EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,015 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- RCRussell Crowe
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) What's happening, man? Pleasure to meet you.
- RCRussell Crowe
Nice to meet you, too, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's always so odd when you've seen someone in so many movies, then you meet them in real life. You're like, "Huh, real person."
- RCRussell Crowe
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? It's strange, isn't it?
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah. Well, you know, I, I, you know, I do have that same thing myself, you know, when I meet somebody that, uh, I, I, y- whose work I dig or whatever, you know? I'm, I'm still just the same fan that I was, you know, before I even got into the business, you know? I met Daniel Day-Lewis in a Motel 8 in Conestoga, New York State. And we ... A guy (laughs) , a guy saw us and he said, you know, "Do you mind if I take your photograph?" (laughs) So we, we went out into the car park of this Motel 8, and this guy took a photograph. And about, I don't know, seven or eight months later, a copy of it arrived at my house in Australia, and the guy had basically just, you know, written "Russell Crowe, Australia" (laughs) and sent it to me.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RCRussell Crowe
So I have a copy of it, and, uh, it's a funny thing, you know? It was like, uh, I was there. It was the Boxing Hall of Fame. I was there with Angelo Dundee, and he was there with Barry McGuigan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's awesome.
- RCRussell Crowe
It was. It was just unexpected and, you know, it was, uh, it was a cool thing. He was such a nice fellow, too. Had a real good vibe about him.
- JRJoe Rogan
Daniel Day-Lewis is a real legend 'cause he's one of those guys who just, like, disappears for a couple years and makes shoes.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just (laughs) just a real artist.
- RCRussell Crowe
This quirky stuff and then-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just gone.
- RCRussell Crowe
... and suddenly comes back with a f- you know, a vengeance and a fury.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RCRussell Crowe
And you go, "Oh my God, look at that." Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, he's-
- RCRussell Crowe
'Cause, you know, some of us have to work for a living, mate, you know that.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RCRussell Crowe
He's probably got independent wealth.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, he's just a different kind of human, you know? Any guy who can just walk away like that and just decide to make shoes, like, that's a ...
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the real deal.
- RCRussell Crowe
It's al- it's, it's pretty special.
- JRJoe Rogan
Some, like, some people try to pretend to be quirky, you know? They try to pretend to be eccentric, and then-
- 15:00 – 30:00
Oh, wow. …
- RCRussell Crowe
own sort of performing life, uh, uh, over time, I changed that rule completely. I only ever bring somebody on stage who's gonna absolutely shred the room. You know? And over time, you know, with the live performances, you know, we've had guests like, uh, Elvis Costello-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- RCRussell Crowe
Uh, Sting.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- RCRussell Crowe
Last year, Michael Buble got up with us. Uh, he did an Elvis song at the end of a, a show-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- RCRussell Crowe
... just at the o- Sydney Opera House, actually. Killed the room. Uh, Rita Ora got up last year. RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- RCRussell Crowe
He got up. Uh, he's a mate of mine, Bobby Diggs. He, we got up in a, like a 350, 400, um, standing room only little pub in uh, uh, Balmain, an area of Sydney. And then suddenly, bah, the RZA's on the stage. It was good.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah. So, uh, I learned a lot from him, but I didn't learn the things he was trying to teach me.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Well, that's a great philosophy to have the best people going in front of you. Um, there's, we have a similar problem with that in comedy. Like, a lot of, like, big name headliners that like to bring terrible opening acts-
- RCRussell Crowe
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... so they're like a hero and they rescue the show.
- RCRussell Crowe
Right, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
But I, I have the exact opposite. I have your approach.
- RCRussell Crowe
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I try to bring the best people possible.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah. Well, you kn-
- JRJoe Rogan
Makes it more fun. It's more fun for me, too.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah. It's more fun for the audience, too.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- RCRussell Crowe
You know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RCRussell Crowe
And that's the whole, the whole thing about live performance is catering for the audience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- RCRussell Crowe
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
The energy of the show.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you enjoy, do you enjoy one thing more or do you enjoy both things?
- 30:00 – 45:00
How long does it…
- RCRussell Crowe
spread its legs out and just sort of like grab at me, you know? And it's sort of pulsing, you know? And then I'm sort of like just lying there going, "Eh." And then, shoo, shoo, the tarantula guy tickles it. Up it goes, you know? And I'm kind of like, "Well, what is that?" You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
How long does it have to sit in your mouth for?
- RCRussell Crowe
Oh, it's only m- just a couple of seconds. As soon as it started going into the mouth, the guy would just grab it out, you know? Because they can cut around that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RCRussell Crowe
As long as they see it going in, then they can cut around it to make it look like it's disappeared in there, you know? So, take eight-... that happens, the tarantula stops on the neck, take nine, we're done for the day, right? So, nine takes with a live tarantula crawling into my mouth, right? The next day, I wake up and I've got a rash all over me. On my, my legs and my chest and my arms, you know? So, I call production, they call a doctor who's, you know, knows about these sort of things. He comes over to see me, goes, "Ah, okay. All right. See, um, were you hot yesterday?" I said, "Very hot." You know, under the lights and stuff like that. He goes, "Right, right." And the spider stopped and he goes, "Yeah, you're right." And he goes, "Okay. See, tarantulas on their legs have these very fine hairs. So fine, in fact, that they can easily go through a pore in human skin. So, currently what you have going on is your body is full of, of, uh, tarantula (laughs) venom. Um, but not enough to hurt you or even make you... Just, you're just gonna have this rash. So, here's this ointment. Take this pill. A few days from now you'll be all right." You know? And the reason that I wanted to tell you this story, um, and your listeners (laughs) is because... And you can check this, you can Google away. You can... D- I'm pretty sure in the history of cinema, I'm the only Academy Award-winning actor who's ever been fucked in the neck by a tarantula.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RCRussell Crowe
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Was that what it was doing?
- RCRussell Crowe
Apparently.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) It just decided that was a good spot?
- RCRussell Crowe
Just decided I was, um, I was moist and juicy and it was gonna have its way with me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah. I know about those fibers. Those fibers are nasty.
- RCRussell Crowe
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
They, they cause real problem with people.
- RCRussell Crowe
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I was, I was hoping you weren't gonna say you were allergic ta- to tarantulas.
- RCRussell Crowe
No, but I did find out I was allergic to, um, one of the things that they tried to fix it with. Um, it comes up quite a bit every time I've l- had major injuries and stuff. There's... I can't even remember the name of it now, but (clears throat) there's a, the go-to thing that they inject into you to take away the initial pain.
- JRJoe Rogan
Cortisone?
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah, cortisone. I'm allergic to cortisone.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah. Odd, isn't it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that is odd.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That could be a real problem.
- RCRussell Crowe
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Especially if you don't know.
- RCRussell Crowe
(inhales) Yeah. Well, that's when... It was around about then I found out (laughs) .
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Goddamn, man. So, is that, like, the most uncomfortable you've ever been in a scene?
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
- RCRussell Crowe
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It happened very quickly.
- RCRussell Crowe
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's the Noah's Ark story.
- RCRussell Crowe
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, it's ... That is it. That- that is the story, which is why it's so fasc- it's so interesting that people wanna dismiss Biblical stories b- ... You know, they say, "Oh, well it was an oral tradition for 1,000 years before it was ever written down." They're like, "Right, right." But what was it based on?
- RCRussell Crowe
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
What the fuck happened?
- RCRussell Crowe
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Something happened. Every culture has a story of something like that happening.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Very likely something happened.
- RCRussell Crowe
That's ... When I was doing the- the research building up to it, I was quite surprised, 'cause i- in my naivety, I actually, you know, had considered it was only a, like a Christian thing, and I didn't realize it was, uh, touched on everywhere, you know, uh, until I was doing that film.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It's a ... Did- do you ha- di- was there any hesitancy in taking on a religious character like that, with such significance to it?
- RCRussell Crowe
No, that was th- the exciting bit. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah. Um, it was a very busy year. Uh, and it was 2012. In that year, I'd just ... I played Superman's dad the year before, and been on ... Pff ... Uh, I mean, I was the fittest I'd- I'd ever been. I worked with a guy called Mark Twight. You ever heard of him?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- RCRussell Crowe
There was this company for a while called Jim Jones, and they were considered to be the hardest asses in the physical training business, you know? Uh, it was very, very difficult to become a Jim Jones trainer and stuff, and Mark was the guy that trained the trainers. And, uh, (laughs) he got assigned to me. Oh my God, uh, the things that he put me through. But it was all great, and we, uh, remain strong friends now, because we did some shit together. You know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- RCRussell Crowe
You know, I like that kinda mateship, you know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RCRussell Crowe
When you've- you've- you've been in the trenches or whatever, you know? Um, and so, the following year, I was b- I played, uh, the mayor of New York in a thing called Broken City with Mark Wahlberg, um, which is ... It's- it's funny, that's one of those performances that, uh, people just haven't seen. But I- I quite rate that- that performance. Um, and then I did Les Mis with, uh, you know, that- all that beautiful cast, and sort of spent f- three or four months on that, and then straight into Noah. Um, so I was- I was exhausted before I started. You know, I'd had three really big jobs in a row, and then to drop into that, which was, um ... It was a lot of, um, physical stuff on that movie, and- and Darren shoots a lot, so those big, wide shots, you're still doing the same action as you're doing when you're close in, so you're sort of working, you know, pretty hard. Um, but I think if- i- if anything, you know, I was really excited by the fact of, like o- of being able to delve into that. I would've preferred ... What I'm getting at is a little more time, you know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- RCRussell Crowe
Um, 'cause it's the- the quiet contemplation that really fills you up for the thing that you're about to do, and when you're coming straight off one film set, pretty much onto another, I think I had a gap of about two or three weeks, it's not quite enough, you know? Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
What would you ... Like, what would you do if you- if you had all the time that you wanted?
- RCRussell Crowe
Go and talk to people, you know? Go and talk to people who have got a perspective. Um, I would've s- probably wanted to spend a little bit more time with some, uh, Jewish scholars, 'cause there's a lot of, you know, writings adjunct to the Torah about Noah, um, and get to the bottom of that. But, um, I really didn't have the time, so I just had to sort of plow into it with what- what I had, which is, um, you know, uh, a beautiful two volume, um, Old Testament and- and-... the New Testament that, uh, Darren got me. So, that was the beginning of, of the research. But, you know, there's not really much else you can do, 'cause you can't go and look up, you know, old photos or anything. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RCRussell Crowe
You know?
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Wow. …
- RCRussell Crowe
And at this stage, um, I was living in a caravan, uh, 'cause I hadn't started building or anything on the, the property. And so I go to bed, and at about two o'clock in the morning, I'm woken up 'cause it's raining, right? And I'm trying to get back to sleep, but all I can think of is these 20 little calves down in the yards and how (laughs) the floor of the yards will turn into muck, and these guys are being picked up the next day and they'll all spend the whole night slipping over and sort of get, covering each other with shit, and they'll be in great distress and blah, blah, blah. So about 2:30 I went, "Fuck it." Got up, (laughs) got dressed, went down to the yards, trying to figure out how to get them outta the rain. I had a shed down there, but it was about 30 meters away from the edge of the yards, andYou know, I looked around in the shed and I had enough bits and pieces to make a fence for one side. All right? So I could make one side of this alley, so then it's just me on the other side. So I got these big long pieces of wood (laughs) and then what I had to do is I had to get them running towards me, then I had to redirect them along that (laughs) fence line so they would go inside the shed. Now, while this is happening, it's pissing down rain, absolutely like tropical rain, you know? And it took me about, I don't know, 40 minutes, something like that, so it's, it's deep in the middle of the night now, to fix the fence. And then I got 'em running (laughs) and they're coming towards me. I could see one was about to jink away so I had to sort of (laughs) dance along with my herd but it was amazing. You know, I stopped that one little bloke and he rejoined the, the rest of them and then they just went, like clockwork, just so smooth, straight into the shed. Right? So then in the shed (laughs) I'd, I'd laid out some hay and stuff and I left a little light on. (laughs) Yeah. You tell stories like that to farmers and they think you're an absolute idiot. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- RCRussell Crowe
What are you doing, mate? Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You gotta learn how to do it some way but I think that's-
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's-
- RCRussell Crowe
But just for me, the next day when the truck came to pick them up, they were all happy and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RCRussell Crowe
... healthy and, you know, not covered in brown shit, you know? So yeah. But so I'm not really a farmer so, but I've got land. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Well, you kinda are though. I mean, that sounds like at least a, a practicing farmer. I mean, you actually did it.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah. Well, we s- still do and we, we still, you know, turn the meat out. But, you know, when I looked into it in terms of a business, you have to really have about 25,000 a head to make it a business. You know? That covers you for, you know, when the, sometimes the price of meat goes down or, or whatever or the, the costs around culling go up. Um, and I just didn't wanna do it that way. I didn't wanna have to be responsible in my heart for 25,000 living creatures when I couldn't be absolutely certain they were all being treated well.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RCRussell Crowe
So, and I think that's one of the big mistakes that we've made going into this thing of, you know, of, um, farms getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger because at the end of the day, the thing that drops off is the duty of care.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. And it's also the humanity of it all just gets so distorted when you have these factory, factory farming operations that you, you're not even allowed. We have Ag-gag laws in America. S- you're not even allowed to film there because-
- RCRussell Crowe
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the conditions are sometimes-
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... so horrific that it damages-
- RCRussell Crowe
See, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
... the business.
- RCRussell Crowe
... we give grain to our cattle because there is, you know, um, a nice texture and stuff that comes with meat, um, beyond being grass fed. But we never put them into a feeding pen situation. And I think that that's also part of, the best part of the balance because, you know, they're still walking around on their home range. You know, this is where they're used to being and then here's a pile of grain over here, so they supplement their grass with the grain as opposed to just being fed grain purely to put on size. So we, what, what we turn off then, and I think it's partly to do with the fact that they stay active and everything, we, we get a natural 7% to 10% fat ratio, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- RCRussell Crowe
Which is the bottom end of the scale, you know? Um, but therefore, to me, you're getting more protein and therefore what we're giving you when we give you a steak is like a, an absolute protein pill. It's a-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RCRussell Crowe
... it's a hit, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
It's better for you too, physically.
- RCRussell Crowe
I think so.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's- It is.
- RCRussell Crowe
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's been proven that the nutritional balance of grass fed animals is just much better.
- 1:15:00 – 1:15:44
Mm-hmm. …
- RCRussell Crowe
Earlier this year, I did, um, uh, Nuremberg, where I played Hermann Göring, and so that's gonna be coming out soon. Um, looking forward to people seeing that. But Braddock was a, a, a such an experienced man because everything that I read about him, the stories I heard about him, I just liked him more and more. You know? Which can be a bit of a dangerous thing. As a, an actor, I try not to fall in love with a character. I d- you know, what I say is, "I'm in love with the job." You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- RCRussell Crowe
So if my, my, my job is to show you who that person is, whether it's positive or negative, you know? Um, uh, because it's kinda weird, you know? You, you can't fall in love with Hitler. You know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RCRussell Crowe
It's sort of like, if you're playing that role, you know what I mean?
Episode duration: 3:07:40
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