ted Turner book.
It's not a new book.
It's an older book.
Not Teddy.
That's a porn.
What do you think?
It auto-corrects.
Yeah, it's too early.
They call me Teddy.
Call me Ted.
It auto-corrects.
Call me Ted.
Oh, my God, Ted.
Call me Ted.
That book right there.
By the way, it's 13 years old, which is perfect because nothing was happening.
It wasn't like.
13 years old.
So that book is due for a bar mitzvah.
09. 09 is what it is.
But CNN was a guy that changed the game and then everything else came after him.
I will say something about CNN.
No doubt, nationally, it has a tainted image.
In my opinion, and from what I talk to, especially people internationally, CNN International has a different cachet globally.
Like CNN International, which obviously we don't watch one in the States, does still have a high level of credibility.
And that's essentially, you know, the international arm of what Tim was.
So you watch a lot of CNN International Sports.
I actually do.
Very about what they're thinking around the world.
Because it's not CNN.
They just think we're a third world country.
Because think about it.
It's not as U.S.-based, left-right, conservative, liberal, Trump, yes, no dynamics, right?
It's just international news.
But I just have a different.
By the way, so for a guy that builds entourage on, you know, which, by the way, some may call it the greatest show of all time.
To me, it's a top five of mine.
I think it's just insane.
When you ask some people that are newer guys, younger guys, they're in their 20s, like, have you seen what's entourage?
I'm like, dude, you missed out.
I slapped them right in the face.
I go, what?
Life is not life.
You don't know what life is, boy.
But you do this and it becomes a phenomenon.
It becomes a, everyone's talking about it at work the next day.
Everyone's talking about it at the peak of insanity.
Tell us a crazy, insane story when Entourage was peaking.
How the in the community, how Hollywood was looking at it.
Tell us some crazy stories about the whole entourage movement.
I mean, I'm trying to think what crazy stories I have, but I always, even though I wrote that show, I was always kind of like a head-down guy.
And I'm not kind of living anything like that entourage life.
In fact, when Mark brought it to me, because Mark said I want to do a show about me and my friends, like, and I'm like a bunch of hanger-ons who hang out with a movie star.
I'm like, it's just not my speed.
And, you know, he said, think about it.
And I went home and thought about how to make these guys like a family.
And that's, you know, any successful show, that's essentially what they are.
But I mean, it's, you know, it's not an insane story.
But when my brother, my brother, my Harvard law brother, who works at Scatin Arps and is Mr. Conservative and like, I don't think ever thought like I was even mildly amusing to him when like when the hug it out thing happened, which honestly, it was, I mean, I've written far better lines than that and had no expectation of this being a thing.
But when my brother told me like his whole office in Scatten Arps, New York, all these Harvard guys that, you know, like I could never even visit Harvard.
I was too stupid to do that.
So when I hear that they were talking about it, and then when the athletes would call LeBron James and Tom Brady, like, we want to be on the show.
That's crazy.
It was, it was really wild.
Phil Mickelson, I mean, you know, I wrote this line or maybe Brian Burns wrote this line, whatever, but he's melting down.
Like Ari says, he's melting down like Mickelson at Wingfoot, which was like his famous U.S. Open meltdown.
And then I see him and I'm like, hey, Doug Ellen, entrage.
And he looks at me.
He goes, you know, I'm sitting in bed with my wife, minding my own business, watching my favorite show.
And this comes on, you know?
And so I said, well, come on the show.
And he still came on.
So it was a very cool, wild ride.
And the town really embraced the show, which, you know, speaking of cancer culture, when it started to turn that all of a sudden the show was racist, homophobic, and this, I'm like, okay, well, it was Obama's favorite show.
You know, the New York Times put it as the best show, you know, and it's weird to see how I don't think the world has shifted as much as you just said.
It really hasn't shifted, but there's just a lot of loud voices that are getting a lot of air and a lot of attention and a lot of power.
Could you do entourage today and get away with it?
Well, you know.
Would you be having to explain yourself every day for an episode?
Look, I have a new show that I'm doing now that I believe will speak to society in 2022 the way that did in 2003.
The reality is the real Ari could never speak the way he did in an office today.
So I would never write that.
So when people write things, which it's also funny with comedy, or, you know, some people don't find it funny, but with comedy, you get this thing like, you can't say that.
But the Sopranos, like Tony Soprano can, you know, murder his son's, you know, best friend's father or beat him up or threaten him, whatever.
And that's, that's okay because it's somehow more artistic.
But I wouldn't write things that don't exist, just like you wouldn't write a show in 2022 where people, you know, cars don't exist.
I mean, things evolve, things change, society's change.
And what I think, hopefully what I did well and why it captured the culture is, is I understood what Hollywood was like in 2003.
And by the way, it was mild compared to reality, you know, and but it still did speak of some reality and some real world issues.
Adrian Grainer, I mean, out of all the guys there, Kevin's been acting since he was six years old.
He's been in Hollywood for a long time, right?
You know, you can, and I'm saying Connell, you can go through everybody.
Kevin Dylan's been acting.
Yeah, Jeremy Piven's been acting for 40 freaking years at this point.
Incredible actor.
But where did you guys find him?
So Adrian was.
Pull up the picture for some people that don't know who he is from Entourage.
Go for it.
Adrian is.
For the people that don't know who he is, I want to spit in your face.
that you don't know who the entourage is.
Wake up.
But Adrian Steve Levinson who was Better picture Tyler.
That's embarrassing.
There you go.
That's a good picture.
He gets the worst picture of the guy.
Go ahead.
Chase in the house.
Vince.
So Steve Levinson, who I went to Tulane with and was a good friend and was Mark's manager, he represented Adrian.
And Adrian, when we were casting, I cannot tell you how hard it is to cast a movie star who is not a movie star.
This is literally one of the hardest things on the planet.
And Adrian, who was a great actor, who actually Woody Allen cast as a movie star, you know, opposite Leo in, I forgot what that movie was called, one of his least successful movies.
But Adrian would be in this office every day while we were pulling our hair out, trying to pull it out.
And then Steve one day was like, you know, I got the guy.
I'm like, who's the guy?
And he's like, him.
And Adrian had this beard.
Like we did this episode where he goes to Mexico.
Yeah.
Like he had this beard.
He would always wear a hoodie.
And, you know, and I'm not a homophobic guy at all, but I don't like stare at handsome men and go, whatever.
I'm like, the guy in the corner with like the hoodie and the beard, you know?
And he's like, yeah, that's the guy.
That guy cleans up nicely.
Yeah.
But even when he didn't clean up, we just put him on tape.
And one of our assistants did a genius thing back in 2003.
He took Connolly's audition and he took Adrian's audition and put them together.
And Connolly's, Connie's a handsome guy, you know, but when we put him together, Adrian just instantaneously felt like a movie star, you know?
And, you know, some people like to say he wasn't great.
And he went, let me tell you something.
There's very few people on the planet who could have pulled off that role and really had this presence in the show that just made you feel like, I want to be around this guy.
I want to be friends with this guy and I want to be in his orbit.
But so we were lucky because we saw every single person in town and it was tricky.
And when I started, I wanted a Wahlberg, which is even harder because, you know, as you look around in the movies, there's very few guys like Mark.
You know, so speaking of Ari Gold, was Jeremy Piven born to play that role?
Like, did you even look elsewhere?
So my agent at CAA was a guy named Jeff Jacobs, who I went to camp with 30 years ago.
He was my agent.
Jeremy, who I'd never met in my life, I loved.
And from Larry Sanders specifically.
So in the first outline that I. Larry Shandling, is that back in the day?
This is the Larry Santa show.
Probably, this is legitimately top five sitcoms ever made.
I mean, it's genius.
And, you know, Bob Odenkirk was the inspiration for the agent.
Better call Saul.
Is that Bob Motor?
That's what he was the agent on Larry Sanders.
And when I was thinking of an agent, he was kind of my inspiration.
But then I saw Jeremy and he kind of looked like a little bit like my agent.
And I, so in my first thing, I said, Jeremy Piven playing Jeff Jacobs, you know?
And then what happened was we went into the pitch meeting at HBO.
I had never heard of Ari Emmanuel.
I had never met him, nothing.
But he represented Mark and Steve Levinson.
So I was with Jeff Jacobs and, you know, they were with Ari and we walked into the room.
And I've told this before, but you know, I'm sitting there with 35 pages of like stories and material for this show.
And we walk in and Ari Emmanuel, before anyone says a word, goes, It's a show about Mark and his friends.
This guy's going to write it.
If it sucks, we're going to fire him and someone else is going to rewrite it.
Wow.
Okay.
Says it to your face.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
In the meeting.
And then, so that was pretty much the end of the meeting.
I didn't even really have to speak.
And the first thing I said to Steve Levinson after we walked out, I go, He's, Piven plays him.
This is the guy.
And we then got in the car and Ari calls.
I honestly did not say a word.
I had a 15-minute pitch ready to say.
I don't think I said a word.
Ari goes, done.
They bought it.
I said, do they want to read any of my writing samples?
And he goes, I just said they bought it.
Would you like them to unbuy it?
So instantaneously, I knew I had a character that would pop.
And then I meet Jeremy.
He's gotten into shape, and he actually kind of now looks like Ari.
It was so bizarre.
Can you pull up a picture of it's Ari Emmanuel?
Who happens to be Ram Emmanuel's brother?
Yeah.
Yep.
He's a manual show.
Him and Elon.
Did you see that?
A couple of scores washing his back.
But, you know, so then I had to convince Jeremy to do the show, by the way.
What do you mean, convince him?
He didn't.
Well, he didn't know who I was.
He didn't know who any of the other actors were.
And we weren't paying a lot.
It was a very low-budget thing when we started.
So we met and we convinced him to do it.
And it was great.
And, you know, there was no other options.
Well, click on that picture right in the middle, between right in the middle.
No, no, in the middle, right there.
That's the picture.
If you want to assume it a little bit, because that's who he's playing.
Yeah, it's wild.
He's a great actor, though.
He started doing stand-up right before the pandemic.
I started seeing him at the left right there.
I moved there from LA.
He's saying Pivot.
Me and Pivot.
And then I got off stage and he was like, dude, like, holy shit.
And like, we kind of, you know, we're both handsome, whatever.
So, but he was just, he was just awesome.
And like, he was like, hey, I'm going to go perform in Utah, one of the comedy clubs.
He's like, I was like, I'm going to go see my sister.
She's in the Air Force.
He's like, dude, come and open for me and feature.
He's in the back smoking cigars.
He's a cool person.
I saw you do a podcast with How You Live in J Pivot, his podcast.
I did his podcast.
I'm going to circle back to kind of what we brought up initially.
And no doubt, I mean, is he the only one who actually won an Emmy or something from the?
He's, as far as actors, he's the only one.
Yeah, Comic and Dylan were both non- Okay, but I mean, obviously he crushed him three in a row.
Yeah, it was ridiculous.
Um, you brought up a point earlier, like, oh, would he be canceled these days?
Who knows?
But sopranos, it's crazy.
Speaking of First Amendment, sopranos, and you can even go down the depth chart of like whatever, you know, murders or grand theft auto.
You could full-on murder someone, gun to the head, just blood plastic.
That's fine.
Yeah.
But God forbid you call someone a nasty name.
No, you'll get that on the Sopranos too.
Yeah, you can call them whatever you want.
But by the way, the crazy thing is with this show, which I'm curious to know about the business model.
I'll get into that.
Just I want to learn a little bit more about the business model.
It's in LA.
It's about like the, it's being shot like mostly the life is entourage.
Yeah.
So, but then I want to say a month ago, you said, I'm done with LA.
It's a thin line between becoming more and more common as city soft on crimes mixed with inflation, create an on-air that's becoming insufferable for many residents.
I was in LA with Kevin two months ago, and we went and he took me out to a nice restaurant.
We're having a conversation.
I'm looking outside.
What was the hotel we were talking about?
Right across the hotel.
SLS.
There's a treehouse.
Homeless guy built a treehouse recorder in Beverly Hills.
How bad are things in LA right now from your point of view?
You know what?
Again, that's like where the media is.
Go read the New York Times and they'll tell you this is racist to talk about.
But I have had more friends have interactions with violent crime in the last year and a half than in the previous 30 years combined.
Wow.
So my ex-wife and my brother's ex-wife are on the news running for their lives in Beverly Hills from shooting at El Pasteo on Canon.
I had a friend of mine with his eight-month pregnant wife with a guy put a gun to her stomach right behind the four seasons hotel.
My ex-wife also grew up with someone whose mother was killed in Beverly Hills this year.
And if you remember that guy just walked into her house in Beverly Hills, an 80-year-old plus woman and shot her.
So things are bad.
Now, I'm not smart enough to want to get into all of the stuff, whether it's bail reform, whether it's the pandemic, whatever it was.
All I know is three years ago, it was a very different place.
And people are fleeing at crazy rates and wealthy people.
And no matter what anyone wants to say about that, it's going to cause major problems because we already have the highest taxes in the country.
And if you take away all the high taxpayers, which look, I don't make a dollar right now.
So Conley pays nothing on this podcast that I do.
So, I mean, it's not, you know, that's not my high concern at this particular second, my own taxes, but it's just getting really bad.
And, you know, people don't feel safe.
You don't want to drive a nice car.
You don't want to wear your watch out.
And we go, is this going to become Venezuela?
Is this like what the plan is for this place?
And, you know, again, I don't want to speak as if I'm smart enough to understand these politicians because I watch them.
They try to find their issues that they can win on and then they go.
Whether they believe in anything they're saying, I no longer have any faith in that whatsoever.
Is it at a point where, obviously, Musk left, Rogan, a lot of people have left.
You read about Austin, people coming here, people going to Tennessee, people are going to Nevada.
Some of the guys are going to Nevada, which I think Mark Wahlberg went to.
Some story came out about him leaving to Nevada.
I think the story came out last week.
Who's the girl from Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts, just left as well?
And she's going to a completely different place.
But is it at a point where you're thinking about leaving or no, that's where you're going to be for the rest of your life?
Because it's the business you're in.
No, 100%.
I'm thinking about leaving.
I have a new show.
If it goes, it'll be in L.A.
I bought a house in the desert, which I understand isn't leaving California, but La Peta.
So I plan on spending a lot more time out there.
You're right.
You got to go in a cave and start writing.
Yeah, but I've looked in Florida.
I've looked in Nashville.
And I've thought about it, which is sad because LA has been a really great place.
And entourage, you know, part of entourage was a love letter to LA and how much I love that place and how I dreamed.
You know, my parents didn't let me go to UCLA because they said, you'll never come home.
And so I dreamt my entire life of being out in California, in Hollywood.
And it's a really beautiful place.
And you can never ever replace that.
And you can never replace the weather, which, you know, when I come here and I'm sweating at eight o'clock in the morning, you know, I go, this is tough.
Welcome to Miami.
Yeah.
So, but I'm seriously thinking about leaving.
I'm having a baby.
So I cannot even comprehend right now, you know, my fiancé walking down the street with a baby right now because it really does not feel safe.
So, and, you know, again, you're going to have, you know, jerkuffs like even Seth Rogan's like, oh, that's part of life in the big sneak car, you know, getting your car stolen.
No, no.
You know what?
That's fine when you have $100 million and you can just go this.
But, you know, when you don't, I just had, I had a flat tire.
It ruined a week of my life.
I got stuck in the desert.
So I just think that right now I'm hoping something turns it and people start to wake up, you know, because it is the same thing I say about Kanye.
It's like, yeah, we want to help everybody with mental illness, but we can't allow lunatics to be running around the streets because we want to hear what their stories are.
Doug, let me ask you, because I'm the only one here that hasn't spent a decade plus of their life in LA.
You spent how many years of your life?
24.
24.
You're there for a decade.
I've been there.
You're a New York, LA guy.
I'm Miami, Florida, born and raised.
Was it a slippery slope thing or did it fall off the cliff avalanche style since COVID?
It fell off the cliff.
And, you know, I mean, you had to think there were going to be some repercussions from COVID.
I mean, because of what was happening.
And, you know, again, for the really rich people, it seemed like, oh, this is a great vacation.
But I have so many friends who had businesses in LA that have been destroyed.
And, you know, it never made sense to most of us.
And you want to protect everyone that you can.
But, you know, you just go, what was the point of that?
And it's a tough pill to swallow.
And I think we're going to feel the effects of this for a long, long time.
Let me ask you a follow-up question because, again, born and raised in Miami, like Florida has catapulted to the top of everyone's list since COVID.
And, you know, a lot of people will put DeSantis on a pedestal for what he's done.
And I know you're saying, I'm not smart enough.
You're a pretty freaking smart guy.
At some point, is it sort of the policies, the politicians, they've kind of got to be responsible for this nonsense.
You know what?
Whether it's Garcetti or Newsome or something.
Obviously, policies have to have an effect, but there are cyclical situations that happen in markets and the world.
Like I said, I got held up at gunpoint in New York City in front of the Plaza Hotel in 1990.
Some of the most expensive real estate on the planet Earth.
And there used to be prostitutes standing right outside the Plaza Hotel.
Those were the days, baby.
Great times.
But New York, New York was a scary, scary place.
The 70s, which I wasn't really around for, were far worse.
And then Giuliani cleaned it up.
He did.
He really did.
And Bloomberg, you know, and he did.
But, you know, it's such a slippery slope because you can't say shit without people saying you're trying to target this and that.
I just want to target criminals.
I want to get them off the street.
I want to, you know, I want to help people to try to have the best lives they can have.
You like this Caruso guy that's running?
I do.
Yeah.
What do you like about him?
I like that he's a businessman who's accomplished things.
I'm so sick of these fucking politicians who've never done anything.
And then you watch them become rich as a politician.
They're supposed to make 50,000 bucks a year and work to try to make the world better, but they're really working for themselves.
That's why, you know, again, I have a small following on my Instagram, but I get in trouble from both sides, which I guess I'm stupid.
That's a good thing.
But the smart thing is to, you know, my friend does a podcast with Bill Maher, and I always say, I had Bill Maher's ideas before he says them, but unfortunately.
You mean he does a podcast with Bill Maher?
He's got a podcast.
Bill Maher's got a great podcast.
No, I've amazing podcasts.
My club random.
Yeah, yeah.
My friend's a producer of it.
Oh, gotcha.
And came up with it with Chris Case.
Bill Maher, is there a more necessary voice in America these days than Bill Maher?
Yeah, that's Joe Rogan, but he's up there.
He's in the top 10 list right now.
And Doug, going off from what you said, I moved from, I left LA, you know, I'm stand up, acting, and doing all that stuff.
So now I'm in the comedian, comedy department here.
I think when they started not decriminalizing, but like the shoplifting, $950 or less, they're basically giving criminals the okay to do whatever.
Then you say shit like defund the police, which is making cops less eager to do their job because they're like, you know what?
Fuck you guys if you guys are going to have that attitude.
And I was one of those moments, and I've said to it before on the podcast where I was like, you know what?
It's time to get the hell out of here.
My mom's visiting.
And we stop at a red light.
There's a full-on fight.
People beating the shit of each other, right?
And then the light's green.
People are beeping for us to go.
Homeless guy walks right in the middle of the street, takes your shit like a good shit.
I'm not even.
Good one.
He looked like he had enough fun.
And he's like, you know, looking at your average one.
I mean, my mother's in the car.
And like, he picks it up.
I mean, he had the decency.
And my mom was respectful.
Very respectful.
Respectful.
What a guy.
Because it was this moment, Doug, where Pat, you know, we're talking.
He's like, maybe you should move here instead of doing all this stuff there.
And my mom will never forget.
Looks at me.
And she goes, I think it's time for you to leave.
You're coming up on the next entourage.
It was like a movie scene.
I'm shocked like something crazy is going to happen.
But yeah, it's let me ask you another question about, like, I've said this before.
Again, not a California guy, but is there a more Hollywood fabricated plastic, tell me what I should say guy than Gavin Newsome?
I mean, I just seem so.
Why are you trying to get him in trouble?
His podcast could get canceled tomorrow.
My opinion.
Don't say no, Adam.
You're wrong.
The good thing is, like I said, I'm unemployed and uncancelable, but I do have personal friends who have connections to Gavin Newsome.
So I'd rather not speak about, you know, they are all frauds.
Okay.
Period.
End of story.
I mean, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, these people are full of shit.
They lie about their backgrounds.
They lie about what they're going to do.
And, you know, it's just, that's why my frustration level is on such a place because you really, like I did grow up and thinking, people want to be the president because they want to make the place better.
But it's a $100 million job if you get that job.
So why wouldn't you want to be AOC who, you know, was a waitress and now she wants to write books and she wants to do this.
And that's why, you know, like I got in trouble because everyone thought I was this left-wing lingua.
When Cuomo sold that book long before his sexual harassment thing, I'm like, how is this even legal that you can be a sitting fucking governor and you write books for $5 million?
Like, how is this possible that we allow this?
And then, again, I don't want to go left or right, but like Pelosi with these trades, like, how is this possibly legal that they can let these congressmen do insider trading when they know what's going to happen before it happens?
So speaking of Pelosi, you know what's the crazy thing is we were talking to Kanye said, when I talked to Tupac, Tupac told me, first go get your money and then wreak havoc or whatever, some line like that that he talked about.
Tupac told him this 20-some years ago, 30 years ago, 1996, whatever the timeline is, right?
Years ago.
And sometimes when you don't have a few money, you have to walk on eggshells, especially in your world when you don't have it yet.
And, you know, when you do, you feel freer.
You can say whatever you want to say.
And I fully understand that business model.
But sometimes people in your world are held hostage because of that.
And you have to be part of the team because, God forbid, you don't support it.
It's going to hurt your business.
And one of the things I'm most excited about Hollywood, what's happened the last, I don't know, 10 years, is that the Netflixes of the world have come out, the Hulus of the world, these OTTs are coming out where you no longer need a Weinstein to do something with him because he's got all this power.
You no longer have to go through Giffen.
You don't no longer have to go through all of these guys that at one point, oh my gosh, God forbid, I better please don't say this.
I won't say it again.
I'm so sorry, man.
You do this.
I'm not going to give you this movie.
It's like, oh, my God, I'm never going to get a part again in Hollywood.
My career is over with.
The best part is those guys are gone.
And today, they're not gone, but those guys are not as powerful as they were before.
And today, a money person, here's 20 million bucks.
Let's go make a bunch of shit and we're going to put it on our OTT.
And this is what we're going to do.
The freedom of these OTTs coming out now.
How has that shifted your mindset within your industry?
Well, we're really going to see because I just went out and financed my own show, you know, and you still need, you still have those gatekeepers because you still need the distribution if you want to go big.
I think where the world will be in three years, you know, like comedians, I don't know if you guys ever had Andrew Schultz or Dave Schultz, I don't know.
Andrew Schultz Schultz.
You know, he released his own album.
Taylor Swift goes and makes, you know, goes and makes, I know she's got 40, 100 million people following her, but she goes and makes her album in her own home.
She doesn't need anybody.
So we did that with a with a pilot.
So now we'll see what happens.
We just finished it.
Now we got to shop it around.
If we somehow can't get distribution from one of the major platforms, then we will figure out a way that we will release it ourselves.
So that was really exciting to me because the process that I did this pilot in, you know, where entourage took, you know, when I talk about how Ari sold that in the room, I was paid $50,000 to write a script.
That took two years and torture and almost, almost to the point where if you really wanted to break it down, it was far less than minimum wage.
In LA in LA, too.
Over two years.
Over two years.
And they'll pay for it.
$25,000.
Three bucks an hour.
Three bucks an hour.
Honestly, I actually said at one point, I said to my aid, can you call them up and say, like, if they want me to keep going, like, give me a little show me the month.
I think there was like 2,500 bucks a day.
So there is such a feast or famine world out there where, and then you get going and all of a sudden you get paid, and then everybody goes, oh, you're part of the elites now.
You're part of this.
But I sat there for two years, busted my ass, wrote 400 drafts of this script with everybody thinking people think people are sensitive now.
Every word was scrutinized, every fucking vowel.
But now I did this pilot now, and we'll see what happens.
And again, it's not some wildly politically incorrect thing.
And I don't think Bill Maher is either.
I think it is a very, just like Entourage was, it is a very clear look at culture and society as it is right now.
I've got Charlie Sheen in it, speaking of this is a real, I don't want to say it.
I want to see if you're comfortable saying it.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Connolly, Dylan, you know, Breezy from All American, Kamiko Glenn from What are you guys looking for?
What are you guys looking for for the whole thing?
In terms of money?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, to be honest with you, I just want to make sure we're at the right place where we can get eyeballs on it.
I feel the same way as I did about Entourage.
Just let me get the audience out there.
And there's so many things that I can do in this.
So we did a pilot.
I feel great about it.
I've started writing the rest of the season and then we'll figure it out.
So the pilots out there?
The pilots out there?
The pilot's done.
It's not out there anywhere.
But, you know, we got actually Richard Weitz, who's currently the Ari Emmanuel of William Morris representing it.
And we'll see what happens.
Fantastic.
What's the latest with Charlie Sheen these days?
Charlie Sheen is, and I mean this sincerely.
So when people talk about second chances and when people talk about the drug addicts, this guy is one of the best people I've ever worked with, one of the best people I've ever known.
I'll say it to his face.
I don't know what he's like if you give him a line of blow.
And I hope I never find out.
But he is amazing.
And his father, I've spent a lot of time with him too.
Great family and great people.
And, you know, it does speak to that fact that people can slip up and they can come back and they can redeem themselves.
And he's a really great guy and obviously a great talent.
So, Doug, is it hard pitching a show to like networks and people when they, when they when I respect what you're saying when they see or they hear like oh, Charlie Sheen's gonna be in it, does it make them more reluctant to be like, oh shit.
Well, we want to pick it up, but who knows what he's gonna be doing in, like the next two or three years?
He might relapse or he might.
You know what?
I obviously, you know I don't know what they're saying when they see it, and we and we're just starting to shop it.
But you know that's what the show is about.
Charlie Sheen is playing himself.
He's playing, you know, and an ultra realistic version of himself.
It's not, you know, trying to make one of these cartoony, you know, versions.
He has Charlie Sheen and HIV positive.
Charlie Sheen who's putting it all straight off.
That is a thing.
That's all on the line and there's nothing like there's no punches being pulled in this thing at all.
So how's his health?
His health seems great.
He's, he's HIV positive.
The medications are great.
The medication for HIV is amazing.
Yeah, he's doing this working okay for you.
I'm in great shape.
He's doing great.
That's great.
Great to hear.
By the way, when you think about him and his pops, I mean, some of the best movies, man.
You think about it.
I got to show you this because the scene with him, I mean, I mean, first of all, the second episode, too, which I already wrote, which Martin told me he read it and he cried because this was actually so realistic to his life.
But the scene in the show with them, like, you know, and whatever.
Maybe Martin will forget he said it.
He goes, I think this is better than our Wall Street scenes.
Wow.
And I think it is.
It's absolutely riveting and real.
And I think any father-son will relate to this.
And, you know, it's awesome.
And Emilio Esteves is also their brother's son.
What is that?
Yeah, yeah.
Full-on brother.
I believe he's a full-on brother.
I mean, yeah, Martin.
Didn't want to go with the Sheen last name.
Just said, I want to be an Estevez.
This is what Martin.
Martin regrets changing his name.
They're actually, I mean, they're Spanish descent.
I mean, their last name is actually Esteves.
Martin Sheen is Ramon Estevez.
Yeah.
I'm maybe pronouncing it wrong.
Esteves.
And thank you.
And Charlie is Carlos Estevez.
Carlos Estevez.
Wow.
I do want to make one thing clear to everybody that's watching.
I do not have HIV because I know that.
It's important for you to say that.
Adam was very, very good acting in it, but saying it's working out okay.
Thank you.
You're doing it.
You know, the business model, if a person wanted to get into that space, a person that wanted to get in the new space in that space, they have distribution, they have eyeballs, they know how to get a lot of eyeballs, but they're not, they've never been in Hollywood.
They've never made movies, but they got plenty of money.
Money's not the issue.
What would you say would be their first two, three, four, five moves to get into the Hollywood space?
Well, I think, you know, my partner on this show who put up the money for it, Ted Foxman, you know, he wanted to get into Hollywood.
He sold his business for a lot of money, and it's all he wanted to do.
He loves movies and he loves film.
Fortunately, we were friends, and hopefully it all works out for him.
He feels great about the process so far.
But I think the most important thing is to find someone, you know, that you believe in, you know, that you like what they do, that you like their talents.
I think, you know, with all of the guys with money that are coming out, I think, you know, that's what you do.
You go find a great writer.
You go find a great actor that you love.
It's step number one, a writer, or is it an actor?
Is there like a step to go through it or not?
I think if you have your money, I mean, obviously, if you can get a real star, that always helps.
But I think me as a writer, I think the most important things about any TV show or movies are the beginning and it's the concept and it's the script.
I always believe that.
But obviously, if you can get a major star, that's going to make it a lot easier to sell it and get people to watch it, you know?
So get a writer first.
Then after you get the writer, try to get a good star.
Is that kind of how?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what we did with this, you know, and I started talking about it on the podcast.
I said, you know what?
I'm just like, we're in the pandemic and I'm like, you know what?
I'm just going to go make my own show.
And that was my plan.
I was going to find out.
What's the name of the pilot or the show?
Ramble On.
Ramble On.
Gotcha.
With the Sheen boys and Doug Allen.
Kevin Connolly.
Kevin Millen.
Oh, wow.
Sick.
Exciting.
It's an entourage type of a model, right?
Structure, except for today's time.
It's a half-hour.
The interesting thing about Entourage when it came on, and people won't remember this now, because they, you know, you guys say everyone knew these actors, people really didn't.
Some people were like, which at first insulted me because I was an insecure 30-year-old.
And they were like, is this like an unscripted documentary thing?
I'm like, what?
I'm like, do you know how many hours I spend with every comma and every word?
No, these are actors.
This is fake.
So some people who had never seen Adrian were like, this is real.
He's really Vinny Chase.
Yeah.
They really did think that.
This one is these guys are the real deal.
Kevin Connolly is Kevin Connolly who quit acting and started a podcast company and is swimming in all of the troubles of a startup business, especially when you've never done it and you're now 40 years old.
So it is all ultra real and I think it's the next level that people that people really want.
And you see all the crappy versions of it where they make these things that kind of look at this is going to be a very realistic grounded look at both Hollywood and celebrity culture in 2022, 23.
But it's also about the world right now, second chances, redemption, second acts, which, you know, you guys will find, I don't know, what you're in your 30s now, but like you get to your, you get to your 40s and 50s and, you know, like you, I don't even know when you started this, but you go, all right, I made money.
I had a lot of success in this, but what the fuck is next?
What do I do with the rest of my life?
And how do I really find a real purpose?
And the movie Sideways, which I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, but that was a big inspiration for me.
One of my favorite movies.
Yeah, Wine Country, Giamatti, and that went viral.
I mean, I was like, everybody was talking about it for.
It won an award, I want to say.
Thomas A. Church definitely won an Oscar.
I'm sure Alexander Payne was nominated, but he may have won.
But, you know, it's a movie that really speaks to people.
You know, he was a struggling writer trying to figure out his life.
And the other one was a struggling actor.
And, you know, that could sound like just a boring thing, but it really spoke to everybody and what people go through, no matter what your level of success or failure is.
So just to be clear, everyone is playing themselves in Vandaline.
Wow.
It's great.
Listen, Charlie Schmidt.
And, you know, Charlie being who he is, the commuting and the writer being who he is.
This is like whoever's invested into this, you couldn't have positioned yourself better.
Whoever that person is, they came and worked with you guys, which is what obviously we're very excited.
I mean, obviously, I had the advantage.
Our model, like for this pilot, I got all my entourage crew.
These were all Emmy-nominated, you know, cinematographers and the whole cast and crew.
They all worked for far less than if we were doing it for somebody else.
But anyway, I'll show it to you.
Hometown discount.
Yep.
I love it.
I love it.
I wish you guys nothing but the best.
It's a very exciting.
If it's anything like Entourage, and it's for today's Times, I can't wait to see it myself.
But, you know, going back to Hollywood, you know, I like to talk about who's the greatest basketball player of all time.
Makes for great debates, right?
Who's the greatest baseball player of all time?
It's Willie Mays.
Be Rue.
This is a actors today, okay?
If you were to put the top five today that are acting today, active, who would you say?
God, you're getting me right off the top of my head.
I got to do it.
I mean, it's a Leo.
I mean, Leo's at the top.
Yeah, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence.
I know I'm going to leave out and all of a sudden I'm doing something wrong.
But, you know, there's so many great talented actors.
Don't be diplomatic.
No, you're not.
I'm trying to come up with it.
So Leo, so we got Leo.
We got Bale.
Freaking Bale is a beast.
That guy is something else.
I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis, I don't know if he's really great.
I was just about, I swear to God, I was just about to say, I just saw an interview of him where he's just talking about my left foot.
It was like an old, just him, Gary Ullman.
I mean, I put Gary Ullman.
He's freaking insane.
Daniel Day-Lewis is a list of people.
I think he's his own.
Daniel Day-Lewis is on another level.
I feel like he only does act.
I mean, I don't think he has a life outside of acting.
Obviously, he clearly.
He was retiring to be like a shoe cobbler.
I'm not even saying it's funny.
I have no idea, but I mean, I remember when I saw Lincoln, which, you know, you just sit and you go, well, how do you come up with like a voice for Lincoln?
And he was more Lincoln than the fucking penny.
You were just like, this guy is just.
I mean, it's amazing to watch.
But there's a bunch of guys.
And what I love is, God, what?
Jesse Clemens?
Is that his name?
I love this guy.
He was on Breaking Bad, but I think he's a future Oscar winner.
Oh, wow.
He's incredible.
Philip Steven Hoppy was one of my best.
I mean, he passed over, but what a, like Capote.
I saw the, like, a roundtable with him and the writers and how he got the voice.
And it was, I mean, God rest his soul, but he was on the bottom.
This kid is unreal.
He's ridiculous.
Yeah.
What do you think about, what do you think about Shai LaBeouf?
What do you think about his style of acting?
I mean, I think he's great.
Yeah.
You know, I don't know mentally how he is, but he's good to it.
Apparently he found God and like he's Catholic.
Yeah, the movie he did.
He was that podcast he did with John Bluntal, which is, by the way, he's sick.
I'm a fan of both of those guys.
But Shai, what an interesting guy.
You know, very talented.
Very talented.
Like I said, Transformers wasn't Transformers when he no longer was in it.
And I love Mark Wahlberg, but it's a different story when it's him and the girl, every time I forget her name, Megan Fox.
First one, second one.
You were in it.
Once Shai wasn't in, it was different to me.
Obviously, I love Mark.
I've never seen a frame of a Transformers movie that once.
I swear to God.
Not one second of it have I ever seen.
Not the first or the second one.
I didn't even know there was a second one.
Oh, actually.
I thought Mark was the only one to know.
No, man.
You watched the first one.
It's not my thing.
Yeah, he's just a very talented guy.
When Shia, maybe it was a kid actor thing, but a lot of what he talks about is like Hollywood just chews you up and spits you out.
And he sounds like an 80-year-old, like haggard lady, like you don't know what it's like in Hollywood.
And they use you and abuse you.
Like, what is that?
I mean, by the way, that happens.
It didn't happen to him.
He did it to himself.
That guy could have run away with it and had, you know, I mean, I don't think Mark looks at Hollywood as a place that has chewed him up and spit him out.
And that's why Kanye, you're like, what are you talking about?
There's people who would kill to be in 150th of your position, you know?
So, but it is, it is, it's a tough town.
There's no question about it.
And I've watched it.
I've been out there, what, the day I graduated college, I went there in 1990.
And I've, I've seen a lot of people come and go.
Is it tough because it's competitive?
There's egos, there's money, it's just backstabbing.
It's things change.
I mean, you know, again, I don't look for anybody's empathy or pity.
I don't give a flying fuck.
But if you watch like where Entourage suddenly went from like this critically acclaimed popular thing to all this and shit, all of a sudden it was like every day.
Let's re-examine Entourage and all of its problematic themes.
And, you know, and that, whether anyone, it has real world effects.
So the town starts hearing it and the fucking clowns in Hollywood start to go, well, we can't do that.
We can't get involved with that thing.
We want to go with that thing.
Literally, they do that.
Yeah.
Now, if you just had something, if the Entourage movie would have made a billion dollars, then I would have been able to do whatever I want, but it didn't.
But it really came out.
If you look at the Entourage movie, which honestly, it is, that movie tested so high that the president of Warner Brothers like sent me the tracking numbers and said, you know, frame this because you'll never see it again and start writing entourage too.
And I said, I will not write one syllable until I see this movie open.
And the weird thing is, is you could watch the movie and like, I know the fake people will go, oh, it sucked.
It's exactly what season one was, which people say was their favorite.
And I made strong, but when you read the reviews on it, it was all about misogyny and how these guys are this and that.
And whether the world had changed, certainly the critics had changed, you know, and you saw a world that honestly none of us saw coming because that was probably came out two years before the Me Too movement, but it was brewing.
And, you know, that's fine.
So you know, I always say about, you know, you either adapt or you die.
And, you know, people talk about canceled culture like it's this new thing.
You know, Andrew Dice Clay is a close friend of mine.
He was canceled in 1990.
Lenny Bruce was canceled in the 70s.
So this is not new stuff.
And the difference now is, as you say with Joe Rogan, it's really hard to really cancel somebody.
Now, is it easy for a director who gets into trouble to go get $50 million from a studio to make a movie?
No.
But there are other ways like I'm doing now with this new show and Joe does with a podcast.
He's not cancelable, even if Spotify didn't want him on their networks.
He'd put it out himself and he'd still have the same.
How much you trust Rotten Tomatoes?
Well, I think Rotten Tomatoes is just like a survey of all the reviewers, right?
I mean, so I don't know.
I don't really, I don't really look at it, but I don't know.
Why?
Do you think they're up to something?
Listen, here's my motto with Rotten Tomatoes.
If you go to Rotten Tomatoes, pick a movie, okay?
Just go to, no, you're going to Dave Chappelle.
Go to Rotten Tomatoes.
Oh, I see what you're doing.
Go forward, go to Rotten Tomatoes.
So if you go here to zoom in.
Okay, so check this out.
Whatever the tomato motor says, I don't trust.
The audience score, I trust.
So this is Dave Chappelle special.
Got 99% of the tomato meter.
That is like a survey of real critics.
Yep.
Exactly.
How much credibility does that have in your space?
Well, it has zero in my brain space, but unfortunately or not, you know, look, at the end of the day, it's a money-making business.
So you can, like Dave Chappelle has no problems with that 35% because it's not going to affect them because the audience loves it.
Click on some of the reviews.
I mean, this is three years ago.
Edgy, but MT.
The 35%.
We know the world loved it.
99%.
I don't know if I've seen a 99%.
So these are like allegedly real critics, but who are the real critics?
Yeah, exactly.
Zooming will go up a little bit so we can read the top critic.
Okay, Chappelle is fascinating, sophisticated, and wasn't great.
Their colors are there, I can't get behind.
What was it?
There are moments in this special that I can't get behind, can get.
But there were others I'm shocked that Netflix gave the go-head.
Okay?
Cool.
This guy's from Pool Whatever.
By the way, that's a crit.
I'm not like that's just stupid because Netflix doesn't give the go-ahead.
They let Dave Chappelle go and he did what he did and they put it on and you can judge it however you want.
So watch Eddie Murphy delirious from the which I, you know, I'll get canceled because I memorized every single line of that.
You and me both.
I mean, you know, it was a different time.
Now, maybe, obviously, you don't want to abuse any of the people that he may have been making fun of, which, again, I...
It's called comedy, though.
It's called comedy, make people laugh.
Like, you know, I went to the American Film Institute, which was considered like, you know, one of the best film schools in the country.
And the first film I did, what they do with you is they, it's crazy.
They, you show your film and to the whole crowd of students and everybody, which is probably like 200 or 300 people.
Then you have to go sit on stage and you can't say a word while they critique you.
Oh, God.
So I put my first film on, which I had David Schwimmer, pre-friends in, I think, and a couple other people.
And everybody laughed their asses off.
And I was like the only comedy guy there.
Everybody laughed their asses off.
Then I get up on stage and people go, funny, funny, funny, funny, which it wasn't meant to be much more than that.
And then the professor, he starts going, wow, but, And then they all started attacking me, like one after the other, how useless this was, how pointless this was, how, how it didn't change the world.
It didn't affect anybody, blah, blah, blah.
So then, and this at the time, the school for the second year, only like 12 out of the 30 directors would get into this program.
I mean, like Darren Aronofsky didn't get into the second year of this program, okay?
I was the only one who did not apply, but I made a film that made fun of the school.
I had the teacher of the school was like, you know, I don't want to go to the Jewish thing, but he was like a Nazi commander and like whatever.
And when I put my film up that everybody laughed at and he turned on me, all the students turned into sheep and they chased me out like Frankenstein out of the school.
He did not show up at the screening of the school the only time the entire year.
And I had students there who are friends of mine, who actually people who worked on Ramble On that didn't want to work on that project because they were scared they'd get canceled at the school at AFI in 1991.
And I think that's part of the whole thing.
Of course you have a fear.
And that's why I say while while I wanted Adidas to throw Kanye out, I get the conversations were not fucking easy.
And I would love to say that I would just walk away from $100 million right now, not to work with somebody who had not opinions.
Again, that's the thing that people say, by the way.
He's entitled to his opinion.
No, if you think all Jews suck, you're not entitled to that fucking opinion, okay?
I don't know what else to say.
It's stupid.
You're ignorant.
And it makes no sense to anyone who has a brain.
But I understand there are a lot of things at play when you get into these situations.
And when you're talking about Chappelle, who is clearly the greatest living comedian right now, he may say something that offends you.
He may say something that offends me.
I'm sure he has.
But if it's funny, it's funny.
Like Ricky Gervais' show, did you watch that one?
I mean, I mean, geez.
He's on a whole different level.
You know, and I'm talking afterlife.
Did you watch Afterlife?
No, I haven't seen Afterlife.
I mean, anything I watch with him, I'm blown away.
You talk about anti-PC stuff that he says and gets away with because I think like Larry David, these are just, and it's why I say, and I'm not even putting myself anywhere near those leagues, but I believe I know how to walk those lines.
And I walked them in 2003.
Nobody was ever coming after us for entourage in 2003.
I believe the same thing with the new show, but Afterlife, Ricky Gervais show, he's such a fucking genius and Laura.
Go on, Rotten Tomatoes.
Let's see how good Afterlife is.
And look, have you guys comedians in cars getting coffee with Chris Eiffel?
Trust me, watch the episode with Ricky Gervais.
He says, you know what?
I will.
I will.
I'm telling you right now, he tells a stand-up comedy joke to Jerry Seinfeld, and Jerry almost falls on the floor.
It's one of the funniest.
Oh, I know.
It's the Jewish guy in the dark.
How brilliant is that joke?
All right.
So 71%.
Now, again, the show's depressing at the same time.
It's about him losing his wife, but there's things he does in that show that you go, okay, I can't believe anyone, but nobody's telling Ricky Gervais, like, don't do this.
And by the way, even on Entrage and HBO, like Carolyn Strauss, who was the head at the time, there were some things that I wrote and she's like, I don't like this, but I'm not telling you what to do.
It's your thing.
Go do it.
And I think that's how it should be.
And again, that's why let Kanye, he should be on Twitter spewing his garbage.
It's sad, and people should tell him why it is.
99% to 37% with Kanye when it comes down to his special he did.
Just tell Chappelle.
Yeah.
Just tell you.
Kanye has a comedy special coming out.
All right, man.
Yeah.
No, no, it's just, I brought up Rotten Tomatoes.
I wonder, like, in your world, does anybody give a shit?
Do people call you and tell you, well, your score sucks.
I'm not going to give you another, you know, we're not going to invest into the next project.
But apparently you don't really care much about it.
Well, I mean, if I had a movie coming out, I certainly would want the critics to like it, you know, because it can't hurt.
But I'd rather make money than the critics.
Give a movie you like.
Give a movie you like.
Name a movie you like.
I don't know.
Pick a movie that's new.
Okay, go to Top Gun.
I mean, everybody liked Top Gun.
Okay, go to Maverick.
Top Gun will be.
It should be good on both sides.
That was pretty, you know, I don't think they offended anybody with that.
Okay, good.
That was actually, by the way, they literally didn't even say who the enemy was in Top Gun.
Which is like who they attacked.
You don't even know who they attacked.
It was in the desert, but you don't know which desert it was in.
Give me another one.
Give me another one that maybe is a little old school.
Okay, go to old school.
Old school today.
Oh, you know what?
Tropic Thunder would be a good one.
Oh, that'd be great.
60%.
It's offensive.
Go to Tropic Thunder.
Go to Tropic Thunder.
60 versus 86.
Tropic Thunder.
Let's see if it's still 871.
But that's flipped.
That's reversed.
Yeah, well, that was a long time ago.
You know, you also don't know who's coming out.
I mean, you ever read your podcast reviews?
I mean, I get podcast reviews like, fuck you, Alex.
It's too much advertising.
One star.
You know, like, you don't know what people's agenda is or what their thing is.
But I don't want to say I don't care, but I would prefer that the audience is like me than the critics.
I think that's a perfect timing.
Today's sponsor is Rotten College.
You like to thank them for the reviews they give us.
Speaking of Chappelle, I mean, talk about meteoric.
I mean, he was doing his thing in movies and all that.
But when Chappelle show came out, I want to say that, was that 04, 05?
Is that what it was?
Three or four?
Yeah.
It's right around 04 for sure.
There's no chance that people can do what he was doing.
He was doing whiteface.
He flipped it on people.
You can do whiteface, though, I think.
Okay, well, that's a whole other conversation.
Eddie Murphy did say that.
If you can't do blackface, you can do white face.
Did you ever see Eddie Murphy?
I mean, on the box sketch.
Oh, yeah.
I once was a white man.
Well, I mean, Dave Chappelle did the black white supremacist, the blind guy.
By the way, I don't want to get into this because it's only trouble, but Billy Crystal played Sammy Davis.
I think he won Emmys.
And I have no idea whether African Americans were offended at the time.
Oh, my God.
And if they were, of course, you feel bad about it.
But I just wish, I don't know.
I just wish comedy was comedy.
And you know what?
Like, I don't know.
Even Sarah Silverman said Jews should play Jews.
I mean, Jim Sheridan, you were talking about Daniel Day-Lewis.
I think Jim Sheridan, the director of My Left Foot, apologized for not, I think, I don't want to, I hope I'm not making that up, for not casting an actual paraplegic.
Now, there's not a fucking able-bodied human being on the world that could play that part.
But, you know, we're getting into this place where, you know, now Darren Aronaski's actually got a new movie out.
And I read critics going, why wouldn't they cast a real 400-pound man?
Why would they put him in a bodysuit?
And you go, this is a fucking movie.
It's supposed to be people acting like different human beings.
That's the point.
And it's art is supposed to hopefully, hopefully that movie helps people empathize with it.
I don't even know if I'm allowed to say fat.
I don't even know.
Yeah, no, don't you ever.
Yeah.
By the way, I'm a little fat.
I'm skinny.
What about Eddie Murphy playing a bunch of different fat characters?
Which, by the way, that was the first time I really got aware of Chappelle and the nutty professor.
That's when he played the shit up.
He was the comedian.
Yes.
I mean, it's still the funniest scene.
You got shitless.
And you know, I watched a lot like Don Rickles, who was one of my favorites.
I watched all those Dean Martin, all those Rose.
And you want to talk about comedy?
There was black, there was Latino, and everybody shit on everybody, and everybody went home and they were okay.
Listen, all those great legendary Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, these guys are liberals.
And if you watch Blazing Saddles, which now they'll talk about.
Oh, there'll be warnings or the jerk, which I always thought, you know, now it makes me uncomfortable to watch it.
But Steve Martin says, I don't know if you remember the line, but I remember the whole movie.
These guys say to him, now that he's successful, he has to be careful about the N-words.
And Steve Martin, who was raised by an African American family, proudly stands up and says, I am The N-word, you know, and I'm sure now, I don't know, they probably edited out, but I know Carl Reiner was a, and I don't want to say the word liberal because now the word liberal is fucking horrible, but he was a person who believed in equality for everybody, and he was trying to move the needle forward as Norman Lear was and Mel Brooks.
So it's just, it's very upsetting to see all those.
Did you see you said the fat?
Can you say it or not?
Did you see the Taylor Swift fat thing that she had to remove the clip out of her new?
Did you see that or no?
No.
So she's standing on the scale.
There's a she's standing on a scale in the music video.
And here, let me show, send you this.
It's a the best one is BuzzFeed because BuzzFeed definitely is a buzz kill.
But let me just send this one to you.
Show this one here.
Yeah, it's from BuzzFeed.
That's the one.
Zoom in a little bit so we can see it.
Yeah, so Taylor has removed the fat scale from her anti-hero music video on Apple Music.
And keep going up.
Keep going up to see the picture.
Read the warning, though.
Where's the warning?
This post contains mentions of eating disorders.
Keep going up.
Warning.
Keep going up, Taylor.
Tyler, keep going.
Okay.
However, a scene where Taylor stands shamefully on a scale that reads fat has received some backlash.
What is going on my concern is more her small little pinky toe than it is the fat concept.
I mean, it's truly, it's truly scary what's going on.
And, you know, everybody should embrace who they are and everybody's got their limitations, but also everybody should try to be as healthy as possible.
I mean, it's just that simple.
And here's what's been proven, okay?
Being skinny is not healthy.
Okay.
We know that.
Like being skinny, too skinny.
Anorexic.
Of course.
But for sure, being overweight and fat has no at all zero benefits to anybody.
And for people to not be able to talk logic and just openly talk about that, that's very, very problematic when you can't talk about that.
So they forced her to remove this, just so you know, from the music video.
I think it's funny.
You can't hurt anybody's feelings.
This is not a Babylon B article, by the way.
This is a true, it's not satire.
It's actually what happened.
By the way.
You see what it says, though?
Has some backlash.
And that's the problem.
Like, who is this backlash from?
And where are the other people on the other side to go, you know what?
I want to see what Taylor Swift thinks is funny.
I want to actually get inside of the knowledge of these artists and what they really think instead of being, you know, pasteurized through everything.
I'm just wondering if we're raising just a generation of freaking wussies where just words hurt them.
If you're not getting your pronoun the way you want it, you're offended.
Like, right now we've got bigger concerns.
Like, China's coming for us from a global macro perspective.
Like, you think China is.
Don't be anti-Asian.
Don't do that.
I'm sorry.
I'm not.
Don't do that.
I'm not.
Because you just offended.
Hey.
Adam.
Oh, did I just?
But what he didn't do.
And again, I'm not on either side.
I don't know who I'm going to vote for in anything right now.
But he didn't go with China, with China.
That's his accent, though.
No, that was him going, fuck you.
I'll say whatever the fuck I want.
And I don't care what ramifications it has.
But the reality was, it is what they did.
It is what that came from.
But you could also say this disease came from China.
But he also could have said, listen, I need everybody to remember what this country did during World War II in turning Japanese people.
We don't turn on people because of what they are or what the government, by the way.
You think the fucking Chinese people are enjoying their government?
You think they like being on 24-hour lockdowns with helicopters going overhead or their fucking dogs getting beaten with sticks in the street?
So I just think you can say if you're the goddamn president.
And by the way, Biden sucks also with his, you know, turning everyone against each other when he was supposed to be the unifier.
But you can get on and go, look, we believe this virus came from China, but do not, A, do not blame Chinese people.
Certainly don't blame people in America who are trying to live their lives.
And if he said that, I believe it would have an effect, whether it stopped one person from getting attacked.
You live in utopia.
You live in a you're writing a little too much and you're living in an imaginary world that's not real.
So tell me how.
What president before him would have spoken?
Stop it.
Stop it.
So you want to go up against a country that says they want to take over the world by 2025, made in China.
You want a soft guy going up against them with the current way we're handling China?
No, I don't want to.
No, you're going to need a guy that's got the brass balls to face those guys.
Quite frankly, I don't care if it's him.
I don't care if it's Clinton.
I don't care if it was a JFK, a liberal, a Republican.
Someone that's got brass to face a country like that that is not Napoleon.
I did not speak anything about not standing up to them.
I spoke about A, Chinese Americans.
Yeah.
B, just Chinese.
I think you're just offended that he, the way he says China sounds like a vagina.
But that's how he talks.
By the way, it's not even that I'm necessarily offended.
I just know that that's the type of stuff that causes a bunch of fucking animosity in this country with people.
Oh my gosh.
You've been in LA too much and you've softened up a little bit.
I'm not soft at all.
You're from New York to go back to the New York days.
New York people are from New York.
Three of you guys here have spent, I'm a guy that lived in LA 20 some years.
Too sensitive on stuff to say.
When you go.
It's again, it's not about my sensitivity.
It's about how it look at the fucking country.
We're almost at a civil war.
Who caused that?
It doesn't matter who caused it.
You need someone to come out and speak that.
Yeah, I don't disagree with that.
There's no fucking other purpose in life than to try to keep.
Dude, can you imagine if for three and a half years people said Doug Ellens financed through freaking North Korea and everyone in Hollywood starts believing it and no one wants to do business with you?
How would you like that?
Let's just say if they said it's coming Doug Ellen.
I'll tell you Doug Ellen.
How's it?
Where's that coming from?
For three and a half years, they said this guy was tied to China.
To Russia.
Yeah, yeah.
How are you going to handle that?
They say that every day.
They say they said that.
Every media 24-7.
So is that okay for them to do that?
Every politician has gone through shit.
I mean, again, now maybe Clinton deserved it with the Monica Lowens.
I don't care.
But again, it's none of my business.
I don't care.
Between him and his wife.
The president of the United States, that's just so unclear.
So everyone doesn't attack me as a fucking libtard.
I lost one of my oldest friends because he's a fucking cult-living Trump lunatic.
That's not us.
I am not a liberal at all.
But the president of the United States, which again, Biden did the same shit.
Oh, the MAGAs are killing us.
The president of the United States should say every fucking day, we need to all come together.
That's his only purpose.
He's a fucking idiot anyway.
Both of them are, by the way.
They are.
These are not like the great intelligence.
I know he wants to show us.
I'd love to see it.
You know, that's a safe cop-out.
And let me challenge you.
That's my opinion.
It's a safe cop-out.
And the reason why I say it's a safe cop-out, it's because it's when you know, you know, if you were to measure policy to policy, which is what matters.
That's what we should be talking about.
We don't.
But you weren't worried about that from 16 to 2020.
You were not.
You weren't worried about policies.
You weren't worried about Ukraine.
You weren't worried about Taiwan.
You weren't worried about Iran.
You weren't worried about Afghanistan.
You weren't worried about that stuff.
You weren't worried about the economy.
You weren't worried about unemployment.
weren't worried about any of that stuff.
The only thing you were worried about is this guy cannot stop talking shit.
And 90% of the stuff that he says on Twitter, you should be like, that's what everybody was pissed off about.
Fine.
Credibility is true.
You're right.
He did too much of that.
But today, policies.
Tell me what policies has made America better the last two and a half years.
Again, like I said, I'm not talking policy at all.
But you said policy is what matters the most.
That's what we should be talking about.
That's what we should be talking about.
And that's why you see, though, you know, you like these policies and you're going to get them back.
And that's what elections are for.
And that's what it's all about.
But I just believe the president should do his best to keep people calm.
That's what I believe.
100%.
We're on the same page with that.
I think using too much of emotions to pin people against each other, again, it's a very effective marketing method that both sides use.
But unfortunately, sometimes it divides you.
But I guess that's what I'm saying.
The biggest thing about the president, they shouldn't be so fucking thin-skinned.
I'm not saying I'm not right, by the way.
You're saying what would I do?
First of all, I would never want to be president.
That's first of all.
Second of all, like we talked about this on the podcast, if like Connolly and I, Kevin Connie, if we were king, I'd be a very violent king.
But I'm not.
I was not voted in and I did not, you know, say, which Trump did, by the way, just like Biden, right before he became president, he said, I'm going to bring everyone together.
And I said right before he started, I go, you know what?
He won the election how he had to.
They always get nasty.
And you know what?
He's going to get, I don't mean nice.
You don't have to be nice, but you have to fucking bring people together.
Because right now, to me, the country, it was bad even in 2016 when you weren't worried about economics.
You were worried that your best friend wanted to punch you in the face because he thought you liked this one or that.
So I just think it's a sad time.
It really is.
And I think that the fact that we could turn, you say, and why I say I am not on any side.
There is no turning on cops on January 6th, just like there's no turning on cops at a mall in fucking Minneapolis.
It's the same shit.
You cannot hit a cop.
And what I believe, police reform.
No, we need to, the existing laws need to be, you know, used.
Like cops cannot be violent, but not all cops are violent.
And we need cops desperately.
It's just like.
Oh, we're learning that.
It's so stupid that it's mind-boggling.
Yeah, by the way, we had the mayor of Westwood on, and the mayor of Westwood was talking about getting rid of cops.
And what they're going to replace it with is a yellow jacket.
Yellow psychology.
Have you seen this one with yellow ambassadors?
Yeah, the ambassadors.
Like psychologists.
By the way, I've been in therapy for 20 years.
It's never done a fucking thing of good for me.
I want to go up to a guy with a machine gun and go, I'd really like to talk to you.
Let me see what's troubling you today.
Yeah, lay down on the sidewalk.
Talk.
You know, I got in trouble for that when Biden said the cops should shoot people like in the fucking calves.
And the truth is, is if anyone's ever worked with a gun, and my son has volunteered, my son who played Ari's son on the show has volunteered with police since he was literally 10 years old.
Oh, wow.
And to think that you would say something so stupid.
If someone like, let me aim for his fucking femur while he's trying to kill me, you know, with whatever.
Sexy, you got to stop right now.
I'm sorry.
Hang tight for a second.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, go ahead.
Stop.
Do what you're doing.
Yeah, you're helping the military.
You have to aim for center mass the whole time.
It's just I was doing something.
No, no, no, no.
I'm role-playing you talking to the guy to shoot him in the spoon.
You have to stop the threat.
Exactly.
And I'm not interested in, unfortunately, discussing what the problem is.
I would rather figure it out after I'm alive and I can still provide for my children.
But I think it's a really sad thing.
My question, though, is, did they ever believe this?
Or was this a thing that they thought could get them some attention, get them into power?
I don't know.
I think you're right.
I think that's what they did.
It's just what everybody says during a certain time, they support it.
And then when it doesn't work, they say, we never agreed to that.
That was the other guy's idea.
Not all right.
I was telling my son that during the whole election.
I'm like, like most of these people don't believe this for one second, you know.
But Doug, what do you think about Elon Musk buying Twitter and firing everybody?
He said, fired 75.
You heard about it.
He fired a CEO.
He fired a CFO.
He fired a bunch of C-suites.
He came to put up the picture of him going to work day one with a kitchen sink.
Did you see that?
Yeah.
He walked up to the headquarters.
What do you think about him buying a Twitter?
Should we be worried?
I saw everybody put the, I don't know if you saw it, but all over Twitter, they put, you know, Ari Gold from Entourage walking into the office with his pink gun and shooting him.
Yes.
Which is probably like, that's problematic.
You're teaching people to shoot people in the office.
But I think my hope is really hopeful because, I mean, by the way, I've been suspended from Instagram.
You know how many ties up you have?
A dirty Jew and this, and I responded.
And it's so bizarre because I watched Michael Rappaport, who I think, you know, is funny as hell.
He doesn't seem to get suspended.
He's much more aggressive than I am.
But I got suspended for three months.
I couldn't get in touch with anybody.
And it was just for responding to people who were saying shit to me.
So I hope, you know, again, threats, violent threats should not be on Twitter.
I'm going to kill you or let's go blow up a building.
But you should be able to speak freely.
I believe that 100%.
So what's the kitchen sink reference here with Elon Musk?
Like, meaning he bought the whole thing.
He's throwing everything out except the kitchen sink.
That's funny.
He's downstairs and then upstairs, all the guys upstairs are like, wait, he's here with a kitchen sink.
Oh, we're fucked.
We got to get out of here.
His pun was he tweeted, let that sink in on Twitter.
Let that sink in.
I'll tell you, he looks a lot thinner than that picture on the yacht.
Shit.
By the way, though, he got shamed and he did something.
Yeah.
Big deal.
By the way, people have shamed me all the time.
You're too fat.
You're too skinny.
You do this.
You do that.
So, I mean, you try to improve.
You're too funny, Doug.
I never said that.
People are losing their minds.
Did you say the Jew or did you?
I see what you're trying to do here.
He's trying to spin it on me.
I got offended by this guy calling me the Jew.
But no, people are losing their minds.
They're going crazy over what's going on with him today and what's going to happen.
You know, God, right now, I tweeted this morning.
I said, a good day for free thinkers, a bad day for canceled culture disciples because he said the bird is freed.
And you should see what some.
Elon tweeted that.
Elon tweeted the bird is freed.
And I retweeted saying a good day for free thinkers, a bad day for canceled culture disciples.
There are literally people who are losing their minds knowing this guy owns Twitter now.
And you know he wants to keep himself as a CEO.
Do you realize what that means?
You realize what this means.
This means if he's CEO, he's CEO of Tesla, he's CEO of SpaceX, this guy's got three jobs as CEOs of multi-multi-billion dollar companies.
You think this guy's getting a lot of sleep?
Boring comments.
Can I ask you a question?
Has he, all the people that were canceled, like Trump and everybody, have they, when's there, I'm pretty sure he's going to reinvent it.
Trump's not going to go back, though.
He's not.
He's not going to go back.
He's not going to go back.
I think that is a horrible move on Trump's end.
How do you not go back to Twitter?
He'll be back.
That's what I was going to say.
I don't believe that for one second.
And by the way, he may add Truth Social to every single tweet if he's smart.
That's what he would do.
But he'll be back.
In two seconds, he'll be back.
Yeah, I mean, all you're looking for is eyeballs.
By the way, I love how you believe him.
He said he won't be back.
No, I mean, if he wants to drive value to truth, he shouldn't.
If he wants to drive value to Truth Social, he shouldn't come back to Twitter because Truth Social was a spec and a lot of people put up a lot of money.
And to keep those guys loyal, the money guys, you kind of got to stay on the business.
But just getting on Twitter to his, I don't know, how many people did he have?
100 million?
He had a lot of people.
Like a lot of people.
To start telling them, hey, start switching over to Truth Social.
I don't think it's.
Oh, that part is a different story.
But the team is logging on to Truth Social.
What?
I don't even know how you do it, to be honest.
What?
Tanap?
Anyone who's center or anywhere left of center is even thinking about Truth Social.
I've never been on, so I have no idea.
And you're center right.
Yeah, I've never been on Truth Social.
That's my point.
But what I'm telling you, dude, forget about this for a second.
If you own Truth Social, okay, and he owns a lot of it, and he can make real good money off Truth Social if he does it right.
If you own Truth Social, you don't want your tweets to be put on Twitter.
You don't want your posts to be on Twitter.
You want it to be on Truth Social so people want to find out what the hell you're talking about.
That's free advertisement for you.
He'll say I got more to say on Truth Social.
But he can control himself.
I actually don't think that's.
He won't be able to stop.
He loves tweeting.
He won't be able to stop.
No, no, no.
The guy can't help himself.
And by the way, every media platform in America misses him.
CNN's profits miss him.
Of course.
A lot of people lost their jobs this time.
It's all a movie.
It's all a big movie, and we're all suckers.
People miss this guy.
CNN, 1,000%, is hoping behind the curtains that he runs and he wins.
Because that's when they were at their peak.
Russia races.
Maybe the money guys.
Maybe the money.
The money guys.
But what I'm saying is once he was gone and then the whole Russia and then he's gone and they just fell apart.
There's nothing.
There's no COVID.
There's nothing for them to talk about.
So they better be hoping that he comes back.
How soon after midterms do you think he announces his candidacy?
Five seconds.
Right then and there.
Right.
You're just waiting until after midterm.
Especially now that it's looking like it's going to be.
I mean, that's why I'm saying it's all a movie.
Like it was going to be a red wave and then all of a sudden the abortion issue came out and it was like, oh, the whole world changed and it didn't.
And now we're exactly where they felt they were going to be six months ago, I think.
Michael Moore thinks that it's going to be a blue wave.
Still, as of like when?
I guess so.
As of when?
As of, I don't know, when was that?
Who said that?
Michael Moore.
He's illusional, bro.
That guy's like, no, no, but Michael Moore is the guy who said that he thought Trump would win in 2015.
So he said recently, though?
Yes.
Again, I only like, I shouldn't listen to the polls because Trump said I shouldn't and he was right.
But I don't know.
Michael Borker.
What happened to Pelosi's husband?
Blue Tsunami.
How long ago was that?
Three days ago.
Three days ago.
Well, what kind of polling are you looking at when you think there's going to be a blue wave all of a sudden?
Maybe, again, maybe people saw Frederick.
They were inspired.
I went to high school with Michael Cohen.
Okay.
Really?
Yeah.
And when he said, what polls?
What polls?
I think I texted him.
I'm like, is there something wrong with you?
And there wasn't.
He was right.
Michael Cohen, you went to high school.
You're texting Michael Cohen.
Yeah, I text him.
Is there anybody that's done a 180 more than that guy?
Yes, there's plenty of people.
And that's why I think we're all suckers.
I've always been just the same.
And I'm like, I look at a lot of them.
I go, just fucking, I tell my girlfriend all the time, I should be a sociopath.
I mean, I could do so much better as a fucking sociopath than trying to be like truthful and honest.
And I'm not saying Michael Cohen's a sociopath.
I like Michael Phoenix.
And Doug asked, what happened with Nancy Pelosi's husband?
Did something happen with her husband recently?
Well, the drunk driving thing was months ago.
Something just happened with, I think you guys were talking about him today, right?
Breaking the husband of Pelosi.
Attack with Hammer?
What?
What?
Zoom in?
Where'd you see Hammer?
Was he right there?
Attack with a Hammond.
CNN, just clicked on that.
What?
Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nance Pelosi, attacked with Hammer at home.
Not by her, though.
Zoom in.
By his wife.
Zoom in.
By a male assailant.
What?
That broke you.
Hammer in San Francisco.
Well, San Francisco.
What do you expect?
Pelosi 82 was hospitalized.
I expected to make full recovery.
Jesus.
The U.S. Capital Reserve Statement.
There's only FBI.
Interesting.
I guess, you know what?
That's my point.
And maybe you think I live in utopia, but I think we're getting into a place where we're going to start seeing stuff like this.
Like, and again, whoever you agree with or don't agree with, there's going to be, it's just getting more violent.
That's what it feels like to me.
So I would like to go to the utopia that you think I live in.
You live in that world.
I think I've always been ahead of the curve.
And I'm watching us drive off a fucking cliff right now.
That's what I see.
Like, you know, it's like the movie Nevere Ending Story.
Remember, Never Ending Story?
Yeah.
I would love to live in that.
I would love to sit on that.
But does she live in San Francisco or is she in LA?
She's got a lot of people.
Or Sacramento.
She's everywhere.
Do you ever spend San Fran?
I mean, I haven't recently, and I have no interest right now, but I've been there and it's a beautiful city.
Is it way worse than LA?
Because I know we've been saying how bad LA is.
It's way worse than LA from everything I hear.
Yeah.
It's like Portland and San Fran are pretty much the same.
People just zombies in the streets and it's homeless and it's crime.
Did you see Bill Burr, though?
It was interesting.
Bill Burr did talking about the difference between homeless people 30 years ago and now it was really, really funny because it was like 30 years ago.
They were just, you know, you got to watch it.
I don't want to try to imitate Bill Burr, but it was really funny because 30 years ago, you did not have this fear of homeless people.
They, you know, now you really do.
And they seem so I don't know what, I don't know what changed in the homeless world, but it's not social media.
I saw a homeless guy being like, hey, guys, follow me on my YouTube channels.
It's like, yeah, homeless, buddy.
What are you doing right now?
I doubt you have a cell phone.
The mental, the mental illness is not about it.
The mentally ill situation is just getting worse.
By the way, if a homeless person started a YouTube channel documenting what their lives look like, I actually think that channel would blow up.
If a person from LA, no, no, seriously.
I'm actually in very, what you just did right now.
If a person in LA who's truly homeless documented what's really going on of a life, first of all, within six months, he's not homeless anymore because that's going to make him money.
But that's, I would want to see what's going on.
But again, I don't, and I feel terrible for homeless people, but a lot of them do not, they don't want to be indoors.
They want to keep this life.
And also when you're joking about the social media, there is some communication going on.
I had a guy, homeless guy, come to my house at 2:30 in the morning, and I'm way up in the hills.
Nobody comes there.
I don't get trick-or-treaters.
I don't get neighbors.
I don't get anything.
And this guy came.
I have two German Shepherds.
I have four legally obtained weapons.
Yes.
And in California.
Yeah, this is about two months ago.
And I have it on video too.
And it was terrifying.
And my girl, and I was also high as hell.
And my girlfriend, you know, doorbell rings.
My dogs go nuts.
They're at the window and you can see them.
And you wouldn't want to walk into my house, I don't think, unless you're crazy.
And I watch him.
I have it all on video, him going, and it's sad because he's muttering to himself, he'll kill the dogs, whatever.
And I answered with my highness and my gun.
And I'm like, hello.
And he asked me for an address.
Like, asked me, he said, is this address?
Not in a clear tone, but he said it.
And I said, no.
And he walked away muttering about killing my dogs, something like that.
And then the next day on Citizens, the address he asked for, there was a break-in.
And what I think was happening, because it was a house that was for sale, they get, they squat.
So I don't think he, I don't think he was coming to kill me or anything like that.
I think he was coming looking for an empty home so he can squat in.
So that particular homeless guy wanted to be with it.
And I just want to say, just, you know, not in my utopia, but I have done the Chrysalis is a charity that helps homeless people.
And I've done some stuff with them.
And there are a ton of great people out there that are hard on their luck that do need help for sure.
But we have to do something about the violence and the danger.
Every Christmas morning at 4 a.m., we would get together at my office in Granada Hills or Northridge.
And we did this for 10 years.
And we would go with, started with like 10 of us, ended up being with 150 of us.
We'd go to Skid Row.
We'd be there by 5.30, 6 o'clock Christmas morning.
And then we would take pillows, blankets, toothpaste, toothbrush.
We'd go to the McDonald's down the street, buy a few hundred cheeseburgers, whatever it is.
We'd take them in the morning and we'd spend two hours with those guys.
And it was a paradigm shift type of an experience to be around them and talking to them.
Hey, how did you end up here?
Are you trying to get out?
What caused you to get here?
What was the turning point?
Just conversation-wise.
And you'd be amazed.
A lot of them have different stories, and some of them chose this life.
It's very chose this life.
Meaning, not chose it like they want to be homeless.
It's, you know, of course, some of them was bad decisions.
There was one family that was a former accountant, and he was doing very well for himself.
Some bad decisions.
His family was there.
But it's a variety of different stories.
But some, eventually, this becomes their life.
This is kind of the life of the people.
But it's also, it's a lot.
You're in the military.
A lot of vets who have serious PTC.
A lot of people, a lot of addicts.
You know, it's a sad situation.
But either way, like I said, something's got to be done so that people feel safe and that they're safe.
So go ahead.
Oh, Joe, George Carlin, my favorite comedian of all time, said, you know, they worry about the war and everything, but there's nothing to help homelessness.
There's no war.
There's war on, you know, everything, but there's never a war on homelessness because there's no money in it for them to help these people.
He goes, you find a way for these corporations to make money.
Homelessness is cleaned up.
Well, the great podcast.
Enjoyed it.
Duck, appreciate you for coming out.
Thanks for having me.
Can you tell the audience about your podcast?
We're going to put the links below as well so they can find you.
I got Victory the Podcast, which is with two of the guys from Entourage, but we do all sorts of stuff there.
Mark Cuban's been on, the DK Medcalf, Julius Randle, but we talk entrage and other stuff.
And I also have a podcast, Ramble On, which is the official podcast of my unofficial show, Ramble On.
And we talk about the whole process of making an independent pilot, financing it, casting it, and the whole thing.
Awesome.
Let's put that link below, brother.
Appreciate you for coming out.
Tell me this is our last podcast of the week.
I hope so.
I have a podcast this afternoon.
You've got a podcast after Gorgia.
No, no, we left here at 1 o'clock last night.
We were here at 1 o'clock in the morning when we finished up.
