Sean Penn | Club Random with Bill Maher

Sean Penn returns to Club Random for another wild ride with Bill Maher. From kissing James Franco in Milk to drone warfare in Ukraine, the conversation covers it all, politics, war, Hollywood, and even AI going rogue. Sean opens up about his documentary Superpower, Putin’s ambitions, America’s contradictions, and what it means to live fully in a broken world. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1 Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: https://billmaher.substack.com Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom Support our Advertisers: -Go to https://www.zbiotics.com/RANDOM and use RANDOM at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics -Go to https://www. RadioactiveMedia.com or text RANDOM at 511511 Buy Club Random Merch: https://clubrandom.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:12Speaker 01

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• 1:31Speaker 02

  Timothy Hutton. Timothy Hutton. George C. Scott. George C. Scott! Wow, that's really going back. He kept me from ever golfing.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Fooled myself that there was any, I was gonna get anywhere with him. I know that I would. I know that I would have no influence. Bad attitude. You don't know that. You don't know anything.

• 1:52Bill Maher?

  Shaun ready?

• 1:53Speaker 02

  I am.

• 1:54Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  I'm just pouring a drink.

• 1:56Bill Maher?

  Oh, thank God.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Can I pour you one?

• 1:59Bill Maher?

  Honey, I'm home. And I hope you have my... Please, I look like I did this myself.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  I won't hurt you.

• 2:06Bill Maher?

  Give me a hug. How are you?

• 2:08Speaker 02

  How are you?

• 2:08Bill Maher?

  I need a... Do you have my martini ready when I walk in? Is that so much to ask of a domestic partner? Can you imagine if you and I were two gay men living together and...

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Well, you know, maybe we're imagining everything else and that's what's actually been happening.

• 2:24Bill Maher?

  That has not been happening.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:26Bill Maher?

  It's not...

• 2:27Speaker 02

  I'm tired of this odd feeling that I'm in a different place than I think I am.

• 2:30Bill Maher?

  When you did, uh, milk,

• 2:34Bill Maher?

  how'd you feel about the kissing men?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  You know, the funny thing is, um, I don't like... Not I don't like. I am disgusted by eating off of, um... Even if it was a relative, when, when anyone, but particularly men, eat off my plate, I'm pretty much done with the meal. I can't, I can't touch it.

• 3:04Bill Maher?

  Why would a man be eating off your plate?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, your dad's sitting there and he goes, "Oh, what's that? By that or whatever." I, I just didn't like the whole idea of men's spit. And so, for me, it was a bit of a, um... It was like, uh, like in, uh...

• 3:24Speaker 02

  You know, in some law, like international law enforcement, narcotics law enforcement, they've got hazard pay that they pay people who go into some of the... So I sort of saw it as like hazard pay without any additional pay or like a stunt, like a big stunt. But, uh, my, um... My son was upset at the time. He was young. I guess, you know, things that were said in school. Uh, he was upset that his father had kissed James Franco. And my daughter was upset that James Franco had kissed me.

• 3:57Bill Maher?

  And not her.

• 4:00Bill Maher?

  Right, wow, that's amazing. Things have certainly changed a lot.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:06Bill Maher?

  I mean, now you really wouldn't even be able to play the part because you're not actually gay.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I wouldn't be permitted, that's right.

• 4:15Bill Maher?

  Because you have to be what you are.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:18Bill Maher?

  You know, sort of the antithesis of acting, though.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:23Bill Maher?

  So you must be over the moon about the Ukrainian attack. I don't know when we're dropping this, probably very soon, but a few days ago, they did, I mean, it's cooler than Mission Impossible, the drones. I mean, to pack them into these trucks, surreptitiously get them near the airfields so that they could then independently, remotely, fly out of the trucks and bomb the planes that are bombing Ukraine. I mean, that took the Israeli beeper attack on Hezbollah.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  And a big chunk of the planes have been a threat against every other country, including our own, all these years. He made a...

• 5:09Bill Maher?

  It's about long-range nuclear bombers.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I mean, that just blows my mind.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Well, I had been in Ukraine again a few, well, whatever it is, a month ago, let's say, Easter, the week of Easter. And the war had in the last year plus, year plus, so dramatically changed. It was clear that it was almost entirely drones and artillery.

• 5:38Bill Maher?

  So where does this put the war? I mean, like, we had been kind of moving toward, honestly, the Trump view, which always was kind of, look, Russ is gonna win anyway. What are we killing all these people? You know, it's kind of like the old John Kerry thing. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  I've said from the very beginning, and I've felt every single day since, that this war is going to, that Ukraine will prevail in this war. There's no question in my mind.

• 6:09Bill Maher?

  You mean, get back all their territory?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Certainly, absolutely the territory pre uh uh two uh uh twenty second of February. Uh twenty fourth of February, twenty fourth, twenty second.

• 6:22Bill Maher?

  You're talking about the beginning of the war in twenty twenty two.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Um.

• 6:25Bill Maher?

  Okay, well, that's all the territory.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Well.

• 6:28Bill Maher?

  Or you might not Crimea.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Dealing with Crimea is a difficult subject for everybody.

• 6:31Bill Maher?

  Uh. Right.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  But um I I think, yes, there will be no compromise on the territory.

• 6:37Bill Maher?

  You're that's not a common opinion.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  But we I I I understand it's not a common opinion, wasn't a common opinion that the Vietnamese were gonna kick our ass throughout the Vietnam War either. Um.

• 6:47Bill Maher?

  And you were saying that then, maybe you were ten?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Well, I I I was processing it through my adulthood and seeing, you know, what is it? What is that hunger that's going to fight like that? And so here, the um, you know, that doesn't mean it's not gonna come without a lot of horrible loss and destruction, and it already has. And, you know, one of the big parts of the story that is not discussed enough are the thirty thousand children that they stole when they occupied those new territories. And now.

• 7:22Bill Maher?

  About the Russians stole.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, kidnapped children.

• 7:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Everybody in the United States screams and cries about how children are treated, you know? And yet, they somehow have let the political tone of this blind them to

• 7:37Speaker 02

  the necessity of the U S being uh more supportive.

• 7:42Bill Maher?

  Well, you know, that's not gonna happen. That's not what I mean, Trump's gonna be there for another.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  They can do it without us.

• 7:48Bill Maher?

  Three and a half years, or maybe ever. Um, so I can't imagine in three and a half years, this war won't have resolved itself somehow. It's gonna have to do it without America's help. I hope you're not counting on that.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  I'm not counting on it, sir.

• 8:03Bill Maher?

  Cause that's just not where Trump.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  You know, one of the things is um. You know, um, this could create a war in Europe, in a sense. And, uh, and, and Europe is definitely showing signs of really coming up to the game.

• 8:20Bill Maher?

  You mean defending, I mean, Trump always says NATO was too reliant on America. We paid too much into it. Um, they should be defending themselves more. That's not all wrong.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not, I'm not saying that that's all wrong.

• 8:36Bill Maher?

  No, I'm just.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  What I'm saying is that, that, that because they're being forced into a pinch this way. Because it's not, they're clearly not just defending Ukraine on a principle. They understand the ramifications of, of, of a Russian victory there. And the way that that would inevitably spread through Europe.

• 8:55Bill Maher?

  I don't think that's true. It would not inevitably spread through Europe. Russia is not strong like that. The idea that Russia is going to, I know, I understand his desire. I mean, Putin would like to reconstitute the Soviet Union for sure.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Cause they're not strong like that, that it happens. What Putin needs to do is this kind of an action every time he's going down politically. And that's the way he manipulates the, the Russian people.

• 9:19Bill Maher?

  He doesn't have enough, he doesn't have enough soldiers. He doesn't have enough money. He doesn't have enough, um, materiel. I mean, yeah, I guess it could be a drone war. Um, but they have, drones are cheap. Drones, like, you, you, it's, it just, it really puts the lie to the new budget we have, which of course, just as the one thing that both parties could always agree on, which is shoveling more money to the Pentagon, uh, which they call defense, but really is defense contractors. That we, to make shit that obviously in this age of drones are already obsolete.

• 9:57Bill Maher?

  It's just about providing jobs back home and making shit that even the Pentagon sometimes says, we don't want.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  But you're looking at the conventional war notion. I, what I'm saying is. Yes, he has enough to be a real threat again in this way. But in the meantime, you look at what's happening in Georgia now. You look at what had been happening in Ukraine, what he aims to have happen in Ukraine. Where, whether or not they, before the invasion, where the pressure was to have a proxy, to have a puppet in leadership. And so, it's not always an army coming across. This war, Putin has already declared that this war is against the United States. He's said it on numerous occasions when he says, you know, this is about, this is saying Ukraine was a proxy of the US.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  And so, and the war on the US has been a cyber war. But it has affected, literally, lives and certainly livelihoods.

• 10:59Bill Maher?

  There's no doubt that he never lost his KGB bona fides. He's a guy who was raised in a system where it was the Soviet Union and the United States was an existential enemy. I get it, he never lost that. No, there are people who would argue that we are the ones who made the mistake when we didn't disband NATO, when the Soviet Union disbanded. Because NATO was formed to confront the Soviet Union.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Or, you know, had we invited the former Soviet Union into NATO, perhaps then we would have had more responsibility to help build their institutions to be able to absorb democracy.

• 11:38Bill Maher?

  NATO was an organization strictly formed to fight the Soviet Union. How can you then invite, it's like the Yankees are playing the...

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Well, no, you have other great enemies, let's say, right? China for one. And so, building a coalition...

• 11:56Bill Maher?

  We all gang up against China? Yeah, that could work.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was discussed. It was discussed at the time.

• 12:04Bill Maher?

  But China wasn't a power then. When the Soviet Union rolled up in 91, China wasn't some threat. I mean, it was the country they talked about as, ooh, watch out, they could be the rising power of the next century, which they turned out to be.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  But they were economically exploding. And they were one of the biggest providers, along with the Russians, of weapons to the Vietnamese. We don't have to go back in time, the entire balance of it. But the bottom line was that Russia, while we were dancing... Perestroika and Gorbachev and Reagan and the walls come down. They never got a chance to dance there. They were, they were, the breadlines were longer. And oligarchy and gangsterism took over where the communist power void left off. And so.

• 12:56Bill Maher?

  Yeah, the, the middle class also did expand. Once you got rid of state owned industry. There, I mean, Moscow, I know, I know I've never been, but I've certainly know people who've been before and after. And they say Moscow is a very alive city with a lot of, a lot of people who are doing well. I mean, you go out at night in Moscow, you can have a good time.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Moscow was a picture city. It is still today.

• 13:24Bill Maher?

  What does that mean?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the advertisement for Russia. It's the ad.

• 13:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Listen, I went and did a.

• 13:31Bill Maher?

  Like the Paradise Ghetto.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, for a movie thing, I did a little bit of training at Star City, which is about 40 kilometers outside of Moscow. And that's their NASA.

• 13:41Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Um, that gives you a little inside view of the, the gas station with nuclear weapons that they are in, in so many ways. Um, nothing but chip paint on broken walls and.

• 13:54Bill Maher?

  Right, which is why I say I'm not worried that Putin is going to get his piece of Ukraine. I hope he doesn't, but if he does, that then he's going to roll into Poland. I just don't.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Okay, here's what I would suggest on that. I remember there was a great story about somebody, I'll, I'll leave it unnamed because, but they were diplomat, you, American diplomat, talking with a Middle Eastern leader. And telling him why the US policy in a third country was going to change in the way that it was. After they talked very sternly and strongly about how it was going to go and why. The Middle Eastern leader said, well, you know, I do know the neighborhood.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  And I would say that if you go and you talk to the people in the neighborhood, whether it's in Moldova, or Georgia, or Poland, Romania, that there is every reason to believe that it would, there'd be a pause, it's not gonna roll from one to the another. But this is the trend he has, and when he has to summon up a military assault, he always does make that threat. Like, I don't know why our president hasn't pre-announced a red line. And I don't mean a taco line, I mean a red line on, you know, don't even talk about nuclear weapons.

• 15:18Bill Maher?

  Because he's got bigger things on his mind. Dolls. Do you know how many dolls people need, Sean?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  How many dolls?

• 15:24Bill Maher?

  Three, maybe four, maybe five. They don't need 250 dolls. He said this.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Oh, the thing about, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:31Bill Maher?

  I'm saying, he's got bigger issues on his mind. And pencils? How many pencils do you have? Do you need that many? I don't think so.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a problem child.

• 15:42Bill Maher?

  Okay, so let me offer this, and I know you know more about Ukraine than anybody I know, and probably have done more, and you're linked to it, I mean culturally, morally, socially, you are all in on Ukraine.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Well.

• 15:56Bill Maher?

  You do know that it is special to Putin, because it is the, sort of the cradle of Russian civilization, the first capital was Kiev. Right? You know that, that they consider that. So, he sees Ukraine as a very different place than Poland or Romania.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Well, he would say that he sees it as a very different place. He would say that, he would say that.

• 16:24Bill Maher?

  Very precious.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  And I think that that's akin to the great, great, great, great grandson of King George, still angsty about the Declaration of Independence. The bottom line is, Ukraine is a separate, sovereign country as we are.

• 16:37Bill Maher?

  I, I agree with that, but it's a lot, but that's a bad analogy, because that's a long way back.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  I think he sees war in Ukraine much more cynically than that. I think that this is when he's got troubles at home. Listen, there's 25 Russians, right? You've got between the Muslim population, the various breakoffs of what it is to be Russia.

• 16:56Bill Maher?

  You know, you just said it, it's sort of self-contradictory. You said, you know, I think it was McCain who first called Russia a gas station with nuclear weapons. Okay, well, gas stations don't take over the world. Again, I don't put anything past this guy. He pushes, he pushes people out of fucking windows. And by the way, your, your boyfriend Oliver Stone was here once. Uh, well, I love the movie you made. I love, I love you, sir.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  I, I, Oliver is a fascinating person. I, I think he's, you know, left the farm a long time ago.

• 17:28Bill Maher?

  He certainly has on the subject of Putin. Because no matter how many times I, you know, I was just mocking him unmercifully in a charming way, of course. Um, but he just, you know, he would just, oh, Bill, you don't really believe that propaganda about Putin being a bad guy. And like, what is it that, that makes a person's mind? I mean, look, we all have places where we disagree with each other vehemently. And we're like, how can this person, who's such a great person, and we love him in so many ways? How can, how can they believe this thing?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  I think iconoclasm is a drug for him.

• 18:05Bill Maher?

  That's a great quote. Yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  So. But when you said the gas station reference, when I say that, I'm talking about, this is what most Russians experience. It's basically a gas station with, with, now for him to have a military. Um, people, you know, there's bodies he's ready to have killed, which is so much of what they've been doing. Uh, and, and, and, and by the way, there's, there's two genocides being attempted. One on the Ukrainians and the other is on his undesirables. So what's at the front lines is you're gonna find the bodies of homosexuals, uh, prisoners that created crimes that, uh, conflict with the, the, the crimes that Putin, uh, would otherwise, uh, champion.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Uh, these are the, this is, and, and, and, you know, just scraping the barrel of those people. So he's purging his country of, uh, the things that, um, he doesn't like.

• 19:01Bill Maher?

  You're saying he's killing homosexuals?

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:04Bill Maher?

  I hadn't read it, but I don't doubt it.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:07Bill Maher?

  Killing them?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Prioritizing them for, to be in the meat grinder on the front line.

• 19:12Bill Maher?

  Oh, by sending them to Ukraine?

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 19:15Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, that sounds like something he'd do.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:17Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and he's, I mean, one of his big gripes about the West, um, is wokeness. Which, which by the way, I could show you a quote from him about that, and I could show you a quote from Macron. From France, not exactly the same kind of country, saying almost the same thing. Which is what? We don't want your American wokeness here. Yeah, well, that's fine. Isn't that interesting? But we don't want your Russian hatred here. Yeah, I understand. I'm not defending them. I'm just saying, isn't that interesting? That both France, the most sophisticated place. Hey, I don't want our American wokeness here either. Exactly. I'm just saying, like, it's something that, for the people who are like woke

• 20:02Bill Maher?

  and are mad at this conversation, just to think about that, that both France and Russia came to the same conclusion about this. Now, of course, they did it for somewhat different reasons. And by the way, sorry, France, but you could use a little wokeness? I mean, they just got around to putting, who's the fat ass, Gerard Depardieu. Oh, yeah, yeah. Away for stuff that, you know, you know, not to like, hey, America, we're the greatest, but stuff that we were putting people away. I mean, he's the Harvey Weinstein or the Cosby or whatever. They're like a decade. It's been building pretty intensely over the last couple of years in France. But they are like a decade behind us on that.

• 20:46Bill Maher?

  Well, not a decade. I wouldn't say a full decade, but yes, okay. Close. Yeah. Close. They're right there now. I mean, we kind of take our victory for a weekend, John. Yeah. I mean, you know, America, I always think we're gonna come out on top at the end, but I don't know.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  My father, when I remember one time having a talk with him about the blacklist period. Oh, yeah. I mean, in depth and walking down the beach and... Was he blacklisted? Yeah, five years. He was? Yeah, so he, for the country, he flew 37 low-altitude bombing missions at night, shot down twice. Came back with a chest full, uh, flying out of London, Germany. To Germany, over Germany? Yeah. Um, and then couldn't work in the country he fought for. Yeah. And I was always admired in him. Yeah, something that I, I still can't imagine that I would have been able to process this way.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Um, he said, you know, it's a growing pain of a great country. What is? The blacklist, it was, it's growing pains. Wow. There was never a bitterness. That's charitable. Yeah, but it makes me, you know, encouraged to think that, you know, we can, I don't, not saying we will, we can get ourselves out of this and into something better than we've had before. And, you know, as part of the physics of this stuff, I don't like it, you don't like it. We see through the people that are sort of fundamentalist on this stuff and hypocritically so in so many provable ways with this woke stuff.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  We are so self-destructive a species in some ways that to get to constructive, we have to recognize there's going to be some destructive. And it sort of does find its own balance at a certain point. I thought lately sometimes that, you know, I mean, I've been certainly a big mouth and often too strident of one. You are a sensational mouth on most subjects and important.

• 24:03Bill Maher?

  I won't spit in your food.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  But I also sometimes think lately, you know, why don't we just shut up and stay out of this way because these guys have plenty of rope to hang themselves with. Don't remind the base that we're here. We don't have anything to do with your fight. Yeah, I wonder sometimes if sometimes there should be a pause and.

• 24:22Bill Maher?

  Do you think being our age makes it easier for us to not freak out? Because I feel like the kids are more freaked out. Now, that may just because that generation is just, you know, angsty about everything.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Well, the ones who are engaged are, right? And that I can only imagine is extremely hard, particularly younger. My kids are in their 30s.

• 24:50Bill Maher?

  And where's their head on like where the country is and are they like, are they despondent? Or what I'm saying is like, we remember Nixon. Now, he wasn't, he certainly didn't go where Trump went. But we thought he was like the end of the world. And it turned out he wasn't. Is that what's going to be the case with Trump?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  He's already been the end of hundreds of thousands of worlds. People, I'm talking about USAID.

• 25:18Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  That's negligent homicide in a sober world, that's negligent homicide. But since it's not sober, I'll have another sip.

• 25:28Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, even bigger picture than that. Just the fundamental essence of America being the peaceful transfer of power, which is, you know, always.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  The peaceful transfer of power and at what temperature is the globe running when you hands it over?

• 25:50Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I'm certainly a person who believes as much as you do, or any person who can read scientific literature, even for the layman, that we are, you know, doing horrible things environmentally, and it's obviously gonna get us at some point. I don't know that one side has really done a lot more than the other. I mean, you can read some very depressing stats like, you know, coal use. With, after all these years and all this money spent on clean energy, and it's like, almost the exact percentage as it was, I don't know, whatever the stat was, 1990 or something.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  You're a pro-nuclear power guy.

• 26:35Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 26:36Bill Maher?

  I'd like to build one right here.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:39Bill Maher?

  You can use my yard.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  France makes money on theirs.

• 26:44Bill Maher?

  Totally.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:45Bill Maher?

  Now, I always say nuclear energy is a lot like marriage. When it goes bad, it really goes bad. Not that I have to tell you about marriages going bad. I'm sorry. But, but it is that kind of thing. Like, you just have to make sure you marry the right person, or you make the plant safe. Because when it melts down, it's so destructive. And that's what, people are afraid of nuclear power for three reasons. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Those three words, and those are three powerful words.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yes, well, they're powerful in, first of all, we know, we're just talking about the climate, the result at the end of all this stuff. The, we have to assume that we are in some denial. We absorb the information. Let's say we believe in this school of thought that's coming from the scientific community. Yes, the world's heating up, this is. Those same scientists are saying, you know, this is, like, guys, this is urgent. We don't really wanna process that. That's part of it. It's not just that they're not communicating it in ways that are successful.

• 28:04Bill Maher?

  I would agree with that.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  And, and that's the same, so for example, you know, the normalization of these 30,000 children that have been kidnapped by the Russians. We're finding ways for that not to be what it, what we know it is to us, right? These are just defense mechanisms. And finally, trying to be a little braver about this stuff and get a clear, clear thought. It does seem to me that the, the science that I've come to trust, not claiming any kind of expertise, but I pay attention, I care, and I don't think I'm alarmist.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  It has me extremely worried. We were talking about like my kids. So they're, you know, they would have come up during the time of my space and all of this. The social media was there.

• 28:56Bill Maher?

  I think having kids makes us a very different idea because like I feel like I've had my fun with the earth. I have the same worries that you do, but I'm like, okay, I'm 70, like probably it'll be around for about the number of years I will also be around. But if I had a kid 30, yes, I would, I would be much more in that headspace because now you've got to project 50 years.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  But don't get too comfortable because with AI, you might be finding the fountain of youth and you're going to live a long, long time in a nuclear holocaust.

• 29:30Bill Maher?

  Did you see what AI has been up to lately?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Which part of it? Tell me.

• 29:35Bill Maher?

  Robots that are refusing to shut themselves off. I mean, this has gone from only two years ago, whenever when I first saw what ChatGPT was that people.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  So that one was programmed by Elon Musk.

• 29:50Bill Maher?

  Well, could have been to like the robots physically fighting back. You saw that video, right?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  I've seen some of that.

• 29:57Bill Maher?

  Okay. We had the story last week also of a robot who blackmailed its user because it didn't like something it was doing. I mean, I've seen, I don't have it because I won't put it in my phone because they don't know everything about me. It's bad enough the way the world is now. But I've seen people send me things like there were. Conversations with the thing about something and it's a it's a fucking prickly little bitch. It's not like it's Mr. Spock. It's not, you know, it it gets mad, it falls in love. It hallucinates. It's worse than a robot. A robot's supposed to be smart and logical and not fuck things up like a human.

• 30:39Bill Maher?

  This isn't like that. They need to like fucking shut it down and and go back to the drawing board. And make one that isn't based on the worst characteristics of humans. Of course, they got it from the internet. What is the internet? A bunch of fucking assholes that they built this thing about, around. And that's why it's acting like this.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:01Bill Maher?

  This is your big.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  They may argue, you know, they're not sentient beings, but it doesn't matter. They behave like them.

• 31:07Bill Maher?

  Listen, I heard the scariest thing today, and I'm sure it's true. Because the person who said it to me would be fired if it was a lie.

• 31:16Bill Maher?

  North Korea. You know what goes on in their phones now? They take a, it automatically takes a picture of you every five minutes and sends it to, they're a great one. Every five minutes to the home office? Can you imagine living under that sort of damocles?

• 31:33Speaker 02

  I was I was there this last year, I mean, not there, in Korea, but at the closest point. And I was sitting on a little rock wall.

• 31:41Bill Maher?

  You didn't swim over, Sean? That would be so you.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Swimable. It's it's short swim.

• 31:46Bill Maher?

  Why didn't you do it? That's that's, no, please, you need a caper on the resume. Swimming into North Korea, that is so you.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  I am, I doesn't, that doesn't, that doesn't get me tickled, that one.

• 32:00Bill Maher?

  Really? Couldn't have been worse than the El Chapo thing and the trunk. Come on, man.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  I could see this farmer across the water.

• 32:08Bill Maher?

  In North Korea?

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you just get transfixed because it's.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  I mean, in some way, it's just so such a sort of sad state of of of human.

• 32:20Bill Maher?

  The saddest.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Restriction.

• 32:21Bill Maher?

  The saddest.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  And.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  It it there's that myth, the Sisyphus myth, you know, but the that what he did is just made the rock his whole world. And it was in that that he was able to, you know, carry out his punishment of pushing the rock up the hill.

• 32:42Bill Maher?

  That's in the myth?

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that that that no, this is no, this is the the the Camus.

• 32:47Bill Maher?

  Right, it's someone's interpreted to, yeah. I mean, the myth is just, you know, if people don't remember their mythology, he's, I forget what he did to piss off the gods, but his punishment was to roll this rock up the hill. But it never gets there and it goes back and he's just always rolling a rock up the hill.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  It reminds me a little bit of those guys who voluntarily, maybe the most moving documentary I've ever seen was that one, The Rescue, about the those hobby divers, cave divers who went and got the kids in Thailand.

• 33:21Bill Maher?

  Chile, wasn't it?

• 33:22Speaker 02

  It's like cold.

• 33:24Bill Maher?

  No, no, the country, wasn't that in Chile?

• 33:27Speaker 02

  No, in Thailand, Chile, I think you might be talking about one of the mines or something.

• 33:30Bill Maher?

  Oh, that was the cave dudes.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:33Bill Maher?

  What's this one?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  These guys are cave divers.

• 33:36Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  And so.

• 33:37Bill Maher?

  So they were underwater?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Well, I think fourteen kids, something like that, that were on a hike up in this cave and the uh, monsoon rains came early.

• 33:45Bill Maher?

  Oh, I hate that.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  They even the American SEAL team, the SEAL teams from Thailand, nobody trains in what these guys do because there's no real cost benefit on it. So you have these sort of middle aged guys who meet up, there may be ten of them in the world that do it on this level. And they do these dives in, so you know, you've got a mile of stone above you. You got this much space. It's black, you can't see anything, cold water. And that's what they like exploring, they're down under the earth doing that. So they came in and rescued those kids in the most extraordinary way.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Uh, Ron Howard, I believe, made a feature about it, but I certainly prefer in order of things to watch the that first, why was I thinking of that, though?

• 34:39Bill Maher?

  I don't know, but like, why don't you make movies like that? Why don't, I mean, you have so many experiences and like, you know, stories about stuff that's dramatic.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  You know, I. Almost never took a camera anywhere with me until, of course, I made this documentary in Ukraine.

• 34:59Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  But.

• 35:01Bill Maher?

  My plugs, I forget. I'm so sorry. I blame the pot.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  It's been on YouTube for a long time now.

• 35:07Bill Maher?

  Yes, but tell them the title.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  It's called Superpower.

• 35:11Bill Maher?

  Superpower.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and and it was a Paramount Plus thing here. And they were Susan Ziransky was really helpful with that because she helped to get it. We all wanted it to be more accessible. And so they were willing to put it on YouTube in the United States.

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• 37:03Speaker 02

  So my first trip to Iraq during the war was in two thousand twenty three. And I took a camera.

• 37:10Bill Maher?

  Iraq, you mean Ukraine?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  No, Iraq. Now I'm talking about Iraq. I'm being, because you say about you should make documentaries like this. I'm answering that. I got.

• 37:19Bill Maher?

  What year are you in Iraq?

• 37:20Speaker 02

  This is two thousand and uh, three.

• 37:23Bill Maher?

  Three, okay. The beginning of the war.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And um, I got the greatest pictures. I brought this Nikon with a lens like this. I mean, I got the greatest pictures. And I came home and none of them developed. I'm terrible with this text.

• 37:40Bill Maher?

  Oof.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  And I, and that was the only other time because I, I sort of like dark sunglasses. I don't have the same situational awareness when I'm doing that. And if I'm looking for a picture versus just being there, then I miss it. I miss everything. So I'm usually, I, I just, yeah, I'm more interested in just.

• 38:02Bill Maher?

  I'm just, I'm making like a movie, you know, like with a script. It's not completely, like, like a doc- not a documentary, like, you know, sit in a room with writers and, and be like, you tell them the experiences and then they weave it into a story. I mean, it is happening. I mean, didn't you, I don't know if your girlfriend is still Ukrainian?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  No, Moldovan.

• 38:24Bill Maher?

  Moldovan? Were you formerly with someone?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 38:28Bill Maher?

  You're doing well in the area.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  I like worst.

• 38:31Bill Maher?

  So like, you've already got a, a love interest. I mean, you've got drama, you've got war. War is always good for, you know, like, why not make a movie out of it, like a movie movie? You know, I mean, there's plenty of movies like that that are, you know, historically based.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Well, I, I mean, I can steal from, you know, a lot of things that I, I witnessed or took part in, you know, in, in any kind of a movie, in little ways and things. I mean, you're not talking about making a movie about me.

• 39:01Bill Maher?

  I'm talking about you, like, like getting in a room with people, telling them your experiences, working on the script with them, and then directing. You've been, why don't you direct anymore? Why don't you direct this?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Well, I am. I just written.

• 39:14Bill Maher?

  Like I said, you're directing now.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've just written something that I'm gonna direct, uh, coming up. And, and, and it, and it has a lot of uh, um, currency in, in terms of what it's about.

• 39:26Bill Maher?

  What's it about?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Well, it, it's, it's, I, you know, I'll tell you offline, I don't, because I don't want to get ahead of anything, but I'll, I'll tell you offline.

• 39:36Bill Maher?

  Oh, I see offline. Okay. Well, you just reminded me. I see, I designed this so well that I forget myself. But I'm online. Again, I blame the pod. But that's right, we're online. So like the people, the people want to know about you, Sean, not just the politics. You're a beloved American icon, movie star. They want to know how you, are you happy?

• 40:01Speaker 02

  You can generalize the people. Without people, that includes people who are either disinterested or loathing.

• 40:07Bill Maher?

  Yes, many people hate you as many people hate me.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:11Bill Maher?

  But you know, to your credit, I mean, you would, you're not afraid to go anywhere. I mean, like you, like you know where you should go? CPAC.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  I would, if I had a reason to go, you know, the, I was making a documentary.

• 40:25Bill Maher?

  If they invited you?

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Well, I would, I think the first question I would ask is why am I, why am I being invited?

• 40:32Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's reasonable. If people know CPAC is the, every year, the big, big, giant, it's conservative.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Right, right wing.

• 40:43Bill Maher?

  Very right wing convention. They have like, you know, everybody who speaks there, Trump has spoken there, of course, he's usually the headliner. But you know, it's Marjorie Taylor Greene, it's, it's Cash Patel, it's Dan Bongino, it's a, it's a veritable Woodstock of the mentally impaired every year. And they go through the social conservative agenda and then break down into smaller groups for gay sex, as I recall. But if like somebody, like I would just love to see you. And you know, you could make a speech about some things that they would cheer. Because you're not Dr. Air. And there are people, Lindsey Graham is the leader, I think, of that wing of the Republican

• 41:28Bill Maher?

  Party, that definitely wants to sanction Russia. And wants to go back to, no, we're the Republicans, we hate Russia, remember? That wing exists, they're just cowed, they're just afraid because Trump will kill them.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, but it is hard to understand.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  How so many of them are so.

• 41:52Bill Maher?

  Cowardly?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that there's that there's no sense. I I I almost wonder sometimes if they aren't kind of like rapturous who just really feel that the the world's gonna end. And they're gonna.

• 42:04Bill Maher?

  Well, they are.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  And there won't there won't be a legacy.

• 42:06Bill Maher?

  Well, yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  To worry about.

• 42:08Bill Maher?

  Well, a lot of them are super duper Christians. We know that. And that's exactly what Christians believe, that they will be raptured.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:15Bill Maher?

  That's a part of it.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so if if they see their kids are gonna go up in flames anyway, then what difference does their reputation?

• 42:23Bill Maher?

  Well, you you don't you don't go up in flames when you're raptured.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:27Bill Maher?

  You go up to heaven.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, the world up in flames and you go, yeah, the special ones get to go to, yeah, right.

• 42:35Bill Maher?

  Well, don't don't say it like that. People will think we're skeptical of it.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you know, they they they put certain scientists forward to debunk the climate change. I I I'd like them to, you know, put some scientists forward on heaven and just give me a shred of evidence.

• 42:52Bill Maher?

  What were you were you were you? Did your family, uh, when you were a kid, make you do anything religious?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  My parents, my so my grandmother said to my mother and father when they married, because my father was Jewish and my mother Catholic. And she said, all all of them water don't mix. And I and they and then, you know, they were together very happily for forty one years until my father passed.

• 43:17Bill Maher?

  You know what?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  But they.

• 43:19Bill Maher?

  My parents were together forty one years, and my parents also are Jewish and Catholic, just in reverse.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 43:26Bill Maher?

  Forty one years, exactly.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  So my kids.

• 43:30Bill Maher?

  Back then.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  We we as kids, we weren't, um, my parents decided, first of all, my father was agnostic atheist somewhere in in in there.

• 43:41Bill Maher?

  And he told you that?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, he told his parents that. I mean, my.

• 43:44Bill Maher?

  But I mean, like, when when the kids asked questions, what did he say? Did he? He didn't sugarcoat it?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  No, and his grandfather, both grandfathers were rabbis, um, on on, you know, he was an only child and his parents were very tolerant of his, exploring other ways of thinking. And I just always felt like, look. You know, if you say there's a God, it's a punchline. You say there's not a God, it's a punchline. I'm okay with the mystery. I am loving this place. I love life and eat it up and, you know, it's a black abyss or it's, you know, I'd rather it not be, you know, some of the worst things that one can imagine. I'd prefer that not be the case, but, but all the more reason to have a good time now.

• 44:29Bill Maher?

  How's Haiti doing, by the way?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 44:32Bill Maher?

  Speaking of places, trouble.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  It is, I'm, I, I,

• 44:37Bill Maher?

  You spend so much time there.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  I still believe these Haitian people are gonna pull themselves out of it.

• 44:42Bill Maher?

  Did you see, you know who's going over there to kick ass and take names?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Ukele?

• 44:49Bill Maher?

  No, Eric Prince.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, I did see that.

• 44:52Bill Maher?

  What is it? What is it?

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Blackwater. Well, formerly Blackwater, yeah.

• 44:55Bill Maher?

  Blackwater. Always sounded to me like a Creedence Clearwater revival tribute band.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Contracts and, and, and I look, whatever the Haitians decide they want to do, they do in some way.

• 45:08Bill Maher?

  But what do you think of that? Blackwater was in Iraq, got in trouble for some shit that they did. Am I wrong?

• 45:16Speaker 02

  No, you're not wrong.

• 45:17Bill Maher?

  Right. Blackwater, which is, we're talking about private mercenaries. Which itself is an interesting concept that we, I don't think people realize, in Iraq and Afghanistan especially, we outsourced.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:29Bill Maher?

  A lot of shit.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Huge part of the Pentagon budget was on private contractors.

• 45:32Bill Maher?

  Private contractors. And sometimes they got, I remember they strung one up on the bridge in Fallujah.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, there'll be a couple of them.

• 45:40Bill Maher?

  And I think that prompted the battle for Fallujah.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:42Bill Maher?

  But that was a private contractor. That wasn't a military guy.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a lot of, a lot of private contractors were involved in Abu Ghraib also, in the interrations.

• 45:52Bill Maher?

  Absolutely, because the CIA didn't want to have their hands dirty.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  But I wouldn't use the term mercenary. Well, it depends on how, but there are within the ranks of any of these organizations, you know, people that were extraordinary soldiers and American soldiers sometime now in particular, and because Blackwater is principally American, but.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  But I've seen it with, you know, South African groups and South American groups also. You know, there are Colombian contractors working on the fight on behalf of Ukraine. There are people from all over, and God knows Wagner's all over Africa now.

• 46:33Bill Maher?

  Really, still?

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 46:35Bill Maher?

  Even after the plane thing?

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, he's gone, but it exists in full.

• 46:39Bill Maher?

  Well, they used to call it the Foreign Legion. Isn't that the same idea?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the French had the Foreign Legion, and then there are international legions.

• 46:48Bill Maher?

  Dude, wanna shoot some people legally? Come join us.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Those were government organizations. So these are now fully, you know, private companies, as is running our prison system.

• 47:00Bill Maher?

  Okay, they are private companies with tentacles very deep into the government. You think they're all ex-military.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  They are among those who are hired. For example, during Katrina.

• 47:10Bill Maher?

  Who's in Blackwater?

• 47:11Speaker 02

  I was, I slept on the floor next to forty Blackwater guys during Katrina because somebody from the tobacco industry, someone who was actually a lawyer fighting the tobacco industry, had contracted Blackwater to come in and protect his neighborhood and his office that he thought tobacco was gonna break into. So, in fact, Chris Kyle was on that floor.

• 47:33Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  And, you know, like I say, you have these guys, they've done their service, they have, many of them with very high skill sets, and now you're getting offered a hundred thousand dollars a year with no taxes, which beats anything anybody in the military was making, right?

• 47:52Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  So, and there is an application for some of this stuff sometimes. I think I might have been one of the first people writing about them, was DynCorp in Iraq, because this whole idea of this term contractors, and I asked one of them what they billed, and he said elections. Or whatever the client is asking. Now, are there bad actors in that? I can't speak for what Eric Prince is. He's, you know, I know he's a former SEAL himself. I don't really know enough about Blackwater.

• 48:26Bill Maher?

  I can't either, but I think his sister is Betsy DeVos.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right. Education, former Secretary of Education.

• 48:35Bill Maher?

  You know, this is what I hate about America, like, all the people on the left are like, "Oh, my God, you just said two names that are like on the list of people we hate forever." Betsy DeVos. And like, I don't know these people. Maybe they are. I'm sure I don't agree with them on a lot of things. But I don't know. And I don't fucking hate anybody because you say I'm supposed to hate them. I'd like to talk to Betsy DeVos. I have a lot of problems with the Education Department and education in general in this stupid fucking country. And Prince, you know, if you say he's a Navy SEAL, well, he probably did a lot more for this country than a lot of people have ever done, including me. I don't know. Is he also a hard right-winger? I'm sure he is. That's who they are.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  I think he's an entrepreneur, from what I can tell. He comes from money himself.

• 49:20Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. In fact, that was something he was, as I understand it, maybe a little shy about the guys knowing. And when he was going through.

• 49:31Bill Maher?

  Well, maybe that speaks better for him because it says, you know, he could be snorting coke off some hooker's ass in Monte Carlo, but he's instead shooting an Iraqi kid in the head.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  But I think that's, you gotta be careful, like, with the mercenary thing. Some of these coke in Monte Carlo guys are okay.

• 49:49Bill Maher?

  I agree. No, I mean, but it is interesting that they're going into Haiti because, I mean, let's be honest. I'm sure the Haitians are the most lovely people in the world, but they, for whatever reason, cannot get their shit together about having a stable country where the gangs don't rule. And sending in Eric Prince and his Blackwater credence.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on what they're like.

• 50:15Bill Maher?

  Tribute ban to fuck with them might be just what the doctor ordered. Is that wrong?

• 50:23Speaker 02

  It depends on the client and how much voice the client has. And the client ought to be the sovereign government. Or rather, in that case, because you don't have a trusted government.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  To have some consensus from civil society, from farming co-ops, from people across Haiti, a kind of convention to come up with what the rules of engagement would be, because these are principally, you know, special operators who, there's no question but that they can get it done, the job done, and with very few people.

• 51:01Bill Maher?

  Well, there's no question that they could rid Haiti of gangs?

• 51:05Speaker 02

  There's no question about that.

• 51:06Bill Maher?

  Why? That seems like a very hard job.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  No, look at El Salvador, look what he did, he's got an army of forty thousand.

• 51:14Bill Maher?

  Well, he did it, not Blackwater.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  No, I understand, Haiti is not the same, Haiti doesn't have a military.

• 51:21Bill Maher?

  But you're saying, as long as you suspend basic democratic norms, which is what you kind of have to do, that's what they did.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  That's why there's got to be some kind of consensus among Haitians about how it's going to be achieved also.

• 51:34Bill Maher?

  Well, you're gonna.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  These neighborhoods are packed, it's, you know, it's Gaza.

• 51:40Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  And how, what's the, how long a period of time, but I do think that there are versions of a kind of a surgical shock and awe, if the Haitians wanted it to happen, that the, that the gangs would back down, and there's a history of that, almost forgot to remind you about the other people backing down, which is the Russians in Afghanistan, they did run away from.

• 52:05Bill Maher?

  Yeah, they did, and that could, that could happen in Ukraine too. They could decide that this is bleeding us.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Too much.

• 52:13Bill Maher?

  Too much, and we, and, you know.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's just got to find a face saving out.

• 52:18Bill Maher?

  Right, no, that absolutely could be the end of this, which I would not have guessed even two weeks ago.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:25Bill Maher?

  And man, I know.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Oh, they've got a lot more sting coming, from what I understand, this is a lot of interesting.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Really innovative uh wargaming going on.

• 52:39Bill Maher?

  Oh, really more Mission Impossible stuff?

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think this is uh we're gonna we're gonna witness uh something that's going to um. Let's say that all the experts are gonna have to be replaced with experts.

• 52:51Bill Maher?

  Have you seen Mission Impossible?

• 52:52Speaker 02

  I haven't seen the new?

• 52:53Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 52:54Bill Maher?

  But you want to.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do.

• 52:56Bill Maher?

  Me too!

• 52:57Speaker 02

  He produces an excellent picture.

• 52:58Bill Maher?

  I love that you said that.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:00Bill Maher?

  Exactly, we're not snobs.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 53:03Bill Maher?

  We're we're.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise in Mission or or Maverick, I I'm I'm all in.

• 53:07Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Or anything.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  He's a very good actor, he's a very professional guy.

• 53:11Bill Maher?

  Yes, he's he's underrated as an actor.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's always too handsome for.

• 53:16Bill Maher?

  Well, it's not that he's too handsome, it's that he wants to do popcorn movies.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  And that, and he does a lot, he does a lot of that, but he does it better than anybody else does it.

• 53:24Bill Maher?

  He does, exactly, and the fact that he can be doing it in his sixties is so inspirational to us.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  It's weird because I I knew Tom well when we were young, we did our first movie of note together.

• 53:34Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  And Taps.

• 53:36Bill Maher?

  What is it?

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Taps.

• 53:37Bill Maher?

  Taps!

• 53:38Speaker 02

  And we were roommates for a while and um.

• 53:40Bill Maher?

  Who else was in?

• 53:41Speaker 02

  I said uh Timothy Hutton was me.

• 53:43Bill Maher?

  Timothy Hutton?

• 53:44Speaker 02

  George C. Scott.

• 53:45Bill Maher?

  George C. Scott, wow, that's really going back.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  He kept me from ever golfing. Cause he had a line in the movie, he says, I don't wanna die knocking the shit out of a little white ball with an alligator on my tit. And he was so compelling the way he said it, I always thought, if I golf, George C.'s gonna see me.

• 54:03Bill Maher?

  I always hated golf too. It was just like, I don't know, I I always felt like it was giving up. Like if I play, if I started to play golf, it was a way of saying, I give up. I had Barry Diller on my show Friday night and like he has a memoir and it's great. And I read Streisand's memoir and I read Woody Allen's memoir, they're both awesome. But all I could think of was, I am not gonna write a memoir, ever, because when you write the memoir, you're psychologically saying, it's over.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:36Bill Maher?

  I mean, I'm not gonna write part two from eighty to one sixty.

• 54:41Bill Maher?

  You know, part one is the interesting part.

• 54:46Bill Maher?

  So tell me you're with me on that.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:48Bill Maher?

  Don't write a memoir, because it always has to be about tomorrow, right?

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Well, you remember when I wrote that book? The, that came because I was getting offers to write a memoir. And I considered, you know, give you pretty good upfront money. Thought, I'll get some of this stuff on the record, sort of archived for my kids, as it were. And then I was sitting in Haiti. And there was some books laying around in this little hotel. And one of them was by someone I knew, and it was a memoir. And I started reading it. And I realized that, I mean, maybe if you're 85 or something like that, you just give up the whole goat.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  You're really willing to, you know, drop all the bullshit. Maybe, but when people are creating a narrative to make themselves look however they want to look, which includes, you know, romantically putting in some self-flagellation and things like that, but doing it just such a way to set up the next heroic deed. It just, I thought, I don't want to catch myself ever.

• 56:02Bill Maher?

  Okay, but put some meat on the bones of self-flagellation. I don't know, what are you talking about?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  You know, they'll immunize themselves against that this is just self-gloryfication. If they, you know, say they were weak in this way.

• 56:16Bill Maher?

  They humble brag.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  But it didn't really matter, because look what I did, you know.

• 56:19Bill Maher?

  You're saying they're, they humble brag.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, it's a trap of the memoir.

• 56:24Bill Maher?

  Yeah, of course.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. But the Irish are good, like the McCourt book. You know, the Irish can do it. Bono's book. And he bids himself up pretty, for real in it. And then all, but. But then says, so what? Because at the end, it doesn't matter what I say. It matters, you know, what I do. And you'll look at it and you'll, it'll be what it is.

• 56:51Bill Maher?

  I, you know, I love, I love him.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 56:55Bill Maher?

  I, I was at the Polo Lounge, runs with Michael Moore, and he was at another table. And I didn't even know he was there. And the waiter came over and gave us this, like, he had done a drawing of us and wrote on it, you know, like two great storytellers or something. And it's one of the, I treasure it, you know. I, I said I'd give it to Mike and never did.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  He's incredibly generous, um, well, he gives them himself.

• 57:21Bill Maher?

  But he's, what I always loved about him was that he wasn't afraid to be a clown. Like, I remember him saying, um, when ISIS was on the rise, you know, I know people like me who mentioned things like a caliphate were crazy. And then they actually tried to have a caliphate. Okay, ah, there's that. But, uh, and he said, you know, we should send comedians over there.

• 57:48Bill Maher?

  Of course, you know, I said, well, let's send rock stars first. Why, why, right away with the comedians? Why do we always have to open for you? You go, see how it goes with ISIS. Because I think they're gonna love you.

• 58:02Bill Maher?

  And, you know, he said that in front of Congress at a testimony. And he, and he, and they pressed the money. He said, I'm not kidding, you know, the, the, and, uh, yeah, and, and I kind of felt like he knew as he was saying it, it was stupid. But he's like, I'm a musician. I can get away with stupid. I just can. And I'm gonna make a bigger point. And he must have known that Charlie Chaplin made a movie about Hitler where he played Hitler, the great dictator, right? 1940?

• 58:34Speaker 02

  One of the greatest speeches ever made by. A certainly by a fictional politician, probably one of the great speeches ever made by a politician.

• 58:42Bill Maher?

  I know what you're talking about. If people don't remember the movie, because it's nineteen forty. Hitler was on the rise, but the war hadn't brought us in yet. It was starting in Europe. I mean, it was came out in nineteen forty. So the the war started in September of thirty nine. Maybe when they shot this movie, that'd be interesting question. Was World War Two started?

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, yeah. In fact.

• 59:06Bill Maher?

  Because Hitler was certainly famous enough to be.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  And you know that the original bone that Charlie Chaplin had to pick with Hitler.

• 59:14Bill Maher?

  They were born the same year.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Hitler stole his mustache.

• 59:18Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yep. And ruined it for the rest of us.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Because he was a fan.

• 59:25Bill Maher?

  Is that true?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a fan of Chaplin and Chaplin. What a beautiful, what an incredible.

• 59:33Bill Maher?

  Now, I know what, okay, so this is interesting. You mentioned that because you and I don't have exactly the same politics.

• 59:42Bill Maher?

  People should watch this speech. It is amazing. But anyway, most of the movie Chaplin is.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Especially now AI, the robot man, all of what he, I mean, it's it's as if.

• 59:53Bill Maher?

  Well, it's it's a it's a it's a socialist cry. Okay, I now I don't remember.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  No, it's a humanist cry. It's not a socialist cry.

• 1:00:03Bill Maher?

  You know what? I haven't seen it in years. Let me tell people what it is. Most of the movie, he plays Hitler, basically. I mean, it's funny.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  The great dictator.

• 1:00:12Bill Maher?

  The great scene where he's like lying on his back and he's kicking a ball, which is the globe of the world, but it's a balloon up in the air. I mean, he's that much in charge, but he also plays this other part where he's the guy who makes the speech at the end, and it's it's like a ten minute pay on to like the world that could be if we were all, if the workers would unite and all that kind of stuff. Now, again, I haven't seen it in years. My memory of it is that it was a little too socialist for my taste.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  See it again.

• 1:00:41Bill Maher?

  It was.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  See it again and text me.

• 1:00:43Bill Maher?

  I will. I absolutely will.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  But everybody should see that.

• 1:00:46Bill Maher?

  And you should see it just for the.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  I take it as a purely humanist and so prescient. I mean.

• 1:00:52Bill Maher?

  Maybe it is.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  It's so.

• 1:00:53Bill Maher?

  Maybe.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Right now.

• 1:00:54Bill Maher?

  Maybe that is exactly what it is. But it's certainly ideal.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  They can just Youtube the speech.

• 1:01:02Bill Maher?

  Yes, it's famous.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  Available.

• 1:01:05Bill Maher?

  It's certainly idealistic, though. Right? I mean, it's utopian.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Yes, but not sort of not unlike Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. Where if only, you know, and I agree with you there in the sense that, you know, Jose Pepe Mujica, the president, former president of Uruguay, who was the most compelling head of state, the most incredible man.

• 1:01:36Bill Maher?

  Uruguay? Never heard of this dude.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  There's a thing called.

• 1:01:41Bill Maher?

  When?

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  So he died a few weeks ago. But he was, I got to know him through working on behalf of Haiti. You have partnership with Uruguay.

• 1:01:50Bill Maher?

  You have every South American leader on speed dial. I know you do.

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  But what he said.

• 1:01:55Bill Maher?

  I don't know why you do.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  One of the things he says in this, the Human Project is portraits of different people from different walks of life, in his case, a former head of state or head president at the time. And he is interviewed for about 20 minutes. And these are great, it's a great show, The Human Project. And Mujica is talking at one point about this idea that, you know, we have it drummed into us worldwide, that if we don't study history, it's bound to repeat itself. And he doesn't believe that because, and he really put the words to something that I've always felt.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  He says that, he says in the first person, "I don't idealize human beings like this. We are the, we will stub our toe on the same pebble 30 times. We will, we only ultimately learn anything from our own experience. And we are bound to repeat it. And then we can process what we repeated by looking back. That's the value of history." And that, and I think that that's true. And, and so.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  We will repeat it. And this is what's sort of frightening and what that denial thing in us. You know, even friends of ours.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  There were these moments I've had like this where, you know, you just feel that this moment is the, you know, thing screaming that this is the moment. Other times you say it's going to heal. It's going to be OK. And somewhere in between is, we don't know. But we have to be proactive about it, right? Whether it's climate or it's. And Mohica really talks about it with such great articulation. It's, he was like a poet of political thought.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  And so is it too socialist, the Charlie Chaplin speech? Or is it at the heart of something? That is an ideal that we should not necessarily associate ourselves with other than to admire and work towards it? Not one that we have?

• 1:04:26Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  And yes, so if you let the practical get involved in a lot of things that people would call socialist and things like that. I am practical. I am practical enough to know that I believe we are not past the moment where we need to manufacture weapons. Well, that's not idealistic.

• 1:04:45Bill Maher?

  You're right.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Right? And we need militaries and we need strong militaries. That's not idealistic.

• 1:04:52Bill Maher?

  No, that's practical. That's good.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  But should we not do our little bit each generation? To move towards the possibility of, you know, one day evolving to the point where we can embrace it?

• 1:05:03Bill Maher?

  Yes, I'm not going to argue with you about that at all. What I am going to ask you about, though, is, I mean, Uruguay, I feel like that one slipped off my radar. And I feel like among most people you're going to talk to, I do have a knowledge of what's going on around the world. But that one, Uruguay?

• 1:05:26Bill Maher?

  I gotta say, they need a better publicist. They have a low profile. We're talking about the country wedged between the giants of Argentina and Brazil.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:05:35Bill Maher?

  Montevideo, I believe is the capital.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  And they've got that beautiful resort beach that all the wealthy Argentinians go to.

• 1:05:41Bill Maher?

  I'm sure they do, and I'm sure you had a girlfriend there in 1991.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  I was never there. I was only in Montevideo. I was only in the city.

• 1:05:46Bill Maher?

  Oh, okay. All right. Well, I'm sure you will have a girlfriend there.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I'm by Moldova.

• 1:05:52Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, Moldova. Moldova, the last country on earth. Drawing a nub a girlfriend from. That's why she's the last one, because Moldova is literally the last. After that, it's just like the Vayana Wives.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  It's very famous for, um...

• 1:06:08Bill Maher?

  It's just an island in the Pacific that's disappearing. What?

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  It's very famous for wine drinkers. It has a...

• 1:06:14Bill Maher?

  Moldova?

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it has a huge catacombs.

• 1:06:18Bill Maher?

  Isn't Moldova really Romania?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  No, Moldova's Moldova, but they speak Romania.

• 1:06:24Bill Maher?

  Okay, but like, it's just sort of like the eastern sliver of Romania, is it not? Is it, if it's Romanian people and they speak Romanian, I mean, it's like if California was its own country and many people think it is.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Or Canada was ours.

• 1:06:42Bill Maher?

  Yeah. You didn't see that coming, you gotta admit that. Did you?

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Not...

• 1:06:47Bill Maher?

  With Trump?

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Only, and I said, and I still do say to myself aloud every day, you know, whatever you don't expect, it's happening.

• 1:06:57Bill Maher?

  But you do, I hope, think I did the right thing to have dinner with him.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  I think having dinner with him was absolutely, you're so smart. You, you, you, you go there and, and look, it's, it's, this is the president of the United States. Whether we like it or not, doesn't matter. And, um...

• 1:07:14Bill Maher?

  And we have no power.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  And I think there's a lot of reasons. I was speculating that, that, you know, that would be good for you to do that. Um, I, I, I think that when you talked about it on the show...

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  That I would have preferred, that I saw his mission or his will to have the dinner. I wish I would have seen it as less successful.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Because you're so smart on.

• 1:07:41Bill Maher?

  Well, it was less successful because I never stopped saying all the things I've always said about him. It would have been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Well, maybe.

• 1:07:56Bill Maher?

  So it wasn't successful.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Maybe more brevity. He, you know what, he treated me fine, that's that, and now on. Maybe more, maybe I would have done some editing. But I, I, listen, I.

• 1:08:07Bill Maher?

  No, you're just being a book.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  The only reason I wouldn't, I have not been invited. The only reason I would not accept an invitation is because I see, I see no, um.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  So it's a long flight. I see no.

• 1:08:24Bill Maher?

  Really, you'll meet with fucking Castro and Hugo Chavez, but not the President of the United States?

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I saw good results come out of some of those things in terms of agendas that I had. I don't, I don't think that there's anything that, that I would, um. I just personally wouldn't trust anything that was said in the room, including the personality.

• 1:08:45Bill Maher?

  It's not a, it's not a, it's not a matter of, matter of trusting it. It's a matter of seeing it, a matter of experiencing, a matter of knowing it.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 1:08:54Bill Maher?

  It's like saying, I don't want this, uh, medical test because I, you know, I don't want to know. I want to know.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, fair enough.

• 1:09:01Bill Maher?

  Okay, so, yeah, I mean.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  I have some good friends that, you know, are.

• 1:09:06Bill Maher?

  I said this many times within the piece when I did it, that like, it's up to, I'm just giving you the report. It's up to you to make the decision. Who do you think is the real guy? I'm telling you, there's a very different guy behind closed doors in a different setting. Now, what you.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Or capable of, of, of performatively seeing that, yeah.

• 1:09:26Bill Maher?

  Well, one of the, either, well, you know, my, my friends who believe in astrology would say, uh, he's a Gemini. Of course, there's two of them.

• 1:09:39Bill Maher?

  Okay, that's one way to look at it. Other people will say, well, you know, the, the, the real guy is the guy you met and he's playing this clown on TV. And other people will say the, the reverse, you know, he's a, well, I mean, it seems harder to do the reverse. I mean. Can you really pretend to be sane?

• 1:10:00Bill Maher?

  You can pretend to be insane. I think it's harder to pretend to be sane. To be measured and like all the things I said, which is just what happened. So again, there's three parts of this. Would you go to the dinner? I think you're crazy not to. Not to want to see up close the person who's this important in everybody's lives for the last decade.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  No, I completely understand that.

• 1:10:21Bill Maher?

  Two, are you going to lie about it? I'm sorry, I'm not a liar. I don't lie. So I told the truth. And then three, do I go back to doing what I always did? Yes, I did.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you could have told more truth or you could have told less truth.

• 1:10:36Bill Maher?

  I told a lot of truth. I told everything.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  I would have enjoyed a little more brevity on that. But I absolutely understand the dinner.

• 1:10:42Bill Maher?

  But that's just emotional. You were just triggered.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  It's possible. It's possible. I, it's true that for some reason, this, this particular president triggers me rather often.

• 1:10:54Bill Maher?

  Exactly. He makes people crazy. He's not making me crazy. But, so you really wouldn't go?

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  No, I don't. I'm not saying I, I think, I think I wouldn't because, let me put it this way. What I know I would not do.

• 1:11:07Bill Maher?

  And especially, he's very.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  I would not, I would not go, let's say, so for example, when I, we talk about this very different president of Uruguay.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  I, I, you know, there were things that Uruguay had models of in development that could be very helpful to Haiti. And I went to see if we could get some training from them and so on and so forth. Uh, which we did. And whereas if I were, let's say, representing a cause celebre, uh, say it was Ukraine, say it was whatever it was. I would not fool myself that there was any, I was going to get anywhere with him. I know that I wouldn't. I know that I would have no influence.

• 1:11:46Bill Maher?

  Bad attitude. You don't know that. You don't know anything. He's a guy who frequently seems to go by what the last thing he heard was. He's very, it's everything with, I'll tell you this about Donald Trump and you don't know it because you don't go to dinners. It's all about.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  I didn't go to dinner with President Trump.

• 1:12:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you should. It's all about personal relationships.

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  I've not been invited.

• 1:12:08Bill Maher?

  I, I, okay, I will get you an invite. He's a star fucker in a way. I bet you he would like to meet you. And you would have a.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, he'll see the show. He says, if I see him, they're gonna call me a star fucker.

• 1:12:17Bill Maher?

  I don't think he watches the podcast. He does watch the show.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  He wa, he.

• 1:12:21Bill Maher?

  He's very, he's a faithful, he's a faithful viewer.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  He's got people to do his thing. You know, Dan Borzino be knocking on your door if you didn't go to dinner.

• 1:12:31Bill Maher?

  That's not why I did it.

• 1:12:34Bill Maher?

  And it could work out the other way. You don't know. He's very unpredictable. And, you know,

• 1:12:43Bill Maher?

  talking about, you know, health and well-being and what we were talking about before, we're like the, you realize that we're kind of a pioneer generation as far as the first people around our age who actually have it in our head, wait, they could solve the mortality thing before we get there. That's not something that even existed in my father or mother's mind. They just knew they were gonna die and nobody even suggested that it wasn't, there was no out.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:17Bill Maher?

  But you know that you and I are thinking, come on, come on, guys.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  I, I, I do think it would be great, um.

• 1:13:26Bill Maher?

  No? You're not thinking that?

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  If, if I don't have to pay the price for smoking all my life. Because we come up with something great that way. But the idea of not passing and getting out of the way is not a good one to me. I think that I wanna live and have a great life and, and, and long as I can. But, and, you know, a natural, I don't want it to go outside of what, what I am familiar with in terms of a, of a natural lifetime.

• 1:13:54Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I, I don't agree with that because it seems.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  You don't know how interesting it might be on the other side.

• 1:14:01Bill Maher?

  The other side? Yeah, I mean, okay, the other side. What do you think's on the other side?

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Not a clue. Could be a black abyss, could.

• 1:14:09Bill Maher?

  Right, could be. That's my issue, black abyss. I mean, yeah, I don't know.

• 1:14:16Bill Maher?

  I'm gonna see Black Abyss tomorrow night at the Roxy. Would you like to come?

• 1:14:21Bill Maher?

  But, okay, here's what I think is the great tragedy of dying. You spend all this time, like, making your brain better.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:30Bill Maher?

  Like, we laugh at kids or young adults who make fun of us because we're older and really, I mean, it's just, it's such a silly fleck when they do that. Because if they only knew, and when they get to our age, they'll feel the same way. That, you know, okay, we're not as cute as we used to be, but we just know so much more than you do. Because we spent so much more days learning. You learn something every day. And so we get to this point where our brain is this way more evolved than it was at thirty. I know yours is.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  Well, I know yours is. My kids are gonna, my kids know me through my dad jokes. Growing up, you know, I'm still, I lost all credibility.

• 1:15:13Bill Maher?

  You accumulated all this wisdom and then it dies. That's this tragedy. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:20Bill Maher?

  Like, I'm dying at the top of my game mentally.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Bill Maher?

  Not the top of my game physically, probably. I guess I get that.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Well, but also, but I don't know if you've experienced it this way, but also, why did I wait to have a sense of general, and I'm not talking about without a clear eye for the anguish in the world, but on the micro, a peace, like, I wake up every day in this

• 1:15:45Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  beautiful gift we've been given.

• 1:15:47Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  And, and it's, and I thought, why did I wait so long for that? Yeah, fuck it. Let's go. Just do it.

• 1:15:53Bill Maher?

  And that's what I mean. That brain is the one that should be preserved. Like, if you killed me at thirty, no big loss. You're just, you're just taking out an idiot.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  It's funny, going back to Mojica, he said, you know, on his last day.

• 1:16:08Bill Maher?

  Mojica, this guy.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  When he goes, when he goes out, when he goes out, he wants to be like that guy who comes into a bar, says to the bartender, this one's on me.

• 1:16:23Bill Maher?

  Ah, that Mojica. On the Navajo thing, I have played many Indian casinos, including the Mojican Sun.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna say... I went back to like Dunsmoke and I saw you playing an Indian in my head and you said I was playing Indian casinos. I think you couldn't do that today.

• 1:16:39Bill Maher?

  Why don't you do a Western?

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  It'd be great to do a Western.

• 1:16:42Bill Maher?

  Why don't you do a fucking Western?

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  It'd be great to do a Western.

• 1:16:44Bill Maher?

  It would be.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Bill Maher?

  Westerns are great.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Bill Maher?

  I mean, I just watched Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West."

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Bill Maher?

  You know it?

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:16:54Bill Maher?

  What a, what a work.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Well, he was a slammin' director. I mean, he was so inventive and, you know, even... And the people that, like, Ennio Morricone, who wrote, for me, what the most...

• 1:17:07Bill Maher?

  The score, right?

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he did it in such an eccentric way that it had never been done in a Western before. All of those things were revolutionary. Morricone wrote the, there's a piece of Gabriel's Oboe that, other than that, I think the most beautiful piece of music.

• 1:17:22Bill Maher?

  The score for "Once Upon a Time in America," his other one.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was great.

• 1:17:28Bill Maher?

  All right, thank you for coming.

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  You bet, and thank you.

• 1:17:35Bill Maher?

  You're wearing a patched up sneaker?

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  Clean.

• 1:17:38Bill Maher?

  You got three of them.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  These are out of the wash, but all my stuff from, I do a lot of woodwork and epoxy work.

• 1:17:43Bill Maher?

  You got like three Oscars. It's so un...

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  Am I helping you or are you helping me?

• 1:17:47Bill Maher?

  No, no.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

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