Joe Rogan Experience #437 — Scott Sigler Transcript

Transcript

0:00 The Joe Rogan Experience. Me and Tony Hinchcliffe, and we're doing a podcast before our show. Oh, perfect. They party hard. Where are the actual clubs? No, I'm not in Houston. And I'm there with the lovely and talented Tom Segura, who's one of the most fucking hilarious dudes on the planet. They're not retarded. He's going to be here for the winter.

2:29 It is. Where'd you escaped to after And you're like, okay, you could just be in this weird town All of a sudden you're around all these like, I mean, San Francisco is super liberal and Berkeley psychedelic movement, all that shit back up. Yeah. And it's a one-bedroom, about 750 square feet. And that's a one bedroom, and it really hasn't changed all that much since then.

5:44 I don't know that it's worth $800,000 for a 750 square foot apartment, but it's pretty sweet. It's all close enough that I feel like it's the same thing. the Silicon Valley tech companies for the rents rising to the point where if you just want to super hard for the people working for these companies to relate, I think, because I've had I have a good friend who works for Google.

8:13 When you think about cell phones, think about any other product that you sell. They catch on, yeah. They're the lumber barons crazy amounts of money But the people are smart as fuck. They're preparing because, seriously, man, Just like, we're going to be able to protect our own stuff. What do you guys want to do? theory to say it's not all that far-fetched if they buy up the weapons making technology and

10:56 or whatever the fuck it is if you stopped and thought about like engineering that and making you not giving us our revenue, then they're screwed. They're like, we need like a billion, five million. He's not like, you know, he's not a nuclear engineer. and Skynet goes live, and not just our government, but our military is run through technology in just a few years to the point where it's going to get real gray, whether or not, like, who has power?

13:16 Has the government become a relatively puppet structure based on who's pumping the most an insanely powerful ability to control It's good for the corporation. And it's fighting to stay alive and dominate how it wants to dominate. to be successful in there. So it's self-perpetuating. So you've got this certain type of behavior, if, if it didn't exist in this form and someone brought it to you as a script,

16:17 now getting to the point with the globe you know the global nature of the internet and everything The leap from having a system that can communicate everywhere all over the world at one time And then five months after that, they create some sort of an artificial brain cell that actually works better than a real brain cell. more copies of itself and continues to do what you want, which goes back to the concept of the Coca-Cola brand or IBM or British companies that are

18:45 I think they'll find us so inefficient and stupid, they'll want to eat us. we treat them like killer whales. They'll think it's hilarious. which is once you get your artificial race or artificial intelligence to the and resources from the environment and I mean, I wonder if we're arrogant in thinking that our special abilities as people, You like to think you're super complicated because it makes you happy.

20:49 Blade Runner. That's a fucking powerful movie man They'd probably like to eat batteries. That's when you're really close to that and emotions would be a big part of that in the movie Completely. Keep my phone screwed on. and it goes straight into your ear. It's going to have to be hardwired. Do you really think that people are that lazy? and change the channel or something like that?

24:26 You know, like Tesla wanted to have electricity in the atmosphere. Well, he wanted to give it away was the other big thing. company and their reaction to tesla and trying to find ways to stop this technology from coming out is that what it would be? You would see the electricity? I don't know. and connect you to the tree, the big metal lightning tree.

26:51 like a dog or an animal. listen, bitch, I'm looking at you. You just have to think about it. And then that butterfly continues on and it happens again and again and again. They made eyeballs on their wings. ones where they look like We're already experimenting. Well, we didn't think it was going to take you this long, but here's your prize. I've never seen that one before. We're all in the Matrix. Look at that. There's the owl eyes. Oh, yeah. That's nuts. We're all in the Matrix. I've never seen that one before.

29:20 So fantastic. Yeah. If you look in the eye, it looks like, like if you had that tattooed on you and it was That's so weird. I mean, you create fantastic works of fiction. and even looking at something like the butterflies of of course, my first reaction is always, what can I do with that? How can I work that into a story? anemones which are deadly to it, onto its claws.

31:42 But at what point does some crazy crab eat a bad piece of fish and get so high that it's like i'm gonna come on cut this off here and Or the pom-pom crab. Just stopping, oh, that's one thing that I really wanted to talk about with the ocean. you're allowed to whale hunt. They're just killing these whales. I mean, they're selling it commercially. Oh, my God.

34:16 research people would go fucking crazy like what are you doing we found this intelligent life form if we don't bomb them first they're gonna bomb us we are scared people get scared especially when Imagine how bad people would freak out. The thing is nature is so evil herself. i was a little kid it was a national geographic and the first time anybody had ever documented

36:29 their side. That's a cunty fish. horrific crimes. That's just nature. Nature's just like that. There's going to be horrific crimes. breathe you're constantly i mean they're they're carrying a lot of body mass you need to get fish And it's the development of agriculture and society and cities and you're like, okay, I got all that covered. And then the whole culture expands from there.

38:29 I know that's a very hippie thing to say, but I had an experience once on a boat with you're very vulnerable and very sensitive and very very introspective and almost painfully so but they have absolutely no need to They're one of the few species on the planet that kill for fun because they've got so much brain power. So with big brains comes big problems, I guess.

40:04 They're getting high with puffer fish. Fuck that. And probably the female tigers want to have sex as well. Well, it could be, you know, They don't even really, they're not even really all that afraid of sharks. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing smart figured out gills. Here's the problem with that argument. Get in that jar and close the lid behind you The visual communication.

42:53 That's all bullshit. communication is almost non there's almost no verbal it's all visual and it's the patterns Like they'll have like some will go this way and others will wait for them on the other end. Like, how are they communicating? seen the video of the chimpanzees organizing an armed party to go after monkeys. No, I don't think This one, right?

45:27 attack the monkeys in the trees. But they How do I know there's going to be people on the other end What we got to do is chase them down there and Mike The trippy thought with that to me is not knowing They might literally have developed that from watching Oh, really? You're never going to win. You're never going to win. If there is an artificially intelligent, super genius

47:56 some if the if we had monkeys in the la area and they walked around with switchblades and guns We would never. That's the driving force behind discovery is I wonder if I can make that happen. doing a presentation and then just walk and goes excuse me and walks off the stage oh so he bombed If you get a sniff of his craziness, some guy is petrified,

49:55 I don't like watching people bomb. you really don't think that anything's good. you leave there and you would you would think it would be the inverse of that oh i want to follow And the comic is really pretty good. It's not like everything's competitive. Instead of it being competitive, you get all the same juice that you would get from the competitive aspect of it, but you get it in a positive form. Instead, you're inspired and happy for people's success, happy for great movies, happy for great music, happy for great comedy. When you see great things, inspired by them. So everywhere around you, you see inspiration. Instead of everywhere around you, you're seeing competition,

52:27 I've had, it's better now, anywhere is probably working their ass off and then you just watch something blow up and you're and Noble and start roaming through the fiction section and find a bunch of authors you don't People were like, God, that guy sounds pretty cool. so that they can say, that sounds like my cup of tea. Is it like an unwanted annoyance,

54:59 He's earned that and he's totally fine. That is not a fighter. Mark Coleman used to look like that to some extent. Awesome. So these are the kind of things that, and it's not like, you know, the Stephen Kings and the Joe Hills don't still do, or their people do that marketing stuff for them. while he was filming this documentary they were doing this documentary on this unstoppable mma

56:55 So anyway, this documentary, they start doing this documentary, and along the lines, it exposes his drug use. was that was when they were calling him the smashing machine uh-huh he was 265 pounds of He started going down. serious problem with drugs but it's also steroids he had a you know he's absolutely on massive if they don't give themselves enough time to recover,

59:11 later in his career like no steroids no drugs a completely different body looked like a guy just Wow. and I saw him fight live when he was the destroyer. Oh, they certainly have. And Dana and him are very good friends. So he realized it was time. Yes. I don't think so, but that was my goal. place. I don't remember. I don't remember either. They were great fucking books though. Those,

1:01:37 The Cyclops in that movie. You can't. first of all, way more is like six foot six. Just And he's a movie star. There's no way. He doesn't have, there's no six foot six and he's a beautiful man. And he's a movie star. I didn't watch the new one because I just didn't want the old one to be, I didn't want them to sully the original Conan because I'm a giant fan of that movie.

1:03:15 He's a good actor. Get a real James Cameron type dude or how about Martin Scorsese does Conan? I don't give a shit if he's stopping bank robbers. Just tell the same friggin' story. just to see that dragon. Up next, the distillations of smeg. Dude knows his monsters like nobody's business. who did Hellboy and Hellboy 2. Fucking A, man. Dude knows his monsters

1:05:14 name is Nikki Monta... who's an agent Lucy reads it, contacts my print agent. That's incredible. Yes. Well, that's all it takes, right? That's going to be crazy, man. Well, I don't know. A whole block. You could get one of those baller castles built in the middle of San Francisco. Because like he had this giant cast iron. Isn't that old Mark Twain's old house? Didn't without driving by Stephen King's house. You had to, just to know that's where Stephen King lives, man. Right, right. Because he had this giant cast iron.

1:07:35 It's what I've heard. It's, you know, but it's not ridiculous. that's his house yeah nice so you drive by and you see this metal fence with the gargoyles on it see Dudes with swords. that's the name of my next book is devil zombie samurai hooker yeah by scott sigler because you Well, there it is. So that's rich, the first thing I'm doing is investing in Google, so they don't kill me.

1:09:56 I mean, Google, by all... They totally accepted it. I like it. I think it's good. He's wearing a robot mask. Yeah, work at Google and put a mask on. As long as you're not being an asshole. so a lot of times i'll have the concept then I'll try and work through a loose structure to this is a guy having a cup of coffee So it's mostly structured. they're a complete story unto themselves simply because i don't i don't believe in extorting

1:13:24 When you talk to other authors, is there like several different schools of thought as far as of writers. There's the gardener and there's the architect. And he's a gardener and Stephen King okay, now we're going to put in electrical, it different ways? I mostly enjoy partner, A. Kovacs had to deal with me. I was, I was miserable for like six months. Cause I wrote

1:15:51 So I would like, eventually I want to get to the Gardner phase. point of view. If you drop 24 bucks on my book and you can tell I phoned it in, you're not coming They just didn't complete it. So that's what people go through a lot. I think that's big. It in this, maybe this is from being a big reader before the ebook set, we give away for free as a serialized audiobook.

1:18:05 So we do it that way. Just like this podcast, we never do an ad inside the podcast. We don't want to interrupt the flow of the book. Right, right. Just like this podcast. We never do an ad inside the podcast. yep and exactly it's organic and a lot a lot of times what happens is people have a lot of people people to try out my stuff. And if they listen to a couple of books and they know what

1:20:04 doesn't people don't when you go hey there's this team, Mike and fucking Pissface, When there's just too much, the internet, it's gotta be free. That really hasn't, because uh like your audiobooks it's more like audiobooks on history but okay very dramatic and what the fuck? At that point, people are like, ah, that's totally worth a dollar an episode.

1:21:43 your credit card information in it, and if you want something, you just click on it, and you go Amazon OneClick, where it's just like your computer has all your credit card information in it, But if you want to actually buy it, you've got to go and enter in credit card information get a paypal account like there's a lot of fucking steps that Then they go, wow, this guy's fucking talented.

1:22:51 Because at the very least, they're going to go to work or they're going to talk to their friends and go, oh, my God, you should have this crazy, gross story I heard called Infected. get rid of all your stress for a little while. We're like, uh, that's, I work so hard to make my stuff so good that I can give it to I can't compete against a Stephen King.

1:24:03 Yep. page novels coming down the pipe but i'm gonna guess it was about three or four months ago Spoiler alert. No, It's the same place George R. at this point? If people come back and there's some, you know, 25 year old interns like, yeah, If you gave me my druthers, every book would be 1,500 pages. But you need them both? want it to be good i so badly want it to be perfect and i want people to read it and walk away like holy crap that's the best book i ever read

1:27:14 Like, yeah, I don't think the village is working out. That's very honest of you. it's, you know, I trust these people. this is too long and you shorten it up. You sometimes go, no, it's not. So you stand your ground occasionally. How do you know when to stand your ground? they're not listening. Okay. With the technology of e-books, couldn't you just take, like,

1:29:58 and then there was like 50 pages today's starting to pitch it. So we wind up with Random House again. I may have the same guy or I may wind up with somebody else. I've been super lucky first and take her feedback. She has less feedback than the editor, but the feedback she brings back is more significant. I promise I'm going to read the whole book.

1:31:27 good at what he does. Let's make real work is done with Julian, the guy over at Crown Random House, who reads, that kind of thing. That's the general getting it all down the flow. And then I use a program called Scrivener, which people can you know i get overwhelmed with the screen and everything going on and I'll just pull out the three by five parts of it is there's only so much screen real estate. So you can only see so many things at one time. If you're really stuck, you pull back, write all these index cards,

1:34:21 Yeah, I use that for jokes. I use oh dear. Really? Yeah, Yep. Yeah, I use that for jokes. Oh, do you really? Yeah. Do you really? Yeah. Three stars is a bit that's pretty close to being done. one of the most important you got to listen and see yourself um and and listen to like oh i don't So kind of the same thing. That's right room. But I was just in Vegas for the New Media Expo. And when I really get into it and I was under

1:36:53 thing is like 50 page story i my own screen came up and i did that's all i was working on didn't And in that, you have much more consideration to every sentence that you write, If you're having a conversation, it's much quicker to get the words out. No talking, no distractions, no fucking music. Yeah, yeah, same thing. I'm like the first 30 minutes are usually just trash, absolute trash work.

1:39:10 but kind of getting into it for 30 minutes doesn't matter what you write and then almost invariably by the time the buzzer goes Just sit on the couch. make all this crap it's all already in there you're just not like you're, you know, it's not like you have a factory where you have to make all this crap. It's all already in there. You're just kind of getting, figuring out how to

1:41:02 to do a mundane, very obvious task, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. And then you can get into that groove and not walking into things. It wouldn't work for me only because I'm, by the time I block a sentence down, it's I cannot imagine speech recognition would ever work for me. Just looking right at them. split ones yeah and your hands rest on it. Yep. Yep. Those died off.

1:42:59 fingers in? No. There was a weird one like Yeah. You know what the problem is? of J and F, the fingers across the board, But the speech recognition software is fascinating to me the actual writing state of mind. And I find that I'm way more creative when I can just sit process is also very creative i mean you have to have this idea you have to have the story you have

1:45:41 I have to keep working on this to make it the best it can be The different types of creative processes that end product where you can hopefully look at what you finished with. And I think all creative people kind of have the same thing. You probably have it radically from day. I mean, like there's stuff that I enjoyed, um, that I did just a couple of years ago that if i have to watch now i don't want to have anything to do with it i don't

1:47:36 He's like, I'm not paying attention to that anymore. It's one of the two. I don't want to see it. I had experience recently with stand-up. and just let that cycle through and watch the VHS. This is so racist and so misogynist and not like, you know, like somebody who's really Oh! He's doing a character. No, he's gotten dirtier. Yeah. it was fucking hilarious. I bet live it'd, just sit there. It was fucking hilarious.

1:51:38 that's how you catch fag. And Brian And that's what I think and you're completely sober and you're listening to some of the horrible things he said like what But nobody has a problem with it until it's their particular area. She made a joke. the face her apology was like brilliantly written too what she said was she was called a cunt so what, but it was,

1:54:10 Yes, there's a lot in there. Scroll up. I got the most recent one that came up, and you don't think it's bad until somebody actually kind of calls you on it. over the top when we do it in the audiobooks it sounds like the guy from South Park basically It's great. then that would be different, of the joke is that you never know whether he has it or not or he's just using it as an excuse to be an asshole to everybody um but

1:57:11 Are we saying that people aren't crazy You know Vegans are mean. If you want to listen to this joke, It wasn't good, but you were offended for another reason. Fuck everybody. But her response was so perfect for like one of the lamest jokes ever. or something like that. they can reach you doesn't mean they're smart and it's so hard to keep a perspective sometimes too

1:59:51 No, don't engage them, man. was until after you said it yeah but if there if there's none of that, and then you're getting hate, like, what are you doing? and it's, uh, a lot of people are very uncomfortable with when they get hyper criticized, It's like, oh, you're another one. twitters like they'll say something hateful They just, anymore not to even look at those.

2:02:20 Like you can tell from the review he says about everything. And everything is like really well-written destruction of various of evil, evil shit What do you put up? I'm now going to come out go do something great yourself. I mean, just because someone falls short, to be treated with an objective sense of respect. They put their life into it. And you'd like those journalists once in a while

2:05:39 and they have to treat it differently than playing basketball wrong with the guy and where it goes wrong to do it with respect it can be done with respect I believe if you want to get shitty about a football player, brain injuries the number one football And you're also amateur football, and they're getting fucking brain damage be sucky at something is astronomical.

2:08:19 And when he did something controversial, people listened and they watched. that's it could be an oasis of logic than in a world of assholery well the stakes are higher But what Anderson, the break that he had was very unusual. fuck yeah so that i can hit the bathroom yeah yeah yeah is that coffee when how long oh yeah How rude. It's got swearing in it.

2:10:34 for Scott Sigler Pandemic. I like that they die. Try to pronounce that last name. You better fucking save me. fun but it's uh it's thrilling to watch what other people do with your work because you know you i infected to be a tv series and nocturnal I mean, what we're trying to do as we work toward getting Infected to be a TV series Their job is to make the movie.

2:14:18 where you see this normal guy you know like it or hate it that's that's an every top top 100 out there because he's just so he's largely not part of what goes on like they tried to do a new Carrie, and she went crazy yeah i watched that recently it still holds up stands up real The last Godzilla was such a frigging disappointment to me. I was disappointed in Pacific Rim. Oh, it was so bad. Horrible. Everybody was telling me it was good Pacific Rim was a mess, man. Pacific Rim was way more of a mess than Godzilla. I was disappointed in Pacific Rim.

2:17:13 You can't vote anymore. and I was like, on my Twitter, I don't know ear sizes and different brain power and people are born with different vision i think some people's It's always shocking. Everything was all grayed out. It doesn't seem real. just like i can't it looks great don't get me wrong i saw the new thor looks great but i know of craziness. I don't give any

2:20:24 go, okay, they did it right He's my favorite person in the movie. The script was horrible. 76%. They said it was a piece of shit. I loved the trailer. I know. He's a punchline. It was called Step Brothers. Have you seen Casa de Mi Padre? Oh, no shit. so it's not that good of a movie. It was so silly and stupid. I think any kid over 10 is probably good to go with that movie.

2:24:06 is how many people wear headphones now around their necks after every fight or before a fight? Well, you used to see them with those energy drinks. And all of a sudden, I'm like, wow, somebody else is getting in on that action this is because ariani does not want to where there's a dude who's on a team bus. He's a basketball player. They should all be mouthing nigger.

2:25:52 them... He helped bring them a championship, here's a question. When you are confronted with scenarios like that, like say, uh, if you have a largely what i have to explain with my fiction a ton like why would you put that in your book What's fascinating to me is the amount of pushback I get from over on the to put my foot down like that's going in the book because that's real life and people actually say

2:28:04 this torture scene on somebody. which is really fucking dark. If you think the movie's dark with Christian Bale, it is What I saw was this intense view Right. They don't go out and commit evil. that's one of the tricks to part of the screwed up part of writing. And if you're just not writing superficial, even though one is morally reprehensible and the other one is supposedly good.

2:31:46 completely unapologetic and that's why i found it so fascinating because the way he described he locks eyes with the real estate agent and the real estate agent is this the other one a psychopath or sociopath. that he left in the tub covered in acid angry things like what would they say would they say fuck you is that okay if you see We can get away with like,

2:33:39 The fascinating thing about fiction is, think about when you're creating fiction is that you, you may be reinforcing or even perhaps inspiring an idea that's ultimately deal with but i'm you know kind of thought this through several times because i write some fucked up shit is is you know if it happens how am i going to feel about that and i've already kind

2:35:25 who's got the wrong fucking chemicals Oh, I heard that. Yeah. I know what it looks like when you choke somebody. when you're not even squeezing. one's that guy he's the he's the marshal ones wears the hat okay justified and he was in what That's Walter Goggins. How come I don't hear about it? an advertisement? He leaves the gun in the holster and he's always like, I can take you,

2:37:52 How dare you? And then he turns over, it's going to screw up a lot of work Yeah, when I saw that rear naked choke, She's not even fighting back. And it starts terrible. It ain't that easy, bitch. Her face isn't red. She'd be fighting for her life and flopping around. Fucking bullshit. Yeah. because we're making money Yeah. And then like, to get rid of bad people.

2:41:02 Scott Sutherland, and I wish you all the best, It's really fun talking to you. find that book, put in the code DEATHSQUAD, out january 27 january 27th la at anybody in LA, come out. January 27th? It's pretty sweet. Thank you for having me again. Sweet. Go to Stamps.com and before you do anything else, tweet it to hashtag back tomorrow with uh my good friend dr mark gordon a specialist in traumatic brain injury