Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Josh Brolin Returns

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Josh Brolin (From Under the Truck, No Country For Old Men, Dune) is an Academy Award-nominated actor. Josh joins the Armchair Expert to discuss his infiltration of Dax’s algorithm, the fact that Monica has only half-seen The Goonies, and how his hand-me-downs always yielded greater returns than his top dogs. Josh and Dax talk about Dax’s anger and forgiveness recognizing himself reading From Under the Truck, how not fighting is just another form of fighting, and the inescapability of the high octane volley. Josh explains why the smallest act of bravery makes him cry, why his memoir is really about surviving nurture to learn how to thrive in nature, and the notion that you never know what being put through the meat grinder can sculpt your life into.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dak Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hello. Our good buddy is here today.

Yes. He's wild. Josh Brolin, he is an award-winning actor. The Goonies, No Country for Old Men, Sicario, Dune, Milk, and a book I absolutely loved, which is out right now, called From Under the Truck. And we daringly asked him on the spot if he would read one of the stories.

Cold read. Cold read of my favorite story in the book. And he obliged that sweetheart that he is. Also this episode's on video if people wanna watch it. Oh yes, yes, yes. This is on video. Josh is so fucking handsome. To not watch the words come out of that gorgeous mug

would be a- It's a mistake. It'd be a travesty. So go over to YouTube and watch this. Enjoy. You were here three years ago, which kind of shocked me. Oh my god. That's crazy. As I listened this morning on my bike ride. Wait, the last time I saw you.

That's true, you pulled into the driveway because you did Ted's podcast? That's right. It was after that. When I thought I was having marital problems, but I wasn't. Oh, did you? Yeah, okay. No, I fluctuate. Oh, you shared? Yeah, okay. No, I fluctuate. Are you shared? I always share because I'm one of these guys, kind of like a book where you have to manifest it

in order to get it out of you because you know the you that it's happening in is not perceiving it correctly. Yeah, you know enough to not trust your assessment of things. And that has nothing to do with a program thing. I just know that. So what's tricky though Is and I think we do the same thing as my wife well and Monica as well because we talked so much

They're my two kind of check-ins. They'll say to me you're crazy right now that theory makes no sense I know you've convinced yourself Happening yeah, but what's tricky is if your kind of check system is the person you're having trouble with where do you go? So where do you go? I have a specific person I go to. I usually go to Dax Shepard. Well, you're not checking in enough because. How's that working out? I don't remember hearing any of your crazy ideas.

We've already filed. And no, who do I go to? There's a couple of people. You have one person that you go to. And ironically, it is your doppelganger. Matt Damon? No, Tom Hanson. I don't know if we've discussed. Those three. Yes, we have. Not that Matt Damon is my doppelganger. Matt Damon? No, Tom Hanson. I don't know if we've discussed- Those three.

Yes, we have. Not that Matt Damon is my doppelganger. There is a Venn diagram there. Of handsomeness, really. Tom Hanson. Well, handsomeness. I love this. Tom Hanson.

Tom, it didn't actually end up happening, but you and I spoke about this, is that Tom kind of coerced me into his thing. We had a great conversation. We talked about surfing. We had everything in common that there was to have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And apparently, which I never really saw, that we look like each other. So why he's not my lawyer doesn't make any sense other than Cliff Gilbert-Laurie,

who brought me in, which is how business works and you learn that later, they bring you in as a top dog and they go, you're amazing, we want to represent you and we've been trying to represent you since before you were born. And you go and they flatter the shit out of you. Then you get in there and then you never see that person again. That's the big bait and switch. You meet the owner of the agency and then you never see them again until you quit.

And then they call you again when you're quitting. Yeah. Yeah. What are you doing? Hey, why are you changing? We have been focusing. Do you know how much time we've put into you? I go, you don't even know my name, bro. You had to look it up. I have to say this to finish that thought. Yeah, is the hand-me-downs that I've always gotten have been better than what could have been had I gone with the top dog? Oh, yeah, because those hand-me-downs turned into the top dogs. And they care. And they care. They still care. They give a shit. There's something very personal still. Wendy Kirk is my lawyer and she is with JS SK and what she has done, they even offered her a partnership when she

changed and she said, no, I don't like what it does to me. Wow. Whoa. And they forced her to be a partner. So she's a partner. She works with Obama. I mean So she's a partner. She works with Obama. I mean, she's a high end. There's a really great metaphor here, which is, yeah, the person under the owner, of course, wants to get in with you and they can have some ownership over the ride,

which is what we all want, right? They wanna collaborate in a sense. If they inherit Jack Nicholson, there's really no ownership. And I mostly just think, well, I should be with that person because that would prove I'm of value or I have status or something. And I would deny someone this great opportunity to help me

and allowed myself to be helped. So back to Tom Hanson. So when you were saying you met with him, it was in a professional capacity, but it could very well just been in a sobriety capacity. I interviewed him and he's very open where we spoke openly about it. When you were saying he was bringing me in.

It's an anonymous program, you know. No, he outed himself in the episode. That goes out the window in this podcast. But even in the rooms, it's not anonymous. I never understood it. Somebody goes, do you want to share? And you go, yeah, so today, and they go, hey, what's your name?

That's a big no no. What's your name? And you go, why do I have to say my name? Cause back in the day, the first hundred that the book is based on, you never, what's your name? That's a big no no. What's your name? And you go, why do I have to say my name? Because back in the day, the first hundred that the book is based on, you never had to say your name. You just had to say, I'm an alcohol. That makes a little more sense. So it doesn't make any sense, the hypocrisy of hello.

State your name. Identify yourself. And people take a certain pleasure out of going, who are you? Totally. And I'm usually the guy that says, shut the fuck up. It's an anonymous program. And I start to.

Do people get in fights in A.A. meetings? Oh, I do. No, I don't. Well, I know you almost got in a fight once with Eric Dane. We talked about that as well. In an A.A. meeting? Yeah, at Tom Hansen's house. Seriously?

With the actor Eric Dane. Do you know Eric Dane? Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He and I walked out to Tom's driveway in the middle of a meeting. Because you got into it? Really?

Yeah, I was sponsoring this kid and he yelled at this kid and I already had a ax to grind with him. So I go, let's go motherfucker outside. It's a low point. But anyways, when you were saying Tom Hanson was going to bring you in, it very well could have meant he was inviting you to the meeting. That's where my head went when you said

I didn't meet with him. Yeah, because that's your experience. My experience is purely on a professional capacity. But I was just with him, and he does look like you guys, and you guys are both blessed. You're both very handsome. Okay, so I have, and I just texted you this the other day, you are in my algorithm on Instagram in a way that only Corey Feldman is. I see dueling.

I understand the parallel. There's no connective Goonies tissue there. That's not why it's there. No, I know that. Monica, really quick, just for a fun question. What human is in your algorithm? You constantly see this person come up and you know it has its moments where it's like, this person will show up for this two months.

Am I following them? Well, that's what's interesting. Probably. I'm following Josh, but I'm not following Feldman. But I guess people who like the shit I like, cars or whatever, they like these Feldman videos So it knows that I might like them and I liked a couple but then I didn't like them anymore It was really fun for like a month. Yeah, and then I don't like it at all

And you know what you did which is what I did is you forwarded them to other people you were like Oh my god, look at this lead that he did by the way. I have nothing against Feldman No, it's his own what I questioned the whole time was does he know and I think that's what drew everybody in when you sit there And you're just going like this You're a Goonies fan right I remember that from before no you're not a good That was a look of absolute I mean, I... That was a look of absolute, almost disgust. No panic.

Was it panic? It was panic, because I think I have to say yes, but that's a straight up lie. I think maybe I've only half seen it. Only have seen it. Half. Oh, half seen it. Yeah, like maybe it was on in the background.

No, but I kind of liked the idea of I only have seen it, meaning I didn't react like everybody else. I just saw it. I didn't like or dislike it, I only have seen it, meaning I didn't react like everybody else. I just saw it. I didn't like or dislike, I just have seen it. Plain and simple. So, no? No, you must be thinking of your doppelganger, Matt Damon Goodwill hunting.

You're just confused. But Corey Feldman, sorry, no, what's happening? So he tours, he's a musician and a lead singer and a guitar player. And he's on tour seemingly many dates a year because the videos come hot and fast. Good for him. He does guitar solos and he sings.

Which he's been doing for a very long time. It's just recently he went on a tour. He was opening for Fred Durst. And Fred Durst brilliantly created this whole thing called like the worst tour in the world. Oh wow. I can't remember. It's not called that, but it's something like that.

So it's intentional. From Fred Durst's point of view. But I think he took, which was genius, Corey Feldman and said, you open for me, and then we're going to come out and do our bullshit. And Fred has a huge white beard now and comes out with basically what he wore back in the day. And it's just fucking funny.

But when you see Corey doing his thing, which is what he's always done, there's no difference in what he was doing during the Goonies back in that day and what he's doing now, there's just a seriousness to it that confuses. So similar, exact same thing. And I didn't forward to anybody,

I did immediately text my best friend Aaron and say like, are you seeing these felonies? Like, it's all I'm seeing. And yes, the great curiosity, which by the way, not even to be political, that was always my great curiosity about Trump. That's what I'm most interested in.

Is he in on any of this or is he not in on it? That's what I'm not sure about. He is. But all to say, Brolin, for much different reasons, has just infiltrated my algorithm. That's exciting. I love it. And I texted him the other day, and I'm like,

I watch four or five interviews with you a day. A day. A day, and I like every single one of them. How many interviews are you doing? Well, that's the point I'm getting to. Oh, wow. So first question, is this the most press you've ever done for anything?

Let's start there. Yes. To promote your book. Yes. I have hoarded myself out to this dog and pony like I never have before. Selfishly, when we have a guest coming up and I start seeing that the guest is everywhere,

I just kind of go, ugh, I'm bummed. Like what new are we gonna get? Two things, yeah. What new are they gonna say? And then are people just sick of this person? Cause I know I've seen them six places. So I saw you everywhere and my first thought was like, oh, bummer, like we're going to be less.

But then my true belief in what you and I share, that we could also have something completely original and different. That's for sure. Yeah. I don't want to be hyperbolic. I want to make sure I'm being honest here. But I can't remember a book I've read that took me

more through it, personally. And I don't want to make this about myself. But. But why not? I am also writing something I imagine we have some of the same fears about writing something and I'm just reading it and I'm like this could be my book I could be writing this book I could see that and I'm extra mean to you because I'm extra mean to me and I'm like oh yeah we have the same story the fucking story like I'm getting really mad at myself reading the book

Oh, but in a glorious way No, but tell me why the amount of things we had to do to be dangerous and scary So that no one would try to hurt us. How exhausting for everyone. I'm like reading my own inventory. Oh, yeah Now I know what you mean. I'm also having great forgiveness For myself because I have great forgiveness for you because I just adore you. I agree. It's very mutual Thank you, but I'm reading it in a way that I don't read other books It's cuz it feels so familiar to me and I am constantly checking myself and going you really you're just a fucking ego maniacal Piece of shit and I'm so mad at myself.

But then I'm reading your book and I'm like, what the fuck else was this guy gonna do? He grew up in a cage with a wolf. Like what was this guy gonna do? With a chimp, right? Did you read it by the way? No, I don't read the books on purpose. I love when people are honest.

Like I get Rogan and I go, so where's the book? And he goes, I don't know, where is the book? And I was like, fuck you mean, where is the book? We sent you the book. And he was like, yeah, where is it? I'm like, so you didn't read the book? And he goes, I don't know, where is the book? And I was like, fuck you mean, where is the book? We sent you the book. And he was like, where is it? I'm like, so you didn't read the book? Read the fucking book. It's kind of like the Goonies situation I was into.

No, but I do on purpose in case things get too esoteric for people who have not read it. It's actually by design. So I'll have read some crazy book on astrophysics and all of a sudden me and the person, we've left the planet. And I was like, hey, no one knows what you're talking about. Even this, like I wanna know specifically the why,

the parts that you resonate with. Well, wait, let me interrupt you for a second. First of all, the fears in writing a book, I didn't have a fear. I've told this story before, but there was only one moment where I kind of said, you need to be just a little bit more inspiring in order to be just a little bit more inspiring in order to be attractive to a wider audience.

And I wrote probably 40,000 words with that in the back of my head, having told nobody. And then my lit agent, she read the first chapter and she said, first chapter is really good. You've smoothed it out. It's very clear. You've simplified a lot of things. It's great.

What the fuck happened with chapter two? And that was the one you were gonna protect yourself with? Not even protect myself, but just give it a little more positive oomph. First of all, I fell in love with her at that moment because I was like, you see me, which I think that's the biggest thing. You see behind the tough and the thing and the guy,

and she said, you need to go back and rewrite it. I said, the whole thing? And she goes, go back and be you. If you cheat or if there's an affectation or if you're trying to write for somebody else, it's never gonna work. The other thing is the fear didn't come until I was two days into the audible.

I speak well, I speak in front of an audience well, I can read other people's books well. There was something about reading through my own book where I was tripping through every sentence. I was started to shame spiral. And then within that shame spiral, I started to say, I wish that I could burn any evidence that this thing ever existed, even as an idea.

I've done the dumbest thing. I should have just wrote when I did the Goonies, me and Corey Feldman used to go to lunch together and it was so fun. He was so smart and he was playing music then too. And there's some people that have reacted to it like this is the fucking worst book I've ever read because wasn't he married for nine years? Where's that spoon fetus? The shit which I understand. There's a certain amount of that when you call it a memoir that you want. This is really more about children and parents.

That's what it is to me. It's like surviving nurture to get to nature, trying to get rid of the habits that you acquired during nurture and then confronting those and hopefully thriving within that nature, figuring out a way to thrive within that nature, so then children come in and all that kind of stuff. And I've learned that through people's reaction, because people's reaction is either really negative because of the form,

because of how it's laid out, or super fucking personal and emotional. Yeah. Put me in the ladder. I know. And that's kind of what I'm saying. I probably didn't do the headline correctly, but I'm just saying I'm judging you so unfairly and severely because I hear myself

and I hate myself a lot of the time. So you hate me, therefore. And I really relate to that reading your own thing out loud because when you're writing it, you're really just broadcasting the way you do in life. I'm telling you my story, Because when you're writing it, you're really just broadcasting the way you do in life. I'm telling you my story. But when you're hearing it, you're actually now the audience.

And now you're like, God, do I sound like that all the time? A, B, that's really tragic. What I'm acting like was no big deal. That to me is really the heartbreaking part. And that's the stuff that I found like a ton of compassion towards you. And I do this a lot. And I think for Monica and the people in my life, I have such a nonchalant

way of going through all this stuff. And when I'm hearing your nonchalant version of it, I want to go, yeah, you were really scared. This is a very, very scary ride you were on. You are a little person. You have little people. I have little people. There's no way you weren't terrified. And there's no way I wasn't terrified. I don't know. Your book has helped me kind of really embrace that part. Like go ahead and acknowledge that, no, you were fucking terrified a lot of the time. And it's colorful

and cool. And it's my story now. But let's also be honest about the fact that you spent a lot of your life quite scared of everything going on around you There is an indictment and Howard Stern brought this up I think you two the most took it very personally and he took it very personally because he had a Paralleled thing with his mom and he was like this is not fucking okay I want to hear you admit that it's not okay, And you go, yes, of course there's an indictment. I can see it clearly, especially now and how I parent my kids, how I've always parent my kids, albeit messily. But how I feel about that time is it was a trauma or a tragedy or whatever it is because of this narcissistic vortex that I was living in. Are you unable to celebrate the child?

If your child does a drawing for you on a post it, are you going to put it on your chest and wear it around so the child can go, Oh my God, that guy loves my drawing. Or I don't understand what this is. Well, can you make it more like this and more like this? Or can you dress more like this? So when a picture is taken with me and the child it makes me look like you know that's all narcissistic bullshit and it goes back to one image and that one image

that my dad would say my dad was very open about this I don't know if he found it funny or if he just found it informational and just didn't care how it was perceived but my dad used to say I remember when your mom was in the driver's seat, you were in the passenger seat, and you guys were arguing, and my dad was in the back with his hands over his ears. And you go, that's a family tree?

And you go, who's the husband? The kid, the eight-year-old kid who's going, man, just fucking drive. Like, why do you gotta stop the car and argue? Just drive, whatever. And then the dad's in the back with his hands over his ears and you go, okay, so that was how that whole thing

was set up. And by the way, where's my brother? He's not even part of that diagram because he was a guy that didn't have the fight that you have, that I have. He just got lost in it. He didn't have the fight. So he lives his life in a very, very simple way now. Just for people listening,

I think that is a version of fighting. Absolutely. We had this conversation sort of recently, randomly where we were at odds at how to handle a situation that affects both of us. And he was like, well, we're just different. I'm a fighter. And I was like, I'm a fighter too,

but I fight differently. There's just all ways of surviving. Yeah. Yeah, they're all just survival mechanisms. And whatever works best. How do you fight though? I'm curious. I mean, I do fight also. I mean, at least.

Well, she and I. So that's why I was like, what are you talking about? We yelled and screamed at each other last night. Yeah, I think you'll fight with the people in your circle and I'll fight with strangers. I think maybe that's the diff. I think I learned fight with the people in your circle and I'll fight with strangers. I think maybe that's the diff. I think I learned early on being a

Marginalized person that wasn't gonna work for me yelling and screaming that would just remove me from that I was already on the cusp of getting removed. So that wasn't gonna work. That's my wife. Yeah, it's getting actually close to those people Both Georgians. Oh yeah, that's right. That's right. How funny is that? It is, it almost is some- That's a cultural thing, for sure. Yes, it's like getting close, understanding the person and figuring out what they need from you

in order to stay- To move forward. Yeah. I had some epiphanies reading it, so just to lay it out to people who haven't read it yet, I really recommend it from the bottom of my heart. But also in your previous interview, we got a taste of the chaos, right?

You were living in an animal life or an animal way station. Your mother collected these animals that were by all accounts wild. By all accounts. By all accounts wild. And she also was a very active drinker. She was sexually very active. Yeah, I found out more and more now.

People have come out to the woodwork, out of the woodworks. And maybe I shouldn't even say sexual, but she engaged men nonstop. The sexuality was just as much psychic as it was everything. It was a mental game, it was a sexual game, it was a physical game, it was a spiritual game. You were regularly though at truck stops, at shitty hotels. All the time. She was a spiritual game. You were regularly though, at truck stops,

at shitty hotels. All the time. She was a vagabond, she was dragging you guys around, God knows what she was looking for, but she was interacting with, again, this is where it's, no matter what you think it is, or when you tell it to people, she's going up to truck drivers and restaurants

and going like, that's a stupid hat, what's going on with that hat? Her technique to engage people was to nag them and be aggressive and be fearless. And sure, there's some fun and excitement in watching her navigate that and land the plane safely every time. But also as an eight-year-old,

watching the scary dude in the corner that mom's getting in the face of, also is terrifying to no end. So unpredictable. But you don't know why, because it's all you know. It's like a kid being beaten. And they know it hurts. They think it's standard.

But some primitive part of you goes, there is an animal that's 300 pounds, and there's another animal that's 105 pounds. And the one third animal is shouting that. You know, there's a reality to the swings she was taking that had to be quite scary. Even if you come to expect she would pull it off. I remember my mom being drunk

and there was a church called Joshua's and Joshua's was turned into a bar. And I remember a bar and pastor Oval's Joshua's. What a rebrand. I know what a rebrand. And I remember my mom pulling somebody or it was James Lee Barrett, the writer. And he was a writer way back in the day.

And I remember her pulling him across the table to give him a kiss. Right? So my mom, who was tiny, had that superhuman drunk strength that you know and I know. But it was always a display. She couldn't just get up and go to the other side. She had to pull him across the table.

And I told somebody else this the other day and talk about fear. Not that I forgot about this, just there were so many things to write about. It's like, what do you land on? And the book starts to dictate itself. And then what do you cut? I had at one point 450 pages or something and then knocked it down. But if you flipped my mom off on the freeway, you were done. She would actively run you off the road at 80 miles an hour or on the freeway, you were done. She would actively run you off the road

at 80 miles an hour or on the CB, she would call a bunch of truckers and you would see that car that had been identified now get boxed in and literally get run off the road by several truckers. But she would freak the fuck out. And when you're an eight year old in a car, it was wild and how ironic that she died hitting-old in a car, it was wild. And

how ironic that she died hitting a tree with a car, chasing a dude. A lover 25 years for a junior. Oh yeah. Monica's traumatized right now. I just saw her peripherally. We talked about this. You get two people in life, if you're lucky, who are safe spots. And so if one or both are not safe, they're unpredictable. You have no choice, but your cortisol levels are at a... Totally. That's exactly right. You're moving through. That's exactly right.

But the whole point, I think, ultimately, it's like, do you feel that this was cathartic in some way? And I go, no. But now I can say, yes, it's starting to become cathartic because of people's reactions to it. To me, what's the point of me writing the book other than just loving writing? That's my first and foremost.

You know, I'm gonna go to Skylight after this because I used to be on the floor of Skylight reading Russian novels and reading Tolstoy and Turgenev and Gogol and Flaubert and fucking Guy Dumas-Pessant and all that kind of shit when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. And now I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna see my book on the shelf. Which is gonna be amazing. when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, and now I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna see my book on the shelf. That's so cool.

Which is gonna be amazing. But ultimately, how do you accept the chaos of what was and not live the rest of your life as a victim of it? Right. That's the biggest thing. But again, I don't think you and I run the risk of seeing ourselves as a victim. I think we have the opposite complex. Which is what?

Which is I think you need to acknowledge a little more. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think you need to be policing yourself about whether, poor me, I was a victim. That's actually not the thing you need to be on high alert of. It's the, yeah, and I walked through that shit and made me this. I think that's more the fucking thing to monitor. But what is clear throughout this book is you absolutely love your mother.

You're one of the few people that have said that. You admire her. You've been kind of trying to be her in some manageable way. Totally. She made a fucking impression. No one ever met her and forgot they met her. There's like a lot of attractive stuff about her. I've never thought about the fact that if anyone, not just us, anyone that's the child of a divorce has witnessed that one of the parents left. Mm-hmm. That's an option Truly in the most simple fucking way. It's an option that these people can leave, you know it now you're down to one You better fucking love and cherish and perform For that one person because you're down to one.

I hold true that I love my mother more than anything and she is the greatest woman to ever be on planet earth. Also, I don't know that I had a choice to feel otherwise. Absolutely, that's what I was gonna say. Do you have a choice? No. Somebody leaves and you go, wait a second, if they leave. You can leave?

That means you can leave, you can leave, you can leave, you can leave. Once you get outside of the family, then are you reacting to the potential of anybody leaving? I just think once you put a kid in a situation where they only have one parent left, I just don't know what else that kid could do other than, A, be really grateful that one didn't leave. So there's this true gratitude. But you just said it, performing.

Then you're performing. Then you're going, how do I assure that I'm not down to zero? That never occurred to me when I was reading your book. Interesting. I was just like, huh, that's an element I need to, again, go through the fucking catalog and just apply that a little bit. Ironically, that's a version of the fight

I was talking about earlier. That's you fighting in a different way to survive that. It's not fighting with yelling, it's fighting with love and affection and being the right thing for her and all of that. It's the same thing. You become less reactionary. And the thing with my mom, which didn't work in life,

was my mom loved the high octane volley. So you had to be up here. I still deal with that, cause I liked the high octane volley. That's why I like Italy. Because everybody's, it's culturally, like what you said about Georgia, it's culturally at that place all the time.

So when I get there, they're like, ah, and I'm like, hey. No one's getting their feelings hurt. No one's getting their feelings hurt. Whereas here I may do something and people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right, relax. What's the problem?

And then if I'm feeling surly or whatever, I go, why does everybody wanna be fucking monotone all the time? Everybody wants to be in yawn mode. And I go, it's okay. Let's wake up. And interestingly enough, and this is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing,

I have my 36 year old Trevor, my 31 year old Eden, my six year old Westland and my three year old chapel. And I see it in my older kids. My son is a little more docile than what we're talking about. My 31 year old is the only person on this earth probably who scares me. All she has to do is give me a look.

And I'm just like, oh. You said she was born with your menacing look. She just has that Brolin brow, I call it. It's that kind of Neanderthal-like brow. The pronounced brow ridge. My youngest daughter has it more pronounced than anybody. So you have the six-year-old,

but I was listening to him this morning. I was trying to say something, and this is often because we're around our kids all the time. I'm a very present parent. So I go, hey, man, don't talk for 30 seconds. I need to say something to your mom. And they literally go, okay, Papa, go ahead. And I go, okay.

And they go, one, two, three. I'm like, you fucking. But I listen to their volley back and forth and their volley is phenomenal to me. It's always on this level. And my wife is always trying to bring it down and I'm always laughing because I go, that's pretty cool. You guys are on a different. So I'm still a proponent of that thing, just not destructively. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

expert, if you dare. On January 5th, 2024, an Alaska Airlines door plug tore away mid-flight, leaving a gaping hole in the side of a plane that carried 171 passengers. This heart-stopping incident was just the latest in a string of crises surrounding the aviation manufacturing giant, Boeing. In the past decade, Boeing has been involved in a series of damning scandals and deadly crashes that have chipped away at its once sterling reputation. At the center of it all, the 737 MAX, the latest season of business wars, explores how Boeing, once the gold standard of aviation engineering, descended into a nightmare of safety concerns and public mistrust the decisions denials and devastating consequences

Bringing the Titan to its knees and what if anything can save the company's reputation now Follow business wars on the wonder EAP or wherever you get your podcasts You can binge business wars the unraveling of Boeing early and ad-free right now on a wonder E on Wondery Plus. It's roughly, your whole environment was in 11 and then you're interacting with people that that feels very uncomfortable. Exactly. I get it that it feels uncomfortable. I wrote way too many notes, I see. I love it. We're on sentence one of 15 pages. But back to conceptually the book, I wanted to ask you, because you told me, some people fucking hate it, and some people absolutely love it,

and I was wondering why people hated it, and then my hunch was, you've already alluded to it, that they wanted this to be your Hollywood stories. And so I imagine for you, it's probably hard to juggle that, because that in itself is one of the most complicated things to understand, the Hollywood show business fame part of this equation. And so if it were me, I'd be like, that's not what I'm trying to share with you.

Like, do you wanna fucking know me or not? Cause it's not about that. But then on the outside I would go, but also it's so much of you, how could it not be? If somebody says I didn't learn anything about him, they're saying something very specific. And they're saying I didn't get spoon fed the People Magazine shit that I was expecting.

Some hot gossip. Which is okay, like I said, I don't have a judgment of that. That's not what this book is. And there is no juggling of it. I wanted to know, did you have to step over the hurdle of wanting the book to be as well written as Cormac McCarthy, like that you want so bad

for it to be the thing that you loved so much. I think that's one of my continual hurdles when I write. Well, first of all, if you're writing, then you're one of 0.0001% people who are actually writing their own memoirs or writing their own book. When I found out how many people don't write their own memoirs, I go, but that's a biography

you got paid for. And the writer didn't. So that's a cheat. And I understand I had a great back and forth with Sharon Graham Norton and I absolutely fucking adored her. She's kind of mom-esque. Mischievous, but super honest, fearless, but vulnerable, said something during, and then was looking for me afterwards to say, I didn't mean to suggest this. So conscientious, 77, 78 years old.

I was like, that fucking broad is great. Yeah, no, she's a gangster. But her book, legendary icon, so I do want to know what happened in those nine days that she was married to Greg Allman. Like what the fuck happened? Why was it only nine days? What happened?

Take your time. I want to hear about every day. Every day. Every hour. Absolutely. I hope you journaled throughout the day. With this, I was in Austin, Texas and people paid for a book signing and then a picture and all that and some guy came up to me and like of all the things he could have said,

he said, you're too young to write a memoir. And then he left. I was like, who the fuck was that dude? How old was he? He was like 40 or something, 45. But he's right. It's like if I were to write a tell all, I would at the end of my life. In Hollywood.

But going back to what you said, writing a good book that's well written meant everything to me. But it can be daunting. It can be incredibly daunting if you care about the writing style and you care about somebody who's written thousands and thousands and thousands of pages. Me, I probably have 91 full journals now. I've written several books. I've written several books of poetry.

I've written a novella and I just put it in a corner. Screenplays. Way too long screenplays. Never wrote a screenplay. Wait, I thought the submarine in the lake next to Fargo. No, that was a joke. That was always to break the silence and to create a discomfort that made me really happy. Oh my god, that's not even clear to me in the book. By the way, you got me.

Poorly written. Wait, so what's happening? This comes up multiple times. So to set the stage, the structure of the book is like two page stories, four page stories. It's not linear. We're bouncing back and forth from childhood to Goonies to 2023 to this, to that. It's all over the map. As your memories do.

And I think for people on the first approach, it probably is a little off putting. It's not clicking into their normal format. But I will say, if you stick with it, I do think when I put it down last night, I'm like, I have the whole picture. It didn't come out in the way that I'm used to it coming out, but it's almost like a Nolan movie.

I tell people, don't try to figure it out. It'll all of a sudden be clear to you. And Nora takes you and it says, well, is it this or is it that? If you spent all your time watching Nora going, is it a comedy or is it a satire or did this really happen? Is this based in truth? And you're looking at your phone.

Just fucking follow it, right? Just lend yourself to the craziness and the messiness that life always seems to hand out. The thing is, is that we're always trying to get away from it. What if we just sit in it for a while? It can be super funny. it can be super absurd, it can be super emotional. Well, that's our desire to control.

I'm scared because I don't know what this is. I can't enjoy this because I don't know what this is. The submarine. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. So this comes up in many different things. He's telling Oliver Stone about this idea. He has the audacity to tell Joel and Ethan Cohen about this.

That you have an idea for a script. And he says the script is 357 pages long. And it's about a Russian submarine and he Cohen about this. That you have an idea for a script. And he says the script is 357 pages long and it's about a Russian submarine and he has a budget. He doesn't know how much a Russian sub. I thought all this was real. And I'm like, how dare you tell the Cohen brothers about you?

What are you, they only direct shit they write. Why are you even telling? That's the point. I know it's great now that I know it, but I didn't get the joke. I didn't get the joke. I can admit out loud. I would sit with them and they don't talk.

There's no small talk. I mean, now there is maybe because we're close and all that, but we would sit around and nobody would be saying anything. And what's the one thing that you don't say on set as an actor? I have a script. Yes, that is so great. Them, Tarantino. We could list the three worst things.

We would literally sit there saying nothing. And I'd be like, I'm so fucking bored right now. And I'd go, hey, listen, I don't want to be inappropriate here. I have an amazing script. I didn't want to bring it up, but I think now is the right time. And then you hear, you'd hear like one clearing her throat. And then I would go off literally until we shot. That's hilarious.

And Joel or Ethan, I don't know, said like, yeah, the submarine part sounds scary. And he goes, exactly, think King Kong. It's like performance art. You're just doing this around town. Oh, that's what it is. It's like directors. That's exactly what it is.

I'm like kind of reanalyzing. Every single time I read that, I'm like, he really thought this was a great thing. And it's the town next to Fargo. So the movie would be called Wichita Papa or whatever. No, it was Walpentin. Which is actually, I had to look up. I was like, what's next to Fargo?

Okay, but it's not Fargo, but it's the town next to Fargo. So dumb. It's like, how can you waste somebody's time? Torturously waste somebody's time. Wait, but I do want to say this, that going back, there is a point. Wait, but I do want to say this, that going back, there is a point in writing, had I just started writing,

I think that it would have been affected by my need to be perceived like somebody else. And I wasn't, because there was some point in the trajectory of my writing that I found my voice. And I know it's my voice. I gave this book while I was writing it to only two people. They're both in New York, they're both Jewish, they're both neurotic, Zev Boro and Ethan Cohen. And they both were super fucking honest with me.

And Zev said, if for nothing else, this book is 100% you. That was the objective. That's great. It's not me trying to be this and somebody goes, oh, Bukowski, or so, oh, Hunter S. Thompson. There were so many influences, and people I tried to copy for years,

and you go, no, that's me. That's how I write. I think it's kind of actually a, well, there's two things. One of the things in the room is ego. We'll keep that aside for a second. The other thing is a really beautiful and sweet part of us, which is like, I read Bukowski and I felt a connection

and I felt being seen in a way that if I'm gonna do this, I'll really want that for other people. So part of it's like a really kind of altruistic and beautiful attempt, which is like, if I'm gonna do this, I want it to do the thing the things did to me. But now I have to think of those things that did that to me. That's in my mind and that can be really arresting.

But that wasn't necessarily the case with me. The greatest exercise of this book was clarifying. There's a great story about Raymond Carver and Raymond Carver wrote, I think, Cathedral that he won the Pulitzer for and short stories and he was a sober guy. He's my all-time favorite. Just the best and the most clear, you know, you think of Heming for in short stories. And he was a sober guy. He's my all time favorite. Just the best. And the most clear, you know, you think of Hemingway's short stories, same thing.

Very, very clear. But a hundred percent them. And when his editor, he was writing and they were like, look, you know, you have sentences that are roughly 16 word sentences. Let's try to bring it down to 12. It was like, why the fuck are you trying to change my sentence?

That's what I want to write. And he was like, yeah, but if we can just economize it and get it down to 12, and then in that volley, he finally said, get out of here. I don't want you as my editor anymore. And a new editor came in and he said, okay, so look, roughly these sentences are 12 word sentences. Let's see if we can get it down to nine.

Oh my God. And they were right. Because when you start slashing and when you start taking all the vividity of it and the colorizing and all that kind of shit, and you go, what am I trying to convey here and try to do it in the clearest way possible? There's a story toward the beginning

where it's a little four-year-old kid and all this chaos is going around. Mother's throwing cups through the window at the father and all that, but it's written like a Dr. Seuss story. I took a picture and sent it to Monica of the book, because you use Seussian, and the day before we were on the fact check,

and I said one of my favorite terms is Seussian, and literally within 14 hours, I read in your books, Seussian. My favorite writer of all time. Yeah. We were watching Grinch Who Sold Christmas with the kids the other day. That's the greatest.

And I go, this guy really needs to be held in the same regard as Salvador Dali or something. For sure. He's like one of the great thinkers of all time, the great. And I go, this guy really needs to be held in the same regard as Salvador Dali or something. For sure. He's like one of the great thinkers of all time. The great artists of all time. The language, the images. Everything. He's an artist on a level of Picasso, in my opinion.

Okay, so my favorite, there's some fun Hollywood ones actually that I like. The Punchline of Goonies is a really good one. And I think people will know this lore of Goonies, which is the kids in Goonies were not allowed. Hopefully this is the half of the Goonies you saw. I don't know if you remember, there's a point where they- She just threw out the one thing that she knows.

What we interviewed him is our favorite interview. He was, we had him on, it was the best episode of the year by far. Oh my God. It's the only episode I've ever made my children listen to. He's so special. Oh yeah, yeah. It's the only episode I've ever made my children listen to. He's so special. He's so special. Fuck is he special.

Oh my god. And then took off back to China for 20 years, 25 years doing fight coordinating and all that. Exactly, his story. Saw crazy rich Asians and said, well maybe I should go back and try it again. Yes, what a story. What a story.

Within a year, he was on a boat coming here as a refugee and then he was on a first class flight to Sri Lanka to work with Harrison Ford. It's like the worst luck in the history of mankind and the best luck. And I was there in the beginning of that. Literally his family would be on the side. Trying to understand what the fuck was happening

in this country. Okay, so famously, they built the whole pirate ship and they didn't want the kids to see it. Do you know this, Laura? No. Oh, you're the one. They wanted when the kids came down the water slide and came out of the water and saw that pirate ship

that they had built, that they would get the real reactions. That was the goal. Very, very cool idea. Yeah, great idea. And so what happens? Okay, so basically they kept us away from it, a practically built ship on the biggest stage

in all of Hollywood, which was on Warner Brothers. Filled with water, 110 foot high, long ship, and they blindfolded us and they finally let us in. We tried to see it and there was no way and there was security outside and they backed us in. And then they said, look, we're gonna put you underwater. We have speakers underwater, which didn't exist. It was like some high tech thing. And then we went under and they backed us in and then they said, look, we're gonna put you underwater. We have speakers underwater, which didn't exist. It was like some high tech thing.

And then we went under and they said, we're gonna say three, two, one. We want you guys to come up, turn around and see the ship and we want that organic reaction. And finally we went under and we go, three, two, one, go. And we all came up and turned around and I saw it and I went, fuck. And Dick Donner.

Holy shit. Fuck. It was like, holy shit, whatever I said. It was the most organic reaction. Fucking hell. Think about the amount of work it took to get that first reaction. Yeah.

Basically rolling fucked up the and Muggs and Donners. Literally the whole shot. Literally the whole shot. That is hilarious. Dick Donner was like, what? Do it again. Really funny. Okay, this is fun because Damon famously turned down Avatar

and he was offered 10% of gross. This is now a really fun story about Matt Damon. Really? Yeah. I turned down Avatar. I bring it up. What? I never knew that Matt turned down Avatar.

With an on the phone call. 10% of gross. So this is literally a hundreds of millions of dollars. Literally. Literally. Few people can remember a time when they go, no thank you. And that resulted in a $200 million loss of income. Maybe more.

That's crazy. Yeah, you didn't know that. I did not know that. And that resulted in a $200 million loss of income. Maybe more. That's crazy. Yeah, you didn't know that. I did not know that. And I love that. Yes. And he has a great attitude about it. Because you don't know. You don't know. I mean, one of the things that I look back at, like, Keith Ledger was supposed to do No Country and then dropped out at some point.

And then they looked and looked and everybody wanted it. And they said, no, we have a very specific guy. And then I auditioned for it. And I sent the video in. And they said, who lit it? And all that kind of shit. And it wasn't until I got, who was it, Matt? Matt was supposed to do Milk.

He was. And then he had a schedule in conflict. And then Sean Penn, who I had just spent time with in Canada, said, what about Josh? Wow. So it's always, I was supposed to do Birdman. I pulled out of Birdman because I needed to go see my son who was living in Thailand at the time.

And then that ended up being Edward Norton. Oh my goodness. Jurassic Park, Chris Pratt. Well, I just talked to Pratt the other day. Walk me. Wait, you were gonna be him? It wasn't, I was gonna be him. It was gonna be me.

He was gonna play Chris Pratt. No, no, no, the way I see it is you were gonna be him. It was gonna be me. He was gonna play Chris Pratt. No, no, no. The way I see it is you were gonna be him. And Chris told me when we did Avengers together, we were sitting there talking to each other about whatever, kids. And he goes, yeah, when I showed up, it was your face on all the drawings. Wow. Which happened to me for Deadpool 2,

which was supposed to be Brad Pitt at some point. Wow. And I remember going and seeing all the drawings for Deadpool 2 and seeing all Brad's face. And I was like, sorry. I'm cheaper. How would you like the Brad Pitt minus version? Jesse Eisenberg was just talking about this with Adventureland

because it was supposed to be Michael Cera. And he just spent the whole shoot being like, I'm not Michael Cera. I'm not Michael Cera. He was just panicking the whole time. They wanted Michael Cera and they he just spent the whole shoot being like, I'm not Michael Cera, I'm not Michael Cera. He was just panicking the whole time. They wanted Michael Cera and they didn't get him, and now I'm here. Is that the one he directed?

No. Now Adventureland was Greg Mottola. Oh, got it, right, right, right, right, right. The one he just directed is fantastic. Yeah, I heard it's really good. Yeah, it's really, really good. It's really interesting in origin. Okay.

Back to the book. Yeah, yeah, so there is fun. My own selfish curiosity, and I'm glad you Developed a relationship with them, but you have this funny Beginning and end to Nick Nolte explain the first time you saw him to Monica my editor Noah Eaker Harper Collins who has been really wonderful and he didn't suggest a lot during the writing I thought there was gonna be this whole you need to change this and flip this into this. And there wasn't. But one suggestion he did make, because I wrote the

story about how I had gotten into a thing with my wife at the time. And I was going down Columbus Avenue with just pants on, no shoes, no shirt, kind of out of my mind. And I looked over and there was this guy sitting at this cafe and it turned out to be Nick Nolte, who I recognized. he had no reason to recognize me and Like Monica he hadn't seen Goonies But I remember a slight smile on his face and it was almost like get ready kit Like it gets way the same thing is like he saw in this young shirtless man and that looks familiar Yeah, I saw my future like he saw in this young shirtless man. And that looks familiar. Yes.

I saw my future and he saw his past or whatever. Whatever it was. So my editor said, is there a follow up to that? And I go, there's actually several follow ups to that. And then I chose the Night Watch story where I'm cutting off my thumb. Part of the reason that I chose that it was because this guy who hadn't gone anywhere for a long time had these moments during that 22 years Night Watch or Flirting with Disaster where it could have been a big hit and

then it wasn't necessarily. Flirting with Disaster was a really revered and is still a revered movie. It's in my top three comedies. I list it all the time. But not a lot of people have seen it. Have you ever seen Flirting? I have seen that, it is unbelievable. It's an unbelievable movie. I think you made me watch it maybe, and I loved it. Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal. Patty Arquette. Patricia Arquette, Ben Stiller, Taya Leone,

Richard Jenkins. Richard Jenkins kind of steals it. He's your lover in the movie. He's my lover, he's my lover in the movie. And that was a moment, you know? It was like I'm fucking acting with Nick Nolte. But you say when you're in this scene with him, he wants to breathe with you.

When that's happening, he's actually not Nick Nolte. The magic is real. And when you're looking in somebody's eyes and you don't see them, and that's whether it be the book, whether it be acting. Even though I didn't grow up in Hollywood, my dad was an actor, there was a celebrity thing in it

because he went from total unknown to Marcus Welby MD, which was basically like the friends of its time. So there was all this attention and how he dealt with that attention. There was a lot of irritability and a lot of confusion and you have to go do this and you have to be this and you have to present your wife. It was not great.

Didn't come natural to him So there was nothing about it in that way that was attractive to me But behaviorally and I think if you go back into this book you go Oh was so behaviorally chaotic for me as a kid or my brother as a kid That of course I would be obsessed with why people do what they do and what a great way to Explore that and acting that was great way to explore that in acting. That was the toehold for you. That was it. Yeah. Yeah. That was it. It's a version of a psychology. Totally. That's exactly what it is. It's like, would you become a psychologist just to be around

people who are constantly talking about this thing that is endlessly interesting to me or experientially be inside of it? And then you're with Nick Nolte and you're like, this is fucking crazy. Nick ended up saving my life later. There was a whole relationship. You ping ponged, yeah? Well, he's a ping pong kind of guy. Yeah, I only know the lore. Never met him.

I've heard some- The best. Almost impossible to believe stories about him. I mean, literally walk into his house and you go, Nick, are you there? And he'd go, yeah. And you go, I guess he's here. You know?

And then you go, I'm in the back room. Is he like an armchair chemist? He's like growing things. No, that's what I mean. So you'd go in the back room or whatever, past the living room and he'd be sitting there looking into a microscope and studying his blood. He like six bandages on his arm.

And you go, hey man. And by the way, not on drugs. Not? No, sobered. Okay, but he has also partaken in drugs. He has. Yeah, cause I've heard some fantastic stories. He has.

I got left with a few questions and I want to touch in on my absolute favorite zone you get into in these many different stories. I have a favorite story in the book. Oh, great. By a landslide. I'd be so interested to know what that is. Oh yeah, mull over whether you have a guess before we get to that. I do have a favorite story in the book. Oh, great. By a landslide. I'd be so interested to know what that is. Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's a mull over whether you have a guess before we get to that. I do have a guess. Okay, you're raised on this crazy ranch, life's nuts. You guys moved to Santa Barbara. This is where you get involved with the Cedar Rats. We know about that, we talked about that the last time. Created the Cedar Rats.

I'm sorry, created the proprietary recipe of the Cedar Rats. But mom was involved, you say she was like one of the lead people in a pyramid scheme that was just kind of raining money. But I need more info, what was the- Do you know the pyramid scheme? I know what the pyramid scheme is. Well, there was the pyramid scheme of the 70s.

What was that? And it was the beginning, it was the first one. And what you do is if you have the ability to kind of, whether you'd say manipulate, but she was so good at cold calling people and saying, hey, if you give $5,000 to this pyramid scheme, so if you have eight people on the bottom that works itself to six people, four people,

two people, one person, and then once you get more people on the bottom, you get whatever money has been accumulated in that pyramid, and then you start a new pyramid. She would have 20 pyramids going at once. She could call 100, 200 people a day and get people involved. So she was getting that money one bag after another. Dumping bags of money on the table. Dude, she would come in with literally grocery bags full of money, and then she'd dump it. I can see it right now. It was right on the side of her bed, and she'd dump it and she'd say, count.

So I counted, I'd count 50 grand, and then at some point she was put on a hit list. Ultimately she found out she was the third person on the list and the first two people had not been killed, but had been severely beaten. Oh my God. And those are the people who didn't get their money back. Also, simply because I'm obsessed with money,

it's like the whole time I'm reading the book, I'm like, what is mom doing for a living? It's like, where does this ranch come from? My dad. Your dad, okay. And then this pyramid, so then a windfall of money, which is fascinating. And then you're stealing a good deal of it,

maybe six grand of it you found. Yeah. While you were counting, you were copying. And so I knew it was around there somewhere. And when you're a 13 year old kid, you're not even 13, 12 year old kid who has this pension for addictions that you don't even know about yet.

And then you're taking each piece of furniture saying there's gotta be a hollow spot in the floor or whatever. And then finally hearing that chunk or a piece of wood goes, boom, and falls out. And you're like, yes. And I paid her back. You did.

After I did Goonies, I gave her a check for six grand. And she didn't know what it was for. Did she know it was gone? Cause she had money coming in and out all the time. Yeah, it's like these cartel people, they lose hundreds of millions of dollars. It's exact, she was a drug dealer. She was a kingpin.

Yeah. And I just can't imagine anything more exciting than being 12 years old and having access to six grand and how much fun me and My friends would have had my god Mike Herbert who's still one of my closest friends He looked older so he would go to the drum shop or he had a mustache Mustache herb estate the herb estate. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so the times I like the book the most is when you're telling on yourself. I make sense It's crazy how that's the most beautiful part of people. It is the most beautiful part accountability

It's just so counterintuitive to some most people not all yeah, I guess a was that stuff hard to write or has our 30 years in AA helped us get to a point where we know will be loved on the other side of that Was it hard? It's hard after you do it and you put it out there and somebody says, this is the worst book I've ever read in my life. And you go, huh. But ultimately it's even better because then you start to realize the thing

that you've learned early on in the program is that has everything to do with them and not about me. They're like, I don't want you to reveal shit, man. That means I have to reveal shit. And if I have to reveal shit, I don't want you to reveal shit, man. That means I have to reveal shit. And if I have to reveal shit, I don't wanna do that. We just talked about this. Or the story I've been telling myself, which is no one will love me if I tell these things,

might be incorrect because you're doing it and people love you. And so it's very threatening to the core story they've been telling. Power of example, within massive discomfort, I love the idea of anybody, even with acting, you know, you're like, hey, you got a scene coming up where you have to cry.

So I think about my dead grandmother, never made me cry. So crisis mode puts me in a different place. Now, if I think of a mother lifting a car off her kid, like even when I say it, forget it. Same, same, same. That's it, I'm done. If I think of people who go beyond this design of themselves that they feel that they have to adhere to,

and the betterment of humanity, I lose it. Me too. So the tragedy that makes most people cry, to me, feels very expected. Of course that person died, and of course this happened. Life sucks and it's gonna get worse. When people are genuine. No, I get it.

When they're genuine and earnest and sincere in the face of how risky it is to be, I lose it. Bro, I lose my shit. When someone's sincere and earnest and they do it out loud, I'm like, thank you so much. Being fucking earnest and beautiful in this world where people are gonna call you all kinds of things

for being that way is, oh. That's it. My daughter had, you know, whatever fears. She did it last night. We went to the ice cream shop. I said, go ask for another spoon. She dropped her spoon and she was looking back and I could see building up the whole,

oh my God, I'm gonna have to go in there. What if it doesn't come out right? And I said, don't think, just go. And then finally she went and she did it and she came back with a smile on her face, dude. Hi. Forget it. Bravery, just bravery.

Yes. Okay, so the part of the book I don't relate to you on, and I've really been spared this, and it's the thing that really probably gave me the most compassion for Your story is I never was out there in the bowels of my addiction With kids I had my mom as my voice right like I would be at the depths of some deplorable act I have kids yet, but I would think of mom forget it

I would've been a dead on my mom saw me buying this crack right now, and you know, like, oh my God, what would my mom think? I think. Yeah. I know what shame I've carried around, but so many of your stories, when it is crazy, and you're in your craziness, and you're getting stabbed in fucking Costa Rica,

of course you're like, I have fucking kids. I have a son I love, I have a daughter, why aren't I with them? That layer of disappointment in yourself and the shame of that, I have been spared and I'm just so compassionate to. It must have been so fucking painful to be in those states, just thinking why aren't I with my kids?

I was 19 years old when Debbie got pregnant and we were living at 2020 Beechwood Villa, just the worst apartment down here on Beechwood Canyon. And then by the way, when I got off the freeway at Vine, then we moved from 2020 Villa once we found out we were going to have Trevor went to Hollywood Towers. Yeah. And then we went over to Kinwood in Los Feliz. You know, we just didn't have any money and that was a really shitty part of town.

Just like gunshots all the time and all that stuff. But I was looking at 14 years in prison and I had fought six cops, so six felonies basically. Thought I was Bruce Lee and they taught me a big, yeah. I told you that story, it's just the dumbest story. Literally most embarrassing story ever, but great. So again, you're in the habit, you get sober and then you're like, okay, it's okay. And then you're responsible.

And then you go back and go, God, this sobriety feels like a ball and chain. I want to have fun my life. I'm 23 years old. I should be having fun. You convince yourself in all those ways. And then you go back out and it doesn't get worse. It just gets gnarly. It was always gnarly.

But I will have been a parent from 20 years old, and my youngest right now will graduate when I'm 70. So I will have been a parent my entire adult life. So I don't know life without kids. So whether it's me going off and whatever this messy trajectory is of a human being, which we're all messy. And you just have to accept these moments, not that they're okay. It's like people saying

they needed to relapse in order to find out. I don't agree necessarily. I relapsed and did I learn anything else? No. But I chose to do it and I take full accountability for it. There's stuff that I haven't written in the book that my family and I talk about everything. So it's all open and it's all out there. But there's things that I've't written in the book that my family and I talk about everything. So it's all open and it's all out there. But there's things that I've done that really put my family in jeopardy. And I always tried to keep it separate. I tried to live this life and then I tried to live that life. You have that goal, but obviously the thing is more powerful than you.

When it would cross over and bleed over and things would happen, you just go, this is awful. But no matter what I did, whether it was involving addiction, because it wasn't always, there's a story in the book where I go to Portland, Oregon to be discovered. Oh my God, this is for my own private Idaho. My own private Idaho.

I stayed in a flop house. I mean, I stayed in a true whore house. There were like hookers going in and out and I'm reading Rambo at the time, trying to be that guy. Let me tell Monica too, this is a Gus Van Sant movie about male prostitutes. River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, beautiful movie.

So he's like, I don't know what it's like to be a male prostitute. Maybe I should go figure it out. I can't get an audition for this thing. Okay, I have enough money to fly to Portland, Oregon, and I'm going to walk around Boys Town in Portland, Oregon. And Gus Van Sant obviously hangs out in Boys Town. He's probably scouting for the real deals. I'm scouting for the movie.

This is your camping trip. And he's gonna see me, and he's gonna go, Holy shit. Wait a minute. Have you ever thought about acting? Yeah, oh yeah. And I go, I have actually. I'm doing a movie right now. No way.

Okay. I'm totally available. And by the way, I have to provide for a wife and child right now. So anyway, I ended up. We've all done that. I ended up, yeah, but not like this. We end up in the adult booths

and you got glory holes. Big dicks come through the wall. I went full into it, freaking out. And then also thinking, what am I doing? You have the right ratio of delusion and reality. So it's like, your delusionusional enough to go up there, but you're also there going, I'm a fucking fraud. I don't know what I'm doing.

This isn't accomplishing anything. I suck. I have a kid. Why aren't I at home? That's it. And by the way, that's not the first time I did. I did it with Oliver Stone for the doors. Then I heard Val Kilmer got it. But I was walking around looking like Jim Morrison

in Tucson, Arizona. It's so sad that the irony is, and I think what the book suggests is you never know, man, if you keep putting yourself out there, you don't know what your life has in store. You just have to keep doing that. You keep having to lift the car off the child. You have to keep doing that. You keep having to lift the car off the child. You have to keep being brave. You have to be willing to go through the meat grinder and get ground and ground and ground and ground and ground because you don't know what's going to be sculpted out of it. So the only time I get nominated so far, Gus

Van Sant. I ended up doing W with Oliver Stone. Yeah. How fucking crazy. Yeah. That's insane. Do you tell Oliver, hey man, I was like wandering around acting like Jim Morrison. Yeah, he didn't care. No, he doesn't care. And I loved working with him and I love him. And I don't say that just to say it, but great working relationship.

I think he was slightly afraid of me, which was probably a good thing. Yeah, it takes a lot to scare him. It takes a lot to scare him. And he's usually this guy that's creating this chaos. Talk about creating a vortex that he controls. There was a great, can I tell you this quick story? Okay, during W there was a thing and Richard Dreyfuss, and I don't know what Richard was going through. I don't know if he was sober or not sober. I think he was sober, but we had a seven page scene and we chose to eat sandwiches. We chose along the lines of doing this movie. We thought, I think he uses his hands a lot. So he's eating potato chips or eating sandwiches or always popping a candy or whatever. We had a scene between

me and Dreyfus and it was just seven pages of going back and forth informationally. And I'm eating a sandwich during the time. And I'd say my first line, I go, you know, so, Vice, what's today hold? And he goes, and I go, what? This is literally the first line. And he goes, what? I go, it's your line, man.

And he goes, what do you mean? What do you mean? And dude, it was just that over and over, every time we did the take, he would stare at me. And then Oliver comes in and he goes, what's the problem? What do you mean? And dude, it was just that over and over. Every time we did the tech, he would stare at me. And then Oliver comes in and he goes, what's the problem? I go, I don't fucking know. I don't know what's happening. Studied my ass off of the scene.

I don't know what's happening. And the driver was still sitting there and he goes, what? And I go, what do you mean what, dude? I don't understand what. You're in a scene in a movie. It's not a monologue. It's there's a dialogue. I'll hold this shit up so you can read it

Like it was like why would you do that? I go so you can speak And I didn't know I thought it was like one of those Alan font things where I was like, yeah I'm definitely being pumped. Yeah, I wouldn't know if he was trying to get control over me I don't know was lying and you never know with actors cuz that goes on all the time I got mad and then Oliver's like no, I can't have all the time. I got mad, and then Oliver was like, no, I can't have you getting mad. I can't have, you're getting emotional. You can't get emotional.

Go over there. And then they're yelling at each other. I didn't know what was happening. Yeah. I did not. I still, to this day, I don't know what was happening. I see that Dreyfus is a genius, or something was going on.

Sure. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. Again, back to my favorite part is always when you're telling on yourself. This is a story that could happen to me any given day, and it would be a fucking bummer. Your sheep story.

I knew it. You did. It's such a beautiful story. I read it out loud to my girls last night and my wife was listening and she said, wow, I can't believe what a great writer he is. I totally wanna read that book. Wow.

It's such a great story. Super cool. And I would love for you to read it and if you don't wanna read it, I'll read it. Oh man. I want people to hear this story because I And I would love for you to read it. And if you don't want to read it, I'll read it. Oh man. I want people to hear this story because I think it would make them want to read this book. It's a good cover too.

Yeah, the cover was Joey Feldman, who's a sober body of mine. Okay, dang. All right. This is great because you didn't know you were going to have to do this. No. And by the way, I never wrote down the story

and I did take my younger kids to this very place where this happened We revisit it at the Korang. Let's see if I can Pronounce this stuff right when I was doing out loud. I was like mungins gonna flub this they won't know I'll probably flub this 1999 2000 my girlfriend was getting minor surgery. I had my 11 year old and my 7 year old with me We were visiting her in England. She kept pushing that we should travel, so we eventually came up with Scotland.

I've always had a thing for Ireland, but Scotland never really came up before then. The Isle of Skye is a paradise. I would learn later that most of our ancestry comes from the highlands of the Isle of Skye, Clan Ross and Clan Reed. Maybe that would explain the feeling we had when we were there. The kids and I had a banter. Where are we going to sleep tonight? I'd yell, to wish they'd reply in equal decibels. We don't care. We didn't care. We were carefree and happy. We were Clan Brolin. We were a unit. One day, about five days into a very nomadic vacation,

we came across the Kerang, a landslip on the northernmost part of Trotternish, Isle of Skye, Scotland. There was no car park at that time, but for a little soggy dirt lot along the edge of the road, everything was new to us there. Everything was a discovery. Clan Brolin just rolling along with whatever came along. A trail was barely visible in the distance,

and from it overlooked a stunning portrait of the valley below. We decided to trek and make use of our whimsy. No water bottle, no idea how long it was. We took off. Eden, my seven-year-old, holding my hand and Trevor bringing up the rear. The walk was precarious at times. Right from the trail's edge, shot down hundreds of feet, it seemed, in moments. I questioned myself and my abilities as a parent. What am I doing up here? Why do I do this with little kids? What about a typical playground?

Why don't you do what is already set up for children? The trail would even out with the pitch of landscape, and we'd be back freely being our lively selves. Sheep are in high population in Scotland. They are everywhere, and here was no exception. Blue dots on white-riddled parts of the mountainside, red dots on others. I surmised the colors sprayed onto their thick wool-represented ownership, farmer blue and farmer red.

Fine, I like sheep. So do my kids. We've had sheep. They are funny. Cartoon funny. Baaaaaah! I suddenly ran toward a flock of them, my arms flailing. I thought it'd make my kids chuckle watching them run down a hill, then up another. The sheep were scared, but no harm, no foul. My children laughed more at me than at them. Our papa's crazy, and I

loved living up to the legend I imagined myself to be in their minds. We love crazy papa. As I stopped running and waving my hands and just started to turn around toward my kids, I heard a snap. I didn't know what it was. Then as I refocused on the herd beyond, now running up a hillside, there was one whose legs were dragging behind it, the front paws desperately scooting the body forward in fits and starts. Poppy, what happened to that one? I jogged down to where the flock had been and the lamb was still there, struggling frenetically.

The closer I got, the more it tried to scamper away, but it couldn't. Something wasn't working in its body. I hoped it was in shock because of the sudden change in pitch. I hoped that maybe the sheep's body had temporarily spasmed and frozen. I put one hand on the back of its neck to try to calm it and the other I slowly pulled down the length of its spine. Vertebra, vertebra, vertebra, vertebra. The sheep let out a yell. It was a screech of pain. We were two miles away from the car.

That part of its back had collapsed. It moved. Something is broken. I've been raised with wild animals my whole life. Bobcats bit my cheek until it bled, and I've cleaned the cages of wolves, mountain lions, and bobcats since I can remember. I know how to deal with crisis. I would have been a good soldier.

I'm calm under copious amounts of stress. I looked over my shoulder to my kids. They were staring at me waiting for a sign of how to react. Stay there, I told them. Please stay there. I don't know what to do. I was kidding. I was making a joke.

This goddamn sheep's back broke. How the fuck did that happen? It was only meant as a joke. This goddamn sheep's back broke. How the fuck did that happen? It was only meant as a joke. What do I do? But I kept a face on. I looked around for anyone else on the trail. Nobody. I looked up to the peaks of the Korang, how the fog was just caressing the tips of them, and I suddenly felt the cold front of death enter my body. The sheep scooted slightly farther forward and bleated. I grabbed its body and attempted to swing it onto my shoulders. I couldn't.

It was too heavy. I wanted to be that parent who could lift cars to save their child, but no matter how hard I tried to hoist it, it failed. I looked back to my kids who looked sad and anxious, but stoic. They had in them that ranch kid grit that didn't allow for an instant reaction. They knew it was gonna get worse, and to react now would be premature.

Turn your heads. They did. I could break its neck, I thought to myself, one startling snap, and it would be out of its misery and pain. What if I weighed it? Would it be better? Where is everyone?

I avoided it as long as I could. The sun was getting lower in the sky and all I knew was that I was going to have to kill this innocent animal. I grabbed its muzzle with my left hand and then brought my right hand over the left side of its head, leveraging my left. I'm going to pull as hard and as fast as I can and it'll go out like a light. One, two, turn your heads, cover your ears. They did. One, two, three. I pulled as every organ in my body fell

into this hell of my own making. Bah! The screaming, the sheep kept screaming. Its back legs were splayed out and it just screamed and screamed as it kept reaching forward away from me. It knew, it knew I was here to murder it. There was no sign of physical trauma. None. Can we look? My son yelled over his shoulder. Not yet. I didn't know what to do. My kids were watching me. This was a seminal moment. There was no

pride in trying to kill the sheep. There was nothing but shame and inadequacy. I didn't know what I was doing. I should know. I was 31 years old. I grew up on a ranch. I grew up around wild animals. I had to assist in the deaths of animals all the time in our house. Cancer, age, trauma.

I wrapped my hand around the nape of its neck. I told it I was sorry. I was sorry. I didn't know what to do. I had killed wounded animals before, a stork on a beach with a broken neck, birds flying into windows who could never fly away again. I put my dog down when he was riddled with cancer. I should know how to do this.

We were fifty feet from the edge of the cliff. I could throw it off, but what if it survived? I don't know what's down there. What if there's hay or a soft bog? I looked up and the other sheep were watching me from afar. My daughter was crying by now. It was a soft cry, a silent cry, just tears. My son put his arm around her, ranch kids consoling each other through each of nature's

traumas. But this was because of me. Do they think if I kill this sheep that I would kill them? Not now, but at any point in their lives? If I do this, will it always be living somewhere under their skin, itching at them? I dragged the sheep up the hill while I continued to bleat and try and hold its ground with its front hooves. There was a loose rock.

It was an old rock with a layer of mica and a slight fur of moss covering it. I picked it up and there were two sharp edges visible. I ran my hand over them. They were as sharp as they looked. I imagined the sheep telling me to put it out of its misery, but I knew that wasn't the case. It had no say in the matter. It was all in my head. The truth is, we were all dying on that landslip, but soon one of us would be dead, and my aim had to be right on. Turn your heads, cover your ears. My daughter wiped away the tears on her face with the

backside of her hand, then put the palms of her hands over her ears. My son followed suit. I lifted the rock above my head, one eye stared up at me from near my feet. The grass along the trail was a deep green. I imagined blood on it. I tried to prepare myself. I am a killer. I kill innocent beings.

I'm not funny. There is nothing funny about me. Don't think. Aim. Save this animal from the pain I caused it. Aim. Please, God. Please let me get it right.

I stand tall, the rock suspended above me. Thunk. A dull sound. It's moving. Please, God. Keep your heads turned. Small bursts of wind came, lift, thunk, lift, thunk, lift, crack. Silence, the wind is picking up, my children are cold,

I am cold, the world is cold. I feel my children are cold. I am cold. The world is cold. I feel my children inside me. I see their pain through me. I feel for the pulse of the animal. Silence, except for the winds. None of us move. I am looking down. My children are looking away. The sheep is dead. We stand for a long, long time. We stand there to this day. Oh my. Fuck.

That's beautiful. It's tragic, but it's beautiful. Oh man, that's like fucking Carver-esque, my friend. What a story. For me, of course, I'm always walking this tightrope of trying to give everyone the most spectacular experience. That's exactly right. And I'm irresponsible and it goes wrong.

It's so selfish of me that I do things and it goes wrong. I mean, I'm reading that, Chris and I were in Africa. I see this huge herd of giraffe. I'll have it on video. It's part of our video. It worked out. I ran at the giraffes and they all started running and it was great. One could have it on video. It's part of our video. It worked out. I ran at the giraffes and they all started running and it was great. One could have tripped. If I'd have killed a

fucking giraffe trying to entertain this gal. And that's with them for the rest of their life. And that's the kind of things I play with. And it's irresponsible and sometimes it works out. And sometimes it doesn't. And I got to live with the fact that, you know, it doesn't. Yeah, that one fucking hit me because that's really a metaphor for how I've been living my whole life. That's it. Watch me jump off this thing. Watch me do this. We talked it in the beginning. It's like when you said when one parent leaves and then you're sitting there and you're having to perform and then there's always this performative sense of self. Like you're the funny guy.

You're the crazy guy, you're the crazy guy, you know, especially while drinking. I went out with a guy once, he was from Canada, but we were in LA and we had a certain relationship where I was in my craziest phase. And he brought somebody from Canada and flew her down and said, hey, I'm gonna take you out with Josh. And you'll see.

Buckle up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, for some reason, I wasn't drinking at that moment. I had a day, maybe three days before, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna stay off the sauce for a while. And we went to one of the few times I've been there, to the Viper room. And he said, what do you have to drink? And I go, I'm just gonna have water. And he goes, what do you mean?

And I go, I'm not gonna drink tonight. And he said, dude, I brought my friend down from Canada. It's time for the Josh show. And I was like, holy shit, I'm your clown. Yeah. I'm the Jester. And I think that's what my mom was. And it was only toward the end of her life

that she started to come to terms. She had thought of a really great story for a series. And she wasn't involved in Hollywood at all. But it had to do with chimps and people. And ironically, this series is out now called Chimps. It was based literally. And she had thought of that story and somebody said, I love that idea, let's develop it.

And I remember my mom in the kitchen really profusely crying, which she never did. And I said, what's up? And she said, I've never been taken seriously in my life. So you have the bleed over of that, which is me, some masculine form of that, who's doing that same song and dance who realizes on his own terms luckily younger and says you know what? I don't want to be this jester all the time I don't want to be the one that people are happy to escape

But they're happy that exists because they're living life some version of chaos through me You're living out their fears, barely. Whatever. Yeah, you're the horror movie they go to see. I'm the horror movie that they go to, that's it. Yes, and then under all that is, could we love you just cause you exist? That's it, which you can't.

And you don't think so, and I don't think so. I've gotten the same thing from, I understood people who are obese, and you go, hey, we can do this, or we can do gastro surgery, we can do this, we can do that. And And they go, no, there's this reticence to work out and all this. And then I got it because I paralleled it with the drinking. Oh, without your extra weight, you don't exist. It's the thing that people are always talking about.

At least it's something without it. You disappear, maybe You're invisible. And I always felt that about drinking. Whereas I'd go out and it was like, you know what you did last night? They go, no, tell me. And they go, you were nuts. It was so much fun, but then you did this thing

and we climbed this building and then you jumped and you thought you had a parachute on, but you didn't. And I lived off that for years. Well, it's the power of off that for years. Yeah. Well, it's the power of identity that we put on ourselves. Like the whole story where you like being the crazy dad and then in one second, you're not the crazy dad,

you're a person. That's exactly right. And that's all we really are. You're just another person. That's it. And can you find something? It's just terrifying. You get to that place eventually where you can say I'm okay just with what I have around me, my family, the few friends. I don't

have to charm everybody, not everybody has to like me. It's okay. I'm gonna go write a fucking book. This has been incredible. I guess the only thing I wanted from the book, and maybe it'll come in another book, is your mom deserves an explanation. Why is she that way? Yeah, I was wondering that too. Yeah. Something happened to her. I used to talk to her about it, because my mom was in Cameroon State Hospital.

She wasn't there for very long, but her sister was in and out of Bellevue for 30 years. Severely alcoholic, really crazy. And I got to know her sister was in and out of Bellevue for 30 years, severely alcoholic, really crazy. And I got to know her sister later, but I would ask her and she said, my parents were amazing. She was down in Texas, Corpus Christi. Corpus Christi, Texas. And she said, I'd sneak out my window and my parents would come back. They'd be so worried about me. I would yell at them for waiting up for me. And she said, I was the chaos. And she very readily admitted that.

Do I believe it? A thousand percent? Maybe not. Because again, her whole thing was she couldn't be vulnerable. So she had power over that story if it was just her, but I don't know. Maybe, maybe not.

I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. We know, we may never know. Well, I fucking adore you. I adore you, man. Yeah, I'm so glad. Thank you for taking this. I don't care if this is your one millionth interview. I got everything I wanted out of it. I'm adore you. I adore you, man. Yeah, I'm so glad. Thank you for taking this. I don't care if this is your one millionth interview.

I got everything I wanted out of it. I'm telling you, it's not like the others. All right, I love you. I love you. We'll do this again. Yeah, thanks for coming. Thank you. So lovely.

All right. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's gotta let him have the facts. We are coming to you live from an apocalypse. Not live, five days late. But five days ago, we were in the midst of an apocalypse.

Wild sky this morning. I got up really, really early. Part of this resolutions biz is I gotta wake up so early to get the things done. Now that I'm back to writing again, in the memoir after the journal. Got it. So I woke up super early, I checked my emails

to see if Delta's school was closed. There was no emails. She was also incredibly excited to go to school. She was out sick the day before, but she could not get there fast enough today because she bought Freddy in Mexico City a fidget spinner with grenades on it. That's thoughtful. And the cutest thing was when we were walking down the street with all these little tiny

market stands with selling different stuff. Of course, I'm checked out, right? I can't stand shopping, so I'm just kind of like standing. And then she ran over to me and she's like, dad, I need your help, what would a boy like? Oh. So I went over, we looked at this thing and her conclusion after playing with it the whole trip was it's the best fidget spinner she had ever,

performance wise, she spun it, watch how long this thing spins. Anyways, we drive to school right away, even when the sun came up, cause I watched the sun come up and I was like, that is the eeriest sky I've ever seen in LA. It's like dark as hell. We get to school.

We were early, we were out of the house on time. And I was like, oh, I love getting here early. Parking's a breeze. Wow, parking's really easy. Walk up to the school, it's closed. I would have been surprised if it was open. Opened my phone, 7.20 a.m. That cancellation came in, so I was 20 minutes early.

So then we drove up to Freddy's at eight in the morning and gave him that present, which was really, really fun. Cute. Yeah. And then got home and we have a couple different groups staying at the house who've been evacuated. Yeah, people. Yeah, so yesterday at like, I guess two, I guess,

or one early, a fire started in the Palisades, which is on the West side, so far from us. Normally these fires happen in Malibu. Yeah, Palisades, that's the first for me. Yeah, Palisades was new and closer, more inland, and it just kept going and going and going, and everyone there had to evacuate, and it's gone. The Palisades is gone.

The Palisades village is completely gone. All the stores? Yes. Wow, I was watching late last night in the high school zone fire, I was like, whoa. The winds were- They were insane. They were insane. They were insane.

Yeah, and that's why the fires got really out of control. And apparently they were, that Palisades fire was moving at five football fields a minute. Wow. Okay, so five football fields, 500 yards. That's a quarter mile a minute. Crazy. Yeah, the winds were blowing 60 miles an hour That's a quarter mile a minute. Crazy.

Yeah, the winds were blowing 60 miles an hour. The embers were like just, yeah. I don't know if you saw like the female newscaster was giving things, she just gets engulfed in embers and she's like appropriately so panicking. I was having a moment watching that. This woman is in the pit of hell. She is standing across the street

from the high school that's on fire. And then the other side of the street is on fire. And there's embers whipping around everywhere. And she's breathing in tremendous amount of smoke. And of course everyone else is scurrying to get out of there. Right. And she is there.

I know. And I was like, this is the greatest example of like when you have a goal and you want to do something, like she wants to be a reporter on the fucking ground when the shit's hitting the fan. Yeah. So for her, it's one experience. Mm-hmm.

And it just, it illuminated for her, illustrated perfectly what your mindset does to your experience in a situation. Yeah, I mean, a lot of journalists have a, they chase that. Like that's a part of their personality. I feel like when we had Anderson Cooper on, we talked a little bit about that,

that it's, in some ways it's like an addict's brain. Like there's some element of chasing a chaos. I guess what my conclusion was, you think a situation is objectively a thing, but really, if you want to be there, it's one experience. And if you don't want to be there, it's a completely different experience.

The context is identical. It's like I said, if you're on a football team and you want to tackle the person, you're completely oblivious to the amount of pain you incur because you've chosen to run as fast as you can and tackle the person. If you're sitting on the sidewalk and you're having an ice cream and that's not what you want,

you don't expect it and you get hit with the same velocity, it hurts. It doesn't hurt when you want it and it hurts when you don't want it. And it's just so interesting, the power of our brain. So if you wanna be in that situation, you're where you wanna be and it's just so interesting the power of our brain. So if you wanna be in that situation, you're where you wanna be, and it's all tolerable. And if it's just came up on you out of nowhere,

it is a nightmare. Lights on fire. She said something like, okay. Like it was a self-talk of like, okay, we're in the shit now. It was the attitude of someone that wanted to be there. Yeah, I think if you get out, you can then reflect back and have that opinion. But if you're in the hospital.

But even experientially in the inferno. Yeah. That's fascinating to me. So that happened. And then there was a lot of warnings that likely more fires would start popping up in the night because it was supposed to get much worse.

The winds were supposed to increase between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. and hit like 100 miles per hour. You know, everyone started like getting these warnings and stuff, I had this app. And yeah, I'm just like staring at the map of LA and just like watching them just pop up all over the place. Well then it became a two front war because on the west side of us it was that

and then Altadena. Exactly. And Brie lives in Altadena. Yeah, did she have to evacuate by soon? So I was like, come over if you need to. She's like, oh, we got a hotel shockingly. Okay, good. And I'm like, I'm watching that thing.

I'm like, where are all these people going? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. ["The Armchair Expert"] Looking at all of this, I was so confused. I was just like, I don't know fires. Like I don't understand them. I don't know where you're supposed to go. If there's a fire on all sides, how do you get anywhere?

How early are you supposed to leave? Should I be going somewhere now just in case? Because yes, this Alta Dina one is on one side of us and at this point is moving into Glendale, which is very close to us. And it's like, I just felt like I have no idea what to do. And it was- You were scared. Very.

You were very scared. Yeah, I was up till three staring at this thing. Worrying. And then I lost power and then I lost cell and internet and I couldn't communicate with anyone and it was scary. Yeah. Sorry you were scared. it was scary. Yeah. Sorry you were scared. That's okay.

Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to be by yourself, but it was fine. Obviously we're fine here. Thank God we're so lucky to be in a place that we did not have to evacuate. We know people. Well, one of our friends in the Palisades house

burnt to the ground. Exactly. Yep. We know people whose houses have burned down. Many people have had to leave. I found myself on hour two of watching the coverage myself, getting annoyed with human nature. People must be thinking this all over the country, which is like, how many times do we spend

hundreds of billions of dollars in the wake of it and continue to put almost nothing into prevention? I know. I don't understand, like is at some point the governor gonna go like, we gotta cut the shit and get fucking serious about preventing this stuff because, I mean, and it'd be expensive, but these start because the winds blow the power lines down, they start a fire. Exactly.

We gotta get the power lines underground. I don't know that step one power line shouldn't, but that's gonna cost a fortune, but there's no way it's gonna cost as much. As all of them. Those houses that were burning in the Palisades, those are like $40 million houses. The bill on that Palisades thing is gonna,

it's just gonna be gargantuan. Across the board, it's like when we think about what's going The bill on that Palisades thing is gonna, it's just gonna be gargantuan. Across the board, it's like when we think about where talent and energy is being spent, when the city is on fire, you really start evaluating like, what is the point of all this other extra accoutrement when we can't even get a fire under it? It's still like, I think the Altadena fire is still at 0% containment. Yeah. Like it's wild, even military.

I'm like, why, why is it? No one could fly in it last night. The winds were way too bad to fly. Like I think they're doing a great job. In fact, I was watching it and I was seeing that like already Arizona had deployed a bunch of firefighters, towns north of us had deployed, they had, you know, they're coordinating all this stuff. And I was like, when you're at a bar saying

you hate the fucking government, that's the government. Somebody comes to help. Exactly. Thank fucking God. Why are you pretty? There's this huge system in place. They don't have their hands on it now, they're gonna. Without them, the entire city would burn to the ground.

You'd have no city and you'd go, yeah, good, no government. What the fuck are you? And then no one repairing it either, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild. But you hate the government, that's who's come to rescue. Firefighters and then also even today, just all the landscape workers,

like there's so many people out there like trying to clear out, there's a huge tree that fell huge that fell on those fields in Commonwealth. So that whole intersection is completely blocked by a tree. And like you see these guys out there like trying to get it out. Yeah, it's wild.

It is wild. It felt very end of days. It's funny, because we had done an episode of Armchair Anonymous yesterday, and we interviewed a nurse who was telling us there was a bomb threat. Yes, I thought about that. And so there was a nursing home that they had

Evacuate. Evacuate in Glendale and there's footage of it and there's just all these old people in wheelchairs and on beds and I'm like, again, thank God there's nurses Oh my God, I know. And there's rescue people. Infrastructure. Yes, I know. I know, I agree, I fully agree.

That must be part of the reason they build prisons out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Because what would you do if you had to release all the prisoners? So scary. That's probably also maybe if they escape, then it's more time to find them before they like hit a community,

maybe is part of also why they're remote. Sure, sure, sure. Well, and they're looking for cheap land and no one gives a shit. There's a numerous reasons, but I was thinking like, yeah, what happens when there's a bomb threat at the prison? Do they just go like, oh, tough shit, we're gonna ride this out.

The guards are gonna leave. What happens in a prison? You can't just let inmates out. I know. Yeah. Wonder if that's ever happened. We can't search, we have no internet. That sounds like a movie.

Yeah, we don't have internet here, so we can't do any searches. This is about you doing the podcast in 1994. Regular radio. On 4K cameras. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ignore that part. But yeah, anyway, it's been a wild 24 hours.

Very eventful. Very eventful 24 hours in Los Angeles. Oh, and for people who will probably ask, because in today's episode, we reference that we did a commercial and that it's out, but it's not out yet. We did postpone putting it, or the company decided to probably rightfully postpone. So, just as nothing else, I mean, what else has happened since?

You know, nothing really compares. Nothing beats that, really. Josh Brolin, I think, lived in Malibu, so that's a ding ding ding. He did live in Malibu, but I think he relocated. Okay. Yeah. Still journaling? Yep, still journaling.

What are we at, eight for eight? Yeah, today's the eighth, right? Is it, seventh, eighth? Today's the eighth, so eight days. Eight to eight. Eight days of journaling, and I'm also- On the eighth day of journaling, I wrote down a secret. Yeah, lots of secrets.

Now I have to burn, but I can't, cause if I were. Oh, shit. It would be insensitive to burn my journal. And it was interesting because, you know, people were like, make sure you have your stuff ready in case you gotta go fast.

And I was just sort of like looking around my apartment and I was like, what do I, what should I take? Like what is important to me? And all I took was my passport and my medication. I didn't put anything in there. Yeah, I remember I was shooting Baby Mama in 2005 or six and Griffith Park was on fire and they evacuated all the houses on Los Feliz Boulevard, one of them being mine.

And so Carly called me and said, hey, they're evacuating your thing. You want me to go, what do you want me to grab from the house? And I was like, everything I've written is on the computer. Grab that, I don't wanna lose everything I've written. What about, no, just grab that and get the fuck out of there. Did your power go out?

It's out currently. It's out currently. Rob's went out much earlier last night. Yeah, we've been out since like seven yesterday, 7 p.m. 7 p.m.? Yep. What did you guys, did you light candles and stuff? We did, and then our neighbor's window flew out of the frame and shattered in the side of our house.

Wow. The winds were so nuts. Yeah, they're crazy. And you could hear it like so loudly as if it was like a thunderstorm. Yeah, fires are observable and they're predictable. You know where they're at? You know which way the wind's blowing?

There's some prediction that can be made. The wind's like, where did that come from? Why now? When's the next one? You don't know. And they're, yeah, they're like 60, 70 mile an hour guests. But okay, but so this is for Josh Brolin, our friend. I love him. Just, that was lovely.

I just love him. I'm so happy he read his book for us. That was so kind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For him to do. Someone had heard it on the early release and they said that they cried during that. I thought that was nice.

Aw, that's very nice. Yeah, it was very touching and moving. Okay, so the Fred Durst, Corey Feldman tour is called Loserville, which we don't like. Yeah, we don't love the name of that. I mean, I'm not blaming them for calling it a bad name, but it makes me feel sad that they called it that. Yeah.

Well, what I think is happening is Fred Durst, who I don't know personally, I've never met him. I follow him on Instagram because he loves station wagons. That's my full extent. Mm-hmm. But he seems to be a pretty self-aware person. And I think he's very aware of that Doc Woodstock and the fact that they were, at least in that documentary,

kind of credited with this terrible toxic masculinity, all the gnarly stuff that happened at that festival. I think he's aware that people are associating him with all that. And I think he's probably not that as a whatever-age guy he is. And I think he's probably not that as a whatever age guy he is. Yeah. And I think he's trying to figure out how to own it

and continue on being a musician. I don't know. I think he's in an interesting situation. Yeah. I think this was probably the best attempt at that. Well, this says, the wild mostly sold out summer tour that brought together two pop culture icons

who know exactly what you think of them. Mm, in the description. Yeah, and then he talks about Skylight Books, which is down the street from us. You love Skylight Books. I love Skylight Books, it's a great bookstore. How often do you find yourself in there? Sometimes I like to just go on walks,

and that's a nice destination for the walk, because it's a good amount of distance. Stamps. Yeah, and then it has a nice little ending. It's cute, it's really cute to walk around there. I did my sprints yesterday. How'd they go? You know, I was part of my res.

Do sprints once or twice a week. I think they're the worst workout you can do. They're hard, yeah. I think they might be the very, I mean, there's probably something worse can do. They're hard, yeah. I think they might be the very, there's probably something worse that I just haven't done it yet. Cause biking up the mountain is really terrible, but the sprints are worse.

But I did them and then today I'm a little tall. What does a sprint workout look like? I did one half pace. Well, I start at the gate and I run to the far end of the property. I think that's probably about 75 yards. And I do a half pace one first, then a three quarters pace one second to loosen and warm my tendons and muscles up. And then it's as fast as I can humanly come out of my blocks and run to the end,

and then I'm allowed to walk back to regain my breath, which I barely do, and the second I'm back there, I have to turn and hit, I'm using your clicker finally. Oh nice. Yes, you got me very early on for my birthday, an Usher's clicker, because I always wanted to operate one. And I have had it and really not had any great use for it. I don't tear tickets often in life.

But in the past when I did sprints, I'd have like a pile of rocks I moved every time. Because you gotta lose track. So this time was like walk back, the second I'm at the gate, I have to turn, drop, click, sprint. Nice. And so I did 11 sprints.

Nice. Yeah, at full pace. Well, the wind probably didn't help. Yeah, I wasn't noticing it too much at that time. Yeah, but it could have been rough. Could have been a factor. Yeah. The good thing about sprints is they're over quickly.

Like you can't do sprints for an hour. No, got to. At least the way I'm doing it, where it's just they're back to back to back. Now we've talked about this many times, but I always feel like it's not correct. So I always check it about Matt Damon and 10% of Avatar. That's, it's correct.

It's still correct. Yep, it's still correct. It'll always be correct. It's still correct. Yep, it's still correct. It'll always be correct. It's still correct. 10%. Of Avatar, there's, what are we at? There's three of them, there's two of them. Now that's the part I haven't reconfirmed.

Let me see what the grand tour of those movies. Worldwide Avatar number one in 2009 is 2.923 billion. We can call that $3 billion. So that's 300 million. And let's see avatar two. We're at 300 million. Let's see.

The way of the water. We got a grand total on that bad boy of 2.3 billions, another 230, so we're looking at 530 million. Half a billion doors. Wow, we will. Thank God he's doing it for the right reason. He is, he sure is. That doesn't seem to hurt him at all.

That would. He just laughs. That would be, yeah. Yeah, almost made a half billion. I guess that's what you have to do. Also. And he's made plenty of money. He's done great, he's done great.

It's a lot of row. It is. You're by the company. They would never sell it. Never, too much integrity. But what were they just valued at, 600 million? No, a billion. Oh, at a billion?

Yeah. Okay, so you get about half of it. Controlling interest. And part of your stipulations were that the girls had to go out for wine with you a lot to pitch you the new product lines. Oh, that sounds great. Can you imagine sitting with wine

and they were showing you sketches and fabrics? I wonder if they're wine girls. I don't think so. Okay. There might be more martini girls. I would put them more in the martini category. You would. Sophisticated. They're too cool. They're cool.

Wine's too pedestrian. A little. I love it. I. I love it. I. But I'm pedestrian. What can you do?

All right, that's it for Josh. Those are all the facts. Love you. Love you. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.