LIVESTREAM Friday, 5.27.22 9am PDT
Published · 1:08:26 · 1,099 views
About This Video
A late May 2022 Friday session. Van takes questions from the Patreon community and talks shop. The livestream format is still new and finding its legs.
Transcript
hello hey guys uh good morning i don't hear myself in the headphone oh here we go okay yeah alright i usually start off with a weather report to let people get
connected to the live stream great weather this week perfect for running foggy every morning a little bit
of rain early early morning like 4 a.m 5 a.m today was no exception foggy overcast sun pokes through in the
afternoon they call it in la they have may gray and june gloom
and those are like kind of some of my favorite weather months all right so um there's probably a bunch of new people
because there's a lot of new patrons um kind of crushed it over the last couple weeks thank you guys so much
um oh so usually what i do is i go through the past not the the comments inside patreon when i post either a live stream or a live stream announcement you guys write in questions and i usually like go
and mine some of those from the last live stream questions i didn't get to at that live stream and then for the current live stream announcement i go
through those questions and then the live ones over here on the right that are like that keep coming up
when i run out of the ones from the live stream that i have written on paper when i run out of the ones from the announcements in the previous live
streams that i have written on paper i go to the digital ones that are like so
um [Music] andreas asked me just a general question about the third person point of view in the earlier
spirited man videos um i think i've talked about it on
on other people's podcasts i don't know if i've talked about it here but it just sort of became a breakthrough
for me because you know with vlogging and youtube videos in general it's like hey guys
and i've been doing that for a long long time and as you kind of grow up you're kind of a different person you know you're
you i've i've like had these real like breakthroughs and insights
into like my development oh i used to think this thing but no it was this other way
and so the third person is sort of i guess me now as an unrelated party
talking about the sort of mindset of me whenever either the week before
the video or 20 years before the video or what have you and it's um
it's just i i don't know i just thought it was oh oh oh and where it comes from is uh there's this
there's a filmmaker from denmark his name's lars von trier and in the late 90s early 2000s he was just the king i
mean he was just the king of independent cinema he was like every one of his movies or at cannes a bunch of them won
uh palm doors he did this movie with bjork called dancer in the dark which was just an
absolute masterpiece and he's just an incredibly um
he's like a kubrick he's just a master of cinema and his mentor was a man named jorgen leff
and in i think 01 i want to say it was like 2001 or 2003
lars von trier the guy who made the dancer in the dark bjork movie made this
documentary called the five obstructions um sort of about his mentor this man named jorgen leff and jorgen leth made this movie
in the i want to say in the 60s but maybe in the very early 70s probably the 60s
called the perfect human and so what the five obstructions was about was
lars von trier taking his mentor who was depressed and in like a bad state he was living in in
haiti and he was kind of he was just miserable so lars von trier invites jorgen leth
his mentor to denmark to lars von trier's compound he has like this studio that's in an old
like army barracks in denmark and he challenges jorgen leth to remake jorgen leth's movie which is called the perfect human
which is one of lars von trier's favorite films it's a short film i think it's 20 minutes long
and lars von trier i believe he has jorgen leth remake it
five times so it's the five obstructions but each time he make has his mentor remake his mentor's film from 50 year or
40 years prior he puts either one obstruction or a set of structure of obstructions
on the process of making the film so for instance i believe the first
remake von trier says no shot can be longer than 12
frames each each shot is half a second long and then he was like no sets and and and then there's one one of the
obstructions which is particularly disturbing to watch is he makes
jurgen left go to the most miserable place he's ever been in his life and this is a man who lives in haiti and he said what's the most and he said
the red light district in um i want to say bombay or delhi or maybe i think actually it was
calcutta and they have to film this film in calcutta where that's all basically starving children of prostitutes
um that are they're filming in the street and he's eating this huge feast as part of
the perfect human so those two films had uh those two films are sort of i don't know maybe the they're like the subconscious influence on the
the spirited man tone because the original i the the original and some of the obstruction versions of the perfect human it's just this narrator saying look at him the perfect human
this is how the perfect human dances this is how the perfect human eats but then it goes into this very beautiful
cinematic like exploratory philosophical practice um and yeah i just stole it from from those guys and uh you know and thinking about and these things come very slowly these ver these developments or else they're
just pretentions they're just like goofy and and there's no depth to them so
you know maybe it was like i i don't know i was like i'm thinking in terms of a lot of my footage is like pre-sobriety
for most of my footage it's pretty sobriety and then i went to this phase where i was just doing sort of like um
journeyman filmmaker work post sobriety just working for other people and then it came time to start my own work again
and that's how it manifested just writing about the spirited man i read the the um
the matthew b crawford book and that's where the spirited man the term comes from and you know it's just off to the races
but i haven't i haven't done a spirited man that kind of video in a lot in a long time because they're a little bit they're more involved they're more
script heavy and the script's eating a lot of my time there's going to be balance to this channel there's going to be there's going to be developments there's going
to be when it's your own you can do all of this crazy stuff you can do crazy tinkering that you could never do if you
were you know on hbo or netflix or whatever you know and i can completely change the format i kind of
want to develop and stick to things from season to season and so the first season from 19 from 2022 i'm sorry from 2021
to 2022 was me kind of playing with all the different manifestations that this thing could be there was me doing like an hour-long
podcast with sean avery the former nhl hockey player there was very short videos like repair
videos there were longer repair videos there were twice a week videos there were just like personal videos
there were just there was like poetic videos so there's a whole language of videos in there and
for this season it started with i took like a month off it was kind of unintentional i didn't see that coming to do this video called um
[Music] uh what was it called it was called innocence versus experience was that the one or no the the influence one
what influence does um and that just got because uh my psychiatrist i was like [ __ ] burning
out and going super crazy and and like mice and i had like um
i'd strayed away from aaa meaning i hadn't i've been neglectful i hadn't gone to meetings i hadn't been calling people
and probably and and that with the workload i was just going crazy i was just like
and my craziness manifests in rage and anger and i was getting scary and was getting scary for my family
and so my psychiatrist was just like try he was like do a video with no deadline
and see what happens and so that was the first video of this year so i was like i can get away with that you know people are away in december january
and it just ate a month and i was like well i don't i don't want to do that and then you know all that there's like a
crescendo of of consequences you have fewer it you know you have fewer adsense dollars i mean it was a longer video so
i guess there's more slots for adsense and then the metrics go down and so you know that was an experiment and
now i'm sort of doing a hybrid this was recommended by braxton haugen who i work with um
it's a hybrid of these philosophical videos the the kind of the live stream
and um uh sort of a documentary video in that i'm using a lot of a lot of the cutaway
footage i use is from my archive and i think that's what this season is and it allows me
i can make those videos much more quickly and not much more quick wait they take less time let's put it
that way they take less time um i guess that's the same as more quickly but it's not like i'm moving faster through
them it's just each step of the process takes less time for instance like the spirited man ones
where where i'm like the spirited man something was coming not necessarily a pandemic
but he knew it was something the writing is so heavy on those to get it perfect and that's like sometimes it's three days then i have like one or
two days to edit and shoot and then in the writing there's all of this there's a lot of um
stage direction i guess and a lot of shots i have to make in little models and stuff and too crazy with the when i started doing those i had a
full-time employee who was here and you know now i'm just solo with braxton
working remotely um so you know i have to put things away and take things out and go shopping for
things and my son is also uh i'm sorry isabelle is working full-time again so i
ta i do child care from three to five so that's 10 hours a week that i've lost
so the result is this sort of hybrid kind of documentary me talking into the camera
um but i think that the spirited man um what would you call it paradigm genre i think that's going to come back you know as i you know the resources i'm making more
money on patreon and um you know if my numbers on you the youtube channel increase i'll make more money with the brand deals and so forth
like that i'll be able to hire i'll be able to hire um
help excuse me like the video excuse me the video i did this week i had to build a little model i built it
really fast and it's for like five seconds but it was still you know a couple hours and that would just be something i'd tell someone to do and it
would happen and then i'd shoot whatever so that's the story of the spirited man
that spirit of man it's not a format it's not a genre
it's i guess it's a format i guess all right next question oh oh this is kind of good i like the
technical ones what's the software i use to prepare the zine for printer ready i guess he's talking
about this is from franklin i guess franklin's talking about you know you there's the two pdfs there's the
the zine pdf that you just like click through and it's regular pdf and then there's a there's a pdf that you can print out and it'll
print both sides i just use preview and you know the mac os preview i don't know it's for photos and there's a
little setting in there that's like you can crop and then there's a setting for um
[Music] adjust the colors and you generally have to like crank the saturation but it's all handmade and then i scan it
and then even if i make a mistake i go and type it out paste it and like type it out on a typewriter on paper
cut it out of the paper paste it into the thing rescan it put it back i had to do that last week because i spelled
savoir wrong because spell check i spelled it savior it's supposed to be saboa sabwa fair and i spelt spelled it
wrong but spell check didn't catch it because savior is also a word and somebody one of you guys was like dude you spelled it wrong
so i had to like pull it i left it up so you could get the upside down airplane stamp version of the zine and
then i i thought i had done so i thought i like really cranked that one out and then i went back and fixed it
so that's what i just use preview that's how i that's the software i use okay evan asked what do i like slash dislike about screenwriting oh my gosh
well i like how i like the discipline of it and how it's like a faith-based activity because at
the beginning of most days of screenwriting um i would write for three or three or four hours at the beginning of most days
it just feels like there's nothing is going to happen and then at the very end you get like a blast the very end of the three or four
hours you get like a blast of like things that start weaving together keep track of them with the typewriter and the process of it i
don't like how slow it is and i don't like that at the end you have to go to make it into a thing for most
screenplays for the ones that you kind of want to write um you have to go and take that thing and then go over like
the years of rounding up money and putting producers together and actors together and this guy falling out and this guy taking advantage and this and i
don't like that part but i guess the screenplays for this for this project for the spirited man channel i guess
those are screenplays and uh same and i don't that i would say i like
the speed of it it makes the process faster in some ways it makes the process i guess more
efficient it makes the shooting more efficient if i'm writing
premeditated and then i'm going to shoot to the script
[Music] it makes the it makes the editing more efficient and the shooting more efficient and then the hybrid ones where i'm just
i have a topic usually suggested by one of you guys and these are the ones that have been so far the prototype ones there's been six five of them i think
the sixth one comes out today um for those it's just a like a topic
like tom sachs and then i sit in front of the camera and i have a clock with
it says whatever i have a clock and then i i do for like 20 something minutes
i talk about this thing just with off of notes i have a few notes and then i pull it in so the editing is a little bit
heavier because i'm pulling together a cohesive narrative from this kind of like
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah i'm pulling pieces out so that's a little bit more time consuming than editing to script
and then the cutaways i have to either go find which is fun and you can get carried away because you just start watching old footage
um but it's a little bit time consuming maybe even with setting up a shot and doing it depending
but as a whole it's a less stressful activity than then um
then like this screen written to the letter script
um because those involve more time per minute that makes any sense um okay so oh i skipped a page did i oh okay i
skipped a page okay oh so in my in this new york city video i made ryan asked
about the there's this part where i'm on the phone in my apartment and i'm just like i want a truck i want five thousand dollars
and um i don't think i was talking to a client that way i was i was probably talking to someone
who was negotiating a deal for me like someone in my employee in my employ or i was thinking out loud on the phone with
a friend or an advisor who was like well what do you want and also that was like during my drug days and i was like that's how i taught
you was just the maniac so that's what that was but that was a turning point
and like my mind still does that my mind is still like i am not if it's for work i am not
flying in that airplane unless it is business class otherwise i do not want to do the job
[Music] oh austin asked [Music] about my thoughts on moby dick and why moby dick read to a lull in my reading
i think it had something to do with the timing of it like it just happened to be that i read moby dick around the time i
began working on this channel so i had less and less time for reading and then also that it was around the
time of the pandemic so i had fewer and fewer like travel opportunities for reading you know you get a lot of reading done on airplanes
and bus or on trains airplanes car rides trips where there's a lot of downtime
um so that's coincidental but i also feel like it was so much labor it felt like labor
reading moby dick it felt like school i'm from southeastern connecticut where mystic
seaport is located and mystic seaport was the i think the globe the global leader in the manufacture of slave i'm
sorry excuse me not slave vessels they have the last they have one they have the amishad there but they didn't build slave ships they
built whaling ships in um in mystic and i grew up with all of that information everywhere all of that decoration in my neighborhood where i grew up in this little up
upriver from the long island sound um there were plaques on houses in my neighborhood captain theodore johnson
of the whaling ship blah blah blah you know admiral so and so or not admirable but like whatever so and so of the whaling [ __ ]
blah blah blah the decorations the the like i think it's called is it called a cap stan i don't know what it's called
but it's the big compass and it has huge cannonball ballast weights on it and it goes on a ship on like a gimbal so that
in seas the compass can get a proper heading those were in like like the real actual ones from actual whaling ships were in
like restaurants and stuff growing up harpoons on the walls all of that stuff so reading moby dick was is moby dick is
okay it's a novel but it's also like the historical record of the whaling industry so there's so much like i think
there's an entire chapter about how they weave the um
the line for the harpoon so i oh and so uh austin asked me my
favorite scenes or quotes and so one of the things that i find just there's a lot of really badass stuff in it and one of the badass things is that ahab you
know the guy who's missing the leg who was going after moby dick his uh his harpoon
was the steel was made of race horse horseshoe nails
melted down and forged in blood you know when they stick the red hot metal in the in the um
water and it goes he used blood and i just watched i haven't finished it but i started watching the northmen last night
and um there's a sword that they forged and blood like that uh oh in a good quotation i just flipped
through and found you know i got a lot of on you know you know underlined stuff so i just found this one
kind of randomly this morning that i like and it says it's in this world shipmates
sin that pays its way can travel freely without a and without a passport whereas virtue
if a pauper is stopped at all frontiers okay tiara asks when do you know you've found your particular voice
as an artist um [Music] you know i think all of your technique is in a constant state of development or refinement as an artist probably your
entire life so i don't know if it's probably some paradoxical thing
like when you're unaware that you have a voice that's probably it or when people ask
you questions like that or maybe it ha when you're getting feedback from people who connect
maybe that's when you found your voice but i don't know if it ever feels like you
find your voice i think a lot of stuff a lot of these developments what it feels like from the person who's making it from
their point of view i think a lot of it just feels like labor
i mean seriously that joy that like a lot of people get into this a lot of people
i think have ambitions to be a professional person who makes things for a living and sells them i don't know what you call that it means that term
artist is thrown around very loosely these days but i think a lot of people get that ambition to be like a person who
makes things and then sells them because when you start out compared to all of the other kind of
labor that you do it's exhilarating it's fun it's like you get a little buzz or a rush or something like that
and what i've found is that like in marriage or wherever that little
buzz only lasts a little while and people i think people have a tendency to some people have a tendency to just jump
around looking for the buzz and it's like well i'm not i'm not a writer now now i'm a photographer because you know
unbeknownst to them because oh because you're getting the buzz from the photography and writing sucks
and so i've kind of been doing the same thing but although it's complicated there's so many different you know making little videos or films
or whatever there's so many different um media to it there is writing there is photography there is performance there
is music there's i've been doing it for so long that the feeling of it is just labor
and then when i guess it's during the edit um it's during writing and during the
edit that um maybe that's when you're refining your voice that's when your sensitivities really get cranked up that's when i'm like you know i put a sign on the door that says
do not disturb under for any reason and where i have like hundreds of ideas and timeline not ideas but just
ingredients in my head that have all just been arranged by my brain in this one little order and then i have to kind
of get the media in that order or there's some concept that's that has to be
levered in and that's almost like a blackout that's almost that's when the time when i'm sitting at the machine
editing that's when the the time is just [Music] like yesterday my son's been home sick from school and he's we have an ipad here and he
he came to the studio and i had to let him be in because he you know isabella had been watching all day she's
at work he's getting bored to death and so it's just like okay watch stand by me that's like he's four but he's three and a half and that's like his
favorite one of his favorite movies um and he sat down and watched it and i was
just doing like two little things in the edit in my edit of this week's video and then he he was done i was like
did you skip anything he was like no i was like you're done and i was like yeah it was just a blackout i mean i didn't
stand by me is two hours long i i edited whatever three minutes of something or some tiny little sequence
and i know what it was it was this super eight sequence that i was putting together and it was like 30 seconds long from five minutes
and i guess that blackout is kind of the goal that like flow state is this that
so who knows what that was happening during that what else we got here um
oh this is kind of a funny question bara asked me has the youtube channel gotten
me more noticed around topanga and yes basically every day that i go out in public not necessarily in tapanga but in
los angeles someone kindly comes up i love your videos and um [ __ ] a that's incredible it's really
nice also at baseball practice my son plays they call it t-ball but they pitch the
ball to him my son plays baseball i like just hanging around some of the dads have seen the videos and it's just
like a great you know ice-breaking thing because like we're all quasi-strangers and then it's just something we can all
[ __ ] about and you know the little topics lead to other things and this guy's got a porsche like an 8 like a 70-something porsche
like blah blah blah my friend's building a porsche and he's been on the show and the land cruiser and so forth incidentally
because we're in topanga my son's baseball league is in malibu
and i think it must be the most beautiful little league field in america and it's on a bluff
overlooking the pacific ocean gigantic there's like 10 baseball fields and i was talking to one of the dads and
i kind of came to the conclusion this plot of land is worth way
way more money than the plot of land upon which yankee stadium sits and this is a little league
field and it's still you know it's like 100 bucks you know whatever whatever the you know whatever a little league fee is
it's still like 100 bucks and it's like and you don't have to be from malibu there's like the coaches from i think he's from the valley and uh
california is beautiful in that way it's a public park the nice things in california are for for the most part the nicest things in
california are for everybody there's a big difference from the east coast where the nicest things are for the richest people
you know yosemite is in california um acadia national park in maine it's like
the only one with private mansions on in it in the national park oh just a little you know a little
west coast democracy um but yeah i do get a notice a little bit and at a very convenient level let's put
it that way go out with my brother not so much it's getting better now but five years ago it was
or going out with my friend yaniv shulman like i went to i made the mistake of going to ikea with him once too famous
um but those guys are both evening out now as the internet becomes the fame center for neve he's a tv guy and then
casey has been out of youtube's for youtube for a while and now he's in like a different world
so um but it's every day with those guys if you go out with them what do i like
oh i already answered that one okay so tomset asks
says talk about getting it done i guess i just talked i guess i just
talked about that a little bit that it's i think tom was asking about like the lack of inspiration
and the resistance going into the studio there's this great book called the war of art which joe rogan said he used to just
have stacks of in his studio and he'd just give them out to everybody to talk to and it's by this book called the war of
art is the the author's name is pressman steven pressman and
the a great deal of the book is basic is um he talks about resistance
about all of the about all the distractions that are going to pull you away from doing your art
and you have to really fight you have to fight you have to fight for it you have to fight i fight i'm paying i'm
i'm bringing in a lot of money and i still have to fight to do it you know i still have to be you know
i have to be unfair and um disproportional or disproportionate in my you know resource consumption um but it is making yourself do it i think a lot of
people think that if it's not that buzz of inspiration where you have to do it and the the legend the cinematic
legendary stuff of the artist and and just painting midnight with all the music on and and there's this movie
by scorsese called um life lessons it's a short film with where nick nolte plays sort of like a julian schnabel character
and i think that there's just this first of all i think filmmakers completely romanticize painting because
it's so such a simple activity um and i think there's a legend of like
oh it's all inspiration and there's a famous quotation from john lennon where he said i don't wanna he's like i
don't do it unless it's from the spirit unless i'm inspired but go ahead and watch that let it be thing go ahead and watch that they're grinding
they're dragging themselves into that studio the only one who's ever on time is ringo because he's the drummer the
drummers are on time but and um they're grinding and if you watch tom if you watch
uh lennon in the studio in his house or in his building in at the dakota in new york or you watched him
there's a that that that incredible above us only sky documentary no they're working their ass he's only four he's died at 40.
they're working their ass off they're grinding they're making themselves do it and i think people get the sensation or
have the i think that the culture and the mythology
is that it's done with absolute ease in a perfect state of inspiration whatever you're making and yes
okay you are not bob dylan if you are [ __ ] looking if you are like on this podcast if you're listening to me if you're watching my videos you are not
bob dylan okay you are not john lennon you are not picasso those are a different they are different breed of
people those geniuses those one in a in five billion people they're they're that's not us we are the
ones who have to god you know we're the ones who have to do the labor of it the work of it and there's no magic bullets
and uh what was the question again oh getting it done and so getting it done is just a matter of uh
of of labor and i was just thinking before i even read that question just this morning i was thinking about all the
compromises i had to do on this week's video to get it done which i might not i might post for you guys this week i'm considering this i'm going to talk to
braxton about it but i not might not post publicly until next week i don't know i don't know yet i'll have to talk to braxton see what he
says but um because it's memorial day weekend here in america which is like a big holiday where everyone goes away
but i was thinking about i wish i i wish it was done or i was
thinking about how all of my um my top priority is getting these things done on time is getting these videos done by
the end of the day friday at the latest and so everything else including quality including um
including quality everything else is subservient to the getting it done on time and i think that's a good exercise i think that's
good for me because there will be a time and i talked about this earlier i foresee a time where i'm going to
eliminate but because of my resources will allow it i am going to eliminate that friday deadline and i'm going to say no i'm going to just write these
things and but i still think you know i i think frank gary the architect was it him or was it like philip glass i think it was frank gary the architect
said artists understand only two criteria deadline and budget that's what you gotta have that's what you gotta you gotta have kind of a budget you gotta have kind of a deadline
so i don't know um also there's so my point is giving yourself a deadline i find giving
myself a deadline like every friday just you don't have i don't have a choice i have to i have to do the work and that makes me that keeps me
motivated and that gets it done also living in new york city trains you to get it done um
just and to me that that's the number one rule like with filmmaking that's the number one rule finish finish and you don't get to start
another one until you're done that's that's how it goes um there's a quote
no no that's a different thing okay um misha asked me how do i separate the good from the hateful and um
this is in the context of misha is a transgender woman and she
said she's listened to rogan and um jordan peterson and finds some of the
things they say transphobic so um yeah there's this guy named
uh anthony kumia and he was on the opinion anthony show and he is
super super hilarious funny comedian guy but like holy crap is he way off the
spectrum as far as my tolerance is concerned and my like way of
uh yeah i guess you'd say like racism or something like um he's way off the spectrum but he's a comic
you know his job is to be horrible and um so one of the ways is like
it depends i mean we're all human we're all trying to learn stuff we're all wrong and right about
things and so i don't know it's just judgment it's just a feeling um about you know don't have to agree with
everything but just because i have friends who are like um you know if if they're in a gr in disagreement
with certain issues that uh like the gnome chomsky has like gnome chomsky's position on israel right like then
if noam chomsky's position on israel differs from a friend's position on israel then everything noam chomsky has to say is
not worth listening to but i you know i just don't think that's the right i i think you lose i think you lose although who's to say
but i i do i try to you know i listen to i listen to communist i listen to um
uh wolf robert wolf is that his name robert wolfe what's his name
robert yeah he's like a marxist i think he works at the new school in new york he's an economist i listen to um
[Music] chris hedges i listen to green glenn greenwald i listened to so those are lefty people but i also listened to ben shapiro you know i also listened to you know people are dennis prager you just i don't know you have to hear
all this stuff it's all in there these people are smart they just have a different point of view and um
oh and she also asked my thoughts on transgender rights yeah i mean i think transgender people should have all of the same rights that
the rest of us have in this snake pit and uh welcome to welcome to hell but uh
uh and then like with the the transgender women in
female sports i think that's between transgender women and biological women it's not really my
fight so um yeah uh oh and now we're on the digital
questions okay these i'm a little bit more um [Music] discriminating because there's so many of them and i can't read them all
this is a good one andrew leslie what kind of advice would you give to your younger self if you had
taken the corporate way and found yourself a couple years later
mildly successful but extremely unhappy okay so kind of advice would you give to your younger self
if okay so i'm me now in this universe i'm a i guess i'm a youtuber a successful
youtuber who makes his living being his own boss um making things and connecting with an
audience and i'm talking to the me who didn't do that who went okay so i
had a job on in wall street at a place called shareholder communications and it was a temp job and it was 17 state street which if you
ever see pic footage or pictures of downtown manhattan the very tip of manhattan there's a tall building with a round
glass face like this that's 17 state street so i worked in there and the job was
this is at the very dawn of the internet this is probably 1998 1999 something like that and the job was
when you would call shareholders from a company to inform them that the company they owned shares in had been bought out by another company
and that you you were a broker to uh give them their certificates the new certificates and a lot of times it was like double the certificates that they owned because
they do splits and so you would make a commission i was hourly but you could make a commission
on those deals if you got a big enough one if you got a
if you worked for this company and you weren't a temp essentially like telemarketing um you could get a commission on some of these deals and some of the
deals were millions of dollars right to get a ten percent commission and get a hundred grand and um there was a guy who was sort of
the pit boss of my little crew and we worked on saturdays as well as during the week and um
he said what are you doing here in new york and i said uh you know this is before i worked at scholastic i said i came to new york to be a writer and he
was like you see todd over there he's like todd and i started at the same time he wanted to write i'm making todd up i don't know if that
was his name he was like he wanted to maybe he was an actor maybe he was
does it matter doesn't matter maybe he was an actor
it's like we started at the same time and he's like so he's still a part-time guy or he's still like a
pursuing his thing the guy was probably like 35 years old todd who is trying to be an actor he's like i committed to this company
and then he's like i got my kids in private school i make a lot of money i got my own house
and todd is like you he's like hourly you know he makes enough to get by and he's still pursuing his thing
and they started at the same time and so i was at a fork and he was this guy talking the pit boss guy was trying
to soft talk me these are salesmen into joining the into joining the firm
and if you're not successful okay like if you're not successful at the shareholder communications if you don't get sued uh which is the name of that
company and you're not successful at youtube or whatever you're kind of equally [ __ ] right
because but if you got paid to be not successful isn't that better i don't know i don't know so i guess i'm talking to the young me who
went and worked and stayed with shareholder communications and i would just say get hobbies and
enjoy it man you're a rich american you know and you know almost all americans are rich
the top one percent the top one percent is 36 globally the top 1 salary
globally of all the humans 36 000 a year you're making more than 99 of your brothers and sisters around this
planet so you're rich and you live in america so i would say
just enjoy it it's your job you know it's like you don't it's not it doesn't have all these tentacles on you and
you can move around there's so much benefits to those jobs there's so many benefits to them and i don't even i mean there's only like one
there's a lot of benefits to being your own entrepreneur boss i don't know i guess i'd say if you're
if you're considering making a transition make sure you go into an industry
no one should be a [ __ ] actor no one no one not one per tom cruise he's not just an actor
he's a producer you know he he finances those big films he puts them together like no one should be an actor
you if you're an actor write have a podcast do another thing like you're gonna have live your whole life based on being chosen by someone like
we're not you didn't you guys chose me but it's not that it's connection this is i'm successful in this because of the connection we're
able to make and that's different than being chosen by one person um so
yeah i mean there are the upsides to the going into those corporate jobs and so forth i mean
you don't you're not gonna it's just like the upsides of being born an american like you're not gonna really realize it understand what it is until
you've seen the downsides of the other one and i think you just you only go into this kind of stuff if it's an abs if there's
absolutely no other way you can do the other stuff i i'm sorry that's what like i i kind of feel i feel compelled i feel
responsible to discourage people from this stuff because it is
it is um [Music] you know if you're on the fence then forget it if you're on the fence forget it because you can't do it the successful ones are
not on the fence they're not they're not insecure they're not they're not they maybe had a few months of i wish i had
done it differently but like josh and ben josh saftey and ben saftey that was just this project this
project do you know where i can get a couch do you know where i can get a thing i need a bell that hangs from a thing i do my car the lenses for our
film got stolen can you help me go find them and then now i gotta find lenses nobody has any money anywhere and it's just
problem-solving problem-solving problem-solving problem-solving problem-solving there is no oh you know i'm just not feeling really good about
this one i just i wish it was a lot but no you're gonna make a billion million trillion things you just keep making making making making making making
making making and that's what the life is but i don't know maybe that's a simplistic way of looking at it because within the
youtube uh kind of creator economy there's all different ways there's all different processes and i'm having like an old i
have you know a 2000s mentality and there's a whole bunch of different levels to doing youtube content a whole
bunch of different ways of of having revenue streams that collin and sameer show is incredible because that's what they talk about all the different
ways that people make money but yeah talking to that person just have to be like look on the bright side man you made your choices and you
have health insurance and you get paid vacations which i have never van neistat has never ever in his life ever ever had a paid vacation ever never
okay there's no sick days there's none of that it's just less money it's just and it's it's significant it's it's it
makes it makes a huge difference but when you're young you have unlimited energy when you're in your 20s you have unlimited you can work yourself 18 hours
a day for 10 years straight probably not going to suffer any health consequences probably not probably not maybe maybe you will but the people i know who've
done it didn't didn't and just part of that decade is finding your part of that work is finding your focus
finding it because it's like oh i'm a writer actor photographer choreographer
[Music] nope find one find one all right um [Music] oh and the advice is um because the question is what kind of advice would you give your younger self to your younger self if you had taken
the corporate way and found yourself a couple years later mildly successful but extremely unhappy
you couple years you're only going to be my mildly successful basically no matter what i mean there's
nobody who's above mildly successful after only a couple years maybe seven people have done that
but nothing takes a couple years so that would probably be the advice i'd give put the time in
um okay four minutes i got a heart out because i'm meeting someone for breakfast
um no i don't have a heart out because my son didn't get sent home from school today for being sick so i can go a
little bit later um [Music] you design like the first generation of page maker on a mac one mac 128k mac i remember that mac i don't remember
page maker though um [Music] would you like to replicate a tom sachs studio environment with a team that helps with videos i would i don't know if
that big of a team but i would the thing with saks is he's so good at finding the right people
he's so good at that connection thing he's really good at it the people who work for him are unbelievable and he's
only had you know out of the dozens and dozens of people that have worked for him he's only had it seems to me although i'd have to ask him
it seems to me there's only been a few or maybe i've got it all backwards it only seems it seems to me there's only been a few that have
it worked out badly but maybe i'm wrong he had this reunion because he thought
he was going to lose his studio he had this like 25 reunion of his that he had been in his studio in new
york and so he invited all the different generations of of assistants it was so cool and that was it no i think no wives
no girlfriends it was so cool it was so cool that was in like maybe 2015 something
like that and it was really cool just to see all those people and the stories we had a huge meal it was
really oh there was awards given out there was the um there was the uh
oh my god evan murphy award evan murphy was like tom's most improved
assistant he did the space bro like first space program mars that's when he came on and he's [ __ ] awesome he's in my movie a space program he's the guy who
puts the suits on he's whatever commander murphy or whatever he's the guy who puts the spacesuits on the astronauts
and he came in he's kind of like a disaster and he left just a total badass
and the award is like a sock like a silk sock with two brass balls in it so it
looked like a screw like a scrotum and um evan went on i think he became a world
champion criterion bicycle racer or crit bicycle racer criterion crit i don't know like the championship was in
barcelona and he won it um all right i'm going to scroll down to the bottom
um has there ever been a time that you regretted asking forgiveness rather than permission oh my god there must be specifically in filmmaking or art
let me think of something that i did that was shitty i must have
i'm legally forbidden to talk about it but there sure [ __ ] was held up the whole hbo thing i needed a signature i needed a release
i had to remake episode 7 three times and i [ __ ] it up i [ __ ] it up because i didn't get a release before
filming with a certain person and then the relationship went south and i still didn't have the thing i still
had to [ __ ] get the release and that was like i had to beg for permission
and beg for forgiveness so yeah that that sucked but
you know the thousand other times it was fine and that was i was reckless in an egomaniac
um this is whoa how can you find your one thing time i think it's just time i think you're one thing it's just time
i still don't really know what my i'm still like focusing focusing focusing like what is it what is it oh my god
okay the [ __ ] movie that is about this all right close encounters all right close
encounters is a metaphor for the compulsion of being an artist
and you have richard dreyfuss and he's he he's a working guy he's a he works
doing power lines he works for the utility company one night he's out i'm giving away the whole movie spoiler alert i'm giving away the whole movie
you've had 40-something years to watch it so that's on you one night he's out the all the grid goes down
okay so he's out like he's like i don't know what the hell is going on he's sitting in his car
lights pull up behind him he's like go go around the car goes around lights pull up behind him he goes go
around go around go around the car's not going around his car
lifts off of the ground all of the the gravity reverses all of the stuff
flies out of all the ashtrays and the maps and everything flies everywhere and then he lowers back to the ground
and then this spaceship comes around and shines a bright light and his eyes bright light so badly so bright that he
gets sunburned on half of his face after that experience the spaceship takes off he goes home and he tries to talk to his
wife about it she's not having it he's totally focused on the practical stuff he gets obsessed what the hell is this
thing now at the same time okay he is sculpting something
out of whatever is malleable in front of him shaving he's shaving and he's sculpting
shaving cream um mashed potatoes mashed potatoes then he buys clay he starts building this thing building this thing building this thing
i want to make sure i get the sequence of events right other people have had this same interaction with the
spaceship and they become obsessed there's a gal whose son disappears
with this aliens and she's obsessed with drawing the same thing that kurt that richard dreyfuss is drawing
in this compulsion he loses his job he loses his wife he loses his kids
and it is driving him insane and he cannot stop he cannot stop with this and he's connecting with these other people
who've had this i think no i don't think that's happened yet no he he's connecting with other people
who've had this experience and at one point he's doing the sculptures he's doing the
point he runs out into his yard and he just screams up at the sky what is it
and that's exactly that's exactly what it's like it's this [ __ ] random compulsion and you know
it's spielberg wrote this thing and it's spielberg he's a [ __ ] true artist and
there's this incredible scene where he has built he's torn all the he's built a model of this thing in his basement he's taken
over his basement where his children would play he's taken over the whole thing and he's built this model of the thing that's like it's eight feet high and he's building it and he's sculpting
it he's torn the bushes out from around his house to be to build shrubs around it he doesn't know what he's building
and there's this news announcement on tv and he's in an argument i think with his wife trying to get his family back and he's in an argument with his wife you
know you know i know that that's not what i said i know and then on the tv screen in the foreground he can't see it and it's
perfectly directed so you have his model in the background and the tv screen in the foreground he's they're talking about
some kind of such-and-such at devil's tower in wyoming and that's the thing he's been sculpting and he's like looking on the phone
and he looks on the he looks on the tv he sees the devil's tower he immediately hangs up the phone
immediately gets in the car immediately drives the wyoming and our top remember talking to sax about this
and sax says something to the effect tom sacks said something to the effect of that moment
when he abandons the sculpture okay and that he has thrown his whole life away on
thrown his life away on when he abandons the sculpture and gets in the car
without thinking and goes he's like that's the moment he becomes the artist and then what ends up happening is he
becomes one of the people who gets to go into the spaceship with the aliens and fly away
and the man who is the leader but he doesn't get to go with the people he's the man who put together the
he's like the scientist who put together the screening process to find who these people were that had these close
encounters these artists if you keep with the metaphor the man who plays uh that
the man who plays that character is francois truffaut who was one of the founders of french new wave who was one of the founders of
basically modern cinema basically like spielberg um you know coppola those that that gang
lucas they all were raised on those films the films that came in the 70s our golden age of
of cinema in america it's from those guys and francois truffaut was the best of them
and he plays he plays like the visionary artist it's so [ __ ] well done but that's
i mean that's that's i think you find your one thing by just submission
really it's a submission it's f i don't know it's just a submission and a dedication and faith
and all you're going to have to bring all of your virtues to the to the table and and become a better person so that
you can facilitate become the best person you can become so that you can facilitate this whatever this one thing is
that's how i've seen it and the lucky ones get it young they know right away but then they have to sacrifice young
also so all right guys i love you all very much um
yeah i don't know maybe i'll post that thing i'm definitely gonna upload it today maybe i'll publish it next week but i'll let you guys i'll send all of you guys the link to it
so that you can watch it but maybe not maybe i'll i'll talk to braxton whatever he says i'll do all right guys um take care
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Porsche mentions — car discussed
People Referenced
Lars von Trier, Bjork, Jorgen Leth, Matthew B. Crawford, Sean Avery, Braxton Haugen, Joe Rogan, Yaniv Schulman, Casey Neistat, Tom Sachs, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Nick Nolte, Julian Schnabel, John Lennon
Books Mentioned
- book discussed in depth (by Matthew B. Crawford)
- classic referenced (by Herman Melville)
Films & Media Referenced
- Lars von Trier film with Bjork
- Jorgen Leth film
- Lars von Trier/Jorgen Leth film
- film discussed
- Scorsese/Nick Nolte/Julian Schnabel
- Beatles/John Lennon
- John Lennon documentary
- Spielberg film, Devil's Tower
- film referenced
- radio show
- film movement discussed
- Neistat Brothers aired here