#2240 - Roger Avary & Quentin Tarantino

Summary

Summary of Podcast Episode #2240 - Roger Avary & Quentin Tarantino on The Joe Rogan Experience

Release Date: December 10, 2024

In this engaging and extensive episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan sits down with renowned filmmakers Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino. The trio delves into a myriad of topics ranging from the intricacies of filmmaking, personal anecdotes, industry challenges, to philosophical musings on society and human behavior. The conversation spans over three and a half hours, rich with insights, humor, and candid exchanges.

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1. Unorthodox Assassination Methods

[00:12]
The episode kicks off with a surprising discussion on unconventional ways to commit murder without leaving traces. Roger Avary shares an alarming method:

Roger Avary [02:26]: "...one of the ones that I think is the best one is you inject someone with coffee. Caffeine. Like, just inject coffee into their bloodstream, gives them a heart attack, and it's untraceable..."

Joe Rogan probes the feasibility, highlighting the simplicity yet danger of such methods.

2. Insurance Woes in California

[02:38]
Shifting gears, the conversation moves to the challenges of obtaining insurance in California, especially fire insurance. Both Avary and Tarantino express frustration over exorbitant costs and the impact of overdevelopment on insurance availability.

Roger Avary [04:08]: "...nobody will insure my house because of fire... and so suddenly it's like, I have a house that's uninsurable."

3. Life at Video Archives and the Genesis of Filmmaking

[08:05]
A significant portion of the discussion revolves around Avary and Tarantino's experiences working at Video Archives, a video rental store. They reminisce about the camaraderie, the community, and how this environment fostered their passion for filmmaking.

Quentin Tarantino [22:39]: "...I was hanging out at the video store, talking about movies, and that's how we bonded."

4. The Struggle and Triumph of Making Movies

[23:12]
Avary narrates his tumultuous journey in the film industry, including his time in jail due to a DUI-related incident. This personal ordeal profoundly impacted his perspective on life and filmmaking.

Roger Avary [30:43]: "It was the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me... it completely changed how I see everything."

Tarantino echoes similar sentiments, emphasizing the importance of community and resilience in the face of adversity.

5. The Evolution of Film Criticism and Podcasting

[65:08]
The trio explores the decline of traditional film criticism exemplified by Siskel and Ebert and how their own podcast aims to fill that void. They discuss the authenticity and depth their conversations bring, contrasting it with other superficial reviews.

Quentin Tarantino [139:56]: "...they're completely sincere, but their film knowledge is abysmal... we actually fact check our shit."

6. Violence vs. Sex in Cinema

[112:07]
A philosophical debate ensues about society's desensitization to violence compared to its reaction to sexual content in films. They critique modern media's portrayal and justification of excessive violence.

Roger Avary [114:06]: "Meaningless Violence... Violence without purpose almost."

7. Technological Advancements in Filmmaking

[178:00]
The discussion shifts to the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technologies in modern filmmaking. Avary shares his experiences with AI tools like Runway, highlighting their potential to revolutionize film production.

Roger Avary [178:15]: "I'm working on Runway lately... whatever you think you can't do, ask us, because we probably will be able to do it in a couple of days."

8. Comedy and the Dynamics of The Comedy Store

[50:52]
Tarantino and Avary reflect on the nature of comedy, the hierarchical progression within comedic venues like The Comedy Store, and the importance of authentic interactions over manufactured success.

Joe Rogan [126:43]: "It's like, how much information do you think you can absorb in a day?"

9. Personal Growth and Overcoming Setbacks

[174:38]
Both filmmakers share stories of personal setbacks and the lessons learned from overcoming them. Avary discusses his time in jail and the transformative effect it had on his outlook, while Tarantino emphasizes the importance of persistence and community support.

Quentin Tarantino [192:06]: "Once you've been incarcerated... I look at a tree and I was like, okay, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."

10. The Future of Media and Community Engagement

[138:02]
Tarantino and Avary outline their vision for their podcast, aiming to create a community-centric platform that values deep discussions over superficial praise. They compare their approach to traditional talk shows, emphasizing authenticity and informed critique.

Roger Avary [132:28]: "It's like a $5 film school... using our experience as filmmakers to discuss deeper into the movies."

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Notable Quotes with Speaker Attribution and Timestamps

• Roger Avary [02:26]: "Inject someone with coffee. Caffeine... gives them a heart attack, and it's untraceable."
• Quentin Tarantino [22:39]: "...I was hanging out at the video store, talking about movies, and that's how we bonded."
• Roger Avary [30:43]: "It was the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me... it completely changed how I see everything."
• Quentin Tarantino [139:56]: "We actually fact check our shit."
• Roger Avary [114:06]: "Meaningless Violence... Violence without purpose almost."
• Roger Avary [178:15]: "Whatever you think you can't do, ask us, because we probably will be able to do it in a couple of days."
• Quentin Tarantino [192:06]: "Once you've been incarcerated... I look at a tree and I was like, okay, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."
• Roger Avary [132:28]: "It's like a $5 film school... using our experience as filmmakers to discuss deeper into the movies."

---

Conclusions and Insights

Throughout the episode, Avary and Tarantino provide a candid look into the challenges and triumphs of the filmmaking world. They emphasize the importance of community, authenticity, and resilience. The discussion highlights how personal experiences, both positive and negative, shape one's creative endeavors and outlook on life. Additionally, the conversation underscores the evolving landscape of media consumption and the need for genuine, informed discussions in an age dominated by superficial content.

For aspiring filmmakers and enthusiasts, this episode serves as both an educational and inspirational resource, offering valuable lessons on navigating the complexities of the industry while staying true to one's creative vision.

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Note: This summary distills the main themes and highlights from the extensive conversation, ensuring that listeners or interested parties can grasp the pivotal moments and insights shared by Joe Rogan, Roger Avary, and Quentin Tarantino.

Transcript

[Joe Rogan]

Joe Rogan podcast.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train my day. Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[Joe Rogan]

All right, here we go.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We're all.

[Joe Rogan]

So you were. You're saying that someone was telling you how to kill someone with coffee?

[Roger Avary]

Okay, so I got to know all these. You were talking about some. His name's John McPhee, some operators, and I got to know through a friend, through a billionaire friend who loaned his plane to the. To Clinton to fly those people out of, I think, North Korea. And so from that point on, he was surrounded by these guys, and one of them, this guy Mikey, which isn't his real name. I think he's actually named. They name them all after the archangels. So he was like Michael Gabriel. They take on these.

[Joe Rogan]

There's nothing creeper than an assassin with biblical name.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Archangel.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. And. Well, you know, and so he. You know, we got to know each other because of our mutual friend. And I think what happened was he and a couple of the other guys, you know, they were placed on me as, like, for surveillance purposes. Like, you know, find out what this Avery guy's about, maybe, or just keep an eye on him or whatever. And they told me right up front, like, be nice to your surveillance. You know, like, don't try to lose us or anything like that. Because I heard stories about how, you know, they're surveilling somebody in wherever. Bolivia, and suddenly some gang attacks their surveillance, and they step in, kick the. Out of the gang. And so. So I got to know these guys, and naturally, you know, I'm a writer and filmmaker. And so I, of course, want to talk to them about stuff. And they immediately started volunteering. Oh, yeah, we've learned all these different ways. When I became an operator, blah, blah, blah. I learned how to kill people without. And I was just making a list now of the 10 Ways to Kill someone without leaving a trace. I was like, well, just like when I told Quentin about this, he's like, well, what are those? I'd like to hear those. Everybody wants to hear those. And so one of the ones that I think is the best one is you inject someone with coffee. Caffeine. Like, just inject coffee into their bloodstream, gives them a heart attack, and it's untraceable. Later on, they do an autopsy, and they just discover caffeine in your system.

[Joe Rogan]

That's it.

[Roger Avary]

That's it.

[Joe Rogan]

Is this just right into the blood coffee? It can kill you sometimes the simple.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Ways, like just right into the juggler in a. With a syringe yes.

[Joe Rogan]

Jesus.

[Roger Avary]

After extracting whatever information you need to get out of him. But he was.

[Joe Rogan]

How much coffee will kill you? Like that syringe worth?

[Roger Avary]

I don't know. And, you know, is it the Turkish kind or is it Folgers Cuban espresso.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

But he was. He was a medic, you know, during the war. Well, the war, and he was a medic. And so he, you know, was kind of identified as somebody who knew how to kill somebody very easily. Because you know what will work. Yeah, because you're a medic. And so, you know, I would hear every now and then I would say I'd kill some guy and some diplomat or something in the Philippines, and I'd hit him with my car. And I'd look in my rearview mirror and make a determination, a medical determination of, you know, is the guy still alive or is he. I better fit him off and put him in reverse and drive him over again a couple of times and then take off. And he's doing that all the time. All the time they're doing it.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, Jamie and I were just talking. They think they have a photo of the guy who whacked that insurance CEO.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

They think they have a photo of his face now.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, they do, huh?

[Roger Avary]

Well, I would think with the amount.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Of camera, or they picked it up.

[Joe Rogan]

Later, I think, you know, there's cameras everywhere, and that's part of the problem with someone. And I don't think this guy was a professional. I think this guy. If I had a guess, some guy got fucked over. Apparently, that company is really bad on denying claims.

[Roger Avary]

30, 34% denial rate.

[Joe Rogan]

The normals, like 16. Yeah, yeah. So those guys, I don't think anybody's.

[Roger Avary]

Gonna, like, be crying too hard over that guy.

[Joe Rogan]

Maybe his family, but that's about it. Yeah, it's a dirty, dirty business. The business of insurance is gross. It's gross. And especially health care insurance, just gross.

[Roger Avary]

Well, actually, all insurance. I live in California, and all of a sudden, because I live adjacent to any kind of open space, like, nobody will insure my house because of fire.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Roger Avary]

And so suddenly it's like, I have a house that's uninsurable. And it's not just me, it's everybody. And so it's chaos.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Yeah. I have a friend who's trying to sell a house in California, and they. It turned out it was $125,000 a year just to get fire insurance.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like what?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, it's insane.

[Joe Rogan]

It's fucking nuts.

[Roger Avary]

It's Insane.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. But, you know, I was evacuated three times when I lived there. I used to live in Bell Canyon. And, you know, it was fucking. It was rough.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I. Look, I've been like. I've been really lucky. I live in. I'm almost afraid to say it. All right. Because I've been living in the Hollywood Hills, that I've never. Any of the fire stuff happens. Never happened around.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. It is just luck. Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

I mean, the benefit of your place is you're at least in a helicopter, accessible. They're just going to dump all that fire retardant right on top of you.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I literally am kind of at the top of the hill on a bunch of rock. So if the whole fucking place turns into an inferno, I'm still fucked.

[Roger Avary]

And I think that place has probably been there a while. It's probably withstood all sorts of calamity.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. When I was filming Fear Factor, I talked to this guy who was a fire guy for the fire department. He said, it's just going to be a matter of time. There's going to be one day where a fire hits LA and the wind is the right way and we're not going to be able to stop it. It's just going to burn right through to the ocean. He goes, it's just a matter of time. We all know it. I was like, what the fuck, dude? I go, the whole city. He goes, the whole city, he goes. When those big fires get going, there's not a damn thing like, what happened in Malibu a few years back. Those are. I always thought, Malibu, those rich people.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, that was the closest Maui. That was like around 93. That actually happened while we were shooting Pulp Fiction.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. Well, there was a. There was a big Malibu fire. The big Malibu fire happened while we were shooting Pulp Fiction. So we actually set up a TV on the set because Bruce Willis was gonna maybe lose his house. And so he was like, actually. So we have the little TV area so we could, like, so in between takes we can watch what's going on with the fire. And they're like. And there was all these reports that, no, Bruce Willis and his family are on top of the house with their water hose. I go, no, he's not. He's right here.

[Roger Avary]

Well, the thing is, fires were normal. Like it used to be when I was young, you know, I grew up in California, and so when I was young, fires would burn through Malibu constantly. But now they put all those houses in there where there never were houses, because the fire is a natural process. It Kind of clears the land, cleans the land and it's normal, actually. But you know, when you put all that kindling in there, suddenly we end up with these like superstorms of fire just where everything's just, you know, going crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's.

[Roger Avary]

I think it's overdevelopment, which is the cause of these insane kind of.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Roger Avary]

Fires that we're getting.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, but it's a cool place to live. You're not going to stop people from developing in Malibu, you know, it's just too nice.

[Roger Avary]

No, you're not.

[Joe Rogan]

Just take your chances. Roll your dice.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, but you roll your dice. You take your chances and you roll your dice no matter where you live.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's just. It's just fucked up when it happens.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Like, oh, my God. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I drove home once we were filming Fear Factor. We had to stop the set early because the fire was so bad. This was like 2003 or something like 4. And driving home, it took me 55 minutes on the 5 to get home. And the entire time, the right side of the highway was on fire for 55 minutes. Everything like Lord of the Rings style.

[Quentin Tarantino]

So three different times you got evacuated from your house?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, three different times.

[Quentin Tarantino]

So what is like. Okay, so you decide what you're going to take with you kind of thing?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Last time. The last time was. The last time it was like, you know, the last big fire in la. And I came home from the Comedy store at like 1:00 in the morning and my wife and I are looking out the window and the fire's like maybe five or 600 yards away and it's coming over the hill and we were looking at each other. I said, let's just get the fuck out of here.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, right on.

[Joe Rogan]

Let's just get out of here now. Just. So we grabbed the kids, got a laptop, took some clothes. I didn't even have underwear. I just said we could just buy stuff. Who gives a fuck, you know, who.

[Roger Avary]

Cares if you have your life. Yeah, I'M always the. I don't want to say the stupid guy, but I'm the guy who, for some reason, always decides I'm going to stay. Like, I'm going to, and.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, you're that old guy.

[Roger Avary]

I live near a fire department. There's a fire hydrant across from my driveway.

[Quentin Tarantino]

The guy on the roof with the flood is happening.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, that's me. Like, my family went away, and I was like, well, they're going to close it out so we can't get back in. I'm just going to hang out here until I know that it's. And, you know, at a certain point, there was fire, like, cresting the ridge, and I'm kind of watching it. I ran down to the fire department to see, you know, like, hey, guys, it's coming. I can see it from my house. And they're all there, like, hanging out and eating sandwiches and, like, not even worried about it. They kind of looked over at it and said, man, it's okay. It'll be fine. It'll just burn a little.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, they get a little too blase. Blase about fire.

[Roger Avary]

Pretty blase. By the way, my spec ops friend, he's like, fuck those firemen, man. Fuck them. They get so much, like, credit for, like, nothing. They barely do anything. They're on these incredible pension plans. Like, he, like, hates firemen.

[Joe Rogan]

That's ridiculous. Well, that's a. It is a great job, but you can't get mad at someone for having.

[Roger Avary]

A great job, for having a great job.

[Joe Rogan]

There's a buddy of mine that I used to play pool with.

[Roger Avary]

Well, he has to actually hump it into another country and kill somebody. So that's.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, the thing's got a real tough job. He's not getting enough credit. That's what it is. That's really what it comes.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, that's better way to say it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's the. That's the reality of our world today. Those people don't get enough credit. But fireman, you know, it is a.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Great job, but I like the way he breaks it up.

[Roger Avary]

Those guys, it's like they have all this huge pensions, and everybody thinks they're heroes. They're not heroes.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it's funny because they're just doing their job. The firemen are very comfortable with fire. These people are very comfortable with people dying and dying because of them. Exactly. They just get real. They get blase. Blase about murder.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I had it.

[Roger Avary]

It's not murder if it's sanctioned by your own country.

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't that Wonderful. What a cool loophole.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, isn't it?

[Quentin Tarantino]

I had a. Interesting thing. You know, it's like, you know, when you live in the Hollywood Hills, you're paying actually, you know, you pretty decent property taxes. So you get, there's, you know, there's, you know, there's a little vig that comes with it. You know, you get a. There's a reason why, you know, you don't have to wait two hours during. When you're. During election. You just go to the, you go to the local elementary school, you're in and out in five minutes. All right. When it comes to election day. But also, it's one of those stupid things that you do that like. What was the fucking idiot. Where you turn on the burner and then you like, leave the room for a while and then you come back and all of a sudden your kitchen is flaming. And so has that happened to you? That happened to me once. And so the alarm goes off and I hit the button, let the fire department know. And then I put it out. I put it out, like pretty much immediately. And then maybe five minutes later, it could have been three. Five minutes later, the fire truck is at my door. So I didn't even have time to say, hey, it's okay now, it's okay. And so there's an entire fire truck at my door. And I, I left them in and go, guys, I'm really sorry. I was really stupid. You know, I left the room and with the pot on the stove and whatever, in any way. And so I'm really sorry I wasted your time. I'm really, really sorry I wasted your time. Having said that, it's nice to see that you guys are here this quick.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And I'm sure they were like, oh, we'll just get a selfie.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And they were like, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Your private taxes pay for something. Are you sure you don't us to come in and just make sure I go, yeah, go ahead if you want.

[Joe Rogan]

The problem is sometimes they have to chop through the walls to make sure that fire and embers inside. Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

Spray it all down, get it to hard fucking job.

[Joe Rogan]

When it's a hard job, though. The thing is, most of the time they're just chilling. You know, they get to cook, they eat, they work out.

[Roger Avary]

Oh, I take ice cream down to our guys at the, like, I'll go out and buy a bunch of ice cream or some pizzas and take it down just on random days just to.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, actually, that's cool.

[Roger Avary]

I'm okay with the fire, guys.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, it was actually funny because it was like one of the things that was a crack up. It was like the local fire department. When we worked at video archives at our video store, the local fire department was a customer. And so they'd rent different movies, but like it was almost out of out of five movies that they would rent, four. Porn, art.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. No, they lived up to their career.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you guys work together?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

No shit. That's how you guys met?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, that's how we met.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Roger Avary]

Video archives in Manhattan Beach.

[Joe Rogan]

How fucking cool is that story?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yes. From like 84.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, yeah, 84.

[Quentin Tarantino]

For about five years.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. Maybe even a little bit before 84.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, I started officially at 84 because I remember.

[Roger Avary]

But you were a customer before.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, I was a customer. Yeah, I was a customer before.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. I predated Quentin as one of the employees. So I was there.

[Joe Rogan]

Look at you guys.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, actually. Yeah, that's us.

[Joe Rogan]

That's crazy.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Very unfortunate shirt on my part.

[Joe Rogan]

There was a lot of unfortunate shirts in the 80s. Everybody was confused. They cut the drugs off in the seventies. No one knew what to do for ten years.

[Quentin Tarantino]

That's exactly.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's. It's crazy. Like, you would have never thought back then that that industry would completely vanish. You thought, Blockbuster Video is going to be around forever.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, you know, one of the things that. That what?

[Roger Avary]

I didn't think film was going to vanish either.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Roger Avary]

I didn't think the theater experience was going to go away either.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But one of the things, though, that was the death keel to video stores that no one ever liked. When they're talking mom and pop, when they're talking old people, to like, hey, you know, you've retired from your business. You've got a nice little nest egg. If you want to. If you want to invest in a nice little business where you get to work with your neighborhood and be in a nice little store with your family, you know, video stores, that's a. That's a good business. Well, I don't know anything about movies. Well, we have people help you, you know, help you choose the titles and everything. So there was a lot of people that, like, invested in this stuff, and it seemed like a good idea. The reason that it seemed like a profitable idea was the idea like, well, you know, I sell you this video cassette and you pay for the video cassette, but the minute you rent it past the point that where you paid for, you paid for the video cassette yourself, then everything else is you all that other money that you make from here on in is just all profit once you pay for the actual cassette. Now, of course, you'll have some cassettes that don't rent as well, but, you know. But that's the way it works out. But it should work out great. Well, again, that sounds like a pretty good business model. Well, if I spend this money and then, you know, five years from now, boom, Everything is profit. Where it all fell apart is the idea that you always have to get new shit. Because like life, it's not a bookstore. Well, bookstores need to get new stuff too, but it's not a library. Life doesn't stand still. Every month there's new titles coming out. And you have to be competitive and you have to get the new titles. And so even if that were the issue, that wouldn't be that big of a deal. But if you're a mom and pop star, you only have so much room. Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

So it's a space. It's literally a space, shelf space.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Within three to four years, you're bursting out of the seams of videos. You're just bursting out. You've got no more room. You've got no more room. And so now all of a sudden, rather than having your tapes facing out now everything is, you know, sideways, spine facing, spine facing. And you've got a really. And it just never stops. It never stops. Next month you got to get this. And next month you got to get that. And next month you got to get that.

[Joe Rogan]

You need a Costco size building.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, well. Yeah, well, again, if you have four different video stores or if you have a chain, you can move things around and it's easier. But when you're a mom and pop, that's just it, you know, mom and Pop store. And you have a bike store, you don't have to keep getting new bikes every month. If you have a pottery store, you don't have to keep getting new regard.

[Roger Avary]

Regardless of your inventory every single month.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

Constantly have to grow your inventory.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Every six months you get something cool. You don't need to get it every month. And you're defined by you having the new shit.

[Roger Avary]

And then there was another problem. When companies that were massively funded, like Blockbuster, came onto the scene, they would go in and they would kind of do this sort of gray market purchasing where they would buy 50 die hards. And a Mom and Pop store can't afford to buy more than one or two Die Hards or three maybe to satisfy your clients.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. The thing is, you spend the Money. Like, okay, you know, one of our big titles when we in the early days of video was Top Gun.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, Top Gun, perfect example.

[Quentin Tarantino]

So you get like, you know, you'll get. Even the mom and pop store, you'll get 12 or 15 because everyone wants to see it.

[Roger Avary]

And at some point it's going to be out and it's going to be checked out. And so you've got to satisfy your.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, you're going to. Yeah, you'll rent all 15 of those for the next two weeks. You know, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be good. But then now you, now you have to sell them off, you know, for $10 a piece. You know, once the, you know, once the desire has died.

[Roger Avary]

It largely fell on us because we were a smaller store and we had a Blockbuster just a block away, basically.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Not even a block. We're talking about in the same fucking.

[Roger Avary]

Basically.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's not a block away.

[Roger Avary]

It was in the, on the block.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. In the shopping center that we were in.

[Roger Avary]

And. Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, you're missing the best. The most interesting thing. It's not about the, the bulk buy. The bulk buy is. That's what it is. But that's. Every mom and pop store has to deal with that depending. Dealing with a franchise. Well, what.

[Roger Avary]

It changes your strategy though.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, but what Blockbuster would do, and they were famous for doing this. They were famous for doing this. And. But particularly they were strategic about it is like, okay, we're gonna go into this town. Okay, we're going into Manhattan Beach. What's the biggest video store? What's the most popular local video store in Manhattan Beach? Well, that would be video archives. They're right on sepulved. You know, they're right across the street from the warehouse. All right. Which is like. Was the big. Which was one of the big red.

[Roger Avary]

And before Blockbuster.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Before Blockbuster, it was rent was warehouse, warehouse records and tapes. And. And they still managed to survive across the street from Warehouse. And then what does Blockbuster do? They buy the Shaky pizza that is in our shopping center. Our shopping center. And they moved into the Shaky's pizza because it's like, well, okay, with a warehouse and with these video archives guys. Well, this is obviously the place to be. So they just bought out the Shaky's pizza and opened up and they still couldn't shut us down.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Roger Avary]

I'm sure they had the attitude of we'll just brush them aside.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, of course, of course. That's how they.

[Roger Avary]

And so consequently, because you don't. You can only get three or 12 top guns. Whatever it is, it's not as many as Blockbuster is getting. You end up having to focus on like, how am I going to convince my clientele to watch something other than Top Gun this weekend? And so it well landed on us to basically say, oh, you can't get Top Gun. Well, how about this movie that you haven't seen?

[Quentin Tarantino]

But, you know, it's, you know, it's the difference between being a cool coffee place and being Starbucks, you know, or, or, you know, a franchise bar and a cool Little Joe's bar.

[Joe Rogan]

All right?

[Quentin Tarantino]

And the bartender knows you, right? You know, so it's like, look, if you, Jo, just absolutely, positively need Top Gun that weekend, then go across the street to the warehouse and get it. We have what we have, but we had customers that came in every fucking day and part of their day or every other day when their tapes were due. And they were people of the neighborhood and they came in and not only did they rent stuff, they dropped stuff off and then they rented new stuff out, but they came in to talk to us for 20 minutes or 45 minutes, like every other day.

[Roger Avary]

And there's no algorithm to tell them what to do. We're the algorithm. You have to know, oh, this guy. Oh, they're on a date night. So they're going to want this kind of rom com type movie or this guy, he really likes, you know, Vietnamese hooker porn tapes. I got to make sure to find something like that for him. And those kids, they're going to want, you know, some skate stuff. So I've got to learn all about the Bones Brigade videos and stuff like that. And so, you know, you just kind of figured out, like, how can I upsell the stuff that they haven't heard of? Because invariably anybody who comes in but.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You'Re making it just sound a little bit more cynical than it was. You are making it sound more cynical.

[Roger Avary]

Than you more like the challenge.

[Joe Rogan]

Because like a married couple.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, but it's not totally. We're like a married couple.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It wasn't that simple without the benefits.

[Joe Rogan]

Tell them the whole story, honey. Tell them the whole story.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We were just hanging out and they're coming and hanging out too.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. And we would pop a movie on and like, you know, pop the movie on and be watching scenes from it and be talking about the scenes. Then a customer would come in or, or many customers would come in and they'd just become part of the conversation and we would have like, you know, like a chat room in the.

[Joe Rogan]

No, no, There was like.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, there was. There. There was about, like, 15 customers that, like, you know, I talked to five hours a week, every week for five years.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Because they come in and I'm like, what? Spend at least 40 minutes every other day, and I expected to see them. And, you know, the. I watched what I watched on tv, I saw what I saw at the movies, and then they saw what they saw in the movies. They watched what they watched on tv. We all talked about. And they talked about the videos, and then what else we're gonna get. And da, da, da, da, da.

[Roger Avary]

And if you like that, you're gonna.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Like this about our lives and everything. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So at what point in time, while this is all going on, do you guys decide we need to make our own fucking movies?

[Roger Avary]

Well, it was always the case.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, we were always thinking, well. Well, Roger. And Roger had another friend that he was a guy that connected me and Roger together was a guy named Scott who took his own life at a certain point of.

[Roger Avary]

His father owned another video store that I worked at as well and that Quentin used to come into.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But the thing is, though, that while I was just thinking about making movies, Roger and Scott were, like, making movies on Super 8.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And they were making little horror films and little zombie movies on Super 8. And then, like, supernatural thrillers. Worm Turns is a zombie movie.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, it's kind an. Yeah, it's kind of a zombie movie. More of an afterlife.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay, Maybe. Okay. And. But. But you're making, like, legit horror films. I'm just thinking about this stuff, and these guys are like, Sam Raimiing it. You know, like Sam Raimi. They're making their shit in their backyard. They're working on it for, like, three months and stuff.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. And, you know, like, I was friends with all the punk guys because it was like, LA punk, and so they were always in my movies. All the. All the punks were in my movies. And because they were media literate, they loved movies, and so they were easy to pull in and. And to be in the film. So they were always playing like, you know, the gang of punks who beat somebody up or something.

[Joe Rogan]

So it must have been cool working at a video store, though, because it's essentially like you have. It's like an education.

[Roger Avary]

Well, when the time came where we actually wanted to be making movies, where we were talking about making movies, because I can remember when. I think it was. It was around the time of Sex Lies in Video Tape or maybe She's Got to have It.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No no, definitely sexualize in video.

[Roger Avary]

But I remember you coming to me and saying, the moment is happening. Yeah, yeah, it's happening. Like small. A small movie is possible to get made. Like. Like, it's happening for us, for guys our age.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, I mean. I mean, the one, you know, it was like the. The sexizing videotape was sort of like the. Like the Seattle band that broke. All right. But I was already looking at Blood simple was my end.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's a great movie.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Was my in. All right. Where it was. That was okay. It's an artistic movie. It's our. It's arty, it's funny. It can play the art houses and play the art house circuit, but there's a genre base to it. Yeah, there's a genre base. It's like, you know, it's a thriller, it's a. It's a film noiri. Kind of thriller done in a certain kind of way, but it's a genre based. Yeah, I go, that's the way you do an art film. You do it. You make it a genre based art film.

[Roger Avary]

If you keep one foot in because it's entertaining. Yeah. If you keep one foot in exploitation in some way, in genre, if you keep your foundation in genre, then you can do whatever you want. Like, my favorite filmmaker is Stanley Kubrick. I love Kubrick movies. Okay. One can pretty much look at all of his films and say each and every one is a genre film. He's got his science fiction movie, he's got a horror movie. Even Barry Lyndon as a costume drama.

[Quentin Tarantino]

At the time is a costume genre.

[Roger Avary]

That was. That was a solid, bankable genre.

[Quentin Tarantino]

The book is definitely a pulpy genre.

[Roger Avary]

Well, yeah, the book was serialized, wasn't it? It was like Thackeray wrote them in like. Like an episode. It was like a soap opera.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But that was a very popular, popular book at that time.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. And so, yeah, it was all, if you can, if you can. And I knew this making my first film, and I know, Quentin, you were talking about it. This was a conversation we were actively having of. We have to make sure that we make a movie. People want to see, like, a genre film. Like, and I was calling them exploitation movies at the time. Like, I want to keep one foot in exploitation. And then. But at the same time, I'm like, well, I kind of also want to make, like, you know, I want to elevate it as much as possible. And so when the time came for me to make my first. First film, Killing Zoe, you know, it was like, I knew it was going to be a bank robbery because I wrote it around a location. You know, we. We found this while they were scouting for Reservoir Dogs. Lawrence Bender, or maybe you also had scouted that location, found this bank location. And Lawrence called me up, and he's like, hey, I'm calling all the writers I know. I found this bank location, and if you can. If you have a script that takes place in a bank, we can kick together a couple hundred thousand dollars and make a movie there. It's like this complete, solid, amazing location. And I said, oh, my God, Lawrence, this is your lucky day. I happen to have a script that takes place in a bank. And then I just quickly wrote one based on the location. And as I was writing it, I was thinking, okay, you know, I know that it's going to be a bank robbery. It's a bank. And so I know it's going to be a bank robbery. And that's my solid bankable genre that I'm going to stick with. But I knew I wanted to do something more with it. And I had just traveled through Europe, and I had been telling Quentin the stories of traveling through Europe. He's like, oh, you should do a movie called Roger Takes a Trip. And I still think it should have been called. I think it's a different movie. I think it's a different. I don't think it's a.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, you kind of made Roger Takes a Trip, just added bank robbers in it. I had Roger Takes a Trip.

[Roger Avary]

I had been in Paris. I had bumped into a guy that I knew from Los Angeles who was a French guy, and he was like, oh, I show you the real Paris. And I went out with he and his friends. Enrique, Jean Claude, all the characters from the movie. I went out with him and his friends, and we. You know, he drove me through Paris, and next thing I know, he's doing heroin. And I'm like. And it started with you. No, not with me.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And now we do heroin.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, it was like, now we do heroin. Hold my arm. I did hold his arm. And, like, I had never. Yeah, yeah. I had never seen anything like that.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, he tied his arm off. He's like, hold my arm.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, no, no. He was the tying off. Yeah, Roger was the tying off.

[Roger Avary]

Roger, hold my arm while I shoot up.

[Joe Rogan]

Geez.

[Quentin Tarantino]

So he doesn't quite know that this is all going to happen, that everything else has been a preamble to this. Yes.

[Roger Avary]

Suddenly that happens.

[Joe Rogan]

And then he just needed a heroin partner.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. And his friends were like, oh, doing it in the nose doesn't even affect me anymore. You know, things like that. And I'm, like, writing these lines down, like, this is great shit. And so I get back and I tell Quentin, like, about this whole story and about these guys and going, you know, driving around the Champs Elysees, and this is where the fags sell themselves. Now we go into the. Into the nightclub down below, and we do more heroin. And I'm like, what about the cops? Aren't the police gonna say anything? It's safer here than, you know, like, you can do heroin anywhere in Paris. And it was like, oh, I work at Le Monde. Like, all of it was like, basically everything in that movie I, you know, was stuff that I'd actually seen. And so when the time came to make it as a bank robbery film, I just, you know, I'm thinking about it. I'm like, well, it's a bank robbery movie, but it's going to be about these guys. And it just became a movie about a guy going someplace and everything that he thought he knew is wrong. You think you haven't seen your friend in a while, you go see him, okay? It's all about that kind of friendship and misconception. He's downstairs at the bank. Jean. Hugo, the bad guy, is upstairs. Chaos is going on upstairs. He has no idea what's going on upstairs. And so this kind of just became what the movie was about. And so I just quickly wrote the script, and then, you know, we ended up not even using that location to shoot the movie in. It came together later and ended up shooting in downtown LA instead. But. But it was.

[Joe Rogan]

The seed was planted.

[Roger Avary]

The seed was planted. So the idea was, okay, I'm gonna make a French film out of it. Because I'm like, in la. I'm making a film. What can I do that would be different? Like, that would make this more than just a bank robbery movie? And because of the experience I had just had, I was like, well, I'm gonna make a French film, okay? I had no business making a French movie. I didn't even really speak French. I just thought it would be kind of cool. I like, you know, a cool French girl and, like, greasy, dirty French guys. French criminals. And I always loved, you know, Alain Delon and Le Samurai. You know, the way he wears a suit and the way he carries a gun and the way he walks around. And I just, like. I just adored all of that. And so it was like, well, let's put all of that kind of space that's in my brain into the movie. And then the movies tend to take on a life of their own. They tend to be like children. It starts off as a concept, as a conception has a conception, and then it has an infancy. And then you're raising that child to become the movie. And along the way, you're really just kind of protecting it and trying to allow it to grow into what it's going to grow into with forcing it to become something that it's not. And it's a little bit of a balance. You have to be a good parent, which means you have to give it a little bit of freedom to grow into something that you don't know what it's going to be. But at the same time, you have to be willing to be strong with it as well.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a very underappreciated movie. It's a fucking great movie.

[Roger Avary]

I think I'm really good at making underappreciated movies. I think I've built a career on underappreciated movies.

[Joe Rogan]

Those are the classics that you would look for in a video store.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Absolutely.

[Joe Rogan]

You look for the movies that were really good that nobody knew about.

[Roger Avary]

Dog Day Afternoon's not in, but we could get you killing.

[Quentin Tarantino]

So my favorite moment in the movie. Well, I like it when the guy gets burned alive. All right. You know the. The hamburger scene that was. Yeah, yeah. But I remember they were trying to talk to you to cut out. And they go, no, no, you can't cut that out. I'm taking my name off.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Quentin did that. Actually, Quentin was a great gorilla to have on my side at that time.

[Joe Rogan]

But why would they tell you to cut that out?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, everyone is afraid.

[Roger Avary]

Everyone's afraid. Everyone operates out of fear.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Taking my name off.

[Roger Avary]

The only people that don't operate out of fear, I think is the director and the actors. Those are the ones who, if everything's working right, you're fearless.

[Joe Rogan]

It's always executives.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But it's the scene that My seat. My favorite scene is the scene with Hugh Anglan when he walks into the close up.

[Roger Avary]

Oh, yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And he's just like, wait a minute. He's like remembering what he heard. And he's rem.

[Roger Avary]

And he realizes, okay, so that's a good example of. Because the movie was shot.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Explain the scene better.

[Roger Avary]

The scene was shot.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Explain the scene better.

[Roger Avary]

I will. The movie was shot for very little money. We had no money to make it. So I had to shoot the entire upstairs first and then the downstairs because it's like doing a company move. But I had kept. I. I knew that when writing, and this was sort of a rule that we had was one, make a genre movie.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Two, explain the scene.

[Roger Avary]

I'm going to.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I said, explain the scene. Don't tell me what you felt about at that moment.

[Joe Rogan]

You missed the exit.

[Roger Avary]

The scene was a replacement for another scene that was in the movie that was too expensive to shoot. That's the shortest.

[Quentin Tarantino]

What does that have to do with what I like?

[Roger Avary]

What I replaced it with was. And I had to fight for it was a single shot. Because originally he goes downstairs and he sees a bunch of like guys coming in through the sewer. Sometimes he starts machine gunning people in the sewer because there was like a little sewer manhole in the bottom of the bank. I was like, well, let's use that. And so I had this whole thing and the Bond company showed up and you're like, you're behind schedule and you've got to like, you know, we're gonna, you gotta cut pages. And I couldn't cut anything. And I'm shooting upstairs downstairs stuff. And so it's like I had to have something because he leaves the scene and then comes back angry. And so I knew, I knew I needed to have something. And originally I had this whole scene where the cops are coming in and he reacts to that. And so I said, well, okay, I just need one shot. And because it's all I could had time to do because fucking Bond company. And so I set up which were actually really cool to me. They were actually film finances was great. I just set up a single camera. I asked for a kind of a Kubrickian lens, a nice wide, like maybe a 14 millimeter lens. And I just had John Hugh walk up into a close up and I just had him do. I said, just walk into a close up and start looking around and just start seeing things coming out of the walls. And is that the shot you're talking about? He does like a little magic trick beforehand, like. No, that's not the one you're talking about. No, that's the great shot. That's a great shot.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, the scene I'm talking about is. But that's why I wanted you to explain it because I hadn't seen it in a long time. But it was the shot.

[Roger Avary]

That's the shot I'm talking about. Look, he's looking into the walls, he's looking around.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But I thought the whole idea about it is the idea that I added.

[Roger Avary]

Those lines of dialogue in.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, but I did some adr. I thought the whole Idea. I thought the whole idea is, is he puts it all together. He realized that there's something going on, that the cops are doing this or Eric Stoltz is dirty with him. All that. And it all hits him. He's ready to do something else, and he walks into a close up and it all hits him. But now we, the audience, know what's going on.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And then he's just like, wait a minute.

[Roger Avary]

Well, it just shows that sometimes if you can't do what you want to do, what you come up with is better. And this was an example of it rained that day and I had to use the rain. That's sort of the example.

[Quentin Tarantino]

The frustrating part for me about what you're talking about is like, I don't care how the sausage was made. I like the sausage. I wanted you to talk about the sausage, not the factory.

[Roger Avary]

You don't want to know what's in that sausage.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You have no interest to hear about the Italian sweetness.

[Roger Avary]

Well, it was very sweet, but it started off sour. It started off sour because I couldn't do what I wanted to do. And so I just came up with something that was. Well, he puts it together in his head, but. And I.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, I mean, I still think that sequence is exhilarating because it's all. It all calls boils down to an actor's face.

[Roger Avary]

Well, I had Tom Savini on the set because. And I couldn't afford Tom Savini, but I. I found his number and before I shot and I called him up in Pittsburgh and I said, tom Savini is a makeup effects artist who did dawn of the Dead.

[Quentin Tarantino]

He did all the effects for dawn.

[Roger Avary]

Of the Dead, and not to mention all the Great Friday the 13th, all the slasher movies.

[Quentin Tarantino]

He's the superstar of practical makeup effects of horror films of that era.

[Roger Avary]

He was in Vietnam and saw some shit. And every time I'm talking to him about stuff like, he's like, oh, yeah, well, you know, no, if you're bleeding from back here, there's only two small veins and blah, blah. Because when your head gets knocked off, like, he's seen all this stuff, and so this is his way of processing it. But Tom came in and I couldn't afford him. I called him up on the phone, I was like, hey, can you think? I'm a young filmmaker. I'm, you know, I'm your biggest fan. Makeup effects, blah, blah, blah. Okay. He flew himself out. We had no money to pay him. I think we paid him, like, some tiny amount. He flew himself to la, put himself up, worked on the film. And he made that burn makeup on that burned guard in the vault out of Vaseline paint and tissue paper. And I watched him make. It was the most unbelievable thing how he made blisters and burn effects. And it was like watching one of the great artists work. Tom is incredible guy. He's an incredible, incredible guy.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Where you were asking earlier on about, whoa, you're working at a video store, did you ever think, you know, when did you start thinking about making your own stuff? Well, I was thinking about making my own stuff for like a long, long, long time. But these guys were actually doing it. But there is the truth. While I thought about it, like for a long, long time and always figured I would do that, eventually I did fall asleep for a few years. You know, it was because working at that store, I just got caught up in the little life there. And it was, you know, it's interesting because, you know, you spent your 20s going to comedy clubs and, you know, building. Building a career. So I'm spending my 20s there. And. Well, it's one of those things where it's like, well, this isn't my dream. This isn't what I wanted to do working at a video store for years. I wanted to actually make movies. It's not my dream what I'm doing, but it's dream adjacent. It's close to my dream. It's close to my dream. I get to watch movies all fucking day. I get to talk about movies all fucking day. I don't have to work at a pizza parlor. I don't have to. I'm not delivering pizzas. I'm not busting ass as a bartender. I'm not busting ass doing menial jobs. I mean, this is the kind of job that I do if I'd go to the store, if I wasn't paid to go to the store. But for a couple of years, it did put me to sleep. It did kind of put me to sleep. It put my ambitions to sleep for a little bit because I was happy enough. I was happy. And just one of these days I'll.

[Roger Avary]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

But you didn't have the fire.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I didn't have the fire. And when I got the fire, eventually got the fire back again. And it was a life changing thing. It was a life changing day. It was. We had a buddy of ours named Steve O. Yeah. And I. He was one. We had different living arrangements and at one point in time, me and Stevo were living in the same house together, renting in the Back of the. Towards the back of the store.

[Roger Avary]

The dude house.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, it was where everyone would hang out and. But now Steve was older than the rest of us, so if, like, he was about, like, almost five years older than us, but he didn't seem like it. He was a young guy.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, like five years younger. Mentally or emotionally?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. Yes. And. But so he hits 30 and he starts changing. He starts changing, like, drastically. I mean, he was, like, one of the funniest guys I ever knew. And he was this really, really funny stoner dude and really cool. And all of a sudden he's, like, angry about things, and now he's not quite as funny, and now he's got this issue, and so we're roommates, and there's this one night that he's kind of, like, all. He's kind of disgusted with his life, and he starts ranting, and he's describing a situation that was very common if you were a kid growing up without a. You know, without a degree or anything in the 80s, especially in California, where it's like you can't get any really good jobs, but, like, you can work at Licorice Pizza, and if you're an okay employee, you could, like, work at Licorice Pizza for a couple of years, and maybe you could even become assistant manager or a manager, and maybe they send you to another store and maybe you worked there for three years, and that's really great. But then, you know, all of a sudden, the district manager doesn't like you. You run a file of somebody higher up in corporate, and all of a sudden, next thing you know, you're fired and you're out in the street again.

[Roger Avary]

It's management.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. Okay. And so now you've just spent three years at Licorice Pizza. Now you could get a job at TRW or some place that's like a real job. Well, those are kind of hard to get. But you can work at Warehouse Records and Tapes tomorrow because you just had three years at Licorice Pizza. Same thing with Wild West Clothier. Same thing with Miller's Outpost. Same thing with any of these kind of stores. Next thing you know, you're 28 and the only jobs you've ever had are minimum wage jobs behind a counter that were designed for kids to pay for their gas.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And you've, like, spent your entire 20s doing that.

[Joe Rogan]

And then you start getting bitter, and.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You start getting bitter. But he was not just bitter about the job aspect of it, but I knew. Oh, my God, he's telling me the truth. I'm learning something here. Because he goes, quentin, you think that we're this really great team, we're this really great crew. Well, we are. I mean, this is that time of your 20s where your group of friends are your family, you know? And, like. Well, we are. Quentin. At 20, I worked at South Bay Cinemas and I hung out with a bunch of guys just like you. And some girls there, too. There was a bunch of guys just like you. And then I stopped working at South Bay Cinema. Then I worked at Miller's Outpost and hung out with a bunch of guys just like you. And we did everything just like we do. We went to movies together, we went out and we dated amongst the girls there. Everything. Then I worked at Laser Pizza for four years with a bunch of guys just like you. I've wasted my life hanging out with a bunch of guys just like you. And they all go away at a certain point. And I realized, this guy's kind of telling the truth. He's showing me a truth about him. This is coming from somewhere. And then all of a sudden, he still hung around us. He still liked us. But then he started making it a point to touch base with some of his high school friends that were still around. So he's not just hanging out with guys four years younger or five years younger than him. Anyway, I'm turning 25 around this time, so I'm having my own little. Okay, well, what have I done with my life so far? So far, fucking nothing. So. So I'm having my own little anxiety hitting 25, but I'm seeing what it's like five years from now when you turn 30.

[Roger Avary]

A window to the future.

[Quentin Tarantino]

When you turn 30 and you're in this situation and there was, like, one night that I had what I used to call. I would do it every once in a while. I haven't done it in a long time, thankfully. I would have a Quintin Detest festival where I'd stay up all night long and rather than give myself excuses, I would look at everything that I'm fucking up in my life or everything I'm not doing or whatever and just not give myself any fucking excuses out. Just, like, nail it. And I would spend, like, all night laying out everything I'm doing that's wrong. And then I would spend the last two hours figuring out how I can change it. And as opposed to just doing it and then going to get some sleep and then you forget about it and fall back into your, you know, your routine, I decided to change my life. I Was like, look, the problem is that I'm living in the South Bay, and even though I drive to Los Angeles, one, I got to not worry about this job anymore. I got to just move to Hollywood. I got to get involved there. I got to meet other people that are in the business. And if I have to work manpower jobs, you know, where you just work like four days at this place and four days at that place, well, then that's fine. And by the way, I shouldn't be making money until I'm making money doing what I want to do. And not that was ever a danger. All right. But then, you know, the next thing I knew, you know, I was. I moved out of the South Bay. And then I couldn't move into Hollywood. I couldn't afford Hollywood, but I could afford Koreatown. And I was close enough. And literally the minute I kind of moved out there, I met a guy who wrote low budget horror movies. And then through him, I met other guys that wrote low budget horror movies and this guy who directs a few low budget horror, and this guy who produces a couple. And well, but yeah, you meet one person and that introduces you to three other people. Now all of a sudden, I actually knew people who were actually making movies. And the thing about it was, it was like, also, well, if these guys can do what I can do, because they weren't too special, Right?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. You know, that's the weird realization that you end up having.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. And then literally it wasn't like everything changed, but like, within a year and a half from moving out of the South Bay and moving into the Hollywood area, within a year and a half, I was finally able to make a living as a writer, you know, getting like $7,000 for this rewrite on this script over here, $4,000 for this polish over here, another $10,000 for this rewrite over here. Well, shit. I mean, I made $10,000 a year through all my 20s before that point. So if I can make like, if I can make 15,000 from writing, oh my God, that was the greatest thing in the world.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow. But it just takes being around people that are actually doing it. So you realize it's possible.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, it's the realizing it's possible, but it. It's also a situation where it's like, as opposed to talking to your buddies about comedy in Minnesota, Your buddies who like comedy. No. You're at the Comedy Store and you're dealing with comedians every fucking night.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And you're in the place where the shit happens and you're hearing how the laughs work, but also, you know, what's going on. Oh, Caroline's Comedy Hour is doing tryouts for this and Chuckles is doing this thing or that thing. Oh, and there's this sitcom going on. There's the funny neighbor guy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

At any moment, you're plugged in.

[Roger Avary]

At any moment, there's a circle of people rising in any industry, and it's just a matter of finding those people. And those people will all gravitate towards the same things. Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And they have the thing where it's sort of like, you know, like, hey, Benny, we have a spot for you that could be really, you know, I can't do it, but my friend Joe could do it. Can you? How about giving Joe a chance?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay, well, you back Joe up. Yeah, I'll back Joe up. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's call your friend Joe. Can he be down here at 9? Yeah, he can be down here at 9. Well, that's how you get a fucking gig.

[Joe Rogan]

This is exactly what we tried to do when we built the mothership here.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What we've done.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

We decided when we left la, like, we need a place where comics have a hub. And when we were all in Austin, we all just moved to Austin because the pandemic.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And all of a sudden we were allowed to perform indoors. It was crazy. In November of 2020, we were doing shows indoors and, you know, you couldn't go on Twitter because they would call you a super spreader, a fucking monster. But everybody started moving here and by the, you know, by the time 2020 rolls around, there's like 15, 16 world class comedians that didn't used to live in Austin that are here now. And we were like, let's. Let's build a club. Yeah. So we bought the Ritz Theater where, you know, some of your movies are played.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Fucking crazy. And when we put it together, the whole idea was like, have a place where people can come. We have two nights of open mic nights, Monday and Sunday and Monday night. So there's always a chance to get on stage. There's always a guy, there's a real talent. Egate is a. Adam Egate is a real talent coordinator. He's really going to watch you. He's really going to give you advice, and you're around the best comics in the world all the time, and everybody knows it's possible. And everybody treats you the way you would want to be treated if you were starting. So you're just one of us. You just started, but you're not. We're not better than you. We're not. We're not. There's nothing special about us. We're just telling you. We. We started walking, and now we're 15 miles in. You're 15ft in. Just keep walking.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay, okay. But let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question, because it. You know, when I watch some of the things on the Comedy Store now, because, you know, I'm. I really love going to the Comedy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You know, and they treat me really great there. It's really cool. All right. But, you know, it. The mythology of the place is you go down there and open mic night if you have something to offer.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You know, then you. You know, you work your way up, and then you're the doorman. And then, you know, you work your way up. But it seems like that was then. That was a long time ago. Now it seems like people are almost paying 10 years. All right. Or eight years before they actually are getting up and getting paid.

[Joe Rogan]

Not necessarily like Tony Henchcliffe started at the Comedy Store. He started as a doorman, you know, and he worked his way up to selling out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row. I mean, it is pop. Possible to still be a dorm. And I met Tony when he was just starting out.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I'm figuring that that's a spot. But it seems like. But if you have to wait five.

[Joe Rogan]

Years, well, you don't get good for 10 years.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

It takes forever. Comedy is like making a mountain out of layers of paint.

[Roger Avary]

It takes forever. You have to fail.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

You have to have the opportunities to fail.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, there's also no one tell you how to do it.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like writing a film. Like you. You know, you have a protagonist, you have the antagonist, you have a plot, you have a. You have a bunch of stuff that you can kind of create and formula.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Would you really. But would you really say that it takes 10 years to be a solid comedian?

[Joe Rogan]

It takes 10 years to be a real headliner, like a guy that's a little different.

[Quentin Tarantino]

That's a little different.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's when you're a real comic. When you can do an hour. You can do an hour, and then you could write another hour. Like you kind of know who you are.

[Roger Avary]

Because it takes years to build that.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You have to be enough of a name of a draw to actually draw an audience.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes, yes. And you have to. Usually you go on the road with a headliner, and then the people get to see you. Oh, I remember he was here When Tom Segura was in town. That guy's really good. We saw him then, and he did 15 minutes. Now he's going to do an hour. This would be great. And it's sort of that kind of a deal. But it's the same sort of situation where most people don't. Like, if you're in Pittsburgh, you don't know what to do. You know, you go up, there's a couple open mic nights, everybody sucks, and there's no inspiration.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's not set up for comedy. And it's in a pizza parlor. And it's good on the weekends, and it doesn't work. And you go, well, I guess this is not for me.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. It's good on the weekends because they'll fly in, you know, Greg Fitzsimmons, some headliner, and you get to see a real comic for a weekend. So you get a little bit of an education from that. And maybe if you're lucky, the club owner will let you open for him or do 10 minutes on that show, and you kind of, like, get a feel what it's like to perform in front of a real audience that's there to see a real comic. But you got to be around, like, comedy doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's no great comedian that lives in some small town by himself. Like, you could find some great blues.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Artist or a great novelist.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes, novelist is probably the best one, because you kind of live in your own head. But you. You have to be around the other people that are doing it.

[Roger Avary]

Which is exactly why Quentin moved to Hollywood.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Got away from these losers.

[Joe Rogan]

You had to do it, but you really do have to do.

[Roger Avary]

I recall living in Hollywood as well. Freaking Franklin.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yes, you did.

[Roger Avary]

He's from Plumber Park.

[Joe Rogan]

Your bitter friend gave you a valuable little piece of information.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, he did. No, very much.

[Joe Rogan]

You need those. You need those moments.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, I knew I was hearing the truth. And I knew I was hearing a coming attraction.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Because I was already feeling it at 25.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Am I throwing my topsoil years away?

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right. The topsoil. Exactly. And when it doesn't come back, it doesn't come back. You never get to be 21 again. Let's hit reset.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. You get one weird march through this life, and if you don't, if you.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Have to throw it away till 23, but from 24 on, you need to be thinking about what you're doing for the rest of your life.

[Roger Avary]

Get it going.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Get it going.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That. What is I think these conversations are so important for young people to hear because there's a lot of people out there that do have ideas, and sometimes they have a little bit of a fire, and then maybe they have a job that's kind of cool like yours was, and they. They get sedated.

[Roger Avary]

Almost. The worst thing that can happen is getting comfortable, which I think is what you were talking about.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I mean, you know, it all worked out okay. It all worked out really, really good. And the thing about it was, you know, I did get comfortable, but I got comfortable in a cool place. And ultimately, I did have the energy and the wherewithal to ultimately get dissatisfied with it and want more. You know, the alternative would have been me working at a department store for those four years.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes. Right, right, right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And then I would have been, like, really been miserable.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Here I'm able to. I mean, you know, in this instance, I'm still involved with filming. The sedative part was the idea that it was close enough to what I wanted to do.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right, right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It was close enough I could get. I could get.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, there's guys like that at the Comedy Store. There's a friend of mine at the Comedy Store that was. He was a bartender in the Back Bar, and he wanted to be a comic, but he was there. It was like five years after I met him. I'm like, hey, man, you gotta quit this fucking job.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because you're here with all the greatest comics in the world, but you're not going on stage because you're making good money. And that's the velvet curtain that's pulled over your eyes.

[Roger Avary]

I worked on Lords of Dogtown, the movie about Zephyr surfboards and skateboarding and polyurethane wheels and surfing. And I'm not like a surfer or anything, but my entry point into that movie was Zephyr Surfboards was exactly like Video Archives. And I imagine that this is like this in a lot of places where, you know, you have a shop, they make skate. They do skateboards. And they've got a shaper guy there, you know, Skip Englam, who's a surfboard shaper. And he was sort of like Lance, the guy who owned Video Archives, and he started a shop, and he's selling to all the kids locally and all the kids who, like, love surfing, you know, like Stacy Peralta or Tony Alva or guys like that, they would just go hang out there. Just like we would go hang out at the video store. And so I looked at that. And I was like, okay, I don't really know anything about these guys other than growing up in the beach community. But my real entry point was, I understand, gravitating towards what you love and wanting to be close to it, and that if a video store is the closest thing to Hollywood in your town, that's where you go. Or if it's not a movie theater.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And so, well, you know, it was funny because when I first started, when I started at the Video Star, I'd, like. It was great because, like I said, I got to hang out in this place that I enjoyed, and I'm surrounded by movies and talking about movies, access.

[Roger Avary]

To all those titles.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But then also, there was also the situation of. I became a little film critic in that town. It was like, I was like. The story was my little Village Voice, and I was the Andrew Sarris there. I was the critic. And people would come and at a certain point, like, oh, Quentin, what should I get? You know? And the thing is. And I'm not just, like, holding court on my own personal taste, pretty soon, they got a really good idea about my taste. But the thing is, I'm usually gearing it towards the people. You know, I'm not gonna, you know, get some housewife to watch some gonzo movie that I. Yeah, gonzo, violent movie that I really like. I'm gaming. I get to know her.

[Roger Avary]

You have to tailor, tailor it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And so I'm, you know, I'm putting something in her hand that I think she's gonna. She's gonna appreciate. And I kind of know what kind of comedy she likes. I know who she likes, stuff like that. And so I'm like, you know, really kind of, you know, gearing it in a certain. In a certain way. And that felt. That felt really good. It felt like I said I felt like a film critic.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You know, but one of the things that I forgot I was gonna go somewhere with that, and I forgot I lost my train of thought. But one of the things that ended up happening. Happening, and I hope I didn't say it the last time I was here that ended up happening is we became really famous in the neighborhood. We were the video guys. And, you know, our store was a little different than most of the businesses that were in Manhattan Beach. And so everyone kind of knew us. We were the video guys. So in a strange way, it. It was a precursor to what it would be like to be famous with the whole world kind of knows about you like that in Manhattan Beach. I'm, like, walking down the street, and people are like, hey, Quentin. Hey, Quentin. Hey, how you doing? How you doing? You know, I'm like, I'm working at the store. I'm walking to the jack in the box to get a coke and come back. And then, you know. But we'd walk into the man's movie theater. All right, that was by the theater, you know, and me and two of the guys would walk in to go see a movie, and we walk down the aisle and we hear, hey, those are the video archives guys. Those are the video archives guys.

[Roger Avary]

Oh, yeah, I was in San Francisco once, and the guys from red cross, the punk band, they were customers of ours. I was like, oh, they're doing a signing at this local record shop. I'll just go show up. I'll just show up there on haight ashbury. And I walk in, and immediately the McDonald brother guys are like, hey, it's the video store guy. Hey, man, come back. Come back behind with us. I don't think they talk like that.

[Quentin Tarantino]

They kind of talk like that.

[Joe Rogan]

It's good to get that slow drip, Get a little bit of a taste of it before you actually get famous. Just to get a feel of what it's like.

[Roger Avary]

It still doesn't give you the full. It's like, you know, oh, I'm just gonna smoke a little weed. Compared to I'm gonna mainline, you know, heroin.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oddly enough, the thing that it did was it made me feel part of a community, which I had never felt with before. I actually felt part of the Manhattan beach. I felt part of the Manhattan beach community. I was part of the Manhattan beach community. You know, the people knew me there, and I was an upstanding member inside of that community.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, the fame thing is, no one can teach you how to do that. There's someone needs to be, like, a group of people to get together with people that are about to get famous and say, hey, listen, we're famous already. Let me tell you how fucking weird this is. I don't know know if you were prepared for this.

[Roger Avary]

When we were first trying to make true romance, you know, Quentin had this amazing screenplay, and it was like we were going to try to do it coen brothers style. We had just seen blood simple, and we were like, okay, I'm going to produce. Quentin's going to direct. We're going to go out and make this. Our first thought was, okay, we've got this database of doctors and lawyers and housewives in Manhattan beach. We're going to go to the video store, you know, we ended up not doing that.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We never had the balls to actually ask anybody for money.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

It was thinking about getting money and actually getting money are two different things.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We apologize about it a lot, but we never actually.

[Roger Avary]

I drew up full partnership papers before. Before that whole dream failed of doing it that way.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Nobody knows what it's like to actually be successful until you are. But in the beginning, did you guys feel like pretenders? Did you feel fake? Did you have imposter syndrome?

[Quentin Tarantino]

I didn't have imposter syndrome because I did a movie and I was really happy with the film. But the thing is what I felt like. I'll tell you exactly how I felt. I didn't feel the imposter syndrome. Well, I guess a little bit there is all that, like, waiting for somebody to tap you on the shoulder. What the fuck you doing? Again, get out of here.

[Roger Avary]

Who would let that guy in? Right the fuck out.

[Quentin Tarantino]

What I had was. I felt like I was a reporter, deep undercover, all right. On the opposite side of the line. This isn't really me. I'm like those people over there.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But I'm deep undercover. I can give you reports from the. From the. From the front of what it's like here on the. On the. On the battle line.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Well, maybe that was a good thing, though.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It was a really cool thing, because.

[Joe Rogan]

I think that's one of the things you did with your films, is you did shit that was very risky. Like, we're talking about executives and all these different management people that are going to come in and fuck with your thing and don't do that and cut that out. But you. You had a sensibility, not of a person in management, but of a person that. I know what I'd like. I know what I like. And I. And I think I can think differently than these people do.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, no, no, I would. No, I. One of the things we talked about, we had a little theory about it, was that gave us a bit of a superpower when we were first brought into. Once we established ourselves that people knew, whether you read our scripts or you knew we were. We had something to offer. We would walk into rooms, and we really realized that. And look, I'm not here to make fun of Hollywood executives. Some of those guys. Look, you don't know how bad some of these movies, these scripts are. They actually. Oftentimes, they actually make them better. They're really, really terrible. All right. When they go through the sausage factory, oftentimes they get better, believe it or not. But the thing Is, though, you'd walk in there and. And you don't become this super successful executive by being. Doubling down on your own opinions. You kind of want to get the temperature and get a consensus going on. You're not the maverick. That's not how people establish themselves as executives. The D girl doesn't become the head of the development process by, you know, being the punk rock person who's the, you know, shooting for the Plimsolls. They're looking for the Rolling Stone. But film people, film geeks and film, you know, film buffs, the one thing they have is their opinion. And they have spent years defining their opinion. And they almost have nothing to show for their dedication to cinema other than their highly evolved opinion. So you put them in a room and say, well, what would you do? Well, it's about time you asked me. And then you. And then all of a sudden you take the strong point of view and the room. The term in Hollywood is he who has the strongest point of view in the view. He who has the strongest point of view in the room wins.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And executives don't have the strongest point of view, you know, but the maverick artist who only can hear the sound of his own voice, he definitely has the strongest point of view. But it's refreshing to them.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Roger Avary]

You know, invariably they hire you because you scare them a little. You're a little scary. And they like, they want to. They want to be like a little thrilled by that.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Roger Avary]

But then, you know, like a girlfriend or something, they want to change you. They think they're going to make you normal.

[Joe Rogan]

Exactly. Right.

[Roger Avary]

And then, and then, then it falls on you to just stay true to that initial guy who was in the room.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I had a. I had a really interesting situation where I had a guy who was an executive who actually directed a movie. And he was talking about, like, oh, I've seen these jokers out there and, you know, what they do isn't so special. I think I could do it. And so he, you know, so he finds a book and then they adapt it. And now he's doing the movie and, you know, he's getting through it. Everything's working fine. He's getting through it. And then he realizes the difference between himself and a director because there's a. He's dealing with another director about something because he's an executive. So he's dealing with another director about another movie. And he asks him a very important question about his movie. And the way he answers it, he realized the difference between him and that director. And I realized, oh, see, he's a real director because he sees the movie. He sees the movie in his head. The question I asked, he went into his head and he saw it. He saw it, and he could actually answer it. Oh, the flower pot is green. Because he sees the entire picture. Yeah, I don't see it. I'm just doing my best. I see it written, but I don't see the movie in my head. I'm just doing my best with the written material.

[Joe Rogan]

He's the Comedy Central executive that thinks they could be a comedian.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on.

[Joe Rogan]

And get on stage and they eat shit. What you were saying is exactly what happened to Chappelle. Oh, the Chappelle ship.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, they loved him. He's this wild dude. And then all of a sudden, this is too wild. This is becoming real. We can change him. We can change you. They want to stop saying the N word. They want to stop a bunch of different things on the show.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And we'll give you all this money if you roll over.

[Joe Rogan]

They gave him, literally, the devil's deal. We're going to give you $50 million, and this is what you're going to get. And he's like, no, I quit. I quit everything. And I'm going to go to Africa. I'm going to hang out in Africa for a while, and I'm going to quit, stand up for 10 years, and come back and still be the best.

[Roger Avary]

That is so the right move.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, my God. Well, look, he's a legend now, but that's really him. If you're around him, he's a. He's an artist in, like, the truest.

[Roger Avary]

Sense of the word. You know, when I was young, one of my first jobs was actually given to me by one of our customers, this guy John Langley, who did that show Cops. And so, like, he was, you know, getting his power turned off and stuff, like, you know, constantly, and he was struggling to get by. And he would do these little things with Geraldo Rivera that Quentin and I would work on as PAs every now and then.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And Dolph Lundgren exercise video.

[Roger Avary]

We worked on the Dolph Lundgren exercise video together. We were picking up dog shit in Venice beach with our hands so that Dolph could do aerobics on that little grassy knoll.

[Joe Rogan]

Hilarious.

[Roger Avary]

And so, you know, I'm like, the first. I'm a PA working for him, a driver. I'm running around town. My car is like. The transmission is going out. I'm trying to figure out, what am I Going to do this is not what I want to do. I don't want to work on Cops, but, like, I need the job. And so I'm. I go in and I meet with John, and he's been a customer of ours and fatherly like, to me. And I go into his office and I sit down, and Cops has just started. And it started because of a Writers Guild strike. And, you know, there was a Writers Guild strike, and so Fox was like, well, that show has no writers. And so they ordered his thing, and he went from nothing to like, I'm buying yachts.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Roger Avary]

I'm collecting vineyards.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Not only that, though, I remember when he first came up with the idea with his partner, Malcolm Barber.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

All right. So he comes in and he's like, hey, we've got a really good idea for a show. So he's. He's. He's. He's describing Cops before Cops has ever been made.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And. And his first idea was, it wasn't called Cops. It was called the Real Miami Vice.

[Joe Rogan]

The problem was it doesn't scale out to the whole country.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah.

[Roger Avary]

He.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, they defined it. They refined it.

[Roger Avary]

I asked him, I said, john, like, you've worked in this business a long time. He was an AD for a long time. What kind of advice can you give to a guy like me who's trying to work my way up? He's like, well, what do you want to do ultimately? I said, well, I want to direct films. Well, then be a director. Don't work your way up the ladder. Don't try to be a grip and work your way in. Just be a director. And I heard that. And he's like, start at the top. It's the best way to go. Just start at the top. And, you know, just tell people you're a director. Put yourself in that. Otherwise, people will just pigeonhole you. They'll just say, that's who he is. He's a grip. Or he's a PA or he's, you know, you'll have to work your way up. Just tell people who you are. So I thought about it, and I was like, okay, I quit. He's like, what? I said, I quit. I'm a director. And I left. I walked out. I mean, I gave him no. And I walked out. And he sat there and he later, told me, years later, told me, man, I thought that was the most audacious, ballsy thing that I gave you advice, and you took it right away. And, okay, never mind the fact that it took me years of just telling people, I'm a director. I directed Super 8 movies. I was not a director. I was a poser. I was faking it until I made it. But I told people what I was and what I was doing. An event. Eventually it stuck. Eventually enough people hear it. And all those people who you end up going into a room and pitching your idea and they say, no, eventually they see you at Cannes running around, you know, trying to do foreign sales. They're like, hey, maybe that kid is a director. That was all it, you know, it was just believing in yourself.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's funny, that guy.

[Roger Avary]

When no one else believes what you.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Believe, the guy he's talking about, John Langley, created cops. It was. He was a really good customer. And his wife Maggie was really lovely.

[Roger Avary]

She came, Morgan, all of his kids.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And I heard the story came back to me later that, you know, when I got the deal to make Reservoir Dogs, you know, just little by little through the Manhattan beach community, they started, you know, hearing, oh, hey, Quentin's making his movie. Yeah, Quentin got his movie off the ground. He's actually making his movie. He's not at the video store anymore. He's actually making a movie. Good for him. And who knows what's going to happen to it, but it's happening. And I think they were having a little dinner party at their house. And then Maggie mentions to John about what happened. Really? That's actually happening? It's actually happening. Yeah. No, they've got production offices and everything. They're making the movie and goes, everybody raise your glass. Yeah, to Quentin. He did it. Good for Quentin. Raise your glass. I'm getting teary eyed just even thinking about it.

[Roger Avary]

You know, I just have to say, John Langley, you know, because I had some shit happen to me in my life. I spent some time in jail. I kind of screwed up my life. But when everything went down, when everyone in Hollywood dropped me like a hot rock, John Langley was there. Our customer, John Langley. Because I lost. We lost everything. He loaned me some money. He gave me my first job when I got out of jail writing something for very little money. But he wanted me back in the saddle.

[Joe Rogan]

I love the things you wrote from jail.

[Roger Avary]

Oh, thanks. Yeah, thank you.

[Joe Rogan]

They were really good. It was really interesting. It was like this, like, super intelligent writer who's in jail. You know, it's a different, different sort of perspective.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Roger's working on a book about his jail experiences that is fantastic so far.

[Roger Avary]

I kept a really detailed, super detailed journal about, like, everything that's going on around me and Know, it became a really. I mean, that was an. It was a very intense experience, being placed into a room, having the doors closed, and you're just left with yourself and everything. All your things, which define you get stripped away. Everything gets kind of dropped, and you lose who you are, and you're just left with your remorse and regret for why you're there, and you have a lot of time to think about things and. But having said that, as a writer, there was a concrete bench that I could sit on. I had golf pencils. I could buy sheets of paper, and I've never in my life been more productive. I've never wanted to write more than when everything was taken away. And I've never felt more about the world, and I've never. Yeah, I've. I've. It was a very monastic. I was telling Quentin at one point, it was kind of monastic. Like, you know, you're. You're in a. You're in a secular kind of. You're in a cell. You're in a cell, and you're with a bunch of dudes and you're writing. You know, it's like you're. I became a scribe. I started. I mean, I was a scribe beforehand, but I really, really. It became my escape being able to write, being able to fall into things and to be able to travel into another world. And then also, people find out you're a writer, and they're like, hey, man, would you write my yo. Essay? Would you write my girlfriend? You know, I want to write her a love letter. I need your help. So I wrote, like, a ton of love letters.

[Joe Rogan]

That's actually good practice for dialogue.

[Roger Avary]

Oh, yeah, no, totally, totally. No, actually, I heard some amazing dialogue.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And you're writing your Robin Hood script. All right, so that's your way to get out of the cell to write his Robin Hood scripts.

[Roger Avary]

I. You know, I. Well, there's a book cart, and so I'm. You know, every now and then you go through the book cart, and mostly it's like Tom Clancy novels. They love Tom Clancy and stuff like that, and Clive Barker novels and things like that. But lo and behold, I found this old Penguin paperback of, you know, an old, old version of Robin Hood written by E. Charles Vivian, and like, oh, man, this is going to be great. And I start reading it, and it's like they get into evil hold, which is like this castle where, you know, Marion's father is being kept, and nobody knows it, and he's there, and he's not away at crusades. He's in this prison. And Robin Hood goes into the prison, and in the moment when he's in the prison, how he sees the other prison, the wretches that he has to leave behind because they're too wretched to even come out. Like, how bad the prison is and what he's seeing inside and his observations. I was shaking after reading it. I'm shaking thinking about. I mean, the entire experience now. But, you know, it was such a vivid depiction. I'm like, well, I'm adapting this because I'm feeling it right now. I'm feeling like what it's like. I'm feeling what it's like to have authority, to have the boot on your neck. I mean, rightfully so, but nevertheless. And so I started writing my version of Robin Hood and on pencil and paper. And as I'm writing it, I was crying as I wrote it. I was looking at the pages the other day, and there's teardrops all over it on every page. It's like, holy crap. When you're writing like that and you're feeling that much, it's not a bad thing to cry when you're writing. It's like, thank God, I'm feeling like. I'm feeling something and it's traveling into the page. And also, because I had been a working writer in Hollywood for a long time, just by speed, I had fallen into the very bad habit of composing at my computer, at my laptop, like one of those assholes who goes to Starbucks. And I was that guy. And so I'm sitting, and I had kind of become used to that. Well, writing by hand in. Well, incarcerated. It reconnected me with, like, pen to paper or pencil to paper. And it reminded me that not only, like, when you write something down, you have a different relationship with the word.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No. I consider the pen is the antenna to God.

[Roger Avary]

It is the antenna to God. And also when you type it into the computer, that's a process of rewriting. And so you're losing an entire section. And so it reconnected.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Couldn't agree with you more.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, tell me. Explain this more to me. This is fascinating to me because I've heard many people say this about comedy, that they have to write on paper. I don't. I write on a laptop. I've always written on a laptop. For me, it's what I like about writing, even writing on paper, is that it takes more time to write the word appreciate than it does to think about what it means to appreciate something like the word appreciate. You know what it is Instantly. Oh, he appreciates this. But to write, appreciate it takes longer. So there's more thinking and more thinking. I feel like when you have more thinking, there's more little different ways you might alternately branch off with your ideas.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I don't think I.

[Roger Avary]

That is not false.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Not that I've ever written an hour long stand up comedy show. All right. But I would think that your writing is different than my kind of writing.

[Joe Rogan]

Sure.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You know, it would like. I would think as far as writing stuff down, it's like notes and ideas and funny word phrases or this and, and the other. But then you're working it out, you're saying it, you're saying it, you're saying it, you're saying it and then you get your story right. And maybe you say it into a recorder, maybe you do this or you do that. But you know, it probably doesn't even look right when you, when you, when you type it up on a, on a thing. It doesn't look right. No, it's the way you tell the story.

[Joe Rogan]

What I was going to get to is that when you, when I type, I can type quicker than I can write by hand. And the problem with comedy is it comes quick and slippery.

[Roger Avary]

And also you can, you can edit.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, that makes a tremendous amount of sense. I mean, we're writing stuff that has to hold up on the page, right? That has to hold up as writing.

[Joe Rogan]

I'll write a 1500 word essay and I'll use one line like there's one thing in there that might be a bit. But I'll write all this other shit on transportation, like strip mining, you just.

[Roger Avary]

Pull all that dirt out and just process it. Get a little Oregon.

[Joe Rogan]

Exactly what it's like. I've tried to write.

[Quentin Tarantino]

So you open up your mind about 100%. Just let loose on public transportation?

[Joe Rogan]

Yes, yes. And I'm not even trying to be funny. I'm just trying to write and then I'll find something funny in it. And then that's the starting point. Now I take that, cut it, copy it into a completely fresh document. Now what is this? Okay, but how do I get to.

[Roger Avary]

Ultimately, it's whatever works is what is the best.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Is it you on either typing or whatever? Is it you doing that eight page thing on. On transportation? Or is it more likely that you're just pacing around doing a running monologue on public transportation?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I'm sitting still, right? That's what you mean. The thing about typing is I type good. So not great. But I don't have to look at the keys. And I can type pretty quickly. And if I have a good laptop, like a ThinkPad that has a lot of finger travel, then you really feel it, and I get into a zone, and then it's just about. Yes, I know.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You actually do write your notes.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And then it's just about Trump. But they don't always come out the same way, because sometimes when you bring them out on stage, the moment lets you know this is not the way to go. It's this way. And then all of a sudden you're like, God, how did I not see that in front of the computer? Because you weren't in that vibe of the crowd. Like, it said, you don't do it on your own. You have to do it with them. It's like the one art form that literally cannot be practiced in solitary. You have to do it. So when I write, I write like that, but I also write things down on pieces of paper, or I also write, like, whenever I. If I have an idea, I gotta catch it.

[Roger Avary]

Well, they're not gonna give you that computer in jail.

[Joe Rogan]

That's true.

[Roger Avary]

You're gonna be forced to write it on pencil, and that's gonna be an okay experience.

[Joe Rogan]

But what is it that makes it to you, like the hand to God? Like, what is it about writing on paper?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, my little analogy of is you can't write poetry on a computer.

[Joe Rogan]

Why not?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, because we're. It's. We're. I'm. I'm going for a rhythm, right? I'm going for. I'm. I'm going for. I'm going for a rhythm. And then. And. And there's a. There's a connection between my chicken scratch and this paper and this pen, as opposed to this other thing. And. And the more unintelligible and only I can read it, the more. More legit it kind of is. And the thing is. And. And it's. It's vomit. It's absolutely vomit. Okay. Yeah. You. When you write by hand, you overwrite. You way, way over, right? Because you just blah. You're just getting it out. You're getting it out there. Then after all the vomit happens, then you sit down with a typewriter or then you sit down with a thing. And now you take the vomit and you. And you tame it, massage it. And now you make it. Now you make the sentences work. And now you. There's more crazy. Yeah, this is all bleh. Okay, now you make. And now you come up. And now you. Now you make it work like a writer. Now you make the page work. Now you make the sentences work. Can we stop for a second while we're in the restroom?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Hey, you have cigars, don't you? Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You want a cigar? Yeah, let's have some cigars.

[Quentin Tarantino]

He doesn't do anything fun.

[Roger Avary]

On Joe Rogan's show. I will have a cigar. He doesn't do anything fun.

[Quentin Tarantino]

That is the truth.

[Joe Rogan]

You don't do anything fun.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Really?

[Roger Avary]

Nothing? Well, then maybe I should talk about this.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, should talk about it.

[Roger Avary]

Maybe I should talk about. Are we on? Should I.

[Joe Rogan]

Can I go?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't do anything fun. Don't do anything fun. No.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, making movies is fun.

[Roger Avary]

Well, that's the, where's the cutter?

[Quentin Tarantino]

I thought that was a cutter. That looked cool. I was like, is that a cutter or is that bread? Brass knuckles. Cool.

[Joe Rogan]

What are you saying about fun?

[Roger Avary]

I don't do anything fun. Well, you know, after, after what happened to me, I, I mean, I should probably tell the whole story and maybe I eventually will here, but, you know, I, I went to jail for a DUI related incident that caused manslaughter and one of my passengers died. And you know, after that and going to jail and whatnot, he's not the.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Funnest guy to get drunk with.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, I don't, I, I, it's kind of what it is. I, you know, if I go to a party or something like that, I, I don't want to be seen holding a drink with, you know, even with water in it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I'm teasing him. But I, you know, I get it.

[Joe Rogan]

Of course, who wouldn't get it?

[Quentin Tarantino]

But then you add the fact that he's a vegetarian. All the, all the fun.

[Joe Rogan]

You're a vegetarian? Yeah. Why do you do that?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Cuz. His wife made him.

[Joe Rogan]

That happens.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That happened to a friend of mine that's. He sneaks out burgers every now and then.

[Roger Avary]

I, I also have a kind of, it's kind of like a, an animal thing. I had a pig as a, as a pet. And man, when you look at those eyes, those are human eyes.

[Joe Rogan]

They're.

[Roger Avary]

And you. I looked into it and it looked into my. I just, I had chickens before that.

[Joe Rogan]

And you know what it's like.

[Roger Avary]

Chickens are like cats. You know, they want back scratches and stuff and I just couldn't, like after a while, I just couldn't do it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, there's people that are feral. You ever met a feral person? You don't want to let them sleep in your house.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You met a Wild, crazy person. You're in jail, so push that thing up. You had it, right? You had it, right.

[Roger Avary]

Did I? Yeah. This thing right here.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Push that up.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's an intelligence tag.

[Joe Rogan]

I'm sorry. Push it down.

[Roger Avary]

Pull it down.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, sorry.

[Roger Avary]

Pull it down.

[Joe Rogan]

Sorry.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Hey, you've.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, they're great foundation cigars. Shout out. You've. You've been around feral people, right? You don't want feral people living in your house. House. You don't. You don't want to take some murderer and, you know, give him your car and let them, you know, come and sleep in your room, you know? Yeah, it's different.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I should take you around some wild pigs.

[Roger Avary]

No, I've.

[Joe Rogan]

Wild. Wild pigs are like little demons. They make, like, orc sounds.

[Roger Avary]

Wild pigs are wild pigs. You know, I get it.

[Joe Rogan]

You hear them fight with each other.

[Roger Avary]

There are people who are like that also.

[Joe Rogan]

Exactly. That's my point. My point is domesticated people are awesome.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Domesticated people like yourself and myself, we're fun to be around. We're nice people. We know, you know, we're not gonna rob you. No one's gonna kill you. It's. There's a difference. What the wild. The wild is. It's different. So I understand that you wouldn't want to eat animals, but they eat each other. And it's just this bizarre cycle of life. I think it's. It's where you're getting your animals from. Are you getting your animals from, of, like, these. Mass. Factory.

[Roger Avary]

That's the other part of it. That's the other part of it is. I think there's a line in Highlander too, where Sean Connery says, I don't eat anything that I cannot identify. And I kind of feel like that as well. Like, I don't have a lot of trust for large industrial.

[Joe Rogan]

You shouldn't. You can get meat from, like a farm, you know, like, you can get it from a ranch. You could go to one of those. You know, they have those. What are those farmers market type deals. Meet a rancher and you can buy beef right from them.

[Roger Avary]

I am not like one of these people who are like, oh, never, never. Like, you know, if I am in the right place, in the right environment and the right food is there. Like, if there's a. Like, if I'm in. On an island in Greece and the guy comes up from the boat with a basket. Basket of fish. And which one would you like? I'll take that one, you know? Sure.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, do you least eat eggs?

[Roger Avary]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Roger Avary]

So you dags like they're going out of style.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. That's good. So you're probably getting what you need.

[Roger Avary]

Cool.

[Joe Rogan]

As long as you eat eggs. I tell people, like, eggs are free. No one's getting hurt. Especially if you have your own chickens. That's the greatest thing in the world. We have 15 chickens.

[Roger Avary]

There's nothing like eggs straight from a chicken.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's great.

[Roger Avary]

Nothing.

[Joe Rogan]

It's karma free. Like, the chickens are having a good time. No one's getting hurt. Like, they're all. They're all, like, treated like pets. Like, hey, girls, I love chickens.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I actually, really have. I've always actually thought that an exotic pet would be to have, like, a chicken. You know, it's like, one chicken. Yeah. And just like, treat her like a dog and treat him. Hey, that's my chicken. He hangs around.

[Roger Avary]

You got to get a couple of them. They need to have a pecking order.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes. They like to hang out with each other.

[Roger Avary]

I think Goebbels figured that one out.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

He was a chicken farmer.

[Joe Rogan]

Was he really?

[Roger Avary]

Oh, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, no.

[Roger Avary]

Chicken farmer. That's how he worked out all of his policies in the camps is we.

[Joe Rogan]

Shouldn'T talk about that. Don't want to connect that to chicken farming. It's just, you know, it's like this. The name Adolf, right? You can't use it anymore.

[Roger Avary]

You can't have that little mustache anymore.

[Joe Rogan]

You can't have a chaplain.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Cool mustache.

[Joe Rogan]

Michael Jordan tried for a little while. Yeah. That's how competitive that guy is. Like that. I can. I can wear that mustache. He had a Hitler for a while, I think.

[Roger Avary]

I can't make it happen. I'll make it happen.

[Joe Rogan]

He just decided he was going to force it through.

[Roger Avary]

You know, as far as writing in jail, I'm just thinking about it right now. One of the other things I had to contend with was they would confiscate anything that I wrote. Oh, so, you know, like once a week or once every two weeks or so.

[Joe Rogan]

Why would they do that? Was it illegal to write?

[Roger Avary]

I was considered a security threat by what I was writing and.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, because you were telling the truth about what was going on.

[Roger Avary]

That. And then when they sent me in, like, I was placed in this, like, solitary confinement thing, like, in the hole. And, you know, you're in there. And like, I'd never been anything like that before in my life. I was thinking, this is like fucking Guantanamo. Except it made me think about it. I've got due process it least. And so I'm in this, like, crazy, Kafkaesque, mechanized, totalitarian environment, you're in a room where you have no window and the lights are on 24 7. And, you know, I don't care what anybody says. You go into a room three days deprived of sound and. And. And the understanding of time, you go cr. Crazy. After a. You know, after two days, you're insane. They broke me. After two days, I was like, oh, I'll do some yoga. I'll meditate. No problem. No, after a while, if the lights are on 247 and you can't hear, and it's like being inside of a seashell, you go slowly nuts.

[Joe Rogan]

Is that by design?

[Roger Avary]

Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure it's by design. It's like you're placed into a. And so about once a week, like in. When I was in population, about once a week, the middle of the night or, you know, the lights are down, and suddenly the lights come on bright. Lights are always on, but lights come on bright. And suddenly a bunch of guards come rushing in through the doors. You know, they just storm into the tank, into the section, and they pull everybody out of their cells and they strip everybody naked. And they put you up against the wall. Wall. So you're up there with, like, you know, Sancho and, you know, Leroy. And like, everybody's Suddenly you're all. You know, one moment you're being kept separate, and next thing you know, you're all naked together, standing up against the wall, and they're going through everybody's cell, and they're just ripping your cell apart looking for anything. And usually they're looking for tar heroin or a shank or a weapon of some kind or works or some kind. Cell phones, anything. Like, they're looking for anything that's considered contraband. Okay, for me, they were looking at my writing because when I was in solitary that time, like, literally on kites. A kite is a. Like a requisition form that you send out to the guards. You're not allowed to talk to the guards. They don't want you to. They don't want to talk to you. You tell them what you want on a kite, and then you give them the kite, and then they take it off, and maybe it gets answered. I never had one answered in my life. And so they. They in. They strip everybody naked, they take all your clothes, and they're under the guise of where, you know, we're doing a laundry exchange. And so everybody gets new clothes, and you end up with, like, these big baggy pants and. Or Something too small for you. And they would look for contraband for everybody. Well, with me, they would look for whatever I was writing, because when I was in solitary, I was writing, you know, like, maps. I would map the place like a fucking idiot. Like, I still was, you know, I'm writing about, oh, Eisenhard the guard. I saw him watching, you know, like, literally saw him watching on a little tv, Nazi propaganda, like Triumph of the Will is playing on his tv and he's watching it. Oh, I'm going to write that down. So they didn't want me writing all my stuff. They were like, that guy is a fucking threat. You get whatever he's written. And so I noticed that whenever I was taken out of my cell to shower, to go to yard, to do whatever, that they would come in, just take whatever I had written. So I learned that they couldn't take or open letters to my attorney, so. Because it's privileged. And so what I would do is I would just write. And then whenever I had to leave my cell, like to go to yard, or if they were raiding the cells and taking everybody out and looking for contraband, I would just quickly seal the envelope. My writing would go in. You know, I always left it when I was working in the letter to my attorney. And then as soon as they would rate it, I would just seal the envelope and then that would go out. And then he would send that letter to my daughter, who would then type up the pages that I was writing. And so that's how I wrote several scripts, was like that.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Roger Avary]

And, yeah, because little.

[Quentin Tarantino]

What did you. What did you. You said you read some of Roger's writing when he was in prison. What did you read?

[Joe Rogan]

You. Where did you publish it? I don't remember where I was reading it.

[Roger Avary]

Well, was it on Twitter? I had several things. Okay. So first of all, I was placed. I was sentenced to go to a low security, Like a country club facility. I went. I went to a low security facility and I went in there and, you know, you have access to stuff. It's, you know, it's more like a. Like a camp almost. And you're there and you're incarcerated, but it's a light incarceration almost. And I had access to a cell phone. And so I started tweeting. And these were the early days of Twitter. And so I started tweeting. Oh, they found tar heroin in Pudgy's cell and they dragged him off. And, oh, they. This happened over here. Oh, so and so shanked so and so. Oh, they've rolled up so and so and taken them away. I was like, tweeting this stuff and this is the early days of Twitter. And Roger Ebert, who was like, at that time the biggest on Twitter, was following me and he put me on blast. Like, he. He suddenly decided that he would tell every. And like all of a sudden, one day, overnight, like, the story kind of went everywhere in the world.

[Joe Rogan]

He put you on blast in a positive way?

[Roger Avary]

Well, he just told everybody that, oh, this is happening. Somebody is. Roger Avery, Academy Award winning writer, is tweeting from jail and tweeting from behind bars.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Did he.

[Roger Avary]

But did he have at the time now it's like nothing. People do it all the time. People like, I've got knights doing podcast. I've got a friend who's one of those January 6th guys, and he's. He's sends me, like, tweets all the time. Like, he's.

[Joe Rogan]

You got a friend who's January 6th?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You got a friend who was January 6th guy.

[Roger Avary]

Well, he's still there. He's like hundreds of days in jail without. Without any kind of. Without trial. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but, like, that's not how it's supposed to be, is it?

[Joe Rogan]

Not how it's supposed to be.

[Roger Avary]

You're supposed to have a due process of some kind.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, especially when you watch the actual footage of how it went down.

[Roger Avary]

Oh, I watched it live and there was that. That guy, that antifa guy, waving people in, like, moving them in. They were moving the block stockade, the blockade things. They were moving out and cops were waving people in. They were opening the doors for people.

[Joe Rogan]

I want you to think about it this way. In the most heavily armed nation the world has ever known, why would you have an insurrection with no guns?

[Roger Avary]

You got to have guns, machine guns.

[Joe Rogan]

Those guys weren't planning on an insurrection.

[Roger Avary]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

And then you have the factor that there was agency agents in. In the crowd, and we don't know how many. There's government agents in the crowd that were inciting people to go in. Yeah, that's what they do. And I want to know who that.

[Roger Avary]

Cop was who shot that woman. Yeah, what about that?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that. The whole thing's crazy. Yeah, the whole thing's crazy. And there's this thing that cops died that. No, no cops got died that day. That's not true. No, the cop who died, he died of a stroke. And I believe it was a stroke. A stroke or a heart attack. But.

[Roger Avary]

Well, like everything, there's a lot of Misinformation being given to us by the mainstream media, but it gets attributed to.

[Joe Rogan]

To it, you know, sort of like when, you know, anything happens to anyone four years after the vaccine, they attribute it to the vaccine. Oh, it was probably the vaccine.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it could have been. The guy just had a heart attack. But this guy who is a cop, he did not die there. He was not killed by the protesters. And you watch the video of the. The shaman dude with the buffalo hat, they're walking him around. The cops are showing him around. They're guiding him. How would you ever think that that is going to let you wind up in jail? How would you ever think that if you're an unsophisticated guy who was wearing fucking face paint and you're kind of a kook, which. And you're part of. You think you're part of a movement, which is really scary. You know, people get a part of a movement and they fucking. Yeah, we're all doing it. And then you've got literal government agents encouraging you to do it, moving barriers, letting you in. They were playing chess and these idiots were playing checkers. They all got locked.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Lot of sense. Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

Because nobody was doing an insurrection. It wasn't an insurrection.

[Joe Rogan]

You don't do an insurrection without weapons. It's. The whole idea is crazy.

[Roger Avary]

So there was no presumption that there was going to be any kind of like, that you were going to get thrown in jail for a thousand days. And so my protest, Lang, is he's been there forever. And every now and then I get, like, a picture of him, like, he's been in, like, look, I deserve to go to jail. That guy. Guy doesn't.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Right.

[Roger Avary]

And most of those guys don't.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I think it was a bad decision, certainly, to go into the Capitol. It was a bad decision to smash windows. But I want to know who.

[Roger Avary]

People have been smashing things, like, for a whole year before that.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. That's a very good point.

[Roger Avary]

It's like we were a culture of smashing things at that point.

[Joe Rogan]

It's also, as soon as you find out that there were government agents that may or may not have incited people to go in, the whole thing fucking changes. Like, what are you trying to do? Are you there to serve and protect, or is there some other weird shit going going on? Because it seems like there is, and no one wants to talk about it because you don't want to be that guy. But at a certain point in time, you should be that guy. You should go, what's going on? Man.

[Roger Avary]

There comes a point when men of good conscience must stand up and. And. And speak out against things that are obviously wrong.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And that is one of them.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that is one. One of them. It's a big one. It's a weird one. And, you know, there's all this pushback about Trump getting into office because he said, one of the first things he said was he was going to release all the January 6th prisoners. Like, how long do you think they should be in there for?

[Roger Avary]

Who's.

[Joe Rogan]

Who's opposing this?

[Roger Avary]

They should at least be going to trial. Yes, you should at least be going to trial.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Right.

[Roger Avary]

It is unconscionable to hold somebody for over a year, two years.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, the thing the government has always had a situation. Situation where we talked about when we did our episode on the Andersonville trial.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You know, is the one charge that the government can put against you where they don't need direct evidence is conspiracy. If they arrest you for conspiracy, that means they don't have direct evidence, but they don't need direct evidence for conspiracy.

[Roger Avary]

By the way, when I was like.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Just one thing, that's how got Manson, right?

[Roger Avary]

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

All right. Because.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, they knew what Manson had done because they were helping them.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I believe that, too, because that book's one of the best. Believe me, I read every Manson book that there possibly could read, and then I read that one, I throw the rest of them away in the trash.

[Joe Rogan]

Chaos is insane.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Chaos is just fantastic. And he helped me, too, because my first AD is a friend of his or Bill Clark. And when I was writing the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood book, I go deeper into the Manson stuff. And so I had a couple of little questions in my head that I always kind of wanted to know the answer to. So I got Tom's number and I called him up, and I was able to ask him something really super, like, direct questions that can really help my book.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, It's a crazy fucking story.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, it's.

[Roger Avary]

You know, when I was in jail, I found out they recorded everything. They're just constantly recording. And so somebody's in. In there, and they're like, man, I'd like to kill that da. Well, that's conspiracy. And so they'll wait and like, oh, you're about to get out. And like, they'll literally start walking about, like, ah, stop.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, God.

[Roger Avary]

Remember that thing you said about conspiracy? Let's play that back for you.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, God.

[Roger Avary]

Or what you said about killing the da. Well, that's. You're. You're going away again. You're going back to trial. That happened to lot, but it's also. Don't ever talk.

[Quentin Tarantino]

They put guys in your cell to get you talking about shit.

[Roger Avary]

Oh, yeah, that happened. That happened right away. That happened right away. They're trying to get you to incriminate yourself deeper. Constantly. It's like a fun game.

[Joe Rogan]

What a fun game. What a fun game. To serve and protect. Incriminate you deeper.

[Roger Avary]

Well, look, I had a. My. As Quentin will confirm, I have my authority issues. I always have. I'm suspicious of anyone in power. Power. And you should be.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's intoxicating like this.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay, so when Roger. Okay, good. Part of the thing on our show. I'm getting back to what Roger's saying. I'm not changing the subject. When we do our show, you know, the thing is, when we do our show, we talk about three movies, so I pick three video cassettes.

[Roger Avary]

The show we're talking about is the Video Archives podcast, which is. It was our second season, patreon.com video.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But the thing is. All right, so it's like, there's, like, the main movie, then there's that second movie that's like, kind of like the main movie, but probably you don't know that much about some wild exploitation thing that I. You know, this is. What the fuck is this? Let's watch it and find out. And one of the things that's about our show is I don't say, hey, Roger, so find these movies, and you watch them, and I'll watch them, and we'll get together and we'll do it on the phone, too, while we're at. No, no, no. We don't do that shit. All right. You know, we get together to watch the movie.

[Roger Avary]

Part of it is the experience of being together and watching the movie together through. Watching it through his eyes.

[Quentin Tarantino]

The reason we came up with the idea of the show is, like, when we reconnected, we started doing what we.

[Roger Avary]

Used to do during the pandemic.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. And then we were sort of like, well, hey, let's come up with a way we can get paid to do this. All right? You know, so me and Roger will get together and we'll watch three movies and sometimes even four, and then we'll get together. Then we have a day off, and then we get together on another day, and then we record, and we're always in the room when we do it. But the thing is, when Roger comes over to watch the Films. I've kind of learned that it's like, Roger, I'm starting. It's three movies we're gonna watch. I am starting the first movie 20 minutes after you get here. Cause Roger will just get off on some archaic piece of thing.

[Roger Avary]

The earth is flat. The earth is flat.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And the next thing you know. All right. It's been an hour and 15 minutes later, and you're getting further and further and further away. All right. From the. From the. The alchemy we're trying to create with the first movie. So now it's in 20 minutes, I'm hitting play, and that's it. So wrap it up.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a problem with podcasts. When people come over, sometimes we have some of the best conversations before the podcast.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So now I have to be rude. I'll be like, stop, stop, stop. Let's not talk.

[Roger Avary]

Let's catch that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, catch.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because you got to catch it. Because it is weird. It's a. It's a weird thing. You know, it's. It's a beautiful thing, though, because it's so open, you know, there's no one telling. Like, there's no studio people. Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No. Even the idea. I mean, one. The fact. The idea. The idea that this has replaced the talk show. The talk shows that we grew up watching and, like, those guys were the king. The fact that podcasting. You're the king of it. But the fact that podcasting has replaced that, but also the fact that anybody that has got something intelligent has got a cool little setup that's got an interesting personality and can sell an interesting conversation, theoretically, can start a podcast.

[Joe Rogan]

100%.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Is the barrier to entry so low? Like, think about the barrier to entry when you wanted to be a director.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, God. Jesus.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy.

[Roger Avary]

Not only. Not only that, you know, like the old days of television, you know, like desilu.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

We own our content. Like you own your content.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And never mind that it's a podcast. I'm okay with that. I like the fact that this is something where, for the first time in my life, at least, I'm involved with something where there is nobody else. It's me and Quentin who decide everything.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And, you know, if Quentin wants to do it, we go there. If I want to do it, we go there. Well, I talked to Quentin. If Quentin allows it, we go there. I mean, basically, what we're doing is the same thing we used to do. It's true. At the video store, we do what we used to do. At the video store, we're talking about.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's completely terrible. I have the kill switch, but other than that.

[Roger Avary]

No, no, no, I didn't mean it like that.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I never used the kill switch.

[Joe Rogan]

But the kill switch switch is always there.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, not really. Not really? Well, I guess theoretically.

[Roger Avary]

But you know what?

[Quentin Tarantino]

You want a theoretical sort of Damocles.

[Roger Avary]

Most times when you've used the kill switch, you've used it on your own.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I use it on myself.

[Roger Avary]

You used it on yourself. You actually haven't used it like on any of my things that I've wanted to do, which is really cool. But basically we're doing the same thing we used to do. We used to sit around and talk about movies. And so during the pandemic, you know, Quentin called me up and we hadn't talked for. I mean, we had bumped into each other.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We bumped into each other a few.

[Roger Avary]

Times, but we hadn't really. We had had a little bit of a.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We had a falling out.

[Roger Avary]

We had a falling out. And I call it a sort of a business related falling out. And maybe if I had been a little more mature, I was young as a filmmaker and probably unprepared to deal with the complexities of agents and attorneys and Hollywood and money and fame and the press and the press's agenda and. And all of that. I was just approaching it like, I'm a SoCal Gen X punk filmmaker. That was how I approached it. I'm going to do whatever the I want to do. I'm going to make the movie that I want to make. And I, with that attitude of, you know, I know what I want, I know what's right, and nobody can tell me I'm wrong. Because you have to be a little bit of a mega maniac to be a director. You have to be willing to say, no, I'm right, even when everyone is telling you you're wrong. And is that how Joker 2 got made?

[Quentin Tarantino]

I like Joker too. I like Joker.

[Joe Rogan]

I know you do.

[Roger Avary]

I like Joker too.

[Joe Rogan]

I haven't seen it. I'm just fucking around.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I will defend Joker too.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, I will. I'll defend the movie as well.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I can't wait to watch more fucking press on that.

[Joe Rogan]

I can't wait to watch it and then talk to you about it afterwards. Because Tim Dillon said it's the worst fucking movie that's ever been made and he in it.

[Roger Avary]

You know, I can. Well, that may have colored his perception though.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, but Tim thinks everything sucks. It's like the beauty of Tim, no matter what everybody's saying Is amazing. Like, Tim loves to talk about Austin.

[Quentin Tarantino]

The funniest thing that I've heard for a while on YouTube when I was listening to you guys talk is he's a guy. I never really listened to his show or anything like that.

[Joe Rogan]

He's brilliant.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But when he was on your thing talking about the election and when he described Tim Waltz as like, well, that guy just. That guy's a goofball who just should be at a county fair eating hot.

[Roger Avary]

Dogs.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I laughed for 15 minutes and played it back about three different times because I thought that was such a funny comment.

[Joe Rogan]

He's always funny. He said, it sounds like Kamala Harris is doing voodoo curses. She's doing gypsy curses. He said, she speaks in gypsy curses. And he always does this show with these fucking crazy glasses on. Like, that's his new thing. If you ever watch his show, it's the best because it's literally just him ranting and a producer and the rant. The ability to rant as a singleton operator, as a fucking lone person out there without anybody to bounce ideas off of, is a rare talent. And he's the best at it I've ever seen. Bill Burr's really good at as well, but Tim Dillon is the best at it I've ever, ever seen. He's so fucking good at it. And he's just basically performing to one person who's his producer.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And he's just ranting. And so because of that, he's got this crazy muscle that he's developed from years of doing that where he just rants about all these different things, but it's fucking brilliant.

[Roger Avary]

I like ranting.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah, clearly. Well, that's the great thing about you guys doing a podcast together. What I was going to get to is, like, in the beginning, you're talking about replacing the talk show. Well, fucking. You guys replaced Siskel and Ebert. Right? Cuz. Cis. Thank you. Thank you. They're gone.

[Roger Avary]

That was actually the agenda that Quentin proposed to me.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, both those guys are gone. You know what I love watching is videos of, like, outtakes of those guys.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Like, bitching at each other, at each other. They hated each other.

[Joe Rogan]

They were so shitty to each other, and then they had to be smiley. And what a way to live.

[Roger Avary]

Do you remember when Vincent Gallo wished testicular cancer on Roger Ebert and then he got it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, wow.

[Roger Avary]

Do you remember that?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay, I do now that you bring it up.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Like, he lost his jaw. Like, did remove his jawbone.

[Roger Avary]

That was Vincent Gallo cursing it onto. He apologized after you. Oh, my God, I didn't. I think he got.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I think Roger Ebert said that Brown Bunny was the worst film to ever play in the history of con film.

[Roger Avary]

That's exactly what happened. And then he went and he. He cursed him, and then the curse came true. And then he regretted. I talked to him. He was like, I wish I had never done that.

[Joe Rogan]

It's crazy. If it really worked, that movie, Brown Bunny, I want to talk about that because I've always thought it's so strange that we can show violence but we can't show sex. And I know they tried to do that with, like. You ever see the lines outside the movie theater when Deep Throat came out? Oh, yeah. Carson was in line. Johnny Carson went to see Deep Throat in a public.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I heard stories about Bing Crosby arrived.

[Joe Rogan]

At midnight because people didn't know what they were seeing yet. It hadn't been defined as a genre. There was nudie movies that people watched as stag parties.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And there was that little moment in 73 where there was porno chic.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, well, Stallone did Italian Stallion.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. But that wasn't a popular thing. This was. And everyone had to kind of see it and like, oh, hey, maybe this will be a thing.

[Joe Rogan]

Right? Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Maybe this will be a thing now that, like, one or three or four porn movies will come out every year that'll be, like, kind of considered, like, real movies. You know, couples will go see. And that was. The whole thing was promoting the idea of couples going to see a porn film. Either porno films or just heavily erotic movies.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You know, like, for sexy. For sexy nights.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. Not like Travis Bickle. Not like how Travis Bickle does it. No, no, no.

[Quentin Tarantino]

As a sexy night. Now we're on. We're going to have a sexy night. We're going to go out and see, and then we'll go home and we'll take care of business.

[Joe Rogan]

Right? Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But it didn't really happen. But there was this hope in the early 70s that that could happen.

[Joe Rogan]

But it's fascinating that it didn't happen, because what I was going to get to is, like, violence we don't have any problem with. But we all agree that consensual sex is way better than someone getting shot in the face. But people get shot in the face in movies, constantly. See heads explode and arms getting lopped off. Game of Thrones. It's constant.

[Roger Avary]

I think it's actually gone too far. I think. I mean, this coming from me. Well, it's not that violence has gone too far. It's the meaningless Violence has gone. Violence without purpose almost. And I started to recognize this during Walking Dead. But really, Game of Thrones, though. You mentioned Game of Thrones. Like, I loved Game of Thrones at first. And then I started realizing, wait a minute, like, they're getting off on me falling in love with characters. And then the moment I've fallen in love with the character, suddenly they're vivisecting their genitals. You know, it's like. And then the cycle begins again. You fall in love with a different character, and then they're killing them, and they're just doing it, like, sadistically, because there's, like. There's nowhere to go other than that. They're. They're just pushing the ceiling higher and higher, sort of.

[Joe Rogan]

But also, if you were living in that world, that would be real reality. Nobody lived forever and became the hero of the fucking movie. There's no heroes back then. Everybody's getting gutted. There's. They're getting usurped into a dungeon, you know? Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

People get fed the lions.

[Joe Rogan]

It's just. You're getting eaten by dogs.

[Quentin Tarantino]

This is real. And now you have to fight for the next five years against the rats that are in the fucking dungeon with you.

[Roger Avary]

But television, at least the television I grew up with, was all about, like, the familiarity of returning to the characters you love.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, but there was plenty of characters.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And you did get to return to the ones that stuck around and didn't get their heads off.

[Roger Avary]

I just wish they killed other characters. Let me get anyone else.

[Joe Rogan]

I love that.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Let me give you another example of my. Everyone talks about how great television is now, and it's pretty good, I gotta say. It's pretty good. But it's still television to me. And what's the difference between. What's the difference between television and a good movie? Because a lot of the TV now has the patina of a movie, all right? They're using cinematic language, all right. To get you caught up in it. And obviously, I'm talking about good shows. We're talking about shows that you're. Ozark shows that you're compelled to watch.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And so, okay, so I'll use an example of a show. I'll use Yellowstone. I didn't really get around to watching Yellowstone the first three years or so. And then I watched, like, the first season, like, wow, this is fucking great. I'm always been a big Kevin Costner fan. He's fucking wonderful in this. All right. And I got really caught up in the show and everything. And all of a sudden, I'm having a good time and, you know, I've got a couple seasons I haven't seen. So I'm watching it. And in the first season, I'm kind of talking about, this is like a movie. This is like a big movie. It's like a big movie. And the guy who writes that, he's a good writer. Good, like punchy monologues and stuff. So then I end up watching, like three seasons of it. And then I even watched that 1883 was. Oh, this is a good western show. I like Westerns. But then after I've watched, like two or three seasons or one season of 1883, look, while I'm watching it, I am compelled. I'm caught up in it. But at the end of the day, it's all just a soap opera. They've introduced you to a bunch of characters. You actually kind of know all their backstories. You know, everybody's connection with everybody else. And, you know, they spend some time selling that out. And then everything else. Then everything is just. The com. Is the compellingness of the soap opera, of what's happening to the.

[Joe Rogan]

What's different between that and a film.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Because the thing is, if you watch. If you watch Edge of Night, Monday through Friday, you get caught up in the dramas of the family and everything, but you don't remember it five years from now. You're caught up into the minutia of it at the moment. All right? So the difference between is I'll see a good Western movie and I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I'll remember the story. I'll remember this scene or that scene. And it built to an emotional climax of some degree. And, you know, one, the story is good. It's not just about the interpersonal relationships. The story is good itself, but there's a payoff to it. But there's not a payoff on this stuff. It's just more interconnectional drama. And while I'm watching it, that's good enough. But when it's over, I couldn't tell you. I can remember who the bad guy was in the first season of Yellowstone because it was Danny Huston. I remember him in it, but I don't remember any of the details of it. And I don't remember any of the bad guys for season two or season three. It's out of my head. It's just completely out of. And same thing with 1883. When I watched the whole thing, and that was like a. That seemed like a movie, except I don't remember. Sam Elliot is about the only thing I really remember of it when it was finished. But now Red River I remember for the rest of my life.

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't that, though? Because it's a different thing, right? Because when you go to a film, film is designed for one sitting. You sit down in the theater, you're going to get the entire encapsulation of what happens to these characters.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay, I'll give you an example of one that is more than a soap opera. And you'll. And here's the difference. Here's the difference, okay? Because, yeah, you could say that. Look, they're in the soap opera business. But I'll tell you one that's not okay. If you watch that first season of. Now, here's one that really works like a movie. If you watch the first season of Home. Homeland. Oh, yeah, that first season of Homeland.

[Roger Avary]

First season is incredible.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, very good.

[Quentin Tarantino]

When it gets to that final episode of the first season and he's got the suicide vest on and he's in the room, he can kill the guys that he's been waiting for to do it for the whole movie. And you don't want him to die, but you're kind of into him and you kind of want him to pull off. And then his daughter calls him on the phone before he does it. She doesn't know what he's going to do, but she gets that little sense from him that something's weird. She goes, daddy, you need to tell me that you're going to come home right now. You need to tell me right now that I will see you later tonight. And the entire series has been built to this scene. And it's one of the most emotional scenes I've ever seen in a movie, any TV show I've ever seen drama.

[Roger Avary]

The first season was great.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I've ever seen drama. Now, that was a movie that was not a soap opera that's built to this moment of him being in that fucking room with the suicide vest on. And there was complexity. She doesn't know what she's asking, but we do, right? She's stopping this major thing, and she'll never know that. But we do.

[Joe Rogan]

Right? Right, Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And he's still committed, but he's more committed to her. And we know that. That's just great shit. That's a movie, right?

[Joe Rogan]

And you can't. Can you do that every week?

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, I didn't say you can do it. Every week. But I'm saying when the season's over, I need to walk away with more than just the soap opera.

[Joe Rogan]

An impactful moment.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Exactly. Now, I don't expect you to do that every week, but at the end of the arc, if you're telling a continuing story at the end of that fucking season, you need to, bam, drop the mic. Yeah, you need to tell me a story. Not just dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

[Joe Rogan]

I see what you're saying.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And look, while I'm watching it, I'm not asking for that, but the fact that it all just goes away once it's over and it's just stand on the beach.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. It's a different thing though. Right? I mean, this is the weirdness of the theater experience versus home.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Here's where it's not a different thing. Part of the thing that makes it different is the fact that everyone's watching these continuing stories. Continuing stories. Continuing stories. Okay, if it were Bonanza where it's just a setup story, Charles Bronson shows up, he's a half breed Indian and he's working at the Ponderosa for a while and he gets involved in an adventure and then at the end it's done. Well, on that show, you, you have the, the episodes are maybe not so good or the episodes are. There are whatever.

[Joe Rogan]

They're dreading one continual story.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But then you, but then you'll have this great episode with Charles Bronson. Or do they have a great episode with James?

[Roger Avary]

They're almost standalone.

[Quentin Tarantino]

That could, that could have been a movie. Yeah, they could have expanded that to a movie.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. They're standalones instead of just a long, ongoing.

[Roger Avary]

Well, the difference is, is that it's.

[Quentin Tarantino]

A long, ongoing story that leads to the soap opera aspect.

[Roger Avary]

Well, it's episodic and television now has become completely serialized.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And so, you know, somebody's going in and they're pitching their show, even a really, really good show, like Deadwood. Okay, Deadwood. I know what they, they probably went in, they pitched and what they knew that they were going to make was the. Was it Wild Bill? The Wild Bill story. And they've got Carradine and like, and they know that story. And that show is fantastic. As long as they're telling that story, which is like six to eight episodes once he's gone. I don't think they had a plan. They. That was what they pitched and it was like they pitched a movie spread out over a number of episodes. But it wasn't even the full season.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. But by that point in Time they have now they have all the Town characters.

[Roger Avary]

Well, they've got everybody, but. But I would maintain that for the rest of Deadwood after Carradine's gone, it's just. Things are happening. Stuff is happening. But I don't remember anything about that show other than the Town and, you know, the, the various actors that I liked and on. On the show and. But really all they had was those first six to eight episodes. I can't remember what exactly what it was.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And the thing is. And the. The thing about it is I'm not. I don't say all this. And the sum up of it all is it's you useless. It is very compelling while I'm watching it, but it just doesn't compare to a movie, real story that is that, you know, that stays with me for the. For the rest of my life in some cases.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. I know what you're saying.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And like, we'll. We'll watch a lot of. You know, I try to watch at least one movie every episode that I haven't seen. And sometimes it's like, well, I haven't seen it since I was 12, you know, or I haven't seen it since.

[Roger Avary]

Those are actually the scariest ones to watch. Because if you loved something when you were young, it's almost.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I'm expecting not to. I'm tougher on stuff now than I used to be. All right? I was a big champion about stuff. Now I'm not such a champion now. I see all the problems with it, all right? But I watch something that I haven't seen since I was 22, and I saw it, like the day it opened, and I, you know, and I watch, you know, I watch it again. I think I just lost my train of thought.

[Roger Avary]

Well, actually, I can jump in really quick if you want.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You know, talking like I'm stoned and I'm not.

[Roger Avary]

Well, cigars. Cigars. One of the movies we saw that we had seen a million times and we didn't even think that it was going to be anything, was Dressed to Kill.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. Okay, let me set this up a little. It was one of those things where we were doing a thing, a special episode with Eli Roth. We were taking, you know, the Italian giallo thrillers and saying, okay, where are the American versions of Jallow thrillers? And we figured out there was like four of them and one of them was Dressed to Kill Michael.

[Joe Rogan]

Cocaine.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. And so we get together with Eli and we're gonna watch these four movies. And then it comes down to dress To Kill. And it's like, I can't even think about how many times I've seen Dressed to Kill. I can't even think how many times he's seen it and how many times that Eli seen it. I mean, we're just huge Brian De Palma fans and Nancy Allen fans and everything. So it was like, how many fucking times? And so I almost. Almost brought up. Let me. We even need to watch Dress to Kill. I mean, we've got.

[Roger Avary]

We had a little congress about it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We've got three movies. No. Okay, well, let's just watch it. We'll just watch it. That ended up being one of the greatest screenings of Dress to Kill I've ever seen. All right? Was in that. In our living room. In my living room, watching it with.

[Roger Avary]

On vhs.

[Quentin Tarantino]

On vhs. On vhs. Pan and Scan. All right? The old Warner Brothers video. Because we watch them on. We. We watch them on the actual video cassettes of video video archives, all right?

[Roger Avary]

Literally, the tape that we used to rent and handle and shuffle and put back and forth into the drawers and then rent to customers. And that has been sitting on the shelves with the number on it and everything for the.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We've seen the movie a bunch of times. But something about watching it with the three of us and then just sitting there and it's so good. But, but, but, but. But it was Roger who was adding to it. It was Eli that was adding. Adding to them.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You know, and, like, we just had this, like, appreciation for the movie. Watching it with the three of us in this situation. The fact that we even considered not even watching it was just, like, sacrilege.

[Roger Avary]

And we saw things in it that we had never seen before. That was the other thing. It's like, I saw things in. During that screening because of. Because of feeling watching the movie with you guys that I had never thought about before. And so it opened up all sorts of avenues. And most frequently, you watch a movie and it's. It doesn't live up. I'm afraid, to watch movies again. You know, a lot of the time. That was just one of those happy incidences where the movie really lived up. It. It stayed strong even when we'd seen it hundreds.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I know. I mean, you could not. It'd be hard to pick a movie that I've seen as much as Dress a Kill.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

See, this is the better version of Siskel and Ebert. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The completely unproduced, uninfluenced version.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, I told Roger when we finished the first Season, and I go, you know, Roger, if we do this the right way, in three or four years time, we could be considered like Sisko and 100%.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, it's.

[Joe Rogan]

It's just a matter of getting it out there.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I think there's just a bunch of people that aren't aware of it yet.

[Roger Avary]

They will come.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

Build it and they will come. What I love about the way we're doing it because our first season, we just, you know, we just put it out and we had a partner with Sirius XM back then. And this season, you know, they kind.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Of went out of business within their own for their podcasting thing a little bit.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, did they? Pandora now, right?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah. They kind of turned into a different thing.

[Joe Rogan]

They just changed their big podcast deal with the Call her daddy chick.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah, I think they did. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So I guess they're trying to get back into it. I think some other people as well.

[Quentin Tarantino]

They paid us a lot of money to do it. And, like, we actually did pretty good for, like, our little archaic little movie.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Show that goes on about two hours.

[Roger Avary]

A real niche. Niche type.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. And we. Yeah, can you guys do Jaws? No, we don't do Jaws.

[Joe Rogan]

But that's the best part of it. Do whatever the you want to do.

[Quentin Tarantino]

That's exactly it. But the thing is, they wear like. So we actually had about, like 2 million listeners, which was like, hey, that was pretty good for us. For us doing our little stupid movie show about vhs. And it's all about vhs. It's about the vhs.

[Roger Avary]

We're talking about the box art of VHS tapes.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We watch the film, we talk about the trailers that are in front of the movie. All right. We talk about the transfer, by the way, the movie.

[Joe Rogan]

VHS is one of my guilty pleasures.

[Quentin Tarantino]

That's a good photo.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, A good movie.

[Joe Rogan]

The one with the devil lady.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

She turns into a devil.

[Quentin Tarantino]

The three. Four different stories or three different stories.

[Joe Rogan]

But that one is worth it. Just sit through the other three for that one. The devil lady was amazing.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But I think they were expecting us to do like Citizen Kane. They were thinking to do like Dax shepherd kind of numbers.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But we're never going to do that with what we're doing.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right, right. Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And, you know, and so we're talking.

[Joe Rogan]

You could, though. People want to see it, they want to listen to it. It's just a matter of just it. Bidding. They'll. They'll realize they wanted it once they hear it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That's what it is. It's like, oh, we want them to only talk about Citizen Kane. No, no, no, no. It's got to be whatever the they actually want to talk about. And then you'll learn about that movie that you never heard about. Maybe you go see it, and then you'll have a deeper appreciation of why these guys love movies.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But one of the things that was interesting when we did it, when we. Okay, so when we made our deal, we're thinking, okay, well, maybe we'll do it here for two years and we own the show, and then we wanna take it to Patreon so we don't have to do commercials.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay. And then when I did commercials, I did it with a 70s DJ announcer voice. All right? Cause I felt like such a sellout that I'm not gonna do it in my voice. The Datsun 750 is coming and it's coming soon, you know, And I did it like the real Don Steele. That was my whole thing, doing it like the real Don Steele.

[Roger Avary]

I just did those readings like myself. And people started commenting on Twitter. They were like, man, Roger Avery, a.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Recruiter can refill your fill, your placement in a quiz for a week. Some people even get in the first week. They get qualified candidates only on ZipRecruiter.com.

[Roger Avary]

Look, I like solo stoves. They're great. But, like, I found myself doing like, you know, stainless steel ads basically, and talking about solo stoves, and suddenly people on Twitter were saying, roger Avery will sell you sour milk from a sick cow. It's like, well, I don't know if I want to, like, be shilling stuff like that anymore.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you just have to only approve the ads that you want to do. Like, I approve ads. I don't, like, just let them give me every ad. I'm like, I can't do this one.

[Roger Avary]

Well, we.

[Joe Rogan]

And I say it all the time.

[Roger Avary]

We'Re not even under that kind of pressure now.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah. The thing about it.

[Joe Rogan]

That's good.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I thought about that would be kind of cool. It, you know, is, look, if we go to Patron, we'll lose a whole bunch of. We use. We'll lose a whole bunch of listeners. But, you know, we'll put a. We put a 40 minute version of the show out there for free, you know, but if you want to get the whole show, then you've got to like, you. You gotta subscribe. And if you just subscribe, you get the show. If you pay $5, you get our show. Boom, boom. And if you pay $8, then you get an extra special show that we do, and we're gonna.

[Roger Avary]

There's still a truncated version of it available for everybody to listen to. You, like, the first part of it come for the rest.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But the thing is, though, is what I like. And some people are sort of like, hey, fuck those guys. And they're like, well, okay, fine. And look, hey, I get it. I'm the guy that. I'm. The guy in my 20s would go to happy hour at the bar, all right, and nurse a beer. I ate all the pizza and the chicken wings, and that was my dinner. So I get that. And by the way, if you want to wait till the end of our season and then join for a month and listen to all of our shows, that way you can. That's an easy way to do it. You can get everything for free for a month. You can get everything you want in a month. But that's not who we're doing it for. We're doing it for the people who care about the show and are subscribing to it. And those people, those audience, right? And then they write on the message board, and we write them back, and like, so we're doing it for those people, and as long as we can make enough to just do the show, we're cool.

[Roger Avary]

And the general feeling is, wow, this is like a $5 film school. Because you've got a couple of guys talking about movies and talking about how to watch movies, how to appreciate films, how to read a film, and then.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Hopefully just genuinely compelling discussion, discussions and.

[Roger Avary]

Using our experience as filmmakers to discuss even, you know, deeper into the movies and to better understand them. And, you know, it's largely something has happened in culture where people. They don't know how to argue anymore politely. They don't know how to, like, enjoy an argument with each other before. And so Quentin and I, we don't have to like the same movie. Just like Siskel and Ebert didn't have to like it. But, you know, we can argue about something, and then afterwards, it's like, okay, let's go do karaoke now. You know, it's not.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's not a. It's not a recommend show. We want to pick three movies, and we want to discuss them.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. And you don't have to like it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Even if you don't like the movie. If there's an interesting thing, if there's an interesting point of discussion about it. Well, that's good. That's all. That's all we need. We just need an interest. We need an interesting. An Interesting conversation.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, they have.

[Quentin Tarantino]

About. It's not about. It's not about. We recommend you watch this movie.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Personally, I don't care if anybody watches any of the movies that we talk about. I want them to listen to the show and enjoy. Enjoy our back and forth and get.

[Joe Rogan]

To understand how you appreciate movies.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. If you want to go out and check the movies out afterwards, fine, go ahead. But I don't care if you do or not.

[Roger Avary]

And we have a really, like, dedicated group of people who have come and they've signed up, and they, like, I really. What's funny is I really care about these people now. It's like, they're there, and they're, like, in the club. It's like a clubhouse, and the people who want to be there want to be there. And they're talking, and they're talking. They're on a message board with Quentin, and, you know, Eli is. Eli Roth is there, and Edgar Wright, and, like, everybody's like. And so it's a. We wanted to create something that was like video archives and that people could come in and talk.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And I wanted. I want at least one of the three movies. Not every week, but at least they're not easy to find. I want to come up with, like, well, that's not streaming anywhere. How am I supposed to get this? Well, it's on vhs. You know, get a VHS recorder and buy it on ebay. And now all of a sudden, that little group is like, what? Maybe we can buy a. Hey, maybe if we buy a vhs, and then we can. We'll burn it, and we can trade it with everybody else. And now they're all doing the work to do that. Well, good.

[Roger Avary]

My daughter, Gala, is one of our producers on the show, and. And she's on the show with us. And one of her things is, like, we get together and we watch the movies at video archives, and then we know the films, and then she has to. She doesn't have that access.

[Quentin Tarantino]

She doesn't have access. She. She's not there with us.

[Roger Avary]

She's like. She represents one of our. One of the people out there. She's got to find it. So if Quentin finds something that's, you know, pretty difficult to find, she's got to track it down, and she usually has a little timetable to do it on. And she kind of is doing her proof of concept on. You can get these. You can find these. She'll find it on vhs.

[Joe Rogan]

She'll find it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

However she tracked it down. And so you can follow her guide.

[Roger Avary]

If it's on YouTube. She'll tell you it's on YouTube.

[Quentin Tarantino]

However, when she goes, quentin, I just couldn't track this one down. I'm like, yes.

[Roger Avary]

I think that's the real reason he likes to do the show. Go.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Eat.

[Joe Rogan]

God.

[Roger Avary]

Gotcha.

[Joe Rogan]

Is everything. Is everything on YouTube now?

[Quentin Tarantino]

A lot of things. Not everything, but a lot of things. A lot of things.

[Roger Avary]

A lot of things, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

There's some certain things you can't find on YouTube still.

[Roger Avary]

And if it's up there and it's not there, it'll be up again somewhere. It's like whack a mole.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, Right.

[Roger Avary]

It's like whack a mole.

[Joe Rogan]

There was the Gore Vidal film, the transsexual movie with Raquel Welch.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, we watched that. We hadn't. We didn't do an episode on it, but I have the video of that. We watch it. I have Myra Breckenridge. I like that movie.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a crazy movie.

[Roger Avary]

Well, the idea.

[Quentin Tarantino]

She the guy in the ass. That's the best scene. She the guy in the ass. That is the best scene.

[Joe Rogan]

It's pretty wild.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I like that movie so much, I read the book afterwards because I thought it was, like, so cool. Okay.

[Roger Avary]

I never liked Rex Reed, and I am not gay, but I was actually like, wow, Rex Reed's kind of hot in this.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's what he was trying to do. That was the whole movie.

[Roger Avary]

You did it.

[Joe Rogan]

Gore Vidal was trying to turn you gay. Can you give me that lighter?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, you should.

[Joe Rogan]

That's one of those weird ones that's difficult to find. I had to buy a DVD to get it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, I like that light. The light she has that keeps building up to it. She goes, what, she gonna finally show her pussy? She goes, well, it looks like the moment of truth has finally arrived. I think Raquel was just fantastic in that movie.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you ever see those debates that Gore Vidal did with William F. Buck? Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Incredible.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

But this is. You know, you used to go, vidal always won, though. Oh, yeah. Well, he was just. He was right and he was better.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, he's right and he's better.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, he's right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You have Gore Vidal fighting with Norman Mailer.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What were they fighting about?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, no, just. They'd get on the. They'd get him on, like, the Dick Cavitt show together. You know, he would talk. They have, like, a pony. Bastard. And the other one, they have, like, a Neanderthal.

[Roger Avary]

I'm sure they had dinner afterwards.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, just. You used to be able to have those kind of conversations on television, which is really fascinating. Yeah, it's like now they exist in podcasts, you know, and like the Siskel and Ebert thing, what I was talking about is like, you can't manufacture a friendship.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

One of the. And you can't manufacture a real interest. You can't be a guy who was a local news report reporter who auditioned for the role of the guy who reviews movies. You know what I'm saying?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

[Joe Rogan]

It's like this thing that you guys have is what this is. The whole new media movement is based on authenticity. Right. And this is like the whole thing. You want people to not be able to find these movies. You want to just review movies that you want to review. And that's the beautiful thing about it. It's like the perfect show in that regard. Like for. For a film review show or a film discussion show. It's the perfect show.

[Roger Avary]

And also, when a customer used to come into the store, they had basically three requirements. I want something that's new. That was always the first one that's good that I haven't seen yet. And I was like, well, if it's. If you haven't seen it yet, it's new to you. So that takes care of two of those. And no, we don't have that new one, but let's show you something interesting. And so it was always a matter of.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, the thing is one of the things that, like. And there's a lot of movie. There's a lot of movie shows out there on podcasts, and they talk about seven. The idea isn't for me to just say, oh, we're better than all those guys. We're not coming from that place. But I'll tell you what bugs me about a lot of the other shows is the fact that the people are sincere. They're completely sincere, but their film knowledge is fucking abysmal. They really don't know what the fuck they're talking about. And especially when they're trying to talk about movies from, like, the 70s or something. Well, they were usually born in the 80s, so they don't know what something was like when it opened up. And they don't really have any context. They definitely don't have context. That's what they don't have. They don't have context. They just know whatever they've learned along the way, and. And so they just yank stuff out of their ass and just. And say stuff that's just wrong a lot. They're just Misinformation a lot. We actually fact check our shit. All right? We rerecord it, all right, to make sure that we just don't yank shit out of it. And there is a little bit of yanking stuff out of your ass, but when I'm not sure about it, we look it up. And then if I'm wrong, then we change it.

[Roger Avary]

Well, then also there's the fact that.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You can count on what we're saying, that we're telling you the true fucking shit we're giving you. I consider it. It as. I consider it as a film expert that. That I would be. I would. My show wouldn't be worth listening to if I don't give. If I don't tell you the truth.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

If I don't give you factual information that you can count on.

[Roger Avary]

Well, so. Because you were there during the opening of the film and, you know, we're going to describe. Because. Yeah, yeah, we. We have the context to talk about. A lot of these people, they maybe didn't see these movies in theaters.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And the thing is, you know, it. It's like, you know, my writing guru as far as, like, film writing, but I think writing in general was the New Yorker film critic Pauline Kail. And she had one rule and one rule for film criticism. And I think this could apply to all writing. You have to give the reader a compelling reason to read your writing. It's that fucking simple. There has to be a compelling reason for you to engage in reading, analysis. And the same thing about talking about cinema, you have to give a compelling reason now. Yeah, I like the guys. That's a good start. I like their personality. I think they're kind of funny. That's a good start. But there has to be something more than that.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's what's more than that, what you just did, this passion for it. Right? That's what's more than that. It's this, like, severe commitment to it. That's what's exciting.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And then when we talk about the movies, we talk about everything that's good about them. We talk about the things that aren't good.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Honest.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, very honest. And I can be wrong. I don't have to be right about it.

[Joe Rogan]

You might be wrong about the Joker. I'm not sure.

[Roger Avary]

It's audacious.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's audacious because you haven't even seen it, have you? You know, you're just jumping on a banner.

[Joe Rogan]

I'm just talking.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I just try to wind you up talking.

[Joe Rogan]

I'm just trying to Wind you up. Sorry, what. What's like an example of a film that you love that other people hate, other than the Joker?

[Quentin Tarantino]

I don't know if I loved it, but okay, I liked it a lot. There's. I have a ton of those. As a matter a fact. I have so many. But when I was younger, particularly, I was the champion of the movie that everyone that all the critics put down and said was the fiasco. And I wanted to.

[Joe Rogan]

Is it because you're contrarian.

[Roger Avary]

Can I guess? Is it Ishtar?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, you. Like in 1940, he was like one of the champions of Ishtar, pushing that.

[Roger Avary]

Tape on so many customers.

[Joe Rogan]

How many of them came back angry?

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, it's a funny movie. It's a funny movie.

[Joe Rogan]

Is it really?

[Roger Avary]

Well, the problem with Ishtar, and we were talking about this a little bit earlier, the problem with Ishtar is that it suddenly became not about the movie, but about the production.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And so people had formed an opinion about whether they liked it or not because it was expensive. It's like. It doesn't change your ticket price.

[Joe Rogan]

No. But that is the kiss of death. If you feel like a film is.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Over budgeted, especially comedies. It's like. It's like critics. Critics have a thing about, like, you know, spending a lot of money on comedies. It seems obscene to them.

[Joe Rogan]

What happened with this film? Like what? Where did the budget go south?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, where the budget kind of went south for the most part was the fact that, like, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman kind of, like, had their full freight, the movie. So Dustin Hoffman got his high big salary. Warren Beatty got his high big salary. And so now.

[Roger Avary]

And all the accoutrements that go with.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It and everything that goes with it.

[Roger Avary]

I need a plane to fly me back from Morocco to New York every weekend.

[Joe Rogan]

If.

[Roger Avary]

If.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, no, he's just making that up. I'm making that up.

[Roger Avary]

But that's not unrealistic.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's not unrealistic. It would be like if. When they did. During the time when they did Ishar, Tom Hanks was famous, but he wasn't the superstar that he is now.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

All right, so if that had starred Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari, like the two guys from Bosom Buddies.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, then that movie would have. It would have been. It would have cost a lot less and would have been just as funny. Those guys were terrific together and they would have been really good in that role, and the film would have been seen for what it is. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

When a film does get labeled As a bloated film, though, that's. That is the kiss of death. Because the general public will turn on it then. Yeah, they want to fail.

[Roger Avary]

But you know what? You generally, you give those movies a couple of years and suddenly they're like these amazing movies. They're like, oh, my. Well, Waterworld's a pretty fun film.

[Joe Rogan]

Shut the fuck up.

[Roger Avary]

I kind of have a great time watching Water World was the first LaserDisc I ever bought. That and Days of Wonder.

[Joe Rogan]

You can't defend Kevin Costner's the Postman.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I never saw the Postman.

[Roger Avary]

I like the idea of the postman. I remember the screenplay for the Postman was great. The idea that I never saw the.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Postman, but I actually like Kevin. I think Dancers is one of the best movies.

[Joe Rogan]

Kevin Costner is awesome. I love that dude.

[Roger Avary]

But you're right about the.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I'm not saying he's right about it, because I've never seen it, but now that says something that I've never seen it, but. Yeah, but I wouldn't mind seeing it. And I'll bet you I like it.

[Joe Rogan]

But then there's films that are so bad, they're great. Like Showgirls.

[Roger Avary]

I love Showgirls.

[Joe Rogan]

Showgirls.

[Roger Avary]

Oh, Showgirls. There's nothing wrong with show girls.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I can absolutely defend.

[Joe Rogan]

I can defend an entertainment piece.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Look, I am not a so badass good guy, okay? I'm not a so bad guy. You are so bad. I'm not as so bad as good.

[Joe Rogan]

The sex scene in the pool, that's.

[Quentin Tarantino]

A little ridiculous, but. Yes, the sex scene in the pool is a little ridiculous, but actually, the fact that it's going for a Hollywood movie, that's, it's, it's. It's. It's going there was actually interesting to me. But what I really liked when I really liked her in it. But when she beats the out of that guy, that so fucking cool. When she beats the shit out of the guy at the end. The guy who fucked over her girlfriend and, like, beat up his girlfriend, and then she does these spinning roundhouse kicks and beats the fucking shit out of the guy. I was like, yeah, Elizabeth Berkley, go.

[Roger Avary]

What I love about Showgirls is normally a movie like Showgirls would be made for under a million, go straight to video star Robert Dahvie and just be this little exploitation movie. And here was an example of that being made for 60 million doll with Paul Verhoeven directing, doing whatever the fuck he wants. Doing whatever he wants, making it as big as possible releasing it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

NC17. Fuck.

[Roger Avary]

It's basically the same as one of those sub million dollar exploitation films. It still has Robert Davi in it. He's still playing the same part he would normally play. And so it's this opportunity to see one of those weird little, you know, exploitation movies made in this grand and fashion. In this huge fashion showgirl.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Doesn't sit on a special shelf in my. In my heart. All right, all right. But I really liked it. What I saw and I saw it in the theaters. I enjoyed it.

[Roger Avary]

I love Elizabeth Bertley, like pushes Gina Gerson down the stairs. Is it Gina Gerson she pushes down the stairs? Like, like everything about that movie is awesome. I think it's great. I love the film. I love the film. I brought it up to all the. I had a dinner once with like Verhoeven and a bunch of the producers that film. I started going off on it and they all sat there at the dinner watching me go crazy over their film. And then at the end of it, somebody, the one of the producers said, well, yeah, that's all nice to hear, but really that movie was just about us doing a lot of cocaine.

[Joe Rogan]

That's exactly what I was just gonna say. I'm so glad you just said that because I always described that movie as a cocaine movie. And I was just casting aspersions with no evidence. But it seems like cocaine everywhere. Because it seems like they thought it was great while they were doing it. But it's like, what are you doing? You know, it's one of those things where you think it's great because you're on coke.

[Roger Avary]

I have a place in my heart for those big movies like that. I mean, that's not the one that I would.

[Quentin Tarantino]

That's not the one I would make my case on. But I still don't like it. That's not my case. That's not my. That's not my chest case.

[Joe Rogan]

But isn't that sort of an example of what happened in. When the 80s were cocaine culture, the world kind of shifted from. From a psychedelic thing from the 60s and 70s to a cocaine thing in the 80s. And you get movies like that.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, you get a little bit more edgy, a little less trippy.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, also like a little more ridiculous. But see, look at how good.

[Roger Avary]

See the beginning.

[Joe Rogan]

It's pretty good.

[Roger Avary]

That's what I call an actress dedicated to her role.

[Joe Rogan]

No, this is where. This is where you're losing me. This is where you're losing me because how are you keeping a heart on?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. Kyle McLaughlin, of all people.

[Joe Rogan]

The whole thing is.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But just watching Elizabeth Berkeley's tits, all right, In a big studio movie like this, flopping up and down, like, I'm. I'm getting my money's worth.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that was huge because it was from Saved by the Bell.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. But I'm, you know. Okay. I'm not actually. That's. I'm not thinking about it from his point of view. I'm thinking about it from the water hitting her face. I'm looking from her point of view. That's. That's the. That's the unrealistic part that.

[Joe Rogan]

True. True cocaine movies are fun, though. There's. There's quite a few of those that were just like. What is this?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, how much coke was going around the 80s?

[Roger Avary]

A lot. A lot.

[Joe Rogan]

When you could. It was actually coke too.

[Roger Avary]

It was actually real cocaine. It was like proper cocaine.

[Quentin Tarantino]

There was, you know, there was this. I mean, it's actually really interesting because it's like one of those things where.

[Roger Avary]

Remember that customer who used to come in and he would bring in, like, a rock of cocaine?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Roger Avary]

Drop it on the counter like a rock of cocaine. We. And boys here.

[Quentin Tarantino]

The guy's name was Tuttle.

[Roger Avary]

The size of. Yeah, Tuttle. The size of a coffee mug. And he would bring us these things.

[Quentin Tarantino]

He was a cocaine dealer. And the thing is, he would rent. You know, we'd let him take the movies out and come back whenever he wanted.

[Roger Avary]

Whenever you want.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. And he would come in and he'd get his films and then he would, like, either open up a little, like, skull can.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Quentin Tarantino]

All right. With a bunch of coke.

[Roger Avary]

I remember that. Skull can. Boom.

[Quentin Tarantino]

All right, there you go, boys. There you go, boys.

[Roger Avary]

Have fun.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Jesus. Coke rock. And just like, bam. Like, throw it on the counter and it bounce off you. There you go, boy. See you later. See you in two weeks.

[Roger Avary]

Like a baseball. Like a baseball. And you take a colander and, like, just grind it up. Okay, who want some?

[Quentin Tarantino]

And for the first time, because we're minimum wage kids, for the first time, we actually had. Fuck you coke. All right? We actually had access to coke in a way that we could never afford. Like, for about a few months, because those relationships don't last that long.

[Joe Rogan]

No, no, no.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay.

[Joe Rogan]

Relationships never last.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But for a few months, we were like, holy shit.

[Joe Rogan]

We're in the.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We're in the. You know, we're. We're in the powder.

[Roger Avary]

Well, he. There was a party once that he came to and he brought a. Again, a Rock of cocaine and a live hand grenade. He put them both down.

[Joe Rogan]

They usually go together.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And it was like, it's okay. It's a dangerous combination.

[Joe Rogan]

Person does a lot of coke, usually would buy.

[Roger Avary]

That was a fun party.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And his name was Tuttle. And we always described excess as Tuttle. Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna get. We're getting into a tunnel situation.

[Roger Avary]

Dude, I'm so Tuttled.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's hilarious. It became like your f. Yeah. Oh, that's so funny. When I worked at, in Boston at Nick's Comedy Stop, they would offer to pay you in cocaine or cash. There was guys who just took the cocaine. The certain comics, they just wanted to get paid in coke. Yeah. Wild times, you know, that's the eighties.

[Roger Avary]

It was the eighties. It was the eighties.

[Quentin Tarantino]

That was actually even kind of an interesting situation because like, it was also one of those things where like, I was actually really kind of proud of us because we all kind of like, woo. We all kind of went nutty for like a little bit with this kind of like more access to coke than we normally have. Would have more access.

[Roger Avary]

More access to coke than we ever had.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Ever had. Ever had. You know, because we can't afford that shit. All right. And so we all kind of went nuts for like a little bit about it. And then we all kind of like, okay, let's.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, enough of that.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Let's bring it together.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's great.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Let's bring it together.

[Joe Rogan]

Let's figure that out.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And we, and we also saw some other people who were like, who let it get. Let it get the best of them.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And they got really kind.

[Joe Rogan]

Like your friend with the story about being bitter.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's the same sort of thing.

[Joe Rogan]

The same sort of thing. You go, oh, I know where this is going.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And so we all like, okay, let's. Let's pull back. Let's get. Let's. Let's. Let's get control of this. And then. And we all did. Yeah, it was all collectively. We all kind of just got our shit together and put it in the rearview mirror.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Didn't mean we didn't do it, but we just, it was, we controlled it.

[Joe Rogan]

Contrary to your goals.

[Quentin Tarantino]

We'll stay with pop. We'll stay with Pop.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Roger Avary]

Well, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

When I was growing up, a bunch of people that I knew got hooked on coke and that's what kept me from ever doing coke.

[Roger Avary]

I. What? Stopped. I mean, I had children and suddenly it was like, oh my God, like, I have to be on call 24 7.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. You can't be out coked up.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, I like that. That's not going to last anymore.

[Joe Rogan]

That gets in the way of.

[Roger Avary]

That gets in the way.

[Joe Rogan]

Mushroom trips.

[Roger Avary]

And pretty soon my Saturday mornings became more important than my Friday nights. This is pretty simple.

[Quentin Tarantino]

My thing about priority was I wanted to have excess or I didn't. Oh, I wasn't that interested in it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

You want to take it to 12?

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, I wanted to have a big pile of it. And we're doing it all night. Until.

[Roger Avary]

Until this is gone.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Until. Until this. Until the straw is bloody. Yeah. You know. Okay, now I'm stopping now because the straw got bloody.

[Joe Rogan]

I think it's like some people don't have the ability to only do that once. Like, for whatever reason, some people, they have that thing and they do coke a little bit, then they just want to keep doing coke.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. That's scary when that.

[Joe Rogan]

It is scary.

[Roger Avary]

That's scary when that happens.

[Joe Rogan]

Because you're captured by a demon.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. You know, and it's literally. And I think it's literally a demon.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

No, I think in the classic gin sense. Sure word. Where it's whispering into your ear.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, in a sense, it does all things a demon would do. You know, you. You could say the demons aren't real. Okay. But they might be real. Look, they've been.

[Roger Avary]

There's pretty good evidence. You think there's pretty good evidence.

[Joe Rogan]

There's a lot of. We live, like, legitimate evil in the world. And where is that coming from? What's that energy? Like, what begets that? What is the reason why people are willing to mass murder? Like, what is it? What is it? People are willing to launch missiles into cities. What is that? Where's that coming from? There's got to be, like. That would be evil if you defined it in the classic sense of the word. When an invading army comes into a village and hacks people, that's not demonic. That's not evil. You're lighting children on fire and throwing them on thatched roofs. That's not demonic. Seems pretty demonic. Like, a demon would do that. Whether the physical demon exists is almost, like, not even important. It's like demonic behavior is 100% documented.

[Roger Avary]

What would Jesus do?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, right, Right.

[Roger Avary]

Just ask yourself.

[Joe Rogan]

But it's a thing.

[Roger Avary]

It's unlikely he's going to raise a fist.

[Joe Rogan]

Everybody wants to be smart, and you want to be secular. And you never want to say that you believe in something that's superstitious or ridiculous. So you don't believe in religion, you're either agnostic or you're atheist. That's how you get respect. And it's like this weird thing where you're not willing to consider, like, okay, but what are the actions? What are the actions of good and the actions of evil? There's. The actions are real. Right? And we all know in our heart and our soul, when you do a good thing, how you feel versus how you. When you do, how do a bad thing, how you feel like. So what is. What are those forces?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Apocalypse Now. When Brando Kurtz tells the story of going into the village and inoculating the children in the village, shooting their arms with flu shots or something like that. Inoculating them. And then the soldiers came in and then hacked off all the kids arms. And then there's like a little pile of arms. And Kurt says, you know, so we did all that. Then we came back into the village the next day. We saw the little pile of all the little arms in there where they hacked them off. And I cried like a baby. Then I started thinking, the genius of that. The genius of that, because these are not monsters. They're not demons. These are men doing a job. And they had the force of will to take the job and take it to its logical conclusion of what they had to do. I'm not condoning. I'm not condoning what Kurtz is saying. Kurtz is a fucking crazy person. But I'm interested in his perspective. Of course, that would be Kurtz's perspective. He's speaking about true power, where he's a God. He's a God you worshiped by these natives. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Clearly lost his fucking mind in the fog of war.

[Quentin Tarantino]

He's completely lost his mind in the fog of war. But he's talking like Genghis Khan.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes, exactly. Like they all talk. Yeah, but this is the thing where you're suspicious of power, right? Like, why are you suspicious? Well, you should be. Because you see where it ultimately leads. It ultimately leads to a curse, or it ultimately leads. Leads to the way to really be in control of people. Like, you have to use violence. You can only use words for so long.

[Roger Avary]

Strong men hold civilizations together. That's just a fact of things. Both of us have become friends over the years with John Milius.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah. Who wrote Apocalypse.

[Roger Avary]

Who wrote Apocalypse Now. And, you know, John is the kind of guy who's like, you know, conquerors.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Conquerors.

[Roger Avary]

You know, the. And he wrote a script about gang. Genghis Khan. And. Yeah. That I worked on with him to help Turn it into a series. My daughter and I helped him with it after he had a stroke. And you know, you look at his Genghis Khan script and he's, you know, he's realistically talking about these horrific atrocities that just, you know, sewing people up in felt and lighting it on fire and throwing them in river, just however you can kill somebody, he figured out a way to do it better and. But at the same time, you know, he invented paper money and he invented the Silk Road and he, you know, pulled, pulled, you know, that whole region of the world together under one empire. And you know, over the course of it, you know, you start out as, you know, almost like Conan, Conan the warrior. Conan the Conqueror. Conan the King, eventually.

[Quentin Tarantino]

King by his own hand.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, a king by your own hand. And eventually you start realizing.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And John Millais also wrote and directed Conan the Barbarian.

[Roger Avary]

And so he rightly recognizes that it's strong men who conquer, but also who hold together and maintain order. And there's a balance to be had between force and strength and compassion as well. Too much compassion fashion. You know, countries fall apart.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

Too much introspection. Countries fall apart.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. And when things are too good, when.

[Roger Avary]

Things are too good, things are too easy.

[Joe Rogan]

And you think they're supposed to be easy. You don't understand how they became easy and what keeps them easy. Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of where we are right now.

[Roger Avary]

Weird times right now is that we.

[Joe Rogan]

Are, we're in a Conan movie.

[Roger Avary]

Well, it does feel a little few like we're in kind of neo feudalistic times where there's highwaymen that you have to contend with when you go out and everything's a little more fragile.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, there's also this new thing which is the Internet and social media. And there's this new thing that has overcome our minds and it's affecting everyone in this very bizarre way. And it's making people more tribal and more inclined towards echo chambers, more antagonistic against opposing beliefs and views. So you were saying about like being able to sit and have a conversation with someone and completely disagree, but not take it personally, just disagree about the points we've lost that in our society.

[Roger Avary]

It'S really important to be able to engage with other people, to disagree with them.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Roger Avary]

And then to know that that's just that we can still have dinner together, we can still be friends.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I can. Okay, so I go on a show and I say that I like Joker 2. Well, I say I like Joker 2. Now there's 150 articles that come out on all these cannibalized articles where one person listens to the thing and writes an article about it. And then there's 150 rip off articles on that. And then you read the comments. A fucking asshole that movies fucking suck me. He's a fucking asshole for saying that. Why am I a fucking asshole? All right? That makes me a fucking asshole.

[Joe Rogan]

It's crazy.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You either like the movie or you don't, all right? And I'm not plugging the movie. I'm not saying I'm not doing anything, all right? I'm just saying I like it. Who gives a fuck what I like, Right? What do you care what the fuck I like?

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Roger Avary]

And also.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But then I'll say I didn't see something. Well, he's a fucking asshole, all right? What do you care what the fuck I see and what I don't see? What the fuck do you fucking care?

[Joe Rogan]

But there's no one in front of him to say that he's an idiot alone with his phone. If he just said it out loud amongst reasonable people, they would turn to him, what the fuck are you talking about? But he doesn't get that check, which is also part of the problem with social media.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Someone say something like, well, I think he's fucking missing out. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of shit I can say that you're missing out on. And I don't care if you miss out.

[Joe Rogan]

Also, you have to be missing out, otherwise you don't have a life.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

How much information do you think you can absorb in a day? How much things do you watch and.

[Roger Avary]

Listen to four movies a day, apparently.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. That's a lot of time, man. You have to miss out. There's going to be shit you miss out on. Well, the other thing is, if you're a film fan today, you're not just dealing with today's films. You're dealing with this insane archive. It goes back to Rocky.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, goes back to, you know, on the Waterfront.

[Roger Avary]

Goes back to the 20s.

[Joe Rogan]

Good Lord, there's so many films to watch.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Like, you know, a film that Saw that was like, very meaningful to me this year is I really like the story of Beau Geste, you know, the French Foreign Legion story. I like French Foreign Legion movies anyway, but that's a really cool story. And I really like the whole story of the three brothers in there. And, you know, I was familiar with the Gary Cooper version, the 1939 version, put it on a stamp. But I'd never seen the Silent version, and it starred Ronald Coleman. And I watched the silent version recently and I was blown away by it. The storytelling was so epic and was so visually just beautiful. And we have a little micro cinema in the theater. I have one of the theaters I have in Los Angeles, the Vista. And it's like a little 20 seat cinema that we just show VHS and 16 millimeter.

[Roger Avary]

It's our Video archives.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, it's like Video Archive. The Video Archive Cinema Club. And it's like literally, it's like the brick and mortar version of Video Archives, but like a little Paris back out Back Avenue.

[Roger Avary]

It's like a little clubhouse. I mean, it's open to everybody, but for our core fans.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And the thing is, and we. We showed last week, we showed the. The silent version of Bo Jest in it. And. And I wasn't there at that screening, but I asked the guy who was our manager there, Matt, I go. I said, how did it go? He goes, quinn, you would have really loved to have been there for that screen. And I go, well, what? He goes, it was so moving, the end of it. And it is really moving. And it's just like nobody was talking. It was just.

[Roger Avary]

It was emotional.

[Quentin Tarantino]

You could hear a pin drop. And then was over. And everyone was still kind of in this collective emotional state. And they just all kind of left the theater and they just seen something emotional and they all kind of just moved out into the lobby and in this emotional state. And it was like, that sounds fantastic.

[Joe Rogan]

That's amazing.

[Roger Avary]

I mean, I think one of the most magical things about movies is that it can speak to you at different times of your life, you know, at the different windows of opportunity in your life. So you might see a movie and not like it. And then, you know, people might see Joker 2 today and not really care for it. And then five years from now, revisit it and watch it again and you're in a different place, and culture is in a different place. Everything. Things in a different place. And you have a different perspective on the movie. And maybe you like the movie. I hated Blade Runner when it first came out. Did not like the film. I thought it was awful. Really awful. Like boring. Like muddled. Like everything that was wrong. Suddenly I'm seeing Kubrick shots in the end from the Shining.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Like Roger would say, Blade Runner should be called Blade Crawler.

[Roger Avary]

No, I was really hard. I was really hard on movies. I was a really angry young guy.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And he was such a prick about shit. He's a completely different guy. All right, now he's like bends over backwards to be nice about something. Who the fuck is this guy?

[Joe Rogan]

Humbled by life.

[Roger Avary]

Well, I Now look at, I mean, having, you know, been a filmmaker and, you know, and knowing the struggle that goes into getting something on screen. Look, I know how hard it is sometimes to get what you have up here, here on the screen and doesn't always work. And sometimes you're faking it by the time it gets to the cut. But, you know, it's not an easy thing to. It's not. So when I watch a movie now, I'm applying my life experience to it and I'm like, okay, this movie may not be the greatest movie, but this is somebody's vision. And I'm going to give that, you know, I'm gonna value that and give myself to it and try to find in it what I like about it. And so I always give every movie a shake, you know, a good shake.

[Quentin Tarantino]

What's happened with our show that I think is really cool again from the fans that follow it and everything is. In our first season, we ended up like covering about 70 movies, you know, all together. And we mentioned a zillion movies in the course of a show, but like, you know, we covered about 70 movies altogether. And between the three movies that we did over the course of like 26 episodes. And we kind of created new classics, at least amongst the people who followed the show, because they followed it and they liked it and they watched some old Mexican horror movie like Demonoid and they hated it. That was pretty cool.

[Roger Avary]

Demonoid is amazing.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And then everybody. And everybody would put it down. If you tried to look at anything about it, it would all be shitty reviews about it and everything. But then we talked about it with passion and then we gave the right context in which to appreciate the movie. It's a killer hand movie. And we gave the right context in which to appreciate the movie. And then the people appreciated it under that right context, like because a movie.

[Roger Avary]

Is old and because maybe they didn't have the money to do it like super clean or perfect.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Actually, that actually has the most best hand effects of all.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, that movie in particular is actually a tough one to. Because it's. Is this demon.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's a killer hand that everybody up.

[Roger Avary]

And the thing is this the best, like hand on the loose movie.

[Quentin Tarantino]

It's a mexploitation movie. Okay. A Mexican exploitation movie. But the one that's great about one, she's fantastic. And it's Samantha Egger. Samantha Egger is become one of our heroes. All right, from the show.

[Roger Avary]

I love Samantha Egger, but this movie looks hilarious.

[Quentin Tarantino]

But what's night? But what's really cool about the Mexican horror genre is they take their tacky horror very seriously. It's tacky horror, but they take it really seriously. And you appreciate the seriousness that they're delivering their payload with.

[Roger Avary]

And I know how hard it is to do some of the things that they're doing. This is like it's pre computer graphics. They have a limited budget, but their vision is so big. And you're watching it, you're like, oh, my God. This is. If you just like, if you try not to judge it on what a movie looks like today.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, but not only just that. What's interesting is when you see some of the effects, that there's a couple of the effects. Well, how did they do that? Because it's all done practical. And then some of it is like, oh, well, I can see how they did that, but oh my God, that's so fucking clever. They figured out how to do it in such a clever way. I can see how they did, but that's so neat because they just figured out how to do it on camera in a way that sells it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

And it's a crazy movie also. That is crazy. It's like you're inside of some sort of crazy Mexican's head making a horror movie. It's fantastic.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, the horror genre is hard to do. Did not make ridiculous.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. Although the best thing about the horror genre and science fiction is that they're the best vehicles to kind of study culture and sociological issues. Because you have that abstraction layer that, you know, makes people think, oh, I'm just watching a science fiction film or I'm just watching a horror movie.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Roger Avary]

Like you watch dawn of the Dead and. Yeah, you're watching a movie about zombies in a shopping mall. Or are you watching a movie about the vanishing middle class being drawn to the consumer temple because it's what they remembered from their lives that was an important place to them.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Like literally quoting the movie.

[Roger Avary]

I'm actually quoting my liner notes that I wrote for the DVD way back when.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Let me stop and go to the bathroom one more time. The coffee is making me take a picture.

[Joe Rogan]

No worries.

[Roger Avary]

Go for it.

[Joe Rogan]

We can keep going. Okay, so when you first got into this, like, did you have like a film that you aspired to create? Something like, like when you first. Did you say, I got. You know, like, it's a composite, Like, I want to be the next Murphy?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, it's. It was a composite. It was a composite. I have, like a kind of a top three filmmaker. You know, when you're a young filmmaker and when you're a young child, you look to your parents to learn how to behave. You know, you're a child and you look. You look to them and you're like. They teach you how to be sure. And so to. At the beginning of your life, you're copying your parents. And because that's. That's who you love, and that's what you're copying. When you're a young film filmmaker, very frequently you kind of copy your parents, your cinematic parents. And, you know, so in my case, you. I mean, you know, in many filmmakers, like, for instance, Stanley Kubrick, who is one of my favorite filmmakers, who. I'm always thinking about his zero point perspective, his reverse tracking shots. I just love the intention of his shots and how he assembles his movies. I. I like everything about his work.

[Joe Rogan]

Kubrick, huge fan.

[Roger Avary]

If you love Fritz Lang, you can see that. Oh, Kubrick was. That's how he felt about Fritz Lang. Like, when I watch M, I can see the Kubrick shots.

[Joe Rogan]

Is Fritz Lang Metropolis?

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, he did Metropolis. He did. I mean, it's like some of the greatest.

[Joe Rogan]

Metropolis is wild.

[Roger Avary]

Metropolis is a super, super powerful and kind of important movie that's exactly talking about everything that's going on today that people should see. The movie I was thinking about was M, which is his movie with Peter Lorre about the pedophile who's. And the movie's made in just before the Nazis took power. And so he's making a movie that's really about, like, kind of the rise of. The rise of Hitlerian fascism in Europe. But he's doing it through this movie about a pedophile. And it's. It's Peter, and Peter Laurie is fantastic. And it's actually his first sound movie. Like, Fritz Lang hadn't made a sound movie. And so every single shot in the film is based on sound. So he'll have shadows talking and the backs of people's heads talking. Or even the device of the movie is Peter Laurie whistling peer giant. You know, that becomes, like, the device by which they find the killer in the movie. So the whole movie is about sound. So as a young filmmaker, if you want to learn how to use sound in a movie, that's the movie to see. Because every single shot, like it used to be, you would show an empty frame and it would just be a shot of nothing. But, you know, now Fritz Lang is able to juxtapose like, a woman has lost her daughter. She's calling for her daughter. And so she's looking for her daughter, and she's looking for her and. Elsa. Elsa. And they cut to an empty shot of a stairwell, and you hear her. Elsa. And they cut to, like, you know, an empty playground. Elsa. And then you see the balloon that she was carrying trapped in something like whipping in the wind. Elsa. And it's super, super intense. But all he's doing is he's using sound juxtaposed with images which he couldn't do before.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

They just called it M. Yeah.

[Roger Avary]

M for murderer. And this is a. This is an amazing, amazing movie. So Kubrick. See, that's a Kubrickian shot. That's. This is where he. Elsa or Elsie. I seem to remember more Elsie's. But I think I got the wrong. It's okay.

[Joe Rogan]

But anyhow.

[Roger Avary]

So Kubrick had his forefathers who he used to watch and that he used to look to. And so those would be, like, my grandparents, in a way. And so there's this lineage of cinematic grammar and vernacular that gets carried on from filmmaker to filmmaker. And eventually, after you've made enough films, you start walking on your own. You start coming up with new ideas. But for me, it was Stanley Kubrick, John Borman. He's the guy who directed Excalibur and Hope and Glory and Point Blank and Hell in the Pacific. I mean, a number of movies. I don't think Quentin is such a big fan of John Borman, some of his films. I think you're a fan of his writing more than you are his films.

[Quentin Tarantino]

No, I have nothing but respect for John.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. And John Borman and then Roman Polanski. I think those three guys, for me and their work. Not the guys, but mostly their work. Like, I am a composite. If you watch my movies, I'm a composite of those guys and other people as well. And those were the filmmakers who are important to me. Those were my. My parents, so to speak.

[Joe Rogan]

Kubrick was such an odd one. Like, his films are so different. And he was a weird guy too. He did like complex mathematics in his spare time.

[Roger Avary]

I do complex mathematics. Nothing wrong with that. No. Yeah, he's a weird guy. But he was also, I think, thinking three steps ahead of everybody at any kind of given moment. Moment. I mean. I mean, to be honest, I was just thinking, I just pulled my script from Eyes Wide Shut. I had a script that was from Set, and I was reading it over the weekend, and I saw that it has this. I Mean, I've known this for a long time, but I started really thinking about it over the weekend. It's missing a narration. It's missing a third person narration that was originally in the movie. That's because the movie was recut and changed after his death. And they will deny it, but as a student of Kubrick, I'm watching the movie and I'm like, well, Kubrick wouldn't do that. Kubrick wouldn't do that either. Kubrick would have trimmed this scene.

[Joe Rogan]

I didn't know they recut it after his death.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Okay, so apparently they finished it.

[Roger Avary]

Well, that's the. That's the party line. That's the party line. But I think that they changed the notes. The closeups, the inserts of the notes. I think those are changed. It's missing a narration. It's definitely missing a narration. A third person narration. That scene where he sees the prostitute who's died. He's at the morgue and he's looking at her and he's leaning over her. It's a bed for narration. There's this whole thing, what they do instead, because they couldn't say that Kubrick finished the movie because they hadn't done the recording of the narrator yet. Maybe they just clutched it together. Except there's an entire thread that's kind of been squashed, squashed in that film. And that's the two men that are throughout the movie that are constantly in the background of the film, who eventually, in the final shots of the film, you see, like, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in that final scene in the toy store when she's looking at the Rosemary's Baby bassinet, which is totally Kubrick saying something. And they never take their eyes off their daughter until the moment they take their eyes off. And the final line of the movie is coming up. You see those two guys walking off with the daughter. They're taking her away. They've given their daughter to the pedo cult. That's what's happened at the end of the movie. And there's an incident where when they first screened the movie in England, people who were outside apparent this is all secondhand, by the way. There were people who were outside of the theater who could hear inside the theater Kubrick yelling at all the executives and saying, it's my movie. You can't cut it. I. You can't cut my film.

[Joe Rogan]

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Roger Avary]

Big argument going on. Then he dies, like, four days later. Oh, Jesus. So somebody went in and finished the movie. But I think when they finished the movie. They hid the film. The. The movie got changed into something else. And I would love to finish that film. I like.

[Joe Rogan]

I'm like, have you ever made an attempt.

[Roger Avary]

I've thought about it. And reading the script over the weekend, I started seriously thinking about it. Well, somebody should recut this. Or somebody should.

[Joe Rogan]

So it'd just be a matter of recutting it with narration?

[Roger Avary]

Well, yes and no. There's obviously missing. There would be missing footage. Now there's things have been removed and is that. No, not unless you crack it open. And there's no way anybody think they would never.

[Joe Rogan]

But hold on. Here's the thing.

[Roger Avary]

Now we have AI Well, I know that's. You're one step ahead of me. I'm one step ahead of you. I've actually been experimenting a lot with.

[Joe Rogan]

AI the newer versions are pretty stunning.

[Roger Avary]

I've been working on Runway lately, which is.

[Joe Rogan]

The curve is insane. The exponential curve of improvement.

[Roger Avary]

I'm literally, as I'm working on things, I'll be talking to the guys and I'll be saying, well, it'd be nice to be able to move the camera. Okay, we got that tool on Tuesday. We're going to give that to you. And so it's like literally whatever you think you can't do, ask us, because we probably will be able to do it in a couple of days. And so it's advancing so fast and so rapidly that I, without telling you, Quentin, I made a little claymation version of you. And I have him talking and kind of funny looking version of both you and me.

[Joe Rogan]

How bizarre that something that would have cost like hundreds of millions of dollars, like, if you wanted to do a film like a pixel type, you know, one of those crazy movies where you have all this like, insane animation that took forever.

[Roger Avary]

The best work that I've seen of it lately. It was the first time I've been kind of ignoring AI and like, I know what it is. It's like form completion with visuals. And I get it. I understand what it is. And we'll see. We'll see. But I like tactile. I like tactile, and I do. But I worked on Beowulf. I made Beowulf with Robert Zemeckis. And like, that was a big, you know, video puppetoon type CGI thing.

[Quentin Tarantino]

My original movie, motion capture.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah. My original plan for that movie, because I was going to direct it myself, was to make it like, you know, in Iceland, you know, under $10 million, you know, just really dirty. I wanted it to be like you know, like an early Terry Gillian film like Jabberwocky. That was actually the one Neil and I were thinking about when. Yeah, Neil Gaiman, when my co writer on that film. And the movie ended up getting made much bigger, it turned suddenly it was like whatever budget I had was probably our craft service budget. Nothing like making a hundred million dollar movie. It's like sushi every day, you know, champagne, fly the plane to England, you know, whatever you want. It's like. It's crazy. But that was definitely not the movie I had planned on making. However, when we made it, like. And it turned into this big performance capture thing, it was fun. Like working with Zemeckis and he's such a. Like an excitable, like creative genius. Like he's. And even before you were able to do stuff like what he was doing in that film, he was like constantly taking. You know, like when he made contact. Oh, we'll take that eyebrow off of Jodie Foster. And I like that eyebrow thing she does. And so put that on this take. And so he was like messing with her face and doing all sorts of performance stuff. And even when you go back to his earliest film, I want to hold crazy. I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand is almost a visual trick. You know, having the Beatles there but not be there. And even though he's not using computer graphics, I think he's just a really super inventive guy. And it was so much fun making the movie with him because we were here. Was that inventing technologies. That was 2010 that.

[Joe Rogan]

I think Jamie came out Beowulf. Let's watch them in that. I want to remember what it looks like.

[Roger Avary]

It looks probably like a video game pre cut scene at this point.

[Joe Rogan]

That's what's crazy, right?

[Roger Avary]

Like, I couldn't make. I've thought about taking Beowulf, importing it into my system and then just painting over it.

[Joe Rogan]

That's with no.

[Roger Avary]

Which.

[Joe Rogan]

Let's go.

[Roger Avary]

Which by the way, you can do easily.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, easily.

[Roger Avary]

I thought about fixing.

[Joe Rogan]

Let me see what this looks like with the Beow Wolf. Oh, jeez.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, I mean, it looks like a. Like a video game cutcene at this point.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. But it was kind of cool because everybody looked like that. Not just the monster.

[Roger Avary]

That's.

[Joe Rogan]

That was of cool about it.

[Roger Avary]

I mean, the difference is, is that this was actual, like performances. And so we could. We could take, you know, Ray Winstone and have him. Ray Winstone doesn't look like that. Like, he looks a little heftier. And.

[Joe Rogan]

Cuts his own arm off.

[Roger Avary]

Cuts my arm. Cut my own arm off. It's funny, cuz my. Our original script was much more modest than this. But then Zimikus was like, okay, boys, it costs a million dollars a minute. Do whatever you want.

[Joe Rogan]

He stabs a dragon in the heart. Oh no.

[Roger Avary]

This movie is kind of a. I mean, it's a little. It's an interesting experience. What happened to me on this film, if you don't mind.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Roger Avary]

So I. So I was going to make this movie myself. I had set it up initially at Image Movers with Zimikus producing, and then it fell out and the rights kind of reverted back to me. I had to cover the turnaround on it, but the rights reverted back to me and I was going to go make the movie myself for nothing. And I was trying to set it up and it was really. I was broke at the time and I was not going to make money. And I had to cover the turnaround expenses myself on the film, which were considerable. But I wanted to make the movie really bad. And I was working on Silent Hill, this other movie I wrote, and I suddenly started getting calls and it was like, the producer of Polar Express, this guy Steve Bang, wanted to buy the script. He's like, I want to buy it for Zimicus. And I said, too little, too late. I'm making it now. And I kept saying no and every. And I was working on this film in Canada and I'm just trying to finish it and. And every hour I'm getting a call from agents at ca and they're like, jack Rapke, right? Yeah, it was actually. Yeah, it was Jack. How did you know it was Jack? Did I tell you that?

[Quentin Tarantino]

Well, no, because. Well, he was. He was Zemeckis's agent and became Zemeckis.

[Roger Avary]

That's right. That's right. And so I was getting.

[Quentin Tarantino]

And he's the guy who gets shit done.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, he is the guy who gets shit done. Well, I was like, you know, no, no, no. And you know, no, I won't. I'm doing it myself. No, no. And Steve Bang. And I said, if another agent calls me, I'm firing the agency. And they're like, will you. Will you at least meet with the producer? And so I went ahead and I meet with them and he says, listen, if I don't make this film with Samikos, with Bob, I'm going to miss the moment. I'm going to lose the movie. It's going to be over. What's your price? Just Tell me, what's your price? And I said, I don't have a price. I don't work like that. He said, listen, everybody's got a price. I said, well, I may have one, but I'm not going to tell you. And he's like, look, why don't you just tell me? Just discourage me. So I said, okay, you want me to discourage you? And so I started, like, making shit up. I need this, I want that. I want this, I want this. I tried to come up with how much money had anybody ever made on a script? And let's add some money to that. I went over the top. He's like, well, Roger, that is. And I had grown a beard to make the movie and, like, grew my hair long like a Viking to learn about, you know, why Vikings had beards, et cetera, all that kind of stuff. I'm making the movie. I'm a Viking. He said, well, Roger, that is really discouraging, but we have a deal. And I was like. And I was like, well, okay. And I started driving home and I started like. I had never done anything. I'd never done something for money before. I'd always done it because I. For passion. And then the money came, and this was the first time in my life that I had ever made a choice based on money, this titanic amount of money. And I was, understand broke. And I went home and I cried, and then the check came, and nothing dries tears like money. And then Zus invited me into the process, which was really great of him. He really wanted me, me and Neil to. To be at his side and collaborate with him, and it was a fabulous experience. But to be honest, I was like, who am I now? What is it all mean? I just gave away something I wanted to do. My entire life, I've always been chasing this John Borman film, Excalibur. I think it's one of the most beautiful movies ever made about the Arthurian legends. And if you watch Beowulf and Excalibur, they're very similar, actually thematically. And so I was like, who am I now? What does it all mean? You know what? I don't even care. I don't even know if I want to make a movie anymore. What do I have to tell now? Now that I've just completely sold out? And then I was at a dinner and big dinner, and I was driving home that night, and I was giving somebody who was at the dinner a lift. My wife was in the backseat of the car, and we were. I told my daughter I was going to be home by midnight. We lived in. Oh, and it was dark, and I. So I was speeding. I have a lead foot, and I was speeding to get there. Without getting into the details of what happened. There was. I lost control of the car. There was another vehicle, but they fled the scene. I lost control of the vehicle. I. I think my tire blew, but I was going into a ditch, and I knew I was going into a. Into this deep ditch because it was right near my house, full of rocks and stuff. And I knew if I go in there, we'll die. And so I turned into the thing and then I turned away from it to try to. The car spun out, and I ended up on the other side of the street where I knew there was, like, a cow pasture. And I was like, well, what's the worst thing that could happen there? Well, it was pretty bad. There was a telephone pole, and I hit the telephone pole. My passenger took the impact, and my wife was thrown from the car. When I came to, all I could hear was the horn. You know, my hearing is going to have glass in my mouth, and I'm. I'm injured as well. I climb out of the car and it's dark. It's really dark. But somebody's already arrived. The ex DA from Ventura county who did all the drunk driving laws and put those on the books. And he was the first person on the scene. I was right near the fire department. They showed up shortly afterwards. But when I jumped out of the car, I came running around to see what happened, and I saw my wife on the. On the asphalt. She'd been thrown from the vehicle. And I threw myself onto, you know, onto my knees on the. On the pavement. And I found myself in that moment asking for the one thing that mattered, which was just life. She looked dead. And she. And I just. In that moment, I dug down. I begged her to come back to life. And I just said, I will give anything for life, just in any form, I'll take it. And in that moment, she came back to life. It was like the life came back into her. Okay, it was a completely fucked up scene. My other passenger is dying in the car or dead, and the police are suddenly there. And next thing I know, I'm in jail. And suddenly, suddenly I found myself in jail. I found myself guilty of manslaughter and something that is absolutely irreversible happening, which is, you know, someone lost their life at my hand. And so after that, I, you know, I ended up. I found myself in jail and doing time and suddenly everything that had come was gone. Like, everything that I had made, gone. It all went, you know, out.

[Quentin Tarantino]

All that money you made all that.

[Roger Avary]

To the settlement, is it. I didn't have time to spend it. Didn't even have time to register that it was there and it was gone, because it doesn't. It was like it was not real. And. And then you find yourself in jail and. And. And suddenly everything is gone. Career is gone. Everybody stops calling. It's over. Two number two hit films. Doesn't matter. It's all over. In fact, it was right in the middle of the publicity on Beowulf. It was just toward the end of it. And it was. It's the most horrible thing that. That has ever happened to me. And I. And I found myself then alone in jail, incarcerated, alone with my remorse and regret and really getting existential about things really, like coming to appreciate, you know, simple existence is the best thing there is. It's. People don't appreciate what we have. You don't appreciate it until it's gone. And it is. Can go like, first of all, we live in bodies of glass. My wife was horribly injured and, you know, and it has been a decade to, you know, to not just rebuild our lives, but to, you know, for her to come back to health, even what it did, though, you know, as. Because I would do anything to reverse that, to reverse what happened. I would give anything to do it. And I don't say this lightly, but having said that, I'm kind of grateful as well, because I was like, asleep walking through life. And it wasn't until that happened that I completely, like. It changed how I see everything. It was like my third eye opened up. I don't view anything the same way. I. You know, once you've been incarcerated and you've been deprived of everything and you have a lot of time to think and be existential, you come out of that. At least I came out of that experience. And, you know, I looked at a tree and I was like, okay, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. I hope I never not feel this way. This appreciation for a class Loud. You know, to be able. Like when you're imprisoned, to be able to pet a cat, for example. It's so simple. It's such a nothing thing. You think, okay, to be able to pet an animal is like a gift. The simplest things are gifts. When I was in jail, it was also a little bit like a comedy. You know, you have people walking in circles and, you know, Everybody's trying to control the outside, and so you start really seeing human behavior up front. I mean, when I was in jail, you know, they're literally during the Academy Awards, it's on the TV in the tank, and I'm watching him win, like, for Django, the Oscar for Django. So while Quentin is, like, at the height of things, I'm pretty much at.

[Quentin Tarantino]

The bottom, watching through bars.

[Roger Avary]

And not only that, but Greg Shapiro, who produced the Rules of Attraction for me, my producer, who came and visited me with Robin Wright in the days that followed, he won for Zero Dark Thirty. And so I'm like. They're like to be taken from one point where you feel like you're at the top, and you're like, oh, you think you understand. Understand things? No, I'm gonna take you and put you at the bottom. But let me tell you something. In that moment, I was sitting on the asphalt, and my wife came back to life. I immediately knew what I had to say as a filmmaker. After that, it was like, whatever had. Whatever cynicism I had had, you know, about the movie and not making it, it just went away.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Evaporated.

[Roger Avary]

Yeah, it evaporated. Evaporated. It evaporated. And the ecstatic experiences and they were ecstatic that I had in jail were like. I mean, you see things kind of for real when you see somebody, you know, get hanged by their celly in. In a cell, or when you see. When you know that, you know, oh, that El Salvadorian ms.13 hitman guy, he's gonna kill that. That gay dude. He's gonna kill him in the yard. I'll go lock myself in my cell. Literally, I'll go lock myself in. You shut the door, because, you know, shit is gonna go down. And so, like. Like, that was, like, every day. And so suddenly it was like, you know. And also, you really know, who stands with you after something horrible happens. And, like, John Langley, our customer from Video Archives, ended up being like. When I. Like I said, when I was in jail, he loaned me money and he gave me my first job. When I got out, that was our customer who did that. And so, like, I value our customers and especially John and his family and Maggie, who I like, it really is. I talk about John a lot, but really, Maggie, she was really my big champion, I think. And so, anyhow, what it taught me, actually, because I was a filmmaker and I was up my own ass most of the time, but what it kind of taught me was, you know, be compassionate to other people, because you might not know it, but they might be going through shit in their lives, you know, and God forbid it be something health related, which is almost out of your control. But you know, people are suffering and people are struggling and I used to be a lot more cavalier about people and kind of with people and, and be forceful with people and not really care as much. Now I'm acutely aware of people and you know, what they may be going through. It's just, I think this is the.

[Joe Rogan]

Best way to wrap this up. Perfect. Gentlemen, thank you very much. This is an awesome conversation.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Really, really appreciate it. Thank you for letting us.

[Joe Rogan]

Three and a half hours flew by.

[Roger Avary]

Thank you.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Oh my God. I, I, I, I, I, I actually thought, oh, I guess he's wrapping it up quick.

[Joe Rogan]

No, I think it's three hours.

[Quentin Tarantino]

I thought it was like three hours and 15 minutes. Thought it was like 90 minutes.

[Joe Rogan]

No, there it is. The video archives podcast on on patreon.

[Roger Avary]

Patreon patreon.com patreon.com video archives. If you just look up video podcast.com.

[Joe Rogan]

It'Ll leave you there.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Beautiful.

[Joe Rogan]

Thank you guys. Appreciate it.

[Quentin Tarantino]

Thank you, thank you.