Jocko Underground: How Movies Might Influence You. Slackers! Being A Team Player Is Hard, but Worth It.
7 Dec 2025 · 9 min
This is a transcript excerpt from Jocko Underground podcast episode (host Jocko Willink with Echo Charles). The hosts discuss the common "one thing" question, then reframe it as "which movies have I watched more than 10 times?" Jocko lists and anecdotes several films he repeatedly watched growing up — notably Jaws (recorded on VHS), Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Deer Hunter, and Taxi Driver — and explains how these war/psychological films influenced his youthful aspirations. The chunk ends with a brief promo for the Jocko Underground site and reasons for hosting independently.
Chapters
This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 37 echo. Charles is sitting here with me, kind of chuckling. What's the chuckle for?
You're the man.
That's not an accurate answer. First of all, what are you chuckling at, guys?
Right? You're fired up today, and I'm feeling your energy, and it's good, man. I'm very happy. It's making me very happy.
Okay, so topic today, there's a question that I get asked. There's a. There's. First of all, everybody always wants to know the one thing, right? I get asked that question a lot. Hey, if there's one thing that you could have known. And I get it, I get. I'm not. I shouldn't have done the. The. The condescending voice or the mimicking voice, because it's a legitimate question. Hey, if there's one thing that you would have known when you were in the SEAL teams, if there's one thing you knew when you started your business, if there's one. So there's always those kind of questions. If there's one book you could recommend, there's those questions. Is there one piece of advice that you. Right there. So there's all these questions, right? And I usually try and sort of gently say, well, you know, I feel like I evolved over time, and I didn't just have a eureka moment. And the eureka moments that I have had, I put them into the book so you can read especially Leadership strategy and Tactics. That's got some eureka moments in it, right? Learn how to detach. Learn the importance of humility. Right? So those are things that I remember happening.
Then you get. But alongside the book one, occasionally there's one that comes up. I didn't feel like this was a Jocko Podcast level question, but that's what this podcast is for.
Best movie of all time. What's your favorite movie of all time? Again, to me, that's a tough question because there's so many different categories of movies. Okay, so what are your top five movies of all time? Well, again, now we're. How are we rating this? So what? I. I framed this topic for myself in a different way. And.
The question is. Or the statement is, what movies have I watched more than 10 times?
Yeah, that's good.
So that was my thought. And then a kind of a little bit of. I'm not going to go too far into, but like, why. Why is that movie particular? And then also, I have to make a caveat here that.
I literally just thought of the first 10 that came to my mind, and there's more than this. And I know I'm probably missing some of my favorites or whatever, but that's what I thought. And then I thought to organize them. I kind of. Well, as I did it, I was naturally. I just naturally fell into going in my past and thinking, what movies in my life have I watched more than 10 times in chronological order? So number one, coming out of the gate. Jaws. Yep, Jaws. We used to watch Jaws. So we. We had a videotape machine back in the day.
Sure. Hell, yeah. Betamax or vhs?
Vhs. My dad started this company, or attempted to start this company called Video Inventory Protection. Vip. Not a bad little branding move there, pops.
I got you.
So he. In order to make this happen, it was. The idea was he would go into your house and video things, and then if your house burned down, you go, hey, I got this videotape in my. You know, my safety deposit box at the bank.
We're good.
That was his idea. Business never did anything. It was a flop. Failure. But. But he did buy a camera, a video camera and a video cassette recorder, which, by the way, was two different items.
The video recorder was the size of two or no, maybe three shoe boxes.
Maybe four shoeboxes. It was big. And then it had a big, thick cable that was as bigger. Bigger around. As big around as your thumb. And the cable went to the camera, which was a big, giant camera. And the freaking pictures were awful and grainy and it sucked. But we did get this video cassette recorder, and you could record off the TV with it.
So at some point in my life.
Somebody. We recorded the movie Jaws off of TV because we had cable. So it was, you know, commercials and all right.
And we just recorded. It was also rated G. So there was a bunch of parts that were missing, which I didn't find out until later in life.
What was rated Gave?
They had adjusted it for TV op. So there was, like, no swears, no nudity. There's a couple nude scenes or barely nude scenes or whatever. Some of the violence had been edited out. But we had recorded the movie Jaws and we watched it freaking all the time. The other thing, too, is.
That might have been the only movie that we had. Maybe we had no. I don't think we had any other movies recorded. So that was it. So, like, you had one record. What are you gonna play? You're gonna play that one record. So by default, we kind of ended up just going deep with Jaws. Now. It's an awesome movie. I'm from New England. It's Got a bunch of hits. A bunch of. What is it? Even. I was a kid, you know, you're like, oh, this is like my people. Right? You know Quint.
Yep.
So that was number one. I remember watching Jaws. We watched Jaws countless times, man. Next up, Platoon.
Platoon. Like, what am I going to say when that came out? You know, I wanted to be a commando. Out comes a movie. Raw. Crazy. Mm. And we ended up at some point, I don't think we. I didn't get the video of that early, but eventually, once I got older and had my own video cassette recorder and stuff and had a. You go out and buy a video from a store.
Platoon. And actually, I think I may have confused chronologically, but Apocalypse now.
That one I know I had a recording of from the TV or from somewhere. I think it was from the tv. Bad recording. You know, those lines going across it sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes.
That's the tracking line.
Yeah, the tracking lines and all that stuff. But Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse now may have been. Actually, I think that predated me watching Platoon over and over again. Apocalypse Now. In fact, I know it did sort of reverse those two. So Apocalypse now was probably the first war movie. And again, here I am. Young kid wants to be a commander. And here we go. River boats, brown water. Navy Commando, upstream. Secret mission, CIA. I mean, this is just a dream come true. And what's funny about these movies, Platoon, Apocalypse now, they were making these. These are allegedly anti war movies. I've never met a friend of mine that ever thought any of those movies were anti war. As far as we were concerned. Like, those are why. Why we're joining. Whenever I. Whenever I hear interviews with some of those people, the Hollywood people that talk about the movie that they made or the movie that they're in, and it was this anti war thing, I was like, man, I guess I wasn't picking up on that because when I saw Apocalypse now, are you kidding me? I wanted to rock and roll Platoon. You watch that now, you think, oh, my gosh, that's awful. When you're 14 or whatever. This is it. This is it. Say, I didn't put on the list, but Deer Hunter is another one. The reason I think of that, because Deer Hunters like a psychologically scarring movie. Awful movie. I loved that movie. I thought that was a dream life.
I never heard of Deer Hunter.
Oh, man, it's a freaking good movie, man. Did he mouth? Did he mouth?
What was the one with Chuck Norris?
I don't know. I never got into those movies. I never got into those movies. The same action movies that you like right now that I don't like. I didn't like them back then.
That's weird.
Yep. I liked the raw, emotional, crazy, psycho war movies like Deer Hunter. You've never seen Deer Hunter? I've never seen psychologically scarring. And when I watched it, I was like, that's what I want to do.
So we got that going for us. And that's. You know, I'm starting to go on a tangent here, but Taxi Driver, same thing. You ever seen Taxi Driver?
Yeah.
Yeah. So Taxi Driver not didn't really make my list here, but that movie, I was intrigued by that.
So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.
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