The Joe Rogan Experience - #2508 - Joe Eszterhas

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Joe Eszterhas is an author, former journalist for “Rolling Stone,” and screenwriter known for films such as “Basic Instinct,” “Sliver,” “Showgirls,” and “Flashdance.”www.imdb.com/name/nm0000390/ Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Use code ROGAN at https://BlueChew.com to get 10% OFF + Free Overnight Shipping on your first order. Open an account in minutes at https://Chime.com/Rogan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Okay, let's rock the roll. You need the headphones? Never. No? Okay.

If it's okay with you, I know I've seen it both ways. No, you don't have to wear them. Okay. You were telling me about your cane. That cane is amazing. It's amazing. It's carved by the Dogan people who were in Mali. and the

it's a family that's been doing it for 100 years and many of them were killed in the Rwandan wars it's heavy it's beautifully done I think and it's been a close companion of mine for many years

it seems to be indestructible it's pretty awesome looking it looks heavy the Dogon people have a very strange origin story it's a fascinating origin story that involves

Is it, uh, the, it involves like, here it is. That's, I don't want to misspeak. So here it is. Centers on the supreme creator Amma and the cosmic journey of the amphibious water spirits known as the Noma. So they have this crazy cosmic origin story that's a part of their mythology. Amma then attempted to procreate with the earth, but the pairing was flawed. It's like a very strange descendant of the ark. According to the Dogan traditions, the gnomah descended to earth from the serious star system

and a giant ark-like vessel. The vessel contained the eight original human ancestors, along with the seeds and animals needed to populate the world. Those are the dogan people. It's amazing. Amazing. I didn't know that. Probably amazing. It's amazing.

It's a crazy story. I have a daughter who's a nature photographer. I mean, does a lot of work in Africa. And she knows all about that stuff. So you were telling me, before we got rolling, I said, save this for the air, that Vladimir Zelensky and his wife have seen basic instinct. How many times?

15, at least 15. There's a recent biography that said that, that began when they were courting, and that they had known each other before. and one day she saw him with this tape in his hand. She said, what is it? And he's a basic instinct. And then they saw it together, and it has such an effect on them,

that they played it together many times, at least 15 times, during their anniversaries. Now, I'm not sure what that says. And I know that some people think the movies had a kind of amatory effect on them. But the other thing that's interesting, thing to me is if you see it 15 times, does it really fuck you up to the point where you go to war with Putin? I mean, is that the real key to why it happened? Well, in his defense, Putin attacked first.

Absolutely. And I like Zelensky very much as a figure. And I'm very sympathetic to the Ukrainians because I've got a Hungarian background in the 1956, the Russians devastated Hungary and a similar freedom fight. So maybe it gave him the balls and the wisdom to go after Putin. Maybe it just meant a warning. Who knows? Might have nothing to do with the war.

Might not. You made some crazy fucking movies, man. You really did. There are 18 of them that have been made, and there have been like 34 scripts. They'd been 16 that haven't been made. And I don't know. you know, I get around and I say there's a twisted little man inside me who lives in some spot that I'm not sure where it exactly is, but he's 29, born 29, he will die 29, and with anything

that has a relatively strong sexual content, he wrote the fucking thing. I'm just an old guy giving him the space, you know, so when the, when the recent deal was made for a record amount of money for basic instinct tree, because there was a sequel to it, that was, that was a, that was a, tell a piece of shit and I had nothing to do with. But this would be three and my title for it is his basic insane Jezebel. The Twisted Little Man put together the story

that I think people will have fun with but it continues in that same vein and it seems to be his specialty. So let's see what happened. I like how you refer to yourself as like another person. Yeah. The twisted man. There is, you know, there's a thing with

with little kids where they have a companion, an invisible companion. Right, and the Twister little man is my main one. I have others. Mark Twain is one. And interestingly, Jesus of Nazareth is another. You know, and then these people are very, very close to me. Twist a little man is a darker presence than the others are, although Twain is a cross between the two of them, and I absolutely love him. So when you were writing things like Basic Instinct, do you really feel like you were

channeling like another person? Is that what it felt like? It felt, well, let me go the backdrop. I wrote it in 13 days. And then I felt like it just poured out of me. There is a background to it, and that is the Catherine Tremel character and then the Nick Curran character. Many, many years before, in college, I had an affair. with a, I was an 18-year-old kid and I had an affair with a faculty member's wife. It was a serious affair and the, the, we, she was sophisticated, smart, beautiful, sassy,

and exactly the kind of woman I've always fallen for. And the, and she had a profound effect on me. Now, at the end of the year, she moved down and I discovered that there was a different student that she was with each year and that her husband looked the other way. How old was she? 39. I was 18. I was a very green 18 because I grew up at the immigrant kid. I fell in love easily.

But falling in love easily also mental. a lot in terms of learning things because I was an immigrant and I really didn't know this country and I was shy. And I learned a lot sometimes, I think, more from the women that I was together with beginning in college and through the rest of my life. Then I preferred the company of women always because they weren't armored off in male macho. But anyway, she was stuck there in my memory. And then when I was a police reporter, almost a decade and a half later, a decade later, the plane dealer, I had a buddy who was a cop that I liked very much who had been involved in three or four shootings. And when we got to know each other and we spent time drinking together and we did

a lot of that, I started wondering how, if he really liked the shootings. Was it an itchy trigger finger or did he just get off on it? So somehow these two characters were in my head, and I thought about them a lot, but they didn't come together, and then I think thanks to the twisted little man, one day the two came together in a love story, and that was the genesis of basic instinct. And by the time I wrote it, I had thought about it subconsciously and directly for a long time. I would wake up in the middle of the night and shot notes down. which happens to be sometimes when I'm very involved in a script.

And I wrote it in Hawaii. I went off to Hawaii by myself. I looked the sun beat me up. I snorted some Coke, which was an habit in those days. And after 13 days of all of that, and the other thing I did was listen to the stones all the time. I love the stones. I loved the blues from the time I was an immigrant kid.

And the stones just blew everything else out during that period of time for me. So I listened to that at the end. of 13 days that I had this script. I went back home to Marin, typed it up, I almost sent it to my agent with the title Love Hurts, and I was going out the door. The twist of little man had another thought, and I raised back inside and wrote to The Basic Instinct.

Send it to my agents. They auctioned it. Ten days later, my main agent, Guy McElwain, who became my big brother, and one of the people I really loved in life. Everybody bit on it. It wound up selling for a record $3 million. And then it became a towering hit.

To this day, it trend. The critics in the beginning were critical, mildly critical. No, actually, the critics were really after the movie. And then through the years, the critics have had a change in mind. Isn't that funny? Yeah. The woman named Camille Baglia, who was a main feminist critic, who went up against the movie very strongly, recently,

not recently, but in the past five or ten years, has come around and said that the movie is the example. It's a post-feminist classic, she says, and it's about women who don't have to hide their sexuality. That's wild that she made such a turnaround. Staples Preferred Business Membership, built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about. With Staples Preferred, get free delivery, no minimums.

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Yeah, yeah. I wonder, did you ever have a conversation with her? No, I've never met her. She teaches. I'm somewhere on the East Coast, and then she has a towering reputation, I never met her. I usually don't listen to critics.

It's through the 18 films. I don't listen to critics. I worked with the director, Richard Mark Wand, who directed Jack at Edge. And the Hearts, excuse me, in Hearts of Fire, and we worked down another one together. And Richard said to me that critics should be taken out into the backyard and shot. Okay? I worked with another director, Mike Figgas, on the one-night stand, who said that critics should be taken out of the backyard and headbutted to death.

I was sympathetic to both things. It's so wild that your views were formed by this relationship that you have when you're 18 with an older, horny, smart lady who's like, you know, kind of wild. Yes. And then a cop who might have been a shady cop. Yes. And how the two came together in this twisted thing called creativity. You know, and they come out of this maelstrom. Now, the other thing I'm sure was an influence is by the time I did that,

I'd been through four years of police being experienced covering cops, two in Dayton, Ohio, and two in Cleveland. And that consisted of, at that point, driving around in a company car that got the police radio and responding to whatever was going on. On occasion, you got there before the cops got there. And the one that really stuck in my head and got inside me was there was one in the report of a shooting suburb in Dayton and I got there. There were no cops there.

The front door was wide open. I walked in. I passed the body of a guy who was. shot himself and there was blood all over the wall. And then a woman was his wife that he'd shot. And I heard someone in the back of the house screaming and crying. And then I went back there. And the thing that really got to me is she was screaming and crying in Hungary.

And it was an old lady who was the mother's mom. And of course I spoke flu in Hungary and grew up Hungary. And there was something about the scene that's with me to this day. The other police beat experience I had, though, that was very moving, was I covered the McLeanville Urban Uprising in Cleveland. It was a big one, and there were, I think, six or seven policemen shot and killed. I was crouched behind a car on the street dugging down with about ten people. feet in front of me was a cop bleeding, badly bleeding, moaning, and at the same time there

were gunshots coming from this apartment house. And I heard that the gunshots were coming from a group of so-called black nationalists led by a man, Fred Ahmed Evans. I knew both men from the police beat the cop was Hungarian his name was Elmer Joseph and he would come around to the little office

in the police bit all the time and I knew him and the black man was named Fred Ahmed Evans and he would come by in his Deshiki sometimes at two in the morning because I worked the overnight shift

sometimes and we had the greatest talks you know drank a lot of beer smoked a lot of dope and got to be And he was leading the group of black nationalists and who had been shooting these policemen. And I was behind this car's wheels a few feet away from the whole shit.

And I found the whole thing so frightening and so disturbing that I pissed my pants. Jesus Christ. So the four years of police, there were other incidents I covered the urban uprisings in Detroit, two in Cleveland. and one in Newark. It was very involved in the civil rights movement. And that's what I did. I covered whatever, was breaking, and much of it was dark stuff. So by the time that hookup happened between Catherine,

Catherine Tremel and Nick Kerr, and there was a lot that went into it. Yeah, I could imagine. Like what the insane life experience to be able to see all those different crime scenes and witness all that. You know, what happened was that I happened to pick a field. That journalism, I thought, and so did Hunter. One of the things we became friends. We were both poor kids, and we both dreamed of being novelists.

Novelists. You mean Hunter Thompson? Yeah, Hunter Thompson. And the way that we chose to begin that was by doing journalism. because no one made a living writing novels, and we both had to make a living. So the under wrote stuff for the National Enquirer and then moved down to Rolling Stone and all of that.

And I did it on a local level. And that put us into a culture that was exploding. The American society was exploding. The black situation vis-à-vis white racism was horrendous. So there was a dynamic in the country that we were on top of because of what we did. So I saw a lot. I saw a lot on the refugee camps because I began my seven years in refugee camps in Austria and then grew up dirt poor in an urban city.

And I saw a lot of stuff there as well that was dark and moving and profiling. soundly effective. This episode is brought to you by Blue Chew. Listen up. Blue Chew just drops something wild. They're calling it Blue Chew Gold. And honestly, the name fits. The stuff is setting a whole new standard for performance in the bedroom. It's not your typical blue pill. It combines two ingredients for blood flow with two for mental arousal and connection. It's not just physical. It's the mindset, too. Chew gets it. Sex is not just about being able to perform. It's about actually wanting to. And I've got a special deal for you listeners. Right now, when you buy two months of Blue Chew Gold, you get the third free with the promo code Rogan. You're also received an additional 10% off plus free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information.

Well, also, so when you're writing, you're writing from real world experience, which is so much more effective and makes sense why your stuff was so dark and wild. Yeah, it does make sense. And the, you know, I mean, when I was a kid in Cleveland growing up, we lived in a very poor part of town near West Side. And there's a boy next door. and the I slept in the on a couch in the living room that overlooked the bar

and one night and I was looking out the window because I always was neon lights and Puerto Rican hookers and all of that stuff they're really interested a little kid who spent most of his time playing with my as the Mark Twain said

with this pecker you know and so this was all very exciting stuff and the and I was watching one one day and I saw this man and then stab another one to death and fall down and bleed to death how old were you?

12 oh Jesus yeah so there are reasons why the other thing with my scripts is almost everything in my scripts that somehow comes from

some kind of personal tie you know big shots which was little movie that was very popular with kids came from my son Steve's experience in Marin County with a black friend and how they tried to make that friendship work. And that's what the movie is. It's a little movie about two kids, a white kid and a black kid, and try to become friends. There was a movie I did called Checking Out with Jeff Daniels, and that was about mid-life crisis. And suddenly now in my early to mid-30s, I was scared shitless that I was going to die.

And here I am at fucking 81 talking about dying at that 30-something. But so there was a comedic thing that came out of that. It basically came out of where it did. But there was almost with everyone. There was some kind of betrayed came out of the notion that at that particular point, if you remember, there was all this right-wing craziness where there were militias that were shooting people and there were jamborees where the right-wingers got together. When was this?

Betrayed, which came out in the 80s. There were several incidents in Oregon in the northwest parts of the country, which got a lot of publicity. It was before Timothy McVeigh, but roughly in that same period. So I decided under a false name to go to one of these jambrees and see what the hell is going on. Essentially, my journalism experience I went into it, and then out of it I concocted this romance between Deborah Winger and Tom Berenshire. But they all had some kind of a tie. Telling Lies in America, which is one of my favorite little movies with Kevin Bacon and Brad Renfro,

is semi-autobiographical in terms of the issues I had as a high school kid. and bullying and all of those kinds of things, and becoming an American citizen. They were shot. Incidentally, right where I grew up in front of the apartment house where we lived, and I remember hearing a TV reporter in Cleveland interview, an old man was watching the shooting

and saying, did you know Joe when he grew up here and he said yeah I was a bartender there and then he said shit Joe is just a fucking refugee trying to make his way in the world he nailed it I mean that's really what

not a complicated thing but that's really what happened the only other things nice things have been said about me through the years but the only other thing that I really treasure and love is I covered I interviewed Oates Redding the night before he was killed in the plane crash in Cleveland. And we began speaking around midnight after a show at a place called Leo's Casino.

And we began talking around midnight and talked till 3.30 in the morning. And we did a lot of beer. We did a lot of Jim Beam. We smoked a lot of really powerful Thai stuff. and had a great time. And at the end of it, when he had to go, he said,

give me a fucking hug, and I gave him a hug. And he said, you know what you are? He said, you're a fucking white nigger. That's what you are. I love that.

Stayed with me all this time. The old time said he's a force of nature. People said, Shakespeare were alive today, was named Joe Estoran. Fuck all that is bullshit. What Otis said, and what the old man said,

I thought was really great. Well, hearing that, Otis Redding was such a legend. Oh, he was great. He died so young, too. He died. He was really, I was in a 30-some place. Listen to this. The interviewer, and I went home the next day at the plane dealer, it was Sunday, and I was working.

I'm literally the day after the interview. And I'm sitting there in this hall-like city room, and I see a city editor, the Associated Press-Wire machine start dinging. And in those days, if it had more than four or five dings, there was some bad thing that happened. So I saw a city editor come from the city desk to this dinging machine. And he's staring at it. The fucking thing is still digging. Staring at it and then he looks in me like that in the city room.

And then he looks away. So I saw that, and then I got up and went to the digging machine. And Otis, his plane had crashed. the way it's another gig and I was probably the last man who really spoke to him at length I left the office right then

and said fuck it for the rest of the day there was a bar across the street drank myself silly and went home with the waitress I mean it just you know it's just horrible but I saw a lot to get back to your point show I did

in different ways And so I tried to write a movie about Otis called Blaze of Glory. And we put it together. A man named John Apted was going to direct it, and it was announced that Cuba Gooding was going to play Otis. And the whole thing fell apart at the last minute for financing reasons, and to this day it's never got made. But I'm a writer.

What else can I do with someone that I loved at a meeting, except write about them in that way, right? So anybody who writes interesting things the way you do has to have had some interesting life experiences. You don't get those kind of scripts that you wrote from a sterile environment. I agree with that. Sometimes, after my conversion to Christianity late in my life,

I wrote three Christian scripts, and none of them were made. And one of them wasn't made because one of the priests involved with potentially getting Christian financing. I said we need more incense. And my response to somebody who interviewed me about it was, I don't write fucking incense. I write flesh and blood. So no wonder it wasn't made. What did he mean by you need more incense?

Well, to make it more him like, to make it a sense of piety, to take, to make it inspire the people so that they become Catholic in this specific case. And that it was too secular. And I think what happened to me with all three is that I fell. between views, between so-called Christian films and secular films. And so that's why we never got to finance for all three. When you say you fell between Christian films and secular films, you mean in the way you were writing it,

that you weren't writing it specifically as a Christian film or specifically as a secular film? The way I was writing it naturally. Like you wrote everything else? Yeah, but that political considerations are clergy. clerical considerations. I was just writing it from my heart. And that was too gritty to get Christian kind of financing.

And on the other hand, too religious to get the secular financing. That's too bad because that bridge is probably what would bring more people to Christianity, where they could relate to it. I agree with you absolutely. And my argument was, you know, these could be hit movies. Because my movies, in a lot of cases have been, these could be hit movies. And that's more important than spiking people with incense. It's interesting how Hollywood has always rejected those kind of

of religious films, like The Passion of Christ, for instance. That was a huge movie. Well, it's not just a huge movie, but in my mind, it was like a prayer. You know, I watch it each good Friday, and it was a huge movie beautifully done. It wasn't officially endorsed by the Catholic Church, although I saw in Cleveland a meeting where a priest organized a preview screening of the movie, and they had like 700 people, the full hall watching it. There was such an interest in it. But part of the reason I think, you raise a good point because I think part of the reason,

It was such a towering yet Was it it was real It wasn't it wasn't incense filled It was real You had a figure Who bled and you really show what happened Upon that cross and how awful That kind of pain is

And the movie really reflected that No it was horrific And there was also that Willem Defoe film What was that one called? The Last Temptation of Christ That's right That's right That's Marty Scorsese

Yeah Yeah I agree with that. I love one of my favorite actress. And I like that. And it's also very real, historically real. You know, the notion that Jesus of Nazareth was this Fred Rogers figure who wasn't really a real man, whereas the Bible says he was a true man and true God, that film really showed as the human side

and my conception of Jesus who I revered and who was one of my one of my close friends that I speak to on most days is that he was true man and true God he was a Jewish zealots a freedom fighter against the Roman Empire he was crucified by the Romans as a freedom fighter he hung around

blue-collar guys and fishermen and ochres and tax collectors who were the lowest of the low back then as they should be now but they were the lowest in the low back then and those were the people that he'd be primarily buddyed around with

that's Jesus of Nazareth and that that side is completely ignored by most films except the two that you mentioned specifically. They're like that. Yeah, the last time, The Christ, I don't remember, I remember there was some controversy around it,

but I don't, I was too young to really be paying attention to like how. It was the very fact that Jesus had a relationship that was clearly indicated as being sexual with Mary Magdalene, who was depicted as a prostitute. Now, the truth, historical truth, is in Mary. Magdalene was a few years older than Jesus and a woman of means who had advised Roman builders in a city called Serafin. And then was one of the people who financed Jesus as he swept through Galilee and the rest of Judea. There's another scene in the Bible where an unnamed woman

goes to Jesus and he washes his feet and then washes his feet with his hair. This unnamed woman by a pope in the 6th century,

Gregory the Great, was picked to have been Mary Magdalene. In no connection to Mary Magdalene, there's nothing that says that Mary Magdalene was a hooker of any kind and then there's no proof

for that in any way. So the fact that the last temptation of Christ did that, and brought the two of them together in a sort of semi-love story without, of course, any real sexuality to it on film is why we're so criticized. Scorsese's house was picketed,

and I think the studio at that point was run by Lou Wasserman, whom I knew from Cleveland because he was a, He ran a racing wire in Cleveland before he went, but he was a legendary man. His house was picketed as well. So was it just Catholic people and Christian people that were upset about this? Mostly, yeah. Yeah. But it was very unusual for a Martin Scorsese film to be a religious film, too.

Absolutely. Like a depiction of Jesus. People were much more averse back then. I feel like sometimes like religion goes. like peaks and waves. And I think there was a wave of atheism back then, and Hollywood was very non-Christian, to put it mildly. Yes.

It wasn't, the Christian themes and films were never promoted. Yeah, it was absolutely right. It's not as bad now in that sense as it was in those days. And I think that part of it, it would frustrates me, is that there would be an openness. to that and to Christian films if they were real, if they weren't full of incense and piety. Right. You know, what we've done to Jesus over the years is make him a kind of Fred Rogers figure.

You know, he wasn't that. I'm not even sure that Jesus really said, do not resist violence. You know, Jesus also said, if you have a cloak but not a sword, sell the cloak and buy a sword. He also said, I come not to make peace. I come not to make peace, but with a sword. So there's been a lot of church stuff, especially I think Catholics are more guilty of this, to romanticize and sort of cosmeticized the figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

Well, there's always a problem when human beings add their own interpretation to an ancient story. Absolutely. And do it for, to fit their own narrative. Absolutely. It's a great problem. But in this case, there is historical evidence on the other side. And they simply ignore that and pretend it doesn't happen. The Nostic Gospels are full of so-called revolutionary things. And the truth is that the Nostic Gospels were written 40 years, 30, 40, 40, years after the death of Jesus, whereas the Xenoptic Gospels, the ones that the churches have accepted, were written 80, 90 years after the death of Jesus. So they had to have been taken secondhand from people who said they saw things, where with the previous, there's a shot

that people directly saw them. The people in the church gospels were named like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not the people who were in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Mark, Mark, Luke, and John. Then nobody knows who write them. They took with those names. But they were not those people. Really? Yeah.

I had no idea. Absolutely. No doubt. Even the churches admit that at this point. 2,000 years is such a hard time for us to conceptualize, to put it into our head as to how much time has passed. Yes. Such a, you know, to try to get an accurate understanding of what was going on back then. This is insanely difficult.

I have become a, since my sort of conversion to Christianity, and I would sound myself a devout Christian, but not a devout Catholic, even though I go to Mass, and I love the Mass and believe in it. But since 2001, when this process really began, I've become a real student of the historical Jesus. and I learn more and more and I'm more and more astounded at what's been done to to cosmeticize this man who was Jesus of Nazareth.

Well, it's also he had some of the most profound and insanely resonating teachings, like even today. The words that he spoke 2,000 years ago. there's still today people, I mean, they resonate with people. And if you live your life by the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will be a better person. Yes, you will. It is a great framework to live your life. Yes. Which is incredible when you think about a person that lived so long ago.

He is a much better person to pick as your imagined companion than Mark Twain. Your imagined companion. Let me ask you this because I have a long conversation with Mel Gibson about this. What do you think about the shroud of Turin? Well, there was a study done, the nature study that was done by the Catholic Church, led by John Paul II, whom I really admired and read a lot about through the years. And this is a scientific study that discovered that, the shroud of Turin came from 1313 or 1320.

Now this is a huge controversy about it, and there are those people who feel that that absolutely is Christ, and I must say that when I look at it, when I look at that figure, and I've done that a lot. And in my house we have several blow-ups of Turin's Christ. It's very, very moving. But the evidence, what there is, seems to indicate that it comes from the 1300s. Yeah, I've seen that as well.

But then I've also seen people that say that that evidence, there's some controversy about that evidence. Yeah, there is. And that some of the cloth, they believe dates to far earlier. And it's the type of cloth and the way it's made seems to indicate that it's far older. I don't know how much of the cloth they've carbon tested. You know, that is also an issue. And whether or not it had been repaired or whether or not there had been additional pieces. I don't either.

But you know what, ultimately, when I look at that, when I look at that, Jesus, and I've done that quite a bit, that face really moves me. So in a sense, I don't give a shit. At the very least, it's an insanely compelling piece of artwork. Absolutely. At the very least. Absolutely. But there's also a lot of very strange mysteries as to how that was created in the first place.

Because it's not a dye, and they're not exactly sure what caused that image to appear. Or how, if that is a piece of art, they don't know how that art was created. And the fact that they really only could see the accurate representation of it once they saw it as a negative is also very interesting. Because who's going to make a piece of art where you can't. only really appreciate what it looks like when you see it as a negative, especially when you're talking about something that you're doing, you're making something in the 1300s. Right. Hundreds of years before photography's ever created.

So what are you making and why is it so compelling when you look at it in the negative? And if you're talking about something that was created by an insane burst of energy, which is what the proponents of the shroud of Turin being legitimate think, they think it was created by this insane burst of energy on Jesus' resurrection. You know, I'm agnostic on it. I don't, no idea whether it's real or not real, but I find it fascinating that they have no real explanation as to how it was created.

I'm pretty much of a complete ignoramus on anything that has to do with science. You know, I've learned algebra and geometry and even biology, although I caught up with biology from personal experience, but I just don't know. It doesn't matter to me ultimately because I'm moved when I look at that, when I pray before that image,

and I look at it, I moved. So as far as I'm concerned, for me, it's real. It may not be for other people. Well, like I said, at the very least, it's an insanely compelling piece of artwork.

Absolutely. But the thing that I don't want to dismiss the possibility that it's real, Because I'm fascinated by just the mystery of how it was... Can you pull up an image of the negative version of it? Yeah, I was trying to look up a bunch of stuff you guys are talking about, though, and there's no answers for you and stuff you're saying. There's no answers as terms of why.

I was looking for an accurate recreation someone's made, you know, in the last 200 years, and it doesn't seem to be one. No, no one has. Yeah, when you look at the image and you realize that this is an actual negative of the original shroud, you just, you stop and think, like, well, what was someone do, if this is the negative, like, how would you create that as a positive? Because can you show me also the positive image of it?

What it actually looked like? Okay, so here's, this is one image. So this is what it actually looks like. This is the actual shroud. And when you look at that, you go, okay, I see like shadows. It's very interesting. switch over to the negative and it all comes to life. And there's marks from the lashes, from the whip marks.

There's blood stains from where the rods went through his wrists. It's very fascinating. Yeah, it sure is. And again, this is not dye. It's not ink. And they don't really know how it was made. And again, no one has been able to recreate this. The cloth was made most likely from a loom that wasn't invented until like the 1300s.

Okay. That doesn't necessarily mean that's where for sure came from though. Right, right. Here's about the image. It's just like how is the image transfer to the cloth I ask. Just, you know, does anybody have any idea? I've seen a video where someone gave some sort of scientific explanation, but I don't know if I could remember how to find it right now.

says it behaves like a photographic negative and shows some 3D information which is unusual for normal artwork. The chemical theories that body heat, sweat or vapors reacting with the cloth. Example, ammonia or lactic acid from sweat may have been proposed, but don't reproduce the shrouds sharp, non-blurry details. Simple heat or scorch theories likewise fail to match the very shallow, non-burned discoloration of the fibers. Human or mad-made image theories. Painting or rubbing from bas-relief has been tested, but studies have not found pigments in the amounts or patterns

that would explain the image, and there's no clear brushstrokes. Primitive photography, some suggest that a medieval camera using light-sensitive silver salts and lenses could have projected a body or statue onto the cloth, and experimental replicas show that it's at least physically possible, though historically speculative. And now here's the weird one. Radiation bursts of energy theories. Some researchers argue that a brief

intense burst of ultraviolet or similar radiation from the body could have discovered, discolored only the top fibrils producing a non-contact image even where cloth and body didn't touch. Proponents sometimes link this to Jesus' resurrection, but the needed radiation, billions of watts without burning the cloth, is far beyond. anything observed in nature, and this remains a speculative, face-based idea rather than an established physical mechanism. In short, there's no consensus mechanism. The image transfer process is still unexplained, and every proposed method has serious problems when tested against the cloth's measured properties.

Wild. Amazing. I mean, there's no other piece of artwork that's that fascinating. Because every other art, Michelangelo's work, you know, all this. incredible art. It's art. You see what they did. There's brush strokes. There's chisel marks. They made, you know, they made incredible sculptures, but it's clearly man-made art. This is a different thing. It's a very strange thing. If you can't recreate it today, if they could recreate it today, people would be doing it. They'd be making their versions of the

Shrout of Turin. Absolutely. I don't know if that has been done historically. Well, you know, where there's some nutbag of this? I had to do business over recreating just rounded through it. Is there, did they carbon test it? And what are the, what are the arguments that it's older? Because I do know that there have been some very recent arguments that the testing was incorrect and that it's older. See if you can find out what that is. Whether or not AI, whether perplexity our sponsor has some sort of a bias.

Like, the thing is it's like, pulling from all these when you get an AI response to something it's pulling from all these articles in the web and most of the articles seem to indicate that people think it's at least either a hoax or elaborate the only carbon dating seems like it happened in 1988 so i don't know that they've done it again supporters of an earlier date argue that the 1988 radiocarbon results 1988 is a long time ago sampled an anomalous or contaminated area and that other historical and scientific clues point to a much older cloth okay what is the scientific arguments. Contaminated

repaired sample. Some research claimed the 1988 test piece came from a rewoven or heavily handled corner, so its carbon date reflects medieval repairs, not the original cloth. Alternative dating methods, x-ray or crystallographic

aging of linen fibers has produced dates compatible with the first century. Though these methods are newer and not widely accepted as definitive, pollen and dust. analysis reports pollen grains and mineral dust consistent with the first century Middle East rather than only medieval Europe, which proponents say supports a much older origin. Image property.

Some argue that the image's microscopic features and burst of energy type characteristics require technology or phenomena unlikely in the Middle Ages implying an earlier extraordinary event. Well, why don't they do a retesting? They probably don't want to know that it actually is from the 1300s. John Paul too really believed in it. He went to see it in Tren several times. He said he was moved by it. And that's when they launched this big Vatican investigation. And he never said in any way that he agreed with the investigation.

He just seemed to drop the whole issue. And from what I know, he never went any further. But he visited it twice. went out of his way. Where is it? It's in Turin still. That's in Toronto. That's all I was looking up that too.

It's currently in the chapel of the Holy Shroud. So here's interesting was who found it and when and why or whatever. The earliest undisputed record appears in the 1350s, rather, in Leary, a village in France, where the knight Geoffrey Des Charnay displayed a cloth claimed to be Jesus' Burial Shroud. How he obtained it and where it was between the first century. in the 14th century are unknown, later theories trace it speculatively through Edessa and Constantinolope. I can't never say that. Constantinople. But these links are debated. Interesting. What does it look like? How is it displayed? That's how it's displayed? Consentinople was named after Constantine, who was the first Roman emperor who made Roman Catholicism

the national religion. Right. Wow. So you can go check it out. And how big is it? Boy, they got that sucker walled off, huh? From my impression, Joe, this was over the length of Jesus' body. Right.

So it's longer than certainly I expected. Well, you could see it's both sides. So apparently folded over. I wonder what all those markings are, those small triangle markings. markings. Like, what is all that? Like, these things?

Yeah. One other picture was pointing those out. It might be the burn marks that it was saying, that there's burn marks on it. Again, it's 2,000 years old in theory. Just imagine if it's real. That's the thing. It's like I never want to dismiss the possibility that it's real, because imagine if it is real. That is crazy.

I agree with you. And in my mind, it's real and I pray to it. And I try not to worry about whether it's real. I know that I'm moved. And that's, you know, that's good enough for me. What led to your conversion to Christianity? I mean, from a guy making these wild, insane movies? Jamie, could I ask you for some water?

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Banking services and chime card provided by Chime's bank partners, terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com slash disclosures for more details. How long ago did you convert to Christianity? Well, I grew up Catholic. I was an altar boy when I was a kid. I knew one really great priest in my life who helped me without my life. I became a LAPS Catholic.

And then when at the tailand of living in L.A., in Malibu, actually, I was usually successful as a screenwriter, of course, and the, and I was big interviewed all over the place, and people were stealing mail from my mailbox and all that shit. And I should have been overwhelmingly happy with that, but something was missing, I felt. And I couldn't really put my finger out what that was, but something was missing in my life.

And then I got throat cancer, stage four throat cancer. shortly after we moved back to Cleveland from Malibu and then the Cleveland Clinic and then a surgeon named Marshall Strom did a surgery that they had never done in this country that done in Switzerland where they took some

they took a muscle from the left side of your neck and attached it to your larynx. Stage four was very dicey and he was very honest with me about how dice he would be. And he did it spectacularly, and here I am at 81. But in the course of all of that, when I was terrified and really frightened from one day to the other,

I ran across to Jesus reading. And partly Naomi's influence, because Naomi also grew up Catholic and she had a very strong faith. And then I went to church a couple of times. And I loved the Mass, the Mass itself. And in the course of recovery, and there was about a three-year recovery for some time I couldn't speak. And then I spoke like Brando.

And then I squeaked. In the course of my recovery, I did everything I could physically to help. I jogged and walked and did all of those things. And I recovered. And I felt afterwards that the reason I was able to beat a stage four cancer had to do with my prayer life. And then I started reading voraciously about Jesus of Nazareth, the apostles, all of that ancient Jewish history, Catholic history.

And some of that really moved me as well. So I started going regularly to church with Naomi, and then as the boys were born with the boys as well. And as time went by, as time went by, I also started having issues with the Catholic Church. I continued going to the Mass because that was a very special thing to me. But I had issues with the history of anti-Semitism in the church. The issue is with sexism in terms of not allowing women to be priests.

The issue is with the Pope making sense. so-called infallible decisions. And I just shut most of that off. Although in the process of it, my Christianity didn't suffer at all. But sometimes I felt like I was becoming a kind of an agnostic Catholic. And my faith in Christ,

and even as all of that happened is unflagged. I still pray to Jesus, very specifically to Jesus. And he continues to be a major and important to figure in my life. So your issues were with the organization as the Catholic Church. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

I respected Martin Luther's revolution because he revolted against those same kind of issues. terrific and I really believe in it. I actually, the kind of worship that really moves me is black spiritual worship, full-scale, emotional. I give myself to you, Jesus, kind of worship. And I felt I didn't want to really switch religions because I had my basic Christianity, and that continues to the important to me. So you felt moved by like Baptist?

Black Baptist teachers. Black Baptist said the whole emotional throw up your arms and say, okay, here I am, take me Lord. Well, definitely seems a lot more fun. It's fun. They look like they're having way more fun. It's fun.

I also have been very fortunate to the course of my life to have black friends and to share the black culture. It was involved in the civil rights movement. I had a shotgun stuck in my belly by a deputy who'd been indicted for killing and told to get to fuck out of

Neshoba County. I had a good fortune to have lunch with the Reverend Martin Luther King. Oh, wow. I knew Stokely Carmichael. What was that like? Well, it was the most amazing thing. He was in town because of the depth of a minister in a protest. And it was an unheralded appearance,

and I think it was partly before he became the towering international figure. And he was getting back to the airport and he couldn't find his ride. And I happened to be right there. And I said, I can drive you, Reverend King. I was watching. He said, okay. So again, on the way to the airport, he said, are you hungry? I'm hungry.

Can we stop someplace? I said, sure. So we did. And what amaze me about the man is that he was more interested almost. in hearing about my refugee camp experiences and what that was like and how that worked and all of that. He said he didn't know much about it.

Then he was about talking about the civil rights movement. He was very, very moving and a powerful figure. And then I just drove him to the airport. But there was something about the man that was absolutely magnetic that I felt.

Clearly. Yeah. And then, but then I also, when I was in college, I had a relationship with the young black woman. And that brought me much closer to the black culture. I mean, as I was an ethnic fucking kid, you know, a refugee. And I certainly needed lessons in that whole cultural area, and I got them. And then I sought them out. And when I was at Rolling Stone, Hugh Newton was over in Oakland,

and he would come over sometimes. I think, I'd partly suspect because at Rolling Stone, we had some of the most beautiful women of the world working there. We didn't have air conditioning when it got real hot. They didn't wear on top at all.

So what about that spread? So it was sort of funny. They were topless? They were topless. They were topless when it got real hot. What year was this? This is in the 60s? I was at Rolling Stone

from 71 to 76. Wild times. It was right. in there. In the years where the cultural revolution was exploding. The women's revolution was what is

exploding. And to be at Rolling Stone at that time was like being in the vortex of all of that. You know, the and it was just a crazy time. You know, the

sexual revolution was at its absolute height. And the I always, as I said to you, I've always really loved smart, sassy, sexy women. And the old office was filled with them. I'm sure. What year was the birth control pill invented? I have an idea. Let me guess.

65. Right? 64. Let me guess. I'm just taking a wild swing. I have no idea. Approved by the FDA and introduced the market in 1960. 68?

60. 60-year-old. 1960. Interesting. Yeah, well, that had a big factor, right? Yes, absolutely. Because before, you know, women were in a situation where every time they had sex, they could get pregnant. Absolutely.

And then all of a sudden. But then you've got this pill that's fucking with their hormones that we found out now that women that have been on it for a long periods of time. They make poor choices in terms of mates. It does a lot of weird stuff. I mean, we're a lot of weird stuff. Yeah. And also, it's very dangerous for it.

them. A friend of mine, his daughter died. She was 17 years old. She was on the birth control pill and she was smoking cigarettes. And she, I guess, smoking cigarettes and birth control pills for some people can cause blood clots. I don't understand why or what, but that is an issue, right? You're not supposed to smoke if you're on birth control. See if that's still the recommend date. Well, obviously they tell you not to smoke, period. But I think there's some potential complication. Smoking while taking oral contraceptive that contained estrogen significantly increases the risk of severe cardiovascular events like heart attack, strokes, and blood clots. The risk is particularly high for women over 35. Quitting smoking or using alternative birth control is highly recommended. Yeah. Joe, I had more fun at Rolling Stone than any other time in my life. I bet you did. I had John Winter in here once.

Yeah, I saw him. It was an interesting conversation. He kept looking at us watching. Well, he was, you know, he was Yon Wanner of 2024 or 2025, not Yon Wanner of 1975. Yes, absolutely. You know, not the Yon Wanner that was the editor when Hunter Thompson was writing crazy stories. You know, different times. People change.

You are a big hunter fan. Huge. And I know. And so am I, and I wanted to talk about him because I really haven't a chance to talk about him specifically. Hunter really was the cause of my whole huge success even as a screenwriter.

Let me tell you how. I was a reporter at the plane dealer and I had read Hunter, of course, when he was the National Observer during those kinds of pieces from Latin America before he discovered Gonzo.

And I covered at the plane dealer, I covered a an El's Angel shootout of a bar called Bartos Cafe in Cleveland, and I wrote a story about it that the Associated Press picked up and put on their national wire. And I get a note shortly afterwards from Hunter Thompson, who had read this story on the AP wire and wrote me a note that said,

I'm barely paraphrasing, big fucker. Now there are two of us who know how to write about Hell's Angels that really pisses me off. All the best on Dress Townsend. Well... That wasn't a bit a fun thing to get. Oh man, I was

excited about that as my two sons were to meet Joe Rogan. They really... They really... It was really, really something. So, okay, time goes by.

And I get a call from Rolling Stone. First, I do a couple of freelance pieces for Rolling Stone. One on Ken State, one year afterwards, and the other, I forgot what the other one was. But then I get a call from the managing editor, Paul Scanlon, who incidentally was the backbone of the editorial content. He'd come from the Wall Street Journal, and he wanted to take on the New York Times for Rolling Stone. So, and they wanted me to do a freelance piece on narcotics agents, corrupt narcotics

agents. So I go out there and I discover that Hunter had been after them to hire me because of that piece and he kept saying, he was a good guy and all of that. Then when I'm at Rolling Stone, I write a book called Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse that Hunter loves by now we know each other and we're friends and we enjoy each other's company and I write this book and Hunter gets me as agent who is the top literary agent in the country and then gets me as publisher which is Random House to publish it and then to boot blurbs it when the book comes out and somebody a united artist sees it oh and then the book becomes

comes a finalist for the National Book Award, one and four finalists. Okay, so somebody a United Artists reads the book, reads because she reads all the finalists, reads the book, calls me out of the blue, and says, you've got really cinematic talent. You thought about writing a script, and I said, no, I haven't, and I go to meet them,

and they hire me, and I write fist, all of that, which led to my success in screenplays, and in the cinema, was nice daughter. Wow. And the friendship we had was, I never, our friendship was in San Francisco.

He lived in the Woody Creek, and he would come to town. Our friendship was in town. But we ran a lot together. We enjoyed each other. We drank together. We both liked drinking. On occasion, we wouldn't,

a good story, we would go down, San Francisco was famed for its, stripper barred area, I think around O'Farrell Street and stuff, and he and I went down there together. There was a famous stripper show in one of those clubs, and one of the times we get down there, he, of course, would take acid before every trip down there.

I wouldn't do acid, but I said, I did acid once, and underwound up holding me if you're an hour. But I was the guy from Cleveland, right? Which he always would, you know. We say, well, you're from fucking Cleveland, you know. Anyway, I would snort some lines and we go down there. And we were waiting for about an hour. And, you know, the place is filled, but the girls haven't come out.

And Hunter suddenly gets up, hurls his arms up in the air, and says, Where's the pussy? We want pussy, right? I don't know. Great memories in my life, you know. Of course, they're setting him down and all of that. And then when he finally started coming, very loudly, equally, finally, he said, finally, pussy.

He was a, you know, larger than life, no doubt, colorful figure, but also what he was. And then I discovered this. And he didn't really share this with that many people. He was very, very well read. He had a whole other side. that was a very sensitive and unhippie-like side. I saw it most clearly once. I was married at the time to a former reporter at the plane dealer who was very, very straight,

and really rejected the whole hippie thing and worked in California for a small suburban paper. And Dunter had never met her, but it heard. He said, I'd like to meet her. So we asked him to dinner. And Hunter came to dinner at our small, tiny apartment in Novado and my wife at the time. He cooked a Hungarian chicken paprika dinner, okay? It's Hungary's most famous meal. And he sat there with us, and what I discovered was that the boy from Kentucky was there

underneath all of that firepower and all of that larger than life behavior. He was sensitive and quiet and they got along like gangbusters. And actually, interestingly, when I drove him,

after dinner I drove him back to town, for the ride back, he berated me because I was having an affair with what he called this hippie chick. He says, you have this wonderful wife here, and you're fucking around with this hippie chick. I mean, he'd be raised it in anger and all of that. He had that sign as well.

Yes, he did. If we had breakfast, it was at four in the afternoon. And what he ordered were four margaritos, six beers, and maybe, maybe toasts with scrambled eggs. And in that sense, he had more. tolerance than anyone that I'd ever seen. And my tolerance in those days, for booze especially, was also very high. But I'd never seen anybody quite like him. He had a great sense of humor.

The, as many, many years later, he wanted me to write the screenplay for Rum Diary. And I hadn't seen him in a long time. And I just met Naomi, I was a question to whom I've now been married 32 years. And he wanted me to go to Aspen so that we could talk about it. And I called Jan, and I said, listen, I had it over hills and blood with this woman. And Hunter wants me to go out there, tell me the truth, what kind of shape is he in? And John sort of pauses. And he says, well, he's good.

And then he's another pause, and he says, but, you know, the stones were in Denver, and Mick and Keith decided to come visit him. So, between gig. So they hire a driver and they drive up here. And they have a terrific time. But they're about there, they're about three or four hours, and they've got a gig that night. So they say, we've got to go, we've got a gig, you know, blah, blah. And Hunter gets all upset and says, well, you just got here. And they said, you know, we've been here two or four hours and stuff.

Well, he continues to be upset. And he leaves a house for in there sitting there. And suddenly they are gunshots. He had gone out and shot the tires out on the Stone's car. So I never took Naomi there. I was fighting too frightened to do. What year was this? Well, let's see. It was in 90, something, four, maybe he said somewhere around five, four, five.

Yeah. Three, four, five, somewhere in there. He had been going hard for 30 years by that point. Yes, he had. Or at least 20. And also, at the end for him, I've read and heard, it was very sad because the sadness wasn't caused by the drugs. It was caused by Booth. And he was, in the Ones' opinion.

And then he saw him often in Woody Creek. And in his former wife's opinion, Sandy's opinion, it was the booge that did it. You know, his body began being old, and he needed a wheelchair. He could hardly walk. She drove him in the wheelchair. And at one time, I think in New Orleans,

when they were visiting Sean Penn on a film, he actually fell out of the wheelchair in the middle of traffic. and she couldn't, Anita couldn't really pick him up and so they get help and cars are going by and all that shit. And then he also broke a leg when they were visiting Hawaii at the Kahala. So as he said in his suicide note, which I thought was the most gut-wrenching

but also terrific suicide note. It was no fun anymore. The fun was gone. Nothing was fun. People know this, know that, no fun. Well, when the body goes, it's hard to have fun. Yeah. And that's the problem with booze.

Yeah, exactly. Well, the problem with many drugs, but particularly the problem with booze, you know, you're breaking down your body over and over and over again. And with a guy like Hunter, he was doing it every day. Yeah. There's a famous piece that this reporter wrote when he went to visit Hunter, and he documented Hunter's drug and alcohol use throughout the day. you know, like six in the morning in the hot tub with champagne.

Like that's the end of the day. Yeah. And then him sleeping and then him waking up and doing all the drugs and then getting ready to write. And what was the guy's name? Who wrote the... There's a guy who took me and my friend Greg Fitzsimmons reading it out and turned it into an EDM song. Really? Yeah.

E. Gene Carroll, I think. No, no, no. It says a memoir of 100, Thompson. I heard of where it says from. Right, but the singer, the song. Oh, you said who wrote. Yes, the guy, I'm sorry. The guy who wrote the...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like an electronic dance music song. We played it before many times. God, I can't believe it's like... Beardy man, thank you. This guy, Beardy Man, put it to music, and it's hilarious. I got to check it out. It's amazing.

I mean, it's a tragic story in a lot of ways. Of course. But in his prime, the writing that he did was in many ways it was the narration of an era. Yes, it was. And it was genius. You know, there was this thing called the new journalism and I practiced that. And so did people like Ageless and David Elversome and Larry Elkin. But then Dunder took that and created an entire new genre.

genre, the Gonzoid journalism thing was his, and it was a kind of humor that just knocked you down, and it was totally revolutionary. And the Tom Wolfe said, who of course was one of the people, the founders of the new journalism, said that he was today's version of Mark Twain in terms of what he was able to accomplish. Two books especially, I thought, the Fear and Loathing in Vegas, of course, and the campaign book, the 72 campaign book, which in my mind is the best political commentary, including all of Teddy White's books. No, it's fantastic.

Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he also had this freedom that was very different from all these other reporters because he was a one-time guy. He was going to go in there and follow the campaign for the entire time and then wrote this book about it. But Joe, these were all stayed, the shoe tie wearing reporters. and you turn this creature loose on them on the campaign trail.

And of course they all fell in love with him, and they did because he was such a free spirit compared to what their lives were going to be like. Well, I imagine you're doing this boring thing, which is following a bunch of fakers as they're telling you how they're going to change the country, which you know they're not really going to do because you've been doing this for 20 years. Absolutely. And then along comes the guys like, let's do asswood. Come on, pussies.

Then all of a sudden, you've got this fucking. fucking maniac who's drinking and saying wild shit and writing wild shit. And he doesn't have to be held to the same standards as everyone else because he knows it doesn't matter. If they never have him back again, it's fine. I'm so sorry that Hunter wasn't here with Trump's time. Oh, my God. Because that could have been fucking wild and hilarious. But there's also a party that says he would have liked Trump.

I know there's this heresy to the liberals, you know, who do think that he's a, you know, that he would absolutely aid him and all of that. But I'm not certain of that. And I think that certainly in terms of his style, he would have liked things about him. Well, I think he would have liked the fact that he's this wild character. Absolutely. A completely wild character that has never existed in all of presidential politics before. There's never been anything like him. For good or for bad.

There's never been a guy like him. Look what he did today. I mean, he's got a shit fit with Netanyahu. Yeah. And he said, you know, you're fucking crazy. Yeah. You would have been in jail except for me. I saved your ass.

What other president, for God's sakes, has ever spoken like that, not only publicly, but to us? Right. And in that sense, you know, I'm proud of being deplorable. I'm from Cleveland. You know, I grew up among poor people and blue-collar people, and he's the first president. That didn't talk down, but talked directly to us. Yeah. For good or for bad.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, he is who he is, which is very odd. You know, it's a very odd person. I have a lot of questions in certain areas, you know, the ice area. It bothers me the whole shit with the ballroom and all of that stuff. Well, the ballroom doesn't bother me that much. That's, to me, trivial construction, like whatever. The ice stuff, what bothers me is we're opening the door for militarized police on our city streets.

As many people say, like, we've got to get these immigrants out of here that are illegal. There's a lot of criminals in this country. There's a lot of people that are committing crimes. I understand that. I understand that perspective. My perspective is not that you need to get the criminals out. It's that it is a very slippery slope when you give people, and they're trained for seven weeks. They're not trained for very long.

They're trained for much less time than police officers, much less time than military. And then you have this militarized police force that has no identification in there on the streets. That's a precedent that you might like it when. It's for a cause that you support, but that could easily be for a cause that you do not support. That militarized police force could be going door to door and confiscating guns. That militarized police force that you could find other ways where a different ruler could use this precedent in a very damaging way for our free society. That's my perspective on it. I agree with that.

When they start calling people like the woman who was killed in Minnesota and the guy, domestic terrorists, you know, the, it's an abomination. Which woman is? That woman who is shot by ice in Minneapolis. And then the guy afterwards, the week afterwards, was also shot by ice. Yeah. To call them domestic terrorists. But to give credit to Trump, he got rid of Christyno.

And he got rid of that guy who was there that Tom Holman replaced. Yeah. Well, Tom Holman was already in charge. That guy was in a different position. But they did get rid of that guy. Also, that guy had a very odd way of dressing. That was very, like, he wore outfits that were, like, reminiscent of, like, Nazi Germany. Like, he had this very weird coat that he would wear all the time.

And a lot of people were saying, this is a very odd choice for someone to be wearing. who's being accused of fascism. See if you find some photos of that dude, the coats that he was wearing were a lot of people. Like, I had to make sure that this was an AI. I was like, is this real coat that he's wearing? It's a very strange. I mean, not accusing him in anything.

It's just a fucking coat. But it was a lot of people online were pointing out. Like, this is a very odd wardrobe choice for someone who's in charge of, uh, in many ways, othering human beings. Yeah. The other thing that's a problem with this whole ice thing is, and it's not the fault of the ICE people or even this administration is that

many of these people were encouraged to come here. That's what's so fucked. Imagine if you're living in Guatemala and you're encouraged to come to America. You live in a terrible third world situation. You have a wherever you're living is like deep poverty. You're told that they'll help you get across the border. They'll literally transport you into America. They'll put you in these cities.

and you can get on public assistance. If you have a bad back, they'll put you on Social Security. There's all these different programs that are incentivizing people to come to America. The Red Cross is giving you maps. People are showing you how to do it. They're letting you across the border. They're letting you into the country. And then two years later, you're being chased down.

Two years later, you've got masked ice workers that are pulling. It's very inconsistent. Obviously, this is a completely different administration, but I feel for those poor fucking people that were told that they can come here and that there was going to be a pathway to citizenship. So they upend their life. They come to America and the only way they know how. And when people say, oh, they should do it legitimately. Sure.

A lot of people do it legitimately and I understand their perspective that it's a very difficult path and no one should be able to cut that line and they went through it the right way. However, these people, that's not an option for them. If you don't have any money and you're living in a third one, world country and people encourage you to come to America, I most certainly would have come to America just like they did. Joe, I did. My parents did. You know, I personify the American dream in terms of what happened to me. You know, what they said in the camps was the streets of America of pay for gold. When we lived on Lorraine Avenue in Cleveland, there was a Hungarian poet. a mad poet, his name was Achimre,

who would go up and down Lorraine Avenue and screaming in an Hungarian, old one, old one, which means where is it? Where is the gold? Right, right, right, right. But look, I came in here as a kid, I couldn't speak the language. We knew no one.

I got into Syria and juvenile trouble. I got out of that. I studied, I was a total autodidact. I wasn't a good student, but I did read it. I went to college. I wanted to be a disc jockey for a while, and it was a name Joe Anthony. It's a song to sue the Sad Sopran Secretary, right?

This kind of shit. I went to college. I did well in college. I won a big award as a senior. I kept working. And I also, through the years, got a terrific amount of help from Americans. Couldn't have done it without him. Beginning with a bus driver named Henry Jackson, a black man who had been adopted by Hungarian parents and spoke Hungarian.

Moving on to people in college who helped, who I found a great deal of help. I couldn't have done what I achieved without the help of other people and other Americans. And then to top everything off, you know, the Hollywood and 18 films and all of that, yes, I think that is the personification of the American dream. And many of the immigrants who come here are looking for the same dream. And many of them are saying what Matt Achimera said. on Lorraine Avenue, old one, old one, where is it? Right, yeah.

Part of the reason that the stuff in Minneapolis breaks my heart is that. These Latino people are my cousins and brothers in terms of not the killers and not the gang members, the people who are gardeners and who work in stores and trying to make a buck and have kids that they're trying to survive. Well, it's also part of the ICE story, too.

Absolutely. Part of the ICE story is that a lot of these officers are Latino, including the two guys that shot Alex Preti. Those two guys were Latino. And they took these jobs because these jobs give you, first of all, you get a $50,000 signing bonus to join ICE. I mean, that's a significant amount of money for someone who's in debt or who's struggling. So this is how this guy dressed.

Look how this guy dressed. That's kind of crazy. See that image? That's a code? Yeah. Look at that coat. Yeah. I mean, come on.

That's kind of a crazy World War II military coat. That's amazing. A little odd when everybody else is, you know. The other thing is the masks. I understand. I understand the need for them, that they get doxed, their families get dachs, and it's very organized. This is not organic. These protests are not organic.

I understand all these arguments. Yeah, I'm bothered by the mask. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it sets a very bad precedent. Yeah. This is the problem with it all. You know, the real thing is you shouldn't be able to have organized paid for protests where you're paying people to protest and you're paying people to cause violence. And then you're also using people as political pawns and moving them into the country so that you could change like when you have congressional seats. It's all based on the census.

The more people that are in the town, regardless of whether or not they're legal or not, they're legal. illegal, you get more congressional seats. So they use them for political points. Yes, they do. Absolutely. Same old political game. Yeah, it's the same old game. And that game should be illegal. That shouldn't be legal. The idea of the America dream is a beautiful dream. And they've corrupted

it and they've taken this and used it for their own gain. And they've weaponized empathy. And it's a real problem. It's a real problem for those poor people that came over here looking for a better life. Listen, I have an idea. Run for

president or righteous speeches. Bah. Listen. No, that attitude is really terrific at it. I think you're right to be concerned. You see it. Listen, I'm 81 years old, but I really see it too.

You know, and there's great dangers there that I hope my sons don't have to... Militarized police on the streets for that reason. It's a very dangerous person. But then there's the other question. It's like, how do you get all the criminals out? I don't know. I'm not the guy. You know, I'm not the one, but I'm... I

I am very concerned with this dangerous precedent. That's my feeling on it. So I just worry that people accept it because they want this result now and they don't realize that this could set up this being a common occurrence. I mean, we saw some of it during COVID. There was some militarized police on the streets

keeping people in lockdown in certain cities. They utilized the National Guard and they did things like that. That scares the shit out of me. It scares the shit out of me when you have a justification for militarized police with masks on that are just grabbing people. And some of these people are American citizens. It turned out a lot of them were American citizens.

Hundreds of them were. You know, we had the same syndrome. I covered the Kent State massacres. Yeah. I covered that. And one of the things that I saw is the rhetoric that was coming from James Rhodes, the governor at the time and from Sylvester del Corso, who was head of the National Guard, was absolutely the main thing that created that atmosphere that caused that

shurning. Yeah, absolutely. And today, sadly, we see many examples of that. Yeah. They're great dangers. Yeah, you would think that we would learn. But we go through cycles where we learn, we get better, and then we repeat the same things again.

You see that with racial tensions. You see that with political unrest. You see that with a lot of different things in this country. It's like we learn for a little while and then we forget. Mark Twain's wisdom once again comes through. Martin Twain said, politicians are like diapers and they should be changed often and for the same reason. Yeah.

He also said history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Yeah. He also said a little bit off the subject, but I love it. And he said when the mind and the pecker are. you, the pecker always wins. Yeah, I mean, he was essentially the original stand-up comedian. Oh, you're absolutely right. You're

so right, I've actually been thinking about doing some piece on it. And stop me, if you know the history. But in the beginning, he was a stand-up with his so-called lectures that he did all over the West. And then he wrote some books,

the books that he's famous for. But he went bankrupt nearly at the end of his life because of bad investments. And then he did around the world tour of stand-up all over again. And usually they said he was a poet of the profane because he's usually for male audiences. He published a little book called On Masturbation, which is about the glories of masturbation. The only thing I've heard that's close is a, is in the same. end up by one Joe Rogan, which there's a great line that says, if you're married and have kids, the only place to find peace, Tway would say, what the pecker does, is if you rent a motel

room and lock the door, you know, but he had the same kind of, of a verb and love in terms of being a stand-up, being outrageous, pushing the envelope. And that whole side of Twain has been sort of hidden under the notion that he is the great of this Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and all of that. Nobody talks. He wrote a book called Letters from the Earth from the Voice of the Devil. He wrote another one called The Mysterious Stranger, which is about Jesus coming back in a very dark way.

And then he wrote one that was published in the 30s. that hasn't been republished called Twain Erupts. You know, so, yes, you're so right when you say he would stand up. He was a first-grade stand-up. He was the originator because he was essentially a very witty author who wrote very provocative things, very hilarious things, and then would read them publicly. And when he was doing these speeches, where he would go and, you know,

whatever you call it, poetry or whatever it was, there was no stand-up comedy back then. There was no name for it. Yes. But he was just riotously funny. People loved them. Absolutely. And they would go to see them because they were funny.

And the initial audiences were mostly male audiences. Right. I think he's a great, it's never been really done. The, to do a piece, a fictional piece about Twain as a stand-up with pushing the envelope, with all these things, I think, would be a lot of fun. It would be a lot of fun. The only problem would be, like, the cultural context. They were so different back then.

It's almost like, did you see Lenny, the Dustin Hoffman film? Yeah, it was. I mean, I think Dustin Hoffman fucking nailed it. It was as close to Lenny Bruce as you're ever going to see someone portray Lenny Bruce. The problem is the world has changed so much since 1960, that a lot of the outrageousness is gone, and it seems very pedestrian. Like the things that he was saying, because he was such a groundbreaker and society was so locked down and so conservative. And so, you know, just there was just the way people communicated was much different back then.

The understanding of culture and of race relations and sexual relations was very different back then. And so the outrageousness of what he was saying back then, it just doesn't really translate. Because in many ways, I think, stand-up comedy in particular, is a window in time. It's a window into the way people behave. Films are that way as well, especially if you go and watch a lot of old films. It's a window into how people perceived reality back then. There's some stuff that's rarely been published from Twain that hasn't really been seen very much. that was left in places like the University of California archives

that go a step past what we know from Twain and I think there's so much of it there's something called Twain's notebooks that hasn't been published in their full forms certainly that may still be shocking and I'm still playing with it because I'm reading and reading and all of that

but even if I never do it's so much fun reading about him and his life because he was such an interesting character. I hope you do write something about it because it would be great for people to see and to get an understanding of them because I think a lot of young people, particularly today,

just think of him as an author. Just think of him as the guy who wrote Tom Sawyer. Tom Sawyer, he's been pushed into being almost a kid's writer. Right, yeah. Speaking of stand-up, I want you to know, and I don't think, you know, did you know that Sam Kinnison

dedicated a CD to me? Did he really? Sam McKinnison, one of his last CD was called Leader of the Band, B-A-N-N-E-D. Right. And the flip side of the CD, he thanks a bunch of people, Riga's Off and Record People and all of that, and also Sly and Sean Penn. And then after all of that, in larger letters than the others, he says, in the very special thanks to Joe Esther Hauser writing his letter to Michael Ovis.

That's amazing. What letter did you write to Michael Ovidz? Michael Ovitz was the top dog, agent in town, running CAA. And I was leaving CAA because my best friend and the rabbi and the business was an agent named Guy McElwyn who had been running Columbia, became an agent again. So I was leaving CAA simply because of my love for guy. And I went in to see Ovidz and said, I'm leaving the agency. And Ovid said, if you leave the agency, then my foot soldiers who go up and down, Wilshire Boulevard, will put you under the ground.

Oh, Jesus. What the fuck. You know, so the, I thought about it for a couple weeks. Jesus. And I wrote him a letter, which essentially said, fuck you. You know, I'm leaving. I'm going back to the person. We started me in the business and the person I love.

and it turned into a major controversy with headlines all over the place and all of that. Put you under the ground, a strong words. Oh, man. There was a producer named Bernie Brillstein. I know Bernie. He wrote a song in memoir.

Years later, we said those exact words had been used to him as well. Wow. Yeah, and you know what? As time went on, it became obvious that the whole controversy with Ovis really hurt him, because other people had been threatened that way

and he had a reputation for that and he actually was out of the business not much past that but the notion of Kinnison, I love Kinessen's work. The notion of Kinnison, when I saw that thing,

I was overwhelmed. He was one of the greats. He was one of the greats. One of the greats and I still maintained that for like a period of two years, two or three years. He was the most profound and revolutionary stand-up comic ever. I agree. I agree. He came out of nowhere. He was so different than anybody else. You know, I was introduced to Kinnison by a girl that I work with. I was working at a gym

called the Boston Athletic Club in South Boston. And it was a girl that worked at the front counter who was hilarious. She was a volleyball player. It was really hilarious girl. And she told me about Kinnison and reenacted one of his bits in the parking lot. of the club told me what she saw on TV about. He had that bit about homosexual necrophiliacs, paying money. She's on her stomach, laying on the, she was so funny.

She was on her stomach in the parking lot going, oh, oh, life keeps fucking in the ass, even after you're dead. It never ends. It never ends. And I was laughing so hard that I couldn't wait to go out and get that videotape.

And I got that videotape, and I was only 19 at the time. I had never even thought. thought about doing stand-up yet. But that was like one of the first times that I was like, oh, this is stand-up? I didn't know that this was stand-up. I thought stand-up was like, did you ever notice? Like that kind of stuff, what you'd see on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

I had no thought ever that this wild shit was stand-up. And, you know, credit to HBO, because before then, you would never be able to see that kind of comedy. The only way you'd be able to see it is in the movie theater. It'd have to be like Richard Pryor, live on the Sunsets True. which predated that by a few years. And no one had any understanding that there was this kind of stand-up comedy out there.

That this wild motherfucker who used to be a priest, he used to be a preacher. Yeah, I know, yeah. And he comes to L.A. and is this wild, coaxed norton, fucking demon comedian who's just different than anybody else before him and just changed comedy. There's a few people, there's a few characters along the way that have just completely changed comedy.

And I think Kenison is one of the big ones. He was absolutely amazing. I adored him. I thought he was a groundbreaker. And when I saw the CD, the CD, I went, holy shit. I have two of his albums. Two different people have gifted me his first album. God, what is it called?

Is it called Louder Than Hell? I think it's called Louder Than Hell. And they're signed. Both albums are signed. Both signatures are totally different. So I don't know which one's real or if either one of them are real. And that's a problem. Like people buy stuff off eBay.

They want to give you a nice gift. They buy an autographed album and it might not even be real. He was a preacher. And that last conversation when he died with Jesus, when he's conversing, it's mind-boggling conversation. Yeah. He's literally having a conversation with someone. Yes, he is. As he's dying.

Yeah. It's obviously Jesus. It's a Jesus figure. I mean, is it my time? Right, right. Amazing. Especially amazing, considering where he came from, what he went through, what he did with comedy, and then that ending. There was a movie made.

It wasn't there. But it wasn't very good. About Kinesin? Yeah. I don't know. I think that. It was a while for a while I was thinking about that, too. I know.

I have a problem with reenactments of a guy who is that profound. Oh, yeah. Someone's playing them. Yeah. It's like it's... I agree. I try not to watch because it's just the actual work of the guy, like going back and watching his HBO special and watching his stand-up appearances on Letterman and listening to his first album.

The first album I listened to it was like, Jesus Christ, this guy's incredible. It was just so different. It's so crazy. And, you know, and he was the first guy that was like open about doing cocaine, like, open about party. You know, I mean, he was a wild boy. It reminds me, I'm sorry, Hunter in terms of being wild to buy coke. My first story when I was at Rolling Stone was a piece about narcotics, corrupt narcotics agents. And as a result of the stories, the guy who was the head of the narcotics agency in the state of California had to resign.

And as a result of that, I started getting plastic baggies full of coke. Rolling Stone from the very dealers who appreciated my work. Now, whenever Hunter was there, I would present him with the back. And he would go, holy fucking Christ, you're getting leads from people. It's one of the things that solidified our friendship. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. That was I would have handed over.

And that was back when cocaine was actually cocaine. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It wasn't stepped on. You didn't get fentanyl. You didn't have to worry about dying of an overdose. It was the only drug besides smoking dope that I really, really enjoy. Like I said, I tried acid once and not a rat to hold out to me because I was so freaked out.

I could only imagine. When I watched Showgirls, I was like, whoever wrote this was doing Coke. That was literally one of the first things I've said. I've always said that's like one of the heightens of cocaine movies. Not anymore, but certainly the memory of it was influenced. Absolutely. Influenced by cocaine. Tarantino was over the 11th year.

I loved showgirls. Well, it was a wild movie. And I remember, you know, because it was that girl, was her name, Elizabeth. Berkeley. Elizabeth Berkeley, who was from Saved by the Bell. Right. So she was like this America's sweetheart

from this really nice sitcom. And then all of a sudden, you know, she's half-naked and she's a showgirl. And it's like, whoa. And she's having a... The fear with Bolverhoeven was moved out with his wife and is living with Elizabeth Berkeley right now. Crazy. No, crazy.

Yeah. Jeez, Louise. Wild times, right? Absolutely fun, really fun. Jimmy Hendrick's story because he's the Jimmy Hendricks experience and I wondered whether he had any kind of a godfather impact on the Joe Rogan experience. Oh, 100%. I stole the name from Jimmy Hendricks. Jimmy Hendricks story. 100%.

When we first started doing the podcast, that was, I would always listen to Voodoo Child on the way to the comedy store. I'd listen to, coming over Laurel Canyon, that was one of my favorite, that and a whole lot of love. Those are my two favorite songs to listen to on the way to the comedy store. I had like a soundtrack that I listened to get myself psyched up for shows. You'll love this story. Okay, I'm a reporter at the plane dealer. And all of our editors barely know about rock and roll. And as I said, I've loved it all my life.

And when Vandricks came around, I'm, I love it. loved his work. And he's in Cleveland for an appearance and fucking Cleveland cops have gone crazy and they're saying that this caused him a riot and it's obscene and all of that stuff. And I ask him to my city editor and ask him, I'd like to interview Hendrickson and cover his concert. So I do cover his concert and it's jammed in Cleveland Arena and people are loving it. And I've set up a date to interview them the next morning at the Cleveland Hotel. Okay, so they show up the next morning and I am the plane dealer reporter. I've got a tie-out and a sport coat and, you know, and they go in, I think it's 9.30.

And he's up, but he's barely up and he's wearing shorts and a t-shirt and his hair. You remember his hair, but on this occasion there are a lot of beads and things in his hair as well. And it's totally scruffed up. And we talk about rock and roll mostly in his background. and the fact that he had been, I think, as a backup, as a kind of guitarist in the Ricky Nelson band that had been in Cleveland a couple of years before then, he'd done this priest stuff before he went out on his own.

And we get along. And we begin smoking dope, of course, at 9.30, and by fucking 11.30, we both got the munchies. And he said, man, I'm hungry, you know. You got any one to go in any place? I've got a car waiting for me downstairs. So I said, sure. And we go down, and then Mitch Mitchell and Chas Chandler join us,

the other members of the experience, or equally looking like seedy characters, you know, but it's that time of morning, it's after concert, all of that. So we pile into this limbo. And I direct them to go to Buckeye Road is the center of the Hungarian community in Cleveland. And the center of the Hungarian community on Buckeye Road is a restaurant called the Balaton. Okay, and I direct them to go to the Balaton.

Now, they know me at the Balaton because I used to live on Buckeye Road. The big stretch limo pulls up, play glass window front, filled with old ladies with babushkas and guys very formally dressed. We get out in front of this place, these Martians,

three Martians get out of the car, and I leave them in. And they're on getting there, look, I'm like, what the fuck? What is this? You know, they're just following me in the end. And I see Jimmy looking around and shit. So they see those.

The Major D knows me, so he calls me aside and he says, Who are these people? Who are these people? I say, Jimmy Hendricks, big rock and roll story. You know, he's in town. And he said, oh, no, Hendrix, and say, yeah, Jimmy Hendricks. So we sit down, and Jimmy says, you order for me. Great.

So I order a chicken paprika for him, which is the big Hungarian meal. And Chaz and Mitchell order something else, but very Hungarian stuff on my advice. And interestingly, as we're sitting there, the matriety has obviously spoken to people because old ladies are coming around asking him for an autograph. My Mr. Hendr said, will you autograph, please? Wow. Wow. And he's crazy.

He says, sure. But he loves his paprakesh and wants to order another. At this point, we've knocked off two bottles of wine, I think, and we're still rolling from all the dope. So they bring that at the end of this. He had three orders of chicken paprakech. He signed, we had like four bottles of wine. We staggered out of there.

He signed, I would guess, 10 autographs for people who come around. Bowen, Garen. And as we walk out of the restaurant, he takes us best eye up in there and says, Hungary, Hungary. That's my Jimmy Hendricks story. That's awesome.

Ron White was telling us a story the other night in the Mothership Green Room, the Comedy Club Green Room, and he was saying that when he was, I think he said he was 13 years old, he went to see the monkeys. And Jimmy Hendricks opened for the monkeys. He said it was the worst booking of all time.

They've got... Oh, my God. Exactly. So this is when Jimmy Hendrix was emerging. He really hadn't become Jimmy Hendrix yet. And so he's the opening act for the monkeys. And so you have a bunch of kids that are there to see this really cute band that was, you know, pieced together by corporate executives, essentially. You know, the monkeys, fun band, but, you know, they had a TV show and it was a very clean, sweet TV show.

Hey, hey, we're the monkeys. You know? And then you've got... But this guy opening up for them, this just jamming on the guitar, wow. And they were freaked out. They were like, what is this? Like, what is going on? And he said, nobody liked it.

It was terrifying to people. Like, who is this guy with his guitar? Like, what the hell is he doing? Great story. Many years later, I thought about writing an Hendricks movie. And I was working with a producer friend named Ben Myron and Ben rounded up his brother. and we actually brought him to Malibu. And unfortunately, we discovered that the rights were so screwed up in between relatives

that there's never been a Jimmy Andrews movie, because people couldn't agree on the deal of any kind. But it still would be a terrific movie, I think. Oh, it would be a phenomenal movie. I believe there was at least one Jimmy Hendricks' docu-drama. Wasn't there, Jimmy? I believe, do you remember it? Yeah, it was Andre 3000 from Outcast.

That's right. But they couldn't really use all the music and stuff, I think. Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't hear it, Jamie. He said it was Andre 3,000 from Outcast. I see. And that they couldn't use all the music. I see.

I think. It came out even like 10 years ago. That was an issue back then, too. I remember that. Yeah. There was a picture of a mess. That's right. That's right.

Wow. Also, the day I was. After you're talking about in Cleveland, there's a recording of the concert. Oh, wow. Oh, shit, that's my Facebook. Is that right, to Cleveland Concert? Yeah. Wow.

I've got a few different links. They kept taking me to Facebook, but there's a bunch of pictures. Whoa. March 26, 1968. Wow. And then there's a recording of the concert, too. So you can listen to the recording from the concert? Yeah, I was trying to get in here.

There's like, there's an article from his legendary trip to Cleveland. Wow. But this was like paid Walt So I couldn't get all the stuff behind it Wow man He was the nicest guy I can imagine Yeah very nice nice guy

I just laid back Wow he was just An insane One of a Not even one of a generation One of one talent I mean to this day If you ask most guitarists

Who's the greatest guitarist of all time It's Jim Hendrix That's crazy That one guy who died at 27 years old. And would he die in 1969 or 1970? Yeah, somewhere there, yeah. That that guy, to this day,

is universally regarded as the greatest guitarist of all time. You know, I interviewed him. It was known as the Grim Reaper at the plane dealer because I interviewed Hendricks. Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Otis. And they all died. They all died young, you know.

I did a feature on, I was A. Polisiano. And people would come up to me as a plane deal and say, what do you have against, Jose? Why do you want him to tell me? That's crazy. It's just unfortunate that they all died. And they all died at 27 years old, which is really good.

Was that right? I didn't know. Wow. Hendricks, Joplin, and Morrison. All died at 27. Wow. And who else? Kirk Cobain, Amy Winehouse.

At 27? Yeah. It's all 27. 27's the magic number for insanely talented, people to die young. Yeah. Very weird. You've had an incredible life, man. You know, I've been blessed. I've been really blessed. First of all, the fact that I'm still here at 81, considering some of my excesses in the past, is miraculous. It truly is. Instead of smoking when I was 13.

Stopped when I was 60. Whoa. And I had to stage 4 cancer, and Marshall's storm surgery saved me. The, you know, I drank too hard most of my life until I was 70, and I finally stopped then. Only because I have a hard-headed Italian, Polish wife who said, enough, you're falling down. You're taking 12 pills and you're falling down. No fucking more. Okay.

Now, shortly after we were married, literally after we were. exchanged the vows, she turned to me and she says, she whispered, she says, if you cheat on me, I'm going to fucking hunt you down and kill you, okay? I listen to her. I listen to her. I listen to this woman. Sounds like a fun lady. She is. She is, and she's, I'm very proud of her because at 67, the mother of four, and truly the true head of our family. She's writing her first. She's written her first novel, which is called Dark Church. And it's set in Dracula's Transylvania.

Whoa. And it's a kind of gothic thriller. the and the I I bring it up because I promised her that I would

make this plug and I fear that if I don't I'm going to be a lot of truck and trouble so thank you very much Joe I love that when someone does something like that when they're in their 60s

just say fuck it something I've always wanted to do let's do it I think it's fantastic thank you I just love when people do like fuck your age, who cares? Just put it out.

I agree. I agree. Yeah. But I have lived an amazing life, and I'm very thankful. I've seen a lot. I've come out on the other side. I've seen a lot of darkness, too. But when it's all over, Graham Green, who's in writer that I admire, died, I think, in the late 70s. and he said we get to a point where we see the fence. The fence is there, but we can't see over the fence.

But the closer we get to the fence, the more curious we are about what's on the other side of the fence. And there are some people who decide that they're too curious, people like Hunter, and jump over the fence, right? I'm not doing that, but I'm approaching the fence. But I've lived a terrific life, and only, once again, only in America. You know, really isn't America.

Yeah, only in America. Well, I'm glad you're not jumping over the fence. No. I'm glad we got a chance to talk to. Although I really did admire his note, but no more fun note. Yeah. It should be classic.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's how he lived. And at the end of his life, obviously, it was not fun. No, no. Yeah. But Twain, why I keep going back to Twain? This is a good one, I think. He said, the orgasm is God. its own payback for all the suffering that he overlooks in the world.

That's funny. Well, it's like writers in particular are, they're so important to culture because they can put down thoughts in a way that reshapes the way people view things. We talked about Hunter in the 60s and the 70s. He was the voice of that generation. Like he was the guy that was this intelligent guy that wasn't a part of the elite establishment, that wasn't a part of the rich fat cats, but was also famous and well known, but stuck true to his thoughts and his beliefs. It was able to articulate things in a way that gave you this understanding of what was going on with the people back then. That to this day, if you read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail or if you read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or any of his work, you know, the Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved. It's just a phenomenal encapsulation of that time.

It occurs a low note, even something. Yes. It occurs at a loan note. Yeah. It's like it's so important. It's, and we don't have a lot of that. today, unfortunately. You know, you got a lot of podcasters and a lot of, you know, people making YouTube videos

and TikToks and just not a lot of, like, great writing that encapsulates things where there's, like, one figure that we turn to to read their stuff on things. And Hunter was that guy. Yes, he was. As Hemingway was for a previous generation. You know, Hunter and I talked a lot about Hemingway. Yeah. Because of our backgrounds and earning a living and all of that.

And I think that the fact that Hunter ended it as he did was sort of taught out many, many years before in part of these three Hemingway's example. Inspired by Hemingway, yeah. Unfortunately, that's how he did it too. Yeah. And they both shared in common that they drank to excess. Absolutely. But, you know, when I was a boy wanting to be a, and I wanted to be a novelist and I'm a screenwriter, I was a boy, the Holy Trinity were Hemingway Fitzgerald and Faulkner.

They all died of alcoholism. In In In In In In fact, Gerald had a heart attack at a very young age While working as a hack, Hollywood screenwriter, incidentally. And Faulkner fell off a horse, I think, in his early 70s, ripped, totally drunk. And these were the idols of young people coming up then, you know. What do you think it is about alcohol and writing that go hand and glove? The, the, I, for a while, I drank all day black coffee and a cognac. And then later on in life, the, I didn't have my first drink until noon.

And what did make way was 11 o'clock. And I measured it until night. And then it was gin. before it was white wine. And part of it is that if you're lost in this imaginary world that's in your head all day, you can't get rid of it, you can't make it stop.

And the booze makes it stop so that you could continue your normal familial daily obligations and schedules without having this stuff in your head all the time trying to crowd it out. The fact that sometimes, excuse me, the fact that sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and take notes of something that the character says or something indicates that I can't get rid of it. With the boo is when I was drinking, if I drank enough, I could get rid of it and begin it again the next day.

It's partly freeing yourself. It's an interesting point. It's partly freeing yourself from something that you've created yourself. so in that sense you create something that can hurt you even if you created my greatest enjoyment

with writing a screenplays that gives me a terrific amount of pleasure knowing that it's going to take when people see this it's going to make their own lives more pleasant for at least two hours they will enjoy it they may laugh at it

but it will take them out of their own existence in a pleasant way That ain't bad to be able to do that with people. Oh, it's huge. And that's very important to me. People think of it as trivial, that entertainment is trivial. I don't think it is at all. It shapes our perceptions of the world.

Exactly. You do the exact same thing. You make people's lives better by enjoying what they're watching. And that is not as important or as dramatic as my daughter-in-law, for example, which has got her medical degree who literally, literally saves people. lives. Incidentally, the classic Hollywood story, I think Alyssa. And Alyssa has their house, works in Texas in a hospital.

And she just got her medical degree. But to show the influence that Hollywood has on our culture, the other day she walks into a room and there's a gigantic big guy there who's yelling and screaming. And Alyssa is the sweetest person in the world. and has this wonderful smile. And really is great with people, and she's trying to calm him down, and she says, what's wrong, what's wrong?

And she describes him as a really big man and is screaming, and he's wrong, what's wrong? And he yells, I want Brad Pitt. He's fucking in Texas, you know, and some hospital went, he says, you want Brad Pitt? He says, I want fucking Brad Pitt.

He said, but why do you want Brad Pitt? He goes, because I want to fuck him. That's sweet woman. That's hilarious. Doctor confronted with this. That man. What to fuck Brad Pitt? One more example.

Do you need of the powerful effect of the culture? So when I write something, I don't want some guy to see it and say, is the result I want Brad Pitt? Nor do I want Philotomayoroski to start a fucking war But I do want people to enjoy it Right That's hilarious When you say like When you say that the alcohol

Silences the voices I always thought of it as the other I thought of it as like alcohol releases people from their inhibitions And allows them to tap into this voice Sometimes I think that happens with some writers But that never been my problem There's something about going into a little room

wherever you are and you don't have to be in Hollywood. You'll be anywhere. As long as there's a little room in the house you can escape to and sit there quietly and make shit up that you think that people will enjoy. As long as that's there,

that's all I really need. Now, occasionally, I will play music without stop on certain scripts. There's the same way with Leonard Cole and I listen to him a lot. And Dylan, of course. I did a movie with Dylan. you know, which was also a funny experience. But sometimes it's music.

It's not Coke anymore. It's not cognac anymore with coffee. I drank so much coffee that finally one day we had a call an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack. Become allergic to it. It was just caffeine? Ambulance caffeine. Ambulance is driving me down in Marine General

and there's a traffic jam. construction, right? And they think I'm having a heart attack, and I jump out of the ambulance, and I run up to the guy with the heart hat. And I'd never forget. It says, Brinker off. I was a name of Brinkeroff. And I'm yelling at him, I'm having a heart attack, you motherfucker. Get these guys out of the way. I'm dying, of course. Oh, my God. It's worse than the guy who wants to fuck Brad Pitt. It gets out of the way. Well, the crazily, it's just coffee after all the coke and all the other craziness.

Yeah, well, even that gun, so I have stopped. Stop the coffee as well. The years after I stopped it, I was in New York, and I ordered a decap espresso. There wasn't decapped when I was up for two and a half days without being able to sleep. So obviously, my system got totally screwed up. It got reset. Yeah, you lost your tolerance for it. But the, I never felt it inspired me.

Now, with basic instinct, writing it in the sun, in the Hawaiian sun. And of course, through all of this, it was non-stop smoking. You know what I mean, two pack a day smoking, beginning with luckies and Marlboroughs and moving out to go waz and occasionally cigars and pipe and all this shit. So I did do that. But I never felt that the Coke was inspiration. It was enjoyable, and it was enjoyable, and it was fucking dynamite sexually. You know, so that also comes in handy.

But it wasn't what fueled your writing. It was just recreational. Yeah, it was recreation. But nicotine did. Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's also, Stephen King said that, that when he stopped smoking was one of the most difficult things that he ever quit. Like quitting the booze and quitting coke and all that stuff was one thing, but quitting cigarettes. He said he really noticed the difference in his writing.

Well, yeah, I went through that. I was warned after my cancer surgery by this Army surgeon that I like so much that if you smoke or drink, you're dead. You know, you're dead. Understand that. And so I took it seriously. The drinking, my idea of not drinking at that point was switching from Tangerade of white wine. And, of course, went back again.

that got out of hand after a while, too, until Naomi jumped into the whole prey, you know. And now you're completely clean? Totally. I've been first, or completely clean. Did this all line up with your conversion to Christianity? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I needed Jesus of Nazareth's help seriously to be able to do all that. And I did a lot of praying.

But I still believe in prayer, and I believe in worship. With a group of people, there's a special kind of inspirational thing that I feel. Yeah. No, I agree with you. I think there's something about all those people collected together. Yeah. It's just like when you go to a concert and you feel the music with all the people that are enjoying the music. There's a similar thing that happens at a church.

Very similar. Absolutely. We're meant to be together. You know, we are tribal people. And we're meant to be together. And there's something about groups of people together, especially in a positive way that unite us and connect us in a way that, you know, It's very profound. It's different than anything else.

It's different than watching it on a screen. There's something about being in the presence of other people that are doing the same thing. Yeah. You can feel a vibe. Yeah. And the vibe goes deep and it's really inspirational. And when it's really working, I feel almost transported. I'm on a different level.

I feel myself being on that level and it's wonderful. Yeah. And you can see all these other people experience. experiencing the same thing. It's very transformational. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I was talking about the park in a lot of church is like the best place on earth. Because no, everybody lets you go. Everybody lets everybody go in front of them. Everyone's kind. You know, it's, it works. That's what's crazy. Like, the teachings of Jesus do work.

Yes, they do. If you follow them, you will be a better person. Yes, you will. But people are very cynical. And rightly so. They're very afraid of people manipulating They're very afraid of cults. There you go. You got your cross right on you. Yeah.

That's a nice one too. I like that. Thank you. People are very afraid of people telling them that they know things, that they have the answers. Yeah. The, the, I'm not afraid of that sometimes. I'm skeptical of it, but it depends on where it's coming from.

And sometimes, I don't know why you are, but sometimes I could feel something very special with someone who is talking about those kinds of things. You can feel the difference, and the difference between that and someone who's not genuine is very apparent. Yeah. You feel that as well. Like, it bothers you.

You know, like, I don't want to hear this guy talk about this. But you know what? If you have a shit detector, and you do, and so do I. If you have a shit detector, you can really feel that and pick it up. Yeah. To block it out. Yeah, well, I think your shit detector works with virtually everything. And I think the audience gets it, too.

You know, people. I agree. In terms of if my shit detector advises me to do something, I must always do it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is Joe. It's been an honor having you in here. You're a real legend.

It's been such a pleasure. You are truly, what you do is you have redefined in the interview. And you've made it into a very special conversation, conversation. conversation chat between two guys who think they'll like each other. And they talk for hours, and they're inspired, and they come out like each other. And you do that to people, and I think that's a great gift. Thank you. I thank you for the Joe Rogan experience.

Thank you for being here. It's an honor. It's an honor to meet you, and an honor to have you on here. And I really enjoyed the conversation. It was awesome. Thank you. I did too. All right.

Bye, everybody.