My guest tonight is a two-time Oscar winning actor writer and director
Who's written? His first novel it's called Bob. Honey who just do stuff. Please welcome Sean Penn
Thanks very much
this is a book that I
Would fail to describe with the amount of words I have in my vocabulary
It's it's a strange story that seems like a metaphor for real life Bob. Honey is a character in the book who?
Goes around murdering people
He's a divorced septic tank worker
And he he's an assassin who kills old people with the mallets and yet when I was reading parts of the book
I was like, but this also feels like real life because it seems like what's happening in the world
Today is it a metaphor
Well, I you know there was a Norman Mailer many years ago wrote a book about?
why we were at war in Iraq, and he he talked about democracy being very fragile because it was such a
Noble idea right and that our darkest nature is such that we would be very
Infatuated with a fascism right if we didn't hold on to this democracy with everything we had he also suggested that
the paradox in it was
When we try to export democracy we tend to create fascism in other places I and start to lean that way ourselves
so as I saw and felt the the the world vulnerable to that and our world as Americans I
thought well the way not to join what I kind of common madness would be to laugh I
understand that and I thought you might and I and so I
Thought of this character Bob, honey, and I thought here's an American man and put him
Hey a guy compelled to service right in the country that doesn't actually
demand
Mandatory service which is something that I've always felt
I missed right out on and that's something that would be very important in the sense that it a
young person who whether the services
Forestry or taking care of the elderly or military or whatever it was that
once one had a
significant experience of having been able to make a real contribution
themselves right that that never leaves them and therefore they engage and
by engaging
They're not ignorant and by but not being a brand they're not fooled and they know who to hold accountable in government
So I thought I would take somebody who couldn't find direction of service
But was compelled to service anyway and put them in the kind of quicksand of this
current climate in right in our country and
See how it danced over it, and I mean it is quite a dance that takes us through the book
There's a there's a threatening letter that Bob. Honey sends to a fictional
President named mr.. Landlord. I don't know that could be
And says here though the office will remain real
You will net you never were know will be you are not simply a president in need of impeachment
You are a man in need of an intervention
We are not simply people in need of an intervention
We are in a nation in need of an assassin, so I challenge you to a duel tweet me bitch. I dare you
Honey to take
in this book
do you do you feel like in many ways when you were writing this this was your catharsis for what you're
Experiencing in the world right now
You know writing for me is like it's much more it starts as melody before lyrics and
It was really being taken it in fact. You know this whole idea
that is not is not a new idea that a writer or
Musician whatever has a muse or there's a there's some part of you that or maybe it's not part of us, right?
that because it's become surprising and when you when you hear something like that and you go with it and so in this case I
stumbled upon these characters in the first character of it really is the character that
Is in essence the author of the book?
So instead of just saying well, I have amused or I have a I gave it a name Brian Knight
and I make him a character in the book who's really kind of this the
storytellers voice
and the name is pappy pariah so I think that that I
Didn't declare the mission. I just accepted it
and the mission was to follow the music right you you are a man on a mission in many ways because
after the real-life president
Had the issue with shithole countries the statement that people reported him saying
You actually wrote a piece
About the president's comments and about Haiti
and I guess this really affected you personally because
You've been credited as being one of the people who has done something on the ground in Haiti
You've gone in and you've helped people after the earthquake you've mobilized efforts to assist why do you think his comments about Haiti?
got you in the way that it did I
immediately flashed on the faces of these the these beautifully spirited resilient men women and
And in particular children that I know Brian Haiti who?
so loved the idea that is the United States of America and
Before I thought anybody might get angry about what he'd said I knew they'd be heartbroken and it was like
It was bullying
really
cruelly bullying so insensitive I
mean when we start talking about the character of leadership the character of people in leadership I
Don't really care who they sleep with that's a problem between them and their wife perhaps
Whatever, it's really that's not the character. I'm interested in Brian
I'm interested in the sensitivity to humanity and the earth first
That's something that you've displayed over and over again you you haven't been afraid to go out into the world and to engage in
You know some some hairy situations. I mean dealing with Haiti is one thing well
I mean I remember I was shocked that you wanted to go out and meet with El Chapo that that was a huge story
What did you hope to Ghana from that moment in meeting him? Yeah? It was interesting. You know it's a story
Maybe I tell I don't know that
another forum at some point because
Certain most most of the criticism, then there was a lot
about that article and so on
They had not most had not actually read the article right
Irritations of other people's which is the Internet today? Yes?
And and so I'll never know if the article when read would have had the effect I would have hoped that it would have had
Which is that?
I always felt that we needed to
Focus on the demand side more than the supply side if only because we've been spending trillions of dollars
for so many decades in in trying to deal with the the
Supply side right off the drug epidemic yes yeah, and I and there been more people slaughtered in Mexico since the arrest of Chapo
Than anybody anywhere else in the world that people in Florida other than Syria right in the last year and a half of whatever it
Is I took like 30,000 people in a year?
So I I was interested in talking to that man
To try to understand what that psychology was I you know it's often talked about as an interview, but again
They didn't read the article. It was never it was a meeting to discuss having an interview. Oh wow and
later I sent questions because then they came they were rated and they between the Mexican Marines and the
DEA they went after him and
They went into hiding and it couldn't get back to him right. I was supposed to have a second visit
Because I wasn't able to get in touch with him, and and that's when the interview would have happened
But that was that was the that was the idea right before I let you go
You are admired by many people for being someone who genuinely
cares for beings in parts of the world that a lot of people don't care about
recently in Venezuela
We've seen some of the the biggest flip from a country that was successful and thriving
to people thrust into abject poverty and
People being in many ways oppressed by a leader who some regarded as a revolutionary yourself included at that time
When you look at what's happening now in Venezuela
How do you deal with the fact that you supported a leader who at the time?
Seemed like the right leader to support and has now turned
Is there disappointment is there way you contact him is like how do you process that information?
And then how do you think people can help with what's happening in Venezuela?
I don't I don't mind saying that Hugo Chavez was my friend
He was a man whose
Initial mission was noble in that the poor people of that country did for all intents and purposes did not exist they had no identification
at all within his
Initial time as president of country they often called him dictator, but he went through more elections that were with robot observers observers
Then and then anybody has to go through here
and
What his mission was to give was to give identity to the poor and and the the oligarchs had not done that?
Before him they had not looked out for their poor
Now he had a lot of oil and where there's oil. There's going to be a lot of
intervention Airi politics from other places
including the United States I
Think that you become very protectionist at that point you start to live in a bit of a bubble
But his charisma was such that
Elvis could keep it going right when Elvis left the building
The institutions were not sound
corruption was one of the things that he himself was looking to fight in in many ways and and and died before he had a
chance to succeed or fail uh-huh and
Maduro would then became president and was his designee
As somebody that I had worked with in a situation related to some hostages in another country where he was very pleasant
very smart
And that's what I knew about him
I'd never I don't think I'd ever written anything publicly stood with him rights in support of anything, but I'd worked with him I
think that what can certainly be said is that to be in a
Situation where Elvis left the building, and you had heat and Shabbos hat he had created
It was a great flaw a power of personality, right
So the smoke and mirrors of holding that country up left
and then you had somebody's really not a competent manager to begin with with Maduro mm-hmm and
With a country so ready to go wrong. Oh boy did it and now it's certainly certainly time
for a
very diplomatic
Change as
designated by the Venezuelan people
Before I let you go
One thing I would love to know from you and do very few people I would ask this question and expect a candid response
Meeting with the people you've met in the world
Do you think?
That we get the full story of what America's doing in the world and how they are shaping
What direction the world is going in having spoken to some of the people who deal with America from the other side?
Yes, I mean. There's a yeah. I think we're at about 28 percent of the country that has passports
And then there are various economic reasons why people aren't able to travel right and and without that context
I think we do suffer, and I think that news organizations
Including some very well-intended ones in the competition of commercial news
Are so forced to focus on that since those sensational stories?
That even that which they might be able to transport us to be able to share with us the context from the other side
Right it's there's just no room for it in this kind of dog-eat-dog of it, so we have a very monocultural
sensationalist news cycle
There's the the generally speaking and I've seen a big change
There you know when the Berlin Wall came down
I think it had a lot more to do with Levi's
501s and and and the dream of wearing them and the Beatles black market wreck
Than it did with Gorbachev or Reagan, right?
It's just human dreaming having a power to make a change the human dreaming so much of it
was in the to
take the American model a dream that is that and
Increasingly now I think that
What we are is the most armed of?
existing democracies and
Beyond that I don't think that I would say that the respect and the aspiration
That we modeled is no longer
On our country. That's not a political comment right. That's a turistic comment where I've traveled
It's changed, and I and I think we owe it to ourselves to get it back and the only way we do that is
Show that we know how to stop fighting with each other?
right and and and really really listen to each other and
Really demand that our politicians do the job and in this case the job includes
by any historical
parallel the impeachment of this president
Just to stuff as it is without some kind of the butter
You