Patrick Swayze was an 80s and 90s
pop culture icon Point break.
Yeah, break excuse, point break.
Yeah, thank you ghost yeah,
and of course Dirty Dancing.
Just some of those memorable
movies that he made.
Author and Co.
Host of the podcast triviality
Neil E Fisher pays tribute to
Swayze and his new book being
Patrick Swayze essential teachings
of the Master of the Mullet.
You wrote this book about Patrick Swayze.
Why Patrick Swayze?
I mean, we all know him and love him,
but why?
Why was he so important to you?
Well, I really connected with him
when I was a kid. He was an athlete.
First that transitioned into the
arts to theater and music and I saw
that in in myself what he was doing
and I have a love of pop culture.
You know from my mom.
So I was going through bookstores,
looked at all these pop culture books,
Keanu Reeves, Jeff Goldblum and
I didn't see any for Patrick
Swayze and I said this is a an
80s icon that everyone loves that
everyone rewatches his movies and
there should be a book about it.
And so I said, you know what?
Just going to be the one to do
it well, it's crazy when you look
through it like it's so smart.
It's not just a biography of him but
you like have top five listings you you
clearly show your knowledge of pop culture.
How hard was it to put all of that together?
It was. It was a challenge because my
editor Becca Hunt who was amazing.
She cut out so much from the book
she said you have so many pop
culture references you have to,
you know fine tune it to Swayze
references and things that people will
understand and it was a great challenge
for me because I just wanted to make
the book 500 pages of pop culture.
Fanaticism so it was.
It was great,
and it was a a nice way to distill
his career into an easily digestible format.
For people who maybe weren't fans before,
or maybe are just discovering him now,
but also a lot of Easter eggs.
For the diehard fans,
you didn't get to meet Patrick Swayze,
but learning about his life and
hearing from people that knew him,
what surprised you the most about him?
That's a great question.
I would say his tenacity
and his drive for success.
For ambition, he was hurt so much of his.
Career right at the beginning of
it in high school playing football,
so he dealt with injury his entire life.
And if someone you know I
deal with chronic migraines,
so trying to be creative in the arts
is really hard when you have just
injuries or things that can prevent you
from being 100% your most creative self,
so that I was really struck by was
the way that he carried himself
and then at the end of the day,
really just sort of his mantra,
which he sort of talked about in Roadhouse.
The poster behind me, which is be nice.
He was just a nice guy.
He was very respectful.
An honorable guy and I think that was
something that I really gravitated towards,
and hopefully we'll carry
that over into my career as
well. I've been staring at the
Roadhouse poster behind you.
I'm glad you mentioned that.
Be nice, so simple but so impactful.
Yeah you have split this up into so many
different ways of learning about him,
but you have some trivia for us,
yes, so I do have a little bit of
trivia and in the book there is a whole
section called Swayze or philosopher.
I'm picking quotes directly from his movies,
but I'm also picking quotes from some
famous philosophers and I just want to
know is it Swayze or is it a philosopher?
Easy enough yeah. No no actually
thinks gonna be hard. OK
no I think I think it'll be great.
And the reason I did this chapter was
he sort of imbued all of his work
with sort of a philosophical slant.
I call him sort of.
Well I say he has tender strength,
obviously because a lot of
his roles he was tender,
but he was also sort of the tough guy,
but he he had sort of a sort of like a
Buddhist philosophy and a lot of his roles.
So I'm curious to see which ones you'll get.
So you Are you ready to try?
Let's do it all right.
The first one here is the only
way to make sense out of change.
Is to plunge into it,
move with it and join the dance?
Dance sounds like swanzy.
Yeah, let's go Sweezy,
sorry, that was Alan Watts, philosopher.
Ohh good. Guess though I I had to.
I had to trick you on that one.
Yeah you added the dance yeah
this one. I think you might recognize
fear causes hesitation and hesitation
will cause your worst fears to come true.
Do you recognize it?
No, let's go Swayze.
Cause the first one wasn't,
yeah alright. That's Mr Swayze
that is Swayze's body and
point break OK I've seen it.
Yep, the Zen surfer.
This last one is my favorite,
but I'm not going to tell you
if it's a philosopher or not.
Believe in yourself,
imagine good things, and moisturize
and moisturize. I think Swayze, you go,
sweetie, I'll go Sweezy on that one.
OK, alright, what does Swayze say now? Yes,
that is Swayze that's visible from Kung Fu.
Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar.
What's the moisture is part of it? Well,
in that movie he's a he's a
drag queen so he just he's very
up on his skin care routine.
So as I guess as we all should be,
there you go. You know there's
so many movies that you forget.
Kind of that Swayze was in.
We know him for point break or
Dirty Dancing, but like 2 Wong Fu,
so many incredible movies.
He left such a legacy and Neil.
Thank you so much for expanding
this legacy of Patrick Swayze.
Congrats again,
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me today
and I hope people will check.
Without in and find a new
newfound appreciation for
an 80s icon gone too soon.
So many incredible tidbits in that
book being Patrick Swayze is out now.
Wherever you can buy books and
you can find out more on Neil's
website at neilefisher.com.
You did better the trivia
than you thought he was.
Trivia and Kristen's like.
We're doing trivia and you
were a great teammate.
Great, we make a good team.