LIVESTREAM FRIDAY, 1.28.22
Published · 1:17:59 · 980 views
About This Video
A January 2022 session, early in the channel's livestreaming history. Van takes viewer questions and finds the format. Everything has to start somewhere.
Transcript
test the mic is this loud enough i think i need to
fix the gain ah so are we live i think we're live um is the mic loud enough can you hear me uh i can't tell if it's working
how about now is this good is this good is this too loud i was a little hot last time
um i'm not seeing any comments so i'm a little afraid that we're not live
[Music] um 9 a.m it's 901. um maybe i don't see his comments not on posts go to this one hmm i'm not seeing it okay i see five six people okay so can someone just tell me if you're hearing me because i don't see
any responses in the uh comments good morning everyone okay and how is the mic last time it was uh hot it was like the level was too high sounds great audio is good okay
i i hope to one day have to start the first three minutes of the uh live stream with me just sorting out
technical issues but thanks for joining it says there's seven people on which is fantastic
um okay uh i got this bump building a playhouse for my son
which is this week's video it should come out today i'm a little behind schedule it should come out this afternoon on youtube
uh okay so mike is a little hot but don't sweat it it really is i am gonna sweat it
there was a youtube video that i didn't click on and watch and it said that you are using your blue whatever this brand of microphone
is it said you are using it wrong and i really regret not watching it
it's a little hot huh okay because there's i just have a little indicator here
and uh okay i don't know okay i'm just gonna get started and hope hope this this does it um okay a lot of good mornings good
morning everyone what other books would you recommend for raising spirited men oh boy
uh what other books would you recommend for raising spirited men from carter jones um
oh my god i guess i mentioned uh the coddling of the american mind by jonathan height and
greg lukianov um i don't know i don't i i'd have to think about have to go through my i'd have to go through my my uh i don't know the jury's out my boy's
only three years old and three-year-olds are spirited so i have no idea but the books that raised me
um i don't know the basics from high school like catch her in the rye uh
um [Music] i don't know it's just there's there's so many uh i have questions from last week that i thought were really good and um
[Music] i'm gonna try to answer those okay so this is one i've been thinking about all or not from last week i'm sorry from the podcast on the on january 14th from the live stream on january 14th
so this is a question from um devon rumple um and i'm just paraphrasing and he asked
about the balance between techno technical craft and storytelling
and this is a great question because i mean obviously it depends on so much stuff
but it depends i guess what your ambitions are and i my over my uh like fundamental thinking behind this is that as your work
gets better more popular i don't know but as your work gets more successful
you will if you choose gain access to the more sophisticated
equipment and i think the if you i'm just saying like in my mind
i'm always starting from resource zero i'm starting from 22 years old out of college
um and i'm also doing this in 1998 okay my brain is like goes back to 1998
so whatever the you know socioeconomic reality of 1998 was not today socioeconomic
uh and you're out of college you're barely making it you can maybe if you sort of
put your life on the line you can maybe figure out how to spare 500 over the course of a year
i mean you can spend that 500 and it'll take you the course of a year to recover from the bomb that that 500
has laid on your like liv living livability um where do you start from there from technical versus uh uh
the i guess storytelling craft right so um story is okay i heard this terrific quotation i think from
robert downey jr and i think he said his father said this he said
anyone can act some people can direct no one can write
so in my understanding and the people that i've seen who get access to the absolute best
cinematographers best actors best equipment best technical virtuosity those are the ones those are the people
who concentrating on writing compelling stories including in advertising i would say
um if you can write great advertising stuff and that's the only time i've ever had access to like an an ari
is this true i'm pretty sure it's true the only access i've ever had to like an ahri alexa is uh um which is like an industry
standard cinema camera was when i was doing advertising jobs and i would um i'd hire uh
you know a professional cinematographer and then they have the lighting um
but i got there with i got to that opportunity with janky crap you know 1990s
equipment um by telling i don't know with good ideas which is to
me is like the same same as as writing um so i think the balance is
again and now and then it breaks down it's like do you want to okay a filmmaker could mean a ton of things
like if you do catering for the movies you are technically a filmmaker you're part of the filmmaking process
um so if you are if you're like a film school trained person and you want to be a technician then i don't know maybe it's just obvious then you
just go and try to get as many jobs as you can within your at whatever level lowest on the totem pole
uh with whatever your technical skill is if you're a gaffer or whatever a cinematographer editor
so that's one route and that's the technician's route and then um the director's route i don't know how that's done like i don't know how you
can just be a director who doesn't write their own stuff and then and that's your technical skill and then you go and get to direct these
big things i can't speak to that i don't know um but writer if you can write you have
entree you can they'll probably let you direct at least one and then like this youtube universe there's no barrier like if you're doing
this right now there's no barrier you have your phone you know the iphone 12 has like a 4k camera on it
and this equipment is sort of um it's nowhere near as expensive as the equipment that that you know we had to
get when we were starting out but the economy i think was better so maybe you break even on that one
but that's it i think you know i stress writing so much because it's the one we have the most access to and it's the most difficult one and it's the rarest
one that people have um virtuosity in okay so thank you um
[Music] thank you uh i've had his name i said his name um i'm sorry thank you for that question i can't i've
um oh devin rumple thank you i said your name uh okay so
this next one is from grant and he asks i'm paraphrasing again why are handmade
items more compelling than i guess manufactured items and this is tom sacks entire um body of work addresses this question
as is an answer to this question and what i've and i'll just steal what i've heard him say because he's my teacher
and his it's he could have books and he does he has shelves of books that he's written about this very question
why are handmade um if uh handmade artifacts more compelling than manufactured artifacts and i think the basic answer is that you
cannot see the human being in the laptop or the iphone or whatever there's
no like biographical connection with the with the uh with the item because it's
so perfect even though a lot of these things are hand assembled a lot i think the iphone is hand
assembled i think these laptops are hand assembled but they're designed with you know computers and a lot of things are you know cnc'd i don't exactly know the
process but if you watch um like how it's made my son really loves watching how it's made it's astonishing
the number of things that you think are made by robots that are actually hand assembled like chalk watch the one about how chalk is
made each piece of chalk is handmade it's a handmade beautiful little
for now because that's how they make it um so i think that's the answer is that with something like okay this is a tom
sachs piece right and you can see what had to be done in order to make it you can see your hands in it you can see
oh he screwed up the drill marks to mount the the hinge here and he had to move the drill you can see where the
where the angle grinder has ground off the screws that were sticking up
and he sacks calls this the scars of labor these little mistakes the scars of labor
and um when you get to a high enough level of woodworking of craft you can't see it looks like a machine it
looks like a machine made it a robot even if it was like hand hewn by it by a by a human being and that is in sax's studio
his building code is not the union building code and he has an entire system
and code uh to exploit the handmadeness of the artifacts that his studio produces and the trick is without being pretentious which means you're not being like well
if i do it this way it'll look really cool like i'm just gonna [ __ ] angle grinder no he leverages speed
go fast and make these things he's very prolific make these things very fast and they will come out to this certain
aesthetic like the you know you could instead of instead of angle grindering this screw which probably
stuck out this far right instead of angle grinding that screw you could have like made a little
um marker on your drill bit and just went down just enough into the plywood and then you could have like hand
machined the the wood screw that held the hinge into the plywood and so then
it wouldn't the screw would not protrude from the plywood and you wouldn't have the cut
mark from the angle grinder and you wouldn't see this group protruding but this is stronger than that process i just said
and it gives you the scar of the labor and it's way way faster
it's not pretentious it's not okay i want to make something that looks really handmade go the other way but just you
know i think sexy the process by which you make things in that studio
uh ensures that if you try to make it perfect if you try to make something
like a laptop perfect out of wood and you go fast it's going to have all of the
the the scars of labor and the human touch and then sax has the code that you have to follow sometimes his you know what sometimes his assistants
are too good their hands are too good they can do things too perfectly he also has assistance that are specifically for
jobs that require perfect hands like paintings or like engraving um you know like with
taking an engraver and then with goggles like this hand writing the date in like
five point handwriting into bronze you know there are people that because like me i can't do that he loved casey and me
when we were assistants because we're the uh we have we were just janky but we got things done and then he was able to refine us some
people they have to go the other he has to go the other way with and they're too refined and he has to say okay go faster and do it this way
anyway that's the long-winded answer as to why you know uh handmade things seem to be
more compelling than you know manufactured uh things there are so many questions this is fantastic 28 of you guys
okay um all right so let me get to a couple more handmade items you know what i'm gonna cross these out
so thank you grant for that question okay so this is a question from andrew who has two little kids like a
two-year-old and a four-year-old and both he and his wife work from home and he asked me uh what uh i'm paraphrasing again like what
adaptations to work life uh do i have to make to maintain a high level of productivity
and um i think the the most significant one was um
waking up at but at four or before four a.m uh five days a week to do my to to to
work and that's so i can have privacy um sometimes it's after four very rarely um
but that's a huge adaptation then of course you gotta go to bed really early the night before like eight or seven depending on how exhausted you are and
then i can work till five probably start work at five a.m maybe sometimes if i get because i have little chores around the house in my
morning routine so wake up at four start at five a.m and then work until 5 pm so it's a 12 hour day
but the first three hours is isabel and x sleeping and isabel and x doing their morning routine
so and then you know take little breaks there it's usually put x in the car for school and you know i go in and say hi
and maybe we'll hit some balls with the baseball or tennis racket uh but they have adapted to me
much more than i have adapted to them like they make huge sacrifices especially isabelle it's extremely
trying on her very scary very high pressure very up and down and it's terrifying for her
and she you know when i fall short which i do often when i fall short like with my financial responsibilities isabel has
to come in and save the day and it's like it's very it's it's unfair in a way because you know it's like
it's my you know it's for my career but you know i don't know i don't know what else i don't know what i'm so far into
it i don't know what else to do i mean i'm kind of so that's that's the answer to that um okay so i got all those
and then okay and then this is also from last week
from scott fairey era scott ferry era um from not last week from january 14th and he said is there a part of the process that casey of my process that casey neistat would disagree with um
[Music] yes uh he would say and he advised me in the beginning he said upload as much as possible you know twice a week upload twice a week and i i could do it
but i couldn't really do anything else and it was made me an incredible like a man at war and like app like
i don't know if you've ever seen klaus kinski um the actor klaus kinski he's one of werner herzog's
um can they be amused if they're a man i don't know he's one of
he's probably klaus he's probably one of herzog's favorite he's dead now but his favorite actors and he was in a gyri wrath of god
but herzog did a film called my best fiend and it's about klaus kinski who was the star of fitzgeraldo of vernon
herzog's fitzgerald though he plays the chara the title role and
i'm not as extreme like if he's uh 10 on the dial i'm maybe a
six or seven compared to kinski you know he locked himself when he was like eight years old he locked himself in the bathroom of his house and this is
post-war germany there's no resources and he took a hammer and destroyed everything that was made out of
porcelain which means the toilet the sink probably not the bathtub but it just shards and was like covered in cuts and
stuff and he was like eight okay i'm not that bad but if i'm going to be really productive i
can do it but the the state that i have to get to it's just pure it's too crazy and it's too
taxing on people and it's harmful so i do one a week so casey would disagree he would say you know at this stage in my
you know in my youtuber career quantity um so that's one and then what feedback of
his have i said no to and i mean i don't know back in the day we would fight all the time about [ __ ] but
since we don't work together anymore and he's more of like a an advisor or consultant i can't really think of anything i just
try to follow what he says to a t and he has mistakes that he thinks he's made like he's like you know he didn't monetize his youtube videos in the
beginning and he just feels really stupid for having not done that and um yeah so not much
um i s uh so there here's one from chad baptiste it says what should i do
when i can't feel or restore the love and drive i had for the things i love doing i think i sort of answered this last week
i don't know if i was very specific and it i guess it depends on your situation like if you depend on it for
if it's your career you have to just muster it up you have to i i don't know i guess put your back against the wall you know get get
yourself in a like basically life or death situation and just maybe you have to go through i don't know how long
of a period of time um [Music] to restore the love the drive i don't know i don't think there's anything you can do about it i think if you don't have the drive then don't do it
because without it you're not gonna you're not gonna find drive you just aren't you're born with it and
some people find it michael jordan found it he was lazy at first probably because he was so talented and then his high school coach
said i'm not i'm not you're not on the team you're not on a team just because you're good you don't have any heart and um
so he found it but he's michael jordan he was probably born with it and the lazy thing was just you know uh there's
an amazing movie about this phenomenon um that my friends
uh josh and ben saftey made made i don't know what they showed me the raw footage before it
was an idea or when it was just an idea or anything i think someone else may get the director credit maybe they produced it i don't know josh and ben made it
it's called i think it's called lenny cook it was on i think espn bought it and it was about
it was about this all-american high school player from i'm pretty sure he was from coney island and he was
basically a genius he was a fantastic god-given basketball player and they had that nike all-american high school camp
and there's footage of him and his roommates i'm okay i'm basketball fans i'm not going to get this exactly right but it's
the caliber of people like um i think um like uh uh
stadami stottemeyer and i think um kobe i think was like he's that
generation kobe i i want to say it couldn't be kobe and lebron because they're too h but it's it
was it was like that k you're looking at it you're look you're watching this movie and you're seeing like this nike
all-american they're the best high school players in america and lenny cook is better than them that lenny cook is better than these guys that go on to win
five championships you're and there's multiple basketball thing you're like oh that guy that guy that guy that guy that guy that guy
and lenny cook is is the master he's the bad he's a badass and then he was just lazy
he was lazy he didn't find the drive he took it for granted he got a a gal pregnant and he and the
whole thing never nothing nothing happened and then in the movie is absolutely heartbreaking and he goes and finds
and he goes to like a knicks game and they're all talking to him and it's that and you know now they're on the knicks and but before they were like roommates at
this nike all-american thing five or six years ago or whatever the time frame is and
that guy his lenny cook like the tragic flaw is he didn't what he needed was the drive that was the thing he needed to do he need he we all have our shortcomings
michael jordan has it had his shortcomings tiger had his shortcomings but i believe that drive brought them
or gave them the will you know to blast through you know it's just the american thing that's the will to blast through
the the the inadequacies and making yourself better all that tony robbins stuff but when you don't have the drive it's
it's the most tragic and from the outside from from the rest of us it is especially if people are super super
talented it is unbearably frustrating you know i've heard tale i you know a friend of a friend
um living in excuse me sorry living in um i want to say virginia northern virginia or maryland teenage gal every weekend the mom would drive her up to new york
city which is hard to do and expensive in parking and it's taxing to go to some program for juilliard
because she was like a virtuoso opera singer and she was in that track she had all of the physical things that
you need to be a virtuoso and she just i think maybe all her maybe her family
wanted her to do it and she didn't want to do it and she just gave it all up and got married and fine fine she gave it up and got married fine
but from the outside it's very frustrating just to see that happen but somebody
asked me about dr you know drive and i just don't i think it's natural and i think if maybe if your gene like a have a like a
like a natural fantastic ability in something you can cultivate drive with the love of the thing that you're good at
but if i don't know like i don't you know my talents are so tiny
but i have this like it's called the burden of dr i mean who called it the burden of dreams um
les blanc in his film the burden of dreams and it's just you know you kind of will yourself
i got these few little talents and you just kind of will yourself into doing it and man i mean i can't even talk from from a position of
success it's still a struggle right right now it's a struggle um
so what do i do when i can't feel or restore the love and drive i had for the
things i loved doing i don't know man the love of it i don't know
the drive if you love it you can put your back against the wall and
um i don't know i don't know it hits home that question hits home because you know
yeah i'm uh yeah yeah it hits home because it's you
know it's it's hard it's hard to do this stuff's hard to do to make a living at to make a living at to put your life on the line i'm not talking about if you're
a hobbyist which i kind of think is the better way to go i think it's better to
find the and i know this is uh sacrilege and blasphemy in america but that guy mike rowe from dirty jobs
he agrees with me on this one i think it's kind of better to just go the hobby route and then
have a profession some other kind of profession and nobody wants to hear that but
that's just what i think so um okay so now i can start looking in the
in the feed here uh some good art house films uh what are some good art house films you recommend
from sabia thakur and um i'd say all of the tarkovsky
films although admittedly i i can't handle um andre ruby lev i can't
i can't figure i can't it i'm incapable of paying attention to it it's too hard for me
but um ivan's childhood these are all tarkovsky ivan's childhood the sacrifice
um [Music] i don't love solera but it's very important um did i say stalker [Music] the mirror um i would say i haven't seen a lars von trier film
that isn't great so i haven't seen nymphomania but melancholia lars von trier fantastic the
five obstructions lars von trier fantastic um dancer in the dark lars von trier oh the one with the one with nicole kidman the lars von trier dog bill oh my god
lars von trier um yeah i don't think he i don't think he's made a bad one okay also the guy
who made dog tooth and who made the lobster um he has one called
alps alps all of his films are great all of them um
all of the ones i've seen are great i can't remember his name he's a he's a greek guy um but you know google dogtooth or
the lobster um bellatar uh of he hasn't made that many films all of them are great they're very slow but somehow they dial
you in so he made one called the turin horse which is a like a two hour plus movie that's
basically about two people making boiled potatoes and eating them and then trying to move
and it's fascinating um he also made a film called satan tango one word satan tango
he also made which i think is like eight hours long or something and i'm pretty sure all of his films are black and white what else did he make
i don't know don't i don't remember them all but they're i've seen them all and they're all great um you're saying art house so our house
is demanding you know this is like if you're very stoned they're much easier than if you're sober and i've been
silver for 10 years i've seen all these things sober but those bellatar ones are pretty tough
um there's a great film and then a great making of the film by this man named sakuraov
who's a russian filmmaker and it's called russian arc and
it was right at the advent of digital cinema so it might have been made in
1998 or maybe 2000 and let me just tell you what this film is okay like
it's okay it's one shot all right it's one shot it's one two hour shot okay and that's been done by people
but the choreography and the precision of the of how this film unfolds in real time is astonishing it's at the hermitage museum
in um st petersburg is that where it is moscow i don't know it's at the
hermitage a guy had this thing for one day or maybe two days he had this museum it's russia's you know it's their it's their
premier museum and the camera follows sort of this man
who's kind of our guide through the hermitage and within the galleries of the hermitage and the hallways of the hermitage you have all
okay give me a break all of russian history up until the revolution
okay hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of extras
one of the scenes you go into a room and it's like the king i'm gonna get all the just i'm not gonna get the facts right you
get the idea it's like this famous moment from russian history where like the king of turkey or somewhere is meeting with
the czar of russia from some century there's you go into some get you go into one gallery and there's like
an orchestra playing music live you know to 40 pieces of music and
things going on and it's unbelievable the costumes in the and and one of the galleries you go into and it's
contemporary it's just oh i'm sorry about this chainsaw if you can hear it but there's nothing i can do about it um
one of the galleries you go into and it's just present day hermitage people paintings on the wall russians in modern clothes just looking at the he's
making that in 1998 in russia when russia was basically a gangster state and it's a difficult movie to watch it's
long but in its subtitles but what an incredible work of mastery what an amazing piece of art that thing
is and that one's called russian arc and the filmmaker is called sakuraov
s-o-k-o-r-o-v um who are the american art house people
i mean obviously you got to watch all of josh saftey and ben saftey's films all of them they're all good and i'm in a
couple i'm in two or three of them um who else who else you know but right before i moved full time to los angeles
these guys opened the metrograph in new york which was this fantastic cinema and the first
new release that they ever booked they bought was a film i made with tom sachs called um a space program
and uh that metrograph it's worth like i think you can get an app and it's probably cheap subscription and i think that's worth getting because they play
those guys are cinephiles and they play mass they play unbelievably great art house films and it used to be you just go to an art house cinema but they're
almost all gone now and that's okay um okay what else
rachel padilla asks me i would like to know what your dream project is if you could do anything
artistically what would it be i have let me think about that i guess rachel means with the skills i have now like not like would you be bruce springsteen
or bob dylan i guess rachel means with the skills on my sticker she also said my sticker's falling off
um i guess she means with the skills i have now do i dare tape it no i'm not gonna tape it
um let me see i guess that means like within reason unlimited resources i kind of feel like this question is difficult because i you know
i should be doing that if that is is what my dream i think this is it i think that the youtube channel
i think that's it just to crank that genre and see where it can be taken because i could say oh cinema
but i don't have there's no story that i'm like oh this has to be made this would be fantastic that i you know that i've written or read or whatever and i you know i don't
like directing although i would direct um it's just sort of a necessary evil artistic project yeah i mean yeah it's a hard one to answer because i
just feel like that's what just i think that's the task at hand i think that's what i'm i'm doing
oh it's a good question um let me see your ghost lanthamos that's the guy who made the the lobster
that's right great okay let me look oh misha moon asks uh one more question any update on the saks manual
no no same as two weeks ago i don't i am at 100 full
throttle um i cannot do anything more than i am and i can't really do like i said i'm gonna
be late with the youtube video today i i can't really do much more with the resources i have at my fingertips so i don't know i don't know
when that will happen um let me see oh this one's a good one do you currently do anything else for a steady reliable income are you full-time youtube if so then what led you here
um no i'm full-time youtube but there's different revenue streams there's
merchandise there's uh you know the brand deals um
which i'm sort of in i'm kind of in i'm sort of like for the time being i'm kind of in the process of
negotiating those you know month-to-month brand deals um then there's the the
adsense you know the money you get from youtube which is i don't quite have enough views for that
to be enough money to live off of and then there's patreon um and then there's also
and i haven't since starting this channel i haven't done this but there's also just kind of like traditional advertising work
but that would be like a that would be like another job that would be like a day job and it's you know that's gigs that's just you know direct this or
write this or whatever or be in such and such but yeah i'm full-time full-time plus 20 hours a week because i
work from 5 00 am to 5 pm 5 days a week someone here wrote the safties
short films are such underrated masterpieces and that's so true there's also a great film called
jerry ruiz shall we do this and i can't i'm pretty sure it's either
ben safty safty or ariel shulman i can't remember who made it
because i'm pretty sure all of us are in it i'm in it ariel's and ariel's a big hollywood
director now and i i think josh and ben made it but it might have just been josh and it's so
it's a it's a it's so great so jerry lewis invented this set the real jerry lewis in real life invented
this set and you can find it in in cinema books or on google probably and what it was i believe
if memory serves was just a cross section of a like an apartment building
right um and the camera just goes from building to building to building but it looks like you're looking into an
apartment building right wes anderson does this in uh life aquatic with steve zisu when steve jesus is like let me tell you about my boat
and then you can see that looks like the the side of the boat has been cut off and he shows you like the library and the kitchen and the underwater observatory so jerry lewis
i'm pretty sure is credited for inventing that technique and i want to say it was josh and ben
but it could have been rel i don't know but they made this movie called jerry ruiz shall we do this and it was in a room
like this big they built this set and it had a whole bunch of rooms in it and a phone booth and i was ned the nudist like everything
rhymed with jerry lewis like every character's name was like sherry brutus and blah blah and it was this unbelievably cool
linguistic um uh poem and it had a little story and i was ned the nudist and i was in a
phone booth which was also part of this thing and um i think ariel shulman played jerry ruiz
who was who was the um who was like a a boss of some kind of company
and he sat behind a desk but it was just his head and then the desk was built like this and he had big fake teeth in and that was one of the rooms
and anyway if you can find that one [ __ ] it's so good it's so good um
grab your chainsaw in battle my chainsaw is like i don't even know i think it's in new york
uh what else what did you study in college and how do you feel it has influenced your professional career okay so i went to a pretty a relatively
conservative college called the college of william and mary in virginia i went to two colleges actually i went to three
i went to um west virginia university in morgantown and
then i transferred to william and mary i didn't graduate and uh i did about two and a half or three years at william and
mary i was in way over my head i just wasn't smart enough those kids were unbelievably smart at that school and it was like a lot of their safety schools
like a lot of them were trying to get into harvard or yale but they couldn't afford it or whatever and they were in state and it's at public school and it
was it was relatively inexpensive if you're in state so i studied um american studies which
was basically american literature and um what was the question how has it
influenced your professional career well the people i met there i'm still friends with and
um uh a friend from william and mary referred me to my school like had this
job at scholastic publishing before i had it and [Music] karen was her name and that was a big influence getting that job and then from that job i'm you know
as a professional writer i was being paid to write for a kids science magazine and that's where i met tom sax i met him in
the cafeteria because he was friends with somebody who worked at scholastic so who knows what would have happened if
i hadn't gone to college but it was also a different era obviously that was you know my last year of college was 1998.
and um [Music] yeah i don't i think if you're going into some creative entrepreneurial i think college for now
this is just my opinion i think college is for people who need licenses that you can only get through going to college like a law did a law
license a medical degree license engineering um that's what i think it's for i think it's for those things i think the
liberal arts i mean i don't want to get political and controversial here but just from what i've heard you know this sort of liberal arts
education one it's all out there on youtube or on the internet
um and two uh it's just way too expensive it's just way too expensive college but yeah that's how it influenced my career i guess you know
taught me to read a lot of books oh this is important this is important i learned how to write in college like and i don't mean i learned how to be a good writer
in college i mean i was taught the difference i was taught why
that unique means one of a kind you know that like there's no such thing as very unique there's only unique
things like that and i ref but also just usage stuff just just how to write i mean making there's this guy named jaco wilnik
it's like a very famous podcaster and navy seal and uh he majored in english in college
and he said you know i wanted to learn how to write and it's really the basically the most powerful skill you can have so
that you can't learn on the internet really you need other matt you need people with a degree of mastery to teach you that and
so that has had a tremendous influence on my career just learning the you know the usage of
you know how to write so there you go um oh yeah i already said that
you can only keep one camera what are you keeping jerry ruiz was directed by ariel and josh
ah so i was right i was right and wrong uh okay i okay so
and that was jacob tender thank you um what did you study in college and how
did oh no i'm sorry i read that sorry sorry sorry um i keep forgetting to read the person's
name if someone asked me i guess you guys can see these comments too uh what camera
okay so i get camera and i get sound right i don't have to record the sound with the camera okay it's uh
gopro 10 that's the camera because i mean you can't
yeah just that's it that's the gopro that's what i keep because it's you can put it in your pocket um
someone said any plans on a spirited man coffee mug for waking up at 4am the problem with the coffee mugs is
they're basically profit proof like i'd have to charge some ridiculous amount of money
or maybe not maybe they're not profit proof maybe they were just profit proof when i tried to do them for the kickstarter i was going to do them for
the kickstarter but then you know the pro the kickstarter thing to figure out the rewards is so complicated because um
you need a margin that can make that you can make your thing with and you need a margin on the rewards that you have to
buy and execute so maybe any plans well now i do have plans yeah maybe that'll be i have a thing coming
out and then maybe that'll be the thing after the thing okay thank you um but there was a great one right
are you a fan of the fast cut editing in hip-hop music and videos like most of casey's videos yes
[Music] if you could collab greg turner if you could collaborate with anyone you haven't already who would it be
oh that's something i'm gonna i would think about and have like 10 answers for
what would be a great collaborator i mean i don't there's certain people i just don't think i could collaborate
with them because they're so good do you guys know this filmmaker lynn ramsey that's art house watch everything she's ever made oh my god
she's amazing she is so great with sound she is the she's my favorite
or the lady um zhao is her last name that made my favorite movie my favorite
movie is called the rider and it was made i can't i'm so sorry i've forgotten her first name but her last name i believe is zhao and i believe last year 2021 she won the
oscar for best picture maybe best director maybe best screenplay but i might have that wrong and she did um
nomad land which is a masterpiece excellent but those two maybe
um i don't know i everyone else has such a singular voice i wouldn't no that's not what i mean
that's not what i mean that's not what i mean i wouldn't be able with anyone on the that i would want to collaborate i don't know
i just feel like at a certain level yeah i don't know i guess actors
because i would be able to do my thing and then they would be able to do their thing like i think her name's chloe zhao
zhao and um lynn ramsey they both do the thing i do so we wouldn't really collaborate i would just watch them and
try to do what they do so maybe that's the wrong answer like who would i want to collaborate with um
i don't know it's so dumb that i don't have an answer but i don't know i don't know okay
um let's see billy pilgrim asks would you say the saying jack of all trades master of none has some validity i sometimes feel that
i have too many interests and maybe that's holding me down a yes
yes i would say that there is some validity of that on the extreme end of the spectrum
but sometimes you're involved in a you know like filmmaking's a good example you're involved in a uh
medium that is so sophisticated that you sort of have to be a jack-of-all-trades and then you have to be a master of one
right um and you see like these these directors that are that are uh marquee directors uh for a while like in the golden age of american cinema like maybe from 1968 to 1993
something like that um [Music] like tarantino is a master screenwriter right kubrick master cameraman um
[Music] there's a guy oh there's a guy like the names thing i'm just gonna say and you guys in the comments you don't know who i'm talking about he made being there he made harold and mod
he made i think he made like three other pictures he is uh i'm just gonna do it he's
a master editor um so i think you can be sort of for this
job you gotta be a jack of all trades and a master of one or two
but i heard yeah but you do things long enough you can become a master at them but yeah too
many interests that's the that's the that's the that's the um that's the
achilles heel of creative people is because there's so much that like refining z
down to be especially like with youtube and stuff like the more the
within reason like the more you know specific you are the more
successful your channel will be so says the book the youtube formula like there's that guy i don't know if
you guys have ever seen matt's off-road rescue and this is a man his videos crush mine
and uh in terms of numbers and he owns a business that tows
trucks out of like that gets stuck and he's so he puts out so many videos
and they do really well he's a super charismatic guy but his thing is
he's a master of rescuing vehicles right so yeah you kind of have to be a jaguar trains master of one that's my answer to
that chloe zhao chloe zhao that's right um my homie was a camera up on that movie paddy god kevin says party god kevin says
hal ashby yep that's the name of the director oh jacob tender frank ocean published your virtual essay i'm sorry frank ocean
published your visual essay on color in his boys don't cry magazine
any stories to share on how that came to be or the hero's journey
slash endless i don't know what endless is it's something very obvious but i'm so frank ocean is i think he was a collector of tom sachs's work and
they're friends also and uh frank ocean is a big um like a musician like a big star like one
of the few star musicians and he is an unbelievably pleasant human being
to uh talk to and respectful and he was in um he's in the he's in the very end of this video that i made with sex called the hero's journey he's sitting at at the
table and the camera dollies into him but you know we hung out a little bit and i think i've had like two meals with him and we had lunch one
day and i've always been i you know my my i have the highest regard for the
musicians who can fill a stadium and bring everyone to an incredibly heightened
spiritual state and to me that is an unbelievable phenomenon of human beings
and so i asked him i said what's and this is a i know this is a boring question but i really wanted to
know what is it like and he couldn't answer he didn't have
like a ready answer he just kind of like looked off in space so i said is it like a blackout
and he said yes because i think the the reality of it is i've been in front of people before not
like that but i've been in front of 2000 people before and um you're st it's just
you're so present you're so you're like possibly enlightened at that moment that
there is no memory your brain isn't remembering it you're bringing it you're just doing the thing um
that guy maslow maslow's hierarchy of needs he i believe i heard him say in an interview that
a human being can be perfect for five minutes at a time
and uh yeah so frank ocean said it was like a blackout well he when i asked if it was like a blackout he said yes
oh this is a good one zach curry lick how much value do you put on physical activity
running or mecano physical activity motorcycling to the mental creative process
so i think i run five days or no four my doctor told me to cut back to four i run four days a week four miles a day two miles uphill two miles down
um i tried a motorcycle at least once a week to keep the batteries from dying on the bikes
uh because this is just the minimum this is like the maximum amount of time i can do these things um
[Music] i don't have a sense of how valuable these things are to the creative process because the creative process is so boom
and bust but i will say that to maintain and consistently be
i guess a professional whatever i am creator just to have the fortitude to do that is
a requirement same with meditation and same with uh fellowship
with you know just interacting with like-minded people and so the value is that it's an it's a
necessity that's that's the value i put on it but i i try to do those things i run the
least i can to gain the benefits of it and then i motorcycle as much as i can um which is not enough i think i rode three
times last week and yeah it's uh it's it's essential for the maintenance i find okay it's 10 10.07 i think i'm gonna wrap up soon
oh here's a question fan on adam savage yes i'm a fan of adam savage i met him a few times
he's very he's uh there's that expression on another level he's on another level that guy can do
anything and he's incredibly curious and still has the gusto and the drive i really admire that about him and
he's you know he's a virtuoso okay what's the story of how miserable in new
york city came to be any reason why it was the first episode of the project what is the story
okay the story of miserable in new york okay so that was the first spirited man i
ever made and i made it in 2016. and in the beginning of 2015 the end of 2014 beginning of 2015 i said i'm not doing this winter this year and then i prayed to god
to get me out of new york for the winter of 2014 2015. and i got this job
i believe it was a job a gig with a j crew andy spade got
me the job making like j crew commercials and i had enough money to go away for four
months and pay all my bills so i went to mexico and i wanted to do nothing and i wanted to have no romantic involvement at all
that's what i did so um and i also wanted to figure out how to
have my own kingdom because i had always been a collaborator i had never had a voice of my own i'd always been working with
people so i went to new york i brought a typewriter i brought i'm sorry i went to mexico i brought a typewriter i brought a bunch of books
came back uh i met isabelle and that was the winter of 15 was the following winter uh and i believe i drove down to florida
for christmas or something and then came back and my friend andy spade
had rented what we called the mansion the mansion house he had rented this incredible
apartment on i want to say it was 72nd between fifth and madison which is an incredible neighborhood um and i had always lived i had almost like for my uh for
many many years in new york i had lived in a 12 foot by 12 foot apartment that i called the fort
as an sro that means the bathroom was down the hall and i was like the bathroom mayor because everybody else was a slob on the floor so i cleaned it
and uh so i was living in this we called it the mansion house and it was like i don't know 4 000 square feet
and spade had rented it i don't i think he branded for a movie thing or something or whatever and he had it for a few months and he you know he lived
across he lived uh he lived where did he live oh he lived on park avenue at the time and so he didn't need it so i he was like do you want it and maybe we
can shoot stuff in here and i was like yes please so he gave it to me for no money at all
and uh you know for a few months for whatever his least short-term lease was and
i had thought that my trouble with new york had been that living in that small apartment on the
upper west side across the park um but then i moved into that big big place
and it was perfect and uh i also seem to have more
time available for like writing and introspection and stuff and
having had the mexico experience and having already lived in la and from 2010 to 2013
i think i started getting the like all right i think this new york phase is over for you because here you are i mean you can't
really get better than this as far as like a living situation like this is kind of the tops
and i had time and i just wanted to i needed i wanted my own kingdom my own
voice and so i said what the hell and i just made that video
and the yeah and i just i think the the way it ends that it ends with me at the typewriter because it was just i had to kind of write my way out of uh i had to write my way out of new york
all right two more minutes and then i gotta go eat
okay here's a good one colin harmon asks do you have any more words thoughts emotions to share that led up to making your youtube we find a song it was beautiful
and i'm so thankful for the vulnerability to demonstrate well that was i was having some personal problems you know at home
and um i was just in a really really bad state and
my brother casey this ties perfectly back to the one of the opening questions one of the recommendations he made
was like talking to the camera about what's going on because it allows um
your audience to connect with you in a much more like personal level i guess and so that's what it was like you know
with this thing the balance is you can't you got to protect people so you can't really go in including myself
so you can't really go into certain super personal you know
phenomena but the feeling i think you can get to without you know without divulging
you know certain private details and there's a herzog lesson that's analogous to this and he talks about
certain things he just won't show on film because the the the well for this is a different reason that
he says but he doesn't show certain things on film because in essence the audience must earn
the thing that he won't show you so for example there's this incredible film he made
called [ __ ] white white something diamond white something i don't remember but it's about this man who made a blimp
like a drone that was made out of a helium-filled blimp and you could fly this blimp and i might have the details wrong i
think behind victoria falls which is in i think that's in kenya and herzog flew behind them and shot it
but he didn't show the audience and he's i think he uh expressed the white diamond yeah the white diamond
and so yeah that that's i guess that's the details that's as much as i'm willing but the idea but
you know as a way to be personal without um violating anyone's privacy including my own
without without exploiting anyone's privacy including my own but i know you know you've all been in these just situations where it
feels hopeless and sometimes you know i just would listen to that
oh man that hurt that that springsteen song um it's not a springsteen song it's uh
it's um the reggae guy trapped and he's like um you know i'm gonna figure out how to get out of this but now i'm trapped
you know i'm trapped in this and it's so strong but you're in the worst possible
situation so thank you guys so much for tuning in i love you all very much and thank you for the for the support and
getting me through this and i'm sorry i'm so tired but fridays are tough and um i'm gonna end this stream right now and
the next one is in a couple weeks so see you soon you
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Opinel (knife) mentions — knife given by Alex Kalman as going-away gift
- ARRI Alexa mentions — industry standard cinema camera, only used on ad jobs
- Canon T2i recommends — best starter camera
- Final Cut Pro 10 recommends — editing software recommended
- iMovie mentions — first editing software used
- Audio-Technica shotgun mic recommends — external microphone recommended
- Panavision lenses mentions — million-dollar cinema lenses referenced
People Referenced
Tom Sachs, Casey Neistat, Isabelle, Josh Safdie, Ben Safdie, Ariel Schulman, Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier, Bela Tarr, Alexander Sokurov, Hal Ashby, Chloe Zhao, Lynne Ramsay, Yorgos Lanthimos
Books Mentioned
- The Coddling of the American Mind
- Catcher in the Rye
Films & Media Referenced
- art house film recommended
- art house film recommended
- important but not loved
- art house film recommended
- art house film recommended
- can't pay attention to it, too hard
- fantastic film
- fantastic film
- film discussed
- Nicole Kidman film
- great art house film
- great art house film
- great art house film
- 2+ hours of boiled potatoes, fascinating
- 8 hours long