#2240 - Roger Avary & Quentin Tarantino
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Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast. All right, here we go. We're rolling. So you're saying that someone was telling you how to kill someone with coffee? Okay, so I got to know all these. You were talking about some- His name's John McPhee. Some operators. And I got to know through a friend, through a billionaire friend who-

loaned his plane to Clinton to fly those people out of, I think, North Korea. And so from that point on, he was surrounded by these guys. And one of them, this guy Mikey, which isn't his real name. I think he's actually named, they name them all after the archangels. So he was like Michael. Oh, Jesus. Gabriel. They take on these names.

There's nothing creepier than an assassin with a biblical name. They named after an archangel. Yeah. And well, you know. And so he, you know, we got to know each other because of our mutual friend. And I think what happened was he and a couple of the other guys, you know, they were placed on me as like for surveillance purposes, like, you know.

find out what the savory guy's about maybe or just keep an eye on him or whatever and they told me right up front like be nice to your surveillance you know like don't try to lose us or anything like that because uh and i heard stories about how you know they're surveilling somebody in wherever bolivia and suddenly some gang attacks their surveillance and they step in kick the shit out of the gang and so um so i got to know these guys and naturally you know i'm a writer and

filmmaker and so I of course want to talk to them about stuff and they immediately started volunteering oh yeah we've learned all these different ways when I became an operator blah blah blah you learn how to kill people without and I was just making a list now of the 10 ways to kill someone without leaving a trace I was like well

Just like when I told Quentin about this, he's like, well, what are those? I'd like to hear those. Everybody wants to hear those. And so one of the ones that I think is the best one is you inject someone with coffee, caffeine, like just inject coffee into their bloodstream, gives them a heart attack, and it's untraceable. Later on, they do an autopsy and they just discover caffeine.

in your system. That's it? That's it. Just right into the blood? Coffee can kill you? Sometimes the simple ways are the best. Just right into the juggler with a syringe? Yes. Jesus. After extracting whatever information you need to get out of him. How much coffee will kill you like that? Oh,

I don't know. Is it the Turkish kind or is it Folgers? Cuban espresso. Yeah. But he was a he was a medic, you know, during during the war, the war. And he was a medic. And so he, you know, was kind of identified as somebody who knew how to kill somebody very easily because, you know,

what will work because you're a medic. And so I would hear every now and then, I'd kill some guy and some diplomat or something in the Philippines and hit him with my car. And I'd look in my rearview mirror and make a determination, a medical determination of, you know, is the guy still alive or is he? I'm better finish him off and put him in reverse and drive him over again a couple of times and then take off. And he's doing that all the time.

All the time, they're doing it. Well, Jamie and I were just talking. They think they have a photo of the guy who whacked that insurance CEO. Oh, yeah, yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, they think they have a photo of his face now. Oh, they do, huh? Well, I would think with the amount of cameras... From around the time or they picked it up later? I think, you know, there's cameras everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's part of the problem with someone... I don't think this guy was a professional. I think this guy...

If I had to guess, some guy who got fucked over. Apparently that company is really bad on denying claims. 34% denial rate. Something like that. Normal is like 16. Yeah. Yeah. So those guys. I don't think anybody's going to be crying too hard over that guy. Maybe his family, but that's about it. It's a dirty, dirty business. The business of insurance is fucking gross. It's gross.

And especially health care insurance. Just fucking gross. Well, actually, all insurance. I live in California. And all of a sudden, because I live adjacent to any kind of open space, like nobody will insure my house because of fire. Right. And so suddenly it's like I have a house that's uninsurable. And it's not just me. It's everybody. And so it's chaos. Yeah. Yeah. I have a friend who's trying to sell a house in California. And it turned out it was $125,000 a year just to get fire insurance.

yeah yeah like what yeah it's insane it's nuts it's insane yeah but you know I was evacuated three times when I lived there I used to live in Bell Canyon and yeah you know it was it was rough I look I've been like I've been really lucky I live in I'm almost afraid to say it all right because I've been living in the the Hollywood Hills that I've never any of the fire stuff happens never happened around yeah it is just luck yeah I mean

The benefit of your place is you're at least in a helicopter accessible ... They're just going to dump all that fire retardant right on top of you.

I literally am kind of at the top of the hill on a bunch of rock. So if the whole fucking place turns into an inferno, I'm still fucked. And I think that place has probably been there a while. It's probably withstood all sorts of calamity. Yeah, when I was filming Fear Factor, I talked to this guy who was a fire guy for the fire department. He said, it's just going to be a matter of time. There's going to be one day where a fire hits L.A. and the wind is the right way and we're not going to be able to stop it. It's just going to burn right through to the ocean. He goes, it's just a matter of time. We all know it.

I was like, what the fuck, dude? I go, the whole city? He goes, the whole city. He goes, when those big fires get going, there's not a damn thing. Like what happened in Malibu a few years back? I always thought Malibu, those rich people, they were protecting them. Maui? That was like around 93. That actually happened while we were shooting Pulp Fiction.

Really? Yeah. Well, there was a there was a Malibu fire. The Malibu fire happened while we were shooting Pulp Fiction. So we actually set up a TV on the set because Bruce Willis was going to maybe lose his house.

And so he was like, actually, so we have the little TV area so we could like, so in between takes, we can watch what's going on with the fire. And they're like, and there was all these reports that, no, Bruce Willis and his family are on top of the house with their water hose. Like,

I go, no, he's not. He's right here. Well, the thing is, fires were normal. Like, it used to be when I was young, you know, I grew up in California. And so when I was young, fires would burn through Malibu constantly. But now they put all those houses in there where there never were houses because the fire is a natural process. It kind of clears the land, cleans the land. And it's normal, actually. But, you know, when you put all that kindling in there, suddenly we end up with these, like, super storms of fire just

where everything's just going crazy. Yeah. I think it's overdevelopment, which is the cause of these insane kind of... This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is brought to you by Craven the Hunter. Craven the Hunter hits theaters this Thursday, and it's a bloody, badass, R-rated action movie that must be seen on the big screen.

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Yeah, but it's a cool place to live. You're not going to stop people from developing in Malibu. It's just too nice. No, you're not going to stop. Just take your chances. Roll your dice. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, but you roll your dice. You take your chances and you roll your dice no matter where you live. Yeah. It's just fucked up when it happens. Oh, my God. Yeah. I drove home once. We were filming Fear Factory. We had to stop the set early because the fire was so bad. This was like 2003 or something, 94. And driving home, it took me 55 minutes on the five to get home. And the entire time, the right side of the highway was on fire for 55 minutes. Wow.

everything like Lord of the Rings style. So three different times you got evacuated from your house? Yeah, three different times. So what is like, okay, so you decide what you're going to take with you kind of thing? Yeah. Last time, the last time was the last time. It was like, you know, the last big fire in LA. And I came home from the comedy store at like one o'clock in the morning and my wife and I are looking out the window and the fire's like maybe five or 600 yards away and it's coming over the hill. And we were looking at each other. I said, let's just get the fuck out

here before it gets bad. Yeah, right on. Let's just get out of here now. So we grabbed the kids, got a laptop, took some clothes. I didn't even have underwear. I said, we could just buy stuff. Who gives a fuck? Who cares? If you have your life. I'm always the, I don't want to say the stupid guy, but I'm the guy who for some reason always decides I'm going to stay. Oh, you're that old guy. I live near a fire department. There's a fire hydrant across from my driveway. You're the guy on the roof when the flood is happening. You're going to have a

Yeah, that's me. Like my family went away and I was like, well, they're going to close it out so we can't get back in. I'm just going to hang out here until I know that it's and, you know, at a certain point there was fire like cresting the the ridge and I'm kind of watching it. I ran down to the fire department to see, you know, like, hey, guys, it's it's coming. It's I can see it from my house. And they're all there, like hanging out, eating sandwiches and like not even worried about it. They're like they kind of looked over at it. It's OK. It'll be fine. It'll

Yeah. They get a little too blase blase about fire. By the way, my spec ops friend, uh, he's like, fuck those firemen, man. Fuck them. They get so much like credit for like nothing. They have barely do anything. They are on these incredible pension plans. Like, all right,

He, like, hates firemen. That's ridiculous. Well... It is a great job, but you can't get mad at someone for having a great job. For having a great job. There's a buddy of mine that I used to play pool with. Well, he used to actually hump it into another country and kill somebody. So... That's... Well...

He's got a real tough job. He's not getting enough credit. That's what it is. That's really what it comes from. That's a better way to say it. Yeah, that's the reality of our world today. Those people don't get enough credit. But firemen, you know, it is a great fucking job. But I like the way he breaks it down. Fuck those cops.

God. Fuck those pussies. These huge pensions and everybody thinks they're heroes. They're not heroes. Well, it's funny because they're just doing their job. The firemen are very comfortable with fire. These people are very comfortable with people dying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dying because of them. Exactly. They just get real, they get blasé, blasé about murder. I had a,

It's not murder if it's sanctioned by your own country. Isn't that wonderful? What a cool loophole. Yeah, isn't it? I had an interesting thing. You know, it's like, you know, when you live in the Hollywood Hills, you're paying actually, you know, you...

pretty decent property taxes. So you get... There's a little vig that comes with it. There's a reason why... You don't have to wait two hours during election. You just go to the local elementary school. You're in and out in five minutes when it comes to election day. But also...

It's one of those stupid things that you do that like, what was the fucking idiot? Where you turn on the burner and then you leave the room for a while. And then you come back and all of a sudden your kitchen is flaming. Has that happened to you? That happened to me once. And so the alarm goes off and I hit the button, let the fire department know. And then I put it out. I put it out pretty much immediately.

And then maybe five minutes later, it could have been three, five minutes later,

the fire truck is at my door. So I didn't even have time to say, hey, it's okay now. It's okay. And so there's an entire fire truck at my door. And I let them in and go, look, guys, I'm really sorry. I was really stupid. You know, I left the room with the pot on the stove and whatever. And anyway, and so I'm really sorry I wasted your time. I'm really, really sorry I wasted your time.

Having said that, it's nice to see that you guys are here this quick. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm sure they were like, oh, we'll just get a selfie. And they were like, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Your private taxes pay for something. Are you sure you don't want us to come in and just make sure? Yeah, go ahead if you want. The problem is sometimes they have to chop through the walls to make sure that there's no fire and embers inside.

Yeah. Spray it all down. It's a hard fucking job when it's a hard job, though. The thing is, most of the time, they're just chilling. Yeah. You know, they get to cook, they eat, they work out. Oh, I take ice cream down to our guys at the, like, I'll go out and buy a bunch of ice cream or some pizzas and take it down. Just,

on random days just to make them happy. That's cool. I'm okay with the fire guys. Well, it was actually funny because it was like one of the things that was a crack up was like the local fire department when we worked at Video Archives at our video store, the local fire department was a customer. And so they'd rent different movies, but like it was almost out of,

Out of five movies that they would rent, four are pornos. Yeah. No, they lived up to their career. Did you guys work together? Yeah. Yeah. No shit. That's how you guys met? Yeah. That's how we met. Wow. Video archives in Manhattan Beach, California. How fucking cool is that? From like 84, yeah. Yeah. Wow. 84 for about five years. Yeah. Maybe even a little bit before 84. Well, I started officially at 84 because I remember- But you were a customer before. Well, I was a customer before. Yeah. Yeah. I was a customer before. Yeah. I pre-

predated Quentin as one of the employees. So I was there. Look at you guys. Yeah, actually, yeah, that's us. That's crazy. Very unfortunate shirt on my part. There was a lot of unfortunate shirts in the 80s. Everybody was confused. They cut the drugs off in the 70s. No one knew what to do for 10 years.

That's exactly it. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, you would have never thought back then that that industry would completely vanish. You thought blockbuster video is going to be around forever. Well, you know, one of the things that... I didn't think film was going to vanish either. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I didn't think the theater experience was going to go away either. But one of the things, though, that was the death keel to video stores that no one ever liked...

when they were talking mom and pop, when they're talking old people to like, hey, you know, you've retired from your business. You've got a nice little nest egg. If you want to invest in a nice little business where you get to work with your neighborhood and be in a nice little store with your family, video stores, that's a good business. I don't know anything about movies. Well, you have people who help you, you know, help you choose the titles and everything. So there's a lot of people that like invested in this stuff. And it seemed like

A good idea. The reason that it seemed like a profitable idea was the idea like, well, you know, I sell you this video cassette and you pay for the video cassette. But the minute you rent it past the point that where you paid for you paid for the video cassette yourself, then everything else is you. All that other money that you make from here on in is just all profit once you pay for the actual cassette.

Of course, you'll have some cassettes that don't rent as well, but that's the way it works out. But it should work out great. Well, again, that sounds like a pretty good business model. Well, if I spend this money and then five years from now, boom, everything is a profit. Where it all fell apart is the idea that you always have to get new shit.

Because like life, it's not a bookstore. Well, bookstores need to get new stuff, too, but it's not a library. Life doesn't stand still. Every month there's new titles coming out and you have to be competitive and you have to get the new titles. And so even if that were the issue, that wouldn't be that big of a deal. But if you're a mom and pop star, you only have so much room.

Yeah. So it's a space. It's literally a space shelf space. Within three to four years, you're bursting out of the seams of videos. You're just bursting out. You've got no more room. You've got no more room. And so now all of a sudden, rather than having your face, your tapes facing out now, everything is, you know, sideways, spine facing, spine facing.

And you've got to really – and it just never stops. It never stops. Next month, you've got to get this. And next month, you've got to get that. And next month, you've got to get that. You need a Costco-sized building. Yeah. Well, again, if you have four different video stores or if you have a chain, you can move things around and it's easier. But when you're a mom and pop, that's just it. If you're a mom and pop store and you have a bike store, you don't have to keep getting new bikes every month.

if you have a pottery store you have to keep getting new regardless of your inventory every single month yeah constantly have to grow your inventory every six months you get something cool you don't need to get it every month and you're defined by you having the new and then there was another problem when um when companies that were massively funded like blockbuster came onto the scene they would go in and they would kind of do this sort of gray market purchasing where they would buy you know

50 diehards and a mom and pop star can't afford to buy more than one or two diehards or three maybe to satisfy your clientele. Yeah. The thing is you'd spend, you'd spend the money like, okay, like, you know, one of our big titles when we, in the early days of video was Top Gun. Yeah. Top Gun. Perfect. So you get like, you know, you'll get even the mom and pop star, you'll get 12.

or 15. Cause everyone wants to see it. And at some point it's going to be out and it's going to be checked out. And so you've got to satisfy your, you're going to, yeah, you'll rent all 15 of those for the next two weeks. You know, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be good, but then now you, now you have to sell them off.

You know, for $10 a piece, you know, once the, you know, once the desire has died down. It largely fell on us because we were a smaller store and we had a Blockbuster just a block away, basically. Not even a block. We're talking about in the same fucking... Basically... Not a block away. It was in the... On the block. On the block.

Yeah, in the shopping center that we were in. Well, you're missing the most interesting thing. It's not about the bulk buy. The bulk buy is what it is. But that's every mom and pop star has to deal with that, dealing with a franchise. It changes your strategy, though. Yeah, but what Blockbuster would do, and they were famous for doing this. They were famous for doing this. But particularly, they were strategic about it.

is like, okay, we're going to go into this town. Okay, we're going into Manhattan Beach. What's the biggest video store? What's the most popular local video store in Manhattan Beach? Well, that would be Video Archives. They're right on Sepulveda. They're right across the street from the warehouse, which is one of the big rental places. Before Blockbuster, that was the place. Before Blockbuster, it was warehouse, warehouse of records and tapes. And they still manage to survive across the street from warehouse.

And then what does Blockbuster do? They buy the Shakey's Pizza that is in our shopping center, our shopping center. And they moved into the Shakey's Pizza because it's like, well, OK, warehouse. And with these video archives guys, well, this is obviously the place to be. So they just bought out the Shakey's Pizza and opened up and they still couldn't shut us down. Yeah.

Wow. I'm sure they had the attitude of, well, just brush them aside. Oh, of course that's how they felt. And so consequently, because you can only get three or 12 Top Guns, whatever it is, it's not as many as Blockbuster is getting, you end up having to focus on, like, how am I going to convince my clientele to watch something other than Top Gun this weekend? And so it...

Well, landed on us to basically say, oh, you can't get Top Gun. Well, how about this movie? Well, but you haven't seen. But, you know, it's it's the difference between being a cool coffee place and being Starbucks. Right. You know, or or, you know, a franchise bar and a cool little Joe's bar. All right. The bartender knows you. Right. You know, so it's like, look, if you just absolutely positively need Top Gun that weekend, then go to across the streets of the warehouse and get it. All right. We have what we have.

But we had customers that like came in every fucking day and part of their day or every other day, you know, when their camps were due. And they were people of the neighborhood. And they came in and not only did they rent stuff, they dropped stuff off and then they rented new stuff out. But like they came in to talk to us for 20 minutes or 45 minutes like every other day.

And there's no algorithm to tell them what to do. We're the algorithm. Yeah. You have to know, Oh, this guy, Oh, they're on a date night. So they're going to want this kind of rom-com type movie, or this guy, he really likes, you know, uh,

uh, Vietnamese hooker porn, uh, tapes. I got to make sure to find something like that for him. And those kids, they're going to want, you know, some skate stuff. So I've got to learn all about the bones brigade, uh, videos and stuff like that. And so, you know, you just kind of figured out like, how can I upsell the stuff that they haven't heard of? Cause I,

Invariably. Anybody who comes in... But you're making it just sound a little bit more cynical than it was. You are making it sound more cynical. More like the challenge of it. You guys are like a married couple. Totally, we're like a married couple. It wasn't that cynical. Without the benefits. Tell them the whole story, honey. Just tell them the whole story. We were just hanging out and they're coming and hanging out too. And we would pop a movie on and be watching scenes from it and be talking about the scenes. Then a customer would come in or

many customers would come in and they'd just become part of the conversation and we would have like you know like a chat room in the no there was like no there was there there was about like 15 customers that like you know i talked to five hours a week every week for five years yeah yeah because they come in and i'm like we'll spend at least 40 minutes every other day

And I expected to see them. And, you know, I watched what I watched on TV. I saw what I saw at the movies. And then they saw what they saw in the movies. They watched what they watched on TV. We all talked about it. And they talked about the videos and what else we're going to get and da-da-da-da-da. And if you like that, you're going to like this. About our lives and everything, yeah. So at what point in time, while this is all going on, do you guys decide, we need to make our own fucking movies?

It was always the case. Well, we were always thinking, well, Roger had another friend that, he was a guy that connected me and Roger together, was a guy named Scott who took his own life at a certain point. His father owned another video store that I worked at as well and that Quentin used to come into. But the thing is, though, that while I was just thinking about making movies, Roger and Scott were like making movies on Super 8.

Yeah. And they were making little horror films and little zombie movies on Super 8. Supernatural thrillers. And they're... The War of Turns is a zombie movie. Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a zombie movie. More of an afterlife film. Okay, maybe, okay. Yeah.

But you're making, like, legit horror films. I'm just thinking about this stuff. And these guys are, like, Sam Raimi-ing it. You know? Like, Sam Raimi. They're making their shit in their backyard and working on it for, like, three months and stuff. Yeah. And, you know, like...

I was friends with all the punk guys because it was like L.A. punk. And so they were always in my movies. All the punks were in my movies because they were media literate. They loved movies. And so they were easy to pull in and to be in the film. So they were always playing like, you know, the gang of punks who beat somebody up or something. So it must have been cool working at a video store, though, because it's essentially like you have...

It's like an education. Well, when the time came where we actually wanted to be making movies, where we were talking about making movies, because I can remember when, I think it was around the time of Sex, Lies, and Videotape, or maybe She's Gotta Have It. No, no, definitely Sex, Lies, and Videotape. But I remember you coming to me and saying,

The moment is happening. Yeah, yeah. It's happening. Like, a small movie is possible to get made. Like, it's happening for us, for guys our age. Yeah, I mean, the one, you know, the Sex, Lies, and Videotape was sort of like the Seattle band that broke. But I was already looking at...

Blood simple was my yeah, that's a great movie was my in all right where it was that was Okay, it's an artistic movie. It's our it's arty. It's funny I can play the art houses and play the art house circuit, but there's a genre base to it Yeah, there's a genre base. It's like you know it's a thriller It's a film noir II kind of thriller done in a certain kind of way, but it's a genre base and

Yeah, I go, that's the way you do an art film. You make it a genre-based art film. If you keep one foot in... Because it's entertaining. Yeah, if you keep one foot in exploitation, in some way, in genre, if you keep your foundation in genre, then you can do whatever you want. Like, my favorite filmmaker is Stanley Kubrick. I love Kubrick movies. Okay, so...

one can pretty much look at all of his films and say each and every one is a genre film. He's got his science fiction movies, got a horror movie, even Barry Lyndon as a costume drama at the time. It's a costume genre. It's a genre. That was a, that was a solid bankable genre. The book is a definitely a, a, a, a pulpy genre. Well, yeah, the book was serialized, wasn't it? It was like Thackeray wrote them in like a, like an episode. It was like a soap opera. But that was a very popular, popular book at that time. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, it was all, uh,

If you can, if you can, and I knew this making my first film and I know Quentin, you were talking about it. This was the conversation we were actively having of, we have to make sure that we make a movie people want to see like a genre film. Like, and I was calling them exploitation movies at the time. Like I want to keep one foot in exploitation. And then, but at the same time, I'm like, well, I kind of also want to make like, you know, I want to elevate it as much as possible. And so when the time came for me to make my first film,

first film, Killing Zoe, you know, it was like I knew it was going to be a bank robbery because I wrote it around a location. You know, we found this while they were scouting for reservoir dogs, Lawrence Bender, or maybe you also had scouted that location, found this bank location and

And Lawrence called me up. He's like, hey, I'm calling all the writers I know. I found this bank location. And if you can if you have a script that takes place in a bank, we can kick together a couple hundred thousand dollars and make a movie there. It's like this complete, solid, amazing location. And I said, oh, my God, Lawrence, this is your lucky day. I happen to have a script that takes place in a bank. And then I just quickly wrote one based on the location.

And as I was writing it, I was thinking, OK, you know, I know that it's going to be a bank robbery. It's a bank. And so I know it's going to be a bank robbery. And that's my solid bankable genre that I'm going to to stick with. But I knew I wanted to do something more with it. And I had just traveled through Europe and and I had been telling Quentin the stories of traveling through Europe. He's like, oh, you should do a movie called Roger Takes a Trip. And I still think it should have been called that.

I think it's a different movie. I don't think it's a... No, you kind of made Roger Takes a Trip, just added bank robbers in it. But it's still Roger Takes a Trip. I had been in Paris. I had bumped into a guy that I knew from Los Angeles who was a French guy. And he was like, oh, I'll show you the real Paris. And I went out with he and his friends, Enrique, Jean, Claude, all the characters from the movie. I went out with him and his friends and we, you know...

he drove me through Paris and next thing I know he's doing heroin and I'm like and it started with you no not with me now we do heroin yeah it was like now we do heroin hold my arm I did hold his arm for real yeah yeah I had never seen anything like that like he tied his arm off he's like hold my arm no no no he was the tying arm Roger was the tying arm Roger hold my arm while I shoot up jeez so he doesn't quite

know that this is all going to happen, that everything else has been a preamble to this. Yeah, suddenly that happens. He just needed a heroin partner. Yeah, and his friends were like, oh, doing it in the nose doesn't even affect me anymore. And I'm like writing these lines down like, this is great shit. And so I get back and I tell Quentin about this whole story and about these guys and driving around the Champs-Élysées and, ah, this is where the fags sell themselves.

Now we go into the nightclub down below and we do more heroin. I'm like, what about the cops? Aren't the police going to say anything? Pfft.

it's safer here than, you know, like you can do heroin anywhere in Paris. And it was like, no, I work at Lamont. Like all of it was like basically everything in that movie. I, you know, was stuff that I'd actually seen. And so when the time came to make it as a bank robbery film, I just, you know, I'm thinking about it. I'm like, well, it's a bank robbery movie, but it's going to be about these guys. And it just became a movie about, um,

A guy going someplace and everything that he thought he knew is wrong. You know, like you think, you know, you haven't seen your friend in a while. You go see him. Okay. It's all about that kind of friendship and misconception. He's downstairs at the bank. Johnny Gengel, the bad guy, is upstairs. Chaos is going on upstairs. He has no idea what's going on upstairs. And so this kind of just...

became what the movie was about. And so I just quickly wrote the script and then, you know, we ended up not even using that location to shoot the movie in. It came together pretty

And I ended up shooting in downtown L.A. instead. But it was... The seed was planted. The seed was planted. So the idea was, okay, I'm going to make a French film out of it. Because I'm like in L.A., I'm making a film. What can I do that would be different? Like that would make this more than just a bank robbery movie. And because of the experience I had just had, I was like, well, I'm going to make a French film. Okay. I had no business making a French movie. Okay.

I didn't even really speak French. I just thought it would be kind of cool. I like, you know, a cool French girl and like greasy, dirty French guys, French criminals. And I always loved, you know, Alain Delon and Le Samurai, you know, the way he wears a suit and the way he carries a gun and the way he walks around. I just like, I, you know, just adored all of that. And so it was like, well, let's put all of that kind of,

Space that's in my brain into the movie and then the movies tend to take on a life of their own They tend to be like children, you know It starts off as a concept as a conception has a conception and then it has an infancy and then you're raising that child to become the movie and along the way you're really just kind of protecting it and trying to allow it to grow in to what it's gonna grow into without forcing it to become something that it's not and

And it's a little bit of a balance. You have to be a good parent, which means you have to give it a little bit of freedom to grow into something that you don't know what it's going to be. But at the same time, you have to be willing to, you know, be strong with it as well. That's a very underappreciated movie.

It's a fucking great movie. I think I'm really good at making underappreciated movies. I think I've built a career on underappreciated movies. Those are the classics that you would look for in a video store. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You'd look for the movies that were really good that nobody knew about. Dog Day Afternoon's not in, but we can get you Killing Zoe.

My favorite moment in the movie. Well, I like it when the guy gets burned alive. All right. You know, the hamburger scene. That was. Yeah. But I remember they were trying to talk you to cut out. And I go, no, no, you can't cut that out. I'll take my name off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, Quentin did that. Actually, Quentin was a great gorilla to have on my side at that time. Why would they tell you to cut that out? Well, I don't know. Everyone is afraid. Everyone's afraid. Everyone operates out of fear. If you take that out, I'm taking my name off the list. The only people that don't operate out of fear, I think, is the director and the actors. Those are the ones who, if everything's working right, you're fearless. It's always executives that fuck everything up. But it's the scene. My favorite scene is...

The scene with Hugh Anglon when he walks into the close-up.

Oh, yeah. And he's just like, wait a minute. He's like remembering what he heard and he realizes... Okay, so that's a good example of... Because the movie was shot for... Explain the scene better. The scene was shot for... Explain the scene better. I will. The movie was shot for very little money. We had no money to make it. So I had to shoot the entire upstairs first and then the downstairs. Because it's like doing a company move. But I had kept...

I knew that when writing, and this was sort of a rule that we had, was one, make a genre movie. Explain the scene! I'm going to! I said explain the scene! Don't tell me what you felt about at that moment. You missed the exit! The scene was a replacement for another scene that was in the movie that was too expensive to shoot. That's the short of it. What does that have to do with what I like?

What I replaced it with was, and I had to fight for it, was a single shot. Because originally he goes downstairs and he sees a bunch of guys coming in through the sewer. So he starts machine gunning people in the sewer. Because there was like a little sewer manhole in the bottom of the bank. I was like, well, let's use that. And so I had this whole thing. And the bond company showed up and you're behind schedule and you've got to cut pages and

I couldn't cut anything and I'm shooting upstairs, downstairs stuff. And so it's like, I had to have something cause he leaves the scene and then comes back angry. Yeah.

And so I knew I needed to have something. And originally I had this whole scene where the cops are coming in and he reacts to that. And so I said, well, okay, I just need one shot because it's all I had time to do because of the fucking Bond Company. And so I set up, which were actually really cool to me. They were actually, film finances was great. I just set up a single camera. I asked for kind of a Kubrickian lens, a nice wide, like maybe a 14 millimeter lens. And I just had John Hughes walk up into a closeup

And I just had him do, I said, just walk into a closeup and just start looking around and just start seeing things coming out of the walls. And is that the shot you're talking about? And he does like a little magic trick beforehand. Like that's not the one you're talking about. No, that's the great shot.

That's a great shot. No, the scene I'm talking about is... But that's why I wanted you to explain it because I hadn't seen it in a long time. But it was... There it is. Is that the shot? Well, that's the shot. That's the shot I'm talking about. Look, he's looking into the walls. He's looking around. But I thought the whole idea about it is the idea that... I added those...

lines of dialogue in. No, but I thought the whole idea is he puts it all together. He realizes there's something going on, that the cops are doing this, or Eric Stoltz is dirty with him. And it all hits him. He's ready to do something else, and he walks into a close-up, and it all hits him. But now we, the audience, know what's going on. Yeah. And then he's just like, well,

Well, it just shows that sometimes if you can't do what you want to do, what you come up with is better. And this was an example of it rained that day and I had to use the rain. That's sort of the example. The frustrating part for me about what you're talking is like, I don't care how the sausage was made. I like the sausage. I wanted you to talk about the sausage, not the factory.

You don't want to know what's in that sausage. You have no interest in that. I wanted to hear about the Italian sweetness.

Well, it was very sweet, but it started off sour. It started off sour because I couldn't do what I wanted to do. And so I just came up with something that was, well, he puts it together in his head. No, I mean, I still think that sequence is exhilarating because it all boils down to an actor's face. Well, I had Tom Savini on the set. And I couldn't afford Tom Savini, but I found his number before I shot and I called him up and

in Pittsburgh and I said, Tom Sveeny's a makeup effects artist who did Dawn of the Dead. He did all the effects for Dawn of the Dead. Like, and not to mention all the great Friday the 13th, all the slasher movies. He's the superstar of practical makeup effects of horror films of that era. He was in Vietnam and saw some shit. And every time I'm talking to him about stuff, like, he's like, oh yeah, well, you know, if you're bleeding from back here, you know, there's only two small veins and blah, blah, because when your head gets knocked off, like, he's seen all this stuff and so...

This is his way of processing it. But Tom came in and I couldn't afford him. I called him up on the phone. I was like, hey, can you think I'm a young filmmaker? I'm, you know, I'm your biggest fan of makeup effects, blah, blah, blah. OK, he flew himself out. We had no money to pay him. I think we paid him like some tiny amount. He flew himself to L.A., put himself up.

Worked on the film and he made that burn makeup on that burned guard in the vault out of Vaseline paint and tissue paper and I watched him make it was the most unbelievable thing how he made blisters and burn effects and it was like watching one of the great artists work Tom is the Incredible guy. He's an incredible incredible guy where you were asking earlier on about whoa You're working at a video store. Did you ever think you know, when did you start thinking about making your own stuff? I

Well, I was thinking about making my own stuff for like a long, long, long time. But these guys were actually doing it. But there is a truth. While I thought about it, like for a long, long time and always figured I would do that eventually, I did fall asleep for a few years, you know, because working at that store, I just got caught up in the little life there. And, you know, it's interesting because, you know, you spent your 20s

going to comedy clubs and building a career. So I'm still in my 20s there. And well, it's one of those things where it's like, well, this isn't my dream. This isn't what I wanted to do working at a video store for years. I wanted to actually make movies. It's not my dream what I'm doing.

But it's dream adjacent. It's it's close to my dream. It's close to my dream. I get to watch movies all fucking day. I get to talk about movies all fucking day. I don't have to work at a pizza parlor. I don't have to. I'm not delivering pizzas. I'm not I'm not I'm not busting ass as a bartender. I'm not busting ass doing menial jobs. I mean, this is the kind of job I that, you know, I do if I I'd go to the store if I wasn't paid to go to the store.

But for a couple of years, it did put me to sleep. It did kind of put me to sleep. It put my ambitions to sleep for a little bit because I was happy enough. Yeah. I was happy enough. And just one of these days, I'll... Right, but you didn't have the fire. I didn't have the fire. And when I got the fire, when I eventually got the fire back again, and it was a life-changing thing. It was a life-changing day. It was...

We had a buddy of ours named Steve-O. Yeah. And he was one of – we had different living arrangements. And at one point in time, me and Steve-O were living in the same house together, renting towards the back of the store. The dude house. Yeah. It was where everyone would hang out. But now Steve-O was older than the rest of us.

So it's like he was about like almost five years older than us, but he didn't seem like it. He was a young guy. Like five years younger mentally or emotionally. And but so he hits 30 and he starts changing. He starts changing like drastically. I mean, he was like one of the funniest guys I ever knew. And he was just really funny.

really funny stoner dude and really cool. And all of a sudden he's like angry about things and now he's not quite as funny and now he's got this issue. And so we're roommates and there's this one night that he's kind of like all, he's kind of disgusted with his life and he starts ranting and he, and he's describing a situation that was very common in

If you were a kid growing up without a, you know, without a degree or anything in the 80s, especially in California, where it's like you can't get any really good job. But like you can work at Licorice Pizza. And if you're an OK employee, you could like work at Licorice Pizza for a couple of years. And maybe you could even become assistant manager or manager and maybe they send you to another store. And maybe you work there for three years and that's really great.

But then, you know, all of a sudden the district manager doesn't like you. You run afoul of somebody higher up in corporate. And all of a sudden, next thing you know, you're fired and you're out in the street. Again, it's management. Yeah. OK. And so now you've just spent three years at Licorice Pizza. Now you could get a job at TRW or some place that's like a real job job.

Or, well, those are kind of hard to get, but you can work at Warehouse Records and Tapes tomorrow because you just had three years at Licorice Pizza. Same thing with Wild West Clothier. Same thing with Miller's Outpost. Same thing with any of these kind of stores. Next thing you know, you're 28 and the only jobs you've ever had are minimum wage jobs behind a counter that were designed for kids to pay for their gas. Right.

And you've like spent your entire 20s doing that. And then you start getting bitter. And you start getting bitter. But he was not just bitter about the job aspect of it. But I knew, oh my God, he's telling me the truth. I'm learning something here. Because he goes, you know, Quentin, you think that we're this really great team. We're this really great crew. Well, we are. I mean, this is that time of your 20s where like your group of friends are your family. Right.

And I'm like, "Well, we are." Quentin, at 20, I worked at South Bay Cinemas and I hung out with a bunch of guys just like you and some girls there too. There was a bunch of guys just like you. And then I stopped working at South Bay Cinema. Then I worked at Miller's Outpost and hung out with a bunch of guys just like you. And we did everything just like we do. We went to movies together. We went out and we dated amongst the girls there, everything.

Then I worked at Alicia's Pizza for four years with a bunch of guys just like you. I've wasted my life hanging out with a bunch of guys just like you. And they all go away at a certain point. And I realized this guy's kind of telling the truth. He's showing me a truth about himself. This is coming from somewhere. And then all of a sudden, he still hung around us. He still liked us. But then he started making it a point.

to touch base with some of his high school friends that were still around. So he's not just hanging out with guys four years younger, five years younger than him. Anyway, I'm turning 25 around this time. So I'm having my own little, okay, well, what have I done with my life so far? So far, fucking nothing.

So I'm having my own little anxiety hitting 25, but I'm seeing what it's like five years from now. Yeah. When you turn 30. A window to the future. When you're turning 30 and you're in this situation. And there was like one night that I had what I used to call, I would do it every once in a while. I haven't done it in a long time, thankfully. I would have a Quentin to test fest where I'd stay up all night long. And rather than give myself excuses-

I would look at everything that I'm fucking up in my life or everything I'm not doing or whatever, and just not give myself any fucking excuses out, just like nail it. And I would spend like all night laying out everything I'm doing that's wrong. And then I would spend the last two hours figuring out how I can change it. And as opposed to just doing it and then going to get some sleep and, and then you forget about it and fall back into your, you know, your routine. Um,

I decided to change my life. I was like, look, the problem is, is that I'm living in the South Bay. And even though I drive to Los Angeles, I want I got to not worry about this job anymore. I got to just move to Hollywood. I got to get involved there. I got to meet other people that are in the business. And if I have to work manpower jobs, you know, where you just work like four days at this place and four days at that place. Well, then that's fine. And by the way, I shouldn't be making money until I'm making money doing what I want to do.

And not that that was ever a danger. All right. But but then, you know, the next thing I knew, you know, I was I moved out of the South Bay and then I couldn't move into Hollywood. I couldn't afford Hollywood, but I could afford Koreatown. And I was close enough. And and literally the minute I kind of moved out there, I met a guy who wrote.

low-budget horror movies and then through him I met other guys that wrote low-budget horror movies and this guy who directs a few low-budget horror and this guy who produces a couple and well but yeah you meet one person and that introduces you to three other people now all of a sudden I actually knew people who were actually making movies and the thing about it was it was like also well if these guys can do what I can do right

Because they weren't too special. Right. Yeah. You know, that's the weird realization that you end up having. Yeah. And then literally it wasn't like everything changed. But like within a year and a half from moving out of the South Bay, moving into the Hollywood area, within a year and a half, I was finally able to make a living as a writer. You know, getting like $7,000 for this rewrite on the script over here.

four thousand dollars for this polish over here another ten thousand dollars for this rewrite over here well i mean i made ten thousand dollars a year uh through all my twenties before that point so like if i can make like if i can make fifteen thousand from writing oh my god that that was the greatest thing in the world wow but it just takes being around people that are actually doing it so you realize it's possible well it's the realizing it's possible but it's also but it's also a situation where it's like

As opposed to talking to your buddies about comedy in Minnesota, your buddies who like comedy. No, you're at the comedy store and you're dealing with comedians every fucking night. And you're in the place where the shit happens and you're hearing how the laughs work. But also he's like...

you know what's going on. Oh, Caroline's Comedy Hour is doing the tryouts for this. Yeah. And, you know, Chuckles is doing this thing or that thing. Oh, and there's this sitcom going on. There's the funny neighbor guy. Yeah. At any moment... You're plugged in. Yeah, at any moment, there's a circle of people rising in any industry. Yes. And it's just a matter of finding those people, and those people will all gravitate towards the same things. Yeah. Yeah, and they have the thing where it's sort of like, you know, like...

Hey, Benny, we have a spot for you that could be really, you know, I can't do it.

But my friend Joe could do it. How about giving Joe a chance? Yeah. Okay. Will you back Joe up? Yeah, I'll back Joe up. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's call your friend Joe. Can he be down here at nine? Yeah, he can be down here at nine. Well, that's how you get a fucking gig. This is exactly what we tried to do when we built the mothership here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What we've done. We decided when we left LA, we need a place where comics have a hub. And when we're all in Austin, we all just moved to Austin because of the pandemic. Yeah.

And all of a sudden, we were allowed to perform indoors. It was crazy. In November of 2020, we were doing shows indoors. And you couldn't go on Twitter because they would call you a super spreader, a fucking monster. But-

everybody started moving here. By the time 2020 rolls around, there's like 15, 16 world-class comedians that didn't used to live in Austin that are here now. And we were like, let's build a club. So we bought the Ritz Theater where some of your movies are played. This is fucking crazy.

And when we put it together, the whole idea was like have a place where people can come. We have two nights of open mic nights, Sunday and Monday night. So there's always a chance to get on stage. There's always a guy. There's a real talent. Adam Egan is a real talent coordinator. He's really going to watch you. He's really going to give you advice. And you're around the best comics in the world all the time. And everybody knows it's possible. And everybody treats you the way you would want to be treated if you were starting.

So you're just one of us. You just started. But we're not better than you. There's nothing special about us. We're just telling you. We started walking, and now we're 15 miles in. You're 15 feet in. Just keep walking. Okay, but let me ask you a question. When I watch some of the things on the Comedy Stern, because you know I really love going to the comedy. Yeah. And they treat me really great there. It's really cool. All right. But, you know, it...

The mythology of the place is you go down there and open mic night. And if you have something to offer, you know, then you work your way up and then you're the doorman. And then, you know, you work your way up. But it seems like that was then. That was a long time ago. Now it seems like people are almost paying 10 years, right, or eight years before they actually are getting up and getting paid. Right.

Not necessarily. Like Tony Hinchcliffe started at the Comedy Store. He started as a doorman, you know, and he worked his way up to selling out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row. I mean, it is possible to still be a doorman. I met Tony when he was just starting out. I'm figuring that that's a spot, but it seems like if you have to wait five years...

Well, you don't get good for 10 years. Yeah, yeah, okay. It takes forever. Comedy is like making a mountain out of layers of paint. It takes forever. You have to fail. Yeah. You have to have the opportunities to fail. Well, there's also no one who can tell you how to do it. Yeah. Like writing a film, like you have a protagonist, you have the antagonist, you have a plot, you have a bunch of stuff that you can kind of create and formulate. But would you really say...

That it takes ten years to be a solid comedian? It takes ten years to be a real headliner. Well, a headliner, that's a little different. Well, that's when you're a real comic. When you can do an hour. You can do an hour, and then you can write another hour. You kind of know who you are.

Because it takes years to build that. Well, also to be a headliner, you have to be enough of a name to actually draw an audience. Yes. Yes. And usually you go on the road with a headliner and then the people get to see you. Oh, I remember he was here when Tom Segura was in town. That guy's really good. We saw him then and he did 15 minutes. Now he's going to do an hour. This should be great. And it's sort of that kind of a deal. But it's the same sort of situation where most...

People don't like if you're in Pittsburgh, you don't know what to do. You know you go up There's a couple open mic nights everybody sucks and

And there's no inspiration. It's not set up for comedy and it's in a fucking pizza platter. Exactly. And it's good on the weekends. And it doesn't work and you go, well, I guess this is not for me. Right. It's good on the weekends because they'll fly in, you know, Greg Fitzsimmons, some headliner, and you get to see a real comic for a weekend. So you get a little bit of an education from that. And maybe if you're lucky, the club owner will let you open for him or do 10 minutes on that show. And you kind of like get a feel what it's like to perform in front of a real audience that's there to see a real comic. But you got to be around people.

like comedy doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's no great comedian that lives in some small town by himself. Like you could find some great blues artist. Or a great novelist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Novelist is probably the best one because you kind of live in your own head. But you have to be around the other people that are doing it. Which is exactly why Quentin moved to Hollywood. Yeah, exactly. Got away from these losers. You had to do it, but you really do have to do it. Cut the dead weight. I recall living in Hollywood as well. Yeah, you did, I remember.

Freakin' Franklin! Yes, you did. Across from Plummer Park! Your bitter friend gave you a valuable little piece of information. Yeah, he did. No, very much so. You need those. You need those moments. Oh, I knew I was hearing the truth. And I knew I was hearing a coming attraction. Yes. Because I was already feeling it at 25. Right, right, right. Am I throwing my topsoil years away?

Right, right the topsoil exactly and when it doesn't come back it doesn't you never get to be 21 again Let's hit reset. Yeah. Yeah, you get one weird March through this life And if you don't if you have a throwing away till 23, but from 24 on you need to be thinking about what you're doing Yeah, get it going. Yeah, get it going. Yeah that what is I think these conversations are so important for young people to hear and

Because there's a lot of people out there that do have ideas and sometimes they have a little bit of a fire and then maybe they have a job that's kind of cool like yours was and they get sedated. Almost the worst thing that can happen is getting comfortable, which I think is what you were talking about. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, it all worked out. OK, it all worked out really, really good. And the thing about it was, you know, yeah.

I did get comfortable, but I got comfortable in a cool place. And ultimately, I did have the energy and the wherewithal to ultimately get dissatisfied with it and want more. You know, the alternative would have been me working at a department store for those four years. Yes. Right, right, right. And then I would have been like really been miserable. Right, right. Here I'm able to, I mean...

In this instance, I'm still involved with filming. The sedative part was the idea that it was close enough to what I wanted to do. Right, right, right. It was close enough. I could get comfortable. There's guys like that at the comedy store. There's a friend of mine at the comedy store. He was a bartender in the back bar.

And he wanted to be a comic. Yeah. But he was there. It was like five years after I met him. I'm like, hey, man, you got to quit this fucking job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're here with all the greatest comics in the world, but you're not going on stage. And you're making good money. And that's the velvet curtain that's pulled over your eyes. Yeah.

I worked on Lords of Dogtown, the movie about Zephyr surfboards and skateboarding and polyurethane wheels and surfing. And I'm not like a surfer or anything, but my entry point into that movie was Zephyr surfboards was exactly like video archives. And I imagine that this is like this in a lot of places where, you know, you have a shop.

They make, they do skateboards and they've got a shaper guy there, you know, Skip Englund, who's a surfboard shaper. And he was sort of like Lance, the guy who owned Video Archives.

And he started a shop and he's selling to all the kids locally and all the kids who like love surfing, you know, like Stacey Peralta or Tony Alva or guys like that. They would just go hang out there just like we would go hang out at the video store. And so I looked at that and I was like, OK, I don't really know anything about these guys other than growing up in the beach community. But my real entry point was I understand them.

gravitating towards what you love and wanting to be close to it. And that if a video store is the closest thing to Hollywood in your town, that's where you go. Or if it's not a movie theater. Well, you know, it was funny because when I first started, when I started at the video store, I was like, it was great because...

Like I said, I got to hang out in this place that I enjoyed and I'm surrounded by movies and talking about movies all the time. Access to all those titles. But then also there was also the situation of I became like a little film critic in that town. It was like I was like the story was my little village voice and I was the Andrew Sarris there. I was the critic. And people would come in.

And at a certain point, I'm like, okay, Quentin, what should I get? And the thing is, I'm not just holding court on my own personal taste. Pretty soon they got a really good idea about my taste. But the thing is, I'm usually gearing it towards the people. I'm not going to...

you know, get some housewife to watch some Gonzo movie that I, Gonzo violent movie that I really like. I'm gaming, I get to know her. You have to tailor it to her. And so I'm, you know, putting something in her hand that I think she's going to, she's going to appreciate it. I kind of know what kind of comedy she likes. I know who she likes, stuff like that. And so I'm like, you know, really kind of, you know, gearing it in a certain, in a certain way. And that, that, that felt, that felt really good. It felt like I said, I felt like a film critic. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, but one of the things that I forgot I was going to go somewhere with that and I forgot. I lost my train of thought. But one of the things that ended up happening, and I hope I didn't say it the last time I was here, that ended up happening is we became really famous in the neighborhood. We were the video guys. Yeah. And, you know, our store was a little different than most of the businesses that were in Manhattan Beach. Yeah.

And so everyone kind of knew us. We were the video guys. So in a strange way, it was a precursor to what it would be like to be famous with the whole world kind of knows about you like that. In Manhattan Beach, I'm like walking down the street and people are like, hey, Quentin! Hey!

Hey, how you doing? How you doing? You know, I'm like, I'm at the working at the store. I'm walking to the Jack in the Box to get a Coke and come back. And then, you know, but we'd walk into the man's movie theater. All right. That was by the theater, you know, and me and two of the guys would walk in to go see a movie. And we walk down the aisle and we hear, hey, those are the Video Archives guys. Those are the Video Archives guys.

Oh, yeah. I was in San Francisco once, and the guys from Red Cross, the punk band, they were customers of ours. I was like, oh, they're doing a signing at this local record shop. I'll just go show up. I'll just show up there on Hey, Ashbury. And I walk in, and immediately the McDonald Brothers guys were like, hey, it's the video store guy. Hey, man, come back behind with us. Yeah.

I don't think they talk like that. They kind of talk like that. It's good to get that slow drip, get a little bit of a taste of it before you actually get famous. Just to get a feel of what it's like. It still doesn't give you the full... It's like, you know, oh, I'm just going to smoke a little weed compared to I'm going to mainline, you know, heroin. Oddly enough, the thing that it did was...

It made me feel part of a community which I had never felt with before. I actually felt part of the Manhattan Beach. I felt part of the Manhattan Beach. I was part of the Manhattan Beach community. You know, the people knew me there. And I was I was an upstanding member inside of that community. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, the fame thing is no one can teach you how to do that. There needs to be like a group of people to get together with people that are about to get famous and say, hey, listen, we're famous already. Let me tell you how fucking weird this is. I don't know if you're prepared for this. When...

We were first trying to make True Romance. You know, Quentin had this amazing screenplay, and it was like we were going to try to do it Coen Brothers style. We had just seen Blood Simple, and we were like, okay, I'm going to produce. Quentin's going to direct. We're going to go out and make this. Our first thought was, okay, we've got this database of doctors and lawyers and housewives in Manhattan Beach. We're going to go to the video store. You know, we ended up not doing that. You were going to ask them for money? We never had the balls to actually ask anybody for money. Yeah, it was...

Thinking about getting money and actually getting money are two different things. We strategize about it a lot, but we never actually... I drew up full partnership papers before that whole dream failed of doing it that way.

Yeah, nobody knows what it's like to actually be successful until you are. But in the beginning, did you guys feel like pretenders? Did you feel fake? Did you have imposter syndrome? I didn't have imposter syndrome because I did a movie and I was really happy with the film. But the thing is, what I felt like, I'll tell you exactly how I felt. I didn't feel imposter syndrome. Well, I guess a little bit. There is all that like waiting for somebody to tap you on the shoulder. What the fuck are you doing? Get out of here. Who would let that guy in? Right. The fuck out.

What I had was, I felt like I was a reporter deep undercover, all right, on the opposite side of the line.

This isn't really me. I'm like those people over there. But I'm deep undercover. And I can give you reports from the front of what it's like here on the battle line. Well, maybe that was a good thing, though. It was a really cool thing. Because I think that's one of the things you did with your films is you did shit that...

was very risky. Like we're talking about executives and all these different management people that are gonna come in and fuck with your thing and don't do that and cut that out. But you had a sensibility, not of a person in management, but of a person that I know what I'd like.

I know what I like, and I think I can think differently than these people do. Oh, no, no. One of the things we talked about, we had a little theory about it, was that gave us a bit of a superpower when we were first brought into – once we established ourselves, the people knew. You read our scripts, so you knew we had something to offer. We would walk into rooms, and we realized that –

And look, I'm not here to make fun of Hollywood executives. Some of those guys... Look, you don't know how bad some of these movies, these scripts are. They actually... Oftentimes, they actually make them better. Yeah. They're really, really terrible. All right? Some of the... When they go through the sausage factory, oftentimes, they get better. Believe it or not. But the thing is, though, you'd walk in there and you don't become...

this super successful executive by being doubling down on your own opinions. You kind of want to get the temperature and get a consensus going on. You're not the maverick. That's not how people establish themselves as executives. The D girl doesn't become the head of the development process by, you know, being the punk rock person who's, you know. Right.

shooting for the plimsolls. They're looking for a Rolling Stone. But film people, film geeks and film buffs, the one thing they have is their opinion. And they have spent years defining their opinion. And they almost have nothing to show for their dedication to cinema other than their highly evolved opinion. So you put them in a room and say, well, what would you do?

Well, it's about time you asked me. And then you and then all of a sudden you take the strong point of view. And the room, the term in Hollywood is he who has the strongest point in the view, he who has the strongest point of view in the room wins. Yeah. And executives don't have the strongest point of view.

But the maverick artist who only can hear the sound of his own voice, he definitely has the strongest point of view. But it's refreshing to them. Yes. Invariably, they hire you because you scare them a little.

You're a little scary. And they like that. They want to they want to be like a little thrilled by that. Right. But then, you know, like a girlfriend or something, they want to change you. They think they're going to make you normal. Right. And then it falls on you to just stay true to that initial guy who was in the room. I had a really interesting situation where I had a guy who was an executive who actually directed a movie.

And he was talking about like, oh, I've seen these jokers out there. And, you know, what they do isn't so special. I think I could do it. And so he, you know, so he finds a book and then they adapt it. And now he's doing the movie. And, you know, he's getting through it. Everything's working fine. He's getting through it. And then he realizes the difference between himself and a director because there's a he's dealing with another director.

Because he's an executive. So he's dealing with another director about another movie. And he asked him a very important question about his movie. And the way he answers it, he realized the difference between him and that director. And he goes, I realized, see, he's a real director because he sees the movie. He sees the movie in his head. The question I asked, he went into his head and he saw it. He saw it.

And he could actually answer it. Oh, the flower pot is green. Yeah. Because he sees the entire picture. Yeah.

I don't see it. I'm just doing my best. I see it written, but I don't see the movie in my head. I'm just doing my best with the written material. He's the Comedy Central executive that thinks they can be a comedian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on. And then they get on stage and they eat shit. What you were saying is exactly what happened to Chappelle. The Chappelle show. They loved him. He's this wild dude, and then all of a sudden, this is too wild, this is

becoming really successful. We can change him. We'll make him normal. We can change you. They want him to stop saying the N-word. They want him to stop a bunch of different things on the show. And we'll give you all this money if you roll over. They gave him literally the devil's deal. We're going to give you $50 million, and this is what you're going to get. And he's like, no, I quit.

I quit everything. And I'm going to go to Africa. I'm going to hang out in Africa for a while. And I'm going to quit stand-up for 10 years and come back and still be the best. That is so the right move. Oh, my God. Well, look, he's a legend now. But that's really him. If you're around him, he's an artist in like the truest sense of the word. Yeah, absolutely he is. You know, when I was young, one of my first jobs was actually given to me by one of our customers, this guy John Langley, who did that show Cops.

And so, like, he was, you know, getting his power turned off and stuff like, you know, constantly. And he was struggling to get by. And he would do these little things with Geraldo Rivera that Quentin and I would work on as PAs every now and then. The Dolph Lundgren exercise video. We worked on the Dolph Lundgren exercise video together. We were PAs on the Dolph Lundgren exercise video. Yeah, we were picking up dog shit in Venice Beach with our hands so that Dolph could do aerobics on that little grassy knoll. Yeah.

Hilarious. And so, you know, I'm like the first, I'm a PA working for him, a driver. I'm running around town. My car is like, the transmission is going out. I'm trying to figure out what am I going to do? This is not what I want to do. I don't want to work on cops, but like, I need the job. And so I'm, I go in and I meet with, with John and he's been a customer of ours and he's fatherly like to me. Yeah. And, um,

I go into his office and I sit down and Cops has just started. It started because of a Writers Guild strike. And, you know, there was a Writers Guild strike. And so Fox was like, well, that show has no writers. And so they ordered his thing and he went from nothing to like, I'm buying yachts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm collecting vineyards. Not only that, though. I remember when he first came up with the idea with his partner, Malcolm Barber. Yeah. All right. So he comes in and he's like, hey, we've got a really good idea for a show. So he's he's he's.

He's describing cops before cops has ever been made. Yeah. And his first idea was it wasn't called cops. It was called the real Miami Vice.

The problem was it doesn't scale out to the whole country. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He... Well, they defined it. They refined it. I asked him, I said, John, like, you've worked in this business a long time. He was an AD for a long time. What kind of advice can you give to a guy like me who's trying to, you know, work my way up? He's like, well, what do you want to do ultimately? I said, well, I want to direct films. Well, then be a director. Don't work your way up the ladder. Don't try to be a grip and work your way in. Just be a director.

And I heard that. And he's like, start at the top. It's the best way to go. Just start at the top and, you know, just tell people you're a director. Put yourself in that. Otherwise, people will just pigeonhole you. They'll just say that's who he is. He's a grip or he's a PA or he's you'll you'll have to work your way up. Just tell people who you are. So I thought about it. I was like, OK, I quit. Yeah.

He's like, what? I said, I quit. I'm a director. And I left. I walked out. I mean, I gave him notice. And I walked out. And he sat there and he later told me, years later, told me, man, I thought that was the most audacious, ballsy thing. I gave you advice and you took it right away. And okay, never mind the fact that it took me years of just telling people I'm a director. I directed Super 8 movies. Like, wow.

I was not a director. I was a poser. I was faking it until I made it. But I told people what I was and what I was doing. And eventually it stuck. Eventually enough people hear it. And all those people who you end up going into a room and pitching your idea and they say no, eventually they see you at Cannes running around, you know, trying to do foreign sales. They're like, maybe that kid is a director.

That was all it took. You know, it was just believing in yourself. It's funny that guy... When no one else believes what you believe. The guy he's talking about, John Langley, who created Cops, it was... He was a really good customer and his wife Maggie was really lovely. She came in... Morgan, all of his kids. And I heard the story came back to me later that...

you know, when I got the deal to make Reservoir Dogs, you know, just little by little through the Manhattan Beach community, they started, you know, hearing, oh, hey, Quentin's making his movie. Yeah. Quentin got his movie off the ground. He's actually making his movie. He's not at the video store anymore. He's actually making a movie. Good for him. And who knows what's going to happen to it, but it's happening. And, um,

And I think they were having a little dinner party at their house. And then Maggie mentions to John about what happened. Really? That's actually happened? It's actually happening? Yeah. No, they've got production offices and everything. They're making the movie. Everybody, raise your glass. Yeah. To Quentin. He did it. Good for Quentin. That's awesome. Raise your glass. I'm getting teary-eyed just even thinking about it. You know, I just have to say, John Langley, you know, because...

I had some shit happen to me in my life. I spent some time in jail. I kind of screwed up my life. But when everything went down, when everyone in Hollywood dropped me like a hot rock, John Langley was there. Our customer, John Langley...

Because we lost everything. He loaned me some money. He gave me my first job when I got out of jail, writing something for very little money, but he wanted me back in the saddle. I love the things you wrote from jail. Oh, thanks. Yeah. Thank you. They were really good. It was really interesting. It was like this super intelligent writer who's in jail. It's a different sort of perspective. Roger's working on a book about his jail experiences that is...

Fantastic. I kept a really detailed, super detailed journal about like everything that's going on around me. And, you know, it became a really I mean, that was an it was a very intense experience being placed into a room, having the doors closed and you're just left with yourself.

And everything, all your things which define you get stripped away. Everything gets kind of dropped and you lose who you are and you're just left with your remorse and regret for why you're there. And you have a lot of time to think about things. And but having said that, as a writer, I.

There was a concrete bench that I could sit on. I had golf pencils. I could buy sheets of paper. And I've never in my life been more productive. I've never wanted to write more than when everything was taken away. And I've never felt more about the world. And I've never – yeah, I've –

It was a very monastic. I was telling Quentin at one point, it was kind of monastic like, you know, you're in a secular kind of, you're in a cell. You're in a cell and you're

you're with a bunch of dudes and you're writing, you know, it's like you're, I became a scribe. I started, I mean, I was a scribe beforehand, but I really, really, it became my escape being able to write, being able to fall into things and to be able to travel into another world. And then also people find out you're a writer and they're like, Hey man, would you write my, yo essay? Would you write my girlfriend? You know, I want to write her a love letter. I need your help. So I wrote like a ton of love letters. Yeah.

That's actually good practice for dialogue. Oh, yeah. No, totally. Totally. No, actually, I heard some amazing dialogue. And you're writing your Robin Hood script, all right? So that's your way to get out of the cell is to write his Robin Hood script. Well, there's a book cart. And so every now and then you go through the book cart, and mostly it's like Tom Clancy novels. They love Tom Clancy and stuff like that. And Clive Barker novels and things like that. But-

Lo and behold, I found this old Penguin paperback of, you know, an old, old version of Robin Hood written by E. Charles Vivian. And I'm like, oh, man, this is going to be great. And I start reading it. And it's like they get into Evil Hold, which is like this castle where, you know, Marion's father is being kept there.

And nobody knows it. And he's there and he's not away at Crusades. He's in this prison. And Robin Hood goes into the prison. And in the moment when he's in the prison, how he sees the other prison, the wretches that he has to leave behind because they're too wretched to even come out. Like how bad the prison is and what he's seeing inside and his observations further.

I was shaking after reading it. I'm shaking thinking about, I mean, the entire experience now, but, you know, it was such a vivid depiction. I'm like, well, I'm adapting this because I'm feeling it right now. I'm feeling like what it's like. I'm feeling what it's like to have the boot on your neck. I mean, rightfully so, but I nevertheless...

And so I started writing, you know, my version of Robin Hood and with on, you know, pencil and paper. And as I'm writing it, like I was crying as I wrote it. I was looking at the pages the other day and there's like teardrops like all over it, like on every page. It's like, holy crap. It's like.

When you're writing like that and you're feeling that much, it's not a bad thing to cry when you're writing. Yeah. It's like, thank God I'm feeling. Yeah. Like I'm feeling something and it's traveling into the page. And also because I had been a working writer in Hollywood for a long time, just by speed, I had fallen into the very bad habit of composing at my computer, at my laptop, like one of those assholes who goes to Starbucks. And I was that guy. And so I'm sitting and...

I had kind of become used to that. Well, writing by hand in, well, incarcerated, it reconnected me with like pen to paper or pencil to paper. And I, I,

It reminded me that when you write something down, you have a different relationship with the word. No, I consider the pen is the antenna to God. It is the antenna to God. And also, when you type it into the computer, that's a process of rewriting. And so you're losing an entire section. And so it reconnected me with that. I couldn't agree with you more.

Okay, well, tell me, explain this more to me. This is fascinating to me because I've heard many people say this about comedy, that they have to write on paper. I don't. I write on a laptop. I've always written on a laptop. For me, it's what I like about writing, even writing on paper, is that it takes more time to write

I don't think...

That is not false. Not that I've ever written an hour-long stand-up comedy show, all right? But I would think that your writing is different than my kind of writing. Sure. All right, you know? I would think as far as writing stuff down, it's like notes and ideas and funny word phrases or this and that and the other. But then you're working it out. You're saying it. You're saying it. You're saying it. You're saying it. And then you get your story. Right.

Right. And maybe you say it into a recorder. Maybe you do this or you do that. But, you know, it probably doesn't even look right when you type it up on a thing. It doesn't look right. No. It's the way you tell the story. What I was going to get to is that when I type, I can type quicker than I can write by hand. And the problem with comedy is it comes quick and slippery. And also you can edit. No, that makes a tremendous amount of sense. I mean, we're writing stuff that has to hold up on the page. Right. That has to hold up as writing. Right.

I'll write a 1,500-word essay, and I'll use one line. Like, there's one thing in there that might be a bit. But I'll write all this other shit on transportation. It's like strip mining. You just pull all that dirt out and just process it. Get a little work. That's exactly what it's like. I've tried to write. So you open up your mind about, okay, just let loose on public transportation. Yes, yes. And I'm not even trying to be funny. I'm just trying to write, and then I'll find something funny in it.

And then that's the starting point. Now I take that, cut it, copy it into a completely fresh document. Now what is this? And how do I get to that? Ultimately, it's whatever works. Let me ask you a question. Is it you on either typing or whatever, is it you doing that eight-page thing on transportation? Or is it more likely that you're just pacing around it?

Doing a running monologue on public transportation. Well, I'm sitting still, right? That's what you mean. The thing about typing is I type good. So not great, but I don't have to look at the keys and I can type pretty quickly. And if I have a good laptop, like a ThinkPad that has a lot of finger travel, then you really feel it. And I get into like a zone. And then it's just about like... Yeah, so no, you actually do write your notes. Yeah. And then it's just about... But they don't always come out the same way because sometimes when you bring them out on stage...

The moment lets you know this is not the way to go. It's this way. And then all of a sudden you're like, God, how did I not see that in front of the computer? Because you weren't in that vibe of the crowd. Like I said, you don't do it on your own. You have to do it with them. It's like the one art form that literally cannot be practiced in solitary. You have to do it. So when I write, I write like that. But I also write things down on pieces of paper. If I have an idea, I got to catch it.

Well, they're not going to give you that computer in jail. That's true. You're going to be forced to write it on pencil, and that's going to be an okay experience for you. But what is it that makes it to you like the hand to God? Like what is it about writing on paper? Well, my little analogy of it is you can't write poetry on a computer.

Why not? Well, because we're it's we're I'm going for a rhythm, right? I'm going for I'm going for I'm going for a rhythm and then and and there's like there's a connection between my chicken scratch and this paper and this pen as opposed to This other thing and and the more unintelligible and only I can read it the more legit it kind of is and the thing is and and it's it's vomit and

It's absolutely vomit. Okay. When you write by hand, you overwrite. You way, way overwrite. Because you're just getting it out there. Then after all the vomit happens...

Then you sit down with a typewriter or then you sit down with a thing and now you take the vomit and you tame it. You massage it. And now you make it – now you make the sentences work. And now there's more – this is a – okay. Now you make – and now you come up – now you make it work like a writer. Now you make the page work. Now you make the sentences work.

Can we stop for a second while we're in the restroom? Yeah, let's do it. Hey, you have cigars, don't you? Yeah, you want a cigar? Yeah, I would love a cigar. Let's have some cigars. He doesn't do anything fun. I'll have a cigar. On Joe Rogan's show, I will have a cigar. He doesn't do anything fun. That is the truth. You don't do anything fun? Really? Nothing?

Well, maybe I should talk about this. Maybe we should talk about it. Are we on? Can I go? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't do anything fun. Don't do anything fun. Making movies is fun. Where's the cutter? I thought that was a cutter. That looked cool. I was like, is that a cutter or is that brass knuckles? What are you saying about fun?

I don't do anything fun. Well, after what happened to me, I mean, I should probably tell the whole story and maybe I eventually will here. But, you know, I went to jail for a DUI-related incident that caused manslaughter. And one of my passengers died. And...

You know, after that and going to jail and whatnot. He's not the funnest guy to get drunk with. Yeah, I don't. That's kind of what it is. You know, if I go to a party or something like that, I don't want to be seen holding a drink with, you know, even with water in it. I'm teasing him, but I get it. Of course. Who wouldn't fucking get it?

But then you add the fact that he's a vegetarian. All the fun shit. You're a vegetarian? Yeah. Why did you do that? Because his wife made him. That happens. That happened to a friend of mine. He sneaks out burgers every now and then. I, um...

I also have a kind of, it's kind of like an animal thing. I had a pig as a pet. And man, when you look at those eyes, those are human eyes. And I looked into it and it looked into my, I just, I had chickens before that. You know what it's like? Chickens are like cats. They want back scratches and stuff. And I just couldn't, like after a while, I just couldn't do it. Yeah. There's people that are feral.

You ever met a feral person? You don't want to let them sleep in your house. Yeah, right. You met a wild, crazy person. You're in jail. So push that thing up. You had it right. You had it right. Did I? Yeah. This thing right here? Yeah, push that up. It's an intelligence test. I'm sorry. Push it down. Pull it down. Yeah, sorry. Pull it down. Sorry. Hey, I'm digging this. Yeah, they're great. Foundation Cigar, shout out. You've been around feral people, right? You don't want feral people living in your house.

You don't want to take some murderer and give him your car and let him come and sleep in your room. It's different. I should take you around some wild pigs. Wild pigs are like little demons. They make like orc sounds. Wild pigs are wild pigs. I get it. You hear them fighting with each other. Wild.

There are people who are like that also. Exactly. That's my point. But you're talking about like boars and everything. Domesticated people are awesome. Yeah. Domesticated people like yourself and myself, we're fun to be around. We're nice people. We know, you know, we're not going to rob you. No one's going to kill you.

There's a difference. What the wild is. I like the way you describe that. It's different. So I understand that you wouldn't want to eat animals, but they eat each other. And it's just this bizarre cycle of life. I think it's where you're getting your animals from. Are you getting your animals from a...

these mass factory farming. That's the other part of it. That's the other part of it is I think there's a line in Highlander 2 where Sean Connery says, I don't eat anything that I cannot identify. And I kind of feel like that as well. Like I don't have a lot of trust for large industrial systems of food. You shouldn't. But you can get meat from like a farm. You know, like you can get it from a ranch. You could go to one of those –

You know, they have those, what are those, farmer's market type deals? Oh, yeah. You can go meet a rancher and you can buy beef right from them. I am not like one of these people who are like, oh, never, never. Like, you know, if I am in the right place and the right environment and the right environment

Food is – like if there's a – like if I'm on an island in Greece and the guy comes up from the boat with a basket of fish and which one would you like? I'll take that one. Sure. Do you at least eat eggs? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do. Okay. So you eat eggs. So you eat eggs like they're going out of style. Yeah, that's good. So you're probably getting what you need straight away.

As long as you eat eggs, I tell people, like, eggs are free. No one's getting hurt, especially if you have your own chickens. That's the greatest thing in the world. We have 15 chickens. There's nothing like eggs straight from a chicken. Oh, it's great. Nothing like eggs from a chicken. But it's also, it's karma-free. Like, the chickens are having a good time. No one's getting hurt. They're all treated like pets. Like, hey, girls. I love chickens. No, I actually really have, I've always actually thought that,

An exotic pet would be to have, like, a chicken. You know, like one chicken. Yeah. And just, like, treat it like a dog. Hey, that's my chicken. He hangs around. You got to get a couple of them. They need to have a pecking order. Yes. They like to hang out with each other. I think Goebbels figured that one out. Yeah. He was a chicken farmer. Was he really? Oh, yeah. Oh, no shit. Chicken farmer. That's how he...

Well, it's worked out all of his policies in the camps is we shouldn't talk about that. Don't like connect that to chicken farming It's like this the name Adolf right you can't use it anymore. Yes, they can't have that little mustache Remember Michael Jordan tried for a little while. Yeah Mike that's how competitive that guy is like fuck that I can if I can wear that mustache Yeah, Hitler for a while. I think I can't make it happen. I'll make it happen. He just

He just decided he was going to force it through. You know, as far as writing in jail, I'm just thinking about it right now. One of the other things I had to contend with was they would confiscate anything that I wrote. So, you know, like once a week or once every two weeks or so. Why would they do that? Was it illegal to write? I was considered a security threat by what I was writing.

And, um, Oh, because you were telling the truth about what was going on. That. And then when they sent me in, like I was placed in this like solitary confinement thing, like in the hole. And, uh, you know, you're in there and like, I had never been in anything like that before in my life. I was thinking, this is like fucking Guantanamo, except it made me think about it. I've got due process at least. And so, um, I'm in this like crazy Kafka esque mechanized totalitarian environment where

You're in a room where you have no window and the lights are on 24/7. And, you know, I don't care what anybody says.

You go into a room three days deprived of sound and the understanding of time, you go crazy after two days. You're insane. They broke me after two days. I was like, oh, I'll do some yoga. I'll meditate. No problem. No, after a while, if the lights are on 24-7 and you can't hear anything, it's like being inside of a seashell, you go slowly nuts. Is that by design?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's by design. It's like you're placed into a... And so about once a week, like when I was in population, about once a week, the middle of the night or the lights are down and suddenly the lights come on.

come on bright lights are always on but lights come on bright and suddenly a bunch of guards come rushing in through the doors you know they just storm into the the tank into the uh the section and uh they pull everybody out of their cells and they strip everybody naked and they put you up against a wall so you're up there with like you know sancho and you know leroy and

And like everybody's suddenly you're all, you know, one moment you're being kept separate. And next thing you know, you're all naked together standing up against the wall. And they're going through everybody's cell and they're just ripping your cell apart, looking for anything. And usually they're looking for tar heroin or a shank or a weapon of some kind or cell phones, anything like they're looking for anything that's considered contraband. Okay.

Okay. For me, they were looking at my writing because when I was in solitary at that time, like literally on kites, a kite is like a requisition form that you send out to the guards. You're not allowed to talk to the guards. They don't want to talk to you. You tell them what you want on a kite and then you give them the kite and then they take it off and maybe it gets answered. I never had one answered in my life. And so –

They come in, they strip everybody naked, they take all your clothes, and they're under the guise of we're doing a laundry exchange. And so everybody gets new clothes, and you end up with these big baggy pants or something too small for you. And they would

look for contraband for everybody. Well, with me, they would look for whatever I was writing because when I was in solitary, I was writing, um, you know, like maps. I would map the place like a fucking idiot. Like I still was, uh, you know, I'm writing about, Oh, Eisenhard, the guard. I saw him watching, you know, uh, uh,

Literally saw him watching on a little TV Nazi propaganda like triumph of the will is playing on his TV and he's watching it So they didn't want me writing all my stuff. They were like that guy is a fucking threat You get whatever he's written And so I noticed that whenever I was taken out of my cell to shower to go to yard to do whatever That they would come in just take whatever I had written. So I learned that they couldn't take or open letters to my attorney and

because it's privileged. And so what I would do is I would just write, and then whenever I had to leave my cell, like to go to yard, or if they were raiding the cells and taking everybody out and looking for contraband, I would just quickly seal the envelope. My writing would go in, you know, I always left it when I was working, in the letter to my attorney. And then as soon as they would raid it, I would just seal the envelope, and then that would go out. Then he would send that letter to my daughter, who...

who would then type up the pages that I was writing. So that's how I wrote several scripts was like that. Wow. And yeah, because little... You said you read some of Roger's writing when he was in prison. What did you read? Where did you publish it? I don't remember where I was reading it. Well, was it on Twitter? I had several things. Okay, so first of all, I was placed...

I was sentenced to go to a low security, like a country club facility. I went to a low security facility and I went in there and, you know, you have access to stuff. It's, you know, it's more like a camp almost. And you're there and you're incarcerated, but it's a light incarceration almost.

And I had access to a cell phone. And so I started tweeting. And these were the early days of Twitter. And so I started tweeting, oh, they found tar heroin in Pudgy's cell. And they dragged him off. And, oh, this happened over here. Oh, so-and-so shaked so-and-so. Oh, they've rolled up so-and-so and taken him away. I was like tweeting this stuff.

And this is the early days of Twitter. And Roger Ebert, who was like at that time, the biggest on Twitter, was following me.

and he put me on blast like he uh he suddenly decided that he would tell every and like all of a sudden one day overnight like the story kind of went everywhere in the world he put you on blast in a positive way well he just told everybody that oh this is happening somebody is roger avery academy award-winning writer is tweeting from jail and tweeting from behind bars did

At the time, now it's like nothing. People do it all the time. People like... Suge Knight's doing podcasts. I've got a friend who's one of those January 6th guys, and he sends me tweets all the time. You've got a friend who was a January 6th guy? Yeah, yeah. You've got a friend who was a January 6th guy? Well, he's still there. He's like...

hundreds of days in, uh, jail without, uh, without any kind of, uh, without trial. Yeah. I, I, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but like, that's not how it's supposed to be. It's not how it's supposed to be. You're supposed to have a due process of some kind. Well, especially when you watch the actual footage of how it went down. Oh, I watched it live and there was that, that guy, that Antifa guy waving people in, you know, like moving them in. They were moving the, the, um,

the blockade things, they were moving them out and cops were waving people in. They were opening the doors for people. I want you to think about it this way. In the most heavily armed nation the world has ever known, why would you have an insurrection with no guns?

You've got to have guns. Machine guns. Those guys weren't planning on an insurrection. No. And then you have the factor that there was agents in the crowd. And we don't know how many. There's government agents in the crowd that were inciting people to go in. That's what they do. And I want to know who that cop was who shot that woman. Yeah. What about that? Yeah. The whole thing's crazy. The whole thing's crazy. And there's this thing that cops died. No cops died that day. That's not true. No. The cop who died, he died of a stroke. Yeah.

And I believe it was a stroke, a stroke or a heart attack. Well, like everything, there's a lot of misinformation being given to us by the mainstream media. But it gets attributed to it, you know, sort of like when, you know, anything happens to anyone four years after the vaccine, they attribute it to the vaccine. Oh, it was probably the vaccine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could have been the guy just had a fucking heart attack.

But this guy who is a cop, he did not die. He was not killed by the protesters. And you watch the video of the shaman dude with the fucking buffalo hat. They're walking him around. The cops are guiding him. They're guiding him. How would you ever think that that is going to let you wind up in jail? How would you ever think that if you're an unsophisticated guy...

who was wearing fucking face paint, and you're kind of a kook, and you think you're part of a movement, which is really scary. People get a part of a movement, and they, yeah, we're all doing it. And then you've got literal government agents encouraging you to do it, moving barriers, letting you in. They were playing chess, and these idiots were playing checkers, and they all got locked up. That makes a lot of sense.

Because nobody was doing an insurrection. It wasn't an insurrection. You don't do an insurrection without weapons. The whole idea is crazy. There was no presumption that there was going to be any kind of like that you were going to get thrown in jail for a thousand days. And so my pal Jake Lang, he's been there forever. And every now and then I get a picture of him. He's been in like, look, I deserve to go to jail. That guy doesn't. And most of those guys don't.

Yeah, I think it was a bad decision, certainly to go into the Capitol. It was a bad decision to smash windows. But I want to know who was doing it. People had been smashing things for a whole year before that. Right. That's a very good point. It's like we were a culture of smashing things at that point. It's also as soon as you find out that there were government agents that may or may not have incited people to go in, the whole thing fucking changes. Like, what are you trying to do? Are you there to serve and protect? Or is there some other weird shit going on? Because it seems like there is, and no one wants to talk about it because you don't want to be that guy.

But at a certain point in time, you should be that guy. You should go, what's going on, man? There comes a point when men of good conscience must stand up and speak out against things that are obviously wrong. Yeah. And that is one of them. Yeah, that is one of them. It's a big one. It's a weird one. And, you know, there's all this pushback about Trump getting into office because he said one of the first things he said was he was going to release all the January 6th prisoners. Yeah.

How long do you think they should be in there for? Who's opposing this? They should at least be going to trial. Yes. You should at least be going to trial. Right. It is unconscionable to hold somebody for over a year, two years. Well, the thing, I mean, the government has always had a situation where, and we talked about when we did our episode on the Andersonville trial, you know, is...

The one charge that the government can put against you where they don't need direct evidence is conspiracy. If they arrest you for conspiracy, that means they don't have direct evidence, but they don't need direct evidence for conspiracy. By the way, when I was- Just one thing. That's how they got Manson. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Right. All right. Well, they knew what Manson had done because they were helping him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I believe that too because- Jerry Chaos? Oh, that's-

Book's one of the best. Believe me, I read every Manson book that there possibly could read. And then I read that one. I throw the rest of them away in the fucking trash. Chaos is insane. Chaos is just fantastic. And he helped me too because my first AD is a friend of his, Bill Clark. And when I was writing the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood book,

I go deeper into the Manson stuff. And so I had a couple of little questions in my head that I always kind of wanted to know the answer to. So I got Tom's number and I called him up and I was able to ask him some really super like direct questions that really helped my book. You know, it's a crazy fucking story. Oh, you know, when I was in jail, I found out they record everything.

They're just constantly recording. And so somebody is in there and they're like, man, I'd like to kill that D.A. Well, that's conspiracy. And so they'll wait and like, oh, you're about to get out. And they'll literally start walking by like, ah, stop. Oh, God. Remember that thing you said about conspiracy? Let's play that back for you. Oh, God. Or what you said about killing the D.A. Well, that's you're going away again. You're going back to trial. That happened a lot.

But it's also- Don't ever talk. They put guys in your cell to get you talking about shit. Oh, yeah. That happened right away. That happened right away. They're trying to get you to incriminate yourself deeper constantly. It's like a fun game. What a fun game. What a fun game. To serve and protect.

incriminate you deeper well i look like i had a my as quentin will confirm i have my authority issues i always i always have i always have i'm suspicious of anyone in power and um you should be yeah it's intoxicating maybe like this okay so when roger okay good part of the thing on our show i'm getting back to what roger's saying i'm not changing the subject uh uh uh uh

When we do our show, the thing is, when we do our show, we talk about three movies. So I pick three video cassettes. The show we're talking about is the Video Archives podcast, which is... It was our second season. Patreon.com slash Video Archives. But the thing is, all right, so it's like there's the main movie, then there's that second movie that's kind of like the main movie, but probably you don't know that much about, and then some wild exploitation thing that I... What the fuck is this? Let's watch it and find out. And one of the things that's about our show is...

I don't say, hey, Roger, so find these movies and you watch them and I'll watch them and we'll get together and we'll do it on the phone too. No, no, no, we don't do that shit.

All right. You know, we get together to watch the movies together. Part of it is the experience of being together and watching the movie together. The reason watching it through his eyes. The reason we came up with the idea of the show is like when we when we reconnected, we started doing what we used to do during the pandemic. Yeah. And then we were sort of like, well, hey, let's come up with a way we can get paid to do this. All right. You know, so me and Roger will get together and we'll we'll we'll watch three movies and sometimes even four.

And then we'll get together. Then we have a day off and then we get together on another day and then we record and we're always in the room when we do it. But the thing is, when Roger comes over to watch the film, I've kind of learned that it's like, Roger, I'm starting. It's three movies we're going to watch.

I am starting the first movie 20 minutes after you get here because Roger will just get off on some archaic piece of thing. The earth is flat. The earth is flat. And the next thing you know, all right, it's been an hour and 15 minutes later and you're getting further and further and further away, all right, from the –

the alchemy we're trying to create with the first movie. So now it's a little, in 20 minutes, I'm hitting play. That's it. So wrap it up. That's a problem with podcasts. When people come over, sometimes we have some of the best conversations before the podcast. So now I have to be rude. I'll be like, stop, stop, stop. Let's not talk. You're all good. Let's catch that magic. Yeah, because you got to catch it because it is weird. It's a weird thing.

It's a beautiful thing though because it's so open. There's no studio people. Oh, no. Yeah. No, even the idea – I mean one, the fact – the idea that this has –

replaced the talk show, the talk shows that we grew up watching and like those guys were the kings. The fact that podcasting, I mean, you're the king of it, but the fact that podcasting has replaced that, but also the fact that anybody that has got something intelligent, has got a cool little setup, has got an interesting personality and can sell an interesting conversation,

theoretically can start a podcast. 100%. Yeah. Yeah, the barrier to entry is so low. Think about the barrier to entry when you wanted to be a director. Oh, God, Jesus. It's fucking crazy. Not only that, you know, like the old days of television, you know, like Desilu. Yeah. We own our content. Like, you own your content. Yeah. And...

Never mind that it's a podcast. I'm okay with that. I like the fact that this is something where, for the first time in my life at least, I'm involved with something where there is nobody else. It's me and Quentin who decide everything. Yeah. And, you know, if Quentin wants to do it, we go there. If I want to do it, we go there. Well, I talked to Quentin. If Quentin allows it, we go there. Yeah.

I mean, basically what we're doing is the same thing we used to do. That's true. At the video store. We do what we used to do at the video store. We're talking about movies. It's completely terrible. I have the kill switch. But other than that. No, no, no. I didn't mean it like that. I never use the kill switch. But the kill switch is always there. No, not really. Not really. Well, I guess. Theoretically. But you know what? But you want a theoretically.

What a theoretical sort of damn Ecclesiastes. Most times when you've used the kill switch, you've used it on your own. I use it on myself. You used it on yourself. You actually haven't used it on any of my things that I've wanted to do, which is really cool. But basically, we're doing the same thing we used to do. We used to sit around and talk about movies. And so during the pandemic, Quentin called me up. And we hadn't talked for, I mean, we had bumped into each other. We bumped into each other a few times.

But we hadn't really – we had had a little bit of a – We had a falling out. We had a falling out. And I call it sort of a business-related falling out. And maybe if I had been a little more mature – I was young as a filmmaker and probably unprepared to deal with the complexities of agents and attorneys and Hollywood and money and fame and –

press and the press's agenda and and all of that I was just approaching it like I am a SoCal Gen X Punk filmmaker that was how I approached it I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want to do I'm gonna make the movie that I want to make and I with that attitude of you know I know what I want I know what's right and nobody can tell me I'm wrong because you have to be a little bit of a

a megalomaniac to be a director you have to be willing to say no I'm right even when everyone is telling you you're wrong and is that how Joker 2 got made I like Joker 2 I like Joker 2 I know you did I like Joker 2 I haven't seen it I'm just fucking around I will defend Joker 2 yeah I will I'll defend the movie as well I can't wait to watch it not that I need more fucking press on that I can't wait to watch it and then talk to you about it afterwards

Tim Dillon said it's the worst fucking movie that's ever been made, and he's in it. Well, that may have colored his perception, though. Oh, but Tim thinks everything sucks. It's the beauty of Tim. No matter what everybody's saying is amazing. Tim loves to talk shit about Austin. I've got to tell you, the funniest thing that I've heard for a while on YouTube when I was listening to you guys talk is...

He's a guy I never really listened to his show or anything like that. He's fucking brilliant. But when he was on your thing talking about the election and when he described Tim Waltz as like, well, that guy's a goofball who just should be at a county fair eating hot dogs. Yeah.

15 minutes and played it back about three different times because I thought that was such a funny comment. He's always funny. He said it sounds like Kamala Harris is doing voodoo curses. She's doing gypsy curses, he said. She speaks in gypsy curses. And he always does his show with these fucking crazy glasses on. Like, that's his new thing. If you ever watch his show, it's the best because it's literally just him ranting and a producer. And...

The ability to rant as a singleton operator, as a fucking lone person out there without anybody to bounce ideas off of, is a rare talent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's the best at it I've ever seen. Bill Burr's really good at it as well. Yeah. But Tim Dillon is the best at it I've ever seen. He's so fucking good at it. And he's just basically performing to one person who's his producer. Yeah. And he's just ranting. And so because of that, he's got this crazy muscle that he's developed from years of doing that. Uh-huh.

Where he just rants about all these different things, but it's fucking brilliant. I like ranting. Oh, yeah, clearly. As you know. Well, that's the great thing about you guys doing a podcast together. What I was going to get to is like in the beginning, you were talking about replacing the talk show. Well, fucking you guys replaced Siskel and Ebert, right?

Right? Because Siskel and Ebert- That's what we want to do. Thank you. They're gone. That was actually the agenda that Quentin proposed to me. Well, both those guys are gone. You know what I love watching is videos of outtakes of those guys bitching at each other. Oh, bitching at each other. Yeah, yeah. They fucking hated each other. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were so shitty to each other. And then they had to be smiley and what a bullshit way to live.

Do you remember when Vincent Gallo wished testicular cancer on Roger Ebert and then he got it? Oh, wow. Do you remember that? Okay, I do. Well, he got cancer in the mouth. Now that you bring it up, yeah. Right? Like he lost his jaw. He didn't remove his jawbone. That was Vincent Gallo cursing it onto him. Oh, voodoo's real. He apologized after he, oh my God, I didn't, I think he got it.

Well, I think after Roger Ebert said that Brown Bunny was the worst film to ever play in the history of con film. That's exactly what happened. And then he went and he cursed him. And then the curse came true. And then he regretted it. I talked to him. He was like, I wish I had never done that. It's crazy if it really worked. That movie, Brown Bunny, I want to talk about that. I've always thought it's so strange that we can show violence, but we can't show sex. And I know they tried to do that with like,

You ever see the lines outside the movie theater when Deep Throat came out? Oh, yeah. Carson was in line. Johnny Carson went to see Deep Throat in a public theater. I heard stories about Bing Crosby arrived at midnight. Because people didn't know what they were seeing yet. It hadn't been defined as a genre. There was nudie movies that people watched, stag parties. And there was that little moment in 73 where there was porno chic. Yeah. Well, Stallone did Italian Stallion. Yeah, but that wasn't popular then.

thing this was and everyone had to kind of see it and uh and like oh hey maybe this will be a thing right right maybe this will be a thing now that like you know you know you know uh one or three or four porno movies will come out every year that'll be like kind of considered like real movies you know the couples will go see yeah and that was a whole thing was uh uh um

promoting the idea of couples going to see... A porn film. Either porno films or just heavenly erotic movies. Right. You know, like for sexy nights. Yeah, not like Travis Bickle. Not like how Travis Bickle does it. No, no, no, as a sexy night. Now we're going to go... We're going to have a sexy night. We're going to go out and see and then we'll go home and we'll take care of business. Right. Yeah. And it didn't really happen. But there was this hope in the early 70s that that...

But it's fascinating that it didn't happen because what I was going to get to is like violence we don't have any problem with. But we all agree that consensual sex is way better than someone getting shot in the face. But people get shot in the face in movies constantly. You see heads explode and arms getting lopped off and Game of Thrones. Bread and butter. It's constant. It's actually gone too far, I think.

I mean, this could be for me. Well, it's not that violence has gone too far. It's the meaningless violence has gone. Violence without purpose, almost. And I started to recognize this during Walking Dead. But really, Game of Thrones, though. You mentioned Game of Thrones. Yeah.

Like, I loved Game of Thrones at first. And then I started realizing, wait a minute. Like, they're getting off on me falling in love with characters. And then the moment I've fallen in love with a character, suddenly they're vivisecting their genitals. You know, it's like... And then the cycle begins again. You fall in love with a different character. And then they're killing them. And they're just doing it, like, sadistically because...

there's like there's nowhere to go other than that they're just pushing the ceiling higher and higher sort of but also if you were living in that world that would be reality nobody lived forever and became the hero of the fucking movie there's no heroes back then everybody's getting gutted there's they're getting usurped they're like turned into a dungeon you know yeah people getting fed the lions it's just you're getting eaten by dogs this is real and now you have to fight for the next five years against the rats all right they're in the fucking dungeon with you but television at least the

the television I grew up with was all about like the familiarity of returning to the characters you love. Yeah, but there was plenty of characters and you did get to return to the ones that stuck around and didn't get their heads. I just wish I killed other characters. Anyone else. I love that. Let me give you another, let me give you another example of my, everyone talks about how great television is now. And it's, it's pretty good. I got to say it's pretty good, but it's still television to me.

And what's the difference between television and a good movie? Because a lot of the TV now has the patina of a movie. All right. They're using cinematic language, all right, to get you caught up in it. And obviously I'm talking about good shows. We're talking about shows that you're— Ozark. Shows that you're compelled to watch. Right, right, right. All right.

And so, okay, so I'll use an example of a show. I'll use Yellowstone. I didn't really get around to watching Yellowstone the first three years or so. And then I watched like the first season. I go, wow, this is fucking great. I've always been a big Kevin Costner fan. He's fucking wonderful in this. All right. And I got really caught up in the show and everything. And all of a sudden I'm having a good time. And, you know, I've got a couple of seasons I haven't seen, so I'm watching it. And...

And in the first season, I'm kind of talking about, oh, this is like a movie. This is like a big movie. It's like a big movie. And the guy who writes that is a good writer. There's good, like, punchy monologues and stuff. So then I end up watching, like, three seasons of it. And then I even watched that 1883. Oh, this is a good Western show. I like Westerns. But then after I've watched, like, two or three seasons or one season of 1883, look, while I'm watching it,

I am compelled. I'm caught up in it. But at the end of the day, it's all just a soap opera. They've introduced you to a bunch of characters. You actually kind of know all their backstories. You know everybody's connection with everybody else. And, you know, they spend some time selling that out. And then everything is just the compellingness of the soap opera of what's happening to this character. And what's different between that and a film? Well, I'll tell you. Because the thing is, if you watch Edge of Night,

Monday through Friday, you get caught up in the dramas of the family and everything. But you don't remember it five years from now. You're caught up into the minutia of it at the moment. All right. So the difference between is, is I'll see a good Western movie and I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I'll remember the story. I'll remember this scene or that scene. And it built, it built to an emotional climax of some degree, uh,

And, you know, one, the story is good. It's not just about the interpersonal relationships. The story is good itself. But but but there's a payoff to it. But there's not a payoff on this stuff. It's just more inters interconnectional drama. And while I'm watching it, that's good enough. But when it's over, I couldn't tell you.

I can remember who the bad guy was in the first season of Yellowstone because it was Danny Houston. I remember him in it. But I don't remember any of the details of it. And I don't remember any of the bad guys for season two or season three. It's out of my head.

It's just completely out of... And same thing with 1883. When I watched the whole thing, and that was like a... That seemed like a movie, except I don't remember... Sam Elliott's about the only thing I really remember of it when it was finished. But now...

Red River I remember for the rest of my life. Isn't that though because it's a different thing, right? Because when you go to a film, film is designed for one sitting. You sit down in the theater. You're going to get the entire encapsulation of what happens to these characters in three hours. Okay, I'll give you an example of one that is more than a soap opera. And here's the difference. Here's the difference. Okay. Because, yeah, you could say that. Look, they're in the soap opera business. But I'll tell you one that's not. Okay. Okay.

If you watch that first season of, uh, here's one that really works like a movie. If you watch the first season of Homeland,

Oh yeah. That first season of Homeland. First season's incredible. Okay. Yeah, very good. When it gets to that final episode of the first season and he's got the suicide vest on and he's in the room, he can kill the guys that he's been waiting for to do it for the whole movie. And you don't want him to die, but you're kind of into him and you kind of want him to pull it off. And then his daughter calls him on the phone.

before he does it. She doesn't know what he's going to do, but she gets that little sense from him that something's weird. She goes, Daddy, you need to tell me that you're going to come home right now. You need to tell me right now that I will see you later tonight.

And the entire series has been built to this scene. And it's one of the most emotional scenes I've ever seen in a movie, in a TV show. I've ever seen dramatized. The first season was great. I've ever seen dramatized. Now, that was a movie. Right. That was not a soap opera. I see what you're saying. That built to this moment of him being in that fucking room with the suicide vest on. And there was complexity. She doesn't know what she's asking. Right.

But we do. Right. She's stopping this major thing, and she'll never know that. But we do. Right. Right. Right. And he's still committed. That's similar. But he's more committed to her. And we know that. Mm.

That's just great shit. That's a movie. Right. And you can't. Can you do that every week? No, I didn't say you can do it every week. But I mean, you know, when the season's over, I need to walk away with more than just the soap opera. An impactful moment. Exactly. I don't expect you to do that every week. But at the end of the arc.

If you're telling a continuing story, at the end of that fucking season, you need to, bam, drop the mic. Yeah. You need to tell me a fucking story, not just dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. I see what you're saying. And look, while I'm watching it, I'm not asking for that. But the fact that it all just disappears once it's over and it's just sand on the beach. Right.

It's a different thing, though, right? I mean, this is the weirdness of the theater experience versus home. Here's where it's not a different thing. Part of the thing that makes it different is the fact that everyone's watching these continuing stories, continuing stories, continuing stories. Okay, if it were Bonanza, where it's just a set-up story, Charles Bronson...

He's a half-breed Indian and he's working at the Ponderosa for a while. And he gets involved in an adventure and then at the end it's done. Well, on that show, you have the episodes that are maybe not so good or episodes that are whatever. That's not one continual story. But then you have this great episode with Charles Bronson. Yeah.

Or do they have a great episode with James Cahober? They're almost stand-alone. That could have been a movie. They could have expanded that to a movie. They're stand-alone instead of just a long, ongoing story. Well, the difference is that that's episodic. It's a long, ongoing story that leads to the soap opera aspect. It's episodic. And television now has become completely serialized. And so somebody's going in and they're pitching their show, even a really, really good show like Deadwood.

Okay, Deadwood, I know what they, they probably went in, they pitched, and what they knew that they were going to make was the, was it Wild Bill? Yeah. The Wild Bill story. And they've got Carradine and like, and they know that story. And that show is fantastic as long as they're telling that story, which is like six to eight episodes. Mm-hmm.

Once he's gone, I don't think they had a plan. That was what they pitched, and it was like they pitched a movie spread out over a number of episodes. But it wasn't even the full season. Yeah, but by that point in time, now they have all the town characters. Well, they've got everybody, but I would maintain that for the rest of Deadwood, after Carradine's gone, it's just things are happening. Stuff is happening. Yeah.

But I don't remember anything about that show other than the town and, you know, the various actors that I liked on the show. But really, all they had was those first six to eight episodes. I can't remember exactly what it was. And the thing about it is I'm not – I don't say all this and the sum up of it all is it's useless. It is very compelling while I'm watching it. Yeah. But it just doesn't compare well.

to a movie real story that stays with me for the rest of my life in some cases. Right. I know what you're saying. And like, we'll watch a lot of, you know, I try to watch at least one movie every episode that I haven't seen. And sometimes it's like, well, I haven't seen it since I was 12.

You know, or I haven't seen it since. Those are actually the scariest ones to watch, because if you loved something when you were young, it's almost. Well, and I'm expecting not to. I'm tougher on stuff now than I used to be. All right. I was a big champion about. So now I'm not such a champion. Now I see all the problems with it. All right. But I will watch something I haven't seen since I was 22. And I thought, like, the day it opened. Yeah.

And I watch it again. I think I just lost my train of thought. Well, actually, I can jump in really quick if you want. I'm talking like I'm stoned and I'm not. Strong cigars. Yeah, strong cigars. One of the movies we saw that we had seen a million times and we didn't even think that it was going to be anything was Dressed to Kill. Yeah. Okay, let me set this up a little bit. Yeah, set it up. And then you can take it. Yeah, yeah. It was one of those things where we were doing a thing...

a special episode with eli roth we were taking you know the italian jalo thrillers and saying okay what are the american versions of jalo thrillers and we figured out there was like four of them and one of them was dressed to kill michael cain yeah so we get together with with eli and we're gonna watch these four movies and then it comes down to dress to kill and it's like

I can't even think about how many times I've seen Dressed to Kill. I can't even think how many times he's seen it and how many times that Eli's seen it. I mean, we're just huge Brian De Palma fans and Nancy Allen fans and everything. So like how many fucking times? And so I almost, almost brought up, I mean, do we even need to watch Dressed to Kill? I mean, we've got- We had a little Congress about it. We've got three movies. No, okay, well, let's just watch it. We'll just watch it. That ended up being one of the greatest screenings of Dressed to Kill I've ever seen.

All right. In our living room. In my living room watching it with Roger. On VHS. On VHS. Pan and scan. All right. The old Warner Brothers video. Because we watch them on the actual video cassettes of video archives. All right. Yeah.

Literally the tape that we used to rent and handle and shuffle and put back and forth into the drawers and then rent to customers and that has been sitting on the shelves with the number on it and everything for the computer. We've seen the movie a bunch of times, but something about watching it with the three of us and then just sitting there and it's so good, but...

But it was Roger who was adding to it. It was Eli that was adding to it. And I was adding to them. And we just had this appreciation for the movie, watching it with the three of us in this situation. The fact that we even considered not even watching it was just like sacrilege. And we saw things in it that we had never seen before. That was the other thing. It's like I saw things during that screening because of...

because of feeling watching the movie with you guys that I had never thought about before. And so it opened up all sorts of avenues and, you know, most frequently you watch a movie and it's, it doesn't live up. I'm afraid to watch movies again. You know, a lot of the time that was just one of those happy incidences where the movie really lived up. It, it, it stayed strong. Even when,

We'd seen it hundreds of times. I mean, you could not... It'd be hard to pick a movie that I've seen as much as Jessica. See, this is the better version of Siskel and Ebert. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The completely unproduced, uninfluenced version. Well, I told Roger when we finished the first season, I go, you know, Roger, if we do this the right way...

In three or four years' time, we could be considered like Cisco and eBay. A hundred percent. It's just a matter of getting it out there. I think there's just a bunch of people that aren't aware of it yet. They will come. Build it and they will come. What I love about the way we're doing it now, because our first season, we just put it out. And we had a partner with SiriusXM back then.

And this season, you know... Yeah, they kind of went out of business in their own... for their podcasting thing a little bit. Oh, did they? I think they... Pandora now, right? Yeah, yeah. They kind of turned into a different thing. They just changed their whole... They just signed a big podcast deal with the Call Her Daddy chick. Yeah, yeah. I think they did, yeah. Yeah. So I guess they're trying to get back into it. And I think some other people as well. They paid us a lot of money to do it. And, like, we actually did pretty good for, like, our little archaic little movie. Yeah. Show that goes on about two hours. It's a real niche-type... Yeah. And we...

can you guys do Jaws? No, we don't want to do Jaws. But that's the best part of it. Do whatever the fuck you want to do. That's exactly it. But the thing is, they were like, so we actually had about like 2 million listeners, which was like, hey, that was pretty good for us, for us doing our little stupid, uh, uh,

movie show about VHS and it's all about VHS. It's about the VHS. We're talking about the box art of VHS tapes. We watch the film. We talk about the trailers that are in front of the movie. All right. We talk about the transfer.

By the way, the movie VHS is one of my guilty pleasures. That's a good movie. The one with the devil lady? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She turns into a devil? The four different stories or three different stories? But that one is worth it. Just sit through the other three for that one. The devil lady was fucking amazing.

But I think they were expecting us to do like... Duh! Citizen Kane! They were thinking they'd do like Dax Shepard kind of numbers. Right, right, right. Well, we're never going to do that with what we're doing. Right, right, right. Yeah. And, you know, and so we're talking... But you could, though.

People want to see it. They want to listen to it. It's just a matter of just it being – they'll realize they wanted it once they hear it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it is. It's like, oh, we want them to only talk about Citizen Kane. No, no, no. It's got to be whatever the fuck they actually want to talk about. And then you'll learn about that movie that you never heard about. Maybe you'll go see it and then you'll have a deeper appreciation of why these guys love movies. But one of the things that was interesting when we did it – OK, so –

When we made our deal, we're thinking, okay, well, maybe we'll do it here for two years. And we own the show and then we want to take it to Patreon so we don't have to do commercials. Right. Okay. And then when I did commercials, I did it with a 70s DJ announcer voice. All right. Because I felt like such a sellout that I'm not going to do it in my voice. Right. That's funny. The dubster. The dubster.

The Datsun 750 is coming, and it's coming soon! You know, and I did it like the real Don Steele. That was my whole thing. I was doing it like the real Don Steele. I just did those readings like myself, and people started commenting on Twitter. They were like, man, Roger Avery... Zip recruiter! Can fill your placement in the quiz week! Some people even get, in the first week, they get...

Qualified candidates only on ZipRecruiter.com. Look, I like solo stoves. They're great. But I found myself doing stainless steel ads, basically, and talking about solo stoves. And suddenly people on Twitter were saying, Roger Avery will sell you sour milk from a sick cow. I was like, well, I don't know if I want to be shamed.

shilling stuff like that anymore. You just have to only approve the ads that you want to do. I approve ads. I don't just let them give me every ad. I'm like, I can't do this one. And I say it all the time. We're not even under that kind of pressure now. The thing about it, I thought that would be kind of cool, is if we go to Patreon, we'll lose a whole bunch of listeners, but

We'll put a 40-minute version of the show out there for free. But if you want to get the whole show, then you've got to subscribe. And if you just subscribe, you get the show. If you pay $5, you get our show. Boom. Boom. And if you pay $8, then you get an extra special show that we do. There's still a truncated version of it available for everybody to listen to. You like the first part of it? Come for the rest. But the thing is, though...

And some people are sort of like, hey, fuck those guys. And I think, well, okay, fine. And look, I get it. I'm the guy that in my 20s would go to happy hour at the bar and nurse a beer while I ate all the pizza and the chicken wings. And that was my dinner. So I get that.

And by the way, if you want to wait until the end of our season and then join for a month and listen to all of our shows that way, you can. That's an easy way to do it. You can get everything for free for a month. You can get everything you want in a month.

That's not who we're doing it for. We're doing it for the people who care about the show and are subscribing to it. And those people, those are our audience. Right. And then they write on the message board and we write them back. And like so we're doing it for those people. And as long as we can make enough to just do the show. Right. We're cool.

And the general feeling is, wow, this is like a $5 film school because you've got a couple of guys talking about movies and talking about how to watch movies, how to appreciate films, how to read a film. And then... And hopefully just genuinely compelling discussions. And using our experience as filmmakers to discuss even deeper into the movies and to better understand them. And, you know, it's...

largely something has happened in culture where people, they don't know how to argue anymore politely. They don't know how to like enjoy an argument with each other before. And so Quentin and I, we don't have to like the same move, just like Siskel and Ebert didn't have to like it. But, you know, we can argue about something and then afterwards it's like, okay, let's go do karaoke now. You know, it's not, it's not a, it's not a recommend show.

We want to pick three movies and we want to discuss them. Yeah. And you don't have to like it. Even if we don't like the movie, if there's an interesting point of discussion about it, well, that's good. That's all we need. We just need an interesting conversation. Yeah. It's not about we recommend you watch this movie. Right.

Personally, I don't care if anybody watches any of the movies that we talk about. I want them to listen to the show and enjoy our back and forth. And get to understand how you appreciate movies. Yeah, if you want to go out and check the movies out afterwards, fine, go ahead. But I don't care if you do or not. And we have a really, like, dedicated group of people who have come and they've signed up and they, like...

like, I really, what's funny is I really care about these people now. It's like they're there and they're like in the club. It's like a clubhouse. Yeah, yeah. And the people who want to be there want to be there and they're talking and they're talking, they're on a message board with Quentin and, you know, Eli is, Eli Roth is there and Edgar Wright and like everybody's like, and so it's a, we wanted to create a

something that was like video archives in that people could come in and talk. And I want at least one of the three movies, not every week, but at least I want to, they're not easy to find. I want to come up with like, well, that's not streaming anywhere. How am I supposed to get this? Well, it's on VHS, you know, get a VHS recorder and buy it on eBay. All right. And now all of a sudden that little group is like,

Well, maybe we can buy a year. Hey, maybe if we buy a VHS and then we can we'll burn it and we can trade it with everybody. And now they're all doing the work to do that. Well, good. My daughter, Gala, is one of our producers on the show. And and she's on the show with us.

And one of her things is like we get together and we watch the movies at Video Archives and then we know the films. And then she has to she doesn't have that access. She's not there with us. She's like she represents one of our one of the people out there. She's got to find it.

So if Quentin finds something that's, you know, pretty difficult to find, she's got to track it down. And she usually has a little timetable to do it on. And she kind of is doing her proof of concept on, you can get these. You can find these. She'll find it on VHS. She'll find it however. Yeah, she explains how she tracked it down. And you can follow her guide. If it's on YouTube, she'll tell you it's on YouTube. However, when she goes, Quentin, I just couldn't track this one down. I'm like, yes! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

I think that's the real reason he likes to do the show. That's right! Eat shit! Gotcha! Gotcha! Is everything on YouTube now? A lot of things. Not everything, but a lot of things.

A lot of things. Yeah, there's some certain things you can't find on YouTube still. And if it's up there and it's not there, it'll be up again somewhere. It's like whack-a-mole. Right, right, right. It's like whack-a-mole. There was the Gore Vidal film, the transsexual movie with Raquel Welch. Oh, we watched that. We didn't do an episode on it, but I had the video of that. We watched it. I was a Myra Breckovich. I liked that movie. It's a crazy movie. Well, the idea that- She fucks the guy in the ass. That's the best fucking scene. She fucks the guy in the ass. That is the best fucking scene.

Fucking scene. It's pretty wild. I like that movie so much I read the book afterwards because I thought it was so cool. Okay, I never liked Rex Reed, and I am not gay, but I was actually like, wow, Rex Reed's kind of hot in this. Well, that's what he was trying to do. That was the whole movie. You did it. Gore Vidal was trying to turn you gay. Can you give me that lighter? Yeah, sure. That's one of those weird ones that's difficult to find. I had to buy a DVD to get it.

I like that line she has that keeps building up to it. She goes, is she going to finally show her pussy? She goes, well, it looks like the moment of truth has finally arrived. I think Raquel Wells is fantastic in that.

Did you ever see those debates that Gore Vidal did with William F. Buck? Oh, yeah. Those are legendary. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. But this is, you know, you used to be- Gore Vidal always won, though. Oh, yeah. Well, he was right and he was better. Yeah. He's right and he's better. Yeah. But then you have Gore Vidal fighting with fucking Norman Mailer. Yeah. What were they fighting about? Oh, no, just they'd get on the Dick Cavett show together. He would talk to him like a Ponzi bastard and the other one would talk to him like a Neanderthal.

I'm sure they had dinner afterwards. You used to be able to have those kind of conversations on television, which is really fascinating. Yeah. It's like now they exist in podcasts.

And the Siskel and Ebert thing, which I was talking about, is like you can't manufacture a friendship. Yeah, yeah. And you can't manufacture a real interest. You can't be a guy who was a local news reporter who auditioned for the role of the guy who reviews movies. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It's like this thing that you guys have is what – this is the whole new media movement is based on authenticity. Yeah.

Right? And this is like the whole thing. You want people to not be able to find these movies. You want to just review movies that you want to review. And that's the beautiful thing about it. It's like the perfect show in that regard. Like for a film review show or a film discussion show, it's the perfect show. And also when a customer used to come into the store, they had basically three requirements. I want something that

That's new. That was always the first one. That's good that I haven't seen yet. And I was like, well, if you haven't seen it yet, it's new to you. So that takes care of two of those. And no, we don't have that new one, but let's show you something interesting. And so it was always a matter of, you know. Well, the thing is, one of the things that like...

There's a lot of movie shows out there on podcasts and they talk about stuff. And the idea isn't for me to just say, oh, we're better than all those guys. We're not coming from that place. But I'll tell you what bugs me about a lot of the other shows is the fact that the people are sincere. They're completely sincere. But their film knowledge is fucking abysmal. They really don't know what the fuck they're talking about. And especially when they're trying to talk about movies from like the 70s or something.

They were usually born in the 80s. So they don't know what something was like when it opened up and they don't really have any context. They definitely don't have context. That's what they don't have. They don't have context. They just know whatever they've learned along the way. And so they just yank stuff out of their ass and just and say stuff that's just wrong a lot. They're just misinformation a lot. We actually fact check our shit, right?

All right. You know, we re-record it. All right. To make sure that we just don't yank shit out of it. And there is a little bit of yanking stuff out of your ass. But when I'm not sure about it, we look it up. And then if I'm wrong, then we change it. Well, then also there's the fact that... You can count on what we're saying that we're telling you the true fucking shit. We're giving you...

I consider it as a film expert that I would be... My show wouldn't be worth listening to if I don't tell you the truth. Right. If I don't give you factual information that you can count on. Well, so because you were there during the opening of the film and, you know, we're going... I can describe the context. Yeah. We have the context to talk about. A lot of these people, they maybe didn't see these movies in theaters. And the thing is, you know, it's like,

You know, my writing guru as far as, like, film writing, but I think writing in general, was the New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. And she had one rule for film criticism. And I think this could apply to all writing. She goes, you have to give the reader a compelling reason to read your writing. Right.

It's that fucking simple. It's that there has to be a compelling reason for you to engage in reading analysis. And the same thing about talking about cinema. You have to give a compelling reason. Now, yeah, I like the guys. That's a good start. I like their personality. I think they're kind of funny. That's a good start. But there has to be something more than that. Hmm.

Well, that's what's more than that, what you just did. This passion for it, right? That's what's more than that. It's this severe commitment to it. That's what's exciting. And then when we talk about the movies, we talk about everything that's good about them. We talk about the things that aren't good. Right. Honest. Yeah, very honest. And I can be wrong. I don't have to be right about it. You might be wrong about the Joker. I'm not sure. It's audacious. It's audacious. Because you haven't even seen it.

I haven't even seen it. You're just jumping on a fucking bandwagon. I'm just talking shit. I'm just trying to wind you up. I'm just trying to wind you up. Sorry. What's an example of a film that you love that other people hate other than The Joker? I don't know if I loved it, but I liked it a lot. I have a ton of those. As a matter of fact, I have so many. But when I was younger particularly...

I was the champion of, like, the movie that everyone... that all the critics put down and said was the fiasco. And I wanted to defend... Is it because you're contrarian? Can I guess? Yeah. Is it Ishtar? Well...

I defended Ishtar. I defended 1941. He was like one of the champions of Ishtar. Ishtar, I championed in 1941. Pushing that tape on so many customers. How many of them came back angry? No, Ishtar's a funny movie. It's a funny movie. Is it really? Well, the problem with Ishtar, and we were talking about this a little bit earlier, the problem with Ishtar is that

It suddenly became not about the movie, but about the production. Yeah, yeah. And so people had formed an opinion about whether they liked it or not. Because it was expensive. Because it was expensive. It's like... That is the kiss of death. It doesn't change your ticket price. No, but that is the kiss of death. If you feel like a film is over budgeted...

Especially comedies. It's like critics have a thing about spending a lot of money on comedies. It seems obscene to them. What happened with this film? Where did the budget go south? Well, where the budget kind of went south for the most part was the fact that Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman kind of had their full freight on them.

on the movie. So Dustin Hoffman got his high big salary. Warren Beatty got his high big salary. And so now... And all the accoutrements that go with it. And everything that goes with it. Right. I need a plane to fly me back from Morocco to New York every weekend. Oh, really? I'm sure. No, no, he's just making that up. I'm making that up, but that's not unrealistic. That's not unrealistic. It would be like if when they did... During the time when they did Ishar...

Tom Hanks was famous, but he wasn't the superstar that he is now. All right. So if that had starred Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari, like the two guys from Bosom Buddies. Yeah. Well, then that movie would have been it would have been it would have cost a lot less and would have been just as funny. Those guys were terrific together and they would have been really good in that role. And the film would have been seen for what it is. Yeah.

When a film does get labeled as a bloated film, though, that is the kiss of death. It kind of is. Because the general public will turn on it then. They want it to fail. But you know what? Generally, you give those movies a couple of years, and suddenly they're like these amazing movies. Waterworld? Well, Waterworld's a pretty fun film. Shut the fuck up. I kind of have a great time watching. Really? Waterworld was the first LaserDisc I ever bought. That and Days of Thunder. Here's one I bet you can't defend.

Kevin Costner's The Postman? I never saw The Postman. I like the idea of The Postman. I remember the screenplay for The Postman was great. I never saw The Postman, but I actually like Kevin Costner. I love Kevin Costner. I think Dancers with Wolves is one of the best movies ever made. Kevin Costner is fucking awesome. I love that dude. But you're right about The Postman. It's hard to defend. I'm not saying he's right about it because I've never seen it.

But now that says something that I've never seen it, but I wouldn't mind seeing it. I'll bet you I'll like it. But then there's films that are so bad, they're great. Like Showgirls. I love Showgirls. Showgirls is fucking great. Oh, I can defend Showgirls. Oh, Showgirls, there's nothing wrong with Showgirls. I can absolutely defend it. I can defend it as an entertainment piece. Look, I am not a so bad as good guy. Okay. I'm not a so bad as good guy. You are a so bad as good guy. I'm not a so bad as good guy. The sex scene in the pool? That's a little ridiculous, but...

Yes, the sex scene in the pool is a little ridiculous, but actually the fact that it's going for a Hollywood movie, it's going there was actually interesting to me. But what I really liked, what I really liked her in it,

But when she beats the shit out of that guy, that's so fucking cool. When she beats the shit out of the guy at the end, the guy who fucked over her girlfriend and beat up his girlfriend, and then she does these spinning roundhouse kicks and beats the fucking shit out of the guy. I was like, yeah, Elizabeth Berkley, go.

What I love about Showgirls is normally a movie like Showgirls would be made for under a million, go straight to video, star Robert Davi, and just be this little exploitation movie. And here was an example of that being made for $60 million with Paul Verhoeven directing. Doing whatever the fuck he wants. Doing whatever he wants, making it as big as possible. And we're releasing it at NC-17. Fuck!

It's basically the same as one of those sub-million dollar exploitation films. It still has Robert Davi in it. He's still playing the same part he would normally play. And so it's this opportunity to see one of those weird little, you know, exploitation movies made in this grand fashion, in this huge fashion. It's exciting. Showgirls doesn't sit on a special shelf in my heart. All right. All right.

I really liked it when I saw it. I saw it at the theaters. I enjoyed it. I love how Elizabeth Burley pushes Gina Gerson down the stairs. Is it Gina Gerson she pushes down the stairs? Like, everything about that movie is awesome. I think it's great. I love the film. I love the film.

I brought it up to all the, I had a dinner once with like Verhoeven and a bunch of the producers that film. I started going off on it. They all sat there at the dinner watching me go crazy over their film. And then at the end of it, somebody, the, one of the producers said, well, yeah, that's all nice to hear. But really that movie was just about us doing a lot of cocaine. That's exactly what I was just going to say.

I'm so glad you just said that because I always describe that movie as a cocaine movie and I was just casting aspersions with no evidence. But it seems like a cocaine movie because it seems like they thought it was great while they were doing it, but it's like, what are you doing?

You know, it's one of those things where you think it's great because you're on coke. I have a place in my heart for those big movies like that. Like I said, that's not the one I would make my case on, but I still don't like it. That's not my test case. Well, isn't that sort of an example of what happened when the 80s were a cocaine culture?

The world kind of shifted from a psychedelic thing from the 60s and 70s to a cocaine thing in the 80s, and you get movies like that. Yeah, you get a little bit more edgy, a little less trippy. Well, also a little more ridiculous. But see, look at how great- See, in the beginning, it's pretty good. This is pretty good. That's what I call an actress dedicated to her role. No, this is where you're losing me. This is where you're losing me, because how are you keeping a heart on? Yeah, and then it's Kyle MacLachlan of all people. What are you doing?

The whole thing is... Okay, but just watching A Lose with Berkley's Tits, all right, in a big studio movie like this, flopping up and down, like, I'm getting my money's worth. Well, that was huge, because it was from Saved by the Bell. Yeah, but I'm, you know, okay, I'm not, actually, that's, I'm not thinking about it from his point of view. I'm thinking about it from the water hitting her face. I'm thinking from her point of view, that's the unrealistic part. That true. True. Cocaine movies are fun, though. There's quite a few of those that were just like, what is this?

Like, how much coke was going around in the 80s? A lot. A lot. A lot.

It was actually Coke, too. It was actually real cocaine. It was like proper cocaine. Proper. There was this, I mean, it's actually really interesting because it's like one of those things where. Remember that customer who used to come in and he would bring in like a rock of cocaine? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Drop it on the counter. Like a rock of cocaine. Boys, here. The guy's name was Tuttle. Yeah, Tuttle. Tuttle. The size of a coffee mug.

And he would bring us these things. It was a cocaine dealer. And the thing is, he would rent... We'd let him take the movies out and come back whenever he wanted. Whenever you want. Yeah. And he would come in and he'd get his films. And then he would like...

either open up a little like a skull can. Yeah. All right. With a bunch of Coke. I remember that skull can. Boom. All right. There you go, boys. On the counter. There you go, boys. Have fun. Jesus Christ. Or you take out a Coke rock and just like,

Bam! I throw it on the counter and it bounces off of you. There you go, boy. See you later. See you in two weeks. Like a baseball. Like a baseball and you take a colander and just grind it up. Okay, who wants some? Pure coke. For the first time, because we're minimum wage kids, for the first time, we actually had...

Fuck you, Coke. We actually had access to Coke in a way that we could never afford. For about a few months, because those relationships don't last that long. No, no, no. Cocaine relationships never last. But for a few months, we were like, holy shit, we're in the fucking, we're in the powder. Well, there was a party once that he came to, and he brought, again, a rock of cocaine and a live hand grenade. And he put them both down. Dude.

They usually go together. Yeah. And it was like, okay, that's a dangerous combination. Every person does a lot of coke, usually with body hand grenades. That was a fun party. And his name was Tuttle, and we always described excess as Tuttle. Okay, we're going to do a Tuttle situation. Dude, I'm so Tuttle-ed. Oh, that's hilarious. It became like you're Fugazi. Yeah. Oh, that's so funny. When I worked in Boston at Nick's Comedy Stop, they would offer to pay you in cocaine or cash. Oh, yeah.

There was guys who just took the cocaine. There's certain comics. They just wanted to get paid in Coke. Yeah. Wild times. You know, that's the eighties. It was the eighties. It was the eighties. That was actually even kind of an interesting situation. Cause like, uh, it was also one of those things where like,

I was actually really kind of proud of us because we all kind of like, woo, we all kind of went nutty for like a little bit with this kind of like more access to coke than we normally would have. More access to coke than we ever had. Ever had. Ever had. Yeah. Because we can't afford that shit. All right. And so we all kind of went nuts for like a little bit about it. And then we all kind of like, okay, let's...

Yeah, enough of that. Let's bring it together. Well, that's great. Let's bring it together. And we also saw some other people who were like, who let it get the best of them. Yes. And they got really kind of. Like your friend with the story about being bitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The same sort of thing. You go, oh, I know where this is going. And so we all like, okay, let's pull back. Let's get control of this. And we all did. Yeah. We all collected.

We all kind of just got our shit together and put it in the rearview mirror. Right, right. That mean we didn't do it, but we just it was Contrary to your goals. We'll stay with pot. We'll stay with pot. Yeah When I was growing up a bunch of people that I knew got hooked on coke and that's what kept me from ever doing coke I would stop I mean I had children

And suddenly it was like, oh my God, like I have to be on call 24 seven. Right. You can't be out coked up. Yeah. Like that, that's not going to last anymore. That gets in the way of. That gets in the way. Mushroom trips. And pretty soon my Saturday mornings became more important than my Friday nights. It's pretty simple. Yeah. My thing about priorities change. Yeah.

I wanted to have excess or I didn't, oh, I wasn't that interested in it. Yeah, you want to take it to 12. No, I wanted to have a big pile of it and we're doing it all fucking night. Until this is gone. Until the straw is bloody. Yeah. Okay, now I'm stopping now because the straw got bloody. I think it's like some people don't have the ability to only do that once. Like for whatever reason, some people, they have that thing and they do coke a little bit and then they just want to keep doing coke. Yeah.

Well, that's scary when that happens. It is scary. That's scary when that happens. Because you're captured by a demon. Yeah. And it's literally, and I think it's literally a demon. Yeah. In the classic djinn sense of the word where it's whispering into your ear. Well, in a sense, it does all the things a demon would do. You know, you could say the demons aren't real. Okay. But they might be real. Look.

I think there's pretty good evidence. I think there's pretty good evidence. There's a lot of legitimate evil in the world. And where is that coming from? What's that energy? What begets that? What is the reason why people are willing to...

to mass murder. What is it? What is it? People are willing to launch missiles into cities. What is that? Where's that coming from? That would be evil if you defined it in the classic sense of the word. When an invading army comes into a village and hacks people, that's not demonic. That's not evil. You're lighting children on fire and throwing them on thatched roofs. That's not demonic.

Seems pretty demonic like a demon would do that whether the physical demon exists is almost like not even important It's like demonic behavior is 100% documented. What would Jesus do? Yeah, right, right? Just ask yourself, but it's a thing It's unlikely he's gonna raise a fist everybody wants to be smart and you want to be secular and you never want to say that you believe in something that's superstitious or ridiculous and

So you don't believe in religion. You're either agnostic or you're atheist. That's how you get respect. And it's like this weird thing where you're not willing to consider like, OK, but what are the actions? What are the actions of good and the actions of evil? The actions are real, right? And we all know in our heart and our soul when you do a good thing, how you feel versus when you do a bad thing, how you feel. Like so what is – what are those forces? Well, there's a whole speech in Apocalypse Now when –

Brandos Kurtz tells the story of going into the village and inoculating all the children in the village, shooting their arms with, you know, flu shots or something like that, inoculating them. And then the soldiers came in and then hacked off all the kids' arms. And then there's like a little pile of arms. And Kurtz says, you know, so we did all that. Then we came back in the village. The next time we saw the little pile of all the little arms in there where they hacked them off.

And I cried like a baby. I started thinking, the genius of that. The genius of that. Because these are not monsters. They're not demons. These are men doing a job. And they had the force of will to take the job and take it to its logical conclusion of what they had to do. I'm not condoning what Kurtz is saying. Kurtz is a fucking crazy person. But

i'm interested in his perspective but of course of course that would be kurt's perspective he's speaking about true power where he's a god he's a god you know worshipped by these natives yeah clearly lost his mind in the fog of war he's completely lost his mind in the fog of war but he's talking like gingus khan yes exactly like they all talk yeah but this is the thing where you're suspicious of power right like

Like, why is it? Well, you should be because you see where it ultimately leads. It ultimately leads to a curse or it ultimately leads to the way to really be in control of people. Like, you have to use violence. You can only use words for so long. Strong men hold civilizations together. That's just a fact of things. Both of us have become friends over the years with John Milius. Yeah. Who wrote Apocalypse Now. Who wrote Apocalypse Now. And, you know, John is the kind of guy who's like, you know, conquerors.

Conquerors! And he wrote a script about Genghis Khan. That you worked on. Yeah, that I worked on with him to help turn it into a series. My daughter and I helped him with it after he had a stroke. And, you know, you look at his Genghis Khan script and he's, you know, he's realistically talking about these

horrific atrocities that just, you know, sewing people up and felt and lighting it on fire and throwing them in river. Just however you can kill somebody. He figured out a way to do it better.

But at the same time, he invented paper money and he invented the Silk Road and he pulled that whole region of the world together under one empire. And over the course of it, you start out as...

Almost like the Conan Conan the warrior Conan the conqueror Conan the king eventually your a zone hand Yeah King by your own hand and eventually you you start realizing and John Lewis also wrote and directed Conan the Barbarian So he you know, he rightly recognizes that it's strong men who conquer but also who hold together and maintain order and there's a balance to be had between force and strength and

And, you know, and compassion as well. Too much compassion, you know, countries fall apart. Too much introspection, countries fall apart. Right. And when things are too good. When things are too good. Things are too easy and you think they're supposed to be easy and you don't understand how they became easy and what keeps them easy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of where we are right now. It's weird times right now.

As we are. We're in a Conan movie. It does feel a little like we're in kind of neo-feudalistic times where there's highwaymen and that you have to contend with when you go out and everything's a little more fragile. Well, there's also this new thing, which is the Internet and social media. And there's this new thing that has overcome our minds.

And it's affecting everyone in this very bizarre way. And it's making people more tribal and more inclined towards echo chambers, more antagonistic against opposing beliefs and views. So you were saying about being able to sit and have a conversation with someone and completely disagree, but not take it personally. Just disagree about the points. We've lost that in a lot of ways.

It's really important to be able to engage with other people, to disagree with them, and then to know that that's just that. We can still have dinner together. We can still be friends. Okay, so I go on a show and I said that I like...

Joker 2. Well, I say I like Joker 2. Now there's 150 articles that come out on all these cannibalized articles. One person listens to the thing and writes an article about it. And then there's 150 ripoff articles on that.

And then you read the comments and it's like, man, Quinn's a fucking asshole. That movie's fucking suck. Man, he's a fucking asshole for saying that. Why am I a fucking asshole? I like the fucking movie. That makes me a fucking asshole? It's crazy. You either like the movie or you don't. I'm not plugging the movie. I'm not doing anything. I'm just saying I like it. Who gives a fuck what I like? What do you care

Right. And also, it also- But then they'll say, "I didn't see something." "Well, he's a fucking asshole!" "I didn't see it!" "What do you care what the fuck I don't see? What the fuck do you care?" But there's no one in front of him to say that. He's an idiot alone with his phone. If he just said it out loud amongst reasonable people, they would turn to him and go, "What the fuck are you talking about?" But he doesn't get that check. Which is also part of the problem with social media. Some will say something like, "Well, I think he's fucking missing out."

I'm sure there's a lot of shit I can say that you're missing out on. And I don't care if you miss out. Also, you have to be missing out. Otherwise, you don't have a life. How much information do you think you can absorb in a day? How much things do you watch and listen to? Four movies a day, apparently. That's a lot of time, man. You have to miss out. There's going to be shit you miss out on.

Well, the other thing is if you're a film fan today, you're not just dealing with today's films. You're dealing with this insane archive. The back catalog. It goes back to Rocky. It goes back to On the Waterfront. It goes back to the 20s. Good Lord. There's so many films to watch. A film that I saw that was very meaningful to me this year.

I really like the story of Bo Jess, the French Foreign Legion story. I like French Foreign Legion movies in any old way. But that's a really cool story, and I really like the whole story of the three brothers in there. And I was familiar with the Gary Cooper version, the 1939 version. Put it on a stamp. But I'd never seen the silent version.

And it starred Ronald Coleman. And I watched the silent version recently, and I was blown away by it. The storytelling was so epic and was so visually just beautiful. And we have a little micro cinema in the theater I have, one of the theaters I have in Los Angeles, the Vista. And it's like a little...

20 seat cinema that we just show vhs and 16 millimeter it's our video archives yeah it's like video arc the video card cinema club and it's like literally it's like the brick and mortar version of video archives but just like but like a little paris back out back avenue it's like a little clubhouse i mean it's open to everybody but for our core fans and the thing is and we we showed uh last week we showed the the silent version of bo just in it and uh

And I wasn't there at that screening, but I asked the guy who was our manager, their man. I said, how did it go? He goes, Quinn, you would have really loved to have been there for that screening. And I go, well, what? And he goes, it was so moving. The end of it, and it is really moving. And it's just like nobody was talking. It was just, it was silent. You could hear a pin drop. And then it was over, and everyone was still kind of in this collective emotional state. And they just all kind of left the theater. And they'd just seen something emotional.

And they all kind of just moved out into the lobby and in this emotional state. And it was like, that sounds fucking fantastic. That's amazing. I mean, I think one of the most magical things about movies is that,

It can speak to you at different times of your life, you know, at the different windows of opportunity in your life. So you might see a movie and not like it. And then, you know, people might see Joker 2 today and not really care for it. And then five years from now, revisit it and watch it again. And you're in a different place. Culture is in a different place. Everything's in a different place. And you have a different perspective on the movie. And maybe you like the movie. I hated Blade Runner when it first came out. Did not like the film. I thought it was awful. Really? Yeah.

Like boring, like muddled, like everything that was wrong. Suddenly I'm seeing Kubrick shots in the end from The Shining. Roger would say, Blade Runner should be called Blade Crawler. No.

No, I was really hard. I was really hard on movies. I was a really angry young guy. He was such a prick about shit. He's a completely different guy. All right. Now he's like bends over backwards to be nice about something. I go, who the fuck is this guy? Humble by life. Well, I now look at having been a filmmaker and knowing the struggle that goes into getting something on screen.

Look, I know how hard it is sometimes to get what you have up here on the screen and doesn't always work. And sometimes you're faking it by the time it gets to the cut. But, you know, it's not an easy thing. So when I watch a movie now, I'm applying my life experience to it. And I'm like, OK, this movie may not be the greatest movie, but this is somebody's, you know,

Yeah. And I'm going to give that, you know, I'm going to value that and give myself to it and try to find in it what I like about it. And so I always give every movie a shake, you know, a good shake. What's happened with our show that I think is really cool, again, for the fans that follow it and everything, is in our first season, we ended up, like, covering about 70 movies, you know, all together. And we mentioned a zillion movies in the course of a show. But, like, you know, we...

about 70 movies altogether between the three movies that we did over the course of like 26 episodes. And we kind of created new classics at least amongst the people who followed the show because they followed it and they liked it and they watched some old Mexican horror movie like Demono and they're like, hey, that was pretty cool. Demono is amazing. And then everybody would put it down

it down if you try to look at anything about it it would all be shitty reviews about it and everything but then we talked about it with passion and then we gave the right context in which to appreciate the movie it's a killer hand movie and we gave the right context in which to appreciate the movie and then the people appreciated it under that right context like because the movie is old and because maybe they didn't have the money to do it like

super clean or perfect. Actually, that actually has the most, best hand effects I've ever seen in my life. That movie in particular is actually a tough one to, because it's, is this Stephen? Yeah, that's Stephen Wright. So it's a killer hand that fucks everybody up? Yeah.

Is this the best hand on the loose movie? It's a Mexican exploitation movie. But the one that's great about it, one, she's fantastic in it, Samantha Egger. She's become one of our heroes from the show. I love Samantha Egger. This movie looks hilarious. But what's really cool about...

the Mexican horror genre is they take their tacky horror very seriously. It's tacky horror, but they take it really seriously. And you appreciate the seriousness that they're delivering their payload with. And I know how hard it is to do some of the things that they're doing. This is like, it's pre-computer graphics. They have a limited budget. No, their shit is not that great. But their vision is so big. And you're watching it and you're like, oh my God, this is... If you just...

Like if you try not to judge it on what a movie looks like today. No, but not only just that. What's interesting is when you see some of the effects, there's a couple of the effects. Well, how did they do that? Because it's all done practical. And then some of it is like, oh, well...

I can see how they did that. Oh my God, that's so fucking clever. They figured out how to do it in such a clever way. I can see how they did it, but that's so neat because they just figured out how to do it on camera in a way that, that, that sells it. Yeah. And, and, and it's a crazy movie also. It's like you're inside of some sort of,

Mexican's head making a horror movie. It's fantastic. Well, the horror genre is hard to do to not make ridiculous. Yeah. Although the best thing about the horror genre and science fiction is that they're the best vehicles to kind of study culture and sociological issues because you have that...

abstraction layer that makes people think, oh, I'm just watching a science fiction film or I'm just watching a horror movie. Like you watch Dawn of the Dead and yeah, you're watching a movie about zombies in a shopping mall or are you watching a movie about the vanishing middle class being drawn to the consumer temple because it's what they remembered from their lives that was an important place to them.

You're literally quoting the movie. I'm actually quoting my liner notes that I wrote for the DVD way back when. Let me stop and go to the bathroom one more time. The coffee is making me take a piss. No worries. Go for it.

We can keep going. Okay. So when you first got into this, like, did you have like a film that you aspired to create something like? Like when you first did, did you say, you know, like comedians would be like, I want to be the next Eddie Murphy. Yeah, it was a composite. It was a composite. I have like a kind of a top three filmmaker. You know, when you're a young filmmaker, you're

And when you're a young child, you look to your parents to learn how to behave. You know, you're a child and you look, you look to them and you're like, they teach you how to be. Sure. And so at the beginning of your life, you're copying your parents. And because that's, that's who you love and that's what you're copying. When you're a young filmmaker, very frequently you kind of copy your parents, your cinematic parents. And, you know, so in my case, you know, I mean,

You know, in many filmmakers, like, for instance, Stanley Kubrick, who is one of my favorite filmmakers, who I'm always thinking about his zero point perspective, his reverse tracking shots. I just love the the intention of his shots and how he assembles his movies. I like I like everything about his work. I do, too. Kubrick. Huge fan.

He, if you love Fritz Lang, you can see that, oh, Kubrick was, that's how he felt about Fritz Lang. Like when I watch M, I can see the Kubrick shots. Is Fritz Lang Metropolis? Yeah, he did Metropolis. He did, I mean, like some of the greatest. Metropolis is wild.

Metropolis is a super, super powerful and kind of important movie that's exactly talking about everything that's going on today that people should see. The movie I was thinking about was M, which is his movie with Peter Lorre about the pedophile who's... And the movie's made in just before the Nazis took power. Oh, wow. And so he's making a movie that's really about like kind of the rise of... The rise of...

fascism in Europe, but he's doing it through this movie about a pedophile. And it's... And Peter Lorre is fantastic in it. It's actually his first sound movie. Like, Fritz Lang hadn't made a sound movie, and so every single shot in the film is based on sound. So he'll have shadows talking and the backs of people's heads talking, or even the device of the movie is Peter Lorre whistling, Peter Giant, you know...

That becomes like the device by which they find the killer. So the whole movie is about sound. So as a young filmmaker, if you want to learn how to use sound in a movie, that's the movie to see. Because every single shot, like it used to be, you would show an empty frame and it would just be a shot of nothing. But, you know, now Fritz Lang is able to juxtapose like a woman has lost her daughter.

She's calling for her daughter. And so she's looking for her daughter and she's looking for her. And Elsa, Elsa. And they cut to an empty shot of a stairwell and you hear her. Elsa. And they cut to like, you know, an empty playground. Elsa. And then you see the balloon that she was carrying trapped in something like whipping in the wind. Elsa. And it's super scary.

Super intense. But all he's doing is he's using sound juxtaposed with images, which he couldn't do before. Crazy that he just called it M. Yeah, M for murderer. And this is an amazing, amazing movie. So Kubrick, see, that's a Kubrickian shot. This is where he's, Elsa or Elsie?

I seem to remember more Elsies. I think I got the wrong part. It's okay. But anyhow. So Kubrick had his forefathers who he used to watch and that he used to look to. And so those would be like my grandparents in a way. And so there's this lineage of cinematic grammar and vernacular that gets carried on from filmmaker to filmmaker. And eventually, after you've made enough films, you start walking on your own. You start

Coming up with new ideas. But for me, it was Stanley Kubrick, John Borman. He's the guy who directed Excalibur and Hope and Glory and Point Blank and Hell in the Pacific. I mean, a number of movies. I don't think Quentin's such a big fan of...

John Borman, some of his films. I think you're a fan of his writing more than you are his films. I have nothing but respect for John. Yeah. And John Borman and then Roman Plansky. I think those three guys for me and their work, not the guys, but mostly their work, like

I am a composite. If you watch my movies, I'm a composite of those guys and other people as well. And, um, those were the filmmakers are important to me. Those were my parents, so to speak. Kubrick was such an odd one. Like his films are so different and he was a weird guy too. He did like complex mathematics in his spare time. I do complex mathematics. Nothing wrong with that. No, um,

Yeah, he's a weird guy, but he was also, I think, thinking three steps ahead of everybody at any kind of given moment. I mean, to be honest, I was just thinking I just pulled my script from Eyes Wide Shut. I had a script that was from set and I was reading it over the weekend and I saw that it has this.

I mean, I've known this for a long time, but I started really thinking about it over the weekend. It's missing a narration. It's missing a third person narration that was originally in the movie. That's because the movie was recut and changed after his death. And they will deny it. But as a student of Kubrick, I'm watching the movie and I'm like, well, Kubrick wouldn't do that.

Kubrick wouldn't do that either. Kubrick would have trimmed this scene. I didn't know they recut it after his death. Okay, so apparently... I think they finished it. Well, that's the party line. That's their version, yeah. That's the party line, but I think that they changed the notes, the close-ups, the inserts of the notes. I think those are changed. It's missing in narration. It's definitely missing in narration.

you know, a third person narration, like that scene where he sees the, the prostitute who's died. He's at the morgue and he's looking at her and he's like leaning over her. It's a bed for narration. There's this whole thing, what they do instead, because they couldn't say that Kubrick finished the movie because they hadn't done the recording of the narrator yet. And so maybe they just kind of kludged it together, except there's an entire thread that's kind of been, uh,

Squashed? Squashed in that film. And that's the two men that are throughout the movie that are constantly in the background of the film who eventually, in the final shots of the film, you see Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in that final scene in the toy store when she's looking at the Rosemary's Baby bassinet, which is totally Kubrick saying something. And they never take their eyes off their daughter until the moment they take their eyes off and the final line of the movie is coming up.

you see those two guys walking off with the daughter. They're taking her away. They've given their daughter to the pedo cult. That's what's happened at the end of the movie. And there's an incident where when they first screened the movie in England...

People who were outside apparent. This is all secondhand, by the way. There were people who were outside of the theater who could hear inside of the theater Kubrick yelling at all the executives and saying, it's my movie. You can't cut it. I can't fucking cut my film. Big argument going on. Then he dies like four days later. So somebody went in and finished the movie. But I think when they finished the movie, they hid the film. The movie got changed into something else.

And I would love to finish that film. I like, I'm like... Have you ever made an attempt? I've thought about it. And reading the script over the weekend, I started seriously thinking about it. Well, somebody should recut this or somebody should... So it would just be a matter of recutting it with narration? Well, yes and no. There's obviously missing. There would be missing footage now. Things have been removed and taken down. And is that accessible?

No. Not unless you crack it open and there's no way anybody would never open it. But here's the thing.

Now we have AI. Well, I know. You're one step ahead of me. I'm one step ahead of you. I've actually been experimenting a lot with AI. The newer versions are pretty stunning. I've been working on Runway lately, which is... The curve is insane. Like the exponential curve of improvement. I'm literally, as I'm working on things, I'll be talking to the guys and I'll be saying, well, it'd be nice to be able to move the camera. Okay, we got that tool on Tuesday. We're going to give that to you.

And so it's like literally whatever you think you can't do, ask us because we probably will be able to do it in a couple of days. And so it's advancing so fast and so rapidly that I, without telling you, Quentin, I made a little claymation version of you. And I have them talking and kind of.

Kind of funny looking. I'm sure a claymation version of me would be funny looking. It's a claymation version of both you and me. How bizarre that something that would have cost like hundreds of millions of dollars, like if you wanted to do a film, like a pixel type, you know, one of those...

Crazy movies where you have all this like insane animation. That shit took forever. The best work that I've seen of it lately. It was the first time I've been kind of ignoring AI and like, well, I know what it is. It's like form completion with visuals and I get it. I understand what it is and we'll see. We'll see. But I like tactile. I like tactile and I do. But I worked on Beowulf. I made Beowulf with Robert Zemeckis. Oh, okay. That was fun. And like that was a big, you know, video puppetoon type CGI thing. CGI.

My original plan for that movie, because I was going to direct it myself, was to make it like, you know, in Iceland, you know, under $10 million, you know, just really dirty. I wanted it to be like, you know, like an early Terry Gilliam film, like Jabberwocky. That was actually the one Neil and I were thinking about when... Neil Gaiman. Yeah, Neil Gaiman, my co-writer on that film. And...

The movie ended up getting made much bigger. It turned, it suddenly, it was like whatever budget I had was probably our craft service budget. It's nothing like making a hundred million dollar movie. It's like sushi every day, you know, champagne, fly the plane to England, you know, whatever you want. It's like, uh, it's crazy, but that was definitely not the movie I had planned on making. However, uh,

Um, when we made it like, and it turned into this big performance capture thing, it was fun, like working with Zemeckis and, and he's such a, like an excited, bold, like creative genius. Like he's, and even before you were able to do stuff like what he was doing in that film, um,

He was like constantly taking, you know, like when he made contact, oh, we'll take that eyebrow off of Jodie Foster. And I like that eyebrow thing she does. And so put that on this take.

And so he was like messing with her face and doing all sorts of performance stuff. And even when you go back to his earliest film, I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand is almost a visual trick. You know, having the Beatles there, but not be there. And he's not using computer graphics. I think he's just a really super inventive guy. And it was so much fun making the movie with him because we were here. Was that inventing technologies? That was.

that I think the movie came out. Jamie, pull up Beowulf. Let's watch some of that because I want to remember what it looks like. It looks probably like a video game pre-cut scene at this point. That's what's crazy, right? I've thought about taking Beowulf, importing it into my system, and then just...

painting over it. Let's fucking go, Roger. Let's fucking go. Which, by the way, you can do easily. Yeah. Easily. I thought about fixing... So let me see what this looks like with the Beowulf... Oh, jeez. Yeah, I mean, it looks like a video game cutscene at this point. Yeah. But it was kind of cool because everybody looked like that, not just the monster. Yeah. That was kind of cool about it. I mean, the difference is that this was actual, like...

It's performances. And so we could take, you know, Ray Winstone and have him... Ray Winstone doesn't look like that. He looks a little heftier. And... Cuts his own fucking arm off. Cuts my arm off. Cut my own arm off. It's funny because our original script was much more modest than this, but then Zemeckis was like, okay, boys, it costs a million dollars a minute. Do whatever you want. He stabs a dragon in the heart. Oh, no.

This movie is kind of a, I mean, it's a little, it's an interesting experience what happened to me on this film, if you don't mind. Yeah, go ahead. So I was going to make this movie myself. I had set it up initially at Image Movers with Zemeckis Producing. And then it fell out and the rights kind of reverted back to me. I had to cover the turnaround on it, but the rights reverted back to me and I was going to go make the movie myself again.

for nothing and I was trying to set it up and it was really I was broke at the time and I was not going to make money and I had to cover the turnaround expenses myself on the on the film which were considerable but I wanted to make the movie really bad and I was working on Silent Hill this other movie I wrote and I suddenly started getting calls and it was like

the producer of Polar Express, this guy Steve Bing, wanted to buy the script. He's like, I want to buy it for Zemeckis. And I said, too little, too late. I'm making it now.

And I kept saying no. And every and I was working on this film in Canada and I'm just trying to finish it. And every hour I'm getting a call from agents at CA and they're like, yeah, it was actually. Yeah, it was. How did you know it was Jack? Did I tell you that? Well, no, because he was he was Zemeckis' agent and became Zemeckis' producing partner.

And so I was getting a call. And he's the guy who gets shit done. Yeah, he is the guy who gets shit done. Well, I was like, you know, no, no, no. And, you know, no, I won't. I'm doing it myself. No, no. And Steve Bing. And I said, if another agent calls me, I'm firing the agency. And they're like, will you at least meet with the producer? And so I went ahead and I meet with him. And he says, listen, if I don't make this film with Zemeckis, with Bob, I'm going to miss the moment. I'm going to lose the movie. It's going to be over.

just what's your price? Just tell me what's your price. And I said, I don't have a price. I don't work like that. He said, listen, everybody's got a price. I said, well, I may have one, but I'm not going to tell you. And he's like, look, why don't you just tell me, just discourage me. So I said, okay, you want me to discourage you? And so I started like making shit up. I need this. I want that. I want this. I want this. I tried to come up with how much money had anybody ever made on a script and let's add some money to that. I went over the top. He's like,

Well, Roger, that is. And I had grown a beard to make the movie and like grew my hair long like a Viking to learn about, you know, why Vikings had beards, etc. All that kind of stuff. I'm making the movie. I'm a Viking. He said, well, Roger, that is really discouraging, but we have a deal. And I was like, well, OK. And I start driving home and I started like I'd never done anything. I'd never done something for money before. I'd always done it because I'd.

for passion and then the money came and this was the first time in my life that I'd ever made a choice based on money this titanic amount of money and I was understand broke and I went home and I cried then the check came and nothing dries tears like money and then Zemeckis invited me into the process which was really great of him he really wanted me and Neil to be at his side and collaborate with him and it was a fabulous experience but to be honest I was like who am I now

What does it all mean? I just gave away something I'd wanted to do my entire life. I've always been chasing this John Borman film Excalibur. I think it's one of the most beautiful movies ever made about the Arthurian legends. And if you watch Beowulf and Excalibur, they're very similar, actually, thematically. And so...

I was like, who am I now? What does it all mean? You know what? I don't even care. I don't even know if I want to make a movie anymore. You know, like, what do I have to tell now? Now that I've just completely sold out. And then I was at a dinner and a big dinner and I was driving home that night and I was giving somebody who was at the dinner a lift. My wife was in the backseat of the car and we were I told my daughter I was going to be home by midnight.

We lived in Ojai and it was dark. And I, so I was speeding. I have a lead foot. And I was speeding to get there without getting into the details of what happened. There was, I lost control of the car. There was another vehicle, but they fled the scene. I lost control of the vehicle. I, I think my tire blew, but I was going into a ditch and I knew I was going into it, into this deep,

ditch because it was right near my house full of rocks and stuff and i knew if i go in there we'll die and so i turned into the thing and then i turned away from it to try to the car spun out and i ended up on the other side of the street where i knew there was like a cow pasture and i was like well what's the worst thing that can happen there well it was pretty bad there was a telephone pole and i hit the telephone pole my passenger uh

took the impact and my wife was thrown from the car. When I came to, all I could hear was the horn. You know, my hearing is going to have glass in my mouth and I'm, I'm injured as well. I climb out of the car and it's dark. It's really dark, but somebody has already arrived. The XDA from Ventura County who did all the drunk driving laws and put those on the books and

And he was the first person on the scene. I was right near the fire department. They showed up shortly afterwards. But when I jumped out of the car, I came running around to see what happened. And I saw my wife on the asphalt. She'd been thrown from the vehicle. And I threw myself onto my knees on the pavement. And I found myself in that moment...

asking for the one thing that mattered which was just life she looked dead and she and i just in that moment i dug down i begged her to come back to life and i just i said i will give anything for life just in any form i'll take it and in that moment she came back to life it was like the

Life came back into her. OK, it was a completely fucked up scene. My other my other passenger is dying in the car or dead. And my the police are suddenly there. And next thing I know, I'm in jail. And and suddenly you're like suddenly I found myself in jail. I found myself guilty of manslaughter.

And and something that is absolutely irreversible happening, which is, you know, someone lost their life at my hand. And so after that, I, you know, I ended up I found myself in jail and doing time. And suddenly everything that had come was gone.

Like everything that I had made gone. It all went, you know, out. All that money you made. All that to the settlement is it didn't have time to spend. It didn't have time to register that it was there and it was gone because it doesn't. It was like it was not real. And and then you find yourself in jail and and and suddenly everything is gone. Your career is gone.

Everybody stops calling. It's over. Two number two hit films. Doesn't matter. It's all over. In fact, it was right in the middle of the publicity on Beowulf. It was just toward the end of it. And it was it's the most horrible thing that that has ever happened to me. And I and I found myself then alone in jail, incarcerated, jailed.

Alone with my remorse and regret and and really getting existential about things really like coming to appreciate, you know, simple existence is the best thing there is.

It's people don't appreciate what we have. You don't appreciate it until it's gone. And it is can go like, first of all, we live in bodies of glass. My wife was horribly injured. And, you know, and it has been a decade to to not just rebuild our lives, but to, you know, for her to come back to health even.

What it did, though, you know, as because I would do anything to to reverse that, to reverse what happened. I would give anything to do it. And I don't say this lightly, but having said that, I'm kind of grateful as well, because I was like asleep walking through life. And it wasn't until that happened that.

That I completely like it changed how I see everything. It was like my third eye opened up. I don't view anything the same way. I, you know, once you've been incarcerated and you've been deprived of of everything and you have a lot of time to think and be existential.

You come out of that, at least I came out of that experience. And, you know, I looked at a tree and I was like, OK, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. I hope I never not feel this way. This this appreciation for a cloud, you know, to be able like when you're imprisoned, to be able to pet a cat.

For example, it's so simple. It's such a nothing thing, you think. Okay, to be able to pet an animal is like a gift. The simplest things are gifts. When I was in jail, it was also a little bit like a comedy. You know, you have people walking in circles and, you know, everybody's trying to control the outside. So you start really seeing human behavior up front. I mean, when I was in jail, you know, there literally...

During the Academy Awards, it's on the TV in the tank. And I'm watching him win, like, for Django. Win the Oscar for Django. So while Quentin is, like, at the height of things, I'm pretty much at the bottom. Watching through bars. And not only that, but Greg Shapiro, who produced the Rules of Attraction for me, my producer, who came and visited me with Robin Wright in the days that followed, he won for Zero Dark Thirty. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I'm like, they're like, like to be taken from one point where you feel like you're at the top and you're like, oh, you think you're, uh, you think you understand things. No, I'm going to take you and put you at the bottom. But let me tell you something. In that moment, I was sitting on the asphalt and my wife came back to life. I immediately knew what I had to say as a filmmaker after that. It was like, whatever had, whatever cynicism I'd had, you know, uh,

about the movie and not making it, it just went away. It evaporated. It evaporated. And the ecstatic experiences, and they were ecstatic that I had in jail, were like, I mean, you see things kind of for real. When you see somebody, you know, get hanged by their cellie in a cell, or when you see, when you know that, you know,

Oh, that El Salvadorian MS-13 hitman guy. He's going to kill that that gay dude. He's going to kill him in the yard. I'll go lock myself in my cell. Literally, I'll go lock myself in. Shut the door because you know shit is going to go down. And so like like that was like every day. And so suddenly it was like, you know.

And also you really know who stands with you after something horrible happens. And, and like John Langley, uh, our customer from video archives ended up being like, like when I, like I said, when I was in jail, he loaned me money and he, uh, gave me my first job when I got out. That was our customer who did that. And so, um,

Like I value our customers. And, uh, and, and, and especially John and his family and Maggie, who I like, it really is. I talk about John a lot, but really Maggie, she was really my big champion, I think. And so, um, anyhow, I, uh, um, you know what it taught me actually, because I was a filmmaker and it was up my own ass most of the time, but what it kind of taught me was, you know,

Be compassionate to other people because you might not know it, but they might be going through shit in their lives, you know, and God forbid it be something health related, which is almost out of your control. But, you know, people are suffering and people are struggling. And I used to be a lot more cavalier about people and kind of fuck with people and and be forceful people and not really care as much.

Now I'm acutely aware of people and, you know, what they may be going through. I think this is the best way to wrap this up. Perfect. Gentlemen, thank you very much. This was an awesome conversation. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you for letting us come. Three and a half hours just flew by. Thank you. Oh, my God. I...

I actually thought, oh, I guess he's wrapping it up quick. No, I think it's three hours. I thought it was like 90 minutes. Three hours and 15 minutes at least. I thought it was like 90 minutes. No, there it is, the Video Archives Podcast on Patreon. Patreon.com. I love Patreon. Patreon.com slash video. If you just look up VideoArchivesPodcast.com, it'll be beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.