The Joe Rogan Experience - #1353 - Rob Zombie

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

Rob Zombie is a musician and filmmaker. His new film "3 From Hell" is available in select theaters this week and everywhere in October.

Here we go. Rob Zombie, ladies and gentlemen. How are you, sir? Good, good. Thanks for being here, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's awesome. Three from Hell comes out tonight. Yes, finally. It's such a crazy leap that you've made. I mean, people know you as much now for your films as they do for your music. Yeah, pretty much. Especially, I've really noticed that when i'd be like in an elevator like

the music fans i can pretty much spot them you know but like when some guy comes up to me an elevator looks like he's a lawyer or something which i i have to get to grips with that because i'm not you know i'm old every time a cop comes up to me like what does this guy want like oh he's like a fan because he's 30 years younger than me um but like yeah when normal people like oh man i'm so into this or that because you know i figure like you know heavy metal music is very specific but everybody likes movies right so you can never spot the fans yeah yeah yeah i can pretty much spot them what do you look for metal fan like when you see it like what's coming your way well it's changed but now it's always a guy with a shaved head and a long goatee that's very nobody has an mma fan yeah nobody has hair anymore it's like i swear sometimes i'm on stage the fans like what's with the long hair that's funny yeah right

that was rock and roll synonymous yeah it's like not not anymore what made you make that leap in the horror films well i always wanted to make movies that was always my main goal in life really before music well it was well let me back it up i loved everything equally but as a kid it all seemed unattainable so it was all fantasy like oh yeah i'm gonna go to hollywood make movies oh yeah i'm gonna have a band like no you're not you're just living in some crap town you're gonna do nothing is what it felt like you grew up in haverhill yeah yeah you're up in newton newton upper falls yeah it's so funny i think when i was a kid and played ice hockey we would play against newton i'm sure i think we wrestled you guys yeah oh god wrestling man i hated having to wrestle it's fucking so exhausting it's the

most exhausting like 30 seconds like that was the worst 30 seconds of my life um what was i saying oh yeah no i mean growing up i mean it's like you can have a crappy band in the garage with your friends but it's not gonna do a thing and then we had a super 8 camera so we'd make crappy super 8 movies but none of it seemed realistic i thought my life was going to be you know world's worst bike messenger in new york city that seemed to be what i was destined for but then as the band started taking off and which seemed odd on its own, and there was a chance to make music videos.

I'm like, fuck it. I'm directing these music videos. This will be film school for me. And that's what it sort of became. Did you have this thing that a lot of people have when things start going well for them? You have sort of like imposter syndrome. Like you kind of, you're like, is this, what the fuck? Are they going to find out?

Oh, yeah. My whole life is like, ah, fooled them again. I think everybody feels like that. I think so, too. I mean, because I was always so, I was so shy. And I was so shy, I wouldn't even, like, want to talk to people on the phone when I was a kid. Because that was too much. Yeah.

That one day I realized, I just, this is how I realized it one day. Like, in high school, I didn't associate with anyone. Like no one remembers me because I was just invisible. But me and my friends were sort of like into punk rock, like in a place where like no one knew what that was. That was just like. And then the day we graduated, we were at like hanging out around McDonald's and the main asshole jock kid came up who would be the worst your worst enemy you suddenly like hey man I'm going to college where do you guys get like your cool clothes and stuff like wait a minute it was four years of torture from you and your douchebag

friends and now the day we graduate you're like hey you guys were so that's what I do everyone's so fucking insecure it doesn't matter and then the next day I was like I don't care anymore oh that's great I'm a different person yeah it's hard to forgive those people you know the people that fucked with you in high school it's hard to let that go and realize though they just were probably tortured at home well you can't let it go because that's your motivation i'm always motivated by probably by anger and revenge and things of that nature. That's why when people want anti-bullying, I go, well, might be anti-success later on in life. Because, you know, people to get fucked with tend to make it. Yeah, Chris Rock has a bit about that.

Yeah, it's true. It's certainly true for fighters. Almost all the best fighters in the UFC have some story where someone was fucking with them when they were young and they had to figure out how to fight. Yep. What's the first thing we all do take karate lessons yeah well even chris rog's bit involves steve jobs and a lot of other people like do you not want microsoft like yeah

no it's yeah it's super true it is super true and it's also it's interesting that you said that you were you had social anxiety so many people that become entertainers also had some form of social anxiety when they're young yeah i had to do this thing last no the night before last i was presenting this award to somebody at this event and you know i'm picturing oh the stage will be really big and high you know i can get up there it's super impersonal doesn't matter and i get there the stage is like lower than this desk and it's like all the tables with people eating dinner right there i'm like oh man this is a nightmare i can't do this yeah you know because you have to sort of be normal i used to freak out when i had to talk to bank tellers i used to like you know you're in the line it doesn't make any sense right

but the line of like i'd have to deposit my check and i'd be in the line i'm like four more people and i gotta talk i totally know that feeling so crazy i was like that about every i was like that I'd have to deposit my check, and I'd be in the line. I'm like, four more people, and I've got to talk. Three more people. I totally know that feeling. It's so crazy. I was like that with my own, not my family that lived in the house, but an uncle came over. I'm like, I can't deal with dealing. I've got Uncle Bill.

I'll be upstairs. Call me when he leaves. Yeah, and then it's crazy that a guy like you winds up singing in front of fucking thousands of people, playing guitar in front of thousands of people. I wish I could play guitar, but I will sing in front of people. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't matter. Like, oh, it's a festival.

It's 100,000 people. I'm like, who gives a crap? It's crazy. But there's two people out there that want to say hi. I'm like, oh, that's weird. Yeah, especially if they're right in front of you. Like, one of the weirdest shows that any comic ever has to do is shows where there's a really tiny audience like the comedy store at one o'clock

in the morning and there's like five people that's brutal it's just so weird it's like 500 people no problem yeah five people ah that's why starting like when when people like oh do you ever want to go back and play clubs and more intimate say i'm like no no i want the shows to be bigger as impersonal as humanly possible because i hated playing clubs and the people like right in front of you like yeah that's the best yeah i like you like i know we do kind of suck but can't you just go with it? Give me a break, man. Let us get our feet. I don't know. What kind of music did you guys play in the very beginning?

Well, when I started, I was living in New York City. And when my first band, White Zombies, started, I was working at Pee Wee's Playhouse, actually. I was a production assistant for Pee Wee's Playhouse for the first season. Did you know Phil Hartman? No, I was a production assistant. Oh, okay. But did you see him? I saw people around because it was Phil Hartman and it was Paul Rubens, obviously. And it was William Marshall who played Blackula.

He was the cartoon king at that point. And it was all these great people. Larry Fishburne. It was Cowboy Curtis. That's right. I'm trying to think who else was there. Wow, I forgot he was on it.

The only interaction I ever had with anybody was Paul Rubens and I was standing there and he walked by and he goes, where's the bathroom? I was like,

it's right there. That's it? That was it. So, I forgot what I was thinking. Oh, but anyway, I always get sidetracked.

It's crazy that White Zombie was your first band too. Yeah. What are the odds? It was weird because we didn't play any covers, and nobody really knew how to play when we started. We sort of invented sound based upon completely not knowing what you're doing. Really?

Yeah. Because that's like any band. Like the Ramones, it's like, well, we know these three chords, but we understand, they instinctively understand catchy pop songs even though it doesn't make sense because when you try to learn a ramon song it doesn't make sense even though it seems like oh these are really simple songs because i've played them before because i've done this ramones tribute thing like oh verse chorus wait verse again two choruses then another like they're so catchy but the structure is so odd because you could tell they were just

sort of inventing this thing they were doing. And that's how I felt with us because I had this weird idea like, let's never play conventional drum beats, which is like saying, let's never make the song fun for anyone to listen to.

Like I was, you know, I got over that, but, but it just, yeah, you just, I don't know

what I'm talking about. Did you take any classes in the early days or did you just? Well, I went to New York originally to go to Parsons School of Design for fine arts. But I got kicked out because my grades dropped too low because I went from Haverhill to New York. So I was like, I'm just hanging out at Danceteria all night.

I'm not going to school. Because Danceteria was amazing because one night it would be, you know, run DMC, like, before anyone knew who they were. And then it would be like Nick Cave. Then it would be this. I stayed there every night until 4 a.m. And then we'd go to school and just fall asleep. Or fall asleep on the train ride home to New Jersey. Then try to get back.

So you never went to school for classical musical instruments or anything like that? No, I never went. I can't learn anything. I think I'm incapable. I just have to do it and figure it out and do it wrong a thousand times i can't i just incapable even as a little kid if we got a game i was incapable of reading the directions we were just let's just make up our own rules we got a spinner and these little guys let's just you know It's like three lines of directions to learn how to play the Happy Days game. We wouldn't bother.

You're giving so many kids out there hope right now listening to this. They're like, that's me. Yeah. You can make it. You can be Rob Zombie. You can be an idiot and make it. I mean, I remember when I got kicked out of school. I was sitting in New Jersey.

I was probably 19, maybe 20 20 and i was just sitting there thinking well i did it i'm a fucking loser because i had you know i was making like 100 bucks a week i got kicked out of school and was sitting there in this crappy ghetto neighborhood in jersey city and you're just like what did i do to my life it. Yeah, it worked out somehow. Isn't that crazy? Things just eventually get better. You keep going. Yeah, I don't know how. I guess I don't know how

because it never seemed like it was going to. Like, White Zombie was a band that seemed like everyone hated. And no matter what, we had to be literally the last band in New York City to get a record deal. Maybe that's why we got it they're like we are literally out of bands we have to sign them but even when that

happened there's always this weird thing and maybe you could relate we got it offered a record deal with rca records now we're a band that hasn't got anything and i was like nah it doesn't seem right i turned it down and then we got mca and i turned it down. I was like, I think we should hold out for Geffen Records. Now, we have nothing. These are people holding out for Geffen Records because they were the biggest at the time with no reason to be holding out. But we got signed to Geffen eventually.

How did you have those kind of balls? Because that seems like you would... Well, I think it's balls mixed with stupidity at the same time. Because I know I could be my own worst enemy because even when i signed to geffen you know i come up with an album title they're like really you're gonna call it la sexorcisto devil music volume one is this just to guarantee we don't get any good placement on the album in stores i guess and then like well we're gonna hire let's

hire so-and-so to direct the video like Like naming, you know, he just did the naming some big, the white snake video. Like, no, I'm going to do it. And they're like, Oh God, idiot.

But it all worked. It's crazy though, that you passed on two legitimate record companies. I wouldn't mean most kids when they're starting out or so, you know, you're like, Holy shit, this is our chance.

I didn't think they were good enough. Wow. Even though we weren't good enough for anything either i don't know what that thought was well maybe you just i don't mean i'm not a believer in fate but if kind of seems to fall into place for you it yeah i don't know it's like i feel like my whole life is just like i could have gotten hit by that car i just didn't you know because i just stopped one second short from actually stepping in front of the speeding car and made it so you always wanted to make movies though that was always something that was always the thing i wanted to do for sure but that seemed completely undoable because it was just like

hollywood and movies i mean it just it feels so far far removed i mean living on the lower east side playing cbgbs like and being broke that seems doable like right you know and that actually inspired me there's i would see so many bands i go well they suck i mean we at least better than they are you know that was i guess the motivation i had but like movies just seem like no way that works for comics too that's one of the best things Richard Jenning once said that about open mic nights that really bad comedians

are great because they inspire people to try it yeah yeah I get it because there's such a I think I have

so many friends that are comics that I've always become good friends with over the years and I think it's so similar I can't imagine standing there trying to tell jokes that people are's so similar i can't imagine staying there trying

to tell jokes that people aren't laughing but i also can't imagine staying there playing songs that nobody wants to hear and they're just looking at you like yeah you know yeah it's kind of similar well the thing is i think it's probably even harder maybe with songs that nobody knows because people will listen to jokes because they make them laugh but songs that no one knows and a band that no one knows like man you got to figure out a way to rope these people in yeah that's why i always figured like uh i was always visually oriented so i always would made sure the band had to look a certain way and act a certain way the way i wanted them to be you know So I thought at least there's that. At least you can go, this is awful, but look at these maniacs

where everybody's hair is down to here and they're going crazy and no one else is going crazy in the club, but they are. At least it's an entertaining train wreck to watch, at least. What kind of films did you like when you were growing up? I mean, when I was a kid kid i would literally just get the tv guide because we're talking like you know the early 70s and i would circle everything that i was going to watch for the week like i would plan it out it wasn't random it was like okay one o'clock white heat's on i'm going to watch that beneath the planet the apes comes on at four we're going to jump to that then you know we're going to take a break to watch gilligan's island then i'm going to come that. Beneath the Planet of the Apes comes on at 4. We're going to jump to that. Then we're going to take a break to watch Gilligan's Island.

Then we're going to come back because Good and the Bad and the Ugly is on tonight because it's Clint Eastwood week. And I would just plan it out the whole week. And I would just watch everything. Kids today will never understand TV guides. No. They'll never understand. And the ones that would come with the Sunday paper, you'd get the guide with the paper and you'd figure out what's going to be on. It was the greatest thing ever.

We would look forward to what was going to be on TV. Remember as a kid, you knew Planet of what's what's going to be on the greatest thing ever we would look forward to what was going to be on tv remember as a kid like you knew planet of the apes was going to be on like the whole neighborhood was on fire because planet of the apes was going to be on now it's like whatever it's on my phone right now it's always there yeah but i think there's something i i don't you think and i don't know how this figures into comedy but i'm sure it does there was something about having to be exposed to everything because there was nothing else that I know as much about John Wayne movies as I do about horror movies. Right. You didn't get to choose.

Whereas now everything's so compartmentalized that people just like, if you hear a band, you go, let me guess what your favorite band is. The band you sound exactly like because you have no other influences. As opposed to a lot of metal bands I know that are huge. They go, well, my favorite band was actually ZZz top so we just decided to play zz top riffs really fast and that's how we created this but now everybody's just so like i only like this yeah that you get in those those confirmation bubbles where everybody else likes what you like and you just operate in the same circles and yeah yeah you can get real weird that way

where it's weird like you just it but if you're taking influences from stealing things from everywhere yeah you can put them together a new way but if you're like i only like metal yes you sound like metal that's the cool thing about the radio right that i mean i've been recently listening to spotify which i never listened before but listen to streaming services i get exposed to you know there's like a channel like there'll be a rob zombie channel and there'll be a bunch of other shit on it as well like you know there's a zeppelin channel and you'll hear some weird music that you you didn't expect from some bands you didn't even know of and i missed that from radio

yeah i mean i just want to because you want you want that moment like oh what's this yeah yeah wow that's fucking cool i'm gonna listen to that i didn't know what it was five minutes ago yeah you know and now i mean because even as a kid i mean i hate talking like this but i can't help it um it's like you know like just fm radio is like okay the allman brothers then diana ross then kiss then abba i'll just listen to all of it because it's on the radio right right you know yeah i remember uh growing up in boston remember wbcn oh yeah sure yeah um they played one time i forget who it was it might have been mark parento i forget who it was who was the dj oh i was saying yeah right was saying um that this look this is not might

have been actually it might have been coz it might not have been bcn anyway whoever the dj was it was a rock station and they were like look this isn't rock but it's fucking good they didn't say fucking good it's really good and that's what we're playing and they played michael jackson and i remember thinking wow this is so crazy they're gonna play a michael jackson song but it was really good yeah and so you're like okay i'll take it you know yeah i still it's funny i remember that because i still remember them one morning brushing my teeth and they're like, okay, I'll take it. Yeah, it's funny I remember that because I still remember one morning brushing my teeth and they're like, oh, we're playing this new band, The Police. It's song Roxanne.

I thought it was like this black reggae band until I saw a picture of them. Rest in peace, Rico Kasich. I know, right? Lost him today. Rico Kasich from the Cars. That's a bummer. That was a bummer. Those guys are so...

The Cars is one of those bands where whenever you don't know what to listen to, you can always listen to The Cars. Sure. Because there's so many good songs and it's so good. Yeah. He was such an interesting guy, too. Such an oddity. Yeah.

You know, tall and lanky with the sunglasses on. And the supermodel and every song's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, they were weird. Yeah, man. He was brilliant. That's a bummer, man. That's a bummer.

And he was cool, too, because I remember when he he um produced the bad brains record rock for light and i was like ricko casick he's hipper than i thought he just did yeah it's cool um so like news movies wise movie wise like when you were a kid were you in horror films back then? I was into everything. But I love that for sure. But I don't even know if we, we definitely didn't call them horror movies. We thought everything was a monster movie. Like, oh man, check out this monster movie.

Like, that's just what we'd call it. Because it was always like, you know, we had Creature Double Feature on Channel 56. Do you remember that? Sure. Yeah, that was like the, every weekend, it's like, fuck it's destroy all monsters and you know whatever son of a creature yeah on channel 56 yeah so that was

yeah so big time that ruled our world so watching them back then that's when you got the idea well it got the idea that i loved it i wanted to do it but it was always it was the idea like yeah i want to be an astronaut too like it didn't seem like an idea that was ever going to happen right it was just something that you were really into yeah and it's really funny too this funny weird things because one time in high school me and my friends filmed a sequel to escape from new york the john carpenter film i don't know get nothing better to do and then to be like you know however meant 20 years later that i remade a john carpenter film halloween was just so bizarre i guess i've been thinking

about it for a long time but you know that is kind of crazy it's weird yeah it's weird shit like that what when when your first actual film film was what like 2004 2000 2000 yeah because the way it went down was this this is a funny story too. I made my first movie, House of a Thousand Corpses, at Universal Studios. And it was 2000. It could have been even the tail end of 1999. I'm not sure. The only reason I know it's 2000, I had a wrap gift somebody gave me and they put a date in.

I was like, oh shit, it was 2000. So I made the movie with Universal Studios. And once they screened it we had our test screening which i thought went i thought went great and what do i know the the head of universal at the time came up to me was like we have to talk tomorrow i was like oh man that was not a good tone that wasn't a you're so great we want to give you a five picture deal tone of voice so the next day they dumped the movie and you know just basically booted us out and then what was the conversation they were like we basically this is unreleasable

i don't remember word for word but that was the conversation in a nutshell but at the time too you figure there was no horror coming out of universal they were making like the flintstones movie and that was not the image they wanted this really vile sort of backwoods hillbilly murder fest where there's the bad people win essentially i mean horror films were sort of like not even a commercial thing at that point in a way so then um which is funny now if you go to universal studios hollywood or orlando there's a huge house of a thousand corpses thing event going on in both theme parks that's hilarious i was there for the grand opening like that's funny again like it's like a train it's like i get fired from here and now you know 20 years later it's a theme park attraction in the exact place i got

fired from wow which is so. What was the conversation like before you decided to do that film? I mean, how did they let you do it? I don't, you know, again, I think getting to make a movie for Universal Studios was such an amazing experience, but I think I was too naive

to understand what was happening. It'd be like you did one set of comments, it was like, hey, we're going to put you on tour. George Carr. You're like, cool. I guess this is the way it happens,

man. You know? And then it's after like, wow, I didn't really appreciate, just went down. Did I? Not that I was took it for granted, but I,

I had, I had met with someone at the theme park about doing a haunted maze during their horror, Halloween horror nights based on my album. And then sort of by being in the offices was meeting meeting people and having just meetings about stuff or i just didn't want to leave once i got in the studio i just loved being there even though i had no business being there and somehow i remember being in the guy time his name was kevin mischer

his office pitching him a movie i didn't have a pitch for. I had a title, but nothing else. And somehow it progressed from there. And I was like, really? I told them kind of a cool title with a completely half-assed idea that I was making up as I was talking to them. What did you say? What was the conversation? I don't even remember.

It was weird. I don't even, I can't, I wish I could remember it well because after the fact, I'm like, how did this happen? I don't remember. This is like your story is like the anti-ambition story. It's like the anti-preparation story but super successful nonetheless. Yeah, I guess the goal is just be vague with people. Be vague and look cool.

And act like you don't care. And I had that attitude too i remember once the movie was rolling i was like this is who i want to cast and this is exactly what i want to do and if you guys don't want to do it that's cool let's just not work together and they did it wow like that's great pitch on my part right and i we shot it on the Universal backlot. We were like right there, like doing the whole thing and big production. And it was weird. Wow. When it wrapped, like final day, final scene, and that's a wrap.

Were you like, what the fuck just happened? Well, the funny thing is, like after we wrapped the first time, we had a little test screening within the studio, like friends. And like, oh, we should probably punch up the ending. So they gave me like, they gave me more money to reshoot the ending than I actually made my newest movie with. It was like money was nothing. Like, you know, there's throwing money around like it's like nothing. I was like, oh, my God, this is insane. We're building these giant sets doing all this crazy stuff.

It was after that that you know the problem started but um i don't i wish i could remember these things better it's weird that i don't but what attracted you to this ultra violent psychopath like outcast murderous style of movie that you do because you have like these almost like mutant society psycho murder people i don't know but people fucking love it man i've always dug like outsider mentality like anything that involved like out i think it started as a kid as a kid because like a lot of people can relate to this i didn't feel like i fit in like i was like weird i didn't fit in i didn't get like what were the cool shoes to wear or the right freaking eyes on sure i didn't understand i wasn't trying to be you know no one's trying to be weird

and like oh yeah i want to be weird and hide away because i'm weird no it's like i don't understand and i think when i would watch the monster movies the monster was always that mentality like king kong's like hey man i'm just trying to get along why is everyone shooting at me and frankenstein's like hey i was just born yesterday why are you trying to kill me like and i think as a weird kid you relate to the monster so as life went on and you know the i would always relate to the outsider then i would always relate to movies like taxi driver bonnie and clyde and be like yeah travis pickle you know he's he's the fucking man you know and i would always be like movies like Taxi Driver, Bonnie and Clyde, and be like, yeah, Travis Bickle, he's the fucking man. And I would always be like, anything anti-society,

fuck you, fuck everything that's normal. Right, like revenge. Yeah. I was just into it. I felt real similar when I was a kid. I was always into monster movies. I was always into something that just tore all the normal people apart and just ripped apart all the normal people apart and just ripped apart all

the conceived notions of what everybody thought was gonna happen and then round the end towards the end of high school when I discovered punk rock you figure out there's an entire form of music where they're just like go fuck yourself yeah that's what we're here I was like i'm in and so many other people as well yeah and it's just like it just it flips your whole idea of what life is and then when i moved to new york i was like wow this is an entire city of people who don't give a fuck yeah that's where they come yeah nobody gives a shit about anything here it's it's amazing how your movies resonate with people in a fanatical way. You read the comments on just the trailer for Three from Hell.

People are so fucking pumped. Yeah, it's great. It's been a long journey because when my first movie came out, I think every review basically said something along the lines of, worst movie ever made. I hate this movie. And now people are like, dude, that's your best movie. You know, like you've been chasing it ever since. So it's just weird. Same with White Zombie.

When our first Geffen, I still remember this. Our first Geffen record came out. I saw the first review. It was this magazine, Alternative Press, who two years ago gave me this Lifetime Achievement Award, and I had to read the review while accepting the award. The review said, this is the worst band ever. I was like, ever? Come on. It said, this is the worst band ever.

Ignore this band. So there was something, you know, there must have been something. Did you ever contact the person who wrote that? No, I didn't. Back then, I was just like. I mean,

I felt like maybe a few years later once you were really successful. I can't remember who it was. I used to be upset by reviews until I saw who wrote them. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. That's a problem. And then you go, that guy? I don't like him. A lot of critics are critics because they really wanted to be writers. They i don't like a lot of critics are critics because they really wanted to be writers they just don't have a lot to contribute and so they just shit on things and it's just like you as a when you're young and you're new and you're reading

you think that the guy's writing it writing all badass you'll think oh this dude must look like lemmy he must be this hard-ass guy and then you see like that guy wrote it oh fuck him and fuck everyone else who ever writes anything again. I don't give a shit. But the thing is about music is it's so subjective. And someone who grew up wearing the right eyes, odd shirts, hanging with the cool crowd, your music's not going to resonate with them

the same way it's going to be with other people that felt like they were outsiders. I mean, I can only do what I i do and i don't know what would be popular i don't understand popular culture in a way because when people are like gushing over something a movie or something i say i go i hated that movie i know it made 500 million dollars and it's everyone's favorite movie i go i could barely sit through it yeah there's a lot of those being made same with music. I'd be like, oh, I love the Velvet Underground.

Everyone's like, but what about? And they'll name something like, I don't want to bash anybody, but something so popular. I go, that makes me want to kill myself when I hear that. Literally, it's sickening. Do you like any films today? Is there anything that you watch today that resonates? Oh, yeah, I'll see stuff all the time. What kind of shit do you enjoy?

I'll watch every everything i mean i whenever there's something that's more like um smaller movies i really like like i was thinking about the other day about this time in the 90s where like you got movies like napoleon dynamite and american splendor which i thought you ever see that yes i thought paul giamatti is having P-cards. It's like the greatest movie ever made. It's a great movie. And Gross World, those early Terry Swigoff films. That's where kind of my head was at, just weird movies like that. Yeah. It's, like, Napoleon Dynamite, to this day, is one of the greatest comedies of all time.

As soon as that movie started and the credits were food, I was like, this is like the greatest thing i've seen in a theater in like 20 years what is going on here well it's i just don't understand why they never made a second one i don't know that didn't make any sense to me i'm like this is a fucking franchise waiting to happen like him and the the other dude the who's the guy who played his was his uncle uncle rico yeah i mean the fucking guy was amazing they were so like over the top but believable like everything about it when he's feeding tina it just doesn't seem i just it doesn't seem like it could miss i love that movie yeah well i can see them doing it now yeah well 50 years years later. They try to do that with Dumb and Dumber, remember? Yeah.

They did it way, way, way too late. Yeah, that's a good one. And Jim Carrey's like 50, and everybody's like, this is just weird. You're not young anymore. Yeah. You can't be a buffoon. That's hard lightning in a bottle to recreate Dumb and Dumber. Yeah.

Right, right, right. It's like Step Brothers. There's certain movies that just- Right. You got to kind of leave them alone. I remember seeing Step Brothers, and I was like, is it my imagination was every single fucking thing in this movie hilarious well those two guys together it's just everything that's on bait you know talladega knights they're fucking amazing in talladega knights i love when a comedy's made well yeah

so often they're not yes you know that's what i liked about the hangover if you turn the sound off you just looked at it it's a really good looking, well-made film. And then you turn on the sound and you realize it's hilarious. But so many comedies are just so shitty. What's that new Seth Rogen

produced film with kids? The Good Boys? Yes. Oh, yeah. I didn't see that yet. My fucking wife said it was amazing. She said it was like

piss your pants laughing. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's good to know. I need to go see it. You didn't see it? I liked it. It was like a live action like South Park. That's a good way to describe it.. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's good to hear. I need to go see it. You never seen it? I liked it. It was like a live action, like South Park.

That's a good way to describe it. Did you see it? Yeah, I watched it a couple weeks ago. Yeah, yeah. Because it's R-rated. Yeah. Seth Rogen can't miss. He's great.

He's hilarious. Now, when you were a kid, you liked all kinds of stuff, but did you think if you wanted to make films that you would be making the kind of films that you're making now these like butchers well i guess since the first thing i made was that and i was into it i mean i liked because what happened too was when i moved to manhattan in like 1982 or something i discovered when when new york city was all second run theaters and double features, so I could finally see the laundry list of films I'd never been able to see. I remember the first time, like 8th Street Playhouse was a good example,

where the first time I saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was on a double bill with Jimmy Plays Berkeley, the Jimi Hendrix movie. I don't know why that was the double bill. I forgot about double bills. Yeah, and I would go see like, oh, my God, Ilwolf so the ss is playing with faster pussycat oh my god this is and i could because i could never see him because there was no vhs yet or it was so new that those movies weren't around that i just had books and i was just staring at books because back in the day you know it's kind of because with the uh this new movie three from hell you know it's playing

on about a thousand screens so it's not like everywhere like you can't walk two feet and it's on five screens and people like fuck man it's like 15 minute drive from my house i was like i would literally drive for five hours as a kid if there was a movie i wanted to see it didn't matter i'd ride my one time i rode before i could drive i rode my bike for like three hours to see night of living dead at a midnight screening. Because I'm like, I'm going to see this no matter what. Because if you didn't see it, it was just going to evaporate. That's one of the things I love about people from Canada.

Canada, they drive everywhere. I have friends in Alberta. They'll drive seven hours to go see something. Yeah. Because that's what you have to do. You get up in the morning and that's your day. You're driving somewhere. And when I was younger, that was like part of the fun.

I didn't care. Yeah, it's an adventure. So the concert's your day. You're driving somewhere. And when I was younger, that was like part of the fun. I didn't care. Yeah, it's an adventure. So the concert's 30 hours away, so. Yeah. Did you study or have you watched a lot of like really old horror? Yeah, I mean, I watch. Sometimes I feel like I'm searching for things to watch because I try to watch literally everything. And I want to own everything. So I have like a vault at home

that has you know 20,000 movies in it because I never if somebody mentions something and I don't know what it is I'm like fuck and I like write it down and I immediately have to go like investigate it. So when you say a vault you like an actual vault? Like a bank vault?

It's just a room that I built that just is nothing So when you say a vault, like an actual vault? Like a bank vault? No, no. I just call it a vault. It's just a room that I built that just is nothing but like a movie library because I want to own everything. So you have a physical copy of all these? Yeah. What format do you put them in? Well, now they're DVD. I mean, they were LaserDisc and VHS and then I started trading them out because what happens now, it's great that everything's digital, but if you go to iTunes, 99% of the things

I want to see aren't there. Because they're not, you know. So you can do that thing now that was nice on Amazon where you can, they will burn the movie on CD to own. Because it'll be like weird movies. Like I was spent forever trying to find it. I mean, I got it many years ago. But like there was this movie called Dirty Little Billy with Michael J. Pollitt as Billy the Kid. And I was like, where do I see this? Dirty Little Billy. Yeah, it's this amazing movie from the 70s and um finally you can get it like they'll you

know they or it's made to order cds i mean dvds on amazon and stuff so when i was a kid i was gigantically in the horror films and i used to read fangoria all the time and i remember they were getting into these there were slasher movies from like i guess like the 60s that i'd never heard of that were like ultra gore fest movies yeah um god i'm trying to remember who was the director but there was a guy who was famous for the herschel gordon lewis is that what you're thinking like 2000 maniacs and blood feastast and stuff like that. Yes. Yes. Like that stuff, I never was exposed to that.

I've still to this day, I've never seen one of those films, but the magazines were covered with like people with axes and blood. Yeah. I mean, because things would play it at the drive-in and then go away. Yeah. You know, that was like, that's how I felt when the first time, when I loved when 42nd Street in New York was the real 42nd Street. And I remember, it was so funny. Me and my friend, my roommate back then, we'd always go to 42nd Street to see movies. Because it'd be like Cannibal Holocaust.

I would just see the poster. What the fuck is Cannibal Holocaust? And you go see this Italian cannibal movie. This is literally the most, I cannot believe another human made this movie. Right. It blows your mind. But every time I went to 42nd Street, I saw a really bad incident happen. Like you could not go there.

Like we'd be like waiting in line and like, oh, let's go get some french fries before the movie. Two guys would start fighting at McDonald's. One guy would just pummel the other guy. It'd be blood everywhere. I'd go, it happened. Next time we'd go, we'd see a guy stab would just pummel the other guy. There'd be blood everywhere. I'd go, it happened. Next time we'd go, we'd see a guy stab another guy in the theater while watching. There it is.

Like, literally, I never went there once. And even right till I was recording my album before I moved, I remember walking to the studio, which was like maybe 43rd, and there was a dead body lying there. And they had just found him, and they were just starting to put the sheet. So I actually didn't see the violent act, but saw the dead body but he didn't care like new york it was like new york when i moved to new york in 82 still seemed like you know taxi driver new york yeah well that was when it was it was coming from hayborough wild fucking west so exciting because hayborough so boring in comparison yeah couldn't be more boring

if it's goal was to be boring gold medal I remember Haverhill was so bad that when we were kids I remember I don't forget maybe this was maybe the around the bicentennial I think they were trying to drive business because Main Street and they can't even blame Walmart back then

was dead there was nothing there it was just a ghost town and they're like they just put all these banners up haverill the all-american city but it was like the catchphrase is gonna matter make people open businesses oh i didn't know this is so bad time to sell flags yeah exactly yeah i i went to new york city for the first time in the 80s as well i'm trying to remember what year it was it was like somewhere probably around 82 or 83 and uh when we were in in the city driving around i remember thinking like this is the craziest fucking place i've ever been in my life the buildings were so big it didn't make sense pulling up to it i remember we we drove up on the west side highway and you see the city coming up in the distance. You see the buildings get larger and larger as you get closer.

It's mental. It didn't seem real. I remember being on the sidewalk. Now, this is coming from a place where a sidewalk means there's literally no other person on the sidewalk as far as you can see. Right. And he was standing on the sidewalk and it must have been uptown somewhere. And it was like you couldn't move with people. I was like, what is happening?

Right. Sworn. I've never seen I was like, what is happening? Right. Sworn. I've never seen like this is how it is all the time. Like I live in a street in Haverhill, like a car drove down it like once a day. And it was probably your dad coming home from work. Like there was just nothing. If you had a time machine, though, and you went from 1982 and you said, hey, what do you think it's going to look like here in 2019? You'd be like, fuck, man, it's going to be Mad Max.

Yeah. Like, there'd be fucking cars driving with black smoke coming out of them, people shooting people right on the street. It's going to get worse. It's not going to get better. Yeah, the only thing I remember, right towards my end of being there, there was the Tompkins Square downtown. And that was just like wherever homeless people lived. It was Alphabet City. It was like the worst.

Well, wait, I want to back it up. When I first moved to New York, the first night I was there, this sounds like I'm making it up, and I'm not. The first night I was there, the dorm that I was in with all my roommates overlooked Union Square Park, which was like Needle Park. You just went there to buy dope, and that was it. Now you go there because it's a farmer's market, and it's beautiful. And I heard this guy screaming and screaming and screaming. I was like, Jesus Christ, what is going on? Because it was like 100 degrees.

Of course, there's no air conditioning. I look out the window, and I watch these cops beat up this guy. And I was like, and then they dragged him down to the subway. And the next day all these cops showed up at the dorms and it was that it was this guy michael stewart it became a really famous case he was they called him a graffiti artist and he had been beat to death by the cops and me and all my roommates saw it and the next day they came and took our statement and we all had to testify in front of the grand jury this is my first day out of haverill wow i witnessed a murder but again it's like the same

thing with like my deal at universal i was like too naive and weird to really comprehend what you kind of pumped like i just was like things are happening i'm so jaded. It didn't disturb me or seem like, I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I am desensitized by all the violence I've witnessed as a child, I guess. Well, did you see more violence before that? Well, there's one famous thing I remember as a kid. There's two famous things. When I was a kid, the family business that my mom came from was like carnivals like you ever see that movie carny yeah with gary bucey yeah that's

exactly the life as a kid that i remember when i saw the movie i was like this is this is what this was our life we were so that makes sense this attraction you have these drifters yeah it was always what i was surrounded by. So that was the thing I remember as a kid. Except it was around 1977, I think, because I remember Kiss Love Gun, it just came out. Because I was all pumped. I was all pumped about it. And the family worked there, my mom and dad.

And me and my brother had to work and sell food and stuff. And I hated it. We used to have to work and sell food and stuff and i hated i used we used to have to dip the candy apples and hand them to people and they've healed now but i all my hand i had burns all over my hands because the apple candy would be so hot it would drip on my hand and burn my hands um anyway i digress but one night there was the gambling tents which were all rigged of course and someone had some guy getting fleeced for all of his money and came back and lit the tent on fire and then suddenly shit hit the fan everybody that me and my little brother had been around all the time it's like all these guns start

coming out and you start hearing guns popping up and then the tents just went like nothing was fireproof so everything's on fire it's complete chaos and i was probably in fifth grade my brother was probably in second grade and everybody's screaming to run around and my and this guy was like that i don't remember his name but he worked there he was like hey you guys should come over here and before he finished his sentence somebody ran up and hit him in the face with a hammer and broke his whole face open it was just gushing blood and we're like and then eventually my parents got us in the car and we left which was that was my parent my mom's like we're done this is we're not doing this anymore that was

the last time we ever did it um wow what a great way to go out though but the best was going to school on september like what did you do this summer? And that was my story. Wow. We didn't go to camp in Pasaki. We were in a carnival riot. What was the gambling tent? Like, what kind of games are they rigging? I don't know.

I mean, everything's rigged. And there's even a great scene in Kearney where a friend of mine who's in a lot of my movies, Meg plays when she's holding all the long strands of rope and joni fought she's trained jody falls like you pull the rope and it's connected to a prize or i or like and everything's rigged like the the weighted lead milk bottles you're supposed to knock down the softball i mean everything's rigged i mean there's certain ways you know how to cheat them so when the guy's showing you how to do it look it's so easy just throw it like this but there's a certain way you can throw it at work, but other ways won't. I would never be in the gambling tents because they were actual gambling. We were like little tiny kids.

But it was probably roulette wheels, I'm guessing. Things like that. You know, the guy spins it and hits something with his foot and it never stops on the number that the guy's got all his money on because he let him win a bunch of times or something. So when the fire broke out and people started shooting, who was shooting who i don't know what was going on just chaos i just you were little kids like you're not really comprehending this going on in like fourth or fifth grade you're just like that guy's now got a gun i hear gunshots everything's on fire there's smoke people screaming this guy's now gushing brains out of the front of his head and so fuck i said there were two stories that was oh the second story the second story i kind of put in this the new movie three from hell

this was like uh when i was in high school i was in the backyard uh rehearsing with my two friends or your band or whatever and we heard this screaming and it was a bright sunny day that seemed like a david lynch movie suburbia and this fat naked guy was running down the street covered in blood he'd been stabbed a whole bunch of times like people are mowing their lawns and looking out and i just remember a bloody naked guy running down the street screaming like a weird scream people scream weird when they get stabbed and um so i put some there's something like that in the movie but it just yeah what happened to him i don't know i don't know he was like ran he was knocking on people's doors and again i was like oh it's weird and i just went back and we continued rehearsing whoa like again that must have

flavored the music a little bit yeah i don't know just like i should be i should be really bothered by things like that but but I'm not. Wow. I mean, there's a thing that happens when you see too much. It's one of the reasons why cops and soldiers have some of the oddest sense of humor. I can see that. Yeah, they've just seen too many bodies. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, imagine the guys that have to come scrape up all the stuff off the road and put it in the bag. Oh, man, geez, yeah. Yeah, I mean, after, i mean that after you know yeah but yeah that was the life i remember i remember my mom's brother he would always uh he didn't always do this but sometimes he was a biker so he'd come over to the house and he had a chopper with iron crosses on it he kind of looked like let me the big mustache and i was like this guy's badass like drive us around the neighborhood so everyone can see us you know there's a lot of that stuff so when you were saying that you collect the films and you have uh films did you do you go back to like the really old ones like nosferatu oh yeah i love silent movies and now they're easier to get because i always loved lon chaney but so many of the films are hard to get i was showing my kids lon chaney two nights ago. What movie did they watch? Well, I was showing them the original Wolfman, and I was showing them Jekyll and Hyde.

I was showing them some of the—Lon Chaney Jr. was something. Well, Lon Chaney Jr. was Wolfman, but his dad, who was in Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame. Wasn't he Jekyll and Hyde as well? That was Lon Chaney, right? No, Frederick March. Oh, what? Well, it depends. There's the John Barrymore silent Jekyll and Hyde, but you're probably not sure.

The Frederick March one is great. It's so perverted. Is it really? With the prostitutes and stuff. Isn't that the one you showed your kids? Like from the 30s? Oh, yeah, for sure. From the 30s?

After they watch porn. Well, there's the boring one with Spencer Tracy as Jekyll and Hyde. Is it boring? Compared to the other one. The other one's... Because anything that's sort of like the pre-code stuff is really amazing. We watched the beginning of the Spencer Tracy one because it was so strange. There's actually...

On iTunes, you can watch a preview, but it's not really a preview in its old films because they didn't have previews back then. So it's just a scene. And it's a scene when he's becoming Mr. Hyde, but he doesn't look any different. Yeah, he just kind of messed up his hair. Looks a little meaner. The Frederick March one is one of the best ones ever made. It's so good.

But Lone Chaney was like, it was Phantom of the Opera, which is a really interesting one, because he put on some really painful makeup for that film. I mean, he just invented everything. Yeah. The things he'd do. I mean, I don't know how much the stories have been exaggerated by publicity departments over the years but yeah i mean it's just incredible and movies like the unknown or the unholy three like you can get everything now forever it's like impossible to see these movies

for a long time i don't do it anymore but i used to collect vintage movie posters and that's what i would go after the the lon chaney silent movie posters because a lot of times i'd be like there's only one of these in existence and i was like i gotta have it then i realized i'm spending too much money on things those old films um you know when i'm i was trying to show them to my kids i was just trying to we were we were going from the 20s to the 30s there's a movie that's the original horror film that i found that was 1920 it's actually two years older than nosferatu it was uh doctor something dr caligari caligari yeah that's a good one yes yeah we watched a little bit of that too but i just wanted to show them how weird it is like the progression of film particularly like scary films because when my kids were real little

my wife was out of town and uh i said do you guys want to watch a scary movie that's not really scary and they were nervous how old are they at the time i think they were five and three or maybe six and four somewhere around there so i'm throwing down the test do you want to watch it but i knew it wasn't going to be really scary so i put on the original king kong from what was that like 30 33 i think yeah and uh we were laughing i was like let me tell you something we're gonna watch this and it's so fake it looks so dumb i go we're gonna we're gonna laugh and so we're cuddled up on the couch they were nervous and then once they saw the thing they're like that's it that's the monster

i was like let me tell you something kid in 1933 this was scary for people they really thought this was realistic they thought this was amazing do you ever have that moment you watch something like say i do this like frankenstein like you've seen it so many times that it's hard to watch it like you've never seen it before but sometimes i'll be watching something and there'll be a scene where like frankenstein is killing fritz and there's no music and he's just screaming. I was like, this must have fucking been so intense because no one had seen anything like this. They're watching this creature

who they don't understand the makeup because no one knew how it was done. Like especially because he kind of, the first appearance of Karloff as Frankenstein, he kind of backs in and turns. His head's flat. He's got bolts on his neck. And he's so, the Jack Pierce makeup is so

incredible that I was like must have been like running for the door pull up a picture of what Boris Karloff looked like in that movie I haven't seen that in forever it's so good it was so good I mean in the also it's so difficult for us to understand perspective like to put yourself in their place back then yeah look at that yeah i mean lighting was incredible now we're used to seeing that it's so iconic that like or that it becomes like but if you'd never i mean never seen anything like that before i mean i guess going back to what we said a second ago like lon chaney in phantom of the opera and his quasimotor you kind of saw crazy. The bolts on the neck.

But that must have just been like. Fucking cables for a battery. It's so crazy. The posts on his neck. Do you remember when they did a remake with De Niro? I do. I don't remember a movie very good. I don't remember it either, but I remember it being terrifying looking.

Like they updated. Yeah, he looked cool in that. Yeah. It's a tough one, though, with those movies because they got it so right the first time. Yeah. And the performances are like, when I watch, I really like Lugosi in Dracula. And when you watch it, I always feel like he's like Brando of that time

because everyone else is talking like, yeah, well, they're still doing vaudeville and they're way over the top and they're too much and he's like this in this doing this thing yeah but sometimes you're like you can't almost can't understand him because of his accent like wow he's like in this whole weird head trip and they're like doing play hey listen buddy you know like the way they're talking yeah it's and that's why nobody can remember david manners who got paid 10 times with Lugosi. But Lugosi is like this iconic thing, like Marilyn Monroe. I mean, this was so out of time with so special what they were doing.

Yeah, even in the film, there's a scene where the woman had been bit. And he's like, what's wrong? What's going on? And he's so corny and over the top in the style of that era, but Lugosi is on another level. And like everybody, like a lot of those actors then seem very much like they were in the closet

and they were trying to like play with the woman. And Lugosi has that vibe like, I'm gonna fuck everything on this set before I leave this movie. You know, he just reeks of like, I'm Hungarian and I'm gonna nail every actress in this film yeah and he's a fucking powerful vampire like you bought into it like he was in the role he was yeah in the headspace and a lot of those movies another good one's like the black cat

where like the same guy was in the dracula's and he's so like swishing over the top and legosi and karloff together so intense it's like this two different movies going on the this weird hollywood and this weird thing these other guys are doing man it's like brando and apocalypse now like he's making a whole different movie him and dennis hopper yeah you know it's cool to just go back in time and see the progression of of horror to go from those films like i still think nosferatu to this day is one of the coolest vampires ever it's so incredible there was no there was no sort of benchmark yeah for him right i mean and he looked so fucking weird with the long fingers

and he looked creepy and the way he would rise remember when they had him on a board it just was like straight up it's so it looks incredible and i still and i love the um the herzog remake with klaus kinski oh that's right did that yeah and kinski's so like he's so perfect wow because he's like another crazy actor that yeah just reeks of crazy right off the screen yes yes yeah it's just hard to do a good monster movie these days i mean i'm a gigantic rick baker fan obviously you see the yeah he's coming on here too oh is he super pumped oh yeah his new book looks amazing yeah i'm so excited i'm getting him to promote that but i'm just i was when i was a kid i wanted to be a makeup artist it was one of the things that i wanted to do yeah so i studied rick baker and i studied you know the the early long cheney days like we were talking about and i just love the prosthetics

and like star wars and shit like which by the way i went to the star wars uh attraction yesterday oh you did disneyland it's the shit oh that fucking star wars ride the ride is incredible man you're actually simulated though right yes i can't do it but you simulate a ride to make me want to just i won't throw up but i'll feel like i want to for the rest of the day it's awesome it's awesome so my kids were steering they got a chance to steer the they were the pilots and you're slamming into fucking because they have to coordinate one goes up one goes down left and right so up and down is one kid and left and right is the other next to each other in the cockpit or are they separate Are they next to each other in the cockpit or are they separate?

Next to each other. Pretty close. But they're screaming at each other. Don't hit it! Oh my God! They're like asteroids flying. Boom! They're hitting shit.

But just the ride is fucking incredible. I mean, you could see there's so much money poured into there and apparently there's a bunch of other ones

that are in the process of developing too. Oh really but i loved the those movies and a big part of it was like like the cantina scene if you if you went to that now you'd be like oh my god it's obviously a mask oh yeah yeah like their face doesn't look like it's like that weird werewolf yeah no but they're not moving but back down i was like this is amazing this is the oh my god i can so clearly seeing that remember seeing that movie for the first time because i was like it like you come out of i remember coming out of the movie like shell shock like everything i thought about everything just changed yeah it's life will never be the

same that's another movie that's so hard to put in perspective i've watched it with my kids now and it's like you gotta bring them back to the 1970s when this movie came out like you don't get it like back then this was fucking insane how good it was yeah people would i mean i watched it like i think we had like little competitions with our friends to see who could watch it the most amount of times. I think I saw it like 13 times. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. Someone gave me a Blu-ray of the original before Lucas did all the extra stuff and ruined it. Somehow they had cut together.

Somebody went to all the trouble of getting a Japanese laser and they cut together a Blu-ray of exactly the movie as it was in 1977. What did he do differently in the new version? Enhance some of the special effects. He added that scene with the digital Jabba the Hutt. And just like, there'll be like the Tauntaun. There's just little robots and bullshit everywhere that wasn't there in the original. And now, what seems so badass for effects in whatever it was, 2000, now looks super bad. Cheesy.

But the stuff from 77 still. That's why I always want to, like, you watch 2001, you go, like, how can this still look better than everything? These are literally models shot in 1968 or something. Well, Kubrick knew the limitations of the visual format. the visual format and so he he shot things in a way where he didn't he wasn't willing to compromise the way something looked to show you something that like like sort of like the king kong animation like that's the best they could do back then yeah but kubrick figured workarounds that i just read this new book that came out well maybe six months ago that's all about the making of 2001 and it's the book is so detailed i wish i I could remember the title of it.

And it's amazing the amount of time. Like, stuff you take for granted. Just how they had to make the digital readouts on the computer screens. Because that stuff did not exist at all. So the amount of time that went into just simple background things that nobody cares about. It's just mind-blowing. Just the weightlessness scenes and how they did all that stuff. Which still look amazing. just simple background things that nobody cares about. It's just mind-blowing. Yeah. Just the weightlessness scenes and how they did all that stuff,

which still look amazing. No, it's still an incredible movie. And it's also a time capsule, right? It's one of those films that it's great, but it's also great and a time capsule. Yeah. I love it because I love all of his movies for the same reason. Because they take over the viewer.

Like most movies, they're like, you watch it and it's doing what the movie thinks will make you happy. Whereas Kubrick's doing stuff like, well, this is what it would be like to be in space. Yeah. This is the pace it's going to unfold at. Yeah. Like, which is painfully slow at times. Well, you can't get away with that today. No, because people are too...

They're all rolled up. They don't have the attention span, I don't think. And same thing with Barry Lyndon or Clockwork Orange. It doesn't matter what movie it is. It's just shining. Yes. Like now if someone made The Shining, they'd go, it's great. You got to cut the first hour out of it.

You know? Too much buildup. We're going to start it with the red rum scene. Yeah. Start it with a hatchet slamming into somebody. The opening shot would be... And then go three months earlier yeah get hit with his axe yeah they would do that they would go three months earlier you know they would do that it's um it's it's cool to see though like those films they did what they could do with what was available

whereas with now the problem with cgi is they use it and they overuse it and i think that i don't i don't i mean cgi can be phenomenal for sure but it's a tool and it's turned into a crutch and i see it with actors like you see actors a lot of time and i feel bad for the actors because you see actors that you go i know these guys are great but they're awful in this movie because they didn't train to stand in a warehouse that's green and pretend to look at stuff yeah right so they really like like when you watch the phantom menace you go why does it suddenly seem like liam neeson can't act right because he's like they're like look at that dot on the wall i mean and you know these guys are incredible actors i was talking to somebody once a kid that was in

my movie was in all the spy kids movies and he said it was so hard because they'd be on a green screen they'd be like you're looking at that well we're not sure what you're looking at but just stare at that dot and react he's like what is it you know is it a dragon or is it my mom what am i reacting to like we haven't figured it out yet and he said he was always in a constant state of confusion as to what he was reacting to well it's hard to when you go back and you look at some of them like you know what movie got it right that sort of didn't get enough respect in its time but in in in time like as time passed it's become more respected as starship troopers yeah i don't i don't remember that movie that well

it's a you know it's all they're gonna say forest gumps oh no but like they're like removing major dan's legs i mean that's like when cg's awesome i thought oh shit they found a guy with no legs who's a great actor because i don't know who gary sinise was back how about the ping pong scene yeah right there's a lot of stuff like that's amazing shit yeah the um what i was getting uh with with monster movies though it's um uh pat mcgee he's the guy who did that werewolf the one that's out there yeah he'll make them for you like he makes oh really and we had this conversation about it we were saying that you can see cgi and even if it's awesome your brain knows it's cgi that's funny that i have that same thought that it's something subliminally your brain knows it's all fake yes like godzilla whereas like yeah like godzilla like when you know it's a guy in a rubber suit crushing things like if you watch the original

one with like when they cut in raymond burr there's something so dark and fucked up about that yes because everything's that's real fire there's actually three-dimensional objects blowing up but when it's so big and fake like i always say like what's scarier uh a giant cg creature that you know you will never see or like a maniac with a pillowcase over his head holding an axe coming at you like your brain goes that could happen i get it yes the other thing's like well that's i'm not gonna that's like roger rabbit that's not gonna happen you know it's not it might be cool or it might be big but it's not like one of the scariest horror movies of all time is alien yeah and in the first few encounters they have with the creature you don't

even see the damn thing because it's you couldn't show it that much like the you know like the shark and jaws but when you see it it's like it's actually there yeah you can feel that its jaws are right in front of sigourney weaver's face yeah it's not like she's looking at nothing and her eye line's a little off because it's a you know a tennis ball and a stick she's looking at there's something about it really happening in the space that i think people can feel it and sigourney weaver is i think sigourney weaver and alien is the greatest female action hero star ever because you bought it hook line and sinker she was a scientist she wasn't supposed to be this heroine that's out there just fucking things up and killing everybody and she wasn't supposed to be super hot and sexy and young but she was hot

enough because she became tough and it made her but like like the whole i remember when alien came And she wasn't supposed to be super hot and sexy and young. But she was hot enough. Because she became tough and it made her, but like the whole, I remember when Alien came out, it was kind of like when the thing came out and all the reviews were bad, if you remember. Was it really? Yeah. I mean, the reviews for everything are bad when you go back and they're like, oh, there's no redeemable characters or they're all cartoon, these cardboard characters. They rip everything apart. But like, it's like Harry Dean Stan and Yafit cardboard characters. They rip everything apart. But it's like Harry Dean Stanton,

Yafit Kodo, and every great character actor doing these great roles. But it was like, now if they remade that, it'd be like everybody would, you know. But that's the thing. The reviews never mean anything.

They're just like so crazy. The first time, was it Harry Dean Stanton that saw it the first time? Who was it that saw it the first time when they climbed down into the, they climbed down the stairs and it's it's right there i don't remember you see it for like a second but it was a physical thing but the point is it was an actual guy in a suit yeah and you knew by the way it was moving that it was an actual guy right in front of

and it took up three-dimensional space in real life. And you could feel it. You could feel it. Yes. And, you know, yeah. I mean, just like when the chest burst thing. Yes. It's an actual thing. It's a thing. Yeah. It's fucking bizarre. Or an American werewolf in London.

Same thing. You see brief glimpses of this thing, like really quick, like one frame, one second of it. And then at the end of it you you see it even when they murder they kill it in the hallway or in the alleyway spoiler alert um that's you know you only see it for a couple seconds when when it stares at her and then they gun it down yeah that was like the heyday for effects everybody i know who does effects it was like the thing american werewolf in london or the howling was like the thing that made every and fangoria when that started and you started really getting articles and stuff and like rob botine and rick baker like became like rock

stars to the the horror nerds well the rick baker scene um when he transforms into the werewolf in the chick's apartment when he's at the in the nurse's apartment for the first time and he's like i'm fucking burning up his back is popping and it's like bright it's a bright lit apartment that's what makes it weird yes and the hand stretch fucking wild man to this day weird to this and then he tried to kind of recreate like the actual makeup style werewolf with the wolf man with benicio del toro yeah but it just wasn't there the movie wasn't there just wasn't wasn't quite good enough but there's one fucking badass scene where it becomes the wolf man when they're in the insane asylum they're doing tests on them do you remember that

film i don't remember that film that much i remember i don't i hate saying things because this was my thought at the time i remember watching it thinking benicio del toro seems like he doesn't want to be in this movie which is such a stupid thing for me to say because i don't know what the fuck he wants because i think he's a brilliant actor and i really like watching but it just had that feeling like i don't know what it was and i i've talked to people connected with that movie and i don't think it was a great experience for people for some reason. Maybe there was a lot of meddling. Probably a lot of meddling.

Is that something that's a difficult thing to manage, or do you not have to deal with that anymore? I had to deal with that a lot when I made the two Halloween movies for the Weinstein Company. Because they're this gigantic franchise. Well, there was weird meddling. It was just kind of psychotic meddling. How so? Just weird. eyes well there was weird meddling it was just like kind of psychotic meddling how so just weird like like my phone was ringing all the time when i'm on set working and it'd be like we think it should be this i'm like well while you're working yeah well if i did that then everything we shot doesn't match and it makes no sense it's just like they're doing coke and just coming up i don't know

it's just weird thoughts all the time. But I mean, a lot of times, I don't want to like name all these names of people, but I remember working on one movie that never happened. And whatever was the number one movie from that weekend was exactly the notes I would get for what we were working on. It didn't. And I swear to you, because it was around the time of Private Parts. And Private Parts was number one.

I go, I guarantee you when I walk into the office, they're going to say, can we get Howard Stern in this movie? And they did. No! Yes, it didn't matter what it was. If it was Starship Troopers, they'd go, can we get giant bugs in this movie suddenly? It wasn't the Halloween movies. It was another movie that never actually happened. And you're just like, this is insanity.

The uncreative executive that wants to be creative, that is a classic story in Hollywood. I mean, that's really like a villain in a film about a movie, about a guy trying to make a movie. Yeah, I mean, I always thought, I will give credit for things like, I remember working with Bob Weinstein and I always thought like

the first thing he would say was spot on. Like they love movies and they have a good sense of movies. And he would say something, he'd be like, what happens between the second act and the third act it's a bunch of bullshit it doesn't work and you go yeah you're right it is but like when he went to the next level of the detail of what's wrong with it

it's kind of like someone going like that joke's not funny here's how it would be funny you're like no no right the first part of your sentence was all he needed i don't need you now to tell me how to make it funny. And that's what happens. I don't do them anymore, but back when I would be forced to do test screenings with an audience, just sitting there, you'll know. You'll go, okay, they're bored during this part. It's boring.

Or they're not laughing. It's supposed to be funny. I don't now need that kid to get up and explain to the studio how to save the picture because he watched a movie once so the process is like half good and half insanity do you get any people upset that in some way you might be glorifying violence maybe but i never hear about it because I don't think that's true. I mean, or if it is true, it doesn't, I don't think it matters. Really? Because it's fake. It's not real.

Right. I mean, it's like, I don't think the rules of real life apply to art. I just don't. Right. Because that's why art exists. Just like, you know, and you just have to feel that way because it's like okay well if we're going to run every movie through the pc filter then in american history x edward norton can't be racist sure and now we actually we don't have a movie or you know you know travis

bickle can't kill anyone he just has to save jodie foster because he's a nice person right you know like it ruins everything i mean but the rules of real life are different but for for fiction i mean they can't be rules right and how else are you going to depict these absolutely possible scenarios like if we're saying that there isn't suicide or homicidal maniacs in real life like that's nonsense so if you're allowed to make a depiction of real life yeah of course it's going to have to include racists murderers psychopaths and i just think it's you know it's it's art and it can go anywhere and it's always if it's shocking that's probably good and it won't be shocking next year like how right whatever you're showing your kids at one point was shocking now they're're like, seriously, dad? Yeah. We were talking about Jaws.

Jaws today apparently would be PG. It was PG then. Was it? Can you believe that? No. Yeah. Was it? It was.

Oh, my God. It was just shocking. Especially. Scared the fuck out of everybody. Because my parents took us to see it, which was awesome, but I was traumatized for sure. Yeah. That was a crazy movie. I didn't want to have anything to do with the water after that movie. Yeah, I still don't.

But the special effects as well, man. When that shark rises out of the water for the first time, he's like, fuck. When he's throwing the chum in the water, why don't you come on down here and chum some of this shit? We're going to need a bigger boat. It's hard to believe those lines were once just lines in a script. Yeah, I know. They're iconic. They're a part of once just lines in a script. Yeah, I know. They're iconic. They're a part of culture now.

It's amazing. Yeah. Do you think that there, is there a style of film or a kind of movie that you want to do that you haven't done yet that you're thinking you'd like to get into? I mean, there's two different projects I tried to develop for a long time and they both failed to get off the ground. One was this movie called the broad street bullies and it was about the 1974 philadelphia flyers and the movie is the true story is so insane that you can't believe it's real just the way that they decided you know they're a fledgling team nobody cared so they basically built a team of tough guys you know

which is kind of like slap shots almost like the same won the stanley cup twice based on just being so scared so and so terrorizing other teams would be scared to play them and they'd be like oh you get the philly flu because major players would be like i'm too sick to play when we get to philly because and you go back and you watch the fights that took place during those seasons. They literally go into the crowd and they're fighting with fans. They come off the ice. They break up. I mean, when the guys are fighting, it's not, and it doesn't seem like good natured, like, okay, we're going to go.

We're going to go. It seems like gripping someone's hair and punching them in the face till their teeth are all gone type fighting. Cops are breaking up the fights on the ice. Cops. Cops. with skates no uniformed policemen come onto the ice and start breaking things up but they're sliding around with their yeah trying to it's all on youtube it's amazing i mean i just i researched this for for years and um and then they just you know and bobby clark at that time was like the most hated man in hockey i don't know if you're a bobby clark at that time was like the most hated man in hockey i don't know if you're a hockey fan at all but he was just like another one of those guys who he had i don't know i could go on forever for a movie that didn't make but but i i kept

trying to make it go and go and just could just never you could just never and i was in went to philadelphia and i was hanging out with the team and i was in their archives and having access to everything i thought this is gonna happen and just couldn't it wouldn't move why why not i don't know i don't know if the team and the team owners want to glorify that time in the in if there's an amazing documentary on it that was on hbo maybe like five years ago you got to watch it what's do you remember the name it might have been called broad street bullies because it was you know the spectrum was on broad street so that's how they got the name but it's nuts and it was like you know the dave schultz and he's wearing like a nazi helmet he was the tough guy on the team that everybody's pet fried of and these guys

that like had really long hair and big beards i mean it's not like hockey you know everybody looked like a maniac and they'd get stuff like you know you'd see them get stitches get hit get stitched go back on the ice with the stitches there's jerseys covered in blood and they don't even change their jersey they're playing covered in blood well it's such a crazy something they never do now well the sport still to this day is such a throwback because it's the only sport where you're allowed to fight in the middle of the sport imagine if they had that with basketball hockey players are the toughest motherfuckers because i always love hockey i want to be a hockey player when i was a little kid and that was my thing and for a long time me and my wife we had season tickets for the king so we'd go to every single game year after

year after year and we'd always hang out with the team and they'd come to our house and then party and we'd always be with them in vegas and they're like football players on skates and they're all for like these like guys from like moose jaw saskatchewan and like they get their teeth out and they get crazy in the bar and they're like mental and they're just like who else is skating at 90 miles an hour crashing into boards yeah that are just have no give but it's so interesting that that's the one sport where it's written in that you can fight i mean it's so funny it's so crazy like that would make so many sports so much more interesting but nobody would ever do it yeah it's literally the tough guy sport it is the tough guy sport and the thing that always drove me crazy like drove me crazy like it involves me but they would always

advertise the la kings as like it's like this family thing like oh come on down and cheer for the kings and it'd be like a girl in a hockey jersey on the billboards around town like you should just put up mugshot style portraits of the players like smiling with their teeth missing and it just says you think you're fucking tough right kings because yeah and then it's not like the old days where they're kind of like skillful they're like this guy's like six foot five and you put them on skates and they're huge. And they're all jacked up and big like football players, except they're on skates. They're fucking scary dudes. I think it would be a hard sell for a lot of people.

But what's not a hard sell is MMA, which is weird, right? Because that's like the darling of so many. You go to the fights and matt damon will be there and leonardo dicaprio and everybody wants to be seen there and kanye's in the crowd and it's one of those things where people have decided like that's okay meanwhile they're smashing their faces open with elbows on the ground mental man heads trapped against the cage and they're pummeling each other and it's okay and you watch it they break it up like i'm pretty sure that guy's already got brain damage you need to stop that punching yeah seconds earlier well it's it's okay though sport because it's become accepted like

like that's what i'm saying it's weird like a fight in a basketball game is a giant deal like oh my god guy shoves another guy and it's like this is crazy yeah if a guy you know like judo tossed a guy and landed on his head. Somebody did that recently in a hockey game. It was awful. Like Robin Black did a breakdown of it where some guy got a guy in a clinch and hit him with a hip toss and slammed his head onto the concrete. It was horrible.

It's weird. I mean, I can see why they want – I think they probably like hockey being more family friendly because the arenas are so nice. You bring the kids and they don't want a bunch of maniacs beating the shit out of each other. But they can still fight. They can still fight, but it is just- Watch this.

This is crazy. Boom. Oh, that's bad. That's horrible. That's an asshole move because that's not even fighting. And plus, that guy landed with both of their weights, guys on his head, he's out cold. I mean, that's like serious, serious fucking brain damage. Yeah, I remember one time, one particular incident at a Kings game where the guy was out and it went on forever.

And the vibe was so heavy in the arena because we're like, is he dead? Because you know when someone hits and they just stop moving in that way. Yeah, they stiffen up. It freaks you out. You pull up some Broad Street Bullies fighting from 1974 pull up some of that yeah I've seen

Dave Schultz oh that's this thing yeah this is the documentary it's amazing oh look at the way they look back then yeah everything

it's like back in the day it's just such a weird thing to see people from that era oh here they are yeah they don't this is like early days before they became insane oh so it built up because what happened was when they were starting as a team they got really manhandled one time by a certain team and they were like this is never going to

happen again and they rebuilt the team with basically like thug type guys i'm always amazed that anybody could punch while they're on skates. And that's, I can't even skate. How the fuck do you maintain your upright position? I don't know. These guys are amazing athletes. One time I went down and got to skate at practice with the LA Kings with the guys who were injured.

And man, that rink seems small when those big guys are all getting on the ice. I'm sure. It seems like, wow, there's no room up here. But it's also, they collide into each other against the wall,

which the amount of shock on your body. I know. It's amazing that, I mean, they just go and go and go. Maybe we can reignite some interest with this conversation because I think that would be it. Look at this, he's pulling his fucking hair. Holy shit. I'm going to watch that.

It's amazing. So have you tried again recently? No, I tried. Do you really think that it's just like they just don't want to be connected to this story? Well, there's this guy, Ed Snyder, who was the guy who started the whole team. And that's where, and I met with, I thought he was the reason it wasn't going to happen. And then he passed away because, I mean, he was pretty old. And then we started talking to the newer people. And it just, I don't know, you're like, how many years am I going to happen and then he passed away because i mean he's pretty old and then we started talking to the newer people and it just i don't know you're like how many years

am i my life am i going to dictate you know right into this and you don't know and someone said to me one time well you got further than anyone else ever did i'm like how many times have they tried to make this movie why didn't you warn me about that five years ago is there any other kind of movie that you're you're interested in other than something like that? Well, yeah. There was this other one that I worked on for a long time that never went either. I had bought the rights to this book called Raised Eyebrows, which was about the last few years of Groucho Marx's life. This guy, Steve Stolia, wrote it.

And he was a 19-year-old college kid who started this petition drive. Do you like the Marx Brothers? Love them. Yeah. Because Animal Crackers had been lost. That was the lost film. I think it was at UCLA. Sorry, Steve, I can't remember your college.

He started this petition drive to get Animal Crackers released from the vault and released because it hadn't been seen since like the 40s or something. And he did. This was in the early 70s and through that he became groucho's assistant but groucho's final years are really dark because he kept having strokes and he was ill and he had this woman erin fleming who was supposed to be his they kind of played it like it was his girlfriend but she was the caretaker and it was turns into sunsetset Boulevard inside his house. And Steve eventually is put in charge of Groucho because it's a really dark story.

Turns into Sunset Boulevard also. Because Groucho is being abused and drugged by this woman. She isolated from his family, and it's happening in this Beverly Hills home. And it's just dark. It was dark towards the end for Groucho. Really? But the book was fascinating because the guy who wrote it steve who's you know still alive and we're friends i was just like it was

one of those books you're reading like five seconds and i just happened to find it by accident i was like this is an amazing movie but again years and years go on trying to get it made just can't get it going groucho was such a controversial character he had one of the greatest lines ever on you bet your life he's talking to this guy and he's asked the guy like uh you married yes how many kids you got this cigar line yeah the guy says he got a gang of kids and he goes geez he goes he goes oh i love my wife because i love my cigar too but i take it out of my mouth every now and then yeah that is that was a hugely controversial line yeah he's amazing and he was like and he was very eyebrows yeah there it is he

was very outspoken he was like on nixon's shit list and stuff and he didn't give a crap inside groucho's house yeah it's really fast if you get that book you'll read it in like two seconds that's it's always sad when some iconic old figure like is being taken care of as he's older and you know he's getting fucked over and someone's waiting for him to die so they can get the money yeah and she kept kind of doing something like we're gonna make your comeback groucho and we're gonna do us tv specials gonna be you know like you and frank sinatra and groucho's like you know had on his like third stroke and it's like can't really talk or you know and it's just like and a couple of the final appearances of him are pretty rough

because he was pretty sharp and good, even when he was older. We watched him on Dick Cavett or something. But then it got bad. And then how did this lady get into his life? How did that go down? I'm trying to remember. She was a secretary at first and just kind of weaseled her way in. I can't remember exactly.

I should be able to remember. I read the book so many times. There's so many stories like that. I think there was a Stan Lee story like that in his last few days. That happens a lot. Yeah. People were trying to get his money. I remember that Martha Ray.

Yes. That was like the thing towards the end with her. It was like, oh, and her boyfriend. And she's like this in a wheelchair. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weird shit. And I was like, yeah.

Yeah, that is sad shit. And their kids are done with them and so someone else is taking care of them. Well, they're so old, their kids have all died of old age. And this was like, you know. So you wanted to do that film? Yeah.

What happened with that? It just couldn't get it going. We thought we'd, every time it seemed like we were on the move, it just would stall. Then I had a falling out with the producers, and I was like, you know, five years spent with this, I'm out. Yeah, oh, my God, the drain of time.

Yeah, that's the thing. For every movie I've ever gotten made, there's probably five others that I tried to get made that couldn't get made. It's a real time suck. Yeah. That's, that's a fucking huge drag,

man. Now, when you, when you do get a film made, is it generally that you come to the studio and you have this idea and you bring it to them? And yeah, it's usually like,

uh, well, the Halloween movies were different because I remember, um, I, I had no thought. I wasn't thinking about Halloween. I wasn't thinking about anything like that. And, well, the Halloween movies were different because I remember I had no thought. I wasn't thinking about Halloween. I wasn't thinking about anything like that. And I got the thing like, oh, you know, the Weinstein company wants you to go have a meeting with them.

Bob Weinstein, he's in L.A., yada, yada, yada. So I go in to meet him and he's just like, Halloween, what do you think? I was like, oh, it's a great fucking movie. I mean, I didn't know what he was getting at. He's like, we own the rights and we want to do something with it. We don't know what to do. Because they didn't know if they wanted to make another sequel or just call it Halloween but not have Michael Myers. There was no preconceived idea. And it was my idea to basically try to reboot it, start over with new people playing all the same roles and do that.

And that was, I don't know, it came out in 2007. So it was probably 2006 when I did that. Who was involved in the more recent one? Lionsgate is the company that did Three from Hell. Because I had done, after Universal booted me with House of a Thousand Corpses, it was eventually acquired by Lionsgate. And Lionsgate made the sequel, Devil's Rejects, and then, which was already 15 years ago. And a couple years ago, I got a real bug to make another one. I just went into Lionsgate

and there was the same executive still there. And I was like, what do you think about doing this? And they were saying like, you know what? That was the last really fun time we had making a movie. Let's do it. That's got to feel good. Yeah, it was great. I was like, wow, that's sad, but okay.

Now, do you have long-term plans in terms of what you want to accomplish as a a guy who makes movies well yes and no i mean i don't have a i'm not trying to gear up towards making bigger films because i know i wouldn't work in that system because it's just not i don't want to make things by committee i want to be like this is the fucked up crazy thing i want to do and i don't want to water because i know so many people that'll be like our friend Tom Papa. I remember him telling me about his TV show, Come to Papa. It was like this certain idea.

He said, by the time the TV people watered it down and changed it, it gets on the air. He's like, well, it's so far removed from the original idea yeah that I don't you know I don't want to do that and you know and so I would rather my goal is just get it made whatever it takes not worried about don't try to be blockbuster guy I don't care I mean I've you know had the Halloween movies were on 4 000 screens it was like the number one movie made up but it didn't make me any happier it's just about making the thing where I can look and go like I love it I'm done because you know that's at this stage that's what i want to do yeah that the genre is still so attractive but there's just not a lot of those examples

other than like well your films are probably the most prominent currently well i mean if everything's meant i mean horror movies are big business but if they look at it that way then they start making them overly palatable to a wide audience this types of horror movies though you know there's like supernatural horror movies there's monster movies but then there's like homicidal maniac movies and you kind of own that shit redneck homicides that's my that's my genre you know it's like the hills have eyes yeah right then you there you go right you know what i mean it's like that kind of psychopath chainsaw massacre type shit i love white trash type stuff well the carny because that's just yeah i was that typical kid who worshipped Evel Knievel.

Oh, yeah. Maybe that would be a fucking movie, man. That would be a movie. That would be a fucking movie, man. I worked with his son. I worked with Robbie Knievel during the Fear Factor days. Oh, really? Yeah, he did something on Fear Factor. Yeah, it was cool.

He was a nice guy. But I was like, damn, dude, your dad was a fucking psycho yeah shit that that guy subjected his body to it's crazy and when you watch that shit and you watch the philadelphia flyers that time in the 70s was fucking mental it was just a little kid watching evil knievel and listening to alice cooper and watching hockey fights and that determines who you become yeah evil knievel was just i mean there's a i think it was a Rolling Stone piece of his body where they showed all of his x-rays. And all of the bone breaks and steel rods that were, various bones that were screwed together. I'm like, fuck, man, what kind of pain was this guy in?

I don't know. I mean, did you see, there's a fairly new documentary. I think it's called Being Knievel. I think it's amazing. Well, it's maybe a couple of years old actually. But yeah, just any one of those crashes. I think this is a famous one in London and he jumps over the double decker buses and you can see him land and the bike looks like it's made out of rubber and he looks like he's made out of rubber. And you're like, it looks like every bone in his body just broke. And that's, you know, he's going to do it again and do it again.

Oh, God. I mean, that was his thing. Imagine that being your thing. Your thing is you fly through the air on something that's supposed to stay on the ground. A full-size Harley that's not made for jumping or doing anything. At all. Or landing, for that matter. Doesn't have any particularly like

like bouncy shocks or anything it's just hitting like boom ka-dunk and just oh my god yeah it's it's a weird thing to be that guy because there was i mean there was some people in the past that had done um some pretty interesting shit and risked their lives but he was doing it consistently with an engine that was like the thing about him it's like and he was like one of the most famous people in america yeah with like an american flag suit yeah it's like the fawns and evil kenevil you know there you are being kenevil you gotta see that if you haven't seen wow it's amazing and there's stuff in there that kind of blew my mind because we all remember

the Snake River Canyon thing but they were showing how out of control it was with the people that showed up and were so drunk and the crowds were fighting and crazy just on their own it's mental

just what was going on around the the event that's one of those things you can't really do today the same way like if someone jumps over things today it's like so many people are jumping like you're not going to get famous that way because like think about the just the bananas shit those bmx guys do with their foot three times in the air it's commonplace yeah no watching, watching Evil Knievel is like watching the original King Kong with your kids.

Right, right. It's like, oh, that was a big deal once? He jumped seven buses. Whatever, I did it on my bike. Yeah, that would be a great film.

I don't know what you have to do now. Catch bullets with your bare hands or something? Like for people, it's like, that guy's rad,

bullet man. Well, now there's people doing parkour and climbing buildings with no ropes. It's like, you ever watch that kid Alex Honnold? Do you know who he is? No. He's the free solo guy.

Oh, the free solo guy, yeah. I still haven't seen that yet, but everyone tells me. He's so nice and so normal. When you talk to him, I've had him on the podcast a couple of times, and I'm like, how are you the guy that's wanting to climb the face of these fucking cliffs and some of them they're they're not straight up and down they're holding on by a finger he's got like hands wedged in these crack look at that picture yeah that's that doesn't make you shit your pants and he's getting older and he's starting

to get injured now too oh and you know he's for the first time in his life he's had you know like you know for a long time he had no injuries no problems and he's you know he's been doing this a long time now his body's not holding up the way it used to when do you retire like when are you mom you retire when you can evil and you know it's done the finger slips on that's when you retire i mean that's what all of the people that have done it before him think. They think, look, this is going to end badly. Yeah. You know?

It's crazy to be known as the guy who's doing something that scares the fuck out of everybody. Yeah. You're the guy that everybody's watching to eventually fall. Look at that. Like, look at the angle. Yeah, that doesn't even seem possible. Well, he's incredibly strong. His hands, like, he's a slender, thin guy. eventually fall look at that like look at the angle yeah that doesn't even seem possible well he's incredibly strong his hands like he's a slender thin guy but he has gorilla hands yeah

the fat ass fingers and he just can shove them into these cracks and hang on in place he was telling me a story about how he was free solo climbing this one mountain when he realized, you know, like fucking 300 feet up that he forgot his powder. So he's got no chalk. So he's, you know, things are getting slippery. He's climbing and he finds these guys that are connected to ropes halfway up. And he says, hey, I don't have any powder. Can I borrow your chalk?

So the guy gives him his chalk bag. He makes it all the way to the top and leaves the chalk bag at the top for the guy it's like what if those guys are like that guy doesn't have any ropes as he's going by no ropes or chalk he doesn't have any fucking chalk like you know like if you ever lifted weights like with that bar gets slippery it sucks like you need chalk yeah to grip things right so you can you can really get a hold of stuff. But that's just weights. You could put the weights down. The worst fall is going to be three feet to the floor. Oh, fuck.

I can't even watch his stuff. My hands are sweating right now thinking about it. I haven't watched that, but I got to, and everyone's always talking about it. No, it's an amazing documentary, but he's just a fascinating guy because it doesn't make sense. He's not like some Steve-O type guy who's just a maniac and just like always trying to freak people out and do the next thing. No, he's real. I'm putting a rocket on a sharpened cart.

Yeah. Crashing into a brick wall. Exactly. Exactly. Like when Steve-O comes up with ideas, like he'll tell them to me. I'm like, don't do that. Don't do that, man. You know, like stop doing that.

But I get it. That's who he is. He's a legitimate bona fide maniac. Alex Honnold, guys, so calm and peaceful. You know, and he said, like, he's like, well, you know, I'm pretty mellow. You know, it's like when the whole thing is pretty mellow. It's like when things go wrong, that's when it's not mellow. I'm like, oh, God.

Yeah, that's kind of how everything is yeah so do you see things like that like current event stuff or like a person like him and think hmm is that a movie is there a movie in that like sometimes i see things i'm trying to think last time i thought that and i'm always late like you'll go oh i just saw that oh it's already in production i'm never ahead of the curve enough to be on top that's a bummer you know yeah but uh no there's all kinds of things like that that i would love to do but it's like it just i don't know it's the time sometimes i just i i've like said, I told you two projects that took so much of my life. I mean I sat there and watched the – because the whole Flyers movie ended with them winning the cup the first time.

And I watched that series. I got all the games with all the original commercials, which were incredible. The commercial was Salvador Dali selling house paint, like weird shit. And I had the whole series like memorized i could have called a commentary on it i've watched thousands of hours of watching this hockey i went because i was like if i'm gonna make this movie i'm gonna be the number one philly's expert on everything i don't want anyone to say anything i'm like oh gee i don't know now i can't remember anything and then it was all for nothing oh but that's so that's the way things are anyway though

but so you invested too much yeah but you kind of had to because it's like i figured with a topic like that they have such the fans are right i mean they're like that they're like gods in philadelphia i mean the best thing about this just think of this as a movie. Okay, just this one scene. When they introduced the team in Philly, I think it was 1967, they had a parade to introduce them because hockey was coming to town. They said they had a parade with the players and there was like maybe no one there to watch the parade. And even one of the guys goes, all I remember is a guy leaning on the lamppost giving me the finger as the parade went by. And then when they won the Stanley Cup, they had a parade. Two million people showed up in the streets of Philadelphia.

And the footage of that, if you can find it while you're over there, the entire, you know, like 100,000 people showed up for the Lakers and everyone was crazy. Two million people is four Woodstocks. In the streets. In the streets of Philadelphia to watch a team team drive by like in the back of like you know convertibles like and they're all they all look like porn stars because they're on fur coats and big mustaches and big afros they're amazing it's like you're just the and that was

such a short period of time that was maybe like seven years from go fuck yourself to like you guys are philadelphia wow and it was all during that time period of like you know when they made rocky so philadelphia was like the shithole of America, you know. And every sports team was bad. And the real life story just reads like fiction. Look at that. Here's the footage. I mean. Holy shit.

Look at all those people. And that was the entire parade road. People were hanging out of buildings. It was just, it was, that's when they won the game. It was just incredible. Wow. Well, growing up in Boston, believe it or not, I wasn't a hockey fan. Oh, my God. I worship the Bruins. I didn't.

I was just into martial arts, and I didn't even like sports. I just was, I found out about martial arts, really, the school that I wound up going to because I was coming home from a Red Sox game. I was into baseball at the time. why i'm going to because i was coming home from a red sox game i was into baseball at the time and uh i went up to this gym and this martial arts this taekwondo school and i happened to be going there right when this guy his name was john lee was practicing and he was a national heavyweight and light heavyweight champion at the time and just incredible and i got to see him hit this bag and i remember thinking i can't believe someone can do that. Yeah. Like he hit it so hard.

He was kicking this bag. And I was like, fuck, I want to learn how to do that. But. What year was that? This was 19, I was 15, 14, 15. So 81, 82, somewhere around there. Okay. And when I was 19 years old, so I really wasn't paying attention at all to sports.

I was balls into martial arts. But I was working at the Boston Athletic Club. And Bobby Orr, who was long retired, used to come there to work out. Oh, yeah. And he had had so many knee surgeries. Oh, it was terrible. That I used to have to help him. I mean, everybody was like, holy shit, it's Bobby Orr.

Bobby Orr's here. Bobby Orr. It's fucking bobby or i didn't i kind of knew he was bobby or but it did it wasn't like i was meeting bruce lee or something like i was meeting bruce lee i probably would have fainted but it was yeah it was this hockey player guy and i used to have to help him to get on the versa climber you know what a versa climber is no there's one of them out there in the gym you you climb on it it's an amazing uh cardio machine but you put your feet in these things. It was in Rocky. Oh, in your car.

Oh, yeah. He was in Russia. Yeah, Drago was working on it. But Bobby wanted to get on this thing, so I used to have to help him because he couldn't bend his knees. His knees, like the range of motion, like here's a leg. Here's a normal range of motion, right? His knees would go like this. They wouldn't lock all the way out they would bend slightly and they would move from this bent slightly to this that's all he had that's crazy he had a little bit of

bend in his knees that's it yeah he would play racquetball and he would just fall over so he like he'd play racquetball the ball was over here he would just tip and fall over it was like he was on these legs that weren't legs it was like he was on sticks they just didn't work you know and i remember seeing the scars up and down the sides of his legs yeah i remember seeing those as a kid like that you'd see pictures i followed the bruin so i was always into bobby orton yeah he probably always was back on the ice too soon another injury yep stitch him up rip him yeah they didn't know how to fix things back then either and he's so incredible Bobby Orton was like at that time like if young Brad Pitt was the greatest hockey player of all time I mean he didn't even seem real right you know he's like the

golden boy and I don't keep making you pull up hockey clips but like you see some clips and it's like the way he's skating compared to everyone else, it's like, did everyone else just learn that day? He's just skating around and they don't even exist. And as a kid, you're like, this is the greatest person alive next to Evel Knievel. Also why he blew his knees out, right? Because he was just taking these crazy risks and moving so fast. Probably, yeah. I mean because he was just it was taking these crazy risks and moving so fast probably yeah i mean he was just and people were probably trying to take him out left and right too yeah i mean he and well the thing with him too he was a defenseman not a forward so he would play

like a forward but he would be a defenseman so he's supposed to be the tough guy defending the goalie yet he's like a leading scorer so he was sort of too good for everything so he's like yeah so he's taking all the hits and scoring all the goals he was such a nice guy i remember thinking that too when i was a kid i always used to be intimidated by people who are really nice guys i was like how is he so nice because i was kind of a prick because it was driving me crazy. I felt inferior. I was like, God, I wish I was that nice.

Yeah, I know you're right. I was mean. I was a mean kid because I was fighting. And I was like, the way to fight is to be mean. You want to get good at fighting, you got to be fucking mean. So by then, I'm five years into fighting, and that's all I want to do. And so I'm around this guy. I feel like, God, he's so nice, and he's like the greatest hockey player of all time. Like, fuck.

I'm such a loser. Yeah, I remember. It's funny. I remember in high school, the kids that would always be in the fights and kick everyone's ass. You're like, you can't compete with that. He's just born crazy. He likes to fight. If you punch him in the face, it'll probably make him happy

after he smashes your head into the sink and kills you. It's just a different way people are. I wasn't really a street fight person at all. I was scared of it. That's how I got into martial arts because I was scared of fighting. But the difference between people

that were like a Bobby Orr or a regular player always fascinated me. I was like, how is one guy Michael Jordan? How is one guy Reggie Jackson? What is he doing different? How does this guy rise above everybody else? They're just special because I would read about him and be like, they knew he was good when he was a kid. They'd be like, come watch this eight-year-old

out skating people. Like he was, I think, I forget. I'm not a Bobby Orr expert. I can't remember things, but I remember being scouted at 14, like he was an adult. He was so good. But that's what you have to be, I guess.

I mean, there were just some kids. I mean, we all remember kids from high school that's like, why are you? You're like a professional athlete and we're like stupid kids. Yeah. Like, you know? Right. Like, why are you shredded?

And we're just like dopey kids. Like, what's going on here? Well, kind of musicians, too, right? Remember when Prince first came out? Wasn't he like 19 when he came out with I Want to Be Your Lover? Yeah, some people are just special. Yeah. They're just Mozart, but in fighting or hockey. It's so humbling.

Well, that's where it goes back to the thing we said like an hour ago. Fooled them again. Because like, those guys are actually special. Well, there's always going to be people like that, right? That just put it all into perspective for you and make you realize like, wow, I'm just, okay, I'm a regular person. It's fun watching people like that. Yeah.

But then there's people like that sometimes that they just self-destruct because they don't care that they're good. Right. You know, and I remember people like that, too. They do nothing with it. That's true, too. Which is weird. Yeah. Sometimes people can be too talented where things come too easy.

It doesn't mean anything. Yeah. There's a thing like you know what you were talking about earlier about being bullied like maybe if we get rid of bullying we're going to get rid of a certain amount of success too i mean it's not like i don't i want anybody to hurt their feelings but i understand that there's something that comes out of that right well there's something that comes out of it being really hard for you to do like when you figure out how to do it you've developed

this indomitable spirit because you've managed to make your way through the hardest levels of the game to get to the top it's not like you were just faster than everybody you have bigger muscles and your fucking head's thicker or something yeah i mean yeah you can't be like pro bullying because that's weird. Right. But there is something to it because like real life just bullies you anyway. There's something to adversity for sure. Like you have to be able to like – like when people – like whenever someone says like, what's your advice for like doing this – like being in show business or something? I go, if being told by complete strangers that you suck all day long does not bother you in any way, then maybe it's the business for you.

But maybe it's not because I think it bothers everybody who wants to do well. But there's a difference between bothering like, oh, that's a drag, or like, I quit. Right. Because there's always – this is funny. Whenever someone comes to me and they say like, hey, I wrote this short story. Be brutally honest. I mean, brutally honest. That person's like secretly saying,

please say something nice about this. Of course. Yeah. Come watch my show. Be brutally honest. Brutally honest, you're hideous to look at and you're the least talented person I've ever seen in my life.

That's such a request. Like I've had people ask me to read their scripts. I'm like, hey, bro, you're asking me for an hour and a half of my time. Yeah. I don't even know you. Do you know how valuable an hour and a half is i have children and three jobs and a lot of hobbies i don't have an hour and a half to watch a movie i don't even want to read a script when my agent sends it over i don't want to read yours i mean it's a lot of

time suck if i can just get this rob zombie if i could just get this rob zombie he can make it then it'll all work out. It's so funny. The people that always make it never talk about themselves. No. The people that can't tell you about their great idea. It's very rare. They'll never not be an idea. It's very rare that that idea is actually great.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like there's certain qualities that someone has to have to make something that's truly exceptional. And very rarely do they want to tell you that it's truly exceptional. Yeah. I mean, it's weird. Maybe it's the insecurity thing that you don't want to tell anybody what you do

because you never think it's good enough, as opposed to people that are not good enough and they always want to tell you about themselves. Right. Yeah, that's a problem. The wrong people are talking about themselves. Well, it's human psychology. But I think the thing about,

like I was saying about Richard Jenny would say that looking at shitty comics is what inspires people to do comedy. We learn from all of the psychological disasters, all the people that think, like all the guys that think they're better looking than they are. You know what I mean?

And they walk up to a girl and the girl's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Get out of here. Like there's something to be learned from that. Like, you know, I had a friend growing up that would swing at every pitch. This guy would go up to every girl. And he didn't, he wasn't a particularly good looking guy. He wasn't smart.

He wasn't funny. But he was bold. Yeah. And, you know, he, and I would learn from him. Like, girls would be angry at him. Like, angry that he had the balls to ask them out. And then they probably would go, right? Because they're like, well, they can't. I would learn from him. Girls would be angry at him. Angry that he had the balls to ask them out. And then they probably would go, right?

Very few. So his strategy just didn't work. It didn't work at all. He'd have to find girls with something wrong with them. Like there's something wrong. They have a screw loose. I thought the end of that story was going to be his boldness paid off. No.

No, he's just dating paraplegics. No, he became an alcoholic. His fucking life is a disaster. I've lost touch with him 15, 20 years ago. That's funny. He's out of his fucking mind. But I remember when we were kids, I'd be like, Jesus Christ. Because one of the things about getting in the show business that helped me is I was always super insecure to talk to girls.

But then when you when you would i would do stand-up you would do work at clubs and you'd be the guy on stage making people laugh like they wanted to talk to you like you actually want to talk to me this is crazy you know i couldn't believe it that's weird that guy would just fucking anybody like look at that hot bartender i'm in i'm going he would every flight attendant on this flight. He would just buy cocktails and take chances and ask for phone numbers. But you can learn from people that fuck everything up. Yeah, you can. You learn from everything, man.

But I have this theory that nobody can learn from other people's mistakes. Really? Maybe it's just the way you think and I think, but it's the rare person who learns from other people's mistakes. Yeah, it's rare, but it's possible. Because I always think like heroin. Right. Didn't Lou Reed finish that one for everybody? We're still going to give it a go because it's different when you do heroin or just anything.

I mean, I never know anyone that learns from anyone's mistakes because you can – even if you're in the business and you go, look, here's my piece. Don't spend that money on that because that's the only you're going to see. Put it away. Do this because that's an advance. That's not coming every month. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then two minutes later, they're broke.

Right. I don't give people advice because they don't want to hear it. I don't care. Be broke. I don't care. The people who really want advice and they're going to use it. That's like one out of a hundred. But they do exist. Yeah, but it's rare.

Yeah. And those are the people that are smart and they're like, aha. Yeah. I try to learn as much as I can from other people's mistakes. But they don't feel as bad as they feel to those people. That's part of the problem is like mistakes have to hurt. Well, that's true too. They have to fucking hurt, man. Like bombing. Like bombing on stage is like sucking that's true too yeah you have to fucking hurt man

like bombing like bombing on stage is like sucking a thousand dicks in front of your mother it hurts so bad that you learn and you're like okay i am gonna figure this out i'm never having that happen again i gotta i gotta get better that must be so bad i mean i can relate to it because you know i've done a different sort of bombing in front of people on stage but you can't really learn from other people bombing. I think that's one of those things you kind of got to do yourself. How long does it take? Because I'm always fascinated by it.

How long do you feel it takes? I mean, this is not really a question I guess you can answer. But until you find your voice and you go, okay, this is me. I'm this guy. I'm not Richard Pryor. I'm not Jerry Seinfeld. It depends jerry seinfeld it depends on i mean some people maybe never find it i guess but a lot of people never find it there's impossible comics whereas like you you see them and you go oh my god this poor bastard he's trying to do something

that he's never going to be able to do there's people that just they're never going to be able to do it for whatever reason whatever whatever psychological ingredients that they have. It's not enough to make chocolate cake. Like, you don't have any eggs. You don't have any flour. You're fucked. Yeah. I know.

Yeah. But then there's other people that their ego protects them where they believe that they did well when they didn't do well. They're delusional. And that's the worst thing because they're trying to to protect themselves from the bad feeling but they don't understand the bad feeling is your friend because that's it sucks hard but yeah that's the fucking medicine that that's that's you take that medicine you gotta go okay okay okay what did i do wrong this is what i did wrong i gotta not do that again and you gotta put more time and focus and effort it's really dependent almost entirely on how much you do that objectively and your focus like how how you can look at it some people just don't ever want no matter what they're doing whether they're

painting or writing making comic books they don't want to ever look at it the way other people look at it they want to think that everything they do is amazing you know like that's true my kids will show me something and sometimes it'll be funny. My daughter will make something on an iPad. Sometimes it'll be funny. And sometimes it's like, look, you've got to edit this. There's too much shit going on here. This is boring.

But they think it's great. Why? Because she's fucking nine. But when you're 28 and you think everything you do is amazing, it's like, okay. But do you think that's worse now amazing it's like okay but do you think that's worse now because of things like instagram oh for sure where everybody puts up anything and you want to go you look like an idiot but their friends like you are so hot or something you know like everyone's can they can feed their delusions that's that's certainly but you also could take

the sting of criticism and you get it from way more people than you ever have before. Like if you're someone who puts something up on Instagram and you think it's funny and then the people come at you hard like, whoa. Like you might, you know, if you're a comic and you've been doing stand-up for five years, you're never going to work in front of, not in normal circumstances, you're never going to work in front of 5,000 people. But you might get 5,000 people saying you suck if you put something up on Instagram. That's true. You know? Yeah, I mean, you can tell. I mean, I'm sure you can tell when somebody's funny almost instantly.

You can tell, but some people surprise you. Like some people in the beginning are like, wow, this guy's got it rough. But then one day it just clicks and they just keep working at it. But it's a matter of whether or not they're willing to put the building blocks in the right place and whether or not they're going to admit that the structure that they have currently is not viable right and some people aren't but some people are it's like it doesn't and also it's it's just like movies right it's like everybody's got a different style you know your films are your kind of films whereas like there's other people that are doing like these really simple sweet you know chick flicks

and that's for them that's what they like and there's people that find that and they think it's amazing it's so good it's like you've got to find whatever the fuck it is that you do that you would like to see. Yeah. Because that's the only way you can judge it. Yeah. I mean, I do what I do because that's what I like. So what I'm doing, I go, okay. But if I was trying to do something else that I didn't get, I'm like, well, what do I judge it against?

Like what you're telling me is good? Then I'm lost. Well, you'd be like the executive asking you to get howard stern in the movie like they don't know why they want him in the movie they just know he's famous like oh he's a movie just came out get him let's get howard and that's what happened when when i was doing the halloween movies a lot because they'd weigh in so often that it can start messing with you because you don't know which end is up because you're like you just want to go jesus christ can i just fucking focus for five seconds before you send her another 18 pages of weird notes?

Then it's fucking with me. And you really don't know which end is up anymore. God, I've been there. I've never been there for a film, but I've been there on TV shows. It's a drag. It's very confusing because you don't know anymore because you're so spun out from too much information. Because I find most of the time, and that's why I'll defend a filmmaker like Ed Wood and why people still talk about Plan 9 from Outer Space. Because, yes, technically it's inept. But there's something so specific about this guy's bizarro vision that you're still talking about it.

And that someone like Tim Burton're still talking about it and that someone like tim burton makes a movie about it there's a million far superior made films from back then that nobody gives a shit about it's just like there's something about keeping that weird bizarro vision alive and not having the committee ruin it yeah if enough people know that it's going to be an edward movie they're gonna go see it there's enough people that find out about it they're like yeah this guy's just weird shit yeah let's go see his weird how did he make a movie more entertaining in six days with like 300 than you made with 200 million dollars well especially in the after the test the taste of time because if you look back

at it now i mean people will gather around and watch it especially after the johnny depp movie yeah because when johnny depp was such a weird ed wood great in that so great there's such a fucking strange character that's like the greatest i think ed wood and like young frankenstein at two times were like that's like the perfect comedy they're just such perfect films ed wood is so weird that the johnny depp version of him it's like what kind of character are you i know yeah i remember um right when it came out no it was right it was right when martin landau got nominated for an oscar i ran into him at a newsstand and i couldn't i never go up to people because i don't want to bother anybody but i couldn't resist and it was like one of those cases where he was so nice that i'm like oh my god you know which was great but he was great

and he seemed so shocked that like some young weird dude was like so excited to see meet Martin Landau because you know he's pretty old yeah that's cool what a movie like that sort of reignites people's appreciation for someone to I always like it's been great yeah I mean because I was like a space 1999 dork and stuff back in the day is there ever a guy that a guy that you are such a big fan of as an actor that you would kind of try to make a movie around them? Probably. I mean, the sad part is so many of the people that I love are gone. I've tried to put a lot of people I really love in all my movies.

A lot of just weird character actors from the 70s that you'd see in like clint eastwood movies and stuff but like jeffrey lewis you know who's in like you know his sidekick in every which way but loose and is in high plains drifter you know juliet lewis's dad jeffrey lewis oh yeah and he was like the greatest i worked with him twice and he would he told me the funniest story once he goes this is what i learned from i can't imitate him but this is what i learned from working with clint whenever i was in the scene with clint i'd make sure i put my hand on his shoulder that way i knew he couldn't cut me out of the scene he had all kinds of but he was he was an amazing guy i remember when we were i did this animated movie with tom papa called the haunted world of el super beast and jeffrey lewis was in he had just come from boxing at that point he was in his 70s, but he was like little,

but he was like, he had that Eastwood body where he's still like ripped. You know, Clint Eastwood, you don't think of him as like, but then he has that Charles Bronson body back then where he's like-

He was boxing in his 70s? Yeah. And he was like, don't be fooled, I can still kick your ass. I was like, yeah, I'm sure you can. Okay, man, relax.

He was a hilarious guy. You know the movie that i fucking loved that it hardly gets uh talked about anymore is bad lieutenant yeah harvey kytel you don't hear from harvey kytel anymore for whatever reason well i think is he no maybe is he in the new thing that irishman the scorsese thing i don't know he seems like he should be that fucking guy has depth he's amazing when he gets there's scenes in movies when he gets angry, you're like, Jesus Christ, this is real. He's hit this weird place where he might murder the person he's in the film with.

I know. I always wonder, I've heard different weird stories of why, because he was in Eyes Wide Shut. Right. And Kubrick filmed him for a long time and then replaced him with Sidney Pollack. Why? I don't know. But I would always hear these different weird, like, that weird, that there was weird shit that he did.

And I don't know if any of it's true, so I don't want to repeat it. But I always wonder. Because he's so great. Yeah. But to shoot for six weeks or two months and then be replaced is such a weird thing. Well, his scenes scenes there's something about him like like pulp fiction he's so authentic like you believe he's the cleaner you know like he's so great as like sport and like uh you know taxi driver yes i think that might be the first

thing i saw him in so i was he just seems so authentically sleazy i used to have a bad lieutenant poster what the fuck happened to it? But somewhere along my travels moving from place to place, I lost it. But I remember- He was amazing. That fucking movie was so crazy because it was like a bad cop. Like it was a movie about a really bad cop. Like over the top bad.

But probably fairly realistic. Probably. Unfortunately. Did you ever see the documentary The 7-5? No. It's a great documentary about corrupt cops in New York. Oh, really? Yeah.

And Michael Dowd, who was one of the guys who was one of those corrupt cops, wound up going to jail. And now he's out. And I had him on the podcast. We talked about it. It's fucking, all of it is true. All of it's documented. And all of it's insane. What of it's insane what year was that all happening is that like i want to say it's the 70s right what year was i always assume corruption happened in the 70s a lot of it seems

like he was showing up at the precinct with a fucking corvette like what is going on here man they were knocking over 80s and 90s oh it was oh wow okay just assumed it was serpico time period yeah but he's out now man and uh it's um it's just one of those stories that's so fucking crazy just you know knocking over drug hits out on him and they were putting hits on other people it's like it's like woof it's it's just maniacal was that in new york yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like the wild west but he talks about like first day on the job being exposed to corruption like they threw some guy out of a fucking balcony and he's like you know like like this guy jumped right and he's like okay i think i forget what the exact story was but some ridiculous shit like that where they were he was

i mean it's like it was corrupt long before he got there yeah he just could have sort of stepped into the the mess of it you know it's like what you're talking about like your early days in new york city like seeing that guy get beat to death by a cop like that was kind of how police had total autonomy they i mean they had so much power and authority back then yeah it was crazy i I remember another incident. This was right before I left. I think I started talking about this, but I didn't finish. It was like they had Tompkins Square Park, and that's when that area was getting gentrified.

That was the big word. And there was kind of a riot. There was all the people protesting the gentrification of the Lower East Side. This was probably like, I don't know, fuck, I i forget maybe early 90s late 80s and the cops showed up on horseback and i was i was i had just walked out to go to the deli i didn't even know this was happening i just walked right into the middle of like what's going on here and um then the cops just started racing through the crowd and i just started running and i saw a friend of mine he he died number he was a singer of this punk rock

band reagan youth and i saw this cop just jump on him and start pounding on him so bad he had really long dreadlocks the next time i saw him his head was shaved and it was all stitched up because he just had so much damage to his head he had been in like a coma or something and then it was a big scandal you could probably find this easy because the cops all put black tape on their badge numbers so that no one could tell who was who while they did

all this shit and it was like on the front cover of the New York Post a picture of like I think the post the badge with the black tape

that shit was wild back then see if you can find it well the the Chicago elections and the riots during the 1960s yeah was like a turning point in Hunter S. Thompson's life. Because he was there and he watched these cops just beat the fuck out of people.

And he said that he saw far worse beatings by the Chicago police than he ever saw for the Hells Angels. Because his first book was the Hells Angels book. So he was around those guys for a year watching them get into biker brawls and shit he's like this fucking paled it paled i mean it's yeah it's why but uh it's crazy too but sometimes i being a cop must be a crazy job horrific because i can't imagine i mean it doesn't justify any of the stuff we're talking about, but I can't imagine how you couldn't go crazy in that job. Right. What you see every day and what you.

Most of them, I think, have PTSD. Yeah. And they don't, it's not addressed. Most people have disdain for them. Almost everybody they meet's a liar. Yeah. Because you meet a guy, like, I didn't know how fast I was going. Oh, this is my house.

Oh, I just can't find my keys. Like, everyone's lying to you, and you're the enemy. You are a professional enemy, and you're wearing an enemy outfit. Yeah. Right everyone's lying to you and you're the enemy you are a professional enemy and you're wearing an enemy outfit yeah for all these criminals you're the enemy it's a terrible way to live yeah we need them badly right it's and it's i don't it's i don't know you can't win on that job i don't think no no you can't and it's and people don't you don't get paid enough people don't respect you they don't appreciate you you know i don't want you around until they want enough. People don't respect you. They don't appreciate you. They don't want you around until they want you around.

Yes. And then you're not there fast enough. Exactly. And then you suck. Yeah. Yeah. And cop movies, that's what's crazy, is like cop movies, people love. People love cop movies and the cops are the good guys. So strange.

But like their interactions with humans in real life like boy if people treated them the way they think about them in the movies it would be a wonderful time to be a cop it's weird though because i remember that time period in new york like so straight like i have a different relationship now when i see cops but uh but as a as like a bum kid at 19 like i remember walking down the street, and a cop would cruise alongside, roll down the window, and they'd start taunting me, saying shit. Bullies. But they're just waiting for you to say something back. Right.

And I was like, wow, this is weird. I was just walking down the street. I wasn't even jaywalking down the street. Now, whenever a cop comes up to me, I'm like, happening he'd be like dude i saw you in slayer it was fucking awesome oh my god that's weird yeah it's gotta be super strange yeah i mean they're more accountable now than ever before i think that's one of the great things about body cameras and cell phones that cops are you know you just can't rock it that way before but i don't think they get enough counseling and i don't think they get enough money and i don't think there's

i don't think it's a stringent enough screening process i think there's a lot of people that are they're you know they're powerless twats when they're young and they want oh i just wish everybody's gonna fucking pay if i could be a cop and they become a cop for all the wrong reasons and then they're the ones that give the good cops a bad name and if you think about the amount of interactions that people have with police and this is what perspective why perspective is so important there are fucking 320 million people in this country and cops have millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of interactions with people yeah all the time

but how many of those interactions are positive the vast majority of them are not police brutality the vast majority of them are not shooting someone and planting a weapon on them or planting drugs on them of course the vast majority of them are cops doing a really hard job and doing their best but nobody gives a fuck about that you only care when the cops go bad you know and then you know it's just perspective which uh you know nobody has no that's too nuanced of a conversation with the world now no perspective on anything well listen man i appreciate you coming in here and your film is out tonight tonight tonight yes three from hell three from hell tonight and everywhere well somebody will tell me they couldn't find it, but it's trying to be everywhere.

So, and then when will it be available? Like if someone wants to get it off Apple TV? I don't know exactly. I mean, it's a three-night Fathom event, and then it'll be in theaters here and there, and then it'll be out probably October. It will be most accessible for people. I should have brought that information but no worries thanks man they'd be professional thanks for having me man thank you rob zombie

ladies and gentlemen that was fun man