Episode Fifty-Eight: The Interview-Ford Austin

Ford died three times after hitting a light pole at 90 mph. In this episode he talks about what happens in that liminal space of death and how it's the people you've met along the way that mean everything.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 58 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

In this episode,

I get to interview the esteemed Ford Austin.

Check out his IMDb and you'll see exactly what I mean by esteemed.

He has 110 credits as an actor.

He's been on such shows as Westworld,

The Tragedy of JFK,

As told by William Shakespeare,

Bosch,

Agents of S.

H.

I.

E.

L.

D.

,

Bones,

And many more.

He also has 83 credits as a producer,

39 credits as a director,

As well as credits for writer,

Editor,

Cinematographer,

And many more.

I'm so grateful that he shares his story with me today.

I do want to announce a trigger warning for this episode,

However.

There is the discussion of severe trauma,

So please be aware of that and take care.

I also want to say that the audio is a little erratic at times,

But it's not too bad.

So please have patience because I assure you,

Ford's story is not one that you want to miss.

So now,

Episode 58 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

I was driving 90 miles an hour,

The police report said.

I was driving 90 miles an hour in a Porsche convertible with no airbags,

And I slid sideways into a pole at my left hip,

Sideways into a light pole,

And stopping the entire car accident with your left hip.

I was inside the windshield.

I smashed into the windshield,

And I was stuck in the glass with my forehead,

And I was talking to firefighters as they were cutting me out of the car.

I saw they were coming up with the jaws of life,

And I was like,

Oh,

Good,

You're here.

Thank God,

Get me out of here.

I want to live.

And they fired it up,

And it sounded like a chainsaw,

And I was in such shock.

I thought,

Oh,

They're going to cut me in pieces and put me back together at the hospital like a Frankenstein stitched me back together.

God forbid they cut the car.

And I said,

No,

Forget about it.

Leave me here.

I'll figure it out myself.

And then I collapsed,

And I woke up standing on the side of the road barefoot talking to my great-grandfather.

I looked back and saw them cutting me out of the car.

Wouldn't it be great to walk up to people at a party and say,

Hi,

My name is Ford Austin.

I'm an extremely creative person who has a problem saying no,

And that is the truth.

I will walk up to someone,

And I did just that's kind of what happened is I walked up to an event.

I spoke at an event,

And somebody walked up to me afterwards,

And they said,

Hey,

Man,

You're a legend.

Anybody that calls me a legend,

They send me a script,

And I go,

Oh,

It's not bad.

I'm going to help make it.

So that's like what I'm doing now.

I'm a creative person.

I'm also a trauma survivor.

In 2011,

I was in a car accident that put me in a coma in a wheelchair.

I had to relearn how to read and write and do mathematics.

Doctors gave me one percent chance of survival.

I know what it's like to be able to reach down and try and feel your leg and not feel anything.

I know what it's like to live your life for an entire year without wearing shoes.

I know what it's like to look out of a window while you're paralyzed in a wheelchair as you watch people walk down the sidewalk outside your house.

Are you the first person in your family to be in theater and do acting?

Yeah.

My parents produced a movie when I was one year old and put me and my sister in it.

In that aspect,

Yes,

We both got into it.

But I think I was really the only one to make a living at it and actually do really well with it.

I mean,

I've been making a living off of being an actor since 1989.

Well,

Congratulations,

Because it is not an easy.

It's the worst.

It's so hard.

It's like not only do you struggle just to make money to make ends meet at times,

You know,

The way it works is like you'll have a job.

Like I've had jobs where I made six figures for a day's work and you're like,

Wow,

This is great.

So,

I mean,

I've gone through periods where I didn't work for an entire year,

But I had money saved up from the previous year.

And you just sort of never really know where the next job is or if there is going to be one.

And as a joke,

In my back of my mind,

Every time I get a job,

I think,

Well,

This probably is my last job I'm ever going to get.

I would put myself into the realm of some good actors and I could go into some roles and really carry scenes.

I've carried full feature films.

I'm not saying I'm the best actor in the world.

And on certain days I am the worst actor in the world.

But the thing is,

I really just try and have fun at it.

And if I ever stop having fun at it,

I just take a break.

I was going to ask,

It might be hard to choose,

But what has been your favorite role so far?

My favorite role I had,

It's kind of hard to tell because there's different things.

I was cast as a Doolittle pilot on Pearl Harbor by Michael Bay.

And I was working side by side with Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett and Michael Shannon and Alec Baldwin.

And it was like on these aircraft carriers.

That's like one of my favorites.

Of course,

I didn't play a really large role and you can't really find me in the final film,

But that was exciting.

As far as movies that I played where it's roles that I did,

There's also things that I wrote,

Directed and produced.

And starred in.

One of those things was The Right Stuff with my friend Scott Angles and Tomas Arceo.

And the three of us made this series about the Wright brothers for Dan Harmon and Rob Schraubs,

Channel 101,

Which was this great little internet thing.

Jack Black would go in and do some web series and Sarah Silverman was on there.

And it was fun.

And it was just us making a TV series.

Another movie I did recently that's out in stores right now called Digging to Death.

And I really loved playing that role because Marty Landau was my mentor for the five years before he passed away.

And that was the last movie that I really got to use his stuff that he taught me on the movie.

The last stuff that Marty and I got to really work on before he passed away in 2015.

I was still working on that movie,

Even though he had passed away,

And still working on that with his tools and his advice.

So,

You know,

That's another type of thing.

It's like I did that movie and now that performance in my mind honors the memory of one of the best actors that ever lived.

He dated Marilyn Monroe,

Who was best friends with James Dean.

So,

You know,

That role to me has a very soft spot in my heart.

On my father's side of the family,

It is kind of that situation.

My grandmother told a story before she passed away at age 103,

Living in Enid,

Oklahoma,

Her entire life.

She tells a story about this little church that I used to go visit her.

You know,

My parents were divorced,

So I lived with my mom,

But until then,

Like,

I would visit my grandmother all the time.

And we'd always go to this Presbyterian church and they really knew her well.

She said this church almost went out of business back in the 30s.

And her father did some big thing,

Like gave them a whole lot of money.

He was a pharmacist and he completely bailed the church out when they were about to close down.

They'd have to like disband their entire parish.

I was never baptized until I got married in 1992.

And I was required by a church in Oklahoma City to be baptized in the Episcopalian.

Prior to that,

I had gone to Catholic high school and an Episcopalian middle school.

And I acolyted and I did all that stuff and never really knew what it was about.

It's like,

Oh,

I'm just going to carry this thing down the aisle.

Or,

Oh,

Now I'm going to take this like this little wafer and some,

I get to drink a little wine.

When we were growing up,

My mom was like,

We literally just went to church on Easter.

And I remember eating all the Peeps and then at Christmas we went to church and that was it.

There was nothing else besides that.

And I always kind of look back and I think,

Well,

Were my grandparents religious?

No,

They weren't.

They weren't atheists.

They weren't agnostics.

They just,

They were kind of,

I think they were Methodists.

But it was like we had this full concept of God in our lives.

And,

You know,

For me,

After the accident,

I actually did have a near death experience where I met my great grandfather on the street and my grandfather.

I saw this doorway of white light with a lot of angel wings fluttering through it.

And I could have walked through it,

But I didn't.

Did that change my spiritual outlook?

I guess it did.

It changed everything in my life.

I'm more positive about anything,

Like as far as an afterlife or what happens to us.

But I also,

I embrace kind of a concept of reincarnation.

You know,

The whole idea that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

It just gets transformed into something else.

And I've gone through like all these different concepts of what happens to us after we die.

Everything from,

You know,

We're all just little pieces of energy that we go back into this one source that I guess would be called God.

And,

You know,

As a press for us practicing religion on earth,

I'm just,

I'm very spiritual.

And I think that being very kind to yourself is the best thing because God comes from within.

And not a lot of people remember that,

That whenever you see somebody who's in trouble,

You have the ability to be that angel for them.

And it doesn't take anything just by being there for somebody.

It is an opportunity to be that representative of a higher power that they might have just been asking for.

I was driving 90 miles an hour.

The police report said I was driving 90 miles an hour in a Porsche convertible with no airbags and I slid sideways into a pole at my left hip.

And I think back to this,

Like how,

How is this not a miraculous,

A miracle?

Sideways into a light pole and stopping the entire car accident with your left hip.

I was inside the windshield.

I've smashed into the windshield and I was stuck in the glass with my forehead.

And I was talking to firefighters as they were cutting me out of the car.

I said I saw they were coming up with the jaws of life and I was like,

Oh,

Good,

You're here.

Thank God.

Get me out of here.

I want to live.

And they fired it up and it sounded like a chainsaw.

And I was in such shock.

I thought,

Oh,

They're going to cut me in pieces and put me back together at the hospital.

Like,

You know,

Like a Frankenstein stitch me back together.

God forbid they cut the car.

And I said,

No,

Forget about it.

Leave me here.

I'll figure it out myself.

And then I collapsed.

And I,

I woke up standing on the side of the road barefoot,

Talking to my great grandfather.

I looked back and saw them cutting,

Cutting me out of the car.

Now,

You know,

Without going too much into it.

The miracle is that I did not die,

That I wound up getting to the hospital where I died three times.

Once I died for three minutes in front of my wife.

And the real miracle is that there was a team of doctors at Cedars-Sinai Hospital where I lived for six months who used all of their skills and all of their training to fix.

And I'll just list it real quick.

And you tell me how much of a miracle this is.

I had a brain bleed that caused a stroke.

My left eye was cut from the windshield and had to be put back in.

My every rib in my body was broken,

Shattered.

My pelvis was broken into 10 pieces.

My hip was broken.

My right femur was broken,

Had a rod put in it.

My lungs collapsed.

My kidneys failed.

My spleen was ruptured and had to be taken out.

My heart stopped three times and I was put on life support.

And they said,

You have 72 hours.

If I don't,

If I live in the next 72 hours,

Then I'll be OK.

And they give me a one percent chance.

And I was paralyzed.

I couldn't walk.

I couldn't really talk.

You know,

I had to relearn to read and write and relearn mathematics.

I was then able to go and run a three mile race and that I was able to play tennis and tennis tournaments and compete in croquet.

Getting a real estate license now.

I went on and I studied Shakespeare at Harvard in their Shakespeare program.

I also started a big company in Oklahoma and I wound up doing more movies after the car accident than I did before the car accident.

And at the time of the car accident,

I laid in the hospital bed and I was doing contracts with my one right hand that would move.

And the rest of it was paralyzed.

And I was producing a movie for a Skywalker Sound.

And I was I was making the sequel to Showgirls at the time,

Which was even worse than the original.

But the people that were involved were really amazing.

And we eventually finished that movie.

And I went to that movie premiere in a wheelchair.

And,

You know,

There's a period of time I went to premieres on crutches or in a wheelchair.

And I was like dictating scripts and shooting things that I had no right to shoot because I was still unable to walk.

And I I don't know how in the world I recovered and I was able to do all the stuff that I was able to do,

Except to help all the doctors,

All the physical therapists,

My family,

My wife did most of it.

And organizations like Artists for Trauma,

Which is one of the best organizations out there.

Artists for Trauma was created by a friend of mine who was in a helicopter crash and we became part of this community of trauma survivors that we decided we weren't going to just be trauma survivors,

But we were going to be trauma thrivers.

We weren't going to let the trauma stop how our lives grew.

We're going to let the trauma reclassify how we were going to live amazing lives.

And we weren't going to let it stop us.

And in a period of time,

I did say,

You know,

What have I done in my career?

And I sat down there and I would just kind of sit in my hospital bed and I would think about the jobs that I had done in the movies I'd made and the TV shows I'd been on and the plays that I'd done.

And I just go down the list thinking,

Well,

I guess I've done enough in my life because I can't do any more.

And then after the accident,

I did way more than I did before the accident.

And now it's been 10 years since the accident,

Almost 11.

You just keep moving forward.

So,

But at a party,

I would say I'm a trauma survivor who says yes to everything.

And that's the biggest thing about this life is somebody walking into a party says,

I'm this and this.

There's no way you're ever going to get all the details of all the stuff that they overcame to get to that party,

To get to that moment,

To be able to say hi to you.

There's no way you can ever understand the struggle that everybody's going through because all we ever do is we post the highlight reel on social media.

And now it's like the reality is we all have this amazing detail behind the scenes,

The stuff that we fight against,

That we struggle against.

I do have to say that,

You know,

I'm listening to you and over the course of this interview,

The word that's coming to me is unstoppable.

And so you're telling me about what your life looked like before the accident.

And then you have this pretty catastrophic accident where you die three times,

I think is what you said.

And then afterwards,

You're busier with your career post accident.

And I'm thinking to myself,

You didn't die because you're unstoppable.

That is the word that is coming to me.

Would you agree?

Maybe.

I think,

Well,

When I was inside the coma,

I remember hearing my wife's voice say,

You promised you'd never leave me,

Whispering,

Please don't ever leave me.

And in that moment,

I became self-aware that I was in a coma.

I woke up.

She was there leaning over me,

Talking to me.

And I think it's like anything in this life that I've figured out,

It's the people.

It's the people that really are worth everything.

It's the people.

You've got jobs you used to work at,

You got school you used to go to,

You got things you used to do in your life.

You don't miss that.

You miss the people that you do.

You miss the friends that you have.

You miss the good times,

But it's really about the people.

Well,

I do have to say,

Your story is astonishing.

And I think it's really kind of mind-blowing.

And of course,

I can't relate to it at all.

But just having that interaction with your great-grandfather while you're outside of the car is really powerful.

And I think for me,

It just says,

You know,

Those people who deeply loved us are always there and always watching over us and always present there if we need them.

And your story is just a really powerful example of,

I think that we're loved all the time here with people that we can actually see and other places with people who we can't see,

But who are there for us anyway.

Yeah.

I mean,

If we take enough time to stop and listen,

You will hear everybody around you is rooting for you,

Even in those moments that you think they're not.

Secretly,

We all want to see somebody do something really amazing.

And,

You know,

It's very rare that there's anybody that's really rooting against us.

And in that situation,

If we think they're rooting against us,

They're not really rooting against us.

They're rooting against themselves.

You know,

I had this theory one time that what if everywhere you went,

Every room you went into,

The only thing you really cared about was everybody else in that room?

Did they have what they needed?

Is there anything that you can do to give them something?

Is there support that they need that you have the ability to give?

Is there something that you can do for everybody else in that room?

The miracle is able to work like that,

That every room that you go into,

You go in with the mindset that I'm going to help every single person in this room somehow,

Whoever it is,

Whoever's in there.

That means if we all do that,

That every room you ever go into,

It's going to be full of people trying to help you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to Episode 58 of Bite Sized Blessings,

The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us,

If only we open our eyes to it.

I need to thank my courageous and unstoppable guest,

Ford Austin,

For agreeing to share his story with me today,

As well as the creators of the music used,

Sasha End.

And that's it.

I love his music so much.

I used all of it in the show.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to books,

Music,

Change makers,

And under Ford's episode,

A link to the group that helps artists who have suffered trauma.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Ford.

Be unstoppable.

Whether it's in your friendships,

Your job,

The work you do for the world,

Be unstoppable.

Make unstoppable your superpower.

I'm not saying you have to go out and buy a cape for this new superpower,

But you never know.

It can't hurt.

Hi.

Hi,

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

I'm good.

Sorry about that.

I was just trying to get a real estate license and it was like I was in the middle of a test and I thought,

Oh,

I got this 30 minutes.

And then I was like,

You didn't have 30 minutes.

It's a brand new watch or is it a.

.

.

No,

It's an old watch and it's not digital numbers.

So you get used to looking at digital numbers so much that when you're filing,

You're like,

Hey,

I know what time it is.

It's very easy to go,

Shoot,

This thing's like an hour away from what I thought.

Right.

So,

You know,

Your first question to me on your text was what kind of person are you?

I guess I'm a person that makes mistakes.