The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 331: Stu Segall—Naked Volleyball and Other Strategic Operations

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

The successful producer of hit shows like Hunter, Renegade, and Silk Stalkings talks about how 9/11 changed television forever and led him to turn his 20-acre studio into Strategic Operations, a training facility that has allowed hundreds of thousands of military, law enforcement, and first responder personnel to experience medical and tactical training in "Hyper-Realistic® scenario environments."  

Good grief did I enjoy that conversation. Hi, it's the way I heard it episode number 331. This one is called Naked Volleyball and other strategic operations. With, I'm now going to call him my friend, Stu Siegel. Chuck, he's an easy guy to like, don't you think? Totally, man. The first time that I connected with him, I couldn't get him off the phone. We had a great chat, and he's full of stories, and he has seen a lot in his 78 years.

Dude, honestly, you know, I keep thinking about a show that I'm going to do one of these days called Drinking with Geniuses, where I just sit down in a bar and have conversations with people who I think you should know. And, you know, in some ways we try and do that on this podcast. But this is a guy who you really just want to sit and listen to. He's a producer in the TV business. And not with a small pee. This guy has actually done it. He got Hunter made. He got Renegade with Lorenzo Lama.

made and Hunter of course with Fred Dreyer. Silk stockings like eight seasons of these shows. This guy got his piece of the TV pie and I met him a couple of years ago because the business has changed radically and through a series of events almost too incredible to believe, Stu Siegel turned his 20-acre production facility down in San Diego. into the premier state-of-the-art training facility. It's called Strategic Operations, and it's where first responders and soldiers. And any number of other agencies can go to experience,

what's he call it? Hyper-realism. Yes. Hyper-realism where... Go ahead, finish your thought. I didn't really have a thought. I was just free associating with the things. thing that brought us together, which was an episode of Dirty Jobs a couple years ago.

Yes, that I happened to be at the shooting of. You absolutely crashed that shoot. We met Stu Siegel and his merry band of miscreants who are down there doing something on the production level that's really incredible, but also doing something on the tech level that makes me think that this conversation you're about to listen to is as much of a public service announcement as it is just a really good hang. Make no mistake. Stu Siegel and his organization, what he's created there, which is a training ground for

first responders, for combat medics, just for teams of Marines, Army guys, Navy guys, who are in situations where something bad goes down and how to deal with it. They train there with that. And make no mistake, he is saving lives with this training that exists there. Yeah, it's the training and the tech. we don't get to it until about 45 minutes in, but so you know going in, I really wanted him on to discuss the cut suit. The cut suit is the most realistic training device that I've ever worn. It's basically a fat suit filled with bodily organs that look very real, complete with a circulatory system.

And the things you can do to train both a combat medic and a medical student with this device, I think are not only going to be transformative. I think in relative terms, this thing that Stu Siegel has his hands on right now could do for the medical industry what flight simulators have done to the airline industry in terms of training pilots. 100%. You know, I mean, I watched you in a faux operating room from up above. I could look down and see you operating on this poor bastard who was lying on the table. Blean out for God's sake. He was bleeding like a stuck big. When you were done, there was a pool of blood on the floor, fake blood, obviously, but that was the size of like Lake Michigan.

It was just ridiculous. Yeah. It's intense. And you know what? Even though you know you're in a simulation and this is the difference between real and hyper-reel, I've been in lots of simulations where it's like a video game and you get into it and it's intense, this is different. When you're in an operating room trying to get a what looks like a very,

real spleen out of a very real person, you get there in a hurry, right? You're out of your own body and you're really experiencing a kind of virtual reality without the virtual. And that's what Stu Siegel has stumbled across. But look, strap in and enjoy the ride because this guy's resume is just extraordinary. And I really had a good time getting to know him a little bit better. I think you will too. It's episode 331. Naked Vyme. Volleyball, you're not going to want to fast forward through that, and other strategic operations with Two Segal, right after this. Do do, do, do do do do do, do dumb. Well, are you sick of it yet?

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NetSuite.com. Well, still, last time I saw you, I was covered in blood or something that looked an awful lot like it. Thank you for that. Well, it was our pleasure was all ours. Believe me, we love seeing you all bloodied up. That segment snuck up on me like very few dirty jobs ever have. You know, we had just kind of come back into the run, and I was reacclimating myself into everything that the show was, and I didn't have a lot of info on it. It was one of those segments, Stu, that stuck with me.

They all stick with me for a day or two. Some stick with me for a couple of weeks. What you guys are doing down there outside of San Diego stuck with me to this day. And it's funny, when I'm out being interviewed and talking about the show, people always ask, you know, what was one of the more surprising segments and so forth and so on. And from what it's worth, I just find myself defaulting more and more to the day I spent at Strategic Ops. So thanks for that. Well, thank you for being there.

It was a privilege to have you there, Mike, for obvious reasons, but it's also good to have people know what the capabilities are that are out there for the medical community of all kinds, being military, first responders, anybody this has touched and hopefully helped. So that's what it's all about for us. We all get up in the morning hoping we save somebody's life. And I know that sounds grandiose,

but it does, in fact, work so we know it. It works, you know. Yeah, well, look, anything that starts with, hyper realistic, A, gets my attention and B makes my antenna go up because I've heard people use that expression all the time and almost always without fail, it's overpromised and underdelivered. I've been through every kind of simulation that I know of and none of them really come close to the real deal except for what you guys are doing. So obviously I want to talk about all that in detail. Stand by while I kill this fly real quick. Ow. Sorry, it's just a matter of...

No, he's real close. No, hang on a second. I'm doomed to get me. Now I'm going to let him go. Get out. Really, you saved a fly's life there? Saved a life. I mean, I think I literally took a wing. I can tell he's flying off, but he's leaving in a circular pattern. So I don't... I don't know that I did him any favors. With your permission, Stu, if we could start just, you know, a little more micro, a little less macro. And by micro, I mean you. Oh, you're a micro. Okay, my micro.

So what I want to get at is how a TV producer wound up in the business of waking up every day, hoping to save people's lives by covering them in fake blood and filling their dreams with night terrors. How did this happen? All right. Well, I've been in the TV movie business for about 35 years or 40 years. I can't count anymore. and then I was doing television down here in San Diego. I came to San Diego from L.A. in 1991 to set up a studio to do a number of productions

that we thought were going to be here for six months and gone. That was 23 plus years ago. It was longer than that ago. It was 35 years ago. Which one specifically? Silk Sockings is what I came down to San Diego to do. I work for Steve Cannell. Steve Cannell, if you know, and maybe your audience does or doesn't know,

was the guy that sat at the end of his show and pulled the paper out of his computer. He was one of the most prolific writers in television, and I had the privilege of working for him for about five years. And my closest friend at the time was named Frank Lupo. Frank passed away a couple of years ago, unfortunately. But he pulled me in from my other business, which was distribution, and got me to produce the TV series Hunter. When I say got me to, asked me to, because he knew what my capabilities were.

And I said, how long is it going to last? Because I got a business to run. He goes, oh, we're only doing 13 episodes and we'll see what happens after that. So I say 13 episodes to me was 13 weeks. I knew nothing about television. I knew. For people under 40, we're talking about Fred Dreyer. Fred Dreyer.

Former played professional football, as I recall. That's correct. Very good. It's been that long that you've got to remember. That's interesting. Well, look, man, I got to tell you, it's just a quick sidebar. but when you talk about that logo from, is it Canel or Cannell? Cannell.

Cannell, right. So, Chuck, you remember, right? It's animated. He's at a typewriter. And it's just a real quick thing and you see an animated hand or maybe it wasn't animated. I don't remember. He grabs the paper and he throws it. It was live action?

And he pulls it out of the typewriter. Yeah, I remember. And people may know it as Stephen Jay Canal. Correct. Yes. Correct. Right. That's what he said.

That's what his credit was. Now, was he also all over Rockford? In those days? He was all over everything. This guy, the most interesting thing about him was he was the nicest man that walked the planet. And I don't say that lightly because I know a lot of men that walk the planet. They're not that nice at all. He was a gym.

He really was. And he had one problem with him. He was dyslexic. This man couldn't write three letters in a row that made any sense. But he wrote over a thousand hours of television. The only person that could read is... But nobody could read him. One person.

Grace. Curcio was his secretary, and she was the only one that could decipher what he would write. Real quick blur. We did Hunter for NBC, and we just hit the air, and NBC the numbers came out, and Steve came into my office and grabbed a pen. He says, hey, we did really well last night. He wrote down on a piece of paper, NBC, but it came out CBN. I mean, three letters he could not put in order.

We're on the Christian Broadcasting Network with Hunter? It was unbelievable. And there was the first time I really saw the dyslexia and the man. But then I saw him do other things that were just totally incredible. He could write a two-hour pilot in three days. I mean, and he did. How do you explain that, Stu? What is the mutant gene in some people that allows them to be so prolific?

Especially in like this area, you know, John D. McDonald had it, right? I mean, some of the, you know, Elmore Leonard had it. You know, writers of that ilk. They could just sit down and bang, classic. What made Stephen so different, he could do five shows at one time. He had seven shows at one time when I was working for him, and he was hands-on with every one of the scripts. He was strictly about the script.

So if the writers that were running the shows, the exec producers on each show wrote, he would make sure they were clear. He was in every editing session when they did the pilots and when they did some of the episodes. he couldn't be in every episodic editing room because he was just so many of them. But he was really a phenomenon. I don't think it's a sidebar because it's, to me, it's really instructive that you had a front row seat. You were working at the feet of a master helping to bring his scripts to life back in the day.

Right. Right. So again, I knew that about you when I showed up a couple years ago, but it didn't matter to me until after I left until I really tried to put myself in your place and think about that particular set of skills and how it translates. But I'm ahead of myself. Go ahead. It's the early 90s and you're living the dream. Yeah. Well, I went to work for him in 84. So Frank Lupo, who actually created the TV series Hunter under Stevens Banner, he's the one who asked me to do it. And I said, yeah, okay, sure, 13 weeks, how bad could that be? Well, 13 weeks turned into five years, and five years turned into 30 years,

and it was just one of those things. I never went back to my other business. I had a business partner, I said, hey, it's all yours, let me know how are you doing. And I went on and did television. And then at the end of my contract with Steve, he wanted me to go to Canada to run his studio in Canada. And I wasn't going to Canada.

I lived in the States. So I just sat around for six months. and I did a couple of things for Columbia Studios. They had a problem on a show that Don Belisario was directing. They asked me to go out and straighten it out, and I did. What was the problem? What was the show? Because that's another name.

A lot of people of a certain age are going to remember. The problem with the show was Don Belisario. Don was a great guy, but, ooh, anyway, he was the producer and the director and the writer of this particular show called, I think it was three on a match. And for me to come up with that title, you've just witnessed a miracle in life because it happened so very long ago. And I don't remember anything anymore. You know, it'll happen quicker when we edit it a little bit. Oh, I hope so.

I hope so. It almost sound like I know what I'm talking about. Yeah, like you brought it up right away. I need you, Chuck. Don't run away. So I did that for Donnie. You wanted me to be his partner because he loved what I did, but I didn't love what he did. And I said, no, thanks.

And he went to Steve and said, listen, I want to buy this guy's contract. And Steve realized what guy, you know, no, you want to buy something? No, because they were friendly competitors. And Stephen wasn't going to give him anything that would help him. You know, and I wasn't going to go because I didn't like him. You know, he was just an interesting character, but a very egotomaniacal one. And that's just egomaniacal ones I can do without. And so I'm sitting around my house in North Hollywood,

and I get a call from Steve's office. And it's a Friday. I lived in the Valley. Steve's offices was on Hollywood Boulevard. and I was swimming with the valley. You've got to go over the canyons to go back and forth. So I got to call at 5 o'clock. He says, Steve would like to see you about doing a show in San Diego.

I went, okay, what time do you want me there Monday? He said, no, we want you there now. I went, okey-dokey. Friday night at 5 o'clock, no one's ever in town in Hollywood at 5 o'clock in Friday. So I zipped over there. He gave me the concept of the show, Silk Stockings. You may or may not know about it. And, USA forever.

Exactly. When it first went on the air, it was USA slash CBS. It was called Late Night, or I'm sorry, Crime Time for Nighttime or something to that effect. And so we were on one particular night. There were four other shows that were on the rest of the week. And we started off that way. And then CBS dropped out and USA took over. And what started at 13 episodes went to eight years.

and in that interim I was about halfway through the first season of silk when I got a call from the production head and he says, hey we've got a show a Lorenzo Lama's called Renegade can you do it? I said, sure, absolutely.

And I'm scratching my head going, oh man, what I just commit to? Because it's one thing to do one show and started from the ground up is you folks probably really know. Now he wants me to do another one while I'm still doing this one. I'm a guy that never says no.

If you say to me, hey, can you, before you finish the sentence, I say, absolutely, let's do it. Sure. Figuring I will figure it out somehow. That's kind of in my life style of how I do my business. Never say no. That's a producer, right, Stu? Yeah.

I mean, like it, side of a good producer. I mean, truly, in the truest sense of the word, every good producer I've ever met says, yes, before they understand the totality of the request, and before they know for a fact that they can actually deliver. Oh, yeah. They have supreme confidence that they're going to figure it out, but they don't know until they know. Absolutely.

Well, that was been my lifestyle in this business forever because they kept throwing stuff at me. We started doing shows for all of the major studios. And the reason we did it is here in San Diego, two hours south of L.A., we had non-union crews, all young folks that were just trying to get into the business that couldn't get into the IA, which is a union for the crews. We did have a deal with the DGA, so we had regular directors that were qualified, and we did Screen Actors Guild Actors.

But the crews and the drivers, there was no IOTC, there was no union for the drivers. Teamsters. Which was a lot of fun for about 12 years of fighting. But I won. So there we go. Anyway, so doing silk stockings, halfway through the season, we start Renegade. Lorenzo worked with him He's a prince of a guy

Really nice man We did five seasons of that We did eight seasons of silk And in the interim And amongst all that stuff We would do two-hour movies a week Or pilots for different studios From Disney to CBS

To Fox to I don't think there was one studio we didn't do something for And it was nonstop production for 12 years I mean Probably one of the biggest shows we did that we really, I didn't really have much to do with was Veronica Mars.

Veronica Mars was a huge hit and we shot it on a couple of my stages here in San Diego. And our good friend, Rico, was in that. Rico Colin Thomas played Veronica's dad. Yes, yes. I have a picture of him signed on my wall. He's been on the podcast. Yeah, a real nice man. And I only met her once.

I drive around a golf cart. At the time, we had 20 acres. Now I'm down to a smaller, seven acres. Why you drive around a golf cart and somebody says, well, go over and say hello to her. And I said, who's her? And it was the lead in the show. She was very nice gal and shook hands and said hello and I went my way.

She went hers. And that was it for, I think they were here for about three years. That's Kristen Bell, you're referring to. Thank you. Because I couldn't come up with a name on my own. I appreciate that. Yeah, we couldn't fix that in the edits too. So we just had to jump in and actually tell you this time.

Okay. Just hang on for another hour and we're going to be great. Hey, if you get the scissors, I got the time. How does it feel and when do you know when you've got a tiger by the tail? Because to say that it went on for eight seasons is one thing, but to only be two seasons in and not know that, and then three and then four, as a producer working in this business that's so cruel and so arbitrary and so random,

what does it feel like to really have that many plates spinning and juggle multiple hits. To us, we weren't multiple hits. We were just lucky to get picked up. We were walking around going, hey, we're a hit show. The actors may have done that, but the guys who are making it, we're going, let's hope we just keep this going as long as we can.

We all know it's going to end at some point. What that point is, who knows? The audience will tell you, or the network will say, no, we don't want to do that anymore. I've lost a couple of real good shows based on the network's making some stupid decisions. And they... Give me a big one.

What's the one where everybody would look back and agree that, holy crap, the suit blew it on this one? Silk stockings. Really? Really? Silk stockings could have gone on for 12 years. It was really the way the numbers were and all that stuff. But they fired a guy who was somewhere up in management. They brought in a new young guy who was going to change the face of CBS night, late night.

And he did. It was a joke. You could see it was a joke. when they came down and they had their new team tell you what it was in on their mind and you knew full well, not from ego, but you knew full well, that ain't gonna work. Yeah, when they say,

why does it have to be silk? Couldn't it be canvas? Couldn't it be burlap? Burlap socks. Yeah, burlap socks, okay? Whole new idea, new team. There you go. Going to be great.

It was something far worse than that. I don't remember what your concept was, but it dropped dead in about six episodes. and they knew it. And well, once you stop a show, you can't restart it. I mean, we did Silk Stockings with three different casts, leading cast. First cast was Rob Estes and Mitzi Capture. And then we had the second cast when those guys,

their five-year contract ended, they wanted to be movie stars and went often to do that. And I still haven't heard, we're seeing the movie yet, but I'm sure it'll come out soon. And then we got these two new people that the network cast for very stupid reasons. I was in the casting sessions. I don't normally speak up,

but I said, you guys are making a big mistake. This is not going to work. And I said, oh, no, no, it's going to be fun. They love that, by the way. They'd love it. So we started the sixth season with these people and it lasted about a half a season

and we were recasting it again. And we recast the last cast with Janet Gunn and Chris, I can't remember his last name, Canadian actor who's been around a long time. Real good cast. And the numbers were there. Then they came in with a new,

idea and the show is goodbye, you know. What was the secret sauce for a show to survive three complete overhauls like that from a casting perspective? Because that's normally the kiss of death. I thought so too. Yeah, I thought so too. I mean, there are people right now saying, you know, Ryan Sechrest, really, you're going to replace Pat Sejack? Is that going to work? Like, do we know for sure? Well, it probably will because Wheel of Fortune is automatic, you know? Exactly. But, you don't really know it until you know it. Exactly.

What made silk that bulletproof for that long? I think it was the basic concept and maybe what the show looked like. We try to give it a, I'm going to say Miami Vice look, but there's probably another term for it. But I got some really unusual set designers, production designers, to come in and make the show look different. And if you saw what the first season looked like, we did some outrageous, creative things for the sets.

Every show had a color. Two colors. Yellow and blue would be episode one, green and red. And we would make everything with those little accents. You wouldn't notice it probably. But we certainly did because every time you cut to the captain's office, he was drinking out of a different colored cup every episode. And again, real subtle stuff, but we knew it.

And it gave the, ooh, I think it shot my soul on foot there. That's okay. That Mike gets in a way. Just knock it out of the leg. I took a punch out. I want to let him know I'm right. ready for him. In doing that, I can only attribute it to the storytelling and the environment. And the environment was supposed to be Miami in San Diego. And if you don't think that was a problem,

let me tell you, from a production standpoint, there ain't any hills in Miami. There are plenty of hills in San Diego. So for the first five seasons, we racked our brains, well, you can't shoot that way because it's got a hill in it. After the fifth season, it was like, okay, you go out there, shoot anything you want, we can't make a mistake here, you know. And people bought it. They just bought it. Well, you know what? I mean, again, not to belabor the point, because I think this is all going to become relevant real soon, but the business of choosing a color scheme for each episode, the business of making those kinds of very, very small decisions really interests me for two reasons. First of all, John D. McDonald and Travis McGee, right? Those missed

all have color in the title. The deep blue goodbye, pale gray for guilt, the long lavender look, right? I mean, and so forth. And for some reason, that just always interests me. But more than that, how important is it to sort of be in on the joke as a producer and do things that you know full well might not be appreciated or even recognized by most of the viewers, but somehow resonates on the set? Every episode.

In a way that it's, yes. I mean, why? Why does that matter? Why not? In other words, I know it sounds silly to say, we had so much fun doing this. I have a grip come up to me and say, hey, what are you about this idea? It's a great idea. Let's do it. It wasn't the producer, the director of the only gods in the town. Everybody on the set was a god. I have a sound man and say, hey, how about this? And they all knew I was open to any idea that sounded good, even if it was a bad idea, we try it, You know, and most of them worked. They really did.

And we did some outlandish things. Most of them I have in the back bowels of my mind I can't get to right now. But it was unusual. And we used really fine actors that did a great script. The fellow who was the head writer on the show for a great number of years was a name David Peckinpaw. The last name is familiar to you because he was Sam. Sam Peckinpaugh's nephew. And he was outlandish.

Hold on a second. Now, this is also interesting for what I know we're about to discuss. Dave Peck and Paul's dad was Sam Peck and Paul? His dad's brother. His dad's brother's uncle. And Sam Peck and Paul, of course, the wild bunch. Exactly. Finest movie ever made.

I agree. What, I mean, that's a bold claim, but I wouldn't disagree. Because isn't that the movie where Sam Peck and Paul, they coined an expression, I think it was the blood ballet. Yep. Right? his fight scenes. He was the first one to do big squibs in your face.

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At puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure talk. Oh, this is going to be so relevant. This is going to be so relevant in a couple of minutes, folks. Stay with us because you're starting to get a sense of where Stu Siegel is coming from. Oh, and also, look, this is worth a quick sidebar too.

The fact that you're listening to a gaffer, the fact that as a producer of a show, anybody on that set felt empowered to walk up to you, with an idea. That almost is impossible today. And the really, I mean, I like to think on dirty jobs, a very, very different show, but it was the same kind of environment. But I heard Jerry Seinfeld tell a story the other day about a scene where, do you remember the dentist? Yes. The guy, so in between, it wasn't even in between takes. It was during lunch, I think. Jerry walks out and he's sitting there in the chair and he's alone on the set and he's trying to think about what the scene needs. And he hears a voice somewhere from above him say, hey, you know what would be funny?

And Jerry looks up and there's an electrician on a ladder, right, doing whatever he does up there. And Jerry doesn't even know the guy's name. And he says, no, what would be funny? And the guy says, it'd be funny if the dentist right before he starts to do his operating on you took a hit of laughing gas. And Jerry was like, yeah, you know what, that would be funny. And so it immediately goes into the scene. And it's one of the greatest moments of that whole franchise. I've always believed that everybody's creative in one way or the other. And everybody's got an idea that works.

And when you stifle that by saying, boy, nobody on this set can say a word because we're smarter than you are. Shame on that guy. I was always open to it. And I always, forever, from the day I got into this business, I would say, hey, what do you think? What do you think? Because half the time, I didn't know.

You know, when I started out in this business, doing what I was doing, what do I do with this and what do I do it? Everybody had an answer. So if you get stuck with something or somebody said, hey, how about this? Let's go. Let's give it a shot. Because not one person, I realize in big Hollywood, it's different. It's just been that way.

But when you're working with a group of people that are your family kind of thing, And it gets into that, you working 12 hours a day, week in and week out, somebody's going to say something that's going to be smarter than you. And that's okay. You know, it doesn't denigrate anybody who says yes to it. It just makes the product better. So aside from new teams and meddlesome executives and maniacs, eagomaniacs who don't know how to stay in their own lane,

how did the events of 9-11 completely change? your career the way you worked and ultimately get you on the track that got me to San Diego with dirty jobs last year? Well, it was a real simple thing. 9-11 changed the entertainment business in a real direct way. The networks wanted to get away from action-adventure shoot-em-ups. And they want to get into reality-based TV where women get together and bitch at each other and their friends with they hate each other.

That kind of stuff was much more interesting to the network. Like dirty jobs. And it was cheaper. Yeah. Well, I was not quite that smart. But anyway, well, I was doing at the time, I think I was doing three shows. And one day, the switch got turned off. Once the episodes were done, the thing was, it was over.

And I'm sitting here on a studio at 20 acres. I got buildings all over the place with sets in them from different shows we did. And I'm walking around here whistling in the graveyard going, what's next? and I had to let everybody go. You know, I had certainly a crew in the office that was with me. But all the crews went into the wind because there was no work. So I was cleaning out a stage, and I had done a pilot for a studio, I can't remember which one, about the FBI and drug dealing and all that stuff.

And we had a bunch of prop cocaine packaged in kilo lots with a drug stamp on them. And it was really pretty cool looking. So I said, what am I going to do with two pallets? stuff, I'm going to throw it away. I said, well, before I do, my neighbors down the street, down the hill from me is the Southwest Regional Drug Enforcement Agency, the DEA, their headquarters. So I'll give them a call, see if they have any use for it. I called up the guy and said, hey, I'm your neighbor up the hill. I said, I'm cleaning out some stuff. I got some fake cocaine. Do you have any use for it for training? I said, I don't know. I said, I'll get back to you.

About three minutes later, I had three DEA agents coming up and goes, where's that cocaine you want to get rid of. And I realized right away, the guy never heard the word fake. So I'm surprised he didn't come up on the SWAT team, to be honest with you, but they figured that I was my myself. How bad could it be? I'm your neighbor, and I have some cocaine up here. You might be interested in it. Swing by. So I had these things out and they went over and they looked and I could see the look of disappointment because they took two kilos, two little foam kilos wrapped and said, okay, thanks, we'll take these two. And I got probably a thousand of them in these pallets. I mean, they were huge.

And I realized right away that the guy had no idea what I was all about. Then he said, what do you do here? And I said, well, here's what we did here. And I walked them around and showed them the different stages and sets. And I had bars, had a Beverly Hills mansion, I had Tijuana Saloons. We had all kinds of different sets that we used on quite a bit of occasions. So he says, well, what do you do here? And I explained, I said, right now we're doing nothing because it's over.

and he said, well, can I bring in a warrant entry team and train and decide here? I went, whatever a warrant entry team is, yeah, sure, I guess, why not? And I had nothing to do. I said, can I watch? And he said, yeah, sure. So they brought this group of DEA agents over about a week later, and the instructor was a DEA agent,

and he was also a reserve Marine officer. Didn't know anything about any of that. So I said, hey, look, I'd like to watch and see what you do and all this and all that. He said, yeah, sure. stand in there with me and we'll do the exercise and we'll go from there. I said, okay. So they lined everybody up to the outside door, which is really an inside door, but outside door.

And he knocked on the door, federal agents open up, got a warrant for your arrest. That's it? I turned to the guy. I said, that's it? What are they doing next? Oh, they'll kick the door and I said, why? I said, can I inject myself a little bit into this? I think I can make this a little bit more interesting for him.

He said, sure. He says, but you are going to get knocked on your ass when they come in. I said, oh, that's fine. I don't care. No, I'm, you know, I'm not a kid anymore. I'm a lesser kid then, but the reality of life was it was fun. So what I did was... Do they understand who you are at this point, Stu?

Do they know? No. They have no idea. They don't know what you've produced. They don't know what you're capable of. They don't know how your mind works. Let them in on a building. I'm the superintendent of the building.

Like a giant playground. Yeah. You tossed them the key. and said, go ahead, use it. So I'm in the building, and I turn to the guy and I said, hey, can I get involved with this a little bit and make this a little bit more interesting? It's a little dry.

He said, sure, but they're going to knock you in your ass. I said, well, that's fine, too. So they do it again, knocking on them. Hey, federal, there's an open oven. I know. F you, I'll keep it clean for Chuck's purposes. F you, I'm calling the police. What?

We are the police. No, you're not. You're phonyies. I'm calling my lawyer. It was an exchange. of profanities that I won't even begin to remember because it was all off the top of my head. It wasn't the script. And I get into it really well, just because.

Next thing I know, the front door goes, blah, boom, and it collapses in. They all run in and I'm screaming up, calling my lawyer. They grab me, they throw me on the ground. And I mean, threw me on the ground. They didn't say, please, would you get on the ground? Boom. I keep hitting that mic again. Sorry.

No, it's realistic, Matt. You talk with you. Right there on the ground. So he grabbed me, threw me in it in. And I'm swearing at them. I'm calling them M. I'm calling him everything you can imagine. And this female voice comes up, the one who's got me in.

She said, if you don't shut up, I'm going to break your arm off and stick it up your ass. Then you can tell your friends. I went, okay, I'll tell you what. I won't tell anybody that you did this if you just don't tell anybody that you did this. You know, it went on from there. I put bombs in there. I put guns and places they weren't supposed to be. Just to give these guys something to think about because they'll come into an empty place,

no role players, and they'll go through rooms. clear, clear, clear. That's not training. Yeah. I can show you a little bit of making this real interesting. And that's really how it started. I work with the DEA quite a bit. I got a couple of my actors, brought them in as role players. Everybody likes to play

with guns, so we had, I have a ton of weapons here. All blank firing automatic weapons, semi-automatic weapons, AK-40s, all kinds of weapons. So I brought that into the fray, and we made that really interesting. And I tell you, I've had my ass kick by

a bunch of DEA agents that I take my hat off to because these guys are the real true no BS warriors. So we did that. And then the SWAT team heard about it. And then I had the Veronica Mars set, which was their college. At the time, I think we were in college. They were out of high school. And we used that set for school shootings. Culembind happened. And they needed a place to train. So once they saw what I did and what I had, they came to me and said, hey, we want to, you know, can we do this? And I said, yeah, sure. We got role players, got kids.

And we did the whole thing. And one team called another team. And pretty soon, all the local SWAT teams came and trained under those circumstances. I had pyro guys so we could blow shit up, RPGs, explosions. You know, we use loud blanks, full load blanks that are really as loud as a real gunshot. And it was realism. And that's what they need. because when they train and they don't have realism,

it's phony training. They're looking at the watch going, what am I going home? You start throwing explosions at them, and back, their nuts sack gets shrunk, and they get into it, and it's on like Donkey Kong. It's real. Yeah.

I've had a number of cops grab me, go a little too far. I was fine with it, but they got into it. And that's how you have to train these people. You have to train to a realistic standard, hence the term we copyright wrote hyper-realistic. So we did, but you don't, I mean, you have a working understanding of what's believable on the big screen and the small screen, but you don't have any real training in first responders and, you know, creating these role played situations with this hyper realism. You're just basically playing the cards you have and using the skills you have in what feels like an adjacent pursuit. Certainly not what you've been.

used to doing, but like a hit that you don't know is a hit, you're early on, right? You're talking to these agencies. Are you beginning to realize that you have something to offer of real value? No. Never realized it. Never realized it until we got a little deeper in the story. I've always been pro-law enforcement. And my previous life, way back in the day, I was anti-law enforcement.

But I'm now pro-law enforcement, as I have. been for 60 plus years. And it just seemed to me that if you can do something to make something better for someone who's doing that job, it's incumbent for all of us to do something to make that, whatever it happens to be. You know, whether to give them a cup of coffee when they're out there, late at night, freezing her butts off, or showing them how to kick in the door and making it realistic in training. And that realism was fun for me because I knew how realistic it was. And the proof of it was as many law enforcement special operations teams came to us to do this. And for a year, we did everybody in the state, the DEA, a lot of federal agencies, local

enforcement, schools. And just in the beginning part, we didn't charge any money for it because it wasn't a business. It was, hey, I got this, you need it. Come on, use it. It wasn't like, how much you're going to pay? And eventually we had to get into like, well, geez, I have to hire some people. So here's how we're going to do it. Cut to about maybe about a year later when we went to war in Iraq.

Got a call from a guy who was the first training officer that I met from the DEA. Gentleman's name is Mark Coast. Really smart, great guy. I think he was a reserve captain, and now he's a full-blown colonel. Anyway, he calls me up and he said, look, I've got 100. 50 guys. We're sitting on the tarmac. We're going to a place called Iraq. You got anything for us to do? Can you do something for us?

I'm going to come on over. Give me a day. So in that day, I set up some things. I called some of my role players up who were my extras and actors in the TV business. I had, on the doles, we had 70,000 extras in San Diego that had signed up to be on TV. Extras. Don't say a line. Walk across us, you know, or cop in the background. Sure. So there's a huge community down here of Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, but mainly it's a big community of Iraqis.

So I called up some of the role players and I said, hey, here's what I'm doing. Can you come down and help us out and just speak the language and we'll figure out what we're doing when we do it? It happened that fast. So the next day, 150 Marines show up all ready to go. They have no idea what they're walking into. And neither did I, actually, but we winged it.

and they were here for about a week. And in that week, we taught them a lesson. And we weren't there to teach them a lesson. I don't mean to say it like, we're going to teach you something. But they learned a tremendous amount because they were in a real environment with the Iraqis. You showed him something. Yeah, and they got it. And when they were speaking to it, you know, you can't do this overseas.

This means that. So, G.I. He's in there with his weapon. He says, hey, come up here. I want to talk to you. Komobia, I want to talk to you. That's the worst thing you could do, but they don't know that. Just to say what, for our listening audience,

you're moving your finger like with a come here motion means the same as the middle finger up. Thank you, sir. Okay. Yeah. Did you ever work for a, no, never mind. He's an interpreter. Yes, I know.

I speak stew. Well, you are in trouble. So we did a lot of scenarios where they were pulling in in their Humvees and this and that. I'm kind of an idiot, so I got dressed up as an Iraqi and ran around with an AK, and, you know, got my ass handed to me a few times. I got to be honest, it was a lot of fun. It was as much fun as you could think it could be doing serious work, as you can imagine it was.

This was not playtime. This was, these guys were going to Iraq. They have no idea because they were on the first wave. They have no idea what they're getting into, and neither did we, but we knew it wasn't going to be fun. So through circumstance, we did a whole bunch of stuff that week through the kitchen sink in there and these guys went off and told another unit,

then another unit called and say, hey, we want to come, can you do it? Sure, come on down. And then we started, I started building a village. I built this Afghan village out of Connix containers and flats. Flats are a set piece that you use in any TV or movie. And I'm saying that for your audience, because I know you know it, but we've made these flats.

They're four feet wide by 10 feet tall. And you can make them look like anything on the outside, but on the inside it's just a real thin wood and a real thin frame. And you can put them up with screws and take them down in minutes. So I built this city, the village. And we contracted with Marines at one point, and we ran about almost 400,000 Marines through the site you were on. in 12 years, not including all the other special operations units, the seals, the Delta guys flew in.

I mean, it turned into an enormous venture that people talked about because it was different. And they learned things, they had things happen to them. When you have a pyro guy blow something up underneath you and you don't die, you hear it, you feel it, you're still alive. That's one thing. When you do that and you have a guy's leg fly off because he's an amputee. and your special effects makeup people have done that prosthetic, as you all have seen. We used to hire a whole bunch of amputees

that loved, loved, loved doing this because they realized how much it was helping the Marines because very few people at that time saw amputated victims. But we'd have a kid, and I say kid respectfully. We have this young Marine actor who was dressed up as a Marine, lost his leg from cancer years before,

and he's screaming on the thing, for his mother and these Marines come around the corner and see them and they go, what do we do? Well, you've got to figure out what you do now. And they had that pressure, was it? When the bombs go off and the blanks go off, there's no ho-hum, we're playing, we're training. It's, oh, my God, all your senses get into the fight or flight mode. It's as real as you can make it. It's remarkable.

Or you make it easier, right? Like you, as a soldier, I would think, you know, you have to use your imagination in order to put yourself in that place. You have to give them the imagination. Well, as a producer, the easier you can make it or the less imagination that I need to bring to the party thanks to the table you've set, the easier it becomes for me to become immersed.

It's the only way it can work. They can't think enough about making something for them to think about. I don't know if that makes any sense. You have to make it happen for them to realize, holy shit, I've got to deal with this. And whatever this is at the time, whether it's his buddy being shot and wounded,

and he's got to take him out under fire because we've got guys shooting from another building or an explosion's going off, RPG's going off. It's chaos. And you can't think clearly in chaos. Nobody can. But you know what your job is. You've been trained to do a certain thing,

and you do that thing. And I've seen guys wet their pants when they see their first amputee. Never expected to do it. The amputee's yelling for his mother. Don't let me die. I've got to see my family. I want to see my kids.

Forget about thinking of anything that you're training. You ain't training. You're in it. And I know it's hard for people to understand that because you look, people who see movies and TV. But when you're in the environment of training, it's not a two-minute thing. It goes on for 20 minutes sometimes. And it's under stress and fire and boom, boom, boom. Then they call end of exercise.

Then they reevaluate what they did. And we correct mistakes. And I say we. We never trained. anybody. We're not instructors except for what. I did it again. Chuck, you're going to kill me or I'm going to kill myself. It's okay. I hit the mic, everybody for it. No, it's very, it's hyper-realistic the way you hit that mic. I mean, it's almost like you actually touched it. We feel it viscerally. Yes. So, um, hey, hold on, Sue. I just want to tell you that I think of you from time to time.

And I just realized Travis Mills is a friend of ours who's been on the podcast. He was one of the first quadruple amputees to come back from Afghanistan. And just last week we had Johnny Joey Jones on, you may have seen. Just a terrific guy. I lost both of his legs over there. And he was telling us a story about, you know, how he was trying in the wake of losing both his legs to keep the guys who were tending to him in a state of okayness. Because it was just so horrific, right? And so I think the point to make is that it doesn't matter how much training you have when you're in a moment.

like that. There is no playbook. You're either going to step up or you're not. And so, you know, the best conversation I had at your facility, unfortunately, we didn't have time to put it in the show, but it was with one of your volunteers. It was a woman who lost her leg in a car wreck. And she's lying there with, you know, her very real stump exposed to our cameras with a very realistic looking leg detached next to her, blood everywhere, and telling me that, you know, really for the first time since her accident, she felt like she had such a purpose in being part of a production, let's face it, in the end, it's a production where the stakes are awfully high. So anyway, I just want to throw that in there because people might... They get the worst of it. It's huge.

They get the worst of it because they're dragged, carried the leg, I believe. And they get treated just like they would if they were a wounded person. Nobody's gentle with anybody. And I can't tell you, we've had amputees that had legs missing, arms missing, two arms. It's a myriad of wounds that we utilized that gave the corpsmen, the Marine medics, that are Navy, but they're called Korman, training under fire, under stress, to get them off the X, which means get them out of there where the bad news is happening and get them to a safe place where they can treat them.

And that's kind of what we did. and that we did that on every exercise, whether it was with snipers or every exercise, somebody had to carry somebody out of there. And it was kind of fun because you could screw with people and get away with it, meaning this way. You know, we had some elite units come here. We had some seal units come here.

And we had one seal unit here that was going to rescue somebody from the inside of one of our sets out of our buildings. And we were going to inject one of our role players in it who was wounded, pre-wounded in his thigh, but he was dressed up as a seal, and we told the SEALs, he's a Korman, he's going to go in with you.

Well, he's got to be in the back. Okay, he can be in the back. The gag was, they were all going in to get this, rescue this person who was being held hostage. And the last guy in line was the Korman, who was our guy, as he came through the door,

he pulled his pistol out and shot himself. Not really, but the SEALs didn't know it. And he went down. Right. So now the seals have got to turn and fix their own guy before they can rescue anybody, and it turned into a cluster beyond belief. And it just threw them off.

They used to do A, B, C, D, D, E. Well, we made them do B, D, C, that's how they got to learn. And they got it fixated in their head, oh, shit, here's what I got to do. That's what I got to do. And we did a lot of that. I love stories like this seven years ago. a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company,

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American Meat Delivered. If you could eat a stare, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. How interesting to bring this back to Stephen Jay for a moment, who went from NBC to CBN, and here you are trying to screw with the chronology of an alphabet that people understand. So it's like the minute you get a pattern, you fall in love with it. And the minute you fall in love with it, you're in danger.

So you basically have to disrupt the pattern. When we started getting all these Marines coming in, we have companies of Marines. Company of Marines is about 200 guys. And the biggest unit we had here was a battalion of Marines. There was a 3-5 battalion that went into Fallujah. And it was close to 1,000 people in that battalion. It was a reinforced battalion.

A regular battalion is about 700. And this was a reinforced battalion. And they were going to go to Fallujah. I don't know if they knew they were going to Fallujah, but that's where they went. I think I lost. Nope, I'm back. No, you're back.

So I had done this quite a bit. My thing was I'd go up to the commander and introduce myself, and I'm going to say one word. You're going to definitely have to cut out of this, Chuck. So stand by with your scissors. I'd go up to the commander and I say, sir, you have rules of engagement. I don't have any.

I'm going to fuck with you every chance I can, and I'm going to make your life miserable. And the commander, look at me like, who the fuck is this guy? talking, you know, I'm just a slumpy guy, but I was serious. And I wanted him to know I was serious. I said, you're going to be here for a while. Every day, I'm going to work with you 22 hours a day and your men, not just him personally.

And it was like, well, yeah, okay. We got to be very close friends times after that because what we did for them in the three weeks they were here, they had never seen before. You have to assume the identity of the enemies do. How they think. I mean, that's basically what this is. You know, to be your friend, I have to be your enemy first. It's real simple.

When you see somebody doing something, you know how to get around it. Damn, and make it. You don't know how to get around that microphone still. It's really job security for you, Chuck. That's really where this is coming from. That's what you should have said to Chuck at the very beginning. Chuck, I'm going to be here for the next hour and a half, and my job is to work with you every chance I can.

And it's going to sound like this. Oh, oh, oh, my, oh, where do you come from? He didn't need to say that. I'll try to stop doing this with my hands. I want to jump in for a second because I happen to be there when you guys shot this episode. And just so people understand at home what this looks like. And you sort of compared it to the movies, but you say in a movie, the actors know what's going to happen. They know that this building is going to, they know an RPG is going to appear and a guy is going to shoot a rocket at you.

These Marines, everybody there doesn't know anything. And it looks so realistic. I saw, with my own eyes, a guy pull an RPG, and there's a line, I guess it's like a wire that's very almost invisible, where the RPG, literally you see it, go through the air, and come down, hit a building and explode out. And that's where this woman jumps out with her leg off. Yeah. And it's just so, it is hyper-realistic. That's the perfect expression of it.

So when these people are in there looking at it, they have no idea what's going to happen. And you really do firk with them. And that's what you have to do for training to keep these guys alive. They've got to realize this ain't a game. This is real life stuff. And we never treated it as a game, though we may have played the bad guy and threw different things into screw with them. It was done for purposes that you're going to run into these knuckleheads and these idiots overseas that are going to do this to you. You better get ready for it.

What are you going to do when it happened to you? Perfect example. We had an explosion in Humvee where a guy had lost his leg. our role player, our legs, if you will. And Marine Corman had to go in and get him out and all that. And a kid was freaked out. He was scared crapless. And he went through it and he did all that.

And days went by and he went overseas. He comes back a year later, I think, and said he was in country two months. The exact same thing happened. Humvee got hit. Guys were inside. Guys lost his legs. And he said he remembered his training immediately. And that's the only reason he got through it.

it. He remembered that one little thing that he did that screwed him up and he got through it. And I've had a few Marines tell me that story differently. That's amazing. That's so much better than a season pickup. That's so much better than, you know, a bump in the ratings. You have to be. Get me to the cut suit because honestly, that to me is about the best piece of tech I've seen in years. And at least under the umbrella of hyper-realism, I know it's cutting edge. So who came to you with that and where are we today with it? If I remember this correctly, the Army actually came to a doctor who we knew and who knew us and what our capabilities were with special effects makeup and all those kinds of things

and said, hey, look, the Army's looking for this, he didn't call it a cut suit, but a suit that they could put wounds on. Woon suit is probably what we called it at the time. And I said, yeah, that's no problem. So I got one of my buddies, and we went up to Hollywood to a special effects makeup company that specialized in special effects makeup.

So he made this suit that went from the neck down to your ankles. And it was, I can't show you on the camera, but he was like a stiff monkey. That was the very first one we made. Cost, I think, 80 grand to make this suit that didn't work. You know, it was crazy.

So I said, well, look, we'll do it in-house. So one thing led to another, and it took us a number of years to finite, get it to where it's supposed to be. And right now we're in, I don't know, phase 15 with it, the stuff that you saw, and we've made it even more different. Damn it. I'm going to go after you, Chuck. It's your fault. So we made about 15 versions of it, and we're at a really high-definition version right now. So we'll probably still keep working on it and tweaking it and making it to where the doctors really need it.

So we hired a real surgeon, Reg François, who you met. Ooh, got a little dizzy there. Sorry. That's okay. I got ice under my computer, which is melting. And I put it there to keep the fan from spinning. And as it melts, my computer tips forward. So what Chuck is doing right now, aside from wrestle with a stroke, is just look at me.

and my shot degrade while you continue to beat your microphone like a red-headed stepchild. It's a very bad day for chalk. That's good. He needs a bad day once in a while. I'm pretty sure of that. He really does. He's keeping me on my toes. You guys are keeping me on my toes.

Anyway. So with the cut suit, that was what we wound up with. It has really, it hasn't taken off, taken off like you would think it has taken up. But it's really out there and we're building new things for the civilian operators now, not just the military. Military's got theirs. We're now going into the civilian world and getting the civilian surgeons

to train on this. Because the way they train doctors now ain't the way they trained doctors 10, 15 years ago. This is the reason, really, full disclosure that I wanted to have you on. And if anybody fast forwarded through the preamble, let me just take

a second to make sure they're visualizing this right. You got to think of like a fat suit, right, that an actor would wear. And it's like a vest, part vest, part fat suit. And everything about it is designed to mirror the human body from the skin that's manufactured right there on your facility to the circulatory system that goes in it that pumps something that looks an awful lot like real blood all throughout the suit. And then, of course, there's flesh and tissue and organs that are painstakes. designed to look like the organs we all have from your spleen to your liver, to your lungs, to your heart.

It's all in there. So when a combat medic goes through this hyper-realistic situation where the RPG that Chuck described smashed into the hut and suddenly limbs are flying everywhere and people are screaming, what they're confronted with is a real person wearing one of these suits and they can cut into it. They can apply tourniquets. They can do any number of things that they would have to do in the real world, but it's not a mannequin. It's a real person wearing this thing that will haunt your dreams. So I just want to make clear people are visualizing your rights to. It also has a rib cage. So it's like a separate rib cage that sits on top of a real person. But one of the things you didn't mention was that one of the organs, it's not an organ,

but the lower GI tract, which is filled with a substance that is similar to poo and smells just like it. Am I right? You're right. Yeah, they brought in the fart guys who made the like the gag gift that you can squirt that smells like. It's called liquid ass. That's it. Liquid ass. We brought the liquid ass guys in to squirt their product onto the fake fecal matter that is injected, which I also did with needles into the lower GI tract.

And just so people understand, these cut suits also come with the, what you call your full exterior, manly accoutrements. Anatomically correct, I believe. Gigantically human. And may I say very generous, Stu, a very generous third leg. Was not modeled after me, I assure you. Let's leave it at that. So that's what I want people to have in their mind's eye. These hyper-realistic wartime simulations with this thing that's been divided.

that's called a cut suit. But now, and this was the thing that sold me for dirty jobs, because I've done plenty of these kinds of things. But the idea that this cut suit that you guys are using could have the same impact on the medical community, in relative terms, as a flight simulator had on the aviation community, that to me is a great untold story, as a teaching tool, I think it could be transformative.

And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how you forest gumped your way into that deal, where here you sit at this point in your career, literally with a front row seat to a device that could actually transform the medical industry. Very well said, Mike. We believe that. And we're approving it, but it's slow slog. We've did this in front of Congress, I think three times. some years ago.

So it's a best well-kept secret. Not a lot of people know about it, but we're getting it out there and we're getting hospitals to know it. We've hired, you met him, Reg Franchios, Dr. Franchios, who's a surgeon who has people open a couple of three times a month still.

So he knows. He comes in and he gives us the tactile feeling part of it. It's got to feel correct. So when a doctor's in there and he feels it and it feels real, he knows it's real. If he goes in there and he feels like it's a plastic thing, you've lost them. It's done. It's over.

The whole thing has to be as realistic as you can possibly make it. That's why we put it on a human. The human does nothing but transport that into the operating room. Once he's in there, it could be a mannequin. But because it's a human, the doctor knows that he's got a human being there, and he's not as laxidaisical or laissez-faire. He doesn't get into the mode that, eh, I'm just screwing around. I got a guy here. He's bleeding out. I got to get him done. I got to stop him from bleeding. I got to suture his heart or whatever the heck he's got to do. But it's, it makes him feel more realistic with someone laying down there who's out. But it's still a someone.

In the same way that you're with the seals by rearranging ABCDE, you get a real person in a fat suit in an operating room with people watching, like in the theater, right? It's their final. exam and they're basically being evaluated on how to remove a spleen, maybe after a car accident or whatever. Now your real guy can do something a mannequin can't do. Like he can come out of his anesthetic prematurely, for instance, and start screaming and do all kinds of things to keep that medical student very, very frosty. They bring an anesthesiologist to run the, keep the patient out, which is, again, a facade, but that person's there. And we have a system in there, and I can't give you the details of it because I'm not smart enough. You can actually type in something and it'll come out on a computer screen that the doctor reads.

He goes, oh, his heart rate's dropping or his blood pressure is dropping, his heart rates, all the things that you would find in an operating room that happens internally on a screen in front of the doctor, just as it would be in real life. But it's the system you just punch in what you want it to do. hemorrhage, whatever the case may be. And it's really... Not unlike Steve and Jay sitting down in his typewriter and pulling out the latest Magnum Opus.

Exactly. Right? See, this is why I lay all the pipe in advance, too. It's all part of the plan. Well, you're doing a hell of a job. Well, I appreciate that. Going back a minute, you kind of glossed over something when you're talking about the evolution of strategic ops

where, right, there's a knock on the door, there's this, there's that, this agency comes. and then 400,000 service people suddenly are going through this little village that you've built. Now, again, do you know you have a hit on your hands at this point? Is there a corollary? Like, are you in season four of Silk right now? Like, do you know? Are you still not quite sure?

I would say I was really never crossed my mind. How long is this going to last? Are we going to still be doing this in a month? It was so much going on every single day, week in and week out, when we went to war in Iraq. You didn't really have time to think about how long is this going to last because you knew the war was going on. And the war kept going on and kept going on and kept going on. He kept doing this. And we did this.

You know, we also do some other things. We manufacture buildings that replicate environments overseas. So we were making what they call mount, military operations in urban terrain, MOUT. and we made mount sites for every branch of the service, did some unbelievable stuff for Socom, the Special Operations Command guys out of Tampa, out in the desert, a place that doesn't exist in Nevada. And we did some incredible things that we're extremely proud of.

It had nothing to do with training guys that had to do with training weapons and, you know, squads of guys. It wasn't an individual thing. It was big. And we still do that as well. it's a little on the quiet side for no other reason and it's not as interesting as the medical stuff is

and the medical stuff you can see instantaneous reaction from and results. Instant feedback. You can't answer this question but I got to ask in anyway if you had to guess how many lives do you reckon you've saved?

I'll tell you one but I can't tell you more than that. I really mean that. We've had so many stories come back from commanders and letters from commanders that came back after their tour complimenting us on what we did.

That's good enough for me. If it's one, I know it's more than that. How old are you, if you mind me, don't mind me asking? Here's what I like to say. I like to say I'm going to be 80 next year. But I'm going to be 79 in December. So I just, the 80 sounds so dramatic. I'm going to be 80 next year, which I am,

the end of next year. I'm 78. And my impression of meeting you, I mean, and it took me about maybe five seconds to form this opinion, but you're an open book. I mean, what you see is what you get. I liked you right out of the gate. But I got to ask, you mentioned early on that you left an industry

or you left whatever it was you were doing in order to get into this production thing. What were you doing in your prior life? Okay. Get your scissors out, Chuck. Here we go. Oh, dear. In 1969, I'll go back a couple of years before that. I was a private investigator for about three years,

for an agency in Beverly Hills. and through circumstance, I got out of that business. I got involved with the, I'm going to leave that one out. I got involved with some problems. And then I kind of lost my way for about a year. You know, I grew my face, I grew my hair long. It was the 70s. And through circumstance, I met this gal who introduced me to this guy

who was a special effects makeup artist in the adult film business. Now, not that business. This is the early stages of the business. When you used to go see girls play volleyball on the beach, just topless. That was the beginning of the... I mean, I say, sure, not that I've ever seen anything like that, but I've heard of stories of topless. What kind of beatles are you hanging out?

Mike, you're way too young for that. So I'll let you look it up and Google it. So through circumstance, I worked on some crews of a low-budget, very low-budget, Titty movies, you know. And I learned my craft. That's the technical term? Yeah, that was my technical term. Yeah, you can Google it.

You can Google that too. Hyper-realistic to the movies. Very hyper-realistic. And so I said, this is a joke. I did it for six months. And I'm the kind of guy that thinks he can do anything. So I said, I think I can make one of these. You know, I've worked in maybe five shows.

How much more do I need to learn, you know? So, again, as I told you about my private investigator days, I still had my license. So I went to the bank and told him I was opening up a detective agency, and I needed to borrow $4,000 to do that. I went in with a tie and jacket. I wanted to look right, you know. And so I showed my license and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I basically lied my way through it, and they gave me the money. I went out and I made not a hardcore. Hardcore wasn't around when I first got in the business. It was all softcore porn. And I'm going to presume you know the difference. Just a presumption. I know it when I see it. Yes, you do.

It's like the Supreme Court. Yes, exactly. So one thing led to another, and I made my first movie. And when I was telling you, I had to ask what people's opinions were. I didn't know where to take the film when it came out of the camera. And it was film 16mm. I didn't know where to take it, what lab to go to.

I didn't know who was going to edit it. I didn't know where to take the sound to get the soundtrue. I didn't know anything about post-production and putting a movie together. So through knowing this guy, knowing that guy, I hired an editor who never edited a picture before. I went to a distributor who just started distribution and didn't know what he was doing. And pretty much everybody that I worked with in the beginning, we were all first timers and it was a cluster. And the best sense of the word. Yeah.

Look, I mean, I just, again, I'm not going to pry. You can pry. I know enough. You can pry. As long as you get your editor next year, you can pry all you want. No, look, I mean, that's the thing. We don't have time to edit this. So it's all got to go.

As far as I know, we're live right now. No, but look. You're a private investigator who gets into the softcore porn business. If you're looking for symmetry in a man's resume, of course you went on to do Hunter. Of course you went on to do silk stockings. You had no choice. For sure. For sure.

But today's Stu, and I really mean this as a sublime a compliment as I can pay, at a guy who's going to be 80 one of these days. You know, when you look back at your life and you try and make sense of the trajectory, of your own career. Like you're Hollywood adjacent, right? You're down there in San Diego. You're still there with this giant playland you built prior to 9-11 where violence on TV was a thing that was very different than it is today. And somehow or other, in the midst of all these pivots, you find yourself on the receiving end of countless thank you notes from first responders and Marines and soldiers. And I just pointed out to remind people that, you know, it's a crooked road we're on.

And where you start and where you finish don't always have a whole lot to do with each other. But holy crap, dude. You have no idea about it. I had no idea where I was headed. I stumbled through it. You don't even know if you're in the middle of a hit right now. And it could be season 20 of strategic operations. Who knows?

I'm hoping so because we're trying to, right now we're in the throes of starting up a little, another wing of doing some homeless shelters. out of conics boxes. But that's a story, another story. Well, actually, you know what? Give me the short version right now, unless Chuck insists on... Okay. What do you want, Chuck?

Well, I just want to ask, you know, since we've, the Iraq war is over and we've pulled out of Afghanistan, are you still getting the same kind of traffic with the military coming through? No, not the combat guys. Still doing a lot of medical. We have units here, and I'm surprised.

You would be able to hear the gunfire. Were they training here today with the explosions? So we do that every week. on different days and I don't know what my schedule our schedule is. But we continue to train. And again, when I say train, we have corpsmen here that all combat trained corpsmen and very smart guys that help with the training. They instruct for different certifications that the fire department needs

and the police department needs to prove that their people can stop somebody from bleeding to death. How to use a tourniquet. And we've had a number of cops come back and say, Jesus, you taught me how to do it two weeks ago and I saved somebody's life yesterday with it. You know, I mean, that's a great feeling that they got something out of this. And the cop learned, and the cop was nice enough to come back and tell us. We've had that happen quite often. And like I say, it's what gets me up at 5.30 in the morning every day dragging my carcass out of bed.

But I love doing it. I don't do anything anymore. Everybody else does it. I watch and go, ooh, that was fun. But, yeah. You're the cheerleader. What are you doing with the homeless then? Well, we were making these mount sites from the military with iconic boxes.

And when I say iconic box, you know, it's an 8 by 20 or 4 foot long steel container. You see them all over the place. But what we've done is we've melded them together. And for the homeless shelters, we've built some for families. I went to a guy I know in San Diego. His name is Bob McElroy. And he runs the homeless shelters downtown San Diego. And I said, hey, Bob, I want to.

to build a home of shelters out of these conics boxes. What do you need? He says, make them for families. He says, they'll transition from six months to a year, and we'll get them out and we'll get them. I said, great. So I grabbed my guys, and we designed some stuff up, and we built two of them. They're about 480 square feet each, and they've got kitchens in them and showers and toilets, and everything works all electric, and all you need to do is plug them into a sewer system and a water supply and electricity, and you've got a home that'll last year for as long as you want. The key to it is, they're not permanent. You can pick them up and move them.

And that's the biggest problem with housing the homeless. They're afraid to build houses for them because they know they can't move the, they can't get them out. These here, you can put in church parking lots. I mean, we've had every idea in the world thrown at us. And I said, yeah, we can do it. We just need to do it. Well, as you well know, I'm sure, the state of California has billions of dollars, and they don't know how to spend it.

They haven't got ahead of the game at all in the homeless part of the state. It's still a chaotic, and it's going to be like that forever until somebody does something. And the thing that's holding us back is nobody wants them in their neighborhood. They don't want those boxes in their neighborhood. And they don't look like boxes, by the way. They look very different than just a box. They look like a tiny houses. It's a tiny house.

Yeah. Bigger than a tiny house. But yes, they've got a coating on the outside. They're insulated. They look different. Where did that idea come from? Just from what I, you do? I mean, I only ask because you made a point an hour ago that as a producer, you would take an idea from virtually anyone.

I'm just wondering how, as we land the plane here, that idea found its way on your desk. I won't say it came from me, but might have been from me talking to one of my guys and just thinking about, hey, you could put somebody in this. Okay, let's call somebody I know who does it for a living. And look, I had the mayor here. I had all this city council in the air. They all went, ooh, that's wonderful. And it's, hello? Crickets.

Crickets after that. You got to show them, man. You got to show them. That's why I built it. You can't tell them, you can't explain it. You can't show them a picture what it could be. Walk in there, touch the walls, see, oh, it's got a bathroom. Oh, it's got an ADA shower.

Oh, it's got, yes, it's got all of that. It doesn't cost that much. And you can move them and take them out of the walls. way when you want to. I'm in the process. My son runs the real estate side of what I do, and we're trying to get the city to finally wake up and do it. And I think they may be getting close because everybody's suing everybody over this thing. And I think in California, they maybe make a change. I'm not sure what. But I'll certainly let you guys know if it happens. Well, I'll tell you what, man, if a guy goes from making volleyball movies with half-naked girls

to solving the homeless problem, then this podcast is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. I hope so. Where can people go to learn more about your crazy life and what you're up to down there in San Diego and whatever else you want? Well, my crazy life is, I just say Google me, and good luck with that. But for the company, it's strategic dash operations.com.

And you'll see all the medical and all the training and all guns and the bangs and the booms. Can you still take a tour? Can a civilian come in and poke around? See what you're doing? We do that on occasion. Of course. Yeah, if somebody's special, you recommend somebody.

If you're down in San Diego, seriously, check them out. It's an eye-opener. I think what you're doing, Stu, is really, really terrific. Well, I appreciate you, Mike, and I think what you do is the same, only much bigger. You've got a great audience. You do some great things. I watch as often as I can, because I'm usually asleep when you're on, but it's... Well, you got great taste, brother. Hey, do me a quick favor before you go. Just give that Mike another smack or two real quick for Chuck. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. It's been a privilege to be on with you. It really has. Anytime, brother. Be well. And you too, Chuck, sort of.

Thanks too. Thank you, gentlemen. If you like what you heard And even if you don't Won't you please Won't you please? Won't you please please please? Well, I hate to beg and I hate to plead

But please please please Moves us Surfing a wave or savoring the view The Ocean delights us As playful otters restore coastal Kel forests The Ocean connects us Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects.

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