- [Kelly] It's lovely to have you all here.
Do y'all get to, like,
how often do you feel like you get to actually hang out in
life? Are you both busy or you get to really chill?
- [Ron] Well in COVID of course,
we wrote this book during COVID,
- [Kelly] A lot of chill there.
- but, but you know, we've been, I mean,
we see each other whenever we can, but there, you know,
there are stretches that go by and months
where we don't see each other. - [Clint] But does it count
when you have those zoom birthday parties
where you're hang the birthday sign above?
Hey bud, how you doing?
- [Ron] I don't think
I don't think, she said, that's what she's referring to.
Part of I've been looking forward to
what we're doing right now,
which is, you know, out together
talking about this book for like, since we started it,
because the book is very cathartic for us on the one hand
and meant a lot to do,
but also I just knew it was going to be a great excuse for
us to hang and tell our story a little bit to people
together.
- [Kelly] I think that's so cool and I...
(audience clapping)
- And I, I love, I feel like was it 2017?
Y'all lost your daddy
and then like 2000 maybe you lost your mama.
So it's like, is it, was it kind of,
did you want to kind of start this book and do all of this?
And it, was it kind of a thing for your parents?
Like a.
- [Clint] Well that was really the jumping off point
for us kind of wanting to do the book is when we lost dad.
I mean, listen, to be honest,
I don't do dying parents very well. You know.
- [Kelly] Oh, who does?
- Well, I don't know.
- And if you do, there's something wrong with you.
(crowd laughing)
- But when, when,
when dad passed and we were actually kind of
organizing the memorial,
which meant going over to their house,
our home that we grew up in
and sifting through the photos,
and items that we were going to present at the memorial,
we just, they had such a rich life and, and, you know,
it was originally, it was Ron saying,
Hey, do you think you might want to write a book with me?
And of course, you know, yeah.
- I felt like with people, all our lives we've been asked,
what was it like to grow up in show business?
What was it like to grow up on a TV set,
whether with Channel Ben or Mayberry or whatever, and,
and how did you get through it? And I, I felt,
and I think I, this is what I said to you.
I think we can tell that story,
but we can really use it while it's fresh in our mind to
tell this other really surprising story,
because nobody knows about this, this, you know,
the very specific,
unique kind of funny sometimes kind of odd ball.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- But very effective choices and decisions our parents made.
So there's a way to honor them. And, and,
and hopefully answer that question for those who are
curious. - [Kelly] Yeah. It must be.
I love that it's called The Boys. Is that it?
Did your mom call you that?
- That's what she called all of us, the three of us.
- [Kelly] I love that.
- And so it's a tribute to, a tribute to her.
- [Kelly] She's like "where's some females?"
So Clint, going back to your childhood,
Ron nicknamed you the hehe man.
So I want you to tell this story about,
cause you started naming him.
- Yes. I gave him, I gave him the name
when he was really young, like maybe 18 months old.
- [Clint] Yeah, so I really don't remember the incident.
So let's let Ron tell this.
- [Ron] Alright. Okay.
Well, first of all,
I was really thrilled to have a younger brother,
very excited and, and you know,
and we were getting along fine.
I was so excited when he came home. We were, you know,
and then he bumps into the toddler.
I began to see that he's got a real sense of humor.
He's a real character. And one day though,
he's now about 18 months old and I'm,
I'm down on the floor putting together a puzzle or Lincoln
logs or something, which was this thing we used to do.
And,
and all of a sudden I feel this warm liquid kind of landing
on my side of my face and down here.
And I hear this hehehehe
and I looked over and 18 month old Clint has dropped
his diaper and kind of like, just spraying me down.
And I, I,
- You know the foreshadowing was there.
- I went to dad and I said, you really got to spank him.
And he said, Nope, he's too young to know better.
And that's what part of it being a big brother is,
is you got to know and he's learning.
- [Kelly] You gotta take the pee.
- And you gotta take the pee.
And so I was, you know, just a little bit annoyed,
but I did appreciate the sense of humor and the audacity.
So from then on, he became the Hehe-man to me.
- [Kelly] I loved that it wasn't the pee pee man.
- (laughing) No, no, no.
It's the laugh that I remember,
I didn't want to remember the other.
- That, that hehe kind of sounded like pre-ice cream
like that, that man, that was a little creepy then too.
So wait, the book, the book is very honest.
I do want to talk about the book. I love that.
I feel like you shouldn't do something like that unless you
are completely honest.
And what I find amazing is it's not always easy to talk
about Clint's substance abuse
and things and hard trials that we go through.
Was it a tough thing for you to open up and kind of maybe
did a rehash like stuff, you know?
- Well, to be honest, Kelly, not at this point in my life.
And also I realized that by me sharing,
by me telling my story or part of my story,
it may help somebody, you know, and listen, you know,
I don't exactly know. I don't blame show business at all.
I really don't.
But for some reason I had a fascination with smoking pot
when I was 13 or 14 years old. And I just,
I got obsessed by the idea of doing it and didn't have the
opportunity to do it right away. But as it turns out,
I was so obsessed that I took the pencil shavings from my
pencil sharpener in my room and twisted up a fatty
- [Kelly] Well that's creative.
- Yeah, and, and, and tried to smoke it.
Please folks, it's a little harsh.
Don't try that at home.
And, and, you know, and listen, you know,
through the travails of,
of smoking weed or drinking and the other stuff,
it's a slippery slope.
And I was thrown down Crisco and it was going pretty fast
and I'm very grateful, very grateful to my mom and dad,
you know, and in a backhanded way to Ron,
because Ron has a little different take on it,
but he always supported me. And,
and one more thing I'll say about it is, you know,
I just didn't wake up one morning and go, oh,
I've got a problem and stop. You know?
I mean, they talk about, you know, hitting bedrock,
you know, and well, I, I scraped,
I scraped along bedrock for awhile. So, you know, it's,
it's not pretty, but listen, I'm here.
- [Kelly] But it's honest and a lot of people,
(crowd cheering)
and I know a lot of people that go through that same thing
and I am with you. I think that there it's,
there's no point in hiding it or, or under rug swept,
you know, keeping it under swept I know a lot of people
in the South do that.
And it's one of those things where it's like, okay, no,
this is not your testimony. This is not your,
your thing you can help other people with.
And I think that's beautiful.
That kind of raw honesty is so helpful because it's not just
about us. We're all a part of something much bigger than us.
And I think it's, it's really cool.
And I think it's brave and bold.
Yeah.
- [Ron] I was very proud of him.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
It's a hard, it's a hard thing.
Well, you posted Ron,
you posted this video of you opening the first box of your
new book with copies inside.
So I do want to show you something though.
This is actually my favorite part of this video.
So you take the book out.
- [Ron] There's a picture of the Andy Griffith show
- [Kelly] Yeah. Yeah.
So cool. Then you turn and...
There we go.
What's in it? What is
Now tell me Ron. What's conveniently in the background?
(Ron laughing)
What is? Oh my God.
You guys, these are my Oscars.
Oh my God.
(audience clapping)
- [Ron] Okay. All right.
Sin of pride. I do have an ego.
- [Kelly] No it was amazing
cause it was like, wait let's just adjust here.
You're such a director. It was amazing.
I was like, hey, here's the thing.
If I had an Oscar buddy, I'd be having my foyer
Just people walked in. Oh, I just,
I was some, we have to take it somewhere to clean it.
There.
It's an amazing award.
And you have so many amazing accomplishments.
I just wanted to review that.
Well Clint,
Clint, it means you're family now.
Clint and Ron's book is called The Boys,
a memoir of Hollywood and family.
And it's out now. You got to check it out guys.