Lawless Media Interview with Sean Patrick Flanery
ME: I'm here with Sean Patrick Flanery Author of the new book Jane 2, one of the stars of the cult classic Boondock Saints, Powder, and many other films. So, Sean, someone told me on the way hear that you grandfather was a huge influence when it came to this book what about his life inspired you?
SEAN: Yes, yes he was. It's sort of a love story to Texas, of course, it's a love story so it's about a girl and a bit about my family, my grandad being one of them. So there's a number of things, he's one of the best people I've ever met, he's a man of character, a man of strong moral values, a prototype for everything that I've aspired to be in my life.
ME: What are the sorts of things we he would say that have stuck with you?
SEAN: He talked about everything, he taught me about life, he was raising men, and sometimes when your raising men some of the things you have to teach them people may find offensive, but it surrounded in a suitcase of nothing but love and he taught me a lot of the pertinent details of life.
ME: What would your grandfather say about the world today?
SEAN:You mean after he was finished rolling his eyes, right now political correctness is ruining a lot of things, I mean it takes away your ability to converse with someone, because if saying the mere word offends people or “triggers” people, or if they need a safe space. If you really need to “check your privilege, then the conversations over before it even began. If you have to check anything before walking in the door, conversations over. I'm mean if I have to limit my dialogue so that I don't possibly hurt their feelings, I'm interested in saving lives not feelings, I am. I prioritize life.
Right now people are talking about this kid that fell into an ape pit, you have an eighteen-month-old.
ME: I was going to avoid talking about this tonight, only because I'm just so sick of hearing people condemn the mother as if it's even remotely possible to keep your eyes on your children every single second, as a parent I know that's just not possible.
SEAN: You have an eighteen-month-old though.
ME: I do, I do, and that's why I think a lot of these people are hypocrites.
SEAN:You wouldn't say let's wait would you?
ME:No, no, never.
SEAN: Of course not, but no people are triggered because an animal was killed and of course it is horrible that an animal was killed. I'll tell you this man and I'm an animal lover it pains me that, that ape had to die. But you know something if you're driving down a dark road and you come around a blind corner doing 50 and there's a kid in one lane and a dog in another. You swerve toward the dog, that's what you do mother fucker, you save the human. There are so many things wrong with the world today.
ME: It seems an absurdity to me that people care more about this gorilla dying than they did about Tamir Rice, who was gunned down while playing in a park in the same state, it's very frustrating to listen to people talk about this.
SEAN: I can't even believe we're debating this, to me it's sad that a life was lost that a nearly extinct species had to die but you have to air on the side of the child, we're not going to wait to see what happens because it takes a millisecond for that gorilla to dismember that kid.
ME: Like I said, it only takes a second and you can not watch your kid every second, I know, my son runs circles around me on my best days and he gets out of my sight all of the time, does that make me a bad parent or him a bad kid? Of course, not, he's just being a kid and as a parent, I can only do so much, I do my best to keep him safe but in the end, he's got to figure things out for himself.
SEAN: There are a lot of wrongs to go around was the zoo wrong, yes. Was the child wrong, yes? Was the parent wrong, yes. But if you find yourself in this sort of scenario you kill the ape, it's that simple and I defy any mother fucker with a child of their own they'd wait it out, because that's the mother fucker that needs to have CPS visit their house and get that kid out of there, because if you would put an animal's life over that of your own child you don't need to have children.
ME: What do you think about Donald Trump's rise to prominence?
SEAN: If you extract all of the nonsense, there are a lot of things that I agree with him on and there's a lot of things I disagree with him on, and I can pretty much say that with all three that are left in this race. I'm no socialist by any stretch of the meaning but there are things I agree with Bernie Sanders on, very few, but you know what I mean.
ME: Personally I'm an Anarchist, with that said though I'm one who still votes in addition to all of the other work I do at the ground level, and I'd have to say that my hats in with Bernie, I find that he's honest and he stands on his record, none of the other candidates can say that and if they are saying it they're full of shit.
SEAN: Look if you tell me that you can't agree with anything anyone else is saying then you're lying or coming at this with biases already in place, there are commonalities with all of them and every one of them says things that make sense. Unfortunately, it gets wrapped up in the cloak of well it's Donald Trump, but if you get what he says transcribed and you try to look at the ideology there are more similarities than differences.
There was a study done, I think it was at Stanford, I wanna say it was with George Bush, and I forget who and they transcribed on a big screen and they said. I think it might have been Mitt Romney, and they said this is what Mitt said and this is what Obama said. Now fifty of you are Democrats and Fifty of you are Republicans, they asked the Democrats to raise their hands if it changed their thoughts on the candidate after reading what the answers were, and no one raised their hand. Then they asked the Republicans and they said no. Really because we flipped the answers, this is what you're dealing with in this country.
ME: No, you're right a lot of people really have no idea what many of the candidates really stand for or what they stand for, nor how close each of these two parties really are to each other in ideology.
SEAN: Now, do I think Trumps a clown, look I don't think you can achieve that level of success with having a pretty good understanding of economics and business. Do I think there are holes in his game, yes absolutely. But I won't just discount him as a clown and I don't just limit it to say oh, he's a reality show guy.
ME: He's very dangerous, his mouth shut, and actually think things through before speaking or acting ME CONT: is incredibly dangerous, he's divisive and I'm not sure he has a real plan for any other things he talks about. Of course I also feel much the same way about Hillary, the difference being that she does know what she's talking about and she has a plan, it's just one that happens to strongly favor the elites at the expense of everyday people, both are hawks though and either one we get will lead us into more disastrous wars.
SEAN: That's very much possible on both counts, they're not that far off from each other.
ME: You were in the movie Powder, what was it like dealing with a situation where a character was so far outside of the norm as to be almost alien? To be ostracized so completely from the social group.
SEAN: Here's the thing, everybody and I mean everybody was bullied, going back to the P.C. Thing again. I teach kids martial arts class and I've never met a kid who wasn't bullied in some way shape or form. The jocks bully the smart kids, physically, the smart kids bully the jocks intellectually, the popular kids bully the unpopular kids and Visa Versa.
It's like this how do you treat a fish, you don't you treat the water, how do you handle a bully, you don't you handle the kid being bullied, if a kid who's being bullied stands up for himself, guess what he's not going to be bullied anymore. A lot of people say well how did you relate to that, you do look like you were ever bullied and I tell them everyone knows what it's like to be ostracized at some point in their life on some level, I think it's both a personal and universal experience.
I tell you the moment you shave those eyebrows you know what those stares from the other corner of the room feel like.
ME: I understand what you're saying me and my wife spent a good bit of time documenting homelessness from their perspective and a lot of that was us living with them and truly feeling what it's like to be down at the bottom and having to look up at the world and the world looking down on you. Those experiences will color and shape the work we do for the rest of our lives. Did your experience on Powder or with the kids in your program influence you in the role for Boondock Saints?
SEAN: I'll tell you this if a script is well written, all the inspiration you need will be between fade in and fade out and when it's not well written then you need to take it outside and find your inspiration in the world. Yeah, when it's well written the inspiration is on the page.
ME: Continuing with Boondock Saints, the first two didn't do so hot in the theaters but late-found success in the home market do you think the upcoming Boondock Saints 3: Legion will turn out the same or will the series cult classic status turn it into a blockbuster?
SEAN: Well I don't know if we're making a third (I give him the Spock eyebrow and he smirks at me) but who knows, with any film you want to make the best film possible but the ingredients to give a film high view ship don't just come down to high quality, it's also about marketing, it's down to discoverability, there's a lot that goes into it. So, it's not just about making something good, it's about making something good, giving people access to it, making it affordable, making them realize where they can find it, how. You know there's a lot of different things that go into it.
ME: You're a Black Belt in Brazilian Ju Jitsu, have you ever studied with the Gracie family?
SEAN: Oh yeah, Studied under the Renzo Gracie Lineage, one of his Black Belts. That's how I got my SEAN CONT: Black Belt under Shawn Williams, who's one of his Black Belts.
ME: How long have you been involved with martial arts?
SEAN: Since I was nine.
ME: High Five on that one, I've been involved with it since I was about five or six, my mother was in martial arts as a teenager and started teaching us very young, so I may have actually started younger than that. I'll likely continue the tradition with my son too.
What if any is your favorite professional fight?
SEAN: Oh man; there's a bunch I mean there's a ton, probably Randy Couture, the first time he beat Tito Ortiz was an amazing fight to watch when he beat Chuck Liddell was an amazing fight to watch. Anderson Silva, Chael Sonnen, both of those were great fights to watch.
ME: It would have to be Tank Abbott and Royce Gracie, I also liked a lot of the stuff from the beginning of UFC, the fights were a lot better back then, a lot more brutal.
SEAN: yeah I'd have to agree, I liked a lot of the fights back in the beginning of UFC.
ME: We have a vote on the Transpacific Partnership coming are you for the TTP or any of these supposed free trade deals?
SEAN: Here's the thing whenever we talk about the TPP or free trade a lot of people don't understand what that means. For example, free trade, if you say to a company well you can't go overseas and now you have to make your cars in the United States. Well now, they're competing against all of these other companies that pay their workers a dollar an hour and some Unions force you to pay eighty dollars an hour. So that in and of itself may be considered free, but you have automatically made yourself uncompetitive. There are markets we can't compete in because they have don't have any labor laws in places; like China, like we have in America, so is that free trade? Well no, not really, because they're not operating under the same guidelines.
So it's like free trade, is not free trade is not free trade. So then if you say we're going to make the difference via punitive tariffs, well the only reason their product is so expensive is because there's a heavy tax on it so that only deals with their sales in the U.S. you're still having to compete with them on the global markets.
I think it's wonderful for people to make fifteen dollars an hour, I think it's wonderful when people make twenty-five dollars an hour, you continue that logic I think it's wonderful for people to make a thousand dollars an hour but there comes a tipping point where the product or service they're providing can't be competitive with someone, maybe from another country who's making five dollars an hour.
ME: Isn't that in itself the problem?
SEAN: Absolutely because we're competing in a global economy, but we're only really making rules for America, how are we going to compete in a country like India, Pakistan or some other country that really doesn't have rules to protect its workers or to even put us on an even playing field? I think it's wonderful for Bernie to say people making T-shirts should be making fifteen dollars an hour but your not going to sell those T-shirts, in fact they're going to go belly up, when somewhere else in the world they're being made by workers making ninety-five cents an hour people are going to buy the cheaper product unless there is some sort of moral imperative to say buy only products made in America but I don't see people doing that. Behind closed doors people yield to what is the most economically friendly to their direct family , people aren't going to say well I'm going to go upside down because I want to do what's right for the country, people just aren't going to do that.
Everybody tries to mitigate their taxes no one says ,oh fuck it, don't write it off I want to pay more, whether their middle income, upper income or super rich everyone tries to mitigate their taxes.
They talk about Donald Trump they say well he's having his ties made in China, well if he doesn't he's stupid, number one he's the CEO of a publicly traded company, he has a fiduciary obligation to his shareholders to turn his shareholders profit. So if he said I'm going to be a patriot, let's make them in the US and let's spend three times as much to manufacture each tie. Really he should be fired for not doing what's legal and have them made in China where the cost per tie is lower and losing his shareholders one-third of the profit. I mean why be a good person and cost your shareholders money, there's no incentive, now I'm not saying it's morally right but this is the world we live in.
In the MMA is a cool thing to just take a guy down and hold him for five minutes, no, but those are the rule and if you can do it then well go and get the win, you see what I'm saying. I can't fault somebody for looking at the rules under a microscope and say this is the best way to achieve this product under the rules, not doing anything illegal, but say can I get this made for less here, then going ahead and doing it or saying is going to cost me more over here, is it a better product okay well let's go over here.
That's why when you're dealing with the global economy you can't make laws just for your country, you have to think about them in global terms. That why the Unions were so great in the fifties, the economy wasn't global, you could pay your workers higher wages and you're
not competing with the guy making a nickel but once you enter the global market you're going to lose every time.
ME: Do you think it's time for us globally speaking here, as humanity to get out of fossil fuels?
SEAN: Here's what I have to say on that, I don't care if you believe in global warming or not, I think everyone can agree that burning oil doesn't help things, you know what I mean. So; I'll be honest with you, am I one hundred percent convinced that carbon emissions are causing global warming, no I'm not. Does it mean that I don't think that we should be curbing these emissions, no it doesn't it's better to error on the side of caution, and maybe we'll find out one day that's not the problem but no matter how you look at it's not good. Is there a cleaner way, I'd rather error on the side of the cleaner way, why wait to find out until it's too late. That being said we live in a global economy are you going to force you factories to stop doing it and compete with those that can, I don't know it's a big question, man.
ME: We covered a lot of stuff tonight, you have an interesting take on things. I can't say that I agree with everything but that's what having a conversation is about getting other people's perspective. Unfortunately, I don't think we get to do that enough, I think we tend to stick too closely to people with our own viewpoints, so this was rather refreshing.
SEAN: Definitely, like said we live in a global marketplace and that has to include idea which means people have to get out there to other people, get their perspectives and you have to do that without expectations from the other person, you have to meet people where they are.
ME: Maybe the next time you're in town we'll have to get together and do this again, beers and all, at a dive bar, though, after all, this is Philly and if you not drinking at a dive bar you're not drinking in a bar. It's like coming to Philly and not having a Philly, have you really been here, and have you really ever had a cheesesteak?
SEAN: Well played Sir, Wel
