#1614 - Tiller Russell

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] Are we rolling?

[4] Oh, we are.

[5] We're up.

[6] Yeah, this is a Kill Cliff CBD, 25 milligrams of CBD.

[7] Halapino pineapple.

[8] Not bad, right?

[9] It's called Flaming Joe.

[10] That's my face, bro.

[11] Then it's flaming.

[12] Hey, I love your fucking movies.

[13] I love the 7 -5, and I really enjoyed Silk Road.

[14] really good and you did a great job of taking something that is a real story and laying it out in a movie format where you only have like a certain amount of time with actors but even the guy who played the bad cop what is his name jason clark i love that guy he's great he's been in a bunch of things yeah i he was in chappaquittic he was in first man he's been in a bunch of stuff and he's just he's a beast um you know so interesting when i got there on set with him and it's like sort of you know day one you don't know what you're getting into and I'm and I was just standing there next to him and I was like dude this guy is like a thoroughbred racehorse and he is at the Kentucky Derby I can't wait to see what this cat does you know so good as a bad guy yeah he's he's game for it yeah yeah he's intense I've seen that guy in so many movies he's just one of those guys like you see him and you're like oh that guy well you know it's so funny when you're like you know I sat down so I'd written the script for Silk Road several years ago and you know I have done all the documentaries.

[15] That's my background, right?

[16] Which is kind of where you dive into the, you know, you do the deep dive on these, you know, crazy crime stories.

[17] That's my whole, that's my whole racket, you know, from Michael Dowd forward.

[18] And then you, you know, go into the world, suddenly going from the dock thing into the movie thing.

[19] And it's like, well, who are the people that are going to inhabit this?

[20] So I sat down and I met with, you know, all these amazing actors and you sort of are looking at, okay, what if it's this version of the movie?

[21] What if it's this kid?

[22] What if it's this, you know, what if it's this guy?

[23] And then suddenly, Jason Clark, who I'd been a fan of forever, he was like, dude, I'm, I'm hip to that.

[24] You know, I want to do it.

[25] Is he playing a real guy?

[26] It's a composite, basically.

[27] What happened is there were a couple of corrupt law enforcement officers.

[28] There was a DEA guy.

[29] There was a treasury guy.

[30] And so what I had done is kind of combined them into that character because I've spent a lot of time in the documentaries hanging out with guys like that and and also people who have relationships, long -term relationships with informants.

[31] So I was able to kind of take the work that I had done in the docs and put it into the movie so that it's drawn from real life.

[32] It's drawn from people I know, but it's, you know, kind of a hybrid between the two.

[33] Yeah, it's a great vehicle for moving the story along, you know, and condensing it without having too many different moving parts, because you got so much going on.

[34] Well, and it's, it was something like that, like a story like this, there are the people that, like I was one of the people that was fully geeked on this story.

[35] I remember the day after Ross Ulbricht was arrested in the San Francisco Library, in the sci -fi section of the Glen Park Library.

[36] I was off shooting some crime doc or another.

[37] And I remember vividly opening the newspaper, and it just had kind of like the shadowy headlines of the story.

[38] It was like dark web, Bitcoin, you know, Dread Pirate Roberts.

[39] But we didn't, none of the stuff was in the zeitgeist yet.

[40] We hadn't even like really heard of Bitcoin.

[41] But I remember thinking like, man, there's like there's a story there.

[42] It's maybe it's a movie, maybe it's a doc, but like there's something.

[43] And I was just kind of fascinated from the get -go and then obsessively tracking the story as new pieces of information would come out.

[44] And then eventually there was this Rolling Stone reporter, this guy by the name of David Kushner, who's this brilliant writer and reporter, has like a nose for story and is able to get to people.

[45] And he had gotten to Ross Oldbrick's girlfriend in Austin.

[46] And then the family.

[47] And so he wrote this profile of Ross that was this very kind of relatable humanist portrait.

[48] And suddenly when I read that piece, I was like, oh, okay, now I can like connect with this guy in some fundamental emotional way.

[49] But at the time, none of the stuff about the corrupt cops had broken.

[50] None of that stuff was in the public, nothing had been reported on.

[51] And I think that the feds deliberately kept that information under wraps so as not to screw up the prosecution of Ross, right?

[52] But I was knowing people in DEA, knowing people in U .S. attorney from making, U .S. attorney's office, from making the 7 -5, from making operation of Dessa, whatever, those guys would call me, and they were like, man, there's a whole another amazing half of this story, which is the crooked cop side of the story.

[53] Suddenly, when I saw that, I thought, okay, now that's a movie, because I can imagine these two sort of people, you know, I always thought of it.

[54] It's almost like their missiles on a collision course flying right at each other, you know?

[55] And so suddenly when I had that in my head, I was like, I can make a movie out of that.

[56] The stuff with the corrupt cop's wife and daughter, was that fictionalized as well yeah so it's so the it's it's interesting you know at a certain point some I remember like on set and kind of going up to it people were like okay so what's what's factual and what's you know fictional what's factual what's fictional and I at a certain point I was like I need to pour myself into this because there wasn't you know when you're making a dock you're going out and you're harvesting people and you're harvesting information and you're harvesting photos videos, news footage.

[57] This was like there was a limited amount of information.

[58] And so then when the information ran out, it was like, okay, what am I going to pour in here?

[59] I can research it the way I would do a doc.

[60] But really, if I'm going to make this something that's true and authentic to me, I kind of poured myself into it.

[61] So that's what I ended up doing, you know.

[62] So when you say poured yourself into it, did you create this story with the daughter that needed the money for school?

[63] And yeah, I mean, what it is is it's a combination.

[64] So there was a limited amount of information.

[65] This guy, one of these cops had family members, had, you know, a background where he was jacked up in Puerto Rico and sort of thrown off track.

[66] So I took the pieces that were in the public record that were in Rolling Stone articles or in the wired article or whatever.

[67] And then I was like, okay, I'm going to put my own biography into this.

[68] I'm going to put, you know, maybe my relationship with my daughter or my relationship with my wife.

[69] And so kind of build out from what's there with a personal story to it.

[70] Is that a difficult thing to do?

[71] Like, do you tiptoe through that?

[72] Because here you are, you have this story, right?

[73] The story for folks who don't know, we should probably let them know what the story is, if they don't know.

[74] The story of Silk Road is a spectacular story.

[75] because he created this marketplace through the dark web with, you know, using Tor and encryption where, and Tor is a browser, it's an encrypted browser.

[76] Yeah, it's basically like, it's like the Harry Potter Invisibility cloak.

[77] You know, you go into Tor and it conceals usage and location.

[78] And he developed this Silk Road platform where you could buy all kinds of drugs and then ultimately you could buy guns as well and a lot of other illegal things and his the way you portrayed him was really fascinating too and I wonder how much of it is accurate because you portrayed him as this sort of really intelligent idealistic young man who ultimately believe that people should have the freedom to buy, sell, use, choose, whatever they like and that the people who support Silk Road that's how they felt and people that are proponents of a lot of these particularly psychedelics, which I'm one of them, they liked that.

[79] Like, yeah, who is a grown adult to tell another grown adult what they can't use?

[80] Wouldn't be great if there were some online marketplace that was free from the tentacles, the American government, and you could buy whatever you want?

[81] Well, there was, and he created it.

[82] And it's, in the sense that it's an important American story.

[83] It's an important Internet story.

[84] It's an important worldwide story, but then you're also adding fiction.

[85] Well, it's, yes, and his story, what fascinated me about his story was you have this guy that starts out as a very kind of naive, innocent guy.

[86] He's somebody who wants to make his mark in the world, wants to change the world, and goes into it with an open heart and good intentions.

[87] And there was a lot of information.

[88] about him.

[89] When I first sat down to write the script, there was, he was locked up in MCC in New York, actually exactly where Michael Dowd from the 7 -5 had been locked up years earlier, right?

[90] And so I sat down and I wrote, I wrote him a letter.

[91] And he was in awaiting sentencing, I think, at the time.

[92] But I knew his lawyers were never going to give me access to him, right?

[93] For rightly so, if it would potentially screw up his defense.

[94] But I felt like, you know, I owe it to this guy in some fundamental sense if I'm going to tell his story to try to connect with him.

[95] And I'm a doc guy.

[96] That's my process, you know.

[97] And so I wrote him a letter and I never heard back.

[98] And but then he had left this kind of amazing archive of breadcrumbs in his past.

[99] You know, he had written all of these public posts on the Silk Road website as Dread Pirate Roberts, where he's putting out his.

[100] philosophy, his ethos, his, you know, convictions.

[101] And then at the same time, he had been secretly keeping a journal long before he had launched Silk Road all the way through it up until the bitter end.

[102] And so when he got busted, they confiscated his laptop.

[103] And when they opened up his laptop, they had all of his private journal entries.

[104] So there was the combination of his public postings as Dread Pirate Roberts and the diary entries as Ross Ulbricht.

[105] And so while I didn't have access to the guy, I had access to his words and who, you know, his, I guess, accidental self -portrait in some way or another.

[106] And so when we got into, and you're out to your question of how much of this is, you know, journalistically accurate.

[107] So every piece of voiceover in the movie that's spoken by Nick Robinson, who plays Ross Ulbricht, all of that is either taken from the diary entries or taken from the public postings as Dread Pirate.

[108] Roberts and then all of the chat logs all of the back and forth the encrypted communications between you know knob and dread pirate Roberts all of that stuff is taken from the documentary record because I felt like you have to be true to who this guy is in some sense spiritually you know yeah did you communicate with him at all no so what happened was I could so I couldn't I couldn't get to you know I wrote him a letter never heard back but what ended up happening was his ex -girlfriend who's an austin who's here in Austin Julia Vee who's port portrayed in the movie by the actor, actress Alexandra Shipp, she became a consultant for it when I was writing the script and then when making the movie because I felt like I needed somebody who knew this guy, who loved him, who had an intimate viewpoint on who he was.

[109] And so she became my kind of source and way in in an emotional sense, right?

[110] How old was she when all it was going down?

[111] 20s, you know, in her 20s.

[112] I mean, and that's, and that's kind of.

[113] What year is this?

[114] That's basically 2011 to 2013.

[115] And so, you know, she's, is she in college?

[116] Is she just out of college?

[117] Just out, right?

[118] So they're like young people knocking around Austin.

[119] And for her, I think it was, you know, what she had told me was, initially it was like he and I against the world, you know, inside the bubble.

[120] And then little by little, the Silk Road website became his masterpiece.

[121] And it was like everybody goes outside of the bubble except me in Silk Road.

[122] And so eventually she felt like she was in almost like a three -way relationship where it's like her, him, and the website.

[123] And eventually the website kind of eats him, you know.

[124] Right.

[125] Yeah.

[126] Well, you did a great job of portraying the obsession that he had with all the inner workings of the website and seeing it ramp up through the website's growth and development when was it Gawker that made the article about it and then it just exploded.

[127] I remember that article.

[128] I remember it very clearly.

[129] Like when you show the image of that article, I remember going, Wow, I remember that article.

[130] Yeah, because it like, you know, and I think that that is true of many of these people that are the kind of disruptor innovators, you know, you have to get your message into the, you have to get into the zeitgeist in some fundamental way.

[131] So like Gawker was the way that like broadcast this to the world.

[132] Hey man, Silk Road's out there.

[133] Like the mailman is your dope dealer and he's not even hip to it.

[134] I wonder what would have happened if he didn't contact Gawker.

[135] I wonder how it would have grown.

[136] You know, I mean, obviously it would have eventually grown and become huge, but I wonder how much longer it would have taken.

[137] It's a, I don't know, it's a fascinating question, but I think you always need the megaphone, right?

[138] I mean, in a way, like, this is, your show is the megaphone.

[139] You know, like, in some ways, it's the, like, transmission of a thing to a audience and to a public.

[140] That's how they connect to it.

[141] And it's otherwise, because you have to be pretty sophisticated, And that was the thing that, you know, he was struggling with initially is like, okay, I've got this amazing thing.

[142] I'm using Tor, so you don't know who it is.

[143] I'm using Bitcoin.

[144] And nobody knew what the hell Bitcoin was at the time either, right?

[145] It's because of this story that we all know of Bitcoin.

[146] This is what put Bitcoin in the zeitgeist.

[147] But basically he had this like, as many of these great ideas are, relatively simple one, which was Tor plus Bitcoin means encrypted transactions, can't be traced.

[148] Anybody can get anything anytime from anywhere, from anyone they want.

[149] And so it unleashed it to the world.

[150] But then it was like, okay, but nobody knows about this.

[151] How are we going to, how are we going to sort of broadcast it?

[152] And the Gawker piece is the thing that injects it into the zeit guys.

[153] But it was a thing before that.

[154] So it was reasonably successful before that, right?

[155] Like, people did know about it in terms of like the weirdo, internet crowd yeah they knew about it but he didn't think that that was enough well and he had to go like he went and like seated the chat rooms and like said like hey man check this out you know acting as if he was a user and not the mastermind to it to like put bait in the water so the fish would hit it you know yeah yeah it's it's such a crazy story and um i has it what is the status of things like that now are is there a more improved version of Silk Road now where you can do that and you don't get busted?

[156] There were...

[157] I'm asking for a friend.

[158] Exactly, exactly.

[159] The crazy thing is there were several iterations of Silk Road that happened.

[160] So like the feds came in, like seized it, and then all of a sudden, like, on the website, it was like seized by the FBI, you know, putting the word out as the feds are kind of pissing on the territory.

[161] But then I forget what amount of time.

[162] I've forgotten the details at this point, but some of them, six months later or whatever, Silk Road 2 .0 comes up.

[163] Then the feds shut that down.

[164] Then Silk Road 3 .0 comes up.

[165] It's kind of like, I think, you know, the genie never goes back in the bottle.

[166] Once the technology is out there, it's going to, in some way or another, continue to persist.

[167] Now, when the feds had shut it down, was this when Ross was running it?

[168] When he basically, after Ross was busted, the feds went in and said, stamped the site that said seized by the FBI.

[169] And then it reemerged.

[170] And then it reemerged.

[171] And the whole thing, you know, his, you know, his, you know, his.

[172] online avatar, you know, nom de guerre or whatever, was Dread Pirate Roberts taken from the Princess Bride, the idea being like, once I go away, there's going to be a new Dread Pirate Roberts.

[173] Somebody else is going to pick up the baton and run with it.

[174] And nobody quite knows, okay, who is it that inherited it?

[175] And there are those people who say, hey, this wasn't Ross that ordered these hits.

[176] You know, this was like nobody knows who's behind the keys at the time anything has happened.

[177] So there are those people who completely deny, you know, his family completely denies the culpability and who knows we'll never know that is a problem when you deal with corrupt cops too right like they literally could have faked him doing that we don't know what has he denied that he called hits but we should explain to people that haven't seen the film spoiler alert uh it goes off the rails for ross for young ross and uh at one point in time one of his the guy he's working with gets busted and rats him out and then the cops are using that guy's account and communicating with him and he orders a hit on that guy and the guy gets to see it and it's like, holy shit, I can't believe this.

[178] Who knows how much of that is real and how much is not?

[179] But the problem is you're dealing with corrupt cops and if the corrupt cops wanted to frame him for something that's going to put him away for a long time, just running the website and allowing people a portal where they can do this and sell things is not quite good enough but if you can get a guy to literally call for murder not once but twice then you've really got him locked up we don't know though did he deny that he called those kids not only did he deny it but what happened was so to back up a step basically the corrupt cop you know in the movie the corrupt cop at a certain point sets out to bust Ross and then at a certain point he's like kind of getting cock blocked by superiors and whatever.

[180] And so he says, okay, I'm going to rip this kid off instead.

[181] If I can't bust him, I'm going to steal the money and I'm going to use it for my own purposes.

[182] But what ends up happening is, and all of that information, by the way, the fake murder of his employee and the photographs that were taken of it, all of that stuff is true.

[183] That's all in the real story.

[184] And as we're shooting the movie, we have access to the actual faked murder photos where what does it look like?

[185] It looks like.

[186] Is it available online?

[187] Can we see it?

[188] Yeah, it's available online.

[189] Oh, we need to see that right now.

[190] See if you can find the...

[191] Curtis Clark Green, murder photos, fake murder photos.

[192] What was his online name?

[193] Chronic pain.

[194] Appropriately enough.

[195] Did he look like that guy?

[196] The fat guy with the crocs?

[197] He does, and I love that.

[198] That actor is amazing.

[199] He was in Eastwood put him in Richard Jewel, and he was in Spike Lee's last movie.

[200] He's just, he's one of those guys.

[201] Did he play Richard Jewel?

[202] Yeah, he played Richard Jewel, and he's fantastic.

[203] Really good.

[204] I mean, he seemed like...

[205] the quintessential internet couch monster.

[206] Working with that guy was so fun, you know, because like, again, we had the, you know, we had information about the real guy.

[207] And what happened was when that guy gets busted, when chronic pain gets busted, in this article it said he had a Chihuahua, and the Chihuahua's going bat shit, barking crazy as the feds are kicking in the door or whatever.

[208] And we're sitting there and I'm thinking like, man, Chihuahua going bat shit on set.

[209] That's going to screw up the dialogue.

[210] What do we do?

[211] And so I'm talking to Paul.

[212] And Paul's like, what if we give him a, ferret instead and I'm like ferret dude let's go ferret you know and then the other the other brilliant thing that paul did was he said you know all of this like you know all this online chatter where it's you know you're typing on the computer and then the other person types back he's like what if the dude's a mumbler so he's kind of saying this shit out loud the whole time that he's talking and he starts talking to himself so once he had the ferret and made the guy a mumbler he had like the keys to the character yeah he nailed it it was great everything down to the fanny pack it was beautiful the um the so the dialogue between all the dialogue that you show on on screen was actually real dialogue yeah so in the movie you have ross calling for this guy's murder did did you struggle with that at all if ross says he never did that and he believed this what was his theory well i think okay so there's a couple of important points one is the feds Eds never charged him with attempted murder.

[213] They put it, you know, Ross ended up getting sentenced to two life sentences plus 40 years without the possibility of parole.

[214] And this is a crazy fact, which is considerably harsher than what El Chapo was sentenced to, right?

[215] Jesus Christ.

[216] And so they really, you know, they threw the book at this guy and buried him.

[217] And yet, he had, he did, he was offered a deal at a certain point and he turned it down.

[218] What was the deal?

[219] I think it was 10 years.

[220] Jesus Christ, kid.

[221] I know.

[222] And this is a crazy, so this is a crazy story.

[223] So starting out with, you know, you had asked me if I had reached out to him.

[224] So I reached out to him when he was locked up in MCC, New York awaiting sentencing.

[225] And then all the way through, he was hoping, you know, the case was working its way through the appeals process.

[226] So, and then finally, he was hoping that Trump was going to pardon him.

[227] And there was a big kind of hullabaloo, okay, is Trump going to pardon this, pardon him on?

[228] his last day in office.

[229] And he didn't.

[230] And I was sitting there watching the news waiting to see if he would.

[231] And I woke up the next day.

[232] And I was like, man, I'm going to look it up.

[233] And so I went on to the Bureau of Prisons website.

[234] And I typed in Ross's name.

[235] And it comes up, you know, Tucson Penitentiary.

[236] And then it said release date, colon, life.

[237] And it just like, it hit me, you know, this kid's 36 years old.

[238] He's 10 years younger than I am.

[239] And just staring down.

[240] the barrel of that.

[241] And so I sat down, even though the movie's, you know, coming out or whatever at the time, and I decide, you know what, I owe this guy and some fun, like just human being man to man. So I write him a letter and I said, listen, man, I've made this movie and this is my portrait of you and my portrait of your story and of Silk Road.

[242] And it's, you know, it's coming out into the world.

[243] But if you ever want to tell your version of this story in any form or fashion, You want to do it as a Rolling Stone interview, you want to do it as a documentary, you want to do it any way you want, you tell me, and I will be there in person to sit down with you because I do feel like there's some kind of, I don't know, I guess like spiritual contract between me and him.

[244] Like when you enter into a story like this, you're in somebody else's life in a real way.

[245] Yeah.

[246] It's almost like we do need to hear his version of it, right?

[247] And we don't.

[248] We just, and especially when you're dealing with lawyers in a court case where it's, you know, they're withholding some testimony if they think it'd be detrimental to his case or, you know, once all said and done.

[249] I wonder why Trump didn't pardon him.

[250] I don't know.

[251] And who knows, you know, the way it was reported that he was close.

[252] considering it but in the kind of last days of the you know chaotic into the administration or whatever it didn't happen but I was I was you know because no matter what you think of Ross's politics or what he did as a you know or Silk Road even there is this thing where like I'm a believer in second chances man you know I've screwed up a million things in my lifetime and and I feel like somebody like that hopefully has something to give the world, you know, and isn't thrown away.

[253] It's just crazy that they were offering him 10 years and instead they gave him two life sentences plus 40 years with no possibility of parole.

[254] Like, why?

[255] You know, there's this.

[256] It's such a disparity.

[257] Well, it's, I think in some way or another, it was like, this changed the drug war, right?

[258] It changed the way the drug game happened and it changed the way the drug war was fought.

[259] Suddenly, it's like it's almost an existential threat to the drug war when it's not by busts and hand -to -hand and all the street stuff that we've seen, you know, since Nixon unleashes DEA, you know, in 73 or whatever the year is.

[260] Suddenly it's, wait a minute, all happening online anonymous, DHL, USPS, people are delivering it.

[261] Nobody even knows that they're carrying it.

[262] So it was like it was an existential threat to the US government, to the DEA, to the drug war.

[263] And so he got the book thrown at him.

[264] Crazy.

[265] So what was the motivation for offering him 10 years as a plea?

[266] You know, I don't know.

[267] And I wonder, you know, looking back on it, it's always kind of hindsight is 20 -20, but he had been beating the system for a long time, right?

[268] He was like one dude with a laptop that unleashed this thing that kind of metastasized and went over the whole world.

[269] And he was winning for a while.

[270] ahead of the feds.

[271] He was ahead of the U .S. Attorney's Office.

[272] He had Chuck Schumer there, you know, calling for his head.

[273] And yet he continued to kind of game the system and beat him by just being nimble and being able to throw his laptop in his backpack and roll on to the next location.

[274] So maybe, you know, maybe he thought he'd be able to continue beating the system.

[275] I don't know.

[276] God, just, I mean, I just, he'd be out.

[277] He'd be out.

[278] He'd be out now.

[279] Full ten years later.

[280] Well, and the crazy thing, you know.

[281] I tweeted this two hours ago.

[282] Kind of convenient time.

[283] I put Silk Road on the tour network about 10 years ago.

[284] I've been thinking about what was going through the mind of my 26 -year -old self back then in 2011.

[285] So much has changed.

[286] If only I could turn back time.

[287] Wow.

[288] So he's got a Twitter account?

[289] He tweets a lot recently about meditation.

[290] How does he have a Twitter account?

[291] He might not be running and he could be sending messages to someone, but it seems like he's running.

[292] Well, I think, you know, one of the things when I looked at the federal penitentiary where he's being held is, is you actually can, they give everybody access to, you know, to the computers and to email periodically once you get on the list.

[293] Fuck.

[294] But it's heavy, right?

[295] I mean, yeah, it's heavy, but I wish I'd know, I wish I could know whether or not he actually called for murder.

[296] That's, that's the difference.

[297] They're in lies the difference, right?

[298] Well, let me argue that point with you, because at a certain point, you know, you can make the argument this is entrapment this is somebody saying hey this guy's ripping you off all of it was a hustle like what the feds were doing was a hustle and so it's again putting bait in the water hey this guy's ripping you off hey do you want to kill him um and sort of encouraging him and entrapping him to do so eventually he says yes you know or arguably he says yes right if it's him he says yes if it wasn't him and somebody else is running it who knows but like that and that and this is the way the feds often prosecute cases right is like you're putting bait in the water encouraging the person to do it then he's like his intention arguably is yes i want to do it but at the same time like the murder wasn't real the whole thing was a hustle yeah but he if he did call for the murder and he thought it was real then he called for a second murder i mean he's literally calling for hits if it's real if it's real if he really did the problem is there's two problems like legitimately if you were the prosecuting attorney and you knew that you had corrupt cops giving bad information and stealing money and you were an ethical person you're supposed to release that information and it should taint the eyes of the jury it should it should taint the eyes of the judge it should taint their case it should weaken their case but they're not going to do that And none of that was disclosed at his trial.

[299] All of that was deliberately concealed so that they could, you know, hammer him in the prosecution.

[300] And look, I'm a strong, like, law enforcement guy, right?

[301] Like, I, in the sense of, you know, I have made a bunch of documentaries that are about cops.

[302] Some of them are corrupt cops like Michael Dowd.

[303] Some of them are, you know, righteous cops, like the guy that investigated the Kiki Camerena murder, the murder of the D .A. in the 1985.

[304] And so I've spent my whole kind of professional life knocking around cops and prosecutors.

[305] And I'm a believer in the, you know, the justice system.

[306] We need it to work.

[307] Yeah, as am I. I'm just, cops are just like everybody else.

[308] There's good ones and there's bad ones.

[309] And unfortunately, with cops, there's a lot of bad ones.

[310] And it's terrible for the good ones.

[311] When you see a story like this, though, and you know that the police, officers that were involved were corrupt and one of them did one of them would go to jail or two of both of them two of them went to jail I mean that that should be grounds for a retrial it's you know it's now gone all the way through the system and the only way he gets out is you know clemency or a pardon by somebody otherwise you know that kid spending the rest of his life you know and and and I called his mother recently is in Austin too actually about the same time and I had not spoken with her beforehand and I reached out again just in sort of human terms and I said you know how are you doing and she said I'm not doing too good man my kids gonna die in prison that was the opening words of the conversation and and I just said hey if the tables were she's like why are you calling me and I said because if the tables were turned I'd want somebody to call my mom too you know Oh, imagine.

[312] Jesus Christ.

[313] It just seems that if the cops were corrupt and if they were lying and if they were stealing money, it should have tainted the whole case.

[314] It should be grounds for some sort of a retrial.

[315] It should be grounds for a dismissal.

[316] It should be grounds for, you know, a re -examination of the case.

[317] Well, but it goes back to your original point, too, which is like, okay, if you have this, the intention to commit murder, if it really was him that did it, you know, have you crossed a fundamental line?

[318] Because I think, you know, and to me, that's what's, that's what makes all of these stories interesting, stories like this interesting, is, it's not clear cut.

[319] Right.

[320] And it's not, you know, good guy, bad guy.

[321] You've got, it's, it's the, it's the gray area in between.

[322] To me, as a filmmaker, what, what is interesting is somebody that isn't wholly good and isn't, or isn't wholly a gangster.

[323] It's somebody that's in between.

[324] between and like the forces of light or warring with the forces of darkness inside them, you know?

[325] You know, you did a great job of portraying him as very tortured by his decision, especially the one where he's seeing his girlfriend now hanging out with some other guy and he's drunk and, you know, he makes a call.

[326] The whole thing was very believable.

[327] But how much of that was based on real accounts of what was going down or how much of that was fiction?

[328] took almost everything.

[329] There was a lot more reporting about Ross, right?

[330] So there was a lot in the public record.

[331] We knew his childhood.

[332] He grew up in Austin.

[333] He was a Boy Scout.

[334] He was an Eagle Scout.

[335] And he ends up getting a degree in physics.

[336] He goes to UTD.

[337] And so there was a lot of information about him.

[338] And there was information in his own words.

[339] So anywhere where I had that information, it was like, let's Hugh closely to that.

[340] And then I had his ex -girlfriend, right, who is there telling me, because a big question I had for her early on is, okay, this libertarian ethos, this notion that like everybody has the right to do whatever they want, that this is America, right?

[341] If you want to pop a pill, snort a line, do whatever, like you have the God -given right to do so, how much of that was legitimate and how much of it was a mask that he's just wearing for, you know, for the site, for the public to, you know, to sell it.

[342] And she said, this is exactly who this guy was at his most basic core level was a believer in our individual rights and freedoms and she would you know he'd sit there and argue with people in bars and say hey like this is our constitutional right and so once i had that kind of piece of the character and i knew okay that's what animates this guy in a basic sense then it gave me something to kind of hook on to and there's people that you know will that don't like the politics that will argue against that.

[343] And at the end of the day, my feeling is, it's not my job to pass a moral judgment.

[344] And even in the same way with Michael Dowd and the 7 -5, it's not my job to tell you, hey, this is a good guy, this is a bad guy.

[345] It's, here's the story.

[346] Here's the characters.

[347] Here's the world.

[348] Make up your own mind.

[349] Hopefully people are arguing about it one way or another.

[350] Yeah, well, I'm sure they will.

[351] I mean, you definitely gave a lot of food for thought.

[352] it's such a complicated story it really is because you know you see the guy entering into it with these intentions that are um you know debatably very they're very american it's very the idea of freedom and the ability to do whatever yeah it really is and then along the wine just everything just goes so sour well and it happens so quickly you know one of the things that's crazy about that that story is from the time he unleashes the site until the time he's busted.

[353] It's less than two years, right?

[354] This guy's got an entire lifetime's worth of drama that happens to him in, you know, 18 months time.

[355] How much money did he make?

[356] Well, you know, had he hung on to the Bitcoin with Bitcoin at 50 ,000 or whatever it is today, it would be like an incalculable amount of money.

[357] It was tens of millions at the time.

[358] God.

[359] And what happened with all that Bitcoin?

[360] It got confiscated and seized by the federal government.

[361] So the federal government owns it now?

[362] Federal government seizes it and confiscates it, although there was just, I read in the news, and I don't know the details of this, but there was a bunch of, you know, significant amount of, meaning like hundreds of millions of dollars, I think, missing Bitcoin.

[363] U .S. seizes one billion in Bitcoin linked to Silk Road site.

[364] The DOJ is suing for formal forfeiture of funds after tracking down the person holding them.

[365] And this is, how long ago was this story?

[366] Three months.

[367] Yeah.

[368] November 6.

[369] Wow.

[370] Isn't that funny?

[371] Look at that little thing.

[372] This article is more than three months old.

[373] That's how crazy the time is today.

[374] Three months old, like, bro, that's a fucking million years ago.

[375] Three months?

[376] Well, time got particularly weird on us over the past year in the pandemic, too.

[377] Oh, yeah.

[378] But that particularly is strange, that they have that little thing to let you know.

[379] This is not new.

[380] Wave in the flag.

[381] Yeah.

[382] According to the information, Ross Oldbrook, now G .L. Found the Silkwell, became aware of individual X's online identity and threatened individual X for return of the cryptocurrency to Ulbricht.

[383] Individual X did not return to cryptocurrency, but kept it and did not spend it.

[384] The complaint said, the complaint officially titled United States versus approximately 69 ,370 Bitcoin.

[385] Holy shit.

[386] Holy shit.

[387] That's so much money.

[388] Serious chunk of money.

[389] Requires the DOD.

[390] to prove in court that the C's cryptocurrency is subject to forfeiture, meaning it is the proceeds of a criminal act.

[391] Wow.

[392] Hmm.

[393] What would they do with that money?

[394] Where's that go?

[395] I think it goes into like, you know, further investigations, and I'm not certain.

[396] Nancy Pelosi's hair fund.

[397] Exactly.

[398] Exactly.

[399] There it goes.

[400] There it goes.

[401] These motherfuckers.

[402] Where's that money go?

[403] well i mean i think some of them it goes into like reinvestigations in the way in the like miami vice days when you like seize the Ferrari then it becomes like the undercover like Ferrari you know three point five billion dollars today oh so a billion three months ago and three point five billion today hey hang on to it for a little bit see what happens fucking christ that's nuts um that is really nuts that's so much money so much money Wow.

[404] So they take it all from him.

[405] He's got a public defender, I'm sure, right?

[406] No, he's got, he's got a, you know, he's got his attorneys that are that are representing him.

[407] His family mortgage their house or something like that.

[408] Presumably, right?

[409] It's got to be astronomically expensive.

[410] It's a sad story, man. It's, did you struggle with whether or not to portray him as being the guy who called for the hits since he said he never did it?

[411] I struggle with, for me, every single one of these true stories, or based on a true story, has a big moral question to it.

[412] You know, when I'm making the night stalker for Netflix, the question is like, okay, you got all these like brutal crime scene photos of people that are just, you know, essentially gutted and just the most horrible stuff ever.

[413] And so it becomes this question of, okay, how much of that stuff do you show the world or how much of it do you conceal because you want it to be a compelling show that people are able to watch?

[414] And so every single one of them has a big moral question where you're constantly kind of struggling with it.

[415] With Silk Road, you know, the hits is a big thing because, okay, there's no guarantee that it was necessarily him behind the keys ordering them.

[416] but at the same time, you know, a reasonable mind would assume, okay, you're the guy that's got the keys to the kingdom, you're broadcasting everything else.

[417] Presumably it is you that makes this decision.

[418] But it's, you know, that's the thing with these crime stories and these true stories is it constantly requires me to make moral judgments about what to include and what not to include.

[419] Yeah, that's what I would, particularly with that, well, I guess with Richard Ramirez and the Nightstocker, like, you've got bodies, they're real photos, you've got, you know, obviously real murders.

[420] My question is with him, if he said he didn't call for those hits, if you portrayed the DEA agent creating a false account or hacking into his account in some way, what would be the method they could do that?

[421] Like if it wasn't him that did it, see, he's using an encrypted website, he's doing it through an encrypted browser, how would it be possible for someone else to...

[422] Well, say he's got employees that are working with.

[423] I mean, theoretically, there are people that are co -conspirators, collaborators that have access to different things, and maybe it's not him that's actually typing it.

[424] I mean, I think most reasonable minds would conclude that was the decision, and that was the intent.

[425] But at the same time, you can't prove it.

[426] And because that's the whole thing with the sort of anonymous internet, no accountability.

[427] Who knows, man?

[428] Yeah.

[429] You know?

[430] So, yeah, it's a big...

[431] So it would have to be an employee.

[432] It would have to be someone on site.

[433] It would have to be someone who had access to his laptop.

[434] Did they get a log from the laptop that showed that those, that type, that typed out words, like put the hit on that guy, whatever, however he said it, that came from that laptop?

[435] Basically, what happened was they ended up...

[436] He uses, instead of using a local server, he uses like a server farm in Iceland so that as people, you know, the feds are trying to track him, it's going to this weird ass locale that's not tied to him geographically.

[437] So eventually the feds get access to the server farm in Iceland and they're able to kind of the simplified version of this is they open it up and they're looking at it in real time from the inside.

[438] So it's as if they're watching from his laptop, but in another location.

[439] How did they do that?

[440] access because he had made a coding error very early on because he taught himself all this like this guy wasn't a trained um you know coder he taught himself all of this like in his own time looking stuff up on you know youtube and whatever the dark web and wherever else and so he had made an early coding error and had left his um email address somewhere ross olbrick at gmail dot com oh no and that one little breadcrumb very early on led to the IP address that he had ends up getting busted for because even though you make those mistakes and you go back and cover it up it's um it's still out there and then like forensically as they sort of recover and rebuild it they catch that mistake and that's what ends up bringing him down oh my goodness i finally found that photo yeah took forever but that's it i guess so that's the photo of that's the fake murder right got that guy looks so close to the guy that you guys they had play him so there's the fake murder with him.

[441] There's a chihuahua.

[442] The soup coming out of his mouth.

[443] Yeah.

[444] And then that's him.

[445] That's, that's, that's, that's one of the real DEA guys there at, at the bottom there.

[446] All hail knob, you see that picture.

[447] So that guy with the hat on in the lower left?

[448] Yeah, that's one, that's one, that's one, that's one, that's one, that's one, that's one of the two DEA guys.

[449] Yeah, exactly.

[450] He's, the, the actor you got portrayed him so well.

[451] Um, um, wow.

[452] Well, that's the thing with those undercover guys, right?

[453] Is, where's that guy now?

[454] He's, he's out.

[455] He's out.

[456] And he's actually a huge advocate of Ross, you know, wanting to get him.

[457] Even though Ross wanted him dead?

[458] Even though Ross wanted him dead.

[459] He's now sort of a big supporter of him and wants, you know, his, wants him granted clemency or pardon.

[460] Look at this.

[461] Here I am at the door of the hotel room suite, hotel room suite where the agents fake my death.

[462] It's like, it's crazy the culture like this, right, which is like people wanting to relive their thing.

[463] I remember very early on, one of the earliest jobs I had was, um, I went out on the crab fishing boats, right, in the Bering Sea doing what turned out to be deadliest catch once upon a time, right?

[464] And so I'm out there on these crab fishing boats.

[465] And I'm thinking, like, who's going to watch this shit?

[466] You know, sort of crabs pulled out of the ocean, who cares.

[467] And there was this kid on there that was like a young kid that had washed up in Alaska, you know, got tossed from the army, smoking dope or something.

[468] And he ends up in Alaska.

[469] And he's on this boat and he starts telling me, man, I'm having nightmares that I'm going to, like, fall over this boat in the middle of the night.

[470] And eventually, he's out there fishing in the middle of the night, throws one of the crab pots over, and the rope catches his leg, yanks his ass into the water, right?

[471] And the alarms start going off.

[472] And I go running out there in the middle of the night to see what the deal is.

[473] And my cameraman, who's with me at the time, is like, dude, we've got to help these guys.

[474] We've got to rescue that kid.

[475] So he drops his camera, and he goes running out to, like, help the other.

[476] And I'm kind of like, dude, my job is to, like, is to film this shit.

[477] Right.

[478] And so I reach down and I pick up the camera and I start shooting.

[479] and I'm feeling like conflicted again that moral thing like okay should I be like helping or should I be filming this and so they grab the kid and miraculously they save him and they pull him onto the deck and he's like shaking with cold you know because your heart gives out in like six minutes when you're in the water like that and so I'm holding a camera with one hand and a knife with the other and I'm cutting the guy's clothes off right and he goes it's all right man just film it and I'm thinking like what like what world do we live in insane right and that's you know but like and then that's the moment that ends up you know being like okay now we got a tv show let's turn it into deadliest catch but it's like so crazy that like people are like that that's yeah but people are so aware of what it means to be on television now or what it means to be on the internet or what it means to be a part of a thing that a bunch of people are going to see yeah and that's kind of how we process these stories it's like why we're still fooling why are people still watching the story of Richard Ramirez and the Nightstocker 35 years after that happened?

[480] And I think part of the reason why is, like, this is how we understand these stories is by like telling them, retelling and having the discussions about like, what's the morality of Ross Oldbricht or using crime scene photos or Richard Ramirez.

[481] It's kind of, this is the way we culturally process this stuff.

[482] Do you ever do a demographic breakdown of who watched, like does Netflix have a demographic breakdown of who watches those crime shows because it's mostly women isn't it anecdotally that's what everybody says there was a funny bit on saturday night live the other night that was like you know what what do ladies do when they're home alone you know wait wait wait you know then they like throw on the murder shows yeah why is that i don't know it's a weird thing and when we were making night stalker there would like we would get to the the point in the interview where it's finally you know i would i would ask everybody like okay so for some reason or another this guy becomes like the Jim Morrison of serial killers because like when he's paraded through the courtroom all of a sudden he's got these like groupies and fans and they're sending him and I had gotten access to all of the like naked pictures that the girls are sending in you know because this author had written a book about him had all this stuff and I was like and you always have to kind of ask that awkward question of like so why does this guy become this sort of crazy sex symbol object of desire, you know, obscure object of desire.

[483] And it's always like kind of, particularly with the, you know, the women who are being interviewed, but everybody.

[484] And nobody quite has an answer.

[485] Is it the bad boy thing?

[486] Is it the celebrity thing?

[487] But this is somebody that like, you know, I think as one of the people said, this is somebody that would eat you for dinner, not like, you know, there's no, it's craziness to have any attraction to it.

[488] But yet it exists.

[489] You know, this guy has like groupies and fans.

[490] And it's very common for murder.

[491] to get, especially murderers of women, to get all these propositions from women.

[492] Yeah.

[493] It's very strange.

[494] Super strange.

[495] And, you know, I read something about that.

[496] No, you know, Whitney Cummings was actually telling me about this.

[497] She said, she read that it was something that had to do with, there was like an evolutionary benefit to getting close to killers, like that, I think this is theoretical.

[498] In what regard?

[499] That the idea of, it's very hard.

[500] to kill someone once you have like human personal contact is that what you're saying no no no no that the the act of killing someone that it's difficult to do and that it requires like someone who is to be capable of taking another person's life and to be close to that person means somehow or another you're protected by them and that they're willing to kill and that this is like something that existed thousands and thousands of years ago in our DNA, this desire to be close to killers because you were more likely to survive because there were so many killers.

[501] Like if you went back in time, you know, a few thousand years ago, murder must have been like really common.

[502] Like when people were sword fighting all the time and stuff.

[503] There's a crazy book on this.

[504] Stephen Pinker wrote this book called The Better Angels of Our Nature.

[505] And what he does is he tracks over time kind of the nature of violence in humanity.

[506] And he's like, okay, once upon a time there's Kane and Abel and Kane kills Abel, like the murder rate is like 50%.

[507] So actually we've been trending up ever since then.

[508] And like it literally looks at how, you know, over time, the incidence of like violence has actually, even though it doesn't seem like that, dramatically decreased in humanity.

[509] It does seem like that.

[510] It does seem like that.

[511] I think we just focus on the instances of violence because we have.

[512] mass media.

[513] Right.

[514] And it's fascinating.

[515] Yeah.

[516] And if it bleeds, it leads.

[517] So there's...

[518] But why is that?

[519] You know, like, that's something that, you know, making the Nightstocker or even making Silk Road, it's like, why are we fascinated by the underworld, you know, the sort of like the worst things that people do to each other?

[520] Like, what is it, you know?

[521] And I'm, you're participating in it.

[522] I'm participating in it.

[523] Anytime we're watching it, making it or whatever, you know, we are all in some way complicit in that well there's the lure of the abyss too right like isn't why is that why do people look over the edge of a building and think about jumping you know like there's there's something about we want to get up to the edge in some way or another you know there's something about death and murder and all those things that it's absolutely and also anesthetized in our culture which is real weird right like why is it okay for a movie to depict a hundred people dying just murdered with with bullets and just stabbed and that's fine.

[524] Like John Wick, perfect example.

[525] Like, how many people does he kill?

[526] Right.

[527] And he's the hero.

[528] He's killing everybody.

[529] Right.

[530] But if you fuck someone and you actually saw it, it'd be like, this movie's a piece of shit.

[531] Right.

[532] This is terrible.

[533] I can't believe you showed me penetration.

[534] That's strange.

[535] It's super strange.

[536] We're totally fine with violence, which is the worst thing that could happen.

[537] But if we actually saw real sex and a moment, movie like that we would be outraged yeah it's whatever those moral lines are you know violence is inherently cinematic like if you look back like the earliest days of like the movies like it's one of the most cinematic things there is and so i think there was an interview with david kronenberg or something they're like what is it with like sex and violence in the movies he's like bacon and eggs man they go together i wonder if there's going to be a time where cg .i pornography in a in a film is acceptable Or VR, like you put on the headset.

[538] Well, they have that, but what I'm saying is, like, pornography in an action movie, but you know it's not really the people having sex.

[539] Like, one of the reasons why we like an action movie like John Wick is we know nobody died.

[540] Right.

[541] So you don't feel bad.

[542] But if they actually did fuck, you're like, hey, this is crazy.

[543] These are two people actually having sex.

[544] You hit the tripwire.

[545] But if they were CGI sex, I wonder if we're ever going to reach a book.

[546] Because clearly, our desire for.

[547] whatever it is depravity whatever you know whatever you want to call whether it's violence or sex or extreme things that we see in films it's it's only getting greater right if you look at what was outrageous like i watched the shining the other night and what was outrageous then in terms of like even violence is pretty fucking tame yeah you know even though it's a wild crazy movie with kubrick and you watch a movie today with violence it's a Way more violent.

[548] Well, you have to keep cranking up the lever, right?

[549] The more you're used to, the higher it has to be like up to 11 in the red to be able to, you know, experience it.

[550] But not with sex.

[551] But not with sex.

[552] Yeah, sex is kind of like it hits a point and that's the line.

[553] Well, but it's also like when you think about depictions of sex in a weird way, it's oftentimes, and I guess maybe the same thing is true with like horror movies.

[554] but it's like the T's can be sexier than the actual sex or like jaws the shark, it's like you think in the shark's coming, not actually seeing the shark is what's scary about it.

[555] You know, oftentimes what the mind can do.

[556] Yeah, we used to think that about violence too, though.

[557] But now that's not the case.

[558] Now if you watch...

[559] Now you want that hit.

[560] Yeah, if you watch like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, that is a fucking crazy violent movie.

[561] Like crazy violent.

[562] And we're okay with it.

[563] Yeah.

[564] We're good with that.

[565] And if that movie existed, if you had once upon a time in Hollywood in the 1970s, they'd probably make it rated X. But, you know, there's those people that make the argument, the reason why we, like, is because we're not indulging in the violence ourselves, you know, because we are trending away from, you know, the murder rate of, you know, 50%, percent.

[566] It's like, it's our way of vicariously taken the ride without having to indulge it.

[567] That's the argument for violent video games.

[568] you know the argument against violent video games is that somehow another makes people numb to the idea of killing people because you're killing people all the time in in these you know virtual forms but the argument for video games is that you get that out you get it out of your system like there's a lot of weird psychology when it comes to things that you're seeing in a film or in a game or any any sort of media depiction what's entertainment what isn't and why are we doing it and consuming it.

[569] And why are we upset at some things that people like and not upset about other things that people like?

[570] We're upset at some versions.

[571] But those also change over time.

[572] It's like you said, you know, you have once upon a time in Hollywood in the 1970s, that movie's rated X. Yeah.

[573] You know, the meter changes.

[574] It does too.

[575] Like, try listening to NWA.

[576] Right.

[577] You know, listen to that now and you're like, Jesus.

[578] Like, what are they saying?

[579] this is crazy they're talking about killing prostitutes you know that it's like a positive thing if you listen to that and imagine that being in a movie and that those guys are the heroes you'd be like what yeah what is this but are is that is that people getting it out of their system i don't know it's a fascinating question i don't know that there's any i don't know there's any answer to it well it's it's fantasy it's fiction you know and that's always been the argument for gangster rap it's always been the argument for gangster movies you know violent movies which is also kind of a cornerstone to the like to america right like the american outlaw is like that's that's a cornerstone of the culture from billy the kid through the godfather and goodfellas and whatever like that's how we that is an american phenomenon and so all of this is in keeping with you know it's a cornerstone of the country yeah in some way or another it is and when we get back to Silk Road and Ross Ulbrook, when you see his story and you see what he, I mean, even if he did call for those murders, in a lot of people's eyes, like what he was doing was stopping rats, stopping people from fucking up his thing, and that these people were, they were in the way of his idea of what the greater good is.

[580] Well, and, you know, he has the argument with his girlfriend in the movie where she's like, dude, you're selling like crack on the site, you're selling meth on the site.

[581] And And his point is, like, hey, if you were to go buy this on the street, there's not a rating system, there's not reviews.

[582] Like, my operation is safer than, like, the old school drug dealers because there actually is some amount of accountability because it's all publicly posted.

[583] It's Amazon.

[584] It's eBay.

[585] There's also a great misunderstanding and a great amount of ignorance when it comes to drugs themselves.

[586] There's a guy named Dr. Carl Hart, who was recently on my podcast, has been on in the past, who wrote a book called Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Grownups for Out over here somewhere?

[587] yeah i think i saw it on the way in yeah um and essentially he says crack is coke it's the same goddamn thing it's the same effects he's like i've i've had meth he's like it's just an infetamine he's like the idea we put these things in our mind like these are horrific here's the line right he's like you know he's like ketamine is pcp it's the same thing and he's a chemist i mean he's a phd he's a guy who really understands this is yeah he's a clinical researcher and became a guy who started using these drugs after he became a clinical researcher.

[588] It was basically a teetotaler until he's in his 30s.

[589] And then while he was doing clinical research on these drugs, he started realizing how much we've been sort of misinterpreting the effects or misrepresenting the effects, rather, and how people have these ideas on what crack is, and a lot of it is based on racist prosecution.

[590] policies because if you have crack versus coke the difference in prosecution is fucking astronomical right it's really crazy yeah and one's the one's the one's the one's the ghetto street drug and one's the like wall street drug exactly and he said but the effect is the same it's the same drug well it's also weird you know you we talk about the like cultural shifts you know and i always think about this you know having done several DEA stories whether it's the last narc on amazon And I think of, like, hanging out with these, you know, DEA agents who, like, become my friends that are in it.

[591] Well, now all of a sudden, like, you're in California, like, the weed store.

[592] There's more weed stores in California than there are Starbucks.

[593] Like, how weird must that be for these, like, DEA guys, these, like, old school kind of knock around, like, warriors that dedicated their entire life to the war on drugs.

[594] And then it's like, and then they're like, maybe give me some edibles.

[595] You know what I mean?

[596] Like, it's a crazy, these cultural shifts are so radical in our time.

[597] It's like, you know, I wonder if you look at Silk Road.

[598] road 20 years from now and it seems like preposterous that he or even now maybe, you know, that he gets double life sentences plus 40 without the possibility of parole, you know?

[599] And these guys that are the cops, they're not bad people either.

[600] That's what's fucked.

[601] It's like the culture is bad.

[602] Like the culture of law enforcement in terms of like prosecuting people from marijuana.

[603] It's just, it's bad.

[604] It's a bad setup.

[605] And they get pushed into this box because this is what their job is.

[606] Like, if you're working at Dairy Queen, your job is to make the ice cream go in a circle and you hand it to people.

[607] That's your fucking job, right?

[608] You might hate swirly ice cream, but that's your job.

[609] If you're a cop and they tell you you're supposed to bust people for pot, that's your job.

[610] And when things change, these guys have this totally mixed signal.

[611] Now, some cops are like, look at stupid to bust people for pot, but other cops, they had it in their head.

[612] No, pot is a fucking, I bust people when they have pot.

[613] That's what I do.

[614] It's the job.

[615] Yeah, that's the job.

[616] The job, that's how I get a collar.

[617] Yeah, that's what I do.

[618] There was a guy that I used to do jujitsu with who was a cop who knew I was a pothead.

[619] And it was, it was hilarious because I had a medical prescription for pot.

[620] And he used to just joke around about it.

[621] I'll still fucking bust people for pot.

[622] I go, why?

[623] His friend, Mark, shout out to Mark.

[624] He's still out there.

[625] He would be like, he goes, it's fucking what I do, man. I bust people for pot.

[626] We were all joking around about it.

[627] I'm like, what's wrong with you, man?

[628] Why are you busting people for pot?

[629] Think of it all these people out there that are robbing people and lighting houses on fire and stealing cars.

[630] Why the fuck you busted people for pot?

[631] But in his mind, that's the job.

[632] Well, also, like, you know, he also risked his life doing that.

[633] When it started out, like, that was the gig, right?

[634] It's like when you're a, you know, undercover cop that's carrying a gun and going in, doing a buy bus to get the weed or whatever, literally every time you go to work, you're risking your life.

[635] Potentially.

[636] So these guys, and that's like Jason Clark's character in Silk Road, right?

[637] Like once, they call these guys Jurassic Narks.

[638] Once upon a time, they were door kickers.

[639] The job was like, go in there, get it done.

[640] And they used to say, you know, what kind of piece you carry in a sig or what are you carrying?

[641] You know, and all of a sudden the world changes.

[642] And it's like, well, how much RAM is on your laptop?

[643] And like, these guys are like peck and paw characters.

[644] They're out of step with the world, man. You know, like, the game has changed.

[645] And all they know is living by what they learned at the barrel of a gun.

[646] And suddenly, they the culture doesn't care anymore.

[647] It's like, no, the drug game is online now, and knowing how to work informants or rouse somebody, it's like, that shit's irrelevant.

[648] He did a great job of showing that conflict in the film, too, when the two guys were outside smoking a cigarette, talking about that.

[649] You know, it's a great version of a dramatic interpretation of real -world events that are historically very significant because it means a lot to our world.

[650] to when something like Silk Road comes along and I never bought anything off a Silk Road I don't even think I know anybody who bought anything off Silk Road but I remember we were all watching it very carefully It changed the culture, it changed the world, you know?

[651] It was also, you know, people would always ask you, man, how do I get mushrooms?

[652] I'm like, ah, you gotta fucking know somebody and then someone would be like, or you go to Silk Road Right.

[653] And you're like, oh, it seems dangerous.

[654] Like, what do you do?

[655] How do you do that?

[656] Do you know anybody who went on Silk Road and bought anything?

[657] I don't think so.

[658] I was trying to think.

[659] I don't know.

[660] Maybe.

[661] But not, yeah, I don't know.

[662] Yeah, maybe I forgot somebody that bought, but no one close to me. But it's a moment I won't forget.

[663] I don't, I remember the, I believe I was aware of it before the Gawker article, but I remember reading the Gawker article going, whoa, this is crazy.

[664] Yeah.

[665] And then it blows up.

[666] And that's why it grew so fast, you know, from something that, like, nobody had heard of.

[667] And it's like just a dude with the laptop till suddenly it's all over the globe and, you know, people are doing.

[668] And to me, like this story is a Frankenstein story, right?

[669] In the sense of this guy, this is his masterpiece.

[670] He's creating like what he wants to change the world.

[671] And suddenly the monster has him by the throat at the end of it and is like squeezing, choking the life out of it.

[672] When he's visiting his sister and he reads a story about the kid on acid who jumped off the top of a building, is that all true?

[673] That's all true.

[674] in fact I had to call the dad and to use the clip right and it because there's there's all sorts of you know documentary footage scattered in there because I wanted it to be about the real stuff and it was a complicated conversation with the dad where it's like hey man I'm making this movie but your son's story is an important piece of this and I would like your blessing to include it and so I understand the complex morality like okay if that were me and I had lost my kid.

[675] I wouldn't be sitting here being like, hey, double life sentence plus 40 is too harsh for Ross.

[676] I'd be asking for his head, doesn't I?

[677] And I'm deeply empathetic to that.

[678] At the same time, you know, it's like the question you asked.

[679] Okay, well, you know, is it, is that fair?

[680] And like, does this kid deserve another shot?

[681] I don't know.

[682] It's like, I don't have the answer to it.

[683] I guess I have the question.

[684] I don't have the answer.

[685] Yeah, it is.

[686] Yeah.

[687] Well, the thing is like, you can't make someone responsible for someone doing acid and jumping off a roof you know if if you are the type of person that wants to do acid it's your responsibility to it's like you can't say that you're responsible for someone who kills himself because you sold them a razor blade you know you didn't sell them a razor blade so they can kill themselves you sold them razor blade so you could shave your face that's what a razor blades for you can use a razor blade to cut your wrists, but are you responsible for someone cutting a wrist with a razor blade?

[688] You're not, right?

[689] Gillette's not responsible if someone buys a razor and slices their wrist.

[690] Well, and this is even one step more than that in the sense of it's not raw sitting there with like a pile of acid.

[691] All he's doing is like the guy that wants to sell the acid, the guy that wants to buy it, I'm just creating the forum for everybody to do that.

[692] Yeah, and it's a very unusual situation when someone takes acid and jumps off a roof.

[693] You know, it's super unfortunate.

[694] It's terrible.

[695] It's a horrible tragedy, but it's not what's intended.

[696] Like, what's intended is for you to have a self -exploratory, psychological...

[697] Intervoyage.

[698] Yeah.

[699] You're supposed to do a deep dive into this psychedelic trip that's created by LSD.

[700] That's what you're supposed to do.

[701] And for this kid to take it and jump off a roof, it's horrible.

[702] But, you know, I don't think he's responsible for that.

[703] I don't think anybody's responsible for that.

[704] But does it still weigh on your conscience?

[705] You know what I mean?

[706] I think it probably...

[707] It should.

[708] It would, you know?

[709] Yeah, it should.

[710] Of course.

[711] It should.

[712] If you're a guy who created that platform, but if you're dealing with how many people are using Silk Road at the time?

[713] I don't know what the total users are, but, you know, a lot.

[714] I mean, if you look at the transactions and the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, a ton of people.

[715] Yeah.

[716] So let's say a million people.

[717] Let's say millions.

[718] Who knows?

[719] I mean, look, there's a lot of drugs that are super beneficial to people, pharmaceutical drugs.

[720] but sometimes people have adverse reactions and they die you know i'm sure the people who make these medications feel horrible about it that these reactions happen to people and they die because of their otherwise beneficial drugs does that you know what do you do you arrest them do you close everything down because someone has a weird biology that interacts strangely with some some medication you don't you know what do you do if someone takes ass and jumps off a roof.

[721] It's complicated.

[722] It's one of those uniquely complicated human issues that deals with personal freedom.

[723] And that's why I'm drawn to stories like this.

[724] Any of these stories that are morally complicated, maybe it's, you know, there are people that criticize, you know, my work for, hey, this is somebody that's, you know, taking a real story and turning this into Gonzo Entertainment.

[725] But to me, you know, it's, okay, this is how we explore these stories.

[726] stories is by telling them, retelling them, talking about them, and not, you know, people are smart.

[727] They can make up their own mind.

[728] Do you think it's Gonzo Entertainment, though?

[729] I don't, I think that's unfair.

[730] I think you, you certainly gave dramatic interpretations of things to order to move the storyline along, but I didn't find it offensive.

[731] You know, I, Gonzo to me is, you know, Hunter S. Thompson's work, right?

[732] He did a lot of while, you know, like when.

[733] He's a man. Yeah, I love that guy.

[734] Well, like, when he was, was it Ed Muskie that he said, he was, uh, he was, uh, on ibegain and he goes yeah there was a rumor going around that he was on ibergain and i knew about it because i started that rumor he was just right wild shit about a witch doctor from rizal coming to meet him on the campaign trail because he was hooked on this you know it's like ibegain's not even something people are addicted to right this is even more hilarious but he wandered into the middle of the story in a way that like nobody done that but when he was doing it it was suddenly like okay it's not just out there like dude i am the story and like my crazy and Gonzo is what's defining it.

[735] And ironically, he was on acid.

[736] Right.

[737] And Coke.

[738] Right.

[739] And everything else.

[740] At the cop convention.

[741] Yeah.

[742] I mean, it's, so calling what you did, Gonzo journalism, or I don't think that's fair.

[743] I think what you did is a great way of getting a story out there.

[744] And, you know, yeah, the wife and the daughter that needed money for the school and everything is a little complicated.

[745] And making it one guy instead of two corrupt cops is kind of complicated.

[746] But ultimately what it's really about.

[747] is this young man and his girlfriend and his friend and their creation of this thing that really changed the way people were able to access things that were illegal that people wanted, that grown adults wanted to get, maybe not even grown adults, right?

[748] That was also part of the problem.

[749] That you could, you know...

[750] It's hard to regulate.

[751] A fucking 12 -year -old with a good understanding of the Internet could get a hold of some...

[752] Well, could get a hold of a gun, right?

[753] Can get to hold anything, yeah.

[754] That was the, like, he did, when did it become guns?

[755] There was another site that he kind of kicked into it.

[756] And to him, this was all part of the, hey, you have the, this is constitutionally protected.

[757] Like, this is your right to do so.

[758] You want guns.

[759] You want dope.

[760] You want whatever.

[761] Like, this is your right to choose.

[762] And it's up to you to be responsible.

[763] But for many people and for his girlfriend, it was like, dude, this is the line.

[764] Like, hey, I thought you wanted to change the world for good.

[765] and now you know but change the world for good did they really think that i mean selling drugs you know i mean you know there you might change the world for good i mean it's possible make a mark anyway yeah for sure make a mark yeah and um and i and i think that he did go into it with and he did make a mark for better or worse well we're talking about him right now yeah for sure he made a mark and i think your film does justice to that i really do i think it it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it definitely encapsulates what a crazy moment it was where this site gained momentum and started, and like, it showed, like, when he gets all the text messages in, like, he's blowing up, yeah, he's like, holy shit, what the, and he's realizing, like, oh my God, what have I done.

[766] Yeah.

[767] It's weird, though, to read that tweet now, you know, Ross's tweet of like, okay, here I am 36 years ago.

[768] It's almost 10 years since I started this site.

[769] And, you know, I wonder what's going on.

[770] You know, I'd be curious one day.

[771] There was this amazing thing in the New York Times where they used to do watching Serpico with Serpico, where they go, you know, find like Frank Serpico, sit down with him and watch the movie and have the conversation.

[772] And like, how interesting would it be to sit down now?

[773] with Ross and watch Silk Road with him.

[774] Even if he hated it or even if he argued, hey, this is not right or whatever, what a fascinating conversation that would be.

[775] I'd love to be able to do that with him.

[776] Fuck.

[777] Come on, Biden.

[778] Let him out, bro.

[779] Let him out.

[780] He could do it.

[781] He could?

[782] Yeah, he probably wouldn't.

[783] You'd have much more of a chance of Trump doing it than Biden doing it.

[784] Speaking of Serpico, Serpico looked me up.

[785] Terpico found me after the 7 -5 came out.

[786] Really?

[787] He's still alive?

[788] Still alive.

[789] Where is he?

[790] Still in hiding.

[791] He's...

[792] He's in hiding.

[793] I mean, he's...

[794] What cops want to kill him now?

[795] You know, when you take a bullet through the head, I think you're probably forever looking over your shoulder.

[796] Which is what happened to him.

[797] Oh, he got shot in the head?

[798] Got shot in the head.

[799] Really?

[800] Yeah.

[801] I didn't know that.

[802] Yeah.

[803] I haven't seen that movie.

[804] It's so long.

[805] It's really interesting to read.

[806] And it was such a crazy call to get.

[807] So the 7 -5 comes out.

[808] And he calls me and he's like, yo, this is Serpico.

[809] And I'm like, Serpico is Herpico?

[810] And he's like, yeah, this is Serpico.

[811] I just wanted to say, which that movie showed, nothing's changed, man. Nothing's changed.

[812] And it was so weird to get the call.

[813] And it made me want to go back and, you know, kind of re -explore Serpico's story.

[814] Mm. You know?

[815] So how did he get shot in the head by another cop?

[816] Yeah, basically at the end, he was the kind of, he was going around reporting the police corruption that was kind of, you know, epidemic in the police department.

[817] And, you know, according to him anyway.

[818] And so eventually he goes to respond to a call, and he goes through the door, and he's the first through the door, and you're expecting your backup to be there to, like, you know, get your back.

[819] And he goes through the door, and I think the door slams on his arm, and all of a sudden he turns around.

[820] There's no backup.

[821] Bang, he gets shot in the head, and that's his, like, exit from working.

[822] Wow.

[823] It's a crazy story.

[824] And yet he's still, like, completely lucid and, you know, very sharp guy.

[825] and Pacino nailed him because I was sitting there talking on the phone.

[826] It was like he sounded exactly like Pacino in the movie.

[827] Wow.

[828] It was really interesting.

[829] What was the effects of the bullet hitting his head?

[830] I don't know.

[831] I mean, cognitively, he seemed totally capable.

[832] I think it was, as I recall, I don't remember all the details, but I think it was like small caliber didn't, you know, cause any sort of significant cognitive damage.

[833] You know, he ended up getting his detective shield when he's like lying in the hospital bed.

[834] Jamie's got something, man. severed an auditory nerve, leaving him deaf in one year.

[835] He's since severed chronic pain from bullet fragments lodged in his brain.

[836] Is there photos?

[837] Just of him.

[838] Let me see what he looks like.

[839] The real dude.

[840] It's an article for me since that.

[841] He looks like Pacino.

[842] He looks like Pacino, right?

[843] Pacino nailed him.

[844] He sounds just like him.

[845] Wow.

[846] What?

[847] Does it say the caliber of weapon?

[848] Oh, this was just briefly mentioned the thing.

[849] Let me get through here.

[850] I'd love to go back in like, 22, yeah.

[851] 22 LR pistol.

[852] Yeah.

[853] Just below his eye.

[854] Yeah.

[855] Wow.

[856] Fired back.

[857] He fired back.

[858] Yeah.

[859] That'd be an interesting one to revisit all these years later.

[860] You know, it's like I'm imagining the, you know, the 10 -part Netflix series that, like, retells the Serpico story now, but like slower and more detail.

[861] Oh, yeah.

[862] That'd be awesome, right?

[863] Dude, you should do it.

[864] Do you think you would work with it?

[865] Yeah.

[866] Well, the interesting thing when he's, you would.

[867] called me was he's like I was never sat and I love the movie and Sidney Lumet's a genius but he said I didn't like the movie he's like there was all sorts of stuff that like didn't go into it and he's like I'd love to tell my version of this and that didn't go into it in what way like more details I guess it's more more detail I mean inherently that's how it is right that is how it I mean having just done this with Silk Road like okay there's elements that you move around and things that you fictionalize so you only have so much time well that's why I'm imagining the like 10 part series music, Serpico, where you go into the whole thing in the world and the culture, it would be fat.

[868] And what a great part for somebody.

[869] It'd be a fun one to do.

[870] And while he's still alive and can contribute to...

[871] Would you do it in a dramatic way or would you do it in a documentary style?

[872] Well, I think, I think a dramatic version of it now, because then you get the fun of like 1970s, New York, like bygone, you know, the city as it once was, you know?

[873] That's true.

[874] Yeah.

[875] Now, that would be the place to do it at Netflix.

[876] Isn't it amazing how television used to be a place where people would go in their careers or falling apart and now it's the best way to tell a story it literally is the best like when you look at whether it's Netflix or Game of Thrones or the Sopranos some of the best drama that we've ever seen has been Ozark rather I mean think about these One after the wire one after another Oh my God there's so many of them that were they tell these long stories and you just get completely glued to it or particularly with Netflix because like you binge watch with stranger things like there's these shows that are just there's so much better than a movie when you see a movie it's like you realize you have to smush everything in to two hours or three hours or whatever you decided to make it well audiences you know viewing habits have changed too once upon a time it was like give me two hours I want to go to the theater and be done now like we're all stuck in our house all the time like give me another episode man i'm gonna crack through three or four more of those well that's the problem when you get into well that's a beautiful thing about netflix too is they release them all in a giant chunk so you can really tear through it yeah you can you can binge but it's a fucking tremendous waste of time too it's like you know something something to do what about would you ever go back to tv no i don't think so i like this i'm busy i'm busy and i'm busy and i'm happy you know i like what i'm doing um uh i love watching television but i would never go back to like a game show and yeah well it's never who knows one day i might just decide that it's fun but i don't think so i think this is better this is more like to me it's more interesting because uh i can kind of choose who i talk to i want to talk to the people that i'm really like with you i love your movie and uh i really love the seven five too but i just the subject matter of creating these films and documentaries.

[877] To me, it's fascinating, and it's fun to talk to.

[878] I love talking to all kinds of different people.

[879] And the beautiful thing about a podcast is there's no real structure.

[880] I don't have to follow it wherever it goes.

[881] And I don't have to, there's no rule, like, you can only talk to these kind of people, or there's no rules, you know.

[882] And initially, if you looked at it on paper, it would have never made any sense.

[883] Like, oh, you're going to sometimes be high as fuck.

[884] talking to comedians, sometimes talk to scientists, sometimes talk to mixed martial arts fighters, sometimes talk to physicists, sometimes talk to doctors and nutritionists and, no, it doesn't make any sense.

[885] But was it sort of, like, what led you on the path that got you here?

[886] Was it systematic?

[887] Was it intuition?

[888] Was it, like, kind of, I mean, that is a crazy mixture of people that you're having on?

[889] Yeah.

[890] The fact that there's no one telling me what to do, that's what led me to it.

[891] was this just interesting to me. Like, I like, I have a lot of interests.

[892] I have varied interests.

[893] If I had three different lives to live simultaneously, I could fill them up easy.

[894] There's so many things that I would love to do that I can't, I just don't have the time to do.

[895] So for me to talk to all sorts of different people from different walks of lives, different specialties and different disciplines and they're involved in, I'm, I'm just a student of humans.

[896] I love the way people think and what they do and why they do it and what.

[897] what was going on while they were involved in something.

[898] To me, that's ultimately incredibly fascinating.

[899] So I just interviewed who, in the beginning, there was no stakes because nobody gave a fuck.

[900] Nobody was listening.

[901] So I was like, whoever I could get to talk to me, it was like, great.

[902] But you didn't change.

[903] I mean, I think that's why it has continued, because it's still like freeform and it's rambling.

[904] It's wherever it, whatever you want to follow it.

[905] That's where it goes.

[906] And I think people are hungry for that, man. I think people like legitimate, genuine conversations.

[907] right or you know that someone doesn't have an agenda they're not pretending to be someone they're not they're just they're just real curiosity is very contagious real enthusiasm is also very contagious and that's what I base what I do on my real enthusiasm and real you know real curiosity I'm fully there with you because at the end of the day you know and it's it's equally true of you know something like Silk Road or making a dock at the end of the day like people are fascinating And if you will sit down and sort of pay attention to them and ask them, hey, man, what makes you tick?

[908] Why did you do this?

[909] Like, it's, that's where these interests, and it's a similar job in many ways, right?

[910] Like, me making a documentary is, I guess it's more polished and more produced and whatever.

[911] But at the end of the day, it's that fundamental thing of like, hey, who's sitting across from me and what makes them tick?

[912] Right.

[913] And the story of Michael Dowd, the way you depicted it in the 7th, 5 was so interesting because you get to see.

[914] how this guy is a young, idealistic kid who becomes a cop and then almost immediately first day on the job gets introduced to corruption.

[915] Just full scale.

[916] It was murder, right?

[917] Like they threw somebody off a fucking balcony or something?

[918] Yeah, I mean, that dude and what's so weird and fascinating about him is he still, you know, as I was saying to you earlier, he served 10 and a half years in the federal pen.

[919] And like being a cop in the federal pen and having to walk that yard alone.

[920] When I first met him, the story of how I got to him was fascinating.

[921] So once upon a time, these producers show me this clip of him.

[922] And it was him being interviewed before the Mullen Commission.

[923] And, you know, the guy asked him, you know, do you consider yourself a New York City cop or a criminal?

[924] He leans over and he confers with his lawyer.

[925] And he says, both.

[926] And as soon as as I saw that clip, I was like, dude, who is this guy?

[927] And like, how do I get to him?

[928] And how do I find his story.

[929] But and what I was using at the time was I have access to the software that the bounty hunters use.

[930] So if I get your name, your date of birth, I can get this kind of crazy matrix of data that's everywhere you picked up a piece of mail, everywhere, any known associates of yours.

[931] So I had gotten that for all these other people that were involved in the story.

[932] And I started sending out FedExes all over the country, right?

[933] So it was like, dude, I'm making this movie.

[934] Everybody else is already in it.

[935] If you want to say your piece, I'll I'll meet you for, you know, a beer or lunch or whatever.

[936] Anytime, any place, I'll be there.

[937] And it was complete bullshit.

[938] I didn't have anybody else at all.

[939] But I sent them all over the, you know, hundreds of FedExes all over the country.

[940] So people started calling and they're like, yo, is Mikey, is Mikey hip to this?

[941] Is Mikey blessed this?

[942] And I could not find out anywhere, right?

[943] Try as I might.

[944] And I'm looking through the data and I'm like, where the hell is this guy?

[945] Because he had fallen into the crack of right when the, like, digital era had begun.

[946] So there was no digital footprint for the guy.

[947] and so there were no known addresses there were some known associates but everybody's like no Dow's not here and then eventually there was this one name on there and it was a woman doctor and I picked up the phone and I called and I thought like what the hell what's the likelihood she does this and she answers the phone and I said yeah it was Mikey there and she puts him on and doubt is like yeah this is Michael Dowd you know what do you want and so and I told him the same thing.

[948] I said, dude, you pick the time and place anywhere, anywhere in America, I'll be there.

[949] And if you think I'm full of shit, if you think I'm not the guy to tell your story, then you walk away.

[950] And he said, all right, tomorrow, meet me on Long Island.

[951] And I'm in L .A. or whatever at the time.

[952] So I jump on a plane, fly out there, and I go out and get on the LIE, and I'm going out to Hop Hog, wherever it was.

[953] I don't even remember at this point.

[954] And I go to get off the train station.

[955] You know, you go to get off at whatever stop, he tells me. And I get off and he says, and I get back on the train.

[956] And he makes me go up to the next location, controlling the meat, you know, as cops do.

[957] It's like a drug deal.

[958] You know, you're controlling the meat, the circumstances or whatever.

[959] He makes me get, you know, go to the next station.

[960] And then I get off and he rolls up and I get in his car.

[961] And he's just this like full tilt, like maniac right out of a Scorsese movie.

[962] And he's like, all right, so what's the plan?

[963] What do you want to do?

[964] And I'm like, dude, I want to know what it's like to be a corrupt cop where you're like snorting lines off the dashboard and like ripping and robbing through East New York.

[965] And he's like, all right.

[966] right, I'll tell you.

[967] Well, I'll get the crew together.

[968] And so, like, away we went, you know.

[969] How many years had he been out of jail when you met him?

[970] I don't remember at the time, not too long, but long enough that he was, you know, and the crazy thing is, he told me the story recently.

[971] He said, the night they got busted in Suffolk County, they're in the back of the paddy wagon.

[972] And as they're getting hauled away, they're like, so who's going to play me in the movie?

[973] That was the question.

[974] You know what I mean?

[975] Like, they want to know at the time.

[976] And it's like all these guys, you know.

[977] When he was getting dragged away.

[978] When he's getting dragged away, they're at there, you know.

[979] Yeah.

[980] Well, I guess he probably recognized it's a big story.

[981] It was a crazy.

[982] I mean, when you're on the New York Post and it says the dirtiest cop ever, you know, it's a story.

[983] Yeah, he's a character.

[984] His Instagram was, we're talking about his Instagram, too.

[985] That's hilarious, too.

[986] Non -stop.

[987] So it's him with girls and bikinis hanging out in Florida, you know.

[988] He's rocking that.

[989] But the funny thing about somebody like that, and I have found this to be true of like, like, several of these you know gangsters is he's like a kid he's like a big kid you know 10 and a half years in the federal pen or whatever it is and he's still kind of weirdly innocent you know what I mean he's still like enthusiastic and like okay you got a gun you got you got you got a schematic let's go rob the bank you know you find his Instagram yeah it's private though so oh is it really that's interesting he must have got busted I've got I've got some strange photos on my on my phone you can be sure Ben Stiller in talks to direct Crooked Cop movie The 7 -5 for MGM.

[990] Well, how are they going to call it the 7 -5 when you have a documentary Well, it's the remake of it.

[991] You know, the funny thing is is like we're sort of doing this with you know, with all these things at this point is I'm going to do the Operation Odessa, which was, I was telling you before, you know, the story of this Russian gangster Miami Playboy and Cuban Narco, these guys who like rip off the collie cartel for 20 million dollars trying to sell them a submarine right now explain that story because that's crazy like they they told them that they were going to sell them a submarine for 20 million dollars did they have a submarine okay let me let me rewind because because the like the top of this was like bonkers so at the time some nark i know calls me and it's like dude you want to hear the craziest drug war story ever there's this like Russian gangster.

[992] His name is Tarzan.

[993] He used to run his operation out of a titty bar in Miami and named after his favorite movie, Porkies, and he's locked up in a Panamanian prison.

[994] And he's got a Blackberry.

[995] Do you want the number?

[996] And I'm like, bro, yes, I want the number.

[997] This is this?

[998] This is, you know, 10 years ago or some, seven or eight years.

[999] I don't even remember at this point.

[1000] So I get the number.

[1001] So you had a Blackberry in jail?

[1002] He's got a Blackberry in this Panamanian prison.

[1003] And I'm like, you know, dial the number, right?

[1004] Some people don't even know what a Blackberry is.

[1005] It's a phone.

[1006] It's a phone.

[1007] It's one of the first phones that had a keyboard on it.

[1008] So I call this number, right?

[1009] And he's like, Russian gangster.

[1010] He's like, hello, this is Tarzan.

[1011] What do you want?

[1012] And I'm like, dude, tell me about the submarine.

[1013] Like, what is this story, you know?

[1014] And he's like, I cannot talk about this on, you know, this I cannot talk about on the phone.

[1015] You have to come down to Panama, come inside prison, and I will tell you story.

[1016] Wow.

[1017] So I fly to Panama and I've got like 10 grand, just under 10 grand.

[1018] Because if it's 10 grand, it's illegal.

[1019] But if it's less than 10 grand, you can bring it, right?

[1020] Because I know I'm going to have to, like, peel off bribes to get in the prison or whatever.

[1021] And he's got this Russian attorney at the time.

[1022] And the Russian attorney is like, okay, meet me outside of this prison.

[1023] La Jolla prison outside of hour and a half outside of Panama City.

[1024] So I go out there, dude, and you remember like Field of Dreams?

[1025] This is like the inverse of that, dude, like field of nightmares.

[1026] Okay, this like stone fortress carved out of the jungle.

[1027] And I roll up on this place and there's this attorney and he's standing out front and I've like made, you know, I'm going to like pay him a thousand bucks and he's going to like smuggle me into the prison or whatever.

[1028] So I'm like, all right, man, what's the plan?

[1029] And he's like, okay, here's the plan.

[1030] You give me $500.

[1031] This is American attorney?

[1032] This is, he's a Panamanian because he lives in Panama, right?

[1033] But it, you know, speaks Russian and whatever.

[1034] Right.

[1035] And he's like, you give me $500.

[1036] I'm going to give $100.

[1037] The guard's going to open it up.

[1038] And you just go.

[1039] running across the yard and when you get to the other side of the lower yard there's going to be a big steel door and you push it open and tarzan's going to be on the other side shut the fuck up and i'm like bro that's the worst fucking plan i've ever heard in my life and so he's like you want to see tarzan right you flew all the way to panama because i was like i knew this was going to be a bonkers caper oh my god and so i'm sitting there and here's the crazy thing about this prison.

[1040] This prison is it's like it's like mad max beyond thunderdome.

[1041] There's like dead dudes and wheelbarrows moving them out because what happens is the guards go home at 5 p .m. and it's inmate rule at night.

[1042] So they just like murder each other in chaos and whatever.

[1043] And I'm like looking around the like lower yard and the convicts are out playing soccer or whatever.

[1044] But I'm like dude, I've come this far like I want to meet this guy, Tarzan.

[1045] So you saw them rolling bodies out and just like it's cordwood and like wheelbarrows, you know?

[1046] And I'm kind of like I'm I'm not sure how bright of an idea this is, but I've come this far.

[1047] So I go to the guard and I'm like, here's $50, bro.

[1048] I'll give you the other 50 when I get back out, you know.

[1049] So this guy opens the gate and pulls it open and he's like, run like hell.

[1050] Don't look back.

[1051] When you hit the steel door, push.

[1052] So my dumb ass goes like sprinting across the like lower yard, you know, convicts, heads whipping at me. I get to the other side.

[1053] I push the door open.

[1054] And there's Tarzan.

[1055] He's like, welcome to Panama.

[1056] I can't believe you came.

[1057] You got very stupid or you got great big balls, you know?

[1058] Oh, my God.

[1059] And so I meet him and I'm like, dude, tell me the story.

[1060] And he's like, I can't tell you the story.

[1061] Because when you were sending me emails on the Blackberry, Russian intelligence intercepted it.

[1062] And they called the Russian mafia.

[1063] And they said, if I talk to you, they're going to kill me. And I'm like, bro, I just smuggled myself into a Panamanian prison.

[1064] Like, you're going to tell me the fucking story.

[1065] And so we kind of get into it in this prison.

[1066] stupidly.

[1067] I mean, this guy could like squash me like a bug, you know, but I'm like pissed off because I've like come this far or whatever.

[1068] How are you planning on getting out?

[1069] Because it's like it's just, it's just, they're just crooks, you know what I mean?

[1070] So it's just like you pay people.

[1071] The guy's going to get you back out.

[1072] So I have, I have some money on me. It sums with the crew.

[1073] I got the camera crew, right?

[1074] So I'm going to pay them when I get them when I get in this like pissing match.

[1075] Pissing match argument at the time.

[1076] And I'm like, bro, here's the deal.

[1077] I'm flying back to L .A. I'm going to get my 300, you know, thread count sheet.

[1078] and go to sleep for the night, and your ass is going to die in this Panamanian prison, and you're a damn fool for not telling me this story, because I'm going to get your thing out.

[1079] And he's like, you know, tells me to piss off or whatever.

[1080] Many years go by.

[1081] But he's sending me. So you leave.

[1082] So I leave, and he won't tell me. So years go by, right?

[1083] And then I'm out promoting the 75 when the 75 comes out.

[1084] And I get an email that says, jailbreak, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.

[1085] I open the email, and I think, what is this?

[1086] and he's like, I escaped from Panama, I traveled to Cuba, and I catch boat, and now I'm back in Russia.

[1087] If you will come to Russia and meet me in Moscow, now I will tell you the story.

[1088] No. So I called my producers from the 7 -5, and I'm like, bro, can you get a million bucks in a week?

[1089] Because I got like five weeks off, Tarzan's ready to tell the story.

[1090] He's like, let me make a call.

[1091] Eli Holtsman makes a phone call, and he calls me back.

[1092] He's like, all right, dude, I got the money, dice are hot, go.

[1093] So I fly to Moscow with the crew.

[1094] and show up and he starts telling the story.

[1095] So what the story is, is it's the story of three best friends.

[1096] It's him, Tarzan.

[1097] It's his best friend Juan Almeida, who's like Miami Playboy, car dealer, sells exotic boats, whatever, and a third guy who's this Cuban narco.

[1098] And what these guys have done is they have sold a submarine to the Kali drug cartel for $20 million.

[1099] And all gotten busted.

[1100] so they end up like in federal pens and whatever else and I'm like so what is the like true story so I'm sitting there and I'm shooting with Tarzan in Moscow and one of the guys has been a federal fugitive his entire life Fed's been looking for this guy for like 30 years that's the Cuban narco and he's been flying around the world sending postcards to the U .S. Marshals like ha ha you're never going to catch me right and this guy spends $100 ,000 a month on getting new identities, real documents.

[1101] That's like operating costs.

[1102] So he's getting new passports and whatever so he can stay ahead of him.

[1103] And what he'll do is, as he's traveling around the world, I get on a plane.

[1104] I sit down next to you.

[1105] Who are you?

[1106] Joe Rogan, good to meet you, whatever.

[1107] And this is pre -internet days.

[1108] So then he takes his passport, he goes into the bathroom, in the thing, changes the name to Joe Rogan, his passport, make sure that I'm ahead of you when I walk out so that I enter the country.

[1109] I got on as Tony Yester when I get out on the other side i'm joe rogan i'm in the line ahead of you so i've changed identities on the plane anytime he goes anywhere and then you get jammed up because they're like no dude jo rogan just just just he just entered a few minutes ago so this guy nobody could ever find this guy right so i keep asking everybody like can i find like tony yester will this guy talk to us and they're like bro never in a million years is this guy going to talk to you so i'm sitting there in moscow and i get a text on what's app and it says you've talked to the waiters If you want to know what really happened to the submarine, come talk to the chef.

[1110] Meet me in Africa tomorrow for a cup of coffee and I'll tell you the rest of the story.

[1111] No shit.

[1112] So I get on the phone.

[1113] I'm in like Moscow, four seasons or whatever.

[1114] I call the producers and I'm like, change your plans.

[1115] I'm going to Africa and they're like, are you out of your mind, bro?

[1116] And I'm like, listen, have 20 grand in cash when I get there because who knows, like we're going to have to like creep around, pay people off.

[1117] you know, I don't know what the deal is.

[1118] Fly to Africa.

[1119] When I get into Africa, I walk into the lobby of this hotel.

[1120] And I walk in, and it's like thick -necked MMA fighter -looking dudes, right?

[1121] Like, not business.

[1122] Oh, wearing Armani suits and stuff, but these are not like business travelers.

[1123] You know, this is like a crew.

[1124] And I'm like, this looks a little gnarly.

[1125] Walk up into my room, and I walk into the hotel room.

[1126] And as soon as I walk in, the phone rings.

[1127] I pick it up and a voice says downstairs, five minutes Porsche Cayam.

[1128] And I'm like, holy shit, this is the dude.

[1129] So I take my location on the iPhone and I share it with, you know, producers, cameraman or whatever.

[1130] Like, dude, if I disappear, like go to where the last place you saw the dot.

[1131] So I walk downstairs and I go out, uprolls Porsche Cayenne.

[1132] Here's this international fugitive.

[1133] Door swings open.

[1134] I get in the car.

[1135] This guy goes ripping ass out of there.

[1136] like 100 miles an hour.

[1137] And as he's ripping along on the like auto bond or whatever it is, yanks the e -break, slams the car over to the side of the road, slaps me on the chest.

[1138] And he's like, brother, you better be who you say you are.

[1139] And there's better be what you say it is.

[1140] Oh, we got a problem.

[1141] And I'm like, it is.

[1142] I am.

[1143] It's cool.

[1144] So I end up spending like a week with this dude.

[1145] And eventually.

[1146] But by then you'd already done the seven five.

[1147] I'd done the seven five.

[1148] So why doesn't he just Google a picture of your face?

[1149] Because it's, like these guys, it's not like Google, it's like, okay, are you still hustling me for the DEA?

[1150] Is this like, there's a $20 million bounty on this guy or whatever the, you know, there's something, but he had to know what you look like.

[1151] Right.

[1152] But the point is, you know, it's like Sean Penn goes to interview El Chapo and El Chapo gets pinched afterwards.

[1153] You know what I mean?

[1154] Right.

[1155] So it's making sure it's not one of those kind of operations.

[1156] Yeah.

[1157] Right.

[1158] Okay.

[1159] So I end up spending a week with this dude.

[1160] And eventually he takes me to this hidden airplane hanger outside of the city and he opens it up and inside is a mig fighter jet with 20 million dollars in cash in the cockpit and he's like here's the deal i'm a pilot that's my bailout plane and that's my go bag you understand how this works and i'm like i think so so he proceeds and then he takes me into his like g5 or whatever it is and he proceeds to tell me the story of what really happened with the $20 million in the submarine.

[1161] Whoa.

[1162] It was crazy.

[1163] It was insane.

[1164] So, like, making these things can be a caper.

[1165] So the Russian cat who escapes from Panama.

[1166] Tarzan.

[1167] How did he do that?

[1168] Well, what happened was they, eventually his lawyers say, okay, we need to get him out for a week because we've got to prep his defense or whatever.

[1169] Well, he goes to get out.

[1170] He goes to his lawyers.

[1171] He's like, dude, I'm booking it.

[1172] I'm making a run for it.

[1173] So they, like, cross the board, you know, jump around.

[1174] river into Costa Rica, run through Costa Rica, catch a boat from Costa Rica to Cuba.

[1175] And when he gets to Cuba, the Cubans repatriate him to Moscow and just hauled ass and ran.

[1176] And the Panamanians like, eh.

[1177] Well, he ain't going back to Panama any times yet, right?

[1178] I mean, yeah, well, that's okay.

[1179] Or maybe he is.

[1180] Yeah.

[1181] Jesus Christ.

[1182] So they tell you the story about selling this.

[1183] Was there a real sub?

[1184] There was a real sub.

[1185] So these guys end up, so at the, here's the backdrop to this is it's the fall of the Soviet Union.

[1186] So suddenly everything that once upon a time was owned by the state, like if you're the general and you like work at the airfield or at the place where the tanks are and suddenly there is no government, like you own those tanks.

[1187] You own that airfield.

[1188] So basically suddenly everything was for sale.

[1189] And these guys were these like rockem sockham cowboy dudes that were like flying to Russia in the early days and being like, so is it possible?

[1190] Like and they buy, um, first they buy, choppers for the collie cartel right they get like so you can you get it's got a hook on it and they can pick up 5 ,000 kilos so they're dropping the dope out to the cigarette boats from from the jungle labs and they do it successfully wow and so eventually the like drug lords come to them and they're like choppers are great bro like can we get a submarine because you know you pack it full of submarine you think about it even if the submarine costs 20 30 million dollars one trip where it's packed with 5 ,000 kilos or whatever it is you paid the whole thing off and made a problem profit.

[1191] So these three guys get together and they're like, absolutely, we can get you the submarine.

[1192] Only like two of them are like, you know, really trying to get the submarine done.

[1193] And they go and they shot and there's pictures of them in the documentary.

[1194] Like you'll see them.

[1195] They're like shopping for a submarine like you're shopping for shoes.

[1196] It's Ross dress for less, right?

[1197] Where does one buy a submarine?

[1198] From the like, you know, hidden the Black Sea military fleet.

[1199] That's it.

[1200] That's the submarine, right?

[1201] Imagine getting that fucking thing.

[1202] Right?

[1203] That's Tarzan on the left.

[1204] That's Tarzan on the left.

[1205] He lives like Tarzan.

[1206] how big is that fucking guy he's big dude he's like with a width on him and he'll like he'll crush you like he'll crush you like a bug right is that's him and his my that's him in his miami days rocking the glasses and whatever look at the hair right oh my god go back to that other picture that's how much shot wide that fucking dude is yeah it's no he's no joke giant hands too yeah so it's like 200 pounds of meat he hits you in the forehead like you're dropping dude So this is, this, this is one of the, so that, was there more than one suburb?

[1207] Well, they wouldn't shop submarines, like at the, like, secret naval base, right?

[1208] So they go to the secret naval base and there's available subs you could buy?

[1209] Basically, if you got enough money and you got the right bullshit, he's rushing, he's, like, walks in, he's like, hey, we're doing this.

[1210] So he, like, bullshits these guys, and he's intending to do it.

[1211] Well, his buddy, meanwhile, the, like, super badass narco that's, like, hiding around the world is, like, these idiots, you can't sell a submarine.

[1212] Like, NATO's going to blow it up the second it, you know, sails out from under.

[1213] But like, these morons want to give me $20 million?

[1214] I'm going to take it, dude.

[1215] And I have no compunction about it.

[1216] So he takes the $20 million and he vanishes without a trace.

[1217] And nobody'd seen him since then.

[1218] So he'd been on the run for all those years.

[1219] U .S. Marshall's looking for him, D .E .A. looking for him.

[1220] And presumably the collie cartel, because he ripped these guys off for $20 million.

[1221] So that's the dude who calls me and says, meet me in Africa for a cup of coffee.

[1222] Holy shit.

[1223] Why does he want, but why would he want to tell him?

[1224] tell you about all this because it's like all movie stars want to be gangsters and all gangsters want to be movie stars oh that's so weird wow it's like almost like a serial killer like they want to get caught well it's like these dudes that live these crazy lives they know like at a certain point like what's the point of having lived it if nobody knows the story right now right and so like that's the weird thing about the job where you're like okay i'm sitting there and you're telling me the like weirdest most precious shit in your life and yet it's going to be broadcast around the world so now all those guys have gotten like pinched and you know they do the they do the documentary eventually they all get busted for one thing or another is that documentary out now it's on Netflix I have not seen it have you seen it I've seen it on like on the I want to leave right now and go watch it holy shit it's it's a trip it's a trip the guy the picture of it's hilarious oh my god I can't wait to watch you.

[1225] So we're going to, so this was how I got off on this to begin with is you're like, okay, which of these, you know, documentary whatever.

[1226] Yeah.

[1227] Now we're going to remake that as a feature film because it's like it's great parts for like actors and stuff.

[1228] Yeah.

[1229] Oh my God.

[1230] Yeah.

[1231] Holy shit.

[1232] There's some people out there, man. Well, and like you and I are both like nutcase magnets.

[1233] You know what I mean?

[1234] Like they sort of are like me anyway.

[1235] You get like normal, you know, fascinating, whatever people.

[1236] I get the nutcases.

[1237] Like my phone rings and like You never know who it's going to be.

[1238] How did you get involved in this world?

[1239] So I grew up in Dallas, and my dad was in the DA's office that was depicted in Errol Morris's movie, The Thin Blue Line.

[1240] Right?

[1241] So I grew up knocking around with, like, cops and prosecutors and crooks and whatever.

[1242] And my dad would kind of drag me around to the, you know, to the courthouse, to the jail, to whatever.

[1243] And I think his idea was like that I would be scared straight and not, you know.

[1244] And instead I just like imprinted like a duck.

[1245] I'm like, these are my people, bro.

[1246] That's so weird.

[1247] And so I end up, years later, I, like, not qualified to do anything, you know, whatever, but I end up kind of talking my way into a job at a newspaper.

[1248] And I'm like, look, I can hang out with cops and I can hang out with crooks.

[1249] And I'm like, I don't scare easy.

[1250] So, like, let me write the crime beat, you know.

[1251] Wow.

[1252] So I start doing that.

[1253] And then eventually, weirdly enough, I cross path with Errol Morris again.

[1254] He wouldn't even remember this.

[1255] is like, you know, for him, it's just another night on the tour, and I'm like, walk -on part.

[1256] But I end up getting an interview with him to do the, you know, to do a profile of him in the newspaper.

[1257] And he's like, dude, I'm so tired of these interviews.

[1258] You want to just go get a steak and a bottle of wine?

[1259] And I'm like, dude, there's nothing in the world more I want to do.

[1260] Sit down with Errol Morris and get a steak and a bottle of wine.

[1261] So we go up and have this, like, fantastic evening together.

[1262] And at the end of it, he reaches over and he puts his hand on my shoulder and he goes, you're either going to spend the rest of your life writing about people like me or you're going to go try your hand at this.

[1263] And I literally called the newspaper the next day and I was like, I quit.

[1264] And so then I just started like, you know, kind of, you know, knocking around.

[1265] And then so then it became like, okay, these crime stories, you know, these, you know, once I do the 7 -5 Operation Odessa, then like the crooks start finding me or the cops start finding me. So was the 7 -5 the first thing that you did?

[1266] You know, I spent many years knocking around, you know, doing, you know, I go on the deadliest catch thing, I do whatever, kind of learning how to, learning how to do this, do stuff on cockfighting, on whatever.

[1267] And, but the 7 -5 was the first thing that kind of people began to, like, notice and pay attention to, you know.

[1268] And so then 7 -5 becomes Operation Odessa, and then kind of one crazy crime story after another.

[1269] And to me, the weird thing is, like, it's all kind of the same movie.

[1270] The 7 -5 is Operation Odessa, is Silk Road, is the Last Narc, is Nightstalker.

[1271] It's all just sort of portraits of cops and crooks and the like thin and porous border between the two.

[1272] Isn't the Nightstalker at least slightly different because you're dealing with this rare aberration in human psychology where someone enjoys killing people?

[1273] Someone gets a thrill out of other people's fear and pain because that was one of the things that you talked about the night stalker that he he would get off on seeing the people terrified it was power yeah yeah yeah i mean i guess i'm being simplistic it's not like it's really all the same thing but it's all related in some way or another the thing about the night stalker was i guess what happened with that is i'm writing on a tv show at the time and one of the other writers tim walsh buddy of mine comes in and he's like dude i just sat down with the guy that worked the night stalker case this like murder cop and he's like fascinating and I think there's a documentary here you want to go to dinner with this guy and so my answer is always like yes like I want the blackberry number and I want to go to dinner like if there's a lunatic out there like then I want to go what happened from getting that blackberry number god that is so nuts um and so you get involved in this I would imagine that it's deeply disturbing the more you dig into a story like the Richard Ramirez's story.

[1274] It's dark.

[1275] As you get deeper and deeper into this, there's guys like that out there.

[1276] I was talking to one of my security guys and he was saying at any point in time there's 12 to 24 active serial killers in the United States.

[1277] And it makes you go, what?

[1278] Wait, how many?

[1279] I know, it's crazy.

[1280] It's crazy.

[1281] I was talking to a cop once and he said, if people kill people, like say if you kill a business partner, you're going to get caught.

[1282] You know, you guys have a dispute you kill him you're gonna get caught he goes but if you just walk into a gas station and shoot a random head nobody knows nobody knows you know that was um henry portrait of a serial killer yeah it was brilliant remember that yeah yeah very vividly which is apparently kind of bullshit because henry lee lucas was apparently full of shit right they he was just a a nut narcissists talking to be talking to like get and the cops would go you know there was this murder in, you know, in 1982.

[1283] Oh, I did that.

[1284] That was me, right.

[1285] Yeah.

[1286] So they had pinned like 62 murders on him at one point in time, but it's highly unlikely that he actually killed all those people.

[1287] Lyers and sociopaths.

[1288] I mean, the crazy thing about the Ramirez thing was, and I think why that it flipped people out so much is there was no pattern to it, you know, it was men, it was women, it was children, some of them were like, you know, murdered with a gun, some of them with a knife some of them with a hammer so it was like completely random and it's in your home when you're asleep at your most vulnerable and so that's what made it so challenging for those murder cops to solve the case yeah like initially the department didn't even buy well like one guy doing all this like couldn't happen unprecedented in criminal history right yeah yeah it's um it's there's also a thing that happens right like um what there was that guy in new york son of sam remember that where it just spikely did a great movie it yeah it grips the entire area because everybody now yeah everybody now is aware that this guy's on the loose another one i remember do you remember the dc sniper yeah that's a that's an amazing story malvo that's crazy did anybody ever make a film on that i think that they did um they did a feature film of it.

[1289] I'm so curious.

[1290] And I never saw it, but I remember that story too, because it was like older guy, you know, training the young shooter, just like the weird psychology of that.

[1291] Also, the way they figured out how to do it where they made like a sniper's den inside the back of a car so he could lay down and shoot out the back trunk and then just get in the front seat and drive away and no one would ever suspect.

[1292] When there was this whole kind of like, it sounds weird to say, like Lolita like element to it where it's like older dude manipulating younger person traveling around the country doing it you know traveling around DC anyway doing it it was just a weird crazy story yeah it was very crazy it was also another story where a crime happens and then a series of crimes happen and then people are just terrified well part of that is and you know that's one of the things that I was trying to explore in the night stalker is there's this weird relationship between the media and the cops right and everybody trying to do their job.

[1293] Nobody's doing anything wrong.

[1294] But like from the media's perspective, it's, hey, we have to get the word out.

[1295] If there's a predator that's out hunting people in the city, then the city has a right to know.

[1296] And the citizens have a right to know.

[1297] But from the cop's perspective, it's like, hey, if you're broadcasting key pieces of information, and in the case of the night stalker, the night stalker was clocking everything that showed up in the media and was changing his patterns based on that.

[1298] Right.

[1299] And so once, somebody had called 911 he was cutting phone cords once they found out that he was wearing his notorious avia shoe print and once that was publicly made public you know in san francisco suddenly he threw the shoes away and so the one clue that's tying him to all those things and so there's this weird unholy connection between cops media killer that everybody's in some way participating in kind of stepping on each other trying to do the work yeah the zodiac killer was never caught right right correct that's a weird one right really weird one and I love that movie um because with that movie they didn't make it easy and tidy you know it just it kept going like the story never ended you have the obsessive reporter played by jillen hall and like they followed the weirdness of that story and didn't try to you know it's just brilliantly made ventures a genius yeah I remember that movie now I was trying to remember remember how it when when that what year was the zodiac killer like what year did it start I forget I forget the details of it 60s and 70s and so late 60s early 70s and how many murders were they think that got they had it narrowed down to a few people and one of them at least one of them's dead right it's just crazy that someone can get away with something like that for a long I think it would be much harder now you would I mean the technology between phones and street cams and whatever else, it would be much harder to do it.

[1300] Or the methodology would have to be different.

[1301] Yeah.

[1302] But it still happens, man. Yeah.

[1303] It's such a weird mindset that all of a sudden someone becomes important by killing people.

[1304] Well, and it's the, and so that was a big thing for me in doing the Nightstalker was, that story had this weird aftermath, where suddenly when Ramirez is brought into court and paraded in front of the cameras, he becomes like the Jim Morrison of serial killers.

[1305] There's this guy in the sunglasses and the long hair and whatever, and he gets all those groupies and kind of...

[1306] And so very early on with that, I was like, man, I don't want to be glorifying this guy.

[1307] This is somebody that's out, not only is he doing these murders, but he's also like kidnapping and abusing children, and people don't know that piece of the story.

[1308] So, like, this isn't about the psychology of Richard Ramirez.

[1309] This is about, you know, these two, cops and the victims and the weird people that have kind of brushes with the beast.

[1310] And again, you know, some people criticize it.

[1311] Some people don't because it's like, okay, tell me more about Richard Ramirez.

[1312] Like, no, man. Like, you don't, like, what's interesting to me is the human story.

[1313] It's what you said, where it's like, I want to sit across from people and know what makes them tick.

[1314] What's it like to be a murder cop that long, hot, harrowing summer?

[1315] What's it like to lose a family member?

[1316] What's it like to be a kid who's kidnapped?

[1317] by Richard Ramirez and then survive and live your whole life and so so that was you know at the end of the day all you have is you know I fly by such lights as they're given me you know and so it's that felt like the right way to tell the story so did you do you have a reluctance of diving into the personality of Ramirez or somehow I didn't want to glorify it because it's like it's that celebratization culture where suddenly like if you're famous you're famous and you're you've got like fans and groupies.

[1318] Well, I didn't want to fall into that crap with Ramirez because it exists already anyway.

[1319] And yes, I'm curious like what is it that makes somebody like that do what they do?

[1320] Was he executed?

[1321] No, he was sent to San Quentin, sent to death row, and then ended up dying, this sort of strange, uneventful death ends up dying of cancer, I think pancreatic cancer and kind of ends with a whimper rather than a bang.

[1322] You know, it's just a strange sort of into that story.

[1323] Yeah, one thing, it's like trying to back engineer how a person like that is created.

[1324] Like how does someone like that?

[1325] Well, here's some tidbits that I had heard.

[1326] And this stuff is not in, you know, obviously not in the Netflix series.

[1327] Some of it were doing a sort of after the doc podcast thing on.

[1328] Some of it were going to hopefully remake it as a narrative series.

[1329] But like what happened was he's in El Paso.

[1330] His father is a cop and would drag him to the graveyard at night and like chain him up in the graveyard.

[1331] And so he was abused and sort of messed.

[1332] with in a fundamental way as a kid.

[1333] And then he's got supposedly this cousin, cousin Mike, who was a Vietnam vet and, you know, participated in, you know, butchery, me -lis style, like, massacres and whatever in Vietnam, took photos of it, murders and whatever, and came home and, like, showed young Richard Ramirez these photos and supposedly trained him on how to, you know, kill in a particular way, combat style training with a knife and whatever else so he gets like you know he's he's abused he's sexually molested he's locked up in the graveyard he's got this psycho cousin and all of this becomes this crazy cocktail he's a thief they call him five finger richie and then eventually he washes up in l .a and he's shooting dope and he's out of his mind and begins to get a a taste for it You know, it's the, that dinite, for him, it was, when I see the fear in your eyes, when you flinch, that's what gave him the sexual charge.

[1334] And so he starts doing this and just ripping and marauding his way through Los Angeles.

[1335] But I didn't want the series to be like a platform for that, for his justifying or explaining it in some way or another.

[1336] Did you struggle with that at all, like trying to?

[1337] It's like, yes.

[1338] And that's why I was, I guess.

[1339] I was trying to articulate before, which is all these things have these, like, major moral questions where it's like, okay, if I'm making a series that's about Richard Ramirez, and suddenly this guy's face is on a poster, even if I don't put him in the show, you know, until episode four or whatever, am I contributing to that mythos and that celebrization of this guy?

[1340] And so constantly you're asking yourself, like, I'm fascinated by this story.

[1341] I want to share this story, but I don't want it to be cheap.

[1342] I don't want it to be exploitative.

[1343] I don't want it to be thoughtless.

[1344] I want it to be complicated and nuanced.

[1345] And so as we make them, we're watching, rewatching, changing this.

[1346] I don't like, this is maybe this is too gruesome.

[1347] This is too glorifying.

[1348] And with the crime scene photos, you know, that was another question where it's like, like, it's rough to look at those.

[1349] I mean, I had hundreds, if not thousands of these crime scene photos of the actual crime scene photographer walking around after these murders, taking pictures of the aftermath of it.

[1350] And it's really hard to look at.

[1351] You don't wipe that stuff out of your consciousness once you see it.

[1352] And so then the question becomes, okay, do you show people this so that they understand this is what it really looks like and it's horrifying.

[1353] mine.

[1354] So there is no glorifying this.

[1355] This is what a real murder photo looks like.

[1356] But you don't want that to be cheap and exploitative where you're getting eyeballs just by being gruesome.

[1357] So there's a ton of moral questions in all of them.

[1358] So when you prepare for something like this, when you know you're going to write like an outline or you're going to sit down and create a series on something that's historical, but really disturbing and very fucked up.

[1359] How do you do you sit alone by yourself and write out your thoughts?

[1360] Do you, do you, how do you decide how you're going to lay something like this out?

[1361] And do you have a vision and ultimately did it, did the vision morph over time or did it, did you kind of create what you set out to create?

[1362] Great question.

[1363] It's, it's like a little spark at the beginning where I don't know, you know, I'm not sure why I'm fascinated, but for some reason I'm fascinated with Ross Ulbricht, or for some reason I'm fascinated with the murder cop in the Nightstock, or for some reason I'm fascinated with Michael Dowd, and I don't know where the story is going to go, but I know something in me wants to dig in deeper.

[1364] So some amount of time is just kind of sitting by yourself and kind of getting right with, okay, what do I want to say?

[1365] Why does this matter?

[1366] How do I do it?

[1367] And then I have a wonderful group of people that I work with year in, year out all the time, have on all these films for many years.

[1368] And I'm a believer in surround yourself with people that are smarter than you and better than you at what they do and talk it through, pitch it out, say this is what I'm thinking.

[1369] What about this?

[1370] Poke holes in it, make it better.

[1371] And so then that happens.

[1372] And then in a certain point, it's kind of like now everybody go away again and like let me think like, okay, what was that little spark that started this?

[1373] How do I stay true to that?

[1374] And then always the story ends up taking a turn at some point.

[1375] Like if you end up in a straight line from where you started, then I think you didn't learn anything.

[1376] And the whole point I'm doing it is so that I will learn something along the way.

[1377] So when there's some weird left feel thing and I'm like, okay, I don't know why, but I have to go there.

[1378] I always trust that instinct to go there and take the story wherever it takes me. Was there any dispute, like, amongst the people that you, that are your confidants, the people that you do work with, about how to handle this or what to cover?

[1379] And there's dispute in a couple of ways.

[1380] Basically, if you ask five people to tell the story of what happened, you know, at a dinner, all five people are going to tell you a completely different version of what happened.

[1381] And so there's that layer of dispute, because it never lines up.

[1382] There's always discrepancies and there's always conflicts.

[1383] So at a certain point, then you're making decision, okay, which version of this story am I going to tell?

[1384] Joe tells the top half of what it was like when we met at this podcast.

[1385] At a certain point, I tell my experience of it.

[1386] And then there's the symphony of collaborators that are around you.

[1387] And somebody's like, man, that's cheap and grotesque.

[1388] I don't know, you know, you're going too far with those murder photos.

[1389] Somebody else is like, if you don't show those murder photos, then people can glorify this guy and think that it's exactly sticking people's nose in the horror of it that show you that make it repugnant.

[1390] So then it's like you're hearing all these conflicting, contrasting points of view.

[1391] And weird story.

[1392] I was knocking around with Gary Busey once upon a time, who's, you know, a stone lunatic, but also...

[1393] Became a stone lunatic.

[1394] Yeah.

[1395] After the motorcycle accident.

[1396] And that's a whole like fascinating story in its own right.

[1397] But basically what Busey said to me is he said, here's the deal, man. On a movie set, everybody is a spoke in the wheel.

[1398] And the only thing they care about is their spoke.

[1399] The camera department cares about what it looks like on camera.

[1400] The actor cares about his performance.

[1401] The production designer cares about, you know, what the production design is.

[1402] Your job is to shut up and be the quiet center of the wheel and make sure the wheel turns.

[1403] And I've never forgotten it.

[1404] It really, it was profound advice.

[1405] And I return to that again and again.

[1406] It's be the quiet center of the wheel.

[1407] But you also have to be the guy who directs it in the direction that you think it should go if you think it's being let astray by all those other pieces of the wheel.

[1408] Yeah.

[1409] And sometimes you push it.

[1410] And sometimes you have to yell.

[1411] Sometimes you have to cajole.

[1412] Sometimes you have to beg.

[1413] Sometimes you have to lie and hustle.

[1414] But at the end of the day, there's always a point where you have to just be quiet and it will tell you what it wants to be.

[1415] If you'll sit there with it and be quiet, it'll tell you what it wants to be.

[1416] It's one of the things about what you do that's very fortunate is there's a never -ending supply of fucked up stories.

[1417] There really is.

[1418] Like, you could just keep going.

[1419] You know, you could get into Grisel de Blanco.

[1420] You could get into, there's a, there's a hundred different versions of every single topic, whether it's serial killer, bad cop, drug dealer, smuggler.

[1421] And those stories now increasingly find me. You know, I got a call a couple weeks ago.

[1422] Snoop called me. And he's like, The Snoop?

[1423] Like Snoop dog?

[1424] Right?

[1425] The Snoop.

[1426] The Snoop.

[1427] It's like super weird and surreal call.

[1428] Out of nowhere.

[1429] Out of nowhere.

[1430] Do you know each other?

[1431] Don't know him.

[1432] So how did you know it was really Snoop?

[1433] His producing partner calls and it's like, listen man, like Snoop is a fan.

[1434] And I'm like, say that again?

[1435] What?

[1436] You know?

[1437] And she's like, Snoop wants you to get on the phone with him.

[1438] And I'm like, I'd love to, you know?

[1439] So phone rings one day and it's Snoop.

[1440] And he's like, yo, man, I seen that nice dog.

[1441] And it scared the motherfucking shit out of me. And I said, whoever made that, they need to be in charge of my visuals.

[1442] So what you got for me, Till?

[1443] And I was like, you know what?

[1444] Charge your visuals.

[1445] Being charged.

[1446] And I thought, like, amazing call to get.

[1447] And like, yes, Snoop, I don't know what the project is, but like 100 % I am there and I want to tell your story.

[1448] Because I could tell artist to artist that he was there ready to like, he's like, I want to do the very best work of my life right now.

[1449] And I want to tell my story in a profound big way on a big case.

[1450] canvas.

[1451] The story of him in his rap career, making it.

[1452] And we'll, and I don't know, we'll see, we'll see where it goes.

[1453] But, but it was instantaneously and categorically, like, do I want the Blackberry number?

[1454] Do I want to be in with Snoop?

[1455] Like, yes, I do.

[1456] You know, his story's nuts.

[1457] Up to the murder trial and, you know, everything, death row records, everything.

[1458] It's an, it's an incredible, it's an incredible story, which also, again, each of these stories in some way or another is like, it's a history of America told.

[1459] through a couple of people's voices and experience.

[1460] So I don't know what exactly that's going to be, but I know, like, yes, Snoop, I'm in, man. There's a story that happened yesterday, or the day before of him, he was playing a video game, and apparently he got pissed off and stormed out of the video game, like streaming it online and kept the stream running for seven and a half hours before he realized that the stream was still running.

[1461] He just rage quit, you know.

[1462] People rage quit.

[1463] Yes, they do.

[1464] games will fuck with your head.

[1465] Snoop Dog left Twitch live streaming for seven hours after he rage quit Matt.

[1466] Awesome.

[1467] And I think this title of his stream was something like, something about chilling.

[1468] Oh, there's a video of it?

[1469] Fuck!

[1470] Everybody understands this.

[1471] You play video it's universal, dude.

[1472] It's universal.

[1473] Everybody understands this.

[1474] Look at him.

[1475] Furious.

[1476] Fuck this shit.

[1477] He came in this fucking real and everything went fucking bad.

[1478] Fuck this shit, man. He doesn't know that people are watching.

[1479] And he's playing roller coaster of love.

[1480] I cannot wait to work with this guy, dude.

[1481] Like, I don't know where it goes, but like I am so in, man. I'm so fascinated to find out.

[1482] He's a national treasure.

[1483] And it's going to be funny because he's all.

[1484] He's hilarious, you know.

[1485] My friend Chris McGuire was working with him when he did that show with Martha Stewart, which was a genius show.

[1486] Amazing.

[1487] How about remixing that, you know?

[1488] Him and Martha Stewart together, and it worked.

[1489] Yeah.

[1490] It's so worked.

[1491] Yeah.

[1492] The two of them together was hilarious.

[1493] It's such a great idea.

[1494] And they're pals.

[1495] Like to this day, right?

[1496] Yes.

[1497] They're homies, yeah.

[1498] It's great.

[1499] He's good friends with my friend Tony Hinchcliffe, too.

[1500] Tony worked with him on his roast.

[1501] and you know it's like he gets these calls every now and then from Snoop like every now and then he gets a phone call from Snoop so I'm just like I'm so curious to like and that's a great one where it's like man I have no idea where the project will go but like man let's take Snoop to Broadway you know what I mean he's doing that thing with Bert now right they're on that show I was going to say Bert's friend of them too and the big show or something go big show I couldn't answer the phone once but I got a fucking I was in the middle of hanging out with my kid and I got a face time call from Bert and I was like I can't answer this right now and it turned out he was Bert with Snoop and I'm like shit yeah what is this call it's a talent show yeah oh it's a talent show there you go well there you go yeah he's a national treasure just so stories just kind of find their way to you now like post 7 -5 pretty much you know um whether it's serpico or whether it's snoop or you know i got this call one time and this unfortunately hasn't it couldn't happen but i get this call one time from this guy called chas williams and he's like man i'm the greatest bank robber in american history and like you're the only guy that can tell my story and i'm like let's go to lunch so we go to the like soho house in malibu or whatever and he and i said so what's your story man and he's like let me tell you something jesse james rob 12 trains rob 12 banks and three of them were trains and he goes through the history of like famous bank robbers we know he's like man i rob 60 banks 15 of them while i was in prison i'm like come again i'm like what do you mean while you're in prison he's like i'm in prison in myelin michigan or whatever at the time locked up for bank robbery and they start to have a work release program and so i'm locked up in the hole and i get hold of the like newsletter that the guards are passing around and it says you know work study release where if you enroll in college you're an inmate you can get a day pass to go attend college so they start this like he and his crew start this like three year long con to be on good behavior so that they can get work release you know that is to say you're locked up in prison for five years but you're coming out to get a study whatever you know english literature and so you go out during the day you get bust out of the prison you go to the college you come back at night And it's these, like, sort of sexy, badass black bank robbers.

[1502] And it's, like, kind of young, do -gooder, liberal, like, white girls that are trying to, like, get them out on their work release, right?

[1503] And so he's like, so basically, we start doing this.

[1504] And I'm like, okay, so they drop us off at school.

[1505] And as soon as they drop us off at school, we slip out the back.

[1506] We go rob banks during the day.

[1507] We take the money.

[1508] We get a stash house.

[1509] We, you know, get girlfriends.

[1510] We get jewelry.

[1511] We get whatever.

[1512] we're back by five o 'clock in pickup.

[1513] We go back into the penitentiary at night.

[1514] We spend the night in the joint, and we start robbing banks.

[1515] And the FBI is looking at this, and they're like, man, this has got to be Chaz Williams, but it can't be Chas Williams, because Chas Williams locked up for bank robbery.

[1516] How can he be doing these?

[1517] And so they had run all of these bank robberies for a while, and they had their master plan where they were going, and they'd save the stash, you know, all the cash that they had made in apartments and guns and all the tools of the tree.

[1518] trade.

[1519] And they were going to buy a nightclub.

[1520] And it was going to be, I forget the name, some amazing name for the nightclub.

[1521] I forget the name of it.

[1522] But it was going to be when they got released, they'd take all the money from the bank robberies and open their nightclub.

[1523] And then, as always happens, one of the crew ends up getting busted, rats them out.

[1524] And literally right before they're supposed to get out and, you know, in the final job, they all get taken down.

[1525] And so we started to develop this together.

[1526] I was like, man, this is an amazing, like, what a crime story, you know?

[1527] And, and so developing it, I was like, because a lot of this is about trust, right?

[1528] You're getting people to tell you these stories that kind of shouldn't be told in some way or another, you know, where you're.

[1529] And so in this case, I was like, listen, I'm going to send you a question.

[1530] I'm going to write a voice memo, say, speak a voice memo, and I'm going to send it to you at night.

[1531] And just like, I'm going to ask you questions.

[1532] I'm curious.

[1533] Like, what's it like to be like black in America?

[1534] What's it like to, you know, why do you decide to rob your first bank?

[1535] How old are you?

[1536] Whatever the questions are.

[1537] Whatever you want to say, nothing's off limits, anything you want to say.

[1538] And so he would then record all these voice memos of telling me the story of his life and how he got, you know, radicalized from his father goes off and serves in World War II and is a war hero and comes home and then they go into the South and he starts walking into places whatever and people are calling him boy and he's like and as soon as i heard somebody calling my dad boy i was like fuck uncle sam man american dream i'm gonna steal mine and in that moment i decide i'm gonna become a bank robber and get my piece of the american dream so i'm like this is an amazing story right and then right as we go out to do it he ends up going to see his son in florida and drops dead after an airplane trip and so i never got to tell the story but it's this And I'm sitting on all these, like, amazing voice memos.

[1539] 60s, maybe.

[1540] Just heart attack?

[1541] I think he had an aneurysm or something along those lines.

[1542] But he had had this whole, so he became a bank robber, and then he had this whole second act as like kind of hip -hop impresario because he had the ultimate street credit.

[1543] There he is, Chaz Williams.

[1544] Amazing guy.

[1545] How much time did he wind up doing?

[1546] He did a number of years, but he got out and sort of, you know, started the whole, started it started, started in the game.

[1547] game like broke 50 cent and sort of became a promoter and like you know how do foxy brown and this whole kind of second act because he had the ultimate street cred as the world's great as bank robber for the hip hop crowd so he had this whole crazy second act and i was so excited to tell that story and then you know boom he dropped dead maybe i do it as a material well i have all his voice memos so it's like maybe it's maybe we do a podcast or maybe we do i don't know it's but it's an amazing story that i want to tell still you know that wouldn't be a bad podcast, if you could do it like, you know, Wondry, does those, like, really detailed podcast with great editing and, you know, they tell stories.

[1548] Like, have you ever heard the one on Aaron Hernandez?

[1549] Yeah, it's amazing.

[1550] And it's so interesting how, you know, and like you were so at the forefront of this, where the world kind of caught up with the podcast thing.

[1551] But it's amazing those long -form stories where people want to be told an amazing story.

[1552] by somebody that really knows it and kind of cares about it and will tell it lovingly.

[1553] It's like this show, right?

[1554] What you do is you're curious to meet people.

[1555] So you sit down with, okay, who do I want to know?

[1556] And like what makes them tick?

[1557] And I think why people hook into you is the same reason that why people hook into the Aaron Hernandez thing because it's like, give me a fascinating character who I don't quite know what's going to come out of his mouth and let him tell me a story, show me your curiosity, and fascination about something, and everybody can vicariously enjoy it.

[1558] Yeah, I don't think too much about why this thing works.

[1559] It just works.

[1560] I'd probably start leaning towards that direction or something like that.

[1561] I just keep doing it.

[1562] And I'm sure it's changed, too, over time.

[1563] But what I do is so different than what, like, the Aaron Hernandez thing is.

[1564] Or another one is great to drop out.

[1565] That's the one on the lady Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos.

[1566] that's a fascinating one amazing story because it's like that's a different company to produce that i believe but that's one where you just like you hear the whole story unfold you're like what a perfect combination of factors you know everybody wants a female genius who's some you know self -made billionaire tech giant who figured it all out but meanwhile it's just a fucking con artist just a hustle man and the best part about it's the fake voice right it's my favorite thing when when I listen to her talk now, I can't unhear that fake voice.

[1567] And when you find out that it's a fake voice, like from the other people, like, no, that's her fake voice.

[1568] They're like, she doesn't talk like that.

[1569] Well, she's talking like this, like a guy.

[1570] Like she figured out that that's like part of this character that she created.

[1571] Black turtleneck dresses like Steve Jobs.

[1572] The genius of the hustle.

[1573] God damn people are weird.

[1574] Yeah.

[1575] It's so, it's so fascinating.

[1576] The Aaron Hernandez story is more sad to me than, than weird because I know too much about brain damage I know too much about it from fighters I know too much about it from personal experience with people and my own getting hit in the head I think there's something about that when you find out that when they do the autopsy on Aaron Hernandez they find out it's like some of the he died I believe at 28 some of the worst CTE they've ever seen like the guy in his 20s yeah you know and you realize trauma blood force trauma 100 % and this is probably what's responsible for a lot of his behavior and also abuse and also you know a lot of other shit that factors in there but you know football players um fighters boxers anybody of soldiers people have experienced you know massive impacts and shocks and the what what that does to the mind is just irreparable or at least if not irreparable like some serious fucking damage that needs real care and understanding and cutting -edge medical assistance to try to help with.

[1577] It makes me think of there's that crazy story in the like psychology textbooks.

[1578] You know the story of Phineas Gage?

[1579] No. He was like this guy who was a railroad worker and was this very kind of responsible, squared away guy and was going around and was, you know, tamping dynamite and the railroad ties.

[1580] And at some point one explodes and it drives a railroad tie through his head all the way through his brain, frontal cortex, whatever.

[1581] He survives.

[1582] They pull it out and no seeming damage to him.

[1583] But what it had done was it had given him this very basic brain trauma where it changed him the rest of his life.

[1584] He didn't seem like he was off, but suddenly he was like a boozer and an abuser and whatever.

[1585] And it totally changed the trajectory of the rest of his life.

[1586] And it was actually the beginning of how they began to study brain trauma and what the impacts to different parts of the brain work.

[1587] It's a crazy story of Phineas Gage.

[1588] Is that how it went through?

[1589] Oh, Jesus Christ.

[1590] What year was this?

[1591] Looks old as fuck.

[1592] That's him?

[1593] Show me that picture of him.

[1594] Like he's got one eye now.

[1595] Oh, it is.

[1596] That's the thing that went through his head.

[1597] Blow that picture up.

[1598] What in the fuck, man?

[1599] That went through his whole brain.

[1600] And didn't kill him.

[1601] And he's still able to go to work, but now he doesn't want to show up, doesn't want to do what he do and it completely changed his personality and because of that they started studying different parts of the brain controlling different things look how big that thing is that went through his whole head holy shit look at that all the way through the brain holy shit and the skull i mean out the top of the skull it's bonkers right it's so big oh look at the hole that's insane that is fucking insane that that didn't kill him Yeah, or even impair him other than to make him He should have been a fighter That guy probably would have taken a hell of a punch You know There's like some people are just extra durable Yeah, that's nuts Brain trial Look at the photo, the x -ray photo Like that one down there of the image Of representing what it must have been like Oh so it completely fractured his skull too Oh Jesus Christ Fuck Wow Bonkers Yeah completely Oh, look at the picture of him before and after, Jamie, right there.

[1602] Yeah.

[1603] Changed like the love, down to the very look in his eye, right?

[1604] Yeah.

[1605] Change, well, it made him fucking crazy.

[1606] You know, that's the story of Sam Kinnison, not a rod through the brain, but, and also Roseanne Barr.

[1607] And Bucce.

[1608] Yeah, exactly.

[1609] And Bucce.

[1610] Bucie changed his face, like, changed the shape of his head.

[1611] Like, one eye is higher than the other eye after that accident.

[1612] motorcycle accident with no helmet on hit a curb well he's been clinically dead i forget through i i knocked around with him for a minute right and i always thought that there was like this there's like an amazing movie in him where it's the life and deaths of gary busey so like when he first started out his life and i'm it's been a while since i've thought about this but he was the drummer for leon russell and leon russell's like first record discredited as like teddy jack eddy which was actually like Gary Busey.

[1613] So Bucy has this like these crazy different lives that he lives and then there's, you know, eventually the motorcycle accident and he's pronounced clinically dead several times over the course of his life and it changes who he is.

[1614] Several times?

[1615] Multiple times.

[1616] And I always thought like how weird, because he's a, you know, he's a, he's a character.

[1617] I wanted to work with him once upon a time.

[1618] And it was like when I was first getting started out and I was working in this production company in Malibu.

[1619] And I know, and there was a dentist.

[1620] upstairs right it was like the dentist to the like stars or whatever and i was like man i think that was like gary busy coming in there so i went and told the the woman that ran the office i was like listen man next time busey comes in you let me know because i'm going to go like buttonhole him when he comes out he's i want to pitch him a project or whatever and she's like all right you know you're on your own so busey comes in to get his teeth fixed and she know she calls me she's like all right you know busey's here you know so i come running out and i'm like gary you know i'm tiller russell i want whatever the hell i wanted to want you know and he looks at me with those like intense like killer eyes you know and he reaches down and he takes a piece of paper and he scratches his address on it and he hands me the address and he's like tomorrow five o 'clock you'd be at this address and i'm like all right you know so i drive over and it's in the pacific palisades and i get to this house and the house is like beat to shit you know the the like door buttons you know popped out and it looks like there's like bullet holes in the door or whatever and i'm like this is going to be a weird one you know so i'm not knock on the door and nothing.

[1621] You don't hear anything.

[1622] Knock even harder on the door.

[1623] Third time, finally I'm like, screw it, man. This guy asked me to come over here.

[1624] I want to talk to him.

[1625] I want to see if I can get him to do this movie.

[1626] So I reach up to the door, and the door handle clicks open, and I push the door open, and the door swings open.

[1627] And I look back, and there on the balcony is Busey, and he's in a robe, buck -ass -naked with his, like, cock hanging down, and he's got moccasins all the way up to the top of his knees.

[1628] and he's holding a shotgun and he looks at me and he locks eyes with him and I'm like dude this is like this is it this is how you die like Gary Busey picks up the like 12 gauge and blast your head off and he waves and he's like come in here come in here look at my cock so I'm like all right so I close the door behind and I go in and I go out to the balcony and he's like and he's pointing out he's like there's a fire you see the smoke you see the smoke there's a fire in the Malibu Hills what do you think we should do about it I'm like shoot it like we're not fire men I don't think we should do anything.

[1629] Let's leave it to the professionals.

[1630] And he's like, no, we got to go investigate this.

[1631] This could be a problem.

[1632] Get in the car.

[1633] So we run out and he jumps into his car, his Mercedes, like black Mercedes, you know, just beat to shit like the house.

[1634] And he's driving completely naked, you know, other than the robe, holding the shotgun, wearing the moccasins.

[1635] And as we're driving, he's driving on the left side of the road, like cars coming at us and shit, you know, and he's like, all right, pitch me the movie.

[1636] What do you want to do?

[1637] As we're like driving up to the fire.

[1638] And I'm like, uh, uh, you know, trying to like pitch him the movie.

[1639] But because of that, we end up kind of knocking around together for a minute.

[1640] What year is this?

[1641] 20 years ago or something, right?

[1642] I mean, if, you know, 15 years ago.

[1643] And so we end up, you know, shooting a short film or something together.

[1644] And then eventually he calls me up and he's like, I got to, I got to move out of the house.

[1645] You know, can I move in with you and the kids?

[1646] And I'm like, I don't think that's going to work, man. you know like i love you gary but i have to move out of the house can i move in with you and your kids and so you know that didn't happen and it's been a hot minute since i've seen him he's probably probably strangled me if he ever got hold of me again but i always thought like that's another guy that's like he's lived literally lifetimes and deaths over the course of his life so how has he died clinically how has he been well one was the car wreck one was like uh i forget i i forget the motorcycle accident i mean i'm sorry the motorcycle accident and i don't know i don't remember what the other ones were, but multiple times, he told me. So there's ones before that?

[1647] Before the motorcycle accident?

[1648] I don't remember the detail.

[1649] I just know he told me multiple times.

[1650] The problem is after the motorcycle accident, everything's real squirly.

[1651] It's hard to understand.

[1652] I spoke with him on the phone once because Alex Jones was hanging out with him.

[1653] And Alex Jones called me up, he goes, Joe, Gary Busey wants to talk to you.

[1654] I go, what?

[1655] And he puts Gary Bucie on.

[1656] And I didn't talk to Gary Bucie.

[1657] Gary Bucie talked at me. And he, there's a long thing.

[1658] And there's a long thing.

[1659] about the universe and about life and death and the spirits and entanglement with the cosmos and it's like crazy long run -on sentence and at the end of it I think I went all right and he goes well someday we'll talk in person and then he hangs up the phone and that's it I'll tell you what though the weird thing is you know and I joke about it but it was the single best cocaine overdose I 1995 cocaine overdose wow surgery to remove a cancerous plum -sized tumor and a sinus cavity oh my god oh he was in his second season of celebrity rehab remember that fucking show god damn what a irresponsible show stand hope had a great bit about it that that fucking show was so ridiculous take a bunch of people that are literally at the low point of their life and then exploit them and Light a fuse.

[1660] Pretend you're just helping them.

[1661] Right.

[1662] We're just rehab.

[1663] And put it on TV.

[1664] Yeah.

[1665] This is about rehab.

[1666] This is about getting you healthy again.

[1667] Fuck that show.

[1668] That show was so ridiculous.

[1669] I'll tell you what, the abusey, you know, it was the single best advice from anybody I've ever gotten about being a director in terms of being the quiet center of the wheel.

[1670] And to this day, I quoted and it's like, man, like I heard him.

[1671] Well, the dude has been in some fucking amazing movies.

[1672] I mean, before everything went south for him after the motorcycle accident, you got to go back to lethal weapon.

[1673] He was sensation.

[1674] One of the great fight scenes ever in the movies.

[1675] That last fight scene in the rain with Mel?

[1676] It's the first time people figure out a triangle.

[1677] Nobody ever saw a triangle before that.

[1678] That was because, you know, Mel Gibson had been training with the Gracies.

[1679] Interesting.

[1680] I didn't know that.

[1681] Yeah.

[1682] Like, they, like, I think it was Horian Gracie was the one who trained him for that film.

[1683] And, you know, that was, no one had never seen anybody throw a triangle on somebody in a movie before.

[1684] Such a great fight scene.

[1685] In the rain, in the mud.

[1686] And I want to say that's like 89 or 90?

[1687] 87?

[1688] Wow, that's crazy.

[1689] So you're talking about a film that was a solid six years before the UFC.

[1690] It's amazing, right?

[1691] So the UFC is in 93.

[1692] No one had any idea what Brazilian jiu -jitsu was.

[1693] Look at this fucking movie.

[1694] And they go out of it.

[1695] Yeah.

[1696] so he scissors sweeps him to the ground it turns into this wild crazy slug fest in the rain cops come look at that fucking crazy i remember this movie this is a great movie too great movie and they're letting them duke it out see if you get to the part where he gets them in a triangle it's the very end of the fight right yeah it's a crazy scene in a movie man like you've never seen oh that's right they i forgot how long this fight goes on.

[1697] It's a five -minute scene.

[1698] They had sticks and coup -butons, and he waxed them with that.

[1699] Mutual combat.

[1700] Yeah.

[1701] You know what's great about it?

[1702] It's ugly and raw the way a fight is, not like the way, there it is, there it is a triangle.

[1703] The first time you'd ever seen this in a film.

[1704] Like, nobody ever scissored someone with their legs.

[1705] It's a shitty triangle, though, by the way.

[1706] Terrible technique.

[1707] High size 2020.

[1708] If I was horian, I'd be like, my friend, you have to cinch this.

[1709] Grab the hand.

[1710] ankle pull it tight like he's got him there though that's pretty good towards the end i don't like where his foot is it's okay it's supposed to be about four or five inches higher under the knee but you know good enough got a lot of people curious like is that real can you do it to somebody great fight scene man fuck great movie man great movie great movie but he played such a good psycho well and then you go all the way back like big wednesday the surfing movie like john Melius did once about the Buddy Holly story the Buddy Holly story is amazing he played Buddy Holly so good yeah no but Gary Busey was a beast he's a tremendous actor and there's something about someone who has stared at death and also just gone so far with coke that they died yeah like those to the other side you know I'm saying like those crossover dudes that have just they've they've peered through the curtain yikes shutting came back over there's something about people that have partied that hard that they just make there's a there's a certain maniacal aspect to their performances that's so believable so committed you know yeah so committed yeah like guys who party like really fucking party well so what so what was the kinnison story you started to tell the kinnison story got hit by a car when he was a kid and his brother bill says there's two different versions of sam there's sam when he was young he was like a normal kid and then he gets hit by a car and becomes a fucking maniac like bad head injury and just completely impulsive wild reckless then he's gauge yeah well the same thing with rosam bar rosam bar a student walking across the street rather someone's driving they can't see because the sunlight and the windshield hit her in in in traffic 15 years old she spends the next nine months in a mental health institute wow she gets locked up in an asylum yeah can't count anymore was a straight -A student in math now now can't count like her brain's completely frazzled and becomes this wild crazy impulsive comic much like kinnison you know and um those two are in my my money for my money they're in the top 20 of the greatest stand -ups of all time 100 % especially like important figures like rosam bar was the first or one of the you know you got it like joan rivers is for sure one of the first too but there's something about Roseanne's style of comedy that was so brash and I don't give a fuck and you know like she was just she was like just like a wild woman you know like one of the very first in terms of like her style the way she did comedy like she and she was a straight up killer man if you ever got a chance to see her live in her heyday she was a monster she would destroy and that wild impulsiveness a lot of that i think came from her head injury you know it's crazy to me you guys the stand -up comics like you're the bravest people in the world because you are standing there in front of a room full of people absolutely nothing stone naked with nothing but your sort of your wits but let's stop you right there because that's not true at all um cops are braver firefighters are braver.

[1711] Soldiers are most certainly braver.

[1712] It's a different kind of vulnerability.

[1713] No, it's a different kind of vulnerability though, because like it's one thing with like with the physical there is, okay, it's a, it's a scrap or it's a gunfight or it's or whatever.

[1714] When you're walking into a room and it's and you're just having to like capture people's imagination, that's an amazing thing.

[1715] That's voodoo, dude.

[1716] That's something coming out of somebody to be able to do that.

[1717] It's a thing that you get better with over time though and it actually gets easier.

[1718] This is one of the things Joey Diaz says, the best he goes it's the hardest easiest thing you'll ever do what does that mean because it's really fucking hard but once you get good at it it's really easy like Joey Diaz would get high as fuck walk on stage and murder a room like he didn't think twice about what he was going to say he didn't worry about it he had bits in his head that he could go to but he would just be free and he would go on stage and just destroy and then he'd get out hang around for a bit high five a couple of people people give him hugs and get in his car and drive away.

[1719] I mean...

[1720] I don't even understand that because it's like improvisational jazz or something.

[1721] Yeah, there's a lot of jazz to it.

[1722] There's a lot of jazz to it.

[1723] That's why a lot of comics like being obliterated on stage.

[1724] Because that's kind of how you create.

[1725] Well, you've got to create a bunch of different ways.

[1726] You don't have to.

[1727] People do it different ways.

[1728] Like some people, they write notes down on napkins and they have a rough outline.

[1729] Some people write out a monologue and they go on stage and they just kind of perform.

[1730] it.

[1731] Like Carlin did that.

[1732] Kind of performed it pretty much the way he wrote it.

[1733] Rehearsed prior to coming in or just roughed out?

[1734] I don't know.

[1735] I don't know if he rehearsed it, but he certainly memorized it.

[1736] He had a monologue.

[1737] Like Carlin would essentially write out his thoughts on things and, you know, some of the best writing really in terms of like social commentary.

[1738] To this day, people are handing out clips of Carlin talking about some of the shit that's going down right now in our culture but he he had his way of doing it and then you know there's some guys that just write completely on stage he just have ideas and they go and flush them out on stage and then they keep going up they go up in different clubs and they flush it out further and they don't write anything down they do it like sort of like j z does rap you know j z doesn't write any of his lyrics down he just memorizes him he makes him up memorizes them just keeps doing it until he gets it down but everything's in his head and then this guy's like gnaz who you read his rap and it's like it's clear this guy's writing this stuff like it's so well crafted and the words go together so well the idea that this guy could just improvise this is kind of preposterous you know it's everybody has a different way of doing it but but how often are like when you're going in um unrehearsed improvisational like that is it a bust do you not connect do you lose your way all the time yeah if you want to improvise you have to i think what most of us do is you improvise as like a hammock in between two poles so you have a pole like the pole is like a foundation pole you have a bit that you know works this is rock solid so you can come back to it do this bang bang bang you get the audience confidence and they try some new shit on them you give it a shot you give it a shot and maybe it's a dip and maybe it's solid you never know there's been moments where I've created bits for whatever reason just work right out of the gate and then there's other ones where you're like god i should abandon this but you don't want to you're like god i know there's some way to do this idea i have this idea that i think is viable i just don't know exactly how to do it and then you'll experiment and you'll twist and you'll turn and sometimes you start it backwards you know you work backwards from the punch line you try to figure out a way to make it work and are you talking about in that scenario live kind of in front of people or are you talking about when you're rehearsing prior to going in that tightrope don't don't rehearse ever but what i do do is i listen to recordings of old sets of not old like last week or last night or whatever or i listen on the way home and i do write and when i write i write in total silence i just write just me sitting in front of a laptop just writing and then um i have other ideas that i don't even have written down i just have a thought and it popped into my head you know like i have like i remember when harvey winstein first got busted i remember right away thinking that it's this is so fucked up especially because i have daughters and if i ever found out that some fucking guy offered my daughter's sex some disgusting guy like harvey winstein offered my daughter's sex for a role i would want to fuck him up.

[1739] But if Harvina Weinstein came to my son with a solid contract, I'd be like, dude, you're going to be Batman.

[1740] And I went on stage with that idea, you know, and I just ran with it.

[1741] I went on stage literally the day he got arrested or the day, you know, the story broke and he was in trouble, whatever the fuck happened to him.

[1742] I don't remember how it all went down.

[1743] But that, like, that day, I went on stage with it thinking about it.

[1744] It's so ballsy, though, man. To me, it's just like you're walking a tightrope in front of, like, a room full of people with a notion and a hunch.

[1745] That one I knew.

[1746] There's sometimes you write some shit down.

[1747] It's like, that's going to pop.

[1748] That one.

[1749] I'm like, dude, you're going to be Batman.

[1750] I'm like, that's going to.

[1751] And it was literally the day of so everybody knew.

[1752] And I opened with it.

[1753] I walked on, say that was the first thing I said, you know.

[1754] So how much in standup do you have to be kind of.

[1755] tuned up like is it something where doing it all the time keeps you polished to go out there 100 % yeah yeah i'm totally out of shape now i have to get myself in shape when i do shows like i was doing these shows with dave chapel we were doing these uh we were doing a stubbs uh stubs barbecue as an amphitheater and we're doing a residency in town and what we did was covid test the entire crowd then we go up but what i had to do for that is very different than any other show so what i had to do for that is I would sit for hours and go over my material, and then I would listen to recordings.

[1756] And so I'd listen to recordings of sets.

[1757] So I have on my phone hundreds and hundreds of sets, because that's kind of how I review stuff.

[1758] Like, there's many different stuff.

[1759] That's your rewrite process.

[1760] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.

[1761] And also, it's one of the best ways to add on to bits, because as you're listening to a bit, when you don't have to say it and you're not writing it, as you're listening to it being performed, in front of an audience, new ideas will pop in your head.

[1762] Like, oh, but what about, I could say this.

[1763] Or maybe I could take it that way.

[1764] And it's like the amount of, there's no substitute for actually performing, for doing sets.

[1765] But I think listening to a set is worth about 40 % of doing a set.

[1766] Interesting.

[1767] Not 100%, but 40%.

[1768] So you've got to listen to like a bunch of sets.

[1769] And then you can kind of get yourself back into where you are.

[1770] And then writing out the material is good for about 10.

[1771] 10%.

[1772] So, like, there's a whole series of things that I do.

[1773] And I started doing that before shows, especially when I started doing arenas.

[1774] Like, you started doing like 15 ,000 people, 20 ,000 people.

[1775] It's weird.

[1776] That's crazy, dude.

[1777] That's unfathomable to me. So that I started writing bits out.

[1778] I would literally, like, write bits out for hours.

[1779] So I'd get in my hotel room and I'd write the bits out.

[1780] look it takes for it but that way they're fucking cemented in my head and then there's a freedom of that where you could just be completely loose like you don't ever want to be thinking about what you're going to say you want to be like in the moment so you've cooked it in the writing process in that scenario you've done enough writing the bits that you've got it locked in so you can still be loose then yeah so like my notebook is not really a notebook it's a notebook but it's not i don't write in my notebook in terms of like new ideas the notebook is really the ideas i already have written down over and over and over again like if you read my notebook it's like jack nicholson the shining all work no play makes jack a dull boy all work no it's like i'm really writing bits over and over again you're sharpening after yeah i'm just getting them burned into my head like that moment but the writing process on a computer is very different that's just hundreds and hundreds of these word docs and you know different i do it in um uh scrivner and I do it in a bunch of different forms.

[1781] I just get bored.

[1782] So I write it in, there's a thing called write room.

[1783] I like to use that too.

[1784] When I use a Mac, I use that.

[1785] But most of the time I write on a Windows PC because I find like think pads.

[1786] They have better keyboards.

[1787] So I don't have to think about where my fingers are going.

[1788] It just sort of flows and it lets me get into a mind state better.

[1789] But there's a lot of different.

[1790] But doing these shows now because of COVID, I don't perform every night anymore.

[1791] And there's no comedy store anymore.

[1792] You know, it's like completely closed.

[1793] down.

[1794] So I'm out here in Austin.

[1795] There's a few places to perform, but it's a little irresponsible to do shows and promote them with no audience testing.

[1796] Right.

[1797] So, I mean, this sort of hold the pattern.

[1798] We're coming, though.

[1799] We're coming toward the light.

[1800] I mean, it's, you know.

[1801] Yeah, it's close.

[1802] We're getting close.

[1803] So when everything gets popping again, you know, I have, I know I can get ready again.

[1804] I know I can do it.

[1805] And how much does you, do you share that methodology with your colleagues.

[1806] I mean, how much do you shop talk with these other?

[1807] All the time.

[1808] All the time.

[1809] Everybody does it different.

[1810] I think one thing that separates some folks from others is work ethic.

[1811] Some people don't have a good work ethic.

[1812] Like, some guys just are not good at writing.

[1813] They don't like to sit down and write.

[1814] Because comics in general tend to be sort of fuck -ups.

[1815] Not in a bad way.

[1816] I mean, just, you know, that's why you became a comic because you fucked off at work or you fucked off at school and you're impulsive and kind of wild.

[1817] and crazy.

[1818] To make people left.

[1819] Yeah.

[1820] That's not the type of person who sits down and disciplines himself.

[1821] So it's like you have to kind of be a hybrid.

[1822] You have to be a hybrid of someone who's disciplined just to get to squeeze the most out.

[1823] You don't have to.

[1824] Like guys have gotten really far by never writing a goddamn thing down and never listening to a goddamn single set.

[1825] They just perform enough and they get into the flow.

[1826] And there's actually a school of thought and it's a good school of thought that maybe that's the best way to do it, just perform all the time.

[1827] And don't write anything down just perform almost every night of the week that way it's just you're never out of shape it's always burned in your mind but i come from this school of thoughts of like with martial arts martial arts you can like with jiu jitsu jiu jizu is a good example you learn techniques and then you go apply them when you spar but if you drill you get way better meaning you practice scenarios over and over again.

[1828] Like if we were drilling an arm bar, I would put you in my guard, I would grab the back of your head, I would pinch down your forearms, shift my hips, catch the arm bar, and you would tap, and then I would do it over and over and over and over again.

[1829] And then you would do it to me, over and over and over again, and then I'd do it to you.

[1830] Oh, and it's fucking boring.

[1831] But it makes it instinctual and reflexive.

[1832] It makes all the difference in the world.

[1833] The biggest jump that I ever made in my jiu -jitsu was drilling, I learned when I was a blue belt to drill and I went, got way better because of that.

[1834] Like it made a giant difference.

[1835] Like within a course of six months, I jumped up several notches 100 % because of drilling.

[1836] It became much more successful.

[1837] And so you're saying the application of that to comedy then?

[1838] Yes, is the writing part.

[1839] It's just sitting down and going over the material and drilling it into your head and then listening to the sets.

[1840] It's really kind of the same thing.

[1841] It's like that's what you don't want to do.

[1842] What you want to do in Jiu -Jitsu is you want to go out there and roll.

[1843] What rolling is sparring.

[1844] Like you and I would slap hands and then we would just practice on each other.

[1845] It's fun.

[1846] It's fun to do.

[1847] It's like a real live video game.

[1848] It's just exciting.

[1849] You know, you don't have to, you're just doing it, and you get better by doing it.

[1850] And a lot of guys do just get really good just by doing it.

[1851] But the guys that get really, really good, those guys review videos.

[1852] they go over techniques.

[1853] They drill constantly and they put themselves in bad situations.

[1854] All things that most people don't want to do.

[1855] But that's the discipline and craft, I think, of anything, right?

[1856] Like, you can kind of wing it, you can improvise it, you can do the fun stuff, or you can sit there and, like, the grinders in any discipline, whether you're writing a screenplay, whether you're rolling jujitsu, it's like the grinders and taking the time to do that.

[1857] That's what gives you the level of polish and precision.

[1858] It also, that's what gets, you get further ahead.

[1859] That's what I've always told people about podcasts, too.

[1860] You know, a lot of comics started out with me. We started doing podcasts at the same time, but I grind.

[1861] Like, I do a lot of them.

[1862] And they're like, why do you do a lot of them?

[1863] I go, first of all, because there's a lot of cool people to talk to.

[1864] And second of all, because that's how you get people addicted.

[1865] Right.

[1866] You don't get people addicted with one a month.

[1867] Right, you got to drop them all the time.

[1868] Yeah, you drop four a week.

[1869] And they're like, four, fuck that.

[1870] That's like a job.

[1871] But I'm like, yeah, it's a job.

[1872] You got to work.

[1873] Like, you have to, I like working.

[1874] So I have a question for you.

[1875] Somebody, somewhere somebody had told me that you, or maybe it was on one of your shows, that you've kind of set up your life that many of the distractions are out of the way so that you can just come in and do this or do the comedy or, you know, so that it's, you have total focus and your time is not spent chasing bullshit.

[1876] Is that true?

[1877] I mean, how, how much have you got your operation?

[1878] dialed at this point so that it's you're just doing what you do all the time well I have modes right so like I have a workout mode and workout mode you know I don't I might look at my phone if I'm lifting weights because if I'm lifting weights I take a lot of time in between sets right but like say if I'm hitting the bag or if I'm doing jiu -jitsu or doing something some endurance base thing I just do it this that's mode well if I'm doing yoga right that's that's yoga mode I just do that.

[1879] That's it.

[1880] So it's one thing at a time fully focused is what you're saying.

[1881] And when it's done, it's done.

[1882] But then I can go, like if I'm doing stand -up, when I work on stand -up and I'm working on writing or if I'm working on, when you're doing stand -up on stage, it's the ultimate, right?

[1883] Because you can't think of anything else.

[1884] You're not multitasking.

[1885] You're just doing stand -up.

[1886] And so the same is true with Jiu -Jitsu.

[1887] If you're sparring in J -Jitsu and you're thinking about other things, you're going to get strangled.

[1888] You have to be completely focused on what you're doing And that's how I like to If I'm doing a podcast My phone goes on silent I push it I see people doing podcasts And they're checking their phone While they're doing a podcast I'm like what the fuck are you doing Yeah you're not locked down Like what are you doing?

[1889] Don't do that Like and I've been guilty of that Over the years I stopped a long time ago Looking at my phone during shows But You lose something You lose something If you're not paying attention to what you're doing You lose focus.

[1890] Well, also, we live in a culture where everybody's multitasking all the time, and you're very rarely locked in, right?

[1891] It's like, okay, I'm rolling calls while I'm driving or I'm doing whatever.

[1892] And I think that to do anything well, it does take, like, the world drops away, man. Yeah.

[1893] When I'm sitting there, like, writing a screenplay or when I'm making a documentary, it's like everything disappears and you are in the tunnel.

[1894] It's the only way to do it well because all this stuff is hard.

[1895] Yeah.

[1896] And I think especially when you're doing a podcast, if you're not locked in, people can tell.

[1897] It's drifty.

[1898] Yeah.

[1899] Well, they also can tell that you're like they're listening to the tennis match.

[1900] They're listening to the boop, boboop, boboop, boboop, they're listening to the feet.

[1901] They're listening to the wrestling match.

[1902] They're listening to the conversation.

[1903] If it's not, you're not, if I'm not paying attention to you, if I'm just talking, like that becomes evident.

[1904] If you're just, you're not listening to me, it becomes, but when there's a dance, there's a nice dance, that's when it's enjoyable.

[1905] And it's difficult to achieve.

[1906] And you don't always achieve that dance with everybody.

[1907] Sometimes it's like you dance and then I dance.

[1908] And some people, it's just how you converse with them.

[1909] And then you have to kind of, it makes it more awkward because you're starting and restarting.

[1910] That's the real problem with Zoom calls.

[1911] That's why I stopped doing these Zoom videos.

[1912] They're just too weird.

[1913] Yeah.

[1914] Because you can't get a rhythm.

[1915] Yeah.

[1916] The person's not there.

[1917] But sometimes you can with someone that you know really well, and you're doing this, like I did one recently, my friend Ari, and I've known him forever where it's so close.

[1918] It's easy.

[1919] I can talk to him.

[1920] We just, you know, we just know each other.

[1921] It's easy to do.

[1922] But for most of the time, they're like, you talk, I talk.

[1923] You talk, I talk.

[1924] It's just, it doesn't feel good.

[1925] It doesn't, like, even when I watch them, unless the person is talking about something really rivet, where all I'm trying to do is just relate, get questions, throw them the questions and listening to their response and throw a nut, but it's a very different kind of a conversation.

[1926] What you just made me think of is, um, I saw an interview, I think, with Errol Morris about how he makes those documentaries and he said, my job is, I'm a conversationalist.

[1927] It's not just me asking a question, you answering it.

[1928] It's like, I'm locked in in a dialogue.

[1929] And that's where the interesting thing happens is when, and it's a tennis match.

[1930] You're hitting the back and forth, which I thought was interesting.

[1931] Yeah, for sure.

[1932] Like, people will call a podcast an interview.

[1933] Like, I don't really interview people.

[1934] I have interviewed people.

[1935] There have been some people that I interviewed.

[1936] But most of the time I'm talking to people.

[1937] Just, I just record it, you know?

[1938] And I'm not, I mean, I have obligations in terms of, like, there's some information that I think I should probably cover and some things I should probably try to get them to talk about.

[1939] Like, there's subjects that I think, if I could get to that point, it would be, cool because like I think that's a pretty interesting topic but for the most part it's just you let it play out and it's one of those things if you've been doing it long enough you kind of get a sense while you're doing of whether or not this is interesting or whether or not you're overbearing and it's taught me a lot about communication it's taught me a lot about how to hold a conversation you know and when you're being overbearing and when you're talking over people and how often people do that how did you decide how did you lock into the format that this has become and at what point how much of it is deliberate and how much of it is you intuiting it and improvising and feeling your way it's almost of it is intuiting that's a good word intuiting is that i say yeah uh most of it is intuition and most of it is uh just learned lessons over time but it's also you know I've listened to some podcast that I did in the past and I didn't like things just like listening to a set and you don't like certain aspects of it and so you learn how to not do it the wrong way tool it yeah there's a skill to it it's also conversations they're not just the information that's being relayed it's the sound it's the way people talk it's the pace it's the rhythm and yeah there's a thing going on it's you know like like stand -up comedy is not just the writing it's also the way you deliver it's the same thing with music when someone sings right it's not just the lyrics of the song okay so fascinating how this applies to documentaries is you know people ask me like oh how does the how does the documentary thing work and how it works is as a director really a lot of directing is long before you ever end up on set long before you ever end up with a It's there has to be this level of trust where like the person understands, hey, this person really gives a shit about my story and is really going to go to the end of the earth to tell this right.

[1940] And then on top of it, it's not with documentaries, documentaries need a performance too.

[1941] It's not just like, here's the facts of the story.

[1942] It's you got a horse whisper people into like, okay, I'm right.

[1943] I mean, when I'm sitting there with Tarzan in Moscow, he's like, I'm not ready to be telling this story right now.

[1944] We're needing to be drinking a little bit of vodka.

[1945] You know, I'm maybe needing blowjob right now.

[1946] You know what I mean?

[1947] Or whatever.

[1948] And so you recognize, okay, now's not the time to roll because I can't force this.

[1949] It's maneuver this such that by the time you are ready, you're ready to pop and you're ready to tell these stories that you've been holding on to most of your life that maybe you should or maybe you shouldn't tell.

[1950] But there's a real art to getting that person to the place where they're ready to sort of crack open and reveal what's in the middle.

[1951] yeah yeah i mean you're making a piece of art and you're doing it about facts and with real people and you're construct that's why is there like what's more satisfying to you doing that doing like the seven five or doing something like silk road where it's fiction i always want to i always want to do both because and i've always thought about it that way which is when i'm knocking around as a crime reporter in Berkeley or Oakland once upon a time.

[1952] What I'm thinking is I'm actually like, yeah, I'm writing stories, I'm getting a job, I'm getting a paycheck, but really I'm gathering material.

[1953] I'm listening to the way like cops talk in the precinct and what the rhythm is and what the bullshit and where the hustle is or what it's like when somebody's in jail and what the noises are so that as I sit down as a writer, I'm drawing on real authentic stuff.

[1954] So they like completely cross -pollinate with one another, you know?

[1955] and then so that by the time I sit down to write Silk Road and I know okay Jason Clark's character I'm going to composite two different people here but I've spent a lot of time knocking around with Narcs and I know how they treat informants and I know you know the dynamic between Darrell Britt Gibson and Jason Clark when these guys are breaking each other's balls and it's like you know a little bit you know weird power dynamics like I know those guys I've spent time with them and also as the actors were like man what's it like like to be a corrupt cop.

[1956] I'm like, well, let's get Michael Dowd on the phone because he can tell us.

[1957] You know what I mean?

[1958] And literally, I would just fold those guys in and be like, hey, we're making this movie.

[1959] I want your help.

[1960] Tell these guys, you know, whatever you can gain.

[1961] And with smart actors, you put them in that position and they'll steal the little materials.

[1962] Like at the time that I was making Silk Road, it was this crazy experience because I had three projects that were going simultaneously.

[1963] I was doing a Nightstocker for Netflix.

[1964] I was doing the last nark about the Kiki Kamerana murder in 1985 and I was doing Silk Road at the same time and I thought man like how am I going to survive this this is like so complicated I'm juggling so much you know at any given time and it was what you said where it was like okay I'm locked in right now right now I'm looking at this edit and I need I've got 45 minutes and I know I need to walk out of this room and tell the editor tweak this tweak this tweak this this joke's not working this needs to be more dramatic and change the music cue and I don't have time to do anything else so I know the trains have to leave the station.

[1965] And so what I had was, with the last narc, I had this amazing character in Hector Bereas, who was this old school Jurassic Narc, door kicker, gunfighter dude, who was down there in Mexico, working the Camerena murder for many years.

[1966] And then I had Jason Clark, who was going to be playing a DEA guy.

[1967] And I was like, you know what I need to do?

[1968] These two cats need to get a taco together.

[1969] And so I was like, Jason, I want you to meet this guy.

[1970] And I was like, I don't need to be there.

[1971] I don't want to be in the middle of it.

[1972] You guys go sit down and go get a taco.

[1973] in Riverside or whatever and what Jason Clark did was he went spent the time with Hector and they like swapped war stories the last NARC and you know Silk Road as they're prepping and then when I got on set eventually with Jason Clark I looked down and he's got this belt buckle and it's Hector's belt buckle and I'm like that son of a bitch dude that's so smart he stole that from Hector because like that's like a street thing where it's you know I'm the rooster man you know and he had that on his buckle and I thought that's a really smart that's a smart actor you know what you're talking about the way you do things about the way you lock into things that's just that's discipline you know it's some that's hard for people have you ever read um Stephen Pressfield's The War of Art no it's a really good book about that in particular and it's uh I used to keep a stack of them and I used to hand them out to people when I did the podcast early days of the podcast I literally had like 10 of them in the room I'll pick it up and we bought a bunch of them because it's a small book It's easy to read.

[1974] But a lot of it details his own personal journey with dealing with what he calls resistance.

[1975] And resistance being the urge to fuck off and not do the work.

[1976] The procrastination, just get distracted.

[1977] Like Louis C .K., when he writes, his computer doesn't connect to the Internet.

[1978] He has a computer that he writes on that doesn't go online.

[1979] So the email doesn't come, the text doesn't come.

[1980] You can't look at porn.

[1981] You can't look at what's the new cool car that's out.

[1982] He just writes.

[1983] And Stephen Pressfield wrote about resistance being, you know, this thing that you have that keeps you from doing the work.

[1984] This thing that distracts people.

[1985] And he has a name for it.

[1986] He calls it resistance.

[1987] And he also has a name for the muse, what he calls the muse, you know, not a name for, this term, this discussion of this thing.

[1988] as a real like a real entity that you sit down and you do the work and you sit down like a professional like you have it's a very rigid time that you're going to do this and you have no distractions and if you do that and if you do that enough the muse will entertain you the muse will show up if you are professional and you really do have the focus and the discipline and you call upon the muse and do your due diligence, the muse will come and will reward you.

[1989] Yeah.

[1990] And he talks about it like it's a real thing.

[1991] And it's really interesting because if you treat it like it's a real thing, it does work.

[1992] Like, I don't think there's really like a ghost out there that's bringing you these ideas.

[1993] But if you treat it like there's a ghost out there that's bringing you these ideas.

[1994] Well, there may be.

[1995] I mean, I remember like in seeing Dylan being interviewed, I think it was by Barbara Walters or something and she's asking him you know like how do you write this he's like i don't write them songs they just fall down from the sky you know and so there's a thing where it's like you are making yourself available to and that's by showing up and doing the work like if you when you know you look at any of those bob Dylan documentaries man he's always sitting there behind a typewriter writing songs you know however old he is right now writing some of the most amazing stuff of his career and that's because he's a worker and a grinder so that when you're doing that then it can come down right something can be transmitted, I think.

[1996] I believe that.

[1997] I believe that, too.

[1998] I don't know what it is.

[1999] What's Pressfield's background?

[2000] He's a writer.

[2001] He's a screenwriter, author.

[2002] But what's interesting is he was kind of a failure for a lot of his life.

[2003] And then around 40, figured it out, got his shit together and wrote some amazing shit.

[2004] Legend of Bagger Vance, wrote a bunch of different books on, what do you write books on?

[2005] Like, was it the Romans?

[2006] the Greeks he wrote a bunch of different shit but I haven't read any of it but I know it's well well respected and regarded but that's right but the war of art is I will definitely get hip to that because I'm always interested in and I do think people have to like fail for a long time you know the ones who get somewhere I mean you get those like out of the box geniuses who do something at you know 18 years old or 20 or whatever but most of the people that are getting to work are the people that like just keep showing up i've got my teeth kicked in seven thousand times but i just keep showing up because it's like man i don't know like i wouldn't i don't know what else to do this i love it so like if you got to kick my teeth out every now and then i'm still coming back for more but it's also that you know there's a way to do this better than how you've done it it's like everyone who's done anything in life where you've had some success and some success is the spark right it's like that's the thing with stand -up comedy Have you gotten any laughs?

[2007] Like, if you've never gotten any laughs, maybe you should quit.

[2008] But if you've gotten some laughs, like, every now you say a joke, like, blah, blah, boom.

[2009] And, you know, like, but if Harvina Weinstein, like, and then everybody laughs, like, oh, my God, I hit a spark.

[2010] There's something there.

[2011] And you realize it, and the audience, but then you fail.

[2012] Then you stumble.

[2013] Like, well, what was it that you nailed?

[2014] How do you get back there?

[2015] And then you figure out how to do it better.

[2016] You review your failure.

[2017] and from them you figure out where you turned wrong and went off the cliff you know how do you stay on the road how do you how do you how do you how do you avoid all the cones like how do you do you do you do it right well and it is a product of you know any measure of success in it's that little whisper of like men of some wind in my sales so like and in a weird way I feel like I haven't even started working yet like I'm just now starting to figure out like hey like I'm starting to know how to do this and I'm starting to really like now I want to do something interesting.

[2018] You know?

[2019] Well, some people, there's a certain point in time where they lose energy and I don't know what it is and I suspect that some of it is physical.

[2020] Some of it has to do with age and it has to do with health.

[2021] Well, you lose vitality and you lose your ability to be enthusiastic about things.

[2022] And that's one of the, I mean, I'm committed to health and fitness just because that's something I enjoy and I like it.

[2023] But also because when you have energy, you can put more energy into things.

[2024] Yeah.

[2025] And as you get older, that energy wanes, and particularly wanes if you abuse your body.

[2026] If you eat shitty food and you drink too much and you just, you don't sleep right and you don't exercise, you don't have enough horsepower anymore to really squeeze out those magical moments.

[2027] And I think it's not a coincidence that a lot of creative people, especially creative people that indulge in, um, alcohol and drugs, they do their best work when they're younger, because their body's more resilient and they have more, there's more juice there.

[2028] Or you hit a point where you like, where you get clean at a certain point, like suddenly like Brad Pitt like stops drinking and is like, then like turns in like once upon a time in Hollywood, you know, and it's like.

[2029] But Brad Pitt never did any bad work.

[2030] Yeah, he was always great.

[2031] I could watch that guy like take a piss and it'd be fascinating.

[2032] He's amazing.

[2033] He's a hard one to pick that on.

[2034] but I just mean like that's somebody that yes the work was amazing early and like I can't wait to like that forever that guy's just getting more better and more interesting and more amazing yeah yeah for sure for sure but then you got guys like Bukowski drink to the grave and just merrily all the way baby some of his best shit yeah being just a scumbag trying to fuck everything that moves yeah getting his teeth kicked in and bar fights and just going back and writing about it but something was coming through like God was coming through or whatever it it is is like he was able to to capture it you know what it was coming through with i think with bukowski i've been listening to a lot of him lately is authenticity that's who that guy was warts and all flaws poem after poem word after word just super real yeah and raw and also really lived a terrible life before he became a successful poet not a terrible life but just unfulfilling shitty post office man yeah and was told by his parents like you're never going to amount to shit you don't have any talent this is a waste of time yeah like well it's like orson wells said man better late than early you know yes yeah better late than early and then there's guys like that too that they they let you know like hey there's no real roadmap like everybody's got their own path like this guy's path is not the same path as you know thorough it's they all and they're never replicable.

[2035] I'm always fascinated because it's like, okay, how did you get here, you know?

[2036] And like you learn something, but you're never going to walk that same path.

[2037] But you do learn something by how people got to where they got.

[2038] You also are, you carry them with you.

[2039] Like, I don't think I'm an individual.

[2040] I think I'm an accumulation of all the people that have ever met and all the experiences that I've ever had.

[2041] And it's one of the things about this podcast that has been insanely rewarding for me is that I can talk to so many different people and I can have these and like how many times do you even get a chance to talk to interesting people for hours at a time without being interrupted they don't it doesn't happen so for me it's been this radical education and sometimes sometimes not educational at all sometimes just fun and a lot of them have been just fun but a lot of them have been like really interesting so it's been feeding my brain all this information for like and I have like random shit in my head like I'll have a conversation with someone I'll go well that's actually because of this and then they go how the fuck do you even know that like well I had a conversation with this scientist and he explained it all to me and I just remembered that part well and the weird thing is it's also this and I never thought about it before like this but you're also providing this record of humanity right this is like all of us are struggling with hey this is my experience of the world this is my record this is what I know and you're having this parade of people come through here and everybody's given you like hey man this is what i got this is what i learned this is what i this what i think is funny or whatever it is and you you know your work has been this document of like what people have to give yeah and there's certain key components that like we will show you that there's there's there's there's like there's certain key things that you kind of have that if you want it like what do we all want right we all want to be happy.

[2042] We all want to be successful.

[2043] We all want to be fulfilled.

[2044] We all want love.

[2045] How do you get those things?

[2046] Well, to be happy, first of all, you've got to be happy with what you're doing.

[2047] And that means happy with what you're doing in terms of who are you having relationships with, who are you having friendships with?

[2048] What are you doing for a living?

[2049] Like, these are not easy questions.

[2050] It's not easy solutions.

[2051] And depending upon where you find yourself in life, when you listen to this, it can be really difficult to work your way out of the whole.

[2052] you're in.

[2053] But there's a way.

[2054] You've got to figure out the way.

[2055] The way might take you 10 years or it might take you 10 days.

[2056] Everybody's got a different way.

[2057] That's big.

[2058] You want to be happy.

[2059] You got to figure out what you enjoy doing.

[2060] Maybe you enjoy doing a lot of things.

[2061] But you got to pick one of those.

[2062] And whatever that thing is, you've got to pour yourself into that fucking thing.

[2063] you can't leave any stone unturned you can't leave any page unturned you got to you got to put it in you got to put that time in you have to if you don't you'll have regret and that's one of the saddest things you can have mistakes you can you could everybody's got those you can feel bad about failures those are good for you but you can't have regret for not putting in the work because if you if you have that then you realize you could have been something you could have been something you could have been happy, you could have been successful, you could have been fulfilled, you could have been inspired, but instead you slept in.

[2064] As you were saying that, it just struck me. It's almost like the ultimate parenting advice, right?

[2065] It's like sort of what you're telling your kid, which is find something you love, man. Like whatever it is, and go all in on that.

[2066] I mean, it's that and find somebody who loves you, who you love.

[2067] Like those are the two things.

[2068] As a dad, like, you know what I want?

[2069] forget all that success forget money like i want you to be like with somebody you love and who loves you and i want you to do something you love and just leave it on the field man the best you got yeah and i guess in a lot of ways with children in particular you they learn by example they see they learn by good example and bad example like a lot of people that i know that are clean sober uh the reason why they're clean and sober is because their parents were alcoholics or drug addicts and they don't want to have nothing to do with that shit they see the failures a lot a lot of people whose parents just were excuse makers and always negative, they don't tolerate that shit at all.

[2070] They're super positive and they're disciplined and they get after it.

[2071] And the reason why they do that is because they saw that.

[2072] The other side of it.

[2073] Yeah, they saw the fucking pitfalls of that kind of thinking and behavior.

[2074] Yeah.

[2075] You know, and this is, these things that you learn from people that are doing what they want to do, there's traits that they share in common.

[2076] And one of the big ones is focus and discipline.

[2077] I don't think you can get anywhere without it And it's hard to do Because there's a lot of times Like that Pressfield talks about in the War of Art That resistance is strong There's something about it It's like you don't want to do the things That you know you should do Well it's boring and it's repetitive It's you know you're sitting there in the batting cage And you're hitting off the tea When you're a major leaguer But like those are the guys That are the ones that are winning the batting title That are still hitting off the tea You know?

[2078] Yeah it's it's with everything man It's it's um It's with running, it's with yoga, it's with writing.

[2079] You've got to force yourself into action.

[2080] And one of the best ways I've found is to write down a list of what you're going to do today.

[2081] Write it down and make it in advance.

[2082] It's best to make it before you go to bed.

[2083] Like tomorrow, Tuesday morning, I am going to get up and I'm going to do this for an hour.

[2084] I'm going to do that for an hour.

[2085] And fucking check that list.

[2086] Because it puts you on, like merely this.

[2087] the act of committing it and putting it down sets your like, that sets a plum line for where you're going.

[2088] You can make so much more progress that way than the people that just try to like wing it.

[2089] You can wing it.

[2090] You can get a lot of places winging it.

[2091] I got pretty far in life winging it.

[2092] I winged it and half -assed it and sort of slopped it out and improvised it for like the long time.

[2093] And then at a certain point, it was like, man, this stuff is so hard.

[2094] It's so competitive.

[2095] People would give anything to do this that if you want to make a contribution, it's got to be tight.

[2096] Yeah, I started realizing that when things were important, then I was going by a schedule.

[2097] And I'm like, why don't I go by a schedule all the time?

[2098] Like when things would be important, like something was big that I was working towards, then I'd be on a schedule.

[2099] But then I'd realize, like, why don't I just do that all the time for things?

[2100] Like, that's how you get ahead.

[2101] And then when you have relaxation time, you enjoy it because you've earned it.

[2102] Man, when like Saturday rolls around, and I can put my feet up and watch fights and just have eat fucking potato chips and just kick back I enjoy this shit out of it because I actually earned it but man if I haven't earned it it feels terrible watching TV when you're fucking off and you're supposed to be doing other things you feel like a loser well people want to work you know like it there is work is a force that gives us meaning and so you know your time has been well spent if you're if you're busting your ass then that is time well spent and then it is and I think one of the challenges for me is I have a hard time spinning down and then chilling out because I'm a grinder you know I just wake up and grind grind grind but you have to like refresh you have to chill and you got to watch the fights and eat potato chips and chill out or you can't do good work all the time my wife has taught me that my wife has taught me how to go on vacations I never used to go on vacations because I used to think of going on vacations is like I travel for work I'm not going to travel somewhere and Right.

[2103] Fuck that.

[2104] But then I realized, like, there's real value and going somewhere and just shutting off, just drinking margaritas and laying on the beach and don't do a fucking thing unless you want to do a thing.

[2105] Like, hey, you know, let's throw a frisbee or let's jump in the ocean or let's get on a boat and or let's go for a hike.

[2106] Let's fucking go walk through the woods.

[2107] But just shut off sometimes.

[2108] You've got to be bored sometimes too.

[2109] You can't always just grind, grind, grind, grind, grind.

[2110] No, because I think, like, at a certain point, with a lot of this work, it's what you were talking about with improvising when the stand -up comics come in.

[2111] You do a lot of work, or what Hemingway used to say is he would write until he would get to, you know, knowing what the very next, the last sentence of the day was, he wouldn't write it.

[2112] So then he would wake up in the morning and he would know what the first sentence was.

[2113] Because it like, then you're set in sale again.

[2114] He has one of the best quotes ever that my friend Ari has on his laptop.

[2115] The first draft of everything is shit.

[2116] it's true right it's it's so good it's just letting you know man just get it out get it out and it's it's also it's it's a momentum builder right just to understand that the first draft is shit just get that first draft out and then start working on it so i got a question for you at you know the podcast for you starts as a hobby sideline it's not a job it's something you're doing that's an afterthought or and also for your tv life for your stand -up life or whatever at what point does it become like, oh, this is, this is the thing?

[2117] I don't know.

[2118] It's gradual.

[2119] It just sort of gradually happens.

[2120] But even now, it's like, it's just a part of my life.

[2121] There's a lot of shit I'm looking forward to doing it.

[2122] Like, I know this podcast is basically over.

[2123] We're three hours in.

[2124] I got a lot of shit to do.

[2125] Yeah.

[2126] I'm thinking about it right now.

[2127] You know, I'm thinking about, I didn't work out today.

[2128] I'm thinking about what I'm going to do when I work out.

[2129] I'm not going to work out until 9 o 'clock because that's when the kids.

[2130] kids go to bed.

[2131] So I've got ideas on that.

[2132] So I've got writing I got to do.

[2133] I'm not going to do that until after that.

[2134] So I'm not going to go to bed till like one.

[2135] So I have all these things that I have to get in the sauna tonight.

[2136] I have a lot of shit to do.

[2137] But we were locked in for a minute there when the world falls away and none of that stuff matters, right?

[2138] And that's when you're in it.

[2139] And the only reason why I'm even thinking about it now is because I know that the time is winding down and that just, you know, this is the schedule.

[2140] We've done the work.

[2141] But we when you think about like upcoming projects that you I mean you've already got this nice body of work all these you know really well done things that you can say look I've got these these are here like when you look at a project do you think of your past work and think that it has to measure up to that do you just concentrate on what it is and just pour yourself into it do you do you do look at your past body or does it have any impact on what you're planning on doing i don't want to repeat anything right i don't like there's a point at which it's i could keep doing the same thing over and over again and in some ways hollywood want you to do that because it's like okay we know you're proven you're in this lane just keep doing this and make money but i um i don't know what the thing is until it's there when snoop calls and it's like hey i want to like i want to i want to i want to do the best work of my life.

[2142] I don't know what that means, but I know, like, dude, I am there.

[2143] And so I never would have told you that I wanted to do that.

[2144] That wasn't on my list.

[2145] And as soon as I heard it, I'm like, whatever it takes, I'm going to the end of the earth with you, Snoop.

[2146] So I think it's staying open and letting the world bring you the thing.

[2147] Staying open, letting the world bring you the thing.

[2148] And then your world of, you know, making films about bizarre humans, it's a never -ending, never -ending supply.

[2149] It's a carnival.

[2150] Life is a carnival.

[2151] And like, and the crazies get my number one way or another, you know.

[2152] And like, and God bless them because this is what I have to give, you know.

[2153] This is like, this is my record of humanity.

[2154] So it's the best I can do.

[2155] Well, you're fulfilled, right?

[2156] You're doing what you're supposed to be doing.

[2157] That's all person could ask for in life.

[2158] Doing what you're supposed to be doing.

[2159] That's right.

[2160] Let's wrap up with that.

[2161] Done.

[2162] Beautiful.

[2163] Thank you, sir.

[2164] Appreciate you, brother.

[2165] Appreciate you.

[2166] Thank you very much.

[2167] Excellent.

[2168] Goodbye, ladies and gentlemen, non -binary folks.

[2169] Thank you.