Joe Rogan Experience #2280 - Peter Berg

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day those black C for CS are we up all right we're rolling those those are a lot is this too much am I am I making a rookie mistake I love them they're too good though they're there there's a lot of sugar in them they're trying to make one with no sugar they're pretty close but right now that that's got a ton of sugar in it but damn it's good yeah they taste good we did the full

thing today dude thanks for the workout my pleasure F thanks for the work you're you're a beast for anyone that doesn't know you are a [ __ ] beast and I suspected you would be you know that's why I wanted to work out um and I was smart enough and I told you right away I'm not going to keep up with you um but man you go hard for you did a lot of the things though you did all the stuff you know like and stuff that you'd never done before like windmills and those windmills

were like you could really get in trouble with the windmill yeah for people that don't know what that is you certainly can with heavy weight yeah it's something but it's all those things like the push-ups and body weight squats it's all just to you have to build to it I love the way you warm up you know because I'm the same way um I do a long warmup every day uh and my buddy Ari got me into it and and just try and stretch absolutely everything and I was telling you I got thrown off a

horse in Africa a month ago and when I I was in the process of getting thrown off and I was like in the middle of the air and I'm about to come down and I'm like oh [ __ ] this is going to be a problem and I thought about those warm-ups and I landed and rolled and didn't hurt myself so I think those are really smart yeah if we could just appreciate when your body works well without having to be injured it would be so nice right cuz you really only think about your God

I hope my body heals when you get injured if you get [ __ ] up then you think God I can't wait to get health again but if you just appreciate and the best way to appreciate your body working well is to keep it working well yeah man is to work on it like stretch out work out lift weights get some cardio in do those stuff that's uncomfortable like stretching I like that you started off your workout with a nice long stretch we had a good stretch yeah and a good ice bath man yours is

colder than mine that blue cube is brutal because it's always running it's like a flowing river yeah that's hard great a great way to start appreciate it gets you fired up man and also like we're saying your workouts done your your day can you you're free you don't have to think about doing it just get it out of the way early you're good well in the and the sauna and the way you approach the way I think you appro approach all of it is kind of a meditation yeah you know and I I know that

that's probably really an important part of your creative process it is of mine when I'm writing or directing to be able to have that time alone uh to and it's a moving meditation and I think one of the secrets to your success in my opinion is that you know how to take that time for yourself lock in Focus get mentally and physically ready because it's not easy to do what you do every day and to be this this present so I respect it so much well thank you very much well I'm obviously I'm a huge

fan of what you do and [ __ ] American priv evil is so good dude thank you man I feel like you made it just for me I've been waiting for a realistic Wild West series like that forever and that is I'll just say it right now that's the best one that's ever been made is the best representation of the Wild West that's ever been made it's so good dude it's so brutal my wife checked out after episode one did she yeah she like I can't cuz we watch we watch shows before we go to

bed and we're in the middle of severance which is excellent really good show and sance is you know I mean there's some brutal moments but it's just really complicated it's really engaging you got pay very close atten really good show and then I said hey baby we got to watch uh America priv eval I go Peter's coming on please sit and watch with me this a couple weeks ago do I the first episode she's like Jesus CHR what the [ __ ] are you doing to me it's like 10 o'clock at night I got to

go to bed I can't like people getting tomahawked in the [ __ ] head and I got to go to sleep yeah yeah yeah uh if I have to call her or send her flowers or anything I will I've had to send a few people flowers and give them like uh massages and stuff like therapy uh treatments because it's traumatized because you did it right that's why cuz you did it right you did it like it really was it was a [ __ ] barbaric time in a barbaric place and it's never really been other

than 1883 Taylor Sheridan's series which is also excellent excellent excellent he he did a fantastic job and uh how crazy is it that like Faith Hill and um what's the other guy's name Tim Tim mcra mcra they're [ __ ] great actors sure Tim was in Friday Night Lights do you remember him in the movie he played uh the father like the mean alcoholic father who used to beat up his kid and Tim Tim was great in Friday Tim very good actor isn't that crazy someone who's a great singer can all just slide into this

other thing and be amazing at it he he's an artist I mean he's a really deep thinking deep feeling artistar and Taylor Taylor Taylor Sheridan has a knack for getting Great Performances out of people like mcra or did you see Jerry Jones his cameo in lman which I think is the best Cameo ever have you seen that yet when episode is it on I I'm not sure because I don't know each episode but he's got uh Sheridan has a sequence where Jerry Jones basically playing himself just tells the story of how he got into business

and how he started up and it's just beautifully done and Sheridan's very good at at getting people to to to do cameos and and pulling it out of him I think that that show was like Billy Bob Thorton was built for that show like he was born for it yeah that he's that's his perfect role he's so goddamn good in that show in land man yeah in land man he's so God I mean he's been good in a million things but in landman it's like you just believe he's that guy yeah man you just believe

but American B evil back to that what what uh inspired you to do such a realistic interpretation do you remember a movie called Jeremiah Johnson did you ever see that with Robert Redford yeah yeah long time ago so Redford plays this city man who goes out west looking for gold and ends up sort of stuck somewhere around Montana and and is trying to survive out there when the Indians first find him he's so inept he's trying to catch a fish in a frozen River with his hands I mean it's just he's completely inept that they

don't even waste an arrow on them they don't kill him and by the end of the film he's a warrior and he's learned how to survive and he marries a Native American woman and his wife gets killed and he goes on a a Vengeance spree and kills a whole bunch of people and ends up getting this incredible respect um from the Native Americans and my dad took me to C Jeremiah Johnson and that movie always stuck with me um and I'm good friends with Taylor Sheridan and we work together a lot and I obviously know

everything he's doing and I kind of wanted to see if I could play in that space But you know he's doing it so well and so specifically I kind of thought well what if I just did something that was really about the survival and I like to call it inch by inch filmmaking where you think about how hard it would have been just to go 50 ft and take a piss and how there might have been 15 different things that could have killed you on the way to taking that piss instead of just jumping through

those 50 things let's let's really try and stretch it out and try and show people and capture the brutality of momentto moment living back in you know that part of America in 1850s um and you're used to doing films so is what is the process like transitioning from something that's two or three hours to something that's long form you have all this time and multiple episodes to lay out the story but you're doing it with the quality of an excellent film everything starts with good health that's why ag1 is a great addition to any morning

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habit for 2025 so try ag1 for yourself and right now ag1 is offering new customers a free $76 gift when you subscribe you'll get a welcome kit a bottle of D3 K2 and five free travel packs in your first box so make sure you check out drink a1.com Joo Rogan that's drink a1.com Joe Rogan check it out yeah it was it was a massive uh job you know a a movie a big movie is generally like 85 day shoot um American Prime Evil was 145 day shoot and I had the um one of my my

my ideas and with Marco Smith who who wrote the episodes and very talented was let's not shoot in sound stages let's not you know make parking lots look like forests and but let's go up into the mountains and in this case we went up uh onto some different Indian reservations in New Mexico and we're like let's really go out there for 145 days let's do it you know we were talk this is all prior to us going out and actually doing it and it's kind of like be careful what you ask for like we you're

actually really [ __ ] on the mountain for 145 days and there's lightning storms and snow storms and wind storms and we had rattlesnakes everywhere and we had to have all these dudes going around pulling the snakes out of the um out of the uh the rocks and stunt men breaking ribs Joe Schilling was with us every day I think we killed Joe five times uh thanks Joe uh I saw tapate Fletcher I was telling you too episode two we only killed tapate once but thanks tapate for that I love that dude but these stun

men were so tough and you know breaking bones and all kinds of horrible things but the creative uh experience of getting to do basically six movies at once you know because I directed all of them um and being able to go that deep in characters and to be able to bring in elements like Brigham Young and the Mormon religion and have big themes circling around just very visceral violent moments um as a filmmaker is [ __ ] awesome and it's it's a it's different you know because it's not directing an episode of a television show

is its own experience but that's very quick directing a movie is really really wonderful and very obviously creatively demanding but that's this is six movies all at once yeah and having to keep that in my head um and kind of fig figure out how to keep myself functioning and not wasting energy and you know I built a gym in my house in New Mexico with a nice bath and a sauna and I'd get up at 4 every morning and just have that time for myself to keep myself fit and you know mentally and physically ready

to to to go at it because when you're when you're I'm sorry to interrupt you but when you're in the middle of a project and you're doing your workouts and your s are you just like constantly going over the show in your head uh yeah I mean I I try to I I do go over it but in more of an abstract way I I'm a a bit of an improvisational filmmaker meaning I don't like to have everything super planned out I I think kind of the way you conduct your podcasts you you have some

ideas and then you just sort of allow whatever happens to happen and I I try know what I'm going to do that day you know particularly with American primeval because you know we had so many big battles and stunts and you know kind of dangerous complex film making that you there has to be some plan but even within that I try to Loosely think about what I want to do and then get out there uh and and and let the actors kind of start doing what they do and see what kind of creative Vibe gets

going and a lot the cameramen you know I just shoot handheld cameras so we have a lot of flexibility uh with how we can work and capture and my feeling is rather than plan it all out go out there knowing kind of what you want to accomplish but allow kind of creativity allow that kind of divine magic to enter the process which um can kind of be freaky for like my bosses at Netflix because they're spending a whole lot of money and they're like what are we doing today and I'm like I don't really know

what we're doing today but we're going to do something um but I've done it well they're pretty good at staying out of the way aren't they they actually are uh Fant fantastic about it and and you know I I have to give um you know my boss there's a woman named Bella bajar Netflix who and people talk a lot of [ __ ] about Netflix I'm not one of them I mean they're G giving so many people so much work and they you know once once you convince them that you have a vision they let

you do it and yeah um she was great and she let me do it and um you know was interesting because there was a scene in uh in the second episode of American primeval where uh a Native American cuts the throats of five women who spoiler alert sorry spoiler alert I guess sort of there there's a lot other bad things that happen but there is this scene right and you know Netflix is a very busy company they're making a lot of stuff and we were deep in the edit process and I got a call from

Bella the the boss my boss and she's like I want to see this show and I'm I'm like well you it's your show so please come in and you know it's hard for her to keep track of all the shows and all the scripts and I was impressed that she wanted to come in and so she came in uh to the edit room and she's like I'm going to watch one episode it's kind of a big deal she's you know very influential person in in our world and so it's me and Hugo the editor and

Bella comes in and we show we're showing her the first episode and we're just sitting in this kind of dark screening room and I have no idea what she's going to say or do and it's pretty viol and it ends and she goes I want to see another one and I'm like okay we'll started playing the second episode and we're getting right to the moment where spoiler alert these women are about to have their throats cut and I'm starting to have a a full [ __ ] panic attack because I'm pretty sure that she doesn't

know what's coming up right and and Hugo the editor is kind of looking at me like should I stop it I'm like and I I really didn't know what to do and we and I we get to the moment where this event happens and my body heat was was literally Rising I'm ready for her to like fire me and take the show and I don't and the scene happens and the girls get their throats cut and she says stop and we stop and she goes Peter I can sense you're concerned about my reaction let me

tell you something I'm here for this violence I'm not afraid of this violence as long as you make it emotional and connect me to the emotion do it and and I'm like thank you Bella and she left and she allowed us to explore the kind of grit and intensity that people have reacted to and I tip my hat to herur for that you know it's um it's not you you need that kind of support to get something like uh American Prim eval made today because it's not you know it's not your grandmother's Western no it's

critical that you do it that way because if people want to really know what that was like if you read the historical accounts of what happened that's what happened for sure it happened that way and you know it was horrific one of the things that you know a lot of people have have talked about and I had you know the LDS church issued his statement sort of critiquing the show and critiquing me um which I appreciate and I understand why um members of the Mormon community would be offended by the portrayal of Brigham Young um

and The Meadows ma the Mountain Meadows Massacre which was the event that you know we use as kind of our inciting incident um for the first episode which was a real Massacre that the Mormons committed on a group of uh Pioneers who were heading out west were a a Mormon militia with some um uh P Indians attacked and murdered about 140 men women and children and we present that uh in the in the film and we present Bram young in the film and most many Mormons it's interesting start reading all the debate about it but

a lot of Mormons were saying yeah this is exactly what happened and this is a part of our history and no other Mormons particularly the the seniors in Salt Lake City were saying this is not what happened this is not fair but what what I find interesting about the Mormon uh church and and about kind of how we present it is I've had a lot of people come to me and go dude I never knew the Mormons were such Savages so gangster they were [ __ ] gangster briam young was in my opinion a gangster

a Survivor a warrior and for anyone who follows um Mormon history you know they started in Upstate New York with this young kid Joseph Smith who found these tablets and basically rewrote the Bible and started getting this following and then they moved to Missouri and they got popular and then was an extermination order and was kill all the Mormons so they fled to Illinois and and tried to survive up there at this place called navu that was going to be their you know peaceful place to live and and Joseph Smith was murdered and they were

run out of uh Illinois and Bram Young led these dudes men and women on foot across the plains in the winter to Salt Lake Valley which was this desolate Wasteland and he said oh we'll stay here they'll never come for us here and they started coming and Brigham Young basically said [ __ ] it we're not taking it anymore he built his own Army the navu legion and he said we're we're staying here we won't mess with you but if you come after us we will fight and that that point I think is interesting and

I think Brigham Young who survived more longer than all of them and if you go to Salt Lake City he did a pretty good job right like that's a big city man and it's a great City and and I don't know I I I respect the Mormon religion I respect bringham young and I feel like we make him look like a gangster in American primeval and um I don't know he's he's a Survivor and I respect that well this is the reality of historical figures you're you're talking about a different time in the world and

it was a particularly barbaric time and if you wanted to survive this is what you had to do and this is we're not talking about the United States in 2025 we we're talking about the wild west and and you're talking about A persecuted group of religious people like if you want to survive you want your children to survive like you got to fight you got to take up arms that's just how it is like you know the story about the Mormons in Mexico right to remind me well uh there's Mormon sects in Mex meico that

moved there when they made uh polygamy illegal yeah yeah and this was uh homeboy from um Massachusetts Mitt Romney his family is from Mexico his father was born in Mexico and his father could never be president because he wasn't born in America then he was born here in America ran for president the whole deal became governor of Massachusetts but there's still these huge groups in Mexico that are armed to the [ __ ] tits because they're always constantly battling with the cartel and there was a series of murders a few years back where a woman

and children like family were slaughtered and was some confusion as to whether or not the cartel targeted them or whether it was a case of mistaken identity or what happened but you know there there's been documentaries about them they're [ __ ] they live in armed compounds the Mormons in Mexico so it's a similar sort of a situation with them in Mexico now what I mean the the polygamy was a thing and you know we we do touch upon that a bit in in primeval I think Brigham Young had 40 odd wives and that how

do you [ __ ] keep up with two I I don't know I don't understand how someone could have two wives that that's a whole another conversation I mean I I have a friend who uh lives in in Saudi Arabia and a long time ago I was I was in Saudi Arabia doing some work and IID asked him because in Saudi you can have multiple wives Saudi Saudi men and ID asked him about that and sort of with like wow that's amazing multiple wives that that's so cool and we were leaving we were leaving Riad

airport and uh he was walking with me and there was a man in front of us and he was holding like five suitcases and he could barely walk and there were four women around him and kids everywhere and he just looked like he was about to collapse and fall face forward on the ground at the airport in Riyad and my friend looked at me and said Pete this is the reality of what having Five Wives looks like uh on the ground if you want to see what what it really feels like so they think about

Bram young having you know 45 wives um uh okay good good luck I guess right um yeah uh but that that was one of the the the issues the polygamy that people that were non- Mormons back in 1850s were using to attack the religion and um you know that was something that was the the polygamy has obviously been since outlawed and the the church has cut itself uh off from that policy but um you know the Mormons were the whole idea that this kid Joseph Smith I believe he was a young teenager 15 14 when

he and his buddy walked into these Woods in like 18 late 1830s right like it was 1820 okay when did he um find when did Joseph Smith supposedly find these golden I believe it was but either way 56 wives Bram young had 50 c there's there's a photo of 16 he forgot about see I didn't want to I didn't want to oversell it so I undersell it I kind of knew it was in the 50s he had 56 wives 46 kids only only four excuse me only 46 kids made it to adulthood that's part of

why oh wow only 46 um he's basically gingas Khan of Utah but 1823 he was visited by an Angel who directed him a buried book 1823 and how old was he like 14 so but so this kid at 14 and comes out of the woods and says the angel came and told me that the Bible's almost right but it's not quite right so I'm going to rewrite it which he did the Book of Mormon and look at where we are today it was not that long ago right and and in the course of that Journey

from Joseph Smith coming out of the woods to where we are today with Brigham Young University and the you know beautiful city of Salt Lake City Utah um there was a lot of Bloodshed and Joseph Smith was murdered Brigham Young uh fought in another interesting theory that isn't proven but it's I believe it it it it holds is what saved the Mormons because in 1857 when you had the Mormon Wars you know Brigham Young was fighting the President Buchanan and when the military was coming after him in 1857 and he was holed up and prepared

to fight in Salt Lake City and Buchanan wanted him out and then right around 1858 1859 little thing called the Civil War popped off and the entire focus of the US military was not on Brigham Young and Utah but it was on fighting the Civil War the Utah church was able and Brigham Young was able to grow the the Mormon church and survive and and Thrive and he was able to politically negotiate you know a place in the government so that by the time the Civil War ended Brigham Young was deeply entrenched and was you

know able to lead the Mormon church to the great power that it is today I think if the Civil War hadn't occurred there would be no Mormonism in the United States wow that's crazy what if for two it his turn of events and I'm going to probably get ripped on for that one but I believe it's supportable yeah you're going to get ripped for everything whatever that's just how it is Mormons are the nicest people my next door neighbors used to be Mormons they're the nicest [ __ ] people I agree I I completely agree

and they're so I know a ton of Mormons because I know a bunch of people in Utah and Salt Lake City is a Utah is a beautiful beautiful beautiful state Salt Lake City is a cool City and like I'm down with the Sundance Film Festival so I'm down with the whole state yeah no I love Utah but it is a fascinating story it's a f and it's you know look they have a great sense of humor because the Book of Mormon when when uh Matt Stone and Trey Parker did that musical they took out a

full page ad in the Playbook so they're like if you want to know more about Mormonism come visit like find out the real thing so instead of protesting and suing and attacking them and they just took out a [ __ ] hat so when I was doing I think that shows incredible character for sure for sure cuz that [ __ ] you've seen the Book of Mormon right hilarious and pretty brutal and they're like well if you like you like to find out more about Mormonism yeah I can't figure out like I when I was

doing my research for uh American primeval I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormon Church gave me a tour and and you know I told them what the film was about and at the Mountain Meadows Massacre was in the book or was it going to be in our show and they took me to um the theater have you ever been to the theater the Mormon theater in Salt Lake City holds like 20,000 people it is the most beautiful incredible theater um where they have you know weekly you know events and meetings and they took

me in there and there's an huge pipe organ and I had a private you know concert with their organist yeah it's that wow look at that boys uh and they and I sat by myself in the in the center of that theater and and you see the pipe organs uh and they they gave me a a private you know concert and then they took me into the museum and showed me you know the history of the Mormon church and I told them about The Meadows Massacre which you know I've taken heat for in the show

and at the end of the tour there a bookstore um in the in the in the museum the Mormon Museum in Salt Lake and the book Mountain Meadows Massacre by this guy Turley was there and I'm like I want to buy this book I read the book and I'm like oh for sure we're putting this this story in our film and it was for sale in the Mormon bookstore oh and I met with the author my Turley who then took me to the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and he had written the book with

the um support of the Mormon church to get their side of the story out did you film at the actual site no we didn't that was in the actual site was in utop but I went and toward it you filmed in New Mexico yeah we filmed we filmed everything in uh uh on different reservations around Santa um but if you go to the the site of the Mormon Meadows Massacre in Utah the Mormons have built a big Memorial there honoring you know 130 Pioneers from Arkansas who were were killed there and the Mormons have have

o have owned this event and they were very willing to talk about it which is kind of like them buying a full page ad in in Book of Mormon they're like you know we know you're going to make a film about the The Meadows Massacre that's probably going to be inflammatory in some ways however come visit us we want to meet you we want to show you we want to play music uh for you and um I don't I had an incredible time with Mormons that were you know involved with us doing the research for

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new customers only so what is the backlash though if they've admitted that this massacre took place and it's a historical it's part of the historical record the book is for sale in this [ __ ] theater what is the backlash the biggest the biggest single issue if you get into the weeds and I think it's a interesting point of debate is whether or not Brigham Young knew and authorized this massacre and the way the massacre played out in real life was different how we did it in the film in the film we did it in

you know one swell move like it just happens and you know we filmed it in one shot and it's you know pretty intense visceral very fast event and then it's over in reality this this Wagon Train was surrounded by the Mormon militia the navu legion and some of these Native Americans and it went on for about four or five days and the Mormons dressed up as Native Americans this is where it gets kind of some Mormons aren't thrilled that we pointed out the fact that they were trying to put the blame on the Native Americans

so they literally Mormons dressed up as Indians to confuse the pioneers and in case there were survivors to say it wasn't Mormons it was the Native Americans that did this so they don't love that but what what the Mormons claim or summon the Mormon Church claim is that during the three or four days that The Siege took place before the actual Massacre and the details of the massacre are really [ __ ] up because the Mormons pretended they were accepting a surrender uh so they went in with white flags and they said okay the men

Walk This Way the women and children we're going to walk you to safety because the Indians are going to kill you Mormon said we're here to save you so they started walking them out and then on someone's signal they just killed everyone really bad um but the issue of whether Brigham Young knew about it or didn't know about it we imply that he knew about it we never say that he authorized it but we imply that he did know about it and what many of the the the Defenders of Brigham Young will say is that

there was a letter written where Brigham Young said do not harm the these Pioneers don't don't kill them but the letter was sent by horse while the massacre while the event was already occurring so I've had people say he knew that that letter wasn't going to make it there in time he was covering himself oh hey I wrote a letter I knew it couldn't get there in time but I wrote a letter so there's plausible deniability no one knows it's hard to believe if you really start getting into this and obviously I did I know

it's not on the top of everyone's list of things to give a [ __ ] about but it's really hard for me to believe that in 1857 a group of bringham young soldiers would on act unilaterally on their own and commit a crime that's horrible without somebody approving it it's hard it's hard for me to yeah to imagine but um so that's the single issue that tends to um you know if if I do what and I really try not to like um my girlfriends turned me onto Reddit I never even really knew what it

was oh my God like I don't like what like like Reddit is [ __ ] crazy yeah um I was talking to uh you know Jack Carr right you know and he's he's getting into you know making movies and he's doing all this cool stuff at the terminal list and I think he's a great guy and he was talking to me about um reviews because was the first time he was ever getting reviewed right and you know any filmmaker who says they don't read the reviews is lying okay they're just [ __ ] lying and

and they we do read reviews and we care and they hurt you know and and he's like I guess he'd gotten you know read something he didn't like on um the terminal list and he's just called me he's like how do you handle this [ __ ] I want to kill this I can't I me and he's freaking out and I'm I mean I'm not he he wasn't really freaking up that bad but he was pissed and I'm like Jack you know welcome to the world of you know what we do you people are going

to are going to talk I'm like I'm like you don't understand what like before Reddit and and comments and all the things back when we first put movies out man there were three critics that mattered like when I first started making movies there was this guy Kenneth Tran in uh in the LA Times there was Janet Maslin in the New York Times and then there was cisal and Ebert right thumbs up and like they had so much power right so you you'd make a movie and you'd spend you know tens of millions of dollars and

you put your heart and soul and you like we never try to make bad movies right like that's that's never the goal we're always like you know we want to win some it's hard to make a good movie but you put all your your heart and soul into these movies and then it's [ __ ] three critics that control your fate right and I was telling car about um you know my first movie was called Very Bad Things it was about this bachelor party that goes Haywire that's a great movie appreciate it thank you I

love that movie so that movie got hands down the worst viw ever given to a movie in the history of film reviews please don't pull it up right now but feel free anyone listening Kenneth teran's review of my film very bad things in the Los Angeles Times okay I read this review I literally vomit like people talk about vomiting like I don't if you've ever vomited when something bad happens I puked I went into like shock I'm like he tried to destroy my career and he like it was and so I'm telling Jack and I'm

going pull it up right now pull it up and he starts reading it and he's like oh my God oh my God I go don't [ __ ] tell me about bad reviews okay because I got the worst and Kenna Teran who like after I'd gotten that review I was in a bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles getting drunk with a couple of my friends and Kenna Teran was in the bar and I got and started moving towards him like I was in a blackout rage and and and my friend Joe and

and uh Mike Mendelson held me back because I was going to get him you know and and for for three films after that Kenneth tan he just had it out for me this guy hated me and finally on I believe it was either Friday Night Lights or Lone Survivor he reluctantly gave me a good review but it was a more like a broken clock is right a day but like nowadays like as I said to Jack it's like okay if you the the crazy thing about if you are focusing on how your your work is

being perceived and it matters and it does matter any like I say anyone who says it doesn't I think is kind of lying don't you think it matters more about the audience than about the critics 100% perspective on critics is that no one wants to be a Critic generally they wanted to be creative but but they're not good enough for sure to contribute they don't have anything to contribute and and they're they're using a different standard that doesn't really apply to just like the working human being it just wants to be entertained and that's why

I said to Jack I go dude like like you know we have Rotten Tomatoes right which is a way of you know critics if if you get 61% good you get a fresh tomato if not you're you know you got a Rotten Tomato and that that sucks okay I've got a Rotten Tomato that sucks oh I got a fresh tomato oh that's great but now they have the audience score right next to the critic score yeah and that's the one that I said Jack don't look at the critics look at what your audience is saying

and that's when you know like I learned about Reddit and all that stuff and I'm like [ __ ] the critics I'm down with this Reddit [ __ ] because you get such interesting conversations um and they're much more thoughtful I think um and they've taken away the you know and and I'm not [ __ ] on critics I get it you want to be a Critic whatever you know I I do like the um the the the quote about critics and life doesn't go to the critic it's the man in the arena I like

that quote and I believe in that um and I've used that to justify my mood when I get a bad review I'll just read the man in the arena over and over until I feel good is that Theodore Roosevelt yeah yeah yeah um it's a great quote great quote um fantastic and it's true it is absolutely true that that you know to to do to do people that do um you know uh I was just talking to to Dana White uh and and about something that I actually want to mention to you but and the

the my my love of a guy like Dana is the the doer of it all the guy who just says I don't care what the critic says I'm going this way I am [ __ ] going this way and if I win and you're with me on the ride you're part of me if if I lose and you're still with me you're my friend if not I don't give a [ __ ] I'm going to do it again and I have I have so much respect for that and and I'll tell you another interesting thing

about my business that never uh uh it never I I it always surprises me how real it is but when you make something a movie or you something whether it's American premier of almost anything I've done and I don't know if you've ever experienced this you know you put yourself on the line so intensely and and you believe in it with your heart and your soul and you go for it and as it's getting ready to come out there's this weird thing that happens where everybody separates from you and you're the one that's kind of

now you're about to be judged it's going to be determined to be successful or a failure it's going to get reviewed and every everyone's kind of like good luck Pete good luck and I could like like the the day or two before it comes out all the people like and and and this is when you know who's got your back okay CU there's a few you look around and like wait well all these people were with me for this journey and I'm all by my [ __ ] where where did everybody go and it's you

know like my sister my best friend Ari my dog my son there's a few people who are really right there and then and then when it comes out and it works man you have a lot of friends and and and that's you know just one of the things that you have to do um in this business and it's why the critics [ __ ] them and it's why Dana and people like that you who do you know create it and build it and make it and it it's real you definitely need feedback because you definitely

need to know if you're on the right track but you can get lost in feedback you can get lost in positive feedback too you get lost you can get lost in people approving you and and enjoy you can get drunk in it I don't read anything I don't read anything about me no reddits ever nothing I don't read anything I just I get it like sometimes I'm good sometimes I'm not as good that's I get it I do my best that's all I can do and I feel like if you're really self-critical which I am

and you're you're objective and you you analyze yourself and you and you're brutally honest you have to be brutally honest about what you've done and how it is like could you have done it better is there anything did you cut Corners did you yeah and if you don't if you don't cut corners and if you do your best and you really prepare that's all you can do you just do your very best and if you haven't done your best that's when the critics really if you know that you kind of slacked off or you weren't

focused or there's something that was wrong with what you get for the money like that that can often I agree with that the do it for the money is a real real one you know I mean that's the the downfall of Robert Jiro yeah right he needs money for divorces you know he's got marital problems and so I spending a lot of money and he starts doing these fantasy movies with Michelle feifer and like bizarre [ __ ] where he's like like what is Robert DeNiro one of the greatest actors of all time doing these

[ __ ] goofy ass movies yeah you get extended I I agree with you that like what I always say is I do a lot of research for my films and you know have went to Iraq with Navy SEAL platoon and lived on an oil rig and went back to high school for Friday Night Lights and I found that if I whenever I put that work in and I put that research in um and I really really with the exception of very bad things which was a fantasy about a bachelor party on Haywire which Kenneth

Ren didn't like it it did it did hurt me it did that review but I was younger um but if if I do stay true to my instincts and my passion and I follow it a the work seems to connect much much better and I don't I don't feel if somebody doesn't like it or wants to talk about it or debate it okay it's I don't it doesn't hurt me yeah that's experience right I think so yeah yeah and anytime I've done a job for the money and there have been a couple it's it's backfired

horrifically and the money was never worth it right um the the the the the reviews did Sting worse um because you agreed with them yeah they were right I was lazy I didn't give a [ __ ] I was you know I I cared I still I didn't phone it in but I wasn't locked in right and that's the difference right yeah and I think one of the reasons that you don't have to read your [ __ ] is because you know you're locked in you just are and that's why you're you're connecting uh um

and and and lo locking and and I say it to filmmakers now because so kids are so confused young kids don't want to become filmmakers you know that they they think they're you know they're going to work hard and they're going to make these movies and they're going to put their heart and soul into them and people are going to watch them and then they go in and they see Tik Tok videos that are getting you know 400 Mill million likes and someone's just you know live streaming them like making toast like they're like wait

a minute what the [ __ ] is happening and I say look all you can do is control your passion your work your your discipline yeah and and believe in something and put the work in and I believe that the results you know will will take care of themselves um but it's it's weird you know for for filmmakers to and to try and figure out how how to what's going to penetrate and what's not going to penetrate and yeah I remember when uh when I did that that series about uh opioids painkiller and you know

that pretty heavy issue and we worked really hard on that and I was very very proud of it and you know we came out number one on Netflix and we were number one for like six seven days around the world and on the eighth day we were number two and the number one show was a documentary made on cell phone footage about the Johnny Depp Amber herd divorce trial where people were just in the parking lots and that was the number one show on Netflix in the world and I'm like whoa wow like you know

they probably made that for $25,000 if that and it that everything is sort of there's this great parody now and I'm like and it's confusing but I'm like dude you just have to work harder if you're not telling the truth you're going to have a a harder time you you can't be in the business of getting the most attention because uh human beings are easily distracted easily amused we like a lot of things that have zero quality and just because we're watching it doesn't mean it resonates with us just because you're watching the Amber herd

trial doesn't mean it's changing the way you feel about things and really entertaining you and and not just entertaining you but stimulating you in in a way like wow like that was a [ __ ] masterful piece of Cinema you know there's there's a difference you know and yeah there's going to be a bunch of people that's just watch people unbox cell phones or eat octopus you know there's like there's weird videos that get a lot of likes but you're not in the business of attention you're in the business of art yeah and um I

feel like when it comes to resp paying attention to comments and critics I feel like if you're locked in and if you're doing your best if you don't if you're one of those people that don't need to be checked on some people need to be checked on some people get off the rails they get a little full of themselves and they need a little something to just like set them back you need someone to say that one sucked like God damn it and then you work harder but but if you're working as hard as you

can this is my advice that I give comedians when it comes to comments and things like that and and negativity you only have so much attention and think of your atten attention as if it was a a number like you have 100 units of attention now if you're spending 30 units paying attention to comments and negative articles and criticism that's 30 units you can't use for something that you love that's thir and then also it probably bleeds into your thoughts when you're doing those things that you do love particularly like devastating negative reviews and comments

and things that are like really hurt you that hurt your feelings take a lot of numbers takes a lot of numbers it's just bandwidth you're you're robbing yourself of your ability to do the things that you love you're robbing your yourself of your ability to pay attention to your family your ability to to contact your friends and reach out and and to be present CU you're thinking oh my God I can't believe he hated my movie oh my God I can't believe you know I bombed oh my God I can't believe this podcast sucked whatever

it is you you're robbing yourself you can only do your best and if you're doing if you're not doing your best you probably need those comments you need something to wake you the [ __ ] up and get locked in but if you're locked in you don't want it you should know I know if I talk too much I know if I interrupt too much I know and I'll I'll drive home I'm like I hate it you don't need you don't need to be reminded of I don't need it I [ __ ] hate me

I'm my number one critic so I don't pay attention and this is something that I had to figure out over the years but I when when I knocked it down to a formula of attention bandwidth that's when I really understood it because I'm like okay the the times even distractions like the times that I'm spending just scrolling through instagramming looking at nonsense like that hour is a valuable hour to me I could have been doing like real good things with that hour where I feel good about it or I get nothing just just distraction just

nothing which is fine sometimes if you're on a [ __ ] airplane or something like that you got nothing to do like who cares is it really ever fine do you think I think it's okay sometimes because barely barely as a comedian I think there's a value in having your thumb on the pulse of culture and even the chaotic you know [ __ ] unboxing videos and food and stupid [ __ ] and people just sticking their ass out right and insta hose like there's there's a value in keeping your thumb on it you just

have to know when your thumb's getting burnt I don't think there's of value in insta hose I don't I don't I actually don't and I've I've gotten pretty good at like just removing that from my life but it I was challenging the boxing okay yeah people putting [ __ ] in boxes maybe eating eating asparagus I guess I do enjoy cooking videos I I think there's value in that I love watching chefs prepare food where do you stand on and this is something I talk to to a lot of writers and filmmakers about like just

being quiet is really important and and being for me the most creative experiences I've ever had have come far away from any stimulation from any controlled thinking from allowing ideas to come to have like yeah like the Divi the Divine Spirit the angels that are creativity that that require a certain amount of quiet and space for those to to emerge at least for me they do yeah uh and I try to make space cuz I so agree with the band with and you're you're right but more than anything just turning it all off yes can

be so inspiring for me creatively yeah one of the most disappointing things that I've ever done the most dis some of the most disappointing things is when I sit down from my computer to write and I wind up looking at my phone and I just scroll and [ __ ] and then I start writing but distracted then I get an email or a text message comes through I'm like oh yeah I'll text him and I'm just distracting myself and then I realized like after an hour and a half scone I just [ __ ] wasted

an hour and a half that I could have written something that could have been a new brilliant bit it could have been a new thing that I'm really excited about instead I just [ __ ] off yeah so my my creative uh process like I just I just wrote a script um that'll be my next film and I wrote it in a very locked in Zone I I try to find a way of locking myself into a a pattern when I'm writing but it involves the the key for me is getting up about 4:45 at

the latest but usually right around I I'm crazy about it so I'll set my alarm for 5:45 to the same song every morning that wakes me up this script was Van Morrison and from I will go right I'll take a piss and then I'll get a cup of coffee and then I'll go right to my writing room with no phone no stimulation nothing until I put in you know usually about 2 and 1 half to three hours of just pure mental focus no distraction no conversation no news no phone no nothing why do you like

to do it in the morning because I think when you I actually um like studying writers and their writing habits I believe that um you know if you've had a good sleep a sober sleep um and an intentioned sleep meaning you go to bed with some plan of what you want to write tomorrow so I want to write I'm making a film about Marines I want to write um The Landing at okanawa uh in World War II which is part of the story I know I'm going to write the actual Landing scene I go to

bed with that intention I might even write that intention down you wake up your mind is like at at its most fertile it's like a calm Pond you know like a mountain pond that's absolutely flat and like glass and reflective and and beautiful and in the morning it's at its most calm your mind and then I believe that every bit of stimulation you put into it is like a pebble or a rock being dropped into that water until the water starts getting all churned and that's what happens to our minds by you know 11:00 in

the morning if you've been you know plugged in and communicating your mind is just a [ __ ] feral you know boiling uh cauldron of acid this is how I think of it so I like early morning super calm I confine the ideas and I tend to if I lock in like that um I write at a at a high level and kind of to your point about like critic proof I know it's good I because I know it it came from the deepest place I have right and it's like well okay if you don't

like that then you don't like me sorry which is fine yeah I can handle that but like I know that you know versus you know writing a little bit here working a little bit there and then going out to lunch and then sitting in a cafe and and you know a coffee shop and kind of writing but being on the phone I just don't think that's deep work yeah and I I uh I have noticed so that like rappers and a lot of people in the hip-hop Community I've been working on a documentary about um

Rihanna for quite a while and spent a lot of time with her in the studio and it's amazing the hours that um hip-hop performers you know musicians and rappers keep CU they're going into the studio at 2:00 in the morning and working till you know 1 in the afternoon and then sleeping all day and that that world that nighttime and I've talked to her about it she's just extremely creative late at night almost for me the exact opposite but like I like do you like to work creatively at night do do can you write comedy

night yeah right when I get home wow yeah so what I do is I do shows and then I come home and everyone's asleep my whole house is asleep so it's quiet and you can access yeah because my mind is really stimulated because I just performed you know and you know I just maybe I've had a drink or two and I sit in front of the computer and I just start thinking really yeah I just start thinking I just start try to Freestyle with thoughts and the way I write is I just I have a

topic and I just start with just essentially an essay and not an essay that I think anybody's going to read an essay is just like my thoughts just rambling thoughts and then maybe I'll rewrite a paragraph but I'll keep the same paragraph above it to reference and then I'll rewrite it again what kind of subject like anything whatever it is um technology how it's affecting our lives and what what our future is going to be like and then I'll sit down with that and think about the pros and cons and like what do I really

what hasn't every society faced this like would you want want to go back and live in the caveman days again no definitely not would you want do you want to live in a time with no penicillin no no no no no like so how much technology is too much technology and I'll just start writing and out of that I'll get a bit out of that I mean not only maybe one out of 10 times something's useful like there's a lot of times I'm just throwing [ __ ] against the wall but the key is throw

a lot of [ __ ] you have to throw a lot of things you know Hemingway famously said my friend AR shiry has this uh on his laptop it says the first draft of everything is [ __ ] yeah yeah yeah yeah I've heard it such a great quote and it just sits on his laptop and I love it I love that it's so true and I just write I just write but when you're when you're writing like cuz I was just watching you as you were speaking you were you were looking up at the

sky like for an idea do you do you think about your your writing intellectually okay I'm thinking this thought okay I'm gonna write it down or are your hands on the keyboard and you're just channeling it's both you know sometimes I'm just sitting there thinking about it before I write or in the middle of writing like is this right am I correct is this how I'm looking at this or am I trying to force this and then I also write on a computer that is not connected to any apps it doesn't have anything on it

the only thing it has on it is um it has it's a mic it's a ThinkPad so it has a so you can't distract yourself right I can I am allowed to Google things things to find out if something's correct that's it there's I've never I don't go to websites I don't look at it this laptop is just for writing it's connected to the internet which is a tricky thing but there's a rule so my home computer is there's no rules I might watch YouTube videos I might [ __ ] watch a little Netflix it's

you know iMac so it's big screen I might do all kinds of stuff on that computer but when I'm writing my laptop is only for writing and so there's there's I don't allow myself there's no Tik Tok there's no Instagram there's no nothing I don't ever look at anything else I just write and I use the browser the I use [ __ ] Bing which is like who searches [ __ ] on Bing but you could you know it's good enough to find out right what's real and what's not real that's the only time I

use it that's it and do you experience like Euphoria when you're writing on occasion do you blow your mind well you know these ideas are not they're com from [ __ ] The Ether they're coming from somewhere I know that creativity is an individual thing and it varies but for me my best ideas seem to come out of nowhere it's like I don't even know if they're my ideas they're they're coming from some place and this is the concept of the Muse right like the Muse is bestowing upon you these beautiful gifts of creativity and

Steven pressfield stuff yes the war of art amazing book I've got a stack of them out there I love him he's a big inspiration to me he's incredible and he's he's just a brilliant guy but that that's what where it's at it's just like setting this table showing up and then trying to pull these things from this other dimension this wherever the [ __ ] they're coming from and then I get these little nuggets and then the Nuggets I transfer it to my phone I I feel bad for people who never get to experience that

yeah you know I I keep a a necklace uh with with a dog tag and a quote from a William Blake poem and he said what that that uh has always just helped me quite a bit and it's uh the only thing pleasing to God is the creation of beautiful and exalted things oo and I remember the first time I got to experience the power of writing and and something it was like literally a religious experience I don't know what happened I kind of blacked out I lost track of time and I wrote eight pages

and I looked at it and I'm like I don't know where this came from and I read it and I blew my mind and I felt like I was having almost a religious experience and and that quote when I read it the only thing pleasing to God is the creation of beautiful things the creation being creative and being able to um please God through creativity uh or or have a religious a mystical experience um that's not drug induced um through your power of your your creativity yeah um I I think it's the greatest thing in

the world and it kind of saved my life because if I hadn't found writing and film making I don't I don't know what I would have done I I wouldn't have been I I mean I don't know well that's why it's for you because it feels so real and so powerful that without it you feel like your life would be lost yeah man yeah isn't that amazing that's an amazing thing to find as a human being if you can find something that you love so much that you can't imagine life without it like that you

would be lost um can I tell you about um it's sort of a nonse but um I did want to I I did want to mention and it sort of related to something I love because I love boxing and I own a boxing gym in Los Angeles which was hands down the stupidest thing I ever decided to do in my life was oh be cool to have a boxing gym and manage boxers and pro you know no don't don't it's awful I mean I love the fighters and have so much empathy but um one of

my Fighters Chris Van Huron um his girlfriend is a girl named Cena Carolina who who I think I told you a little bit about earlier when we're working out and and this is just a a [ __ ] up story she's a 28-year-old American Russian citizen who made a $51 donation to Ukrainian Charity she went home a year ago to visit her family in Russia and Putin got her and she's in prison now for 12 years and her name's what was the charity the charity was a Ukrainian uh a charity based in America for Ukraine

that she thought was going to give U uh money to children that had been you know hurt by the war in Ukraine um it's all it's all very researchable um so she got put on list she got somehow they she's dual citizen she's an American citizen and a Russian she went to visit her parents a year ago in Russia and on her somehow the Russians were able to figure out like if anyone with any Russian uh citizenship even if it's dual makes donations to certain Charities that get flagged so she came in um got to

her parents house was called to the police station the next day um came in and they arrested uh and and said you donated $51 you're this is treason and she's now a almost a year into a 12year sentence holy [ __ ] so um president Trump has been super cool Dana White has been um helping um just trying to get like you know it's so it's such a crazy chess game right that that you know someone like look and and I hope things go really well between us and Putin and I think Trump's doing some

great things and I'm glad we're talking but the way they do business is different and they will grab somebody you know and they've done it to um to to um Brit Britney Griner and they just released this guy Fogle who they had gotten for smoking weed if they can get you um and hold you and use you as a bargaining chip they will and and we don't do that you know one of the things that the US doesn't do but you end up having to make these kind of crazy swaps it's all about swapping right

so they get cassena and and well who do we have that that that's going to you know get Putin to say all right yeah I'm gonna let her out right release that arms dealer but the people that we have are like pretty serious criminals The Merchant of death The Merchant of death for a basketball player smoking weed it's crazy but you know if you love Britney Grinder like or know like I know cassena and my you know good friend is engaged to her and he's in hell and it's like we need someone to trade you

know and and so it's not going to feel right for you know people we're going to have to trade someone that's done some pretty bad things to get this girl out of prison and that's the game that these guys are playing and it's not a game that you ever ever want to get involved in and I wish I hadn't but I have and um you know cassena is a a beautiful girl and she's in a really bad way and she doesn't deserve it so yeah and it's it's so true that we don't do that in

America because there's a lot of Russians that fight the UFC and they don't even get booed no one even cares they love them especially when they're really good people get excited to kabib is is sure I mean we don't we don't do it and and that's you know we we take our America takes a lot of [ __ ] and I know maybe you know what we deserve and what we don't but we don't do that we don't detain 28-year-old you know uh ballerinas for um smoking weed and throw them in prison for 15 years

20 years we don't take people and say well you donated $50 to a charity that we're not um aligned with um we're throwing you in prison foron wow yeah so it's um but yeah owning a boxing gym and I me you telling me about how when you met Canelo and Canelo came to your gym to train I thought that was almost worth owning a boxing G de Canelo Canelo saved my gym uh Canelo I sparred with can did I ever tell you that J on my birthday I hope he was nice to you uh I

was I was flying I landed uh in LA from and I had a few drinks on the plane I wasn't drunk but I wasn't sober walked into the gym Canelo was training for he was in Camp I don't remember for which fight I walked in I announced it was my birthday and I wanted rounds okay and I wanted R and Eddie and Cho you called it on yourself oh I called him I go it's my birthday and I want some [ __ ] he just kind of stared at me and and I ran up didn't

warm up got my stuff on Pedro wrapped me up I put my gloves on I waited till one sparring partner was out I go me and to canelo's credit he only threw one punch okay I went two rounds with him he threw one punch at the end of the second round but it was a jab in the way it landed I've never been hit like this he locked my jaw and my whole neck cracked he locked my jaw down it was a perfect jab and he threw it at maybe I don't 20% it was just

this one perfectly placed jab um but I did Spar two rounds with Canelo uh and and I I can say that honestly uh he went extremely easy on me um that's very nice of him but yeah I'm I it was cool because we got I got to see his whole journey when he came into our gym and he was just starting and I think he was fighting a guy named Lopez and he was just this little redhead skinny kid and to see his progression um you know he he's one of like the only good stories

in boxing if you ask me like name two good boxing stories I'd be like well I think Alvarez is a pretty good story he's you know stayed with his trainers he's a you know family man he's you know carries himself well he's made a lot of money okay that's one and two is there is no two well Floyd Mayweather is a pretty good story yeah right all right all right I'll give you Floyd Mayweather you're right you're right yeah 50 and0 all his faculties still making millions bought all the real estate in New York okay

you're right I'll give you Floyd for some reason it's always hard for me to put and you're right Floyd is I got another one hold on hold on hold on okay current yeah sugar R uh sugar Leonard no Andre Ward Andre Ward Olympic gold medalist two two Division World Champion retires undefeated brilliant analyst has they offer him millions of dollars to go and fight Canelo after he's retired he says I think I can serve boxing more as a commentator I I will give you Andre Ward but I would I would submit that nobody knows who

he is other than boxing fans of course but I mean he never right he didn't achieve Superstar he never he never crossed over but but yes I think sugay Leonard is necessarily the great example either because he saved his money though he he took a lot of fights that he shouldn't have taken later in his career like against Terry Norris and those kind of fights like I I just put him in um I put him in a slight like like a positive story just because I've I've been to his house he's Rich he's still you

know sharp he's handsome and well spoken and he didn't take his brain he didn't take his brain the stories of you know like working class boxing gyms like Churchill box in my gym in La uh which I technically don't own anymore because it just was turning into such a headache if you could see the day in day day out trials and tribulations that these Fighters go through and you know it from UFC I I think that boxers have it like harder I think I can't prove this but boxing is a a more dysfunctional State than

UFC mainly because of Dana and you know the fact that Dana's been able to monopolize it and that there's a system that you're a huge part of that that makes sense and that there's good people involved at the top and and and on the the broadcasting and all of it boxing has none of that right and so it's this broken dysfunctional um mess that is just begging for someone hopefully Dana to come in and and organize and clean up yeah they are talking about doing that and uh um turkey Alik who is running Riad season

who's done a phenomenal job of putting together these incredible fights he's basically just said there's a lot of resistance getting these top fighters to fight each other what's the resistance they want to maximize their earning potential by staying undefeated and avoiding the really tough chall just give them the money now yeah and he's having all these Fighters fight these dangerous fights and it's incredible for boxing do you think that that there's a way for Dana and UFC to work with him yes they're talking about doing that how would that go do you think what would

it look like well I mean he obviously has U an an excellent uh relationship with them because you know rad season helped promote the big event at the sphere um which was an insane have you [ __ ] been to I haven't been there but I watched the UFC fight this the greatest did you weren't there was the greatest venue in the history of anything but it doesn't overpower the experience I don't know man it didn't overpower the fights the fights were insane they were so good but it was like the the arena itself is

so spectacular I would say go to see any band there you possibly can go to see anyone there it's so good the graphics are so mindboggling it's like you're on a drug yeah it's like you're having a psychedelic experience I mean the moment I walked into it I was like you got to be [ __ ] kidding me it's so in actually there's a video of me like the I made a video I wanted to film The my very first reaction the very first time I walked into it and it's it blew me away what

kind of drug what kind of drug would you compare it to it's like a you're in a different dimension it's like this is like a mushroom like a DMT well it's like a it's it's so oh this is this is actually me walking give me some volume this is my first time ever being inside spere this holy [ __ ] and this is just they're just practicing and doing rehearsals of all the graphics packages this isn't even the audience is even in yet this is insane oh wow and and this is nothing compared to when

they had the graphic packages running and I mean it was unbelievable it's just the amount of money that it cost to put on a show there though do do you think that like is it going to be profitable like like like how do you make that money back like it's I don't know how much did it cost I think the UFC spent something like $25 million over a normal budget for a for an EV an event but I was just think like if you pay I think it was Dolan it was uh the Madison Square

Garden folks that that put that deal together and I just am like well okay it holds how many 35,000 20 I don't think it's even that much not that big and I just like they someone spent a lot of money on that screen right like that's a lot of Technology yeah but so you thought you thought that turkey he did a great job but was Turkey involved in the UFC fight at he was involved in Riyad season was a part of the sphere event it was co-promoted by Riad season so in in theory Dana could

work with him in some way and start that's the plan and they own Ring magazine now so the reason why that's significant is the Ring magazine belt is one of the only belts that has kind of been it's there's a bunch of different organizations that are sanctioning bodies is the WBO the WBC the ibf there's all these different it's very fractured right but Ring magazine has always been like Roy Jones Jr was the Ring magazine middleweight champ of the world the Ring magazine Superman white Champion the world like that's the gold standard is Ring magazine

so so there would be one belt in this if they can do that and then overpower everything else with money and then really put the compelling fights like did you watch this past weekend arur bitter be and Demetri ball what a [ __ ] fight yes probably the greatest slide heavyweight fight of all time bivel trains in our gym by the way does he really Churchill boxing the hardest punch I've ever seen anyone throw in my life was in our gym David benovitz was sparring bivel and Biv Biv and dve Ben is a great fighter

but bivel caught him uh and and dropped him with the jab in sparring whoa inspiring Biv incredible fighter he's an example so they're both are those are actually two guys that I feel like could be could do it right um but just having so much trouble getting a recognition that they deserve I mean benv has been chasing Canelo forever won't fight him yeah for a good reason fight that's a hard fight that's a hard fight and you want that fight you gota you got to get paid yeah you got to get paid but but I'm

hoping that with Riyad season turkey would make that fight right because he signed a multi fight deal with Canelo for $400 million I think it's a five-fight deal for $400 million I think that's what's been reported I don't know if that's accurate but but Terence Crawford's the first one which is is that really happen is a proper Canelo fight happening yes it's happening so what was going to happen was ter uh was Canelo apparently had made a deal with Jake Paul to fight Jake Paul ridiculous ridiculous but I bet it was for a significant amount

of money still ridiculous yeah but fun I'd watch it look Jake Paul wants to test himself against actual not just world champion but one of the greatest of all time he would be if if Canelo really fought and it wasn't fixed Jake Paul would would not survive 45 seconds I don't know about that I think it would take a few rounds really yeah first of all Jake is a lot bigger Jake's a lot bigger but what way would they what way would they fight well I don't think Jake is getting anywhere lower than 205 pounds

he's a huge guy but so Canelo would let him fight at 205 I think that would would be the case I think Canelo when he got to 175 when he was uh fighting light heavyweight and you know he still fluctuates between 68 and 75 I feel like probably weighs 190 when he's walking around so he would probably weigh 190 and Jake would weigh over 200 they would probably fight either at Cruiserweight or they would fight at heavyweight but didn't Tommy fury like take Jake Paul no he beat him but it was a very good fight

a very good F but that's what I'm saying but Tommy Fury versus compared to Canelo you think different levels different levels yeah no doubt look who's favored for sure the greatest of all time I mean one of the greatest boxers of all time in Canelo Alvarez he's the favorite but i' like to see what happens it' be crazy I I like a little freak show every now and then as far as like would you like to see lot of freak look if Jake fall wants to fight for the title I would like to see him

beat top contenders in the light heavyweight division or whatever division he chooses to compete at and then eventually fight for a title yeah but are the f are the are the fights even real like the Tyson fight like I saw video breakdowns of Tyson not throwing punches early on in that fight if you watched any of those videos where like he's there's a like a left hook is 100% available Tyson on you know in in training 99% of time releases that punch and he held out like do you think that that was a real was

that a real fight it looked like sparring to me that's what it looked like but like with an arrangement beforehand uh I wouldn't want to speculate because I haven't talked to anybody about but my educated assessment agree yes agree it looked like sparring it did didn't look like a fight and you think if Canelo and Jake Paul agreed to do it I don't think that would be that I think that would be a fight that be a fight that would be a fight like a sanction real n it would have to be a fight yeah

I don't think Canelo Alvarez is making any agreements where he's not going to knock you out well he's not taking the fight though right well this is what happened so they had this agreement and Jake Paul actually told me about the agreement when I met him at the inauguration we were talking about it and I was like holy [ __ ] it hadn't been announced yet I was like that's crazy and then turkey came along and said [ __ ] all that let me throw some money at you and said stop with all this [

__ ] you need to be fighting the greatest fighters in the world right now you need to be fighting Ben aidz you need to be fighting Terence Crawford so Terence Crawford is first on the list and a lot of second second on the list according to report I thought on the list now he supposed to fight Crawford in September and they're going to have him fight singco de Mayo weekend against against like a no skull uh Williams skull s c u l l that's why I was asking stri can last year or unnamed do they

have a date for Canelo Crawford is it September 13th supposedly but nothing see that's kind of crazy that they're going to have another fight beforehand but it does give Crawford time to bulk up so Crawford got on scale the other day he was 185 pounds really yes and he's doing deadlifts he was doing deadlifts with 450 pounds Crawford is a strong dude I'm GNA put Crawford and another success story of boxing I'm totally just contradicting myself now I'm remembering you're right he's the I love the guy he's fantastic I know you've had him on right

he's so a couple times he's so good and he's the best switch hitter in the game maybe the best switch hitter since Marvin Haggler yeah yeah he's phenomenal and he's so intelligent like his his boxing is so clever he sets traps how old is he 36 I believe canelo's like 3 37 uh so Crawford is 37 yeah yeah I'm looking at a thing right now how old is Canelo I think he's 35 34 or 35 I don't have this up he's still in his Prim what's crazy is [ __ ] better be of his 40

and went 12 hard rounds where they never slowed down once yeah that's because people like you are getting us all in Crazy shape Joe like these guys are living forever you're like teaching us the way to do it look at that very likely Terence Crawford faces fighter with 90% KO rate after Canelo says Del La Hoya who would that be that's what I was looking at I what weight class would that be after so he must have fought a oh that's such a boxing headline isn't it like 90% chance Virgil Ortiz Jr okay Virgil Ortiz

Jr is a Savage that would be a phenomenal fight that would be an absolutely phenomenal fight yeah yeah after that though well I saw his fight with mov who was very difficult who Crawford struggled a little bit with too but beat and Virgil walked him down he was he was battering him towards the the the last rounds why is uh Oscar De La Hoya offered an opinion on who Crawford would fight Oscar De La Hoya is not Crawford's manager is he I don't believe so no I don't think he has anything to do with do

you watch um Oscar seems like he's a little off the rails days do you watch okay for sure and I mean God love him and I I think he's having a good time he do you watch his clap like okay I know social media I said don't scroll and certainly like insta hos or bad my favorite Instagram account is Oscar De out on his clapback Thursdays he he and then he rips into Eddie Hearn basically and it's deranged it's absolutely deranged but it's funny and Oscar clearly doesn't care he does like to to your point

earlier he does not give a [ __ ] and he just rips apart anyone and everyone um and he does this thing every Thursday called clap I think it's called clapback Thursdays and and that's my secret guilty pleasure um my secret guilty pleasure is watched him dance around with a thong on oh that was out of his [ __ ] mind the best that was the best was fake abs it's a hell of a drug cocaine it's a hell of a drug cocaine yeah but I mean he's I mean I like to say we've all

been there I I haven't been there I haven't been there no I haven't I put the fish nets on I've been here but I haven't been there okay um and you know like I do respect him I Oscar was a great fighter phenomenal fighter phenomenal fighter but I mean come on now it's like Oscar De La Hoya and all that's coming with him and Eddie Hearn who I I also like quite a bit and then you've got um Al hymon and Bob arum you know is and is well into his 90s and is just going

it's it's chaos yeah and and that's the problem is that they're represented by different and it's very difficult for people to co-promote very difficult for people to decide like who's the aide who's the BS side you get ridiculous deals where you know this fighter wants 75% the other fighter wants 25% they have to figure out whether or not they can make this happen and the Fighter's like [ __ ] that I want it 50/50 and then the promoters get involved and they don't want you to fight that guy fight the number one mandatory Contender and

then these some great fights never take place or they take place too late like Floyd Mayweather and um Manny Pacquiao they fought too late I mean if that fight could have been arranged by Riad season they probably would have caught them both in their Prime and it would have been chaos yeah yeah yeah Manny was he was done before that ever started yeah he also had a blown shoulder going into the fight yeah you know his he needed shoulder surgery before the fight even started yeah have you um I I have a little regret that

I never had a professional fight and I was just in Mexico um and my driver started talking about boxing say my driver told me his son was a pro fighter and that if I wanted to uh and he told me how much it would cost I could come have a professional fight and his son would would let me win the fight and then and I then but then I could have well but it would be a sanctioned fight and it would go I would have a box wck score of 1 and0 or 0 and one

I mean I could have not paid the money and like taken the loss but at least I would have had it and I did think about it for like about I don't know maybe a minute I decided not to do it like you and I were talking like I just can't take getting hit in the head anymore um and you know when I was younger and I had the gym I would I would Spar more um you know and Canelo I sparred and that was controlled but I sparred cam Cam Newton once you know the

the football player who's 6' five and he was in the gym and he went to work and I'm like well let's Spar and we'll just you know Spar light and he wasn't a boxer and I have you know basic defensive boxing skills but I'm like well just let's work Cam and he's like okay and we started you know kind of sparring a bit and he didn't really know what he was doing but he's an very very you know physical specimen and I lightly kind of jabbed at his face and maybe hit the gloves and he

just went insane and started punching me across the ring and I'm just like flashes of white I lost all feeling in my hands um and then I didn't I didn't Spar any other athletes until Steve Nash came into our gym the basketball player and he wasn't as big as Cam Newton so I'm like well all right I'll spar with Steve Nash and he doesn't know how to box so we'll just gentleman Spar so we're sparring a bit and I hit him and I'm I underestimate how [ __ ] athletic he is he just [ __

] cracks me hard with a uh just solid right and it's my hands go numb I see nothing and then that like that's said I'm done and then uh Squan Barkley comes into our gym now SE do you know who Israel Barkley was a pro fighter had his uncle had a incredible uh career as a pro fighter is that Iran Barkley I'm s my bad Ian Barkley thank you wow that was a political slip Israel Barkley oh [ __ ] sorry everybody thank you Joe Iran Barkley do you know who Iran Barkley is sure okay

good so that was saquan Barkley's uncle right did you know that no I did not yeah that was his uncle so sequan comes into our gym and I'm like oh I'm I'm in a spar was and I'm like no I'm not I'm not gonna [ __ ] with this guy after Cam Newton and Steve Nash and saquon Barkley is a [ __ ] stud right like this guy's like Mike Tyson but bigger just his body type so I'm like well I'll hold mits for him I just want to see and that guy could fight like

his Uncle Iran Barkley legend legend taught him and he started throwing punches and sequan Barkley could move and counter and had balance and foot you know head movement I'm like dude if you had in started playing football gotten into this at at you know 12 13 I assuming that your brain stayed on you would have been one of the great heavyweights of all time he could um sequan could box wow and so but I learned but I thought about taking the fight in Mexico and I decided don't do it I'm not would you ever no

hell no right no no not now I'm 57 there's no way I'm fighting anybody now dude you're in shape I did agree to fight Wesley Snipes like 20 years ago yeah there was what happened well he you remember what happened with him with taxes yeah of course he went to jail right yeah so I think they were trying to figure out a way to make money to try to pay the government off and the UFC um uh they contacted well this guy camell McLaren who is one of the original producers of the first UFC before

zua bought it he he I he knew me because I worked for him at the time I was the postf fight interviewer in 1997 and 1998 and that's that was when I first started working for the UFC I started again as a commentator in 2001 so in 19 you know 97 when I knew him he knew that I did martial arts he knew I was obsessed with this and then so he contacts me like I guess it was like 2004 or five or something like that somewhere around then and he says this is going to

sound crazy but uh Wesley Snipes wants to have a UFC fight and he wanted to fight jeanclaude vanam and we didn't think that that would be compelling and so we offered some other names and we said what about Joe Rogan and he said yes and I said well what do you mean like when are we talking about like how because I've been training I was brown belt and Jiu-Jitsu and I'd been training kickboxing still I was Lou training and so I would had to really ramp everything up he was kind of a martial arts guy

right he's a martial artist but I don't think he's ever had a fight and I don't think he has any ground game and that's a giant problem no you would have gotten a hold up well also I was a nation I mean I I competed nationally in Taekwondo for five six years traveled around the country like and I had three kickboxing fights I was a good standup fighter like and I I can kick very hard I'm very good and even then then I was even better cuz I was in my 30s so what happened he

didn't want to do it as time reason you just said you would have killed him as time went on I think he kind of understood that it was a bad idea I think initially he thought he who knows it could have been [ __ ] chemically fueled these these conversations with the desire to have it was chemically fooled and then he soed up but I trained every day I trained for six months you would have annihilated him I was kickboxing with Rob Cayman in the morning and I was doing Jiu-Jitsu at night I was [

__ ] exhausted prepping for the Wesley just didn't we were in negotiation so the first negotiation was 50/50 we're going to split it 50/50 this and that blah blah blah and I said okay great and then a couple weeks went by I had lawyers involved the whole thing and then it was like Wesley wants 6040 and but this time I'd already invested so much time training I go okay I just give it to him I'm like I'm gonna [ __ ] this guy up I go just give it to him just give it to him

and then it got to a point where just give me a half a million dollars I don't care what you give Wesley go give me a half a million dollars and we agreed on that I said I don't care what you give him just give it to him I'm going I'm going to [ __ ] strangle this guy I'm going to get a hold of him and there's not going to be a goddamn thing he can do about it I was convinced and I was like so was Wesley convinced he obviously knew that but it

was so engrossing like it took up all my energy and my time like I my mind shifted into like what it was when I was younger and I was fighting it was wild it was weird like I became like a different person for like a like almost a year so like when you hear the name Wesley Snipes now I have no animosity there's not like a little part of your brain that still flips and like no no no no no no no no it's I think he did a smart thing I think he did a

smart thing by not doing it it's just so interesting and and uh the the idea that you got to experience a version of what it feels like to prepare to fight someone yeah people just don't get it right well I had fought a bunch of times you know and and when I was younger I mean it had been more than 10 years since my last fight but I knew what it was like I knew the experience I knew what training and preparing was right like and I also knew that like I was a like legitimate

brown belt in Jiu-Jitsu i' had been training Jiu-Jitsu for but it was like I think he had had this idea that he was going to be able to hit me when I was trying to take him down I was like dude I would [ __ ] happily stand up do you think the um Zuckerberg musk was ever real was it ever even slightly real I don't know that that to me is the most could you ask him please Zuckerberg is legit he trains hard he trains with legit guys he trains all the time he's very

smart and very obsessed by it and he's like legitimately training he's significantly smaller than Elon elon's a big guy um but that only goes so far especially if you don't have any endurance but Does Elon what what do you think elon's fighting skill strategy would be like but he took karate when he was younger so would he come karate no I don't think it was ever going to happen I mean I was entertaining it because I think it would be fun if it did happen and Elon said he would do it and Zuckerberg said he

would do it but like how can I don't know how the guy tweets as much as he does how the [ __ ] could you train for a fight I mean how do you how do you run SpaceX and Tesla and the department of government efficiency and Starling Joe he's your friend you know him better than we do how the [ __ ] does he do I don't know how he does it and I'm his friend I don't know how he does it I don't understand it he's he's I've never seen anybody who knows how

to manage time better than that guy yeah and he's also has like a 100 kids like I don't [ __ ] I don't get it he's a different type of human I I I just love the idea of people that don't ever fight having to suddenly have a fight right just like like you know CU people who never fought but suddenly get them and okay here's another secret don't like when I do scroll I look for street fights with people who don't know how to fight or or drunk people fighting is funny too but like

like you know okay Elon and Zucker Mark you know are going to fight okay let's say it's going to really happen they both train but they're not Fighters so however much they train they're still running their other businesses now the fight starts and for about 20 seconds they're going to have some tactics that their trainers have been and then it's all going to go out the [ __ ] window they all go out the window with Zuckerberg Zuckerberg's a real martial artist but has he ever really fought yes he's have Jiu-Jitsu matches he's hasn't fought

a kickboxing match but he does a lot of sparing full so he could do a a two minute or a three minute 100% no doubt yeah no doubt and also he's very disciplined and stay true to his his what what style of fighting with well he he trains in Jiu-Jitsu but he also trains in mixed martial arts so he does Muay Thai he does everything he's really obsessed with it and he has been for years okay so he's a legitimate martial artist elan's going to come out elon's running SpaceX and he's got to dodge thing

he do and now he's going to take some time and focus on the fight it's not going to do it I don't you don't have the there's no way he has the time like if you want to really prepare properly you train twice a day and you have to have recovery in between so you have to get massages you have to do red light therapy you have to do everything especially if you're at his age you you and you have to take hormones you have to be on the ball you have to take peptides you

you have to you get you have to really watch your nutrition you have to really make sure you get enough enough sleep all those things are out the window he's not doing any of those things he doesn't have the time to do any of those things so it would have to be like a demonstration where they agree to how it's going to go but even then there's no way he could be in condition for it yeah there's no way and so he did train with some of my friends he trained with Le Lex Lex fredman

I think he trained George St Pierre as well so I think he realized early on his cardio wasn't going to get him there not us cardio is non-existent what is what is harder on cardio than boxingufc do you think like I always say boxing people don't understand how exhausting 40 seconds of sparring is like and I'm I've never fought UFC I've I've always felt that boxing for some reason is actually harder on the on the cardio I'm sure I'm wrong I'm sure yeah definitely wrong wrestling is the hardest wrestling is number one but the what

what else com Compares in terms of cardio and physical demanding to wrestling UFC boxing what like maybe ultra running maybe really crazy things where guys have to run like 300 miles but they don't have the anerobic kind of exhaustion and the soccer soccer takes incredible conditioning incredible conditioning those guys are unbelievably fit have you ever followed um Aussie Rules Football yes so you know I'm doing uh uh my next film's about um a football game that some Marines played in World War II and we're filming it in Australia it's called the mosquito bowl and in

the middle of it's true story about this football game that was played guad Canal before the Battle of okoa but these marines all played it these marines were good college football stars and then they all died in the ble of okona a it's an intense story but we need to film uh this tackle football game there was supposed to be a touch game and the Marines ended up playing tackle and Legend has it that it was the most violent football game ever played and so we got a film a tackle football game um in Australia

which is we're going to make the film and like stun men are tough but like playing tackle football you know is a is a [ __ ] painful thing to do right imagine you know even like turkey Bowl touch football games on Thanksgiving get like people are in the hospital so I was just in Australia and I'm I had the idea that well like Aussie Wills football it's perfect we'll just take a bunch of these guys and teach them how to play tackle football and and they'll really do it so I just went to a

an Aussie rules football practice in um in uh um uh Brisbane Australia and those [ __ ] dudes are tough they are tough if you ever just watch like the highlight reels of a I mean the notepads full smash um and I put that yeah here it is I mean so yeah these are the guys we're going to use to uh my God these [ __ ] collisions oh Jesus I think these are the toughest athletes I think this is how they play should play regular football I do too I feel feel like the pads

are [ __ ] but there's only way the only way you can pay American style football is with pats because like the collisions that these guys have like your career be cut short look at this guy look at him oh out cold he's done stiff look at this look at the hitting is just [ __ ] nuts and I'm sure a lot of head-to-head collisions too so I went to this a practice of one of these teams that just got back and they were um and I brought in American football and I'm like all right

do you guys have any idea and they're like zero I'm like come on you you you sort of have to know something and they're like zero so I get I get they just know nothing like how much of cricket do you know zero okay if you if if I had a guned your head and said one rule of cricket could you do it no could you do it no you couldn't like it's a cricket Junior's got to stay in I think I've seen him try to throw it back in stay in what the ball has

to stay in the whatch we don't know [ __ ] do you understand how [ __ ] popular Cricket is gigantic like bigger than football huge go to India or Sri Lanka I mean like these people go nuts so in in Australia they have 100,000 people stadiums for Aussie Wills football so I go and and I'm like you know I'm meeting these guys and these guys I think are big stars I don't know them but you know this is a major Aussie worlds football team and I got the football and they don't so I line

them up 11 against 11 and I'm te and they're really kind of starting to get into it and they're lined up Center guards tackles ends quarter and I'm like all right so what do you think they're like yeah we don't like it I go let me let me help tell me what this does for you all right you're the center and you if you were doing this in American football you'd be making six to7 million a year you're the tackle on Blindside you're making $40 million a year protecting Patrick Mahomes okay you're Patrick Mahomes and

I'm telling them how much money they would make cuz these guys make no money right there's no money in it which is crazy crazy and then they have do you know um tall poppy Syndrome have you heard of this like like there there's no ego like these guys they're huge you know they're members of these super successful teams but they don't have the ego of American athletes and the they don't get the attention and it's TP papy syndrome they're culturally um you know condition to not brag and to not boast and to be humble and

and uh I don't know I'm they like to see people get knocked down when they get too big yeah for sure tall they they cut the tall poppy gets its head cut off so they stay humble um which I kind of thought was kind of cool you know just realizing that I was like hanging out with like the captain of um an aussy rules team and I had dinner with the captain of the um oh uh the the New Zealand the All Blacks the the rugby team and this guy um this was a a little

while ago couple of years ago this guy in America I mean you know the All Blacks like the most popular rugby team and and the most humble dude ever and you go to a restaurant and nobody bothers him he you know no security no nothing um we don't that that would never exist here but seeing how hard these dudes hit and trained made me think well maybe they're working the level of athleticism that you Fighters are working at I mean that's a hard [ __ ] sport it seems like it especially if you watch that

video like that's that's unbelievably grueling the difference between fighting and anything else is that there's no one there to assist you there's no other teammates there's no rules there's no timeouts you know you have round breaks but fighting is very individual and if you didn't prepare properly and your opponent did you're [ __ ] if he's better than you and he's more skilled and he's got better genetics and better training and he comes from a better background and he's more he's more technical you're [ __ ] you know it's it's it's a crazy sport where

you're literally putting your health on the line time let me ask you this question and this this is something I don't talk about but it's another secret theory that I have okay so it's between you and me I feel like and I've seen a lot of boxers train MH and I've seen a lot of great trainers um Eddie and Cho are great trainers um Abel Sanchez is a great trainer Pedro name from my gym lots of great trainers out there and I've watched entire camps where trainers like if I'm your trainer I figure out okay

this is our opponent um these These are going to be our tactics we're going to do a lot of jabbing with overhand rights and we're going to take our head offline consistently we're going to counter this way we're going to and every and I've really watched this and paid a lot of attention to it and this is I'm not in any way [ __ ] on trainers but I'm kind of at making your point about how alone Fighters are I see all this training and I watch it and I understand the strategies and the tactics

and the second the fight starts none of it has any relationship to how the fight goes down it all the strategy is rarely employed and it becomes this moment where a fighter has to adjust and adapt and improvise incredibly and yeah the conditioning matters a lot but I often think that like the training doesn't do [ __ ] the trainers are they can help you get your head right and get yourself in A Warrior's mindset and I do respect that but tactics sometimes I think that they're like am I wrong yeah okay yeah definitely wrong

all right yeah at the highest level it's the most important thing okay but do not at the highest level like at a Terrence Crawford level tactics are everything but he just does it like yeah he just does it but it's also because he spent so much time working on the fundamentals and the technique and the movements and counters and positioning and he understands boxing so comprehensively he knows where the punches are coming from he knows where he's going to be vulnerable to get hit he knows when he's not he knows when he has to take

a risk and and and to give one he has to take one but how much of that like his his trainer boheim him uh I might be saying I know him I know his trainer just like Eddie and Cho and they've got who's got have Canelo they have lots of other Fighters but like Eddie and Cho have never had another Canelo Alvarez and including all of his brothers and I like okay how much of it is just god-given Talent like Terence Crawford has that's then trained by trainers versus how much credit does a trainer get

trainer gets some credit but a trainer with a bad fighter is never going to create a world champion like you you have to be an extraordinary individual to be a championship level fighter no doubt and then there are some Championship level Fighters that have they have emerged from gyms that don't have any Championship like Marvin hagger one of the greatest of all time he came out of the petronelli brothers gym they weren't known for having like a a giant stable of multiple world champions who who was the who are the top who in your opin

the best UFC trainers well there's quite a few there's quite a few there's some really Elite trainers out there and I don't want to miss anybody but faras the hobby is probably one of my favorite he's uh cuz he's very very intelligent and very analytical and he does a fantastic job also of breaking down fights both before the fight and after the fight and telling you like what tactics didn't work and why they didn't work and what went wrong in the fight and what was very effective he's just a brilliant human being and also just

so intelligent about the way he makes his Fighters prepare and he trained George St Pierre who's one of the greatest if not the greatest of all time so there's him um there's uh Greg Jackson and Mike Winkle John from uh Jackson Winkle John in in Albuquerque which is phenomenal gym that's where J Jones came from multiple world champions have come from that that gym those guys are phenomenal John crouch in Arizona he's phenomenal um there's there's just so many [ __ ] like top of the food chain guys and how much how much of that

skill is and if it's it's all equal I I get it but how much of that skill that makes a great UFC trainer is okay if I'm your trainer and I'm getting you ready for a fight we're I'm going to study your opponent I'm going to study your opponent's strengths his weaknesses his Tendencies his tells and I'm going to train you in relationship to that and and and be right right so I you can anticipate where there's going to be an opportunity and take it how much of it is that and how effective is that

like versus how much of it is Joe I got to keep you [ __ ] ready for anything I got to keep you in shape I got to keep you mentally like good um I got to remove distractions and I got to be like your father your uncle your brother um and everything else in between do you know what I mean yeah I think there's both but I think for some fighter every fighter has a different approach Jon Jones is famous for studying tape and and and devising game plans and strategies that are based on

what he sees about his opponent's Tendencies yeah yeah and that's how he caught Daniel Cormier with that left high kick like he he knew that Daniel dips to the right and you know and Daniel even called it out before that you think you're gonna hit me with that head kick and he actually did hit him with it in the fight because Daniel had a tendency and John exploited that tendency and he does that with everybody he's famous for not just doing that but also not taking fights on last minute notice like he's had some opponents

fall out and the UFC offers him an alter alternative opponent in a short period of time and he says no I didn't train for that fighter he goes I'm the greatest of all time for a reason and that reason is I'm fully prepared for every fight I'm not going to take a fight against someone who I'm not fully prepared for and has he had the same coach his entire career yes yes so that's a real that's Jackson Winkle John he's been with them forever and that's an incredible pairing well it's an incredible Jackson in particular

is fantastic at devising strategies to deal with opponents and you know he trained Holly home when she knocked out Ronda Rousey I was there they are you were in Australia for that that was in Australia no I wasn't there I watched it I wasn't I felt like I was there because I watched it and mean it was shocking that was crazy that was that was a crazy fight but they they trained her yes shocked right oh it was incredible yeah but Holly was good man she's a multiple time world champion in boxing and in kickboxing

she was very very legit Striker but you were surprised yeah it was shocking but it was also like Holly was good she was really [ __ ] good and when she landed that head kick like holy [ __ ] I remember Rhonda's face just the shock in her face and and and she just it was yeah that was I literally felt like I was there because it was a piercing moment but they knew that Ronda had had a very specific entry that she used to try to take people down and they avoided that every single

time kept her out they they they circled away they fought off Rhonda's takedown attempts and kept the fight standing and not flustered her yeah well it just it was just more effective and so it really depends on the athlete like I said if you get a person that falls apart In the Heat of the Moment and just throws it all out the window and starts brawling yeah well then your training has kind of gone to waste and then they're relying on instincts and hopefully skill but if you have a really good fighter and a really

good trainer then you get a Mike Tyson what was her trainer Ed Edmund or uh Ronda trainer um uh I can't remember his name um uh but I wonder whether he underprepared her for that right I don't know I mean she was very stretched then when that was going on because she was doing movies and she was a superstar and she was like constantly being cted but you know you know she did a movie for me I'm part of that problem oh really what was that it was mile 22 but she had kind of retired

by then oh this was after her this is after the fight yeah I think that the distractions when you're a superstar are huge and if you give into all those distractions you say yes to everything and you have agents that want you to be and you think like you're so confident you could do anything anyway you could I don't give a [ __ ] I'll beat everybody and that's how every Champion feels sometimes I think about like what I've seen with with coaches and and you know I I I do appreciate a coach and and

I've Just Seen different success stories in different ways that coaches have really impacted Fighters but I think about like why don't life coaches work better and like like I wouldn't mind having a coach that would be like Pete here's our enemy here's our opponents and like I actually had a therapist for a while who act for I when I first started seeing him his name is Barry and he's a great guy and uh I love him and he's but you know so much of my relationship with him was unpacking my [ __ ] you know

my parents and my trauma and my fears and all this stuff and and for years Barry would you know talk to me about my dreams and all this stuff and and like the dreams that I had that night not my goals and then I started realizing well okay I feel like I've talked about my mom and my grandma my grandparents and every [ __ ] thing the bad that's ever happened to me and and like Barry what if we start talking strategy like could you coach me and he started coaching me a bit and I

found that like with my business decisions my creativity decisions like like you're so disciplined you don't like I don't know do do you ever think like why don't life coaches work better and if you had someone like um Jon Jones coach in your life every [ __ ] day would would it be better I think for a lot of people yes yeah if you could find someone who could devise a strategy that you could follow and you could help because it's a collaboration you know you could collaborate with this person and go yeah there's definitely

value in that but you could also be your own coach yeah but you can so many people can't right like don't people ask you or I don't know they ask me for you know advice and how do you do it and I'm like well you know you got to go to bed you got to get up early you've got to have self motivation you have to not make stupid mistakes and you know sometimes what you don't do that helps more than what you do and I I I'm aware of people struggling to figure out like

more than ever especially with you know all this perceived Success Through social media and the glorification of billionaires and all this stuff everyone's like I'm not happy where I am and I want and I and I'm like well you know are you following these basic rules like the basic rules that I believe you follow you Joe follow and people seem to have so much trouble getting on a program well you got have to pay attention to the people that are successful like what are they doing and without doubt everyone who is really successful and has

longevity has discipline and discipline is maybe number one discipline is showing up with a desire to improve and work hard every day do you think the source of your discipline is martial arts for sure 100% learning when I was young that focus and and and drive and attention to detail and and and Obsession leads you to get excellent at something and there's no if ends or buts about it that the more time I put in the more I trained the better I got the more I was really locked in and focused the better I performed

and I learned that at a young age I learned that as a kid and so I developed discipline when I was very young but so thousands of of young people at what age did you start martial arts I started fighting when I was 15 okay but you started fighting when you start I start training when I was like 14 I took my first karate classes that's actually older than I I thought but like so so many you know thousands of kids take boxing classes or you know lessons or mix mixed martial arts or whatever and

they don't find the level of discipline that you were able to find right yeah it's not for everybody so but what made you able what made you like was it your parents was it insecurity was it someone that gave you [ __ ] when you were eight that made you be like [ __ ] it I'm going to learn this [ __ ] and I'm going to master it well when I first started doing it I just wanted to figure out how to fight and I wanted and I was very lucky that I found a

gym that was filled with Incredible Fighters they were very high level one of the guys my friend John Lee was a national champion and he was like a mentor to me and you know I was a white belt and he was a black belt and competing in the world cup at the time that's when I met him and you know he just took a liking to me and helped me out a lot so white belts you complete beginner but I got a black belt in two years I was obsessed I trained every day of the

week I I had a key to the gym and I could work out anytime I wanted CU my instructor at some point in time realized that I had potential and made a deal with me and offered me um I could teach classes and if I taught classes and I taught private lessons like teaching beginners like when they first come into you have to take a certain amount of beginner classes private lessons before you're allowed to enter into the group class so I would teach people from the very beginning and um so because of that uh

I was able to be at the gym all day long and and whenever I wanted to be there I could be there and I also from teaching really broke down technique which is the most important thing to like if you have bad technique even you're like a good fighter you have flaws in your you can get pretty far with bad technique if you're just tough eventually you get you get caught it's just not you're not going to be the best the best have excellent technique like without doubt especially when it comes to martial arts it's

but kicking and jiujitsu like it's technique is everything technique and and drive and training and focus and I realized early on like I thought I was a loser and until I started doing martial arts and getting really good at martial arts I'm like oh I'm not a loser like I'm really good at this like I have a propensity to it I have a genetic propensity I have like very good I'm fast I hit really hard and I really loved it I love getting better I love the fear of it too I love being terrified I

love overcoming the fear of competition it was so [ __ ] scary it was like it was like religious for you though wasn't it was like a much a massive experience it was so religious that my girlfriend at the time wanted to [ __ ] in the gym cuz I had the keys and I wouldn't have sex with her there I'm like no why it's a Sacred Space we can't [ __ ] in the church even when no one was there I would bow before been a mistake you should you should have [ __ ]

[ __ ] plent all right so that we're keeping it but like like okay so I think that's so interesting that to to trace the origin story of of your fuse being ignited because people look at you and they're like okay that dude is [ __ ] on he's in it um I've had people tell me that I'm in it um you know some of our friends mutual friends are in it guys you know when you're in it you know when you're in it most people can't find that you know well they don't have the

thing whatever it like not everybody's going to be great at everything they're just not some people just don't have the discipline the desire they don't have the willpower to push through when they're tired they don't have the willpower to show up when they're feeling tired and lazy or when they're uninspired you have to you have to learn that and you have to learn that through like if you want to get great there's only one pathway there's only one pathway it's hard work and discipline there's no other way and you might not get there still because

if you're hard work and you have discipline but you're you're competing against Mike Tyson and he also has yeah he also has hard work and discipline but Superior genetics and Superior training hypnotized from the time he was 13 you're [ __ ] yeah you're [ __ ] yeah I I um I can remember when Canelo Alvarez first came into my gym and he was young he was just starting to you know have a rep everything about that guy wreaked of exceptionalism the way he put his bag down the way he took his shoes out right

the way he drank his water every rep every you know when he started to stretch every single stretch felt intentional as [ __ ] him starting to just lightly warm up on a heavy bag felt he was absolutely exceptional and I try to tell other fighters in our gym and other people in general that like you don't understand it's it's not something you know you see other Pro Fighters that I've seen a lot of them coming to our gym and they're talking to people and they're joking around and they're sort of you know taking a

moment or two off and then you look at all of them and these are good Fighters I mean these are pro Fighters but they're not exceptional and they don't have that intention and when I would see can Canelo Alvarez or certain Elite uh Crawford's done media days at our gym they from the moment they walk in everything about them the way they take their sweatshirt off and fold it up and put it down I'm like that dude's a world [ __ ] Champion has nothing to do with the fighting the way they their hands they

hold their hands out when they're getting taped it's almost like every breath from the moment they walk in to walk out is so [ __ ] exceptional and I look at all these other Fighters I go no you don't understand you don't he's got something you don't have and you can still lose with all that because you you might be yeah you might be competing against a guy who has a slightly better strategy and maybe he's better at one thing that sets you off yeah and you want to beat that guy well you got to

work even harder you got to go back and figure out what you did wrong you got to figure out where your flaws are and improve upon them whe whether it's an endurance issue whether it's a technique and strategy issue whether it's pacing whatever it is Floyd never lost right and I do I have I I totally agree with you what you said earlier that Floyd deserves yeah that's a great story I just for some reason have in my life over the years sometimes hated on him a little bit for a variety of reasons mainly because

of how defensive he was now I know how great he is but I do sometimes look for inspiration in random places and if I'm feeling like I need a reminder of what Excellence is I'll watch training videos from Vegas with Floyd just him and his uncle or his dad just doing the MS doing these like 15minute rounds just so smooth and effortless and uh what does he say hard work uh easy work hard work or I can't remember what his phrase is but the the beauty of like Mayweather training in in a gym and I

I I just find that so interesting to look for people who are exceptional um and and it's a long road man it's a long road you're you're making a mountain one layer of paint at a time and you're you're competing against other people that are doing the exact same thing and if L you set yourself apart from the pack unless you're a guy like Marvin Haggler that goes to Cape Cod and trains in the winter and runs on the [ __ ] sand unless you're that guy that like pushes it past everybody else you're not

going to be exceptional and it's a it's a [ __ ] struggle that's why some Fighters they reach a certain level of success and they sort of slack off and a lot of people thought Canelo was doing that when he started playing golf all the time like they're like oh he's not completely focused anymore he's and maybe this is why he doesn't want to fight benovitz might be might be a little true it also might be a money thing it might be like look I'll fight that guy but I know what that fight is and

I want2 200 million for that fight how about just like how hard it is to stay hungry when you're refrigerator is that [ __ ] full oh yeah like you're kenel Alvarez you're a good looking dude you have a beautiful wife you've got this Henda in Mexico that like Pablo Escobar would have killed for with the stallions and the cars and then and and you got to go [ __ ] deal with David benovitz right like like that's like when you know Rocky when you had to go fight I can't remember who and he's all

rich clber Lang yeah to go fight Clubber Lang Rich yeah like okay Canelo I fight you poor but now I got to fight you rich I got to wake up for like I Haggler always say it's very difficult to wake up in the morning when you're sleeping in silk sheets yeah yeah yeah and like and and I do think about that also like I have people asking me like like you you know we started talking about making American PR that that was 145 days up on a mountain you know in standing in Ice uh with

clamp on your shoes cuz we're on ski mountains and there's [ __ ] wind and it's [ __ ] miserable and I'm like people like why why are you doing this [ __ ] I'm like cuz I [ __ ] love it cuz you [ __ ] love it I love it but they're like but but we could like you know I got a boat we're going to go on to the Mediterranean I'm like no I'm going to be up on the mountain yeah and like staying hungry is a um I don't know well all

depends on what your motivation is if your motivation is to just get wealthy and then once you reach that point now you're [ __ ] because now you don't have this motivation anymore if your motivation is the big house and the big cars and all that [ __ ] but if your motivation is Excellence you can maintain that motivation no matter what your financial state is forever right it's an unlimited Source I mean that's the necklace I wear pleasing to God as a creation a beautiful thing that's what it says on your necklace yeah the

only thing pleasing to God is the creation of beautiful and exalted things it's that quote because it reminds me dude like okay I don't I'll I'll enjoy like you want to take me to a fancy m restaurant here in Austin okay you want to take me to Guero and [ __ ] have some ribs okay like I don't care and I mean I appreciate it but it's not your primary motivation [ __ ] you're not your primary motivation is not to show up at the big party and have everybody kiss your ass no it's creation

the creation of great art correct yeah and if you're a fighter it's the same thing it's like to to be excellent to be unstoppable to be the best of the best and if you have that motivation you can maintain that with wealth you can still get hungry to be Canelo and come out and fight David Ben and V but it's obviously very hard to do which is why most Fighters don't maintain it once they achieve wealth who's the best who's the best like I think Tom Brady is a great example of like someone that was

able to just like reignite the [ __ ] beast yes Kobe Bryant I I guess you know yes but like Fighters or people that you know that I just think it's interesting to think about it's a different thing though Sports and fighting are a different thing because you don't play boxing yeah you don't play it it's like you could decide that you're going to still maintain a very high level of basketball and you enjoy you want to just be excellent but no one's kicking you in the legs you know no one's taking you down and

strangling you who's the is George St Pierre that's been able to like who who is it Jon Jones that in your mind is like Curious and that they were able to with a full fridge and comfortable sheets just keep [ __ ] Jon Jones is exceptional because Jon Jones beat a lot of guys when he wasn't training there was times in his life where he was [ __ ] off and partying all the time and still beating the best guys in the world that was like the the when he had that press conference with Daniel

corm he goes I beat you when I was doing coke coke yeah that's such an insult what's a worst insult than that like dud I was doing I was high on [ __ ] eight balls and I beat your ass well John talked to me about it he said I used to when I was younger I used to give myself an excuse so I would party really hard like a week before the fight which you should never do and it's like well if I lose you know maybe it's cuz I partied but he doesn't he

doesn't do that now now he thoroughly prepares and he went through a time when he was a light heavyweight champion when he was kind of like playing with his food because he was just so much better than everybody else he wasn't he wasn't threatened by people so he wasn't putting on the performances that he did when he was younger like when he won the title against Shogun he lost some of that motivation but then gained it later in life when he went through a bunch of legal struggles a lot of problems and realize like this

could all be taken away from me I got to get back to what made me great and then you know won the heavyweight title defended against the greatest and stie miotic and you know now he's the heavyweight champion of the UFC what do you think he's been fight he's many won the title in what like 2008 when did what year did Jon Jones win the title which is just that's insane [ __ ] crazy and he's 40 no he's in his 30s he's 3 he's the youngest ever uh champion in the UFC won the title

at 22 years old 2011 2011 okay so he has been a world champion for 14 years that is unheard so he has to be the greatest fighter in the history of the UFC greater than George St Pierre I mean right like I think on paper for sure I think the problem with that is like who did he fight versus who did George CM Pierre fight who did khabib fight versus who did George cerre like it's like who did Mighty Mouse fight versus so according to who do you put number one based on those metrics well

out of just the sheer longevity and the accomplishments I say Jon Jones but I could see the argument for Mighty Mouse being the best martial artist I've ever seen I think he's the best expression of martial arts talent and technique that I've ever seen But then George St Pier's right up there too and George St Pierre was you know multiple Division World Champion he won the Welterweight Title then he won the middleweight title and then he came back after four years off and beat Michael bisbing for the middleweight title like he's he's in the argument

too I just think there's a real problem with saying the number one of all time the greatest of all time but if you were going to give it to somebody I would say give it to John when you think about John and like like what how he's been able to do it for this long and go through these highs and lows and get I mean fight and doing blow like that's [ __ ] like well he's that talented I mean he was that good he's an intelligent psychopath like like but what what's in there you

know like to what we're talking about what's the like you can't what's driving that [ __ ] I know you can't you can't you can't manufacture that you either are that guy or you are not that guy so that's pure nature that's like it's a lot of things it's how he grew up he has two Savage Brothers both of them are NFL players Superior athletes L beat each other up all the time I'm sure you know it's like you're in a competitive environment from the time you're young you have incredible genetics on top of that

then you go to a place like Jackson Winkle John that is superior training with world class sparring partners world class coaches world class recovery training facilities technique strategy all the above it's like you need a perfect storm to be uh a real true alltime great do do you think that cuz sometimes I think we would the having of being [ __ ] up can work to your advantage and having addictive Tendencies and being like being able to harness addictive tend Tendencies into something as violent as in and to to be able to apply those to

a sport versus just being well I'm a well- adjusted human being with no addictive Tendencies not a lot of trauma I'm G to I'm going to fight you oh no I'm a [ __ ] beast that grew up in a f and like Mike Tyson that grew up like I don't know even understand if you grew up inside or outside dealt with [ __ ] ignited torments drug addictions violence and I will kill and and I I guess uh be that's always interesting to look at how well adjusted people do versus people that have real

trauma when it gets [ __ ] brutal I think there's some real value to being out of your [ __ ] mind I do I really do and I think some of the greatest artists some of the greatest athletes some of the the greatest accomplishments were achieved by people that were out of their [ __ ] mind and just had pushed it to a level to a level and into an area that other people weren't willing to go and that's how they became the best of the best and you don't get to be a Michael

Jordan unless you're out of your [ __ ] mind or maybe an Elon Musk I don't know I don't know if right yeah similar similar in that regard it's not a normal person that chooses to take on four five jobs like that and then runs the department of government efficiency like who is that now very few people are willing to put in that kind of work or have that desire to do anything like that you have it has to be real you can't be forcing it because if you're forcing it and it's like oh God

this is like I don't really want to do this well there's someone out there that wants to do that they're going to get better they're going to be better at it they're obsessed they're Allin you have to be Allin and when Fighters aren't Allin anymore that's the worst stage of their career it's horrifying and and you know I say that about people ask me about me my job or how do I get a job working in Hollywood I want to make movies I'm like well are you sure you want to do this because like you're

not going to have an office you're not going to have a boss you're not going to have someone saying Hey Joe get up time to get up and you're going to have to be totally self-motivated you're going to have to deal with and and yeah like reviews I I feel what you're saying there but you're going to be judged you're going to be only as good as your last job you have no [ __ ] job security and you know you're going to be up at 400 in the morning in some Mountain fumming someone cutting

someone's [ __ ] head off having no idea whether you're like on the right path or the wrong you you got to be a little [ __ ] crazy yeah you have to be crazy to think that you can do it right cuz most people don't get a chance to do that delusional thinking you have to be able to be delusional well I don't even think it's delusion my business a little bit you have to be willing to go through everything that it takes to get there and that is not an easy Road and it's

not an easy road to be a great filmmaker it's not an easy road to be a great athlete no matter what you're doing you be a great author you have to be willing to go down that road and it is a long road with trials and tribulations and errors and and successes and you have to learn from your successes and learn from your failures and not everybody has their [ __ ] together enough to pursue a path consistently for a long enough period of time that you achieve great yeah or and having the combination of

having your [ __ ] together and being [ __ ] up cuz it's got to be you got to be crazy but you got to be able functionally crazy but I always say delusional thinking because like I I made the point to to people asking me about my job I'm like well okay think about it this way you have to have the ability to look someone in the eye so if I'm a young filmmaker and you're the head of a studio I have to look you in the eye and say Hey Joe um here's a

deal um I need $135 million I'm going to make up a story about a bunch of uh Cowboys and Indians fighting in a mountain I'm going to bring all these people up there I'm going to film it and move people around and I'm going to edit it all together and I'm going to for your $130 million I'm going to build this thing I'm going to make it all put music on it and edit it and make it all I'm going to put it out into the world and people are going to stop doing what they're

doing and they're going to watch it going to love it and it's going to bring you value but why is it delusional if other people have done it here is the thing everyone that's done it is a little delusional because it just doesn't like you you're you're right okay it's not totally delusional but it's a little bit of magical thinking maybe take the word delusional out of it and be like you know like the idea of magical thinking that like oh no I can do something that that's very doesn't quite make sense it's not like

I'm going to make this table I'm going to measure it and cut it and nail it and attach it to a frame and no it's like I'm going to I've got this abstract Vision that I'm going to attempt to put together in a way that cost somebody a lot of money and yet I'm going to Aspire to touch people's hearts and souls with this it's just a weird way to think it is but I love it but but it it obviously works like it can't be D like there's a lot of bad movies out there

yeah that's true there's a lot of bad everything there's a lot of bad books you know but is it delusional to want to write a book no it's been done forever you know it's just like film making is fairly recent terms of human history you know what my dad told me when I told him I was going to Hollywood to learn how to make movies what so my dad was a business guy and I loved my dad very much but he right when I was getting ready to come to Hollywood he said Pete I've secured

you a job at Leman Brothers you're going to work on a desk and you're going to learn about Finance it's it's done and I had studied theater in college which was making my dad very anxious because I was starting to get into making these little movies and all this stuff and I'm like I'm in LA and I'm getting ready to move to LA and he stopped me we're not moving to La I've got you a job uh this guy Barry Frank who's a friend of my dads who knew someone at Leman brothers and and I

think they're out of business now by the way big money company and I'm like Dad I'm not doing it he's like what do you mean I go Dad I'm not he's said you really GNA go to [ __ ] [ __ ] Hollywood I go I am he goes you're not I go I am he said okay I'll tell you what good luck out there you know what's going to happen you're going to end up making them gay [Laughter] pornos imagine like that's the only way that the only thing that can happen if it goes

wrong you make gay pornos gay pornos it's hysterical and he's staring me in the eye and he's not [ __ ] kidding and I'm like oh my god dad I'm not and I [ __ ] left and in the back of my mind for the last 30 [ __ ] years has been that warning don't do gay portal oh be careful like you better [ __ ] work but it no it's not magical thinking but to my dad the idea that you were his you know cuz I had no artist in my family my dad

was a business guy he was like Madmen advertising work for gray advertising like GIF peanut butter and [ __ ] like the account guy he he had to go get the GIF peanut butter guys drunk twice a week and that was his job you know but the idea that wow you can make a career in the Arts yeah people do it but most people don't [ __ ] with that most people don't make it yeah they don't [ __ ] with it but that's just because it's hard yeah if it was easy everybody would do

it it was easy everybody have their own [ __ ] movie everybody be making movies everybody have their own [ __ ] if it was easy to have a podcast my favor I think everybody does I think everybody does Gavin new just started one yeah well the second one I well you're right you're right but so like well like so this is the other thing right that I I think is so interesting and it's true with podcast what I tell people who like come to Hollywood and they're like I don't understand this business I'm what

do I do what do I do I'm like [ __ ] off let me tell you something there's no barrier of entry for my business or podcasting meaning anybody in the world can move to LA you don't have to be an LA anym be in Austin and be like I'm an actor I'm an actress I'm a writer I'm a director I'm a producer I'm a podcaster any [ __ ] can do you need a degree if get on an airplane and look to the left when you're getting on like d can anyone fly a [

__ ] plane if your toilet is [ __ ] backed up and you need it fixed is can you just pull anyone off the street or does a plumber have to have a [ __ ] degree right right like but we you want to exist this is where I say magical thinking you want to thrive in a job where all you're doing is talking Joe you're just talking anyone can [ __ ] everyone has a mouth and two ears but you're doing it on a different [ __ ] level that's magical thinking in a way

if you little bit I don't well if I set out and said I one day want to be the biggest podcaster on Earth that's magical thinking but I didn't you just followed your instincts and who was your first one the who the guy you were telling me about Brian Redban my buddy Brian yeah we just started out with snowflakes falling from the screen and we did it on a webcam we were just being silly and we just did it all for fun but people move to LA or get into my business thinking I'm going to

smash it yes like they're not that's a little bit delusional thinking delusional and like I always say to people or aspirational at least because it's it's delusionally aspirational yes like cuz I'm like dude if if if like you come you want to work in still call it Hollywood even though it's not really Hollywood anymore which it's so decentralized but it's [ __ ] Show Business [ __ ] it's money and art smashing together in this very bizarre way and you got to get so good at art that the money people trust you yeah and you

got to know how to play the money game even when they trust you you still have to know how to play it even if you're you know um uh Tarantino or um Christopher Nolan or you still have to understand you know for the most part that there's there's Financial parameters and you have to be able to accept that and play that because you're playing in a serious game like our bosses they don't give a [ __ ] they're all publicly held now and they're looking at stock prices and I say to people bro if you

just want to be like an artist and just pure and think about like oh I just you know like you actually were when you were doing your podcast like I kind of was when I was in Minnesota making little movies and doing all this idiotic [ __ ] that got my dad to say oh you're gonna make gay porn you [ __ ] idiot like like this little phase of oh isn't I was in Minnesota and St Paul in this small school and I'm like I just [ __ ] love this [ __ ] just

like your first pod I just loved it but I'm like I tell people if you just want to be an artist go write plays in Oklahoma City and just stay over out there but if you want to like step into this Arena Like It's Tricky you know well you have to be Allin and you have to realize that this is a a very high failure rate and yeah even Allin just like fighting you still might not make it you might not make it yeah I mean acting is the best example of that there's I mean

we talked about Tim mcra being amazing how many amazing actors out there that don't act there's a lot there's a lot of people that can act you can take them and they can figure out how to do it it's a weird skill that some people either have or don't have some people have the ability you can definitely get better at it there's definitely like people that that train very hard and there's method acting and there's all sorts of different strategies but the reality is there are a small number of roles and a large number of

people and they're auditioning for these things and if you don't get into one you probably won't get another and it might be five 10 15 years and you've had no success and you don't know what the [ __ ] to do and you can quit or you can do with Billy Bob Thorton is and he make Sling Blade right and then all of a sudden boom he takes off well that that's what um the the reason I got into directing was I was trying to act and I was having mixed success and I was getting

very scared that you know you could like prepare for an audition for five days and I know everything and I ready and I'm all in and I go in and I la I get 30 seconds of the director's time and you find out like oh you look like the dude that the director's girlfriend cheated on and he's like you were dead before it started and I was um I was on this TV show Chicago hope it was a hospital drama and I was kind of getting a little famous I played a TV Doctor Billy K

and people would kept calling me Billy whenever I walked down the street like hey Billy what's up Billy Billy Billy and I'm like oh my [ __ ] God this is going to be my legacy is being this TV [ __ ] doctor Billy and I was on an airplane going from uh LA to New York and I'm sitting there and this guy walks by me and he stops he goes hey Billy and I'm like my name's not Billy he said my wife has this rash show him the rash and she pulls up her shirt

and got this [ __ ] rash and she's sticking it in my face he's like Billy what's the rash and the other people on the plane are like what's the rash and I'm like [ __ ] this [ __ ] I'm like I've been busting my ass I'm barely making it as an actor and people are showing me their rash I'm like I got to [ __ ] do my own Sling Blade and I did very bad things and still got the worst review ever in the history of reviews but it started my career it

was a good movie man you know F that CRI but you know what saved me so I get the the horrible review I throw up and I'm literally in on death's [ __ ] door like I'm done I have no career I get a phone call at night from a uh woman named uh her name was Kelly Chapman Meyer she was married to Ron Meyer who used to run Universal and she's like he was a huge [ __ ] guy Ron Meyer was a big big mogle in our business and I could hear these guys

laughing and she's like Pete Pete I'm on the boat with Ron and Stephen and David Spielberg and David geffin oh wow and they we're watching your movie and they're laughing like little [ __ ] Frat Boys and the [ __ ] Ry Meer gets the phone and he's like this is [ __ ] great and I'm holding the review of Kenne tan like I just got it and I'm like what hold on Spielberg this movie's [ __ ] great it's great and I'm like let's go that's awesome yeah so they say well they were right

and the critic was wrong I appreciate but I think a lot of those critics probably wanted to be you and they didn't didn't get the chance and they failed and they got this job and then they [ __ ] on everything and you got to be able to take the hits and like I took the hit you know like it strengthens you it strengthens your resolve go is it get knocked down seven get up eight like I believe that like like if it's just all good all the time I think you get knocked down seven

you get up seven I think you have to get no you get you knock down seven no you get knocked down seven get you get up for the eighth time no seven times you get knocked down the seven time is the phrase is the phrase sucks get knocked down seven get up seven or get knocked down seven get up well whoever made the phrase they're wrong no because you every time you get knocked down you get up that's one time if you start up and get knocked down one one yep you're one ahead of getting

up cuz you started up no no you get knocked down one you get up one you get knocked down two fall down seven get up eight yeah they're [ __ ] so you're you're saying that denzo Japanese pro proverb yeah that's great that's great but you're saying this is wrong yeah every time you get knocked down you get up you can't get up if you haven't been knocked down that's stupid if you get knocked down seven times you get up seven times period it's like math man you're making they're just delusion this this is just

like this this is just like pump you up talk that doesn't make any sense so this has been Mis you can climb any mountain no you can't there's certain mountains you're not going to climb shut the [ __ ] up this is stupid I Believe I Can Fly well you [ __ ] can't R Kelly jump off a building see what happens you can't fly okay you get knocked down seven you get up seven times cuz otherwise there's no way to get up when you're already up did you hear that right am I right I

know what you're saying but I also so like you have to get up the first time to what I'm saying start no no you don't get credit for [ __ ] you don't get credit for not getting neck knocked down and getting up that's stupid but you don't start up you have yes you do you start standing up you get knocked down now you're up you get knocked down once you get up once yeah but then you you have to get knocked down to get up you have to start but you start nonsense you don't

get point you don't get extra credit for [ __ ] standing up and getting in the ring you have to have courage you get knocked down you get that's the the challenge is getting knocked down you fight you don't you don't get credit for thinking you're going to fight you have to actually do it when you actually do it and you get knocked down you get up you get knocked down once you get up once you get knocked down seven times you get up seven [ __ ] times you can't get up eight times what

I what I like about what you're saying is it just like oh I can climb any mountain no you [ __ ] can't yeah like get knocked down get up who [ __ ] gives a [ __ ] just get up like that's the kind kind of advice I'm a fan of uh it's like life is not fair you're going to you're going to come into the whatever if if you want really to have success you're going to see people that work less that have luck or you know connections or who [ __ ] sore

past you and it won't be fair deal with it [ __ ] deal with it well you can't compare yourself you know that's the great quote comparison is a thief of joy you can't compare yourself you can look to other people for inspiration have you felt that have you always been that way like back in the day when Fear Factor days when before you were Joe like you are now were you competitive were you I wasn't competitive with other TV shows you were just playing your own game well Fear Factor wasn't a good example because

that was just a job the Fear Factor was I didn't want to work with actors what about doing standup you done you were doing stand up that yeah but standup was just a thing that I L to do and I did it I mean certainly compared myself to other people that were doing better than me like wow why why are they doing better than me why are they more successful why they sell out everywhere and I don't yeah uh but then eventually I caught up you know just you just keep working that's all it is

all it is is like keep improving and working and if you don't have the desire to keep improving and working you should get out because you're in the wrong business because there's going to be a bunch of people that do have that desire and if you want to live a life of mediocrity and halfast itness and just [ __ ] kind of showing up and doing the bare minimum like what kind of a [ __ ] life is that that's not fun that's not exciting that's not stimulating one one of the things some people don't

have Drive they don't have this desire you can't you can't like you can't make a championship fighter out of someone who doesn't like working out like you can't it's not going to happen like you have to have something inside you a calling to whatever you do and for you it is film making you have a calling to this thing it's a passion project it's love it's art it's intensity it's discipline and F focus and you're trying to make the best [ __ ] thing you can make and if you're not doing that you shouldn't be

doing what you're doing or you need to come to Jesus moment you need a refocusing you need something that real that like pressfield had where he realized he was kind of like 40 years old and like half-assing his life he turned it around and he talks about how he turned it around by deciding that he's a professional and amazing career since then right which is kind of spectacular for anyone that doesn't know Steven pressfield and they're like they want to do anything like right Sports podcast that [ __ ] has laid it out and I'm

not a big fan of like self-help tell me [ __ ] like the war of art that that dude in my opinion and I think yours that's the real deal yeah it's a guide book it's a guide book for creativity and discipline and and becoming a professional you know and he he really laid it out and he laid it out also with his own personal examples of failure which I think are very important like you need to know like that this struggle that you you're experiencing when you feel like you're [ __ ] up everybody

has that nobody is just like gungho the best of the best right out of the gate you learn you improve it's a long slow Journey yeah man it takes a lot of [ __ ] work and if you're not interested in doing that well you better find something else and there's a lot of people that aren't interested in that a lot of people just want to do a job where they make some money and then at the end of the day they go play video games hang out with their kids that's great there's nothing wrong

with that there's nothing wrong with that but if you want to do something that's extraordinary that's very hard it's going to take extraordinary effort it's going to take extraordinary discipline and willpower and it's going to take objectivity you're going to have to have introspection it's going to be a lot of things you're going to have a lot of soul searching and you still might [ __ ] get your ass K get your ass kicked yeah right yeah but that's why when people do succeed and someone can put together something like American primeval it's so fantastic

because we know how hard it is to do it's not easy are you going to apologize to your wife for me or do I have to no no no she's used to watching she [ __ ] freaked out of noos forado too she hated that too do you have to watch that movie the climax that I was telling you about I'm not going to watch that with her but I'm watch no definitely don't watch it with her so the climax uh tell everybody you were telling me about it in the gym last night I watched

this film um uh uh called the climax um it's made by this French director who's made some really [ __ ] up uh gas gaspero is name is he's set up from um uh my son made me watch this film um and he's he this guy's made some really [ __ ] up films and I don't recommend them if you if you have like any sensitivity because this guy is the hardest filmmaker out there right now in my opinion like these are [ __ ] intense movies did one called irreversible did one called Enter the

Void and they're about drugs and death and sex and they're very experiential so you feel like you or um yeah so this is it this is the climax and it's about these dancers who accidentally drink a bunch of [ __ ] LSD and this is the hardest film I think I've ever seen in my life uh and you feel like you are on a very very very bad LSD trip is this in subtitles yeah it's French it's French but it's language is almost irrelevant but if you want to um I don't I don't recommend LSD

for because I'm not a doctor and I think it's a very dangerous and I've done LSD and I've had some pretty intense experiences on it um but this is a brilliantly deranged um trip into a you know have you ever had a bad trip like a really bad trip not really so I haven't either and I've done you know some of the DMT and the 5mo and you know mushrooms I've had powerful experiences but I I did have one bad experience on LSD the first time I ever took it and none of us had ever

taken it before so we we didn't feel it so we took another hit thinking that so we all basically were a bunch of high school kids in New York City trying to go to a Santana concert and now we just started [ __ ] tripping out and it was scary it was actually really really scary this movie um is a it experientially it becomes and this is something that is one of my strategies when I'm making movies is I don't want my movie to be a part a spectator sport I don't want you watching it

I want you participating I want to try and grab you by the throat and make you watch and be like come on bro watch put the [ __ ] phone down I want to own your heart and your mind and your pulse while you're watching my films that's just a goal some sometimes I do better than others but that's always the goal I don't want you kind of sitting back watching this [ __ ] got berau he takes you into it in a way that um I'm sure a lot of people will hate it I

mean people see the guy is like speaks to you the most right now no I don't I mean there's a part of me like so I'm getting ready to make a film called mosquito ball this war movie and and these young kids went through I don't if you know the Pacific Theater campaign and with the battles of teroa and gu canal and okanawa these were hellacious awful [ __ ] violent fights and the Japanese wouldn't surrender and they believed in Emperor horo so they would fight to the death you know Bonsai charges and sepo they

would kill themselves before they would be taken prisoner and in World War II you had these young American kids who in our movie were were college football players who Pearl Harbor hits and they immediately joined the military and they have to go fight these [ __ ] horrific battles like just people's throats getting blown out and torturing and killing and suicides from the locals suicide and and so to me one of my goals with this next film is I want to try because been a lot of good War films and just like there' been a

lot of good westerns and I always said well I never got to make one so I want to try and make a western I was American primeval been a lot of Great War films Great War films but I never got to make one so my take is to try and bring people into the experience of how but you have you have made more films World War II oh okay you're right I made I made Lone Survivor but I never made a World War II film um and there have been a lot of great ones you

know from Private Ryan to hexel Ridge to Private Ryan was probably the first one that was realistic though right yeah I mean like that that opening which which is like why Steve for anyone like you ask me who I look up to Steven Spielberg he is so far in ahead the goat of my business to think that the guy who did [ __ ] Jurassic Park in ET God love V Close Encounters then it's like oh you know the and Spielberg was always like the good boy of the of the cuz it was like he

was growing up with like Copa and Scorsese and Michael man and these guys were like [ __ ] yeah they were just [ __ ] hard partying [ __ ] um you know hard drinking hard drugging hard [ __ ] filmmakers and Stephen was like the good goody good kid right like well little stepen he's got to go home soon put the wait let don't keep the girls in the garage Steven's still here and then Stephen's like oh really and then he makes um you know Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List Right and these move

like he goes oh really you don't think that I know how to do War Saving Private Ryan was like another [ __ ] level level um so to answer a question Spielberg who I look up to still the most and I think he's on a whole another level based on the the scope of his work but Gasper if I'm thinking about the thing I got out of watching this film that I would try and use in my own way for for mosquito ball for a war movie is the idea that you want to try and

take the audience into what it would have been like to try and get on that [ __ ] beach and you know in the case of my film there was a battle of teroa and they were trying to get a Shore but they [ __ ] up the tides so they came in and the tides were too low so those landing craft all got stuck on the tides uh on the coral reef and they started getting bombed by the Japanese who were hiding in the caves and they brought their big guns out so these kids

were getting blown up before they even got to the [ __ ] beach they were getting killed and their you know best friends are body parts are floating in the [ __ ] oceans and there's sharks and there's giant surf waves and they're getting rocked before they've ever even got so I'm like okay well how do I want to show that what like like and I look at a movie like Climax and I'm like all right different horror bad acid bad LSD but my God you're W like I had to stop watching it and I

knew I was coming in here today and I'm starting to have an anxiety attack because I want to get sleep to do you know to talk to and I'm [ __ ] watching this movie and I'm all worked up because he's taken me into the [ __ ] experience and he does his movie into the void is about DMT and he you into the experience of DMT so for anyone um who doesn't ever want to experience and you know things that you've touched and I've touched watch you can watch these movies and you can be

like whoa I I'm getting that feeling and that's a that's a real accomplishment for a filmmaker and and I it's immersive so watch it but don't let your wife I'll definitely watch it do not let I don't want this [ __ ] I don't want don't worry she's not going to it is not for everyone I can't talk her into watching anything that she doesn't want to watch she only watched American primeval because I told her it was going to be really awesome and she loves Yellowstone in 1883 but there was like we're violent it's

[ __ ] violent well it's also it's that time period I think we do have we we do have a bit of a problem culturally because a lot of the films that were created in the early days about the wild west were very glossy they were very whitewashed it wasn't an accurate representation of what actually went down you know film in the 1960s and70s in particular when it covered that subject like spaghetti westerns you know great films but it just never really quite captured the reality I don't think film making was really ready for that

experience because I think the the settling of the West and making their way across the plains in particular and dealing with the kamane and the Plains Indians like it is one of the most brutal experiences in human history they couldn't look at it in film back then there's no way people have asked like well you know when when I was making it is there going to be sex in the film like Isaac and Sarah are they going to fall in love are they going to have sex I'm like are you [ __ ] can you

imagine what they would have smelt like just think about just odor from head to toe there's no way these people were going to have sex there's no way they were going to smell each other or taste each other in any [ __ ] way and and that was like you know when we were talking when we were putting it together and we're writing it and you know Mark and we're like well should they have sex and we're like there's no [ __ ] way just that alone right would have been it's amazing to me that

people did have sex like that were wanted to [ __ ] each other like like get the [ __ ] away from me yeah they barely washed back then bar they and they never brush their teeth and making their way across the country there's I mean you're months on end same clothes no sanitation women didn't there were no tampons right like there was no toilet paper they didn't have Japanese toilets that blow water up your ass and you can [ __ ] dry yourself like they they they this was a messy [ __ ] world

and they were not going to make and I wanted to do a scene where where uh Taylor Sher uh Taylor sh Taylor Kit's character has to [ __ ] and he's constipated and and he's got to use sticks to help him get it out cuz that we'd read about that about that was how you had to [ __ ] cuz you were constipated all the time so you would have to stick wood up your ass and probe and break it up and force it out and we we had that scene written um and I I

called that one off but by the way Taylor kitch is [ __ ] he's a beast that scene in the first episode when they first meet him and he has to take off his clothes and he's changing and you see the scars all over his body like holy [ __ ] it's he's really good in that Mo that show he's really [ __ ] Taylor is such a great great guy and a great actor and you know like um really proven cuz he had some big [ __ ] misses one of them was my film

Battleship which I'm proud of I love all my movies but I kind of made him do that film and he was didn't quite work and he kind of had some other misses but he stayed true to himself and has built an incredible career and is that's a guy who truly does like he used to live here and now this city got too big for him so now he's up in up way up in the crazy Mountain the crazy Hills of Montana um just tracking wolves with cameras all day long he's like I looked at some

of your pictures out in the lobby of the wolves like he he sends me pictures all the time he's just so true to himself in that way that's awesome but yeah he plays a bad man he he plays it so well I think this is his best work ever I mean he's been in a bunch of phenomenal projects but this is this is his his best it's so good dude all I appreciate it you should really be proud of it thank you man it's cuz it's it's not just really good it's really really good about

a very unique time when you have this convergence of a American you know this this emergence of these settlers trying to make their way across this country and dealing with the Indians and it's just it's just phenomenal I mean it's it's a crazy time in human history and a very brief time if you really think about the impact that the West has had on American culture you think about wild west every kid grew up playing Cowboys and Indians like this is a time that was a very short window it was only a couple hundred years

and it really changed the entire world cu the the successful settling of this country by the Europeans changed everything the establishment of America changed everything and the only way it was going to happen was you got to get through the the Indians so we're doing the next one on uh this is a this is a um announcement yeah the next American primeval is going to be on uh General kuster yeah man and we're gonna focus on a period short period of time leading up to Little Big Horn and how when you know cuz he is

a very misunderstood character from American history and I'm sure you know a bit uh are you a cust fan I mean he was a [ __ ] beast and he was a you know warrior in the Civil War who was leading in the front of of the Cavalry and he started Cavalry Charges and I've like to you imagine being in a cavalry charge [ __ ] like [ __ ] 500 guys on your side 500 on mine and we are just Galloping full [ __ ] speed at each other and just [ __ ] smashing

and he would just and he just kept doing it all through the Civil War and was just a badass the war ends and he's a warrior with like he starts losing his mind cuz he doesn't know what to do with himself so they send him out to deal with the Indian problem so have you thought about multiple versions of American primeval with different characters throughout history yeah so the goal would be to do um like what one of things was cool about American primeval and reaction is people like whoa I didn't know that about Brigham

Young I didn't know this about Jim Bridger I didn't understand right and and so you get something that works hopefully is you know entertaining cool [ __ ] show that's just [ __ ] awesome but you're also like oh wow I'm [ __ ] learn about the country right so you I like the idea of taking moments in American history not necessarily all about the West although kuster is something that Marl Smith and I are both kind of obsessed with and there's so much cool [ __ ] around the story of general kuster and Crazy

Horse and building a fictional story around those characters and having some great actor Play custers exciting but I could see doing the third one on something like the Attica prison riot which has always obsessed me and if you followed that there's a Incredible Book by Tom wicker who was a journalist called A Time To Die that dissects that event because I like events you know like I'm good with events um if you give me a contained event over a short period of time and I can tell that story and it's emotional and visceral that that's

and Attica was [ __ ] wild and how it started and how it escalated and the players involved in the negotiating to try and calm it down and the corrupt Governor Rockefeller who wouldn't negotiate because they don't want to be appear weak and then finally it just goes off and everyone's dead and it was you know a great look at the American prison system uh racism negotiations religion because the Black Panthers were in there and the the Muslim Brotherhood was it just so I like the idea of taking moments in American history that are probably

pretty [ __ ] violent and sort of presenting them and being like wow this is thrilling and deeply entertaining but I never knew that and this is might like in with Attica oh this might get me to think a little bit about prison reform and the state of you know uh incarcerated American men in today in America and because that story of ATA is deeply rooted in like abuse of prisoners All Over America have you done anything on that no you I mean incarceration well I've done some shows with Josh Dubin who used to work

with the innocent project and now ik PE m center and you know because of the show we've gotten a lot of people actually that were wrongfully accused released it's it's uh the prison system is a [ __ ] [ __ ] it's a [ __ ] disaster well I mean look you got going back to sea this girl who's now in a [ __ ] working prison camp in Siberia for like you like we have [ __ ] up prisons um Russia South America you imagine being in a Venezuelan prison right now um and so

I like the idea and America has its own unique flavor of [ __ ] hell within prisons um not to make light of prison right and I'm not but I actually had an idea while ago for a show that I wanted to do like Survivor or or Fear Factor it take take three guys three like take the three of us in this room right now three [ __ ] tough badass American men right and put yeah there's three of us in here in my mind you are that's we doing you're a [ __ ] Legend

You're a legend jie [ __ ] Legend Jamie uh but he put each man in a Maximum Security Prison somewhere in the world like the worst so you're in Thailand Jamie's in Venezuela and I'm in Russia okay and you go in by yourself right and you just are putting the general population and the deal is you can get out anytime you want you just have to say the code word blue Vay and the warden knows and the prison knows but nobody's telling that nobody knows that you everyone thinks you're a prisoner whoever stays in the

longest gets $10 million and you have no idea when the other guys have gotten out right so like right you could stay in for five [ __ ] years and me and Jamie got out in three minutes but just like how you would survive prison and what a horror prison is today and so that took me down a rabbit hole of I say maybe doing it as a film but um it'd be a good squid Games movie yeah like squid games like did you ever see the movie Brew Baker with Robert Redford where he with

true story about a warden of a new prison who went in undercover as a prisoner to you know to see what was going on um but I think to do something like Attica something like we're do we're going to do kuster next but if you have any good ones man send them over I will all right buddy well hey brother thank you very much for being here I appreciate you very much you're a [ __ ] beast your work is amazing thanks for the workout this morning my pleasure it was fun I was I was

so pumped when you wanted to do it I was like yeah let's go I appreciate it it was fun it was a good time Mar from Prime Evil right now on Netflix can't recommend it enough absolutely fantastic Peter BG you're the [ __ ] man there it is damn all right goodbye everybody [Music]