Yeah.

the storms at sea eventually are going to come right towards you.

And what I hope people take from this is an understanding of, it's very difficult for me to spotlight this very humiliating moment because I wanted people to only know me as a guy of cheer and a person of like comedic escape.

I didn't want to be thrust into anything on a, you know, documentary or reality level.

But the reality is what I learned from it is when you can share the very thing that was, you know, suffocating you and you can overcome it and then share the thing you thought was an anchor only to realize it's elevating you, that it's actually helping you to ascend and, to a greater purpose, to a greater way of communicating with people.

I do hope people get this from that and realize you can put up the biggest win of your life with the biggest loss that ever happened to you.

And is that true?

Absolutely.

Yeah

... and different memorabilia.

That was my, like, merch, like, wrapped up, and it's 60, 70, $80,000.

Like, in perishables, in pantries, in clothing, behind tiles, soil, you name it.

Could you forgive him?

I think that, uh, forgiveness is the most powerful gift you can give to yourself.

I'm always willing, willing to sit down and hear somebody out.

I had to go through hell and back, but would I change it? I wouldn't change a single thing except the fact that if I could have one more day with the guy that I knew as my brother-

Mm-hmm.

I really didn't know where I belong.

And, and, uh, I guess that was the beginning of really wanting to i- i- you know, seven levels of grief and I gotta really start it and go through the process.

I have to start doing some group meetings and meeting with other people that have...

You know, and by the way, what I learned was you said Um, you know, I've gone through this experience not as great as yours, but it is as great as mine.

It's equally as important and impactful the thing that happened to you.

Mm-hmm.

... love that you said that.

So I wanna know how you're feeling now that it's airing and now that you've watched it in its entirety and you've seen the Erica of it all and are you feeling differently than you did before you started filming?

Every time I have had any kind of sit-down moment with it, I'm very cognizant of realizing what I'm steeped in at that moment.

For example...

The score, like the music throughout the film, I was fortunate enough to have somebody create an original score for the movie, and it accentuates the visual, the aesthetic, and the music got me emotional.

I wasn't even watching the scene.

I was just listening to the music as I was playing the scene, and You know, I was like, wow, this is like the soundtrack of my life now, in a sense.

Yeah.

And I'm guessing that's changed for you.

So I wanna know how you're feeling now that it's airing and now that you've watched it in its entirety and you've seen the Erica of it all and are you feeling differently than you did before you started filming?

Every time I have had any kind of sit-down moment with it, I'm very cognizant of realizing what I'm steeped in at that moment.

For example...

The score, like the music throughout the film, I was fortunate enough to have somebody create an original score for the movie, and it accentuates the visual, the aesthetic, and the music got me emotional.

I wasn't even watching the scene.

I was just listening to the music as I was playing the scene, and You know, I was like, wow, this is like the soundtrack of my life now, in a sense.

Yeah.

And I'm guessing that's changed for you.

Right

... bit of internet.

So the good thing is, I would say to most people today now, like you, you know, you can ask for the app and you can log into and it's not as, uh, overwhelming as I thought it, you know, once thought it was.

Um, but also the, the, the ability to, um, communicate with people in the way that I, I do now, um, the, the, the, the business people that I surround myself with and the understanding that when we're, when I'm communicating with my team now, and by, by the way, my wife, once again, like, um, a, a, an incredibly prolific and smart person when it comes to all things, you know, economy and being able to share and know that like, you know what? You can sh- you can build something, you can share it with somebody that you trust, and you can trust yourself in those...

You don't have to be a BC college graduate to, to-

... be very impactful, that part of this documentary.

I, I, I hope so.

I really do.

So was it difficult to kind of give up some of that control and beat this open on camera?

You know, man, you nailed it right there.

Thank you for asking that, because I'm not sure if people realize some people make a documentary and they kind of control it.

It's a it's a puff piece.

It's sort of tailored.

I said to the team and Brett Harvey, our incredible director, I said, you're going to put me in a chair.

I'm going to answer everything.

So was there a particular moment when you realized that what happened would no longer even just define you, just won't define you anymore?

Dan, tell me, what is it the pythons have that is the magic ingredients to make all of those layers work so well?

Well, for me, the reason why the pythons have always been so funny is because they have such wildly different personalities.

John Cleese and Graham Chapman came from Cambridge, so they had quite a high education.

Eric Idle was from Wolverhampton, which is not too far away from here, so he had quite a working class background.

Terry Gilliam was American.

Terry Jones was Welsh, so he was from the other side of the country.

So you had all of these different personalities and different styles coming together to create this strange blancmange of comedy that no one else had ever come up with before.

There's probably a ton of choices here too, Dan.

So was that something that you had to get over, that feeling of, I can't believe I fell for this or I can't believe this happened to me?

Oh, yeah.

And it was a lot of things, too.

It was neglect in how I wanted to maintain my...

My business, I lost a lot of faith in how I ran business.

I stopped kind of affiliating with the right mentors to help me to build my brand.

I got lost, man.

So I feel like I have to ask you about the time that you bombed opening for Phish, how that happened and what happened when it did.

How, how was that for you? Was it easy to kind of go, "Here it is, have your way with it"?

Yeah, it, it was...

I wouldn't say it was easy, but I really knew that he was the guy for the job.

I'd seen, uh, another documentary that he did.

He, he's, has several brilliant documentaries, but he did, uh, one called Inmate Number One: The Danny Trejo Story.

And the way he handled the aesthetic of prison life and the more harrowing parts of the story, I remember thinking, "He's the guy because if he puts me in the chair, I know he can handle the true crime of it, but I also want this to have a spirited..." You know, I am f- a person who, I love comedy.

I dealt with so much in my life, um, through laughter.

Yeah.

And it's just, it's a very approachable film and very relatable, which I was not anticipating because you and I not a lot in common, but actually when you boil it down there, there was actually some pretty common threads there.

Oh, man.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

I think that I have had a lot of conversations with people even just by way of the trailer and DMs and now the luxury of voice texts and people can – we can correspond in more meaningful ways at a distance.

But it's like – For me, being able to share this and then receiving not only stories where people say, this thing happened to me and I don't really know how to get past it or get through it or I'm still dealing with it, but the additional element of a couple of people have written me who are the doers of it, who are the people that...

That reached out and said, I found myself in a situation where I put my family through...

And I'm just wondering if this is more vulnerable and scary than going on stage or going on SNL or that kind of vulnerability, or is this just more raw than that?

Right.

I love cinema.

I always loved documentaries.

I love true crime.

Right.

I always felt like...

I'd like to be involved in that world.

I mean the movie it's really intense and they're like you were just talking about you're talking about this terrible thing that happened to you but it overall was very uplifting and inspiring like the way you handled it the way it all happened and having to know who to trust and who not to trust that was really actually the biggest surprise is like we're all like oh my god and what's gonna happen next but at the end it just felt so like oh my god this guy came through this like how did How did you find the strength and emotional wherewithal to actually make this movie, like get through it? Because that alone had to be a workout.

Dane? [upbeat music] [audience clapping]

Thank you very much.

Yes, I am, uh, I am very, very excited to be here.

I, uh, I'll tell you a little about myself.

When I was a little kid, I was a terrible speller.

I could not spell, so my mom and dad tried to help me out.

They got me a little helper, a little friend, a little aide.

I know you saw me do them, and I think they just went in your brain, and I don't think you meant to do it, but I don't think you stopped yourself either, and that's why I never felt the need to help you not be hated by a lot of people.

It's hard to tell with you because y- you know, like, you're very positive on, on, like, externally.

Yeah.

That, that is something that I've had to, uh, that I taught myself to do, that I had to at a young age, 'cause I was so negative about not being inclu- My whole thing is not being included.

When I feel like I'm ostracized, that's where depression comes in for me.

Do I...

I wake up every day, and I, I'm, um, like, vin and vigor.

I'm, I'm excited.

Yeah

But DJ, talk about what this movie becomes through these flashbacks.

Yeah.

My thoughts on this are, like, what I love about this story and especially the flashbacks is, like, you get the kind of, quote-unquote, "modern contemporary day," which is early 1990s in the rural South, which is this kind of, like, much more polished, like, suburban, Winn-Dixie kind of shopping life.

And you keep looking back on the history of the area, which is dark, but also very beautifully, like, romantic in a way because these people, like, you are living in the racist South, but there's also a lot of care that's shown with how they treat other people.

And, I mean, they are portrayed as simple people, country folk, but you really build a genuine connection with them.

And one thing I like about it very much is that I feel it embraces this kind of, like, Southern Gothic aesthetic.

Like, it is very dark.

They d- this isn't a movie set.