Reflections on Life and Faith

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day . Okay, let's rock them roll. You need the headphones? Never. No? Okay . Um If it's okay if it's okay with you, I I know I've seen it both ways on the book. No, you don't have to wear them. Okay. Well you you were telling me about your cane. That cane is amazing. It it it's amazing. It's uh it's carved by the Dogan people who w who were in in Mali . And the the uh it's a family that's been doing it for a hundred years and many of them um were killed in the Rwandan wars. Um it it's it's heavy, it's beautifully done, I think. And it's been uh a close companion of mine for many years. It seems to be indestructible. It's pretty awesome looking. It looks heavy. The Dogon people have a very strange origin story. It's a fascinating origin story that involves is it uh the The it it volves like here it is. That's I don't want I didn't misspeak. So here it is. Um centers on the supreme creator AMA and the cosmic journey of the amphibious water spirits known as the Noma . So they have this crazy cosmic origin story that's a part of their mythology . Amma then attempted to procreate with the Earth, but the pairing was flawed. It's like a very strange descendant of the Ark. According to the Dogon traditions, the Noma descended to Earth from the Sirius Star System in a giant arc-like vessel . The vessel contained the eight original human ancestors, along with the seeds and animals needed to populate the world. Those are the dope. That's amazing. Crazy story. My I have a daughter who's a nature photographer, um, and does a lot of work in Africa. And um and uh th she knows all about that stuff. So you were telling me before we got rolling, I said save this for the air. Fifteen, at least fifteen. There's a recent biography that that said that that began when they were court ing and that they had known each other before and one day she saw him with with this tape in his hand. She said, What is it? and he said basic instinct and they then they saw it together and it had such an effect on them that they that they played it together many times, at least fifteen times during on their anniversaries. Now I'm not sure what that says. And you know, th and I I know that some people think the movies had a kind of amateur effect on them. But the other thing that's interesting to me is if you see it fifteen times does does it really fuck you up to the point where you go to war with Well in his defense, Putin attacked first. Absolutely. But it's and and I like Zelen sky very much as a figure. And I' Im'm very sympathetic to the Ukrainians because I'm I've got a Hungarian background. And in nineteen fifty six the Russians devastated Hungary in a similar freedom fight. So um maybe it maybe it gave him the ball s and the wisdom to go after Putin. Maybe it just made it horny. Who knows? Might have nothing to do with the war. Might might not. You made some crazy fucking movies, man. You really did. It well be there are eighteen of them that have been made. And there have been like thirty four scripts that hadn't maybe so there's sixteen that haven't been made and and I don't know, you know, I I kid around and I say there's a twisted little man inside me who lives in some spot that I'm not sure where it exactly is. But he's twenty nine, born twenty nine. He will die twenty nine. And with anything that has a r relatively strong sexual content, he wrote the fucking thing. I'm just an old guy giving him the space. You know, so when the when the recent deal was made for a record amount of money for basic instinct three, 'cause they there was a sequel to it, that was that was a totally piece of shit and I had nothing to do with it. But this would be three and my title for it is is Basic and Saint Jezebel . Um the um Twisted Little Man put together the story um that I that I think people will have fun with but it's but it's it's continues in that same vein and it seems to be his specialty. You know, so let's see what happened. I like how you refer to yourself as like another person Yeah. The twisted man. There is you know, there's a thing with with little kids where they have a have a companion, an invisible companion. Right and the twisted little man is my main one. I have others. Mark Twain is one and interestingly Jesus of Nazareth is another. You know, and and these these people are very, very close to me. Twist the little man is a darker presence than the others, although Twain is a It felt well let me backdrop the the uh I wrote it in thirteen days. Um, the um um and and then and then I then I felt like it it just poured out at me. There is a background to it and that is that the the Catherine Tremill character and then the Nick Curran character. Um many, many years before in college, um I had an affair with a I was an eighteen year old kid and I had an affair with a a faculty member's wife. Um and it was a serious affair and and the the um w we the She was sophisticated, smart, beautiful, um sassy, um um exactly the kind of woman I've always fallen for. And the the um and she had a profound effect on me. Now at at the end of the at the end of the year she moved on and I discovered that there was a different student that she was with each each year and that her husband looked the other way. Um the uh how old was she ? Uh thirty nine. And I w I was eighteen. I was a very green eighteen because I grew up an ethnic immigrant kid. Um the uh the the uh I I I fell in love easily. Um th but falling in love easily also meant a lot in terms of learning things 'cause I I was an immigrant and I really didn't know this country and I was shy. Um and and I learned a lot sometimes I think more from the from the women that I was together with the beginning in college and through the rest of my life than than then I preferred the company I women always um because they weren't armored off in in male macho. Um but but anyway she was stuck there in my memory and then when I was a police reporter um almost a day decade and a half later, um a decade later at the plane dealer, my buddy who was a cop that I liked very much who had been involved in three or four shootings. Um, and when we got to know each other and we spent time drinking together and we did a lot of that, I started wondering how maybe if he really liked the shootings. Maybe d was it was it an itchy trigger finger or did he just he get off on it. So somehow these two characters were in my head and and and I thought about them a lot. But they didn't come together and then I think thanks to the twisted little man, one day the two came together in in in in a love story. And that was the rid that was the genesis of Basic Instant . Um and by the time I I wrote it, I had thought about it subconsciously and and directly for a long time. I would wake up in the middle of the night um and and jot notes down. Which happens to me sometimes when I when I'm very involved in a script. Um and I wrote it in in Hawaii. Um I went off to Hawaii by myself, I let the sun be at me up, I snorted some coke. Um the uh which it was just an habit in those days. Um and after thirteen days of of all of that and the other thing I did was listen to the stones all the time. I love the stones. I l I loved the blues of the time. I was an immigrant kid. And the stones just blew everything else out during that period of time for me. So I listened to that at the end of thirteen days. I went went back home to Marin, um typed it up, sent it almost sent it to my agent with the title Love Hurts, and I was going out the door. The twisted little man had another thought and I raced back inside and wrote the word basic instinct , sent it to my agents, they auctioned it. Um ten days later, my a main agent guy McAwain, who became my big brother and and uh and uh one of the people I really loved in li fe. Everybody bit on it. Um the uh it wound up selling for a record three million dollars. Um and then it became a towering hit. To this day a trend, um the uh and so now gotten the critics in the beginning were c critical , uh th mm mildly critical. No actually the critics were really after the movie. And then through the years, um the the critics have had a change of mind and isn't that funny? Yeah, it just uh the woman named Camille Bagmia, who was a main feminist critic, um who went went up against the movie very strongly recently, not recently but in the past five or ten ye ars, has come around and said that the the that the movie is the example of it's a post feminist classic, she says. And it's about women who don't who don't have to hide their sexuality. Um that's wild that she made such a turnaround. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder did you e ever have a conversation with her? No. I I've never met her. She teaches I'm somewhere on the East Coast and and she has a to wering reputation, but I never met her. I usually don't listen to critics through the eighteen films and you know I don't I don't listen to critics. I worked with a director, Richard Marquand, who directed uh Jack at Edge. And the Hearts he was being Hearts of Fire and we worked on another another one together and and Richard uh said to me that uh critics should be taken out into the backyard and shot. Okay. I worked with another director, Mike Figgus . And one night sand, who said the critics should be taken out of the b backyard and headbutted to death. I was sympathetic to both to both things. It's so wild that your views were formed by this relationship that you have when you're eighteen with an older horny smart lady who's like you know kind of wild. Yes. And then a cop who might have been a shady cop. Yes. You know, and you may come out of this maelstrom. Um now, the other thing I'm sure was an influence is by the time I did that I'd been through four years of police beat experience covering cops. Um two in Dayton, Ohio and two in Cleveland. And excuse me, and that consisted of at that point driving around in a company car that got the police radio um and responding to whatever was going on. On occasion , you got there before the cops got there. Um and and then the the one that really stuck in my head and and uh got inside me was was there was one with the report of a the shooting in a suburb in Dayton and I got there. Um th there were no cops there. The the w the front door was uh wide open. I walked in. Um I I I passed the the body of um the guy who who had shot himself and there was blood all over the wall and then a woman um was his wife that he shot and I heard someone in the back of the house screaming and crying. And then then I walked went back there. And the the thing that was really got to me is she was screaming and crying in Hungarian. Um the and there was an old lady was the the mother's mom, um and and of course I spoke fluent Hungarian and grew up Hungarian. Um and uh and there was something about the scene that that's with me to this day. The other police feed experience I had Joe that was a that was very moving was I covered the the Glenville urban uprising in Cleveland. It was a big one and there were uh I think six or seven policemen um shot and killed. Um the I was crouched behind a um a k a car on the street dugging down with with about ten feet in front of me was a c was a cop bleed ing, badly bleeding, moaning. Um and who the the the um and at the same time there were gunshots coming from the from this apartment house. And I heard that the that the gunshots were coming from a group of so called black nationalists led by a man, named Fred Ahmed Evans. I knew both men. I from the police beat . Um the the uh the the the cop um uh was Hungarian. Um his name was Elmer Joseph. Um and he would come around to the little office and the policeman all the time and I knew him. And and the black man was named Fred Ahmed Evans, um and he would come by in his dashiki sometimes at two in the morning because I worked the overnight shift sometimes. And we had the greatest talks, you know, d drank a lot of beer, smoked a lot of dope, um, and got to be pal s. And he was leading the group of of of black nationalists and who had been who were shooting these policemen and I was behind this k this k this car's wheels a few feet away from the whole shit. Whoa. And I and I found the whole thing so frightening and so disturbing that I pissed my pants. The the um so the the four years of police bec they were other incidents I covered. The the urban uprisings in in uh Detroit, two in Cleveland and one in Newark. Um the I was very involved in the civil rights movement. Um the um and I th you know, the that that's what I did. I I covered whatever was breaking and much of it was dark stuff. Um so by the time that hook up happened between Catherine, um Catherine Tremell and Nick Curran, it there was a lot that went into it. Yeah, I could imagine. Like what the insane life experience to be able to see all those different crime scenes and the witness all that and you know the what happened was that I happened to pick a field. Um the the that journalism I thought and and so did Hunter. One of the things uh w we became friends. We were both poor kids and the and we both dreamed of being novelists. Novelists. Um and the the way that we chose to begin that it was by doing journalism because we no one made a living writing novels and we both had to make a living. Um so the the hunter wrote stuff for the national inquiry and then moved on to Rolling Stone and all of that. And I did it on an on a local level. And the the that put us into a culture that was exploding. Um the the American society was exploding. Th the the the black situation vis vis white racism was horrendous. Um so th there was a dynamic in the country um that we were on top of because of what we did. So I saw a lot. Um I saw a lot in the refugee camps because I was in I began my seven years in refugee camps in Austria and then grew up um dirt poor in an urban city. Um This episode is brought to you by Blue Chew. Listen up. Blue Chew just dropped something wild. They're calling it Blue Chew Gold. And honestly, the name fits. The stuff is setting a whole new standard for performance in the bedroom. It's not your typical blue pill. It combines two ingredients for blood flow with two for mental arousal and connection. It's not just physical, it's the mindset too. Blue Chew gets it. Sex is not just about being able to perform, it's about actually wanting to. And I've got a special deal for you listeners. Right now, when you buy two months of Blue Chew Gold, you get the third free with the promo code Rogan. You'll also receive an additional ten percent off plus free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit Blue Chew.com for more details and important safety information. Well also so when you're writing you're writing from real world experience. Yeah. Which is so much more effective and makes sense why your stuff was so dark and wild. Yeah. It does make sense. The the um and the you know, I mean in I w when when when I was a I was a kid in Cleveland growing up, um we lived in in a very poor part of town near west side. Um and there's a bar next door. Um and the um and I I slept uh in the on a couch in the living room that's over looked the bar. And w and one night, um and I was looking out the window 'cause I always was the the the the neon lights and Puerto Rican hookers and all of that stuff that really interested a little kid who would s spend most of his time playing with Mar as the Mark Twain said with his Becker. You know, s and uh s so this was all very exciting stuff. Um and the and one one I was watching one one day and I saw this man on this sta b another one to death and fall down and bleep to death. Oh gee how old were you? Twelve. Oh Jesus Um Yeah. So um th there are reasons why the other thing with my scripts is almost everything in my scripts is somehow comes from some kind of personal die. You know, Big Shots. Um, which was a little movie that that was very popular with kids. Came from my son Steve's experience um in the in Marin County w w with a black friend and how they tried to make that friendship work. Um and that's what the movie is. It's a little movie about two kids, a white kid and a black kid. Um trying to become friends. Um the um the the the uh there was a movie I did called Checking Out with Jeff Daniels and that was about midlife crisis. And suddenly now at the in my early to mid thirties I was scared shitless that I was going to die for and here I am at fucking eighty one talking about dying at that thirty something But but so there was there was a comedic thing that came out of that. Um basically came out of where it where it did. Um but there was almost with every one and there was some kind of betrayed came out of out of the notion that at that particular point if you remember there was all this right wing craziness where there were militias that that were shooting people and and uh there were jamborees where the where the right wingers got together. One business? Betrayed which which came out in the mid eighties. There were several incidents in Oregon and in in the northwest parts of the country which got a lot of publicity. It was before Timothy McVeigh. Um b but but all roughly in that same period. So I decided under a under a false name to go to one of these jambries and see what the hell's going on. I essentially my d journalism experience I went into it. And then out of it I concocted this romance between Deborah Winger and Tom Baringer. So but they they all had some kind of a tie. Telling Lies in America, which is one of my favorite little movies with uh Kevin Bacon and Brad Renfro. It's semi autobi autobiographical in terms of the issues I had as a high school kid. And all of those kinds of things, uh in the uh and becoming an American citizen. Um the uh they were shot and um incidentally right where I grew up in front of the apartment house where we lived. Um the um and I remember hearing a T V reporter in Cleveland interview an old man um was watching the the uh the shooting and saying, um, d did you know Joe when he grew up here? And he said, Yeah, I was a bartender there And he then he said, Shit, Joey's just a fucking refugee trying to make his way in the world. That's he nailed it. I mean that's really what not a complicated thing, but that's really what happened. The only the other the only other other thing some nice things have been said about me through the years, but the only other thing that's that I really treasure and absolute love . Is uh I covered I interviewed Otis Redding the night before he was killed in the plane crash in Cleveland. And the the um we star we began speaking around midnight after a show at a place called Leo's cas ino. Um and uh and uh we began talking around midnight and talked till three thirty in the morning. Um and the uh w we did a lot of beer, we did a lot of Jim Beam. We smoked a lot of really powerful Thai stuff. Um and had a great time. And at the end of it when he had a g he had to go go he said, Gimme a fucking hug and I gave him a hug and he said, You know what you are? He said you're a fucking white nigger, that's what you are. And I l I love that. Stayed with me all the time. New York Times said he's a force of nature, people said. If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be so as we'll call that as bullshit. What Otis said and what the old man said I thought was really great. Well here and that for Otis writing was such a legend. Oh he was the He died so young too, oh he died. He was really he I was at his thirties someplace. But listen to this, the the uh interviewed him and went home the next day at the plane dealer. It was Sunday and I was working. Um literally the day after the interview . And uh so I'm sitting there in in in this hall like city room and the the I see a city editor the the the the the Associated Press wire machine start dinging. And in those days if it had more than like four or five dings, there was some bad thing that happened. So I said I saw a city editor come from the city desk to this dinging machine. Right, and he's staring at it, the fucking thing is still digging. Staring at it and then he looks at me like that in the in the city room. And then he looks away. So n I I saw that and then I got up and went to to to the digging machine. And Otis his plane it had crashed. Um the uh the weights another gig. Um and I I was probably the last man who really spoke to him at at length. Um the um I left the the office right then and fuck it for the rest of the did day there was a bar across the street. Um drank myself silly and went home with the waitress. I mean, I just You know, it's just horrible. But but I saw a lot, if you get back to your point, so I did it in in different ways. And so I mean I tried to write a movie about all this movie called Blaze of Glory . Um and the the um we put it together, a man named John Atfat was going to direct it and the it was announced that Cuba Gooding was going to play Otis and the the whole thing fell apart at the last minute for financing reasons and to this day it's never gotten made. But um I'm a writer. What else can I do with someone that I loved in a meeting I guess I' wdrite about them in that way, right? So anybody who writes interesting things the way you do has to have had some interesting life experiences. You you don't get those kind of scripts that you wrote from a a sterile . Um I I agree with that. Yeah. Sometimes um not to tell you the the I m after my my conversion to Christ the the the Christianity later m late in my life. I wrote three um Christian scripts and none of them were made. Um and one of the one of them wasn't made th was wasn't made because um the one of the priests involved with potentially getting Christian financing said that we need more incense. Right? And my response to to to somebody who interviewed me about it was I don't write fucking incense, I write flesh and blood, you know, so so no wonder it wasn't made. What did he mean by you need more incense? Well th the uh to make it more him like, to make make and to give it a sense of piety. Um d to to take t to make it inspire the people so that they become um Catholic in this specific case and that it was too secular. Um and and I think what happened to me with all three is that I fell between pews and be between so called Christian films and secul ar films. Um and uh and so the the that that's why we never got the finan cer all three of 'em. Well you say you fell between Christian films and secular films, you mean in the way you were writing it? That you weren't writing it specifically Clergical si clerical . That's too bad because that bridge is probably what would bring more people to Christianity. Hit movies. And that's more important than than than than uh spiking people with incense, right? It's interesting how Hollywood has always rejected those kind of relig ion film religious films like uh The Passion of the Christ for instance. That was a huge movie. Well it's not a huh just a huge movie, but in my mind um it was like in prayer. You know, the uh I watch it each Good Friday. Um and it was a huge movie be beautifully done. Um and the um the uh it was it wasn't officially endorsed by the Catholic Church, although I saw I saw in Cleveland a a meeting where where a priest organized a preview um screening of the movie and they had like seven hundred people the four hall watching it. There was such an interest in it. But part of it part of the reason I think y you raise a good point because I think part of the reason um it was such a towering hit was that it was real. Insec filled. It was real. There was b you had a figure who bled and you really show what happened up on that cross and how awful. Yeah. But that that kind of pain is and how and it the movie Aaron Powell No, it was horrific. And then there was also that Willem Defoe film, what was that one called? The The Last Temptation of Christ. That's right. Yeah, the uh I agree with that. The I always I love W the Poe. I mean I'm one of my favorite actress. Um the and uh and I like to and it's also very real that historically real. Yeah. You know, the the the the notion that that Jesus of Nazareth um you know, was this Fred Rogers figure, um, who wasn't really a real man, whereas the Bible says he was a true man and true God. Um, the th that show sh really showed his that film really showed his the human side. Yeah. And and my conception of Jesus who I revere and who was one of my one of my close friends that I speak speak to on most days, um, the uh is that he was true man and true god. He was a Jewish zealot, a freedom fighter against the Roman Empire. Um, the he was crucified by the Romans. Um, the then as a freedom fighter, he hung around blue collar guys and and uh and fishermen and hookers and tax collectors who were the lowest of the low back then , as they should be now, but they were the lowest of the low back then. And those were the people that he breed primarily b buddied around with. That's m that's Jesus of Nazareth and and that that side is is completely ignored by most films except the two that you mentioned, specifically that are like that. Yeah, the last Temptation of the Christ I don't remember I remember there was some controversy around it, but I don't I was too young to really be paying attention to like how it was the very fact that Jesus had a relationship that was clearly indicated as being sexual with Mary Magdalene who was depicted as a prostitute. Now, the truth, historical truth, is that Mary Magdalene was a few years older than Jes us and and a woman of means who had advised um advised um Roman builder isn't it in a city called Seraphim. And then was one of the people who financed Jesus and as he swept through Galilee and and and the rest of Judea. Um a a there's another scene in the in the in the Bible where where an unnamed woman um goes to Jesus and and the the washes his feet um and then washes his feet with his hair, right? This unnamed woman by a pope in the sixth century, Gregory the Great, was depicted to have been Mary Magdalene. No connection of Mary Magdalene. There's no no no no nothing that says that Mary Magdalene was a hooker of any kind. And then there's no proof for that in any way. So the fact that the last temptation of Christ did that and and and and and brought the two of them together in a sort of semi le uh love story w without of course any real um there's actuality to it on film is why it was so criticized. Scorsese's house was ticketed and and I think the studio at that point was run by Lou Wasserman, whom I knew from from Cleveland bec because he was a he was a um he ran a race wire in Cleveland before he went but but he was a legendary man. His house was was picketed as well. So was it just uh Catholic people and Christian people that were upset about this? Mostly. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. But it was un it was very unusual for a Martin Scorsese film to be a religious film, too.. Absolutely Like a depiction of Jesus. People were much more averse back then. I th I feel like sometimes like religion goes in like peaks and waves. And I think there was a wave of atheism back then and Hollywood Yeah, it was the absolutely right. The uh it's not as bad now in that sense as it was it was in those days. The and I think that that part of it that would frustrates me is that is that there would be an openness to that and and to into Christian films, if they were real. If they didn't if they weren't full of incense and piety. Right. You know, what we've done to Jesus over the years is make him a kind of Fred Rogers figure. No, he wasn't that. Um, you know, the I'm not even sure that Jesus really said do not resist violence. You know, Jesus also said if you have a c a cloak but not a sword, sell the cloak and buy a sword. He also said, um the I come not to make peace. I come not to make peace but with a sword. You know, so the there's been a lot of of um of church stuff. Um and then especially I think Catholics are more guilty of this that it's romanticized and sort of cosmeticized the figure of Jesus. Well there's always a problem when human beings add their own interpretation to an ancient story. And do it for to fit their own narrative. Absolutely it's a great problem, but in this case there is historical evidence on the other side. And they they simply ignore that or pretend it doesn't happen. The Nazi gospels um the are full of of um so-called revolutionary things. And the truth is that the Gnostic gospels were written forty years, thirty, forty years after the death of of of Jesus, whereas the Xenophic Gospels, the ones that the churches have accepted, were written eighty, ninety years after after Jesus. So they had to have been taken second hand from people who said they saw things. Where with the with the previous there's a there's a shot that people directly saw them. The people in in in in in the church gospels who were named like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not the people who are in the gospels as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Then nobody knows who write them. They took with those names. But they were they were not those people. Really? Yeah. I had no idea. Absolutely. No doubt. Even the um even the the churches admit that at this point. Whew. Two thousand years is such a l hard time for us to conceptualize to put uh into our head as to how much time has passed. Yes. Such a l you know, to try to get an accurate understanding of what was going on back then is insanely difficult. I have become a since since my my sort of conversion to to Christianity. And I would style myself a devout Christian but not a not a devout Catholic, even though I go to Mass. Um and I bel I love the Mass and believe in it. But since um since two thousand and one when this process really began. I be I I become a real student of the historical Jesus. Um the um the uh and I learn more and more and I'm and I'm more and more astounded at at at what 's been done t to cosmeticize um th this man who is Jesus of Nazareth. Well it's also he had some of the most profound and uh th th and insanely resonating teachings. Like even today. The words that he spoke two thousand years ago, there's still today peopleople I mean they they resonate with people and if you live your life by the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will be a better person. Yes It is a great framework to live your life. Which is incredible when you think about a person that lived so long ago. He is a much better person to to pick as your um imagined companion than Mark Twain. Your imagined companion. Let me ask you this when it comes 'cause I had a long conversation with um Mel Gibson about this. What do you think about the Shroud of Tur in? Well there was a study done the major study that was done by by the Catholic Church led by J John Paul II, who whom I I r I really admired. Um the um and and and and r read a lot about through the years that d and this is a scientific study that discovered that the shroud of of Turin came from thirteen thirteen or thirteen twenty. Um the um now this is huge controversy about it. And there are those people who who feel that that absolutely is Christ and I must say that when I look at it when I look at that figure and I've and I've done that a lot. And in my house we have the several blow ups of um of of of of of of Turin's Christ. It's very, very moving. Um the um but the the evidence what there is seems to indicate that it comes from the thirteen hundreds. Yeah, I've seen that as well. But then I've also seen people that say that that evidence there's some some controversy about that evidence. Yeah, there is and that some of the cloth they they believe dates to far earlier and it's the type of cloth and the way it's made seems to indicate that it's far older. Um I don't know how much of the cloth they've carbonized I don't either. But you know what ultimately when I look at that when I look at that Jesus and and and I've done that quite a bit, that face really moves me. So in a sense I don't give a shit. At the very least it's an insanely compelling piece of artwork. Absolutely. At the very least. Absolutely. But there's also a lot of very strange mysteries as to how that was created in the first place. Because it's not a die and th they're not exactly sure what caused that image to appear. Or how if that if that is a piece of art, they don't know how that art was created. And the fact that they really only could see the accurate representation of it once they saw it as a negative is also very interesting because who's gonna make a piece of art where you can only really appreciate what it looks like when you see it as a negative? Especially when you're talking about something that you're doing you're making something in the thirteen hundreds, hundreds of years before photography is ever created. So what are you what are you making and why is it so compelling when you look at it in the negative? And if you're talking about something that was created by an insane bur st of energy, which is what the proponents of the Shroud of Torah being legitimate think. They think it was created by this insane burst of energy on Jesus' resurrection. I don't I don't have no idea whether it's real or not real, but I I find it fascinating that they have no real explanation as to how it was created. V I'm pretty much of a complete ignorance on anything that has to do with science. Um, you know, I've learned n algebra and geometry and even biology, although I caught up with biology from personal experience. But but I just don't know. It doesn't matter to me ultimately because I'm moved when I look at that when I pray before that image and I look at it. Um I moved so as far as I'm concerned Well, like I said, it's at the very least, it's an insanely compelling piece of moral work. Absolutely. But the thing that I don't want to dismiss the possibility that it's real. 'Cause I'm fascinated by just the mystery of how was can you pull up an image of the the the negative version of it? Yeah, I was trying to bunch the stuff you guys are talking about though and there's no answers No, no one has. Yeah, when you look at the image and you realize that this is an actual negative of the original shroud , you you just you stop and think like well was someone do if you if this is the negative, like how would you create that as a positive? 'Cause it can you show me also the positive image of it? What it actually looked like? Okay, so here's this is one image. So this is what it actually looks like. This is the actual shroud . And when you look at that, you go, okay, I see like shadows, it's very interesting. And then switch over to the negative, and it all comes to life. And there's marks from the lashes, from the the whip marks, there's there's blood stains from where the rods went through his wrists to recreate this . Yeah, it's that the the uh cloth was made most likely from a loom that wasn't invented until like the thirteen hundreds. Okay. That doesn't necessarily mean that's where it for sure came from though, but um Here's about the image. It's just I how how was the image transferred to the cloth, I asked. Just you know, does anybody have any idea? I've seen a video where someone gave some sort of scientific explan ation, but I don't know if I can remember how to find it right now. Uh the chemical theories that body heat , sweat, or vapors reacting with the cloth, I uh example ammonia or lactic acid from sweat may uh uh have been proposed, but don't reproduce the shroud's sharp, non blurry details, simple heat or scorch theories likewise fail to match, the very shallow, non-burn discoloration of the fibers, human or man made image uh human made image theories, painting or rubbing from Bass Relief has been tested, but studies have not found pigments in the amounts or patterns that would explain the image, and there's no clear brush strokes. Primitive photography, some suggest that a medieval camera using light sensitive silver salts and lenses could have projected a body or statue onto the cloth, and experimental replicas show that it's at least physically possible, though historically speculative. And now here's the weird one. Radiation bursts of energy theories. Some researchers argue that a brief intense burst of ultraviolet or similar radiation from the body could have discovered discolored, only the top f ibrils, producing a non contact image even where cloth and body didn't touch. Proponents sometimes linked this to Jesus' resurrection, but the need the needed radiation, billions of watts without burning the cloth is far beyond anything observed in nature, and this remains a speculative, face-based idea rather than an established physical mechanism. In short, there's no consensus mechanism. The image transfer process is still unexplained, and every proposed method has serious problems when tested against the cloth's measured properties. Wild. I mean there's no other piece of artwork that 's that fascinating. Because every other art, Michelangelo's work, you know, any all this incredible art, it's art. You see what they did there's pi brush strokes, there's chisel marks, they m youade know they made incredible sculptures, but it's clearly man-made art. Right. This is a different thing. It's a very strange thing. If you can't recreate it today, if they could recreate it today, people would be doing it. They'd be making Absolutely. I don't know if that that's been done historically. But whether you know whether some you know the the some nutbag has decided to do business over recreating the sh Is there did they carbon test it? And what it what are the what are the arguments that it's older? 'Cause I I do know that there have been some very recent arguments that the testing was incorrect and that it's older. See if you can find out what that is . Whether or not AI, w whether perplexity our sponsor has some sort of a bias. Like the thing is it's like pulling from all these when when you get an AI response to something, it's pulling from all these articles on the web and most of the articles seem to indicate that people think it's at least either a hoax or an elaborate. So I don't know that they've done it. Supporters of an earlier date argue that the nineteen eighty eight radiocarbon results nineteen eighty eight is a long time ago. Sampled an anomalous or contaminated area, and that other historical and scientific clues point to a much older cloth. Okay, what is the scientific arguments? Contaminated repaired sample. Some research claim the nineteen eighty-eight test piece came from a rewoven or heavily handled corner, so its carbon date reflects medieval repairs, not the original cloth. Alternative dating methods, X ray or crystallog crystallographic aging of linen fibers has produced dates compatible with the first century. Though these methods are newer and not widely widely accepted as definitive, pollen and dust analysis reports pollen grains and miner al dust consistent with the first century Middle East rather than only medieval Europe, which proponents say supports a much older origin. Image properties. Some argue that the image microscopic features and burst of energy type characteristics require technology or phenomena unlikely in the middle ages, implying an earlier extraordinary event. Well, why don't they do a ret est ing? They probably don't want to know that it actually is from the thirteen hundreds. John Paul too um really believed in it. Uh he went to see it in Turin several times . He said he was moved by it and that's when they launched this big Vatican investigation. And he never said in any way that he agreed with the investigation. It just seemed to drop the whole issue. Um the and then from what I know it never went any further, you know. Um but he visited it twice. It went out of his way. Where is it? It's in Turin still. It's currently in the chapel of the Holy Shro village in France where the knight Geoffrey de Charnay displayed a cloth claimed to be Jesus' burial shroud. How he obtained it and where it was between the first century and the fourteenth century are unknown. Later theories trace it speculatively through Edessa and Constant Constantinople . I can't never say that. Constantinople. But these links are debated interesting. What does it look like? How is it displayed? That's how it's displayed? Constantinople was named after Constantine who was the first Roman Emperor who made Roman Catholicism the national religion? Right. Wow. So you can go check it out. And how big is it? Boy, they got that sucker walled off, huh? I from my impression, Joe, it it this was these this was over the length of Jesus' body. Right. So it's longer than than certainly I expected. Well you can see it's both sides. So uh apparently s folded over. Right . I wonder what all those markings are, those small triangle markings. Like what is all that? Like these things? Yeah. Uh one other th picture was pointing those out. They might be the burn marks that it was saying that there's burn marks on it . Again it's pffff it's two thousand years old in theory. Just imagine if it's real. That's the thing, it's like I never want to dismiss the possibility that it's real, 'cause imagine if it is real. That is crazy I agree with you and I in in my mind it's real and I pray to it. You know, the and I don't I try not to worry about whether it's real or not. I know that I'm moved. And that's that's you know that that's good enough for me. What led to your conversion to Christianity? I mean from a guy making these wild insane movies? Jamie, can I ask you for some water? This is water right here. Oh great, thank you This episode is brought to you by Chime . Chime is bringing something fresh to banking. JD Pedower just rank them the number one choice for new bank accounts in America. And that's not a small thing. That means real people, millions of them, are choosing this over traditional banks. That's because banking at Chime is fee-free, no monthly fees, no overdraft fees, and thousands of free ATMs. But here's the real kicker. If you get their Chime card, it gives you five percent cash back on a category that you actually pick yourself. Your savings rate nine times the national average. That's crazy high. Go to chime .com slash Rogan. Takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and chime card provided by Chime 's Bank Partners. Terms and limits apply. Go to Chime .com slash disclosures for more details. How long ago did you convert to Christianity? Well, I grew up Catholic. Um I was an altar boy when I was a kid. Um the um I knew one really great priest in my life who helped me with up my life. Um the I became a labs Catholic. And then when um the at at the tail end of living in in um in LA in Malibu actually, I was um I was hugely successful as a screenwriter, of course, and and um the um and I w then I was being interviewed all over the place and people were stealing mail from my mailbox and all that shit and and um I I I should have been overwhelmingly happy with that but, something was missing I felt. And I couldn't really put my finger on what that was, but something was missing in my life. Um the and then I got throat cancer. Um stage four throat cancer. Um the uh well shortly after we moved back to Cleveland. You know, the uh b from from Malibu and then the the Cleveland Clinic and then a surgeon named Marshall Strome did a surgery that they had never done in this country, that done in Switzerland, um where they they took some they took the the a muscle from the left side of your neck and attached it to your larynx. Stage four was very dicey and and he was very honest with me about how dicey it would be and he did it spectacularly and and here I am um at eighty one. Um the but in the course of all of that when I was when I was terrified and and and uh and uh m and r really frightened from one day to the other. Um I ran across a Jesus um re ading and and partly Naomi's influence because Naomi also grew up Catholic and she had a a um very the strong um the the can and the very strong faith. And then then I went to church a couple of times. Um and I and I loved the Mass , um the the Mass itself. Um and in the in the course of recovery and was it about a s three year recovery for for l for some time I couldn't speak. And then I spoke like Brando , um and then I squeaked. Um the um the in the course of my recovery and I did everything I could physically to help. I I jogged and walked and did all of those things. Um and I I recovered. Um and I felt afterwards that uh wouldn't that the reason I was able to beat a stage four cancer had to do with my prayer life. Um and then I started reading um voraciously about Jesus of Nazareth, the the apostles, all all of that, ancient Jewish history, um Catholic history. Um and some of that really moved me as well. Um the the um so I started going regularly to church with Naomi and then it as the bo boys were boarded with the with the boys as well. And as time went by excuse me as time went by, um the I also started having issues with the Catholic Church. Um I continued going to the Mass because that n that was a very special thing to me. But I had issues with with the the history of anti Semitism in the church. Um the issues with the the sexism in terms of not allowing women to be priests. Um the um um the the the is sue is with the with the the Pope making so called infallible decisions. And I just shudded um most of that off. Although in the process of it my Christianity didn't suffer at all. But but it sometimes I felt like I was becoming a kind of an ignag nostic Catholic. Um the um and my and my faith in Christ and even as all of that happened is unflagged. Um I still pray to Jesus, very specifically to Jesus. Um the um and he is continu es to be a major important figure in my life. So your issues were with the organization of the Catholic Church. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Well that's I I respected Martin Luther's um revolution be because he r revolted aga inst those same kind of issues. But the the um the um as I said in the in the mass continued to hold me worship is terrific and I really believe in it. I actually th the kind of worship that really moves me is is black spiritual worship. Full scale emotional. I give myself to you, Jesus kind of worship. Um the um and and I felt um I didn't want to then I didn't want to really switch w switch religions because I had my basic Christianity. You know and that's it continues to be important to me. So you you felt moved by like Baptist Black Baptists. Black Baptist It's fun. They look good. They're having way more fun. It's fun. I the I also have been very fortunate to the course of my life to have b black friends and and uh the to share the black culture. I was involved in in the civil rights movement. I had a shotgun stuck in my belly by a deputy who'd been indicted for killing and told to get the fuck out of Neshoba County. Um I I had the good fortune to have lunch with the Reverend Martin Luther King. Oh wow um the um I knew Stokely Carmichael. What was that like? Well it was the one thing the most amazing thing, he was in town because of a of a the the depth of a of a minister in a protest and and the the it was an unheralded appearance and I think it was partly b before um he became the towering international figure. And the the um the uh he was heading back to the airport and he could have find couldn't find his ride. And I happened to be right there and I said, I can I can drive you, Rev drive you, Reverend King Watch and he said, Okay. So again get we we we on the way to the airport he said, Are you hungry? I'm hungry, can we stop someplace? I said, Sure. So we did and the what amazed me about the man is that he was more interested almost in hearing about my refugee camp experiences and what that was like and how that worked and all of that. He said he didn't know much about it. Then he really then he was about he was uh about talking about the the civil rights movement. Wow. Um he was very, very moving and a powerful figure. Um the and then I just drove him to the airport but the the the uh there was something about the man that was absolutely magnetic. You know, that and that I felt. Clearly. Yeah. And then but then I also when I was in college I had a relationship with a young black woman. Um the um and and that brought me much closer to to black culture. I mean, as I was an ethnic fucking kid, you know, and a refugee. And I certainly needed lessons in that whole cultural area and I got them. Um and then I sought them out. Um and uh when when when I was at uh the Rolling Stone, um Huey Newton was over in Oakland and he would come over sometimes. Um the uh I think partly I'd partly suspect . Th because the the at Rolling Stone we had some of the most beautiful women in the world working there. We didn't have air conditioning and w when it got real hot they w they they didn't wear a top at all. So what about that spread? So it was sort of fun. They were topless? They were topless when the w when it got real hot. What year was this? It was in the sixties? Wild time. I was right right in there. Um in the in the in the in the in the years w where the cultural revolution was exploding. Yeah. The women's revolution was r was ex was exploding. Um and and to be at Rolling Stone at that time was like being in the vortex of all of that. You know, the uh and and uh it was a just a craze time, you know, the the uh the the sexual revolution was at its absolute height. Um and the the uh I always as I said to you, I've always really loved smart sassy sexy women. Um and the whole office was filled with them, you know. Um sure. What year was the birth control pill invented? I have no idea. And let me guess. Sixty five. Right. Sixty four. Let me guess. I'm just taking a wild swing. I have no idea. Approved by the FDA and introduced to the market nineteen sixty. Sixty-eight? Sixty, sixty row. Nineteen sixty. Interesting. Yeah, well that had a big factor. Right? Yes, absolutely. Because before, you know, women were in a situation where every time they had sex they could get pregnant. Absolutely. And then all of a sudden But then you've got this pill that's fucking with their hormones that we found out now that women that have been on it for a long period of Yeah. And also it's very dangerous for them. Uh a friend of mine, his daughter died. She was seventeen years old. She was on the birth control pill and she was smoking cigarettes. And she uh I guess uh smoking cigarettes and birth control pills for some people can cause blood clots . I don't I don't understand why or what, but that is an issue, right? You're not supposed to smoke if you're on birth control. See if that's still the recommendation. Well, obviously they said tell you not to smoke, period. But I think there's some potential complication. Smoking while taking oral contraceptives that contain estrogen significantly increases the risk of severe cardiovascular events like heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots. The risk is particularly high for women over thirty-five. Quitting smoking or using alternative birth control is highly recommended. Yeah. I had more fun at Rolling Stone than any any other time in my life. I bet you did. I just I had Jan Winter in here once. Yeah, I saw him. It was an interesting conversation. He kept looking at his watch. Well he was you know, he was Jan Winter of twenty twenty four or twenty twenty five, not Jan Winter of nineteen seventy five. Yes, absolutely. You know, not the Jan Wender that was the editor when Hunter Thompson was writing crazy stories. People change. You are a big Hunter fan. Huge man, then I know. And so my and I wanted to talk about him because I really haven't had chance to talk about him specifically. Um, Hunter really was the cause of my whole huge success, even as a screenwriter, let me tell you how . Um the uh I was a reporter at the Plane Dealer, and I had read Hunter of course, um when he was the national observer. Those kinds of pieces from Latin America before he discovered Gonzo. Um the um and um and I covered it the plain dealer, I covered a a sh a n Hells Angel shootout of a of a bar called Bartoes Cafe in Cleveland. Um and I wrote a story about it that the Associated Press picked up and put on their national wire . Um the and I get a note um shortly afterwards from Hunter Thompson who had read this story on the A B wire and wrote me a note that said I'm barely paraphrasing. Big fucker. Now there are two of us who know how to write about Hell's Angels. That really pisses me off. All the best. Understouns . Well that must have been a fun thing to get. Oh man, I was I was as as excited about that as my two sons were to meet Joe Rogan. They really they really it was really, really something. So okay, time goes by. Um and uh I get a call from Rolling Stone. I know I do a couple of freelance pieces for Rolling Stone. One on Kent State um one year afterwards and the other I forgot what the other one was, but um then I get a call from the managing editor, Paul Stanley, who incidentally was the well it was it was the backbone of the editorial content. He'd come from the from the Wall Street Journal and he wanted to take on the the New York Times for Rolling Stone. So then and they wanted me to do a a freelance piece on narcotics agents. Um corrupt narcotics agents. So I go out there and and and I discover that that Hunter had had been after them to hire me because of that piece and he they kept saying he's a k good guy and all of that. Um then when I'm at Rolling Stone I write an a a book called Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, um, that Hunter loves by now we know each other and and um and we're we're friends and and and that we enjoy each other's company. And the and I write this book and Hunter um g gets me as agent who was the top literary agent in the country and then gets me as publisher, which is Random House, to the the to publish it and then to to boot blurbs it when when the book comes out. And somebody a United Artist sees it oh, and then the book becomes a finalist for the National Book Award, one of the four finalists. Okay. So somebody a United Artist reads the book, reads because she reads all the f the finalists, reads the book, calls me out of the blue, and says, You know, you've got really cinematic talent we I would give you . Thought about writing a script and I said, No, I haven't and I go to meet them and they hire me and I write fist. All of that . Which led to my success in in in the screenplays and in the cinema was Thanksgiving . Wow And the friendship we had was was I never our friendship was in San Francisco. He lived in in the Woody Creek, um the and he would come to town. Our friendship was in town. Um but we ran a lot together. We enjoyed each other. We drank um together. We both liked drinking. Um on on occasion we wouldn't good story, we would go down the San Francisco was famous for its stripper barred area. I think around O'Farrell Street and stuff, and he and I went down there together there was a v v famous stripper show in one of those clubs. And one of the times we get down there, he of course would take acid before every trip down there. I wouldn't do acid but I but I said I did acid once and Hunter wound up holding me for an hour. Um the uh But I'm that was the guy from Cleveland, right? What she always went, you know. We say, Well, you're from fucking Cleveland, you know. Anyway, the um I would I would snort some lines and we go down there. Um and we were waiting for about an hour. And you know, the place is filled but the but the girls haven't come out. And Hunter suddenly gets up, hurls his arms up in the air, and says, Where's the pussy? We want pussy right I don't know like great memories in my life, you know. Of course I settle him down and all of that and and then when they when they start coming very loudly he called , Finally, finally pussy . He he was a you know larger than life, no doubt, colorful figure, but but also what he was, and then I discovered this . Um and he did n't really share this with that many people. He was very, very well read well read. Um the he had a whole other side that was a very sensitive and uh unhippy like s like s ide. Um I d I I saw it most clearly once. Um the the I was married at the time to a to a former reporter at the plane dealer who was very, very straight and really rejected the whole hippie thing and and worked in in California for a small suburban paper. Um and Dunter never met her but it hurt her and he said I'd we'd like to meet her. So we asked him to dinner. And Hunter came to dinner at this at our small tiny apartment in Navado and and and my wife at the time. Um the um cooked a a Hungarian chicken paprika dinner. Okay. It's Hungary's most famous meal. Um and um and he sat there with us and what I discovered was that the boy from Kentucky was there underneath all of that firepower and all of the all of that larger than life behavior. He was sensitive and quiet and and the and uh they got along like gangbusters, you know, the and and actually I interestingly when when when I drove him after dinner I drove him back to town, um he for the ride back he derated m berated me because I was having an affair with what he called the zippy chick. And he said, You have this wonderful wife here and you're fucking around with the zippy chick. I mean it's true beration and and anger and and all of that. He had that side as well. Um yes he did. If we had breakfast it was at four in the afternoon and he he he and and w what he ordered were four margaritas, six beers, um, and maybe, maybe toasts with uh with scrabbled eggs. Um and in that sense he he had more tolerance than anyone th that I'd ever seen. And my tolerance in those days, for Booze especially, was also very high. Um but but I'd never seen anybody quite like him. He had a great sense of humor. Um the um the uh as the many, many years later um the he wanted me to write the screenplay for Rum Diary. And I hadn't seen him in a long time and I had just met Naomi, um, with to whom I've now been married thirty two years. And and the um and and and he wanted me to go to Aspen so that we could talk about it. Um and and I called Ion and I said, Listen, I I head over heels in blood with this woman. Um, you know, and and uh Hunter wants me to go out there. Tell me the truth. What kind of shape is he in? And yeah, and sort of pauses and he says, Well, he's good. Um and then he's another pause and he says, But you know, the Stones were in Denver and and Mick and Keith decided to come visit him. So between gig. So they they they they hire a driver and they drive up here. Um and they they they have a they they have a terrific time and but they're about they're there about three or four hours and they've got a gig that night. So they say, Let's say we gotta go, we gotta gig and blah blah and honor gets all upset and says, Well you just got here and they say, No, Uh, we've been three or four hours and stuff. Well he continues to be upset and he leaves the house for and they're sitting there and suddenly they hear gunshots. He had gone out and shot the tires out on the on the on the on the st on the So I never took Naomi there. I was frightened too frightened. Well, let's see, they was in ninety and ninety something, four maybe, may th maybe said somewhere around five, four, five, and three f three, four, five somewhere in the middle. Yes he had. Or at least twenty. wasn't caused by the drugs, it was caused by booth. And he was in John's opinion and and he he an saw him often in Woody Creek. In and in his former wife's opinion, Sandy's opinion, it was the booths that did it. The um he he you know, his his body began being old and he needed a wheelchair. Um, he could hardly walk and the she um drove him in the wheelchair at one time, I think in in New Orleans when when they were visiting Sean Sean Penn um on a film, he actually fell out of the wheelchair in the middle of traffic and had she couldn't uh Anita couldn't really pick him up and and so they they had to get help and cars are going by and all that shit and then and then the he he also broke a leg when they were visiting uh Hawaii at the Kahala so it's um as he said in his suicide note, which I thought was the most sort wrenching and and and but also d terrific suicide note, it was no fun anymore. The fun was gone. Nothing was fun. No football, no this, no that, no fun. Well when the body goes, and that's the problem with booze. Yeah, exactly. Well the problem with many drugs, but particularly the problem with booze. You know, you're breaking down your body over over and over and again, and with a guy like Hunter, he was doing it every day. There's uh a famous um piece that this uh reporter wrote when he went to visit Hunter and he documented Hunter's drug and alcohol use throughout the day. You know, like six in the morning in the hot tub with champagne, like that's the end of the day. And then him sleeping and then him waking up and doing all the drugs and then getting ready to write. And uh what is the guy's name? Who wrote the there's a a guy who took me and my friend Greg Fitzsimmons reading it out and turned it into uh an EDM song. Really? Yeah. No, no, no. Right, but the um but the the singer, the song the who wrote the singer Yes, the guy I'm sorry. The guy who wrote the The song Yeah yeah yeah It's like uh electronic dance music song. We played it before many times. God I can't I can't believe it's like Beardy Man, thank you. This guy Beardy Man put it to music and it's hilarious. It's amazing. I mean it's a tragic story in a lot of ways. But in his prime, the writing that he did was uh in many ways it was the narration of an era. Yes. It was. And it was genius. You know, the heat there would you know, there was this thing called the new journalism and I practiced that and so did people like A Lee's and David Elversum and and Larry Al King and but then Hunter took that and created an entire new genre. The the Gonzalo journalism thing was his and it was it was a kind of humor that that just knocked you down. Um and it w totally revolutionary. Um and the um the the um the Tom Wolf um said, who of course was one of the people, the founders of the new journalism, said that uh he was today's version of Mark Twain. Two books especially I taught the the Fear and Loathing in Vegas of course and and the campaign book, the seventy two campaign book, which in my mind is the best political commentary, including all the No, it's fantastic. Fear and loathing on the campaign trail. And he also had this freedom that was very different from all his other reporters because he was a one time guy. He was gonna go in there and follow the campaign for the entire time and then wrote this book about it. But Joe these were all stayed um the the the shoe tie wearing reporters. And you turn this this b creature loose on them in the on the campaign trail. And of course they all fell in love with him and they did because he was such a free spirit compared to what their lives are to be like. Well I imagine you're doing this boring thing, which is following a bunch of fakers as they're telling you how they're gonna change the country, which you know they're not really gonna do because you've been doing this for twenty years. Absolutely. And then along comes the guy's like, Let's do acid . Come on, pussies. And he doesn't have to be held to the same standards as everyone else because he Aaron Powell I'm I'm so sorry that Hunter wasn't here with Trump's time. Because that could have been fucking wild and hilarious. But there's also part of me that says he would have liked Trump. I know this is heresy to liberals, you know, who to think that he's a you know, he th that he would have that he would absolutely hate him and all of that. But I'm not certain of that and I and I and I think that that certainly in terms of his style, um he would have liked things ab about him. Well I think he would have liked the fact that he's this wild character. Absolutely. Completely wild character that has never existed in all of presidential politics before. There's never been anything like him. For good or for bad. There's never been a guy like him. Look what he did today. I mean he he had a shit fit with Netanyahu. Yeah. And he said, you know, the uh yeah, you're fucking crazy. Yeah. You would have been in jail except for me. Mm-hmm. Um the I saved your ass. Well what other president for God's sakes has ever spoken like that, not only publicly, but to us. Right. And in that sense, you know, I'm I'm I'm proud of being a deplorable. I'm from Cleveland. You know, the the the I grew up amo among poor people and blue collar people and he's the first president. Um th that d that didn't talk down but talk directly to us. Yeah. For good or for bad. Yeah, I mean he's he is who he is. Yeah. Which is very odd. You know, it's a very it's a very odd person to be. Well I have I have a lot of questions in in certain areas, you know, the ice area. Well the ballroom doesn't bother me that much. Um that's to me, trivial construction. Like whatever. The the ice stuff. What bothers me is we're opening the door for militarized police on our city streets. As many people as they like look, we gotta get these immigrants out of here that are illegal, there's a lot of criminals in this country, there's a lot of people that are committing crimes. I understand that. I understand that perspective. Very slippery slope when you give people and they're trained for seven weeks. They're not trained for very long. They're trained for much less time than police officers, much less time than military. And then you have this militar militarized police force that has no identification in there on the streets. Th that's a precedent that you might like it when it's for a cause that you support, but that could easily be for a cause that you do not support . That militarized police force could be going door to door and confiscating guns. That militarized police force that you could you could find other ways where a different ruler could use this precedent in a very damaging way for our free society. That's my perspective on it. Yeah, I agree with that. The n the the wh when they start calling people like like that the the the woman who was killed in in uh Minnesota and the the the guy domestic terrorists. Um, you know, the uh it's it's an abomination and it's which woman is uh the the that woman who was uh shot by ice in Minneapolis. Oh, and then the guy afterwards. The the the week afterwards was also shot by ice. Yeah. Yeah. Well Tom Holman was already in charge. That guy was in a different position. Um but they did get rid of that guy. Also that guy had a very odd way of dressing that was very like he he wore outfits that were like reminiscent of like Nazi Germany. Like he had this weird very weird coat that he would wear all the time. And a lot of people were saying this is a very odd choice for some one to be wearing who's being accused of fascism. See if you find some photos of that dude, the the coats that he was wearing where a lot of people like I had to make sure that this wasn't AI. I was like, is this is real coat that he's wearing? Is it very stran I mean, not accusing him of anything. It's just a fucking coat. But it was a lot of people online were pointing out like this is a very odd wardrobe choice for someone who's in charge of uh in many ways other,ing human beings. The other thing that's a problem with this whole ICE thing is, and it's not the fault of the ICE people or even this administration, is that many of these people were encouraged to come here. That's what's so fucked. Imagine if you're living in Guatemala and you're encouraged to come to America. You live in a terrible third world situation, you have a wherever you're living is like d deep poverty. You're told that they'll help you get across the border. They'll they'll literally transport you into America. They'll put you in these cities. And you can get on public assistance if you have a bad back, they'll put you on social security. There's all these different programs that are incentivizing people to come to America. The Red Cross is giving you maps. People are showing you how to do it. They're letting you across the border. They're letting you into the country. And then two years later you're being chased down. Two years later you've got masked ice workers that are pulling mean it's like it's very inconsistent. Obviously this is a completely different administration, but I feel for those poor fucking people that were told that they can come here and that there was gonna be a pathway to citizenship. So they upend their life, they come to America and the only way they know how. And when people say, oh, they should do it legitimately, sure. A lot of people do it legitimately and I understand their perspective that it's a very difficult path and no one should be able to cut that line and they went through it the right way. However, these people that's not an option for them. If you don't have any money and you're living in a third world country and people encourage you to come to America, I most certainly would have come to America just like they did. Joe, I did. My parents did. You know, I I personify the American dream in terms of what happened to me. You know, the the the what they what they said in the campus was the streets of America are paved with gold. When when we lived on Lorraine Avenue in Cleveland there was a there was a Hungarian poet, a mad poet, his name was Hachim ra, would would go up and down Lorraine Avenue screaming in Hungarian old one, old one, which means where is it? Where is the gold? Right. Right, right, right. Um but look I c I came in here as a as a kid I couldn't speak the language, we knew no one. Um the I I got into serious juvenile trouble like maybe I got out of that. I I I studied. I was a total autodidact. I did wasn't a good student but I did reading. Um the uh the I I went to I went to college. Um the the um I I had I d I wanted to be a disc jockey for a while and the name Joe Anthony. It's a song to see the sad separate secretary, right? This kind of shit. Um the went to college and I did well in col lege. Um I won a big award um as a senior. Um the the um I I I I kept working and I then and I also, through the years, got a terrific amount of help from Americans. Couldn't have done it without him. Beginning with a with a bus driver named named Henry Jackson, a black man who had been adopted by Hungarian parents and spoke Hungarian. But you know, moving on to to the the no people in in college who helped who I found them a great deal of help. I couldn't have done what I achieved without the help um of of other people and other Americans. Um and the and then then to top everything off, you know, the uh Hollywood and eighteen films and all of that. Um the yes, I think that is the personification of the American dream. And and and the the immigr many of the immigrants who come here are looking for the same dre am. And many of them are saying what Matt Archimida said on Lorraine Avenue, old one, old one, where is it? Right. Yeah. It part of the reason that the that the stuff in Minneapolis breaks breaks my heart is be I I is that. I these are are m m these Latino people are my cousins and brothers in terms of not the the killers and not the gang memb ers. The people who are gardeners and who work in stores and trying to make a buck and have kids and that that they're trying to survive. Well it's also part of the ice story too. Absolutely. Part of the ice story is that a lot of these officers are Latino. Now including the two guys that shot Alex Pretti. Those two guys were Latino. And they took these jobs because these jobs give you first of all, you get a fifty thousand dollar signing bonus to join ICE . I mean that's a significant amount of money for someone who's in debt or who's in who's struggling. So this is how this guy dressed. Look how this guy dressed. That's kind of crazy. See that image? Yeah. Look at that coat. Yeah. I mean, come on. That's a cr it's kind of a crazy World War II military coat. That's amazing. A little odd when everybody else is, you know. The other thing is the masks. I understand. I understand the need for them that they get doxxed. Their families get doxed and it's very organized. This is not organic. These protests are not organic Yeah, it's too disappointable like to me. That's it. It's also it sets a very bad precedent. Yeah. This is the problem with it all. But you know, the real thing is you shouldn't be able to have organized paid for protests where you're paying people to protest and you're paying people to cause violence. And then you're also using people as political pawns and moving them into the country so that you could change like when when you have congressional seats, it's all based on the census, the more people that are in the town, regardless of whether or not they're legal or illegal, you get more congressional seats. So you they use them for political points. Yes they do, absolutely. Same old political game. Yes, same old game and that game should be illegal. That that shouldn't be legal. The idea of the American dream is a beautiful dream. And they've corrupted it and they've they've taken this and used it for their own gain. And you know, and they've weaponized empathy. And it's it's a real problem. It's a real problem for those poor people that came over here looking for a better life. Listen, I have an idea. Run for president or write your speeches. No, that attitude is really terrific attitude. I I think uh you're right to be concerned. You see it. Yeah. Um you know listen, I'm eighty one years old but I really see it to Militarized police on the streets for that reason is a very it's a very dangerous precedent. But then there's the other question, is like how do you get all the criminals out? I don't know. I'm not the guy. You know, I'm not the one. But I'm I am uh very concerned with this pr th this dangerous precedent. That's my feeling on it. Yeah. So I just worry that people accept it because they want this result now, and they don't realize that this could set up this being a common occurrence. I mean, we saw some of it during COVID. There was some militarized police on the streets keeping people in lockdown in certain cities. They utilized the national guard and they they did things like that. It's that scares the shit out of me. Scares the shit out of me when you you have a justification for militarized police with masks on that are just grabbing people. And some of these people are American citizens. It turned out a lot of them were American citizens. Hundreds of them were. You know, we had the same syndrome. I I covered the Kansas State massacres. Yeah. I covered that. And the one of the things that I saw is the rhetoric that was coming from James Rhodes, the governor at the time, and from Sylvester Del Corso, who was the head of the National Guard, was absolutely the one the maybe the main thing that in that created that atmosphere that that that caused that shooting. Yeah, absolutely. And today just sadly we see many examples of that. And they're great dang Yeah, you would think that we would learn. But we go through cycles where we learn, we get better, and then we repeat the same things again. unrest. You see that with a lot of different things in this country. It's like we we learn for a little while and then we forget. Mark Twain's wisdom once again comes through. Mark Twain said politicians are like diapers and they should be changed often and for the same reason. Yeah. He also said history doesn't repeat itself but it also of it often rhymes. He also said it a little bit off subject sub toject but I love it and he said the he said when the mind and the pecker argue, the pecker always wins. I mean he was uh essentially the original stand up comedian. Oh, you're absolutely right. I mean you're so right. I w I've actually been thinking about doing some piece on it. The I mean and stop me if you know the history. The but but in the beginning he was a stand up with his so called lectures that he did all over the West. And then then he did this then he wrote some books, the books that he's famous for. But he went bankrupt near nearly at the end of his life because of bad investment s and then he did a round the world tour of stand up all over again. And usually they said he was a a um a poet of the profane because these are usually for male audiences. He published a little book called On Masturbation, which is about the glories of masturbation. The only thing I've heard that's that's close is a say they send up by one Joe Rogan which there's a great line that says if you're married and have kids, the only to the only place to find peace the Tway would say with the Pecker that is if you rent a motel room and lock the door. You know, but he had the same kind of of of um of verve and love the in in terms of d being a stand up, being outrageous, pushing the envelope. Um and that that whole side of Twain has been sort of hidden under the notion that he is the great of it's Hug Finn and Tom Sawyer and all of that. Nobody talks but he wrote a book called Letters from the Earth from the from the voice of the Devil. He wrote another one called The Uh Mysterious Stranger, which is about Jesus coming back in a very dark way. And then he wrote one that was published in the thirties that hasn't been republished called Twain Erupts. Um, you know, so yes, you're so right when you say he would stand up. He was a He was the originator. Because he was essentially a very witty author who ha wrote very provocative things, very hilarious things, and then would read them publicly. Right. And when he was doing these speeches where we'd go and you know, whether you call it poetry or whatever it was, there wasn't up comedy back then. There was no name for it. Yes. But he was just riotously funny. People loved them. Absolutely. And they would go to see them because they were funny. And the the the initial audiences were mostly male audiences. Right. Um the uh th the the yeah, I mean yeah, I I think he's a great it's never been really done. The the the uh to do a piece a fictional piece about Twain um as a as a stand up w with pushing the envelope with all It would be a lot of fun. The only problem would be like the cultural context are so different back then. It's almost like um did you see Lenny, the Dustin Hoffman film? Great film. I mean I think Dustin Hoffman fucking nailed it. It was as close to Lenny Bruce as you're you're ever gonna see someone portray Lenny Bruce. The problem is the world has changed so much since nineteen sixty that a lot of the outrageousness is gone and it seems very pedestrian. Like the things that he is saying, because he was such a groundbreaker and society was so locked down and and and so conservative and so you know, just that there was just uh the way people communicated was much different back then. The understanding of culture and of uh race relations and sexual relations was very different back then. And so the outrageousness of what he was saying back then, it just doesn't really translate. Because in many ways I think stand-up comedy in particular is a window in time. It's a window into the the the way people behave. Films are that way as well. Like especially like if you go and watch a lot of old films. It's a window into how people perceived reality back then. There's some stuff that that's rarely been published from Twain. That that that hasn't really been seen very much. That was left in places like the University of California Archives. That they go go a step past what we know from Twain. And uh and I think there's so much of it. There's something called Twain's notebooks that that hasn't been published, um in in their full form certainly. Um that that may still be shocking. Um the um I mean I'm I'm still playing with it because I'm reading and reading and all of that, but even if I never do, it's so much fun reading about him and his vlog Well I hope you do write something about it because it would be great for people to see and to get an understanding of him because I think a lot of young people, particularly today, just think of him as an author. Tom Sawyer, I just been he's been pushed into being almost a kid's writer. Right. Speaking of stand-up, and I want you to know and I don't think you know, did you know that Sam Kinnison dedicated a C D to me. Did he really ? Sam Guinness in one of his one of his um last C D was called Leader of the Band, B A N N E D. Right. And at the flip side of the C D, he thinks a bunch of people, Ringaze off and record people and all of that, and then also Sly and Sean Penn. And then at after all of that, in larger letters than the others. He says and a very special thanks to Joe Esther Husser writing his letter to Michael Lovitz. That's amazing. What letter did you write to Michael Lovitz? Oh Michael Ovitz was the was the uh top top dog, um the agent in town uh running CAA . And the and uh I was leaving CAA because my best friend and rabbi in the business was an agent named Guy McAlwain who had been running Columbia became an agent again. So I I was leaving CAA is simply because of my love for Guy. And I went in to see Ovitz and said I'm leaving the agency. And Ovitz said, um, if you leave the agency then my foot soldiers who go up and down Wilshire Boulevard will put you under the ground. Oh Jesus. You know, so the I thought about it for a couple of weeks and I Jesus. And I and I wrote him a letter. Which essentially said, Fuck you. You know, I'm leaving. I'm going back to the person you started me in the business and the person I love. And it turned into a major controversy with headlines all over the place. Oh man. There's a but there was a producer named B Bernie Brillstein. I knew Bernie. He did too. He wrote his memoir. Um late years later we said those exact words had been used to him as well. Wow. Yeah. So the uh and you know what in as time went on, it became obvious that that that the whole controversy with Ovids really hurt him. Um bec because um other people had been threatened that way. And he had a reputation for that. And he would and he actually um was out of the business, not not not not p much past that. But but the notion of Guinnesson, I love Guinnesson's work. The notion of Guinnesson when I saw that thing, I was uh overwhelmed He was one of the greats. He was one of the greats, absolutely. Stand-up comic ever. I agree. I agree. He came out of nowhere. He was so different than anybody else. You know, I was introduced uh to Kinnyson by a girl that I work with. I was working at a um a gym called the uh Boston Athletic Club in South Boston. And there was a girl that worked at the front counter who was hilarious. She was a volleyball player. She was really hilarious girl. And she told me about Kinnison and reenacted one of his bits in the parking lot of the club told me what she saw on TV about he had that bit about uh homosexual necrophiliacs oh yeah. She's on her stomach laying uh on the she was so funny. She was on her stomach in the parking lot going oh oh life keeps fucking you in the ass even after you're dead it never ends it never ends and I was laughing so hard that I couldn't wait to go out and get that videotape and I got that video tape and I was only nineteen at the time. I had never even thought about doing stand-up yet. But that was like one of the first times that I was like, oh, this is stand-up? Yeah. Like I didn't know that this was stand-up. I thought stand-up was like, did you ever notice? Like that kind of I had no thought ever that this wild shit was stand-up . And you know, credit to HBO because before then you, would never be able to see that kind of comedy. The only way you'd be able to see it is in the movie theater. It'd have to be like Richard Pryor, live on the Sunset Strip, which predated that by a few years. And no one had any understanding that there was this kind of stand up comedy out there. That this wild motherfucker who used to be a priest he used to be a preacher and he he comes to LA and is this wild Coke snortin fucking demon comedian who's just different than anybody else before him and just changed comedy. There's a few people, there's a few characters along the way that have just completely changed comedy and I think Kennedy Kinnyson is one of the big ones. He was absolutely amazing. Um I d I I adored him. I I thought he was a groundbreaker. And when I saw the C D, the C D I I have uh two of his albums. S two different people have gifted me um his uh first album. God, what is it called? Is that is it called Louder Than Hell? I think it's called Louder Than Hell. And uh they're signed. Both albums are signed. Both signatures are totally different. So I don't know which one's real or if either one of them are real. And that's a problem. Like people buy stuff off eBay, they want to give you a nice gift. They buy an autographed album and it might not even be real. Mind boggling. Yeah. He's having literally having a conversation with someone. Yes he is as he's dying. Yeah. It's obviously Jesus is the Jesus figure. I mean it's a is it by time? I mean all that Right. Um amazing. Especially amazing considering where he came from. What wha what he went through, what we did with comedy and then then that ending. Yeah. There was a movie made, wasn't there? But it wasn't very good. And I don't remember About Kennison? Yeah. I don't know. I think yeah, I was a while very well I was thinking about that too. I don't I think I have a problem with reenactments of a guy who is that profound. Oh yeah. Someone's playing 'em. It's like it's I try not to watch 'cause it's just the the actual work of the guy, like going back and watching his HBO special and watching his stand-up appearances on Letterman and listening to his a his first album, the first album I listened to, I was like, Jesus Christ, this guy's incredible. It was just so different, so crazy. And you know, and he was the first guy that was like open about doing cocaine, like open about partying. You know, I mean he was uh he was a wild boy. It reminds me, I'm sorry. Hunter in the terms of being wild about coke. M my first story when I was at Rolling Stone was it was um was a piece about narcotics, corrupt narcotics agents and as a result of the of the stories the guy who was the head of the narcotics agency in the state of California had to resign. And as a result of that, um I started getting plastic baggies full of Coke at Rolling Stone from the various dealers who appreciated my work. Now whenever Hunter was there, I would present him with the bag. And he would go, Holy fucking Christ, you're getting leads from people. It's one of the things that solidified our offensive is that I would have handed over. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It was the only drug besides it besides smoking dope that that I really , really enjoyed. I I said I tried acid once and another hat to hold on to me because I was so freaked out. I can only imagine. When I watched showgirls, I was like, whoever wrote this was doing Coke. That's like w literally one of the first things I've said. I've always said that's like one of the heightens of cocaine movies. Not anymore, but but certainly the memory of it. Influence. Absolutely. Influenced by cocaine. The uh Tarantino also really loved the Love It Showgirls. Um Well it was a wild movie. And I remember, you know, because it was that girl was her name Elizabeth Berkeley. Berkeley. Elizabeth Berkeley, who was from Saved by the Bell. Right. So she was like this America sweetheart from this really nice sitcom. And then all of a sudden, you know, she's half naked and she's a showgirl. And and she's having an affair with Paul Verhoven. Right. Crazy. No. Yeah. Geez Louise. Wild times, right? Absolutely fun. Really fun. Um Jimi Hendrix story because he's the Jimi Hendrix experience and I wondered whether he had any kind of a godfather impact on on the Joe Rogan experience . I stole the name from Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix, right. A hundred percent. I mean when we first started doing the podcast, I was I would always listen to Voodoo Child on the way to the comedy st You'll love the story then. Okay. I'm a reporter at the plane dealer. And the all of our editors barely know about rock and roll. And as I said, I've loved it all my life and when Bendrix came around I I loved his work. And he's in Cleveland uh for an appearance and the fucking Cleveland cops have gone crazy and they're saying that this caused him a riot and it's obscene and all of that stuff. And um I asked go up to my city editor and asked and I'd tell him I'd like to interview Hendricks and cover his concert. So I do cover his concert and it's jammed in Cleveland Arena and people are loving it. And uh I set up a date to interv to interview them the next morning at the Cleveland Hotel . Okay, so um the I show up the next morning and I am the plane dealer reporter. I've got a tie on and a sport coat, you know, and it and uh and uh they go in I think it's nine thirty, the um and he's up but he's barely up and he's he's wearing shorts and a T shirt and his hair is you remember his hair but on this occasion there were a lot of beads and things in his hair as well. And it's totally scruffed up. Um the um and we talk about rock and roll mostly in his background and the fact that he had been I think as a backup and as a as a kind of guitarist in the Ricky Nelson band that had been in Cleveland a couple of years before then he he'd done this pre stuff before he went out on his own. And um and we get along. Um and uh we began smoking dope of course at nine thirty and by fucking eleven thirty we both got the munchies. And he said, Man, I'm hungry, you know, I you got any you wanna g go to any place, I've got a car waiting for me downstairs So I said, Sure and um we go down and then Mitch Mitchell and Chaz Chandler join us, the the other members of the experience. Um who are equally looking like CD characters, you know But it's that time of morning, it's after a concert, all of that. So we pile into this limbo . And I direct them to go to um Buckeye Road is the center of the Hungarian community in Cleveland. And the center of the Hungarian community on Buckeye Road is a restaurant called the Buloton. Okay, and I direct them to go to the Buloton. Now, they know me at the Bulleton 'cause I used to live on Buckeye Road and the big stretch Limo pulls up plate glass window front filled with old ladies with babushkas and guys very formally dressed. We get out in front of this place and these Martians three Martians get out of the car and I lead them in. And the Hungarian they're looking at them like, What the fuck? What what is this? You know, they made me the um the the they they're just following me in and I s I see Jimmy looking around and shit. So they see this. The major D knows me, so he calls me aside and he says, Well what are these people? Wha who are these people? And I say, Jimmy Hendrick's big rock and roll star, you know, he's in town and and he said, Oh Hendrix and say, Yeah, Jimi Hendrix. Okay. So we sit down and J and Jimmy says, You order for me Great. So I order a chicken paprika for him, which is the big Hungarian meal. Um and and Chaz and and Mitchell ordered something else but but very Hungarian stuff on my advice. Um and the the interestingly as we're sitting there , the Matre D has obviously spoken to people 'cause old ladies are coming around asking him for an autograph. Wow. And he's gracious. Um the the but he loves his paprika and wants to order another. At this point we've knocked out two bottles of wine, I think, and we're still rolling from all the dope. Um so they bring that at the end of this. He he had three um orders of chicken paprika . He signed he we had like four bottles of wine. We staggered out of there. Um the he signed I would guess ten autographs or people come around, bowing . We and then as we walk out of the restaurant, he sticks his fist high up in there and says, hungry, hungry That's awesome. Rod White was telling us a story the other night in the mothership green room, the comedy club green room, and he was saying that when he was I think he said he was thirteen years old, he went to see the monkeys. Uh and Jimi Hendrix opened for the monkeys. He said it was the worst booking of all time. You've got opened oh my god. Exactly. So this is when Jimi Hendrix was emerging. He really hadn't become Jimi Hendrix yet. And so he's the opening act for the monkeys. And so you have a bunch of kids that are there to see this really cute band that was pieced together by corporate executives essentially. You know, the monkeys fun band, but you know, they had a T V show and it was a very clean, sweet T V show. Yeah, yeah, of course. You know? And then you've got this guy opening up for them, this just jam it on the guitar. Wow. And they were freaked out. They're like, what is this? Like what is going on? And he said nobody liked it. They were it was terrifying to people. They're like, who is this guy with his guitar? Like what the hell is he doing? Great story. The the many years later I thought about writing an Hendrickson movie and working with a producer friend named Ben Myron and Ben rounded up his brother. Um and uh and we actually brought him to Malibu . And we and and unfortunately the we discovered that the rights were so screwed up in between relatives that there's never been a Jimmy Hendrix movie baby because people couldn't agree on on the deal of any kind. But it still would be a terrific movie I think, you know. Oh, it'd be a phenomenal movie. There was at least one Jimmy Hendrix . Wasn't there, Jimmy? I believe. Do you remember it? Yeah, it was uh Andre 3000 from Outcast . It was but they'd like couldn't really use all the music and stuff, I think. Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't hear Jamie. He said it was Andre three thousand from Outcast. I see. And uh that they couldn't use all the music. I see. I think. I put it yeah, it came out ten even like ten years ago. That was an issue back then too. I remember that. Yeah. Jimmy. That's right. Wow. Also that the day after you're talking about in Cleveland there's a recording of the concert. Oh wow. Uh shit, that's my Facebook. Is that right? The Cleveland concert? Yeah. Wow. There's a I've got a few different links. They kept taking me to Facebook, but there's a bunch of pictures. Whoa. March twenty sixth, nineteen sixty-eight. Wow. And then there's a recording of the concert too. So you can listen to the recording from the concert. From his legendary trip to Cleveland. Wow. But I this was like paid walled, decided I couldn't get all the stuff behind it. Wow. He was the nicest guy. I can imagine. Yeah, very nice. Well he was just uh insane one of a not not even one of a generation, one one of one talent. I mean to this day, if you ask most guitar ists, who's the greatest guitarist of all time, it's Jimmy Hendricks. That's crazy. Yeah, somewhere there. Yeah. That that guy to this day is universally regarded as the greatest guitarist of all time. You know, I interviewed him I was known as the Grim Reaper at the plane dealer because I interviewed Hendrix . Um Janet Joblin, Jim Morrison and uh Odison . And they all died. They all died young, you know. Um I did a I did a feature on Jose Feliciano and people would come up to me at the plane dealer and say, What do you That's crazy. Well it's it's just unfortunate that they all die and they all died at twenty seven years old, which is really Was that right? I didn't wow. Hendricks, Joplin, and Morrison all died at twenty seven. And um who else? Kirk Cobain. Um Amy Winehouse. At twenty seven. Yeah. It's all twenty seven. Twenty-seven's the magic number for insanely talented people to die young . Yeah. Very weird. You've had an incredible life, man. I've you know, I've been blessed. The I've been really blessed. First of all, the fact that I'm still here at eighty one, considering some of my excesses in the past, is miraculous. Truly is. I instead of smoking when I was thirteen. Well stopped when I was six ty. Well right. Um then I had to stage four cancer and and and the martial throne surgery saved me. Um the you know the I drank too hard most of my life until I was seventy. Um and I finally stopped then . Um the um only because I have a hard headed Italian Polish wife who said, Enough, you're falling down . You're taking twelve pills and you're falling down. No fucking more. Okay. Now w shortly after we were married, d after literally after we exchanged the vow, she turned to me and she says she whispers, she says, If you cheat on me, I'm going to fucking hunt you down and kill you. Okay . I listened to her. I I did I listened to her. I listened to this woman. You know, so unds like a fun lady. She is. She is and she's um I'm very proud of her because at at sixty seven , um, the mother of four, and truly the the true head of our family. She's writing her first she's written her first novel which is called um Dark Church and it's set in in uh Dracula's Transylvania. Whoa. And it's a a kind of um of uh gothic um th thriller. Um the um and um the the I I bring it up because I promised her that I would make this plug and I fear that if I don't I'm gonna be in a lot of truck and trouble. So thank you very I love that when someone does something like that when they're in their sixties just say, fuck it, uh something I've always wanted to do, let's do it. I think it's fantastic. Thank you. I j I just love when people do like fuck your age. Who cares? Just put put it out. I write it. I agree. Yeah. But I have lived a lived an amazing life and I and and and I I'm very thankful. Um the uh um I've seen a lot. Um the and I've come out on the other side, I've seen a lot of darkness too. Um but when it's all over. Graham Green who's in in who's a writer that I admire died I think in his late seventies . Um, and he said, um, we get to a point where we see the fence. The fence is there but we can't see over the fence. But the closer we get to the f ence, the more curious we are about what's on the other side of the fence. And there are some people who d decide that they're too curious, people like Hunter and jump over the fence, right? I'm not doing that. But but I'm approaching the fence. Well but I've lived a terrific life and only once again only in America. Yeah, only in America. Well I'm I'm glad you're not jumping over the fence . Uh I'm glad we get a chance to talk to you. The no more fun note. It should be uh it should be classic note. Yeah. Well I mean that's how he lived and at the end of his life, obviously it was not fun. No, no. Yeah. But Twain, why I keep going back to Twain . This is a good one, I think. He he said um the orgasm is God's own payback for all the suffering that he overlook And on a look, we we talked about Hunter in the sixties and the seventies. He was the voice of that generation. Like he was the guy that was this intelligent guy that wasn't a part of the elite establishment, that wasn't a part of uh the rich fat cats, but was also famous and well known, but stuck true to his thoughts and his beliefs. It was able to articulate things in a way that gave you this understanding of what was going on with the people back then to the that to this day. If you read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, or if you le read Fear and Loathing in Los V egas or you know any of his work, you know, the Kentucky Day uh Derby is decadent and depraved. Like it's a just a phenomenal encapsulation of guys at Lono, even even something else. Yeah. It's it's so important. It's um and we don't have a lot of that today, unfortunately. You know, you got a lot of podcasters and a lot of you know, people making YouTube videos and TikToks and just not a lot of like great writing that encapsulates things where there's like one figure that we turn to to read their stuff on things. And Hunter was that guy. Yes, he was. as Hemingway was for a previous generation. You know, Hunter and I talked a lot about Hemingway. Yeah. Um because of of our backgrounds and earning a living and and all of that. Um and I think the the fact that Hunter ended it a as he did was w was was sort of thought out many, many years before it probably through Hemingway's example. Inspired by Hemingway. Yeah. Unfortunately that's how he did it too. Yeah. And they both shared in common that they drank to excess. Absolutely. But you know, when I when I was a boy, um wanting to be a and I wanted to be a novelist and not a screenwriter, when I was a boy, the Holy Trinity were Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner. They all died of alcoholism . Um Hemingway shot himself. Fitzgerald had a had a heart attack at a very young age while working as a hack, Hollywood screenwriter incidentally. And Faulkner fell off a horse I think in his early seventies rip ripped. Totally drunk. Um and these were the idols of young people coming up then, you know. Um What do you think it is about alcohol and writing? The the um I I for a while I drank mm all day black coffee and a cognac. Um the um and then then later on in life, um the I didn't have my first drink until noon. And which I make way was eleven o'clock, um and uh and I m measured it until at n ight. And and then i it was gin, um before it was white wine. Um and part of it is that if you're l ost in in this imaginary world that's in your head all day, you can't get rid of it, you can't make it stop . And and the booze makes it stop. So that you could can continue your normal d familial d daily uh obligations and schedules without having this i this stuff in your head all the time trying to crowd it out. The fact that sometimes excuse me the fact that sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and take notes of of something that the character says or something indicates that I can't get rid of it. With the booze when I was drinking. If I drank enough I could get rid of it and begin it again the next day. It's partly freeing yourself it's an interesting point, it's partly freeing yourself from something that you've created yourself. So th in that sense, y you create something th that that that can hurt you even if you created my greatest enjoyment in with was writing screenplays. Knowing that it's going to take when people see this, it's going to make their own lives more pleasant for at least two hours. They will enjoy it. They n they may they may laugh at it, but it will take them out of their own existences in a pleasant way. That ain't bad to to be able to do that with people. Oh and and and then that's very important to me. People think of it as trivial that entertainment is trivial. I don't think it is at all. I mean it shapes our perceptions of the world. Exactly. You do the exact same thing. You make people's lives better by enjoying what they're watching. And that's that's in that that is not as important or as dramatic as my daughter in law, for example, who just got her medical degree, who literally, literally saves people's lives. Um the um incidentally the classic Hollywood story, I think. Alyssa and uh Alyssa Esther House works in um in Texas in a hospital. Um and uh she just got her medical degree. Um but to show the influence that Hollywood has on our culture. The other day she walks into a room and there's a gigantic big guy there who's yelling and screaming. You know this is the sweetest person in the world. And uh and has this wonderful smile and really is great with people and she's trying to calm him down and she says, What's wrong? What's wrong ? And y she describes him as a really big man and is screaming and he says, What's wrong, what's wrong? And he yells , I want Brad Pitt fucking in Texas, you know some hospital and he says, You want Brad Pitt? And he says, I want fucking Brad Brad Pitt . Why do you want Brad Pitt? He goes, Because I wanna fuck him. doctor confronted with this madman. What the fuck Brad Pitt One more example do you need of the powerful effect of the culture So when I write something, I don't want some guys to read to see it and say, uh this is the result I want Brad Pitt Nor do I want Volodymyr Zelensky to start a fucking war. Right. But I do want people to enjoy it. Right. That's hilarious. When you see like when you say that uh the alcohol silences the voices, I always thought of it as the other. I thought of it as like alcohol releases people from their inhibitions and allows them to I think that happens with some writers, but it that never been my problem. The uh th there's something about going into a little room wherever you are and you don't have to be in Hollywood. You can be anywhere. There's a as long as there's a little room in the house you can escape to and and sit there quietly and make shit up. Um that that that you th that you think will that people will enjoy. As long as that's there, that's that's all I n that's all I really need. You know, the uh now occasionally they I will play music without stop on certain scripts. I there's the same way with with Method Cohen, I listened to him a lot. And Dylan of course. I did a movie with Dylan, you know, um the uh which was also funny experience. Um the um but sometimes it's music. It's not Coke anymore. It's not it's not cognac anymore with coffee. Um the I drank so much coffee that finally one day we had to call an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack and become allergic to it. It was just caffeine? Ambulance caffeine. Ambulance is driving me down a marine general and there's a traffic jam. There's construction, right? And they think I'm having a heart attack and I jump out of the ambulance and I run up to the guy with the heart hat . And I never forget it says Brinkerhoff, I don't know, Brinkerhoff. And I'm yelling at him, I'm having a heart attack, you motherfucker. Get these guys out of the way. I'm dying, of course. Oh my God. It's worse than the guy who wants to fuck Brad Pitt. Well the crazy thing is just coffee after all the coke and all the other craziness. Yeah, yeah, well even that got so I had to stop. I stopped the coffee as well on the uh th the years after I stopped it, um I was in New York and I ordered a decap espresso . There wasn't DCAP and I was up for two and a half days without being asleep, so obviously a my system got totally totally screwed up. But got reset. Yeah, you lost your tolerance for it. But the um but I n I never had it d never I never felt it inspired me. Now y the the the uh with basic instinct writing it um the um in the sun, in the Hawaiian sun, you know, and of course all through all of this it was non stop smoking. You know, I mean two pack a day smoking. Beginning with Luckies and Marlboro's and moving out to Gal waz and occasionally cigars and pipe and all this shit. Um the the but but so I did do that. But I never felt that the the that the Coke was inspirational. Uh it was an enjoy it was enjoyable and it was fucking dynamites actually. You know, so and and that that also comes in handy. But it wasn't uh what fueled your writing. No, it was just recreational. But nicotine did. Yeah, absolutely. That when he stopped smoking it was one of the most difficult things that Well the the uh yeah I went through that and the I was warned af afterter my cancer surgery by this army surgeon that I like so much that if you smoke or drink, you're dead. You know, y you're dead. Understand that. And and um so I took it seriously. The the uh d drinking my idea of not drinking at that point was switching from tangerai to white wine. And of course that got out of hand after a while too. Until Naomi jumped into the whole prey, you know, so And now you're completely clean. Did this all line up with your conversion to Christianity? Yeah. Yeah. Well I n I I needed Jesus of Nazareth's help seriously to be able to do all that. Um the um and and then I did a lot of praying. But I still believe in prayer and I've I believe in worship with a group of people there's a special kind of inspirational thing that I feel. Yeah. No I agree with you. I think there's something about all those people collected together. Yeah. There's a similar thing that happens at a church. Very similar. Absolutely. You know, we are tribal people and we're meant to be together and there's something about groups of people together, especially in a positive way, that unite us and connect us in a way that uh it's very profound. It's d it's different than anything else. It's different than watching it on a screen. There's something about being in the presence of other people that are doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Um and the vibe is goes deep and it's really inspirational. And when it's really working , um I feel almost transported, I'm on a different level, you know, and I feel myself being on that level and it's wonderful. Yeah, and you can see all these other people experiencing the same thing. It's it's very transformational. It really it and you know, I always talk about the parking lot of church is like the best place on earth 'cause no everybody lets you go. Everybody lets everybody go in front of them. Everyone's kind Yes, it's not a better person. Yes, you will. But people are very cynical. And rightly so. They're very afraid of uh people manipulating them. They're very afraid of of cults. There you go, you got your cross right on you. Yeah. That's a nice one too. I like that. Thank you. Afraid of people telling them that they know things, that they have the answers. But it depends on where it's coming from. And sometimes I I don't know where you are, but sometimes I could feel something very special with someone who is talking about those kinds of things, you know? You can feel the difference and the difference between that and someone who's not genuine is very apparent. Yeah. You you feel that as well. Like it's distur it bothers you. You know, you're like, I don't want to hear this guy talk about this. But you know what? If you have a shit detector and you do, so do I. If you have a shit detector you can really feel that and pick it up. Yeah. Yeah, well I think you your shit detector works with virtually everything. And I think the audience gets it too. You know, people I agree Honor having you in here. You're a real legend. Um you are tr truly what you do is you have redefined in the interview and you m you made it in into a very special conversation conversation chat between two guys um who think they like each other and they they talk for hours and they they 're inspired and they they come out and they like each other and and uh and you do that to people and I think that's a great gift. Thank you. I thank you for the Joe Rogan experience. Thank you for being here. It's an honor. It's an honor to meet you and an honor to have you on here. And I I really enjoyed the conversation. It was awesome. Thank you. I did too. All right. Bye everybody.