Narcissism vs. Universality
Published January 07, 2022 · 31:48 · 250,893 views
About This Video
Van is two weeks behind on a video and the problem isn't writer's block. He's written too much. The problem is plot block. He knows the conflict (is this whole thing pretentious and narcissistic?), the resolution, and the middle bit (influence). He can't connect them.
The middle bit takes him to Void, a bar on Mercer Street he'd never entered, on a night in the year 2000 when a film festival was screening 20 short films to maybe 40 people. These weren't TV, commercials, or music videos. They were art films with embedded narrative, and they changed what Van thought was possible. The conflict is the question he can't stop asking: is talking into a camera a real job? Preparing power lines for the Santa Anas so the canyon doesn't burn. That's a real job. This YouTube business is more like a hobby gone feral. Cornel West provides the resolution: anytime you give fully of yourself, elements of your old self are dying because a new self is emerging.
Transcript
undefined undefined undefined undefined I'm two weeks behind on this video and it's making me very uneasy
and the reason is not riter's [Music] block I've actually written too much the reason is plot block which is to say that I'm struggling with the structure of this
video I know the conflict of this video and I know
the resolution of this video and I know the middle bit of this
video but what I'm struggling with is how to connect the middle
bit to the conflict and resolution and the middle bit is usually what videos and movies and books are about the conflict and the resolution
are just tricks to get you to watch the middle bit and the middle bit of this video is
about influence and I'm having trouble connecting it to the
conflict and the resolution this is my 10 bullet mock
this is Tom Sach Studio uniform I learned this undefined undefined
trick on the new Yankee Workshop which had a huge influence on me as a kid and
influenced my film making or video making career and the trick is if you're using
wood glue use this kind and wet both surfaces to be joined because it draws the glue into the fibers of the
wood please please please please please please please please this is the best thing that
happened to me today it clamps perfectly [Music] undefined undefined I just heard something from Brother Cornell that I think I'm going through and I'm going to play for you
[Music] anytime you give fully of yourself there are elements of your old self that are dying because a new self is in the process of
emerging and I think that's part of the reason why I'm having so much trouble writing this
episode something's dying and something is being born
[Music] undefined undefined and the conflict is this is this whole whole thing pretentious and narcissistic this talking into a camera
calling myself a spirited man uh is this a real job that's a real job preparing power
lines for the Santa anas so the canyon doesn't burn down that's a real
job this YouTube business it's more like a hobby gone feral gone rabid
so it occurs to me that I captured a moment when some part
of me died so that a new point a new part of me could emerge I captured it it
exists and maybe that's why the Goldfish movie is so important to me undefined undefined
[Music] year 2000 probably summer I was riding down Mercer Street I never took Mercer Street home and void was a
bar and they had this sign with a falling D I think it was a lowercase D
and I think that the V was the only capitalized letter but I'm not
sure I'd never been there before and I don't know why but I went in by myself
and there was this Film Festival going on and it was maybe 40 people in the bar it was probably just the
film makers and their friends and they played maybe 20 films
short films 1 to 3 minutes long back then internet video barely worked so
there was almost no internet video and the only things that regular people I'm
a regular person ever saw were TV movies commercials and music videos on MTV but
these films were none of those you could call these films art films but they
weren't boring they had at the core of them some kind of narrative some kind of
uh embedded subtle narrative they were films they were shot and
projected on film I believe one I remember particularly but not vividly this is a three minute or so long video that I saw once over 20 years
ago but it is it's burned in my mind as a turning point this night at void might be the original influence that begat this compulsion to go in a certain unknown
Direction the whole lot of them all the films left this impression on me but I remember this one
specifically and I'm going to describe it to [Music] you now I understand that my description can't possibly convey to you the weight
that this film had on me and I'm going to throw some images in
here that I shot yesterday so that my description is less boring but this
video at void the whole frame what you're looking at is
fog or a Mist it looks like you're in a we're in a cloud and a pretty woman in
her 20s appears in the right of the frame I think she she wanders in and this thing's shot documentary
style uh the camera's locked off and it I don't think it was set up so there's a woman standing in the
fog to the right of the frame and you can see her head to toe she's kind of far away
and the fog is coming from somewhere but it's also the atmosphere of the frame
we're in the fog and from The Unseen source of the fog these little kids keep
running into the frame and then running back to the source of the fog and these are African-American kids
so the brown skin and the white Mist it's just fing beautiful man the music there was no sound just music and this
is going to ruin it for a lot of you but the song was relatively new at the time so it was okay but the music was
Sweetest Thing by you two so the kids run in and out of this
fog elated they're elated and the woman the Pretty Woman at some
point turns to the camera as if to say are you seeing
this she's a stranger to the kids we think but one of the kids runs up and he throws his arms around her
waist and this puts her in hysterics because he's soaking
wet because it turns out [Music] what we're looking at is the mist from a pulled fire hydrant and these kids are
running in and out of the Mist and the ladies just watching I to this day I have no idea how they shot it because the whole thing is just a white cloud
but it was happening in real life [Music] you know these things just Mushroom in your mind and I and sometimes it's Sublime you know
so the influence that those films I saw at void had on me begat a video I made that was a turning
point in my life and I think in the video in this goldfish video we see the undefined undefined
exact moment when the filmmaker or the video maker emerged
at the time of seeing the videos at void and making this goldfish video I had a job at Scholastic publishing writing for
a kids science magazine I wanted to be a magazine writer like Hunter Thompson or Tom Wolf back in the
day and the videos were just a [Music] hobby each issue of the Scholastic Science magazine would publish and
answer a science question sent in by the readers and somehow I got my hands on a
list of a hundred of these questions sent in by high school kids and one of the questions I think
it's the one that they ended up publishing in the magazine the question was can a goldfish live in Mountain
Dew I thought it was hilarious ious and uh I thought the other questions were kind of sad and beautiful so I made a
video to see if a goldfish could live in Mountain Dew and that's what this
is I'm shooting I drained the water with a turkey baster filled the glass with Mountain
Dew and when the Goldfish was floating there seemingly dead I panicked though a
veterinarian would later tell me that the carbon dioxide had simply knocked the fish out and that in that school students would knock out fish with CO2
for some reason so chill out Peta so the fish is floating there some kind of divine inspiration comes over me and I
remember this Legend from high school wherein Dave Reynolds def fiul a dead frog with a 9volt
battery so off camera tape still rolling I tear the 9volt out of my telephone answering
machine touch it to the Goldfish and bang the fish comes out of it and the that particular fish live
just as long as the underst study fish I bought in case this one died I think um
I think I bought five fish for this video just in case but I had not planned to shock the thing back to life that
that was just it just came to me during the [Applause] shooting I don't know that I've ever felt that high
before as when I touch the battery to the to the to the
Goldfish and I think that moment of the battery touching the
Goldfish was the moment the magazine writer died and like Cornell West talked about the filmmaker video maker
emerged that was uh 21 years ago and not long after that I made my first internet undefined undefined
video and sort of establish the two families of videos that I would continue to
make for the next 20 years I didn't know until this project
that you had to season a chalkboard before you used it
the background noise is [Music] rain 6 months after making the Holland Tunnel I turned Pro albeit at $10 an hour Tom Sachs undefined undefined
hired me as a fabricator and I made a bunch of videos with him too saxs has been my biggest professional influence undefined undefined
he taught me how to build things this is around the same time that Casey and I began working together Casey made some of the saxs videos too after working at
Sach studio all day Casey and I made as many videos as we could all the time we were working all the time one of Sax's
collectors a man named Tom Healey commissioned Casey and me to make a video series that we called science
experiments and like the saxs videos these science experiments videos played in museums all over the world undefined undefined
Casey and I made a video about the first generation iPods crap battery the video went viral this was before YouTube so it
was a corporate media story and that was a big break for us publicity wise and from then on we were making video videos
all the time figuring out how to hustle to make a living at it okay influences we were watching DVDs all the undefined undefined
time DVDs of anything we loved mostly Cinema over and over again during lunch
during breaks in the background while we were working and a lot of the DVDs at the time had what they called
director's commentary so you could watched the movie and listen to the movie's writers and directors talking
about their experiences making the movie also some DVDs had behind the scenes stuff you
could watch um Wes Anderson's Royal Tenon bals had particularly good director's commentary and a particularly
good behind the scenes little featurette um and I think the firsters film making stuff what they probably
call Vlogs now I think for us it came from the director's commentary and behind the scenes
featurettes there were also two documentaries U masterpieces about the difficulties of making movies one was
called hearts of darkness by Elanor copela about the making of Apocalypse Now and one was by Les blank about the
making of Verner herzog's Fitz coraldo and that one was called the burden of Dreams the burden of Dreams burden of
Dreams sent us down the Herzog Rabbit Hole he's in many of his own documentaries and I believe he does the
voiceover for all of them so there was this very delicate idea that you could put yourself in your own work so long as
you were careful enough not to be narcissistic and to this day I struggle with that line between
narcissism and universality [Music] undefined undefined this video you're watching now yes it's about me shamefully but really it's about my work and hopefully the struggle
of creative work in general a brave man a third Tom Tom undefined undefined
Scott financed what would become the niist St Brothers HBO bought it um we
made it first but then HBO bought it it took two years to make and another year to get it aired I think uh I became an
egomaniac after that or maybe I was always an egomaniac and the HBO deal
gave me the confidence to be a Shameless egomaniac but it was incredibly fun we
had so much fun and you know that journey of up to making that is the life you when you fantasize about oh I'm
gonna be a professional so and so and go on all these Adventures that was that that that was that part of
life but I hurt a lot of important people around me and I got deep into drinking and
drugs and I just generally went crazier we shot a second season of the ni Brothers which HBO did not buy thank
God because looking back on it now it's embarrassing and mortifying and when I see the footage I
cringe I split from C went broke Tom Sachs bless him hired me to make 10 bullets which he wrote with undefined undefined
John Ferguson saxs continued hiring me to make more and more videos about his Studio I was happily getting away from
myself these videos were not about me they were about Tom's work I made a pilot for my own show which probably
would have worked as a YouTube channel but I just wasn't thinking in Internet terms in those days uh in 2012 sax and I
began making a feature film called a space program I quit drinking and drugs
and began the brutal process of growing up and becoming a man I was so old at
the time uh when we wrapped on that I went to Mexico I had just had it with the first person stuff I had it with the
I Me Mine bull a space program went to South by Southwest and it was released in 2016 undefined undefined
that year 2016 for fun I made a video that I called the spirited man I hadn't made a video for fun I don't know five
or six years this I it was a third person omniscient video it wasn't about van it was
about my favorite part of myself the spirit and I was really just watching and reading the serious filmmakers at
this point the Giants of contemporary Cinema sax and I wrote this video called Paradox bullets it's about um using your
intuition when trapped in a paradox and wouldn't you know somehow saak figured out how to get verer Herzog
to narrate it this is what distinguishes us from the cows in the
field and um it felt like we made a verer Herzog film saxs and I and his team went on to make this fun surfing
video and IND and then I quit I read this book when I was 20 went through a vaget phase and read a whole
bunch of vaget books I have analytics for this channel so I know that a lot of you are
between the ages of 18 and 35 which means that a lot of you are
trying to figure out your purpose what you should do and I can tell you from experience that figuring out what to do
is the hardest part of the adventure but if you don't know your life's
purpose then your life's purpose is to find your life's purpose
Elon Musk says if you're trying to find your purpose read books books present you with options you
might not have known existed I reread this book when I was 40 about 6 years
ago and I was astonished to realize that in the 20 years since first reading it
so much of my fundamental thinking had come from reading vag's books had come
from vag get's ideas for instance practicing an art no matter how well or badly is a way to make your soul
grow For Heaven's Sake and we have Contraptions like computers
that cheat you out of becoming what you can become is the miracle you were born to be be through
the work that you do and maybe he was wrong about the computers but that's how I feel about
computers in 2018 I started making these pieces because I was sick of computers
sick of screens I called Tom Sachs for advice about selling the pieces and he told me just keep making
the movies I wrote a feature film began lining up financing and I began making spirited Man videos continued making them saak gave me a job co-writing a book with him
God bless him Co hit financing for the movie I wrote evaporated I continued writing uh the saxs book and making the
spirited Man videos but I did not publish the videos investigated doing a Kickstarter campaign for the spirited
Man YouTube channel uh during my research into successful Kickstarter campaigns I came
across the kickstarter campaign for a documentary called unstuck in time about
Kurt vaget March 9th 2021 I launched the kick Kickstarter and this YouTube channel and
they're both successful thank God thank you a few weeks ago I was feeling a
little uneasy about some of my recent videos and started to
wonder is this endeavor just narcissistic unstuck in time the Kurt vaget documentary from the
kickstarter out in theaters I hadn't been to the cinema in 2 years
[Music] the documentary was made by a man named Robert wey took him 40 years to make he was friends with vaget originally Mr wey did not want to be in the documentary but to
not put himself in would have been to sacrifice essential themes of the undefined undefined
film the documentary was a masterpiece had Mr Whitey not been in it the documentary
would have suffered and we would have been deprived of a
gift and having experienced Mr wey's gift I made peace
with yes you can be in these videos and make them Universal and I had the resolution to my is this narcissistic undefined undefined
conflict during the middle of making this episode when I was stuck and
[Music] forlorn I got this letter from a guy in Kansas City this guy had to think about what he was going to write
write it down the guy's got two little kids he had to drive to the post office wait in line to buy a stamp put the
stamp on it mail it and just to encourage me and it says here I have enjoyed watching your YouTube channel
you have been a positive influence in my life I want to learn
more and be better each day [Music] it didn't occur to me that I would hand down my influences but yeah that's what my influences have done for me essentially
they've made me want to be a better man each day but now I'm a little sick of me
somehow now I got to begin including my friends in these videos my vaget
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Sony TRV8 uses — early camera used for filmmaking
- Mountain Dew mentions — mentioned in context of early filmmaking days
People Referenced
Tom Sachs, Werner Herzog, Wes Anderson, Eleanor Coppola, Les Blank, Kurt Vonnegut, Elon Musk, John Ferguson, Tom Healey, Robert Weide, Ed Ruscha
Films & Media Referenced
- Van's first internet video from 2000
- Van's 2003 film made against Apple
- Wes Anderson film referenced
- Eleanor Coppola documentary about Apocalypse Now production
- Les Blank documentary about Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo
- Werner Herzog film referenced
- HBO 8-episode series
- Tom Sachs Studio film directed by Van
- Van's directorial debut feature, premiered at SXSW 2015
- short film co-written with Tom Sachs, narrated by Werner Herzog, starring Ed Ruscha
- Robert Weide documentary about Kurt Vonnegut
- TV show referenced as influence