“Love is a virus. One I think we should spread.” – Tom Proctor

On August 29, 2013, The Only Love Project’s Bill Murphy (BM) spent an enjoyable hour via Skype with Hollywood actor, stunt performer, director, and producer Tom Proctor (TM). What follows is the transcript of our conversation. Enjoy!

BM: Briefly tell us your background. What would you like others to know about you?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.02.38 PMTP: Well, my background is I grew up a farm boy, raised on the family farm. And it was one of those, like, five farms together to make one little farm, so to speak. And so it was kind of funny, you know. I didn’t know until after I had moved away from home and until I was about 34 years old that we were poor when we were kids. I always thought we were doing great, because all our family, we’d run cattle up on the range, and we each owned like five acres that we’d come down to the river a lot, you know, there’s big-ass trout in the river right next to your house, so what was missing? [laughs] I didn’t know until I got older that we were basically poverty level. I said, “Really? Wow, I didn’t know that.”

BM: What effect did your childhood have on you?

TP: It really made the core of who I am. And at the end of the day, at the end of anybody’s day, I think the core of who you are is really all you’ve got. You got the world that has its expectations – especially when you’re in the film industry – of what you are and who you should be. And then you’ve got what makes you what you are. I’ve been a very competitive person; I’ve competed in motorcycle skill trials, drag bike races, I’ve been a competitive fighter, everything else. And I always felt like I won, because of where I came from. Because that was my family, and that was the way it was. And my mom was one that always managed to promote the positive. And my dad’s my biggest hero. Everybody thinks in Hollywood we’re all supposed to have some sad, abusive childhood. And I just really don’t. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like Hollywood?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.03.26 PMTP: It’s like this. People would always stop and ask my grandpa as he’s digging ditches or whatever, they’d say, “So, what’s the neighborhood like around here? What are people like around here? And he’d say the same thing every time. He’d say, “What are they like where you come from?” And they’d say they’re either good, bad, or indifferent. Whatever. Then he’d say, “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I think you’ll find here.” And that is what I think happens. I’ve been very blessed to find awesome people. I had stuntmen bringing me up in the business and trying to keep me alive instead of make an impressive record for them. I’ve been really, really fortunate. And then I’ve run into those producers that the words “scorched earth” comes to mind. And with them, I just find that the way I handle things don’t change. I had my first agent and manager drop me one time because I held a producer upside-down out of the third story of a hotel, because he was gonna basically rip off a whole crew that I had lined up for him. And she said, “That ain’t the way business is done here.” And I said, “Yeah, people go to court and they never see their money. That’s how business is done there. That ain’t how business is done where I come from.” And I learned that from a man that was one of my mentors, that always told me, he said, “There’s no such thing as losing, there’s only an alternate route to winning.” And this is a man that would fly me all over the place to buy horses and stuff like that for him. I mean, we’re talking high-dollar horses. And he said, “As long as you do business where everybody wins on both sides, all the time, it’s a win-win. Look for a win-win, everybody wins, you will never lose.” I went down to Colorado, bought a cuttin’ horse the day before a futurity for $50,000. The horse won that futurity, which meant it was now worth a quarter of a million dollars. It also, because the horse came in from Australia, got a virus that we weren’t used to in America, and killed the entire barn. I called the same man up, I said, “Please tell me where the win is here. You said there’s no such thing as losing, only an alternate route to winning. Well, the horse is dead.” I had a pilot’s license. The man said, “I want you to fly down to Dallas. You’re going to go to the Fireman’s Fund, take that paperwork on that horse, take that loan out, I’ll raise the loan, take out a $750,000 loan against that horse.” And I said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, I thought everybody wins, nobody loses money. You’re taking a loan out on a dead horse.” And he said, “That’s right, get a balloon payment, I’ll get it all set up. Don’t worry.” I said, “But somebody’s gonna lose money if they loan money on a dead horse.” He said, “I’ll explain later.” So trusting the man, I flew down there and did that, got the loan and everything. We flew in. Then we began to wheel and deal. The short version of this story is I personally handled the finances on what amounted to just under two million dollars. So you’re talking to a man who sold a dead horse for two million dollars, and nobody lost money on it. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.03.29 PMTP: Everybody made money, and everybody’s happy. That’s how you have to get to Hollywood. You have people say in Hollywood, “People lose money on movies.” No they don’t. At least I don’t. I’m at a point now where I can produce my own movies. If I can sell a dead horse for two million dollars, I’m not going to let my investors lose money on a movie. That just ain’t gonna happen. [laughs]

BM: Is there much call for dead horses these days?

TP: [laughs] It’s like I’ve said several times: the difference between Hollywood and New York is that both of ‘em will steal your wallet. In Hollywood, they’ll help you look for it. [laughs]

BM: Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.08.05 PMTP: That’s a really tough question. Because, by my own rules, I think, yeah. Because, I mean, you’re looking at a man that really has been dead twice, so I can’t help but think that. And I’ve had just too many really, really good things happen for there to not be a God involved. What’s his name? Is it Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed? I don’t know what his name is. As a kid I used to look at different religions and all this God stuff, and I didn’t know really what to think about it. So I asked this one cowboy one time, we were out at Lewis’ Ranch, herding cattle, and I says, “What do you think about God and all this stuff?” And he said, “Boy, I look at it this way,” he said, “I don’t think God’s any different than Jim.” And I said, “Jim?” And he said, “Yeah, Jim Lewis, the guy I work for.” I go, “Jim ain’t God.” He says, “No, Jim ain’t God, but you work for him just like you should be working for God.” And I said, “Ok.” He said, “I don’t build buildings in Jim’s name, and I don’t even sing songs about Jim. But I do take care of his cattle; it doesn’t matter if they’re black, white, or black and white, or brown. If they’re tangled in the fence, I untangle them. If they’re hungry, I’ll feed ‘em. And that’s where I kind of look at it with God, too. You just kind of take care of everybody around you, if they’re hungry, feed them. If you can help them out, help them out.” And I said, “What if that ain’t good enough?” And he goes, “Well, if that ain’t good enough, I don’t think I should be taking care of them anyhow.” [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.10.25 PMTP: You know, at times I go into different churches and listen. I have never heard any church preach something that hurt someone. I’ve never heard any religion teach something that wasn’t an attempt at making a better person. And many attempts at making a better person, is an attempt on the part of that person. It’s just like me. If you attempt to make me the sexy leading man, it ain’t gonna happen. But, you keep me in the serial killer role, I will do it for you.

BM: Most religious traditions speak of the power and value of love. For example: The Dhammapada tells us, “Only love dispels hate.” The Bible tells us, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” What, if anything, do those words means to you?

TP: Those words are, to me, like coin to a man of the realm, because I don’t think anyone survives without love. It is a motivator for all things. And it dispels all prejudice. It goes back to this: you’re gonna find what you’re looking for. If I’m looking for love, in every person, then that’s what I’ll find in you. You go around looking for an enemy, especially here in Hollywood, you start looking for people to screw you, and you’ll find that, too.

BM: [laughs]

TP: If you start looking for friends, and looking for people you can love and do love, you’ll find that, too.

BM: Sure.

TP: I’ll never, never, never forget, we had the horses ready to go up Dry Canyon and come back down Clear Creek. My grandpa would be there, my grandmother came home, she worked as a nurse at this time, she’d come home, I mean, he was close to his 70s at this point, and I’m watching my grandpa check out my grandma’s ass.

BM: [laughs]

TP: As he tells us, “Oh, my neck’s a little stiff. You boys take the horses up without me,” because she’s off work. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] That’s amazing.

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.06.08 PMTP: You know? Well, he was an old prize fighter and a cowboy that was jumping out of the back of trucks onto mustangs when he was 67 years old, I remember that. He was pretty busted up in his old age, you know. My grandpa was at the Stockyard one day, and some of those old horse traders were out there, and my grandpa pulled up in the car, gets out of his car, goes to the backseat, gets out his walker, walks around to the other side and opens the door for her; she gets out. The other fella looks over at him and goes, “Man, why the hell you openin’ the door for her? She can get out faster than you can.” And he looked up at him and said, “Cause she don’t mind waitin’.” My grandpa is my biggest hero. He was a prize fighter that was totally goddamn awesome, plus the fact that he could throw a mustang off its feet, at 65 could throw a stang on its head until he got a side on it and break it out. That, right there made him my hero.

BM: What role can love play in the world today?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.27.21 PMTP: I think love, if we all just embrace it, will affect everybody. We’re trying to fix the politicians, and you can’t fix them. We’re out there trying to fix the country that you can’t fix. We’re arguing about the right to bear arms vs. the wrong people getting their hands on the guns. I grew up in a world where everybody carried a gun, and nobody got shot except the muskrats and that was because they were digging ditches. And if you could manage to get the whole world to focus on love…I like to say that love is a virus. Virus don’t have to be a bad word. It can spread. I’ve got a little Polish girl in my acting class. I challenge you to be around her without smiling. You’re gonna smile. Because she has contagious happiness. I challenge you to be around people that just love openly, honestly, and freely, and be angry. Try it. It ain’t gonna happen. I was a cage fighter. I went into one of my cage fights, and the guy across from me was looking at me with hate in his eyes and snorting like a bull, like “I just wanna rip your head off.” And it was December, they were all coming into this music of Pantera and music like that. And I come skipping into the ring to the tune of “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” Because I don’t hate the man. And I looked over at him and he’s just looking at me with all kinds of hatred. And I said, “I really don’t know who screwed your life, but it wasn’t me. And you need to get over it. This is just a paycheck. Why do you hate me? If I’m not here, you don’t get a paycheck. You’re not here, I don’t get a paycheck. I’ll still work, but I don’t get a paycheck.”

BM: That’s wonderful.

TP: Absolutely. It’s like I told you in an e-mail, one of my best friends, I wasn’t in shape for fights, I wasn’t ready. Anyways, one of my friends he’s just stomping around going, “Oh my god, my fighter didn’t show up, I can’t pay my rent, I’m not going to be able to make my rent.” I said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. Tell him I’ll fight you. I’ll square it with the boxing commission. Tell him I’ll fight you.” “You’d do that?” I says, “Yeah.”

BM: Actually, that was really nice of you.

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.49.36 PMTP: Yeah, a lot of people said, “I thought you liked him.” “I do.” “So you gonna let him win?” “No, I’m gonna kick his ass. But, he’ll still get a paycheck, because that’s the job.” I get on a horse, I pull the horse in a circle until we get to where we understand each other, but I don’t hate the horse. I trained mountain lions and bears for a movie investor, and when they charge at me, I don’t hate them, I know that’s an instinct. So we communicate something different.

BM: True.

TP: Love is a virus. One I think we should spread.

BM: I like that. In fact, I think I’ll use that as the headline of our interview. See, I just wrote it down.

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.31.00 PMTP: It’s easy to preach one thing, and what we preach is really what we’re learning, but what’s really terrible is I would go in. I surround myself with very nice people, because I’m really not a nice person. My dad is a nice person. I thought he was a wimp for most of my life, because he never even raised his voice. But as long as I’m around these nice people, I stay nice. But especially when one asshole comes into that group, if they attempt to change that dynamic, instead of saying what I’m saying now, or doing what I’m saying now, I guess I should say, that love is a virus, and staying about love and spreading it, I grab the easy out. I turn into an asshole, because it is a virus too. It’s the two choices of how you can react. You can come out and be a dick to me, and I can be a dick back. And then we’re gonna find out who’s the strongest, because it’s gonna lead to blows, which is not gonna solve the problem. The only thing that fighting ever solves is if you question if you are a better fighter than me. We can fight and answer that question. But if you are opposed to gay marriage, and I’m in favor of it, we can’t hate each other and solve that problem. We can’t fight and solve that problem. We can only exchange information until it circles around, and everything circles around, and the truth always lands in the same place. So you’ve gotta be open to the circle.

BM: What stops people from being more loving and compassionate?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.38.59 PMTP: The same thing that stops them from being rich. The same thing that stops them from being successful. The same thing that stops them from being happy. And it’s that four letter f-word, fear. It’s always fear. We had a project where we — it takes one step at a time to get homeless people into jobs and off of the street. We’ve got this guy set up with an apartment, and guess what. He would go to the apartment, shower. He would go to the apartment, eat, and then he would go back to a spot on the street and sleep. Out of fear that the apartment could be taken from him the minute he didn’t have a job anymore. But he had to keep that spot on the street. That’s what makes it so difficult to spread love as a virus. For me to come up to you and say, “Hey, you know what? My name’s Tom Proctor. I really like you. You seem like a likeable guy. I’d like to sit down and have coffee with you, and get to know you.” My fear is, this guy’s gonna think I’m gay, coming on to him. He’s going to reject me. Right now, I’m all exposed, I might as well be naked, am I gonna get slapped down for it? What will they think? And we teach our kids to think like this growing up. That’s not how you behave in public. Really? I think that child’s instinct on how to behave in public is probably better than all the shit we’re trying to teach him. I will give you another example of how the world becomes messed up. I grew up in a small town; we didn’t even have a police department. 20 miles of washboard road to the nearest grocery store if you want to call it that. It was a grocery store, gas station job. You know what I’m talking about? And then our bank was Western Mountain Bank, I think it was called or something. Everybody had a gun. And then as the city started to move in, I remember taking my kids through the McDonalds drive-through on the horse and buggy, still having the gun on my side. I would walk in and out of my bank with my pistol on my side. And everybody knew me, “Hi, Tom. How you doing?” Blah, blah, blah. Then I went away, I was gone in the service, and the film industry, blah blah blah. And I come back, and the bank was a brick building. I go into my bank, I walk up to the teller, and the girl goes white as a sheet, and screams, “He’s got a gun!” And quickly, like someone out of a John Wayne movie, I spin and draw my gun, looking for who it was that had the gun, not thinking she was talking about me, because I’m not the bad guy. This is what happens. We project our own fears onto the other guy. The guy that’s behind you blasting his horn in traffic, and you immediately go, “What an asshole.” You go, “Oh my gosh, maybe he’s trying to get his wife to the hospital. There’s no way that I can get out of his way. Is there something that I can do to assist?” Instead you go, “Fuck you, dude, I can’t move.”

BM: You pulled a gun in the bank? You’re kidding me.

TP: No, that’s what I did. Scared the shit out of everybody.

BM: My friend, you’re going to have to finish your story now. What happened next?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.03.44 PMTP: A bunch of cops show up, and they were young cops, and they were acting like assholes. So I turned in the gun, told a couple of officers, “Your momma know you play with guns?” Because they were little kids, I’m looking at kids. Shortly after this, this was at a time when there was no law against wearing a gun. And then shortly afterwards they got a bill passed through that made it illegal to carry a weapon in public. And it was bizarre because they passed that bill based on a bus that got hit at a railroad crossing from being too close, and so they put the bill under a safety on a bus bill, where all the stuff about the bus was there, and then down at the bottom was also carrying a gun, and they shoved that bill through. And there’s a lot of things that go on like that, just like right now, they found they can’t get rid of our right to bear arms, so what the government’s done is buy up all the ammo. So you literally, you almost can’t buy it. And then what’ll happen is, once the manufacturers increase their manufacturing size to meet demand, then [the government will] release that stock and put all those manufacturers out of business. So unemployment is the workaround for not listening to the public on what they really want. And all of that, if you think about it, if you listen with love, to both sides again, that circle will start, and truth will come full circle. But if you listen with ‘this is my agenda,’ it ain’t gonna happen. Barack Obama could have the greatest plans in the world, and he would never get them implemented, because there’s too many people that just want to stop him, because they didn’t agree with him. Rather than say, “Ok, he’s got that job now. Let’s work with him. Let’s listen.”

BM: Do you have recommendations regarding how someone might cultivate a spirit of love over the long term…but also put love into action right now so that he or she can make a positive difference right away?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.30.01 PMTP: I have one that I’m trying to implement. It actually comes from a thing called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of the first goals is seek first to understand, and then to be understood. I think with that, you’ve gotta dispel all personal agendas, like if we’re having this conversation, you and I are having a conversation about anything, but I have an agenda, then I’m not really listening to you. I need to listen to you, drop my agenda long enough to listen to you, hear what it is you want, and then really take a beat and go, “hmm, does that actually work for me?” But instead, we have to quickly respond with an answer, because we want to look intelligent. I think we’re afraid to say, “You know what? I’m not sure how I feel about that. Can we take this conversation elsewhere, give me time to think about it?” Used car salesmen thrive on that, not giving you time to think about it. I don’t want to do my workout when I get up in the morning. But I know I’ve got to get up and do that workout first or it ain’t gonna happen. My day’s gonna catch up with me, it’s gonna run away. So if you just start out with saying, “I’m going to spread love virally, somehow” then you’ll find opportunities to do that. And I think that in your conversations just listening and really trying to understand is step one.

BM: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” is the foundation for everything else that follows. But it’s hard to do consistently.

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.46.04 PMTP: Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It’s very hard. I would like someone to tell me anything in this world that’s worth doing that didn’t take some work into it, some dig into it. We had the best tomatoes and the best broccoli and everything on our farm. Because before, I would take all the manure from the chickens and plow it into the ground. That required extra work and an extra bit of plowing, but it’s nitrate. So our tomatoes were this big around and didn’t require salt. There’s a point where instead of working for the politicians and everybody else, there’s a point where we have to say, I am responsible. I can make a difference myself. I guess to do that, we have to drop our agendas. And now here’s the trick question. Am I able to do that? A lot of times I forget. And I come out of it and go, “Ah, fucked that opportunity up.” The only thing you can do is go, “Ok, I fucked that opportunity up. I’m going to have to grab it on the next one.” It’s just like I’ve been working out, getting back in shape for some film projects, I’ve dropped 18 pounds, I’ve put on a lot of muscle mass, everything like that, but tacos got the best of me the other night. So what happens, you go, “Ok, I screwed that up. I’ll have to do another half hour on my cardio tomorrow.” I get that. That’s life.

BM: You can’t drag the past into the present. You have to let it go.

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.05.32 PMTP: Yes. And I’ll tell you where I get my best examples from. In The Lion King, the little monkey walks up to Simba and bops him in the head with the stick. And he goes, “Ow, what’d you do that for?” He says, “Forget about it, it’s in the past.” And then he hits him again and says, “Forget about it, it’s in the past.” It’s gotta be that quick. Because we’re humans, and we fuck up that quick.

BM: And that’s okay. Mistakes happen. But it’s not skillful to live with regret.

TP: The purpose of regret is so that you would not do the same mistake based on guilt. Who wants to live with guilt? How about we don’t do the same mistake based on happiness, based on love, based on future?

BM: Who do you look up to the most when you think of the power of love?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.24.46 PMTP: Wow, that’s a tough one. That would be between my mom and my dad. Yeah. I’ve had great examples from both. I’ll go back to one, I think right now it’s actually, who I look up to most when it comes to love, I would have to say the woman I’ve been married to for over 20 years. She’s totally selfless with our kids and our grandkids, I think she’s taken a lot from my mom, but a lot of it’s from overall knowledge and creativity and she’s promoted our girls and made ’em better people. I was gone a lot from my kids’ life, because that’s what I did. But my kids all turned out awesome. And the other thing that she did was she came as a package with three kids. And when that package came, those kids were mine. There was no distinction. I’m the same with “mine are hers.” Matter of fact, I think any one of the kids would kill you if you tried to bad-talk their stepbrothers or stepsisters. They actually look alike. Her kids look more like my biological kids than hers. And the two sons, if I showed you them side by side, they’re brothers. [laughs] My daughter, I told Margie, “Are you sure you didn’t go to some biker bar drinking one night?” Because I’ve done that several times and maybe that deal just kind of happened.

BM: What did she do that made such an impact on your kids?

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.38.59 PMTP: She did things kind of like the things my mom did. Positive things. My mom didn’t have an education behind her. Margie did and added to it. I don’t know how to get the point across, other than, well, here’s an example. I was a very small kid. I’ll never forget it, my mom had an ability to take a house that would be condemned and fix it into, like I said, I didn’t know we were poor. She would do stuff on the walls, she would paint, do things and get rid of stuff so that the house would be clean and spotless. And I was a little kid and I got some crayons and I colored on the walls, and she come around the corner after her hard work and looked at me and goes, “Tom!” And I just froze. And then she recomposed and said, “Oh, honey.” I was trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. And she goes, “You drew pictures on the wall. So when I wash the wall, I’m afraid that beautiful picture will go away.” And she got me a piece of paper and said, “Will you copy that picture for me so I’ll have it forever?” And my god, I was panicked. I sat there I’m sure with my tongue out, tracing it, trying to make sure it was just like the one on the wall; I knew how important it was to her. And I never colored on the wall after that. Because I knew that mom liked them on paper, so she could keep them. And right now, if you’re dumb enough to be a door-to-door salesman at my mom and dad’s house, you’re gonna get taken in, you’re gonna have to see that painting along with all the Black Belt magazines from 1974, to everything I’ve ever done, all the newspaper articles, the covers I’ve been on. Over time, the door-to-door salesmen have learned to avoid that house. [laughs]

BM: That story really gets to me. It makes me tear up.

TP: Yep.

BM: Do you have anything you’d like to add that I haven’t asked?

TP: The only thing I would like to add is, God bless you for taking the time to do this, because you’re like starting the virus. And I just hope that it’s really successful, and I hope that it does something where people like me can get the message, and maybe even learn to implement it.

BM: It’s people like you who put these concepts into everyday language so that everyone can understand the importance of love. I appreciate that gift you have. And I appreciate your time today.

TP: I appreciate you. Thank you so much.Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 1.50.22 PM

BM: I’ll have to come for a visit you and buy you a cold one.

TP: Yes, yes, and we have to do that down in Venice, because beer is always better where bikini babes are walking by. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Can’t argue with that.

Special thanks to Tom for his time, wisdom, and delightful sense of humor.

2 thoughts on ““Love is a virus. One I think we should spread.” – Tom Proctor

  1. Great interview. For me, too, the part with the drawing going from wall to paper due to his mom’s wisdom was touching. I love these interviews because they point out – they prove – that we’re all so much alike, get right down to it. Love is the glue that holds us together on this planet, and it’s so cool to hear how each individual person has had brushes dipped in love affect their lives, shape who they are. Fascinating stuff.

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