Speaker 1: Hey, we welcome in. I'm done. Godly, this is all ball,
Speaker 1: all basketball, all the time, sort of. We talk a
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff as well, including part two of
Speaker 1: our of our talk with the new Predator, Dane de
Speaker 1: Legro UH. He joins me in studio. We got a ton,
Speaker 1: a ton of great stories that he's already told us
Speaker 1: in in uh part one and more here in part two.
Speaker 1: Really really fun and interesting stuff. Before we get to
Speaker 1: part two with Dane, I did want to give you
Speaker 1: my thoughts on on the unwinding of the nineteen year
Speaker 1: age limit for the NBA draft. Uh. This is something
Speaker 1: that's long been discussed, long been desired by the NBA,
Speaker 1: p a and the NBA. Whether they want it or
Speaker 1: don't want it, it's just been a leverage point where
Speaker 1: they said we get to it. Now it feels like
Speaker 1: they're going to get to it. So what does it do? Well,
Speaker 1: the college basketball coaches forever have said, why don't we
Speaker 1: just have the baseball rule, you know, college baseball while
Speaker 1: you go out of high school or you gotta stay
Speaker 1: for three years. That works. Here's the problem with it.
Speaker 1: College Baseball, and I get I get that basketball is
Speaker 1: an inherently different sport. Um, I totally understand that. I
Speaker 1: understand that. Basketball is why are differently. That the tradition,
Speaker 1: the pomp, circumstances, all of those things, and what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do when you have, and you know, I know these.
Speaker 1: They want more draft picks as well, which of course
Speaker 1: will create a bigger influx of young players who go
Speaker 1: directly to the minor leagues, to the to the g league.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a lack of sustainability, I believe, to
Speaker 1: the whole thing. I could be wrong because obviously gatorade
Speaker 1: changing from the D League to the g league is
Speaker 1: a big proponent of it. The League wants to stay alive.
Speaker 1: It helps the teams, but they have don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: they lose money. This is not a money maker. Um,
Speaker 1: for for the most part, I would guess it's a
Speaker 1: little different with the gatorade money, but not much different.
Speaker 1: The G League, ignite, is not a money maker. It's
Speaker 1: just not. And the weird thing that I haven't heard
Speaker 1: anybody say, at least in front of a microphone, is
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't matter that the players are better
Speaker 1: than g league than they are in college basketball. People
Speaker 1: don't watch minor league sports. So the caution to to
Speaker 1: college basketball is this idea that we like the college
Speaker 1: baseball model. Sounds Great, but does Anybody Watch College Baseball
Speaker 1: outside the College Baseball World Series? The answer is no,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to. You don't want that to
Speaker 1: be your sport, that you don't want that to be
Speaker 1: your m O, that nobody cares. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the cautionary tale for the NBA is it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how good the talent is in the g league. We
Speaker 1: don't watch minor league sports. We just don't. And I
Speaker 1: think turning college football or basketball in a minor league
Speaker 1: sport is a mistake. And depending upon a minor league sport,
Speaker 1: a True Minor League sport, to to to draw a
Speaker 1: number on a TV writing is an ill fated concept.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It seemed to work for a long
Speaker 1: time the way that we used to do it, and
Speaker 1: now that you have name, image and likeness, guys should
Speaker 1: stay longer than our borderline. I I don't love this rule,
Speaker 1: but I would especially not like this rule. If you
Speaker 1: can come out of college, go back in. Come out
Speaker 1: of college, go back in. Now you get compensated with
Speaker 1: N I l. Now you can transfer right away without
Speaker 1: sitting out, all of which is not great for college basketball,
Speaker 1: but it's great for the student athlete. I think expanding
Speaker 1: the draft pool Um and, frankly, lowing the age limit,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna make more people charge into this thing headlong,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't make it a great decision. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get you to Dante Legro. Here's part two of
Speaker 1: my discussion with the new star of the new dangelegro.
Speaker 1: So you have you finally got this passport, you get
Speaker 1: done playing. So then all these like all these European
Speaker 1: agents start coming out of the world facebook. They just,
Speaker 1: I don't the same thing with the Jew the Jew
Speaker 1: basketball radar. They just find you, I don't know. They
Speaker 1: look up stats, they look up Division One. How many
Speaker 1: Division One schools are there? So they you know, the
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty, four now, I think, but back then
Speaker 1: there was probably, you know, there's three. So if you
Speaker 1: if you have like a hard working, relatively smart agent,
Speaker 1: he can he can find these graduating seniors who could
Speaker 1: go play overseas. And I don't know if it's public
Speaker 1: information or not that I have my passport, but there
Speaker 1: are people who are starting to pursue me now and
Speaker 1: it's it's a little bit of a factory. Like you know.
Speaker 1: They're a guy from Germany came and did his rounds
Speaker 1: on the East Coast and met with me at New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and my numbers weren't bad, but I started for
Speaker 1: four years, so I think that stands out. Um, I graduated,
Speaker 1: I was the second all time leading rebounder in school history.
Speaker 1: Oh that's another I was I could have been the
Speaker 1: all time leading reboundersquistory. I got suspended for what I had.
Speaker 1: I used a fake parking pass. That are S I
Speaker 1: D who? But by the way, our S I d
Speaker 1: on the road was my roommate. His name, his name
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. I'm not even gonna his name is Eric,
Speaker 1: but Um uh, he copied his like faculty parking pass
Speaker 1: photocopy and gave it to me so that I could
Speaker 1: park um closer to the field house so I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to walk. Amazing our athletic trainer saw me one
Speaker 1: day and snitched on me, reported it not to my
Speaker 1: head coach but to the athletic director and I got
Speaker 1: suspended for three games for extra benefits and he instiduably
Speaker 1: forced me to pay one hundred dollars to a charity
Speaker 1: of my choice, like, first of all, looking back. No,
Speaker 1: the instable. You cannot fucking do that. You can't force. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not paying. Well, you can't play. That's you can't
Speaker 1: do that. I certainly can't. I don't know, but that
Speaker 1: ship wouldn't fly today, I can tell you that much.
Speaker 1: All that extra benefits ship. Well, yeah, that that stuff
Speaker 1: as good. Well, for parking pass, I got suspended for
Speaker 1: three games. People thought I was doing I'm in New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: I me at Vermont there, like, were you doing drugs?
Speaker 1: I heard you're doing dealing drugs. N Fake Parking Pass. Crazy.
Speaker 1: Three Games, three games, three. And so I was the
Speaker 1: average trainer. Did the trainer understand what he she was? No,
Speaker 1: she did not know. She was just no, she didn't
Speaker 1: choose from North Shore Massachusetts and just wanted to snitch
Speaker 1: on me. And that's it. And I was averaging eight
Speaker 1: point out. How many rebounds short are you of being
Speaker 1: the all time leader rebound? So I was averaging eight
Speaker 1: point eight rebounds a game that season and I missed
Speaker 1: three games and I missed the all time leading rebound
Speaker 1: record by twenty four rebounds. Women close but very likely.
Speaker 1: If I knew, and who are the team? If you knew,
Speaker 1: you would have got more. If I knew, I would
Speaker 1: have dedicated these games to rebounding. It's since changed. The
Speaker 1: record has been broken by now. You know, I would
Speaker 1: have been I don't even know, Um, because they played
Speaker 1: more games now too. Well, they play more games and
Speaker 1: like the yeah, there there are like better those. Those
Speaker 1: records are so fragile because we never had players at
Speaker 1: New Hampshire anyways. So you bring one guy in who's
Speaker 1: capable of doing a lot of things and you know
Speaker 1: that they were going to break all the records. So
Speaker 1: I was seventh all timesis when I when I finished,
Speaker 1: but I finished three short of Greg Anthony and then
Speaker 1: Aaron Miles is, uh was how many? Way, he's seven
Speaker 1: short of him. Um, I'm nine short of Tony Miller
Speaker 1: at Marquette and thirteen short of Sherman Douglas. And these
Speaker 1: are all the time. Great, I'm forty six. Oh, you
Speaker 1: didn't play with Travis Deiner Against Travis Deiner? No, here's
Speaker 1: my point guard. So so my point is, my my
Speaker 1: story is I wasn't suspended, but one UM, Notre Dame,
Speaker 1: did not help because one. We lost in the first
Speaker 1: game in the Big East Tournament. We didn't play any
Speaker 1: postseason play and we played pretty slow. Right that that
Speaker 1: that that didn't help. But I did start that year,
Speaker 1: so I probably got more than most guys. But then
Speaker 1: in Oaklhama state. So my the year I aloud led
Speaker 1: the country one time, a second the other time. But
Speaker 1: when the year I let it Um, two things one.
Speaker 1: So I was averaging like twelve and ten. We play
Speaker 1: out here play. That's crazy. And I had gotten a
Speaker 1: technical foul against Florida Gulf coast. So here's the here's
Speaker 1: the here's the story. Okay, UM, my sophomore year we
Speaker 1: we were picked last in the League and UM at
Speaker 1: Oakham state. So I sat out of year side of
Speaker 1: Oaklham state and Um really was there was a bunch
Speaker 1: of other schools that's going to go to and it
Speaker 1: just kind of all fell into place. Plus, they badly
Speaker 1: need a point card. If you watch their team play
Speaker 1: like they're actually really good. They just are playing way
Speaker 1: too slow because they don't have a point guard and
Speaker 1: they don't have anybody who makes everybody else better like
Speaker 1: they had really like Joe Atkins was my two guard.
Speaker 1: He averaged like four and a half sister game our
Speaker 1: senior year. He was a great passer and score. He
Speaker 1: just wasn't a point guard right, like he didn't think
Speaker 1: of getting everybody else involved. Deson Mason was was playing
Speaker 1: a wing and you know, when I got there we
Speaker 1: moved into the four, we played small and he was,
Speaker 1: you know, like as a he it was just a
Speaker 1: constant mismatch, right. So, anyway, we had a really good
Speaker 1: sophomore year. We got a bad draw. We lose the
Speaker 1: Duke in the N C a tournament, kind of similarly
Speaker 1: to your Yukon story where we were tied with Duke
Speaker 1: with two and a half ago. We get home but
Speaker 1: we got no. I meant not the officiating, which wasn't great,
Speaker 1: but it was more that you get home and people
Speaker 1: are celebrating. You're like we lost, like Oh, would you
Speaker 1: almost be Duke? Like we lost, like no, you almost
Speaker 1: bed it, like we fucking lost. We should have won
Speaker 1: the game, like, dude, have a beer. So it was
Speaker 1: a hard fought battle and it was I'm sure it
Speaker 1: was great to watch, but the end result is what
Speaker 1: was really plus. Like, you know, if you're in the moment,
Speaker 1: you're like we shouldn't want to. It was a tight
Speaker 1: game with two haive minutes ago and we made a
Speaker 1: couple of shots and they scored, like we should have
Speaker 1: won the game. So Um. So, my junior year we
Speaker 1: were picked when we were top preseason, top ten, because
Speaker 1: we had everybody back except our starting center again, Brett Robisch. Brett,
Speaker 1: his dad played in the NBA. His brother was on
Speaker 1: the team to his brother ultimately transferred to Butler. He
Speaker 1: played like six years but like fifty games because he's
Speaker 1: just always had these always hurt. Brett was really good.
Speaker 1: But plus Brett was like a he took a lot
Speaker 1: of bullets for all the rest of the guys, you know,
Speaker 1: like he stood up for people, he talked back to
Speaker 1: coaches just because he knew we couldn't play without him
Speaker 1: and like he just didn't take ship from anybody. So
Speaker 1: when he was gone it kind of changed the dynamic.
Speaker 1: And then we had we didn't have enough eligible guards.
Speaker 1: We lost Florida Atlantic. I could, I could do a
Speaker 1: whole podcast on it, but I got so anyway, I
Speaker 1: got a t in the I got thrown out of
Speaker 1: the U C L A game. Again, another pot. You
Speaker 1: want to just boil it down. Well, I got it
Speaker 1: the first tea I got. So it's the only game
Speaker 1: I ever played in the state of California and from California.
Speaker 1: We played in Orange County. I'm from Orange County and
Speaker 1: we played against US silly. My brother and sister used
Speaker 1: a lambs. I was the U C L, a ticket
Speaker 1: hold of one, I would say I was. I was
Speaker 1: a ball boy for a time, you know. And UH, well,
Speaker 1: Jim Herrick recruited me but I turned down. And then
Speaker 1: Steve Labin was the coach we lost to. So Um.
Speaker 1: So I turned them down in a high school Um.
Speaker 1: And then why went to know dame and then when
Speaker 1: I when I was sitting out in between, had baron
Speaker 1: Davis not gone there, I would have gone there would
Speaker 1: be a better player than me right. So they were
Speaker 1: like wait, waiting on barren. So Baron it was his
Speaker 1: first game off of the A C L tear from
Speaker 1: the end of his freshman year. So he was heavy.
Speaker 1: He wasn't very good, but I got a tea where.
Speaker 1: I mean the officiating was awful. There's got named Charlie range.
Speaker 1: Anybody listen to podcast just from western United States are
Speaker 1: a high a college basketball coach like Oh, Charlie range,
Speaker 1: borderline criminals official, fucking horrible. Okay, but he would always
Speaker 1: do the big west coast game when somebody from the
Speaker 1: East would come and play or midwest to come and
Speaker 1: play and low behold, like they would get calls like
Speaker 1: Charlie range. Dave Libby was a better official but also
Speaker 1: could be a merciless prick if you if you looked
Speaker 1: at him, weird like he would. He hed t coach
Speaker 1: and my last game ever for nothing anyway. So Um,
Speaker 1: I go and I'm, you know, again kind of like you,
Speaker 1: like I'm in college. I probably run my mouth more
Speaker 1: than that ship. So we start the game and it's
Speaker 1: like six Oh and six Oh and fouls, and so
Speaker 1: I flipped the ball to him after they call us
Speaker 1: like a little nickel diamond. I was like come on,
Speaker 1: charl leaving him up a little bit. He bangs me.
Speaker 1: You know. That's the first so end of the first half,
Speaker 1: like we're holding for the last shot and I probably
Speaker 1: went early off a highball screen. I go in and
Speaker 1: I shoot a floater over Jerome Moiso, French kid, and
Speaker 1: Dan get's reach. I don't know how you remember all these.
Speaker 1: I don't remember half of the dudes I played again. Well,
Speaker 1: they were both pros and that ship came out so hard.
Speaker 1: They were like. And then baron like I went by him,
Speaker 1: so instead of trying to get back defensively, like, he
Speaker 1: leaked out. He gets a layup, lays it in. I
Speaker 1: think it was only two points of the night and
Speaker 1: he comes back like talking ship. Yeah, motherfucker, yeah, yeah, motherfucker,
Speaker 1: and he like bumped shoulders to me. I was like,
Speaker 1: get the funk off me, dude, right, and he takes
Speaker 1: a dive. Oh No, takes so they call it in
Speaker 1: tensional foul, but then they go back and the intentional
Speaker 1: foul was after the halftime Buzzer had expired. Consider technical foul.
Speaker 1: So I have to stay in the locker room in
Speaker 1: the second half. We lose by three points. So we
Speaker 1: had we had a player sitting out. Um, I promised
Speaker 1: my teammates I would not I would not say his
Speaker 1: name aloud because he's the one guy who's not in
Speaker 1: the circle. But his name is Glenn and Alexander. He's
Speaker 1: had some he's had an interesting post career career life whatever.
Speaker 1: He's the all time leaning scored in the State of Texas.
Speaker 1: He was a transfer from Arkansas, so he was eligible
Speaker 1: the next game. So uh, and that's really what kind
Speaker 1: of unsettled our whole team. We had terrible chemistry because
Speaker 1: he thought he should play right away and like we
Speaker 1: were all we all started the year before we were
Speaker 1: really good. So somebody was gonna sit and ended up
Speaker 1: being him and him coming out the bench and ended
Speaker 1: up kind of settling and working itself out. But the
Speaker 1: next eight games I was in the doghouse and he
Speaker 1: had enough. Dud. Don't you know, if you get as
Speaker 1: you punch somebody. I don't know if the rules changed.
Speaker 1: I don't know. If you get thrown out now you
Speaker 1: have to sit, but but I played like eight minutes,
Speaker 1: nine minutes, like I was like I'm out of here,
Speaker 1: like this dude is doghouse and me for some bullshit.
Speaker 1: And those are also the games against the SHITTY teams
Speaker 1: like Southeast Missouri State right like Dude, I would have
Speaker 1: had fifteen assists. So the net net is at the
Speaker 1: end of that year we end up turning around, having
Speaker 1: a good year, having a good run at the end
Speaker 1: of the season and losing to Auburn Um Bruceton Coachter
Speaker 1: then Um um losing to Auburn in the second round
Speaker 1: of the tournament. But I lead the country and assists,
Speaker 1: but I only played twenty six minutes of game, which
Speaker 1: is the lowest number of minutes per gamebably the highest
Speaker 1: efficiency rating, no question, like through the like per forty, forty,
Speaker 1: I was insane. This system. Like, look at everybody else
Speaker 1: who leaves the country and sists. They all average like
Speaker 1: thirty five, thirty six minutes. Again, and now part of
Speaker 1: it was my own doing, with like retrow shooting took
Speaker 1: me out of games late. That hurt my scoring average
Speaker 1: as well. Oh, terrible, like forty something really. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I thought I was bad. I was like fifty six
Speaker 1: and that's bad. But I would go, I would I
Speaker 1: would start good and then I would always hit, like
Speaker 1: some mental thing. And it's such a mental thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's the worst. So, especially if it was a game
Speaker 1: where like so hit. My point is there was a
Speaker 1: really long way of getting around to like I completely understand.
Speaker 1: Like had I I I find three assists short and
Speaker 1: at the time, like now, I'm like no, I'm eleventh.
Speaker 1: But like, had that doghouse not occurred, there's eight games
Speaker 1: stretch there, I'm probably third all time and assist in
Speaker 1: the third fucking third, like dude, third, nobody could, nobody
Speaker 1: will catch you anymore because, with the exception of like
Speaker 1: a covid guy, nobody plays long enough. Like I was
Speaker 1: like T J fourd. I was like, Bro, you gotta,
Speaker 1: you gotta go pro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny. I
Speaker 1: just like, for me, I mean you, you only means
Speaker 1: a lot more to you than it does me, but
Speaker 1: like it just it bugs me that for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. Now I have to say I graduated
Speaker 1: the second all time leading rebounder and I wish I
Speaker 1: could just have it, I mean listen it. Having my
Speaker 1: my high school, I'm my boy, David Laalas Arian. He
Speaker 1: surpassed me and I was second, and I was second
Speaker 1: all time and scoring down third. I had I had
Speaker 1: for everything else, scoring an assist, and he like what
Speaker 1: up me his senior years. But the only other way
Speaker 1: to look as well second. It could be worse, like
Speaker 1: I could be I'm on the I'm on the on
Speaker 1: the list. Fox Sports radio has the best sports talk
Speaker 1: lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at
Speaker 1: Fox sports radio DOT COM and within the I heart
Speaker 1: radio APP, Search F S R to listen live. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you get done playing, these guys are searching out
Speaker 1: to you facebook. Um, how did you just? How did
Speaker 1: you pick an agent? UH, Jim Norton was, I think,
Speaker 1: connected to me through my add my my father worked
Speaker 1: for Nike for thirty one years. He Um, he started
Speaker 1: with them when they were blue ribbon sports and I
Speaker 1: think he was employee number two, oh four. He was
Speaker 1: very early. He started with Nike in the seventies and Um, uh,
Speaker 1: he made a lot of contacts through the years and
Speaker 1: one of one of his people like connected him with
Speaker 1: this Guy Jim, Jim notton out of Texas, who was
Speaker 1: a sports agent in Europe for Europe European players. and Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I remember standing outside the library in Durham
Speaker 1: and like Jim's pitch was the best one I heard.
Speaker 1: So I just signed with him. So, uh, where's your
Speaker 1: first team? Oh, stuny, Italy. That was also during the
Speaker 1: lockout until eleven. So like the European teams were like bolstered.
Speaker 1: So it kind of all the NBA guys came over
Speaker 1: and it kind of pushed everyone down. Um Division, second division.
Speaker 1: Where's the stunny? It was stunts in Pulia. It's in
Speaker 1: this it's in the south. It's in the heel of
Speaker 1: the boot of Italy. I've never heard of it. It's
Speaker 1: called Lech Ta Bianca, which means the white city. It's
Speaker 1: all white washed limestone buildings. It's a great place to
Speaker 1: go on vacation. It's it's really amazing, the whole city.
Speaker 1: It's up on a hill. It's surrounded by alive trees
Speaker 1: like it's something out of like game of thrones. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a great place to visit. Just you know you're
Speaker 1: living there for ten months now and I'm holy Shit,
Speaker 1: I'm in Italy and I think my first contract was
Speaker 1: like forty dollars. Wasn't much, but it's it's tax free
Speaker 1: and they give you a house, to give you a
Speaker 1: give you a car. Pretty good deal. And the car
Speaker 1: they gave me was a Fiat Marea. It was terrible
Speaker 1: stick shift. Aaron Johnson, who was U A B Guy,
Speaker 1: you might know him. He was assist leader into A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was my point guard. Playing with Aaron Johnson was
Speaker 1: one of the most pleasant experiences of my life that
Speaker 1: that dude got me the ball. He would just drive
Speaker 1: into traffic and then disappear and then the ball just
Speaker 1: be in my hands. I don't know how he did it,
Speaker 1: but Um, yeah, we they went bankrupt with like four
Speaker 1: months left of the season. Didn't tell us. We kept playing.
Speaker 1: When we realized that, the team started, you know something,
Speaker 1: the guys started striking. For me, I didn't care. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about the money. For me, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: put on display what I was capable of, and I
Speaker 1: think I lost like half my contract that season because
Speaker 1: they just stopped paying and like they that's the thing
Speaker 1: about Europe. was like, yeah, it's tax free, it's great.
Speaker 1: They pay you when they want to pay you. They
Speaker 1: pay if they want to pay you, and they have
Speaker 1: they have your Feba contract and then they have this
Speaker 1: thing called the image contract, and the image contract is
Speaker 1: that black money. It's that untaxed envelope that you get
Speaker 1: at the end of, you know, every month, and it
Speaker 1: comes wrapped in like ankle taping pre wrap and uh,
Speaker 1: there you go. Um, and you know you can make
Speaker 1: more money signing a bigger image contract, but you're putting
Speaker 1: yourself at risk because if the team fails, then you
Speaker 1: are owed less money because it's not in the books. Um,
Speaker 1: played well, you know, obviously it didn't matter that we
Speaker 1: went bankrupt. Then I signed with Sassery and Sassaries in
Speaker 1: Sardinia and I went from I went from Italy Sign
Speaker 1: Division to First Division. Um, a team consisting of travis diner,
Speaker 1: Drake Deaner, bootsy Thornton. Um. Who else was on that team? Tony? Easily,
Speaker 1: we were we. I went from like they gave me
Speaker 1: a BMW x six, like we it just like we're
Speaker 1: in European Cup, we're in Euro Euro Cup. Now we're
Speaker 1: going to Serbia, we're going to Spain, we're going to
Speaker 1: France and man what and that playing for Sassary, just
Speaker 1: seeing Travis deaner manage everything on and off the court,
Speaker 1: was amazing. This dude is so talented it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You could make a game of flipping beer bottle caps
Speaker 1: into a trash can across him. He's going to get
Speaker 1: a competition. He's going to be better than you at it.
Speaker 1: Travis Deiner is the most, one of the most talented
Speaker 1: dudes I've ever met in my life. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how tally is and he's not the
Speaker 1: biggest athlete in the world, and you look at him
Speaker 1: you're like he's just a normal dude. He's just so
Speaker 1: skilled at everything and I've never the way he carries himself,
Speaker 1: the way he talks to the coaches, the way he
Speaker 1: talks to the refs, the way he manages the floor.
Speaker 1: It was like, maybe next to bootsy, no other player
Speaker 1: has impacted me that much in my entire life playing
Speaker 1: with Travis Deaner. Um, just his general demeanor towards life
Speaker 1: and and competition and being a fucking man like to
Speaker 1: this day we still talk, we're still Um, we're still
Speaker 1: good friends and he's just he I don't even think
Speaker 1: he realizes how much he inspired me. When, Um, when
Speaker 1: you tell me the Israel story with your knee. Oh
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I mean, yeah, it's not. There's not really
Speaker 1: much to tell that. I went. So I year what
Speaker 1: you go? So that was year when Ostoony Sassery Trie
Speaker 1: Este up in the northeast. That was cool city. It was.
Speaker 1: It was like it's the last city before he hits Slovenia. Um,
Speaker 1: back to second division. I averaged like twelve and eight
Speaker 1: that season. We weren't that good but um, we saved
Speaker 1: ourselves from relegation because the bottom team in the league
Speaker 1: goes down to division and we saved ourselves. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then from there I went to Israel. I signed with
Speaker 1: Gilboa Gilio, first division, in my agent, obvis Zilberman Oman,
Speaker 1: don't worry, like you. Then you saw it was Jim's partners.
Speaker 1: Don't wor we put you on Gilbo. You average him
Speaker 1: ten in seven. Next year I put you McCoy Televiv.
Speaker 1: No problem, easy, easy, you'll do set the screen then
Speaker 1: Riman and everybody will be happy, you know, and like okay, Great.
Speaker 1: So I have to go to Gilboa, do decent and
Speaker 1: then I'll play from a copy next year and then
Speaker 1: Nokia arena. I'll be living in Tel Aviv, I mean
Speaker 1: a celebrity in in Israe. Was gonna be amazing. And
Speaker 1: second game of the season I tore my a C
Speaker 1: L against Jerusalem. Um. I went up for a rebound
Speaker 1: and I just came down on my knee funny and
Speaker 1: it went. It went too far in. Um. No, nothing,
Speaker 1: it just it just. I just remember coming down and
Speaker 1: being like Whoa, my name went too far in and
Speaker 1: I I stood up because I was playing well, and
Speaker 1: remember the Tony Gaffney on their team. Who Else is
Speaker 1: on that team? But I stood up and I was like,
Speaker 1: don't be a bitch, don't be a bitch, keep playing.
Speaker 1: You're you're like this is like this is a big
Speaker 1: opportunity to Jerusalem, and I started to walk in my
Speaker 1: knee just like wasn't working right, and then I was
Speaker 1: like I gotta come out of the game. So funny said,
Speaker 1: don't be a bitch. I was. I hung out with
Speaker 1: the University of Texas and their their first rule on
Speaker 1: their team is don't be a bit, don't be a bit.
Speaker 1: It's it's like, I mean you, you could throw that.
Speaker 1: That's saying that a lot of things in life. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I completely agree. And it's it's actually I had my
Speaker 1: my my son with the workout last night and we
Speaker 1: only had seven shop at our practice whatever, and so
Speaker 1: I had him at the end playing three on three full.
Speaker 1: Oh No, and so he was dying and he was
Speaker 1: like I can't even think. I go, do you know why?
Speaker 1: Because I'm just stupid, and I go no, dude, because
Speaker 1: you're tired. You're fucking tired, and when you're tired you
Speaker 1: can't think, you can't you can't make shots, you can't
Speaker 1: do anything. You know, he's like he's like. So I's
Speaker 1: just like stop. I was like no, he cannot be
Speaker 1: a bit. You'll be a bit. Like it's a good
Speaker 1: rule at Um, like just if he just hey, I'm
Speaker 1: being a bit right. So I'm not a big technical guy,
Speaker 1: but you know, I can't give him the manual, but
Speaker 1: just just figure it out, Dude. I don't know, like
Speaker 1: there's no just be tough. I have one tattoo on
Speaker 1: my wrist. It says that's it. Work Harder. It's not
Speaker 1: going anywhere. That's it. Okay, just work harder. That's all, um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so then my knee. So whatever, ten month recovery and
Speaker 1: UH yeah, the whole knee situation. I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think so. So here's what I here's what I
Speaker 1: recall you telling me, because I tried to get you
Speaker 1: to come to play the Maccabi Games with me in
Speaker 1: thirteen and you were like I can't. I was like
Speaker 1: what I mean? You can't? You're still playing. No, I
Speaker 1: can't play in Israel because I get benefits. I tore
Speaker 1: my knee as an Israeli citizen. That's correct. So there
Speaker 1: was there. I'm not get any in trouble. By the way,
Speaker 1: by by this spot. No, no, no, it's true. And like,
Speaker 1: do you still get the benefits? I do because it
Speaker 1: altered my career. But it wasn't, didn't you get determined
Speaker 1: to be a career inting injury? Well, no, career altering injury.
Speaker 1: I lost money. I lost I lost money from that
Speaker 1: injury and I like, so we have. They had a lawyer,
Speaker 1: my team stopped paying me and my payment went into
Speaker 1: the this like Israelly Fund or whatever. But we we
Speaker 1: just we asserted that, like, if I never got hurt,
Speaker 1: I would have gone on to keep playing in Israel
Speaker 1: heavy stead. I was going to pay and and you
Speaker 1: know in the you know. So, yeah, but it's true, like,
Speaker 1: I mean even to this day I still feel the
Speaker 1: lasting effects from that injury on my knee. And when
Speaker 1: I got back, I went to see I went to
Speaker 1: play in Sienna Um and then I went to play
Speaker 1: in Verona and like I still like my knee definitely
Speaker 1: affected me. So we we launched this case. That just
Speaker 1: like it, that it changed my career and I might
Speaker 1: still be under deliberation exactly how it all. It's all
Speaker 1: working out. But uh, I mean, if I never got hurt, man,
Speaker 1: I would like probably still be playing in Israel right
Speaker 1: now in some capacity. Um, your your last two years
Speaker 1: you played, Um. So. Then I so from the Verona
Speaker 1: and then there was the last one, four Lee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: four Lee is uh near Bologna. It's in Romagna. Um.
Speaker 1: So I played there. And then what's what's interesting, is
Speaker 1: I had a one plus one in four lead and
Speaker 1: they they cut it. They released me after my first year. Okay, fine.
Speaker 1: So I went home and I'm like, I want to
Speaker 1: play in Japan. Japan is good money. Once a week.
Speaker 1: What's yeah, yeah, and the the Americans just run the
Speaker 1: show over there. It's good, like technology money, all that.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never been to Japan. I want to
Speaker 1: play in Osaka, the food capital Japan. So I hired
Speaker 1: this Um Italian um agent. Her name was Deborah, and
Speaker 1: met she sent me to she sent me to l
Speaker 1: a for this tryout and I did really well and then,
Speaker 1: like when it's coming around as signing time, late August,
Speaker 1: she just like disappeared. She went a vacation and I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I'm not signed, it's not and there
Speaker 1: a whole falling out and I had been pushing away
Speaker 1: Italian teams because I was so hell bent up playing
Speaker 1: in Japan that now it's September and the Italian teams
Speaker 1: are full. You know, I've fired this woman and we're
Speaker 1: not working together anymore, and now I'm stuck. So I
Speaker 1: trained for until I didn't sign until February. I went
Speaker 1: back to four Lee, who essentially waives me the year before,
Speaker 1: and it's like you dumbasses, might just keep me on
Speaker 1: the team like now, because they were struggling. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I played from February to May and then
Speaker 1: at the I was just done. I was just like,
Speaker 1: I was like, how are you I at the time? Oh, man,
Speaker 1: thirty thirty, I think thirty one. Okay, so you so
Speaker 1: you're flying back middle flying back, but like, so, okay,
Speaker 1: before all of this, I want to host culinary travel
Speaker 1: television when I'm done playing basketball. That was my unscripted
Speaker 1: you and I should do this show, but I'm listen,
Speaker 1: I'm all ears for for this. Um. So when I
Speaker 1: it started, when I went to Israel in two fourteen,
Speaker 1: I started creating food content overseas, because are going to
Speaker 1: go into eat things, both both cooking things and then
Speaker 1: like getting lost finding food and just like that, like
Speaker 1: street food and all that stuff because, like, to the
Speaker 1: American audience, who doesn't get who don't get to go
Speaker 1: to Europe? Who Don't get to go to Israel and
Speaker 1: Experience Rathschild Boulevard or or you know whatever, Europe is
Speaker 1: easy because it shoots itself. Do you don't like America?
Speaker 1: You'RE gonna get real creative, because everyone's seen this ship.
Speaker 1: When you go to Europe, do you just show what's there?
Speaker 1: It's amazing, you know. So I'm building this content thing.
Speaker 1: I want to host unscripted culinary travel television. So I
Speaker 1: start making all this content and then so when my
Speaker 1: my final season in four Lee, I like I still
Speaker 1: this throughout this whole process. I'm I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what am I gonna do once basketball and that
Speaker 1: was my question about your ride home, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: for that thing to do. What am I going to
Speaker 1: so like I want something that's different projects all the time. So,
Speaker 1: like for basketball, it's different seasons, which is which is nice.
Speaker 1: I want to do something that require us, me to
Speaker 1: stay in shape all the time. Okay, just like pro basketball,
Speaker 1: and I want something as equal or as good of
Speaker 1: pay as playing professional basketball. Right. So I'm home in
Speaker 1: Boston and I'm I'm like, I still don't have anything set.
Speaker 1: So I'm training for the next season of basketball and
Speaker 1: I got a phone call in July from Boston casting
Speaker 1: who had my information because I think I sent in
Speaker 1: a video. I saw an ad in the newspaper of
Speaker 1: few years before my mom did for Slenderman, the movie
Speaker 1: slender man, and I sent in an audition tape. So
Speaker 1: they just had my information from years before and they
Speaker 1: called me and said, hey, we're shooting this movie in
Speaker 1: Boston called Free Guy With Ryan Reynolds and the big
Speaker 1: bad guys, this six FT eight muscle man, and we
Speaker 1: need you as a stand in. And I'm thinking, what
Speaker 1: the Hell's a stand in? And so I go down
Speaker 1: a set and I've never been on a movie set
Speaker 1: before and I'm thinking, okay, I don't know what this
Speaker 1: is or what her and while I'm there. So what
Speaker 1: time of years? This is July and I'm still training
Speaker 1: every day. I go to Harvard by what's that? Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: no question. Um, I'm still training every day at Harvard
Speaker 1: University preparing for the next season. But every time I'd
Speaker 1: see Tommy America Walk Through the gym into the office.
Speaker 1: You Go, Dane Man, I wish we could have had
Speaker 1: you like Tommy. You could have. I would have went
Speaker 1: to Harvard in a heartbeat. I wish like but they
Speaker 1: never offered me at the time. But, like is, he
Speaker 1: always hung that over my head and it's still to
Speaker 1: this day bugs me. I would have loved to go
Speaker 1: to Harvard, but Um, so, yeah, so, and while I
Speaker 1: was there, the stunt coordinator comes up and he goes, look,
Speaker 1: I don't know who you are, but your size, the
Speaker 1: way you're built, the way you move, like you need
Speaker 1: to be an actor. You just because you're you're tall,
Speaker 1: but you're proportionately tall and dad, DA, Da Da, and
Speaker 1: I you know, Oh wow, and interesting. I never thought
Speaker 1: about that. And so like a standing. Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: a standing as someone who stands there. I know I
Speaker 1: mean listener for the listener some but I think people
Speaker 1: know right. You just stand it. But again, how about this?
Speaker 1: So tell me what like the day of a standing
Speaker 1: that you're actually so it's interesting because you're very close
Speaker 1: to the main actors on set, whereas if you're an
Speaker 1: extra in a movie, they kind of like corral you,
Speaker 1: like like steer like cows and like, Oh, like like
Speaker 1: background holding like you're. The goal of my life has
Speaker 1: to never be in a place called holding. They have
Speaker 1: background holding, where they're like and they're like they are,
Speaker 1: they're standing. You're right there on set with the directors,
Speaker 1: with the producer, with the main actors, because when they
Speaker 1: need you to, when they set up the lights for
Speaker 1: the scene, and you stand there while they set up
Speaker 1: the lights. Because how dare the main actors stand there
Speaker 1: when they're not shooting or anything? They go and sit
Speaker 1: down and rest, and which I appreciate and I understand
Speaker 1: it's also part of the union thing, right. There's only
Speaker 1: certain em vows are at something like that potentially. So
Speaker 1: have to know the actor's lines. You have to know
Speaker 1: they're blocking and they're blocking well, because they're you're they
Speaker 1: shoot with the stand ins to figure out the lighting
Speaker 1: before and you have to know exactly what that actor
Speaker 1: so how do you how do you deal with the lines?
Speaker 1: They never used me. They never used me that day.
Speaker 1: I stood one day. One day I stood on the side.
Speaker 1: Did you meet Ryan Rayls? I saw him. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw him. Or do you meet him? I did not
Speaker 1: talk to him here. I got I was standing too
Speaker 1: close to him because his daughter was there. On set.
Speaker 1: I was standing apparently too close to him because, excuse me,
Speaker 1: I was behind him and I saw him look back
Speaker 1: at me and I was a little too close and
Speaker 1: he he called the p a over and a p
Speaker 1: a he whispered something to him and then Pa went
Speaker 1: right at me, he goes, it seems there. Can you
Speaker 1: back up about ten paces, and I was just like paces, yeah,
Speaker 1: like just like I understand, but they actually used the
Speaker 1: word paces. I don't know, steps, paces. I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: in fascinating, like who uses the word paces? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but this there was just some like seven teen year
Speaker 1: old day a kid that like Ryan. Okay, so back up.
Speaker 1: So that and I go and I sit in the
Speaker 1: producer's chair because I'm thinking like who's this gigantic funk up?
Speaker 1: WHO's this? WHO's this giant WHO's sitting in my chair?
Speaker 1: So the P A, who had just walked away from
Speaker 1: me after he give me orders, looks, glances over his
Speaker 1: shoulder and sees me sitting down and like Sean Levy's
Speaker 1: seed or whatever, and sprints as police sir, can you
Speaker 1: get up and just get away from this area? And
Speaker 1: I learned real quick never sit in uh someone's chair
Speaker 1: that has their name on it. That is like a
Speaker 1: big I didn't know. I know, I've never been on
Speaker 1: the movie set before. I'm like, I'm from Lexington Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: on a six eight white Jewish guy who went to
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. I've never been on a movie set. I
Speaker 1: don't know how it works. Um. So, anyway, so the sun,
Speaker 1: you know, I start I'm board. So I started talking
Speaker 1: to Ryan Reynolds, stunt double, his name is Daniel Stevens,
Speaker 1: and the sun coordinator's names Christal Harah, and we're just
Speaker 1: chip chatting shooting the ship about basketball and blah, blah blah,
Speaker 1: and that's when the suggestion came look, you should look
Speaker 1: into acting. You have a you know. So I was
Speaker 1: going to l a the next week anyway, to pitch
Speaker 1: culinary travel television. I wrote a treatment and there was
Speaker 1: a producer that I was working with and while I
Speaker 1: was there, I reached out to some producers and, you know,
Speaker 1: people in the Biz and I said, Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm Dangelegro, six eight basketball player, getting me in town
Speaker 1: pitching a show. Would love to meet with you, and
Speaker 1: cutting a lot of stuff out because it's a long story,
Speaker 1: but I ended up booking a Netflix show two weeks
Speaker 1: later called sweet home. Um, it was it was a
Speaker 1: Korean it was the it was the squid game the
Speaker 1: year before squid game came out. So, yeah, I played
Speaker 1: muscle monster in this show and I'm like, Huh, acting,
Speaker 1: this is interesting. So when I flew home from that
Speaker 1: initial l a trip, I told my mom I'm going
Speaker 1: back to l a the next week to talk to
Speaker 1: more producers, and that's when I booked this show. It
Speaker 1: was like and then, yeah, it was a crazy thing.
Speaker 1: And then I'm like, okay, I guess I'm talking to
Speaker 1: my brother's like why don't you just live in l
Speaker 1: a for a month and try out this acting thing
Speaker 1: and then you just go back to basketball? Sure, no problem.
Speaker 1: So I go and I end up going to Korea
Speaker 1: for a month to shoot this Netflix show and I
Speaker 1: did a really good job and I came back and
Speaker 1: then the pandemic hit and now I can't go back
Speaker 1: to basketball and I'm stuck in this tiny l a
Speaker 1: apartment that I thought I'd be here for, you know,
Speaker 1: a month or whatever. and Um, do you make good
Speaker 1: money when you're doing that? When you did this the
Speaker 1: Netflix show, like yeah, that was a non union job.
Speaker 1: So they gave him a number and they took it.
Speaker 1: So I had a stunt Um agent advising me on
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. But yeah, I mean even as
Speaker 1: a union actor in just the normal acting whether if
Speaker 1: you're making scale, that's that's like a thousand, one thousand
Speaker 1: thirty dollars a day. Now, if you're working every day
Speaker 1: as a scale actor, making pretty good money. Um, no
Speaker 1: complaints there. So it's yeah, it's decent money. If you
Speaker 1: what was the what was the language barrier? Like you
Speaker 1: had to Korea. I had three translators. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: a funny story. So I go to Korea and I'm
Speaker 1: playing this character called muscle monster. I'm wearing this, you know,
Speaker 1: pound foam late text costume that has four inches of
Speaker 1: foam late texts around. He's like a mutated bodybuilder. Um,
Speaker 1: and the creature shop that built this suit sent three
Speaker 1: people over with me to kind of manage these suits
Speaker 1: that I'm wearing. I think that I have two suits Um,
Speaker 1: and they netflix provided these two translators for us, Kevin
Speaker 1: and David, and I just remember Kevin. He was like
Speaker 1: he looked like the Korean Harry Potter, but Kevin and
Speaker 1: David grew up in New Zealand, so they were they
Speaker 1: were Kiwi Koreans. Okay, the director, who was amazing, could
Speaker 1: not speak English and I didn't understand the process of
Speaker 1: acting and being on set and shooting a TV show.
Speaker 1: Typically you get your when you come in in the morning.
Speaker 1: They give you your sides, your like your lines, they
Speaker 1: give you a call sheet and you go over all
Speaker 1: of your lines and all of your action, everything you
Speaker 1: have to do. So you can read that. When I
Speaker 1: came in the morning, nothing, just go, go to make up,
Speaker 1: get ready, Blah, blah, and I had my little tent
Speaker 1: on set in this sound stage with like this huge
Speaker 1: air conditioning tube that would go up my stomach to
Speaker 1: keep me cool. And then they would say, okay, Dane, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're shooting the scene now. You're gonna go,
Speaker 1: Um uh, she's gonna hit you in the nuts with
Speaker 1: a baseball bat and then you're gonna turn and smash
Speaker 1: her into a wall. Sure, great, let's go do it. Awesome,
Speaker 1: and you know, then you go shoot the scene or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it was just it was interesting the way the
Speaker 1: Korean hierarchy worked. So, Kevin, I could tell that let's
Speaker 1: get ad, no business being on set. His Dad was
Speaker 1: like a producer or something. He so Kiwi, Korean. So
Speaker 1: we'd be on set and the director would tell him
Speaker 1: something and he didn't understand that. Like, as a translator,
Speaker 1: you have to tell me exactly what the director is saying,
Speaker 1: because it's hard enough there's a director to explain to
Speaker 1: your actor what you want. So this director will talk
Speaker 1: to him cream and then he'd be everything started off
Speaker 1: with basically, and he'd go so basically, the director like, okay,
Speaker 1: so you're really angry and you're chosing this guy, but
Speaker 1: you're hungry, but you can't show you angry because you're hungry.
Speaker 1: So you turn the corner and you smash into the Kevin.
Speaker 1: What the wait, wait, wait, what? You can't give me
Speaker 1: the basics? You gotta tell me exactly what I have
Speaker 1: to do with this guy. So okay, there, Shannon, my
Speaker 1: was my liaison from L A. I gotta get another
Speaker 1: translator because this is not I don't know what to do,
Speaker 1: because I'd shoot a scene in the director like no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: you can't it. So it was a whole it was
Speaker 1: a whole thing. But now I have like Kevin's like Um,
Speaker 1: New Zealand accent ingrained in my head basically from here.
Speaker 1: So you basically Um, and so it was just but
Speaker 1: I ended up doing a really good job and it
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. And so I come back
Speaker 1: and like they were like you, you can do this,
Speaker 1: you should. You know, it's about playing monsters, essentially, and
Speaker 1: I always figured playing monsters is great because I can
Speaker 1: leverage my athleticism to becoming an actor and then I
Speaker 1: can leverage that into becoming an actual actor as a
Speaker 1: backdoor into acting. Um. And I came back the pandemic hit.
Speaker 1: Everything shutdown. Couldn't go back to basketball, obviously. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Italy was going through their own thing at the time.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, I'm now I'm in L A. The streets
Speaker 1: are empty. I bought a road bike and I just
Speaker 1: start riding to Manhattan beach and back every day from
Speaker 1: West Hollywood. Fifty yeah, they're and back. Yeah, they're and back.
Speaker 1: A home and home. Um, yeah, you ride to like
Speaker 1: the Manhattan beach. Peering back, it's it's about fifty miles,
Speaker 1: something like that. So I just did that. I would hike,
Speaker 1: I would alternate. I'd hike one day, I'd bike the
Speaker 1: next day and I laid down artificial grass in my
Speaker 1: living room. It became my gym. Very functional, very functional
Speaker 1: living room. Wasn't too hot with the ladies, but it
Speaker 1: was good for me. I could do all my could
Speaker 1: do all my movements in my training and everything. and Um,
Speaker 1: then I booked uh to be master chief in the
Speaker 1: xbox commercials for Halo and like you see, a fixed
Speaker 1: built of one of one custom moll in your armor
Speaker 1: for me to be master chief. And then things just
Speaker 1: started moving. Walking dead looking dead was interesting. I just
Speaker 1: walked in a circle for six hours in Calabasas. It
Speaker 1: was really not that trying or difficult. Um, and then, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like things start moving, the pandemics starting to I
Speaker 1: was I was at the water world on show universal
Speaker 1: studios to learn stunts and stuff like that. and Um,
Speaker 1: and then I got a like a phone call. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I don't have a real theatrical agent. I'm doing everything.
Speaker 1: Have your a real theatrical agent and you're looking for
Speaker 1: a guy with incredible potential. His name is Dane, or
Speaker 1: a manager or manager. Yeah, yeah, so I'm doing this all.
Speaker 1: I'm getting all these jobs on my own, essentially. and Um,
Speaker 1: this stunt agents helping me look over contracts, but essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm garnering everything on my own. How did
Speaker 1: you get the Predator Gig? Okay, so then. Well, then
Speaker 1: there was American horror stories. Is First. They named the
Speaker 1: episode after me. That was just most of the stuff
Speaker 1: is just on instagram. Someone a D M me big hey,
Speaker 1: do you have a like? Are you around in May? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm an. Do you want to be an American horror stories? Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: and that's how that's how, that's how it goes. There's
Speaker 1: no there's really no audition, there's no like vetting process. Um,
Speaker 1: in January of one I got a message on Instagram
Speaker 1: from a guy named Alec Gillis, who who runs the
Speaker 1: former studio a d I, and he said we need you,
Speaker 1: I need you to come in for a design pitch
Speaker 1: for a project, Um, we're working on in Canada, and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking interesting and he, I think he offered me
Speaker 1: launch or like two hundred bucks or something, and I
Speaker 1: said keep keep your money, just whatever. The job has
Speaker 1: put me in for it. Yeah, they're shooting in Canada.
Speaker 1: L A's bringing in an L A guy. It's a
Speaker 1: bad spend. You know that. You get tax relief when
Speaker 1: you use a Canadian whatever. So I drive out to
Speaker 1: Chatsworth to the studio and what's going to happen is
Speaker 1: that he wants me to they're designing us a creature
Speaker 1: suit for a show, a movie, and the director, the
Speaker 1: director of photography and the producer going to come in
Speaker 1: and watch how this suit moves and the design of
Speaker 1: this head. And Alec told me he wanted me to
Speaker 1: bring a balletics seltness to this character. Okay, what the
Speaker 1: Hell is boletics felt this? So it's my job to
Speaker 1: figure that out what that is. I get there and
Speaker 1: there it is, laid on the table as the Predator
Speaker 1: costume from the last movie. Now, did you? Did you?
Speaker 1: Were you a Predator fan? Yeah, sure, absolutely. I mean
Speaker 1: old school. You watched the old yes, of course. No,
Speaker 1: when I when I moved to Los Angeles to do
Speaker 1: this creature acting thing either. These are quotes, because I
Speaker 1: do not want to be branded as a creature actor
Speaker 1: because once you get put into that whole yes, but
Speaker 1: I had two roles in mind that I wanted one.
Speaker 1: Number two was to be a predator. I thought that
Speaker 1: would have been the coolest thing of all time. Number
Speaker 1: one is to be Jason Vorhees, because that he is
Speaker 1: my ultimate horror icon. But to be a predator. I
Speaker 1: was a Predator Fan. I knew all the actors, I
Speaker 1: knew all the movies, I knew all the culture. I
Speaker 1: was very excited. So I come in and there it is.
Speaker 1: There's the Predator costume from the last movie laying out
Speaker 1: in this table and Oh my God, and they had
Speaker 1: this three d iteration of a Predator had they printed
Speaker 1: out and they used like ropes as the dreads and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that's kind of a Predator. It's kind of not.
Speaker 1: It's gross, it's weird. It looks like an insect, it
Speaker 1: looks like a bug. So they suited me up in
Speaker 1: this suit that was way too small for me. I
Speaker 1: remember it was cutting off circulation in my hands. My
Speaker 1: hands were ballooning up and I was losing feeling in
Speaker 1: my fingers and I couldn't see anything out of this gray,
Speaker 1: three d printed plastic head. But Dan Trachtenberger, director, Jeff Cutter,
Speaker 1: Marta young they all come into the shop and I
Speaker 1: gave what I thought was Baltic smelting this and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking for Um. So this is like like like a Ballerina,
Speaker 1: like smooth and graceful, but like smelting, this is like
Speaker 1: lean and dynamic. Right. So I'm thinking like feline, something
Speaker 1: like a cat Um, and I'm jumping up on tables,
Speaker 1: I'm getting really low, I'm like shifting my weight from
Speaker 1: side to side, I'm running through the shop, I'm sliding
Speaker 1: all over the place, I'm running through the parking lot. Um,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of I think people that were
Speaker 1: surrounding businesses were taking pictures because this was a scene.
Speaker 1: It was a big scene. Um, and at the end
Speaker 1: of the thing, Marty, they go I'll tell you. I said, well,
Speaker 1: six nine. I'm six eight and a half. I danced
Speaker 1: between six eight and six nine. Six Nine, when you're
Speaker 1: monster role, you're six nine. It's better to be bigger. Oh,
Speaker 1: six nine. That is the height we're looking for. And
Speaker 1: in my head I'm like, they don't have anyone fucking
Speaker 1: cast for this role. And I go listen, guys, here's
Speaker 1: the deal. I will do anything to be your Predator,
Speaker 1: like I would kill for this role. I Want I
Speaker 1: want to be your Predator. I used to play professional basketball.
Speaker 1: This is what I do. I trained to be an actor.
Speaker 1: I trained to be a monster, like I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you blood. Yeah, all right, we'll see. We'll see. We'll
Speaker 1: keep you in mind, Marty say, we'll figure out a
Speaker 1: way to get you in there. So, yeah, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I ended up, you know, being the guy to
Speaker 1: play this role and I, you know, it just worked out.
Speaker 1: What is what was the premiere like? When you're Oh,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna talk about filming or anything, well, we'd
Speaker 1: have a filming and stuff, or just was filming it.
Speaker 1: Like we shot in Calgary for three months in Canada.
Speaker 1: It was this time last year, beautiful September. I flew home.
Speaker 1: What's Today? September three, literally a year ago today, I
Speaker 1: flew home from Calgary. What was it like? It was crazy.
Speaker 1: It was hot. Um, you were another foam. So Foam
Speaker 1: Lake Texas an interesting thing. It's a sponge and you're
Speaker 1: wearing it. We had six suits and four heads. Um
Speaker 1: The heads there were two stunt heads, two amatronic kids.
Speaker 1: These amatronic kids have thirty servos where little motors instide
Speaker 1: controlling the face. There's four people puppeteering the face of
Speaker 1: this character. So when we were doing a scene, I
Speaker 1: have to do what the predators doing. But I have
Speaker 1: to let my puppeteer is know what this exactly this
Speaker 1: Predator is doing, because they're controlling the emotions the face.
Speaker 1: So when I'm roaring, I have to cue them on
Speaker 1: exactly how I'm going to do that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would like lift my arms up before I swing
Speaker 1: them back or something. We would go over that before
Speaker 1: every every scene. It's really like Bluetooth with these people.
Speaker 1: It's like it's crazy the synergy that's required to make
Speaker 1: this character. Um. It's interesting. I listened Dan, our director,
Speaker 1: went on BBC The other day and he was saying
Speaker 1: like there are so many things you have to do
Speaker 1: just to not make just to make it look like
Speaker 1: you're not a door in a suit, and then you
Speaker 1: have to act so like the Predator's head was sitting
Speaker 1: on top of my head and it weighs fifteen pounds.
Speaker 1: I had to shrug my shoulders and shorten my neck
Speaker 1: and look at the ground to make the Predator look
Speaker 1: forward right like. So I shot this movie essentially blind.
Speaker 1: I was looking out through two holes in the neck
Speaker 1: straight at the ground. So all my fighting scenes, all
Speaker 1: my act scenes, all everything, I can't see anything and
Speaker 1: we had to lay sticks on the ground for me
Speaker 1: to follow so I knew where to walk. I had
Speaker 1: a speaker in my ear so my first ad could
Speaker 1: cue me on things that I couldn't see, and then
Speaker 1: my fighting scenes, I. I we just had to rehearse
Speaker 1: it and I couldn't hit any of my cast castmates.
Speaker 1: You know it is. It was scary. You're fighting amber
Speaker 1: mid thunder in a fight and she did most of
Speaker 1: her stunts. And if she doesn't duck when I'm swinging
Speaker 1: my spear, it's my fault. If she's in the way
Speaker 1: when I'm swinging my spear, it's my fault. If it's
Speaker 1: her fault, it's my fault. So because I'm the number three,
Speaker 1: she's the number one and I'm also like the dirty Grimmy,
Speaker 1: you know monster guy that you don't see his face,
Speaker 1: it's my fault always. Ten out of ten. She could
Speaker 1: literally be like I'm going to get hit in the
Speaker 1: face intentionally and it's my fault. So terrifying. I can't
Speaker 1: see her and Um, it was just insane. There was
Speaker 1: a day my you know, my atronic head caught on fire, uh,
Speaker 1: because the battery pack short circuited. Just all the scenes
Speaker 1: the mud. That mud smells so bad. You've you've seen
Speaker 1: the movie. Have you seen? Okay, yeah, the mud. The
Speaker 1: mud pit was only supposed to be there for two weeks.
Speaker 1: We were shooting on week eight. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: When you said you had sticks in the ground, though,
Speaker 1: but now there's just all this mud. Like, how do
Speaker 1: you how do you know where to move when there's
Speaker 1: the mud pit and the final scene? I understand, but
Speaker 1: how do you like, how do you're? You're describing it
Speaker 1: as you're operating blind, but you're essentially blind. I can
Speaker 1: see my feet. I can look at my feet still, though,
Speaker 1: but you're also doing all this other stuff with your body. Yes,
Speaker 1: now you're throwing a mud pit. How does that work?
Speaker 1: The mudpit was I was like lower, you know, above
Speaker 1: my waist and the mud and it was what are
Speaker 1: you looking at? There? The ground, the nothing. Nothing. So
Speaker 1: how do you know what to do? They cue me.
Speaker 1: So my first a D was in my ear, with
Speaker 1: the with the with the speaker. He had a god
Speaker 1: Mike on him and he would tell me where to
Speaker 1: point the gun because I'm looking straight at the ground right.
Speaker 1: So he do you like bring the tip down, you
Speaker 1: know a little bit to the left little bit. Hold it.
Speaker 1: Hold it and you're sitting up cameras if you're holding something,
Speaker 1: keeping your arm out, and it's you. It's only head
Speaker 1: to yeah, fifteen pounds. So I'm pulling a lot of levers.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a little alien inside this giant body.
Speaker 1: They loved the breathing. I had to really focus on.
Speaker 1: I had to actually breathe, show breathing, because they loved
Speaker 1: how tight the foam latex was to the suit and
Speaker 1: I did this kind of breathing thing that showed that, like,
Speaker 1: I have to think. I'm telling a story nonverbally, right.
Speaker 1: I don't have the luxury of using words like you know,
Speaker 1: amber and Dakota's characters have. I have to tell a
Speaker 1: story through posture and through movement. So, like I have
Speaker 1: to think about what are my hands doing? So, like
Speaker 1: are my hand so you know, even like sometimes you
Speaker 1: catch frozen hands. So you have to do this with
Speaker 1: your hands. You have to open your hands, you have
Speaker 1: to kind of fan your hands out. So I have
Speaker 1: to think about what my hands are doing. How am
Speaker 1: I walking? Where's my posture? I also have to remember
Speaker 1: to shorten my neck and look at the ground. I
Speaker 1: also remember to do this breathing thing. I also have
Speaker 1: to remember I have four people relying on me to
Speaker 1: do cues if I make a big action. So that's
Speaker 1: just to look normal. Then I have to act. Then
Speaker 1: I have to remember choreography and blocking. Then I have
Speaker 1: to remember fighting. So you, so, you, you go through
Speaker 1: this whole thing. It was unbelievable. Okay, do you know?
Speaker 1: Are you? Do you know what it actually looks like? No,
Speaker 1: I when we wrapped the movie, I told dance, I
Speaker 1: can't wait to see this thing. I haven't seen a
Speaker 1: damn thing this whole fucking shoot. Okay, so it was
Speaker 1: up there in ninety days or whatever. So you come
Speaker 1: back to when do you? When do you? When's the premiere?
Speaker 1: The premier's August three. So there's like did you? Did
Speaker 1: you see anything before then? Yes, so I. So at
Speaker 1: first we had we had additional photography in February. So
Speaker 1: I went into so we let's get a little deeper.
Speaker 1: I went into this like post production depression when I
Speaker 1: got back because for three months I was relied on.
Speaker 1: I was the main antagonist of this major motion picture.
Speaker 1: Whatever seventy million dollars. I was I was accountable every
Speaker 1: day I was needed. I was like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: in this sort there's the three crew members around you,
Speaker 1: and then you're in that inner circle of twelve people
Speaker 1: setting up a shot and it's like, Oh my God, right,
Speaker 1: you get home and get home, and now I'm like
Speaker 1: taking out my trash and collecting mail and like grossery
Speaker 1: and I don't have anything booked. I like barely scratched
Speaker 1: this job, like and now, do you get paid then,
Speaker 1: or do you you get paid when it releases? You get paid,
Speaker 1: then you get paid then you sign a flat, flat rate,
Speaker 1: flat contract and Um, yeah, and then there's like overtime
Speaker 1: and stuff. But Um, I wasn't. I didn't have anything
Speaker 1: book I came home, I had nothing going on. NOPE,
Speaker 1: no one knows who I am. I like I got
Speaker 1: lucky with this job through instagram. That wasn't like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we gotta have Dane, his prowess, isn't you know. So,
Speaker 1: so the premiere so like. So we did a digital
Speaker 1: photography in February. We added a couple of scenes, we
Speaker 1: changed things around and then in March I saw a cut,
Speaker 1: a version of the film Dan Had Dakota, and I
Speaker 1: come to twentieth century and we sat in the theater
Speaker 1: and watched it and he had to go through everything
Speaker 1: what we thought and what our ideas were. And, Um,
Speaker 1: when we shot this thing there there was no title
Speaker 1: like it shifted a little bit through time. The movie
Speaker 1: kind of evolved and when we were shooting this no
Speaker 1: one really knew what this was gonna be. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously a period piece, adventure story with a little sci
Speaker 1: fi sprinkled and interesting Um. And then I saw the
Speaker 1: movie in March I was like, that's pretty good. Do
Speaker 1: you think you were good, or do you do you
Speaker 1: think I I'm in this stuff? Well, it's interesting because
Speaker 1: for a character like that, there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that go on in the movie that that don't really
Speaker 1: require like for me it's like a basketball game. First
Speaker 1: of all, acting and and pro sports are so similar,
Speaker 1: are so ridiculously similar. You come in every morning, you
Speaker 1: got your coach, you got your director, you got your GM,
Speaker 1: you have your producer, you have your teammates, you have
Speaker 1: your castmates. One common goal, make a nice picture. Okay.
Speaker 1: How about role player? Okay, role in a movie. You
Speaker 1: come in, the bigger, the bigger the production, the bigger
Speaker 1: the jigsaw puzzle you're just a piece in the jigsaw puzzle.
Speaker 1: Show Up, keep your head down, keep your nose clean,
Speaker 1: do your fucking job, smile, say yes, be happy. Same
Speaker 1: thing at practice. Hey, I need you to sprint harder,
Speaker 1: I need you to set the screen. Do Your job.
Speaker 1: You're good at screening. Actually keeping your head down. Literally. Yeah, literally,
Speaker 1: keeping my head down literally. Um, it's like coming in
Speaker 1: not complaining, knowing you have to do for this one
Speaker 1: common goal. I would rather work with eleven other less
Speaker 1: talented guys who are easy to be around, who I
Speaker 1: know I can rely on, than super super talented people
Speaker 1: who just suck being around. You know, something so like
Speaker 1: you're on set for, you know, a number of months
Speaker 1: with these people. You're with them every single day. The
Speaker 1: same thing on a team. You're in the locker room
Speaker 1: with these people every single day. It's like being a
Speaker 1: good person to be around. It goes so much further
Speaker 1: than being super super talented. Um. And, like I said,
Speaker 1: pros like the transition from you know, other than off
Speaker 1: the court stuff, the politics of sports and and entertainment
Speaker 1: that come into play, but when you're in it, when
Speaker 1: you're working, it's so similar and Um, I don't even
Speaker 1: know where I was going with this. But your depression.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so, like, you know, the same thing
Speaker 1: with the sea season ends. You come you come home
Speaker 1: and it's just like what am I doing? Like you
Speaker 1: missed that, you missed that energy, missed like connection with people,
Speaker 1: you miss being on a team. It's the hardest. There's
Speaker 1: the hardest thing about team sports and going into workplaces.
Speaker 1: You're you're used to being told what to do and
Speaker 1: be part of a team and you know, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you have all this freedom, which you think
Speaker 1: is what you want, and you're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I actually really like being told what to do. It's
Speaker 1: almost like a it's it's a low level form of
Speaker 1: like institutionalization. And, Um, I listen and I know how
Speaker 1: lucky and fortunate I am to be able to have
Speaker 1: a job that kind of replicates what I got from
Speaker 1: basketball and everything I did, and now this is something
Speaker 1: that I can do for quite some time if I
Speaker 1: continue to experience success with it. Um, but I I
Speaker 1: was like really just going through a very strange time.
Speaker 1: I was in a doja cap music video in October.
Speaker 1: I Um, it was just get into it, okay. I
Speaker 1: was the main alien overlord. I steal her cat. She
Speaker 1: comes in and slaps me in the face takes her
Speaker 1: cap back. Yeah, all right, this, this, this has to
Speaker 1: be we're gonna we have to do we have to
Speaker 1: do more. Did more of them, more of the okay,
Speaker 1: so I'll wrap on this. Okay, you go to the premiere.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the premiere. And it was unbelievable. We
Speaker 1: went to like six premieres that we went to comic con,
Speaker 1: Sandel Comic Con. We premiered the movie there for the
Speaker 1: first time. So I see it on screen for the
Speaker 1: first time at Comic Con, the finished product, and I
Speaker 1: was like, holy sh it, this movie is good. Two
Speaker 1: standing ovations. When this movie, when the credits start rolling
Speaker 1: and I look over and amber's right next to me
Speaker 1: and she's tearing up and I'm I'm getting goosebumps now
Speaker 1: talking about it, but I started crying. This is real.
Speaker 1: Not to mention not to mention they gave me like
Speaker 1: a single card crediting out. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know about crediting or like how the crediting works in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: It's insane how contractually, how important credits are. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: your position in the rolling credits, yes, very important. But
Speaker 1: they have these things called like the cards, single card,
Speaker 1: multi card, shared card. A single card is like at
Speaker 1: the end of the movie, Tom Cruise's name comes in
Speaker 1: and comes out the order of the names, like if
Speaker 1: you if there's three names on the on the list,
Speaker 1: like top position, middle position, lower position, you know, and
Speaker 1: then there's the with Robert De Niro and will Farrell.
Speaker 1: These are all it's a very like crazy science behind
Speaker 1: all this. And they century gave me the single card
Speaker 1: and Dandelegro as the Predator at the end. That's for
Speaker 1: like Robert De Niro, that your predators. I understand that,
Speaker 1: but you don't like you don't see my face. Did
Speaker 1: you kill it? What do you mean? Like when you watched,
Speaker 1: like I was good, that was good. So for me
Speaker 1: it was like it's like it's less the movies could
Speaker 1: have been bad, which it's not. It's amazing, but just
Speaker 1: I just wanted the Predator to be scary. I wanted
Speaker 1: the predators convincing, and I feel like it was got
Speaker 1: great reception and I was super happy about that and
Speaker 1: I just remember crying at the at the World Premiere
Speaker 1: Comic Con, looking at amber during the end credit. It's
Speaker 1: not just like, holy sh it, there's like the big
Speaker 1: pinch me moment Um. I just could believe it, and
Speaker 1: they started chanting like make one more the crowd. What
Speaker 1: the Hell is it like? That happens a can or Venice.
Speaker 1: So you'RE gonna YOU'RE gonna double your right next time. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let's I don't know. I don't know about that. That's
Speaker 1: if twenty century calls me for another one. But very
Speaker 1: last thing. Yes, UM, the next goal is the culinary
Speaker 1: show or to book legit acting roles. Legit acting rules
Speaker 1: the culinary thing. I feel like you can always, can
Speaker 1: always happen. Yeah, the more you grow as an actor
Speaker 1: than yeah, like that's the culinary Predator goes. The Predator
Speaker 1: goes to Italy and tries all the monster in the kitchen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean that would be I imagine myself
Speaker 1: in like a bigfoot sasquatch suit in the back of
Speaker 1: it like a Japanese kitchen, folding dumplings with tiny with
Speaker 1: tiny women, you know, something like that. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the reason why I couldn't get a cooking or travel
Speaker 1: show was because I essentially wasn't famous enough. So you
Speaker 1: that brand. Anyone could do a cooking show. Exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: But okay, so the one you did, the Predator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jason Vorhees would be my next that's like if if,
Speaker 1: or like a Xeno morphrom the movie alien, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to be humans, i. i. You know the can
Speaker 1: you confirm or deny? There are some reports on the
Speaker 1: Internet about gardens of Galaxy Three. Can you confirm or deny?
Speaker 1: I can confirm it. There are reports on the Internet
Speaker 1: about gardens of the Galaxy. I. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know anything. I all you're mumbling, you're stuttering. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do this again. Is that cool? Yeah, okay, and
Speaker 1: so the next time, next time we do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to do places you've been, stuff you've eaten,
Speaker 1: so I'll remember the things you've eaten. Okay. And then
Speaker 1: I didn't even talk about my butchery. And then the
Speaker 1: whole my my apprenticeship at the butcher shop in Tuscany.
Speaker 1: Even talk about that? You did not talk about that. No,
Speaker 1: that's a whole because we didn't go down the culinary path.
Speaker 1: WE'RE gonna go down the culinary path. This was like
Speaker 1: and and we're gonna do is, we're gonna we need
Speaker 1: to pick them movie and but we we broke down
Speaker 1: your movie. You did. No, I mean a little bit,
Speaker 1: not enough. We want to go back to it. I
Speaker 1: mean we could, you could watch it and you can
Speaker 1: ask me question. You could ask me anything about the movie.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you. Okay, let's do that. Let's let's let's
Speaker 1: that'll be our next part two is culinary and behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. and behind the scenes, Dane Lego, thanks for jam.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Awesome stuff there, I mean really, really fascinating.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you want to listen to the
Speaker 1: Doug Gotlieb show, you can download it and podcast form
Speaker 1: all three hours. Just type in Doug Gotlieb show listen
Speaker 1: to it live at was it three o'clock Eastern, noon,
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Speaker 1: in the meantime. Thanks so much for listening and don't
Speaker 1: forget to download, subscribe and right. I'm Doug Gotlieb. This
Speaker 1: is all BALLP