Joe Rogan - Instant Family is based on Sean Anders Life

So this movie is based in no small part on your own life experiences. It is. Of adopting an actual, you adopted like a full family. Three human children, yeah. Wow. That's wild. That's a bold maneuver, sir. Yeah. What were the ages? Six, three, and a year and a half. Wow. Yeah. What was the process? Well, it starts, and this is how it starts in the movie as well. My wife and I, for years, I wasn't making any money, including after I made Sex Drive. So I didn't really feel like I could afford to have kids, so whenever we'd talk about it, I'd just be like, not there yet. And then finally, when I felt like I was doing better, I was starting to get a career together, I just started to feel like I was going to be one of those old dads. By the time the kid was a teenager, I wasn't going to be able to play with him. How old are you now? I'm 49 now. I was 41 at the time. And so, God, is that right? Oh, man, it's depressing. Anyway, so I made this dumb joke to my wife. I said, look, why don't we just adopt a five-year-old that'll be like, I got started five years ago, and I'm like, I'm right back in the game. And she was like, you know, that's actually a really interesting idea. And I was like, no, I was totally kidding. Didn't mean anything about that at all. And then she went to a website, and she showed me the website. And then when I saw the website, I was like, oh, wow, you see these kids, you see their faces, you start to learn a little bit more about it. And we just started having conversations, and it went from there. Now I got three kids in a movie. And they're all siblings? Yes. So they all came from one mom, and how did they get separated from the family? I don't have a lot of details about that. You know, they don't really tell you. You know a little bit, but not much. I mean, I know that there were issues with drugs, and I think there was some kind of a fire at some point. But it's all pretty sketchy as far as what you hear. So you learn a lot about the kids themselves, but not that much about the situation. And what made you want to turn this into a film? Like I would imagine that's a very personal experience. Yeah. It was actually my writing partner, John Morris, because I had been about three years into it at that point. And the beginning of it was a nightmare. Like epic, bad decision, why did we ever do this? Really? Yeah. It was really a nightmare for a short time. And then when it came online and we became a family, it really became the best thing that ever happened to me. And you know, when John and I get together every day, we just talk about our lives a little bit. That's how we get started. So John had been hearing all these stories, and one day he just said, I don't know why we're not doing a movie about this, because nobody really knows how this works when you go into foster care and adopt kids. So we started talking about it. And then there was the conversation of whether it could be a comedy or not, because that's what we do. We make comedies. And John, again, was like, most of the stuff you've told me is really funny. So not all of it, of course. But that's and then we thought, wow, you know, we could approach this as a comedy, and we might be able to get, you know, a more general audience to get their their interest in it that way, because it'll feel less scary. Because that's the problem is that most movies that are made on this topic just frighten people and people think that these kids are all are all damaged and reachable. Right. You know, do you worry that it'd be like that movie 101 Dalmatians and a bunch of people start getting foster kids now and just screw them up? Yeah, we were talking about Top Gun about how, you know, remember when Top Gun came out and everybody joined the Navy thinking they were going to fly the plane? Right. Well, when the color of money came out, pool halls boomed across the country. I mean, a giant impact on pool halls from that one time cruise movie. And they just really a lot of people just got scammed out of their fucking pocket money. I'm sure there was some of that going on. I think the crazy thing about this, too, was that like on the set, you realize like when you when we're doing this, you go like, oh, yeah, I always thought of people who do that. Like, you know, they exist. But you're like, those are nameless, faceless angels. They're not real people. Right. If you're like, do any of your friends at Top Gun be like, no, I don't have friends like that. Like, those are other people, you know, and then you start like on the set. There was, you know, people visiting or consulting and there would be like, oh, you know, they adopted or they run some foster care thing. And then you're like, oh, like, this is actually something that people really do. Well, even like dudes on the crew that somebody would come up, you know, who's in the electrical department be like, oh, hey, bro, I got I adopted two kids, by the way, if you look really, wow, you know, or hey, I got adopted when I was four years old, you just would like once. Now you see it now everywhere. Yeah. And then someone hit me up. Someone hit me up yesterday. Like, my sister is adopting four siblings this week. Wow. Yeah. It's nuts. I mean, like, it's like something I don't want to it's almost like when your friend gets a car and then you start getting it everywhere. Yeah. No, it's exactly like that. We talked about that video that went around online of this little girl that realized that she's opening up a box and there's something in it that tells her that she's been adopted by these two people that are with her. And it's really yeah, it's impossible to not cry. Yeah. I mean, if you have any heart at all and you watch that little girl freak out and it's it breaks you up. I think that's almost the test as far as what you were talking about about how because believe me, I have to say, if you're a piece of shit or not, when you watch that. We should show that to a lot of people. What's your reaction? Oh, you're a piece of shit. You're a sociopath. Yeah. I mean, there's what you were just getting at as far as believe me, I'm not that guy that I didn't feel special or like any one of those sort of heart of gold angels. We have a line that's in the movie where Mark just says that's for the kind of people that volunteer when it's not even a holiday and we don't do that. Yeah, you should probably tell the audience that I'm not starring in this movie right now for people that are. No, those people are like, so Tom stars. No, it's just Mark Wahlberg. You're starring in the movie for like four and a half minutes. There you go. And then everyone else. And Mark Wahlberg stars in the rest of it. That's true. That's a good way of breaking it down. The movie is only probably like 90 minutes. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's not bad. We'll have probably like seven scenes. It's good scenes. Yeah, they're good scenes. Yeah. Now you've got a solid presence. You didn't make the poster. Didn't make the poster. Didn't make the poster. No, you know, you made the standy though. Did you know that there was there's a standy in movie theaters and you're in that. Oh, really? All right. I'll take that. I can still one heard that word. Standy, standy. Those are the big cardboard. Yeah. I never know what those things were called. I didn't know that either. Cardboard cutout thing. That's what I always call it. Cardboard cutout. Standy is the real, the real term. Is that the term in the industry? Yeah. That's an industry term. That's a real industry.