The Rich Roll Podcast - Hollywood Stuntman Trampas Thompson: Life on The Edge, Expanding Consciousness & What It’s Like To Be Birdman

Episode Date: December 17, 2015

Today's guest isn’t famous. He hasn’t written a book. He's not an in demand speaker. But I can almost promise that you have seen Trampas Thompson — you just didn’t know it. Working behind the scenes, Trampas is a Hollywood stuntmen extraordinaire, collecting blockbuster credits performing a dizzying array of delicious, death-defying acts in some of the world's most popular movies and television shows. Trampas has run the streets on fire, sword battled with Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and most recently doubled Michael Keaton in Birdman. Yes, that was Trampas, not Michael, who lept off a New York Theatre District rooftop in the most memorable scene from last year's Oscar winning best picture. His credits are impressive: The Dark Knight Rises, National Treasure, 21 Jump Street, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, The Wolf of Wall Street, and on and on. But what drew me to Trampas as a great fit for the podcast actually has very little to do with his work. Far more fascinating? Who he is. What kind of person becomes a stuntman? God broke the mold with this guy. Larger than life, Trampas is one-of-a-kind. A renaissance man living life full throttle 24/7. The kind of guy who survived a skydiving accident when his parachute didn’t open, then jumped again. A person unapologetically himself, incapable of doing anything half-assed and utterly fearless. This is another epic, thoroughly entertaining 3-hour conversation with a truly singular human about living life on one’s own terms. It's about dragonfly tattoos, synchronicity, Burning Man and the never ending spiritual quest to grow and expand consciousness. It's about what it means to hand-wring the adventure out of life. I sincerely hope you enjoy this conversation with one of my favorite people. Peace + Plants, Rich

My intention is to just, with my heart as wide open as I can, jump into the air. And I'll think of smashing my head in the concrete, or planting it. I don't think of the graphicness of that. But it's just like, I'm intending to touch it. And it stops me. But there's no fear.

And there's nothing diminishing my bandwidth. So as a result, like my, my consciousness expanded, my heart is wide open. And in that space, like I'm open for those things, one, to enter and also to be aware of it. That's Hollywood stuntman, Trampas Thompson. And this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, guys, what's happening, everybody? It's Rich Roll back at you with another midweek episode of the RRP, the show where I converse with forward-thinking minds across all categories of health, wellness, fitness, athleticism, entrepreneurship, environmentalism, mindfulness,

spirituality, and consciousness. And the formative idea here is to just get us all to think more openly and broadly about our lives and things that matter so that together we can grow into our best, most authentic selves. So thank you so much for tuning in today, for subscribing to the show on iTunes, for leaving us a review on iTunes, and of course, for always using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases.

The holiday season is upon us. You might find yourself on Amazon trying to pick up a gift here or there. Well, it would mean a lot to us if you could first click through our banner ad. It does not cost you anything extra on anything you subsequently purchase, but Amazon kicks us a little bit of loose commission change, sends it in our direction, and that really helps us keep the bandwidth flowing and keep this little podcast going. So we appreciate everybody who has made a habit of that. It means a lot. So today, we're going to take a little bit of a left turn to

venture into a subculture, a world that I know virtually nothing about, the world of Hollywood stuntman. And in particular, the life of a guy who is really a renaissance man, my friend, Trampas Thompson. He is a completely unique, larger-than-life character, and we had a lot of fun with this conversation. Much more on Trampas in a second, but first. You guys want to talk about today's show? Let's talk about today's show, Trampas Thompson. Trampas Thompson isn't famous. He hasn't written a book, although I think he should. He isn't on the speaking circuit. The guy doesn't even have a website. But no doubt, you have seen

him. You just didn't know it was him. Trampas has worked behind the scenes in Hollywood as one of the industry's most in-demand, experienced, and accomplished stuntmen, collecting this insane list of blockbuster credits. The guys lit himself on fire. He sword battled with Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And most recently, he doubled Michael Keaton in Birdman. Yes, that was Trampas, not Michael, who leapt off a New York City rooftop in one of Birdman's most memorable seminal scenes. And we tell a really funny story about that experience in the podcast today.

Trampas's IMDb page just goes on and on and on. The Dark Knight Rises, National Treasure, Indiana Jones, The Wolf of Wall Street, on and on and on. But what drew me to Trampas as a great fit for the show is much less about his work and more about who he is, how he lives. He is a truly authentic, one-of-a-kind, larger-than-life character. He's just one of those guys who lives life full out all the time, incapable of doing anything half-assed. He's always jaunting off on some harebrained adventure on the other side of the world, unapologetically himself, and always utterly fearless. For a little context, we're talking about a guy who survived a terrifying skydiving accident when his parachute didn't open. And now he recalls that story in a way that

almost brings a smile to his face. And this thing that happened to him that would absolutely traumatize a normal human being, he's able to talk about it and laugh with fondness. It's just amazing. So this is a great conversation with a truly unique human being. It's about living life on one's own terms. It's about seeking out the adventure in life. And it's about the never-ending spiritual quest for growth and expansion. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Trampas Thompson. Yeah, no, John Joseph's in town.

I was in Vegas. I think he called me on Sunday, so I've got to call him back. I've just been super busy. Have you seen him since he's been in town? You know, I haven't. I've been texting with him a little bit. And actually, it's very funny because I've been at this like you know like visionary plant-based convergence over the weekend and so like all these people that are in like medicine plants or whatever we're in and talking and and um dimitri i forget dimitri's last name

but it's the guy that when we were at crossroads john had mentioned um like it's his friend who did all this stuff with iboga and is doing like addiction therapy and stuff like that with ibogaine which is a you know I don't know who that is but but he had mentioned him to me and and uh and of course I I see him and I said hey like I think John mentioned you know like your name to me I you seem familiar and we started talking about John and and of course he's like you know like I've been like I'm just trying to get off meat, you know? And it's like, he's like every single, he's like every single medicine journey I've had

in the last whatever, 20, 30 years, he's like every single one tells me that I've got to stop eating meat. And he's like, but to me, it's like, it's harder to kick than heroin. You know, he's like, I just am like addicted to that thing. And of course I tell John, i text john john's like that's bullshit tell him he's a pussy to stop eating meat right and then i saw and then i saw him today

at uh at locally and uh-huh and he had a huge kale salad he was just like yeah yeah like i was just like i like shamed him into it no totally it was totally like so i took a picture and i sent it to john i haven't heard back from john yet but it was so perfect that I just like randomly saw him. That's pretty funny. I mean, well, like if the medicine is telling him the same thing again and again and again for 20 years, but he's not modifying his behavior. Well, right.

It's like in every way. Like he's modifying his behavior in every way except for like, except for that. And John, you know, like, like John was like, tell him you can't get into all that spiritual shit and eat dead animals. That's pretty funny, man. Yeah, I mean, it's tough because John, you know, I want to see John. And I'm sure, you know, he wants to see me. But I live like a freaking hour away.

And the dude, like, doesn't drive, won't get a rental car. And it's like so short of, like, me driving to him and picking him up wherever he is and going to do something. Yeah, totally. It's like, come on, man. Just, just like get your driver's license sorted out right right right like i don't know does he not he doesn't have a driver's license no he comes to la and he stays you know he was staying with tal like downtown last time like downtown los angeles uh and and i still like dropped him off that was after crossroads when i saw you there oh yeah i took him back there i think he's in West Hollywood now,

um, but still, but he's your training, right? Well, he was going to do the super frog triathlon. Uh, that was this past weekend yesterday,

um, in San Diego, but he like aggravated his calf muscle, like shortly after he arrived in LA and decided not to race around. And I think they're recording their next, next Cro-Mags. So he's working on his record. So he's in LA and decided not to race. Oh, really? So he stuck around. And I think they're recording their next Cro-Mags album. So he's working on his record. So he's in town? Yeah, he's here for another week or something.

Oh, really? Yeah, so anyway, man, let me see that tattoo. All right. That is, that's crazy. It's crazy, isn't it? That is, I've never seen a tattoo like that. The sort of realism, but also like the surrealism of that woman's face is no it's amazing i mean in this part look the part that like blows me away

is like this right here which looks like a blotch right but like this would be like if your airbrush kind of misfired in the air like sprayed paint all over it even this like line this almost imperceptible line like a really thin paint sort of being blown by air and and the thing is with an airbrush that's a one second mistake but on a tattoo like that has to be designed like he designed that you know so who is this guy like i remember first of all like we've been trying to make this podcast happen for a long time right it was like dude it must have been like a year ago where we were trying to figure it out. And you're like, I'm going to Italy. Right.

I'm like, why are you going to Italy? Because I'm getting a tattoo. Right. You're going to go to Italy to get a tattoo? Right. He's like, no, you don't understand. No. He's the guy.

Well, yeah. So the story, I have to sort of start at the beginning of that story, right? Which is, you know, people see the tattoo and they're like, oh my God, that's a, what an amazing story. Well, the story starts with the fact that I was doubling Michael Keaton on Birdman. And I was in New York City. And I was, there was a gag where, like in the movie, if you've seen the movie, like he is on top of the roof. And the guy's like, do you know where to go? And he's like, yeah, I know where to go and he's like yeah i know

where to go and he runs off and he jumps off this building and ends up flying all around manhattan and you're the guy who basically did the jump that's right we're gonna get into all that but yeah we'll tell the tattoo story first okay so um well the the impetus is that i that while i was in air in the midair like one of these times that i jumped a dragonfly flew across the street and i saw it because my you know awareness was very expanded like it's a kind of gag that i could do really you know like not very easily but like there's not a lot of adrenaline i wasn't closed down or like i just wasn't you're only jumping off a building yeah exactly but it was like so my mind was so expansive so like I looked across the street and a dragonfly,

I mean like something black was coming at me like a bullet and it landed on my arm. It turned out that while I was flying in the air, like a dragonfly landed on my arm, right? So like, I mean, that just was this magical moment. And as you do, you know, there's much more to that story. We can unpack it a little more later. But like it, as you do when something like that happens,

when you're, you know, like flying in flying in the air 100 feet off the ground, a dragonfly lands on your arm, you're going to get a tattoo, right? Right, right, right. And so, yeah, I was thinking, obviously I was going to get a dragonfly tattooed on my arm. And I ended up, a friend of mine, and I actually put this on Facebook at one point, and I said, a friend of mine, and her name's Stephanie Dennis. She was mad because she was like, oh, yeah, I'm a friend. You know, like, I totally turned you on to that guy.

Like, so, Stephanie. Credit where credit is due. Exactly. So, she turned me on to this guy, and his website, and his name's Jay Freestyle. Jay Hong is his name. He goes by Jay Freestyle. And he's from South Africa. He's Chinese, from South Africa, lives in Amsterdam, and tours the world at tattoo conventions

and guest spots all over the world and stuff. And so as the, it was this year, he was going to be in LA in December or January, and I checked him out. I was like, hey, man, I know you're going to be in LA, and the Academy Awards were coming up, and it sort of reinvigorated me to get this tattoo. I thought, wow, if I could get it by the time the academy awards roll around and i was like are you booked up in la and he's like oh yeah right so there's no way so i look at he look at his

schedule and and he's like uh in in sydney you know like not not long in february maybe i'm like what about sydney booked you know just get back booked. Berlin is next. What about Berlin? Booked. And I'm like, okay, bro, like when and where? And he replies back June 8th in Brindisi, Italy. And I was like, okay. Like, I was just like, okay, like, I guess I'll go do that. Right. And, uh, so then of course, you know, June rolls around and yeah, I ended up like traveling to Italy. And the thing about this guy is he like designed it on the spot. Like he didn't do any research. I didn't have any drawings.

I told him sort of the story, which he really wasn't super enthusiastic about, which was good for my ego, you know? Because I was like, wow, that's the most amazing. Yeah, I was like, I was expecting him to be like, oh my God, I'm going to design them was like wow that's the most yeah i told him i was like i was expecting him to be like oh my god i'm gonna sign them oh that's just amazing right and he's just like okay so you want a dragonfly in your arm you know like i was just like i was like awesome awesome and uh and then he sat there i or like i stood i stood in front of him he sat there for like two hours and like looked at my arm.

Then he would do these long blinks. It felt to me like he was seeing it on my arm and then erasing it and sort of seeing it and erasing it. Finally, after about an hour and a half, he started drawing. Is he drawing on paper, or is he drawing on your arm? He's drawing on my arm. He designed it, came up with it it designed it on my arm entirely and then we went and had lunch and then for five hours he like tattooed it on my arm and it was something that like other than you know the inspiration he was like do you want some flowers and i'm like yeah sure right and he put these like like these uh

lilies on my forearm and and and eventually i'm going to meet him again like somewhere in the world and he's going to put a some like geometry like sacred geometry flower of life and other kinds of like where's the where's the dragon so the yeah that's there's no dragon it's these wings like the sort of like it's this kind of like it's almost like you know there's all this digital pixelation and it's like the dragonfly is kind of like bursting out of this person who's sort of in this meditative state's brain you know like sort of i mean i think that might be what it means i don't know it's just like it's great podcasting because no one can actually no i know it's just like if you think about it like if you're gonna have somebody you know create art on your body doesn't it deserve that level of of kind of like respect like it sounds crazy to go all the way to

italy to to to get with this great artist. But when you actually think about it, that makes more sense than going up to Hollywood Boulevard and letting anybody looking through a book of flash or whatever. And then have somebody do whatever on you for the rest of your life. Oh, I mean, and I have those stories too. I mean, I had a story where a guy did a tattoo on me. And when I went to talk to him earlier about the tattoo, it's a tattoo on my ribs. And it's written backwards.

And it's from Shakespeare's first folio. And it says, this above all to thine own self be true. And it's for me to see in the mirror. So it's written backwards. And it's in this first folio font. So actually, when you're looking at it, it looks like elvish or something. It's completely illegible.

And I went in and talked to him about it. And he had Shiva Natarajaj statues and you know i have a tattoo of shiva on your back yeah exactly and so like like it covers your entire back it's yeah yeah exactly so so uh i i saw you know he had these statues and of course like that's there's no coincidence like this is the guy right and um he you know we were talking about joseph campbell and alan watts and like all these sort of like mythic things and shakespeare i came back like you know i decided i was gonna do this tattoo i came back at night like a week later and he was you know like had had the radio blasting so loud and it was just like this thrash metal that probably makes the chromags look like you know like children like it was like like it was so loud and i and i went up to

him and i was like you know like hey man like i was mouthed like i was screaming at him and it looked like i was just mouthing the words you know his music was so loud he's like tells me to hold on and he's like listening in reverence it seems and he's poured himself like four fingers of scotch and and like and i was like oh oh, right? So then he poured himself another four fingers and then we start getting ready and he does it and he gets almost, you know, like three quarters of the way done and smokes a bowl and pours another four fingers of scotch.

And early on he'd offered me some scotch, you know, like, and I was like, no, no, no. And about that time I was like, yeah, maybe I think I'll have a little bit of that scotch right now because it was just like i'm either gonna have an amazing tattoo or an awesome like rock and roll tattoo story you know right and it turned out all right you know it turned out all right and then it turned out that the guy wasn't like i'd gone there because a guy that shop had like was great with like script you know and like really doing really fine detail work like that well that guy had

actually died 10 years before of a heroin overdose so i wasn't even at the it wasn't even the guy it was the wrong guy and uh you know ironically i was telling the story to somebody i told the story to somebody the next day i was talking to another guy and uh in this group that we were hanging out with and and he starts telling this story i was talking about the my dragonfly tattoo on my arm, just how great it is. He was like, yeah, at least it wasn't the guy where he showed up drunk and the one guy was dead. And for a second I was like, yeah, what kind of idiot would get themselves

in that situation, right? I literally thought that and I was like, oh wait, that was me. Like somebody has told you my story already, right? Yeah, that's funny. It was really, really funny. But yeah, so the difference is, this guy's phrase, it's on his website is is uh um it's tattooj.com by the way tattoo yeah j freestyle yeah yeah and uh j freestyle on on facebook amazing and just you

won't believe the artwork that's on that on the page but uh he says uh uh give me a piece of your skin and i'll give you a piece of my soul which i think is just a radical way to like get a tattoo you know like it's just so amazing it's a partnership yeah for sure and for me like you know i'm i'm a control like i have to be in control in my job and like i'm you know like make aesthetic and and creative decisions and like i'm you know like make aesthetic and and creative decisions and like i'm i'm about directing those things you know and um and i had to fully surrender you know like fully fully surrender to that tattoo and and that was a huge leap for me not only did i surrender but i flew to italy to to surrender the purpose of surrendering. Exactly, exactly.

Because you're not going to tell that guy what he's going to do. No, not at all. You're going to him so that he can do what he does, and you're trusting in that. Yeah, exactly. And the permanence of it, I mean, that's heavy. For sure. I mean, to have this face on my arm, like I never wanted a tattoo of a face on my arm. You couldn't have predicted what it was going to be, obviously.

It's a thousand times better than anything I could have imagined. You know what I mean? By saying yes to that, I said yes to that experience. And then what was returned to me is so much greater than what I could have. I could have a very realistic, maybe even watercolor-style painting of a dragonfly on my arm. But then why go to that guy? Exactly. It just is. And this is like i let him do his thing and i mean it's just beautiful

and you know like sometimes you get a tattoo and you're like oh maybe i regret that a little bit like like a little buyer's remorse but like it's there's not an instant where i've just haven't been just like this is one of the you know like greatest decisions i've made you know really really cool well i mean i think it would be it would be kind of lazy to say like, Oh, well you're, yeah, but you're a guy who, you know, you're impulsive, like, cause you kind of live this adventure, some sort of life. Uh, but I don't think that's really quite accurate. I think there's a, there's more of a, a method in the, in the surrender to use your phrase and like, what's gotten you from where you were to here.

So let's track it, man. What's the log line? Sort of stuntman, spiritual warrior, vegan ambassador. How do you, at a cocktail party, when someone says, what do you do, what's the response? Yeah, I mean, typically i say i'm a stuntman which is actually strange as it because i've made my career as a stuntman and i'm i've been stunt coordinating for a number of years now and i'm actually making a transition and moving into

becoming a director but um yeah my life is is um you know i grew up on a cattle ranch in texas like my dad's a cattle rancher. You have brothers and sisters? I have a sister, a younger sister. It's like Panhandle, Texas, right? Yeah, north of Amarillo. And this town is 304 people. Like, it's so small.

You know, you might be sort of, did we talk about this with Julie? Because, you know, her dad's from Amarillo. Oh, yeah, from Amarillo, right? Yeah. I bet on some way you've got to be related to my wife. Probably. Or I'm sure that my parents know her dad. Somebody knows somebody who knows

Julie's dad. We did talk about that. Because her dad was at the book signing, right? And I actually talked to him for a little moment about it. But I don't remember if it turned out that he was my uncle brother or or what yeah we'll figure that out later but most likely brushed up against somebody oh yeah for sure for sure probably like yeah my dad probably knows him or

certainly my my grandfather was a big cattle rancher in the area and stuff like that you know so like full-on cattle rant like how many heads of cattle you know it would depend at one point we had like um 13 000 acres leased um and we're running a couple thousand head of cattle on it and we'd always like you know like sunday would be my mom would go to church and if we didn't get a load of cattle in we'd go to church and and um and if we had cattle or had to move cattle, we'd either go on a big cattle drive or we would brand and process and do all those cowboy things that you do. Which is interesting because I've given up both church and cattle. It's like, yeah, those are neither of those things that I just mentioned are things that are in my life at all. I mean, spirituality is certainly part of my life,

but the kind of association with those things is not who I am anymore. There's been a disproportionate number of people that I've had on the podcast that are kind of in the vegan movement now who grew up on farms. A lot of the doctors grew up on dairy farms, it seems like. Oh, yeah, right. It's a recurring theme. It does. And one of these things that I like, this thing that i come back to a lot because it it it um and i don't know if it's what what got me out of it in a way because there was a long ways like i

what i was saying about dimitri and that sort of like giving up the meat and you know like how difficult that is like i would never have you know like i would never have been able to have done that in the 90s i couldn't even fathom not eating meat you know and uh and there was a period where you know i had a lot of vegetarian friends and a lot of uh i mean much less being vegan and and as you say like vegan ambassador you know like i like it just wasn't i couldn't have done it and i started practicing yoga and i and at one point i was like you know like i like it just wasn't i couldn't have done it and i started practicing yoga and i and at one point i was like you know what i realized that i hadn't had a choice and it was less about a compassionate choice than it was about like okay i'm surrounded by all these people

i have a practice that's about making invisible things visible and i'm i'm living a lifestyle that's unconscious because i've never was never able to make a choice about it. What would happen if I made a choice? Well, it's never presented as optional or a choice. It's just this is what people do. Oh, yeah, for sure. And if you're on a cattle ranch, then even less so. Well, and everything in my life was provided by it, right?

Like every opportunity. And my parents are still together they've been married since 1967 they live outside of Dallas now much closer to my sister um but uh but always always supported me always you know we were never rich but like I was never lacking you know like if I needed anything like we could make it happen and all that money came from the cattle business you know what i mean so it's like in in a lot of ways it was like you know like and you know people say that it's like well it's american it's our history it's we're meat eaters or that you know it's like giving up that like for me it was exactly that

like it was my heritage it was what my parents did and it's what my parents did to provide me with so it's everything you know yeah an added layer of like almost betrayal for sure built into that to say like for sure do that anymore yeah for sure so how do you get to how do you how do you navigate that to get to that place like where where that you know decision is presented to you you know um well i was in la and and uh i was i was uh doing a lot of yoga and i was practicing yoga um and and as i said like it finally like i i was in my car one day and i just was like you know what i'm gonna try that out i'm gonna see what happens because it had been sort of circling around me for some time you know to just be like yeah but where does the skydiving thing come in well that was this is the story that i'm trying to drive you does the skydiving thing come in well that was this is the story that i'm trying

to drive you towards the skydiving what about this guy well episode but that's like you know like i was still a full-on medium when i was a skydiver so so so the reason i mean even the reason related no but the reason that i that i even became involved in yoga right was because i had had this injury skydiving so in the mid 90s I was you know I'd come out here I thought I was going to be a stunt stuntman I was still like pursuing acting I was still a visual artist but I wanted to you know I was really trying to be a stuntman I didn't have my SAG card but I was I was skydiving if you remember like in the early 90s and then you know like like all of these it was when Point Break was the biggest thing.

I was going to say, this is Johnny Utah. No, full on, dude. It was full on. Yeah, full on. How ironic that the remake is about to hit theaters. I just am not excited. It can't have the soul. That's the thing.

The soul of Johnny Utah is deeply rooted in Keanu's incarnation. Yeah, exactly. So formative of our youth exactly exactly and you know it's so like and there's such a difference now you know I mean I really um I hate sequels I mean the other the only you know like Empire Strikes Back being the like obvious exception right you know maybe Godfather two still. For sure. You know, but the,

but like these remakes and these sequels and they just like, they don't, you know, there, there is no heart. Although I find myself sort of being like a, you know, kind of crotchety old man about that when, you know,

I can imagine my parents trying to get me as a young kid to try to watch, you know, the Manchurian candidate or something like that. And it would be like the, you know, like sequel or the remake with Denzel Washington or whatever that is exciting and more for my gen or you know it's actually really for the generation after me but like that kind of way like I think of movies that were you know those movies point break it's like you know the action there's no CG there's no you know the it's it's it's like it you know is the

it was the innovator of all that stuff and as a result but that was before like travis pastran or somebody could do like five backflips on his bmx bike and and and land it you know now we see something that's like a zillion times more exciting than anything in point break on youtube know, like, and kids do it. Well, they do it because of Point Break, you know, but it's still much more fascinating and exciting. And so it makes those movies seem a little like slow, but even still, these movies then just become about that. Like, I can imagine that the story of this movie, Point Break, like, I don't know, like

I'm in the movies, like, sorry to my friends who are like, who who worked on it or like i don't even know who's involved in it but but i imagine that that movie is going to have like zero soul and be all about the action like well yeah it's going to be like a uh a constant like gopro video on youtube because they got the wingsuits and they're jumping motorcycles from you know off cliffs right it's like everything now like the big thing and you know like it was surfing and skydiving in in point break but I will like like I catch myself like passionately advocating point break as a movie with like soul and I'm just like did I just did I just say that like so we clearly i understand the best part in point break is that like how all those cops like uh they knew like johnny utah's like high school football statistics oh right like as if like a normal person would actually know something like that

about high school football for sure we're going we're getting like way into the weeds here but i think the point you're making is that, look, the movie business really, the art aspect of it has become so marginalized. They are roller coaster rides to sell merchandise for the most part. And a theatrical release is nothing more than a billboard for the long-term revenue stream that comes from a tentpole film. And I was just at the movies the other day with Julian. You know, all the ads that come before it. And then you get to that ad that the theater chain does

that's specifically about where the exits are and turning your cell phone on. Oh, right, right. Where to buy the Coke and everything. And they do it from the point of view of you actually sitting in a roller coaster, like, you know, little whatever, cabin. Oh, like over this film strip? Yeah, you're going over the little whatever cabin oh like go over this film strip and you're over the films and i'm like i'm like they're making the point so obvious like this

is not about anything other than just being on a roller coaster ride oh sure it's not meant to leave you with anything more than that and that's like sad and tragic you know for sure and that's not to say that there isn't amazing art being made in film and, and certainly in television now with the explosion of all this amazing, you know, all the distribution channels available to it. But, you know, the, uh, you know, the three days of the Condor and you know, the great movies of the seventies and all those, you know,

the amazing Senate East and, and, uh, you know, directors of that era, like they would never be able to make movies now oh for sure not at all not at all but for a guy like you there's probably a lot of employment opportunities oh well totally you know i mean yeah exactly like it's you know but but even that it's like i i uh you know i find that like i want to tell like at my heart i'm a filmmaker and a storyteller and i want to tell stories that are that have have soul and have spirit, you know? And, and again, it's, it's almost like, like kind of moving away from this, you know, the cattle ranch lifestyle, you know, and then moving into a, a, a sort of portion of the

industry where like my contribution is like the number of people I've murdered or the times I've died or the violence that I've contributed to the film. Like that's my job. Like it's like, oh, we need to have somebody get there. Like, oh no, like we want to have like somebody get like, you know, killed with the post hole diggers in the face. Like we've never seen that before. Bring Trappist in.

Let's see how he like kind of like- Do you feel like you incur some kind of like- Like that's my contribution, you know? Psychic karmic debt doing that? Or like, what does that feel like? Well, no, you know, again, it's just sort of a thing that I, you know, like I sort of relate that to me growing up on a cattle ranch, you know, it's sort of, it, it's kind of a, maybe a way of growing or a thing that I have gone through, you know, like, um, and,

and, uh, but it's, but my soul isn't, it's's not where that's not my soul anymore you know like my soul is to to tell these stories that are that are and yeah maybe i do like maybe now it's like in the same way that like you know having and i i've told people my whole life like i've ate more meat by the time i was like 25 that most people eat their whole life you know like and and so yeah there is a like i have a kind of a retribution, you know, or a kind of like, a payback, you know, and part of that is like being this evangelist or an advocate of, of a, of a plant-based lifestyle and really like, you know, making sure that people know like, what really is the cost of that? Like, and so if i take that on and i get

marginalized because of that well that's i mean i'm all right with that because it's it's it's my duty now it's a thing that i have to do you know and in the same way it's like all right now i have these stories that i have to tell and it and it kind of galvanizes me to tell those stories because of of kind of what i've contributed but what i've you know like what i've done you know when i tell when people ask me about my job i tell them i i get paid a ton of money to travel the world with like all of my best friends and act like a six-year-old and and most of the time we have like swords and guns do you know what i mean it's just like it's stupid it's so yeah like seven years old in the basement on saturday morning that's exactly it you know and it's like that is like i mean you know that is like a childhood dream come true but it's exactly that

it's a childhood dream come true you know like and and and as i've kind of grown older i have other things that i need to accomplish, but I will never take away from the fact that like, like that has been the most profound blessing that, that I've had in my life. You know, I've just been like gifted with this incredible opportunity to like be a part of this thing that I dreamed of, to have like amazing friends, to travel the world, to have these like amazing opportunities, you know, and, and have my heart open you know to to just like fulfilling my dreams you know it's like people don't get that and so it's again it's a little bit like that thing of the cattle ranch where everything that i had was came from the the

beef industry like eating meat you know and and providing that gifted me with every opportunity I ever had. And in the same way, like, that's how this, you know, like, how this, this experience in the film industry. Yeah, it's a weird, it's a weird juxtaposition, for sure. And it's a long road to travel for a kid, you know, in the panhandle of Texas to, you know, swashbuckling with, with Johnny Depp. Well, right. Exactly. You know, it's crazy, right? When you think about it or jumping off buildings and pretending you're Birdman, you know, on, on the set of, of, of Birdman with Michael Keaton. And then that, that kind of, you know, additional juxtaposition of being in, in occupation that is sort of the touchstone of which is is sort of uber masculinity

and bravado and and and you know sort of fearlessness and all of that and being this you know sort of compassionate vegan guy like right those things are not like you know necessarily kind of like compatible on the surface in the minds of most people so right and it's been that's a tightrope walk in and of itself that's its own stunt that you have to pull off for sure for sure and it's been really interesting because like you know a lot of people like i mean you know like um like the the guys that have run the business i mean almost like like uh politics and whatever but it's old white guys you know like it's how like it's particularly in the stunt business right and these guys were

it's got to be a pretty insulated small little world like you know all these guys and for sure there's probably only like a couple people that make the decisions because it's not like the producers or the directors know who you guys are there's somebody who knows right like i'll just make sure you get the guy well sure you know but i mean you know like a bunch of producers have you know like different producers have their different guy you know it's like if somebody like worked on it you know like so i'm gonna stunt coordinate for this particular producer or a live producer or a guy they like for sure definitely definitely you know and those guys will bring their they'll bring the guys on but you know the guys that got entrenched in the business in the, you know, like late fifties or the sixties and the seventies, you know, they were the cow,

they were kind of the cowboys of, of the industry. Right. And, and then as young people have kind of come into the business, they've in a lot of ways had to, you know, maybe adopt like it's who, you know, like, like stunts is who, you know, right. More than, more than almost any other part of the business because if i don't as a stunt coordinator right if i don't know you if i don't know what you can do if you haven't come highly recommended from somebody that i do know and trust like how do i know that you're not going to one get yourself killed or two and far worse get someone else hurt or killed right which then is going to reflect really badly on me and and then my career is done right and even if you know like look there's stunt coordinators that have had huge accidents and they still work all the time but like

i'd like to sleep at night you know like i don't want to be carrying that around you know and so i you we have to know each other right and there's no it's not like you go to school for this right it's an apprenticeship scenario yeah for sure i mean there's you know people come at it for different ways like but like for example if somebody's like a world-class gymnast they may come in and and and be you know want to be a stuntman or they work for circus or some kind of thing like that right but that person doesn't know how to fight and so then they're going to have to like learn how to what the angles are how to throw a punch or how to take a reaction and some of these other things that like aren't necessarily what you would train to do you know I mean there

are like some stunt schools like the people go to which you know and I always uh I'll tell people to like go to a stunt school if there's a place where you can learn, if somebody is going to like set you on fire and create a safe situation with no pressure of getting the shot or ego or, you know, like having to impress somebody or somebody trying to like put you down or whatever kind of other energies there's there. If you can learn how to do those things in that environment and if you have to pay money to do it, that's great. But the problem that happens is one, cause yeah, it's like there has been this sort of like, Hey, Hey kid,

I'm going to take you under my wing. You know, this old cowboy is going to like bring you up and bring you up. And you know, so there is that kind of like idea that that's how the, you know, the old guys want to like sort of pretend that that's how the business works, even though they really like, you know, once you get to a certain age, you're like not able to do that thing that the 20 know the old guys want to like sort of pretend that that's how the business works even though they really like you know once you get to a certain age you're like not able to do that thing that the 20 year old kid can do but you still want to work and and so even while there's a it's not like i'm directly going to pass on like everything i know so the next generation can do it because if the next generation's doing it and i haven't like transitioned to being a

stunt coordinator or or directing like i'm not going to be doing it anymore right so like i'm going to pretend that i'm seven years old until i'm 70 years old or can't you know until the uk and you see that i mean oh my gosh you see that so much in the business and and um even if it's not you know so like there is this idea that oh those are going to groom the young kids well it's not exactly like that right so but you don't want somebody to come in and be like oh i went to so-and-so stunt school and i have a diploma in in jumping off of a 10-story building so like you know bring me in um because that just doesn't it's not like it doesn't work like that right like so how do you like so I would say that somebody should like, I mean,

I would say that they should like, you know, go to that school, learn those things. So there are like programs. I mean, there's like kind of workshops that you could do or like a, you know,

like a month long place you can go up to. There's a, there's a school up in Seattle and there's places all over. I mean, really the way, like I don't, I mean, it's not like I say like,

Oh, that's the way to do it. But again mean it's not like i say like oh that's the way to do it but again if you want to go somewhere that's sort of safe to do a thing like that and get the skill in a way that you might not otherwise so that when the opportunity comes and someone says hey i've got this fire burn that i'm doing um i need somebody to run safety and then you know you have the confidence to be able to be there and be on that team as a second or third or fourth guy which then gets you the opportunity to kind of be brought up and then you're maybe then your primary with a fire extinguisher like the guy in the hot spot really putting i mean not in the literal hot spot

but in the like they like primary spot like with with the responsibility of like right making sure this guy gets out right right right and then you're you know then you're doing the burns or whatever but it's like like you're not trying to you're not having to learn that on the job you're you know you've got yourself in a position where you can confidently say yes i can do that you know which is a huge difference between stunt people like when somebody says to me yes like they have got to be able to do that thing where like it's you know like you know this like it's typical that actors will be like oh hey can you ride it the worst is like riding a horse right can you ride a horse yes and then they get the job and then they like you know then they like spend the next 24 hours like trying to learn how to ride

horse you know and it's just like it never it never kind of works and what actors don't realize is that that you know particularly with fighting you know like if they're not able to do those things like you know the vision is getting compromised all the way down the road you know like the director may want to do it in one shot which means the actors have to do it and if the actors can't do it then i either have to simplify the choreography as a stunt coordinator bring in doubles which means that you have to do it in cuts like there's no way to do that in one if you have doubles um and and and and if that doesn't work if we can't like fix on set then the editor is going to do it and then that actor's gonna get an academy award for like you know like whatever sort of

swashbuckling fight thing that they did and then the next time like you're sure not going to be able to like convince them that they need to rehearse because they're the guy that won the academy award for like when in reality i don't know how to do it they're like they yeah and their lack of ability compromised the whole thing you know like start to finish but as a stunt person i mean the stakes are so much higher exactly that so when you say yes i can do that you have to be able to do it there's no like oh yeah i can do that i think i can absolutely like you you don't often like um i mean there's ways that that like oh i've trained in a specific way and i can i know that i can pull that off i may never have done that before

i mean yeah i was gonna say like if you you must have been in a specific way and I can, I know that I can pull that off. I may never have done that before. I mean, yeah, I was going to say like, if you, you must've been in a situation where they said to you, Hey, this is what we're thinking. We want to do this. Can you do it? And it's something you've never done before. Oh, for sure. Yes, of course. But, but even then I have like related skill or, you know, it's like, I've been like, all right, I can do, these are the things that I can do. So I know that I can push it to that far and and make that happen you know what i mean i have the confidence to make it happen i'm not going like yes yes i can do that and being like

oh my god how am i gonna learn how to do that you know it's like and and that happens all the time i mean obviously we're always innovating action or we're doing different things you know i did this i did a really awesome, I mean, awesome meaning big and huge and cool, fire burn on the TV show Southland a number of years ago. And they wanted a guy running out of, like the storyline that you find out that gets revealed is that the guy was inside an adult bookstore on Coangable of our just south of Hollywood, right?

Which is there if you want to go see it right like it actually is there is there's an adult bookstore down to coanga south of hollywood and and uh you know southland was kind of that show where they're like going around the car and they're talking and they they turn off of hollywood onto coanga and out the door runs this guy on fire and runs down the block and falls down as they slide the car in front of him. And the owner of the bookstore is chasing me with a fire extinguisher and puts me out. And so it had to be like normally you do a fire burn and you burn for a little while and you fall down on the ground. And four guys come out with fire extinguishers and safety suits and put you out. And obviously you cut right before all of that right um but this was like i had to be put

out on camera so like one guy is chasing me down the block um with one fire extinguisher he's an actor he's not no he was a stunt guy oh no he was a stunt guy for sure um and and but like i my face and my hands i couldn't have like a lot of goopy gel on it because I was going to be on camera without, um, any fire to obscure that. Right. So I had to be that, you know, had to be like visible and not obvious. Right. Um, and they wanted the fire to be huge. Like the, the thing was like the Q-tip, like they really wanted like human torture, Q-tip

running down the street. the thing was like a Q-tip. Like they really wanted like human torture, a Q-tip running down the street. And a buddy of mine, his name is Jason Domenico and he has a company called Action Factory and has put together like this fire package of, he developed a stunt gel

where you can put it actually on skin, you know, like right on. So normally a traditional fire burn is like lots of layers of protective clothing and you might put gel on your hands or your face. And the gel is flammable. So it's the gel that's burning? The gel is actually like protecting you, right?

So the gel is like a hydrogel. Like it's either, you know, like there's a high content of water or it's cooling. And it's in such a way that so like if your hand were to get in the fire, you know, or the flame would come around on your face and you're wearing this gel, like it's not going to burn you, right? But you couldn't stay in the fire, that's kind of the traditionally how it's been and if you watch movies in the 80s you see like you know the guy and he gets lit by the barbecue and then the next thing you know is like a giant monster wearing like a big safe like racing safety suit you know like fully on fire and and you know like. Well, this burn on Southland was, so Jason had developed this gel and we had R&D'd it in his backyard

for a long period of time. But the gel is that you can, you can actually put the gel on your skin and it's kind of viscous enough that you can, it'll hold, it'll be a platform for the fuel, right? So like I could put it on my arm and it's about maybe an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick and then, and then put fuel directly on top of that. So it actually looks like my skin is on fire. Right. And, and, and, and having that

also has allowed us to like go smaller with the layers of protective clothing. Right. So, so I have fewer layers of clothing. I don't look like a big bulky monster. Plus, you know, like I have fuel. I have this gel up onto the top of my head. So I have fuel onto the top of my head. On the bottom of my neck, it's protecting me. Huge, huge, huge fire. And nothing on my face, nothing on my hands. My ears are protected with this gel.

But there's literally fuel on the top of my head. And then also on top of my clothes, up my arms legs front and back and what kind of suit are you wearing you just what kind of clothing are you wearing so i'm wearing several layers of of like cotton and nobex or or pbi which are you know like fire retardant layers and and two of those layers have been saturated with the gel then i have like a uh some kind of barrier that like would keep the wetness of that from making my wardrobe wet and then i think i was wearing like a you know like a flannel and uh and jeans you know um but those have been like treated so that they won't uh i mean they're you know they're gonna burn but they're not gonna flash right they've been they're

like fire retardant they've been we've treated those's, so, so it really doesn't look like I have layers of anything on at all. Right. And yeah, I know you ended up running, you know, like I ended up running down the street and like, like doing this thing. And that, but the thing about that burn, you know, like it was, and I would say like, so, you you know people might not have been available you know it's just like we're gonna like uh hey yeah here's this thing going on like yeah unavailable oh sorry i'm working out of town you're something like that but he and i had had had is that what you say when like you don't really want to do it yeah exactly you don't want to like what are the

what are they gonna look like you're afraid or whatever. You just say you... What are the dates on that again? Oh, yeah, I'm working on town. Yeah, fully. But Jason and I together, if it had been anybody else prepping that burn, I probably would have been less confident, right? And if it had been anybody else doing the burn, he would have maybe not gone as big, right? But the two of us together made this just like massive burn you know and and

um and it turned out to be really really great and you know i honestly don't know why i brought that up but i will tell you like one of the one of the things about that like one of the magical things about that like you know i say that so here's my job it's like i get paid a ton of money to travel around the world with all of my best friends and act like a six-year-old with swords and guns right and that's most of my job and then every once in a while there's a job that like like that where i don't i don't know what's going to happen in the end of it right like i'm either going to be a rock star which fortunately was how it played out right um i'm going to be um dead or i'm going to be in the burn ward, right?

Because I've ingested fire. And those are the only three options in my whole life, right? Like I know we're going to start this thing probably around noon. By 12, 15, I'm going to be done. And of this sort of zillions of possibilities that we all live in all the time, like my life has come down to three. And two of them are radically transformative. You know, like.

I mean, that's crazy. Yeah, there's no, I've never really thought about it like that. But that's so true. It's not like, no one's going to go like, all right, man, good job. You know, like on to the next thing. Like it's either like, oh my God. Yeah. Or it's like, oh, whoa, now we have a huge problem it's either like, Oh my God. Yeah. Or, or it's like,

Oh, whoa, now we have a huge problem. No. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And that was, you know, and the thing about that is like, you know, I don't know how, I don't know how other guys are, you know, like, again, I'm sort of like, in a lot of ways, I'm a bit of an anomaly where I'm just like, I, I, um, am, you know, I'm sort of this like spiritual stunt guy, right. In a way, you know, and, and, and a lot of guys are like that, but, but, uh, um, I mean, for me, it's like that, that kind of awareness, that sort of like the options being limited to that thing, like kind of like really narrowing it down to this, to these, to this simple thing. It's like, I'm either going to come out of this alive or or not and

i've chosen to do it so i i can't be afraid of it i mean i can be afraid but i but i need to overcome it you know right that can't impede the action but i mean what is that and so for me so so like i like i'm like how okay how how am i going to design the hours that lead up to that right how am i going to live my life presently to you know so i like you know at the time i was i uh was married and i and i made sure that my uh wife knew that i loved her and i and my uh dog was still around and i like you know grabbed him by the side of the face and just looked in his eyes and had that like now moment of him being like you know that i love you bro you know like i listened to my favorite album you know on the way to work and and does you know that I love you bro you know like I listened to my favorite album you know on the

way to work and and does you know the night before like spent some time with the moon like got up early enough to see the sunrise like designed my life in a way that was fully present and that kind of like like presence that awareness you know that like that's a real gift you know and it's a real gift, you know? And it's a gift that comes in some ways from knowing that in a few hours, I might be dead or radically transformed. And the crazy thing is that we all live that life. That's our life. Well, the adage, it's the annoying trite adage of live each day like it's your last.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. But when your job is to place yourself in such a heightened situation, it really does snap that focus, you know, directly onto what's most important. So, you know, the question is, you know, what is it about you that like drove you into this career path where you found this to be like the attractive way to live. You know what I mean? Like we're in a culture, you know, our cultural sort of paradigm is to, you know, go up the middle, like safety seek and like get the job, you know, make sure you have

the good insurance and like, you know, get the job and, you know, whatever. Right. And, and what you're doing is really, you know, very much an outlier kind of, you know, career path. And I would say the positive side is like, yeah, maybe it gives you a heightened appreciation for what's important and, you know, the immediacy of life. Right. But but what is it about, you know, your character that is driving you towards this sort of, you know, sort of repetitive scenario where you're repeatedly putting your life on the line to, you know, for, for like a movie, it's not like you're a fireman, you know what I mean? So there's the childhood kind of fun aspect of it, but there's something inside of you that's attracted to like these kinds of stakes, like the live or die stakes. For sure. I mean, you know, but again, I think that it's i have two words the answer is point break but i mean like obviously um but i i think that like you know again i i there's always been to me

you know when i was younger and and honestly because of point break when I was skydiving, there was a real spirituality to that, right? Like I was, you know, I trained as an actor and was always sort of seeking this, you know, like actors are trying to be like present in the moment and like there's all kind of this sort of like real presence and real connection and it's very elusive, you know? And when I, the first time I went skydiving, it was just like, you can't think about about your laundry you can't do anything but this thing

that you're doing you know and and and I created you know like all these metaphors about it where like you know you jump out of the plane and like there's only fear in your life when you're on the precipice right there's only fear on the ledge and as soon as you jump, like you're, it all unfolds. Do you know what I mean? You grow wings or you, you know, like you're going on that path. Like gravity is going to take you to the ground. So like you better figure out how you can get there safely, you know, like, and it's up to you in that way, but very much about being fully alive and fully as close to death

as you may be. And while I think skydiving is super safe, and I think it's safer than driving in your car. I think that, I mean, it's funny, people are like, oh, I can't believe you ever went skydiving. That's so crazy. And of course, I lost a lot of credibility when I broke both of my legs. We're going to get to that because we're still answering my first question of this podcast. Let's talk about the skydiving incident.

But I am, you know, look, you're not sitting here because you're a stuntman. It's like, okay, that's interesting to me, but what's interesting to me about you is, is the kind of, you know, sort of spiritual warrior perspective that you bring to your, not just your profession, but your life. Right. And so, you know, I want to get to the origin of, of, uh, you know, where that began. And it seems to me like, I'm sure it started very, you know, maybe it started in, you know, in, in vitro or, you know, in, in utero. But it seems to me that, you know, if you could point to one incident that kind of triggered, um, a different perspective on, on how you're living your life, like this skydiving incident seems like as good a place as any to, to park it.

Yeah, for sure. I think so for sure. I think I'd already like prior to that, I had, I'd kind of developed this way of being, uh, you know, I think most people laugh at situations like, well, we're going to laugh at this someday, this someday you know like and i've always been able and i think that that's part of being growing up as a cowboy right or or in a cowboy family like we laughed at everything all the time you know like and and so um while some people are like oh yeah someday this will be funny we'll look back at this and laugh you know like i've always been able to be in a situation and be able to be like oh this is actually kind of funny right so yeah we were talking about this before the podcast began but you know you strike me as a guy whose natural disposition is to like laugh and find joy in whatever situation you are like that's just how

you carry yourself for sure for sure and and and yeah like so then having that or being in that space and again that's something that i owe to fully owe to my parents. You know, um, there was, there, it was always like, I, I grew up in an environment that was full of love and full of support, you know, and, and full of sarcasm too. Like that was the, that was hugely part of it, you know? And, and when you're, when you're on the cattle ranch and you announce that you want to be an actor or perhaps a stunt man, this can't be going over very well. Well, no.

And honestly, I always wanted to, even then, I also wanted to draw comic books. So I was an artist and an actor. Yeah, it was more than that. I mean, I remember one day my dad was like you know and i really always wanted to be a pirate that was a funny thing like i really was like i didn't know how to like express it but like i wanted to be a pirate you know and and uh you know i wanted to get my ear pierced as soon as i could get out of like the house and i remember one day my dad had like a ear tag you know like a gun you know like the ear tag gun and he was just like if you for

the oh yeah and he was just like if you get your ear he goes you want your ears you know like a gun you know like the ear tag gun and he was just like if you for the oh yeah and he was just like if you get your ear because you want your ears you know like he was gonna like threaten to like your you know like give me an ear tag you know because i was like i'm gonna get an earring you know like so it was you know it was definitely like um what's the uh there's a there's a u2 song that says every, I forget the song, but it's like every artist is a cowboy, every something is a thief, I forget. And it's like I realized my dad and I were very, very different.

And we had a lot of conflict a lot of times. Conflict that never overrode his support of me. And probably just more to his personality and graciousness because i've you know there's a period of time where i wasn't super receptive to that you know but then i realized like we were that sort of like cowboy artist kind of those things you know like we we both wanted to be pirates i think we can kind of like relate to each other in that in that pirate way you know and uh but yeah there was always the the humor and and always kind of a fun sarcasm and a way of being like on the hot seat right so

it was like um one day you might be the or one minute you know you might be the the butt of all the joke and everybody's laughing at you right and then not two minutes later i'm gonna trip over something and and fall down in cow shit and i'm gonna trip over something and and fall down in cow shit and i'm gonna be the butt of the joke and everybody's gonna be laughing at me and i would have been the one that was like fully like leading the right the you know the joke on you and and so it was never personal and it was always malicious yeah never malicious but always knowing that you were going to be in that seat too you you know? And it was actually, it was actually funny because my Holly, who is, who is my ex, she, and my, and a great friend, she would, like, it took two years

in our relationship before I realized, like, when I was like using my sarcasm to say, like, I love you and I'm paying attention to you, which is how I learned it. Like in her family, like sarcasm meant, you know, I hate you and I think you're stupid. it. Like in her family, like sarcasm meant, you know, I hate you and I think you're stupid. Right. So like, it was like one of those things of like really like learning that our, that our languages for, for love are totally different. And I had no idea, you know, I was like in this sort of joyous place of sort of sharing the way that like my family had done it. And it was just like, you know, it was hurting her, you know, I had no, you know, I had no idea. So, you know, as I've gotten older, I've recognized just like, you know, it was hurting her, you know, I had no, you know, I had no idea.

So, you know, as I've gotten older, I've recognized how like not everybody grew up in that kind of environment that they're able to be so comfortable in the, in that hot seat, you know, but, and the reason I bring that up about the skydiving is like, I woke up, um, so I ended up, I had a, uh, I was only a 56th jump and I, I was, uh, out here in LA and, and, um, trying to be a stuntman, but I was working a temp job at, at Disney. How long ago was this? What year? This was, uh, 1995. It was 20 years ago.

Exactly. 20 years ago in March of 95. And, um, but I didn't have a SAG card, you know, I was like, you know, like not, I was, you know, like I was super fit and I was training all the time and I was, I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know what was, you know, like I didn't know, I didn't have an in, you know like not i was you know like i was super fit and i was training all the time and i was i didn't know how to do it i didn't know what was you know like i didn't know i didn't have an in you know and i was you're like the guy in line at starbucks who's like yeah i'm gonna be a stuntman like whatever yeah? And it was like, I was at this place where I was just kind of like, I was floating a little bit, you know what I mean?

And I was like, I was out here and I was trying to make it happen, but I didn't know the inroad, right? And I remember I took a guy. I was like, I went out to dinner with a bunch of people and I was like, hey, I'm going to Skydive tomorrow. Who's going with me? It was a beautiful day and I hadn't been jumping in a while and some guy his name's jeff who was from the office like i kind of barely knew him you know

and he's like i'll go you know awesome come on i'm gonna i'll pick you up at 8 30 right so cut to you know like 8 30 the next night and and i've been medevaced away and he's like alone at the drop zone waiting for us. No, but I'm just talking to this guy, right? So like, it just was very funny, like the guy that I invited. But so yeah, we went out there together and it was back, this was at Paris and it was back when you could,

and I think you still do it, but it's all computerized now. But if you bring somebody out for a tandem jump, their first tandem, you get a free skydive, right? So it was a free skydive right so um it was a free skydive you know ultimately not that free but uh as soon as back then as soon as like their feet touched the ground on their dive like you got a jump ticket and you could go you know and uh so it was i was i thought it was done for the day i was packing up my shoot and i was like uh but the last load a sunset load was going and and they were like um hey you got your guys down like do you want to go and i'm like yep

i'm i'm in i threw my you know i threw my my parachute over one arm and last run yeah totally it was like yeah but which is also very like sort of famous like stunt phrase was like you know like we got one more you know it's just like we just got one more for safety and then that's the one where like the guy you know blows up both his knees or right whatever happens and uh and i remember like i jumped out and i had this i mean it was beautiful sunset like i was where what airfield did you guys it was at paris paris valley which is which is by riverside uh-huh and uh um you know i remember a point like i when i opened one of my steering toggles like kind of popped out of my hand and it and it went through the d-rings that would sort of hold it you know like you can just you can let go of your steering toggles and they and and then grab

them again but this came out of my hand with such force it it flew out of my hand and and passed the d-ring so there's no way i could retrieve it but in that case you just sort of like steer with the rear risers, you know, like it's just a little more crude, but you can do it. And I'd done it before. So I wasn't really worried. And, and, um, I had a little bit of a spin, like my, I don't know what was going on. My canopy was kind of a little odd, but it wasn't something I didn't think I could manage or couldn't manage. And, and, um, about a thousand feet, I realized like, well, I didn't have any forward glide, and I was just dropping straight down. And I was over the parking lot, which was completely filled because the Golden Knights were there having their training camp. And the runway was in front of me, and I was too low to cross it.

And over here was a field. to one side of me which was really above it looked like a like a graveyard for used farm equipment that like you know gerald scarf who was the animator for the wall right had had designed i mean it was like this is like frightening like tim burton-esque like sharp metallic graveyard that i was kind of heading for it was like cars or you know like i was and uh so i decided to to to try to get more forward glide so i pulled really hard on my rear risers and and stalled out my canopy so it stalled out at about 500 feet and then re-inflated just before hit the ground but then i was in a spin and so when i i spin in so when it stalls out what does that mean like it's it kind of folds on itself and it's not catching the air exactly so like a like a parachute is designed the same way that an airplane wing is um and and

when you land like you're you're you know you're falling at 10 feet per second and you're traveling forward at about 30 miles an hour normally and then when you land like about 10 feet above the ground you pull down both of your brakes and it and it changes the aspect ratio of it and so you get you actually get lift creates negative airspace underneath the canopy so it lifts up um but unlike an airplane wing it doesn't have any thrust right so if it if you you do it at the right time you you literally just take a step right out of the sky as if you were walking because it just you're you're floating for that that moment right but if you do it too soon or if you you know do it in the air like because there's no

thrust it stalls out it just basically collapses on itself which is what happened so i let go of that and then it you know normally if you're high enough it'll reinflate and you're fine but then i wasn't compensating for the spin and the spin now became really violent and i was way outside the you know like it was spinning me around with the with the parachute at the center of the circle and me like outside, like almost flat, you know, like parallel to the ground, spinning around and it just slammed me into the ground. And they said probably like 70 miles an hour,

right next to my own car, which is amazing, right? And I didn't hit a car. I mean, if I'd hit a car, it would have been like being run over on the freeway at 70 miles an hour right or if i dropped straight in and not spinning you know like i was able to disperse that energy how much of you were i mean 70 miles an hour how much of that is downward force versus like the forward well i think it was spinning right so spinning um and then that was across really really across the ground you know once i because you know. Because I was in this sort of flat spin, basically.

Did you land on your chest? I landed. My feet hit. So I look at sort of the injuries and how it happened. But my feet must have hit first. And my right knee was locked out. And so the force of that went to my femur and broke my femur. And then I fell forward.

And I would have been on both of my knees. But one knee was, now my femur's broken. So my one knee was kind of trailing somewhere behind me. And my other knee hit the ground. And so I shattered that knee. And then I was like elbows and chin. And my hair was like really long at the time. And I wasn't wearing a helmet.

And of course, now I'm knocked out. It's like Utah. Totally. I was more than like, I was more the Bodhi. I was definitely more the Bodhi at the time. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, um, so yeah, I was like knocked out.

And, and of course the, you know, there's a doctor there that was like, I mean, this is all told to me afterwards. Right. Like if you, you know, like we, we got to call this guy's mother because he's not going to make it through the night, you know? And, of course, you know how stuff on your head bleeds like crazy? Like, my hair was super blonde, and it was just, like, covered, covered in blood, not going to live, you know? And that last, like, when you went into that spin,

I mean, what's going through your mind? Like, are you thinking, like, this is it, or I can salvage this or it's going to be okay. Or like I'm toast. You know, before it's, it's, it's funny because I don't, I remember thinking like before I stalled out my canopy, like I was looking at that, like I had no control and I'm going towards this like spiky monster graveyard thing. Right. And I remember thinking, this is going to happen to me like i was like oh my god this is gonna happen to me like and um and then it's interesting like in the hospital like a friend of mine like was videotaping me while i was on the phone with a with another buddy of mine and uh and i actually don't remember being scared you know um but but i there's video evidence

somewhere it's on vhs so it's probably been destroyed by now but like like of me on the phone telling my friend was like yeah i just remember being really scared you know and um so maybe i i guess i was scared but once i stalled it out and then i reinflated like i was spinning so fast it just was like you know like such a uh you know like being in car wash i don't even you know like i don't, uh, you know, like being in carwash, I don't even, you know, like, I don't, I don't remember anything. And I, I don't really remember any pain of hitting the ground, you know? Um, and, and then I woke up tied to a spine board or taped down to a spine board in the, in the emergency room. Right. Of course, I remember being abducted

by aliens, but, you know, I was medevaced away. And there was like, you know, a light, a bright light, which is like, you know, like, they're like checking to see if my eyes are like, like dilated or whatever. But my first thought to go back to that, like, sarcasm was like my absolute first thought

when I woke up in the emergency room was, well, there went all my credibility right it was just like like my first thought was like now no one's gonna believe me you know like now like what about skydiving yeah yeah exactly exactly like as an aspiring stuntman you just pulled off like an epic you know it's yeah exactly right but like you know i wrecked a motorcycle one time and and uh a buddy of mine was like i was like hey he was riding beside me when it happened on the freeway and and like you know traffic fully stopped and I you know grabbed a handful of my brake and and actually like really stomped the back brake which is not how I ride anymore but like you know like was sliding out

fishtailing and that and wrecked the bike and it it high-sided and flipped and i got thrown like you know down the the uh the shoulder of the road right by the median like you know 100 feet like just rolling down the way and and uh i asked him after i was like hey man what how what would you give me for that adjustment he was like you mean since you ruined the bike and no cameras were rolling like nothing like you get zero stunt adjustment for that you were like uh you know 15 years too soon because today everybody's got a gopro on their phone fully yeah yeah like skydive jump would have completely been a youtube moment yeah yeah like it would be all over the internet yeah fully this would be my podcast

exactly like oh yeah i'm that guy totally i'd have my own TV show. I'd have my whole deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Trampus 2.0. Exactly, exactly. So, so in the wake of that experience, I mean, you know, is this something as, you know, somebody who's a stuntman and has a unique kind of relationship with risk and fear, you slough it off? Or does this sort of, you know, root you in this, you know, kind of spiritual journey that propels you forward with this, you know, appreciation for the now and like, you know, how does it what is the impact of that experience? You know, the coolest thing about it was, I mean, a lot of things, you know, a lot of things happen, my life was transformed in an instant, right? So I was in a way where, you know,

you know a lot of things happen my life was transformed in an instant right so i was in a way where you know i went from and at that time i was 24 i was super fit you know and um and then i was in a wheelchair like the next day and so then the femur the knee what else what were the other injuries um i ended up that was that was basically it i had no internal injuries i had no neck and spine injuries i mean i was ridiculously lucky like astonishingly lucky um i ended up you know the blood that was all on my head was was five stitches on my chin five stitches you know and most people get that like chin scar when they're like four like i did it took me till i was 24 to get mine right and uh and and then i like a couple weeks later some of my teeth like like i had four teeth that sort of started like cracking off that i ended up having to get ground but that was

it um that was all the injury that i had wow i mean really really really amazing but so yeah here i am like and and and i think you know like at that point in my life i was probably pretty arrogant you know like i was like and and just just like feeling this sort of like bulletproof yeah fully you know like i was i was i mean i think there was still a um a conscious part of me but i definitely wasn't as i was much more narcissistic i was much more like into my deal you know know, like I, my path was like, I mean, I was, it was, you know, I was on this path of like awareness, but it wasn't, you know, like I wasn't able really to sort of express love in a really huge and profound way, you know. and uh um so there were things in me that weren't whole you know and and that experience uh you know not only i mean first of all it's super humbling you know and then and then years later when i when i did become successful as a stuntman or even had opportunities as a stuntman um i was

so much more grateful you know it was just like like it when it happened i just was like oh my gosh this is i mean this is enough you know like i i had a big project and i was just like wow that's that's magic that's enough you know and and it where before it had been like never enough i gotta you know like i gotta do this more harder i'm not good enough or whatever is it that sense of like everything's bonus time now or not quite that not so much like i didn't you know like like i don't think that i like again like that thing of you know like the fire burn and that sort of like reflection on on mortality it's like i'm not you know it's more about being able to sort of be aware of that moment and the possibility than uh spending time ruminating on what could have happened you know

what i mean i did live and i do live and so so that's, that's where my, where I always focus, you know? And I think even in my own personality where I'm more like, I focus on sort of the journey rather than where I'm didn't choose to go. You know, it's like, if I'm going to go to, if I'm going to travel to Ireland and live in Ireland for six months, I'm not thinking about what I'm leaving behind because obviously the adventure of going there is the thing that like, it's enough to get me there. Right. So like, why would I think about where I, where I was instead of where I'm going, you know? And, and I think that that's a little bit about that too, but, but it, uh, it definitely, I mean, one of the cool things about being in that wheelchair and in that space, and in particular

when I was actually able to walk again. So I, so I, able to walk again. So I had a rod down my femur. That's the surgery that they did on my femur. And if I'd had a weight-bearing leg, I would have been able to like walk relatively quickly and run within a month. You know, it's a really pretty quick recovery if you have a weight-bearing leg. But I'd also shattered that knee

and it was swollen like as big as a basketball. it and it shattered like a like a rock hitting a windshield right so the back of it was still solid but the front was just like pulverized right and they and and my femur was an open fracture that they set in the field so often with a femur fracture like in particular bone that's outside of your body you don't put it back in for the risk of infection unless you can't feel a pulse in your foot so like either the emts like didn't know what they were doing or they were trying to save my foot by putting that bone back in and um and so because of that like operating on my knee trying to like piece it back together would have risked a systemic infection, right? So they didn't do anything with my knee at all.

And again, to me, they told me like they didn't want to, yeah, like risk that infection, right? They told my dad or my dad, and as you recall, he's a cowboy who is prone to hyperbole. So I mean, like this just kind of comes with the territory. They told him that like trying to put my knee back together would be like trying to staple jello to a wall, which probably was true,

but I have doubts. Put that, put that jello out on, you know, just out on the counter. Exactly. Exactly. Let it,

let it freeze in the freezer for a little while. So, so as a result, like I couldn't, I, I, they just on the counter. Exactly. Exactly. Let it, let it freeze in the freezer for a little while. So, so as a result, like I couldn't, I, I, they just put a brace on it. And, and because my knee was like basically liquefied, I couldn't bend it for a month and a half while it solidified again. Right. And, and then, so I start, you know, like my recovery, it was two and a half months where, before I could get out of the wheelchair. And then I was walking on crutches where I was, um, you know, putting all of my weight on, on the opposing arm. So like I would step with my left leg and put all my weight on the, on the crutch that was in my right arm and vice versa, right. Opposing leg. And, and so like there was a period of time where if there was a tree in my vision and I was walking towards it,

it would take me five minutes to get there. And so I had to see it in a way that we don't really see in our life. We move too fast to actually see. Everything slows down. Yeah. And we have a memory of a thing. People talk about this all the time, where it's just like we don't. And a lot and, and, you know, like we have a memory of a thing, you know, and like when people talk about this all the time where it's just like, we don't, you know, and a lot of that's good, you know,

like we don't have the bandwidth or the capacity to, to always be like picking up everything, you know, like, I mean, that's our brains work often is to try to, you know, to diminish our experience so that we can like not be drooling and sitting in the corner versus like have more of an expansive experience you know like our brains are like kind of closing us down a little bit right but like when you slow down then the bandwidth can expand right you don't have to like there's not as much like you know like radically eating stimuli yeah exactly and so like the things that are there you

can can see you know and i had i had were you consciously aware of that for sure absolutely and i was like you know i'd considered you know i'd thought of myself as an artist and somebody was very aware and suddenly like i realized that it you know like 24 years old i was like learning to see actually for the first time it was really really really huge for me um and even you know like uh my girlfriend at the time, she came and took care of me for a couple of weeks and, and that was when my teeth started falling out, you know, like they, like they like flaked off. Right.

And, and, uh, my, I mean, it was just crazy. Like, I'm like, what is that? You know? Oh, wow. That's my tooth falling out. And, uh, like they didn't fall out at the root, you know, they just sort of like, it was like, you know, like slate or whatever shale, you know, like just kind of like flaking off. And we went to the dentist in Dalhart, Texas, which is where my mom's from.

And of course it wasn't ADA compliant. And so my girlfriend at the time, Reagan, thank you, had to carry me into the dentist office. had to uh carry me into the dentist office like she actually because like so this was like two weeks after i was like the the most fit and arrogant person on the planet you know what i mean and then i'm like i'm being like carried into the dentist office by my girlfriend which even that like those experiences were just you know like magic really you know like that was those things that continued to to open me in that way and then when i i i healed or as i was healing um you know i went and skydived a year later at the exact same spot like and and and throughout that year like people were like well you're never gonna you know

do that again you know and i'm like well yeah of course i have to and and my dad who never wanted me to skydive i used his like you know cowboy like logic against him i was like well dad you know i gotta gotta get back on the horse right he's like you know like i mean the first when you went back and did it again was it was there like an an extra level of trepidation or were you just like no i got or i mean was part of the part of the purpose in doing that to make sure that you didn't have some kind of fear blockage definitely like i had to do it i mean and i was you know i was immediately training again like i like as soon as i could start training like i was training right and i was i was you know i was in

the gym and i was lifting weights i was doing leg extensions and i was just like and i hurt it just hurt so bad and it turned out actually my leg was still broken. Like they had left a pin in it that was actually holding my leg and traction over the rod. And so after seven months it hadn't healed at all. And, uh, so I was like, I mean, imagine I was in the gym. I had it like it was in, I'd moved to my, so Reagan was living in Wilmington, North Carolina and, and Wilmington or North Carolina is a right to work state. So like all of my friends from college had gone there and were getting their SAG cards like right away. Like, and, and Reagan had moved there and was like,

Dawson's Creek is filming there. All these TV shows were there. It was like a little before that it was like Matlock had just finished, but American Gothic was there. And every like CBS movie of the week, it was before like Canada had came came become the the thing for that yeah that was the place to go like wilmington was the thing like it was it was like it was la new york and wilmington you know and uh and so we were all there and i went so we ended up in wilmington like so you were living you went and actually lived in wilmington i did yeah yeah wow yeah and uh um and got my sag card like in a situation where you know i thought again i thought i was like well i was gonna be on fire or blow something

up i thought i was gonna do some you know like heroically swashbuckling thing to get my sag card and it's like if they had asked me to run like i wouldn't have been able to do it you know and um but i was i was living there and i and had, you know, access to a 24, you know, I had a key to a gym, you know, there's no real 24 hour gyms at the time. And I, but I would, I would go there and I would work out all the time and, and my leg was broken and I was, and I was just like lifting, doing leg extensions. That's the thing. Like, I just think of the, I just think of the leverage on that broken leg that I was

putting. And I was like, this is not going to stop me. It's not going to stop me. You know, I'm just like fighting through the pain and whatever. And, and, and I went and saw this doctor and he was like, oh yeah, you either have a massive bone infection or we got to take this one screw out. Of course he took the screw out and, and instantly it was just like the vice had come off my leg, you know, I was like, oh, and then it started to heal. But in that time, like to, to go back to the, you know, like, the second skydiver or the, you know, skydiving after that, you know, there was a lot of people with a lot of intention to love me, you know what I mean? Who were expressing their concern and

hoping that I would never skydive again. And really like, you know, and it was all about love, but really what was happening was they were like infusing me with their fear, right? And it was all about love, but really what was happening was they were infusing me with their fear, right? And it's almost something like your sort of epic run, right? There was a moment the day before I went skydiving, I could run a few blocks without being winded. I was trying to train and I couldn't just, you know, get there. There was just like, like I still felt broken, you know? So part of that was informed by this desire to feel like if you could, if you could do that jump successfully, that that would make you whole. For sure. You know, and, and, and I went up,

I went up in the plane with all everyone's fear you know my mother my grandmother like all of these people that had to express like genuine love and concern with me but the result was that it was putting fear in me you know a fear that you didn't have prior and that when i jumped out of the plane and was now 12,000 feet up in the air and in a three-dimensional world, a 360-degree world, and part of this huge thing, feeling small and feeling huge and feeling alive and near death and all that stuff, realizing that that was not my fear. The instant I jumped out of that plane, I was like, well, none of that was mine. It wasn't mine at all like I'm this this is me in the air like having this like sort of unique experience of hurtling towards the ground and being fully present like I'm not afraid at all and um and then I jumped

again that I think I did two jumps that day and of course the second jump like the plane ride was like a completely different experience and the jump jump was still really, you know, like very present in that way and went home and ran a mile. You know, it was just like the next day I could run, you know, it was just like, it was the, the physical block was all fear. You know, it was all fear. So what do you make of that in terms of like, you know, how that lesson has informed, you know, later decisions and how you live? I mean, because that's kind of a profound realization. you know, like hearts, mission, desire, journey, whatever, like with your authentic self, there's, there is no fear, you know, it's not there. And, and, and that fear, you know, like I said before, like it's all on the ledge, you know, there's only fear on the ledge. And once

you commit to that, to an action, action the fear goes away like it goes away because there's no space for it you know and so as long as we're like you know in action and moving forward in that way and and for me like i said following your like your like sort of biggest authentic like heart opening self then then there there is no space for it, you know? Well, also recognizing that some of that fear, the fear that, that visits you on the ledge may not be your own fear that you're, you're sort of this vessel for other people's projections onto you and being able to kind of decipher the difference between, you know, what your true emotional state is and the kind of, you know, baggage that you allow to, you know, kind of

penetrate your boundary and carry for other people. Like parsing that I think is, is tricky, you know, to try to like understand what's yours and what's not. Yeah, for sure. And I think that there's almost in a way there's like, there's no way of knowing unless you go, right? Like, I mean, like action being the antidote you know action being the the curative kind of solution to alleviating that fear that's interesting yeah you know and i think that that's like like i remember when i was younger and i think even before like i read the artist's way like very young you know and and one of the things that that julia camera wrote in that book was like you know, it's like we're all spiritual sharks, right?

When we stop swimming, like we sink to the bottom and die. And that's a little bit of that kind of like idea, you know, like moving forward in that way. Otherwise you just like, you sink and die. Yeah, I talk about that book all the time. Oh, really? I've done the artist's way many times. I have just like book all the time. Oh, really? I've done The Artist's Way many times. I had you on, dude. I was just like, journals of morning pages.

Yeah, I know. I still have all these journals. I think I started, the first time I did that must have been 1998 or something like that. Oh, yeah. I still have some of those journals sitting around. I was like, oh, my God, I should look at that. It's such garbage. No, I know.

I think I might have been in it in like, I think I was in it in maybe 1994. And it was just tomes of these things, you know? And I, and, and, and it's, I have to admit, it's been a long time since I wrote morning pages, but it would, like I, I, gosh, I can't even imagine reading some of that stuff. And a lot of it's just like like i don't know like maybe like cuff my jeans like in a different way today you know it's just like but there are there's some things in it you know and i think like i never like i was always like a visual artist or or you know in my body in action in that way so i never thought of myself as a writer which is strange now because i'm like i'm writing screenplay and i'm kind of like trying to create some you know like content for myself to like to direct and like tell like bigger stories like i'm i i feel like i'm like i inherited an ability to tell stories from my dad like my dad is a storyteller i think the difference between my stories and his is mine are true you know he was gonna that doesn't matter we're in hollywood who cares whether it's true no it's true but uh my dad could tell, he tells great stories.

But like, I never was a writer, you know? So when I was like writing morning pages, I was never thinking of content. You know, I wasn't creating content in any way. It was just really that brain dump that she talks about. You know, it was really easy for me to just dump all that stuff out. Dump, dump, dump, dump, dump.

Yeah, well, that's where you get the clarity so that you can later on write the screenplay. The screenplay doesn't get written in the morning pages. Exactly. The morning pages are taking out the garbage. Well, exactly. And that's, you know, like, we talked about this before the podcast a little bit,

you know, like this way that I'm sort of cultivating, like, you know, a lot of the work that I'm doing now is so much different than this, you know, the skydiving and the kind of the things that brought me on this journey where I am. But like, like the, the kind of heart that i'm trying to create now is this emptiness you know this empty vessel you know like i do it i don't want to be half full or half empty i want to be empty so that i can just fill it with light like fill it with lightness

and and and it's an empty heart is what i'm trying to cultivate and And that is, you know, like those morning pages are great for that because it empties you in such a way that, yeah, you're able to be a vessel or a receptor for those. You're available. The creativity, the opportunity. All it is is expanding your bandwidth. You know, I feel like we operate in such a limited bandwidth now because of stress and ego and all of the things it's all just compressing our

our experience and our experience of reality is so dictated by like i mean we think oh like i'm fully expressing myself and i'm aware of everything that's going on you know but like i i you know i like when i talk about bandwidth i I had a Border Collie who was, you know, like my companion in LA for 16 and a half years, you know? And a very smart dog. You know, as people with Border Collies all say. Smartest dogs, right? My dog was really smart.

Jack Russell's were the smartest. They're pretty smart. But yeah, talk to a Jack Russell owner and they will tell you that yeah yeah exactly jack russell's are smart um border collies are smart really smart dogs um but anyway this and loving you know like the dog his name was josie wales and he just was like profoundly you call him the outlaw i called it well i called him his whole name was the outlaw, Josie Wales. I called him Joe, mostly. He was a really, really...

That's a classic name. And honestly, I will tell you that that dog taught me how to love. When I was saying earlier, I was unavailable in that way. The experience I had with him opened my heart to be able to both give and receive love and loving in such an authentic way, a non-conditional way. And in that way, like, and really it happened, I was going to, I mentioned I went to Ireland, right?

And I was leaving for Ireland and I was all about this journey and I found myself when that happened. And it was after I'd broken my legs and and come back I was I was healing and I found myself sort of like pursuing visual art again I was like well this may be the time to not be a stuntman and maybe like go back to like the artwork that I started out with early on too so I ended up finding my way to Ireland to study animation and when I was leaving I was I mean I was leaving a relationship I was leaving two dogs um all of my friends um and uh I found myself I found myself sort of in the role of comforting everyone around me that I was leaving

which is so weird right like people be like oh we're so sorry that you're going and I would be the one when my story was like no it's really great i'm going to to do this thing and and it's really awesome and so like i never had to like actually sort of face it right and then the day i was leaving um i took my dog for a walk and and then he was like okay bro you know he like he couldn't like he couldn't take the burden of leaving from me. You know, like it was like I had to, like I had to look at him and be like, oh my God, like I'm leaving you. And then it brought all of what I was kind of not facing that I was leaving. Like it brought all of that up.

And just by, by reflecting, you know, like he was just sitting with me in love, you know, and I oh my god this is what it's like you know i didn't even i never knew you know like and um and and that was a moment that like changed my life so anyway this dog like he's just like uh was was super magical why was that why did i bring up my dog you were talking about uh i don't know this is a conversation yeah my friend says uh uh uh she'd be like she called me tangent man she's the same friend that turned me on to jay freestyle yeah well the tangent becomes the through line at some point like yeah i'm just letting you like just so you know like i'm i'm like i'm giving him a long leash there's no agenda today today. Well, exactly. I mean, and that's kind of, that's a conversation with me. Like,

this is who you are, man. So yeah, for sure. It's a story. I used to tell people, I used to tell people like there would be like someday I would come back to the original tangent that started it all.

And it would be something like baked spaghetti. So the joke was like, it was like, shaggy dog story. Yeah. Baked spaghetti. Yeah, exactly. Right. But I do want to get to the part where, you know, kind of, uh, like baked spaghetti so the joke was like it was a shaggy dog story yeah baked spaghetti yeah exactly right but i do want to get to the part where you know kind of uh i want to like sharpen the lens a little bit on you know the kind of the spiritual journey and how that began to take place

i mean so so in the wake of kind of rehabilitating your body there must have been a moment of you know you're getting more into visual arts and thinking maybe, you know, stunting isn't going to happen and, or maybe, maybe you didn't think that, but you find yourself in yoga, like you start like availing yourself, making yourself more available, like physically and emotionally to kind of, you know, these spiritual principles that now seem to take, you know, kind of a prominent role in, you know, how you, you know, the principles upon which you live your life and make decisions about you know career and relationships and and everything yeah for sure you know and it's it it is you know when i was so i started pursuing you know i started coming back to my visual art and i was finding myself like i i came back from ireland and and

you know i had i felt like i had an interesting relationship with the universe at the time where i would say if this then, then that, right? Like, I've always been something of a manifester. Making deals with God. Well, yeah, like, it's what I'm willing to accept, you know, like, deals with dog, really. I mean, it's not ironic that, like, I find my love through dog, not God, right? But, like, yeah, it was almost what I was willing to settle for, right? Like, but like, yeah, it was almost what I was willing to settle for.

Right. Where, um, you know, I've always had these just like magical coincidences, like, and been aware of synchronicity, which actually reminded me why I brought up the dog. But, um, and it was about bandwidth, by the way, like bandwidth, you know, like, and, and, um, you know, know we i used to live in an apartment in a loft downtown and and and he would uh in order to go out like we would go to the elevator right and we'd have to go to the elevator he'd stick his nose right in the crack of the elevator door the door would open he'd get inside stick his nose in the crack and it would open again and and every single time he stuck his nose in the crack of the door, like the elevator would open and like without fail ever, you know?

And so his, as soon as he saw that crack in the elevator door, he put his nose there and, and it opened. Right. And so in his bandwidth of experience, like those things were connected. That's a causal. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah and so if he was able to expand his bandwidth just a little bit to look up and see my hand pushing the button right and actually activating that then his whole reality would have shifted right but his truth was based on on the bandwidth that he was in border college

you're smart but he was operating on a limited bandwidth in the same way too that if i was able to expand my bandwidth enough to see that my finger really probably isn't the cause of the elevator opening either other than you know like there are certain mechanisms making it happen that are a result of of pushing the button whatever happening but there's something bigger at work and it really is about expanding our bandwidth but the choices that we make are while they may be fully authentic often are based on always are based on imperfect information exactly and and uh you know far lacking from a full perspective on what's actually at play exactly like because of a limited bandwidth you know you can really go down the rabbit hole on that and start talking about

like dark energy and dark matter and you know like kind of oh sure particle physics totally universe actually functions totally totally totally but yeah yeah so but anyway i just want to revisit that but so because i was reminded of what i why i brought my dog up but i um as far as like yeah that's sort of like how i then like started to uh kind of come into this awareness you know i um i was pursuing art and i and um and i was getting better um the the thing in ireland like wasn't exactly working out um but it's because i of the relationship i felt like i had at the with the universe at the time right like i would say i'm willing to as long as um as you know i have access to the machines and i can do all this artwork that I want to create,

I don't care if the school is crap. Well, it would be like six months later, it would be exactly that. I don't care if I have a horrible job at feature animation as long as I get to take advantage of the art classes and the life drawing classes that they had at lunch and afterwards. And six months later, I have exactly that. I'm doing data entry in hr and and and yet and i'm taking like

two hour lunch breaks and three hours after work and i'm drawing on the model like with the best you know artists in town um both as collaborators and and teachers um every single day you know so i got exactly what i you know and and it was one of those things where later I realized like, oh wait, if I just ask for what I want, like I'm sure that there, you know, the universe like is, you know, the universe, whatever. Like it was like, oh, I was going to give you like so much more, but if you're willing to settle for that,

like then we'll just like send that energy somewhere else, you know? And, but it was, it was actually the deal that I was making, you know? And, um, but it was, it was actually the deals that I was making, you know? So Ireland happened, you know, it happened to be exactly that, right? Um, uh, not a great school and, and I, I got to do that, but it wasn't enough for me. And I ended up coming back. Um, I was going to go to art center and I then I ended up going to USC for a little while and and in that time is when I started really practicing practicing yoga um getting on my bicycle um I'd never really ridden a bike and I mean I

since I was a kid till I was I mean I had a Schwinn Stingray and then I had a right you know I had a 613 or whatever you know it's just like right what color was your Stingray blue. Yeah. I had a yellow one. Oh really? Yellow banana seed. Oh yeah. Mine was blue. It had the like sparkly blue banana seed for sure. Um, and, uh, um, and in that time where I like started getting into yoga, um, started riding my bike and started rediscovering my body again, you know, I realized I was like, okay, well I could send, I could spend, you know i realized i was like okay well i could send i could spend you know like six hours eight hours 10 hours 12 hours a day in a dark room you know drawing uh somebody jumping off a building on fire or i could you know like opt for the path of instant gratification which was like get get lit on fire and jump off a building you know and that's how that kind of like you know that's how that evolved um i started doing um the water world stunt show at universal

studios um after 9-11 i i uh i actually like i i was i was i was teaching yoga and i was trying to i thought for a while i was going to be a firefighter. I was sort of like, you know, like, I got to get out. I want to be of service. I don't want to be part of this industry. You know, so there's always like this calling to be of service, you know. And... Yeah, so not only were you taking it, you were teaching yoga, so...

I was teaching yoga, yeah. So like I... Obviously got a foothold in you. Yeah, exactly. So I'd gotten, like in the, you you know in the late 90s i had really really developed a practice daily practice um very intensely um found you know a kind of yoga vinyasa yoga um kind of a non-specific vinyasa you know what would now be like hatha vinyasa versus you know ashtanga um where were you teaching i I taught at the Center for Yoga. And then I taught kind of in the mid-2000s.

I was teaching at Liberation, which was once that kind of like was an offshoot of some people that had come from the Center for Yoga. But I taught in the big room at Center for Yoga. I mean, it was a really like sort of magical time, you know. I was traveling to India, you know, several times. And I mean, it was really like I thought I was going going to, I thought I was going to be a yoga teacher. And, um, well, you were a yoga teacher. Well, I mean, I thought that that was like my, I mean, that was it. You know, I was like, and this was really before like, you know, somebody was like, you know, you should do a DVD. It's like, no, there was like no yoga DVD. Like it was a novel idea to be like,

do you, you know, I'm like, yeah, well, and then of course, before anybody, it's funny because there's a lot of i mean there's a lot of yoga teachers in la who are frustrated actors oh totally i mean that's what you know like people yeah like in person like trainers you know it's like that you know you yeah you start teaching yoga you become a massage therapist a trainer whatever the thing that you become in order to be an actor and and really uh you know that um be an actor and and really uh you know that um when so after 9-11 i i i uh i got a full-time job at at universal studios like i was kind of you know like the way that that live stunt show works is there's a roster of people there's a couple of full-time teams and then there's like six people

down the list that are like clamoring for those like top spots right and and the great thing about it is when you're full-time, you work like, I worked, my shift full-time was Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and every other Wednesday, right? Like that was my full-time job. And I made more money than I'd been making any time before that. It allowed me to teach two classes a week

and not worry about money. You know, there's a period when I was just starting to teach yoga and I was teaching like 15, like maybe 17 classes a week like something ridiculous like all over town like i was teaching at center for yoga i was teaching at a bally's in glendale i was teaching at bodies in motion in in in on balboa you know and and in encino and it you know i was traveling all over town and i was thinking like i had this like like I had attached my rent to my practice you know and it really like I was struggling I was having a hard time with that

and then I and then I got uh this opportunity full-time opportunity at Universal Studios I mean I was working really hard to make that happen and ultimately it happened and and uh and that allowed me to not care at all about teaching. You could detach the yoga from the finances. Exactly. It was just like I was able to let that be my seva. It was service to be able to do that. And it also allowed me...

The great thing about that schedule was... So Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, every other Wednesday, I would have a huge number of shows in the summertime. But if I had a job or if I wanted to take off or if I wanted to travel, like I said, there was those six people down the list that I used to be one of that were desperate to have my job. And so at any time, I could pass that off.

If I had an audition or a stunt opportunity that was on one of my three or four days off a week, I would just take that and i would do that but if it fell over into the time that i had my you know work at the live show then uh i would just get it covered you know so what's the first big break and into the real stunt world that happens for you like what was the thing that that occurred that allowed you to you know make that transition into like being you know the being the dude who's sword fighting with Johnny Depp? Well, that was it, actually. Oh, really?

Your first gig was Pirates of the Caribbean? Yeah. I had done some commercials. I had done some day playing on TV shows. But yeah, Pirates, the first Pirates was the one that changed it for me. And a buddy of mine who, he was like, it was interesting because I was trained as an actor and kind of a conservatory style training where I did a bunch of stage combat and I

did all these different things. And I really had this idea that actors could kind of do everything that i could do and and and didn't realize that my skill set was and my you know sort of uh level of of enthusiasm about it was was different than that right so i sold myself very very very short at that time and a buddy of mine who had um his name is mark vanzo and and uh he doubles liam neeson he's he's a you know um does a lot like it works a lot these days and all that taken movies but apparently he's done with that though right I don't make those movies anymore is he doing a couple more or something I don't know like I think he's I don't know yeah yeah yeah um but Mark's a great guy and and and has been really somebody that has helped

me out in my career in a huge way and and and And he says, he asked me to come over to his house and train him to sword fight for this big audition for Pirates, which I kind of at the time didn't know anything about. And because of my energy wasn't there, you know, I was like, I was teaching. I was like, it just wasn't kind of where my head was, right? That's interesting though, because yeah, based on what you just said, there's a change in your relationship in terms of the attachment to that career path, right? That's interesting though, because yeah, you, you, you, based on what you just said,

there's a, there's a change in your relationship in terms of the attachment to that career path, right? Yeah, for sure. Like, yeah, I'm doing this other stuff now. I don't really need that. I don't need to be Bodie and Johnny Utah. Totally. And when you were there, then that's when it happened. No, that's exactly right. Exactly right. And so he was, he, and he had this conversation with me, which was like, Hey, you know, you know, what you can do is like a thousand times more than what any of these people can do. And you need to, I mean, actors and stuff, but you need to express that and be a part of it.

You've got to try to get into this audition. And so I ended up getting, you know, like getting this opportunity and auditioning. When you audition as a stuntman, what do they make you do? Well, that was like, I mean, often you you know like you know that's a way that like when you need like tons and tons of people and you'll call out it right you know like mostly it's like because they already know who their guys are yeah you know like but we're like all of the all of the

soldiers and pirates and sailors and so the stunt coordinator um who's a astonishingly good friend of my name george rugi who uh really took a chance on me at that point and has, you know, over the last decade and a half, like really become a genuine true friend. And, but also like somebody who provided a lot of opportunity for me early on, you know, and, and really because, so I showed up and, and I was enthusiastic. I was laughing and I was enthusiastic. I was laughing. I was enjoying, you know, like just fully committed to the thing of it. And he was like, look, you need to come to this kind of callback. Like Gore is going to be picking, you know, all time, full time pirates.

Like Gore Verbinski. Yeah, yeah. Major director. The very one. I mean, Mr. Verbinski yes um so gore's gonna be picking these you know like like pirates like come in like you look as dirty as you can and whatever and and uh this is one of those moments where like i i always find myself in my life being like exalted and humbled like right in the same moment which is just so magic like like the day

that i got into the dGA, like, which was a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge thing for me. Right. And, um, I was, I was taking my paperwork to, uh, the office and my wallet flew out of my, I mean, I, we'd gone on a tech scout for this TV show that I was coordinating and, uh, um, I'd blown past that, you know, as a stunt coordinator, you, you never go on the tech scout bus right because you'll just get stuck there all day and they have like 30 locations and only two of them have action so like you take your motorcycle and you meet them at the at the ones that are important well so i'd done that and i i was going back to the office to

make sure my paperwork got in for my deal memo for the dga and i yeah and for the listener the dga is the directors guild of america it's the it's the union for directors that's right and that's kind of a it's like a you know like a stunt coordinator path which is uh you know you start out doing stunts and then you become a coordinator and then you second direct and are part of the dga and second unit directing is sort of directing the stuff that the main director doesn't have time to do like a lot of it is exactly establishment shots or kind of or action too like huge you know like huge action set pieces the director may bring in like the cast or the you know and then they move on to

do something else and then the big stuff with the doubles and lots of cars and all that stuff you know like wrecking stuff may happen on second unit um and which you know we will unpack that later but that was a real transition too that happened was that for the bridge it was the bridge yeah yeah great show yeah it was it was a really good show isn't it um did it get canceled it did get canceled yeah yeah i enjoyed it i watched watched most of it yeah it was really it was it was a great show um should be still going, but, oh well. All right. But, yeah, so, you know, George had taken this risk on me for Pirates, you know, brought me into this audition with Gore.

Gore brought me in and, there was a circle of everybody, and and george had called me and said listen you know i don't really know you you know but you're super enthusiastic and and i just want you to look really like as ugly as you can you know and so like i i mean i had this thermal and a ratty t-shirt and some cargo pants and put bicycle grease on my head and you know like i was all like i put nasty stuff on my teeth you know the kind of stuff they do to make your teeth that they use in makeup stuff and i went in there and and of course all these other stunt guys were like you know they're wearing

their like you know like button-down t-shirt with the sleeves cut off so it looks kind of like i mean i looked like a bum you know and these guys look like you know like stills like showing off their arms or whatever and and and g, and, and Gord walks around and he's looking at all of us and, and he, and he looks at George and he goes, George, these guys are all just too buff and too good looking. And he looked at me and he was like, except you, you're, you know, like you go over here, like, and now, and I got hired in that moment. Right. Like I ended up being one of like five guys that were like the bat full-time bad guy pirates. And I worked for, you know, five months on that that movie but it was that awesome moment where it was just like

like I'm like he totally insulted me but also like transformed my life in my career right you know like and that that gig ended up you parlayed that into being in all three of the movies for four of them and then and when you're doing that i mean correct me if i'm wrong but you know you're kind of playing different small bit characters right so you're actually like a lot of different people in each one of the movies oh for sure you know and and uh in the first one you know there were like like i said we were sort of full time pirates so we you know like there were there were guys that were sailors and soldiers and you know they would have to have to shave or they could shave you know but we had to grow our beards out and we were always like you know those guys were

working and and i would be scuba diving or hiking in a volcano or some kind of way you know so like but i was really mostly like a particular person you know but it's nondescript like indie stunts you know what i mean so like um yeah like the things gets blown up, we're all in that, like in the second one, when the Kraken is attacking that octopus squid monster thing, you know, like we're all defending that and I may change wardrobe or I was one of the flying Dutchman, which was all like kind of digital costumes and stuff. And then that one, like I didn't have to have a beard, so then I'd be a sailor as well, you know? So it's like, yeah, I played a lot, a lot of different parts.

And I really never, there may have been like every once in a while I had to double somebody, but for the most part it was, yeah, I was the guy that was like sword fighting with Johnny or Kira or Jack Davenport or some, you know, any of these other, Orlando, any of the other actors, you know, like I would be in kind of a hotspot with those guys.

Right, that's amazing. And so you're in all four of these movies and then you go on and you do Leatherheads Resident Evil Indiana Jones National Treasure Alias like you become like you're working all the time if you go to your IMDB page it looks like you've been in the movie business for 50 years there's like so many credits, which is cool, you know, like you, how you made all of that happen. So, you know, I'm interested in, in, in kind of what that subculture, you know, the subculture world of stuntmen is like, like we all, you know, are aware of it on some level, but like, I'm sure the reality of it is very different than what we imagine, you know? So like, what are, what are some misconceptions about like, you know, what you guys do that, that people might be surprised to hear about well you know what's funny i i will say like um there is a funny thing that like i i was working on we were working on national treasure

and um and we were in philadelphia and a group of us gone to new york and spent a couple of days there and we ended up getting called back like we we had to, you know, run, drive all night and get back like early in the morning for a particular scene. And the World Series was going on, right? So these two girls that are friends of mine that were already at the bar and I was coming and meeting there. And then we were going to drive back together. So I show up and this guy comes up to me. He was like, oh, man, you know, like shaved head like mine at the time.

And he's like, man, you're a stunt guy. Like, you know, like Lisa and Heidi were already talking about you. And you know, like he was like, this guy was like, you must get laid all the time. Right. Like that was his deal. And I was like, he goes, cause I tell people, cause this is his thing. He was like, I tell people I'm Vin Diesel stunt double. And it is just like the best thing. Right.'s like our conversation totally you know and and he's like

and it oh it just works for me all the time like well you must be as a stunt guy and the funny thing about some people is that like um because you know that like as soon as you say you're a stunt person somebody's gonna say like what the most dangerous thing you ever did? Right. Which I'm waiting to ask you. What's the craziest thing you ever did? What's, is Johnny Depp cool? Is, you know, who's the biggest jerk you worked with or whatever? You know, so like, so some people actually like put that off for the longest time. Be like, oh, hey, what are you doing? Like, you know, I'm kind of working in the film business.

You know, like, and they'd be like, oh, really? What do you do? And you'd be like, well, you know, you don like you know i'm kind of working film business you know like i'm gonna be like oh really what do you do and you'd be like well you know i you know i'm in front of the camera a lot of times you know whatever i'm a i'm a i'm a stunt guy you know why you're a stunt guy you know and then they like freak out and it becomes that right so it's so it's actually like there's an energy about stunt people that like it's not attractive at all you know because we're trying to like often downplay i mean there's obviously there's a lot of ego involved and some you know the people some people are like i'm a stunt person in that but like if you really often want to have a genuine conversation that's not just about like what you do in the movies like we'll downplay it

and and i find that that is like you know i think there's a conception that everyone's just like oh yeah these guys are like super macho and whatever but they're really like sometimes we really downplay that in a way that like makes us unattractive, you know? Yeah. No, I get that. I get that. And I, and I would think that, you know, it's changed a lot. Like it's not Steve McQueen and bullet where, you know, you guys are, are, you know, driving through the streets of San Francisco as much as it is. I mean, not that that kind of stuff isn't still part of that world, but you know, so much of it has been sort of transplanted with green screen work,

you know, wearing those suits with the little, you know, sensors all over them and doing all of that kind of stuff. That's a, you know, kind of just part and parcel of the modern age of filmmaking. But I think that's really cool. Cause we were able to like, you know, there was a, you know, when all that was coming on, you know, everyone's afraid that like, you know, Oh, like we're never gonna like, this is going to take all our jobs and everything's going to become digital. And,

and, and in some ways, like, I mean, you do see digital doubles often, but like many times it's like you, a stunt person goes into something that becomes digital or they can extend a fall or background. Like I just saw,

like I just saw Everest, right? Oh yeah. Have you seen that movie? I haven't seen it yet. So, you know, they're they're climbing and and you know you could tell that i mean it's incredibly realistic but also you know part of the background you know it's like when they're the perspective of being on the mountain and seeing the view off of that i'm like well that's got to be computer generated because they're not actually on everest you know what i mean so

they're probably not even on a mountain yeah i mean there's probably like 20 by 20 feet of styrofoam that they're on right right so so you know the stunt person doing what they do but just sort of you know the graphic aspect of like you know painting out the background or some other aspect of it but still you know taking that risk well yeah i mean and you can that thing you know you can uh i mean there's wire removal i mean the the thing that i did on birdman you know i was on a cable like i jumped you know i was so i know that scene i mean it's like it's like a you know arguably one of the most important scenes in the whole movie i mean he's he's up on that thing he's up on the top of that i mean were you actually on top of that building in in the theater district or oh yeah for sure on a soundstage no no no it

was we were on that building yeah for sure and it really was like a top of that theater like i know that street uh no you know it was actually it was a school that was um on like 43rd between eighth and ninth it was just a little bit that's the same neighborhood yeah yeah totally in fact it's you know like he walks out i mean the geography that movie is a little interesting because it's like yeah if you know that about it like that theater should be like on a different corner or something like that and then he walks you know when he goes when he gets locked out of the back and he has to go around the block right it's like exactly because it quite makes sense it doesn't yeah yeah and then when he walks away he walks you know like where we were was west of actually where that theater was you know and it's it's just kind of

hard to tell where it is but yeah that was on 43rd between like you know 8th and 9th um and it was and looked like about i don't know 10 or 12 stories up yeah it was like 10 stories right and so he takes the leap but you're the one making the leap what is that like what are the what's the technical aspects of of pulling that stunt off well the cool thing about that's that wires yeah i was i had a wire i had it i had a line on me um and really because the um you know if you remember the shot the techno crane kind of follows me off and then i fall out of the bottom of the frame but the camera dips down so you see people and cars and things on the street and then and then what it was a digital double kind of comes out and hits the tree and kind of goes around and then and then it goes back around to the behind that church and

then uh then michael's composited into the rest of it and and that was stuff that we shot at montreal where we put had him on a green screen and and they had shot those plates in manhattan you know and then we just projected them and and and, and he flew around in that way. Right. Um, but the cool thing is, is that is a, that is an old, you know, Hollywood trick, right? It's a cowboy switch, right? But it's, but it's a sort of modern take on the cowboy switch. Right. So, um, and there's the edit happens in the, in the whip, like in the blur. So if you notice, like when when the guy the guy says like do you know where you need to go or do you have some place to go and he's like yeah i know where to go and and michael runs off and he exits frame and the camera holds just a second on that guy on

the roof and then whips and and it catches me and then i go off so well the whole movie is cut on the whips exactly the cut on the whip or in the one shot exactly or in the dark you know like when they go through like the stairway or into the bar there's like at least a frame of darkness and they're able to cut in those moments as well but yeah so it's like so with michael on the roof like he just ran towards the edge and it whipped and followed him and then we did that a number of times and then set up the stun he just pulls up before yeah exactly right and then i just so the then i start with the camera and it whips with me and i jump off and then they match it in the blur which i just think it's so cool kind of like harness on you so you jump off and then it just

catches you that's right so i just it decelerated me um probably about 40 feet down so um i was attached to a crane um and then uh and you know i was started at the back of the roof so they had to take in the slack as i ran across it so the so the line's getting shorter as i'm coming towards the ledge towards the crane right and then jump off and then it pays out and then gets into like a belay device that slows me down so that the shock of that of that stop at the end right right you know doesn't like right how many times you have to do that i think i did it about eight times yeah there had to be a nice crowd down on the street well the yeah it was pretty cool yeah yeah you know there

was and and also like again there were backgrounds sort of moving down there too but yeah there was a good crowd and then also the people across in the in the buildings across like we're we're home you know what i mean so like they like it was kind of neat to see them there's like a little you know like a couple little kids like standing on their balcony just like minds blown you know i mean that's a really special movie was there a sense when you were working on that like this is this is like this is something unique and and and really different you know i don't know certainly unique and different in or out to i mean come on yeah i mean it was challenging like the the the production schedule was very short um i mean they were doing you know the takes were so long and so it would be like you know you would have like maybe two setups a day two or three where the setup has to take forever when you're

shooting this super long takes with all the moving parts and with no editing right so that so that there's nothing to cut away to i mean you know like most filmmakers now can shoot just a bunch of garbage and like you can cut away like you can cut away to anything if you like shotgun the coverage right so you know what would happen is they would they would have stand-ins and and um do all of the camera movement stuff like that and they would do that over and over and over and over until they got it right. Then they would bring, you know, if it was a scene with Michael, for example, out on the roof, they would bring Michael out.

They would do that a number of times. And then some kind of inspiration would happen in the middle of that. And then, so that would change everything, right? So it's like, so then you would have to take, you know, do more takes, but like everything had to be perfect. Like, like if-

Zero room for error. If something was not right in the the take it had to go again yeah because you wouldn't be able to assemble the movie no exactly because there's again you can't cut away there's nothing to cut away to so so i think that kind of you know there was some pressure and and and trying to to do a lot and and um and so it did I mean, we were all working very hard. Um, I don't know that, um, like, I think I was very, very excited much before I saw the film, like that it was going to be really, really good. Um, but I'm not as sure if I was excited, like when we were working on it, you know what I mean? But I will say like, I've had some, like, I mean, I've had some magical

experiences on movies and I've had some really, really, really like horribly, horrible experiences on movies. And this was not, you know, like it wasn't a hard time. You know what I mean? And as I mentioned before, like one of those takes, I jumped off a building and a dragonfly landed on my arm in midair. And that's magic, you know? Like, and so that kind of, like then, so I lowered down. So I jumped off the building.

Dragonfly lands on my arm. I watch it flying at me. I'm hanging in the air. And then they lower me to the ground. Everybody on the ground freaks out and is taking pictures and stuff like that. I end up, I'm like, I gotta show these guys. I mean, like Michael alejandro and chivo and and everybody's up on the roof like i'm like they'll never believe this i gotta go up and and to get back up to the to the uh to the roof like i

i would go up in a there was a building next door i went seven floors up in an elevator across a hallway up a stairwell across the roof and we built a platform that was like that that building was still smaller than than the school i was jumping off of so we built the platform to get up there and so it was kind of a journey to get to the roof and the dragonfly stayed on my arm the whole time and then once i got back and i was like hey look what happened like when i went over that ledge like production shut down you know i mean like like i mean it was still after you went back in the building he's still hanging out on your arm yeah okay so and then you go up and you see alejandro and is it still on you at that yes yeah no it stayed there and then um and then uh you know i mean while i'm

getting hooked back up to do it again well well i have video of of michael filming alejandro filming the dragonfly on my arm right like and and the you know the epk guys the behind the scene guys are like they're filming it like chivo's freaking out like everybody is like like so have you showed michael keaton and alejandro in our tattoo i haven't seen uh alejandro hasn't seen it but uh mich's seen it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, it was a funny thing too. Like I,

before I went to, before I went to Italy, and Michael and I've stayed in contact pretty well. Like he's, he was really like, he's such a super cool guy. Really, really great guy.

I think great actor. And I thought he was just astonishing in that movie. Yeah. It was revelatory performance. Yeah. I thought he was just astonishing in that movie. Yeah, it was a revelatory performance. Yeah, I thought he was astonishing. And he's been really, you know, just we've stayed in contact. And, you know, of course, all these awards and all these things are happening. And, you know, like it's been really good for us to stay in contact.

Well, one, I was at a Lyle Lovett concert. Lyle Lovett was in The Bridge, you know. and, and, and, and Lyle, you know, it's like haunting character performance. I know. Right. Exactly. So weird. Yeah, exactly. And Lyle, you know, it's funny when I broke my legs, I was in North Carolina, I was working as a stand in. I, you know, like I was kind of healing in that way. And I ended up working on a film with Lyle and, and, and hitting it off, you you know we're both from cattle

ranches in Texas and that kind of way and and when we became like sort of friends for a minute and and you know Lyle bought me dinner this one night me and my girlfriend and a couple other people went out to dinner with Lyle and it was one of those moments where like I felt lost after I'd broken my legs and yet somehow magically my all all time favorite musician and Lyle was at that time, like bought me dinner, you know? So it was kind of like,

well, something still, I don't know what the path is, but like, there's no reason that this don't worry, it's going to be all right. Yeah, exactly.

And cut to, you know, cut to 20 years later, um, I'm stunt coordinating the bridge and, and second year directing some and, and Lyle's an actor in that bridge. And we were like, you know, after years of seeing him in concert and thinking like, oh, I should reconnect. And then thinking like, well, what's he going to do?

Like, be like, oh, yeah, I don't remember you. Have a beer. See you later. If I go backstage or some kind of thing like that, you know, like and being like, I wish I'd met him like when I was at the top of my career. You know, and sure enough, when I was at the top of my career, I was reintroduced to him and we became friends. And so I went to one of his concerts in Thousand Oaks and went backstage.

And Michael Keaton was backstage at the Loud Loving concert. And he's like, oh my God, Travis. He says, tell the Dragonfly story. And so Michael tells the story from me jumping off the roof. And then I take over from me over the precipice and the dragonfly and then coming back to the roof. So I tag-teamed that story with Michael Keaton backstage at a Lyle Lovett concert.

Isn't that just crazy? Yeah. And yeah, those are the and that's like those are the kinds of things that like i say crazy meaning like i mean it's the thing that happens in my life and it's just magic but it's so awesome you know um what do you think that relationship is between uh you know the synchronicities or you know i think i think synchronicities exist for everybody you know not those are very obvious examples. I think they happen in a more granular way, like on a daily basis.

For sure. But I think it's about your relationship to them and your awareness of them, right? And I think the more that you can root yourself in the present and be in that place of, like, surrender that we were talking about earlier. And emptiness, you know. were talking about earlier and emptiness you know that yeah that emptiness place of of uh you know where you can detach from expectations um you know as imperfectly because we're human beings as we can that's that almost creates that kind of like you know uh fertilized plot for something like that to occur yeah for sure i think that you know like like it's a lot about intending having an intention and not an expectation right and so like if you

have a um like that i think there's you know like everybody has this expectation and leads to these goals and they're pursuing that and they're looking at that and and that to me like shuts it's again about bandwidth you know like your expectation diminishes your bandwidth because you have a single focus you know i mean the reason that like, I feel like I was, I watched this dragonfly land on my arm is because, I mean, that's a kind of a synchronicity that like, it's just too magic, you know? Like, but, but because I was on a cable, because I was like, you know, like because I set up these wire gags, like I, I know it's safe.

My intention is to, to just like, with my heart as wide open as I can, jump into the air. And I'll think of smashing my head in the concrete or planting it. I don't think of the graphicness of that, but it's just like, I'm intending to touch it, and it stops me. But there's no fear, and there's nothing diminishing my bandwidth so as a result like my my consciousness expanded my heart is wide open and in that space like i'm open for those things one to enter and also to be aware of it you know and um and and also i think i i started flexing that. Like it's a muscle. Like when you see it and it starts to happen and you start to know what's going to happen. And I operate in a way that that kind of synchronicity is going to happen to me all the time. And as a result, it does.

And I think that it, as you say, I fully agree that it happens to everyone. It's happening all the time. I'm writing this story, this screenplay that I'm writing about, which is my penance. It's sort of my heart-opening story, but it really is a story of a medicine journey. And this guy goes down to Peru, and he has some experiences there. And in the beginning of it, his bandwidth is just so diminished like what i want to show is this idea that that like this guy's walking in this well of providence and

and and and opportunity and it's not because it's not happening that he doesn't see it it's because his bandwidth is is diminished right and so you know very early on as you introduce this guy like he's had a dream he he dreams of the shaman. We see his face very clearly. And then the guy like, you know, like as bad luck would have it, like horrible things can happen to him. He locks himself out. He takes his dog out. He doesn't have a poop bag. You know what I mean? And like like so, you know, all these sort of pile of just like things, things things things you know and and jangly things that are holding him down and you know as you do sometimes in the city when you don't have a poop bag for your dog you grab the uh you know you go to the trash bin and you grab a piece of

newspaper or cardboard off the street and he happens to grab a uh you know like a village voice type paper or la weekly that has a article about ayahuasca that's a painting that's almost identical to the guy that he sees. And he picks up his dog's poop with that. You know what I mean? And then throws it back in. And we see that it's the same guy. But he never makes the connection because he's just like, you know, the bandwidth isn't there.

And so it's this idea that it's happening. His perception is not attuned. Yeah, if he'd even looked at it, he would have had to stop because it's who he's just seen. And instead, the result is he piles shit on it. And that's what happens. That's what we do. Yeah, I mean, this is the theme.

I'm starting to see it more clearly. My bandwidth is expanding. I'm coming to the it more clearly. My bandwidth is expanding. Travis Thompson life story. But yeah, it's this. It's a river. No, the recurring theme in your life is a constant and deliberate, you know, conscious effort to continually kind of expand and remove those blinders to broaden your bandwidth and your perspective from the cattle ranch to, you know, to being vegan, to, you know, the skydiving jump

and like this journey that you're on that, you know, I want to get into the plant medicine and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, that's pretty interesting. I had an, I had an experience last night that like pushed me right up against that. kind of a little bit of a way, which was I had just gotten back from Las Vegas. I did like a speaking thing at Life is Beautiful, which was great and it was cool, but I had to get the next week's podcast up. So I sorted it out. So I was going to ride my bike in the morning, and then I was going to spend the afternoon.

I got to record all the intros and get it to Tyler, my son who produces it for me. And then I would spend the evening like writing the blog post and I just mapped it all out and cleared it with everybody. Uh, and then Julie is like, Oh, it's the, it's the, it's the blood moon eclipse. We got to do, we got to do this meditation tonight. Like that's not on my schedule. Like, no, this is more important. Like you need to do that. So we did like a little bit of a family ceremony and, you know, talked about intention and we did like an hour and a half meditation, like out on the deck as the moon rose up. And, you know, usually I can get into not a state of no mindedness because

that's very difficult, but I can kind of approach that. But my mind was like going crazy. This is like not a I'm going to be up super late now. And I want to go to bed early. Right? It's like, my spiritual priorities were were upside down. Like I was not my you know, I wasn't able I my bandwidth was not expanded enough to understand like, no, this is actually more important. And if I focus on this, the other stuff will take care of itself in this weird, bizarre spiritual equation. I recognize it in retrospect, but I battle with that. And it's a challenge. And it's difficult for me in the moment when I'm like, no, you don't understand. I have this work thing I have to get done. And that's what's important. And sometimes Julie has to say, no, actually you have it upside down.

And it is that, I mean, it's like like it's that kind of thing of like yeah like providence will happen right i mean and that's a that's a word that i don't like i've just started using providence you know like it's and and um to to to to discuss that because it is like if our hands are open you know and, and again, like heart is empty. Like if it's, if we're open in that way, like everything's going to come in and the way that we open them, it's like getting rid of that expectation, right? Like you have an expectation, a deadline, and those things that are like sort of like, you know, like closing down.

And then it is that, you know, having to, allowing yourself to be able to like, all right, this is actually, not only is it going to like, is it something I need to be doing, you know, like, but it's going to help me do this other thing better. And the opportunity to do it is going to flow into it. If you want to have a quantum leap, you know, then it's about engaging that because, you know, I get stuck in like, look, nothing's going to work unless I stick my nose in that crack and make the elevator door open. Because I'm the only one who's making it open. Right, right, right. Don't you see? No, totally.

You know what I mean? So, you know. We get it. I mean, we all get it. And that's the thing. That as much as I feel like I continue to work and expand that bandwidth and that I have this sort of awareness of these other things. Like, you know, a friend of mine was, she gave me a reading. She's a very perceptive person. And she was like, yeah, you know, there's all this stuff going and there's these just little like jangly things that are there.

You know, these jangly things. And then I'm, you know, like, I want to be working on those things. You know, like, before my bandwidth was, like, beginning to expand, like, you know, when it's contracted, like, the jangly things don't matter. But then when you, like, start to open up and you transform your life and, you know, I remember Julie, like, talking, describing you having a heaviness, right? And she, like, talk about that way, like, you know, this sort of heaviness and this burden on you, a heaviness, like a, and it's that, like you know this sort of heaviness and this burden on you a heaviness like a and it's that like when you have that heaviness the the uh i mean obviously

you know she doesn't describe you that way anymore clearly like that like at times you know but before like when you know before the real transformation that has made you who you are now you know um that heaviness the little jangly things don't matter, you know? And then like, as, as the sort of bandwidth increases, those things like, then they become even more pronounced, right? So like the more balanced that you become, the little things are the ones that like, yeah, that's why I would say the road gets narrower for sure. Other little like things that didn't seem like a big deal before suddenly become like

sort of incompatible with this life that you're trying to live. and that can become annoying oh sure again i gotta i can't do this either oh yeah totally yeah no exactly like i've never been faced more with my own judgment than i have been in the last year six months you know what I mean and I never judgment of others or of self both both but others for sure I mean and you know look my you know like my parents are um you know we're we're spiritually very different we're politically very different we're you know our lifestyles are very different in a lot of ways and so like you know and the people that they're around and and and obviously there's a there's a whole political group that's that's different or you

know it's like you you know when you're on opposite sides of that it finds the judgment comes in you know and you find you think oh well you know like you're seeing a different kind of reality rather than like judging harshly the way a particular person is you know it's just god no it's just me discerning a different way or a better way to to live but really it's me like judging their behavior you know and and ultimately like that that judgment isn't about how they can change like i'm not going to change them that's just me being like okay two people in a room like i have judgment like like you know whatever they're acting the fool or they're being who they are right i have judgment like what's going to change?

What, what could I possibly change in that scenario? Your reaction. My judgment, you know, like only that. And, and, and, um, but I've never been so aware of it, you know, as I am right now. And, and I see almost every opportunity as, as an opportunity for me to face and work on that judgment. Um, and, and again on that judgment. And, and again,

let's, it's the medicine. It's been that kind of like, that's what's brought me that awareness where I've had experiences in ceremony where I was judging, you know, in a particular way or, and then,

and then brought that out. Like, and so now, you know, now I kind of, I'm able to see like, like my life as it as sort of an extended ceremony in a way. It's always like everything for me is an opportunity to work on those things.

And again, when I was heavier, when I had sort of layers of lack of awareness or my bandwidth was more diminished, that judgment wasn't such a big deal. But now I'm like, oh, wow, this is the thing that is the obstacle. This is the obstacle that keeps coming up and it's the thing that I need to. But it's a fine line because I'm moving into a path where I'm becoming a director. As a stunt coordinator, even as a stunt person, I'm always making informed decisions. I'm making discernments. I have a particular like aesthetic that I want to like sort of create and, and, um, express and, and, and those are all, that's a, that's maybe more of a positive aspect of judgment, but it's still judgment.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's constructive, you know yeah yeah i mean there's constructive you know judgment in the form of discernment right and making you know appropriate decisions you know based on how you're evaluating you know other people's behavior and situations and all of that versus just uh that guy's an idiot right but when ego when your ego blocks when ego blocks the ability to know the difference right like when i'm like i think i'm discerning and yet i'm judging you know like the like and so like as they dialed in spiritually to be able to know that to be able to make that discernment exactly like when is the ego really dictating that exactly that decision making exactly right interesting yeah and then

so that's what i'm really that's really the work that I'm doing. Well, I mean, look, you're one of, you know, several people that I know that, that, that appear to have benefited in a, in a rather positive way from these ayahuasca experiences. And so I've talked about this before on the podcast, but, you know, uh, I've had a number of people come up to me and say, you know, you should check it out and it changed my life or, and I know people whose lives are better as a result of doing it. I just was in Vancouver like two weeks ago and I interviewed this guy. His name is Dr. Gabor Mate. Oh yeah, for sure. He's like, yeah, world renowned, you know, doctor who has all these amazing, uh, you know, sort of ideas and

philosophies surrounding addiction. Um, we had this amazing conversation and then in the wake of it, as I was sort of walking him out of the hotel, it was, we didn't talk about it on the podcast. He said, you know, didn't come up when we were talking about it, but you know, I've had a lot of success with ayahuasca with addiction patients and, you know, something maybe you should look into. I said, yeah, you're not the first person to say that to me. Um, but I have a lot of trepidation around it because as somebody who, you know, is an alcoholic suffers from the disease of addiction. If you tell somebody who is an addict or an alcoholic, that the solution to their problem or a salve to it is to take a mind-altering substance.

That's a very intoxicating concept in its own right. For sure. And that terrifies me, first of all. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is, and this was kind of Julie's insight into it, I'm interested in your perspective, which is that when you, when you

sort of undertake this, this journey with this medicine, you are like, if you want to go down the spiritual rabbit hole and the whole thing, like you're opening yourself up to all kinds of energies. Right. And so, you know, I, I don't believe that everything is, you know, rain, rainbows and unicorns. there's dark energy out there. There's gnarly shit. I was just in Las Vegas. I can feel it. I can't be there more than a day

before I'm like, I have to leave. I have to be out of this energy field. So the idea of opening yourself up and being so vulnerable and becoming, like you said, you're working towards becoming this empty container, this vessel. Well, to be in that place of being that vessel that's on the receiving end of something that you don't have control over is also something I think that causes me to pause.

I think that, and I think that those, that's really like, I mean, that's a smart way to be, you know what I mean? I mean that's a smart way to be you know what I mean it really um uh those those thoughts about it and and sort of thinking of it as like sort of a oh hey here's a magic pill you know um and yeah there there is opportunity to to to really maybe damage yourself you know um I think though um I mean a couple of things about you know the medicine I always say the medicine like every you know um i think though um i mean a couple of things about you know the medicine i always say the medicine like every you know like our la medicina like people you know like don't want to you know no one's referring to it as a drug it's a medicine and it really is a medicine in a way that none of the medicine that we take in our country is actually medicine you know like but it is a drug i mean it's a drug. I mean, it's a powerful drug.

Well, for sure. It's a, but it's, it's actually something that like is, is already present in our body. You know, it's something that we're, you know, like you take this, you know, the way that the, the tea is made is there's a plant that has DMT, which is contained in our body. Um, and then another plant that allows that to, uh, metabolize and get into your body. And so you have this sort of like protracted experience, you know? But it only is activating this thing that's already in you, you know? So it's not like a foreign chemical that you're introducing to your body. You know, there's no poison. There's no toxic dose.

It's not something that actually like the brew that is ayahuasca and that you'll hear you know oh this person died or this person this thing happened to that like it will it cannot hurt you you know and let you know like people that are taking like mao inhibitors or some kinds of like there's there's medications that might be a counter indication like ironically there are antidepressants and the and these these kind of like numbing devices that we use in our country to fix things um that really like you need to one would need to get off to get off of in order to like experience it without risk but otherwise i mean it's it's a safe experience right um the the medicine itself the sort of physical reaction

physical aspect the physical aspect of it um I mean the setting aside the vomiting and all yeah but you know what the thing is is like yeah that's the thing it's like to me like I like I'll tell people these things and they'll be like oh my god it's so magical I was like and and and people like but but do you really like do you throw up like I'm like oh yeah probably every time sometimes the whole time oh yeah I really couldn't do that you know and it's so magical. And people are like, but do you really, like, do you throw up? I'm like, oh, yeah, probably every time, sometimes the whole time. Oh, yeah, I really couldn't do that. And it's like, it's because we have, like, three relationships with vomiting in our country. Like, you either are drunk, you're sick, or have an eating disorder. And this is an experience that's not like that.

And even if it was, like, to me, it's like if the price of it. But it's the body's natural response to removing something that it's perceiving as being negative or toxic right but it's not the medicine that it's removing right it's i would say that 90 of the time maybe 100 of the time when people have a purging experience it's the result of an energetic thing that happens and the purging isn't of the medicine to get the medicine out of your body. Again, there's nothing toxic in that, in your body. Um, the purging is an energetic purging and immersion and emotional purging. And, and, you know, like most people that have had this experience will be, we'll tell you that like, yeah, like I built this purge because, and I vomited it out, like the you that like, yeah, like I built this purge because,

and I vomited out like the abuse that I experienced when I was a young child. And then when it was gone, it was gone and gone forever, you know? So, so again, yeah, we have this perception that, yeah, that, Oh yeah, I put this in and then I threw it up. So it must be a bad thing. Well, you know, the Hindus like have purging cleanses. There's, there's all kinds of of purging practices throughout. That doesn't mean it's necessarily proof positive that it's toxic. But I will say that to do it alone, to do it without the vessel or the space held by a qualified and experienced teacher or shaman,

as the people will say, is actually inviting some danger. You know, like where I've been going down in Peru is in the Sacred Valley. You know, there's a Shipipo tradition where there are dark entities and dark shamans, brujos that like are trying to maybe like get into you and influence people in a certain way and do that kind of stuff. But where I've gone, like that really isn't a part of the experience at all.

And even those things, like the entities, mostly, and most people will say that that's just a manifestation of your own stuff. You know, like, well, of course, yeah, I mean, that's what Dr. Mate said to me, too. He's like, it will show you, you know, what you need to see about what you need to work on, right? It presents you with a certain truth, right? That's, that's sort of the line that I've received. For sure. I don't mean to be pejorative about it. No, no, no. But there, you know, but there is a, but there is a, um, you know, so, so, so, um, like my experience has been that, that, that even if that's not your, you know, like, like in a ceremony I've never thought about or, and it's also just me, you know what I mean? I've never worried or been concerned in the

vessel that I've been in of being mounted by a dark energy or taking on something that I wasn't experience or something like that. I've had dark experiences for sure. But there's, there's always, there is a kind of benevolence that you feel even in the most challenging part of that. There is a sort of safety and a healing and you know that it's healing, you know? It's, and I've seen it. It's so funny. Like I've seen people go through and I've gone through like just really, really, really challenging experiences. If you have a yoga practice and can breathe through that, like and get through it, there's you know, there's music, these Icaros and different kinds of songs that that will be

sung in the ceremony that either move you deeper or anchor you in a way that you're not going to be taken so far, like that help you out. And I personally believe that that that, you know, your bandwidth in that medicine expands in such a way that you're kind of leaving the confines of our, our ego driven consciousness. That's, that sort of is our, our like throttling down of our brain, right? Like, so we, so we lose, lose that and then tap into this like oneness this one consciousness and there's a kind of telepathy that occurs right and in that um the shaman who's singing those songs can actually know like where you are in that experience and know that they need to sing you

deeper to work on this particular thing or they need to sing you lighter to help you out of it right there's a there's a there's a kind of consciousness that's happening that is is really really really uh beyond you know anything that i've ever experienced you know right and it's actually how long have you been how many times have you done it and when was the first time you did it uh the first time i did it was uh January of 2014. So it's been almost two years. Yeah, okay. So it's not something like you've been doing for the last 10 years.

No, no, no, no, no, not at all. And it's been kind of around, you know, but it's one of those things I think that it finds you. It's having a moment right now. It is, it really is. It's like it keeps coming up. There's a lot of people talking about it. I had, last winter, I had Daniel P pinchback on that oh yeah of course on that show

you know he's like you know sort of our generation's you know uh kind of uh flag bearer for this whole kind of idea and movement around psychedelia as like a healing kind of modality and he's got all sorts of amazing, interesting ideas. But one of the things that he expressed to me was somewhat of a, he's kind of, he's having a little bit of a revisionist opinion on some of the things that he wrote, that he's written about in his books in the sense that you're sort of like disappointed that he had, he held out like high hopes that people would have this kind of psychedelic type experience that he had that was transformative in his own life. And it sounds like

in certain respects, you know, you've had that experience. But what he's noticed is that it is for the most part, and not for everybody, but it's kind of devolved into this sort of touristy kind of thing to do for the well-heeled investment banker. Like, hey, let's go down to Peru and we'll have a wild weekend and we'll do ayahuasca. For sure. It's not coming with the proper intention and respect and kind of ideas behind it that are kind of the guiding principles

that are driving you to do it and him as well. There's a big article in the New York Times about it, right, too. I think all these rich people are going down and doing it and then they're just going back and doing whatever they were doing with their lives but they're but but you know what they're also ruining burning man too you know what i mean it's just like there's always i want to talk to you about burning man too okay but you know but but i and i say that ironically right because it's like like your burn is your burn whether the whether there's plug and play camps or or the ceo of whatever you know it's just like now that the thing's gotten

into the world and it's become what it's become like like everyone's like well it's not what it used to be and i wish it was a certain thing you know and isn't the intention behind it to transform consciousness across the globe and in order to do that everybody has to be exposed to it and so the fact that it is magnetizing more and more people and more and more people are interested in it that's isn't that isn't that sort of part of part of the overall desire yeah no no no for sure absolutely without question like you know and again that's the that's the thing like that's the thing it's like everyone's like you like everyone said everyone suddenly likes the band well that's exactly right like you just

like my favorite band like the cow and crows are my favorite band right like well you're out of luck like like but it's like but the thing is is like um you know everybody gets on that and i'm like so i could decide that i hate that song because like everybody hates it you know or everybody loves it you know it's like but no i still like am down like with you know like august august and everything after is my desert island album it's the one that i need i get to listen to it for over and over and over and over again but but it has become you know it's super trite and everybody like you know like you won't get a lot of high fives for that choice but who cares you know what i mean but actually i hear you every song on that album is good oh it's so good but and that's the same way where it's like um yeah and and i think that that it all depends

on i think it depends on the all depends on the shaman. I think, you know, like, I will say that I've never been to the jungle of Peru, right? I've never been to Iquitos or Pacalpa where these, like, sort of huge, I mean, they're almost like Agra, like Taj Mahal, like where you go and there's just, like, you know, like, people are pressing this and trying to sell the medicine and it's become a real tourist thing and people are are trying to take advantage of the naive tourist that wants to go down there and and do exactly that uninformed you know um there are safe places to go and there are people that that are seekers of the medicine that will go to those places and they are um those are the places where people are being radically healed and and are really sort of making those change. But it doesn't, I mean,

just because like there are all these other people kind of going and, you know, like, yeah, has it been commodified hugely, you know, like, it's interesting.

Like why now? Like what is going on right now that has made it, you know, kind of like this zeitgeist thing. Well, I mean, we're like, it depends on what,

I mean, you could have. If you're expanding your bandwidth, you're removing the blinders and looking at it broadly. I mean, a couple of things that go on. One, we need it now. We in our world need it now because without this kind of expanded awareness or the feeling of, you know, like psychedelics are suppressed in our world need it now because without this kind of expanded awareness or or the feeling of

you know like psychedelics are suppressed in our culture because we have a dominator culture right terence mckinnon would talk about how like you know like caffeine and alcohol and sugar and cocaine or now adderall like are the things that run our dominator commodified consumer culture right and and these feminizers cannabis um ayahuasca these other things that like open your heart and open you to a larger experience shatter your paradigms of reality and certainly and by by default shatter your your acceptance of of this you know like uh very limited view of reality that we've accepted in the United States. People, we need to shatter that in order to be able to survive.

Otherwise, it's like we're in some trouble, right? And also in some ways, which I also think is true, there is this intelligence of these plants that are like, okay'm like, okay, well if we get all the white guys from the United States to like take us, maybe they'll stop destroying our home. You know, like, like if, if, if we're, you know, if the, the rainforests, you know, like, like, um,

and so there's, there's a, there's a, you know, maybe a conscious effort of this plant to sort of move itself and move the consciousness in a way to, to really like heal, you know, and heal the planet. Um, so, you know, that's, I mean, that's happening now. Those things are, are happening. That's interesting. Or, or, uh, for us to go and exploit it. Well, that's definitely true. And, and, and, and yet there's no, there's no way that that's, that's not going to happen but i also think that if people continue to uh yeah like like every one of these like addictive um painkillers

or or um uh antidepressants or whatever came from a plant in the amazon right and we've taken it and like reduced it to the thing that has like you know as as colin campbell will talk about you know like here's the you know we have this thing that it does and then it has like 27 side effects right and he will just be like approach yeah exactly and he'll be like actually it has 28 effects only one of them is the one you want but like right just because you know they're not side effects they're all effects they just happen to be not the effect that you want you know what i mean and so like yeah like i mean imagining this oh now i've got your psychedelic and you're gonna take that and it's gonna help you in this way and or putting it in the hands of of the the va or the pentagon to treat uh ptsd

with it or in in the hands of psychiatrists to who are who are distributing and prescribing like uh ssris and hormone inhibitors like left and right, give them then the power to prescribe ayahuasca or whatever. Maybe it stays in these circles where real people are taking control of their consciousness and bringing it out into the world. And whether people are drinking the medicine or not, I'm not trying to convince you or anyone to drink the medicine. Yeah, and to be fair, the people that I know that have talked to me about it, nobody's trying to get me to do something I don't want to do.

Yeah, for sure. And I probably won't do it, but I'm interested in hearing. And it's undeniable to me that I know people whose lives they're better off as a result of it. I can't deny that. I don't know if I'm better off as a result of it. Like, I can't, you know, I can't deny that. Like, I don't, you know, I mean, I don't know if I'm better off. You know, I have, I have, yeah, no, I am. My heart is, like, radically open

in a way that it wasn't before. I'm working in a much deeper level, and I'm seeing my responsibility in everything that I do in a way that I didn't before. And my, I have seen the way that our illusion of reality, how my limited bandwidth creates the small reality that I live in, and I know that there's something bigger.

And I can operate with the knowledge of that bigger thing and kind of play in a way in this world where the world becomes magic in that way. And I then want to be a vessel for the stories that are like heart opening and not like disaster movies or violence or those kinds of things. And so in that way,

like if I then am able to sort of create the platform to tell those stories, well then that's a, and people are affected by that because the paradigm shifts in the way that films are being made or or what the consciousness is what people want to see and and uh well even beyond that what about the paradigm shift just in terms of of you know how we conceptualize consciousness and how we um you know think of ourselves as as men and how we define masculinity oh i mean it's like you know the way that you are kind of you know just speaking in general is very much at odds

with how we would sort of the you know the predominant paradigm would perceive a man you know 10 15 20 years ago for sure you know what i mean it's like very threatening you're talking about your emotions and consciousness and like all these things that are, to use your word, are, you know, quite feminized. Right. Yeah, yeah. Right? So I think there is a shift in kind of, you know, not gender roles.

And I'm a vegan too, by the way, right? I don't eat animals, right? We've been talking for like two and a half hours. We haven't even talked about the fact that we barely even touched on the vegan thing at all. You know what I mean? Yeah, like you're a super macho guy, you know, jumping off buildings and like running around, you know, on fire and shit. But you're this vegan and you're talking about your emotions and how you can kind of, you know, perfect, you know, your human capabilities when it comes to your consciousness.

But isn't that like, that is, to me, that really is masculinity. Like that's a masculinity that doesn't fit into the paradigm of our culture or our society. But I think it's a larger, like embracing of the creativity of divine feminine or femininity in that way. And that like, I've lived and worked in the arts for you know like three decades you know and it's like that's art is creative it's it's you know like when it's when it's uh you know when the patron is the the church well there might be a more masculine aspect but creativity as a experience is a feminine experience, which is why everyone's like, well, what are you going to do?

Be in the theater? What are you, a girl? You know, whatever. Well, you have it painted on your back because Shiva is like the ultimate kind of manifestation of masculinity and it's like very primal force, but he kind of looks like a chick. You know what I mean?

There's a very feminine aspect to the portrayal of that. Like that's very interesting. For sure. I mean, so it's, it's an embrace of that feminine energy as part and parcel of, of, you know,

becoming like the, the fully expressed masculine. For sure. And Shiva also without, I mean, ultimate consciousness, right. But without Shakti,

like actual creative force is nothing inert yeah nothing interesting yeah so uh how how long you been going to burning man uh my first year burning man was 2009 2000 so it hasn't been now so here i got a story for you okay so uh i was working on a movie um so i was still a lawyer i was like, I hooked my train up to being a producer on this movie. I was actually doing production legal on it. It was like an independent movie, super low budget, shooting in Montreal. It was called See This Movie. It was being produced by my friend Joe Smith and executive produced by Chris Weitz.

All right. And starring Seth Meyers. and uh executive produced by chris weitz all right okay and uh starring seth meyer this was like before you know seth meyers uh while he was still on saturday night live and uh and john show and we're shooting for we're there for like four or five weeks in montreal right and it's like september and we're like halfway through the shoot, and Chris Weitz goes, hey, man, I've got to leave. You're on camp with Chris at Burning Man, right? This is why I'm telling this story.

In the middle of making this movie, Chris says, I've got to leave. I've got to go to Burning Man. He has a clause. You're a producer on this movie. You can't leave and go to Burning Man. He's like, what do you mean? I think it's actually cool that your producer has to go to Burning Man in the middle of production.

And he left. And then he came back like a week later. And he's like, oh, that's amazing. This was like 2004 or something like that. And for people that don't know, Chris Weitz is a very prolific, amazing, brilliant, accomplished writer-director in Hollywood. Him and his brother uh made that movie about a boy and they were uh nominated for an academy award for that script i think uh chris is now writing one of the star wars movies like he's just insanely gifted and cool and cool like

it were like really like cool yeah yeah very very cool super cool family like they're my family i mean they're just great i just ran into him such in Venice a couple weeks ago. I hadn't seen him in quite some time. But anyway, so he's like your Burning Man bro. Yeah, for sure. And his kids, too. Like, you know, his wife, Mercedes. In fact, the reason that I camped there, I was friends with Mercedes before they met. The Ashram Galactica.

Ashram Galactica. That's the camp. ashram galactica ashram galactica that's the game and um and uh they uh uh mercedes and another friend of theirs uh theresa livingston who is now a yoga teacher and just a beautiful soul like they came to a retreat christmas or not uh mercedes and theresa came to a retreat that i was teaching uh in ohai at matilla hot springs right oh wow and then we became friends and and and they were actually trying to get me to go to burning man since like 2006 but i always i mean i literally always had a pirate movie that kept me from going like for years i can't go to burning man and pretend to be a pirate because i actually have to go pretend to be a pirate somewhere else

i'm telling you there was one year like in 2000 i'd gone in 2009 in 2010 i was gonna go um and i was in the tank falls lake back lot of universal and uh i was actually gonna go for the last two days to see the temple burn and to strike and then we ended up going an extra day and i was still gonna go for like a day to help them like break down the camp right but it was just like just like, but for years I had a, I actually had a pirate film that like, that like kept me from going to Burning Man. Right. Yeah. You had like your own like version of Burning Man, you know. But yeah, Chris and Mercedes, you know, like, I mean, they have three children now, but like, you know, two of their kids have gone.

And I mean, they're, you know, it's like a family, like family out there, you know, it's like a really, and again, like who, um, who cares what else is going on? You know what I mean? It's just like, there's a, there's love and heart opening and magic that's happening there. And, and, and if your, um, you know, experiences is radical self-expression and participation and these things that kind of are like abandoned around as they're like the sort of principles of of burning man you know like well then that that makes all those other things kind of okay you know because it's not like i'm gonna what i'm gonna sit there and be like well i'm here at burning man and it sucks because like a mile away literally there's a bunch of silicon valley guys yeah like that it's like that doesn't

affect me at all you know um or it does because they they like actually like come out open their heart like expand their consciousness and come back and make some like radical magic that like changes the way that we like view the world you know bring them all bring them all like there was like i forget who was like some years ago everybody was like some conservative pundit was there you know everybody was like grover norquist or somebody was at burning man you know what i mean it was just like what the you know like but it's like bring them like bring them all well yeah i mean to to think mom dad i want you to come to burning man with me to make i want to come to peru too right to make that

judgment like oh well having a guy like that is is somehow like you know diluting burning man is to say that burning man doesn't have the power to absorb a guy like that and transform him like if you really believe in the power of burning man and like this collective consciousness then it shouldn't be an issue no exactly everybody should come that's exactly right and go back into the world and the ripple effect of that experience should sort of you know wash over everybody in a positive way well and it's my i mean that's my sort of experience of burning man it's my experience of psychedelics my experience with being a vegan you know where where in burning man in particular right so like like 2009 you know like people were like oh my god i can't believe tramps is going to burning man like that he's of course

he is he's like insane you know and then it's like, oh my God, I can't believe Tramp is going to Burning Man like that. He's, of course he is. He's like insane, you know? And then it's like, wow, you went to Burning Man? Tell me your stories. It's like, oh, you went to Burning Man? I want to, I want to go next year. And it's like, holy crap, I'm camping with you at Burning Man. Like, it's just like, it's how, like, and that's the same person, you know what I mean? It's just like, and it shifts and that's great. You know, like again, let everybody come and let them experience something that like, I mean, the magic of Burning Man is that like, you know, it's not. You know, like, again, let everybody come. And let them experience something that, like, I mean, the magic of Burning Man is that, like, you know, it's not a, you know, most people think it's a music festival. There are, like, these sound camps and there's things that happen. But it is this sort of, like, you know, immersive art festival, really.

And half of the art is you and is an individual and how you're participating, you know. It's a gifting economy, which is, you know, everybody's like, oh, you know it's a it's a gifting economy which is um you know everybody's like oh yeah it's a bartering and bartering implies that like if i give you something you have to give me something in trade you know it's like gifting is i i you i see that you need something and i help you out or i have a thing and i just give it to you you know it's like um and which is a completely different paradigm right and yeah and and it is a it's a um you know it's a city that comes up and it gets built for a week and it lives for a week and then it goes away and and all of these works of art not all of them but the majority of them are made out of wood and get burned down at the end of the week you know and and so here's these things that people have been working on for

years maybe you know or at least that year from the last burn and up into that and and it gets celebrated and then it burns down you know and it goes away and everyone loves it and that is like it's like the zen buddhist monks that make the mandalas out of sand yeah it's exactly that they'll spend weeks and then the wind blows it away and that's such a threat to our paradigm right because here like i feel like in america like as much as our we have this sort of like you know like christian paradigm that like involves a heaven and an afterlife and those kinds of things that we're so astonishingly afraid of death you know and and that fear of death informs our culture in every way and if people like see this this sort of temporal nature of that festival and the magic that can be had

and the celebration that it can be and the fact that it goes away and it'll never be again in that same way. Well, that palpable lesson of impermanence is terrifying and frightening for most people because it brings up this idea that we ourselves are impermanent. And it's a challenge to the kind of, you know,

status quo paradigm of property ownership, you know? So who wants that? I mean like, you know, but we'll say that we'll say that, right. You can't take it with you.

We'll say that over and over. And yet we don't, that doesn't drive our decision. We don't believe it. We don't believe it. We think we're going to be the exception. Exactly. We're actually going to be able to take it with us but and we're also going to dodge death and yet when you embody like when you really embody this idea of impermanence like when you see something that you've celebrated is beautiful and that people are really

like loving and you've had and see it go up in flame and and embrace that right like if that enters your heart and your life changes like then the world changes and so whoever you know like donald rumsfeld or or whoever wants to go there sarah palin goes to burning man and and like she has a has a transformative experience like radical you radical. You know, bring her. Like, I don't know if I want to burn with her, but like, let her be there. You know what? I would burn with her.

Like, I say that, and I'm just like, Sarah, if you're listening, come to Burning Man with me. Surely. Yeah, like, you got the vegan fitness. That's her, like,

buzzwords that she's looking for on iTunes. all right well that would be a great place to lock it down uh we've been going dude we're coming up on three hours here but i can't let you out without kind of getting some context for how you know your veganism kind of plays into all of this and how it fits, you know, I mean, it seems to be, you know, uh, an extrapolation of your kind of core value system, but how did that all begin and how does that kind of work in your life? Uh, you know, it was interesting. I, um, I became a vegetarian initially because of, uh, my yoga practice and that idea of like, like, um, it's sort of, yeah, but more of an experiment in consciousness. You know what I mean? Like really like trying to, well, it's going to happen if I shift. And then those things did happen, right? Like there was a shift in consciousness and, and, and I realized I

wasn't lacking in any way. And I certainly wasn't, um, you know, like diminished as a person or as an athlete or performing in any way, you know, and That's a weird epiphany to have when you go, wait, this is like an option? Yeah, totally. And then, you know, when I was, I mean, I spent time on these pirate movies and we spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. And I mean, there was a point where I was like,

okay, I'm gonna eat fish again because like I'm on this island, like for months that is like fresh rivers and, you know, like ocean fish. And I was like, you know, and I didn't have quite, I kind of still had this sort of mythological paradigm that I needed some animal protein fresh rivers and you know like ocean fish and i was like you know and i didn't have quite i kind of still had this sort of mythological paradigm that i needed some animal protein and that the that the fish was a sustainable so like all the things that are wrong you know like i still was

in that thing and then um and i met uh uh john pierre like uh so like a few things happened like a fitness trainer yeah a friend so like a friend of mine introduced me to Jean-Pierre, uh, right about the same time I saw earthlings and read the China study. And so it was like, Oh, Whoa. I'm like, that's a synchronicity of events. Exactly. Right. And so I thought, I was like, I need to talk to this guy and figure out how I can make

this happen. And, um, so when I met with him, you know, I was talking about the environment, and I was talking about my athletic performance, like around, you know, like Brendan's stuff had come out at that point. I don't think your book had come out quite yet. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Vega came out.

Vega was out. You know, there was all these different things. You know, so I was kind of around like, you know, like performance as a vegan or that, you know, that option was just sort of like being introduced into our consciousness. And, and, and then, you know, of course, the China study was really more about like health and those kinds of things. And, and as I was talking to, and my concern was, was health and that, you know, and, and, and Jean-Pierre was like, listen, man, you know, there seems to be this other, like,

compassionate thing about you that you're not focusing on. And I was like, you know what, bro? If you'd talked to me five years ago, I would have said yes. But, you know, now I'm, like, kind of really entrenched in the stunt community and the people that I'm around, like, aren't in that way. And kind of almost like a pebble in the water, like, I've been softened, you know?

Like, my sort of, like, real kind of the water like i've been softened you know like my sort of like real kind of ethical concern in that way has has diminished and i said but i really hope that like by shifting my diet i can shift my consciousness and um and literally like within two weeks of of making the commitment to be a vegan within two weeks i was like well i can't wear this down jacket i i like i you know i was like i really like a a huge compassionate transformation occurred right and so when people ask me now like why are you vegan you know like i'm like well pick a reason like why do you either admire or hate vegans you know like and and is it because like you know like uh the environment or compassion or you know like whatever it is, like, like all of those things, athletic performance, health, animals, the environment, like all of it.

There's no like, like there's not a reason for me to choose otherwise, you know, like I'm winning in all of those ways, you know. Yeah, it checks every box. Yeah. And also like, I think, you know, it also allows winning in all of those ways you know yeah it checks every box yeah and also like i think you know it also allows me social acceptance box but what i was just gonna say like because of that it also allows me to you know in the same way that like you know my name trampas right like i've never had to fit in because of my name as soon as i say my name i'm immediately different in a way you know the conversation is going to be about my name people are going to make fun of my name people are going to not know how to say it like however it The conversation is going to be about my name. People are going to make fun of my name.

People are going to not know how to say it. However it is, it's going to be the coolest thing they've ever heard. I'm going to tell my stories about my name. But I've never had to. I learned as a young kid that I never had to fit in because I really actually couldn't. That's super interesting. And I think that my name in that way has really been the thing that has opened up a lot of this experience for me, right? Because I don't try to fit in.

Like, I don't care because I never could, right? And so I just never had that, like. That's almost like a predestined thing. So amazing, right? the same thing about like so then being a vegan in that way where if i'm already making these choices that are like like outside of the social acceptance then then why not push that further right so you're already a stuntman named trampas yeah exactly all the way to the wall right but even then but then when i i mean that was the other thing as soon as i like like made that commitment to be vegan like my other sort of like sort of political spiritual kind of ideas were also galvanized you know it actually like

galvanized those things for me you know what i mean i get that i mean that's that's been my experience yeah yeah that's super that's that's really fascinating. And interesting that like your cipher was Jean-Pierre. I know, right? Yeah, I love Jean-Pierre, he's so great. He's a character, man. He fully is. He's not in LA too much anymore. I saw him this summer at an event.

He's in Colorado mostly now, right? Yeah, pretty much. And he's starting like an animal sanctuary now. He's getting more into that aspect of it, I think. Yeah, he's definitely somebody we animal sanctuary now he's getting more into that aspect of it i think yeah he's somebody definitely somebody we can all look kind of like he's he's walking it in a way that's really oh yeah i mean he like gets up at four o'clock in the morning you know he doesn't he like he's like uh he lives a very sort of at least when he was in los angeles kind of very much a gypsy lifestyle yeah but he's dialed in like he's working with all these amazing people that you

know kind of behind the scenes yeah for sure working with like cops and SWAT people and celebrities like domestic abuse you know like women's issues and different things yeah for sure and he's somebody that's like you know like he's like I I wouldn't kill a mosquito and and you know what like you see him and you're like I believe you you. You wouldn't. That's the thing. He's just like, it's like, I'm like, you know, it's a strength in the path that I can aspire to because I assure you, like, I will kill a mosquito. And how did you meet John Joseph? Where did that happen?

So that happened, you know, I think that, I think he'd been on your podcast maybe. And then i saw that he was doing that walking tour of oh you did the walk of the lower east side and um and we went and met up with him and and uh of course then you know like talked to him afterwards and and really like kind of latched into the like the vegan part of it you know like it was all the stuff about the like the rock and roll and the drugs and the you know all the crime and the murder and all this like crazy stuff about like his life in loryside you know but then of course the tour basically ends at angelica kitchen

and so like we you know like stayed and ate lunch with him at angelica you know and and that uh like instantly hit it off you know and that's cool did you see the uh vice just did a new piece with him it's like a little mini documentary that fuel thing with the when he did the triathlon or like it's the yeah yeah not the one where he makes the smoothie but it's like one that just went up like maybe two weeks ago yeah yeah he sent it to me and it's like yeah like he's like um like he like he travels to like a full-on triathlon. He goes to a race tree for race. Yeah, exactly.

What's the race that he ran though? Boulder. Yeah, I was in Colorado. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was great. Like that was really, really cool. He's great in that. And I love that it shows, I mean, again, what an awesome guy he is, you know?

I mean, I remember like the first time I heard him on your podcast and he's just like, you like spent, you spent 40 minutes like being like, by the way, he's going to drop some heard him on your podcast, and he's just like, you spent 40 minutes being like, by the way, he's going to drop some F-bombs. Yeah, I know. Well, I kept it pretty clean. In general, I keep it pretty clean. I don't get uptight if people swear or whatever, but I know there's a lot of young kids that listen

or moms that have it in the kitchen. So that was such a radical departure from everything I'd done, and I was like, no, you don't understand. There's going to be, it's not like he says the F word a couple times. It's every three seconds or like three hours straight. It's that he surprisingly says other words besides the F word.

Like that's the real shock. But the best part is like he's like, you know, like talking about like, you know, like these like, you know, high level concepts about reincarnation and samsaras and the sort of wheel of karma and like just like, you know, like talking about like, you know, like these, these like, you know, high level concepts about reincarnation and samsaras and the sort of wheel of karma and like, just like, you know, but the way he introduces that was just like, sort of like, like 17 F-bombs on the way in, you know? And I'm actually like trying like really hard not to say it too, but it's just

like, it's so funny. Cause he just like, yeah. Cause he's always just like, Oh, you know, you've got these fucking samsaras like you're going to like them off and it's like like if you're hearing what he's talking about it's like really spiritual and heart-opening and and amazing you know and almost and everything come out of his mouth and and so what i love about that video is you know when they're making dinner he and erica are making dinner and it's like he's like pradipa is there and he likes he has he has his altar and he like you know like has his ritual with the food you know it's just like the the um the incense out yeah yeah and like i've had dinner at his house and he does that i can tell you like he

lives that no for sure and for sure he does there's there's there's that's a really beautiful no it's so beautiful and it's beautiful that then the you know like also he's like it shows him performing the crow mags it shows training it shows him like you know like in the race and they broke the mold with that guy full on and uh i just think he he has uh such a unique uh facility for communicating with certain people in a certain way and i and and he's just about service, man. And there's a lot to be learned from that. Like if you just follow him around on the streets of New York City for a day and watch how he interacts with people,

I've never been around anyone else like that. You could say whatever you want, but I'm telling you, he takes an interest in every single person he encounters on the street. For sure. If he's got five bucks in his wallet, it's coming out of his wallet and it's going into that guy's hand who needs it most for sure for

every single time no you're absolutely right you're absolutely right it really is amazing yeah he's he's you're right they broke the mold he's really an awesome dude so all right man we got to end this but uh i'm going to ask you the question that i've avoided asking you the entire what is the craziest thing you ever did as a stuntman you know i will say that that that burn that i was talking about on southland was yeah was pretty pretty intense you know because i like i said i didn't have a mask i didn't have gloves um i got i did get some burns you know on that one um for as big as that fire was like i'm lucky that i you know it's a testament to the to the setup and and all that stuff that

I didn't get burned worse um but yeah like that was one of that was a thing where I was like yeah I don't know if I'm gonna get out of this one you know and where does the name come from Trampas is it's um well my parents got it from a tv show it was a western called the Virginian and Doug McClure he told me that Dougoug mcclure played trampas and uh um but interestingly like and so doug so trampas in the tv show was came on as a bad guy and then was reformed to be a good guy but in the book the name like he's the the character's the bad guy he's like a murderer and a cattle thief and gets killed by the virginian right so you know obviously there's i can just imagine the like studio meeting where they're like oh no no we'll just make him a good guy it's

perfect you know but trampas in spanish means tricks or traps right and tramposo is a trickster or con artist right so it's so it's actually the perfect name for a bad guy in a book and the worst name for the good guy right it's like and so like so like i'm sort of the the uh uh butt of the ultimate like kind of cosmic joke about my name you know but if but if i was to ask your parents why they chose that name for you well you know my dad's a cattle rancher they loved the show my mom thought cowboys in general my dad included and of course doug mcclure was you, good looking and that like, so they love the show and they love that character. Like, um, but they, but they didn't know, they had no idea that it meant that, you know,

but the other part of that is like, like I was in, when I was living in Ireland, um, I was reading death in the afternoon, which is a book about bullfighting that Ernest Hemingway wrote. And, and so forgive me for talking about bullfighting in a vegan podcast, but one of the things that in that event, if you can make it any kind of significant, like I have my judgments about bullfighting. The disclaimer is it's a ridiculous practice.

But the matter has to be right between the horns when he kills the bull right now um some and that's that's what creates this sort of like it's the alchemy that makes this like symbol between life and death or man overcoming like darkness or shadow or uh the monster and uh but sometimes a matador will like do something that's kind of tricky that um you know looks really flashy but doesn't put him in that spot of danger and the uh noveleros in the audience will be like oh wow that's really amazing and the aficionados are like trampas it's a trick right it's not the real they don't believe it right and so uh in the glossary in that book, Death in the Afternoon, where he talks about these bullfighting words, he defines trampas as the appearance of danger where none really exists.

I mean, I was 27 years old when I read that. That's exactly what I do with my life. I create this illusion of violence. It's this, you know, like, how crazy is that, right? That's crazy. Yeah, amazing. And then later when I was 42, this guy, I went to this restaurant. I'd gone there a lot, and the takeout guy was like, so I'd sort of lived with that paradigm for some years.

I don't believe it. You know, like, it's, you know, the appearance of danger would not really exist. It's, you know, like, that's bullshit or whatever, you know, like, or it is bullshit, you know? Like, so this guy was like, hey, Trampas, you know, your name is unbelievable. He says to me, this is a couple years ago. I was like, well, you know, it's pretty cool. I'll admit it. But like, I don't know if it's unbelievable. And he's like, no, it's unbelievable. And because my grandmother used to watch the telenovelas. And when she would see something that she didn't believe, she would yell Trampas at the at the screen. So it's unbelievable. And I was like, oh, yeah like oh yeah unbelievable like that's another

like that's just a different sort of like awareness right of that you know i don't believe it versus unbelievable right and so like my name actually means unbelievable like that's how i define myself now fully unbelievable the podcast is officially over. Drop. We got to end it there. Yeah, like drop the mic and walk away, dude. Drop the mic. Kachoo. You know? We did it.

Yeah, man. Thanks, man. That was awesome. Yeah, thank you. Really cool. So, you feel good? I feel great. Good.

Yeah. I feel like you could talk for like eight more hours. I fully could. I got that from my dad. Well, come on back and we'll talk some more. I'll do it. I'd love to. Cool.

So, all right. If you're digging on Trampas, trampasthompson.com and at trampas t is the twitter well you don't tweet you i think your last tweet was like january i don't know why i'm telling people to go there i'll go there i'm gonna i'm actually gonna start facebook i'm gonna start instagramming too like i'm at tramposo at instagram at tramposo i literally have zero pictures up but like no but i told like i have this whole like instagram you have this crazy i'm gonna tell you could be like carrying a gopro when you do this crazy stuff and like get these amazing shots no i'm gonna like i have this big fat download that's like today there's nothing like in two weeks it's gonna be like you're gonna be like oh wow this is like so rich in content to my my instagram that's my commitment to myself i'll hold you that okay cool

all right cool man well peace thanks brother plants all right that's our show for today i hope you guys enjoyed it. If you're digging the RRP and you're new to the show and you want to delve into episodes beyond the most recent 50, which is what you see on iTunes, well, we have an app for that. It's the Rich Roll app, and it's totally free. Just search Rich Roll in the App Store. It'll pop right up. That way you can carry around the entire catalog on your iOS device

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