Jocko Underground: How Movies Might Influence You. Slackers! Being A Team Player Is Hard, but Worth It.

Movies and their influence. Dealing with Slackers on your team. Being a team player. Tips on learning guitar. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 37. Echo Charles is sitting here with me, kinda chuckling. What's the chuckle for?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  You're the man.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  That's not an accurate answer, first of all. What are you chuckling at?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Because, right, you're fired up today and I'm feeling your energy and it's good, man. Very happy. It's making me very happy.

• 0:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so, topic today, there's a question that I get asked. There's a, there's, first of all, everybody always wants to know the one thing, right? I get asked that question a lot. Hey, if there's one thing that you could have known, and I get it, I get, I shouldn't have done the the condescending voice, or the mimicking voice, because it's a legitimate question. Hey, if there's one thing that you would have known when you were in the SEAL Teams, if there's one thing you knew when you started your business, if there's one, so there's always those kind of questions. If there's one book you could recommend, there's those questions. Is there one piece of advice that you, right, so there's all these questions, right? And I usually try and

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  sort of gently say, well, you know, I feel like I evolved over time and I didn't just have a eureka moment. And the eureka moments that I have had, I put them into the book so you can read, especially Leadership Strategy and Tactics, that's got some eureka moments in it, right? Learn how to detach, learn the importance of humility, right? So those are things that I remember happening. Then you get, but alongside the book one, occasionally, there's one that comes up. I didn't feel like this was a Jocko Podcast level question, but that's what this podcast is for. Best movie of all time. What's your favorite movie of all time? Again, to me,

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  that's a tough question, because there's so many different categories of movies. Okay, so what are your top five movies of all time? Well, again, now we're, how are we rating this? So what I framed this topic for myself, in a different way, and the question is, or the statement is, what movies have I watched more than 10 times?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  So that was my thought. And then it kind of a little bit of, I'm not going to go too far into it, but like, why? Why is that movie particular? And then also, I have to make a caveat here that

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  I literally just thought of the first 10 that came to my mind and there's more than this. And I know I'm probably missing some of my favorites or whatever, but that's what I thought. And then I thought to organize them, I kind of, well, as I did it, I was naturally, I just naturally fell into going in my past and thinking, what movies in my life have I watched more than 10 times in chronological order? So number one, coming out of the gate, Jaws.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep, Jaws, we used to watch Jaws. So we, we had a videotape machine back in the day. Sure. Betamax or VHS? VHS. My dad started this company or attempted to start this company called Video Inventory Protection, VIP. Not a bad little branding move there, pops.

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  So he, in order to make this happen, it was, the idea was he would go into your house and video things. And then if your house burned down, you go, hey, I got this videotape in my, you know, my safety deposit box at the bank. We're good. That was his idea. Business never did anything. It was a flop failure.

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  But, but he did buy a camera, a video camera and a video cassette recorder, which by the way, was two different items.

• 3:49Jocko Willink?

  The video recorder was the size of two or no, maybe three shoeboxes.

• 3:58Jocko Willink?

  Maybe four shoeboxes. It was big. You, and then it had a big, thick cable that was as bigger, bigger around, as big around as your thumb. And the cable went to the camera, which was a big giant camera. And the freaking pictures were awful and grainy and it sucked. But we did get this video cassette recorder and you could record off the TV with it. So at some point in my life, somebody, we, we recorded the movie Jaws off of TV.

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  Cause we didn't have cable. So it was, you know, commercials and all, right?

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  And we just recorded, it was also rated G. So there was a bunch of parts that were missing, which I didn't find out until later in life. Wait, what was rated G? They they had adjusted it for TV. Oh, PG then? Like no swears, no nudity, because there's a couple nude scenes or barely nude scenes or whatever. Some of the violence had been edited out. But we had recorded the movie Jaws and we watched it freaking all the time. The other thing too is that's that might have been the only movie that we had. Maybe we had. No, I don't think we had any other movies recorded. So that was it. It's like you had one record. What are you gonna play? You're gonna play that one record?

• 5:26Jocko Willink?

  So by default, we kind of ended up just going deep with Jaws. Now, it's an awesome movie. I'm from New England. It's got a bunch of hits, a bunch of, uh, what is it? Even when I was a kid, you know, you're like, oh, this is like my people, right? You know? Quint. Yep. So that was number one. I remember watching Jaws. We've watched Jaws countless times. Man, next up, Platoon.

• 5:51Jocko Willink?

  Platoon, like, what am I gonna say? When that came out, you know, I wanted to be a commando. Out comes a movie, raw, crazy. And we ended up at some point, I don't think we, I didn't get the video of that early, but eventually, once I got older and had my own video cassette recorder and stuff and had a, you've gone and buy a video from a store. Platoon. And actually, I think I may have confused chronologically, but Apocalypse Now. That one I know I had a recording of from the TV or from somewhere. I think it was from the TV. Bad recording. You know, those lines going across it sometime, not all the time, but sometimes.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  That's the tracking line? Yeah, the tracking lines and all that stuff. But Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Now may have been, actually, I think that predated me watching Platoon over and over again, Apocalypse Now. In fact, I know it did. Sort of reverse those two. So Apocalypse Now was probably the first war movie. And again, here I am, young kid, wants to be a commando. Here we go. Riverboats, brown water navy, commando, upstream, secret mission, CIA. I mean, this is just a dream come true. And what's funny about these movies, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, that they were making these, these are allegedly anti-war movies. I've never met a friend of mine that ever thought any of those movies were anti-war.

• 7:18Jocko Willink?

  As far as we were concerned, like those are why we're joining. Whenever I, whenever I hear interviews with some of those people, the Hollywood people that are talk about the movie that they made or the movie that they're in and it was this anti-war thing. I was like, man, I guess I wasn't picking up on that. Cause when I saw Apocalypse Now, are you kidding me? I wanted to rock and roll. Platoon? You watch that now, you think, oh my gosh, that's awful. When you're 14 or whatever, this is it. This is it. I didn't put it on the list, but Deer Hunter is another one. The reason I think of that, cause Deer Hunter is like a psychologically scarring movie, awful movie. I loved that movie. I thought that was a dream life.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  I never heard of Deer Hunter.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh man, it's a freaking good movie, man. Did he mouth? Did he mouth?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  What was the one with Chuck Norris?

• 8:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I never got into those movies. I never got into those movies. The, the same action movies that you like right now that I don't like, I didn't like them back then.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  That's weird.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I liked the raw, emotional, crazy psycho war movies like Deer Hunter. You've never seen Deer Hunter? Psychologically scarring. And when I watched it, I was like, that's what I want to do.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  So we got that going for us. That, and that's, you know, I'm starting to go on a tangent here, but Taxi Driver, same thing. You ever seen Taxi Driver? Yeah. So Taxi Driver, not, didn't really make my list here, but that movie. I was intrigued by that. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacoodunderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you. More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.