WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 533 - Dax Shepard

Episode Date: September 14, 2014

Parenthood star Dax Shepard first caught Marc's attention as the barely functional simpleton named Frito in Idiocracy. And while he's had an expansive acting career, starting at Punk'd and leading up to his latest movie This Is Where I Leave You, Dax's life has been defined by his family, his sobriety and his cars. Lots of cars. And lots of racing in those cars. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers?

What the fuck buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fucksters? What the fuck? Fuck. Wow. What? I hit a what the fuck wall.

Okay, that's it then, I guess. My brain said no. I don't know what's happening i do i do know that dac shepherd is on the show i do know that dac shepherd is in the movie this is where i leave you with tina fey and jason bateman that opens uh this friday we did this uh this conversation while back had a good time great guy been through some shit enjoy talking to him hope you enjoy listening to it what else is happening what i just have that weird feeling in my chest like something isn't finished there's unfinished business in life there's a a void is it sadness isn't loneliness i don't know i don't know what it is uh i usually it goes away i look i'll be honest with you folks

i'm as tired as you are of hearing myself go on about the same shit over and over again. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm tired of it. I've got nothing to complain about. It must be a mental thing. It must be an emotional thing. I seem to be incapable of maintaining a relationship with another person. Pow, look out.

Just shit my pants. Justcoffee.coop. Available at WTF pod. I seem to have become cynical about relationships. I seem a bit angry at the idea of them. But what are you going to do? I've been doing these oddball shows, and I got to be honest with you, between me and you, as interesting and as exciting as it is to do comedy for 15,000, 20,000 people.

It's not satisfying. There's this feeling like, I can do this. I'm going to pick the jokes. I'm going to focus on them. I'm going to get punchline efficiency. I just want each one to hit, and then I want to get the fuck out of there. I want to leave before the traffic starts. It's making me feel a little weird and a little empty, actually.

They're great shows, and I think for fans, they're great to see all these comics that are on the shows. They're fun, but I've spent so long trying to kind of pull it in and be as open as possible. And it's very hard to be as open as possible in front of 15,000 people. And then I start judging myself. I start thinking, like, you know, I watched Gaffigan the other night. And I go way back with Jim. And, you know, I know him for years. And I watched him at Oddball.

And he was spectacular. Probably the best comic working in terms of straight up craft, efficiency, work ethic. I mean, he just does what he does. He's clean. His punchline efficiency is monumental. And I hadn, he just does what he does. He's clean. His punchline efficiency is monumental. And I hadn't watched him in a long time. And I was just watching him going like, oh, fuck, man, I got work to do. And just watch the craft. I mean, this is one of the only guys,

you know, me and Louie and Sarah and, you know, Hannibal, a lot of people on these shows. But Jim Gaffigan is one of the biggest comics in the country he's earned it he's a family act uh but the thing is he's out there almost every night performing comedy for a fucking living and and his skill set is just awesome i it was and it was it was just monumental and and it made me feel shitty not like I didn't feel bad about myself. I didn't feel like I was bad. I didn't feel like I didn't like Jim. But it just was this ongoing thing I have where it's like, I got to fucking work harder at stand-up. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with me? I mean, I can get away with an awful lot by talking and being intimate and just being impulsively funny when I do stand-up.

But he's got it all in place. Watching Jim work recently was just spectacular. Just to see a guy that sharp in his craft is just awesome. You just don't see it that often. I'm not saying other people are bad, but he's one of the few guys that do that sort of joke per minute, you know, every 30 second kind of comedy and make it, you know, and make it smooth and make it just seem like effortless. It was inspirational to me as a comic to watch my pal Jim Gaffigan

perform in front of 15,000 people. It was also inspirational to me for doing that and not losing my mind. And because, you know, there's part of me that, I don't know if I can really explain this, but I think I've probably explained it before. Like, I'm really battling with the idea of, like, if I go up, like, I could,

there's moments where I'm on stage at Oddball, and that's for 15,000, 20,000 people, and I'm on the big screens up there, whatever they're called, and I'm like, I could screens up there whatever they're called and I'm like I could just sit here and not do anything I could make it completely weird and completely awkward and maybe even cry in front of 15,000 people like there there's something that is so I feel the vulnerability of it the pressure of it I would have lost my mind if I had to do a show that big when I was younger.

I guess it's one of those things where I should just appreciate the progress and be thrilled. Because I've been killing, man. I mean, I killed last night. It was fine. It's only 15 minutes. But I don't know. There's something not sitting right with me, man. And I got to work it out.

That's why I hope these trippin' shows work out. I'll tell you, man. I talking to jim gaffigan he's got five kids he doesn't wallow around in pools of his own bullshit in his head where's the time that's one advantage of having a family it's less about you out of necessity but don't kid yourselves. People with kids can be plenty self-centered too. And you know what? They'll make children that turn out to be like me. All right, let's talk to Dax.

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cleaner energy, safe and secure food, efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Calgary's visionaries are turning heads around the globe, across all sectors, each and every day. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. Shepard. Do you know anything about me? Did you have to look me up today and find out that I'm an actor? No, I happen to be the biggest Dax Fett Shepard fan in the country. You're a bona fide punk rock hardcore street cred comedian, and I was on Punk'd, or I was only in the Groundlings,

or this, I walk in with all these things that think, oh, you might not. I'll be honest with you. Yeah. First time I saw you was in Idiocracy.

Oh, then you probably like me. That's right. And I had no idea who the hell that guy was, and I thought, that guy just acted the fuck out of that movie. Oh, thank you.

That was hilarious. Did you think he might be retarded? No, but I'd never seen you right as a as a comedic actor i'm like who the fuck is this guy out of nowhere right this funny motherfucker just does this thing that makes me very happy that's and that's where i saw you and that was quite frankly the last thing i saw you i don't doubt it um if if i got to pick one thing you only saw me and that would probably be it but But no, I know we have common friends, and I know you're hilarious.

And then I heard there was some trouble in your life. And I heard that you fought the good fight. I know you're married to a hot girl who I think is funny. Yes. I like her. Her hotness is like fourth on the list, but yes. Yeah, well, that's a diplomatic thing for you to say. No, no, it's a legit thing to say.

And you've always been pleasant to me. I met you, I believe, in the dressing room with the UCB with Tom Arnold. And at that time, I was like, what's going on there? Uh-huh. Sure. Oh, we were probably doing, yeah, Doug Benson's podcast. It might have been. It might have been.

Yeah. And I met you in Bonnaroo with Doug. Uh-huh. And I was sort of curious as to, but is that really where you started? And TV was on Punk'd? Yeah. Well, I started at the Groundlings in 96. Okay. but let's just say how did the world see yes the world met me on punk the first season of with ashton exactly and you and ashton were buddies we were not buddies

i auditioned like most of the improvers in the city i'd gone in to audition for this show and i had like 26 callbacks and, after four months of auditioning, I got the show. And then on the pilot, I became friends with him. And then when we got home from the pilot, he really was, he did me a salad. He took me to his agency and said, this guy's really talented.

You have to sign him. It's the second time I've heard Ashton Kutcher do a nice thing in a week. Oh, really? Who was the first? He bought Judy Greer's dad a Harley Davidson because he said he would if their show got picked up. Uh-huh.

And the show got picked up, but it didn't go. Uh-huh. But he still bought her dad a Harley. Yeah. You know... That's not a bad guy. No, it's not. I think a lot of people hate him because he's gorgeous, and it seems like he got where he

was at from being gorgeous, and that's annoying to people. But where is he, really? Well, he's got a shitload of money i'll tell you that but is that what it's all about dax well it's you could as you get money you come to find out it's not what it's all about but until you get it yes that's what it's all about yeah i'd like to get the kind of money to realize that it's not about money you know honestly well no the bar keeps moving i had an idea of what x amount of dollars would feel like that number was that number, Dax? Let's say a million dollars. A million dollars.

I thought, oh my God, if I had a million dollars, my fantasy of having a million dollars was like I wouldn't have to brush my teeth or watch what I ate. It's an outdated idea of what a million dollars is. It was extremely outdated. And side note, I watch a lot of these kind of sports biographies of people, like 30 for 30s, and I'm constantly shocked by those contracts people signed in the day, like in 84, that seemed unbelievable.

Like, he's getting $1.6 million. And I'm like, that guy's still alive. That's not shit now. I wonder what he's up to, that guy. It changes so quick. But at any rate, yeah. Like all my fantasies and expectations uh it was it was a bit of a letdown to realize i still had to do all the the business of being a normal human being it didn't get me out of well it got me out of some

things i don't care about um gas prices all that much and i order pizza with reckless abandon but yeah you'll throw down for dinner maybe i do i buy every all my friends dinner um that's i think i like i'm at a point where i don't have a wife i don't have children i've saved a little money i'll go ahead and buy dinner yeah isn't it nice yeah yeah well it's for me it's particularly nice because i i um that punked job came 10 years after i moved to la so i had been auditioning for tampon commercials and diarrhea medication and just not booking anything. Were you a niche performer? I think I was. And I have a whole thing.

Tampon and diarrhea commercials? Yeah, yeah, I was, but I knew a lot about both of those. But I did fall into the niche bracket of commercial auditioning, which was, I wasn't goofy enough to book anything and I wasn't handsome enough to book anything. Nice. I was just in this terrible.

Marginalized. Yeah, I was very, very. So where the hell do you come from? How do I see, like, how do I not, like, I was a little too old for punks when you were on it, but I appreciate the mindset of it. I don't enjoy pranks. No, me neither.

They're all mean. Uh-huh. And I don't like them happening to me. I don't like being part of them. But I'm not going to judge you for that. Thank you. Because it was, for me, just an acting job. Sure.

But you're a very talented, funny guy. Where did this start? Where did you come out of the vagina screaming covered in blood? Well, I'm from Michigan. I'm from a suburb of Detroit. What suburb are you from? Oh, man, I lived in like seven of them. But I would say primarily this Milford, which was hillbilly paradise.

Really? Yeah, yeah. Detroit hillbillies. Yes. Probably the worst version of white trash you can get. How old are you now? 39. Oh, so you're a youngster.

You're a young man. You think so? I'm 50. You're not that young, but you're getting there. No, I'm not really not that young. You're not a kid, but you look good. Yeah, thank you. But Detroit was a great city.

Do you remember it as a great city? You know, no, detroit was a great city do you remember it is a great city you know no i it was not a great city but i liked it a lot but but it it looked like shit and we knew it looked like shit we would go to toronto occasionally because it's a three-hour drive yeah single mother would take us three kids to toronto single mother yes and we would think oh my god it's like detroit but it's clean and the windows aren't broken. Oh, you ever go to Niagara Falls and go to the Canadian side? You're like, oh, my God. Yes, exactly. Like you go to the Canadian side and you can look over the water at the end of the world.

We just sat down. Uh-huh. It's so sad. Uh-huh. Yeah. So where was your dad? My dad, when I was three, they got divorced. He was a car salesman who was also an addict.

He drove a red Corvette and did tons of blow and banged young girls. Corvette blow young girl guy. Uh-huh. He would take us, our weekends with him were spent at a bar called the Dirty Duck in Walled Lake, Michigan. And we would go in the winter and he would drive up there in his Corvette. My brother and I would share one seat, the passenger seat. It's not a family car. And we would go inside and he would, from 10 a.m. till midnight, he would just work

the broads at the bar with his two kids. We'd play Pac-Man and eat chili dogs. And then invariably it would snow while we were in there because it's Michigan. Yeah. And then we would drive home with him in a blackout through six inches of fresh powder in a corvette with some dingbat following us who would also invariably get thrown into a ditch and we'd be on the side of the road i mean it was a fucking circus these weekends with him oh my god and then sunday he'd like you know he'd he'd have some come to j moments and cry a little bit.

I mean, it was something else. But the upside, I will say. Did he do blow in front of you? Not that I know of, no. I don't think so. But the upside was, so I had a mother who was a janitor on midnight shift at GM, supporting three kids on her own. And then I had this swinging dick car salesman dad.

So when we go to his house, we got to order pizza. He had a vet. He had a VCR. He had on TV. Strange women were there. Chicks everywhere. So it did help. You know, it was the silver lining.

The silver lining was it. You got to eat Oreos there and drink pop and do all that stuff. Well, dad needed a lot of approval. He had a lot to prove. He definitely bought his way out of a few pinches with us. Still alive? No, he died last year. Oh, really?

Sorry to hear that. No, it's not a bad story. I mean, it's obviously bad because he died, but it's the good version of someone dying. Oh, really? He just dropped dead? No. See, I think that's the bad version of mine. This was August. He calls and says, this thing in drop dead? No. See, I think that's the bad version of mine. This was August.

He calls and says, this thing in my neck is cancer. I have small cell carcinoma. End of December, he's dead. So I had basically three straight months where I knew he was going to die. I got to be of service every... I took care of all the medical stuff and went through the whole thing with him. And it never got ugly. He kind of got over the

finish line without all the gnarly stuff so all in all it was as good as i think you can get now when you say and we had some shit to go through you know well i mean that's interesting to me so you have a lifetime well what well he got sober i should add that you know He got sober when I was 14. Yeah, 14, he went to treatment and then never relapsed. He died 30 years sober or something. Oh, really? Yeah, 25 years sober. Okay.

Well, I think that we should come around to that. Okay, great. You want to circle back to that. Well, in my mind, the story is that you grow up in this environment. Your mom's busting her hump to feed you and your brother. Well, you got brother and sister? Yeah, older brother, younger sister. And your dad's this playboy car salesman. I can only imagine.

Pretty cheesy. I bet your imagination's exactly what he was. Yeah, yeah. Because what is it? The late 70s? He wore Johnny Carson suits. He was balding. He was 300 pounds.

He got tons of ass. 300 pounds. Yeah, he smoked Vantage menthols. Vantage. Yeah, 100s. Rough. Rough. Rough cigarette.

He ate like a maniac. You know, he was everything you would imagine. He had a huge personality. He fought a lot of guys. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So sometimes in the bar he would- Even in sobriety, he got into regular shoving matches at costco when i would come visit he would pick fights at the

gas station chip on his shoulder a little embarrassing yes felt very much like everyone was attacking scary guy in a way yep yep sorry so you grow up in this environment when do you start getting interested in acting you know i wasn't interested in acting per se um i always hear uh actors in interviews say like they knew they wanted to be an actor at 12 in minnesota or whatever i just don't get that i had never met an actor i don't know why you would have thought you could be an actor that's fucking preposterous movie star is not and that would be like i'm gonna assemble the great wall of china that's not what happens in detroit. But it's an unusual fantasy for people to want to be an actor. I guess.

You know, you're right. I do think my wife, who also grew up in Michigan, she somehow had a sense of that. But I knew I was funny. I got in trouble a lot in school. I was the class clown every year. Were you partying? No, I wasn't. I didn't start really going for it until 18.

I had one year in high school where I experimented, and then the cops immediately got involved. My mom said, you cannot do this, and I honored her wishes for one year. Then I graduated. What did you get busted for? Oh, my God. I wonder what the statute of limitations are. It's over.

It's over. Yeah, I can tell the story. I've had a situation on this show where I had to take something out because we weren't sure there was a statute of limitations. I think at this point they would be as tickled that it was you. Yeah, maybe. I'd like that. Because no one got killed or anything.

Let's give it a try. I was in 11th grade and I went to a graduation party with two friends that were seniors, a guy and a girl that were boyfriend, girlfriend. We were coming home down a dirt road. We passed this dude's house and the girlfriend of my friend said, you know, he date raped me, that guy. And we said, we will administer justice now. And our version of that was we were going to give him a lawn job. And we went to give him a lawn job, but we were in my Mustang, and I-

What does that mean? You go on the lawn with the car, and you... You just fucking tear everything to shit. Yeah, they wake up in the morning, it looks like a ditch witch went through there. So... This is a guy's parents' house, so basically. Exactly, and again, at 16, you don't realize you're not hurting the kid, you're hurting the dad

who's gonna deal with it. Anyways, we pull into the driveway. Well, they have a big gate, so my friend's like, just bump it, see if, you see if you can take it down. Oh, you guys had to have been fucked up. We're hammered. I mean, we're on the verge of blacking out. When you're bumping gates.

Absolutely. In your car, which I worked hard to get. It wasn't bought for me. I bought this car. It was a Mustang? A Mustang GT. I was super into drag racing. This car was my pride and joy.

What year was that? 84 GT. This was in 92 okay fast car it was a very fast car and i am for some reason on her word ramming this gate with my car well i don't do anything to this gate so we we go back to my friend's house which is a mile down the road yes they're home it's like friday night at one and two in the morning so we go to my buddy's house which is a half mile down the road everyone knows this car i'm sure everyone certainly knows this car

yeah we're not even to the meat of this fucking story which is we get to his house he has a monster truck he has a jacked up mud bogging i told you i lived in hillbilly heaven 44 inch mudder tires big fucking bumpers yeah he goes in the truck we're going back i'm like yeah committed to the plan we get in the truck the girlfriend him driving now me in the passenger seat we go back well what we don't anticipate is that all my ramming of the gate woke the whole family up sure so he's approaching the gate and i tell him don't just give it a nudge. Don't go fall, guy. And as I'm saying this, he's full throttle. We ram through this gate, come flying down the driveway. The dad's in the driveway with the flashlight.

He dives out of the way. The whole family's on the porch. He proceeds to give this crazy launch up, almost hits the dad. So he's spinning around on the yard? Kicking mud everywhere, driving through flower beds. I mean, ruining this house. Yeah. And, um, goddammit, telling this story

makes me think I owe, like, a financial amount. You might. Every time I tell a story, this ends up this way. It just happened yesterday. Anyways, so, um, all's going fine. It's a successful lawn job. We're leaving the driveway. It's a successful launch. We're leaving the driveway. It's a pretty long driveway.

Except it was witnessed. It was witnessed, but hold on. We're not in trouble yet. Because we came up the driveway with such speed that the dad jumped out of the way. He never could have gotten a license plate. The other folks on the porch, it's 2 in the morning. It's pitch blackout. They wouldn't have got shit.

We're coming back down the driveway, and the gate that he hit is now bent towards us. And as we cross that gate, it gets hung up on the back wheel and gets ensnared around the axle. And we come to a grinding stop. And now the dad's on his feet with the flashlight. And he's running towards the truck. And now my friend is putting reverse and drive, reverse and drive. And I'm like, we are fucked. The dad is going to be opening this door in a second.

And by some miracle, he got traction. And we ripped this whole fucking gate out of the ground and drug it down the dirt road. And half a mile down the dirt road, the gate ripped off, just left in the road. We went back to his house and we said holy shit what is our story yeah so the story we concocted was someone stole the truck we were smart enough to know that the more people that are telling the story the better the odds that we're going to get caught so let's let's eliminate some angles so you had to kill the girl we killed the girl we backed over her with the truck yeah, we took me out of the equation.

What we said was we all went to a graduation party. I passed out cold and they drove me home in my car. And then the girlfriend picked up her car and then the car pulled back to her house. He's never been home that night. So we proceed with this story. They dropped me off at home. Next morning, this is too involved, but my mom's actually having a work function at our house. There's about 20 of her employees up front. The next morning.

The next morning, and the police come at 7 a.m. to talk to me. They bought our story. Our story was someone joyrided his truck. I leave the keys in it. I don't know that they bought it as much as maybe they just thought they couldn't prosecute us. We held strong to this story that I don't know that they bought it as much as maybe they just thought they couldn't prosecute us right and we held strong to this story that I don't remember one thing so my mom's story I was so dedicated to this lie that I even had to tell her mom I don't remember what happened last night I got went to this party and I passed out in the backseat of my car and she's like you're at a stage where you're passing out in the backseat of your car already and the cops are

showing up you cannot do this you're done your experiment with this is over you are your dad we know this now and you can't drink again and um i honored that that was like end of 11th grade when you would graduate from school and then i and then so the the truck was the whole bed of the truck no but it's done that was it yes we all got off scot-free huh it's funny the other story that was told on this podcast that I had to remove because I don't think there is a statute of limitations on a felony was driven by a girl who said that something happened. Something bad. Yeah, right. Right. And add in you're drunk and you're a young man and you're trying to prove how brilliant you are.

I love it. It's not a leap for that situation to happen. So that was enough to get you sober that got me sober for one year and i intended to stay sober but um so you were a crazy car guy i was yes could you take apart an engine yes that mustang i had rebuilt the engine so you know how to do that i do yep where'd you learn how to do that um i that seems like a detroit thing you should know how to take apart an engine if you live in detroit and your mom works at gm you really ought to like you should be able to rope a fucking horse if you're from kentucky that's right yeah um you know i just kind of slowly started um tinkering with stuff so like oh i'm gonna change the

carburetor i think i can do that because i'm looking at it and there's only four bolts. And I see that there's three hoses and a fuel line. So if I label this all, I could do anything that I was, I could take apart and then I could put something back together. You just improvised it? You didn't get a book or nothing? No. But when it came to the full engine rebuild, a good buddy of mine who I drag raced with, his neighbor was this older guy who loved helping out the kids, and he was super into cars. And that took place in his garage. So he actually taught me how to torque the mains and everything,

all the important things inside the engine, other than just visually looking at it. You think you could do it again? Yes, yeah, I could. It's not that complicated. But aren't cars more complicated now? Yeah, they absolutely are. I could do nothing with the computer or fuel management system on a car,

but I could take the pistons out or put a new- Don't you miss the time when cars were simple? Yeah, well, I own a few that they're simple. What do you got? I have a 67 Lincoln Continental that I made a whole movie about called Hit and Run. Oh, that's right. That was your movie. You directed it and wrote it and your wife was in it, right?

Yeah, and then my cars were in it. It's my love story. How'd that do? I remember seeing the trailers for that. Well, it depends how you measurement it. Not with money. Yeah. It was a million dollar movie that made

$14 million. That's good. How much did you get? Nothing. Less than I would have if I would have. But you made your money back. I made my money back. I made money for the people who invested, which was really important to me. I got to make this movie that was just me living out my Smoking the Bandit fantasy. It was my wife in it and all my best friends.

And I jumped cars and shit. You know, it was the best. You did the stunts? Yes, I did 100% of the stunts. I race off-road cars as well, so I have this silly off-road car. My wife and I jumped other cars. She was in the car as well, Kristen. Uh-huh. Yeah.

So she's in for that. She's down for it. Yeah. Ride or die. Yeah? Uh-huh. That's your thing? Not out of, um, she's not an adrenaline junkie like me. She could give a shit is what it is. You know, she just, I don't even know that she evaluates how dangerous things are. gonna go you might as well be together i know honestly that was her pitch to me i was gonna do the jump without her and have us i hired her her stunt double to come

in that day yeah she goes why is my stunt double here and i go well i don't think you should be in the car when we jump the other cars she goes why if if you're a paraplegic you think i want to push you around in a wheelchair if we're we're both getting spinal cord injuries so we both get pushed around if that's going to happen i'm like all right that's a solid argument i don't even know if that's optimism around not thinking you're gonna die is it more optimistic to think we're both gonna be quadriplegics as opposed to dead i have to tell you one thing though that i actually that there's the one thing i wanted to tell you weirdly is um before i that I actually, that's the one thing I wanted to tell you, weirdly,

is before I did this stunt, because not only did we jump other cars, but we drove through a barn door. So we actually broke through a barn door, and directly on the other side was this jump. So there's a huge light difference between the dark barn and then the bright outside day. So you're going to break through wood, and then your eyes are going to try to adjust, and then you've got to hit this little ramp, and then you're going to jump other and then your eyes are gonna try to adjust and then you gotta hit this little ramp and then you're gonna jump other cars and just prior to that did you

have a coach on on set that knows how to do this shit um you know i was supposed to know how to do this shit but yes i had a stunt coordinator who knew about ramps i basically i didn't have ramp knowledge but they had ramp knowledge but ultimately just jump you know I had jumped the fucker before so but right before this that the the take where we do this stunt my stunt coordinator leans in he goes how are you feeling you know are you nervous I go no I'm not I feel pretty good he goes really out of ten and I go let's establish what ten is yeah I said if if ten is going on stage to do stand-up yeah I feel like i'm at a five right now and that's the god's truth that for me jumping cars after bursting through a barn door is half as

scary as doing stand-up it's also like probably a fraction of the time it would take to do stand-up i mean once you well it's considerably shorter than doing stand-up. Right, once you get the car going, you know, you got one bit. You got to do one bit. Yes. And it's life or death, but you got to do one bit. I understand that. It's like the first time

fucking was this car stunt. We did. What the... Oh, yes! We landed! Boom! All within 20 seconds. Well, no, if it was like

the first time, you probably would have made it to the ramp. The car would have ran out of gas going up the ramp. Yeah, he's just like oh i'm done oh man so that's exciting i'll never forget the first time i i did have sex i was so young and how young really young seventh grade and i i i i was wearing a condom really good for you

yeah um i can't say that that pattern continued. They're horrible. Yeah, they're. Anyways, I finished in a very short period of time. Sure, with the condom. With the condom on. But she doesn't know that I've finished. And I'm so young that I'm staying erect. Yeah, keep going.

And I just keep going, but now I'm confused and I'm a little bored and I don't know what the protocol is. Should I just keep doing this? You don't know what the protocol is. Should I just keep doing this? Exactly. You don't know what they're supposed to do. I'll never forget the like three minutes of post orgasm. Do a timeout. You're like, it's done.

You made it. And there was no internet for me to look this up. Yeah. I just was like, God, am I supposed to, how long do I do this for? Yeah. I hate this. Well, as you get older, you realize that it's done. Yes. Yes. Well, luckily your penis quickly, you realize that it's done. Yes.

Well, luckily your penis quickly makes that decision for you as you age. We're good. I'm out. Yeah, I'll finish. I like that you keep the cars in your life.

That's like the most important thing. That's the one thing in your life that stayed steady. Well, yeah, all this acting business, it really was a means

to an end to buy cars and do all my car stuff. Do you think that's true? Yeah, I do. I mean, I love what I do. Don't get me wrong. It's awesome. But all I really want is all these car things I'm into.

Last year, I raced for Lamborghini. I race in the series that is all Lamborghinis. Is that on a track? Yes, on a racetrack. So you race real race cars? Uh-huh. And I didn't know about this car. I'd never driven one.

So Lamborghini lent me one for a week before the race so I'd have some fucking clue about what I was about to drive, right? It's like a rocket. So they drop this car off at 7 p.m. and they're unloading it. And I'm like, I can't even believe this is happening, right? And Kristen's like, honey, honey, the baby's got a, you know, was doing something. You got a new baby. Yeah, I had a new baby. So I had to go in, and we had to deal with the baby, and then it was, you know, clean the baby, put the baby down, all this baby stuff.

Then that finally ended, and then it was, honey, we've T-vowed whatever fucking show we had to watch, right? So, okay, the Lamborghini's just sitting in the driveway. Finally, we're laying on the couch. She nods off at about 1130, and I sneak out from under her. Yeah. You got a nanny? We're canoodling. Yeah.

Who's watching the baby now? The baby's asleep. The baby's asleep. Okay, fine. So they're both sleeping. It's out cold, yeah. So I'm gone. Yeah.

And I'm walking out of the living room, and she goes, where are you going? And I go, honey, there's been a fucking Lamborghini here for five hours, and I haven't driven it. I gotta go. And she Well, this is, I got to go. And she's like, okay, okay. So at midnight, I came up to Angeles Crest and just went to town for like an hour and a half. And I had the greatest moment on the way home on, what is it?

How do you pronounce it? What do you mean go to town? Like 160? No, you can't really get up to 160 up. There's not a lot of straightaways, but like 140-ish. Yeah. And so i'm on my way home and you know what is it how do you pronounce your road right here verdugo verdugo

yeah so i take verdugo home and i'm driving and i can feel a car like speeding up and slowing down speeding up and so i don't know why jesus was it i look over it's uh two lapd guys yeah and they're speeding up flowing down and i'm like this is pretty funny yeah they want me to like race yeah i'm like i feel like that's what they're asking me to do that's what that means is it yes and i roll down the window and and i go i just look at them and then they say that thing as fast as you're linking and i'm like oh they've seen hit and run these dudes are down to fucking party so then i do go ape shit and downshift at first and i'm out of there and then they get up to the next light and they're like that thing fucking moves and i'm like it had to me that's the academy award like that i was in a position where cops were virtually high-fiving me

for hauling ass on the city where they goaded me into the middle of the night though too yeah yeah they knew it was cool they knew it was cool yeah i'm not saying they were being irresponsible can you imagine the bad version of that where i did like put a rabbit around a telephone pole and the dashboard cam of them basically calling me a pussy if I don't floor it. And then they got to take a ride around the block before they find you wrapped around the pole. And they're going to sit there and say, like, I'm glad you're okay, but you know whose story

they're going to believe, don't you? Yeah. They're going to try to reconstruct what happened based on the skid marks. So, all right. So you graduate high school so i i had a sense that i was i was funny and i wanted to stand up and i had a couple friends that did stand up in detroit and but i know them i was no they're not around they're not around yeah i was just too scared and so i thought if i move all the way to california yeah that you know

commitment will force me to do it. It's interesting that first time where the jump between I want to do it and I'm going to do it. And what's so weird is what was less scary to me was moving all the way across the country and living by myself as opposed to just going up on stage in Detroit.

I got to get out. If I'm going to do this, I don't want to sing a one human being to know me in an 80 mile. Did you take the Mustang out? No. At that point, I had, I still own the Mustang, but I left it there. All I took with me was a motorcycle.

I had a Suzuki 600. You rode a bike across country. I did not drive the bike across country. It's too long and boring, but my family did car shows for General Motors and we had all these traveling events that were at racetracks. I put the bike in a van. What part of your family?

My mother, who started as a janitor at General Motors, ended up building this huge business by the time I was in high school. That's a great story. It's the greatest story ever.

How did that happen? She was a janitor, then she was in fleet management at the Proving Grounds where they design all the cars in Milford, Michigan. And then she started hosting these hospitality days for the family members of GM. And she did such a good job that when she got another job at an ad agency, they asked her to come back and still put on this show for them.

And then they asked, do you want to do this show with all these car journalists? She said yes. And then that turned into another job, another job. And then all of a sudden she had four shops around the country that managed their whole publicity fleet. She did these huge events for all the car magazine journalists who would write stories about cars. And so my life from 14 to 28, I worked for her and just was on the road, like going from racetrack to racetrack.

And driving cars. Driving cars, mostly washing cars. But yes, I did get to do a good deal. You lived around cars. I lived around cars. Yeah. I even had a stepdad at one point that was an engineer on the Corvette. Really?

Yes. How long was he around? He was in the picture for about two and a half years, I think. That's okay, Ron, huh? For her, pretty good. Yeah. And what did you learn from that guy? You know, he was a real real type a asshole but i did pick

up a lot from him one he was crazy smart and he really did instill in me this this weird thing that i still have which is i had lost two retainers under his tutelage yeah um and he said to me he used to regularly stop me and go hey right now what are you doing i go oh i'm gonna make a sandwich he's like okay but are you thinking about eating the sandwich are you thinking about opening the drawer and then grabbing the knife and then the getting the thing out he goes i want you in life to be thinking a few steps ahead of what you're doing and he constantly call out to me what are you doing what What are the steps? And it did kind of form this process by which I do think about things before I do them or before I do them. And I notice a lot of people don't do that.

Instead of thinking about eating the sandwich, you start with the bread. The construction of the sandwich and maybe, yeah, is it a good sandwich to eat this time of day? I don't know. Just being conscious, really. Yeah. Probably. And you had to throw all that out for idiocracy it was good that he gave you that that information because you knew

what to remove that's right for that role yeah i knew the null hypothesis yeah all my but nobody i guess people either naturally think that way or they don't i didn't think that way and he was a very methodical engineer and he was crazy intelligent and he did kind of help my mom was the opposite she was very artistic and just she did make nine things at once and maybe she was trying to make a sandwich but she ends up with spaghetti yeah you know there was no way that was going to work then fuck no he tried to wrangle her i guess and she was a strong she's a strong strong yeah so he he left you know just destroyed and pummeled he did i think and I think it was a real wake-up call to him, too. I think a lot of people were shocked by like,

wait a minute, she left me? What the hell? Yeah, I'm telling you, man. But he was an improvement of the one before who was just really the worst. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. What was that guy?

That guy was a coke addict and got physical with everyone. And just a real sweetheart of a guy. Really? Yeah. When she met him him he had two jobs the day they got married he quit both jobs the only thing productive he did was bowl and he would occasionally be in arm wrestling tournaments uh-huh yeah and he was uh he was violent and terrible oh yeah terrible human being and you were how old i this is very key to the whole story uh

he i was this started when i was five and ended when I was seven. Yeah. Or six to eight. Either five to seven or six to eight. Yeah. Because my little sister, that's her dad. We have different dads. Oh, really?

So that's how I would measure that. So she was married to him? Oh, yeah. And he was a violent guy? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Physically abusive. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's the root of a lot of my i think what else uh what are my issues that stem from that well yeah what i will fight anybody i will fight absolutely so he just beat you could you could bring a guy in here that we would both look at each other and go this guy's gonna fucking destroy you. And I go, you're right, but I'm swinging. I will, no one will ever not. And it was because he beat the shit out of you.

He, not me. I saw him hit my mom before and I was young and I couldn't do anything and I felt very emasculated by that. And like, I didn't, I was, I was like, I thought I was her knight in shining armor like i thought i would raise rise to the occasion yeah and i was paralyzed by witnessing that and he wasn't sexually abusive no oh good no just a fucking asshole yeah he was too busy fucking ripping lines if he could have got hard maybe he would have sexually abused somebody well i mean i i think that's interesting

that she goes from the from that from you know just another one step worse than your old man uh-huh and then she then she gets with the dude who's a complete control freak which is usually what alcoholics invent like the children of alcoholics uh-huh are control freaks yeah yeah uh-huh and uh and then she got one of those and she couldn't deal with that i can't imagine and. And by the way, it's all like a different shade of gray, like his weird type A control shit. I think, look, we all know it's like you're treating some inside feelings with some outside stuff.

Sure. So his way of trying to regulate was through this regimented, crazy worldview he had. Right. So I don't think it's much different you're still living with someone who you're in there you're in their jet wash the whole time their jet wash right so from from that from your dad in the first step dad you learned how to be a crazy out of control ass kicker uh-huh and then from that guy you learned how to make a sandwich and think it through and probably look, look, he raced motorcycles,

he explained an engine at some point to me. The Corvette guy. Yeah. Again, I cannot put too much on point on how brilliant this guy was. He had like nine inventions

while he was at GM. He invented a version of rack and pinion steering. I mean, he's a really, really crazy smart guy. Oh, that's great.

Ran marathons and shit. Oh my God, I gotta tell you the best part about this whole thing. My mom hadn't seen him in forever. And she called me not too long ago, maybe five years ago. And she goes, well, I ran into blank at the airport. I go, no kidding.

What was he doing? She said, he was on his way to a roller skating contest. And I go, what? Yeah, apparently he's in this competitive roller skating dance thing. What? Yes, what? This is a dude who raced motorcycles and ran marathons. What happened?

I don't know. Did he come out? I don't think maybe since my mom left him, she drove him to this roller skating pastime. What a weird, it's what you would pray happens to your ex if you don't like them. I fucking hope they are roller skating and dancing. They're forced to dance

on roller skates to get by without me. All right, so you leave Michigan. I leave Michigan. You take your bike to come here to do stand-up. Right, I come all the way out here to do stand-up

and guess what? I don't do stand-up. I'm still afraid when I get here and i find out about the groundlings yeah and and so i auditioned to start taking classes at the groundlings with the never acted in my life wasn't in you know the high school theater how'd you know about the groundlings i had a friend who i'd met in santa barbara who had done it yeah and and i he was the one guy in LA I knew that was in comedy. Did you know Kareem El-Safi? No. To me, he was fucking Jim Carrey for having. Right.

And he said, you should go to the Groundlings. Like, you're pretty quick-witted, and improv's probably a thing for you. So I went in an audition. It was the first time I'd ever acted was in that audition. And then I got in, and then I went through the levels, as you do, which take years. And also, in the meantime, I went to Santa Monica College and West LA College, and then I transferred to UCLA. So I was going to UCLA and Garland at the same time. Anthropology.

Where did that come from? I've always been really interested in primates. Really? Mm-hmm. And since I knew I wasn't going to... Look, if I went to college, my mom would pay my rent. Yeah. So I didn't really have to major

in something that was career oriented I could just take what interested me and I went to like a intro uh to uh anthropology class and I saw dudes doing peyote and you know weird drugs down and I was like oh this is for me yeah you're studying basically weirdness. And so I did that, and then I... What'd you learn? I learned a ton. I really learned... I really processed the world through that lens, through the anthropological lens,

which is, in this country, is a culturally relative approach to just evaluating things. Sure. And it's huge. It really had... The layers of history and evolution. Well, what they do right out of the gates,

in an intro to Anthro class, if anyone's going to go to college, it's really worth taking. It's really fun to challenge yourself because they'll hit you right out of the gates with some things that seem so obvious. Right. Infanticide.

Is infanticide right or wrong? Is there any way that infanticide wouldn't be wrong? Well, let's look at this. And what they basically teach you is that you can't learn anything if you're in the judgment business. If your goal is to lay judgment on these people you're studying, you won't really learn anything about them. All you'll do is categorize them as something. So there's nowhere to go. You have to enter it with they're not good or bad.

They're just this culture. And to learn everything about go. Yeah. You have to enter it with, they're not good or bad. They're just this culture. And to learn everything about the culture, we just have to listen and document. Right. We're not here to say whether it's right or wrong. Unbiased. Yes. And in doing that- You actually find out that what they're doing isn't as crazy, inhumane as you thought.

For their particular- For their culture. Right. It came to be for a reason and it served a point maybe they've passed that point but it's not they're not evil there's you know right necessity so it really is a cool way to think of things in the process the world which is like just slow down just listen i'm more interested in what happens than i am about like this dude's a dick or she's evil or she's a bitch or he's an you know asshole whatever and realize that infanticide in some

situations is okay. Well, weirdly, you'll hear actors talk about this that are actually good actors that have studied. You can't approach a character saying they're good or bad. Right. Really good actors who play villains will tell you, well, they weren't playing a villain. They were playing a guy. They were playing a guy. Yeah.

Who was doing bad shit. Yeah. Or whatever, which is largely true. Yeah. Right? I made an observation about a good friend the other day, and she said, you know, or whatever, which is largely true, right? I made an observation about a good friend the other day, and she said, you think I'm an asshole now. And I said, I really don't. I think we all have a big old list of character defects. I happen to mention one of yours,

but I don't think that makes you good or bad. I've got a zillion. We all, we're all, we have a fucking little bag of crappy things we're trying to get rid of. But you're not bad. Well, so I guess then, because i speak the same language as you do that the the sort of anthropological foundation on some level had an effect on your sobriety it did because you know you were able to fill in some of the gaps uh-huh and look at it's at something like character

defects or like resentment or like and i was just open to the culture of aa weirdly like i wasn't threatened by um oh i didn't walk into it going like they're a cult and i wasn't afraid i get sucked into a cult just like you could go study sub-saharan african people and i'm not going to necessarily believe in witchcraft afterwards i can submerge myself and feel very safe that i'm not going to lose myself well that's i think that's a fortitude of character that you know that that's a fortitude of character. That's a blessing. And I think it comes from driving fast. I do, too.

You got to learn to make. But I will say the addiction in the driving fast is very related because I think being able to think calmly in mass chaos is like the best. Have you rolled cars? I have not thrown a car away. I have been in a very bad rollover, but I wasn't driving. That was in high school. I was a kid. Kid fell asleep.

I was in the backseat. Did you both live? We both lived. He's okay? Shockingly. Yeah, he was fine too. Rolled many, many times. Ended up upside down, car flat.

My first thought was, oh my God, I'm going to be pulling him out of this car dead. There's no way he lived. I don't know how I lived. He was fine too. We were both fine. It doesn't make any sense. In fact, I walked around for about a week after it going, did I die?

I have this weird theory that when I do die, I'm like, oh, I died, and then you get to heaven. They're like, oh, that's so cute. You think this is the first time you died. You died like 95 times. That's not how it works. It's like lives in a video game maybe that just fucked my brain up because it could happen all those situations like i'm you

know i'm admittedly saying i'm an ex-addict but i've had a couple situations where i i i went out on friday i came to i thought it was i thought worst case scenario was sunday yeah it was fucking tuesday i looked at the the box of pills i had and I looked at the this I had and I added all those things up and I said a human can't live through all that and it's all gone and I no one came over yeah and it's a terrifying thing I'm saying now with a smile yeah but at that time you're like you can't take all that stuff and still wake up and I did so probably I didn't maybe on that time I didn't well maybe maybe you just know how to pace yourself even when you're

fucking not I'll never forget that time in particular I'm talking about just trying to reconstruct that in a blackout that lasts almost

almost a week it lasted like three days yeah and my ribs my ribs in particular killed I'm like

why are my ribs hurt so bad like I feel like someone hit me with a baseball bat hours and hours later I go downstairs into my carport. My Harley is on its side.

Yeah. And all of a sudden, I have this kind of memory of I was at one point going to go for a motorcycle ride. I didn't make it out of my parking spot. I tipped it over, and it was a touring bike. It's 880 pounds with gas in it. And I tried to pick it up for hours to the point where I pulled a rib out and I just looked at that thing and I just started crying because I thought, thank God I didn't get on that thing. Oh my God. Thank God it fell over. Yes. All right. So you

go through groundlings. Yeah, we go through groundlings. I get into the Sunday company. I've now been in la for over five years probably again i'm auditioning for those tampon commercials yeah it's a lot of competing companies and where's the where the drugs fit in or that was until later no that's that's i i i was i was very lonely when i moved to california my first year was in santa barbara weirdly and that that year was very lonely and that's where I really learned to drink by myself and enjoy it yeah and then I came to LA and I started doing coke I had a neighbor below me that smoked crack and I smoked crack with him and then it's always good to find your community absolutely you know and a sailor a fisherman always spots another fisherman at sea

so I found people yeah but I was you, pretty functional because I was still going to college and getting good grades and stuff. But my Thursdays through Sundays for years were just a real blurry mess. Running around Hollywood. Running around Hollywood. You know, failing as an actor pretty miserably for eight years. And starting all my friends from home are buying ski boats and fucking houses with decks and stuff.

And I am in the same one bedroom apartment in santa monica with my hawaiian neighbor who just got out of prison um and uh but i ran that for years for like a decade you're in the sunday company though i was in the sunday company who was in your crew well i'll tell you i was in a comedy troop while we went through the ground like while we were all waiting for classes um this was a pretty uh neat moment for me which was like two academy awards ago or maybe three um so my group was um melissa mccarthy who was nominated at for bridesmaids um tate taylor who directed the help that year and that was nominated Nat Faxon who had written The Descendants that year

that was nominated and there's someone else and this is a group of like Jim Rash Jim Rash wasn't in that group but I was very good friends with Jim but this was just a group of

eight people that we would rent these theaters no one would come and I was like fucking A half of them are at the Academy Awards right now and they're nominated oh Octavia Octavia Spencer also would do sketches in our group wow and it was pretty

mind-blowing and although I'm not at the Academy Awards I'm in a nice house watching the Academy Awards which is mind-blowing to me so it was just as that's a pretty amazing it really was it was it was both um inspiring and also disillusioning i was like oh all the previous academy awards i watched as a kid those people were just in comedy troops too like there's nothing special going on you just some you eventually get there i guess if you keep pining away at it no you don't no you don't yeah but you can i don't know but i mean so when did your first break okay so so punked was my first break I had not made a dollar acting. I had booked an AMP industrial buyout commercial that played in an AMPM gas station in the TV in the corner,

in which I played a hot dog as a harmonica, which was like the lowest point of my career. Yeah. And I was completely broke, and then they were holding auditions for this show, Punk'd, and the premise was you go fuck with people and you have to be good at improv and i thought i'm not afraid to get into some shit and i can improv if i can't book this show i honestly need to reevaluate what i'm doing did

they tell you you can't kick anyone's ass um they did as ashton and i became friends he said you know you can't if these guys someone gets physical with with you, you're just going to have to kind of take it, which weirdly enough. So you didn't watch the show, but definitely the most famous bit ever on the show of all the years was the punking of Justin Timberlake. And it was what got what made it so viral, I guess, was that he had cried at one point. And at the end of that bit, when Ashton comes out, and you're on Punk'd, and blah, blah, blah, and everyone's celebrating. It's so funny.

It's basically Candid Camera. It's all it is. Yeah. But with celebrities, so it's... Alan Funt was a genius. Yes. Yeah. The bit's over.

The cameras are off. And he keeps saying, Timberlake, he's like, Yeah, man, I was about to fucking punch you. I was like, mm-hmm, all right. Dude, I was for real, man. I was like, I was just about to fucking punch you out. And I was like, okay, that's number two. I'm thinking, how many times can I hear this dude in his golf outfit?

He's literally wearing a golf outfit. Tell me he can punch me out before I'm just not going to be able to handle it. And God bless Ashton he goes when were you gonna punch him before or after you were crying and I was like oh my god thank god I think he saw me starting to get in the red and was like I gotta let some steam off this but that was hard for me just he he was saying it over and over again and I just had to kind of take it he was just trying to make now it wouldn't be that hard for me at that point it was really hard for me when was the last time you got in a fistfight um when kristen and i were day maybe a year into dating so an actual hardcore fistfight on the street was like six years ago on sunset over what we were

driving to a um kind of a fancy dinner i was dressed up which i never am we were driving down sunset right in front of chateau marmont there's not a crosswalk there yeah this dude starts a kind of a fancy dinner. I was dressed up, which I never am. We were driving down Sunset and right in front of Chateau Marmont. There's not a crosswalk there. Yeah. This dude starts crossing the road. He's got plenty of time. We all have plenty of time.

And by the way, I applaud people who cross the road, not in a crosswalk. But when you do that, you got to get across the fucking road. You're not in a crosswalk. Yeah. He starts doing that thing

as I'm getting closer where he's deciding that I should be slowing down, even though he's got plenty of room. Yeah. So now he's really taking his time, and I'm not slowing down. And as I pass him, he steps onto the WL line, and he throws a 30-inch, 30-inch, a 30-ounce drink at my windshield. And it hits the windshield in a way that I think the windshield has exploded. Right. Because of the ice. Because of the ice, it makes a noise and I can't see, you know, everything is just, I thought the windshield broke. Yeah. And so I am pulling the emergency

brake and exiting the car before it stopped. And I'm running across sunset. He is running away from me. He turns when we get to the sidewalk. There's that newsstand there. Do you know that newsstand? He turns. He dives for my legs like he's a grappler. I kick him in the face. He falls backwards.

I get him in a headlock. I pick him up. This is not a lie. There's records in LAPD of four. Kristen's watching this. She's watching it. We've not been dating long and as I have him in a headlock and I'm about to unleash yeah he's screaming

I'll fucking sue you I know who you are and I look at the newsstand and there's about six people who missed the whole throwing the shit at the car. All they see is me beating the shit out of a guy on the sidewalk. It's very incriminating looking. And in that moment, I was like, I need to get out of here right now. Yeah. I dropped him. And you'd already done what? Punk'd or what?

Where were you? No, you'd already done. This is five years ago. I'm on Parenthood. I'm on NBC. Oh, you're already doing it. Yeah, yeah. I'm like done 20 movies and I'm on network television.

Yeah. Oh, you're already doing it. Yeah, yeah. I'm like done 20 movies and I'm on network television. And I get back in the car and Kristen is very, very anti-violence. Yeah. Appropriately so, as everyone should be. This is a big theme in Hit and Run, by the way. So we get back in the car.

I'm expecting her to really give it to me. And she's such a good person. She knows now's not the time. We're driving, driving, driving. It's just dead quiet. And I go, I think I may have broke my calf because I'm feeling like a huge egg come up on my calf. And we got to the restaurant. I'm kind of limping into this.

It was the Soho House before it was the Soho House. It was like this one-time thing they were making. And we sit down at the table. She goes away, and I think she's going to the bathroom. She comes back. She's got them to give me a bag of ice, and she hands me under the table a bag of ice, and I start icing my broken leg, which wasn't broken.

But I thought that was a real show of her character. And what happened? She kind of put – she let me have it later, but she knew to, like, take care of me first and then later tell me how inappropriate the whole thing was. What the fuck is wrong with you, Tom? Yeah, why would you be out of the car while it's still moving? And was there legal repercussions?

There was. Shortly, I knew there would be trouble. I mean, when the guy's yelling, I'll sue you in the middle of it, you know there's going to be trouble. And I got a call from an LAPD officer and I told her the whole story. And she said, well, you know what? What you did is a misdemeanor and what he did is a felony. If you throw something at a moving car in California, that's a felony. And I said, oh, that's great.

Tell him I will press charges against him for the felony unless he drops the misdemeanor charges. She goes, that's great. We're thinking that'll be a great plan. She calls back in like three days. I talked to him. He doesn't care. He said, go ahead and press the felony charges. My assumption is that he needs to get a criminal case for the civil case to really work out. He's probably dealing with a lawyer who's

like, you got to first get this criminal thing going. So I'm like, oh my gosh, because all I can do is give the DA this report I've taken and he'll ultimately decide whether or not to, or she will decide whether or not to or she will decide whether to prosecute or not i'm like oh my god okay so about a month and a half goes by where i'm certain i'm gonna lose my house over this dingbat throwing a fucking coke at my windshield um but i get called a month and a half later and she goes i have great news they're not the da's not gonna prosecute and then everything just unraveled he never did sue me civilly. Thank God. Yeah.

All right. So now, at that point, you're sober. And you've been on this network gig for a while. It's good. Uh-huh. Yeah. Doing a lot of movies here and there. Uh-huh. You're respected.

You're a good go-to guy for some people. It's becoming that, yeah. I'm becoming predictable. Well, that sounds bad. Well, you know, it's an interesting business, especially comedy. So much of it is cachet and perception. I've done good things and I've done bad things. And depending on how loud the bad thing was, that'll slow you down for a little while.

And then you'll do a good thing. You're definitely in the game. I'm in the game. And you know what? I've definitely gotten through some harder stretches and now I feel like those are kind of over. I think now finally the voice in my head that says you're going to be penniless and you'll never work again

is a whisper now. I think I'll probably work in this business. You'll do all right, yeah. And you're working now. Mm-hmm. And the show's popular. The show's popular. I'm currently writing and I'm going to direct Chips

at Warner Brothers, yeah. Oh, great. Yeah, so. And you're going to be in it. I'm going to be John Baker, yeah. popular the show is popular um i'm currently writing i'm gonna direct chips at one brothers yeah oh great yeah so and you're gonna be in it i'm gonna be john baker yeah oh cool yeah that's great that's an amazing thing how long you've been sober uh it'll be 10 years in september and what was that bottom like when did that happen was that after the three day might you threw a rip i have so many stories that end with and then i continue to get fucked up for another year. But no, that wasn't the, I mean, that was a bottom. I think people traditionally think of it as in terms of a bottom. No, it's like a year.

I had like 11. Yeah, yeah. And I tried to get sober a dozen times, and I could put together two months here, three months here. I would always get sober for movies. Yeah. I cared more about that. Right.

And in between movies is when it got really dangerous. And then basically what happened, as Favreau was in here, right? So I did this movie, Zathura, that he directed. Right. And in between movies is when it got really dangerous and then basically what happened as Favreau was in here, right, so I did this movie Zathura that he directed right after Elf and I knew I had to get sober

to do that movie and so I thought, oh, I'm going to go to Hawaii and have this one last week vacation where and I chose Hawaii specifically because I thought,

well, there's no cocaine in Hawaii. Yeah. So it'll be safe for me to go. What are you talking about? It just seems so far from everywhere. Okay, sure. They can't get it there's no cocaine in Hawaii. Yeah. So it'll be safe for me to go. What are you talking about? It just seems so far from everywhere. Okay, sure.

They can't get it there. That was my assumption. That's your drug logic. I was honestly debating between going- There's probably more coke in Hawaii than you could ever imagine. No, it was hard to find, but I found it. What I did is I didn't underestimate the amount of coke there. I underestimated my willingness to search it out and find it.

So I went there with a friend, and a couple of things happened. But I got in a car accident with this local dude. What island? On Kauai. On Kauai? The nicest island? I'm there with my- There's one street in Kauai.

Everyone's a newlywed except for my buddy and I from Detroit who are there to get fucked up. Right. And, you know- Where were you staying at the- Some place I got on Or on orbits was like airfare and the hotel and everything you did that

absolutely you didn't just go to the one up on the north no no no that beautiful place I would now but this was

was it Prince whatever this was 10 years ago I'd only I'd done three movies I was still living in a one bedroom apartment stockpiling every penny

because I thought I would never work right okay so I was still looking for bargains I think the whole trip was a grand were you like the Hyatt yes I was like at a hyatt or something right by the airport just

you leave the airport five minutes later you're at the place there's chickens running around all over the roosters everywhere roosters everywhere like on poipu beach or whatever yes oh my god such a visceral memory so we're at a bar we're drinking with locals i've already done punked i'm kind of popular among that crew. The first two days at the bar, it's really cool. I'm there. The third day, I start realizing it's worn off. They're going to kill us.

It's not fun that these Howleys are drinking at this local bar. But I met a guy who said, yeah, I know where to get Coke. Okay, great. Let's go. I go with him and his girlfriend. We're driving. It's raining. This guy's driving way too fast.

He's got his shirt off. He has a beer between his legs. I'm in the process of telling him you've got to slow down and turn down the radio when we go through a left-hand turn. He loses control. We spin. We hit a guardrail.

Cars are fucking flying off the road to avoid us. We somehow end up going straight. We drive out of it. He thinks it's great that he's like, I fucking drove out of that, bro. I'm like, fucking slow down. I got the radio down now all the way.

We come into the next town. Cop passes us, sees the smashed up back end, flips a U-turn. We pull into a gas station. We're getting pulled over. I'm looking at myself in the rearview mirror. I'm in a cutoff T-shirt and a cowboy hat. I don't know anyone in the car. The cops are coming up, and I'm like, I've been in Hawaii three days.

This is where we're at. Where's Ashton Kutcher when you need him? Exactly. I need him to come up and tell the cops they've been in Hawaii three days. This is where we're at. Where's Ashton Kutcher when you need him? Exactly. I need him to come up and tell the cops they've been punked. So they let this guy go. They make the girl drive who's just as drunk as all of us. We continue on to the drug house. It's not coke. It's crystal meth.

I buy it anyways. Sure. Why not stay up for a few days? Absolutely. So we go and me and my buddy smoke crystal meth for three days. I get to a point where I get that feeling where you're like, I got to get this out of my body. It's toxic. I've been up for three days.

I need to go for a jog. I jog on the beach in front of the Hyatt with the roosters going, and it is 100 degrees, and I jog probably three miles. The fact that I didn't die. I came back to the room. I sweat for like four hours. Still not the low point. Go out.

The night before we fly back, I get so drunk, so on everything. And I had a layover again, because this is a bargain flight. I have a layover between Kauai and LA in San Francisco. And I'm at a bar in San Francisco because I'm so physically sick. I cannot make the flight from San Francisco to LA unless I get at least four Jack and Diets in me. So I'm sitting at this bar in the corner of the bar because i'm so afraid someone from aa is gonna see me because up to that point i had three months yeah i'm sitting

at this on a stool in san francisco convinced that everyone walking by is an aa and knows me i am staring that's the best speed uh by you know like usually the paranoia that comes with staying up and fucking your brain up is not the good kind. You literally, like, you think you're going to get caught by AA 5. Yes, exactly. So you were aware. Oh my god. So I, the actual moment

moment was, here I was, I was about to start this Favreau movie. I had just finished Idiocracy with one of my heroes, Mike Judge. I was in a movie that came out a month before that was a hit. And I was sitting in the corner of this bar, literally hiding. And I had accomplished all these goals I had and dreamed about for 10 years and worked to get. And I was afraid to just be in public at this fucking airport.

And I was looking in the mirror there. Oh, you were at the airport, right. I was looking in the mirror and I was like this is not it this is not you you're doing this wrong this is really you're afraid to be you and you've gotten everything you wanted it was just very very profound so i got sober for the movie uh which was which it was easy i i did that before what was hard is when the movie wrapped in three months, I said, I can't do it again. If I have another stretch like the Hawaii trip,

I'm not going to make it to the next movie. And I was able to get over that hump, that three-month hump that was so elusive to me. And then it's been pretty easy since then. That's great, man. Yeah. That's a good story. Yeah.

And now it's been 10 years. It's been 10 years. And how long have you been sober? Going to be 15. Yeah. solid yeah and now it's been 10 years it's been 10 years and you know how long have you been sober uh let me 15 yeah so i bet i would assume you had the same trajectory of me which is the first five years are just like just being sober like that that's the only goal i'm learning new things now dude yeah like you know at five you know they say you get your mind back or whatever i guess i did but then took me another five to fuck up a marriage or two and to destroy other things. And then even this last stretch, this last five has been hard, but it's taken me a long

time to get humble and also to say to myself, all right, well, I held on to a lot of character defects because I felt they defined me. Me too. And I still do. Yeah. of character defects because i felt they defined me me too and i still do yeah and and and they've become you know they become very specific you know i know exactly what they are how they're fucking me yeah and the obstacle becomes very clear and a lot of people get it sooner but i'm stubborn and you know there's the anger issue which is just not it's not cool uh-huh and you

know and i've got other problems too i got the you know i got the codependent thing too so i'm like i'm just trying to because i know I'm probably not going to have kids. I don't know if I can hold a relationship together. I fucked a lot of them up, but it's a two-way street. I get it. But at some point, you got to be able to live with yourself around those last few defects. Yeah. Like, how do I let that go?

Well, what's, for me, what's tricky about that is, for all the people who are not any awareness of this program you know you do figure out your list of character defects and then you start asking for them to be removed but here's the tricky part it seems very simple you just say I don't I please take these away from me I don't need them anymore but in reality

you might not be being sincere about that and that's the truth there are three still that i have that i asked to be removed that i know i'm i'm bullshitting i still want them because i got nothing left i kind of like i feel like that'll be the last spice of life that i forego well that's the weird thing about the program is it's one of the weird kind of like um suggestions or or or you know they it's when you're ready yeah yeah and. And it's one of the only areas in the program where you know you can't drink

and you should do these other things. Yeah. But ultimately, the goal is not to drink, but how do you want to live a quality of life that, you know, you have acceptance and happiness? And you do have a choice. It's like, you know, when you're ready. Yeah, you're allowed to do it wrong.

That's the beauty of it. I would never have gotten with it. And there's no sort of like, you have to get rid of these character defects. It's really like, you know, if you want to be happier or not happier. Right. Yeah. And you can know things intellectually.

Like I understood all of these things right out of the gates. I knew intellectually I get it. But you have to actually emotionally feel it. You have to actually have some good, not consequences. You have to have some some positive things happen from making the right choice a few times yeah before you start believing what everyone's telling you now for me now but i know that like being in this in the situation you're in i know you're outspoken about being stalked by people with cameras yeah yeah and and dealing with anger

has got to be because you sound like you got got a pretty good trigger. Yeah, I do. But you know the one thing that keeps me from, I have gotten into it with the photographers on a couple of occasions. I've gotten real lucky a couple times. But by and large, I'm pretty good. And here's why. I hate them so much, I refuse to give them what they want. I know the ultimate loss will be that I lose my shit and punch one of these guys, and then they get paid, and it's a story.

Or like when I'm walking out of the airport, and they have the video camera, and they're bringing up something embarrassing, I know that if I acknowledge it in the slightest, it will get on TMZ. But if I just pretend I don't hear it, there's nothing to show. So it's my ultimate victory I'm aiming for that keeps me from the immediate immediate victory the high road but it does get trickier with a kid like all that stuff was semi-manageable for me um but then when there's a baby involved that's when it got um that's when i started getting kind of vocal about it all and what what are you well my wife and i started this thing called no kids policy and we've urged all the consumers to stop buying magazines or consuming media that has little kids that are stalked, that are the children of celebrities, that aren't actors that haven't chosen this life.

And how's that? Shockingly well. I didn't think we'd get one ounce of movement, and the list of people that have agreed to it is staggering, like Us Weekly, People Magazine, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Perez Hilton, Just Jared. A ton, primarily through my wife, her really. It all started with, we had done a really good job at keeping the baby. Kristen Bell. Kristen Bell is my wife, by some miracle. And we have a one-year-old baby.

And we had done a great job for nine months. They live at the end of our driveway, the paparazzi. For nine for nine months we were able to keep her covered and there was no photos of her right and then one day we were at a friend's house in the deep valley we had no idea we had been followed we came out i was holding her and there were pictures all over the internet and i got i got really bummed out about it and i didn't really know what to do and i'm also aware of how what a low level problem it is in the world so i i'm a little hesitant to speak out about it because i know people go fuck you you're rich and who gives a shit and i certainly heard that reaction on twitter but besides that i decided i'm gonna tweet about it so i tweeted

about it like hey maybe boycott these magazines then kristen tweeted about she has a bazillion followers that kind of got some um attention so then the huffington post said would you to me would you like to write an op-ed article about this? So I did. Then the op-ed article got a lot of traction. Then the Today Show called and said, would you guys like to talk about it? So we did. Cut to then she sits down with all these different media outlets and we do a bunch of interviews all over town.

And then all these people adopt this policy. There's still some outstanding people, but we've gotten a ton of movement. The ones that are a little better than the ones that have absolutely no moral compass. Exactly. And that's what, you know, I get all the arguments against it, but the bottom line is like, sure, I signed up for this, although I don't know that I signed up for this. I can concede to the fact that I have a lot of great quality of life things. So if that's what I got to deal with, great.

But we don't live in a society where we punish people's children for their parents right but even then it's like i don't know how you guys deal with it i mean i you know i don't i don't have any real celebrity there's no one at the end of my my driveway i'd love to start if you're open to it yeah you want camping out yeah sure that'd be fine if just dax shepherd was camping out of my driveway with a camera yeah i'll probably pose for you. Okay, good, good. Let me know when you're going to go jogging. But just to have to accept that, like every day. Well, here's the ultimate fucking test. So, okay, a part of our program is like acceptance is the answer to all my problems.

And this is the number one thing I have an almost impossible time accepting, that I have to accept that they're going to follow my baby around or that they're going to push other little kids out of the playground to photograph her i just can't accept that yeah well i don't think you should i think it's right it's you know we you know righteous indignation if it is truly righteous is something that you're entitled to to hang on to well well i mean whether it's going to you know yield any results yeah well not even yield any results i mean the idea is that we can't afford it because you know that type of resentment is going to fuel the discomfort that could lead to drinking yeah but the truth of the matter is i mean we can't neuter ourselves

completely if you have a just cause that you believe in it has to be okay i i it would lead to more discomfort if i did absolutely nothing right it seems that in terms of your anger that the the the period of time that you had with your father at the end, did that get you closure around anything? Yeah. First and foremost, I've listened to you, so I know more about you than you know about me. And I know that we have a lot of similarities, but I don't really have an anger issue. I was a kid who fought, but more for the, like, yeah, I'll do this. I wasn't picking a lot of fights right and i

wasn't um you got a hair trigger though right i will fight yeah but i'm not i'm not like crazy anger right angers it is on my i have that issue but it's it's at a four it's not at a ten it's not something i really wrestle too much with i have fought with a smile on my face a few different times. So, you know, it's not eating me up. But the stuff with my dad was, I don't know, your dad was a doctor, right? Yeah, he is. Yeah.

I guess. He is, okay. You know, I was very disappointed in my dad. He wasn't the one I wanted. I was super judgmental of him because I have the exact list of character defects he does and I hate them about myself. So, of course, I hate them about him, and he's the asshole who gave them to me. So I had a really—

What, self-centeredness, drug addiction? Self-centeredness, yes. His standing in society, being a bragger, all these things. And just terrible insecurity that I deal with by acting overtly confident in an annoying way and um so uh and but more than anything the love of my life is my mom yeah this i've never respected a human being more than my mother and this is the fucker who left her and didn't support her and partied so i don't i couldn't ever let that go because i just love my mom too much. Yeah. But man, in those three months, I was like, this is a fucking boy dying of cancer. Yeah.

And yes, he's my dad, but he's so much more than my dad. He's a human being that I would. And also, I'm in AA. I listen to people's stories that are way worse than my father's and i totally accept them and love them and i'm happy for them that they are trying to put that all behind them and make amends but i couldn't grant my dad that even though i could do it to anyone else and he had sober i go to a meeting over before you because sober before me yes of course i was judgmental of how he did the program i don't think he ever read the big book or whatever uh as i continue

to judge him always i thought he was lazy yes and that and um but i did get to a point where um uh he was just a guy that was scared and i could see what a little boy he was trying to process the knowledge that he was going to die and we did have a moment where we were sitting and i didn't have any expectations of there being like an alexander pain-esque but you showed up i showed up i was fucking there and and i was busy i was shooting the show but i was flying back every weekend or you know i was i was going back a lot and i was on the phone with doctors all the time and i was um just handling everything and um i for some reason had this this desire on one of these trips to michigan to go photograph every house i ever lived in because we had lived in

about 65 houses and i thought i better i want to document this maybe to show my daughter, you know, and at this point, my wife was seven months pregnant. And so on this, we're driving to all these places and we pull over at this, the place we moved out of his house into this welfare apartment building and we're looking at it and I take a picture of it and he goes, you know, I came and dropped a couch off to you guys. And then I left and I pulled over on the side of the road and I cried for like six hours. I physically couldn't drive the car home. I knew I was driving away from my life and I just was, and I couldn't turn around and go back. And I was like, wow, I didn't realize, I didn't even think he had that moment. And then two more stops on the photo shooting trip. He goes, remember I took you to buy a BMX bike. And I said, you can pick out

the most expensive one here. And you wanted this other one that was cheap. And I told you not, and it was the wrong decision. He's like, that's always confused me. And I said, I wasn't going to let you buy me the fucking most expensive one because I didn't want you to think you were off the hook. I was purposely not letting you off the hook at eight. And he started crying and that something about that meant so much to him that I was hurting and I was trying to hurt him and he knew it. And I and I said, I'm sorry, I didn't, you know. And we had a fucking moment where i was like oh my god this really like we're gonna die in a he's gonna die and we're in a pretty healed

relationship mind you i was there for him always and i supported him the last five years he was alive and but you're also we were buddies i just i i always had that that grudge against him and um and also i have a really good friend who i look up to in a and he said you know i blame my dad for everything i blame my dad for everything and then he died and i had no one to blame anymore and i realized i was just as upset and it it wasn't helping me to blame him and it was all my shit and it just didn't get me anywhere to blame him and i thought oh fuck i can either realize that now in this process or i can realize it in two years but i think he's right and i'm going to try to get to that point during this process well which i did unfortunately you were you're both sober guys

yes and we and again we speak that same and you're open to that you could handle it yeah yeah i i like i'm i'm not in a good place with it i don't know what the hell is gonna happen right and i gotta get there yeah and i'm like i'm stuck boy, did it prove that principle of like, you know, your body shows up and the rest could follow, which is like, I didn't want it. The irony, my older brother, who he liked way more, they had a great relationship. My older brother has no resentments against him. He was his dad for eight years and he thought he was great. I was the one that ended up there nonstop because my brother simply couldn't. He didn't have a job that would allow him to do that.

And of all the people in the world that ended up doing that, it was me, which I thought was pretty fucking funny. And I was the one that needed to be there. He wouldn't have carried anything, my brother. He's much more at peace with it. So had I not had that chance, yeah, I would have been dealing with it for years probably. Oh, God. It was good. It's a great story

yeah I liked it it's weird when you have these kind of conversations where I'm talking to you about this it's very simple stuff you know understanding ideas you know about psychology or trying to understand the ideas that enable us to understand that it that all becomes just you know bullshit after a certain point because you, where the, what's the expression? Where the wheels hit the road, or whatever the expression is, is just showing up and being open to what's going to happen. And knowing you can handle it. And at a certain point, you've got to acknowledge at a certain point, like right before I met Kristen, I was coming out of a nine-year relationship

that it didn't work out. I was unhappy in a lot of ways, even though I'd achieved all these goals. And at a certain point, I think people, it's important to go, oh, I don't know what's best for myself. Right. And that's really hard to understand that like the things that feel right for you, like people will be in new relationships and they'll go like, oh, it's just not a match or it's, it's, it's, it's not going easy. And it's like, well, that's probably the one to stick with because the ones that feel right and feel easy, I did those ones. They don't bear fruit.

But a lot of times that, but is it right and is it easy? It's not even a matter of bearing fruit. With me, the stuff that I lock into immediately is usually going to honor some sort of destructive pattern that I grew up with. Absolutely. destructive pattern that I that I was grew up with absolutely so like you know having but meeting somebody that you you are connected with but is also willing to work within you know the self awareness game yes and and make it better as it seems to me the best you can hope for I I'm so fucking out at sea with this shit right now you know I'm like one step away from like I'm done with it right yeah right yeah sure Sometimes you think there's more peace

in being oblivious, right? Or being alone. Oh, okay. Or just like, you know, like how much can your heart take? I couldn't do, I've done alone. I'm not good at it either. Here's the thing.

I just don't want to be beat up. Again, I know from now experience, A, if it feels wrong, I should probably keep doing it because almost everything i don't want to do ends up being the thing that yeah but i just don't have the fortitude to like it becomes sort of like if the compromise is unreasonable it's hard for me to stay right now if the compromise is reasonable and i've tried making compromises with people that you know

just obliterate me because like no matter what my personality is here you know my heart is it is what it is sure and you know it wants you know it wants acceptance it doesn't want to be rejected it's overly sensitive yeah you know it also worked very hard just to survive in the world uh-huh so if somebody is plowing me under i'm gonna be like fuck this yeah yeah i'm losing myself yeah so it's very tricky with me because i got this angry kind of thinky exterior but i'm ultimately just this hypersensitive motherfucker yeah and very sensitive and very insecure uh-huh and uh and those things too yeah and and in you know it's delicate dude uh-huh so i don't know how that gets taken care i think what you for me or at least with kristin the one thing that eventually

i was like okay i'm gonna take a leap of faith which is she was someone who was the opposite whatever the opposite of this anthropological view i told you about hers she came from a very christian background we did not see eye to eye on anything i'm an ex-addict she never did drugs all these things right um and at a certain point she would go like hey will you get me a glass of water we're both on the couch and i'm thinking, hey, will you get me a glass of water? We're both on the couch. And I'm thinking if I get up and get her a glass of water right now, I'm establishing some pattern where for the rest of my life I get up and get her like, if you're thirsty, get your ass off the couch and go get a fucking glass of water.

Right. But that's my family and where I come from. Yeah. And because everyone around me was trying to fucking take advantage of me. Yeah. And her loving family, sometimes you get me a glass of water and sometimes I get you a glass of water. We're never going to take advantage of me yeah and her loving family sometimes you get me a glass of water and sometimes i get you a glass of water we're never gonna take advantage of each other but once i keyed in on the fact of oh wait she is a good human being she's not gonna take advantage

of me fucking go along with some of these things that feel bad okay new and uncomfortable as long as i think if if you can convince yourself that the person is ultimately a good person, then you can go along with some shit that seems crazy and doesn't feel right and just think it's going to come out on the right side. And for me, it has. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm writing a book. You should pick it up soon. Let me know if you want me.

It's called Love Your Opposite. Let me know if you want me to write the foreword. I would like nothing more. Thanks, man. your opposite let me know if you want me to write the forward i would like nothing more thanks man how fun was that that guy's a great guy good stories glad he stopped by i did run i did exercise i did go out and take a nice three and a half mile run in the 95 degree heat, and I think I almost fucking died. Alright? But sometimes that's the price you pay for exercise.

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