446: Nick Searcy—Justify This

Speaker 1 You are about to hear another episode of The Way I Heard It with me, Mike Rowe, and the one and only Chuck Klausmeyer.

Speaker 4 Yes, hello.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 6 Yes, to what? Yes.

Speaker 8 You'll hear me, but you'll basically hear Nick Cersei more than me.

Speaker 9 That's true.

Speaker 10 That's true. Of the three of us, you will be heard very little.

Speaker 13 The least one.

Speaker 14 The least.

Speaker 16 But still, you do chime in with a couple of interesting points.

Speaker 8 Very important stuff. Earth-shattering, really, when you think about about it.

Speaker 21 Nick Cersei is our friend.

Speaker 22 Well, he's your friend.

Speaker 3 You've known him for a long time.

Speaker 28 You introduced us virtually about a year and a half ago after he did a movie that damn near got him canceled and caused me no amount of grief either.

Speaker 27 Capital Punishment was the film Nick did in the aftermath of January 6th.

Speaker 33 And you know what?

Speaker 6 I just thought it was worth talking about.

Speaker 34 And it wasn't a big political conversation, but I was glad to have it.

Speaker 28 I've always liked the guy.

Speaker 34 You know him from Justified.

Speaker 36 You might know him from Fried Green Tomatoes or maybe 40 other films that he's done.

Speaker 32 He's a terrific character actor.

Speaker 37 Yep.

Speaker 21 He's written his first book.

Speaker 34 It's called Justify This.

Speaker 38 It is funny.

Speaker 39 It is smart.

Speaker 31 I mean, if you know Nick, you're going to get this great blend of

Speaker 17 honesty.

Speaker 40 I mean, he's very much like Art Mullen in Justified.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 8 And he said that that character is based on his father.

Speaker 8 So he's really kind of sort of playing his father, it seems.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 25 So that's a plug for Justified.

Speaker 41 If you haven't seen every season of it, you really should.

Speaker 25 It's terrific.

Speaker 21 His book is great.

Speaker 42 He's got a new project that he's working on as well called Where I'm Bound, which we get into.

Speaker 45 And he's got a follow-up to Capital Punishment because he's a glutton.

Speaker 46 For punishment.

Speaker 13 For punishment, right.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 8 That's called The War on Truth.

Speaker 16 And it's a four-part series, which is available online.

Speaker 51 i admire him i admire him because he has plenty to lose and he simply doesn't want to spend the rest of his life doing anything that doesn't matter to him and you know when you find people like that in this industry you might not agree with them but you'd be foolish to ignore them you can just learn so much i think from people who who take real risks and big swings yeah in this place we call sodom and gomorrah indeed justify this is the name of the book it's also the name of this this episode.

Speaker 16 Nick Searcy is the name of my guest if you don't already like him.

Speaker 9 You're about to, right after this.

Speaker 57 Dumb.

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Speaker 29 I can't believe we've never met in person.

Speaker 39 I know, it is funny.

Speaker 3 Even when you walked in, I'm like, oh, hey, Nick.

Speaker 17 And I just realized I should be saying, well, it's nice to finally meet you.

Speaker 19 Yeah, well, nice to meet you, too.

Speaker 66 I'll tell you now.

Speaker 17 The shirt did throw me for a loop, but then I looked in the mirror and I realized I'm sporting some colors that don't occur in in nature either.

Speaker 62 So here we sit.

Speaker 39 This is a shirt that my wife picked out for me, and I just don't question it. I just go, oh, you think that?

Speaker 19 Okay, I'll wear that.

Speaker 52 So did you evolve into that level of perpetual acquiescence, or was this just good instincts from the beginning?

Speaker 39 It took me a long time to learn that.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it took a while.

Speaker 39 I just went about five years ago, I think, I just went, oh. this isn't worth fighting about.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 39 Because I never win.

Speaker 62 What a silly hill to die on or to even get wounded on.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 13 I'm not going to fight anymore.

Speaker 25 Speaking of which, Chuck told me a funny story about you.

Speaker 24 I think that the day you guys met,

Speaker 71 how long ago would that have been?

Speaker 72 10 years?

Speaker 16 At least, yeah, I would say.

Speaker 7 Maybe 15.

Speaker 39 Yeah, something probably more like 15.

Speaker 16 It was a while ago.

Speaker 62 I don't even know if you remember, but I don't know why I offered you a cigar.

Speaker 16 I don't have any cigars.

Speaker 6 But then I realized there was like a

Speaker 33 memory artifact.

Speaker 27 And Chuck had told me that the day you guys met, you came over to this apartment.

Speaker 39 Yeah. And I said, can I smoke a cigar here? And he said, no.

Speaker 13 And I said, well, let's go to my house then.

Speaker 39 I've got a room that you can smoke a cigar in.

Speaker 65 I mean,

Speaker 74 you've got rooms where you have to smoke cigars. That's right.

Speaker 8 It's required. I was fresh out of those kinds of rooms.

Speaker 1 So did you hesitate, Chuck, for a moment, knowing that an actor you admired a great deal and had watched over the years was suddenly in your home making an indecent proposal and you had to give him the bad news?

Speaker 6 Like, did you think about saying, yep, screw it?

Speaker 14 Not even for a second. Really?

Speaker 7 And it was immediate. It was like, no.

Speaker 40 I think I said it just like that. I think he did.

Speaker 13 I think it was. It was high-pitched and wonderful.

Speaker 75 I didn't remember that tone. It was kind of whiny.

Speaker 69 No.

Speaker 47 Here, wear this shirt.

Speaker 77 It was like,

Speaker 13 it sounded more like, ooh, than no.

Speaker 11 I don't have much of a cigar story, but something deeply humiliating happened to me about four months ago.

Speaker 26 I did Joe Rogan's podcast.

Speaker 55 You know, we sat down and got everything squared away, and you kind of hunker in because you know you're going to be there for three hours.

Speaker 31 Right.

Speaker 39 Yeah. You got to relax.

Speaker 31 It's a commitment. And so he's like, hey, you want a cigar?

Speaker 34 And unlike Chuck, like the honest answer was without the high-pitched part, which is like, no, man, I'm not going to smoke a cigar.

Speaker 62 I'm going to sit down and talk with you for a while.

Speaker 79 And it's a small room.

Speaker 62 Like all the smoke, what are we doing?

Speaker 28 You know, I mean, is there going to be whiskey too?

Speaker 10 If so, maybe.

Speaker 62 But of course, I said, oh, yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker 46 So he hands me a cigar and then he rolls this device from the future across the desk,

Speaker 21 which of course is just a lighter.

Speaker 6 But there have been so, like the last time I smoked a cigar, I struck a match on a brick.

Speaker 39 Big match.

Speaker 64 Yes.

Speaker 81 This thing has got like rocket fuel in it, and it's like air-fed.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And it took me like two minutes to figure out how to operate it.

Speaker 27 And then, of course, I'm just,

Speaker 21 you know, it's the first big drag I took.

Speaker 52 And I was right in the middle of telling some story.

Speaker 43 Like the part of my brain that I wanted to work tried to say, it's like that scene in Young Frankenstein when Gene Hackman, right, offers cigars to the creature.

Speaker 21 Right.

Speaker 50 But I conflated it with blazing saddles.

Speaker 73 And I got everything all wrong.

Speaker 39 Joe's like,

Speaker 80 I'm high from the cigar, embarrassed because I can't operate the lighter.

Speaker 33 And Joe's like, no, man, I didn't see that scene.

Speaker 23 So I really came out of the gate weak,

Speaker 77 weak and all.

Speaker 39 Well, those torches, I think they're basically those cigar cigar torches. It's for golf courses.

Speaker 39 They came up because you can do that in the wind.

Speaker 23 In the high wind.

Speaker 39 But you can also burn your eyebrows off if you're not careful.

Speaker 51 Have you done that before?

Speaker 39 Well, almost.

Speaker 1 Because I got that too.

Speaker 44 I had a portable little stove working with a farrier down in Kentucky, I think.

Speaker 62 And we were making horseshoes out in the middle of nowhere, and the gas built up, and I got too close.

Speaker 73 And suddenly

Speaker 23 I'm picking pieces of contact lens out of my eye. Oh, my God.

Speaker 62 Just thinking I dodged a bullet there.

Speaker 6 You've been dodging bullets your whole life, brother.

Speaker 39 Fake ones. Fake bullets.

Speaker 16 Yeah, but they leave a mark too, man.

Speaker 30 They leave a leave a mark.

Speaker 39 They leave a mark on your soul.

Speaker 1 What's the latest bullet that you've dodged?

Speaker 27 Or did you just take one for the team?

Speaker 28 Like, what are you in the midst of right now?

Speaker 34 I got so many things I want to talk to you about, but capital punishment, obviously, and everything that's happened since then and what a strange time it must be for you to see the headlines.

Speaker 50 Yeah.

Speaker 62 I mean, are you feeling, I don't know, vindicated at all?

Speaker 39 Yeah, I mean, more and more, I'm beginning to feel vindicated. I mean, the truth is coming out.

Speaker 39 And, you know, we were kind of ahead of the game, even though we weren't sure about exactly what we were finding when we made the documentaries.

Speaker 39 We made the first documentary, Capital Punishment, in 2021. Yeah.
Like November, we released it, same year

Speaker 39 of January 6th. So we were kind of like piecing it together and hinting at things.

Speaker 39 But no, it's been, I mean, I was overjoyed when Trump pardoned the January 6th people because by this point, I'd interviewed 65 or 70 of them. And I'd gotten to know them.

Speaker 39 And some of them have become friends. And I knew what kind of people they were.

Speaker 39 And I was just... There's that pins and needles kind of thing leading up to it after he got elected.
It's like, is he really going to do it?

Speaker 39 Because so many people,

Speaker 39 John Strand, Brandon Stracha, Colton McAbee, all these people that I knew, that I knew their stories, and I knew that what had happened to them was not fair, but I didn't know if Trump was really going to go through with it, if he was really going to pardon them.

Speaker 40 Well, we talked to you about this.

Speaker 31 It's been over a year, right?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I think so. Easily.

Speaker 40 And Chuck was nervous.

Speaker 79 I was a little nervous.

Speaker 31 I mean, there was a lot of blood in the water.

Speaker 29 I was more interested, not from a political point of view, but but just from this idea that so many people there seemed to experience such a different thing at the same time.

Speaker 27 That level of ambiguity and experiential difference seemed undeniable, and yet there was so much certainty in the narrative.

Speaker 29 That's what freaked me out, Nick, honestly.

Speaker 39 And that's why I kind of wound up going down that road, because I was there that day. I was there on January 6th, and what I saw was people praying and singing hymns, and people were joyful,

Speaker 39 pretty much. And I really didn't see any of the violence.
You know, I didn't see what they were showing me on television, and I was there.

Speaker 39 So that was sort of what sent us down the road of like, let's figure this out. Somebody said, would you like to make a documentary about that? And I said, sure, I would like to.

Speaker 52 And I remember, too, after talking to you, thinking, boy.

Speaker 18 Somebody's going to pick this up in a hurry.

Speaker 5 This is going to go tearing through the corridors at at Fox.

Speaker 55 It's going to go tearing through.

Speaker 88 And man, nobody touched it.

Speaker 39 No.

Speaker 31 They were scared.

Speaker 25 The people were straight up, flat out scared.

Speaker 39 Yeah, Fox wouldn't even let us buy advertisements for the movie because I think they were in the midst of that whole

Speaker 39 election. They were being sued and whatever.

Speaker 2 Over 980 million among friends, but whatever.

Speaker 39 Yeah. But they were afraid to have anything on that might jeopardize that, I guess.
And so, but yeah, it wasn't just Fox. I mean, mean,

Speaker 39 everybody was kind of nervous about it. And we were coming out strong saying, This is all a lie.
They're lying to you. Listen to us.

Speaker 39 And nobody really wanted to jump in and go endorse that, you know, because we were kind of, we were pushing it pretty hard.

Speaker 28 So, what am I looking at here?

Speaker 53 Is this a sequel of sorts?

Speaker 39 We made a sequel to Capital Punishment called The War on Truth, which is now

Speaker 39 the first edit of it was four and a half hours long. We cut it down to two

Speaker 39 and then we decided to release it in four parts. So now it's a four-part mini-series.

Speaker 39 And it basically, mostly what the War on Truth is about is revealing who these people are that the government has been telling you are domestic terrorists and white supremacists and violent, hateful people.

Speaker 39 And they're nothing of the sort.

Speaker 39 And that should give you some idea of how deep the lie goes. Because they have to demonize these people in order to preserve the narrative.

Speaker 39 If they can't keep the idea going that January 6th was a violent uprising by people who wanted to overthrow the government, then everything crumbles around them.

Speaker 10 What do you think?

Speaker 23 I know you don't have a crystal ball, but

Speaker 28 institutions are still, I think, operating at all-time low levels of trust in general.

Speaker 17 Certainly the media has got an awful lot on them right now.

Speaker 35 Can the Democratic Party recover?

Speaker 27 Do you think the current, as people are grappling to get up to speed with the fact that there really and truly was a cover-up,

Speaker 16 is that going to break what you would call the spell surrounding this day?

Speaker 39 I don't know. I keep telling, people ask me that, and I say, I don't know what they do if they give up the lie.
It's like if they admit that they lied that profoundly for that long,

Speaker 39 the only consequences for them have to be legal. They have to go to jail.
So I think their only chance is to try to continue to push the lie.

Speaker 39 And that's why we're still getting pushback on our movie and on the things that we're saying. There's still a lot of fear about coming out and saying exactly what happened.

Speaker 50 So, I mean, just to remind people, though, the movie, it didn't leave me feeling like you were denying any of what we saw on TV.

Speaker 17 It was more like the blind guy grabbing the tusk on the elephant and concluding that he was holding on to an ivory statue.

Speaker 31 Right.

Speaker 79 You just didn't see enough to understand in context the totality of what happened.

Speaker 39 But also, I mean, what we did see, what we found out later, even after we made the first film, we had hints of it.

Speaker 39 It's like we had footage of people changing clothes in the bushes and changing out of their gear into Trump gear. And we were going, what is that about?

Speaker 39 These people are obviously not actual sincere Trump supporters. These are people that were sent there to do some damage, to cause some ruckus.

Speaker 39 And that is coming out more and more.

Speaker 39 That's being shown to be true. And

Speaker 39 we hinted in the first movies like, there's a lot of reports that there were people from the government that infiltrated the crowd that caused a lot of the vandalism, that incited the the crowd to do some things.

Speaker 39 Yeah, some of the people did some bad things, but

Speaker 39 what caused them to do it? And in the War on Truth, you see more and more that the Capitol Police were actually the aggressors in the situation.

Speaker 39 You had a huge crowd outside the Capitol that was out there just singing songs and doing nothing, and the Capitol Police began firing munitions into the middle of the crowd.

Speaker 3 What kind of munitions?

Speaker 39 Flashbangs, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets in many cases. There's one guy that got hit by the rubber bullet in the cheek.

Speaker 39 And when it happened, the people in the crowd were screaming, what are you doing?

Speaker 91 Why are you firing at us?

Speaker 39 So that kind of thing is, that's not come out yet as clearly as it should, because the Capitol Police were the aggressors.

Speaker 39 And in War on Truth, we interviewed Tarek Johnson, who was a Capitol Policeman that day, who testified that this was all a setup, that the Capitol Police were set up just as much as the crowd was.

Speaker 39 And he, Tarek Johnson is the one who cleared the House and Senate before the crowd got to them because he knew that if the crowd had breached the House and Senate while the senators or the representatives were still in there, that would have been a situation where the Capitol Police would have had to open fire.

Speaker 39 because they're not allowed to do that. He was radioing his superior officers saying, let Let me clear the House and Senate, let me clear the chambers, and they no response.
He never got an okay.

Speaker 39 And then he did it on his own. He did it of his own volition.
He cleared the house, he cleared the chambers, and he probably saved hundreds of lives.

Speaker 39 And then the next day after that, because he did that on his own, he was suspended for 17 months and on house arrest.

Speaker 15 So it's a big, big, big deal.

Speaker 39 It's a much bigger conspiracy than I can explain.

Speaker 93 There's a very poignant moment in the great film, It's a Wonderful Life, when George Bailey realizes that Uncle Billy is a terrible employee.

Speaker 93 It's right after Uncle Billy takes a moment to gloat in front of Mr. Potter, but then stupidly leaves his newspaper behind along with $15,000 of bank deposits, which Mr.
Potter steals.

Speaker 93 It's not long after that that poor George Bailey is standing on the bridge over the Bedford River, ready to take his own life to avoid the scandal put in motion by Uncle Billy's carelessness.

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Speaker 13 Well, you know, as a storyteller, and forgive me, I know that sounds awfully precious, but it's really tempting when you know a thing is a big deal to talk about it in big terms.

Speaker 27 You want to try and match the moment.

Speaker 17 But what I like what you've done with this film, and to some degree with the previous one, is you tell the small stories, too.

Speaker 92 And

Speaker 27 those, I think, are the ones that most people will be most horrified by and the ones that are going to resonate.

Speaker 31 So we don't have to make a meal out of this, but I would like to hear briefly some of, I mean, people who've spent eight, nine months in jail for essentially being

Speaker 36 pushed into the Capitol with their cell phones on or something.

Speaker 39 Well, there's a lot of stories I could tell, but I mean, the one story that I do like to tell is because it's not just the jail time. I mean, so many of these people...

Speaker 39 Like Colton McAbee was in jail for four years. He was in there for the whole time.

Speaker 39 And three and a half of those years, he wasn't even even charged. He couldn't even get bond.
He couldn't get bonded out because he was classified as a domestic terrorist.

Speaker 39 And when you hear his story of what he actually did that day, he basically tried to save Roseanne Boylan's life and tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Speaker 39 He fell down on top of a police officer. He was pushed in by the crowd.
And in the audio, you can hear him saying, I'm trying to help. And the police officer goes, I know you are.
I know you are.

Speaker 39 And he helps him up, and the police officer says, Thank you.

Speaker 39 In the trial, the judge wouldn't allow them to play the audio so that you could hear the police officer thanking Colton for helping him up.

Speaker 39 So if you just don't play the audio, it looks like Colton threw the guy down on the ground and then jerked him around, you know, and that's the impression they were trying to give.

Speaker 39 And another story is my friend...

Speaker 60 Sorry, Nick. Go ahead.

Speaker 28 Are you naming names?

Speaker 24 Like, what judge did that?

Speaker 56 Who decided to take the audio out of the tape?

Speaker 1 These things are outrageous to the point where you just,

Speaker 33 it feels like they're coming out of a real thriller, a fictitious

Speaker 86 who done it.

Speaker 9 You've got to be kidding me.

Speaker 17 They did this right in front of us.

Speaker 39 Well, I don't know the exact judge that that was, but there's about nine or ten. All these cases went before D.C.

Speaker 39 judges because that was another thing they did was they made it so that you could not get a change of venue. So every one of these cases had to be tried before a D.C.
jury, which is 99% Democrat. And

Speaker 39 most of the people in the District of Columbia think that everybody who went to January 6th that day needs to go to jail. And the judges are in the same boat.
So you have judges like Royce Lamberth,

Speaker 39 Colleen Collar Cottelli.

Speaker 39 These are just the names I can remember off. off the top of my head, but none of these people could get a fair trial with these judges.
And in fact, Collar Cottelli is probably the worst one.

Speaker 39 She would call people insurrectionists in her summation, even though no one was ever charged with insurrection.

Speaker 39 I don't have the name of that judge off the top of my head, but I will say that

Speaker 39 a lot of the damage that was done to these people was in their communities, their reputations.

Speaker 39 They lost their businesses because the government put out this idea that everybody who went there was some sort of racist terrorist. So everybody, they're demonized in their communities.

Speaker 39 Their sandwich shops, their coffee shops, all these things that they owned are now getting terrible Yelp reviews and don't go eat at this place.

Speaker 62 It's a scarlet letter.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 39 And my friend Jay Johnston, who was an actor like me, he was trapped in the tunnel fracas.

Speaker 39 And during that, you know, it was a lot of pushing and shoving.

Speaker 39 During that...

Speaker 39 whole melee, a police shield was passed back through the crowd. And Jay's a pretty big guy.

Speaker 39 And Jay, Jay you know the shield was passed back to him he took it and he just passed it on somebody else well that was characterized as attacking with a deadly weapon because he put his hands on the police shield Jay

Speaker 39 was completely ostracized in Hollywood at the time he did that he was on a show called Bill's Burgers or some animated show yeah I can't remember what it was but anyway lost his job all of his Hollywood friends turned their back on him you know he comes out of the comedy community.

Speaker 39 All those comedians just vilified him. We're never working with him again.
So it's not just what the government did. It's what the government narrative caused the community to do.

Speaker 62 That's what they enabled.

Speaker 95 I mean, it's, I remember as a kid reading about,

Speaker 32 oh, in the, you know, the old Puritan days, like, like, like, the hardest thing that could happen to a person was to be excommunicated, to be banished.

Speaker 83 Yeah.

Speaker 84 And

Speaker 27 you don't think about that much.

Speaker 20 It just feels like an artifact of some old thing, but to not be able to go into your favorite diner, your sandwich shop, your church, the school.

Speaker 60 Yeah.

Speaker 94 You know,

Speaker 39 it's like, where do I go to get my reputation back? Even though they've been pardoned, even though they, yes, the legal trouble is over. But they're all like, where do I go to get my...

Speaker 39 my standing in the community back. Well, look, that's the oldest dodge in journalism.

Speaker 4 You know, when the headline's dead wrong, the correction shows up on the back of the bottom of the

Speaker 36 last page.

Speaker 66 Nobody sees it.

Speaker 8 Hey, there's one part I think you failed to mention was that Colton McAbee was a police officer.

Speaker 14 Oh, that's right, right?

Speaker 8 A sheriff or something like that.

Speaker 40 Do you remember?

Speaker 39 Colton McCabe was a... No, he was Tennessee.
He was Williamson County where I live. He was a deputy there.
at the time that he went to Washington that day.

Speaker 39 And he even had police on his clothes that day, showing that he was, you know, he wasn't on duty, but he was.

Speaker 39 And he was immediately, the sheriff's department there, they were, couldn't speak about him, they couldn't talk to his wife.

Speaker 39 And the way I wound up making the war on truth, by the way, is because I was in a butcher shop right before Christmas. And Leslie and I are going, you know, the kids are coming over.

Speaker 39 Let's go order a roast. And so we go into this butcher shop.
I look up on the internet.

Speaker 39 This is the best one in Franklin I go in I order the steak from or the roast from this nice young lady I get home I get a text from her Mr.

Speaker 39 Cersei could you give me a call I helped you with your roast today so I thought okay they run out of meat or something I don't know so I call this lady back and she said I thought you sounded from your name sounded familiar but I couldn't place you But then I talked to my husband and he said that you were the guy that made Capital Punishment, the first movie about January 6th.

Speaker 13 I go, oh, that's great.

Speaker 39 Your husband's one of the 10 people that saw it.

Speaker 39 Can I speak to him? And she said, no, he's in the DC Gulag. He's been there for two years.

Speaker 39 And it was like, it was Sarah Maccabee. It was Colton Maccabee's wife.

Speaker 39 The roast. And I just went, because up to that point, I've been resisting.
It's like... No, it's real.

Speaker 75 Real, like real, real, real. Yeah.

Speaker 39 I was like, I didn't want to make a sequel, but then I was like, okay, I think God's telling me I need to make the sequel.

Speaker 80 You typically listen when you're pretty sure the

Speaker 16 suggestion is coming from on high?

Speaker 39 I try to.

Speaker 39 I try to.

Speaker 39 Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, you know, but I try to.

Speaker 31 How hard was it for you and Leslie when you...

Speaker 22 I mean, I'm sure you wrestled with it, prayed about it, and so forth, but when you decided to make capital punishment, people got to remember that you did this right on the heels of this thing.

Speaker 53 I mean, you just literally walked up to the wood stove that you were absolutely conscious was roaring right and you just put your hand on it as if to say is this thing hot right was it

Speaker 39 you know i i think in that for that first one i i

Speaker 39 i didn't really question it it was sort of like okay i've got to do this there was never really a doubt in my mind.

Speaker 39 I said, I knew that, you know, there were going to be some repercussions from it, but I had already directed Gosnell, the abortion movie. Dodge that bullet.
Yeah.

Speaker 39 And so, I mean, I was kind of already exposed as one of those people anyway

Speaker 39 in Hollywood. So I figured how much worse could it get, you know.

Speaker 63 But why are you still standing?

Speaker 20 I mean, if you think about the guy you just described, Jay.

Speaker 30 Was it Jay?

Speaker 92 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 16 And so many others.

Speaker 9 You're a clear and present danger.

Speaker 70 You're a threat.

Speaker 39 I don't know. I don't know.
I mean, I'm sure that there have been jobs that I haven't gotten because of it, but I've continued to work enough.

Speaker 31 You're too busy to miss the jobs you didn't get.

Speaker 13 You don't even have an agent, do you?

Speaker 39 No, I don't have one anymore.

Speaker 39 And the reason I don't have an agent is because I was talking to him. It was right when Capital Punishment came out.
I said, what did you think of it? And he goes, I'm not going to watch that.

Speaker 39 I go, you're not even going to watch it? He said, I'm not watching that. That was an insurrection, full stop, and I'm not going to watch that propaganda.

Speaker 27 He He wouldn't even watch 10% of it.

Speaker 76 I said, well, yeah.

Speaker 65 Right.

Speaker 73 Exactly.

Speaker 69 Jesus, you should have used that line.

Speaker 39 But I said, I guess you don't want to be my agent then.

Speaker 39 Why do you want to represent some insurrectionist?

Speaker 83 So I fired him.

Speaker 39 And ever since then, I've been some agents that have come sniffing around saying, you know, I'd like to represent you. And I'd go, okay, run it by everybody else in your office.

Speaker 39 And then I never heard from him again. Yep.

Speaker 51 Because it goes that way too.

Speaker 56 Like the same way you get excommunicated in your neighborhood for being on the wrong side of that argument.

Speaker 51 Can you imagine working in the 10 percentery in this town?

Speaker 19 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 43 I mean, there must be some, but I don't.

Speaker 39 I know it's a good friend of mine who got run out of being an agent for the same reasons. He was too open about what he thought.

Speaker 39 And I do know some other agents that are, you know, at least a little bit on the right side of things.

Speaker 39 They can't really expose themselves to their, the rest of their agency because they would just be excommunicated.

Speaker 24 What about the persuadables who are on the other side of the aisle?

Speaker 19 Your friend Graham.

Speaker 97 I love your book, by the way.

Speaker 1 The book is called Justify This, and here we'll shamelessly pivot to this for a moment.

Speaker 97 But

Speaker 21 it has two forewords. Yeah.

Speaker 39 You know, one from the right and one on the left.

Speaker 98 Which I think is terrific.

Speaker 80 It's great that you would do that.

Speaker 22 And talk about Graham, if you would.

Speaker 62 Well,

Speaker 39 Graham's Canadian, so that explains a lot.

Speaker 13 What can you do?

Speaker 39 But Graham and I have been friends for a long time. I met Graham on From the Earth of the Moon.
He was one of the supervising producers.

Speaker 39 And the story I always tell is like for 15 years after From the Earth of the Moon, Graham was writing all these movies.

Speaker 68 He wrote Speed.

Speaker 39 He did Boomtown. He was doing all this stuff.
And I'd be emailing him going, I thought we were friends.

Speaker 65 What?

Speaker 39 You don't ever have anything for me?

Speaker 39 And so he said when he read the pilot for Justified, he said, finally, I've got something for Nick. I can shut him up.
So that's kind of how I got into Justified.

Speaker 6 But it's now, did you guys

Speaker 97 ever talk politically?

Speaker 27 Were you aware from whence the other was coming?

Speaker 39 Well, Graham is very, very funny. He has a great sense of humor.
And

Speaker 39 we joke about it. You know,

Speaker 39 he knows that I think he's a communist and whatever, you know.

Speaker 39 But you know, it's never been like we don't have arguments because we know there's no point. You know, I like Graham.
He likes me. You know, I like him as an artist.
He liked me as an actor.

Speaker 39 So we never really had some big powwow about politics.

Speaker 26 But look, I think that there was a time, and we're both old enough to remember, where that was the default.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 13 It was simply, it's like, okay, we're not going to be singing together out of that hymn book, but look at all the other things we can do in life.

Speaker 17 And that, that to me is the great tragedy of the times that we're in now.

Speaker 87 AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes.

Speaker 87 Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes.

Speaker 87 So you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubrik.com.

Speaker 99 That's r-u-b-r-i-k.com.

Speaker 39 When I was coming up, you know, I got my career started in North Carolina in a regional market.

Speaker 39 And I knew people that were, you know, we would have discussions in the waiting room for auditions, and it was never contentious. You know, there were some guys that were Clinton people or whatever.

Speaker 70 You know, we just talked about it.

Speaker 39 But then when I got to, by the time I got my career going, I moved to L.A., I was like, I didn't realize that that wasn't the same in Los Angeles as it was in North Carolina.

Speaker 39 It was a bad thing if you really came out. And by the time I realized that, it was too late.

Speaker 89 So I just had to roll with it.

Speaker 31 So when you read The Pilot, I assume Graham sent it to you.

Speaker 10 I'm curious to the extent that he and you both were already familiar with Elmore Leonard.

Speaker 94 And what, if anything, what kind of impression that guy had already made on you.

Speaker 39 I had read a couple of his books. I mean, mean, I wasn't like a big avid Elmore Leonard fan, but I kind of read a couple of his books, and so I sort of got the tone of it.

Speaker 39 You know, I got the snappy dialogue and the, you know, the crispness of it. Yeah.

Speaker 39 And Graham, I think, really, I don't know if Graham had really read Elmore Leonard before, but he certainly steeped himself in it after he got this assignment. And he

Speaker 39 had Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules for Writing posted up.

Speaker 44 I got him too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I literally have him on my wall.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 35 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 27 My favorite is,

Speaker 86 I think it's dispense with the hoop-de-doodle.

Speaker 65 Yeah. Right?

Speaker 1 Just get all the stuff out of the way.

Speaker 28 And it's funny.

Speaker 29 You know, David Mamet was sitting right where you are, you know, yesterday.

Speaker 39 Well, that's an honor.

Speaker 19 Boy.

Speaker 31 Well, I mean, I didn't connect the dots then, but there are very few guys he reminds me of as a writer, but Elmore Leonard's one of them.

Speaker 16 And Hemingway to an extent, too.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 39 Sparse. Cleanness of it.
Yeah.

Speaker 39 Like, don't say anything but he said.

Speaker 65 You know,

Speaker 54 that's right.

Speaker 80 The attributions.

Speaker 62 Yeah, right.

Speaker 28 Never, yeah. And not replied.

Speaker 13 Not yet.

Speaker 47 Or sighed.

Speaker 23 Intoned.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 30 Not even asked.

Speaker 20 Right.

Speaker 41 You know, it's all the attributions are he said and she said.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 63 And at first it feels

Speaker 63 it.

Speaker 41 It's a little awkward at first because you're not used to reading that way.

Speaker 34 But then later it's it's actually very comforting.

Speaker 39 Yeah, because you don't spend any time you're just right through it he's not selling you and like ad or adverbs anything that ends with l-y i think he was firmly against or against firmly there's another writer i love lawrence block you know he his style is a bit like elmore's i think so was art mullen stupid question you've had it a thousand times but i think i know the answer that that had to be a

Speaker 29 a hinge in your curriculum viate.

Speaker 39 It was a great gift for that to come along at that point point in my life. You know, I was in my 50s and it's like, you know, you're kind of facing the over-the-hill gang.

Speaker 39 You know, I'm getting ready to ride with those old men. But to get a part like that at that stage in my life was just a great gift.

Speaker 11 When did you know it?

Speaker 28 Like, when did you know?

Speaker 24 I mean, obviously the offer was kind, and the fact that Chuck has yet to see the program is unforgivable.

Speaker 14 What? What are you talking about?

Speaker 25 I don't believe you're familiar with Justified at the time.

Speaker 16 Every single episode I have seen.

Speaker 29 Not one.

Speaker 19 Right. Not one.

Speaker 54 Every single one.

Speaker 39 He's just saying that to make me feel better.

Speaker 69 Is that what it is?

Speaker 15 His wife Leslie is in it?

Speaker 91 Yeah, I watched the whole thing. I binged it before we had him on the first time.

Speaker 82 Oh, that's right, because you hadn't seen any of it.

Speaker 8 I hadn't seen it up until then, but you had been telling me about it for years.

Speaker 27 For years.

Speaker 72 Yeah.

Speaker 69 See,

Speaker 2 I am an Elmore.

Speaker 23 I feel like I knew the Harlan story and I knew everything that came out in that first thing.

Speaker 16 And I didn't see it promoted.

Speaker 17 I didn't see it advertised, which is almost impossible to do anymore.

Speaker 3 I just found it.

Speaker 52 It was just one of those things where it's like reaching in your pocket of your old tuxedo and finding $200 in a money clip you didn't even know you had.

Speaker 38 Like going, wow, I'm so happy to find this.

Speaker 81 It was just terrific, man.

Speaker 60 Yeah.

Speaker 39 Just terrific. It's a really good show.
And for me personally, it's a tribute to my own father.

Speaker 39 You know, it's like the way I played that character was like, I just played him like my dad because my dad was always a boss.

Speaker 39 He ran a restaurant, and he just had this really acerbic sense of humor and this really cutting way of keeping people in line, but in a way that was pleasant and funny.

Speaker 3 Tough, kind,

Speaker 50 with just a little, just enough world weary on you, but not bitter.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 90 Right. I mean,

Speaker 37 it was just terrific to watch. Yeah.

Speaker 39 I'm very grateful for that.

Speaker 62 When people stop you in airports, et cetera, it's usually for that.

Speaker 39 Well, since I moved to Kentucky,

Speaker 39 I'm a huge star in Kentucky. Yeah.
Like, I don't get recognized that much, but in Kentucky, I walk into a restaurant and they go, Art Mullen.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 39 You know, they know.

Speaker 23 Have you been following Walton Goggins?

Speaker 90 Yeah, he's done great.

Speaker 6 But again, we were just talking earlier.

Speaker 31 It's like, well, I've been following that guy for years.

Speaker 27 And then all of a sudden the White Lotus thing.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 88 And now the country's like discovered him.

Speaker 19 Yeah. What's blowing up? Yeah.
What a ride.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 39 No, he's done really well. I'm happy for him.

Speaker 74 Well, I'm happy for you, man.

Speaker 33 I love that you don't have an agent.

Speaker 27 I love that somehow you're still standing.

Speaker 81 This is your first book.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 28 What do I need?

Speaker 33 I mean, is it, it's not really about justified.

Speaker 39 No, it's just sort of a summation, kind of an autobiography, you know, and it

Speaker 39 just came about because

Speaker 39 this company approached me and said, we think you should write a book. I said, I'm just some character actor.
You think anybody's going to buy that?

Speaker 39 And they gave me a guy to work with to help me write it or whatever.

Speaker 39 Johnny Russo. Yeah.
And so I would tell him these stories. And, you know, I just started talking to him.
He said, I'll just record you and then we'll put it together.

Speaker 39 Well, after about I don't know, 16, 17 hours, he sent me an email one day and said, well, I turned the book in.

Speaker 13 I go, What are you talking about?

Speaker 39 I haven't even seen it yet. And he said, No, no.
I said, Send me what you sent in. And

Speaker 39 I looked at it and it was like, I sound like an idiot. You can't send that in.

Speaker 39 And so I called the company. I said, Look, you got to let me rewrite this, you know, so because he had kind of just transcribed what I said.

Speaker 39 And, you know, if you think you sound like an idiot, if somebody just, you know,

Speaker 39 it's every uh and every well.

Speaker 39 And then I, you know, so I kind of rewrote it all and then you know added some things that he hadn't written about you know that we hadn't gotten to yet so it started out as something i was going to go oh that won't be much work and then it turned into like okay i i really kind of had to write that book yeah well same thing happened to me and i realized it really was the frog in the boiling water where where all of a sudden i don't know when it became so precious but it did and i like i was agonizing in ways that yeah i normally wouldn't wouldn't I just think you know there's something about writing

Speaker 39 the business of writing a thing down yeah that obviously amplifies it in some way and there's a permanence to it you know this is going to be around I have to make sure that this is

Speaker 39 embarrassing you know it's going to live for a while you know what about um

Speaker 14 What about this thing, man?

Speaker 90 Where I'm at. Oh, oh, yeah.

Speaker 39 Well, that's the movie I'm trying to put together. A friend of mine and I wrote this movie.
His father, who is now a minister,

Speaker 39 sang in gospel quartets in the 60s. And most of a lot of my cousins were preachers, and my first cousin was a gospel singer.

Speaker 39 So he started telling, we were doing a play together, this guy and I, and he started telling me the story about his father.

Speaker 39 And I said, that sounds like a movie, because the whole thing was about him going into the gospel music world and finding out that it was

Speaker 39 much more of a business than he thought it was.

Speaker 39 You know, he thought it was just, I'm going to be spreading the gospel, but he finds out that it's a little darkness there and a little bit more, you know, what's the word,

Speaker 39 calculated than he thought.

Speaker 38 It is an extraordinarily deliberate world.

Speaker 33 I don't know a ton about it, but

Speaker 71 I know enough.

Speaker 3 I got hooked on the cathedrals

Speaker 29 one night.

Speaker 34 And actually, it's funny,

Speaker 18 we have a friend, you remember Steve Lawan from the old days.

Speaker 4 Sure.

Speaker 63 He wound up working

Speaker 55 at a Christian radio station, WRBS, and I introduced him to a quartet called The Haven of Rest.

Speaker 24 And he introduced me to the cathedrals.

Speaker 41 And then we just went down this rabbit hole.

Speaker 3 There are hundreds of famous southern gospel quartets.

Speaker 17 It's not barbershop,

Speaker 24 but it's those same power harmonies.

Speaker 27 And there's always a tenor with no top and a bass with no bottom.

Speaker 26 And just the idea that here's this world where these musicians, many times without instruments, but sometimes with,

Speaker 9 are like on the circuit.

Speaker 28 You know, making the rounds.

Speaker 35 It's like a, I don't know, oh brother, where art thou kind of vibe over the whole thing.

Speaker 39 Yeah, the Blackwood brothers, the Inspirations. I grew up with the Inspirations because they were from Western North Carolina where I grew up.
And actually, my mother was a biology teacher.

Speaker 39 And the chemistry teacher was Martin Cook. And he left teaching to become the piano player for the Inspirations when I was about six years old.
Yeah. And he kind of, I think

Speaker 39 his son or his grandson is now running the Inspirations. So it's a long-standing,

Speaker 39 I mean, they've been around around for 50 years.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But the originals?

Speaker 39 Well, there's a whole young, it's the new inspirations now, right? But it's, there's a, you know, vestiges of the old guard. There's still, they're like the, you know, Leonard Skynyrd.

Speaker 39 There's one guy left that's still alive.

Speaker 73 Right.

Speaker 27 What is it about that form of music, in your view, that resonates so profoundly

Speaker 27 with some people,

Speaker 52 but is so just completely alien to others.

Speaker 41 It's so specific.

Speaker 39 It is. It's a real interesting subculture.
And that's kind of why I wanted to do the movie. There's never been anything about it, you know, very little.

Speaker 39 The Righteous Gemstones thing, that's a parody, you know.

Speaker 39 I think it's the, like you said, it's the power of the harmonies. And it's that fascinating sort of mixture between

Speaker 39 sincere religious belief and showmanship. That's it.

Speaker 70 You know, there it is.

Speaker 39 Because they are putting on a show and they are selling something to the audience, you know, above and beyond the sincerity of the message they're trying to deliver.

Speaker 43 Do you remember?

Speaker 31 So the inspirations were your inspiration, I suppose.

Speaker 33 But were you in a church the first time you heard that kind of music come at you with all the stenturian force?

Speaker 27 that men in harmony can muster?

Speaker 39 Yeah, well, my uncle was an evangelist. He was a traveling preacher.
And so I ended up going to a lot of revivals that he was, and he was, he played the guitar and sang.

Speaker 39 And his daughter and his son sang with him sometimes. And his son is the one who became like a lead singer in a gospel quartet.

Speaker 39 So I just remember, I think my first memory of it is seeing my uncle sing harmony with his son and daughter. That was my introduction to it.

Speaker 87 And then, you know, I would go to these gospel sings where there'd be five groups or something and they'd all, you know, sing for an hour and ai agents are everywhere automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed but agents make mistakes just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice rubrik agent cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents not risk accelerate your ai transformation at rubrik.com that's r-u-b-r-i-k.com.

Speaker 40 Have you talked to Nick before about barbershop and the weird thing we grew up with?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, I told him that, you know, that we sang together and we do it on the podcast all the time as well.

Speaker 29 Well, I'm thinking more of the, like the first time we were 17, maybe 18 years old, and our music teacher was a big deal in that world, and he directed an international

Speaker 27 world champion men's chorus that sang the old songs. Now, this was not a religious group, although

Speaker 63 they really could tear up near my God to the.

Speaker 47 I mean, like,

Speaker 31 in a way that would make you cry, regardless of what you believed in or didn't believe in.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 12 It's that.

Speaker 27 It's that kind of magic that's baked into this.

Speaker 41 It was the first time in my life I saw 120 men, many of whom had fought in the Korean War and the Second World War, shoulder to shoulder, singing about the pals that would never let you down and the sweetheart of Sigma Kai and a mother's love.

Speaker 19 Tough men, hard men,

Speaker 29 weeping as they sang.

Speaker 17 And I remember just, I was just a boy sitting there next to Chuck, and we, it got us

Speaker 20 like in this, like, it was the combination of unapologetic sentimentality

Speaker 66 with actual talent and

Speaker 9 a wall of sound and that too you know how on a hot day you can like see the heat coming up off the macadam yeah right yeah you you could see the sound waves in the air it would it like it it just hit you and it knocked the moisture out of your eyes right i don't know there's just something um

Speaker 39 there's an alchemy in that i remember my uh my best agent joe rice who passed away sadly about a few years ago i've never gotten another one as good as him, but he,

Speaker 39 when I played him the music that we, I had written this show, and we had links to some of the music that was in it. Yeah.
And Joe Rice said to me, I love that music.

Speaker 98 I don't even believe in Jesus.

Speaker 39 It made me cry.

Speaker 52 It was great. He chased a dream.

Speaker 23 He found a calling.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got to have a deck, don't you?

Speaker 39 Yeah, anymore, yeah. And we're pretty far down the road.
I mean, we have a company out of Nashville called Third Coast Film, and they're putting the deals together.

Speaker 39 Patricia Heaton and her husband are helping David Hunt. They're going to be involved.
Patricia's going to be in the cast.

Speaker 70 You got Sam Rockwell?

Speaker 39 It's coming together. Well, that's...
That's who I want. Oh, I got you.

Speaker 40 I'm like, wow, this is an amazing cast.

Speaker 39 I did a movie with Sam. I know Lori.
I mean, you know, these are the people that I want.

Speaker 39 But I keep telling these guys, you got to get the money together because, you know, these guys have schedules. I've got to be able to tell them when they're going to work.

Speaker 36 It's like, so you're in the midst, like all these projects have just life cycles that a lot of people probably don't understand.

Speaker 21 But it's kind of like being a farmer, I guess.

Speaker 16 You're either reaping or you're sowing or planning or doing a rain dance and hoping for the best.

Speaker 39 Yeah, people don't really, and I didn't know before I started doing this, but how long it takes to put together a movie like this. I mean, we're going on seven years.

Speaker 39 We wrote the script seven years ago and then rewrote it and rewrote it and changed, you know, different companies get involved and then they fall away or whatever.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 13 But it's a long road.

Speaker 52 That's so funny.

Speaker 23 I'm thinking of Jack Teeter now, who was here three hours ago.

Speaker 36 You'd love this guy.

Speaker 22 His great uncle

Speaker 66 was blind

Speaker 85 from the age of five on and

Speaker 3 in spite of that, was determined to become an engineer, which he did, and then went on to

Speaker 94 To invent the automatic transmission.

Speaker 75 Oh, wow.

Speaker 52 And then cruise control.

Speaker 16 He changed the automotive industry, ran a company out of Hagerstown, Indiana for years called Perfect Circle, which made the...

Speaker 13 Point is, you know,

Speaker 31 this guy decides I have an extraordinary relative and a movie needs to be made.

Speaker 29 And I wind up narrating this documentary, and we just had him in here to talk about it.

Speaker 16 And my point is, you know, if you don't have an agent and if you're not playing the Hollywood game, then

Speaker 32 all of these projects become very personal, whether it's January 6th or whether it's where I'm bound.

Speaker 62 Right.

Speaker 42 And so something is certainly guiding you.

Speaker 73 Well,

Speaker 39 you know, something happened this year.

Speaker 39 I lost two of my best friends in the same week, right, in the first week of January this year. My wife lost one of her best friends.
And

Speaker 39 Chuck knows one of them, Loy, our friend Loy, who I think was there the night. Loy wanted to smoke cigars.
That's right.

Speaker 11 Yeah, you were coming to see Loy.

Speaker 91 He was staying with me.

Speaker 7 He was visiting from Kansas City.

Speaker 26 Voiceover guy.

Speaker 30 Yeah. That's correct.

Speaker 47 Yeah. Loy Edge.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah. Very funny guy.

Speaker 91 I think I sent you a- wonderful guy.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I sent you the audio of him singing a very funny song.

Speaker 33 That song,

Speaker 33 I can't play any of it.

Speaker 54 That's correct.

Speaker 22 I would like to play all of it, but that was the filthiest song I've ever heard.

Speaker 39 It's pretty dirty, yeah.

Speaker 83 It's pretty awful.

Speaker 46 It's pretty funny. Yeah.

Speaker 80 It's like pretty dirty.

Speaker 63 That's like saying there are a lot of people in China.

Speaker 57 That's right.

Speaker 78 That's right.

Speaker 39 Well, my buddy Rodney Carrington, who makes a living singing dirty songs. Yeah.
Lloyd and I played it for him and he's like, that's too dirty.

Speaker 39 I can't do it. I can't record that.

Speaker 54 True story.

Speaker 76 True story.

Speaker 72 Oh my God.

Speaker 27 Well, I'm sorry for your loss.

Speaker 39 But what I was saying is, like,

Speaker 39 those losses really brought something home to me, which is like,

Speaker 39 I don't want to spend my, what time I have left doing something that I don't care about. You know, I don't want to, I'm not like looking for a job anymore.

Speaker 39 I don't, you know, I'm not rich, but I've got, I'm not going to starve.

Speaker 39 And I would rather spend my time doing things that it's worth taking me away from my home, from my family, from, it's worth me spending

Speaker 39 the time to make that movie.

Speaker 94 Yeah.

Speaker 39 So like when the manager calls and goes, we got this thing,

Speaker 39 it's three and a half months, you'll be in Vancouver.

Speaker 46 I go,

Speaker 96 How much?

Speaker 74 Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 39 I just don't want to, I don't want to waste any more time.

Speaker 11 It's funny, and by funny, I don't mean funny at all, but I mean human, how sometimes it's like something has to grab you by the lapels and shake you.

Speaker 96 Yeah,

Speaker 3 you know, I just

Speaker 39 it forces you to go, okay,

Speaker 39 realistically, I probably don't have 30 years.

Speaker 39 Maybe I've got 20. Maybe it's in the teens, you know.
Right.

Speaker 39 Do I want to, you know, and I think of Ray Liota, Ray Lioda, who I never worked with him, but I always looked up to him. And he dies in the Dominican Republic at 63,

Speaker 39 doing a little independent film. And

Speaker 39 I just go, I don't, I don't want to go that way.

Speaker 23 No, it's the big chill.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 28 You're right in that neighborhood, too, right?

Speaker 66 I'm 63 now. Yeah.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 41 Man, he was something in Field of Dreams.

Speaker 78 Oh.

Speaker 1 It really snuck up on you, that performance, you know.

Speaker 39 And Goodfellas and, you know,

Speaker 9 well, Goodfellas didn't sneak up on me.

Speaker 28 That hit me like a...

Speaker 47 Yeah. I mean, but the subtlety.

Speaker 56 that he brought to that,

Speaker 51 just those couple of scenes, they're crazy how that, like what you do, what you've done, those little moments that get

Speaker 30 just embedded in your crawl.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 39 I've had a few of those, you know, not many, but,

Speaker 39 you know, I've been a character actor, you know, and I've had a few little brushes at sort of doing something really memorable. Fried green tomatoes, maybe.

Speaker 79 That was the first. For sure.
Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 47 you were the bad guy.

Speaker 39 I was the bad guy. I was the wife beating husband.
But the funny thing is, whenever I meet a young lady that's in their 30s and she goes, you look really familiar, I'll start rattling things off.

Speaker 39 No, I never saw that. I go, did you have the Disney channel when you were a kid? And she goes, yes.
And I go, Do you remember the movie Double Teamed?

Speaker 10 And they were like, you were the dad.

Speaker 39 It's like this movie, this TV movie about these two tall girls and their mean dad made them play basketball. And then they wound up in the WNBA.

Speaker 39 Every woman, 35 to 40 right now,

Speaker 39 had the Disney Channel. They saw that movie 50 times.
So that's what I'm most famous for.

Speaker 97 What are you most proud of?

Speaker 39 Well, outside of

Speaker 39 my personal life, you mean, outside of being putting up with Leslie for 38 years, it's been tough.

Speaker 36 Who I just met on the telephone, by the way.

Speaker 44 She sounds delightful.

Speaker 39 She is.

Speaker 39 I don't know. I wouldn't be anything without her.

Speaker 73 Probably

Speaker 39 the thing I'm most proud of is

Speaker 39 Justified's up there. Fried Green Tomatoes is up there.

Speaker 39 But the documentaries, you know, I think they're going to,

Speaker 39 you know, they'll be out there. There

Speaker 39 still haven't wound up on Amazon or, you know, where I would like for them to be seen by people who didn't know it was coming. But I think those are going to be an important piece of history.

Speaker 39 I think of, you know, I was able to chronicle something that most people ignored or didn't didn't want to look at.

Speaker 31 Or didn't have the guts to do themselves.

Speaker 79 Yeah.

Speaker 96 Yeah.

Speaker 90 Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 39 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 39 I don't know if it's bravery or stupidity.

Speaker 72 Well,

Speaker 31 I'm not sure, like, what's really the difference other than, I guess, motive.

Speaker 20 Stupid doesn't have a motive. Right.

Speaker 52 You know, it's back to touch in the wood stove that you know is hot.

Speaker 31 If you do it stupidly, well, then, you know, that scar is probably remembered differently.

Speaker 63 But if you lurch for it to get the baby off of it,

Speaker 4 because somehow or another a baby is on the hot stove, don't unpack the metaphor too deeply, but right, you

Speaker 72 something pushed or pulled or kicked or prodded.

Speaker 63 And, you know, whether you're around another 10, 20, 30, 40 years or whatever, it's not up to you anymore, man.

Speaker 9 Right. You're the pitcher who let the ball go, and now it's out there.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And we'll see where it goes.

Speaker 39 I think that's part of why I decided to make those movies, because when I would hear these people's stories,

Speaker 39 I would think back to where I was on that day.

Speaker 39 And like, if I had been where Colton was or where Jay Johnstone was,

Speaker 39 I might have done exactly what they did and it would be me there instead of them.

Speaker 39 So I think in some ways I'd look at that and I'd go, I think I was being protected that day so that I could tell the story, so that I would be able to make these films and tell these stories.

Speaker 42 Is the wall of resistance coming down?

Speaker 63 Do you feel like you're going to be able

Speaker 66 to get more,

Speaker 16 I hate to, it's just promotion.

Speaker 71 Is anybody going to help you tell these stories?

Speaker 39 Well, I don't know about that. I mean, I've had a little bit of a a struggle with the producers of the movie, the people who funded it.

Speaker 39 You know, they have a certain way that they want to do things, and I haven't been able to convince them otherwise.

Speaker 39 I've certainly reached out to Amazon and to companies to try to help me get these things. You know, I want to just give it away at this point.

Speaker 39 I just want it to be on Amazon so that somebody could just go, what's this about? You know,

Speaker 39 because I'm tired of preaching to the choir. The only people that watch it are the people that already agree with me.
You know, know, I want to show it to some people, the persuadable people.

Speaker 97 Yeah.

Speaker 39 But I haven't figured it out yet.

Speaker 12 I've got to

Speaker 39 turning it over in my mind. You know,

Speaker 39 I don't have an agent.

Speaker 50 You keep saying that. Careful.

Speaker 82 You want one?

Speaker 39 I want a good one. I'd like to have one like Joe Rice, but, you know.

Speaker 75 Yeah.

Speaker 33 You just kind of...

Speaker 46 glossed over it before, but you said when you were a boy, there were these tent revivals in your world and again that's a

Speaker 79 that's a thing i think most people kind of know about but very few have experienced what was it like and what kind of impact did it have and to what extent are these things

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Speaker 39 Yeah, well, it's that blend. It's that blend of showmanship and sincere belief.
And I did a one-man show about a preacher when I was a struggling actor in New York for about three years.

Speaker 39 And that was what was fascinating to me about it because

Speaker 39 I never doubted these people's sincerity, but I would often marvel at like, okay, the showmanship is going a little bit far now,

Speaker 39 the dramatic nature of their presentation.

Speaker 39 And the tent revivals.

Speaker 39 You know, it was always like,

Speaker 39 we got to take up a collection. We got to make enough money to make this so that we can get to the next town to spread the gospel.
You know, so it's that sort of, that's the tension.

Speaker 39 It's like, how much of this is commerce and how much of this is spreading industry?

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 39 And I, like I said,

Speaker 39 it fascinated me because I never really doubted their sincerity. I never, like,

Speaker 39 you know, I never thought I was being...

Speaker 39 you know, watching somebody being a shyster or being, you know, trying to screw people out of their money. But the showmanship has always fascinated me.

Speaker 39 And I think that's part of why I became an actor. I think for a while I wanted to be a preacher, and then I realized, no, it's the acting that I like.

Speaker 47 It's the acting that I like.

Speaker 74 Right.

Speaker 33 Right.

Speaker 33 Yeah, I mean, it's funny.

Speaker 20 You know, if it goes too far, it's P.T.

Speaker 3 Barnum in that direction. Yeah.

Speaker 23 Too far in the other direction, we fall asleep.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 39 And that's why I think a lot of movies have all, you know, leap of faith, that Steve Martin movie a long time ago. They've always gone for the, you know, the dark side of it.

Speaker 39 They sort of assume that the preacher is lying.

Speaker 39 And it's like, I always, that's what Where I'm Bound is about. It's like, no, they mean it.

Speaker 39 You know, I want it to be sincere, what they're trying to do, but there is also this, you know, we got to make a living here.

Speaker 39 Right. You know, where'd the title come from?

Speaker 39 There's a song that the man's father wrote that called Heaven's Where I'm Bound. That is the sort of closing song of the movie.

Speaker 1 I was just thinking it's a phrase from that

Speaker 66 Peter Paul and Mary sang it. I don't know who wrote it.
Maybe Dylan.

Speaker 71 I'm walking down that long, lonesome road, babe.

Speaker 19 Where I'm bound.

Speaker 60 Yeah, I can't tell.

Speaker 39 And there's a Nancy Griffith song, too, that has that phrase in it.

Speaker 65 Where I'm bound, where I'm bound.

Speaker 39 I can't remember the song right now, but yeah, it was always a phrase in my head.

Speaker 39 And then when he played me me this, there's four original songs that my writing partner's father wrote back in the day that were never recorded or published.

Speaker 39 And Heaven's Where I'm Bound is one of them.

Speaker 66 What's the last great movie you saw?

Speaker 60 Wow.

Speaker 39 It's going to be really old.

Speaker 34 That says plenty.

Speaker 69 Yeah.

Speaker 39 Ah, gosh, that's a tough question.

Speaker 52 Actually, does it mean you don't watch movies anymore or you just haven't seen a great one in a while?

Speaker 39 I don't watch very many.

Speaker 39 I watch a lot of documentaries and wrestling.

Speaker 39 I watch a lot of professional wrestling.

Speaker 54 Do you really? I do.

Speaker 39 I love it. I'm hooked on it.

Speaker 29 Now, that actually makes an incredible amount of sense,

Speaker 34 juxtaposed with...

Speaker 16 the showmanship that attracted you to a tent revival.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 28 Oh, yeah. We're still on that same

Speaker 15 sliding scale.

Speaker 39 Well, just like two weeks, not even a week ago, there was a local wrestling show in Owensboro, Kentucky. And those are my favorite.
I like the local wrestling more than I like the WWE. Yeah.

Speaker 39 Because you go there and those guys are trying to establish themselves and they have to sell their characters the minute they come out.

Speaker 74 Yeah.

Speaker 39 And so they have to establish, is this the heel or is this the good guy or whatever? I love it. And the crowd, there's usually 300, 250, 300 people in the crowd.
And

Speaker 39 they are real fans.

Speaker 16 What's going on with this?

Speaker 28 Let's unpack it.

Speaker 86 And maybe that's, because it's like, it's not, never mind the tent revival, but that, it's like a monster truck pull.

Speaker 69 Yeah.

Speaker 52 There's something completely without guile

Speaker 31 or pretense.

Speaker 30 Right.

Speaker 16 Like there's a bargain.

Speaker 55 Like we all know you're playing a character and we all know that everything is an exaggerated version of something real, but we still go along for the ride.

Speaker 30 We willingly suspend disbelief.

Speaker 39 And that's what I love so much about the wrestlers is that they have to be so good at acting that they make the crowd want to pay money to see them pretend to get the hell beaten out of them. Right.

Speaker 98 Right.

Speaker 39 Because wrestling is always about the bad guy. Right.
It's always about the heel making everybody so mad they're going, I'm going to go see that guy get killed because I don't like him.

Speaker 39 Right.

Speaker 79 So that's what?

Speaker 42 Catharsis.

Speaker 23 That's some.

Speaker 23 You know.

Speaker 27 Aristotle or Plato would have something to say about that.

Speaker 39 Well, it's it's protagonist and antagonist. Right.

Speaker 39 I remember when we, when Leslie and I first met, we were living in New York City and we were talking and she was like, I've never been to a wrestling match. I'm like, what?

Speaker 39 You've never been to a so like our second or third date was like, I said, we're going to, we're going to Madison Square Garden and you're going to watch Hulk Hogan wrestle.

Speaker 52 Chuck, just for grins, I don't know if there's a picture out there, but Google my name next to WWE and Halloween Havoc.

Speaker 60 Oh, yeah, I remember.

Speaker 46 You remember Halloween Havoc?

Speaker 77 I remember you were on it.

Speaker 40 That must have been 25 years ago.

Speaker 39 It was 1999 or something, probably. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 62 I was in a very, very different part of my life where I was just, I would take any gig anywhere for, I didn't care.

Speaker 27 But somehow or another, I got pulled into that world and I started doing these like ringside interviews.

Speaker 10 And I didn't know the world, Nick.

Speaker 74 I didn't know the world.

Speaker 52 And I didn't appreciate it at the time, but

Speaker 63 I was an actor then.

Speaker 12 I was just acting like a host.

Speaker 10 So I'm there in my stupid, you know, turtleneck, my big stick mic, interviewing these people who ever, like, there must have been 30,000 people in this stadium.

Speaker 49 And I didn't know who the hell they were.

Speaker 80 They were all just dressed up, beating the hell out of each other.

Speaker 6 That's hilarious.

Speaker 40 And I felt like

Speaker 1 such a fraud, but I was so interested.

Speaker 48 Again, it's a world, man.

Speaker 48 It is a world. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 39 No, that's always been, I've always wanted to get on a WWE broadcast or something or just even be in the crowd and they cut to me, but I'm not a big enough star for that.

Speaker 39 But I did get to do one wrestling match as a manager with Matt Hardy, one of the Hardy boys.

Speaker 39 Really? Yeah, he and I got to be friends, and he said, I'm doing a match. He was wrestling with a group called Ring of Honor.
He said, I'm doing a match in Nashville.

Speaker 39 Do you want to come be my manager?

Speaker 39 Sure. You know, and this was when Justified was still going on.

Speaker 39 So I get there two, three hours early. It was a tag team match, Matt Hardy and Mike Bennett versus the Briscoe brothers.

Speaker 39 And I'm the manager. So I had like a black coat and, you know, glasses.
And I'd brought my Peabody Award that I won on Justified. Yeah.

Speaker 39 So I was going out to the crowd going, this is an award for excellence in television, something you losers will never understand.

Speaker 39 And so they set up this gag that I'm going to throw my Peabody award into the ring, and Matt's going to catch it and hit the guy with it, and then try to pin him, and he kicks out.

Speaker 39 And so then I'm supposed to crawl into the ring and get my Peabody.

Speaker 13 Get your Peabody.

Speaker 39 Well, I get in the ring, and Risco brother grabs my Peabody and won't give it to me. And I'm going, You get your filthy hands off that award.

Speaker 39 And he said, And we set it up so that he would kick me in the stomach and hit me on the back, and I'd lay down.

Speaker 39 And his brother would jump off the top rope and drop the elbow on me, like an elbow drop drop off the top rope.

Speaker 39 And when we're setting this up, I'm like going, that sounds like it's going to be really funny, but won't that hurt?

Speaker 73 It could hurt a lot.

Speaker 39 And Jay Briscoe says, oh, yeah, you'll feel it, but it's not going to hurt you. Yeah.

Speaker 78 Oh, there it is. Yeah.

Speaker 12 I can't believe you actually saw that.

Speaker 39 I've seen, I've never missed one. My God.
My wife can vouch for that. I've never missed one.

Speaker 8 Unbelievable. That's the only picture picture I could find.

Speaker 80 Well, this is as good as it gets, man.

Speaker 73 Look at that hair.

Speaker 9 That's a deep cut, Chuck.

Speaker 39 That really is amazing.

Speaker 11 Those were the days.

Speaker 39 That was WCW.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 72 Yeah.

Speaker 27 But look at the size of my head.

Speaker 23 I don't have a thought in there, Nick.

Speaker 23 All I know is there's some guy dressed up like a vampire on my right who I'm about to interview.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 27 And some other gladiator type dude.

Speaker 69 Vampira.

Speaker 44 Vampire. Yeah.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 25 What about the UFC?

Speaker 9 Does that appeal?

Speaker 39 I I used to watch it with a friend of mine, but it makes me uncomfortable because they're really hitting each other.

Speaker 77 They're beating the absolute snot out of each other.

Speaker 39 I like the fake stuff better because I know at least they're trying to not hurt each other. It's a show.

Speaker 23 You know, I've farce gumped my way into that, too.

Speaker 51 I was in an office with Dana White and the guy that used to produce Dirty Jobs, and he was pitching.

Speaker 26 the ultimate fighter, the show.

Speaker 34 And I walked in just in time to hear

Speaker 10 Craig Peligian go, oh, that's Mike.

Speaker 6 You know, he's doing the dirty jobs.

Speaker 41 He does voiceover stuff.

Speaker 62 And Dan is like, yeah, I've seen you.

Speaker 18 Say something.

Speaker 27 And I said,

Speaker 31 previously, on the Ultimate Fighter.

Speaker 46 And he said, yeah, fine.

Speaker 12 You're hired.

Speaker 80 Did 13 seasons.

Speaker 13 Genius. 13 seasons.
You're a genius.

Speaker 98 You're hired.

Speaker 40 But I mean, who knew that the Ultimate Fighter would go on to eclipse really all of it?

Speaker 19 All of it. Yeah.

Speaker 39 It's still going, isn't it?

Speaker 13 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 29 Oh, my God.

Speaker 66 It's huge. Yeah.

Speaker 62 But it just goes back to whether it's a tent revival or professional wrestling, ultimate fighting, boxing.

Speaker 52 It's gladiators. It's Are You Not Entertained? Yeah.

Speaker 62 And this whole quest to try and figure out what the hell does the audience want.

Speaker 12 It's all Halloween havoc.

Speaker 47 It is. One way or another.

Speaker 39 I mean, when Leslie was at the wrestling match watching Hulk Hogan, she looked around, and we were doing a play together at the time.

Speaker 39 And one night we had one person in the audience and she's like looking around. There's 25,000 people there and go, just think if this many people came to the theater.

Speaker 64 And I'm going, this is theater.

Speaker 77 This is the theater.

Speaker 64 This is it.

Speaker 1 What's it feel like to do a play with one person in the audience?

Speaker 39 It was, well, in that situation, you know, equity says that you can vote. If the cast outnumbers the audience, the cat has to vote

Speaker 39 about whether they're not going to

Speaker 47 do it or not.

Speaker 39 So we all voted, voted, yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 13 What the hell?

Speaker 35 Let's call it a rehearsal. Yeah.

Speaker 39 And so we did it. And like at intermission, we're like going, I think he likes it.
We're all peeking through the curtain.

Speaker 98 He's still there. He's going to stay.

Speaker 77 I think he likes it.

Speaker 39 He laughed once.

Speaker 77 Oh, man.

Speaker 62 God, I mean, how demoralizing if the guy has to go up to...

Speaker 31 go to the can.

Speaker 74 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 65 Like, we'll wait.

Speaker 78 Yeah.

Speaker 77 We'll wait. Should we wait?

Speaker 77 We'll just pause.

Speaker 65 Should we we just pause here for a minute?

Speaker 22 Let's take a yellow flag on this one.

Speaker 2 Good God. What was the play? Do you remember?

Speaker 39 Yeah, it was called the Kennedy Play.

Speaker 45 Comedy?

Speaker 39 It was like a Pirandello, six characters in search of an author kind of play where we were all playing actors trying to put together a play about the Kennedy family.

Speaker 8 Six actors in search of an audience.

Speaker 80 And that's why there was one person in the crowd.

Speaker 39 It was not a good play, but

Speaker 39 we also also had to improvise the relationships between the actors, and I improvised that I was in love with Leslie, and she bought it. So that's how we got married.
We met in that play.

Speaker 52 You and your wife met during a production of a play with one person in the audience.

Speaker 39 Well, some nights we had nine or ten, you know.

Speaker 71 How many were at your wedding?

Speaker 95 Oh, gosh, I think.

Speaker 39 About 65, 75.

Speaker 27 Oh, see, now that's a performance. Yeah.

Speaker 39 And they had to come to North Carolina. We got married at my parents' house in North Carolina.

Speaker 15 Nice. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Speaking of which, what the hell is going on in your state right now?

Speaker 32 I've got some friends there.

Speaker 4 I'm trying, if I can, to take this project I'm working on now to that area because the recovery

Speaker 55 just seems to be interminable.

Speaker 71 It is. And I don't know how they're going to get out of this.

Speaker 39 It's also, it's like, I don't know how you rebuild, like, whole towns are gone. Yeah.
You know, just wiped away Banner Elk and Blowing Rock and some other towns that are just not there anymore.

Speaker 39 And so I think that's part of the problem is like, how do you rebuild an entire town that's just not there?

Speaker 39 And I, you know, I think that land has some value for some mining.

Speaker 39 And I think

Speaker 39 there may be. some of that going on that they're

Speaker 39 they don't want to rebuild it because they want to get the get the minerals out of the ground.

Speaker 4 It's amazing how the rebirth of a town, I mean, when I look at what's going on in Lahaina, which I don't understand, it's been two years now, and they're not building anything, and I wonder about the Palisades and Altadena, and you just look around and you see these geographical do-overs,

Speaker 29 you know.

Speaker 45 And what's going to happen to our cities, Nick?

Speaker 86 Yeah.

Speaker 50 Just real quick, as we start to land the plane, what's going to happen to the species and the future of mankind as we understand it?

Speaker 39 If you could just very quickly

Speaker 39 well, I think what we're seeing happen is there's a real exit from the cities.

Speaker 39 The cities are becoming more

Speaker 39 concentrated and people are fleeing. So I think what you're going to see is more and more people flooding the countryside.
and getting away from the cities because Pacific Palisades is gone.

Speaker 39 Like you said, who knows how long that's going to take to be rebuilt and how expensive it's going to be to live there.

Speaker 39 So I think we're headed for back to nature kind of thing.

Speaker 19 I think

Speaker 39 we're going to have to learn how to grow tomatoes and raise chickens again.

Speaker 6 You know, it's interesting.

Speaker 42 Conversely,

Speaker 18 I heard a guy not long ago from the Brookings Institute holding forth, and somebody asked a question about China.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 29 the degree to the existential threat vis-a-vis the military, of course.

Speaker 44 And this guy, who wrote a couple books on the thing,

Speaker 31 just kind of said, look, I don't think it's a thing.

Speaker 29 What China's dealing with right now that people don't understand is the exact opposite.

Speaker 23 Everybody's coming to the cities.

Speaker 27 And by everybody, he said 400 million people.

Speaker 34 are leaving the countryside and coming into the city.

Speaker 27 They want their industrial revolution.

Speaker 94 Right.

Speaker 16 And so you're talking talking about a population 20% larger than everybody in this country all running to towns.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 41 his point was, you just can't imagine

Speaker 36 what kind of pressure that's putting on a country.

Speaker 28 And I don't know, maybe there is, maybe the good news is that this is the opposite of that.

Speaker 79 Maybe the cities here have gotten too big.

Speaker 67 You know, I fly a lot.

Speaker 3 And I spend a lot of time looking out the window, and I don't see anything, man.

Speaker 26 There's a lot of open room.

Speaker 19 There is.

Speaker 39 There's a lot of open highway, except in Nashville. Maybe everybody's moving to Nashville.

Speaker 81 Are you in Franklin?

Speaker 65 Yeah.

Speaker 39 I have a place in Franklin, but we have our, we have a place about two hours and 45 minutes north of Nashville that is kind of our dream home kind of thing.

Speaker 39 We got a hold of this a little over a year ago, and it's

Speaker 39 1875 house on 16 acres with five outbuildings and end of a road.

Speaker 39 I mean, it's totally silent at night. You can't hear a thing.

Speaker 52 And you can actually see the stars in a way that almost makes your eyes water.

Speaker 39 And on one side, we've got the river. We've got barges going up and down the river.
And on one of our borders, we've got a railroad track.

Speaker 39 So every once in a while,

Speaker 39 a train comes through.

Speaker 4 I just said that to somebody the other day.

Speaker 27 I think the sound of a train in the distance is, I don't know if there's a better, more evocative

Speaker 28 way to make your imagination go, man, where's that going?

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 79 Or who's coming? Yeah.

Speaker 39 And what's it got on it? You know, what's on the train? No, it's a magical place. And

Speaker 39 we bought it from a friend of ours that we've been visiting for 30 years. And for 30 years, I've been saying, if you ever want to sell this place, let me know.

Speaker 23 And he let you know?

Speaker 90 Yeah, he finally did.

Speaker 27 My whiskey's made down in Columbia.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 22 Actually, we were talking about that earlier.

Speaker 22 Are you actually going to dabble in that world?

Speaker 39 Well, I got to figure out how to do it. I mean, I might want to talk to you off the air about how you set that up because these guys are making whiskey all the time.
It's like, okay, what do I do?

Speaker 39 Do I just do a single barrel that's like, you know, one batch that's the Nick Searcy brand, you know? And do I sort of come up with the mixture? I mean, I don't know. I'm just thinking about it.

Speaker 39 They mentioned it to me, so I'm trying to figure it out.

Speaker 45 It's fun, but it's a knife fight in the phone booth, too.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, well, you look around, you know, you know what the world needs, Chuck, really right now more than anything.

Speaker 66 What's that?

Speaker 1 Another celebrity with a bourbon brand. That's what we need.

Speaker 22 Well, that's what I've been thinking.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 39 With cigars. I'm trying to fill a need here.

Speaker 27 I'm so glad you came.

Speaker 85 Thank you for making the time.

Speaker 39 Mike, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 67 Yeah. Anything I forgot to ask you?

Speaker 3 Anything we want to drill down on a little harder?

Speaker 46 Good.

Speaker 39 I don't think so. I'm happy doing what I'm doing now, and I'm really excited to see what happens to me now that I'm not really acting anymore.

Speaker 21 It's like you're watching your life from an elevated height.

Speaker 20 Like you're the one guy in the audience looking at the Nick Cersei

Speaker 13 revival, going, huh, I wonder how this is going to play.

Speaker 39 And I think I'm the only guy interested.

Speaker 49 I promise you, man, that's not true.

Speaker 8 Hey, I want to say something. First of all, the book is called Justify This, and it is very funny.
I listen to the book,

Speaker 8 and

Speaker 8 Nick reads it, and it's a great performance.

Speaker 13 And like I said, God, man, I know

Speaker 8 we appreciate when authors actually read their books.

Speaker 39 I tried to get a really good actor to do it, but they're too expensive.

Speaker 13 Yeah, not with your age.

Speaker 14 You did pretty good.

Speaker 33 And the dream project, currently in the works, is called Where I'm Bound.

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 8 what is it called?

Speaker 7 The War on Truth Truthmovie.com.

Speaker 3 Is that correct?

Speaker 74 Yes.

Speaker 8 And how do you see Capital Punishment?

Speaker 39 It's on Rumble. If you do a search for Capital Punishment, Nick Searce, you can watch it for free on Rumble.

Speaker 39 It's quite a palate, folks, you know?

Speaker 3 And for a guy without an agent who's being guided by apparently things that matter to him,

Speaker 49 you know, good on you, man.

Speaker 31 I really wish more people had that

Speaker 29 compass.

Speaker 39 Well, thanks, Mike. Thank you.

Speaker 79 Best to Leslie.

Speaker 39 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I'll switch shirts with you if you want.

Speaker 39 She's a big fan of yours, by the way.

Speaker 66 Well, that's nice.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I'm a big fan of hers.

Speaker 39 She's read your books and

Speaker 39 told me how good they were.

Speaker 4 Tell her I think she's a woman of exceeding taste and sophistication.

Speaker 14 I appreciate it.

Speaker 39 Obviously. Clearly.

Speaker 52 Nick Cersei, everybody.

Speaker 31 Thanks. Talk to you next week.

Speaker 58 When you leave a review, only five stars will do, not just one or just two or just three.

Speaker 58 We were hoping

Speaker 58 four

Speaker 58 more.

Speaker 58 As in a one more

Speaker 58 than a four,

Speaker 58 please one more than four.

Speaker 58 Just a quick review with five stars too

Speaker 77 from the you five stars will do.

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