Speaker 1: The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
Speaker 1: It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
Speaker 1: it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
Speaker 1: on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
Speaker 1: buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
Speaker 1: see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
Speaker 1: I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
Speaker 1: you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
Speaker 1: The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
Speaker 1: end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
Speaker 1: the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour. They're available
Speaker 1: at the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour or
Speaker 1: at your local outlet in your region. My name is
Speaker 1: Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is joy. I
Speaker 1: talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
Speaker 1: When I was doing late night television, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite guests was a gentleman that he was a kid
Speaker 1: at the time. His name is DJ Qualls. His name
Speaker 1: is still DJ Qualls. He's not a kid anymore. He's
Speaker 1: growing up to be one of the most impressive, lovely
Speaker 1: men I've talked to in a while.
Speaker 2: Please enjoy this. Hello, Hello, Hey dude, how are you?
Speaker 2: I am so happy to see you. I can't tell
Speaker 2: you I'm to see you.
Speaker 1: This is great. It's very happy for me. I haven't
Speaker 1: talked you know. I was just trying to figure out
Speaker 1: I haven't talked to you properly. I think in about
Speaker 1: ten years.
Speaker 3: It's been ten years since I saw you.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, you were lovely when I came out
Speaker 4: in two twenty twenty. Messaged me and we chatted. But
Speaker 4: I haven't seen you in forever. Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 4: It was funny.
Speaker 1: I remember because you were like you were taking a
Speaker 1: little hate for becoming for coming out. This is like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is this nineteen six? Because these are
Speaker 1: something in this correct, That's the thing.
Speaker 4: The thing is, it's not surprising though, because I you know,
Speaker 4: I'm from the South, I understand, I understand the world.
Speaker 4: But it also was a point in my life where nothing,
Speaker 4: none of that felt like anything. It just after a
Speaker 4: while you're like, it doesn't matter to me, none of
Speaker 4: this really matters, And and a lot of that spilled
Speaker 4: over into how I feel about my career, my relationship
Speaker 4: to Hollywood, Like it really was this time of my life,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, I think a lot of this is
Speaker 4: the source of my unhappiness, and I don't want to
Speaker 4: do this anymore.
Speaker 1: I did the same thing, same for me. Yeah, dude, I.
Speaker 3: Thought about you during this. You were like, what's the
Speaker 3: goal of this?
Speaker 4: To come and be miserable like a lot of people
Speaker 4: in this industry are, And I'm like.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 4: But the thing is, I'm not good with transitions, like
Speaker 4: and change is hard for me, Like I still have
Speaker 4: a Hotmail account and so like I it's very hard
Speaker 4: for me, Like I now have I replaced my twenty
Speaker 4: two year old car this last week because it was dying.
Speaker 4: And but and now I have a car that I'm
Speaker 4: afraid of, Like it's there are no buttons on it,
Speaker 4: it's all computer screen.
Speaker 3: But it's really it's not. It's the change of things.
Speaker 4: Like I get really nostalgic and overly connected to things.
Speaker 4: And I think what I was really dragging behind me
Speaker 4: was this childhood idea of what Hollywood would be like
Speaker 4: and people loving me, And you get addicted to that
Speaker 4: until one day I realized I was like the people
Speaker 4: making these choices whether or not to validate me or
Speaker 4: fulfill my dreams or really provide me with. What I
Speaker 4: was attaching myself worth to was we're nbas from Harvard,
Speaker 4: like these people think they're creatives. And then I really
Speaker 4: started seeing things. And here's the thing. It's not that
Speaker 4: I'm never going to do this again. I'm still doing it,
Speaker 4: but I don't have the same emotional connection to it.
Speaker 4: I show up every day like it's my opus and
Speaker 4: I'm still doing it. But I don't care if you
Speaker 4: don't want me to do your project, and I'm not
Speaker 4: going to jump through a thousand hoops for you because
Speaker 4: I've proven myself.
Speaker 1: Right, I go. I was talking to Tom Lennon about
Speaker 1: this really recently because I got asked to do a
Speaker 1: chemistry read on some kind of thing that Hulu were making,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, what do you mean? No? Is
Speaker 1: that it's not a chemistry read? You want to audition me?
Speaker 1: It's a purpley. I'm not doing that's right and uh
Speaker 1: And they said, well if you don't, if you don't
Speaker 1: do the chemistry read, they're not going to offer you
Speaker 1: the part, and I'm like, okay, that's okay, you don't
Speaker 1: have to offer me the part. I'll be all right,
Speaker 1: you'll be all right, you should be great. I'm just
Speaker 1: not I'm not going to do that for you. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to create a power dynamic which allows you
Speaker 1: to treat me like that. It's not it's not gonna happen. No,
Speaker 1: And I get that sometimes you have to do that.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people would do a chemistry
Speaker 1: read but Tom in facts and good for them. Yeah, fine,
Speaker 1: but you have to do was write for you? I
Speaker 1: really do.
Speaker 3: I mean I I feel that as well.
Speaker 1: I remember talking to you back in the day and
Speaker 1: we've talked backstage a little bit too, and we didn't
Speaker 1: talk anything about you coming out. I don't remember having
Speaker 1: any conversations about you worrying about coming out. We talked
Speaker 1: about unhappiness and about it squirming in Hollywood and not
Speaker 1: quite knowing how to make it because look, I don't
Speaker 1: come from show business people either. I don't come from
Speaker 1: that world. And I had an idea about it too,
Speaker 1: that when you see behind the curtain, it's a little different.
Speaker 3: It is, and then you realize that their aspects. Here's
Speaker 3: the thing.
Speaker 4: It's given me so much like my love home, but
Speaker 4: it's been over the world. And being famous is fucking awesome.
Speaker 4: I love it because people are happy that you're there.
Speaker 4: What a great gift to you, and so so many
Speaker 4: beautiful things. But the thing is, after you play it
Speaker 4: for a while, the person who doesn't get absorbed by
Speaker 4: it or into it. For me, knows when to get
Speaker 4: the hell out and not doing this anymore and getting
Speaker 4: myself worth caught up minute, and that was a big
Speaker 4: thing to me. And so by the time I worked
Speaker 4: around coming out like I'd worked so easily for twenty
Speaker 4: for almost twenty years, and then it got hard. All
Speaker 4: of a sudden, things that I would be offered I
Speaker 4: was asking to read for and I'm like, well, I'm
Speaker 4: not doing that because I've already done that. But then
Speaker 4: it it's And then I looked around and realized that
Speaker 4: I was not in a relationship. I don't know many
Speaker 4: people because I just moved back from Canada. I've been shooting.
Speaker 4: I was on a man in the high Castle there
Speaker 4: and la is so transient and this is where I lived.
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't know anybody, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: so I've given away all of that, and yes, I've
Speaker 4: gotten so much from it, but the fundamentals, like going
Speaker 4: to they're not going to be here. I'm clearly not
Speaker 4: going to be here when I need them. Or it's
Speaker 4: so easy for the system to turn its back on you.
Speaker 4: And so I was like, well, I want to build
Speaker 4: something for myself. And I started when I started thinking
Speaker 4: like that, it the shock of not being chosen were
Speaker 4: off pretty quick. Yeah, But then I started saying little
Speaker 4: insidious things like I was up for a job.
Speaker 1: Girl.
Speaker 4: Mordatorio did this Netflix thing, this cabinet of curiosities, and
Speaker 4: he told them to offer it to me and they
Speaker 4: asked me to read for it, and I said no,
Speaker 4: But they did it to get me cheaper, to make
Speaker 4: me think.
Speaker 1: There was a bunch of other people in the mix.
Speaker 1: That is so gross. Yeah, but you know a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff now is difficult. Look, things change. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's better or worse. But there was a time,
Speaker 1: I think in Hollywood where no, these executives have always
Speaker 1: been there. There's always been the soulless money people executive,
Speaker 1: but smattered amongst them were executives who really cared who
Speaker 1: really people that really gave a shit about it and
Speaker 1: really wanted to be involved and wanted to make good
Speaker 1: stuff and really gave They would never use the word
Speaker 1: product about what they were making. They would and and
Speaker 1: I think they probably still exist, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: less of them in the mix now, and I think
Speaker 1: it shows on what work is around and what and
Speaker 1: what is getting made as well. I mean even just
Speaker 1: as a consumer of entertainment, I'm like, we got I
Speaker 1: got five hundred channels of fuck you, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, people can feel it, People can really feel
Speaker 4: it because I am a fan first and foremost, Like
Speaker 4: I love the magic of this and I don't find
Speaker 4: a lot of magic anymore. And I don't think it's
Speaker 4: because I'm so jaded, because I worked very hard to
Speaker 4: still have clear eyes about things.
Speaker 1: I think I was worked with a cinematographer called Join
Speaker 1: the Boorman. He's a great cinematographer, and we were taking
Speaker 1: a shot on a film that we were doing, and
Speaker 1: we got this show. It was like, it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a kind of like running into the ocean thing,
Speaker 1: and it was okay. It was an okay shot, and
Speaker 1: it was getting the late in the day and everyone
Speaker 1: was a bit worried about time. And I said, did
Speaker 1: we get it?
Speaker 2: John?
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, we got it. It's okay. And
Speaker 1: I went, what are you saying? And he went, it's okay.
Speaker 1: I said, he said, but is okay? I said, well
Speaker 1: anybody notice? He said, well we don't. No, it's only
Speaker 1: we could have done better, and and he fail. And
Speaker 1: I feel this too that if you don't do your
Speaker 1: I mean, you can get away with it. You can
Speaker 1: make fucking Emily in Paris and everybody will be fine.
Speaker 1: But it's awful.
Speaker 3: It's it's awful.
Speaker 1: It's soulless, and you should make find a way to
Speaker 1: you don't have to make pride and prejudice again. But
Speaker 1: somebody can write something.
Speaker 4: But what makes it worse is when you beat your
Speaker 4: brains out begging people for the right to make okay.
Speaker 4: And that's when I was like, what am I doing?
Speaker 4: Like I was in hustle, and followed I've gotten to
Speaker 4: do so many amazing things and they came easily because
Speaker 4: I was trusted and I was trusted by other artists,
Speaker 4: and so then I started, I mean, it was this
Speaker 4: took two years. It took two years of grieving sort
Speaker 4: of like not knowing I was grieving because my life
Speaker 4: was changing.
Speaker 3: How I identified was not there anymore.
Speaker 1: Did you ever think you were straight? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: no no, no, I know that right, so you weren't really,
Speaker 1: I mean you knew you were, right, I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like you were.
Speaker 4: No. Here's but here's I knew that I was gay
Speaker 4: since I was nineteen years old. And they're only related
Speaker 4: in the fact that when I realized that I'd been
Speaker 4: given my life to something that couldn't love me back,
Speaker 4: when I really realized that in the sort of tangible terms,
Speaker 4: that's when I realized, well, I've also sold this away,
Speaker 4: this part, this part of myself away or I mean,
Speaker 4: I don't think I necessarily misled anybody. But here's the thing.
Speaker 4: At my very first press junket, the executive producer who
Speaker 4: was a massive director from the eighties, told another actor
Speaker 4: he almost didn't hire him because he thought he was
Speaker 4: a faggot. And those and that taught me in the
Speaker 4: year two thousand, everything I needed to know about Hollywood
Speaker 4: and if I wanted this, shut my mouth. And that
Speaker 4: is the truth, and that that existed until a few
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 3: This is New Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean I've fared. I've heared slurs like that used
Speaker 1: around as well. But it the idea that you would
Speaker 1: say I wouldn't hire someone because I mean, that's but
Speaker 1: it's the old school boys boys club, right, You're so
Speaker 1: used to being able to do whatever the hell you want,
Speaker 1: and he was such a huge guy entertainment.
Speaker 4: But it really just taught me that if I want this,
Speaker 4: if this dream that I had since I was a child,
Speaker 4: I wanted to go after I had to. There's certain
Speaker 4: things that I just couldn't do, Like I couldn't take
Speaker 4: my boyfriend to the premiere the New Guy, Like it
Speaker 4: just wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 3: And then you get used to that. And I don't think.
Speaker 4: I don't think that I have any sort of damage
Speaker 4: from it, other than the fact that those were the
Speaker 4: choices that I made. I made them willingly. I stay
Speaker 4: behind every choice I've ever made because I made them.
Speaker 4: But the system was fucked. It was very odd. I
Speaker 4: made a movie in nineteen ninety nine. I love this movie.
Speaker 1: It totally flopped, but it was a movie called The
Speaker 1: Big Teas and the Big Te's. It was about competitive
Speaker 1: hairdressing and it was about a hairdresser from Scotland that
Speaker 1: came to La seeking this fame and for it basically
Speaker 1: and hijinks and SIU And I'm very proud of the movie.
Speaker 1: It's a very affectionate movie. It's a very sweet movie.
Speaker 1: And it got rated R because the lead character I
Speaker 1: played a gay man. Now, there were no gay sex
Speaker 1: scenes in it. There were no sex scenes in it.
Speaker 1: There was no there was no there was no violence
Speaker 1: or there was no hard language, there was nothing. It
Speaker 1: was just that the main character was unequivocally a gay
Speaker 1: man who was in a relationship with another man and
Speaker 1: they talked to each other and they had a sweet relationship,
Speaker 1: and there was It wasn't really part of the story.
Speaker 1: It was just who he was and they it was
Speaker 1: an R. If you look at this thing, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: even make PG. Thirteen today. And that's what he That's
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago. And that is not that hung ago,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: And the thing is, I'm fully cognizant of like how
Speaker 4: things are so much easier now, but Craig after like
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one, everything I was being offered was
Speaker 4: a who falls apart because he left his moisturizer at
Speaker 4: home and.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to do that, and so that's so
Speaker 5: fucking lame.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 4: But here's the But also I completely like I also realized,
Speaker 4: like I knew something told me when I first got here,
Speaker 4: Like I was in young Hollywood. Young Hollywood was very small.
Speaker 4: It was you know, we got jobs from going out.
Speaker 4: It was one bar one night. My friend got a
Speaker 4: gap campaign with Joni Mitchell from going to hide one night.
Speaker 4: That's what you did. But I saw people blowing through money,
Speaker 4: and I was like, this cannot sustain itself.
Speaker 3: This won't sustain itself.
Speaker 4: So I started putting like during during note like after
Speaker 4: nine to eleven, I spent three months chainsmoking on Ebaye
Speaker 4: buying gold bullion between two fifty and three fifty an ounce.
Speaker 4: We are from a very similar place. I know I
Speaker 4: spoke anymore, but I still have the gold.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I'm honestly, I'm a survivalist. I bought an airstream trailer
Speaker 1: on Facebook Marketplace. It's in my house and I'm like like,
Speaker 1: so it's at my house and I have it and
Speaker 1: I'm ready, and I'm like stalking it with things my
Speaker 1: wife's like, what are we stalking this form? Like you know,
Speaker 1: you never know, you never know.
Speaker 4: I think part of it also is that I don't
Speaker 4: be caught out, you know what I mean. And also,
Speaker 4: once you've been poor and you've been in a situation
Speaker 4: where you're no longer poor, you would think that you
Speaker 4: would feel relief, but you feel fear this is going
Speaker 4: to go wait for me and be taken for me.
Speaker 4: And then I saw so many of my peers lose
Speaker 4: it all by doing crazy stuff because there's no governance,
Speaker 4: there's no mentoring.
Speaker 1: Right well, when you get given you know, large sums
Speaker 1: of money and success and privilege when you're very young.
Speaker 1: Now that it honestly didn't really happen to me like that.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a slow burn. And but the
Speaker 1: but I saw it. I saw it a lot in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I saw it with euro Peers. I saw it when
Speaker 1: there would be people that would come through when it's
Speaker 1: what I was doing late night, there'd be people coming
Speaker 1: through and you would go, oh, man, you've got to
Speaker 1: try and get better people around you. This is going
Speaker 1: to go bad fast, and yeah, you saw it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some of them dead and some of them didn't
Speaker 1: you know. And some of them made it, some of
Speaker 1: them are dead. I mean, it's crazy. It's unsupervised in
Speaker 1: any way. There's no real structure to it. But at
Speaker 1: the same time I wonder because the you know, I
Speaker 1: look at the kind of freedom and the openness about
Speaker 1: certain areas of life now, and there are other parts
Speaker 1: of it where I kind of go, is this good?
Speaker 1: Like the amount of bit Middler said a thing years
Speaker 1: ago that I always kind of hung on to, which
Speaker 1: was she said, the saddest thing about success is finding
Speaker 1: out that not everyone is happy for you. And when
Speaker 1: that happens, and you find out when the and when
Speaker 1: social media came along, you find all of the people
Speaker 1: that are not happy for you are right the click. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're there and they're there to let you know. And
Speaker 1: I kind of I understand that. I feel shot in freud. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: I sometimes see people that I don't like do well
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, come on, I feel that. Do
Speaker 1: you soon feel it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Occasionally?
Speaker 4: But I fight it though, because me too, Yeah, because
Speaker 4: the difference is now, like I understand where it comes from,
Speaker 4: and I really do fight it, but of course I
Speaker 4: feel it. I said something the other day on my
Speaker 4: podcast that after I said it, I was like, that's
Speaker 4: not who you are at all.
Speaker 3: But I was caught up in this.
Speaker 4: Thing and there was a little thing still in my
Speaker 4: memory from another time ago, and I was like, oh man,
Speaker 4: and is disappointing when I do it. But also the
Speaker 4: thing is I realize that I am I'm not who
Speaker 4: I'm going to be, but I'm better than who I was,
Speaker 4: and so I do give myself. But also I'm an
Speaker 4: easy apologie. It's really easy you apologize, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think. I think once you start doing it agains easier.
Speaker 1: I go into a bed during late night. I have
Speaker 1: to apologize for stuff every night, and then I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, Okay, I find I'm sorry, And at
Speaker 1: first I meant it and then it didn't mean it
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 3: And then I can't apologize for stuff I don't mean.
Speaker 1: I apologize for stuff. I do mean stuff I don't mean.
Speaker 1: I could run for I could run for office. I
Speaker 1: could apologize for ending. I can say, I can say, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't me I was I wasn't me at all.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there. But the truth is that when I
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that thing when I really apologize.
Speaker 1: I know, and you know, and you can tell what
Speaker 1: I mean it and it's it's uh. But saying something
Speaker 1: that is kind of awkward or weird, it's just a
Speaker 1: human thing. It's not like, of course, you know, to
Speaker 1: be judged on one thing you say is a little
Speaker 1: it's a pretty odd standard to hold anyone to.
Speaker 4: Late night is a scary world because you can say
Speaker 4: something and like I remember early like you were the
Speaker 4: first ever late night hosts who didn't pre interview me.
Speaker 4: You did it once and we had such a good
Speaker 4: chat and we went so far off the scripted cards
Speaker 4: or whatever. You were like, we don't have to do
Speaker 4: this anymore. And then you go on and you feel
Speaker 4: safe and you feel like if you get into something,
Speaker 4: you'll be guided out of. As opposed to this thing
Speaker 4: you have to get back to these stories and you're like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I'm so far away from IM supposed
Speaker 4: to be, so you're never truly yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what I loved.
Speaker 4: But I couldn't imagine if I was on every night,
Speaker 4: the kind of stuff that would just randomly come out
Speaker 4: of my mouth.
Speaker 3: I'd probably be held responsible for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I took a few hits, no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. But the truth is, though, I think the
Speaker 1: atmosphere of them was a little less frantic because it
Speaker 1: wasn't about filling the space. You know, you didn't have
Speaker 1: to fill every website. You didn't have to post every
Speaker 1: ten seconds about some kind of outrage. So you know,
Speaker 1: if I say the wrong thing about something in twenty ten,
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough of a social media appetite for someone
Speaker 1: to go looking for it. But if it's no I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we could say this the wrong thing. You can say
Speaker 1: the wrong thing on a podcast right now and it's
Speaker 1: like be tabloid bang and then. But it's also gone
Speaker 1: like that, but then it's always available to be found digitally.
Speaker 1: No one has to go through and find the microfiche
Speaker 1: from you know. All they have to do just put
Speaker 1: your name out and then put it by date and
Speaker 1: it all comes up.
Speaker 4: But I do feel though, like on social media when
Speaker 4: people say things like I feel lucky that we came
Speaker 4: up in a time when somebody said something bad about us.
Speaker 1: It was in the New York Times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that really hurt because that was official the New
Speaker 4: York Times.
Speaker 3: One said about me human bookmark. DJ Quall shines.
Speaker 1: I go, you know what, when I go on when
Speaker 1: I first start The New York Post said, when I
Speaker 1: first started Late Night, he said, he's awful and it.
Speaker 3: Looks like he's wearing a wig.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, there's one thing I know about me,
Speaker 1: the only thing I know about me. I've got great
Speaker 1: fucking hair. That's the only thing I know about me.
Speaker 1: It looks like he's read. It's funny the things you go.
Speaker 1: I that really got to be like, fuck you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think when The New York Times says something bad
Speaker 1: about you, it's like when your parents go, I'm not angry,
Speaker 1: I'm disappointed. That's why he's like, ah.
Speaker 4: Yes, but really, I mean, can you after you've been
Speaker 4: dragged through the mainstream press when it was in print,
Speaker 4: can the Internet really hurt that that unless they're coming
Speaker 4: for your belongings or your family or your your reputation.
Speaker 1: I always felt like Hollywood and the Internet were very
Speaker 1: could be treated in the same way. Then Late Night
Speaker 1: told me that, I said, demystified me for me the
Speaker 1: following way. It's only dangerous if you take it. See,
Speaker 1: if you don't take it seriously, it's not really there,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like it's that Nietzschean thing. If
Speaker 1: you look into the void, fine, but remember the void
Speaker 1: looks into you. But if you don't look into the void,
Speaker 1: you can avoid it. And that's kind of how I
Speaker 1: feel about it. I refuse to participate in any interaction
Speaker 1: with media beyond what I think is acceptable for me.
Speaker 1: Like you were saying, like right at the beginning when
Speaker 1: you were talking about no, I still do it. I
Speaker 1: still love it. When I show up, I'll give you
Speaker 1: my best. But I'm not showing up unless I'm going
Speaker 1: to do that right. And I think it's it's funny
Speaker 1: now because I feel like that's part of the growing
Speaker 1: up process. And like even talking to you now, because
Speaker 1: when I met you, you're a young man. You were
Speaker 1: like in your in your mid twenties, you really were.
Speaker 6: You were a kid, and and it's like to see
Speaker 6: someone it's appropriate for someone to go from their mid
Speaker 6: twenties to the mid forties and to change their mind,
Speaker 6: you know, and go No.
Speaker 1: I feel differently about that now. I don't. I'm not
Speaker 1: a kid anymore. I'm not gonna And what I think
Speaker 1: happens is, especially if you get success when you're young,
Speaker 1: is that some people perhaps who are not as emotionally
Speaker 1: gifted as you, are emotionally diligent as you. They get stuck.
Speaker 1: You get stuck in what worked for you at that time,
Speaker 1: and you try and keep in that time, do you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, try and stay in the same place. But
Speaker 1: you can't. It's against the law of nature. You can't
Speaker 1: stay in the.
Speaker 3: Same Change is coming, and it's coming for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the time changes the law of God's mind,
Speaker 1: and the resistance to it is the source of all pain.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. I'm going to remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it too. So so let me ask
Speaker 1: you this, Was there any kind of because I've always
Speaker 1: thought of you as someone who has quite a kind
Speaker 1: of searching personality. You're quite a seeker. You're you look
Speaker 1: for reasons, you look for that you analyze both yourself
Speaker 1: and the situation around you. Right, I think that, I
Speaker 1: mean that's my impression of you. Was there some kind
Speaker 1: of spiritual or emotional switch that flipped when I'm not
Speaker 1: talking necessarily about coming out, but I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: change of attitude that you that you're talking about. I think.
Speaker 4: I think something happened to me where my my grandfather
Speaker 4: always told me this, when you don't know what to do,
Speaker 4: don't do anything until that doesn't work for you anymore,
Speaker 4: and you will know. And all of a sudden, just
Speaker 4: my heart how I felt about things, how I felt
Speaker 4: about myself. Also during the same time, I have problems
Speaker 4: looking in the mirror, and like some days I would
Speaker 4: have to, you know, brush my teeth with the medicine
Speaker 4: cabinet open. Just I had some days where I just
Speaker 4: couldn't with myself, and then it stopped happening, and just
Speaker 4: there were these gradual changes and where you released the care.
Speaker 4: And I had this really pivotal moment in the shower
Speaker 4: where I know where I do all my thinking in there.
Speaker 4: And so I got asked to grand marshall the Christmas
Speaker 4: preade in my little town where I was horrifically bullied,
Speaker 4: and this was not that long ago, and I had this,
Speaker 4: I played this little drama out in my head where
Speaker 4: I was like, you know what, I'll tell them the
Speaker 4: fuck off and this, this and this, and then I
Speaker 4: was like, what are you doing. You're holding sixteen year
Speaker 4: olds responsible for their behavior. You are a grown up.
Speaker 4: You've been carrying this your whole life and I'm pretty
Speaker 4: sure it's dictated a lot of your choices and behavior and.
Speaker 3: What that happened.
Speaker 4: You know, every and every sort of every thought, every
Speaker 4: mistake has been made before you by other people who
Speaker 4: are older than you, are on a different path. But
Speaker 4: you can never really in turn anything until it applies
Speaker 4: directly to you. And in that moment, I was like,
Speaker 4: this is I don't want to do this. And I
Speaker 4: released it, and I'd never released anything before, and I
Speaker 4: remember exactly how I felt. I felt so light, I
Speaker 4: could float out of that shower. And I don't feel
Speaker 4: it anymore. It's so crazy.
Speaker 1: It's great though, it's freedom. I always think the best
Speaker 1: revenge is no longer want revenge. That's the best revenge.
Speaker 1: You know, say revenge is a Dutch chef cold to know.
Speaker 1: The best revenge is no revenge at all. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to revenge. I forgive you, you said
Speaker 1: up a bench, goodbye.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But it also makes it intellectually makes no sense because
Speaker 4: I know for a fact that when you get successful,
Speaker 4: the people in your past misremember your dynamic.
Speaker 3: Yeah and so, and I know this, and I know.
Speaker 4: This at the same time when I'm thinking all of
Speaker 4: these things about being put upon.
Speaker 1: And that's very true. Then it just.
Speaker 4: Changed for me and it was all these things just
Speaker 4: started occurring to me, like and the cool thing about
Speaker 4: it was one of it was angry. None of it
Speaker 4: was like I've been used and whatever. Like, No, all
Speaker 4: the decisions were mine. I've done all these things, and
Speaker 4: I've certainly profited and had a great life from it.
Speaker 4: But I don't want to do this anymore in this way.
Speaker 4: And that's the thing. I know that I can do
Speaker 4: what I want to do, but just in the way
Speaker 4: that I want to do it, and if I don't,
Speaker 4: if I can't, then I won't.
Speaker 3: It's really that simple.
Speaker 1: It's really funny, is I had a thing happened to
Speaker 1: be in a similar nature right before my mom died.
Speaker 1: She was in a care home. She's very ill for
Speaker 1: a while and she was in this care home in Scotland,
Speaker 1: and when I got there, I was talking to her.
Speaker 1: She was cognitively she was fine, but she was physically,
Speaker 1: you know, falling to pieces and needed round the cloud care.
Speaker 1: And I was in this went to visitor in the
Speaker 1: care home and she said, let's change her name. Actually
Speaker 1: I'll edit this out. See missus lady who was mean
Speaker 1: to me when I was a kid is in here.
Speaker 1: And the lady the teacher who had beat me horrifically
Speaker 1: when I was a child, and that I like a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, stuff i'd come out of. It
Speaker 1: was in the care home and she was and she
Speaker 1: was suffering from Alzheimer's and she had very bad Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: And my mom said, you should go in and see her, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think so, man. I think I think whatever
Speaker 1: that was, it's gone, and I don't want to go
Speaker 1: in and lord it over this poor woman.
Speaker 3: Who is you get it from that pushed it down
Speaker 3: the stairs?
Speaker 1: Yea, the very definition of it, as well as Look,
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not a doctor. I don't know a
Speaker 1: law about Alzheimer's, but I know if I won't get there,
Speaker 1: she's going to have no fucking clue I have. So
Speaker 1: it's like, what the hell? But it's funny. My mom
Speaker 1: was like, no, you you you should go and give
Speaker 1: it a piece of your mind. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: think so, man, I think it's all right. It's an
Speaker 1: odd thing. It's the idea of holding on resentments. I
Speaker 1: used to think it was a kind of a Pollyanna
Speaker 1: thing to try and free yourself from that. But it's no,
Speaker 1: it's mental health, it really is. It's like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna hold on it to make you feel more comfortable,
Speaker 1: or because I was mad ten years ago. I'm not
Speaker 1: mad now. I mean, I can get to it, but
Speaker 1: I can release it, let it go.
Speaker 4: But we also do it from behavioral modeling too, because
Speaker 4: it's what people that came before us do, and we're
Speaker 4: told to always get the last word in get your
Speaker 4: own back. We're taught that, and it takes I think
Speaker 4: maybe if I didn't leave my community, then maybe I'm
Speaker 4: from a small town and I feel like being exposed
Speaker 4: to the rest of the world without sort of the
Speaker 4: net that reinforced that kind of behavior. Yeah, I think
Speaker 4: that helped me sort of get to where I am
Speaker 4: or where I'm going.
Speaker 1: Do we ever tempted to move back? Never?
Speaker 3: What's so great about not belonging is that you leave and.
Speaker 4: You don't have to go back because there was nothing
Speaker 4: there for me. My high school farms into the casket
Speaker 4: factory and the pajamas factory, and pajamas closed down.
Speaker 5: In a fucking country song, crack so fucking bleak. It's fantastic.
Speaker 5: I love yeah, but it's great. It's such a gothic picture.
Speaker 5: It's fabulous.
Speaker 1: I think that. I think also the freedom that comes
Speaker 1: from it's really it feels to me very therapeutic to
Speaker 1: laugh at at stuff like that as well. It kind
Speaker 1: of it doesn't I think. I'm sure that's why I
Speaker 1: ended up getting into working mostly in humor, because it's
Speaker 1: such a fabulous weapon to free yourself. Like you know,
Speaker 1: it's why I'm sure you know, whenever like the Hitler's
Speaker 1: or the Stalons or the demagogues come along, they always
Speaker 1: go after the humorists first. It's always you can't make
Speaker 1: jokes about that? And you go, well why not? You know, it's, uh,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can make jokes about that, and when
Speaker 1: when you But if you make jokes about things, you
Speaker 1: kind of emasculate it a little bit. You make it
Speaker 1: a figure of derision, do you know, a figure of fun.
Speaker 1: And you can do that. I think you can do
Speaker 1: it with your own history. When you laugh at your
Speaker 1: own history, it becomes less threatening somehow, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 4: I mean, that was my I think that was my
Speaker 4: security blanket or my armor when I moved out here
Speaker 4: and started doing work.
Speaker 3: He's an actor.
Speaker 4: It's like, I'm going to say all the things before
Speaker 4: you say them. You don't think I know what the
Speaker 4: merchandise I'm trying to move looks like you don't think
Speaker 4: I don't know myself. And I did it, and I
Speaker 4: did it, but I did it at a defense and
Speaker 4: now I'm able to do it with it. We're like, Yep,
Speaker 4: this is exactly what happened. This is what's going on.
Speaker 4: Like it seems different. The motives are different, right, because
Speaker 4: it's not scorn of pain?
Speaker 1: Do you do you feel that you know, like the
Speaker 1: movies that you were doing early in your career is
Speaker 1: hilarious movies, funny performances, and in these like kind of
Speaker 1: they're not slapstick movies, were quite broad humor movies, and
Speaker 1: people who people who love those movies sometimes, I think,
Speaker 1: not necessarily for you, but just for anyone. If you
Speaker 1: do a joke and somebody likes it and then they
Speaker 1: find out later that you're not like the joke you did,
Speaker 1: they feel a little betrayed by it.
Speaker 4: It is so crazy that you're saying that, because that's
Speaker 4: what I got as I've gone forward in my life.
Speaker 4: People meet me in public way before coming out, and
Speaker 4: people meet me and find out that I'm not that,
Speaker 4: and I try to explain to them, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 4: I made you think that on purpose because it's funny
Speaker 4: and it's for the movie. But I was I was
Speaker 4: the reason why you thought that was funny. But it's
Speaker 4: not who I am. And so many times people are like,
Speaker 4: after Hustle and Flow, everybody thought that I could make music.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of a little bit flattering that people
Speaker 4: think that I am the person that I play. But
Speaker 4: here's what I wanted to say to people. I played
Speaker 4: a virgin like twenty seven times. I've been famous like
Speaker 4: for like seven years at this point. You don't think
Speaker 4: I'm one person would have sex with me. I'm on television. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a.
Speaker 1: Very It's a very odd thing, though, because I think
Speaker 1: that people do get attached to it in a way.
Speaker 1: With John, I always thought, Look, the example is fairly recently,
Speaker 1: was what happened to Ellen DeGeneres that you know it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's not very nice. I don't know Ellen DeGeneres at all.
Speaker 1: I was on a show once or twice, I think,
Speaker 1: But you don't know someone because that you're on their show,
Speaker 1: you know that you're going to show you league. And
Speaker 1: she was perfectly nice. And then it turns out apparently
Speaker 1: she wasn't as nice backstage as she was on the show.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, uh, yeah, it's because she's doing her job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, she's pretended to be nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like everybody else in the Hollywood, you have to
Speaker 3: be also her job.
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 4: You can't go on a daytime talk show and bitch
Speaker 4: or talk about things that are going wrong.
Speaker 3: People don't want to see that.
Speaker 4: And and the thing is they also don't like I
Speaker 4: knew when I did Road Trip, my first movie, Todd Phillips,
Speaker 4: you know, he went on to direct The Hangover and
Speaker 4: The Joker.
Speaker 3: It was his first movie too.
Speaker 4: I realized that if I allowed myself to be the
Speaker 4: butt of the joke, my whole career was over. There's
Speaker 4: a kid from American Pie who was the butt of
Speaker 4: the joke and didn't work much beyond that. I knew,
Speaker 4: and also knew that we lost the movie. So I
Speaker 4: was like, there's a way to do this where I'm
Speaker 4: not being shot upon, that I'm being celebrated. And I
Speaker 4: still get to do all these things that you want
Speaker 4: me to do. I was really really aware of this,
Speaker 4: and as I as my career came along, I started
Speaker 4: to see, like, there's a role I could take that's enough,
Speaker 4: like that it's going to pay me this big amount
Speaker 4: of money so that I can go away and do
Speaker 4: something else. So I was a I think part of
Speaker 4: I think I've sort of benefited a lot from insecurity
Speaker 4: and from being sort of made fun of and all
Speaker 4: these things that were going on in my head because
Speaker 4: it allowed me to to first of all, insulate myself
Speaker 4: from my career, but also to be a good storyteller.
Speaker 4: I'm like, going for the joke and making fun of
Speaker 4: myself is first of all, not good for me in
Speaker 4: the long term, but also that's not what we're doing.
Speaker 4: We're telling we're telling hero stories and redemption stories, and it's.
Speaker 3: Not that, and it's too easy to go for that.
Speaker 4: And so I I think that I made some wise
Speaker 4: choices and knew one to take the money. The only
Speaker 4: time I didn't, I got offered Scary Movie two for
Speaker 4: two million dollars. I've never made that before or since,
Speaker 4: it's never been offered that. But my character had to
Speaker 4: suck his own dick. And my manager says, you're not
Speaker 4: the kind of guy that could do that and walk
Speaker 4: away from it. And he was right, I am not
Speaker 4: the vessel that can tell that story and recover from it,
Speaker 4: all right.
Speaker 1: That look just as go to say can you can
Speaker 1: you do that?
Speaker 4: Because nobody I tried, without try, every every man alive
Speaker 4: has tried.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It blew my mind the offer though, and and but
Speaker 4: then it was explained to me there are certain things
Speaker 4: that you have.
Speaker 3: You haven't set that up for yourself.
Speaker 4: You've not You've said you've gone the opposite route in
Speaker 4: like not being being the butt of it, and you're
Speaker 4: not the physical shell or the personality that you created
Speaker 4: that can endure that. And he was right, and so yeah,
Speaker 4: he yes, Brian Doggins, he's my manager. So when I
Speaker 4: first came out here, everybody tried to like Brad Gray.
Speaker 4: I met with him when he was at burl Stein
Speaker 4: Gray and they were like, we'll get you the young
Speaker 4: Hollywood cover of Vanity Fair and I'm like, how could
Speaker 4: you promise me that? And Brian he now runs artists. First,
Speaker 4: he had a handful of clients, him and Paul Young,
Speaker 4: and he was like I don't know.
Speaker 3: I can't get you that, but I think you're going
Speaker 3: to work.
Speaker 4: And I believed him because he wasn't lying to me,
Speaker 4: and he's been my only manager in my whole career.
Speaker 4: And so instead I did hustle and flow, which is
Speaker 4: a career highlight, and I'm.
Speaker 3: So happy that I did that.
Speaker 4: But I couldn't see around it because the money was
Speaker 4: my redneck mine was blown. I didn't realize that agent, manager,
Speaker 4: business manager, publicist, accountant, everybody. I didn't realize, you know,
Speaker 4: the half of it I didn't think about. That didn't
Speaker 4: occur to me because the number was so huge. And
Speaker 4: but and then something interesting happened as a result of that.
Speaker 4: My father found out and called me lazy, and we
Speaker 4: got into a massive fact.
Speaker 3: My father was the welder.
Speaker 4: It was a welder in that casket factory for forty
Speaker 4: years he was.
Speaker 3: And so you found this out.
Speaker 1: But look, if you're a welder in a casket factory,
Speaker 1: your kid gets off for two million dollars to suck
Speaker 1: on deck, and you know he's tried to do it anyway,
Speaker 1: kind of like, why what are you doing? Why would
Speaker 1: you do that?
Speaker 3: You're crazy?
Speaker 1: So given that you have I mean very clearly, you know,
Speaker 1: matured and and I'm very happy for you. You seem
Speaker 1: so much more inside your own skin as when we
Speaker 1: first met. Is that what what are you looking for?
Speaker 1: And I what what kind of like sails your boat?
Speaker 1: I love I love making things. I form a production company.
Speaker 4: I've we've finished production on our first movie, and we've
Speaker 4: done it ethically. We've hired people that we had no
Speaker 4: business getting crew members, like our production designer did La
Speaker 4: La Land, and everybody worked for three hundred dollars a day.
Speaker 4: And because they like what we're doing and we are
Speaker 4: we are not we're doing first dollar splits like we
Speaker 4: want to be ethical and make things that we want
Speaker 4: to make the way that we want to make them,
Speaker 4: so that feels good. The podcast. I have a podcast
Speaker 4: that's getting a footing. We've never done a dollar of advertising, nobody,
Speaker 4: I mean, but the word of mouth.
Speaker 3: We're going twenty percent month over month.
Speaker 4: And it's just my space to say exactly how I
Speaker 4: feel and what I want. And it's not formatted. We
Speaker 4: don't have guests yet, it's just me and my friend Guess.
Speaker 4: Guess is a terrible idea, I.
Speaker 3: Know, I fuck, it's their whole world right now, you
Speaker 3: know what to say, you'll be soon.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is about guests is that it's great
Speaker 1: when you get them. But everybody, and look, I remember
Speaker 1: this from Late Night and everybody I've talked to the
Speaker 1: do show is about guests. So it was like, you
Speaker 1: get a guest, and then you have to get another guest,
Speaker 1: and you have to get another guest, and it's always
Speaker 1: like people want to do the show, but you know,
Speaker 1: they got things to do. And I think if I
Speaker 1: was doing a podcast again and that might after this,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have any guests.
Speaker 4: It's freeing because first of all, it's well, it's on
Speaker 4: our own schedule and you can have the other things
Speaker 4: going on in the world and still find time to
Speaker 4: do this. But also just the therapy aspect of it,
Speaker 4: where you just get to talk about how you feel
Speaker 4: about stuff you know, and somebody will will bring up
Speaker 4: something that will reminds you of the story from twenty
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 3: So it's part in the nostalgia.
Speaker 4: It's about my life path and where I'm going, and
Speaker 4: her life path and where she's gone. She was the
Speaker 4: Coast of Jim Jefferies' podcast for five years and her
Speaker 4: and I split off and do and it's amazing.
Speaker 1: What is our name? Forgive me?
Speaker 4: Her name is Kelly Blackheart right. Our podcast is called
Speaker 4: locked In probably loaded with DJ and Kelly and it's
Speaker 4: just fun.
Speaker 1: It sounds great. So wait, Jeffries. I know Jim Jeffries,
Speaker 1: I've I've told him before a couple of times. News. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's good news that guy.
Speaker 4: I was a show with him called The Jit for
Speaker 4: two years and it was the best job I've ever
Speaker 4: had as an actor. I just loved it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a he's a great guy. He he uh.
Speaker 1: He's a pretty uh, pretty impressive standout comedian as well.
Speaker 1: He's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's great. Did you ever think about doing that?
Speaker 3: I did, I really did, and I have since.
Speaker 4: But I gotta tell you a part of it, I
Speaker 4: a part of me doesn't want to make dramatic me really,
Speaker 4: I'm not joking for me, and I know he wouldn't.
Speaker 4: But it's his realm and I'm the actor, and I
Speaker 4: just wait a minute, fuck him, mister has realm.
Speaker 1: I working that of guys that work in that realm, well,
Speaker 1: Jim Jefferies is a nice guy and a good stand
Speaker 1: I can own it. That's like saying, oh, yeah, Eric Clapton,
Speaker 1: I don't want to play the guitar because Eric craft
Speaker 1: and plays the guitars. Again, a lot of other people
Speaker 1: could play the guitar. Thank you. I love it. I
Speaker 1: think you would love doing stand up. I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 4: It's funny that you bring that up because I've mentioned
Speaker 4: it to several people recently that I've been thinking about
Speaker 4: it for a couple of years now.
Speaker 1: It's relating. It's time. I think what you should do
Speaker 1: is you should do stand up and in the background
Speaker 1: you should have these two ladies that you've got behind
Speaker 1: you right now, standing right there cracking. Yeah. I know
Speaker 1: they're great. Somebody did okay are you? Are you a
Speaker 1: big Tamy art collector? I love it.
Speaker 4: So that is so on days when I have had
Speaker 4: on like not good times on sets, so things aren't
Speaker 4: going right in my career, I have at I have
Speaker 4: divided my salary by the second and every minute I'm like,
Speaker 4: I just made this much toward a painting. So it's
Speaker 4: become my my It's the it's the love of my life.
Speaker 3: A creation kind of painting. Do you collect?
Speaker 4: So I started out collecting French paintings from like eighteen
Speaker 4: seventy to like nineteen forty. Okay, so, and because before
Speaker 4: the eighteen seventies pigments were not able to be synthetically produced,
Speaker 4: so like red was ground up corondam ruby and blue
Speaker 4: was ground up you know lapis I mean vice versa
Speaker 4: and so, and all of a sudden they made these
Speaker 4: lead based paints. And that's why people like the early
Speaker 4: the Impressionists and the post Impressionists they painted like a
Speaker 4: purple tree and you know, it's all these things because
Speaker 4: before that pigments were so expensive. You had to paint
Speaker 4: for the church or wealthy people because you couldn't afford
Speaker 4: to do otherwise you could just paint whatever the hell
Speaker 4: you wanted.
Speaker 3: So it was really the birth of you could do it.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with Are you familiar with the paint
Speaker 1: called Joe michell Raphaeli the Italian and he was he
Speaker 1: was in the first Impressionist exhibition and then he had
Speaker 1: a big fight with money. And I didn't like him
Speaker 1: because he would he would draw or he would paint
Speaker 1: in things that weren't at adyllic, you know, like he'd
Speaker 1: you know, the painting in the Loure of the absentthe drinkers.
Speaker 3: You know that sounds familiar to me.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful paint.
Speaker 3: I'll look it up.
Speaker 1: Well, RAPHAELI painted that. He painted imperfect images during the
Speaker 1: Impressionist fashion, and he got he got in a little trouble,
Speaker 1: but he patented a new form of paint as well.
Speaker 1: They made all the Impressionists angry. You got in a
Speaker 1: real trouble. The guy liked him, and money didn't like
Speaker 1: him at all. He's a fascinating character, an Italian Jewish
Speaker 1: painter who was in the first exhibition of the French Impressionists.
Speaker 1: And I think he probably ran into a bit of
Speaker 1: anti Semitism as well. He's a fascinating character. I urge
Speaker 1: you to check him out. He's very well and I've
Speaker 1: got a couple of his paintings. He's he's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I like very I like very painterly paintings. I like
Speaker 1: Barbizon and Eli Impressionists. But then so I just am
Speaker 1: learning about Barbizon right now.
Speaker 4: That's great stuff. Yeah, yeah, so that's what I do.
Speaker 4: So I use an object that I see at auction.
Speaker 4: That's so I started learning. I would get some of
Speaker 4: these Christie's Bottoms auction catalogs and then just start looking
Speaker 4: at and then I could identify painters by brushstroke, and
Speaker 4: then I started you know, so I got interested there.
Speaker 4: But then I realized that you pay a huge premium
Speaker 4: for buying through them, and you can find things on
Speaker 4: there are web there auction healsies all over the world,
Speaker 4: and let me tell you, I mean, I can get fooled,
Speaker 4: but I think it's harder art Net I love.
Speaker 3: I love Artnett.
Speaker 4: I also invaluable dot com and Live auctioneers dot com.
Speaker 3: But you know what you're looking.
Speaker 1: At Facebook marketplace for rich people. I get it.
Speaker 4: It's really that's great, but I love it and I
Speaker 4: really I feel like I haven't released a painting yet,
Speaker 4: like I've I've never bought anything for sale, and I
Speaker 4: feel like now when I when I go to like
Speaker 4: I went to a little auction, I mean to an
Speaker 4: art gallery in Dunedin, New Zealand, and they have this beautiful,
Speaker 4: beautifully curated collection, but they don't have a Louis VLTA
Speaker 4: and they're gonna get mine when I die.
Speaker 3: So it's it's it's cool because this will go on
Speaker 3: after me.
Speaker 4: And I'm the guardian of these things, and it just
Speaker 4: but also it's a sickness a little bit.
Speaker 1: I understand that I have more paintings than I care
Speaker 1: to admit. I I go into it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you ever met Megan, my wife, but she was
Speaker 1: an art dealer before we met, still as an art dealer,
Speaker 1: and and so she can get deals on stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh god, but I'll be bankrupt.
Speaker 1: Well you know, but here's the thing. You get these
Speaker 1: amazing paintings, like amazing, there's amazing things that I'd heard of.
Speaker 1: I come from a very similar background to you economically.
Speaker 1: I come from very blue collar, kind of poor background.
Speaker 1: And I'd heard about some of the paintings, paintings that
Speaker 1: I own. I heard of, I'd heard of the artist,
Speaker 1: I'd heard of the I read about it in school,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, that's, you know, a world
Speaker 1: that's beyond imagining.
Speaker 3: And now I own a couple of these paints and
Speaker 3: I kind of love cool and all my favorites.
Speaker 1: But I like the kind of I guess it's kind
Speaker 1: of the avoristic nature of having it.
Speaker 3: It's amazing, it's a great feeling.
Speaker 4: I fully I think my collection is I have names,
Speaker 4: But like you said, my favorite things are definitely not names.
Speaker 4: There's an artist named Bernard U Tavia Monvaal. He had
Speaker 4: when he dialt like it wasn't I think when his
Speaker 4: heir died and like twenty sixteen, Sethby's had this big auction,
Speaker 4: and like he was a massively famous painter, like around
Speaker 4: the turn of the century into the forties, like portraits,
Speaker 4: but his early work were post Impressionist works and nobody
Speaker 4: really wanted them. But I didn't know a lot about him.
Speaker 4: And a painting went I think for like ten thousand
Speaker 4: pounds and I didn't buy it, but then I couldn't
Speaker 4: stop thinking about it, so I chased it. I looked
Speaker 4: for I said an alert. I looked for this painting
Speaker 4: for years. Last year it came up at Dorotheam in Vienna.
Speaker 4: I was willing to pay whatever the hell it costs.
Speaker 4: I would have sold things. I had to have it.
Speaker 4: And it's two guys dragging a boat of the Seine
Speaker 4: like at sundown.
Speaker 3: But it's so mind blowingly beautiful. I had to have.
Speaker 4: It, and so I stayed up all night. I was
Speaker 4: ready to go. I was calling everybody bitches and hoes.
Speaker 4: In my mind, I'm not going to take this painting
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 1: I was in it.
Speaker 3: I got it for eight thousand euros.
Speaker 1: It was one of the best days of my life.
Speaker 3: I never part with it. Yeah, I have, I have.
Speaker 1: There's one paint and I have in my life that
Speaker 1: I love above all others. And it was actually my
Speaker 1: wife and kids got it for me as a present
Speaker 1: and they knew I loved it, and they kind of, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we used family money to get it, but
Speaker 1: they But it's a painting. It's not by a very
Speaker 1: famous wit as a gentleman by the name of Empire,
Speaker 1: and it's called at the End of the Day, and
Speaker 1: it's just a guy standing in the side of a
Speaker 1: canal bank waving to his friend on a boat who's
Speaker 1: just sailing up the route, like it's the end of
Speaker 1: the day's work. But it's a fucking masterpiece. And when
Speaker 1: I look at it, I go into a world that
Speaker 1: I don't know where else in the world in the
Speaker 1: universe that that world is, but it's in there and
Speaker 1: I can fall into it and then it's hard to
Speaker 1: explain and it sounds fanciful, but it's so riveting. Is
Speaker 1: a thing to sit next to. I fucking love it.
Speaker 3: And that's how I feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, and I'm I'm delighted.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm delighted to find this out about
Speaker 1: you because I really knew I liked you, but now
Speaker 1: I really really like you because because of your appreciation
Speaker 1: of great art, and it's kind of my secret thing
Speaker 1: that I loved. I don't really talk about that much,
Speaker 1: but I spend money on it and I love it.
Speaker 4: Same people's eyes get dupe when I try to tell
Speaker 4: them too much. I'm cognizitive that. Yeah, and here's the thing.
Speaker 4: It's okay that it's just for me. Yeah, yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 4: It's fine. You can sit by the paint. You don't
Speaker 4: need to talk to anyone about it. It's like, oh, amazing,
Speaker 4: it's great.
Speaker 1: Listen, my friend, I'm very I really think we should
Speaker 1: try and talk to each other before another ten years
Speaker 1: ago past.
Speaker 3: I would love that.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the next time in la Or if
Speaker 1: you're going to a if you're going to an art
Speaker 1: auction in Vienna, I'm in. I'll definitely come with you.
Speaker 1: It's just a world which fascinates me. You're such a
Speaker 1: lovely mind. I'm so happy for you that you're growing
Speaker 1: up really cool, even cooler than you were when you
Speaker 1: were a kid, and you were a pretty cool kid.
Speaker 1: I know you were tough on yourself, but you were
Speaker 1: pretty cool and you're even cooler now, so that's great.
Speaker 3: Thanks Craig, I love you.
Speaker 1: I love you too, man. I am so happy to
Speaker 1: see you well and yourself. It's great.
Speaker 3: Thanks buddy, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Oh, thanks for being on. It's great to see you.
Speaker 1: Thanks Pam,