King Saud Q & A

Q:  Do you think it's OK for someone to take the law into their own hands when the system fails?

A:  It's right for an individual, if they're right, but I wouldn't pass a law that allows that, because then every yoohoo with a grudge would go around knocking off their enemies and we'd have chaos.  But if I was the Detective investigating the murder of a murderer whom the system let go, I would give that person a pass.  Or if I was investigating the murder of one of these greedy little pricks who keeps giving me these pissy little banking fees or a University guilty of student loan fraud, I'd probably let anyone who whacked them go too.

Q:  You'd sanction the murder of an entire University?

A:  Which University?  I mean, no, of course not, that's nuts.  Disproportionate anyway.  I don't think they should be protected from litigation as they are now though, this entire bloated, inflated University structure that's been fed on nothing but gov guaranteed student loans for the past 40 years serves no economic purpose, they're pure parasites actually depressing the economy, if you let loose the dogs of war and let the plaintiff's bar feed on the ones actually committing fraud (i.e., falsifying their employment or post grad salary stats -- Trump University wasn't the only one doing that, it goes all the way to the top, just like Wall Street), to the point of even wiping them out, the economy wouldn't be missing anything important, it would actually grow faster.  They're actually sucking everyone's blood, not just the taxpayer and their student victims.

Q:  Why should anyone pay attention to King Saud?

A:  If you're an artist or a scientist, or both, and I claim to be both, the biggest and most powerful thing you can claim is that you have vision.  You can see the future in some way.  I defy anyone to watch my first movie, Prince of Swine, and tell me, whatever its flaws as a movie, some of which I concede, but don't detract from its enjoyment, that it's not a pitch perfect prediction of what became true.  Now it's not because I knew Harvey Weinstein personally (though the studio in that movie, Trimax, has shades of Miramax), it's because I understand power, the way our system works, the country I live in and human nature.   And that movie was released 5 years before anyone, including me, knew what he was really up to.   It didn't change anything, but I think at the very least the New York Times owes me an apology and a retraction.

King Saud is exactly the same way, but even moreso.   Now it was written over ten years ago, and we were well into production before the lid really blew off this country with the election of Trump.  But I defy anyone to watch this movie and tell me it's not a pitch perfect prediction of where we are now and where we're going to be years from now even with Trump gone.  If the Dems don't seize the window or fuck it up, I can see Trump coming back in 2024, assuming they don't convict him of anything.  Even if they try to get us out of the ditch and fail, which is at least a 50/50 chance, we're in bad shape, I can see that opening the door for him.  He lost, but he got 74 million votes.  Biden only got 81 million.  So that's 74 million people who still want Trump.  They're not going anywhere.  It's no more unlikely a scenario than him winning the first time.  Make no mistake, if not for Covid, Trump would have won in a landslide, we're talking Nixon/McGovern or Reagan/Mondale like numbers.

Now I don't consider any movie important by itself, because they're not specific enough, they're not scientific, I just consider them enjoyable as entertainment for anyone with good taste as well as proof of vision.  Just by themselves movies are, at best emotionally moving, satisfying or entertaining, but frivolous, they don't change anything in and of themselves.  But they're the best way in our time to get media power.  

Now the non-fiction stuff I'm the science writer for, I do consider that important, not because I wrote it, I had a lot of help and those ideas are all intuitive anyway, everyone in our time, right and left knows there's something wrong with our economy, our way of life, and everyone also has at least an intuitive feel for the best potential which is achievable in our time.  The art and science of a book like that is focusing and articulating that intuition and then articulating the exact scientific route to its realization.  That I consider important, it's like a person's life coming into focus and having a meaning, except for an entire society, an entire tribe.  And the fiction stuff is the only means to get the non-fiction stuff published on a big and mainstream enough level to lodge those ideas in the mind of the American people.  The publishers, they're not as bad as Hollywood, but they have to believe you can sell before they'll bankroll and promote a book like that, and if you can sell a movie you can sell anything.  I mean we could get published academically tomorrow, but it's academic, it never leaves the academy, the ideas never reach the public in any way to move them or make them understand.  And those ideas can not only predict the future but shape and change it for the better.

Q:  What are those ideas?

A:  Well, I need a book for that, I need to command public attention for a whole book to get it through their heads and I don't have the media power for that yet. I can sketch them here, I will in the later sections, but I can't really prove them, motivate anyone to specific action or answer all the objections, without a full length non-fiction book published on a national, mainstream level.  King Saud needs to be a hit, not even a very big hit by Hollywood standards, anything that makes the charts, even an underground indy hit, would be enough to command the media platform I need to get published on that level.

Q:  But aren't the same ideas in the movies?

A:  Yeah, but not in specific enough form to act on, only in an emotional form people can feel and enjoy, their brains would explode or it simply wouldn't register as anything important if you gave it to them in pure scientific form at this point.  It's like putting medicine in something sweet or in alcohol so it goes down easier, or your adrenaline overcomes the pain/danger/horror.  Inertia or momentum in the wrong direction, rather than entrenched interests, are a bigger challenge to getting anything done in our system.  It's a fight, but not really against any particular entrenched interests, these change all the time, you may or may not mix it up with any number of people along the way depending on your political and business skill, but it's a struggle just to command the attention and move any system our size, we're so big, it's like the Roman empire.  So what do you need in any fight, what's the first thing to kick in that makes a lot of other things possible and amplifies everything?  Adrenaline.  Emotion.  Now this is not an action movie but a movie can command more adrenaline or at least emotion than a book, or for that matter, a scientific theory.  A theory has been stripped of all emotion, by design, it's just factual, not fictional.  We only allow emotion or passion in fiction, cause, ya know, in the real world, it's dangerous shit.  Leads to war, market crashes, broken hearts, syphilis and all that stuff.

King Saud picks up where Prince of Swine left off, but it's darker and deeper.  The difference between a civil and criminal case is the level of violence, my experience was very similar to my heroines in both my movies, when I was very young, being overwhelmed by a side of the system no child should see, the corruption of power, baptized in fire, but not just harassment.  Madness, violence, murder, whistleblowers, institutional corruption, to the point of not just ripping people off or even ruining them, but killing them, cold blooded murder, and I can tell you, once you’ve been kissed by violence, you’re never the same.  

Sometimes it kills you, but if you survive, it’s not the end of the world, it happens to everyone sooner or later, it happened to the country on 9/11, some people seek it out, just out of curiosity, not rape, but darkness, danger, that Madonna song, Justify my Love, that’s exactly what that’s about, because they want to know the dark, exciting side of life or, in a positive way, they want to know the antidote to brutality and human suffering.  But violence changes you forever, you’re never the same, ideally you’re better and a benevolent person, for both yourself and society, but it comes with a price, nobody, young or old, gets to that point without going through hell, heaven is out the other side of hell.

Q:  Just focusing on this movie for now, forget about whether it's prophetic or not -- 

A:  But that's the main claim to fame I'm making, that's why I'm seeking and deserve media power, without that it's just entertainment for people with good taste and insight, that's not a very big market, but regardless of whether you've got taste or insight or not, the big ideas I'm aiming for should concern you -- 

Q:  I get that, but putting that aside for now, on a more intimate/emotional level, what a movie can convey by itself --

A:  Say you're in the mood to laugh, and you go and see a comic.  If the comic is at all good and you want to laugh, you're in the mood, not fighting it, you'll probably laugh.  We can promise you, if you're open to what we want you to experience, you can experience it through King Saud.

Q:  Which is what?

A:  Not to be pretentious, but I would call it religious experience.

Q:  Which is what?

A:  I would define it as the full experience of the power of nature, but it doesn't destroy you, and you bring that experience back to society in some way that benefits/empowers both you and society, whereas before that you are either unrealized, naive, depressed or miserable, or an actual threat or drag to people, probably both.
Religious experience is a dangerous thing, it saved my life, but it killed my older brother.  That show, Nine Perfect Strangers, they're exploring this now.  Everything that woman does is so dangerous, ya know, could be enlightenment, could be death.  That show is realistic in that its exploring the area where these things happen, but she could never survive as a business, she'd get sued into the ground.  Anything meaningful doesn't happen over ten days either, you might have some extreme experience in that time, but it's meaningless, or at least transient, no big deal, unless you can incorporate it into your life over the period of a lifetime, and it has some good effect on the tribe.  It doesn't need drugs either, every drug she uses in that show has a corresponding drug in the human body that releases naturally if you just press yourself to your full potential.

Q:  Religious experience is violent?

A:  In its pure, raw form?  Yes, ferocious, wild and dangerous, there's no guarantee you survive.  Nature is just as easily destructive as benevolent - wolves could eat you, a flash flood, a supernova.  But suppose you avoid these things, venture out into nature, and stretch your limbs, flex your muscles, open your mind, as far as all will go, walk ‘til you drop, 'til you're good and tired, exhaust your barriers to the outside world, demand an answer from God.  Something will happen, I assure you, it happens to everyone who does this, knock and the door shall be opened, the universe will show itself to you, at full power, it will engulf you, like a wave.

Now it depends on how you react to it if it's a good or bad experience.  Maybe it will kill you, maybe your mind will open too far, you can't close it and you go mad or have a heart attack.  That happens to some people.  

Q:  Is this an artistic experience or a religious one?

A:  I guess it could be either.  There's a difference between esthetics and morality, but they're also related.  There's an esthetic in the movie, and one I try to live by too.  

Q:  What is it?  

A:  There's such a thing as animal beauty, I mean, there's animal ugliness too.  Two dogs humping in a trash dump, that's not particularly beautiful, or wolves eating a fly ridden buffalo alive in a swamp, that's pretty ugly.  And you can’t blame that on man, that’s just God given ugliness or the ugliness or savagery of nature.  But say, a wild horse running in a field, or just how a tiger moves with animal grace, that's beautiful, so the universe has the potential for beauty too, and that’s our job as artists, to capture beauty and ugliness, and say, see, this is this and this is this.  Complex, huh?  But it’s the main things moderns suffer from, being cut off from this in an artificially ugly world, whatever its comforts.  You can feel that beauty, just out in the wild or in nature.  If you need that explained to you, you're lost and beyond redemption, that's something you have to feel, at full power, without reduction, and if you refuse to feel it or are so corked up by society you can't, you are truly beyond redemption.  I guess the only way modern people feel the power of nature any more is through sex, but it doesn't have to be sexual.

I'm such a geek, when I was little and lost, one of the first times I felt it again was in a book, there's a passage in the Autobiography of Malcolm X where he's talking about the first time he danced, and he was worried because he didn't know how to dance, but something took over, he called it an African ancestral memory, but really it’s just making contact with the rhythm and feeling of the universe, letting it possess you.  That has real power, I was never shy or inhibited on a dance floor again after that, which was odd, I was shy in everything else.  It was a psychological change which morphed into a physical one too, it changed my body, women were attracted to me for the first time, I guess I just moved or held myself differently.  I’ve seen actresses undergo amazing transformations, from plain to animally magnetic, over the course of a few minutes audition, because of the power of a character inhabiting them.  Nobody thought James Gandolfini was sexy until he played Tony Soprano, unleashed his inner animal, that’s the power of good writing, of a character and an actor to inhabit it.    

Q:  That character was evil –   

A:  Yeah, esthetic doesn’t necessarily correspond to morality, raw nature is another word for evil or savagery, it’s just a wild animal thing, the ideal would be to let it inhabit you but turn it to some beneficent thing, and Tony Soprano could have done that, he was a natural leader, he could have been heroic just as easily as a scumbag.  I don’t think there is any esthetic or beauty or morality without turning that loose, even if you have to also restrain it in society, that tension, that’s creative tension, you do have to restrain it, but at the same time, if it’s not alive at full power, you don’t have full beauty, and if it’s dead, bleh, that’s modern ugliness for you.  The idea that you should repress evil, that’s a terrible idea, that will end up in perversion and defeat in the long run, some sort of twisted version of the human animal.  Rather, you let it loose, let it run free, and then tame it I guess through compassion or love.

Whether it's esthetics or morality, if you fight the experience or don't understand it, you're not in the mood, it's unpleasant, even destructive, awful, the same way if you're not in the mood for sex and someone tries to have sex with you, that would be rape. Now if you don't want to have sex, you can usually avoid somebody or everybody - 

Q: Assuming you don't work in Hollywood.

A:  Yes, well, we just have to run faster here, and fortunately most of the perps are too fat to catch us.  I don’t want to get stuck on some trauma, mine or anybody else’s, that’s just the beginning of something artistic, not the end.  But fuck even that, if there’s one thing I’d want anyone to know, one thing I’ve found most valuable in life and has never let me down, under any circumstances, is that if you’re aware of that source, all around you, you can always return to it, it’s a source of inexhaustible energy and renewal – and well, I don’t know how to say it, I was clinically depressed, reckless in a way you can’t believe, nobody thought I’d make it to adulthood, but ever since that experience, never been depressed again, never felt alienated or like I didn’t belong in the world, you just know the universe is your home, you came from it and will return to it, and you can see how society rises out of nature, out of energy, God, whatever you want to call it, nothing is ever unfamiliar or apart from you after that, even violence.  Ya’ know, the gods are playful and pityless, you can have everything one moment, and the next, it’s all taken away.  Other people, sometimes they’re great, sometimes not.  You want a friend in Hollywood, get a dog.  But this is the one thing you always have and can always come back to, make an effort from -  

Q: That’s a personal code – 

A: It is, it’s my code – 

Q: But on a political level, so we just accept rape as a fact of life?

A: Well, do we accept war or murder? No, but they happen. Do you know the rate at which we solve murders in this country? I’m not sure you want to know.

Q: The solved rape rate is even worse.

A: That's true, but at least you're not dead. Women can come back from rape, even stronger than before, you'll get crucified before you're resurrected, but it can be done. I’d really be uncomfortable, and it would be a lie for anyone to give a woman anyone or anything she could depend on 100% all the time, except ya’ know, be aware everyone is potentially an animal, most people repress it their entire lives and are miserable, but harmless. Some master it and are happy, powerful, beautiful, benevolent. Some it masters them and they fuck everyone up, spread disaster and pain. Everyone else is somewhere in between. But the bad one can break out at any minute, and we need to know ahead of time what we’d do in that situation, because it’s too late once it happens, it just gets on top of you if you’re still an innocent, ya’ know, your body is releasing all this adrenaline, your body knows how to fight, but civilization robs us of our edge and we panic, we forget how to fight. Even a woman can fight off a bigger attacker when she’s pumped to the gills with adrenaline, it’s the cliché of the mother lifting the car to save her baby. Plus, you have that animal awareness and you can read people below the surface, “This one’s very sad, but harmless. Oooo, there’s a dangerous pig, avoid him.” I mean, you can’t follow women around all day and protect them, that’ll get you a restraining order in the feminist age. If you protect a woman, she's protected while you're around, but teach her how to protect herself, how to be strong and free, and she's always protected.

All this “It’s a man’s world”. That's half true and half a lie. Men occupy both the top and the bottom. Most positions of power are held by men, we control more money, but 99% of men are powerless, 90% make the same or less than women, women are actually making more than men in many blue states, and when you really get to the bottom, it’s almost all men. In prison, homeless, suicides, who dies in war, men way outnumber women like this. Rape and breast cancer are the only things where female victims far outnumber men. We're at the top and bottom, and you're in the middle, the center. Generally, the women are more suffocating and suffering in silence, you’re not so much wreckage on the highway like men. I believe women are more depressed because they’re more sensitive/empathic, but you just sort of linger and suffer and rot, you don’t explode like men do for the most part. 

Q: This is what the movie’s about, that does sound like 100 minutes of a really good time?

A: Well, I put the antidote to that in the movie, I didn’t leave people in hell, but you have to visit hell to demonstrate the antidote, hell doesn’t have to be the end of the story, it’s not in anything I write, and I live what I write, anyone who’s ever met me knows that. I mean, that’s what you do, you hold up a mirror and whisper, “Hey, here’s the way out.” I wish someone had done that for me as a kid.

A political solution to lessen violence? I think an economy which is good for everyone generally does that, my non-fiction does this, it blueprints the optimum economy we're capable of in our time, just dramatically superior for everyone, rich and poor, in terms of personal freedom and material well being, this is no mistake things are heating up in this country when the economy is so skewed. But a good economy is no guarantee, people are inherently violent anyway, a good economy just lessens conflict greatly. I don't think these witchhunts will have a good or less violent effect, I think they'll backfire, they're already blunting sympathy for the women who've been raped, and there's nothing that could make men want women in power less than the sort of whacked out hypocritical witchhunt that got Franken, a lot of it led by female rivals who've got skeletons in their closets themselves. Stuart Smalley, who every Mom and Dad in America fears their daughter will be ravaged by?

Just generally, violent is the way Americans seem to want it, this is a theme that runs all through American life, not just in rape, Americans will tolerate violence, whether it's rape or murder, 80% of homicide victims are men, but we despise anything that takes away our freedom. My Dad was a scientist who worked for the government, he was just like that Jared Harris character in Chernobyl, the Russian system is so much worse, you're talking about tens of thousands of deaths in Russia, and a few hundred people a year in the US, but the political situation for a scientist was exactly the same, knowing everything and being powerless.  The work that got him in so much trouble is he discovered a way to predict mine explosions, that could prevent, say, a few hundred people a year from being buried alive in cave-ins.

Q: Great.

A:  One would think.  But no, both the mining companies, the unions and the government tried to bury or ignore the work, the mines were making a lot of money and the discovery created a legal liability, nobody wanted to upset the apple cart.  Not even the miners.  It hurts me to say this, because I grew up amongst working class people in Pittsburgh, and they showed me a lot of familial affection growing up.  But they are the dumbest fucking group of people in the country.  Not even they cared about the work, they would rather die than think or take precautions.  There actually was a method to lessen explosions before my father discovered a better one, you were supposed to spread this sort of sawdust which kept down the level of explosive dust in the mines, but the miners didn't even use it, couldn't be bothered.  This is basically where soldiers come from, they're just like soldiers, I remember a Vietnam vet on TV lamenting the death of his son in Iraq, "Ah cud nawt buh-lieve the govmint wud lie to us like that.  What iver in mah experience cud have prepared us for sech deception?".  If a person is afraid of their brain like that, because thinking is too scary, too much trouble, ya’ know, I’m OK with writing them off, it bothers me when they do it to kids though.  Kids are already, by definition, stupid, we shouldn’t add to it and con them. 

Doing something artistic, what happened to me as a kid, that’s definitely the source of it, but making a movie you want more general, universal themes that apply to everything, it’s not really art until you’ve taken your experience and made it universal and triumphant like that.  Even in a fantasy, you have to engage the darkness of the world, any story that doesn't do that is cheating the audience, not true to life and the audience will dismiss it.  At the same time, nobody wants to see a depressing story that ends in defeat and you've got no business making art if your message is defeat and doom.  You can do that in a song, release your sadness, like Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, that's a beautiful song, we have moments of release like that in the movie, but you can't do that for a whole movie, writers who aren't about anything generally can't finish in any satisfying manner.  If that song were a whole movie the audience would be like, "Hey, why don't you get off the dock of the bay and get a job, already, loser?".  An American audience anyway.

Even if Harvey Weinstein is chasing you, or gay Harvey Weinstein (not to be confused with Harvey Fierstein!), that's not an everyday occurrence, you can usually avoid whoever it is, get some sleep.  And God forbid you have to fight someone like that, fight to get out of a room, a fistfight, fight a long term battle in court or business, all of those require courage, when you get filled with that natural fighting spirit, you’re getting out of nature’s way and letting it take hold, when we’re attacked our natural inclination is to fight, that’s where courage comes from.  

Now you can usually avoid a fight, and that’s usually best, but there's no avoiding the universe, the universe takes you whether you're ready or willing or not, there is no escape, we're part of the universe, inseparable from it, living without that awareness is the definition of hell, alienation, so best we get in tune with it and try to maintain the right spirit, that's heaven, when you're in tune and at peace with everything around you, connected to everything and have all the natural forces working in your favor, mastered smoothly, for both you and your tribe.  What other choice do we have?  Move to some other universe?  Things will be any easier there?  This universe can be spectacular as well as horrible.  Even if we're not the aggressor, if we deny aggression, aren't aware of it, even when it's latent, which it usually is in the modern world, then we're afraid, we're too weak to fight back if someone does attack, people and society get the jump on us. 

Even when we’re not attacked, a state of grace, to me that’s a state of natural animal beauty and power, in the way a tiger or a horse is beautiful, just running in a field, perfectly what it is, with animal joy, something is wrong with our way of life if we can’t feel and experience that any more, it’s like we don’t belong on this planet any more and there’s no way we can find life beautiful.

Suppose a woman comes back to society in this state.  Just walking down the street, she radiates this animal grace and magnetism, something purely natural and God given, her birthright, her full power and potential, without even being particularly sexual or trying, she’s immensely more charismatic and sexual.  That’s dangerous.  It’s dangerous to every man who sees and wants her, it can bring us to our knees with desire, and it’s also dangerous to her.  She walks down the street and every guy who sees her wants to pounce on her.

Q:  The universe is inherently violent?

A:  Are thunderstorms man made?  Are predators some political conspiracy?  Yeah, there's a streak of violence in the universe and in us, we're naturally hunter gatherers, we're capable of compassion too, we make babies and care for them, but that's only half the story, there's no heaven without hell.  This is not exactly a new philosophy, "Can you rage like thunder, but be supple like a babe?", that's the ideal, in a lot of traditions.  I would call that being a gentleman, i..e., both gentle and a man.  Take it out of a sexual context, if you're not in the mood to exercise or run or fight, and someone makes you, that's brutality.  But if you are in the mood, c'est magnifique, non?  Exhilirating?   

Q:  I'm reminded of that scene with Gary Sinise, up on the masthead in the storm in Forrest Gump --

A:  Yes, yes, making his peace with God!  With the suffering of the world.

Anyone born after 1945 lives with the consciousness, which is so omnipresent we don’t even notice it, that you can be fried at any moment.  That absolutely changes modern people from everyone who came before us.  You look at western culture, and the dominant symbol of western culture is the crucifixion.  What is it?  It’s a big scarecrow, isn’t it?  Look at the crucifixion, it’s the exact same silhouette as a scarecrow you’d put up in a field to protect crops (exactly the same function as Christianity, “God save us from the beast laying waste to our vineyard” - we're the beast.  Why put up a warning against something that's not dangerous?), a warning against the passions, past this point danger lies, it’s all an attempt to curb the war-like, violent nature of man, and make us gentle and protective, good shepherds.  But what do we need that for if now we have the bomb?  It’s redundant, it’s doubly repressive.  The bomb already tells everyone, in real terms, not in imagination or off in “heaven”, we will fry if things get out of hand.  So a modern guy is already hesitant, a bit at odds with his nature, alienated from nature, simply by being born in a nuclear age.

Q:  We don't need the bomb or the crucifixion, men can just be trained to be more sensitive.

 A:  That card has been played for all it’s worth in the last fifty years, if this generation gets any more timid and sensitive you’re gonna have to start douching them.  Why do you think they elected this monkey?  Because even an idiot, a babbling chimp with its balls still attached, is better than the pack of mealy mouthed eunuchs we’ve had leading us for the last 50 years.  Look at all this bullying craze lately, “let’s make the world safe from bullying”, which I guess is a good thing, if you see a pack of kids bullying a weaker kid an adult should step in and stop it, and we should teach kids not to be bullies.  But what’s the one thing left out of that discussion?  The best way to stop bullying?  For the bullied to step up and pop that fuck in the nose.  That’s how you get stronger, that’s how you learn to fight and to be fearless, courageous, be both compassionate and a leader.  But that’s forbidden knowledge in the modern world, and what’s the message we send to kids instead?  “Cry for help, and someone bigger will come help you.”   That’s female behavior, that’s not male behavior.  And don’t think it doesn’t have a price.  

The country as a whole is basically being dominated by Wall Street in a way that’s not good for the whole, we’re working for them, they’re not working for us, or at least we’re not working together.  They’re out of control, the crack addicts of greed, they've bought both houses of Congress and the Presidency, both parties, and where is a Roosevelt, Democrat or Republican, to stand up and take them on, redirect them on the right path?  You’re gonna find that sort of balls and grand vision in this pack of castrated dwarves?  And don’t say Obama, I liked Obama, I voted for him twice, he was better than what came before and after, but when the banks said, “Wipe our asses” his answer was, “Is that clean enough, sir?  Do you want me to wipe your balls too?  Here's the keys to the Treasury:  please like me!  I can't go back to community organizing, it's so low rent and Michelle has expensive tastes now!”.  How can I put this delicately without offending anyone?  He was a lawn jockey for Wall Street.  And let’s be clear on this:  Obama?  Raised by women, dominated by women, not a strong male presence anywhere in his life.  Same with Clinton, though Clinton was secretly deeply resentful of this and acted out behind their backs.

Q:  I thought both were good Presidents.

A:  They were.  That’s a good philosophy, 99% of the time.  Except for that 1% of the time, which will always come sooner or later, which we're in now, when your back is against the wall and life demands a huge set of balls from you.  So everything is fine using that philosophy, until that time comes, and then you’re dead.  They’re like a tribe of bonobos.  All living in peace in the rain forest, happily fucking.  What does it take to decimate them?  One chimp.  Or a human being.  What’s the only thing that can protect you against that?  Another chimp or a guy with his balls still attached.

Did you listen to those tapes of Weinstein trying to get over on the actress?  He wasn’t really violent, he was whining the whole time!  “Please, please, give me sex, or I’m gonna punish you!”.  When you remove the spine from a man, but leave its balls attached, that’s basically what you’re left with, a big blob that still wants sex and sort of oozes all over you until you give it to him.  Men have inferior intuition, but it’s actually not that hard to read women.  Any guy, with a clear head, if the blood has not rushed out of his brain somewhere south yet, can look at a woman and determine, by her body language, by the way she reacts to you, even if she’s trying to hide it, whether she likes you or not.   The problem is it’s usually bad news, for most guys, most of the time, they don’t want to have sex!  It takes an effort of will, an effort of character, to master your cock at that point and walk away or at least just go about your business without distraction, the same sort of effort it takes to control the urge to violence.  So castrate away ladies, unless you’re actually going to remove our balls, like you do to dogs so you can pet them, all you’re gonna end up with is a pack of spineless losers, too weak to protect you, who still relentlessly want sex, but lack the strength of character to control that urge.

I mean obviously we have to repress and polish raw nature to live in society, we would be in a state of constant, open war, raping and pillaging otherwise, but that social repression only becomes a fatal problem if you can't unrepress it at full power, which is so hard for modern people to do as we're so cut off from nature, more than anyone in history. Digging up raw nature, letting it loose and then taming it, making it benevolent/palatable, that might be one definition of modern art or artfulness, it only becomes dishonest or pretentious if you lie about what you're doing and can't trace it back to the source, or aren't even aware of it.   Most modern people don't even know they're acting, living falsely, every day, just to get along in society.  It's why we're so obsessed with sex because it's the only time we make contact with raw nature for most people, especially women.  I got away from society to see this when I was young, but it was incredibly dangerous, twice as dangerous for a woman as a man to get completely outside of society, so women are more prone to social suffocation, repression and depression.

Q:  And you expect people to get that from King Saud?

A:  Well you could if you wanted to, it's one of many things you could get if you were in the mood, looking for it, not fighting it, it's what I would most want you to get, it's what I've found most valuable in life.  You don't have to see that to enjoy the movie though.  You can't preach or underline in a movie, have to keep things moving, entertain, give emotional pleasure and satisfaction.  A sort of muscular soulfulness is what we were going for.

The New York Times called my first movie “an ode to our basest instincts”, which it was, they were on the right track, but I’m very proud of that, not angry like they were.  I was like, "Thank you, bitch, what're you moaning about?".  They seemed less pleased than me though.  That chick blasted me with both barrels.  It's like if you're dusting off a kid and he or she thinks you're punishing them, they'll start crying, but then you tell them, "I'm just dusting off your clothes", then they immediately stop and crawl up in your lap, happy you’re paying attention and care.  They were unaware of your intention and it scared them emotionally.  But I must say, once you explain to women what you're up to, if you survive first contact, once they understand it, they usually change course and are passionate about it, the worthwhile ones anyway.

Q:  Humor me a bit more, expand on that for we less primaly gifted intellectuals -

A: King Saud is about the corruption of power, how systems renew themselves.  We gotta take power in life or power takes us, we become pawns or automatons, at the whim of others, or at least not leading the life we want.  To the extent society limits or enables our actions, we won't live in the society we want.  But it's a double-edged sword, if we use it wrong it cuts us back.  I for one believe power is ultimately rooted in the passions, in sex and violence, what Keynes might call animal spirits, which is not necessarily an amoral view, in how we master and react to them, people who don't see that, male or female, I tend to think they're in denial.  

There’s a difference between restraint and repression.  Restraint, whether it's sexual or with violence, either of the most intense passions, is a moral choice a person makes out of love and a desire to serve and protect people.  That restraint can be removed when a person’s the master of their innate power and they have need of it.  Repression, the person is in denial about human nature, who they are, it suffocates them personally, and their real nature is going to come out anyway in the end, usually in some perverse, weaker, unconscious and unhealthy way, it’s just an ugly, weak, ultimately powerless and suffocating way of life, for yourself and other people, where you’re at war with yourself, human nature and the universe.

Q: Why does it have to be violent?

A: I don’t know. I guess it doesn't have to be but I'm not surprised when it is.  Men, at least, seem to be born that way, I know I am and the only peace I get is to acknowledge that and tame it, try to be a gentleman, channel it into some good and great goal. Gentleman means both gentle and a man -- we overstress gentle to the point of hyper-repression, and it just breeds this -- 

Q:  Generation of wimps -

A:  Easily dominated by nobodies like Trump.  Other men seem to be that way too, whether it's repressed or not, women are violent too, but we're better at violence.  There's a balance of power, it evens out, I mean, I can't give birth or have multiple orgasms.

Q:  If we could ignore sex for now and remain on violence for just a bit longer - 

A;  Well look, we’ve been at war for the last 15 years, we’ve shunted off all the violence, bloodshed and dirty work onto the most vulnerable and naive segment of our population, suckering our young men and women into bearing the brunt of it in a way that is truly cowardly and despicable, but it plays out even in civilian life. Corruption and economic pressure seem to provoke and exacerbate it. These last two elections were the angriest, most vicious elections since 1968. That’s economic, that comes from economic corruption, stagnation and breakdown, not just corruption in our foreign policy. It’s not just male or political either, it's in our nature, the nature of the world. Have you ever seen a woman give birth? That’s the ultimate creative act, but it’s a violent, bloody, painful process. The world and human nature just seem to have a streak of violence in us and no matter how technologically advanced or sheltered we get, it doesn’t go away, we can’t escape from ourselves. I mean look at 9/11, we're minding our own business and bam, violence reaches out and tags us.

The real murder being investigated in King Saud is 9/11, but it's not really even about that. The roots of 9/11 and the crash were building long before we got tagged, they're always there, 9/11 just brought them to the surface. The American system is in need of a major adjustment, both economically and in how we go to war. Americans will have no more stomach for war for a long time, though most of us have barely been touched, we’ll lash out if we get tagged again, but that’s no solution in the long run. You just watch, a million could die in Syria and the US still won't step in. But economically right now, that’s what we can’t escape, that’s the more immediate threat, the violence building up in our system from the bottom up.

Q: What can we do about it?

A: Ideally it should be a creative tension, to propel us to something better. Now even I'm not pretentious enough to think a movie can do much by itself, but I'll tell you one thing we were after with King Saud. Say we were just pure escapist entertainment, like Star Wars, we want to succeed on that level, a rebel fight against overwhelming odds, or even Game of Thrones, which is much more adult, much more violent and sexual. But both of those, you're done with them, return to your life, and it's like you've been somewhere else. We want our audience to enjoy themselves like that, but when they're done, there's no difference between what we did and our lives, they're all revved up for life as we live it right now.  We're digging beneath the social and political surface and what's underneath is more fantastic and incredible, for good and evil, than any fantasy.  It’s surreal, but emotionally reassuring without being escapist, to know that these things are real, the movie gives vent to our deepest most buried feelings and reality, so we don’t feel like we’re going mad. If we saw it alone we might go mad, but if we see it in a group, we can all agree, "OMG, this is really happening."  

 A:  It's not like I'm above politics, nobody is, I'm down in the same shit as everybody else, 99.9% of making a movie or the better things I intend to do with media power is spending all day every day raising money, on the net, on the phone, on email, raising your media reach, so I'm doing the exact same thing Trump did, the same thing anybody who wants power is doing, Jesus, Hollywood is the largest whorehouse in the country like that - 

Q:  What's the difference?

A:  If I win I leave something better in my wake, better for people, the country and the planet, I don't mean a movie, you can't preach in a movie, it works as entertainment or it doesn't work, but just a movie by itself is a frivolous thing anyway.  I mean what you can do with the media power a successful movie gives you.  If he wins, it's like a metastasizing cancer, you're just adding to a growing cancer - 

Q:  You're running for President?  This is a Kanye moment?  

A:  No, I couldn't, wouldn't and you don't have to.  Real power is lodging an idea in the minds of the American people and getting it acted upon, he who commands the media commands the mind of the people, even Trump knew that, he just didn't occupy it with anything but shit, dragging everyone down to his level of bullshit and bad childhood drama.   I voted for Joe, not that I think it will change much, but anything's better than Trump.

Q:  Trump -   

A:  Enough about him, I don’t want to get political right off the bat, that train wreck sucks all the air out of the room, he's nothing but a disturbed child with too much money acting out, that he's what media power is reduced to, its most infantile, primitive form is a measure of a sick, immature society.  Anyway, there’s only two causes I’m really passionate about in life and I want both of them to be bi-partisan. You could see them reflected in the movie if I told you what they were, but nobody would be able to see them or tell if I was right or left just watching the movie.  If you took the Bernie camp and the Trump camp, ya’ know, emotionally, which is the level movies operate on, they’re almost the same, they have a common thing driving them.

Q: What?

A: The belief the country’s corrupt, that the Government’s been bought by corrupt interests and the game is stacked against the average person. It’s a belief I mostly agree with.

Q: How do you disagree with it?

A: It’s half corruption, but it’s also a scientific breakdown. About every 40 years our economic paradigm runs up against its own limits, becomes internally inconsistent, like an engine out of whack, the old solution becomes the new problem. So people, even the experts, honestly don’t know the right answer right now. That state will persist until somebody grabs the spotlight and gets the new answer listened to --

Q: What if they don’t?

A: The society goes belly up. But we’ve done it before. I believe we’ll do it again.