Lights, Cameras, and Conspiracies – A Deep Dive into Filmmaking and Faith (with RJ Moeller)

In this episode of Who Gave Jeff Allen a Podcast?, Jeff Allen and co-host Carollynn Xavier sit down with writer, producer, and storyteller RJ Moeller to talk about the wild world of filmmaking, faith, and the unexpected paths life takes us on.

RJ shares his journey from Hollywood to Nashville, the challenges of independent film production, and the power of storytelling in shifting culture. They dive into his latest projects with Angel Studios, including Live Not By Lies, a gripping documentary exploring the dangers of totalitarianism through the stories of those who survived it.

🎙️ Topics Covered:
✅ The entertainment industry’s shake-up and what it means for faith-based content
✅ The reality of producing independent films outside Hollywood
✅ The journey of Live Not By Lies and why its message is so timely
✅ How storytelling is changing in comedy, faith, and politics
✅ Deep thoughts on red dye, Twizzlers, and Chinese food cravings

Jeff, Carollynn, and RJ keep the conversation hilarious, insightful, and a little chaotic, covering everything from film industry politics to dodging Hollywood’s nonsense and even a few conspiracy theories.

Join us for Jeff Allen’s Celebrity Golf Classic, a two-day event packed with comedy, camaraderie, and a whole lot of competition, all for a great cause. June 29th - 30th at Westhaven Golf Club

Your ticket includes: Dinner reception + comedy show and full tournament play. Open to golfers of all skill levels and ages.

Bring your swing, your sense of humor, and your heart for a good cause.

To find out more, head over to jeffallencomedy.com

Transcript

00:00:33:27 - 00:00:52:10
Speaker 1
We are lucky today. I have another friend of mine, in town here. I met RJ. When did I meet you, RJ well, let me just tell you a little bit about RJ Miller. He's a writer. Producer, again, and Los Angeles trans, but. But through Chicago, that was a connection we had. He's a bears fan.

00:00:53:01 - 00:00:54:06
Speaker 1
As much as you can.

00:00:54:13 - 00:00:55:21
Speaker 3
Star bears.

00:00:55:23 - 00:01:19:19
Speaker 1
As much as you can, possibly without crying. Talk about the bears. But RJ is a writer. Producer. Yeah, from how he came in from Los Angeles to Nashville. And we met when you. You read my book. And, reached out to, management and wanted to do a project. We'll talk about that later. But you have, anyway, RJ Miller, let's just say hello and,

00:01:19:22 - 00:01:22:07
Speaker 2
Hi, guys. Hi. To be here. Yeah.

00:01:22:09 - 00:01:24:23
Speaker 3
We've never met, so I'm excited about this.

00:01:24:23 - 00:01:30:12
Speaker 2
Yes, I'm excited as well. And, I, named podcast is a pretty good.

00:01:30:15 - 00:01:31:01
Speaker 3
You feel good about.

00:01:31:02 - 00:01:34:05
Speaker 2
Pretty good name. Yeah. Is that. Oh, like that just came in.

00:01:34:05 - 00:01:38:20
Speaker 1
That's on fire. That's. I have no idea how this brain is. Synapses right.

00:01:38:21 - 00:01:45:03
Speaker 2
Now. That's good. I thought that you would have. I would have thought that's the actual name of the podcast. The way you sold that. That was good. Well, I like it.

00:01:45:06 - 00:01:50:06
Speaker 1
I'm such a whore. I'll probably take it and keep it then. You're know, just because of one person said, I like that.

00:01:50:09 - 00:01:51:20
Speaker 3
He's ordering merch right now.

00:01:51:23 - 00:02:11:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think the the unnamed. So anyway, you have multiple. I can't even tell you how many irons in the fire you got going on. You are a mover and shaker in Nashville. You have made your mark. But one of the things that we, the first one you got is releasing on Angel Studios, right?

00:02:11:18 - 00:02:13:14
Speaker 1
Yes. Live not buy lies.

00:02:13:15 - 00:02:14:02
Speaker 2
Yes.

00:02:14:02 - 00:02:16:03
Speaker 1
Tell us what that one is about. Yeah.

00:02:16:03 - 00:02:23:22
Speaker 2
So we do a lot. I have a producing partner as well that, you know, Dave Jacobson, we work on a lot of stuff together.

00:02:23:25 - 00:02:26:14
Speaker 1
So you say I've never met Dave. Yeah.

00:02:26:17 - 00:02:28:21
Speaker 2
Exactly. He's lurking in the shadows.

00:02:28:23 - 00:02:30:22
Speaker 1
This imaginary friend that you have.

00:02:30:23 - 00:02:52:17
Speaker 2
Well, it's the world of being an independent film producer. Is a very lonely one. If you don't have someone and you know, you can't find that that person who's simpatico with you values wise, project wise, but then you also want to find someone who can wear different hats than you, right? You don't want to be doing the same thing, so you end up partners.

00:02:52:17 - 00:03:13:08
Speaker 2
We talk every day, Dave and I, but, we're doing such different things that you're, like, moving in these different circles where at a certain point we're like, we need to hire more people so we can hang out with him more because he's wearing so many hats. I'm wearing so many hats. But yeah, we started a, our own production company back in LA, moved our families here a few years ago.

00:03:13:15 - 00:03:14:18
Speaker 1
And.

00:03:14:21 - 00:03:28:21
Speaker 2
You know, again, being an independent film producer means you don't have anybody covering your nut each month, right? It's just you. And, as as our friend Adam Corolla would say, you build your own pirate ship and you go sailing on the high seas.

00:03:28:21 - 00:03:31:14
Speaker 1
That's one of the many hats is the fundraising head. Yeah.

00:03:31:15 - 00:04:03:09
Speaker 2
So you're raising money. You're you're reading scripts. We do scripted and unscripted. You're writing scripts. But, that's all leading back to your question, which our current project with Angel Studios, it's called Live Not Buy Lies, documentary series chronicling people of faith and conscience who survived Russian communism in the 20th century and telling their stories, but also kind of their warnings to the west of, what they see in our culture that they, are telling us we might want to avert, the direction we're heading.

00:04:03:13 - 00:04:26:23
Speaker 2
So that's a documentary series. Angel Studios is a fun partner on that, because that's, as you can tell by the premise of the project, Netflix isn't banging down our door to get that thing made right. But so there's it's like anything else, there's in in chaos. There's opportunities, there's challenges. And the chaos right now is the entertainment industry.

00:04:26:27 - 00:04:40:06
Speaker 2
You know, film, traditional film and TV is crumbling in front of our very eyes for a lot of reasons. And we don't have to dissect that. But they're spending way too much money recklessly, and they're making stuff that a lot of people don't want to watch. Right? So that's why we.

00:04:40:06 - 00:04:44:25
Speaker 1
And 80% of them are on this tape. Yes. A lot of them.

00:04:44:28 - 00:04:46:00
Speaker 2
A lot of them are on lists.

00:04:46:00 - 00:04:49:09
Speaker 1
Studios are waiting for that moral hammer to drop.

00:04:49:16 - 00:04:53:10
Speaker 2
A lot of them are on various lists that they're hoping never, emerge.

00:04:53:10 - 00:04:53:18
Speaker 1
That.

00:04:53:19 - 00:05:17:07
Speaker 2
Steven and otherwise. So, yeah, we have these projects, Dave and I. And through that, you end up working with a ton of great people. You got to know agents, managers, money folks to invest in it. You need everybody from the, you know, catering to director of photography. You got to know everybody. And that's why, as Jeff says, you know, we do have a lot of irons in the fire.

00:05:17:07 - 00:05:37:07
Speaker 2
You're constantly building this, pushing that boulder up a hill, pushing that boulder up a hill. But how we met really was through Angel Studios, because we're doing this documentary series that Dave and I are producing. A friend of our friend of ours named Isaiah Smallman is directing it. He's tremendous. You should go check it out. Angel.com. You can, you know, find out more about it there.

00:05:37:09 - 00:05:58:03
Speaker 2
But we met because and you if you want to share some of that of how it happened. But on our end we had senior stuff on the drybar comedy. Folks at Angel Studios had let us know that you're local here. And there was a book out and we got connected to Lenny, your manager, and kind of things went from there.

00:05:58:03 - 00:06:11:28
Speaker 2
So we're always we wear a lot of different hats, but it's also like, I'm have enough energy and I'm two A.D.D.. I couldn't do one thing at a time. It's fun to have a bunch of different things, and it is fun to push those boulders uphills.

00:06:11:29 - 00:06:16:08
Speaker 1
Carolyn, are you beginning to see a pattern with our guests? The A.D.D. connection?

00:06:16:08 - 00:06:18:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah yeah, all of us.

00:06:18:08 - 00:06:19:26
Speaker 1
All of us. Yeah, yeah.

00:06:19:28 - 00:06:32:22
Speaker 2
And I'm sure it's all like my wife, like many, has gotten deep into the RFK Jr, the foods we're eating, our health in the 80s, probably from all the Doritos I ate as a kid or something. You know.

00:06:32:25 - 00:06:34:12
Speaker 1
Red dye for 30.

00:06:34:15 - 00:06:35:15
Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly.

00:06:35:15 - 00:06:51:09
Speaker 1
I was eating Twizzlers like, the other day. This is how it's affecting us. I mean, I love Twizzlers. It's my go to. I just go when I go, I'm starving. Oh, Twizzlers, you know, and I go, yeah, I wonder what you know. And I had heard about red dye. Yeah. So I look on the packets right there. Big letters, red dye.

00:06:51:09 - 00:06:55:27
Speaker 1
430 I went, oh my God, I'm killing mice. No wonder I can't think. I can't remember a thing.

00:06:55:27 - 00:07:08:17
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's. And then you have we have four young daughters that, you know, you go to the store now and you're looking at ingredients for the first time, at least in my life. And it's. Yeah, it's in everything. And, probably.

00:07:08:19 - 00:07:10:22
Speaker 1
Because our government would never let them poison us.

00:07:10:23 - 00:07:11:28
Speaker 3
No, never.

00:07:12:00 - 00:07:14:09
Speaker 1
Not, you know, not here. Not knowing.

00:07:14:09 - 00:07:30:10
Speaker 3
I live in the middle of nowhere, and we live in, like, a food desert, middle Tennessee, but middle, middle of nowhere, Tennessee. And I was like, oh, we're out of mayonnaise, and we're not going to Costco for a while. So I go to the little store and I couldn't find real mayonnaise anywhere. Like it all had soybean oil in it.

00:07:30:10 - 00:07:32:20
Speaker 3
And I was like, oh no, this is how it happens.

00:07:32:21 - 00:07:33:18
Speaker 2
Change is coming.

00:07:33:18 - 00:07:34:17
Speaker 3
Yeah. So I just change.

00:07:34:17 - 00:07:36:23
Speaker 2
Is on the horizon, though for RFK.

00:07:36:25 - 00:07:53:02
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's true. Well, anyway, back to I wanted to talk to you about with live not by lies. Yes. The genesis of the idea, the seed. Where does that start? The conversation with you and Dave. Yeah. Let's do this. And then. How long were you in Russia?

00:07:53:04 - 00:08:16:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, we after we got out of the gulag. So, you know, I it's so the genesis without boring you with all the details. I, I grew up loving history. My dad, I think every male ironically, except me in like multiple generations studied history in college. I studied economics in journalism and journalism is what led me into film, and that's a whole other story.

00:08:17:00 - 00:08:40:29
Speaker 2
But for this one, I love history, I love Russian history, I don't I don't know where that ever came from. Probably watching Red Dawn too many times in the 80s. But I also then got into in college, you know, Russian literature, Dostoyevsky, you know, those novels. Yeah. And so Russian. It's it was for if you're of a certain age.

00:08:40:29 - 00:08:57:25
Speaker 2
Right. Russia is this looming, thing. I remember I had older cousins who would, tell me that their high school, you know, gym teachers would, you know, you'd be doing push ups and climbing ropes and they'd say, we're doing this so the Russians don't beat us. You know, we got to beat the Russians in the in the 80s.

00:08:58:02 - 00:09:18:25
Speaker 2
So all of that's just baked into my brain. And now you fast forward a few decades. It was, during Covid where we were still living in Orange County, Calif, at the time. And, after this book, we live Not by Lies by Rod Dreher, who's a Christian journalist. Everyone was like, you got to read this book.

00:09:18:25 - 00:09:44:21
Speaker 2
It's he wrote it before Covid, before all this kind of madness, you know, societal upheaval. But it reads as if he predicted a lot of this stuff. And of course, he didn't. He just went back to where totalitarian governments existed. They're pretty consistent. Yeah. It's it's there's nothing new under the sun. So anyway, we read the book and one of the things that, again, you have to do as an independent film producer is there's no one if you have an idea, it's on you.

00:09:44:23 - 00:09:58:09
Speaker 2
So it's like we we have a litmus test, Dave and I, that used to be just are you willing to get out of bed for the next 3 to 5 years and work on this thing? And you kind of have to look at yourself in the mirror and be honest, because I'm David Goggins.

00:09:58:09 - 00:09:59:02
Speaker 3
Is that Dave?

00:09:59:08 - 00:10:05:00
Speaker 2
No, you're right. I wish him well. He probably wishes to. We all wish we looked like.

00:10:05:00 - 00:10:06:12
Speaker 3
Look myself in the mirror.

00:10:06:20 - 00:10:24:13
Speaker 2
But no, it is that sort of thing. Yeah, because we are my Dave. We love Joe Rogan Goggins, you know, Jocko Willink, all those guys. So we you have to hold yourself accountable and go. Yeah. Even when we read your book, it's like, all right, if we don't really believe in this, we're not going to take it because we don't want we want to do it justice.

00:10:24:15 - 00:10:43:21
Speaker 2
We don't want to, you know, get wishy washy. So we read Rod's book and it's all about people that lived through totalitarian governments again, telling their stories, and it's captivating. And we weren't the first to read it. It sold millions of copies and, internationally, it's been translated into languages. So you read the book and you go, this is a film.

00:10:43:24 - 00:10:58:24
Speaker 2
We should send crews over to Eastern Europe to meet with people that actually lived through this, that are still alive, and then also talk with experts and smart people and professors and journalists and pastors here in America. And then you go, well, who's going to pay for it? And that's the next question.

00:10:58:27 - 00:11:00:02
Speaker 1
Is it always isn't.

00:11:00:06 - 00:11:19:17
Speaker 2
And so we shopped it around and I won't throw anybody under the bus, but we shopped it to all any conservative media outlet you've ever heard of. We shopped it to and they all said, I don't know who, it's communism and that's who's going to watch this. And we're like, it's. Most of the people that said it had read and loved the book too.

00:11:19:19 - 00:11:33:12
Speaker 2
And this is where I. I won't ramble on too much, but I'm landing the plane on why Angel is really exciting, because then we finally took it to Angel where you present a video. You do a proof of concept video. You show them the story you're going to tell. They submit it to their audience.

00:11:33:12 - 00:11:34:12
Speaker 1
Or the guild.

00:11:34:12 - 00:11:35:15
Speaker 2
The guild, they call it.

00:11:35:15 - 00:11:36:25
Speaker 1
25,000.

00:11:36:28 - 00:11:47:29
Speaker 2
Well, it's up to like 350,000 now and then they whittle it down. I mean, it's crazy. It they're growing like gangbusters. And you should have Jordan Harmon on some time to this podcast.

00:11:47:29 - 00:11:50:08
Speaker 1
I'm hoping when it comes to Nashville, I'm definitely going to.

00:11:50:11 - 00:12:16:07
Speaker 2
Get into all of it with him. And he can do it justice more than me. But we submitted this video, and at the time, I'm sure it's changed now, but it was the highest rated video that has ever been submitted to Angel Studios, proving that we're brilliant, of course, that we know, but it was just this was about a year and a half ago, and we're like, this is the moment we're in where people are feeling this sort of cultural pressure to the governments, are you right?

00:12:16:09 - 00:12:17:29
Speaker 2
Feeling well, it's word. Yeah.

00:12:17:29 - 00:12:24:06
Speaker 1
It was actually starting to see the rumblings of I mean anyone who's paying attention. Yeah. Is seeing this. Yeah. Censorship.

00:12:24:07 - 00:12:41:13
Speaker 2
Totally. Yeah. So anyway, we just submitted this video. It did. Well. And then they help you and they go through all the process of they help you crowdfund and raise money and build an audience. And we raised money and we've been out shooting at the last year, and we've shared with you guys some of some of the content that's been collected.

00:12:41:13 - 00:12:54:04
Speaker 2
And it's set to be released March, April ish. This in 2025. But yeah, it all starts with like. Well, with that one, we had to ask ourselves, are we willing to go to jail for this project?

00:12:54:07 - 00:12:55:28
Speaker 1
For sure. We're yeah.

00:12:55:28 - 00:12:58:15
Speaker 2
We were asking and once you do that, you're off to the races.

00:12:58:15 - 00:13:05:28
Speaker 1
And it's funny when you start going after totalitarianism and shedding light on it, how that could end negatively.

00:13:06:03 - 00:13:31:19
Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, it's I grew up in a world right where you're like, that happens elsewhere. Right. And I would read Russian history and I, I grew up in Chicago, a lot of Romanians and Ukrainians and Eastern European Polish. And so you hear the stories. My dad was a pastor and, and, in the city for many years. And so we knew a lot of Romanian ex-pats that would we'd be sitting around after church eating, you know, a ham dinner.

00:13:31:19 - 00:13:47:18
Speaker 2
And they're telling stories about being taken in the middle of the night to jails. You know, I'm like eight years old, and I was fascinated by it. So, again, a lot of this, this project in particular was very personal for me because I had grown up in a city where a lot of people had fled these very things.

00:13:47:25 - 00:14:07:09
Speaker 2
But now I'd never dreamed that those same folks and their relatives back in the old country that we wouldn't talk to, we're like, yeah, we're seeing this in the UK, in America, we're seeing Canada. Like, this is the stuff that leads to something we're. So we just wanted to get that message out and hopefully it will resonate here in the next few months as it gets released.

00:14:07:09 - 00:14:29:22
Speaker 3
Yeah, I really enjoyed the first episode and for me, selfishly forgive me, but I felt like I was vindicated in some way. Like I grew up in Los Angeles. That's why I look like Antifa. Like I got out during, Covid because, you know, I didn't have Jesus yet. So preach Jesus. We have Joe Rogan and the first.

00:14:29:23 - 00:14:31:05
Speaker 2
Another good J. Yeah.

00:14:31:08 - 00:14:39:02
Speaker 3
Yeah, I live by the three J's. Jesus, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, and there you go. Occasionally, Jocko.

00:14:39:04 - 00:14:41:15
Speaker 2
There you go. That's that's formidable.

00:14:41:15 - 00:15:01:04
Speaker 3
Yeah. You got to go to the what would Jesus do? What would you Rogan but he was like, oh, you need to get out. And I grew up in Los Angeles. I was like a vegetarian. I was a diehard liberal, and I never thought that anything I lived in, like, people would say, the California bubble. I didn't realize that that was a real thing.

00:15:01:06 - 00:15:19:09
Speaker 3
And so I leave and I start seeing all these things, and I start saying to my family, like, I think these vaccines are kind of weird. I think the lockdowns are kind of weird. Like, I don't really understand these things, but I'm still very much like indoctrinated in what I grew up with. And I'm like, how come this is making me feel uncomfortable?

00:15:19:14 - 00:15:46:16
Speaker 3
And then they're angry at me, and then all of a sudden it was, you're not vaccinated. You can't come home and visit for holidays or whatever. And so in watching that, at the time, I didn't have, during the time of Covid, I didn't have any concept of, rush like the Bolsheviks or any of that. But I've since converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, so now I have like a little bit of a better understood.

00:15:46:17 - 00:15:50:20
Speaker 2
Our director of our film also has converted to orthodox.

00:15:50:20 - 00:16:11:13
Speaker 3
Oh that's beautiful. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So in watching it, it was like, oh, these little teeny tiny tidbits have been coming out. These little, teeny tiny. We're not going to control you. Like, we're not going to come in and take everybody with the secret police, but we're just going to slightly control you and slightly control you.

00:16:11:15 - 00:16:13:03
Speaker 3
And if I'm rambling, stop me.

00:16:13:04 - 00:16:14:01
Speaker 1
No, no, no.

00:16:14:01 - 00:16:14:17
Speaker 2
Amazing.

00:16:16:00 - 00:16:33:18
Speaker 3
When I had moved to the south and I became a Christian and we can cut this if this is too gnarly. But I'd become a Christian for the first time. And God has a beautiful way of humbling people. I had got on TikTok as a new Christian, and I was going to profess my testimony everywhere, but I had no idea what I was talking about.

00:16:33:18 - 00:17:02:20
Speaker 3
I'd been, you know, I was still wet from the baptism, you know? Anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was, I had started not Eastern Orthodox. I was later on, but, I was still a comedian first, and I had made a joke on TikTok about the vaccines. And when I had made that joke, I made a joke about, shaving my head and that it was going to really trend in 2021 because of the camps, the unvaccinated camps.

00:17:02:23 - 00:17:25:29
Speaker 3
I thought it was hilarious. I was the only one the last, I think one of the last Holocaust survivors on the planet. Somebody sent him the video, and then he put out calling for my head. And then 29 million people had seen and shared the video. While they shared my phone number. They shared my address. I pulled my son out of public school.

00:17:26:04 - 00:17:50:14
Speaker 3
I was scared to leave my house. Holy cow, it was gnarly. And the church I was going to, they didn't, they didn't kick me out, but I had willingly left them because they were being so bombarded with, how could you let this anti-Semitic, racist, psycho Republican into your church? And then everywhere I had worked, they had gone.

00:17:50:14 - 00:18:08:19
Speaker 3
I mean, hundreds of thousands of people had left negative reviews on all of these churches, Google sites, like totally trashing their numbers that they hire anti-Semitic and all of these horrendous things. So to be touched by that in a sense like, oh, this is.

00:18:08:23 - 00:18:09:06
Speaker 1
This is.

00:18:09:09 - 00:18:25:21
Speaker 3
Not the secret police, but it's the social media police, and this is how they're going to silence you. And this is how you can't have an opinion. And whether you think it was a funny joke or not, a funny joke or I wasn't really considering other people's thoughts or people that had been that were still alive, that had gone to the gulags.

00:18:25:21 - 00:18:40:11
Speaker 3
And what's so funny is I was reading The Gulag Archipelago at the time, which is what gave me the idea for the joke, because I was hearing what I was hearing was going on in Australia with the vaccines at the time. Yeah. So all of that went through my comedy brain and maybe garbage came out. But at the time.

00:18:40:14 - 00:18:43:20
Speaker 2
It was funny. I would like to talk.

00:18:43:23 - 00:18:50:19
Speaker 1
And it's funny because you're coming off of the the Gulag. Yeah. That's also this thing, right? Yeah.

00:18:50:22 - 00:18:51:12
Speaker 2
Yeah. He yeah.

00:18:51:12 - 00:18:54:27
Speaker 1
I think I read I read three quarters of it. Yeah.

00:18:55:00 - 00:18:56:23
Speaker 3
Which is about 800 pages. So what do you.

00:18:56:23 - 00:19:18:13
Speaker 2
Go for you on the tight it live not by lies is from a Solzhenitsyn speech that he gave before he was kicked out of Russia, where they finally were sick of him. And just like, get this dissident loudmouth out of here. But he sort of parting advice was the only way out of this is only way is that everyone start telling the truth right in everything they do, in your starting, in your personal life.

00:19:18:13 - 00:19:40:08
Speaker 2
That's we, we all, we the Russian people. And now you can say we Americans, we all of us. We're just lying to each other about everything all the time. And that lack of not just sincerity, but the truth degrades the soul of a human and of a culture, of a family, of a nation. So that, you know, Solzhenitsyn was he's the OG.

00:19:40:08 - 00:20:11:04
Speaker 2
He's the he's the guy that really saw this, that inspired many, not like Jordan Peterson and others that grew up reading him to do something. And Roger also, who wrote our book, you know, he went and spent time with these people. So he did a lot of the groundwork. We went film, sat, you know, in Romania and Budapest and, you know, brought a Slava, all these towns, you know, all these cities, and sat with those folks and then talked to people here that went through things like that.

00:20:11:04 - 00:20:18:10
Speaker 2
Right. And, and in the UK, there was a woman, who was, praying outside of an abortion clinic.

00:20:18:16 - 00:20:20:06
Speaker 3
Yet not even out loud.

00:20:20:09 - 00:20:20:27
Speaker 2
To herself.

00:20:20:28 - 00:20:22:25
Speaker 3
To herself in her head.

00:20:22:25 - 00:20:38:11
Speaker 2
And they arrested her. And so you see things like that. And of course, the instinct, even for me for many years was over the last, let's say, 4 or 5 years was to be like, you kind of roll your eyes even when it's your own side, so to speak. Yeah. It's like, come on, are we being a little alarmist?

00:20:38:11 - 00:21:11:03
Speaker 2
Like, what are we doing? I'm busy. Like, when's lunch sort of thing? But then you start hearing these stories in the Canadian trucker stuff, right? Yeah. Deep banking. I won't go into too many details, but my company has experienced deep banking issues involving working on certain projects and stuff. Now, again, we're not big enough to warrant, a news story out of it, but we've seen it firsthand that people here in the United States who they don't like, who who you're supporting or a project you're working on or who you've donated to.

00:21:11:09 - 00:21:29:27
Speaker 2
So all that stuff is real. And that's Rod's point was, first and foremost, we need to start telling ourselves and each other the truth. But also it's not all going to happen exactly like it did in Russia or anywhere. Every culture is different. And that's the big thing that we, as we talk to people from, even those different, you know, we're Americans.

00:21:29:27 - 00:21:49:06
Speaker 2
So you're like, it's Europe. It's something over there, right? Yeah. And then you start talking to and you're like, oh, they're all unique countries with their own cultures and experiences and how each of them, you know, the Czech Republic, all of them experienced communism differently even. And it all had the totalitarian instinct. It all had the they'd always go after the church first, right?

00:21:49:06 - 00:22:10:10
Speaker 2
It was always Christians that were. So there's there's similarities, but each one responded differently and in different kinds. And, and the, in the, the, the, the Soviets would work with the local communists to go. All right, we need to know how your people operate, and we'll turn the screws in a certain ways. And so that's that was Rod's point with the book too, is it's not going to happen the same way here.

00:22:10:12 - 00:22:17:14
Speaker 2
And so if you just brush it off of like, oh, it's alarmist that you think tanks are rolling, you know, martial law and tanks down the street.

00:22:17:20 - 00:22:28:01
Speaker 1
Doesn't go from total freedom to tanks down the street. Right. It's just not like this is invasion one day and all of a sudden you don't have any freedom. Yeah, it's just these little things by little by little.

00:22:28:03 - 00:22:29:16
Speaker 2
And we're doing we're handing it over.

00:22:29:18 - 00:22:58:27
Speaker 1
But it really wasn't until Covid for me that I noticed, how many Americans, were that easily bought into turning on their people and on their fellow citizens. That's what you know, it's one thing the government does what the government does. But to get the citizenry to turn in, I mean to actually say it, I think it was the governor of Minnesota that set up a hotline where you turn in your neighbor to what?

00:22:58:29 - 00:23:01:21
Speaker 1
Oh. Is that. Yeah. Oh that's right. Yeah, yeah.

00:23:01:23 - 00:23:09:00
Speaker 2
Yeah. Anyway, I just he's this a name? You just start laughing when you think of him now. He's such a caricature of it.

00:23:09:01 - 00:23:23:27
Speaker 1
Well, I told you know that my wife when that when and when he got nominated for that, I said, he lost me when he sat in his mansion and watched his flagship city burned to the ground and did nothing. Yeah. I mean, that's your job as a governor is to protect your citizens.

00:23:23:28 - 00:23:25:06
Speaker 2
Was it his wife who said she.

00:23:25:06 - 00:23:26:04
Speaker 1
Said, smell the burning.

00:23:26:07 - 00:23:29:17
Speaker 2
Like the smell of the burning tires? Yeah. So, anyway, sweet.

00:23:29:22 - 00:23:54:25
Speaker 1
But, the the Covid thing was that was so mind boggling to me because, you know, look, we're sitting in my house and in rural Tennessee, my grandkids visited me every day that when they wanted to, we didn't mask up. We never did not. Yeah. So the world existed. A completely different world existed outside of ours. It would have been easy for me to just go, well, that's again alarmist.

00:23:54:28 - 00:24:02:15
Speaker 1
Yeah. Oh, that's just happening over there. But then even in Nashville, you know, this, you were where you were living here, right?

00:24:02:15 - 00:24:06:10
Speaker 2
We got here in 21. So we. Okay, so some of those states.

00:24:06:10 - 00:24:31:00
Speaker 1
So you experienced, Davidson County, the governor of, of, of Tennessee said, I'll leave it up to the mayors to determine the rules so that Davidson Nashville had much stricter rules in Williamson County where we live. And again, you I was an outside observer. And then as someone who performs I was home for five months couldn't work.

00:24:31:19 - 00:24:49:18
Speaker 1
And when you get out into the world it was almost like a war where there was just these fragments of still, you know, Chicago was still, I mean, yeah, restricted and masked up and you're like, didn't you get the memo?

00:24:49:21 - 00:24:50:11
Speaker 2
Well, that's a bit.

00:24:50:11 - 00:24:55:27
Speaker 1
So they can't do it without the citizenry. They can't do it without turning the people against each other.

00:24:56:00 - 00:25:12:11
Speaker 2
That's the big thing. So the big rod's one of his big messages and that we try to mine over the. It's going to be a four part, excuse me, four part documentary series. We're very likely going to cut down about a 90 minute version to put it in theaters. We're talking about that. There's a lot of that. Again, with Angels Studios.

00:25:12:11 - 00:25:31:03
Speaker 2
They're they're so entrepreneurial and think outside of the box and they're like, well, this is great. We should do this. So it's not, I always say, like working in traditional Hollywood for many years, you were hoping that someone didn't have, like a bad sandwich for lunch. You know, if you had a meeting in the afternoon, just hoping, or they're not in a fight with their wife or husband that day, right?

00:25:31:04 - 00:25:41:01
Speaker 2
There's all those personalities that get in the way of creativity. Angel has eliminated a lot of that. And not to turn this into an infomercial for them, but it's amazing you make stuff in the audience.

00:25:41:01 - 00:25:44:26
Speaker 3
First podcast is brought to you by Angel Studios and Tri Bar. Right?

00:25:45:01 - 00:25:45:24
Speaker 1
Absolutely.

00:25:45:27 - 00:26:11:18
Speaker 2
And so it's it's, but Rod's whole thing was it starts it's all personal. It's all all politics is local. It's it starts in your heart, in the home. And if you've allowed culturally in your area, like cities like Los Angeles, you know, in New York, Chicago, where so many people are dependent upon the government and or have buying into an ideology that facilitates that.

00:26:11:18 - 00:26:31:22
Speaker 2
And that's their power structure. When when bad things happen, everyone's going to just, oh my God, tell me what to do, right? But I would go visit our relatives that live in rural Georgia, that live on a street named after their family. They've been there so long and they're out like hunting hogs and going fishing. And so we're like, we're hanging out with them, right?

00:26:31:26 - 00:26:50:13
Speaker 2
We'd rather be with them. And for us moving here, we came here for a wedding in the spring of 21, and by Labor Day that year, we lived here because we're just like, we left California. And it was like a cloud parted. Right? And you go, oh, there's a whole big country out there. So that's there's so many things packed into that project.

00:26:50:13 - 00:27:10:17
Speaker 2
But we want people to think about how am I living? How am I voting? Also, how am I spending my money? Am I giving all my information over to companies that hate me? And that would put me in prison or give me give my information to the authorities too? So that's really what Rod's warning against for Americans in particular, is we have to be disciplined.

00:27:10:17 - 00:27:29:26
Speaker 2
We have to decide what are the priorities in our life, what are our values, and do we actually believe in things like representative democracy where we have we the people are the government? And what does that mean? And the responsibilities, not just the rights. We always want our rights, right? But there's responsibilities with it. So we're trying to pack a lot in.

00:27:29:26 - 00:27:39:11
Speaker 2
And that's why at ten, it ended up being four hours worth of content. Because as you can tell, there's so many threads to pull on and we're just scratching the surface trying to do it justice with this project.

00:27:39:13 - 00:27:50:10
Speaker 3
And I'm sure so many beautiful interviews and those are like amazing time capsules. Was there one interview in particular that just really hit your heart? Like, I'm never going to forget this moment of this project.

00:27:50:10 - 00:28:14:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, there's a lot. And the crew, our team, our director and the team did most of the traveling and I helped more, again, wearing different hats where I was simultaneously running. The other project that we can talk to about our military whistleblower doc, that was happening concurrently. So we're all over America. We're all over Eastern Europe. But the biggest there's just it's her name's Camilla.

00:28:14:08 - 00:28:37:28
Speaker 2
And, from an Eastern Europe. And I won't give away too many of the details and all of that is the project still being worked on. But the big thing is she's just a mom. She was a mom. She taught locally, and her husband was, an intellectual and, you know, work to the university. But her stories are all about just, like gathering people and feeding them and reading novels together.

00:28:39:02 - 00:28:56:00
Speaker 2
She said the biggest thing that kept her family and her friends sane was reading things like Lord of the rings and watching American Westerns, of all things. So I love Western and just feeling like, hey, there's John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and there's these people, there's these heroes that are willing to fall on their sword to do the right thing.

00:28:56:00 - 00:29:06:12
Speaker 2
So it was stories that that kept her, her kids, their circle of friends. They were heroic. There was so much going on. There was so much at stake. People being taken in the middle of the night.

00:29:06:12 - 00:29:13:07
Speaker 1
What you said a lot of this is about hanging on to your faith as well. Yes. And they were able to, but they had to be quiet about it.

00:29:13:07 - 00:29:31:01
Speaker 2
Totally quiet. They had underground newspapers where they would get, you know, Bible study curriculum out, but they had printing presses. And our team went down into some of these houses where there's secret hidden chambers, and the one guy would have one piece of the component to build the printing press and the other so that no one could be caught with all of it.

00:29:31:01 - 00:29:54:04
Speaker 2
And if they need. Oh, wow. So just all the the ingenuity that came out of it. And the other thing I will just say, as a as a son of a pastor, I've grown up in the in the church my whole life, to see people resisting their government, not just grabbing grenades and throwing them at their neighbors or, you know, it wasn't just thoughtfully going, I'm not going to do that.

00:29:54:06 - 00:30:13:09
Speaker 2
Right. And it reminds you of people like Daniel in the Old Testament, right, who just said, no, I'm not going to do that. You can throw you throw me in the lion's den like I don't want to be thrown in. But if that's my choice, is disobeying God. I think there's a lot of Christians. I was told I'm such a loud mouth and also someone that has gallows humor.

00:30:13:09 - 00:30:43:26
Speaker 2
Let's say some things I get all the time for saying my brothers and I don't invite us to a funeral because you're going to. We are the worst and we say things that are so inappropriate, but it's our way of, you know, processing all of it. But like. The this idea that and I will name names there were pastors like the late Tim Keller and John Piper who wrote articles saying basically, you're a bad Christian if you don't get vaccinated and trying to make all these sorts of cases.

00:30:43:28 - 00:31:04:11
Speaker 2
And that this is how we show love is by adhering to this secular government that doesn't you know what I mean? So it really was inspiring to see Christians thoughtfully and not violently or, you know, it's not about that, but just go, no, that's not for me and come do your worst. But also I'm going to hide from you too.

00:31:04:13 - 00:31:21:10
Speaker 2
I'm going to try to be sneaky. And because I want to get Bibles out. So I'm going to sneak. You know, our church does a lot of work of smuggling Bibles into places like Pakistan. Yeah, I love that sort of thing. Especially, you know, we're always told to just obey, obey and yes, obey God and listen to your parents and those things.

00:31:21:10 - 00:31:30:22
Speaker 2
But when the evil government or someone who's got the wrong ideas that are making you do something that are against your faith, that's really what stood out to me. I was making this.

00:31:30:23 - 00:31:48:10
Speaker 1
Isn't that why they go after the church, though? Because you're not married to the state. Your allegiance is to a higher calling, the divine. And that's a very deep bond that's hard to break. So the state needs to break that. Yeah, initially. And they'll turn the kids against the parents. So they go after the young minds first.

00:31:48:10 - 00:31:49:05
Speaker 2
Absolutely.

00:31:49:05 - 00:31:49:26
Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay.

00:31:49:26 - 00:32:10:18
Speaker 2
So that's really it's been an amazing project. And I'm not bitter that all those companies passed on it because it ended up being where it should be. Right. And now it's in God's hands. We're working our butts off. We're going to release it. And that's again, you know, it's like do a new comedy or anything else. You you work really hard and then you're like, at some point it's not mine anymore.

00:32:10:20 - 00:32:21:04
Speaker 2
I'm handing it over to the people. Right? And God can do what he wants with it. So this spring, that'll be that moment in between now and then. Will you just keep tinkering?

00:32:21:04 - 00:32:27:05
Speaker 1
That's a well, the unnamed podcast will send it out to our southern listeners.

00:32:27:05 - 00:32:32:16
Speaker 2
Yes we will. I can't wait to get that email. Yeah, I'm one of the seven.

00:32:32:19 - 00:32:33:10
Speaker 1
You were out.

00:32:34:01 - 00:32:55:14
Speaker 2
So anyway, yeah, thanks for asking about it, but it's it is a new adventure every single time getting to work on any sort of project, including yours. And we can talk about that process, but live not by lies. It is special. The moment we're in the opportunity, the travel, the amazing work our director and our team has done, we do feel like this one's special.

00:32:55:14 - 00:32:57:09
Speaker 2
So you know, yeah, we'll see.

00:32:57:12 - 00:33:20:11
Speaker 3
It a sparked question that I'm still wrestling with. You know, I've it's been 24 hours since I watched it. Do I something in my nose am I saying. Oh no no no. Sorry. Okay. I'm safe. Good. I it's something I really I'm struggling with since I watched it is how it's like all of the suffering and pain can be utilized to glorify God.

00:33:20:14 - 00:33:49:10
Speaker 3
So in just my own experience, and I think it's an experience of a lot of people because of Covid, because of their distrust in the government, because of starting to question things that they knew deep down inside them. It sparked like a resurgence in Christianity, especially for millennials, especially in the Orthodox Church is bursting right now. But I in watching it and they, you know, they talk about what was it czar Nicholas the Second, I believe was the czar during the Bolsheviks.

00:33:49:13 - 00:34:13:29
Speaker 3
Yeah. And a beautiful story is his sister in law. So Alexandra, Sister Elizabeth, who we call Saint Elizabeth, that's neither here nor there. And I don't want to offend anyone but Saint Elizabeth the new martyr. She was a grand duchess. She was married to. Forgive me for not remembering, but I think I want to say the Lord of Russia.

00:34:14:02 - 00:34:46:10
Speaker 3
Who. Anyways, at their wedding, Elizabeth and, the Lord of Russia. I can't think of his name right now. That's where Nicholas and Alexandra met. The futures are. Well, Elizabeth's husband was an Orthodox Christian. She was the Grand Duchess. I think she was Anglican. And he was, blown up before the Bolsheviks took over. But just when the rebellion had started, blown up his carriage in the snow by it, like a terrorist attack of the of the time.

00:34:46:13 - 00:35:08:00
Speaker 3
And he was, you know, scattered in the snow and she gets out and she's just kind of collecting the pieces of him. And she goes to the prison where they were holding the man that they found that had done the terrorist attack. And she begged, she begged for him not to be executed. And she would bring him like, prayers every day.

00:35:08:00 - 00:35:29:09
Speaker 3
And she would pray for him and tell him that she forgave him. And just like the power of that. And then after he was gone, she had set up, you know, she lived in like a palace. She was a grand duchess. She set up her one room in the palace as like, a nun cell, and had slowly start to sell all of her Oliver goods and all of her goods and all of her goods.

00:35:29:09 - 00:36:03:01
Speaker 3
And then, she'd built, I believe, the first orphanage and monastic nun hospital in Russia. I could be getting some of the details wrong. But anyways, long story short. When the Bolsheviks came, they of course killed her brother in law. And the czar and their children and her and Saint Barbara were thrown into a pit, and they threw a grenade on top of them, and she survived the initial explosion, and they heard her singing hymns until the moment she was gone.

00:36:03:04 - 00:36:32:16
Speaker 3
And that is the church that I happen to go to is Saint Elizabeth's. And so it's like this weird thing where how your film connected. This was the suffering of the time that was so deep, and it was so painful and such a struggle for all of those people. And just the little bit of totalitarian that we had touched in the United States thus far brought me to Christianity.

00:36:32:18 - 00:37:06:21
Speaker 3
Just Covid and being in the South and then being exposed to what is greater and bigger than the government and the people you thought that loved you. And so during all of those things and all of the martyrdom and all of the struggles and the strife, and how it really course connects people back to Christ and what is important, what I'm really struggling with now is how do you reconcile all that if everything that happens is God promises and the struggle brings people closer to Christ, it's almost like I saw that you're at this.

00:37:06:25 - 00:37:12:21
Speaker 3
There was a premise in there that was comfort was the new totalitarianism.

00:37:12:21 - 00:37:16:16
Speaker 2
Comfort is the new gulag. Yes, it is a theme that we've explored.

00:37:16:24 - 00:37:20:28
Speaker 3
Yeah, which is brilliant and beautiful and it's so true. And it's just.

00:37:20:28 - 00:37:25:25
Speaker 2
Like, I can't claim credit. Our director came up with it, but it is. It's very insightful.

00:37:25:28 - 00:37:46:22
Speaker 3
Yeah. So just kind of this struggle of like, is it supposed to be comfortable or is the comfort what's killing us? And we need to be pushed is the struggle I'm having personally not saying that the world should fall, but I'm just saying it's like all of a sudden I had something I needed to cling to like, this is important.

00:37:46:22 - 00:37:53:23
Speaker 3
I would die for this. The people that came before me were willing to die for this. And it's just it's been a really it's a struggle I'm having.

00:37:53:26 - 00:38:19:22
Speaker 1
Well, it's interesting, the, the thought that just popped into my head was the C.S. Lewis quote, suffering was God's megaphone. You know that in that midst of that pain, you'll hear his voice if you seek it. And that's where the comfort comes in that the pain doesn't go away. But for me, my faith became real in the midst of the pain where I realized there was there was calm.

00:38:19:24 - 00:38:48:11
Speaker 1
There really was in prayer, there was calm, and it's real. So what you're talking about live not by lies. Somebody online attacked my faith one day and I said, look, I'm not going to get into an argument online, but I believe what I believe because I believe it to be true. I cling to those words as if they are true, and for whatever reason, in the midst of the pain in my life, which I've had a lot, there is a comfort there.

00:38:48:14 - 00:39:09:12
Speaker 1
Doesn't see it, it doesn't mean it isn't there. I'm not denying it. That's neurotic. But amidst that storm, you know, because somebody had when Tammy was going through treatment for breast cancer, somebody kind of threw. I don't know how you can believe in a God who would allow cancer. And Tammy's response was, I couldn't have got through this without that.

00:39:09:14 - 00:39:36:05
Speaker 1
So, again, it's not my universe. I think I always think of the little man shaking his fist at the heavens, you know, telling God how he should run things and, I believe that, we have pain. So somebody said suffering to the to the nonbeliever, suffering is central joy is peripheral. To the believer. Joy is central, suffering peripheral.

00:39:36:07 - 00:40:03:16
Speaker 1
So as long as the center of your life is is vertically, him never changes. It's always there. That voice, then whatever else you have to endure while you're here is endurable. Not pleasant, but it's intolerable. And the lie that Wall Street tells us is that that's wrong. You shouldn't have any pain. Yeah, pharmaceuticals tell you you shouldn't have any whatever.

00:40:03:20 - 00:40:12:26
Speaker 1
I mean, but it's. Yeah, the an adult will tell you it's just part of life. I mean, it is it's you don't have to like it.

00:40:12:28 - 00:40:20:03
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, you think about it, I for me, that question, of course, is deep and profound of problem of evil and.

00:40:20:05 - 00:40:21:08
Speaker 1
Good things.

00:40:21:10 - 00:40:48:20
Speaker 2
Happen to bad people and vice verse and all that. And it's when you're going through any of those examples, it's of course the hardest to, to, see, but it's also ends up being the most clarifying to your comment about Tammy's situation and others in our family that have gone through similar things, but you just say, I, I'm a very simple person, and I just think, like, I just came from physical therapy.

00:40:48:23 - 00:40:49:14
Speaker 1
Right.

00:40:49:16 - 00:41:08:17
Speaker 2
There, working on my hamstring, my hip flexor. It was so painful. I'm so glad there was not a recording of what was going on, like shrieking and and the guy, the guy working on me, he's been doing it for over 20 years. And he said, this is the second worst hamstring and hip flexor I've ever seen. The only person worse.

00:41:08:19 - 00:41:20:00
Speaker 2
And he started to describe someone like David Goggins. He's like, I had this one guy who ran 100 mile marathons, and I was like, and then me. And so like, the one guy got it from abusing his body and and I.

00:41:20:00 - 00:41:24:07
Speaker 1
Don't know if the camera shows it, but, RJ doesn't look like he runs a marathon.

00:41:24:07 - 00:41:45:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, I'm not a David. Yeah, I do not look like David Goggins or any of his friends, but my point is, I feel great right now. When I walked out of that office, everything loosened up my hip. I could start walking. I had to go through that pain. It didn't make sense in the moment. And I was ready to like, you know, leave the room, even if it was very painful.

00:41:45:27 - 00:42:10:11
Speaker 2
Some of the most pain I've ever felt because of, choices I've made do not stretch, you know, so you start factoring in all the things, like any of these other situations. There's all these mitigating circumstances, all these things around it. But at the end of it, I felt better. And I'm like, that's totally worth it. And Americans right now, especially many people in my life are obsessed with health and fitness and good for them.

00:42:10:11 - 00:42:31:01
Speaker 2
So they go and they abuse their bodies at the gym and they push and they fat, you know, intermittent fasting, all these things for a better good. So I again, for my whole life, I've always just because I'm an athlete, you know, grew up playing football and lacrosse and stuff. It always made sense to me that through pain, suffering, good things can come and nothing.

00:42:31:03 - 00:42:56:15
Speaker 2
You always keep the sports analogy. I we always hated the kid whose dad was the coach, and he got picked on the traveling baseball team. He didn't have the he wasn't that good. His dad was the coach. He didn't earn it, you know? So pain, suffering, sacrifice these are things that again, I'm not trying to be flippant about very serious situations, but if you extrapolate them out, everyone I know that's been through difficult situations is that's a Christian.

00:42:56:18 - 00:43:13:21
Speaker 2
And many that even aren't are like, that changed my life for the better. And I have that perspective that I wouldn't have had. So, you know, the things, the stories we've heard from people and you don't have to just watch our film. And I would recommend people read Solzhenitsyn, you know, and go and study what those people have been through in these communist countries.

00:43:13:21 - 00:43:19:09
Speaker 2
And sadly, it's not just Eastern Europe. And Russia's solitary and regimes have been in all places and at all times.

00:43:19:09 - 00:43:24:09
Speaker 1
Somebody said 0.3% of the world's population lives in freedom today.

00:43:24:11 - 00:43:25:13
Speaker 2
0.3 really?

00:43:25:14 - 00:43:35:03
Speaker 1
I I'm not sure if that's true. I heard it and I it's one of those internet things where you go. But I mean I wanted to get a shirt made. It said 0.3.

00:43:35:03 - 00:43:36:18
Speaker 2
Yeah I am the zero I am.

00:43:36:21 - 00:43:38:11
Speaker 1
I am from living in freedom.

00:43:38:14 - 00:44:00:13
Speaker 2
Yeah. So it's it's a it's weird to say it's been fun to work on a project like that, but it actually has because it, you learn a lot and it certainly you just go, wow, I've even with what we just went through with Covid and stuff and people had horrible experiences, it is helpful to go and kind of sit with how awful it can get.

00:44:00:16 - 00:44:23:10
Speaker 1
Well, I heard Don John Don Jr said that Ivanka, his mother, you know, Don owns Trump's first wife, made them every summer, go back to Czechoslovakia and live under communism for six weeks. So they stood in line for the bread. They stood in line for their toilet. Really? Yeah. And wow certainly explains the. And she reminded them over and over and over again, you be grateful for what you have.

00:44:23:13 - 00:44:25:02
Speaker 1
This is not normal.

00:44:25:04 - 00:44:29:09
Speaker 2
Yeah. And you can only she could only have that perspective. Right. Which came out.

00:44:29:09 - 00:44:33:15
Speaker 1
Through other didn't her mother didn't get out. She got out. And so it's powerful.

00:44:33:17 - 00:44:42:07
Speaker 2
That's that's what we want to give is can we give someone an experience to make them think a little bit, to want to go study, to talk to someone, to to think about it differently.

00:44:42:07 - 00:44:45:25
Speaker 1
So that's great. So now we gotta we gotta get on to the military.

00:44:45:27 - 00:45:06:05
Speaker 2
Oh yeah. I'll just very briefly share about that. That one is is going to be out in the next few months as well. But so again you're out pounding the pavement. You're reading articles, listening to podcasts, talking with friends, trying to find projects that, again, you're willing to go to jail for or work for five years on, mostly for free as well, which is my wife's favorite part.

00:45:07:07 - 00:45:39:06
Speaker 2
But we, my brother was in the military, and my grandpa was a World War two bomber hero pilot. You know, we looked up on Ancestry.com, and Mueller has has served in the military every generation since the Civil War. So it's in our blood to love the troops, support them, send people from our family to to serve and so having not served myself and feeling like a wimp for that my whole life, anything I can do to help is always in the forefront of my mind.

00:45:39:06 - 00:46:00:25
Speaker 2
Whether it's my brother and his friends and things that they're doing. And we came across this story of Lieutenant Colonel Matt Longmire. He was a Space Force commander. Was the first basically, like the first employee of Space Force helped start it from the ground up. Highly ranked. Just an incredible guy who had gone to the Air Force Academy.

00:46:00:25 - 00:46:25:00
Speaker 2
All these different things. But when all the DNI post, George Floyd, all the D-I, CRT, all this activism started showing up on bases all around the country and world and he was at Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado at the time. He voiced his displeasure with all this activism that was happening because of the top guy running the base was was on the left and would bring in speakers.

00:46:25:00 - 00:46:45:18
Speaker 2
And so Matt spoke out against it, but did it in the right way of filing complaints with the right. He's a he's a rule follower. He's he's he's like G.I. Joe, Mister All-American, doing the right thing for the right reasons. And no one ever investigated any of his things, which they should have done legally. If someone is he was a lieutenant colonel.

00:46:45:18 - 00:47:05:15
Speaker 2
They're supposed to investigate. If you write these reports, no one did. And instead they kicked him out, took away his pension. And the guy who had been running the base basically helped accused Matt of. You're being political, you're being Partizan. You're some right wing extremist. So he has all this thing happened to him and he walks away from that and says, I'm yeah.

00:47:05:16 - 00:47:26:03
Speaker 2
Again, kind of like, you know, these, these moments like Daniel in the old like, I'm just I'm not going to be a part of this. Yeah, I've served this. I want to do these things. He was effectively being groomed to run the Air Force. Space Force. He was that high up, multiple master's degrees, speaks fluent Mandarin. You're like, this is the guy we want protecting our country.

00:47:26:06 - 00:47:41:12
Speaker 2
And we heard this story and we were just like, that's that's not right, right? Like something needs to be done. Our buddy Matt was at the point where he's like, he he had gone through it. He had been on the news and stuff and people had covered his story, but he was ready to just kind of be like, I'm done with all this.

00:47:41:12 - 00:47:56:08
Speaker 2
I'm going to go be a teacher and, you know, chop wood out in the forest or something. I'm done with all this. And I read his book and we called him through mutual friends. We got Ahold of him and I said, you can go live out in the woods when? After we make this movie. So tell us, tell your story.

00:47:56:10 - 00:48:27:10
Speaker 2
We went on this journey the past year and it's been unbelievable to get a look at the people who have served, to capture more stories of those that have suffered in the last few years, some of them for Covid shot mandate reasons and then others who just didn't feel comfortable judging others that they were serving in the military with based on the color of their skin, which I thought was the whole point of the, you know, the post-racial society we were all aiming at.

00:48:27:13 - 00:49:09:11
Speaker 2
So we got to hang out with a bunch of folks again, interview experts, journalists, you know, military vets. We did a deep dive into Matt's family and his personal story. What made him want to serve, what makes people that do what he does tick. And we've made this film. And the remarkable thing is, along the way, about two months ago, Matt was invited to come to North Carolina when President Trump was holding a rally with military vets, was brought up on stage, and was allowed to talk to the president in front of everybody and tell a very brief summary of what happened to him and said, if you do win, Mr. President, we

00:49:09:12 - 00:49:36:02
Speaker 2
can't just fire a couple of generals here and there. This is a systemic problem. This stuff is gone into every area. And of course, as we know, not just the military, it's everywhere in corporate America, academia. But matches said, you can't I I'm making this film. I'm trying to get this story out. We have to approach this with the idea that it needs to be uprooted everywhere and in all places, and Trump's like, great, you're going to do it.

00:49:36:04 - 00:49:53:08
Speaker 2
I want you to do it. If I win, you're going to do that. So now all conversations are happening. Our film is about to come out. It's been a miraculous journey of this guy who was ready to walk away from all this stuff. And now is potentially going to be serving a role in the administration to help undo die.

00:49:53:09 - 00:50:12:04
Speaker 2
So that one's called against all enemies, and that one is a just a feature film, 90 minutes long. We plan on putting that in theaters and then also talking with folks like Angel and others to for partnership Daily Wire, you know, those sorts of folks. But it's really a story of what are you willing to sacrifice for what you believe.

00:50:12:07 - 00:50:25:10
Speaker 2
And here's a guy that didn't just talk about it, but did it. And, again, having served this is just our little way of being like, thank you to this man. And then God's done other cool things with it along the way.

00:50:25:15 - 00:50:51:28
Speaker 1
Yeah. You look at a guy like that who has all that credential, you know, obviously could have chose any path in life, would have succeeded. And for him, it was to choose to serve. And it is a service. You know, my son was in the military and it's a special bond they have. It really is. And to think of somebody who would take.

00:50:54:13 - 00:51:13:18
Speaker 1
Falsely claim to be a member of that community and take that that honor that comes with that. That's something I'll never understand. When my son Emery.

00:51:13:20 - 00:51:40:07
Speaker 1
When he came home from, from Iraq and, he just he wanted to get out Iraq knocked it out of him. It was just a bunch of myriad of things that came together. He was messed up with, And you dealt with this with your ex, with, PTSD and TBI and. But he was so broken hearted because he wasn't going to re-up and go to Afghanistan with his guys.

00:51:40:09 - 00:51:53:04
Speaker 1
His term was coming up. They were throwing money at him. They were begging him to stay. And he said, dad, am I a coward?

00:51:53:07 - 00:52:31:10
Speaker 1
You've done more than 99% of us. It is a service. It is 99%. It goes unnoticed. It just is a thing that we we've taken for granted. It was nice that they gave him their props, you know, during Desert Storm. And, you know, they thank you for your service and stuff. But the real work is in the VA, and it's up to us to take care of these guys and gals for the rest of their lives, for the service they gave us.

00:52:31:12 - 00:53:03:21
Speaker 1
And, That film, when you told me about that, what's what? And with the appointment of Hegseth and all this. I hope they blow the lid off of the bureaucracy. And again, it's a reallocation of funds. We have the money. I mean, just stop sending it to Ukraine. Stop. Send it over seas. And to me, that's what art should do.

00:53:03:23 - 00:53:38:14
Speaker 1
It should entertain as well as educate. Yeah. And, hopefully with the, just having the president, the current, you know, the, the, the Trump behind it will get tens of millions of eyeballs on that thing that never would have if he just released it on your own and yeah, set it out. So as those of us who believe in divine intervention, just the fact that all those things kind of lined up, all the personalities and the holy cow.

00:53:38:19 - 00:53:56:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. And, that one I'm really looking forward to seeing where that will go is because it's a personal thing to me. My son's done a lot of work to get his mental health back. A lot of them don't make it. Yeah, a lot of them don't make it. And, it's wrong on so many levels that we ignore these people.

00:53:56:22 - 00:54:22:21
Speaker 2
Yeah. And it's even Matt himself. Not to spoil the film, but it. Matt had a sister who had a medical condition where by the end of her, all too short life, I think she passed away around the age of 30 or so. Matt's in his 40s. So this, you know, ten, 15 years ago, whatever medical condition she had, she lost her voice at the end.

00:54:22:21 - 00:54:47:07
Speaker 2
And so Matt really felt when all this was happening, that's what he heard God saying was, be the voice for the voiceless. Be. You have the opportunity now. Yes. They've kicked you out of this thing. You loved that you were the like the best. He was the best we had to offer. But he saw, okay, there's another role to play, and I can say I'm permission to speak freely.

00:54:47:07 - 00:55:03:19
Speaker 2
Now. I'm not in. I didn't want to not be in, but I'm not in. Right. So okay, then I'm going to say some things. And he did again. He did for a little bit and then was like, all right, I've said a few things. I've gotten it off my chest. Tucker and some other guys had helped, you know, put a spotlight on him for a minute.

00:55:03:22 - 00:55:21:05
Speaker 2
But no one had really done the deep dive into this. And it's like we it's a version of what you're kind of talking about, of. Thank you for your service. Conservative media can do that where someone does something heroic and we. All right, do your lap and go on Hannity and go on a few of the podcasts, and then let's never hear from this person again.

00:55:21:12 - 00:55:38:04
Speaker 2
And and again, our buddy Matt was like, fine with it. It's like, okay, I said what I need to say and I'm on. But we just Dave and I, we read his book. We met him and those are the things you don't know because there's plenty of meetings we take where we think something's going to be special. And it is, but in different ways.

00:55:38:04 - 00:56:03:10
Speaker 2
And this one has been remarkable. Where the more we've worked on it, the more like crazy things have happened. And so again, I can't give away too much of some of the stuff that's going on. And there may be announcements, in the coming weeks or maybe not, depending on what God has planned, but it is miraculous to watch a documentary that we were making about a guy who got kicked out of the military, have such an impact on our lives.

00:56:03:10 - 00:56:23:10
Speaker 2
And hundreds of people that have been that we've sat and talked with and families and now, potentially the the entire country, the higher Air Force, the entire, you know, military operation could be impacted by Matt and his friends that are getting this opportunity to serve at a higher level. And that's that's the exciting moment we're in to is, not to get off.

00:56:23:10 - 00:56:34:12
Speaker 2
But I say this like we need I have such respect for my elders, from my parents, for the boomers. Right. But it's all I.

00:56:34:12 - 00:56:35:01
Speaker 3
Respect.

00:56:35:01 - 00:56:35:06
Speaker 2
You.

00:56:35:07 - 00:56:37:24
Speaker 1
There's a oh, we do there's destroyed everything.

00:56:37:24 - 00:56:40:02
Speaker 2
There's a there's a war. I respect the.

00:56:40:02 - 00:56:41:09
Speaker 1
Good ones, the good.

00:56:41:12 - 00:56:51:10
Speaker 2
But but there is this problem in our culture right now of not handing the reins off. And now some of it is. Maybe it's not deserved. Right? There's a feel for me.

00:56:51:10 - 00:57:04:00
Speaker 1
It's almost like the looting at the end of the war. I mean, it's like everybody sees the writing on the wall. I'm grabbing what I can. Yeah. You know. Yeah, it's it's that's what's scary to me. It's like there's nobody thinking a generation ahead.

00:57:04:01 - 00:57:27:13
Speaker 2
Well, so so Trump, however your listeners feel about him with a lot of these picks, it's an exciting moment to see. Like there's a lot of younger faces, very competent. So that's something also in film this happens all the time where yes, you get some hot shot young, you know, the guy who made whiplash, ten years ago, he was in Damien Chazelle.

00:57:27:13 - 00:57:40:17
Speaker 2
He made it La La Land and a few other films. Yeah. Great film. Young. So you get those young upstarts, but so much of the entertainment industry is really controlled still by an older generation, and it's kind of the same people all the time.

00:57:40:17 - 00:57:56:16
Speaker 1
Years ago, when I was going in to do interviews for the pilot, everybody, the first line of people you got to get through it were 25 year olds, and I was 41 years old and were pitching a family sitcom, whatever. And we would leave the office and go, how do you get that gig?

00:57:56:16 - 00:57:57:18
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:57:57:21 - 00:58:07:09
Speaker 1
Yeah, that made it tough because if I when I was 25, if I was in charge of television, it would be all sophomore jokes and half naked women. Yeah. Or fully naked if I could go.

00:58:07:11 - 00:58:07:24
Speaker 2
So I.

00:58:07:25 - 00:58:28:15
Speaker 1
Got it. All of a sudden television was explained to me, because you don't get to the the older people until the younger people go, oh, okay. Yeah, we'll put you in. And they were bored, put off arrogant. I mean, it was it really was all I could do to not stand up and go, you snotty little twit, you, you have no idea how good you have it.

00:58:28:18 - 00:58:55:12
Speaker 2
Well, that like especially LA, but the industry out there, it's so superficial, as we all know, and it's all driven by looks and status and all these things. So again, the angels of the world, the sort of new frontier of media of of directly distributing things to your fans and going right to the people. It's exciting because you no longer have to be told, oh, you're too inexperienced or you're too old, or you look a certain way.

00:58:55:12 - 00:59:29:29
Speaker 2
If you can reach fans, there's work to be done. There's money to be made, there's there's ways to get it out. So that's how we feel again. And against all enemies. Hulu's not putting that film out right where we're going after die and CRT and and, and all the corruption during the sort of Biden years. So like for us as independent film producers, screenwriters and, and again, even with your project that we've been working on, I just love the moment we're in that there's a lot of challenges the is facing and there's exciting things.

00:59:30:02 - 00:59:52:21
Speaker 2
But in terms of storytelling, I don't think I'm so bullish on what the future holds of opening up for comedians and the things that you can do, the audiences you can reach, the tickets, you can sell, the parts of the country. It's kind of like, you know, you learn in adversity who your real friends are. You've probably also learned the better parts of the country to go to, and well know this place is never going to shut down.

00:59:52:21 - 01:00:06:03
Speaker 1
But you think about the whole David Goliath thing, thinking of ants that popped into my head. Anthony Oliver, the, the guy that sang that anthem, basically, and he went from literally obscurity to turning down a $100 million deal from a label.

01:00:06:06 - 01:00:09:18
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, because he was talented and he connected with.

01:00:09:20 - 01:00:28:16
Speaker 1
Lee and the people. So as someone who tried to for years to get into the system and I couldn't, I couldn't connect in New York, I couldn't connect in L.A., I couldn't, you know, for whatever reason, I didn't have what they want in those gatekeepers. And there were 5 or 6 of them. That's basically it. If you're a comic.

01:00:28:16 - 01:00:47:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. To be into this world now where, like you said, you produce something and if you can get it to your fans and then they get it out, the whole distribution process has changed. And that's what I want to bring up our project. Yeah. Real quick, based on the book. Yeah.

01:00:47:17 - 01:01:03:21
Speaker 2
So we read your book. I, it's funny, I every time I think of this project, I think of how many times, for some reason, my spellcheck always turns memoir into memoirs. And Lenny will write back and go, you met memoir. He's so good. I know she knows Lenny.

01:01:03:21 - 01:01:06:04
Speaker 1
Is the ultimate proof reader. Yeah.

01:01:06:06 - 01:01:22:26
Speaker 2
My wife's the same way where I'm like, can you just read this email? Because I'm sure there's eight things wrong with it, but, but no, we read your read your book. And again, we do a lot of documentaries and, you know, none of the, there's not a lot of laughs in the two projects that we just, you know, mentioned.

01:01:22:26 - 01:01:47:05
Speaker 2
Right? It's pretty serious subject matter. But I the reason I moved to LA was I wanted to be Larry David. I wanted to create the right sitcom. No, not necessarily Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm, although I can be as cranky as he can sometimes. But no, just the idea of that dude was not. He was doing stand up and stuff, and then his buddy Jerry signs was like, you want to make a show?

01:01:47:05 - 01:02:04:03
Speaker 2
And they came up with an idea and they made the great American sitcom. And so I went to LA in large part to be like, I want to get in those rooms, or I just want to be a writer in one of those rooms. How much fun would that be to order Chinese food and come up with a funny present, you know, so all that was very, alluring.

01:02:04:04 - 01:02:05:14
Speaker 1
At least you gave it a lot of fun.

01:02:05:14 - 01:02:09:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, it was mostly about the lunch that I.

01:02:09:04 - 01:02:11:10
Speaker 3
I want Chinese food and to make people laugh.

01:02:11:10 - 01:02:32:05
Speaker 2
So that was about it. But no, I went out there and we had some success, and I got an agent and a manager for script writing and sold a few projects and one and I'll tell this story very briefly, but it leads into why I wanted to work on yours so much. But, I'm a big football fan and, college football fan.

01:02:32:05 - 01:02:52:20
Speaker 2
And there's a guy named Paul Finebaum who's ESPN's kind of I always jokingly call him like the Ryan Seacrest of college football. He's the guy that they go to for interviews and commentary. He looks like an econ professor from the 1970s or something. He he doesn't look cool or hip, but he's so witty and snarky and very Larry David esque.

01:02:52:22 - 01:02:59:22
Speaker 2
And, and he, I married into a Georgia Bulldog family. So I grew up in Chicago. Right.

01:02:59:22 - 01:03:00:20
Speaker 3
Big time for you.

01:03:00:21 - 01:03:11:26
Speaker 2
Yeah. Big ten country. And I started hanging out with my now in-laws and everyone's, you know, into SEC football. So I got educated quickly. And how much everyone cares about that?

01:03:11:26 - 01:03:13:22
Speaker 1
I also talk about a religion.

01:03:13:25 - 01:03:35:08
Speaker 2
Yeah. I remember the first like Thanksgiving I went to at my with my in-laws and people in the South, and I came, right. My dad called me and said, how'd it go? And I was like, I kind of understand how the Civil War started. Like just how different it is. Even this was ten years ago, right? Just the so I say all that because I was intoxicated with that world of SEC football.

01:03:35:10 - 01:03:57:22
Speaker 2
Well, lo and behold, I'm out in LA and I meet Paul Finebaum at an event and I go, your life story is fascinating. Jewish liberal guy whose grandma was a communist organizer in New York 100 years ago, and now you all of a sudden want to be this world changing journalist, and you end up in sports talk radio in Birmingham and building this empire, and you're like, that whole thing is fascinating.

01:03:57:22 - 01:04:13:29
Speaker 2
So that's a story. So long story short, we sold a TV show to ABC based on Paul's life back in 2021, 2020 into 2021. And it's all going great. And I'm like, my dream is happening. Chinese food is waiting for me. I'm going to be in the writers room soon.

01:04:14:02 - 01:04:16:17
Speaker 3
And it'll be there in 15 minutes and.

01:04:16:17 - 01:04:39:07
Speaker 2
In an hour, about a week away from them saying, we're moving forward. On the pilot, they called and they're like, there's too many white people working on this show. And it's it's done. There's just it's we need more diversity, blah, blah, blah. And Paul's white, we got Jason Biggs, the actor was going to play young Paul. We were going to take his story kind of like yours, jump back in time and and kind of pick up the story.

01:04:39:07 - 01:04:49:22
Speaker 2
Anyway, at that moment, I was just like, I remember getting off the phone with my agent at the time and just saying to my wife, like, all right, we're out of here. We're living in Southern Cal, you know, chasing that dream.

01:04:49:22 - 01:04:51:01
Speaker 1
They have Chinese food elsewhere.

01:04:51:01 - 01:04:53:00
Speaker 2
There's Chinese food elsewhere. We can make.

01:04:53:04 - 01:04:54:05
Speaker 3
Egg roll somewhere else.

01:04:54:06 - 01:05:17:04
Speaker 2
Right. And this was 2021. So things like Angel were starting and Daily Wire, you know, we're just I'm like, we'll figure something else out. So my business partner and his wife, me and mine, our kids, we all, pack up and move here. So fast forward a couple of summers and we're working on these documentary projects, but I'm literally praying and thinking about, like, when's that comedy or something fun in that realm?

01:05:17:04 - 01:05:35:10
Speaker 2
When are we going to get our sinker, sink our teeth into it? And then that leads us to eventually meeting Lenny and you guys and reading the book and just being like this, this could be a great American story. And this the project we're developing is not straight sitcom. It's a little bit more like The Wonder Years or Parenthood.

01:05:35:10 - 01:05:37:03
Speaker 1
It's like a dramedy. Yeah.

01:05:37:05 - 01:05:58:25
Speaker 2
So we read the book. We all start working together, we write a script, we do a bunch of drafts, and now we're in a position of pulling some funds together, because, again, in this sort of Wild West environment that we're in, our plan is let's make this ourselves. Let's own that pilot episode. Let's show not tell that this story's worth telling.

01:05:58:28 - 01:06:13:15
Speaker 2
Jeff's going to play a version of his own dad in the story, and we're out, you know, meeting with actors to to play young Jeff and Tami and other characters that are built in and do a, inspired by version of of what they went through.

01:06:13:15 - 01:06:23:10
Speaker 1
I was disappointed that Anna Nicole Smith passed away. I thought that would make a great Tammy.

01:06:23:12 - 01:06:28:14
Speaker 2
That was first on our list. Yeah, she was at the top. She was at the top. But no, we're we're twins.

01:06:28:14 - 01:06:36:02
Speaker 1
Know who I'm talking about? I'm trying to think that's where my brain is. It's like, I'm glad we're shooting this. And you can. You can kiss my brain. Isn't the night.

01:06:36:04 - 01:06:55:04
Speaker 2
If they change the voice. If you couldn't hear the voice. You could tell the age of the man talking based on who they're like. Pin up example is right, because it's like Pamela Anderson or whatever. The other guys was a kid in the 90s, right? Exactly. Right away. Yeah. But no, it's so much fun because we're getting to, like my producing partner, Dave.

01:06:55:04 - 01:07:15:00
Speaker 2
He moved to L.A. to be in scripted content, and he worked on the Spider-Man movies and big things like that. So we've spent a number of years in the trenches doing what we hope is important work on docs. But this has been like an absolute pleasure. So much fun to work with, with Jeff and Lenny and, our friend cubby, who will be directing the pilot.

01:07:15:00 - 01:07:41:22
Speaker 2
So we've got a team assembled. We're trying to find actors, we're trying to put the money together and make that. And then then you can go shop that around and go scripts. Everyone's got opinions, scripts. But when you actually have something that you've filmed, it's so much more powerful. And it shows executives and other folks that could pour gasoline on that fire and make it into a full series like an Angel Studios and others, that you're serious about it and that your people that go and get stuff done instead of just talking about it.

01:07:41:22 - 01:07:56:01
Speaker 2
So that's sort of our ethos as a company is like, let's go do it and not just talk about it. And so, yeah, we've been working on that and it's a blast. And hopefully it's funny and meaningful and all the things we're trying to make it.

01:07:56:03 - 01:08:13:04
Speaker 3
The bits I've heard about it, it sounds amazing. I think it's going to be really great, and I love that it's set in the 90s because I'm constantly like, you might work around the same age on Instagram. I get hooked into those like 90s nostalgia stuff, like, I so badly want the 90s, like you said, Anna Nicole Smith.

01:08:13:10 - 01:08:30:02
Speaker 3
I remember my dumb dad, single dad, a daughter complaining that she's fat all the time, and he's like, well, I saw this Anna Nicole selling this trim spa. You take all that. And so I was just like, pop and trim spot ten. Just like, I'm gonna get a bad guys.

01:08:30:05 - 01:08:35:10
Speaker 2
The end of the year award. Yeah. No, that's. It is funny. Two raising daughters. I have four of them.

01:08:35:10 - 01:08:48:19
Speaker 1
Do you think you guys can talk for ten more minutes without me? I have a radio interview. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I have it for Birmingham deposit. Well, he can pause or they can keep talking. Just don't put the camera.

01:08:48:22 - 01:08:53:10
Speaker 2
Up anywhere, I don't mind. It's just ten minutes.

01:08:53:12 - 01:08:56:13
Speaker 3
Yeah. My name is Carolyn. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you.

01:08:56:14 - 01:09:12:19
Speaker 2
Me too. Yeah. No. Yeah. Just having daughters is those conversations I know are coming of, Yeah. Body image issues and all that stuff, so I'm gonna have to. I'm already, like, with my sisters.

01:09:12:19 - 01:09:13:13
Speaker 3
What are their ages?

01:09:13:25 - 01:09:15:12
Speaker 2
They're the oldest ones. Only eight.

01:09:15:14 - 01:09:18:18
Speaker 3
Okay, so the oldest one is the one that just got her ears pierced. Yes.

01:09:18:18 - 01:09:36:23
Speaker 2
So they're just getting into it. But, But no, it is like the story where we're telling, you know, Jeff story, the script we're working on is, taking it back to when their kids were young. We've changed the time period a little bit and made it late 90s, partially because all of us who were working on it didn't.

01:09:36:23 - 01:09:41:08
Speaker 2
We were just old enough that we wouldn't have remembered much of, like, the late 80s.

01:09:41:08 - 01:09:43:01
Speaker 3
I'm about to be 35. How old are you?

01:09:43:02 - 01:09:43:25
Speaker 2
41.

01:09:43:26 - 01:09:48:06
Speaker 3
41? Yeah. Okay. So I thought you were, like 35. No. Look. Great.

01:09:48:10 - 01:09:48:20
Speaker 2
Oh, well.

01:09:48:20 - 01:09:51:01
Speaker 3
Thank you. Tight hamstrings and all. You're looking.

01:09:51:01 - 01:10:08:25
Speaker 2
Good. My, my, becoming an independent film producer is, turn my beard a little bit wider and greater than I thought is quicker, but. But it makes me look distinguished. I've been told. So that's. I'll go with that. But no, it's wanting to, like, capture.

01:10:08:27 - 01:10:31:17
Speaker 2
A time period that hasn't been done much. Although I guess there's some new film called Y2K that's come out by Kyle Mooney from SNL. If you know who that comedian is. Anyway, so we wanted to to to move it into a time period where me and the other guys writing the script and working on the on the pilot, where we could really, like, capture that moment of the late 90s, early 2000, Y2K, all that stuff.

01:10:31:19 - 01:10:50:15
Speaker 3
Okay, so take me back to how you got into filmmaking. You said Larry David, not like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but like the kind of the Seinfeld. Yeah, dream. So was Seinfeld the first? Did you just, like, family together, sat down, watch sitcoms together? Like, when did you fall in love with.

01:10:50:18 - 01:10:57:13
Speaker 2
Yeah. For I mean, yes, my dad, my whole family, we've just always loved film.

01:10:57:14 - 01:10:59:26
Speaker 3
So your dad was the pastor, and then how many kids?

01:10:59:28 - 01:11:01:09
Speaker 2
I'm the oldest of six.

01:11:01:09 - 01:11:03:01
Speaker 3
Oldest of six? Yes. Okay.

01:11:03:05 - 01:11:03:20
Speaker 2
Three girls.

01:11:03:21 - 01:11:05:06
Speaker 3
Wow. Catholic? No. Just kidding.

01:11:05:06 - 01:11:09:20
Speaker 2
No, but that was. It was always Catholic or Mormon. Yeah. Questions we got growing up.

01:11:09:21 - 01:11:12:19
Speaker 3
That's like an old Jim Gaffigan joke. Six kids care.

01:11:12:21 - 01:11:18:15
Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah. Jim Gap, that's right. He, he's got five, eight.

01:11:18:15 - 01:11:20:03
Speaker 3
Hundred or six shot, 800 kids.

01:11:20:03 - 01:11:32:25
Speaker 2
Yeah, he's he's amazing. But I would I'd love to chat with him someday about about all that. So. No, we just came from a big family, loved movies, loved literature, read books, played sports. Just had a kind of normal, you know, whatever.

01:11:32:25 - 01:11:34:02
Speaker 3
And this was in Illinois.

01:11:34:07 - 01:11:49:26
Speaker 2
In the Chicago suburbs. Yeah, we grew up there. But really film was always the thing movies, TV shows. And my dad, because he was a pastor, because we were Christian, you know, we couldn't watch certain movies. There was restrictions.

01:11:49:26 - 01:11:52:07
Speaker 3
Where he loved to watch Harry Potter. I've heard that's a scandal.

01:11:52:07 - 01:12:03:08
Speaker 2
So that yeah, that became that was a little bit later than me. That was I think I was in college by the time we really became a thing. But yes, definitely in, in sort of my evangelical world, that.

01:12:03:12 - 01:12:21:29
Speaker 3
Husband grew up in the South, Southern Baptists, deep Southern Baptists. I grew up California atheist. So he would tell me, like in college, he had a part time job as like a youth, like minister at a camp. Yeah. And they would sneak Harry Potter. Yes. Like we were talking about, like sneaking Bibles in to Pakistan. And he's like, I don't know.

01:12:22:03 - 01:12:25:11
Speaker 3
This is here, this. Take this. This is sorcery stone.

01:12:25:16 - 01:12:33:12
Speaker 2
So I it's so funny you say that. I used to put my Pearl jam CDs in my DC lock covers, so. Oh, my God.

01:12:33:14 - 01:12:34:09
Speaker 3
He lives here.

01:12:34:11 - 01:12:55:07
Speaker 2
I would think that we were listening to other music. That was my move. But no movies, movies, TV, all that stuff always meant a great deal to us. You know, I played sports and all that, but really, I would nothing. I never enjoyed anything as much as a good movie, you know? And a good a good novel, but but really, it was movies for us.

01:12:55:07 - 01:13:11:01
Speaker 2
So I had friends that went into the film business, right? You know, went to school for it, went to film school and all that. And I'd go visit him in LA and go, I don't know, these my friends are dumb. Like they're figuring it out like some. I started to take the magic out of it, but in a good way.

01:13:11:03 - 01:13:11:20
Speaker 2
You're like.

01:13:11:23 - 01:13:13:03
Speaker 3
I is there. You can do it. I can do it.

01:13:13:03 - 01:13:24:15
Speaker 2
Yeah. You're like, it's just people. There's just people. And of course there's, you know, there's like David Fincher and Spielberg and like, just brilliant. What's the the French guy, Denis Villeneuve we've I don't.

01:13:24:15 - 01:13:25:27
Speaker 3
Know, I suck at current events.

01:13:26:00 - 01:13:36:17
Speaker 2
Go on. He's the guy who made like Dune, the new Dune movies. Oh, he must have me watch those. He's. Anyway, my point is brilliant, right? Like something? I could never do any of that stuff.

01:13:36:18 - 01:13:40:26
Speaker 3
You couldn't put a handful of people in the desert and just have weird music that's like, oh.

01:13:40:28 - 01:14:01:11
Speaker 2
I might be that that part. I think you could do that. But yeah, the special effects and and, cinematography maybe not, but no, it was just it made it accessible. So I got into journalism out of out of college and I was working more with writers and journalists, but also trying to help friends get documentaries made and raising money and putting things together.

01:14:01:13 - 01:14:01:26
Speaker 2
So.

01:14:02:01 - 01:14:16:06
Speaker 3
So what was the first passion project like? What was the I heard the journalism change this, so I want to do journalism or I heard this documentary change this. Like what was the first? My heart is completely in this project.

01:14:16:08 - 01:14:44:00
Speaker 2
Probably for me was a family friend of mine is to actually lose two family friends. One's a history professor and his buddy Morris is a New York Times bestselling Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from the Chicago Tribune. They co-wrote this book called Hitler in the crosshairs. That's about an American officer and a German officer who worked together at the end of the war to save the city of Munich from destruction.

01:14:44:03 - 01:15:06:05
Speaker 2
There was this whole, like, dissident ring and in and around Munich of guys that weren't Nazis. And we're trying to communicate with the Americans, like, come help us take this city down and end the war quicker. And, so these family friends wrote this book and in like 2013 or so, right after I'd moved to LA, I read that because it was a family friend, and I love history of that.

01:15:06:05 - 01:15:27:09
Speaker 2
Cool. And I was just you started to see the movie, right? And I always kind of thought that way, but that was the first one where I was like, I want to get the rights to this. I want to hire a writer or write it myself or collaborate. And like, this could be a really cool, you know, kind of spy thriller, World War Two style.

01:15:27:11 - 01:15:41:25
Speaker 2
So that was it. Hitler in the crosshairs is the book. We now have a script that's we're out pitching called Munich Rising. So we've kind of changed the title and, and took away I mean, the book's big and it's sweeping, and we're just kind of focused on a few days when they did this.

01:15:42:02 - 01:15:45:15
Speaker 3
So that passionate that 11 years later, you're still like, I'm going to get that.

01:15:45:18 - 01:15:58:17
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all these other things have happened in projects, but that's one that I just keep chipping away at because you're like, that's the kind of film my dad and I and my brothers and I watched growing up that made me love all this to begin with. So it is that, sort of.

01:15:58:22 - 01:16:00:15
Speaker 3
That like hero's journey. Yes.

01:16:00:17 - 01:16:18:17
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. So those things interested me, but really it was like I the Larry David thing. I'm not kidding. I was just like, I've always been pretty funny. I love comedy, I had friends again that were starting to be standups and stuff, and I was like, I'm definitely funnier than that person. I don't want to be a standup.

01:16:18:19 - 01:16:22:12
Speaker 2
I want the Chinese food. I want to go sit in a room. I just want to just write.

01:16:22:12 - 01:16:26:06
Speaker 3
And hey, somebody, Philip, get this guy Chinese food.

01:16:26:09 - 01:16:30:10
Speaker 2
I would love some, general sours if anyone's making a run.

01:16:30:13 - 01:16:33:13
Speaker 3
Oh. I'm sorry. It's pronounced general. Cheers.

01:16:33:18 - 01:16:35:00
Speaker 2
Oh, okay. Yeah. That's right.

01:16:35:06 - 01:16:36:19
Speaker 3
I need some general chaste.

01:16:36:23 - 01:17:05:18
Speaker 2
Bless your heart and all that. Yeah, yeah. We, So, anyway, I like to get to do any of this. As hard as it is to be an independent producer, because a lot of my friends went and worked, you know, interned at a big company or worked for a big producer and then got their, their opportunities. But my pathway was much more, again, as I've already shared, having some successes, selling some scripts, being involved with stuff, and then realizing I don't want to work for any of these people.

01:17:05:23 - 01:17:20:18
Speaker 2
I don't want to work with most of these people. If any of these people really knew my values and how I vote and where I go to church, you know, all these sorts of things that I wasn't like hiding. But you're also you're at pitch meetings and stuff. I'm not talking to them about.

01:17:20:23 - 01:17:21:19
Speaker 3
Committees and.

01:17:21:19 - 01:17:22:04
Speaker 2
Stuff.

01:17:22:04 - 01:17:22:22
Speaker 3
Oh you're not.

01:17:22:25 - 01:17:24:12
Speaker 2
I'm that's not usually that's.

01:17:24:12 - 01:17:25:09
Speaker 3
Not your icebreaker.

01:17:25:09 - 01:17:44:12
Speaker 2
No. Oh. But I, but I was like, to heck with all that. And we'll go again. Build our own pirate ship. A big influence on me was Adam Corolla, the comedian. He, was one of the first people that kind of hired me and brought me in. When I was in LA. He was trying to start doing documentary films.

01:17:45:07 - 01:17:54:19
Speaker 2
Needed help raising funds and bringing people together. And so, I've been listening to Adam since, like, 1996. Loveline. He used to host this show.

01:17:54:19 - 01:17:57:05
Speaker 3
Wasn't it like the first podcast or two? Like he really.

01:17:57:05 - 01:18:00:14
Speaker 2
Was. It was Adam, Joe Rogan and like.

01:18:00:14 - 01:18:01:06
Speaker 3
Tom green or.

01:18:01:06 - 01:18:06:22
Speaker 2
Someone Tom green. And there's one other Bill Simmons from ESPN, formerly of ESPN.

01:18:06:24 - 01:18:18:23
Speaker 3
Oh, and the guy from what was that show that people would go to all the time? Like it was like the big radio show Howard Stern, not Howard Stern. Two dudes.

01:18:18:26 - 01:18:19:23
Speaker 2
Opening.

01:18:19:25 - 01:18:24:06
Speaker 3
Yes, yes. Anthony was one of them. Right. One of the first podcast. Jeff.

01:18:24:08 - 01:18:27:06
Speaker 2
Sorry. Yeah. Because he got canceled, I think, or something.

01:18:27:06 - 01:18:34:14
Speaker 3
Wasn't it like into I swear I've heard on Joe Rogan he like did like karaoke in his basement was like yeah.

01:18:34:19 - 01:18:56:02
Speaker 2
No he literally the one Tom green was like in his living room. Yeah. Just set it up. So I was fascinated by all those those people, funny people that were creative, and were interested, like Adam Corolla in particular. You listen to Love Line. His podcast is radio shows. Very funny, but also was interested in the world around him.

01:18:56:04 - 01:19:23:05
Speaker 2
And now Adam's produced, I don't know, I probably at least 7 or 8 documentaries, maybe more. And we did one with him called No Safe Spaces, which is about free speech on college campuses, that we did about 5 or 6 years ago. So, yeah, just being in his orbit and others out there in LA and going to comedy shows and, what is it, the UCB theater, you know, just, just being around that and knowing a lot of funny folks.

01:19:23:05 - 01:19:37:29
Speaker 2
The manager I ended up working with represented a lot of comedy clients. And so we would collaborate on things. So, yeah, if you had told me five, six years ago that I'd be like, you know, talking about gulags and.

01:19:38:02 - 01:19:39:04
Speaker 3
And living in the South.

01:19:39:05 - 01:19:45:14
Speaker 2
Yeah, living in the South, working, you know, with Angel Studios run by four Mormon brothers in Provo. Like all these things you.

01:19:45:17 - 01:20:01:21
Speaker 3
Can I ask you a question? This is inside baseball. And if we have to cut it, we can cut it. Sure. Is there a possibility with Angel Studios that, like season six, The Chosen, Joseph Smith's going to show up on scene? Is that like the plot twist? We've all been waiting for that.

01:20:01:21 - 01:20:25:13
Speaker 2
I'll call them and ask them, but no. Okay, it's the play on that. It's it's funny and without, of course, wanting to offend any of my Mormon friends. They they know this. Evangelicals. My dad's an evangelical pastor. There is all the tensions and what you know is there. Yeah. Just like we believe different things. So there's the theological tensions.

01:20:25:13 - 01:20:32:27
Speaker 2
But I guess what I'm referring to more is the is there some secret there's someone sneaking some secret agenda?

01:20:32:29 - 01:20:42:01
Speaker 3
Yeah. Okay. There's all oh, I didn't realize that was like something that was actually happening. And I didn't realize you're talking about tension between Mormons and evangelicals. I thought you were talking about tension around the chosen. I was like, oh, no.

01:20:42:01 - 01:20:43:04
Speaker 2
There is also that, too.

01:20:43:04 - 01:20:47:05
Speaker 3
Really? Oh my God, I'm so out of. I'm not really I'm not so sure of that.

01:20:47:05 - 01:21:00:27
Speaker 2
So I don't want to speak to any of that because, yeah, they all, they all ended up like suing each other. And the guys that created Angel or Angel Studios and the guys that created the chosen. So I don't know, I don't know.

01:21:00:27 - 01:21:01:20
Speaker 3
Oh, really?

01:21:01:20 - 01:21:02:17
Speaker 2
Well, that's going on.

01:21:02:20 - 01:21:05:24
Speaker 3
Oh, okay. So it's not actually funny. We're probably going to have to cut this.

01:21:05:24 - 01:21:17:13
Speaker 2
I'm sorry. No, it's it's all in the news. I mean, you can Google it and read articles about the lawsuits and stuff, but it's I always tell people I want to be successful enough that someone wants to sue me. Like, that's a.

01:21:17:15 - 01:21:18:07
Speaker 3
That's the dream.

01:21:18:07 - 01:21:18:21
Speaker 2
That's the dream.

01:21:18:21 - 01:21:19:21
Speaker 3
Chinese food. And they get.

01:21:19:21 - 01:21:23:24
Speaker 2
Sued and they get sued because your show is so wildly popular,

01:21:23:27 - 01:21:25:07
Speaker 3
That people hate you for it.

01:21:25:07 - 01:21:28:01
Speaker 2
People start fighting over, you know.

01:21:28:03 - 01:21:28:21
Speaker 3
That's a dream.

01:21:28:21 - 01:21:33:04
Speaker 2
A piece of the pie. But no, there is. Yeah. We don't have to go down that rabbit hole.

01:21:33:04 - 01:21:37:00
Speaker 3
That's too wild. Yeah. I've learned you'll make a documentary on intimacy with that.

01:21:37:00 - 01:21:44:28
Speaker 2
We will be. We will be hired to do the, What was it? Behind the music. Oh.

01:21:45:00 - 01:21:46:04
Speaker 3
That was so good.

01:21:46:04 - 01:22:06:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, we'll do that for, the Chosen Angels studios for you, but. But no, they're all lovely people. Angels. The chosen is awesome. As a pastor's son, I was forced to watch so many crappy Christian things growing up. And so The Chosen is one of those things where you're like, thank God they made something good here. And especially about, you know, Jesus life.

01:22:06:07 - 01:22:14:19
Speaker 2
And the angel guys are awesome. So yeah, I wish them all well. And we want to work with both sides. Yeah, I think it'd be okay. I mean, I stop to question.

01:22:14:21 - 01:22:37:01
Speaker 3
No, I, I think you're right. Stand up. What? You said that you love to stand up. At what age did you discover stand up. And what is the bit that like you heard first that still makes you laugh today. Like you were like oh this is what comedy is. Because I feel like we all have that thing where it's like we hit a maturity level in our sense of humor, where we're like, oh, that's the thing.

01:22:37:09 - 01:22:47:18
Speaker 2
Yeah. It's funny, for sure. Growing up, I don't know if you're allowed to talk about him any more, but Bill Cosby, Bill Cosby, stand up specials like that.

01:22:47:20 - 01:22:49:01
Speaker 3
You're still allowed to talk about him.

01:22:49:04 - 01:22:49:18
Speaker 2
Okay.

01:22:49:19 - 01:22:51:18
Speaker 3
Thank you. I'll cover my drink, but go on.

01:22:51:20 - 01:23:15:22
Speaker 2
The, the, my dad, everybody loved Bill Cosby very growing up in the 80s and 90s. And so we would, we had a I forget the names of them. I'm sure they're classic, that everyone else can repeat by heart. But we had those on, on cassette tape, and when we'd go on road trips, we would listen to, Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, my dad loved.

01:23:15:23 - 01:23:28:06
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah. So going back to all the way to those guys for me, Jim Gaffigan, for sure. What was his first one, Beyond the Pale or something like that? His Hot Pockets, it's like.

01:23:28:13 - 01:23:31:06
Speaker 3
For me, his first one was his Comedy Central Presents.

01:23:31:06 - 01:23:34:28
Speaker 2
Or maybe that was in the late 90s, early 2000, when you really.

01:23:34:29 - 01:23:39:16
Speaker 3
Had corn behind him on the set. Yeah, yeah, that was the best.

01:23:39:16 - 01:23:50:24
Speaker 2
So yeah, Jim Gaffigan stuff was big. I remember in college, discovering people like George Carlin and Richard Pryor. Right.

01:23:50:25 - 01:23:52:16
Speaker 3
I had that was your rebellious phase.

01:23:52:16 - 01:24:08:01
Speaker 2
Well, everybody had older friends. I don't maybe we all didn't, but I feel like most of us did. There was always some older cousin or friend on the street down the block who would turn you on to music, right? Or be like this band. So I had a few of those guys in my life that loved comedy, loved film.

01:24:08:04 - 01:24:14:06
Speaker 2
I remember one guy gave me a, like a bootleg copy of Wes Anderson's, Bottle Rocket. If you ever.

01:24:14:07 - 01:24:15:26
Speaker 3
I don't even know what that is.

01:24:15:28 - 01:24:17:08
Speaker 2
It's an amazing film.

01:24:18:01 - 01:24:22:04
Speaker 3
Everybody in the room knows what it is, but I don't. We're allowed to talk about the people in the room, I was told.

01:24:22:06 - 01:24:42:25
Speaker 2
Yes. You guys, have everyone seen Bottle Rocket? Bottle rocket was. Yeah, it was a I didn't watch it, but it was such a phenomenal one. Yeah, it it was mostly bootleg copies. People would hand them around. So I had those guys in my life that were a little bit older that would say, you should check out George Carlin, you should check out Richard Pryor.

01:24:43:02 - 01:25:01:22
Speaker 2
Seinfeld was huge, of course, like that. What was it? I'm telling you, for the last time, I think was when he, like, retired all of his jokes famously. So. Yeah, those are those guys were huge. But it was also like, I honestly, it's the two biggest comedic influences on me.

01:25:01:24 - 01:25:02:11
Speaker 3
Were Jeff.

01:25:02:11 - 01:25:22:20
Speaker 2
Allen, were Jeff besides Jeff Allen were shows, and it was Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development. Those were I was in college. I was starting to write for the school newspaper and like, write sketches and stuff, and I was just so taken by both of those shows that that I as I understand it, Arrested Development wasn't really improv.

01:25:22:20 - 01:25:26:24
Speaker 2
It was very precisely written, but but acted so well that it you felt like it was.

01:25:26:24 - 01:25:28:12
Speaker 1
That's what good improv is.

01:25:28:14 - 01:25:29:04
Speaker 2
Yeah.

01:25:29:07 - 01:25:30:07
Speaker 1
It's scripted.

01:25:30:09 - 01:25:46:06
Speaker 2
Yeah. And that's fun. And the curb is like the quintessential, obviously version of that. So yeah, my sensibilities have always been and it's one of the reasons I connected with Jeff is I do I like kind of cranky humor, I like I like somebody to be like, what's hey, what's going on?

01:25:46:07 - 01:25:49:00
Speaker 3
Like the Lewis Black kind of yeah, a little.

01:25:49:03 - 01:25:49:26
Speaker 2
I like Lewis.

01:25:49:26 - 01:25:51:18
Speaker 1
Black. Absolutely cranky.

01:25:51:18 - 01:25:54:06
Speaker 2
Well, whatever we call Larry David.

01:25:54:06 - 01:25:56:26
Speaker 3
When you make that face, you look like Jeff Dunham.

01:25:57:00 - 01:26:03:00
Speaker 1
I don't I don't believe me. I've been told that all over. If Jeff Dunham ever does a live version of Walter, I'm.

01:26:03:01 - 01:26:06:15
Speaker 2
I'm I'm in the lead. I've been just like.

01:26:06:15 - 01:26:10:02
Speaker 1
I don't know if that's a compliment or not, but I don't care if it pays the bills.

01:26:10:04 - 01:26:11:04
Speaker 2
It's a compliment. Hey, we.

01:26:11:04 - 01:26:23:18
Speaker 1
Got to land this thing. But I got to tell you, before we leave, the most important thing I say for the best. And that's, You are a meat lover and griller. You send me meat porn pictures of your meat.

01:26:23:20 - 01:26:24:26
Speaker 3
We're talking about food.

01:26:24:29 - 01:26:26:18
Speaker 1
By the way. Yeah, yeah.

01:26:26:20 - 01:26:30:05
Speaker 2
So soup, cow and pork.

01:26:30:05 - 01:26:34:19
Speaker 1
And. Yeah, if I ever run for public office, that'll be the clip. Yes.

01:26:34:21 - 01:26:39:15
Speaker 2
He looks for me. Porn.

01:26:39:18 - 01:26:42:08
Speaker 2
You got a bud by barbecue? I heard from your shirt.

01:26:42:10 - 01:26:55:27
Speaker 1
Oh, you Christians, this man loves other men's meat. So anyway. But, and the deep dish pizza from Chicago. Yeah, I, I every time I do a Portillo's or a Giordano's, I send you the picture of the sign just to make you jealous. Yeah.

01:26:55:27 - 01:27:08:03
Speaker 2
And our friend cubby was at Mel. Not Lou. Mel, not his pizza the other night. Making me jealous with a photo. I know food is a huge part coming from a big family. Yeah, coming from the Midwest, we eat. We eat our feelings.

01:27:08:08 - 01:27:14:18
Speaker 3
I just recently discovered biscuits and carbs. I'm very excited about it. They're legal here. Yeah. So yeah.

01:27:14:21 - 01:27:33:04
Speaker 2
So it's funny. Lastly, I'll say about food go to LA. I start kind of weaseling my way into production meetings and helping friends and trying to get seats at tables just to be around writers and projects. I remember I was a I was like 29 years old, and I paid for, a commercial with Pat Sajak on the Wheel of Fortune.

01:27:33:09 - 01:27:52:04
Speaker 2
And it's all like 19 year old college kids and me, but I just wanted to be around it right when I got out there. And one thing I noticed is everyone talked about how they were on a diet. You know, it's LA. Yeah. And how they just wouldn't, you know, I don't eat donuts and all that. And I'd be like, that's B.S..

01:27:52:06 - 01:27:55:08
Speaker 2
And so I started bringing donuts to like production meetings to think.

01:27:55:09 - 01:27:57:04
Speaker 3
Oh my gosh, get behind me Satan.

01:27:57:09 - 01:28:10:11
Speaker 2
Every they'd always be God, but it would always start the same way where they'd be like, oh, molar, molar, what are you doing? And by the end of the meeting I'd go check. And they were all empty. And then by then people start going, hey, get blueberry next time. Or like they start.

01:28:10:13 - 01:28:11:29
Speaker 1
I think we have rotors.

01:28:12:00 - 01:28:15:08
Speaker 3
Yeah. If you checked again, they'd be, like, in the bathroom. In the toilet.

01:28:15:10 - 01:28:34:13
Speaker 2
Well, there's like, whatever they do is between them and their maker. But all I knew was people love food. And so I always some day, if I'm rich and famous and people care enough to ask me to write a book, mine would be called Abdi Always Bring donuts and it would be a short book. Just encouraging young people.

01:28:34:13 - 01:28:54:18
Speaker 2
If you're going to do something, show up with something, write. Show up with some pastry, show up with an idea. Show up with a kind word. I was amazed I'd get out to LA when I got to tell everyone was so of course fake and whatever. But it was always. Everyone was just like, depressed and like, you'd go to these meetings and you're like, I don't think anybody even likes what they're doing here.

01:28:54:20 - 01:28:59:26
Speaker 2
I don't just, I people would literally be like, I don't even watch movies. Or because they pitch meeting the.

01:28:59:26 - 01:29:03:16
Speaker 1
Croutons, you know, don't it? People are happy people.

01:29:03:18 - 01:29:05:01
Speaker 2
Yes. So yeah.

01:29:05:02 - 01:29:06:03
Speaker 3
Their joints hurt.

01:29:06:06 - 01:29:06:20
Speaker 2
Okay.

01:29:06:22 - 01:29:12:06
Speaker 1
Lost church used to do it. This is what I love about the South. They'd raise money with dozens of Krispy Kremes.

01:29:12:06 - 01:29:13:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, there you go.

01:29:13:00 - 01:29:21:15
Speaker 1
And you'd give them $5 for a dozen. And we got to the point where we would just give them the five and keep the talk, because we got a dozen would be gone by the time we got home. Yeah.

01:29:21:17 - 01:29:22:20
Speaker 2
You know, in the park with.

01:29:22:20 - 01:29:24:03
Speaker 1
Two kids and two adults.

01:29:24:03 - 01:29:26:11
Speaker 3
Giving me the shakes. Yeah. We need some donuts.

01:29:26:15 - 01:29:28:19
Speaker 2
Yeah. Chinese food and donuts next time.

01:29:28:19 - 01:29:31:08
Speaker 1
Well, next time, bring donuts. You didn't bring any of this time.

01:29:31:10 - 01:29:32:03
Speaker 2
That is true.

01:29:32:03 - 01:29:34:24
Speaker 1
And, we will, we will talk to you again.

01:29:34:26 - 01:29:36:03
Speaker 2
Yes. Thank you for having me.

01:29:36:03 - 01:29:40:00
Speaker 1
When, the. Are we there yet? Project? The,

01:29:40:02 - 01:29:41:04
Speaker 2
Stay tuned for that.

01:29:41:08 - 01:29:58:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm excited about that. And, by the way, if, you know anybody that has some extra money lying around, we will be doing a fundraiser for the, for the project, so. But anyway, thank you for tuning in. Hit the subscribe button, wherever that is, up or down. We need you. We really do.

01:29:58:20 - 01:30:19:14
Speaker 1
We need you to share this. If you liked what you saw, share it, brag about it, talk about it. And if you didn't like what you saw, keep your yap shut. Nobody likes a winner. And, that would be winning at the highest levels. Or send it to people you don't like and just tell them how great it is, because, anyway, from, Carolyn Xavier.

01:30:20:01 - 01:30:20:17
Speaker 1
Say.

01:30:20:20 - 01:30:24:20
Speaker 3
We need donate money. Donate money. Give us that. Donate money. Yeah.

01:30:24:23 - 01:30:25:10
Speaker 1
And,

01:30:25:12 - 01:30:26:05
Speaker 3
And God bless.

01:30:26:05 - 01:30:32:04
Speaker 1
You and RJ Muller. Keep an eye out. Coming this, this spring, some really good stuff, man. Thank you. RJ, so.

01:30:32:04 - 01:30:32:21
Speaker 3
Nice to meet you.

01:30:32:23 - 01:30:36:26
Speaker 2
I bless you, too. Okay.