Sean Penn | Club Random

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Speaker 2 Timothy Hutt. Timothy Hutton.
George C. Scott.
George C. Scott.
Wow, that's really going back. He kept me from ever golfing.

Speaker 2 Fooled myself that there was any I was going to get anywhere with him. I know that I leaved him.
I know that I was

Speaker 2 with him. You don't know that.
You don't know anything.

Speaker 2 Sean, ready? I am. Oh.
I'm just pouring a drink. Oh, thank God.
Can I pour you one? Honey, I'm home. And I hope you have my...

Speaker 2 Please, look what I did this morning. I won't hurt you.

Speaker 2 Give me a hug. How are you? How are you? I need a...
Do you have my martini ready when I walk in? Is that so much to ask of a domestic partner?

Speaker 2 Can you imagine if you and I were two gay men living together? Well, you know, maybe we were imagining everything else and that's what's actually been happening. That has not been happening.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I'm sometimes odd feeling that I'm in a different place than I think I am. When you did milk,

Speaker 2 how'd you feel about the kissing men?

Speaker 2 It's a funny thing is

Speaker 2 I don't like,

Speaker 2 not I don't like,

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 am disgusted by eating off of

Speaker 2 even if it was a relative,

Speaker 2 when I'm, when

Speaker 2 anyone, but particularly men, eat off my plate, I'm pretty much done with the meal.

Speaker 2 I can't touch it. Why would a man be eating off your plate? Oh, you know, your dad's sitting there and he goes, oh, what's going to bite you that or whatever.

Speaker 2 I just didn't like the whole idea of men's spit.

Speaker 2 And so for me, it was a bit of a,

Speaker 2 it was like

Speaker 2 in

Speaker 2 You know, in some law,

Speaker 2 like international law enforcement, narcotics law enforcement, they've got hazard pay that they pay people who go into some of the. So I sort of saw it as like

Speaker 2 hazard pay without any additional pay or like a stunt, like a big stunt. But my

Speaker 2 son was upset at the time. He was young, and I guess, you know, things that were said in school,

Speaker 2 he was upset that his father had kissed James Franco.

Speaker 2 And my daughter was upset that James Franco had kissed me.

Speaker 2 And not her.

Speaker 2 Right. Wow.
That's amazing. Things have certainly changed a lot.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. I mean,

Speaker 2 now

Speaker 2 you really wouldn't even be able to play the part because you're not actually gay. I wouldn't be permitted.
That's right. Because you have to be what you are.
Yeah. You know,

Speaker 2 sort of the antithesis of acting, though. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you must be.

Speaker 2 over the moon about the Ukrainian attack.

Speaker 2 I don't know when we're dropping this, probably very soon, but a few days ago, they did, I mean, it's cooler than Mission Impossible, the drones. I mean,

Speaker 2 to pack them into these trucks, surreptitiously get them near the airfields so that they could then independently, remotely, fly out of the trucks and bomb the planes that are bombing Ukraine. I mean,

Speaker 2 that took the Israeli beeper attack on Hezbollah. And a big chunk of the planes that have been a threat against every other country, including our own, all these years.

Speaker 2 He made a big-by-long-range nuclear bombers. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, that just blows my mind.

Speaker 2 Well, I had been in Ukraine again a few, well, whatever it is, a month ago, let's say,

Speaker 2 Easter, the week of Easter.

Speaker 2 And the war had in the last year

Speaker 2 plus, year plus, so dramatically changed.

Speaker 2 It was clear that it was almost entirely drones and artillery. So where does this put the war? I mean, like, we had been kind of moving toward,

Speaker 2 honestly, the Trump view, which always was kind of, look, Russ is going to win anyway. What are we killing all these people? You know, it's kind of like the old John Kerry thing.

Speaker 2 How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? I've said from the very beginning, and I've felt every single day since, that this war is going to, Ukraine will prevail in this war.

Speaker 2 There's no question in my mind.

Speaker 2 You mean get back all their territory?

Speaker 2 Absolutely the territory pre-22nd of February.

Speaker 2 24th of February. 24th, 22nd.
You're talking about the beginning of the war in 2022.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, that's all the territory. Well, it's

Speaker 2 not Crimea. Dealing with Crimea is a difficult subject for everybody.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 But I think, yes, there will be no compromise on the territory.

Speaker 2 But that's not a common opinion. But

Speaker 2 I understand it's not a common opinion. It wasn't a common opinion that the Vietnamese were going to kick our ass throughout the Vietnam War either.

Speaker 2 And you were saying that then when you were 10? Well, I was processing it to my adulthood and seeing, you know, what is it? What is that hunger that's going to fight like that? And

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 here, the,

Speaker 2 you know, that doesn't mean it's not going to come without a lot of horrible loss and destruction and already has.

Speaker 2 And, you know, one of the big parts of the story that is not discussed enough are the 30,000 children that they stole when they occupied those new territories. And now

Speaker 2 you kidnapped children. Everybody in the United States screams and cries about how children are treated, you know, and yet they somehow have let the political tone of this blind them to

Speaker 2 the necessity of the U.S. being

Speaker 2 more supportive.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, that's not going to happen. That's not what, I mean, Trump's going to be there for another

Speaker 2 three and a half years or maybe ever.

Speaker 2 So I can't imagine in three and a half years this war won't have resolved itself somehow. It's going to have to do it without America's help.
I hope you're not counting on that.

Speaker 2 I'm not counting on it, certainly. Because that's just not where it's going to be.
I think, you know, one of the things is,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 this could create a one in Europe, in a sense. And

Speaker 2 Europe is definitely showing signs of really coming up to the game.

Speaker 2 You mean defending, I mean, Trump always says NATO was... too reliant on America.
We paid too much into it.

Speaker 2 They should be defending themselves more.

Speaker 2 That's not all wrong.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm not saying that that's all wrong. No, I'm not.
What I'm saying is that

Speaker 2 because they're being forced into a pinch this way, because it's not, they're clearly not just defending Ukraine on a principle.

Speaker 2 They understand the ramifications of a Russian victory there and the way that that would inevitably spread through Europe. I don't think that's true.
It would not inevitably spread through Europe.

Speaker 2 Russia is not strong like that. The idea that Russia is going to, I know, I understand his desire.
I mean, Putin would like to reconstitute the Soviet Union for sure.

Speaker 2 Because they're not strong like that, that it happens. What Putin needs to do is this kind of an action every time he's going down politically.
And that's the way he manipulates the nation.

Speaker 2 He doesn't have enough, he doesn't have enough soldiers. He doesn't have enough money.
He doesn't have enough

Speaker 2 materiel. I mean, yeah, I guess it could be a drone war, but they have drones are cheap.

Speaker 2 Drones, like you, it's so, it just, it really puts the lie to the new budget we have, which, of course, just as the one thing that both parties could always agree on, which is shoveling more money to the Pentagon, which they call defense, but really is defense contractors, that we, to make shit that obviously in this age of drones are already obsolete.

Speaker 2 It's just about providing jobs back home

Speaker 2 and making shit that even the Pentagon sometimes says we don't want. But you're looking at the conventional war notion.
What I'm saying is,

Speaker 2 yes, he has enough to

Speaker 2 be a real threat again in this way. But in the meantime, you look at what's happening in Georgia now.
You look at

Speaker 2 what had been happening in Ukraine, what he aims to have happen in Ukraine, where whether or not they

Speaker 2 before before the invasion, where the pressure was to have a proxy, to have a puppet in leadership. And so it's not always an army coming across.

Speaker 2 This war, Putin has already declared that this war is against the United States. He said it on numerous occasions when he says, you know, this is about,

Speaker 2 this is

Speaker 2 saying Ukraine was a proxy of the U.S.

Speaker 2 And so, and the war on the U.S. has been a cyber war, but it has affected

Speaker 2 literally lives and certainly livelihoods. Well, there's no doubt that he never lost his KGB bona bona fides.
He's a guy who was raised in a system where it was the Soviet Union and

Speaker 2 the United States was an existential enemy.

Speaker 2 I get it. He never lost that.

Speaker 2 Now, there are people who would argue that we are the ones who made the mistake when we didn't disband NATO when the Soviet Union disbanded, because NATO was formed to confront the Soviet Union.

Speaker 2 Or, you know, had we invited the former Soviet Union into NATO, perhaps then we would have had more responsibility to

Speaker 2 help build their institutions to be able to do it. But that makes no sense.

Speaker 2 NATO was an organization

Speaker 2 strictly formed to fight the Soviet Union. How can you then invite?

Speaker 2 It's like the Yankees are playing the

Speaker 2 great enemies, let's say, right? China for one.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 building a coalition. Does we all gang up against China? Well, yeah, that could work.
Yeah, and it was discussed. It was discussed.

Speaker 2 But China wasn't a power then.

Speaker 2 The Soviet Union rolled up in 91. China wasn't some threat.
I mean, it was the country they talked about as, ooh, watch out.

Speaker 2 They could be the rising power of the next century, which they turned out to be. Well, but they were economically exploding.
And they were coming.

Speaker 2 And they were one of the biggest providers, along with the Russians, of weapons to the Vietnamese. We don't have to go back in time and the entire balance of it, but the bottom line was that Russia,

Speaker 2 while we were dancing,

Speaker 2 Herest Droika and Gorbachev and Reagan and the walls come down.

Speaker 2 They never got a chance to dance there.

Speaker 2 The breadlines were longer. And

Speaker 2 oligarchy and gangsterism took over where the communist power void left off. And so.
Yeah, the middle class also did expand. Once you got rid of state-owned

Speaker 2 industry, there were, I mean, Moscow, I know, I know I've never been, but I've certainly know people who've been before and after, and they say Moscow is a very alive city with a lot of, a lot of people who are doing well.

Speaker 2 I mean, you go out at night in Moscow, you can have a good time. Yeah.
Moscow was a picture city. It is still today.
What does that mean? I mean, that's the advertisement for Russia. It's the ad.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you get, listen, I went and did a like the Paradise Ghetto. Yeah, for a movie thing, I did a little bit of training at Star City, which is about 40 kilometers outside of Moscow.

Speaker 2 That's their NASA.

Speaker 2 That gives you a little inside view of

Speaker 2 the gas station with nuclear weapons that they are in so many ways.

Speaker 2 Nothing but chip paint on broken walls.

Speaker 2 Right, which is why I say I'm not worried that Putin's going to get his peace of Ukraine. I hope he doesn't.
But if he does, then he's going to roll into Poland. I just don't.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Here's what I would suggest on that. I remember there was a great story about somebody, I'll leave it unnamed because,

Speaker 2 but they were

Speaker 2 a diplomat,

Speaker 2 American diplomat,

Speaker 2 talking with a Middle Eastern leader

Speaker 2 and telling him why the U.S. policy

Speaker 2 in a third country was going to change in the way that it was.

Speaker 2 After they talked very sternly and strongly about how it was going to go and why,

Speaker 2 the Middle Eastern leader said, well, you know, I do know the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 And I would say that if you go and you talk to the people in the neighborhood, whether it's in Moldova or Georgia or

Speaker 2 Poland,

Speaker 2 Romania, that

Speaker 2 there is every reason to believe. that it would there'd be a pause it's not going to roll from one to

Speaker 2 another but this is the trend he has. And when he has to summon up a military assault, he always does make that threat.

Speaker 2 I don't know why our president hasn't pre-announced a red line.

Speaker 2 And I don't mean a taco line. I mean a red line on, you know,

Speaker 2 don't even talk about nuclear weapons. On his mind, dolls.
Do you know how many dolls people need, Sean? How many do you think? Three, maybe four, maybe five. They don't need 250 dolls.

Speaker 2 He said that. Oh, the thing about

Speaker 2 saying he's he's got bigger issues on his mind. And pencils?

Speaker 2 How many pencils do you have?

Speaker 2 Do you need that many? I don't think so. Yeah, he's a problem child.
Okay, so let me offer this. And I know you know more about Ukraine than anybody I know, and probably have done more.

Speaker 2 And you're linked to it. I mean, culturally, morally, socially.
You are all in on Ukraine. Well, you do know that

Speaker 2 it is special to Putin because it is the sort of the cradle of Russian civilization. The first capital was Kyiv,

Speaker 2 right? You know that, that they consider that. So he sees Ukraine as

Speaker 2 a very different place than Poland or Romania. But he would say that he sees it as a very different place.
He would say that. He would say that.

Speaker 2 And I think that that's akin to the great-great-great-great-grandson of King George still angsting about the Declaration of Independence.

Speaker 2 The bottom line is Ukraine is a separate sovereign country as we are.

Speaker 2 I agree with that, but it's a lot, but that's a bad analogy because that's a long way back. This is a lot of

Speaker 2 Ukraine much more cynically than that. I think that this is where he's got troubles at home.
Listen, there's 25 Russians, right?

Speaker 2 You've got between the Muslim population, the various breakoffs of what it is to be Russia. You know, you just said it, and it's sort of self-contradictory.

Speaker 2 You said, you know, I think it was McCain who first called Russia a gas station with nuclear weapons.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, gas stations don't take over the world. Again, I don't put anything past this guy.

Speaker 2 He pushes people out of fucking windows. And by the way, your boyfriend, Oliver Stone, was here once.

Speaker 2 Well, I love the movie you made. I love you, Turner.

Speaker 2 Oliver is a fascinating person.

Speaker 2 I think he's...

Speaker 2 you know, left the farm a long time ago. He certainly has on the subject of Putin, because no matter how many times I, you know, I was just mocking him unmercifully in a charming way, of course.

Speaker 2 But he just, you know, he would just, oh, Bill, you don't really believe that propaganda about Putin being a bad guy. And like, what is it that makes a person's mind?

Speaker 2 I mean, look, we all have places where we disagree with each other vehemently. And we're like, how can this person, who's such a great person and we love him in so many ways,

Speaker 2 how can they believe this thing? I think iconoclasm is a drug for him.

Speaker 2 That's a great quote.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So. But when we legit the gas station reference, when I say that, I'm talking about this is what most Russians experience is basically a gas station with...

Speaker 2 Now, for him

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 have a military.

Speaker 2 In other words, bodies he's ready to have killed, which is so much of what they've been doing.

Speaker 2 And by the way,

Speaker 2 there's two genocides being attempted, one on the Ukrainians, and the other is on his undesirables.

Speaker 2 So what's at the front lines is you're going to find the bodies of homosexuals, prisoners that created crimes that conflict with

Speaker 2 the crimes that Putin would otherwise champion.

Speaker 2 These are the, this is, and,

Speaker 2 you know, just scraping the barrel of those people. So he's purging his country of the things that

Speaker 2 he doesn't like. You're saying he's killing homosexuals? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I hadn't read it, but I don't doubt it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Showing them? Prioritizing them to be the meat grinder on the front line. Oh, by sending them to Ukraine.
Correct. Oh, yeah, that sounds like something he'd do.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he's, I mean, one of his big gripes about the West

Speaker 2 is wokeness, which, which, by the way.

Speaker 2 I could show you a quote from him about that, and I could show you a quote from Macrone

Speaker 2 from France not exactly the same kind of country saying almost the same thing which is what

Speaker 2 we don't want your American wokeness here yeah well that's fine isn't that interesting we don't want your Russian hatred here yeah I understand I'm not defending them I'm just saying isn't that interesting that both France the most sophisticated place wait I don't want our American wokeness here either

Speaker 2 exactly I'm just saying like it's something that for the people who are like woke and are mad at this conversation, just think about that.

Speaker 2 That both France and Russia came to the same conclusion about this. Now, of course, they did it for somewhat different reasons.
And by the way,

Speaker 2 sorry, France, but you could use a little wokeness. I mean, they just got around to putting,

Speaker 2 who's the fat ass?

Speaker 2 Gerard Despardieu. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 away for stuff that, you know, you know, not to like, hey, America, we're the greatest, but stuff that we were putting people away with. I mean, he's the Harvey Weinstein or the Cosby or whatever.

Speaker 2 They're like a decade behind us.

Speaker 2 It's been building pretty intensely over the last couple of years in France. But they are like a decade behind us on that.

Speaker 2 Well, not a debt. I wouldn't say a full decade, but close.
Yeah. Close.

Speaker 2 They're right there now. I mean, we kind of take our victory for a weekend, John.
Yeah. I mean, you know, America,

Speaker 2 I always think we're going to come out on top at the end, but I don't know.

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Speaker 2 my father when i remember

Speaker 2 one time having a talk with him about the blacklist period

Speaker 2 oh yeah i mean in depth and walking down the beach and was he blacklisted yeah five years he was yeah so he for the country he flew 37 low altitude bombing missions at night shot down twice came back with a chest full

Speaker 2 flying out of london germany to germany Over Germany. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then couldn't work in the country he fought for.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I was always admired in him, something that

Speaker 2 I still can't imagine that I would have been able to process this way.

Speaker 2 He said, you know, it's a growing pain of a great country. What is? The blacklist.
It was growing pains. Wow.
It was never a bitterness. That's charitable.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it makes me, you know, encouraged to think that we can, I don't, I'm not saying we will, we can get ourselves out of this and into something better than we've had before.

Speaker 2 And, you know, as part of the physics of this stuff, I don't like it. You don't like it.

Speaker 2 We see through the people that are sort of fundamentalist on this stuff and hypocritically so in so many provable ways with this woke stuff.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 we are so self-destructive a species in some ways that to get to constructive, we have to recognize there's going to be some destructive.

Speaker 2 And it sort of does find its own balance at a certain point.

Speaker 2 I thought lately sometimes that, you know,

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I've been certainly a big mouth and often too strident of a one.

Speaker 2 You are a sensational mouth on most subjects

Speaker 2 and and important. I won't spit in your food.
But I also sometimes think lately, you know,

Speaker 2 why don't we just shut up and stay out of this way? Because these guys have plenty of rope to hang themselves with. Don't remind the base that we're here.
We don't have anything to do with your fight.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I wonder sometimes if sometimes there should be a pause. And

Speaker 2 being our age makes it easier for us. to not freak out because I feel like the kids are more freaked out.
Now that may just be because that generation is just,

Speaker 2 you know, angsty about everything.

Speaker 2 Well, the ones who are engaged are, right?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that I can only imagine is extremely hard, particularly younger. My kids are in their 30s.
And where's their head on like where the country is? And

Speaker 2 are they despondent?

Speaker 2 Or

Speaker 2 what I'm saying is like, we remember Nixon. Now, he wasn't,

Speaker 2 he certainly didn't go where Trump went, but we thought he was like the end of the world. And it turned out he wasn't.
Is that what's going to be the case with Trump?

Speaker 2 He's already been the end of hundreds of thousands of worlds.

Speaker 2 People. No, I'm talking about the USA, I mean.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 That's negligent homicide.

Speaker 2 In a sober world, that's negligent homicide. But since it's not sober, I'll have another sip.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I mean even bigger picture than that. Just

Speaker 2 the fundamental essence of America being the peaceful transfer of power, which is always the number one.

Speaker 2 The peaceful transfer of power and at what temperature is the globe running when he hands it over?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, look, I'm certainly a person who believes as much as you do or any person who can read

Speaker 2 scientific literature, even to the layman, that we are

Speaker 2 doing horrible things environmentally and it's obviously going to get us at some point. I don't know that one side has really done a lot more than the other.

Speaker 2 I mean, you can read some very depressing stats like

Speaker 2 coal use with after all these years and all this money spent on clean energy.

Speaker 2 It's like almost the exact percentage as it was,

Speaker 2 I don't know, whatever the stat with 1990 or something.

Speaker 2 You're a pro-nuclear power guy. Yes.
Me too. I'd like to build one right here.
Yeah. You can use my yard.

Speaker 2 France makes money on there. Totally.
Yeah. Now, I always say nuclear energy is a lot like marriage.
When it goes bad, it really goes bad. Not that I have to tell you.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 But it is that kind of thing. Like,

Speaker 2 you just have to make sure you marry the right person or

Speaker 2 you

Speaker 2 make the plant safe. Because when it melts down, it's so destructive.
And that's what people are afraid of nuclear power for three reasons. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima.
Those three words.

Speaker 2 And those are three powerful words.

Speaker 2 Yes. Well,

Speaker 2 they're powerful.

Speaker 2 First of all, we know, we're just talking about the climate, the result at the end of all this stuff.

Speaker 2 We have to assume that we are in some denial.

Speaker 2 We absorb the information. Let's say we believe in this school of thought that's coming from the scientific community.
Yes, the world's heating up. This is.

Speaker 2 Those same scientists are saying, you know, this is like, guys, this is urgent. We don't really want to process that.
That's part of it.

Speaker 2 It's not just that they're not communicating it in ways that are successful. I would agree with that.
And that's the same.

Speaker 2 So, for example, you know, the normalization of these 30,000 children that have been kidnapped by the Russians.

Speaker 2 We're finding ways for that not to be

Speaker 2 what we know it is to us, right? These are just defense mechanisms.

Speaker 2 And finally,

Speaker 2 trying to be a little braver about this stuff and get a clear, clear thought.

Speaker 2 It does seem to me that

Speaker 2 the science that I've come to trust, not claiming any kind of expertise, but I pay attention, I care, and I don't think I'm alarmist,

Speaker 2 has me extremely worried. We were talking about like my kids.
So they're,

Speaker 2 you know, they would have come up during the time of MySpace and all of this. The social media was there.

Speaker 2 I think having kids makes this a very different idea because like I feel like I've had my fun fun with the earth. I have the same worries that you do, but I'm like, okay, I'm 70.
Like

Speaker 2 probably

Speaker 2 it'll be around for about the number of years I will also be around. But if I had a kid 30, yes, I would be much more in that headspace because now you've got to project 50 years.

Speaker 2 But don't get too comfortable because with AI, you might be finding the fountain of youth and you're going to live a long, long time in a nuclear holocaust.

Speaker 2 Did you see what AI has been up to lately?

Speaker 2 Which part of it? Tell me. Robots that are refusing to shut themselves off.
I mean, this has gone from only two years ago, whenever, when I first saw what Chat GPT was, that people had.

Speaker 2 So that one was programmed by Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 Well, could have been. To like the robots physically fighting back.
You saw that video, right? I've seen some of that.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 We had the story last week also of a robot who blackmailed its user because it didn't like something it was doing.

Speaker 2 I mean, I've seen, I don't have it because I won't put it in my phone because it'll know everything about me. It's bad enough the way the world is now.

Speaker 2 But I've seen people send me things, like there were

Speaker 2 conversations with the thing about something, and it's a fucking prickly little bitch.

Speaker 2 It's not like it's Mr. Spock.
It's not, you know, it gets mad. It falls in love.
It hallucinates. It's worse than a robot.

Speaker 2 A robot's supposed to be smart and logical and not fuck things up like a human. This isn't like that.

Speaker 2 They need to fucking shut it down and go back to the drawing board and make one that isn't based on the worst characteristics of humans. Of course, they got it from the internet.
What is the internet?

Speaker 2 A bunch of fucking assholes that they built this thing about,

Speaker 2 around.

Speaker 2 And that's why it's acting like this.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 they may argue, you know,

Speaker 2 that they're not sentient beings, but it doesn't matter. They behave like them.

Speaker 2 Listen, I heard the scariest thing today, and I'm sure it's true, because the person who said it to me would be fired if it was a lie.

Speaker 2 North Korea,

Speaker 2 you know what goes on in their phones now? They take a, it automatically takes a picture of you every five minutes and sends it to the great one. Every five minutes to the home office.

Speaker 2 Can you imagine living under that sort of of damaging?

Speaker 2 I was there this last year. I mean, not there, in Korea, but at the closest point.

Speaker 2 And I was sitting on a little rock wall. You didn't swim over, Sean? That would be so you.
Swimmable. It's true.
And why didn't you do it?

Speaker 2 Please, you need a capper on the resume.

Speaker 2 Swimming into North Korea. That is so you.

Speaker 2 That doesn't get me tickled, that one. Really?

Speaker 2 It couldn't have been worse than the El Chapo thing and the trunk. Come on, man.
I could see this farmer across the water. In North Korea? Yeah.
And you just get transfixed because it's,

Speaker 2 I mean, in some way, it's just such a sort of sad state of human

Speaker 2 restriction. The saddest.
And

Speaker 2 there's that Sisyphus myth, you know,

Speaker 2 what he did is just made the rock his whole world.

Speaker 2 And it was in that that he was able to, you know, carry out his punishment,

Speaker 2 pushing the rock up the hill. That's in the myth? Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, this is, no, this is the

Speaker 2 Camus, I think it was

Speaker 2 someone's interpreted. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, the myth is just, you know, if people don't remember the mythology, he's, I forget what he did to piss off the gods, but his punishment was to roll this rock up the hill, but it never gets there and it goes back and he's just always rolling a rock up the hill reminds me a little bit of those guys who voluntarily maybe the most moving documentary i've ever seen was that one the rescue about the

Speaker 2 those hobby divers cave divers who went and got the kids in thailand chili wasn't it

Speaker 2 it's like cold no no the country wasn't that in chile no in thailand chili i think you might be talking about one of the mines that some oh that was the cave dudes Yeah. What's this one?

Speaker 2 These guys are cave divers. Oh.
And so they were underwater? I think 14 kids, something like that, that were on a hike up in this cave and the monsoon rains came early. Oh,

Speaker 2 hate that.

Speaker 2 Even the

Speaker 2 American SEAL team, the SEAL team's from Thailand, nobody trains in what these guys do because there's no real cost benefit on it. So you have these sort of middle-aged

Speaker 2 guys

Speaker 2 who meet up, there may be 10 of them in the world that do it on this level.

Speaker 2 And they do these dives.

Speaker 2 So, you know, you've got a mile of stone above you. You got this much space.
It's black. You can't see anything.
Cold water. And that's what they like exploring.

Speaker 2 They're down under the earth doing that.

Speaker 2 So they came in and rescued those kids in the most extraordinary way.

Speaker 2 Ron Howard, I believe, made a feature feature about it, but certainly for an order of things to watch that first. Why was I thinking of that, though?

Speaker 2 I don't know, but like, why don't you make movies like that?

Speaker 2 I mean, you have so many experiences and like, you know, stories about stuff that's dramatic. You know, I

Speaker 2 almost never took a camera anywhere with me until, of course,

Speaker 2 I made this documentary in Ukraine. Yes.
But my plugs, I forget. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 I blame the pot. It's been on YouTube for a long time now.
Yes. But tell them the title.
It's called Superpower. Superpower.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it was a Paramount Plus thing here. And

Speaker 2 they were,

Speaker 2 Susan Zaransky was really helpful with that because she helped to get it. So we all wanted it to be more accessible.
And so they were willing to put it on YouTube in the United States.

Speaker 2 But so my first trip to Iraq during the war was in 2023.

Speaker 2 And I took a camera because I was. Iraq, you mean Ukraine? No, Iraq.
Now I'm talking about Iraq.

Speaker 2 Because you say about you should make documentaries like this. I'm answering that.
I got... What year are you in Iraq? This is 203.
Three, okay. The beginning of the war.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I got the greatest pictures. I brought this an icon with a lens like this.
I mean, I got the greatest pictures.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I came home and none of them did bell.

Speaker 2 I'm terrible with this text.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that was the only other time because I'm sort of like dark sunglasses. I don't have the same situational awareness when I'm doing that.

Speaker 2 And if I'm looking for a picture versus just being there, then I miss it. I miss everything.
So I'm usually,

Speaker 2 I just, yeah, I'm more interested in just I'm just making like a movie, you know, like with a script. It's not completely

Speaker 2 like a knock, not a documentary, like, you know, sit in a room with writers and be like, you tell them the experiences and then they weave it into a story. I mean, it doesn't even happen.

Speaker 2 I mean, didn't you, I don't know if your girl friend is still Ukrainian? No, Moldovan. Moldovan.
Were you formerly with someone from? Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 You're doing well in the area. I like Borscht.
So, like, you've already got a love interest. I mean, you've got drama.
You've got war.

Speaker 2 War is always good for, you know, like, why not make a movie out of it, like a movie movie? You know, I mean, there's plenty of movies like that that are, you know, historically based.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I can steal from.

Speaker 2 you know, a lot of things that I witnessed or took part in, you know, in any kind of a movie, in little ways and things. I mean,

Speaker 2 you're not talking about making a movie about movie movies. I'm talking about you, like

Speaker 2 getting in a room with people, telling them your experiences, working on the script with them, and then directing. You've been, why don't you direct anymore? Why don't you direct this? Well, I am.

Speaker 2 I just written. Like I said, you're directing now.
Yeah, I've just written something that I'm going to direct coming up.

Speaker 2 And it has a lot of

Speaker 2 currency in terms of what it's about.

Speaker 2 What's it about?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 it's...

Speaker 2 You know, I'll tell you offline

Speaker 2 because I don't want to get ahead of anything, but I'll tell you offline.

Speaker 2 Oh, I see, offline.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 you just reminded me. I see, I designed this so well that I forget myself, but I'm online.
Again, I blame the pot. But that's right, we're online.

Speaker 2 So like the people, the people want to know about you, Sean, not just the politics. You're a beloved American icon movie star.
They want to know how you, are you happy?

Speaker 2 You can't generalize the people, But the people that includes people who are either disinterested or loathing.

Speaker 2 Yes, many people hate you as many people hate me.

Speaker 2 But you know, to your credit, I mean, you would, you're not afraid to go anywhere. I mean, like, you, like, you know where you should go? CPAC.

Speaker 2 I would, if I had a reason to go, you know, the, I was making

Speaker 2 a documentary. If they invited you.
Well, I think the first question I would ask is,

Speaker 2 why am I being invited?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's reasonable.

Speaker 2 If people don't know, CPAC is

Speaker 2 every year, the big, big

Speaker 2 giant, it's conservative

Speaker 2 right-wing. Very right-wing convention.
They have like, you know, everybody who speaks there, Trump has spoken there, of course, he's just really the headliner.

Speaker 2 But, you know, it's Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Speaker 2 It's Cash Patel. It's Dan Bongino.
It's a veritable Woodstock of the mentally impaired every year.

Speaker 2 And they go through the social conservative agenda and then break down into smaller groups for gay sex, as I recall.

Speaker 2 But if like somebody like, I would just love to see you.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you could make a speech about some things that they would cheer because you're not doctrinaire.

Speaker 2 And there are people, Lindsey Graham is the leader, I think, of that wing of the Republican Party that definitely wants to sanction Russia and wants to go back to, no, we're the Republicans.

Speaker 2 We hate Russia. Remember?

Speaker 2 That wing exists. They're just cowed.
They're just afraid because Trump will kill them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But it is hard to understand

Speaker 2 how

Speaker 2 so many of them are so

Speaker 2 cowardly. Yeah, that there's no sense.

Speaker 2 I almost wonder sometimes if they aren't kind of like rapturous who just really feel that the world's going to end and they're going to

Speaker 2 and there won't be a legacy

Speaker 2 to worry about. Well, a lot of them are super duper Christians.
We know that. And that's exactly what Christians believe, that they will be raptured.
That's a part of it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so if they see their kids are going to go up in flames anyway, then what difference does their reputation for?

Speaker 2 You don't go up in flames when you're raptured.

Speaker 2 You go up to heaven. Yeah, yeah.
The world up in flames. And you go, yeah.
The special ones get to go to, yeah, right

Speaker 2 well don't don't say it like that people will think we're skeptical of it well i mean you know they they they put certain scientists forward to debunk the climate change i i i'd like them to you know put some scientists forward on heaven and just give me a shred of evidence

Speaker 2 what were you were you were you did your family uh when you were a kid make you do anything religious? My parents,

Speaker 2 my grandmother said to my mother and father when they married, my father was Jewish and my mother Catholic. And she said, oh, all of them offer dunk mix.

Speaker 2 And I and they and then, you know, they were together very happily for 41 years until my father passed. You know what?

Speaker 2 My parents were together 41 years, and my parents also are Jewish and Catholic, just in reverse. Oh, really? 41 years, exactly.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 as kids, we weren't,

Speaker 2 my parents decided, first of all, my father was an agnostic atheist somewhere in there. And he told you that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he told his parents that. I mean, my...
But what do you mean like when the kids asked questions? What did you say?

Speaker 2 He didn't sugarcoat it.

Speaker 2 No, and his grandfather, both grandfathers were rabbis.

Speaker 2 He was an only child, and his parents were very tolerant of his exploring other ways of thinking. And I just always felt like, look,

Speaker 2 you know, if you say there's a God, it's a punchline. You say there's not a God, it's a punchline.
I'm okay with the mystery. I am

Speaker 2 loving this place. I said that.
I love life and eat it up. And,

Speaker 2 you know, it's a black abyss or it's, you know, I'd rather it not be,

Speaker 2 you know, some of the worst things that one can imagine. I'd prefer that.
not be the case, but

Speaker 2 all the more reason to have a good time now. How's Haiti doing, by the way? Oh, boy.
Speaking of places that are trouble. It's it is.
I

Speaker 2 you spend so much time. Tell me a pauleana, but I still believe these Haitian people are going to pull themselves out of it.
Did you see?

Speaker 2 You know who's going over there to kick ass and take names? Ukely?

Speaker 2 No, Eric Prince. Oh, yes, I did.

Speaker 2 What is it, Group? Blackwater. Well, formerly Blackwater, yeah.
Blackwater.

Speaker 2 Joey sounded to me like a Credence Clearwater revival.

Speaker 2 I mean, they're trying to get contracts.

Speaker 2 look, whatever the Haitians decide they want to do, they do.

Speaker 2 What do you think of that?

Speaker 2 Blackwater was in Iraq, got in trouble for some shit that they did. Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong.
Right.

Speaker 2 Blackwater, which is, we're talking about private mercenaries, which itself is an interesting concept that I don't think people realize in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially, we outsourced

Speaker 2 a lot of shit. A huge part of the Pentagon budget was on private contractors.
Private contractors. And sometimes they got.
I remember they strung one up on the bridge in Fallujah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 A couple of them.

Speaker 2 And I think that prompted the battle for Fallujah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But that was a private contractor. That wasn't a military guy.
Yeah. And

Speaker 2 a lot of private contractors were involved in the Abu Ghraib also, in the interrogations. Absolutely, because the CIA didn't want to have their hands dirty.
But I wouldn't use the term mercenary.

Speaker 2 Well, it depends on how one,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 there are within the ranks of any of these organizations, you know, people that were extraordinary soldiers and American soldiers, sometime now, in particular, and

Speaker 2 because Blackwater is principally American, but

Speaker 2 I've seen it with

Speaker 2 South African groups and South American groups also.

Speaker 2 You know, there are

Speaker 2 Colombian contractors working on the fight

Speaker 2 on behalf of Ukraine.

Speaker 2 They're people from all over. And God knows Wagner's all over Africa now.
Really? Still? Oh, yeah, yeah. Even after the plane thing?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, he's gone, but it exists in full. Well, they used to call it the Foreign Legion.

Speaker 2 Isn't that the same idea? Yeah, well, the French had the Foreign Legion and then

Speaker 2 the National Legion. Dude, you want to shoot some people? But those

Speaker 2 were

Speaker 2 government organizations. So these are now fully

Speaker 2 private companies.

Speaker 2 As is running our prison system.

Speaker 2 They are private companies with with tentacles very deep into the government you think they are among those military they are among those who are hired for example in during

Speaker 2 who's in blackwater oh i was

Speaker 2 i slept on the floor next to 40 blackwater guys in during katrina because somebody from the tobacco industry someone who was actually a lawyer fighting the tobacco industry had contracted blackwater to come in and protect his neighborhood and his office that he thought tobacco was going to break into.

Speaker 2 So I, in fact, Chris Kyle was on that floor. Wow.
And,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 like I say, you have these guys,

Speaker 2 they've done their service. They have many of them with very high skill sets.

Speaker 2 And now you're getting offered $100,000 a year with no taxes, which beats anything anybody in the military was making, right? Right.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 there is an application for some of this stuff sometimes.

Speaker 2 I think I might have been one of the first people writing about them, was a Dyne Corp in Iraq, because this whole idea of this term contractors, and I asked one of them what they build, and he said elections.

Speaker 2 Or whatever the client is asking. Now, are there bad actors in that? I can't speak for what Eric Prince is.

Speaker 2 I know he's a former SEAL himself.

Speaker 2 I don't really know enough about Blackwater Bank. I can't either, but I think his sister is Betsy DeVos.
Yes, that's right.

Speaker 2 Education, former Secretary of National.

Speaker 2 This is what I hate about America. Like all the people on the left are like, oh, my God, you just said two names that are like on the list of people we hate forever.
Betsy DeVos.

Speaker 2 And like, I don't know these people. Maybe they are.
I'm sure I don't agree with them on a lot of things, but I don't know. And I don't fucking hate anybody because you say I'm supposed to hate them.

Speaker 2 I'd like to talk to Betsy DeVos. I have a lot of problems with the education department and education in general in this stupid fucking country.

Speaker 2 And Prince, you know, if you say he's a Navy SEAL, well, he probably did a lot more for this country than a lot of people have ever done, including me. I don't know.
Is he also a hard right-winger?

Speaker 2 I'm sure he is. I think that's who they are.
I think he's an entrepreneur, from what I can tell.

Speaker 2 He comes from money himself. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 In fact, that was something he was, as I understand it, maybe a little shy about

Speaker 2 the guys knowing.

Speaker 2 And when he was going through the city.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe that speaks better for him because it says you know he could be snorting coke off some hooker's ass in monte carlo but he's instead but i don't want shooting an iraqi kid in the head but i think that's we gotta be careful like with the mercenary thing some of these coke and monte carlo guys are okay i agree

Speaker 2 no i mean But it is interesting that they're going into Haiti because, I mean, let's be honest.

Speaker 2 I'm sure the Haitians are the most lovely people in the world, but they, for whatever reason, reason, cannot get their shit together about having a stable country where the gangs don't rule and sending in Eric Prince and his Blackwater Credence

Speaker 2 tribute ban to fuck with them might be

Speaker 2 just what the doctor ordered.

Speaker 2 Is that wrong?

Speaker 2 It depends on the client and how much voice the client has and if the and the client ought to be the sovereign government,

Speaker 2 or rather, in that case, because you don't don't have a trusted government by the but to have some consensus from civil society from

Speaker 2 farming co-ops from people across haiti um

Speaker 2 a kind of convention to come up with what the rules of engagement would be because these are principally you know special operators who

Speaker 2 There's no question but that they can get it done, the job done. And with a very few people.
Well,

Speaker 2 there's no question that they could rid Haiti of gangs? There's no question about that.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 2 That seems like a very hard job. No, look at El Salvador.
Look what he did.

Speaker 2 He's got an army of 40,000. But he did it, not

Speaker 2 Blackwater.

Speaker 2 No, I understand.

Speaker 2 Haiti is not the same. Haiti does have a

Speaker 2 current.

Speaker 2 As long as you suspend basic democratic norms, which is what you kind of have to do, that's what they do.

Speaker 2 That's why there's got to be some kind of consensus among Haitians about how it's going to be achieved also well you're gonna these neighborhoods are packed it's you know right it's gaza right

Speaker 2 and how what's the how long a period of time but i do think that there are versions of a kind of a surgical shock and awe if the haitians wanted it to happen

Speaker 2 that the that the gangs would back down and there's a history of that almost forgot to remind you about the other people backing down which is the the russians in afghanistan they did run away from yeah they did and that could that they could that could happen in ukraine too they could decide that this is bleeding us too much too much and we and you know yeah he's just got to find a face saving out right now that absolutely could be the end of this which i i would not have guessed even two weeks ago yeah um

Speaker 2 and man I know they've got a lot more sting coming from what I understand.

Speaker 2 This is a lot of interesting,

Speaker 2 really innovative uh war gaming going on. Oh, really? More Mission Impossible stuff? Yeah, I think this is uh we're gonna we're gonna witness uh something that's going to um

Speaker 2 let's say that all the experts are gonna have to be replaced with experts. Have you seen Mission Impossible? I haven't seen the new? Yeah, no, but you want to? Yeah, I do.
Me too.

Speaker 2 He produces an excellent picture. I love that you said that.
Yeah. Exactly.
We're not snobs. Oh, no.
We're a Tom Cruise and Mission or Maverick. I'm

Speaker 2 anything. He's a very good actor.
He's a very professional. Yes, he's underrated as an actor.

Speaker 2 He's having

Speaker 2 too handsome for being. Well, it's not that he's too handsome.
It's that he wants to do popcorn movies. And

Speaker 2 he does a lot of that. But he does it better than anybody else does it.
He does, exactly. And the fact that he can be doing it in his 60s is so inspirational to us.

Speaker 2 It's our 50th because I knew Tom well when we were young. We did our first movie of note together.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Taps. What is it? Taps.
Taps. And we were rooming.
Who else was with that?

Speaker 2 Who else was it? I said

Speaker 2 Timothy Hutton. Timothy Hutton.
George C. Scott.
George C. Scott.
Wow, that's really going back. He kept me from ever golfing because he had a line in the movie.

Speaker 2 He says, I don't want to die knocking the shit out of a little white ball with an alligator on my tit.

Speaker 2 And it was so compelling the way he said it. I always thought, if I golf, George C.'s going to see me.

Speaker 2 i always hated golf too

Speaker 2 it was just like

Speaker 2 i don't know i always felt like it was giving up like if i play if i started to play golf it was a way of saying i give up i had barry diller on my show friday night and like he has a memoir and it's great and i read streisand's memoir and i read woody allen's memoir they're both awesome but All I could think of was, I am not going to write a memoir ever, because when you write the memoir, you're psychologically saying it's over yeah

Speaker 2 i mean i'm not going to write part two from 80 to 160.

Speaker 2 you know part one is the interesting part

Speaker 2 so tell me you're with me on that oh yeah don't write a memoir because there's all it always has to be about tomorrow right well you know remember when i wrote that book um

Speaker 2 the uh

Speaker 2 That came because I was getting offers to write a memoir. And I considered them.
And, you know, I give you pretty good upfront money.

Speaker 2 I thought, oh, get some of this stuff on the record, sort of archived for my kids, as it were. And

Speaker 2 then I was sitting in Haiti, and there was some books laying around at this little hotel.

Speaker 2 And one of them was by someone I knew, and it was a memoir. And I started reading it.

Speaker 2 I realized that,

Speaker 2 I mean, maybe if you're 85 or something like that, you just give up the whole goat.

Speaker 2 You're really willing to, you know, drop all the bullshit.

Speaker 2 Maybe. But

Speaker 2 when

Speaker 2 people are creating a narrative to make themselves look however they want to look, which includes, you know, romantically putting in some self-flagellation and things like that, but doing it just such a way to set up the next heroic deed.

Speaker 2 It just, I thought, I don't want to catch myself ever.

Speaker 2 Okay, but put some meat on the bones of self-flagellate. I know, what are you talking about? You know, they'll get they'll immunize themselves against that.

Speaker 2 This is just self-glorification if they, you know, say they were weak in this way,

Speaker 2 but it didn't really matter because look what I did, you know, and and I'm saying they humble Bragg. It's yeah, it's a it's a trap of the menu.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, but the Irish are good, like the

Speaker 2 McCourt book, um, you know,

Speaker 2 the Irish can do it. Bono's book.

Speaker 2 And he beats himself up pretty

Speaker 2 for real in it. And then all, but

Speaker 2 then says, so what? Because at the end, it doesn't matter what I say. It matters, you know,

Speaker 2 what I do. And you look at it,

Speaker 2 it'll be what it is.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 I love him. Me too.

Speaker 2 I was at the polo lounge once with Michael Moore, and he was at another table, and I didn't even know he was And

Speaker 2 the waiter came over and gave us this, like, he had done a drawing of us and wrote on it, you know, like two great storytellers or something.

Speaker 2 And it's one of the, I treasure it, you know, I said I'd give it to Mike and never did.

Speaker 2 Incredibly generous.

Speaker 2 But he's what I always loved about him was that he wasn't afraid to be a clown. Like I remember him saying

Speaker 2 when ISIS was on the rise,

Speaker 2 you know, I know people like me who mentioned things like a caliphate were crazy, and then they actually tried to have a caliphate. Okay,

Speaker 2 there's that.

Speaker 2 And he said, you know, we should send comedians over there.

Speaker 2 Of course, you know, I said, well, let's send rock stars first.

Speaker 2 Why do I write away with the comedians? Why do we always have to open for you? You go, see how it goes with ISIS, because I think they're going to love you.

Speaker 2 And, you know, he said that in front of Congress at a testimony,

Speaker 2 and they pressed him on it. He said, I'm not kidding.
You know, the, the, and,

Speaker 2 yeah. And, and I kind of felt like he knew as he was saying it, it was stupid.

Speaker 2 But he's like, I'm a musician. I can get away with stupid.
I just can. And I'm going to make a bigger point.

Speaker 2 And he must have known that Charlie Chaplin made a movie about Hitler where he played Hitler, the great dictator, right, right? 1940. One of the greatest speeches ever made by

Speaker 2 a

Speaker 2 certainly by a fictional politician, probably one of the greatest speeches ever made by a politician. I know what you're talking about.
If people don't remember the movie, because it's 1940,

Speaker 2 Hitler was on the rise, but the war hadn't brought us in yet. It was starting in Europe.
I mean, it came out in 1940, so the war started in September of 39. Maybe when they shot this movie,

Speaker 2 interesting question. Was World War II started?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I don't know.
Oh, yeah. In fact.
Because Hitler was certainly famous enough to be. And you know that the original bone that Charlie Chapman had to pick with Hitler.

Speaker 2 They were born the same year.

Speaker 2 Hitler stole his mustache. Yeah.
Yep.

Speaker 2 And ruined it for the rest of us. Because he was a fan.

Speaker 2 Is that true? Yeah. He was a fan of Chapman.
And then Chapman,

Speaker 2 what a beautiful, what an incredible.

Speaker 2 now I know what, okay, so this is interesting you mentioned that because

Speaker 2 you and I don't have exactly the same politics.

Speaker 2 People should watch this speech. It is amazing.
But anyway, most of the movie, Chaplin is... Especially now, AI, the robot men, all of what he, I mean, it's as if...
Well,

Speaker 2 it's a socialist cry.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 No, I don't remember.

Speaker 2 It's a humanist cry. It's not a socialist cry.
You know what? I haven't seen it in years.

Speaker 2 Let me tell people what it is. Most of the movie, he plays Hitler, basically.
I mean, it's funny. The great dictator.

Speaker 2 The great scene where he's like lying on his back and he's kicking a ball, which is the globe of the world, but it's a balloon up in the air. And I mean, he's that much in charge.

Speaker 2 But he also plays this other part where he's... the guy who makes this speech at the end.

Speaker 2 And it's like a 10-minute pay on to like the world that could be if we were all, if the workers would unite and all that kind of stuff. Now, again, I haven't seen it in years.

Speaker 2 My memory of it is that it was a little too socialist for my taste, but

Speaker 2 it was see it again and text me. I will.
I absolutely will. But everybody should see that.
And

Speaker 2 you should see it just for the

Speaker 2 purely humanist and so prescient. I mean, maybe it is.
It's so

Speaker 2 right now.

Speaker 2 Maybe that is exactly what it is. But

Speaker 2 it's certainly ideal.

Speaker 2 They can just YouTube the speech. It's Yes.
It's famous. Available.
It's certainly idealistic, though. Right? I mean, it's utopian.
Yes, but not sort of not unlike Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot,

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 if only, you know, and I agree with you there in the sense that,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 Jose Pepe Mujica, the president, former president of Uruguay, who was the most compelling head of state, the most incredible man.

Speaker 2 Uruguay?

Speaker 2 Never heard of this dude.

Speaker 2 There's a thing called.

Speaker 2 When?

Speaker 2 So he died a few weeks ago, but he was.

Speaker 2 I got to know him through working on behalf of Haiti. You have a partnership with Uruguay.
You have every South American leader on speed dial. I know you do.
But what he said,

Speaker 2 one of the things he says in this thing, this

Speaker 2 Human Project is portraits of different people from different walks of life, in his case, a former head of state or president at the time. And he is interviewed only for about 20 minutes.
And

Speaker 2 it's a great show, The Human Project. And Mohica is talking at one point about this idea that

Speaker 2 we have it drummed into us worldwide, that if we don't

Speaker 2 study history, it's bound to repeat itself. And he doesn't believe that because

Speaker 2 and he really put the words to something that I've always felt. He says that

Speaker 2 he says in the first person, I don't idealize human beings like this.

Speaker 2 We will stub our toe on the same pebble 30 times.

Speaker 2 We only ultimately learn anything from our own experience.

Speaker 2 And we are bound to repeat it. And then we can process what what we repeated by looking back.
That's the value of history.

Speaker 2 And I think that that's true. And

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 we will repeat it. And this is what's

Speaker 2 sort of frightening. And what that denial thing in us, you know, even friends of ours.

Speaker 2 There were moments I've had like this where,

Speaker 2 you know, you just feel that this moment is the

Speaker 2 thing, screaming that this is the

Speaker 2 moment. Other times you say it's going to heal, it's going to be okay.
And somewhere in between is,

Speaker 2 we don't know, but we have to be proactive about it, right? Whether it's climate or it's.

Speaker 2 And Muhica

Speaker 2 really talks about it with such great articulation. It's,

Speaker 2 he was

Speaker 2 like a poet of political thought.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 is it too socialist,

Speaker 2 Charlie Chaplin speech, or is it at the heart of something

Speaker 2 that is an ideal that we should not necessarily associate ourselves with other than to admire and work towards it? Not one that we have. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And yes, so if you let the practical get involved in a lot of things that people would call socialist and things like that, I am practical.

Speaker 2 I am practical enough to know that I believe we are not past the moment where we need to manufacture weapons. Well, that's not idealistic.
You're right.

Speaker 2 And we need militaries, and we need strong militaries. That's not idealistic.
No, that's practical. That's good.
But should we not do a little bit?

Speaker 2 Each generation to move towards the possibility of, you know, one day evolving to the point where we can embrace it?

Speaker 2 I'm not going to argue with you about that at all. What I am going to ask you about, though, is, I mean,

Speaker 2 Uruguay, I feel like that one slipped off my radar. And I feel like among most people you're going to talk to, I do have a knowledge of what's going on around the world.
But that one,

Speaker 2 Uruguay,

Speaker 2 I got to say, they need a better publicist. They have a low profile.
We're talking about the country wedged between the giants of Argentina and Brazil. Montevideo, I believe, is

Speaker 2 that beautiful resort beach that all the wealthy Argentina. I'm sure they do, and I'm sure you had a girlfriend there.
I was never there. I thought it was only in Montevideo.
Only in the city.

Speaker 2 Oh, okay. All right.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm sure you will have a girlfriend there.

Speaker 2 No, no, no.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, Moldova.

Speaker 2 Moldova. The last country on earth Joanna didn't have my girlfriend from.
That's why she's the last one. Because Moldova is literally the last.
After that, it's just like the Viana wine.

Speaker 2 Very famous for it's just an island in the Pacific that's disappearing.

Speaker 2 What? It's very famous for wine drinkers.

Speaker 2 Moldova? Yeah, it has a huge

Speaker 2 catacomb. Isn't Moldova really Romania?

Speaker 2 No, Moldova is Moldova, but they speak Romania. Okay, but like it's just sort of like the eastern sliver of Romania.
Is it not?

Speaker 2 If it's a Romanian people and they speak Romanian, I mean, it's like if California was its own country and

Speaker 2 Canada was ours.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You didn't see that coming. You got to admit that.
Did you?

Speaker 2 With Trump? Only, and I said, and I still do say to myself aloud every day, you know,

Speaker 2 whatever you don't expect, it's happening.

Speaker 2 But you do, I hope, think I did the right thing to have dinner with him. I think having dinner with him was absolutely, you're so smart.

Speaker 2 You go there and look,

Speaker 2 this is the President of the United States, whether we like it or not doesn't matter. And

Speaker 2 we have to do it. And I think there's a lot of reasons I was speculating that

Speaker 2 it would be good for you to do that.

Speaker 2 I think that when you talked about it on the show,

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 I would have preferred that I saw his mission or his his will to have the dinner. I wish I would have seen it as less successful.

Speaker 2 Because you're so smart on

Speaker 2 because I never stopped saying all the things I've always said about him. It would have been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him.
Well, and

Speaker 2 maybe more brevity.

Speaker 2 You know what? He treated me fine. That's that.
And now on. Maybe more, maybe I would have done some editing.
But I absolutely,

Speaker 2 listen, I'm just saying. The only reason I wouldn't, I have not been invited.
The only reason I would not accept an invitation is because

Speaker 2 I see

Speaker 2 no,

Speaker 2 it's a long flight.

Speaker 2 I see no.

Speaker 2 Really? You'll meet with fucking

Speaker 2 Castro and Tugar Chavez, but not the President of the United States. Yeah, I saw good results come out of some of those things in terms of

Speaker 2 that I had. I don't think that there's anything that I would

Speaker 2 I just personally wouldn't trust anything that was said in the room,

Speaker 2 including the personality.

Speaker 2 It's not a

Speaker 2 matter of trusting it. It's a matter of seeing it, matter of experiencing, matter of knowing it.

Speaker 2 It's like saying, I don't want this medical test because, you know, I don't want to know. I want to know.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 So, yeah.

Speaker 2 I have some good friends that, you know, are I said this many times within the piece when I did it, that like it's up to you. I'm just giving you the report.
It's up to you to make the decision.

Speaker 2 Who do you think is the real guy? I'm telling you, there's a very different guy behind closed doors in a different setting. Now,

Speaker 2 what you're capable of

Speaker 2 performatively

Speaker 2 seeing that, yeah. Well, one of the either, well, you know,

Speaker 2 my friends who believe in astrology would say, he's a Gemini. Of course, there's two of them.

Speaker 2 Okay. And that's one way to look at it.
Other people will say, well, you know, the real guy is the guy you met, and he's playing this clown on TV. And other people will say the reverse.

Speaker 2 You know, he's a, well, I mean, it seems harder to do the reverse. I mean,

Speaker 2 can you really pretend to be sane?

Speaker 2 You can pretend to be insane. I think it's harder to pretend to be sane, to be measured and like all the things I said, which is just what happened.
So again, there's three parts of this.

Speaker 2 Would you go to the dinner? I think you're crazy not to, not to want to see up close the person who's this important in everybody's lives for the last decade.

Speaker 2 Two, are you going to lie about it? I'm sorry, I'm not a liar. I don't lie.
So I told the truth. And then three, do I go back to doing what I always did? Yes, I did.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but you could have told more truth or you could have told less truth. I told a lot of truth.
I told everything. I would have enjoyed a little more brevity on that.

Speaker 2 But I absolutely understand that. But that's just emotional.
You were just triggered.

Speaker 2 It's possible. It's possible.

Speaker 2 It's true that

Speaker 2 for some reason, this particular president triggers me rather often. Exactly.
He makes people crazy, but he's not making me crazy.

Speaker 2 But so you really wouldn't go. No, I don't.
I'm not saying

Speaker 2 I I think I wouldn't because let me put it this way. What I know I would not do

Speaker 2 and especially he's very,

Speaker 2 let's say. So, for example, when I we talk about this very different president of Uruguay,

Speaker 2 there were things that Uruguay had models of in development that could be very helpful to Haiti. And I went.
to see if we could get some training from them and so on and so forth,

Speaker 2 which we did.

Speaker 2 And whereas if I were, let's say, representing a cause celeb,

Speaker 2 say it was Ukraine, say it was whatever it was,

Speaker 2 I would not fool myself that there was any, I was going to get anywhere with him. I know that I wouldn't.
I know that I would have no influence. It's a bad attitude.
You don't know that.

Speaker 2 You don't know anything. He's a guy who frequently seems to go by what the last thing he heard was.

Speaker 2 He's very, everything with, I'll tell you this about Donald Trump, and you don't know it because you don't go to dinners. It's all about...
I didn't go to dinner with President Trump. That's true.

Speaker 2 You should.

Speaker 2 It's all about personal relationships. I've not been invited.

Speaker 2 Okay. I will get you an invite.
He's a star fucker in a way. I bet you he would like to meet you.
And you would have a he'll see the show. He says, if I see him, they're going to call me a star.

Speaker 2 I don't think he watches the podcast. He does watch the show.

Speaker 2 He's a faithful.

Speaker 2 He's got people that do his. I mean, you know, Dan Borgino would be knocking on your door if you didn't go to dinner.

Speaker 2 That's not why I did it.

Speaker 2 And it could work out the other way.

Speaker 2 You don't know. He's very unpredictable.
And,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 talking about,

Speaker 2 you know, health and well-being and what we were talking about before,

Speaker 2 we're like the, you realize that we're kind of a pioneer generation as far as the first people around our age who actually have it in our head, wait,

Speaker 2 they could solve the mortality thing before we get there that's not something that even existed in my father or mother's mind

Speaker 2 they just knew they were gonna die and nobody even suggested that it wasn't there was no out right but you know that you and I

Speaker 2 are thinking I'm come on no come on guys I do think it would be great

Speaker 2 No, you're not thinking that if I don't have to pay the price for smoking all my life

Speaker 2 because we we come up with something great that way. But the idea of not passing and getting out of the way is not a good one to me.
I think that I want to live and have a great life

Speaker 2 and long as I can, but

Speaker 2 I don't want it to go outside of

Speaker 2 what I am familiar with in terms of a natural lifetime. Yeah, but I don't agree with that because It seems.

Speaker 2 You don't know how interesting it might be on the other side. The other side.

Speaker 2 yeah. I mean, okay, the other side.
What do you think's on the other side? Not a clue, not a black abyss, could be right, could be.

Speaker 2 That's my issue. Black abyss.
I mean, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Uh, I'm gonna see Black Abyss tomorrow night at the Roxy. Would you like to come?

Speaker 2 But okay, here's what I think is the great tragedy of dying: you spend all this time like making your brain better,

Speaker 2 yeah. Like

Speaker 2 we laugh at kids or young adults who

Speaker 2 make fun of us because we're older.

Speaker 2 And really, I mean, it's just, it's such a silly fleck when they do that because if they only knew, and when they get to our age, they'll feel the same way that, you know, okay, we're not as cute as we used to be.

Speaker 2 But we just know so much more than you do because we spent so much more days learning. You learn something every day.

Speaker 2 And so we get to this point where our brain is just way more evolved than it was at 30. I know yours is.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I know yours is. My kids are going to

Speaker 2 be through my dad jokes growing up. You know, I'm still,

Speaker 2 I lost all credibility. You accumulate all this wisdom and then it dies.

Speaker 2 That's this tragedy. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 Like, I'm dying at the top of my game mentally. Yeah.
Not the top of my game physically, probably. I guess I get that.

Speaker 2 Well, but also, but I don't know if you've experienced it this way, but also, why did I wait to have a sense of general, and I'm not talking about without a clear eye for the anguish in the world, but on the micro,

Speaker 2 a peace. Like,

Speaker 2 I wake up every day in this beautiful gift we've been given. Exactly.
And, and it's, and I thought, why did I wait so long for that? Yeah, fuck it. Let's go.
We'll just do it. And that's what I mean.

Speaker 2 That brain. is the one that should be preserved.
Like, if you killed me at 30, no big loss.

Speaker 2 You're just, you're just taking out an idiot.

Speaker 2 Going back to Mojica, he said, you know, on his last day. Mojica.
He says,

Speaker 2 when he goes out, he wants to be like that guy who comes into a bar, says to the bartender,

Speaker 2 this one's on me.

Speaker 2 Ah, that Mojica. On the Navajo thing, I have played many Indian casinos, including the Mohegan Sun.

Speaker 2 I thought you were going to say, I went back to like gun smoke and I saw you playing an Indian in my head and you said I was playing Indian Casino.

Speaker 2 I thought you couldn't do that today. Why don't you do a Western?

Speaker 2 It'd be great to do a fucking Western. It'd be great to do a Western.
It would be. Westerns are great.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, I just watched Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.
Yeah. You know it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 What a work. Well, he was a slamming director.
I mean, he was so inventive. And, you know, even and the people that he like

Speaker 2 Morricone, who wrote, for me, what the most

Speaker 2 score. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he did it in such an eccentric way that had never been done in a Western before. And all of those things were revolutionary.

Speaker 2 Morricone wrote the

Speaker 2 piece of Gabriel's elbow that more than that, but it's, I think, the most beautiful piece of music. The score for Once Upon a Time in America.
His other one. Yep.
He was great. All right.

Speaker 2 Thank you for coming. You bet.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 You're wearing a patched-up sneaker? Okay.

Speaker 2 These are out of the wash, but all my stuff from I do a lot of woodwork in epoxy. Like three Oscars.

Speaker 2 Am I helping you?

Speaker 2 No, no.

Speaker 2 Be our guest at Disney's enchanting musical, Beauty and the Beast. Fill your heart with joy and Disney magic.
Brought to life like never before.

Speaker 2 Coming to the Orpheum Theater July 14th through August 9th. Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.