Hi, welcome to the You Can Quit Smoking podcast, where we go over stories of success with overcoming smoking addiction. Many people have moved through this radical transformation and use smoking as an opportunity for inner growth, with deeper self-awareness and a greater capacity for compassion. So many have done it and you can quit smoking, too. I'm your host, Jessi Hartnett, founder of Honor Your Heart.

Jessi:

I'm here today with Stephen Koeper. I'm so excited to be here with him. Stephen, can you introduce yourself?


Steve:

Hey, my name is Steve. I'm a resident of New York City, lifelong. I am a career martial artist and stunt performer. And I work in the television and film industry with a little detour of about 10 years after college and grad school working as an art therapist in pediatric oncology. So my life road has been pretty windy.


Jessi:
Yeah, a lot of variety there and a very interesting background. And so talk to us today about smoking. What's your story with smoking?


Steve:

You know, I was trying to think about what my story would be because it's so long. You know, I smoked for 24 or 25 years.


Unlike a lot of people, I did not start in my high school years and stuff. I actually started when I was 18 in my first year of college. I did three semesters in France studying medieval archaeology, which had absolutely nothing to do with what I graduated with. But it was an opportunity, so I did it.


You know, you're 18 and it's the ‘80s. The dollar is killer and you're living in a foreign country. Over there, I started smoking a lot of rolled tobacco mixed with hash. We started smoking hash, right? And then still, I was not just smoking plain old cigarettes. Tobacco for me was just a vehicle to smoke other things.


And then when I came back to America, I didn't have access to hash. So I just kept going with the tobacco, you know? And then it was just downhill from that point on.


The funny thing is I grew up with a family of smokers. My dad was a smoker. I remember him trying to quit many times. There's a family story that one of the biggest and first fights that my parents ever had when I was a kid was over my dad smoking because my mom was a non-smoker. And they caught me at age, I don't know, six or seven or something with his pack of Malboros pretending to smoke.


And my uncle smoked and a lot of people in my life smoked. My grandmother that I grew up with smoked. My grandmother, my father's mother, who was a lifelong smoker who died of emphysema and cancer living with us. We were her caretakers. My entire life I only knew her as an older sick person with lung cancer and emphysema.


She smoked her way through it, the whole way through it. Like she's the stereotypical old woman carrying the oxygen tank in one hand and the cigarette in the other hand. You know what I mean? So, this is the environment that I was raised in.


But I never actually picked up a cigarette myself until my first year of college. And then I quit in 2010. So, you're talking 24-25 years later, I finally after several attempts over the years.


I had broken my leg. I was preparing for a martial arts competition. I was going to go compete in England. During training for that, I broke my left leg in two places. And that led to several months of a non-weight bearing, bedridden life. And I decided to make quitting smoking part of my rehab of all that experience.


And what really kind of pushed me was a friend of my wife and mine recommended a book to me called The Easy Way to Quit Smoking. I don't know if you ever heard of it by Allen Carr.


Jessi:

Yeah, I've read it. Yeah.


Steve:

Yeah. So, if you wanted a very small sample size of my wife and I, because she was a smoker, too. Like it didn't work for her, but it totally worked for me. And I think part of the reason it worked for me was because I was stuck in bed and had nothing else to do.


The book encouraged you to smoke through the book. But once you get to the end of the book, that's your last cigarette. So, I sort of timed that. I finished the book when I was allowed to walk again and start going to rehab. And so, I just made quitting part of my plan.


So, for me, it was very contextual. I'm a very goal-oriented person. So, it worked out for me that time. And that was in 2010. So, that was quite a while ago.


But along the way, I've just been involved in cultures that embraced smoking. And I'm not afraid to say I enjoyed smoking. There was guilt over it. But the guilt was not because I was doing something unhealthy. The guilt was because everybody else was telling me I was doing something unhealthy. But I actually enjoyed it.


And I was training through it. I was very fit and I had all the rationalizations everybody could have, “I'm totally fit. I'm a competitive athlete. I'm a coach. I do all this kind of stuff. It doesn't affect my performance.” This, that, the other thing.


But eventually you just take stock of your life and realize, “Yeah, this is really stupid.” The end result of that entire book is just like when you finish the book, you really feel like, “Wow, I'm a dumb idiot, you know?” [laughter] Like “What am I doing?”


The book is like deprogramming people from cults or something like that. It literally just walks you through all the reasons why you're an idiot for having done this for so long. So yeah, it's been 16 years.


I still get cravings now and then. And for me, the cravings, they're not so frequent, but they do pop up like during super stressful times. You know, they say you're only as good a non-smoker as you are as you can handle stress.


And then the other times are sort of these romanticized moments. Like I will still when my wife and I are driving around. Let's say we're in a new neighborhood or we're traveling somewhere. And we're driving through the neighborhood and looking at houses. And we see a house with a nice front porch or something. I'll always say like, "Oh man, I'd love to just sit on the porch in the morning and have coffee and a cigarette." You know what I mean? Like it's still a thing.


Or like when I see movies where they're like sitting on the beach at sunset having a cigarette. Like the romantic social aspects of it still are ingrained in my brain.


So I'm not one of those people that could pick up a cigarette once in a while. It's all or nothing for me. I'm done. Like I just consider myself an addict forever. I know if I picked up a cigarette I would start again. At my worst I was like a one to two pack a day or I was smoking a lot.


Especially when I worked in the hospital. You have your relationship with the woman in the food truck outside who would sell cigarettes. You know, they would sell loosies. That's how you know when you're really bad, like you can just buy one from someone, but and it's like, “Hey, do you sell loosies?” “Yeah. Yeah, I have loosies”. And then so that was a part of our relationship, you know, was smoking.


And then working in the hospital.. you may have heard this before from other people. But working in the intense situations that we worked in in oncology and I worked also in ER and intensive care. All of us smoked. We all smoked. We would value our smoke breaks, our breaks to go out.


And I worked at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. The oncology clinic was connected to the main building by this sort of outdoor hallway with like a covered canopy. It was like a hallway but outside between the buildings. And along that hallway was the door to the morgue, right? And there were literally times where we would be standing out in that hallway smoking right next to bodies waiting to go in the morgue.


It was just part of the deal. We all smoked. We all knew it was crazy. We all knew we were working with people who had cancer and all these other horrible diseases. But we just did it anyway. It was just part of the culture.


And even when I was younger, I played in bands. I'm a piano player. I played in a lot of bands up through grad school. And we were always smoking.


And then even early in my years in art school, like once I started college. In the art world in the ‘80s, everybody was smoking. I was just surrounded by smoking.


So I tried to quit a few times over the years. But once I had quit for about 3 years and then my father passed away. And that just put me right back on back on with a vengeance I guess.


But yeah, that's the cliff notes version. It's hard because it was such a big part of my life for so long. It's hard to tell my smoking story because half of my life is my smoking story, right?


Jessi:

And all these different places you went and your relationships and it's just kind of woven throughout it.


And I just think that's really great that you used that opportunity because that sounds miserable. I've been on bed rest, for a very short period, but it's not easy mentally.


Steve:

No.


Jessi:

I'm just kind of wondering what your perspective was on it that you were like, "Hey, I’m doing a hard thing. Might as well do another hard thing." Or if you were kind of wrestling like those excuses that we go to. You know, where it's like, "Oh, I'm stuck here. I might as well have something that I want." Like what was the thought process with that?


Steve:

I mean, even when I was working as a therapist, we would suggest to people not to should on themselves. You know what I mean? Like don't should on yourself. And I was the king of shoulding on myself.


It was like, “I should be able to quit this. Like, what is the problem?” And then you had all these conflicting emotions. Like the part of you that really did enjoy it, that you didn't want to admit.


And then the part of you, like every other aspect of my life, I was pretty much able to just make a decision and do something. I'm very much a go get it type of person, but this one thing was not something that I could just do. I couldn't just put my mind to it and do it and quit.


So, I think part of the thing being stuck in bed was it really intensified everything about smoking, like the smell. You know, you're in one room, the smell of it. Because I wasn't training anymore, and because I wasn't physical every day, at the gym every day, coaching students every day, I wasn't in that world. I was just sort of sedentary.


I could really start to feel the physical effects of the smoking, or at least be more aware of it. Like the morning cough, like every morning coughing like crazy. Back when I was super active, I didn't feel it in my lungs. But once I became bedridden for I think it was like almost three months, it was like I could really really feel the effect of it.


And then I knew I was just going through such a struggle. And I had tried a couple of times to quit and I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to do this again."


And then I think the thing that did help me was just not being able to do anything else. I had very much tunnel vision about getting back out of bed and getting healthy and getting back to where I was before. So it was very opportunistic.


And I just think that for people generally, not just smoking, but any challenge they're trying to overcome: it all comes down to like how we frame it. That moment for me was about framing it in a way that made sense. I think a lot of times we, as these sort of conscious beings, get stuck in these patterns and we don't recognize the patterns. But there really is always another way to look at something to help us overcome challenges.


And so for me it was breaking my leg and having that traumatic experience. I don't remember. It's not like I thought about it like when I broke my leg. I don't remember at what point I decided that this was going to be my moment.


But there was some point in there where I had played every game that the Xbox ever made. It's like everything that you could do sitting there in bed was done. And then at some point it just dawned on me like, “This is my moment. I need to take it.”


Jessi:

Wow. Well, way to turn a tough thing around there and use it as a chance, an opportunity. Because yeah, that sounds really painful. Did that play a part, too?


I know you talked about stress. I do want to talk more about that. But like that the pain of withdrawal. If you're already in that much pain with a broken leg, doesn't it seem a little bit less? What did the withdrawal process look like when you're stuck in bed with that?


Steve:

Well, the thing was I actually followed the book, you know? So, the book says don't quit smoking yet.


Jessi:

Oh, that’s right. Yeah.


Steve:

Like, smoke through this whole thing. So, I literally was laying in bed actively smoking. I just sort of knew that like if I finished this book, that's sort of when I have to stop.


So, I didn't try to quit while I was in bed with a broken leg. I actively smoked through that whole thing. But the fact that I was inactive and sedentary at that time just made it so much worse.


That's what I mean by really being able to feel the effects of the cigarettes and not hide it behind all these other veneers of my fitness. Or this myth that you tell yourself like, “Well, if I stay super fit, that counteracts the effects of the cigarettes.” Like you tell yourself all these lies while you're smoking.


But in that particular situation, I was not able to lie to myself. It was just very apparent. And then I forget who it was that recommended the book to us.


I'm not big into self-help books. I tend to think they're a bunch of hocus pocus. But that one worked for me. I don't know why. It definitely did the trick for me.


My wife, it took her another bunch of years to quit. And that was a big challenge actually because I had quit. So I quit 16 years ago and she quit 10 years ago. So there were six years where we were living together. She was a smoker. I was a non-smoker. And that was a challenge.


She was trying to quit. But she also enforced a rule on herself to not smoke inside. So smoking was only outside. And that made it more tolerable for me because the house didn't smell like cigarettes anymore and the stuff wasn't around. The ashtrays weren't around and like all the paraphernalia wasn't around.


Then when she finally quit, we knew that she finally quit because this was after the movie John Wick 2, right? So I worked on John Wick 2 and we went to the wrap party. My wife came with me. We got there a little early to the bar and it was me, the director, Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves and my wife. Just the four of us hanging out at the bar.


And Keanu, for those who don't know, is a heavy, heavy smoker. Still to this day, he smokes a lot. And of course, people of our age, like we grew up watching Keanu Reeves. And my wife, of course, had like the high school crush on him or whatever.


So he was like, "Hey, I'm going out for a smoke. You guys want to join me?" And my wife was like, "Oh, I'd love to, but I just quit." So she told Keanu Reeves, "No."


And then I remember I turned to her. I said, "Wow, you really did quit. This is official now. You just turned down a cigarette with Keanu Reeves, you know? [laughter]


Jessi:

[laughter] No kidding! Yeah, that must have been tough. But yeah, you can make it work.


I feel like sometimes people are like, "How can I quit when, I have a partner smoking in the home?” But it really comes down to your own personal decision.


Steve:

And yeah, and I think it's like my mentor used to say to me like, "How do you eat an elephant?"


Because back in the day when I was in college, during one of my internships at Bellevue Hospital, I worked in the recovery program, you know? So it was like a lot of new addicts.


We would have group therapy. And at the first session for a bunch of people, he would ask, "How do you eat elephant?" And a lot of people would be like, "You can't eat an elephant. It's too big." But it's like, "No, you cut it up into little pieces."


And that's the way you have to handle smoking, you know? So for my wife, one little bit of that behavior modification was, "Okay, well, I'm only going to do it outside. I'm not going to do it inside."


And then you add to that. Then you say, "Okay, well now I'm only going to do it outside twice a day. I'm going to give myself a number of times a day or whatever."


Just going cold turkey like, “Boom! I'm just going to stop.” It's too difficult generally. I mean, I failed a lot of times before I finally succeeded under the conditions that I succeeded in. And you could argue it was all those other failures that primed me for this one to succeed, right?


We have to fail forward. And I think a lot of people that try to quit, they fail and then all they do is is put themselves down for failing, not put themselves up for trying, for trying to quit. Like the trying is the success. The failing is irrelevant.


Jessi:

Yeah.


Steve:

I think too many people, myself included, when they try to quit and fail, the failure becomes the focus.


Jessi at midroll:

We will get back to the conversation in just a moment.

If you are listening to today’s story and feeling a bit of that familiar tension in your own journey, I want to share a resource with you. We all know that a craving is just a temporary sensation, but when you are in the middle of it, that feeling can take up a lot of space.

I put together a free minicourse called How to Survive a Craving. It is a collection of the specific tools and mindset shifts I used to navigate those hard minutes and stay connected to my true desire to quit.

You can grab it for free at honoryourheart.net/craving so you have those tools ready for the next time you need them.

Now, let’s head back to today’s episode.


Jessi:

Oh yeah, that was me. But I kept trying again and again just hoping. But like in my thought process to be like, “You can't do this.” And it was really cutting me down. It wasn't until I actually believed that I could do it that I could.


I think it was from the practice that I finally felt like I could because of all the long time periods I'd gone where I'd gone months. It's like, “Okay, I know I can work through cravings. It's just I’ve got to figure out what's going on with stress.”


So, what did you end up doing to adapt to stress? Like you said, that was a huge part of your pattern. What alternatives did you find rather than smoke and hurt yourself? How did you cope with stress?


Steve:

Yeah, I'm always pretty good under stress, with just like the kind of professions that I do. I have to handle stress and function well.


But I think it's not the stressor so much. It's like when things are a surprise and that changes the level of stress when something happens that you're not ready for.


So, you know, like my job in oncology or even as a stunt performer now, like I go into these very stressful situations on film sets. Or even when I used to be a competitive martial artist, you could argue, “That's stressful.” You're performing in front of all these people and whatever. But that was like you had time to prepare for all that. So, it wasn't a shocker.


But say like after I started again when my father died, that was a sudden thing. It was a sudden death. It wasn't expected. We weren't prepared for it. It was like, “Bam!” It hits you.



Jessi:

Yeah, that’s hard.


Steve:

And so I think yeah that's the hard part. You know one interesting thing is like even as in my career as a competitive martial artist, I smoked through the whole thing.


I would go to let's say another country. I would go to Russia a lot or Europe or wherever to train big training camps with US teams and stuff where the whole time I wouldn't smoke. I would go to Russia for three weeks and not smoke at all and not miss it. But I was so focused on the training that I didn't think about it.


And then I’d step off the airplane at JFK. The first thing I do is light up a cigarette. And I would tell myself like, “What's going on here? I just went three weeks without a single cigarette and as soon as I come back to this environment, that's the first thing I do?”


So, it's like you said, I knew intellectually I could do this. It was not about that. And that goes into the lies, you know, where you tell yourself, “Oh, I could quit anytime I want to.” But you know, it's like not really like that. You know what I mean?


So in terms of your original question, stress, I think it was a bit of a mind shift for me in accepting stress as a part of having a good life. My mom is a Buddhist. I was raised under a Buddhist mother and a non-practising Christian father, right? But one of the things that I was raised with my mom was that suffering is part of life. That is the whole central tenant of Buddhism is that it's how you handle it, right?


It's what I always loved about the basic philosophy behind Buddhism is: it's on you to handle it. You can't blame this god. It's all on you. It's like you have nobody to blame but you. And so I think regarding big stressors, a shift in my mentality was really coming to believe that this stuff is just part of life.


And then I started to embrace more the stuff that I say to my students all the time. Like let's say in martial arts we're on the mat, I tell them, “This mat is a microcosm for you to rehearse how you handle stress and how you handle pressure in life. And this mat is where you can take risks without severe consequences.”


Like how you handle a stressor or a pressure position…. let's say you’re in this sparring match where you're not winning. Whatever you try is not working. This is probably very similar to how you will emotionally react if the boss calls you into the office to chew you out about something. Like our behaviors don't change significantly from place to place.


So, I just really embraced the fact that I need to handle other parts of my life the same way that I handle the martial arts part of my life, which is very successful. And that kind of goes back to what I was saying before, like there's always different a way to look at things.


One part of my life, I would look at something where it's not working. But over here, look at it, “Oh, it's totally working over here. I need to take what's working over here and put it over here.” But that's that's a hard thing to do. It's a very hard thing, right?


Jessi:

I was really surprised when I quit smoking how much more adaptable I was to stress and the resilience that I had. Did you notice any kind of change with that? Because I was really stressed out as a smoker. And then when I had stopped that, I actually was less stressed out.


Allen Carr talks about that too; that trick where you're trying to help yourself with the thing that's creating the problem.


Steve:

One hundred percent. Like a lot of the stress that I and I'm sure every other smoker feels is self-imposed stress.


So, like before I was running my own gym, for example, my coach was avid anti-smoker, avid. And I lied to him throughout my entire relationship with him about my smoking. I would go to all these great lengths to, you know, like we all do to get rid of the stink and to blah blah blah. I never, never would own up to it.


Or there was always the stressor of going to an event. “Am I going to have a minute to go out? Did I buy my cigarettes before I left?” Blah blah blah.


Or even the importance of cigarettes as a tool to talk to people. “I’ve got to be prepared in case somebody asked me for a light or whatever.” Or “Are people judging me because I'm stepping outside for a cigarette right now?”


Jessi:

Right.


Steve:

Yeah. So, it's like all that stuff just vanished. You know what I mean? Like once you stop smoking, all that self-imposed pressure just goes away.


And then as a non-smoker now, I am not like my coach was. I don't try to convince anybody not to smoke. I just feel like that's useless.


Like when students come in and I know that they're smoking. I have a student that drives me home sometimes after training because he lives in my area. He's a smoker and I never go after him for that. I'm like, “Whatever dude, you're a grown person. You know what this is doing. I don't need to be on your shoulder henpecking you about this.”


So like I try to be now as a non-smoker the way that I would have preferred people to be to me, which is to not get on my case about it. Like, “I know. I know I'm making a mistake.” But even that goes back to your point about the stressors, right?


Because now I'm aware that that was a big stressor for me when I was a smoker, like the rabid anti-smoking people and this and that and the other thing.


And then and of course when I started smoking, you could still smoke in restaurants and some movie theaters and stuff like that. And so now people of my age, we've gone through this whole period where like it's harder and harder to do it, which makes it more and more stressful by limiting where you can go and what you can do and stuff.


So, I try to now as a non-smoker to just respect people as adults and just be like, "Listen, you you got to make your decisions.” I'm not going to be there, you know? I'm not the convert who's like uber orthodox." I respect that that's where you're at, you know?


Jessi:

Yeah. And that relationship with your wife, too. It's ineffective, I think, to use guilt or fear or any of those tactics like or no one would smoke, right?


Steve:

Yeah.


Jessi:

Yeah. You get plenty of that.


Steve:

Yeah. Totally.


Jessi:

It has to be internally motivated. I think it can be tough when you're in that in-between phase when you know you want to quit and you can't. So that's like where I like to support people.


Steve:

I mean my uncle, my mother's brother, also was a lifelong smoker. I've only ever known him as a smoker. Like my grandmother, he ended up having cardiomyopathy and he got a heart transplant. He had to quit smoking in order to get the heart transplant, right?


And he managed to do it enough to get the transplant. But as soon as he got the new heart, he was sneaking cigarettes here and there. Like I understand how alluring, how hard it is and how seductive it is and everything. And how your brain can tell you, “It's really not that bad”, and all this kind of stuff.


So like you said like guilting people and dropping the hammer on them and stuff, it's actually going to make them smoke more. I think it's like they'll come back even if they don't come back at you directly. It's in their brain is like, “Oh yeah? Well I'll show you. I'm different.”


Jessi:

And I mean, I don't like to speak for everyone, but I've noticed this in myself and in other people that a lot of smoking can be a self-worth issue. So, being mean to someone, being judgmental, it's not going to build up the self-worth that it takes to change.


Steve:

Well, and I also think that, yeah, it's not helping the smoker's self-worth, but I also think it says something about the person that's putting that out there about their self worth. It's like, why is it so important to you to um…


Jessi:

To be better? Yeah.


Steve:

Yeah. To do this to show that you're a better person. It's like a superiority thing.


Jessi:

Totally. So, we've talked about some of the benefits with stress and your health in general, but I'm just curious if you had to pick one, like what's one of the biggest benefits you've gotten from quitting smoking?


Steve:

Wow. There's so many, but honestly, the first thing that comes to my head is financial. When I think back, like I don't even know how much a pack costs now, but in 2010 when I quit, it was already like $9 or $10 a pack.


And then especially like you know another myth, “I'll smoke the all natural American Spirits.”


Jessi:

[laughter]


Steve:

[laughter] “These are healthy cigarettes.” So you'd pay a little more for those. But I can't even imagine like what it costs now and how much money I've saved.I mean if you think about it, I was definitely at my worst like a pack a day sometimes pack and a half a day.


Especially if I got into this meditative zone because I write a lot. And I'd be sitting at the computer writing for hours and then you just kind of like a drone just going through cigarettes going through cigarettes Before you know it, you finished the whole pack in like 4 hours, and then you got to run around the corner and buy more.


So 10 bucks a day for years. Like the amount of money…. I just feel like I could have a new car right now, you know? So yeah, right off the bat, it's financial.


But also it's I just feel better about myself, honestly. It's just like you said, it's about self-worth. I feel good just knowing that I quit. I don't feel good bragging about it or talking about it or anything like that.


But just knowing it for myself that, “Yeah, I was able to do it.” It makes you feel good.


Jessi:

It's an accomplishment, especially when it didn't come easy for so long. Yeah.


Steve:

Yeah, for sure.


Jessi:

So, someone that's in it, they're struggling. They want to quit. Maybe they've tried. What word of advice would you have to them?


Steve:

I would go back to what I said before. I would say focus on the trying, which is a success for you, that you tried. Try not to focus on the fact that you didn't actually quit. Don't focus on the “failure.”


Like I'll just say failure because I'm not sure what else to call it. But the unsuccessful nature of your attempt to quit, don't focus on that. Focus on the fact that you did try to quit.


And then like let's say you did quit, for a month or three months or something. Count that as a win. That's a win. That's three months of no tar and no nicotine and no this and that. The same goes for vaping, by the way, too.


I don't vape. I don't put anything in my lungs, anything, you know? Like that's just not what I do. Even weed. I'm not a big weed smoker. Like if I'm going to do that, it's usually an edible maybe or something. But I'm not putting stuff in my lungs.


So like take the three months of cleaning out your lungs a little bit as a win and a trial run for your next attempt. Look at it like an athlete.


You don't run a marathon straight out. You do the 5K. You do the 10K. You do the half marathon. Then you do the marathon, but can you imagine just like never having trained running and just going right to the marathon? You will die.


Jessi:

[laughter] And being upset with yourself that you didn't do it.


Steve:

Yeah. Exactly. And so that would be my advice is like to cut yourself some slack. Focus on the wins, not on the losses. And just keep trying.


And then also I would say I think it's important that you have people that you can share that win with. I think doing it in a bubble by yourself in your own brain is not so useful. You need to have someone to support you.


We stand on the shoulders of other people and other people stand on our shoulders with all our successes. So nobody does anything in a vacuum. You always need help.


So, I would say even if it's just one person that you can celebrate the win with and get some advice and get some consoling when you go back to that cigarette. When all those emotions flood back into your head like, “I couldn't fucking do it.” Or, “I'm such a loser. I'm weak.” Or this or that.


When all those thoughts that come into your head when you started smoking again after quitting for a period, find somebody. You’ve got to have a support system for sure. It doesn't have to be a group. It doesn't have to be whatever. It could just be at one person, but somebody. So it's not all just an internal exercise.


Jessi:

That's great advice. Thank you.


Steve:

Oh, my pleasure.


Jessi:

And I want to talk more about your podcast, which is awesome. I loved it.


Steve:

Oh, yeah. Thanks for listening.


Jessi:

You got me hooked on a new show, so thanks for that.


Steve:

Well, well, vice versa. That's one of the cool things about podcasting. I told some of my friends like, "Oh, I'm going to go on this podcast about quitting smoking." And I listened to like five or six of your episodes and it's like, "Wow."


It's more about all the interesting people. It's really about the people, you know? It's like the smoking is almost like… yeah, there's really good nuggets of advice in there. But it's also about just learning about how we're all the same.



And I'm sure it’s similar if people listen to our podcast, Film Fights with Friends. It's a filmmaking podcast. Myself and Paul Varrachi, we just try to be ourselves on the show and we're not putting up a veneer of like this other podcast identity.


And a lot of the struggles that we talk about with guests, whether they're stunt performers, actors, or writers, or directors or whatever, are going to sound familiar to people just like in other aspects of their life. They'll be like, "Oh, I went through something like that. It had nothing to do with acting.” But it might have been having to do with something else.


I think we find a nice middle ground with the show between not getting too filmmaker technical but not getting too fanboyish either. Just keeping it real somewhere in the middle. So like people in the industry will learn stuff but people not in the industry will also learn stuff and hopefully hear some good stories from interesting people.


Jessi:

Yeah. Well, you've done a great job. It's very accessible for me and it was exciting because I've always just been a consumer. And it's like, “there's there's a lot that goes into this!” It's super interesting. So yeah, I thought it was awesome.


Steve:

Thanks for tuning in. That was a nice surprise.


Jessi:

Yeah. And there's a lot of different perspectives to look at it, too, if you know you're a fighter or an actor or any kind of interest you have around it. So, I thought it was a great cross-sectional thing.


Steve:

I think what's cool about the show, at least brush our shoulders off a little bit, is like a lot of these Hollywood style podcasts, they all have this cookie cutter formula like, "Okay, so how'd you get into the business?" Blah, blah, blah. “What'd you do? How'd you start?” They just start at the beginning and a lot of times it gets real boring real fast.


It's like the thing with guests is they have the same stories. People have their stories that they tell. And I think the challenge of an interviewer is to try and have them tell new stories.


The way our show works is we start with a fight scene or an action sequence from a movie. So, we're essentially starting in the middle of their career. We're not starting at their current project and we're not back where they were. We ask them like, "What's a favorite action sequence that you were involved in that we could talk about?" And already it's like, "Hey, now they've chosen like this nugget that they love."


And then we just let the conversation go naturally where it goes. And sometimes it goes back to the how they got started and sometimes it goes off into completely topics have nothing to do with film making at all. I think that's what's great about it. It's like a little bit of a shift on sort of the industry interview type podcast.


Jessi:

Well, that's a neat thing. Yeah.


Steve:

Thank you. Appreciate you giving the shout for it.


Jessi:

Is there any other work you want to talk about? I mean, I guess if anybody wants to see something that I was in recently, I was in the show Beast in Me on Netflix. That's out right now. I doubled Jonathan Banks on that show. So, you see him doing anything stunty, it's probably me, not him.


Jessi:

Behind the scenes. It's so neat.


Steve:

Yeah, it's cool. It's a fun job. It's definitely like sometimes you can't believe you're getting paid to do this. Then there's the days where you kind of get really banged up and then you're like, "Yeah, thank god I'm getting paid to do this."


Jessi:

Yeah. [laughter] I don't think it's for the faint of heart.


Steve:

To tie it back to the smoking, I was on this episode of Blue Bloods, this last season of Blue Bloods. And I had to do a stair fall. I had to fall down a flight of stairs in this warehouse and I got banged up pretty good. I mean, not bad. Like, there's a difference between hurt and injured, you know? I wasn't injured. But it was definitely like there was some sore spots.



And like that would have been a time in my smoking life where I would have went off set somewhere and had a cigarette. Again, “Oh, it's going to help with pain management.” Or whatever, which actually is the worst, right? It actually raises your heart rate. It does all this stuff to make you experience the pain more.


But that would have been a moment where I would have been running for a cigarette once they said cut. I would been like, "Okay, I need a break."


Jessi:

Yeah. Instead, you're taking care of yourself and healing up quicker for it.


Steve:

Exactly.


Jessi:

Well, right on. Thank you so much for coming on here, telling us your story and sharing some great advice. I really appreciate it.


Steve:

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I saw it on the Reddit and I was like, "Oh, this sounds like something cool." I'm glad I reached out.


Jessi:

No, it's great to have you a part of it and a really unique take. Everyone has their own thing that's like, “This is my time.” So, I'm glad that you were able to take something so hard and turn it around and now your whole life is changed because of that.


Steve:

Well, I appreciate that. Thanks. You're doing good stuff for this podcast. So, keep it going. It's great.


Jessi:

Thanks. I love it. All right, everyone. See you next week. Take care.




End of Interview


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