#119: Kevin Costner on Building His Career, Positive Self-Talk, and Making Dances with Wolves Happen

Kevin Costner (@modernwest https://twitter.com/modernwest) is an internationally renowned filmmaker. He is considered one of the most critically acclaimed and visionary storytellers of his generation. Costner has produced, directed, and/or starred in such memorable films such as Dances with Wolves, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099348/ JFK http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1, The Bodyguard http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103855/?ref_=nv_sr_1, Field of Dreams http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097351/?ref_=nv_sr_1, Tin Cup http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117918/?ref_=nv_sr_1, Bull Durham http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094812/?ref_=nv_sr_1, Open Range http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316356/?ref_=nv_sr_1, Hatfields & McCoys http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1985443/?ref_=nv_sr_1, and Black or White http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2883434/?ref_=nv_sr_1, among many others. He has been honored with two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award. This episode also features Jon Baird, the author and illustrator of the novels Day Job http://www.amazon.com/Day-Job-Workplace-Reader-Restless/dp/1841120154/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 and Songs from Nowhere Near the Heart http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Nowhere-Near-Heart-Baird-ebook/dp/B00FOACO50/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. He is the co-developer, along with Costner, of the Horizon miniseries. Their first book collaboration is a beautiful tome -- The Explorers Guild: A Passage to Shambhala http://amzn.to/1QecRKC. Kirkus described it: "With its colorful cast, exotic locales, and intertwined fates, the book slowly addicts. A rousing throwback whose spinning plates never stop, even at the end." Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by TrunkClub http://trunkclub.com/tim. I hate shopping with a passion. And honestly I'm not good at it, which means I end up looking like I'm colorblind or homeless. Enter TrunkClub http://trunkclub.com/tim, which provides you with your own personal stylist and makes it easier than ever to shop for clothes that look great on your body. Just go to trunkclub.com/tim http://trunkclub.com/tim and answer a few questions, and then you'll be sent a trunk full of awesome clothes. They base this on your sizes, preferences, etc. The trunk is then delivered free of charge both ways, so you only pay for clothes that you keep. If you keep none, it costs you nothing. To get started, check it out at trunkclub.com/tim http://trunkclub.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim, which is non-spec. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run…

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I answer your personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  No, this isn't appropriate.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. You know I've used them, and here's why. Especially in the holiday season, last-minute gifts, crowded airports, the family. You have enough crap to worry about. During the holidays, without having to think about mixing and matching, picking out, buying clothing, Trunk Club has your back. Here's how it works. Trunk Club takes the hassle out of shopping by shipping you a trunk of clothes that fit perfectly, make you look amazing, and in this case, they would include custom-picked fall and winter styles. So, go to trunkclub.com/tim. You answer a couple of simple questions about your style, preferences, and size, and you're assigned an expert stylist. They curate clothing from top-premium brands, and you approve of what you like. All this is free. And just like that, a trunk arrives on your doorstep, filled with hand-picked clothing that are perfect for you.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  Try them on, keep what you like, easily return what you don't in their prepaid trunk. And this is not a subscription service. Super important, because I don't buy clothing that often. But I do it every once in a while, and I've used Trunk Club this way. You only pay for the clothes you keep from your trunk. No hidden charges, just great clothes. It's the busiest, most hectic time of the year, so save your brain cells. You can still look fantastic without spending a lot of time on trying to do that. Get started today, and Trunk Club will style you for free. Plus, free shipping both ways. You only pay for the clothing that you keep. So, check it out, trunkclub.com/tim. Again, that's trunkclub.com/tim.

• 1:47Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one-stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else. I used 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number-one New York Times bestseller. And I also use them for banner ads, illustrations, and... Other things with 99designs designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners at 99designs.com/tim. And right

• 2:30Tim Ferriss?

  now, my listeners, you guys, will get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. That's 99designs.com/tim. Check it out.

• 2:43Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I'm on the road playing road warrior, going from hotel to hotel, attempting to do interesting things. And of course, my job is to deconstruct world-class performers in each of these episodes. I interview many different people from various fields and try to distill what makes them great. The lessons learned, the habits, routines, etc. And that ranges from four-star generals to chess prodigies to scientists, startup CEOs, and in this case, a world-class storyteller, Kevin Costner. Of course, I grew up loving Kevin Costner films. He is an internationally renowned filmmaker across the board, considered one of the most critically acclaimed and visionary storytellers of his generation.

• 3:28Tim Ferriss?

  Costner has produced, directed, and/or starred in such memorable films as Dances with Wolves, one of my favorites, JFK, The Bodyguard. Remember the kitchen scene? Amazing. Many scenes in that. Field of Dreams, Tin Cup, Bull Durham, Open Range, Hatfields and McCoys, and Black or White, among many others. He's been honored with two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award. This episode also features John Baird, the author and illustrator of the novels Day Job and Songs from Nowhere Near the Heart. He is the co-developer, along with Costner, of the Horizon mini-series. Their first book collaboration is a beautiful tome. It's really quite something to behold. The Explorers Guild, a passage to Shambala, or Shambala. I've never known how to say that. In any case, we get into

• 4:10Tim Ferriss?

  all of that and more. And this episode is really split into three parts. The first part explores Costner's background, lessons learned, and we dig into a lot of his specifics. ...films and roles. And I think at some point, I refer to the big chill as the chill like a dum-dum because I think I was just a wee bit nervous, honestly. Since I've really only seen Kevin on the screen before. And he is a, he is a, he's a very, very focused man with intense eye contact. We had a great time and I really enjoyed it, but it was, it's weird going from screen to in-person for the first time, I gotta say. But had a great time. I hope that translates to your experience of the conversation.

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  We had it at his home and we touch on a lot. The first, like I said, is his background, the history. Then we get into his current projects, including the book project, among many others. And then we do the rapid-fire questions that many of you are already familiar with, and those are always fun. And that's what we wrap up with. Kevin has an opportunity to get into some stories that I don't think he's really told anywhere else. And had a blast. You can say hi to him on Twitter. And he doesn't use social much, but I'm going to encourage him because he makes a couple of requests of the audience and I'm going to point you guys to Twitter. So there are some opportunities, requests that come up here. @ModernWest on Twitter. @ModernWest is Kevin Costner.

• 5:37Tim Ferriss?

  And please enjoy this long and broad conversation with Kevin Costner.

• 5:47Tim Ferriss?

  Kevin, welcome to the show.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 5:48Tim Ferriss?

  I really appreciate you having me out here. This is a beautiful spot you have. I guess we're outside of Santa Barbara.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:56Tim Ferriss?

  And this is one of my favorite parts of the world. But you did not start out here, did you? I mean, where were you born?

• 6:03Speaker 03

  I was, I was born in Lynwood, California, lived in Compton in 1955 and was there for about six, seven years and then ended up actually moving up in this general area here between Ojai and Santa Paula. Lived on a, a single street, went to a one-room schoolhouse.

• 6:21Tim Ferriss?

  How many students were in that schoolhouse?

• 6:23Speaker 03

  I don't know. It was, it was like, I think the first through the sixth grade. So I don't know. There could have been sixty of us. I'm not sure. Maybe, maybe not even that many.

• 6:32Tim Ferriss?

  How did going to such a small school or growing up in that way, um, impact you? I mean, do you, do you think?

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't for very long. I actually didn't like it because, uh, I, because of that, because of that idea that all these kids were in the school and this, you know, the, the, the teacher's impact was, could be the best it could be. I, I was way ahead. When I went into that school, where the school I had come from in Los Angeles, I was really far ahead. And my parents picked up on that really quick. And since I was such a rascal, they thought, man, he's not doing anything. You know, I, and I wasn't, and I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut about being way up on this stuff. Um, and so, uh, but they moved me right out of that school really quickly back into, I think, a parochial school, which is they don't mess around, as you know.

• 7:20Tim Ferriss?

  And so they were, your parents were concerned that you, since you were further ahead, would kind of sit on your hands and, and coast through it?

• 7:26Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't think they were worried about that. I think they just, my, my parents, I tell you, really, you know, I mean, a lot of people I know, they look back on their childhood and, you know, maybe it wasn't the greatest or what. Mine was pretty good. Mine was very Huckleberry Finn, if it was. And a lot of that had to do with, my parents were very focused in on their kids. I mean, my dad and my mom were at every Little League game, every, everything. You know, so when people aren't able to, you know, when I've talked to people, go, you know, my dad never came to one thing and probably a reason for it, but I didn't have that experience, you know, it was, uh, we didn't have a lot of money. But it was, my backyard was my kingdom. And when my dad got home, we went to work in it.

• 8:09Tim Ferriss?

  And I read, and I don't know if this is true, that you were raised Baptist? Is that true?

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:13Tim Ferriss?

  Did you, how did that, uh, sort of affect? The lens through which you viewed the world or

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, good question. I tell you, it did, it obviously affected it. Came up in a really conservative background. My dad's from Oklahoma and tough guy, fist fighter, uh, very hard knuckle people and came in during the Dust Bowl. I mean, if you think of Tom Joad, that's my family. They lost everything and had to come out here. Uh, but the, so my conservative foundation was right in place. My dad would put me in my place. Right in the middle of church, you know, I mean, I could be launched right out of that seat for, you know, um, you know, for, for, for whatever, you know, and then, and also, you know, when you, you know, you drink the blood of Christ, it was that grape juice and, you know, I loved pretending it was whiskey

• 9:02Speaker 03

  after church was over because they had those like little glasses that you'd see, that you'd see, uh, in the, in the cowboy movies. And I'd like to just knock it back and boy, I tell you, my dad was just a no nonsense guy about that. But, you know, I also grew up with music in the Baptist church. And so that was a real, uh, uh, first love of mine, music. My grandmother, you know, taught the piano. My mom was in the choir, his, her sister was in the choir. So I grew up with music, was in all the little, little things we did, you know, the Christmas play. So I liked singing and eventually my, uh, you know, it was, uh, my mom made me take the piano lessons, you know, so I was trained classically on piano for about three and a half years.

• 9:45Tim Ferriss?

  Did you, did you always maintain that practice of music or is it something you've only revisited?

• 9:51Speaker 03

  I revisited, I revisited in my twenties, uh, because I tell you, I was always staring out the window and I was taught to be a, I, I, I was taught by a teacher that wanted to train a concert pianist. So there was no boogie woogie, there was no, you know, it was all, I mean, the closest thing I got to rock was green sleeves, you know, everything else was, was the classics and, uh, and my mom, being in a conservative background, she goes, no, that's what the teacher wants. You don't step outside that line. And so after about three and a half years of staring out the windows, watching everybody play ball, which is what I do, I'm a sports guy. Um, my mom really got tired of feeling that she had pinned me down to that chair. And she said to me, she said, you're going to be really sorry you gave this up.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Cause I was pretty good. I was able to transpose anything. So I, I really could, I mean, if, if they would've let me play a little rock song and some little girl would've sat next to me, I probably never would've given it up. But, um, you know, no one wanted to sit next to me playing Mozart, so, um, so the music came out of the church, uh, my, my, my, I'd say my conservative outlook came in it. Also, it, also, it also probably would clouded me. I was a late learner on things because I would adopt my parents' point of view. What was talked about at that kitchen table was mine. Vietnam was going on. If you were against the war, you were bad. If you had long hair,

• 11:17Speaker 03

  you were bad. Uh, my brother went into Marines, so if somebody hated the Marines, I hated them. Now, I was like thirteen or fourteen, and so as I was moving into high school, I, I wasn't very evolved in a sense. There's nobody would say, no, just because somebody has long hair doesn't mean they're dumb, doesn't mean they're anti, you know, establishment, anti-America. But in fact, that's, that's what I saw, and I had to really fight really a long time to grab on to my own ability to look at the world in a, in a, in a more gray way.

• 11:50Tim Ferriss?

  Was there any experience or person who comes to mind early on who helped you develop that?

• 12:00Speaker 03

  No, but I, I can remember really being behind the curve a few times, uh, um, you know, because my parents would say, hey, look, you gotta be able to speak your mind, you know, in these circles, whatever you need to do, you gotta, you know, you, but what I found was I was speaking my parents' mind, and, and I was not coming off very well in a way. I was, I was, I was militant about things I didn't even know about, and I began to sense that, that I didn't have a, a bigger view. I had their view. And, you know, it hasn't hurt me in my life to have a conservative view, but I'm not a very, I'm, uh, my eye, my eyes, the scales came off my eyes a long time ago about things.

• 12:46Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm gonna jump around chronologically a little bit, but, uh... But before we we jump beyond high school, so in high school, you were five two, is that right?

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Well, I was I was a sophomore. I was sixteen years old. And the reason I can say that is because, you know, when you get your license, the first thing people want to do is look at it, especially the girls, right? They want to look at your picture. And of course, I handed my picture over and and then there it is, eighty seven pounds, five foot two, sixteen years old. I was looking below the wheel of my Datsun pickup when I drove. I was itty bitty. Um, I began to, you know, grow in my senior year and grow into college, but, uh, you know, I wasn't not a senior. I wasn't five two, but that's was kind of, it was kind of humiliating after about the fourth or fifth girl said, hey, you're, look at that. That's really cute, five two. And I took my license out. I never let anybody look at it again.

• 13:39Tim Ferriss?

  Did you were you athletic? You mentioned the playing ball, uh, before you hit your growth spurt? So while

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I was. I was. Yeah, I I was really, I played a lot and I played till the,

• 13:53Speaker 03

  till I had to come home when those streetlights came on. And of course I didn't. And here come my father dressed almost like I am right now in blue jeans and blue shirt. He was a lineman for Edison. And when they were faded jeans, it wasn't because they were designer jeans or faded because they just got washed a billion zillion times. And he was as handsome as Paul Newman, I got to tell you. And he, he'd come looking for me and I'd see that finger man and I'd like be running across the street, trying to get around him to get home. I just had, I just couldn't keep certain things in my head. You know?

• 14:24Tim Ferriss?

  And you mean by that, the, um, the sports?

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, just I couldn't keep track of it. I was like any kid.

• 14:31Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, got it.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  I just he said, look, when you see those streetlights, come on, you come home. So, you know, or when I'd go build a fort, you bring my tools back, you know, or when you take your sports stuff out, you don't leave your ball out, you know?

• 14:42Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  The the the hammer, the saw would be left at the fort, but my dad would go down to where I'm building a fort and back would came the saw and it was all rusty. You know, he'd look at me and and and I was like, I was thinking, man, I'm I'm a bit of a fuck up. You know, I'm I I just, I I don't get it right. You know, it's like, I know to bring it back, but I'm having so much fun. I was a classic ten year old, twelve year old. Just you have so much fun. You almost can't think of the consequences.

• 15:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think that a lot of adults then spend the rest of their lives trying to recapture that feeling in a way.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Well, Mark Twain said it, you know, he said, look, if a man lived his life correctly, he's never forgotten his childhood. He's never given it up.

• 15:23Tim Ferriss?

  When you were five two, you said 87 pounds?

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:28Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, that is small. Did you, I mean, were you a kind of a rough and tumble kid?

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was really rough and tumble. I mean, I remember they asked me to go out for the wrestling team because I could get my, the varsity letter, right? You get a varsity letter. And I said, no, I'm gonna be a basketball player because I'd always dreamed of, you know, doing the layups with, you know, to the Hawaii 5-0 theme because that's what I saw when I was a little kid. I was a good athlete, but I thought, no, I'm gonna be that. And they go, well, you're not gonna make the varsity, you know, at 5'2". They go, you could wrestle at 96 pounds, right? Get your varsity letter. And I thought, I don't want that. But they go, well, just go try. So I went out and wrestled the one kid that was 96. I just threw them all over the place.

• 16:09Tim Ferriss?

  Dragged all the.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  I just, you know, I got him in a, I didn't get him in any classic wrestling. I got him in a headlock and he whined. He was like whining. I wasn't gonna let him up. I really dominated him, but I thought, big deal. I don't want my Letterman's jacket in this sport and I, I want it in basketball. And I, my mom promised me I'd grow. I mean, I literally was running around the house, jumping up and touching the header on every door going, what in the hell? 5'2". Cute. I can't be this. I can't. And I'd say to my mom, which you do, you know, you go, Mom, am I gonna grow? I swear to God, am I gonna grow? And she goes, I promise you, you're going to. So, you know.

• 16:48Tim Ferriss?

  And you, I had read about a, I guess a heart to heart that you had with your father at one point. I want to say in the bathtub or you were in the bathtub?

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:59Tim Ferriss?

  Am I getting this right? Could you describe that?

• 17:01Speaker 03

  Well, you know, that was, it was an, I had been working up in, in Aspen. I have a ranch up there and working very much like I work here. And, and it got to put a little bit of it into context too, a little bit. It was. You know, my dad was a worker and when he would try to teach us to work, it was like we'd mow the lawn and we'd be done and at an early age and he'd go, well, did you edge it? And you go, didn't edge it, right? So the next time we mowed it and edged it, he goes, did you wash it off? Didn't wash. He was a bit of a taskmaster in a way. So it was very difficult to get it exactly right. Right. You know, a man does a job right. And a lot of that came from the Dust Bowl. Cause he used to, he saw when a hundred guys would be in line to dig the same ditch. And he used

• 17:45Speaker 03

  to say to me, he said, there'd be a hundred guys dig this thing if you don't dig it. So I understood that a guy had to work. That's what I was, was about. And, and I had a real big problem up on the property and they literally watched me solve it all day long. I never stopped working. And at the end, I was actually going underwater and plugging something, you know? I mean, I was like in that cold water up there and he watched me. This is your, your property? This is on my property. I was, but it was, to be honest, it was a typical day other than the fact that something broke and I really had to fix it. It was just was a, he watched, he watched me work. And now the day was done and I was up in, and I don't

• 18:27Speaker 03

  take baths for the most part, but I was up in my room and I'm taking a bath. I'm really beat to shit. I'm really beat up. And the door opens and my dad walks in. So imagine he go, what the? What the hell's going on here? And he walks in and he, and I'm in the bathtub and I don't know what to, I'm not going to sink down, but I'm thinking maybe I, I don't know what it is. And he, and, and kinda like a dog who can't find a place to stand, he kinda walks a little bit in circle and finally puts his up arm on the, on the hearth or up on the mantel. And I say that because when I designed this house, I always wanted a fireplace in the bathroom. Yeah. I always wanted to get out and Sounds amazing. And have the fireplace in the mantel. So he had us on the mantel. And so I'm, I'm like, look at him, yeah? And he starts to talk to me. He says, you know, when you, you're

• 19:10Speaker 03

  young, you had all the things you wanted, right? Uh, I go, yeah, of course I did. He goes, and you never felt like it, there was anything we didn't provide, money? He started going down this trail of, of.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Did we have enough? Did we, you know, and, and he looked at me, cause he was always so worried that I would go into acting. He thought, you know, a guy should work, work. And I know he was unsure. And then he was able to see the success that I had. And, and so I think, I wonder if he was thinking at some point, I hope I never derailed you. But nevertheless, he's going down this path. You had what you wanted. You, your mom and I did the best we could. And he looked at me and he said, you know, I never took a chance in my life. And I was almost in my own Field of Dreams moment. And, and, and it's like, there was like some tears coming down. He goes, you know, I, I hope,

• 20:04Speaker 03

  you know, he goes, I came out of that goddamn fucking dust bowl. And I just, when I got a job, Kevin, I didn't want to lose it. I was gonna hold on to that because I knew there'd always be food on the table. And I said, there was. There was. I mean, and there was a really kind of just an amazing moment. My dad sitting there going, and I'd long since been able to take care of myself. I didn't need gas money from him when I'd go visit him. And it was just a, you know, and I don't know if you ever had a moment like that, but I, I had that. And, and, you know, I didn't want him to tear up. He'd given me everything that he could give me. And it was just one of those moments.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  And, um, you know, I won't, you know, I'll always remember that.

• 20:53Tim Ferriss?

  Has, uh,

• 20:54Speaker 03

  They just want to know that they did right by you.

• 20:57Tim Ferriss?

  Do you, uh, as a father yourself, do you, uh, has that mentality carried over to you as well? Were you, you, are you ever concerned?

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Well, I probably talk to my kids a little bit more than he talked to me. And I probably maybe even a little bit easier on them than he was on me. Uh, you know, man, he was tapping me on the shoulder in the morning. He said, here we go. We're going to work. I don't really do that to mine. I, I let them see me work. They're, you know, I, you know, they can come work side by side. But I, I, I don't know who's right. I don't know if he's right. I don't know if I'm right. You don't know till the, till the end. I, I do know that early on, my dad thought, you're lazy. He'd say that to me. You're lazy. You're not gonna, and I, and I just, I work more than anybody I know. Um, you know, I mean, and maybe I have that in my head, you know, it's not.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  It's not uncommon for me when I come out with the guys that are working on the property, I'm here before they are and I work with them all day, right next to them. In fact, the ones who don't even speak English go, "Is he gonna be here all day?" And the other ones go, "I think so." And then later on, they go, "I thought he was in the movies." Maybe he doesn't need to do that. And somebody says, "Hey, Jefe, he likes it." You know, he likes to be out here. So, um, it, my own children, you know, I tell my children I love them every day. That's what I tell them. But I, and I tell them they're special every day. But I always finish that sentence with, "It doesn't make you better." Okay?

• 22:33Speaker 03

  It doesn't make you better being special because people out there, their sons or daughters, they're special. You can feel special yourself. But even if you do something that the world acknowledges, you gotta be, you gotta really relax because it doesn't make you better than anybody. And I, and I need, what they need to learn in life is different than what I do. I never was in a limousine till I was 28 years old. They've ridden in limousines, going with us wherever we go since they were, you know, in diapers. So their lessons are gonna be different and, and part of what I anticipate for them is to be able to share their good luck. How are they gonna share their good luck? How are they gonna have a sense of balance, you know?

• 23:14Speaker 03

  And, uh, you know, I, there's no book on that, but it's something I think about and work at every day.

• 23:20Tim Ferriss?

  So I have a friend who is, who's also on the podcast named Chris Saka, very, uh, very, very successful venture capitalist. And when he was growing up, and he does this with his kids now, his parents would put him through what he called the sweet and sour summers. So he would have some fun experience that his parents would expose him to, but then the sour was, they, they would be required to go do not a thankless job, but a hard manual job, like cleaning, I'm making this up, like oil refinery equipment with, with some taskmaster that dad or mom had decided for them to spend time with, to give them both perspectives.

• 23:59Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, do you, uh, what, what is the, uh, what are the jobs, the hardest jobs that have taught you the most?

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Well, my dad was the hardest on me. You couldn't be harder than my dad. So, um, you know, maybe that put me in a position to, to work. I, I, my dad said, if you can outwork, if you can stay long, if you can, you'll, you just have to outwork someone. And it was really very, very basic. So, um, you know, my own outlook for my own kids is they see that I'll work side by side with somebody. There's no difference between who I'm working with.

• 24:39Tim Ferriss?

  Is there anything when you were, and we're going to come back to, actually, this is a good time to sort of shift gears a little bit with, um, acting, talking about acting and that entire career. Can you talk a little bit about, uh, your experience with Rumpelstiltskin?

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that was a, um, it was a moment in my life. I was in my, I think I was in my senior year at college, um, the start of it. And I was in night school. And if you know anything about night school, you know that the people in night school are really serious. So the bell grunts really hard there, you know, as opposed to a bunch of eighteen year olds, you know, or whatever you are. If you're in night school, it's serious. Those dudes are all drinking coffee. They're all still in their suits. They're all, and I'm in accounting class. And it's not happening for me. I know I'm not supposed to be there. I know where I'm at. I'm not, I'm at the other end, I'm at the wrong end of what was going to happen when a test is taken because I don't like it. But again,

• 25:37Speaker 03

  because of my conservative background, you graduate high school, you go to college and you get a college degree and you get a job. I wasn't really, again, very advanced in my thinking or my eyes weren't open to the real possibilities. I mean, I, the greatest things I did was when I would go drive trucks or frame houses or I worked on commercial fishing boats. I like that work. I like the exoticness of that life or the... You get what you get because that's what you just earned.

• 26:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  And so academia was not a thing for me. And there I was smack deal smack in the middle of it. And realizing that I was just like pulling sand down. I couldn't get out of this hole. But I saw I, what do I do? I turn off to the teacher. I open up the little student newspaper. And I'm winging through the newspaper, which is all three pages long at a college, right? And on the back of it was a, a, a play, an audition for a thing called Rumpelstiltskin on an off-campus area. And don't, I don't know why, I just thought audition. I'd like to try that. And, um, you know, when I closed that newspaper, I listened to the person drone on. I saw the latest pop quiz and I was last.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  And, um, but what I knew at that moment, I was going to that audition, audition the next day. I was excited about the next day. It's been a long time in my college life where I was excited about the next day. And I took a, I, I, I drove down, I real, almost was killed, literally doing it. I was going down the fifty-five freeway, which is in Orange County. And at that time, the freeway hadn't been finished all the way. So stoplights were on the freeway at a certain point, like where they were gonna build.

• 27:19Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds so dangerous.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  And as I'm going down there, everything's fine. That's not a big problem. And let, except my accelerator broke and went to the floor. On this old Dodge and pickup. And all of a sudden, I saw the brake lights up ahead, like where those eucalyptus trees are way out there.

• 27:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, a couple hundred feet from us.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Brake, brake lights. And my speedometer's going from sixty to seventy to eighty and it's not slowing down. And I'm probably gonna hit those people at about ninety miles an hour and kill them, kill myself. And I'm just, and the engine is just, I, it was, I don't know why it was designed that way, but the floor, like some ghost pulled it straight down to the bottom. So I had my wits about me at one point halfway through when I realized I didn't want to die. And I threw the clutch in. And there was never such a terrible wind, but I thought, oh my God, it, it did engage. But the engine was revving. I was able to turn the key off. And I coasted to a stop, pulled over into the emergency lane, didn't kill anybody. I jumped out of that fucking car.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Hopped over that fence and hitchhiked to my audition, cause I wasn't gonna miss it.

• 28:23Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  I left it on the freeway. I left it because I had some place I wanted to be. I had a place that something was gonna happen. And of course, nothing did. I wasn't good enough. I didn't have enough skill. I didn't really know about Rumpelstiltskin. I mean, I didn't know my fairy tales, okay? I figured there was a prince. I would just leave it at that. I'll go out for the prince, maybe. You know, I had, you know, you know, and, but I didn't get it. But my imagination started to burn about the possibilities.

• 29:00Tim Ferriss?

  And what, uh, when you had those possibilities then in your head, what were the, the next steps?

• 29:07Speaker 03

  The next steps were to, to, the reason I didn't get the part because I wasn't very good. I could tell the people, like in accounting, they were better than me. They were better than me. But I thought the difference was, I didn't wanna try to improve in accounting. But in acting, I thought, I'm gonna go to school. I found something I think I wanna learn. And so it was one night, they started to have classes there. One night a week turned into two nights a week, turned into three, turned into four. I suddenly started to become the student that I wasn't in college. I went to UCLA and took two classes in film financing, film budgeting. Uh, I showed up for the first day of class.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  I had already read the book, the entire book. I wasn't in the mood to do an all-nighter. I was interested.

• 29:58Tim Ferriss?

  So at this point, you'd, you'd graduated from college at this point?

• 30:01Speaker 03

  I graduated from college. I was framing houses out in Orange County. I would go and that's how I would make my dollars. I, I wasn't very good, but I could work all day. If you could frame one house by yourself a day, you could get another house. But what guys were doing that were really experienced in eight hours, I was doing in 12. So I was usually out there, and I think about this time of year, because the sun goes down quickly, and guys are going home at 3:30. Sometimes they'd work in teams. Some guys could frame a house by themselves. I'd do it by myself. But I wasn't finished at 3:30. I wasn't finished at 5:00. And I had that pickup truck, the same one, almost killed me. Um, I'd have the lights out and I would frame with the lights on till I was done, so I

• 30:46Speaker 03

  could get a house the next day.

• 30:48Tim Ferriss?

  And the classes, you took the classes during, uh, during the day?

• 30:52Speaker 03

  No, at night.

• 30:53Tim Ferriss?

  Those are at night?

• 30:53Speaker 03

  Then I would go, then I would go at night. And, um, I was, all we can say without, you know, beating this to death in a way or boring anybody with it, it was just, suddenly, suddenly I was interested. I was interested in my own life, the way I used to be interested in it when I was a kid. When everything, when tomorrow was exceptional. And for me, every day was exceptional, when I actually realized I wanted, now I wasn't telling people what I wanted to do, because half of me was going, who's gonna believe this? Especially my dad.

• 31:27Tim Ferriss?

  How, so let's see, how old were you at the time?

• 31:29Speaker 03

  So, let's say I'm, let's say I'm probably twenty.

• 31:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  Twenty-one, you know, and, you know, in, in my mind, I thought, why, how come at twenty-one, I don't know what I wanna be? You know, I, there's this kinda thing, I thought I was actually getting old, I don't know what I wanna do. Um, seemed like everybody else did. Um, I didn't have anybody to tell me to relax, just, just keep moving, you're doing fine. You know, a lot of what I got was, what are you gonna do?

• 31:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  And so I just, like the rat in the maze going after the cheese, I just kept going to class, kept going, I was gonna, graduated with a degree that I didn't care, you know? I did care about the acting, and I started, I, I started to fall in love with something. Didn't know if I was gonna be able to make a living at it, but I finally got rid of the, got rid of the whispers in my head, which was, what are you gonna be? And I thought, it's none of your business, I'm gonna be what I wanna be. I, I, I finally shook loose of, I guess, my parents. And this is not a session about therapy, but I finally got rid of the whispers, it didn't matter.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  I knew, I somehow figured out, if I didn't make myself happy, I would never be happy. If I didn't, you know, if I didn't pursue what was, was whispering to me, I would absolutely be a failure. I would absolutely be an unhappy person. And believe me, when I could articulate that, which maybe many people could, I couldn't. But when I articulated that I didn't care anymore what anybody thought about what I did, except me.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  All the weight of the world came off my shoulders and everything became possible. It shifted to everybody else that they were now worried. Now they're worried, but it didn't shift. Everything for me had shifted to a place where I felt free.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  The, how did the chill come to be? That came. That experience? Yeah, well, that was a, um, it was the one part that Lawrence Kasdan could cast without permission from the studio. Um, uh, he'd, you know, already done Body Heat and people recognized it was special, special talent. And a casting director named Wally Nacita, who was a very tough casting director, a no-nonsense kind of person who really, really actually helped her directors. Instead of, she would, she would offer up people that she thought. She put me up in front of him and saying that she was, I was somebody that she thought

• 34:08Speaker 03

  was very good. And I was lucky enough to get the big chill. And I knew immediately that my life would change as a result of that movie. And a lot of people talk about, well, you're cut out, you know, then, you know, were you disappointed? I, I guess I had a small measure of disappointment, but none to the, not, not anything like what I think people thought I should have. Um, because I realized at the moment that I was hired, that somehow I was on my own yellow brick road. And that appearing in that movie wasn't nearly as, as important as being in it. I knew I was in it. The people I was around

• 34:49Speaker 03

  knew I was in it. I had suddenly found my footing that had probably taken, uh, from the point of, um, you know, that accounting class, uh, probably taken six years, seven years. You know, people talk about entrepreneurs, you know, and the idea of being an entrepreneur is, is, uh, being willing to do a job that nobody else wants to do. Sure. Uh, to be able to live the rest of your life doing whatever you want to do. And so the idea, how I can correlate that a little bit would be to, to try to be an actor when you don't, there's no guarantee that it's ever going to work for you. But that you're willing to really work at it for a long time. When all the other responsibilities that

• 35:30Speaker 03

  followed you, being married, trying to provide, but still not giving up on your dream. It... It sustained me. I was able to, I was lucky. I was able to make it. And when I got to that point, I was a better actor. I would not have been a good, a better, I would, even though I made a check and everybody had been really happy, I wouldn't have had the foundation. I had to re-educate myself. And I loved the idea of educating myself.

• 36:00Tim Ferriss?

  How, what did, over that course of six or seven years before, before you were cast for The Chill, what did you say to yourself to keep yourself going?

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Well, there's, it's hard because if you want to be practical, and you need to be, it's very difficult to be around people that don't see themselves clearly. So when your parents tell you're the fastest little runner, you believe that. But you know, by the time you get to the sixth grade, there's people blowing by you and, and your chances of being in the Olympics, they're not good. And so, somebody says, well, I'm gonna make it anyway. Okay. That's a hard person to be around a little bit. But, you know, in the world of acting, you have to say, you have to think where you would fit. So I was looking out at the landscape. Obviously, I was going to class at night, doing everything I would do and, you know, you know, hating everybody I saw, or being around other actors who I

• 36:56Speaker 03

  realized hated everybody on television that had parts. I mean, there's like bitterness, I mean, actors, bitterness among actors who don't have jobs looking out there and the people that do or whatever. And I was like, I didn't really feel that, but I, I could understand that. But as I was moving along, I, there was a moment in time where I actually thought I wasn't going to make it. I, I did. And I, and one thing I did, once I decided that I'd become an actor, is I didn't want to put a clock on-

• 37:22Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna ask you that.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Put a clock on things. So I, I didn't. But I was also a practical person. I mean, look at me. I can, you know, I know what time it is. And I'm starting to think, you know what? The people I'm supposedly going to be going up against are getting more parts. I was going up against Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage and Ken Wall and Mel Gibson and Richard Gere and you can think of all the people that were already on the landscape when I actually decided that I would act. So they not only had those credits going for them before I started, some of them, you know, they had, you know, 20 films behind them. And so these were the parts, this was the category that I was in.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  And so if I would go up for a part, there'd be four or five of these names being thrown around and they would just work their way right down. And suddenly, and so my chances of getting those parts weren't very good, but somewhere along the line, they started using me on certain movies going, "Well, if you want too much money, we're going to go with this unknown guy." Well, who's this unknown guy? Kevin. And that, I was a bit of a stalking horse for some, you know, for some people, you know, to either take less money or we're going to give this good part away.

• 38:37Tim Ferriss?

  By stalking horse, you mean like a bargaining ship or a...

• 38:39Speaker 03

  We'll go with this unknown. We'll go with this unknown. They continued to go with the known, so I actually thought, "You know what? I'm not going to be able to jump over these guys." Timothy Hutton, you can just go right down the list, but then the big chill happened for me. And, you know, I was working as a stage manager at Raleigh Studios and for three years and I would be taking cable and working late, late, late at night. And I didn't tell a lot of people that I acted because nobody wants to be around a pining actor, so I just didn't say it. But what happened was, all of a sudden, when I did start to emerge, Big Chill moved to Fandango, moved to American Flyers, moved to Silverado. Suddenly, it seemed like it was happening very fast for some people. It's like, "What?

• 39:24Speaker 03

  What? Where did this come from?" And then, when I decided I would direct, which was about two pictures later, people thought, "Wow, he's moving really, really fast." You know, what they didn't know was I had been dreaming this moment for six, seven years before that. Then, when it was starting to happen, I had already been planning for these things. So what was fast for other people, wasn't fast for me.

• 39:49Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that makes perfect sense. I mean, you hit a certain escape velocity, in a sense, and then, or you'd use maybe a different metaphor. I mean, you got, you'd been cranking and cranking, got to the top of the roller coaster, but you'd been sort of thinking of that descent all along. The, I've heard you say that the big struggle in acting is staying loose. If you were to have the opportunity to go back to yourself, say, at the Silverado point, what advice, acting advice or otherwise, would you have given yourself?

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Well, I just wanted, I tell you, I would give myself almost the same advice as I did, which was, "I'm gonna try to hold out for the good movies. I'm not gonna just try to go to movie after movie." You know, maybe what I should have given myself is, which is, "Be really ready to do the sequels." At 30, I would said, "Just be prepared to do Bull Durham 2, Tin Cup 2, you know, Bodyguard 2. Get in the mode of making these movies later on."

• 40:55Tim Ferriss?

  What, uh, what are some of the scenes that have scared you the most? And I've heard you talk about, after you've read a script and sort of picked up on the secret, right? Something you can't wait to hopefully portray or share with an audience or tell in a certain way. What are, what are some of the scenes that come to mind that you're most scared of in any, any film that comes to mind?

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Well, I'm usually scared of the scenes, if there's, number one, there's gotta be a scene in there that you really wanna do, you think you can do, that you really, really wanna say, that you wanna be known. I guess, listen, I remember seeing, you know, Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind, and, you know, and, and, and watching Gregory Peck, and, you know, "The Kill a Mockingbird, Stand Up, you know, there's, your father's what," you know what I mean? And I thought to myself... I mean, I loved McQueen and I loved Newman, and they were minimalist. And so, I understood how to work with a lot of economy. I knew I would do westerns. But I was never afraid of language either.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  So I wasn't, you know, I remember, you know, I'd read a lot about McQueen and so they, it's like, just always ripping lines out, ripping line, didn't, you know, have any, any elongated anything. It was just not gonna happen. Me, I wanted to have the inherit, the win speeches. I wanted to have those things. And I've been able to have four or five of those in my career. You know, had one with Black or White in the courtroom. The problem is, when you see them written so well, you know, the thing in Bull Durham, you know, I Believe, is, is that you realize you're also the person that can mess them up.

• 42:42Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Right? You're also the person that can miss, take a big whiff at something that was so great. And so, I usually know when I'm on to something, which is when I'm a little bit afraid of it. Go, wow, I could, I could mess this up. And I, I put myself there, you know, a lot of times in my life, and I've often asked myself, you know, um, why have I tried so hard to be in a place where I could fail so badly in front of so many? And, you know, I have, you know, gone to bed at night knowing the next day, I have to deliver. And if I don't, everybody else is gonna know.

• 43:20Tim Ferriss?

  I, um, I'm recalling a commencement speech that was given by one of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, an amazing fiction writer. And, uh, it's called Make Good Art, but at one point he says, you know, when you feel like, and I'm paraphrasing here, you're walking down the, the street naked, extremely uncomfortable about what you're about to say, then you might just be getting it right. Along those lines. Uh, the, when you're tackling a scene, you know, like the I Believe, say, in Bull Durham, uh- How do you prepare for that? How do you practice beforehand or how do you?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I never thought that I did that scene as well as it could have been done. I was, the writing there was so great. I just did the best I could. And I had a great director in Ron Shelton and launched me in another movie called Tin Cup. But, you know, how do you prepare? Let's take the, let's take the scene in JFK, which was about 11 pages long, you know? It was a really intense thing. And I, I started on that probably a month and a half, two months before we ever started filming. I'm really slow. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm a, I can memorize, I think, as well as anybody, but I can't perform with memory.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  I have to perform when I actually own the words and I can do them in any, you know, in any state. And so to do that, I know that I have to get off book, which is a term for, you know, I don't need the script anymore. I do that before every movie. I'm off book. I, I, I don't trust myself to learn lines of the week of, the night of. I just don't do it. And it's kind of anal, but for me, it makes me more prepared to step through what I call the window of opportunity if one presents itself on this, on the set that day. You know, a lot of people, they come, they go, no, I'll just wing it. I, I like being fresh. I like being, you know, you know, open to the spontaneity.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  I would never trust the work that I do to that. And I would never, I couldn't, I couldn't do that to a movie I was working on. I wouldn't trust myself. I think going in really prepared makes me really confident to do anything that happens that day. I'm not just stuck there. I'm just prepared to do that.

• 45:45Tim Ferriss?

  It seems also that your familiarity with the material allows you to make some very intelligent suggestions. You brought up JFK. I mean, the "Let us suppose." Maybe you could explain the conversation with Oliver Stone.

• 46:00Speaker 03

  We did. You know, Oliver comes under a lot of scrutiny. You know, he really has a really active mind and is really, you know, a patriot in his own way after a truth. And he's willing to go at it very, very hard. And people have questioned him on it. And the directions he goes down, the roads he'll, the rabbit holes he's willing to go down, and what gets said and who said it. And I knew I was going to be the voice of all this. And as I was going through that script, I wanted to serve Oliver. But I also wanted to serve myself a little bit, too, which was to make sure that I wasn't so far out

• 46:43Speaker 03

  on the limb saying explicitly, you know, what Oliver is saying. And when I came to certain things that I was unsure about, and some other people questioned it a little bit, I said to Oliver, I go, "I'm not comfortable with saying this." I said, "I would be more comfortable saying 'let us suppose' as opposed to this actually happened." Because the "let us suppose" is framing things for people to see. Because if there's no actual eyewitness there, you go, "Let us suppose this happened," you know. And Oliver didn't fight that at all, to his credit. He said, "That's fine. Let's just paint that picture. Because that's the picture I believe that's there." You know, because you could turn and say, "And now let us suppose that didn't happen," boom, and you go down that thing. And I thought

• 47:28Speaker 03

  it was a fair depiction. And I was proud of Oliver, instead of fighting that, "No, we're going to say that's fact. It is fact because this guy said it was." And I said, "Well, let's just think about that a little bit." It was a good collaboration.

• 47:41Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned something that Oliver...

• 47:47Tim Ferriss?

  I hope he doesn't burn himself up. What did you mean when you said?

• 47:50Speaker 03

  I said what?

• 47:50Tim Ferriss?

  I hope he doesn't burn himself up. I hope he hears this.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  I don't know where I said that, but that's just, that's just one friend to another, one colleague to another. And, and listen, you know, we all burn pretty hot and bright and, and, and go pretty hard. And, uh, you know, I don't need to let people know anything more than that, other than, than, uh, you know, th- this is a guy that was good to me. Uh, and, uh, I know he plays hard and I know he works really hard. And, and, uh, I wanna see him have as long a life as he possibly can and do the work that means a lot to him. So I just, I'll just kinda let it go at that.

• 48:28Tim Ferriss?

  And the reason, the reason I ask is, I mean, quite frankly, because I think that, uh, it's out of personal interest. I mean, you've had a very long career and you've lasted. Uh, I feel like I burn the candle at both ends quite often with, particularly when I get immersed in a creative project and, and can't kinda pull back to 30,000 feet. Have you, do you feel like you've ever been at risk of, of burning out? I mean, you've had some, for instance, I mean, Waterworld massively long shoot, right? Uh, what do you do or how have you contended with that if you've had to?

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, I was also going through a divorce, which was something that I didn't see happening to me. You know, kinda from a conservative point of view, how you're raised, that you think, well, this is how it's gonna be the rest of your life. And you kinda know even before that, that it wasn't really working that way. But, but all the planets lined up with this incredibly long movie, a very tough thing. And I actually went through that entire movie, um, um, divorced, uh, um, separated and then divorced before the movie started. Uh, people don't know that. They happen to think that somewhere halfway through that, um, that that happened. It didn't. I was going to work every day with, with, um, you know, feeling a bit like a failure.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  The, but you know, to me, you know, I just go back. You just, you put your head down, you keep working. And you keep doing the very best you can and you don't let the people know around you that your heart's on the ground.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  But um, you know, my life is so much more than acting. So I've never, you know, I could, I stop sometimes because I just wanna stop. Not because I have to stop, please, you know, it's not like I'm, you know, I remember when college, when we do like the black beauties, you just be up all night, you know, just somebody needs to come in and stop me, you know what I mean? And I didn't have that. I have my own governor. Uh, and I have my own energy level, which might not be the same as somebody else who's think, I think you need to slow down. I, I kinda know when I need to.

• 50:29Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. You have some type of limiter.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I have other interests that actually almost force that.

• 50:34Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 50:35Speaker 03

  You know, I have my own seasons as a man, so to speak. I gotta go hunting, I gotta go fishing, I gotta go be with, I gotta be back for Little League. I gotta, you know, I have these things that are important to me and important to my family.

• 50:49Tim Ferriss?

  This is a bit of a non sequitur, but I'm so curious, because I've spent just a little bit of time in Aspen, uh, doing some work with the Aspen Institute. And I bumped into somebody at one point and they're like, you know what? I actually bumped into, and this could be total, total, totally false, but they're like, I walked into this bar in Aspen, and Kevin Costner was bartending. Have you ever bartended in a bar in Aspen or anything like, like even as a, like a, just a.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  I, I have friends that bartend, maybe I jump back to help them for a second.

• 51:16Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  But I don't, I haven't, you know, I don't, I don't know how to make change, you know? My nightmare is when something costs eight dollars, you know, and, and, and then, and they, you know, or something, and I give them a certain amount of money and the guy goes, can you give me 10 more cents or something like that? You know, and I go, no, I'm only giving, you know.

• 51:33Tim Ferriss?

  Like PTSD after accounting class.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it was like, it's like, please don't do that to me, that the, my, that my temples start to pound. It's like, hey, man, why are you asking for more money? Or something, because you wanna make life easier on me? You're not, you're humiliating me. Stop.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  I just like, I literally kind of throw the money down on the counter and just like walk out. It's like some reflex like, don't have me do math at the chalkboard. Yeah. I had this little creep in, um, I was in fourth grade and, um, you know how sometimes the teachers will tell you, hey, the, the fifth grade teacher needs you to take this note over, right? Well, if I look back in my life, I've got a very, very sound life, but if I really look back at it, I do have moments where, um, you know, you know, I have real problems as a result of certain things. You just don't realize it. And I remember I would go to this, so I'd go to the fifth grade class and there was this little prick, uh, his name was Mr.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Chapman and he was short and he had a flat top like a, like a marine, a flat top and he wore a bow tie. All right. So, you know, he Sounds like a handful already. Yeah, this prick already, right? And so I walked in and, and I brought the paper and he goes, what are you doing in class? And I go, oh, we're doing clay or something. He goes, well, we're doing math here. You know, we're doing, you know, whatever kind of math. Oh, that's really great. He goes, why don't you show us the math you know how to do? Oh, God. Can you believe that? This guy would do this to a fourth grader and he would have me try to do their math and he laughed at me. Oh, what a mess. And the kids laughed. Yeah. And I remember that teacher told me another time, can you take this over to Mr. Chapman? I go, no, no.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  And, and she said, look, you just have to do this for whatever reason. I wasn't able to say no to her either. Again, maybe that's that conservative background. Into that class I went. Chapman, this little, this little prick did the same thing again. He humiliated me and he allowed his fifth graders to laugh at me. And I, believe it or not, I could never go to the chalkboard again without that. That um fear of being laughed at. So the truth was, I could go, I could go to the gas station now and give the guy the money and he goes, give me an extra dime and I'll

• 53:55Speaker 03

  make this even on you. And that's the chalkboard to me. It's the chalkboard. And um, that guy was cruel. That guy shouldn't have been a teacher. Somebody should have jerked him on his ass. And so you don't talk to anybody like that. You don't humiliate anybody, let alone a kid lower grade coming into your class just to give you something. There was something really wrong with him. I probably conjured that story up for the first time, probably about 10 years ago, telling somebody about it. And because I always wondered why everything would go into a fog with me when I would go up to the chalkboard. I couldn't follow the directions that anybody was saying to me. They go, this is really simple. It

• 54:37Speaker 03

  wasn't simple to me. The why? Because I couldn't hear it. My brain was pounding.

• 54:42Tim Ferriss?

  That's uh horrible. I mean, it's, it's incredible how just even, I mean, that sounds very sadistic. Um.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  It's wrong, you know, I mean, I've, I've got this life, you know, where I have this fame, worldwide fame. Somebody's listening probably going, Jesus Christ, this, this, you know, we, listen, we're all, we're all bruised in this world. We've all been kinda, um, you know, that wasn't, you know, not the kind of abusive home, thank God, you know, wasn't, you know, somebody said, hey, gee, Kev, that's pretty mild. I would agree with you. But nevertheless, you realize if you take that and see how it affected me and then maybe add on heaps of the stuff that happens to other children, my God, we, we really can ruin people.

• 55:25Tim Ferriss?

  And it could just be an off the cuff remark. I mean, I remember my, uh, my mom, for instance, at one point was uh, in a music class, I think it was, singing and the teacher said, yeah, you should just stop singing. Or it was some like off the cuff remark. Maybe that teacher was just having a bad day, whatever it was, but my mom has carried that throughout her entire life.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 55:45Tim Ferriss?

  She can't sing or she shouldn't sing. And I had a similar experience with a math teacher in high school, just was constantly kind of heckled or, or needled in this class. And so my choice of college was partly determined by where I wouldn't have a math requirement.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Right. No, I tell you, you know, and so we understand how we affect people and that's followed me with my whatever fame I carry around the world that I know I come into contact with people. And there's a moment that I can have an impact on them. It's very with me.

• 56:21Tim Ferriss?

  How have you learned to contend with, I mean, for instance, and I mean, this is just in my small like startup world space. But I'll have people who like come up to me, I'm at a urinal and they'll come up and want to like pitch a startup behind my head. How have you learned to contend, because it must be difficult for you to go out to a lot of public places, I would imagine.

• 56:42Speaker 03

  I go anywhere I want. I tell you the problem, you know, I, because I never wanted my kids to be limited. Oh, daddy can't go here because daddy's too famous. I tell you where I can't go very well is to the bars because there's alcohol. When there's alcohol, people get loose, they get too free. They say things and under the guise of it or whatever and a girl will say something and somebody will say, so that's not a good place for me. Um, to be honest, and I'm not a drinker, so it's not a, it's not really a loss for me. The other place that's more difficult is like Disneyland where people think you're part of the ride. But I go to both places regardless, because if my friends are there, I'll go.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  And I'll make sure that my kids go to Disneyland. I, I have determined to not let fame affect them.

• 57:33Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, see, you mentioned you have many different interests. One I'd like to touch on before we talk about some more recent projects is directing. And specifically, uh, Dances with Wolves, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, uh, as a side note, but, um, could you describe, uh,

• 57:53Tim Ferriss?

  How that got started and your interactions with Michael Blake?

• 57:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, you mean the, the story of it being written, the whole thing?

• 58:00Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, specifically what I was thinking of is, um, sort of how Dances with Wolves started up on a wall.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Well, Michael, and we've lost Michael, Michael passed away. Um, Michael was a real total child of the sixties. He, um, you know, he, he would be, he was on the newspaper staff, you know, he was like, he was against the establishment. He was with Jane Fonda. Just imagine everything, Berkeley, the long hair, the whole thing. And, but Michael was really after the truth and, but then Michael got to a point where he wanted, you know, as we moved into the seventies and, you know, wanted to write screenplays, wanted to write books. He did write books, but he really wanted to write screenplays and that's how we met. And, uh, in a little downtown off the LA River near the Coors, well, the Coors plant used to be down there.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  And there was this chemical plant and that's where Michael slept and we, you know, uh, we met and there was an acting group that none of us had to pay any money. And it was a very eclectic group of people, a lot of rock and roll people, a lot of, uh, screenwriters, people wanted to direct, people wanted to produce. And so we, we could all do what we wanted to do at every night, which was act and which was hear our own writing. And at one point, the big chill thing happened and I started to emerge. So I was the one person in the group that started to emerge and things started to go well for me. And so I was quickly dragging along my friends, if I could, get them interviews and Michael was one of those.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  And, um, I got Michael eight or nine interviews that I could never get when I was struggling and, and every one of them went south. Every one of them that I'd get a phone call, Michael insulted us. Michael told us, we don't know what we're doing. You don't know good writing. And so those calls were getting very difficult for me because I was trying to help him and, and pretty soon some of the people I was sending him to were actually as good a friend to me as he was. And so now he insulted them and so I was losing patience with him and, and losing patience with him really putting down Hollywood and everything and putting this down. And, and somewhere along the line.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm shortchanging this because I don't want to bore the audience, but he really crossed the line with me and said something about some people and about this and, and, and I kinda was letting him know, Mike, maybe the writing's not good enough right now. I just get this and then he said one more thing and next thing you know, I had my hands on him and I had him up against the wall. He had really crossed the line with me and basically what I said, I said, "Well, then quit," I said, "quit pretending you want to be in Hollywood because everything you're writing is ending on page 120," which is code for a screenplay that's about 120 pages. And I said, "Why don't you start writing things that mean something like a short story or a long story, something that ends on 88 or 188 or 888 and quit trying to write these." And I literally had him off the ground and

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  there was scripts under his feet and I kicked them and they went dramatically sliding like a deck of cards out there and now I let him down. And I just, I said, "Why don't you quit pretending this thing you want to be and you actually hate?" I thought really our relationship was over there because I had put my hands on him and that would be hard for me to come back from. And, um, but you know, Michael, three weeks later says to me, "Typical writer," goes, "I don't have any place to live." And so I said, "Well, all right, come live at my house." And I, and he started, and every night I would come and he goes, "I'm writing something." And he goes, "You want to hear it?" And I go, "No." And every night, he goes, "You know, I'm writing, can I read whatever?" I said, "No."

• 1:01:33Tim Ferriss?

  Why'd you say no?

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Because I was sick of him. I'd almost beat him up. And so now I'm having to look at him, have cereal in my house and everything in the morning and at night. And I got one spare bedroom of a house I bought and my wife's even beginning to wonder about him. And she's saying to me after two months, "Hey, he's down there reading to our kids in his underwear." So my kids are like five years old. They can't understand the stories he's reading. And I said, "Michael's fine. There's nothing going on down." She goes, "Well, I'm not so fine with it after about two months." So I say, "Mike, you're gonna have to go finally." So Mike goes and spends a little bit of time at another one of my friends for about three weeks and now he's done. And he gives me this manuscript and I, I

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  said, "I'm," he goes, "I hope you read it." I go, "I'm not sure I'm going to." I was pissed at this guy, but I let, but I'm also softy, right? I let him live with me. And I just didn't want anything to do with him for a while. He was so... Bugged me so much. And so he split. He went down to Bisbee, Arizona and worked at a Chinese restaurant, washing dishes at night and then killing raccoons in the day at this ranch. And he would call me up and say, "Did you read my thing?" I said, "No, no." And this went on for about three weeks. Then I get a letter and he goes, "I'm cold." And I said, "Ah." And so I'd send him down sleeping bags and Coleman stove. I sent him some stuff. And he goes, "Did you read my thing?" I go, "No." One night, I pick it up. About four months later, five months later.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  And I start reading and I read it all that night. It was Dances with Wolves. And I was really proud of him. I was really, really proud with him because when you live in this town, there's people always giving you things, giving you their last best work. "This is my best work." And so you're honored to be able to read somebody's thing, but you're also in the position of having to turn around and tell them if you like it or not. And that can really take the air out of somebody. So unbelievably, Michael without... I was right not to try to listen to any of his stuff. I didn't want to edit any of his stuff. I didn't want to influence it. I wanted him to go till he was done. And it just took me, you know, six months to read it.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  And it was Dances and I was really proud. And I called him up. I said, "I'm gonna make this into a movie." I said, "I don't know how I'm gonna do it." Because I didn't have that kind of money. I said, "But I'm gonna do it and you're gonna write the screenplay. And I'm gonna pay you more than you've ever been paid. I'm gonna find out what the Writers Guild is instead of working for $3,000 for all these goombas in town writing, you know, low-budget films." I said, "I'm gonna find out." It was like, I don't know what it was, $27,000? And I went and figured out how to get $27,000 and paid Michael. I said, "Let's do this." And, um, you know, we made that movie about two years later and Mike won the Oscar.

• 1:04:21Tim Ferriss?

  It's such a fine movie. Was it originally titled Dances with Wolves?

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Tim Ferriss?

  It was, right from the beginning.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, how long did he give it to you in basically novel form?

• 1:04:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was all written out in manuscript. It was about as thick as a phone book. But when you mashed it down, it was, you know, I don't know what it was, 200 pages, I'm not sure.

• 1:04:41Tim Ferriss?

  And how did you end up directing that movie? Was it your intention?

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  Well, I actually went out to three really important directors. I'm not going to use their names. I know that would be interesting, but they were the top of the heap guys. And all of them had things that they wouldn't do to the movie. Some would get rid of the opening Civil War sequence. Some thought it was just too long. Somebody thought that probably it shouldn't be a white girl. That that seemed like a cliche. And I said, well, it really wasn't on the frontier. What people were traded. There was a lot of that going on. Um, and so, once I got past them, I thought to myself, you know, I think I should direct this. And I'll probably, you know, going back to our earlier in our discussion where you talked about, were you ever afraid?

• 1:05:26Speaker 03

  I was, I really had a good script. I knew, I worked with Mike. In fact, Mike said, man, he didn't have a lot of fun working with me on the script. He said it was like having to clap. Because I, because I made him rewrite himself.

• 1:05:40Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  Till we got it right. Because I would look at it and I said, well, look, you're either going to write it, or I'm going to do it. I think you should do it. Because he, and you know, Mike never rewrote himself after that. And he never had another produced screenplay. But we, I-

• 1:05:57Tim Ferriss?

  So that was his only produced screenplay?

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Own produced screenplay. And I was hard. Not hard, but I knew when it was working in my mind, and when I didn't think it was working, I knew we had to fix that. And it just came back to, either you're going to do it, or I'm going to do it. And I said, I think you'd be wise if you did it. Then you would always be able to say, it's yours. And he did. And, uh, you know, that's how that happened.

• 1:06:26Tim Ferriss?

  What, uh, what mistakes did you make early on directing? If any come to mind?

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, um-

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  The, um, I, you know, I thought I had to make up my own shot list every day. So I'd, I'd be, you know, working late at night after a long day of like how I would do the shots. And I don't, um, you know, I had Dean Simler, this really world-class cinematographer. And I, I think I made a mistake worrying about that aspect of it, you know? Because if I, you know, look at directing is kind of like, you know, um, you know, unless you don't, you know, unless you watch a lot of porn, it's like, it's like you kind of, you don't really know how other people make love, right? You don't know how other people direct. I was wondering where that was going. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know how other people directed. Right. You know, I'd only been on a few movies. Right.

• 1:07:19Speaker 03

  So I wasn't sure how I was supposed to direct, but I had my own idea about how, but it's like, so if you don't see anybody do it, how do you know if you're doing it right? Yeah. You know, you just, you kind of like, yeah, maybe that was a, maybe you'll edit that out. You know, you're just, how do you know? No, it makes perfect sense. You're kind of trying to, your own way. I, I actually direct sometimes with a chalkboard. And that has a lot to do with my own athletic background. Sometimes when I have really big scenes, I'll pull out a chalkboard and I'll look at somebody. Because a lot of times I'll be doing what you're doing, which is they're giving me some chin boogies. Right, right. Like that. But what I realized is they're, they're afraid. The actor's afraid and he's going like this. He's, he's, he's me at the chalkboard when I'm in the fourth grade. Nodding, but. He's nodding, but he's not hearing me. Right.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  So when I go out to do a really big explosive take and he's supposed to be somewhere and he's like over there and I go, hey, what happened? I was looking right at you. And he's going, so I, a long time ago, I go, wait a second. Maybe he's a visual guy. Maybe he's basically his head's bobbing up and down because he's saying, please don't look at me. Please don't talk to me. So I found that that chalkboard helped a lot of people. They physically understood. And would you use the chalkboard to storyboard or what would you be doing? No, mostly in big action sequences where you gotta be here, you gotta be there. Like a sports. I wouldn't use a chalkboard in a, in a, in a sit around thing. But I would find that when I had to communicate with a lot of people. Got it. So almost like a football play. I mean, you have the X's and the circles. This is what's gonna happen. And I go, you know, you don't forget if there's a shooting

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  and you're over here, you're gonna have to be ducking your head. You're gonna, I need for you to be doing that, you know? Don't, um, uh, you know, and so it was like that. I think, you know, I compensated for how I learn with other people.

• 1:09:04Tim Ferriss?

  So you have

• 1:09:04Speaker 03

  I mean, there was other mistakes, you know, I um, I think I, you know, when I finally, when we kill the one, uh, the one Native American, the Pawnee, in the um, uh, finally in the river, he, they're chasing him down the river. I think I wouldn't have gotten such a circle around him. I think I would have just had them look and then pour in on him. There was a moment, though, where they, they were glad they caught him. I just felt like the circle was too, too mu- there was just, it was just too perfect. Uh, I just thought there was this kind of thing where he realized he couldn't run anymore. They look, they look, and then they just descend on him. So I look at that and I think that was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that.

• 1:09:47Tim Ferriss?

  Such a great movie. Uh, I, I was really struck by it. I only, I only saw Dancing with Wolves for the first time a few years ago. I was be- I was becoming very interested in the Lakota Sioux and looking at a lot of um, Native American heritage and mythology and whatnot, but anyway, I mean.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  That, that movie was different than a lot of movies for, in a sense that that was a journey movie. It wasn't a plot movie. It's like, how are we gonna rob the bank? Well, you, you, you get your crew, you get your plan, and then something starts to go wrong with your plan and, you know, you know, it was a, you didn't know where the movie was going, and I, I think people were able to just go for the ride.

• 1:10:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, just that, I mean, the entire transformation, uh, of the protagonist throughout the movie. Uh, you don't need the, the extra kudos, but it had a real impact on me. So, thank you for helping to put that out into the world. You have so many different interests, like you'd mentioned, you have, uh, the longstanding interest in music. You have, uh, obviously the, the acting and the directing, very manually literate. I mean, you, you know how to work with your hands, framing houses, et cetera. Uh, and I'm holding here in my left hand, this is the Explorers Guild, and this is, uh, sort of a, a book after my own heart in a way. It's a, this is a thick tome, but why writing? And why the Explorers Guild? How did this come together?

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Well, it came together, uh, it, it, it, it's not how, it wasn't on my, uh, agenda to do this. I, as I go through my life, I'm always really open to meeting people and, and since there was a writer, uh, and, and, and, and a couple of his friends wanted to meet me. And I was told that he was very, very talented, but you know, that they wanted to meet me at some point and talk about some story ideas that they might've had. And, and, and I, I had a level of trust in the person that told me they were good and that kind of thing. And I, I like, you know, uh, my mind's always open to things. So, um, we met not with the idea that we were gonna write a book. I was, we met, I was gonna listen to what they had

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  to say. And, uh, that person was John Baird. And, uh, we met at the Four Seasons. Actually, John's, um, John's with us. I mean, you were nice enough to invite him in and, and let him be part of this.

• 1:12:00Speaker 04

  Hey guys, thanks for letting me crash.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:02Speaker 04

  Although, you know, I think, uh, I can be a more effective salesperson sometimes, uh, when I'm out of the picture. But thanks for, uh, thanks for having me anyway.

• 1:12:10Tim Ferriss?

  Of course. No, I'm just, I'm just so curious how something of this magnitude, uh, manifests.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Tim Ferriss?

  Because, yes, I, I mean, I'd just love to, love to hear you expand on what happened at the meeting and then what, what followed after that.

• 1:12:24Speaker 03

  Well, we had, he came in and kind of had this, uh, idea that I was, I couldn't get my arms around really what he was saying. And, um,

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  A bit, a bit, a bit, a lot of that.

• 1:12:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. It was a thing, you know, anybody has to, hard sometimes on a cold meeting to get traction. And John was having trouble getting traction. And, but, but it turns out he was, you know, in his favor. The story he was talking about was pretty elaborate. But, so it was like, how do you do that really, really quickly? And I couldn't get my arms around. And I said, why don't we talk the following week? You come up to Santa Barbara, uh, we won't be in the Four Seasons, we'll be in my backyard. And, um, I, I, I have to admit that the story was still a little bit unclear. I think John was still working it.

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  Tried to.

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  But I had, but I had, I, I had a bigger feeling about who this guy was. And I thought, I want to be around this guy, John Baird.

• 1:13:18Tim Ferriss?

  What gave you that feeling?

• 1:13:20Speaker 03

  I can't, I can't always say it, you know, I can't always articulate it, but you know, you feel you're around somebody that has a different voice, thinks in a different way, has a wicked wit, and it was just, I, I believe the story was there underneath the stuttering.

• 1:13:38Tim Ferriss?

  So, so John, maybe you can tell me, because obviously there, there are two sides to this story, right? It's kind of like the Rashomon of, of, of the birthing of a book. So, why did you want to meet Kevin?

• 1:13:51Speaker 04

  Well, I'd like to tell you that we had some really well worked out plan, and it was just a question of communicating it to him. I think we had a general idea of a secret society of explorers. You know, we thought that this would be a gateway to just innumerable stories. And it was, we were presenting it as a kind of throwback to that classic epic adventure storytelling. And, you know, given an opportunity, opportunity to meet with someone of Kevin's stature, of course, we wouldn't say no, but the, you know, the fact is, he has, you know, what we discover is he's got, he's sort of a fan of those same old classic stories that, that we actually love. And so, you know, things kind of took off from there. We both found that we loved that big canvas storytelling. We love the

• 1:14:34Speaker 04

  idea of, you know, secret parts in the world and hidden histories, and the collaboration took off from there. But I think that, you know, he's not, he is not mischaracterizing the, our first couple of meetings at all. And it had less, I think, to do with, with being starstruck and more just, you know, this is a very anti Hollywood story. It, we didn't have an endgame. We didn't have even a format that we liked. I had a couple of sketches, a couple of storylines, a couple of ideas.

• 1:15:02Tim Ferriss?

  Right. It wasn't Aliens meets Die Hard, or?

• 1:15:06Speaker 04

  I don't know. It was, my pitching is today, is still terrible. It, you know, so, and I don't know if that was... Part of maybe the allure for Kevin because he would, this wasn't something that was presented to him fully formed by any stretch. It just had some elements and some things that he, I think he may have sparked to. And it was always going to be something that we formed together.

• 1:15:27Tim Ferriss?

  And then, so what, when did, uh, when did you decide to actually pull the trigger and work together on this?

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  I think, um, I think it was that second time or did you come up one more time?

• 1:15:41Speaker 04

  Well, and again, to Kevin's credit, it was, it was, and it was, uh, we're recording in a place right now and it was maybe five feet from where we're talking. And he said, yeah, you know what, I, I still really don't get this, but let's do it. Uh, and it as a, as a testament to, you know, you probably heard him as he's recreating some of his biggest successes. And people always see him when the rock is rolling down the hill. That's the part they see. What they don't see is all the pushing, and he's pushing it downhill, no mistake. But I think by the time, you know, people see him, it's, you know, you kind of think he's got it pretty easy. Uh, I've been witness, you know, myself now to the, this is eight or nine years ago when we met. And, um, there was just all kinds of, all sorts of misfires, all sorts of, you know, uh,

• 1:16:26Speaker 04

  trying some things and scrambling back, reformulating, trying it again. Before about four years ago, we, we sort of, I came to him saying, look, let's just do this as the book.

• 1:16:34Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So initially was the plan to do a whole collection of, of multimedia properties? Or was it intended to be a film initially and then decided to be in this iteration of the book?

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  It was always a book. That's my background, uh, in sort of minor books. Um, but you know, we think that the, the story, the, the structure of it is so expansive. It lends itself, and I think 360 degree media was a popular thing at the time, perhaps still is. Um, and we saw a lot of opportunity there. I think we tried, you know, we tried animating it for what could have been, you know, in these very small chunks. Kevin put some of our smaller animations together and thought, you know, maybe we have a.

• 1:17:14Tim Ferriss?

  Go from a web series, or maybe this is an animated TV series, or something like that.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  It was really cool. We did an- we did animate it, and everything I saw about it is, once we started working, I just, I just picked up the momentum of loving it. And, you know, we talked earlier about some of my films that I haven't done the sequels to. I saw this as something that had innumerable stories, you know, it just was going to, it could be, it was big storytelling, it was big canvas. So I thought to myself, gravity's gonna just fall right to our, everybody's gonna come right to our door. This is what people are looking for, and so we, we did this, and I think John's, you know, alluding to the fact that, no, people didn't. They wanted to know, well, you know, who's the boy in it, you know, and, you know, there is a little boy, and he go, could he have a magic watch, make him fly, because our boy doesn't have a magic watch or fly.

• 1:18:00Tim Ferriss?

  What is he on there for, lesbians?

• 1:18:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, we could get a lesbian in here too. And, and so we said, yeah.

• 1:18:05Tim Ferriss?

  Are these Hollywood people giving these feedback, or?

• 1:18:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, John heard those versions, and I heard the magic watch version, which is, we can put them in because they exist in the world, but maybe not in our world in this particular moment. So, we think our boy's better off having a hole in his head than having a watch in his pocket.

• 1:18:21Tim Ferriss?

  Magic watch and lesbians.

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, what happened was, it, it didn't work. And then we went on, and we kinda, kinda, that was like, again, that was probably five years ago, and we stopped, and I think John felt that I was humiliated by all the no's by executives. I wasn't, but I appreciated him. That's the only time I ever saw John get really mad. He goes, he goes, these people shouldn't be saying no to you. And I needed to look at him and think, well, who am I, John, other than a storyteller? They can say no. It is what it is. But I loved his defensiveness for me, you know, and, and, but we, we stayed the course. We went off and wrote a western together, and John came back and said, I'm gonna write the book, because that's my background. And I said, go, man, go.

• 1:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  And, so this is, this is a beautiful book. I, I, I mentioned before we started recording that I wanted to be a comic book penciler for a very long time. Aesthetically, how did you think about putting together the book?

• 1:19:21Tim Ferriss?

  Because I mean, it's clearly very, very consciously decided. I mean, the paper stock, the tint of the paper, I mean, it's just a physically beautiful.

• 1:19:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I have a long background because as you might know, writing books is not a great way to make a living. And, you know, though I had a couple, I had to support myself doing other things. And I was always an art director and a designer and wanted to be an illustrator. And I got to, I had a lot of experience in not just design, but right through press. I got very into the, because I really like the sort of ins and outs of paper stock and printing techniques and finishing techniques. So the two things I had done before this, you know, though they didn't find much of an audience, they were very, same thing, very carefully done. Each page was, you know, well thought through. And this always was going to have a graphic element in it. Before we leave the, you know, the

• 1:20:14Speaker 04

  idea of Kevin just sort of saying, "Go, man, go" on the book, it's true that that was the initial brief, you know, where we'd kind of ping pong some story for many years. And then when it came format wise, he was doing his things and I was going to run off with the book. It started that way. But the thing I really always need to say, because I think people will make certain assumptions when they see there's a celebrity, someone of Kevin's stature and someone who's, you know, me, there, I think the thought is probably that here's a guy who's probably reading it along with the rest of America and wanted to sort of show up when it's on press, make sure his name is in the right place. This was really, you know, it may have started, he may have started in more of a backseat role in it because this was a book and not a film because it was something I brought to him. But as pages started coming in, it was very natural for him just to slip into

• 1:20:59Speaker 04

  it like he has, you know, on any other project. And I mean, you know, it started in a general way, kind of shaping it like you would bounce material. But then it was, he's bringing characters and storylines and dialogue. And then he's, you know, page by page with me, always making time, knocking these out, getting through it. And at a certain point, it was no longer something that was mine that he was giving input on. This was ours and we were collaborating on it.

• 1:21:23Tim Ferriss?

  What would a jam session look like? In other words, to organize those inputs and try to synthesize it? This is something I've always been fascinated by because I've never had a writing partner, which I quite frankly envy a lot. And I've come to know a lot of comedy writers who work in film and they're almost always, at least a pair. In this particular case, how did you guys collaborate and sort of capture and decide then what would be drafted?

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  There's a third component too, as you kind of alluded to. I didn't illustrate this thing myself. It's way beyond my talents and certainly my endurance. There's a guy named Rick Ross, who is the major part of making this book what it is. You know, we joke like we'd like to characterize it for you as like a, you know, sort of an extended keyboard that we're both kind of, you know, jamming on in our berets. My process is very, very solitary generally. And it's, I think, you know, probably a lot of people who hack their way through, especially this kind of writing. It starts in just a room alone. And, you know, there were long stretches like that. But the rewarding part for me was getting to bring product up here.

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  Kevin, I think, has a little more of a kinetic type of process where, you know, he, I think it's the actorly directorial sort of mindset where he envisions sort of living in these people. And he, you know, he can sort of, from character to character, and he knows what's, how certain people would act and how certain people wouldn't. He knows where he wants things to lead and how best to get there. And so, you know, where I might do, where I might be following up on his ideas from last time and bringing them up in a certain form, he would kind of springboard off of that. And then it was kind of following him around and burrowing through notebooks while he just goes. It was very different from what I am used to doing, but it was, it was sometimes very hard to keep up.

• 1:23:15Tim Ferriss?

  Did you capture that flow of ideas in, say, a single word document, on a board, on paper? How did you capture and then? Process.

• 1:23:26Speaker 04

  I'll occasionally come up if, you know, because something like this, there are just storylines on storylines and wheels within wheels and it's, you know, every once in a while, even just for me, I need to, to whiteboard it and he, you know, always sort of takes shots at me for being sort of an egghead and he, but he's always very indulgent, no, no, I'll go with this, I'll go with this, not bring up some sort of chart or something that, that will go through, but mostly it was, mostly it's sort of theater of his mind and, you know, like, you know, I can kind of be there, you know, sort of rolling with it and trying to, trying to get what I need out of it and sort of, you know, give and take some of that. So mostly it's, it's really just conversations.

• 1:24:03Speaker 03

  There would be a level of point by point thing. Sometimes if, you know, I, I would have to write down everything that I'm thinking about what I was actually thinking about and that would go to him. And then sometimes out of that, when we've come up, then we would really begin to rift because we, you know, it's made up of five books. People call them five chapters. We call them five books and we would advance down the line, even though we were in, in, in book two, sometimes we would be dealing with what was going to happen in four and five and actually then circle back to, to something else. So it was like that. Sometimes it's written down. Sometimes it's on my feet and.

• 1:24:43Tim Ferriss?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:24:45Speaker 04

  Oh, just, I, I got it.

• 1:24:46Speaker 03

  On my.

• 1:24:46Tim Ferriss?

  Improvised, sir.

• 1:24:48Speaker 03

  Well, not improvised, not improvising, but you know, trying to break it down. It's John's voice, absolutely. And I think it's really appropriate that, you know, when you talk about the book and you look, it was really important that John's name stand alone up top there. That was very important to me. I had a lot to do with the cover and versus what was on it versus what is, you know, what people wanted. You know, Rick Ross and I, we always wanted to be a part of something that could stand the test of time. When you talk about these books, you know, Kipling, Jules Verne, Robert Lewis Stevenson, you know, I mean, Mark Twain, Conrad, the kind of books that have that heft that sit up on the, on the shelf.

• 1:25:31Speaker 03

  That's what we wanted. Now, whether we got there or not is nearly as important as what it was we wanted to do. I liked the idea of taking something off the shelf that has the heft of this, actually having to blow the dust off it. And that's what this book is. This book is almost an heirloom for me. A book that, who reads this goes, I'm gonna pass this down to my little brother, my little sister. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this book for them. Cause there hasn't, you know, where are these books? I mean, we're looking in our, our last century, in the century before for our classics. Who's writing them for us now? That's what we wanted. That was our love of it. And so, I brought, you know, I guess the love of that to, to the characters that I liked in this. And, um, where, where

• 1:26:15Speaker 03

  we wanted to go with them. But only John writes in this peculiar, in this specific way. I, I can't write the way he writes. I can see my stories in there, but I can't see them as beautiful as, as how John has written them.

• 1:26:29Tim Ferriss?

  And who is the, uh, who's the target audience? Like, who is your sort of ideal reader or, or type of reader? Who, who would, uh, who would like this book? Uh, what type of, what type of person, what type of reader?

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  You know, I, I think we're not always the best equipped. I think, you know, I'm sure our marketing gang, uh, Simon and Schuster at A3 Books, who've been really excellent partners too, might have a, a real good spiel for you on the, the demo for this.

• 1:26:57Tim Ferriss?

  But when you were writing it, like who was in your?

• 1:26:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I think that's exactly it. I think when we were, like anything, and especially when you're talking about four years of just, there's not gonna be any feedback from the world while you're doing it. You really have to be doing it to please yourself. And I think one of the things that set me loose most was Kevin saying, look, you know, ultimately, we're not gonna judge the success of this by units sold, or, or, you know, where it, where it goes in the world, if it makes a big movie or not. Don't worry about the movie. Don't worry about all that stuff. Worry about doing something that's meaningful to us that he says, you know, like he said, like that can sort of sit on a shelf. I mean, this is, this is a big, big statement. I don't necessarily say we delivered on it, but the aspiration was always sit on a shelf with Melville,

• 1:27:40Speaker 04

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Connor Kipling, you know, try to hold a place up there. And if we feel like we're, we're at least trying for that and we feel like we're being honest to the ideas that we have and true to that, we're going to reach, maybe not everybody, but the people we do reach, those, those 10 percenters who feel it and who are going to feel like this was really written for me. I've been waiting for something like this and it hasn't been in the market. That's going to be our success.

• 1:28:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, you can quantify, you can actually put an age, okay, a 12 year old, you know, a 12 year old who's pretty, you know, really wants to get with it, who loves reading, but six year olds are going to become 12 year olds. So when we were also doing the book, there was a notion of, well, can we simplify the language? Can we, I don't want to use the word dumb it down, but there's, I don't know how else to explain it. What do you mean simplify it? This is how we want to talk. Because when you think something's going to travel through time, people are going to find it. And they find it when they're probably, look at when you make Bull Durham or you make 10 Cup, there's R to it. Okay? So the 12 year old can't see it, but when he's gonna see it.

• 1:28:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:28:39Speaker 03

  So there's something about trying to be true. The problem that we deal with, I think, in the world artistically is that everybody's got this little meter on their shoulder or something like go faster or somebody's like, you know, a, a pace. It's going too slow. When we decided that we were going to make a book, we weren't going to have anybody tell us how to do it, other than how we felt about it. And we felt that this could become perhaps a classic in our own time.

• 1:29:05Tim Ferriss?

  So this is not, not maybe directly related, but for you, Kevin, after, after all of the accolades, the awards, the box office success, how do you continue to develop yourself as an artist? How do you think about that?

• 1:29:20Speaker 03

  I just move towards the things that interest me. And if I get really interested, if I'm not doing a movie and I'm really interested in Little League, I'm gonna do Little League with my kids in the spring and I'll be really interested. I move towards, I move towards the things and towards the people that interest me. And story usually has a bit of an attachment to almost all of those things, the poetry of telling a story.

• 1:29:48Tim Ferriss?

  What, John, for you, what type of fiction or non-fiction writers have most influenced your thinking about storytelling?

• 1:30:01Speaker 04

  I think we mentioned a few of the canon. You know, when we talk about sort of more recent comparables, we, you know, just generally to kind of put this in a framework for people, go to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but what we're really doing is drawing from the same well that, that, that those guys drew from, which is, I mean, that specific was probably more the, the H. Redder Haggard books, the King Solomon's Mine, the Alan Cordey Mysteries. But, so for me, they're the, you know, the Treasure Island, you know, Moby Dick, like all these classics filtered through, kind of Thomas Pynchon, you know, you'll see that kind of layering and, and sort of creeping into surrealism toward the end that I always dug in him.

• 1:30:43Speaker 04

  But, you know, I, I think there's a reason that those stories of Conrad and Kipling stay evergreen and they may be thought of now as kind of required reading, but I think our idea was there's a reason why these stories still thrill us today. If we can, as Kev says, well, more metaphorically, blow a little of the dust off it and bring it to a new audience, we felt that there was a, that that would succeed. There's also just, you know, parenthetically, when you mentioned the graphics, that was another decision too of, I think, because what you'll see when you open it is it's, it's a little bit of a hybrid between a traditional novel and not just an illustrated novel, but a paneled sort of graphic novel. But you know, sort of, I think it was a little more of a problem than we would have anticipated

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  just with the gatekeepers of, I heard a lot of, it's kind of between two chairs was a phrase that pecked at me for a while.

• 1:31:31Tim Ferriss?

  Was it heads between two chairs?

• 1:31:32Speaker 04

  This is kind of, this kind of lands between two chairs. The idea is, are we gonna put it in a graphic fiction?

• 1:31:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was, I was the first one to say huh.

• 1:31:39Speaker 04

  I know, I know. But, which I know, there are a lot of knee jerk things. People's job is, it's a, you gotta classify it one way or the other and some things are difficult to classify is usually like, thanks, but you know, no thanks.

• 1:31:50Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's a very anachronistic element of old school publishing, right? Where they think in terms of a retail store and not a search algorithm, where it's like, N word of mouth.

• 1:31:58Speaker 04

  And you think like, well, my feeling was if we put it in front of somebody, they're gonna get it or they're not. And there are, you know, people who will stumble when it's going from a straight paragraph into paneled graphics, who are, you know, not gonna get it. I feel like after the third or fourth time though, you know, the idea was always that this, the graphics weren't gonna be ancillary, there weren't gonna be something you could skip. The story would go right through them, you know, I wanted the art to be really integrated in, in a way that you don't see in a lot of places. But I also wanted the, you know, our story to have a lot of heft when it went right to the text. So, so yeah, it's, it's a bit of an odd doc and we, you know, neither fish nor fowl. We heard a lot of that and we were like, you know what? We think when people see it, they're gonna get it and that, that was more.

• 1:32:36Speaker 03

  I always remember the joy of when I had one of those books, Treasure Island, that I could see in the middle of that book that there was pictures.

• 1:32:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. That you'd see the glossy pictures.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  And I wanted to get, and I wanted to get to them. I did. And I somehow knew in my heart that I wasn't supposed to just go to the, you know, it's not like the centerfold of Playboy. Let's just get right to it.

• 1:32:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Speaker 03

  Um, but, you know, and you had to earn your way. But I was always, you know, maybe this was the jock part of me, but I was always like, I wish there'd be more pictures. Um, you know, because I, I, that always, that always let you really imagine the duel on the beach, you know, with what, those guys had cutlasses and they were gonna go and who was gonna win and there was something about that. And so, you know, I kind of wanted more, I wanted, you know, more of that and I think, but the reality was, when you came to those pictures, often you just stopped and looked at it. You just stopped. And here it's not that same experience. It's you can stop and enjoy, but the story is going to travel through those pictures.

• 1:33:38Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:39Speaker 03

  So it doesn't, it's not just that you're feasting on it, although the drawing of Rick is that spectacular, I think, but really the pictures are, you're still in the middle of the story.

• 1:33:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a cool combo. I mean, I remember with, you know, my last book, decided to make multi-sections, illustrations, photographs, and I'd never done either before, really. My previous two books. It's a huge undertaking. I mean, it's, from a production standpoint, I can imagine it being quite challenging because did Rick start, when did Rick start on the illustrations? Was it after the primary text was done, or was it concurrent?

• 1:34:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, in the interest of getting it in a sort of finite timeframe, he, I think after the first chapter, we brought Rick in, and there's a sort of an interesting story behind that, our finding of Rick, but.

• 1:34:36Tim Ferriss?

  Well, hey.

• 1:34:38Speaker 04

  I like interesting stories.

• 1:34:39Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, look at, you know, John, he said, look, I, John's a beautiful drawer in himself, an illustrator. He's mentioned that, and really good. But he understood that the volume of work that was going to be here was just unbelievable. It was epic.

• 1:34:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  It's a, you know, it's epic, and I hope that people out there, however we've managed to bore them, go, the book is better than this interview, that at least on our part. I think, I think, Tim, you're doing great, but the book is really special. And I, it's a great, it's a great thing to give yourself and to give a young friend, you know, it's a stocking stuffer, if you will. But we, we knew that he was gonna, this was gonna be an amazing task to illustrate this. Probably should have been four guys, but he wanted somebody to be able to draw in the vein of Windsor McKay. Now, I don't know if you know who Windsor McKay is, and we've been to big giant book signings, and, and I always think

• 1:35:40Speaker 03

  I'm going to be blown away by the intellectuals, and usually only one of them out of 400 knows who Windsor McKay is. You know, that always makes me happy because my problem was, you know, when John said, "Well, we've got to get somebody that draws like Windsor McKay." If you're me, you go, "Then why don't we get Windsor McKay?" Well, Windsor McKay's dead. He was, you know, doing this in the twenties. You know, he was really the father of this kind of work, if you will, or whatever. And, um, so John, I said, "So how do we find this Windsor McKay?" And John said, "Let's get him in Craigslist." And that's what we did. He, he put a, he put an ad in Craigslist. He threw out that bait, knowing that only a few, you know, like the dog who can only hear a certain sound out there.

• 1:36:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, that's genius.

• 1:36:22Speaker 03

  Only a few people are going to know who Windsor McKay is. So that, we knew the line out in front wasn't going to be that long. And out of that, great artists culled down to one fabulous artist. And Rick happened to be in between jobs. He thought he had a month to kill. And he ended up working on this for almost three years. Did every bit of art on it, including the cover. It's really, it's really a, um, it's a jewel of a book.

• 1:36:50Tim Ferriss?

  That was a beautiful piece of work. I mean, and I haven't yet had the chance to read it, but, uh, it, it sort of combines a lot of elements and, and, uh, aspects or genres of storytelling that I find very appealing. And you, we were talking about the genre and the slotting, which, the categorization, which I'm really disillusioned by in a sense. Because for instance, I mean, you have these books, and you were talking about age earlier. Uh, there's some fantastic books out there, whether it's, you know, The Neverending Story, or Philip Pullman's, uh, His Dark Materials, I think it is, like The Golden Compass, where that's in the young adults section, which in my mind meant, "Oh, this is written for young adults." And I picked up the book, and I had to look up probably 200 words,

• 1:37:32Tim Ferriss?

  including a lot of nautical terminology. I was like, "How can a 12-year-old read this?" But this is great writing. It's really compelling. And I think the fact of the matter is that if you put something out there that is... truthful in so much as it's what you wanted to write that you know younger readers will rise to the challenge if it's

• 1:37:52Speaker 03

  that's right there's no ceiling on who's gonna be able to

• 1:37:55Tim Ferriss?

  yeah you don't have to dumb it down yeah um so I'm very excited to dig in uh I assume people can find this everywhere in terms of Amazon

• 1:38:04Speaker 03

  I think so Barnes and Noble, Amazon

• 1:38:07Tim Ferriss?

  the usual

• 1:38:07Speaker 03

  and I think you know um you know and a lot of the independent bookstores you know are picking it up it's it's it's it's selling and six days in we were able to jump to the you know New York Times bestseller which was a kind of a surreal moment and and really you know I I when you have partners you're really glad for them I was really glad for Rick and for John to be able to say that one day I I do think these guys are gonna be you're gonna be hearing about John into next century that's what I believe and um and you know and I'm really glad that you gave us a chance to talk about this this book

• 1:38:46Tim Ferriss?

  yeah absolutely so where can people find this uh online I I'm gonna put all the show notes for those people listening uh there'll be links to everything we've discussed uh including the book obviously uh in the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast all spelled out but for those people who want to find it on social on the web uh where are the best places for them to look

• 1:39:06Speaker 04

  there is a welcome to the explorers guild.com uh that is set up by the publisher and that has links there to not only the places you can buy it online but also our various sort of social media feeds I think there I haven't got them memorized I'm I'm

• 1:39:20Speaker 03

  that's okay we also have our own we created a website what's it called

• 1:39:24Speaker 04

  uh well we've got you know our Facebook thing our Instagram I don't

• 1:39:28Speaker 03

  what do you say what do you call our Facebook thing

• 1:39:30Tim Ferriss?

  you know that's that's the beauty of the internet

• 1:39:34Speaker 03

  but you know what it is if you can find it out there this is like a treasure hunt for everybody listening but if you find it you're gonna see exactly how we start it we have all our starting materials

• 1:39:43Tim Ferriss?

  oh you do very cool

• 1:39:44Speaker 03

  and we did our own kind of

• 1:39:45Tim Ferriss?

  the making of

• 1:39:46Speaker 03

  internal interviews about our own process so it's it's almost as long as a book now you know you see our drawings we do we do time lapse drawings

• 1:39:55Tim Ferriss?

  oh nice I love seeing

• 1:39:56Speaker 03

  so if you really wanna see how this book

• 1:39:57Tim Ferriss?

  the behind the scenes

• 1:39:58Speaker 03

  um if you I I don't even know where my own website is

• 1:40:02Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's, that's the beauty of, of the show notes. So folks, I will, I'll provide links to all of that. But Kevin, do you have a few minutes to do just a handful of more sort of rapid fire questions?

• 1:40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:16Tim Ferriss?

  And?

• 1:40:17Speaker 03

  My lawyer's standing by and my other lawyer's standing. I have a legion of lawyers. So go ahead. Shoot.

• 1:40:24Tim Ferriss?

  All right, we have, I'm getting, I'm getting the, I'm getting the green flag.

• 1:40:28Speaker 03

  Tim's eyes got big for a second and they just normally don't do that.

• 1:40:32Tim Ferriss?

  The good news is my eyes are already kind of fishbowl sized. So they, they start off big.

• 1:40:36Speaker 03

  Well, you keep wanting to go outside like me on the piano. It looks fun here.

• 1:40:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's gorgeous outside. So everybody, take a look at the show notes. We will come back to that before we take off. Just a handful of questions here, Kevin, and obviously very much appreciate the time. When you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why?

• 1:41:03Speaker 03

  The first person, I think Steven Spielberg's really successful. You know, I, and I think Thomas Jefferson was successful. You know, I guess I'm not leaping to the, the giants of today. But you know, as you drill down on that list, you know, then, then you start to go to Bezos and you start to go to, to Jobs and you go to Bill Gates. Really successful. Really found their way. But I guess at first blush, I don't know, I just said Spielberg. I mean, here's a guy that's probably not so dominant in his personality that has been, been able to do everything he's wanted to do.

• 1:41:48Tim Ferriss?

  Is, is there anything else about how he's led his career otherwise that you particularly admire or?

• 1:41:55Speaker 03

  I don't think Steven has limited himself. I think there were early on, people tried to say, oh, we can only make this kind of story. This guy is really gifted. Really gifted filmmaker and I think he's, I think he has challenged almost all genres. He really, he really has, I, you know, from Sugar Land Express to, you know, you know, it's, he's, um, uh, I think, you know, to Minority Report and to these different things, I, besides the obvious ones, you know, that really changed the way people look at film, you know, you know, Jaws and, and E.T. and Close Encounters were giant, giant movies. And I think that he, he has really bounced around. I think he's been incredibly successful.

• 1:42:37Tim Ferriss?

  A very diverse canon of work.

• 1:42:39Speaker 03

  I do.

• 1:42:40Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, do you have any favorite documentaries?

• 1:42:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, it was called Coney Island.

• 1:42:47Tim Ferriss?

  Coney Island?

• 1:42:48Speaker 03

  Um, uh, narrated by McCullum, David McCullum, and I, blew me away. It blew me away to finally understand that Coney Island was so much more than just, uh, roller coasters. It was a, it was the most popular place on the earth at the turn of the century. It was bigger than Paris, it was bigger than Chicago, and it was because all the inventors were going there. They were, um, they were allowed to do things. The medical profession, which wouldn't allow this guy who said, hey, I think I know how to keep babies alive, you know, I can heat them in my incubation, and they just ran them out on town. Uh, Coney Island said, do it here, and so he did, and it was the most

• 1:43:28Speaker 03

  popular exhibit. You could walk in and see these babies that were kept alive. Uh, the great Edison, all these guys were hanging around Coney Island. We think of it as, in terms of the warriors, like decrepit, uh, um, uh, roller coasters and things falling apart. Coney Island, there was three, three competing parks that were all as big as Disneyland. Luna Park, Coney, and it was, it was the place to be in the world. And so, look this documentary up, Coney Island narrated by David McCullum. I was blown away by it.

• 1:44:06Tim Ferriss?

  What do your, uh, when do you go to bed and wake up in the morning?

• 1:44:10Speaker 03

  When do I go to bed? Um, I don't, I don't have a regular schedule when I go to bed, but when I wake up is pretty specific. Uh, the alarm starts going off and one, two, then the dog, three people end up in bed. There's five people in bed, dog, and now the cat coexists there too. It's really a problem. Um, my kids are really hot, way too hot to be around. He is like warm and the bed's not comfortable. It's just now it's just too hot and I want out.

• 1:44:40Tim Ferriss?

  Um, what time is that?

• 1:44:41Speaker 03

  That's, well, that's probably around seven and we gotta be in the car at 10 to eight. Or I gotta sign this crummy little sheet that says why you're late. Our name is in it so much at their school. They're all go to the same school. Uh, and you know, there's tiers before they get there sometimes. Cause they're five, six and seven. There's backpacks that are like all over. My kids are just like me. They can't keep their shit together. It's everywhere.

• 1:45:11Tim Ferriss?

  Tools and baseballs and everything.

• 1:45:13Speaker 03

  It's just everywhere. It's just everywhere. And when you say, where's your sweater? They'll say it's in the car, which is a bullshit answer, but it, I hope people understand that my life is just as cluttered as theirs probably. But, uh, my wife and I both, if I'm not making a movie, and I haven't made one since last November, just taken a year into my own life, uh, we drive together. Uh, we did this morning. Uh, we drive them and we drop them off. I don't know why. You know, I, I look like a dorky dad in the seat and I get out and give them their backpacks and my wife's driving and it's like,

• 1:45:46Speaker 03

  I don't know how that looks, but it's how my life plays.

• 1:45:53Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any, uh, well, this is a, I suppose you could choose either one of these questions. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Um, and/or is the, do you have any bad habit or bad habits that you're currently working to get, to overcome in any way?

• 1:46:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wish I was more disciplined, you know, about wanting, you know, to work out because I need to. But I hate it. I hate thinking about the clothes you have to wear if you go to a gym. I hate the idea of picking up lead. It makes no sense to me. I don't want to run with headphones. I wanna, if I'm gonna run, I wanna make sure I'm watching the news. I'm not disciplined about taking care of my body. I wish I could. Um, But it's it's not, it just, exercise is just a drag, man.

• 1:46:38Tim Ferriss?

  I'll do some thinking on that, I might have some ideas for you. Is it true that you did all of your, that you've done all or most of your riding, equestrian work in your movies?

• 1:46:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've done most of it. I've had some, I've always had stunt guys in my movies and they have done some really, really difficult things, but because it's important for me to put the camera as close to the action as possible, I've done all, most of my riding, but I, but I have been covered by excellent stuntmen. I've had stuntmen make me look faster and make the jump look farther. But I have put myself in the middle of stampedes, I don't know why, with no reins and going. So, I like that part of it. I, I, I always think, who would, who wouldn't want to go after the bad guy yourself? Why do you just automatically give that up, you know? I, I heard Roger Moore, who I think is great, but used to say, oh no, that's too far, I don't do that.

• 1:47:28Speaker 03

  And it might be, it might have been just a step over, get my stunt, no, I'm not gonna wrestle here, you know? I kinda wanted that, you know, I wanted to, to jump on it and, and save the day. Who wouldn't want to swing, you know, from rope to rope in Robin Hood? Wouldn't want to do that. I had a stunt guy help me, but I, but whenever I can, I do it.

• 1:47:51Tim Ferriss?

  Is there, are there any particular historical figures that you identify with?

• 1:47:56Speaker 03

  Not that I identify with, but, you know, Mark Twain is someone I think about a lot.

• 1:48:00Tim Ferriss?

  He's amazing, yeah.

• 1:48:03Speaker 03

  Lincoln I think a lot about, you know, and, and Jefferson, you heard me mention him. He's somebody I think a lot about, you know. I would have liked to have met Crazy Horse.

• 1:48:18Speaker 03

  I would have liked to have met Chief Joseph of the Ness purse. I would have liked to have known, you know, you know, how fucked up they must have felt about, at the, at the end going, Jesus, we're just gonna have to fight for our life. And we've been here for thousands of years, and who are you? People that would make me, make me run for my life and watch my brothers and sisters and my children die? Who the fuck are you? Uh, this used to be the Garden of Eden, what happened?

• 1:48:52Tim Ferriss?

  And I know we don't have time to get into it today, but Tatanka, the story of the bison.

• 1:48:58Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:49:00Tim Ferriss?

  That, can you describe that briefly for people so they can sort of look into it?

• 1:49:04Speaker 03

  It's a very humble little information center. I had bigger ideas for it, that it could be a hotel, that it could ultimately be a museum. If there's anyone out there entrepreneurial enough, I'm an entrepreneurial guy, but I put about as much as I can. If anyone thinks there's something missing in this country, like where the first people went, especially on the plains, I have a place where we could make a great museum together. And I fear that I've long chased everybody away from this interview a long time ago.

• 1:49:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no.

• 1:49:36Speaker 03

  But if there's somebody out there, there's somebody out there that burning to keep that story, which is our story, alive, I have the place to put it. And along with it, I'll put these incredible statues, the story of the bison, these bronzes that are amazing.

• 1:49:51Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds fantastic.

• 1:49:52Speaker 03

  Right there in Rapid City, right there in actually Deadwood. So I need a partner now. I've done, I've done all the heavy lifting I can, but if, if somebody is in love with our history, then, and, and, and has a way through money and love of the history to keep it alive, you come be my partner.

• 1:50:09Tim Ferriss?

  So I will, do you, do you recall your Twitter handle offhand?

• 1:50:13Speaker 03

  My what handle?

• 1:50:14Tim Ferriss?

  Your Twitter.

• 1:50:15Speaker 03

  I don't do Twitter.

• 1:50:17Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, all right, we don't do Twitter. I will.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  I don't do Facebook either, though I'm told I have an account.

• 1:50:22Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So I will do some detective work and put in the show notes.

• 1:50:27Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:50:28Tim Ferriss?

  Perhaps how you can, how you can track down Mr. Cost.

• 1:50:32Speaker 03

  I just need one guy. I just need.

• 1:50:33Tim Ferriss?

  Just one guy.

• 1:50:34Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't want a bunch of partners. I need one guy goes, I like this stuff and I got a ton of money. And we're, we are going to remember this stuff. I'm going to do it in a really classy way.

• 1:50:44Tim Ferriss?

  If you could put one billboard anywhere, what would it say? What would you have on the billboard?

• 1:50:52Tim Ferriss?

  Not the book, but just a general.

• 1:50:55Speaker 03

  I'd put it in Washington, I'd say no term, no, you know.

• 1:51:00Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no term limit.

• 1:51:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd say enough. You know what? We don't need more experience. We need, we need, we need a work ethic that by the time you're done there, you're so tired, you don't want to go back after one term or two terms. You're done after two. Experience is not helping us. It's clogging us up.

• 1:51:20Tim Ferriss?

  Two more, that's it. What advice would you give to your 30-year-old self?

• 1:51:27Speaker 03

  To my 30-year-old self? Um, I'm gonna say something. You, we talked about the conservative upbringing I had, the idea that you were gonna do this, this is how man makes a living. Um, my, my turning point was at 22 when I said, I'm gonna be an actor and I don't care what anybody else thinks. So, I would have, I wish I could have got that advice earlier, but I had to actually give it to myself. So, um, what would I give myself at 30? Um, I think, um, I would have stayed in more control of the projects that I lent my name to.

• 1:52:15Tim Ferriss?

  Good advice. Uh, 'cause I'm 38 now. That's the conclusion I just came to last year, in retrospect. Uh, and, uh, last question is, uh, do you have any asks or requests of everybody listening to this? Is there anything you'd like them to take away with them? Obviously, um, everybody will see in the show notes, uh, and elsewhere, the, uh, the Explorers Guild. But is there any, any message or any kind of parting comment or suggestion that you'd like to make?

• 1:52:50Speaker 03

  Well, one, obviously, whatever audience it is that is out there supporting you, likes the long form of communication. And I hope your audience understands that we like it too. You know, the thing that's hard for us is to go on these nighttime television shows and come up with some small Pat joke, and then you introduce your movie and then you're done. So this has been good for me, and I do want to return to the book. For those who have waited through this interview with us, this was something that I didn't know was going to be in my life. And this book, which I hope you read, it turned out better than I thought it ever could.

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  It was really something that I was proud to be a part of. And I hope you not only get the book, but the book does something to you which I think all stories or art can do, which is, and it's something we all have in common. I know that when I read something great, the first thing I want to do is share it. I know that when I hear a great song, the first thing I want to do is share it. If I hear a joke, the first thing I want to do is share it. I hope, it's the same with movies. And I hope that when you read Explorers Guild, your first instinct will be, I need to share this. And that, that really is what I hope, you know?

• 1:54:11Speaker 03

  And my advice out there for people who get so completely overwhelmed by Christmas, it's a great way to stuff your stocking. Take the thinking out of things. You don't know where to get somebody, get them the Explorers Guild. Let them go on their own journey.

• 1:54:28Tim Ferriss?

  It's a beautiful book, and you're a wonderful creator. I really appreciate all the time.

• 1:54:34Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:54:35Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm a huge fan of your work, so please continue to create and collaborate with other people. And waving to John, just a few feet away also, thank you. I appreciate you guys making the time. And to everyone listening, you can find the show notes, links to everything at fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, forward slash podcast, or just go to fourhourworkweek.com and click on podcast. And as always, thank you for listening.

• 1:55:03Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness

• 1:55:48Tim Ferriss?

  before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 1:56:06Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one-stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else. I use 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I also use them for banner ads, illustrations, and other things. With 99designs, designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, my listeners, you guys,

• 1:56:51Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:57:03Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:57:48Tim Ferriss?

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