I had been arrested numerous times by the time I was 17.
Really?
How many times?
So let's take a look at this phobia of yours.
You're scared-- and I think a lot of people are-- of?
Spiders.
And is it small spiders or big or just any spider.
I think just typically any spider.
And I'm not quite too sure where this came from.
There wasn't anything that happened in my past that--
What do you do when you see them?
Well, it all depends on how close they are.
I just think if you held one, it would be different.
So look, here's the thing.
What's your name?
Joe.
Hi, Joe.
It's a tarantula.
It's obviously--
[AUDIENCE GASPING, EXCLAIMING]
Don't-- you're not helping.
Right.
It's going to be fine.
If you put this-- no, you're going
to want him to do it in a minute.
If you just put this in your hand and hold it in your hand,
we're going to give everyone the audience two tickets to go
see a movie at the AMC theater.
So that would be your movie.
[APPLAUSE, CHEERING]
Wait a minute.
Do you want me to hold it?
My hands are cold.
Is that all right?
Hold on.
He's going to do it.
I'll hold it just to show you that I'm not scared.
They don't bite.
It's just a--
Wait, they don't bite?
Think of it as.
No.
It's like a kitten.
(LAUGHING) It's like a kitten.
All right.
Just do your hands like mine, straight out.
[APPLAUSE, CHEERING]
Isn't it great?
[LAUGHS]
See?
Now they're going to go see your movie.
Well, you know what's interesting is when I--
because we would move a lot.
So by the time I got to--
I was going to high school.
I think first it was in Hawaii.
And then I went to high school kind of all over the place.
But when I first got to a new high school at that age,
I was at the size I was.
And everybody thought-- honestly, they thought
I was an undercover cop.
Seriously.
And I had no friends.
And nobody-- and everybody's like, uh, don't talk to him.
He's an undercover cop.
No girls-- forget it, nothing.
Oh, poor guy.
Poor Dwayne.
Poor thing.
It builds character.
Look at you now.
You're a nice guy because of all that.
I wanted to play pro and, I also wanted
to work for the Secret Service.
And that's what I got my degree in was criminology.
But the funny story was by the end of my junior year,
I finally had the bright idea of asking the professor,
well, how much am I going to get paid?
And he told me, and I was like, oh, my god!
And here's the thing.
The Secret Service, they are true heroes.
They protect our leaders.
But I looked at him.
I'm like, that's not take-a-bullet pay for me.
No.
I just-- I can't.
I can't.
I can't do it.
So by that time, I was already too late.
So I wound up graduating with a degree in criminology.
I don't like rides that you really get strapped in.
I have that phobia, and especially if they're bars.
I don't know where it comes from.
Probably something happened when I was five or six
that I have to see a therapist about in a couple years.
But I'm not quite too sure where.
But it's funny.
We all took a big trip to Disney before we shot the movie.
So it was myself, Carla, the director, the kids.
Everybody was there.
And as we were walking on the rides,
we have a tour guide with us.
So I've kind of pulled the tour guide aside.
I said, hey, what kind of ride is this right now?
What's going to-- and he's like, oh, it's great.
It's going to go up, and you're going to go down and around.
I'm like, oh, OK.
Well, I'm going to stay here.
I'm going to say off to the side.
He's like, oh, OK, sure no problem.
But then the worst part about it is
there's everybody standing in line
waiting to get on the ride.
And here I am just standing there.
And they're like, hey, Duane!
Hey, how come you're not going on the ride?
There's hundreds of people asking me that.
I'm like, I'm on the BlackBerry.
It's Hollywood business right now.
This is very important stuff right now.
I can't.
I got to do this.
Uh-huh.
So you're scared.
[LAUGHTER]
I had been arrested numerous times by the time I was 17.
Really?
How many times?
Nine times.
You were arrested nine times before you were 17?
By the time I was 17 was my ninth arrest.
And I started getting arrested--
What were you doing? and
Just a lot of bad things that I shouldn't
have been doing, from fighting to theft
and making the wrong decisions, running
around with the wrong people.
So that's why the script spoke to me and the documentary.
I watched the documentary, and I knew these kids.
And I knew what they were going through.
What made you stop?
What made me stop was I was fortunate I
had somebody in my life who cared to invest
a little bit of time in me.
And I had loving parents as well, as well as great coaches.
And I continued to get in trouble, by the way.
So it was a work in progress.
It wasn't until I was 17--
and my mom had come to get me out
of jail a whole bunch of times.
And that's-- somebody finds that funny.
But she did.
She came to get me out of jail all the time.
And it was always the same thing.
She would be crying.
And then I'd get the tongue lashing and just
how awful things are, and you can't keep disappointing
like this.
But then on the last time I got arrested when I was 17,
my mom picked me up, and I was waiting to hear the worst.
I was waiting for that big tongue lashing.
But she was crying.
But now she's crying with no more words.
She's not saying anything.
And for me, I love my mom.
And she's turned into my greatest
fan and such a great friend.
And when she's crying with no more words, that hits you,
and that hit me like a ton of bricks that I can't keep--
and life is tough enough.
Life is tough enough for us back then through evictions
and everything else.
And I thought, wow, life is throwing a lot of crap
at my mom.
And here I am, oh, here, Mom.
Here's some more crap.
And I just-- I couldn't do it anymore.
So I had to make a change.
[MUSIC FADING OUT]