What It's Like to 'MAKE IT'
Published March 05, 2022 · 19:22 · 222,590 views
About This Video
E.B. Sollis asked the question: is there a moment in an artist's career when the passage from innocence to experience is fully realized? Van knew exactly what he meant. Innocence is your fantasy of what the adventure will be. Experience is the reality of what the adventure actually is. Hunter Thompson said he drank and drugged so much to withstand the constant barrage of punches to his innocence gland.
Van tells three stories. The first: Susan, his friend's mother and intellectual guardian, bought him a Canon XL1 in June 2000 for $2,000. His rent on 13th and 8th in Manhattan was $1,100 a month. Between depositing the check and buying the camera, September 11th happened. The second: Fred's birthday party. The third: the HBO series. Making it, as Van defines it, means two things. Earning a living from your talent. And the living allows you to live like a successful dentist. Successful dentists have $10,000 in pocket money at all times. Nineteen minutes on whether we ever arrive, or whether the passage from innocence to experience repeats itself, again and again and again.
Transcript
for the patreon I met up with eie Solace last month to come up with an idea for this
video I'm always really fascinated as to whether there's a moment in an artist's
career where like that Journey from innocence to experience is fully realized you know like was there an exact point when you're like wait a
second I'm not like a Grom anymore you know like oh my God I know how to do this in you to
experience the question is is there a moment in an artist's career
where the journey from innocence to experience is fully
realized and when eie said innocence and experience I knew exactly what he meant but maybe you don't maybe you're too
young I think what he meant by innocence is is your fantasy of what your adventure will be and what he meant by
experience is the reality of what the adventure actually
is or was so eie wondered if there's a moment in an artist's career when the journey from innocent to experience is fully
realized like Oh I thought it was going to be this way but it turns out it's really like this I find my career and life is a series of those
experiences again and again and again when Hunter Thompson was asked why
he drank and drugged so much he said it was so he could withstand the constant
barrage of punches to his innocence gland I want to talk about three career Adventures when a journey from innocence
to experience was maybe not not fully realized but was certainly
real and the first Adventure from innocence to experience I'll talk about is the story of when Susan bought me my
first professional video [Music] camera Susan is my friend's mother and when I was a kid Susan was my
intellectual and educational mother she taught me how to love books and
reading Susan is and was a beautiful woman so picture Meg Tilly in The Big Chill now Susan and her family had thrown a 90th birthday for
their father Grampy Paul and Susan's son Sam my friend had shot the party on
video in those days this was June 2000 there was almost no non professional
editors and I was one of them one of the nonprofessional video editors in the
world uh so I edited the footage that Sam shot I said it to nice music bork Benny Goodman chopan made sure all the kids and
grandkids were in the video and I ended it with a touching speech made by Grampy
Paul himself about a year later Susan bought me my first professional quality video camera a Canon XL1 there's more to this story she was protecting me from a dangerous debt that I had incurred I can't go into the
detail but she she was protecting me the XL1 was a video camera with which
you could do professional work Cy Simmons shot a lot of the footage in the new Kanye documentary genius with a with
a canyon Canon XL1 you know at around the same time 98 2000 around there so here's my innocence my fantasy I'm going
to get this XL1 this professional camera and I'm going to make
it and to me this is what making it means making it is two things number one earning a living from your talent and and number two the living you
earn from your talent allows you to live like a successful dentist successful dentists live in nice houses successful dentists live in nice
neighborhoods successful dentists send their kids to good schools successful dentists Drive nice cars successful dentists pay their bills on time
successful dentists have $10,000 and pocket money at all times that's what making it means to me making a living
from my talent and earning a living that allows me to live like a successful dentist a successful dentist in other
words has made it now when I say Susan bought me the camera the x01 I don't mean she went to Circuit City picked it
out and weighed in line I mean I went to Adorama found a used XL1 told her the price and she sent me a
check a physical check through the mail I deposited the check and in the interim between the
funds clearing and me withdrawing the cash to buy the
XL1 the entire world changed and all bets were [Music] off the check was for $2,000 my rent uh one bedroom on 13th and 8th Avenue in
Manhattan was $1,100 a month and nobody knew what the hell was going to happen
to us so at about about 9:30 a.m. on September 11th
2001 I rode my bike to Citybank withdrew the $2,000 basically all the money I had and
returned to my apartment on 13th and 8th so in my innocence I was going to
buy this camera and live like a successful dentist but my experience
[Music] was Terror my experience was a dilemma inside of a [Music] dilemma stay in New York or leave New York food and rent or XL1
[Music] The Second Adventure from innocence to experience Fred's birthday party the most important night of my career Casey and I were hired by a man
named Tom Healey to make a birthday video about Tom Healey's husband Fred
the video was to be shown at Fred's 50th birthday party to a room of
about 200 people a lot of rich people a lot of people from New York's art elite
Tom Sachs was there and Andrew Cuomo pre- disgrace Senator Bob KY Senator John kery no relation Hillary Clinton
and Bill Clinton to name a few this was our first paid gig thousands of dollars
Tom Sachs had vouched for us Tom Healey the man who had hired us Fred's husband was an early champion of saxs and a
collector of Sachs work so if Casey and I pulled it off we were set but if we
didn't Casey and I were screwed Tom Sachs was screwed for vouching for us
Tom Healey was screwed for hiring us and Fred would be embarrassed and screwed
out of his 50th birthday video this was the era of the dreaded
DVD which never worked well good riddance we had a DVD in the house DVD
player that the professional AV company had supplied we had a backup DVD in our
own DVD player which we had brought to the party and we had two backups of the
video on tape in two video cameras you could connect the video cameras to the
projector with um something called RCA cables and play the video through the camera into the
projector if need be we had tested each backup with the very expensive
professional AV team earlier in the day and no matter what happens for the rest
of my career this was the most important night of my career and I knew that that night so everyone is seated at a very fancy restaurant called lirk picture like a 19th century Ballroom
it's right before dinner is served so everyone is hungry an announcement is made we're
going to show you a video that we made for Fred and Casey and I are told to play
the video push play on the house DVD player boom screen goes blank doesn't work we
connect our backup DVD player to the projector press play boom screen goes blank doesn't work we connect our camera
to the projector to play the video from a tape boom screen goes blank but the
video is working we can see it playing just fine on the little LCD screen on the
camera it's the projector the projector keeps going out projector goes out video
plays got to stop the video rewind the video play through through the blank leader at the beginning of the video
glasses are starting to clink voices are starting to rumble uh Fred's mother a very successful businesswoman named
Lillian Vernon who's throwing the party paid for it hundreds of thousands of dollars probably comes over to us and
says the movie plays in 1 minute or it doesn't play at all the projector is old
so each time it shuts off it goes out it takes 15 to 30 seconds just to boot it
up and we discover that the outlet that the expensive professional AV team has
plugged the projector into is not only a floor outlet but it's also about 50
years old cracked broken and the the the plug won't stay in it so the projector
keeps turning off all the other outlets in the room are taken up by God knows what Casey runs over to the band unplugs
someone's amp plugs our projector in and you know gives me the thumbs up I boot up the projector Casey makes his way
back to the projector rewinds uh the tape and pushes play on the camera video comes up on the projector screen starts
playing videoos like 10 minutes long so for 10 solid minutes we've got to suffer
through the possibility of the projector [Music] crashing the room loves it laughing at all the Beats we put two big jokes in there save the biggest for the end
delivered perfectly by Bill Clinton himself and it brought theing house
[Music] down everybody loved it Tom Healey the man who had hired us ended up becoming a huge patron of ours uh instrumentally helped us develop our early careers getting us paid gigs one after another
but the success of that night the innocence was that we were going to make it but the
experience was that sometimes success is merely relief and the third Adventure from innocence to experience
[Applause] Jos boys up just got off the phone with Casey and Bell we sold the show to wow that's unbelievable you know Andy slipped up yesterday and he was like yeah Tom's doing something with HBO and I was
like you mean the KN are doing something I thought the HBO show meant
that we had made it that I was set and could live like a success uccessful dentist for the rest of my life that was
my innocence for me it was maybe a year or so of living like a successful dentist
but like a new dentist who hadn't built up his wealth yet and was still paying off his student
loans now I must say that the kindness extended to me during
this adventure has been astonishing but the experience is that I don't know if anyone ever really makes
it and now about a dozen years after the HBO show aired my temple is starting to get cracks in it I'm still fixing projectors
and buying cameras I can't afford so to speak for Fred's 60th birthday 10 years after the big party I made him a sort of
candleabra with 60 candles in it and each subsequent year I've made him an
additional tiny candleabra scon with a a single candle in it to commemorate another year this is the 70th candle and I'm a
month late sorry Freddy I think that my innocence now that I'm nearing 50 has been just about completely
extinguished by my experience but sometimes when I'm with
my little boy a boy who was born into these hands I catch a glimpse and I can feel some innocence just a little
bit through my my mirror neurons I guess we've got hats like this in the merch store now and this week on the patreon a live stream answering your questions the link is right there
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Canon XL1 mentions — early digital video camera Van used
- Adorama mentions — NYC camera store referenced
People Referenced
Tom Sachs, Tom Healey, Casey Neistat, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Lillian Vernon, E.B. Sollis