Personally Speaking ep. 89 (Robert Davi)

he has made over 140 motion pictures he's a working actor from tv from the stage he has an albino where he sings the songs of frank sinatra he's an amazing talented actor and singer his name is robert davi he's our guest on personally speaking stay with us [Music] do [Music] hello and welcome to personally speaking i'm your host monsignor jim lisanti and veteran character actor and singer robert dobby joins me now robert has appeared in more than 150 motion pictures and some of his best known roles are in films like die hard licensed to kill the goonies and the iceman robin is one of film industries most recognized tough guys he's also starred on the small screen and hit shows like profiler criminal minds and csi robert davie is also a singer and in 2011 he released his debut album davi singh sinatra on the road to romance he's the father of six sean ariana francis isabella nicholas and gabriella and he's here with us today to talk about his faith his family being a conservative in hollywood and the values that matter the most to him joining me now i'm so pleased to welcome to personally speaking the wonderful actor and singer robert davi before we go to robert and our conversation with him let's listen to him first singing a cut from his dobby sings sinatra album out of the tree of life i just picked me a plum you came along and everything started into hum still it's a real good bet the best is yet to come [Music] best is yet to come and baboon it'd be fine [Music] you think you've seen the sun but you ain't seen it shine wait till the warm-ups underway wait till our lips they have met and wait till you see that sunshine day you ain't seen nothing yet the best is yet to come and baby won't it be fine [Music] best is yet to come come the day you're my come the day you're mine i'm gonna teach you to fly [Music] for these arms to surround you think you've flown before but baby you ain't never left the ground [Music] wait till you're locked in my embrace we are here with robert dobby delighted to have him back on personally speaking robert this is going to be a left field question but let me begin here uh you're like a number of people i know have been blessed to know who went through the experience of raising a great family and then as we are slightly aging he takes on the responsibility of a new baby uh and i'm just wondering how is she and what's it like to be a dad second time around a little bit later in the game she's a miracle yeah uh yeah she actually is she's uh it's uh as you know you're baptized there yeah and she's just the extraordinary little girl she'll be three may 17th and her spirit her intelligence uh her the book she walks around with is the bible stories for children that's in her little purse believe it or not because at bedtime stories we tell her i give her the uh you know my bible bedtime stories but she's uh she's really uh uh i'm not saying it's easy right it's harder for diana you know because i'm busy but the baby is just absolutely incredible she's so uh it's a joy i'm glad i did it because in the early stages of your career you're really uh miss a lot because you're traveling and your your hunger for your career supersedes sometimes even though i coached the teams and was a hands-on parent yeah you don't remember as much as now at this age for some reason and you're seeing this and go my did i do this with the other children you know um and it just is uh she's just full of love yeah rob and your mother is very expressive you know it's so important with the mothers it really is knowing uh having had a couple of different uh the the the the mother's behavior and uh uh with that child creates a very very different energy yeah well energy energy is what i want to talk about i'm talking earlier today to my nephew matthew who has three little boys and uh where do you find the energy he's in his 30s to constantly be doing your job and at the same time raising your kids and be a good husband now we're a little bit later in life than matthew so where does the energy come from to both be the worker you are and acting and producing and at the same time be a hands-on dad well first off diana had does a lot of heavy lifting with the baby okay you know she does a lot of heavy lifting with the baby but of course i'm there you know and the baby what's interesting is gabriella demands it of me good she demands it of me which is wonderful it's not like you can slide by right daddy daddy bad watch this with me sit by me daddy she comes over sits by me come on daddy let's sit like this now and she's so emotional like that so she pulls me into her her world beautifully and um the energy uh did you hear about the story between toby keith and clint eastwood i'm sure you did or maybe you didn't tell me they were playing golf and um toby keith asked that same question to clint eastwood you've got a younger wife you've got kids you've got a career you're directing you're acting you're 90 years old yeah how do you do it and he says i just don't let the old man in and then toby keith went home and made a a song that you should listen to okay don't let the old man in which is and then clint wound up using it in one of his films and it's a terrific song in terms of the sentiment that that holds so i would say that's that's kind of i'll let the old man in i like that yeah yeah yeah i'll try to keep that in mind even in priesthood you know we can sometimes say i'm 41 years in the priesthood this week and i'm like god i must really be old then but i don't want to give into that that surrender you know for those who don't know robert dobbie is an interesting guy obviously i mentioned before that he's made 150 motion pictures and tv and all the rest but he's also um along with a few other folks in hollywood uh kind of a proud conservative guy and aligned often enough with republicans in a world where that's certainly not common uh how do you fit in how do people who are at the extreme other end they don't call themselves liberal anymore they call themselves progressive because they know that's a term they can sell more fully but how do they respond to you when they know this guy doesn't think like we do you know it's uh there's complexities of different responses okay some you could tell appreciate my outspokenness and my point of view i can see that in some people um others that are friends of mine remain friends and you know we we flirt around the politics of it all or they'll say to me don't tell me that you know you still i go well don't tell me this you know so there'll be there'll be certain kind of the absolute back and forth cordial uh and sometimes a little heated uh discussion of it all but there's less um and again with that with that political thing hollywood's always leaned left except there was a certain point in the 50s and 60s with john wayne and sinatra well sinatra later on in life but a lot of the conservative big stars of the time that protected that aspect in hollywood and today you don't have that voice you have the spinelessness of a lot of or maybe it's not spinelessness but the blindness of it for instance father the epidemic of homelessness in los angeles the lawlessness that's happening all over i don't know if you've seen the trains in l.a yeah unbelievable people going into stores and you have celebrities like a nice guy i know him jimmy kimmel jimmy fallon or george clooney or the rest of the hollywood power elite now they don't say a word yeah and if their voice is lifted because they do have an effect to think that hollywood does not have an effect and culture doesn't have an effect is incorrect it does yeah and the silence that they have and i think that the general public let's they let them have a pass at the uh at i think the injustice that they're able to let happen in our society because they talk about all of this but meanwhile the people that are the foundation of the country the foundation holding it up they're letting them be torn away and that to me is a uh it's egregious and the politicians that call themselves you know catholic like pelosi and biden and the rest of them well you know i don't want to mention names which i did but there seems to be a hypocritical aspect to everything they did one of the things when they took down the statue of father junipero serra and then columbus now why do i say this because nancy pelosi in 2015 was kneeling at that statue with the pope and here she didn't protect it when they tore it down years later several years later that kind of spineless hypocrisy which is rampant in politics we have to find a new way and new leadership and support people that have deep ethic yeah not necessarily a political mind but an ethical mind that's based on what the tenants of this judeo-christian nation was founded on robert let me ask you if you wore a hat like a bishop if you were a bishop in modern america today i'm i'm very resonant with what you're saying i hear joe biden coming out of his meeting with the pope saying oh he says i'm a good catholic and i should keep on receiving communion of course the holy father can't come back and say anything because his conversations are private so biden can say whatever he wants to nancy pelosi being another good example or on the view someone like joy behar who has nothing of the catholic and her constantly saying i'm an italian catholic but what does that mean means nothing but if you wore the hat of a bishop what would you do in response to catholics who while they announced that catholicism in fact seem to be given the bird to every catholic teaching that we treasure i would have to um sanction in some way or strongly speak out have an encyclical in some way a bishop of the encyclical uh saying that in terms they talk about the propagation of the faith which obviously they're not living up to and there's a responsibility you have uh when you say that you're catholic yeah there is a responsibility to that and uh and to ignore that is is uh or to uh um now that's not to say people you know we're sinners you know i mean it was one christ was our perfection um and so you know it's not for us to judge but i would have to say that there are certain um uh responsibilities that you have to show for your faith or you have to stand up for your faith because otherwise what what good is it you can't just pretend and um you know what i say you can't have communion um that's a because i feel that communion is this is a sacrament and i don't know their heart there may be a moment of contrition prior to that saying i'm stuck in this political life right and i've got to do this for whatever it might be so i can't read into their hearts as souls but i would surely say publicly you have to you have to um be proud of your faith and and and adhere to certain values of it you know robert you i i don't think we talked about this before but years ago one of our guests was a governor you carry the former governor of new york and as governor he had been pro-choice and uh and then as soon as he got out of office he flipped and became very very militantly pro-life and i said to him on the show what happened to you and he said i'm getting older and i know i'm going to die one day and i'm going to stand before god and he knows that i knew all along that i was pro-life in my heart but as a democrat i could not be elected governor of new york if i didn't say i was pro-choice but are you hopeful that a lot of these people uh in public life who have just completely embraced the abortion culture might with god's good grace change direction i would hope because you know how can you deny you know it's again i always say unless a baby is born with just uh a certain part of the anatomy that expels toxic material from them until the baby's just born with that part it's either male or female you're denying the natural order of things and the denying of abortion continues i mean see if they hold on to that they can hold on to anything and i'm all for people's rights i'm not going to judge anyone's that's not for me to judge you know what i mean i i have many friends that that of the lgbtq community many good people yeah wonderful people uh and i'm not gonna uh that but don't say to society that a child is non-gendered or whatever they call it now this wokeness that's going on that's incrementally destroying and confusing and creating i think mental illness in a lot of our youth you know since you raised the life issue too again i want to go back to that for a second you and i are speaking robert moments before the supreme court will decide on dobbs versus mississippi i'm i'm pretty convinced that uh at the at the very least they'll decide that mississippi is within its rights to say 15 weeks is what you have have the abortion before that or or don't but that's it 15 weeks which still puts us at a more permissive way than europe where it's allowed only until the 12th week but i mentioned that because you know and i know that as soon as that happens that the cnn folks and new york times are going to say this is tragic this is monumental they're going to try to shake the troops to major demonstrations but you and i know that actually it still allows most abortion to continue that doesn't change certainly not in california or new york where it's still a nine month right it will always be a nine month right but i guess i'm wondering because you are a great communicator what should we do in response to the ex expected hysteria that will come from the elite and the major media who will see this as just a terrible tragedy for women's rights women's autonomy when you know and i know that most abortions take place in the first 12 weeks anyway so to limit it to 15 weeks is not the end of the world at all what should be our response to the expected hysteria of the media to dobbs versus mississippi when i think it's going to go the pro-life way not being a female because it's like when they play the racist card on the most ridiculous things the other thing is you shouldn't speak for women's rights i'm speaking for human rights not for women rights right speaking for the natural order of life now what i think is that and feel that conception and aristotle and sophomore they all had this question about when does life begin when does the soul that's that's been a question since many many years you know i looked it up one time and i was surprised to see the discussions they were having when it happens after birth first year there was many discussions back then but as a human being i mean that's who we are yeah you have to say at conception now the abortion issue this and my research on what for my last understood father was that about 60 million abortions since roe versus weighed 16 million in this country right in this country 60 million so i have to think to myself wait a second what what does that mean are there 60 million rapes are there 60 million people that have some issues that they don't want the child so what is the abortion so we have to talk about that that's not being talked about they want to say over and over again i i've had women well what about the case of rape what about they bring that up like that's another hot button to keep you awake right right no no no no we're not talking about some of these things and they've got such procedural things nowadays that within the first 24 hours or 48 hours before conception supposedly it can stop a baby being conceived so if we have this tool you have to then we have to talk about this we have to educate our youth we have to tell them about the sanctity of life we have to not give in we have to not be afraid to say no i'm not a racist i'm not a bigot i'm not a uh misogynist i love women i appreciate women as a male and as a and the female and uh approach it with a in a strong intelligent uh humanistic way um protecting our life because what they're doing they're saying things like you know if you're a certain color you get better treatment for covet if this is happening you're getting better treatment for that if this is happening so this is the tip of the iceberg of pushing a left-wing progressive communist agenda on the world and um we have to educate the people and be strong in our our discussion of it and not back down from that and say to them you're a hypocrite you mean to tell me there were 60 million rapes 60 million with for whatever reasons well now to that point you know when you said people raising it as a feminist issue i often think to myself but of the almost a million abortions every year in our country that means half of those children who are aborted have to be female what about female rights in that case but going to your other point about the rape and incest uh the alan guttmacher institute which is the think tank for planned parenthood admits that 98 of the abortions in our country are performed for what they call reasons of social convenience and that only two percent have anything to do with rape incest danger to the life of the mother so you're on to something there we gotta change the topic back to the 98 percent who we terminate for reasons of social convenience now let me ask you this do you do you find in being a voice for the voiceless ones that anyone in the hollywood community is willing to listen to you are we so entrenched that we can't even dialogue that issue is such a hot button issue with the the men because they have been their lips have been stapled or their tongues have been stapled to their forehead by calling misogynistic and you have no right and you don't know what it's like and women that are that are militant on this issue they've taken a very militant uh issue and uh holistically saying don't speak for my you know it they've educated them don't speak for my body and i understand that i understand there's a backlash to that but this is also adject prop that's been created through you know my dad was a knight of columbus and he brought home two books one was called none dare call the treason and one was called masters of the seat when i was a little kid okay he said read these books yeah and i read these books i was 11 and over the decades and then having children in several decades and my education i've seen how education has been hijacked and the incremental brainwashing yeah to where we're at this tipping point today robert let me let me stop you for a second there just to ask you know i love what you told me about your father handing you those two books and that was his way of trying to pass along to you values that mattered but now as a dad how have you been able to share with your children both the young and the older ones values that you hope will sustain them you know they see me talking and writing and reading and i send them different articles and i have to say that uh one one is one may not be he's off the beaten path on that pray for my son sean okay he's a good good person has a drug issue okay he's 41. and i think that his whole culture is a different uh on this but he's a he's a good person you know what i mean he is but he has a different idea of things which is not bad it's not a bad idea he has the values but he has a little bit my other children my son nick who's 21 he sees exactly who i am oh and you know he he watches this i mean so uh deeply um and uh uh my daughter ariana i think osmosisly over the years they've seen that in the readings in church in values in example and hearing me discuss and and not be afraid to have a conversation with them robert you know for our listeners and watchers around the country robert davie is talking to us now from his new home in florida but he has been for years and years based in the california los angeles area robert 44 what went into your decision to make the move to florida the epic amount of i went to florida for the first time with frank sinatra in 1977 they brought me there and it was a great place i mean it was just it was it was great it was really the and i saw over the again over the years the dissipation now the last several years the absolute dissipation the homelessness that has popped up that is just epidemic proportions you would think in some areas i mean it's a third world i've talked to some of the law enforcement guys where they come out of there people go into stores and they could take under a thousand dollars worth of stuff and this has been going on forever and walk right out and they're not allowed to stop them the security can't do anything police officers are telling them it's a misdemeanor they let them out now because they're scared about losing an election coming up and i hope there's a red wave not because i'm such a red wave guy i you have to you know the greater of two because both sides have their problems both sides have the hypocrisy both sides have things that you know it's human and it's politics but the aspect of law and disorder in los angeles when i went to venice beach i didn't feel safe for little gabriella to grow up in that community anymore so i said to my wife i said let's get out of here and uh ron desantis seems like he's doing a good job here in florida and and uh but that was that was the reasoning didn't feel safe and i was in a safe area i want to thank robert davie again for being a guest on personally speaking and uh what i love about robert and i hope our listeners and viewers do too is that he's a man of conviction who's not afraid to speak up you know robert we had recently an actor on who'd been in a picture about abortion called roe versus wade and and he was just concerned that we not get into that issue because even though he took the job as an actor he didn't want to be associated with those pro-lifers and i thought to myself you know this fear factor that keeps people silent is is one of the great cancers in our society today and i'm so delighted that it has not impacted on you but that you know there are going to be people who will turn their backs on you or reject you but you know at the end of the day you've got to stand before god who will say robert do you know the truth and did you speak it and happily you'll be able to say yeah lord i did it didn't always pay off but it sure was what i wanted to say and it's what i believe so thank you for being that that voice that tells the truth in season and out of season and uh and keep it up because man we need you we need people just like you well we need you father god bless you thank you thank you for what you do as we end today's program to thank you all for being with us if you need to reach out to me for any reason you can get me a personally speaking podcast at gmail.com if you'd like to see past episodes go to youtube and punch in personally speaking with one senior general santi and please don't forget to click like and subscribe personally speaking is also available as a podcast personally speakingpodcast.buzzsprout.com [Music] or you can go to www.closeencountertv.com or www.olmp.org you'll also find there our weekly mass and homilies i'm going to encourage you also to look on facebook and personally speaking with monsignor germasanthi we're also now on instagram a personally speaking podcast please share and let others know about personally speaking i'm privileged to serve as host and executive producer of personally speaking our producer is lisa jandevitz thanks so much for joining us we'll be with you again next time on personally speaking [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Personally Speaking with Msgr. Jim Lisante

Views: 288

Keywords:

Id: JDtSoppfEGg

Length: 28min 0sec (1680 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022