Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day You're all suited up. You got a wild card boxing hat on, a Bruce Lee shirt. Come on, son. Hey, we got the yellow thing going on. Yeah, you got it all going on. What's happening? Great to see you. Man, things are really well. This thing is a little loud. Is it? On that thing there, there's a little... volume knob.
You can turn that sucker knob. There it is. Last time I saw you was at Terry Black's Barbecue. Yeah, yeah. Random run in. Yeah, that was crazy. That was crazy. Yeah, man, I was thinking about going there right after this. I'm like, what? Terry Black's? That place was no joke. That place rules. Yeah, man. Are you still in L.A.? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's it like? It's cool, man. Is it?
You're the only person that said that. No. Yeah, well, because, okay, I defend L.A. in a way where, first of all, if you've got a handful of good people with you, you know, your family, then it's, so the fact that L.A. has all kinds of different things, you could be on a hiking trail, In 20 minutes, you can be- Oh, geographically, it's amazing.
Yeah, and the weather, you can't- Oh, you can't beat it. So if you got good people, good friends with you, then it's all good. You just run by crooks. It's a nice neighborhood run by the mob. It's run by the woke mob. But, I mean, geographically, you can't beat it. You could be at the ocean, and then you could be in the mountains in two hours. Yeah, yeah.
Chapter 2: How does Michael Jai White feel about living in Los Angeles?
Even if you don't partake, it's still cool. It still amps up the ante, really. Oh, yeah. The spot itself is magical. It is a magical place to live. Although, I am deeply concerned that that motherfucker is going to get hit with a big one soon. It's about time, right? Yeah.
I was reading this article about massive earthquakes in California and how often they're spread out and the possibility of one of them happening within the next decade. It's very high. Yeah, yeah. You know, I try not to think about that. I try not to think about it, too. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, now there's... I think they have better detection of that stuff now, too. It's better.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They can't detect. Do you remember what happened in Italy? A couple guys got arrested and went to jail. They were seismologists because the country didn't understand the ability to detect it. They had a big earthquake and a bunch of people died. And so they blamed these people.
geologists or seismologists they wound up winning in court on appeal because eventually the science was revealed like hey there's no fucking way you can really tell but they hung these guys out they blamed these guys on not being able to detect it Well, I mean, just think about it. The last crazy ones were 72 and then 94. Yeah. I think it was 93. I moved to L.A. right after the last big one.
I saw one of the sections of the highway that had collapsed on the other one. I remember driving by going, fuck this place. I was in the middle of that one. I came into L.A. Oh, you were there? Dude, I don't even like to tell the story about what happened during that 94 earthquake because it sounds like bullshit.
But literally, I got up, ran out of my house, my apartment at the time, jumped off the balcony and watched it happen. You watched the house collapse? I watched the earthquake happen from outside. Oh. It's like no bullshit. So I thought, oh, shit, I overreacted. I had a bad dream. I lived on the first floor of this apartment building.
All I know is I wake up, I'm off balance, catching my balance in the parking lot, right? And like, oh shoot, I gotta find the guard to get me back in the apartment building, right? And I'm thinking, like I've lost my mind or something. The next thing you know, Everything shakes and the lights go out. Just everything gets black.
And so I'm backing, I retreat back because I'm thinking the building is going to fall on me. And I'm like, wait a minute. Then I got the story from everybody else that experienced it. They said that the first thing that happened was the building shook and the lights went out. Well, I was outside watching that. So I'm outside when it happened, like some kind of canine.
So what made you jump over the- I don't know. You had a feeling? Dude. Or did you have like the first, was it the first rumbles? I thought it was, I thought I reacted to the, like some kind of an aftershock or some kind of rumble. No, because the girl that was with me- You left her in the apartment? Dude! All she knows is that you jumped up and you ran out of the house.
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Chapter 3: What concerns does Michael Jai White have about California's natural disasters?
And I heard the door slide. And then the next thing you know, everything shook. She was trapped in there because there was a closet door that trapped her in the hallway. So when I got back in the place, me and a friend had to try to pry the door open because she couldn't get out. But I ran out of that place before the earthquake actually happened. How weird. Yeah. You got good instincts.
I don't know what the hell that was. It has to be. I don't even like telling that story because it sounds like bullshit. It really happened that way. Then the guard, I talked to the guard. I'm like, hey, when did the lights go out? Oh, it shook and the lights went out. I'm like. I'm watching that happen. So you felt it happen before it happened. Some kind of weird way.
Well, I bet humans have that. Animals definitely have that. They talk about Thailand, how they had that tsunami and all the animals ran up to the highest point of the island. They all just took off. It's like they just knew instinctively.
Yeah.
I don't know. Nothing like that has ever happened afterwards. But I got to say, I've been lucky over the years. Yeah, but you're a dude who's tuned in. You're tuned into your body. You're tuned into your environment. You're not going to get caught slipping. Like, you probably felt something and your spidey sense went off. Yeah, I kind of have been like that growing up.
Like, I've been on my own since I was 14. Yeah. been through crazy shit that you normally would see on movies. And that's the type of shit that gives you those kind of instincts. But, yeah, and I was always the one that said, hey, let's leave. Let's get out of here. And then, hey, man, there was a shootout that just happened right after you left. Or I could detect, like, the predators.
You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So I grew up kind of that way. Right. Because you have to survive on that. But nobody looking out for you. Yeah. Nobody was looking out for you. You had to look out for yourself. Well, yeah. I mean, I was... Oh, I was like always the junior of the group a lot of times, because like I said, I've been on my own since I was 14.
I haven't grown an inch since I was 13, 14. I looked like a grown-ass man, right? I was fighting in tournaments at 15 against grown men, like fighting heavyweight at that time. But I was always hanging with older people, right? Kind of, you know, kind of like I got away with kind of living as an adult early on. Did you work? Yeah, well, I was teaching a karate class. What was happening, see...
I used to hang out at this community center in the hood. At this time, I moved from Brooklyn to Bridgeport, Connecticut, right? Bridgeport's a tough neighborhood. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people don't know. Yeah, we had the top murder rate per capita, man. Bridgeport's rough. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I was constantly—I mean, there's a community center that was like my haven, right?
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Chapter 4: How did Michael Jai White's childhood shape his instincts and career?
Even an idiot, you can learn from an idiot. You can. A lot of idiots say wise things occasionally. Yeah, because everybody's going to have a quotient. Of of legitimacy. Mm hmm. You know, maybe it may be 20 percent as well. And they don't see the 80 percent. Right. But until you acknowledge that 20 percent, they're not going to hear you. Right. You know what I mean? So that's the thing.
It's like, man, we're on this planet. And one of the things I mean, I don't envy a whole lot of people, but I do. Dude, I do envy you. Because you get to expand your world. You talk to so many interesting people. And that's what a great thing. What a great thing to just have all these type of perspectives and all that coming through.
And I got to say, man, I'm super proud of you because I know you as Joe from the gym. And look what you've done, man. Thank you. Man, it's like that. That's a that's a shot in the arm because it's like people that you like and seeing them prosper. That's cool as shit. Yeah, I've learned a lot, man. And I didn't expect to. When we first started doing this, it was just for fun.
We'd just get together with our friends. But you knew what you wanted to do, man. You were pretty damn clear. Do you remember this? You remember me coming to, I think it was the Ice House? In Pasadena? No, no, no. Oh, shoot. It wasn't Ice House. It was in Orange County. Comedy Magic Club, maybe? I came to see you perform, and I offered you the role in Blood and Bone. Do you remember that at all?
I do. Yeah. Yeah, I do now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because Blood and Bone, which is like actually Sony's most successful non-theatrical That was basically a kind of reimagining of hard times with Charles Bronson and James Colburn. Great movie. Yes. Well, that role was basically that I was offering you was the James Coburn role. Right. And but you were so you was dead.
I don't want to do this acting stuff. I want to do I want to focus on what I you know, your interest, which was, you know, you stand up and you you're getting together. I mean, I know you and Eddie were doing like kind of the early podcast type of stuff and whatever. And I'm like, man, you know, you really kind of knew what you wanted to do.
Well, the thing about acting is, I mean, I admire it, especially good acting, but it takes a lot of time out of your day. It's a 16-hour day. It's a long day, and it will take away from other things you do. And I saw that with a lot of comics that they started doing acting, and it would take away from their act because they really couldn't go and do sets every night.
They couldn't really polish their material. You could see stuff getting a little clunkier. You got to focus. You got to find the things you enjoy and focus on them. Yeah, that's why I say I'm so proud of just being there and seeing what you did. You being a part of the UFC when it was nothing promised. You know what I mean?
Not only was it not promised, man, people looked at you like you were doing like snuff films or something. Exactly. They looked at you like, I remember the early days, man. Dana White always says this, people would talk to you like you were doing porn or something. Right, right.
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Chapter 5: How does Michael Jai White come up with movie ideas?
But it came to me just like the whole movie came to me in a ride to set. Is that normal for ideas or do you sometimes sit down and say, like, I want to write an idea about blank? Sometimes, sometimes. Like I have a movie that the next movie I'm going to do is a sequel to a movie I did called As Good As Dead. Right.
Chapter 6: What inspired Michael Jai White's character in his upcoming film?
And it became Samuel Goldwyn's, one of their most successful movies. I wrote the idea. It was based off my brother. My brother, he went from Florida into Mexico and started a family. He just fell in love with Mexico. And I kind of based my character on him. And he's basically a cop that's like hiding out in Mexico and trying to avoid this syndicate or whatever that's trying to kill him.
But that movie just came to me. I wrote it. We were in production like two months later. And we actually got the movie done within a year. How did you get it made so quick? Yeah, I mean, they responded to the script. And it was kind of like a grown-up karate kid in a way. So my character, you don't know what was this black dude doing working construction in Mexico.
And he's got his Wing Chun dummy.
Chapter 7: How does Michael Jai White approach fight scene choreography?
He's training in his backyard. And there's a kid who's trying to avoid the gangs that he befriends. that he teaches this unique kind of martial art. And so one thing leads to another. This kid gets good at it, and they trace the style back to my character. And then the bad guys are trying to kill me, and I have to fight back. So what we're doing, we're about to do a sequel.
I start that in a couple of weeks, actually. So I wrote that one. But yeah, so I feel like, I don't know, I'm still a fan of movies. I wouldn't write something I wouldn't want to see. And I've seen a lot. I think I understand this industry. I understand there's a lot of stories that I think could be told with fresh ways and with the action and martial arts that could be new and exciting.
I'm getting to a place where I'm trying to make fight scenes look very real, including choreographing mistakes. I think people have become so much more sophisticated watching UFC fights and all that type of stuff. I think you've got to raise the bar. To make something look real.
And there's a lot of the stuff that's in the superhero movies and whatever that you just kind of go, okay, you're seeing choreography for choreography's sake. Right. And you're not invested because you don't feel like you're looking at a real fight. Right. And so I like to try to use my platform to step that up a bit.
Yeah, that's hard, especially as a person who is a martial artist, to watch fight scenes and go, you have to kind of suspend disbelief and go, all right, let this play out. Kind of like, you know, it's weird, but, you know, kind of full circle. It's kind of going back to the way Bruce Lee did stuff. And he's a little faster than the other person. He has a little bit more technique.
And, you know, if you imagine, like, even if I imagine you in a real fight, your technique is not going nowhere.
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Chapter 8: What insights does Michael Jai White share about discipline and personal growth?
And other people are not gonna have that same technique. You beat somebody to the punch, you do things that will logically give you the edge, that's what you shoot. You know what I mean? Yeah, so it's not like you gotta do a lot of camera tricks. If you're moving faster and stronger than another person, Well, there it is. There it is.
So luckily, you know, I mean, I can put things on screen that kind of resemble what things might look like, you know, and you get the benefit of the doubt because, you know, you're in a heroic position. It's just very hard to do that. It's very hard to make it look real. There's a real art to that. Yeah, yeah, but like with the movie that you turned down, Blood and Bone...
I turned down John Wick 4, too, though. I turned down a lot of movies. You do. You did the right thing because what you're doing, this could not be more up your alley doing the things that you're doing. John Wick was hard. I'm a giant John Wick fan. Are you? Especially John Wick 1. There's going to be a John Wick 7, so you can decide to do whatever you want to. They got kind of crazy.
They're over the top now. But even John Wick 1 was totally unrealistic. Oh, man. Totally unrealistic, but so fun. I fucking love those movies. Yeah, well, I got something that's kind of in that vein that I just finished. There's a lot of body count, but a lot of CQB. I've been studying that for a while. What is CQB? Close Quarter Combat. Oh, OK. Close Quarter Battle.
But, you know, I've been doing like, you know, a lot of like tactical training and kind of getting myself. I may compete at some point. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty into it. Where do you train at? Well, a lot of places. I trained with a guy named Tyler Gray. He's Delta Force. I had a lot of friends who were like, you know, Special Force guys. You ever go to Terran Tactical? Oh, of course.
Yeah. Yeah. I go to Terran quite a bit. That guy's the best. Oh, yeah. He's a man. He's amazing. You want to talk about someone who's very technical. Oh, my God. He shoots from the hip better than anybody using a laser. No, he's preposterous. It's unreal. Always iron sights. Yeah. He uses red dots, but he prefers iron sights. He's like, they never fail. They never go wrong. Yeah.
And he's so crazy accurate. It's wild to watch. And when you think about how long... how fast could you just take out everybody in this damn room? It's kind of... It's kind of spooky. Yeah, it is spooky. Yeah. Well, it's also, he's so calm about it, too. Yeah, yeah. It's weird, like, almost like autistic. Like, weird, fucking Rain Man-ish. Yeah, yeah. Like, what the fuck?
When you watch him do it, like, many times I've gone to his range and trained, and then, you know, people goad him into it. Like, do a run. Like, do this. And he's like, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to pull this out right here. Yeah. It's crazy. You're like, what the fuck did I just watch? That's crazy.
And then you see how many times he's won the championship. Oh, yeah. Ridiculous. And there's only a few people that won consecutive years. And he's got like seven years in a row and just chunks. I'm like, this is crazy. Yeah. He's a very unique talent. Yeah. Very unique talent. Yeah. A buddy of mine, like Tyler Gray, he just... He's been Delta. He's been decorating.
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