
#2282 - Bill Murray
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Thank you for doing this. This is a huge honor for me.
I'm a giant fan forever. Like since I was a kid.
Well, are we going? Yeah, we're live. So for me meeting there's certain people I meet where it's like, whoa.
OK. And you're those you're one of those.
Well, I have a very different experience. I only know about you what I've heard.
I've never heard your show. I had to ask you, are you Joe? Because I somehow I knew you were like in the fitness and everyone out there seems to be a weightlifter.
in your outer room.
Even Danielle seems like she did lower body today.
But it's uh so it's it's it's nice to meet you and people are are alternate or you know some people are very very excited that I've gotten gotten come down here to to be on your show so well you're an interesting other people are concerned for me oh really are they legitimately I don't know I I don't know. I don't know why.
It's a weightlifter thing because I have no predisposed. I have no premonitions.
But when I walk in here and I see – I got to look at that. What is that green neon? Oh, that's the local racetrack.
That's the Circuit of the Americas where Formula One races. That's my friend's place.
So he gave me that. Yeah, I walked in and I saw all these Hunter Thompson things.
I felt automatically like, okay, well this guy can't be a complete disaster. And then I walked down the hall and there's Hunter wearing a hat that I gave him.
Oh, that hat with the gun? Yeah. The one where he's in a cockpit, it looks like.
That's a dog hair hat.
That's dog hair. It's made out of dog hair?
Yeah. And he got such a kick out of it because
when it rains on you or snows
on you like it would in Woody Creek,
you come in the house and you smell
like a wet dog. And he
loved doing that to people.
People go, what in the hell? Oh that's the dog right there yeah oh so this is are you filming this too this is yeah whatever you do yeah yeah so uh yeah there he is there's that dog head it's got the head like big like tie things you could tie it under your chin. What year was this? This is...
Wow, look at that one. Lawyer's guns and money? Jesus.
Those are later ones. Yeah, he didn't have scopes for a long time.
That was... He had hearing protection then, too.
He was learning. 86?
Well.
No.
No?
Really? We're all learning something about.
Maybe.
What, that one there?
Is it 86?
With the dog?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's probably.
Yeah, it was earlier.
Blind bat.
Blind bat.
Where's that?
That's funny.
It's a historic piece, I guess.
When did you meet him?
I met him.
Let me drink your magic coffee here.
Whose coffee is this?
I'm not going to be a good one. It's a historic piece, I guess.
When did you meet him? I met him – let me drink your magic coffee here. Whose coffee is this? Laird Hamilton's.
Laird Hamilton's Superfoods. I met him – it was one of those years.
Maybe it was after my first real year on Saturday Night Live. Maybe it was 1977, like the spring, summer of 77.
Uh, I was asked by Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, if I would, I had to go to, our season was head-ended. I'd gone to California.
And, uh, he asked if I would drive his Volkswagen convertible bug back cross country for him. I'm like, yeah, sure.
Well, you know, a week or two later, he was like, where's my car? I'm like, you didn't give me a time limit, you know. So I visited people on the way.
So I made some stops. I visited my friend John Thompson in Reno, biggest little city in the world.
And we were, you know, threw our cups out the roof and stuff like that. Had a really nice time there.
And then I wanted to go to Aspen. I'd never been to Aspen before.
And so I went to Aspen and stayed at the Jerome Hotel. I can talk like this because this show is like endless.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So went to the Jerome Hotel, which was like the place to go back then.
And it was off-season, which is the best time of year to go to any resort town is like when all the tourists are gone and the citizens regain control of their town for a while. So the Jerome Hotel, which would have been full of like knucklehead skiers from anywhere, was only full of like the people that worked the town and lived in the town.
And they took over the bar and they took over the swimming pool, was outside so that's i was there and it was just i remember being there and they were like beautiful girls and this really funny guy and i didn't know who he was and we just had the most fun you know making girls laugh that's kind of what you know may or may not have been the reason i. But, you know, that's so we just had the most fun doing it.
And then we had this sort of episode where, you know, we we did an escape act and it was that had, you know, consequences. You may know, I started talking about an escape act, underwater escape act, and I felt like I could do anything.
You really think you could escape underwater?? Oh no. And I said, yeah, I think I could do it.
I think I could do it. Cause you just, I, so we agreed to, I agreed to be a subject and, uh, you have to know, I did not know who this guy was.
I just thought he was like a funny guy. So, um, and we were like showing off for girls and stuff and being stupid.
And it was fun. We were just having fun.
So I was tied with socks to a lawn chair and lowered into the pool. But just before I went, I said, hey, just in case I want to take a breath while I'm untying my sock knots, move me over here to where it's like six feet, you know.
So if I have to stand up, you know, I can take a breath and go back down and continue my untying, you know.
So I went in and, you know, I was untying and a guy could tie some knots, you know,
even with socks.
So after a little bit, I thought earlier, you know, maybe I'll just take a quick breath and go back down well i stood up well try it um joe um try and lash yourself to a chair and try to stand up yeah it's hard well i'm i'm a little over six feet but if you're tied to a chair you don't get to fully extend right your calves any more than that so tied to a chair i'm only like only like five. You couldn't get out of the water.
Five, eight or something like that. And I just, it was funny to see like that camera shot of like, there are people up there and I can't reach them or speak to them because I'm still underwater.
So that's when I started to work more feverishly on the knots. And I kind of was going, hey, hey, you know, this is –
You know, I'm kind of leaning with my head like push me down to five feet instead of six feet, you know.
But he was strong enough.
And because I was buoyant in the water, he just picked up the chair out of the water.
So I lived through it.
But it was a funny way to meet someone.
And the next day I found out that this was Hunter a Hunter S. Thompson he never asked him his name no he never asked me my name I don't know that he knew I was either you know I think he thought I was just a funny guy and we were kind of like holding court and being funny everything starts with good health that's why AG1 is a great addition to any morning routine and why I've partnered with them for so long.
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That must be fun for you, though.
I enjoy when people don't know
who I am. It's very
rare for you. It's preferable.
You have figured out
this way of navigating life
where you're not a
cell phone guy. You probably don't even have
email, do you? No, I have these things now, But if you have children, you have to get a cell phone. Right.
Because they will not answer a telephone, but they will answer a text. So that's – I had a breakdown.
Yeah. But you've managed to stay blissfully detached in some sort of way.
Yeah, my email is AOL.com. Is it really? Yeah.
So that was my concession to it. One of my favorite things you did with Hunter was when it was a filming of some sort of a documentary or something, or it was in a documentary, the footage is, and you're going around trying to convince people that Nixon got a bad rap? Yeah, yeah.
That was good. We were trying to write something funny.
I was with my friend Dick Blesucci on that one. And I can't remember.
There were like two or three of us that were trying to write this thing. And we rented like a Klieg light, you know, like a big Hollywood premiere, kind of one of those giant lights that they flash up in the sky.
You know, you don't even see them very much anymore. And we were just outside the Chateau of Montmartre where Hunter had a room at that moment.
And we were doing we were excited because Nixon's back, you know. And we were interviewing alleged people on the street, men on the street saying, what do you think about this? Because it was after Watergate and Nixon had basically burrowed down.
Hunter had like a powerful hatred of Nixon, really didn't like Nixon, of course. But I just remember Dick Blasucci saying, well, I'm excited.
He's tanned, he's rested, and he's ready. I still say it all the time.
I just, I say it about myself all the time because I think it's funny. How are you, Bill? I'm tanned, I'm rested, and I'm ready.
But saying it about Richard Nixon, I thought, was a really brilliant thing to say. Well, actually, it became a common phrase.
Yeah. People use it all the time to this day, probably not even knowing the origin.
That's right. Yeah.
And it's Dick Blasucci who did it. And we weren't there for like 45 minutes before like –
I work in the industry and I know you have to have a permit to have that light on.
I mean there were people.
They came at us.
We were going concerned for about one hour tops.
And that was with like professional argumentative people like Hunter, myself going, that is a fabulous watch you're wearing.
Where did you get that?
You know, just anything to keep this thing going and to keep the cameras rolling on our super stuff. But, and demands.
But yeah, that was one of the things. I had a lot of fun with the guy.
Really, he really was a lot of fun. He really could make a lot of fun.
I really wish I met him. He's one of those people that, gah, just really wish I met him.
Well, you can still read it.
Oh, yeah.
There's still so much more stuff that I hadn't even read then.
It just keeps appearing.
There are things that are so beautiful that he wrote that are good.
And, you know, people text me things and say about what's going on,
how sort of pressured he was about things a long time ago. Yeah, dead on about so many things.
I mean, you could take a lot of his commentary on politics from 1976 and apply it easily to today. You know, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is one of the best books ever on the American political system, just like what it's like when people are running for office.
Yeah, To me, it's a better book than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is really fun. But the Campaign Trail book is so insightful about America and about Americans.
It's great reading. The movie was fun.
Fear and Loathing was fun. It was a great introduction to a lot of people, maybe, that weren of Hunter like maybe then you'll start reading as his stuff But it's it wasn't all you know chaos and acid and seeing lizard people in the in the bar It was there there was even there's moments in fear and loathing the movie where you know he there's this one thing where Johnny Depp is at the typewriter Or is that in the movie or is that in the documentary the documentary? I don't know exactly.
Where he's at the typewriter. He's talking about how the 1960s, there was this great wave of change.
Yeah. And then.
Yeah. The high water market.
You can see it on the mountains. It's a beautiful, beautiful piece of writing.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
It's amazing. And when Johnny Depp is saying, the way he's saying it.
Yeah. It's like, it's so beautiful and melodic.
Yeah. Why don't you, Jimmy, why don't you see if you can find it.
It's and when Johnny Depp is saying the way saying it. Yeah, it's like it's so Beautiful and melodic.
Yeah, why don't you Jimmy? It's about the most famous. It's the most famous line of the road It's beautiful Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas has it years? Six? It seems like a lifetime.
The kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle 60s was a very special time and place to be a part of.
But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive In that corner of time in the world Whatever it meant There was madness in any direction, at any hour.
You could strike sparks anywhere.
There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right,
that we were winning.
And that, I think, was the handle.
That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil.
Not in any mean or military sense.
We didn't need that.
Our energy would simply prevail.
We had all the momentum.
We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high watermark.
That place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. God damn, that's good.
Yeah. I mean, that is just an amazing piece of writing that so perfectly captured that very strange moment in time where the anti-war, the peace love movement just got drowned out by the Nixon administration.
It's a beautiful piece. It glistens your eyes to see it, you know, not just the thing of Hunter and the words that he said, but seeing Johnny and how close Johnny and Hunter became, how much they loved each other and how much they shared with each other other it's really a beautiful piece thank you yeah it is a beautiful piece and it's uh it's just so fucking perfect it just perfectly yeah he got it he really got it yeah it just encapsulates that that time you know and it's just thank god there was a guy like him around to document it from that perspective to like to give you this like insight and that the way he did it with gonzo journalism where he just would have real facts mixed in with fiction you couldn't tell what was what and you had to be in on it to understand what he was doing yeah you had to enter the event yeah to comment on it you had to be a part of it yeah yeah uh you played him i did play him yeah we were talking about it before i loved it we're in the buffalo room yeah we're in the buffalo room was that weird to play your friend it was a lot of responsibility yeah i mean it was um any actor that has to play either a living person, especially a living person or a famous person has a real responsibility to that person.
You can't just be that person for 90 minutes. You have to realize that person was that person for 60-some-odd years or 70 or however many years the person was.
You've got to try to get all that into your hour and a half or two hours.
You've got to try to take in as much as you can so you're not lying.
At least you're giving the best you can to say this is who I think he was.
This is who I think that person was.
She was.
He was.
Did you run any of it by him?
Did you try to talk to him as him? Well, he was living in the guest house. So you were around him all the time? Yeah.
So I would go to work and I would come home. and then we would stay up and sort of just an hour or so before, maybe an hour and a half before, two hours before dawn, he'd have a NyQuil and scotch in the hot tub and then go to sleep.
And then I had to get about 90 minutes
and then the teamster was knocking on the window
saying, Bill!
Millie!
And then I'd have to go to work.
So that's what it was like while we were shooting a movie.
Wow.
Yeah.
And he appears in the movie briefly.
He appears in the movie briefly.
I can't remember all of it,
but he appears in the movie briefly. And we did, together we wrote a scene.
I was always constantly changing. John K.
wrote the script, but I was always playing with it because I was always being informed more. And that's what I did anyway.
I just pretty much – I felt the freedom to change anything. But we did write a scene, Hunter and I wrote a scene that was late in the movie.
Pardon me. They gave me these beautiful, massive things.
Cough drops? Yeah. Want one? No, thank you.
Yeah, so he was in on a lot of it and the editing of it, you know, we can secretly say that too. And, you know, it was a lot of, he was really involved.
Very nice. So.
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Download Call of Duty Warzone for free, and I'll see you in verdansk rated m for mature um so you're saying he wrote a scene you guys wrote yeah we wrote a scene together yeah which was um encountering nixon in a urinal because he did have a moment with n Remember, yeah. Yeah.
And he was told he could not speak politics.
They could only talk NFL football.
Yeah.
Which Nixon was rather, you know, knowledgeable about.
Yeah.
And Hunter Copta was like, yeah, the guy really studied it.
And George Allen, it's in the book, you know.
Yeah.
Nixon even wrote a, designed a play that he gave to George Allen, who was the coach of the Washington Redskins back then. And it was like they lost like 10 yards or something on the play.
But Allen actually played, ran the play. Wow.
That's crazy. It's just also insane that they would let Hunter get in a limousine with the president.
Like, just that alone. Like, who, you know, who greenlit that? Who thought that was a good idea? Well, he'd been on the, I mean, he was on the campaign trail.
He also, for whatever he was, the people who knew, and you know, like, Secret Service guys, you ever run into them, they, like, read people for a living. This is what they do, you know.
They read people. And they can really burn a hole through your head and your body just looking at you.
And they'll give you this one, you know. They'll just really burn you.
And, you know, he'd been on the tour, the tour. He'd been on the road with them.
They knew who he was. They knew what he was after
hours and they knew what he was during hours where the people who were really smart knew, this guy's really smart. This guy's really smart.
He knows politics. And you can't try to dumb down, you can't try to like big time him because he'll kill you.
He'll chop you. He's got the words to answer, and he has the intelligence.
So he was
a force. People knew who he was.
Even to get information, you got to go into the people who work for the guy. So the people that work for the guy know who he is, and they've already established that they have a relationship with him.
They can speak with him. He's talking a certain way.
There's a reality check. You know, if you're running someone's political campaign, you have the best jokes about the campaign.
You know, not Hunter Thompson maybe. You have the best jokes because you've seen it all.
You know how stupid things get. And, you know, if you can be realistic and savvy about those things, then people trust you.
Well, it's still pretty extraordinary
that they also got him
to agree or at least
thought he would agree that he would
only talk about football. Well, he
knew if he blew it, that was it.
And that was going to be the end of it. And it was only
I don't know what month it was.
There's more coffee in this.
Oh, is that your stuff? No, that's everybody's.
Okay, well,
we'll try to finish it all off. It's hot.
I just feel like yours is probably going to sit there for a while. It doesn't have to be super.
I keep coffee for days. At least two days.
If it's not hot, it's got ice in it. You just keep drinking? I just keep drinking.
Yeah. That smells good.
What kind is that? Black Rifle Coffee. Where does that come from? It's an American company, veteran-owned company, made by real coffee nuts that travel around the world and find different blends and different— It smells good.
It's very good.
There's a lot of coffee you can't even smell.
It's excellent.
It's very good coffee.
Yeah.
It's just that meeting in the limousine is, like, one of my favorite meetings because it just – you could feel how weird it must have been for Hunter to be sitting in a limo getting a ride with Nixon and they're just talking about football. And then they can find common ground.
Well, it's very much like this is happening – this has been happening in my life anyway. And I'm sure it's happening in everyone's life for the last – got to be 10 years where you meet people have something in common we've got a we've got a something we got to get done you know but if we talk politics we're leaving the rails you know right all hell's gonna you know we're we're not gonna get along we're not gonna get anything done we're never gonna be friends and and you know it could be worse than that.
We could be we could be adversaries or even enemies or, you know, so that I mean, it's, you mentioned it's like, I go places where, and I'm sure you do too, where you just can't talk, you just don't want to talk politics with people, because there are people that are, you know, whose politics can be the exact opposite of yours, completely 12 to 6. And yet there are people that have lived lives that are so extraordinary and so enormous in terms of what they give to the world and the planet.
And you think, well, how, you know, why would I like ever want to get how it's a mystery? You know, it's kind of a mystery. But it's if you don't like value that first instead of your kind of political, you know, handkerchief, you know, you're you're making more of a mess.
You know, that's kind of what's, you know, that's what I feel a lot about what's going on anywhere, everywhere, you know.
That people are leading with their handkerchief and not with their whole self, you know, what they understand about what living is.
I agree 100%.
I think that we're just too tribally divided.
And people look at it like it's us versus them. They enjoy the comfort of being a part of a tribe.
They lock on to whatever ideologies the tribe support. And then anybody who opposes that is somehow or another the enemy.
And it's just a, it's a division tactic that's been used by the people that actually run the government, the actual world itself. The of this world Especially the people of this country have mostly share the same Common core needs you want to be healthy you want to have a good family you want to be able to make a living You want to live in a safe place you want your kids to be able to go to a good school You want everybody to prosper and have a good time that's most of what life is all this other shit that people get so goddamn caught up in most of it has very little to do with you and you get locked into it like it's 100% of your identity and the next thing you know anybody who opposes you is Hitler and it just gets it's true it gets so time name gets bandied about a lot't it? Yeah, it's a good one.
But you sort of started it by saying – by bringing up that quotation of hunters, which is so – and I think about that all the time. I can – but I think about it regularly.
Like what was that force that that movement had, that anti-war movement, whatever that was? You know, it wasn't perfect. You know, it wasn't perfect.
I think the thing that if I had to regret anything or anyone regrets anything about it was the sort of hostility that was shown towards the actual servicemen. Right.
Most of whom were drafted. Right.
You know, right. To fight, you know know so that those service people had an experience that i will never have i was in a military movie that's as good as it ever got for me but there's the thing about being in war together with people is everybody hates war and who could hate it more than someone that was there right but the sort of camaraderie that you had is an experience, I'll never have that.
I'll never have that thing that Rambo had. I'll never have that thing.
And I don't think that, I think that the sort of, there could have been more vision about who we're talking to or who we're talking to about whatever kind of change you want to make. And so that the agents of it are not necessarily the architects like you say.
The people who are making this tribal thing. They're not the agents of it.
They're the architects of it. And how do you jump over or how do you, you know, excuse or not excuse isn't word, but how do you unite, miss the people that are the agents who are just people that have a job or whatever it is, they're, they're, they're doing their work to survive and live, whatever it is.
How do you get to the architects with whatever you feel is, is that what could be a shared experience and get them to like sort of dissolve the creation of the tribal world? I think it's – you ask a great question. You know, you have people on here I guess that know or think about those things and have the ability to do something about it.
I don't think I have the ability to do anything more than something for myself mostly. But you do because you have the ability to express yourself and you're an example.
And a lot of times when someone is a very reasonable, intelligent person like you and you express yourself, other people get inspired to maybe reexamine the way they're looking at things. Well, that's a nice hope.
I hope that maybe that'll happen.
I think that's maybe one of the only things. Well, right back at you then.
Okay. Thank you.
Because part of our problem in this country is that we're in competition every two years. Every two years, you have midterms.
That is crazy. You have elections every four years.
We don't get a break. No, we don't get a break.
We don't get a break from these people. No, we don't get a break.
We don't get a break from division. We don't get a break from propaganda.
And we don't get a break from new threats.
We don't get a break.
It's like every day it's a new thing. And it keeps us completely in this constant state of stress and anxiety and also this fear of being overcome.
Like your side's going to lose. Yeah, if I fall asleep too early tonight, I'll...
We're going to lose the internet. I'm supposed to be on watch or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. of being overcome like your side's going to lose yeah if i fall asleep too early tonight yeah we're gonna lose the internet to be on watch or something yeah yeah it's a very very stressful and it's not healthy for human beings to be constantly in this state of competition and stress it's bad for and then on top of that you have most people are addicted to social media so you're constantly getting inundated with the worst fucking things in the world all day long, and you're freaking out.
It's terrible for you. It's fucking terrible for you.
I mean, that footage made me cry. Now you're going to make me cry.
Okay. No, but it's true.
Someone's got to – there has to be some sort of a new – I don't know if it has to be a club, but there's got to be some sort of new, you know, it used to be music. I think music played such a big part of, of whatever that movement was, whatever you call the peace movement or the hippies or, you know, whatever it was, it was a, it was an extraordinary moment in time.
And the music was part of the, part of the experience and part of the, it brought the message and it's sort of it crashed through everybody's brain you know it wasn't there wasn't a side to it right it's like what were the soldiers listening to in vietnam jimmy hendrix yeah you know well you know we're all listening to the same stuff no matter where you were yeah no matter where you were you were listening to the same music no matter what were listening to the same music, no matter what your politic thing was. The music sort of told a story and sort of suggested a possibility.
And the music was so much different than the music of the past. Yeah.
And it was like you go from 1959 to 1969, you're dealing with a completely different dimension. And it's because it was all psychedelically inspired.
And that was another thing that the Nixon administration did they pass that sweeping schedule one psychedelics act made everything illegal and Just threw water on the whole movement And then everything changes then you have the 70s music starts getting weird the 80s It completely falls apart cars start looking like shit people start dressing stupid It's like you're talking. Yeah, you're talking.
It's a real language. It's like when I never tied it all to that sweeping thing, but when you revisit that, you realize how much harm that did, that kind of lawmaking.
But let's all agree that the cars don't look as good as they used to. They look like dog shit.
Who are those people that say they're the really good problem solvers? I see them every once in a while, and they go like, how does he do it? He says, well, first I say, what can we agree on? Okay, so we can agree that cars don't look so good no more. Well, they look good now.
It used to be that every single year, every single car looked different than it looked the year before yes and that's mind-boggling nowadays to think about that and even now with it the cars are made of i don't know plastic what are they made of they're made of shit they're made of nothing they're not made of steel they did it with steel back then right and now they're made with i don't know some sort of carbon something or other and you would think they would be able to like, I don't know what a 3D printer is, I have to confess. I have no idea.
We actually talked about it yesterday. I have no idea.
The biggest one's four feet long. The biggest one is four feet long? Yeah, that's what Elon was saying.
So can you make a table out of this? You can't make anything bigger than four feet? I don't think so. I mean, maybe there's some super...
Car parts now are... I mean, if you have a car, if you have a fender bender, there's like seven parts that you have to replace now.
Panels and panels and panels. But that's also because they're better structurally with sand impact.
They have these crumpled layers and they're designed in a way that makes it safer for you. They're a lot safer than old cars.
I fucking love old cars.
And the sound systems are better.
Yeah.
Let's face it.
But new cars look great.
New cars are awesome.
There's a lot of really good-looking American cars, a lot of really good-looking German
cars.
What happened in the 1970s and the 1980s was a drop-off, a significant drop-off from
the 60s.
The 60s cars were some of the best-looking cars of all time.
Like a 65 Corvette, one of the greatest-looking cars the world's ever designed.
I was a 62 Corvette.
Oh, my God. off from the 60s the 60s cars were some of the best looking cars of all time like a 65 corvette what a greatest looking cars the world's ever was a 62 corvette oh those are beautiful too model one the first one generation one but like you know the camaros and barracudas like they made beautiful wild looking cars back then and i think a lot of that had to do with just the the the way creativity was encouraged in the 1960s it was more free-flowing the music was completely radical and different politics is radical and different and that's why they passed those laws they passed those laws to stop the anti-war movement it was a civil rights movement and the guy they put in charge was a man who had absolutely no qualifications, who had no qualifications to do any of it.
No. Yeah.
It's kind of a – I've got someone, a friend, that's been trying to get me to do a movie about it. But the person responsible for making all the laws was someone who had absolutely no background in any of the fields, no knowledge whatsoever, just a total huckster that got himself out in front.
Well, they probably had a mandate. They gave him a mandate.
This is what we're going to do. This is the plan.
We're going to lock up all these hippies. I'll carry the flag.
I'll carry the flag, whatever it is. I'll run up the hill.
Exactly. Yeah.
Well, I heard that Buick is going to make a car and I just could be wrong, but I heard they're going to make a car next year. That's not going to look like any car ever.
It's going to be like a brand new, whatever the hell, 25 or 26 Buick. And it's not going to look like the 24 or 5.
It's going to look like its own individual thing. They're going to try to recommence the idea of making a new car every year.
You didn't hear this? No, like a completely new kind of model? Yeah, like the idea that you would make a car that didn't look like every... I mean, you can look at a car and go like, that's a Volvo, but that part of it looks like a mercedes that part of it looks like an infinity that part of the car looks like you know a toyota that kind of you know they're they're it's like you've heard probably the story about the once that car called the ford that's got a animal name mustang taurus taurus now there's a story now it could be apocryphal okay that the ford taurus you never heard this one no i thought You were like this guy.
You had all the information. Taurus.
Now, there's a story. Now, it could be apocryphal.
Okay. That the Ford Taurus.
You never heard this one?
No. I thought you were like this guy.
Taurus is a piece of shit.
I don't care about Tauruses. Well, the Taurus, yeah.
The Taurus is like, it's not the most beautiful car in the world. No.
But it was a huge seller for Ford. They sold a lot of them.
And the story is that these guys at Ford designed a car and they took the rear quarter panel from this automobile, the fender from this, the back fender from this, the rear windows from this, and just did a composite of all these different cars. And the car was, this car is bullshit.
And we'll call it the Taurus. And they presented it to Ford, who went, we love it.
And then proceeded to sell hundreds of thousands of them. And this is a story.
Like, where's your phone calls here? Hey, caller number one, you heard about this? No one's ever heard this story? You've never heard this one? No, I've never heard that. No.
But I believe it. It makes sense.
You can believe it if you look at the cars that are put now that they are absolutely like look at that damn volvo it looks exactly like a three year ago mercedes or something like that they just really just steal and jamie pull up 2024 shelby mustang super snake so there's still better yeah some cars roll it in here. Just check out what this looks like.
There's cars that they make today that are unique looking and look badass. I wish I'd bought a Shelby back when I first had a paycheck.
Oh, yeah. They're such beautiful cars.
That's, look at that. Come on.
Well, that kind of, funny when I first look at it, it looks a little Chevy to me. It does a little bit.
It could be like a Camaro. I mean, look at that.
That looks like Chevy.
I mean, that's a beautiful car, though, right?
Well, you know, you could photograph either of us from a certain angle. No, no, I've seen that one in real life.
That's a beautiful car.
That's a beautiful car.
That's better.
Oh, and it sounds amazing.
But I'd hate to hit anything with that thing.
In what way?
I would hate to bump into anything.
It looks like I'd have to get the car back for six weeks.
That's true.
Can you pick up that picture there? What's the rear look like? Oh, it's got a spoiler? Yeah. Come on.
How do you feel about spoilers? That looks fucking badass. That thing looks awesome.
That looks amazing. Well, I think the original one is like the super coolest car in all.
Oh, yeah. Oh, no doubt.
I mean, if you go back and look at, like, pull up a Boss 429, 1969, Boss 429. This, to me, is the pinnacle of muscle car design, is the Boss 429.
Like, that is just spectacular. Look at that.
Look at that. Well, that's pretty close.
Well, that's got that scoop in the front. Yeah.
But that's pretty close to the bullet year, right? The bullet car? 68. Yeah, bullet was 68.
I actually have a recreation of that. I was watching it.
You know, they found the original bullet car. Did you know that? Yes.
I was reading about that this week. It was on TV last week.
And I've watched it a lot of times, that movie, because, you know, I think Steve McQueen's pretty damn good. But when you watch the movie, it's obviously the roaring through San Francisco and all that sort of stuff it's famous for.
And then there's the ending where there's – the sort of story ends with kind of a flaming crash. It's kind of – not really kind of an ending in a way but but watching at this particular time it was all the moments in between all that that really make the movie yes all the quiet in between where he's in the grocery store he's with the groceries the mailbox he's seeing these people and these people and he has this very quiet inner self that's dealing with people very respectfully and it and his his blood pressure only moves the needle only starts to move when he gets with the bad guy chalmers who's obviously a you know a fraud of some sort and he's got him like he see him like not just as a an actor keeping his cool but as like a cop keeping his cool with like a person he knows is trying to use him.
And just watching that part of the performance and that part of the story was much more interesting. The first time I saw all that as its own weave through it, you know.
Yes. The car stuff had very little to do with what I was getting from the people.
The car stuff was nothing. And his boss was a great actor, Simon Oakland, I think his name is.
He was great as his boss who said, I'm going to hold this till Monday morning. You know, that kind of guy.
And there was some great acting in that. It's a really beautiful American movie like that.
I'm so glad you brought that up because it's one of the things that I love about that movie and Lamont's another great Steve McQueen movie is that he had these moments and you could do that in a movie back then where no one was talking for minutes and minutes at a time there's a lot of quiet bullet a lot of quiet yeah yeah it's just you're lot of music. A lot of music.
A lot of music. Yeah.
Amazing. Yeah.
It's just, you're taking in this story, but it's very compelling. And sometimes there's not even any music, right? Like in Le Mans, the whole first part of it, there's no talking at all for quite a while.
It's just like you're getting the sounds and the feeling of being this race car driver and he's driving his 911 down this country road's it's it it engrosses you in a different way it draws it pulls you into the story bullet where he's writing what movie is he driving like a dune buggy is that bullet too where's that no that's the other one the uh one in boston that's a pretty good movie too which one's that oh come on they remade it um proceed thomas crown affair yeah and obviously he's having time you know yeah why don't we shoot some stuff in a dune buggy and basically they had like a whole day yeah this yeah and he's having a time and meanwhile he's got faye dunaway and they're going i hope that's Faye Dunaway anyway, roaring around, and he could really drive, right? Oh, yeah, like really drive. Like you could really flip one of these fucking things if you're driving like him and you don't know what you're doing.
For sure, for sure. Yeah, he's going sideways.
And she is having the time of her life. Look at that, spinning it out in the water.
With a movie star who doesn't even have a seatbelt on probably. No, they didn't have seatbelts back then.
Jesus Christ. Well, she might have a seatbelt.
She looks like she's belted. But that was cool.
He was like the archetypal movie star. He was a movie star.
That guy was a movie star. There was something about him that was compelling.
He lived his life in this sort of wild, renegade way and drove race cars and knew he was a man's man. And when you saw him in a movie, you believed it.
Well, I've been watching, I've come to be watching all the old cowboy shows on the satellite. I watch all the old cowboy shows and Wanted Dead or Alive was always a super cool show.
And I've been watching it just to say, what the hell is he up to? Man, he is just, no one was getting away with that. No one was doing what he was doing, which was so small and so slight.
He was really preparing himself to be a movie actor, you know, because his, his performances is so controlled. He's so in his skin, you know, and he's always got, like, a piece of business to do.
He always had a piece of business to do. Like something to do.
Like the way he, like, strapped on his goofy sawed-off rifle and stuff. You know, you keep thinking it's a sawed-off shotgun.
It's a sawed-off rifle, you know. So just all his moves were very little.
His face gave very, very little away. He would pout and do a half pout kind of stuff.
And it's just fun to watch him see how little he could do and get it done, get it across. I like that about him.
But he always had, like, he kind of challenged himself to do something physical.
Like so if he'd be talking to you, he'd have just – even that, even something like that to be like, you know, come in here.
You know, he would just – the way he did it was a guy who had a real natural way with his body.
It was fun.
Yeah.
Well, he would just draw you in in all of his films and just like in a way that was – it was just different. It's like it was a different presence on screen.
There's that guy. Sawed-off rifle.
See, it's a sawed-off. It's not a shotgun.
It's a rifle. See that little shtick? He's got it so it locks in and then swings back.
So he could actually, if he wished to, and you better hope he better not wish to against you two, he could just sort of swivel it and fire it while it's still attached to his waistband. I never saw this show.
You never saw this show? I didn't know it existed until right now. What kind of a citizen are you? I'm a little younger.
That's all it is. That's all it is.
Well, you can find this. There's these new cowboy shows channels.
There's like four channels. I have DirecTV, and so you can go this there's these new cowboy shows uh channels there's you can there's like four channels uh i have direct tv and and so you can go and watch that god that's a famous guy that's oh god oh who's that oh oh that's killing me i know who this guy is well i don't know who he is but i recognize help me somebody who's that guy jimmy will find it.
Anyway, there's a few channels. There's one called INSP.
There's also the Cowboy Channel. There's also channel 364, 304, 323, 81.
Is this DirecTV? What is this? DirecTV. And they're all, and you can, and I just go through going like, what have I got to find? So I see the rifleman? Oh, yeah.
I remember that. That was a great show.
Also a rifle guy. Yeah.
But he had a full length rifle. And that was Chuck Connors, who once upon a time was a Chicago Cub.
He was a baseball player. Oh, really? Yes.
And allegedly did some art films. But also, he was good too.
Chuck Connors was good. The Lone Ranger.
Oh, yeah.
Sure.
And that was – come on.
Why can't I not remember his name?
But there were some Lone Rangers.
The Lone Ranger came on and then the guy – I didn't realize it because there's some Lone Rangers where it's not our Lone Ranger being the Lone Ranger and who wasn't as good as our Lone Ranger.
And then our Lone Ranger comes back and it turns out out I finally figured out that he sort of went on strike. He said he wanted a contract raised after the first season or something and they like said no.
They went ahead and made a season with this other guy and people went, when are you going to kill off the Lone Ranger? No offense to that man's family. I'm sure it paid for somebody's college.
Oh, come on.
I almost had it.
The guy's name?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jamie will find it.
Jamie, you've got a lot on your plate.
I switched over to the Lone Ranger.
I was looking at people that were listed here.
I'll give you this one.
There's a few people listed here as guest stars.
I actually saw him someplace.
He came to like a jewel.
Is he one of these names? Michael Landon? No, Landon Warnoats. Warren Oates.
I was looking down there. It's definitely not Coburn.
No, it's none of those guys. Lon Chaney's misspelled.
All right. But it's not those guys.
I tried that. Coburn's in there twice.
Lone Ranger here. One of these guys maybe? No.
All right. I'll try it again.
See, it started on radio first. That's what you're getting.
You're pulling up radio. That's how far back you're going.
Clayton Moore? Clayton Moore. Thank you.
I saw Clayton Moore. He came to a jewel food store near us.
The Lone Ranger was going to appear. But he was not allowed to wear the mask for, like, contract, whatever the hell.
So there he was. And I'm like, Mom, that's not the Lone Ranger.
You know, whatever the hell hell it was but it was funny to see clayton more without a mask on imagine a contract saying you can't do personal well no it was like he was the lone ranger was copyrighted you know nine days from sundays you know so he could go and be right on an elephant i think i may have seen him riding on an elephant in a parade once, but also without the mask on.
But I should talk about movies because I'm supposed to be talking about movies
since we started talking about movies.
Tell me about your movie.
I got two movies.
I have three movies.
I'll work backwards from the one which is least,
which is farthest away.
I did one with Wes Anderson
called The Phoenician Something. That's the title.
I did one with Wes Anderson called the Phoenician something that's the title I'm sorry Wes you know what it is? the Phoenician Scheme and I have a lot of trouble with names nowadays but the guy who did the set design can you figure that out this guy is the most famous he's the best there is now these are the most beautiful sets i've ever seen in any movie um come on it's coming i'm sorry everybody but i just haven't been getting enough sleep no worries anyway the power that's a great movie that we shot that in berlin and there's great people in it it's got uh uh i want to say tushiro Mifune, but it's not. It's the guy who played Che.
Come on. Don't.
Come on, help me out here. All right, you look it up, Jim.
You get back to this with this. Anyway, that movie's coming in a bit.
Benicio Theroux is in that. Who? Benito.
Yeah. Yeah.
Benito's really good. He's really good and he's really cool.
And Michael Cera, right? Is he the third? Did you say Benicio? Yeah. Benicio Del Toro.
Yeah. I said Benito.
You said Benito. He's great in Fear and Loathing as well.
He was awesome in that. He's great.
He's great in everything. We got on good.
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And then the daughter whose name is of Kate Winslet, who is really wonderful. So the three of them are extraordinary in the movie together.
And her name is like Cupid or Eve or something that's crazy. What's it about? I have no idea.
Huh? What's her name? Mia. Thank you.
See, I told you. Cupid.
Something. Mia.
I have no idea what it's about. You're going to have to pay the money.
There she is, right there. A dark tale of espionage followed a strained father-daughter relationship with a family business.
Yeah, Willem's got a good part. But it's really those.
Keep going. Keep going.
Benedict Cumberbatch. Yeah, they're all swell and fine.
Michael Cera. Michael Cera is huge in it.
He's fantastic. Yeah, he's a really good guy.
Michael Cera, Benicio, and Mia are really the muscles. Brian Cranston.
They're great. Anyway, that's going to be really good.
People are – all his movies are like they are. They're all great.
And that one's going to be very good. That one's going to be funny too.
Then I made a movie called The Friend, which stars – What's her name? Naomi Watts and a dog. There's a huge dog.
Are you a dog guy? I love dogs. Okay okay so there's a massive really big dog i mean it's just it's pretty much as big there it is there's naomi and there's the dog the dog is is that is that big see how big it is it's fucking huge yeah that's the words for it yeah that's a great dane uh isn't it's an extreme it's an amazing dog and the script is great it's written by the it's from a book written by a woman named sigrid nunez and can you pop up on the titles there maybe uh what no the other thing yeah these guys directed it these guys scott mcghee and david siegel and they wrote the script from this book and it's a great script.
Nobody can hear you over there, unfortunately. Nobody can hear you over there.
You're going to have to come back. Scott McGeehy and David Siegel wrote the script and directed it, and they're great.
I love those guys. They made a few good movies, and this one's really good.
And this Sigrid Nunez is kind of a big deal author.
People know who she is that read lots of books.
And what is The Friend?
What is it about?
The Friend, well, yeah, there you go.
So that's the question.
Well, that's sort of the puzzle, a little bit of the puzzle of it.
So who is The Friend?
Is The Friend the friend or is The Friend the dog?
The dog represents something.
Oh, okay.
It's a little deeper than a lot of the ones we get to, But it's really good. It's really good.
I like it. It's been to film festivals and people, you know, laugh and cry and the whole thing.
How do you pick things to do now? Like you've done so much. You've had this insane career.
I'm going to tell you that. But let me finish the last one because today.
Now, is your show live? No. No, it comes out tomorrow.
Okay, so that's why I want to ask because this movie, the third movie, opens today, which is yesterday, and it's called Riff Raff, and this is a movie that you have to see. You have to see it.
This is really something. This is a movie you should take ten of your friends to and go see Riff Raff.
It will be, I guarantee you, this one's a party. Tell me what it is.
Well, there's a trailer for it up there. See, there's...
Let's play the trailer. Okay, you can do it.
Put the headphones on. We'll play the trailer.
I wasn't... There you go.
Slap some headphones on. Oh.
No Slim Jims.
Past two hours, you've been passing gas like a very sick infant.
I gotta breathe all day.
Sorry, Lefty. I had a lot of coffee, okay?
Sorry.
And then you used my name.
Jesus Christ, Lonnie.
Yeah.
She said my name.
You catch our names by any chance?
Yeah. He called you Lefty, and you called him Lonnie.
Well, I overreacted. Okay.
Son, we gotta talk about Lefty. What did you do? Lefty! You killed his son.
You're gonna kill us. What are you doing? I get horny when I'm scared.
I'm married. Who cares? It's just us and the shitty wildlife, you know? This is our son.
We're too young to be grandparents. All because your son couldn't pull out in time.
We've got house guests.
I would categorize these as a must kill. And what are we? Family.
Oh my God. Can I get you anything? I'd sell my left tit for an Advil and a cup of coffee.
You said what? Who was first?
There was this food incident, Rocco. You said what?
Who was first? There was this food incident. Rocco put pubes in my wonton soup.
If it's okay, I would just really like to torture him a little bit if it's okay.
Shouldn't have done that Rocco.
Yeah, knock yourself out.
Oh my God. Are we all gonna die?
You don't have all night? Wait for me before you two start hitting each other. Once you start killing it, it sort of becomes your de facto solution for every problem.
What? Get off of me. I'm not gonna.
I'm not gonna, Ruth. What's that? Shame.
We're gonna put something that hard to waste. Huh? That looks fun.
Uh, yeah. Well, yeah, that's...
They gave you too as I'm concerned. They always do, though, right? I don't know.
Not always. Not always.
But it's... It's common.
It's kind of nicer to see as a surprise. Oh, should we not have seen the trailer? It's okay.
I mean, what are you going to do? But some people will think, I must see that. But I guarantee you this movie is really, really funny.
I love a movie where I don't get to see the trailer. I really do.
I have no idea how it goes down. You could say, yeah, you could not show the trailer.
That would be okay. There was one, I saw one that was like just the first part of that.
And then they just added this, and I was hoping that was what it was. Yeah, it could have been.
This kind of makes it seem like a little bit puttanesca. You know, it's just a little bit too much stuff in it, a little bit too much stuff for me.
Maybe. Yeah, we can think about it.
But anyway, it's good. It looks great.
Yeah. So Jennifer Coolidge has got some unbelievable things to say in the movie.
She's got some amazing things to say. And Ed Harris is really, really good in the movie.
Pete Davidson, who I had no idea about. We were sidekicks in the movie, and we had a very good time, did some good stuff.
It's Louis Pullman, who's Bill Pullman's son. It's really good.
I mean, and Emanuela, she got an Italian, Pustakini, like that. She's just wonderful and beautiful.
And Gabby Union. I call her Gabby.
Gabrielle Union. And Miles, whose last name, I can't remember it because I just want to call him Miles Davis, but that little kid in there, he plays the voice of the Electric Junior Bunny show or something like that on Nickelodeon or something like that.
He does like weird cartoon voices. Oh, yeah? So if you watch a lot of Nickelodeon cartoons.
I don't anymore. My kids are teenagers now.
Oh, really? I used to. I used to.
I used to. I could tell you all about Ni Hao Kai Lan.
Oh, see, I don't know that one. I guess I, I guess SpongeBob.
My brother plays the Flying Dutchman. Oh, really? On SpongeBob.
Oh, wow. So I watched a lot of that, but that's about it.
I don't know. I'm way behind.
How do you decide what projects to pick? It's really just what – well, there are certain people like with people that I've worked with before. There's some like Wes Anderson is one and Jim Jarmusch and Sofia Coppola are others.
And those three people call and say, I got something. I just say, OK, when? Because I know that they know what I can do and they know they look out for me and they treat people well.
I love them as people and I love them as artists. So that's just a thing.
But the other ones are more like you have to
read the script because people
you know, the script is pretty much
if the script's not there
I mean
I can always help improve a script but
if the basic thing isn't there it's like
I was scratching at one
the other day and I'm writing and I'm going
what the hell am I doing this for? This is just terrible.
Every page is like
so but if it's not
Thank you. I was scratching at one the other day and I'm writing.
I'm going, what the hell am I doing this for? This is just terrible. Every page is like – so but if it's not good and usually – you know in like five pages whether or not to even continue reading the script at all.
Yeah. So a lot of it is based on relationships and people that you trust and know.
those are very few. There's only very few people that I have those kinds of relationships with.
And I've done like multiple jobs with them and they kill every time.
They're good.
They're really good.
So when they call, it's like you don't have to waste my time telling me the story.
Just send me the thing, you know.
Right.
You don't have to waste any time I'm in.
You can count on me.
That's awesome.
So that's it. I love that.
Yeah, I do too. God, that's
such a great feeling when you trust someone that much
and you're so enthusiastic about working
with them. Yeah, I mean, it's like great.
And you know, like people
make the living, the making of
a movie part of their living, you
know, like Wes is probably the
most extreme example
in that, like we all live
in a quasi-dormitory.
You know, we take over a small hotel in some city and all the actors and like the key crew live in the hotel. And you come down for breakfast in the morning and people pad down in their slippers and their jammies and they have coffee and stuff.
And they look at the newspaper and say, what are we doing today? And then they like pad back up the stairs and get on their clothes and they go to work. That's cool.
It's really nice. It really is like what you always thought it would be like in the old days.
Like what if we all lived in a dorm and we were just being funny all day, you know, like that. Yeah.
What was it like working on Kingpin? Well, those guys have more fun making movies than anyone. They really make it fun.
Like I remember like in between shots on Kingpin, we'd be on the side of a road somewhere and it would be like everybody's got to pick up a rock and we got to throw it at that telephone pole. You know, who's going to hit the telephone pole with a rock? So we would sit there and like, I don't know, a dollar, ten dollars, a hundred dollars, whatever it was.
We're throwing and somebody's got to hit the rock, you know, and then people like pull out cash and pay. Because it's just like we just got to keep this thing going.
You know, we're not going to let the energy of this thing drop. Just fun.
Keep the fun rolling. Fun, yeah.
And just creativity and always being loose and always being physical, always being, you know, connected, attached, you know, not just attached, but connected. And entertaining, entertaining each other, you know, really making this fun.
God damn it, we are going to have fun or else. else you know if you don't have fun making a comedy you've just made a bad movie that's not funny yeah well it comes off in the film the film is so fucking funny it's so good and it's one of those films like if you tried making that today it would be an uphill trudge well you know and that's like one of those things um they had a moment on Saturday Night Live, an in-memoriam thing.
They said, oh, someone I was there the week of the thing and said, yeah, so-and-so was working on the in-memoriam and I'm thinking, who's gone? Which reminds me. Who's gone? No, it's not who's passed away.
It's what we can't do anymore to be funny. So it was like all these kinds of jokes.
And so it was just a whole clip. I didn't even see it, but I saw a little bit of it being assembled, but it could be 40 minutes long.
Just all the sketches that people would get, like, you know, Internet responses like we're going to burn down the city in New York. It could be hours long today.
Yeah. Hours long.
Yeah, I'm short with 45. But some of the funniest things ever done, you know.
Yes. Like head wound Harry, you know, which was one that not many people think about.
But how, you know, like somebody would object to a dog eating a brain wound, you know, like licking like the blood out of someone's skeletal wound. But someone told me on the way here, a friend of mine, a musician named Mike Zito, who said he listens to your show.
He said that you knew Phil Hartman. Yeah, very well.
What did you do with Phil Hartman? Newsradio. It was a sitcom we did together.
Okay. I didn't really watch much in news radio but it was
uh what were you doing four to 99 i played the um sort of like the maintenance guy in this radio station and phil was the like the lead anchor and yeah and did you resent him because you were doing maintenance and he was the lead egg no so no i'm just joking um so and where was it was it on CBS? NBC. NBC, of course.
Yeah, in the 90s. And he was
the news anchor. Well, he's got that crazy
voice. So, no, I'm just joking.
So, and where was it? Was it on CBS? NBC. NBC, of course.
Yeah. In the 90s.
And he was the news anchor. Yes.
Well, he's got that crazy voice, right? Oh, he was great. Yeah.
He was, we became really good friends. He was a wonderful guy.
We actually played one of his clips the other day. We had to take it out of the show, but it was a clip from SNL that you could never play today about a doctor who decided that every child was female and he had to do operations on all of them.
And we were like, holy shit. Holy shit.
And it's like, you know, 90% of his births involved an operation to turn it into a girl. They were all girls.
That's funny. It was insane.
He was great. Yeah, he was really good.
He was, I worked with him. I mean I did Saturday Night Live I guess when he was there.
But he was in the movie we made called Quick Change. And he was like sterling silver.
It was like every single take was just like perfect. And it was so much fun.
And you just go, Phil, that was so great. And great and go like he was so kind of modestly proud of like yeah i i felt pretty good about that yeah it was really nice he had real real modesty yes he did well he was a guy who made it late in his career you know late in his life so he was before he was an artist we have one of his albums out there um in the uh the other room was a musician? No an artist artist.
Oh, I'm sorry. He was a musician as well He did why did I say musician? Oh, you said one of his albums.
I I was looking at vinyl today, so that's why I went into my head It was a cover of an album that he drew. Oh, yeah, he was an illustrator He was brilliant like really really good.
I'd love to see that and then he was on Pee Wee's Playhouse Yeah, may he an illustrator. He was brilliant, like really, really good.
Oh, I'd love to see that. And then he was on Pee-wee's Playhouse.
Yeah. May he rest in peace.
May he rest in peace. That guy was fucking great, too.
And the lady, I didn't really watch a lot of Pee-wee's Playhouse, but he was a funny guy, that guy. And his lady sidekick died this week or something.
Who was his lady sidekick? I don't know. On Pee-wee's Playhouse? I'm not up to date on anything, but.
Hey. Lynn Marie Stewart.
Who? Lynn Marie Stewart is her name. Yeah.
So Miss Yvonne, I believe. All right.
Lynn Marie Stewart. There she is.
Lynn Marie Stewart. Lynn Marie.
See, I didn't, oh, I guess I'd recognize her if her face were bigger. So I think Phil, because of the fact that he made it late in life, like he was just so happy to be there.
He had perspective. Yeah.
He had – I mean I think he was like 37 or something when he got SNL. You know, so it's like – it's the point where a lot of people start thinking, hey, this is never going to happen for me.
And then he was, you know, he was a hero. Yeah.
He did. He could do a lot of things.
He had a lot of chops. He had a great voice.
And he could play straight and, you know, playing, doing comedy is the ability to play straight. And he could really do it.
He could really do it. Yeah.
Well, I miss that guy. He was good.
He was a good guy. Yeah, I miss him terribly.
That was a crazy one. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Black Rifle Coffee.
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Black Rifle Coffee, America's Coffee. Because I knew the whole family.
I knew the wife. I knew the whole situation.
He had tried to divorce her a few times, tried to leave a few times, always went back. Yeah.
And that's also the guy. He would go back and keep trying to make things work yeah yeah i mean he was uh very unusual guy and what a fucking professional like he would make me feel like i wasn't doing enough like he'd have like all of his scripts would have tabs for all the scenes that he was in and then he'd have notes underneath each thing and everything would be organized he had a three-ring binder he would put the script in well that's going too far who would hole punch the moment he got the script put it in the three-ring binder oh yeah no he was i didn't have that much faith in the scripts i knew they were going to change a lot from wednesday to friday if it was a if it was a big scene i knew they would rewrite it uh the next two days well there was a lot i didn't try it because it's hard to unlearn yes so i would not.
Because unlearning is really hard. Yeah.
Like if you have a sketch that's this long and all of a sudden it's this long, you've got problems. Have you ever met Dave Foley? I think so.
He's one of the guys from – yeah. I saw him.
He goes out with my brother Joel. And he sings – they do like an improv thing called Whose Line Is It Anyway? Oh i never i only met him recently i met him recently i finally saw my brother's show that he goes out with whose line is it anyway right with greg proops and all those guys and they and they kill yeah i mean there's you know i knew they were i knew they were going to kill because i know how good my brother is as an improviser.
He can, you know, if you get good at it, and my brother is really good at it, far better than I ever was or could hope to be, because he's really kept at it. And so he really goes and goes hard at it.
He's really good at it. I knew that they would kill.
I didn't realize how much fun the show would be from an audience perspective. Like they drag a lot of people up on the stage.
And I think, well, that can go any way at all. Yeah.
And they managed to get, I mean, the show I saw, they had people in the audience that probably should have been hired. They were, that was funny.
But there's something about the uncertainty of bringing up someone from the audience that raises the energy level and the expectation and the possibility. Yeah.
And the crowd goes crazy for it. And the actors, the performers go crazy, too, because it's like, God damn, they just killed us.
They just came up here and murdered us. Yeah.
And that's where the real fun is. So they're enjoying themselves.
Well, it's a tight show. They've been doing that show for so long.
Like their muscles are like very developed. You know, they're comedy improvisation muscles.
They're just so sharp. When you do a show like that on the road constantly, like you develop a sort of feel for how to improvise and how things can go.
Well, you're fearless. And, you know, you're certainly anyone that's ever been in that racket knows you can't be afraid of dying right so if you're not afraid of dying let's go here we go and anything and there's a handful of you so it's it's like the magnificent seven if i don't kill you he will right right right right so if i don't kill you he will yeah so it's it's fun to.
It was really fun to watch finally see it live. I'd only seen it on television to see the live show.
It was cool. I recommend it too.
They're coming to a town near you. It's a great show.
You should definitely go see it if they're coming to you. Dave Foley, who was on Kids in the Hall, he was also on News Radio.
Oh, okay.
He played the manager of the station who was in charge of reigning in Phil.
Stephen Root from Office Space and a million other things.
Andy Dick, Maura Tierney, Vicki Lewis, Candy Alexander.
I know a lot of those people.
Yeah.
So that was the show.
So it ran five years. Yeah.
Well, around four years and then Phil got killed. Oh, that's what ended it? John Lovitz, who was a good friend of his, took his place.
Well, not take it over necessarily. It was a real ensemble.
I mean, Dave was really the main star, Dave Foley was. But it was just, you know, for whatever reason, I think the John Lovett's ones were really funny they're really good but it was just it's just different funny it was just the end of the line the show was over and it got canceled after the fifth year yeah there's something about it was like that was said in our life the fifth year it's like wait a second high school is only five years why should why should this show be five years is a long time.
It's a long time.
I know. It's amazing to think.
We thought like five years, this is it.
We're done. Goodbye, everybody.
That was 45 years ago.
Who the hell thought that would happen?
Is it the longest running show ever in television?
I think the Today Show is the longest running show. Oh, is it really?
Well, if I had to guess.
Certainly the longest running show that's actually entertaining. I mean, SNL's been around for so long.
Don't tell Al Roker that, buddy. Can I take a break for a second? Yeah.
I'll take a leak. I'll be right back.
Take a leak. Be right back.
You're in charge. Straight up this table.
I'll do a little bit. See you in a bit.
You have so much cool stuff on the walls. A lot of art.
Do you do shows where you walk around and show all this stuff? No, no. Really? No, no, no, no.
It's personal. It's just for us and the guests.
Well, there is a photograph in the men's room. Which one? It's Presley, and it looks like it's a mug shot.
It's a fake mug shot. So what it is is he went to the White House, and he met with Nixon.
Okay, the gun thing where he gives Nixon a revolver. He gives him a automatic pistol.
Yeah, what did he give him? And Nixon gives him a drug badge to be a drug agent. You don't know that part? That's right, I forgot about that part.
He gave Presley a gun badge. Because Presley would talk shit about all these guys who were doing drugs.
Meanwhile, he was high as fuck well he was he was in pain you know yes he was in pain he had physical pain what was the physical pain what was wrong with him i think he did the splits a lot of times you know like chevy's you know chevy hurt himself falling you know oh yeah people have pain presley had i don't know all the facts, but Presley had physical pain. And a key, I don't know what his back or something like this, sacrileic or whatever the hell.
And they got him hooked. And so he had like painkillers.
Right, but it's just hilarious that he was the drug guy. It is hilarious.
Yeah. It's like good fun.
Yeah. It's like a great American story.
And like, yeah, yeah you just see the picture there's a photograph that exists of nixon handing him the badge and i you know you can laugh looking at it going right that's exactly right yeah but but but uh yeah there it is and there's the damn badge. Special assistant.
Special assistant.
You know what I did see the other night? Did you ever see Frost and Nixon? No. It's a movie that was made.
And back in the day after Watergate, is his name David Frost? He was a British interviewer cat. And he staged – he had this idea to – he was trying to like – he sort of lost his place in the universe of England anyway or the world.
And he came up with this idea somehow to – if he could somehow get an interview with Richard Nixon.
And it's a pretty well-made movie.
It's a very well-made movie about it.
And they paint a pretty well-made movie. It's a very well-made movie about it.
And they paint Frost pretty much as like maybe what he was like, sort of what the perception, my perception is kind of what he was like. Not a perfect person, but certainly not, you know, but certainly got some juice certainly has has some sort of idea of something going on.
That sounds very small, but he was a little complicated. That's the cheating word.
And Nixon, too. And I just want to say that Frank Langella, who I only know from like doing, he was kind of like a Broadway guy and he did some horror movies.
He's really good as Nixon. Very, very
very good
as Nixon. And it's just a really well
made movie. And I was up in
New York and I thought, you know, I'm going to find Frank Langella
and tell him so.
There's the guy. I don't know what this
man's name is who plays for us. I can't recall
anything. But he's good.
And there's
Langella playing Nixon. And Langella is really good as Nixon.
And Nixon's not easy to do. Does he do the voice well? He does him well.
And, you know, when you try too hard. I mean, here it is.
Your personal lawyer came to Washington. Yeah.
There you go. Yeah.
He's pretty fucking good. It's good.
Yeah, he's really good. So I never got around to finding out where Franklin Joe lived in New York or calling him up.
But maybe someone who knows him, listens to your show, will say, hey, Frank, you got a shout out today in Texas. That guy's great.
He was great as Dracula, too. Yeah.
That whole Nixon Watergate story, I used to think about it very differently until Tucker Carlson broke it down for me. Bob Woodward an intelligence agent and the first time he ever gets a job as a journalist he's covering Watergate The FBI all the people that were involved in the break-in FBI people like it was it was a complete intelligence operation Nixon definitely did the things they accused him of but the whole thing was sort of coordinated by the intelligence agents to get Nixon out of office Apparently what the story was According to I could play you the Tucker thing if you'd like to see it But apparently what the story was I got it sounds crazy.
Well, it sounds but the story was that Nixon was digging into who killed JFK One of the one of the things that they wanted to set up when he was running for president is to make sure that Gerald Ford was his vice president. Gerald Ford was also on the Warren Commission.
He was digging into it, and they wanted to remove him from office. They set this up.
They framed him. He did it.
They got him out of office. Gerald Ford gets in.
Okay, I got a shorter version. Okay.
You're going to going to take me down to the Kennedy Road, and I don't—you know, where are we going there? With that one, I got Richard Belzer tapes I can play for you. Oh, I'm a fan of Belzer.
I met Belzer. Belzer and I talked UFOs.
The new guy is going to— Bigfoot. The renew guy is going to bring out all the warrant commission stuff, supposedly supposedly release all this stuff allegedly allegedly but my question is
what the fuck is going to be in there
good call allegedly
I like that
it's not going to be
hey this guy did it
here it is
no here's the way I see
the Bob Woodward story
see you said
what did you say first about Nixon
about your way of looking at Nixon
the way I look at Nixon
and part of it is
seeing this
I like this way
that I love the way Langella did this
I'm going to go and part of it is seeing this, I like this way that I love the way Langella did this. I thought it was really well done and made a character of him, you know, a person of him.
But to me, I feel – here's what I feel about Nixon. It's like, you know, he was hard to care for.
He ran against JFK, who was everybody's, you know, my hero. And my father actually pushed me into John F.
Kennedy in 1960.
You know, just pushed me into the crowd and just pushed me up so I'd bounce up against him.
Now I'd have been wrestled to the ground.
But back then, you could do that.
Anyway. Now I'd have been wrestled to the ground.
But back then, you could do that. Anyway, I felt like Nixon was, and certainly knowing Hunter and knowing all of the history of Nixon and whatever, Nixon wasn't my guy.
Oh, agreed. He was not my guy.
No, I'm not defending Nixon in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I talked about Nixon before that I think he's the problem with the whole psychedelics drug legalization act of 1970.
Okay, we can agree on that. But however, when I read Wired, the book written by, what's his name, Woodward, about Belushi, I read like five pages of Wired.
And I went, oh my God, they framed Nixon.
All of a sudden I went, oh, my God, if this is what he writes about my friend that I've known for half of my adult life,
which is completely inaccurate,
talking to the people of the outer, outer circle getting the story,
what the hell could they have done to Nixon?
I just felt like if he did this to my friend like this,
Thank you. the story, what the hell could they have done to Nixon? I just felt like if he did this to my friend like this, and I acknowledge I only read five pages, but the five pages I read, you know, made me want to like set fire to the whole
thing.
Jamie, see if you can find that.
Those five pages, I went, if he did this to Belushi, what he did to Nixon is probably
soiled for me too.
I can't take it. And I know you say, well, you could have two sources and everything like that.
But the two sources that he had, if he had them for the Wired book, were so far outside the inner circle that it was, it was criminal, cruel. And the reasoning for it is that the most famous person ever to come from Wheaton, Illinois, is John Belushi.
The second most famous person to come from Wheaton, Illinois, is Harold Red Grange, the football player. And the third most famous person to come from Wheaton, Illinois, is Bob Woodward.
Really? Wow. So there's all my controversy for today.
That's all I got. I got a bone about that one.
You know, I got a bone for Woodward ever since I read that. Well, once you see it from something that you know, you know, once you see propaganda or bullshit from someone that you you know and you see a distorted perception it really it opens your eyes to the fact that a lot of the things you read are horseshit i mean you like belushi made whole people's careers possible he made people's careers possible mine would be one of them all all the people that he dragged to New York.
He went to New York first. He broke into New York.
He took over New York. And he dragged all of us from the second city, you know, to New York.
He's the one that got everyone there. And there are musicians and lots of them that will thank Belushi for the creation of, you know, the revivification of the blues and for like the fact that there is like a house of blues chain that blues players can go and play.
And there are all these venues that wouldn't have existed without Belushi. Yeah.
You know, he did a lot of things for people. He did a lot of, there's a lot of people that slept on John Belushi's couch.
There's a lot of people that stayed for free at his house until they made it in New York. And I'm one.
And, you know, he died in an unfortunate way. But the man, when he was still the best stage actor I ever saw, he was absolutely magnetic.
You couldn't take your eyes off him. And he did a lot of wonderful things for each other.
He was a short hitter. Guy could only drink like four beers and he was drunk.
So the idea that he died of an overdose is hilarious. Like that's what my brother said.
He said, what, do you have four beers? You know, he's John Stead. What, do you have four beers? Because he was not really much of a drinker, but.
But it was drugs, right? It was drugs, yeah. Speedball? It was a speedball.
Yeah. What was the.
And it was this, I believe, to my knowledge, it was like the first speedball he ever had. Jesus Christ.
So what was the Woodward interpretation? What was his version? Oh, it was just, he was talking to people like, wait a minute, you're telling me that that guy over there, that guy who's that far away from the center of things is telling you the facts about John Belushi? That guy way the fuck over there is telling you who John Belushi is? It's like, wait a minute. And he didn't contact any of you guys? Well, I didn't want to have anything to do with it.
I would have nothing to do with it. I didn't like the – it smelled funny from day one, you know.
And, you know, Judy wanted people to talk. I was like, sorry.
I know where this is going. And it wasn't exactly where I thought it was going.
Even worse than where I thought it was going. Even just the title alone, you know.
It was just, it was cold. So it was just exploitation of his death.
You know, I – you'd have to hold me down and burn my feet to make me read more of it. So I couldn't say that it's exploitation of his death.
But, you know, guys that write books come up with – you know, Bob Woodward's got a new title every 45 minutes for another book. Yeah.
You know. So, you know.
So, you know. It's a very disturbing thing.
It's just tough, you know. It's like, so what do you, you know, that's, he really, in those five pages I read, he tore down my friend with a, you know.
I didn't see any, there was no compensation. There was no balance in the five I read.
And maybe I was unlucky, but certainly if that much was – to me was disturbingly ugly and like irresponsible to report. And then I can't imagine that I got so that I only found by.
Yeah.
You know, and I'm sure he's done – Wilbert does other things.
I've seen him on TV and he can be smart and everything.
But, you know, he's going to have to answer for that sometime for something, you know, I think.
Yeah.
You know, it's just like you don't get a free ride for – not with my friend.
No. Well, you can get away with things a lot more back then when he wrote that book as well.
You know, so there's no other venues for people to express themselves back then. It was like he writes the book.
He does the interviews for the book. This is the narrative.
Yeah. And Bob Woodward, like one of the squarest guys in the world, gets to tell the story of what it was like to live in New York City in the 70s.
Yeah. Really? In the late 70s and 80s? Like he knew what the story was? Come on.
Yeah. That must have been a magical time.
It was cool. It was really fun.
You know, it was a smaller city in a funny way. There was a lot more freedom.
And it was when I got there, you know, the town was broke, you know. You know, the town was falling apart and, you know, the subways were rough.
And, you know, people, you know, to me it was exciting. I didn't, what the hell, I know I came from Illinois, from Chicago, from the suburbs of the city in Chicago.
Chicago was pretty – it was a city and it had its own hazards. There was some more hazard.
Where I lived in Chicago was more dangerous than where I lived in New York ever.
But the city was – the economic part of it and the infrastructure was, you know, like the subways were, you know, people complain about the subways now. It's like, wait a second, these subways are air conditioned and the windows close.
Those windows were open summer and winter and you either froze or you had like metal shavings dust flying through in the summer with no heat, with no air conditioning. And, you know, if it's 97 degrees out, it's even hotter inside of a crowded subway car, you know, so.
That was also back when Times Square was Times Square. And it was cool.
Yeah, Times Square was, is just as weird now, but it's just a different weird. They sort of tried to sanitize it, you know, and it's kind of stupid.
I mean, now there's a lot more lights and everything. There's more signs.
But the signs were always cool. When they were neon, they were cool.
Now there's just these glow lights, and they just keep moving and dancing. And, you know, people with, like, vision problems shouldn't be out.
And, you know, who are the people that are supposed to watch out for strobe lights? Yeah, epileptics. Yeah, epileptics can't walk through Times Square.
And 42nd Street is blah. It's like dull, you know.
It's an Applebee's. Back then it was like, wow.
Yeah, it's a giant Applebee's. Yeah.
It's a giant Applebee's with huge ads, giant LCD ads. But it was cool back then.
You could see stuff. There was real stuff to see.
Not that it's still real, but it's just a different reel. There's a lot more.
It's a whole international world now, which it wasn't back then. Back then it was just like the street survivors of the city at the very physical center of it.
And you saw some amazing things there. And it was alive, certainly alive.
Now there's, you know, you're crashing into not exactly debutante or not exactly like bridesmaid parties, but like, you know, there's people with flags and dragging people around and stuff. Well, there's always a lot.
There's a lot to see. There's still a lot to see.
It's still
New York City, New York. But back then,
having that experience,
being in that wild New York of the
1970s and then getting
on SNL, how old
were you?
26. Wow.
That had to have been a fucking bizarre experience. Yes, it was.
It was a great experience for sure. And, you know, you saw, you know, you know, your life just changed dramatically from being, you know, unable to barely able to pay your rent or afford, you know, a car, a telephone, anything like that, you know, to having a credit card.
Like that was a big thing, you know, credit card and a credit card. And, you know, we had to, because they wanted a safe, we had this sort of cab account with a thing called Skulls Angels.
There was a sort of company within the yellow cab company called Skulls Angels. And you could call them and they would pick you up anywhere in the city and take you wherever.
And it was just – you just signed your name. You didn't have to have any money.
And I had a credit card and that account and that's all. And I just went, lived for a couple of years like that.
And you just basically, all you were doing was going to work and going to sleep and going, and then in between you, when you'd have 12 or 15 hours where you didn't have to do anything, you'd go like, okay, let's go. And then you go like, anything could happen.
Anything could happen.
And you could go anywhere in the city.
And you sort of had a sort of a thumbprint of okay. You could go into any place and people would be like, come on in.
You know, and you got to, you know, really, you know, I mean, I probably could have done, you know, gotten more out of it. But I certainly got a lot.
I put a lot into it. You know, I got a lot.
An amazing kind of education, you know. I got an amazing education.
But I guess that gets back to, you know, I got to put my education to use is what I should say. I mean, in this kind of new challenging environment, I got to put what my education had to that point had been to use.
What was the adjustment like going from being broke to all of a sudden having money, being famous, living in New York City,
trying to make sense of this new reality that you live in?
Well, I'll try to do them in order. Well, being broke was, oh, I should tell you, I'm here in Austin, Texas.
This is a William Murray golf shirt I brought you.
Somehow I got involved with these clothes.
The clothes got involved with me.
And that's me.
That is I and that person right there.
and I'll see with these clothes. The clothes got involved with me.
And that's me.
That is I and that person right there.
And I brought you a pair of shorts.
Oh, thank you.
I also brought licorice, which you don't want.
He's a licorice dealer. I don't know what to make of you.
Trying to pass out licorice.
Anyway, so anyway, the shorts are very – you're not too chubby, but the shorts are very forgiving.
Actually, I ran out of clothes.
I've been traveling.
Well, yeah, they're kind of golf.
So are you gray?
Are you a gray guy?
I can wear gray.
Yeah, sure, I'll wear that.
That's what I thought.
I thought you'd be a gray guy.
Those are for you.
Thank you very much.
I've got my name on them.
So if they get lost, they'll be returned to me.
Nice. Thank you very much.
Okay. I name on so if they get lost they'll be returned to me nice yeah thank you very much okay i'm excited and wait i got your shirt i thought you might like this shirt because this set of this kind of has the range of possibility on it oh yeah it has a lots of that kind of has a sort of a studious look for you there's a lot going on that there's a lot going a lot going on.
Thank you. There you go.
There you go. Thank you very much.
Yeah, you're welcome. I have long pants, too, if you want some long pants.
No, I'm good. But I think you're more of a shorts guy.
Yeah, I'm good. Thank you, though.
Jamie's a gigantic golfer. Oh, yeah? Yes, sir.
Are you a long – you're tall. How tall are you? 6'1".
6'1"? Yeah. Well, it's not that tall.
Let's see. So we're the same, sort of.
And so you like white or blue or black?
Those are shorts.
Hold on.
Are you a shorts guy or a long pants guy?
I like it all.
It's usually hot in Texas.
You love it all, huh?
It's hot out here to play golf in Texas.
It's hot?
Texas gets hot when you're playing golf?
Usually.
I bet.
Well. But you can play all year here.
you're playing golf. Usually.
I bet. Well.
But you can play all year here.
How chubby are you?
I'm not.
I don't think it is.
Okay.
Well, the pants are pretty good.
Well, here's the, you want the shorts?
Yeah, give them the shorts.
These are black.
Nice.
And that's the Murray Tartan right there.
That's the family Tartan there.
There you go.
Is that like from your family seal?
Huh? The Tartan is a special to your family? Yeah, that's the Murray Tart there. There you go.
Is that like from your family seal? Huh? That tartan is a special to your family? Yeah, that's the Murray tartan. Really? Yeah.
Nice. Yeah.
Okay. And then so here.
And then so you want a shirt? Sure. Let's see.
I should show off this shirt. This is a shirt because my sort of brother has something to do with this one.
This has got like all this stuff from Chicago on it. Oh, nice.
It's got... I haven't even looked at this yet.
Guitars. Well, there's guitars on it.
Looks like a pizza place. I don't know why there's tambourines and stuff on it.
I have no idea. And there's always a glass of beer for some reason.
There's a drum. But there's a bunch of references to people we know and things we did in Chicago.
And I see there's like the names of some character in a movie I played. And then there's Slew's Place.
That's my friend Jeff Slewman, who's a golfer. I think you're going to like this shirt here, Jamie.
How's that for you? Oh, that's perfect. That's Jamie.
What color pants did I throw at you? I got some black shorts over here. Perfect.
Black shorts, dark blue shirt. You're in.
You can pull that off. Way to go high for that one.
When you stomp Tony Hinchcliffe in this inevitable match, you'll wear that. It'll be perfect.
There's that. How long have you been golfing for? Well, the question is how long have I been caddying for? So I started caddying when I was very young.
Our eldest brother, Edwards, started caddying. So Caddyshack must have been a lot of fun for you then.
Yeah, well, Caddyshack came, you know, my brother Brian was the, wrote the, Brian wrote it with Doug Kenny, one of the really great funny guys from National Lampoon, and Harold Ramis, who ended up directing the movie. But all the golf stuff is all Brian's, you you know memories of caddying and the whole golf story comes from brian sort of the joke i mean they all write jokes but doug was in charge of all the fancy lad stuff his dad was some sort of tennis pro sometime rather in ohio and harold wrote the jokes that were left and shaped it and directed it So you started off caddying? Yeah, yeah.
I started as a shag boy, which doesn't even exist anymore. What is that? There's a thing called a jam boy, which I don't know if it really exists.
My friend Duff insists that back in the day there was a thing called a jam boy who walked around. I think it was a slave or something like it who walked around covered with jam to draw the insects away from the golfers.
Now, I don't know if that's true or not. We should ask your listeners.
But I didn't have it that bad, of course. But a shag boy was, golfers had what they call a shag bag, which was like a small bag of golf balls, like 100 golf balls or something like that.
And they would dump them out on the practice tee, and you would run out there with the bag, and you would be the target. Okay, go out about 70 yards, 60 yards, you know, and then they'd start hitting.
See, no, but see, that would be safer than what I was wearing. We didn't have that.
But I was just out there. See, can you? Yeah.
But I was definitely out there and they would aim at you. And the thing was, it would last for an hour or so.
And you know, you're only, I was 10 when I started doing this. So you sort of, your mind would wander and occasionally you'd hear like a ball land next to you or really close.
I never got conked exactly on the head, but I definitely got hit on one bounce on any number of times. But you were just the target.
And then he'd wave in the next club and you'd go like seven iron. So he'd have to back up a little farther and then farther.
And the bigger the club, the wider the dispersion of the ball. So you had to run back.
You really had to run to catch up to where this bad golfer was hitting the golf balls.
So that was when I was 10.
And then like a year or so later, I became like a caddy.
And then I caddied all the way through high school, paid my way through high school.
When did you start playing?
Well, if you showed up to caddy on Sunday, you were allowed to play golf on Monday morning.
So probably I didn't really play golf-golf like that until really 12 maybe, maybe a little sooner or later. But we used to play golf across the street from our house.
There was like a line of telephone poles planted in grass, you know, and we would play from phone pole to foam pole. And that was the pin.
So that's it. And then I didn't really play.
I mean, once I sort of, you know, made it through high school, I didn't play for a long time until I made some money. And then all of a sudden, you can play golf again.
Because golf, if you're not catting, it takes money to play. You got to least play and be organized and have a set of clubs and stuff.
So I think – If you're not cadding, it takes money to play. You got to at least play and be organized and have a set of clubs and stuff.
So I picked it up then and now I like it.
You know, I was going to give it up a few years ago, but then, you know, all of a sudden my son started playing golf.
I was like, well, that's what you got to do, you know.
So now I'm having more fun playing and I've gotten smarter. you ever play golf no never no never no i'm scared of it because i think it'll eat up all my time because uh i get addicted to games oh yeah i play pool a lot do you have a pool table here i got a couple pool tables here oh i got one at home.
Yeah. And what games do you play? Do you play like straight pool? Nine ball, ten ball.
Nine ball. Yeah.
You know, I should work on nine ball. I have a pool table.
Yeah. I mostly play with.
The thing about it is I know everybody who plays golf gets fully addicted to it and loves it to death. And I just don't have the time to get fully addicted to another thing.
And, you know, just being friends with Jamie and seeing Jamie's addiction. See what's happened to him.
Over the last few years, he's become a maniac. He's got a golfing simulator in the back.
Really? He drives balls. Oh, yeah.
A track man. A track man? It's in here? Yeah.
Wow. Yeah, he has it set up in the garage.
Do you live here? Do you guys live in this building? No, we don't. It's a big building, but we don't live here.
We could. We definitely could.
Maybe that's the next one. Maybe the next one will set up dorms.
Maybe. Yeah, there's always the rooftop.
Yeah. Well, I don't want you to get addicted.
Well, I've heard you're a very good golfer. That's why I'm asking.
Well, just keep that light going. But it's – but I can play okay.
You know, I've hit a lot of golf shots. What's like your handicap? Jamie will know what that means.
Now it's about 12. The lowest I ever was was about seven.
Pretty good if you can play. Yeah.
It means I can play a little bit. And now it's actually – what's the word? Diminishing.
It's going lower because I've figured something out. There's a – I went to there's a great book these ladies i got pia nielsen and lynn pia nielsen's an easy one to remember but lynn's whatever lynn's last time they wrote a great book called every shot must have a purpose you ever read that one well i should talk, I should talk about them because they really are onto something
and it's about quieting your
brain when you play.
I always thought I'd get better as my
brain softened. It seemed to be
happening. My brain was softening.
It was maybe getting better, but
not fast enough for me. And then I
started following what these ladies
had to write. They were Annika's teachers
at one time in Annika Sorenstam.
She's a famous golfer.
Swedish. Every shot must have
Thank you. I started following what these ladies had to write.
They were Annika's teachers at one time, and Annika Sorenstam, she's a famous golfer. Okay.
Swedish. Every shot must have a purpose.
There it is, and there's the forward by Annika. Anyway, Lynn Marriott.
How can you see, I'm blocking that because it's a hotel name. And I didn't used to be a member of the Marriott Club.
But, okay,. So that's a great book and they've written a bunch of stuff.
They know some stuff. So what does it – You should try that one, Jamie.
That's cool. What does it change as far as – It made me enjoy – I enjoy golf.
I've always had a lot of fun. But that made me enjoy golf even more.
How so? Like what is it – You know, it just – it's decluttering. You know, it's like when you do it in your life and you – You know, you talk about, you know, you mentioned distractions at the very beginning.
You know, you think about all the things that can catch you, you know, to distract you. And if you're trying to do something that's pretty straightforward, whether it's stir grits or sew a line of something or play a game of golf, in which ideally you only have to swing, hit the ball like 75 times if you're, you know, if you, everything that
distracts you from that is a, is, is a problem.
So it's the ability to like sort of just pull the weeds out of your head as I read
a Japanese man say once and, and, and attend to it when you attend to it.
It's for, you know, it's a few hours to play a run of golf.
Like you say, it takes a whole time, But the actual playing of the game is only minutes. The actual hitting of the ball is only minutes.
Like an NFL game can take like three hours on TV, but it's like 20 minutes of action. Right.
Right. So it's similar to that in golf or anything that you have to sort of return to yourself to hit the ball.
You've got to come back, get it back together to hit the ball or do anything. And so you have the freedom in between the shots to move and to speak and to tell jokes and smoke cigars and whatever you want to do.
But when you want to hit the ball, this is about you're going to think, make a little plan,
and you separate that.
You sort of inculcate that.
You take it in and then you separate that and you step up and you hit the thing.
And hitting the thing is only hitting the thing.
And that, if you can do that,
then you start having real success
with the actual hitting.
And the sort of joy of the sort of mind-body connection
and all this sort of aesthetic,
all the kind of like, you know,
almost spiritual things about a mind-body exercise,
a game, come to you, you know. Like to you.
Like when you hear great athletes say they're in a zone. They're not in a zone.
They're really conscious. They're really connected.
They're really aware. It's more than a zone.
It's like the ideal place to be. Right, right.
And what is it about their writing that helped you? Like what is their philosophy that helped like steer you more towards being able to do that? Well, for an example, it's like something that can keep you in your body because you have to stay in your body. I believe that anyway.
I already believe that. So you've got this dreidel here, right? So imagine it's a golf ball.
One thing that they sort of say was like you would just in between shots, you would just take your golf ball if you're on a putting green or if you have a spare in your pocket and you just toss it up and catch it. Toss it up and catch it.
That keeps you like physically aware of I've got to do this and this and that. I've got to do these two things, so I've got to have my attention in my body.
I've got to stay home, you know. So if you can stay in your body, it all begins in the body.
Everything we are or everything we hope to be, everything we dream about, it's all within the skin.
So you've got to stay within the skin.
So if you can make yourself come back, if you can get yourself back inside, you don't have so far to go to achieve your intended goal.
Right.
You don't have to drag yourself back from outer space.
You're not dreaming over there. I'm in my body already.
So I'm close. Does that make sense, Jamie? Yes.
So and I've had some discussions with Pia and she says, well, that's what the great golfers are doing. They are pulling themselves back into this thing.
That's why they hit so many good shots is because they, they're home, you know, they're home, you know, and so that's, that's sort of what I got out of her. And I, I sort of learned and believe that from other venues, but I never had it put in with practical applications like, like she gives, they give for golf.
You know, you think of golf as like,
oh, I can be willy-nilly out here.
I can be fun or I can be aggressive or I can be competitive or whatever the hell.
All that stuff is real.
That's emotion kind of thing.
But if you're not in the body, good luck.
Right.
And it's only luck then.
Well, there's a great joy in things that take you away from the rest of the world because they require so much of your attention. That's what I get out of pool.
And that's what I get out of archery, too. I practice archery.
But there's things that require so much focus while you're doing them. And you have to be in your body.
You have to be synchronized. I would imagine archery would be one of the more challenging ones.
Very challenging. It's very challenging because you're supposed to have as little movement as possible upon the execution of the shot.
So there's all these strategies. They started televising it lately.
It's really cool to watch. It's very cool to watch.
And they've got the cameras right on their face and just the torso, just like this. And you're like, God dang, that's beautiful.
That's as good a close-up as any Robin Hood movie ever had. It's just great.
No, I love watching it. I watch it on YouTube all the time.
There's these Las Vegas shootouts where they have three targets and they have 30 different shots. So they're trying to get an X 30 different times.
And they're standing next to the best archers in the world. Everyone's at probably like 20 meters.
And they're all just focusing, like dead still, completely calm, focusing, focusing. What's that? Where do you find that? Oh, you can find it.
Like go to Lancaster Archery, Vegas, and they have what they call a Vegas face. So a Vegas face is three targets.
Do people watch that live? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they've got to have big screens because you can't see the faces from a distance, right? No.
And you don't want to get between the arrows, of course. No, you definitely don't.
People bring binoculars. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All the archers have binoculars, and they all pull them up after each shot because they're looking for precise distances. And then they'll make slight adjustments on their scope and their sight and move.
And then they'll take a breath. So do you have one of those massivo archers? Yes, this is exactly what it's like.
Yeah, those things don't even look fair. So these guys are all on this line, and they're all firing.
and the amount of pressure is insane because really the guy who makes money out of this thing is the guy who wins first place. Everything else is not so good.
There's not a lot of money in archery. Look at the audience.
This is like about 60 guys. Yeah, not a lot of audience, right? Yeah, it's not a crowd pleasing.
So this is just for real, complete archery fanatics who are absolutely lost in this connection between your mind, your body, and the flight of the arrow, the mystical flight of the arrow. That's interesting.
Can you go back and freeze that? There. Yeah.
Can you lose the line on the bottom? So that's just interesting to me to look at. Yeah.
Like their weight balance. Just to look at, like, who's's on sort of half his front foot.
So it's interesting. They have a little bit more weight on their back foot.
Is that right? Well, we're catching this in mid-draw. So he might settle.
Yeah, see that guy that you were looking at who was like that? That's got Brazier on his back. Watch.
He'll settle. So he'll draw.
And as he draws, he arches back back and now watch he'll settle forward see he settled he was settling as the the angle change of the camera shot but they want to ideally be about 50 50 and you're just staying calm keeping it as steady as possible and the wheelchair shooting too yes yes there's a guy that shoots with just his feet, the guy who doesn't have arms, and he's unbelievably accurate. I think I've seen that guy.
Yeah, he shoots with his toes. So what these guys are doing is it's just a perfect balance of technique and focus and attention, and they're actually trying to get what's called a surprise shot.
They're not executing the shot like you would like a rifle trigger. Most of these guys use what's called a hinge.
And so that's what they're going for. So with a hinge, you don't make the release go off like with a button, where you press a button.
It's just a rotation of the handle, and you don't know when it's going to go off. So you draw it back like this.
So you're not letting go with your fingers? No. You have a metal release in your hand that has a hook, and the hook is attached to a sear.
And by just twerking your wrist, it breaks. And so the hook breaks.
Or some of them use a thumb, like that guy with the yellow and black, that guy. So he's got a thumb trigger.
So what he's doing is he's setting the trigger, the barrel of the trigger, right where his thumb is, and he's just using the pulling of his arm to make it go off. He's not executing it with his thumb.
Now, there's a small select group. So that's why they all look different on the release.
Yes. But they all, their arms all fly backwards.
If you watch, see how their arm moves backwards? That's indicative of a surprise shot. That means they're executing it perfectly.
So as they're pulling back. So the surprise is that they don't know when it's going to go.
Exactly. They're just executing the technique, which is the pull with the back muscles.
You're pulling with your rhomboids and then then it slowly goes off. So like that chubby guy right there.
See, like that guy with the hat, the black hat. Watch.
See his fingers? How it's curling? See how it goes off? So that's just from his hand curling that's making the shot go off. But they get it to the position or the area where it's going to go.
Yes. And they've got to be right.
They've got to be poised forward. But the idea is if you think about it going off and you make it go off, there's some sort of a recoil.
So there's some sort of an anticipation of that recoil. And when you're shooting that precisely, that anticipation of that recoil might make a difference of an inch or two left or right.
Yes, that tension. So you try to not anticipate.
Yes. So it really does surprise you.
When you are doing that, you do not think about anything else. It clears your mind.
When you are just concentrating on that target, you cannot think about your bills. And so you do it.
Yes. And when a thought does come into your head, you don't hit the target.
Yes, but it doesn't come in your head. It can't.
It's too hard. The process of aiming is so engrossing when you lock in place and you're aiming and then you're pulling back with the shot like you're all in.
You're all there, especially if you're good. If you're good, that is the only thing you're thinking of.
And there's a moving meditation aspect to it, a cleansing of your mind. Your worries go away.
Your thoughts, the things that are bugging you and I got to do this and I got to call that guy back and all of it goes away. Because it's so engrossing.
It requires so much. So how do you affect that yourself? How do you move that away from the incidental thoughts that pop in? Well, it's just the difficulty of it.
Yeah. Yeah, the difficulty of it actually sort of facilitates your meditative mindset.
Because if you're going to do it right, there's no other way to do it. You literally can't be thinking about other things while you're doing it.
Well, it's not like golf. Like if you're going to do it right there's no other way to do it you literally can't be thinking about other things while you're doing it well it's not unlike golf like if you're thinking about what you got to pick up on the way home exactly you're not going to hit a good goal same as pool when you know i play pool at a pretty high level like i bet that book would be very beneficial to me i bet there's some techniques and strategies of how to focus yourself and completely remove yourself from the rest of the world and just think about this mind body connection and this the execution of this thing that you're trying to do all right i'm gonna try to do that i know i i i i you know i don't play enough pool and but i did I had to shoot some pools in Groundhog Day.
So I got with a guy who's a pool expert, and he just gave me drills to do. Do you remember his name? No.
But if he remembers, he should say hi. Anyway, he taught me a bunch of things, and I'm still very disappointed because when we actually shot the scene, I think I made, I think I sank, I think I shot, I think I sank like nine balls and seven balls, eight balls in three shots.
And I went, we got that?
And the cinematographer was like, well, let's set it up.
I'll set up a different shot.
I said, what are you talking about? He had half of the table oh no alright I'm going to take a lead again you want to wrap it up we can wrap it up take a lead and come back I keep asking many suggestions they say well tell some stories. You should never ask for suggestions.
So where do you come from?
I was born in New Jersey, went to high school in Boston, lived all over the country,
lived in San Francisco for a while when I was a kid, Florida.
Were you in the military or something?
No.
Mother got divorced, married my stepfather.
He was going to school, went to San Francisco for that, and then Florida, and then eventually Boston.
Well, that's pretty good i mean i think i always wanted to live in san francisco well i was in san francisco during the vietnam war in the height of the hippie days when i was a little kid it's pretty wild it was a very interesting time to to be there you know it was a crazy place i yeah well that's what hunter is talking about i think yeah finn yeah my brother was there too he went to school out there at saint mary's in moraga okay and so but it turned out he was spending a lot of time in berkeley yeah he wasn't doing that much studying but he but what a life he had out there what a fantastic time to have been there And my other friend went to high school at that time somewhere around there.
I envied that.
I really like San Francisco.
I was there
recently. I saw
Dr.
Father Guido Sarducci.
Oh, wow.
And had dinner with him
and Roman Coppola.
And we went to an old place called Macaroni or something like that.
Old Italian place.
And it was really delightful.
I just love San Francisco.
And I have friends who were like,
and we started talking about politics a long time ago,
like for political reasons,
they say, oh, San Francisco, they've ruined San Francisco.
And so I was there. And I know there's homeless people in San Francisco now, lots of them, and there's homeless people in Los Angeles, in Santa Monica, anywhere that is warm.
And California's the most popular state, but I don't think it's a political choice. I mean, I think, isn't it, I don't know the stats, but these people don't, it's more of a mental health thing.
It's definitely a mental health issue.
So it's not anybody's politics that are making people crazy.
Well, it's.
But it's not making people live on the street.
But I know I just, I'm sticking up for San Francisco saying it's still, I mean, San Francisco survived the beatniks. It survived the hippies.
It survived the earthquake. It survived AIDS.
It survived everything. It's like a resilient, extraordinary place, you know? It's still got a lot of extraordinary aspects to it.
The problem is they kind of encouraged people to sleep on the streets and shit anywhere they want, and they didn't do anything about it. You really think they encourage people? Well, they definitely make it financially viable for them to do it.
They give them money to do it. Well, that sounds like they're paying them the shit on the street.
No, they're paying them so that they don't have to be poor or homeless. I mean, they have a tent, and they'll help them.
They'll subsidize this existence. What they need is more mental health care.
It's a mental health issue. It's drug addiction and mental health.
That's the real problem. And when you don't address it and then you just allow people to camp any way you want, you're almost sort of encouraging mental health problems to be everywhere all throughout and just be throughout the entire city.
It's just a lack of empathy for people if you're empathetic for them you don't let them just camp out and shit on the street what you do is you try to say obviously over a real problem this needs to be addressed for the greater good of the city and for these people they need mental health care they need addiction care they need it's a real problem that needs to be addressed you can't just leave them out in the street and let them do whatever they want and become a hazard for everybody else. Then it makes the city kind of fucked up.
Well, I don't know what the I mean, you know, when you talk, when you speak, it's it sounds like more of a political choice. No.
Someone's saying, well, it sounds like you're saying they're being, you know, paid to shit on the streets and become mentally ill. I'm not saying they're being paid to shit on the streets and become mentally ill.
I'm not saying they're being paid to shit on the streets.
They are mentally ill.
I always felt like mental illness happened first before living on the street.
Unquestionably. It's all during the Reagan administration when they opened up the mental health institutes and just let people out in the streets.
Well, it started before that in New York. And that was my experience in New York was like Rockefeller way back when, and I could be wrong, but this is how it was attributed, sort of opened up the mental, closed up the mental health hospitals and pushed these many, many, many people out on the streets that had nowhere to go.
And it wasn't like, it wasn't a poverty situation, although it looks like it when you look at it. It's really a mental health situation.
And a great number of these people have no interest in going into a place. They would just as soon live on the street.
Their life is like an interior monologue that they can't control. And living in a home is no different than living on the street.
The thing is still going on. The conversation is still going on inside the brain.
But there has to be a solution for it.
Well, OK. So I don't disagree that there has to be a solution.
But I don't think that people are – this is sort of like where – I'd like to think about let's not talk politics. Let's agree with what we can agree on.
so that solution is like this is where the great minds of california or the united states need to
come to That's what we can agree on. So that solution is like this is where the great minds of California or the United States need to come together and say, OK, these are – why don't we solve these problems that are common to every state has a city that has X number of people living on the street, whether it's Yankton, you know, whether it's, you know, Minneapolis, whether it's, you know, Louisville, whatever.
Everyone's got like a street scene situation that's rough like that. And it's hard to say let's, you know, you say there's got to be a solution.
Where's that going to come from? And who's going to believe it from if it comes from this direction or that direction or this side or that side? How do you like evaporate the walls of separation and say like how do we get the right people with the right minds to solve these questions? You know, these are real things and people argue about them them when, I mean, you and I are, you know, not arguing, but we're talking about it. Yeah.
And neither one of us is sleeping on the street. Right.
We both feel compassion for it, you know, empathy for it. But how do you get people that are far removed, and we could say we're far removed from it to like allow the solution to take place from one side or the other one side any side who gives it to him who's got right what has to be a completely bipartisan thing we have to look at it in terms of the health of human beings in our community right this country is supposed to be our community these people that are on the street that they are sad sick people in our community and some real effort has to be taken to try to change that instead of just enable them to keep doing it that's all i'm saying i just don't think that the solution is let them camp wherever they want let them shit in the streets i'm not there's no argument so you you were in this situation you had this this, people call it a platform or a place where you invite people to come here that can speak to lots of people.
How many people watch your show? A lot. So there's lots of people watching your show.
And when there's people that make sense, you hear it. It rings a bell.
You know, it sounds like that. I wish I knew the answer to solving these things.
And occasionally, like I say, you see people who are these problem solvers. And the problem solvers come.
But, you know, people want to choose their own problem solver. You know, it's kind of like money's also money in being a problem solver that's the problem one of the parts of the big parts of the problem in california in particular is that there's an enormous budget to deal with the homeless so you have these people that work in these departments that are making quarter million dollars a year that are just working on the homeless problem which keeps getting worse every year.
There's no incentive to fix anything or change anything. And it's a bunch of bureaucracy.
There's a lot of bullshit that gets involved in the business. A buddy of mine is a lawyer who went to San Francisco and he was disturbed by it all.
He was like, this is so crazy. Like what is missing? Do we need more funding? And they're like, no, you know, this guy explained to him, no, they literally have an incentive to keep the homeless problem.
There's an enormous number of people that are making a fantastic living and dealing with the homeless issue. Money on the homeless.
There's a giant list of people. We could pull it up if you want to say, well, we don't need to call them out, but there's, there's a bunch of me like who, who makes money on the homeless, the people that are involved in these organizations that are dealing with the homeless, whether it's in Los Angeles or in San Francisco.
You mean, are they like government? Yes. They're all government jobs? Yes.
It's all funded by the state. And there's real jobs, like real money.
And nothing gets done, nothing changes. In fact, it gets worse every year.
Something needs to be done that shows results. What is that? I think it's got to be compassionate.
It's got to be something that both the left and the right can agree to. So I'm trying to follow you.
God knows I'm trying. Are you having a hard time? No, I think we were talking earlier about the agents versus the architects or something like that.
You used a word that explained people who are like coming up with the sort of thing it's like and i was watching something and i've really tried to avoid watching the news lately but i saw someone talking about and it was someone that works and you know you say the word bureaucracy and it's it's a loaded word and everyone and we all hate bureaucracy there's just a word of it it. Yeah.
It gives you like a creepy feeling. Frustrating word.
Yeah. And so, you know, it's like being on hold for Amtrak or whatever the hell it is.
You know, there's someone – oh, please, God, come back. Okay.
So – please, God, come back. So the idea that – and so this person was talking about the cuts that are going to come and the talk about eliminating a bureaucracy.
And I don't know what particular department this person was in or not. No, that's not what this person was talking about.
Oh, you're talking about a different person. It's a different person.
I don't know what your person is. This is my person.
So my person is saying the bureaucracy is like – the bureaucracy gets sort of like fed from above somehow or other. It's fed by these people that are the architects of one side or the other.
But the actual bureaucracy includes the people that can solve the problem. Like encased in this bureaucracy are people that can solve the problems and that if you just you know, I'm not saying it's the case, but if you sort of just like zip a bunch of the bureaucracy out, you run the risk of zipping out some of the people that actually have the brains to do the solutions.
And what this person said was the solution to the bureaucracy is within the bureaucracy that is finding the people that know what can be done because they really do have the data. They really do work.
They actually do show up for work. And they actually have the data on how to do this thing.
But because it keeps being fed from above all the time, there's just all this extra debris and noise that keeps coming down that causes more clutter and more splitting and more something. So, you know, I'm not going to suggest that I could solve the question of bureaucracy today, but I think there's something about what we have.
We have the people. You know, I'm going to go off on tangents now, but I always kind of had an objection to Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, because I thought, damn it, that's not my generation.
How do they get that? You know, but I did start reading some of it recently. And he's to his credit.
He's finding people that are very singular in that generation that. Which generation is he referring to? Well, he's talking about the generation that won World War II.
Okay. And that generation was formed by the Great Depression.
You know, that was part of what they had.
And then they had a world war that lasted five years. And it's really hard for people of a certain age to understand, you know, like you think you have problems with your relationship.
Have your lover go away for five years and see how well you're doing upon that person's return. See what the hell that's like for five years.
And like, you didn't answer my letter. You know, my letter.
Your letter? What letter? You know, your letter never came. I was under fire.
Whatever it was. And then they come back shell-shocked.
And then you come back with shell-shocked on top of it. And then back then, the sort of kind of, I don't want to say a macho thing, but back then people just didn't want to talk about it, which to me is part of what created the hippie generation was kids couldn't get their parents to talk about anything that they thought mattered.
What their parents were talking about was like, huh? Wait, what about peace, love? What's so wrong about about peace, love, and understanding, right? Right. So, and they couldn't get to that because even the idea of peace was a completely different concept to someone that lived through a world war.
Yeah. Or lived through a depression.
So these kids were like, I don't even understand who these people are. I know they're flesh and blood, but I don't know that.
I don't know what the hell they know and why they're this way. But he chose people that lived a very intentional purpose during that very, very difficult, challenging time where they just went, I don't know what I don't know.
I don't know what all this is, but I do what I do know.
I do know what I do know and stay through that. And that's, I guess that, I don't know how this relates me to this idea of bureaucracy, but people that do know the facts have got to stay with the facts, even in the face of like all the blunderbussing above about, you know, there's this and there's that, you've got to be really dedicated to what you do know and realize that there's lots that you don't know.
But if you give up what you know in the name of, you know, jostling over here, you know, then there's even more lost. Yeah.
No, I agree. And I think most people get involved, particularly if they get involved in something like homeless or, you know, any charitable organization, most of the people get involved aren't doing it cynically.
They're not doing it to get that big paycheck. Their initial reason for being involved
in something like that is to help.
The problem is sometimes when they realize
it's just a big clog
and you're not going to be able to do any meaningful good,
then things get weird.
And then you just sort of exist off of this system
that's not doing anybody any good.
This is his argument about why so many people
are working on this and nothing's getting better. So who's this one? friend, Coleon Noir.
This is my friend who's a lawyer who went to San Francisco and saw this and had a conversation with someone who's actually in government in San Francisco and was explaining what the problem actually is. And the government, people say it's just, it's the government?
No, they just say there's no incentive. There's no incentive for them to do a better job.
And there's a very compassionate perspective in the city. They're very kind people and they don't want to take these homeless people and remove them.
And that this sort of suicidal empathy that they have for the people in their city is causing this rash of tents everywhere and crime and you know you can't have to leave your fucking car unlocked otherwise they're gonna smash your windows and it's just that's what his perspective is it's that there's no real incentive to do anything different because these people are still getting paid to keep it the way it is it It's not, the amount of money they make is not based on how much good they do. So like if they're financially, if they're incentivized to like, you get paid more if more people clean up, seek treatment, get on medication, get to a mental health institution, if you can show some sort of progress, it'll affect how much money you get and vice versa.
If you have no progress and nothing gets done and the problem actually gets worse, perhaps you're not doing a good job. Well, that sort of makes sense, doesn't it? You get results, you get encouraged by getting more money.
So does this remind you of anything? It reminds me of everything. It reminds me of the government itself.
What does it remind you of? Well, I feel like there's something hanging over our heads here that's like this situation, and maybe it's just a continuous situation of like a world that gets more and more people all the time, and more people want to have a voice and there's just more people shouting all at once and there's there's we don't there's not quite the same kind of agreement we don't have like a an ideal that we're all working for you know i guess not to like cheat but you know that the greatest generation they had to fight a war to maybe save the sort of structure of Western civilization. Right.
There is that argument, you know. Right.
That if the Nazi party had defeated England and, you know, life would be different. Life would have been different, you know.
And if that kind of dictatorship kind of world had gone further, you know, that we'd have been – it would have been a different world. It wouldn't have grown the way it is.
But now it's grown. There's this freedom.
The war was fought. I believe there was a great quote in one of those books like there's no such thing as a bad piece or something like that.
There's all kinds of different. But I feel like there's no sort of idea that people can agree on that's the source of a reason for our being.
Well, it's a very uniting thing to be all together against a common enemy that is real like World War two like there's a real purpose to life people understand that this is a very important mission this is something that unfortunately it's one of the the best ways to unite people is a threat from the outside we've come up we've come up with. Well, that's what happened after 9-11.
Do you remember 9-11? Everywhere in L.A., people were driving around with American flags on their car. I'll never forget 9-11, what it was like to walk down the streets of New York after 9-11.
There was nothing like I've ever experienced in my whole life. Right.
It was bizarre. But it was also very united.
Like, people were together. It was.
People looked into each other's eyes.
You walked by someone on the street, and every person on the street looked right in your eyes. Yeah.
And that lasted for weeks. I mean, people in New York walk with their head down.
They look like a thing. They're reading a paper.
But people just looking by like, okay, we're in this. Yeah, together.
Yeah. And I think some people actually obviously hated the act of what happened, but loved the way people reacted and how people felt with each other.
It did feel different. New York City felt friendly.
It felt united. It felt like people were proud to be American.
We were all together. There's bad people out there.
They did this to us, but we're all together. Well, okay, so what we have here with the situation of, like, just using San Francisco as the idea is, like, it's just a gentler version of something that we could all say this is something that we have to go to war about.
Yeah, or it's a task. Any kind of a problem that we have as a group that we all are affected by or care about.
Well, it's too easy to ignore. It's too easy to just say, oh, there's the tents.
Let's go this way. And the reality is the health of the community, it's dependent upon the health of the lowest members of the community on the social rung.
The lowest members are the people that are sick. And if you don't take care of them,
if you don't take care of the people that are mentally ill,
that are homeless, that are addicted to drugs,
that are on the street, that are desolate,
that don't have friends, don't have love,
don't have structure, don't have anything that they can call upon,
horrible childhood, the whole deal,
if you don't look at them, then your society's sick.
Because the foundation of the society is the people.
If you've got a group of people that are part of your community and you're completely ignoring their plight, that's not good for anybody. That's not good for big business.
That's not good for the common folk. That's not good for people in the neighborhood.
It's not good for anybody. And it's gotten so far because it's so big now.
The problem is so enormous. It's almost too big to tackle.
It's almost like, okay, you're dealing with LA, you're dealing with 100,000 people living on the street. That's so many fucking people.
That's the entire population of Boulder. That's Boulder, Colorado, in tents on the street in LA.
That's crazy. It's almost too big.
And I talked to Mayor Adler, who was the mayor of Austin at the time when I first moved here. And he had a bunch of plans in place to help the homeless people.
And they did an amazing job because it got pretty bad here during the pandemic. I remember there being homeless here, yeah.
They got hotels. They put people up.
They put together programs. They got people jobs.
There's a company that we've had. What is his name? Alan that we had in here? Alanham uh from loaves and fishes who we went i went and visited his community they set up he has this this community where they build houses for these people they bought an enormous piece of land outside of austin and he sets up work programs for these people gives them a sense of purpose it's an amazing place to be they're doing They're doing art and selling art.
It's working? Yes, it's working. Yeah.
I mean, it doesn't work with everybody, but it works with a lot of them. And these people, they have a sense of community.
They all live in a safe area. And, you know, we walked around, I brought my kids, we walked around there.
It was like, the whole thing was really nice. It was really wonderful.
It was really cool what he's doing. Well, how did that...
So that guy, his plan, his way of working needs to obviously get out there. It's got to get around.
He lives there. And this is a guy who has money.
He lives in the community with those people. This man must be deputized.
Well, he's a Christian, like a real Christian, like in the greatest sense of the word.
Like he's a guy who really believes in reaching out to people and helping people.
This is, yeah, this is Alan right here.
He's just a wonderful guy, like a really beautiful person and lives with these people.
They're his neighbors and they're constantly bringing people in.
And he has all these different programs that people can sign up for to learn arts and crafts and learn how to sell things that you've made. And it's really cool.
And, you know, I mean, he's doing his part. It's small in relation to, like, the problem of San Francisco.
But you need people like that that really dedicate themselves to it. I've heard of Loaves and Fishes.
This sounds – I didn't know all of this about it. It's pretty amazing.
It's a pretty amazing place that he's got. And he's expanding it.
They're building new ones right now. So there's these small houses that these people live in, and they all have like a community kitchen where they can go and barbecue and grill outside.
And there's an arts and crafts center. These people, they make cool chess pieces and they sell them they make paintings they sell them jewelry they're doing all these different things and they it gives them a sense of purpose you got to get this guy to san francisco yes well you need more people like him that's what it is it's just he's a very unique guy there gotta there must be people there must like him but you you mean it's a lot i mean he lives with them i mean he's in the community has one of those little houses in this you know giant area filled with people and it's a lot.
I mean, he lives with them. I mean, he's in the community.
He has one of those little houses in this, you know, giant area filled with people. And he's with them for encouragement.
And, you know, it's a beautiful thing. It sounds really amazing.
Yeah. It's beautiful.
Okay. Should we wrap it up, Bill Murray? Yeah, okay.
Sorry I kept you so long. No! It was amazing.
It's an honor to meet you. I really enjoyed it very much.
And I appreciate talking to you.
Thank you.
And thanks for this shirt and thanks for the shorts.
Yeah, well.
I'm going to wear those.
Okay.
But, you know, I will just say that those shorts are very – they're forgiving shorts.
So if you've had a big meal.
Okay, good.
Beautiful.
Yeah, they still fit you.
I like that.
They're good.
Can people buy these? Can they? Are they for sale? Yeah, yeah, they still fit you. I like that.
They're good. Can people buy these?
Can they?
Are they for sale?
Yeah, yeah.
They sell them.
Where do they go?
It's called William Murray Golf.
They sell them online a lot.
And I know they sell them in golf shops some places and some stores.
That's it.
That's it right there.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
That's it.
William Murray. Look at that guy.
Look at that. Look at that handsome fucking model.
Yeah, that's a model. That's it.
Beautiful. That's it.
Look at that guy.
Look at that handsome fucking model.
Yeah, that's a model. That's a good looking fella.
Let's get loud.
Alright. That may be a model too.
Hey, he's definitely a model.
He's beautiful.
Well, thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you.
Enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.