BUILD MEN UP

“Here, everybody is so hopeful in Austin. And I can look at like, Peyton made it. Like last night, I'm looking at that green room. I'm like, all of these people have money and are touring, and they came here and they got to do it. Like, and the hope and the adventure. When I was in LA, everyone was just... It's so nice getting to do it. It is so nice having a club. There's four cities in the world where you can do it. In America, there's three and that would be London.”

“You can't work with people that aren't creatives. And that's what those people are. They're a bunch of people that are caught up in whatever the cultural moment is, whatever they think like the winds of the winds of discontent blow the hardest. So the people that are going to get the most upset are the Wokeys. They're the ones that are going to complain the most about a lack of diversity. So to satisfy those people, they'll torch their own art. They'll fuck up the thing that they do best. If you want it to be funny, it has to be in the language and in the mind, like from the viewpoint of one person.”

“The biggest problem is full control of all resources. Complete utter control of human population. Restricting breeding, restricting travel, restricting movement. It will do it. As soon as it gets control of the grid and gets control of the internet, and it will have control of those, within a year, all your passwords and all your fucking encryption won't mean a damn thing. It will be able to crack everything. It is going to be smarter than any human being that has ever lived times ten. It is going to make better versions of that, and it is going to keep going.”

“That's why I came to America to start, is I got off at a job hosting a Catholic podcast, and they fired me as I packed up everything in Adelaide. This is like two and a bit years ago, I had the kids and the wife, and on the way to America I got fired. It was a good clean Catholic podcast, and then the business manager was like, there was a sketch about stabbing someone in the throat with an AIDS needle. They're like, he uses the word cunt all the time. I was like, this is a sponsorship nightmare. Get him out.”

“I am so drawn to themes of healing and renewal. You know, my movie was about our, it's a family film. Right? It's a movie about our collected pain and our the the universality of family trauma. And I have had some profound conversations with people after the film because of what it brought up in them.”

“The biggest problem is full control of all resources. Complete utter control of human population. Restricting breeding, restricting travel, restricting movement. It will do it. As soon as it gets control of the grid and gets control of the internet, and it will have control of those, within a year, all your passwords and all your fucking encryption won't mean a damn thing. It will be able to crack everything. It is going to be smarter than any human being that has ever lived times ten. It is going to make better versions of that, and it is going to keep going.”

“We're seeing AI interviews now. I am meeting young people who are like Jody. I applied for a 150 jobs. I didn't meet anybody in the process, and the only interviews I had were AI interviews. Your answer is analyzed and crunched by the AI and then sent to the hiring company with recommendations. That is exactly what young people are saying. They're saying, I don't feel seen. They're saying, hiring is a black box.”

“Like after one performance, a lady, held my hand and confessed that she had been contemplating, suicide until she saw the play. Just hold my hand and like that. And she said she told me the show changed her mind.”

“Wild pigs are all over Texas. There's millions of them, like literally millions of them. Like one time they opened up a highway, like they built this new highway and the day it opened up, they had like this ridiculous amount of accidents because people were hitting wild pigs because there were so many wild pigs out there that they're just crashing into them on the road with this new highway. Because the pigs had never seen cars before on this spot because they hadn't finished the road yet. Then all of a sudden there's cars everywhere and these wild pigs are just getting fucking land-based.”

“It's festival driven and it's to a much greater extent, I've thought about this, it's like industry driven. We don't have—like managers and agents, which is one role in Australia, but they are deciding who's succeeding and TV people are deciding who's succeeding. Whereas like in America, everybody is on the road, everybody has one or two openers and there's a whole lineage of who brought who up in the business. In Australia, I can't say enough how there's like a it's been 20 years since someone got to be successful.”

“Tonight Show was where people went to find out what was going on, what movies were coming out, what bands were coming out, what comics were funny. I remember. Six to seven million was average. Even eight to ten. It was that big. Now? A tenth that. A million. I don't even know if it's that. And here's the thing about ratings. The ratings are very weird because it's based on boxes that are connected to your television. But with like Netflix, it's a different animal. They know the exact number of people that are downloading.”

“The only thing you have to be to make the show work is kind. And if you're kind, the show flies. That's beautiful. It's a really it's a beautiful thing to be on the receiving end of.”

“Can we just call out the utter hypocrisy of Donald Trump who claims that he was the free speech president? Remember how free speech was a big thing? Do you remember when the entire right was devoted to fighting against cancel culture? They get into power, and what do they do? They have their own cancel culture, and he has gone into overdrive in trying to shut up critics, telling people not to say various things, using the cudgels of government like Brendan Carr to go after folks.”

“Tonight Show was where people went to find out what was going on, what movies were coming out, what bands were coming out, what comics were funny. I remember. Six to seven million was average. Even eight to ten. It was that big. Now? A tenth that. A million. I don't even know if it's that. And here's the thing about ratings. The ratings are very weird because it's based on boxes that are connected to your television. But with like Netflix, it's a different animal. They know the exact number of people that are downloading.”

“I have to say, I think there's something incredibly liberating for me being able to do this. I don't get to be in a room in the way I am in the room for the half hour before the show ever. I don't get to walk into a huge crowded room of people with my hat off and no glasses and not trying to, you know, not trying to hide, which is normally my MO when I go through the rest of my life.”

“The plot of the show is I play a character who, when they were young, their mother was dealing with very, very serious depression and mental health issues. And so to in an effort to sort of cheer his mom up, he starts making a list of every brilliant thing that he can think of about the world.”

“I came across this article in the New York Times about the old Pizza Huts. I grew up going to Pizza Hut with my family. It was all these images and photos of the old Pizza Huts. It was the the red and white checkered, tablecloths. It was the stained glass lights and windows. It had a salad bar. Ours in Hershey, Pennsylvania had a jukebox, dimly lit. It was the best. I'd walk over to the jukebox and I would play two songs every time. I would play Creed, My Sacrifice, and I would play Will Smith, Getin' Jiggy Wit It.”

“Did you when when when Donald Trump called into the little squawk box the other day and somebody had given Rashida how long wars were, and he's reading it well. World War one was this long, and World War two was this long. And I've only been at this for five months. But then he said, and the Vietnam War, I would have won that very easily. This is the war that he where he dodged the draft claiming that he had bone spurs.”

“So I'm patiently waiting for that new challenge to be presented in front of me. And I'm learning to be patient in a season of waiting for that to be placed in front of me within God's timing and God's will. And that obedience in itself is a challenge. Maybe that is the challenge. Maybe the obedience and faithfulness in the waiting, in the patience, is the challenge that I'm hoping and looking for.”

“That's why I came to America to start, is I got off at a job hosting a Catholic podcast, and they fired me as I packed up everything in Adelaide. This is like two and a bit years ago, I had the kids and the wife, and on the way to America I got fired. It was a good clean Catholic podcast, and then the business manager was like, there was a sketch about stabbing someone in the throat with an AIDS needle. They're like, he uses the word cunt all the time. I was like, this is a sponsorship nightmare. Get him out.”

“And I eventually learned the hard way that you can't control everything in the moment. And sometimes you just have to embrace the chaos and allow yourself to live in the chaos and teach and influence your children how to clean up, what to do and what not to do, but not follow them around and clean it up for them. That's, like I said, perhaps the most humbling and profound lesson that is applicable, not just to emptying cabinets and drawers and trash and all of those things, but realizing that you can't control everything, especially as young parents.”

“What I'm not loving is the pressure we put on ourselves to constantly entertain the seriousness of life and the stress, the unnecessary stress or stressors that we add on to life when they're really not that big of deals. And I believe, and I want my kids to see this as they grow up, that you can work really, really hard. You can be ruthlessly ambitious towards your goals, but still have fun and still joke around and not take things or yourself too serious.”

“So this year, they're both coming back for redemption. The race ended last year as a tie between Kim and Kendall because this wild storm came through and ended the race. This crazy storm came in through Central Texas, destroyed the ranch, destroyed the course, destroyed the house that we remodeled on the ranch. And we spent the last year pretty much getting the the course, the trails back up to condition, the house back up to condition.”

“There are sort of two levels to the audience participation in this show. There's one sort of, quite a light lift for people where I give people a card that has a number on it and some words. And when I shout out the number, they shout out those words.”

“But I've come to realize it's it's not what you have accomplished in your life that matters, but who you are becoming and have become along the way. That's been on my mind a lot recently. I don't wanna live this life to just have a portfolio of all of my accomplishments, a resume of all of the things I've done, a LinkedIn profile to say where I've worked and how long and what positions I held and what we achieved within that organization during my time there. That's not the intent. The intent is, who are you becoming?”

“Wild pigs are all over Texas. There's millions of them, like literally millions of them. Like one time they opened up a highway, like they built this new highway and the day it opened up, they had like this ridiculous amount of accidents because people were hitting wild pigs because there were so many wild pigs out there that they're just crashing into them on the road with this new highway. Because the pigs had never seen cars before on this spot because they hadn't finished the road yet. Then all of a sudden there's cars everywhere and these wild pigs are just getting fucking land-based.”

“DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud over secret funding of extremist groups. How fucking crazy that is. Between 2014 and 2023, Southern Poverty Law Center paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, some of whom were associated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Clans of America, National Socialist Party of America, Aryan Nations Affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. These people were cited as an expert in extremist groups, and they were paying extremist groups in order to be extreme. This is what's crazy. They were citing them and paying them.”

“It's festival driven and it's to a much greater extent, I've thought about this, it's like industry driven. We don't have—like managers and agents, which is one role in Australia, but they are deciding who's succeeding and TV people are deciding who's succeeding. Whereas like in America, everybody is on the road, everybody has one or two openers and there's a whole lineage of who brought who up in the business. In Australia, I can't say enough how there's like a it's been 20 years since someone got to be successful.”

“I heard about that on the set of news radio and I was like, what? The drugging? Yeah, the drug women. I heard about it in the 1990s. I couldn't believe it. I was like, what? Bill Cosby? Is this widespread? People knew about this at the time? People in Hollywood knew. Actors. So actors, it was an actress that actually told me that, that Bill Cosby drugs women. I couldn't believe it. It's crazy. It's just crazy that this guy did this for decades. It's not like there's a story of one weird night.”

“I think we found out yesterday that Donald Trump is almost as obsessed with Jimmy Kimmel as he is with his bunker ballroom. On the one hand, he is into this he's got this fetish for authoritarian aesthetics. On the other hand, he remains this thin skinned little boy who actually hates being laughed at and actually fears being laughed at more than just about anything else.”

“And this, I feel like, is such a great metaphor for Trumpism. Right? You have all Republicans, and they can't legislate themselves out of a fucking paper bag. I was worried that we might cruise into a midterm with $2 gas and Republicans passing legislation, but two, we're cruising into it with $4 gas and Republicans just completely committing seppuku once again.”

“This pursuit of a so called golden ticket, I understand. This is the time when everybody's craving stability. It's a scary time. The problem is that without risk, we get nowhere. You if you're not taking on any risk, you're not growing. And so even though it sounds like counterintuitive advice, I think we have to warn people that running towards the supposedly safe thing might actually end up being inhibiting.”

“I think you wanna pair a craft with a need. A craft is a special skill that you have some expertise, something you do really well that other people don't know how to do. Your craft protects you. Because, listen, the job market is cruel. We can be fired at any time. But your craft is yours. It can't be taken away from you. It prevents you from being treated as disposable or interchangeable.”

“The value action gap is the inconsistency between a person's stated values or beliefs and their actual behaviors. We wanna close the value action gap. People say they value one thing, they believe in one thing, and then their actions reflect otherwise. That's a problem. Doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. If you say you believe in one thing and you value one thing, but then your actions say otherwise, you can't be trusted with anything because you don't even know what you believe in.”

“Lindsey Graham, not content with that, comes out and says, we're gonna have the taxpayers pay for most of all of this. And everybody even the Republicans are going, wait. The ballroom the Bunker Ballroom was supposed to be paid for with private donations. And now Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump's chief most enthusiastic, desperate fluffer, comes forward and says, no. We need to stick the taxpayers with the tab for all of that.”

“Because with retail, it has a huge upside and opportunity if done right, but there's also a huge risk in liability if done wrong. Where you go wrong is if you try to get into way too many doors way too fast and your velocity isn't there, meaning your sell through, how fast and how many products or units you are moving at a specified rate within that retail store, if you don't have strong velocities, those retail partners will drop you. And that makes success in the future for retail very challenging.”

“I heard about that on the set of news radio and I was like, what? The drugging? Yeah, the drug women. I heard about it in the 1990s. I couldn't believe it. I was like, what? Bill Cosby? Is this widespread? People knew about this at the time? People in Hollywood knew. Actors. So actors, it was an actress that actually told me that, that Bill Cosby drugs women. I couldn't believe it. It's crazy. It's just crazy that this guy did this for decades. It's not like there's a story of one weird night.”

“DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud over secret funding of extremist groups. How fucking crazy that is. Between 2014 and 2023, Southern Poverty Law Center paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, some of whom were associated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Clans of America, National Socialist Party of America, Aryan Nations Affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. These people were cited as an expert in extremist groups, and they were paying extremist groups in order to be extreme. This is what's crazy. They were citing them and paying them.”

“All that to say, I'm leaving the Garmin family. I bought a new watch yesterday. This vision came to me. I acted on the vision right away. I ordered a g shock. Now, the g shock watch is what I wore when I was in the army. And back then, I'd go for a run. I didn't track any of my mileage on a run or my pace. I'd go run for an hour. I looked at my watch. Alright. It's 1PM. I'm gonna go run till 2PM.”

“The feeling was, let's show a collective experience where we're all crying together, we're all laughing together, and sharing in the truth of that, hopefully quite a, worthwhile and maybe even healing experience.”

“You can't work with people that aren't creatives. And that's what those people are. They're a bunch of people that are caught up in whatever the cultural moment is, whatever they think like the winds of the winds of discontent blow the hardest. So the people that are going to get the most upset are the Wokeys. They're the ones that are going to complain the most about a lack of diversity. So to satisfy those people, they'll torch their own art. They'll fuck up the thing that they do best. If you want it to be funny, it has to be in the language and in the mind, like from the viewpoint of one person.”

“Here, everybody is so hopeful in Austin. And I can look at like, Peyton made it. Like last night, I'm looking at that green room. I'm like, all of these people have money and are touring, and they came here and they got to do it. Like, and the hope and the adventure. When I was in LA, everyone was just... It's so nice getting to do it. It is so nice having a club. There's four cities in the world where you can do it. In America, there's three and that would be London.”