Backstage: Mark & Franci Kerr talk Dwayne Johnson and The Smashing Machine

Never seen/heard footage that did NOT make the original full episode. Mike and Scott had 30-minutes in the studio before the podcast went live.  Mark shares some great stories about The Rock, filming the movie, The Smashing Machine, and more. 

Join us as we delve into the inspiring journey of Mark Kerr, a former NCAA wrestling champion and MMA fighter, as he shares his life story, challenges, and insights into overcoming adversity. This episode offers valuable lessons on resilience, vulnerability, and the power of authenticity.

Key Topics
Mark Kerr's early life and wrestling career
Transition from MMA to Hollywood and media
Lessons on resilience and overcoming adversity
The importance of vulnerability and authenticity in life
Behind the scenes of the documentary, The Smashing Machine

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:55 First Impressions and Personal Challenges
01:56 Meeting Dwayne and Publicity Challenges
03:01 Mark Kerr's Public Persona and Engagement Skills
04:02 Balancing Public Life and Personal Authenticity
05:16 Starting the Interview: Mark Kerr's Story
06:20 Mark Kerr's Background and Early Life
07:14 The Documentary 'The Smashing Machine' and Its Impact
08:17 Behind the Scenes of the Documentary Filming
08:53 Mark Kerr's Connection with Music and Art
10:03 Memorable Moments in Venice and Italy
11:01 Reflections on Personal Growth and Challenges
11:23 Dealing with Fame and Vulnerability
12:26 The Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing
13:48 Gratitude and Support Systems
14:54 Manifestation and Unexpected Opportunities
16:14 The Power of Persistence and Patience
18:12 Balancing Public and Private Life
19:22 The Role of Family and Support in Recovery
21:03 Final Reflections and Lessons Learned

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of What's Your Story? I'm Scott Lees here with my good friend and co-host Mike Lindstrom. What's going on, buddy?

SPEAKER_02 0:12

I'm excited about today. That's all I know. I'm really excited about our guests. This is a really this has been a long time coming. In fact, the last time around, we were going to interview this guest. So who is it?

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Well, his name is Mark Kerr. And if you don't know who he is, you're about to because The Rock is starring as Mark Kerr in a movie called The Smashing Machine. And Mark is a former NCAA wrestling champion as well as an M MA fighting champion. I'm going to be honest with you. He's about to be sitting right there. I have not sat that close to somebody who can actually snip me in half. It's called the Smashing Machine for a reason, man. I'm a little intimidated by somebody who I know can break me.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

But you know what the thing is? Well, uh, the first time I met Mark, I had the same feeling that nervousness. And when you meet him, he's like a gentle giant. The guy is just such a pure heart. Yeah. And I'm just excited to interview him.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to him as well. I mean, I've been through my own challenges and stories with health and addiction and injuries from sports and athletics and all this kind of stuff. So stick around. We're super excited to have Mark Kerr join us on what's your story.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

They said that Tiger Woods was budgeted to the every to the five-minute mark. Yep. So you had a five-minute interview that's been pulling him off. Like, you're done. You're good. Like if you did this podcast, they would tell you you got 12 minutes with them. And they pull them right out.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Exactly. It's crazy. Literally, like uh there's two interview sessions I did with with Dwayne, um, where his publicist has been with forever, uh, her name is Meredith, and she's doing that. She's like, You gotta go. And he, and we were like him and I were doing it together, and there's enough of a flow where he's like, he just tells Meredith, he goes, No, time me three more minutes, and I'm you know, he's like, fix my schedule. Yeah, he's the boss. Yeah, he's kind of the boss, yeah. Yeah, but she she knows hard stops, she knows the hard stops were were and she's uh when we were in Toronto, when we were in Toronto, oh my god, man, it was it it just uh they had a pre-screening event and it was it wasn't as secured as it needed to be, and so it was just overrun. And so Dwayne stood there for an hour, and he just had people just playing on him and playing on him, and that's cool, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

I don't know how he does that.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

So, you know what's crazy about it, and France heard me say this a bunch of times. What's crazy about it that Meredith again is publicist, is there, she's turning him, right? Like this is you know, Jane, this is Bill, this is blah blah blah. She knows who all the people in that immediate sphere are. Yeah. And when he turns and engages with you, there's nobody else in the room.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

That's amazing. How's he doing? That's a skill. That is a skill. I couldn't I've never met him. I've seen him in public, and but I've never met him.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Could not imagine it was like like I've seen him just turn and all this chaos and stuff going on all around him, people pulling on him, pushing on him, the density of it, him just engaged, like and it's it's like one of those engagements where it's like listening, but not listening, waiting for your turn to talk. It's like he's completely engaged. Like, actually, what you're saying is really important to him, and he actually is. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

That is a skill, man.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

That's definitely a skill.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

I don't need not too many people. Tony Robbins is really good at that. Tony, but he's he's a really good, he's the best way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

And it just it was repeatedly, you could see these little pockets of uh, you know, like you you could throw you could throw Emily into a room full of pipe fitters and welders, and then throw her right in the next room with the queen, and she's good. She's great. She's a pro too. Uh she's good. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

How much time do we have with you?

SPEAKER_02 4:06

We normally have 35 minutes or whatever, but whatever.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

We're good.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

You have a hard stop though on all seriousness. There's a clock right there. So we'll tell you if you tell us, hey, we're we gotta be at a dinner and I'll start chopping it up here. Well, we're not gonna stop you, man. Trust me. We're gonna take it. So we're we're gonna we're gonna uh start off the first question. We're gonna do because ladies first will say what's your story. You're gonna go to you.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

That's how I don't even know what to say my story. Oh shit. So boring.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Yeah, no, it's called the Noah. Everybody thinks their story is boring. Everyone says the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

Yeah, some, but I'm not gonna go in.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

No, no, no. We're we'll draw it out. We're just looking for the abbreviated. We're gonna draw it out of you during the interview, and then mark the laughing you're we're gonna ask instead of. And you can start wherever you want. We already know because we've seen it, but we wouldn't use a specific motion of what you want to share with us. Then we're gonna go to make a pivot.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Then you decided to start your own business at some point in time. You met this guy?

SPEAKER_02 5:03

So you can elevator pitch. You dropped the last name. We're going Kerr. Albert Inker. Okay. Okay, cool. I want to make sure I got that right. All right, cool. So Scott Lee is I'll kick it. Uh you want me to kick it off or you want me to take it off? You do you do it? Check it off. Okay. So we're gonna go here. Hey guys, you ready?

SPEAKER_01 5:20

The people that know the connection with sit closest.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

And you and you know them. I have a better angle right here. I think honestly, I think I have a good angle. Okay. Do you want to okay, okay? No, I don't want it.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

I'm fine. We're still going this camera, right? No, you're over there. We're going here? From that chair, you you go there.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

So if you could just talk a little bit more, we're just trying to get it used to anything?

SPEAKER_02 5:46

No.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

Can you hear me?

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Do you want to bring it up higher? Bring it up a little bit higher. And then move that hair that side of your hair back. There you go, so the hair won't rub on it.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Better?

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Better? Mike on the mic, how are you? How are you? Where were you born?

SPEAKER_03 6:04

St. Louis.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

You were born in St. Louis? How long have you been in Phoenix?

SPEAKER_03 6:07

Uh about twenty-five years.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

25 years. How's it sound?

SPEAKER_03 6:16

You said I need something behind you.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

No, no, no. I think they're the mic, that's the microphone they wanted to go with. They have a different mic for her.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

There's something here?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

No, that's okay. It's aiming correctly. Just give us like an ABC one two three.

SPEAKER_03 6:33

A B C one two three. A B C one two three. A B C one two three.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Make sure you introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

Francie Albert Incar.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yeah, there you go. Okay. I was born a side live. You don't have a Missouri accent anymore.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

I feel a little of a twang.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

You don't really have a couple.

SPEAKER_03 6:56

So let me practice.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I'll just remember.

SPEAKER_03 6:58

What's my story? So um I was born in St. Louis. I moved out here in 1910.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Yeah, what brought you out here?

SPEAKER_03 7:06

My best girlfriend was moving out here chasing her husband. And she said, You want him? I was in Springfield, Missouri, going to college. And so I followed her out here, and I met this guy.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

They were filming a way back in 1999.

SPEAKER_03 7:19

They were filming a documentary about his life.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

In 99, they were in the world. That's how crazy this is. That's how long it was. No. No. So so so when I met her, there was a film crew that I went to Syracuse University with that filmed a documentary that aired on charge of it. That documentary is the basis of what Dwayne did the smashing machine off. It was like 18 months in my life where we're gonna swap it up. That was in the movie, you know. That was happening.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

There are certain angles that you I watched that. I was wondering how they got those angles. Buried the cameras. Didn't even think of that. Buried the mics?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Didn't even think of that. Because once he shot Wayne and Emily in there, he wanted that to be as close to life as like your voyeur looking in on brother. Yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

And never has he talked about that in the in the talk?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

I don't know how much in detail he's gone about it. He's talked about the buried cameras, but the reasoning and rationale, why it's just one where we're it's just like brilliant. That's yeah, see, that's got to be government. Like, because production has to budget for it. Yeah. And he's already got this mapped out in his head. That's crazy. You know, which is like one of those things. And then it's got then um the one scene where it's Bruce Ringstein and um Jungaland, right? He had to send that to Bruce because the clip he played the whole song. Really? And normally you could play a clip of it, but most artists won't approve the full length of the song.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

So weird.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

So he writes, and writes a letter and sends the clip to Bruce Ringste.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

It was cool. I mean, he helped out. That's pretty cool. He'd never been there in his life. That blows my mind, bro. That I've been to a place before that guy, and that guy's never been to Venice.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

This is she'll so I'll I'll I'll show you afterward. So we got there uh Friday morning early, and Emily had had texted me that week and said, Hey, listen, um, when do you get in? I said, Friday morning. She said, Okay, perfect. Um, I reserved St. Marco's Basilica at 7:30 at night for a private tour. And she goes, Dwayne, Dwayne never gets to play tourist. That is so cool. So it was my wife, me, Dwayne, Emily, Benny, Benny's.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

Ava, I love Ava.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Ava, she's just beautiful. And uh Hiram, who's who's DJ was DJ's brother-in-law at one point and has been his producer forever, and Dave Copeland was St. Marco's Basilica to ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

I'm asking DJ, like, what do you think this is made of?

SPEAKER_00 10:17

It's like it's like Mike Drop. If you ever complain like ever, that's the first one I'm gonna bring up. The second one I'm gonna bring up is we we had six water taxi rides. Just me, my wife, Dwayne, Emily, Benny, and Dwayne's head of security, and just doc the doc. You know, I go, what the f? I mean it was what on the right hand side.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

So it's showcase. No, no, no, no. Put it back where it was, but the the line of it, so put it back.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Really nervous at the beginning, and then all of a sudden it's two days hanging out, you know, just totally in her own little groove.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Yeah. But looking back on it is You're getting all this right now?

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

You might wake up a year or two from now and see them doing. Oh my god. Yeah. All right, you ready, rock and roll?

SPEAKER_02 11:18

When you first said Dwayne and Emma. We may have you redo this. Yeah. Okay, okay, we're riffing here. This is good. All right, so what's your version of the what's your story, my man?

SPEAKER_00 11:29

I so that's like one of those, um, where do I start? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Just uh exhale and you're getting that now, I hope, right? Round it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

A lot of it right now is is um like I I looked at it like this. Like like when I was competing, I would do a 12-week or 14-week training camp, right? Have the fight, and then afterward there was this blank spot. And sometimes that blank spot was dangerous because I filled it with a bunch of bunch of stuff you shouldn't have been doing. Oh my god, a bunch of really bad stuff. Because I was looking for that next dopamine hit, right? I was looking for it and looking for it and looking for it. So then figuring out like where I am now going, okay, I'm cog I'm aware of it now, so I can go, okay, I'm not gonna engage in that behavior. There's this decompression, but there's this sense of urgency behind me of like, I need to be doing something, I need to be doing like onto the and it's like, hang on a second, let me just enjoy this for a minute, right? Because even the championships I won and stuff like that, there's moments that were where the second I won it, I'd sit in the locker room, I'd have 15, 20 minutes of just peace, and then got it. What's next? On to the next thing, on to and it was this relentless drive. This was just this is what was going on behind everything. This was why the behavior was this, why this was this, why and so it was this relief, and then it was like okay, how do we how do we get help? How do we figure this thing out, you know? When you get so it for my first year, it took me that first year for me to figure a lot of stuff like in my head, like, oh my gosh, wow. Like it wasn't a soft landing, it was like uh, dude, hey, look where you are. It's it's that brutal honesty you need, right? And um in that first year, I was like, I was terrified. I was terrified of everything, everybody. I was just so shell-shocked that I had let my life get to that capacity. And then the second year, it was just okay, I'm just gonna build one little step at a time, you know. I just need to make one incremental improvement per day. Yeah, you know, and then I can build off it. And then when you look back on it, you go, that compounded itself. At the end of the year, I'm much better. So she came into my life just at a pivotal point where you know, I needed her influence because uh the first thing I wrote, um I'm gonna start crying if I can't, but the first thing I wrote was, uh, you make it want to be better.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Start making me cry of this chair. I know. Thank you so much from the depths of my heart for taking the time. I I know you're busy people, and uh it means a lot to Scott and I to have you come on.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

No, it means a lot for us to support you as well. Thank you. Because it's just one where where, again, it's just you know, it's like local.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Yeah, yeah, that's that's we ever almost everybody we've had's been pretty much local in Arizona. The only person not local is me. That's a good point. Austin, Austin, Texas. We're gonna get him out here though. He's on his way, he's on his way.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

It must be hard to peel him away from Austin.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yeah, Austin's keep it weird, baby.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

This is what's this is what the crazy again about the universe and about manifesting about how it is. So it's the fall of 2023, October, and she had said, Yeah, do you do you need to reach out? And I'm like, I go, you know what, I'm gonna call Brad's office. So I call William Morris, and and this is no shit. Brad goes, your ears must have been ringing. And I'm like, okay. And he goes, I can't tell you. It's Thursday, it's a Thursday. And he goes, I can't tell you you need to talk to Dwayne. And I'm like, okay, and he goes, Dwayne, we'll call you over the weekend. So it's Thursday. Dwayne texts me the next day, hey, I'll call you over the weekend. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, no call. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I get another text. So now it's like eight and eight and eight nine. Counting. And so it's like Saturday, no call.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

I'm like, I'm like, I can't focus on anything else right now. I'm just I don't want to admit it. Yeah, but is my phone charged?

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Yeah. Is this thing working? You know, like everything. And um, so finally it's like it's Sunday afternoon. And uh he calls me, he goes, You available? I'm like, yeah. We get on the phone, we talk for an hour on the phone. Then he goes, Yeah, um, we're going forward with this. It's green lit, you know, A24 studio, they're the ones doing it. Benny Safety's directing, I got Emily on board, all this other stuff. Not understanding that when he said this thing's moving forward, but behind him, his production company, A24, that there's hundreds of people that are working on this and have been working on it for the last couple months.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Unbeknownst to you, really.

unknown 17:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

And and he goes, when he says he says this, he goes, um, he goes, I'm gonna make the announcement to the world tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

When you're in the spotlight, like you are, Mark. Everyone's like, oh no, no, no, yeah, you get out of the picture. We're whatever. You know what I'm saying? I'm sure it happens, and it sucks. It sucks, but how do you handle that? Because it's not about you anymore, right? It's about us, it's a teamwork, that's who you are in your lives, but you're in this next last couple months promoting something, which is his product, not your product, but it is your product. Yeah, because you're a family, right? How do you how do you handle that?

SPEAKER_03 18:10

I'm an introvert by nature anyway, so I'm not necessarily like super camera, like you know, so that part um I'm okay with. Like let him go. Um but I yeah, um, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

I'm I'm happy to see, you know, Mark, you know, there's moments, there's moments I didn't handle it very well. Really? Yeah. Like in what way? Um just make sure she's okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

Well, you're you're you it's sometimes hard.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

It's it's like in retrospect, I can look back and go, oh shit, I I fumbled that one. Yeah. Realistically, like I should have it should have been a priority for me to make sure she's okay. And and there's moments where I'm so consumed with what I have to do, and what I like the pro like the the PR team would go, like, okay, here's the points, here's what you're gonna talk about, here's this, is it and in and I'm like, okay, and then you get in front of a bunch of reporters, and it's like you have to distill that and and so like on the back burner was like, Hey, is my wife okay? Yeah, you know, it's an afterthought, and unfortunately, through through the process, I tried to get better at it, and sometimes I got worse at it, and then it's just kind of all growing, too.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

Like you don't, it's it's hard to like all of it, like even Venice and Toronto and LA, it's all just like you're enjoying it in in moments and pockets, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

The experience of going through it and and everybody else had to make time for it too. So Benny Safty had to be available, Emily Blunt had to be available, right? They had the cinematographer named. Oh my god, the book years is right, years is right, like universe, man. It is because like you don't find like Dwayne, Emily, Benny, and all the other casts, they can't find 12 continual weeks of time in that short, like literally, it's writer strike ends, and then everything just kicks in. It's like wow, so I had started sending them stuff. Like I was rummaging through boxes and you know, I like uh photos and screen grabs and magazines and everything, whatever you could find. Everything that I could find. I said box after box after box. Um, when I got up to Vancouver, which was in April, right before right before productions were right before the shooting schedule started. Um, they're still in pre-production. Um, I walked into my life from 25 years ago. Well, it was like walking in a room and it was like all these screen grabs from the documentary, all this stuff I had sent them, all my clothes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

All the stuff you sent him was on set.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

On set replicated replicated. Like you'd walk in the room. So that so the producer Dave Copeland was walking behind me the whole entire day going, Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you sure you're okay? Let's take a break. She actually went when we got back home from all this. She actually went to movie theater and saw it by herself. That's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

It's gotta, it's gotta be trying to think how to phrase this. You've got to feel so almost naked and vulnerable. It's like all of these parts of you in your life, which in your case, what's being shared, is like some of the lowest, worst elements of your whole entire life. And you know, some people close to you knew all this kind of thing, maybe a lot of people probably didn't know most of it, even those closest to you. But now all of a sudden, all of that is out there. And so now, both of you, you could go walk. Through the airport, do you find yourself having people look at you? And do you ever think to yourself, oh man, these people are fucking they've said all the worst parts of me or whatever? Like I have that insecurity. So I'd be thinking to myself, uh, oh shit, all these people know the worst parts of me. I swear I'm not only that. Yeah. Is that is that strange? Is that part of the feeling? Like my I'm just completely open, completely vulnerable. Everything about me is out there now.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Part of what um I've come to literally understand about this whole process is that um my hope through the whole entire thing is that if I'm able to do that, right? If I'm able to be that wide open about all this different stuff, it literally is a it's a segue for other people to open up.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

All right. So we're gonna wrap up the episode. Uh, Francie, thank you so much for coming on. Mark Kerr, thanks so much. Uh Michael Instrument signing off Scott Lees, Watch Your Story Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Catch us next time.