446: Nick Searcy—Justify This

Actor, director, and pseudo-troublemaker Nick Searcy is back! Nick recounts what he saw at the Capitol on January 6 and why he made Capital Punishment https://rumble.com/v349eqw-capitol-punishment-by-nick-searcy-and-chris-burgard.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp_a and its sequel, The War on Truth https://thewarontruthmovie.com/. Also discussed is Nick's unfiltered memoir, Justify This: A Career Without Compromise https://www.amazon.com/Justify-This-Career-Without-Compromise/dp/1637588410/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0, where he shares stories from his long career in Hollywood, and a new project about gospel singers that might just redeem him—at least a little. It's a conversation full of laughs, sharp elbows, and more than a few surprises.

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

• 0:04Mike Rowe?

  You are about to hear another episode of The Way I Heard It with me, Mike Rowe, and the one and only Chuck Klausmeyer.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Yes, hello.

• 0:11Mike Rowe?

  Yes, yes to what?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Yes, you'll hear me, but you'll basically hear Nick Searcy more than me.

• 0:17Mike Rowe?

  That's true, that's true. Of the three of us, you will be heard very little.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  The least.

• 0:23Mike Rowe?

  The least. But still, you do chime in with a couple of interesting points.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Very important stuff, earth-shattering really, when you think about it.

• 0:31Mike Rowe?

  Nick Searcy is our friend. Well, he's your friend, you've known him for a long time. You introduced us virtually about a year and a half ago, after he did a movie that damn near got him canceled, and caused me no amount of grief either. Capital Punishment was the film Nick did in the aftermath of January 6th. And you know what? I just thought it was worth talking about. And it wasn't a big political conversation, but I was glad to have it. I've always liked the guy. You know him from Justified. You might know him from Fried Green Tomatoes, or maybe 40 other films that he's done. He's a terrific character actor.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10Mike Rowe?

  He's written his first book, it's called Justify This. It is funny, it is smart. I mean, if you know Nick, you're gonna get this great blend of honesty. I mean, he's very much like Art Mullin in Justified.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yes, and he said that that character is based on his father, you know, so he's really kind of sort of playing his father, it seems.

• 1:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. So, that's a plug for Justified. It's, if you haven't seen every season of it, you really should, it's terrific.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:37Mike Rowe?

  His book is great. He's got a new project that he's working on as well, called Where I'm Bound, which we get into, and he's got a follow-up to Capital Punishment.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49Mike Rowe?

  Because he's a glutton. For punishment.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  For punishment, right, yeah. That's called The War on Truth, and it's a four-part series, which is available online.

• 1:59Mike Rowe?

  I admire him. I admire him because he has plenty to lose, and he simply doesn't want to spend the rest of his life doing anything that doesn't matter to him. And, you know, when you find people like that in this industry, you might not agree with them, but you'd be foolish to ignore them. You can just learn so much, I think, from people who take real risks and big swings in this place we call Sodom and Gomorrah.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Indeed.

• 2:26Mike Rowe?

  Justify This is the name of the book. It's also the name of this episode. Nick Sirsi is the name of my guest, if you don't already like him. You're about to, right after this.

• 2:41Mike Rowe?

  So as some of you may have heard, I went to Congress 16 years ago to testify before a House Subcommittee, and then again a year later to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about the need to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some kind of national effort that would make a more persuasive case for a lot of good jobs out there that didn't require a four-year degree. Well, 15 years later, I finally heard back from the government, and I am delighted to tell you about a program called BuildFreedom.us. This is the national PR campaign that MicroWorks has been talking about for a decade and a

• 3:24Mike Rowe?

  half now, and it's focused on 300,000 or 400,000 excellent jobs in the defense industrial base. These are the electricians, and the plumbers, and the steam finners, and the pipe fitters, and the CNC operators, and the shipbuilders, and so forth. But, in this case, all of those trades are focused on building out our national infrastructure through the defense industrial base. So people who are building our autonomous weapons, our planes, our ships, it's only a matter of national security, and it's a very big deal. And on a personal level, it's really been very gratifying. Build Freedom donated $10 million to MicroWorks. The money's available right now for you if you want to pursue a skill that's in demand

• 4:08Mike Rowe?

  and work in the defense industrial base. I think it's an opportunity of a lifetime. Go to buildfreedom.us, see what's available, and then apply for a scholarship from MicroWorks. The money's there, burning a hole in my pocket. Go get some. BuildFreedom.us.

• 4:29Mike Rowe?

  I can't believe we've never met in person.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  I know, it is funny.

• 4:32Mike Rowe?

  Even when you walked in, I'm like, "Oh, hey, Nick." And I just realized I should be saying, "Well, it's nice to finally meet you."

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, nice to meet you, too.

• 4:40Mike Rowe?

  I'll tell you now, the shirt did throw me for a loop, but then I looked in the mirror and I realized I'm sporting some colors that don't occur in nature either, so here we sit.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  This is a shirt that my wife picked out for me, and I just don't question it. I just go, "Oh, you think that? Okay, I'll wear that."

• 4:53Mike Rowe?

  So, did you evolve into that level of perpetual acquiescence? Or was it just good instincts from the beginning?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  It took me a long time to learn that. Yeah, it took a while. I just went, about five years ago, I think, I just went, "Oh, this isn't worth fighting about."

• 5:09Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Because I never win.

• 5:11Mike Rowe?

  What a silly hill to die on, or to even get wounded on.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna fight anymore.

• 5:16Mike Rowe?

  Speaking of which, Chuck told me a funny story about you. I think that the day you guys met... How long ago would that have been?

• 5:24Speaker 02

  10 years, at least, yeah, I would say. Maybe 15. Yeah, something, probably more like 15.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  It was a while ago, yeah.

• 5:31Mike Rowe?

  I don't even know if you remember, but I don't know why I offered you a cigar. I don't have any cigars. But then I realized there was like a, like a memory artifact, and Chuck had told me that the day you guys met, you came over to his apartment.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I said, "Can I smoke a cigar here?" And he said, "No." I'm like, "No." And I said, "Well, let's go to my house, then. I've got a room that you can smoke a cigar in." I mean...

• 5:55Mike Rowe?

  You've got rooms where you have to smoke cigars.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  That's right, it's required.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  I was fresh out of those kinds of rooms, so...

• 6:02Mike Rowe?

  So, did you hesitate, Chuck, for a moment, knowing that an actor you admired a great deal and had watched over the years was suddenly in your home, making an indecent proposal, and you had to give him the bad news? Like, did you think about saying, "Yep, screw it"?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Not even for a second.

• 6:16Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  It was immediate, it was like, "No." I think I said it just like that.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  I think he did.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  No!

• 6:21Mike Rowe?

  High pitched and womanly?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  I remember that tone. It was kinda whiny.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  No!

• 6:25Mike Rowe?

  Here, wear this shirt.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  It was like, it sounded more like, ooh.

• 6:30Mike Rowe?

  The no.

• 6:33Mike Rowe?

  I don't have much of a cigar story, but something deeply humiliating happened to me. About four months ago, I did Joe Rogan's podcast. You know, we sat down and got everything squared away and you kind of hunker in because you know, you're going to be there for three hours.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Right, right. You gotta relax.

• 6:48Mike Rowe?

  It's a commitment and so he's like, hey, you want a cigar? And unlike Chuck, like the honest answer was without the high pitched part, which is like, no, man, I'm not going to smoke a cigar. I'm going to sit down and talk with you for a while. And it's a small room, like all the smoke, what are we doing? You know, I mean, is there going to be whiskey too? If so, maybe. But of course I said, oh yeah, that'd be great. So he hands me a cigar and then he rolls this device from the future across the desk, which, which of course is just a lighter, but there have been so, like the last time I smoked a cigar, I struck a match.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:22Mike Rowe?

  On a brick.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Big match.

• 7:24Mike Rowe?

  Yes. This thing has got like rocket fuel in it and it's like air fed and.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:31Mike Rowe?

  And it took me like two minutes to figure out how to operate it. And then of course I'm just, you know, it's the first big drag I took. And I was right in the middle of telling some story. Like the part of my brain that I wanted to work tried to say, it's like that scene in Young Frankenstein when Gene Hackman, right? Offers cigars to the creature.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:56Mike Rowe?

  But I conflated it with blazing saddles and I got everything all wrong.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  You were high from the cigar.

• 8:02Mike Rowe?

  I'm high from the cigar, embarrassed because I can't operate the lighter. And Joe's like, no, man, I don't, I didn't see that scene. So I really came out of the gate weak. Weak and awful.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Well, those torches, I think they're basically those cigar torches. It's for golf courses that they came up because you can do that in the wind.

• 8:20Mike Rowe?

  In the high wind.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  But you can also burn your eyebrows off if you're not careful. I mean, that's.

• 8:24Mike Rowe?

  Have you done that before?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Well, almost.

• 8:26Mike Rowe?

  Cause I got that too. I had a portable little stove working with a farrier down, down in Kentucky, I think. And we were making horseshoes out in the middle of nowhere and the gas built up and I got too close and. And suddenly, I'm picking pieces of contact lens out of my eye.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 8:44Mike Rowe?

  And just thinking I dodged the bullet there.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:47Mike Rowe?

  You've been dodging bullets your whole life, brother?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Fake ones, fake bullets.

• 8:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but they leave a mark too, man. They leave a mark.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Leave a mark on your soul.

• 8:58Mike Rowe?

  What's the latest bullet that you've dodged? Or did you just take one for the team? Like, what are you in the midst of right now? I got so many things I want to talk to you about, but capital punishment, obviously, and everything that's

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:09Mike Rowe?

  happened since then, and what a strange time it must be for you to see the headlines.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:14Mike Rowe?

  I mean, are you feeling vindicated at all?

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, more and more, I'm beginning to feel vindicated. I mean, the truth is coming out and, you know, we were kind of ahead of the game, even though we weren't sure about exactly what we were finding.

• 9:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  When we made the documentaries, we made the first documentary, Capital Punishment, in 2021.

• 9:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Like, November, we released it, same year of January 6th. So, we were kind of like piecing it together and hinting at things. But no, it's been, I mean, I was overjoyed when Trump pardoned the January 6 people. Because by this point, I'd interviewed 65 or 70 of them.

• 9:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And I'd gotten to know them, and some of them had become friends. And I knew what kind of people they were. And I was just, there's that pins and needles kind of thing leading up to it. After he got elected, it's like, is he really going to do it? Because so many people, John Strand, Brandon Straka, Colton Maccabee, all these people that I knew, that I knew their stories, and I knew that what had happened to them was not fair. But I didn't know if Trump was really going to go through with it.

• 10:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  If he was really going to pardon them.

• 10:30Mike Rowe?

  Well, we talked to you about this, it's been over a year, right?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 10:34Mike Rowe?

  Easily. And Chuck was nervous, I was a little nervous. I mean, there was a lot of blood in the water.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 10:41Mike Rowe?

  I was more interested, not from a political Point of view, but just from this idea that so many people there seem to experience such a different thing at the same time.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:55Mike Rowe?

  That level of ambiguity and experiential difference seemed undeniable, and yet there was so much certainty in the narrative. That's what freaked me out, Nick, honestly.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  And that's why I kind of wound up going down that road, because I was there that day. I was there on January 6th, and what I saw was people praying and singing hymns, and people were joyful.

• 11:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Pretty much, and I really didn't see any of the violence. You know, I didn't see what they were showing me on television, and I was there. So that was sort of what sent us down the road of like, let's figure this out. Somebody said, would you like to make a documentary about that? And I said, sure, I would like to.

• 11:36Mike Rowe?

  And I remember too, after talking to you, thinking, boy, somebody's gonna pick this up in a hurry. This is gonna go tearing through the corridors at Fox. It's gonna go tearing through. And man, nobody touched it.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:51Mike Rowe?

  They were scared. The people were straight up, flat out scared.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, Fox wouldn't even let us buy advertisements for the movie.

• 11:58Mike Rowe?

  What?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Because they, I think they were in the midst of that whole, you know, election. They were being sued and, you know, whatever.

• 12:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, 980 million among friends, but whatever.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they were afraid to have anything on that might jeopardize that, I guess. And so, but yeah, it wasn't just Fox. I mean, everybody was kind of nervous about it, and we were coming out strong, saying, this is all a lie, they're lying to you, listen to us, you know? And nobody really wanted to jump in and go endorse that, you know, because we were kind of, we were pushing it pretty hard.

• 12:32Mike Rowe?

  So what am I looking at here? Is this a sequel of sorts?

• 12:37Speaker 02

  We made a sequel to Capital Punishment called The War on Truth, which is now, the first edit of it was four and a half hours long. We cut it down to two, and then we decided to release it in four parts. So now it's a four-part miniseries. And it basically, mostly what The War on Truth is about is revealing who these people are, that the government has been telling you are domestic terrorists and white supremacists and violent, hateful people, and they're nothing of the sort. And that should give you some idea of how deep the lie goes. Because they have to demonize these people in order to preserve the narrative.

• 13:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  If they can't keep the idea going that January 6th was a violent uprising by people who wanted to overthrow the government, then everything crumbles around them.

• 13:29Mike Rowe?

  What do you think? I know you don't have a crystal ball, but institutions are still, I think, operating at all time, low levels of trust in general. Certainly, the media has got an awful lot on them right now. Can the Democratic Party recover? Do you think the current, as people are grappling to get up to speed with the fact that there really and truly was a cover-up? Is that going to break what you would call the spell surrounding this day?

• 14:03Speaker 02

  I don't know. I keep telling, if people ask me that, and I say, I don't know what they do if they give up the lie. It's like, if they admit that they lied that profoundly for that long, the only consequences for them have to be legal. They have to go to jail. So I think their only chance is to try to continue to push the lie. And that's why we're still getting pushed back on our movie and on the things that we're saying. There's still a lot of fear about coming out and saying exactly what happened.

• 14:38Mike Rowe?

  So, I mean, just to remind people, though, the movie, it didn't leave me feeling like you were denying any of what we saw on TV.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:48Mike Rowe?

  It was more like the blind guy grabbing the tusk on the elephant and concluding that he was holding on to an ivory statue.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:57Mike Rowe?

  You just didn't see enough to understand in context

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:01Mike Rowe?

  the totality of what happened.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  But also, I mean, what we did see, what we found out later, even after we made the first film, we had hints of it. It's like we had footage of people changing clothes in the bushes and changing out of their gear into Trump gear. And we're going, what is that about? These people are obviously not actual sincere Trump supporters. These are people that were sent there to do some damage, to cause some ruckus. And that is coming out more and more. That's, that's being shown to be true. And we were, we hinted in the first movies, like, there's a lot of reports that there were people from the government that infiltrated the crowd, that caused a lot of the vandalism, that incited the crowd to do some things.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, some of the people did some bad things, but what caused them to do it? And in The War on Truth, you see more and more that the Capitol Police were actually the aggressors in the situation. You had a huge crowd outside the Capitol that was out there just singing songs and doing nothing, and the Capitol Police began firing munitions into the middle of the crowd. What kind of munitions? Flashbangs, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets in many cases. There's one guy that got hit by the rubber bullet in the cheek. And when it happened, the people in the crowd were screaming, what are you doing? Why are you firing at us? So that kind of thing is, that's not come out yet as clearly as it should, because

• 16:32Speaker 02

  the Capitol Police were the aggressors. And we, in War on Truth, we interviewed Tariq Johnson, who was a Capitol policeman that day, who testified that this was all a setup, that the Capitol Police were set up just as much as the crowd was. Hmm. And he, Tariq Johnson is the one who cleared the House and Senate before the crowd got to them, because he knew that if, if the crowd had breached the House and Senate while the senators or the representatives were still in there, that would have been a situation where the Capitol Police would have had to open fire, because they're not allowed to do that. He was radioing his superior officer, saying, let me clear the House and Senate, let me

• 17:17Speaker 02

  clear the chambers, and they, no response. He never got an okay, and then he did it on his own. He did it of his own volition. He cleared the House, he cleared the chambers, and he probably saved hundreds of lives. And then the next day after that, because he did that on his own, he was suspended for 17 months and on house arrest. So it's a big, big, big deal. It's a much bigger conspiracy than I can explain.

• 17:49Mike Rowe?

  What if, say, five years ago, some big oil company offered a promotion that gave you a chance to lock in the price of gasoline at $2.50 a gallon for the rest of your life? Would you have taken that deal? Or what if a nationwide grocery store had given you an opportunity to lock in the price of ground beef at, say, $2 a pound for as long as you live? Would you have taken that deal? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, those deals were never on the table, but this one is. Today, as in right now, for a very, very limited time, Pure Talk is offering every American the opportunity to purchase unlimited talk, text, and data, along with a 30-gig

• 18:32Mike Rowe?

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• 19:17Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, as a storyteller, and forgive me, I know that sounds awfully precious, but it's really tempting, when you know a thing is a big deal, to talk about it in big terms. You want to try and match the moment. But what I like what you've done with this film, and to some degree with the previous one, is you tell the small stories, too. And... Those, I think, are the ones that most people will be most horrified by and the ones that are going to resonate. So, we don't have to make a meal out of this, but I would like to hear briefly some of, I mean, people who've spent eight, nine months in jail for essentially being pushed, pushed into the Capitol.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:58Mike Rowe?

  With their cell phones on, or something.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Well, there's, there's a lot of stories I could tell, but, I mean, the one story that I do like to tell is, because it's not just the jail time. I mean, so many of these people, like Colton McAbey was in jail for four years. He was in there for the whole time. And three and a half of those years, he wasn't even charged. He couldn't even get bonded. Couldn't get bonded out because he was classified as a domestic terrorist. And when you hear his story of what he actually did that day, he basically tried to save Roseanne Boylan's life and tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He fell down on top of a police officer. He was pushed in by the crowd. And in the audio, you can hear him saying, "I'm

• 20:43Speaker 02

  trying to help," and the police officer goes, "I know you are. I know you are." And he helps him up, and the police officer says, "Thank you." In the trial, the judge wouldn't allow them to play the audio so that you could hear the police officer thanking Colton for helping him up. So, if you just don't play the audio, it looks like Colton threw the guy down on the ground and then jerked him around, you know? And that's the impression they were trying to give. And another story is my friend-

• 21:12Mike Rowe?

  Sorry, Nick.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 21:14Mike Rowe?

  Are you naming names? Like, what judge did that? Who decided to take the audio out of the tape? These things are outrageous, to the point where you just, it feels like they're coming out of a real thriller, a fictitious-

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does.

• 21:31Mike Rowe?

  -whodunit. It's, you've got to be kidding me. They did this right in front of us.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know the exact judge that that was, but there's about nine or 10. All these cases went before DC judges, because that was another thing they did, was they made it so that you could not get a change of venue. So, every one of these cases had to be tried before a DC jury, which is 99% Democrat, and-

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Most of the people in the District of Columbia think that everybody who went to January 6th that day needs to go to jail. And the judges are in the same boat. So you have judges like Royce Lambert, Colleen Colerca Telly. These are just the names I can remember off the top of my head. But none of these people could get a fair trial with these judges. And in fact, Colerca Telly is probably the worst one. She would call people insurrectionists in her summation, even though no one was ever charged with insurrection. I don't have the name of that judge off the top of my head, but I will say that a lot of, a lot of the damage that was done to these people was in their communities, their reputations.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  They lost their businesses because the government put out this like idea that everybody who went there was some sort of racist terrorist. So everybody, they're demonized in their communities, their sandwich shops, their coffee shops, their, all these things that they owned are now getting terrible Yelp reviews and don't go eat at this place.

• 22:57Mike Rowe?

  It's a scarlet letter.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And my friend Jay Johnston, who was an actor like me, he was trapped in the tunnel fracas. And during that, you know, it was a lot of pushing and shoving. During that whole melee, a police shield was passed back through the crowd. And Jay's a pretty big guy. And Jay, you know, the shield was passed back to him. He took it and he just passed it on to somebody else. Well, that was characterized as attacking with a deadly weapon because he put his hands on the police shield. Jay was completely ostracized in Hollywood. At the time he did that, he was on a show called Bill's Burgers or some animated show.

• 23:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  I can't remember what it was. But anyway, lost his job, all of his Hollywood friends turned their back on him. You know, he comes out of the comedy community, all those comedians just vilified him, were never working with him again. So it's not just what the government did, it's what the government narrative caused the community to do.

• 24:04Mike Rowe?

  It's what they enabled. I mean, it's, I remember as a kid reading about, um... Oh, in the, you know, the old Puritan days, like, like, the hardest thing that could happen to a person was to be excommunicated, to be banished.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:21Mike Rowe?

  And, um, you don't think about that much. It just feels like an artifact of some old thing, but to not be able to go into your favorite diner, your sandwich shop, your church, the school.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:34Mike Rowe?

  You know?

• 24:34Speaker 02

  It's like, where do I go to get my reputation back?

• 24:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Even though they've been pardoned, even though they, yes, the legal trouble is over, but they're all like, where do I go to get my, my rep, my standing in the community back?

• 24:46Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, that's the oldest dodging journalism, you know, when the headline's dead wrong, the correction shows up on the back of the bottom of the, of the last page. Nobody, nobody sees.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Hey, there's one part I think you failed to mention was that, uh, Colton Maccabee was a, uh, police officer.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Right? A sheriff or something like that?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, Colton Maccabee was a. No, he was Tennessee. He was a Williamson County where I live, he was a deputy there at the time that he went to Washington that day.

• 25:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  And he even had police on his clothes that day, showing that he was, you know, he wasn't on duty, but he was, and he was immediately, the sheriff's department there, they, they were, couldn't speak about him, they couldn't talk to his wife. And the way I wound up making the war on truth, by the way, is because I was in a butcher shop right before Christmas, and Leslie and I are going, you know, the kids are coming over, let's go order a roast. And so we go into this butcher shop, I look up on the internet, this is the best one in Franklin. I go in, I order the steak from, or the roast from this nice young lady. I get home, I get a text from her, Mr. Cersei, could you give

• 26:01Speaker 02

  me a call? I, I helped you with your roast today. So I thought, okay, they've run out of meat or something, I don't know. So I, I call this lady back and she said, I thought you sounded from, your name sounded familiar, but I couldn't place you. But then I talked to my husband and he said that you were the guy that made Capital Punishment, the first movie about January 6th. I go, oh, that's great. Your husband's one of the 10 people that saw it. Can I, can I speak to him? And she said, no, he's, he's in the DC Gulag. He's been there for two years. And it was like, it was Sarah McAbey. It was Colton McAbey's wife.

• 26:35Mike Rowe?

  Good grief.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  With the roast. And I just went, cause up to that point, I've been resisting. It's like.

• 26:40Mike Rowe?

  No, it's real. Real, like real, real, real.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was like, I didn't want to make a sequel, but then I was like, okay, I think God's telling me I need to make the sequel.

• 26:48Mike Rowe?

  You typically listen when you're pretty sure the, uh, the suggestion is coming from on high?

• 26:55Speaker 02

  I try to. I try to. Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, you know? But I try to.

• 27:03Mike Rowe?

  How hard was it for you and Leslie when you, I mean, I'm sure you wrestled with it, prayed about it and so forth, but when you decided to make Capital Punishment, people got to remember that you did this right on the heels of this thing.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:18Mike Rowe?

  I mean, you just literally walked up to the wood stove that you were absolutely conscious was roaring.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:28Mike Rowe?

  And you just put your hand on it as if to say, is this thing hot?

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:31Mike Rowe?

  Was it?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  You know, I, I think in that, for that first one, I, I, I didn't really question it. It was sort of like, okay, I've got to do this. There was never really a doubt in my mind. I said, I knew that, you know, there were going to be some repercussions from it, but I'd already directed Gosnell, the abortion movie.

• 27:53Mike Rowe?

  And dodged that bullet.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, I mean, I was kind of already exposed as one of those people anyway.

• 28:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  In Hollywood. So I figure how much worse could it get, you know?

• 28:04Mike Rowe?

  But why are you still standing? I mean, if you think about the guy you just described, Jay, was it Jay?

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:09Mike Rowe?

  The, the, right? And, and so many others. You, you're a clear and present danger. You're a threat.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure that there've been jobs that I haven't gotten because of it, but I've continued to work enough, you know?

• 28:26Mike Rowe?

  You're too busy to miss the jobs you didn't get. You don't even have an agent, do you?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  No, I don't have one anymore. And the reason I don't have an agent is because I was talking to him, it was like right when Capital Punishment came out, I said, what did you think of it? And he goes, I'm not going to watch that. I go, you're not even going to watch it? He said, I'm not watching that. That was an insurrection, full stop, and I'm not going to watch that propaganda.

• 28:50Mike Rowe?

  He wouldn't even watch 10% of it?

• 28:53Speaker 02

  I said, well.

• 28:57Mike Rowe?

  Jeez, a whiz.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  I should have used that line.

• 28:59Mike Rowe?

  No kidding.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  But I said, I guess you don't want to be my agent then, you know? Why do you want to represent some insurrectionist, you know? So I fired him.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  And ever since then, I've been some agents that have come sniffing around saying, you know, I'd like to represent you, and I'd go, okay, run it by everybody else in your office. And then I never heard from them again.

• 29:19Mike Rowe?

  Yep. Because it goes, it goes that way too. Like the same way you get excommunicated in your neighborhood for being on the wrong side of that argument. Can you imagine working in the 10 percenterie?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:32Mike Rowe?

  In this town?

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:35Mike Rowe?

  I mean, there must be some, but I don't.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  I know, it's a good friend of mine who got run out of being an agent for the same reasons. He was too open about what he thought. And I do know some other agents that are, you know, at least a little bit on the right side of things. They can't really expose themselves to their, the rest of their agency because they're, they would just be excommunicated.

• 30:00Mike Rowe?

  What about the persuadables who are on the other side of the aisle? Your friend Graham. I love your book by the, the book is called Justify This, and here we'll shamelessly pivot to this for a moment, but it has two forwards.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:16Mike Rowe?

  You know?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  One from the right and one from the left.

• 30:18Mike Rowe?

  One from the left. Which I think is terrific. It's great that you would do that. And talk about Graham if you would.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Well, Graham, Graham's Canadian, so, you know, that explains a lot.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  But Graham and I have been friends for a long time. I met Graham on From the Earth to the Moon. He was one of the supervising producers and the story I always tell is like for 15 years after From the Earth to the Moon, Graham was writing all these movies. He wrote Speed, he did Boomtown, he was doing all this stuff and I'd be emailing him going, "I thought we were friends. What? You don't ever have anything for me?"

• 30:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  And so he said when he read the pilot for Justified, he said, "Finally, I've got something for Nick. I can shut him up." So that's kind of how I got into Justified.

• 31:02Mike Rowe?

  But it's now, did you guys ever talk politically? Were you aware from whence the other was coming?

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Well, Graham is very, very funny, has a great sense of humor and we joke about it, you know. He knows that I think he's a communist and whatever, you know. But we, you know, it's never been like we don't have arguments because we know there's no point. You know, I like Graham, he likes me, you know, we, I like him as an artist, he liked me as an actor. So we never really had some big powwow about politics.

• 31:35Mike Rowe?

  But I, look, I think that there was a time, and we're both old enough to remember, where that was the default.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:41Mike Rowe?

  It was simply, it's like, okay, we're not going to be singing together out of that hymn book, but look at all the other things we can do.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:49Mike Rowe?

  In life. And that, that to me is the great tragedy of the times that we're in now.

• 31:59Mike Rowe?

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• 32:40Mike Rowe?

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• 33:22Speaker 02

  And when I was coming up, you know, I got my career started in North Carolina in a regional market. And I knew people that were, you know, we would have discussions in the waiting room for auditions and it was never contentious, you know, there were some guys that were Clinton people or whatever, you know, we just talked about it. But then when I got to, by the time I got my career going, I moved to LA, I was like, I didn't realize that that wasn't the same in Los Angeles that it was in North Carolina. It was a bad thing if you really came out. And by the time I realized that, it was too late. So I just had to roll with it.

• 33:58Mike Rowe?

  So when you read the pilot, I assume Graham sent it to you?

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:03Mike Rowe?

  I'm curious to the extent that he and you both were already familiar with Elmore Leonard and what, if anything, what kind of impression that guy had already made on you?

• 34:15Speaker 02

  I had read a couple of his books. I mean, I wasn't like a big avid Elmore Leonard fan, but I kind of, I read a couple of his books and so I sort of got the tone of it. You know, I got the snappy dialogue and the, you know, the crispness of it.

• 34:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  And Graham, I think really, I don't know if Graham had really read Elmore Leonard before, but he certainly steeped himself in it after he got this assignment. And he, he had Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules for Writing posted up.

• 34:43Mike Rowe?

  I got them too.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:44Mike Rowe?

  I literally have them on my wall.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, my favorite is

• 34:50Mike Rowe?

  I think it's dispense with the hoop-de-doodle.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:53Mike Rowe?

  Right? Just get all the stuff out of the way. And it's funny, you know, David Mamet was sitting right where you are.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:59Mike Rowe?

  You know, yesterday.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Well, that's an honor.

• 35:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, boy. Well, I mean, I didn't connect the dots then, but there are very few guys he reminds me of as a writer, but Elmore Leonard's one of them.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:11Mike Rowe?

  You know, and Hemingway to an extent, too.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:14Mike Rowe?

  Spars.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Cleanness of it, yeah.

• 35:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Don't say anything but he said. You know, I remember that.

• 35:20Mike Rowe?

  That's right, the attributions.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 35:23Mike Rowe?

  Never, yeah, and.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Not replied, not.

• 35:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, or sighed. Intoned.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:31Mike Rowe?

  Not even asked.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:33Mike Rowe?

  You know, it's all the attributions are he said and she said.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:36Mike Rowe?

  And at first it feels, it, it's a little awkward at first because you're not used to reading that way, but then later it's, it's actually very comforting.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you don't spend any time, you're just right through it.

• 35:48Mike Rowe?

  He's not selling you. And like, or adverbs, anything that ends with L-Y, I think he was firmly against, or against firmly.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  There's another writer I love, Lawrence Block, you know, his style is a bit like Elmore's, I think.

• 36:03Mike Rowe?

  So was Art Mullin, stupid question, you've had it a thousand times, but I think I know the answer, that, that had to be a hinge in your curriculum vitae.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  It was a great gift for that to come along at that point in my life, you know, I was in my 50s and it's like, you know, you're kind of facing the over the hill gang, you know, I'm getting ready to ride with those old men, but to get a part like that at that stage in my life was just a, a great gift and.

• 36:32Mike Rowe?

  When did you know it? Like, when did you know, I mean, obviously the offer was kind and the fact that Chuck has yet to see the program is unforgivable.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  What? What are you talking about?

• 36:43Mike Rowe?

  You know, I, I don't believe you're familiar with Justified at this point.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Every single episode I have seen.

• 36:48Mike Rowe?

  Not one.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:50Mike Rowe?

  Not one.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Every single one. He's just saying that to make me feel better, is that what it is? His wife, Leslie, is in it. Yeah, I watched the whole thing, I binged it before we had him on the first time.

• 37:00Mike Rowe?

  Oh, I, that's right, because you hadn't seen any of it.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  I hadn't seen it up until then, but you had been telling me about it for years.

• 37:06Mike Rowe?

  For years.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:08Mike Rowe?

  See, I, I am an Elmore, like I, I knew The Harland Story and I knew everything that came out in that first thing, and I, I didn't see it promoted. I didn't see it advertised, which is almost impossible to do anymore. I just found it. It was just one of those things where it's like reaching in your pocket of your old tuxedo and find a $200 in a money clip you didn't even know you had, like going wow. I'm so happy to find this. It was just terrific, man.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:39Mike Rowe?

  Just terrific.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  It's a really good show and for me personally, it's a tribute to my, my own father. You know, it's like the way I played that character was like, I just played him like my dad. Cause my dad was always a boss. He ran a restaurant and he just had this really acerbic sense of humor and this really cutting way of keeping people in line, but in a, in a way that was pleasant and funny.

• 38:03Mike Rowe?

  Tough, kind.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:05Mike Rowe?

  With just a little, just enough world weary on you.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:09Mike Rowe?

  But not bitter.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 38:12Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it was, it was just terrific to watch.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm very grateful for that.

• 38:18Mike Rowe?

  Would people stop you in airports, et cetera? It's usually for that?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Well, since I moved to Kentucky.

• 38:24Mike Rowe?

  Oh, boy.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  I'm a huge star in Kentucky. Yeah. Like I don't get recognized that much, but in Kentucky, I walk into a restaurant and they go, Art Mullin. Yeah, you know, they, they know.

• 38:36Mike Rowe?

  Have you been following Walton Goggins?

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's done great.

• 38:40Mike Rowe?

  I mean, but again, we, we were just talking earlier. It's like, well, I've been following that guy for years and then all of a sudden the White Lotus thing.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:48Mike Rowe?

  And now, now the country's like discovered him.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's blowing up. Yeah.

• 38:54Mike Rowe?

  What a ride.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, he's done really well. I'm happy for him.

• 38:59Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm happy for you, man. I love that you don't have an agent. I love that somehow you're still standing. This is your first book.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:06Mike Rowe?

  What do I need? I mean, is it, it's not really about justified?

• 39:11Speaker 02

  No, it's just sort of a summation, kind of a autobiography, you know, and it, uh, just came about because, um, this company approached me and said, we think you should write a book. I said, I'm just some character actor. You think anybody's gonna buy that? And, uh, they gave me a guy to work with to help me write it or whatever.

• 39:32Mike Rowe?

  Johnny Russo.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I would tell him these stories and, you know, I just started talking to him. He said, I'll just record you and then we'll put it together. Well, after about, I don't know, sixteen, seventeen hours, he sent me an email one day and said, "Well, I turned the book in." I go, "What are you talking about? I haven't even seen it yet." And he said, "No, no." I said, "Send me what you sent in." And, uh, I looked at it and it was like, "I sound like an idiot. You can't send that in." And so I called the company. I said, "Look, you gotta let me rewrite this," you know, so... 'Cause he had kind of just transcribed what I said and, you know, you sound like an idiot if somebody just, you know...

• 40:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, right.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  It's every "uh" and every "well..."

• 40:12Mike Rowe?

  And every "dot, dot, dot."

• 40:14Speaker 02

  And then I, you know... So I, I kind of rewrote it all. And then, you know, added some things that he hadn't written about, you know, that we hadn't gotten to yet. So it started out as something I was going to go, "Oh, that won't be much work." And then it turned into like, "Okay." I, I really kind of had to write that book.

• 40:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, well, same thing happened to me. And I realized it really was the frog in the boiling water where, where all of a sudden, I don't know when it became so precious, but it did. And I like, I was agonizing in ways that I normally wouldn't. I just think, you know, there's something about writing, the business of writing a thing down.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:54Mike Rowe?

  That obviously amplifies it in some way.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  And there's a permanence to it. You know, this is gonna be around. I have to make sure that this is...

• 41:03Mike Rowe?

  Spell it right.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Embarrassing, you know, it's gonna live for a while, you know.

• 41:08Mike Rowe?

  What about, um, what about this thing, man? Where I'm bound.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, yeah. Well, that's the movie I'm trying to put together. A friend of mine and I wrote this movie. His father, who is now a minister, was, uh, sang in gospel quartets in the sixties. And most of, a lot of my cousins were preachers and my first cousin was a, a gospel singer. So he started tell, we were doing a play together, this guy and I, and he started telling me the story about his father. And I said, "That sounds like a movie," because the whole thing was about him going into the gospel music world and finding out that it was much more of a business than he thought it was.

• 41:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  You know, he thought it was just, "I'm gonna be spreading the gospel." But he finds out that it's a little darkness there and a little bit more, you know, what's the word?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Calculated than he thought.

• 42:07Mike Rowe?

  It is an extraordinarily deliberate world. I don't know a ton about it, but I, I know enough. I got hooked on the cathedrals.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Mm hmm, yeah.

• 42:18Mike Rowe?

  One night.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:20Mike Rowe?

  And actually, it's funny, I was, we have a friend, you remember Steve Lohan from the old days?

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 42:26Mike Rowe?

  He wound up working at a, at a Christian radio station, WRBS, and I introduced him to a quartet called The Haven of Rest.

• 42:36Mike Rowe?

  And he introduced me to the cathedrals. And then we just went down this rabbit hole. There are hundreds of famous, southern gospel quartets. It's not barbershop.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 42:50Mike Rowe?

  But it's those same power harmonies.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:55Mike Rowe?

  And there's always a tenor with no top and a bass with no bottom.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:00Mike Rowe?

  And just the idea that there's, here's this world where these musicians, many times without instruments, but sometimes with, are like on the circuit, you know, making the rounds. It's like a, I don't know, oh brother, where art thou kind of vibe over the whole thing.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Blackwood Brothers, the Inspirations. I grew up with the Inspirations because they were from western North Carolina where I grew up. And actually, my mother was a biology teacher and the chemistry teacher was Martin Cook. And he left teaching to become the piano player for the Inspirations when I was about six years old.

• 43:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  And he kind of, I think his grandson, his son or his grandson is now running the Inspirations. So it's a longstanding, I mean, they've been around for 50 years.

• 43:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. But the originals?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Well, there's a whole young, it's the new Inspirations now.

• 43:53Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  But it's, there's a, you know, vestiges of the old guard. There's still, they're like the, you know, Lynyrd Skynyrd. There's, there's one guy left that's still alive.

• 44:03Mike Rowe?

  Right, right. What is it about that form of music, in your view, that resonates so profoundly with some people, but is so just completely alien to others? It's so specific.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  It is. It's a real interesting subculture. And that's kind of why I wanted to do the movie. There's never been anything about it, you know, very little. The Righteous Gemstones thing, that's a parody, you know. That's... I think it's the, like you said, it's the power of the harmonies. And it's that fascinating sort of mixture between sincere religious belief

• 44:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  and showmanship.

• 44:43Mike Rowe?

  That's it. There it is.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Because they are putting on a show and they are selling something to the audience, you know, above and beyond the sincerity of the message they're trying to deliver.

• 44:55Mike Rowe?

  Do you remember, so the inspirations were your inspiration, I suppose, but were you in a church the first time you heard that kind of music come at you with all the stentorian force that men in harmony can muster?

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, my uncle was an evangelist. He was a traveling preacher. And so I ended up going to a lot of revivals that he was... And he was, he played the guitar and sang. And his daughter and his son sang with him sometimes. And his son is the one who became like a lead singer in a gospel quartet. So I just remember, I think my first memory of it is seeing my uncle sing harmony with his son and daughter. That was my introduction to it. And then, you know, I would go to these gospel sings where there'd be five groups or something and they'd all, you know, sing for an hour and...

• 45:53Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training? Like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this... Academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period. Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five week, highly immersive, pre apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 46:35Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI proof, six figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you or your spouse or your kid or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 47:18Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. Have you talked to Nick before about barbershop and the weird thing we grew up with?

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I told him that, you know, that we sang together and we do it on the podcast all the time as well.

• 47:42Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm thinking more of the, like, the first time, we were 17, maybe 18 years old and our music teacher was a big deal in that world and he directed an international world champion men's chorus that sang the old songs. Now, this was not a religious group, although they really could tear up near my God to the, I mean, like, like in a way that would make you cry regardless of what you believed in or didn't believe in.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:15Mike Rowe?

  It's that, it's that kind of magic that's baked into this. It was the first time in my life, I saw 120 men, many of whom had fought in the Korean War and the Second World War, shoulder to shoulder, singing about the pals that would never let you down and the sweetheart of Sigma Chi and, and a mother's love, tough men, hard men.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:42Mike Rowe?

  Weeping as they sang. And I remember just, I was just a boy sitting there next to Chuck and we, it got us. Like in this, like, it was the combination of unapologetic sentimentality.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:57Mike Rowe?

  With actual talent and.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  And a wall of sound.

• 49:03Mike Rowe?

  And that too. You know how on a hot day, you can like see the heat coming up off the macadam?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:09Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:11Mike Rowe?

  You could see the sound waves in the air. It would, it like, it, it just hits you and it knocked the moisture out of your eyes.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:18Mike Rowe?

  I don't know. There's just something, um, there's an alchemy in that.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  I remember my, uh, my best agent, Joe Rice, who passed away sadly about a few years ago. I've never gotten another one as, as good as him, but he, um, when I played him the music that we, I'd written this show and we had links to some of the music that was in it.

• 49:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  And Joe Rice said to me, I love the music. I don't even believe in Jesus. It made me cry.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  It was great.

• 49:48Mike Rowe?

  He chased a dream. He found a calling. Yeah. You gotta have a deck, don't you?

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, anymore. Yeah. And we're pretty far down the road. I mean, we, we have a, a company out of Nashville called Third Coast Film and they are, they're putting the deals together. Patricia Heaton and, uh, her husband are helping David Hunt. They're going to be involved. Patricia's going to be in the cast and, uh.

• 50:11Mike Rowe?

  You've got Sam Rockwell?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  It's coming together. Well, that's, that's who I want.

• 50:15Mike Rowe?

  Oh, I got you. I was like, oh, I'm like, wow, this is an amazing cast.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  I did, I did a movie with Sam. I know Laurie. I mean, I, you know, these are the people that I want. But I keep telling these guys, you gotta get the money together because, you know, these guys have schedules. I gotta be able to tell them when they're going to work.

• 50:32Mike Rowe?

  It's like, so you're in the midst, like all these projects have just life cycles that a lot of people probably don't understand, but it's kind of like being a farmer, I guess. You're, you're either reaping or you're sowing or planting or doing a rain dance and hoping for the best.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, people don't really, and I didn't know before I started doing this, but how long it takes to put together a movie like this. I mean, we're going on seven years. We wrote the script seven years ago. And then rewrote it and rewrote it and changed, you know, different companies get involved and then they fall away or whatever.

• 51:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  But it's a long road.

• 51:10Mike Rowe?

  That's so funny. I'm thinking of Jack Teeter now, who was here three hours ago. You'd love this guy. His great uncle was blind from the age of five on. And in spite of that, was determined to become an engineer, which he did, and then went on to, um, to invent the automatic transmission.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 51:34Mike Rowe?

  And then cruise control.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:37Mike Rowe?

  He changed the automotive industry.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:39Mike Rowe?

  Ran a company out of Hagerstown, Indiana for years called Perfect Circle, which made the, hey, point is, you know, this guy decides, I have an extraordinary relative and a movie needs to be made. And I wind up narrating this documentary and we just had him in here to talk about it.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:58Mike Rowe?

  And my point is, you know, if you don't have an agent and if you're not playing the Hollywood game, then all of these projects become very personal, whether it's January 6th, or whether it's Where I'm Bound.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:12Mike Rowe?

  Right? And so, something is certainly guiding you.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Well, you know, something happened this year. Um, I lost two of my best friends in the same week, right in the first week of January this year. My wife lost one of her best friends and Chuck knows one of them, Loy, our friend Loy, who I think was there the night that I wanted to smoke cigars.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah, you were coming to see Loy. He was staying with me. He was visiting from Kansas City.

• 52:39Mike Rowe?

  Voiceover guy.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's correct. Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Loy Edge.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Very funny guy. I think I sent you.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Wonderful guy. Yeah.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  I sent you the audio of him singing a very funny song.

• 52:49Mike Rowe?

  That song, I can't play any of it.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 52:53Mike Rowe?

  I would like to play all of it, but that was the filthiest song I've ever heard.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  It's pretty dirty. Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  It's pretty awful.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Pretty funny. Yeah.

• 52:59Mike Rowe?

  It's like, pretty dirty. That's like saying, there are, there are a lot of people in China.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Well, my buddy Rodney Carrington, who makes a living singing dirty songs.

• 53:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Loi and I played it for him and he's like, "That's too dirty." "I can't do it. I can't record that." True story, true story.

• 53:20Mike Rowe?

  Oh my God. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry for your loss.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  But what I was saying is like that, those losses really brought something home to me, which is like,

• 53:33Speaker 02

  I don't want to spend my, what time I have left doing something that I don't care about. You know, I don't want to, I'm not like looking for a job anymore. I don't, you know, I'm not rich, but I, I've got, I'm not going to starve and I, I would rather spend my time doing things that it's worth taking me away from my home, from my family, from, it's worth me spending the time to make that movie.

• 53:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  So like when the manager calls and goes, "We've got this thing, it's three and a half months, you'll be in Vancouver." I go, "Hmm, how much?"

• 54:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  I just don't want to, I don't want to waste any more time.

• 54:14Mike Rowe?

  It's funny, and by funny, I don't mean funny at all, but I mean, human, how sometimes it's like, something has to grab you by the lapels and shake you.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:25Mike Rowe?

  You know?

• 54:26Speaker 02

  I just, it forces you to go, okay, realistically, I probably don't have 30 years. Maybe I've got 20, maybe it's in the teens, you know?

• 54:38Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Do I want to, you know, and I think of Ray Liotta, Ray Liotta, who I'd never worked with him, but always looked up to him. And he dies in the Dominican Republic at 63.

• 54:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Doing a little independent film and I just go, I don't, I don't want to go that way.

• 54:59Mike Rowe?

  No, it's the big chill.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:01Mike Rowe?

  You're right in that neighborhood too, right?

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:03Mike Rowe?

  I'm 63 now.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:07Mike Rowe?

  Man, he was something in Field of Dreams.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 55:11Mike Rowe?

  It really snuck up on you, that performance.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Goodfellas and, you know.

• 55:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, Goodfellas didn't sneak up on me. That hit me like a.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:19Mike Rowe?

  I mean, but the subtlety that he brought to that.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:24Mike Rowe?

  Just those couple of scenes.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 55:26Mike Rowe?

  They're crazy how that, like what you do, what you've done, those little moments that get just embedded in your crawl.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  I've had a few of those, you know, not many, but, you know, I've been a character actor, you know, and I've had a few little brushes at, at sort of doing something really memorable. Fried Green Tomatoes, maybe.

• 55:50Mike Rowe?

  That was the first one?

• 55:51Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 55:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. I mean, you were the, you were the bad guy.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  I was the bad guy. I was the wife beating husband. But the funny thing is, whenever I meet a, a young lady that's in their thirties and she goes, you look really familiar, I'll start rattling things off. No, I never saw that. I go, did you have the Disney Channel when you were a kid? And she goes, yes. And I go, you remember the movie Double Teamed? And they were like, you were the dad. It's like this movie, this TV movie about these two tall girls and their mean dad made them play basketball and then they wound up in the WNBA. Every woman thirty five to forty right now had the Disney Channel. They saw that movie fifty times. So that's what I'm most famous for.

• 56:36Mike Rowe?

  What are you most proud of?

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Well, outside of my personal life, you mean, outside of being, putting up with Leslie for thirty eight years.

• 56:47Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  It's been tough.

• 56:49Mike Rowe?

  Well, I just met on the telephone, by the way. She sounds delightful.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  She is. She's great. I don't know. I wouldn't be anything without her. Probably the thing I'm most proud of is Justified's up there, Fried Green Tomatoes is up there.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  But the documentaries, you know, I think they're going to, you know, they'll be out there. There's, still haven't wound up on Amazon or, you know, where I would like for them to be seen by people who didn't know it was coming. But I think those are gonna be an important piece of history. I think of, you know, I was able to chronicle something that most people ignored or didn't, didn't wanna look at.

• 57:34Mike Rowe?

  Or didn't have the guts to do themselves.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe, yeah. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if it's bravery or stupidity.

• 57:48Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm not sure, like, what's really the difference, other than, I guess, motive? Stupid doesn't have a motive.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:57Mike Rowe?

  You know, it's back to touch in the wood stove that you know is, is hot. If you do it stupidly, well, then, you know, that scar is probably remembered differently. But if you lurch for it, to get the baby off of it.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:12Mike Rowe?

  Because somehow or another, a baby is on the hot stove. Don't unpack the metaphor too deeply, but right?

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:19Mike Rowe?

  Something pushed, or pulled, or kicked, or prodded.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:24Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, whether you're around another ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, or whatever, it's not up to you anymore, man.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 58:32Mike Rowe?

  You're the pitcher who let the ball go, and now it's out there.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:36Mike Rowe?

  And we'll see where it goes.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  I think that's part of why I decided to make those movies, because when I would hear these people's stories, I would think back to where I was on that day. And like, if I had been where Colton was, or where Jay Johnstone was, I might have done exactly what they did, and it would be me there, instead of them.

• 58:58Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  So, I think in some ways, I'd look at that and I'd go, I think I was being protected that day, so that I could tell the story, so that I would be able to make these films and, and tell these stories.

• 59:12Mike Rowe?

  Is the wall of resistance coming down? Or do you feel like you're going to be able to get more? I hate to, it's just promotion. Is anybody gonna help you tell these stories?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know about that. I mean, I've had a little bit of a struggle with the producers of the movie, the people who funded it. You know, they have a certain way that they wanna do things and I haven't been able to convince them otherwise. I've certainly reached out to Amazon and to companies to try to help me get these things. You know, I wanna just give it away at this point. I just want it to be on Amazon so that somebody could just go, what's this about? You know? Cause I'm tired of preaching to the choir. The only people that watch it are the people that already agree with me. You know, I wanna show it to some people, the persuadable people.

• 1:00:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  But I haven't figured it out yet. I gotta turn it over in my mind, you know? My, I don't have an agent, so.

• 1:00:13Mike Rowe?

  You keep saying that. Careful, you want one?

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  I want a good one. I'd like to have one like Joe Rice, but you know.

• 1:00:20Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. You just kinda glossed over it before, but you said when you were a boy, there were these tent revivals in your world. And again, that's a, that's the thing. I think most people kinda know about, but very few have experienced. What was it like? And what kind of impact did it have? And to what extent are these things moral circuses?

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

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• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that well, it's that blend. It's that blend of showmanship and sincere belief. And I did a one man show about a preacher when I was struggling actor in New York for about three years. And it was that was what was fascinating to me about it because I never doubted these people sincerity, but I would often marvel at like, okay, the showmanship is going a little bit far now, the dramatic nature of their presentation.

• 1:01:48Mike Rowe?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  And the tent revivals, you know, it was always like, we've we got to take up a collection. We got to make enough money to make this so that we can get to the next town to spread the gospel. You know, so it's that sort of, that's the tension. It's like, how much of this is commerce and how much of this is spreading ministry?

• 1:02:10Mike Rowe?

  Redemption.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, like I said, it fascinated me because I never really doubted their sincerity. I never like, you know, I never thought I was being, you know, watching somebody being a shyster or being, you know, trying to screw people out of their money. But the showmanship was always fascinated me. And I think that's part of why I became an actor. I think for a while I wanted to be a preacher and then I realized, no, it's the acting that I like.

• 1:02:39Mike Rowe?

  It's the acting that I like. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, you know, if it goes too far, it's P T Barnum in that direction.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Mike Rowe?

  Too far in the other direction, we fall asleep.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's what I think a lot of movies have all, you know, Leap of Faith, that Steve Martin movie a long time ago, they've always gone for the, you know, the dark side of it. They sort of assume that the preacher is lying.

• 1:03:06Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's like, I always, that's what Where I'm Bound is about. It's like, no, they mean it. You know, I want it to be sincere, what they're trying to do. But there is also this, you know, we got to make a living here.

• 1:03:20Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:03:22Mike Rowe?

  Where'd the title come from?

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Oh, there's a song that the man's father wrote that called Heaven's Where I'm Bound. That is the sort of closing song of the movie.

• 1:03:35Mike Rowe?

  I was just thinking, it's a phrase from that, Peter, Paul and Mary sang it. I don't know who wrote it, maybe Dylan. I'm walking down that long lonesome road, babe. Where I'm bound.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:47Mike Rowe?

  I can't tell.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  And there's a Nancy Griffith song too, that has that phrase in it. Where I'm bound, where I'm bound. I can't remember the song right now, but yeah, it was always a phrase in my head. And then when he played me this, there's four original songs that my writing partner's father wrote back in the day.

• 1:04:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  That were never recorded or published and Heaven's Where I'm Bound is one of them.

• 1:04:10Mike Rowe?

  It's the last great movie you saw.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  Wow. It's gonna be really old.

• 1:04:17Mike Rowe?

  That says plenty.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Ah, gosh, that's a tough question.

• 1:04:24Mike Rowe?

  Actually, does it mean you don't watch movies anymore? Or you just haven't seen a great one in a while?

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  I don't watch very many. You know, I watch a lot of documentaries and wrestling. I watch, I watch a lot of professional wrestling.

• 1:04:36Mike Rowe?

  Do you really?

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  I do. I love it. I'm hooked on it.

• 1:04:40Mike Rowe?

  Now that actually makes an incredible amount of sense. Juxtaposed with the showmanship that attracted you to a tent revival.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 1:04:50Mike Rowe?

  We're still on that same.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Mike Rowe?

  Sliding scale.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Well, just like two weeks, not even a week ago, there was a local wrestling show in Owensboro, Kentucky. And those are my favorite. I like the local wrestling more than I like the WWE.

• 1:05:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  Cause you go there and those guys are trying to establish themselves and they have to sell their characters the minute they come out.

• 1:05:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  And so they have to establish, is this the heel or is this the good guy or whatever? I love it. And the crowd, there's usually 300, 250, 300 people in the crowd. And they are, they are real fans.

• 1:05:27Mike Rowe?

  What's going on with this? Let's unpack it and maybe that's, cause it's like, it's not, never mind the tent revival, but that. It's like a monster truck pull.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Mike Rowe?

  There's something completely without guile or pretense.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:42Mike Rowe?

  Like, there's a bargain. Like, we all know you're playing a character, and we all know that everything is an exaggerated version of something real, but we still go along for the ride. We willingly suspend disbelief.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  And that's what I love so much about the wrestlers is that they have to be so good at acting that they make the crowd want to pay money to see them pretend to get the hell beaten out of them.

• 1:06:09Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  You know? Right. Because wrestling is always about the bad guy.

• 1:06:12Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  It's always about the heel making everybody so mad, they're going, "I'm gonna go see that guy get killed, because I don't like him," you know?

• 1:06:18Mike Rowe?

  Right. So that's what catharsis, that's some, you know, Aristotle or Plato would have something to say about that.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Well, it's protagonist and antagonist.

• 1:06:30Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  I remember when we, when Leslie and I first met, we were living in New York City, and we were talking, and she was like, "I've never been to a wrestling match." I'm like, "What? You've never been to a..." So like, our second or third date was like, I said, "We're going to Madison Square Garden, and you're gonna watch Hulk Hogan wrestle."

• 1:06:49Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, just for grins, I don't know if there's a picture out there, but Google my name next to WWE and Halloween Havoc.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I remember.

• 1:06:58Mike Rowe?

  You remember Halloween Havoc?

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  I remember you were on it.

• 1:07:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  That must have been 25 years ago.

• 1:07:03Mike Rowe?

  It was 1999 or something, probably.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:06Mike Rowe?

  That was, I was in a very, very different part of my life, where I was just, I would take any gig anywhere for, I didn't care. But somehow or another, I got pulled into that world, and I started doing these, like, ringside interviews. And I didn't know the world, Nick. I didn't know the world. Like, my, and I didn't appreciate it at the time, but I was, I was an actor then. I was just acting like a host.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:32Mike Rowe?

  So I'm there in my stupid, you know, turtleneck, like, big stick mic, interviewing these people who, like, there must have been 30,000 people in this stadium, and I didn't know who the hell they were. They were all just dressed up, beating the hell out of each other.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  That's hilarious.

• 1:07:50Mike Rowe?

  And I felt like such a, such a fraud, but I was so interested. Again, it's a world, man. It's a, it is a world.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, that's always been, I've always wanted to get on a WWE broadcast or something, or just even be in the crowd and they cut to me, but I'm not a big enough star for that. But I did get to do one wrestling match as a manager with Matt Hardy, one of the Hardy Boys. Really? Yeah, he and I got to be friends and he said, I'm doing a match, he was wrestling with a group called Ring of Honor. He said, I'm doing a match in Nashville, do you want to come be my manager? Sure, you know, and this was when Justified was still going on. So I get there two, three hours early. It was a tag team match, Matt Hardy and Mike Bennett versus the Briscoe Brothers.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  And I'm the manager, so I had like a black coat and, you know, glasses and I'd brought my Peabody Award that I won on Justified. Yeah. So I was going out to the crowd going, this is an award for excellence in television, something you losers will never understand.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  And so they set up this gag that I'm gonna throw my Peabody Award into the ring and Matt's gonna catch it and hit the guy with it and then try to pin him and he kicks out. And so then I'm supposed to crawl into the ring and get my Peabody. And get your Peabody. Well, I get in the ring and Briscoe Brother grabs my Peabody and won't give it to me and I'm going, you get your filthy hands off that award. And he said, and we set it up so that he would kick me in the stomach and hit me on the back and I'd lay down and his brother would jump off the top rope and drop the elbow on me, like an elbow drop off the top rope. And when we're setting this up, I'm like going, that sounds like it's gonna be really funny, but won't that hurt? It could hurt a lot. And Jay Briscoe says, oh yeah, you'll feel it, but it's not gonna hurt you.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Oh, there it is, yeah. I can't believe you actually saw that. I've seen, I've never missed one. My wife can vouch for that. I've never missed one.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  That's the only picture I could find.

• 1:10:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's as good as it gets, man. Look at that hair. That's a deep cut, Chuck.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  That really is amazing.

• 1:10:07Mike Rowe?

  Those were the days.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  But that was WCW.

• 1:10:10Mike Rowe?

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Mike Rowe?

  But look at the size of my head. It's, I don't have a thought in there, Nick. All I know is there's some guy dressed up like a vampire on my right who I'm about to interview.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Mike Rowe?

  And some other gladiator type dude.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Vampire.

• 1:10:23Mike Rowe?

  Vampire, yeah. Yeah. What about, um, what about the UFC? Does that appeal?

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  I used to watch it with a friend of mine, but it makes me uncomfortable because they're really hitting each other.

• 1:10:34Mike Rowe?

  They're beating the absolute snot out of each other.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  I like the fake stuff better because I know at least they're trying to not hurt each other.

• 1:10:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  It's a show, you know?

• 1:10:44Mike Rowe?

  You know, I farmed my way into that, too. I, uh, I was in an office with Dana White and the guy that was, used to produce Dirty Jobs. And he was pitching The Ultimate Fighter, the show.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Mike Rowe?

  And I walked in just in time to hear, uh, Craig Peligian go, well, that's Mike, you know, he's doing the Dirty Jobs. He does voiceover stuff. And Dana's like, yeah, I've seen you. Say something. And I said, uh, previously on The Ultimate Fighter. And he said, yeah, fine. You're hired. Did 13 seasons.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  Genius.

• 1:11:16Mike Rowe?

  13 seasons.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  You're a genius. You're hired.

• 1:11:20Mike Rowe?

  But I mean, who knew that The Ultimate Fighter would go on to eclipse, really all of it?

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  All of it. Yeah. It's still going, isn't it?

• 1:11:29Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. It's huge.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Mike Rowe?

  But it just goes back to whether it's a tent revival or professional wrestling, ultimate fighting, boxing. It's gladiators.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Mike Rowe?

  It's are you not entertained?

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:43Mike Rowe?

  And this whole quest to try and figure out what the hell does the audience want?

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Mike Rowe?

  It's all Halloween havoc.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:11:51Mike Rowe?

  One way or another.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  I mean, when Leslie was at the wrestling match, watching Hulk Hogan, she looked around and we were doing a play together at the time. And one night we had one person in the audience and she's like looking around. There's 25,000 people there and go, just think if this many people came to the theater. And I'm going, this is theater.

• 1:12:09Mike Rowe?

  This is the theater. This is it.

• 1:12:13Mike Rowe?

  What's it feel like to do a play with one person in the audience?

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  It was, well, in that situation, you know, Equity says that you can vote. If the cast outnumbers the audience, the cat has to vote.

• 1:12:26Mike Rowe?

  True.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  About whether they're not gonna, whether they're gonna do it or not. So we all voted, yeah, let's do it. What the hell?

• 1:12:31Mike Rowe?

  Call it a rehearsal.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so we did it and like at intermission, we're like going, I think he likes it. We're all peeking through the curtain, you know. He's still there. He's gonna stay.

• 1:12:44Mike Rowe?

  I think he likes it.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  He laughed once.

• 1:12:48Mike Rowe?

  Oh, man. God, I mean, how demoralizing if, you know, the guy has to go up to, go to the can.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:55Mike Rowe?

  Listening like, we'll wait.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:58Mike Rowe?

  We'll wait.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Should we pause?

• 1:12:59Mike Rowe?

  We'll just pause for a minute. Let's just take a yellow flag on this one.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Mike Rowe?

  Good God. What was the play? Do you remember?

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was called The Kennedy Play.

• 1:13:08Mike Rowe?

  Comedy?

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  It was a, it was like a Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author kind of play where

• 1:13:16Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  we were all playing actors trying to put together a play about the Kennedy family.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Six actors in search of an audience.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 1:13:25Mike Rowe?

  And that's why there was one person in the crowd.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  It was not a good play, but we also had to improvise the relationships between the actors. And I improvised that I was in love with Leslie and she bought it. So that's how we got married. We met in that play.

• 1:13:40Mike Rowe?

  You and your wife met during a production of a play with one person in the audience.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  Well, some nights we had nine or 10, you know.

• 1:13:50Mike Rowe?

  How many were at your wedding?

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, I think about 65, 70.

• 1:13:56Mike Rowe?

  See, now that's a performance.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they had to come to North Carolina. We got married in, at my parents' house in North Carolina.

• 1:14:03Mike Rowe?

  Nice.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Mike Rowe?

  Speaking of which, what the hell is going on in your state right now? I've got some friends there. I'm trying, if I can, to take this project I'm working on now to that area, because the recovery, it just seems to be interminable.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:14:20Mike Rowe?

  I don't know how they're gonna get out of this.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  It's also, it's like, I don't know how you rebuild, like, whole towns are gone.

• 1:14:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  You know, just wiped away Banner Elk and, and Blowing Rock and some other towns that are just not there anymore. And so I think that's part of the problem is like, how do you rebuild an entire town? That's just not there. And I, you know, I, I think that land has some value for some mining. And I think there may be some of that going on that they're, they don't want to rebuild it because they want to get the, get the minerals out of the ground.

• 1:15:01Mike Rowe?

  It's amazing how the rebirth of a town, I mean, when I look at what's going on in Lahaina, which I don't understand, it's been two years now.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Mike Rowe?

  And they're, they're not building anything. And I wonder about the Palisades and Altadena. And you just, you look around and you see these geographical do-overs, you know? And what's going to happen to our cities, Nick?

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Mike Rowe?

  Just, just real quick, as we start to land the plane, what's going to happen to the species and the future of mankind as we understand it? If you could just very quickly.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Well, that's simple, Mike. Well, I think what we're seeing happen is there's a real exit from the cities. The cities are becoming more concentrated and people are fleeing. So I think what you're going to see is more and more people flooding the countryside and getting away from the cities because Pacific Palisades is gone. Like you said, who knows how long that's going to take to be rebuilt and how expensive it's going to be to live there.

• 1:16:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  So I think we're headed for back to nature kind of thing.

• 1:16:10Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  I think we're, we're going to have to learn how to grow tomatoes and raise chickens again.

• 1:16:16Mike Rowe?

  You know, it's interesting, conversely, I heard a guy not long ago from the Brookings Institute, holding forth, and somebody asked a question about China, had the degree to the existential threat vis a vis the military, of course. And this guy, who wrote a couple of books on the thing, just, just kind of said, look, I don't think it's a thing. What China's dealing with right now that people don't understand is the exact opposite. Everybody's coming to the cities. And by everybody, he said, 400 million people are leaving the countryside and coming into the city. They want their industrial revolution. They, right?

• 1:16:58Mike Rowe?

  And so you're talking about a population 20% larger than everybody in this country, all running to towns. And his point was, you just can't imagine what that, what kind of pressure that's putting on a country.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14Mike Rowe?

  And I don't, maybe there is, maybe the good news is, is that this is the opposite of that. Maybe the cities here have gotten too big.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Mike Rowe?

  You know, I fly a lot and I spend a lot of time looking out the window and I don't see anything, man.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Mike Rowe?

  There's a lot of open room.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  There is. There's a lot of open highway, except in Nashville. Maybe everybody's moving to Nashville.

• 1:17:37Mike Rowe?

  Are you in Franklin?

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. I have a place in Franklin, but we have our, we have a place about two hours and 45 minutes north of Nashville that is kind of our dream home kind of thing. We got ahold of this a little over a year ago and it's 1875 house on 16 acres with five outbuildings and end of a road.

• 1:17:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  I mean, it's totally silent at night. You can't hear a thing.

• 1:18:05Mike Rowe?

  And you can, you can actually see the stars in a way that almost makes your eyes water.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And on one side, we've got the river. We've got barges going up and down the river. And on one of our borders, we've got a railroad track. So every once in a while, whoo, whoo, a train comes through, you know?

• 1:18:21Mike Rowe?

  I just said that to somebody the other day. I think the sound of a train in the distance is, I don't know if there's a better, more evocative

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Mike Rowe?

  way to make your imagination go, man, where's that going?

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Mike Rowe?

  Or who's coming?

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And what's it got on it, you know, on the train? No, it's a, it's a magical place and we bought it from a friend of ours that we've been visiting for 30 years and for 30 years I've been saying, if you ever want to sell this place, let me know.

• 1:18:52Mike Rowe?

  And he let you know?

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he finally did.

• 1:18:55Mike Rowe?

  My whiskey's made down in Columbia.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Mike Rowe?

  Actually, we were talking about that earlier.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:02Mike Rowe?

  Are you actually gonna dabble in that, in that world?

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  Well, I gotta figure out how to do it. I mean, I might want to talk to you off the air about how, how you set that up because it, these guys are making whiskey all the time. It's like, okay, what do I do? Do I just do a single barrel that's like, you know, one batch that's the Nick Sersi brand, you know, and do I sort of come up with the mixture? I mean, I don't know. I'm just thinking about it. They, they mentioned it to me, so I'm trying to figure it out.

• 1:19:27Mike Rowe?

  It's fun, but it's a knife fight in the phone booth, too. I mean, like, well, you look around, you know, you know what the world needs, Chuck, really, right now, more than anything?

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 1:19:36Mike Rowe?

  Ah, another celebrity with a bourbon brand. That's what we need.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  Well, that's what I've been thinking, yeah.

• 1:19:41Mike Rowe?

  With cigars.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  I'm trying to fill a need here, yeah.

• 1:19:46Mike Rowe?

  I'm so glad you came. Thank you for making the time.

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  Like, it's been a pleasure, yeah.

• 1:19:52Mike Rowe?

  Anything I forgot to ask you? Anything we want to drill down on a little harder?

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  I don't, don't think so. I'm happy doing what I'm doing now and I'm really excited to see what happens to me now that I'm not really acting anymore, you know?

• 1:20:06Mike Rowe?

  It's like you're watching your life from an elevated height. Like, you're the one guy in the audience looking at the Nick Sersi revival going, huh, I wonder how this is gonna play.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  And I think I'm the only guy interested.

• 1:20:19Mike Rowe?

  I promise you, man, that's not true.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Hey, I want to say something. First of all, this, the book is called Justify This and it is very funny. I listened to the book.

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  And Nick, Nick reads it and it's a great performance and

• 1:20:37Mike Rowe?

  Well, thank God, man.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:20:39Mike Rowe?

  Thank God.

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  We appreciate when authors actually read their books and

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  I tried to get a really good actor to do it, but it's too expensive.

• 1:20:46Mike Rowe?

  But yeah, yeah, not with your agent.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  You did pretty good, you did pretty good, yeah.

• 1:20:49Mike Rowe?

  And the dream project currently in the works is called Where I'm Bound and

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  Oh, uh, what is it called? Um, the War on Truth?

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  War on Truth.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  On movie.com? Is that correct?

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  Uh, yes.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  And how do you see Capital Punishment?

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  It's on Rumble. If you do a search for Capital Punishment, Nick Cersei, you can watch it for free on Rumble.

• 1:21:12Mike Rowe?

  It's quite a palette, folks, you know? And, uh, for a guy without an agent who's being guided by, uh, apparently things that matter to him, you know, good on you, man. I really wish more people had that, uh, compass.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  Well, thanks, Mike. Thank you.

• 1:21:29Mike Rowe?

  Best to Leslie.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:21:30Mike Rowe?

  I'll switch shirts with you if you want.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  She's a big fan of yours, by the way.

• 1:21:34Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's nice. I'm a big fan of hers.

• 1:21:36Speaker 02

  She's read your books and, well, told me how good they were.

• 1:21:42Mike Rowe?

  Tell her I think she's a woman of exceeding taste and sophistication.

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  Obviously, obviously.

• 1:21:48Mike Rowe?

  Clearly. Nick Cersei, everybody. Thanks. Talk to you next week.

• 1:21:51Speaker 04

  When you leave a review, only five stars will do. Not just one, or just two, or just three. We were hoping... Four more. As in, one more than a four. Oh, please, one more than four. Just a quick review with five stars, too. From a you, five stars will do.

• 1:22:33Speaker 05

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• 1:23:07Speaker 06

  That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.