#1158 - Chuck Palahniuk

Joe Rogan (0:03)

Four, three, two, one.

And we're live. How are you, Chuck?

Chuck Palahniuk (0:09)

I am great. Look at this place.

Joe Rogan (0:11)

Thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it.

Chuck Palahniuk (0:13)

Thank you.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

I've read your books. I've watched movies based on your books, so it's very cool to meet you in real life.

Chuck Palahniuk (0:19)

And it's always a disappointment. It is always so heartbreaking, because people expect somebody so not me. And I am constantly breaking their heart when they meet me.

Joe Rogan (0:31)

Well, I expect you, so you're not breaking my heart at all. I'm very pleased to meet you. So I didn't have any weirdo expectations or any delusions of who you are.

Chuck Palahniuk (0:41)

And don't just, just don't kill yourself, okay?

I mean Anthony Bourdain. And he kills himself.

Joe Rogan (0:49)

Well, I think there's a lot of other factors involved there.

Chuck Palahniuk (0:52)

I don't know. I see this, so many of my peers, it's like the moment I meet them, boom, they're gone.

Joe Rogan (1:00)

Yeah, I'm not going to do that.

So don't worry. Everything's fine. Listen, I want to talk to you about a bunch of things. First of all, I'd love to talk to you about your writing process. Because one of the things I read once is, I believe you were writing down, it was on the Cape, it was in Massachusetts.

Were you ever writing down there? Were you ever writing somewhere where you made a deal with yourself where you wouldn't turn the heat on unless you were writing?

Chuck Palahniuk (1:26)

Oh my gosh, you think I'm a white person, don't you?

That is so weird. The Cape? The Cape?

Joe Rogan (1:31)

You've never been to the Cape Cod?

Chuck Palahniuk (1:33)

That's like in England.

Joe Rogan (1:34)

Is that all white people?

Chuck Palahniuk (1:34)

That's in England, right?

Joe Rogan (1:35)

New England.

Chuck Palahniuk (1:36)

New England, yes. No.

Joe Rogan (1:38)

I never read anything like that about you?

Chuck Palahniuk (1:39)

No.

Joe Rogan (1:40)

I'm sorry.

Chuck Palahniuk (1:41)

Never been on the Cape.

Joe Rogan (1:43)

You've never been to Cape Cod?

Chuck Palahniuk (1:44)

Never had a clam bake?

Joe Rogan (1:46)

You're a white person. What's wrong with clams?

Chuck Palahniuk (1:50)

No, no. No, it's just something.

Joe Rogan (1:53)

Maybe something I attributed to you for many, many years. But it's just an interesting story that someone said that they were forcing themselves to be disciplined writing. And so they wouldn't write unless they had the heat on.

And so they lived in this place over the winter. God, it wasn't you. It's so embarrassing.

Chuck Palahniuk (2:08)

You were talking about Michael Cunningham.

Joe Rogan (2:10)

Is that who it was?

Chuck Palahniuk (2:11)

Yeah, because he, I think that's his story about living in Provincetown.

Joe Rogan (2:16)

Might have been. Fuck this all up. What a terrible way to get going.

But one thing I wanted to talk to you about.

Chuck Palahniuk (2:22)

Ambien much lately?

Joe Rogan (2:23)

No, I don't. Any. At all. I just sleep.

I'm fortunate in that regard.

Chuck Palahniuk (2:28)

All right.

Joe Rogan (2:29)

You don't take that shit, do you?

Chuck Palahniuk (2:31)

Of course I do.

Joe Rogan (2:31)

Do you?

Chuck Palahniuk (2:32)

Yeah, three times a day.

Joe Rogan (2:33)

Oh, you're fucking with me. We got started off poorly.

Chuck Palahniuk (2:40)

Once a day.

Joe Rogan (2:41)

Do you really take Ambien?

Chuck Palahniuk (2:42)

Yeah, you know, to tell the truth, just before I want to do anything I don't want to do, it's like Elves and the Shoemaker thing, is I don't want to do my taxes so I take Ambien. And then I wake up and my taxes are done.

Joe Rogan (2:54)

Oh, and do you have plausible deniability too? If you can get videotape, you take an Ambien.

Chuck Palahniuk (3:00)

People have committed murder on Ambien and gotten off because they had no memory.

Joe Rogan (3:05)

That is true. Yeah, it's hypnotic. We actually did a pretty in-depth discussion about that after the Roseanne Barre thing came out.

My own mom has taken it and she stopped taking it, but one of the reasons why she stopped taking it is because she woke up in the middle of the night and she had a white bathroom mat and she painted it with lipstick and makeup. She had no recollection of it whatsoever, but she painted it like a two-year-old would. If they got to hold their mom's lipstick.

And she just woke up and went, what the fuck am I doing? Like, what is this?