STRAWT media. Hi Everybody, and
welcome, welcome to my show American Badass.

We're on episode three already. Well, I get to speak to so

many of my wonderful friends and colleagues. So, yeah, I'm feeling really

blessed right now. I've got another
great guest for you this week where I'm

really excited about. I've worked with
him twice, welcome to Akapoco and two

grades in the desert, and I've
also worked with his brother Alec in getaway,

and I worked with Daniel and Stephen. So you probably already know who

I'm talking about. All right.
Yeah, ready, this week I'm speaking

with actor Billy Baldwin. Hey,
see me, been a minute, man.

Yeah, it has. How long
has it been? Actually? He's

kind of lasting. Last time we
were in Europe together, you and I,

and and even Steven, and we're
all and Daniel. We're all kind

of nicely connected and I've enjoyed your
instagrams when you talk about your family and

and your kids and your recent things
you've been through and and I especially remember

a picture that you posted one day
of you and Joe Nameth. Yeah,

yeah, what year was that?
That was one thousand nine hundred and seventy

three, wow, and I was
going to wrestling camp at Hofshire University and

we would finish our sessions for the
day at like three in the afternoon and

the jets training camp was at Hof
Shie University. It used to be there

before. When the jets played in
Chase Stadium, their training facility was at

the Hofstra until they moved over to
the medal lands to find giant stadium.

Now they're out in east repoffert or
something. Back then it was called we

we view Bank Hall and we view
Bank Stadium and and we would finish the

wrestling sessions and we would go out
and watch the jets play and then we

would we would, you know,
hang, hang around for their autographs.

Yeah, looks like you guys with
Danny in a parking land somewhere. Yeah,

and and then when they would come
out we would get their autograph.

That nameth had this this Cadillac El
Dorado convertible, and that was the day,

that was the day that I met
him, because I'm still holding I

wish you could find it because I
still have that. It says to bill,

best wishes, Joe Nameth, number
twelve, and I had that card

in a scrap book somewhere and in
that photograph I'm holding that card in the

pencil when I asked for his autograph. And then he took us for a

ride in the Cadillac El Dorado around
the parking lot and then we were in

camp or, like you know,
multiple years we were there. So we

sort of became friends with him and
he would always take a tool and around

and his Cadillac Eldorado. And then
when he went to he went to the

rams for a year and came back
to New York and took a run at

a career and acting and he tried
to do a musical out of Jones Beach

Theater. He tried to do he
did a summer where he did Damn Yankees.

Oh, no, summer, yeah, that's summer that he did Damn

Yankees. He lived in my friend
Christopher D he rented my friend Christopher Dean's

House. was literally like three blocks
from the house. So we would go

up and at the fucking Eldorado was
in the in the driveway. We'd bring

the doorbell. We'd of course had
it. We had the freaking pigs get

in our hand and sometimes he come
out and he tossed with us in the

street. It was pretty cool.
I tell you a funny story about Diana.

She you know, when you first
get together with somebody and you start

sharing your past people or relationships.
She told me somehow Joe Nameth came up

and she said, Oh, I
met Joe Nameth and right away I said,

Oh really, so how well did
you meet Joe Namit? Did you?

No, no, I wasn't like
that. And I said, well

then, what the hell was it? What the fuck did do you do

with Joe Naman? And she goes
Michael Ice. He I bumped into him

and dumped an entire cup of coffee
all over the front of his clothes.

Said, Oh my God, she
was. It was on an airport and

I was running around the corner and
I had this Cup of coffee in my

hand and there was Joe name it
that I ran right into him and it

dumped it all over him. And
what did you do? And she goes

well, I was so embarrassed and
he smiled at me and I didn't know

what to say and so I turned
around and I ran away and yeah,

well, when the sixty starts,
he had of coming for your wife and

she says, Oh, I've met
you. I met Joe Name of a

couple of times where I got Joe
name is. That's the ending that you're

hoping for? Okay, yes,
a good that could that could have gone

an entirely different direction. Yeah,
you know, Buddy nobody, with those

pictures of him with those like four
hundred sunglasses in the fur coat sitting on

the sidelines back when he was the
quarterback for the New York just to mean

there's only in sports, even though
he'll be won one super bowl. I

mean I'm not comparing him to Tom
Brady. Know it comes being to being

a cultural icon at the right time
in the right city. Yet remember the

the the mets won the world series
that year and the jets one the the

Super Bowl that here there was a
big time and here at the mets,

the miracle mets won the Super One
of the world sceries and sixty nine and

the jets one. And I I
know the Yankees did when. That's sure

about those fur coults he used to
wear. I mean yeah, yeah,

here there's a kidder. I'll tell
you funny stories. A kiddier that went

to elementary school of my daughter and
I heard he was a big Joe Namoth

Fan. I didn't know how he
even knew Joe Nameth was because the kids

only twenty one years old that but
when he was like eight years old,

when I first moved here, he
said he was a Joe Namoth Fan and

I had all these extra pictures,
like from going to charity events. I

buy a picture, assigned picture of
Muhammad Ali Joe Nameth. That three copies

of the picture of him sitting on
the sidelines with the fur coat the sunglasses.

So his dad was friends of mine. I said here and here's a

gift for your son Dane. Sure
enough, a frigging mudslide hits and this

kid gets rescued. His house is
being torn to shreds, ripped to pieces

and the house is being washed out
into the ocean and the father's down in

l because he's a professor who spent
USC and the Mother's at home with the

two boys. The House is being
ripped apart in the neighbors had to save

them. Sure enough, the next
day the beach is cluttered like a couple

of hundred homes were destroyed and everything
was out on the beach and they're walking

down the beach to see if there's
anything to salvage and I don't know even

sure it was on the beach or
somewhere in a creek that or on their

property, and they start they see
something in the mud and they start smearing

the mud away and loan behold,
he was able to recover the friggin Joe,

name of picture that I gave him. Pulled it out of the mud.

Well, it was still intact.
The glass was cracked, but he

still had the picture of the journey
of its survived the mud slide of the

the big mud slide. We had
a pair a couple of years ago.

You want to know something funny?
I know you're very fun to your father

and I've always noticed that you've made
references to your dad and and I I

relate to that because I missed my
dad very much. And a funny thing.

The reason I'm telling you the story
is because what you just told me.

But our house burned down, you
know, in Malibu in the Wooseley

fire we lost our house. The
whole thing went up in flames and about

three days after the investigation was done
in the insurance companies and all that,

they allowed the N and I had
to go up there and it looked like

a bomb had dropped on the house, okay, and there was virtually nothing.

We just did giant pile of burnt
stuff and I walked around in the

back of the garage and I was
kicking my foot against some metal stuff and

a ring rolled out and fell down
and you know what, Billy, I

picked it up. It was my
dad's ring. It was my my father's

fire department ring and Allan the hell
it got there because it was it had

been up in my closet, which
was on the third floor of the house,

and how it made it down to
the bottom of the garage intact,

right there. You don't remember.
You don't remember. We were you and

I were going to security wow man
in Europe, and we were talking and

we were going through security in Italy
or something, and I said, what's

that on your hand and you showed
me the ring and you told me the

story I'm telling me now. Yeah, and I would I should have started

I should have started crying because it's
so poignant and so beautiful because your father

was one of Chicago's bravest for so
many years. But I just started laughing

so hard because the friggin irony.
Yeah, the Malibu blaze that melted,

like insinerated everything you had to you
had like a sick a safe in your

house that, I think the fire
melted. Everything inside of it was just

reduced and you found the only thing
that you found, I think it was

this. Maybe the soul surviving thing
that matter to you was your father's is.

Was it this retirement ring? It's
is. It was his when they

made him a lieutenant before his retirement. It has a stone on it.

Luke has it. I a you
kind of let it be kind of funny

because I couldn't stop laughing. But
then, you know, once the like

the once we both started getting the
drugger. But I just Michael, I

was I was always crying. I
was laughing so hard that there we were

talking about that because my believe,
the irony of the only thing that came

out of that place, which rang
from the fire to bubble, what he

made luten. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, so that was a pretty

emotional event for me, to say
the least. Losing all your belongings surely

puts into perspective what's important. I
can tell you that. So let's take

a quick break here and when we
come back, billy and I will talk

a bit more about life changing events. Hi Everyone, welcome back to my

show, American Badass, and thanks
for tuning in. And before the break,

billy and I spoke about the time
when my house burned down. Yeah,

that really happened in Malibo. We
lost everything, my family and I.

All that was left to US my
father's firefighter ring. Oddly enough,

my father was a firefighter and he
was honored with a ring when need to

become a lieutenant. And Strangely enough, for ironically enough, I should say,

that's all that survived from that incident. The House look like a bomb.

I'd been dropped on it and that
at ring had been in my closet

up on the third floor of the
House and I just kicked it out of

the dust now in the driveway,
which was all that was left. And

so it was quite an emotional moment
and anyways, on too much happier things.

So Billy and I have course,
for in lockdown like the rest of

the world last year, and so
we spoke a bit about that and how

technology and social media helped us stay
connected and we both made some new online

friends. You know, you've told
so many stories in your instagram about your

growing up together with your brothers and
your dad and stuff, and they were

touching stuff. Billy, and I
think I remember once you made a good

point about how everybody got life change
with the pandemic when we're else stuck in

the house and we couldn't go do
what we would normally be doing. But

at the end it seemed like everyone
being stuck together brought everything, brought everybody

closer together in so many ways that
we never could have imagined if we weren't

stuck locked up in a house,
you know, with a pandemic. Yeah,

I remember saying something like I in
a weird way, I felt closer

to some people through the technology of
the Internet and social media. I felt

like I had made such close friends
with that I had never met before,

through through both twitter and through instagram. I felt like I had made connections

and people would touched me and I
had touched them in ways. It was

weird because I didn't I just it
was cool thought I felt so close to

was just weird feeling so close to
people that you didn't that you had never

met before. In fact, it
was a couple people who didn't necessarily like

some of the things that I was
saying and didn't agree with some of the

things that I was saying on twitter, and then I would publicly pose a

question to them and they'd say,
I don't have a problem with that,

and I'd say, well, what
about this, and they said what's of

course I agree with that. I
say, well, what about this?

I literally went into my I followed
them, went into my private messages,

sent them myself when number it said
to be a favor and call me.

And there's one guy who's like a
country and western singer from Omaha Nebraska who's

like become a really good friend of
mine, and he I might we keep

our shouting at each other and you
don't even realize that on a lot of

these things that we think we don't
agree, we have like eighty four in

like eighty percent agreement. We agree
on way more than we disagree on.

So why are we fighting? Why
aren't we talking about let's let's let's have

a relationship, let's see where we
could find common ground and consensus. And

I this is country and western singer
from Omaha Nebraska named Rowdy, who's become

one of my one of my dear
friends, and I only met him through

social media. I've never met him
in by I facetime of a couple times.

I feel like I know, but
I never met the guy. I

met a guide in the same way
that lives in Japan and he made some

comment. He made some sinine comment
about something, and so I did the

same thing. I commented back and
I said, you know, I'm sure

you feel that way, but you
know, and I'm sorry, you not

live in America anymore and so you
can go fuck yourself. And then he

he commented back, Oh, Michael, you know, I never met you.

And on and on and on,
and it turns out that he's a

guy who does books, audio in
you know, I've written a couple books,

which nobody reads books anymore and so
they were nowhere. But he does

audio books and so I we became
friends and I just finished my third audio

book with this guy from Japan who
originally I told the fuck himself because he

was proud and asshole comment. So, you know, it's strange. It's

just he wrote the book and You
read you did the narration for it.

I knew I narrate stuff and I
record stuff I send it to him and

then he puts it out as an
audiobook, short stories and poems. Yeah,

he's a great guy man and I
it's a strange I feel this sense

that everybody is kind of there's a
weird people are different because of this whole

thing. There's a strange, false
kind of friendship and underneath it is this

this fuse that's about to go off
and it's just did you know what I

mean? It's just a strange I
don't know where it's all going. It

just it's such a buzz are thing
to have happened to people. That's what's

causing a lot of stress. I
mean between, you know, just the

uncertainty with the economy and the craziness
with stuff that's been going on politically,

and then the isolation from quarantine and
the pandemic and not, you know,

trying to get this variant under control
and getting the economy cranking again. But

there's a lot of people that are
like, you know, no matter how

much the economy gets cranking, they're
worried about, you know, which direction

real estates going, in the stock
markets going, and consumer confidence and and

and and, of course, inflation. We have an inflation for so many.

For decades we haven't really had inflation
and everyone's forecasting that the economy could

good tank in the next year or
so, which is kind of scary.

I've seen more road rage than I
then. I used to notice. People

are a lot more angry in their
cars than I can remember, and I

don't know where does that covering from? You know, they're ready to get

out and fight right in the street. You know, if you cut in

front of somebody, it's a it's
a it seems like it's over, but

then again it seems like it's all
starting again. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean it's pretty if you keep
it in perspective. And I know

a lot of people say, oh, sure, you two guys are in

Hollywood and you live in California.
I get people commenting all the time.

Right, you know, poor billy
has to come out of his mansion,

he's got to leave his butler.
Meanwhile I wear jeans and a t shirt.

I drive a two thousand and eight
Prius. Yeah, and you know

I got now, right now I'm
sharing a car Tina and California and my

wife that are sharing a carcus.
I gave my son a car to take

you to college. I have my, I have my wife's, I have

the NA's Prius. It's red and
a couple like about two months ago,

I was on sunset boulevard and I
unfortunately stopped at a light right next to

one of those tour buses and I
said, Oh Shit, oh my God,

right and and I saw. I
tried to pretend like I didn't notice

it and I was just waiting for
the light. And slowly, you know,

I know, you know what I
mean, you start to, yeah,

realize, Oh shit, they know
who I am. This is okay,

I can't get out of this.
And suddenly they're all staring over.

Oh my God, it's him,
it's him, and then the driver.

You know, they have a microphone. Look, Ladies and gentlemen, do

you see who next to us?
Oh my gosh, it's Michael Madsen.

And I'm like, Oh hey,
I wave up at them and they and

then he goes and he's driving up
for as the world. Oh my God,

you're suddenly chroma perfect I should have
been sitting there. What I should

have been in a sting ray are
you know, yeah, Lincoln, cotton

metal. He's and you know the
rest of their lives are going to say.

You know what, we were park
next to Michael Madsen at a red

light and he's driving a pris.
I'm in trouble with two thousands my life.

It's the reality of it. Well, I sincerely hope that all of

you out there are healthy and your
family and are going to stay healthy.

It's been a hell of a year
for everyone and many people suffered not only

physically, but I know that it's
been a real challenge for a lot of

people mentally as well, myself included, and I truly wish everyone out there

the best after this madness. So
billy and I got talking about our plans

for the future and what's in the
pipeline, as you do, especially when

everything's been shut down as long as
it has been, and it also brought

us onto the topic of our childhood, because we're both fathers raising sons and

how different are upbringing was from kids
today. On that note, a huge

thank you to our listeners. We
could not make the show possible without you.

If you've enjoyed the episode, don't
forget to tune into part two.

It's here now. Go listen.
We love feedback, so please rate and

review this episode. See all next
time for more story time with Billy and Mike.