LIVESTREAM 8.12.22 9AM PDT
Published · 1:22:16 · 874 views
About This Video
An August 2022 Friday session. Van answers viewer questions and works through project updates. The workshop never stops.
Transcript
all right says i'm live in keeping with tradition in the tradition of ripping off a david lynch idea the weather um
perfect running day if you were running between seven and eight a.m
um okay i'm going to jump right into it oh the video this week that's coming out there's a new video
coming out friday it's a good one it's the kind of video i sort of want to always make and
um uh comes out today probably after this on youtube
and i think what did i end up titling it written down i can't remember the title it's
something like nostalgia graves and a new york city apartment and that's what it's about um okay so i'm gonna do the you know i uh i take the questions that appear underneath the live stream
announcement that i post on patreon there's like a list of questions and then i usually go in chronological
order from when they were posted so i go to the first one that was posted like whatever two you know 22 hours ago
or whatever and then i write down with pencil as many as i can until the live stream begins and i wrote them down
uh all of them down today but there's 27 questions so we'll see if i get to them all um the first one comes from marcus
and he asks me my thoughts on toronto because um i used i lived there for like six months once and um so my thoughts on toronto okay so
the downtown part where all the big buildings are and where the water is is just like any other city i think and i i often say
in a in a derogatory sense when i talk about like boring new cities
i say it's like toronto like i say tokyo is like toronto it really is like toronto it's a lot like toronto and what
i mean by that is just aluminum and glass buildings everywhere now having said that most cities have
like an older part which is usually also the residential part that has like the old mom and pop buildings
and the thing about toronto i think i lived in queen near queen right they have street cars like san
francisco but they're not pulled by a rope they have like motors in them or they're not pulled by a cable they have motors in them and electricity wires
um so i don't think bicycling is very fun in in um
in toronto because those things are treacherous and the weather's bad um but it snows every day in the winter which is
amazing and wonderful and the thing that i love best about toronto and it's a testament
to canada and a testament to the canadian people is that in just about every
neighborhood in toronto there are two ice rinks one is for free skating for people like
me and the other one is for playing hockey and they i want to say almost always have their
own zamboni public service i mean there's no you don't sign anything you don't fill in anything you just go with your skates
and you go out there and ching ching skate around every cup hour a couple hours or so like or maybe it's only once a day i don't know but they have a
zamboni that goes out and ying ying and to me i'm like this is a rich and civilized
country i love that canadians love the winter and they embrace the winter and they get
a real winter i went skiing in ontario just you know regular east skiing and i can't remember the mountain i went
to but it was terrific and it was like half the cost of an american ski resort and i think that has a lot to
do with the insurance and the liability kind of laws we have here but toronto is a
is one of you know it's a world-class city and um yeah but the downtown skyscraper part is
just like every other every other like up-and-coming city i'm trying to think of any other little details that were really cool you know
great pool halls great bars cool little restaurants it's easy to get around and it's easy to park
the access to the rest of the world or the rest of you know the the non-city world is very fair and easy
canada for me for for a person who's from a super densely populated places is just so
it's so easy and [ __ ] what a country you guys have it's too bad you're attached to us because we're so overwhelming with
our influence in the world people just think canada's just like america junior but what i've heard
i've heard it's uh what is it it's like europe light canada is europe light
or something i don't know anyway that's my thoughts on toronto it's a great city um
and that comes from marcus okay so mjl asked me how to pitch work to someone i know
and i think about the thing about pitching work i think he he means to like get money but i think the thing about pitching work is you have to know
what your exactly do you want from the person that you're pitching to exactly what you want exactly do you want like
thirty six thousand five hundred and seventy nine dollars and four months to deliver such and such the other thing is like
what are your deliverables what are you what exactly are you going to deliver a 27 and 31 second 27 minute
31 second short film about boot blacks in london um and how to do it so those are the two key i think fundamental things and then
practice on all of your friends so that you have your whatever your idea is is like razor sharp and super duper simple
to understand don't pitch something that's like a little like weird and like well you know i'm not really sure but i think it's you know
it's kind of like cosmic but you know there's a lot of like spirituality no you want it to be as simple as possible
and if you look out there at the things that are very successful even if they're super super sophisticated they're simple
you know eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is about a heartbreaking break a heart broken man who wants to er
who erases his girlfriend from his memory um but an unbelievably sophisticated movie
or that movie um inside out that pixar movie unbelievably sophisticated i don't know
how they were able to i don't know how many it seems like you would need a hundred people to write that movie to to do that concept and to make it for
children and it works perfectly for adults but it's just it's about the um
emotions that live inside the head of a girl who's just moved from michigan to san francisco
that's it um i make movies so that's what i'm always pitching but um
it's probably simpler if you like make i don't know if you custom build cars or
whatever um but yeah very simple and practice on your friends a lot and then you also really have to know
i think part of the like getting there is part of the like going from imagination to
having whatever the thing is exist part of that process
is like the god test of god saying are you sure are you sure okay step two i heard
the cia guy on lex freeman this like cia operative who's no sorry no longer in the cia
and he was talking about like how the process for joining the cia was and it was just like a death of a thousand cuts
it was just like they inched you more and more and more and more into the process more more and more and more into the process and then
eventually you were you're in the cia or i think they just call it cia all right next one um
so steven asks how to be disciplined how to sit down and work
um the way for me it's about you have to really really indulge in the thing you really
really want and it has to be a really really specific thing i guess that's the theme of today's of today's live stream is specificity
and simplicity and like targets you have to really really be specific
about what you want and as specific as humanly possible you don't have to know no i'm not even going to say that as
specific as humanly possible at the outset so i think the hardest thing that i've ever done
and i was part of a team who did it was when we made that neistat brothers show from scratch and then our target was to sell it to
um hbo and it was such a difficult thing to do and it just so that's but it was specific it was specific we want hbo we took the
meetings with everyone we took the meeting we met and this will answer a question that's further down the road here we met with marcy klein
who is the who is the the the not lorne michaels of saturday night
live she's like the other lorne michaels at saturday night live and we met in saturday live
in lorne michael's office and marcy sat at lorne michael's desk and behind her head were all
were these big beta tapes which is an old old format tv format from the from the 70s and 80s
and i don't know what was on those tapes but it was like steve martin eddie murphy bill murray chevy chase in a like in a beautiful
wooden cabinet behind glass behind and they were like tapes that probably still worked anyway we met with her to do digital
shorts on saturn live because we had had all these funny little shorts that we had been making with david with i'm sorry with
andy spade i think we had worked with david spade at that point um and tom scott and
a whole bunch of people and um maybe the nicest brothers show as we've made it could have been busted up into
different you know little shorts that would have been on saturday night live but that wasn't what we wanted i mean we didn't say no to them they didn't come back with an offer and we said no but we
didn't like pursue it it was more of a like we were learning the process we met with tmc the
turner classic tur turner music clas turner club tcm i think the one that uh they ended up
doing um that show about advertising at mad men they ended up doing madmen and um i was insulted by what the lady
said but she was right she the program director was just like you should package this as like an internet show and
this is 07 or 08 so it was like very early days of youtube and we didn't know about there were no big youtubers yet or
anything but she said that i took offense to it but she was totally right but hbo took it
point is okay so to be disciplined point is you got to have some kind of a target and your first target if you're not disciplined your first target isn't to
have an hbo show buddy you know that takes 10 years your first target is to i mean i don't know maybe if you want to be a youtuber
is like i want to upload a video every week and then at a certain time 9 00 a.m friday every week
and then another thing that tom sachs taught me and this is kind of reckless but it's also like the
a little bit the artist's way he said you know you got to just put your back up against the wall you get a big paycheck spend the whole thing and
get yourself in debt have everything ride on you being successful or you're just screwed you're just like you're in a you're
i mean if you if this is if you're single if you have a family you have to consult with the family you have to consult with the wife and the child and so forth
um and then use fear and try to keep try to keep anger
out of the fear equation but use fear of not being able to pay rent fear of bill
collectors fear of getting your car repossessed fear of having to move out of new york city
fear of being broke fear of the irs garnishing all of your bank accounts because you haven't paid
taxes and you use that fear to fuel you to get up at four o'clock in the morning or whatever
and after a while they tell me uh the fear will turn into just you'll
just get used to it and it'll just be the way you live and you have to part of being disciplined is you're smashing you're taking a hammer
to this hot steel that is you and smashing it into into the shape you want this thing to be
the you the reason you're getting disciplined is because the you right now can't do the thing you want to do the thing you want to do you have to smash
yourself and build yourself into the person who's capable of doing the thing that you want to do so
you had to be disciplined pick a goal put your back up against the wall no plan b no plan b no well i can
always go back to blah blah blah fine fine just watch cartoons fine also understand
that maybe your motivation isn't something you were born with like maybe like i haven't always been disciplined
i'm a i'm like a right-brained person i've always been a scatter brain i was voted in high school most disorganized um
my senior year i'm 18 at that point i'm going to college the next year i was voted most disorganized and i just um
you know i got to this point where i discovered well you're going to need organization to do anything of consequence anything you want to do
you're going to need to be organized and is is is how you how you get there every discipline is
the key it's the absolute key but you're gonna have to smash yourself into someone that you are not and you might not be born with
you might not be born you might not be born conscientious but you've got something else that you were born with
that you can help yourself develop conscientiousness and discipline with
um [Music] oh so jake asked me i guess in one of the videos i don't remember which one it was it was probably the new york video where i talked about how new york isn't
that great or no maybe it was the tom sachs video i don't remember but um there's a video where i'm sitting at a table with my
brother and with tom scott who was the executive producer of the nicest brothers show in other words he f foot
he funded the entire series um and we're at a table in a restaurant and
the person we're sitting with is talk might have actually been marcy klein i don't think it was but it might have been the someone we're sitting at the table with is talking to tina fey
and then standing next to tina fey is steve martin and then i think there's some other person and the person asking
this question stephen i'm sorry jake asked what what what's that party and that party is
the famous rap party or is that what they call it after saturday night live after they
shoot saturday night live the whole cast and crew or the whole cast or whoever they go to a restaurant and they have a little party every saturday night they
do that i think it's called the cast party uh that i you know one of the great blessings i've had in my life as i you
know when we were talking to marcy klein about doing digital shorts she invited us to 30 rock is that what it's called
uh to the little studio and we got to watch the saturday night live i have no recollection of what happened on that
episode and then we got to go to the cast party we had to go to the cast party afterwards and all like everyone was
there you know um the guy seth meyers was there he was like the
big shot news guy and he was there with one of the most beautiful women i've ever seen in my life and i remember
she had like one of those ski hats on in the restaurant you know and it was just like i was like yeah that's what those guys
get they get those like 10 apex predator beautiful model women or whatever her job
hopefully it's his wife now um so yeah that was that story uh
so grant asked me about my ex he probably asked it more succinctly than this let me see if i
have the let's see if i have the question up about fatherhood
oh here it is so grant says uh i've been following your work since hbo can you share your experience with fatherhood
i also have a young son and my world completely changed when he was born so i've always thought i'm an old dad
bill burr has a new movie coming out called old dads um and i'm an old dad like i think at my kid's school i'm the
oldest dad and isabelle is the youngest mom is that can that no that can't be right
that can't be right there's like a there's a dad there that looks super young but he's just beautiful
he's just a very beautiful man i don't know how young he is he's probably the same age as everybody else um so i thought about i had a long time to
think about fatherhood and i to me i kind of treat it like an art
project and like it's something i mean it's like the most worthwhile thing to invest in
and also i'm lucky because my kid is kinda like me and so he's like he's his interests are similar to mine
and i'm lucky that i got a boy first so i can like learn stuff on a boy
yeah i i just remember a lot of things from childhood that weren't you know i'm a gen xer and uh
there weren't parents they just they there's like i have almost no memory of parents the only memory i have of parents
is the memory of photos of me with parents or videos of me with parents doing stuff
and the reason those photos and videos were taken was because it was such an extraordinary experience and unusual
experience to be with my parents or took for my brothers and sisters to be with my parents it was just a lot
most of the time when we came home the house was empty and my mom didn't have a job most of the time when we came home like
that my mom wasn't home you know get up get home from school at three my mom wasn't home from school until like dinner time five or six and then my dad got home after work at like seven or
whatever so there was a lot of stuff you had to learn on your own and i kind of remember
like being i remember revelations as a kid of like oh no that was taught to me the wrong way it's really this
right like i guess the best example i can give is training wheels and like training wheels should be illegal like switchblades like switchblades
or um stiletto you know automatic knives those should be legal and training wheels should be illegal just like those lawn
darts that they used to have those are illegal training wheels should be illegal because um
the only purpose they serve is to hold the bike upright and they rob you of learning the most fundamental
part of riding a bicycle is holding the bike up holding the bike up and walking it between your legs is
closer to riding an actual bike than pedaling a bike that's on training wheels there's no really in all of the
you know you have to lean the opposite way when you turn on training wheels because you're going to go you know you don't anyhow that's an example
so i for some for some reason i have a lot of those memories and i also have memory that i you know that i apply to teaching
my son stuff and then i also remember being extremely
feeling a sense of extreme betrayal when i found out things that my parents told me were
untrue were lies which happened a lot and um and i think they were just uncomfortable and then there's also
like i heard on a podcast i think it was like the tim dillon podcast he's writing a book about boomers and about like the worst gender they're the worst
generation ever and i lost my train of thought parenting books no one's around boomers oh i lost my train of thought shoot
somebody somebody remind me somebody reminded me i can't remember what i was saying um yeah when i'm editing when i just talk into the camera and then i have to edit it it's always the tangents that kind of get me that i have to cut out
what was the question even oh experience with fatherhood oh so um
yeah being um being honest even when it's like when it doesn't seem
age appropriate so one of the things that x my son asks a lot when music comes on the radio
this is so heartbreaking when music comes on the pandora on the in the car
you know he's basically raised on bob dylan we play bob dylan all the time and so you know you put the bob dylan pandora
station on and then it plays all these other guys like johnny cash and willie nelson and stuff and one of the things x asks is did he die did this guy die or
if it's a lady singing did she die but although i don't think he can tell the difference between women and men singing he just assumes they're all like bob
dylan's friends and they're all guys and so you know bob dylan nope he's still alive he's
still on tour he's still going out doing live shows um did johnny cash die yeah he died how did he die
cancer oh and then nirvana plays did he die yeah he died how did he die he
killed himself how he shot himself in the head with a shotgun why and the why makes sense because he was
in agonizing physical pain he had a stomach disease that no one could help him with and the only thing that could
help him was taking heroin and taking heroin makes you very very very miserable and so he killed himself and he sort of
bought that but the most heart the most heartbreaking one
was was marvin gaye excuse me because he's like did this guy die and i just knew it was coming i was like oh [ __ ] yes
and he said how did he die and i just had to say i said it's so sad i'm it's so sad he said i said his father killed him and then he said why
and i just had to say you know his brain was broken his father's brain was broken sometimes people's brains break and he and he sort of bought it and it
didn't have as much of an effect on him as it did on me and he's also like obsessed with death and dead bodies and stand by me and stuff so
so that's my take on fatherhood uh don't kill your son when he becomes a
one of the great american music men of all time oh so christian writes have i thought about writing a book and i guess so i don't really have anything
to say that would fill a book but maybe that'll be like the last thing i do after i stop making videos in
probably eight years um probably i don't know but that's where my exit plan is in eight years
um maybe i'll do that the problem with writing a book is you can't need the money and
you can't have a deadline it just takes as long as it takes and you can't be dependent on the money so
it's not really a business investment because it's probably not going you're probably not going to sell very many books and you're not going to get out of it what you put into it
so it has to be there has to be a higher purpose for it so jeff asked if i ever thought about
having it a reunion with the hbo people that are all in the hbo show man all the time i love all those people that i put
in that show all the friends and stuff and i do reunite with them going to new york next week and i'll see some of them
but yeah i think about that all the time they're all very a lot of them a lot of those people are very successful people who are very busy and it's
extremely difficult to corral that kind of person a group of that kind of people together i was looking at a
like the vogue supermodels in the 1980s like the vogue cover that
like folded out and it had all the supermodels on it and to me that that term supermodel is so abused now like
they they if if a girl like if a woman has made has like been like on the cover of a magazine then her
boyfriend and all her friends call her a supermodel but to me the supermodels are is that class there are no is that era
is that there are no others the new ones are not super models they're something else maybe
i don't know i'm pretty sure but to me supermodel refers to like it's like super cars that means they can
go over 200 miles an hour that's what a supercar is um so a lamborghini countach is not a
supercar a ferrari f40 is not a supercar although there is a tuned one that will go like over 200.
um so anyway the i always wonder how did they get all those the the real supermodels you know
cindy crawford naomi campbell uh linda evangelista i uh kate moss how did they
get them all together for that shoot this is that those women are so busy they're all over the world all the time like it was you know that's why they're
usually those shoots are in new york because that's where most of those people live um so yeah i'd love to do a reunion
oh oh sorry i can't talk about it anyway god that's so mean to do no i had
a phone call the other day can't talk about it but it was tangential to reunion and book but i
can't say who it was it wasn't tom sex um oh uh tom asked uh if i would be willing to give plans for the mobile repair station
that i made i'd be willing to do plans but i'm not willing to right draw them i don't want to it's too much it's too much work to draw
them but i think you could just take the video and look and see how it was all and kind of improvise and see how it was all done
it's quarter inch plywood is what they're all mounted to um
so noise rock asks my thoughts on nfts in the metaverse okay so nfts
i think the jury's kind of in that it was just basically a bubble it was it reminded me very much of the dot-com
um era where um i don't know how old you people are but when the
internet first became sort of mainstream there was this era of a few years
where dot-com businesses were valued at like pet stock the famous one i think is pets.com was
had a market cap higher than um or had an evaluation i don't know what the difference is they had an evaluation that was higher than gm
and it was basically just a domain name and so the nft thing kind of reminds me of that of like the domain names and the
and the dot-com uh stuff back then like there was this company called urban fetch and then there was a company
called cosmo and they were the same thing and they would deliver electronics for less than you could buy them for at
the store and i was and i was like and the reason the way they were able to do it is because they just burned up all
their vc money all their investment money on inventory i guess and both of them are no longer but amazon's around and some of them so
like the nfts probably some of them will maybe still hold their value like that
that big one that uh five thousand every days by people that's probably gonna be worth
be of value forever um but i heard there was like the first tweet sent
by mark no not by mark by dan the twitter guy the guy who invented twitter
i the first tweet like the nft of the first tweet was um you know
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and then they put it on auction they like when the value like someone bought it for 250 000
and then they put it on auction i'm making these numbers up by the way they put up for auction and the biggest bid
for it was like eight thousand dollars so yeah i think nfts are a bubble uh we're a bubble but there'll be some
valuable ones that come out of it uh as far as the metaverse the metaverse seems to me right now in this era is like the
dawn of internet video like pre-youtube internet video like it's kind of this weird thing that like
some of your more like techy kids and like kids who have always been into weird electronic stuff
that they know about and they and they have experience with i don't really know what the metaverse is
but my this is what i think it is i think the metaverse is you put on a headset and you go and have all these experiences in certain worlds and those worlds are
comprised of things but having said that i think if you're starting out now like
you're a kid like you're 22 years old or 25 years old and you're starting out i would get the best metaverse making equipment
and metaverse experiencing equipment i could afford and just have that be your native thing start like i can you
simply take a so to me the metaverse is like the goggles and you go like this and it's 3d and blah blah blah and that's what and
what you're ex that you're looking at and hearing is the metaverse maybe i'm wrong um or that's how the metaverse will
manifest or maybe the metaverse is like the internet you can't really just you can't describe it's like well you can hail a cab with it and then you can
also have like virtual sex with it um but i would if i was starting out
you know having a bit of experience now i would say get the best metaverse making equipment that
you can afford even if it's really shitty equipment and start making whatever metaverse assets are you know make sure they're
all i don't know how you um own them it must be blockchain technology it must be have to you know
blockchain um ledger them so that it's they're yours
um and just start making this stuff i'm wondering i heard burke chrysler talking about putting on an oculus
um and then talking about youtube videos that you could watch with the oculus and these youtube videos are shot with like
a 3d camera so with uh i'm sorry with a 360 camera uh like an um [ __ ] i have a couple like right at my
feet 360. insta360 camera like on a pole and you know it's an experience
and you as the observer you you're going on the experience with the the filmer the person who's shooting it
but you can look 360 and around you um [Music] you can look inside the sphere so i would say make stuff like that and just do very rudimentary simple stuff
like motorcycle riding any extraordinary experience that people pay to go do surfing if you're a good surfer
but you know it sounds simple but it's not it's easy and like with any new technologies you are maxing out the capability of your machine of your
computer you are going like you're gonna have to learn file management because your computer is barely going to be able to manage all that gigantic data
and then you'll learn about computers and how to build them faster and oh maybe i should switch to pc because i can make my own cooling system and add
on that's what i would do that's the kind of route you want to go and um
you know you learn how to make stuff and 3d models stuff that's it's that's whatever that there's not much
isabel is a 3d modeler that's what she does for a living like she is a expert a professional like she could make this studio and you wouldn't be able to tell
that it's not a photograph of this studio it'd be 3d and she could email the file to a cad machine
or a cnc or 3d printer and it could just build this whole studio maybe in pieces i don't know but
she was looking on the internet to see what kinds of things people were making and selling in the metaverse and she was like oh my god this stuff is
so easy to make this is like really rudimentary stuff so that's my opinion of the metaverse is
like it's probably the next frontier of uh it might not even be the facebook one facebook might just be the behemoth
like you know xerox invented the mouse and the graphical user interface and then this shitty little crap company
that made their computers that you had to put together yourself with like soldering irons and build the box out of wood
called apple computers they they uh they were like well we'll let's just use
we'll use the the graphical user interface and the mouse and people are like yeah well if xerox can't make it work how the hell are you
idiots gonna make it work and um you're at it's such an advantage being
small it's a total advantage um so that's what i think so william asked
um let me see if i can um oh wait i skipped one that's on the awareness of oh i've skipped a bunch hold on a sec hbo reunion oh okay sorry i skipped mats matt asked how
tom sacks made the and i learned a new word today chamfer
on the inside of his plywood cinder blocks so the chamfer is the curved portion
where the horizontal part of the cinder block meets the vertical part of the zinder cinder block so you have a cinder block and then you have this
and this part how did he make that i don't know exactly how he made it but i know the materials he used and if
i was a fabricator there which i was if i was a fabricator there the way i would make it is
he uses west systems resin which is like the most expensive version and it's the kind that's it's like
golden i can't i think it's 207 it's either 205 or 207 i can't remember and then the west system's hardener uh
that uh the hardener is the it's like the 12-hour one
i don't remember exactly or maybe it's west system resin and then the 205 harder hardener it's been a while
and then he mixes it with this stuff called cabacil which is this silica powder you have to wear a respirator or else you can get
silicosis in your lungs it's super fine dust but what it does is it turns the liquid
resin it turns it into like a paste and so they probably just like they they like
like a like a like a drywall guy they just schlopp it in there in that little corner and then there's probably a jig
that that that someone is made with a vertical and with a vertical and a horizontal like an x and a y and then a little curve that has the right curve
and they probably just stick it in and like carefully pull the cabicil so that it sort of comes out a little bit too far beyond the edge of the
of the cinder the plywood cinder block and then they probably just grind it down or sand it down but they're perfect
i mean that that edge that's the hard part is like the exit edge where it meets the it's like flush that's the hard part maybe they do it in two passes
and they hold it vertically but that's how i would do it take a few experiments but no i don't know how that was after my time i don't know exactly how they do it
um okay uh so felix asks what's my musical background i don't have any music education i'm just i like music like everybody else
and um so uh gray gersten when i used to have he scored a lot of music
but then i couldn't afford him anymore like i ran out of my kickstarter money and he was
getting like bigger jobs like big like real you know composer jobs he's like he's like a pro like a it's like a real
composer um who does like you know big projects for big you know networks and so forth um
so then i was kind of forced into making my own music and i just i got a um i got a
i really love the sound of the moog synthesizer or the mini moog synthesizer and i love that it's just invented
sounds like there's just knobs and [ __ ] that you turn the knobs all a bunch of different ways and it's all just circuits it's all analog and then the
keyboard plays like it can play like the sound like the soundtrack from blade runner or it can just play like space
alien like star wars weird sound effect sounds and so you can buy all these like little
plugins for like five bucks or whatever and i buy those you know it's on my ipad i connect it to my
rode and then i just get in a trance put the headphones in push record and just find instruments and settings that i like and mess with dials and stuff and just play
tones that i like and then name them and put them in a folder and then mix them together to make
you know sounds it's not really music it's more sound design that's my musical background um
okay so eric who sent me um artwork thank you very much eric i have your letter right right over there
that you sent me and it's on my pile of letters that maybe one day i'll reply to um and he sent me some artwork and he's
definitely a um skilled artist um and he asked me how to select an art gallery
all right so that's out of my league i didn't have success um i've shown work at galleries i work with a guy
here and um [Music] the way to do it oh the art industry man is so so conservative it might be the most conservative in industry it is like they first of all read a book called the 12
million dollar shark read that book because that is a book written by an uh
an economist a harvard economist and he just wrote a book about the economics the nuts and bolts of the
economics of the art industry it probably is 10 years old it probably came out in 10 no it's probably older probably 2009 2010 but it's basically up
to date and it's you can't really i mean when you hear stories of a guy who like he was shown at the the local garage you know with the he had it up where they were selling motorcycles and
then five years later it was 850 million dollars at christie's okay that's the one guy who did that that's why it's a
story no one else is ever going to do that like the other thousand artists or 3 000 artists who
are millionaires none of them did it did it that way and the all of them all followed a certain
uh protocol for getting becoming successful artists with who could like send their
kids to school and live like dentists and i know a great i don't know a great deal of them but i know a lot of them i
know 25 of them i've visited them all over the world i've been in their homes and um they all sort of have certain things in
common and you have to be very very careful with your gallery selection and you should
prob i mean and there's all these like rules about collectors it's more about collectors
that's how you select your gallery is find collectors who believe in you collectors who want your work because
they want your work to become more valuable so that their collection is more valuable that's the route to the galleries i
think and you want the highest possible status collector you want the highest possible
status gallery do not commit to a gallery and unless they're a name brand gallery and that and i'd probably not more than 90 percent of name brand galleries are in
new york city i would say do not commit to a gallery unless it's a new york city gallery and
maybe commit to an la gallery maybe commit to a gallery in paris and there's one in like
salzburg but you ain't getting in there if you're asking me today's row pack is not is not going to recom is not going to
represent you if you're asking me for gallery suggestions um everything i'm sorry i'm sorry and yes
you can find the one guy who is the exception or the one girl who is the exception but everything else is irrelevant i'm sorry that's the way it
is this is like the biggest gallery in st louis or whatever this local blah blah i'm sorry
i mean if we're talking about galleries and we're talking about representation and we're talking about the real deal that's the way and um
you know the way to not do it is to be an assistant is to be a big artist's assistant i think that never really works i don't know anyone
who's worked for sax who went on to become a fine artist and is represented by a big you know blue chip
gallery i don't know anyone it's um they've all just gone out on their own and the thing it's such a it's such a
it's such a strict conservative um industry because they want like the
archetypical artist story they want the story you have to fit a certain profile and yet
they want artists who went to art school which is weird like they're all like almost uh almost ever tom sacks went to art school almost
every single artist that i've met first of all it's so unbelievably rare to be a
um like a museum quality artist or uh like i wanted to say rich artist because that's i think that's what we're
talking about here right we're talking about galleries gallery is your retail for your artwork um i don't know that there's a medium i
don't think that there's there's like a middle class the middle class artists are teachers it's only
like rich or poor i don't think there is like a middle class area with artists and
um all the ones i know went to even the like renegade ones they're all still like art school kids
chris burton went to art school i'm almost positive like ed roushay i'm almost positive went to art school um
i've worked with ed roushay uh but you know who who represents him like gagosian or something some
[Music] monster uh represents ed roushay uh and then some people have multiple galleries sax has multiple people who
represent him but today is robot gets his best work and today as rhopak moves his best work
and today's robot gets the biggest dollars for sax and that over 20-year relationship 25-year
relationship and the best way is to do something that gets you a lot of press do some
audacious uh thing that gets you a lot of attention a lot of press it's a little tricky now because everyone's trying to
get a lot of press and um you know i'm not a gallery artist so i shouldn't even be speaking to this but i know some
and i know sax pretty well and i know his story pretty well and the reason he got a mary boone who was a big big deal
she represented basquiat um when he was alive and basquiat was a gigantic superstar he was
like the biggest superstar post um warhol and warhol was jealous of him um
so tom got mary boone because he he was a he was a what's called what is it called a window dresser which are the people who do like the the windows in the new york the big famous bloomingdales and
all that stuff little sets in those windows they're very artfully done and beautifully done especially around the holidays and so tom
so barney's new york which is a you know what barney's is they did windows one year and tom had been working at barney's doing window
dressing and they were um they focused on they they did one with that was artists and tom cajoled
and he's very clever and he's a he's a foxy guy and he got the opportunity to get one of those windows at barney's
and so the thing he made for the window at barney's and he made it it was entirely made out of duct tape but made well out of duct tape
you know his life was dedicated to making this piece when he was making it and it was a crash a manger
like the the manger with the three wise men and the virgin mary and the baby jesus
and all that stuff it was all made out of duct tape and it was the manger had a mcdonald's logo on it and the virgin
mary was madonna hello kitty with six nippled tits and like the bondage gear
and the baby jesus i'm pretty sure was bart simpson and i don't remember who the three wise men were but it was this this crazy
um nativity scene that's what they're called it was this crazy nativity scene and he put it for the christmas display at barney's in one of the windows
and the catholic defamation league like came out against barney's and like it was this huge thing in the
press and it was on the cover of the new york post and the headline was away with the
manger which is like it's a pun from one of those from one of the christmas carols
away in a manger the angels did say and it said away with the manger and so
he got a show with mary boone and even that took a tremendous amount of being clever and chess on tom sachs's
part of getting mary boone and then at the mary boone opening at one of his big big big mary boone openings where
all the soup the real supermodels the ones i just named showed up because this is 90s this is mid 90s um
and movie stars and you know parker posey and winona ryder i'm pretty sure he dated um
big deal big deal pre-internet you know and all that big deal art opening he had as hors d'oeuvres
he had and this this was in manhattan i'm pretty sure it was in chelsea he had as hors d'oeuvres like guys walking around like this like beautiful
uh i i don't know baccarat crystal or something um bowls full of night live
nine millimeter um cartridges bullets and mary boone went to jail the cops came put her in handcuffs put her in the back of a cab and put her in
jail and that's how you get a gallery i mean that's how you keep a gallery that's how you get today is ropak you know um
audacity there's no such thing as that read that book on 48 laws of power like there's no such thing as bad publicity that's how you
did it in the olden days and uh you know they left you can't have bullets in manhattan you can well maybe now you can
maybe now you can because of that supreme court ruling but this was back in the days where it was like mandatory sentencing and all of this stuff
so you know i don't know you gotta be really audacious um tyler asks me i'm gonna go a little late
today because uh i already went on my run uh tyler asks um advice for college freshman to be so i guess tyler is going
to be going into his freshman year i would say okay i was a college freshman
i went to four years of college but i didn't graduate i might have even gone to five years of college i didn't graduate so you've already made the decision
you're going you're enrolling in college so i would discourage you from going to
college unless you need a license for the career you want and the only way to acquire that license is by going to
college i would say that the college um culture right now is in such a
it's in disarray and i i don't trust those institutions really especially the elite ones um but you're gonna network and meet
depending on the quality of your college you're going to meet people you would normally have wouldn't have access to um
you know don't party too much don't make partying your thing don't be the party guy um you know unless you're bert crusher uh
um you know all this stuff your dad would tell you to do but you're there
to sort of learn the possibilities i think depends what you're studying but you know do as much as you possibly can
and you're never going to have you're probably never going to have as much free time as you have you have a unbelievable amount of free time in
college i i hadn't anticipated that i mean when i i went to two colleges i went to west virginia university
and then i went to uh college of william and mary in virginia and uh william and mary i was in over my
head and west virginia i was in under my head uh and everybody was so much smarter than me at
william and mary and i just like i could barely barely barely keep up but yeah there's a lot of free time
you know uh i would say don't join a fraternity um i would say if your call if your
college has um if you're going to i should have asked him what college it is because it all depends on the kind of college you go to
go to the sporting events especially if you go to a college with elite sports teams if you're going to michigan go to the michigan ohio game don't be a fool
and participate and don't be above it my generation has kind of had this tendency to try to be above everything i don't know the the younger kids these days are
much more uh they're more like crowdsource people they're like very integrated and community based which is the better way
to be god college i can't imagine going to college right now you know when i went it was like you had
if you went to a certain level of college you had access to the world and if you didn't go to a certain level of college generally speaking you didn't
have access to a certain level of the world you know this is all pre-everything you know when i went to college steve jobs
had been like fired from from uh from apple so it was uh
the college was i think much more important back then than it is now it's sort of become a scam but you're there so you know
concentrate don't be afraid to fail the classes that you hate but definitely if you're in for the long haul you're gonna
have to do all the shitty classes to get your degree you're gonna have to do the ones that you don't have any interest in and just get through it and i don't know
how smart you are but whatever do your best and have fun um what else
uh william asked me if uh about if i have an awareness of my handwriting is it part of my work and really it's just
i i'm from i'm handwriting's not special to my generation the computer is the computer is the special weird thing so
it's just natural to me to write faster easier i have less trouble keeping track of things if they're handwritten but it's not as fast
as typing so it's not as good for writing like complex things that i don't that i'm trying to understand for myself
and i think x is trying to get in buddy i'm doing my live stream
can i come see you in a minute oh he just like hanging his head and
walked away oh no he's digging he's just digging in the yard okay i'm sorry
uh yeah it's just um there's nothing special about it
okay illy asked waste of money purchases i'm not good with money i'm not like
organized with it but i don't really waste it um but i think what he's asking is there things that i bought that are just
like oh man this is a total waste of money uh i should be able to think of something
um i have this investment thing i won't name any names or anything but it was like it was it was like person i trusted recommended me to a
person i trusted and i'm doing i did investments with them and i'm like looking at the numbers and i've been doing these investments for like it's
not much it's like a hundred dollars a month or something like this and i'm looking at the numbers and i'm thinking and i think
like um i think there's less money in there than i've put in and i understand markets
okay i understand how the whole thing works and i don't understand how the whole thing works but i understand you have risk versus reward blah blah blah blah blah blah but i also understand
if i took that money and i there were months where hundred dollars meant skipping meals if i took that money
i would turn it into i would make little videos and turn it into more money okay i would take the money and make
turn think of how hard that is all you have to do investor person is make more money you don't have to
make the videos your whole job is making the more money you don't have i in it like and it may it
infuriates me that you are not it's not about losing the money that infuriates me it infuriates me that you're allowed to do
this you're allowed to do this and not make the money it should be like i don't know so that i i consider that a
waste of money and ironically i wish i had wasted that money i wish i had wasted that money on stupid stupid
things um instead of saving it i kind of hate savings and also like inflation just means if you're saving
money that means you're losing like 10 a year this year like what um
but wasted money i don't know what i wasted money on i don't know i don't know little things i don't know
i'm i'm kind of too uptight with money i wish i'd wasted wasted more and then and he asked if i had any spontaneous
things that i was really glad i bought yeah um my first motorcycle i had brought in an
older motorcycle i spent two thousand dollars getting it fixed and then i wrote it off a lot i rode the old motorcycle
and uh the the the um anti-lock brakes didn't work anymore and i turned right around went back to the
to the bmw manhattan i said hang on a second guys i just spent two thousand dollars fixing this bike and now the anti-lock brakes don't work fix them and
they're like it doesn't work that way it's gonna cost such and such amount oh it's a more complicated story i had a loaner bike that they had loaned me to
ride while they were fixing my bike and i had [ __ ] dropped the loaner bike and did damage to it i was taking a right turn they just
that hour painted the crosswalk and it had those little beads on it and i just took the turn from a stoplight too fast
and dropped the bike went out from underneath me and i like scraped up the fairing a little bit but it was a brand new bike and scraped up the
foot the foot peg a little bit but it was a brand new bike so they had that against me so
uh they were like well it's the damage is such and such amount of money and to fix the anti-lock brakes is such
and such amount of money and i was just like what if i buy a brand new motorcycle right now and trade this bike in how
much will you give me for it and uh it was like a smart it was like right when i had hbo money um
no it wasn't hbo money i had like nice step brothers money the production money and uh it was like i just felt tough
and then it was like okay and then they gave they're like we'll give you two grand for the old bike and we'll eat the damage you did to the loner bike and
then it costs such and such money and i just bought it right there on the spot i still have it that was 15 years ago things right down there i wrote it two
days ago so that was something uh spontaneous and i'm really glad i did um what did i learn reading the thompson
hunter s thompson books i learned that you can get away with things with with being a crazy person
um to the degree that your work is good that's one of the things i learned and um
you know he killed himself in the end so all that all the drugs and stuff was like useful
to a point and then it killed him so i guess i learned that but also that your point of view is very
valuable no matter what it is so that's three things um
uh chad asked was i selective about client based work in the past and if not when did i become
selective it's the opposite i used to be because the advertising industry was different back in the olden days if you were an ad person you were just making
ads you weren't making the little videos you weren't making the little nystat brothers uh you know youtube videos you weren't our
hbo series you you weren't making uh the respectability tour you were just cashing in your ability to
do those things and your time to do those things to making commercials and so i didn't do any i did we did a couple
if the timing was right where we were broke and we were getting little like opportunities to make stuff
we would do it um but now now that advertising just supports the thing that you're already
doing if you're a youtube person i'll advertise just about anything unless it's you know i don't know it depends
it depends um just because i wouldn't use a product doesn't mean it's not a good product so
um but if it's like a scam or something i wouldn't advertise that i wouldn't knowingly advertise that um
so no i'm less it's just it's like wow this per like yeah just take the money just do it
uh also it's you know mike tyson does 60 second ad reads mike tyson
okay if he can do it i can do it um another question has one come disciplined become disciplined i think i
already answered that one just put your back up against the wall find a very specific goal and go after it
what book have i gifted most to others and why jesus i don't know
i don't know maybe the outlaw bible of american literature just because it's full of all these great little snippets from all the
great badass writers in america um oh ethan asked did i work on the tom
sachs shoes no i didn't work on the shoes did ads but i mean did little videos but didn't work on the shoes
oh somebody mark asked what does the little tc stand for in the upper right hand side of my
of my post-its and the tc stands for topanga canyon
on the old ones they all say like nyc and on some of them it says berlin and some of them it says mexico but uh yeah that's where i wrote them
um do i have oh max asked do i have any preferred notebooks or note-taking styles
you know in my my you know it's i'm from a different world like um there were no laptops when i was learning when
i was in school so the notebook thing is the most ordinary thing in the world to me but now that i think about it it's like oh
no no no people don't use notebooks anymore it's all computers and blah blah blah so the notebook i prefer and i think this might have to be
it might be because i'm left-handed and the the spiral or the binding of any notebook when you're a lefty and you're
writing the binding you know as opposed to this um
i like to use a three ring binder and then cardstock paper
if it's going to have drawings on it so that you can erase or just like notebook paper with three holes punched in it you can buy it with the holes but i have a
hole punch in case i don't want to punch in it and um you know i date everything every page has a date
uh and sort of every page has a title and then that's how i do it notes and then it's very similar to the with the
typewriter i use three ring binders and then i also use this special
it's called pleating paper i don't know why but it has red margins and it's 25 cotton uh
it's expensive um and that's what i use for my for type notes um
somebody asked i didn't write your name down i'm sorry uh if i would ever collaborate with the company the thing about collaborations like when
you do a product together like saks did the leatherman or or he did the nikes right
it's a it no one makes any money on those deals because the runs are so small i mean kanye or whatever when he
did didn't he do like an adidas deal i don't know maybe i'm wrong or like uh lewis hamilton when he does you know puma
yeah he makes my he makes money but like a guy on my level it would just be like a project for fun that you would do and i just
don't have time for that pentel reached out they make these pencils and you know i said i was interested in working with them but like
i didn't come back with a big plan because i know there's no money it's just it's just a project you do for fun and i i
i'm there's i would be there's no way sax made any money on the um on the uh
what are they called the leatherman and there was some nike collaboration i
think it was the first the nike the mars yards and wait maybe this is privileged
information is this privileged information i don't know i'll just i'll just speak in general terms then i know someone who did a
collaboration with a big manufacturer and this person told me they did this product the product sold out very fast
and completely and no one made a profit he didn't make a profit and the big company that he collaborated with didn't make a profit
so you know sometimes it's there's a there's a purpose you know down the road if you have a bigger strategy and you're going to eventually you know roll out a bigger and bigger
thing and you're testing you know i'm a little guy you know i'd be testing out little things for interest and if they caught on then you
could bratch it up and do a bigger thing next time bigger thing but with that kind of stuff it's all volume isabel is always trying to get me to do
products but like no all the product people are going into media media is the is the thing if you're trying to make money and that's where i am
uh that's where i am in this beginning stage of this channel starting to loosen up now thanks to you
guys big a big part thanks to you guys um but yeah it would just weaken the videos to do it and i get one video out of it
which would be one week and it would take months and months or maybe a year to do the product um
oh what's the progress of my with my land cruiser um oh i just called montana this week and
i'm delivering it on the 15th and i was talking to um
i talked to one auto shipper and i can drive it up for half as much money including all the air the airfare flying
back and the gas and the hotels staying on the way there um i can do it for half as much and i can
get a youtube video out of it and there's a there's a good possibility that this
engine won't make it but that's okay because i'm getting a new engine so it'd be like the last hurrah of this engine that's in this
machine that has like it has 300 and something thousand i think it
has 200 000 miles on it like i mean it's it's it'll go for a long i i d
very seriously doubt this trip will make a dent on it but the reason i am replacing this
engine is because it has it does not have anywhere near the amount of horsepower it needs to get
that truck up the mountains around here you know if it was a florida truck you just leave that engine in there forever
but you cannot get up the i mean i can't even get to uh malibu i'm not i'm sorry i can't there's a
[Music] uh cane and dune canaan doom road which is a canyon road that goes up and over into malibu and i have to pull
over into the breakdown lane because at full throttle going up that hill it's only going 35
miles an hour full throttle so and i pulled into a fancy restaurant semi-fancy a nice restaurant let's call
that a nice restaurant called it's called malibu cafe this was a few weeks ago i just i had the air conditioning on full blast uh it
was isabelle myself an ex in the car so like full car and we drove up that road 35 miles an hour full full throttle up
the thing it was hot out and when when i got to the parking lot there was smoke coming out from underneath the uh
the uh the hood and i opened the hood and then the uh heat shield boot which is made out of
fiberglass around the turbocharger which is a it's not a factory turbocharger it's a toyota turbocharger but it was
added by the last owner was on fire and you know there's a lot of things in the engine bay i mean it's diesel engine so it's not like a gas
engine where things where the fuel explodes um and the the thing was on fire and it melted my
brake um master cylinder so i hit it with the um i hit it with the uh not the master
cylinder the reservoir for the master cylinder because that's plastic i hit it with the fire extinguisher i keep a fire extinguisher in the car and then i
redid i you know i redid some of the heat shielding and so forth so that it hasn't happened again
and um driving up to montana in september it's probably not going to be as hot but anyway anyway so yeah that's
the progress i'm driving up to montana um god willing please bless me on this trip i don't
want any problems i just want to get there and drop the truck off and fly home um you know the first night i'll be staying
in salt lake city and then next leg is all the way to it's on like the idaho border it's like southern
um uh montana uh so that's september 15th i'm leaving probably the 12th
that's my current plan i don't know what's going to happen that's what i think is going to happen i might start booking that stuff today but the plan is to have the truck there
i've already arranged it talk to the guy at overland cruisers so that's what's going on with that and wait there was one more question that he had um
oh how much time do i spend documenting family photos before i started the channel i was doing it probably an hour a week or something
taking real time to like or more than that maybe you know i shoot the film camera and then i bring it there's a great lab at the bottom of my
hill and i bring it and i get them printed out onto you know that developed onto matte paper and then i put it in
sometimes i do the dates in captions on tape typewriter and like tape it in there i spend a couple hours a week doing it i've done it so long and i have
a pile of photos that i haven't put in albums yet because i have to put the dates but um yeah that's something else i'll do maybe
in during my break in the in the wintertime um gabriel asked me if i have a sweet tooth
yes i do but not as bad as my brothers my brothers like when we were kids they would take the hershey's chocolate syrup at my
grandmother's house like the squeeze bottle thing and just drink the whole thing um
and my youngest brother dean he's like this okay my youngest brother dean is thor's stunt double okay to give you an
idea of like the athleticism and the size and the fitness of this guy he is a he's an ironman triathlete and he is
thor's stunt double in the new thor movie um he i the only thing i've ever seen him
eat in the last decade is sweets like i don't know of him i don't know what kind of food he's the most picky guy he doesn't like ketchup
but you know i see him eat pies and stuff i know i saw him eat some like risotto or something in this restaurant in los feliz but it was
disgusting um so ayer said i mentioned my favorite film in one of these
live casts but she didn't write it down or something uh that would be the writer
by chloe i can't remember her last name the woman who did
she won last year zhao chloe zhao she won for uh if you go to imdb you can just i it's
called the rider is my movie that i like if you go to idmb and imdb no mad land she wrote and directed that um
and then peter is the last question peter asked me if i had a 3d printer no but that is the technology i am willing to adapt and when i have more
space god willing when i have a bigger facility to do this stuff in um
that will likely be the next cutting-edge piece of technology that i um
learn and i'm going to be pc based probably for that i will have a whole independent
create creative uh paradigm for that and it will be pc i will have a pc com like an ibm like a
panasonic toughbook computer that runs the thing and that will be how i can learn pc because i'd like to learn all the pc stuff because this apple
i got news for you guys i've been buying apple forever i'm the i was the bigot when they were like going out of business and stuff i was the biggest like
proselytizer for apple apple was made for people with my kind of brains but truth be told the reason they're so popular
apple are toys they're toys pc is a tool apple stuff is a toy i'm just making all
this stuff all my videos and all this stuff with a toy and you can you know toys you can do lots of cool stuff with toys but they're
not real they're not like they're not real they're toys so um and i don't know anything about pcs i
just know that you can like take them apart and build them and solder and [ __ ] pcs are tools um
also isabel works for microsoft so i have a vested interest all right that's it have a great weekend
the next video should be coming out the next youtube video should be coming out sometime today it's a really good one i'm very happy with it and i haven't been happy with them in the last few
weeks so uh i hope you enjoy it no video no youtube video next week because i'm going on a little trip with my boy but
i'll make a video about that when i get back uh take care everybody
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Apple uses — discussed as toys vs PCs as tools
- Moog synthesizer/Mini Moog recommends — analog synthesizer sound loved
- Pentel pencils essential — pencil brand that reached out for collaboration
- Leatherman mentions — Tom Sachs collaboration mentioned
- Nike Mars Yard mentions — Tom Sachs collaboration mentioned
- BMW Manhattan uses — motorcycle dealer where Van bought his bike
- Insta360 mentions — 360 camera mentioned
- Oculus mentions — VR headset discussed
- Panasonic Toughbook mentions — PC laptop considered for 3D printing setup
- Lamborghini Countach mentions — car discussed (not a supercar)
- Ferrari F40 mentions — car discussed (not technically a supercar)
- West Systems resin uses — epoxy resin, 205 or 207 hardener
- Cab-O-Sil uses — silica powder thickener for resin (auto-caption: 'cabacil')
- Overland Cruisers uses — Land Cruiser shop in Montana
People Referenced
David Lynch, Tom Sachs, Marcy Klein, Lorne Michaels, Seth Meyers, Tina Fey, Steve Martin, Andy Spade, David Spade, Tom Scott, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss, Bert Kreischer
Books Mentioned
- The Outlaw Bible of American Literature
- The 12 Million Dollar Shark
Films & Media Referenced
- example of sophisticated but simple film
- Pixar film praised
- Chloe Zhao, Van's favorite film
- HBO series, making-of discussed
- meeting with Marcy Klein for digital shorts
- Bill Burr movie
- son obsessed with it
- soundtrack reference for Moog synthesizer