The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood by Danny Trejo, Donal Logue

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood by Danny Trejo, Donal Logue “If you’re a fan like I am this is definitely the book for you.” —Pete Davidson, actor, producer, and cast member on Saturday Night Live “Danny’s incredible life story shows that even though we may fall down at some point in our lives, it’s what we do when we stand back up that really counts.” —Robert Rodriguez, creator of Spy Kids, Desperado, and Machete Discover the full, fascinating, and inspirational true story of Danny Trejo’s journey from crime, prison, addiction, and loss—it’s “enough to make you believe in the possibility of a Hollywood ending” (The New York Times Book Review). On screen, Danny Trejo the actor is a baddie who has been killed at least a hundred times. He’s been shot, stabbed, hanged, chopped up, squished by an elevator, and once, was even melted into a bloody goo. Off screen, he’s a hero beloved by recovery communities and obsessed fans alike. But the real Danny Trejo is much more complicated than the legend. Raised in an abusive home, Danny struggled with heroin addiction and stints in some of the country’s most notorious state prisons—including San Quentin and Folsom—from an early age, before starring in such modern classics as Heat, From Dusk till Dawn, and Machete. Now, in this funny, painful, and suspenseful memoir, Danny takes us through the incredible ups and downs of his life, including meeting one of the world’s most notorious serial killers in prison and working with legends like Charles Bronson and Robert De Niro. An honest, unflinching, and “inspirational study in the definition of character” (Kevin Smith, director and actor), Trejo reveals how he managed the horrors of prison, rebuilt himself after finding sobriety and spirituality in solitary confinement, and draws inspiration from the adrenaline-fueled robbing heists of his past for the film roles that made him a household name. He also shares the painful contradictions in his personal life. Although he speaks everywhere from prison yards to NPR about his past to inspire countless others on their own road to recovery and redemption, he struggles to help his children with their personal battles with addiction, and to build relationships that last. Redemptive and painful, poignant and real, Trejo is a portrait of a magnificent life and an unforgettable and exceptional journey.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from thechrisvossshow.com thechrisvossshow.com hey we're coming in a great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here to see the video version of this go to youtube.com for chest chris voss hit video version of this, go to youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss.

Hit that bell notification button. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those places the kids are playing at these days. We're over there. Also go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there as well. Today we had an amazing author, actor. I believe some of the other things I want to say on his thing is a producer and director from Hollywood. Donald Logue is with us on the show, and he was the co-author of the book

with Danny Trejo, Trejo, My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood. And he co-authored the book, to my understanding, with Danny Trejo. And he's here with us today. Welcome to the show, Donald. How are you? Oh, Chris, I'm fantastic. Thank you. And he's here with us today. Welcome to the show, Donald. How are you? Oh, Chris, I'm fantastic. Thank you. And thanks for having me. Thank you for coming. We certainly appreciate it. We've got Hollywood royalty here between you and Danny and Spirit. Yeah, Danny is, my God, Danny is the one in the zillion person. And his story reflects that. And the book, I think, really gets to the heart of that really well. But Danny and I have been very close friends for a long time. And this process of

writing his book together only brought us closer. And actually, I love and admire the man, but it's made me love and admire him even more. There you go. There you go. Now, give us your plugs so people can find out about you and Danny on the interwebs or where to buy the book, whatever sort of plugging you want to put in for yourself. If you go to simonandschuster.com, that's where you can find Trejo, My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood, or of course on Amazon or wherever, barnesandnoble.com. I'm semi-active on social media at Donal F. Logue, at Donal F. Logue on Instagram. And Danny, you can find on official Danny Trejo, I think on Twitter and Instagram. And luckily now

the way books are, it's pretty easy to just Google search a book and find a way to get it. Although it'd be great for people to go in the stores and get it. It was always a fantasy of mine to walk by a store or walk through the airport and see a stack of Danny's books on the shelves. And it's come to fruition. It's pretty wild. That is awesome. That is awesome, man.

Now, Danny has been in over, I think it's over 400. He's acted in over 400 movies. 406 credits as of IMDb of today. You've acted in over 113 credits. And then you have a producer, director, and a few other things to your credit. Do you want to expand a little bit more on your bio? And feel free to. Yeah, I guess my bio in regards to for Simon & Schuster was just,

I was born in Canada to Irish parents and grew up on the Mexican border. I studied history in college and fell into acting there. And then, but writing was this thing that I'd always, that's what I really wanted to do and have taken some stabs at it. And then, but Danny's book was really, it was just this godsend because of course, Danny was so famous and ubiquitous and that there was real interest in his story of publishing houses. The problem was finding someone that he would trust enough to sit with him over the course of that kind of process. And really, over the course of those hundreds and hundreds of hours

of conversation, really get to the third rail, the driving force that makes Danny who he is, or some of the big epiphanies he's had over the course of his life to either change his behavior. And that's what I think I was able to accomplish probably more so than a stranger would have been able to in the case with Danny. Yeah. I had watched one of your guys' interviews where Danny had said he was trying to get other people to write the book at first and he didn't hear his voice in them. And I think that's when you stepped in and saved him from that. It's really fascinating, Chris, the process of co-writing a memoir. Now, bear in mind that a lot of the memoirs that you see, the celebrity memoirs are, generally speaking, formed out to somebody else because it's a lot.

The process of writing a book takes a long time. And what people do is they interview a lot. The process of writing a book takes a long time. And what people do is they interview a subject. So they have their own voice, but at the same time, there's this completely different world where you have to build this whole world of prose and place their own words in context. And then within that, somehow start to try and really match their voice or in a way put yourself in their shoes and in their mind and there's an art to it and it's super difficult to find but i think sometimes when you write when you read a memoir you can either consciously or definitely subconsciously you can tell when the voice the narrative voice shifts and it doesn't

quite feel like them one thing that danny and i did was during each draft of the book i would sit and we would read the book out loud and start to iron through stuff where he's like nope that's not how i felt in that situation that's not certainly not a word I would choose to use. And so we were pretty painstaking about it. But I had to be. I think in a weird way, when we pitched the book and there were a number of publishing houses interested, they were like, sure, we want a book from Danny Trejo, but who's his buddy? So I knew that hard work would be my only level of defense against the people who are suspicious or potentially naysayers. I know what that's because I've handed over my book to the editors that I just got done doing. And there's that argument about what's that?

Congrats. Thank you. Thank you. I guess if it ever gets published, it'll be congrats. It will. But it's that whole, it's not your voice. and then it's your voice. And then it's not, I'm like, wait, whose voice is this supposed to be? Like, I don't know. This is maddening sometimes. It's fascinating, right? Because it's the, it's such an interesting thing. And I think

this is funny, but definitely true. When I first started acting, the impetus was I was a class clown and kind of a funny guy a little bit and had a certainly Irish, colorful personality. And my friend said to me, man, you'd probably do well at that. And then the second I had to memorize text and perform it, all of a sudden, every color I was able to generate in just my personal life, I felt had been taken from me because of the artifice of memorization and delivery. And then I think it was Flannery O'Connor said, everyone can tell a good story until they sit down to write, all of a sudden, whether we think it has to be more formal or the voice doesn't come out like our conversational voice. And in a weird way, with both acting and writing, it is this incredibly difficult process of beating away the fakeness that takes us away from our natural voice and how to appear spontaneous when it's artifice and all these different things but congrats on sitting down to write a book clearly

you're a master at conversation and stuff so in a weird way i think it's probably feels like it would be easy and then all the on the hand, it feels like you're handcuffed. Yeah, yeah. You're just like, and the editing, oh my God, the editors. So it was great that you guys were able to sit down with Danny and really make this happen. And by the way, had great editing. Yeah, yeah. And great help.

And it takes a team to come up with these things. You have to have outside Michelle Herrera Mulligan at Atria Books and Simon & Schuster, a dear friend of mine, Hillary Lifton, who's a genius writer and an author, an amazing author in her own. And those were the women who really helped sit back and get some objective view of what we were doing. Sometimes I was just way too in the weeds. I had thousands of pages of things transcribed and written and it was overwhelming. I felt like I was drowning at certain parts of the process.

And then you guys had a lot of tapes too, right? You recorded a bunch of... Yeah, I would transcribe them. And I'm not a great typist. I would come home at the end of the night, and then I would spend hours just transcribing what we had discussed. And then I remember it was so funny because there were times later when I was writing chapters and I would just fill in what I was like, yeah, I think Danny said this. And when I went back to the actual transcript, he had said something different, but he had said something more brilliant than I ever could have concocted. And that's his mind. That's his unique. He's a really brilliant, deeply emotionally intelligent human being so yeah for people to read the books you know i'm excited too he's had quite the journey of life

i'm always surprised because i asked a bunch of people for questions today and to come into the live show and watch and there's still some people and i think they're these millennials those folks some are like dude jenny trejo who? I'm like, did you ever see Heat? Machete? Desperado? Who doesn't, in my mind, who doesn't know who he is? But I actually found a few people. That's interesting. But I do think that if you see his face,

all of a sudden there's this... In fact, I think Danny's face is perhaps one of the most recognizable faces worldwide. Yeah. And we discuss it in the book. It was this strange thing where, you know, around the time of Machete, there were these weird murals of Danny started popping up in places like Brazil and Germany and the Philippines. And his son Gilbert showed him a mural that someone had done of Danny in some village in the Philippines. And I was like, wow, this is the next level.

You're not just Danny Trejo, this guy who's come out of prison and had this movie career. You've seeped into some kind of collective psyche in some stranger. He's super cool. So for those who are the layman of not knowing exactly who he was or putting the name to the face, give us give us an arcing overview of the book and maybe a little bit of lay a great strength of the book, is it doesn't, it's not really a Hollywood book. It's not talking about Hollywood stories or, but certainly gets into that part of his career. But what the book is about, we all have the ability to change in life, that there's no situation in life as seemingly hopeless as it appears, that there is always hope as long as we're breathing and we're living. And Danny was this guy. He wasn't one of the guys who fell through the cracks when he was young.

He was in the space under the cracks. He had it hard coming up. Grew up in L.A., grew up in a very kind of macho, chicanismo background, and then started getting in trouble and, you know, doing drugs at a really early age. The first time he really got busted and dragged down to juvie was like he was 10. First time he shot heroin, he was 12. And that was what he felt like you were supposed to do. And that's what instead of for some of us where it's OK, elementary school, junior high school, college, career, whatever. They were like, oh, youth authority, fire camps, YTS, and the prison system. And there were a certain set of rules he had been taught

by this incredibly charismatic person in his life, his uncle Gilbert, who was only four years older than him, a really amazing, fascinating guy. And he's like, Danny, you're going to go to juvie. And this is what you have to do to survive. And this is what's going to happen in prison. And because he had gone through those steps before him. And at some point, after a massive prison riot in Soledad State Prison in 1968, where Danny was looking at a potential death penalty charge for apparently attacking a guard. That's when all of those rules, that tough guy stuff, how to survive, how to never show fear, how to never step back. That's when all of that stuff abandoned him and he needed something else. And what he found was God. And it's how this spiritual life,

a spiritual life and a life of helping other people. If you want help in life, help someone else. Boom. Stop. Full stop. And so he just said, God, if you get me out of this, if you let me live, I'll say your name every day and I'll help an inmate every day. And he said inmate because he never assumed he'd get out of prison, but he did. And he kept helping people. And it wasn't until many years, almost 17 years after he got out of prison. So he was already in his early 40s when his film career started. Yeah. his film career started. And as this bit player who was like inmate number one or Chicano number

two, or in his mind, he was excited. And this friend of his who owned a string of methadone clinics, because he's like, Danny, can you imagine if people see your face out there, it might help spread in some way the message of recovery and hope. And then Danny's always seen his career as an extension of this megaphone he's been given to tell his life story. And essentially that life story is to help, let's help each other, that there's a way out of whatever it is, addiction or the addiction of loved ones, how we, to deal with that. He had a lot of failed marriages and a string of broken relationships. And it took him till very late in his life to have some kind of insight on why that might be the case in his life and how he could grow from that. And I think it's a really triumphant story of personal growth.

Most definitely. So how did the two of you meet? This is an interesting story, I think. You know, I was a janitor at this place called the West Hollywood Drug and Alcohol Center back in 1991. And Danny came in and it was a crazy place. They'd have midnight meetings, a lot of fights, a lot of raucousness. And Danny remembers me as being like the angriest dude he'd ever met. He's a guy from prison. Right. And in my defense, was like look man i was

trying to i was trying to corral that place in and there was p it was it was ridiculous the drama going on but eight years later danny and i met on the set of reindeer games a movie that john frankenheimer directed with charlize theron and ben Affleck and Gary Sinise and really amazing experience. And we were up way we were up in Prince George, British Columbia, which is up near kind of Alaska in Canada. And we met one night in a snowy church basement the first night I was there and I was going through some stuff. My first, my oldest boy was like five days old at the time. And it was hard to take the job, but I had to take the job. I felt like I was stuck between rocks and a hard place. And Danny, Danny was like, I got your back partner. And he has had it ever since. But we became really good friends there up in, up in Prince George. That's pretty amazing.

And then I had overheard you tell a story about how he spends a lot of time going out and speaking to youth, troubled youth, people who need help. Yeah, even last night I was at his house and he said, hey, man, you want to come to Palm Springs with me? I'm speaking to these people on Friday and Saturday and every single night. And whether it's 50,000 people at a recovery convention that's been being worldwide or the next night to nine children who are in a halfway home, that's what he does every day. And this is, Chris, what you're doing with your show, what books are doing, what we're trying to do with TV and film. Yeah, on one hand, they're goofy entertainment or sometimes they're mindless. But at other times, it's in sharing stories and listening to someone else's story, where we gain that perspective on our own. And it really makes

us think about our life. There's a deeper reason why humans have been doing this around a fire in a cave forever. And I know I was certainly impacted by a lot of people's stories that I've been able to hear, and especially the ones where they share their insecurities and their frailties and the foibles and the stuff and the vulnerabilities that make us human. And one thing that's what's beautiful about Danny's story is that Danny was friends with this guy, Eddie Bunker in prison. And Eddie Bunker was the captain's clerk in San Quentin. He was like the most powerful inmate in the prison. He, no one knew prison politics better. He was genius. He used to, what he used to do was he was an architect of crimes. Like he

would draw up plans for robberies and sell them and then take his third cut. You know what I mean? Other stuff. And Eddie became a very successful prison novelist. And when he got out, he was the one who had adapted the screenplay for Runaway Train, the Jon Voight movie that was Danny's first break. And Eddie told Danny about someone else's book. There was someone who they all knew in the community. It was a tough guy, had done some time, and he wrote a book. And Eddie said about it, he goes, badass, badass, too afraid to show his ass.

So when you're like, when you hear someone talking, it's just I'm the toughest guy and I'm the baddest this and I'm the and I had no fear and this and that. Immediately, there's something in me that starts to shut down because I'm like, there's a BS factor going on. Come on, dude. We're all scared at times. It's what's it's that thing, that vulnerability that that joins us and allows us in. And so Danny was not he wasn't afraid to be vulnerable in this book. And he's got that character face. That was one of the things I learned in Hollywood, the, the character face. And it's just epic. His face can, he doesn't have to say anything. His face can tell you a story just looking at his face and you go, that guy has led a hard life and he's been somewhere.

It's funny. So I was at his house last night and it was Danny and this friend of his, Mario Castillo, who he met when Mario was an inmate in San Quentin and Danny was doing blood and blood out there. And after a few more stints in prison, Mario got out and got itself together. He helps other ex cons find their way and stuff.

He's the greatest guy with the best stories. And we were watching some documentary on one of those true crime things and they were like the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. They're doing one of those real prison gang things. And I'm sitting there and these two men who are so awesome and hilarious and they're laughing. And I go, God, it's so weird when I watch these things that I forget that was your life for so many decades for the both of them. That was the world that they were in. And thank God they got to the other side. And it's certainly not easy to, but he has that face because he's earned it. Danny has, he has the best laugh. He's got the best smile.

He lights up a room when you forget that he has that side to him that was absolutely terrifying. Oh, yeah. On screen, he looks your way with that look and you just, I'm going to run away. I'm going to run out of theater. I don't think he has a word in Desperado. Robert Rodriguez just said, I don't need you to speak, man. I just need you to look. Just like a badass.

But like I told you about a pre-show, I met him in 2003, 2004, something like that, 2005. Nicest guy in the world. Everybody's going up to him, wanted pictures with him, wanted to meet him. He just couldn't be more of a genteel, just nice guy, just all around. But I would never want to piss him off.

100%. Absolutely. So what are some other aspects or things you can tease about that are in the book that you think Riedel will be enticed by? I think for fans of Danny's, it's that journey that he made from just being that inmate number one guy, the guy who had, you know, and how he got from that to being with Machete, which at the time, I'm trying to remember, but I think Danny was almost in his mid-60s.

But here's a guy in his mid-60s who's the romantic action lead of a major studio release. And it's the first time it's happened. It breaks every paradigm. And it's again, a one in a zillion story, but more, I think for the book with me, it's just that journey of this, of he's 77 years old, lived a lot of life. And it's that journey Wow. We've been victimized by another person or things were unfair. And that realization that sometimes when we're children, the adults, they're not necessarily doing stuff to hurt us. They're just trying to survive themselves and to have that full breadth of perspective. And I think the book has something in a weird way for everybody, for fans of Danny's, for people who aren't. What I love about the book is, yeah, there are some people who don't know who Danny Trejo is. And some of them were from the more genteel classes of more the fans of New Yorker and stuff like that. And what I loved was that some of the people involved in the publishing of the book,

they were like, oh, my husband, he's a big Joyce fanatic or something. He doesn't watch movies. And he read the manuscript and he flipped out about it. And I'm like, man, that's, I think, casual movie fans. But I also think for the Latin community that here's a voice. This guy was born literally of an affair in the middle of the Zoot Suit riots, birth of the Chicano movement in the United States, and became arguably the most famous Chicano of all time. And he traces that journey and what it's like to be proud of his heritage, but incredibly patriotic about the country that he lives in. And he loves America. And only in America could there be a Danny Trejo. And what I love too is some of my

kids' friends who are not readers at all, which is weird. When I grew up, I was a crazy reader, but they've picked up the book because it's been lying around my house and they won't give it that. That excites me because there are certain people who are going to read whatever books come out and come out on the New York Times bestseller list, which thankfully Danny's did immediately. And then there are people who, for some reason, reading just isn't their bag. But I really feel like if they crack this one open, it's going to be hard for them to put down. Yeah. How did you guys decide on what stories to keep? Because I imagine he must have billions of books worth of stories.

Yeah, that was tough. And it was tough, too. It was tough for some babies to get thrown out with the bathwater. But ultimately, there's a kind of group of stories that serve the central thematic move of the story. There's a story and good stories have this flow. And sometimes even if you're sitting on a bar stool, you realize that you're listening to someone and you're like, all right, dude, you're floating away from a tangent. And I want to get back to what happened over here. And that was the thing that we, that was the criteria that we used to decide stayed and

what went. You know how you go through those times where you see something and you always wanted to see it, but you didn't know that you always want to see it. But the moment you see it, the moment you go, Oh my God, that's it. I grew up as a kid walking the dog with Bob Barker. And the first time I saw him fight, what's his face in the movie? What was that? Uh, that's Holy smokes. I said, wow. Now as a kid, we lived on the corner from where his uh house is there with the it's the first adobe home in whatchamacallit my parents

rented uh they didn't rent apartments they managed apartments right next to him so we'd walk the dog and i'd sit and look at him and go like how do you see getting that tv every day but when he fought adam sandler in the movie happy gilmore happy gil, I didn't know that I never wanted to see him fight, but seeing him kick Adam Sandler's butt was that was all like, and then there was money. So what I'm getting to is I was watching the Quentin Tarantino film grindhouse. I think it was. And they show that ad scene where he comes out as Machete.

And I was just like, I will pay to see that movie i don't care that's in the book chris that's awesome because when they what happened with machete was that when they were doing desperado the wheels were turning in robert rodriguez's head and then he mentioned to danny i have this idea for this why can't there be like this Mexican James Bond, Batman kind of guy. And then he didn't know where he could do it or how he could get the support to do it. But when he,

when Quentin and Robert were doing grind house, Robert said, I have this incredible trailer in mind for this exploitation movie called machete. And when they showed it at the grindhouse premiere the whole audience went nuts oh yeah for the machete trailer and that's when robert turned to danny and nodded because he said now we have our movie this is the only thing we needed and like he had that response that you had yeah i was just floored i'm like please you have, you have to make this movie. I'll buy two, three, four

I'll buy you a thousand bucks to see this movie. It just was so perfect for him. My favorite movie in the whole wide world is Heat. And I gotta tell you, to this day, I have trouble watching the scene where Danny dies and Robert De Niro takes him out of his misery. But to this day,

I'm always so upset because he's taken out of the movie and i'm always like damn it i want the rest of the movie to be with him in there yeah it's so intense because he gets you know they have his anna or whatever that's the only death scene that danny's ever done that his daughter just couldn't wow watch yeah you know she went to her room and she was so upset because they were watching heat together and she went to her room and she was so upset because they were watching heat together and she went to her room and he goes it's okay babe i'm here and she goes he goes because she'd seen him die in so many films he's died more than he's died more than any other actor in hollywood

history and she said dad this one was so real because that was the life you led. Danny wasn't cast in Heat because he was as an actor necessarily. He was on Heat with Eddie Bunker as armed robbery consultants. Oh, wow. And then Michael Mann had done this incredible movie called The Jericho Mile with Peter Strauss about a guy who breaks the world record in the mile in prison or qualifies for the Olympics.

And it's an amazing movie. But to film the movie in Folsom, he needed the he had the cooperation of white and black inmates, but not the Mexicans. And he had to talk to the syndicate of which Gilbert Trejo's Danny's uncle was one of the leading members. And so they worked out a deal. And so later, Michael Mann was like, he saw him, he was like, Gilbert, and he goes, No, that's my uncle. And Danny had worked with Michael Mann before. But Michael hadn't remembered this from the Camarena story. And so then he started the character that Danny played. And he wasn't this Mexican guy or anything like it. But Michael

immediately changed it to be Danny. And he said, Danny i have to call it gilbert trejo and he goes that's the biggest honor you could ever bestow upon me so danny plays his uncle gilbert trejo in that movie and yeah and the death scene's pretty intense dude it's really intense and i to this day i'm still bummed out i'm like i should just turn the movie off now it makes the movie so emotional though it needed that it does it takes it away from you it's a takeaway sales reverse psychology thing where it goes 100% take this away and he was one of the most likable guys of the crew the other guys are good actors some of their seedy characterness and stuff i like danny the best he was the straight guy he's like the honorable loyal guy and he's got all this anyway we could talk forever about actually i did

talk forever about it because there's this podcast out of australia that's dedicated to heat which is pretty amazing is it really wow yeah but he is what a movie you know what a film i could get into the nitty-gritty of heat for a long time but i i auditioned for michael man once and we auditioned for it was just me and him in his office. And it was like three and a half hours. It's so easy. I ended up doing the project, but I was like,

wow, I've never, this guy is so precise in what he wants and what he does. Like it's just a next level and all the details and he show it. One of the great ice movies of all time. And I would say with to live and die in LA and then the older ones like sunset Boulevard, but just,

and like Danny's book in a weird way for people who love, I have this love affair with Los Angeles for a zillion reasons. And by the way, I came here clearly. I was a janitor at the drug and alcohol center. So things weren't really rolling my way. But what I did find about L.A. was it had this heart to it that's so different from what people think. Because there's a lot of life and humanity going on here besides the entertainment industry.

But Heat's one of the great L.A. movies of all time. Yeah, it is. It just really is. Just such a wonderful story and life of redemption with him and both of you, actually, from some of the journeys that you've been on. Anything more you want to tease out on the book to get people to pick that baby up? I just think it feels weird because it feels like you do a shuck and jive soft shoe dance. The book is really good. And I love that that and it's not that it is the most important thing in the world but it was awesome to get incredibly nice critical reviews because

they're coming at it critically and then and i think in a way it tells readers that you're not going to dive into something that's like a slog fest this guy's life is 7000 times more interesting, fascinating, illuminating, and inspiring than any movie or television show that Danny's ever done. And that's guaranteed. Could this be a movie? But who would play Danny? No one could play Danny. No one could play Danny. But absolutely, yeah.

I think it would have to be a multi. It would have to be a series in some kind of 13 episode arc. I'd be to see that. You have to get a good actor. I don't know how you'd match that caliber. You'd have to get the young guys too. You'd have to get them as children and as teenagers and stuff like that, which is always interesting. But, you know, what I do love about a book that's transportive in a way that films and stuff can't always be is that it contains those multitudes of worlds in this simple little package. And when it comes to making movies and stuff, now you're talking about $160 million budget and a zillion 18 wheelers filled with equipment. What's beautiful about this story in this book is that you don't need any of those to have that ride. It's right there

at your fingertips. And just yesterday, we're getting news like more territories around the world are buying it. And I'm just, I can't believe that you're going to go somewhere and it's going to be translated into German and Japanese. And I just love that. I love that. And I'm just, I can't believe that you're going to go somewhere and it's going to be translated into German and Japanese. And I just love that. I love that. And I was so proud that I was able to be part of bringing that story to life. And for me personally, yeah, I've done a bunch of, I've done a bunch of film and television and I'm really proud of that. I'm proud of the projects that I was involved in. And then I'm really proud of this because that was my contribution

to the written word. And I've been so lucky to be like some of my favorite projects when I was a young actor, Common Ground, Gettysburg, and the band played on. They were all stories based on Pulitzer Prize winning books that were brought to life. And that's where I felt like, wow, if I have an ability to inhabit a character, bring some of this person's story to light and help this story to be brought to a broader audience. Because if you're not a reader, I would say if you are a reader, the Killer Angels and the Band Played On and Common Grounder, these books that just i love that kind of stuff i love i love historical non-fiction or even historical fiction i like knowing and when i

do a civil war movie or a revolutionary war movie or something it's just an excuse for me to go out and read 20 books about it to understand it more to help help myself understand it more. And I've been actively engaged in storytelling in one way or another. I have other pursuits. I got my CDL and became a long haul trucker 11 years ago. I have this little trucking company called Ashley and we have truck driving schools up in Oregon called Ashley Truck Academy. I have a hardwood company with this partner of mine, Kevin Frizen, Frizen Logue Hardwoods. So if you guys, if people out there want to buy like a walnut slabs or oak or pine or something, we have a mill and a kiln up in Oregon that I'm super involved in. And I just think, I hope with my kids, that part of it is that they look at me and say,

here's a dude who didn't stop moving his feet. And it's possible to write books and drive trucks and do different stuff. And you don't always have to be the best at it, but you got to try. And there's a lot to get done on planet earth. And, but man, I'm just blown away by the fact that this book, I know that this Chris being involved in the process yourself, like it's one thing to find a publishing house and an editor who's willing to take it on. And, and then books, the 30,000 books, excuse me, 30,000 books a month come out and, and they, it's a brutal business to want to be a writer or an actor, all these different things. The rewards are nice, but sometimes hard to come by.

But that this book is going to be in airports when you're walking by. And someone on a flight from Dallas to New York is going to be like, that guy's story. That's interesting. And to think that we had something to do with just filling their flight and making them think about their own life. That's the coolest thing in the world. That is. So when do we get your book on your life? Oh, I don't know, man.

My agent's like, all right, get busy. So was the proponent for this book, COVID, giving you guys some time off so you could work on it? COVID certainly, no. We started it before that, but COVID came in. It was amazing in this weird way where it was like, okay, nothing else going on. I did do some filming during COVID, which was interesting, but we had these months where we were both just, we were in our bubble. And yeah, COVID definitely provided this kind of laboratory for us to just get busy with it and have no excuses. Yeah. I had an idea.

You could do a Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, that whole camera thing they did. Maybe we could just take Dannyy and used to go younger and older and i don't know it i don't think it turned out very well on the irishman that's my opinion the irishman yeah i i'm loathe to say anything because every person says these movies and what a genius you know what a genius but yeah that's a tough one that's a tough one when you're like i i know it myself because i did a sitcom called grounded for life. And we were, so at the time I must've been 33 or whatever it was.

And I had my own kids and then we would do these high school flashbacks and there's just, uh, no one wants to see me pretending to be an 18 year old version. It's just painful. Yeah. And I think it was Al Pacino's or Robert De Niro's way too blue eyes that were throwing,

it was taking me right. It was like breaking the fourth wall. It was taking me. Oh, it's interesting because my initial response to the Irishman was that was jarring me right off the bat. But I have to say that as the movie wore on, I got,

I got down with it. For me, the one scene that was interesting was he comes home and he goes down the street, De Niro, and beats the hell out of a groan. I think it was for what he did to his daughter or something in the shop. But I thought about Robert De Niro as when he was in Mean Streets and it was young De Niro or something, There was nobody who did that physical, violent jam and acting better. And then you could just see, Hey,

we all get older and getting old is great in some ways and sucks in others. Sucks a lot of ways for me. I don't know. There you go. What do you think? My sister always says getting old isn't it's rhymes with wussies, which I think is true. It is tough to get old. I like to say youth is wasted on the young.

And then George Carlin used to do a bit where he said, it's really screwed up how this works. You should start out old, and then you have money, and then you work your way up to being young. It should go the other way. Yeah. money and then you work your way up to being young it should go the other way yeah what do you think what is something or maybe some things that you think readers are going to take away that they don't know about danny that they i don't know if they knew about the extent of how intense his criminal life was it gives them some insight i always think that a good, I always think prison memoirs are fascinating. We clearly have a bit of a fascination with them as a society because people

can't, people love watching true crime and those locked up documentaries, but there's different stages to the book. And what someone wrote was they were just psyched. It wasn't just this kind of weird, goofy Hollywood tell all that it was getting into the nitty-gritty of that and prison politics and the mindset you have to have. And I think that was fascinating because it certainly tore back a curtain on stuff that I didn't know, I wouldn't have known intuitively. And it's fascinating. Again, what I do think is that

I think its greatest strength and value is in that golden rule. And I don't care how tough you are, or where you're from, or what neighborhood you're in, or whatever, if you want help in life and if you're hurting, the answer is to help someone else. And in that, and it's not to be goofy or look at God, I'm being a nice guy or whatever. It's actually, that's the thing that takes you out of your own head and puts you in motion. And Danny says everything good that's ever

happened to him came as a direct result for helping someone else without expecting anything in return. And that's happened to me in my own life. If I stop and help someone change a tire or push a car to the side of the road, that's because my dad and my mom taught me that's what we do. I give them full credit. But as time went on, and in my own small corner of the universe, I guarantee I would go to job interviews, auditions in Hollywood. And someone would say, Hey, look, man, eight years ago, you pushed my you helped my mom out when her car stalled out on Gower. Wow. No, and it's I didn't do it because 10 years later i was going to meet some producer in a meeting but i guarantee you you never know action begets action if you get off

your ass and leave the house and do stuff and positive things are going to come back to you danny's living proof of that his story um and i think all stories that should inspire us to look at our own lives in a certain way. And it's entertaining as hell. It's a great read when it's, I hate it. It's so hard to say that because it's so self-aggrandizing and self-serving, but it's, it was really like, Hey, help me be a vessel. Help me just help transpose this guy's story to a wider audience because i think um people will find benefit and value in it in their own lives but they're gonna have to read the book too to get

that can't give everything away there are no spoilers there's no there's no plot to kill the president or some crazy shit in there for yeah the it's it the story of redemption the story about sharing helping other people. I love that his life, he goes around and spends time with people that are struggling with addiction and other different issues. Back when coronavirus started, I was crushed because I just watched all this money disappear that was planned out. You may have been in a similar situation in Hollywood where projects came screeching to a halt that were planned. And I was just crushed. And I saw the 2008

recession that I went through and a friend of mine wrote on Facebook, he goes, there's two things you do right now, find a lifter or be a lifter. And I didn't feel like lifting at that point, but I said, okay, so what do I have? What are my assets? I have a podcast. I have a pretty big audience. I have a lot of social media influence and stuff. What can I do with this? I'm going to be a lifter. And it was hard for about four or five episodes where I was trying to be a lifter and it wasn't working out pretty good. I was cracking up, but I kept doing it and then I became a lifter.

And so giving back to people, helping them and stuff, sometimes that are. Man, when you need something, when you need something, it's the hardest thing, right? Because you're trembling. Danny got out of prison. He was 25 years old. He had this, imagine 1969. No one had a frigging tattoo like Danny on his chest. That was a prison resume writ large for anyone to see.

He comes back to his house like a little boy and he needs to stay there. And his dad doesn't even want to let him in the screen door. And he sits on the bed and he's so full of this rage and he goes, he takes his shirt off and he sits across from his dad. This super tough guy who was tough, just tough love and probably scared of what the road Danny was heading down and headed down. And Danny had his shirt off because he knew it would piss this man off and they were like two of the angriest mofos sitting in a living room with plastic on the furniture you know that's it i can see his mom was like can i can i get you milk and cookies and his dad's yeah so these two super angry dudes are eating milk and cookies and danny's like who the F am I, man?

I'm like this 12-year-old kid who they didn't even know. Anyway, I'm 25. No one's going to hire me with my record. And that was going to follow him everywhere. And he went outside and there was an old lady struggling to carry. Back then they used to have this. They didn't have normal trash cans. They had these big like containers or whatever and she was there was construction and she was struggling to

carry these things and danny started running towards her and she was like no me robes don't rob me they all knew danny's reputation he goes i ain't gonna rob you i'm helping you and he was and he pulled her trash cans and he started, um, he started dragging these trash cans for the old people out when their trash was getting picked up because it got him out of his head. So while sitting in that house going, I'm a piece of crap, they don't like me. This is this you're going living in the future where you're like, I'm never going to get a job. I'm an ex-con you're living in the past. You're like, I have all this regret of all these people I burned and robbed, people who are going to be out here, people whose family are going to be around, pissed off at me still.

And what you do is you go help someone else. And does it help them? Sure. But who it helps mostly is yourself because you're not sitting there on a couch, hating yourself, living in either the future or the past, both of which you have no control over. It's done. It hasn't happened yet. And that's what Danny did. And there's another really awesome story in the book where there was an old lady on Danny's block. And Danny started because he couldn't get a normal job. He started a landscaping company with this other ex-con named danny

d landscaping and so they were mowing lawns and so there was an old lady in his neighborhood who really unkempt hair kids called her the witch her grass or everything was completely overgrown she had the one shit house on the neighborhood that was nice or and dann Danny knew that her son had been killed in gang style stuff. Her other son had died in Vietnam and her husband had committed suicide over grief. And he was like an alcoholic. So Danny said to his friend, Danny, he goes, Hey man, we're going to do this lawn. Right. And for free. And they didn't even knock on the door they would just they just started mowing her lawn every week and clipping her hedges wow and at some point like the third or fourth time he notices that someone's peeking out at the curtain to him all right don't do anything they

just do it and so one day probably two months into, the door opens on the back porch and Danny hears something and he comes around and he sees that there's this big pitcher of lemonade in like a Waterford crystal thing pitch. And then there are these two crystal glasses, like killer crystal with ice in them. And what Danny had never told anyone ever that one of his biggest fantasies in life back when he was doing armed robberies and stuff was he was going to pull some big super heist he was going to get some fat money he was going to go to las vegas and his fantasy was sitting in a club with broads all over him, drinking whiskey out of a crystal glass because he'd never had a drink from crystal before.

And here are the ice cubes clinking in crystal. And when sitting on that lady's porch with Danny Levitov, drinking this crystal, this lemonade that tasted better than anything ever could, any whiskey, he was like, isn't god funny the way he makes your dreams come true but in a way different than you thought they would be and better and better you know and his life story is full of that stuff and yeah that's in the book so if you get to the book and another thing this old guy came down the street when they were doing the ladies lawn. And he was like, hey, Paco, how much do you charge for the lawn? And Danny was pissed because he knew it was some BS, some big old white guy who's racist or something.

And he goes, we don't charge her nothing. He got things about it. And he goes, hey, follow me. Danny follows him and he opens up. He's got a really manicured place and a garage and stuff like that. And he says, if you help me with my lawn, my wife won't let me mow the lawn anymore because I had a heart attack last year. He goes, I'll give you all this equipment.

And what he didn't know was Danny and the D&D landscaping needed a new lawnmower, an edger and clippers and all that kind of stuff. And this guy gave it to them. Wow. And that was God too. And he had just, and the only reason he did was because he had asked that question, how much do you charge the old lady to do her lawn? And Danny said nothing. And he knew in that moment, that's that kind of stuff. I'm not saying good stuff because there are going to be cash prizes waiting for you, but don't be surprised if there are. The serendipity of those moments

are just amazing, extraordinary. We're sometimes putting yourself in the path of just the universe or God or whatever you want to call it. It's the universe and God, right? You pick. I used to say to my friend, Chris, I was like, Hey man, I have problems. I was raised with religion and there's hypocrisy and this and that. And he goes, who hung the moon, dude? Not these dudes you're talking about. Go stand in front of a 10-foot wave. Who went? And I was like, oh, okay, I'm starting to get it.

And I'm not putting down religion because I think religion is phenomenal, especially all this love your neighbor as yourself and be good to each other. That's so important. And I just think that a spiritual contemplative life is important, but certainly one where you take action because faith without works is nothing. Yeah, that's true. That's very true. So it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Anything more you want to tease out on the book before we go?

No, man, the book's the book. It's available everywhere that books are sold. I have some stuff coming out. I have on the Peacock, I have a miniseries season two of a show called Departure about a train derailment that with Archie Punjabi is really awesome. And Resident Evil, I did a remake of that. There's a reboot of that franchise and that's going to come out this fall. And a couple of a movie called All My Puny Sorrows is going to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. So I was lucky to stay busy and get some filming done during COVID. We had to be careful, but I don't say that necessarily as much for myself i i just think in the case of tj scott

who did departure and johannes roberts who did resident evil and mike mcgowan who did all my puny sorrows and the amazing cast in it i'm excited for some of these things to be shown to people because they're all my puny sorrows is depressing subject matter, but told in such a beautiful way. Resident Evil is one of those old school, just fun as hell thrill ride zombie things. And I like that. I like peppering.

I've been lucky to have peppered my career with things like From Blade to Zodiac or sitcoms or Grounded for Life or Gotham or Vikings or whatever and it's been it's just it's fun to still be included at the table what's your favorite role that you played movie or scene carriers i think the tv series terriers i did for fx a one and out but awesome adored critical one and out season terriers on fx which is on hulu is absolutely if someone's what do you do as an actor i'd say look if you're willing to take the time and you want to give me 13 hours watch that 13 episodes and you decide at the end of it and let it give it

three to get into it and then jimmy the cab, the improv comedy sketches I used to do for MTV in the 90s. Oh, wow. Wow, there you go. I did all their crazy comedy stuff back in that kind of height of the old awesome MTV days. And it really felt like my best friends Clay Tarver and Jesse Peretz and I were like three guys who got to make up the rules. No adults allowed. We filmed it ourselves. I improv them.

And so I was proud of that because it was the first time I feel like when you're an actor, you get, oh yeah, you get to come in and sit down and you hope to give them the best version of what their vision is. But there's, you have so little control over everything and you shouldn't. It's not your show. But when it's your show, you get a chance to make over everything and you shouldn't. It's not your show. But when it's your show, you get a chance to make it the way you want to. And that was Jimmy the Cab Jobber. That's awesome. We'll have to check that out. When I had my talent agency back around the time Danny was there, I would get to go to a few different auditions.

And I would see the difference between people who come up and do auditions that there was no nothing there. You just be like, yeah, but and then someone would come up and they would just punch it, kill it and deliver. And you would just you'd be crying. And there's no scene background. There's no setup or anything. They're just standing there just making for all young actors out there to a scene isn't just saying the words. It's how you walk. A scene starts like you can walk in the door of a house

700 different ways. Like animals don't like dogs in a dog park. They don't need to have dialogue with each other for them to be like, stay away from me or I kind of like you. And we as humans can do that. And good actors, man, they have that ability to change the molecules of the air in the room and just that energy that they bring to it. And yeah, I love that. There's a scene in this movie, An Angel at My Table, one of my favorite movies. And they're this woman's brother. They're in New Zealand and a period thing. And they're auditioning for the school theatrical and he's a little kid. And one kid comes out and he's, look out, dynamite. And someone else says, look out, dynamite.

And then this one kid, their brother comes out and just look out, dynamite. And he blows it. He's committed. And you're like, oh, shoot, that's it. It's commitment. If you're half-assed about it, don't be surprised when someone's half-assed experiencing it. Yeah. I feel really blessed because I really love film

and actors and what they do, actresses and what they do. In fact, I hadn't watched Lady from Shanghai, but from Orson Welles. I don't know why. I just never had. I haven't either. You haven't? Oh, you've got to watch it. I won't blow it for you. But there's a scene in there where he gives a monologue that is just... I watched it like

20 times. It's in the middle somewhere. So, do you ever watch yeah of course yeah what a great film and so i finally watched the other night and there's one monologue scene in there that just it's one of those actor moments that'll just blow you like it blew me out of the water i don't know about you you've been that dude is the most amazing yeah but my god what a tale of not going that way yeah you know like watching danny grow and then watching certain people who start like orson wells in his early 20s had the world at his feet and was maybe the most talented dude and then and made arguably like the greatest movie of

all time and citizen kane and then at the, he's barking at people on trying to direct him in a voiceover commercial for frozen peas and shit. It's a cautionary tale, but thank God when Orson Welles was burning bright, like my God, there's nothing like that. Do you like him? Yeah.

If you get a chance to go to the movie, it's wonderful. Thank you very much for coming on the show and spending some time with us. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks, Chris. All the best, man. Thank you very much. And to our show and spending some time with us we certainly appreciate it thanks chris all the best man thank you very much and to our audience go check out the book you can order it up where fine bookstore fine books are sold at fine bookstores only go to the fine bookstores uh treo my life of crime redemption and hollywood sounds like you're gonna love it judging by the stories in the life of both you guys I'm sure it's going to be a fun read. Check it out, guys.

Go to YouTube.com for just Chris Foss. Hit the bell notification. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those TikTok, all those different places. Go see us on Goodreads at 4sashchrisfoss and all that stuff. Be good to each other. We'll see you next time.