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- [00:02]
Joe Eszterhas
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
- [00:04]
Joe Rogan
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- [00:06]
Joe Eszterhas
Train my day. Joe Rogan podcast By night. All day. Okay. Let's rock and roll.
- [00:14]
Joe Rogan
You need the headphones?
- [00:16]
Joe Eszterhas
Never.
- [00:16]
Joe Rogan
No.
- [00:17]
Joe Eszterhas
Okay. It's okay if it's okay with you. I know. I've seen it both ways.
- [00:21]
Joe Rogan
No, you don't have to wear them.
- [00:22]
Joe Eszterhas
Okay.
- [00:23]
Joe Rogan
You. You were telling me about your cane. That cane is amazing.
- [00:26]
Joe Eszterhas
It's amazing. It's. It's carved by the Dogon people who were in Mali, and it's a family that's been doing it for 100 years, and many of them were killed in the Rwandan wars. It's heavy. It's beautifully done, I think, and it's been a close companion of mine for many years. It seems to be indestructible.
- [00:53]
Joe Rogan
It's pretty awesome looking. It looks heavy. The Dogon people have a very strange origin story. It's a fascinating origin story that involves. Is it
- [01:06]
Joe Eszterhas
the.
- [01:08]
Joe Rogan
It involves, like. Here it is. That's. I don't want. I didn't want to misspeak. So here it is. Centers on the supreme creator, Amma, and the cosmic journey of the amphibious water spirits known as the Nomad. So they have this crazy cosmic origin story that's a part of their mythology. Amma then attempted to procreate with the Earth, but the pairing was flawed. It's like a very strange descendant of the ark. According to the Dogon traditions, the Noma descended to Earth from the Sirius star system in a giant ark like vessel. The vessel contained the eight original human ancestors, along with the seeds and animals needed to populate the world. Those are the doggos people.
- [01:54]
Joe Eszterhas
That's amazing.
- [01:55]
Joe Rogan
Amazing.
- [01:55]
Joe Eszterhas
I didn't know that crazy story. I have a daughter who's a nature photographer, does a lot of work in Africa, and she knows all about that stuff.
- [02:08]
Joe Rogan
So you were telling me before we got rolling, I said, save this for the air. That Vladimir Zelensky and his wife have seen Basic Instinct. How many times?
- [02:16]
Joe Eszterhas
Fifteen. At least 15. There's a recent biography that said that began when they were courting and that they had known each other before. And one day she saw him with this tape in his hand. She said, what is it? And he said, basic Instinct. And they saw it together, and it had such an effect on them that they played it together many times. At least 15 times during. On their anniversaries. Now, I'm not sure what that says. I know that some people. People think the movies had a kind of amatory effect on them, but the other thing that's interesting to me is if you see it 15 times, does it really fuck you up to the point where you go to war with Putin? I mean, is that the real key to why it happened?
- [03:08]
Joe Rogan
Well, in his defense, Putin attacked first.
- [03:11]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely. And I like Zelenskyy very much as a figure, and I'm very sympathetic to the Ukrainians because I've got a Hungarian background. And in 1956, the Russians devastated Hungary in a similar freedom fight. So maybe. Maybe it gave him the balls and the wisdom to go after Putin.
- [03:31]
Joe Rogan
Maybe just made a horny.
- [03:33]
Joe Eszterhas
Who knows? Might have nothing to do with the war, might not.
- [03:35]
Joe Rogan
You made some crazy fucking movies, man. You really did.
- [03:39]
Joe Eszterhas
Well, there are 18 of them that have been made, and there have been, like, 34 scripts that hadn't. There's 16 that haven't been made. And I don't know. You know, I kid around and I say, there's a twisted little man inside me who lives in some spot that I'm not sure where it exactly is, but he's 29, born 29, he will die 29, and with anything that has a relatively strong sexual content. He wrote the fucking thing. I'm just an old guy giving him the space, you know? So when the. When the recent deal was made for a record amount of money for Basic Instinct 3, because there was a sequel to it that was. That was a totally piece of shit, and I had nothing to do with it. But this would be three, and my title for it is Basic Instinct. Isabel, the Twisted Little man put together the story that I. That I think people will have fun with. But it's. But it continues in that same vein, and it seems to be his specialty, so let's see what happens.
- [04:43]
Joe Rogan
I like how you refer to yourself as, like, another person.
- [04:45]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, the twisted man. There is. You know, there's a thing with little kids where they have a companion, an invisible companion, Right. And the twisted little man is my main one. I have others. Mark Twain is one, and interestingly, Jesus of Nazareth is another. You know, and these people are very, very close to me. Twist. A little man is a darker presence than the others, although Twain is a cross between the two of them, and I absolutely love him.
- [05:14]
Joe Rogan
So when you were writing things like Basic Instinct, do you really feel like you were channeling like, another person? Is that what it felt like?
- [05:22]
Joe Eszterhas
It felt. Well, let me tell you the backdrop. I wrote it in 13 days, and I felt like it just poured out of me. There is a background to it, and that is that the Kathryn Tramill Character and then the Nick Curran character. Many, many years before, in college, I had an affair with a. I was an 18 year old kid and I had an affair with faculty member's wife. It was a serious affair. And we. She was sophisticated, smart, beautiful, sassy, exactly the kind of woman I've always fallen for. And she had a profound effect on me. Now, at the end of the year, she moved on and I discovered that there was a different student that she was with each year and that her husband looked the other way.
- [06:28]
Joe Rogan
How old was she?
- [06:30]
Joe Eszterhas
39. I was 18. I was a very green 18. Because I grew up an ethnic immigrant kid. I fell in love easily. But falling in love easily also meant a lot in terms of learning things. Because I. I was an immigrant and I really didn't know this country and I was shy and I learned a lot sometimes I think more from the women that I was together with beginning in college and through the rest of my life than I preferred the company of women always, because they weren't armored off in male macho. But anyway, she was stuck there in my memory. And then when I was a police reporter, almost a decade and a half later, a decade later at the Plain Dealer, I had a buddy who was a cop that I liked very much, who had been involved in three or four shootings. And when we got to know each other and we spent time drinking together and we did a lot of that, I started wondering how if he really liked the shootings. Was it an itchy trigger finger or did he just get off on it? So somehow these two characters were in my head and I thought about them a lot, but they didn't come together. And then I think, thanks to the twisted little man, one day the two came together in a love story. And that was the genesis of Basic Instinct. And by the time I wrote it, I thought about it subconsciously and directly for a long time. I would wake up in the middle of the night and jot notes down, which happens to me sometimes when I'm very involved in a script. And I wrote it in Hawaii. I went off to Hawaii by myself. I let the sun beat me up. I snorted some coke, which was an habit in those days. And after 13 days of all of that. And the other thing I did was listen to the Stones all the time. I loved the Stones. I loved the blues from the time I was an immigrant kid. And the Stones just blew everything else out during that period of time for me. So I listened to that at the end of 13 days that I had this script Then I went back home to Marin, typed it up, almost sent it to my agent with the title Love Hurts. And I was going out the door. The twisted little man had another thought, and I raced back inside and wrote the word Basic Instinct, sent it to my agents. They auctioned it 10 days later. My main agent, Guy McIlwain, who became my big brother and one of the people I really loved in life, everybody bid on, wound up selling for a record $3 million. And then it became a towering hit. To this day, it trends. It's now gotten. The critics in the beginning were critical, Mildly critical. No, actually, the critics were really after the movie. And then through the years, the critics have had a change of mind.
- [09:43]
Joe Rogan
Isn't that funny?
- [09:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah. This woman named Camille Paglia, who was a main fe feminist critic who went up against the movie very strongly recently, not recently, but in the past five or 10 years, has come around and said that the movie is the example. It's a post feminist classic, she says, and it's about women who don't. Who don't have to hide their sexuality.
- [10:07]
Joe Rogan
So it's wild that she made such a turnaround.
- [10:10]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [10:11]
Joe Rogan
I wonder, did you ever have a conversation with her?
- [10:15]
Joe Eszterhas
No, I've never met her. She teaches. I'm somewhere on the east coast, and she has a towering reputation, but I never met her. I usually don't listen to critics. It's through the 18 films I don't listen to critics. I worked with a director, Richard Marquand, who directed Jagged Edge and Excused Me and Hearts Are Fired. We worked on another one together, and Richard said to me that critics should be taken out into the backyard and shot. Okay. Worked with another director, Mike Vegas, on the One Night Stand, who said the critics should be taken out of the backyard and headbutted to death. I was sympathetic to both things.
- [10:58]
Joe Rogan
It's so wild that your views were formed by this relationship that you have when you're 18 with an older, horny, smart lady who's like, you know, kind of wild.
- [11:10]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes.
- [11:10]
Joe Rogan
And then a cop who might have been a shady cop.
- [11:14]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes. And how the two came together in this twisted thing called creativity, you know, and they come out of this maelstrom. Now, the other thing I'm sure was an influence is by the time I did that, I'd been through four years of police beat experience covering cops. Two in Dayton, Ohio, and two in Cleveland. Excuse me. And that consisted of, at that point, driving around in a company car that got the police radio and responding to whatever was going on. On occasion, you Got there before the cops got there. And the one that really stuck in my head and got inside me was there was one, the report of a shooting in a suburb in Dayton. And I got there, there were no cops there. The front door was wide open. I walked, I passed the body of the guy who had shot himself. And there was blood all over the wall. And then a woman was his wife that he'd shot. And I heard someone in the back of the house screaming and crying. And then I went back there. And the thing that really got to me is she was screaming and crying in Hungarian. It was an old lady who was the mother's mom. And of course I spoke fluent Hungary. I grew up Hungarian. And there was something about the scene that's with me to this day. The other police beat experience I had, Joe, that was very moving, was I covered the Glenville urban uprising in Cleveland. It was a big one. And there were, I think six or seven policemen shot and killed. I was crouched behind a car on the street, ducking down. About 10ft in front of me was a cop, bleeding, badly bleeding, moaning. And at the same time there were gunshots coming from this apartment house. And I heard that the, that the gunshots were coming from a group of so called black nationalists led by a man named Fred Ahmed Evans. I knew both men from the police beat. The cop was Hungarian, his name was Elmer Joseph. And he would come around to the little office and the police beat all the time. And I knew him. And the black man was named Fred Ahmed Evans. And he would come by in his dashiki sometimes at 2 in the morning, because I worked the overnight shift sometimes. And we had the greatest talks, you know, drank a lot of beer, smoked a lot of dope and got to be pals. And he was leading the group of black nationalists and who had been shooting these policemen. And I was behind this car's wheels, a few feet away from the whole shit. And I found the whole thing so frightening and so disturbing that I pissed my pants. Jesus Christ. So the four years of police, there were other incidents. I covered the urban uprisings in Detroit, two in Cleveland and one in Newark. I was very involved in the civil rights movement. And, you know, that's what I did. I covered whatever was breaking and much of it was dark stuff. Um, so by the time that hookup happened between Catherine, Catherine Tramiel and Nick Curran, there was a lot that went into it.
- [15:07]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I could imagine, like what? The insane life experience to be able to see all those different crime scenes and witness all that and you know, the.
- [15:18]
Joe Eszterhas
What happened was that I happened to pick a field that journalism, I thought, and so did Hunter. One of the things we became friends, we were both poor kids and we both dreamed of being novelists. Novelists.
- [15:36]
Joe Rogan
Me and Hunter Thompson.
- [15:37]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, Hunter Thompson. And the way that we chose to begin that was by doing journalism because no one made a living writing novels and we both had to make a living. So the Hunter wrote stuff for the National Enquirer and then moved on to Rolling Stone and all of that. And I did it on a local level. And that put us into a culture that was exploding. The American society was exploding. The black situation vis a vis white racism was horrendous. So there was a dynamic in the country that we were on top of because of what we did. So I saw a lot of. I saw a lot in the refugee camps because I was in. I began my seven years in refugee camps in Austria and then grew up dirt poor in an urban city. And I saw a lot of stuff there as well that was dark and moving and profoundly effective.
- [16:45]
Joe Rogan
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- [17:45]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [17:45]
Joe Rogan
Which is so much more effective and makes sense why your stuff was so dark and wild.
- [17:50]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, it does make sense. And the, you know, I mean, I was a kid in Cleveland growing up. We lived in a very poor part of town near west side. And there was a bar next door and I slept on a couch in the living room that overlooked the bar. And one night I was looking out the window because I always was neon lights and Puerto Rican hookers and all of that stuff that really interested a little kid who spent most of his time playing with, as Mark Twain said, with his Pecker, you know, so this was all very exciting stuff. And the one night, watching one one day, and I saw this man stab another one to death and fall down and bleed to death. Oh, gee, how old were you? Oh, Jesus. Yeah, so there are reasons why. The other thing with my scripts is almost everything in my scripts is somehow comes from some kind of personal tie. You know, Big Shots, which was a little movie that was very popular with kids, came from my son Steve's experience in Marin county with a black friend and how they tried to make that friendship work. And that's what the movie is. It's a little movie about two kids, a white kid and a black kid trying to become friends. There was a movie I did called Checking out with Jeff Daniels, and that was about midlife crisis. And suddenly now, in my early to mid-30s, I was scared shitless that I was going to die. Here I am at fucking 81, talking about dying at that 30 something. But so there was a comedic thing that came out of that basically came out of where it did, but there was almost with everyone, there was some kind of betrayed came out of the notion that at that particular point, if you remember, there was all this right wing craziness where there were militias that were shooting people and there were jamborees where the right wingers got together. When was this Betrayed, which came out in the mid-80s, there were several incidents in Oregon and in the northwest parts of the country, which got a lot of publicity. It was before Timothy McVeigh, but roughly in that same period. So I decided under a false name to go to one of these jamborees and see what the hell is going on. Essentially, my journalism experience, I went into it and then out of it. I concocted this romance between Deborah Winger and Tom Therancher. So. But they all had some kind of a tie. Telling Lies in America, which is one of my favorite little movies with Kevin Bacon and Brad Renfro, is semi autobiographical in terms of the issues I had as a high school kid with bullying and all of those kinds of things, and becoming an American citizen. They were shot, incidentally, right where I grew up in front of the apartment house where we lived. And I remember hearing a TV reporter in Cleveland interview an old man was watching the shooting and saying, did you know Joe when he grew up here? And he said, yeah, I was a bartender there. And then he said, shit, Joey's just a fucking refugee trying to make his way in the world. He nailed it. I mean, that's really what. Not a complicated thing, but that's really what happened. The only other things and nice things have been said about me through the years, but the only other thing that I really treasure and absolutely love is. I interviewed O. Threading the night before he was killed in a plane crash in Cleveland. And we began speaking around midnight after a show at a place called Leo's Casino. And we began talking around midnight and talked till 3:30 in the morning. And we did a lot of beer, we did a lot of Jim Beam, we smoked a lot of really powerful Thai stuff and had a great time. And at the end of it, he had to go. He said, give me a fucking hug. And I gave him a hug. And he said, you know what you are? He said, you're a fucking white nigger, that's what you are. I love that stayed with me all this time. New York Times said he's a force of nature. People said, if Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe, Esther, Oz? Fuck all that. It's bullshit. What Otis said and what the old man said I thought was really great, you know.
- [22:56]
Joe Rogan
Well, hearing that Otis Redding was such a legend.
- [22:59]
Joe Eszterhas
Oh, he was.
- [23:00]
Joe Rogan
He died so young too.
- [23:01]
Joe Eszterhas
How old was he? He died. He was really. I was in his 30s someplace. But listen to this. I interviewed him. I went home the next day at the plane dealer. It was Sunday and I was working literally the day after the interview. And so I'm sitting there in this hall like city room and the. I see a city editor. The Associated Press wire machines start dinging. And in those days, if it had more than like four or five dings, there was some bad thing that happened. So I saw a city editor come from the city desk to this dinging machine, right? And he's staring at it. The fucking thing is still dinging, staring at it. And then he looks at me like that in the sitting room and then he looks away. So I saw that and I got up and went to the digging machine. And Otis, his plane had CR. The way, it's another gig. And I was probably the last man who really spoke to him at length. I left the office right then and said, fuck it for the rest of the day. There was a bar across the street, drank myself silly and went home with the waitress. I mean, I just, you know, just horrible. But I saw a lot. To get back to your point, show I did and in different ways. And suddenly I tried to write a movie about Otis called Blaze of Glory. And we put it together. A man named John Apted was going to direct it and it was announced that Cuba Gooding was going to play Otis. And the whole thing fell apart at the last minute for financing reasons. And to this day it's never gotten made. But I'm a writer. What else can I do with someone that I loved at a meeting except write about them in that way? Right.
- [24:58]
Joe Rogan
Anybody who writes interesting things the way you do has to have had some interesting life experiences. You don't get those kind of scripts that you wrote from a sterile environment.
- [25:11]
Joe Eszterhas
I agree with that. Yeah, sometimes. After my conversion to Christianity, late in my life, I wrote three Christian scripts and none of them were made. And one of them wasn't made because one of the priests involved with potentially getting Christian financing said, we need more incense. Right. And my response to somebody who interviewed me about it was, I don't write fucking incense. I write flesh and blood, you know, and so. So no wonder it wasn't made.
- [25:54]
Joe Rogan
What did he mean by you need more incense?
- [25:56]
Joe Eszterhas
Well, to make it more hymn, like to make and give it a sense of piety to take, to make it inspire the people so that they become Catholic in this specific case. And that it was too secular. And I think what happened to me with all three is that I fell between views between so called Christian films and secular films. And so that's why we never got the finance for all three of them.
- [26:32]
Joe Rogan
When you say you fell between Christian films and secular films, you mean in the way you were writing it, that you weren't writing it specifically as a Christian film or specifically as a secular film?
- [26:42]
Joe Eszterhas
The way I was writing it, naturally,
- [26:45]
Joe Rogan
like you wrote everything else.
- [26:46]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, but that political considerations are clerical considerations. I was just writing it from my heart. And that was too gritty to get Christian kind of financing. And on the other hand, too religious to get the secular financing.
- [27:04]
Joe Rogan
That's too bad because that bridge is probably what would bring more people to Christianity where they could relate to it.
- [27:10]
Joe Eszterhas
I agree with you, absolutely. And my argument was, you know, these could be hit movies because my movies in a lot of cases have been these could be hit movies. And that's more important than spiking people with incense.
- [27:27]
Joe Rogan
It's interesting how Hollywood has always rejected those kind of religion film. Religious films like the Passion of the Christ, that was a huge movie.
- [27:37]
Joe Eszterhas
Well, it's not just a huge movie, but in my mind it was like a prayer, you know, I watch it each Good Friday and it was a huge movie, beautifully done. It wasn't officially endorsed by the Catholic Church, although I saw in Cleveland a meeting where a priest organized a preview screening of the movie, and they had like 700 people, the full hall watching it. There was such an interest in it. But part of the reason. I think you raise a good point because I think part of the reason it was such a towering hit was that it was real. It wasn't incense filled. It was real. You had a figure who bled and you really show what happened up on that cross and how awful that kind of pain is. The movie really reflected that.
- [28:37]
Joe Rogan
No, it was horrific. And then there was also that Willem Dafoe film, what was that one called?
- [28:41]
Joe Eszterhas
The Last Temptation of Christ.
- [28:43]
Joe Rogan
That's right.
- [28:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Marty Scorsese. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. I love Wynton Dudpoe. I mean, he's one of my favorite actors and I liked it. And it's also very real, historically real, you know, the notion that Jesus of Nazareth, you know, was this Fred Rogers figure who wasn't really a real man, whereas the Bible says he was a true man, a true God. That show really showed his. That film really showed his human side. And my conception of Jesus, who I revere and who was one of my close friends that I speak to on most days, is that he was true man and true God. He was a Jewish zealot, a freedom fighter against the Roman Empire. He was crucified by the Romans as a freedom fighter. He hung around blue collar guys and fishermen and hookers and tax collectors who were the lowest of the low back then, as they should be now, but they were the lowest of the low back then. And those were the people that he primarily buddied around with. That's Jesus of Nazareth. And that side is completely ignored by most films, except the two that you mentioned specifically that are like that.
- [30:15]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, the Last Temptation of the Christ. I don't remember. I remember there was some controversy around it, but I don't. I was too young to really be paying attention to, like how it was
- [30:26]
Joe Eszterhas
the very fact that Jesus had a relationship that was clearly indicated as being sexual with Mary Magdalene, who was depicted as a prostitute. Now, the truth, historical truth, is that Mary Magdalene was a few years older than Jesus and a woman of means who had advised Roman builders in a city called Seraphim, and then was one of the people who financed Jesus as he swept through Galilee and the rest of Judea. There's another scene in the Bible where an unnamed woman goes to Jesus and washes his feet and then washes his feet with his hair. Right. This unnamed woman by a Pope in the 6th century, Gregory the Great, was depicted by Mary Magdalene. No connection to Mary Magdalene. There's no, nothing that says that Mary Magdalene was a hooker of any kind. And then there's no proof for that in any way. So the fact that the Last Temptation of Christ did that and brought the two of them together in a sort of semi love story without of course, any real sexuality to it on film is why it was so criticized. Scorsese's house was picketed and I think the studio at that point was run by Lou Wasserman, whom I knew from Cleveland because he was a. He ran a racing wire in Cleveland before he went. But he was a legendary man. His house was picketed as well.
- [32:15]
Joe Rogan
So was it just Catholic people and Christian people that were upset about this?
- [32:20]
Joe Eszterhas
Mostly, yeah.
- [32:21]
Joe Rogan
But it was. It was very unusual for a Martin Scorsese film to be a religious film too.
- [32:27]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely.
- [32:27]
Joe Rogan
Like a depiction of Jesus. People were much more averse back then. I feel like sometimes like religion goes in like peaks and waves. And I think there was a wave of atheism back then and Hollywood was very non Christian, to put it mildly.
- [32:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes.
- [32:44]
Joe Rogan
It wasn't that the Christian themes and films were never promoted.
- [32:49]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, it was absolutely right. It's not as bad now in that sense as it was in those days. And I think that part of it. What frustrates me is that there would be an openness to that into Christian films if they were real, if they didn't, if they weren't full of incense and piety. You know, what we've done to Jesus over the years is make him a kind of Fred Rogers figure. You know, he wasn't that. You know, the. I'm not even sure that Jesus really said, do not resist violence. You know, Jesus also said, if you have a cloak but not a sword, sell the cloak and buy a sword. He also said, I come not to make peace. I come not to make peace, but with a sword. You know, so the. There's been a lot of church stuff especially, I think Catholics are more guilty of this. To romanticize and sort of cosmeticize the figure of Jesus of Nazareth.
- [33:58]
Joe Rogan
Well, there's always a problem when human beings add their own interpretation to an ancient story.
- [34:05]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely.
- [34:06]
Joe Rogan
And do it to fit their own narrative.
- [34:10]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely. It's a great problem. But in this case there is historical evidence on the other side and they simply ignore that and pretend it doesn't happen. The Gnostic Gospels are full of so called revolutionary things. And the truth is that the Gnostic gospels were written 40 years, 30, 40 years after the death of Jesus. Whereas the Synoptic Gospels, the Ones that the church has accepted were written 80, 90 years after the death of Jesus. So they had to have been taken secondhand from people who said they saw things where with the previous there's a shot that people directly saw them. The people in the church gospels were named like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not the people who were in the gospels as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Nobody knows who write them. They took with those names, but they were not those people.
- [35:07]
Joe Rogan
Really. Yeah, I had no idea.
- [35:10]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely no doubt. Even the, even the churches admit that at this point,
- [35:18]
Joe Rogan
2000 years is such a hard time for us to conceptualize, to put into our head as to how much time has passed. Yes, such a, you know, to try to get an accurate understanding of what was going on back then, insanely difficult.
- [35:33]
Joe Eszterhas
I have become a, since my sort of conversion to Christianity and I would style myself a devout Christian, but not a devout Catholic, even though I go to Mass and I love the Mass and believe in it. But since 2001, when this process really began, I've become a real student of the historical Jesus. And I learned more and more and I'm more and more astounded at what's been done to cosmeticize this man who was Jesus of Nazareth.
- [36:14]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's also, he had some of the most profound and insanely resonating teachings. Like even today, the words that he spoke 2,000 years ago, there's still today people. I mean, they resonate with people. And if you live your life by the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will be a better person.
- [36:38]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes, you will.
- [36:39]
Joe Rogan
It is a great framework to live your life, which is incredible when you think about a person that lived so long ago.
- [36:47]
Joe Eszterhas
He is a much better person to pick as your imagined companion than Mark Twain.
- [36:57]
Joe Rogan
Your imagined companion. Let me ask you this because I had a long conversation with Mel Gibson about this. What do you think about the Shroud of Turin?
- [37:06]
Joe Eszterhas
Well, there was a study done, a major study that was done by the Catholic Church, led by John Paul ii, whom I really admired and read a lot about through the years, that this is a scientific study that discovered that the Shroud of turin came from 1313 or 1320. Now there's this huge controversy about it, and there are those people who feel that that absolutely is Christ. And I must say that when I look at it, when I look at that figure, and I've done that a lot, and in my house we have several blow ups of Turin's Christ, it's very, very moving. But the evidence, what there is, seems to indicate that it comes from the 1300s.
- [38:05]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I've seen that as well. But then I've also seen people that say that that evidence, there's some controversy about that evidence. And that some of the cloth they believe dates to far earlier. And it's the type of cloth and the way it's made seems to indicate that it's far older. I don't know how much of the cloth they've carbon tested, you know, that is also an issue. And whether or not it had been repaired or whether or not there had
- [38:34]
Joe Eszterhas
been additional pieces, I don't either. But you know what? Ultimately, when I look at that, when I look at that Jesus and I've done that quite a bit, that face really moves me. So in a sense, I don't give a shit.
- [38:49]
Joe Rogan
At the very least, it's an insanely compelling piece of artwork.
- [38:52]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely, at the very least.
- [38:54]
Joe Rogan
But there's also a lot of very strange mysteries as to how that was created in the first place, because it's not a dye and they're not exactly sure what caused that image to appear or how. If that is a piece of art, they don't know how that art was created. And the fact that they really only could see the accurate representation of it once they saw it as a negative is also very interesting. Because who's going to make a piece of art where you can only really appreciate what it looks like when you see it as a negative? Especially when you're talking about something that you're doing. You're making something in the 1300s, hundreds of years before photography is ever created. So what are you making and why is it so compelling when you look at it in the negative? And if you're talking about something that was created by an insane burst of energy, which is what the proponents of the shroud of Torah being legitimate think, they think it was created by this insane burst of energy on Jesus resurrection. You know, I'm agnostic on it. I don't no idea whether it's real or not real, but I find it fascinating that they have no real explanation as to how it was created.
- [40:08]
Joe Eszterhas
I'm pretty much of a complete ignoramus on anything that has to do with science. You know, I've learned algebra and geometry and even biology, although I caught up with biology from personal experience. But I just don't know. It doesn't matter to me ultimately, because I'm moved when I look at that, when I pray before that image and I look at it, I'm moved. So as far as I'm concerned, For me, it's real. It may not be for other people.
- [40:39]
Joe Rogan
Well, like I said, at the very least, it's an insanely compelling piece of.
- [40:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely, absolutely.
- [40:45]
Joe Rogan
But the thing that. I don't want to dismiss the possibility that it's real because I'm fascinated by just the mystery of how can you pull up an image of the, the, the negative version of it.
- [40:58]
Jamie
I was trying to look up a bunch of stuff you guys are talking about, though, and there's no answers for any of the stuff you're saying.
- [41:03]
Joe Rogan
There's no answers in terms of why
- [41:05]
Jamie
I was looking for an accurate recreation. Someone's made, you know, in the last 200 years and doesn't seem to be one.
- [41:11]
Joe Rogan
No, no one has. Yeah. When you look at the image and you realize that this is an actual negative of the original shroud, you. You just, you stop and think like, well, what was someone do? If you, if this is the negative, like, how would you create that as a positive? Because it. Can you show me also the positive image of it, what it actually look like? Okay, so here's. This is one image. So this is what it actually looks like. This is the actual shroud. And when you look at that, you go, okay, I see like shadows. It's very interesting. And then switch over to the negative and it all comes to life. And there's marks from the lashes, from the whip marks. There's. There's blood stains from where the rods went through his wrists. It's very fascinating.
- [42:08]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, it sure is.
- [42:09]
Joe Rogan
And again, this is not dye, it's not ink, and they don't really know how it was made. And again, no one has been able to recreate this.
- [42:21]
Jamie
The cloth was made most likely from a loom that wasn't invented until, like the 1300s. Okay, that doesn't necessarily mean that's where for sure came from, though, but.
- [42:34]
Joe Rogan
Right, right. But here's about the image.
- [42:38]
Jamie
It's just like how. How is the image transfer the cloth? I asked just, you know, does anybody have any idea? I've seen a video where someone gave some sort of scientific explanation, but I don't know if I could remember how to find it right now.
- [42:48]
Joe Rogan
Says it behaves like a photographic negative. Negative and shows some 3D information, which is unusual for normal artwork. The chemical theories that body heat, sweat or vapors reacting with the cloth, example, ammonia or lactic acid from sweat, may have been proposed, but don't reproduce the shroud's sharp, non blurry details. Simple heat or scorch theories, likewise fail to match the Very shallow non burn discoloration of the fibers. Human or mad made image Human made image theories Painting or rubbing from bas relief has been tested. But studies have not found pigments in the amounts or patterns that would explain the image. And there's no clear brushstrokes. Primitive photography. Some suggest that a medieval camera using light sensitive silver salts and lenses could have projected a body or statue onto the cloth. And experimental replicas show that it's at least physically possible, though historically speculative. And now here's the weird one. Radiation bursts of energy theories. Some researchers argue that a brief intense burst of ultraviolet or similar radiation from the body could have discovered discolored only the top fibrils producing a non contact image even where cloth and body didn't touch. Proponents sometimes link this to Jesus's resurrection. But the need, the needed radiation, billions of watts without burning the cloth is far beyond anything observed in nature. And this remains a speculative face based idea rather than an established physical mechanism. In short, there's no consensus mechanism. The image transfer process is still unexplained. And every proposed method has serious problems when tested against the cloth's measured properties. Wild I mean there's no other piece of artwork that's that fascinating because every other art, Michelangelo's work, you know, all this incredible art, it's art. You see what they did. There's brush strokes, there's chisel marks, they, you know, they made incredible sculptures. But it's clearly man made art. This is a different thing. It's a very strange thing if you can't recreate it today. If they could recreate it today, people would be doing it. They'd be making their versions of the Shroud of truth.
- [45:09]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely. I don't know if that's been done historically, but you know, whether some nut bag had decided to do business over recreating this round of drilling.
- [45:21]
Joe Rogan
Is there, did they carbon test it and what are the arguments that it's older? Because I do know that there have been some very recent arguments that the testing was incorrect and that it's older. See if you can find out what that is. Whether or not AI whether Perplexity, our sponsor has some sort of a bias.
- [45:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Like
- [45:46]
Joe Rogan
the thing is, it's like pulling from all these. When you get an AI response to something, it's pulling from all these articles on the web and most of the articles seem to indicate that people think it's at least either a hoax or an elaborate.
- [45:59]
Jamie
The only carbon dating seems like it happened in 1988.
- [46:02]
Joe Rogan
So I don't know that They've done it. Supporters of an earlier date argue that the 1988 radiocarbon results. 1988 is a long time ago sampled an anomalous or contaminated area and that other historical and scientific clues point to a much older cloth. Okay, what is the scientific arguments? Contaminated repair samples. Some research claim the 1988 test piece came from a rewoven or heavily handled corner. So its carbon date reflects medieval repairs, not the original cloth. Alternative dating methods X ray or crystallographic aging of linen fibers has produced dates compatible with the first century, though these methods are newer and not widely widely accepted as definitive. Pollen and dust analysis reports pollen grains and mineral dust consistent with the first century Middle east rather than only medieval Europe, which proponents say supports a much older origin image property. Some argue that the image microscopic features and burst of energy type characteristics, requirements, technology or phenomena unlikely in the Middle Ages, implying an earlier extraordinary event. Well, why don't they do a retesting? They probably don't want to know that it actually is from the 1300s.
- [47:21]
Joe Eszterhas
I just don't think they want. John Paul Toome really believed in it. He went to see it in Turin several times. He said he was moved by it. And that's when they launched this big Vatican investigation. And he never said in any way that he agreed with the investigation. It just seemed to drop the whole issue. And from what I know, it never went any further. But he visited it twice. It went out of his way.
- [47:48]
Joe Rogan
Where is it? It's in Turin.
- [47:50]
Jamie
I was looking up that too. It's currently in the chapel of the Holy Shroud. But so here's interesting. Was who found it and when and why or whatever.
- [48:00]
Joe Rogan
The earliest undisputed record appears in the 1350s, rather in Leary, a village in France where the knight Geoffrey de Charnay displayed a cloth claimed to be Jesus burial shroud. How he obtained it and where it was between the 1st century and the 14th century are unknown. Later theories trace it speculatively through Edessa and constant Constantinople.
- [48:25]
Jamie
Constantinople?
- [48:26]
Joe Rogan
I can't never say that Constantinople. But these links are debated. Interesting. What does it look like? How is it displayed? That's how it's displayed.
- [48:37]
Joe Eszterhas
Constantinople was named after Constantine, who was the first Roman emperor who made Roman Catholicism the national religion.
- [48:47]
Joe Rogan
Right. Wow. So you can go check it out. And how big is it? Boy, they got that sucker walled off, huh?
- [48:58]
Joe Eszterhas
From my impression, Joe, this was easy. This was over the length of Jesus body.
- [49:04]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [49:05]
Joe Eszterhas
So it's longer than certainly I expected.
- [49:07]
Joe Rogan
Well, you can see it's both sides. So apparently folded over. I Wonder what all those markings are, those small triangle markings. Like, what is all that?
- [49:18]
Jamie
Like, these things?
- [49:19]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [49:21]
Jamie
One other picture was pointing those out. It might be the burn marks that it was saying that there's burn marks on it.
- [49:28]
Joe Rogan
Huh. Again, it's.
- [49:30]
Jamie
It's 2,000 years old in theory.
- [49:33]
Joe Rogan
Just imagine if it's real. That's the thing. It's like. I never want to dismiss the possibility that it's real, because imagine if it is real. That is.
- [49:40]
Joe Eszterhas
I absolutely. I agree with you. And I. In my mind, it's real. And I pray to it, you know, the. And I don't. I try not to worry about whether it's real or. I know that I moved. And that's. That's, you know, that. That's good enough for me.
- [49:53]
Joe Rogan
What led to your conversion to Christianity? I mean, from a guy making these wild, insane movies.
- [50:00]
Joe Eszterhas
Jamie, can I ask you for some water?
- [50:02]
Joe Rogan
This is water right here.
- [50:03]
Joe Eszterhas
Oh, great. Thank you.
- [50:10]
Joe Rogan
This episode is brought to you by Chime. Chime is bringing something fresh to banking. JD Power just ranked the number one choice for new bank accounts in America. And that's not a small thing. That means real people, millions of them, are choosing this over traditional banks. That's because banking at Chime is fee free. No monthly fees, no overdraft fees, and thousands of free ATMs. But here's the real kicker. If you get their Chime card, it gives you 5% cash back of the category that you actually pick yourself. Your savings rate, nine times the national average. That's crazy high. Go to chime.com Rogan takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card provided by Chimes Bank Partners. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com disclosures for more details. How long ago did you convert to Christianity?
- [51:15]
Joe Eszterhas
Well, I grew up Catholic. I was an altar boy when I was a kid. I knew one really great priest in my life who helped me with my life. I became a lapsed Catholic. And then when at the tail end of living in. In la, in Malibu, actually, I was usually successful as a screenwriter, of course. And I was being interviewed all over the place, and people were stealing mail from my mailbox and all that shit. And I should have been overwhelmingly happy with that, but something was missing, I felt, and I couldn't really put my finger on what that was, but something was missing. And my life. And then I got throat cancer. Stage 4 throat cancer. Shortly after, we moved back to Cleveland, you know, from Malibu. And the Cleveland Clinic and a surgeon named Marshall Strom did a surgery that they had never done in this country, that done in Switzerland where they took some. They took the. A muscle from the left side of your neck and attach it to your larynx. Stage four was very dicey. And he was very honest with me about how dicey it would be. And he did it spectacularly. And here I am at 81. But in the course of all of that, when I was terrified. And really frightened from one day to the other, I ran across Jesus reading and partly Naomi's influence, because Naomi also grew up Catholic and she had a very strong, very strong faith. And then I went to church a couple of times and I loved the Mass, the Mass itself. In the course of recovery, it was about a three year recovery. For some time I couldn't speak and then I spoke like Brando and then I squeaked. In the course of my recovery, I did everything I could physically to help. I jogged and walked and did all of those things. And I recovered. And I felt afterwards that the reason I was able to beat a stage four cancer had to do with my prayer life. And then I started reading voraciously about Jesus of Nazareth, the apostles, all of that ancient Jewish history, Catholic history, and some of that really moved me as well. So I started going regularly to church with Naomi and then the boys were bored with the boys as well. And as time went by, excuse me, as time went by, I also started having issues with the Catholic Church. I continued going to the Mass because that was a very special thing to me. But I had issues with, with the history of anti Semitism in the church. The issue is with sexism in terms of not allowing women to be priests. The issue is with the Pope making so called infallible decisions. And I shut most of that off. Although in the process of it, my Christianity didn't suffer at all. But sometimes I felt like I was becoming a kind of an agnostic Catholic and my faith in Christ, even as all of that happened, is unflagged. I still pray to Jesus, pray specifically to Jesus, and he continues to be a major important figure in my life.
- [55:39]
Joe Rogan
So your issues were with the organization as the Catholic Church?
- [55:42]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes. I respected Martin Luther's revolution because he revolted against those same kind of issues. But as I said, the mess continued to hold me. Worship is terrific and I really believe in it. I actually then the kind of worship that really moves me is black spiritual worship. Full scale, emotional, I give myself to you Jesus kind of worship. And I felt I didn't want to really switch religions because I had my basic Christianity, and that continues to be important to me.
- [56:28]
Joe Rogan
So you felt moved by Baptist? Black Baptist church, yeah.
- [56:32]
Joe Eszterhas
Black Baptist says the whole emotional. Throw up your arms and say, okay, here I am. Take me, Lord.
- [56:38]
Joe Rogan
It definitely seems a lot more fun.
- [56:40]
Joe Eszterhas
It's fun.
- [56:41]
Joe Rogan
They look like they're having way more fun.
- [56:43]
Joe Eszterhas
It's fun. I also have been very fortunate through the course of my life to have black friends and to share the black culture. I was involved in the civil rights movement. I had a shotgun stuck in my belly by a deputy who'd been indicted for killing and told to get the fuck out of Neshoba County. I had the good fortune to have lunch with the Reverend Martin Luther King. Oh, wow. I knew Stokely Carmichael.
- [57:09]
Joe Rogan
What was that like?
- [57:10]
Joe Eszterhas
Well, the most amazing thing. He was in town because of the death of a minister in a protest. And it was an unheralded appearance, and I think it was partly before he became the towering international figure. And he was heading back to the airport, and he couldn't find his ride. And I happened to be right there, and I said, I can drive you, Reverend King. And I said, okay. So on the way to the airport, he said, are you hungry? I'm hungry. Can we stop someplace? And I said, sure. So we did. And what amazed me about the man is that he was more interested almost in hearing about my refugee camp experiences and what that was like and how that worked and all of that. He said he didn't know much about it then. He really. Than he was about. He was about talking about the civil rights movement. Wow. He was very, very moving and a powerful figure. The end. Then I just drove him to the airport. But. But there was something about the man that was absolutely magnetic that I felt, clearly. Yeah. But then I also. When I was in college, I had a relationship with a young black woman, and that brought me much closer to the black culture. I was an ethnic fucking kid, you know, refugee. And I certainly needed license in that whole cultural area. And I got them, and then I sought them out. And when I was at Rolling Stone, Huey Newton was over in Oakland, and he would come over sometimes, I think partly. I'd partly suspect because at Rolling Stone, we had some of the most beautiful women in the world working there. We did have air conditioning, but when it got real hot, they didn't wear a top at all. So what about that spread? So it was sort of funny.
- [59:18]
Joe Rogan
They were topless.
- [59:18]
Joe Eszterhas
They were topless when it got real hot. What year was this?
- [59:21]
Joe Rogan
This was in the 60s.
- [59:23]
Joe Eszterhas
I was at Rolling Stone from 71 to 76.
- [59:26]
Joe Rogan
Wild times.
- [59:27]
Joe Eszterhas
I was right. Right in there. In the years where the Cultural Revolution was exploding, the women's revolution was, what is it? Floating. And to be at Rolling Stone at that time was like being in the vortex of all of that, you know? And it was just a crazy time. You know, the sexual revolution was at its absolute height. And I've always, as I said to you, I've always really loved smart, sassy, sexy women. And the whole office was filled with them. I'm sure.
- [60:08]
Joe Rogan
What year was the birth control pill invented?
- [60:10]
Joe Eszterhas
I have no idea.
- [60:12]
Joe Rogan
Let me guess. 65, right? 64. Let me guess. I'm just taking a wild swing. I have no idea.
- [60:22]
Jamie
Approved by the FDA and introduced to the market. 1960.
- [60:26]
Joe Rogan
68. 60.
- [60:27]
Jamie
60.
- [60:28]
Joe Rogan
1960. Interesting. Yeah. Well, that had a big factor, right?
- [60:33]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes, absolutely.
- [60:34]
Joe Rogan
Because before, you know, women were in a situation where every time they had sex, they could get pregnant.
- [60:40]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely.
- [60:40]
Joe Rogan
And then all of a sudden. But then you've got this pill that's fucking with their hormones that. We found out now that women that have been on it for long periods of time, they make poor choices in terms of mates. And it does a lot of weird stuff. I mean, we're learning.
- [60:54]
Joe Eszterhas
We're learning a lot of weird stuff.
- [60:55]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And also, it's very dangerous for them. A friend of mine, his daughter died. She was 17 years old. She was on the birth control pill, and she was smoking cigarettes. And she. I guess smoking cigarettes and birth control pills for some people can cause blood clots. I don't understand why or what. But that is an issue, right? You're not supposed to smoke if you're on birth control. See if that's still the recommendation. Well, obviously they tell you not to smoke, period. But I think there's some potential complication. Smoking while taking oral contraceptives that contain estrogen significantly increases the risk of severe cardiovascular events like heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. The risk is particularly high for women over 35. Quitting smoking or using alternative birth control is highly recommended.
- [61:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, Joe, I had more fun at Rolling Stone than any other time in my life.
- [61:49]
Joe Rogan
I bet you did.
- [61:50]
Joe Eszterhas
I just.
- [61:51]
Joe Rogan
I had Jan Winter in here once.
- [61:52]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, I saw him.
- [61:54]
Joe Rogan
It was an interesting conversation.
- [61:55]
Joe Eszterhas
He kept looking at his watch.
- [61:57]
Joe Rogan
Well, he was, you know. Who's Jan, winner of 2024 or 2025? Not Jan, winner of 1975?
- [62:03]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes, absolutely.
- [62:04]
Joe Rogan
You know, not the Yon Wenner. That was the editor when Hunter Thompson was writing crazy stories. And, you know, different times, people change.
- [62:12]
Joe Eszterhas
You are a big Hunter fan.
- [62:15]
Joe Rogan
Huge.
- [62:15]
Joe Eszterhas
And I know, and so am I. And I wanted to talk about him because I really haven't had a chance to talk about him specifically. Hunter really was the cause of my whole huge success, even as a screenwriter. Let me tell you how. I was a reporter at the Plain Dealer, and I had read Hunter, of course, when he was the National Observer. Doing those kinds of pieces is from Latin America. Before he discovered Gonzo. I covered. As a Plain Dealer, I covered an Hell's angel shootout of a bar called Bartos Cafe in Cleveland. And I wrote a story about it that the Associated Press picked up and put on their national wire. The. And I get a note shortly afterwards from Hunter Thompson, who had read this story on the AP wire and wrote me a note that said, I'm barely paraphrasing Big Fucker. Now there are two of us who know how to write about Hell's Angels. That really pisses me off. All the best on dressed hunting.
- [63:34]
Joe Rogan
Well, that must have been a fun thing to get.
- [63:36]
Joe Eszterhas
Oh, man. I was as excited about that as my two sons were to meet Joe Rogan. They really. They really. It was really, really something. So, okay, that time goes by and I get a call from Rolling Stone. I know when I heard it at first. I do a couple of freelance pieces for Rolling Stone. One on Kent State one year afterwards, and the other, I forgot what the other one was. But then I get a call from the managing editor, Paul Scanlon, who, incidentally, was the backbone of the editorial content. He's come from the Wall Street Journal, and he wanted to take on the New York Times for Rolling Stone. And they wanted me to do a freelance piece on narcotics agents, corrupt narcotics agents. So I go out there, and I discover that Hunter had been after them to hire me because of that piece. And they kept saying good guy and all of that. Then when I met Rolling Stone, I write a book called Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse that Hunter loves. By now we know each other and we're friends and we enjoy each other's company. And I write this book, and Hunter gets me as agent, who is the top literary agent in the country, and then gets me as publisher, which is Random House, to publish it and then to boot, blurbs it when the book comes out and somebody, a united artist sees it. Oh, and then the book becomes a finalist for the National Book Award, one of four finalists. Okay, so somebody, a united artist reads the book, reads. Because she reads all the finalists, reads a book, calls me out of the Blue and says, you've got really cinematic talent. Have you thought about writing a script? And I said, no, I haven't. And I go to meet them and they hire me and I write fist. All of that, which led to my success in screenplays and in the cinema was thanks to Hunter. And the friendship we had was. I never. Our friendship was in San Francisco. He lived in Woody Creek. And he would come to town. Our friendship was in town, but we ran a lot together. We enjoyed each other. We drank together. We both liked drinking. On occasion, we wouldn't. Good story. We would go down. San Francisco was famed for its stripper barred area, I think, around o' Farrell street and stuff. And he and I went down there together. There was a very famous stripper show at one of those clubs. And one of the times we'd get down there, he, of course, would take acid before every trip down there. I wouldn't do acid, but I did acid once. And Hunter wound up holding me for an hour. But that was the guy from Cleveland, right? Which he always, you know, we say, oh, you're from fucking Cleveland, you know. Anyway, the. I would. I would snort some lines and we'd go down there. And we were waiting for about an hour and, you know, the place is filled, but the girls haven't come out. And Hunter suddenly gets up, hurls his arms up in the air and says, where's the pussy? We want pussy. I don't make great memories in my life, of course. I settle him down and all of that. And then when they finally started coming very loudly, finally, finally, pussy. He was a, you know, larger than life, no doubt, colorful figure, but also what he was. And then I discovered this, and he didn't really share this with that many people. He was very, very well read. He had a whole other side. There was a very sensitive and unhippie like side. I saw it most clearly once. I was married at the time to a former reporter at the Plain Dealer who was very, very straight and really rejected the whole hippie thing and worked in California for a small suburban paper. And Hunter had never met her, but had heard her. He said, I'd like to meet her. So we asked him to dinner. And Hunter came to dinner at our small, tiny apartment in Nevada. And my wife at the time, the. Cooked a Hungarian chicken paprikash dinner, okay? It's Hungary's most famous meal. And he sat there with us. And what I discovered was that the boy from Kentucky was there underneath all of that firepower and all of that Larger than life behavior. He was sensitive and quiet and they got along like gangbusters, you know. And actually, interestingly, when I drove him after dinner, I drove him back to town. He. For the ride back, he berated me because I was having an affair with what he called this hippie chick. He said, you have this wonderful wife here and you're fucking around with this hippie chicken. I mean, through beration and anger and all of that. He had that side as well. Yes, he did. If we had breakfast, it was at 4 in the afternoon. And what he ordered were four margaritas, six beers and maybe, maybe toast with scrambled eggs. And in that sense, he had more tolerance than anyone that I'd ever seen. And my tolerance in those days for Boots especially was also very high. But I'd never seen anybody quite like him. He had a great sense of humor. As many. Many years later, he wanted me to write the screenplay for Rum Diary. And I hadn't seen him in a long time. And I had just met Naomi with Christopher, to whom I've now been married 32 years. And he wanted me to go to Aspen so that we could talk about it. And I called Jan and I said, listen, I head over heels and blood with this woman. And Hunter wants me to go out there. Tell me the truth. What kind of shape is he in? And Yeon sort of pauses and he says, well, he's good. And then he's. Another pause and he says, but you know, the Stones were in Denver and Mick and Keith decided to come visit him. So between gigs. So they hire a driver and they drive up here and they have a terrific time. But they're there about three or four hours and. And they've got a gig that night. So they say, listen, we gotta go. We got a gig, blah, blah. And Hunter gets all upset and says, well, you just got here. And they say, no, no, we've been here three or four hours and stuff. Well, he continues to be upset. And he leaves the house and they're sitting there and suddenly they hear gunshots. He had gone out and shot the tires out on the stone's. So I never took Naomi there. I was fighting too frightened.
- [71:43]
Joe Rogan
What year was this?
- [71:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Well, let's see, it was in 90 and 90 something. 4 maybe somewhere around 545345 somewhere.
- [71:55]
Joe Rogan
He had been going hard for 30 years by that point.
- [71:58]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes, he had, or at least 20. And also the end for him. I've read and heard. It was very sad because the sadness wasn't caused by the drugs. It was caused By Booth. And he was, in Jan's opinion, and Jan saw him often in Woody Creek, and in his former wife's opinion, Sandy's opinion, it was the Booth that did it. You know, his body began being old and he needed a wheelchair. He could hardly walk. She drove him into the wheelchair. And at one time, I think in New Orleans, when they were visiting Sean. Sean Penn on a film, he actually fell out of the wheelchair in the middle of traffic. And she couldn't. Anita couldn't really pick him up, and so they had to get help and cars were going by and all that shit. And then he also broke a leg when they were visiting Hawaii at the Kahala. So as he said in his suicide note, which I thought was the most gut wrenching, but also terrific suicide note, it was no fun anymore. The fun was gone. Nothing was fun. No football, no this, no that. No fun.
- [73:15]
Joe Rogan
Well, when the body goes, it's hard to have fun. And that's the problem with booze.
- [73:20]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, exactly.
- [73:21]
Joe Rogan
Well, the problem with many drugs, but particularly the problem with booze, you know, you're breaking down your body over and over and over again. And with a guy like Hunter, he was doing it every day.
- [73:30]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, yeah.
- [73:33]
Joe Rogan
There's a famous piece that this reporter wrote when he went to visit Hunter, and he documented Hunter's drug and alcohol use throughout the day. You know, like six in the morning in the hot tub with champagne. Like that's the end of the day. And then him sleeping and then him waking up and doing all the drugs and then getting ready to write. And what's the guy's name who wrote the. There's a guy who took me and my friend Greg Fitzsimmons reading it out and turned it into an EDM song. Really? Yeah. No, no, no.
- [74:13]
Jamie
It says, a memoir of Hunter Thompson.
- [74:18]
Joe Rogan
Right, but the. But the. The singer, the song. Yes, the guy. I'm sorry, the guy who wrote the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like electronic dance music song. We played it before, many times. God, I can't believe. It's like Beardy Man. Thank you. This guy, Beardy man, put it to music and it's hilarious.
- [74:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Gotta check it out.
- [74:45]
Joe Rogan
It's amazing. I mean, it's a tragic story. Yeah, in a lot of ways.
- [74:48]
Joe Eszterhas
But.
- [74:49]
Joe Rogan
But in his prime, the writing that he did was, in many ways, it was the narration of an era.
- [74:57]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes, it was. And it was genius. You know, the. He. There was. You know, there was this thing called the new journalism, and I practiced that, and so did people like Gates, Elise and David Elverson and Larry L. King, but then undertook that and created an entire new genre. The gonzo journalism thing was his and it was the kind of humor that just knocked you down and totally revolutionary. And Tom Wolf said, who of course was one of the people the founders of New Journalism, said that he was today's version of Mark Twain in terms of what he was able to accomplish. Two books especially I taught, the Fear and Loathing in Vegas, of course, and the campaign book, the 72 Campaign Book, which in my mind is the best political commentary, including all of Teddy White's books. No, it's fantastic.
- [75:51]
Joe Rogan
Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail. And he also had this freedom that was very different from all these other reporters because he was a one time guy. He was going to go in there and follow the campaign for the entire time and then wrote this book about it.
- [76:07]
Joe Eszterhas
But Joe, these were all stayed the shoe tie wearing reporters and you turn this big creature loose on them on the campaign trail. And of course they all fell in love with him and they did because he was such a free spirit compared to what their lives are going to be, of course, like.
- [76:26]
Joe Rogan
Well, imagine you're doing this boring thing which is following a bunch of fakers as they're telling you how they're going to change the country, which you know, they're not really going to do because you've been doing this for 20 years.
- [76:36]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely.
- [76:36]
Joe Rogan
And then along comes the guys like, let's do acid. Come on. All of a sudden you've got this maniac who's drinking and, and saying wild and writing wild. And he doesn't have to be held to the same standards as everyone else because he knows it doesn't matter if they never have him back again. It's fine.
- [76:58]
Joe Eszterhas
I'm so sorry that Hunter wasn't here with Trump's time.
- [77:02]
Joe Rogan
Oh my God.
- [77:03]
Joe Eszterhas
Because that could have been fucking wild and hilarious. But there's also a part of me that says he would have liked Trump. I know this is heresy to liberals, you know, who think that he's, you know, that he would have, that he would absolutely hate him and all of that, but I'm not certain of that. And I, and I, and I think that certainly in terms of his style, he would have liked things about him.
- [77:29]
Joe Rogan
Well, I think he would have liked the fact that he's this wild character, absolutely, completely wild character that has never existed in all of presidential politics before. There's never been anything like him for good or for bad. There's never been a guy like him
- [77:43]
Joe Eszterhas
look what he did today. I mean, he had a shit fit with Netanyahu and he said, you know, you're fucking crazy. You would have been in jail except for me. I saved your ass. What other president, for God's sakes, has ever spoken like that? Not only publicly, but to us? And in that sense, you know, I'm proud of being a deplorable. I'm from Cleveland. You know, I grew up among poor people and blue collar people. And he's the first president that didn't talk down, but talked directly to us.
- [78:20]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. For good or for bad?
- [78:22]
Joe Eszterhas
Oh, yeah, absolutely. For good or for bad?
- [78:24]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I mean, he is who he is, which is very odd. You know, it's a very odd person.
- [78:31]
Joe Eszterhas
I have a lot of questions in certain areas. You know, the ICE area bothers me. The whole shit with the ballroom and all of that stuff.
- [78:43]
Joe Rogan
Well, the ballroom doesn't bother me that much. That's, to me, trivial construction. Like whatever. The ice stuff. What bothers me is we're opening the door for militarized police on our city streets. As many people say, like, look, we got to get these immigrants out of here that are illegal. There's a lot of criminals in this country. There's a lot of people that are committing crimes. I understand that. I understand that perspective. My perspective is not that you need to get the criminals out, it's that it is a very slippery slope. When you give people. And they're trained for seven weeks, they're not trained for very long. They're trained for much less time than police officers, much less time than military. And then you have this military militarized police force that has no identification and they're on the streets. That's a precedent that you might like it when it's for a cause that you support, but that could easily be for a cause that you do not support. That militarized police force could be going door to door and confiscating guns. That militarized police force that you could, you could find other ways where a different ruler could use this precedent in a very damaging way for our free society. That's my perspective on it.
- [79:58]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, I agree with that. When they start calling people like the woman who was killed in Minnesota and the guy domestic terrorists, you know, it's an abomination. Which woman is that woman who is shot by ICE in Minneapolis and then the guy afterwards, a week afterwards, it was also shot by ice.
- [80:26]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [80:27]
Joe Eszterhas
To call them domestic terrorists. But to give credit to Trump, he got rid of Christine Ohm, he got Rid of that guy who was. Who was there that Tom Holman replaced?
- [80:36]
Joe Rogan
Well, Tom Holman was already in charge. That guy was in a different position, but they did get rid of that guy. Also. That guy had a very odd way of dressing that was very. Like, he wore outfits that were like, reminiscent of, like, Nazi Germany. Like, he had this very weird coat that he would wear all the time. And a lot of people were saying, this is a very odd choice for someone to be wearing who's being accused of fascism. See if you find some photos of that dude, the. The coats that he was wearing where a lot of people, like, I had to make sure that this wasn't AI. I was like, is this his real coat that he's wearing? This is very straight. I mean, not accusing him anything. It's just a coat. But. But it was. A lot of people online were pointing out, like, this is a very odd wardrobe choice for someone who's in charge of, in many ways, othering human beings. The other thing that's a problem with this whole ICE thing is, and it's not the fault of the ICE people or even this administration, is that many of these people were encouraged to come here. That's what's so fucked. Imagine if you're living in Guatemala and you're encouraged to come to America. You live in a terrible third world situation. You have, wherever you're living is like deep poverty. You're told that they'll help you get across the border. They'll literally transport you into America. They'll put you in these cities and you can get on public assistance. If you have a bad back, they'll put you on Social Security. There's all these different programs that are incentivizing people to come to America. The Red Cross is giving you maps. People are showing you how to do it. They're letting you across the border, they're letting you into the country, and then two years later, you're being chased down. Two years later you've got masked ICE workers that are pulling. I mean, it's like, it's very inconsistent. Obviously, this is a completely different administration. But I feel for those poor fucking people that were told that they can come here and that there was going to be a pathway to citizenship. So they upend their life. They come to America in the only way they know how. And when people say, oh, they should do it legitimately, sure, a lot of people do it legitimately, and I understand their perspective that it's a very difficult path and no one should be able to cut that line. And they went through it the right way. However, these people, that's not an option for them. If you don't have any money and you're living in a third world country and people encourage you to come to America, I most certainly would have come to America just like they did, Joe.
- [83:04]
Joe Eszterhas
I did. My parents did. You know, I personify the American dream in terms of what happened to me. You know, what they said in the camps was the streets of America are paved with gold. When we lived on Lorraine Avenue in Cleveland, there was a Hungarian poet, a mad poet. His name was Achimbrand, would go up and down Lorraine Avenue screaming in Hungarian, hold one. Which means, where is it? Where is the gold?
- [83:33]
Joe Rogan
Right, right, right, right.
- [83:35]
Joe Eszterhas
But look, I came in here as a kid. I couldn't speak the language. We knew no one. I got into serious juvenile trouble. Like maybe I got out of that. I studied. I was a total autodidact. I wasn't a good student, but I did reading. I went to college. I wanted to be a disc jockey for a while. And his name is Joe Anthony. Here's a song to sue the sad serpent secretary. Right? And this kind of shit. I went to college and I did well in college. I won a big award as a senior.
- [84:17]
Joe Rogan
The.
- [84:20]
Joe Eszterhas
I kept working. And I also, through the years, got a terrific amount of help from Americans. Couldn't have done it without them. Beginning with a bus driver named Henry Jackson, a black man who had been adopted by Hungarian parents and spoke Hungarian. Moving on to people in. In college who helped, who. I found a great deal of help. I couldn't have done what I achieved without the help of other people and other Americans. And then to top everything off, you know, the Hollywood and 18 films and all of that. Yes, I think that is the personification of the American dream. And many of the immigrants who come here are looking for the same dream. And many of them are saying what Matt Achimita said on Lorain Avenue. Old one, Old one. Where is it? Part of the reason that the stuff in Minneapolis breaks my heart is that these Latino people are my cousins and brothers in terms of not the killers and not the gang members, the people who are gardeners and who work in stores and trying to make a buck and have kids that they're trying to survive.
- [85:50]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's also part of the ICE Story too.
- [85:52]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely.
- [85:53]
Joe Rogan
Part of the ICE story is that a lot of these officers are Latino, including the two guys that shot Alex Preddy. Those two guys were Latino, and they took these jobs because these jobs give you first of all, you get a $50,000 signing bonus to join ICE. I mean, that's a significant amount of money for someone who's in debt or who's struggling. So this is how this guy dressed. Look how this guy dressed. That's kind of crazy. See that image? Yeah. Look at that coat.
- [86:24]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [86:25]
Joe Rogan
I mean, come on. That's a. It's kind of a crazy World War II military coat.
- [86:31]
Joe Eszterhas
That's amazing.
- [86:32]
Joe Rogan
A little odd when everybody else is. You know, the other thing is the masks. I understand. I understand the need for them, that they get doxxed, their families get doxed, and it's very organized. This is not organic. These protests are not organic. I understand all these arguments. Yeah.
- [86:49]
Joe Eszterhas
Bothered by the master. It's too disappointable. Like, to me, that's.
- [86:52]
Joe Rogan
It's also. It sets a very bad precedent.
- [86:54]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [86:55]
Joe Rogan
This is the problem with it all. But, you know, the real thing is you shouldn't be able to have organized, paid for protests where you're paying people to protest and you're paying people to cause violence. And then you're also using people as political pawns and moving them into the country so that you could change. Like when. When you have congressional seats, it's all based on the census. The more people that are in the town, regardless of whether or not they're legal or illegal, you get more congressional seats. So they use them for political points.
- [87:24]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes, they do, absolutely. Same obligation, political game.
- [87:26]
Joe Rogan
Yes, the same old game. And that game should be illegal. That. That shouldn't be legal. The idea of the American dream is a beautiful dream, and they've corrupted it and they've. They've taken this and used it for their own gain and, you know, and they've weaponized empathy.
- [87:41]
Joe Eszterhas
And it's.
- [87:42]
Joe Rogan
It's a real problem. It's a real problem for those poor people that came over here looking for a better life.
- [87:47]
Joe Eszterhas
Listen, I have an idea. Run for president. I'll write your speeches. Listen, no, that attitude is really terrific. Out of that, I think you're right to be concerned. You see it. Yeah, listen, I'm 81 years old, but I really see it too, you know, and. And there's great dangers there that I hope my sons don't have.
- [88:08]
Joe Rogan
Militarized. Police on the streets for that reason is a very. It's a very dangerous person. But then there's the other question is, like, how do you get all the criminals out? I don't know. I'm not the guy, you know, I'm not the one. But I'M I am very concerned with this, this dangerous precedent. That's my feeling on it.
- [88:26]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [88:26]
Joe Rogan
So I just worry that people accept it because they want this result now and they don't realize that this could set up this being a common occurrence. I mean we saw some of it during COVID There was some militarized police on the streets keeping people in lockdown in certain cities. They utilized the National Guard and they did things like that. It's, that scares the shit out of me. Scares the shit out of me. When you, you have a justification for militarized police with masks on that are just grabbing people and some of these people are American citizens. It turned out a lot of them were Americans. Hundreds of them were.
- [89:02]
Joe Eszterhas
You know, we had the same syndrome. I covered the Kent State massacres. Yeah, I covered that. And the, one of the things that I saw is the rhetoric that was coming from James Rhodes, the governor at the time and from Sylvester Del Corso who was the head of the National Guard was absolutely the main thing that created that atmosphere that caused that shooting.
- [89:25]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, absolutely.
- [89:26]
Joe Eszterhas
And today sadly, we see many examples of that and they're great dangers.
- [89:34]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, you would think that we would learn, but we go through cycles where we learn, we get better and then we repeat the same things. We again, you see that with racial tensions, you see that with political unrest, you see that with a lot of different things in this country. It's like we, we learn for a little while and then we forget.
- [89:51]
Joe Eszterhas
Mark Twain's wisdom once again comes through. Mark Twain said politicians are like diapers and they should be changed often and for the same reason.
- [90:00]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, he also said history doesn't repeat itself, but it also, it often rhymes.
- [90:07]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, he also said a little bit off subject, but I love it. And he said when the mind and the pecker argue, the pecker always wins.
- [90:22]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I mean he was essentially the original stand up comedian.
- [90:26]
Joe Eszterhas
Oh, you're absolutely right. You're so right. I've actually been thinking about doing some piece on him and Stabby if you know the history. But in the beginning he was a stand up with his so called lectures that he did all over the west. And then he wrote some books, the books that he's famous for, but he went bankrupt nearly at the end of his life because of bad investments. And then he did around the world tour of Stand up all Over Again and usually they said he was a, a poet of the profane because these are usually for male audiences. He published a little book called On Masturbation which is about the glories of masturbation. The only thing I've heard that's close is in the stand up by one Joe Rogan, which there's a great line that says if you're married and have kids, the only place to find peace. Thwaite would say with the pecker is if you rent a motel room and locked the door, you know. But he had the same kind of verve and love in terms of being a stand up, being outrageous, pushing the envelope. And that whole side of Twain has been sort of hidden under the. The notion that he is the great Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and all of that. Nobody talks. He wrote a book called Letters from the Earth from the Voice of the Devil. He wrote another one called the Mysterious Stranger which is about Jesus coming back in a very dark way. And then he wrote one that was published in the 30s that hasn't been republished, called Twain Erupts. You know, so yes, you're so right when you say he would stand up. He was a first rate stand up.
- [92:22]
Joe Rogan
He was the originator because he was essentially a very witty author who wrote very provocative things, very hilarious things and then would read them publicly. And when he was doing these speeches where he'd go and you know, whether you call it poetry or whatever it was, there was no stand up comedy back then. There was no name for it. But he was just writing funny. People loved them and they would go to see them because they were funny.
- [92:48]
Joe Eszterhas
And the initial audiences were mostly male audiences. Right. I think he's a great. It's never been really done to do a piece, a fictional piece about Twain as a stand up with pushing the envelope with all these things I think would be a lot of fun.
- [93:14]
Joe Rogan
It would be a lot of fun. The only problem would be like the cultural context are so different back then. It's almost like, did you see Lenny, the Dustin Hoffman, great film. I mean, I think Dustin Hoffman fucking nailed it. It was as close to Lenny Bruce as you're ever gonna see someone portray Lenny Bruce. The problem is the world has changed so much that since 1960 that a lot of the outrageousness is gone. And it seems very pedestrian, like the things that he is saying because he was such a groundbreaker and society was so locked down and so conservative and so, you know, just there was just the way people communicated was much different back then. The understanding of culture and of race relations and sexual relations was very different back then, then. And so the outrageousness of what he was saying back then, it just doesn't really translate because in many ways I think stand up comedy in particular is a window in time. It's a window into the. The way people behave. Films are that way as well. Especially, like if you go and watch a lot of old films. It's a window into how people perceived reality back then.
- [94:25]
Joe Eszterhas
The. There's some stuff that's rarely been published from Twain, that hasn't really been seen very much that was left in places like the University of California archives that go a step past what we know from Twain. And I think there's so much of it. There's something called Twain's Notebooks that hasn't been published in their full form. Certainly that may still be shocking. And I mean, I'm still playing with it because I'm reading and reading and all of that. But even if I never do, it's so much fun reading about him and his life because he was such an interesting character.
- [95:10]
Joe Rogan
Well, I hope you do write something about it because it would be great for people to see and to get an understanding of him because I think a lot of young people, particularly today, just think of him as an author. Just think of him as the guy who wrote Tom Sawyer.
- [95:22]
Joe Eszterhas
Tom Sawyer. He's been pushed into being almost a kid's writer, right?
- [95:27]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [95:27]
Joe Eszterhas
Speaking of stand up, I want you to know, and I don't think you know. Did you know that Sam Kinison dedicated a CD to me?
- [95:34]
Joe Rogan
Did he really?
- [95:36]
Joe Eszterhas
Sam Kinison. One of his last CDs was called Leader of the Band B A N E D. And at the flip side of the cd, he thanks a bunch of people, Ring Azoff and record people and all of that, and also Sly and Sean Penn. And then after all of that, in larger letters than the others, he says, and a very special thanks to Joe Eszterhouser writing his letter to Michael Ovitz.
- [96:07]
Joe Rogan
That's amazing. What letter did you write to Michael Ovitz?
- [96:10]
Joe Eszterhas
Michael Ovitz was the. Was the top dog agent in town running caa. And I was leaving CAA because my best friend and the rabbi in the business was an agent named Guy McIlwain, who had been running Columbia, became an agent again. So I was leaving CAA simply because of my love for Guy. And I went in to see Ovitz and said, I'm leaving the agent. And Ovid said, if you leave the agency, then my foot soldiers who go up and down Wilshire Boulevard will put you under the ground. Oh, Jesus. What the fuck? You know? So the. I thought about it for a couple weeks and I. And I. And I Wrote him a letter which essentially said, fuck you. You know, I'm leaving. I'm going back to the prison. Who started me in the business and the prison and I love. And it turned into a major controversy with headlines all over the place.
- [97:09]
Joe Rogan
Put you onto the ground of strong words.
- [97:11]
Joe Eszterhas
Oh, man. There was a producer named Bernie Brillstein.
- [97:16]
Joe Rogan
I know Bernie.
- [97:17]
Joe Eszterhas
Did you? He wrote his memoir years later, who said those exact words had been used to him as well.
- [97:25]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [97:25]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah. So the end. You know what? As time went on, it became obvious that the whole controversy with Ovitz really hurt him because other people had been threatened that way, and he had a reputation for that. And he actually was out of the business. Not much past that. But the notion of Kinison. I love guinnesson's work. The notion of Guinnessen. When I saw that thing, I was overwhelmed.
- [97:56]
Joe Rogan
He was one of the greats.
- [97:57]
Joe Eszterhas
He was one of the greats.
- [97:58]
Joe Rogan
Absolutely one of the greats. And I still maintain that for, like, a period of two years, two or three years, he was the most profound and revolutionary stand up comic ever.
- [98:07]
Joe Eszterhas
I agree. I agree.
- [98:08]
Joe Rogan
He came out of nowhere. He was so different than anybody else, you know, I was introduced to Kinison by a girl that I work with. I was working at a gym called the Boston Athletic Club in South Boston. There was a girl that worked at the front counter who was hilarious. She was a volleyball player. Really hilarious girl. And she told me about Kinison and reenacted one of his bits in the parking lot of the club. Told me what she saw on TV about. He had that bit about homosexual necrophiliacs paying money. She's on her stomach laying on the. She was so funny. She was on her stomach in the parking lot going, oh, oh, life keeps fucking you in the ass, even after your dad.
- [98:52]
Joe Eszterhas
It never ends.
- [98:53]
Joe Rogan
It never ends. And I was laughing so hard that I couldn't wait to go out and get that videotape. And I got that videotape. And I was only 19 at the time. I had never even thought about doing stand up yet. But that was, like, one of the first times I was like, oh, this is stand up. Like, I didn't know that this was stand up. I thought stand up was like. Did you ever notice, like, that kind of stuff like you'd see on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson? I had no thought ever that this wild shit was stand up. And, you know, credit to hbo, because before then, you would never be able to see that kind of comedy. The only way you'd be able to see it is. In the movie theater. It'd have to be like Richard Pryor live on the Sunset Strip, which predated that by a few years. And no one had any understanding that there was this kind of stand up comedy out there that this wild motherfucker who used to be a priest, he used to be a preacher.
- [99:47]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [99:48]
Joe Rogan
And he, he comes to LA and is this wild, coke snorting demon comedian who's just different than anybody else before him and just changed comedy. There's a few people, there's a few characters along the way that have just completely changed comedy. And I think Kennedy Kinison is one of the big ones.
- [100:08]
Joe Eszterhas
He was absolutely amazing. I adored him. I. I thought he was a groundbreaker. And when I saw the cd. Cd, I. Holy shit.
- [100:18]
Joe Rogan
I have two of his albums. Two different people have gifted me his first album. God, what is it called? It's not. Is it called Louder Than Hell? I think it's called Louder Than Hell. And they're signed. Both albums are signed. Both signatures are totally different. So I don't know which one's real or either one of them are real. That's a problem. Like, people buy stuff off ebay, they want to give you a nice gift. They buy an autographed album and it might not even be real.
- [100:48]
Joe Eszterhas
He was a preacher. And that last conversation when he died with Jesus, when he's conversing, it's mind boggling.
- [100:56]
Joe Rogan
Mind boggling.
- [100:57]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [100:57]
Joe Rogan
He's having, literally having a conversation with someone as he's dying.
- [101:01]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah. It's obviously Jesus. Jesus is a Jesus figure. I mean, it's. Is it my time? I mean, all that.
- [101:07]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [101:07]
Joe Eszterhas
I'm amazing because. Especially amazing considering where he came from, what he went through, what he did with comedy and then that ending. There was a movie made. It wasn't there, but it wasn't very good.
- [101:19]
Joe Rogan
About Kinnison.
- [101:20]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [101:21]
Joe Rogan
I don't know.
- [101:21]
Joe Eszterhas
I think it was a while. For a while I was thinking about that too.
- [101:26]
Joe Rogan
I have a problem with reenactments of a guy who is that profound. Oh, yeah, someone's playing them.
- [101:33]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, it's like, it's. I agree.
- [101:35]
Joe Rogan
I try not to watch because it's just the, the actual work of the guy. Like going back and watching his HBO special and watching his stand up appearances on Letterman and listening to his, his first album. The first album, I listened to it, I was like, jesus Christ, this guy's incredible. It was just so different, so crazy. And, you know, and he was the first guy that was like, open about doing cocaine. Like open about partying, you know, I mean, he was. He was a wild boy.
- [102:07]
Joe Eszterhas
It reminds me. I'm sorry, Hunter. In terms of being wild to buy coke, my first story when I was at Rolling Stone was it was a piece about narcotics, corrupt narcotics agents. And as a result of the. The stories, the guy who was the head of the narcotics agency in the state of California had to resign. And as a result of that, I started getting plastic baggies full of coke at Rolling Stone from the various dealers who appreciated my work. Now, whenever Hunter was there, I would present him with the bag, and he would go, holy fucking Christ. You're getting these from people. One of the things that solidified offensive. That's hilarious. If I were to hand it over.
- [102:51]
Joe Rogan
And that was back when cocaine was actually cocaine.
- [102:53]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [102:56]
Joe Rogan
It wasn't stepped on. You didn't get fentanyl. You didn't have to worry about dying of an overdose.
- [103:00]
Joe Eszterhas
It was the only drug, besides smoking dope that I really, really enjoyed. I said I tried acid once and another had to hold on to me because I was so freaked out.
- [103:13]
Joe Rogan
I can only imagine. When I watched Showgirls, I was like, whoever wrote this was doing coke. That was literally one of the first things I've said. I've always said that's like one of the heightens of cocaine movies.
- [103:25]
Joe Eszterhas
Not anymore, but. But certainly the memory of it was
- [103:29]
Joe Rogan
influenced, absolutely influenced by cocaine.
- [103:32]
Joe Eszterhas
The Tarantino also really loved Showgirls.
- [103:40]
Joe Rogan
Well, it was a wild movie. And I remember, you know, because it was. That girl. Was her name Elizabeth Berkeley? Berkeley. Elizabeth Berkeley, who was from Saved by the Bell. Right. So she was like this America sweetheart from this really nice sitcom. And then all sudden, you know, she's half naked, and she's a showgirl, and it's like, whoa.
- [103:57]
Joe Eszterhas
And she's having an affair with Paul Verhoeven, who's moved out with his wife and is living with Elizabeth Berkeley. Right. So crazy, no? Yeah.
- [104:07]
Joe Rogan
Geez Louise. Wild times, right?
- [104:10]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely fun. Really fun Jimi Hendrix story, because he's the Jimi Hendrix Experience. And I wondered whether he had any kind of a Godfather impact on the Joe rogan experience.
- [104:24]
Joe Rogan
Oh, 100%. I stole the name from Jimi Hendrix.
- [104:26]
Joe Eszterhas
Jimi Hendrix.
- [104:28]
Joe Rogan
100%. I mean, when we first started doing the podcast, I was. I would always listen to Voodoo Child on the Way to the Comedy Store. Coming over Laurel Canyon. That was one of my favorite. That and Whole Lot of Love. Those are my two favorite songs to listen to on the Way to the Comedy Store. I had, like, a soundtrack that I Listened to, to get myself psyched up for shows.
- [104:46]
Joe Eszterhas
You'll love this story then, okay? I'm a reporter at the Plain Dealer, and all of our editors barely know about rock and roll. And as I said, I've loved it all my life. And I. And when Hendrix came around, I loved his work. And he's in Cleveland for an appearance, and the fucking Cleveland cops have gone crazy, and they're saying that this caused a riot and it's obscene and all of that stuff. And I go up to my city editor and ask, tell him I'd like to interview Hendrickson, cover his concert. So I do cover his concert, and it's jammed in Cleveland arena, and people are loving it. And I set up a date to interview them the next morning at the Cleveland Hotel, okay? So I show up the next morning, and I am the Plain Dealer reporter. I've got a tie on and a sport coat, you know. And they go in. I think it's 9:30, and he's up, but he's barely up. And he's wearing shorts and a T shirt. And his hair is. Remember his hair? But on this occasion, there were a lot of beads and things. Things in his hair as well. And it's totally scruffed up. We talk about rock and roll mostly, and his background and the fact that he had been, I think, as a backup, as a kind of guitarist in a Ricky Nelson band that had been in Cleveland a couple years before. Then he'd done this pre stuff before. He went out on his own. And we get along, and we began smoking dope, of course, at 9:30, and by fucking 11:30, we both got the munchies. And he said, man, I'm hungry, you know? You got any. You want to go to any place? I've got a car waiting for me downstairs. So I said, sure. And we go down and Mitch Mitchell and Chaz Chandler join us, the other members of the Experience, who are equally looking, like CD characters, you know. But it's that time of morning, it's after concert, all of that. So we pile into this limbo, and I direct them to go to. Buckeye Road is the center of the Hungarian community in Cleveland. And the center of the Hungarian community on Buckeye Road is a restaurant called the Balaton, Okay? And I direct them to go to the Balaton. Now, they know me at the Balatun because I used to live on Buckeye Road. The big stretch limo pulls up, Blake glass window front, filled with old ladies with babushkas and guys very formally dressed. We get out in front of this place. And these Martians, three Martians get out of the car. And I lead them in. And Hungarian, they're looking. I'm like, what the fuck? What is this? You know, they made me. The. They're just following me in. And I see Jimmy looking. Looking around and shit. So they see this. The Major D knows me. So he calls me aside and he says, who are these people? Who are these people? I say, jimi Hendrix, Big rock and roll star, you know, he's in town. And he said, oh, Hendrix. Yeah, Jimi Hendrix. Okay. So we sit down and Jimmy says, you order for me. Great. So I order a chicken paprikash for him, which is a big Hungarian meal. And Chaz and Mitchell order something else, but very Hungarian stuff, on my advice. And interestingly, as we're sitting there, maitre d has obviously spoken to people because old ladies are coming around asking him for an autograph. And he's crazy. He's a. But he loves his paprikash and wants to order another. At this point, we knocked out two bottles of wine, I think, and we're still rolling from all the dope, so they bring that at the end of this. He had three orders of chicken paprikash. He signed. We had, like, four bottles of wine. We staggered out of there. He signed, I would guess, 10 autographs of people come around bowing. And then as we walk out of the restaurant, he takes his fist high up in there and says, hungary. Hungary. That's my Jimi Hendrix story.
- [109:10]
Joe Rogan
That's awesome. Ron White was telling us a story the other night in the Mothership Green Room, the comedy club Green Room. And he was saying that when he was. I think he said he was 13 years old, he went to see the Monkeys, and Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees. He said it was the worst booking of all time. You've got. Exactly. So this is when Jimi Hendrix was emerging. He really hadn't become Jimi Hendrix yet. And so he's the opening act for the Monkees. And so you have a bunch of kids that are there to see this really cute band that was, you know, pieced together by corporate executives, essentially, you know, the Monkeys. Fun band. But, you know, they had a TV show, and it was very clean, sweet TV show. Hey, of course, you know, and then you've got this guy opening up for them, this. Just jamming on the guitar.
- [110:00]
Joe Eszterhas
Wow.
- [110:01]
Joe Rogan
And they were freaked out. They're like, what is this? Like, what is going on? And he said, nobody liked it. It was terrifying to people. Like, who is this guy? With his guitar. Like, what the hell is he doing?
- [110:13]
Joe Eszterhas
Great story. Many years later, I thought about writing a Hendrix movie and working with a producer friend named Ben Myron. And Ben rounded up his brother and we actually brought him to Malibu. And unfortunately, we discovered that the rights were so screwed up in between relatives that there's never been a Jimi Hendrix movie because people couldn't agree on. On the deal of any kind. But it still would be a terrific movie, I think, you know.
- [110:44]
Joe Rogan
Oh, it'd be a phenomenal movie there. I believe there was at least one docudrama, wasn't there, Jimmy? I believe. Do you remember it?
- [110:56]
Jamie
Yeah, it was Andre 3000 from out. But they'd, like. Couldn't really use all the music and stuff, I think.
- [111:03]
Joe Eszterhas
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't hear Jamie.
- [111:06]
Joe Rogan
He said it was Andre 3000 from Outkast.
- [111:08]
Joe Eszterhas
I see.
- [111:09]
Joe Rogan
And that they couldn't use all the music.
- [111:11]
Joe Eszterhas
I see.
- [111:12]
Jamie
I think.
- [111:13]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah.
- [111:13]
Jamie
It came out even like 10.
- [111:15]
Joe Eszterhas
That was an issue back then, too. I remember that. Yeah. There's a picture of him as.
- [111:20]
Joe Rogan
That's right, Jimmy. That's right. Wow.
- [111:24]
Jamie
Also that the day after you're talking about in Cleveland, there's a recording of the concert.
- [111:29]
Joe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- [111:31]
Joe Eszterhas
That's my face. Is that right? The Cleveland concert?
- [111:33]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [111:34]
Joe Eszterhas
Wow.
- [111:34]
Jamie
There's a. I've got a few different links. They kept taking me to Facebook, but there's a bunch of pictures.
- [111:39]
Joe Rogan
Whoa.
- [111:40]
Jamie
March 26, 1968.
- [111:42]
Joe Eszterhas
Wow.
- [111:43]
Jamie
Then there's a recording of the concert,
- [111:45]
Joe Rogan
too, so you can listen to the recording from the concert.
- [111:48]
Jamie
I was trying to get in here. There's like. There's an article from his legendary trip to Cleveland.
- [111:54]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [111:55]
Jamie
But this was like paid walled, so I couldn't get all the stuff behind it.
- [111:58]
Joe Eszterhas
Wow. Man, he was the nicest guy I can imagine. Yeah, very nice guy. Just laid back.
- [112:06]
Joe Rogan
Well, he was just insane. One of a. Not. Not even one of a generation. One. One of one talent. I mean, to this day, if you ask most guitarists, who's the greatest guitarist of all time, it's Jimi Hendrix. That's crazy. That one guy who died at 27 years old. And would he die in 1969 or 1970?
- [112:29]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah. Somewhere there that.
- [112:31]
Joe Rogan
That guy to this day is universally regarded as the greatest guitarist of all time.
- [112:37]
Joe Eszterhas
You know, I interviewed him. I was known as the Grim Reaper at the Plain Dealer because I interviewed Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Otis. And they all died. They all died young. You know, I did a feature on Jose Feliciano, and people would come up to me at the Plain Dealer and say, what do you have against Jose? Why do you want him to die?
- [113:01]
Joe Rogan
That's crazy. It's just unfortunate that they all die and they all died at 27 years old, which is really.
- [113:07]
Joe Eszterhas
Was that right? I didn't. Wow.
- [113:08]
Joe Rogan
Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison all died at 27. And who else? Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse at 27. Yeah, it's all 27. 27 is the magic number for insanely talented people to die young. Yeah. Very weird. You've had an incredible life, man.
- [113:33]
Joe Eszterhas
You know, I've been blessed. The. I've been really blessed. First of all, the fact that I'm still here at 81, considering some of my excesses in the past, is miraculous. It truly is. I started smoking when I was 13, stopped when I was 60, and I had stage four cancer. And Marshall Strom surgery saved me. You know, I drank too hard most of my life until I was 70, and I finally stopped then only because I have a hard headed Italian Polish wife who said, enough, you're falling down. You're taking 12 pills and you're falling down, no fucking more. Okay? Men did it. Now, shortly after we were married, literally, after we exchanged the vows, she turned to me and she says. She whispers, she says, if you cheat on me, I'm going to fucking hunt you down and kill you. Okay? I listened to her. I listened to her. I listened to this woman.
- [114:42]
Joe Rogan
Sounds like a fun lady.
- [114:44]
Joe Eszterhas
She is. She is. And she's. I'm very proud of her because at 67, the mother of four and truly the true head of our family. She's writing her first. She's written her first novel, which is called Dark Church, and it's set in Dracula's Transylvania.
- [115:09]
Joe Rogan
Whoa.
- [115:10]
Joe Eszterhas
And it's a kind of gothic thriller. And I bring it up because I promised her that I would make this plug. And I fear that if I don't, I'm going to be in a lot of drunken trouble. So thank you very much.
- [115:34]
Joe Rogan
I love that when someone does something like that when they're in their 60s. Just say it. Something I always wanted to do. Let's do it. I think it's fantastic.
- [115:43]
Joe Eszterhas
Thank you.
- [115:44]
Joe Rogan
I just love when people do, like your age. Who cares? Just put it out, write it.
- [115:49]
Joe Eszterhas
I agree. But I have lived an amazing life and I'm very thankful. I've seen a lot and I've come out on the other side. I've seen a lot of darkness, too, but when it's all over, Graham Greene, who's a writer that I admire died, I think, in his late 70s. And he said, we get to a point where we see the fence. The fence is there, but we can't see over the fence. But the closer we get to the fence, the more curious we are about what's on the other side of the fence. And there are some people who decide that they're too curious, people like Hunter and jump over the fence. Right. I'm not doing that, but I'm approaching the fence. But I've lived a terrific life, and only once again, only in America, you know. Really?
- [116:45]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Only in America. Well, I'm glad you're not jumping over the fence. No, I'm glad we got a chance to talk.
- [116:50]
Joe Eszterhas
Although I really did admire his note. The no more fun note. It should be.
- [116:56]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, well, I mean, that's how he lived. And at the end of his life, obviously, it was not fun.
- [117:01]
Joe Eszterhas
No, no. Yeah. But, Dwayne, when I keep going back to Twain, this is a good one. I think he said, the orgasm is God's own payback for all the suffering that he overlooks in the world.
- [117:18]
Joe Rogan
That's funny. Well, it's like writers in particular, they're so important to culture because they can put down thoughts in a way that reshapes the way people view things. We talked about hunter in the 60s and the 70s. He was the voice of that generation. Like, he was the guy that was this intelligent guy that wasn't a part of the elite establishment, that wasn't a part of the rich fat cats, but was also famous and well known, but stuck true to his thoughts and his beliefs. It was able to articulate things in a way that gave you this understanding of what was going on with the people, people back then that to this day, if you read Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail, or if you read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or any of his work, you know, the Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved. Like, it's just a phenomenal encapsulation of even.
- [118:17]
Joe Eszterhas
Even something.
- [118:19]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it's so important. It's. And we don't have a lot of that today, unfortunately. You know, you got a lot of podcasters and a lot of, you know, people making YouTube videos and TikToks. Just not a lot of, like, great writing that encapsulates things where there's, like, one figure that we turn to to read their stuff on things. And Hunter was that guy.
- [118:41]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes, he was. As Hemingway was for a previous generation. You know, Hunter and I talked a lot about Hemingway because of Our backgrounds and earning a living and all of that. And I think that the fact that Hunter ended it as he did was sort of thought out many, many years before, probably through Hemingway's example.
- [119:05]
Joe Rogan
Inspired by Hemingway. Yeah. Unfortunately, that's how he did it too. And they both shared in common that they drank to excess.
- [119:12]
Joe Eszterhas
Absolutely. But, you know, when I was a boy wanting to be a. And I wanted to be a novelist and not a screenwriter, the whole eternity were Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner. They all died of alcohol anyway. Shot himself. Fitzgerald had a heart attack at a very young age while working as a hack Hollywood screenwriter, incidentally. And Faulkner fell off a horse, I think, in his early 70s. Ripped. Ripped, totally drunk. And these were the idols of young people. Coming up.
- [119:46]
Joe Rogan
What do you think it is about alcohol and writing that go hand in glove?
- [119:55]
Joe Eszterhas
For a while I drank all day, black coffee and cognac. And then later on in life, I didn't have my first drink until noon, was 11 o' clock and I measured it until at night. And then it was gin before it was white wine. And part of it is that if you're lost in this imaginary world that's in your head all day, you can't get rid of it. You can't make it stop, and the booze makes it stop. So that you could continue your normal familial daily obligations and schedules without having this stuff in your head all the time, trying to crowd it out. The fact that sometimes. Excuse me. The fact that sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and take notes of something that the character says or something indicates that I can't get rid of it with the boo is when I was drinking, if I drank enough, I could get rid of it and begin it again the next day. It's partly freeing yourself. It's an interesting point. It's partly freeing yourself from something that you've created yourself. So in that sense, you create something that can hurt you. Even if you created. My greatest enjoyment with writing screenplays, I mean, it gives me a terrific amount of pleasures knowing that it's going to take. When people see this, it's going to make their own lives more pleasant for at least two hours. They will enjoy it. They may laugh at it, but it will take them out of their own existences in a pleasant way. That ain't bad to be able to do that with people. Oh, it's huge. And that's very important to@blyze.com.
- [121:55]
Joe Rogan
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- [122:30]
Joe Eszterhas
Exactly. You do the exact same thing. You make people's lives better by enjoying what they're watching. And that is not as important or as dramatic as my daughter in law, for example, who just got her medical degree, who literally, literally saves people's lives. Incidentally, classic Hollywood story. I think Alyssa, Alyssa Esterhaz works in Texas in a hospital and she just got her medical degree. But to show the influence that Hollywood has on our culture, the other day she walks into a room and there's a gigantic big guy there who's yelling and screaming, you know, this is the sweetest person in the world and, and has this wonderful smile and really is great with people. And she's trying to calm him down and she says, what's wrong? What's wrong? And she describes him as a really big man and is screaming and what's wrong? What's wrong? And he yells, I want Brad Pitt fucking in Texas. You know, some hospital says, you want Brad Pitt? I want fucking Brad Pitts. Brad Pitt. But why, why do you want Brad Pitt? He goes, because I want to him. That's sweet woman.
- [123:57]
Joe Rogan
That's hilarious.
- [123:58]
Joe Eszterhas
Doctor confronted him with this Matt man, what the Brad Pitt. One more example do you need of the powerful effect of the culture on us, right? So when I write something, I don't want some guy to see it and say this is the result. I want Brad Pitt. Nor do I want Volodymyr Zelensky to start a fucking war. But I do want people to enjoy it.
- [124:23]
Joe Rogan
Right? That's hilarious. When you see like when you say that the alcohol silences the voices. I always thought of it as the other. I thought of it as like alcohol releases people, people from their inhibitions and allows them to tap into this voice.
- [124:39]
Joe Eszterhas
Sometimes I think that happens with some writers, but that never been my problem. There's something about going into a little room wherever you are, and you don't have to be in Hollywood. You can be anywhere as long as there's a little room in the house you can escape to and sit there quietly and make shit up that you think will, that people will enjoy. As long as that's there. That's all I really need now. Occasionally I will play music without stop on certain scripts. It was the same way with Leonard Cohen. I listened to him a lot. And Dylan, of course. I did a movie with Dylan, which was also a funny experience. But sometimes his music, it's not coke anymore, it's not cognac anymore. With coffee. I drank so much coffee that finally one day we had to call an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack and become allergic to it. It was just caffeine ambulance. Caffeine ambulance is driving me down to Marin General and there's a traffic jam, there's construction, right? And they think I'm having a heart attack. And I jump out of the ambulance and I run up to the guy with the hard hat and I never forget it says Brinckerhoff and his name was Brinckerhoff. And I'm yelling at him, I'm having a heart attack, you motherfucker. Get these guys out of the way. I'm dying. Of course. Oh my God. It's worse than the guy who wants to fuck Brad Pitt gets out of the way.
- [126:10]
Joe Rogan
Well, the crazy thing is just coffee. After all the coke and all the other craziness.
- [126:14]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, well, even that gun. So I had to stop. I stopped the coffee as well. The years after I stopped it, I was in New York and I ordered a decaf espresso. There wasn't decaf. And I was up for two and a half days without being able to sleep. So obviously my system got totally, totally screwed up.
- [126:35]
Joe Rogan
Got reset. Yeah, you lost your tolerance for it.
- [126:38]
Joe Eszterhas
But I never felt it inspired me. Now the. With Basic Instinct, writing it in the sun, in the Hawaiian sun, you know. And of course all through all of this it was non stop smoking, you know, I mean, two pack a day smoking. Beginning with Lucky's and Marlboros and moving out to Galoise and occasionally cigars and pipe and all this shit. So I did do that, but I never felt that the, that pecoke was inspirational. It was enjoyable and it was fucking dynamite sexually, you know, so. And that also comes in handy.
- [127:24]
Joe Rogan
But it wasn't what fueled your writing.
- [127:27]
Joe Eszterhas
No, I never felt that it did.
- [127:28]
Joe Rogan
Recreational.
- [127:29]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, it was recreational.
- [127:29]
Joe Rogan
But nicotine did.
- [127:30]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, absolutely.
- [127:32]
Joe Rogan
That's, you know, that's also. Stephen King said that that when he stopped smoking was one of the most difficult Things that he ever quit, like quitting the booze and quitting coke and all that stuff was one thing, but. But quitting cigarettes. He said he really noticed the difference in his writing.
- [127:44]
Joe Eszterhas
Well, yeah, I went through that. I was warned after my cancer surgery by this army surgeon that I liked so much that if you smoke or drink, you're dead. You know, you're dead. Understand that? And so I took it seriously, the drinking. My idea of not drinking at that point was switching from Tanqueray to white wine. And of course, that got out of hand after a while, too, until Naomi jumped into the whole pray, you know.
- [128:21]
Joe Rogan
And now you're completely clean.
- [128:22]
Joe Eszterhas
Totally. I've been first. Completely clean.
- [128:25]
Joe Rogan
Did this all line up with your conversion to Christianity?
- [128:28]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I needed Jesus of Nazareth's help, seriously, to be able to do all that. And I did a lot of praying, but I still believe in prayer, and I believe in worship with a group of people. There's a special kind of inspirational thing that I feel.
- [128:49]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think there's something about all those people collected together. It's just like when you go to a concert and you feel the music with all the people that are enjoying the music. There's a similar thing that happens at a church.
- [129:01]
Joe Eszterhas
Very similar. Absolutely.
- [129:02]
Joe Rogan
We're meant to be together. You know, we are tribal people, and we're meant to be together. And there's something about groups of people together, especially in a positive way, that unite us and connect us in a way that it's very profound. It's different than anything else. It's different than watching it on a screen. There's something about being in the presence of other people that are doing the same thing.
- [129:24]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah. It said you can feel a vibe.
- [129:26]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [129:27]
Joe Eszterhas
And the vibe goes deep. And it's really inspirational. And when it's really working, I feel almost transported. I'm on a different level, you know, and I feel myself being on that level. And it's wonderful. Yeah.
- [129:42]
Joe Rogan
And you can see all these other people experiencing the same thing. It's very transformational, really. And, you know, I always talk about the parking lot of church is like, the best place on earth because everybody lets you go. Everybody lets everybody go in front of them. Everyone's kind, you know, it works. That's what's crazy. Like, the teachings of Jesus do work. If you follow them, you will be a better person.
- [130:06]
Joe Eszterhas
Yes, you will.
- [130:07]
Joe Rogan
But people are very cynical, and rightly so. They're very afraid of people manipulating them. They're very afraid of Cults. There you go. You got your cross right on you. Yeah, That's a nice one, too. I like that.
- [130:20]
Joe Eszterhas
Thank you.
- [130:21]
Joe Rogan
People are very afraid of people telling them that they know things, that they have the answers.
- [130:28]
Joe Eszterhas
Yeah, I'm not afraid of that. Sometimes I'm skeptical of it, but it depends on where it's coming from. And sometimes I don't know how you are, but sometimes I could feel something very special with someone who is talking about those kinds of things, you can feel the difference.
- [130:49]
Joe Rogan
And the difference between that and someone who's not genuine is very apparent. You feel that as well, like it bothers you. I don't want to hear this guy talk about this.
- [131:00]
Joe Eszterhas
But you know what? If you have a shit detector, and you do, and so do I, if you have a shit detector, you can really feel that and pick it up. Just block it out.
- [131:10]
Jamie
Yeah.
- [131:10]
Joe Rogan
Well, I think your shit detector works with virtually everything, and I think the audience gets it, too.
- [131:16]
Joe Eszterhas
I agree. In terms of if my shit detector advises me to do something, I almost always do it.
- [131:23]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Well, listen, Joe, it's been an honor having you in here.
- [131:28]
Joe Eszterhas
You're a real legend. It's been such a pleasure. You are truly. What you do is you have redefined in the interview, and you made it into a very special conversation. Chat between two guys who think they'll like each other. And they talk for hours, and they're inspired, and they come out liking each other. And you do that to people, and I think that's a great gift. Thank you. I thank you for the Joe Rogan experience.
- [132:06]
Joe Rogan
Thank you for being here. It's an honor. It's an honor to meet you and an honor to have you on here. And I really enjoyed the conversation. It was awesome.
- [132:13]
Joe Eszterhas
Thank you. I did, too. All right, thank you. Bye, everybody.