Name: Joe Rogan Experience #652 - Ricky Schroder
Uploaded: 2015-05-26T00:40:20.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #652 - Ricky Schroder' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-05-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #652 - Ricky Schroder' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-05-26. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #652 - Ricky Schroder

and we're live what's up Rick happy Memorial Day a perfect day to have you
on to talk about your project because this it's called a fighting season it's
available right now on iTunes and for folks who are not aware of Rick Schroeder
first of all how dare you and actor now director producer you're doing a lot of
different things and we've been friends for what ten years ten years now ten
years yeah girls introduced us yeah so your documentary series is pretty
intense man and you showed me a bunch of it last time I was over your house and
I
was first of all I was really impressed but one of the things I was really
impressed was was your commitment to doing this I mean you spent a lot of
time in in Afghanistan and like embedded yeah you were with the soldiers in
firefights I mean you were there pretty much every step of the way yeah I was
there 110 days from March until July 2014 and I needed to be there because I
needed to be there that long because just to build trust with the the soldiers
and
the units that I would embed with took sometimes weeks alone just because
everybody looked at me like you know what's this journalist doing here a lot
of the guys were 20 22 25 in these platoons no had no idea of my past they
thought I was just a journalist a camera guy that was you know there to tell a
story that was probably negative so just took time to build a relationship with
them before I got into their worlds and but you know it's funny the you know
when
when you do go out like a combat patrol and you do have contact with an enemy
then
like all of a sudden you know you're with you're one of them so it like totally
changes that the dynamic but it has to but that some big event has to happen
typically for them to accept you Wow that's that's pretty intense man so what
was the motivation to do this and like when did you decide how long did it take
to
plan this out like yeah so the motivation is probably you know I was always
curious
about what war was you know war is just one of those things that has affected
mankind and changed the course of history since the beginning of time right the
act of war and so you know I was always curious about what war was and I in my
mind I
always thought wow I have to experience what it is or else I don't have like a
whole picture of what it means to be you know in this state of you know this
condition is man so I was always looking for an opportunity where I could sort
of
experience it but you know I didn't come along for a long long time but after 9/11
you know I've been sitting there watching you know us fight in the war on
terror for 13 or 14 years from my living room like there were most of us and
you
know I I had an opportunity because I knew a three-star general named
lieutenant
general Anderson at Fort Bragg North Carolina who was deploying Afghanistan in
the spring of 2014 so I asked Joe I said Joe can I go with you guys and he's
like why do you want to go and I'm like well Joe I think it's important to
document you know what we've accomplished or failed to accomplish in that
country
for the last 13 years we've spent a lot of money there we've lost a lot of
people
there we've had a lot of handicapped and amputees come from that war and I
think
it's important to show what ending a war looks like how hard it is how
complicated
it is how ugly it is and so he agreed and he said okay I'll make it happen now
this
was when you had already started doing that show for the army you had done this
show what was the show called yeah the the project that I started working for
was
called starting strong started working for the army for that's a branded
content
show it's like a long-form kind of infomercial in a sense ultimately the
for the starting strong for the military I mean that's a 30 minute it's not
truly a
reality show right it's right it's it's it's branded content it's it's
messaging
that they want in there that I help produce and I have a government contract
and I
produce that for them so in that sense one of the conversations that we had
about that
they're fairly restrictive about what you air and what you don't air and you
didn't have
a lot of creative freedom with that that's right I mean they it's it's a long-form
commercial Joe
starting strong but it's it's well done and it's real there's nothing in it
that's not not truthful
but it's definitely controlled by the army on and the messaging that they want
to put into it so
it's not necessarily balanced like the negative aspects are not really shown
you're just kind of
showing the things that that they want yeah and ultimately they have the final
edit they're the final
judge and and jury on those decisions when you have you know a creative
difference so that really kind of
opened your eyes to this possible or opened your mind to this possibility of
doing this non-restricted embedded reality I mean this is a real real
documentary that yeah this is the real deal I mean this is this is John Paul DeGioia
the guy who owns Patron Tequila and me
uh each kicking in a chunk of money and you know putting together a film crew
and you know I scrambled um after I talked to Joe Anderson in Fort Bragg in
February I was in Afghanistan by February by March
and I brought three camera guys with me I brought I hired a local there and the
only limitation the army put on me was they said we are going to have to review
for operational security
any any any things that could endanger our soldiers or give away capabilities
tactics techniques and procedures of certain weapon systems or or things that
we employ to defeat the enemy
which which is pretty interesting stuff and I can talk about a little bit with
you some of those tools that we have
like what were the things that you were not allowed to to put in so like when
we were on the let's say um a drone we were when we were trying to do dynamic
or or um kinetic strikes with drones on bad guys we were following um known
terrorists that had pictures and names and we were following them from the air
um and looking for opportunities to shoot a hellfire missile uh and eliminate
them
um there's certain information that's on the drone feeds the monitor feeds that
gives away sort of capabilities of the drone
I see and so we had to blur that um there were certain weapon systems which are
just brand new that you couldn't even talk about
and people don't know but they're not released to the public yeah that's always
tripped me out like things like the area 51 stuff and the groom lake
where they test all this crazy technology out there and people don't even know
about it until it's too late it's
one of the thing not not too late necessary but I mean till it's already
employed one of the things um that they attribute to a lot of the ufo sightings
is like stealth bombers and the b-52 and b-51 all these different technologies
they had created out there in the Nevada desert people had no idea they even
existed
until they started using them you know the technology that I saw and
experienced with with the army and in the way that they can
you know fight and conduct war and gather intelligence and stuff was it was
phenomenal absolutely phenomenal um
at that being said there's only so much you can do to um overcome an adversary
that's a suicide bomber
that's going to you know load a car with explosives and drive it into your you
know checkpoint um or walk up to
you and detonate there's only so much you can do with technology um and it's
there's just certain things
that's hard to mitigate against and that that's fanatics yeah and this war in
particular and uh the
first desert storm war was really the first time that they had experienced that
as uh the united states
military had experienced that from the enemy right except the japanese suicide
bombers but the kamikazes it was
sort of a different story yeah i mean that's the only time i can really
remember is you know the weapon of
choice becoming um a human you know is is um world war ii with the kamikazes
and then you know you started
hearing about it in iraq um and that really wasn't employed in afghanistan for
many years early in the war
and then they decided to change tactics and bring bring that to the battlefield
but you know the real
disgusting thing with with some of that is you know they use kids a lot for
suicide bombers um you know
kids that are handicapped kids that have mental problems down syndrome or
handicaps in some way they'll
actually you know radicalize the kids in pakistan madrasas or schools you know
teach them that you
know it's it's um it's the highest degree of glory to die in the act of jihad
because without jihad
actually you can't actually get the 72 versions so the kids are actually
trained to thank the americans
kind of in a way or thank the the infidels because without the infidels to kill
you can't get the
highest degree of of uh celestial glory that term 72 virgins apparently um i
looked it up what a lot of
people think that it's actually like the number 72 but it's like a shitload it's
like saying a
shitload you know like you have 72 more than 72 well you know what i mean it's
like it's a term
like you know like it's not it's not an exact term i don't know what the uh the
definition that would
be but you know um you know people say that uh it's a kajillion yeah you know
let's say something
along those lines exaggeration it was the original i mean it's not it's not
really defined it's just a
large number of virgins that apparently is what they mean by saying 72 because
i always thought
like that's so specific what does that mean yeah i mean it's a cultural thing
obviously but yeah um so
this is a really a crazy undertaking i mean really i mean you threw your whole
life into this you
separate yourself from your family for many months a hundred plus days and then
uh went over there and
was there any was there any point in time in the process of this before you
launched where you had
second thoughts where did you know that you were going to commit yourself to
such a long um extended
stay yeah so i did have second thoughts um before i went you know especially
because like three days
before i left andrea my wife said don't go if you love me don't go whoa and so
if you love the kids don't
go so i got that and so i had to deal with that like three days before and that
was pretty tough um
because i do love my wife and do love my kids but i went so um but but yeah i
mean it was definitely a hard
a hard thing to um to come to terms with to come to grips with um you know my
camera one of my camera
guys backed out the day of the trip um and i went out there one time before my
team actually and just
to scout and look for different embeds and different characters and stuff that
i could follow different
soldiers different units different missions and we follow everything in this
just you know from three
star general who was the commander of the battlefield of all of afghanistan to
you know um colonel john
graham which is a uh great embed where he advises the chief of police in kabul
which is six million
people cops with rpgs 13 000 man paramilitary police force in kabul heroin
industry thriving black
market for weapons thriving and our embed was with colonel graham embedded with
the chief of police for
kabul um you know trying to secure the city and build a ring of steel they
called it which was like
50 or something checkpoints to try to keep suicide bombers and vehicle-borne ieds
out of the city before
the election because the taliban had threatened immense bloodshed to disrupt
the elections this was
2014 was just you know um the first peaceful transition of power in afghanistan
legitimate transfer of power
after karzai and so the taliban wanted nothing more than to to to disrupt that
process they want sharia law
they don't want democracy and so 2014 ended up being the deadliest fighting
season in afghanistan's history
at least while we were there i don't know about the soviets but while we were
there and um more
c