Josh Brolin | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #690

Episode Overview

• Theo Von (age 46) and actor/author Josh Brolin (age 58, 12 years older than Theo; father James Brolin is 86) explore how to survive a chaotic, high-adrenaline upbringing, addiction, and decades of professional rejection without being imprisoned by a single label like "alcoholic," "actor," or "famous."
• The conversation traces Brolin’s trajectory from a wild childhood on a Paso Robles wildlife ranch and running with Montecito's "Cito Rats" to enduring a 22-year career gap after The Goonies before No Country for Old Men revitalized his acting career.
• Both speakers candidly examine the mechanics of addiction and recovery—including why substances appeal to an overactive mind, the predictability of relapse, and how Anthony Hopkins reframed the "alcoholic motor" as a powerful gift once paired with recovery tools.
• Listeners gain perspective on treating identity as "wet clay" and an ongoing experiment, discovering hidden talents later in life (such as Brolin day-trading stocks in his 30s), and maintaining curiosity through writing, literature, and long-distance motorcycle rides.

Key Concepts

• Disclosed Projects, Ties, and Sponsors: Theo Von discloses his Netflix special I'm Doing Fine (out October 20th), his merchandise store at theovonstore.com, his role as a UFC ringside casual commentator, and episode sponsors Celsius (product on the table), MoonPay / MoonPay Agents (moonpay.com/agents), Manscaped (manscaped.com, code: THEO), Quince (quince.com), and Chime (chime.com/theo). Josh Brolin discloses a "little tiny stake in" Liquid Death, taking over the trademark for the "Cito Rats" brand/group, his memoir From Under the Truck (written a year and a half ago), his film The Dog Stars with Ridley Scott (which just came out), his new film Whalefall (in theaters October 16th), a new story he wrote called The Fisherman (filming in January), and an upcoming Untitled Montauk Project film with Jeremy Renner.
• High-Chaos Upbringings and Emotional Regulation: Brolin grew up on a 230-acre ranch in Paso Robles, California, with a mother from Corpus Christi, Texas, who was a wildlife activist standing 5 feet 3 inches tall ("5'3\"") with the voice of a 6-foot-8 ("6'8\"") man, and who always drove at 100 miles an hour. They housed transitional wildlife including wolves (one of which attacked Brolin's 6-year-old brother, requiring 60 stitches in his leg), mountain lions, a lion, a bear, and a chimpanzee named Reggie who watched Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone movies, escaped his cage, took a gun from a repairman's truck rack, put one round in the chamber, and held the repairman at gunpoint at waist height. Meanwhile, in Theo's childhood neighborhood in Louisiana, people stole wood off his family's second-floor apartment balcony "many times," once using it to build a baby crib down the street. Brolin explains that growing up in constant chaos leaves no room for emotional processing at the time, though accepting it later without self-pity adds rich color to adult life once one learns to regulate it.
• The Mechanics of Addiction, Youth Culture, and Survival: Brolin attended Santa Barbara High (which had 3,500 students, 80% of whom were Mexican) and ran with a Montecito group called the "Cito Rats." He claims—while hedging slightly with "36, out of 50, are dead?" and noting surviving members remind him "You know we're all not dead, dude"—that 36 out of 50 of those friends died from substance abuse and addiction issues. Comparing their group to actual rats, Theo notes that rats can swim and tread water for up to 3 days, have extremely sensitive whiskers used to pick up information, and do not vomit, allowing them to live in muck and the worst spaces without it affecting them. Brolin first got sober at age 19 after getting busted and doing a little jail time, stayed sober for 3.5 years, and consciously went back out around age 22 or 23; he also hedges on the exact age his driver's license was suspended ("17, 18? 16, 17? 17, 18.") and on what his charges were when arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana while filming W. (guessing drunken fighting or obstruction, while an on-screen article clarifies: remaining in the bar, resisting arrest, and public drunkenness). While Brolin sought a "God feeling" from alcohol to quiet self-doubt and Theo used cocaine to immediately control how he felt (even claiming cocaine helped him quit vaping because the multi-day hangovers made him too afraid to put nicotine or other toxins in his body), Brolin notes that today's youth drink less alcohol, which helped Liquid Death succeed because water in cans resembling 40-ounce beers ("40s") prevented kids at concerts from feeling judged or ousted.
• Professional Rejection, Financial Pivot, and Late-Blooming Talents: Before landing The Goonies (released in 1985, his first time in front of a camera), Brolin missed 36 out of 56 days of school, got kicked out by his mom, moved to his dad's couch in L.A., and went on roughly 350 auditions. Looking back at a photo from The Goonies, Brolin hedges on his own memory of his wild youth, wondering if he made things up because he looked healthy, young, innocent, and naive. Meryl Poster (third in command at Miramax) publicly stated that the worst auditioners in Miramax history were Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin. Spending 22 years "in the ethers" after The Goonies, Brolin worked as a landscaper for 1 year and, starting at age 30, day-traded and swing-traded stocks full-time for almost 5 years (using 3 screens with 4 tabs per screen), making more money in 4 years of trading than in 20 years of acting. By contrast, for No Country for Old Men, Brolin was paid $100,000 gross and cleared only about $30,000 after taxes and fees. While shooting No Country, he filmed an audition tape for American Gangster with his 16-year-old son reading the Denzel Washington part, which he hedges was his final audition ("I think so, I think maybe there was one other"). This financial and professional journey taught him that hidden talents can be revealed later in life once given direction.
• Reframing the "Alcoholic Motor" and Resisting Fixed Definitions: Both speakers emphasize treating identity as "wet clay" rather than a fixed label. Brolin had all his early tattoos removed at age 30 before recently getting a full-back lighthouse tattoo, and he stays active through 1,200-mile motorcycle "pulls" with friends and deep dives into literature and extreme survival stories—such as his upcoming Montauk project about a fisherman who fell off a boat with no flotation device and treaded water in a 200-mile radius search area for 12.5 hours surrounded by sharks. Brolin was also with author Cormac McCarthy in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the night McCarthy died, noting McCarthy left behind 20,000 books (including ~1,000 on math and ~300 on whales) and hedging that until All the Pretty Horses ("which I think is his sixth novel, or his seventh"), McCarthy sold "maybe 1,200 books of each novel." Similarly, older peers model continuous curiosity and humility: Jeff Bridges told Brolin during the Crazy Heart promotional circuit that he missed being an underdog, and Theo shares that Bridges recently introduced him to his ChatGPT friend named "Gary," with whom they spent the day talking and writing songs. Ultimately, Anthony Hopkins taught Brolin that the alcoholic's intensity is not a curse; while it causes massive harm without tools, that same "motor" allows recovering alcoholics to make an outsized positive impact once given a few tools and direction.

Quotes

• At 0:02:30 - "So they'd go to these concerts and they'd have these cans, and the kids started drinking these cans that are full of water, and it made them feel like they weren't ousted, that they weren't going to be judged because they weren't drinking, because they had a can in their hand that looked like they were having a beer." - Brolin explaining the social psychology behind why Liquid Death appealed to non-drinking youth.
• At 0:04:48 - "But the group that I grew up with, um, 36 out of 50 are dead from shit that we were just talking about." - Brolin highlighting the lethal reality of substance abuse among his childhood "Cito Rats" friend group in Montecito.
• At 0:05:06 - "And I said, I'm so sick of hearing those stories that I'm going to spearhead this whole thing. So I've brought the whole thing back as a, like, survived and updated. Like new and improved." - Brolin explaining why he took over the "Cito Rats" trademark to shift the narrative from tragedy to survival.
• At 0:09:20 - "So the point is, is that emotions and all that weren't—it's not that they weren't allowed, it's just there was so—there was such a high level of chaos that you just didn't, you know, what were you going to do? Like go in a corner and like cry or like talk to your parents about like how you were scared you were going to be eaten?" - Brolin describing how growing up around dangerous wildlife suppressed normal childhood emotional processing.
• At 0:10:06 - "Because when I drank, it was like the—it was the best—it was like God feeling. It was like, I don't have to think at all now. I can do whatever I want, and I don't have that little voice in there going, 'Oh, you're a piece of shit,' or 'You can't do that, you're not good enough.'" - Brolin articulating the exact psychological relief and silencing of self-doubt he originally sought through alcohol.
• At 0:11:15 - "No, I think it made me go, uh, like cuz cocaine, I think it made me be able to feel immediately how—I could feel immediately some way. And I don't—there was something about that. Like, I'm going to control how I feel right now." - Theo identifying the desire for immediate emotional control as the root appeal of his past cocaine use.
• At 0:12:32 - "You know what is nice? It's fun to laugh about, because it takes the air out of whatever part of me that wants to behave that way. It makes it fun, and it makes it like, I don't know, for a second you have some community, and that's all I ever really wanted." - Theo explaining how humor and shared stories disarm the lingering pull of past addictions.
• At 0:19:06 - "So when you grow up in that, not as a victim, because you said that earlier, you know, not to victimize yourself, you go, that's what it was, and I accept it fully for what it was. I like it because it colored my life later in a way, once I figured out a way to kind of regulate the whole thing." - Brolin showing how to reframe a chaotic childhood into an asset by rejecting victimhood and learning emotional regulation.
• At 0:21:06 - "And you go, yeah, it's not going to—that's going to happen every time, no matter what. When you eat strawberries, you will break out. It's going to happen. 'No, but if I just eat the right strawberry.' Nope." - Brolin using an allergy analogy to dismantle the illusion that an addict can ever safely moderate their substance use.
• At 0:38:37 - "She said, 'The worst'—she did it publicly—'The worst auditioners we ever saw, we ever experienced in our kind of history at Miramax, were Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin.'" - Brolin illustrating that being terrible at auditioning does not correlate with actual acting capability or long-term success.
• At 0:46:46 - "I made more money—I'd put it this way—I made more money in those four years, really, it was five years, but within four years, than I had made in 20 years acting." - Brolin revealing how learning to day-trade stocks in his 30s outperformed his first two decades in Hollywood financially.
• At 0:48:28 - "And then you start—things start to get revealed that you're good at. You're like, 'Wow, I could have developed this shit when I was young, given the opportunity or maybe given somebody to direct you, a mentor or a parent or something like that, like you're actually good at this shit. You're not a total dumbshit.'" - Brolin reflecting on how stepping outside a single career track proved he had untapped intellectual capabilities.
• At 0:53:31 - "I remember seeing Jeff on the circuit, on like the promotional circuit during that time that he did Crazy Heart, and he looked—I go, 'Hey, how you doing?' He goes, 'I miss being an underdog.'" - Brolin sharing Jeff Bridges' insight into the unexpected pressure of acclaim compared to the freedom of being underestimated.
• At 1:22:31 - "I think that fame, what fame can do, is define you in a way, and I don't want to be defined. I don't want to be defined as an alcoholic, I don't want to be defined as famous, I don't want to be defined even as an actor. Like, I realize it's what I do... I want to keep discovering shit. I want to keep learning shit. I want to keep surprising myself." - Brolin summarizing his core philosophy of resisting static labels in favor of lifelong curiosity.
• At 1:24:37 - "Like your profession, you're a mirror. You throw shit back in people's face, and they can laugh at it. They can laugh at their foibles. They can laugh at their, you know, how absurd we are, and the shit that we say and the stuff that we do. And I think that actors do the same thing in story." - Brolin connecting comedy and acting as parallel crafts that help audiences recognize and process human absurdity.
• At 1:29:37 - "And he goes, 'No, because given no direction and no tools, we create more harm and hurt than normal people, than most people. But given a few tools, we can have a bigger impact than most people, given that we have the drive, that we have the motor. We have the motor of alcoholics.'" - Brolin recounting Anthony Hopkins' perspective on channeling addictive intensity into constructive impact through recovery tools.

Takeaways

• Treat your identity as "wet clay" and an ongoing experiment rather than letting your past traumas, profession, or public perception lock you into a single fixed definition.
• Refuse to victimize yourself over a chaotic or unstable upbringing; accept the past fully for what it was and focus on building the tools to regulate your nervous system in the present.
• Recognize the "strawberry allergy" reality of addiction: stop bargaining for the "right strawberry" or a safe way to moderate a substance that reliably triggers destructive behavior.
• Use humor and open conversation with peers to "take the air out of" past addictive behaviors, replacing isolation and shame with community.
• Channel the "alcoholic motor"—or any high-intensity, restless drive—into constructive projects by pairing that natural engine with structure, direction, and recovery tools.
• Do not mistake early or repeated rejection (such as failing hundreds of auditions or selling only 1,200 copies of early books like Cormac McCarthy) as a final verdict on your talent.
• Test your capabilities outside your primary career at any age; learning an entirely new skill set (like Brolin learning stock trading at age 30) can build financial independence and prove you are capable of much more than you assumed.
• Protect the mindset of an "underdog" even when you achieve success or acclaim so that external validation does not stifle your willingness to take risks.
• Prioritize experiences that foster awe and continuous learning—whether through reading deeply, writing your own stories, or taking long-distance journeys with close friends—to keep surprising yourself as you age.