Peter Berg
Appearances
Fresh Air
The Secret History Of The Rape Kit
Friends, you can assure Governor Young that we're going to be out of here first light. He'll never knew we were here. Well, I'm afraid it don't work like that.
Fresh Air
The Secret History Of The Rape Kit
As I understand it, I'm standing on land owned by the United States government. I do not need permission. A proclamation of Governor Brigham Young. No man shall be... You keep talking about your proclamation. I do hear you. I'm not deaf. Only problem is that we have our own proclamation. And that proclamation says that we take orders from no man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
That just gave me goosebumps when I walked in here and saw the rounds from the Chinook that crashed. I was not expecting to see that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I know how challenging it can be for so many team guys to kind of figure out the next chapter of their life. And we get a lot of guys in L.A. who are trying to figure it out and kind of trying to get into writing or directing or stunts. And I pay attention to that, try and help. And I heard about you and how you had kind of found this whole new career for yourself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And having gone through, you know, the military experiences you have, I found it really fucking impressive. Wow. And that caught my eye also. So I don't think people understand how hard that transition is. I mean, obviously military guys do, but civilians don't. They don't think about it. If they do, they kind of think about it. But to go from...
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Wow. What a time to be on the grinder.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I mean, it just kind of goes back for me to what we were talking about, the complexity of, you know, the difficulty of surviving for anyone that went through buds during 9-11, okay, yeah, you're going to be busy, and good luck surviving that, just literally coming it back alive, like Saw and Axelson couldn't. And then if you do come back, the complexities of having
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
to carry, forget about the woman and the baby. I mean, that's horrific and that would do most people in. Then whatever you saw in theater and people, these guys are coming back and having to try and move on. And I, you know, I know some professional athletes, and I've seen the complexities of an athlete retiring.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I own a boxing gym in L.A., and we get a lot of military and pro athletes that come in there and train, especially when they've gotten out. And I see... firsthand how hard it is for pro football players. We have a couple in there now. We've had a lot of team guys come in, and they're trying to just stand on their feet like children again, like babies in a new world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I can't imagine how hard it was for your friend to come back with the weight of those experiences in a world that's not necessarily receptive, and we can't see the injuries, right? So I could be talking to you, and you look pretty good, and you're handsome, and you're an ex-fucking Navy SEAL, and everybody loves a Navy SEAL, and so you're cool. Inside it can be, you know, a different story.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I remember when someone gave me the statistic about how much money the government spends making a seal, right? All the training, everything, you know, three phases, and then all the specialized training. And then, I don't know, I heard pretty high numbers for what it costs to make a seal versus how much money they put in to kind of keep an eye on a seal when he's done.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I tend to agree. I mean, certainly they don't act like they care. They might say they care, but if you just look for actions, that's where it kind of gets hard for me to sort out. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yeah, for sure.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I understand that. I got to go, when I was writing Lone Survivor, I got to go to Iraq with Team 5 to a place called Rawah. I don't know if you're ever out there. It was a Marine Corps base kind of by the Syrian border. And I got to spend a month as a civilian embedded with a bunch of guys from Team 5. And that was, without a doubt, one of the greatest experiences of my life on many levels.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
the job that you've had, and I've been fortunate to have a pretty decent look at for a civilian, to understand how difficult it is to let go of that world and move into civilian life. I think it's important that people do make an effort. I do, and I just, a lot of respect for what you've done.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I took a lot from it and have a lot of memories. But to this point, one memory that really stuck with me when I look now back and I try to understand the transition for SEALs, but not just SEALs. It could be anyone who was in the military, but certainly it could be for Rangers or Delta or MARSOC or any particularly special operators that have to kind of get out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Something I remember from my time in Iraq was was I got to go with the SEALs and they were going to go into a house and, you know, kick in a door and get a guy. And so they all went in and they wouldn't let me go in until it was secure. And so I was sort of out on the street and I was on a corner with this one young SEAL. I think it wasn't quite a new guy, but he was young, little guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And he was doing security on a corner. And I was kind of with him. And he wasn't really talking to me. He was kind of looking out in the street. And there were three Iraqi young men that had sort of come and were staring at us. And he knew enough Arabic to say, you know, go, get out of here. And he yelled it at them, and they stared at him, and he yelled it again. And they sort of walked away.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And afterwards, after the whole lot, we were back at the base. I said, well, what would you have done if they didn't leave? And he said, I would have killed him. I said, what? He said, well, you know, the way I look at it is if I'm working and I see them, I own them. I own their shoes. I own their pants. I own their shirt. And I own their organs. I own their heart. Their heart is mine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So I do whatever the fuck I want with that. I own them. And I remember thinking, well, this guy's going to have trouble getting out of the military. Like, how do you take, and I totally understood that mindset of like, fuck it, I will survive. My job is to protect this corner. My guys are in that house. I will fucking protect this corner. I understood that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
but then thinking, well, this guy's going to have to get out one day and he's going to be in traffic and someone's going to cut him off or he's going to be in Starbucks and someone's going to say some shit. And like the complexity of that kind of mindset to have to adjust to being able to be, like I remember someone once talked about Mick Jagger, right? The Rolling Stones guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You met in like 1975 when the Rolling Stones were the biggest band in the world. And Mick Jagger told a story about how he had to come home from a world tour where they were selling out stadiums all around the world. And he's Mick fucking Jagger. And he comes home and his wife, Jerry Hall, this woman, And he has a baby. She hands him the baby.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
She says, clean up the baby, and there's dog shit in the yard. And Mick Jagger's like, but I'm Mick fucking Jagger. I just came back from, you know, the— And I've always thought that moment, just a little moment, where I felt what it means to have that kind of power—
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
in a place like iraq well now you got to come home and you have to turn it in you have to retire and you have to move forward i don't i don't think civilians understand that yeah they don't they don't you know but i think that uh that's that's a that's i think that
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Well, that was what Painkiller, you know, was for me. The show I did about Purdue Pharma, you know, and the Sackler family. It's interesting. Just today—what's the date today? What is it? The 16th. The 16th. So today on the way over here, someone sent me a New York Times article about a new twist in the opioid epidemic. These companies that serve as the middlemen between the doctors and the—
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I'm sorry, between the prescribers and the insurance companies. There are these companies that control what the insurance companies will allow to be prescribed. So if the doctor says you should have 250, you should be able to take 250 milligrams of Oxycontin a day, these companies
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
are in charge of regulating whether the insurance companies will pay for that so they've got this incredible power and there's three main companies can't remember the names of them but it's just today in the paper and now it came out in the times today that the sacklers and other drug companies were bribing these guys to restrict the the amount of pills that were allowed to be prescribed so they would they would get paid off and they would allow
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
these incredible prescriptions to be put through and the insurance companies to pay for them. So it's just more of a game within a game within a game. Damn.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
For a minute, I did. You're fucking with some really powerful people. So at first, I didn't, right? It's like people say, well, when you went to Iraq, were you scared? And I said, well, not really, because there were 20 Navy SEALs around me all the time, and I felt pretty safe. When I got back and I kind of really looked at the map and figured out, I felt a little more nervous.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But in the moment, I didn't feel nervous. Probably should have felt a little more nervous, but I felt very safe with the guys. The Sacklers, at first I'm like, well, yeah, these guys are fucking scumbags. Fuck them. Let's make a movie and let's tell the truth. You know, I have friends that have died from drug addiction and I don't give a fuck and let's go. I'm not scared.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
The more research I did, the more nervous I got because they're just like, these are like real mobsters. These are the real Pablo Escobars, the real drug dealers that are putting up numbers much larger than the Medellin cocaine cartels, the companies like Purdue and the Sackler family. So the more I learned about just how powerful and quiet they were, And what kind of masterminds at secrecy?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Like you still, if you try and, you know, search Richard Sackler, they're so fucking scrubbed that you'll get virtually nothing on them. And they just constantly cycle that. And I don't still, I've yet to find anyone who's better scrubbed as far as, you know, internet than Richard Sackler, you know, the kingpin of the Sackler family. But so the more I learned, the more nervous I got.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And there was a moment where I was literally paranoid and I'm like checking my back and like making sure doors are locked and, you know, having access to security if I felt threatened. And then I realized, like, if they want to get me, they're going to get me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And kind of by the time we really got going, the wave was really getting big and people were finally starting to say the name Sackler and realize just how... dirty and corrupt this family was. And I felt a little, I think all of us involved felt at least secure in that, like, it was so public at this point that if they did come after us, everyone was going to know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It's like I didn't have to leave a note, like, hey, man, if something happens to me, it was Richard Sackler. People kind of already would get that. And everyone's like, dude, I don't know if I want to stand so close to you. I don't know. I'd invite my friends out to dinner and they're like, yeah, no, we're good. We're busy for a while. Let's see how the show plays out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
People kind of distance themselves from me for a minute. But I mean, I'm not necessarily like the biggest conspiracy guy. Like I'm always up to entertain a good conspiracy story. Like I'll talk about Lee Harvey Oswald for a long time and the magic bullet theory and all that. But I don't even know whether it's a conspiracy or it's just like the realization of how the world does business.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And this, if you really want to understand what the fuck's going on, not just in pharmaceuticals, but I think in almost any business, certainly the business of war, right? The amount of guys that are making money off of war, right? That's a different story. But the way money rules the world, It's all about money and the Sacklers knew it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And the Sacklers knew that they had this incredible product that could do this incredible thing, take away your fucking pain. Like for anyone that's dealt with pain, whether it's like the emotional pain that your buddy went through after losing his child and girlfriend and seeing what he saw in that helicopter, he's in pain, give me that pill.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Give me 40 milligrams of that liquid honey, you know, that happens to have a little battery acid in the middle of it. I'll take it. And the Sacklers knew it. And they knew how to monetize it. And they knew how to game the system. And I think, like, the worst thing that I found, the thing that really floored me, was this guy Curtis Wright. Do you know who Curtis Wright is? Curtis Wright, no.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So one of the challenges the Sacklers had with OxyContin and Purdue had, they needed to get the FDA to approve it, right? They had spent so much money developing this drug and they were having financial problems prior to OxyContin being approved by the FDA that they were all in on OxyContin and they needed the FDA to approve it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You think about the FDA, a big government organization, and it is probably a big organization that probably does need a haircut, and I'll bet they're going to get one now with the new administration, which is probably a good thing, I think. But you think, oh, wow, the FDA has to approve OxyContin. That's probably a team of 50 scientists, and they're going to have to go.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It was really just one guy. And it was this kind of nerdy dude named Curtis Wright, and he was the obstacle. He kept saying to the Sacklers and to Purdue Pharma, I can't approve this drug. This is heroin in a little M&M wrapper. Like, what, are you fucking crazy? No. And they kept trying—he went through multiple applications, and this one guy was saying no.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And that was putting the entire Sackler family and Purdue Pharma in real risk of financial ruin. And so at some point prior to getting the approval, some members of Purdue Pharma took Curtis Wright to a hotel room in the Virginia area, somewhere near D.C., and they spent a couple of days in a hotel room. And no one knows what happened in that hotel room.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
When they came out, Curtis Wright had signed the approval with the words that OxyContin is believed to be non-addictive. Is believed. Is believed. Which is weird language. It's not OxyContin is not addictive. It is OxyContin is believed to not be addictive. But no one ever used that language. Doesn't make any sense. Curtis, he approved it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
The drug gets going, and it becomes a grand slam home run, and the money's off the chart. About a year and a half later, Curtis Wright leaves the FDA and goes and works for Purdue Pharma. Oh, shit. He was making, they say, $70,000 at the FDA, hundreds of thousands at Purdue. They bought him. And when I heard that, I'm like, OK. That is how the fucking world operates. And it's not a conspiracy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It's a fact. And, you know, it's public. People know about it. Human beings like your friends and friends that I have are dying and are still dying. People are getting addicted. Families are being thoroughly fucked up and derailed. And this is how it goes. And so it was making Painkiller... was, you know, just an emotionally powerful experience.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I don't think there was a day filming it when someone on the crew didn't come up to me and say, hey, can I talk to you for a second? My best friend died. My cousin died. My mother died. Just in your studio today, someone that works for you came up to me and started sharing me a story about their relationship to a family member and the drug. And it's omnipresent and it's, Horrible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And it's, you know, what I get from it is like, let's open up our eyes and be real honest about how this world operates. Yeah. And usually it's money.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I remember I was trying to interview members of Purdue Pharma. Because like I said, you can't get any information on the Sacklers. So I was trying to interview members, people who had worked for the company, and we couldn't get anyone to talk. And then a journalist from the New York Times had written a book that was one of our pieces of source material for the book, a book called Empire at Pain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
The author of that book called me and said, there's a woman who will talk to you. And she used to work for Richard Sackler as one of his five secretaries. And I'm like, great. He's like, she's going to call you at whatever time in two days. Be ready. She's going to call you. So I was in pre-production on the film. My phone goes off. It's FaceTime. And I answer the phone, and it's this woman.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And she's in a car, and she's pulled over on the side of the road. And she starts talking to me about working for Richard Sackler. But she's getting real close to the phone, and she's whispering. And she keeps looking around. And she told me she'd left work and driven to the parking lot of a little strip mall. And she was, you know, willing to tell me enough about him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
She told me some things about him. But I could feel her legitimate paranoia and fear of talking about him. And after that call, I came back and I said, guys, we just got to like, you know, watch our backs. Yeah. And be smart because we are poking a bear. Yeah. And that, I don't know, man, they still could get me. And if they do, if I go quick or I go weird, check out the Sacklers. I will.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I do feel pretty safe here with you, though, I got to say. We're in good company. Yeah, I feel safe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I was lucky. I never had addiction. I have family members that have. They've used 12-step to their... I have one sibling, and she's done an incredible job. She's 30 years sober, and A has been a godsend to her. And we've talked about addiction and addiction. And I've asked her, I'm like, what do you think it is? I've asked her, do you think I'm an addict? Because I do drink.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
There's not a drug I haven't tried. Pretty much. I don't think I've done bath salts or angel dust. Okay? Take those two, maybe a few others. But I've tried them. And I don't know, man, I always had that ability to sort of see through the shot, see through the line. You know, if someone put a line of coke in front of me back in the day, I might do one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But then I think about the other and I kind of have that... It's not that I didn't want to do it and that I didn't see kind of what was good and what felt good about it, but I was able to sort of see... well, let's jump ahead 24 hours, 48 hours, and think about the cost, the hangover, the self-loathing, the self-disgust, the bad choices that start to accumulate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I was able to kind of, I'm good. And my sister said to me that that ability to have that pause is something that can separate, you know, an addict, a true addict from someone that's not. And I think about that because it's not any super human quality. It's nothing that I take credit for and be like, oh, I can do this. any more than I think most of the addicts that I know suffer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It's not about weakness. It's not mental weakness or physical weakness that's causing someone to go back to that drug or back to that behavior, whatever it is, that's so fucking self-destructive. It's a disease, I believe. And I'm fortunate that I don't think I have it. Yeah. And do you? Have you experienced it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Is that common knowledge? Forgive me for not knowing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You had a little journey.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
What were some of the drugs? I'm sure everyone knows this and you've talked about it. Yeah, that's fine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yeah, that's a tricky spot for anyone that's even tempted to flirt with the devil. You're going to find it down there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
How much coke had you done, do you think? And how long was the binge?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But would you do like, because I never did, but I heard about like three-day, four-day binges that people would go on and you're not sleeping and you're just doing more. Did you ever experience anything like that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Right, but that goes back to what we were talking about earlier. You get to play God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Talk about adrenaline. What are you going to do with that energy when you get out? You're going to go to Medellin and shack up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You know right now some of your viewers are like just Googling Fahrenheit and booking plane tickets right now. Well, that was a long time ago.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Right. So, okay, so what would happen? You go to Fahrenheit. How would that play out?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But what do you think, did you get into 12-step? No. What saved you? What got you to walk away from the drugs and the alcohol?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Okay. They're not going to get me high? I'm not going to get me a rest or anything?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
That's what you call a positive fail, my friend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I'm glad you fucking failed. Me too. I really am. I really am.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So did the psychedelics help you? Are you in 12-step? Do you use 12-step?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
What psychedelics did you do?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You smoked a toad?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I've smoked it four times, my friend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Here's yours. I got you... I got you this because I said I might need it. Oh, man. I'm not good with three hours. That's, from what I understand, some of Tennessee's finest from right here, right in Franklin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I was going to recommend that you smoke the tar before you told me that you did. How many times have you smoked the tar?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Oh, my goodness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yeah. You had to really get to it. You had to dig deep, you know. Wow. But, yeah. Four times I think I've done it. It wasn't like staying under.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You'd come out of it to go back. And you had a good shaman that was guiding you?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I mean, those are the two most powerful, I mean, Ibogaine I've never done, but I know what it is. I'm scared of it, actually. Yeah. And I've met the toad. Yeah. Wow. You really... I couldn't see how that would have taken care of a problem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
How many times did you do the Abigain? One. That's enough, right? Yep. Different experience than the 5MEO?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yes, sir. Perfect. Thank you. And then I got you, this is a limited edition. This is an American Primeval crew hat. which generally we had to earn up on the mountain. But I figure you've definitely done your fair share of earnings. So that's a gift from me and the entire crew of American Primeval.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
How would you explain the differences?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
They say the Ibogaine is the godfather. Yeah, it's like that's the most powerful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Pleasure, man. Thank you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I always heard that 5-MeO is the god molecule, but Ibogaine is the godfather.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Is that accurate?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Like from way back, from when you were a little kid? Everything, everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
On Ibogaine?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Somehow that just like... Do you credit the Ibogaine more than the 5-MeO with your sobriety? Yes. Because I've heard that. I've heard that from ex-military guys, ex-team guys who've taken Ibogaine and they physically look different. I've seen them since. And the look in their eye, it's almost like their facial construction is different. Their cheekbones feel different. Their eyes feel different.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Their posture. And they're sober. It seems to be one of the more effective
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
with Kennedy and the new administration, that people start looking at this and that any of it, whether it's ketamine, psilocybin, 5-MeO, Ibogaine, that people start at least being educated on what it can and cannot do, and that the government starts making these medicines available. I'm all for it. My experience on 5-MeO, I never did Ibogaine. I don't know if I have the guts for it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I was scared to smoke the toad. I remember my friend took me, and my friend's a pretty high-functioning business guy, successful, and the fact that he had done it, and a couple other people I know that are pretty high-functioning have done it, made me willing to take the chance.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I was a little concerned that I was going to break my brain on something that powerful, but because they had done it, I felt confident. And I got to the place in California where I was going to do it the first time. And they were already doing it. And I was looking at them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And it's a little, if you watch somebody that's going through it, you know, they're making some noises and moving around a little bit. And I was like, not quite sure what kind of experience they were having. And the guy who was actually a psychiatrist who is now the administrator of this, and he used to do antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, and he would write scripts for it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And he started learning about some of these psychedelics, and he completely changed his practice and only does 5-MeO and Ibogaine now. And I thought that was interesting. But he took me aside and he sat me down. He said, okay, Pete, you know, you're about to ingest 5-MeO-DMT. It's the most powerful psychedelic, you know, certainly one of them in the world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It's going to last 30 minutes or so, and you're going to have this very powerful experience, and you might feel as though you're dying, but you won't. He's telling me all this stuff, and I'm kind of looking at him. He's like, do you have any questions? I said, well... You know, I'd heard this about other psychedelics, you know, should I set an intention, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Like, I want to make peace with my father, or I want to remember my grandfather, or I want to spend time with my dog, Schlemmer, who died when I was eight. Like, you know, what's my goal? What should I do? I remember he looked at me, and he put his hand on my shoulder. He said, good luck with that, Pete. Good luck. You try and set all the intentions you want.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And that kind of freaked me out a little bit, because I could tell, you know what I mean? He was like, good luck with your little intentions. And I remember... Smoking it and the feeling of, for me, what they call ego death, right? And I've talked to other people about it. Mike Tyson's talked about it. It's certainly nothing that I'm the only one that's experienced.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But when you experience it, you really know you've experienced it. And it's interesting because you try and explain it to people and you find that words fail you because we don't literally have the words in the English language to explain this kind of experience because people just haven't experienced it, so they don't have words for it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
and but it is death right of some sort that that's a word that people can relate to and and for me the way i explained what i first experienced was as the medicine was taking over my mind i felt myself trying to hold on to thoughts like okay i'm in Malibu, California. I'm in California. I'm on the West Coast of America. I'm in America. I'm on the Western Hemisphere. I'm on the planet Earth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I was trying to hold on to it, and suddenly my ability to think was just turned off about that thought. And then I went to, well, I'm Pete. My dad's Larry. My grandfather's Harry. My great-grandfather—that's off. I'm wearing shoes. I'm wearing socks. And every thought I could have would suddenly be slammed off, almost like a steel curtain was shutting down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I could feel myself trying to hold on to any kind of thinking, any kind of rational thinking. And every thought was just and then this giant wall of darkness came over me and it was a sound and it was like over. And I remember thinking very clearly, I'm dead. And my first thought was, it's all over. It's all nothing. Everything is nothing. I thought that. Wow. Everything is nothing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
All of this sort of sudden, because these are just words now, I became aware sort of that something was still going on. I was still functioning. There was brain function. But it wasn't any brain function I'd ever encountered before.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And then I just started going into something that felt so expansive and such an energetic experience that was kind of moving and unfolding in multiple directions, everywhere, everything at once kind of energy. And that energy overtook me. And I remember I sobbed and I laughed and I screamed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And when I came out of it, the people who were organizing this, the doctor and his assistants, one of the women had a pet wolf. And I didn't know there was a wolf in the house. And I came to, and I was on my hands and knees, and I had snot and tears all over me. And I really had this cathartic release of feelings that I just don't have the ability to access on a regular basis.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I looked up, and there's this white wolf staring at me, like about as close as you are, a little further away, locked into my eyes. Damn. And I'm staring at this wolf, and I start pointing, and I'm trying to determine whether it's real, which it was. And I look up at John, the guy, and I'm trying to ask him if this is real. And I remember he put his hand on my shoulder.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
He said, Pete, try not to make sense of anything right now. Just stay in it. And it was an incredibly life-changing experience for me. Sounds like a David Yarrow photo. Wow. It was so powerful. And for me, because I'm not... religious, I was raised a bit atheist. I'm a Catholic Jew and my parents didn't believe in organized religion. So I never, I just never really had access to it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
This felt like an incredible religious experience to me. And for me, and people are like, Pete, stop fucking talking about 5-MeO, but I love talking about 5-MeO. And if someone's done it, I'll talk to them about it for hours.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Because for me, the big secret that we all keep, that we all walk around as humans on this planet, and we never acknowledge, well, there's a lot of them, but the real big one for me is the concept of infinity, right? The concept that if you look out into the sky at night, that in theory, it goes on forever in all directions. It never stops. It has no barriers. It has no ending, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Very hard to get our mind around. I shared a car in Greece with Elon Musk alone for 35 minutes in traffic. And I was like, it's a long story, but I ended up in a car alone with Elon Musk and his driver and his security guy. And this is after I'd done it. And I'm like, I'm fucking, I got Elon Musk for 35 minutes. What do I want to ask him? And I said, Elon, what are your thoughts?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Right, so I've been asked this question before, and I'll give the real answer. Like, you know, I could just say, oh, well, Lone Survivor's my favorite, or Friday Night Live's my favorite, but the truth is, they're all incredibly fucking hard to make. Every single movie that any director makes, any TV show, is really, really hard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Can you explain to me like in a way that I could understand your concept of infinity? Because I can't understand it. How do you process the concept of an infinite universe? And he looked at me and said, Pete, I don't have a clue. I don't think I ever will, and I don't think we ever will. And I remember, wow, okay, he doesn't get it. I'm not so, you know, I don't get it either. That tracks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But when I was under it, the 5MEO, I felt as though I was beginning to experience the maybe very beginning of, of a look at a glimpse of what an infinite energy might feel like. And that felt religious to me. It felt like, and it sounds so stupid for anyone, and I get it, don't judge, don't judge. Try it, maybe. That's where I went. And it really has helped me so much
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
in every aspect of my life, as a father, as a filmmaker, as a friend, in business negotiations. It's given me access to a different perspective. And I would imagine for you, it doesn't feel like people are like, well, could I get addicted to it? And I don't...
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
know of anyone that gets addicted to things like ibogaine or 5-meo it's like no i'm good it takes balls it's like i parachute i've done you know some jumps and every time i've jumped it takes it's like you don't really want to right that last second you're like and how many jumps have you had would you say not very many okay not very bad i had 13 on my 13th i had a malfunction so i haven't gone since but every jump
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
No matter who. And I've been in a plane, you know, with some down in San Diego where, you know, that skydive San Diego, which is a great place, Jeff Bramson. That's where all the SEALs train and civilians. I go as a civilian. But a bunch of tough people jumping out of planes. And I know every one of them that second, right before they jump, they feel that. Maybe not today. At least most people do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I'm sure there are a few psychos that don't. But that's how I feel about, like, 5MEO is, like, I'm glad I did it. But, man, if I'm going to do it again, it's, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It takes a certain type of courage to take that hit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
No, I'm not an atheist, but my belief, okay, don't judge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
All right. So the second time I did it, I went into this again. This time I skipped the crying. And one thing that's interesting is doing it a couple times, I think you go a little bit further. Does this sound utterly insane? No. People are going to be like, oh, he's just a fucking drug wacky dude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You go into it believing you're going to touch God and achieve real greatness, and you're going to change lives, and you're going to tap into the divine creative forces of the universe, and you just don't always do it. Sometimes you fail miserably, sometimes you succeed, but the reality is they're all really, really challenging.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I really believe in this. And by the way, I don't believe in cocaine. I don't believe in recreational LSD. I think weed is problematic. I certainly don't. Opioids? Fuck no. This is a totally different animal to me. including alcohol. That's all over there. This, we're talking about something completely different.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
This is a whole nother experience. So the second time... I very quickly went into this energy that feels like I'm deep in the universe and I'm experiencing something that feels like this multi-directional energy that's just expanding, that I feel may be part of the energy that built the universe. Something had to build it, right? Got all these
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
planets floating around and, you know, you start getting into like the sun and what the fuck the sun is and how that thing's still burning and how we're in this, you know, something's, right? And so there was some energetic, even if a God caused an explosion and that created the massive universe, not just our little solar system, but the infinite universe, which
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
we are such a small part of, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So God would have to be really busy, and he's probably not just our God, the way I look at it. But I'm feeling something, and we don't have words for this, but it's a real energy. Words won't do it justice. And as I'm coming out of this energy, I start to see images of religious, iconic religious structures being built. The pyramids, the Vatican, the Notre Dame Cathedral, Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Literally, I'm seeing man building these temples. And it's coming, so I'm coming out of the energy into man's building of religious structures. artifacts and temples and structures. And I'm seeing men building these temples, acknowledging their religion, their gods. But to me, it felt very reductive after being in a much larger energy. This actually felt smaller to me, if that makes sense.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And then I saw these religious, the pyramids, Mecca, Notre Dame Cathedral, I remember very clearly, and I came out of it, and there was a guy with me who was sort of my attendant. I don't know if you had someone watching you. Just make sure you don't take off all your clothes and run down the street, which I didn't. But I looked at him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
His name was Connor, and I remember coming out of it, and I looked at him, and I said to him, Connor, organized religion is somewhat fucking absurd. And he looked at me and he nodded, just like you did. And I couldn't understand, in that moment, having felt something that to me felt beyond organized religion.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
These structures, and I've been to the mall, I've been to Notre Dame, I've been to the Vatican. I haven't been, I've been into Saudi Arabia, but I couldn't go to Mecca. I wanted to. I've been to Japan and to India and seen Buddhist and Hindu temples, and I appreciate that, and I certainly respect it. But in that moment, I felt that if that type of organized religion wasn't speaking to me,
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And you end up kind of looking back, at least I do, and loving certain things about every one of them. Even the ones that suck. You know, because you don't go into it thinking, hey, man, I'm going to make a really shitty movie and I don't care. No. You go into it like, you know, I would imagine, you know, an athlete goes into a game and
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But I did believe that there's definitely a force greater than anything we can see or feel or touch out there. And that, to me, was the most honest religious experience I've ever had. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
They just closed. They didn't cover them up. I couldn't see anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Were your eyes open?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
That must have been terrifying.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Well, I feel the same way. I've watched a lot of your shows, and I figure it's good for you to expand your reach and get a director to come on here because, you know, I think I asked you if you'd had any other directors, and you said not yet. So I'm glad to be here. I'm a big fan of yours, and good job, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
a team guy goes into a building, you know, a dentist goes into a mouth with a drill, you go in expecting to have a good result, you know, if you're like a competitive, ambitious human being. And so I try for them all to work, every single movie. And, you know, I love all of them. They're all really stressful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Right, and that's where I say it's changed me in all aspects. I don't get upset about things that I used to get upset about. I'm not quick to conflict. I've found my work has just gotten better. I'm a deeper movie maker. When I was editing Painkiller, the opioid film, I had two editors and one I had never worked with. And they were editing while I was still in Canada filming.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I came back and then I had to come and work with them, you know, every day. And I was just getting to know them. And one of them had an energy. I had just done The Toad. And they were both really good guys, but I could tell one of them had an energy of heaviness, darkness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I found out that he and his wife had taken their son, I think three-year-old son, into the doctor, the ear doctor, for a procedure. This was like three months prior to us starting to work. And they put the son under some sort of local anesthesia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
uh and the son died their kid died uh and i found out that that was my editor and that that had happened to him and uh just came in after i'd found that and we're working and then i realized he had a picture of his son a little picture kind of under his computer that i noticed for the first time And I don't know him that well. And I started asking him about his son.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I heard about this and I'm really sorry. And I just want you to know that I'm, I'm aware and if there's anything we can talk about or you want to talk about, I want to be available to you for that." And we started talking and started asking him questions about his son and what kind of life his son had had and what kind of young man he was at that age and what he had experienced.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And we started talking. We started talking for a while and he stopped. He said, you know, I haven't talked about my son like this. And I realized, I don't know that I would have had this conversation prior to experiencing that medicine. And we started talking about it. And I said, well, you know, how are you and your wife coping? He said, horribly, horribly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
He said, we're going to grief counseling. But it's not working. They've gone to some like chainsaw counseling where they go into the woods with chainsaws and just start cutting trees as a way of trying to release anger and energy. I mean, axes and group therapy. And I asked him if he had thought about exploring psychedelics. And he said his wife was talking about that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
If you really push me, I'll probably say, like, Lone Survivor is my favorite, and that was the most emotional. Yeah. But I love them all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I said, well, have you heard about 5-M? You know, he sat up. He said, my wife has been asking me about this. And I said, he said, what's it like? What do you think? And I thought about it. And I said, you know, here's what I think. And I was like, you know, forgive me if I'm overstepping. He said, no, I want you to say it. I said, okay, because I really didn't know him that well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I said, in my mind, the way I'm thinking about you and your family, if this is your son right now in your mind, and he's right here, and wherever you look, your son, your dead son is right there, and you can't, right, wherever you look. I said, I believe that this medicine could maybe take your son and put him here for a minute. And give you... It's never going to go away.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But give you a little bit of space to maybe process something like that in a way that you're not able to. And I stand by that. And it's advice I would give... to myself, to you, to anyone. The only thing I think is that young people might, I don't think it's good to do for someone, you know, much in their 20s still. I would encourage people to wait until their 30s. Yeah. Just because.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I can't back that up scientifically. It's more of a hunch. But if someone came to me and they were like, you know, 19 or 20, you know, my son, I've talked to my son about this, and he's in his early 20s, and I'm very honest with him about, you know, all of this, everything I try to be honest with him about. But I said, I don't think you should do this until you're 30. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Right. I know where you're going. I think I know. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I would agree with you. For someone like your friend's son, I think it could be really helpful if someone has gone through that kind of really fucked up trauma that's sort of out of the realm of just talk therapy is not going to fix that. I think what would be important is that whoever administers the medicine, the toad, I mean, Ibogaine, for a 17-year-old, I don't know, but maybe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Did he do Ibogaine? I believe it was the— 5M, yeah. But that whoever is the minister, the guide, stays on board with that person for days, weeks, months, helps process that. So it's not like, at least keeps an eye on that younger mind just to make sure that he's able to talk about things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You know, because I remember I was trying, you can relate to the idea that we don't have words in the English language, right, for some of these feelings. And so it's hard to explain what you experienced. And I was talking to someone about it. And he told me about this tribe in Brazil that does a lot of, you know, ayahuasca-type psychedelics.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I think it's slightly different than ayahuasca, some like the Yamamoto tribes. These are some of these wild tribes that have been doing psychedelics for generations. and how they have different words, words that we don't have in our language. And he's trying to get me to understand how we don't have words for so much.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And he talked about this word that this tribe had for the feeling you get in your stomach when you hear a cliff diver jump like 100 feet or 200 feet into the water, that concussive sound, you know, that . It gives you a feeling. It's hard to explain, but like, if you've ever heard somebody really get punched in the face, you know, with a bare fist, that's a sound that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Different, not like a movie, right? And that sound of a body hitting the water is a stirring sound. And there's a term for that in this language, because that's important to them. Let's remember that feeling that you get. And I think it's interesting that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
We're so new to this world and it's become sort of vogue and I know a lot of people are doing it and they think it's cool or, you know, rich people in, you know, the Hamptons of New York or in Beverly Hills are having like psychedelic parties and all that and expanding their consciousness and microdosing mushrooms.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Great, I don't judge that, but there is something very real to it, and particularly for people who are going harder and have, I don't know, man, that kind of trauma to dig up and to look at, this shit is real.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I mean, that is... Yeah, I mean, we're talking a little bit about it. And for some reason, you know, I always say, like, I want to make a love story. Just film a love story with a girl and a boy on a beach drinking wine, kissing and crying and doing all the things that people do, falling in love on a beach. And then I...
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
No, no, and I looked it up. I think I heard somebody died There was a, no, I remember there was a doctor or a shaman who, I think in Mexico, this is all searchable, was putting people under and molesting. Oof. Right? But that was one person. He was busted. Because I searched it all, like dark side, downside. Addiction, deaths, and very, very little.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I couldn't find anything directly related, but I remember this one story of some shaman who was putting people under and like, you know, doing that, but I don't know. I haven't heard much. Have you?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
That's a movie, man. That's like, because there's like an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. I don't know if you ever saw that film, Jim Carrey. It's a good movie where he wants to erase part of his brain to get a girl out of his mind. It's like just, you know, bad relationship. But see, that's fascinating to me. I can totally see how that could happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I think that one of the things that 5MEO did for me was just that, kind of what's the adage, that we use 2% of our brain. And it's like, to me, I've made the analogy to people like, Do you want to understand a little bit about what it's like? Think about your dreams.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I always end up on top of a mountain with a bunch of stunt guys fighting for their lives and pyrotechnics bombs going off and weather and animals. And I can't seem to just make the love story. So I tend to be drawn towards more challenging projects. And in the case of Lone Survivor,
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And when you wake up from a dream and you've had some insane dream that you're speaking languages and your mother is there, but her head is an ostrich head. And your son is like a stockbroker and he's making deals, but he's only two. And you're like, where the fuck did that come from? How did my brain... I shut down part of my brain to sleep and something else woke up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And as a writer, I can relate to that feeling of accessing parts of your brain that you just can't get to sitting here talking. And I've had that experience many times. I don't know if you've had it writing, but where you sit down and things start coming out of you. And you look, you think that, you know, 15 minutes have gone by and you look up and three hours have gone by.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And you don't remember it. And you look down, you've written 10 pages, but you've accessed something that you can't get to normally. And I call it, you know, flow state or, you know, some sort of optimal creative flow. Like, Rogan thinks that this state is an actual entity, like an external goblin that comes in and enters you, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
There's this guy, Steve Pressfield, who I like, who's like a guru for writers, and he talks about this too, like being able to access truly access aspects of your mind that you normally just can't get to, right? So that 5-MeO can put you in this state where it just shuts down your default network.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So everything that we normally think of, like, oh, I'm wearing a sweater, you're wearing a sweater, I'm wearing pants, you're wearing pants, carpet here, all your things that are up on the wall, that's all our rational brain. Turn all that shit off And the next thing you know, you've created 10 years of a life, and you really think you've got a son and a wife. It's crazy, isn't it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
He's mourning his child that never existed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
No, I've heard of it, but I've never read it. Oh, man, you got to. Tell me, give me, like, the notes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Like, right from the get-go, when I met Marcus Luttrell and, you know, first looked into his eyes, I knew—I read the book quickly, and he was in town interviewing directors, and a lot of directors wanted that story read. So I met with him, and literally from the moment I sat down with him and looked into his eyes, I was kind of caught up in this spell of emotion and pain and sacrifice and this...
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
FDA, baby.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I don't know, man. I wasn't there. I wasn't there. I know about the picture. Capricorn One was a movie when I was a kid that was about the theory that we never did. I don't know, man. I like to think that we did because that's how I was raised. And if that didn't happen, then I got to really unpack a whole bunch of other shit. But I don't know. I can tell you I never went to the moon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
What about the Stanley Kubrick stuff?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
That's the movie. That's what it is? Yeah, I mean... I don't know. Damn! I don't know. I love this subject. I know. I don't... I'm going to assume we did. Yeah. But I wasn't there. Yeah. I just want to believe we did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
People are full of shit, and there's a lot of reasons that we would have lied, and governments are horrific, and governments will do things that we can't believe to advance agendas, and I've seen all of this, and I've gotten a front row seat to some really fucked up shit. That our governments do. And when I was young, I didn't know about it and I didn't think about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I thought there were good guys and bad guys. And I believed our leaders when they said that we were the good guys and they're the bad guys. And not always the case. Yeah, yeah. You know, I did just come back from Israel last week. How was it? Dude, it's fucked up. You know, I...
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I was—two weeks before I went to Israel, I was in New York, and I was going to have lunch with a friend of mine, and she brought a friend of hers who I didn't know. And during the course of the meal, Israel came up, and she started ripping into the Israelis and, fuck the Israelis and fuck Zionism. And she's looking at me. She's really getting mad, and I'm like— I'm curious, are you Arab?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Are you Muslim? She said, I'm Palestinian. I said, okay. I can imagine this is a really fucking hard time. She goes, yeah, it is. And I said, I get it. And she starts ripping Israel. They all need to fucking go. I go, okay, okay, I hear you. I'm curious, how do you process the Nova Music Festival and what happened?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
300 Israelis were killed at the music festival and she looked at me and she had this look in her eyes I haven't seen I don't know ever and she said I thought it was fucking hilarious. I loved it and the feeling I had was Sickness anger confused like I'm looking into the eyes of this 30 year old girl And I said, I got to go. I said, I'm going to leave.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I said, look, I just want you to know I don't agree with anything you said. My pulse was going. I didn't even know what I felt other than I had to get out of there, walk away. And then I decided to go the next week to Israel. I wanted to see it. And I wanted to just see it for myself. And I went to that site of that festival, and I went to one of the kibbutzes that was attacked.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I wanted to go into Gaza, asked if we could go in. I was told we couldn't go in. It wasn't safe. We got close and could see into that world, the Gaza Strip, you know, behind the wall. And I just spent—I was there for five days, and I really just tried to see it, you know, because we read about it. We see it on our computers. We certainly get into our, you know, whatever social media feeds.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I had all this information. I wanted to see it. And I think my biggest takeaway is— as simple as this sounds, is that these people fucking hate each other. I mean, hate each other. I've never seen that kind of hatred. I remember when I was in Iraq with Team 5 and we were driving through towns, people would look at us. We'd be in those RG trucks. I can't remember what they were called. Like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
and those trucks, you know, looking out, and they'd be looking in with this look that felt, I hadn't seen that look a lot. You know what I'm talking about, like die. But when I was in Israel, the anger and fear was so palpable. And I know it's on the other side. And I don't know, man, like, I just think like, where my mind starts going is, okay, Israel did this shit. Palestinians did this shit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
energy that Marcus had kind of got me. And still to this day, it still gets me. Just FaceTiming him, I have such a connection to him. But making Lone Survivor and, you know, started with going to the Dietz family, the Axelson, the Murphy family, and asking for their blessing and telling the story. And all three of those meetings were very emotional.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It's been going back and forth since 1941 or whatever the, you know, 1907, depending on how far, whatever, however far back you want to go. Because I've tried to go back and, well, okay, it was their fault and it was their fault. And the English gave it to the Israelis and that fucked everything up. And then World War, and it's this Rubik's Cube that you never solve.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Bottom line is, like, they fucking hate each other. They cannot work it out. Like, it's like, you know, two kids that are fighting, they just can't stop. They're never gonna stop. And I came out of there with the sense of, and looking at so many Israelis I met, The energy you get is, please, we need help, right? And yes, they're horrific what's happening over there, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
These kids dying in Gaza and these innocent people dying and horrific what happened. It's horrific. And I'm not like, at this point, I don't know what to justify and who's right and who's wrong at this point. It's just, if it's going to stop, they need help. That was my take. They need someone to come in and say, you go over the fuck here, you go over the fuck here, stop. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I hope that can happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yeah, it's super complicated, but at the end of the day, if you just look at it, just practically, they can't fix it without other people, in my opinion, getting involved. It's like there has to be help from us. There has to be help from Saudi Arabia, from UAE, from Qatar, from Egypt, from Jordan. They got to help. Europe's got to help. because they can't fucking figure it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
That was what I got. And it's really fucking sad to me. How much time did you spend over there? I was there for five days.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yeah. And, you know, I recommend for people to go there if they want to understand what it really feels like and get a better sense, maybe a deeper sense, of just how dark and complex the problem is. So I recommend going over there. Damn, damn. How long ago was that? I got back like 10 days ago.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Yeah, and, you know, brutal, absolutely brutal to go tour the kibbutzes, And the tour that I had was a young 28-year-old guy whose brother was killed. His mother was kidnapped. They've kept the kibbutz exactly as it was, October 7th. So the blood's all over the place and the glass and everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
the kids shoes and you know the baby shoes and you know babies were taken and you know absolutely horrific um and and you know like you've seen that video of murphy and deets uh and you know using that i mean you can't go there without getting activated and then you go to the music festival and um you know it's it man it game on yeah okay you want you're gonna do this game on you support that
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Right, and I do, but then you start, you know, understanding the pain on the other side and you just, your head starts to explode. And that's why I've come to the conclusion like they can't, they need referees. It's like the nastiest hockey fight you've ever seen in your fucking life with no refs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I remember going to Danny's parents' house in Colorado and his father taking me into his bedroom. which they left kind of as it was, almost from a young age, or, you know, Hot Wheels and posters of girls and, you know, toys and all kinds of things. And there was also his uniform that had been recovered. And his father— That they recovered? Holy shit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You know, and people are bringing guns onto the ice and knives onto the ice and no one's there to stop it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It's just, it's... Well, if you look backwards, it's really complicated. Well, you did that. Well, you did that. Well, you did that. Well, you did that. Okay. That's never going to get unpacked, in my opinion. Looking forward, big brother issue, like from 40,000 feet, someone has to step in. and organize a large group effort to stop this shit. So that's what I hope happens. Yeah, me too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Because it sucks. Me too. It sucks for everyone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So American Primeval, that's the new show. Did you ever see Jeremiah Johnson when you were a kid?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So when I was a kid at Robert Redford, played this wilderness guy who went out west from the city and had to learn how to survive. Yeah. You know, ended up marrying an Indian woman and a kid. And he was, ended up, at first he was totally inept and couldn't function. And Indians wouldn't even waste an arrow on him because he was so, he was, you know, so useless and such a non-threat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And by the end, he was a great warrior and he had the respect of multiple tribes. And that was one of my favorite movies as a kid. And that was like something that got me going and wanting to make movies and tell stories and stuff. And I always kind of wanted to do something like that, you know, an adventure story.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Not like a Western in the traditional sense, and I like Westerns, like What's Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was one of my favorite, or The Unforgiven. I loved The Cowboys, some of John Wayne's earlier films. I loved all those movies. But I kind of wanted to do something that was a little more
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
like raw and just pure survival and didn't have like towns with saloons and whorehouses and you know sheriffs and people i wanted like to be up in the mountains with the savages and um so i got a friend this guy markel smith who wrote the revenant did you see the revenant yeah and and i love that and i'm like hey man let's let's go back into this world and
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And he actually came into my office, and I have a collection of axes in my office. I think he'd let you to prove of it. And I pulled out this ice axe, and I walked up to him, and I go, I just put the axe in his lap. I said, let's do a show that's this. And I said, let's just channel this, this ice axe. And he smiled. He said, okay. And he wrote it, and it's this kind of epic saga set in 1857.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
In this corner of America, it's southwestern Wyoming and southeastern Utah. It's that intersection. Where in 1857, it was fucking wild. There was no civilization. But it was kind of the last... one of the last areas that were really wild in America. And, you know, there were multiple Native American tribes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
There were the Mormons who were setting up in Salt Lake City, and they were violent, had a real violent side to them, because they'd been fucked over from New York to Georgia to Illinois, where their leader, Joseph Smith, was killed. So this dude, Brigham Young,
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
flees west with 2,000 Mormons and sets up his last stand in Salt Lake City, thinking no one's ever going to come, and he starts growing the Mormon church, and he builds his army to defend. So he's out there, the U.S. government sending the army to fuck with the Mormons and get them out, because Brigham Young's trying to turn Utah, true, this is true, into a Utah state. Utah wasn't a state.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It was a territory. And Brigham Young's like, all right, we'll take it. This will be a Mormon state, Utah. And it was President Buchanan who preceded Lincoln who's like, yeah, no, you're not doing that, bro. You're not doing that. So he's sending the army out there to get the Mormons out. So they're fighting. All the Indians are fighting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And you've got all these trappers who are just, you know, hunting, trapping bear and other pelts. So it's just a fucking savage place. And our show follows a woman who's got a handicapped son who's just trying to get through that land to California to find the kid's dad, so you'd think. She's got a secret. And the story's her journey through that part of America. Damn. And it gets nasty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
His father sat me down on Danny's bed, which is his bed from childhood. And he had a piece of paper and he started reading from the paper. And he started talking about, I remember hearing after action report, autopsy. And he started reading and he said, left knee, bullet. Left thigh, bullet. Groin, bullet. And I realized he was reading his son's autopsy report.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It gets nasty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Did we send you the shows? You sent them to me. All right, good. We'll sit down and take a peek. The organizing event is worth anybody checking out. It's a very underreported mass murder, arguably the first mass killing in American history. that was called the Mormon Meadows Massacre. And it happened in 1857.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And a group of pioneers called the Fancher Party that were going from Arkansas to California had to move through Mormon land, Utah land, to get to California. But in 1857, the Mormons had basically issued a proclamation saying that no one can come through our land without a permit from Governor Brigham Young.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And they'd done this because they were getting so disrespected by the pioneers who would come through and be like, hey, bro, can I have some of your wives? Or maybe I'll just take one of your wives. And they'd steal women. Mormons were polygamists, and they all had 10 or 15 wives, which was problematic. But these pioneers would come through and harass the Mormons, rape women, kill cattle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
They'd let their cattle graze on the Mormons' crops. So there was all this mutual disrespect. So by the time this party came through without a permit, the Mormons warned them off and said, you got to go back. You got to go around, which would add like two weeks to the journey. And these pioneers were like, fuck you, we're not going around. So the Mormons came back and killed all of them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So a group of Mormons, and what was kind of fucked up is they dressed up as Paiute, which was a tribe out there, Indians. They dressed up as the Indians and actually brought a couple of Indians with them so that any witnesses would think it was an Indian murder. Damn. And it was really a Mormon murder. It was a killing done by Mormons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And they killed about 165 of these pioneers, men, women, and children. And really horrific moment in the history of the Mormon church. And it's a horrible moment in general. And that's kind of what we use as like the inciting incident is what we call it. Where, you know, the moment it kicks something off. So the show's kind of going along and you don't realize it's going to hit you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And then the Mormon's mental massacre kind of... comes at you hard, and that's the event. And so it was interesting, like, going to Utah, meeting the different Mormons that were historians of this moment in time, and getting them to talk about it, because it's a dark moment in Mormon history, which I never knew about until... You got them to talk about it? Yeah, and there was one guy...
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
One Mormon wrote a book called The Meadows Massacre, and he took me to the site. And he wrote it because there's a monument in Utah now where the massacre took place, and the Mormons built the monument to all the folks that were killed. And his book, it's really interesting because it's about this crime, this horrible moment in Mormon history.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And what he does in the book and what he said to me was, okay, As a Mormon, if you want to show this moment in our history, you have every right to do it. It happened. But I would ask you to read my book and do your research and at least understand how it got to that point, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Because, you know, like any moment of violence, if you backtrack it and think, well, which is kind of what's so tricky about the Israel situation, well, you can't unpack it and get to the roots very hard. In the case of the Meadows Massacre, what the book did well is it sort of let you understand how things got so tense that this 145-person massacre could occur.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I thought that was really kind of interesting. And in learning about that, And learning about American history and the continual line of violence that's plagued our planet, but certainly plagued our country. You start to understand man and our human nature and why we're so inclined to violence. And that's sort of a theme of the show.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
One thing so interesting that saved the Mormon church, arguably, is that in 1857, the army was ready to come in big numbers and just fucking kill the Mormons. And that would have been no Mormon church. There'd be no BYU. There'd be no Salt Lake City, as we know. It would have been over. And that would have been a great act of violence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And he started shaking, and he said, abdomen, bullet. And I could see the tears falling out of his eyes and hitting that paper. And he finished, I can't remember how many times Danny Dietz was shot, but a lot. And he put the paper on my lap, and it was an autopsy report with his father's tears in it. And he said, that's who my son was. That's how tough my son was. You make sure you get that right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
But the Civil War was just popping off at that moment in 1857, 1858. So Buchanan and then Lincoln had to pull all the troops away from Brigham Young. And they were about to fucking get him, right? Civil War, ah, we need these troops back east. No shit. And that saved Brigham Young. The Civil War saved the Mormon church. Wow, I had no idea. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
In Santa Fe. in santa fe uh on location i wanted to do a film with no sound stages i was like let's go out there let's go up on the mountain let's shoot in the weather let's let's let's make a survival show that's what i asked for and that was maybe one of the stupider things i've ever asked for because we're up there for 135 days on the mountain through the winter through the summer
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
You know, snowstorms, rainstorms, lightning strikes, fucking rattlesnakes. We'd have rattlesnake wranglers cruising through the set, you know, constantly. And they'd find the little ones, which I didn't understand. Those are the real dangerous ones. Did you know this? The little rattlesnakes, the younger and smaller the rattlesnake, the bigger the venom load.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
So you see a big rattlesnake, you don't want to mess with it. You see a little rattlesnake, Everybody clears out. Oh, shit. I didn't know that. Snakes. Our actor broke his leg. We had to film around that. Stuntman got all fucked up. It was a wild shoot. And I'm like, you asked for it. You got it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
It's on Netflix on, I think, January 9th.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I thought to myself, okay, what the fuck have I gotten myself into with this? Not a joke. Very, very real to some degree. very good, decent human beings, parents and wives and siblings. And it was a tremendous amount of pressure to make sure that when I was done and I showed that film to not just the families, but the entire SEAL community, I think Admiral McRaven was running,
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
either SOCOM or the SEALs. I'm not sure what he was running when we finished, but I had to show it to him and all of those folks and the families and everyone in between. And every day I was making that film, I was thinking about the Murphys, the Deaches, the Axelsons. Marcus, and so was the whole crew. So was Mark Wahlberg. It became something much more than a movie for us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
We didn't quite realize the power of the Brotherhood, of the SEAL community, of your community. You know, at first, maybe certainly some of the actors didn't, but very quickly everyone did. And that movie had a special gear that is very hard to find.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And I think if you ask Mark Wahlberg or Taylor Kitsch or Ben Foster, anyone that was involved in that film, we see each other, you know, text each other, and like, no, no, that was it. That was one that would be hard to... to replicate and a feeling that's very hard to get.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
And the pressure to get it right was there every day, including the trial on set every day reminded me that if I didn't get it right, he was going to kill me. So that every day I would, by the end, at first I was really scared. And then sort of halfway through, I would see Marcus in the morning. I'd be like, I know. I have to do a really good job today or you're going to kill me. Anything else?
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
He'd be like, nope, that's it. I'd be like, got it. And then I'd go about it. And then he had Morgan lurking as backup. For me, Marcus was a scary one, but Morgan was a really scary one who really didn't have to say much. Have you met Morgan? Do you know him at all? I've never met him. He's such a great guy in Washington now, doing really well. I just spoke to him last week.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
I was trying to think about when I first came to know of you. You know, I know a lot of SEALs, and it might have been— Marcus or Morgan Latrell that somehow got you on my radar. And a couple of other guys that are living in California that I know, but just your name came up. You know, I'm always interested in anything a SEAL is doing, particularly an ex-SEAL.
Shawn Ryan Show
#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side
Having those two guys suddenly in your life and then just the general SEAL community was a gut check and it definitely focused a little bit harder every second than I have in some other films.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Taylor's such a great guy and a great actor and really proven, because he had some big fucking misses. One of them was my film Battleship, which I'm proud of, I love all my movies, but I kind of made him do that film and he was... Didn't quite work, and he kind of had some other misses, but he stayed true to himself and has built an incredible career. That's a guy who truly does.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
He used to live here, and now this city got too big for him, so now he's way up in the crazy hills of Montana. I'm just tracking wolves with cameras all day long. Like I looked at some of your pictures out in the lobby of the wolves. Like he sends me pictures all the time. He's just so true to himself in that way. That's awesome. But yeah, he plays a bad man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So we're doing the next one on – this is an announcement. The next American primeval is going to be on General Custer. Oh. Yeah, man. And we're going to focus on a short period of time leading up to Little Bighorn. Because he is a very misunderstood character from American history. And I'm sure you know a bit. Are you a Custer fan? Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was a fucking beast.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he was a warrior in the Civil War who was leading in the front of the cavalry. He started cavalry charges. Can you imagine being in a cavalry charge? Fucking 500 guys on your side, 500 of mine, and we're just galloping full fucking speed at each other and just fucking smashing. And he just kept doing it all through the Civil War and was just a badass. The war ends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he's a warrior, like he starts losing his mind because he doesn't know what to do with himself. So they send him out west to deal with the Indian problem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, so the goal would be to do... One of the things that was cool about American Primeval and reaction is people are like, whoa, I didn't know that about Brigham Young. I didn't know this about Jim Bridger. I didn't understand, right? And so you get something that works, hopefully it's entertaining, cool fucking show that's just fucking awesome.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But you're also like, oh wow, I'm gonna fucking learn about the country, right? So I like the idea of taking moments in American history, not necessarily all about the West, although Custer is something that Mark L. Smith and I are both kind of obsessed with. And there's so much cool shit around the story of General Custer and Crazy Horse.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
building a fictional story around those characters and having some great actor play Custer is exciting but I could see doing the third one on something like the Attica prison riot which has always obsessed me and if you followed that there's an incredible book by Tom Wicker who was a journalist called A Time to Die that dissects
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
It was horrific. One of the things that a lot of people have talked about, and I had the LDS Church issued a statement sort of critiquing the show and critiquing me, which I appreciate and I understand why members of the Mormon community would be offended by the portrayal of Brigham Young and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which was the event that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
that event because i like events you know like i'm good with events um if you give me a contained event over a short period of time and i can tell that story and it's emotional and visceral that that's and attica was wild and how it started and how it escalated and the players involved and the negotiating to try and calm it down and the corrupt governor rockefeller who wouldn't negotiate because he don't want to be appear weak
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And then finally it just goes off and everyone's dead. And it was, you know, a great look at the American prison system, racism, negotiations, religion, because the Black Panthers were in there and the Muslim Brotherhood was just. So I like the idea of taking moments in American history that are probably pretty fucking violent and sort of presenting them and being like, wow, this is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
thrilling and deeply entertaining. But I never knew that. And with Attica, this might get me to think a little bit about prison reform and the state of incarcerated American men today in America. Because that story of Attica is deeply rooted in abuse of prisoners all over America. Have you done anything on that? No. I mean, incarceration.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I mean, look, going back to Ksenia, this girl who's now in a fucking working prison camp in Siberia. Like, we have fucked up prisons. Russia, South America, imagine being in a Venezuelan prison right now. And so I like the idea, and America has its own unique flavor of fucking hell within prisons.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Not to make light of prison, right, and I'm not, but I actually had an idea a while ago for a show that I wanted to do, like Survivor or Fear Factor. Take three guys, Three, like take the three of us in this room right now. Three fucking tough, badass American men. All right. And put three. Yeah, there's three of us in here. In my mind, you are. You're a fucking legend. You're a legend, Jamie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You're a fucking legend, Jamie. But you put each man in a maximum security prison somewhere in the world, like the worst. So you're in Thailand, Jamie's in Venezuela, and I'm in Russia, okay? And you go in by yourself, right? And you just are put in the general population. And the deal is you can get out anytime you want. You just have to say the code word, blue vase.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And the warden knows and the prison knows. But nobody's telling, nobody knows. Everyone thinks you're a prisoner. Whoever stays in the longest gets $10 million. And you have no idea when the other guys have gotten out. Right. So like you could stay in for five fucking years. And me and Jamie got out in three minutes. But just like how you would survive prison and what a horror prison is today.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And so that took me down a rabbit hole of maybe doing it as a film. But it'd be a good Squid Games movie. Yeah, like Squid Game. Did you ever see the movie Blue Baker with Robert Redford? Yeah, yeah. Which true story about a warden of a new prison who went in undercover as a prisoner to, you know, to see what was going on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But I think to do something like Attica, something like we're going to do Custer next. But if you have any good ones, man, send them over.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You know, we use this kind of our inciting incident for the first episode, which was a real massacre that the Mormons committed on a group of pioneers who were heading out west. A Mormon militia with some Paiute Indians attacked and murdered about 140 men, women and children. And we present that in the film. And we present Brigham Young in the film.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And many Mormons, it's interesting to start reading all the debate about it, but a lot of Mormons were saying, yeah, this is exactly what happened. And this is a part of our history. And no other Mormons, particularly the seniors in Salt Lake City, were saying this is not what happened. This is not fair. But what I find interesting about the Mormon church is,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And about kind of how we present it is I've had a lot of people come to me and go, dude, I never knew the Mormons were such savages. So gangster. They were fucking gangster. Brigham Young was, in my opinion, a gangster, a survivor, a warrior. And for anyone who follows Mormon history.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You know, they started in upstate New York with this young kid, Joseph Smith, who found these tablets and basically rewrote the Bible and started getting this following. And then they moved to Missouri and they got popular. And then there was an extermination order. And it was kill all the Mormons.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So they fled to Illinois and tried to survive up there at this place called Nauvoo that was going to be their peaceful place to live. And Joseph Smith was murdered, and they were run out of Illinois. And Brigham Young led these dudes, men and women, on foot across the plains in the winter to Salt Lake Valley, which was this desolate wasteland. And he said, oh, we'll stay here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
They'll never come for us here. And they started coming. And Brigham Young basically said, fuck it. We're not taking it anymore. He built his own army, the Nauvoo Legion. And he said, we're staying here. We won't mess with you. But if you come after us, we will fight. And that point I think is interesting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I think Brigham Young, who survived longer than all of them, and if you go to Salt Lake City, he did a pretty good job. Right? That's a big city, man. It's a great city. And I don't know. I respect the Mormon religion. I respect Brigham Young. And I feel like we make him look like a gangster in American Primeval. And I don't know. He's...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I mean, the polygamy was a thing, and we do touch upon that a bit in Primeval. I think Brigham Young had 40-odd wives. Nice. How do you fucking keep up with two? I don't know. I don't understand how someone could have two wives. That's a whole other conversation. I mean, I have a friend who lives in Saudi Arabia. And a long time ago, I was in Saudi Arabia doing some work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I had asked him, because in Saudi, you can have multiple wives, Saudi men. And I had asked him about that and sort of like, wow, that's amazing, multiple wives. That's so cool. And we were leaving Riyadh Airport and he was walking with me and there was a man in front of us and he was holding like five suitcases and he could barely walk. And there were four women around him and kids everywhere.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he just looked like he was about to collapse and fall face forward on the ground at the airport in Riyadh. And my friend looked at me and said, Pete, this is the reality of what having five wives looks like on the ground if you want to see what it really feels like. So they think about Brigham Young having, you know, 45 wives. Okay. Good luck, I guess. Right? Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But that was one of the issues, the polygamy that... people that were non-Mormons back in 1850s were using to attack the religion. And, you know, that was something that was the polygamy has obviously been since outlawed and the church has cut itself off from that policy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But, you know, the Mormons were the whole idea that this kid, Joseph Smith, I believe he was a young teenager, 14, when he and his buddy walked into these woods. I mean, like 18, late 1830s, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
There's a photo of you. 16, he forgot about it. See, I didn't want to oversell it, so I understood it. I kind of knew it was in the 50s. He had 56 wives.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
14. So this kid at 14 comes out of the woods and says, the angel came and told me that the Bible's almost right, but it's not quite right. So I'm going to rewrite it, which he did, the Book of Mormon. And look at where we are today. It was not that long ago, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And in the course of that journey from Joseph Smith coming out of the woods to where we are today with Brigham Young University and the beautiful city of Salt Lake City, Utah – There was a lot of bloodshed and Joseph Smith was murdered. Brigham Young fought. And another interesting theory that isn't proven, but it's I believe it it holds is what saved the Mormons.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Because in 1857, when you had the Mormon Wars. You know, Brigham Young was fighting President Buchanan when the military was coming after him in 1857. And he was holed up and prepared to fight in Salt Lake City. And Buchanan wanted him out. And then right around 1858, 1859, a little thing called the Civil War popped off. And the entire focus of the U.S.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
military was not on Brigham Young and Utah, but it was on fighting the Civil War. The Utah church was able and Brigham Young was able to grow the Mormon church and survive and thrive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Well, and the sauna and the way you approach it. The way I think you approach all of it is kind of a meditation. And I know that that's probably really an important part of your creative process. It is of mine when I'm writing or directing to be able to have that time alone. And it's a moving meditation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he was able to politically negotiate a place in the government so that by the time the Civil War ended, Brigham Young was deeply entrenched and was able to lead the Mormon church to the great power that it is today. I think if the Civil War hadn't occurred, there would be no Mormonism in the United States. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. What a fortuitous turn of events.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I'm going to probably get ripped on for that one, but I believe it's supportable.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And Salt Lake City, Utah is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful state. Salt Lake City is a cool city. And I'm down with the Sundance Film Festival, so I'm down with the whole state. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, I can't figure out like I when I was doing my research for American Primeval, I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormon church gave me a tour. And, you know, I told them what the film was about and that the Mountain Meadows Massacre was in the book. I was going to be in our show. And they took me to the theater. Have you ever been to the theater, the Mormon Theater in Salt Lake City? No.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
It holds like 20,000 people. It is the most beautiful, incredible theater where they have weekly events and meetings. And they took me in there, and there's a huge pipe organ. And I had a private concert with their organist. Yeah, it's that. Whoa. Look at that place. And I sat by myself in the center of that theater. And you see the pipe organs. And they gave me a private concert.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And then they took me into the museum and showed me the history of the Mormon Church. And I told them about the Meadows Massacre, which I've taken heat for in the show. And at the end of the tour, there's a bookstore called in the Mormon Museum in Salt Lake and the book Mountain Meadows Massacre by this guy Turley was there and I'm like, I wanna buy this book.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I read the book and I'm like, oh, for sure we're putting this story in our film and it was for sale in the Mormon bookstore. And I met with the author, Turley, who then took me to the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre And he had written the book with the support of the Mormon Church to get their side of the story out. Did you film at the actual site? No, we didn't. The actual site was in Utah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Is this too much? They're delicious. Am I making a rookie mistake?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I think one of the secrets to your success, in my opinion, is that you know how to take that time for yourself. lock in, focus, get mentally and physically ready because it's not easy to do what you do every day and to be this present. So I respect it so much.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But I went and toured it. So you filmed in New Mexico. Yeah, we filmed everything on different reservations around Santa Fe. But if you go to the site of the Mormon Meadows Massacre in Utah... The Mormons have built a big memorial there honoring 130 pioneers from Arkansas who were killed there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And the Mormons have owned this event, and they were very willing to talk about it, which is kind of like them buying a full-page ad in Book of Mormon. Right, right. You know, we know you're going to make a film about the Meadows Massacre. It's probably going to be inflammatory in some ways. However, come visit us. We want to meet you. We want to show you. We want to play music for you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I had an incredible time with the Mormons that were involved with us doing the research for Primeval.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
The biggest single issue, if you get into the weeds—and I think it's an interesting point of debate— is whether or not Brigham Young knew and authorized this massacre and the way the massacre played out in real life was different how we did it in the film in the film we did it in you know one swell a move like it just happens and you know what we filmed it in one shot and it's
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
pretty intense, visceral, very fast events, and then it's over. In reality, this wagon train was surrounded by the Mormon militia, the Nauvoo Legion, and some of these Native Americans. And it went on for about four or five days. And the Mormons dressed up as Native Americans. This is where it gets kind of
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And some Mormons aren't thrilled that we pointed out the fact that they were trying to put the blame on the Native Americans. So they literally, Mormons dressed up as Indians to confuse the pioneers. And in case there were survivors to say, oh, it wasn't Mormons. It was the Native Americans that did this. So they don't love that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But what what the Mormons claim or some in the Mormon church claim is that during the three or four days that the siege took place before the actual massacre and the details of the massacre are really fucked up because the Mormons pretended they were accepting a surrender. So they went in with white flags and they said, OK, the men walk this way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
The women and children, we're going to walk you to safety because the Indians are going to kill you. Mormons are we're here to save you. So they started walking them out. And then on someone's signal, they just killed everyone. Really bad. But the issue of whether Brigham Young knew about it or didn't know about it, we imply that he knew about it. We never say that he authorized it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
but we imply that he did know about it. And what many of the defenders of Brigham Young will say is that there was a letter written where Brigham Young said, do not harm these pioneers. Don't kill them. But the letter was sent by horse while the event was already occurring. So I've had people say he knew that that letter wasn't going to make it there in time. He was covering himself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Oh, hey, I wrote a letter. I knew I couldn't get there in time, but I wrote a letter, so there's plausible deniability. No one knows. It's hard to believe if you really start getting into this, and obviously I did. I know it's not on the top of everyone's list of things to give a fuck about.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But it's really hard for me to believe that in 1857, a group of Brigham Young soldiers would act unilaterally on their own and commit a crime that's horrible without somebody approving it. It's hard for me to imagine. So that's the single issue that tends to, you know, if I do and I really try not to. My girlfriends turned me on to Reddit. I never even really knew what it was. Oh, my God.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Like Reddit is fucking crazy. I was talking to, you know, Jack Carr, right? He's getting into making movies and he's doing all this cool stuff at the Terminalist. And I think he's a great guy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
and he was talking to me about um reviews because it was the first time he was ever getting reviewed right and you know any filmmaker who says they don't read the reviews is lying okay they're just fucking lying and and they we do read reviews and we care and they hurt you know and and he's like i guess he'd gotten you know read something he didn't like on um
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he's just called me and said, how do you handle this shit? I want to kill this. He's freaking out. And I'm I mean, I'm not he wasn't really freaking out that bad, but he was pissed. And I'm like, Jack, you know, welcome to the world of what we do. People are going to are going to talk.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm like, you don't understand what – like before Reddit and comments and all the things, back when we first put movies out, man, there were three critics that mattered. Like when I first started making movies, there was this guy Kenneth Turan in the LA Times. There was Janet Maslin in the New York Times. And then there was Siskel and Ebert, right? And like they had so much power, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So you'd make a movie and you'd spend – you know, tens of millions of dollars and you put your heart and soul and, you know, like we never try to make bad movies, right? Like that's never the goal. We're always like, you know, we want to win. It's hard to make a good movie. But you put all your heart and soul into these movies and then it's fucking three critics that control your fate, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I was telling Cara about – My first movie was called Very Bad Things. It was about this bachelor party that goes haywire. That's a great movie. Appreciate it. Thank you. I love that movie. So that movie got, hands down, the worst review ever given to a movie in the history of film reviews. Please don't pull it up right now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But feel free, anyone listening, Kenneth Turan's review of my film Very Bad Things in the Los Angeles Times. Okay. I read this review. I literally vomit. Like people talk about vomiting. Like I don't know if you've ever vomited when something bad happens. I puked. I went into like shock.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm like – he tried to destroy my career and he – like it was – and so I'm telling Jack and I'm going, pull it up right now. Pull it up. And he starts reading it and he's like, oh my god. Yeah. Oh, my God. Don't fucking tell me about bad reviews. OK, because I got the worst.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And Kenneth Turan, who like after I'd gotten that review, I was in a bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles getting drunk with a couple of my friends. And Kenneth Turan was in the bar and I got up and started moving towards him. Like I was in a blackout rage. And my friend Joe and Mike Mendelsohn held me back because I was going to get him, you know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And for three films after that, Kenneth Turan, he just had it out for me, this guy. Hated me. And finally on, I believe it was either Friday Night Lights or Lone Survivor, he reluctantly gave me a good review. But it was more like a broken clock is right twice a day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But, like, nowadays, like, as I said to Jack, it's like, okay, if you – the crazy thing about if you are focusing on how your work is being perceived and it matters – and it does matter. Like I say, anyone – Who says it doesn't, I think is kind of lying.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
They don't have anything to contribute. And they're using a different standard that doesn't really apply to just like the working human being that just wants to be entertained. And that's why I said to Jack, I go, dude, like, you know, we have rotten tomatoes, right? Which is a way of, you know, critics. If you get 61% good, you get a fresh tomato.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
If not, you're, you know, you've got a rotten tomato and that sucks. Okay, I've got a rotten tomato. That sucks. Oh, I got a fresh tomato. Oh, that's great. But now they have the audience score right next to the critic score. Yeah. And that's the one that I said, Jack, don't look at the critics. Look at what your audience is saying. And that's when I learned about Reddit and all that stuff. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I'm like, fuck the critics. I'm down with this Reddit shit because you get such interesting conversations. And they're much more thoughtful, I think. And they've taken away the power. And I'm not shitting on critics. I get it. You want to be a critic? Whatever. I do like the quote about critics and life doesn't go to the critic. It's the man in the arena.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I like that quote and I believe in that. And I've used that to justify my mood. When I get a bad review, I'll just read The Man in the Arena over and over until I feel good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great quote. Great quote. Fantastic quote. And it's true. It is absolutely true that, you know, To do people that do, you know, I was just talking to Dana White about something that I actually want to mention to you. My love of a guy like Dana is the doer of it all, the guy who just says, I don't care what the critic says. I'm going this way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I am fucking going this way. And if I win and you're with me on the ride, you're part of me. If I lose and you're still with me, you're my friend. If not, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to do it again. And I have so much respect for that. And I'll tell you another interesting thing about my business that never – It always surprises me how real it is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But when you make something, a movie or you do something, whether it's American premiere of almost anything I've done, and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, you put yourself on the line so intensely and you'll believe in it with your heart and your soul and you go for it. And as it's getting ready to come out, there's this weird thing that happens where everybody separates from you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And you're the one that's kind of now you're about to be judged. It's going to be determined to be successful or a failure. It's going to get reviewed. And everyone's kind of like, good luck, Pete. Good luck. And I could like, like the day or two before it comes out, all the people like, and this is when you know, who's got your back. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Cause there's a few, you look around and like, wait, well, all these people were with me for this journey. And I'm all by my fucking word. Where'd everybody go? And it's, you know, like my sister, my best friend, Ari, my dog. My son, there's a few people who are really right there. And then when it comes out and it works, man, you have a lot of friends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
If I have to call her or send her flowers or anything, I will. I've had to send a few people flowers and give them like massages and stuff like therapy. Because you did it right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You get extended. I agree with you that like what I always say is I do a lot of research for my films and went to Iraq with Navy SEAL platoon and lived on an oil rig and went back to high school for Friday Night Lights.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I found that if I – whenever I put that work in and I put that research in and I really – with the exception of Very Bad Things, which was a fantasy about a bachelor party gone haywire, which Kenneth Duren didn't like – It did hurt me. It did, that review, but I was younger. But if I do stay true to my instincts and my passion and I follow it, A, the work seems to connect much, much better.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I don't feel if somebody doesn't like it or wants to talk about it or debate it, okay. It doesn't hurt me. Yeah, that's experience, right? I think so, yeah. And any time I've done a job for the money, and there have been a couple, it's backfired horrifically. And the money was never worth it. The reviews did sting worse. Because you agreed with them. Yeah, they were right. I was lazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I didn't give a fuck. I was – I cared. I didn't phone it in, but I wasn't locked in. Right. That's the difference, right? Yeah. And I think one of the reasons that you don't have to read your shit is because you know you're locked in. You just are. And that's why you're connecting. And locking in – and I say it to filmmakers now because –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So kids are so confused, young kids that want to become filmmakers, you know, that they think they're, you know, they're going to work hard and they're going to make these movies and they're going to put their heart and soul into them and people are going to watch them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And then they go on and they see TikTok videos that are getting, you know, 400 million likes and someone's just, you know, live streaming them like making toast. Like. They're like, wait a minute. What the fuck is happening? And I say, look, all you can do is control your passion, your work, your discipline and believe in something and put the work in. And I believe that the results work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You know, will will take care of themselves. But it's it's weird, you know, for for filmmakers today and to try and figure out how how what's going to penetrate and what's not going to penetrate. And, yeah, I remember when when I did that, that series about opioids, painkiller and, you know, that pretty heavy issue. And we worked really hard on that. And I was very, very proud of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And, you know, we came out number one on Netflix and we were number one for like six, seven days around the world. And on the eighth day, we were number two. And the number one show was a documentary made on cell phone footage about the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard divorce trial where people were just in the parking lots. And that was the number one show on Netflix in the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I'm like, whoa, wow. Like, you know, they probably made that for $25,000, if that. And everything is sort of, there's this great parody now. And it's confusing. But I'm like, dude, you just have to work harder. And if you're not telling the truth, you're going to have a harder time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Sure. Tim was in Friday Night Lights. Do you remember him in the movie? He played the father, like the mean alcoholic father who used to beat up his kid. And Tim was great in Friday Night Lights. Tim's a very good actor.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Is it really ever fine, do you think? I think it's okay sometimes. But barely, barely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I don't think there's a value in Insta-hoes. I don't. I don't. I actually don't, and I've gotten pretty good at just removing that from my life, but it was challenging. The boxing, okay, yeah, people putting shit in boxes. Maybe eating asparagus, I guess. I do enjoy cooking videos. I think there's value in that. I love watching chefs prepare food.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Where do you stand on, and this is something I talk to a lot of writers and filmmakers about, like... Just being quiet is really important. And being, for me, the most creative experiences I've ever had have come far away from any stimulation, from any controlled thinking, from allowing ideas to come, to have like the divine spirit, the angels that are creativity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
that require a certain amount of quiet and space for those to emerge, at least for me they do. And I try to make space because I so agree with the bandwidth, and you're right. But more than anything, just turning it all off can be so inspiring for me creatively.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah. So my my creative process, like I just I just wrote a script that will be my next film. And I wrote it in a very locked in zone. I try to find a way of locking myself into a pattern when I'm writing. But it involves the key for me is getting up. about 4.45 at the latest, but usually right around.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
He's an artist. I mean, he's a really deep-thinking, deep-feeling artist. Yeah, clearly. And Taylor Sheridan has a knack for getting great performances out of people like McGraw. Or did you see Jerry Jones, his cameo in Landman, which I think is the best cameo ever? Have you seen that yet? What episode? So is it on?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm crazy about it, so I'll set my alarm for 5.45 to the same song every morning that wakes me up. This script was Van Morrison. And I'll take a piss, and then I'll get a cup of coffee, and then I'll go right to my writing room with no phone, no stimulation, nothing until I put in usually about two and a half to three hours of just pure mental focus.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
No distraction, no conversation, no news, no phone, no nothing. Why do you like to do it in the morning? Because I think when you – I actually like studying writers and their writing habits. I believe that if you've had a good sleep, a sober sleep, and an intention sleep, meaning you go to bed with some plan of what you want to write tomorrow – So I'm making a film about Marines.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I want to write the landing at Okinawa in World War II, which is part of the story. I know I'm going to write the actual landing scene. I go to bed with that intention. I might even write that intention down. You wake up, your mind is like at its most fertile. It's like a calm pond, you know, like a mountain pond that's absolutely flat and like glass and reflective and beautiful.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And in the morning, it's at its most calm, your mind. And then I believe that every bit of stimulation you put into it is like a pebble or a rock being dropped into that water. Until the water starts getting all churned. And that's what happens to our minds by 11 o'clock in the morning. If you've been plugged in and communicating, your mind is just a fucking feral boiling pot. cauldron of acid.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
This is how I think of it. So I like early morning, super calm, I can find the ideas. And I tend to, if I lock in like that, I write at a high level and kind of to your point about like critic proof,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Thanks for the workout. My pleasure. Thanks for the work. You're a beast. For anyone that doesn't know, you are a fucking beast. And I suspected you would be. You know, that's why I wanted to work out. And I was smart enough. And I told you right away, I'm not going to keep up with you. But, man, you go hard.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
i know it's good i because i know it it came from the deepest place i have right and it's like well okay if you don't like that then you don't like me sorry which is fine yeah i can handle that yeah but like i know that you know versus
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You know, writing a little bit here, working a little bit there and then going out to lunch and then sitting in a cafe and and, you know, a coffee shop and kind of writing. But being on the phone, I just don't think that's deep work. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I have noticed that like rappers and a lot of people in the hip hop community, I've been working on a documentary about Rihanna for quite a while and spent a lot of time with her in the studio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
um hip-hop performers you know musicians and rappers keep because they're going into the studio at two o'clock in the morning and working till you know one in the afternoon and then sleeping all day and that that world that night time and i've talked to her about it she's just extremely creative late at night almost for me the exact opposite But do you like to work creatively at night? Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm not sure because I don't know each episode, but he's got Sheridan has a sequence where Jerry Jones basically playing himself just tells the story of how he got into business and how he started up. And it's just beautifully done. Sheridan's very good at getting people to to to do cameos and pulling it out of them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I just write. But when you're writing, because I was just watching you as you were speaking, you were looking up at the sky for an idea. Do you think about your writing intellectually Okay, I'm thinking this thought, okay, I'm going to write it down. Or are your hands on the keyboard and you're just channeling? It's both.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And do you experience euphoria when you're writing on occasion? Do you blow your mind?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I feel bad for people who never get to experience that. You know, I keep a necklace with a dog tag and a quote from a William Blake poem. And he said that has always just helped me quite a bit. And it's the only thing pleasing to God is the creation of beautiful and exalted things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I remember the first time I got to experience the power of writing and something – it was like literally a religious experience. I don't know what happened. I kind of blacked out. I lost track of time and I wrote eight pages. And I looked at it and I'm like, I don't know where this came from. And I read it and I blew my mind and I felt like I was having almost a religious experience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And that – Quote, when I read it, the only thing pleasing to God is the creation of beautiful things, the creation, being creative and being able to please God through creativity or have a religious, a mystical experience that's not drug induced. through the power of your creativity, I think it's the greatest thing in the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And it kind of saved my life, because if I hadn't found writing and filmmaking, I don't know what I would have done. I wouldn't have been, I mean, I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Can I tell you about, it's sort of a non sequitur, but I did want to mention, and it sort of related to something I love because I love boxing and I own a boxing gym in Los Angeles, which was hands down the stupidest thing I ever decided to do in my life was, oh, it would be cool to have a boxing gym and manage boxers and, you know, no, don't, don't. It's awful. I mean, I love the fighters.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I have so much empathy. But one of my fighters, Chris Van Heerden, his girlfriend is a girl named Ksenia Carolina, who I think I told you a little bit about earlier when we were working out. And this is just a fucked up story. She's a 28-year-old American Russian citizen who made a $51 donation to a Ukrainian charity called She went home a year ago to visit her family in Russia, and Putin got her.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And she's in prison now for 12 years. What was the charity? The charity was a charity based in America for Ukraine that she thought was going to give money to children that had been hurt by the war in Ukraine. It's all very researchable. So she got put on a list? She's a dual citizen. She's an American citizen and a Russian. She went to visit her parents a year ago in Russia.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Somehow the Russians were able to figure out if anyone with any Russian citizenship, even if it's dual, makes donations to certain charities, they get flagged. So she came in, got to her parents' house, was called to the police station the next day, came in, and they arrested her and said, you donated $51. This is treason. And she's now almost a year into a 12-year sentence.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So President Trump has been super cool. Dana White has been helping just trying to get like, you know, it's so it's such a crazy chess game. Right. That that, you know, someone like and I hope things go really well between us and Putin. And I think Trump's doing some great things and I'm glad we're talking. But the way they do business is different and they will grab somebody.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So do you remember a movie called Jeremiah Johnson? Did you ever see that with Robert Redford? Yeah, yeah, yeah, a long time ago. So Redford plays this city man who goes out west looking for gold and ends up sort of stuck somewhere around Montana and is trying to survive out there. When the Indians first find him, he's so inept. He's trying to catch a fish in a frozen river with his hands.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And they've done it to Brittany Greiner, and they just released this guy, Fogle, who they had gotten for smoking weed. If they can get you and hold you and use you as a bargaining chip, they will. And we don't do that. It's one of the things that the U.S. doesn't do. But you end up having to make these kind of crazy swaps. It's all about swapping, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So they get Ksenia, and, well, who do we have that— that's gonna get Putin to say, all right, yeah, I'm gonna let her out. Right, release that arms dealer. Yeah, but the people that we have are like, Pretty serious criminal. The merchant of death. The merchant of death for a basketball player smoking weed. It's crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But, you know, if you love Brittany Griner like or know like I know Ksenia and my good friend is engaged to her and he's in hell and it's like we need someone to trade, you know, and and so it's not going to feel right for, you know, people. We're going to have to trade someone that's done some pretty bad things to get this girl out of prison. And that's the game that these guys are playing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And it's not a game that you ever, ever want to get involved in. And I wish I hadn't, but I have. And, you know, Ksenia is a beautiful girl and she's in a really bad way and she doesn't deserve it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Khabib is... Sure. I mean, we don't do it. And that's, you know, we take... America takes a lot of shit. And I don't know, maybe, you know, what we deserve and what we don't. But we don't do that. We don't detain 28-year-old, you know, ballerinas... for smoking weed and throw them in prison for 15 years, 20 years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
We don't take people and say, well, you donated $50 to a charity that we're not aligned with, we're throwing you in prison. Yeah, so it's...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah. Canelo saved my gym. Canelo – I sparred with Canelo. Did I ever tell you that? Oh, Jesus. On my birthday – I hope he was nice to you. I was flying. I had landed in L.A. and I had a few drinks on the plane. I wasn't drunk, but I wasn't sober. Walked into the gym. Canelo was training. He was in camp. I don't remember for which fight. I walked in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I announced it was my birthday and I wanted rounds. And I wanted rounds. And Eddie and Chepo- And you called it on yourself? Oh, I called him. I go, it's my birthday and I want some fucking rounds. And he just kind of stared at me. And I ran up, didn't warm up, got my stuff on. Pedro wrapped me up. I put my gloves on. I waited till one sparring partner was out. I go, me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And to Canelo's credit, he only threw one punch, okay? I went two rounds with him. He threw one punch at the end of the second round. But it was a jab. And the way it landed, I've never been hit like this. He locked my jaw and my whole neck cracked. He locked my jaw down. It was a perfect jab. And he threw it at maybe... 20%. It was just this one perfectly placed jab.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But I did spar two rounds with Canelo. And I can say that, honestly. He went extremely easy on me. That's very nice of him. But yeah, it was cool because I got to see his whole journey when he came into our gym and he was just starting and I think he was fighting a guy named Lopez, and he was just this little redhead skinny kid.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I mean, he's completely inept that they don't even waste an arrow on him. They don't kill him. And by the end of the film, he's a warrior and he's learned how to survive and he marries a Native American woman and his wife gets killed and he goes on a vengeance spree and kills a whole bunch of people and ends up getting this incredible respect from the Native Americans.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And to see his progression, he's one of the only good stories in boxing, if you ask me. Name two good boxing stories. I'd be like, well, I think Alvarez is a pretty good story. He's stayed with his trainers. He's a family man. He carries himself well. He's made a lot of money. Okay, that's one. And two is there is no two. Well, Floyd Mayweather is a pretty good story. Yeah, all right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
All right, all right. I'll give you Floyd Mayweather. You're right, you're right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Just bought all the real estate in New York. Okay, you're right. I'll give you Floyd. For some reason, it's always hard for me to put... You're right. Floyd is... I got another one. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay. Current? Yeah. Sugar Ray Leonard.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I will give you Andre Ward, but I would submit that nobody knows who he is. Oh, boxing fans. Boxing fans, of course. But, I mean, he never... Right, he didn't achieve superstar status like Sugar Ray Leonard. He never crossed over. But, yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I just put him in... I put him in a slight, like, a positive story just because I've been to his house. He's rich. He's still, you know, sharp. That's good. He's handsome, and he's well-spoken, and it didn't take his brain. Right, he didn't take his brain.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
The stories of, you know, like, working-class boxing gyms like Churchill Boxing, my gym in L.A., which I technically don't own anymore because it just was turning into such a headache. If you could see the day-in, day-out, day-out trials and tribulations that these fighters go through. Oh, yeah. And you know it from UFC. I think that boxers have it, like, harder. I think. I can't prove this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But boxing is a more dysfunctional state than UFC, mainly because of Dana. And, you know, the fact that Dana's been able to monopolize it and that there's a system that you're a huge part of that makes sense and that there's good people involved at the top and everything. and on broadcasting and all of it. Boxing has none of that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And so it's this broken, dysfunctional mess that is just begging for someone, hopefully Dana, to come in and organize.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Do you think that there's a way for Dana and UFC to work with him? Yes. I mean, they're talking about doing that. How would that go, do you think? What would it look like?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And my dad took me to see Jeremiah Johnson and that movie always stuck with me. And I'm good friends with Taylor Sheridan, and we work together a lot, and I obviously know everything he's doing, and I kinda wanted to see if I could play in that space. But he's doing it so well and so specifically, I kinda thought, well, what if I just did something that was really about the survival.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Do you think that, like, is it going to be profitable? Wow. Like how do you make that money back? I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But I was just like if you pay – I think it was Dolan. It was the Madison Square Garden folks that put that deal together. And I just am like, well, okay, it holds –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
how many 35 000 20 i don't think it's even that it's not that big and i just like they someone spent a lot of money on that screen right yeah that's a lot of technology yeah but so you thought you thought that turkey he did a great job but was turkey involved in the ufc fight at he was involved in riad season was a part of the sphere event it was co-promoted by riad season
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So in theory, Dana could work with him in some way and start... That's the plan.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Incredible. Bivel trains in our gym, by the way. Does he really? Churchill boxing. The hardest punch I've ever seen anyone throw in my life was in our gym. David Benavidez was sparring Bivel. Whoa. And David Benavidez is a great fighter, but Bivel caught him and dropped him with the jab in sparring. Whoa. Whoa. Inspiring. Bivol, an incredible fighter. Amazing. So is Benavidez, by the way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I like to call it inch by inch filmmaking, where you think about how hard it would have been just to go 50 feet and take a piss, and how there might have been 15 different things that could have killed you on the way to taking that piss.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So they're both are. Those are actually two guys that I feel like could do it right. But just having so much trouble getting a recognition that they deserve. Well, Benavidez has been chasing Canelo forever. Won't fight him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But is that really happening? Is a proper Canelo fight happening?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
He would be, if Canelo really fought and it wasn't fixed, Jake Paul would not survive 45 seconds. I don't know about that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But that's what I'm saying. But Tommy Fury versus, compared to Canelo, you think? Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah. But are the fights even real? Like the Tyson fight? Like I saw video breakdowns of Tyson – Not throwing punches early on in that fight. I don't know if you've watched any of those videos where like there's like a left hook is 100% available. Tyson, you know, in training 99% of the time releases that punch and he held out. Like, do you think that that was a real, was that a real fight?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Instead of just jumping through those 50 things, let's really try and stretch it out and try and show people and capture the brutality of moment-to-moment living back in that part of America in the 1850s. And you're used to doing films.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
It looked like sparring to me. That's what it looked like to me. But like with an arrangement beforehand?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And you think if Canelo and Jake Paul agreed to do it? I don't think that would be that. I think that would be a fight. That would be a fight. That would be a fight. Like a sanctioned real non-edition?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm going to put Crawford in another success story of boxing. I'm totally just contradicting myself. Now I remember. You're right. I love the guy. He's fantastic. I know you've had a mine, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, that's because people like you are getting us all in crazy shape, Joe. These guys are living forever. You're like teaching us the way to do it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Why is Oscar De La Hoya offering an opinion on who Crawford would fight? Oscar De La Hoya is not Crawford's manager, is he? I don't believe so. No, I don't think he has anything to do with it. Oscar seems like he's a little off the rails these days. Okay, for sure. God love him. He's having a good time. Do you watch his clap?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Okay, I know social media and I said don't scroll and certainly Insta hoes are bad. My favorite Instagram account is Oscar De La Hoya and his clap back Thursdays. No. And then he rips into Eddie Hearn basically. And it's deranged. It's absolutely deranged. But it's funny. And Oscar clearly doesn't care. He does – like to your point earlier, he does not give a fuck.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he just rips apart anyone and everyone. And he does this thing every Thursday called – I think it's called Clap Back Thursdays. And that's my secret guilty pleasure. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
It's a hell of a drug, cocaine. It's a hell of a drug, cocaine. Yeah, but, I mean, he's... I mean, I like to say we've all been there. I haven't been there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I haven't been there. I haven't put the fishnets on. I've been here, but I haven't been there, okay? And, you know, like, I do respect him. Oscar was a great fighter. Phenomenal fighter. Phenomenal fighter. But, I mean... Come on now. It's like Oscar de la Hoya and all that's coming with him and Eddie Hearn, who I also like quite a bit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And then you've got Al Heyman and Bob Arum, you know, is in as well into his 90s and is just going. It's it's chaos.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah. I have a little regret that I never had a professional fight. And I was just in Mexico, and my driver started talking about boxing, and my driver told me his son was a pro fighter, and that if I wanted to, and he told me how much it would cost, I could come have a professional fight, and his son would let me win the fight.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But then I could have, well, but it would be a sanctioned fight and it would go, I would have a box rec score of one and O or O and one. I mean, I could have not paid the money and like taken the loss, but at least I would have had it. And I did think about it for like about, I don't know, maybe a minute.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I decided not to do it because like you and I were talking, like I just can't take getting hit in the head anymore. And, you know, when I was younger and I had the gym, I would spar more. You know, in Canelo I sparred and that was controlled. But I sparred Cam Newton once. You know, the football player? Sure, yeah. who's six foot five and he was in the gym and he wanted to work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I'm like, well, let's spar and we'll just, you know, spar light. And he wasn't a boxer and I have, you know, basic defensive boxing skills, but I'm like, well, just let's work him. And he's like, okay. And we started, you know, kind of sparring a bit and he didn't really know what he was doing, but he's a very, very physical specimen. And I lightly kind of jabbed at his face
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
and maybe hit the gloves, and he just went insane and started punching me across the ring. And I'm just like flashes of white. I lost all feeling in my hands. And then I didn't spar any other athletes until Steve Nash came into our gym, the basketball player. And he wasn't his biggest candidate, so I'm like, well, all right, I'll spar with Steve Nash.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he doesn't know how to box, so we'll just gentleman spar. So we're sparring a bit. And I hit him, and I underestimate how fucking athletic he is. He just fucking cracks me hard with a solid right, and my hand's gone numb. I see nothing. And then I'm like, that's it. I'm done. And then Saquon Barkley comes into our gym. Do you know who Israel Barkley was? A pro fighter.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
His uncle had an incredible career as a pro fighter. Is that Iran Barkley? My bad. Iran Barkley. Thank you. Wow, that was a political slip. Israel Barkley. Oh, shit. Sorry, everybody. Thank you, Joe. Iran Barkley. Do you know who Iran Barkley is? Sure. Okay, good. So that was Saquon Barkley's uncle, right? Did you know that? No, I did not. Yeah, that was his uncle.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So Saquon comes into our gym, and I'm like, oh, I'm going to spar. And I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm not going to fuck with this guy. After Cam Newton and Steve Nash, and Saquon Barkley is a fucking stud, right? Like, this guy's like Mike Tyson, but bigger, just his body type. So I'm like, well, I'll hold mitts for him. I just want to see. And that guy could fight. Like, his uncle, I ran Barkley.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Legend. Legend. taught him and he started throwing punches and Saquon Barkley could move and counter and had balance and head movement. I'm like, dude, if you had instead of playing football gotten into this at 12, 13, And I'm assuming that your brain stayed on. You would have been one of the great heavyweights of all time. He could say Quan could box. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And so but I learned I thought about taking the fight in Mexico and I decided I'm not. Would you ever? Yeah. Hell no.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
The desire to have it was chemically fueled and then he sobered up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I trained for six months. You would have annihilated him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So when you hear the name Wesley Snipes now- I have no animosity towards him. There's not a little part of your brain that still flips?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
It's just so interesting, and the idea that you got to experience a version of what it feels like to prepare to fight someone. Yeah. Because people just don't get it, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Do you think the Zuckerberg-Musk was ever real? Was it ever even slightly real?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But does Elon – what do you think Elon's fighting strategy would be like? Well, he took karate when he was younger. So would he come karateing?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Joe, he's your friend. You know him better than we do. How the fuck does he do it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I just love the idea of people that don't ever fight having to –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
suddenly have a fight right just like like you know because people have never fought but suddenly get themselves and yeah okay here's another secret don't like when i do scroll i look for street fights with people who don't know how to fight or or drunk people fighting is funny too but like like you know okay elon and zucker mark you know are gonna fight okay let's say it's gonna really happen
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
They both train, but they're not fighters. So however much they train, they're still running their other businesses. Now the fight starts. And for about 20 seconds, they're going to have some tactics that their trainers have been. And then it's all going to go out the fucking window. It won't go out the window with Zuckerberg.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, it was a massive job. You know, a movie, a big movie is generally like 85-day shoot. American Primeval was 145-day shoot. And I had one of my ideas, and with Markel Smith, who wrote the episodes and was very talented, was let's not shoot in sound stages. Let's not make parking lots look like forests, but let's go up into the mountains.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Elon's going to come out, and Elon's running SpaceX, and he's got to dodge. And now he's going to take some time and focus on the fight.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
What is harder on cardio than boxing slash UFC, do you think? I always say boxing, people don't understand how exhausting... 40 seconds of sparring. And I've never fought UFC. I've always felt that boxing, for some reason, is actually harder on the cardio. I'm sure I'm wrong. I'm sure I'm wrong. Yeah, definitely wrong. Wrestling is the hardest. Wrestling is number one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But what else compares in terms of cardio and physical demanding to boxing? Wrestling, UFC, boxing, what?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Those guys are unbelievably fit. Have you ever followed Aussie rules football? Yes. So, you know, I'm doing my next films about a football game that some Marines played in World War II. And we're filming it in Australia. It's called the Mosquito Ball. And in the middle of a true story about this football game that was played on Guadalcanal before the Battle of Okinawa.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But these Marines all played it. These Marines were good college football stars. And then they all died in the Battle of Okinawa. So it's an intense story. But we need to film this tackle football game. There was supposed to be a touch game and the Marines ended up playing tackle. And legend has it that it was the most violent football game ever played.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And so we got to film a tackle football game in Australia, which is we're going to make the film. And, like, stuntmen are tough, but, like, playing tackle football, you know, is a fucking painful thing to do, right? Imagine, you know, even, like, Turkey Bowl, touch football games on Thanksgiving, like, people are in the hospital.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So I was just in Australia, and I had the idea that, well, like, Aussie rules football. It's perfect. We'll just take a bunch of these guys and teach them how to play tackle football and they'll really do it. So I just went to an Aussie rules football practice in Brisbane, Australia. And those fucking dudes are tough. They are tough. Have you ever just watched like the highlight reels of Aussie?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I mean, no pads, full smash. And I put that. Yeah, here it is. I mean, yeah, these are the guys we're going to use. Oh, my God. These fucking collisions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Look at this. Look at the hitting. It's just fucking nuts. Shh, shh, shh, shh. And I'm sure a lot of head to head collisions, too. So I went to this practice of one of these teams just got back and they were and I brought in American football. And I'm like, do you guys have any idea? And they're like, zero. I'm like, come on. You sort of have to know something. And they're like, zero.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So I get they just know nothing. Like, how much cricket do you know? Zero. Okay, if I had to gun your head and said one rule of cricket, could you do it? No. Could you do it? No, you couldn't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Stay in to what? The ball has to stay in to what? The pitch. We don't know shit. Do you understand how fucking popular cricket is? Gigantic. Bigger than football. Huge. Go to India or Sri Lanka. These people go nuts. In Australia... They have 100,000 people stadiums for Aussie rules football. So I go and I'm like, you know, I'm meeting these guys. And these guys I think are big stars.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And in this case, we went up onto some different Indian reservations in New Mexico. And we're like, let's really go out there for 145 days. Let's do it. This is all prior to us going out and actually doing it. And it's kind of like, be careful what you ask for. You're actually really fucking on the mountain for 145 days. And there's lightning storms and snow storms and wind storms.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I don't know them. But, you know, this is a major Aussie rules football team. And I got the football. And so I line them up, 11 against 11. And they're really kind of starting to get into it. And they're lined up, center, guards, tackles, ends. And I'm like, all right. So what do you think? They're like, yeah, we don't like it. I go, well, let me help. Tell me what this does for you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
All right, you're the center. If you were doing this in American football, you'd be making $6 million to $7 million a year. You're the tackle on blindside. You're making $40 million a year protecting Patrick Mahomes. Okay, you're Patrick Mahomes. And I'm telling them how much money they would make because these guys make no money. There's no money in it. Which is crazy. Crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And then they have, do you know tall poppy syndrome? Have you heard of this? Yes. There's no ego. These guys, they're huge. They're members of these super successful teams, but they don't have the ego of American athletes. And they don't get the attention. And it's tall poppy syndrome. They're culturally conditioned to not brag and to not boast and to be humble. And I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
They like to see people get knocked down when they get too big. Yeah, for sure. That's tall poppy syndrome. The tall poppy gets its head cut off, so they stay humble, which I kind of thought was kind of cool, just realizing that I was hanging out with the captain of an Aussie rules team. And I had dinner with the captain of the New Zealand All Blacks, the rugby team.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And this guy, this was a little while ago, a couple of years ago, this guy in America, I mean, you know, the all blacks, like the most popular rugby team and the most humble dude ever. And you go to a restaurant and nobody bothers him. He, you know, no security, no nothing. We don't – that would never exist here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But seeing how hard these dudes hit and trained made me think, well, maybe they're working at the level of athleticism that fighters are working at. I mean that's a hard fucking sport.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Let me ask you this question. And this this is something I don't talk about, but it's another secret theory that I have. OK, just between you and me. I feel like – and I've seen a lot of boxers train. And I've seen a lot of great trainers. Eddie and Chepo are great trainers. Abel Sanchez is a great trainer. Pedro Nema from my gym. Lots of great trainers out there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I've watched entire camps where trainers – like if I'm your trainer, I figure out, okay, this is our opponent. These are going to be our tactics. We're going to do a lot of jabbing with overhead rights, and we're going to take our head offline consistently. We're going to counter this way. And I've really watched this and paid a lot of attention to it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I'm not in any way shitting on trainers, but I'm kind of making your point about how alone fighters are.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
i see all this training and i watch it and i understand the strategies and the tactics and the second the fight starts none of it has any relationship to how the fight goes down it all the strategy is rarely employed and it becomes this moment where a fighter has to adjust and adapt and improvise incredibly and yeah the conditioning matters a lot but i often think that like
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
the training doesn't do shit. The trainers are, they can help you get your head right and get yourself in a warrior's mindset, and I do respect that, but tactics, sometimes I think that they're like, Am I wrong?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And we had rattlesnakes everywhere. And we had to have all these dudes going around pulling the snakes out of the... out of the rocks and stuntmen breaking ribs. Joe Schilling was with us every day. I think we killed Joe five times. Thanks, Joe. I saw Tate Fletcher. I was telling you, too, since episode two. We only killed Tate once, but thanks, Tate, for that. I love that dude.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But how much of that, like his trainer, Boheim, I might be saying, I know him. I know his trainer. Just like Eddie and Chepo. And they've got who's got to have Canelo. They have lots of other fighters. But like Eddie and Chepo have never had another Canelo Alvarez and including all of his brothers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I'm like, OK, how much of it is just God given talent like Terrence Crawford has that's then trained by trainers? versus how much credit does a trainer get?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Who are the top, in your opinion, the best UFC trainers?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
How much of that skill is, and if it's all equal, I get it, but how much of that skill that makes a great UFC trainer is, okay, if I'm your trainer and I'm getting you ready for a fight, I'm going to study your opponent, I'm going to study your opponent's strengths, his weaknesses, his tendencies, his tells, and I'm going to train you in relationship to that and be right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So you can anticipate where there's going to be an opportunity and take it. How much of it is that and how effective is that versus how much of it is, Joe, I got to keep you fucking ready for anything. I got to keep you in shape. I got to keep you mentally good. I got to remove distractions. And I got to be like your father, your uncle, your brother, and everything else in between.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But these stuntmen were so tough and breaking bones and all kinds of horrible things. But the creative... experience of getting to do basically six movies at once, you know, because I directed all of them. And being able to go that deep in characters and to be able to bring in elements like Brigham Young and the Mormon religion
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
That was in Australia. No, I wasn't there. I watched it. I felt like I was there because I watched it. And then it was shocking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I remember Rhonda's face, just the shock in her face. And she just, it was, yeah, that was, I literally felt like I was there because it was a piercing moment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
What was her trainer, Edmund or Rhonda's trainer? I can't remember his name. Yeah. But I wonder whether he underprepared her for that, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You know, she did a movie for me. I'm part of that problem. Oh, really? What was that? It was Mile 22, but she had kind of retired by then. This was after her. This was after the fight.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Sometimes I think about like what I've seen with coaches and, you know, I do appreciate a coach. And I've just seen different success stories in different ways that coaches have really impacted fighters. But then I think about like why don't life coaches work better and like – I wouldn't mind having a coach that would be like, Pete, here's our enemy, here's our opponents.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
and have big themes circling around just very visceral violent moments um as a filmmaker is awesome and it's it's a it's different you know because it's not directing an episode of a television show is its own experience but that's very quick directing a movie is really really wonderful and very obviously creatively demanding But that's this is six movies all at once. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I actually had a therapist for a while. When I first started seeing him, his name's Barry, and he's a great guy, and I love him. But so much of my relationship with him was unpacking my shit, my parents and my trauma and my fears and all this stuff. And for years, Barry would talk to me about my dreams and all this stuff and like the dreams that I had that night, not my goals.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And then I started realizing, OK, I feel like I've talked about my mom and my grandma and my grandparents and every fucking thing, the bad that's ever happened to me. And like, Barry, what if we start talking strategy? Like, could you coach me? And he started coaching me a bit, and I found that with my business decisions, my creativity decisions, you're so disciplined. I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Do you ever think, why don't life coaches work better? And if you had someone like Jon Jones coach in your life every fucking day, would it be better?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, but you can. So many people can't, right? Like, don't people ask you or, I don't know, they ask me for, you know, advice and how do you do it? And I'm like, well, you know, you've got to go to bed. You've got to get up early. You've got to have self-motivation. You have to not make stupid mistakes. And, you know, sometimes what you don't do that helps more than what you do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I'm aware of people struggling to figure out, like more than ever, especially with all this perceived success through social media and the glorification of billionaires and all this stuff. Everyone's like, I'm not happy where I am and I want, and I'm like, well, are you following these basic rules? Like the basic rules that I believe you follow, you, Joe, follow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But so thousands of young people, at what age did you start martial arts?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Okay, but you started fighting when you started training?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
That's actually older than I would have thought. But so many thousands of kids take boxing classes or lessons for mixed martial arts or whatever, and they don't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
find the level of discipline that you were able to find right yeah it's not for everybody so but what made you able what made you like was it your parents was it no insecurity yeah someone that gave you when you were eight that made you be like it i'm gonna learn this and i'm gonna master it well when i first started doing it i just wanted to figure out how to fight
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And having to keep that in my head and kind of figure out how to keep myself functioning and not wasting energy. And, you know, I built a gym in my house in New Mexico with a nice bath and a sauna. And I'd get up at four every morning and just have that time for myself to keep myself fit and mentally and physically ready to to to go at it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
It was like, it was like religious for you. That wasn't a much, a massive experience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Why? It's a sacred space? Yeah. You can't fuck in the church? Even when no one was there, I would bow. That might have been a mistake. I'd go into the gym. You should have fucked her. No, I fucked her plenty. All right. All right. So we're keeping it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But like, like, okay, so I think that's so interesting that to trace the origin story of your fuse being ignited, because people look at you and they're like, okay, that dude is fucking on. He's in it. I've had people tell me that I'm in it. You know, some of our friends, mutual friends are in it. You know, when you're in it, you know, when you're in it, most people can't find that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I love the way you warm up, you know, because I'm the same way. I do a long warm-up every day. And my buddy Ari got me into it and just try and stretch absolutely everything. And I was telling you, I got thrown off a horse in Africa a month ago.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, you're fucked. Yeah, I am I can remember When Canelo Alvarez first came into my gym and he was young he was just starting to you know, have a rep and Everything about that guy reeked of exceptionalism. The way he put his bag down, the way he took his shoes out, right? The way he drank his water.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Every rep, every, you know, when he started to stretch, every single stretch felt intentional as fuck. Him starting to just lightly warm up on a heavy bag felt he was absolutely exceptional. And I try to tell other fighters in our gym and other people in general that like you don't understand. It's not something – you see other pro fighters.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I've seen a lot of them come to our gym and they're talking to people and they're joking around and they're sort of taking a moment or two off. And then you look at all of them and these are good fighters. I mean these are pro fighters. But they're not exceptional. And they don't have that intention. And when I would see Canelo Alvarez or certain elite, Crawford's done media days at our gym.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
From the moment they walk in, everything about them, the way they take their sweatshirt off and fold it up and put it down. I'm like, that dude's a world fucking champion. Has nothing to do with the fighting. The way they hold their hands out when they're getting taped, it's almost like every breath from the moment they walk in to walk out is so fucking exceptional.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I look at all these other fighters and go, no, you don't understand. He's got something you don't have.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah. I mean, I try to, I do go over it, but in more of an abstract way. I'm a bit of an improvisational filmmaker, meaning I don't like to have everything super planned out. I think kind of the way you conduct your podcast. You have some ideas, and then you just sort of allow whatever happens to happen. And I know what I'm going to do that day, particularly with American Primeval because –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Floyd never lost, right? And I do, I have, I totally agree with you what you said earlier, that Floyd deserves. That's a great story. I just, for some reason, have in my life over the years, sometimes hated on him a little bit for a variety of reasons, mainly because of how defensive he was. Now I know how great he is, but I do sometimes look for inspiration in random places.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And if I'm feeling like I need a reminder of what excellence is, I'll watch training videos frequently. from Vegas with Floyd just him and his uncle or his dad just doing the mitts doing these like 15 minute rounds just so smooth and effortless and what does he say hard work easy work hard work I can't remember what his phrase is but the beauty of of like Mayweather training in a gym.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I just find that so interesting to look for people who are exceptional. It's a long road, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
How about just like how hard it is to stay hungry when your refrigerator is that fucking full? Oh, yeah. You're a good looking dude. You have a beautiful wife. You've got this. Hacienda in Mexico that Pablo Escobar would have killed for with the stallions and the cars. And you gotta go fucking deal with David Benavidez?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
That's like when Rocky, when he had to go fight, I can't remember who, and he's all rich. Yeah, you have to go fight Clubber Lang, rich.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Like, okay, Canelo, I'll fight you poor, but now I got to fight you rich. Right. And I got to wake up for, like, ay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, and like, and I do think about That also, like, I have people asking me, like, you know, we started talking about making American Prime Viewable. That was 145 days up on a mountain, you know, and standing on ice with clamp on your shoes because we're on ski mountains and there's fucking wind and it's fucking miserable. And I'm like, people are like, why are you doing this shit?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm like, because I fucking love it. Because you fucking love it. I love it. But they're like, but we could like, you know, I got a boat. We're going to go into the Mediterranean. I'm like, no, I'm going to be up on the mountain. Yeah. And like staying hungry is a...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Forever, right? It's an unlimited source. I mean, that's the necklace I wear. Pleasing to God is a creation of beautiful things. That's what it says on your necklace? Yeah, the only thing pleasing to God is the creation of beautiful and exalted things. It's that quote. That's perfect.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Because it reminds me, dude, like, okay, I don't – I'll enjoy – like, you want to take me to a fancy Michelin restaurant here in Austin? No. Okay. You want to take me to Guero's and fucking have some ribs? Okay. Like, I don't care. And, I mean, I appreciate it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Who's the best fighter? Who's the best, I think Tom Brady's a great example of someone that was able to just reignite the fucking beast. Kobe Bryant, I guess, yes. But fighters or people that you know that, I just think it's interesting to think about.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You know, we had so many big battles and stunts and, you know, kind of dangerous, complex filmmaking that there has to be some plan. But even within that, I try to loosely think about what I want to do and then get out there and let the actors kind of start doing what they do and see what kind of creative vibe gets going. And a lot of the cameramen, you know, I just shoot handheld cameras.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Who's the – is it George St. Pierre that's been able to like – who is it, John Jones, that – And your mind is like curious in that they were able to, with a full fridge and comfortable sheets, just keep fucking going.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
That's such an insult. What's a worse insult than that? I was high on fucking eight balls and I beat your ass.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So he has to be the greatest fighter in the history of the UFC, greater than George St. Pierre, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Who do you put number one based on those metrics? I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
When you think about John and how he's been able to do it for this long and go through these highs and lows and fighting and doing blow, that's fucking... Well, he's that talented.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Like, like, but what, what's in there, you know, like to what we're talking about, what's the, like, yeah. What's driving that motherfucker.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Do you think that because sometimes I think we're That having of being fucked up can work to your advantage and having addictive tendencies and being like being able to harness addictive tennis tendencies into something as violent and to be able to apply those to a sport versus just being, well, I'm a well-adjusted human being with no addictive tendencies, not a lot of trauma.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
with how we can work and capture and my feeling is rather than plan it all out go out there knowing kind of what you want to accomplish but allow kind of creativity allow that kind of divine magic to enter the process which um can kind of be freaky for like my bosses at Netflix because they're spending a whole lot of money and they're like what are we doing today and I'm like I don't really know what we're doing today but we're going to do something um
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm going to fight you. Oh, no, I'm a fucking beast that grew up in a fight. And like Mike Tyson, who grew up, I don't even understand if you grew up inside or outside, dealt with fucking ignited torments, drug addictions, violence, and I will kill. And I guess that's always interesting to look at how well-adjusted people do versus people that have real trauma when it gets fucking brutal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
It's horrifying. And I say that about people ask me about my job or how do I get a job working in Hollywood? I want to make movies. I'm like, well, are you sure you want to do this? Because like you're not going to have an office. You're not going to have a boss. You're not going to have someone saying, hey, Joe, get up. Time to get up. And you're going to have to be totally self-motivated.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You're going to have to deal with. And yeah, like reviews, I feel what you're saying there, but you're going to be judged. You're going to be only as good as your last job. You have no fucking job security.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And, you know, you're going to be up at four in the morning and some mountain filming someone cutting someone's fucking head off, having no idea whether you're like on the right path or the wrong. You got to be a little fucking crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Delusional thinking. You have to be able to be delusional.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, and having the combination of having your shit together and being fucked up because you've got to be crazy, but you've got to be able to functionally crazy. But I always say delusional thinking because I made the point to people asking me about my job. I'm like, well, okay, think about it this way. You have to have the ability to look someone in the eye.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So if I'm a young filmmaker and you're the head of a studio, I have to look you in the eye and say, hey, Joe, here's the deal. I need $135 million. I'm going to make up a story about a bunch of cowboys and Indians fighting in a mountain. I'm going to bring all these people up there. I'm going to...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Film it and move people around and I'm going to edit it all together and I'm going to – for your $130 million, I'm going to build this thing. I'm going to make it all, put music on it and edit it and make it all. I'm going to put it out into the world and people are going to stop doing what they're doing. And they're going to watch it and they're going to love it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And it's going to bring you value. But why is it delusional if other people have done it? Because everyone that's done it is a little delusional. Because it just doesn't... You're right, okay? It's not...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
totally delusional but it's a little bit of magical thinking maybe take the word delusional out of it and be like you know like the idea of magical thinking that like oh no I can do something that's very doesn't quite make sense it's not like oh I'm going to make this table I'm going to measure it and cut it and nail it and attach it to a frame and no it's like I'm going to I've got this abstract vision that I'm going to attempt to
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
put together in a way that cost somebody a lot of money and Yet, I'm gonna aspire to touch people's hearts and souls with this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
They actually are fantastic about it. And, you know, I have to give, you know, my boss. There's a woman named Bella Bajara at Netflix who and people talk a lot of shit about Netflix. I'm not one of them. I mean, they're giving so many people so much work. And once you convince them that you have a vision, they let you do it. And she was great. And she let me do it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Do you know what my dad told me when I told him I was going to Hollywood to learn how to make movies? What? So my dad was a business guy, and I love my dad very much. But right when I was getting ready to come to Hollywood, he said, Pete, I've secured you a job at Lehman Brothers. You're going to work on a desk, and you're going to learn about finance. It's done.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I had studied theater in college, which was making my dad very anxious, because I was starting to get into making these little movies and all this stuff. And I'm like, I'm in LA, and I'm getting ready to move to LA. And he stopped me. He says, we're not moving to LA. I've got you a job. This guy, Barry Frank, who's a friend of my dad's, who knew someone at Lehman Brothers,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I think they're out of business now, by the way. Big money company. And I'm like, Dad, I'm not doing it. He's like, what do you mean? I go, Dad, I'm not. He said, you're really going to go to fucking bullshit Hollywood? I go, I am. He goes, you're not. I go, I am. He said, okay, I'll tell you what. Good luck out there. You know what's going to happen?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he's staring me in the eye, and he's not fucking kidding. That's so fucking funny. And I'm like, Dad, I'm not. And I fucking left. And in the back of my mind for the last 30 fucking years has been that warning.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Be careful. You better fucking work. But it's not magical thinking. But to my dad, the idea that you were his, you know, because I had no artists in my family. My dad was a business guy. He was like Mad Men advertising, worked for Gray Advertising, like Jif Peanut Butter and shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
like the account guy he had to go get the jiff peanut butter guys drunk twice a week and that was his job you know but the idea that wow you can make a career in the arts yeah people do it but most people don't fuck with that most people don't make it yeah they don't fuck with it but that's just because it's hard yeah
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Everybody would have their own fucking podcast. If it was easy to have a podcast, my favorite— I think everybody does. I think everybody does. Gavin Newsom just started one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Well, you're right. You're right. But so like—well, like I said, this is the other thing, right, that I think is so interesting, and it's true with podcasts. What I tell people— who like come to Hollywood and they're like, I don't understand this business. What do I do? What do I do? I'm like, fuck off. Let me tell you something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
There's no barrier of entry for my business or podcasting, meaning anybody in the world can move to LA. You don't even have to be in LA anymore. You can be in Austin and be like, I'm an actor. I'm an actress. I'm a writer. I'm a director. I'm a producer. I'm a podcaster. Any motherfucker can do it. You don't need a degree. Get on an airplane and look to the left when you're getting on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Can anyone fly a fucking plane? If your toilet is fucking backed up and you need it fixed, can you just pull anyone off the street? Or does a plumber have to have a fucking degree, right? Right. But we want to exist, this is where I say magical thinking. You want to thrive in a job where all you're doing is talking, Joe. You're just talking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Anyone can fuck, everyone has a mouth and two ears, but you're doing it on a different fucking level. That's magical thinking in a way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But I didn't. You just followed your instincts. And who was your first one? Who was the guy you were telling me about? Brian Redband, my buddy Brian.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But people moved to L.A. Or get into my business thinking I'm going to smash it. Yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Delusional. Or aspirational. Because it's delusionally aspirational. Yes. Because I'm like, dude, if you come, you want to work in...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
still call it Hollywood even though it's not really Hollywood anymore which is so decentralized but it's fucking show business motherfucker it's money and art smashing together in this very bizarre way and you gotta get so good at art that the money people trust you yeah and you gotta know how to play the money game even when they trust you you still have to know how to play it even if you're you know uh
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And it was interesting because there was a scene in the second episode of American Primeval where a Native American cuts the throats of five women. Spoiler alert. Sorry. Spoiler alert. I guess. Sorry. There's a lot of other bad things that happen. But there is this scene, right? Yeah. And, you know, Netflix is a very busy company. They're making a lot of stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Tarantino or Christopher Nolan or you still have to understand for the most part that there's financial parameters and you have to be able to accept that and play that because you're playing in a serious game. Our bosses, they don't give a fuck. They're all publicly held now and they're looking at stock prices.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I say to people, bro, if you just want to be like an artist and just pure and think about like, oh, I just, you know, like you actually were when you were doing your podcast. Like I kind of was when I was in Minnesota making little movies and doing all this idiotic shit that got my dad to say, oh, you're going to make gay porn, you fucking idiot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Like, this little phase of, oh, isn't – I was in Minnesota and St. Paul in this small school. And I'm like, I just fucking love this shit. Just like your first podcast. I just loved it. But I'm like, I tell people, if you just want to be an artist, go write plays in Oklahoma City and just stay over out there. But if you want to, like, step into this arena, like –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And then all of a sudden, boom, he takes off. The reason I got into directing was I was trying to act and I was having mixed success and I was getting very scared that you could prepare for an audition for five days and I know everything and I'm ready and I'm all in and I go in. And I get 30 seconds of the director's time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And you find out, like, oh, you look like the dude that the director's girlfriend cheated on him. And he's like, you were dead before it started. And I was... I was on this TV show, Chicago Hope. It was a hospital drama. And I was kind of getting a little famous. I played a TV doctor, Billy Kronk. And people kept calling me Billy whenever I walked down the street. Like, hey, Billy, what's up?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Billy, Billy, Billy. And I'm like, oh, my fucking God. This is going to be my legacy is being this TV fucking doctor. Billy. And I was on an airplane going from L.A. to New York. And I'm sitting there. And this guy walks by me. And he stops. He goes, hey, Billy. And I'm like, Billy. my name's not Billy. He's like, my wife has this rash. Show him the rash.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And she pulls up her shirt and she's got this fucking rash and she's sticking it in my face. He's like, Billy, what's the rash? And the other people on the plane are like, what's the rash? And I'm like, fuck this shit. I'm like, I've been busting my ass. I'm barely making it as an actor and people are showing me their rash. I'm like, I gotta fucking do my own sling blade. And I did...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Very bad things. And still got the worst review ever in the history of reviews. I love that movie. But it started my career. It was a good movie, man. Fuck that. Fuck that critic. But you know what saved me? So I get the horrible review. I throw up. And I'm literally on death's fucking door. Like, I'm done. I have no career. I get a phone call at night.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And when I was in the process of getting thrown off and I was like in the middle of the air and I'm about to come down and I'm like, oh shit, this is going to be a problem. And I thought about those warmups and I landed and rolled and didn't hurt myself. So I think those are really smart.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And we were deep in the edit process. And I got a call from Bella, the boss, my boss. And she's like, I want to see this show. And I'm like, well, it's your show, so please come in. And, you know, it's hard for her to keep track of all the shows and all the scripts. And I was impressed that she wanted to come in. And so she came in to the edit room and she's like, I'm going to watch one episode.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
from a woman named uh her name is kelly chapman meyer she was married to ron meyer who used to run universal and she's like he was a huge guy ron meyer was a big big mogul in our business and i could hear these guys laughing and she's like pete pete i'm on the boat with ron and steven and david spielberg and david geffen oh wow And we're watching your movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And they're laughing like little fucking frat boys. And fucking Ron Meyer gets the phone. He's like, this is fucking great. And I'm holding the review of Kenneth Turan. Like, I just got it. And I'm like, what? Hold on. Spielberg. This movie's fucking great. It's great. And I'm like, let's go.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And you've got to be able to take the hits. I took the hit. It strengthens you. It strengthens your resolve. Knock down seven, get up eight. I believe in that. If it's just all good all the time,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
No, you get knocked down seven. No, you get knocked down seven.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Get knocked down seven, get up seven, or get knocked down seven, get up. Well, whoever made the phrase, they're wrong. No, because you start- Every time you get knocked down, you get up. That's one time. Right, but if you start up and get knocked down, one, one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Fall down seven, get up eight. Yeah, they're retarded. So you're saying that Denzel Watson, Japanese proverb.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
What I like about what you're saying is it's just like, oh, I can climb any mountain. No, you fucking can't. Yeah. Like, get knocked down, get up. Who fucking gives a shit? Just get up. Get up. Like, that's the kind of advice I'm a fan of. Uh...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
it's like life is not fair you're gonna you're gonna come into the whatever if you want really to have success you're gonna see people that work less that have luck or you know connections or who fucking soar past you and it won't be fair deal with it yeah fucking deal with it well you can't compare yourself you know that's the great quote comparison is the thief of joy you can't compare yourself
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
It's kind of a big deal. She's, you know, very influential person in our world. And so it's me and Hugo, the editor, and Bella comes in and we're showing her the first episode and we're just sitting in this kind of dark screening room. And I have no idea what she's going to say or do. And it's pretty violent. And it ends and she goes, I want to see another one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Have you always felt that? Have you always been that way? Like back in the day when Fear Factor days and before you were Joe, like you are now, were you competitive?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
What about doing stand-up? You were doing stand-up then. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
he turned it around and he talks about how he turned it around by deciding that he's a professional and amazing career since then right which is kind of spectacular for anyone that doesn't know Steven Pressfield and they're like they want to do anything like writing sports podcast that motherfucker has laid it out and I'm not a big fan of like self-help tell me shit like the war of art that that dude in my opinion and I think yours is
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And I'm like, okay, we'll start playing the second episode. And we're getting right to the moment where, spoiler alert, these women are about to have their throats cut. And I'm starting to have a full fucking panic attack because I'm pretty sure that she doesn't know what's coming up, right? And Hugo, the editor, is kind of looking at me like, should I stop it? And I really didn't know what to do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Are you going to apologize to your wife for me or do I have to?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You have to watch that movie, the climax that I was talking about.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So last night I watched this film called The Climax. It's made by this French director who's made some really fucked up, Gaspar Noa's name is. He's from, my son made me watch this film. And this guy's made some really fucked up films, and I don't recommend them if you have any sensitivity, because this guy is the hardest filmmaker out there right now, in my opinion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
These are fucking intense movies. Did one called Irreversible, did one called Enter the Void, and they're about drugs and death and sex, and they're very experiential. so you feel like you're um yeah so this is it this is the climax and it's about these dancers who accidentally drink a bunch of lsd and this is the hardest film i think i've ever seen in my life
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And you feel like you are on a very, very, very bad LSD trip. Is this in subtitles? Yeah, it's French. It's French, but its language is almost irrelevant. But if you want to, I don't recommend LSD because I'm not a doctor and I think it's very dangerous. And I've done LSD and I've had some pretty intense experiences on it. But this is a brilliantly deranged experience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Have you ever had a bad trip, like a really bad trip? Not really. So I haven't either. And I've done some of the DMT and the 5-MeO and mushrooms. I've had powerful experiences. But I did have one bad experience on LSD the first time I ever took it. And none of us had ever taken it before, so we didn't feel it. So we took another hit thinking that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So we all basically were a bunch of high school kids in New York City trying to go to a Santana concert. And we just started fucking tripping out. And... It was scary. It was actually really, really scary. This movie is experientially, it becomes, and this is something that is one of my strategies when I'm making movies, is I don't want my movie to be a spectator sport.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
i don't want you watching it i want you participating i want to try and grab you by the throat and make you watch and be like come on bro watch put the phone down i want to own your heart and your mind and your pulse while you're watching my films that's just a goal some sometimes i do better than others but that's always the goal i don't want you kind of sitting back watching this gasper no he takes you into it in a way that um
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm sure a lot of people will hate it. Is he the guy that speaks to you the most right now? No, I don't. I mean, there's a part of me like, so I'm getting ready to make a film called Mosquito Ball, this war movie. And these young kids went through, I don't know if you know, the Pacific Theater campaign and what the battles of Tarawa and...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Guadalcanal and Okinawa, these were hellacious, awful fucking violent fights. And the Japanese wouldn't surrender and they believed in Emperor Horohito, so they would fight to the death. You know, bonsai charges and seppuku, they would kill themselves before they would...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And we get to the moment. where this event happens. And my body heat was literally rising. I'm ready for her to like fire me and take the show. And the scene happens and the girls get their throats cut and she says, stop. And we stop. And she goes, Peter, I can sense you're concerned about my reaction. Let me tell you something. I'm here for this violence.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
You had these young American kids who in our movie were college football players who Pearl Harbor hits and they immediately joined the military and they have to go fight these fucking horrific battles. Like just people's throats getting blown out and torturing and killing and suicides from the locals.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And so to me, one of my goals with this next film is I want to try, because there's been a lot of good war films, and just like there have been a lot of good Westerns, and I always said, well, I never got to make one, so I want to try and make a Western. That was American Primeval. There have been a lot of great war films, great war films, but I never got to make one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So my take is to try and bring people into the experience of how— But you have made war films, right? World War II. Oh, okay. So you're right. I made Lone Survivor, but I never made a World War II film. And there have been a lot of great ones, you know, from Private Ryan to Hacksaw Ridge. Private Ryan was probably the first one that was realistic, though, right? Yeah. I mean, that opening scene?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Yeah, yeah. Holy fucking shit. Which is like why Steve, for anyone, like you asked me who I look up to, Steven Spielberg. He is so far and ahead the goat of my business to think that the guy who did fucking... Jurassic Park and E.T. God love both. Close Encounters.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Then it's like, oh, you know, and Spielberg was always like the good boy of the, because it was like he was growing up with like Coppola and Scorsese and Michael Mann and these guys were like fucking- Gritty. Yeah, they were just fucking hard partying motherfuckers. Right. You know, hard drinking, hard drugging, hard fucking filmmakers. And Steven was like the good, goody good kid, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Like, well, little Steven, he's got to go home soon. Right. Put the, wait, keep the girls in the garage. Steven's still here. And then Steven's like, oh, really? And then he makes, you know, Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List. Right. And these, like, he goes, oh, really? You don't think that I know how to do war? Saving Private Ryan was like another fucking level. Another level.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So to answer your question, Spielberg's who I look up to still the most. And I think he's on a whole nother level based on the, The scope of his work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
But Gaspar Noe, if I'm thinking about the thing I got out of watching this film that I would try and use in my own way for Mosquito Ball, for a war movie, is the idea that you want to try and take the audience into what it would have been like to try and get on that fucking beach.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And, you know, in the case of my film, there was a battle of Tarawa and they were trying to get ashore, but they fucked up the tides. So they came in and the tides were too low. So those landing craft all got stuck on the tides on the coral reef. And they started getting bombed by the Japanese who were hiding in the caves and they brought their big guns out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
So these kids were getting blown up before they even got to the fucking beach. They were getting killed. And their best friends or body parts are floating in the fucking oceans. And there's sharks. And there's giant surf waves. And they're getting rocked before they've ever even got. So I'm like, okay, well, how do I want to show that? And I look at a movie like Climax. And I'm like, all right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
different horror, bad acid, bad LSD. But my God, like I had to stop watching it. And I knew I was coming in here today and I'm starting to have an anxiety attack because I want to get sleep to do, you know, to talk to you. And I'm fucking watching this movie and I'm all worked up because he's taken me into the fucking experience. And he does his movie Into the Void is about DMT.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he takes you into the experience of DMT. So for anyone who doesn't ever want to experience things that you've touched and I've touched, you can watch his movies and you can be like, whoa, I'm getting that feeling. And that's a real accomplishment for a filmmaker. And it's immersive. So watch it, but don't let your wife... I'll definitely watch it. Do not. I don't want the shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I'm not afraid of this violence as long as you make it emotional and connect me to the emotion. Do it. And I'm like, thank you, Bella. And she left and she allowed us to explore the kind of grit and intensity that people have reacted to. And I tip my hat to her for that. You know, it's not – you need that kind of support to get something like American Primeval made today because it's not –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
They couldn't look at it in film back then. There's no way. People have asked, well, when I was making it, Is there going to be sex in the film? Like Isaac and Sarah, are they going to fall in love? Are they going to have sex? I'm like, are you fucking, can you imagine what they would have smelt like? Just think about just odor from head to toe. There's no way these people were going to have sex.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
There's no way they were going to smell each other or taste each other in any fucking way. And that was like, you know, when we were talking, when we were putting it together and we're writing it and, you know, Mark, and we're like, well, should they have sex? And we're like, there's no fucking way. Just that alone would have been, it's amazing to me that people did have sex.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
Like that world wanted to fuck each other. Like, get the fuck away from me. Yeah, they barely washed back then. And they never brushed their teeth.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
I mean, you're months on end. Same clothes, no sanitation. Women didn't, there were no tampons. Like, there was no toilet paper. They didn't have Japanese toilets that blow water up your ass and you can fucking dry yourself. This was a messy fucking world and they were not going to make... I wanted to do a scene where Taylor Kitsch's character has to shit and he's constipated.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2280 - Peter Berg
And he's got to use sticks to help him get it out. Because that we had read about that. About that was how you had to shit. Because you were constipated all the time. So you would have to stick wood up your ass and probe and break it up and force it out. And we had that scene written, and I called that one off.