Speaker 1: Hi there, It's Steve Fishman, and this may be a
Speaker 1: good time to mention that you can listen to all
Speaker 1: episodes of Get the Money and Run ad free by
Speaker 1: subscribing to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple just to ninety
Speaker 1: nine a month. So today we've got a treat. We've
Speaker 1: got Joe Lawyer with us to answer your questions in
Speaker 1: mine and thanks to those of you who sent questions
Speaker 1: in just to add some sense of Joe these days.
Speaker 1: After nearly a decade in prison, Joe went on to
Speaker 1: write a book about his life. It's called The Man
Speaker 1: Who Outgrew his Prison Cell, and the New Yorker called
Speaker 1: it thrilling. Joe also turned himself into a consultant for Hollywood,
Speaker 1: writing scripts and consulting on bank robbery movies like Baby
Speaker 1: Driver and the upcoming Baby Driver Too. All right, let's
Speaker 1: jump into it.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, it's unfortunate. You know, I did a
Speaker 2: lot of shit, so a lot of things. I was
Speaker 2: raised a peacher's son, so that gave me a whole
Speaker 2: sense of like how to tell stories with some moral depth.
Speaker 2: And then I was a storyteller, so I got me.
Speaker 2: Since I was a little kid, I was been telling
Speaker 2: little Bible stories. So I've perfected I feel like my
Speaker 2: storytelling style. So I feel like that's the trick. You
Speaker 2: have to be you. You have to be authentic, and
Speaker 2: then that's what works. And I think it and I
Speaker 2: think that. The other thing too is I like to
Speaker 2: fucking laugh, and I liked to watch other people laugh,
Speaker 2: and I just fucking love I am so like that
Speaker 2: to me is that's my sweet spot. I want to
Speaker 2: be as vulgar and tell crazy, wild, violent, bloody, baroquely
Speaker 2: but bloody stories. But I also want to tell you
Speaker 2: all these absurd things that people do and I've seen
Speaker 2: do and weird shit and that'll make you laugh. So
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's I have to tell you. Joe.
Speaker 1: You know, one of your great talents is you make
Speaker 1: you make bank robbery seem like a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: All right, so let me jump in now. So uh
Speaker 1: uh uh, you just make me think bank robbery was fun.
Speaker 2: Question mark, Okay, let's be clear. Bank robbery in retrospect
Speaker 2: is fun. You know, like I can walk in a
Speaker 2: lot of rooms and I'm the bank robbery. It makes
Speaker 2: me kind of unimpeachably cool in some ways, even as
Speaker 2: an old man. It's like, oh, that dude rub the banks,
Speaker 2: thirty banks. So there's something about that makes it like
Speaker 2: I can tell these stories with humor. But in order
Speaker 2: to get to these stories, you remember, I had to
Speaker 2: do seven years in federal penitentiary and that was no fun.
Speaker 2: And you can't parse out bank robbery without that, because
Speaker 2: there is a fucking thing that goes with it, and
Speaker 2: that's the doing the time to get you to reflect
Speaker 2: on these stories. So I get to the fun part
Speaker 2: of the red. You know, looking back at crime stories,
Speaker 2: I mean bank robbery, when are you're when you're in it,
Speaker 2: you know, it's compulsion, it's it's uh, it's disassociation in
Speaker 2: many ways. I mean, if we're being like right where
Speaker 2: you are in it, it's not fun, it's it's fulfilling
Speaker 2: in that you. I am my most I was my
Speaker 2: most effect effective self. I was the least effectual male
Speaker 2: I ever was when I was robbing banks, because I
Speaker 2: was the most effective I've ever did. I married my greed,
Speaker 2: my rage, put it together, went in there, got the money,
Speaker 2: walked out, and and did what I wanted to do,
Speaker 2: and oftentimes several times a day. So that made me
Speaker 2: feel purposeful and that made me feel complete, But fun
Speaker 2: was not the part of it, especially when you're running
Speaker 2: away with smoke billowing out of a bag because a
Speaker 2: die pack has exploded and you and you got and
Speaker 2: you have tear gas in your eyes. It's not necessarily
Speaker 2: fun that in that regard, but in retrospect, when you
Speaker 2: can put in all the different ironies, like the time
Speaker 2: that the cops picked me up and I got away
Speaker 2: with it, and all the different things that I saw
Speaker 2: that I can laugh about now, like the woman who
Speaker 2: I went to robber and she immediately just started giving
Speaker 2: money before I was even finished with my spiel.
Speaker 1: To me.
Speaker 2: That was funny in retrospect because I thought, why did
Speaker 2: she give it? I didn't even tell her, and then
Speaker 2: she started giving me the big bills first. So I'm
Speaker 2: thinking later, like, you know, it's funny. Your boyfriend probably say,
Speaker 2: hey man, I'm going to send this guy named Sancho
Speaker 2: in and he's gonna come to rob you, and when
Speaker 2: he doesn't, just give him all the money, give him
Speaker 2: the big bills first. I felt like she miss like
Speaker 2: mistook me for a guy who was part of another
Speaker 2: came for that was supposed to go on after me.
Speaker 2: Because she just saw me. I came up and she
Speaker 2: just started handing me the money when I said, this
Speaker 2: is a bank robbery. So like in retrospect, certainly those
Speaker 2: things are funny to me because I can impose, you know,
Speaker 2: some story on it. But it was peculiar, certainly peculiar,
Speaker 2: Like that was wild.
Speaker 1: Joe, did you feel that you were this could go
Speaker 1: on forever or did you feel did you come to
Speaker 1: know that you were going to get caught?
Speaker 2: This is a good question because I think that what
Speaker 2: it implies is that the regular frame of mind is
Speaker 2: in play, so that you know when you're when you
Speaker 2: and I are sitting here, we're thinking what's going to
Speaker 2: happen tomorrow. I'm going to do this thing tomorrow, and
Speaker 2: I better I better make sure I have enough gas
Speaker 2: because I'm going to go to Oregon. Like we plan
Speaker 2: day to day, week to week. And when you're asking
Speaker 2: that question, you're asking it from that place. But you
Speaker 2: have to understand one of the reasons I was able
Speaker 2: to do what I was able to do. I have
Speaker 2: no feel for the future, none at all, no posterity.
Speaker 2: Most criminals don't, which is what makes them impulsive. Because
Speaker 2: if we thought about the future. We don't want to
Speaker 2: go to prison, we don't want to spend ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen years. Who does Nobody chooses that. But we're always
Speaker 2: on the route there. So how do you get to
Speaker 2: the route there if you don't want to be there.
Speaker 2: The way you do is you don't think about it.
Speaker 2: And the way you don't think about it is you
Speaker 2: think I could die tomorrow. I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 2: I could die when I go rob this bank. I
Speaker 2: don't know, and you don't care. Nobody's putting away money
Speaker 2: for the ten years when you're treasury bund you will,
Speaker 2: you know, will yield your money. Nobody gives a fuck
Speaker 2: about that. We're not talking about people, and certainly not me,
Speaker 2: who has any grasp of the future. The one thing
Speaker 2: I don't want to do is sit down there and
Speaker 2: be a drag on my initiative by thinking, oh, what
Speaker 2: happens if I get caught? Who fuck that? There's none
Speaker 2: of that which allows me to just be living in
Speaker 2: the moment, in the present. I'm mad I get fucked.
Speaker 1: Up, Joe, just to get to some details that you
Speaker 1: know we've had come in here. Well went through your
Speaker 1: head when you were picking out your first disguise for Dora,
Speaker 1: trench code, sunglasses.
Speaker 2: If you look at the bank robbery photos, there might
Speaker 2: be seven that are out there, and most of them
Speaker 2: if you could see, I'm like just wearing clothes that
Speaker 2: I had. The first bank robbery iore, I wore jeans
Speaker 2: with ripped, ripped jeans and a Mickey Mouse t shirt
Speaker 2: like the first one I did in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: I just wore what I was and I never wore
Speaker 2: a mask, never wore like a disguise, like so you
Speaker 2: couldn't see it was it wasn't me, right, I didn't
Speaker 2: I didn't care, So it wasn't like I was wearing
Speaker 2: a disguise. I was just wearing clothes, and the nicer
Speaker 2: clothes I got, like I had a look. I liked
Speaker 2: to dress nicely. I wore suspenders, I wore cloks. I
Speaker 2: wore cohon loafers with cassels. So you see the most
Speaker 2: iconic one of me is walking out there with my suit,
Speaker 2: my trenchcoat, my my loafers, and I just robbed a vault.
Speaker 2: But yeah, someone once or twice it were for Dora. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes I wore sunglasses, but it wasn't really
Speaker 2: like I was trying to disguise myself in that regard,
Speaker 2: but I was always trying Towards the end, I was
Speaker 2: trying to wear nice clothes.
Speaker 1: So you got married when you got out of prison, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: People were wondering just about your relationship with your wife
Speaker 1: around your past. So did she get tired of hearing
Speaker 1: about it? Did she get tired of Joe Lawyer the
Speaker 1: bank rubber? Or did maybe she thought it was just
Speaker 1: sexy as hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But one of the reasons I liked liked her
Speaker 2: was when I got out of prison. Obviously, Hollywood can't
Speaker 2: call it. Oh, can you come and talk to us
Speaker 2: for doing a movie? What do you think about this?
Speaker 2: And you know, there was a sense in which I
Speaker 2: felt like I was Joe the bank robber, but I
Speaker 2: was trying to turn myself into Joe the writer. So
Speaker 2: I was writing op eds and I was doing that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. But my wife was introduced to me
Speaker 2: through my best friend at the time. She was a
Speaker 2: woman in offe uh. And my wife was not so
Speaker 2: interested in the bank robberies that she was interested that
Speaker 2: My writing mentor was Richard Rodriguez. Rich rod was kind
Speaker 2: of a controversial figure in the Mexican American community, Latino
Speaker 2: Mexican American human, mostly because he had been a SKay
Speaker 2: guy who had been Catholic, gay guy who was against
Speaker 2: a firntive action and English is a second language teacher.
Speaker 2: He was like a conservative Mexicine. But he was my mentor.
Speaker 2: We would had a two year correspondence in prison, and
Speaker 2: he was well known. He was a great writer, like
Speaker 2: published in Harper's and everything that was more fascinating to her,
Speaker 2: and so my bank rubbery. Actually really she wasn't that interested.
Speaker 2: When we got we would start getting to say, Hey,
Speaker 2: how's your dad, how's your brother? What? She never asked
Speaker 2: about what I was writing about anything. She's just and
Speaker 2: I remember a couple of years later, within a couple
Speaker 2: of years, still we would go to parties. I would
Speaker 2: hear her people to how many banks Robin. I could
Speaker 2: hear her say, I don't know, I think seven or
Speaker 2: her age. Never she didn't know how many years I
Speaker 2: was in prison. I subsequently, you know, my wife and
Speaker 2: I were separated now now after about twenty years, but
Speaker 2: being together. But I've had girlfriends who like they're meticulous
Speaker 2: about understanding my biography right, and a lot of friends
Speaker 2: who knew it, but my wife, she just wanted to
Speaker 2: know who I was. She cared for me for me,
Speaker 2: and that was one of the reason I was hugely
Speaker 2: attracted in the beginning, because the bankrut yourself just missed her.
Speaker 2: She was like, yeah, okay, I know who you are
Speaker 2: as a new man, as a reformed guy. You know
Speaker 2: that's cool?
Speaker 1: And how about you doing? You have one kid?
Speaker 2: I have a nineteen year old daughter right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what did you explain to her about your past?
Speaker 2: And when just a good question. I like this question. Well,
Speaker 2: kids are really smart in ways that we forget because
Speaker 2: we're so far away from being little kids. But kids
Speaker 2: pick up stuff in the air. And right when she
Speaker 2: was about seven, she started asking me questions like we
Speaker 2: saw a Brinks truck out front of a Safeware the morning.
Speaker 2: She's like, what what is what is that? Is? Is
Speaker 2: that the thing that has money? I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: do you know anyone who's ever robbed them those kind
Speaker 2: of things? And I looked at her like, why, what
Speaker 2: where did that come from? I She's seven. So finally,
Speaker 2: at age seven, when this comes up, I realized she
Speaker 2: started bringing up like robbery. A couple of times, and
Speaker 2: I told my wife, I say, I think she knows something.
Speaker 2: She must have heard something for somebody's parents at school,
Speaker 2: or somebody's somebody's kid who heard their parents talking about me.
Speaker 2: Who knows how she got it in her head about
Speaker 2: bank robby. So my wife and I we took her
Speaker 2: out to have froyo, her favorite froyo. We went apart.
Speaker 2: We did the thing where we were all like when
Speaker 2: when at that age it's all yummy, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like you're just with the family, it's a great day.
Speaker 2: And then I sat her down and say, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: I got somebody to tell you. You know, you know
Speaker 2: I always go in prisons, and you know I'm a writer.
Speaker 2: And then I show on my book I wrote about
Speaker 2: how this time when I was young, I messed up
Speaker 2: and I robbed banks and I went to prey and
Speaker 2: then she says, you did you have to pee in
Speaker 2: a pot? Said no, I said I wasn't in a
Speaker 2: French medieval, seventeenth century medieval in prison. No, that regular chilett.
Speaker 2: And we laughed and we laughed, and then it was gone.
Speaker 2: Like she was she was young. I didn't need to
Speaker 2: sit with it heavy with her in that moment to
Speaker 2: vulge Ermany, I just said, so, I wrote this book,
Speaker 2: I changed my life. I met your mommy, I came
Speaker 2: out of prison. And as you go older, let's begin
Speaker 2: of the conversation. We'll talk about it more. As you
Speaker 2: have questions, just ask me. And that's how it happened.
Speaker 2: And they said, okay, can we go play or do
Speaker 2: something else? And we did.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a great story. It's a little parenting tip.
Speaker 1: So jumping around, Joe, people want to know about Baby Driver.
Speaker 1: So you are hired as a consultant on Baby Driver,
Speaker 1: and I'm just curious, like, do you have to say, well,
Speaker 1: what do you guys say or do you need to
Speaker 1: course correct or give me some sense of the dynamic
Speaker 1: there with you the expert.
Speaker 2: To be honest with you is It's funny. I think
Speaker 2: the way I met Edgar may it made it easy
Speaker 2: for me because when I met Edgar, they called me
Speaker 2: first and they said, hey, there's a young writer who
Speaker 2: needs he's stuck on a piece. He's like fifty pages
Speaker 2: in the script. It's about to get Away Driver. And
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, cool, I'll talk to him,
Speaker 2: and they said cool, and they sent me up I'm
Speaker 2: coming Alan next week. They say, great, you can meet him.
Speaker 2: I'm an hour from LA from the conference on there,
Speaker 2: so you're going to be meet Edgar Wright. At this time,
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, wait, wait, this is Edgar Wright, like
Speaker 2: one of my favorite directors. They didn't tell me who
Speaker 2: it was. They just said, like some young writer. I'm
Speaker 2: thinking some little, you know, first script writer kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And this is baby, this is Edgar who had done
Speaker 2: already Shana the Dead and Hot Fuzzs and Hot Fuzzs
Speaker 2: one of my favorite movies. I'm going to see him.
Speaker 2: When I get there. We start talking movies. All we're
Speaker 2: talking to movies because he's he loves movies. I love movies.
Speaker 2: And we just start talking movies and we're talking movies
Speaker 2: and we're talking We're not even talking about a script,
Speaker 2: we're not even talking about any of that. We're talking movies, movies, movies,
Speaker 2: and we just we just connect like like as movie lovers.
Speaker 2: And then at one point I'm like, hey, dude, we
Speaker 2: could sit here and talk still, or I could just
Speaker 2: take you some banks I rob and you can see
Speaker 2: how I got away. And he was like, I said,
Speaker 2: which one. He's like the latter, let's do that. And
Speaker 2: so I took him and so I get to show
Speaker 2: him who I was. Do. I take him out of
Speaker 2: the car. I did this, I came here. They walked out,
Speaker 2: and I followed me. I I scared them. I just
Speaker 2: I show him how I how I did it, like
Speaker 2: how I did it, what I was thinking on. And
Speaker 2: that's what earned me his trust that when it came
Speaker 2: to this, I'm not some guy who did it, and
Speaker 2: I know how it relates to movies, and I know
Speaker 2: the cinematic quality of what I'm preparing him to look
Speaker 2: at it that way. So he says, well, I'm going
Speaker 2: to start sending you my script. I'm going to start
Speaker 2: sending you writing, and like pretty quickly, two three days later,
Speaker 2: he starts sending me writing. So I'm on a script consultant.
Speaker 2: I'm a technical consultant. I'm doing all the things. And
Speaker 2: basically I would tell him this, you're looking for this
Speaker 2: character to be this from what I read, I would
Speaker 2: hold his standard up. You say, he's this guy, he's
Speaker 2: a shot caller. Well, if you have these guys under
Speaker 2: here always saying shit to him, he can't be a
Speaker 2: shot caller. They will diminish him. A shot caller would.
Speaker 2: If one guy just says one thing, he's gotta slam
Speaker 2: him down, so all the other ones look and say,
Speaker 2: oh shah, we don't want to do that, and fuck you,
Speaker 2: you're stupid for trying. Like I was trying to show
Speaker 2: him the dynamics of it, which he had no feel for.
Speaker 2: He's a sweet guy from the world, you know, England,
Speaker 2: so it's a great filmmaker. But so I would do.
Speaker 2: I would tell him, here's the standard you've said that
Speaker 2: you want for him, and these things don't meet that standard.
Speaker 2: You have to have these characters around to be this,
Speaker 2: and he would make all these such an adjustment. And
Speaker 2: then when technically one of the third bank robbery, he
Speaker 2: Sony came back and said, does it have to be
Speaker 2: a bank robbery where they have two? And he said,
Speaker 2: I don't know, what do you think, Joe? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'll give you a bank robbery that I'll give you
Speaker 2: a robbery of a post office that I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: And that way, if it ever, if I ever backslide,
Speaker 2: I won't go be able to rob that because it'll
Speaker 2: be the robbery that I wanted to do. So I actually,
Speaker 2: let's have rob a post office, and they did. He
Speaker 2: gave me the gig to play the guard who ends
Speaker 2: up getting shot in that by Jamie Fox. I actually
Speaker 2: was I actually played that role.
Speaker 1: Yeah fantastic. So uh and you you ended up being fan.
Speaker 1: I mean people who have listened to get the money
Speaker 1: and run one of the things they wanted to know
Speaker 1: about baby Drivers. You ended up being a fan of
Speaker 1: the final product absolutely, Like is there a movie that
Speaker 1: just has gotten the heist totally wrong? Like one that's
Speaker 1: laughable in how it understands bank robbery.
Speaker 2: Johnny Depp and Public Enemies, and he makes it look
Speaker 2: on sexy. He comes over the counter. He's got his
Speaker 2: coat flint said Fedora on he's got his Tommy gun
Speaker 2: like and then that looks like like that looks like
Speaker 2: it could be a robbery. Closer robbery would look like
Speaker 2: I do remember I was watching that movie Public Enemies,
Speaker 2: and Johnny Depp jumps over that counter, so it's a
Speaker 2: famous scene. Puts one hand over the counter, hops over.
Speaker 2: He looks like a cape crusader because his coat's coming over.
Speaker 2: And I looked at that and I remember, I swear
Speaker 2: to God this happened I was like, God, damn, that's
Speaker 2: so sexy. That's a sexy thing. And then I was like,
Speaker 2: wait a fucking minute, man, that was me. I was
Speaker 2: like thinking, like, man, it'd be cool to be a
Speaker 2: bank robber, and I'd forgotten for a split second that
Speaker 2: that was me, that I wore the trench coat at
Speaker 2: the Fedra I was a bank robber, because it was
Speaker 2: like so so far from my experience. Now, you know that,
Speaker 2: for a minute, I forgot that I actually owned that
Speaker 2: fucking status, that fucking moment, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. So one of the things in Get
Speaker 1: the Money and Run is you capture so beautifully and frighteningly, frankly,
Speaker 1: the rage that you used, you harnessed and kind of
Speaker 1: recreated is the superpower.
Speaker 2: What I'm wondering is.
Speaker 1: Does that rage ever surface today?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's not like that. I'm not young
Speaker 2: and dumb and full of cum kind of thing like you.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I don't have that impulsivity. I have
Speaker 2: a family. You know, I think I've made too many
Speaker 2: choices about my future. I've had to invest a lot
Speaker 2: of times again, things done so that another thing could happened,
Speaker 2: or that thing could come to fruition and open up
Speaker 2: door like i've I've already danced with my posterity well
Speaker 2: for many, many years, and I made a commitment to
Speaker 2: try and be a better human being. So I did
Speaker 2: a lot of work on my soyle so that that unadulterated, pristine,
Speaker 2: crystal clear diamond fucking sharp rage doesn't exist in me
Speaker 2: an expression anymore. What it did, it became diffuse, And
Speaker 2: so I eat my feelings because I know one thing.
Speaker 2: My body knows one thing and will never forget this.
Speaker 2: My body never forgets that if someone was coming to me,
Speaker 2: I'd go right at them just I knew that. I
Speaker 2: don't care. I'm fearless. I'm gonna go at you. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna try and take out your I'm gonna stab you,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna imprison you have to like be this person.
Speaker 2: My body doesn't forget all the years that I spent
Speaker 2: committeing violence, treachery, innocent. So I know there's a lot
Speaker 2: of things that I know it can do. It knows
Speaker 2: it can do and has done. So what what that
Speaker 2: means is I came out into a world where I
Speaker 2: can't do that, and my body has to live with that.
Speaker 2: If I've described it as imagine you come into the community.
Speaker 2: You're driving with your nice fast car that can go,
Speaker 2: that's already gone like one hundred and sixty on the Autobahn,
Speaker 2: and you're driving this community. It's like, uh uh, the
Speaker 2: cops pull you over. You got to park that right here.
Speaker 2: You can't drive that. We all take up these really small,
Speaker 2: slow battery powered like golf cart, slow things like a
Speaker 2: little bus. That's how we all travel, or we walk.
Speaker 2: And you know you have speed right there, and these
Speaker 2: roads could handle your speed, but you have to do
Speaker 2: what everyone else does. You got to line up in
Speaker 2: a line and get these slow moving things that everybody
Speaker 2: else does. That's what it feels like to be me,
Speaker 2: because I was able to once just plow through with
Speaker 2: this power of mine drive and by my rage. So
Speaker 2: that has made it hard on me at several moments
Speaker 2: in time when my body was like, Joe, we can
Speaker 2: do this, let's do let's let's do this, and I
Speaker 2: had to override it with my morality. Now you know,
Speaker 2: I have to say I don't do that. Well, this
Speaker 2: thing comes up and revs so high in me, and
Speaker 2: it takes so much to shove that shit down just.
Speaker 2: I'm talking a handful of times over the twenty nine
Speaker 2: years I've been out, but it's been a handful of times.
Speaker 2: It's been the dark knight of the soul where I
Speaker 2: was like fuck and by the time it was over,
Speaker 2: I just fucking just. I did not treat myself. I
Speaker 2: was like, live with shame, embarrassment, I felt like a
Speaker 2: coward whatever. And so over the years, I feel like
Speaker 2: I've just eaten my feet. I think that the eighty
Speaker 2: pounds overweight I am is because there's five men walking
Speaker 2: around who don't have any holes in them. That's why
Speaker 2: I have eighty pounds on me. And I feel like
Speaker 2: I feel like I can't do what I used to
Speaker 2: do and feel the feel, the agency and the power
Speaker 2: of that because I've committed to this life. That said,
Speaker 2: there is a way, you know, pressure busts of pipe.
Speaker 2: So I have to get rid of that somehow. So
Speaker 2: I write some really dark fucking crime stories and I
Speaker 2: commit a lot of mayhem to my characters on the
Speaker 2: page a lot. And like I said, I'm baroque fucking shit, primitive,
Speaker 2: fucking shit, medieval all day long. I'm one of the
Speaker 2: scenes in Queen of the South is in the episode.
Speaker 2: The episode I wrote was that that there's a scene
Speaker 2: that I wrote was at the there's just one a
Speaker 2: guy who was like a Luca Brozi guy. He goes
Speaker 2: out to kill someone, he gets killed, and his boss
Speaker 2: who sent him out to kill the enemy, ends up
Speaker 2: with the enemy who survived, and he's offering them tacos,
Speaker 2: and our guy scared, like, oh shit, I sent my
Speaker 2: Luca Bronzi. I don't know where my Luca Bronzi is.
Speaker 2: And this guy now is alive and he's trying to
Speaker 2: be friendly to me. What the fuck is this? Well,
Speaker 2: the focos he's giving him. When he looks at the
Speaker 2: spit through the clouds and the scenes that he's making
Speaker 2: them shaving out the got an different some meat for him,
Speaker 2: he realizes that that thing has boots on it and
Speaker 2: it's his Luca Bronzi's is on the spit, spinty, and
Speaker 2: they're shaving his fresh off him. So that's where my
Speaker 2: rage goes. My rage goes to scenes like this that
Speaker 2: are really dark and terrible and violent and vulgar and
Speaker 2: scary and full of horror and terror. But also, you know,
Speaker 2: I write comedy stuff, but.
Speaker 1: So Joe let me ask the bank robberies in h
Speaker 1: I mean, we go through probably half a dozen of
Speaker 1: them and get the money and run, and they just
Speaker 1: they do seem like capers. And there's a fun aspect
Speaker 1: in part because of the way you tell it. You know,
Speaker 1: you're always kind of laughing, obviously in retrospect, but it
Speaker 1: seems almost like it was a golden age of bank robbery.
Speaker 1: At the technology was, in comparison, really low tech. I mean,
Speaker 1: could you ever be a bank robber of the same
Speaker 1: accomplishment today given what's out there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, I mean the reason it was easy for
Speaker 2: me is there was very little bandit glass, right, very
Speaker 2: little all right. I may have walked into one bank
Speaker 2: or two in all that fourteen months I was rubbing
Speaker 2: banks in the late eighties in which that was up
Speaker 2: and I had to walk out there is so now
Speaker 2: you go into most of them and they have that, right,
Speaker 2: that's just that's a regular thing. So no, that you
Speaker 2: know at the counter is not as as as easy
Speaker 2: as it was, though there are still a lot of
Speaker 2: banks that don't have it, so people are still out
Speaker 2: there robbing it that way. But it was a golden
Speaker 2: age in la like that when I came out, I
Speaker 2: would sometimes be in banks. I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: ain't trying to row. I would never rob. Even if
Speaker 2: I got mad and said fuck it, I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: do that. I'm going to go to crime, it would
Speaker 2: not be the row banks. So let me ask you.
Speaker 1: I mean, another thing was as a successful bank robber,
Speaker 1: you were had pockets full of cash, and everybody around you,
Speaker 1: your family, your dad, your brother, stepmother, at some point
Speaker 1: they almost have known that you were that you weren't
Speaker 1: a cook at Crocodile Cafe in Pasadena.
Speaker 2: Well, by the way I covered that was remember I
Speaker 2: was a fugitive in Mexico before I got arrested the
Speaker 2: first time, and so I told them I hoped that
Speaker 2: with some really interesting people there, I committed a couple
Speaker 2: of big time crimes and they held my money for
Speaker 2: me and I'm living off that. That's all you need
Speaker 2: to know, and nobody said anything, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, a very central point of get the money
Speaker 1: and run. It's bookended by your relationship with your father.
Speaker 1: At the beginning, the abusive relationship, and at the end
Speaker 1: he's sitting by the door of I guess your bedroom,
Speaker 1: not letting you out. It's the last episode that we
Speaker 1: call fatal peril. What is your relationship with your father?
Speaker 2: Like now? So, my dad's eighty nobody, six or four
Speaker 2: this year, and he is alone. He lives in Ourhambra.
Speaker 2: We we get along really good. I talked to him
Speaker 2: three times a week, like I talked to him last night.
Speaker 2: We were laughing our asson. He's funny, he's got a
Speaker 2: good sense of humor. It's about him. So we take
Speaker 2: care of him. We love him. My brother calls him
Speaker 2: three nights a week. I call him three nights a week.
Speaker 2: I don't know very many sons who are as close
Speaker 2: to their father as my father and I are. And
Speaker 2: we have a fucking terrible history, and so we overcame
Speaker 2: so much. My dad gets so much love. It's really simple.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you how it is. We look at it
Speaker 2: this way, my brother and I. My mother loved my dad.
Speaker 2: We love my mother. We love and respect the death
Speaker 2: the memory of my dead mother. My mother saw something
Speaker 2: in my father that my brother and I know is
Speaker 2: at bottom of My Dad's a sweet man. He was
Speaker 2: harassed by his demons, and he fucked up, and he
Speaker 2: didn't fuck up. Twenty four to seven he just fucked
Speaker 2: up in cinematic style several times a year, really bad.
Speaker 2: But he gave us a lot of good. We are artists,
Speaker 2: my brother's a musician, I'm a writer, I'm a thinker.
Speaker 2: I own all the things I am because of my dad,
Speaker 2: and he worked hard to give us a lot of
Speaker 2: advantages that we have. We're in private schools. When we
Speaker 2: were on like, we are who we are and we
Speaker 2: are loving people as we are. And I was able
Speaker 2: to heal myself because excuse of my dad gave me.
Speaker 2: So we look at it this way, Dad, on your
Speaker 2: this is your endgame, on your way out, We're just
Speaker 2: gonna love you on the way out of the way.
Speaker 2: Mommy is not here to love you. Our mommy is
Speaker 2: not here to love you. And so that's how we
Speaker 2: that's our ethos. And now we just talk all the
Speaker 2: good things about his life that we love about him.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I hated the man so much in
Speaker 1: episodes one and two. It was crazy that that ability
Speaker 1: to forgive is just I guess one of the miracles
Speaker 1: of get the money and run. It's crazy the way
Speaker 1: that happens. One thing that somebody wanted to know about
Speaker 1: the prison hierarchy. How were you as a bank robber
Speaker 1: considered in prison.
Speaker 2: A bank robbery When I got there, it was pretty
Speaker 2: high on the hierarchy because it's violent crime and some
Speaker 2: money crime. Low crimes are like, you know, obviously sex
Speaker 2: trafficking across lines because I was a federal prisoner. Drug
Speaker 2: crimes are low, you know, but we are considered violent
Speaker 2: men who took our agency into a place, took over
Speaker 2: an institution, got the money. Like there's there's some something
Speaker 2: to it, and I believe part of it. Most of
Speaker 2: the guys that matter where bank robbers are a bunch
Speaker 2: of lames. They had just graduated from selling drugs, so
Speaker 2: now they got so fucked up on their own product.
Speaker 2: They now need to go make money. So they started
Speaker 2: robbing banks, and they were you know, and they got
Speaker 2: caught after four or five or three or two whatever.
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I didn't. I didn't have the respect for
Speaker 2: bank rubbers a lot of the society does, because I
Speaker 2: feel like society has a sense of the bank rubber
Speaker 2: and a more a more Hollywood sort of view of it,
Speaker 2: which which is which is also more mythologized, meaning in
Speaker 2: the depression, those bank rubber the Depression era bank robbers.
Speaker 2: They were folk heroes. Yeah, they were folk heroes, right,
Speaker 2: they were. They were the guys who would go into
Speaker 2: a bank like baby like a babyface Nelson. He would
Speaker 2: go into the banks and banks in those days obviously
Speaker 2: there's nothing digital, nothing, nothing like that copied. So he
Speaker 2: would go into banks and he would not only rob them,
Speaker 2: he would burn the files that had all the mortgages
Speaker 2: for the farmers. So then he would say, fuck you,
Speaker 2: you've been fucking over everyone. We're gonna like, we're not
Speaker 2: only robbing you for us to make money, we're robbing
Speaker 2: you because it's a social fucking thing we're doing. Now.
Speaker 2: The other thing that is important about that, to make
Speaker 2: the myth grow larger, is every Hollywood hunk since then
Speaker 2: has played a bank rubber. They've made it so like
Speaker 2: not even Hollywood hunks have to do it. They got
Speaker 2: that little kid who played Mark Zuckerberg. They had him
Speaker 2: may a bank robber. They had on the Ansari like
Speaker 2: comic little Towrpy nerdy dudes play. They have little girls
Speaker 2: robbing banks like you used to be. Once upon a
Speaker 2: time it was like, you know, like al Pacino and
Speaker 2: de Niro and Robert Radford and Paul new and those
Speaker 2: are the bank robbers, right, But no, now they have
Speaker 2: everybody played so and they come up with highschovies all
Speaker 2: day long. But there was a time when I think
Speaker 2: that people thought bank robbery was resistance crime, and they
Speaker 2: had the mythology the folklore of the depression era thing,
Speaker 2: and I think that lingered. By the time I got
Speaker 2: there in the late eighties, there were still sort of like,
Speaker 2: we are the outlaw, we are the epitome of the outlaw.
Speaker 2: So then the hierarchy bank robbers had like, you know,
Speaker 2: made you say you're a bank rubber, like, oh, okay, cool,
Speaker 2: that's a respectable fucking crime. That's how I look at
Speaker 2: That's what I think. I mean, I didn't feel like
Speaker 2: that was how I was treated, you know, like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: bank robber.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, last question, just I want you
Speaker 1: to say something about your book. It got wonderful reviews,
Speaker 1: A great accomplish Schmidt. You know, you turn yourself, as
Speaker 1: you said, into a good person. You also turn yourself
Speaker 1: into a writer. How hard was that?
Speaker 2: I was disciplined. That was actually one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that could change my life because one of the things
Speaker 2: my dad taught me. My dad taught himself Greek and Hebrew. Right,
Speaker 2: my dad was disciplined. He has a disciplined mind, and
Speaker 2: he would put in the rigger. My brother taught himself
Speaker 2: piano and guitar, never took lessons. And so while I
Speaker 2: was in prison for the last two and a half years,
Speaker 2: every day I was writing, and every day I was
Speaker 2: reading good writers, and I would highlight their words, and
Speaker 2: then I would copy paragraphs down hole, you know, read copy,
Speaker 2: read copy, and follow their thinking and follow their ideas
Speaker 2: the flow. If it has something in the sentence that
Speaker 2: was surprising, that was provocative, that was new a word,
Speaker 2: a novel word, I would write it. And because I
Speaker 2: wanted to be influenced by different minds that were where
Speaker 2: there were sharp that I found interesting to me. So
Speaker 2: I did that. I've sat with many writer friends of
Speaker 2: mine and they were they were also the same. I
Speaker 2: wish I had that kind of time, like solitary gave
Speaker 2: me time, and prison gave me time to sit there
Speaker 2: for hours and do the thing that writers want to do,
Speaker 2: which is we want to just swim and live and
Speaker 2: seem in solitary. I remember I got picked up for
Speaker 2: solitary a little bit later for stabbing a man in prison,
Speaker 2: and I was in there for three months on investigation.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I made it work for me. When I
Speaker 2: would get up make my bed, I would just write.
Speaker 2: I just didn't have to listen anyone, didn't have talked
Speaker 2: to anyone, and I had the luxury of like being
Speaker 2: fed three times a day, doing an ava wreck, showering
Speaker 2: only three times a week. It was It wasn't that
Speaker 2: hard to do it. It was just a lot of work.
Speaker 2: And fortunately for me, I was that kind of work
Speaker 2: when you're doing what you really want to be doing,
Speaker 2: feels like play. And so when you say how hard
Speaker 2: was it, it wasn't hard. I was having that was
Speaker 2: that was enjoyable. Ryan. The book was hard because I
Speaker 2: had to live a lot of PTSD. I didn't know
Speaker 2: what PTSD was at the time, and so I would
Speaker 2: go into these things like, oh, I'm going to write
Speaker 2: all these details for you guys, and then I would
Speaker 2: write them on I'd be sitting there afterwards, devastated. And
Speaker 2: that was the hard part, was technically writing the traumatic
Speaker 2: scenes in my memoir.
Speaker 1: You make solitary confinement sound like a National Endowment for
Speaker 1: the arts grant.
Speaker 2: That's interesting you say that, because obviously the best solitary
Speaker 2: was the best thing that ever happened to me, solitary conversy.
Speaker 2: And this is where paradox is alive. Solitary was the
Speaker 2: worst thing that ever happened to me. I'm still fucked
Speaker 2: up psychologically for that. I saved nightmares periodically because of that.
Speaker 2: I still carry so much fucking fractured shit because of that,
Speaker 2: because of the way I was treated, handcuffed by guards,
Speaker 2: beaten by guard like that kind of stuff that happens.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do with that? But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, it created an occasion for me to really
Speaker 2: experienced myself and experience they have an experience that profoundly,
Speaker 2: profoundly sharpened by vision and sparked my imagination so that I,
Speaker 2: like this, was awakened to the new me. And so
Speaker 2: that's who's here. And that happened because of a hallucination
Speaker 2: in solitary confinement.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's an amazing moment staring at that wall and
Speaker 1: starting to hallucinate. And you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: I think about you, Joe, is that you put us
Speaker 1: there and not that I could necessarily feel what you felt,
Speaker 1: but I could imagine staring at that wall and kind
Speaker 1: of going crazy, and I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: real talents that you have as a writer but also
Speaker 1: as a storyteller, and I hope that Get the Money
Speaker 1: and Run really captures that. I think it does, so Joe,
Speaker 1: thanks so much much for spending the time with us.
Speaker 2: Thanks man, great m