On this episode we have Green Beret turned Actor Jeff Bosley. We speak with Jeff about how he found his way into Hollywood (not how you’d expect!) and how those experiences have influenced him in his craft. We touch on his method of acting and the political climate of Hollywood currently.
Episode: 43
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Jeff Bosley, an Award Winning Film and Television Actor and Producer.
Subtitle: “The seal mind commands the body, not the other way around”
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-43-from-the-special-forcesto-hollywood-w-jeff-bosley/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…,Norman Farrar introduces Jeff Bosley, an award winning film and television actor and producer.
He is an American actor known for his movies and shows such as Vice, Amy Adams & Sam Rockwell and SEAL Team. In this episode, he shares his journey from Special Action Force to Hollywood.
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Jeff 0:00
The risk I think a lot of young or inexperienced actors make is they treat acting like it’s therapy and it’s not. That’s where people, that’s where I think a lot of media screws up a lot of the method acting stuff is it gets kind of psychotic and you should be able to pretend, let it come close to home, let it kind of give you the heebie jeebies. But if it’s lingering for days, because you got into the headspace of a psychotic killer or 9/11 survivor, you’re now acting for therapy.
Norman 0:35
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know This Guy, wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, like kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 1:07
Alright. So Dad, who do we have lined up for the podcast?
Norman 1:10
All right, Larry Broughton did it again. We’re gonna be talking with Jeff Bosley, who is a Green Beret, firefighter, actor and producer. He’s the whole package.
Hayden1:23
Yeah, I can’t wait to dig into this one. You don’t really you don’t normally hear of a Green Beret becoming an actor or they’ll seem like very different worlds to me, so super stoked to hear it.
Norman 1:34
You’re reading my mind, Hayden. I’m gonna get to it.
Hayden 1:38
Alright. Well, let’s dive right in.
Norman 1:43
Alright Jeff, welcome to the podcast.
Jeff 1:45
Hey, thanks for having me as always.
Norman 1:48
Yeah. Larry Broughton was the referral. Larry is an interesting guy.
Jeff 1:57
Yes. That sounds like a tiptoe PC thing. Like right there right off the bat.
Norman 2:01
I wasn’t gonna challenge him anyways.
Jeff 2:04
Oh, yeah. No, no, no. I’ll go with you. I support your decision.
Norman 2:08
Yeah, no, no, he’s been one of our most interesting guests and if he’s referring to you, I’m listening.
Jeff 2:17
Oh, God. The bar is high now.
Norman 2:18
Yeah.
Jeff 2:20
Dammit, Larry.
Norman 2:23
One of the things that we talk about and what I try to bring across in the podcast is I want to get people to understand what made Jeff, Jeff and so if you don’t mind, do you mind going back and let’s talk a little bit about your backstory.
Jeff 2:37
Yeah, like I said, like you said, If I start getting censored or skimming, pause me, digitally slap me and say, Hey, dig into that.
Norman 2:46
A digital slap.
Jeff 2:47
A digital slap. That’s a play on words. My backstory basically, I was raised mostly in Idaho, a small town named Pocatello sounds smaller than it is. It’s probably around 70,000 people but it’s called Pocatello and it sounds like something you’ve seen like a Texas football movie where it’s like rivals and all that and growing up there, that’s kind of how it was. There’s only two Junior Highs. When I was there, there’s only two high schools, one hospital, so that was where I was raised. I was raised by a physician and the years I don’t remember much, we did spend some time in like Indianapolis, or Wyoming but other than that most of my life was spent in Idaho. I was born in Colorado, but my formative years if you will, were Idaho, but like I said, I was raised by a physician, my father he’s an ER physician just recently retired a couple years ago. He was divorced when I was really young, remarried when I was young and so I call the woman who raised me mom, she kind of got into my life that early so dad and mom raised me in Pocatello, they had a kid my I call it, she straight up to me my sister even though biologically she’s my half sister. I always say I’m really fortunate that I was raised by a doctor and I even hesitate to like, say that because there’s sometimes a, sadly a safe assumption and cliche with that upbringing and I won’t lie, I was well taken care of, by all means, but at the same time, my mom and dad kind of came from two different schools in a way and so my mom was really good at keeping me, my dad even though he was a doctor, he was the baby of four brothers and our three other brothers and they were raised by like a Nebraska dirt farmer like their father was the principal the local high school like small town in Nebraska. So he didn’t like Graduate Medical School and go buy like a portion three houses. So he was still very pragmatic with this stuff and then my mom kind of complimented that. Top of my head. I remember I always wore Levi’s jeans or Wranglers, and if I wanted fancy shoes, mom made me mow more lawns. So that was kind of like I kind of got a good upbringing that way, but I’m lucky that I didn’t if I wanted something, it was more it’s not like I was, I was always like, Oh, I wonder if I’m going to eat. I was very lucky that way, but at the same time, if I wanted fancy waste of money stuff, they taught me that value of, you’re gonna figure out yourself. So it was kind of a nice dualistic upbringing.
Norman 5:09
Can I ask a question? Because I’m in Canada, Hayden’s in Canada and one of the things that I always find amazing. You talked about the rivalries, Shelbyville. In your high school, did you have like, was it a big thing on Friday nights? If I think of Texas I think the stands are full of parents and everybody in the community?
Jeff 5:34
Yeah, it’s like, yeah, the movies in TV, or Texas, Movies and TV that base football games are all that stuff American football games. They’re not too inaccurate when it comes to Texas. Texas is its own extreme. But with that being said, my upbringing in Idaho with just those two high schools, it absolutely was that. We didn’t have the funds like a lot of Texas high schools do. But we had like their Idaho State University is in that hometown. I was raised in Pocatello and most of our home games were at their venue. It was this big dome, so is this giant indoor American football stadium with indoor turf and giant stands and they let us piggyback off that the local college so depending if it was me, I went to Highland the rival school was called Pocatello and the stands would be full, the news would do stories on it, no matter what the sport, the news would do stories on it and it was pretty, I think it’s kind of my take, it was my taste of what you think of when you think of like that Texas football stadium. The weekend is just completely shut down. There’s assembly, some calm pep rallies, people decorate their vehicles, they go on these parades, and it is just a cluster of shenanigans and it is truly a looking back into the weirdest experience, like this other high school had this giant boulder in front of its high school and basically the job was for no matter what year in high school you were a rite of passage was to go do something to that Boulder, nothing crass or crude cuz it was still clean, fun. People tar and feather it and do all sorts of stuff and I don’t know, we really had that they paid us back for it, to be honest with you. We didn’t leave any targets in our front yard. That was their fault. Now I think about it that’s on them.
Norman 7:27
It’s funny, because I don’t know if you know much about Canadian sport, but we used to live in a small, small town of around 20,000 people. But for some reason year after year after year, we have either the provincial or the national champion rugby team, and we had incredible football teams. But if you went out on any given Friday, you had the parents. Yeah. That was it. Besides standing on the sideline sure. That was it.
Jeff 7:59
Yeah. That’s kind of depressing. No, it wasn’t that way for us. It was absurd. The parents would go but it was an unspoken rule. If you went to that high school, you went to that game and if you weren’t playing in that game, you were in the stands. I didn’t play. I only played American football one year, but I actually spent most of my life playing soccer growing up. So I went to all the football games as a fan, one of my closest friends was on the team and we created his name was Brian Johnson and we created the Brian Johnson fan club and we body painted and I mean, it was like those were in high school. But it was like watching what you see on TV on American TV like the drunk Chicago Bears insane fans. It wasn’t like, but we were not drinking in high school. But we were just like body painting and doing the wave and the whole nine yards and the parents probably quit going, because they’re just embarrassed to see their kids acting like fools.
Norman 8:49
How many people come out?
Jeff 8:50
Of the high school? Like our graduating class probably, they’re gonna crucify me. I would say maybe a couple 100. At the most maybe, maybe 300. Like I remember they did the aerial shot of all of us sitting on the graduation field and I mean, if you pull the camera back far enough, you could fit us all in one shot. It wasn’t by any means that large but it was weird because we had a rivalry every season, or every sports season. Except, here’s Idaho for you. We had a rodeo team. So this stuff you see the bull riding and the whole nine yards, but it wasn’t big enough to each school have their own. So then come rodeo season. We were all on the same team and then sometimes that overlapped with football season and so like on a Friday night you’d be rivals, but then on Saturday, midday, you’d be teammates on the rodeo team and I mean, that was high school for me like that small community, Texas without the funding. I don’t know where Texas kids get all their money. Their stadiums are pretty beefy.
Norman 9:51
This is crazy because it’s not just football and I know we’re off topic, but my kids Hey, Canada, what do you play? Hockey. Well, you go down and we play in the US. So we go over, hop the river and go to Detroit for it’s called the silver stick. He started talking to some of the US teams, Dallas. They have their own jet.
Jeff 10:19
Yeah, I don’t know how that works. Yeah, it blows my mind. It all comes back. It’s the almighty dollar and some people are just really good at getting that almighty dollar and some people just, I don’t know, yeah, we didn’t have a jet didn’t have a jet.
Norman 10:35
What about rodeo, did you get involved with that?
Jeff 10:38
I did a little bit. I did the thing, it was called steer wrestling. Depending on your vernacular, it was called bulldogging. It’s the guy, there’s a steer in the center chute so like a teenage male bowl and then there’s two cowboys on each side on their horses and the one cowboy on the right side of the steer, he just kind of keeps them on track and then the other cowboy, the guy that’s actually doing the event, he basically rides out, and they sprint out and he jumps off and wrestles the steer, and the time stops when all four of the steers legs are upright and there’s no rope. It’s just it’s literally steer wrestling. I had a short horse, and I’m really tall. So that helped me a little bit. But at the end of the day, I was comparing myself to ecopod grain growing up, like I’m six foot five, I didn’t know how my body worked in all sorts of ways. So I was tall, I was Angular, I didn’t know how to use all my limbs the right way. So it was not graceful by any stretch of imagination.
Norman 11:35
I’m just having this visualization of your feet kind of being dragging behind the horse, your other saddles straight up.
Jeff 11:45
Because Yeah, it was an advantage to have a shorter horse because you could lean off and you don’t have to, like if you’re on a tall horse and you’re trying to wrestle the steer. If you’re on a tall horse, you have to at one point just commit and come off whereas a short horse with a taller guy, I could be much more calculated on getting a hold of the steer and really getting a good grip and getting ready then falling off but the side effect of that was that horse hated me, cuz I was way heavier than he wanted me to be my legs, it’s not too far from if you didn’t know I was a steer wrestler on a steer wrestling horse and you saw me on this horse just be bopping around, you would absolutely point and make fun of me. I get it looked like a kebab crane got a donkey, basically.
Norman 12:28
My wife and I went to Santorini. Do you know Santorini? So I hope I’m saying it right, I probably have a brain fart or something. It’s a Greek island. So when you get off the boat, you have to go to the port and you get a donkey unless you want to walk up forever and if you ever saw my physique, I’m not the guy that walks up forever. I get this donkey is going up this little path right? This donkey’s I could just see us like, Oh, you can imagine what the donkey’s thinking. Well, then what does the donkey do? He goes into a little gallop, right? I’m looking down around 300 feet going, Am I gonna make it? This donkey’s pissed off. He’s gonna tip me over.
Jeff 13:22
In that equation, the human is not in charge.
Norman 13:26
I made it to the top but Oh, boy. Anyways, let’s get back. Yeah, you’re at high school. What happens after that?
Jeff 13:37
In high school, it was pretty normal. I always look back, especially on these kinds of conversations trying to think back like, was I lame? Or was our high school just not modern and then I go into this deep political, sociological evaluation of modern day. I don’t remember like, the kids that drank or did drugs or like maybe five whereas now those ratios are like the opposite in high school and so I had a really boring high school like I had fun and all that but pretty much I focused on school because I didn’t know if I went to some people call it university or college. I knew I probably wanted to go with academics and not a sports scholarship. So I pretty much spent my high school hanging out with a select couple of friends playing soccer, a little bit of rodeo, a little bit of football, graduated, got the honors as high as I could get them and then because I was raised, I always say I was raised around academia. I just saw a father who was a physician, I didn’t see an alternate to his credit, he didn’t like literally or metaphorically beat it into me that you must go to college. I just assumed that’s what you did next. So I spent like the second half of my senior year looking at colleges after that just went off to college. I ended up going to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma Washington, which it sounds like I was going there to study to be a priest but it’s kind of like Notre Dame just not famous. It’s a private college. Again, I was very fortunate and are typically religious based. They gave me the biggest scholarship for my academics, my GPA and so I moved up to Tacoma, Washington and the joke. When I was looking at colleges in Washington, like, in the States, there’s a running joke about like the Northeast or the Northwest just being constantly gray and gloomy and I was looking at colleges in the summers, and it’s green and gorgeous and bright blue and all that and I was like, Oh, the stereotypes are in the cliches are wrong and then day one of college, it rained and it rained. It was great for like, the next nine months. I was like, Oh, it’s a seasonal thing and so, first year of college was very much for me, not like I was sheltered but I was like, Oh, I’m out in the big world and I didn’t do anything cool or fun to earn the incredibly poor GPA I got. I just slept in and accounting went to class, I couldn’t focus and I watched a lot of cartoons and I wasn’t high watching cartoons. I wasn’t drunk watching cartoons. I was stone cold sober watching cartoons not going to class. So yeah, it was a guy that probably in retrospect, probably should have went to the military out of high school, and then decided on college later, college was what it was after I lost my academic scholarships because of that amazing work ethic and cartoon watching. No surprise there. I was an RA in the dorms. I don’t know what you guys call it either the Resident Assistants so they’re kind of like the big brother for that hallway or that wing or that dorm that helped pay room and board and that was kind of fun. I enjoyed that. I wasn’t really good at it. So I’m good at authority and babysitting. But at the same time, I’m not because our campus was a dry campus, which means you had to enforce you can’t drink but I kind of was like, Well, if you’re drinking in your room, and I don’t know about it, good on you. So I was kind of like, I tried to be the cool RA and then that was pretty much my college career. Academics kind of took crap on me and then after four years, I decided I’m going to take a year off of college. I wasn’t close to graduating because of my amazing grades. Took a year off was a cliche personal trainer, and then I went really south and then I was a personal trainer and host at a Tony Roma’s it’s a rib restaurant, and that wasn’t paying enough and then so I was a personal trainer, a host Tony Roma’s, an overnight security guard venue in Washington and then finally I kind of just burying myself, finally had to come crawling back home to Idaho in debt to mommy and daddy and say, I need to move in. I got to sell my truck, get myself out of debt, kind of lick my wounds, started high school or started round two at college back in my hometown in Pocatello, Idaho. So it was just kind of like, here we go again. Let’s try this one more time. Since it was in state tuition, it was much cheaper for me and dabbled at that again for almost five years and a large amount of those we’re doing theater and sports medicine and then five years, when most people are finally done, and this is now mind you around nine years of college still no degree. I decided I quit. I’m going to regret 9/11 happened towards the tail end there and I was like I’m going to regret never doing this military thing that I always wanted to do. But the more I got comfortable in my life, the more I wanted to put it off and not do it. So you get older, you don’t want people telling you what to do in that whole nine yards and enlisted, proposed to my at the time girlfriend, the next day ran off and played Green Beret for a good minute and that’s kind of the backstory ish.
Norman 18:23
Is that how you meet Larry?
Jeff 18:24
That’s what’s ironic is there’s only like three green berets in California that we know of and it’s like dogs smelling each other’s crotch. It was like, I moved to California and Larry was down where he was going. There’s another one of us somewhere here. He could just sense there was a new Green Beret in the country. So we bonded over that and it was mostly because of social media. We popped on each other’s radar and that’s how we just kind of instantly for me, there’s a blind loyalty and trust to like, the people in my world that Elkin my Green Beret world where until they prove otherwise, I 1,000% trust them with my life, my family, my mother, my sister, whomever and when I met Larry, he met those standards and we just kind of became friends ever since and the irony is, we’re both Green Berets in California. Yeah, that’s kind of I think that catches us up to the backstory. It’s a very Forrest Gump on steroids backstory.
Norman 19:20
Well, how did you get from, okay, you were athletic to getting into the military to becoming a Green Beret? So it’s not that you’re just athletic. To get it to get into the Green Beret you’ve got to be in excellent shape.
Jeff 19:35
Medium answer is yes, there is obviously a physical component and the thing and I’m going to come across a little bias, obviously, but the thing that makes the Green Berets, the US Army Special Forces so incredibly unique is yes, they are a lot of them actually, ironically, you’d be amazed a lot of them are just kind of barrel chested freedom fighters. They’re not like the navy seals in the movies where they’re all tanned and ripped, they’re actually just kind of, they look like farmers. They’re just tough and strong and have endurance, but obviously they’re in shape. But the thing that kind of in my opinion differentiates us largely is because there’s a huge educational and like socio political component in a lot of what we do and how we’re trained. So that really narrows down a lot of people because you’d see in the tryouts Mr. triathlon, but they would fail out because they couldn’t deal with like learning a second language or like, learning or we have a lot of stuff called, like, psychological operations, like they couldn’t do that. But they could swim for 10 miles. So finding that unique package that hits a lot of different bullet points to include physical fitness really narrowed down the amount of candidates that make it and it’s not like you have to be the perfect soldier like in the movies or anything. But you have to be really good at a lot of stuff. I suck at running, never been good at it, like ever and I’m not just being self deprecating. Anybody will vouch for me, anybody that works has worked with me, they’ll say yeah, Bosley sucks at running. He is horrendous, but be perfect. But where I was really good at I compensated elsewhere, and everything else I did. So it was that package deal that we offered and if Mr. Iron Man shows up, and that’s all they have to offer, they’ll fail out pretty quickly. That’s unquestionable. But that being said, the physical component sucked a lot. It beat me up. It destroys your body, whether you’re even doing the tryouts or just maintaining the career. The physical component is 1,000,000,000% there, and where your physical component ends or or weakens or gets lacks, your mental component has to compensate and that’s where a lot of I think Green Beret stuff happens is where the the mind takes over and you just suffer through hell, despite what your body can and can’t do.
Norman 21:55
That transfers over to day to day life.
Jeff 21:59
Yes. In theory, good and bad, though.
Norman 22:02
Let’s talk about that.
Jeff 22:03
Well, it’s hard because you apply that intense living experience. I don’t want to get cliche of like kill or be killed, or all those kind of cliches, but that intents, if I do this, and I am willing to die trying or whatever. It’s a great mental attitude, mental approach to a career in the civilian world, or whatever you’re doing, like, particularly in this Hollywood shenanigans, but the ratio of percentage put in and percentage put out seems a little, I think that’s some, like kind of the heartbreaking reality for a lot of vets coming out is I was used to putting in 1,000,000,000% and if I put that in, I would get it out and if my body broke, and my mind could take over, I would still succeed at the mission, whether literal or metaphorical. Apply that to a little bit more of the chaotic 99 in counting COVID but apply that to the little chaotic world of the civilian sector and especially like this Hollywood crap I do. It’s really heartbreaking in a way to have such in that intense, you’re used to success based on what your merits are. But we all know that sadly, not how the real world works and sometimes especially, and I chose to go into the industry, that’s the 1,000,000,000% opposite of the Green Berets. So I can put all this effort in this heart and work and talent and work ethic in and it doesn’t mean crap and that’s the extreme of Hollywood, obviously. But I think a lot of poor guys and girls that went in right after high school and that’s all they know for 20 years, and then they come into the “real world”, it’s kind of soul crushing. They’re not used to not being able to control their destiny and it’s really hard to apply that mentality to a fate they might not have as much control over as there used to.
Norman 23:57
I can see the skills coming out of the military, and you being able to apply it to Hollywood.
Jeff 24:04
Yeah, it isn’t like there’s the pretty obvious thing like obviously, I can play a soldier, play it well, they get a lot of bang for their buck like I always argue like a lot of people in the military and no disrespect to them. They’ll go to a movie about the military and just got it and I argue, yeah, they did this wrong, they did that wrong, but you’re going there to be entertained. The audience is made for probably the 98% of the people in that theater that aren’t military but the thing is, is like you get a guy that knows how to stand there, hold a rifle, like just cut off top my head like a guy if they’re standing there in a scene and he’s tired, they put their arm in their body armor like this, just those little nuances help sell that character and then so that’s just kind of like the mechanical aspect that absolutely helps in Hollywood, absolutely helps for those kind of characters. But then if you do get deep down into like the artsy fartsy side of creating characters and their backstory and then actually, I noticed like to suffer and to be miserable, and I can depending on how you act or how some people think about acting, I can apply that misery like if I’m playing a character that has to get used to death, I might not be a soldier. I can be playing some cardigan wearing father whose son died. I know what it’s like to see people die and I can use that help in a healthy way to create better characters hopefully, so it is a tool obviously, that is a crazy idea if I came here at 18, I would not be near as well off as I am now.
Norman 25:39
Okay. I’m curious. Day one out of the military. What was it like?
Jeff 25:48
I was OCD and my day one was more like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. While I was getting out of the military, I was actually in the firefighter academy in Colorado Springs. I didn’t want any overlap. So I didn’t get the true slap in the face a lot of people did when they turn in their gear and walk out and like, Alright, I’m now a civilian. This is weird, because I kind of went into a paramilitary existence firefighting it’s very similar in its design. So that basically put off the thing you’re talking about, they just put it off for me for two years until I moved to Hollywood and did the LA thing then I got that experience, but it was like a two year delay and that holy crap I’m not in the military. Holy crap, I’m not a firefighter around that military mind like the world and people. It sucks and it still sucks to this day and it’s good. Like I said, it’s good and bad and it’s not a thing I regret or whine or complain about or wish I’d done differently but it is a double edged sword. I think any vet no matter what their career is, that veteran existence, depending on what you did in the military, or how it affected you. I mean, you’re that 24/7 in some way, shape or form you live because of your career, you have a house in a certain spot because of your career. Your divorce happens because of your career like everything is around that career you go away whereas a lot of jobs I call them the nine to five jobs, you don’t have to be that 24/7 anymore and I think it’s against human psychology to live eat and breathe out with brothers or sisters so hard, so deep, so long, and did not have that and so for me it was coming to LA was that massive slap in the face of like, wow, you’re alone. You don’t have a team. Your work ethic and the work you put in doesn’t mean squat and it was very eye opening even though I was in my late 30s. It was still weird to cope with and then I had a moment of empathy with like, man, those poor bastards that were like infantry men from 18 years old to 35 or 40 and that’s all they know. I truly was like, holy crap, those poor people cuz I tasted college and then I did the military then I went to Hollywood, so I kind of had a weird bookend of normalcy and even then it slapped the crap out of me. So I can’t fathom what it’s like for my best friend or my brother and a lot of people that did the military right out of high school. It’s like I said it is a slap in the face.
Norman 28:16
So I’m thinking, you’ve gone through the military, you’re a firefighter, you go to Hollywood. Did you feel out of control?
Jeff 28:24
1 billion%. Up until this interview, I would say I still felt that control. What time is it? It’s 2:45. I still feel out of control.
Norman 28:33
Well, you’re completely in control now.
Jeff 28:35
I know that’s the thing is that’s the one thing and I’m trying to get better at that. I always call it I’m trying to find my inner hippie because I’m very pragmatic, very structure minded. But yeah, I always feel out of control because it’s in my wiring pre military, post military or whatever to have like you said that control and to constantly want that and if you don’t have it, it is soul taxing I mean, miserable is a strong word, but it is exhausting and I present tense like as of this moment now still trying to find that I hate the word balance, but I’m trying to find the ways to take the things I do have control over and let them satisfy me to compensate for the other 90% I don’t have control over so like I love chatting with people and talking to people and having people on my podcast me and there’s the little bit of tapping into my Hollywood industry I can do that’s disproportionate to the nine to five job. I am trying to be better about letting that buy me that time of control so I can go back into hell, where I have no control and survive it.
Norman 29:42
You said the word balance.
Jeff 29:45
That’s the B word.
Norman 29:47
Behind you, I see a bunch of stockings.
Jeff 29:50
Yes.
Norman 29:50
How do you balance work and family?
Jeff 29:55
Man, if you had a hidden camera in my apartment two nights ago. I don’t have the answer for that and I have a divorce under my belt and that was, I would say we were together for 12 years and if I could be hypnotized or she could be hypnotized. We’re with our priests and our pastor and we truly confessed. I don’t know what our answer was, there was no cool Ricki Lake story. So beyond her, I have a failure trail of it. I like monogamy, I like having a relationship. I like that. I like family. I like normalcy. But I chose to do it in an industry that’s one, it’s just not normal. It’s not the nine to five Monday through Friday barbecue on the weekends existence. So to find that balance, the B word with family has been harder and harder through the years because I don’t care who you are, you get used to a pattern of life and it gets more and more solid and if you’re alone with just your dog, you’re gonna get more and more scroogie and current and stuck in your ways and your knives have to be a certain way in the drawer and it doesn’t affect anybody, because nobody’s there to be weirded out by it. So that I mean, I guess to the truest sense of the confession is, is that I don’t do that well. The balance of work and family is the thing I’m currently one of the biggest priorities on my list right now of trying to get better at is hunkering down and working my ass off and doing what I do. But then having, just giving that time like I’m raised by a workaholic, I was inherently workaholic. My career’s made me workaholics, an industry I have no control in makes me work even harder, because I go, Well, I have no control over this, I got to work even harder, just in case it works out. I mean, so I go, Well, how can I do this? I literally have at 12pm on my Google Calendar every day, Hey, shoot a message or a phone call to your girlfriend and say hi, just thinking about you not because I don’t mean it or don’t feel it that I have to put in a Google Calendar. But that’s how I try to find balance, it’s like using my gifts of structure and regimen and applying that to let my heart or my feelings or whatever. Use those tools to do the thing, it’s the thought that counts only lasts so long, but the heart and the feelings are there to my mom, the people in these stockings, my girlfriend, but the mechanics are. So that’s a long winded answer to say I have no clue in hell how to do it.
Norman 32:27
There we go. No clue in hell.
Jeff 32:28
Yeah, you could cut out all this stuff I just said and just cut to me saying I have no idea.
Norman 32:34
But look at your professions. I mean military, firefighter, and then actor, producer. I mean those are it’s really tough to, I shouldn’t say commit but to balance things out.
Jeff 32:51
Yeah, and it is and depending on your like I know some people that are in this industry and I don’t mean this any disrespect to them but like they might come here and they might dabble, they might do their best but they are better at spending time with a significant other or their family or taking time off going to the beach and all that and like I said with all due respect all disclaimers insert here, when I see them posting on social media like oh, I’m at the beach or Oh, we’re on a date. My first instinct sadly is like you’re being lazy. You could be working on something right now or especially in our industry, I look at and go you could be working at something. You might not be working on set collecting a paycheck but you could be updating your resumes or you could be talking to your man I mean, and that’s not healthy. That’s healthy to an extent but it’s not healthy if that’s how you are 24/7 and yeah, it is hard for me that is committed. But I mean if you just look at the pie if the pie is 100% and you’re 100% committed to this one pie, you got nothing to give and then therein lies for me a failure trail of it of relationships and family. My family god bless them, family they’ll take the most abuse from you yet still love you and I think that’s what makes a family a family in an ideal scenario and I there that’s how they are for me is Jeff really sucks at calling but we know he loves us. But my mom’s still human, she would probably like me to call more and it’s the older we get this that’s the thing is like it’s a current event to the older we get more of like oh, yeah. I’m that weird mental midlife crisis of Oh, yeah, I might die soon. My parents are getting older. They’re on their way someday, and maybe I should probably not work on this resume today and maybe call mom. So I’m trying to do that too little too much before it’s too little too late.
Norman 34:40
It’s really tough. It’s tough to change, right?
Jeff 34:43
Oh, God. Yes.
Norman 34:45
Yeah. I mean, it is a habit and it’s like smoking. I mean, try changing that.
Jeff 34:53
Yeah, it is and I mean, I’ll duck. I mean, I try to always vow to be as transparent as possible. All Dr. Phil the hell out of this but like, truth be told, like I said, like as 48 hours ago, I was my girl, she’s older and more mature. She’s, like I say older, she’s my age or in LA most people, like, there’s no single people at my age, so they’re always way younger than me. I wasn’t trying to be a Hollywood la cliched dbag. But she’s older and she’s more mature and so she’s a little bit more tough and saying, Hey, this is what I want. Were you giving it to me? I was like, Oh, this is awesome. You’re very much like that and then like you said, it’s a habit, where I’ve cultivated this good, bad or indifferent person who I am for now 42 years, her and I’ve only been together for less than a year and that you got some work ahead of you. I’m not asking her to like, Wait 42 years for me to get my stuff together to work like a normal human with her. But you’re right, that habit is weird. It’s not my instinct. After, if you’re alone for years, or whatever, it’s not my instinct at the end of the day is to do what I always do, which is work out or do my nightly routine or whatever. Never once is my instinct, call this person. So to insert that new instinct, even though it’s driven by a true urge, it’s against your wiring. It’s Pavlov’s dog, to the worst degree.
Norman 36:17
I don’t talk politics on the show and this isn’t meant to be political. But when you’re coming out of the Green Beret, yeah, I’m thinking, this might be a stereotype that there’s more to the right way of thinking. When you go to Hollywood, much more to the left. How do you cope with that?
Jeff 36:39
Yeah, you don’t have to get too political too, for me to say yes, I know exactly what you’re saying and I agree with it and it’s there. That’s tough. That falls into that same where like I was joking with Larry and I are like I can only think of and I only think I’m exaggerating, like four or five Green Berets in South Southern California and that might even be rounding up by one and not saying Green Berets are better than an army infantryman. But that’s just who I was, and who I was around who I was used to and so that falls into everything. Whether it’s that political leaning, or belief leaning or attitudes or work, like you said, right or left or whatever you want to use. I don’t live in Larry’s backyard. It’s like hanging out with him 24/7 to get my Green Beret Larry fix. He probably wouldn’t have referred me to you if that was the case. He’d be like, Well, I’d have you talked to this creepy guy in my backyard. But he’s kind of getting scary now. But yeah, like you said, since I’m not around that it is it. That is even more of a, it sounds really depressing. I don’t mean it to but it creates even more of a holding up,isolating, dig deeper in what you do and what you do well scenario that like I said, you bring in a family member, a girlfriend or a significant other into that equation, that armor is even harder, because there is a very little overlap of theirs. I have sympathy with some of my closest friends in this city. But very little overlapping empathy and it’s not a judgment thing and it’s not a who’s better than who thing but we don’t have the same experiences and I chose to live some of the most extreme life offering experiences, and then come to a world inherently that isn’t that and I’m not wishing, combat and war on anybody to understand where I’m coming from. But to me not to be too extreme, but to me, it’d be like, I can’t relate what it’s like to be a female and that’s a victim of rape. Obviously, this is an extreme metaphor, but I will never be able to relate to that knock on wood, and she will never be able to or another person just as much as somebody that hasn’t been through a layer I’ve been through will never better relate to it doesn’t make us wrong, wrong for each other, bad friends or good friends. It’s just a forever unreliable experience and thing that makes up your new DNA and I would imagine that’s why trauma victims never feel like they can connect again because they don’t have that connection and yeah, like you said, I just I keep setting myself up for really inconvenient existence by going okay, I’m going to try this and I’m going to try this thing that’s out of my control and I’m going to go to a city that has nobody like me this will be great and you’re right, yeah like I’m probably the only guy in so many mile radius that has a National Rifle Association member on my window and I know a lot of my, I’m not unaware of some of the more the more extreme peers of mine and I know I’m not that I guess that’s maybe how I find that God forbid to use this word again balance is I’m not so swung and not even politically but swung one direction that I can’t even relate to some people in my city and in my industry. I have some friends and military that I would never let them visit me because they may just go on a murder spree if they spent five seconds in Hollywood but luckily I think a lot of is because I had a little bit of life before I went into the military. So the ability to indoctrinate so intensely was less likely. So when I plugged into Hollywood and because I do have that artsy fartsy side, despite Google searching me and just seeing a bunch of pictures of me with stern faces and guns and muscles, I do like that artsy fartsy stuff, and so that gives me a way to relate to my more people that have a different ratio where they’re mostly artsy fartsy I can still connect with them and I think that’s what makes me lucky is I’m a walking duality.
Norman 40:29
So you don’t think you’ve ever lost a role because you’re more to right?
Jeff 40:36
Yes. I do.
Norman 40:37
You do?
Jeff 40:38
Oh, I absolutely do. I absolutely think I can’t promise that obviously, I would have to be able to read minds. But in the politics of this industry and the world we live in and just with social media itself, I can’t help it without risking sending like the whiny guy that didn’t get this job. I’m pretty sure if the people that make the decisions are probably that but that left and right, not using politics, but just that this side, and this side, it is a wider gap for those people that make a lot of decisions, like my friends and I might be this but some of the bigger people in the movie industry studio world, they’re nothing like me, and not in a judgmental way. We just have zero in common at all and sometimes that might be a judgment thing, like perfect example’s I know for a fact there are gay people in the whole community here is and are everywhere. Whether and that’s not a bad thing. I don’t give a crap. But it’s funny because I’ve actually run into people and after they got to know me, they assumed because like Green Beret gun carrying killer you hate us, was the quote, and I was like, my sister’s gay. She’s my best friend on the planet. I could give a crap. I defend your rights more than some people and they’re like, Oh. I was like, Yeah, see, judgment goes both ways. But on the surface, I know what I look like and I know a lot of those people in the decision making world. You Google me and I’m like, Oh, this is a bearded tattooed guy. Oh, here’s another picture with him in a gun.
Norman 42:10
Are you talking about me or you?
Jeff 42:14
Close call. Yeah, exactly. So you’d be in the same boat and so yeah, I definitely think like, even my manager goes be true to yourself. But also you need to kind of play that marketing angle and numb it down sometimes, because I’ll get pretty intense and I’m like, Ah, you’re right. That’s not good. That’s not good PR and it is a slippery slope, where if I probably just whitewashed my my personality, if you will, I truly think it would have been more conducive to getting some work. Because in their defense, it only makes sense. Like, hey, if we’re gonna pay this guy, whatever to carry this show, or this franchise or whatever, we’re gonna go Google Search him. Like, there’s no pictures of me doing drugs, or like doing like beer bongs and stupid stuff like that. But if they have a certain belief system, whether they’re aware of it or not, and they go to my thing, and like, Holy crap. What is this guy doing? Like, this is one of those guns, psychopaths that we see on Twitter all the time. I can’t fault them for it. Because we live in a world of you judge books by covers whether you mean to or not, so I can’t fault them. But I really have a good feeling it can happen.
Norman 43:26
There’s a slight possibility.
Jeff 43:28
Yeah, there is and then and like I said, I always use this little metaphor, and it’s like, can I lay my head on my pillow at night knowing Yeah, I might have done this or like, if somebody would I have sold my soul for x role. If like my Green Beret brothers, and my parents or my close friends go, Jeff, come on man. I know, pretty much everything I do, still falls into that spectrum of that barometer of staying true to me, like my real friends, like I’m not like saying I’m two faced, or I’m malicious, or I put on a fake face front. But I definitely am different kind of behind the scenes when I’m talking to a Green Beret buddy than I am talking to a Hollywood casting director. I mean, that’s a fact. Doesn’t mean I’m malicious. I’m just definitely putting on a different presentation.
Jeff 44:23
I was dancing around that answer.
Norman 44:26
Hey, you did a great job.
Jeff 44:29
I’m sweating.
Norman 44:31
I’m interested in how you took your life experience and sort of injected that into your acting or producing roles.
Jeff 44:41
Yeah, you’ll hear a lot of talk about styles of acting and all that and not to crap on any of them, or any approach to acting or any whatever. But to me, I use this example of a movie with Robin Williams. It was called, I think One Hour Photo, where he played a psychopath but he wasn’t like off the rails psychopath. He was kinda like Dexter, he was very just kind of unsettling and creepy and it was interesting to see Robin Williams because we all knew Robin Williams is the 1970s coked out comedian. But there was this behind the scenes footage of this, and that you could see they’re holding the handheld camera shooting, recording the scene being shot, and you could see Robin Williams doing his psychopath thing in the scene and they called cut and Robin Williams was back to Mork and Mindy, and just insane goofing around everything and they said, All right, Robin, we’re gonna go again, and he went right back to it and I think I truly think acting is just playing pretend. If anybody has kids, you can see kids believing to the deepest core of their heart that they are GI Joe, or they are whatever they’re doing and to me, that’s all acting is,. Obviously I think, as us as adults, as we grow as human creatures, we get these inhibitions and these hang ups and all that I’m not saying I’m perfect about all this, but we get all these inhibitions, we overthink it and I mean, I’m really guilty of that. I think at the end of the day, we’re just playing pretend and that’s all it is. But the way I infused with all that being said infuse that life experience is only I identify as a method actor, like I’ve gone to method acting schools, that’s the style, if you will, that clicks with me most. But unfortunately, in the media method acting as a horrible, it’s kind of been tainted a little bit by some actors that have gone a little off the rails and all method acting is to me is you fill a toolbox up with life experiences, whether that comes with emotions, or even physical things, and you just put it in this toolbox, and you refer back to it later to play similar characters. So like I said, in the other experience, I use this metaphor a lot, this is extreme, but it works. I don’t know what it’s like as a male to have raped a woman. I have played a character in a play where that character was going to try to rape a woman. That’s messed up and it’s really weird and I didn’t want to like some, a lot of people think method acting is believing you’re the rapist in this scenario. That’s not the case. To me method acting or what I at least do with drawing life experience into a fictional character is I know from research, more or less peep men that do that. Their issue, it’s not a sexual thing. It’s a power thing and they choose to display that control and power in that aggressive manner. So I look at Well, what is Jeff do that he wants power and control. Anytime I was deployed, or anytime I’m in charge of something, I micromanage and I want control, and I want things to go my way, and then turn that up to a 10 and apply that to this character and so that’s to me, where I just draw that stuff. If I’m playing, like I said, a cardigan wearing dad mourning the death of his son, I’m very fortunate, I don’t have a son that has passed away. But I’ve seen death and you take that seed and apply it into this other scenario and that’s kind of what I do and luckily, I waited 30 plus years to get into this industry and I’ve lived a barometer of good, bad and hell, and everything in between. Whereas like a kid that goes to an acting school and he’s 17 and has like a cell phone bill. He has nothing to show and any of us that are older and crustier and more jaded, you can see that and I think that’s why those great actors of the world work for us whether you’re talking about De Niro, or am I just blanked on his name? Not Gerard Butler. Oh God, Daniel Day Lewis. I don’t know his backstory or his life. But every time he’s played a character, I as an old guy that lives in this life. I’m like, I buy that and I think it’s because he conveys that whereas some 17 year old kid couldn’t do that crap and yeah, so that’s my house. I just try to find the thing that applies or the thing that’s similar and just apply to that, and I literally think of that Robin Williams scene, and I think of little kids playing pretend in the sandbox, and I go you know what, you’re not curing cancer. Don’t overthink this, just go play pretend and just do your best at it.
Norman 49:19
Has there ever been a role that you’ve played that may have hit too close to home?
Jeff 49:24
Yeah, and I think that that might be something like there’s the actors high like, firefighters love fighting fires even though sadly that means something’s wrong or something’s properties burning down. But you get a high within your career. You get that enjoyment or that rush and not to say every time I play a navy seal on a TV show or movie I’m not enjoying myself, but I’m also not, I’m kind of just going with the flow. It’s kind of a walk in the park, but I still love doing it. But the ones that make you kind of go shutter a little bit or just kind of go like you said it was too close to home was actually at this school I go to. It’s called the Strasberg Institute and they’re very known for their method acting and all this stuff. I had to do a scene and it was a monologue and there’s a monologue I actually took from a movie or a TV show with Denis Leary, and it’s called Rescue Me and it’s about firefighters and it’s very heavily focused on these firefighters with this fire station after 9/11. Tons of comedy, but tons of drama too and there was a scene in there, I transcribed the scene. It was one Dennis Leary performed, who Dennis Leary is inherently like he’s known for being crusty and angry and very comedic with this weird, angry twist. But this scene was amazing and at the risk of the, you’re never really supposed to use scenes from known material because you can’t unsee what you saw. But the writing of that monologue was so well, I took the writing, and I did everything in my power to brain dump his performance, and I performed that, and I’m very lucky I wasn’t part of the 9/11. But now I now know after 9/11 what it’s like to just see severe loss and and that helplessness and so that one is probably the closest one that hit home because I truly tapped into pain and loss and suffering in a way the scene was he’s talking to the ghosts basically, of his life and I tapped into that because we’ve all had loss and that was the one that hit the closest home and it’s weird to talk about it in in a self congratulatory role way. But it was one of my best performances because I was truly, I hate this phrase. But I was in the moment, I was very much there by the acting instructor. I truly respect her opinion. She knows I’m an overthinker that I overthink and I’m very militant in a lot of stuff I do. But she could see that I finally turned it off and just did my thing and it was because of that because I let it get close to home and the risk I think a lot of young or inexperienced actors make is they treat acting like it’s therapy and it’s not. That’s where I think a lot of media screws up a lot of the method acting stuff is it gets kind of psychotic and you should be able to pretend, let it come close to home, let it kind of give you the heebie jeebies. But if it’s lingering for days, because you got into the headspace of a psychotic killer or 9/11 survivor, you’re now acting for therapy and you’re gonna have a long life and I mean, I wonder if that’s you could argue that might be the cause of a lot of issues with a lot stereotypically a lot of performers have a lot of issues and maybe they don’t. Robin Williams. I mean, obviously he had his own issues, but I don’t think any of his characters lingered. I think his own demons were his personal ones, but nothing because of his acting.
Hayden 52:32
Hey there guys and gals. Thanks for listening. That concludes part one of our interview with Jeff Bosley. Make sure to tune in later this week to hear the rest of the interview. As always, like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. It helps you keep up to date with all things I Know This Guy and helps us grow the show. Anyway, that’s enough for me, and I’ll see you next time.
Hayden 0:00
Welcome to part two of our interview with Jeff Bosley. If you haven’t heard part one yet, make sure to go back and give that a listen. We get into some really interesting stuff about method acting and all the different techniques that I was totally oblivious to. So get educated, or don’t. As always, make sure to like and subscribe to the podcast, wherever you get your podcast. It keeps you up to date with each new episode and helps us grow the show. Anyway, that’s enough for me and now for the rest of the interview.
Norman 0:32
It’s interesting that you say that. I’ve never really thought about that. But people playing or getting into the role becoming depressed or becoming suicidal or whatever and using acting as a therapy. Never thought about that.
Jeff 0:50
I can’t take credit for it. The same instructor for this No, I’m sorry, a different instructor that I really respect. I was one of his like, first day one lectures, and I took his class a lot. So I got to hear this lecture. Like he acted like it was new every time or as new as the same speech every time. But that was one of his topics. He goes, Now if you’ve come here for therapy, see a therapist, we’re here to act and I was like, the first time he said the same thing. By the way, you’re like, holy crap, that’s probably right and I fail to believe if you’re acting like I said, if I’m playing a navy seal, at the end of the day, I’m gonna keep using Navy Seals because I keep getting cast as a navy seal, cuz I got pretty blue eyes, I got tattoos and muscles and that’s the Hollywood navy seal. But, I’ll play a navy seal, little kid Jeff will have the time of his life, he’s getting paid to pretend, he’s loving every second of it. At the end of the night, I clock out, I go to the food truck and get a burrito, go home, and it doesn’t affect me. No matter. It’s just like playing pretend. But the ones that do kind of give that residual emotional shakiness. I think it’s not possible with the human psyche, to not have it just kind of linger a little bit and just because I mean, it’s like, if you hang around something that’s in a bad mood, you’re gonna get in a bad mood it doesn’t mean you’re also sharing their experience, but you’re gonna get a bad mood if your wife or your girlfriend or somebody around you is in a bad mood. So I think there’s a healthy amount of like shakiness that’ll kind of stick with you residually for X amount of time. But yeah, when it starts to linger, like I do support younger actors at my school, who would be F up because of a performance and I was like, you and I went back to my head to like, you need therapy if this pretend character. I mean, that, to me, is indicative of how much therapy or self evaluation some people need. If a fictional thing that was on a piece of paper had a fictional experience, and it is affecting you and your real world like you’re in the matrix or something, you need to have some come to Jesus for what you’re doing, because that’s not art. That’s like, malicious. That’s like self abusive pretend and yeah,I think that’s a dangerous slippery slope. Because little kids can play pretend, why can’t we?
Norman 3:01
Right, exactly. You mentioned how important discipline and patience are for success. So I’m just kind of wondering, have you always had them or were these learned?
Jeff 3:19
I think like anybody, I’m highly impatient and because of my failed experiences, being impatient, it created it’s like some people when they have to, if they fail a test, and the teacher allows you to take a retake, and you pass it the second time, you probably know that material better because of that experience, than if you just passed it the first time haphazardly and I’ve had, I was just like any kid you’re impatient, you want what you want and like I said, with even the shoes, and it’s a running joke, and a lot of times you’ll hear me talk about it, but I truly wanted like $120 Nike Air Jordan shoes, and I was the impatient kid that wants the new toy, the new shiny object, and mom said, No. That instant gratification doesn’t happen in this household and I think I was susceptible to that kind of education in that experience. So that patience was cultivated well, not to say internally like I’m as impatient now as a kid wanting a rattle. I won’t lie, I’m at fault. But I guess maybe my Buddhist compensatory mechanism for that impatience is that discipline is channeling that discipline or channeling that impatience into whatever I can and discipline and like I said, it’s a weird self feeding. It can be a downward spiral. Because the more disciplined I get, the more disciplined I get, which makes me less more rigid, which makes me more impatient because things aren’t going, I get things more and more my way, which makes me more impatient when things don’t go my way. So it’s weird, it’s an ebb and flow but it’s like a river full of elmer’s glue rather than water like it still flows. But it still bounces off the banks but it’s a little bit more viscous and the discipline has been a self feeding mechanism for years and it’s good and bad. It can border on being OCD sometimes. I would admit, I think getting my family, my girlfriend, I would admit that.
Norman 5:26
How do you like you’re in Hollywood, you’re getting in all sorts of roles. How do you continue to hone your skills as an actor?
Jeff 5:34
The obvious answer would be like going to school and going to classes and again, obviously this is happening during COVID which it’s the weirdest time right now. So I’m gonna do COVID talk because there are classes in my schools offering online stuff and I don’t know if it’s because I’m stubborn and rigid in my ways. Well, I know there’s an element of that to any question but doing acting online to me, that is now that I’m not some higher than now artsy fartsy original actor from Russia or anything but to me, that’s the downfall of acting like that will be that’s like we’re a step away from cyborgs doing it. Human connection is so important and the Zoom things in this like this it helps, don’t get me wrong, but it will never be replaced by direct contact and I think that’s why a lot of people like theater like I love theater like if I had to pick one so to speak and maybe get Kassir actually unless you’re famous and on Broadway, theater actually pay like you barely can survive and I’m not talking like rich and famous. I’m talking just like your average blue collar worker, who might probably make more than a poor theater actor. But if money does exist, I don’t care what I did, to be honest, but like theater acting is you’re with a person always. You’re not talking to a camera, while they say their lines over here which movie acting is very disconnected. But that’s the long answer of classes, Yes. COVID classes, I don’t because it just seems weird.
Norman 7:02
How tough is that. That must be crazy and again, this is something I’ve really never thought about, but you’re going to class acting and you’re on a Zoom call.
Jeff 7:11
Yeah, and this is where I’m a turd. I didn’t give it a chance. Like a bunch of friends, like Yeah, they’ll let you audit and try a class for free. I was like, No, I’m probably wrong for sure. I know I’m wrong for not trying it once. But I personally just chalked it up. I was like, No, I’m not gonna do it. I know a lot of people are doing it during this and this. To me if that’s the new, I don’t know where this is all going. But if that’s the new norm, I might have to do a career change. That’s just too weird for me . That’s not what I wanted to do as a kid. Even movie acting like I said his movie acting isn’t the kids in the sandbox playing pretend, movie acting as you’re talking to a camera, or just to the left of the camera while the actor that’s there might not even be there might be a stand in that look that has their back of their head might match. So you can be talking to somebody that doesn’t even look anything like who you’re doing the scene with and you have to act all the loving, emotional and sad and sappy. Meanwhile, some dude over here is trying not to chew his burrito too loud and so movie acting is already disconnected and absurd and then if you add this Zoom, like I know, soap operas right now are doing. Like they’re actually using dummies for like, if there’s a person standing here and I’m talking to them for the back of their head, they’re actually using dummies with a wig for that person there because of COVID Yeah, it’s straight up a thing in soap operas. Yeah and like I’ve even saw a footage right hand to God, where they now have plexiglass and for the scene just before they kiss, there’ll be Plexiglas between them and then they’ll cut or they’ll do whatever movie wizardry to hide it and that’s not what I signed up for is if that’s the new norm, I’m done. Yeah. So what I do, that’s deviation. So what I do, presently, like I said, I touched on the producer thing, a good friend of mine, like, I’m not good. I always look at my art, like, I can do other people’s art, I can take scripts, I can do that. I can conceive an idea. But ultimately, for me, my ideas are kind of like my turds. I say, every time I get a tattoo, I say this a tattooer and so like, here are my ideas. Like I’ll go to a tattoo artist and I’ll be like, I’m not married to this idea. Here’s my concept. Here’s my blog, here’s my pile of poop now make art. I’m like, that’s kind of what I am with this stuff and so what I’ve been trying to do with one of my best Hollywood friends, he can actually create stuff and I’ll be like, Hey Scott, here’s the blah, make blah out of it and he’ll write stuff and we’re trying to social media influencers have really screwed up content, that word content like content creators, because when I hear content creator, I think the youtube kids that jump off balconies and make $24 million dollars a year, but he and I are trying to like fight the system and make our own stuff, which it’s kind of a hard battle to win. Because at the end of the day, you’re still trying to pitch to that studio or that whatever, and you’re trying to still sell them. How can this make you bajillions of dollars and not risk anything? Like, so I’ve tried to tap into that producer side of it, obviously Scott when he writes stuff, he knows I want to be the actor in it. So I’m only doing a self fulfilling prophecy. Where am I? Hey, Scott, here’s an idea. Or Scott will write a script, he’s like, Hey, I got a script, here’s your lead, I make a little bit more money. So I’ll help make the funds happen. So I do the producing things. So we can try to create and tap into that little bit like I say, always say that artsy fartsy side of me, that helps. They say to like, sit here and do monologues with yourself and all that and to me, it only has so much because I think I’m higher than now I’m probably a crappy actor for not practicing or doing things more. But I think we pretend every day and to me, my pretending comes from having a toolbox of life experience. So I try to read more. I could cop out in my industry and watch movies constantly, Sam research. So I try to don’t do as much obvious acting practice as I should. But like after we record this tonight, I’m actually recording two monologues for children’s charity I do and to me that fulfills that artsy fartsy thing where I can tap into the creating a character and all that stuff, I truly do enjoy giving back and getting a little bit of practice out of it because at the end of the day, just like anything, even though it’s artsy fartsy, a painter, if they don’t paint constantly, they can’t just pick out a brush and pick up where they left off two years ago. So there are just some rudimentary things like memorization, if you don’t work on memorizing, that’ll go to hell fast and so for this conversation, I probably should work on more memorization, to be honest.
Norman 11:42
Part of what I do outside of doing this, this is fun. Yeah, we started this as a COVID project and it just kind of bloomed. So it’s great. But I go to events and I’m involved with eCommerce and Amazon and I meet people and Zoom calls? There’s virtual summits going every bloody day.
Jeff 12:05
Yeah, that’s awesome.
Norman 12:07
No, it’s breaking bread with people, that’s awesome and I know, I can feel exactly what you’re talking about not being able to be next to somebody. It’s a completely different feel.
Jeff 12:25
Yeah, it’s hard and I’m an introverted isolated lover of loaning like my girlfriend is giving me crap. I was like we’re giving teasing but I go if it weren’t for you, COVID would be perfect. I’m being told to stay home and isolate. Okay, the only time I leave my home anyways, either work or take my dog to the bathroom so, but in our business or the thing we enjoy doing whether it’s ecommerce in the Amazon stuff or me playing pretend on a movie or TV thing, like there are yeah, the human connection can’t be substituted and and that obviously, is the whole, like a whole psychological revelation for us and we’re just talking and I’m talking about acting, you’re talking about when you’re doing eCommerce and breaking bread with clients and working with them. That’s just that aspect. So I imagine people that need that personally daily not just counting their jobs or their careers or their business and right now, they’re being condensed like kids that have to do classes in Zoom. I can’t fathom that work. This is the first time being a loner, Bruce Wayne isolated into my cave has ever been in my favor. But it’s about to get all psychological. It’s fascinating. This is really depressing. I think like suicide rates are like 300% or something.
Norman 13:45
We don’t talk about that.
Jeff 13:46
Yeah and if I’m just whining about playing pretend on set with a real human and people truly need human connection, I don’t know, I’m not okay with that number. But that number doesn’t surprise me if what I feel playing pretend on Zoom is a fraction of what they need in their life. Just having coffee with somebody like, holy crap, I understand where their heads are at which is a dark turn.
Norman 14:14
Let’s talk a bit about your roles. What have been some of your favorites?
Jeff 14:20
I always go back to this one is I played a cowboy in a T or F the way it started, it was an indie student film in Colorado. This is when I was getting out of the military but also in the fire department and not sure about Hollywood. I was dabbling in Colorado film and then I’d come out to LA here off and on if I had time for small stuff. But I did an student film at a college there and audition and it was for a character, his name was Wayne and it was originally like a slapstick comedy and they liked what I did and the control freak Jeff kind of incepted them politely and professionally and they actually changed the entire movie basically and they turned it into like this thriller, and it’s sounds so pitchy, but it’s like crushing in the film festivals right now. We made this five years ago and it’s just now getting noticed in the film festivals and it’s just getting it’s, it’s probably COVID because they’re like, Oh, we’re nothing better to do, let’s watch Jeff Bosley’s movie. But basically the character in it, it was fun because the movie was about a producer trying to make a real Western, and he’s trying to find a real cowboy to be in his movie. So it’s a movie within a movie and I play that local cowboy that the director finds and cast in the movie, and you think he’s a hero and then it’s a turn of events and you realize, and the theme is I’m looking at the sounds so narcissistic, but the poster like the theme is, isn’t the dream always better than the real thing and there’s a turn of the movie where they realize heroes and Cowboys, and it’s a little dark. But the turn is the good guys, though there’s no such thing as a good guy anymore and it was fun to play that character. That’s the one that’s stuck with me the most. Because I don’t care if it’s acting or just meetings or doing your job, if you can be who you are with other people, that’s easier, but it’s who you aren’t that that’s the challenge and so to me, that was the challenge is. When the character in the film is pretending to be a good guy. That’s inherently me. I’m kind of a Boy Scout boring kind of white bread, American yay, good guy, Hero guy. But when he turns without giving it away, because sooner or later, we actually can release this to the public. It’s not who I am as Jeff. He does some horrible things to a woman. It’s not that graphic. But it’s not who I am and by no means do I enjoy doing that as an actor or a human. But it was fun because it challenged me to do that and so that one will always stick with me. That one was like super fun.
Norman 16:48
What was the name of that movie?
Jeff 16:49
Oh, yeah. See, like I told you, that’s how you knew I wasn’t pitching it cuz I didn’t mention the movie once. So I’m pure. It’s called Parallax P a r a l l a x and I hesitantly watched it with my girlfriend. She wanted to watch it and I liked that it made me feel gross. Like I like that I made you feel gross watching my own movie. So that means I still have morals, but people seem to love it and when it’s out the little weird secret or unknown fact, when movies are in festivals, they can’t be publicly viewable and so like, nobody can watch it yet, because it’s still doing well and yeah, and I just acted in it and because of my militant work design, I ended up producing it and helping things happen. Like, one scene in it is actually the movie within the movie, they’re shooting my character Wayne, riding in on a horse, the movie within the movie is like an old 1800s Western and so we’re shooting those guys shooting the movie on a horse and they’re like, Oh, we’ll just pretend there’s a horse will imply it off camera. I was like, No, I there’s no way I’m gonna be part of this crap. If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna knock this out of the park and so like I put an ad out in this local Facebook group saying Hey, we need a horse and then somebody loaned us a horse and a horse trailer and we got to generate all this stuff and like okay now, we need to actually there’s a place in Colorado Springs Colorado called Garden of the Gods is a national park and basically, with like to winch do not cross tape, that just like official looking barrier tape that you can get like a Home Depot. We roped off major roads within this national park and just roped it off and made it and everybody assumed it was official and we shot a major scene in that movie and in that, like I confessing this spray gonna make me go to jail. But like, we shot a major scene in this movie National Park and it was like, Oh, apparently we can’t drive here and they just went about their business and we spent a day shooting there. We have my horse Ryan running up these red rocks and like it’s gorgeous red rocks that you see in like postcards. The reason that stuck with me not only because of the character, but because those kinds of projects, I feel like I’m sitting on the couch being a smooth but like, those kinds of projects are literally fueled by want. We had no money. I was able to kick some in because I was the firefighter of the group and they were all just kids. But like we had no money, it was purely fueled by the urge to want to do it and that was kind of fun is to figure out ways to solve things, lie about shooting National Park and that was that camaraderie and then that’s why that one stuck with me not just because I played a good guy that played a bad guy. Yeah, that one sticks and then like there are other ones I shot in Korea. I shot in Korea for like six months and here’s the fun part of this business. I shot in Korea for six months, I learned to do a Russian accent. I always sang scenes and lines and I was there for six months and I was literally in the movie like probably on screen for less than 60 seconds. They cut everything out but filming that, it was the first giant budget where I was part of like they build entire cities and entire sub cities and the entire like underground layers and we had full on machine guns and all this equipment and were covered in blood and sweat and it was that way for like the whole six months we’re there and that was just awesome is like this is the little kid Jeff playing pretend even though I’m playing another frickin soldier. I was like I’m playing pretend. I’m covered in blood. I have a hair and makeup person. My hearing has gone from that explosion. I got a fake building over here and that was like that tapped into that Holy crap. This is what the little kid Jeff wanted to do when he moved here. So probably those two.
Norman 20:17
So if we go back to Parallax first, I got one major question for you. Short horse or big horse?
Jeff 20:25
Big horse.
Norman 20:26
Okay, good.
Jeff 20:28
Hollywood actor ego and in that one, I was like, at the end of the day I’m producing this. This is my money, I’m gonna make some decisions that make me look awesome. Yeah, at the end of the day, like no little kid wants to look stupid playing pretend, they want it to look as cool. There’s a running joke in the Green Beret world of like, I’ll bastardize it, but it’s something like rule number one, know what you’re doing or something. Rule number two, look cool and if you can’t do rule number one, just always do number two always just look cool. So I just like I’ll play this Hollywood crap, as long as I might not know what I’m doing. Just make sure I look cool doing it. Because at the end of the day, it’s all movies. I mean, the movies we love. I don’t care like this painting here. If it’s the Avengers, or an indie film Parallax, we just want to enjoy it and get lost and find that little kid thing and obviously the dramatic movies like godfathers and all those like, they still make you lean in and listen, and that’s to me, that’s all it really matters. If I can do that, and just pay my bills. Like that’s, yeah.
Norman 21:26
That one right now is still doing the festival circuit. So I can’t see that right?
Jeff 21:32
No, no, but I’ll tell ya. I mean, I can send you a private link or like an expiring link or something because I think it’s 45 minutes long and it’s really good.
Norman 21:45
You got my curiosity.
Jeff 21:46
Yeah, it’s really good. It’s a fun sweet little movie and I mean you’ll see it won’t look like a home movie. I won’t lie, it doesn’t look like Warner Brothers made it but it also doesn’t look like some kid with his, an iPhone is probably a bad example because they’re amazing now, but it’s not like a mom’s home camcorder and I should also add an amendment to this I’d be a miss if I didn’t. This one can be seen as probably the most felt almost like a schmuck for not even thinking of this. The thing I poured my heart into the most is it’s a long side tangent, but basically, there’s those Jack Reacher books and they were cat Tom Cruise played him in two movies, and they’re casting a new actor to play him in the series and I actually auditioned, I had a chance for it, I was brought into Amazon and it would have been the whole, it would have been the life changing role, that whole thing. But prior to getting the audition two years ago, I mean a ragtag team of friends we produced a short movie, almost like a fan film to get on the radar without a name agent or being a name person getting those major auditions. It’s really hard and so to get on their radar, I created a short film from a scene in one of the best books I’ve loved the books before I was even actor and I leaked it online and I mean, I put a lot of time energy and money and it was a character I love is Jeff is a character I love making happen as an actor. I mean, the amount of Green Beret-like shenanigans I pulled off to get people to give us in lowness cameras. We needed a Bentley for the scene and some random guy like he’s like, Oh, I love that character and I love the army. Oh, here’s a Bentley and it’s online. It’s just called I think it’s just called Jeff Bosley as Jack Reacher. It’s on YouTube or whatever now. I can send you the link if you’re ever curious. But it looks like a movie. It looks like what you’d see in the theater. The sound design, I mean, I pulled it very rarely in Hollywood, the last seven or eight years. I always tried to do favors for others. But I never wanted to be that favorite asker and then I flipped that on. I was like, No, I’m asking everyone being that poor, annoying bastard and calling in every favor I had. I had stunt coordinators, makeup artists, sound designers. Some guy actually, there’s this amazing guy. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t be able to do it. The guy, you’ll see all the footage of Keanu Reeves shooting his gun at this one shooting range online. The guy who owns that range, he and I are friends. He let me shoot at his personal house for two days. He just left for two days and let us have a full run of his house and in LA, if anybody can make a buck off you they would and he didn’t like in LA they charge you like 500 bucks a night to shoot. Like all sorts of stuff and he’s like, I’ll just move in whatever you need and a guy loaned us like a $20,000 camera for free and that one is the most like heart, soul, mind, body, spirit, infused job I ever did and it was all for free and all out of pocket and all on my own and so when I didn’t get the roll fast forward, I was like depressed finding out Santa wasn’t real because you’re not supposed to like, if you got crushed on every roll, you didn’t get the audition for, the suicide rate in Hollywood be through the roof, it’s just massively depressing. But this one I allowed to happen. I was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go to 11 and I know if I don’t get it, I’m gonna crash but I want to know, back to like something I said on the nice cast I think at one time like, I always go to that burn your boats metaphor of like I want to know, without a frickin doubt I did everything in my human power to make this and to this day it still gets reposted and people still comment on it and it looks like a movie in. It’d probably be tied with Parallax as far as like, like, they got a thing I did. It wasn’t just a well and it wasn’t a paycheck. There’s the common denominator between those two projects is they’re purely driven by passion.
Norman 25:43
Oh, I gotta get a link to that one too.
Jeff 25:45
Yeah, I’ll get that one easily. Yeah, happily. It’s good. It’s good. It’s a lot of people hate, the thing about it, and this is a little pitchy, but the key if you don’t know the books, the character in the Jack Reacher books. He’s 6’6 tall, and he’s a 250 pound dude and if you’ve seen any Tom Cruise movies, that’s not Tom Cruise and so that obviously didn’t go well with the fans. So me being 6’6 250 pounds. A lot of people loved it, because they’re like, Oh, this is what we wanted.
This is the guy we wanted. So, it’s really good. I’m proud of it.
Norman 26:20
I hate saying this. But you’re right. I had a hard time. Seeing Tom Cruise play that part.
Jeff 26:29
Yeah and did you know the books though, when you saw the movies?
Norman 26:31
No, I didn’t.
Jeff 26:32
Well, that’s the thing is to his credit, like a lot of people would go Oh, do you hate Tom? I’m like, No, I liked these books where Tom Cruise made him and when Tom Cruise made him because I knew of the books. I was like, This is not accurate. But actor Jeff, I would kill for his career. He gets to do what he wants. He’s a kid playing pretend. I mean, he kind of makes the same movie all the time now. But at the end of the day, I can’t fault the guy for that. He’s having a blast. He’s doing his own stunts. That to me and not to knock it because it’s weird because the producing side of moviemaking is at the end of the day, it’s still a business. You’re not gonna be like, oh, warm, huggy feeling but I’m willing to lose money to feel good. That’s bad business. So you put Tom Cruise in a movie, guaranteed income right there. So I can’t fault them for doing that because he had the money to buy the rights. That’s just the nature of the business. As a fan I was a little bit sick to my stomach. But yeah, they were hard because it was Tom Cruise being a Tom Cruise and the Tom Cruise movie starring Tom Cruise. Playing Tom Cruise and another movie that’s not Mission Impossible. But as accurate Jeff, I look back I got if you’ve never seen Magnolia or like Born on the Fourth of July. Tom Cruise can really act like he would not lean in so hard to the Mission Impossible stuff. I mean, the dude can act and so whiny actor Jeff was pissed.
Norman 27:58
When you take a look at that, and we don’t need to go on a tangent, but I just couldn’t buy in. Same with Mission Impossible. I agree that he’s a great actor. But these two parts Mission Impossible and this, it took away from it.
Jeff 28:17
Yeah, zuz especially like Mission Impossible like, it takes away from it. But I guess in a way, you can turn off a little bit of ignorance and I think that’s why a lot of the fans with Jack Reacher, the source material, and the author intimately states frequently throughout the book, how his presence, his size, he’s just 6’6 and 250-60 pounds, will never look the same as 5’7, 150 it’s just not possible. So the source material, just beating that character feature to death. There’s no excuse. Like, if you put a gun to my head right now and said, What’s Ethan Hunt’s build in the source material? I think back to the original the TV show Mission Impossible. Like I’d be I don’t know. So there was like some, I don’t know, dare I say forgiveness. I’m like, wow, you took like the opposite and you’ve got that character. I can’t even get roles for me that match me. That’d be like me getting cast as Frodo like I almost gotta give him credit.
Norman 29:14
So what are you looking for now? What are you currently striving for? What’s the next big thing in the works?
Jeff 29:20
I think a lot of it my friend I mentioned his name’s Scott. We started and you’ll appreciate this being a bearded guy. We started a film, TV Film Producing thing called Scruff Brothers Films and Norm, I have a little bit nothing of your girth and length. But I know he has a beard. He always has a beard. So we’re like, Oh, let’s go with that and like I said, the dude can write and we’re just trying to find a way like, I’m too pragmatic to just whimsically believe I can just bump into somebody and drop my script in their lap and like, Oh, we want to make you famous. But at the same time, I also do know if they’re not going to let us play in their sandbox, I’ll be damned, we’re going to make our own sandbox and play it ourselves if we have to. So would that’s kind of what’s been going on and kind of the producing side that will lead to me acting in our movies. Like he has a script now and he just called optioning it where basically people buy the rights to it temporarily and if they don’t make it till then, the writer gets it back. He just optioned one of his scripts, our projects to somebody and the dream is they go, Hey, who would you want in this and my buddy goes, Hey Jeff, but otherwise, he just gets funding and that’s that. So that’s kind of that side of it. At the end of the day, that sounds almost desperate. But I just love acting like I don’t care what I’m doing because of union stuff and trying to have a sense of like, creating your own levels, I try to only audition for like, somewhat larger roles, and you kind of have to self push, which with that, it’s great because I’m getting audition. Like the Jack Reacher audition, I’ve got other big ones like I got a big one for Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I didn’t get it. But getting in these doors is a no name, that’s like a giant gap, even though it doesn’t pay the bills or let you go play. But so I’m just trying to keep that and COVID is messing the world up, like even big stuff like Mission Impossible 30 is shooting somewhere in Hungary or whatever and even COVID is screwing them up. So the industry is a disaster right now. Every time people try to shoot, somebody gets COVID, and it goes to crap and if you’re in the Union, you can’t do anything like off the book stuff to just get your fix. So that’s why Scott and I did this. I’m like, Well, I can’t act in non union stuff, which is a little bit more sometimes more flexible, and shady. So I’m like, Well, Scott, I’ll do this. So I just keep trying, keep trucking it. I do also have the business mind to not just be silly and just do anything and everything. I try to think everything like a business and like I didn’t sign any non disclosures on this. I did audition for one of the lead characters in the new Lord of the Rings TV show on Amazon.
Norman 31:59
Frodo?
Jeff 32:00
God, exactly. How did you know? No this is like, I think it’s the prequels to the movies and they’re making a TV series. Basically, this character is he’s kind of like the Aragorn of this series. Like he’s a big hero guy and so again, the jaded, tough angry Jeff just wants the role. But the guy trying to find his inner hippies like, I’m just happy they let me in because it’s really hard to get major auditions if you’re not with a major agency and you’re not because at the end, I get it, they have to make money. Are they gonna make money with a guy that some people know named Jeff Bolsey? Are they gonna make money with a rock? That’s a whole nother conversation. But they are scared. Like, if you think about it, like, they wouldn’t make the Godfather now, like nowadays, because if not knowing these actors, because none of them at the time were really super famous. So like, they have a whole cast of like kind of unknowns making a movie about the mob. That’s scary to make and so like the risks studios are making now which is, I say this a little jaded. Which is why you see the same people in everything, is because that’s guaranteed income and I don’t know if COVID is going to help or hurt that like, I don’t know, if they’re going to go, we’re desperate for new materials and new movies cast anybody, or they’re going to lean into it and go, every movie from here on out is going to have The Rock and Tom Cruise. Like, I don’t know what extreme it’s going to go. But for me, I just desperately want to act and not in a, like not a desperate way but I just I really frickin love acting and just a lot of it. I don’t think I’m perfect at acting. My manager is really good at finding, getting reviews from others, from casting directors and most every time it’s been like, he was great. He just didn’t fit the role physically and if that’s the worst critique, I get out of it. I want to say I’m up to like 700 auditions already in the last seven years. If that’s my worst critic, that sucks, because I can’t fix that. But that’s a good critique to have. But so now I’m just trying to fight the system. Hollywood is not a get in, get out what you put in kind of thing. So it’s just plugging away and yeah, this is really cool. I should have touched on it, it’s really sweet. There’s this program here in California where these kids give, it’s called the young storytellers program where they take like, I don’t wanna say at risk youth but their kids that kind of might need something to do or guide direction and they basically right these are middle schoolers. I do mostly for grade scores, but these are middle schoolers who I don’t know how they guide them on to write a monologue or if they give him a topic or if they just say, Hey, freeball it, but they’ll write, they write a monologue and have us perform it and they keep it anonymous, but they tell us the backstory to it and some of them are like, they sadly talk about some of the stuff that like talking about what their home life and some hideous things and these kids, you would think and especially in America, I think, or at least my experiences, I only know America, middle schools to me I like holy God, I can’t imagine I’m a middle school right now. Like this seemed like a lost cause and these kids write some of the most eloquent things and they basically reach out to actors in LA to like perform them and record them and they play when it’s in front of the school. I had a pretty boring life and I can’t imagine having anything I created, read and performed in front of the school like. That’s a long story short, these kids are astonishing and that’s what I’m recording tonight is a thing for these kids.
Norman 35:23
What was that called again?
Jeff 35:25
They’re on Instagram, they’re called Young Storytellers. It’s a program like they have actually all around the country and initially started, what they did is how I got involved. Now the thing I just told you, is they go to these grade schools, I want to say they’re like seven years old is all and they teach them how to write a script, they teach him like beginning, middle and protagonist antagonist, they don’t get too deep, but they teach them that and then the kid will dictate the story, they’ll create the characters, they will teach them the elements of like storytelling, not too deep, but just storytelling to get them involved in like the concept of reading again and then we know how to format a script, and we’ll type the script out for him. It’s only like five pages, and then the end of like, eight weeks. So at the end of eight weeks, they have an assembly and in front of the school, they actually bring in actors. So like I’ve been a mentor and an actor, but the mentor will mentor them and write the script and then they’ll actually cast, you can’t do both with the same student, but they’ll cast they’ll have actors come in and audition for their roles and then the students will pick they’re like, Oh, I want him to be this character and you’ll get a stack of scripts and you’ll perform the plays live, basically and it’s just, it’s a shit show of fun. It’s light hearted. They’re not deep but it’s the funnest thing to watch these kids. I have this one picture of my first mentee, this little girl and the joy you saw her watching her that gives the first time she’d created something and then she actually saw it, like, for lack of better terms come to life. It was just fascinating, it’s the coolest thing. This program just deserves every ounce of credit it gets. So another one again, I’m not long winded, I know, the most heartfelt one too like, I guess, encapsulate what they do is this little girl that she did a script where the character was a girl that couldn’t speak, or couldn’t speak English and so she actually wrote it, the little writer girl wrote it in Spanish. So all the actors, luckily, that day in the cast knew how to speak Spanish. So they did the whole play in Spanish. So if you didn’t speak Spanish, you didn’t know what was going on. But she wrote it as the little girl that was her superpower. That was that she could speak Spanish and at the end of the play, it revealed that she felt that that’s her weakness and you saw the little girl when the actors because the actors could pick up the vibe they saw. They’re like, Oh, this is this little girl obviously feels very out of place because she can’t speak English and they amped it up to an 11 when she became the superhero. I mean, I’m getting chills thinking about it right now and if you saw the little girl watching her play, she’s holding her tears and for all it was worth because she saw her as a character become a superhero on stage and it was like I was like, that’s what it’s about.. So I always post after I go to those things. I’m like, I’ll get home and I’m like, I think I get more out of those things than the students because I’m like, how dare I bitch about my cell phone bill? Or I’m just like, it’s thank God those moments exist, and they’re still doing them during the COVID times, like, we’ll do Zoom ones, which are weird, like we’ve touched on, but like, I go all out like the last Zoom, I actually put fake backgrounds like I put space and I actually created like a fake movie out of it. So at least I took advantage of it. My dog made an appearance in it.
Norman 38:49
That’s cool. Nice story. I’m interested and as you know, part of this podcast, we talk about hurdles and successes. What has been your biggest hurdle? What did you do to get around it and what did you learn from it?
Jeff 39:09
My biggest hurdle was probably I would say it is and was the mental hurdle to make the decision to move to Los Angeles and do the whole dream chasing stuff. Everything I did was very practical, even though it’s chaos with the fire department in Green Beret world war and death and destruction or whatever, it’s still practical. I still got a paycheck, I still got insurance and X, Y, and Z. So the hurdle to overcome that terror and that fear mentally, I would say that was the biggest hurdle of the holy crap, I’m about ready to sell everything I own, because I don’t have a place to live. I’m going to go live on a couch to basically do everything. I’m not that whole pack a bag, move away thing. I swore I would never do and I’ll be damned if I didn’t end up doing it. But to get over that mental hurdle, that was the hurdle. Even now, it almost gives me anxiety about like, how in God’s name that I can trick myself into doing that, like even now just telling me like thinking I had no job and this is practical Jeff like this is a guy that has like five backup plans already and finally, this moment happened and the way I got over it. Like the seed was there tattooed on my arm actually, the way I overcame it was almost embarrassment and there was a Jim Carrey commencement speech where he said, don’t live like his he said something along the lines of, “Don’t live a lie of a life of fear disguised as practicality” and that tapped into the like, nobody calls me chicken. Like if a little kid on the playground called me chicken, I’m going to be the idiot that does whatever if he says you’re a chicken, if you don’t swallow the sword, I’m like, Oh, really, and I’ll swallow that sword and that tapped into it. Like I was in that sweet spot of, I have this hurdle, I’m gonna be really uncomfortable. I have no plan. I have no home, I have no bed. I have nothing in plan other than I need to move to Hollywood and finally quit pussyfooting around and do this and then that speech came on. I’m just sitting at my desktop and that speech flew through Facebook and I saw that and then it tapped into like, Oh, you’re calling me scared. I was like, I’m not scared and that was essentially it is that’s how I overcame it was that quote, tapped into it couldn’t have tapped into something that wasn’t already there. But it made me aware of that quote of him saying, “Don’t live a life of fear disguised as practicality.” I’ve lived my entire life being practical, despite the chaotic scary stuff I’ve done. They were still practicality based and so him basically he tapped into that little weird, competitive high school kid nature of are you scared? I was like, Well, nobody calls me scared and so that’s how I overcame it and not to be too altruistic. But if that speech had not been floating on Facebook, I might still be in Colorado Springs firefighting, and that’s not a bad thing. But I don’t think I’d be here.
Norman 42:12
That quote is on your arm?
Jeff 42:14
What I do is under my little cardigan here. I have a, it says Why? Like just why and then a line, and then initials of people in my life, why I do what I do and why I’ve done what I’ve done. It’s like my parents. They’re one of my best friends and then the very bottom one says JC and a lot of people go Oh, Jesus Christ, like Nah, I’m Catholic, but give me some credit. But JC is for Jim Carrey as he was the straw on the camel’s back. That made me finally like I said, overcome that hurdle and so that JC is there and that’s the underbelly of that quote, incepting me to finally just suck it up and give it a whirl. Ah, I wish he knew about it. Maybe he put me in a movie.
Norman 42:53
There you go. Hopefully he watches the podcast.
Jeff 42:57
Yeah, I’ll tag him in it. Because we talked about it, we talked about it.
Norman 43:02
So now let’s switch it. Let’s go to the other end of the spectrum, let’s talk about your greatest successes.
Jeff 43:08
Ah, I would absolutely say the Green Beret thing. Like the day I put the Green Beret on because despite sports and getting medals or trophies here and there. My life never had anything like an identifiable purpose and anybody that says in high school, they know their purpose are full of crap anyway. So I don’t feel bad about not having a purpose in high school, or even college for that matter. I went because I thought you’re supposed to. But the Green Beret was the first time I dedicated in the most literal sense my life to a chase and it was a chase at fighting. There’s a there’s a phrase in the military called the the needs of the army,if you didn’t get it become a Green Beret your needs of the army, which means they could put you anywhere and so it was the first time I pretty much put all my cards in and I went for arguably, without being arrogant, one of if not the hardest jobs in at least the army branch of the military and just kind of went all in and it was the first time I set a very distinct life revolving, soul sucking goal that would require every ounce of my being 24/7 for X amount of time and this is John just talking about like having it in and working as a Green Beret is another beast, but the tryouts and the schooling and passing the schooling and passing the training and then getting to put on, you didn’t get to put on that little green hat until all of that was done and for my job within the Green Berets, I had two years of just medical training. That was the first time I had said, I’m doing this and then keeping that resilience for years, through injuries, marital problems, family, just the sheer amount of strain it caused on me mind, body and soul and then being able to put that Green Beret on you. Even now, if there was a dude that because we walked out there in our regular army hat, and they do this formal thing like Donnay, from the French word to put on or to put on or whatever Don your Green Beret and you switch it out and there’s not a moment that I can’t think of that knot gets slightly misty because it was that like, Holy God, I did it and I love symbolism. Like I said, I’m Catholic. It was the symbol of not just the heritage of the Green Berets and everything that came with that little felt green piece of cloth that we put on our head. But it also symbolized everything, it symbolized everything from knee surgeries to strains on my marriage to anything and everything that went on and it was a gesture. It was the cap. So yeah, that’s my long winded answer for that, because that would be unquestionably.
Norman 45:56
Oh, that’s great. So you know what, you’re pretty much off the hook.
Jeff 46:02
Oh, that implies something. I don’t know.
Norman 46:05
We’re getting to the end of the podcast. Yes. It really has been great speaking with you. Just going back and forth with you. It just feels like you’ve been my next door neighbor for 20 years.
Jeff 46:17
I can’t believe it’s already been almost an hour and a half or over an hour and a half like, no, I don’t like to talk. Yeah, this is a blast. This was really enjoyable.
Norman 46:28
Well, I hope at some point we get to meet. I hope after COVID. But let me just say this, it’s been an honor to talk to you and I wish you all the best. I’ve got to check out your movies. I do have one question for you. Every guest gets this question. But do you know a guy?
Jeff 46:50
Ah, it’s funny because you referenced him and that caught me off guard. The guy who does the nice cast, his name’s Karan, K a r a n, but he’s of Indian descent. So it’s cut on, I would want you to talk to him. I feel he does a podcast. I came across him just because of the social media world. But he does a podcast called The Nice Cast like you touched on. But if you go into his backstory, I almost feel inadequate because without ruining it, the things he gave up with what he had created in his life academically and as far as like traditional success, setting himself up for a perfect life, the things he almost gave up, but chose to not continue pursuing to do what he does now. Based on pure love and passion, it’s truly interesting and he’s extremely brilliant. Anybody’s a nerd. Like, believe it or not, I’m a huge nerd and he and I have deep nerd text conversations on movies but like he has a very deep philosophical approach to things. He has an Indian heritage. So he has a lot of interesting thoughts on karma. But he applies it to a modern day Western American thought process is fascinating. Like two hours won’t be enough. I promise you that. I’ll try to raise the bar. I’ll try to raise the bar. He’s not just another guy playing pretend in Hollywood. He’s truly a creative and interesting individual.
Norman 48:14
I can’t wait to talk to him.
Jeff 48:16
I’ll connect you. No question.
Norman 48:18
All right, sir. Well, thank you so much.
Jeff 48:20
Thank you. I’m so glad you guys reached out. I kind of thanked Larry too.
Norman 48:24
All right. Thanks, Jeff.
Jeff 48:26
Thank you so much.
Hayden 48:29
Thanks for listening. Next week we have a really special treat. We have the real Donnie Brasco, the FBI agent who is a part of an experimental program to bring down the mob. It was our pleasure to interview Joe Pistone, along with Leo Rossi, who has worked on movies alongside Joe and they both currently have a podcast out now called Deep Cover the Real Donnie Brasco. You definitely don’t want to miss this. So make sure to check it out. As always, make sure to like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That’s enough for me and I’ll see you next time.
