Shia LaBeouf on REAL ONES with Jon Bernthal

[Music] i'm so grateful that you're allowing me to just talk come on man uh and i love what you did with this thing i was watching all the you know because i'm fearful too so i was watching all the interviews that you've done with bo and kevin and man there's like a you you found a you found a gap not a whole lot of places a guy like me can come and talk my true you know or bo talk his truth and sit down with another cop i think is phenomenal with you i'm not just kissing your ass i think i think this is really special i like how small it is also anyway what do you got to say you i know you do your little intros there you gotta be not you gotta be anything like that i think i think the first thing i want to say is from what you said as soon as you got out of that car yeah can you lead me in a prayer yeah definitely about this conversation what we're trying to achieve first off i'm prepared to go every which way let's go yeah we i mean i i think that it's my duty now like i when i think about what my life has become and what it is now like what my purpose is now you know i i i need to be useful and when i look at this me too environment there's not a whole lot of dudes that are taking accountability you know i [ __ ] up bad bad like crash and burn type [ __ ] hurt a lot of people and um and i'm fully aware of that and i'm gonna owe for the rest of my life for the rest of my life and i also don't have that feeling about uh the woman who's accused me all this [ __ ] like i did in the beginning when it first landed i thought man um you know there was thing i wanted to hit twitter and be like look i got receipts this that that but this but not that but this but not that and the reality is uh all of that [ __ ] is unimportant the reality is that she saved my [ __ ] life dude yeah so i i uh she's like a like some kind of sage or like a i don't know she she's uh she's a um a saint for me because had she not intervened in my life and not created the avenue for me to experience ego death i'd either have a really mediocre existence or i'd be dead and full and you know i had no love in my life i had no purpose in my life my whole purpose as you know was just craft it was just i'm gonna be good at this thing and that's all that i have the only thing i care about in life is being a good actor and that's such a vapid shallow existence and three emotions that i toggle between which was i would feel anxiety depression and excitement and i thought excitement was joy and i thought lack of depression was serenity peace and i had no spiritual life i had a a very i was bankrupt spiritually i thought my whole my whole spirituality was this craft because other than smoking weed and drinking the only spiritual experience i ever felt was on set you know that's the only time my perspective would shift and change and it's the only time i ever felt useful and so um i'm on a spiritual growth path i'm on a uh an excavation i'm picking it up cleaning it up putting it back you know i didn't just hurt that woman the kind of shame my wife has to walk around with you know the um the the pain that came to the the people i was working with creatively even i built this like me and beau built like something really special downtown and uh and all them kids you know i just failed a lot of people and so when i say i'm gonna oh it's not just her i owe a lot of people and so the reason i wanted to do this and the reason why i felt like celestial mathematics when you hit me up was it's not a lot of places i can go talk period you know and um i guess old me would have looked at this like oh well this is an opportunity for you to like speak your piece but really the only thing i want to do is like give dudes who [ __ ] up hope absolutely yeah what can what what what can this achieve who can this touch victim perpetrator someone lost someone who's trying to be found yeah who on that path pain is an adhesive bro if you've been through it yeah you can connect to people period and the story the first thing i just think like look man i haven't seen you in a long time and um i want to talk about that yeah the first thing i just need to ask you man is i need to ask you about your child yeah i need to ask you about your baby bro yo man tell me about your baby i mean she's uh she is the most dynamic spark of life and most magical um it's a game changer doug you know like i you would always talk about your kid and i was like yeah i've had a dog as though them like like as though these loves are like anywhere near what you experience when you have a kid but um this was all tied in too like it came at a time when you know me and my girl been in love for a long time but i didn't really know it you know i didn't really know what love was to all this [ __ ] hit the fan and she was still around i thought she was in love with me because of what i could offer i didn't know that when i had [ __ ] jackal [ __ ] all nothing to offer she would still love me so i didn't i didn't really know what love was right that's one and out of this like newfound discovery of real love in my life this kid you know and uh it um [Music] i'm not gonna pretend like i like i haven't figured it all out it's such a mystery you know i and i what scares you what scares me is like enough nobody tells you about the first three weeks you know the first three weeks man i remember changing the diaper yeah you know i've been hanging out with monks for nine months and i came out a monastery and i'm you know i've been in rehab for three months and i've been working you know been outside for a while and so i thought i had like things dialed in like i could press the pause button but when you're changing a diaper and you change it and then you put it back on she shits again and then you change it again and she shits again and it's three in the morning you ain't slept for four days and you're on the third it's the third iteration of [ __ ] and you're sitting there at the table and you change it one more time you say to yourself if you [ __ ] one more time i'm gonna jump out the [ __ ] window like i'm done right and you're looking at your kid and you're just thinking how how am i gonna get through this and you you put the fourth diaper on and she doesn't [ __ ] it feels like a miracle it feels like god is hugging you like i got you bro so i i don't know if i'm infusing a bunch of stuff but there's some kind of incredible genius in my child but she's testing me and she's forcing me she's forcing me to give up on me yeah that's right which is way more important yeah i mean way bigger obviously way more important but it also feels like some kind of weird reset button for sure like i know that i'm never gonna be the dude i was in front of this this woman you know and i know that i'm never gonna treat my wife the way that i treated her around this woman it's almost like having the ultimate parole officer it's like the ultimate probation officer i've never looked down on having a probation officer i need somebody to keep me accountable because freedom without guidelines and limitations is [ __ ] madness you know if i strip you naked and throw you in the ocean you'll be free but you won't enjoy it you know i need i need like i need guidance and my kid is serving as some kind of ultimate like um like horse star yeah and for sure north star but even more than that she's first of all my kid is so [ __ ] joyful like she's just always i've been around doctors and maybe all doctors say this but like i've been around dr saying like this is the most joyful kid i've ever been around you know she's raised in complete love and my wife is such a good mother she's a part of a new purpose that i that i didn't have you know i was living for myself and when you're holding a baby like you don't care about none of your [ __ ] you know like what do you think being a good dad is what what are you going to bring to the table i'm honest yup i'm loyal uh i'm willing i'm uh open curious super curious and uh i'm uh i'm learning how to how to be a man of principles give voice to what you're scared of and what you're worried about about being a dad and and and what you think uh you know you need to focus on and what you're worried about with your relationship with her for the future i'm not worried about much anymore like i don't live in fear i don't have a bunch of worry like that what do you need to work on yeah there's a lot i need to work on first off just in terms of having a daughter and knowing that your daughter is one day gonna search your name in a search engine and see that you know you are a deplorable disgusting [Music] uh piece of [ __ ] and that [ __ ] hits you know and so i i have i have from now until she's uh literate to create a relationship with her where she knows me more than this this idea who i am in the public you know when that hits like you like you say because it's funny man i i i just went through something like that with my kids because my kids can [ __ ] read now you know what i mean and uh what what what's there man do you see an opportunity in that yeah what is it i'm i i picture for myself for christmas with a bunch of people i don't helped there you go that's what i envisioned for myself it's not you know i i used to judge my worth by the films and stuff and like i think about my christmases during that whole path it was just so [ __ ] solitary and lonely or to be like this new girl and that i mean it was always like some like very um in intangible rapid vapid no intrinsic value nobody that could like i imagine that there's dudes i'm working with now that i got 597 days of this program i'm in and um i got monks at my house you know i look around sometimes in my house even now and i think what like how you know how did this happen and um i think it's the relationships i think my daughter will be able to when it does come time for her to be able to assess who her father is she'll see a man who failed was a sinner was honest about it that's it took accountability for it and then made course corrections that's it changed and then gave his life to something bigger than himself and found solace in a program of principles service love you know that's that's where i'm aiming at so i think it'll be a christmas one day where she just wakes up and goes damn dad's got a lot of friends who are these people and my mommy will say like you know dad had a hand to play in like these people finding the same thing he found that's what i i'm hoping for you know not if but when she falls because everybody does man sure you're going to be able to talk about it with her and you're going to be able to be there with her the reason i've always connected to you is because you know you have depth and weight because you done fell on your [ __ ] face you know and then got back up and kept it moving and you know this is people who haven't gone through that they don't have depth and weight to the the message that they have to share they can tell you all about what to do and how you're supposed to do it but very few people have the life experience and this child is a big part of that you know there's a lot of miracles that have taken place in my life just in this short period of time that that that takes me out of this belief phase into like oh i can touch it yeah this feels very real so and i i played with faith you know when we did fury i was toiling with faith but it was all like the purpose was performative what was your it was it's about intentionality right right to be good in the movie right not to save yourself or save somebody else and when i [ __ ] up in the past it's like you know you get a call from brad pitt what [ __ ] up you know there wasn't no calls this time yeah my mother didn't talk to me this time you know nobody all my all my friends became acquaintances the antithesis of being a friend is walking away i am not going to walk away like i am always going to love you i am always going to support you that being said the things that you know this person said like i can't i can't [ __ ] with that and like and like what you said you were right man like i i [ __ ] hurt people in my life you know like i know what that is i know what it's like to be in that valley i know what it's like to be left behind um i don't know what it's like you know to put my hands on a woman or for a woman to say i put my hands on her and and that's something i you know like but no matter what the the case is my job as your friend is to in whatever way you allow me to or you allow me to be a pro part of that process is to make sure one you never do it again make sure to that that that you're in a healthy process and and number three that i'm a support system for why you're going through that um so i guess my question with that is man's like where am you answered it a little bit but where are you and what do you what four four people who support you and love you like what do you want to say to them yeah i mean i got a men's to make i got a long list of people that i need to make amends to and so um what i want to say to those people is i i want to get it you know it doesn't seem you know when it first hit it was like you know i wanted to air it out and talk about specifics and like none of it really matters you know i hurt that woman you know and in the process of doing that i hurt many other people and many other people before that woman you know i was living my life i was a pleasure-seeking selfish self-centered dishonest inconsiderate fearful human being and i was operating on a on a survival instinct i wasn't operating as a friend i didn't actually all my loves and friendships were transactional you know i [ __ ] with you because we worked together and i experienced great pleasure in that working situation you know uh when i look back at the friendships who people who who dipped or don't talk to me these were also part of the same kind of transactional relationships i didn't actually understand what love was you know i didn't know what friendship was i'm not trying to do a pity party thing i was raised very specifically in in in my father would tell me stuff like you know your life is your life son you know if you want to have a good life you got to work real hard you gotta get into a good school you gotta get a good job that'll lead to a good relationship you have a kid and you put that kid in a good school and you know it's all up to you and so that kind of it forced me into a position in my life where i was god i was the person who was making [ __ ] happen and um and i was using people like like like i was um in a laboratory measuring [ __ ] and like um quite controlling i mean you know how i am on set too you know the way i was operating on set was the actor is the poet you know like you're in a solitary you're on your own like journey that's a bunch of nonsense but this is what i was living in it's the [ __ ] i came up with you know the actors that i looked up to the the art that i was inspired by uh they moved like the actor is the poet i was moving like in my life like i was that way right that does something to the way you operate in the world some people are attracted to it because that confidence is attractive and it feels comforting to be around somebody who who you think knows something it's attractive it it calms my own insecurity to be around a person who who is fully acquainted and acclimated to their craft or their mission in life when somebody's really confident in something it's nice to be around that energy because it feels like guidance it feels like you can lean on it yeah they got to figure it out they got it figured out right so i get why why i'm i empathize with why my way of doing [ __ ] was attractive then and i remember who you were on that set i remember how fearful how deeply insecure you know and sure and the way that you were moving on that show specifically and then the yearnings for david to hit you with certain compliments and [ __ ] like you know you needed validation from him for sure from us from kevin more so from kevin you know and like the military dudes you constantly needed them to co-sign all your [ __ ] all the time and i i empathize with that but that's not who i was i was not that way in life uh the way that i felt about craft and life in general was i don't give a [ __ ] what you think you know i don't care what you think about me i had come from an environment with very little um cheerleading going on and so i created a sort of um survival instinct where i would cut people out you know and and minimize opinions and the way that i would do that is i had to i had to believe that my opinion was great greater than everybody else's opinion around me i remember i remember talking [ __ ] to spielberg i mean there was no director who ever directed me you know and and i used to be proud of that this is what i mean like my the the things that i looked up to and romanticized was i came up on a certain kind of music a certain kind of culture boss [ __ ] you know the guys i looked up to were not asking you what you thought i thought it was something there was something sexy and punk rock about like these islands these men who were islands untouchable yeah is that possible is it possible to be there it's nonsense yeah it's just not real this this the it's um it's fiction it's not a real it's a blanket right i mean it's armor i listen to mickey rourke interviews and i think damn bro it's a sad boy you scared man you're so [ __ ] scared you know and there's a lot of this tough guy armor [ __ ] and i get it you know and i love mickey roar you know he gives me hope when you see a dude go for 12 years no craft and then come out and do the wrestling a guy like me who's in my position looks up to [ __ ] like that it gives me hope it makes me feel inspired like all right if i'm patient for 12 years maybe one day guys like me in my position need stories like that and simultaneously i listen to his interviews and i go there's no evolution here there's no you're still [ __ ] on tom cruise bro like why right and it's insecurity right you know and i was that way i was so competitive my acting wasn't collaborative it was competitive it was a sport and my life was this way and this is what created the insecurity and the jealousy that put hands on this woman the the man that was involved in that relationship was constantly comparing himself to other people and i was a dishonest person in that i was wearing this mask you know i i've gotten cold sores my whole life got them from my mother i get two cold sores a year when i'm stressed out or i'm sick i never told any of my sexual partners about getting cold sores never and that's something when you talk about like how do you what you know how do you how do you talk to these people who you done [ __ ] over like there's certain [ __ ] you can't clean up yeah you know you can't make amends for permanent damage like that you know and so my daughter now has become this opportunity for me you know and every woman in my purview has become an opportunity for me to be like a stand-up dude i used to open doors for women yeah and i used to you know i was a good dude that way but it was almost performative it was almost like i'll do this good thing so you can think i'm a good dude but like in my own private life when the doors were closed i never told any woman i had cold sores you know and so um that's that's deplorable behavior you know when a woman would like me it felt like so [ __ ] foreign that i didn't want to [ __ ] it up and i always thought that a woman being into me was tied to this business so like i think about why the business and the industry was so important for me and it really has almost little very little to do with the craft itself and the spiritual nature of what the craft can be for a great swath of time it had to do with this is how i how i define myself this is where i build my ego so that i can go in and pursue these the these these things that will um these feelings that will absolve me from the very real feeling that is continual loneliness and the feeling of being not enough and the feeling of constantly comparing yourself to other people and what that does in a relationship is it makes you it makes you controlling and fearful and manipulative to not tell somebody you get cold sores twice a year is the is a heinous manipulation you know um but i never came up with a dude who was like hey this is how you navigate that situation nobody hit me to game like hey bro you know if you're really in love you can have open conversations about uncomfortable [ __ ] and really get to like another kind of connection you don't even know about or if somebody was trying to tell you you weren't in a place to to receive it anyways i mean maybe something that's right yeah yeah it wasn't and and i get look you you said whether it was through you know drinking or whatever the [ __ ] it was that you you hurt people that are are close to you yeah yeah that really that really resonated with me man and and i'm just wondering um i mean people who who put their whole [ __ ] on the line to like bring me back from the fire you know alma harel is a great example of a person who she took a gamble on me you know i was in rehab when we started having a conversation i got arrested in georgia for fighting with a cop wound up in rehab and uh didn't hear a damn thing about god spirituality personal growth accountability my whole as soon as i got to rehab was let me get back to this hustle so i started writing a script in rehab that's how [ __ ] mad i was i wasn't listening to no therapy i had been therapist my whole life that it felt like you want me to focus on the problem well how am i gonna like how am i gonna hack this focusing on the problem thing and how am i gonna find my way back to this [ __ ] hustle so i can get back to my ego because really all i cared about was my ego i didn't give a [ __ ] about getting well you know it was all about get well for you get well for the camera get well and so you know honeyboy was born in this kind of toxic milieu of false recovery uh false recovery masked as some kind of like uplifting product uh and she was in on it because she thought that it was i mean i don't know what her motivations were but it felt like she was she was doing kind of what you're doing here when the conversation first started with alma it was like man we got to get to the root of what the [ __ ] is going on here you know something wrong with you you know let's get well it's out of love it was out like y'all [ __ ] with each other you made stuff together i love you what can we do it wasn't it wasn't let's build a product it wasn't a fetishizing product when we first it wasn't like i was in an environmental academy award yeah let me let me go hit you up for a script idea it wasn't that she hit me up like hey i'm in the same i'm i'm living a principled life also maybe you should get you know get get involved in this thing and immediately i was on a you know as a matter of fact you know here's a [ __ ] 60-page monologue i wrote about my dad while i was doing this fourth step you know and right away it was almost like i manipulated her into directing this movie and then that put me in a situation where i was even sicker because then self-will is run riot in full because now i'm at sundance we just done one sundance and i'm like thinking that i can like that i'm the ultimate um manipulative master and i was and i was telling other people who would come to me after seeing that movie asking me about how to help and i would tell them well you just got to paint with your pain you know and all this [ __ ] nonsense it just wasn't i had no spiritual life none the fact that the fact that your spiritual life at that point was bankrupt and the fact that that came out of a transactional uh less than weak part of you if that's if that's what you're saying yeah is it still possible that through the art that you made that that had inspired people or helped people it's it still could have oh i know it has okay uh and i don't think and i don't get too um spiritual too uh too much god talking here because i know that it landed like on deaf ears when i wasn't ready but yep god uses people in in many ways and i've interacted with people and alma has interacted with people who that movie has has had a hand in helping them find their way back to the route you know and and uh that's very fulfilling so i can't deny that that that craft and art is a huge instigator and people you know when you think about catholicism in full you know beauty is a huge part of the religion that's right art has a huge uh hand in evangelizing people and bringing them to god and so but there's also been some real toxicity and some morally bankrupt things that use that art in order to draw people in for own personal gain and for weak parts of those people which is where i was and i think man you know it's you know when i think about you you have this ability um to inspire and to galvanize and ignite people you can make people feel um enormously strong and powerful and and joyous i've also seen you completely humiliate people yeah i've seen you um completely destroy the joy and you know in an environment you know and that's and and i think these things they're cousins man like you cannot have one without the other and it is a constant i think it is a constant work it is a constant mission if you're going to try to if you're going to try to walk the path where you're trying to live for positivity you're trying to bring people up because that doesn't go away that [ __ ] will never ever go away and it's constant work yeah and and the thing that i was tripping out on is you saying how you hurt people close to you that that's also i i i you know we've talked about it i definitely understand what it's like to hurt people i've hurt people i've heard people in ways i have i i i'm disgusted with myself for what i've done yeah um i haven't heard people that that are close to me i can't imagine what that's like and i want to know first i guess i i want to know how does that feel do you know that you're doing that while you're doing it and what is the realization like what is it what does that feel like to know you've done that or to know you're doing that yeah i mean uh so there's there's there's two uh perspectives on it there's where i am now and who i was then yeah and i've had to do a lot of inventory on what was motivating this perspective i come from like and this isn't a boohoo [ __ ] either but i know abandonment i know like deuces and i uh would test relationships and as a way of like finding finding a barometer i'd also like i would hurt people just out of straight selfishness no like there's no intellectual facet to it just the fact that you know uh the fact that i cheated on every woman i'd ever been with you know uh the fact that that directors who put me on who took me from nothing and put me on i eviscerated in public life even on set when i would sense weakness in another person on the other side of a scene i would lean in i wouldn't try to uplift nobody i would try to lean in and it was this constant trying to define myself in the world it has it has to do with not feeling enough you know all all of this comes from fear just when i have no i didn't understand masculinity in full you know um what i know masculinity to be now is stability you know you can't really have stability if you're running [ __ ] because if you're just a dude like you're you know how infinitesimally [ __ ] small we don't even know how deep lake michigan is you know like what are you really running you're running nothing right and so this idea that if you're if you're like uh if your boss in your life you're always going to be in in in a tremendous amount of fear and denial right in denial it's just not real yeah you have to you have to deny anybody else's god you have to deny god in full and you have to you know you fall into this like sam harris christopher hitchens hole where you're trying to intel intellectualize everything and rationalize it you're fragile dude we're all fragile yeah but then you then you get caught up with like you know how you hung out with like philosophers and [ __ ] you know i would backstop all my [ __ ] with like these philosophies and like [ __ ] words you know play these word spells on people and uh was using like performance art to like create this uh you know running word spells you know just a bunch of [ __ ] nonsense really at the end of the day uh that all had to do with the very with the same thing that hurt people it was all about i had my propulsion system was [ __ ] my motivations behind the way i was living my life was wrong you know i had to get a new propulsion system i wasn't looking at life like how can i be useful to other people i wasn't looking to be of service to nobody even including a director i listen to ethan hawk sometimes you know uh do interviews about how he looks at the craft and he's always talking about like my job is just to be in service of the director and that's like foreign to me yeah you know i remember being in service to a director and getting [ __ ] over i remember doing movies with certain dudes who like led me down a weird path and looking back at the project thinking like nah man i was right all along you were wrong and then i just i stopped listening to any kind of director you know and that innocent dude who came into the industry with all this wild wide-eyed wonderment that disappeared pretty quick and then it became like uh i got around some dudes who i saw work a very specific way and i thought the answer to this is the answer to this um having to rely on the infallible man that is the director is you just don't listen to the director and you just do your own [ __ ] because trust your instincts buddy cause you're god i remember calling my manager and saying like what do you mean i'm god you know this is really where i was at because i thought my craft was was god i thought love art and god all meant the same thing to me and and to somebody who's who's because i understand you're looking at it from two different perspectives it's where you're at now and where you were where you were going through it so for somebody who may be going through that right now or for somebody who you know maybe is close to somebody who is going through that were there ever times of empathy were there ever times of realization were there ever times a shame when you're like [ __ ] i just hurt that person what would you say to that dude i'll tell you like this i remember being in georgia when i was doing this movie with this kid zach you were there for part of it yeah and i remember getting arrested yeah and i remember getting out of jail the next day and i remember sitting down with zach and there were moments of like like lucid articulation from this man and this happened to be one of them and he said you know this is my one shot you make movies all the time but this is my one shot and you're ruining it for me and to say that you don't feel that when it lands is not true i felt it deeply but it's what you do with that feeling you know do you change and i didn't you know i would always like i always had an inch left i always had some [ __ ] wiggle room every time i would [ __ ] up there was always some wiggle there was always a brad pitt on the phone there was always some like you know sundance some next project there was always alma there was always another there was always wiggle room to get back into ego and this time there wasn't no wiggle room that's why i attribute this woman with save on my life because she she she destroyed any route towards that wiggle that's real it is real rock [ __ ] bottom rock bottom bottom isn't when you experience the worst moment of your life bottom is when you change right it's when you actually it's when you touch it when you smell it when it's right on your face yeah you feel it and then it's not about severity of what the thing is it's not it's about what you do with it once it happens so like once once once it happened i mean when it landed i forgot how to breathe you know because the email the subtext of the email was your hustle's over you know uh and i forgot how to breathe and i the next thing i did after two minutes of sitting there looking at staring at a computer screen was i went and loaded up a gun and sat at my table and was gonna kill myself i was out of here i didn't know what to do anymore like all my ideas had failed and i sat there for two minutes thinking where is the wiggle room i'd already used my play yeah what's the play uh and there were no options it was like there was nowhere to go it's not like i could go outside and get a choco taco and chill on the you know people driving down the street rolling down the window like [ __ ] off and die you know this is where i was in the early days of this [ __ ] so i didn't even want to leave my house and i had a woman living in my house who wasn't my wife and i was on my way to go do some movie i didn't give a [ __ ] about you know just like momentum building kind of [ __ ] you know movies no intrinsic value just like i need something on the cards you know for this year i need my two or three products one of these things and um and i felt disconnected from all of it and i wound up getting emails from certain dudes who who like you were still involved in my life even when it got ugly you know when it got chunky one of those dudes was sean penn and sean's like you need to call brolin and i called brolin and he told me he was going to this meeting online now the gun is loaded like i haven't left my sitting position you know and i wound up signing on to this meeting and i heard one of the dudes who was speaking that night say uh if you're new and you just entered you know you don't have everything you want right now but you got everything you need right now now now now now and he did that for like two minutes and the first minute i'm thinking you can't spend the whole rest of your share just snapping your fingers and saying now like this [ __ ] is ludicrous and i went into this judgment which is what my alcoholism sounds like sounds like criticality it sounds like judgment so i'm in my judgment like you better say and a gun is right here i'm like you better say something that's really going to get me the [ __ ] out of where i'm at and after two minutes like i i felt like a giggle start to rise inside of me and i felt something like presence i stopped thinking about the email stopped thinking about my hustle the gun almost disappeared and it was like i'm sitting here on this this this skype call and i'm present for the first time in my life and i want to write in the dude in the chat box like hey bro you know i'm on the verge you know i'm about to kill myself he's like okay cool call me tomorrow just like throw away you know and i needed that i had been enabled for so long in my life that if it was going to be me walking into this program and having a bunch of dudes pat me on the back like hey man welcome home we're glad you're here i'd have been out again because then it would have been more wiggle room but the guy that i wound up running into was not having it and he said hey man uh meet me on the beach tomorrow and i wound up up here at tower 10 and he he said uh i need you to get on your knees and i'm like i'm not getting on my knees he's like cool deuces he started walking away i'm thinking oh [ __ ] but it also reified this like you don't care like you care but not in that way you know you're not gonna pat me on my back and i said okay okay i was i was so willing at this point because i was in so much [ __ ] pain and he said get on your knees and i get on my knees he gets on his knees with me so right away it's no longer like this power play we're like like collaborating in this and he says i need you to stop the waves and i'm like ah man listen this dr quinn medicine woman version of this [ __ ] ain't gonna work with me you know like i get how this goes he's like are you either gonna write what happens or you're gonna do a bunch of [ __ ] that you don't believe in so that your life changes because your issue is that you you need to rationalize everything and you're out of options son like what if not this what and he was right and so i started saying you know stop waves and he's like louder man stop waves and he got up off of his knees and he started walking away and i look back and he's like nah keep going and he's like keep saying it again i say stop waves he's like louder brother all the way over there you're all the way over here stop them waves man and now i'm yelling and i'm having like an emotional it almost feels performative now now i'm like back in my bag back to like the manipulating hustling like wiggle room yeah watch this boom let me let me and then i'm crying and i'm stop waves you know like i'm in the middle of like the the greatest monologue of my life on this beach yeah exactly and uh and uh he puts his hand on my shoulder and he goes you can stop all that which made me like giggle you know i started giggling and then he stood up and he put his hand on my left shoulder and put his hand on my right shoulder and he said welcome to aaa and uh it did something to me that felt like like it felt like warrior [ __ ] yeah i didn't it felt like like like man code like g [ __ ] it didn't feel like fluffy cute [ __ ] book reading sitting in a it felt like you're on a mission yeah it felt it felt purposeful and it felt sexy to be honest with you sexy in the way that listening to kevin vance feels sexy to a young man who feels like a boy it felt so rooted and it wasn't emotional it wasn't performative he wasn't trying to manipulate me but it was kind of hokey and like the nights which knights in shining armor kind of hokiness that like made me feel like a little kid again and he said i need you to go home and clear out like clear the decks and i'm like nah man like for me and i don't know if you felt this way but every woman was the one for me there was never a two if you liked me you were the one and that had to do with my insecurity and my fear like i didn't have no there was no two or three or i was just dating like like frivolously it was always like this grand hair climbing up the super emotional super uh romantic super uh this fierce romance you know that i was searching for desperate little boy [ __ ] and he said you gotta clear the decks and i'm like i don't know if i can do that man you know i i feel like she's the one and he's like giggling to himself you know this isn't my wife my wife is not involved in my life at this point and i got this one who's not the one who accused me of this [ __ ] and she's just another person who's who's been uh trapped in my sphere of uh of influence and she's living in my house and he's like uh well look man i tell you what you know you can keep doing it your way or you can try some new [ __ ] because the way that you're living it's [ __ ] you're [ __ ] you're fully [ __ ] you're doomed is what he said you're doomed that was the word and um i flipped to this page he made me flip to this doctor's opinion we got in our book and in the doctor's opinion or how our book starts it it mentions the word doomed and he's like this isn't like another a.a guy this is a doctor telling you you're doomed if you don't figure this [ __ ] out and uh he goes to put it in perspective if you went to kaiser permanente right now and they sat you down and put your you know x-rayed you and put your your x-ray up on a light board and you're looking at a picture of your clavicle and the doctor said hey man you said that gray spot just above your chest cavity you're doomed what would happen to you was your [ __ ] would suck you would [ __ ] start sweating bullets and you wouldn't be thinking about the job that you got to get to or the girl you got to hold on to or where you're going to go on the for father's day or what that you immediately your whole life would get very small and the only rational response to that kind of information is well what do i do and if i told you to staple a dog's dick to your [ __ ] chin and walk up and down the street picking a cigarette butts you would do it you wouldn't ask me why or whether you believe in it or nothing you go look for a dog you know and so uh that made sense to me he puts me in a car he says i need you to listen to sandy beach tape now at this point in my life like i'm i'm i'm like barely hanging on and i'm i'm using this woman like drugs you know every time i need validation i'm having like i'm with this woman and and she becomes what the job the mask of success that the job created for me which kept me from like really looking at myself she became that for me in the interim and he's like you got to get rid of all of it you know there is no more work and no more romance for for a year you're going to have to give me a year and i'm thinking like i'm not gonna be able to pull that off you know and right away i'm half measuring and this is my wiggle room i i can't and uh he says i need you to download this tape this sandy beach tape sandy beach is a big speaker uh and in this in this what was the speech yeah the speech was he's talking about this this chinese farmer and uh chinese farmer in the sun they're picking radishes about the ground and they don't own the land that they're farming off of and uh they're barely subsisting they're giving 70 to the land owner they're living off of 30 of these radishes their whole financial legacy is tied up into this workhorse and one day and the sun is really working the land because the man is too old and one day the workhorse runs up off the hill he just [ __ ] off he's up the hill and the son runs into the house and he shakes his dad up and he says dad you're not gonna believe this is a this is a travesty we're gonna die out here uh i can't get these radishes to grow unless i turn this land over and i can't move that hoe without the horse and the horse is gone this is a nightmare and the old man non plus looks at his son he goes i don't know what this is son i don't know if it is a nightmare i can't call it and the son thinks his dad's out to lunch or like ambivalent or something's wrong or he's too old and a couple days later the kid is chilling on the porch and he sees the horse running down the hill with 50 wild stallions behind it and they run into the paddock and he locks the paddock and he runs inside and he hits the daddy he's like man this is [ __ ] radishes like we're rich you know we're we're in the horse business we're in the horse trading business now this is a miracle dad i'm gonna go tell everybody we're trading horses now and the father looks at his son nonplussed again and says i don't know what this is i don't know if it's a miracle i can't call it and a couple more days pass and the sun's trying to break these horses down domesticate these horses he doesn't know anything about horse he's a radish farmer so one of the horses ain't having it he rears up kicks him in his leg it's like 1400's china there's no kaiser permanente his [ __ ] is shattered they wrap them in some like tobacco leaves or some sprinkle cement on it go sit in a chair for a while and uh and he's wailing and the townspeople hear about it and towns people run up on the little shack and oh man what are you gonna do you know you can't domesticate these horses you can't move this hoe you guys are fully [ __ ] i don't know what you're gonna do but this is this is pretty much the end right like this is a nightmare and the old man says i don't know what this is he looks at his son's leg he goes i don't know what this is i can't really call it a couple more days pass he's sitting with his son he's trying to calm down he's in the middle of pain and they hear this thunderous noise and they look up on the ridgeline and they see 5000 samurai on horseback running towards their little hut and the commanding officer gets off his horse and says give us your son we're going to fight the maoist army and he looks at his son's leg and he looks back at the samurai army and he goes i would but he can't get out the chair you know he he can't get on his he can't no i can't i would but i can he's crippled and the man gets back on his horse and 8 000 men right off to their death and i listen to this tape and and i i i'm driving back from the beach back to where i'm living and i get out of my car and her bags are packed she's on her way out and old me would have written a haiku poem in blood and ripped my shirt off hulk hogan style ran down the street and jumped over the fence and that guy the climb the hair up the thing yeah yeah boombox in the air guys what i came up on and something in me from having heard what i just heard what feels like this is this is now i can't get no lower i hear this like i can't call it and this it becomes like this the most diplomatic breakup i ever had in my life and i say what can i do and sh and uh can i get you a car and she goes no don't worry about it go get well and i go walk into my house and i call my dude up and i'm like man i think this [ __ ] is working like man this is a miracle like this is the most diplomatic thing i ever and i'm in my meeting i'm telling all the dudes like i think this program is really working in my life man and then i got five days sober and they're like bro i think you're pink cloud why don't you go to another [ __ ] meeting jack and uh and i go on to this other meeting now the whole time i've been doing this for the first five days i'm on the phone with a lawyer like look this is true but this isn't true and i got receipts for this and i'm not going to do this and pop up and i'm fighting fighting fighting tooth and nail i'm on the phone with the agents and the manager's like listen you gotta believe me and blah blah blah doing that [ __ ] right and uh my sponsor's telling me the whole time he's like look you're gonna have to let go dog like the wind's at your back just let go you know all this like fighting [ __ ] around like let go man that's childish and and i'm hearing him but i'm not doing it you know i'm on the phone i'm on the phone with him and i'm hanging up the phone i'm fighting this thing and i got a lawyer who's like you need to go to rehab for anger management because when you go to court no spot no aa is going to mean [ __ ] you know addicts that already juiced that route for so long that don't mean nothing we need clinical receipts that you're doing something right and i'm like i'm not going to rehab that's like that's i've always really like cultivated my brown bagger right like i don't like wearing new shoes so this idea that i was gonna pay all this money to go pet a horse and make a friendship bracelet it felt like man this shit's like that's not sexy you know i found aa for real i'm really in my [ __ ] now i don't want to uh i don't want to go to this rehab i don't want to go to it because somebody's saying that's going to get you off it's all about the intentionality you got to not stop it's not about not saying the right thing because you're worried about getting in trouble you say the right thing because you believe the [ __ ] right thing it's that and it's also i'd already done this right i'd already gone to rehab wrote a script and played that game you know and uh right and to focus and it didn't work it didn't work it didn't work to focus on like my childhood trauma isn't where my problem lies my problem doesn't lie in what people did to me what led you to a place with more wiggle room and now you don't have it and so and so and i'm telling them no i don't want to do this you know and i'm telling the lawyer like i don't want to do this and look yeah this and this and i'm fighting all this [ __ ] and i signed on to this a.a meeting this is where i'm talking about like miraculous [ __ ] started to pop off in my life and my sp my dude sent me there because his mom was taking a chip for like 37 years and the woman who took a chip right after his mother was the woman i lost my virginity to who when i was 19 years old i held a knife to her neck and everything in that moment it felt like i heard god's voice say i'm everywhere you can't run no more and like my whole [ __ ] all my planning and like all this like just went gone and um that really happened you know and i remember it vividly and i wrote her in the chat box like did my dude tell you to come like do you know this guy and this guy she's like nah i'm in here because my people are getting chips you know but it's good to see you i knew you were on your way here you know i hope you get it this time and um so i called my dude up and he's like bro you got to let go you got to let go in full and i want to get in my car and i drive up to utah and i'm in utah for three months and while i'm in utah it allows me it gives me they take my cell phone from me and if they didn't take my cell phone from me i was never going to be able to deal with what i needed to deal with i had never known how to pray because i could never cultivate silence i had no absence in my life every unforgiving minute was full of some [ __ ] scroll or some more like ego feed constant non-stop rotation of this this ego thing and that ego thing and just constant fulfillment of like my own personal desires and they took my phone from me and just for that reason alone i would i would urge anybody to go this route if you're in a situation like mine just to get the [ __ ] phone out of your pocket and what that gave me was time to like really assess what had been my operating systems what had been like the motivational force in my life which was always me it was always ego it was always the smallest decision the smallest decision to even go into everything to everything everything was ego everything was ego i would eat that not because it tasted good but because it would do this or do that you know and um so i was there for for 90 days and in that 90 days i i uh i made a list of all these people that i hurt and and um i mean a bunch of [ __ ] happened but uh i came out and um just hit the ground running trying to make amends trying to right these wrongs this is also still a part of that there's some people who don't want to talk to me you know and uh and i understand that and so my purpose now is to be patient is there an example that you can think of that you're i don't know if the right word is proud but if you feel good about sort of where you guys got to or you feel good about the process in terms of making amends or and there's growth yeah can you give me an example of that yeah see i didn't even know what a men's meant just like i didn't know what prayer was but um and let me let me let me find my way to what you just said but like um part of what happened to me up there was uh i would get quiet and i started hearing like like loving thoughts for people that on paper were like villainous characters in my life so i would get quiet and i was you know the first 20 thoughts is like you got to do this you got to do that go here go there go get this and then there'd be like the 30th thought that's like hit your dad up tell him you love him now me and my dad weren't talking you know and um and this is how my prayer life works now it's like i get quiet i hear loving thoughts and then when i act on these loving thoughts miraculous [ __ ] happens in my life you know i wind up in service or uh and then i feel peace but also like i get all these like incredible like with my dad i want to hit my dad up now here's a man who i don't vilified on a grand scale i put all this [ __ ] in the street you know uh and used him juiced my dad is like this is the reason i'm [ __ ] foul out here you know i'm come from this wayward upbringing and you know my dad is the reason i'm such a [ __ ] up you know he's a a biker and a wild man and a criminal and a duda and abusive about and i and i wrote this narrative which was just [ __ ] nonsense my dad was so loving to me my whole life fracture sure crooked sure like wonky for sure but never was not loving once never was not there he was always there he was always there and i done a world press tour about how [ __ ] he was as a man honey boy is basically like a big woe is me story about how [ __ ] my father is and i i wronged him and i remember getting on the phone with him and him and being like you know i never read this stuff in the scripture sin you know because i because i didn't put that [ __ ] in there you know and i was i was bullshitting him i was you know just trying to get him to sign his [ __ ] piece of paper he thought i was gonna tell the story of like braveheart you know i was gonna and i didn't i didn't you know i told the story like this this uh this dude who and i and i turned the knob up on certain [ __ ] that wasn't real my dad never hit me never he spanked me once one time and the story that gets painted in honeyboy is like this dude was like abusing this kid all the time you know my dad tried to keep me from smoking cigarettes that's when he spanked me he found me smoking cigarettes in the shower he pulled me out he spanked me that's when he spanked me but that wasn't my narrative because it didn't position me as like this wounded fractured child that you could root for which is what i was using him for so when i got on the phone with him i you know i uh i took accountability for all that and knew very clearly that i couldn't take it back you know my dad was going to live with this certain narrative about him on a public scale for a very long time you know probably the rest of his life and i didn't put all the [ __ ] in the street you know uh the [ __ ] that my dad got arrested for happened like 30 years ago and i didn't brought it all back to the surface you know and um and i and i i i told them you know what i was doing and it went just like you know hey man i'm i'm in this program i'm learning to be a decent man one day at a time uh i know i didn't [ __ ] you over over here you know i don't put your [ __ ] in the street and i know i made it harder for you to move around in the world and and uh i defined you as like this villainous character when really you were like a an amazing dude for me in my life and like you know i really look up to you and and the way that you've moved through your failings and the father that you've been to me you've been a great man to me and uh um if there's ever anything i can do be it blood counsel money whatever if there's ever anything i can do to make your life better in any way please don't hesitate to let me know and um my dad was living in costa rica on his [ __ ] cocaine farm at the time you know and uh living with a bunch of nicaraguans and like he said i want to come home and um so i i got him back and uh when i my dad was like me i was a big pothead and so here i am with like i got like 10 months of sobriety i'm about to go pick my dad up i'm in a weed shop buying like 500 bucks worth the weed for my dad and uh sober and i get in the bag and uh and i show up at the the airport and my dad gets out and i see my dad in a wheelchair he's got copd dude could barely breathe and i wheel his ass over the truck and i put him in the truck and i give him a joint he sparks up and he's coughing like he's got blood and mucus coming out he looks like he looks like totally broken you know and um [Music] little by little i start bringing him back to health you know he's got eye problems he fixed the eye problems he found out he's pre-diabetic we go he hadn't been to a doctor in like 10 years you know when we get to the doctor doctor's like if you smoke anything you're going to die you got like 10 lung capacity if you smoke anything or even around incense you might die and my dad in the doctor's office looks at me and goes i think i want to get sober in the doctor's office he looks at me goes i think i got i think i want to get sober so i bring him into my fold i bring him into the group he starts going all this [ __ ] with me we just we get get on it together that's probably like the crowning achievement any amends that i made my dad's got he's got five and a half months now you know and he's working with other dudes and like you carried the message that way uh you know for my wife i'll be making amends for the rest of my life you know it's every day you know doing dishes it's part of that amendment i got to make you know that's going to be a lifelong journey a lot of these amends are going to be lifelong journeys there's amends that people don't want to talk to me you know i gotta make a living amends i gotta i gotta find another way to be a service to the world in a way that takes all that energy and creates something uh valuable uh something valuable for another person um i mean i got a men's you know that that girl who was on that meeting you know i reached out to her she was in the in the program so she she kind of knew what i was what was going on and that that amends was made me and alma had sort of made some we bridge the gap there we're not like talking every day but there's there's been a we've i'm making contact communication little by little you know it's only been 597 days i'm still the beginning of this whole journey in my life which is gonna be for the rest of my life and um and yeah i go to every single person out unharmed and i try to figure out where i can be of service to their life in any way that's that's possible and um yeah sometimes it'll be like these these these really neon versions of it like with my dad and then sometimes it'll be you know uh vanessa kirby right like vanessa kirby was on her way to go get an oscar when all this [ __ ] landed you know and um she's been supportive to me this whole time but i remember she had to answer for me out there because i wasn't communicating i wasn't like uh because i didn't have nothing to communicate i was still like you know like this little uh myopic litigator my dude kept saying don't say nothing just shut the [ __ ] up and start working you know and so i wasn't out there talking but she was in the middle of promoting a movie and she had this whole oscar campaign that was set up for you know and for the movie and the cast and hole and my damage [ __ ] those chances up because as you know this is a very political thing it's not about the quality of the material becomes like this positioning political and like to be attached to this heretic wasn't sexy and so it [ __ ] up her opportunities and so like making amends there was you know how do you rewind that you don't you know uh and though she never asked me to like to do anything you know i reached out and she and we and we put it to bed as best as we could you know um but that's another person who was always she always showed up she was always in my corner even when it wasn't sexy just like my wife it's like it's not sexy to be married and have a kid with a dude who's like this public uh abuser of women you know sometimes i i you know i'll go look up uh i'll go look up like the the response to my woman's film you know she had a movie came out not recently and like there'll be comments like you know i don't [ __ ] with this woman because she [ __ ] with him you know that that's heavy you know that my wife is like how does that make you feel terrible dog explain terrible like terrible like like you converge into the kind of shame that makes you unproductive like you can make yourself is that unfair uh no it's not unfair you don't think no it's not unfair but uh it's not even about fair fairness i mean it's not even about fair like fair don't really exist you want fair go to pomona but there's no fair in this life so we're not thinking about like the emotions are real yeah my accountability doesn't take away the very real that comment that somebody feels that way towards my wife and that uh looks at her like she's somehow less than because she's still in my corner and that we share this bond you know that doesn't feel good to be that that kind of influence on somebody's life uh but equally for me to put too much value into another person's opinion is to [ __ ] myself it's to [ __ ] my marriage it's to put me in the shame spiral that doesn't do the dishes no more now i'm just in like my own little haiku room you know just like spiraling into my little woe is me [ __ ] again and and i've been there and i've done done that you know and so my job isn't to feel right my my purpose in life isn't to be happy no more that's what my purpose used to be which is such a shitty aim in life my aim in life in totality my whole purpose for existing in life was to be happy and that's not that's not my purpose anymore now yeah my purpose now is to be useful and so it doesn't make me useful to my wife to shame spiral on some [ __ ] like that it makes me useful to my wife to show up for my wife and be stable for my wife when we take our kid to the children's hospital and she's tripping and i happen to have a relationship with god that centers me at this point where i can be in a city environment like that and be able to hold it down in that environment so that's what my amends looks like today when my wife is tripping and she looks at me like what's going to happen because my my my three-month-old baby has a uh has a has a bump on her head that feels like something scary you know and and we know now it wasn't it was called a hemogenoma which is really scary when you first catch that you know you feel like oh man this is and my wife was tripping and had this not all happened i wouldn't have been able to show up from my wife and be stable in that environment and be able to look at her and really know what i was saying when i said god loves us you know we're he's cheating in our favor be that radish farmer's dad exactly exactly you know man i i found you know there's been so much resistance in my life just like that i've touched personally people know about my connection to you having you come on and do this yeah [ __ ] being like are you out of your mind you need to run from that dude and it's like it's just something that i've never really be able to shoot but but a funny little anecdote uh you know the last time you came up you know we had such a wonderful time we we kicked it we kicked it like the kids still you know they still do you know the the 5150 test that you taught them yeah about the about the picture and the box they do it to everybody who walks in the house like the little tricks the little [ __ ] side clown tricks you taught my kids they do it to everyone like my little man like they still you you're like a pie pie like this huge presence in my kids lives and that's your ability to touch you know what i'm saying uh and when we spent that day in ohio you know my agents all called me uh i think either right before that right after that and and were just like you know couldn't we just have shya's number you know we just feel like we could represent him you know like this third like they would have literally sucked the [ __ ] out of your ass you know what i'm saying and uh please you know we just want to write you know they was just so thirsty you know what i mean you know then this stuff went down and some months later you know i got to know beau and i got to connect with bo and we decided to put this thing on you know at slauson and and it was this beautiful event and these same very guys were like you know if shia comes we can't be there and the casting directors that you're bringing to come see and this is uh i mean for whatever it's worth there's there's known inactive members of a of a criminal gang in the in the piece but you've been accused of something and and they they're no longer those people that were the and and to me the hypocrisy of of of where we're at in discourse in this country period but especially in this industry it just was mind blowing to me and then and and on one side when we can have convicted murderers on this show who by by the way i mean they've they've done the crime and they've done the time and that work has been done but that's something that's celebrated but then when i want to have you on the same industry that you've given so much to in the same industry you know they they can't touch you and does that hurt are you can you divorce yourself because because that's not i i don't imagine you're you're you care about what those people think right right now so how do you how do you decipher the not because i'm sure what you were saying it really hit me man that you're driving down the street people rolling down their window yeah i mean you've been public for so long man yeah and i think you've been dealing with whatever [ __ ] scared like you know like look i know what it's like to walk in a room and everybody knows like i i understand that now that everybody knows who the [ __ ] you are you walk into a room and it's like do they know you for your art do they know you for your scandal does it matter like like how do you because that [ __ ] doesn't matter but it does affect us it is like you're a human being like can you divorce yourself from the nonsense easily it makes me useful tell me people don't question whether i was a fuck-up my [ __ ] was neon so like my message when i'm talking to a dude who's in a similar situation i don't have to do all this qualifying right right right i don't gotta like walk you through all the the bang bang right you know what i mean like you know what it was right it creates an avenue to be effective in somebody's life you know the reason beau is effective down there is because nobody questions him right it's like is his [ __ ] was neon dew was the key holder of the pueblos for a long period of time so when he's moving around youngsters don't like question need him to like i mean i i remember being in like i was getting ready to get and i had no business in the middle of it but it was quite a contentious thing running that theater program down there there's a whole lot of like race relations you had to deal with down there you know and a whole lot of like art kids from like studio city would drive down to the hood and like after a while like the neighborhood was like man [ __ ] all this [ __ ] like i don't want you down here you know unless these opportunities for people from this zip code then get out of here and and that became quite contentious and i remember like watching bo go and talk down every single one of these neighbors and it was short conversations and it wasn't rah-rah it was like they knew right away they were talking to tribe this is what i mean by like i'm in the tribe of the fuck-ups and i'm like a um a very public um a very public sinner very fallible person in the public sphere and so what i think now my purpose is is to not do this like the other examples that we've had of how to navigate something like this which is to go after the woman or try to like win a court case or like get back into a [ __ ] movie or like get back on it all you know my purpose and i mean this with every fiber of my being is to be instructive with my life so that i can be a an advertisement like a billboard for a principled way of living and that this [ __ ] on the other side of being being where i was is still [ __ ] sexy it's still glittery it's still fun i found my smile on the other side of this [ __ ] i learned how to laugh on the other side of the [ __ ] like genuinely i found a group of friends around me you know i found purpose in my life this little girl man i mean that's like that's that's even that as big as that is that's almost an infinitesimal part of how and feels almost like some cheesy pre-written version of what's available to a person when they start living towards this purpose uh it's [Music] um complete alignment you know like when your head heart and your spirit in the universe are in alignment like what this agent is saying you know it's like uh you know bro i pray for dudes like that every night before i go to sleep i pray for all my cheerleaders and all the naysayers and then i ask god to give these people everything he would give me like my life is now i have experienced ego death and what that's allowed me to do is like open myself up to being what dudes like like brolin and and not to lump them all to the same category and i probably shouldn't even do that but other dudes that you know mel i remember seeing mel at the oscars with his head held high and i thought you know i was sitting in rehab this is the [ __ ] rehab but i remember seeing that and thinking like oh man i could do it you know and this is i'm trying to present a different version of that to the world where it's like all right you know the business aside and like all the ego [ __ ] aside which really isn't my aim anymore like my life is incredible i'm so [ __ ] blessed that's not there's no cap in anything i just said to you i got so much love in my life so much joy in my life fearlessness that i didn't have before you know a calm a serenity my life is full and it's not full of like the stuff that i was chasing before not here to like find my way back into nothing those people who don't get down with me they probably never will you know uh to say that i don't love the craft is not true but it's secondary to this other thing i got going on because this is all temporary and i don't want to get too far into this route but like people may not forgive me but i know that i have been forgiven you know and i know that i am loved and when you really know that in your fiber and on a cellular level then what people think about you is you know like god bless them it's not that it don't matter because to say that like i'm blessed in that i am in the public sphere and that people do have judgments about me i i'm blessed for the judgments they keep me in line you know uh it's it's about perspective on it you know like it's that it's that can't call it [ __ ] you know uh i wasn't supposed to be there for whatever reason now he's got his reasons but he's got you know there's a bunch of other reasons that i wasn't supposed to be there for that i think about the jobs that i that i had that i got fired from when this [ __ ] just popped off and i think yeah i wasn't supposed to be there you know and there's a strange kind of weird validation on the other side when when like uh when you feel like you've been saved from certain situations and like if i sit for 12 years it's because i'm supposed to be sitting for 12 years you know if if i never work again that's exactly what's supposed to be happening like my purpose isn't tied up in my craft like that anymore and the other thing that's happened to me because i've been blessed with opportunity since this should happen is when i do show up my way of working is totally different how so it's free it's free it's like i mean i heard people talk about this but it's not so like controlling and nitpicking and trying to figure out what i got in my pockets and how i'm going to sit and let me do it this way and like there's a perfect take and a [ __ ] take and and like you know it's not that anymore it really becomes like this like a jazz routine with me in the universe you know i pray before i do [ __ ] i'll be looking at my co-workers like bro i love you you know i mean i guess like the motivator isn't it's a different propulsion system and so yeah so even that has changed in my life and i never thought i was going to work again and the fact that the job that i got to come back put me into the church in a real way not in a way that i had done it previously in a very real way felt almost bigger than the job it still feels bigger than the job yeah and so um i have a very defined version of god in my life it's very defined and i needed it to find now that may not be for everybody and that's cool you know you call it what you want at the end of the day what it really is is it's just love you know every great abrahamic text talks about the same [ __ ] like god is love and so i didn't know how i didn't know what love was i didn't know what that actually meant and what it is is it's it's selfless service for your fellows that's what love is and so i never had really done any of that i had never been a part of any of that so even slauson even the theater school was ego it was straight up ego watch me bring art to the hood and and you know looking back on it i could navigate a little bit better because of my upbringing and i didn't look like such a [ __ ] square walking in because i knew who to go to and how to move and da da but at the end of the day it's the same [ __ ] it's like virtue signaling you know watch me go be of service and then i advertised it on in on mass you know watch me go do this thing it's the [ __ ] that nobody sees it's the quiet service it's the quiet small work that's the stuff that actually is much more fulfilling and really the the that's really what's been motivating my life it's the only reason i can like wake up and have any respite in my life some reason i can have any kind of um reprieve from this non-stop monologuing that happens in my head that will put me in a shame spiral you know i i could very easily walk into a coffee shop in the middle of venice and look around and watch people look at me and write a whole monologue about how you think i'm the elephant man and if i really want to i could just go on twitter and just scroll my name and just fall into some kind of k-hole of self-deprecating shame and darkness do you ever do that anymore of course of course that's why this is a daily thing you know my ego doesn't just disappear like ego death but that [ __ ] will pop back up at a moment's notice the minute i do anything good so prayer what else like how do you keep it at bay how do you keep it dead like how do you extinguish it when it pops up on a daily basis having a kid is really helpful for humility definitely because kid don't care no no that's really helpful she's very helpful uh in keeping me humble um having a squad being a part of a group that gives you feedback in real time can you walk me through the squats is that how often is that it's a meeting it's every day 60 dudes and yeah we meet every single day 6 p.m on zoom we have bike rides on thursday we meet up at the beach on sunday you know we go to other groups and stuff like that but it's like a squad it's full-on it's like it's like a gang and um i get out of it with bogot gets out of being in the pueblos bo's not going to tell you about all the bang bang [ __ ] he gets out he's going to talk about the love that he gets in it and the the you know i remember bo telling me one time i remember asking him questions like you did like why did you join this and he remember i remember telling me a story about how like he was in the middle of some [ __ ] at a house and 50 dudes showed up for him to help him that's the feeling that i get out of like the squad that i have you know it's not tied to like what uh what i'm doing what they don't ask me questions like hey man what are you working on that's not that's not what goes on in that room you know yeah um and there's other people in that room who dip and dabble in the arts and stuff like that but there's also like just regular cats you know um and it's a great equalizer it's a great equalizer it's a it just keeps me in check it keeps me on the ball you know it keeps me in alignment you know they ask questions like were you honest all day you know they ask questions like what'd you do for somebody else today you know uh were you kind to all god's kids were you kind to everybody today oh you weren't tell me about it well i flipped the dude off in traffic word why you know oh well and then you know you talk it out not that you're trying to dwell in the the toxicity but like you're trying to get to you're trying to build an awareness around how you move in this life so that you can create like a bit of distance from your reactions i'm such a reactive person and and being like being a cat who like uh i mean i'm not stanislavski i don't know why people accredit me with this [ __ ] that's your thing i was never that guy i was far more uh into um into a different craft you know i was far more reactive and when you when you when you work that way then it's very difficult to like navigate the world and not be that you know i was very reactive in life which is a lot of where this drama came from a lot of this trauma and pain that i perpetuated on people was so reactive um so i'm developing a pause i'm developing like the ability to shut the [ __ ] up and not do anything you know and it felt so masculine to not do something it feels like a masculine to not do something and um for me there's nothing more masculine than a mountain tell me why just don't do much and it's always there yeah yeah and you can't move it yeah yeah yeah and so like that's complicated it's good it's got all kinds of [ __ ] on yeah but it's also super simple that's true too yeah i mean not to get too like already farting with the [ __ ] but i like the stability of a mountain i like the simplicity of a mountain i like the complexity of a mountain there's different notes sure you know different elevations yeah i'm not i'm not interested in like a monotone naive optimism either you know that's not what i'm pitching it's not it doesn't make me effective to tell a dude who's in the middle of being on fire hey it's all going to be okay um because it's not some shit's not gonna be okay and and then you gotta ask yourself why that's happening and god either is or he isn't you know that's just it's very simple and so even the negativity that befalls your life or any kind of tragic [ __ ] that happens in your life really is you're being tapped you know this is how god refines and and so i'm blessed bro i'm blessed for all the fuck-ups too i'm blessed that that um that i had a group of people around me who when i was in triage mode could really grab my arm and tie a tourniquet and now i'm able to to pay it forward and be a service to other people and even show up here and like look another man in the eye just that was like a big hurdle to get past when you're in the kind of shame that i was in and you've been uh defined a certain kind of way in the public just to get to the place where you could sit down and look another man in the eye and speak honestly about where you're at that's a big that's like a testament to a lot of work that got done 100 and really if that's all you get out of doing the work then then then do the work you know so and i keep going to this god thing and i and and it's not like they get out of jail free card for me you know it's not like i'm trying to say this stuff to to um absolve myself of anything you know i i'm i'm i'm trying to be an advertisement for what this did in my life it it changed my life i was kicking it with these monks for nine months and i for a while i just thought like santa ines there's a monastery called the san lorenzo novitia it's a monastery okay franciscan monks and i was there for living in my truck in the parking lot for months until they brought me in and wound up being like this nine month journey with them and they laugh so much you never think monks are they just [ __ ] they're laughing all the time they're laughing like they're laughing a laugh that feels pure it's not based on like this cutting of anybody uh cutting anybody out it's like can you give me an example like somebody like like lets a fart out or yeah it's just like childish babies they've been laughing about since they're little kids bro it's like it's like they've cultivated their innocence they're like kids they're not but there's this innocence to them when they don't have to d they've taken permanent vows of chastity obedience and poverty and when you cut that [ __ ] out of your life it leaves you with this a very a very specific palette with which to paint when when money isn't dictating any of your decisions because you don't have a bank account when when sexual relations and [ __ ] and that's not clouding your brain infringing on your ability to see [ __ ] if you're not in charge of nothing if you're completely obedient to basically their commanding officer they're the head of the head of vocations then it puts you in this very like whimsical wonder there's a lot of wonder it's like they're they're they're in awe all the time not like in a naive way you never had see you've never seen people have more fun at a barbecue kind of way the kind of [ __ ] where like i remember one time there was there was a couple of monks there you know they would go get groceries people donate stuff to them right they don't buy [ __ ] they live off of the whatever somebody's some day is gonna be edamame some days it's gonna be gummy bears they're they're living off of what they get right there's a beauty tool they're happy with as [ __ ] with everything no but i mean like is there is there's no preference i'm a beans like for real yeah yeah straight but but is it but is the lima beans is that disappointment they will freak some lime beans it's not like they don't know what they're doing they're good with it they're going to freak lima beans and lima beans gonna be something you want to have you know yeah yeah um they're gonna freak it out whatever it is they're gonna do go get to work there's 20 dudes going to be in there like chefing yeah like uh yeah some gummy bears you know we're about to make this happen yeah it's going to pop in here tonight yeah and uh they're excited about it you know uh they'll be walking up and down the hallways like lima beans tonight you know anyway so i remember driving behind him and this is like early days this is back when i had you know when abel first reached out to me about doing this it was all ego i was still early days of sobriety it was like ooh back to hustle wiggle room that's how it started for me it's like oh you want me to do what with who william defoe oh bro let me yeah oh yeah forget all this sobriety talk forget all this cleaning yeah i'm back oh here we go bro back right it happened so fast and um now i'm in the mirror again i'm doing my [ __ ] again just back to the old me you know just getting to work you know trying to find who this dude could be and and uh and i'm expl i'm back in it like full-blown did it diminish the shame the shame that was on your shoulder did that start yeah it went away it went away i mean this is what work used to do for me it was like oh you talk [ __ ] all you want agent man but i'm like going to work so like i don't care you know and even now like there's parts of me that are like well yeah okay you can hate on me hate on me all you want but i'm still talking to this dude or doing that and you know my head still i'm still yeah i'm a human human being of course and you got to navigate you got to see when it happens you know right away when you said that i'm in my head like ooh coppola yeah you know like i want to like speak to like who are you to this and just constant it happens it's just a constant um process you got to be aware of um so yeah i remember driving behind them to go pick up this stuff and this is early days so i'm not even there for spirituality i'm there for like where do you put your hands what's it look like when you do this i'm just like building right i'm just building you know all right what kind of you know like the the that the vapid [ __ ] yeah what kind of shoes you know yeah yeah just like oh prayer life yeah okay boom yeah what does that look like it just looks like a dude sitting in a room okay cool but i'm not going to actually get involved in that process you know and so i'm driving behind them they're going to pick up these groceries and i see this dude on the left turning the dude on the right and he just starts laughing just ha ha ha like the kind of light looks like a cartoon like a cartoon laugh but it's kind of silhouetted because i'm in the back watching them drive and i remember thinking to myself like i've experienced that a bit in my life i remember being on fury with you and laughing like that on the tank these are like the most incredible moments of my life looking back now these moments where you're laughing like that and they laughed all the way to go get the lima beans and on the way back to the seminary they laughed all the way back to the seminary and i thought this was a one-off and every time we would get in the car and these dudes would get in the car it was this silhouette of just outrageous laughter and you know you ask him like what are you laughing about man and the dude's like don't know everything everything sometimes i just look at the dude and we'll just start laughing at each other and it's it's um it's joy was the first like laughter was the first miracle it felt like i don't know that was the first attractive thing about faith for me was the laughter and the fact that these monks aren't like docile solemn all the time you know they cut each other's hair they're in the gym they're dudes but they also have a principled life and that became very attractive to me at a certain point i've always been attracted to guys like kevin vance i've always been attracted to a marine to a gangster to an extremist who's got who's cultivated this kind of tribe around him who it resembles some kind of weird jumbled up idea of masculinity to me these go-getters in life because really what's sexy is the commitment the commitment to a lifestyle direction is sexy whether it be beau or kevin or whatever you're committed to it it's a lifelong thing it's not a tattoo there's no removal this is forever right and so you get around these monks and you feel something like what you feel when you're around kevin you feel something like what you feel when you're around bo it's sexy it's super appealing you're a part of a group and they're they're knee-deep in it they they are in love with what they got going on and the hollywood [ __ ] is secondary and you know i remember telling them what was going on for me in my life when i was there and they were the first guys to say um things to me that sounded like there was a route towards something salvific for me like like it happened um like this stuff also happened to a man named saint augustine and they started breaking down augustine to me and who he was and started explaining to me who saint francis was and you come to find that most of these stories of saints in the faith were fuck-ups full-blown fuck-ups they weren't perfect people who did perfect [ __ ] their whole lives and they wound up they were they required me touched by god from the beginning poop and gold like yeah it wasn't that way yeah the requirement for their sainthood was the [ __ ] up that they'd been there they had to they had to have experienced real negative [ __ ] in their life to be able to have this other thing this salvation this hero's journey they're explaining saints to me it's like the hero's path you know and i'm a writer i'm in my head you know what is my hero's journey i'm always asking myself well what and this is sort of and i always thought it was going to be through the craft that my hero's journey was kid from the bottom came to hollywood with no [ __ ] training and now now i'm like you know working with these people and this and i'm doing that and that was my hero's journey and it was so curt it was so blunt and lazy and it wasn't like this other thing that's available and so you get around these dudes and you hear about their path and how these guys got there and you start meeting dudes who like professional tennis players you know got lost on steroids you know drugged up got completely wayward and then decided to enter the order and so these are dudes who know something about competitive you know competitive sports they know about like ego in the way that i do the only people i've ever been able to feel like i'm close to in terms of the way that i deal with my craft is athletes it's sports figures and you find that a lot of sports figures are deeply insecure people because it's all based it because it's a meritocracy and that's what i irregardless of this is if this is how the business works now i view the way i view the business is it is a meritocracy you know you you you get respect based on what you can do and how hard you work and sports is like that and that's a shitty way to live because everything that comes to you is based on you and what you do and if everything in your life surrounds you and is centered on you you become a [ __ ] uh a vapid self-interested selfish self-centered human being how could you not the world is happening in front of you the default setting already is that you're completely self-absorbed but then when you're involved in a meritocracy like pete working for commission basically when then then it's all about your efforts your efforts dictate the how your life is going to go and then there's no room to have faith the guys that couldn't make the team are you worthless because you didn't make it yeah not at all do you have a purpose out there are you important but that not at all is not a given it's not a understood understood well i think it's it it is probably was and is extraordinarily difficult for you i had no value once they took the job from me there was no value in me as a human without this craft i didn't have any reason to be alive my whole life and you were super untrusting of friendship bro like you never you know what i mean like true that's what like before i even met you man i was like i'm gonna show that [ __ ] what it's like to have a friend he's like i'm gonna be his friend and you it was always you know it was always a resistance which made me untrusting of love which made me entrust a love in every version and capacity of it and so my relationship with my wife all the friends that i had in my life they were always like less than they could be and even with guys like bo you know when bo kept in contact with me through all this you know you know and other people as well but it was guys like that who had messages of depth and weight who could really speak to the fact that like you'd been lower that's right beau had been lower than me beau was sitting down for a long time now i'm not in prison for a bunch of different reasons that have to do with politics and reality of race relations in america and you know if this [ __ ] had happened to a white woman and i was a black man this would be a different story we wouldn't be talking in the same kind of thing i'm fully aware of the kind of privilege with which i moved through the world right and um and so beau is able to like when we talk about humility and getting right sized you need certain dudes if you're a person like me you need certain people who've been there who've experienced certain [ __ ] in their lives where they can speak to what you're dealing with because a therapist isn't going to speak to it you know i'm not going to hear it from you who studied carl young in harvard for five years and really grew up in thousand oaks and then you know you you got injured when you played football and then life just all worked out like i'm not gonna hear it from you it has to be from a guy who i know has been there and also a guy who i know has a real laugh bo has real joy in his life real joy it's not manufactured and it's not it's also not tied to his finances or his uh his ego that dude is a service to his he's got a he has a route towards being of service to his the hood his people the people around him you know he's involved in in the community and he's of service the whole reason that [ __ ] started up was i was piggybacking his knowledge of how to be a service for my ego slauson started with a conversation with me and him me trying to you know i was trying to join a gang i was in a you know i was hanging out with a bunch of harpies members and was like fully jumped in and was a part of a gang and trying to talk to him about [ __ ] he's looking at me like bro you don't know [ __ ] you know you got a bunch of tattoos and like okay right you got jumped in the parking you don't know anything about this [ __ ] you know and and he was generous with me he could have just wrote me off you know as a person with no depth and no weight because i hadn't experienced [ __ ] in my life compared to him now we speak more like contemporaries because he knows how to bend to hell in a real way and he knows while we were talking i was there yep and it i mean this is kind of part of being a man it's like you kind of gotta [ __ ] it all up a little bit i think so i think part of learning is dying i think part of learning is you got to die a little bit because what is learning learning is me giving up on my old [ __ ] my old ideas those ideas have to die for me to be open to some new [ __ ] and so me learning how to be a better man i had to die a little bit and when you kill [ __ ] inside of you man there's a [ __ ] hole and you don't know what to put in there right you just gotta find the right food right you gotta find the right food and i was lucky to have like some good dudes in my life at the time when it hit for me to be able to fill it with the right [ __ ] you know and and that's only further it's the longer i've been in the middle of it you know getting in contact with whatever spiritual path you find but when you're around a bunch of dudes who are really committed to that kind of life uh it rubs off on you if you're around it long enough i just want to give you one more opportunity if you wanted just to speak about your your wife man and just about what she means to you and and um you know her her path and her relationship with all this i know she's been a part of your life for a long time just just if you if you're feeling it just speak on her yeah well uh i'll never be able to speak on it i don't i don't know nothing like this relationship i never have in my life i never had even my parents even my father you know i never had what i got with her which is you know to enter my life to be with me she had to take a loss she had to like eat [ __ ] to be with me to be with me she had to to re-enter being a part of my life she had to take a hit uh in ways that i've spoken about before and in other ways too probably you know and uh what i know love to be is selfless loving action and i've never known anything as loving or as selflessly active as what this woman did for me in my life she showed up for me at a time when i mean this is the first time i saw her we had been a strange for like years because of my jealousy she went and did a movie with another actor and i thought she was cheating on me so then i cheated on another but it was just [ __ ] messing all that we [ __ ] uh little boy [ __ ] like nonsense and we hadn't talked for two years when all this [ __ ] hit and i wound up at this rehab right um in utah and they do something called family week and every week on a sunday everybody who's involved in the program has their family show up on these skype calls and everybody will show up in the same room and your mother your father your brother your sister your wife your friends just you and the people no it's you the whole squad of you that are in this group like twelve of us and mine's everyone's family everyone's family pops up on the screen and week one no one shows up for me no one they got the calls i know they got the calls but no one showed up my mother my father no one no one showed up manager friends no one showed up week two same thing so i'm sitting in this room and even the person who's like therapizing me she's starting to feel like this she's empathizing with where i'm at everybody else in the room we gotta do to like you know this isn't just alcoholics and [ __ ] this is like [ __ ] arsonists and like child predators and all kind of wild people in this group right and they got people showing up for them and i don't have nobody showing up for me and week two week three i'm there 90 days so i'm there for a a clip and there comes a point where family weed comes around i say to my therapist like i'm not gonna go you know like i don't want to subject myself to this [ __ ] like i'm i'm on a path and you know let me just stay here like i don't want to keep reminding myself how [ __ ] my situation is and um and she says no i think you should show up this week and i show up thinking all right my mom's going to be on there you know my mom will be on and mia is on the screen and you know like you don't deserve that kind of [ __ ] you know you don't deserve that punish like like i don't deserve that kind of [ __ ] you know i don't put i don't put her through years and years of [ __ ] nonsense bro just like all right and i don't have nothing to offer her either you know what i mean i'm in the middle of my [ __ ] you know i'm [ __ ] like i'm like i'm like two months into this program you know i don't even have nothing going on i don't even have no i have nothing nothing going on i'm making this list she's at the top of the list but i i'm not reaching out to her nothing like that and uh and yeah you were her voice like she's like a [ __ ] angel you know i mean she and everybody does their [ __ ] and i'm [ __ ] gone you know and so they let her go first because i can't even [ __ ] believe and they all know because i had no family show up for me and she just she a mutes and she's like hi shia she's doing it's like she's prepping a movie she ain't got no [ __ ] time for this you know but she found time and she said hi shia and uh we just smiled we got nothing else to say but she saved my [ __ ] life dog like it uh before the kid before the job before [ __ ] before god before any religion before any before laugh before a laugh before a laugh before bo before a phone before anything was this woman's face and uh the one no promises made what no long conversation had been had nothing just her presence the ministry of presence sometimes that's all you need to offer a person who's in a situation like that is like just to be present and she was present for me at a time when i didn't deserve to have nobody in my life especially her and i'm not trying to do this [ __ ] because i right away my head goes to like how's this being viewed i'm such a [ __ ] this way good you come on man yeah uh she's a she's a she's a real one she's a real one in that and uh i'll never be able to i'll never be able to it's the first time i really understood love because i didn't have nothing to give and i was sitting there thinking like well i don't have nothing it's not sexy to be with me don't you get it like people out here accusing me of like putting makeup on my genitals and like shooting dogs and [ __ ] you know that's what i'm being accused of and you're showing up for me like you're you're going to be tied to this [ __ ] i couldn't it didn't make no [ __ ] sense and love is irrational that way you can't rationalize real love it doesn't make any [ __ ] sense and i spent my whole life trying to rationalize it like ah you know this dude hits me up he's in my corner because you know we [ __ ] with the same crap you know i mean that's what he he loves this thing that i got that i'm like i'm g with this [ __ ] over here that's why he loves me because he loves that part of me that's g at this you know and and then i would i would write your love off like okay you love me because i do this [ __ ] and so many of my relationships were basically like you love me because i'm [ __ ] sensei over here in the dojo i'm black belt right here so you love me because of this and when they blow the dojo up you're like i'm not g i'm not sensei and nothing i got no i'm not a fish i don't even have to [ __ ] do nothing like i don't even know how to camp i'm a [ __ ] little kid you know i mean i know how to make a fire and uh yeah she gave me hope bro when i was really like running on fumes i wasn't running on empty but i was running on fumes i had a sponsor in my life who was kind of he was saying yo be patient the [ __ ] will show up miracles will show up this was another miracle bags packed is a miracle you know them laughing in the car is a miracle my wife's face on the skype call is a miracle the [ __ ] starts to add up where you know it it becomes this like it creates faith because you're not doing it it wasn't some [ __ ] dope poem i sent or some flowers i sent to put her on the skype call and it wasn't good behavior of being a man it wasn't good sex that got my wife on the skype call it wasn't like any of the self-will [ __ ] that i used to validate her being in my life like even my sex life was like it was so performative it was like well if a woman didn't orgasm i would question it you know like what does this mean about me it was always about me i never had like like like a real coupling it was always performative and it was always like this constant validation trip if i i would try to look for the same [ __ ] i got at work over here in this relationship and the reason i didn't like being friends with men is it was constantly this comparison study you know this has been difficult too is to like reach back out to people who are in my corner then who are still in my corner but are g's it's hard to reach out to dudes like that because you knew them at a certain level you know another dude who really showed up for me was cuddy like he was the first friend that really hit me back you know like and he's a [ __ ] g dude is like his life is on fire and it's hard to like i've always known him at a certain kind of equivalency we've always been to be in a in a in each other's lives as sort of like you know like i knew him at a level and i'm not at that level and sometimes it's difficult to like to show up for the love to show up for the love that people have thrown at you because you think you're you know you think you are these twitter comments you think you are this idea what you what ah [ __ ] i gotta get out of this octave because i sound like boohoo [ __ ] come on being you bro yeah but i don't want to be [ __ ] performative it's difficult for a dude in my spot to receive love uh because you you don't feel like you deserve it and so uh you wind up dipping on a lot of people even when they're showing up for you and then you got to have like real conversations i had to really put it out there to him like bro i don't feel successful enough to be your friend anymore what a [ __ ] like crazy [ __ ] to write but you gotta you gotta air it out you're not stuck there anymore no i wouldn't be able to sit here with you if i was there right i won't be able to sit here and talk to you about this [ __ ] right and so it's it's re so the the emotion right now what this is almost i'm looking back at it because i think [ __ ] what a sorry case like what a sad [ __ ] for real you know what and that's who i was not even that not even that long ago bro this is like two months ago but i understand but the fact that you that the fact that you were there the fact that you've been there that you treaded on that path means you can actually talk to others who are [ __ ] locked in and i should and i do that's it man and and uh yeah and and um that really is my purpose in life now is to like be able to express the reality of my life that you could be where i just was you know in some kind of sense memory like remembering the text message conversation i have with this man and also know that now we talk all the time you know now i don't need to be anything i don't need to be a certainness or a certain that to have permission to have friends or a wife or or anything like i i deserve it and that's a hard thing to to say that you deserve love when on paper no you don't you know i mean listen bro like for me there are a few things as ugly as putting your hands on a woman what else is what is there's nothing worse i remember i used to come into a all the time put my hand up like yeah i just got in a fight with a cop i grew up on eze this shit's sexy you know i mean i used to put my hand like i just flipped the car you know there's got to fight with with this or that and there was like this faux it was like it was like i romanticized that kind of [ __ ] when you come back in and you raise your hand and you don't even need to raise your hand because dude's already read it your baggage already showed up at the hotel before you got there people know about you there's nothing sexy about what i'm dealing with and that's what makes me useful it's also why i go to strictly men's meetings because you don't hear about dudes talk about what we're talking about at a mixed meeting because very quickly once women are involved i probably wouldn't be able to talk like this with you if there was a woman here because right away the the little boy in me would start like curating again you know what i mean and and when i'm here with you i can forget about that also and all this [ __ ] it takes a certain kind of dude to be able to open a person up like this and be receptive of it and also like show up and look the dragon in the eye knowing that there's purpose yeah like i'm purpose driven here i'm willing to eviscerate myself and emasculate myself and like because i know that there's this grander purpose than like me trying to 100 yeah so so the reason i go to strictly men's meetings is because you get people dudes get vulnerable about the ugly [ __ ] the [ __ ] that dudes don't want to talk about and the reason the show is important is cause you kind of serve the same purpose that those things on a on a bigger scale in a less specified sense for a lot of dudes that don't have a masculinity ceremony there's no puberty ceremony in culture right what when do you come in as an american man when do you become a man when you get a driver's license like what do we do you 16 we give you a driver's license okay well like you get a job like when do you become a man you become a man when you become responsible for other people and part of that is taking accountability and so like i i'm very new to this being a man thing and i'm still not there and i'm on a path but i didn't have no like i grew up on a in a culture that told me going to war made you a man going to prison and coming back coming back makes you a man um making a million dollars makes you a man you know and and it doesn't and you don't know it till you didn't done all these things and realized damn i'm still a little [ __ ] boy or been around people who've been there a bunch of times you know i don't know nothing about being at war like kevin but i know a bunch of soldiers that come back and are still [ __ ] little boys can't wait to get back out i know so many dudes can't wait to get back out you know guys that we know uh you know warriors uh but even warriors don't make that don't make you a man that's right you know also my definition of warrior has changed me too you know i didn't really know what that meant and really it's about bringing others back and that's my whole [ __ ] mission dog really is just like dudes who've been where i've been or something similar just know it gets better it does like it don't make no sense it doesn't make no sense it's irrational it doesn't make any sense on paper that i could have joy in abundance in my life that i could feel any kind of joy in my life after being what i've been it doesn't make this unclear it's not no you've got no mind yeah and also you got to get the [ __ ] out of the way and that's that's where the work really really is it's like getting out the way and allowing this bigger thing to work in your life because the bigger thing is working in your life whether you know it or not and you're either going to let go willingly or you're going to get dragged but either way you're going to be humbled in this life and there's nothing you can do about it how do you feel about the craft going forward is that are you are you i know you talked about the experience you just had and aligned yourself and it served you and served your mission and informed your mission sure but but i you also recognize that there's real trappings you also recognize that there's you say trappiness trappings happiness is a good word for it yeah trappiness but yeah the same [ __ ] trappings doug you know what i mean there's you you go down that path and those voices how do you feel what are you looking for what's your interest do you have a plan do you have desires do you have like like so tell me so like what's your relationship to it now i'm not just saying this because it sounds good like my i'm i'm my professional good guy like all i care about is my purpose i don't you know i don't really think about craft much when it pops up [Music] and really the only guys that can work with a guy like me are dudes at a certain level because they're going to have to talk to a marketing department about why they just hired an atomic bomb to come work on their movie you know and and and the only dudes who can really make that kind of [ __ ] happen are guys who are very far and few between right but i'm also not in this jobbing mode you know i mean like i was talking about do the other day like something really sexy about working at home depot you know my head goes there before it goes to like let me go work on some movie where i'm playing a romanian vampire lawyer you know i mean you think you could work at home depot yeah you think you have this thousand percent but you think you understand the inventory of homes i spend so much time in home depot yeah that's a church for me yeah home depot are you building a lot are you working with yeah i'm in home depot all the time okay so you feel like i love home depot what what's another job you feel like you you you could do that that would both serve you and your mission you feel like you'd be good at oh just any kind of like regular [ __ ] like regular like do you think you could work in the kitchen no no because you're not good you know well that's another kind of this that takes this okay that's another kind of crafty job where like you know the impetus is on your the the poetry of you right right then i'm [ __ ] lost again right i'm talking about something that doesn't where there where the poetry of me doesn't matter one [ __ ] iota right i need something like i'm looking at jobs that that don't cultivate your poetry and your uniqueness looking for jobs that like that keep me humble and i think working at home depot is one home depot is full of possibilities so in the back of your mind there's not something that's yearning i mean i'm sure the voice is there that's saying i got i got stories to tell i got to get out there i got it no it's going oh no yeah it's gone it's going it's going or it's just quiet i don't wake up and think about what acting i'm gonna do right no that doesn't uh take any space in my life um i don't have an agent i don't have like i don't live that [ __ ] i have dudes i'm around and i watch them do the [ __ ] i don't do that um uh both because i i've been my life is structured in such a way where the universe has has given me that gift that's where i'm at right now i need you to not be interested in me i need that route to not be open to me for me to get where i need to be for sure because if it is for sure buddy boy for sure you know i'm i'm gonna go is there any way that you feel like you can use your but that's also not to say that there aren't opportunities where you can't say no you know when coppola calls you when when when abel ferreira calls you these are dudes i looked up to before i was a heretic right you know i mean i always bad lieutenant for me top ten you know uh the conversation top ten this [ __ ] it's like when the top tens call you then then it's like don't deny god either right and so i i was blessed to work with abel and had an incredible uh experience working with him and made a lifelong friend in him and he had the clout and the was insane enough and was searching for something so specific that he thought i was the right guy for the job uh i have something to offer for a very specific kind of guy in a very specific kind of role it happened to work there um it also had intrinsic value attached to it yeah and so that you know that you learned by doing it you didn't know going in as it is i went in there on a let me get back to my hustle mission you know abel ferreira william defoe oh [ __ ] i'm back on i can i can read the deadline articles now you know i mean like this is where my instantly and so uh more humility had to happen through the process you know and and it has to happen on a day-to-day basis you know i'm a movie got into venice it's in competition boy right away my [ __ ] head could do all talk all kind of [ __ ] and make me feel like oh you know what you're back on dawg you know and and and i i spend a lot of time in prayer like why why why why do you got us going there you know uh why have you made it accessible to me and not to other people why have you provided me wiggle room it is my responsibility to not make it that yeah yeah and and what what kind of lesson am i supposed to be learning here not just not just in how to navigate the stuff away from set but how do i navigate on set relations do you want me to work different this is why my work indifferent happened it was like because my main priority was my good guy and my way of working was not about that at all my way of working was animal it was totally instinct driven uh magic cultivating i couldn't even put my finger i don't have a process you at least have a pr i don't have no process my process is i don't even know what it is i don't know what i do which is another problem but um this time it was because i was playing a a priest a monk and i was surrounded by non-actors it was no other actors there was only monks around me you have no there's no acting going on it's you're going to show up in the morning and pray with us and you're going to have to learn latin prayer you're going to have to do this you can't act this you can't be over here on your cell phone and jump over here and be running mass it's not going to work so it forced me to and there's a certain amount of humility that comes with being a priest and a certain amount of suffering that you ask for you know a priest is a masochist it's the most masochistic thing in the world to want to be a priest because what are you actually doing it's the ultimate performance when you go up and run mass you're performing the death of christ you're not just telling the tale you are embodying the the the uh the journey to the mount you are performing it and the good ones really go there i happen to be playing a dude who and this is why the job worked for me invited a certain amount of destruction into his life he invited a certain amount of pain and he painted with his pain he felt pio specifically felt that his mass was a was a massive tears and so he would cultivate all this pain he was nourishing and cultivating and watering his pain on a day-to-day basis because he felt his purpose was to suffer for others and i was there for a minute i remember talking to you about like what this job is you know your job is to show up and bleed out that's how we used to talk about this what is the job show up and die in front of the camera you better you know leave it all on the field that's how i used to talk about my craft was i am a vessel for suffering what i do best is i suffer in front of a camera and so you're playing this guy you have this certain way of working and yet it's like the most it's the most loving calm collaborative lack of control in a performance i've ever had the performance isn't something i made it happened to me you know we would do takes and right before the take i'd get nervous and i'd look over to this dude named brother alex and i never used to do this i used to play like music on loudspeaker you know i used to be such like a manager you know yeah but you got to play this song on this i'm going to go jump in the corner and i'm going to you've seen how i get down like it's so managed i'm not going to show up on set until i'm not going to rehearse i'm going to do this this guy's got to be here and you got to do this don't look at me and you're getting in my way you're the enemy yeah yeah get away from me yeah i don't need you here you know and um this time it was like i was leaning on dudes who weren't weren't actors you know and they would look at me and they don't have the answers either and sometimes it's not that sometimes when you're entering a mass of tears and you're playing one of the most important figures in all the catholicism the pressure is heavy the pressure's enormous you're in italy you're staying at the seminary he grew up in he is he is considered like the most important other than christ in italy he is the most important catholic he's more important than saint francis he is they paint him on walls he's so when you tell people you're playing p.o right away you can't live up to it it's just impossible you're never going to get it and and really it's like playing bob dylan if you're going to play bob dylan you better learn how to play some songs if you're going to play p.o you need how to know how to run a mass and so there's a lot of pressure in a mass and so 11 months of prep went to this one moment where you're getting ready to run this mass and old me would have been so managed old me would have been so nitpicky and so controlling and this got to be there and that's got to be here and really like i showed up on set it was the easiest and probably the best work of my life i showed up on set i looked at this man i told him i loved him he told me he loved me and then you're off and running and i had never had that as a motivator when i told you like what motivated my life before all this happened to me wasn't love it wasn't good will towards my fellows the idea that that was that somebody's life would be motivated by that felt cheesy and like naive you know like not in this dog-eat-dog environment no way it's actually the most powerful 100 yeah i never worked from that place i never used that well and i didn't know that well was full either uh and then you turn to that well and that world is full and the work is better and it's almost like a part of you dies a little bit it's like we talk you you learn to to move a different way but if you told me that when we were on fury i'd have told you you kick rocks bro what the [ __ ] are you talking about you know no way yeah uh and maybe that was what you were trying to tell me you know maybe maybe i just wasn't open to the message i remember top i remember brad turning to me one time in a scene and this is brad right the [ __ ] am i a brad brad no matter what you look at you know there's no way you can write the man off as a craftsman as a [ __ ] adonis as a father as an all-around g the dude is thorough and i remember being on set with him and him turning to me after a scene and saying man what do i do and my [ __ ] ass got lost i was intoxicated brad pitt just asked me what to do i didn't even hear what the question was my response wasn't even it didn't come from no honest place all i heard was you're amazing yeah wow i didn't see the genius of his humility i didn't see the beauty in his love wow i didn't see it i didn't see this selfless act he was actually bigging me up and using his take to do it he knew i was next he knew they were going to turn this camera around and i was going to have to go after him because no matter how you structure it when you're the star of a movie you go first usually and he was going first and he used his last take he threw it away just so he could big me up because he knew the camera was turning around and all i heard was you're [ __ ] amazing dog give me advice and that [ __ ] me up for a while i just wasn't ready to hear or see what he was actually doing which was coming from this place of humility and love and like self he was like self um i don't know what the word is it's not emolliating but he he kind of like he leveled himself to like big me up and i never moved like that or knew anything about that in life or in craft yeah but i've been around dudes who did it i just couldn't see it you know i looked up to like the the rah-rah gorillas i was around you know part of me really appreciated working with you because i thought here's another rah-rah gorilla i'm around but yours has you have an adaptation that i didn't actually couldn't see at the time you know because you loved us all of us you know i remember me and penny were about to get in a fist fight in london yeah i remember yeah and you showed up for us and that fight went away and you didn't have to do that you know and and it's not always like tough guy either i remember like sitting in the grass with you and you being like hey let's run these scenes uh and that's like sitting in the grass like on some dead poets society [ __ ] i mean sitting in the grass just like reading to each other with apples and [ __ ] [Laughter] but yeah i i um some of the stuff i now i see now was around me already and i just wasn't open to it um even the things like hardy was always very brotherly with me very luck he's another dude who in the midst of all this [ __ ] i had to make amends to him i had to make amends to him because um you know i mouthed i did a press tour where i mouthed off about how me and him got in a fist fight and da da and like on my rah-rah let me define myself by using this other man who's respected in the world and let me minimize him to big myself up kind of [ __ ] like and i had to make amends to him he was on my list and uh and when i hit him uh you know the response also because he's got principles in his life you know the the response wasn't even a conversation it was not even a it was um i love you you don't owe me no amends you know but thanks sometimes it is just that simple but the fact that i'm i'm showing up for it and i'm i'm taking stock in my life and i'm i'm defining that vague tension that existed between me and other people is how i got to move so that i don't have this monologue in my head that tells me i'm a piece of [ __ ] in order to get rid of that monologue i gotta show up and i gotta clean it up that's really what i'm doing now so you ask me if i think about acting much i got bigger fish to fry right now that's where i'm at i know not much i know i love you i know i'm blessed today i know i got work to do and i know that it's all gonna be okay in the end and if it's not okay it's not the end i like watching from afar [Music] hey what's going on everybody it's jon bam bam the dog uh first on behalf of both of us and everybody from the real ones team i just want to sincerely thank you guys for for tuning in the folks that i bring on the show they're family to me and uh being able to tell their stories and bringing you into their world is something i'm i'm just super proud of and uh again grateful that you guys tune in we've decided we want to take things just a step further we're going to introduce a patreon community and basically what that means is if you become part of this community look i already bored bam bam if you want to become a part of this community you're going to be able to hear episodes early and all that ad free and all that good stuff but there's all this behind the scenes footage all this stuff that we've shot that really brings you into the folks that we've had on the show really brings you into their world you're going to be able to do live chats with me and the folks that i bring on the show to talk about their world talk about the issues that they're dealing with about their triumphs and their tragedies just go to patreon real ones on this website that you see right there right on the screen that's right in front of you this whole idea was um something about building bridges and and bringing people together and um bringing folks that often don't get the mic and giving the mic to them so the fact that you guys tune in means the world anyways again thank you be good to each other out there rock and roll

Channel: REAL ONES with Jon Bernthal

Views: 9,987,592

Keywords: jon bernthal, shia labeouf, real ones podcast

Id: nnVKqQiQyTQ

Length: 122min 57sec (7377 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022