Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is once
Speaker 1: again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. And with me today in this special
Speaker 1: San Francisco City by the Bay episode of Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards is Sean Riley, also known as Sean Baby. It's
Speaker 1: a pleasure to be here. I had to check up
Speaker 1: on your last name because I've only ever known you
Speaker 1: with Sean Baby. It is Riley. Yeah, Sean Patrick Riley
Speaker 1: got because you know, my dad, it was his turn
Speaker 1: to name the kids and he really wanted an Irish name,
Speaker 1: so he said triple the Irish. Sean Riley is very
Speaker 1: Irish and adding a Patrick in there just too much, exceptionally,
Speaker 1: so it's too much. Well, we are talking about the
Speaker 1: opposite of an Irish person today, Steven Seagal, we have
Speaker 1: cans of wine. Is not normal, not normal normally, I'm
Speaker 1: sober other than the natural high durritos gives me. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be your first drunken Irish guest. Drunken Irish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did a really drunk one at Unite the Right too,
Speaker 1: But anyway, we're just gonna dive right in here to
Speaker 1: our story about Steven Seagal. God, I can't wait now.
Speaker 1: If you all remember Steven Seagal kind of mediocre, bordering
Speaker 1: on decent sometimes action starts of such films as Under
Speaker 1: Siege on Deadly Ground. Yeah, what on Deadly Ground is
Speaker 1: not so great? No? No, no, no, understieges all right,
Speaker 1: we're talking hard to kill, Yeah, hard to kill above
Speaker 1: the law, above the law. Hard Target was a Jean
Speaker 1: Claude May Name movie, which was better than all these.
Speaker 1: You don't we should talk about Jean Claude Van Name
Speaker 1: for three hours. Well, the thing about Steven Seagal, I
Speaker 1: suspect a lot of people listening to this might be
Speaker 1: surprised that Steven Seagal has been picked as a subject
Speaker 1: for this, And I want to ensure everyone up front.
Speaker 1: He's a monster. And that's part of what's so important
Speaker 1: to talk about in a day, because honestly, you can
Speaker 1: kind of tell from his movies like There seemed to
Speaker 1: be made by a very insecure man. I know if
Speaker 1: you watched a lot of his films, but he has
Speaker 1: never taken a shot. Steven Seagal movies are just him,
Speaker 1: like just walking through his enemies. Oh yeah, yeah, no
Speaker 1: he's not. It's not like a Bruce Willis thing where
Speaker 1: he's gonna be shot and choked and eat up. And
Speaker 1: he's just I'm the toughest guy that's ever been. And
Speaker 1: even when he made The Glimmerman and like Keenan every
Speaker 1: Wayne's had all these funny lines, He's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I should these funny lines too, and so like there's
Speaker 1: two funny man. There's no straight guy in that movie
Speaker 1: except Steven Seagal, you know, has no comic timing and
Speaker 1: he sort of sucks, but like again, walks through everybody
Speaker 1: and you have a you have a knife, Steven Seagal
Speaker 1: has nothing. You're so dead, Like ten seconds into that fight,
Speaker 1: you're dead. Oh yeah, he's gonna break your arms to
Speaker 1: the knife goes back towards you, and then he's gonna
Speaker 1: stab you with your own knife. That's the kind of
Speaker 1: action here on dam He'd get stabbed like seventy five
Speaker 1: times and make a heroic come back. That's a story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an arc. There's no arcs and Steven Seagal movies.
Speaker 1: The arc is just Steven Seagal is a badass. There
Speaker 1: are people opposed to him and then they're dead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so. Stephen Frederick Seagal, or well, Stephen Frederick Siegel
Speaker 1: is the original pronunciation of his name, so we'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a second. Was born on April tenth,
Speaker 1: nine two. On his personal website Steven Seagal dot com,
Speaker 1: he describes his early life vast lee. A son of
Speaker 1: a math teacher and a medical technician, Stephen's humble childhood
Speaker 1: was underscored by a fascination with the martial arts and
Speaker 1: the blues. Some would say that this is a strange combination,
Speaker 1: but ask any martial arts expert or blues legend and
Speaker 1: they will both tell you that it is the spirit
Speaker 1: that reaches deep and within your soul that drives the artistry.
Speaker 1: I learned on an ancient mountaintop. It's actually freaky how
Speaker 1: accurate that is to what he claims about his training
Speaker 1: in the blues. Um, I like every stupid thing I
Speaker 1: make up. You're like, oh, yeah, that's actually no. You
Speaker 1: can't think this is dumber than it is, and then
Speaker 1: it gets really sinister. So that's the Steven seagaltail. So,
Speaker 1: according to the Guardian, Stephen began studying a keto when
Speaker 1: he was seven years old, and soon thereafter Quote professed
Speaker 1: to his parents that he was not of this cosmic realm.
Speaker 1: I learned from credit class that space. Yeah, uh, it's possible.
Speaker 1: This was because young Stephen Segal was actually the reincarnation
Speaker 1: of a seventeenth century Buddhist lama. Again more and that later.
Speaker 1: Probably the best source I've been able to find on
Speaker 1: Siegel's early life was a November article in People magazine,
Speaker 1: written at the height of his popularity. The author actually
Speaker 1: got to interview his mom, Pat and get some presumably
Speaker 1: accurate information about the stars early life. The article notes
Speaker 1: that while Siegel claimed that quote a lot of my
Speaker 1: youth was spent in Brooklyn, his mom says that he
Speaker 1: was born in Lansing, Michigan, and lived near Detroit until
Speaker 1: the family moved to Fullerton, California, when he was five.
Speaker 1: Here's a quote from that article. Although Segal likes to
Speaker 1: paint himself as an urban street kid whom the Fullerton
Speaker 1: youths saw as some kind of crazy gangster, Pat says
Speaker 1: her son was frail and suffered from asthma. He was
Speaker 1: a party kid back then, she says, but he really
Speaker 1: thrived after the move from Michigan. So good for him. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: moving moving to Fullerton was great. Yeah, the weird thing
Speaker 1: to lie about, Yeah, what wanting people to think that
Speaker 1: you were a gangster at five? I just I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have bought it anyway. But like, go and ask his mom,
Speaker 1: and his mom sells him out immediately. He doesn't even say, like, Mom,
Speaker 1: I told every want to come from the karate streets.
Speaker 1: You gotta you gotta come before me. She's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing that, sweetheart. People magazine calls, I'm telling them
Speaker 1: the truth. You are fat and asthmetic and you're not
Speaker 1: from space. You know. Uh, you know that kid in
Speaker 1: like elementary school who always has all these like bold
Speaker 1: lies about his uncle who is a Navy seal or
Speaker 1: whatever like that. Steven Seagal is that, but never growing
Speaker 1: up or learning anything like That's a great way to
Speaker 1: describe him. Um So, Steven's mom says that he spent
Speaker 1: most of his youth playing rock music rather than the blues,
Speaker 1: but confirms that he was obsessed with aketo from an
Speaker 1: early age. So that does seem to be true. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a perfect sport for a seven year old. Some
Speaker 1: shade on Aketo will not be the last. She says, quote,
Speaker 1: he worked with this nice old Japanese man at a
Speaker 1: dojo and garden grove. He where it's Stephen to go
Speaker 1: to Japan. We don't know when Stephen first went to
Speaker 1: Japan because he is a viitual liar, but in sundry
Speaker 1: interviews he's claimed to a first gun there at various years,
Speaker 1: from between nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy three, so
Speaker 1: somewhere in that period. Fullerton College enrollment records note that
Speaker 1: he was enrolled there from nineteen seventy too of any one,
Speaker 1: which suggests he would have been at least nineteen before leaving.
Speaker 1: This is meaningful because one of Steven's claims to fame
Speaker 1: is that he studied under Morahi Uyashiba, the founder of akito.
Speaker 1: Since Mr Uyashiba died in nineteen sixty nine, it's likely
Speaker 1: that Steven's lying about that too ridiculous. Yes, it won't
Speaker 1: stop being that so Segel moved back to California nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, where he met Miyaku Fujitani, a second degree
Speaker 1: black belt and daughter of an Akito master from Osaka, Japan.
Speaker 1: They met in l a at a dojo where she worked,
Speaker 1: and Stephen pursued her quote aggressively, Um no, no, it
Speaker 1: will be creepy later. At this point, he was really
Speaker 1: good looking in his youth, like he has legitimately swollen
Speaker 1: like a handsome guy like in his early twenties, and
Speaker 1: she was charmed by it. She says he somehow lost
Speaker 1: all that by the time he made his first movie.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he went downhill from like ag eight teen on.
Speaker 1: It has been a steady slide, to be honest, I
Speaker 1: think he might have peaked at five. So Miako eventually
Speaker 1: went home to Osaka and even went with her. So
Speaker 1: he went back to Japan a second time. They got
Speaker 1: married there. According to Robert Strickland, a former ci A
Speaker 1: consultant who knew Segal in Japan, Segal claimed to have
Speaker 1: married Miako and moved there in order to quote avoid
Speaker 1: the draft. Marrying a Japanese national would make him less
Speaker 1: likely to be sent back to the United States. So
Speaker 1: he doesn't talk about that so much anymore now that
Speaker 1: he's Steven Seagal law man. But yeah, that's that's apparently
Speaker 1: why I moved to Japan in the first place, to
Speaker 1: avoid the draft. Yeah, to this day. Segal claims that
Speaker 1: he was the first and at the time only white
Speaker 1: man to open a dojo in Japan. If true, that
Speaker 1: would be impressive. Spy Magazine says that that's bullshit. However,
Speaker 1: Spy magazine magazine calling your bullshit, I bet that's some
Speaker 1: serious bullshit. I really like every article of Spy I read,
Speaker 1: because they had a great one about Paul mana fort
Speaker 1: like this one. They spent six months studying Steven Seagal
Speaker 1: and like talking to people who knew him as a
Speaker 1: kid and really getting into his back story. It's a
Speaker 1: fun journey into the youth of Steven Seagal. Yeah, mazin
Speaker 1: Spy Magazine baby quote. In fact, the dojo, which was
Speaker 1: founded by Fujitani's father and noted Akito black Belt, was
Speaker 1: owned by his mother in law and managed by his wife,
Speaker 1: herself a black belt. Seagal has also boasted of his
Speaker 1: courage and battling criminals. Sometimes they are bugs of the Yakuza,
Speaker 1: the Japanese mafia. Other times they are mere garden variety criminals.
Speaker 1: I jumped right in front of their faces, Sigal told
Speaker 1: movie Line. I was a tenacious motherfucker man, and I
Speaker 1: was fearless Miako. His ex wife says Segal was not
Speaker 1: exactly telling the truth about fighting the Yakusa man quote,
Speaker 1: it is a lie. He once chased a few drunks
Speaker 1: away from the dojo, but was never involved with the yakuza.
Speaker 1: So it could have been yukuza. You don't know, You
Speaker 1: don't know. Man could have been drunk yakuza. Another major
Speaker 1: Segal claimed to fame is that he was the first
Speaker 1: Westerner to receive a black belt in Akito. His ex
Speaker 1: wife doesn't challenge this exactly, but she did tell Spy quote,
Speaker 1: the only reason Stephen was awarded the black belt was
Speaker 1: because the judge, who was famous for his laziness, fell
Speaker 1: asleep during Steven's presentation. Judge just gave him the black belt.
Speaker 1: It's like, where am I? Who is this guy? You
Speaker 1: know what? Here's a black belt. Normally only give these
Speaker 1: two nine year olds of the way. But you seem
Speaker 1: like a good guy, like a yah because of fighting
Speaker 1: good guy. This is a ridiculous story. It's really ridiculous,
Speaker 1: like such dubious honors to lie about the first black belt. Okay, dude,
Speaker 1: that is a black belt is one of those phrases
Speaker 1: that's like a shortcut to me, just cutting, closing my
Speaker 1: ears to somebody like, Okay, you're bragging about being a
Speaker 1: black belt, unless the question is can you teach me taekwondo,
Speaker 1: in which case absolutely drop your credentials. Why not? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So Steven spent a sizeable chunk of the late seventies
Speaker 1: teaching martial arts in Japan, and according to him, this
Speaker 1: is when he first attracted the attention of the CIA.
Speaker 1: Here's how Steven put it in the nineteen interview with
Speaker 1: the l A Times. These guys were my students. They
Speaker 1: saw my abilities both with martial arts and with the language.
Speaker 1: You can say that I became an advisor to several
Speaker 1: CIA agents in the field. Through my friends in the CIA,
Speaker 1: I met many powerful people and did special works and
Speaker 1: special favorites, special favorites like the largest Kumfu trophy and
Speaker 1: all of Minnesota. Even claims that during this Lansing Michigan
Speaker 1: there too. Stephen claims that during this period he did
Speaker 1: security work for Archbishop Desmond too too of South Africa.
Speaker 1: The shot of Iran and Egyptian President and War Sadat.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess one of those, probably probably not, probably not.
Speaker 1: I don't buy it. And wat I mean clearly his
Speaker 1: security team wasn't great because he got assassinated. So maybe
Speaker 1: Segal was maybe tried a keto against the sniper. It's
Speaker 1: not working. Oh sorry, and more that was that was unfair.
Speaker 1: Um for a time, it was hard to refut to
Speaker 1: confirmed Steven's claims of badassory. His ex wife Miako did
Speaker 1: admit that he would regularly go away for long chunks
Speaker 1: of time during their ten years together, saying my children
Speaker 1: don't have any memory of him as a father god,
Speaker 1: so he must be in Nina. The first thing to
Speaker 1: appears the illusion of Steven Seagal, actual action hero turned
Speaker 1: movie action hero was that wonderful article ann of Dishonor
Speaker 1: by John Connolly. Now, like I said, this article was
Speaker 1: the result of a six month investigation, and it was
Speaker 1: the first place to point out that Steven Seagal's last
Speaker 1: name would originally pronounced Siegel, not Segal. Are you going
Speaker 1: to guess how that came about? I'm gonna say I
Speaker 1: definitely had to do with Ninja's He had to have
Speaker 1: been defending some kind of a dojo. No, this is
Speaker 1: actually the only believable story he's ever told. He apparently
Speaker 1: went to a Chegal exhibit at a museum and liked
Speaker 1: the pronunciation. Never would have guessed that. I believe that's true.
Speaker 1: No one would lie about that. Uh So, when Segal
Speaker 1: came back from Japan in nineteen eighty, he opened two dojo's,
Speaker 1: one of them in Taos, New Mexico, and one of
Speaker 1: them in Los Angeles. Houses an odd choice, kind of
Speaker 1: a small town to open an aikido dojo, and familiar
Speaker 1: must be a great akido town. It's a beautiful town.
Speaker 1: I didn't notice any Aikido going on there, so I
Speaker 1: think it failed to take on. Miako says that her
Speaker 1: then husband told her that he wanted to go to
Speaker 1: the US to either get rich in Hollywood or by
Speaker 1: running restaurants, which he doesn't seem to have ever done.
Speaker 1: Uh She supported him in his dreams, though, and spent
Speaker 1: years saving up money and living like a popper to
Speaker 1: fund his trip back in his attempts to start a business.
Speaker 1: So that's sweet. I'm gonna guess he does right by her.
Speaker 1: Let's read the next paragraph. Before he left her, he
Speaker 1: told her quote, I will always do the right thing.
Speaker 1: I will never betray here you. Then he took her savings,
Speaker 1: went to America and married another woman, Adrian LaRussa, in
Speaker 1: nineteen four. Shortly thereafter, he met another woman, actress Kelly LeBrock.
Speaker 1: According to Joe Hiams, then Warner Brothers VP of Publicity,
Speaker 1: Segal saw LeBrock in the film Woman in Red and
Speaker 1: said she is my destiny. So Hiam's and Segal wound
Speaker 1: up having dinner with Jerry Pam, Lebron's former agent, and
Speaker 1: during dinner, Segal asked Pam what the best way to
Speaker 1: get publicity was. Pam told him it was to be
Speaker 1: seen in the company of famous people. So Segal asked
Speaker 1: him if he could help him meet Kelly LeBrock. Pam
Speaker 1: told Segal that Colley was currently in Japan. So Steven Seagal,
Speaker 1: who was still married to Miako and illegally married to
Speaker 1: a second woman, flew to his first wife's home country
Speaker 1: to try to pick up a third woman because she
Speaker 1: was famous, which is that's how all the great story start.
Speaker 1: It's almost a work of art as far as being
Speaker 1: a shitty person as it's like the being a garbage
Speaker 1: husband version of the Mona Lisa, like if you were
Speaker 1: in a writer's room and you're like, Okay, we gotta
Speaker 1: have this piece of ship do some stuff to like
Speaker 1: let the viewers know he's a piece of ship. You'd
Speaker 1: be like, nude, pump the brakes on all this. This
Speaker 1: is way too much, and it is way too much,
Speaker 1: And yet that does seem to be what happened. So
Speaker 1: he did meet Kelly Lebron in Japan, and within two
Speaker 1: weeks they were lovers. Within a year, she was pregnant.
Speaker 1: By this time, Adrian Larissa had decided to file for
Speaker 1: an annulment, so that's good. Shell granted her an ennulment.
Speaker 1: She didn't seek any financial support, and in an interview
Speaker 1: later stated that, in fact, quote, I gave him money
Speaker 1: for months afterwards, just to get him out of my life.
Speaker 1: I can't say very much because I'm afraid of Steven
Speaker 1: and his friends. We'll talk about who Stephen and his
Speaker 1: friends here. But yeah, yeah, it's sad for this girl,
Speaker 1: like a lot of women, for Kelly Lebron. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of shame in that. Like
Speaker 1: that's got to be most women's fears. Yeah, But like
Speaker 1: I just he'll pay the guy money. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: also got another wife, yeah, yeah, I bet you didn't
Speaker 1: even get those karate trophies. No, no, no, I guess not.
Speaker 1: Mia could divorced Segal. Right around this time, he and
Speaker 1: Lebron headed back to Hollywood and her Beverly Hills mansion.
Speaker 1: Now he wasn't a movie star at this point. He
Speaker 1: was just sort of living with a movie star as
Speaker 1: part of his quest to get famous. His house Do
Speaker 1: Joe failed in the late nineteen eighties, leaving him desperate
Speaker 1: for cash. In the words of Robert Strickland, according to Strickland,
Speaker 1: Stephen arranged for a mercenary he knew to steal Lebrox
Speaker 1: Porsche Carrera for the insurance money. Mercenary, A mercenary he
Speaker 1: knows a lot of mercenaries. In interviews at the time,
Speaker 1: Segal claimed to be actively searching for the monster who
Speaker 1: had stolen his wife's car. Christ It's pretty remarkable, right,
Speaker 1: just keeps going. I went in this hating Steven Seagal.
Speaker 1: Now I'm like, now, okay, coming around, Now you're coming around.
Speaker 1: This really wiped the stain of hard to kill out.
Speaker 1: Money problems were common with pre movies. Stephen Segal. Multiple
Speaker 1: sources who knew him for years alleged to Spy that
Speaker 1: he seemed to have mysterious backers who would regularly help
Speaker 1: him out of his pickles and presumably helped him start
Speaker 1: his dojos in the first place. Two of his friends
Speaker 1: were called a time when he left for around a
Speaker 1: week and returned with a new car and quote a
Speaker 1: stack of hundred dollar bills six inches high. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: bet hey someone for money. Well that is what he claimed.
Speaker 1: Segal bragg that he had gotten the money for pulling
Speaker 1: off a hit for the mob, like he confessed to
Speaker 1: murder to his friends. Know his friends later told Spy
Speaker 1: magazine spoiler alert about Segal, none of his friends stay
Speaker 1: his friends, maybe because he's a giant piece of ship
Speaker 1: that might have an effect whether or not he actually
Speaker 1: carried out a hit for the mob. Seagal spent years
Speaker 1: telling lies like this in order to craft an aura
Speaker 1: of danger. Spy reported in nine that Seagal packs of
Speaker 1: forty five in his belt, not just loaded, but cocked
Speaker 1: and chambered. Some might think this tough, others merely creetanus,
Speaker 1: since he's just as likely to choose himself in the
Speaker 1: testicles as to drop an attacker. Now, in fairness to
Speaker 1: Seagal cocked in, chambered, or been locked as a common
Speaker 1: way to carry a single action called nineteen eleven, which
Speaker 1: sounds like the gun he was carrying. In more fairness
Speaker 1: and in more accuracy, if you carry a cocked and
Speaker 1: loaded pistol of any kind in a belt without a holster,
Speaker 1: you are asking to get yourself shot in the c Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's dumb. It's a dumb thing to do. I'm wearing
Speaker 1: one right now, and I mean I got shot in
Speaker 1: the pick four times, five times. You lose track after
Speaker 1: a few, you know, but you save a lot of
Speaker 1: money on birth control. That's a great point. Male birth
Speaker 1: control is here, and it is called dangerously carrying a
Speaker 1: loaded handgun in your pants. So Stephen's supposed history as
Speaker 1: a badass was not invented out of whole cloth. Throughout
Speaker 1: his life, he's had numerous friendships with former CIA operatives, mercenaries,
Speaker 1: and soldiers. Spy suggests that this is because he basically
Speaker 1: just steals these people's stories and relates them during interviews
Speaker 1: to seem like a badass quote. On one occasion, one
Speaker 1: of Segal's students, a former Green Beret, was talking about
Speaker 1: his time in Lao. Later, Segal told the same story
Speaker 1: to another group, only now he had become the protagonist. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the Green Beret was in this group. Makita remembers the
Speaker 1: soldier saying, hey, Eddie, that's my story. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: man died after three quick chops of a kido. Speaking
Speaker 1: of a keto, you know what flips and throws hunger.
Speaker 1: This is this is this is a derrito's blood. But
Speaker 1: it actually is time for us to have a normal
Speaker 1: ad break. So imagine that I made a comment that
Speaker 1: tied a keto into whatever ads come up next. We're
Speaker 1: back and we're talking about Steven Seagal. I'm going to
Speaker 1: read another quote from his website. Al Right, it gets
Speaker 1: into how he describes the start of his film career.
Speaker 1: Most of us know Stephen for his roles as an
Speaker 1: action hero, with an acting career that was launched at
Speaker 1: his Los Angeles do jo in the late eighties, where
Speaker 1: he taught martial arts to the likes of Sean Connery,
Speaker 1: James Coburn, and the famed talent agent Michael Ovitt's fun fact,
Speaker 1: he broke Sean Connery's wrist yea when they were sparring.
Speaker 1: Not too bad. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess. I
Speaker 1: mean it's a sign of clumsiness. You probably shouldn't break
Speaker 1: a student's wrist. Yeah, but I mean, at least didn't
Speaker 1: shoot his dick off. He didn't shoot Sean Connery's dick off,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure a lot of people are grateful for
Speaker 1: Stephen Sigal aready, this is a better day than most.
Speaker 1: Uh quote. It was Mr Ovits who paved the way
Speaker 1: for Stephen to co write and star in his first
Speaker 1: and hugely successful action film, Above the Law in y.
Speaker 1: It's a good movie. It's a good movie. It's a
Speaker 1: good movie. The story for how he came to be
Speaker 1: in it is a little bit more complicated than Steven
Speaker 1: Seagal's website gives, and involves a lot more of the mob,
Speaker 1: of course it does. Would you have guessed before this
Speaker 1: that Steven Seagal's career was bankrolled at the start by
Speaker 1: the mafia? Yes? Or the y I guess, yeah, the
Speaker 1: Japanese mafia, whatever, No, the American mafia. No good has
Speaker 1: ever led Steven Seagald doing anything. No, I would. I
Speaker 1: would say that's a problem, unfair. So let's let's hear
Speaker 1: about how we got into above the law. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the law. We're talking above the law. Yes, we're
Speaker 1: we're definitely talking about to the bank, the blood bank. Wait,
Speaker 1: is that a real line form movie? Fantastic? Okay, it
Speaker 1: is almost certainly true that Michael Ovit's arranged for Sigal
Speaker 1: to meet with a group of Warner Brothers executives to
Speaker 1: show off his akito skills. He was apparently quite impressive.
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers president Terry Simmel recalled, with just a toss
Speaker 1: of his hand, Stephen would send the other guy flying.
Speaker 1: It was pretty astounding. Mark Mikeeda participated in this demonstration.
Speaker 1: He ran a dojo in Los Angeles and basically agreed
Speaker 1: to be tossed around with the help of his friend.
Speaker 1: He said, and later in an interview quote, I still
Speaker 1: can't believe those guys at Warners didn't know it was
Speaker 1: rehearsed demonstration. It shouldn't have fooled anybody. Segal could not
Speaker 1: toss me or anyone else in the air unless we
Speaker 1: were in on it. Yeah, if I can interrupt here
Speaker 1: for a second. Sure, if you watch an keto demonstration,
Speaker 1: it usually is one dude in the center of like
Speaker 1: a crowd, and they run at him one at a
Speaker 1: time and he'll like do a little thing with their
Speaker 1: wrist and they'll go flying into a front flip. It's
Speaker 1: clearly bullshit. Yeah, and we've now had you know, three
Speaker 1: decades of m m A in our country and many
Speaker 1: more in Brazil and Japan, and no one has ever
Speaker 1: gone in there as a nikto expert. And he said,
Speaker 1: like this is me. I'm gonna aketo a guy and
Speaker 1: they come in and he flips them all around. It
Speaker 1: just simp doesn't work. There's no record of akdo working
Speaker 1: on someone who doesn't want akdo to work on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what way I've heard it described? And you know,
Speaker 1: in case our listeners don't know who you are, you
Speaker 1: you have a lot of experience in this world. I
Speaker 1: wrote a few UFC games, you know, A big fan
Speaker 1: of sport, trained in a jiu jitsu, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I like I like this stuff a lot. I think
Speaker 1: about this stuff a lot, and like everyone else, when
Speaker 1: UFC first came, I kept expecting some magic tai chi
Speaker 1: guy to come down out of the mountains, or an
Speaker 1: akdo guy to come out, or a jeet kundo guy
Speaker 1: to to lock everybody's hands up and beat them with compass,
Speaker 1: and it just it never happens. Like these traditional martial
Speaker 1: arts have sort of been proven bullshit. They're great ways
Speaker 1: to stay fit and have fun with your That doesn't
Speaker 1: explain the size of Steven Seago. I'm not even shared
Speaker 1: that's true. I think it's a good place to like
Speaker 1: leave a kid for an hour. Anyway. My point is
Speaker 1: stories of akdo devastating yakas and members. It's unlikely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you grab a guy by the rest and
Speaker 1: he does a front flip, he probably didn't mind doing
Speaker 1: that front flip so much. He's helping you out. It
Speaker 1: was a consensual flip, right, yeah, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: non consensual flips, which I think are more useful in
Speaker 1: a fight. I'm not an expert, I would say, so, okay,
Speaker 1: all this, uh, you know, Steven Seagal is a big,
Speaker 1: fraudulent sort of exhibition where he tossed around his friend
Speaker 1: was enough to convince the WB executives to drop fifty
Speaker 1: dollars on a screen test, which shows you what money
Speaker 1: means in Hollywood. The screen set test was apparently an
Speaker 1: absolute disaster. Seagal had no charisma, talked like whispering ghosts.
Speaker 1: Like that sounds like him. Yeah, that sounds like Steven Seagal.
Speaker 1: That's how you would describe him in like, yeah, whispering ghost.
Speaker 1: I have no charisma. My head stores one triangle. He
Speaker 1: does have a weird Ovit's appeared to really love Stephen though,
Speaker 1: because he continued to vouch for this kid that he
Speaker 1: just met. So Warner Brothers was like, this kid's no good.
Speaker 1: We're not going to put him in a movie. We
Speaker 1: already wasted fifth granded on it. So ovit's his last
Speaker 1: job before starting to work with Seagal is he had
Speaker 1: done like the casting for Lethal Weapon, which obviously giganticit,
Speaker 1: so they wanted him back for Lethal Weapon to clearly
Speaker 1: he's good at casting, and he agreed not to take
Speaker 1: a pay bump, which you're guaranteed for a job like that,
Speaker 1: a sizeable paid bump if you're working in the sequel.
Speaker 1: He agreed to work for what he'd gotten paid to
Speaker 1: make the first one if they would give Steven Seagal
Speaker 1: a job. Um, So, Michael ovit's really fucking believed in
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal, or at least that's one possibility here. Um,
Speaker 1: it's possible that Ovit's just saw something in Steven Seagal.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that Seagal's career was bankrolled by the
Speaker 1: Mafia from day one, and that Ovits was maybe bribed. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've never heard any allegations that Ovits
Speaker 1: was bribed. Maybe he just loved him. But there are
Speaker 1: credible allegations that Steven Seagal started his career in the mafia.
Speaker 1: People do get like a sort of a cult like
Speaker 1: love for their martial arts instructor. Like if you're going
Speaker 1: cold as an adult, especially and like start taking like
Speaker 1: karate classes, you'd be like, oh my god, my karate.
Speaker 1: Start taking levitate, don't even know with one finger he
Speaker 1: can knock you out, And like that's just sort of
Speaker 1: becomes he's just staying at the strip mall because he's
Speaker 1: too enlightened to work somewhere better. Right, So this guy
Speaker 1: might have just thought that Steven Seagal truly was magic.
Speaker 1: Then that is entirely possible. I'm glad you you brought
Speaker 1: that up, because I wouldn't have thought about that. Um,
Speaker 1: we do know that in nineteen nineties, Steven Seagalf formed
Speaker 1: Steamroller entertainment with a guy named Julius Nasso. Now, Nasso's
Speaker 1: main business was providing pharmaceuticals to merchant boats. But he've
Speaker 1: broken off pharmaceuticals to merchant boat. He's so drugs um though.
Speaker 1: Julius got into filmmaking, UH, and he claimed to spy
Speaker 1: that he had been introduced to Segal via Tony Danza.
Speaker 1: Danza denied this. Danza knew who Nassas was and basically said,
Speaker 1: he's no fucking friend of mine. Don't don't talk to
Speaker 1: me about that guy. So Segal told people that Nassa
Speaker 1: and he were related, although neither he or Nasso ever
Speaker 1: gave any detail as to how Stephen's mother denied any
Speaker 1: relation between them, whatever the truth, Julius uncle, also named
Speaker 1: Julius Nasso, owned a concrete come in New York. In
Speaker 1: nine revealed that Nassa's concrete firm had participated in a
Speaker 1: bid rigging scheme with Anthony Salerno, the original Fat Tony
Speaker 1: that's where the name comes from on the Simpson's Tony Salerno. UH.
Speaker 1: Several employees testified against him. Nasso, the younger in Seagal
Speaker 1: were good friends for about a decade. Nasa was the
Speaker 1: best man at Seagal's second wedding. He was also the
Speaker 1: co owner of Seagal's five hundred and sixty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: Staten Island home. It's worth noting that several other mob
Speaker 1: guys connected to the Gambino family wound up having roles
Speaker 1: in Seagal's early films. Quote from That's By article. One
Speaker 1: of the technical advisors on the set of Under Siege
Speaker 1: was Robert Booth Nichols, who has been identified in federal
Speaker 1: wire taps as associating with the Gambiano crime family. A
Speaker 1: retired Navy captain named Joseph John who was a technical
Speaker 1: adviser in the same movie responsible for securing the use
Speaker 1: of the U S s Missouri, described Segal and Nichols
Speaker 1: as asshole buddies, which I think means butt buddies and
Speaker 1: not both assholes who are friends. But I can't tell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never heard the term. It doesn't mean they have
Speaker 1: sex with each other. It might, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know this guy, Martine, he's can get all out together.
Speaker 1: Uh so. Another performer in a Segal film, Jerry Cri
Speaker 1: is the stepson of a mafia capo, Robert Zimbardi, who
Speaker 1: reportedly got Segal to give his stepson apart and out
Speaker 1: for justice. Segal hired Cri, who has ambitions to be
Speaker 1: a movie star, to play a bookmaker and a key scene,
Speaker 1: Segal beats up a number of bad guys in the bar,
Speaker 1: the one vronman who never takes a punch of Cri,
Speaker 1: No way. Segal was going to take a swing at
Speaker 1: Bobby Zam's kid. Spy was told that is suspicious that
Speaker 1: you're a bad guy at Steven Seagal scene and you
Speaker 1: didn't get punched in the face. Involved, Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Even weirder than all this is the fact that during
Speaker 1: the nine deposition for a civil assault case, which I
Speaker 1: could not find more detail about, but I don't think
Speaker 1: he was the one being charged, but he was deposed
Speaker 1: in the civil assault case, Segal, under oath claimed not
Speaker 1: to know how much money he had, what he actually owned,
Speaker 1: or what he was paid per movie. His attorney explained
Speaker 1: that Segal did not have an individual contract with Warner Brothers. Instead,
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers had a contract with Sigal and his friend Nasso.
Speaker 1: At times, some of the money paid to Seagal went
Speaker 1: directly to Nasso, so that is a little weird. That's
Speaker 1: a little weird. But your movie deal is with another
Speaker 1: guy who has mob ties and he gets some of
Speaker 1: your money, and no one seems to know quiet why
Speaker 1: his agent. No, no, they owned a production company together,
Speaker 1: his asshole, but it was his asshole buddy. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in the early nine nineties, Julius Naso started walking around
Speaker 1: to l A with a card saying he was a
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers producer. So it seems like Warner Brothers might
Speaker 1: have given him some title on some but it's also
Speaker 1: like they refused to talk about this at all, so
Speaker 1: who knows what happened. Spy interviewed him and he claimed
Speaker 1: that he would be handling foreign distribution for the movie
Speaker 1: I think for under Siege movie. Yeah, great movie. The
Speaker 1: interviewers that Spy thought this was odd since w B
Speaker 1: at the time had the largest foreign distribution system of
Speaker 1: any Hollywood studio. Warner Brothers refused to comment, so Naso explained,
Speaker 1: because of my experience in the drug business, I had
Speaker 1: contacts all over the world, which is why he was
Speaker 1: the right man to help sell this movie overseas. Yeah. Boy,
Speaker 1: those high sailors man, they were really like understiege. Hey,
Speaker 1: I've always said if you can get say Hiler side,
Speaker 1: you can sell movies overseas, especially about Navy chef that
Speaker 1: kicks ass Okay so at. At the time in this
Speaker 1: is about all that spy new. But in the decades
Speaker 1: since nine, a lot more information has come out. It
Speaker 1: turns out that Nasa was an associate of the Gambino
Speaker 1: crime family, and he loaned Segal at least half a
Speaker 1: million dollars of their money. Segal claims it was for taxes.
Speaker 1: When segaland Nasso had a falling out around two thousand,
Speaker 1: Segal was forced into a meeting with several mobsters where
Speaker 1: they demanded a hundred and fifty thousand dollars per movie
Speaker 1: he'd made. So here's a quote from a two thousand
Speaker 1: to New York Times article on the matter. Steven Seagal,
Speaker 1: the action film star cited as a mafia extortion target,
Speaker 1: has told investigators that after he stopped working with his
Speaker 1: long time producer, he was ordered into a car in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn last year and shuttled to a Landmark restaurant where
Speaker 1: he was threatened by mobsters. According to officials and lawyers
Speaker 1: involved in the case, he was so intimidated, He recounted
Speaker 1: that he agreed to turn over seven hundred thousand, although
Speaker 1: investigators are still trying to trace the money. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I would do if I was in a
Speaker 1: car with all those mobsters and I knew, akdo fucking
Speaker 1: akdo everybody in the car? Just you can't throw someone
Speaker 1: in a car. No, I can't think. I think it
Speaker 1: worked really well in those closed quarters. They try to
Speaker 1: punch and you like slap slap. Movies have taught me
Speaker 1: that just liquid human all over the just bloody pieces
Speaker 1: of money. Well, my favorite out of the water, like
Speaker 1: twenty minutes later. That's how long I hold my breath.
Speaker 1: I was sucking there out of their dead lungs that
Speaker 1: whole time. You should direct to Steven Seagal. My favorite
Speaker 1: thing about this is that some of these guys who
Speaker 1: were doing the meeting were tapped, and so the FBI
Speaker 1: listened into them laughing about intimidating Steven Seagal. And the
Speaker 1: thing they thought was funniest is that he had a
Speaker 1: gun but was too scared to do anything. Like they're
Speaker 1: just laughing at him. They just think it's hilarious. Has
Speaker 1: said he was the thing about Steven Seagal, is you
Speaker 1: really get the idea he like buys into his own
Speaker 1: bullshit and after something like that, like he's got to
Speaker 1: rethink like three decades worth of that bullshit he's living under, Like,
Speaker 1: am I really a pussy? I'm going to correct you there.
Speaker 1: I don't think Steven Seagal has ever refought anything. Like
Speaker 1: they're lucky I didn't do my key to pull my gun.
Speaker 1: Takes a real badass to get out of a situation
Speaker 1: like that with only seven d dollars in spending. No
Speaker 1: one expects me to be my pants for eight streight minutes.
Speaker 1: Oh so, Steven Seagal in court claimed that these guys
Speaker 1: were basically just his business partners and then the mob
Speaker 1: extorted him. It sure seems like what really happened is
Speaker 1: that the Gambino crime family, through Nasso, invested in Segal
Speaker 1: in the hopes that they could cash in on a
Speaker 1: long and successful action movie career, which the joke was
Speaker 1: a little bit on there got him a little too
Speaker 1: late there. Whatever the truth behind his start, Seagal became
Speaker 1: the hottest new action hero on the block and was
Speaker 1: on his way to becoming a massive start. Gary Goldman,
Speaker 1: an ex mercenary was one of the badasses Seagal liked
Speaker 1: to surround himself with For a while, they were working
Speaker 1: on a script together, and Seagal had Goldman vouched for
Speaker 1: him in interviews. In one interview with The l A Times,
Speaker 1: Goldman claimed that Segal had gone with him quote on
Speaker 1: several missions and that he has a high level of
Speaker 1: skill that you don't just pick up reading fantasy magazines.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone would question escape abilities. A lot
Speaker 1: of mercenaries they take dudes who just read fantasy magazines
Speaker 1: with them and they're like, damn it, another one of
Speaker 1: these fantasy magazines. Guys. I really should have learned not
Speaker 1: to bring random people on my mercenary missions. We've been
Speaker 1: getting magic spells on this mission. No, this is a
Speaker 1: real life he is not a fantasy magazine. Well, my
Speaker 1: only expertise is fantasy magazines. I've cut out these little
Speaker 1: lightning bolt things. We gotta get that Stephen Seagal guy back.
Speaker 1: He knows what he's doing. Well, Okay, so full full disclosure.
Speaker 1: About a year after this point, Segal and Goldman had
Speaker 1: a falling out and Segal backed out of their plan
Speaker 1: to write a movie. So Goldman wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: the same journalist at the l A Times he'd lied
Speaker 1: to a year earlier and recanted. He said, quote, the
Speaker 1: plain truth of the matter is that Segal wasn't as
Speaker 1: a gutlass coward who was trying to convert the heroic
Speaker 1: deeds of those brave men into a personal history for himself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Among other other things, Goldman's letter claimed that in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, he and Segal had gone treasure hunting near
Speaker 1: Barbados with Randy Whitner. While they were all hanging out
Speaker 1: on a boat, Seagal bragg repeatedly about his time as
Speaker 1: a Navy seal, which do I even need to say
Speaker 1: that he was never absolutely not. At one point, Stephen
Speaker 1: and Goldman had to wait into the water to deliver
Speaker 1: equipment to a Zodiac boat, which is like a real
Speaker 1: badass cool thing that like a real cool person might
Speaker 1: have been able to handle. Steven Seagal was not. Here's
Speaker 1: how Goldman said it went. Quote the surf was unbelievable,
Speaker 1: really tough. He started screaming and panicking and was sure
Speaker 1: he was going to die and all that crap. Goldman
Speaker 1: claims that Randy Wintner had to pulse Segal up by
Speaker 1: his hair while well, Goldman quote pushed his ass onto
Speaker 1: the boat with my shoulder. Well, the one thing I
Speaker 1: know about Navy seals is when you get him like
Speaker 1: in rough water, they just freaked. Oh yeah, no. Their
Speaker 1: training is to panic and water is rough. That's what
Speaker 1: makes beautiful Corona Beach. But it's it's like lovely and
Speaker 1: you can watch the planes land, but there's the sound
Speaker 1: of all those Navy seals. Just me just panishes, and
Speaker 1: I like, you're doing good work. Panic a little harder,
Speaker 1: you'll be the best. You really want to lose your
Speaker 1: mind at this young recruit, Steven Siegel. We're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna send you to the desert, so we want you
Speaker 1: scared of the sea. I love that they have special
Speaker 1: circumstances just to say, oh, you're a Navy sea Well,
Speaker 1: here's the water. And he just fucks it up so badly.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even in there. Because later it became clear
Speaker 1: that Segal could not read a compass or a map,
Speaker 1: both things the Navy seals sort of stress, kind of important.
Speaker 1: In his letter to The l A Times, Goldman said
Speaker 1: Segal quote would surely die of starvation. If he was
Speaker 1: given a compass and a map that led to a
Speaker 1: restaurant five miles away. That's that's some good, like badass
Speaker 1: way to cause someone. Yeah, that's that's some solid mercenary ragging. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Goldman smack talking prompted Segal to take action. He called
Speaker 1: up his friend Robert Strickland, the former contract employee with
Speaker 1: the CIA, and had him meet on the set of
Speaker 1: a movie he was filming, I think on Deadly Ground
Speaker 1: as the sat Inness Trail. As they sat in his trailer,
Speaker 1: Seagal handed Strickland to dossier he'd had compiled on Goldman
Speaker 1: and then showed him a briefcase with fifty dollars in it.
Speaker 1: According to Strickland, he said this, I'd like you to
Speaker 1: do me a favor. I'd like you to kill Gary Goldman. Now.
Speaker 1: I should note Mr Seagal was thirty eight years old
Speaker 1: at this point and in the prime of his career.
Speaker 1: Robert Strickland was a sixty eight year old retiree who
Speaker 1: was a good foot shorter than him. Strickland claims his
Speaker 1: first response was you're crazy, to which Seagal responded, if
Speaker 1: you won't do it, get someone who will pay him.
Speaker 1: What you want and keep the rest. This would not
Speaker 1: be the last time Steven Seagal tried to pay to
Speaker 1: have somebody hurt. Well, what you want is a long
Speaker 1: paper trail when you when you want to assassinate someone,
Speaker 1: you want to outsource it and then have them outsource it.
Speaker 1: That way, it's easier to get away with when lots
Speaker 1: of people know about it. The more documentation you have
Speaker 1: for your crimes absolutely better. No, I think most criminals
Speaker 1: would agree with that. In the Summer of writer named
Speaker 1: Alan Rickman, not the actor that kind of messed me
Speaker 1: out for a second to wrote an article about Seagal
Speaker 1: for Gentleman's Quarterly. It was not complimentary. Segal flew an
Speaker 1: intelligence analyst to his Staten Island home to help him
Speaker 1: dig up dirt on the writer. Quote from Spy, Segal
Speaker 1: tells the consultant that Rickman is gay, a fag. In
Speaker 1: the actor's words, he once Rickman set up with a
Speaker 1: homosexual quote to get pictures of Rickman going down on
Speaker 1: the man. When the security consultant refused, Segal asked what
Speaker 1: it would cost to have a hypothetical man whacked. When
Speaker 1: the consultant replied whacked dead, Segal said, of course, you
Speaker 1: people do that all the time. What if what if
Speaker 1: you were Rickman masking I suck your dick? Here? Is
Speaker 1: that gonna work? My favorite part about this is that,
Speaker 1: like in an television interview, he lied about the other
Speaker 1: man's height and he called him a pansy, even though
Speaker 1: Rickman was an army captain who was also taller than
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal. Stephen, He's just step He might be genetically
Speaker 1: incapable of telling the truth. It's it's really hard to say,
Speaker 1: Bob Strickland, that former c A contractor seems to have
Speaker 1: been one of the people who put up with Seagal's
Speaker 1: bullshit for the longest amount of time. Sa actually paid
Speaker 1: Strickland fifty thousand dollars of a two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollar deal for his life story. Strickland thought this
Speaker 1: meant that Segal was going to make a movie about him,
Speaker 1: but it actually just meant that Segal wanted the right
Speaker 1: to lie about his own life and tell stories from
Speaker 1: Strickland's life when he was interviewed. So one night, Strickland
Speaker 1: was watching the Arsenio Hall Show and saw Steven Seagal
Speaker 1: telling a story from Strickland's own life. That's an amazing
Speaker 1: interview too, by the way. Yeah, yeah, he gets all
Speaker 1: dark for he's like, I think he's talking about Kelly
Speaker 1: Lebron and how like she was misbehaving, and he's like,
Speaker 1: my house, my rules. It's a real window in the
Speaker 1: darkness that is inside that man. Well, if I was
Speaker 1: not a hack and a fraud, I would have seen
Speaker 1: that one. I was too busy reading about Steven Seagal.
Speaker 1: So Strickland got really angry when he heard his own
Speaker 1: stories being told by Steven Seagal. So yeah, he uh
Speaker 1: called Stephen a bunch of times, left a bunch of
Speaker 1: angry messages, and Steven's response was essentially to threaten Strickland,
Speaker 1: which prompted the former ce A contractor to file a
Speaker 1: sworn affidavit in the Burbank Superior Court. Quote on December,
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal said to me in my attorney's press, if
Speaker 1: anybody from the CIA fox with me, they will be hurt.
Speaker 1: He claimed he was backed by very powerful people, more
Speaker 1: powerful than the CIA ship in their pains. No, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's he's one of those non swimming Navy seals,
Speaker 1: which he knows are the deadliest kind. And if you
Speaker 1: want to hear something that's even better than a Navy
Speaker 1: seal who can't swim. Sponsors, it's an ad break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a sponsors and we're back. We're talking about Steven Seagal,
Speaker 1: who has just ruined what probably the longest friendship he
Speaker 1: ever had with a former CIA man by lying and
Speaker 1: stealing his life, becoming an experienced vampire national television. That's embarrassing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really shameful thing to do. So. In the
Speaker 1: affidavit Strickland filed, he claimed that a mutual friend of
Speaker 1: he in Segal, had quote called me from New York
Speaker 1: and advised me to watch my ass. He stated that
Speaker 1: my safety could be in jeopardy because Steven Seagal is
Speaker 1: backed by powerful people who have vested interest in preserving
Speaker 1: his image and reputation. Which might have been true at
Speaker 1: that point and entirely honest, like he you may not
Speaker 1: have been lying about that. Seagal quickly followed the success
Speaker 1: of Nine Above the Law, which was his first film,
Speaker 1: with three more action hits, Hard to Kill, Mark for Death,
Speaker 1: and for Justice. Yeah. Yeah, his career peaqud in nine
Speaker 1: with Undersiege or with Undersiege. I may have sucked that up,
Speaker 1: but he was a pretty big star in when he
Speaker 1: was invited to host an episode of Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1: Not not the greatest success in the history of that show.
Speaker 1: In a way, it might be. In a way it
Speaker 1: might be. It depends on how much enjoyment you get
Speaker 1: out of this next anecdote. So in the book Life
Speaker 1: from New York, which is a history of the show,
Speaker 1: several cast members chimed in about the week Stephen Seagal
Speaker 1: was the host. Tim Meadows, the biggest problem with Steven
Speaker 1: Seagal was that he would complain about jokes that he
Speaker 1: didn't get. So it was like, you can't explain something
Speaker 1: to somebody in German if they don't speak German. He
Speaker 1: just wasn't funny, and he was very critical of the
Speaker 1: cast and the writing staff. He didn't realize that you
Speaker 1: can't tell somebody they're stupid on Wednesday and expect them
Speaker 1: to continue writing for you on Saturday. So people like
Speaker 1: of him intentionally bad ship because they hated him. I
Speaker 1: think so. I think that that's part of the explanation.
Speaker 1: David Spade said, quote he didn't want to go along
Speaker 1: with what the plan was that week, and as a result,
Speaker 1: I think that was the first week that I heard
Speaker 1: talk about replacing the host and just doing a cast show. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Julius Sweeney, when we pitched our ideas for
Speaker 1: Sigal at our Monday meeting, he gave us some of
Speaker 1: his own sketch ideas, and some of his sketch ideas
Speaker 1: were so heinous, so hilariously awful, it was like we
Speaker 1: were on candid camera. He had this idea that he's
Speaker 1: a therapist and he wanted Victoria Jackson to be his
Speaker 1: patient who's just been raped. And the therapist says, you're
Speaker 1: going to have to come to me twice a week
Speaker 1: for like three years, because he said that's how therapists
Speaker 1: fucking are. They're just trying to get your money. And
Speaker 1: then he says that the psychiatrist tries to have sex
Speaker 1: with her. That's Stephen Seagal's idea of comedy. That's so weird.
Speaker 1: It will not be weird later in this story it
Speaker 1: will actually make total sense about I've been a comedy
Speaker 1: writer for many, many years now, and I am seriously
Speaker 1: racking my brain how to get to a place of
Speaker 1: comedy from such a dark premise. No, there's no punchline
Speaker 1: anywhere in that description, and I don't think there was
Speaker 1: a punchline in the show. I can't even if you
Speaker 1: had nine hours to build the context for this, I
Speaker 1: don't think you can make that like funny funny. No,
Speaker 1: And I do think it's important to note that nightmare.
Speaker 1: I suspect that four Seagal the punchline was the psychiatrist
Speaker 1: tries to rape his patient. I think that was his idea.
Speaker 1: That was the joke. You ready for this. It's a salt,
Speaker 1: it's a horrible the sexual self victim. Oh see, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like poetry. It dies back to the beginning. Oh god,
Speaker 1: he would have said that. He wouldn't compared to absolutely
Speaker 1: would have compared it to poetry. And then he fucking
Speaker 1: cried a chop through the table, vanished in a puff
Speaker 1: of flower cloud. In two thousand fourteen, when guest Nicholas
Speaker 1: Cage expressed a worry to Lauren Michael's that he would
Speaker 1: be quote the worst host ever, Lauren Michael's reportedly said, no,
Speaker 1: that would be Steven Seagal. He's one of the only
Speaker 1: people ever banned from being on Saturday Night Live ever ever.
Speaker 1: Ever ever again. They did that joke on Sarah Live,
Speaker 1: remember Lord Michael's coming out and saying like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the worst was sal but there was something real about it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds like he was terrible. There's another story.
Speaker 1: I think it was Rob Schneider who saw Steven Seagal
Speaker 1: like walked up to him and said, I just finished
Speaker 1: reading the best screenplay in my life. And Schneider was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: who wrote it? And he was like me and it
Speaker 1: was not a joke. Oh my god, Steven Seagal, what
Speaker 1: a dream set up for that answer, though, because like
Speaker 1: if if you said, oh, I made the best screenplay,
Speaker 1: most people are like, oh, what's it about? But he
Speaker 1: asked who the writer was, to perfectly set up Steven
Speaker 1: Seagal to say, men, that should be the team. Schneider,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh my god. I would throw my
Speaker 1: own money into the production of that film. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: if all of the bad guys are Segal and Snyder.
Speaker 1: I love it. Like some sort of a time loop
Speaker 1: made it so every person in that universe was segalange Nier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there in map it's like really that,
Speaker 1: it's really that you commit to the premise. Yeah, Hollywood,
Speaker 1: of the phone, this is an inspiring idea. That idea
Speaker 1: of the sex assault victim and the therapist. That's a
Speaker 1: dead end. That's a dead end. Don't pursue that. But
Speaker 1: but Schneider and Seagal, that's at least a skit. Let's
Speaker 1: do another podcast after this. We'll save it for that.
Speaker 1: But the storyboard, the whole thing. Yeah, okay, So you remember, like, actually,
Speaker 1: way less than twenty minutes ago, when I said that
Speaker 1: him wanting to make the joke be entirely about sexual
Speaker 1: assault would make sense very soon. Yeah, it's about to
Speaker 1: make sense. Yeah. So the early nineties were a time
Speaker 1: of great professional success for Steven Seagal, and they were
Speaker 1: also when he began his career as a sexual predator.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe he began it earlier, but we certainly
Speaker 1: know about assaults dating back to the early nineties. The
Speaker 1: signs were already present as earliest nineteen nine, when Robert
Speaker 1: Strickland watched Seagal harassed one of his personal assistants. She
Speaker 1: was brushing her teeth in his trailer when, according to Strickland,
Speaker 1: Seagal told her that she needed to get over there.
Speaker 1: Immediately when she came out, still brushing her teeth, he said, Gee, Ranne,
Speaker 1: you look like that when I come in your mouth
Speaker 1: some more Steven Seagal humor there. That is the absence
Speaker 1: of a romantic relationship before that. No, Strickland, the former
Speaker 1: CIA guy, who I'm going to guess was a pretty
Speaker 1: coarse fellow, thought this was gross. I think yea profoundly gross. Yeah. So.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, Julianna Margoulas of the Good Wife was
Speaker 1: a guest on the Katie CorX podcast. They talked about
Speaker 1: the me Too movement, and Margoulas recalled an unsettling encounter
Speaker 1: with Seagal in the early nineteen nineties. He was a
Speaker 1: big action star at that point and she was still
Speaker 1: quite new when a casting director told her that Stephen
Speaker 1: wanted to do a scene with her in his room. Quote.
Speaker 1: I walked in and I sat down, and I jumped
Speaker 1: right back up because there was something very uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: hard in the couch. He laughed and said, oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: that must have been my gun, Margoulies recalled. He lifted
Speaker 1: up the cushion and he took out his gun. When
Speaker 1: Margoolies grew noticeably nervous, Segal explained that he casually packed
Speaker 1: to protect himself from quote all the crazies that are
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, if your guns in the couch, you're
Speaker 1: the crazy verse. I think he might be right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not where the gun goes, not in the couch.
Speaker 1: What so next, if you've got company coming over, why
Speaker 1: you leave your gun in the couch? He wanted her
Speaker 1: to find it. Yeah, he wanted her to find What
Speaker 1: kind of a person thinks like this will turn the
Speaker 1: girl on almost dying. I don't think turning her on
Speaker 1: was his goal. Maybe it was was he trying to
Speaker 1: like terrify her. Maybe the thing that he did next
Speaker 1: in this interaction was tell her that he was a healer,
Speaker 1: and then he wanted to read her palms, So maybe
Speaker 1: he was trying. Yeah, quote he told me I had
Speaker 1: really weak kidneys at that point, to be honestness and
Speaker 1: New York girl, I kind of started laughing inside. So
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter, Ma Gooli said she squirmed out of the room,
Speaker 1: but then realized that she hadn't received the cab fair
Speaker 1: she had been promised, so she went back and asked
Speaker 1: for it. She got the cash as well as the
Speaker 1: part and out for Justice, although she demanded she never
Speaker 1: be alone with Seagal on set, so not to diminish it.
Speaker 1: But this is a rather tame story to compare to
Speaker 1: the stories of many of the other women's who have
Speaker 1: reported their interactions with Stevenson. Would be real pretty if
Speaker 1: you had better kidneys. Steven Seagal is Out for Kidneys.
Speaker 1: In nineteen John Connelly, the author of that spy article,
Speaker 1: wrote another article about Segal, this time for Penthouse and It.
Speaker 1: He alleged that four female staffers had resigned from the
Speaker 1: production of his film Out for Justice in protest of
Speaker 1: his constant sexual harassment and quote a sexual attack on
Speaker 1: one of them. They claimed Segal tried to undress them
Speaker 1: during casting interviews. Once stated, when I was finally able
Speaker 1: to get him to stop, he told me I had
Speaker 1: the part. So that does seem to be Stevens modus
Speaker 1: opera and I Another woman claimed Segal would constantly brush
Speaker 1: past women in his office and touch them. His former housekeeper,
Speaker 1: La bum Garner, claimed Segal sexually attacked her while she
Speaker 1: was working at his house. She did plead guilty to
Speaker 1: stealing from him later. Maybe I mean I could also
Speaker 1: see steven crimes. Yeah, a little more minor. In fact,
Speaker 1: stealing from a rich guy barely qualifies, barely qualifies as
Speaker 1: a crime. Connolly talked to six women in total who
Speaker 1: accused Seagal of harassment. They would not be the last.
Speaker 1: He stated at the end of his article that the
Speaker 1: code of silence around seagal' suggish behavior is starting to crack.
Speaker 1: Shatter would be a more apt term. In n Jenny
Speaker 1: McCarthy talked to Movieline about her audition for the classic
Speaker 1: film Under Siege two, a sequel to Seagal's biggest hit,
Speaker 1: in one of the first real clear signs that his
Speaker 1: career was already passed. It's a fun fact he outruns
Speaker 1: an explosion in that movie, which is impossible because Steven Seagal,
Speaker 1: actually he runs like a fat woman waking up in
Speaker 1: a bathtub covered in snakes. That's a good description of
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal running. And I've I've written a lot of
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal runs like jokes in my career, and I
Speaker 1: think that might be the most evocative he is. You
Speaker 1: owe yourself to look up Steven Seagal running on YouTube,
Speaker 1: because he has never managed to run like a normal person.
Speaker 1: He like tucks his elbows in and he kind of
Speaker 1: has like limp wrists and he keeps the elbows tucked
Speaker 1: in tight and he just sort of wiggles through the
Speaker 1: air and it's like a scurry. Yeah, but they're just
Speaker 1: like in these movies. And you look at Tom Cruise,
Speaker 1: he just got beautiful form because until he spent it
Speaker 1: out run and then Steven Seagal, it's like a hamster
Speaker 1: getting electrified. Well, and it's one of those things you
Speaker 1: talk to people. I've talked to someone who does firearms
Speaker 1: training for movies, Like his job is helping movie stars
Speaker 1: like learn how to use weapons and like do shooting
Speaker 1: against like like choreographed gunfights and stuff. And he says,
Speaker 1: and you can find this in other articles, like Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise is really good with a gun. With all the
Speaker 1: physical stuff he's done, he's really good at everything. Nobody
Speaker 1: says that about Steven Seagal. Nobody praises his ability to
Speaker 1: do stunts. So in Jenny McCarthy talked to movie Line
Speaker 1: Yeah about her audition for the classic film Understage two
Speaker 1: and which Steven Seagal at runs an explosion. Um, here's
Speaker 1: what she said happened. I was wearing this very baggy dress,
Speaker 1: which I always wear to auditions with my hair pulled back.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to Seagal go on and on about how
Speaker 1: he found his soul in Asia and was one with
Speaker 1: himself or whatever, and I said, well, I'm ready to read.
Speaker 1: He said, stand up. You have to be kind of
Speaker 1: sexy in the movie and in that dress. I can't tell.
Speaker 1: I stand up and he goes take off your dress.
Speaker 1: I said what, and he said there's nudity. I said, no,
Speaker 1: there's not, or I wouldn't be here right now. He
Speaker 1: said again, there's nudity, and I said, notable fully closed woman. Well,
Speaker 1: she said, the pages are right in front of me,
Speaker 1: and there's no She's right to make this objection. I'm
Speaker 1: getting to it. He goes take off your dress. I
Speaker 1: just started crying and said, rent my Playboy video, you asshole,
Speaker 1: And yeah, fair enough funny on single that I always
Speaker 1: thought like that hot girl's way funnier than the hot
Speaker 1: I would like you McCarthy a lot if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for advocating child or not get vaccination. She's got a
Speaker 1: lot of bad and she's certainly in the right here.
Speaker 1: Think that she has more wit than you'd expect. No, she's.
Speaker 1: That's a funny, funny thing to say. Yeah, No, she's.
Speaker 1: She's got a great response. Her recollection of the events
Speaker 1: is really good. When the Daily Beast question segall spokesman
Speaker 1: about this, he said, the claim was completely false, and
Speaker 1: I should note several times so we don't get sued.
Speaker 1: Steven Seagald denies any history any of the many many many, many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many many many. The Washington Post says, there are too
Speaker 1: many allegations of assault and harassment to count, too many
Speaker 1: to count, the Washington Post, and they have great they
Speaker 1: have whole people who Yeah. So there's no nice segue here.
Speaker 1: It's it's about to get really dark, so buckle up
Speaker 1: the delicious flavor of no. This is not the time
Speaker 1: for that um. When Steven Seagal was filming one of
Speaker 1: his most popular movies, on Deadly Ground, he met an
Speaker 1: eighteen year old extra named Regina Simmons. He invited her
Speaker 1: to a rat party at his house. When she showed up,
Speaker 1: no one else was there. Yeah. Regular listeners will remember
Speaker 1: this as the same basic strategy used by Bill Cosby
Speaker 1: on several occasions. Tell him there's a party. It seems
Speaker 1: to be a pretty common Hollywood creep strategy. Yeah. Regina
Speaker 1: says he told her everyone else had already left, and
Speaker 1: then he took her into his bedroom. Quote. He closed
Speaker 1: the door and approached me from behind. He started kissing
Speaker 1: my neck and taking off my clothes. I was in shock.
Speaker 1: I was completely caught off guard. Segal was more than
Speaker 1: twice my size and twice my age. I was not
Speaker 1: sexually active, nor had I ever been naked in front
Speaker 1: of a man before I froze. She alleges that Segald
Speaker 1: and raped her. She says, there was nothing consensual about this.
Speaker 1: I couldn't move, and I felt as if I was
Speaker 1: watching my body from above. I felt tears coming down
Speaker 1: my face. Yeah. When Segal was done, he asked her
Speaker 1: if she needed any money, and then allowed her to leave.
Speaker 1: He called her the next day. I don't know what
Speaker 1: actually is going It is a good question what is
Speaker 1: going on in Steven Seagal's head, because I seriously think
Speaker 1: he probably doesn't think of himself. He kept calling this
Speaker 1: this woman. I don't think he thinks of himself as
Speaker 1: it rapist. Yeah, I I don't know. I like not
Speaker 1: that that mitigates it at all, because he seems to
Speaker 1: be a monster, but I think that is part of
Speaker 1: his psychology in this Now. This story came out in
Speaker 1: March of last year after several women, among them Portia
Speaker 1: de Larossi from Arrested development alleged Steven Seagal being a
Speaker 1: creepy sexual harasser. There was a whole press conference when
Speaker 1: Regina came out and another woman was there to support her,
Speaker 1: Faviola Datis. She auditioned for a part and as if
Speaker 1: yet unproduced vanity project with Steven Seagal about Genghis Khan,
Speaker 1: which Segal was supposed to write, direct and star in.
Speaker 1: He was, Oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: dark story. So I don't want to get lost in this,
Speaker 1: but that may be the only unproduced vanity project I
Speaker 1: do kind of want to say. Um Data said her
Speaker 1: initial meetings with Segal took place in public and didn't
Speaker 1: give her any cause for concern. The two bonded over
Speaker 1: shared interest like Buddhism and martial arts, she said, and
Speaker 1: quote soon developed a friendly relationship via text and phone calls.
Speaker 1: At one point, Segal invited Datas for a private audition.
Speaker 1: She said. He explained to me that he would like
Speaker 1: to evaluate my figure and see if I would be
Speaker 1: suitable for the role. His assistant told me to arrive
Speaker 1: wearing a bikini or a broad and panties under my clothing,
Speaker 1: as this is quite standard in the modeling industry. I
Speaker 1: agreed to do so. Now Datas noticed some strange things
Speaker 1: right off the bat. For one Segal, it asked her
Speaker 1: to meet in the evening at a hotel that he
Speaker 1: had booked. Quote. I was taken up to Seagal's room
Speaker 1: by his assistant, who repeated to me multiple times in
Speaker 1: the elevator, Steven's word is as good as gold. I
Speaker 1: thought this was a bit strange, but I did not comment.
Speaker 1: When she arrived, only Stephen and his bodyguard were in
Speaker 1: the room. The assistant who had led her there immediately left.
Speaker 1: Stephen asked me to take off my clothes, which I did,
Speaker 1: although I was nervous considering there were no other individuals present,
Speaker 1: and do a cat walk through the room for him.
Speaker 1: I did so, and Stephen approached me and said that
Speaker 1: he would like to act out a romantic scene to
Speaker 1: get a sense of our chemistry. Davis told him that
Speaker 1: she was uncomfortable with this and said, no, that's when
Speaker 1: she alleges Segal reached under her bikini top and groped
Speaker 1: her while fondling her vagina with his other hands. She
Speaker 1: yelled that the audition was over. Steven sat there calmly
Speaker 1: as if nothing had happened, and while I was noticeably
Speaker 1: upset and terrified by the experience, Steven's security guards stood
Speaker 1: blocking the doorway and only moved when Steven motioned for
Speaker 1: him to do so. I left feeling horrified and totally violated.
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal there, His lawyer denies both of these allegations.
Speaker 1: It was so gross. But then to have like a
Speaker 1: security guard there too, Yeah, that that lot the creepiest thing.
Speaker 1: You're gonna stand here and watch, I think it will
Speaker 1: really help her, like feel more at ease if there's
Speaker 1: a weird dude watching. What if there's a giant guy
Speaker 1: standing in the back of the room, Well, I like groper,
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna move fast, so like I just want
Speaker 1: you to stand there and be weird. Which it's one
Speaker 1: of those things there's always in these stories of Hollywood
Speaker 1: sexual predators, so many people complicit. You know, the assistant
Speaker 1: has to know what's playing on. This is not Steven
Speaker 1: Seagal in his prime, when someone might think, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: a young actress wants to meet this handsome guy, Like
Speaker 1: this is someone knowing something creepy's going to go on.
Speaker 1: But this is my paycheck, so I'm just gonna soldier on.
Speaker 1: There's other jobs you can take where people don't rape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yes, Uh. I have never
Speaker 1: worked at a place where someone's just trying some rape
Speaker 1: out near me. Yeah yeah, yeah you work here, right,
Speaker 1: so like you're cool with this rape, you understand this
Speaker 1: is just how kings works. Well, I sure need this job.
Speaker 1: I'll just block the door in case anyone tries to
Speaker 1: make a run for it. This is a really bad
Speaker 1: time for an ad segue tremendously disastrously. Kinkoes is not
Speaker 1: a supporter of the podcast, so I really don't care
Speaker 1: what you do to them. How you feeling about Steven Seagal,
Speaker 1: it's a little little roast, Like these intimate details of
Speaker 1: like this type of interaction is what's like it's easy
Speaker 1: to say, like, oh, this guy, he's a he's an
Speaker 1: attempted rapist, that guy, but then when you like learn
Speaker 1: these little details, it's so gross that some woman had
Speaker 1: to explain that this is exactly what happened. I should
Speaker 1: say we're back, but I think we've been back since
Speaker 1: the start of this conversation. Uh, it's it's remarkable to me.
Speaker 1: I guess one of the things I can never stop
Speaker 1: thinking about because I like watching old movies is like
Speaker 1: you look at like Humphrey bogartan screen and you like,
Speaker 1: did you assault somebody? Bogie? Probably right, yeah, probably, yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've never heard anything about that, but
Speaker 1: you just see how many of these guys did something
Speaker 1: fucked up. Even Bowie has some dark stuff in his background,
Speaker 1: and it's like not like this, nothing like this, but
Speaker 1: like some stuff that's questionable anyway. It's a bummer, And
Speaker 1: there is something about like celebrity that I think Jack's
Speaker 1: your game up. Yeah. It's one of the things that
Speaker 1: confused about this to me is I've read a lot
Speaker 1: of allegations from various because we're not going to cover
Speaker 1: every allegation spinning at Steven Seagal again. As The Washington
Speaker 1: Post said, there are too many to count. Um, there
Speaker 1: are a number of allegations where he will do creepy stuff,
Speaker 1: He will grope someone clearly against their will, but they
Speaker 1: will say no, that they don't want sex, and he
Speaker 1: will let them leave, which makes me think in his head,
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal, I don't I don't know, like A yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to mitigate it, but I'm certain he
Speaker 1: doesn't think of himself as a rapist, which again I
Speaker 1: believe the women in this case, because, for one thing,
Speaker 1: there are too many allegations to count, which is usually
Speaker 1: the first sign that it's true. Like so, yeah, back
Speaker 1: in March is when those two latest allegations, including one
Speaker 1: of straight up rap we're filed against Steven Seagal, not
Speaker 1: the first time allegations have been made, but the first
Speaker 1: time in the meat Too era. For sure, there were
Speaker 1: allegations against Steven Seagal starting back in the nineties and
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, and then right after me two
Speaker 1: kicked up, people started talking about them again, and of
Speaker 1: course these two women came forward in March. But in
Speaker 1: January Stephen Seagal decided that he wanted to get ahead
Speaker 1: of these sexual assault rumors and really deal with the
Speaker 1: problem in a proactive manner. Can you guess what media
Speaker 1: outlet he chose to talk to. I bet it was Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal showed up on info Wars in January of
Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen. He told Alex Jones that the
Speaker 1: many many many many many many many many many many
Speaker 1: many many many many many many many women who had
Speaker 1: made claims against him were paid liars. Someone has deep pockets. Quote.
Speaker 1: This isn't just about me, because hundreds of people in
Speaker 1: Hollywood have been attacked and hundreds of people have been,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, falsely accused. My opinion is that sixty
Speaker 1: of these people are completely innocent, and that includes me.
Speaker 1: In most of these cases, the accusations are years old.
Speaker 1: They're not providing evidence or proof of witnesses. They're just
Speaker 1: throwing it out, and all of a sudden, somebody's life
Speaker 1: is ruined. Yeah, when people say it's a witch hunt,
Speaker 1: it's worse than any other witch hunt in America's ever seen.
Speaker 1: This is ruining our country. This is worse than the
Speaker 1: time we burned people to death, worst in the time
Speaker 1: we burned witches. He's the real victim here, he is
Speaker 1: the real victim. And I'm never not excited by how
Speaker 1: many times terrible people's lives intersect Alex Jones. And of course,
Speaker 1: of course they wound up talking to each other. How
Speaker 1: could they have not? How could the world have allowed that?
Speaker 1: I always wonder like when say, you buy your own bullshit,
Speaker 1: like and you meet someone like Alex Jones who's also
Speaker 1: full of shit, Like, do they completely believe all of
Speaker 1: the other guys bullshit? Does that like start to create
Speaker 1: like this bullshit spiral where like they start just like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just stay some crazy Steven believes it may
Speaker 1: just be a matter of like Alex Jones knows that
Speaker 1: Steven Seagals talk about his time as the Navy seal
Speaker 1: that didn't I can talk about like all the badest
Speaker 1: stuff I've done and like the globalst trying to kill
Speaker 1: me and stuff. Yeah, and so like if Alex Jones
Speaker 1: is being like I used to win fights against men
Speaker 1: when I was a child, like Stevenson allowed to be
Speaker 1: like I know you're full of shit? Or is he
Speaker 1: like I can't pretend like I know you're full of
Speaker 1: ship because that would admit that I understand the limits
Speaker 1: of this absurdity. It's mutually assured destruction is applied to lies,
Speaker 1: shameless lies. It is remarkable. So Steven Seagal's career peaked
Speaker 1: around nineteen nineteen four. By the year two thousand, he'd
Speaker 1: had a string of flops and was no longer considered
Speaker 1: in the same tier of action star as Bruce Willis,
Speaker 1: if that was ever a fair thing to say, you know,
Speaker 1: he was. He was like of a Jean Claude Van
Speaker 1: Dam contemporary, but his films were like, didn't have as
Speaker 1: much joy or fun and uh, they weren't his like,
Speaker 1: um adventurous, I guess yeah. And when you've seen to
Speaker 1: Stephen Seagal, mo, you've seen all every Stephen Seagal movie.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things when when John Clyde
Speaker 1: Van Dam came back and did j c v D
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, everyone was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to watch John Claude vandam I'm
Speaker 1: sure nobody feels that way about Stevens. Nothing level about
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal. What John clad is a movie star? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the early two thousands began the start of a long,
Speaker 1: sharp decline for Steven Seagal, from movie theater releases to
Speaker 1: direct to video releases to eventually direct to digital productions,
Speaker 1: which is kind of where he is now. And if
Speaker 1: you've seen a recent Steven Seagal movie. It's a heavy set,
Speaker 1: elderly man pulling guns out of people's hands and trying
Speaker 1: not to move to rutch. Just a bunch of catwalks
Speaker 1: in Eastern European really dark lighting. Yeah, um so Yeah.
Speaker 1: The early two thousands definitely marked the end of Steven
Speaker 1: Seagal's career as a serious action movie star, but they
Speaker 1: also marked the start of something else, something we're going
Speaker 1: to get into in Part two of this podcast, Steven
Speaker 1: Seagal's twin careers as a blues musician cop. Well, I
Speaker 1: should say three careers because in addition to being a
Speaker 1: blues musician and a cop, he's an alleged human trafficker.
Speaker 1: So all that and more in Part two. Yeah, Sean,
Speaker 1: do you have any plug doubles that you would like
Speaker 1: to plug? I'm easy to find on Twitter search for
Speaker 1: Sean Baby. Uh. I still write jokes at Cracked. Uh.
Speaker 1: Play calculords on your mobile devices. Yes, Play calculates on
Speaker 1: your mobile devices and you will get some of Sean
Speaker 1: Baby's signature humor, great jokes, great way to teach math,
Speaker 1: and listeners should know. Sean Baby essentially invented comedy on
Speaker 1: the Internet and was it might legally be true? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was one of like the three or four people.
Speaker 1: That is a big part of why I got into
Speaker 1: this industry. So I didn't tell you that until now
Speaker 1: because I wanted us to have emotional resonance unlike a
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal movie. I wanted to prove we could do
Speaker 1: it better. What a perfect button on a perfect episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at I right, Okay,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Instagram and on Twitter this
Speaker 1: podcast at at Bastards pot and you can find us
Speaker 1: online along with some really sad pictures of Steven Seagal,
Speaker 1: Behind the Pastords dot com and all of the many
Speaker 1: sources for this episode if you've been wondering what would
Speaker 1: it be like if I spent sixteen hours reading about
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal's life and times ordinary day for me. So
Speaker 1: we will be back on Thursday talking about way more
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal and really getting into his intersections with like
Speaker 1: three other people we've done podcasts on because he is
Speaker 1: just the worst person and intersects with all the other
Speaker 1: worst people. But until then, I'm Robert Evans. This is
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, and I love about h