Truth and Art: Inside the Mind of Joshua Miller

On this episode, Seano McFarland interviews his friend and client, Joshua John Miller, a talented writer and director known for his cult classics and personal storytelling. The conversation delves into Josh's tumultuous experiences with addiction, identity struggles, and his Hollywood lineage while highlighting his journey towards self-acceptance and creative reinvention. They also discuss the importance of finding purpose in sobriety, the transformative power of storytelling, and the need for a supportive community.

 

Keep in Touch With:

Instagram: @Seanovenice

Website: https://www.shellvenice.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My mom would get a call at two in the morning,
and I feel like it would be not me calling her,
it would be a man calling my mother to say,
your son is overdosing in our dungeon. I'm on my
own in a gay club in Santa Monica at fourteen
and a half. Whow Now. I was afraid to be

(00:20):
known by anybody there because I didn't want to be
known as gay, and I was sort of uncertain as well,
so I pretended I was French. I think with sexuality
you hide and you have the separate life. I think
when you realize that it doesn't have to be so

(00:41):
lonely that you know, you need to be around people
who support what you are, that you can talk to
about who you are. You need to have a mirroring.
They don't have necessarily even be gay. They could just
be someone who listens with an open heart. So if
someone's new in recovery, I think you need to find
a purpose, at least in the moment. It doesn't have
to be your life on purpose, but I think finding
something that you wake up in the morning, because I

(01:03):
don't think sobriety is an end in itself, you know,
I think it's a. It's part of what, like you said,
you need to get out of the to have the
magic happen. You need to get out of the house.
And I've seen a lot of people in sobriety stay
in the house, and I didn't get sober to stay
in the house. Straight up, everybody, it's seen on McFarland.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
If you're loving the show, which I gotta believe that
you are right, I mean, hit the subscribe button or
fall a button please and send some love our way.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Because we have a very special show today.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Today on the S Show, I'm sitting down with a
true creative force, my friend and client, Joshua John Miller.
You might know him for cold classics like Near Dark
River's Edge, which is I can't wait to talk to
you about that team which, But today he's behind the
camera making serious waves as a writer and Director's latest film,
The Exorcism, starring Russell Crowth, is a dark, layered and

(02:00):
deeply personal, bold piece of art that wrestles with legacy,
identity and the ghost that we all carry. We're diving
deep into his Hollywood lineage, growing up in the shadows
of cinema, and how he's flipped pain in the power
through storytelling. My brother's not just a filmmaker, he's a
true teller, a boundary pusher, and one of the most
fearless voices working today.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Welcome to the show, sir. Thank you for having me.
You like that intro? Yeah, it's a lot of Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
You're so humble. I could get talk about twenty other
amazing things you've done.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Thank you. I appreciate it, you know, It's what I
mean you. It's funny. You always hope that people are
gonna acknowledge your work, and then when they do, you
get embarrassed. It's like you you want the thing you want,
and then when you get it, you're like, no, I
don't want it. Why do you get embarrassed though we
got it? Uh, I don't know why. But this is
what I'm remembering. I was thirteen years old at Crossroads

(02:58):
School in Listen, Angelus and it was the talent show.
And this is a story about the first time I
ever became self conscious. I think up intol thirteen, nothing
I was fearless. Nothing bothered me. So this was the
Junior high talent show and my friend at the time,
who will remain nameless, said let's do the talent show.

(03:21):
I'll do Madonna like a virgin, and you do Tina Turner,
What's Love got to do with It? I got a
leather skirt, I got my mother's high heels. I did
the wig, thankfully, not blackface. I was just it was
an homage. I showed up at six pm to the

(03:41):
talent show. He wasn't there. It was only me having
to gro ount in front of all my peers in
drag at thirteen years old. Oh my gosh. And then
a week later, this is the worst part of it.
First of all, I did it. I did the show.

(04:03):
I saying What's Love Gotta do with It? Lip SYNCD
in high heels across a stage of parents who all
looked stunned out of their minds that who is this
kid that's doing Tina Turner and drag at thirteen. The
next day, all my friends started making fun of me
and calling me, you know, derogatory terms, and suddenly went wait,

(04:26):
I just thought what I did was cool. Oh I
didn't think for a second I did anything wrong or
weird or strange. And suddenly, like my world that was
this wide got like like micro close up, and everything
just like just shut down and suddenly I became conscious

(04:46):
of every little thing I did. Wow. I didn't think
there was anything wrong, whether I was queer or try whatever.
I was just expressing myself. You know, I'm glad you
brought that up. You know.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
One of the reasons why I wanted you on the show,
and there's a lot of them, is you and I
share a lot of saying. One is our profound lonliness
at that age. You know, it was just a very
I've always connected with you about how scary the world
was and who we looked to to tell us it
wasn't that bad.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Well I looked to Tina Turner, but you know that.
But actually there's some truth in that, because there was
a story about a human being who had been like
at a young age, I knew this was a woman
who had been abused, had survived the abuse, found a
spiritual life in Buddhism, and found her way back as

(05:42):
a great artist with her own identity. I think in
her divorce she was willing to give up all the
rights to her music that she did with Ike if
she could keep her name.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, And I thought, well, oh wow, so that's even
then you were like, looking, Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
I was like, it's about intense and dignity and holding
on to your soul right and and your work and
your art because she had that, you know, her holding
onto her name was part of her artistic identity, and
she knew she needed that name to truck forward. You
started acting at what eight? Around there? Around there? I

(06:19):
mean I was always performing, yeah, but your actual first
my first job was I don't know, probably yeah, around
that age. I mean, you know, some commercial or something
like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
And then but your Hollywood Royalty, I don't know what
that means. Well, I mean, if your dad wins a Pulser,
if he wins a Tony, if he's nominated for an
Academy Awards, he's in one of the greatest films of
all time.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
I'm Malibu Royalty, your dad man. Yeah, No, everybody in
the everyone in the family is in the business. Yeah yeah,
company town, company family. But I think a family of artists, yeah,
I think it, you know there they everybody try to
do something or has or continues to try to be

(07:07):
I don't like that word artists so much, but they
are artists. Everyone's been an artist. But you got a
half brother's pretty chalented. Yeah, and my mother and my
grandfather and my great grandfather was a visual artist. My
grandmother was one of the first directors and TV female
directors and TV obviously my grandfather, you know, internationally known photographer.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
My brother you know, it's yeah, what's the last time
he watched the uh, the championship season? Oh gosh, that's
the for for listeners, you want to tell give a
little backstory on that.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
It's a play that my father wrote. A year before
the play premiered, he was selling his plasma to survive
and pay for you know, rent, and support his family,
including my younger, not my younger, my older half brother Jason.
It started at the Public Theater and went to broad

(08:00):
Way and he won every single award that was possible
for a place. It's a great play. It still works,
still works. And then he vanished, Yeah, where'd you go?
What happened? He went to too deep into Malibu, got it,
you know, and then he went home to build a
theater to take care of his parents who were sick

(08:21):
in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And remember, at the same time as Pulitzer,
he stars as the priest and the Exorcist, which this
is a guy who was like I said selling Plasma.
Six months prior, Billy Freaking had come to a performance
of that championship season. He looked into the he looked

(08:43):
at the play, you know, the whatever, the playbill, and
saw the picture of my father as the author of
the play and thought, that guy looks like a tortured Catholic.
What isn't he play father Caro. So he and my
dad met at the Plaza Hotel. They were both probably high,

(09:03):
as one imagines people did in the seventies, and my
father didn't want to do The Exorcist because he thought
the He thought the sound of it. He hadn't read
the book yet, but just a popular novel about possession
just seemed cheap da mhn. He just won the Pulitzer.
He had done plays as an actor, but never to
the level at which The Exorcist was. And then he

(09:25):
went home. They had a very contentious meeting, and he
went home read the book and could not stop reading.
And he called Billy Freaking and said, I want to
play this role, and Billy sadly responded, I didn't hear
from you. It's already been cast, you know, Because he
really related to the struggles that the priest has with faith. Wow,

(09:48):
something we can understand. And this was my father's struggles
as my father had been an altar boy, grew up
you know, taught by the Jesuits. I mean, this was
his whole life. And then he begged him, begged him,
and he says, okay, fine, come to LA. You got
to be here tomorrow. We'll do a screen test, even

(10:10):
though someone else has been cast, which my dad responded,
I don't fly. Okay. He's like, well, you have to
be here Tomorrow's like, no, I don't fly. I have
to take a train to Los Angeles. And Billy says, well,
I'm sorry, there's something I can do. My dad gets
on the flight, goes to LA, shows up, does the

(10:31):
screen test. He had never been in front of a
camera in his entire life, gets the role, and you know,
the rest is history. The rest is history because you
have to understand at that time that movie, like we
have like big blockbuster Marvel movies now, but The Exorsus
was a global event. I mean there were lines around

(10:54):
the block from blocks to get into the show. There
were people who went in the morning and brought their
lunches and stayed for every show. Oh wow, there were
people who were taking their lives because they convinced themselves
they were possessed from watching the controversial film. Yeah, it was.
It was a phenomena. So it was a lot. It

(11:14):
was too much for him that and then the Pulitzer
it was, and then my mom and then me coming
It was he just had to hide after.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, let's talk about your mom a little bit. Who
sure you have a lot of love and reverence for Yes,
I do.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
I reference for everyone in my family, even the ones
I loveless or not loveless, just love differently or love
with detachment. What about my mom? But I mean, where
does one begin tell a little bit of the people.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Get folks, what your mom and what she was doing
and you know, and back in that time growing up
raising you.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Well, I've been thinking about her a lot lately because
I'm I'm writing this new book that's based on the
relationship of my grandfather and his creative relationship and friendship
with marily Monroe. Not to get too tangential here, but
to give you a little context. So in the nineteen forties,
my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. He had come to

(12:12):
Los Angeles in the late late thirties, he escaped on
a student visa. He wanted to be a director, he
wanted to be an actor, but his accent was so
thick he could not get a job except to play
a Nazi, and as a German Jew, he didn't want
to play a Nazi. You know, that's fair enough, right,
got it? So he he met a studio executive who said,

(12:36):
can you take a picture of my kid? And so
his mother, before he left Germany had given him a
Brownie camera, so that became sort of his view a
way to document his wow coming into the new world.
And he said, sure, I'll take a picture of your kid.
And of course they love the pictures of the kid,
and then they're like, can you take a picture of

(12:57):
my wife? I wanted her to look a little you know,
make her a little glamorous. You know, I went have
some nice pictures. And so suddenly he took these pictures.
These women fell in love with him. He was dashing,
chrismatic Berliner and they look beautiful. And then suddenly they're like,
you know, you can make some real money if you
take pictures of actors. So he started taking pictures of performers,

(13:18):
and then he had a studio in Sunset Boulevard at
that studio, then went to Palm Springs and he had
a studio on the top of the Riviera Riviera in
Las Vegas, then New Yorca. But before all of that,
he was leaving his dentist's office on right after the
war had ended in September nineteen forty five, and he

(13:38):
did something he never had done. He was leaving his
dentist's office, but he could hardly speak, so he whistled
at this young girl crossing the street who just was
like this apparition in the middle of the day, and
he had this He's like, this is the one. He
felt like this pull towards her. It was Norma Jean Wow,
And I loved that. They started to take pictures. That

(14:02):
next day they went to Griffith Park, Mount Wilson, and
then they began to do a series of sittings and
every day after each sitting they would go and have
dinner and he would sort of be her big brother.
I don't know. I'm still uncovering all his diaries, so
I'm learning about the real nature of their relationship, which
is very interesting. I know I'm talking about you asked

(14:25):
me about my mother. But I almost feel like I
need to start. You may start there. That's such a
great story. So they became close friends, and he was
with her on and off up until his iconic shoot
of the Seven Year Rich which is the Flying Skirt picture,
and they the second Flying Skirt because the first scene

(14:47):
in New York they had to reshoot because it was
a plane going overhead, so they recreated New York at
twentieth In between, she got divorced because Joe Demagio did
not like the fact that she was letting her skirt
blow up in the air in front of fifty photographers.
So when they reshot it, she asked for my grandfather
to be there. They hadn't seen each other many years.

(15:08):
They had a fractured friendship at that point, and that
was the last time they saw each other was the reshoot.
But the reshoot was two days after she announced her
divorce from Joe Demagio. Keep in mind, this is the
you know, it's fifty four, I believe, and Kinsey had
just released Female Sexuality, the book right before you know.

(15:29):
The idea of a married woman letting a skirt fly
up in the air in front of all the people
which was her choice, and you have this like traditional
macho Italian sports icon. He wasn't having it. But she
wasn't going to back down either. I mean, she had
just admitted two years before that those new pictures she

(15:50):
took were hers, despite everyone trying to tell her, no,
you know, you should not admit to that. She's like, no,
I needed the money. I was hungry, right, and that
propelled her. You know, the fact that she took responsibility
for what some would say is the most humiliating moment
in her life. She owned it, and that's how she
became a star. That's what's good better for listeners what

(16:13):
he just said, please say one more time, so plase
you know, all the all the photos came out that
she had taken because she needed the money. She was
about to have her first get cast in her first
big starring role, and all the studio executives were about
to fire her, and in her first public interview about it,

(16:36):
she decided to stand by her decision to pose nude. Right,
she owned the thing that was the most embarrassing part
of her life, which, by the way, she didn't necessarily
feel was the most embarrassing, but she she owned it.
Fully that she was unapologetic and opposed to being slut shamed.

(17:00):
Suddenly the world was like, oh, this poor girl next
door orphan needed the money, right, She's just a girl
who need made her stronger and it made her identifiable
exactly like we've all been in places where we needed
the money and needed to survive. So all women identified

(17:21):
with her and didn't put her into the oh she's
a bad woman. I don't want my husband to see
her in a movie. They felt for her, and then
the men, of course, yeah, you know, they were in
love with her too. So in that moment, everything turned
around and she was propelled to superstart him from the
pictures because pictures at that time were like Instagram or

(17:44):
TikTok viral videos, So pictures and magazines could make you famous,
and so she became a household name before her first
leading role even came out. Oh wow, yeah right, So
he was part of all of that and various other pictures.
And so this book I'm writing is sort of tracing
their friendship from you know, him being an immigrant coming

(18:08):
to America, meeting her, building his world, trying to you know,
assimilate as an outsider, trying to find a home, a family.
In her he found a sense of family, a sense
of home and his art. Those were his two families,
which was not easy for my mother, or my grandmother
for that matter. I bet yeah, all right, well, you

(18:29):
gotta te U a little bit more about mom. So
she I think when Marilyn died in nineteen sixty two,
my mother just became a woman. She was sixteen, She
looked voluptuous, she had breast, she was gorgeous. Suddenly she
became the subject of my grandfather. So he had moved

(18:50):
from Maryland to my mother. And I'm this is all
very fresh right now because I'm writing about it in
the book. And I think that she so she grew
up in this incredible world of being in from the camera.
Then she posed in Playboy in sixty six like Marilyn.
Although Marilyn did not choose to pose in Playboy, Hefner

(19:12):
bought the pictures. There's some ethical issues about that. He's
also buried on top of her and a crypt above her,
which is even more strange. Some people have problems with that.
But his whole magazine was launched because of that, because
he bought those pictures and put them on the cover.
Of put Marilyn on the cover of Playboy, and that's
how well I didn't that's what launched Playboy. And did

(19:33):
I know that that's she didn't see a dime from it? Oh,
goot out here. Yeah. So yeah, another another godfather in
my life. So my grandfather was part of the magazine.
He then you know, my mom wanted to do Playboy
because she felt at that time it was revolutionary. You know,
it was not kynecology shots. They were as my grandfather

(19:55):
would call them. It wasn't in pennhouse. It was art
and it was also once again on the wave of
sort of the beginnings of like a real wave of feminism.
And my mother wanted to pose because she thought it
was cool, yeah, and rock and roll, and she wanted to,
I think, separate herself from her father and other people

(20:17):
and decide, look, I'm beautiful. I see myself as beautiful,
and I'm taking my clothes off and celebrating my sexuality.
So I grew up in a house my grandfather. I
lived with my grandfather a big part of my life,
and my mother's house and pretty much my grandfather's house,
everywhere were pictures of naked women. Wow, I mean everywhere,

(20:38):
and then my mom was writing about Playboy, a book
about it, so there were Playboy magazines everywhere in my house,
which was awesome. But I was like me, Okay, this
is kind of cool and beautiful and it's celebrating sexuality.
And then we would always go to the you know,
the mansion for parties, and I what I I think

(21:00):
I most loved about that experience, other than the zoo
that they that Hefner had at his house, was I
could sense, even though I wasn't traditionally attracted to women,
I could sense there was a sense of a celebration
the good parts. I know, there's bad parts of that world,
but there was a celebration of sexuality, a sense of freedom.

(21:21):
And even as a young queer person who didn't know
they were queer, I knew Hefner supported all kinds of
sexual expression. Oh wow. And in the sixties he funded
tons of obviously civil rights activist groups as well as
a lot of He fought very heavily in the magazine
and financially for gay rights in the sixties and seventies.

(21:46):
So I knew I was safe there going to the
Playboy mansion because He's what it's queer if you think
about it, and I mean just queer in that outside
the margins, outside traditional tro sexual life, here is a
world of people just sort of walking around in their lingerie.
I mean, this doesn't happen at every party. Say what

(22:07):
you will about some of the exploitive aspects of the
Playboy empire, there was. It was a huge part of
playing into men celebrating their free sexual freedom, women celebrating
their sexual freedom. Anyway, that's a whole other I could
go on and on about that, because I think the
controversy about Playboy is interesting.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
You know, talk talk about being a young man growing
up in Hollywood and what that was like for you, and.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well, I mean going to the Playboy mansion, you know.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah again, huh how old were you when you were
doing that?

Speaker 1 (22:40):
When I first started, I was thirteen, because I was
Hefner did not want any young kids at the mansion.
But their New Year's Eve party was their Tamous party
or the Halloween party. It was more of a formal event.
Sometimes the men were usually in tuxedos or or kajan
and the women were in lingerie. Got it, yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Sertainly want to tag along with you, like can you
give me a tob otler? What you say, did your
friends want to tag along? I mean, that's a hell
of an invite.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
I mean as I got older, yeah, and I had
a whole posse of straight guy friends, I got them
on the list and that was pretty That was I
was pretty cool with the with my posse about doing that. Yeah.
But growing up in Hollywood, you know, it was interesting

(23:31):
because you had access to a lot of decadent aspects
because you're in a big city. And at the same token,
I had my mother and my grandmother and grandfather who
really protected me from a lot of it. So it
was sort of like a mix of heaven and hell
where you could just choose were what realm you wanted
to live in. You sort of had a choice, And

(23:55):
you know, I was thirteen years old, fifteen years old.
I climbed out of my mother's porch. There was a
telephone pole that went up the side of the house.
I got on the telephone pole, climbed down the telephone pole,
walked to large one boulevard where there was a payphone.
If you remember that, you remember that, and I picked

(24:17):
up the phone. I remember the number of the Beverly
Hills Cab Company three one zero two seven three seven thousand.
I said, I need you to take me to Rage
in West Hollywood. It's on Santa Monica and Sam VINCENTI click.
I got in the Beverly Hills cab. They dropped me
off in front of the Rage nightclub on Santa Monica.

(24:37):
I'm fourteen and a half. Wow. Now, keep in mind,
at this time, I'm more visibly known because I was
acting in a lot of movies. The bouncer let me in.
I'm on my own in a gay club in Santa
Monica at fourteen and a half. Wow. Now, I was
afraid to be known by anybody there because I didn't
want to be known as gay, and I was sort
of uncertain as well. So I pretended I was French. Yeah,

(25:04):
and I spoke in a French accent, and I went
around talking to guys trying to pick them up in
my French accent, which was probably terrible. Yeah. And years later,
this very old queen came up to me and, oh, honey,
everybody knew who it was you. You weren't fooling anybody. It

(25:26):
was humiliating, but so like that was the benefit of
being in La you could explore who you wanted to
be here, right, But then there's a lot of dangerous
like sand traps in that would do you mind sharing
some of those dangerous sound traps? Well, I think as
I started to get into drugs and alcohol, I think,

(25:47):
you know, my mom would get a call at two
in the morning. It would be not me calling her,
it would be a man calling my mother to say,
your son is overdosing in our dungeon. Not kidding. Oh,
She's like, what, my poor mother, Oh my god, how

(26:09):
old were you that? I don't know? Seventeen right? You know.
This went on for a while though, and so we've
sent him in an ambulance to you can either come
here or we're going to call an ambulance and send
him to the local. Well, he has to go to Cedars,
he has to go to Cedars. Theater said, well, no, ma'am,

(26:29):
Glendale is the only closest hospital. No, it has to
be Cedars. I don't know who the doctors are at
Glendale Cedars. Eventually I was end up at some I
don't know, third tier hospital in the San Fernando Valley
coming from a dungeon overdosing, and my mom didn't understand
what was happening. First of all, she didn't understand who
these strange men were that were calling her. She did

(26:50):
understand what I was doing with these strange men, she
didn't know what I was doing in a dungeon or
what my proclivities were at that time, and I think
she was shocked, but she couldn't talk about it. All
she wanted to do was sort of help me stay alive,
which is you know. And these overdoses were continual, wow,
and continual, and they were always I would always just

(27:12):
be in some weird location. It's like I had to
like fake a death in a dramatic space or somewhere strange.
So that was sort of those are I think the
darkest moments. But also at the same time I was
thinking about this earlier. I remember like being an ambulance
once and being conscious and they kept slapping me because
they try to keep you awake so you don't keep

(27:33):
falling asleep and try to not die or stay conscious.
And I just thought this is going to be really
cool to write about. Oh wow. Even then you go like, oh,
this would be right, this will be this is a
cool scene in a movie. Yeah, man, Yeah, I'm living.
I'm doing the right thing. I'm living my art right

(27:54):
before I've made it art. That's interesting. Yeah, this is
a good scene in a movie. This is how the
movies and open up, wide shot, ambulance down Los Sienaga Boulevard.
I was found once like dead outside of Norms. I
don't know what it makes me laugh, but like not
a glamorous place to overdose, but you know, close to
the Chateau Marmond, but really the Norms on Los Sienago. Yeah,

(28:16):
at like three in the morning, I just kissed a
guy at a club and then I was dead. I
don't know what happened at between like the kissing the
guy and Norms, but there I was. And then you know,
wide shot, Losi Agle, ooh, close up in the ambulance,
tighter shot, you know, the heart monitor. You know. Everything
I was seeing was a movie. And I remember it

(28:37):
was eastern morning and I was like my last big
one of my last big runs. And I woke up
and it was Easter and I thought this is I
woke up in the same hospital that eventually I found
my mother dead in. But she she went and picked
me up there and she didn't understand what was happening. Like,

(28:59):
my mom and I were best friends growing up, and
I think when I started to fight with her and
assert my independence, obviously drugs came with that, and alcohol,
because that's sort of in a way gave me in
a weird way. Drugs and alcohol empowered me to push
away from her in certain ways, but not in the
right ways. And then when I started to try to

(29:19):
get sober at that time, I think I even became
more enraged. But I think all of that complicated our relationship,
you know, because I was leading a double life, and
I didn't know how to be her son anymore. You know,
I distanced myself from her, so I lost some time
with her, but we had so much time together. It

(29:41):
was an amazing relationship regardless, but that double life. You know,
here I am in Hades, but then I'm in La.
Well I guess that La and Hades are the same thing,
but no, but you know, there's the good parts of La, right,
And so I was definitely like going back and forth
between that heaven and Hell, and I didn't know how
to be one person with her, so I just avoided
her her. What was your dad during all this time?

(30:03):
He was completely in hell. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
And I remember walk me through that time, buddy, when
you had to move out of the house quickly.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Was it who came in and scared everybody? Was that
your dad? Well? That was that was Yeah. I think
in a lot of ways, my mother and I had
a tremendous amount of traumas that we both had collected.
But weirdly enough, I realized after she passed, we never
talked about right, oh wow. We talked about everything but that,

(30:37):
Like my mom would get in the car, we'd have
a lovely dinner, and then my partner Mark and I
would drive her home, and as we got to the house,
the subject would invariably lead to the Holocaust. She'd want
to talk about the Holocaust, but she gets, you know,
this was a trauma. She felt we could somehow join
on and have a real deep conversation and or some

(31:00):
related to the Holocaust or something related to my grandfather.
But we never talked about specific events that happened with
my grandfather before he died that were very traumatic, or
what happened when my stepfather. You know, one day we
were I was sitting in my bedroom. It was like,
I don't know, six seven o'clock in the evening, and

(31:21):
I was like reading I think the Little Prince, and
suddenly I heard this rumble behind me, and I heard
dishes smashing, and I heard my mother screaming, and I
hit in the corner. And then suddenly, as if like
a weather system had just sort of fallen on the house,
the wind almost like I felt bleue open my door,

(31:43):
and in came my stepfather. It's been three months since
they had been married, and he ran for me, but
my mother threw herself in front of him to protect me.
And then he switched the approach and took my bed,

(32:04):
lifted it in the air, and threw it through the
glass window onto the pool in Beverly Hills. And so
my mother and I quickly got went out the bedroom
bathroom down a side stairwell and were running down Beverly

(32:24):
Drive for our lives. As he was chasing us and
banging on doors of houses like it was like do
you remember Halloween, Jamie Lee, Curtis is banging on all
the doors, let you in, but no one will answer
the fucking door. M sorry, I don't know if I
could use but they're trying to open the door, and
it won't open. That was me, which is actually why

(32:45):
I started to love horror movies because not only because
I had watched my dad in a classic horror movie,
but I felt as a child my mother was a
final girl, like Jamie Lee Curis, like all the classic
final girls, and I was a fine old boy. I
guess we were running until somebody finally opened the door.
In the same days. Wow, my mother never mentioned that

(33:08):
night ever.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Again, no idea that you were out seeing people twice
your age, three times your age, no idea that the
drugs you were using, no idea these other things, and
just didn't want to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
She wanted to talk about everything else, right, But that
night was a blackout for her, and yet I think
intrinsically a big part of her own traumas and her
own addictions. Hold were you when you got sober? I tried.
I first did a stint at eighteen for a couple

(33:39):
of years, and then I wrote my first book, my
first novel while sober, and then I thought the book
tour was too small, so I drank and then took.
They gave me that you should never give a new
sober person an American Express Platform card for a book

(34:01):
tour who definitely mythologizes like success with excess and especially
being a literary success with excess. And so I would
just I would take the American Express that belonged to
News Corp. And just charge prostitutes and drugs on my
So you were Tennessee Williams and they yeah, they build
it as well, remember this one drug or maybe sex

(34:25):
worker build it as bedding. And my agent called me
and he said, Judith Reagan at Harper Collins needs to
talk to you about your American Express bill. What are
all these bed sheets you're buying. I didn't have an answer. Yeah,

(34:50):
what am I supposed to say? Pet sheets? Like ten
thousand dollars for bed sheets. They knew I was up
to something, now, you know.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
And I love a hustle that texts a AMEX too,
by the way.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Right, but you know what of the things, Oh I
was going classy? Yeah. There was There was this guy
in West Hollywood who I call him mister Magoo because
he had these glasses, these reading glasses that made his
eyes that must have been at the highest possible reading
level you could possibly see. And he so we had
these bug eyes and he wore a Chinese kimono, and
he smoked weed out of an ivory holder. And he

(35:27):
had a book of boys that he would show you
the book of like which one do you want, darling,
and he would like cook you up with guys. Because
I was at that point I couldn't go into a
gay bar. I was too self conscious. I couldn't be myself.
I only was open to hiring and or doing drugs
and hiring because I was just too afraid right to

(35:51):
go meet And there was no there was no AOL even,
there was no grinder, there was no you know, there's nothing.
Central Park was the original grinder. I was too scared
to get killed, and yet I did everything to kill
myself in a way, but I was too scared to
do that.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
It's so funny because there's you're this very kind, sweet guy,
but you're also a grifter.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Okay, let me tell you why I think you're like
the best.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Why I relate to you because you know, when you
get accused by your publisher, right, you have a very
good way of disarming people. Yeah, oh oh, oh, gosh,
I'm solutely right.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
It's interesting. Well, I think I think i'd like determine
as Survivor Survival. I'm not. I mean sure, I'm sure
there's some grifting going on. I feel like a grifter
is maybe doing things for the wrong reasons. I was
doing them because I was out of control, but I
think I think I was definitely, But yeah, there's some

(36:51):
grifting going on, for sure. I I think in some
ways there was always sort of like I watched my
mom have to raise me as a single parent, and
she was, you know, she didn't want to take any
money from her family, so you know, the heat would
be on. This is after she ran away from the
wealthy husband in Beverly Hills, and so she's like, I'm

(37:13):
just going to do this on my own. We're going
to run a house and she's gonna you know, we're
gonna we're gonna make it work. I'm not taking any
money from the family. I'm going to finish my book
and we're gonna survive together. But you know, the electricity
was always going on or off, or the the heat
was on her off, and so you know, when the
bills weren't paid, she'd like call them and she'd create
these characters on the phone of like my son he

(37:36):
has asthma and we have to have electricity on because
his breathing machine, which I was like, what breathing? Yeah,
there you go, you know. So I didn't see this grifting.
I saw it as hustling to survive from my kid.
Oh is that it? You know? Well, I get I'm
with you. She was. She really did everything, all the lives,

(37:57):
dealing from people. It's just part of this electricus everyonetricity.
And she's a charge car to get a handsome young car.
That was stealing for sure, and I did pay it back.
By the way, my mom was trying to be She
had to juggle so much to raise a kid alone
and do it without depending on her family, who certainly

(38:19):
had the means. But she was all of twenty you know,
twenty seven, right, and trying to like do these really
interesting artistic projects that were very ahead of their time,
and she didn't have any resources but her own street smarts.
So I think I watched how she survived. Yeah, I

(38:39):
get it. And then she and she learned that from
her father, who was an immigrant coming to the country.
You figured out he was on the boat coming over
and he gave psychic readings to get some money to
eat when heney Landed. I love that, right.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
One of the other reasons why I relate to you
at a very young age. You look at your you
know your history, and it's you sexualize your feelings. M yeah,
sometimes yeah, yeah, I mean look at I mean look
at all you know, going to sex to feel better,
to disappear, to ease the pain, right, Yeah, do you

(39:20):
want to talk about that?

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Well, I mean it's interesting because you know, I've been
thinking about this a lot lately. Also, like what it
means to be a queer person in sobriety, not that
we're all not the same. And I don't want to
get too foreign, too identic politics, as I don't believe
in any kind of tribalism and I don't believe I
think like everyone sort of identifying too closely with their
own tribe is dangerous. I think what the world needs now,

(39:44):
in my opinion, is more unity, right, not separate camps.
That said, I do sometimes think it's important for people
to look through the lens of where they come from
or what's specific about themselves, and so much about queer
idea entity and what I identified with as a young person.
In the literature I read and the artists that I followed,

(40:06):
and the musicians like Bowie. There is a level of decadence.
There's a real permissive nature of being queer of like
orgies and drugs and celebration and Studio fifty four and
Warhol and the factor. Like you think about all the
great art that came out of them, music, visual, on
and on and on fashion, So you know, in a

(40:30):
way like I had to go through all of that.
I think in some ways, or at least, I did right.
But then you get sober right and you're like, uh oh,
I don't want to lose all that. I don't want
to lose a connection to a celebration of sexuality. I
don't want to lose a connection to living boldly, broadly.

(40:52):
I don't want sobriety to shrink my life. And I
think I got very lucky. On one of my first
meetings I went to and I was suggesting this for everybody,
but I was a It was called Midnight Madness, and
it was on Santamonica Boulevard, upstairs, upstairs, upstairs.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
It was a looney bit, probably not far from that
club he went to as a young man.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Well hold on, So when I went to those clubs
at a young age. It was fun and exciting, but
I felt a level of shame that was intense. I
go to that meeting at eighteen years old. The first
time I try to get sober. I speak about having
just taken an exstaus seatpill that didn't work, so do

(41:32):
I have to start my time over? I was, you know,
being honest, not crushing, right, but kind of grifting. Is like,
go you all none of my time because it didn't
work right, right, right right. I'm sitting outside the meeting
and this fabulous Native American drag queen comes up to me,
who was in the meeting. Wasn't a drag that day,

(41:52):
but he does to drag. Darryl my first punzer Wow,
and he walks up to me and he says, honey,
you gotta restart your day. Count acquiesced and he says
we're going dancing, and I went what. He's like, yeah,
you need to sweat the shit out. Oh it's beautiful.

(42:12):
You need to dance. You need to get out there
in the day. I'm like, but I'm really sober. I
can't go to a gay club. I'm my gay And
he's like, no, honey, you're coming to a you're coming
to rage with me now, and we're gonna dance, and
you're gonna be with so and sober and we're gonna
go dance and you'll be safe. Wow. And we went,

(42:33):
and I remember Robin asked, showed me Love was playing
on the dance floor, and I sat there in the
strobe lights, feeling more alive than I had felt in
many years. And I was completely sober and completely in
my realm. And I realized, Oh, I could be sober

(42:53):
and be high in a healthy way. I could listen
to the music and feel feel the base, feel it
in your like on a molecular level, and just let go.
So the tricky thing is is still wanting to have
those feelings in sobriety, but not ending up in a
dungeon fucked up, Like, how do you replace all those

(43:19):
joyous things that we seek when we're out there, that
you feel like will help your art, that will be
erotic in a healthy way, or make you feel, you know,
have that tension of life or death where you feel
like you really feel alive, but not a way that
puts your life in danger. Ideally for me, you know,
it's so tied to like queer life. What we're talking about,

(43:41):
all that kind of indulgence. So I think what's really
been challenging for me, and I'm slowly learning it more
and more is how to build that pleasure and that
excitement and that joy in a healthy, safe way. Now
I'm not saying the heterosexual world doesn't have this same
ambitions too, but for me, it's so tied to sexuality, sure,

(44:04):
because I see myself through that lens of sexuality and
queer identity. So unfortunately it all gets a little money
and I have to kind of what I've been trying
to do with you, with other people is find out
how to balance that. Yeah, you know, which was funny
the other day you said to I said, what do
I do with my weekends? I don't know what to do.
That's when they're day that's the danger zone for me.

(44:26):
And you said, I plan things to look forward to, right,
I was like, oh, yeah, oh yeah, I could there.
You know, plan a really great. I don't know, concert
plan and I do that kind of naturally, but you
really underscored it with plan ahead, plan these moments that
will be joys. Plan you know, stuff like that. Really

(44:50):
commit to show up for things as opposed to I'm
alone in my hotel. I didn't plan anything for Saturday night. Well, hmm,
maybe I should download that app and write, you know,
maybe I should. You know, whatever the poison is that
you have, that's poisonous for you. The worst thing at
Ada can say is I have no plans for the weekend.

(45:11):
I think so honestly, it's really dangerous. It's very dangerous
for me, especially the weekends. Are you know, I work
really really hard during the week and I don't you know,
the weekends can be my you know, and you know,
there's like a celebration in the culture of the weekend warrior,
and there's like a masculinity tied to it. And I
could bounce back, but I don't bounce back like I

(45:34):
used to. And I don't want to feel I don't
want to feel that spiritual lethargy. Spiritual lethargy, however, yeah,
spiritual sort of on wei on Monday or even Sunday.
You know, I want to feel like I made a
connection with the world over the weekend or something I

(45:56):
learned about myself. Right, I've nourished my cliche as that sounds, But.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Tell what, are there some great lessons you've learned that
you've been sober. How long now, twenty.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Twenty one years? Twenty one years? Yeah? Wow. I know
something the other day who was listening to my life
story and I always think this is weird, but he
said to me, it's like, this is my editor, one
of the editors of my book, not the novel, but
the Marilyn and Bruno book. And because I was writing
about how so many people in my life and my
family are either addicts or have died of addiction, you know,

(46:31):
and even Marilyn. My grandfather was cancer, so it's different,
but pretty much everyone else, including my mother, died of
some form of addiction. Hers was food, and he says,
it's a miracle that you're alive, you know. But I
think that moment on the street in Santa Monica Boulevard

(46:51):
when Darryl came up to me and said, let's dance. Yeah,
let's dance, let's dance. Angel, I had to bring it
to Bowie, you know, I had, I got it. I
you know, I know how you feel about Bowie and
Bowe is a huge, huge inspiration for me. And you know,
he talks about reinvention and I think sobriety is a reinvention, right,

(47:12):
it's a huge ree and he inspired so many artists
about reinvention in their art, in their life. So, you know,
look my backgrounds and acting, so in some ways I
had to believe I could reinvent or play this new
sober person, you know, even when I didn't believe it
was possible. And but hey, let's you know, you talked
a little bit. It was the same way.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Oh yeah, you know what was the diner on Los Aenea? Right, Norms, Norms,
this is a great you know, it's a historic landmark.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Now it should be, it should be.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
It's a great great Oh yeah, seeing yourself there overdosing.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
What it's going to be. Like, I wasn't in Norms.
So I was on the curry No, sorry, in the gutter. Yeah,
well that's more true. That's a better shot. Now I'm
not even exager, that's not even hyperbole. I was in
the gutter. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
But what you've done, and I think what i've you know,
you've taken all those the dungeon, the different things running
down knocking on doors, you know, and make great art
out of it and really put it into your films
and your TV shows with your partner, and let's talk
about that process in your part. So let's talk about
your partner and some of the projects you've done and

(48:20):
some of the beautiful work you've created.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
Man, thank you. That's very that's very I kind of
you to say. I you know, I feel like I'm
just starting out, which in many ways I am, because
I'm trying to. I think a lot of the stuff
I've been doing before has been you know, more pop culture,
more pop art in and then I think that's there's
a place for that, and I want to do more.
The longer I'm sober and the more I'm dealing with

(48:44):
like sex and love, addiction stuff, the more I'm wanting
to move towards, like more authorship and more things outside
the studio system. But I'll go back real quick. I
know that sounds incredibly pretentious, but I live in France. Yeah,
so you know, yeah, that's what happened. No, Like one

(49:05):
of the things I'm really proud of that to link
personal trauma with art is there was this book called
Queen of the South, and it had been a soap
opera in Mexico City, and then they decided twentieth century
Fox wanted to make a TV show of it, and
the first script that they had a writer do was

(49:26):
the main character, Teresa Mendoza, who's this iconic character in
the book. She escapes Mexico and then begins a drug
trade and by the second act she's already got an
entire business running in America. And by the third you know,
it was like too fast. And I remember an executive
at HBO had always said, slower, deeper, slower deeper in

(49:48):
your development process, I want to stay with the characters.
Don't try to rush into a plot, but let it breathe.
Really So when we were given this book to adapt,
which I chased really hard, They're like, well, what do you,
as a quick white person going to tell a story
about a young female Latin female Mexico. And I said, well,
you know, I understand women on the run. My mom

(50:11):
is a woman on the run. And I churned that
night in Beverly Hills where we were running for our
lives and into the entire first hour of Queen the South.
So the show begins, the pilot episode begins with Teresa.
Because I was like, how do I write this, how
do I connect with this material? I needed to pay

(50:32):
the rent really at that time. So I was like,
how do I write a pilot that I am proud
of that no one else will ever make, Like literally
that was my thinking. And I said, okay, well, I
got to write this real fast, but I better be
personal because I and I'll enjoy doing this with Mark,
because Mark Emma Forden is my writing partner and life partner.
And I said, we got to, you know, let's just write.

(50:55):
Let's have her be on the run should her boyfriend
gets killed by the cartel and make the first hour
of her just running, running, running, running until she gets
to America. And the studio wasn't really paying attention because
I didn't think anyone was going to make the show.
And they let us do that, and they let us
shoot that, and you know, so it was just this.

(51:17):
It was sort of also inspired by Cassavetti's Gloria, which
is one of my other favorite movies, and I didn't
know that that's awesome. So but it all goes back
to my mom and I, my mother and I being
on the run like that night, but also like in life,
like you were like hustling to survive to get to America,
to get to the American dream that was the you know,

(51:39):
so I tried to just really build that into the show,
and even though I wasn't a woman of color, I
was able to tap into it as a creative person
that world and then staffed my show as much as
I could with women of color, even though the studio
really fought me on that. At the time, this was

(51:59):
before the real reckoning of inclusivity and female of more
female agency in the business. It was right on the
tip of me too. So but the good news is
that the pilot got made and became Netflix's biggest international
show for five years around the world. I mean, it
was the it was the show that they use as

(52:20):
the template of how to make a show that travels
around the world. So we were in America, we were
Latin America, South, you know, Europe, we were everywhere. And
you know, it's funny because I took what was most
personal but reinvented it or and fictionalized it in a
whole other world and took that incredibly painful night, right

(52:43):
you know. And what's interesting is that women come up
to me on a daily basis if they find out
I've done it, or they know I've done that show,
and they talk about how much that show means to them,
how empowered they feel. So here this show is based
for me on a kid running for his life with
his mother and you know when he was ten. Is

(53:05):
now a TV show where women, mostly women of color,
to be quite honest, Latin and Black women are obsessed
with Queen of the South. That's the biggest demographic for
the show. And those women come up and be like,
I feel empowered to go to work now, I feel
empowered to fight for a raise. I feel like this
incredible swell that the show has granted. The show, for

(53:25):
me is not artistically what I ideally wanted to bring
into the world, but that doesn't matter because it had
a huge effect because the studio really wanted to make
it a procedural I wanted to keep it in the pilot,
the spirit of the pilot, more character, more like a
film for ten hours or twelve hours, but because the
show became such a hit, they wanted like fast episodes,
and you can make more money with a show that

(53:46):
has a procedural element where there's a beginning, middle, and
an end case of the week, and I didn't want
to do that. I wanted to do more of a soap, right,
sopranos more, you know, things like that. So I you know,
fought for what I could, but it became a show
that was very different than I imagined. But it didn't
matter because it packed was The impact was massive. Yeah,

(54:08):
and something I'm very proud of.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
He can I just add something to that, brother, It's
so important to me here. As you know, one of
my big teachings is to help people change your sad
stories and shift the narrative and what you did. And
just like people want to get heavy about my kidnapping,
I said, no, no, no, my kidnapping give me my superpowers. Yeah,

(54:31):
you use that to give it your superpowers and create
something very magical. And you also create a lot of
jobs for people. Your art creates jobs. Your your art
puts food on people's table. Your art, your art gives
people insurance that they take care.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
And I love you for that.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
I appreciate that, man, So thank you for not being
your fucking sad story.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
I mean it goes back to my grandfather. Yeah, and
sobriety right, because you find survivors in the rooms. But
also I was raised by a survivor. Yes, straight up,
you know, and he did not rest on his sad
stories of having lost everything, his entire country, his entire
sense of security, his most of his family. He came

(55:11):
here and did not sit on his sad story. He
I mean, of course he was aware of it. It
was a big part of his life and a huge
tempest brewing inside of him that he always had to
deal with. But he he overcame it. He overcame it.
But he turned it into art and he created you know,
some of the great icons in the world helped create.

(55:32):
And you know it did so much beauty out of ash,
Out of ashes.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
What other projects do you want to talk about? You know,
kind of move into what you're doing now. Some other
things I want to discuss.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Now, Well, I'm writing the book about my grandfather and Maryland.
I never wanted to do this project because I don't know,
it was just I got back to La a couple
of months ago. You know, I've been kicking and screaming
about doing this project. You know, I lost my house
here during the fires at the beach landing at lax

(56:03):
what two months ago. I was like, I'm just going
to drive right to the house now and just see
the wreckage and then I was like, no, I'm going
to go back to the center, Velly. I'm not ready
to look at these bones that I have charred that
are sitting on the beach I grew up incause that
beach is really associated with my life growing up, my mother.
Now that she's gone, these are so it's a gravesite
a little bit for me at the moment, even just

(56:25):
driving here to do this interview. The second time I've
been on the West Side. The other time was to
see you as well, and I really felt it this time,
oh really well. I could feel the ocean breeze, the light,
and I felt the joy of actually being backed by
the beach, which I missed. So I'm glad to be here.
But at the same token, there was that layer of
oh shit, it's not there anymore, and there's like this

(56:47):
wreckage that's sitting there that they haven't fully removed yet,
And will I ever live there again? And we'll ever
get on that beat? You know, all these questions. So
I guess one thing I'm doing. One project is working
on myself, obviously, that's a big one. Every day every
day writing the book about Bruno and Marilynd, which also

(57:08):
is a book about my mother because I'm realizing what
a difficult thing it was for her, especially a woman
who had an eating disorder, to grow up around so
much body imagery of perfection. Wow, that's powerful, and how
that haunted her until the end, and love addiction too.

(57:29):
So I'm I'm writing a lot about that. And so
that book will be out in twenty twenty six and
it's going to be three hundred pages, three hundred images
that my grandfather took, and then a lot of family
pictures of the family related to Marylyn, stuff like that.
So that's a book project. And then I have a
novel coming out after that, and then hopefully I'm going

(57:49):
to make a movie of the novel. Wow. And now
I'm thinking there's like a visual component to the Marylyn
Bruno book. I'm going to shoot maybe some stuff and
explore what that might be. I'm not going to commit
to anything yet. I'm just sort of going to get
a sixteen millimeter camera and shoot some stuff that's great,
just for fun, just for fun, just for see what happens. Yeah,
see what happens. Why does it have to be like,

(58:11):
you know, not you know, get back to the purity
of just creating. Yeah, like, well is it gonna is
Fox gonna buy it? It's like fuck all that.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
What will you say to our listener, maybe a young
listener that's struggling with their identity, sexual identity, sexual identity?

Speaker 1 (58:26):
I mean, I don't know why. The first thing that
came to me was go out and explore your sexuality,
like experiment in a safe way. I think. I think
sex is very important experiment with, but you must do
it with people you trust. Hm. You know, there's nothing
wrong with sex in itself, but it's who you allow
yourself to be with and who you are coming to

(58:49):
the sexual experience, right, you know, is it to truly
experience pleasure and intimacy and explore parts of yourself or
is it to non out right? But if someone's trying
to figure out their identity, I think part of it
is just sort of getting the pool. Getting the pool,
get in the pool, but safely, and have people around

(59:13):
you that you can talk to about it, because I
think one of the things about sexuality is, like you know,
we were talking about that heaven and hell and the
disassociative qualities of having like a fracture itself and never
being whole which really I think kept me away from
creating a lot of issues with my mother and I
growing up. And I think with sexuality, you hide and

(59:34):
you have the separate life. And I think when you
realize that it doesn't have to be so lonely, that
you know you need to be around people who support
what you are and that you can talk to about
who you are, you need to have a mirroring. They
don't have necessarily even be gay. They could just be

(59:55):
someone who listens with an open heart and hears you.
So I think it's about finding people who see and
people who really make you feel seen. Because we look
at ourselves with such judgment as queer people, that we
need to change the lens and the people behind the
lens so that we see ourselves as God's creatures too.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Right, Oh, that's beautiful speaking to God? Would you talk
about your higher power? What is your higher power?

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
God? I never know how to answer this one, because
I think if I really said what my higher power was,
people think I was crazy, You know what I mean? Like,
everyone has their own cosmology a year, what is it?
What hits you? I mean? I think I think the
conversation we're having is like a form of community, right,
you know, I think being able to be here present

(01:00:46):
as much as I can to. I mean, I remember
when I was it was my first run of sobriety.
I was with my dad and we were at Notre
Dame because he's a big Notre Dame fan. And I
was really feeling like, what am I doing with a
bunch of drunk Irish Catholics at a football game when

(01:01:06):
I'm only you know, three months sober? Probably not a
good idea, yeah, And I wanted to leave, and my
dad was so high he actually had a friend at
his house, be like, you watch him, don't let him
leave because I wanted to go. I was shooting a
TV show in Houston and I need to get back
on Monday, I think this is the game was on,

(01:01:26):
I don't know, Sunday or whatever. And he wouldn't let
me leave. So I'm always escaping, right, So I'm always running.
I am that. I am Teresa Mendoza. I am the
Queen of the South. Okay. I ran out the bedroom
window down this strange like Forest Lake area suburb of

(01:01:47):
South Bend, and I forgot to take my wallet. I
had nothing, no money, and I had to get to
Houston to shoot the show and get away from all
these drunk people because I felt I was gonna use
And I was sitting on this dirt road and this
taxi pulled up and I says, ma'am, I I don't

(01:02:10):
have any money and I just need you to get
me the airport. So we're in the car for like
ten minutes talking and eventually, you know, and this isn't
South Bend, Indiana, and I wasn't sure how I was
going to get from South Bend to Chicago to get
my flight back to Houston. And I told her I

(01:02:31):
was struggling with sobriety. It was newly sober. And while
I was on the run, she said to me, she said,
I've got thirty years sober. I'm going to drive you
to Chicago. She drove me to Chicago three hours. Yeah,
and she was a lesbian. I'm pretty sure the lesbian's

(01:02:53):
always saved the gays. That's what they did it during
the AIDS crisis, because you know, the the gays were
partying too much. But if he drove me to Chicago, right,
how is that not God? That is fucking God in
a taxi. And when people tell me there's no God.

(01:03:14):
I'm like, you are a fucking blind or dead, right,
And I don't mean like a god in the mountains, Yeah,
somewhere in some but there's an energy, there's something. The
person that took you dancing was God. Oh God, Yeah,
he's he's he's one of my dearest friends. Still. I
love it. I mean, he'll call me up because he's
also has like this third eye is Native Americans, so

(01:03:35):
he's very in touch with this sixth sense that he has.
And he'll call him and be like, dump him. He's
no good for you. You know, you have to be
in LA because you have to do that. Like you know,
he'll he'll give me these brothers unsolicited psychic readings, which
you know. But oh he's tappain big time and he's
been sober got maybe fifty years now.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
But I want to always I want to talk about
something so beautifull that you just presented. I always had
to tell people you can't have those experiences if you isolate. No,
you had the experience with your with that gentleman took
you dance because you went to a meeting. You had
that experience with it because you said, I'm not saying I.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Gotta get it out.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
The angels will only can come if you're out asking
for absolutely, It's very powerful.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
It's true. They're they're right. Well, when you're isolating, you're
in the addiction, right, You're you're I've done it. You're
in your phone, You're in your fucking Instagram, you're in
your all these things that take us away from ourselves.
I mean, unfortunately, as we all know, these new machines,
they are they they're they are programmed to make you

(01:04:40):
an eyeball that consumes. This is social media and apps.
They are a friend of mine. I'm not gonna measure
her name, but she created the software that is used
to break the firewall of oppressive regimes. Oh wow, she
trusted Ukraine used her software. She was drafted to Google

(01:05:04):
at fourteen. She's a genius and and taught herself classical piano.
But you know two and so she knows what goes
on in those boys up in Silicon Valley. She has
been in the center. It is too. She's literally said,
you work. All they want you to be is an eyeball,
like this soul that just consumes. It frightened me. That's

(01:05:31):
especially is it's someone who is an addict. That's like
the perfect that's the perfect game. Well, we've all been
the eyeball here. Yeah, but imagine now when they're scientifically
taking the technology is hooking into you. Yeah, got it.
You're becoming I mean, we're all becoming the machine, I
guess in certain ways. But this is the worst. It's
tapping into that worst part of you that we're not
I don't want to say worse, but the really vulnerable part.

(01:05:54):
What do you want to say to the person struggling
with recovery? Thinking out right? What do you want to say? What?
What's your message of hope? What's your message of inspiration? Well,
I hope some of this conversation. Yeah, you know, And
I tell your story, right, you know, I think tell
your story, know your story, write about your story. That's

(01:06:18):
what I did. I can only tell people to do
what worked for me, right. I don't want to sit
here in like some you know, self important way, but
that's what worked for me. I needed to express myself.
I think, you know. I remember I was writing my
first book, in my first big because I think every

(01:06:41):
chapter is somebody. If you slip or not, it matters,
and it's part of the it's a brick in the building, right.
And my first round was five years and there's a
lot I learned in those five years. And I remember
I sold a car my mother had given me, the Grifter,
the hustler was supposed to be just to drive, not
to use. But I sold it. But it was mine, right,

(01:07:04):
wasn't it. I sold it and I had a stack
of travelers checks, and I says, by the time I
get to the end of these travelers checks, I would
have finished my book and sold it. I'm going to
go to New York, and I'm going to go there.
And I stayed sober. I wrote my novel because for me,

(01:07:24):
expressing myself at least was the only thing that I
wanted to live for at the time, just to create.
I didn't have a lot of reasons I wanted to
live or stay sober, but something about creating something in
the world felt like a purpose. I think you need
a purpose in sobriety, which is a obviously building your

(01:07:45):
own sense of self and health. But I think you
need something bigger than yourself. And I think some people
find that with service. And I think there's a lot
of service involved in art. I think there's a lot
of you're giving something to the world, you're bringing something
back to it, you're helping people see themselves. So for me,
that was part of service, part of also service to myself.
It was a dream of mine. So I stayed I

(01:08:07):
stayed sober for that book, honestly, and that's what worked
because it also helped me understand myself and the world
and things that had happened to me by because the
first book is very autobiographical, even though it's you know, fiction,
and there's a lot of horrible things that happened to
the main character that like literally didn't happen to me,

(01:08:27):
but they're all metaphors, and you know, you know, there's
a very abusive relationship with the father who sexualizes the child.
This never happened with my real father, but there was
a lot of emotional abuse with my father, a lot
of neglect and other men who were cruel and neglectful,
especially as a young actor growing up in Hollywood and
stuff like that. So I kind of just turned that
into sexual abuse, you know, because that's just what came

(01:08:49):
out on the page. But I think and also you know, definitely,
I think so writing that book was healing, and I
stayed sober, and so if someone's new in recovery, I
think you need to find a purpose, at least in
the moment. It doesn't have to be a lifelong purpose,
but I think finding something that you wake up in
the morning, because I don't think sobriety is an end

(01:09:10):
in itself, you know, I think it's part of what,
like you said, you need to get out of that
to have the magic happen. You need to get out
of the house. And I've seen a lot of people
in sobriety stay in the house, and I didn't get
sober to stay in the house straight up. You know,
it's part of what you and I have talked about recently.
I guess it was like, maybe, oh my god, a

(01:09:32):
little over a year and a half ago, we sat
in this room and you said, you're sober twenty one
years or twenty years, but you know, you could be
a lot happier. And I was like, oh, yeah, I
had gone back a little bit into the house. Yeah,
a little bit, and you're like, get out there, get
out there. Pretty happier in this sobriety. And because you

(01:09:55):
get a lot of time under you and you kind
of think, well, you know I'm good, but you forget
what really good is that's really good right now? Yeah,
it's really good right now. And I think, so get
out of the house, engage in the world. And so
if you're new in recovery, I think that's a find
a purpose or find things that or at least search

(01:10:16):
for your purpose, right, Like I think education is important
for me, and sobriety. I went back to school. That
was really important. Meeting other people who are wanting to
enrich their souls and minds by knowledge. I think these things,
at least for me, were things I didn't get to
do when I was using and I maybe skipped over.

(01:10:38):
So for me, going back to school was important.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
Last question, Yeah, an amazing brain trust around you have
an amazing creative people around you, right, I mean just extraordinary.
One of them, of course, is mister Tarantino. Yeah what
what what have you learned from him? Most what's a
lesson you could gosh, I'm sure as there's many.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
Yeah, I was thinking about him earlier. Pissed off on
him right now, but a love piss off. Yeah, what
what did I learned from him? What I share? That's
interesting to think about a bunch of stuff we'll talk
about being of service. He has used his and this
is an interesting way. You may not see him right

(01:11:20):
away as because we think about his movies, but he's
used his power and fame to educate the world about
international cinema, wow and American be cinema that was like
for many years relegated to the dustbin. Right. He has

(01:11:42):
elevated work that was well basically abandoned, whether in America
or not known by Americans from around the world, and
brought it to the public awareness. He's been like an
ambassador for cinema in that he has taken this director
from this country and said, I am hosting this festival

(01:12:02):
and I'm exposing you to this great artist who inspired
me to do kill Bill or I'm and suddenly all
these people around the world suddenly go, who's that director?
I never heard about them, And suddenly there's a whole
renaissance for that filmmaker. And he's not just done that
once he's done that, like we're talking hundreds of filmmakers
and creative people that he has discovered or rediscovered and

(01:12:25):
amplified and put a spotlight onto the world. So that's
one thing, you know, he and so I think he
said to me once he's an ambassador. I remember we
were you know, he lives half the time in Tel Aviv,
and a lot of my family's in Tel Aviv, and
we were there last time. I haven't been there in

(01:12:46):
a while since the war obviously, and prior to the war.
We were there and I was sitting across from him,
and he was talking about his schedule for his new movie,
which would be his final tenth movie, and he said,
you know, he was talking about how it just didn't

(01:13:10):
motivate him, the schedule, and he realized, I'm just not
doing this. I'm not making this movie. I don't think.
I hope I'm not talking out of school or I
don't think I'm saying anything that would upset I. I
hope not. But he just didn't feel the drive and
he wasn't going to engage in something that compromised his
integrity just to do something. He's like, look, and he

(01:13:33):
has a luxury to be able to not do the job,
but he he's like, I'm not doing this if I'm
not truly in it, and if I'm not truly going
to take a bullet from it. I think he's once said,
if you won't take a bullet for your project? Why
do it? Wow? So not to me, but I think
that's like an interview once I heard so he just
didn't feel that bullet that he was going to take
a bullet for it, I guess, and he dropped out

(01:13:54):
of the movie, you know, and decided not to shoot
that particular movie. So I think his integrity and his focus.
I've never seen anybody more monofocused in my life. But
he brings enthusiasm with that focus, it's like there's such joy.

(01:14:14):
You know. I have not had the privilege to work
with him yet on a movie set. I've he's read
scenes to me and we've shared, you know, talked about
material and stuff, and I've told him crazy shit about
things I've told you, and you know, he always loves
those stories. I think he creates an environment where you
feel like you could tell him anything. He's very good

(01:14:35):
at that. But also this focus, I mean just this,
when he's got a deadline or when he's on something,
it's like he researches and researches and and and gives
every like fiber of his body to that project. So
that's really inspiring. And now he's a dad, and he's
so in love with being a dad, and that's also
very inspiring. But why his film preservation, his preservation of

(01:14:58):
film theaters. But aside all the great art he's created himself,
which also is inspiring. I think a lot about what
he's done for La and restoring the Vista and having
it become this hub of art. And then the New Beverly,
which is this refuge for indie films and classics in
a place where people go. I mean, even my partner
when he's really down and depressed, you know, or or

(01:15:21):
whatever he is, he'll be like, what's playing the New Beverly? Oh,
they're playing this great Topama movie I need to see
on the big screen, and you know, and it's sold out.
Most shows are sold very nice and I got a
little connections reasonable and so like he's the world he's created.
I think he's given back. Yeah, he's been of service

(01:15:41):
to the planet. Powerful stuff powerful Yeah. Powerful. It's nice
to talk to him about it's nice to think about
him in these ways because you know, sometimes with your friends,
you get no I love him. My level for him
will never change, but you know, but part of part
of being friends with somebody like that is, you have
to understand that they have a certain focus, and you

(01:16:03):
have to understand that when they're in their zone, they
need to go to their zone, and they can't They
sometimes can't be there for you. And that's part of
I think you say, growing up in La growing up
in Hollywood. You know, there's a lot of extreme personalities
and some of them you need to stay away from,
and then some you need to understand that they have
their quirks and special things. And then there's the people
you need to be that need to be on your

(01:16:23):
show regularly that you need to surround yourself with. Those
I think are the one of the most important right
to have you, Like you said, a brain trust support system,
because I think I think the world is hard these days. Yeah,
that's that's my thing on Quentin is to create with joy.
Here's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. What is the definition

(01:16:44):
enthusiasm speaking of gods like energy like energy from the gods. Yeah.
I think that's the Latin derivation of energy for the gods. Yeah.
So that's a good place to close, I think, brother,
thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
This has been incredible. I really appreciate you coming out here. Today,
I really do. It means the world to me.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
Thank you. I'm honored to be here, truly. It's you know,
there's always strange talking about its life, but this was fun.
It was fun, right, Yeah, it was good. Yeah it
felt really good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
So, folks, once again, if you love the show, please subscribe,
please follow, get amazing conversations with my buddy here, and
thank you again, brother, thank you. The Sino Show is
a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted by me Cina McFarlane, produced.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
By pod People in twenty eighth. Av Our lead producer
is Keith Carlik. Our executive producer is Lindsay Hoffman. Marketing
lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you so much for listening.
We'll see you next week.