David Mamet
嘉宾：David Mamet
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§01Transcript · 00:00–06:30§02Transcript · 06:36–13:55§03Transcript · 14:03–19:35§04Transcript · 19:36–25:11§05Transcript · 25:13–31:12§06Transcript · 31:21–38:34§07Transcript · 38:41–44:29§08Transcript · 44:33–49:28§09Transcript · 49:29–53:19§10Transcript · 53:20–56:28§11Transcript · 56:31–59:54§12Transcript · 59:58–1:05:11§13Transcript · 1:05:13–1:11:55§14Transcript · 1:12:04–1:16:34§15Transcript · 1:16:35–1:21:16§16Transcript · 1:21:19–1:27:26§17Transcript · 1:27:32–1:32:54§18Transcript · 1:32:56–1:38:56§19Transcript · 1:39:01–1:47:33§20Transcript · 1:47:37–1:52:24§21Transcript · 1:52:29–1:57:53§22Transcript · 1:57:55–2:04:28§23Transcript · 2:04:34–2:10:10§24Transcript · 2:10:16–2:16:23§25Transcript · 2:16:30–2:22:40§26Transcript · 2:22:43–2:28:46§27Transcript · 2:28:53–2:34:39§28Transcript · 2:34:46–2:40:23§29Transcript · 2:40:27–2:45:08§30Transcript · 2:45:10–2:49:03§31Transcript · 2:49:07–2:53:02§32Transcript · 2:53:05–2:57:26§33Transcript · 2:57:28–2:57:34§01Transcript · 00:00–06:30
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
How are you sir?
I'm great, happy to be back in the United States.
I've been in California for the last...
The People's Republic of California?
Yeah, exactly so.
Yeah, it's an interesting turn of events.
California has become a strange new place.
Yes, it has.
Almost unrecognizable.
Yes.
Will it be recognizable to George Orwell?
Well, yeah, right? Even he probably would have been like, wow.
He was probably, if you could get George Orwell from the time know, the time he wrote 1980, when did he write 84?
Oh, that's pretty good. I don't know. I think it was the late 40s. We can look it up.
And then to see, you know, in 2022, he was in the neighborhood. He definitely was pretty close.
He was off like 1.2%.
There it is, 49.
Wow, interesting.
You know, George Orwell said, he was an interesting guy.
He was a cop in Burma.
Really?
Yes.
He was a colonial cop, and then he was a roustabout,
and he wrote down and out in Paris and London.
He was a bum.
And he said when thought control comes, it will come not from the right but from the left.
I wonder why he thought that.
Well, because he got around.
I mean that guy had seen a huge bunch of life.
And he looked at what things were from every angle, right?
He was a well-brought-up Englishman.
And then he was a tramp and a dishwasher and a cop.
And he saw it all.
He saw it clearly.
But it's when classically, like when we think about depictions of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, when I was a kid, we always thought of it as being a right-wing thing.
There was always like a right-wing dictator-type character that imposed censorship and authoritarianism.
He didn't think of it as something that would be coming from the left.
Well, but who was Stalin?
Who was Trotsky and Lenin?
They're certainly the left.
Right.
And Pol Pot and all of the Chinese.
Also, if you look at the history of this country, that Woodrow Wilson imposed strictures against talking about the
war. Anybody who talked about the war and said anything that could be construed as unfavorable
was thrown in prison. Really? Oh, yes. Yes. A lot of people were thrown in prison. A lot of people
had their businesses wrecked. What year was this? Wilson would be 1917.
Wow.
1917, 1918.
They were throwing people in jail.
Yes, they were.
For talking badly about World War I.
Yes.
And then, of course, Roosevelt did the same thing.
Really?
Yeah, sure. And, well, look, also, he tossed all the Japanese-Americans in prison.
Right.
He said, go into a concentration camp.
By the way, all of our loyal German Americans in New York and Yorkville, we're going to leave them alone because they're white.
Meanwhile, Yorkville, New York and Baltimore were full of Nazi spies.
They were – you could see the shipping being torpedoed from the beach at Coney Island because they were
giving away all that information.
The left has always believed – the idea of fascism means a bundle.
Everything is together.
Everything is for the state.
Nothing against the state.
Nothing outside of the state as Mussolini said.
And with the exception of those particular fascists, the Nazis, it's always been the left because they don't believe in the individual.
So you think that that's the root cause of it, not believing in the individual, believing in the collective, that that automatically lends itself to erasing individual rights?
lends itself to erasing individual rights? Yes. I mean, it also goes back to the enlightenment, to the idea that God doesn't exist, and the idea that the human being is the measure
of all things. Well, if the human being is the measure of all things, what does that mean? Our
reason. And our reason is completely flawed. All of us do things every day which are unreasonable, sinful, wrong, and absurd, right? And the reasonable
person says, wait a second, why did I do that? What do I have to refer to in my confusion
and my self-loathing? Well, the Bible was a pretty good bet, you know, for the Hebrew
Bible for 6,000 years, right? The Christian Bible for 2,000,
it's a pretty good bet. Say, wait a second, let's talk about human nature. You really aren't that
smart. You really aren't in charge of the world. You really aren't. Although you think you are,
you think that because you're human. But God's in charge of the world, and there's a certain way
things are. And if you'd like to get out of your wretched self-consciousness and self-delusion, you better get your ass into church.
But don't you think that, you know, when atheists talk about religion and they criticize organized
religion and criticize the Bible, they talk about things that are in the Bible that seem preposterous,
right? They talk about people rising from the dead and walking on water, particularly the
Old Testament, right? Like, to use that as a guidebook for life, you have to kind of ignore
some of the stuff that doesn't make sense. Don't you think?
Well, the Bible's a myth, okay? The Bible's a myth. The Christian Bible
comes out of the Jewish Bible.
It's a retelling of the story in a different
way. But the Jewish Bible is a myth
and the myth is
the myth of creation and the myth of
human experience. So what it does
is chapter
by chapter, story by story
it challenges
us with disturbing and bizarre images. And it
says, why don't you try to understand this? See if you can understand this. What does it really
mean to escape from Egypt? Does it mean escaping from your inner pharaoh? What does it really mean
to part the Red Sea? So these stories are told, any myth is a dramatic retelling of an underlying reality
that can't be expressed rationally, right? So the atheists say everything can be expressed
§02Transcript · 06:36–13:55
rationally. For example, you know that the earth is burning up. You can tell that because sometimes
things get warmer and sometimes things get colder. You can also tell that when things get colder,
that's obviously because the earth is burning up,
because the sun is melting the glaciers,
and the glaciers are raising the temperature.
You can also tell, of course, that to be fair to everyone,
children change sex.
You know that, don't you?
And you can tell that men can compete as women and women compete as men.
This is all human confusion because we trust
our senses and we trust our mind and the mind just, it doesn't work real good. We're very cunning,
but we aren't very smart human beings. And that's the message of the Bible. And so if you look at
Moses, sorry, Moses, Moses was, they tried, the Egyptians tried to kill him all of his life. The
Egyptians tried to kill. He didn't have any trouble with the Egyptians because to kill him all of his life. The Egyptians tried to kill him.
He didn't have any trouble with the Egyptians because God was on his side.
He had trouble with the Jews because the Jews were always saying, who the hell do you think you are?
So the Old Testament is the story of atheists, really, saying, who the hell do you think you are?
hell do you think you are? So when you're talking about the Bible, right, and the lessons in the Bible, isn't part of the problem is that people translated it from ancient Hebrew to Latin to
Greek and all these other languages and eventually to English? Like a lot's lost along the way,
right? And a lot is open to interpretation, like a lot of what we're talking about in these myths and stories that people take as factual occurrences,
they probably were some sort of a lesson in the myth, some sort of allegory.
There's things about these stories that probably have hints of truth.
But isn't it hard to kind of decipher it all if you can't speak the mother language?
That's a very good question. So I want to first let me ask you, okay, I'm gonna tell you a story, okay?
Okay. These two octopuses walk into a
laundromat. Okay. See, that's what a myth is. I said two octopuses walk into a laundromat
and you didn't say wait a second octopuses can't walk and they wouldn't be in a laundromat well i thought about it but i'm being polite so what you said is yeah tell me more okay
i'm hoping there's a good joke okay well i'll get to that but it's the same thing with the the bible
is really two octopuses walk into a laundromat so i'm going to tell you a story i want you to
suspend your disbelief because there's something in this story you might get a kick out of
you might and you might there might be some wisdom in it.
There might be yes and might know.
But if you listen as you would to a story, which the Bible is, it's a myth, rather than
to a factual retelling, you might get a kick out of it.
Now, as far as a translation goes, I can read the Bible in Hebrew.
I started learning when I was 40.
It's an easy language.
And there are a lot of mistranslations. But the main point is not the mistranslations,
because there are some pretty good English translations too. But the main point is saying
that doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. So what do you think the Bible is? Do you think
the Bible is a bunch of very wise people got together and they formed these stories to sort of
illustrate the folly of mankind and how one needs to have like a moral compass and guiding
principles that are set in stone and that you have these rules to live your life in a moral
and just way and that'll make for a better society?
What do you think the Bible actually is?
Well, a friend of mine, a rabbi, a reformed rabbi, was applying to get into an orthodox
yeshiva, an orthodox college.
And he's a reformed rabbi.
So the guy says, he says, you have very good credentials and you're very well-learned.
Do you think the Bible is literally the work of God?
Rabbi says, no.
So the guy says, well, is it possible?
Rabbi says, yes.
Guy says, okay, you're in.
Right?
So Dennis Prager, you know, who I'm crazy about, said the other day, he said, you know,
I don't believe in the Torah, the Jewish
Bible, because of God. He said, I believe in God because of the Torah. So if you read the Torah,
the Jewish Bible, and the Christian Bible is just an extension of that, you say, my God,
this is incredible wisdom. This goes back to the beginning of time, people who've tried to figure
out everything.
And they didn't have the language that we have, but they had the language that they had. And this was thousands of years of experience progressed and compressed into a myth.
So we know that this is true because, like, liberals have always been in love with the myths, especially Jews, with the myths of other cultures.
Right? in love with the myths, especially Jews, with the myths of other cultures, right?
We say how beautiful it is that this culture has that myth, that the Haiden Indians say
the world was formed by a large beaver, and when the beaver slapped his tail like that,
it made the oceans, and when the blah, blah, blah.
It's a gorgeous myth.
Nobody says of that myth, wait a second, you can't have a beaver that big, right?
That's what I would say.
Yeah, okay.
I would step in and go, hey, man.
Yeah, but there's a purpose to having myths, right?
This is like Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey, all that stuff.
Yeah.
Of course there is because we need myths, right?
So when you destroy the old myths, you're always going to get a new myth because we need myths, right? So when you destroy the old myths, you're always going to
get a new myth because we need to mythologize our life. We need to have something to hold on to.
I've been very curious about this lately because it seems like, as you were saying,
from the left, you're getting a lot of what seems like very cult-like behavior and this very cult-like, this ignoring of basic truth to fit a narrative.
And I think that in the absence of religion,
it's almost like we're hardwired for some sort of guidelines
that we all collectively agree to follow, whether it's agreed, whether
it's Judaism or, you know, Mormonism or whatever it is, like a collective group of guidelines.
It's almost like human beings are hardwired to follow some sort of a guideline. And if we don't
have one, we create one. And even though we don't say it's a religion, we behave exactly if it's a
religion. Like if you questioned it at all. There's no question about it.
Yeah. That's what's going on right now, right? Sure. There's no question about it. So what the
left is, is I hope nobody's listening when I say this because it's kind of, it's extreme.
No one's going to listen. It's a death cult. It's a cult about death.
And that's why I want to talk about my outfit today.
Okay.
Tell me about your outfit.
I'll get there in a second because I spent a couple of years of COVID thinking, I just don't get it.
I'm a child of the mid-century.
You know, my dads and my uncles, everybody I knew went through the war.
My grandfather fought in World War I. I've made
a living when I should have been in jail, right, or homeless because I don't have any talents except
writing. And because I could do that, I made a living. I have a wonderful family because of
America, right? And I'm a Jew and I'm not getting killed because I live in America. And I saw the
§03Transcript · 14:03–19:35
country transform when I was a kid.. I used to go down south and there
were chain gangs and there were lynchings and there were separate. That's pretty gosh darn close.
And those people who were being treated that way, their great grandparents had been slaves.
And now we see that racism is in effect gone. There's certain prejudices of whites against
blacks. Well, duh, there's certain prejudices of blacks against whites.
But it's gone.
We see that gays who committed suicide or lived their life in terror or were blacklisted are now normalized.
These are wonderful things.
This is a magnificent country that we live in.
things. This is a magnificent country that we live in. And to see it go to shit in front of my eyes, where half the country said, you know what? No, I'm not ready to die yet. I'm not going to submit
to the death cult. I don't worship the sun. I don't think the sun is trying to kill us.
Why do you think it's a death cult? What are you saying?
Because...
What about it is death cult?
Well, look, if you say, as I've heard, perhaps you have, people say, you know, my kids don't want to have kids because we live in such a dreadful place.
I joke around about that on stage.
I'm like, yeah, why would you want to have kids today with all the books and medicine and shit?
Yeah, really.
It's so stupid.
The reason why people are here is because people had sex before they even had a language.
Yeah, and people say, well, wait a second. The seas are rising. The seas are rising. Although the seas are rising, I'm going
to buy a house in Martha's Vineyard. Right. And although we're poisoning the atmosphere with
carbon dioxide and inert gas, I'm going to fly in my private plane that burns 3,000, blah, blah,
fly in my private plane that brings 3,000, blah, blah, blah.
And you know what?
Also, there's no such thing as men and women.
I know people have overlooked this for a million years of human history, but now we know it's true.
So we have to teach our children this, right?
I don't think they're saying there's no such thing as men and women.
They're saying it's flexible and you can be whatever you want.
Well, yeah, except anybody who's ever been in the backseat of a Chevy knows it's not flexible, right?
You can behave in any way that you want, right?
But there are men and there are women saying, no, no, no, that's not a fact.
That's not a fact.
And you mustn't mention it.
Have you ever read any of Douglas Murray?
No.
Douglas Murray, who's a brilliant guy,
British intellectual, he said something that I've never forgot. I keep harping on it,
that at the end of every civilization, when a civilization starts to crumble,
they become obsessed with gender. They become obsessed with swapping gender,
acting out in different genders, like gender nonconformity. And he doesn't have an answer why, but it seems like when things – for whatever it
is, whatever cause of society collapsing, there's something where they become obsessed
with definitions and particularly gender definitions.
Well, yes, they become obsessed with definition. They also become obsessed with sex
because it offers experience, right? The problem is if you become sexy, you know, when I was a kid,
we used to joke about say, you know what? I bet you if we got an old guy, he could rent a post
office box. We could get Playboy, right? Now, Playboy, those Playboys, they look
like the shipping news, right? But the problem is you can just chase pornography so far, right?
We say, we'll show this, we'll show that, we'll do this, we'll do that. Everything's permitted.
And then people get bored. So what's happening in the younger generation in their 20s, they're
bored with sex. They don't want to have sex. They want to stay in their
rooms with porn. They don't want to get married. They don't want to have kids.
Really?
Yes. And Alan Bloom talked about this, the great Alan Bloom. In 1988, he wrote a book called,
I think it's called The Death of the American Mind. And he said that he saw at the University
of Chicago that there was no eros at the longing for the other, that the
kids weren't longing for the other.
They also weren't longing for the other in wisdom.
They weren't interested in wisdom.
What year was this?
When you were saying?
88.
Really?
The closing of the American mind.
God, I was a kid in 88.
We were definitely interested in sex.
Well, me too.
But, you know, maybe you're still going to.
I don't know if that's accurate.
I mean, that's a gross generalization that kids aren't.
I think kids are very interested in sex.
I think there's a whole host of problems with people getting interested in pornography.
And one of them is that they wear themselves out, beaten off all day.
Well, sure.
And then they don't have any energy for the opposite sex.
And also there's the thing that it's just so accessible.
You know, children are so impulsive.
Young kids are so impulsive.
You get a 20-year-old kid or an 18-year-old kid,
you give him a phone, he's going to watch porn on it.
They're not going to be able to help themselves,
especially if they never saw it before,
and now they have access to it
anytime they want on their iPad.
Well, so here's the thing about the problem with our society,
the problem with our country, the problem with the West is prosperity.
Because it's what survives prosperity, right?
What billionaire's kid works for a living?
Right.
Very few.
None of them.
Because none of them.
Doesn't Donald Trump Jr. work for a living?
Oh, yeah, he does.
Okay.
I'll give him a pass.
He comes from an extraordinary family.
You look at a person who's like, I know a lot of people give him shit, but when it comes to like billionaires' kids, he's about as good off as I've ever seen one.
Also, he's a wonderful speaker.
§04Transcript · 19:36–25:11
He's a good thinker and a wonderful speaker.
But what happens is this country is the wealthiest, the most prosperous, the safest until recently in human
history. And the question is, what are you going to do when the middle class is gone? There's nobody,
the merchants are gone, the farmers are gone, the bootmakers are gone. The middle class and
the industrialists and the people who, the agriculturists thought about the world every moment of the day.
If you owned a shoe store, right, and you were an independent contractor, you had to say, my God, what does this leather cost?
What can I sell it for?
What happens if I am late with my payment?
Is this a good enough grade?
Can I be nice to this person who's a son of a bitch?
Can I get them to pay a little bit more?
What is my rent cost?
What happens if it rains tomorrow?
These are the concerns of everybody in the middle class.
But when the middle class is gone, you've got people at the bottom of the food chain who are, you know, gang-raised on the streets because there's no alternative to them or very little, and people who are gang-raised in the elite schools. And
they're both taught there's no reason to work, that strife is error. That's what they're taught.
To have to strive for something is wrong. It should either be free or it should be easy,
but to pay for your school is wrong. Someone should pay for the school, right? To have to pay for that iPhone is wrong.
I should be able to go into the store and take it out, right? So if the middle class is not
around to say, wait a second, I'm in charge here, right? I pay the effing taxes. I'm in charge.
The cops are going to come take you to jail if you steal from the store. No, not anymore, right?
jail if you steal from the store. No, not anymore, right? And we're going to let your line die out if you're a billionaire and you're engaged in child pornography and money laundering,
you know, and bribing the President of the United States. We're going to send you to jail.
There's no rules anymore. It was the middle class that had to insist upon the rules,
because if they didn't have certainty, they couldn't live. They needed to insist upon the rules because if they didn't have certainty they couldn't live they needed to know what the results of their actions were going to
bring about right because if they didn't they couldn't order the leather they
couldn't sign a lease or they write they couldn't throw the robber out of the out
of the store so they were involved in human interaction every moment of every day. And
that's the history of America up until recently. So what went wrong?
Well, what went wrong is prosperity, right? That civilizations die like anything else dies.
Things which are organic means they're going to die. Say something is organic. It was given life
means it's going to mature and die. So the question is, what do you
do when it comes into a final stage? You got a tree, starts a little seed, blah, blah, blah,
becomes a tree. It gets taller and taller and taller. Eventually, as they say, goes to seed.
It gives all of this energy. It says, geez, I'm dying now. I'm going to put all my energy not into
making branches, but into making
seeds, because I got to make sure I can continue.
That's what you say when something's gone to seed.
The only thing you can do with that tree is prune it.
If you prune it, you can extend its life.
You can't extend its life forever, but you can extend its life.
So what the conservatives are saying now with the Trump phenomenon and the Tea Party is it's time to prune it. Yes, we're incredibly prosperous,
and yes, that has some downsides, but God put us here for a reason. This is a magnificent country.
Let's prune it, right? Let's prune the government. Let's go back to religion, and let's put
human behavior back in the hands of the individual rather than the state.
But how does that erase the problem of prosperity?
Because why does prosperity cause all the calamity
that we're seeing today, all the problems?
It's inevitable, just as,
I wanted to talk about this, right?
Okay.
Okay, so I'm about 75, okay?
You look great.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
You really do.
Jiu-jitsu.
Yeah, man, it's amazing.
It's working.
Ain't it?
You know, a lot of 75-year-olds are fucking falling apart.
You look great.
Yeah, my teacher said you should also compete in the seniors.
You know, as age 50, compete in the seniors.
Where's the honor in that, to whomp some 50-year-old?
No.
That's hilarious.
You as a 75 are looking at 50-year-olds like they're old men.
Yeah.
And so I moved out.
My wife says one day, my lovely wife, she says she wants to move from Boston to L.A.
So I said, yes, dear.
I said, oh, you got some more coffee?
Yeah, sure.
Thanks a lot.
So I move out to LA.
So thank you.
So I'm feeling okay on whatever I was.
I was like 55 years old, had a magnificent career as a playwright and a novelist and a movie maker and TV, blah, blah, blah.
Wonderful time.
Da, da, da.
I guess it's just time for me to learn how to play golf or something.
Because I kept saying, you know, I've been where I'm going.
I've been where I'm going.
It's fine.
It's fine.
It's fine.
It's a bunch of bullshit, right?
So anyway, I just done a movie with Eddie O'Neill.
Ed O'Neill.
You know Ed?
I love Ed.
Me too.
Married with children of, what do you call it?
Modern family.
Known him forever.
Black belt in Jiu Jitsu.
You bet.
And so, there I am, I was doing a movie with Ed in New York,
and he says, man, you gotta come out to LA,
§05Transcript · 25:13–31:12
if you do, I'm gonna introduce you to these guys,
the Gracies.
And he says, this guy, Ho-Yin Gracie,
and Ed is a big guy, he's like 6'3", big guy,
he had a walk on and a cup of coffee with the Steelers.
He's a tough son of a bitch.
He says, these guys, I've never seen anything like it.
Okay, so I move out to L.A.
The first day I'm at a restaurant, and there's Ed O'Neill.
I say, Ed, baby, how are you?
He says, hey, Dave, welcome, welcome, welcome.
A cup of coffee.
I said, you got to tell me about these jujitsu guys.
He says, oh, yeah, they're next door.
So he takes me next door, and it's an Otto Magno Street Sports.
And that's how I got into jiu-jitsu.
Okay, so I'm into jiu-jitsu, blah, blah, blah.
So as you know, it's a very close community because there's no nonsense, right?
You are what you are.
Yeah, can't fake it.
And it's a very close, a wonderful community.
So I did a favor for some guy. I can't remember what it was.
One of the guys, a lot of guys did favors for me.
And I admired his jacket as something.
He says, oh, you like that jacket?
Ta-da.
This is the second one.
He says it's this company called Langlitz.
It's in Portland, Oregon.
They make the same things in the garage.
Been there forever.
That's this...
That guy.
That you gave me.
Yeah.
He says they're the best jackets in the world.
He gives it to me, right?
It's a flight jacket.
So I think, irk, irk, irk, irk, irk.
Wearing a flight jacket, working a flight jacket.
And so later on, I'm having lunch with somebody else,
and he admires the jacket. I said, it's great. I said, but you know, I'm kind of a fashion
maven. I've been wearing jeans and t-shirt all my life, but you know, I kind of like,
I had a clothing company, and I do a lot of designs for movies. So I said, I feel kind of
queasy about it, because it's a flight jacket, but I don't know how to fly a plane. So he says, come on,
walks me across the street to the Santa Monica airport, introduces me to a guy. And 20 minutes
later, I'm flying a plane with this guy. Yeah, because that's, and I became a pilot.
So, so that's, but because that's the, that's the way that's a tradition in aviation someone says, you know
Hi, here. I am in a flight school. I kind of think I want to fly a plane
You expect them to say well, you know a plane but they don't they say come on and they stick in the airplane
They just want to grab you while you're curious. Yeah, no they because that's that's exactly so but that's all that's the answer
Right, the answer is going to be in the air. So what I realize I'm getting dressed is I thought I was dead.
I was 55 years old, a magnificent wife, lovely couple of bucks, blah, blah, blah.
I discovered these two things that changed my life.
So you were kind of ready to wind it down, and instead you found these two fascinating new interests.
Yeah.
So that's what I think about prosperity, right? That there are
fascinating new interests. We don't have to be dead. We can find fascinating new interests,
fascinating new people like Barry Weiss, right? He's starting a university here in Austin.
Yeah. And I'm playing along with her. There are wonderful things that we can do
rather than saying, you know what? I guess we as a country, we're
going to sit down and we're going to play golf till we die.
Why do you think, though, I still, I'm curious myself, I'm asking you this because I'm trying
to figure it out myself as well.
What is it about prosperity?
Is it just as simply as like we're spoiled, like spoiled kids, the kids of rich people,
like billionaire sons tend to be spoiled and not have good character?
No.
What about prosperity is ruining this country?
It's not that it's ruining the country.
It's that the country is organic.
You can't say of somebody who is 80, why is he behaving like that? Whatever kind of life he had, energy drains.
Energy which is used, it's like gasoline.
Any energy that's used on A cannot be used on B, right?
Or Alexander the Great died when he was 33, right?
Energy that's used at this point in your life is probably going to be decreased at that
point in your life.
So what you learn as you get older is you have to conserve energy. So the old thing is you should never try
any new business practices after you're 60. Because the stuff that I did when I was 20,
25, I can't do anymore. I have a certain amount, I hope, of increased wisdom and knowledge,
but I have a decreased fund of energy. So the question is, what are you going
to spend the energy on? So when we come to a point that has never been experienced in human history
of magnificent prosperity, freedom, freedom from want, what do we see? That for the first time in
human history, rather than worrying about how am I going to get enough calories to keep from dying,
time in human history, rather than worrying about how am I going to get enough calories to keep from dying, they worry about how can I lose weight, right? Rather than saying, thank God, you know,
we became the power, the world power, the greatest power the world's ever known in the 20th century.
But wait a second, here we still are. What do we do now? Huh? What about the Vietnam War? Let's
fight that. That's a good idea. Although we said from the first, there's no particular end to it and we can't win it.
Now we've got into it.
How do we get out of it?
So the problem about prosperity is one of them is you make choices.
And then you have such an infrastructure, you can't correct them.
Right?
That gets us into the Vietnam War.
You make choices.
Right? That gets us into the Vietnam War. You make choices. Let's have a representative government. And it's so powerful that they, of course, are going to take on themselves the responsibility of running your life. They say Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, right?
So here I am.
I'm not very good at anything, but I can smile and kiss babies.
Oh, guess what?
I can have all the sex I want and I can go on TV and I can gain power and I can raise money to gain power and gain power to raise money.
§06Transcript · 31:21–38:34
What else can I do?
I can trade favors with that guy over there. He wants to build
a bridge in Alabama. I know it's a bunch of bullshit, but I want to build a courthouse
in Louisiana. So we'll trade favors, right? And so the government becomes so powerful.
They say, well, let's have an income tax. Okay. 1%. Good. 2%. Good. Now you live in California,
Okay, 1%, good.
2%, good.
Now, you live in California, 60% of your income doesn't make any sense, right?
The government is in charge of your pocketbook.
They're in charge of everything.
But it got that way because of prosperity.
So the Asians, some of the Asian sects, they say that a successful man, when he turns 50, 60 years old, he says, okay, good.
I'm going to become a monk now.
Right? It makes some sense. The question is, how do you correct for the accelerated decay of age? Because people will decay in age. All human endeavor decays with age. Where's ancient Greece? Where's Rome? Great Britain was the
greatest power in the history of the world in August of 1914. Where were they four years later?
That's inevitable. So what the conservatives are saying is, we don't know, but we got a good guide.
conservatives are saying is we don't know, but we got a good guide. That guide is called the Constitution. Let's go back to this simple 20-page document about how the country should
be read and let's stick to it because that's all that got us here. Let's not say it's a
living Constitution.
I'm still confused how this idea of prosperity affects the left more than it affects the right it affects
everyone it affects everyone but like why is it that you you seem to be concentrating on the the
left is responsible for this sort of decay that we're in no no good prosperity isn't responsible
for it the left is more susceptible.
Like, what are you saying?
It occurred to me, because I spent this, you know, I wrote this book.
I spent a couple years writing these essays.
I said, I don't understand.
I was asking myself the same questions you're asking me.
How did we get here?
Why, why, why?
And I look at all these people in office.
You know, we call them politicians.
And most of them are thugs and whores and thieves and fools and blah, blah, blah. He said that, not me. Well, I said that. Well, you know, it's true.
There are some exceptions, but I thought, well, wait a second, who would have thought that those were going to be the politicians? Well, everybody who wrote the Constitution thought that. Right.
Everybody who ever read the Bible thought that, because that's what happens when people have
power. So I thought, but wait's what happens when people have power.
So I thought, but wait a second.
These people, you know, these people in high office, is it possible that they had the power to warp a civilization so that we dealt with prosperity through fear?
Because that's what we see around us all the time.
It's called anger, the anger of the left.
It's not anger. It's really fear, the anger of the left. It's not anger,
it's really fear. Why would these people are idiots, right? I'm not going to mention any names,
but you people can fill in your own. They're idiots who say that we have to get out of
Afghanistan and leave everything there, or we have to give Iran the nuclear bomb,
or that we have to stop digging for oil, though we're going to import
oil, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They're fools. What happened was not that they caused
the decay of the civilization. What happened was that the civilization went through a transition,
and they came out of the woodwork. They came out of the woodwork, how so?
They came out of the woodwork household. Well, look at this.
Anybody ever meet any good teachers?
Maybe a couple, right?
But we remember lovingly that one good teacher that we might have met.
But we remember with shame and hatred the teacher who abused us, humiliated us, who dissed us, who called us stupid.
We remember those all our lives.
We always have that dream.
Every human, American anyway, has that dream about,
I forgot to do my homework.
What shall I do?
I have to kill myself, right?
Teachers down through history, at least through Western history,
have, they're kind of a lower middle class.
They don't have very high skills.
And Milton Friedman said if you took the same skills that a teacher has in a public school into the workplace,
he might make 55% of what he makes.
And they're treated as if, they were treated as if they were good and powerful
and hardworking. Well, maybe a few are, but they aren't any better or worse than you and me.
But they're kind of at the bottom of the food chain socially, kind of hanging on,
always hanging on to the- Public school teachers.
Exactly. And as I say, some of them have been magnificent and some haven't.
So these people have something, they discovered something very powerful.
And what they discovered was fascism, meaning the group, right?
So they say, well, wait a second, I myself am nothing.
I got to smile at Mr.
and Mrs. Smith over there and tell her how good Johnny's doing. But I don't give a shit about
that kid. And I got my own problems. Leave me alone. They form a union. The union becomes one
of the biggest, maybe the biggest donor to the Democratic Party. So all of a sudden, they're in
charge of a large extent of the Democratic Party. Party because the Democrats, you know, being human beings, want to stay in power and want to be rich.
Okay.
So they say, well, let me kiss the ass of the teachers' union.
How can I do that?
Hmm, say the teachers' union.
You know what?
I'm tired of being powerless.
I'd like to be powerful.
I'm going to say that white people are no good.
And that's what we're going to teach. And I'm going to say that white people are no good. And that's what we're going to teach.
And I'm going to call it critical race theory. Happened to me. Sonny went to school.
Yeah, that's a good idea. This person at B says, you know what? I got a great idea.
Kids love talking about sex. I'm going to say that there's no such thing as
men or women. And I'm going to say that there's no such thing as men or women, and I'm going to start
teaching kindergartners there.
Right, but this is not like how they decided to do it.
Like the idea behind critical race theory, I believe, was that they thought that there
was a lack of either appreciation or education about the history of the United States, particularly
the history of racism and slavery and Jim Crow laws and segregation and redlining
and all these different aspects that have led to this disproportionate number of African-Americans
in prison and in these crime-ridden, gang-ridden neighborhoods
and trying to come up with some sort of educational method of explaining some
of the holes in our history that haven't been discussed. The problem that rational people have
about it is that with any concept, sometimes it starts with good intentions and then along the way
§07Transcript · 38:41–44:29
you have bad actors who get involved and they use it for their own gain.
And they use a movement of real concern, a thing that has a genuine origin and fact and history.
And then they start using it.
The worst term I've heard is you're a race hustler.
worst term I've heard is like you're a race hustler. And there's a lot of people that elevate their careers by taking these ideas of critical race theory and then they get hired by universities
or hired by corporations to give speeches and they want to make an exorbitant amounts of money.
And they keep making more and more inflammatory statements and the more outrageous these statements get
and they put them on Twitter and they write blogs and articles and op-eds and these outrageous
statements get a lot of heat behind them and then they get more and more calls for these speaking
gigs and they wind up making a lot of money and they make the discourse extremely toxic.
So instead of having conversations about the history of it, then it starts being all people
are racist.
Yeah.
All people have biases and black people can't be racist because they don't have power and
racism is only a thing that white people can, which is ridiculous, right?
Well, yes, but that is power.
This is where it comes from.
Right, of course.
But this is where it comes from.
Yes, but there is power. This is where it comes from.
Right, of course.
But this is where it comes from.
It comes from people taking an idea that has some merit and you take it to a point where people are either exaggerating or changing that idea to suit their own purposes as a speaker and as a person who reflects these ideas.
Yeah, I got no problem with that.
They're a bunch of thugs.
But, you know, there's thugs on both sides of the aisle,
and we'd all like to make money.
My point is that it doesn't have a place in the schools,
that the schools should just...
I got a friend of mine, she's a black woman,
and she took her kids out of school,
eventually had to go to Catholic school
because she went to school and she was objecting
to what they were teaching.
What were they teaching?
Well, what they were teaching was that black people are oppressed and that black people
have always been oppressed. And she said, wait a second. She said, who are you, some 22-year-old
jumped up white girl, to be telling me about racism? She says, if there's anything that I
want my children to know about race,
I'll tell them.
So that's what I'm objecting to.
I mean, did you ever go to parents' night at your school?
I've been to parents' night before, yeah.
Yeah.
What a bunch of nonsense.
You know, the kids were out of school for two years in California,
and I was saying to my wife, what's the shame?
She said, no, it's a good idea.
They get two years less of indoctrination.
Maybe they learned something.
Well, you know, when the whole George Floyd thing happened,
one of the schools that my kids were going to back in California
released this email saying that it's not enough to not be racist.
You now must be anti-racist.
And my kid's nine at the time.
Yeah.
What does that mean?
What does it mean?
It doesn't mean anything.
I'm like, these kids are not even remotely racist.
Like, they have all sorts of different kinds of friends.
I've never heard them discuss it once.
It's just I like this person and she's nice to me and we like to play together and we both like the same things.
So to tell a nine-year-old that you have to be anti-racist, well, then they're going to look in for racism.
They're going to look in to confront it.
But I don't know if it's power.
It's an ideology to confront it. But I don't know if it's power. It's an ideology that captures people.
And I think the roots of it, in their mind, is good.
That is, you're going to stomp out racism.
But it's this naive person who's an educator who's, you know, I mean, I don't want to disparage anybody, but they weren't that good at what they were doing in the first place.
That's right.
They weren't that good at teaching in the first place.
And now here they are saying they're going to tackle something, not just tackle something
as complex as race in America, but you're going to establish rules that you can't just
be not racist.
You have to be anti-racist.
And you're going to teach this to a nine-year-old.
It's like, what are you saying?
Like, what exactly are you saying?
What is your fucking end goal?
If you want to say all human beings are created equal in the eyes of love and the Lord and
God and heavens and the universe, and really the differences are about climate, where people evolved,
and then the differences are social, what communities they come from
and what part of the world they come from and what their ancestors encountered
and what their relatives, their mom and dad encountered
and what they've encountered in life.
And that human beings are vast resources and reservoirs of potential all of us and
that brilliant people can be Asian and black and white and all kinds of things
and that racism is stupid if you want to teach that I'm all with you but if you
want to tell my nine-year-old they have to be anti-racist what doesn't mean
anything what does it mean yeah what does that mean so they have to go find racism
and confront it well the problem is this is the thing about censorship.
This is what I was saying when people were calling for censorship.
There were some people that celebrated certain people getting removed from Twitter.
Like in the early days, it was like Milo Yiannopoulos.
Then it was Alex Jones.
And I was like, hey, man, if you don't want to see where this is going,
do you understand that once they start censoring people for what they believe
is something that's objectionable, that obviously the person who said it doesn't think it's
objectionable, it's going to keep going further and further and they're going to keep moving the
§08Transcript · 44:33–49:28
goalposts. And then eventually it's going to come to you and you're not going to be left enough.
And you might be a really left-wing Democrat like Bill Maher. They're coming for Bill Maher
all the time now. Yeah, or Sarah Silverman. Sarah Silverman.
Or Sarah turned around and said, wait, wait, wait.
It's my own party.
It's my own party.
It doesn't matter.
Good morning.
It doesn't matter.
You are on the censorship train.
And there's only so many stops before it gets to your fucking house.
And that's how I feel about all this stuff.
If you want to say that human beings should be able to express themselves and we need to do it in a way that doesn't harass people or dox people or threaten people, but we have to be able to express ourselves because it's the only way we sort out what's right and what's wrong.
I'm with you.
But as soon as you start saying, I want to only hear thoughts that I agree with. Well, that's not discourse. That's propaganda. You want only your side to be represented, which is crazy. And that's what's
happening on social media. That's what's happening in Twitter. That's what's happening in all these
things. And that's the same with everything. That's the same with whether it's anti-racism,
that's the same with corporate greed and anti-capitalism. That's the same with everything. That's the same with whether it's anti-racism, that's the same with corporate greed and anti-capitalism, that's the same with when people start going
after stuff, like when people start deciding that this thing that we've always accepted
for so long is no longer acceptable and now we have to attack it and we have to attack
it by the parameters that I believe are just and right. You go, oh, Jesus Christ.
Well, it's terrorism because terrorism, the way terrorism works is not if you do A, I'm
going to punish you.
The way terrorism works is figure out what you want to do and I'll figure out if I want
to punish you.
Right.
You might say, wait a second, I thought that was permitted.
Uh-uh-uh.
So now you're not going to fucking say anything.
That's what we're looking at now.
There's a suit in Texas, maybe you're aware
of it, that Texas passed a law
that said
the social media carriers cannot
censor conservative voices.
Can't censor for content. Yeah, but I
don't think that works. Of course it doesn't.
They don't really have any teeth
to that.
They would maybe if Twitter was centrally located in Texas.
I thought it was Florida, by the way.
No, it's Texas.
I'll tell you why I know.
That the social media guys got together and formed a consortium of liars and sued the state of Texas to overturn the law.
Doesn't Ron DeSantis institute some sort of a similar?
Yes, he did. But this,
I'll tell you why I know it's here, because the guy who's in charge of the defending the law asked me to write a brief, a little amicus brief about free speech. So that's what I realized
about myself, is the reason I'm not dead or in a mental institution or in a joint is because of free speech.
Because I came up in a time when it was just assumed that if you could write, you could put your play on in a garage.
Maybe they'd come.
Maybe they didn't.
But if they did, maybe you'd put your play in a little theater.
And if they liked it, maybe you could put your play on on Broadway.
And then you could buy a car and get married.
So that's – right?
Because that's in some order. But that's, so that's the United States of America, and people died for this right forever.
And talking about racism, I'm very good friends with Shelby Steele, right? Shelby wrote
notably White Guilt, where he says black power and white guilt are the same thing.
And I was talking- How is that? How is black power and white guilt the same thing?
He says the only black power, he said in the book,
everybody should read this book,
he's a genius, a black guy, a genius writer.
Sorry, what's the book called again?
It's called White Guilt.
Okay, that's the name of the book?
Yeah, that black power comes from white people.
It's from race hustlers.
People say, you should be guilty, you should be guilty.
And so I was talking to, wait,
let me finish for one second.
I was talking to Shelby about racism.
I say, what about racism, Shelby?
He says, find it.
I said, what do you mean?
He says, point to it.
I say, uh.
He says, exactly.
Well, it certainly exists, right?
Where?
Well, how about in police enforcement?
How many more black people are
pulled over for and harassed for whatever crime or whatever traffic violations versus white people?
The way they describe their experience seems very different than the way a lot of white people
describe their experience. Well, that may be true. But on the other hand, what the population has
and what the like officer, what's his name?
Who does the, what's his name?
He's a great guy.
He does, I've forgotten his name.
He's a black guy, a cop,
who does this wonderful podcast.
And he says- Is it a podcaster?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Officer, police officer?
Yeah.
And he said, listen, he said,
you ever been pulled over by the cops
when you were right and they were wrong?
Yes, I have been.
It's no fun, right?
I get it.
§09Transcript · 49:29–53:19
But what he said is, your correct answer is, of course, yes sir, no sir, yes sir, and then
sue their ass back to the beginning of time.
Well, fortunately, in my case, the cop came around because he had a video camera.
But it was kind of interesting because there was a guy who was driving like a maniac, and he was cutting in and out of lanes.
And I don't think he saw me, and he was in a big pickup truck, and I was in a Tesla.
And he pulled into my lane, and I had to swerve almost into incoming traffic to avoid him slamming into the side of my car.
almost into incoming traffic to avoid him slamming into the side of my car.
And then because I was at a Tesla, because it's so fast, I just shot around in front of him.
And the moment I did that, I saw blue lights.
And so the cop did a U-turn.
The cop was coming directly towards me, saw me do that, did a U-turn, pulled me over,
was insisting I was drunk.
And I was coming from jujitsu.
I was not even remotely. I had nothing to drink at all.
I was like, I'm not drunk, man.
He goes, why were you in the opposite lane?
I goes, try not to get hit.
I go, that guy, so he had to go over his camera on his car and he saw it.
And he's like, okay, you're right.
And then he let me go.
But we had to have this sort of conversation where he was insisting he could smell alcohol on me.
I go, I haven't had anything to drink in a week.
Like, this is not real.
Like, you're saying this.
This is not true.
I can't believe we're having this fucking conversation.
Well, look, the cops have a lot of power.
The cops have always been rude men and women because we need them there.
Do the cops misuse power?
Yeah.
Do they misuse power now and then?
Yeah.
Is it getting better?
Yeah, it's getting better for a lot of reasons.
One is it's getting better.
Accountability.
Exactly so.
And video cameras.
Body cameras, yeah.
And so forth.
But the answer is not to do away with the police.
Of course.
Which is what we see in these big cities.
The people are out of their fucking minds. Well, it's just a simplistic solution to a complex problem.
And the problem needs to be addressed in terms of training,
respect for police officers as well.
You know, this is a very difficult job that we need.
And if you don't think we need it, wait till something happens and you need to call a cop
because there's a lot of fucking people that are like, you know, get rid of the police,
get rid of the police.
And then the shit hits the fan and they need cops and then they complain about it.
They complain about the fact that the cops aren't helping them.
Well, I live in this wonderful neighborhood on the west side of LA and we had a shootout
outside my house in the middle of the night, bang, bang, bang.
A shootout?
Yes, sir.
We sure did.
Oh, I'll tell you a good cop story.
So a friend of mine, he's a retired FBI and before that he was a Chicago cop.
And his son went down to the force.
I think it was in Beverly Hills.
Son's full on the force.
And he gets a call.
He's rolling on this call.
There's a student who's lost his mind.
He's beating up a teacher in the schoolyard.
So vroom, vroom, vroom, there they go. Come into the schoolyard. The assistant
principal runs out of the cops.
Wait, wait, wait. I need to see your
vaccination card.
Really? Yes.
While the guy's
getting the shit beat out of him?
By a kid? Wait, so it gets better.
So the kid, the cop,
says,
this dad is fucking crazy.
He goes out to lunch with his partner.
They're sitting down having a cup of coffee.
And the waitress comes over and says, I need to see your vaccination card.
So the cop says, okay, I've had enough today, yes.
He takes out his vaccination card.
Waitress says, and I need to see your ID.
Guy says, miss, I'm a Beverly Hills police officer
this is my badge number
this is my
you know who I am
I need to see your ID
so he goes home
and he says
screw it
I quit
and he moved down
to become a cop
that's it
one lady asked for his vax card
and he quits
no no he said
we don't need those cops
that guy's a pussy
§10Transcript · 53:20–56:28
no
well
if that's all it takes
hey pussies
imagine you're involved in shootouts violence all the crazy shit you see in car accidents.
But some lady, while you're getting a cup of coffee, asks for your Vax card too much.
Pussies got to live too, right?
Yeah, sure.
Just shouldn't be a cop.
Oh, so wait a second.
So here's another story from my.
Not that I'm on that lady's side at all, but it's not even her fault.
It's like the man.
Yeah, you're right.
So you are right. So anyway. but it's not even her fault. It's like the man does. Yeah, you're right. You are right.
She's trying to keep her job.
So I got a friend who's a retired pilot, and his son is an operative airline pilot.
He flies for one of the big carriers.
And the son wrote an article for Aviation Magazine.
He says he's going through security to get on his plane to the crew only.
And they say, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, excuse me, sir, gonna have to look at your bag.
They open his bag.
They say, what's this?
He says, it's a nail clipper.
They say, I'm sorry, sir, you can't take it on the plane.
He says, well, okay, why?
She says, because you might use it
to take control of the aircraft.
A nail clipper?
He's the pilot.
He's the fucking pilot.
And they say, you might, he said, ma'am, it's my job to
take control of the aircraft.
That's real? This is a real conversation?
Look it up. It's in, I think, Flying
Magazine. Then he says, wait a second,
wait a second, wait a second. He says, ma'am,
I'm armed.
I have a pistol right here. I have a federal
permit. I have a blabber, every
blabber. I'm carrying a gun on the plane, and you want to take my nail clipper?
I'm sorry.
She says, what can I do?
So, okay.
It's modern life.
That's a real story?
So they kept the nail clipper, and he kept his gun.
Yeah.
And everything's fine.
Yeah.
Pretty cute, huh?
It's adorable. I mean, that's what happens's fine. Yeah. Pretty cute, huh? It's adorable.
I mean, that's what happens
when you have to blindly follow rules, right?
So back to this prosperity thing.
So what about prosperity is fucking us up?
Well, let me ask you a question.
When you were a kid, right, walking down the street,
if you saw a nickel, would you pick it up?
Yes.
Would you do it now?
No, but I'm rich. nickel, would you pick it up? Yes. Would you do it now? No, but I'm rich.
Exactly.
I might.
I might pick it up.
I doubt it.
Nickel?
I might.
Probably not.
But I mean, I might because I feel like, I don't know.
If it was a dollar, I'd pick up a dollar.
Yeah, I would too.
But you know, it's not worth anything anymore.
A dollar? You could use it for waste paper. You could pick up a dollar. Yeah, I would too. But, you know, it's not worth anything anymore.
A dollar?
You could use it for waste paper.
You could send a letter.
You could, yeah, except the post office ain't delivering them anymore.
They're not?
What do they do with them?
I don't know.
They deliver it in mail.
Well, they don't deliver it in my mail because I'll tell you why.
It's because I write with a fountain pen, right?
So I always wrote with a fountain pen.
Do you really?
Yes. Like a feather?
No, it's not quite a feather, but I've done that too.
So I have this wonderful stationery I bought years ago.
I love writing stationery.
And the post office for a year has been kicking it back, saying to address the unknown address.
And I print it out.
It's the machines can't read handwriting anymore.
Really?
At least in my post office.
I get mail all the time from people where they write it on the letter.
Oh, okay.
Well, maybe it's just my post office.
You got a fucked up post office.
That might be a California thing.
§11Transcript · 56:31–59:54
Really?
Are you saying that California's fucked up?
It's fucked up.
Yeah.
That's why I moved.
Okay.
So look, talk about-
Prosperity.
Prosperity.
Okay.
So you make a couple of bucks.
Right.
Right.
You say, your wife, you say, wife, honey, you don't have to clean up anymore, and I'm not going to.
So let's get a housekeeper.
So you get a housekeeper.
You get richer.
Right.
You say, oh, I'm going to need two housekeepers.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
We have some kids.
Oops.
Got richer.
Nanny for the kids.
Boom.
Oops.
You know what?
Love having the nanny.
Weekend nanny.
Boom.
Oops.
Now we need a household manager because we got so rich we need a household manager and we need a gardener.
Oops, now we need a security team.
Sounds like you got business going on.
Dude.
So we're doing very well.
So now, oops, now we need a financial manager.
Oops, now we need a – and on and on we go until they're living your life for you and you're in this little pinnacle, right?
You don't go out of the house.
When's the last time you filled up your – this is not bad.
This is the way human beings –
When's the last time what?
You filled up your – mowed your lawn, filled up your car, filled out your own income tax, et cetera, cleaned up your front yard.
But isn't the idea of prosperity that you don't do all those things
so you can do the things you enjoy?
Exactly so.
Get somebody else to do all those things?
Of course. Why not?
But you're doing the things that you enjoy,
but you're less and less involved
with the day-to-day life of your community.
In my community, for example,
even before COVID,
if you said good morning to your neighbors,
they called the cops.
Nobody talked to each other.
You should move to Texas. My neighbors are super friendly. I would love to move to Texas good morning to your neighbors, they called the cops. Nobody talked to each other. You should move to Texas.
My neighbors are super friendly.
I would love to move.
Talk to your wife.
Yeah, you talk to my wife.
I'll get your wife to talk to my wife.
Please, I'll put her on a thing.
They're so friendly out here.
It changed my idea of what neighbors are.
It really did.
Oh, it's marvelous.
People are so friendly out here.
It's like I have friends that came out here and they initially thought that they were being put on.
Like, come on.
These people aren't real.
They're not really that nice.
Like everywhere.
At fucking grocery stores.
At drugstores.
Like everywhere you go.
People are friendly.
Yeah.
It's different.
I much prefer high on what's yours to put your mask on. Well, they tell you to put
your mask on too. They were for a while, but that was just mandates. That was just city wines.
You're so easygoing. I'm an easygoing guy. Yeah. Golly gumdrops. I came here right from the gym
too. I'm relaxed. That'll do it. Well, I'm a hothead, which I'd be the second to tell you
my wife would be the first. Oh, I'm the only guy who ever got barred from Williams-Sonoma.
Did you really? How do you get barred from that place?
I'll tell you.
It's filled with jam and nice kitchenware.
It's so wonderful. So I park at Williams-Sonoma, and I come in through the back door, the parking lot.
And this woman says, excuse me, sir, did you not see that sign that says this is not an
entrance? It's an exit. You came in through the wrong side. I said, it's okay. I'm an illegal
immigrant. She says, I find that very, very offensive comment. Would you please leave?
So because you joked around and said, it's okay, I'm an illegal immigrant, she wanted you to leave?
Yeah.
And she's just an employee there?
Yeah.
But all the other people were over there and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They all were saying you got to leave?
No, they were all nodding, nodding like the little dog in the back of the station wagon.
§12Transcript · 59:58–1:05:11
But I thought, well, A, it's a joke.
And B, the reason I think it's funny is it's true, right?
We're sending up something that we're all concerned about.
But when you can't send up something that you're all concerned about, what are you joking about?
Where's the humor anymore?
The only funny thing anybody said for two years was Chris Rock.
He says, I'm glad I didn't insult Alec Baldwin's wife, right?
Where was the humor of the last two years?
Everybody's afraid to joke,
because humor's all about repression.
Well that sounds like, the William Sonoma thing
sounds like you just caught the wrong person
at the wrong time, and you had the wrong joke,
and she didn't like it.
But it's a good story.
It's a decent story.
A decent story, you're right.
I'm not gonna repeat it.
Okay.
It's not so good that I'll be telling my friends,
you're not gonna, David Mamet was on my podcast, let me tell you his story. Yeah, really. It's not so good that I'll be telling my friends, you're not going to, David Mamet was on my podcast.
Let me tell you his story.
Yeah, really.
It's not that.
You're right.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
They kicked you out of Williamson.
Did they bar you?
Did you try to come back the next day with a different outfit?
No, but I kind of barred myself.
I didn't want to go back there and take it again.
So she's just upset that you came in the wrong door?
No.
That was it?
She was upset.
She said she found the comment deeply offensive.
That you're an illegal immigrant? Yeah. That subject is so strange.
It's such a strange subject because some people think it should be okay to be an illegal immigrant.
I'm like, well, you know, this country's founded on immigration.
You know, my grandparents were immigrants. My entire family line came from Europe. My grandparents came from
Italy and one of my grandfathers came from Ireland. Yeah. My grandparents are immigrants
too. No one came from America. I am third generation. So it's the whole idea of immigration
is like, of course, immigration is great. It's what America is all about. But there's rules.
Then the question becomes, is it fair? Are the rules fair? And I don't know if they are. I don't know. I mean,
it seems pretty fucking hard if you're from Mexico to get into America legally.
Like it seems hard. It seems difficult. Well, let me ask a question. Fair to whom?
Well, fair to the people that are trying to get in in comparison to the people that are already
here. Like if you talk to my grandparents, they're dead now.
But if you talk to them while they're alive and ask them how hard was it to get into America, all they had to do was show up.
They showed up.
They wrote their names down.
A lot of times they changed their names, like a lot of Italian names that were too hard to pronounce.
They changed them.
And they were in.
And then they founded this country.
It's one of the then they founded this country.
It's one of the things that made this country so fantastic,
that you have a legitimate melting pot in the 20th century with all these people coming from all over the world
trying to seek a better life and risk-takers, right?
People that are willing to try out a new continent,
get on a boat with their family.
And when my grandfather came over here, he was a young boy.
And to be able to do that and to establish the lineage that he has left behind in this country, it's pretty fucking cool.
It's the coolest country in that regard is that we're all immigrants.
Everybody here.
There's no like, you know, if you go to China, generally speaking, Chinese people look Chinese.
You know, that's just, Chinese people look Chinese. They, you know, that's, that's just,
they're, they're from China. There's, you're dealing with thousands of years of genetics and the same people living in the same area and a billion of them now. And America's everybody,
America's people from Africa, from Ireland, Scotland and Mexico. And, but it's fucking
hard to get in now. If you're a poor person from another country
that wants a better life.
You have to show that you have something
that we don't have here.
You have to show that you have some sort of a special skill.
Not if you're coming through the southern border.
Right.
But even then, it's still illegal.
How does that make sense then?
It doesn't make sense.
But what is that?
What is what? What is what?
What is that, that allowing people to come in through the southern border?
Do you think that what's going on, and this is the argument that I've heard, is two things are happening. One, like in New York City, the mayor, I believe Eric Adams said that he believes that illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote, which is fascinating. It's a fascinating
thing to say, because as soon as you say that, and then you're also letting people in, they know
that the people that are allowing them to vote are people in the Democratic Party. So you're
basically allowing people to come in, because those are the people that are interested in
allowing people to come in illegally, right? Those are the ones that don't fight it.
And then once they're in, you want them to be able to vote.
So you're essentially saying, hey, we got you in, you know who to vote for, because
we're the people that let you in.
And you've got a built-in, like, you've got a, it's a beautiful thing in their eyes, because
you've got this built-in voter base now, and you're allowing them to come in. Duh, right? Duh. So, you know, anybody says that the borders should be open, try coming
and flying from Heathrow to JFK and walking in. You can't do it. So the question is, why do the
Democrats want the illegal immigrants? It's because they're harvesting votes. Why do they want
everybody on welfare? Because they're buying votes. This doesn't mean that they're more evil
than the rest of us, although they are.
It means, you know, I grew up in Mayor Daley's
south side of Chicago.
It was all about buying votes,
§13Transcript · 1:05:13–1:11:55
keeping the people in their place,
and if you want a job, turn out the vote.
And if you want, you want to stay on the police force,
kick back two weeks of your pay, and shut the fuck up.
Right, but you don't think Democrats want everybody to be on welfare, right?
I think that the Democratic Party wants everybody to be on welfare. The Democratic Party has gotten
so far away, not only from its liberal base, but from its liberal constituents.
What do you base that on, though, that statement that they want everybody to be on welfare?
Because the people on welfare are the people who vote for the Democratic Party.
Because somebody said a long time ago, they said that democracy dies when the people realize they
can vote for the government to give them money. So if the people can vote for the government to
give them money, they're going to do so. So the question is, who is paying for the welfare? It's
not the Democratic Party. It's the
taxpayers. Do you believe in any sort of a social safety net? Of course I do. So you believe in
welfare? No. Well, no, no, no, no. Well, no, wait a second. I believe in some sort of a social.
Listen, Social Security started out as an interim program to deal with the elderly who didn't have any savings during the Depression.
So now we have all of this money paid into Social Security.
It's not there anymore.
It's all been spent.
So the only way the Social Security can function is to indenture the future.
Unemployment insurance existed at the beginning to help somebody who lost their job in the period before they got the next job.
So now it exists to keep somebody on unemployment insurance for two years so they don't work.
You know, if I was a kid and that's all that I knew, I'd do it too. You know, the aid to dependent children started to help mothers who didn't have babies,
didn't have a wage earner around, that they were young, they were single mothers,
they didn't have a wage earner around. So then it became evident, two things, that the more
children you had out of wedlock, with no man in the house, the more money you got.
And the only way you could keep on getting that money was if the man was out of the house.
So the men left.
Now, this is not specific to the black community, but it's endemic.
It's the same thing happened to the Jewish community.
When my grandparents' generation came over in the 20s.
About a third of the men just left, including my grandfather.
He just couldn't take it anymore.
They couldn't take the shock of immigration and the new language.
They just left.
And so my dad was raised by a single mom in the Depression.
That's not a good way to—he did very well, but it's not a good way to bring up kids.
So when you got no men in the house and women having a lot of babies because they get more money, you know. But do you think they're having babies because they get more money? Really? Do
you really think that people like maybe want, well, what percentage of people are actually
having babies just to get more money? I don't know. What percentage of people are just making
poor choices? I don't know. That percentage of people are just making poor choices?
I don't know.
That's a very good question.
And the thing is, the idea is, I think, that first of all, for the children in particular, it's not their fault.
Of course it's not their fault.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
If there's no father in the house and if there's no community in the house, what are the especially
young men are going to do? They're going to seek out a community, right? Right. no father in the house and if there's no community in the house, what are the, especially young
men are going to do? They're going to seek out a community, right? It's called a gang.
Of course they are. I would and you would too. If that's the only thing that they know.
Sure. Yeah. It's the only thing that gives you a sense of community.
Okay. So now you look around and you say, well, wait a second, the inner cities, there
seems to be more crime. Well, there is more crime because there's more gangs, right?
It's not that the people are depraved.
That's not racism to say so.
It's true.
It's unfortunate, but it's true.
So what's one way that you turn it around is you let the people in the inner cities choose their own schools because the teachers union has always sent the worst teachers to the black neighborhoods, always. And they're still doing it, right? So if the school has the worst
teachers in the world and they're teaching the young kids, you know, you've been put upon and
you're a victim, you're perpetuating the death of the inner cities. When Trump comes along and says,
you know what, let's stop that.
Let's have school choice.
Parents should be able to pick where their kids go to school.
And let's incentivize people to put industry in the inner cities and give everybody a job.
So the parents, the Democrats say, no, no, terrible idea.
That's racist.
How dare you say that?
No, no, no.
Parents shouldn't be able to pick where to put their
children to school. What if the parents make the wrong choice? But if the parents can't make that
choice, the kids are going to be raised on the street to a largest extent. Not that they can't
get out, but it's going to be very, very difficult for them to get out. So I'm still confused about
your position on welfare. So do you think that welfare should exist?
Should people have welfare?
Well, I don't know.
Here's the thing.
Rich kids are all on welfare.
College is basically welfare.
How so?
Well, they say to the kid, I tell you what, I'm going to spend $70,000, $80,000 a year.
You go to this elite university and what are you going to learn there?
I don't know.
Study film.
Study diversity. Study some soft thing. Have a good time. elite university and what are you going to learn there? I don't know, study film, study diversity,
study some soft thing, have a good time, right? So the kid gets through there and he doesn't want,
now the only society he knows are those society of the well-to-do liberal kids.
What's he going to do? Is he going to join the military? No. Is he going to join the Forest Service? No. Is he going to become a cop, a fireman? No. Is he going to become
a plumber? No. Is he going to become increasingly a doctor or a lawyer? No. Because he's raised
in this idea that work is a mistake, that property is theft, and that strife is error, right?
Because he's never been tested.
He grew up in these elite schools, whether the public schools in an elite area or the private schools,
and they filled his head with trash.
He can't leave that society because—
The society of universities.
Yes.
So you're talking about someone who gets a
degree and then winds up becoming a teacher and lives in the same sort of insulated bubble.
Exactly. So or he goes on and he gets another degree in another degree. So for him to undertake
an alternative view. It's an he can't undertake an alternative view because that means to him
§14Transcript · 1:12:04–1:16:34
giving up his life.
But don't you think there's a lot of people that have alternative views that just don't know how to express them because they're worried about being rejected by their peers?
Sure.
Of course there are.
There's probably a lot of kids in college.
Yeah.
There's a lot of kids in college that are listening to this right now.
Yes, I'm sure there are.
Well, God bless them, you know, because they're in a tough spot.
So it's tough.
So what I'm doing is comparing that to the kid in the inner city.
It's tough for these people to get out. But I still don't understand how it's tough. So what I'm doing is comparing that to the kid in the inner city. It's tough for these people to get out.
But I still don't understand how it's welfare. Like it seems more like you're just involved in this educational system, the black man's devoted his life, and he's a very close associate of Tom Sowell, to understanding the problem, the heartbreaking
problem of his people. I'm a Jew, so I got the heartbreaking problem of my people. He's got the
heartbreaking problem of his. I don't understand the specific problem, but I understand the
phenomenon. So he was talking in a black community in Los Angeles the other day, and they said,
what can we do?
What can we do?
The city's community is no good.
The cops are no good.
The schools are no good.
Crime is rampant.
What can we do?
He said, move.
Okay, that's a pretty simplistic answer.
If you're really poor and you're stuck in a neighborhood like that and you have roots
there, maybe you have a job there, and someone says move, that's a lot easier said than done.
It is possible.
Of course it is.
It's possible, but one has to gather up the resources and formulate a plan.
Exactly.
So his point that he can make is a black man, I'm not.
His point is, you told me you can't live here.
If you were in charge of yourself, move.
If you're in charge of yourself.
And so the point is we all are in charge of ourselves.
I still don't understand how that makes universities welfare.
That doesn't –
Well, people –
Welfare is free money, right?
Is what?
Welfare is free money.
Yes.
Welfare is people are down and out.
They're in a bad spot.
Yeah.
And then you get to apply for some money for the government for your basic needs.
Yeah, and universities are free time.
So instead of getting your money from the government, as a lot of people do, kids get scholarships, you get it from your parents.
What's the difference?
Or you have student loans.
You have student loans that you're never going to repay.
Well, you probably repay slowly over the rest of your life.
But here's my question.
If you said this kid had actually worked for his living at any point and you said, guess what?
You want to spend four years in college.
Okay.
Take the skills you now have and earn that money.
Go out and see what it takes.
To earn the amount of money.
To earn a quarter of a million dollars.
And then see, having earned it,
if you want to spend it on listening to some idiot
talk about deconstruction.
Right, because they don't go to college
to have some idiot talk about deconstruction.
Nobody knows why they go to college.
They go to college, I'm sure, to get high and to get laid,
have a good time. They want to have a degree and eventually get a career, right?
I mean there are some uses for the education that you can get in modern universities.
It's not all nonsense.
There's certainly a lot of nonsense.
There's a lot of Marxist ideology and a lot of silly socialist thinking that's not really applicable to the real world.
They want to say socialism
just hasn't been implemented correctly yet. There's a lot of that thinking.
Well, yeah, sure. Of course they do.
But there's also real courses.
Yeah, maybe. I've worked in universities all my life.
Physics and biology.
Of course, physics and biology. But physics and biology are also being ruined by the left,
with the people being taught in biology that it's an open question what a man or what a woman is.
I mean, that's insane.
I'll tell you a Boom Boom Mancini story.
So Boom Boom Mancini, my good friend, champion of the world, one of the great boxers of all
time, he comes out to, and I made a couple movies with him, he comes out to Los Angeles
and he goes to creative artist agencies.
And he says, I'd like you to represent me.
I'm champion.
Well, you know who I am.
I'm Boom Boom Man Sr.
Ray Boom Boom Man Sr.
They say, well, you want to be an actor and stuff?
He says, yes, I do.
They say, well, you know, we can't take on a new client unless he can make a million dollars a year.
So Ray says, well, what's your commission on that?
Guy says, $100,000. Ray says, okay, I'll write on that? Guy says, $100,000.
Ray says, okay, I'll write you a check right now, $100,000 to represent me for a year.
Guy says, well, I can't do that.
Ray says, well, then you're full of shit.
And he leaves.
§15Transcript · 1:16:35–1:21:16
So the question is, what are you actually getting from a degree?
But no, because that's a different deal.
That's not as simple as taking 10%.
That's like you're giving someone money to represent you. That's not as simple as taking 10%. That's like you're giving someone money to represent you.
That's not what an agency does.
The agencies, the whole idea is it's predicated on the idea that they're going to seek work
for you and then they're going to take a percentage of that work.
If they just take the money up front, they have zero incentive to do any work for you.
Except the second year.
Yeah, if that's real, but if they don't have any faith in you in the first place,
you just gave them $100,000 for no reason.
To them, that's their way of saying they're not that interested because there's no history
of you being successful in this world.
And that makes sense.
If someone comes along and says, I'll give you $100,000, but that takes away the incentive.
The whole idea of agents getting a percentage is they now have an incentive to go seek work
for you because if they can get you $100,000, they're going to get 10 grand out of that.
That's the whole business model.
If someone comes along and says, I'll give you all the money up front, they're like,
for what?
Now I don't have any incentive because I got your money and I don't think you're going
to get any work anyway because you have no history of working in this business.
Well, that's a good story.
But the other thing about agents is they don't do anything anyway.
Some of them do.
I have a great agent.
Yeah?
Yeah, she's awesome.
Yeah?
I love her.
Who's supporting whom?
She gets me gigs.
But I have a different business, business. I'm not an actor.
If you have a cell phone, you can get any gig
in the world. You could be the Pope next
week if you wanted to.
I like the business model
of agents and managers.
I like it because it insulates me
and allows me to stay normal.
Okay, but that's the problem with
prosperity. That's not the problem. That's one of
the aspects of prosperity. It's an aspect that can problem. That's one of the aspects of prosperity.
It's an aspect that can be managed like a lot of other aspects of prosperity.
Of course.
But I know guys, and you know guys too, where they say, well, I got an agent, blah, blah, blah.
No, I got a manager, blah, blah, blah.
No, I got a lawyer and a business, blah, blah, blah, et cetera.
And I'm giving them all, but I can afford it.
I can afford it because blah, blah, blah.
No, I got an assistant carrying time for my time.
I don't even look at that shit anymore.
How many times have we heard the guy say,
you say, how are you doing?
I say, oh, my business manager just stole all my money.
That does happen sometimes.
Of course it does, because that's the problem with prosperity.
If you're not looking at it, and how can you look at it
when it gets so broad?
You don't even know who's working for you anymore.
Yeah, you could have that, but you could keep it close enough that it's manageable. I see
what you're saying, but it's like these are generalizations.
Well, of course.
I buck them. I don't have an assistant. I don't have an assistant for a reason. I tell
all my friends, they go, oh, I think I'm going to get an assistant. I go, just do less stuff.
Excellent.
The problem is you get an assistant, like David Spade's assistant tried to kill him and tasered him.
You know that whole story?
No, it's great.
I love it.
The guy went to jail.
The guy was so fed up because he was a crazy person working for David Spade.
Got fed up with David Spade and decided he was going to kill him.
He had duct tape.
Remember that story?
Yeah, he was going to duct tape him and wound up tasering him. Wild shit. But I was like,
you don't want an assistant. You don't want someone that's just like in your business all
the time and a part of your work. Like stop. Just do less shit. That's what I tell people.
Well, you know who also said it was brilliant was, you know, Sully Sullenberger, the captain
Sullenberger landed the plane. He did this, I guess, a bunch of business how-to.
And one of the things he said was, there's no such thing as multitasking.
He says multitasking is doing two things badly at once.
That's true.
I thought that was so smart.
In a lot of ways, that's true.
Yeah.
If you're trying to do two things at the same time
You're not devoting enough time to the one thing you can do more than one thing with your life
But while you're doing each thing it demands all of your attention
Sometimes they can kind of enhance each other sometimes you could do many things and you're sort of talent stacking
Which can be very effective. But yeah, you can't
do two things at once and expect to be as good as you would be if you were just focusing on that
one thing. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. So the question is for our country, what are we here for now?
Well, we're still talking about welfare, right? Oh, go ahead. So what's the problem with welfare?
What about poor people that need money for food?
Don't you think it would be a good idea to provide them with a social safety net?
Yes, I do.
I also think it would be a good idea to provide them with the capacity to get a job.
That would be nice.
But, I mean, there are circumstances where people are down on their luck,
§16Transcript · 1:21:19–1:27:26
and it would be great if the government stepped in in a good faith effort
to try to help those people get back on their feet and move forward.
And sometimes it works that way, right?
But we've had 60 years of welfare and we've had three generations of people living on welfare.
So it's a good idea that it has some bad consequences.
And the problem with government is not that they don't get good ideas.
Once in a while they do.
You know, a blind pig can find a truffle.
The problem is if the idea turns out to be bad, they never fix it, ever, because with the idea comes power.
So welfare may have been a good idea at the beginning.
Okay, I don't know.
Maybe so.
It seems humane. But if it doesn't work, if it leads to poverty, if it leads to violence, if it leads to broken homes, the government has gotten so much power from expanding welfare that they're going to keep expanding it.
So you think the government has got so much power from expanding welfare because in expanding welfare, they put it out there that these people who want welfare and they want that money to keep going and you've got to vote Democrat. If you vote Democrat, they're the ones who want to continue these programs. Is that what
you're saying? That's part of it. That's part of it. And the other part is that when you create
an infrastructure, you have sycophants and you have supporters to whom you've given jobs.
And those guys all want to expand their domain. And those guys that they hire want to
expand their domain. So the tail is wagging the dog. So now where does all the money go in
government, right? Where does all the money go in California taxes? Does it go into helping the
people in the inner cities? No, they're in the same place they were in 60 years ago. It goes into trains to nowhere and diversity programs and trying to send what they call social workers out with the cops.
The problem about government as opposed to private philanthropy is that a very little portion of it actually reaches its recipients.
And if it's not doing the job, no one's going to correct it. If you've got a job, say, is in charge of distributing welfare to a certain neighborhood,
and you say, wait a second, I feel for these people. I love these people. I live among these
people. But it's not working. What we're doing is not working. Let me see if I can change the system and lose my job.
The reason why I'm talking about this is because my family was on welfare when I was a kid,
and they worked their way out of it.
When I was a young boy, when I was seven, from age, I think, seven to, like, maybe 11 or something like that,
my family was on welfare.
We were on food stamps.
We were poor, and they worked out of that.
They got to San Francisco when I was a young kid, and we didn't have any money.
And my mom was working, and my stepdad was going to college, and it was a hard time.
And through welfare, we were able to get by.
And then they eventually did well, and they eventually became well-off.
And my stepdad formed a business, and it was super successful.
It did real well.
But I remember being a kid and being on welfare, and so I've always had a soft place in my heart for these social safety nets because it was responsible for feeding us when I was a kid.
I don't think it's all bad. And I think if done
correctly, in good faith, with good intentions to eventually wean yourself off the system and
use it as something that can help you get back on your feet, I think there's a great benefit to it.
And I'm happy to pay taxes if I can provide families with the same sort of benefit that I
experienced and my family experienced when I was a boy. I agree with you.
I couldn't agree with you more.
But the difference in my thinking is that, because I've been involved in a couple of philanthropic ideas
and a couple of money-raising ideas and so forth, that what about if you took the taxes that you paid and said rather than giving it to the government,
which is going to waste most of it in administration
and waste the rest of it,
waste most of it in administration,
waste a lot in waste, where did it go,
and waste some of it in theft
so that very little is going to trickle down.
But if you said, you know,
geez, I got, you know, whatever,
five million bucks.
Here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to open a soup kitchen myself
and I'm going to keep an eye on the soup kitchen
and I'm going to make sure that the soup is good
and I'm going to make sure that the people,
I'll talk to the people, say, what do they need?
Talk to me.
What else can I do to help you?
What else can I do to help you get out of here?
That would be great if enough people did this.
Well, we don't need enough people.
We just need one.
We need you and we need me because we're just each one person because the government can't do it.
But welfare is not just food.
Welfare is money for rent.
Welfare is money for electricity and utilities.
Good.
Well, the Jewish tradition is everybody has to give tzedakah.
Tzedakah, it almost means charity.
It means like righteousness.
Everyone does, including the poorest person has to give tzedakah. Tzedakah, it almost means charity. It means like righteousness. Everyone does, including the poorest person
has to give tzedakah.
It might be like one-tenth of a cent
they have to give tzedakah.
And somebody is in charge of the community
of going around and seeing that it's spent correctly.
The community with the church, the synagogue,
the blah, blah, blah.
The community gets too big.
Nobody's paying attention to each other.
That's the problem, right?
When you get to a place like New York City, something like that, with millions and millions
and millions of people, it's so hard to think of that as a community.
Well, it's not a community, you know, but there's a certain size behind which it's impossible
to go and have everybody know the same, everybody's name.
The size of like an infantry company, the size of a Klan,
the size of a movie set.
Everybody knows each other.
Well, that used to be in the absence of everything else,
that used to be the neighborhood, right?
The neighborhoods are gone now, you know?
And so the question is how do we reconstruct them?
And I don't know.
We're challenged.
But that's what we've got to do is bring back some community. So that when I was a kid And I don't know. We're challenged. But that's what we got to do is bring
back some community. So that when I was a kid, I don't know if we knew any Republicans, but if we
§17Transcript · 1:27:32–1:32:54
did, we would have talked to them. Right. And in the last up until very, very recently, the
Republicans and the Democrats met at the church. They met at the scouts. They met at blah, blah,
blah. They met at work. And nobody said, oh, yeah, you're the other party.
I hope you die.
Yeah, that's a post-Trump statement, isn't it?
Post the Trump administration, people on the left just got so fucking crazy with politics that they don't just oppose the ideas.
They feel like they have to actively oppose the person and shame the person and shun the person.
That's right.
You can't have a friend that has opposing political viewpoints anymore.
A lot of people feel you can't have any more, that it's a real problem.
And I think a lot of that started during the Trump administration.
It's terrible because if you have a one party system, you have a dictatorship.
Period.
So the whole point of the Constitution, you have a dictatorship. Period. So the whole point of the Constitution
is you have two parties. The whole point of the Constitution, we have a constitutional democracy,
it happens that there are two parties. Why? To keep the other son of a bitch honest.
That's what they're there for. To say, I have an idea. I think you're full of it, but let's debate.
How are we going to debate? Well, we got these rules. They're called the Constitution, right? Sometimes you're going to win.
Sometimes I'm not going to win. But what you don't get to do is say, I think that I'm so right,
I'm going to throw the rules out the window. And that's what you see a lot of today. You see a lot
of people saying that we should rework the First Amendment. We should tweak the First Amendment.
I've seen morons say that. It's like, oh my God, what the fuck are you even saying?
Where does that go? It goes the same way censorship goes on Twitter. It keeps moving
further and further. The goalposts keep moving until you're living in an authoritarian dictatorship
where anything that you say that doesn't go with the party line, you have grave consequences.
That's right.
And that's the real problem with today's society when people are talking about the
implementation of a centralized digital currency that the government controls.
I'm like, are you out of your fucking mind?
And the answer is yes.
Because what happens in the society gets, everybody gets frightened by prosperity at
some point.
They used to say when I was a gambler, right, that the loser can't get enough to eat and
the winner can't sleep.
All of a sudden, I mean, think about it.
You go to the casino and all of a sudden, doink, you just won $10 million.
That guy can't go to sleep.
He doesn't know what to do with his money.
Does he deserve it?
Is somebody going to steal it?
He puts it underneath the couch.
He puts it in the safe.
He says, maybe I'll go down and lose it. So the people who are frightened by prosperity, who don't have some gratitude to their forebearers, to their parents, to their church, to the country, to God, can't let people call attention to their fear.
Anything which causes attention to their fear has to be killed.
How do you feel they're frightened by prosperity?
Well, of course they're frightened by prosperity.
They think the world is ending.
How do you feel they're frightened by prosperity?
Well, of course they're frightened by prosperity.
They think the world is ending.
The far left, I'm not talking about liberals now, you know.
I think they're wrong, but I don't think they're evil.
The far left think they're trying to convince everyone the world is ending.
But don't you think they believe it?
It's okay with me. I've had conversations with people about climate change, and the thing that's shocking to me is that they absolutely
do believe that we're doomed.
Of course they do.
Of course they believe it.
But if they looked at the models, it doesn't show that we're doomed.
If they look at the worst case scenario models of climate change.
It's not good, but it doesn't mean the human race is doomed.
There's no one saying that.
Not only that, if you look at the model,
like I've had multiple discussions on this podcast about it,
and I'm a believer in climate change.
I should say that.
I'm a believer that there's a real problem with fossil fuel production
and what we're doing in terms of the environment
and particulates in the atmosphere
and coal-burning power plants that have destroyed cities
where you get like a fucking fine mist of coal dust over people's cars and people are breathing
that, a host of health problems that come along with those things.
But there's no models that show that like within our lifetime or our children's lifetime
that the earth is fucked.
But people believe that for some reason.
Well, do you know why?
But why?
Because they won't look at the models. Because if they look at the model, because people, especially on the left and the right,
you live in two worlds. You live in the world of the conservatives, but you're also constantly
exposed to the world of the liberals. You have to be because that's the world you live in.
But on the left, they're only exposed to one world. What about centrists?
What about people that are just rational and they're trying to look at all the facts presented to them?
God bless them.
I'm crazy about those people.
Isn't that better?
I mean, isn't that like a better position to be in?
Like isn't there some thoughts on both sides you can adopt like me with my take on welfare and my take on a lot of social issues.
Of course there is. And that's what the Constitution says. Sometimes you're going to win.
Sometimes I'm not going to win. What are the things, what are the rules we aren't going to?
But if you say sometimes you're going to win, sometimes I'm not going to win,
that's the same thing.
Sometimes you're going to win.
No, you're basically saying that I'm going to win both times.
No, sometimes you're going to win. Sometimes I'm going to win.
Okay, that makes more sense.
Yes, indeed it does.
So the whole point that a constitution comes down
to a kid at a birthday party, right?
Kid at a birthday, he's given a little cake
and his friend says, I want some of the cake.
§18Transcript · 1:32:56–1:38:56
So I say, okay, I'm gonna cut the cake in two,
but you get to pick the first piece.
Both of those people are gonna become honest, right?
They aren't gonna become honest because their parents told them to become honest people are going to become honest, right? They aren't going to become honest
because their parents told them to become honest. They're going to become honest because they're
looking at a concrete example of why we need to share. I can cut the cake wherever I want,
but you get to pick the first piece. That's the constitution. It's pretty great. So sometimes
you're going to win. Sometimes I'm going to win, but what we don't want to do is throw the rules out.
For example, if you got a bad call in a football game, right, the ref says, geez, I made a bad call, I made a bad call.
Well, that happens.
What you don't want the ref to do is next time to say, well, I made a bad call against these guys.
I'm going to have to make a bad call against that guy the same thing.
Right.
Because it might be fair, but it's not a football game.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then there are people that do believe that, that that is a good thing to do, to
balance things out.
That's equity, right?
Yeah.
I can't quite understand what equity means.
But any time people try to balance things out between human beings, they end up with the pie.
Yeah, that's the redistribution of wealth.
Like how much of it goes to administrative costs?
When they talk about redistributing wealth, like where is it going?
Well, also, you know, who got all the money in communism?
The nomenclatura, right?
The thousand people at the top, they got all the money in communism. You wrote this book,
which is,
it's,
you've written so much
in terms of like these great movies
and films and plays,
but you wrote a book,
which is basically like a social commentary book,
right?
But with humor.
Yeah, I hope so, yeah.
It's called Recessional.
Yeah, Recessional, yeah.
And what is,
what was the premise behind it and what inspired you to do this?
Well, Recessional is a poem by my good friend Rudyard Kipling.
He said it's a poem said that writing at the height of British power, he said we're the most powerful nation in the history of the world.
Let's remember that we are all children of God, that we're all here
to help each other. We're all going to die, lest we forget. God says, great God of hosts, be with
us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. So this is written before the First World War. So I'm
looking at this marvelous country. So I start to age out, right? I'm way past the age of retirement for anybody,
but somebody said, Jews don't retire. You know, we just work ourselves to death.
And I'm saying, what did it all mean? This magnificent adventure that I've had here. I mean,
it's a better life than anyone could possibly deserve, you know, and I've had nothing but fun,
you know, and trauma and tragedy, right tragedy and love and all this marvelous stuff.
Because my grandparents came here from the Ukraine and from Poland.
And they put up with – not only did they not have any money, they didn't speak the language.
And they came here and lived through the Depression.
My grandmother raised my dad in the Depression, a single mom, working in a sweatshop.
Her son went to college, my dad.
He went under a Jewish quota to the Northwestern University.
He didn't want to let him in.
Graduated first in his class.
And his son became, if I may, a poet, right?
That's me.
What a country.
This country is magnificent.
And now I look and say, well, I got a lot of time on my hands now because I'm not hustling
so much.
And I looked around at the decay of free speech and at the decay of the culture and at the
growth of hatred.
And I said, I have to understand this.
So I had a couple of years.
I started writing essays.
I have to make it make sense.
Where does everything meet? Where do all of the different lines meet so that I can make a diagnosis, just like a doctor? He says, okay, I got to look at, okay, I got to figure this out.
I got to make a diagnosis. What are the pupils doing? What's the word of respiration? What's
the skin? How can I feel? Blah, blah, blah. What's the pulse rate? Blah,
blah, blah. Okay, I think I know it's beginning to make sense what it has to be. So I said,
what I'm looking at seems to be the death of the West, that we know it. Well, I said, okay,
I get it. All civilizations die, right? When my grandparents were alive, there was still a Stone Age civilization of
American Indians. That civilization has died, right? It exists as a memory and it exists
as a means of paying homage, but it's gone. That my grandparents came from Eastern Europe
where everybody spoke Yiddish and they lived in these little shtetlach, these little villages.
They lived there for a thousand years.
That's gone.
It doesn't exist anymore.
It's all gone.
Civilizations grow and civilizations die.
What makes them die?
Well, a lot of things, but one thing that makes them die is prosperity because just
like the tree, it's not going to live forever.
If it was born, it's going to die.
This society started in 1776, where a bunch
of guys sitting together in a room and they say, wait a second, we need to figure this
out. How can we all get along together? We don't need a king. It never existed on land
and sea. And now it's 200 and X years later and it's prosperous. So I said, as a dramatist, I got to know the form.
Is this a comedy? Is it a tragedy? Is it a farce? Is it a melodrama? Is it a pageant?
And so one of the other things I started doing is reading the Bible every day. And as I read
the Bible every day, I said, I get it. I know what's going on. The Bible's all about it.
This is what happens to civilizations. They are born from nothing. They mature, and they get into a lot
of trouble. That's what the Tower of Babel is about, right? That we say, we're so rich,
we can do anything. We can build a tower to God. Well, that tower is going to crumble, right?
§19Transcript · 1:39:01–1:47:33
So the Bible helped me to understand that what we're looking at is human inevitability
that things age and what are you going to do when they age you're going to say oh i give up
right i can't do anything say no it's not a very good idea we can have a prosperous
rebirth of sanity in this country and in
In maturity because we're a mature country anymore. Well, you got a dog right? They you feed them a different
Thing when they're 12 than you do when they're a puppy, right? They need different things when they're 12 when they're a puppy
Right. It's the same with any organ organism and eventually that dog is gonna die and it will be very very sad
But it's life.
So let's start from the beginning of this round of yours, and let's concentrate first
on censorship.
Censorship is a key part of your book, and it's a key part of some of the problems that
we're facing today.
The right feels disproportionately censored because the tech people are almost universally left-wing.
That's one of the more fascinating things about these gigantic social media companies. I mean,
there are some companies that are coming up like Rumble and Gab and Mines that don't share this
same sort of ideology that the people on Twitter and Facebook and a lot of these other places,
they have this idea that these are private companies and they should be able to govern
them by their own rules.
In doing so, one of the things they do is censor things that they think are objectionable
or that they don't want on their platform.
And disproportionately, that favors people on the left and criticizes people on the right.
It's a real problem.
And it's also a problem in that it, in many ways, fuels extremism. Because if you do have extremism and you kick them off your platform, they're going to go somewhere else.
They're going to go see they are against us and they're going to team up and then they'll be more hardened in their
efforts or more galvanized in their approach.
What can be done?
What do you think can be done other than like Elon Musk today, it was announced that he
bought 9% of Twitter.
So Elon Musk is now the number one shareholder in Twitter. And he is very concerned with free speech.
Well, good.
Good for him.
It's incredibly important for a free democracy and a functional government and a functional society where people get to communicate about ideas.
You need to have free speech.
You need to be able to figure out what's right and what's wrong. And one of the best ways is to let people discuss things.
Of course.
And this is a problem with the social media sites that are not just simply a private company. You
could say Twitter is just a private company, but I think that's a crazy way to say it. It's an experiment in human history where one entity has an enormous portal to the discourse in not just
America, but the world. The amount of communication and the amount of information that gets distributed
and the amount of debate that happens on Twitter is unprecedented. There's never been anything like
it. You could say the same thing about YouTube. You could say the same thing about Facebook. These are unprecedented new entities in
civilization. It's not as simple as these are private companies. Nothing has ever existed like
this that has the kind of impact and the kind of influence. So I believe my position is they should be treated like utilities.
And I think if you do something horrendous, if you dox people or hack into their accounts and put all their nudie pictures online or whatever horrible shit you want to do.
If you threaten people's lives and call to attack people and try to organize people, attack people, that's one thing.
Barring that, I think all ideas should be open to discussion,
all ideas that are in good faith.
And then when people don't have good faith ideas,
those are the type of people you shouldn't communicate with.
You should ignore them.
But the worst thing that we can do is just start deciding
what can and can't be discussed when people disagree about that.
If you say, nope, I'm in control, this is my private company,
and I'm not going to allow you to discuss certain political ideologies or social ideas,
you can't fucking do that.
Well, if you don't have free speech, you don't have anything in this country.
And I agree with everything you said, except you said everything should be any ideas in good faith. I would even take that off the table because the question
is who decides what's in good faith?
That's a good point. That's a good point. But I just, I meant like, you know, like-
I know what you meant. But the law in the United States has always been, you can say
whatever you want, except advocating violent overthrow of the United States government.
It's in the constitution. Now you've got people on the left who are advocating violent overthrow of the United States government. It's in the Constitution. Now you've got people on the left who are advocating violent overthrow of the United
States government, but you can't say that there's a difference between men and women.
So free speech doesn't mean you have the right to say happy birthday. Free speech means that
you have the right to say anything you want except violent incitement to treason.
And it's completely under attack.
And it's been – I was so thrilled to find out that there were people who, you know, on podcasts and on AM radio and a couple of other outlets who had the capacity to stand up and say, you know what?
No. So, of course, it should be a public utility. But the same organism which brought up Twitter
also created the podcast. So thank God. So all you can do is, you know, as they say, put on the
armor of God and stand fast to stand up for what you believe in and say, yeah, you know, as they say, put on the armor of God and stand fast, to stand up for what
you believe in and say, yeah, you know, I get it.
There may be a cost for speaking my mind, but it's not as great to me at this moment
on this subject as the cost of not speaking my mind.
Yeah, that is, I mean, that should be a foundational principle of our society.
We shouldn't deviate from that in any way because without discourse, without discussion, without debate, we never find out what we really think.
It's so valuable to watch two people with opposing perspectives hash it out and try to figure out who's got the better argument.
It's great.
As a spectator, it's so educational. It's so important for trying to solidify your own ideas
or trying to figure out why you think the way you think
or maybe someone will say something that completely shifts.
If you have a good open mind,
and I pride myself on having as open a mind as possible,
when I see a good debate
and someone says something that goes against
what I thought I believed, but I start
agreeing with them. It's a fascinating moment because you get, you get a chance to examine
all these thoughts that you have bouncing around your head and go, Oh, I think I know why I thought
this. Oh, I was under the impression that this was the case, but in fact, there's more to the story.
And those kinds of discussions are being fucking silenced that's right and it drives me
crazy it drives me crazy because i feel like i'm very fortunate and then i snuck in before people
realized how big podcasts could be and i think that's the same thing in many ways with twitter
but they have control over this you know centralized sort of portal to information. And they're doing things to try to
censor it and move it along and move it in a way that they would like it to be. But they didn't do
that with podcasts. Podcasts just got out. And then people just started developing followings
and have this ability to have conversations with anybody. And then you see people saying,
you shouldn't platform this person. This person needs to be taken off the air and we need to remove this room.
And but why is that? Because it goes against the way you think. That's all it is.
Well, yeah, because talking to a liberal, like I was talking to some guy and he said, well, you know,
I said, Dr. King, so we have two American saints, right? Dr. King and Abraham Lincoln, they lived
and died to fight racism. I said, Dr. King, the most famous speech after Lincoln is this,
I have a dream speech where a person would be judged by the content of the character rather
§20Transcript · 1:47:37–1:52:24
than the color of the skin. This person's a white liberal. So, well, you know, if Dr. King had been
alive today, he would have come around to the opposite view. And I thought, what?
You know, if Hitler had been alive today, he might have become a rabbi.
What opposite view?
The opposite view that—
That you should be judged by the color of your skin and not the content of your character?
Yes, that colorblindness is—
Who the fuck are you talking to?
Exactly.
Who is this person?
Well, he's a liberal.
They believe that colorblindness is racism.
A lot of them do.
Leftists, not the liberals.
Oh, you mean colorblindness is an I don't see race. Yeah. Soness is racism. A lot of them do. Leftists, not the liberals. Oh, you mean colorblindness
is an I don't see race.
Yeah, that we have to see
the person's race
so we know how to treat them.
Yeah.
So yeah, so it is the foundation
of this country,
the idea of free speech.
And I learned something
really great from a rabbi
about the way debate
should be carried on,
which is so helpful.
He said, when you're debating with someone, first, adduce the facts, right?
Adduce the facts.
Say, you think this, I think that.
If we disagree, take it off the table.
Just adduce the facts upon which we can agree.
So now we already have a little bit of agreement, right?
You say January the 6th was a peaceful demonstration of blah, blah.
I say it was a riot.
Okay, take it off the table.
What can we agree upon?
Okay.
Right?
Now, let's reason from those facts to what our position is.
You say your position is X.
I say my position is Y.
You say that your position is welfare must be increased. I say your position is X. I say my position is Y. You say that your position is welfare must
be increased. I say it should be decreased. I don't think it should be increased. I just
think it's necessary. No, no. I beg your pardon. I misspoke. I didn't mean to say that you said
that. I mean, just as an example. So now we start with these facts and now we have these ideas
toward which we're progressing. So now we say, okay, good. I get it where you're going.
I get it where I'm going.
Let's take these facts upon which we did agree and see if that leads to your conclusion or
it leads to my conclusion, right?
Because we already started out with agreement.
Let's use the power of reason.
And I was talking to some other liberal a couple of years ago.
He said, obviously, the Constitution's outmoded.
It's 230 years old. It's outmoded. I said, oh, yeah, like what?, obviously, the Constitution's outmoded. It's 230 years old.
It's outmoded. I said, oh, yeah, like what? Like the Ten Commandments are outmoded? He says, no,
it just doesn't work anymore. I said, what should we replace it with? He said, well,
I said, OK, I got a better question. What are the rules by which we should determine what we replace it with?
Because that's the bigger question.
You say the Constitution is the law of the land.
It's close to magnificent holy writ and how it deals with human nature.
I see it's a terrible, constrictive document, right?
If we don't have any rules, where is this going to end up?
Well, you remember the civil war
i do remember yeah of course yeah if there are no rules of debate all that we're left with is
sluggery so do you think the people that are saying we should revamp the constitution they
believe the constitution offers protection for things that they feel are questionable and need
to be eradicated from society.
I don't know what the hell they think.
I don't think they've read the Constitution.
I mean, it'll take them about 10 minutes to read the Constitution.
I don't know what there is to object about.
Well, I think, again, during the Trump administration, I think there was a lot of
people that felt like we have to stop this from ever happening again.
To stop what?
To stop a guy like him from ever getting to a position of power
because the way he communicates is so aggressive and bombastic
and so contrary to what we think of when we think of a statesman,
when we think of a leader of the free world,
we don't want that kind of person in power who insults people
and says rude things and talks about himself in a very braggadocious manner
and that this is negative and that he has this horde of followers people and says rude things and talks about himself in a very braggadocious manner and
that this is negative and that he has this horde of followers that will just believe
anything he says and start cheering for him at these rallies.
And we don't like it.
People start comparing him to other dictators.
Yeah, no, it's terrible.
He was terrible.
I think we're much better off under Joe Biden.
Yeah, I like a president that doesn't know what's going on. Yeah. You know, one of the things about Joe Biden is people say, you know, Joe Biden. Yeah, I like a president that doesn't know what's going on.
Yeah. You know, the one thing about Joe Biden is people say, you know, Joe Biden,
Trump, I didn't like his tweets. I didn't like his tweets. Oh, that's a good idea. That's
we're much better off with $10 a gallon gas. We didn't like his fucking tweets.
That's a shame. Grow up. Were you always a conservative?
No, I was a left, a red diaper baby liberal. When did you become a conservative?
I think, you know, I grew up, my dad, they were all involved.
My dad was a labor lawyer and I knew my friends of mine, their parents were involved with Saul Alinsky.
And, you know, when I grew up and Jesse Jackson was in my neighborhood and all that race baiting and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I grew up in the turbulent 60s, and I grew up in the theater.
§21Transcript · 1:52:29–1:57:53
So I didn't know a conservative.
And so I grew up with people saying, oh, Barry Goldwater, you may remember.
Barry Goldwater is a wonderful man.
He loved Arizona.
He was a committed outdoorsman.
He didn't want to be a politician, but he was.
And he said of the Vietnam War, this is a combat
pilot.
Understood war. He said, bomb them back
to the Stone Age or get out tomorrow.
Meaning, get out tomorrow
if you aren't prepared to fight a war.
For God's sake, stop
killing people and get out.
They had 400 psychiatrists
who wrote into the New York Times
and signed a letter saying he is a psychotic. So that was Barry Goldwater. William Buckley,
so he's a psychotic. He's the John Birch Society. Ronald Reagan, he's a jumped up actor, blah, blah,
blah. So then I wrote a book. I wrote a book about this. I do a lot of thinking about my wonderful poor people, the Jews.
And I wrote a book called The Wicked Son called Judaism, Self-Loathing, and Anti-Semitism.
And I wrote this book, and I thought it was a fairly straightforward understanding of what was going on with the Jews.
straightforward understanding of what was going on with the Jews. And another writer read a manuscript and she said, oh my God, wait till you see what the left is going to do to you.
And I said, well, like Sarah Solomon, I said, what do you mean the left is going to do to me? I am
the left, right? I'm a congenital Democrat. I am the left. There's nothing objectionable in here.
So then the thing started to fray
and then I wrote a political play in the New York Times.
It was a comedy, it was pretty fucking funny.
I wrote a political play in the New York Times,
said, oops, guess what?
He's now a conservative.
Then I wrote an article for the Village Voice.
What was the premise of the political play?
Did they decide to label you a conservative?
Well, it wasn't the play so much.
Okay, the political play there with Nathan Lane on Broadway is hysterically funny.
It's about a president who's the worst president of all time, and he's getting voted out of office.
And he's got like two weeks to earn enough money to jack up his campaign.
No one's going to give him any money because they say his numbers are lower than Gandhi's cholesterol. So it's about to be Thanksgiving. And every
Thanksgiving, the president pardons two turkeys, right? They put them on national television and
they walk through Disneyland. It's a big thing. I pardoned a turkey. So the president gets this
idea. He says, I want the head of the National Association of Turkey Manufacturers
in my office in an hour. So the national, the Turkey guy shows up and the president
says, I want $300 million. I'm going to pardon every fucking Turkey in the United States of
America. So it's all about him shaking down the Turkey administration. It's hysterically funny.
So I wrote a article for the Village Voice about political debate and I said, we're in
the midst of having some unfortunately heated political debates.
Why can't we debate with political civility?
It was called political civility.
I said, for example, I used to refer to myself, I've always referred to myself as a brain-dead
liberal. I said, this is not even being refer to myself. I've always referred to myself as a brain dead liberal I said this is not even being simple to myself
Wonderful recent article village voice comes out on Monday the whole front page
Why I am no longer a brain dead liberal
by David Mamet
Yeah, so after that zip I
Was a non person to the left.
All of a sudden, I said, golly, gumdrops, guys.
And you didn't have a platform where you can immediately refute this?
And did you have social media at the time or anything?
I think it was before movable type.
It was a long time ago.
What year was this?
When did this happen?
Maybe 24 years, 25 years ago.
Oh, okay.
So the 90s.
But also, you know, there is no refuting.
There's no refuting to the people that don't believe.
But you can express yourself in a way that reasonable people can see your point and they get it.
Yes, but see, the only people that I knew to communicate with were my supposed friends on NPR and The New Yorker and The New York Magazine.
Right.
But they lost my number from the Rolodex.
As soon as this all happened?
Yeah, kaboom, just like that.
One Village Voice article.
That's amazing.
And one play.
No, there was nothing wrong with the play.
The play was a hysterically funny play.
But that it seemed to be at least enhancing right-wing arguments.
No.
It had nothing to do with the play.
It had to do with the article that the Village Voice said,
because they never liked, listen,
it's great fun to burst on the scene, right?
Two guys have had that experience.
But you can't burst on the scene forever.
At one point, it's no longer news that you've burst on the scene.
So what's the news?
Oh, we've got to find something else.
Maybe he likes having sex with dogs, or maybe this, or maybe that.
So this one article though, you were still identifying as a liberal at the time.
So what changed for you?
Well, they wouldn't have me.
So then I said, wait a second, I've got to figure this out.
But who is they though?
The people... See, I've always made my living with the connivance or the oversight or the ignorance of the press.
Here's a perfect example.
You mean by reviews?
Of course, yeah.
Because, yeah, when you're a playwright.
§22Transcript · 1:57:55–2:04:28
It was before the internet.
If you're a playwright, you got to go to New York.
You got a good review.
Right.
They had a stranglehold on it back then because it was all about the reviews.
There was no social media word of mouth like rotten tomatoes type deal where you have today not that
sort of it the the rotten tomatoes things is really fascinating to me because it's shown the
difference and then the real the very clear difference between the way critics look at things
where a lot of them are the sort ofologically captured, like very overwhelmingly left wing versus the way the audience looks at things.
That's right.
You know, like my friend Dave Chappelle's special, Sticks and Stones, when that came out, that was one of them where they showed the difference between Rotten Tomatoes' version of it and the Rotten Tomatoes where the critics had looked at it and gave it like 4% or something like that.
And then the most recent one, The Closer, is the best one.
Because when it first came out, I think it was like something crazy.
It's insanely low Rotten Tomatoes score by the critics,
but insanely high Rotten Tomatoes score by the general public.
Yeah, but see, the critics have always been, I've dealt with them for 50 years, like the woman behind the counter at the auto registry.
They're trying to do a job, but you better not fucking piss them off, right?
Or you ain't going to get that license.
And if they're in a bad mood or had a bad lunch or had a fight with their husband or wife.
They come after you.
Yeah, they'll ruin you.
It's kind of a tyranny.
Of course it's tyranny.
It's tyranny of the week.
And they used to say,
what is the one requirement that you need
in order to be a drama critic?
Insufficient talent to write sports.
Or insufficient talent to write, for sure.
They don't start out wanting to be a critic.
Generally speaking, they want to be a writer.
They just didn't have the talent for it.
And so what do they have?
They have the capacity to fuck things up.
And there were two guys when I was very active in New York theater that were John Simon and Frank Rich,
who were the theater critics for, respectively, New York Magazine and the New York Times.
respectively, New York Magazine and the New York Times.
And it would come to the openings, every opening,
and they would go down to the bottom of the aisle right by the curtain before the show,
and they would turn around.
And they would look out at the audience and gossip.
So they were, in effect, saying,
oh, guess who the show is tonight, folks?
It's us two.
So I wrote an article that said,
John Simon and Frank Richard, the
gonorrhea and syphilis of American theater. How'd that go over? It was great. But then
John Simon died, rest in peace, six months ago. And somebody called me up and said,
would you give me a comment? So I always try to think something of my wife because my wife says, you know, that's a great idea.
Please don't do it.
We have to live here in this country.
So this guy said, what do you think about the fact of John Simon's death?
And I didn't say, unfortunately, he's finally done something for the American theater.
Yeah.
So this Village Voice article comes out,
you get excommunicadoed by the left.
Yeah.
If that's a verb.
And then from there you decide I'm going to join the right?
No, I didn't know there was a right.
I didn't listen.
I'd never met a conservator in my life. Really? Knowingly, no. I mean, where am I going to meet that? A Chicago Jew
went to a hippy-dippy college and grew up in the theater? Forget about it.
So what is the, but why didn't you just, this is what I don't understand. You have this,
these principles, these ideas, this left-wing person. One bad article comes out about you, and you're a non-persona by the left. But don't you still have the same core beliefs and ideas
that led you to be a left-wing person in the first place? I did, but I had to re-examine them.
So how does that process work? I'll tell you. So I was going to a nice synagogue at the time, and there was a fellow there who was a conservative.
And I'd never met a conservative before, ever.
And so we talked a little bit, not too much about politics.
And I was so impressed by his demeanor.
He wasn't angry.
And he was, you know, the old joke is what do you call a happy black man, a conservative, right?
He wasn't angry and he wasn't arrogant and he could listen to me.
And we talked and I was really impressed by his attitude.
And he said, you want to read some books?
I said, sure.
He said, I'm going to bring you a couple books.
And he brought me The Road to Serfdom by Frederick Hayek and Capitalism and Freedom
by Milton Friedman. Real simple, straightforward books. And I say, thank you so much. But of course,
I'll have to hide them when my friends come by. And he said, I don't. And I thought, Dave, listen to yourself. You said
there's a guy whom you admire greatly as a good human being. You asked him to give you some books.
He gave you the books and you said you had to hide them from your friends. You're nuts, Dave.
You're nuts. A and B, are those those really your friends so I had to start reading
and I read everything I could get my hands on and I wrote a book about 20 years ago called
the secret knowledge which is the beginning of this change so that started off yeah and so you
read these books the Milton Friedman book like what what book was most influential in getting
you to shift your ideas?
That's a very good question.
I think it was probably Capitalism and Freedom.
And I would start arguing because I was going nuts, right?
I said I just don't get it.
I was arguing, what about this?
What about that?
Going nuts how so?
Because I was exposed to the difference between what I thought I thought and what I really thought.
Because I realized that a lot of things I thought I thought, I wasn't operating in that way.
You know, I might have said that wealth is bad, but I wanted more.
Right?
I knew that there was a lot of prejudice against Jews, and I knew there was a lot of prejudice against Jews and I knew there was a lot of prejudice against black.
But the question was what's the responsibility of a human being in this situation?
§23Transcript · 2:04:34–2:10:10
Was it to give more money to, quote, social programs?
Right?
Well, what was the right-wing alternative to that?
What was the argument against it?
The right-wing alternative to that was charter schools.
Charter schools.
Shelby said, my good friend Shelby,
and I started reading Shelby's works,
and Shelby said, if we did away with welfare,
the trauma in the inner cities would stop tomorrow. How so? Well, in his words, and I gotta agree with welfare, the trauma in the inner cities would stop tomorrow.
How so?
Well, in his words, and I got to agree with him, he's a black guy, I'm not, because
people would say, wait a second, we're all in the same boat, let's work for a living.
And the same thing that I went through and you went through. Unless we say that somehow,
there's two groups in the United States that have always, well, one group for 150 years, another group for 60 years,
have been under government control by accepting government largesse.
And from having worked a long time with kids, especially young men, it's real easy to warp them, right? If you take, like, I know a lot of young men of my
son's age who went to these colleges and they get out and their parents say, well, I got to give
them a little bit of money. And it's extraordinary how little money it takes to warp a young man,
whether that young man has just gotten out with a degree in philology from Dartmouth or the young
man has just joined a gang on the streets. It's the same thing.
It's a hard transition to become a man. It's probably a hard transition to become a woman.
I wouldn't know. But it's a hard transition. And young men, I did and probably you did too,
looked at the gap. They said, geez, you know, I'm young. I'm not very strong. I don't know how I'm going to get a job. I don't know how I'm going to get a wife. I don't know how I'm gonna get a job, I don't know how I'm gonna get a wife,
I don't know how I'm gonna get a car.
I don't get it.
I can't make that transition.
But you make it little by little.
But if someone says, you know, son,
you got out of Dartmouth, here's $1,000 a week.
Have a good time till you find yourself.
You're never gonna get off of that tit, ever.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
Yeah, that does seem to be a problem with wealthy people, with their kids.
What's the problem with everybody?
The people who don't work for what they get.
If you get free money, it does seem to be a problem.
But how does this, but still, like, that's just one
aspect of conservative thinking. You actually identify as like a right-wing person now.
I don't know. You know, I can't even say Republican because the Republicans were the people
when I was a kid who wore white pants and white shoes and lived at the-
So what do you identify as? Conservative?
I guess I do. All of these, I find all of the things
so difficult to get my mouth around.
Libertarian?
No, not a libertarian.
Like somebody said, I'm an independent.
He said, you know what an independent is?
I say, yeah, it's a Democrat with a speech defect.
So I got a speech defect about saying Republican
and blah, blah, blah.
But I'm certainly an American.
I love it here.
So what do you think of yourself as?
Do you think of yourself as right wing?
No, I don't think of myself.
I suppose I think of myself as a conservative.
Conservative.
Because I'd like to conserve just as my own life has reached a stage where I'd love to be able to go on and enjoy some of the fruits of and engage in some
contemplation. I would like the life of my beloved country to continue in maturity, which it can't do
it as it could in adolescence, in maturity as an honorable, decent place to live with liberty and
justice for all. But don't you think a lot of people on the left share that idea? I don't know.
You don't know.
But it used to be you.
Well, exactly so.
But a lot of conservatives today would have been Kennedy liberals then.
Because the political landscape has shifted so much.
Yes, as it always does.
Yeah.
So let's go back to the late 90s.
So this horrible article comes out about you.
You become a non-persona to a lot of left-wing people.
Yeah.
But you continue to work in Hollywood. You continue to make films and write scripts.
Right.
Is it a friction? Is it an issue?
Well, to a certain extent. That's a good question. The answer is you don't know.
issue? Well, to a certain extent, you know, that's a good question. The answer is you don't know.
To a large extent, you don't know. For example, if in Hollywood, I wrote my first movie, I think 1979. And the guy who gave me notes on the movie was a guy called Samson Rafelson. Samson Rafelson
is famous because he wrote the first talking picture. That's how close I am to the beginning of Hollywood. So I got to enjoy like 40 years of the great adventure
of the movie business.
But the movies that I made aren't getting made anymore.
A.
What kind of movies?
Well, independent films.
Right, when I was, I made a bunch,
I wrote 30 films for hire, and I directed 12 films, which I also wrote.
But in those days, there was still a little bit of independence.
Somebody said, okay, you know what, kid?
I like this script.
What's it going to cost?
Four million bucks.
Okay, good.
Here's four million bucks.
Go make the movie, and I'll sell it to blah, blah.
So that was independent film.
That doesn't exist anymore.
It doesn't?
No, not that I know of.
Because not only did that die, the movies are dead.
§24Transcript · 2:10:16–2:16:23
The whole idea of movies was I'm going to get my best gal and my best boy and blah, blah, blah.
And we're going to go out on a Friday, Saturday night.
We're going to sit in the dark.
We're going to eat popcorn.
And there's the people that are 20 feet high.
They're like gods.
We're going to have the best possible time.
Right.
And if I don't like that movie, I'll see another movie, blah, blah, blah.
But now the movies are being played on this, right?
And the movies have become so corporate, you know, just like Twitter, that all the decisions, they aren't being made by some, you know, the people I grew up with, you know, ancient Jews like me smoking a cigar.
I said, yeah, it seems like a good idea.
Go make it.
They're being made by 30 people sitting around a board table, you know, playing silly buggers and pig Latin with each other's pronouns.
Right? I get it. Things mature
and things die. Who would have thought that Kodak would go out of business? They had this
magnificent hegemony. They made this little product that cost them nothing. And the more
people used it, the more they had to use it. So who at Kodak would say 15 years ago, guys, you know, we have to stop.
There's this other thing now.
But they are still making some movies.
Is it less?
Is it overall like a lowered production of films?
No, no.
The problem is always in who holds the high ground.
Who holds the passes controls the commerce.
Who owns the railroads controls the commerce.
Who owns the blah, blah, blah.
Who owns Twitter controls the commerce.
So it's the suits at these movie theaters. Sure, they own the high ground.
So when I was starting out in the theater, I had a blessing. I started out in a
garage, you know, with William H. Macy and Joe Mantegna and Dennis Franz and Billy Peterson.
People became the John Malkovich. The people became huge stars. We just working in a garage
because we could. And we then we eventually moved to Broadway and got some credibility because we
could. But if you can't, if you can only start off by
entering at the corporate level, what are you going to do? For example,
the people who made the chop shops in Southern California, right? They took cars and they said,
wow, this would be a good idea. Let's take the Blazer and cut the roof off. I tell you what, let's take this Jeep and raise the fenders. Let's take blah, blah, blah. Those were guys in the
garage, just like me and John Malkovich were in the garage. And all those ideas got adopted
by GM, right? Where they looked at this marvelous invention and said, well, that's a good idea.
I'll do that. And so this year, last year, Ford bought
out another Bronco. But if you take a degree in automotive design and get hired by Ford,
you're going to be designing taillights for 10 years, right? So where's the individual initiative?
It's not going to exist, as Milton Friedman says, until you give the people with
inspiration a reason to reveal it. It's kind of a brilliant thing to say.
So what's the bottleneck? Is the bottleneck financial? Is it just too expensive to make
films so that they try to make a film that's only going to be financially viable? They don't take
any creative choices or chances? Well, you know, who wants to make a film
that's not going to be financial? Nobody ever did. You know, sometimes the film was so expensive, it didn't matter anymore.
The bottleneck is the corporation which controls the high ground or the method of distribution.
That's the bottleneck. And okay, over a hundred years, vaudeville died, and then there was radio,
Over 100 years, vaudeville died, and then there was radio, and then radio died, and then there was television, and then the movies, and then television drove out the movies.
The movies are dead, and television becomes streaming.
So the method of distribution, I hate to sound like a Marxist, is determining the content, right?
So you say, okay, I want to, rather than saying, honey, let's go out and see if there's anything with Clint Eastwood in it.
You say, no, no, no, I bought a subscription, right?
What's on my subscription series?
What can I get on Netflix?
Right?
So they're turning out sausages.
Of course they are. But the movies were turning out sausages
too to the largest extent i just had a good time making them so i'm still trying to figure out like
what's this leap that you're making to being like this uh hardcore conservative or or whatever you
are well i i don't i mean whatever you know i don't hardcore I mean, whatever... Hardcore conservative is wrong.
The leap is I have to be able to understand.
So your business doesn't exist in the way that it existed when you were coming up
and making your great films?
For me.
For you.
Yeah.
Because the other thing is, I was 22 years old.
I didn't want to work with grandpa.
Right.
I get it.
Right?
The young people have a chance to have their day.
The technology changed.
Doesn't do any good, you know,
to be the greatest designer of passenger trains in the world.
But they are still making independent films, right?
Yeah, a bunch of independent films.
So how do they get made?
I don't know.
You don't know.
Listen, Herman Melville, right,
wrote the thing about the big fish,
wrote a book about a big fish, Moby Dick.
You remember him? Yes. So he says the first thing he says in the book is
there's no different he says the greatest disparity in the world is
between the people are looking for work and the people are looking for help
right so the people looking for help we're always saying Jesus Christ I can't
get good help and the people looking for work says I can't get a job there's
always a disparity.
So the old joke has, there's two Jews, right?
Remember the Jews?
Yes.
One of them says, did you get the job working for ABC Radio?
The job you went over for ABC Radio.
Did you get the job?
The other guy says, no, no, no, no, no.
They don't like Jews.
§25Transcript · 2:16:30–2:22:40
That's a funny joke.
I see that the business model shifted.
I see that things have changed.
But I'm still trying to find out your journey
to the point where you're writing this book.
Well, my journey was-
You're slowly educating yourself to these different ideas and
those ideas resonate with you more than the ideas you had previously accepted,
maybe because you hadn't examined those.
Well, the idea is, you know, the boy, you ever a Boy Scout?
I was a Boy Scout.
Yeah, I was a Boy Scout.
Okay.
So the old Boy Scout test is, can I walk away from the fire? Is it out
sufficiently that I can walk away from it? And the Boy Scout test was pick up the ashes, right?
You don't have to worry about it. If you could pick them up, it's out. So I'm very fortunate
having written plays for a million years, because when you're writing a play, you're constantly
saying, I don't get it. I don't get it. I know this scene works, and I know that scene works, but there's something
missing in between. I just don't understand. So writing a play is really a process, an analysis.
Happens to be analysis of your imagination, but nonetheless, it's an analysis. Is there one thing
too many? Is there one thing too few?
Did I misunderstand who the protagonist is?
I've got to keep at it until I understand.
So I was looking at this whole idea of conservatism,
and I read everything I could get in my hands.
I said, I've got to understand.
I've got to understand.
So I was just furious at myself and probably those around me all the time.
I said, I don't understand because what these guys are saying makes sense.
But it's contrary to everything I've been taught.
Let me see if I can find the error.
So I just kept reading and reading and writing and writing and trying to find the error.
And I couldn't.
So I said, oh, okay, I get it. Now I got a different problem, right, which is the world that I thought was congenial to me has just kicked me out.
It's just Sarah Silverman's problem.
What does that indicate?
I wouldn't want to kick them out.
Why do you want to kick me out?
I said, I get it.
Okay, I get it.
I get it. This is one of the – look, two years before I was born, they were throwing Jewish babies into ovens because they thought that was a good idea at the time, right?
Civilization splits into two camps and fights World War II.
It looks like a good idea at the time.
People are crazy, and people do individual crazy things and communal crazy things. So the fact that we're undergoing a societal shift here is nothing new. It's in fact inevitable. My question was,
what does it mean to me, B, and what should I do about it?
It is fascinating that the business of entertainment is almost overwhelmingly dominated by people that follow
a left-wing ideology. Almost overwhelmingly. Yes. Right. In terms of film, in terms of television,
in television, it's almost a hundred percent. I mean, it's, it's in the high nineties,
other than like Fox, Fox news, right? That's probably the only thing on television that
you can point to that's clearly conservative is Fox News Channel.
Everything else, like shows and television shows, there's so many left-wing-leaning production houses and so many left-wing-leaning Democrats that are working as executives and as writers and as producers.
It's the whole business.
Yes, indeed.
It's the whole business.
Yes, indeed.
And for a person who has a differing ideology, you either have to lie or you have to hide it.
Or get out.
Or get out.
Yes, that's right. If you're a person like – there's very few people that are Republicans or that are right-wing or conservatives that are openly conservative and talk about it openly and talk about politics openly that exist in Hollywood.
They just – you've got like John Voight, right?
But he's kind of on the way out.
He's done a million movies.
He's a legend.
He's been around forever.
He doesn't give a fuck anymore.
And he's been talking about his right-wing ideas for a long time.
Yeah.
But other than him and Clint Eastwood, who the fuck else is there?
Well, there's, I don't know, there's a few.
A small handful.
Yeah.
And they're kind of grandfathered in,
like Clint's grandfathered in in a lot of ways.
Yes.
But if you're a young guy, like right now.
Well, people in Hollywood who are conservatives whisper.
Yeah.
Literally. Literally whisper. Yeah. Literally.
Literally whisper.
They come up on the street and they'll say, you know, I saw you with that thing, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
God bless you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And if you had come to the studios with a Trump sticker, your car would have been keyed.
Right.
And if you put a Trump sticker up in your neighborhood, it would have been destroyed.
Maybe your house would have been, who knows what? Because it's, you know, when you think about a
codependent family. Sure. Okay, good. Don't we all? Yeah. So in the codependent family,
if daddy is stripping little Susie, right? The problem is not in that family, if they're codependent, that little Susie
is getting sexually abused. The problem is that one must never draw attention to the fact. Because
if anyone says, wait a second, daddy's stripping little Susie, the family breaks up. It's all over.
So when you're kids, you say, oh my God, this is the thing that has to be, it's the worst thing in
the world, that the family would break up. So maybe he's not really blah, blah, little Susie, or maybe she's asking for it, or maybe I'm wrong.
But you can't allow the possibility to come out of your mouth.
So that's the same thing with the left.
They're codependent.
They're living a life that doesn't stand up to the test of reason, and it's destructive.
But they can't allow any alternative to come to their consciousness, let alone out of their mouth.
Because if it comes to their consciousness, they're a hypocrite.
Who wants to be a hypocrite?
So what they do is they become arrogant.
And they say it's not that I'm a hypocrite.
§26Transcript · 2:22:43–2:28:46
It's that you're wrong.
There's also a genuine fear of losing your income, right?
There's a genuine fear of being kicked out of the community.
Absolutely.
I've experienced that with many friends where they would talk about their ideas that they have that might be right-wing or more conservative.
And they can't talk about it on sets.
And they can't talk about it.
Of course.
They hide it.
And that they can't talk about it on sets and they can't talk about it. Of course.
They hide it.
But there's a lot of strength to be gained from examples.
And one example that I took a lot of strength from is gay liberation.
Because I grew up in a gay business with the theater, right?
Surrounded by gay people who were all closeted because they had to be in that time, right?
by gay people who were all closeted because they had to be in that time, right?
And I can't imagine the hell that that was
because their choice was either to shut up
or to come out and perhaps lose your income.
Yeah. But then something happened, right? It happened with Stonewall. perhaps lose your income.
But then something happened, right?
It happened with Stonewall.
And they said, wait a second.
It's not my problem that I'm gay.
That's what I am.
It's your problem.
You have to deal with that.
I don't.
And so what we saw in this transformation in 50 years has become part of the culture,
which is a really good thing about the the
the way the culture is
Has aged in the last 50 years?
Yeah
And another good thing is the way that being black is aged in the last 50 years and in among the majoritarian a white culture
Where they say wait a second that I get it the slavery was bad blah blah blah
Not only a slavery been over,
not only has segregation been over, we're going to go too far in the other direction,
blah, blah, blah. But there's no more lynching, and there's no more church burnings, right? And
there's no more people. Look, white actors have a very, very difficult time now because it's hard
for them to get hired in the business. That's unfortunate. But on the other hand, black actors had to put up with it for 100 years.
Okay. It's understandable. You know, is it equality? Maybe yes, maybe no,
but it's completely understandable. White actors have a hard time getting hired now?
Yes. Really?
Yeah. But there's so many of them.
See them in so many shows. Maybe that's a problem.
Well, maybe no.
If you look at it, you know, I live among actors.
Oversaturated market.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
So what have you abandoned in sort of becoming a conservative?
Like what ideas have you gotten rid of?
That's a great question.
Let me think about that.
of? Because that's a great question. Let me think about that. I've gotten rid of the idea that it's the government's job to help people. And it's the government's job to be kind to people. And that is
a that's a core tenet of left wing ideology, right? That's right. Big government. Because
here's the thing. Anyone's let me ask you, what happens when you get a letter from a government organization that you didn't expect?
What's your first reaction?
Call my lawyer.
Of course.
Everyone is frightened.
It's everybody's reaction.
Anybody who had anything ever to deal with the government went home weeping, right?
Because the government is of necessity forced.
That's all that a government is.
They have the capacity to force you to do certain things.
So what the Constitution says is let's limit that capacity only to force you to do things which promote the general defense, provide for the common welfare, and get the blessings of prosperity for you and your progeny, that the government is good for
the post office, the army, the navy, the roads and the sewers. That's it. It does those things
well because everybody, as Milton Friedman said, everybody needs them, but nobody can pay for them.
So when the government decides to do something other than that, something that everybody needs and nobody can pay for,
right, all that they can do is do something nobody needs, right, like a train to nowhere
or like a diversity department, right?
Because the great blessing of capitalism is if people needed it, somebody would supply
it.
If nobody's supplying it, it means that nobody needs it.
So this was something you had to learn this.
I had to figure it out.
You had to adopt this.
Yes.
So what I realized was,
and this is Milton Friedman's great contribution,
he said when he was tutoring doctoral students for the thesis at the University of Chicago,
he said, when you submit your thesis for a doctorate in economics at the University of
Chicago, it can't be longer than 500 words.
It's kind of brilliant.
So what I realized is you got to pad of paper and a pencil and a kitchen table.
If it doesn't work at the kitchen table, it's not going to work at the governmental level.
There's no magic. What did I earn? What did I spend? Was it a good idea? What should I do next?
What do I learn from my mistakes? That's it. That's how we all run our lives.
Except when you give the power to the government, the government says, well, I'm doing good for people.
So fuck you.
I'm going to run you.
I'm going to teach your children about sex.
I'm going to teach your children about race.
I'm going to have a diversity department.
I'm going to et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
That's inevitable because you put people in power, they're going to use it. So this book, you start writing this book and this book sort of outlines
the way you feel, all the problems that you feel are happening today in this society with censorship,
with, you know, the decay, the moral foundation decay of society? Like what is your, like when you sat out to do this,
like why did you put it together in book form? Well, I started, I was doing a lot of writing at
§27Transcript · 2:28:53–2:34:39
the time. I was writing for National Review, writing for Wall Street Journal, writing for
Flying Magazine, a Jewish journal. And I wrote a lot of essays and I started calling them in favor
of a book. And the form of the book is really, it's a bunch of anecd, and I started calling them in favor of a book.
And the form of the book is really a bunch of anecdotes.
Rather than saying, here are my thoughts, I say, well, here's a story. Here's a story, and here's what it makes me think of.
I'll tell you a story, okay?
So there's one of the stories in the book.
It says two Jews, right?
This Jew is called Szpierski.
And he gets off the boat from Poland.
And his brother tells him, I've changed my name to Frederick Stafford.
I've changed my name from Szpierski to Frederick Stafford.
So the Polish guy gets off the boat.
Szpierski gets off the boat.
And he says, please page Frederick Stafford.
Paging Frederick Stafford.
Paging Frederick Stafford.
He looks around and he sees his brother standing next to him.
He says to the brother, wait a second.
I'm paging Frederick Stafford.
Why aren't you responding?
The guy says, well, I changed my name.
It's now Austin Woodford.
The guy says, you changed your name from Frederick Stafford to Austin Woodford.
Why?
The brother says, well, because when it was Frederick Stafford, everyone says, what was it before you changed it?
So my question that starts off that essay is, of America, what was it before you changed it?
Not totally sure if I follow you. That's okay. That's okay. You got some Jews
somewhere in your background, I'm sure. I kind of get it. Okay. But so you're writing this book,
like what was your goal? Like in this book, you just wanted to get your ideas out? Well,
yeah. The idea about being- Express yourself? Yes. Well, the idea about being an artist,
I wrote about this in the book too. it's like being an oyster, right?
People say, oh, what's art good for?
It's good for changing people's minds.
Oh, no, that's why they have firearms, right?
Art's not good for that.
It's good for expressing myself.
Well, that's why they have boars, right?
They're good at expressing themselves.
The artist creates because he's irritated, just like the oyster. He creates
the pearl because he's irritated. He can't use the pearl, right? And other people who aren't
an artist might say, oh my God, who aren't an oyster. Yes, I see that the pearl, I'd like to
make a pearl too. I know, I'll go to film school.
So it was just something you needed to get out, essentially. That's all I've done all my life, my whole life.
Like, I've been doing this for 50 years.
I get up, I go to work every day, and I come home.
I spend the day writing, reading, and taking a nap.
You talk about what's happening in this country almost like as if it's a mind disease.
A what disease?
A mind disease.
Well, it is.
To a large extent, it is.
But when you read the Torah, as I say, I read the Bible every day, read the Torah, the Jews
are crazy.
Right?
So it's Jews as, to a largest extent, the progenitors of Western civilization, right? The Abrahamic
religions, right? Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all come out of this one tradition.
But Moses takes the Jews out of Egypt, and the first thing they do is they say, fuck
you. I want to go back. I don't like it here. Weren't there enough graves in Egypt?
Why do you bring us out to die in a desert? We have nothing to eat.
So Moses says, well, what's your favorite food?
They say, quail.
So it rains down quail, and they eat the quail
until they say the quail comes out of their nose.
So then they come back to Moses.
They say, you know, we're tired of quail.
He says, okay, I'm going to give you this other stuff.
It's called manna.
It's going to fall, and you gather it up, and it's going to taste like whatever is your favorite food that day.
They get tired of manna.
So from the moment that Moses takes them out of Egypt, they don't want to leave until Moses dies, which is the end of the story.
They want to kill Moses.
They're nuts.
The people are fucking nuts.
They see Moses part the Red Sea.
He takes them out of Egypt.
Pharaoh's army gets drowned.
God appears in fire on the mountain.
Moses says, okay, guys, wait here.
I'm going to be back in 40 days.
I want to talk to the big fellow.
You know who I'm not talking about, right?
Not talking about Biden?
Yeah, that's right. I'm going to go up the mountain and talk to the big fellow. He's
a half an hour late coming down, and they've torn off all their clothes, and they've made
this molten calf, and they're worshiping the molten calf. They just saw God. He says,
what the fuck? These people are nuts. And throughout the Torah, either he's saying
to God, let me get rid of these people and start again, and God says no. Or God said, I'll tell you
what, Moses, you get rid of the people, we'll start again, and Moses says no. But the Torah,
the Jewish Bible, is the history of human insanity. That's what it is. And that's why it's a great
idea to study it,
because everything you see in the Torah,
you're seeing around you and in yourself every day.
Do you think that it's imperative
that a society have some kind of structure to follow,
whether it's some kind of religion
or some kind of ideology? Do you think that
we need something? Of course we do. And it's not only an imperative, it's inevitable that a society
will form itself. Like, for example, you're in a boat full of people that gets washed up on a
desert island. You guys will improvise society just like that within a half an hour.
§28Transcript · 2:34:46–2:40:23
Who's going to be the food gatherer?
Who's going to be the wise one?
Who's going to be the kvetch?
Who's going to take care of the public?
That's what we do.
The problem is when society gets too big, which is inevitable because it's successful, we don't know who these people are.
And we forget that we're all just, if I may, stranded on a desert island with
each other. Is there a solution? Is there a way to put, like, where we're at right now? Is this
the inevitable downward spiral of this civilization and we're just going to have to watch it circle
down the drain? Or is there a way to stop this progression? Well, that's a good question.
And stabilize it. That is the question. So the answer is, is it going down the drain or are we at a place of – listen, in 1914, the people in England could not have foreseen what was going to happen to them with six months.
They came back to a world they couldn't foresee.
The people in 1939, World War II, they came back to a world they couldn't foresee.
And the same thing has happened with the computer, the group of the computer. This is the hugest upheaval. It's more than any
war. It's the hugest upheaval in human history. But it starts with Adam. It's inevitable that if
you got enough leisure, I don't know if 5,000 monkeys will write Shakespeare, but it's inevitable
that Alan Turing and Bill Gates will come up with the computer age.
So here we are. So the question is, what do we do now?
Right. How do we stabilize it?
Yeah. Or how do we enjoy it? And the answer, the only answer I know is with gratitude,
right? Gratitude to God for putting us here. The fact that we still have it. Listen,
Right?
The gratitude to God for putting us here.
The fact that we still have it.
Listen, I'm 75.
I'm not going to go out and chase girls, right, in addition to being blissfully married, you know, and try to get my name in all the papers and blah, blah, and write a million plays and make all that money, all the stuff I did when I was young.
I'm at a different place in my life. And the country's at a different place in its life.
But the young people are young, right?
The country's in a different place in its life, but the young people are young, right?
And they're going to have to determine how to live in this society. And one of the great things that I see in California is the Hispanic Americans because they're religious.
They love their family.
They love their country.
They work hard.
And it's inevitable that that will yet again – once again, Spanish land
grants will become Hispanic.
So there's no real clear path other than gratitude for us to be – I mean how do you
promote gratitude?
How do you get people to accept that idea?
I don't get people to do anything.
But I'm just asking if there was a way.
But I'm just asking if there was a way.
I mean, I feel like every time someone talks about the problems with X, you should also approach it in what's the solution to these problems?
Is there a solution?
Okay, so let's go back to religion, for example, right?
So the golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right? So this comes out of a saying by a Jewish rabbi,
an old, old Jewish rabbi,
who somebody said, do you know the Torah?
He said, of course.
He said, can you stand on one foot and tell me the Torah?
He said, yes.
He stood on one foot and he said,
what's hateful to you, do not do to your neighbors.
So the golden rule is a version of this, but golden rule inverts it.
The golden rule says it's your job to do good to your neighbor.
How do you know what good is?
Well, good is what you like.
If you think it's good, your neighbor will think it's good.
But that's not true because people have different desires and different understandings.
The Jewish traditions, I don't know what's good for you, but I know what's bad for me,
and I'm not going to do that to you.
So that's the solution to a happy life.
Do you have any desire to continue making films?
Sure.
I mean, you know, they say,
how do you know when you're done making movies your legs go?
Because you're on your feet for 18 hours a day.
I love making movies.
But it takes a lot of energy.
And there's two reasons that I made movies.
One is you make a lot of money sometimes.
Sometimes you don't make any.
And one is because you have a lot of fun.
So those are two reasons why I consider making a movie.
But if neither one of those apply, I'd rather not. Are there any films that you thought were gonna make a lot of money. So those are two reasons why I consider making a movie, but if neither one of those apply, I'd rather not.
Are there any films that you thought were going to make a lot of money that didn't?
I thought they were all going to make a lot of money, but they didn't. You know, I did
my first movie. It was called House of Games. I think it was 1985.
Sure. Love that movie.
Thank you. And Siskel and Ebert were the guys. They were the...
Yeah.
And I knew them both from Chicago. And they said it's the year's best film.
I thought, my God, the year's best film.
My God.
But I did it for like $3 million.
And the downside of independent films in those days is if somebody paid $3 million for the movie, they pre-sold it.
They said, I know I got this cast and this blah, blah, blah.
I pre-sold it.
I'm already out.
I don't give a shit if the movie makes a dollar
But what I'm not gonna do is risk money promoting it because I'm out right, you know
If it makes three million and ten dollars, I'm great. It makes four million dollars. I just made 33%
Spend a million dollars promoting it. You might not make any money. That's right. That was the case of that film
Yeah, it's too bad.
That was a great movie.
Yeah, well, I made a lot of movies.
And I said to the one guy, I almost remember his name, it was Orion Pictures.
He says, you understand the way we make movies?
I said, yeah.
I said, you get everything and I get nothing.
And he said, that's such an unfortunate, cynical way of looking at it.
§29Transcript · 2:40:27–2:45:08
The truth is, you get nothing now, but we get everything later.
Isn't that great?
Did Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross make money?
I think they made a lot of money.
I didn't direct.
There's a wonderful movie directed by Jamie Foley.
But I think that made, I did a bunch of movies that made a bunch of money
that I wrote, Wag the Dog.
Wag the Dog was fantastic.
Wag the Dog is, it's eerily like applicable
when you look at modern day propaganda
and you go back to that film, right?
That film was, it was preposterous.
It was great, but people great but people like oh this could
never happen but you think about it today you go jesus christ that 100 could happen oh yeah
well who was it who they started the uh i can't remember i've lost the thought um
the hottest thing about wag the dog is barryinson called me up one day. I'm living
in Vermont. And he says, I got this novel about this guy. The president has to start a war,
a phony war to divert attention from some mischance. He said, you want me to send it to
you? I said, no, no, I get it. I get it. I get it. I said, he has to start a war because he's caught in the closet with a Girl Scout.
Barry says, yeah, go write it.
So five weeks later, they're shooting a movie.
That was it.
That was our discussion.
They're shooting a movie.
So the movie comes out.
And as the movie comes out, the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks.
Yes.
So I'm in New York promoting something or other. And for, you know, for the one
time, only thank God time in my life, I was stalked by the press all week. I couldn't leave the hotel
because they all wanted to say blah, blah, blah. But one of the reasons was there's a scene in the
movie with the supposed, the president, I guess, is talking to somebody who looks exactly like
Monica Lewinsky. As you go back and she's wearing, she looks like Monica, she's got the same outfit.
So I called up Barry, I said, what the fuck?
He says, it beats me, I don't know.
Total coincidence.
Yeah.
Wow.
And in real life, who did Clinton bomb
during the middle of that to divert attention?
There was a bombing.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was literally right out of your movie.
It was an aspirin factory somewhere in Syria or somewhere.
Something crazy like that.
Everybody was cynical about it.
Everybody was like, he's doing that to distract attention
from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Say, hey, listen, we had to bomb some people.
Let's not talk about this nonsense.
Really? And let's talk about this nonsense. Really?
And let's talk about something serious like this military action that was absolutely
necessary and had nothing to do with distracting people from the fact that I was having sex
with an intern.
Well, you know, I knew Paddy Chayefsky pretty well and I always – I think one
of the only guys I ever envied as a writer – I mean, I envy people who made more money
than me certainly but I never envied their writing. But I envied Patty that created, among other things,
the phrase, I'm mad as hell and I'm just not going to take it.
Yeah, network.
Network. But then I created that phrase, wag the dog. So I felt very rewarded.
I mean, that phrase gets repeated all the time when people are talking about propaganda or
things that they don't believe in. Well, the other thing, there was somebody, I think it might have been a rack or a rander,
was saying, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. That's the Chicago way,
which is, I made that up for Untouchables. Really? Yeah. You made that expression? Yeah.
That's wild. I thought that was just an expression. That's another great film.
Man, you had so many good ones. I mean, when you look back at your career,
I mean, what an incredible,
like your resume of films,
of great movies that you did.
It's really impressive.
I got lucky.
You know, I was a playwright in New York,
very successful young playwright in New York.
And Bob Rafelson was doing a movie.
He was doing Postman Always Rings Twice.
And a friend of mine was going to audition for a part in Postman Always Rings Twice.
And I said, tell Rafelson he should hire me to write the screenplay.
And she said, Dave, he's got a screenplay.
He has to have a screenplay.
They're auditioning for the part.
So she goes, blah, blah, blah.
And he calls me up.
I never met him.
He says, this is Bob Raiferson.
You say you should write the screenplay?
I say, yeah.
He says, yeah, I know you work.
You're hired.
And that's how I broke into the movie business.
Really?
Yeah.
So I started right at the top.
Wow.
I'd never been in Hollywood.
How old were you?
What?
How old were you at the time?
30, maybe 31.
Wow.
So all of a sudden, I'm sitting in Santa Barbara.
§30Transcript · 2:45:10–2:49:03
We're shooting in Santa Barbara, and I'm befriended by Jack Nicholson.
And so every night, it's all night shooting.
So we spent all night sitting in his trailer, drinking and telling stories, and me and Jack Nicholson.
Wow.
So then it's New Year's Day,
and we're all going to watch the Super Bowl with Bob Rafelson.
So it's Hunter Thompson, me and Jack Nicholson,
and Scatman Crothers.
So I ended up playing the piano while Scatman Crothers sang.
So I just had such a ball doing the movies.
So you knew Hunter?
What?
You knew Hunter Thompson?
I knew him from there.
He's very silent.
Really?
Yeah.
He's probably taking it all in.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's a good move.
Jack Nicholson and you were sitting down there talking.
Oh, he's great.
And listen, from that day to this,
anytime we're in the same place,
I'm saying recently we used to see him a lot,
he would always cross the room and see great gentlemen say, ma'ams, how you doing? So sweet.
That is sweet. When you look back at these films that you've made, is there anything
that stands out as being like an extraordinary accomplishment to you? Like anyone that you...
Oh, that's a good question indeed. I did a movie with Alec Baldwin. My wife and Phil
Hoffman, my wife Rebecca Pidgeon
and Phil Hoffman were the stars that Alec played. It's called State and Main, and it's about a movie
company on location. And they've just lost their Billy Macy's, and they just lost their location
because the star, played by Alec Baldwin, was found just living in Girl Scout. And so they have
to come to a new town, and they destroy the town in three days.
It's pretty funny.
Everybody's Sarah Jessica,
Barbara,
Sylvia,
Julia Stiles,
everybody's in the movie.
And there's a scene where Alec Baldwin
is out getting drunk with this underage girl,
and he cracks up his car,
and the car turns over,
and he crawls out of the car.
Clark Gregg's in the movie.
And he says, looks around, and she'sls out of the car. Clark Gregg's in the movie. And he says, looks around and she's crawling out of the car and the cops are coming and she's underage. And
he turns around and he says, wow. I thought, we're about to shoot. So I say, hold on, stop,
stop, stop, hold on. I say, Alec, when you crawl out of the car, turn around, look around
and say, well, that happened.
So he jumps up and down.
He's screaming.
It's the funniest fucking thing ever.
Woo, woo, woo.
So he jumps.
So that's the way the line is in the movie.
And I felt very, very proud of that.
Wow.
When you see all the crazy shit that happened with him on the set of Rust, like, how did you react to that?
You know, I did a lot of stuff with Alec.
I directed him in that movie.
He's wonderful.
The scene in Gary Glenn Ross,
Coffees for Closers.
Oh, yeah.
That is a fucking amazing scene.
He's marvelous.
And he did, you know,
how that scene came about
is Alec was supposed to play a part,
I think it was eventually played by, I can't remember who.
But then he had to drop out because he had a contract with some other show.
And as often happens in Hollywood, they say, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know that we are done shooting, but we have you under contract for two more months.
We might have to do reshoots.
So I had to write him out.
We cast somebody else.
But then the contract finished, and they said, yeah, you're done.
You can go do the movie.
So Alec comes back.
He says, you know, what can I?
I'm so heartbroken.
I said, what can I do?
He says, write me another scene.
So I did.
So that scene, which doesn't occur in the play, I wrote for Alec to...
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
It's perfect for him.
Oh, it's wonderful.
And that's another thing I feel very good about
is a lot of salespeople come up to me
and every one of them says,
oh my God, thank you, you got it so right.
Because I used to do it for a living.
I used to work on a boiler room.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
It's an amazing scene.
§31Transcript · 2:49:07–2:53:02
He's a fascinating guy, Alec Baldwin,
because he's just, he's such a movie star guy.
Also, I did a great movie with him and Anthony Hopkins called The Edge,
which I wrote about these two guys,
the world's richest guy, Anthony.
I remember that, yeah.
And the plane goes down in Alaska
and they have to fight a grizzly bear. Yeah. That was a lot of fun. That was a fun movie, too. I remember that, yeah. And the plane goes down in Alaska and they have to fight a grizzly bear.
Yeah.
That was a lot of fun.
That was a fun movie too.
Damn me, my God.
I mean, it's gotta be satisfying
to look back at all you've accomplished
and look back at this insane resume of great film.
Yeah, but what does it mean
when my mother has to live on Social Security?
What does that mean?
It's a joke, it's an ancient joke.
The psychiatrist, the rock star comes to the psychiatrist
and he's bitching and moaning and this and that
and everything's da da da da da da da da da da da da da.
And the psychiatrist says, yeah, but you're world famous.
He says, you're worth billions of dollars.
And the rock star says, yeah, but what does it mean
when my mother has to live on Social Security?
I don't get that joke.
He let his mother, he's worth billions of dollars
and he's not taking care of his mother.
Right, what does that have to do with your film career?
It's a joke.
I know, it's a fucking terrible one.
Well see, but that's the thing about,
see that's the thing about Jewish humor, right? I'm
a yid, right? Right.
Okay, here's a great Jewish joke.
Okay, hit me with it. Why did Hitler
kill himself? Why? He got his
gas bill.
That's a good joke. Yeah.
That's a solid joke. Okay.
It's a solid joke. You know, I mean,
it's got so many layers to it. Gas chambers.
You know, the whole thing. Exactly so. You know, I mean, it's got so many layers to it. Gas chambers, you know, the whole thing.
Exactly so.
Yeah.
Well, listen, David, it's been amazing talking to you and meeting you.
I appreciate it very much and appreciate our mutual interest in jiu-jitsu and martial arts, which we didn't even talk about.
Red Belt's another film that you made.
Oh, Red Belt.
Man, you know, I got to work with everybody.
Yeah.
All the greats and
because i you know i've been involved with jujitsu like you but me for 20 years and i was sitting
you got time for one more story yeah so the guy who's my teacher my beloved teacher not to magno
grew up in sao paulo and i guess shout out to hanato i've known him since 1998 well dude so
and he grew he's i think he's a cousin to the
Machades and the Gracies. So I knew
them all and I trained with a lot of them.
And Hickson was doing an event
that he
staged and it was an event down at the
Culver City, right?
I think so. Yeah, I was there for that.
Yeah, yeah. And he was at the control
booth, right? Right. Because I remember they were talking
about your film back then.
Yeah, and so it was before he did the film.
He was going to do the film.
Wow.
And we ended up with John Machado.
He's wonderful.
So anyway, so Hicks says, you know, Dave, I know you.
We know him from around.
He says, come sit in the control booth with me.
So I'm sitting and watching, and he says, he's trying to reason away how do you put jiu-jitsu, how do you dramatize it, right?
Of course, there's MMA, but there's something else,
which is just straight-up jiu-jitsu.
It's very hard to, yeah, there you go.
It's true, telegy, foreign, jiu-machado.
How do you dramatize it?
And I said, I came up with this idea.
I said, wait a second, what about if one of the guys
has an infirmity, you assign,
you in effect cripple him for a moment, not really.
He loses an arm, he can't use his arm,
he can't use his hand.
He's like blah, blah, blah, blah.
And so I'm coming up with that one, working with Hicks
over there and I told it to him and he kind of liked it,
he was considering it, but then he got called to train
for some fight he was going to do
for five million bucks.
You can remember who he was fighting,
I remember.
So he went down to Brazil.
But I got really lucky with that cast.
Yeah, I think that was
probably the early days of Pride.
If I want to, the timeline,
§32Transcript · 2:53:05–2:57:26
I think Red Belt was 2004 maybe is that right
am i guessing right i think that's if i'm guessing correctly that might have been funaki that might
have been hickson's final fight in coliseum i think that aligns correctly, which is like probably his biggest fight
and the most respected and dangerous opponent.
And it's one of the more spectacular victories too
because he chokes Funaki out completely.
And you see Funaki going unconscious.
Funaki doesn't tap.
He just goes to sleep.
And then Hickson climbs off of him
and kind of like kicks him off of his body and stands up.
It was wild.
Yeah.
That's the final fight of Hickson's career, too.
Is that right?
No.
2000?
What you're talking about happened, but it says in 2003,
Antonio Inaki offered Hickson $5 million to fight against Fujita, but had no answer.
But Fujita didn't fight him.
Yeah, it says they didn't fight, but he had an offer on the table for $5 million around the time.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
And then the Funaki fight was when?
2000.
Oh, that's right, Coliseum 2000, so it was before that.
Oh, so Hickson never did wind up fighting again.
Correct.
Okay.
I had dinner with Hickson and his son and his wife once, and he was talking about they were trying to get him to fight Fedor, which would have been incredible.
Oh, they would have kicked his ass.
You think you would have kicked Fedor's ass?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow, you're a true believer.
That's cute.
I certainly am.
I would never say anybody was going to kick Fedor's ass back then.
Well, okay.
I watched Fedor Krokop today at the gym.
I was working out today at the gym, and they had Fedor versus Krokop on the big screen.
I forgot what a fucking incredible fight that is.
Fedor is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, heavyweights of all time.
Marvelous.
I don't think anybody could say that anybody was going to kick Fedor's ass back then.
Not in 2000.
He was too fucking good.
From 2000 to 2000, whatever it was, 2005, there's a certain amount of years that an
athlete, particularly a combat sports athlete, can compete at their very best.
You can't do it forever.
Sure.
It's only a certain amount of years.
And I maintain that during that time, like when Fedor fought Noguera when Fedor fought
uh Crow Cop when Fedor was the fucking man he could do anything when Fedor fought Randleman
he could submit you off of his back he could knock you outstanding his ground and pound was ferocious
he was stoic dead face just a fucking technical assassin with a bulletproof mindset.
You had to beat him.
And until Fabrizio Verdum came along and triangled him, nobody even came close.
Fabrizio Verdum was the first guy to really solve the puzzle and crack the code.
And then from then on, a lot of people beat him.
But that's just wear and tear and time and just sheer numbers, you know.
So I had enough people.
I was – I had to go up to – you can cut it off.
No, no, just keep going, man.
So two stories.
One is that I had to fight the old – I had to fight the old man, the old sensei in Red Belt.
And we're thinking, who are we going to get?
Who are we going to get?
And we kept saying it should be somebody like Danny Inosanto.
So I know Danny, trained with Danny.
So we kept saying it should be someone like Danny Inosanto.
So then at one point, Nata says, well, what about Danny Inosanto? So we cast Danny, and he said the second most flattering thing in the world.
I was rolling with him.
He said, are you sure you're a writer?
You don't fight like a writer.
That must have felt good.
Oh, it felt so great.
Yeah, I mean, that's lineage, man.
I mean, he's straight from Bruce Lee.
He gave me a sign, Bruce had signed and Danny signed.
It's in my office.
Oh, wow, that's amazing.
Yeah, he's good friends with Jean-Jacques,
who I got my black belt from.
So, you know, he always speaks very highly of me.
We just saw Jean-Jacques.
We just had lunch with him a couple of months ago.
I love that guy.
He's amazing.
Yes, he is.
David, thank you very much.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
I really, really appreciate it.
Really enjoy it.
And it was an honor to talk to you,
to sit down and just shoot the shit with you.
It's great talking to you.
And your book, it's out right now? Oh, yeah. Yeah, today. It'll come out. There enjoy it. And it was an honor to talk to you, to sit down and just shoot the shit with you. And your book,
it's out right now? Yeah, today.
§33Transcript · 2:57:28–2:57:34
It'll come out. There it is.
Recessional, the death of free speech and the cost
of a free lunch.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye.