Kevin Smith (Part 2)

00:00My brother just has this expression where he just kind of gives me the slow nod, which is, he's gone. You know, my father was dead, and I went in and I saw him on a gurney and shit, and it was so strange. And I go outside, and I was a smoker, like cigarette smoker in those days. I go to have a cigarette, and Donald comes out. And I was like, oh, this is a shock, and whatever. You know, we were upset and stuff. And I said, how was it? Because he was there. I said, what happened? And then Donald tells me the story of, like, Dad woke up and had this, like, big reaction, like, just like, I'm hot, I'm hot. He was throwing the sheets off, and Mom freaked out. She said, what's the matter? What's the matter? She told Donald, call the ambulance, call the hospital. And he was gone within seconds. So that's, you know, bad enough. You know, he was hot and uncomfortable.

00:46You didn't want to hear, like, oh, he died in his sleep, and we woke up, and he just didn't. But then my brother says this thing, probably defined my life. My brother goes, he died screaming. And I go, what? And he goes, he died screaming. And I was like, I mean, is that a figure of speech? And he goes, no, he literally, he died screaming. And you could see my brother was haunted by it. And my father wasn't like a, I wouldn't say he was a butch man or a strong man, but he wasn't a soft man, money stretching the imagination. And I never heard him get real loud or anything like that. And the notion of my father dying screaming changed my life because I was like, even a good man in this world. You play the game, you play it straight, you play it by the rules, you do everything you're supposed to, you're going to die screaming.

01:32And at that point, I was like, there's no point in not trying to accomplish every stupid fucking dream I've got. Even if it's dumb shit like fucking, you know, oh my God, I've always wanted to collect this many fucking Wayne Gretzky cards in one fucking binder. Or if it's like, I want to make a movie. Or if it's like, I want to put on a podcast. Or I want to do a TV show now. Or I want to write a book. Chase it all down. Chase and whimsies is what I've been doing for the last few years. Just smoking weed and chasing whimsies. Anytime I'm like, back in the day, I'd have a good idea, something I really wanted to follow through on. And then all of a sudden you get scared, you start thinking about what some motherfucker's going to say. And be like, oh, it's stupid. Why would you fucking do that? And fucking why, why? A lot of why people in this world.

02:11I try to surround myself with the why nots, motherfucker. So you're like, I want to try this. They're like, why not? Let's go. Let's give it a shot. You've got to be game, man. People help you achieve your dreams and shit. So for me, the last few years, I've just been trying to accomplish every dopey dream. The big shit, the little shit. You've got to do them all. You can't just do the climb every mountain shit. You know, sometimes lay the bar down, step over it, and be like, ta-da, so you feel accomplished. But chase it all and do it all because we're all going to die screaming. And you might as well enjoy it here. And when I say chase it all, don't fucking do it at the expense of someone else. Obviously, don't hurt somebody else. But go after your dreams, man. If your dream is to like, I want to kill 12 children, I'm not talking to you. But go after your dreams if they're not going to hurt anybody.

02:55You seem, I wish I knew you before you became famous. Because you seem like if I had a guess, I bet you haven't changed at all. Yeah, I'm the same person pretty much. Now, how did you navigate that? That's a very... My friends, those dudes. Those dudes that I was kidding about, they don't want to do the show. And that is, they really don't want to. I mean, not really like, Kevin, we don't want to do this. But Walter's just like, oh, man. So you think they just grounded you so much? You never gave in to the tide of craziness out here? Those dudes, you know you've got friends. I mean, I've never had butch friends who fucking punch you and wrestle and shit. I think that's called butch. I mean, it is to a fey dude like me. That's butch dudes. Those are bullies. But like the hard boys, as my mom used to say when I was a kid. The hard boys. Leave those hard boys alone, Kevin.

03:37I never, I didn't have the rough house playing around like, let's wrestle and shit like that. What I had was more psychological, more oral. And that sounds dirty, but I don't mean oral. More like the dozens. Motherfuckers keeping you tight. You grow up fat. You got to be fucking sharp. Stay on your toes or else you're a fucking victim every time you walk in a room. Because most of the world don't look like you. So you get sharp. You learn how to fucking take yourself out first before anybody else can. Steal their thunder. Hey, I'm fucking fat. And then people are like, oh, he knows. You know, and then you've removed their fucking card. You're taking their biggest weapon out of their quiver. The biggest thing they got. And then suddenly you've changed the focus. And hey, he's easy with himself. Blah, blah, blah. And it makes people, you know, just all that shit you pick up over the years.

04:21It's what shapes you. It's what makes you who you are. So being able to hang out with people who were quick enough to, like, shred you. But you had to be able to protect yourself. And, you know, it's like hanging out with ninjas all the time. Or not ninjas so much as Kato from the old Pink Panther movies where you just hired him to literally attack him out of nowhere. That's what your friends do. They just, like, attack you out of fucking nowhere. And so by doing this all the time, it made me sharp. But it also kept me very, very real. So these cats, even when the movies would take off, or I was doing this one or this one, they were never like, oh, my God. Fucking we had no idea you were hidden genius. They remained the same exact individuals. Did they tell you I didn't like that one? Oh, fuck yes. Really? Yes. Oh, yes. In a heartbeat. In a heartbeat. They'll let you know. And they'll let you know.

05:07Like, I brought them on to Mallrats to come work on the movie and stuff. And they made it. They were in it in a few scenes. But they worked beyond the scenes. They quit after about two weeks because they're just like, I don't want to do this. I have no interest in this. I mean, and that's cool. Like, I respected that. I was like, that's Brian. That's Walter. Like, that's who they are. Rather than be like, all right, man, we're going to do it. Because it might upset Kev. If we don't, they're just like, oh, we don't want to do this, dude. Be true to thine own self kind of thing. I'm sorry. What makes you think that without them, you wouldn't be you, though? What makes you think that without them, you wouldn't have pulled yourself to the ground? I wouldn't have had that sense of humor. I think my sense of humor largely came from them, largely came from my friend Brian Johnson.

05:47And Walter also kind of shaped it to some degree. I was funny. Like, don't get me wrong. In high school, I write sketches for the comedy shows and shit like that. But it was their sensibility, married to whatever sensibility I had as one of three kids raised Catholic in Highlands, New Jersey, that clicked, that kind of made me the version of me you know. The person that you would want to meet or the person that was different was like Kev, 18 years old, 17, 18, before he started hanging out with Brian and Walter. Those were the cats that kind of helped me define who I was. And if you look at Clerks, like that movie is I'm kind of Dante. And my friend Brian Johnson is meant to be Randall, the guy that I most wanted to be. Like, he always knew what to say. He was fucking funny in a room and shit like that. Really misanthropic and stuff. And so it kind of all communicated.

06:40Without those cats, I know I wouldn't have the jobs I've had because I wouldn't have the sense of humor I have now. And I don't think I'd be, if let's say I got into entertainment somehow, I doubt I'd be as grounded. Knowing those dudes have kept me kind of grounded for years. That's pretty cool, man. It's good to have something like that in your life, man. I have a similar... Nobody else is smoking weed. Why aren't you smoking weed? I thought this was a weed show. We already got high. You want to get high again? Let's get higher. Okay. We can get high. Why the fuck are we experiencing it higher? Kevin just gave me a heart attack and he didn't even realize it. What way? What way? By talking about all that life thing. I almost died Friday night. When? I was out in... You just told me and I'm like, when? I was at a karaoke bar in Burbank right across the street from the Jay Leno show, like the NBC building.

07:27Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called Dimples. I've seen... I've seen... I drive past that. I've seen that place. I came out, me and my girlfriend, around 1130. And we were walking out the front and we parked. So I'm opening the door for her to get in. Out of nowhere, this big, tall, black guy, about 6'2", wearing a fake gray beard, like a Santa Claus beard, that was like tied on with white strings and a hat and this big hobo jacket, shoves a gun to my chest and was like, give me your fucking wallet. Oh, man. You're harshing my buzz. Yeah. Never mind. Keep going. Keep going. We're already having my Nagamana. And then my girlfriend was... Are you scared of this stuff? My girlfriend was pretty drunk. You're scared of my stuff, dog. I'm not scared of your stuff. My girlfriend was pretty drunk because she has social anxiety, so she drinks when she goes out. Right, right, right. She thought it was a joke.

08:10She looked over and thought this was a character or something. Right. And so he's like, give me your... You're shaking, telling it. Yeah. You can tell it's still... Yeah, fucking A, that would fuck me up. Keep going. And so he said, give me your fucking purse, bitch. And she's looking at him like, what? She was drunk and shocked. And I'm like, give him the purse. And so she gave him the purse. And then he goes, get in the car, lay on your fucking stomach. And he's shoving the gun in my back while I'm laying in the car. And I'm thinking like, all right, this is like execution style. Like he's telling me to get in there. And then suddenly he goes, lay down to my girlfriend. And she laid down on her back because she was just so freaked out. And he said, I said, lay on your fucking stomach, bitch. And he's like just shoving a gun in her back. And then finally we're just like both laying there.

08:53And then he slams the door and then just takes off. And so now, like the other day I was at the grocery store and I saw a black guy that was tall. And now I'm like freaking out. Like if it was a redhead that robbed me, it would have been the same way. But now I see these guys and I'm like becoming like a racist from the 50s now where I'm like walking around like, what's he doing on my side of the store? You know, it's crazy. It's like at this point you were in that moment. Yeah. What did you, what was it like? It was really when I was laying there, it was like, this is it. And but you think that. What did you think? What did you think? You know, I didn't think about anything except my girlfriend the whole time. I'm like, because hearing him yell at her. Yes. That's just you. You think that you can just going to look around, look for a weapon or something like that.

09:33But when you're in that big of a shock, you're just like, oh, I wouldn't. I'm so not the butch dude. That's again. There's that word. I'm so not the dude. That's like, where's a weapon? I'm going to do this. My immediate. My reaction is going to be like, let me suck your dick. Let us go. I will suck your dick until you let us go. And he's like, you've got a girlfriend. I'm like, still, I'll be better than her. Yeah. I can really deliver. That's where I go with it. I would never go defensive or offensive. All these people online, of course, is like, that's what you give for not doing jujitsu. And I'm like, if I had two guns in my pocket, I still would have done it. You still would have been fucked. Yeah. I mean, even if you had yourself strapped to dynamite, maybe. Then you could be like, look at this, bitch. Right. Yeah. People, those you should have people should shut the fuck up.

10:13No one knows what that's like until that happens to you. And you should always give someone what they want. Usually they just want to fucking get your money and run away. They don't want to shoot you. Is that the case? Usually. You hear it once in a while, though. Like, old lady did nothing, still gets shot or something like that. Yeah. That does happen sometimes. If it's a young kid on fucking PCP, it's really a gamble. You're right. And this was in fucking Burbank. This is in fucking Burbank. What time were you leaving this place? About midnight. And three months before that or six months before that, I was in Fuddruckers in Burbank. And some guy's like stealing this girl's purse and running out the door and I'm chasing him. I'm like, I'm in Burbank right now. Why? You know. And we talked about the Kmart shooting in one podcast. Yeah. There was a shooting at a Kmart in Burbank.

10:56And the officer that got shot was the one that came to rescue me the other night. And I was like, you're the one officer. And he's like, yeah, I got shot in the leg and stuff like that. So he became like a celebrity guy because he got shot in the leg? Well, he's been shot at in Burbank and Kmart's like, you know, in Burbank. So you saw him on TV? Like they showed his picture? Yeah. But it's like, it seems like you always hear Burbank. It's so safe and stuff like that. You don't think of Burbank as like, Bob Hope lived there. How could it be? There could be no terror. Well, too late. I wonder how many chicks want to bone that guy because he's the celebrity cop that got shot. Well, I had to wait. I bet a bunch, right? Gotta be, right? Fuck yeah. There are chicks that want to fuck fat dudes. There gotta be chicks that want to fuck fucking a hero cop. Hero cop that got shot in the leg.

11:42I bet that guy is beating off the pussy. I was waiting for forensics. I had to wait like four hours. Because I mean, this is like, they closed off helicopters and everything. There was like cops and stuff. And then they wanted to fingerprint my car. So I'm just sitting there. And he's like going, asking my girlfriend like questions, like weird questions. Like, so what do you do? Oh, you're a dancer, huh? You're a dancer. And stuff like, it was weird. Cop is asking? No, he was totally an awesome, nice cop. But it was kind of weird like hearing like my girlfriend having to talk like, yeah, I'm an exotic dancer. No, but just asking weird questions. Like what? Was he going as close to hitting on her as he could and still remaining a cop? Was he doing like, why are you with this guy? Yeah. You should be protected with somebody else. I don't know. You see me and then you see my girlfriend.

12:25Maybe he thought I like paid for her. Like if she was a hooker or something. You know, like how long do you know this guy? You got the out of the, she's out of your league look kind of thing. Right, exactly. And Brian fucks way over his head. But what's weird is, I don't even know what's weird. Oh, but it's weird is he was talking to me and asking me all these questions. And he goes, and I was like, yeah, I would like to be a cop, but I like marijuana too much. And he goes, yeah, I see that. Yeah, you know, marijuana. And he's like, it's going to be legal soon. So don't worry about that. Cops are that? Yeah. And I was like, all right, this cop is great. Yeah, I don't know if he's got a fucking crystal ball. Yeah. Come on, man. Come on, man. That was the only silver lining to that horrible story. Was like, at the end of it, the cop was like, don't worry, kid. One day, weed's going to be legal.

13:04And now I'm scared of black wizards. Wizards? Wizards. With the beard? Yeah, like I'm going to be at Halloween. There's going to be one black wizard that's going to attack me like a screen mask. That's going to be an internet meme, my friend. Black wizards chasing me. Black wizards. You're scared of monsters, you know, like werewolves and stuff. My strain is. I'm not scared of werewolves, bro. I just have my own monster now, though. I'm scared of jaguars and panthers. And now I'm a monster. Did you see the video I tweeted the other day of a jaguar killing a fucking crocodile? Somebody tweeted it to me and I retweeted it. It's a jaguar killing a fucking crocodile. Right. How scary are jaguars? I don't know. They look at a crocodile and they're like, hmm. This is the fourth reference you've made to a jaguar. They do scare you. They're terrifying. Big cats. Big cats to me. Yeah, well, not here, fortunately.

13:48But there are pumas in this neighborhood. Really? Oh, yeah, for real. Yeah, whenever you see deer, there's deer in this neighborhood and there's pumas. All right, so there's two neighborhoods to stay out of. This one and Burbank. It's not uncommon. People have spotted them in this community several times. Really? Yeah, yeah. Like mountain cats and shit. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a known population of them that live around Topanga Canyon in this area. And they travel really far. One of them, they tracked from South Dakota all the way to Connecticut. A Puma? It got hit by a car in Connecticut. And they had decided. Yeah, I saw this article. So they did the DNA test on this fucker. And they found out that it's from South Dakota. So this is from a group of genetics from South Dakota. This thing had walked 1,800 miles. He was looking for sugar to put in his teeth. A lump? Oh, three or four. Or a dog or two.

14:35Eating some nice plump dogs along the way. Yeah. That's what they do. Downing mutts on the way. Little dogs like mine. I had a dog. All right, man. Let's change up the topic. You're scaring me. Now I don't want to go out to my car in this neighborhood. And I don't want to get out of my car in other neighborhoods. You should just watch the video of the jaguar killing a crocodile. Because it is fucking amazing. Because you look at a crocodile. And you look at that. That is a goddamn dinosaur. Yeah, it's a dinosaur. It should win. This armor-plated, evil lizard. Like, who would fuck with that? And the jaguar, just like playful with this fucking crocodile. Like, knows it's going to kill it. He's just playing with it. Swats at it. Paws at it. Just looks for the right moment. Gets sideways on it. And then butts it right behind the fucking head. It's crazy. It's like, if they're not scared of crocodiles. Yeah.

15:21What hope do we have? Our fleshy bags of pink. You know? These big, black, muscular, evil-looking cats. In a world where you've been following up on wildlife attack stories. You've been seeing all the bear stories lately? Yeah, two bears in Yellowstone this year. The animal bears? Two guys have been killed by bears in Yellowstone this year. It's rare. You read that story online about the kid who got bit by the polar bear. Yeah. Yeah. That was fucking astounding. The dude literally tells a story where him and his troop are on, you know, they're out in the fucking woods or something like that. Yeah. And this polar bear comes fucking through the tent. And the kid woke up to, like, wailing and gnashing of teeth and the fucking thing growling. And blood all over its face. And the thing bit him on the head. Had his head in its mouth. A polar bear had this kid's head in his mouth.

16:13And he said it bit so hard they cracked his fucking skull. And he heard it crack in his head. And what he also heard in his head, louder than life, sense around style from the 70s, was growling because its fucking mouth was over his ear, dude. Oh, my God. And he starts punching this fucking beast in the head. Punching it in the head real hard and shit. And finally, it lets go enough for him to, like, make a move or something like that. So he survived. His buddy who was right next to him died. And they interviewed the kid. And he's talking about it. He's like, I got a lot of guilt, man. Like, it could have been me. If I had slept on that side, I'd be dead. But I'm like, dude, you got your head bit by a polar bear. I'm not going to say it's worse, but that's pretty damn bad. So he got away and it just went after his friend next? No, his friend was done for.

17:03By the time the kid woke up, the polar bear had taken what it wanted, I think, from his friend. It mauled him instantly. It's at his face, I believe. Oh, my God. Yeah, man. Nature, what do you think it is? Do you think it's like they're hungry and the weather condition changes and they're just coming into the neighborhoods now? Because you didn't hear a lot about this back in the day. But a lot of it happening now. A lot more shark attacks. A lot more bear attacks. Is that really true statistically? Well, I'm asking. I don't know. You would know more. Maybe it's just I'm reading more about it. Well, we have more access to information. I do know that they said with this Yellowstone attack that the last time there had been a death from bears and Yellowstones, it was in the 80s. 86, yeah. Yeah, so that's a long time, man. I mean, shit. That's a long-ass time.

17:44You know, it's for nothing to get killed and then all of a sudden two people get killed quickly. But those two people could have been sprinkled any time along the way. You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. You zig when you should have zagged. It didn't rain enough, so there's not enough food. And then all of a sudden bears start eating other things. Bears are omnivores. That's the crazy thing about them. They can eat whatever the fuck they want. So it's like us. But the terrible thing about bears is because they're not strict carnivores, they don't kill their prey before they eat it. They just start eating. I'm going to stand for a bit and I just don't want the camera looking at my dick the whole time. That was the only reason. We could all stand. No, I just wanted to stretch. No, no, I'm all good. How long are you going to stand for? Only until it gets awkward. And then I'll kick back down.

18:32Do your balls ever fall asleep from sitting too much? Like lately, I think I've been sitting a certain way where it squeezes the blood pressure off of one of my balls. And then it feels like my whole crotch is numb. That's the inevitable progression to you growing a vagina. What's going to happen is your balls are going to melt together and then pop open. You remember that scene in John Carpenter's The Thing where the chest cavity opens up and becomes a big mouth? That's going to be your new pussy. That's your new pussy. No, my balls don't fall asleep usually. Never? Have you never had that happen? It's such a weird feeling. Is it good? Should I try it? No, it's horrible. I do the Ari Shaffir sometimes, though. When I'm reading, he has that joke about taking a shit and his legs go numb. Yeah. And you get off and fall down to the ground. Yeah. I read magazines all the time in the toilet. And you do.

19:18If you read magazines, essentially you're choking out your leg. Yeah. That's why jujitsu works. Jujitsu works because you cut off the blood. And what you're doing when your feet go numb is you're putting all this pressure on yourself. And wait, you're essentially choking out your legs. And making hemorrhoids. That's what it is? Yeah, yeah. When you choke someone out in a jujitsu choke, what you're doing is you're stopping the blood to their brain. You're cutting it off. You're stopping it from happening. You're squeezing it. And that's what you're doing when you're sitting here on the toilet. If you have this hard surface beneath your leg and then you're on top of your leg, you're basically giving your feet a slow choke. Oh, my God, dude. All right. I do this all the time. I do, too. I sit on the toilet for so long that when I get up, I got pins and needles and I can't walk and I have to lean on the wall.

19:59And then, like, sometimes I'll try to man up and get through it. But by the time I hit the bedroom, like, you start laughing because it's so you're out of control of it because the nerves are all dead. And my wife's just like, how long? When are you going to learn? Like, you go in, you shit, you get out. Like, why are you staying in there until your fucking leg falls asleep? And I was like, because I'm getting shit done. But I guess that's unhealthy. I read car magazines. Is that what you do? I go on the Internet, tweet. It's the only time I read car magazines. I won't let myself go on the Internet in the toilet. That's where it gets ridiculous. I'm like, I'm down to the occasional magazine. At least let me finish a Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone article in here on the crapper. Do you wipe sitting up or sitting down? What the fuck? You mean stand? Yeah, standing up. I've never done that.

20:46You never stand and wiped up? Only when I was a kid. And this is weird. Wow. All right. You're getting something out of me I haven't said publicly, maybe ever. When I was a kid, I remember, like, I'd take a shit. I'm trying to remember what age this stopped. But I'd be like, I'm done. And somebody would get up, you'd stand up, and they'd wipe your ass for you. And I think I did that until I was like seven, which is weird. It is weird. Yeah. But it was pretty good. Like, in terms of, like, I didn't really have to figure out how to fucking wipe my own shit until that point. And then you had to train yourself to do it from sitting down. But I think it's an ever-perfected or an ever-perfecting art form, like the art of the wipe. It's not, you know, there's no one true measure. And I think it develops as you get older. You learn better technique and stuff. But, no, not since then. I've never seen.

21:33I'm more of a front wiper, though. Yeah. Like, I'll reach, because I got a lot of back fat. Rather than reach around, I'll reach through my, lean forward and reach through my legs. So I'm wiping almost like my man puss. Right. But I clear the balls so it doesn't hit my balls or anything like that. Wow. Fascinating. The wet wipes have really helped my life ever since. Like, did they just come out of nowhere? Couldn't they have those in the 70s or something? Will Smith was the first one that called them to my potential. I mean, they had baby wipes forever, but these flushables, they didn't have. Will Smith, asshole-cleaning aficionado. Yeah, big time, man. He talked about it in an interview. Really? Yeah, he did. He literally talked about it in an interview. He was just like, Barry Sonnenfeld on Men in Black turned me on to wet wipes or handy wipes for going.

22:17And he's like, why would you use toilet paper when you can use this? And he's like, I haven't gotten back since. And so one day I went out and got a pack. I was like, this is fucking amazing. It's like taking a shot. Do you flush them? Yeah, but these are flushable. Yeah, they say they're flushable. Let me tell you what happens. I've used them though for four years and I've never had any problems. But I had a problem. You were probably about to. I had a septic problem with non-flushables. Yeah. I had a tree growing inside my pipe. For real. Oh, dude, it was the most ridiculous thing. I tweeted it. It's almost impossible to find now. Someone on the internet will find it. But it's a, literally, there was a branch growing. It was huge. This crazy root system and everything that was growing in my toilet. I kept having this clogged up toilet. Didn't matter if I poured Drano on it. Nothing would work.

22:59So I had these guys come over. I figured they're just going to snake the toilet. Well, they cut out a fucking tree because nature is such a motherfucker that a tiny crack had grown in one of the pipes. And these, a root from one of the nearby trees had forced its way into this and found out that there's all this water in this area. So it spread apart the pipe by growing and then grew up the pipe. It was incredible. It was just an invasion by this plant species living off my poop. And it was all clogged up with those little fucking flushable wipes. Those flushable wipes don't go anywhere, dude. You know how the flushable wipe comes in, like, that little treasure chest? Yeah. And you can just get, like, refills and throw it in there? Yeah.

23:41Don't do that for that long because if you look at, like, the taint or the button of the thing, you know, sometimes if you get a second wipe, you might have a little poo on your hand. And that builds up. If you smell that, it smells like an asshole. I never use the button thing. I just open it and draw them out, man. And for that very reason, I don't want to touch poo button ever. Yeah. What's up with that, right? Yeah. Poo butt. That's a silly move. Did they give you a rubber glove to use that thing with? That's what they should fuck with. Yeah. They should give you a rubber glove. That should be what. I'm into the sincere wipe to the deep sincere. I'll take it. I'll go knuckle deep to wipe. Why not? When you're cleaning yourself out. Exactly. You never know if somebody's going to be like, tonight's tonight. I'm going to eat your ass. People are so funny about assholes. You know? Who are these people?

24:24Uncomfortable about it. Uncomfortable about it. Don't like you talking about your own. Just like certain things you can talk about. You can talk all day about your, oh, I have psoriasis on my elbow. It's really annoying. It's itchy and scratchy. Yeah. Look at my eczema. Yeah. Yeah, you can talk about that. But you start talking about, man, I just, you guys ever like just massaging your asshole? Do you massage your asshole? People are like, what the fuck are you talking about? You know? You could say, dude, when I get home, I massage my neck on the way home. You know? Sometimes it gets so stiff. I just give it a solid massage on my own. I feel so much better. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, me too. I know what you mean. I like to massage my asshole. It feels really good. You do? No, I don't. But if someone said that, you know. But do you? No. No. That'd be awesome.

25:04But it's something about you talking about your asshole and pleasure that makes me terrified. Does it really? Yeah. Something. I'll tell you a pain story about the asshole. Or grossed out at least. Because of sitting on the turlet, as you said, for all that time. I got an anal fissure. Oh, Jesus. You ever have one of those? No. You never want one of these. This, I've never, okay, I've never been punched in the face or choked out or anything fucking cool. But this was the most pain I think I've ever felt in my entire life. Really? It's that ring, that sphincter, it's the fulcrum of your entire body you start to discover. Anything you do reverberates in your asshole. I know. It sounds deep. It's not. Move your finger. You can feel it. Move an arm. You can feel it. And you only really realize it when there's something wrong down there.

25:49And an anal fissure is when there's a tear right on the fucking lip of your asshole. Somewhere on the ring. Or this one extended a little deeper. And I didn't know what it was. It was painful, man. Like, so painful that, like, I asked my wife. Like, my wife's never fucking seen me completely naked, let alone my asshole. I literally was like, I'm going to ask you to do that fucking thing I never imagined I'd ask another human being to do. And she's like, what? And I was like, I'm going to lay on the bed. I'm going to fucking crane open my two fucking cheeks. I'm going to need you to look in there and tell me if something looks funky. Now, oh, no. I've never even seen my own asshole. But I know for a fact, I'm a dude. Dude, I've got hair down there, too. So I'm telling her. I'm like, now, you might have to deal with a little shrubbery down there. There's no manscaping.

26:37So if that's the case, you might have to move hair. And she's like, oh, my God. Please don't make me do this. I was like, there's no one but you. I was like, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have you do it. I was in pain, dude. I was crying. It's hurt so much. So I lay down. She's looking at her. And she's like, I don't know. There's just so many rolls. She couldn't get to it. I was like, come on. Do you see any blood? She's like, I think I see some blood. I think I see an inflamed area. And I went to a doctor. And the doctor was like, get up on the table and whatnot. And I never went to a proctologist. And I'm laying on the table. And he opens my cheek. And he does it. And he puts a flashlight on the outside of my fucking ring piece. I'm waiting for the fletch move. We're moving on the river. He takes a look with just the flashlight. He goes, oh, anal fissure. I go, really? Is that what it is? He goes, yeah.

27:26I was like, you don't want to go deeper? He's going, I don't need to. He's going, you don't want me to either. And I said, what do you do about them? He's going, I'm going to give you two creams. One's a topical. One, a little more insertion. And he's going, basically, what was the figure he said? God, I can't remember. He said, in eight to 10 weeks, you'll start feeling 50% better. And I looked at him like, what? Are you kidding me? And it may not have been eight to 10. It may have been four or five. But it was a long period of time, only 50% better. And I was like, dude, I don't like these odds. He's like, that's the best I could do. He's like, that's either that or you can go for surgery. But trust me, you don't want that. He's like, I said, what surgery? He's like, well, basically, we get in there with a needle and sew you up. I'm like, forget it. I'll wait for it to heal. And it was fucking misery.

28:12They get in with a needle and sew you up. And then how long does it take before it heals? That's the thing. And then it takes for a while to fucking heal. So their whole thing is like, just keep rubbing this topical on it. Nature will heal itself. Try not to fucking rough around with it. I'm like, I don't want to even go near it. Rough around with your butthole? Yeah. Did the doctor use those terms? I said, doc, I like to rough around with it, son. I said, like Joe Rogan, I like to massage my asshole. What will this mean for that? But he said, he was like, it's very common. He goes, if you're in a room, 45% of the people in the room are dealing with anal fissure. He's going, nobody talks about it. I said, why? He's going, because it has everything to do with your asshole. He's going, people, he was saying the exact same thing. He's like, people don't talk about this kind of thing publicly.

28:52It'd be much easier because you wouldn't have people waiting as long as they do to come in. And he's going, it's common practice. He says, you know how yours happened? And I was like, I don't know. I thought it was going to be like a lot of fucking bathroom activity, man. A lot of fucking glory holes and shit. I said, no, no, I don't know how it happened. And he said, you sit on the toilet a lot, I bet. I said, I do, as a matter of fact. He's going, well, your weight sitting on that toilet. And he's going, I bet you don't just go and leave. You sit there for a while. I said, yeah. He's going, it's just, think about it. Gravity is just pulling at that, you know, as you sit there. It's not like you're sitting on the toilet and your butt cheeks are clenched and your asshole is fucking tight. That's what I said. Is that how you do? I'll tell you, nothing's getting in here. Excellent posture.

29:34Your shit comes out through your balls. My shit comes out when I tell it to. Look out for it, dude. You never want that. Oh, my God. That sounds horrible. So six weeks, only 50%. Six weeks, 50%. When did it take until it was 100%? Oh, honestly, it felt like months. I think it was months. And for months, all I could do literally was like lay on the bed, belly down. And if I took it, oddly enough, when I took a shit, it felt better. But it only felt better for the moment I was taking the shit. Because then I guess what, I don't know what, I don't know. I can't even tell you the science of it. But when I took a shit, I felt better as soon as I was done taking a shit. That's when the agony kicked in of like reminding you it was there. And you would literally just flinch and squirm on the bed like fucking you were withdrawn or something like that. It was mad nasty.

30:25Yeah, the last thing you want is asshole problems. Get off those toilets. Asshole problems. Yeah. It's the fulcrum of your body, dude. I had the internal hemorrhoid for that reason. And they had to do the rubber band technique where they tie a rubber band around inside your asshole. And they tie it super tight so it gets no blood supply and it falls off. Well, I'm like, is this going to hurt? And he goes, no, it's more of an annoying pain. And I'm like, all right. I go home and it was like somebody shoving their fingernail into your asshole from the inside and just sitting there and twisting it and turning it like a fucking nerve. How did you shit pass it? Did shit get caught up on the rubber band or anything? No, no. I don't know. So how big is this thing that you could wrap a rubber band around it, man? It was pretty big. You ever had a hemorrhoid or a grape or whatever?

31:05Yeah, I've had a hemorrhoid before. They said that I was supposed to go back maybe two or three times. This is a whole process. The first time is probably not going to do it. But I wouldn't go back to the second one. So now I live with the little guy. And he's just this little teeny guy now. But once in a while, if he eats, like if I eat the wrong thing, it blows up. And he's like, yo, bitch. Not juice. Juicy clam style. You still have it in there tied up? No, no, no. The rubber band is dissolved. But the internal hemorrhoid still exists? Yeah. He's got a clit in the sphincter. So it just returns whenever it wants to? Whenever I get crazy and eat a bunch of hot peppers or something. Is that what it is? Is this for eating? It's hot peppers. It's a lot of fucking caffeine. It's a lot of like... Really? I had heard that it's from forcing your shit out. I was going to say, mine is from pushing.

31:46Like I've got a resident just like yours that's mostly quiet. He's a nice guy. A lodger. But periodically, hey, I'm down here. And it's always from fucking, like on the toilet and I'm fucking pushing. Maybe I'm not ready to go. But I'm like, if I don't go now, I'm not going to be able to go for a couple hours. Once in a while, he shoots somebody and there's blood everywhere. You know, it's like a crime scene. Oh. Yes. My buddy. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Bloody nose, no big deal. Bloody asshole. Oh. Oh. Oh. Jesus. For reals. I want to go to the fights, dude. Dude, anytime, man. I remember last time you went to the fights. We got to do it and roll a camera on me, though. Okay. So you could watch me vomit on cue. For sure. Well, there's going to be a big card on Fox coming up real soon. I think it's November. I don't want to say. I think it's the 14th. I have to look at the schedule. But it's going to be on Fox.

32:35And I think they're announcing tomorrow who the fighters are. But that'll be in Anaheim. Oh, that's fucking close. So that should be close. And you do all of them? Are you always the guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. I didn't do this. So you got the hookup? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can hook you up. I don't have to buy tickets for this shit? No, we'll hook you up, man. Come on, dog. I'll make you spend your money. Kevin fucking Smith. You're Kevin Smith. I'm happy to spend it. Dana White would be happy to meet you. I want to make sure. Dudes are getting punched in that ring. I want to make sure they get paid. I'm happy to pay. Oh, they get paid a motherfucker now. But they must get paid a little bit of our gate, right? That's how they make it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's different. I mean, they get different deals. But the gates, it's almost always sold out. Almost all the domestic UFC sell out.

33:15We've had a few problems in other countries where they weren't hip on the UFC. You know, Germany wasn't like the biggest success when we were over there. Why? We don't like this. Stop hitting each other. It wasn't like Australia. Australia sells out in like an hour. Whenever we put on a show in Australia, people go fucking nuts. But Germany was a little more difficult. What about Canada? They blocked us from television or something in Germany, too. There was something crazy where you could only get it on pay-per-view. They couldn't have it on live television in Germany. What about Canada? Canada. Canada's great. So Canada, I always find, is very similar to Australia or vice versa. Canada's awesome. I fucking love Canada. I would live there if it wasn't so confusing. You know, if I didn't have to pay taxes to two different countries. GST and PST? I think Vancouver is one of the greatest cities in the world.

34:02It's the government and the province. So it's, you know, you're paying... It's essentially federal and state taxes. Yeah, but then you also have to pay for American, too, unless you want to... What American? If you want to live in another country, unless you want to give up your citizenship, you have to pay American taxes, as well. Yeah, you would have to. Oh, if you're talking about doing dual citizenship. Yeah, I'm not saying I hate America. Just like, I would live in Vancouver. Vancouver is the shit. It's one of the greatest fucking cities ever. I'd go for Toronto. Hockey Hall of Fame, dude. I love Toronto, but it gets cold as a motherfucker. I don't mind whether I grew up on the East Coast. I grew up in Boston. I'm scared. Yeah, so you know weather. I'm scared. You don't want to go back to it. Edmonton. I would live in Edmonton, too. But my lady would never let me live in Canada, man.

34:41You guys don't like Vancouver? I like Vancouver. I went to school there. I shot a TV show there and a movie there. I do, but I'm not into whale art. All right. There's a lot of that up there, man. That and trees. Fuck trees. As a comic, I travel too much, man. With stand-up and with the UFC, I travel too much to risk being snowed in. So if I live somewhere like Toronto, I would always risk being stuck. Boston, you risk being stuck. It's not a sensible place to live if you're a traveler. Unless, of course, you can figure out how to get out of town before the snow hits. You call Scatman Crothers, man. He shows up in the snowcat and shit. That snowcat up that mountain. Totally, man. Just look out for the dude behind the fucking... With the axe. I do think that I like people better. Didn't see that coming, did you? Didn't see that. That Jack Nicholson motherfucker. Shining. He couldn't shine that at all.

35:33That was a great goddamn movie. Oh, it was brilliant. And Stephen King doesn't like it. You know that? Yeah. So much so that he made sure they made another one. Make a worse one. Make a terrible one. This other one was too good. Make a bad one. Yeah. That other... The TV movie one is tough. I never saw the TV movie one. Or if I did, I don't remember it. Stephen Webber from Wings replaces Jack Nicholson right then and there. I mean, my hat goes off to Stephen Webber because he... That's balls of steel, dude. You know what I'm saying? To be like, all right, I'll give it a shot. The dude are... But to be fair, is what Heath Ledger did years later. Sure. He stepped into a role that Jack Nicholson made iconic and stuff. That all being said, hats off to Stephen Webber. That movie's a tough sit. Yeah. Heath Ledger apparently was on so many pills, he didn't even know what fucking, you know, what position he was taking.

36:23When Heath Ledger died, he was on so many different pills. Is that what they said? Yeah. Who knows? Yeah. He was a state of mind. I mean, when you hear all the different shit that he was on when he died, that guy... I mean, there's a lot of those don't give a fuck guys that can put in, like, spectacular performances like that. Like that Heath Ledger Joker was a fucking pretty spectacular performance. Yeah. When a dude has something like that inside of him, you know, you don't... That's an amazing abundance of energy and you're not exactly sure how he's controlling that. Not everybody can have that kind of a burst of energy inside of them and put it under control. Some people, like, literally aren't capable of that kind of a performance. You think he was? You think... I think he's probably had a little bit of crazy in him, man. No. Come on. A little bit of crazy and then he gets on pills.

37:06Some cats just make pretend real well. Yeah. For sure. No doubt about it. But with all the pill thing and that... I don't want to believe that he was, like, fucking, like, I got into the headspace of the Joker. No, no, no. I don't even think that. I don't... I don't... That asshole shit. You think he has pain in his life? No, I just think he's just good. But I'm just thinking that being really brilliant at something like acting and being completely fucking insane are, like, next door neighbors, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a thin line. I'll agree with that. Totally. The ability to lock onto a character so completely and captivating. Yes. I'm sorry, but... And create it real. Make it so real that you're sitting there... Like, look, I love that Joker performance. It's spellbinding. But I say dial, like, one movie back and look at him in the gay cowboy picture. Mm-hmm. That...

37:51The performance he gives in that movie, that dude exists. Like, the Joker performance is big. Right. And it needs to be big. Right. And, like, pray you never meet someone like that in your life. But you would meet the character... I think it was Enos or Enos he played. The character he played in Brokeback Mountain. That performance is so fucking frighteningly real. That was the first time I was like, this motherfucker's an actor. I thought he was that dude from 10 Things I Hate About You. But he had chops. Because he made only one other actor... Well, two others. Parks. Michael Parks did that for me in From Dusk Till Dawn. Like, that's why Red State exists. Because I watched the opening 10 minutes of From Dusk Till Dawn back in 95. I was like, this motherfucker's Yoda. Like, how do you... I want to spend a month on set with a dude who can drop performance science this fucking brilliant. This laser sharp.

38:38This otherworldly. But then the other one... God, who was it? I just had it on my head. What was the other one? I said Parks. Oh, Billy Bob Thornton in A Simple Plan. Did you ever see A Simple Plan? That fucking movie is... What's his name? The guy that did Spider-Man. What movie was this? It was a movie with Bill Paxton. A Simple Plan. Bill Paxton. Bill... Bill... What did I say his name was? You know, Billy... What's his face? Billy Roy Cyrus. Not Billy. I was going in that. The guy who fucked Angelina Jolie. Yeah, what? Billy... Joe... Billy Bob. Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob Thornton. Jesus Christ. Billy Bob Thornton. And who else? Oh, Bridget Fond is in it. This fucking movie is so good. It's so well done. It's about dudes who find money in the woods. Drug money. And then they're trying to like... It's a simple plan. We're going to hold it and whack it up together. We're going to wait some time.

39:31And then it just gets more and more complicated and fucking horrible things start happening and shit. Excellent movie. Well done. But Billy Bob Thornton gives a performance in this movie where he ceases to be Billy Bob Thornton. And you're just like, that character exists. The man who is in this movie ain't... There's no connection to Billy Bob Thornton. Right. Like, it's literally a dude being possessed of someone else or something like that. He changes his look, changes his deliveries, everything. Perfect example. I think that to be that good, there has to be a part of you that's a little bit fucking crazy. And we know Billy Bob Thornton is a little bit fucking crazy. No doubt about it. Meryl Streep. Do you think she's a little bit crazy? Maybe she just keeps it together better than him. Maybe she just has better composure. Maybe she just got better composure. More self-aware.

40:13But that demon inside her beats just as freely as it does in Billy Bob. She just knows how to control it in her social life. But she can blast it out when she's pretending to be some other person. She can just let that fucking demon free. You know? Is that what acting is? Billy Bob Thornton is crazy as fuck, yes. I think, to a certain extent. Yes and no. I mean, I think it's completely containable. You know? I think, like, I've seen Daniel Day-Lewis get interviewed, and I think he's, you know, he's a brilliant guy who's clearly, like, doing it as an artist. You know? He's clearly got a good handle on the whole celebrity thing. I mean, the guy, like, he quit movies to be a fucking shoe cobbler. I mean, he's this crazy, deep, interesting, weirdo dude. That is one of those stories that, like, everybody knows that Daniel Day-Lewis cobbler thing. It captured everybody's imagination.

40:58Whether he was serious about it or not, it may have been his most brilliant fucking move. Because for the next ten years, whenever somebody says Daniel Day-Lewis, somewhere in the next minute they're going to go, you know, he was a fucking, he quit to be a cobbler? He studied shoemaking? Shoemaking? Like, it captured people's imagination. Like, why would a guy this good at the job go off, quit, and make shoes for? He came back sooner or later. But that shoe thing captures people's imagination. And you think he probably went to it because it wasn't acting. It was the furthest thing from acting. Because you're right. You look at a dude who gets into a role like he does, he probably does go to someplace fucking dark. And you, you know, accrue a bunch of years of doing that, one after another. Maybe going to fucking make shoes in Milan feels good. Sounds good. Simple. Doesn't require much.

41:44Use a different part of your brain. No darkness and fucking cobbling. You know, unless one of those fucking witches show up. Some of his movies where he does go dark are the darkest characters in the history of cinema. The fucking Gangs of New York. Oh, love it. Jesus Christ. Bill the Butcher, that's what his name was, right? Jesus Christ was at a fucking scary performance. Isn't the accent great, too? Yeah, and he seems like he really would cut your fucking head off with a machete. One of the only... Like, you really, it's real. You're feeling it. All the way. One of the only conversations I ever had with Martin Scorsese was after a screening of that movie. I was coming out of the theater, and I hear somebody go, Kevin, and it sounds like Martin Scorsese. I was like, no way Martin Scorsese would be fucking saying Kevin. And I turn around, and Martin Scorsese was saying Kevin. He was talking to me.

42:26And I was like, whoa. Holy shit, man. How are you? Did your ball tingle? Very much. You know what I'm saying? Like, in a way of like... Like, the way he called me wasn't quite pure, but it was like... He had no reason to know my name. Exactly. And he's like, what did you think? I said, I fucking loved it, man. Like, and I'd stayed through all the credits and shit. I said, oh my God, I loved it. You gotta tell me, how did he arrive at that accent? And he goes, we found cylinders. Old cylinders recorded around, what was it? 18, whatever, turn of the century, 19, whatever that period, the flick was set. He said, we found cylinders, which we just sat there and played, and Daniel took the accent from there, worked on it a little bit, and took the accent from there. And I was like, what did the cylinders sound like? He goes, surprisingly, crystal clear. And like, you could literally hear what a person...

43:10Like, what that guy sounded like in that era. Isn't that amazing? I mean, it was... Daniel Day-Lewis is probably our best representation of it, because I bet he nailed it. He must have. He must have. Because we've never heard the cylinders. I've never seen him not nail something. He played a boxer, and it's the best version of an actor playing a boxer ever. He really looks like a boxer. Like, as he's moving, he's doing everything correctly. The way he's holding his hands, the way he's responding to being hit, the way he's following through with his punches, with his footwork. He literally looked like he could be a professional boxer. It takes so much energy and focus to get that good. Like, he didn't just look like an actor that they taught how to box. Right. Like, he's a perfect example, and I don't mean to diss him, but Marky Mark, Mark Wahlberg, whatever. The Fighter? The Fighter. It was a great movie.

43:57I love this performance in the movie, but when you watch him boxing, it looks like an actor is boxing. Right. Okay? Really? Yes. Because I thought he was, like, street smart. He looks like he can box. I bet he can box. I bet he can box. But it doesn't look like... Like, when you watch Daniel Day-Lewis do it, Daniel Day-Lewis is moving like a real professional boxer. And when you watch in the Mark Wahlberg thing, it seems like I'm watching a movie. Right. I'm watching a movie where there's boxing in it. There's a difference in the reality. What about Stallone? Did he convince? No. No. He didn't look like a boxer? No. I mean, he looks like a guy who can kick your ass. Don't get me wrong, but there's a way a professional fighter moves is very specific. You have to... Unless you're some Roy Jones Jr. freak of nature athlete who can keep your hands down and do all kinds of crazy shit

44:44because nobody can touch you because you're so fast and your timing is so good. But there's only a few of those guys ever. And if you look at a classic boxer, they have very simple characteristics. The hands are always up high, the chin's tucked, the shoulders are up. Nobody does that in a movie. In a movie, everybody's... Their hands are down, they're throwing wild punches and flexing their muscles, and it's my turn to hit you, and then it's your turn to hit me. And it looks very obvious. And nobody... They never get into a 30-second, 40-second hug embrace kind of like where they have to get split up. Well, you can't do it realistically unless you're going to let people hit people. And you don't want to do that because you're only going to get one shot at it and people aren't going to like it. No one's going to like a halfway fight. It's like, I'm going to let you hit me and then I'm going to hit you back.

45:27We're going to agree that there's a certain amount of times we're going to hit each other and we're going to hit each other realistically hard. You can't do that. You can't do it. You can't fake it. I could do it. You can do it? Yeah. Do you think you can do it realistically? Real easy. Let me ask you this. Just kidding. Other than Daniel Day-Lewis, who has convincingly fought in a movie that earned your respect where you're like, all right, that looks like it. Other than Daniel Day-Lewis. That bar's too fucking high, dude. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Denzel Washington. Denzel Washington when he played Reuben Herrick Carter. That bar's too fucking high. Can't you give me somebody that's just like... Nope. You need a guy like that. You need a bad motherfucker. Who just really commit, overcommit. My friend Terry Claiborne trained him for some of that. And he would go down to the Hollywood Boxing Gym. It was on La Brea.

46:11And he said that guy would be out there every fucking morning at 7 o'clock, blaring his music in the parking lot, fired up. And he said he would run up the stairs and he would train like a professional boxer. He said he did everything I asked him to do, did exactly the way I told him to do it, skipped rope, sit-ups. He was in there every day. He literally transformed himself into a professional boxer. There's only a few guys who can hit that level, that Daniel Day-Lewis, that Denzel Washington level of commitment. There's only a few guys who can do that. Those are the only two guys that I've ever seen that look like real fighters. Daniel Day-Lewis and Denzel Washington fight each other. Who wins? Daniel Day-Lewis. Get the fuck out of here. I would say Denzel. That's a crazy white boy. It's got to be Denzel. No, he'll get tired. He'll gas out. He'll start off strong. Daniel takes the punches.

46:59What do you base this on, glory? Just fucking talking shit, bro. Just talking shit. We're both talking shit. I just have to guess. If I looked at the boxer that Daniel Day-Lewis was and I looked at the boxer that Denzel Washington was, I think Denzel Washington looks like a very good athlete, moves very well, but it looks more like Daniel Day-Lewis is a real boxer. If we base it on their movie rules, then Daniel Day-Lewis held out a long time as John Proctor in The Crucible. Denzel Washington, one of the best actors ever, right? Yeah, totally. Oh, God, yeah. And you know what? They gave him, when they gave him the Oscar for, what was it? Was it Malcolm X? No, that was the thing. They should have given him to him. Oh, right, right, right. That performance, if you ever go watch Malcolm X footage, you know, on YouTube, which you can now. They got tons of it. Nothing but free. Fascinating. You look at that and you realize,

47:58like, that dude, you don't want to talk about a Denzel Washington up at six training like a boxer. Yeah. He didn't even have YouTube to pull clips from. He became Malcolm X. The mannerisms, the way he holds his hand as he speaks, it's crazy. He should have gotten, I think he got nominated. He should have won that year. He didn't. Then they gave it to him years later for the King Kong ain't got nothing on me. Yeah, that was the training day? Training day. Yeah. Which. He was really good in it. That's the thing. He's like, I remember when they first gave him the award, I hadn't seen the movie. I was like, oh, they're making up for fucking overlooking Malcolm X. But then you see his performance in that movie and what could be a simple programmer or a simple, like, good guy, bad guy. He took that role to the next level. Yeah. So it may have been overdue payback for a fantastic performance he didn't get enough credit for.

48:47But I think he earned that 10. I agree. 100%. Training day. I agree 100%. With his performance alone. Yeah. He legitimately seemed like a corrupt cop. Yeah. He becomes it. He's one of those guys, those Russell Crowe guys. And sociopathic. Like, you believed he was sociopathic. And like him giving him the, like, smoking the, he's like, you're smoking the wet. Yeah. And like, he enjoyed it. Like, he was a little malicious and shit like that. It seemed real. Very real. It seemed very real when he was enjoying it. Yeah, I mean, to put your mind into that place to allow yourself to go there, you gotta get real close to crazy. You gotta get right next door to neighbors to crazy. You gotta see crazy every morning when you're getting in your car. Morning crazy. What's the craziest you've seen? Who you worked with that you're like, I've seen someone go to that place. On Red State, we were with Michael Parks. I don't think I've ever seen

49:31Michael Parks and Melissa Lea went to weird places. Like, incredible places where I'm like, oh shit, this is otherworldly stuff. Like, true fucking actors, man. True across the board. Michael Parks is the preacher? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, folks, if you see one movie this year, see Red State. Kevin invited me to this movie. Now listen, I had known nothing. I knew nothing. I knew nothing of what this movie was. I had no idea. And I showed up, I showed up with Aubrey and we had not a fucking clue in the world as to what this movie was about. I assumed it was a comedy. I heard some whisper online. I heard it was a horror film, question mark. That's all I saw. So I go in with an awesome blank slate. And halfway into the movie, I'm like, what the fuck is going on? I'm like, maybe 35, 45 minutes in, I was like, this is the craziest fucking, this is Kevin Smith's movie? I can't wait. You don't even, it's like, you have to throw out

50:28everything you think of as a Kevin Smith movie. Kevin Smith movies are always fun comedies. You know, and this movie just gets so fucking crazy, so quick, and just keeps, and goes. And you know, I really, I appreciate so much about that movie, but what I really, well, the one thing that's staggering right off the bat was that guy who played the preacher, Michael Parks. Amazing. If that guy doesn't get nominated for the Academy Award, he deserves so much attention. Yeah. Fuck awards, right? Fuck, fuck the, who cares? you know what? To a 70-year-old man who this business turned its back on a long time ago and clearly has better chops than most of his peers who went on to other things, it means something. Yeah. Like that award, it may not mean shit to me, like me getting awards, but him, that award means something. It's still, he comes from an era where it does mean something. Where it does mean something. Well,

51:21I wish we could substitute that with the greater opinion of, you know, whatever people, nice people all across the country, people discerning individuals. If you watch this movie and don't think this guy is a fucking super genius, all that shit that I said about Daniel Day-Lewis, exact same shit I'm saying about this guy. He's one of those very special talents. Right there. He was playing this fucking preacher and he had this one long, non-cut monologue. I mean, the camera is on him for a long fucking time and it's all one run and it's brilliant. Thank you. It's brilliant. He sucks you in to the point where you're shitting your, you know this is gonna, something terrible is gonna happen. You don't know when, you don't know what and it keeps, he just holds you there with this conviction in this character and this character's belief that is fucking scary. It's fucking scary. You know there's imminent death. Yeah. Like,

52:21it's set up right there but his performance is so riveting. He's so, so fucking good at the craft that you'll put, because the movie's moving along in a nice clip right there. We put the movie on pause and be like, ladies and gentlemen, Michael Parks and he does a fucking, essentially a guitar solo. The most amazing guitar solo you've ever heard. And rather than be like, move on, fucking get to the murders that we knew were coming. People like kick back and go like, oh my God, that's so beautiful. And he finishes his solo and the movie begins again. It's pretty, it's so weird. It's pretty astounding. A guitar solo? What kind of music? You saw it. It's him. It's his voice I'm talking about. It's more metaphorical. Oh, Jesus Christ. Did I lose you? I'm so high. Are you more stoned than me? I must be. How is that possible? Because you keep going. You keep going and dragging me in with you. I thought you were being literal.

53:09I'm down the rabbit hole, bitch. Wow. I'm an idiot. This ain't even happening. We're in this meditation tank. You're in the meditation tank and we're just having this conversation. How did that character come about? Oh, yeah, for sure. I'll let you know. How'd the character come about? How did that guy? Fred Phelps. I saw a Westchester Baptist Church guy. And basically, that dude created that character for me. Did that create the movie for you? Nah, a little bit. I mean, it was kind of a two or three prong thing. Like, number one, I saw Parks in From Dusk Till Dawn, which was Quentin's movie with Robert Rodriguez. And he's in the opening ten minutes. He's astounding. Like, I love acting. Love actors. Love people, actresses. People that could take the words off page and make it sing. But, you know, there's only so many ways to skin a cat and fucking even the best of them. Pretty much, like, can see the strings and whatnot.

54:00You know how acting works. Every once in a while, you meet one of these performers or see a performer. You're lucky you get to meet him. That takes it off the fucking grid, off the charts. Yeah. This guy does this. In the opening of this movie, which, From Dusk Till Dawn is a fun vampire fucking romp. This guy comes in and drops a performance that could have won, should have, in a fair, just world, would have won a supporting Oscar nomination. Like, you know, Judi Dench gets one for Shakespeare in Love and she's in the movie, what, seven or nine minutes. Parks is in From Dusk Till Dawn roughly at the same time and gives a performance that's as electric, as believable, as off the charts wonderful. But, you know, it's a genre film so he don't get the attention and stuff. This guy fell in love with him. I'm watching From Dusk Till Dawn, 1995, Lumley Sunset 5. Bob Weinstein's like, you man, you can see the Quentin and Rabbits movie.

54:54I was like, yeah, fuck yeah, I want to see the vampire movie. And I went to go see this vampire movie made by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. But what I left there was with, I have to work with that man. I don't know who that fucking man is, that sheriff guy, in the first ten minutes who, spoiler, spoilers, movie's fucking 16 years old, but just in case, he gets killed in the first fucking ten minutes. Whole movie, I'm like, no, that dude was the fucking truth. The absolute truth. I walk out of that theater, I go, I gotta work with that guy. To sit at the fucking feet of a Yoda like that and for a month on a set, imagine the amount of fucking information you could glean, steal, fucking benefit from? He's pure genius in acting form. A clear genius. When you're watching him, it's so spectacular and riveting. So good. You inspired it. I told him, there were days on set like I did, we didn't do many takes at all

55:46because we were just, you know, we didn't have a lot of money and shit, it was a low budget movie. And when the performances are that good, man, you got John Goodman, Melissa Leo, you got Parks, they're crushing it, take one and shit. So, you know, I leave it up to them and they're like, I'm good, if you're good. I'm like, I don't direct the movie as much as I sit there and edit it in my head on set because you don't direct Michael Parks. I'm going to go up to him and be like, here's how I do it based on all my experience playing Silent Bob over the years. Did he ad lib any of that? Oh, yeah. He got in there and definitely. Because it seemed like he could probably just start talking in that guy. He seemed so in tune with that fucking character, man. Yeah, he was, well, he had that script for what, two, three months ahead of time. By the time he came to the set, and I have, no, I'm not the author of that performance. That guy authored

56:31his own performance, hands down. Across the boards, you don't direct a movie like Red State. You just let it happen. But all that home. And you make sure you keep it on the tracks. This dude's, like his, he would, he had the script for a while. When he came to the set, he's like, can I have the space? Can you show me the space? And we brought him to the chapel and went on. They were still putting the finishing touches on it, but he kind of did a laid out, like the way you would lay out a dance. He essentially kind of didn't say the dialogue out loud, but he would just sit there, and you'd watch him kind of moving his arms and stuff, and it looked like he was slowly waltzing by himself, and then he'd stop somewhere and ask somebody to put a mark here, blah, blah, blah, put a mark here. Then he put it all together. I got to see what he was doing the next morning. He had choreographed this fucking thing. Like, he could do it

57:17from top to bottom. Like, he could do the entire scene, which was, I think, in the script, 12 pages. 12 pages of dialogue or something ridiculous like that. And he could fucking do it from beginning to end. And you watch him hit his marks. He knew exactly where he wanted to be and stuff. So much so that, like, I had done a draft right before shooting, and I was like, hey, man, this is the new version of the sermon. And he fucking bristled because he was like, no, no, no, no. I mean, that's, other stuff's great. What do you need this for? Blah, blah, blah. And what I realized was because he was dialed in. Like, he knew what was going to happen when he hit that stage. He knew where to be so that he could just let his art come out of his mouth. But he was still framing the movie for it, still commanding the stage. It's a movie. Let's keep things moving. He wasn't content to just stand there and deliver dialogue, which he could have,

58:03and he still would have fucking captivated you. Instead, he choreographed his movement. It was fantastic. He was a dude that just gave beyond giving. You know, I wrote it with him in mind, going, I know what it's going to sound like because I'm a big fan of this dude's work now. And even getting to the set, he would still deliver over what I heard in my head. Like, oh, I remember, I'll never forget, what, a month? A month before we started shooting, we're in my kitchen. It's me, John Gordon, it's Bruce through the movie, and Parks. And we're just talking about when we're going to go, and it took us a while to get money together. And so we're leaving the kitchen, and we're talking about something in the script, and he stops, and he goes, he delivers one of the lines, and he delivers it so flawlessly, and it was the first time I heard Parks do what would be Abe and Cooper. And so I was like, oh my God, Parks, my heart skipped a beat and shit.

58:57He left, and I turned to John Gordon, and I was like, dude, he's going to win an award. I don't know what it is, but like, there's no way people don't cite him. Like, for that one line, he slipped into Abe and Cooper. You could hear it, you could, the gravitas of the life that Michael Parks has led in forming, like, every job he did or didn't get, an entire life brought to bear on this. He gave a monster some soul. Like, you look at that character on the page, very two-dimensional, easy to hate. Michael put a soul on him, where, you know, you still hate him, but you're like, oh, there's somebody under there. You know, he's not just like a two-dimensional cartoon you could easily write off. He brought something to it, and I wanted him to do two-dimensional cartoon. Like, I was just like, I'm going to put you in track suits, because that's what Fred Phelps wears. And, you know, you could talk like him. He goes, I don't want to do that. He's like,

59:49I came to act. I was like, right on. And he did charismatic instead. Wow. He's a dude, man. He don't fuck around. This is a dude who's a straight shooter. 70 years old, he's not pulling punches. He's going to tell you exactly how he fucking feels. And he gave... What is it that have? This will be a little intimidating, though, when you're having that kind of a conversation with him. You wanted him to do that, though, right? You wanted him to take it and own it. it all exists because of him. And, like, he'll give you, you know, like, I'm a grown-up, so I can take good ideas, leave stuff behind. He gave me the wonderful idea you've seen the movie. Like, it ends with somebody going, shut the fuck up from off-camera without spoilers. Spoilers. That came from Parks. It wasn't in the script. It was just, you know, it just ended where it kind of ended without that. And Parks was like, how about instead you go off of me, and I'm trying to be vague

60:36so as not to spoil it, but I hope you remember what I'm talking about. Yeah, I do, totally. You go off of me singing, and then you go down to another cell, and there you are, you know, and you say... You're giving away way too much of your movie right now. A little bit, but again, I said spoilers, but it's... Tune out, folks. Yeah. But anyway, he goes, you say blah, blah, blah, you say that line. And I was just like, I said, Parks, I would love to, but I think it'd be weird in this moment. I said, I like the idea of that line. I said, but cut to me in the movie. I'm not in the movie, and I think people would take people out of the movie. And he goes, why? And I was going, because people would recognize me. And he goes, from what? And I realized, like, oh my God, this guy, like, not, he has no clue that, like, I've had this whole other career. As far as he knows, like, it's Red State and Red State only. He knows I made some movies. I has no idea

61:31what they are. Didn't know I was in them or anything. That was so sweet. It was going in pure, you know what I'm saying? Like, this dude went in all about the craft, and he dropped science on that performance. And he would sit there from time to time, like, and be like, can I grab one more take? And I'd be like, Parks, you can have as many takes as you want. We're literally all here because of you, because I saw that performance in From Dusk Till Dawn. So it was kind of like the whole movie was kind of a Parks celebration. Right. People that didn't know him fell in love with him as we made the movie because the dude just, every day you were awed by something he did. You were sitting there going, oh my God, like, do you remember? He started singing in the movie. At one point, we had the whole chapel, you know, everyone in the chapel singing. And I said, for some other part of the movie, I said, hey man, while this thing's going on over here

62:21on camera, I'm going to push in on you. You want to sing one of those gospel hymnals? Because he picked the other one, Old Rugged Cross. I said, you got another one you want to go with? And he's like, yeah man, I can sing Farther Along. You want that? And I was like, yeah, whatever, sure, totally. And we shoot him, we're pushing in on him, and he sings Farther Along, and it's kind of as it is in the movie. He's got this beautiful, soulful voice. The man had made records. So, oh, it sweeps me off my feet, and it's a church song, but I'm still way into it. Next day, I come into work, everyone on set periodically, you hear him going like, Farther Along, and they're all singing it, and I'm like, it's good, I said, right? Like, it's catchy? They're like, yeah, for a Jesus song, it's pretty catchy and stuff. So he brought that to it too, the elements of singing. Charisma. Charisma, and that's what he went for. He said he wanted to play it as a charismatic.

63:09He had this whole backstory for not only Abe and Cooper's father, but his grandfather. He's like, oh, he's very close with his grandfather. He wrote a backstory himself to create for the character? He was a fire and brimstone. He was charismatic, but he was still strict, but his grandfather still also had a sense of humor for the kids, so his grandfather would be the one in the kitchen, you know, pulling like a train whistle down with one fist and lifting a leg and farting with the other, so he was still kind of human. So he loved his grandfather, Abe and Cooper, even though he preached the holy word and he loved him for it. His father also preached the holy word. This killed me, because part's going on all eloquently. He goes, his father also preached the holy word, but he probably touched his dick, so he don't talk about his father ever. I was like, that's astounding, dude. That's amazing. That's so bizarre. But he gave it thought. He gave thought

64:03into buying the outfit, dude. He went out and picked out the wardrobe with Beth, the costume wardrobe person, picked every piece. He was just like, never really done that before. Gone out with girls who were looking for specific sizes, but he, right down to the underwear and the socks, the dude had to be involved in picking the choices that what Abin wore. He felt represented. Yeah, and he put the outfit together. I remember the first time she showed me a picture of him in the outfit, Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth, anyway, regardless, Beth shows me pictures of Abin in, and in his outfit, Michael Parks, and I'm going, oh man, that ain't it at all. I was looking for a track suit. Like, this dude wearing some khakis and button-down shirt and a tie, looks like a school teacher. And I had, you know, I'd written, I'd read state on my brain for like five years, you know, wrote it five years ago, and I'd always had a very specific idea of what he looked like, which was stolen

64:55from the look of Fred Phelps. And I remember going like, I don't know, man, like, how do I dress this? I don't want him to wear this. And she was like, you might want to go with it. He's dialed into the costume. And it was such a good choice because the clothes made the man, like, I don't even know how else to say it. It sounds corny. But the outfit made him, just allowed him to do what he had to do up there. He felt like, if you see him early in the movie, at one point he's at the protest, holding a cup of coffee outside, he's wearing just a jacket, a windbreaker, and a t-shirt or something. But whenever he spoke the holy word, he would put on his Sunday best, essentially. And this was his Sunday best, like the button-down shirt with the tie. And he believed in presenting, particularly if you're going to go up there and preach the holy word, you should look respectable. All this philosophy behind just the outfit. And the whole time, I feared it until we went in front of cameras.

65:47I was like, this looks beautiful. Like, the outfit is perfect in some weird way because it gives him this air of respectability. And that makes the shit coming out of his mouth that much more heinous. I realize I'm still standing. He was, yeah, he's, that guy's a unique talent. It's hard to believe that it's taken him this long for, well, it's taken me this long to find out who he is. You know, like, why doesn't America... Quentin and Robert, Quentin and Tarantino particularly. Made that guy famous? charming Quentin story. I love this story because it shows you that we're all like fucking kids in this business. We go see the movie. Quentin's got his own fucking movie theater at his house. Looks like a fucking real movie theater. Movie seats, fucking popcorn and shit. And he's got these awesome sculptures from his movies all around by this artist named Cleet Shields. Great. Own personal movie theater sits about 50 or 60 or something like that. Maybe a little less. So we go watch Red State.

66:46There's me, Quentin, and Parks, Michael Parks. And he liked it. He liked it. He really loved that I watched it without us when he wasn't supposed to. He got the print two days early. We were supposed to watch it with him the day that we joined him. And he was like, I'm going to be honest with you, I watched it already twice. Fucking love it. I was like, oh, you don't have to apologize for that. That's fucking awesome and shit. So he watched it with us again. Then afterwards, he goes, come in the house. And, you know, because the theater is separate from the house. And he brings us in the house. And this fucking charmed me. I will never forget this. He goes, I got to show you my tape. I got to show you my Michael Parks tape. And he goes into, you know, he's got big entertainment centers, DVDs everywhere and stuff, high tech everywhere, but he also still has VHS. And the dude lays hands on a fucking VHS tape, almost as if I thought I hit the fucking flux capacitor, because I ain't seen

67:39one in a while. And there scribble on the fucking side and marker, because remember we used to write on the side of our videotapes when we made our own tapes, the best of Michael Parks. And Quentin throws this tape in. And what it is, is he's such a fan of this guy's work. He loves him going back to then came Bronson. He loves this dude's work so much. Anytime this dude's going to turn up on TV or gets a video of him, he records from tape to tape or from TV to tape, the segments of his performance, everything that involves Michael Parks and particularly the highlights and shit. So what you have is a collection of some of the cheesiest exploitation straight to TV movies or straight about a high school volleyball team or college volleyball team and stuff like that, murder mysteries and whatnot, like real programmers. And as he's showing you the clips, even though it's programmers all around him, Michael Parks is still in each one of these scenes that Quentin has pulled

68:43off and put onto this VHS, dropping science, performance science, where you're just like, this is crazy, like this dude's doing Shakespeare in the middle of shit. And not to put anybody who made those movies down or off or whatever, but clearly everyone else is kind of like, here we are collecting a check and this is about the furthest we can go. and this dude is crushing it, crushing it. Like what movies? A lot of TV movies. I don't even know them, dude. They're all TV movies from the 60s and 70s and a little bit into the 80s. And that's what Quentin had collected. He's got encyclopedic knowledge of cinema and even bad trash cinema, but there is no such thing as trash cinema to this guy. He watched that movie and he found gold, like diamonds in the midst of shit that was just maybe simple or fucking programming material and he collected them for years on a fucking VHS tape long before he ever knew he would be a filmmaker, long before he ever knew he'd meet Michael Parks,

69:47let alone become a filmmaker, make movies with Michael Parks in them, direct Michael Parks and inspire me to make a fucking movie where I put Michael Parks in it. That's what he said to me. He's like, oh my god, he's going, as a Michael Parks fan, I love this. This is the ultimate Michael Parks movie. I was like, right, right. So for me, I loved that, the tape, dude. He still had it. If he had just told us the story of, I used to have this tape, man, where I had the best, that would have been cool enough, dude, but he produced it and we all watched it together. And I sat in a chair off to the side and him and Parks sat on the couch and it was, I would have rolled a tear if it wouldn't have embarrassed them both or made them be like, get out. But there they were, like the man whose work that this kid filmmaker loved so much, think about the shit you made mix tapes of when you were a kid. He made this guy's performance and there he is watching that very same tape

70:42with the guy on the tape, the actor he loves. Oh, it was touching. You know, that's inspiring but it's also inspiring that there's guys like Tarantino out there, real enthusiasts, you know, dudes who get really fucking super excited about some shit. But that's like you with fucking MMA or whatever the fuck, like the shit that you're into you're super into you get geeky about. Yeah, yeah, he gets geeky about fucking movies. Yeah. And that passion will translate to an audience. For everything, whatever it is that you're doing, man. I never wanted to see a fucking single, what is it, UFC? Yeah. UFC fight, but when you talked about on the show, I was just like when you came on our show, I was like, you know, I would go see this now. Like, when you talk about it with the passion and enthusiasm you do, it translates to somebody who was never sold before and I wasn't even on the fence really, but then when I watch you talk about it, I'm like, this motherfucker's

71:34smart. Like, he's one of the smartest dudes I ever met. Everyone running the organization is intelligent. It's a totally different thing than what people expect. You hear the term cage fighting, you think, well, there's going to be a bunch of barbaric assholes and mean people beating up other mean people. That's not what it is at all. What it is is people that are trying to attempt to do the most difficult thing in all of sport. Put your body and your health at risk to go after another person's body and shut it down and take it out. It's the craziest game of all time. But it's the oldest game of all time. Male dominance over other men. And look, we have a society where obviously that's illegal. You can't beat people up. It's good. We want everything to be civilized. But in the midst of evolution where we find ourselves in this stage along the way from changing from a wild animal to a conscious being, we still got a lot of chimpanzee DNA that needs to be

72:32satisfied. And there's one or two ways to do it. Either you can suppress it, you can pretend it doesn't exist, or you can give it something like porn or violence on television and movies and in sports. You could give it something to live vicariously through. Is that why I like porn? Yes. Because if you don't have these other ways to live vicariously through, there's only one other way around it. You have to go find whatever it is you're looking for, whether it's find violence or find sex. But if you can get violence and sex in a television form, you can eliminate it from real life. The Japanese have believed this forever. The Japanese believe that you're much more likely to commit heinous sexual crimes if it's difficult to get laid. They're so freaky over there, you can buy used women's panties and dispensers. Dispensers. It's ridiculous. You put some cash, you buy underwear. And their porn, there's no pubic hair. It's only nipples

73:22and even those are kind of taken out. But their animation and their comic books are fucking intense. A lot of bondage. It's giant cocks, too. Yeah. Giant vein label. But you're not allowed to see hair pubic hair. So bizarre. Very strange. Yeah, they have it's got to be weird when an entire country looks so similar physically. I mean, obviously, you can tell the difference between one Japanese guy to another. I know a lot of Japanese people, but essentially, the vast majority of the people that live in Japan have this one look. Dark hair. You know, the Japanese look. I mean, they are a clear race. You know, it's got to be so strange to be a part of such a specific ethnicity. Like, I'm a mutt. You look like you're probably a mutt. You're a mutt. You know, we're a combination. I'm a little bit Irish, a little bit Italian. But, you know, I'm just a white guy, you know, to most people. But when you, you know, Japanese people, like,

74:18that is a very clear race. That's got to be very strange to be a part of, like, a real powerful, dominant, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, like, you look at, like, it's very, some Italians you can see this in. You know, you look at them and you go, oh, clearly that guy's some sort of an Italian guy. You know, or if not, he's Armenian or something like that. You know, that sort of dark look. But it could be a bunch of different things. Japanese guys look like Japanese guys. You know? If you understand what, like, the, what Asian people look like. You know, Koreans have a different look to them. But it must be interesting to be a part of, like, one of, I mean, how many millions of Japanese people are there? You know? And to have such a similar look with all these different people like you that you could be recognized immediately somewhere else in the country, you know? I think it'd be awesome to have a culture. Like, they have a culture.

75:09Don't you feel like we, I mean, we have pop culture, which thank God because that's why I have a job. But they have a culture that goes back eons. And we don't really have that. And as white mutts, we don't really have a culture that goes back eons. What always impressed me about the Japanese is the culture of discipline. They've had this culture of discipline and of martial arts. You know, the discipline of war and strategy like way before any of the European countries ever figured out what the fuck was going on. Right. You know, this tattoo that I have on my arm is Miyamoto Musashi battling a tiger. This famous samurai guy. And he wrote this book called The Book of Five Rings. It's an amazing book, man, where you've got to get into this guy's head that he's living, I believe it was the 15th century. So I think it was like the 1400s. I might be wrong. Whenever he was writing this book, basically, he was a ronin. So he would travel

76:07the earth. He had no master. He had no emperor. So he was traveling the earth, basically having fucking sword fights with people. He had like 60 duels, one-on-one duels with other men and killed them in hand-to-hand, one-on-one combat. I mean, it's a crazy thought to think about killing people with swords. This guy did it to like 60 different guys. Swords, and in some situations he thought swords were too easy so he would let them use a sword and he would use a stick. I mean, he was fucking, he was a fascinating character. But his whole life was based on balance. It was about art. It was about philosophy. It was about, it was about seeking the correct way. And for him, the way of the sword was simply the way to be successful. The most successful movements in any given situation as far as what combat is. But he equated this combat to artistic integrity, the ability to create things freely, the ability to draw and paint,

77:07the ability to write poetry and to elegantly express your feelings. To him, it was all connected. It was all one piece of excellence and that is like a guide to live your life by. And he had this statement that I read when I was a kid and it always stuck with me. Once you understand the way broadly you can see it in all things. And the idea being that once you find out how to tap into anything, like find out how to be a great movie director, find out how to be a great guy who draws animation, a fucking singer, a chess player. Say it again. Once you find the... Once you understand the way broadly you can see it in all things. This is a translation from Japanese so it's not, probably not totally accurate. But what, that's what he meant is that you find greatness. You find greatness as a carpenter. You find greatness as a samurai. There's that same thing when you just tap into the zone where you're just really tuning in

78:04to whatever the fuck you're doing and then you let creativity sort of spread it out for you. Comes better with age too, doesn't it? Comes better with awareness. You get that it's just like, comes better with what? With awareness, I think. With awareness? Not even just with age? I think the age is just experience. And that's awareness? Yeah. Or eventually equates to awareness? I don't think it's necessarily just age. There's a lot of people that they get older and they put that box closer and closer to their head. They want to see less and less of the world. Right. It's all you're seeking as well. You're not trapped in some sort of a box every day. So as you get older, of course you're going to get more tuned into things. You're constantly still asking the questions. You're not trapped in a slave box. I used to be a destination guy. I talked about it with Moser on Smodcast quite a bit back in the day. Iowa's destination

78:52he was very journey oriented for him. It was all about like, hey man, everything's a journey and you know, it's like the journey is the fucking fun and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no, destination, get there. I just want to get to where we're supposed to be. And the last few years I've flipped and now I am kind of like the journey is more important to me. You know why that is? Why? Because you're rich as fuck. No, weed. I think it's weed. It's that too, but it's also you're successful. You think so? You don't have to worry about it anymore. Yeah, you're fucking Kevin Smith. You've got two million friends on followers on Twitter. You can talk to them whenever you want to. They want to come and see your movies. You're in this weird zone where you don't have to give a fuck anymore. Yeah, you know what it is? It's beautiful. I love the expression and I've co-opted it, but they said Kevin doesn't have to work for anyone anymore

79:40because he works for the audience. And I was like, oh God, that's perfect. It's true. That's it. If you could get to that place where it's not about like fuck everyone, but you don't rely on anybody for anything. It's all coming from within you, your camp, or something like that. Not like there's no help. Of course you get help within your world, but do you know how comforting it is to know that I don't have to do press?