Almost Funny with Judson Veach

The future of content has to get attention without giving up depth w/ Zack Slingsby

• Judson Veach • Season 1 • Episode 9

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0:00 | 1:03:50

Zack Slingsby joins the pod to discuss movies, content and his new book!

SPEAKER_03

I feel like our podcast, if we did a joint podcast, would be called Creative Differences.

unknown

That'd be perfect.

SPEAKER_01

By the way, I'm so pumped to be here. Are we actually doing this? Yeah. It's good. So because I'm gonna just I'm coming for this podcast.

SPEAKER_03

Good.

SPEAKER_01

I'm coming for your show.

SPEAKER_03

This could be the last one, the ninth and final episode. Uh almost funny, episode nine. We've got the founder of the sketch comedy group, King Jester, newly published author, and yes, the source of all of my creative differences, Zach Slingsby. Good to be here. Happy to be here. Wow. Thank you. Yeah. Give the audience a little context for how uh we know each other.

SPEAKER_01

We got to know each other over the last year, more year. A little over a year, yeah. Run a year. Um, you know, you're a funny guy, you live here. And um I don't know how we met. We're gonna choose.

SPEAKER_03

You messaged me uh because I make all these videos. You make all these funny videos. I'm just trying to get attention anyway.

SPEAKER_01

And we're looking to grab up as many uh comedians who have these tribes of folks who have already kind of recognized how funny you guys are. And um we started doing some sketches together, immediate creative differences, immediate um clashing, um, just sort of uh an innate, just reflexive uh wow, we have different ideas here type vision. And then no, no. Um yeah, been great. We've done sketches together, we've done other stuff, series, ideas kicking around stuff. I think it's been it's been awesome to get to work with you.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you guys are um we're this is where we shoot the pods. So uh the building is now called Bungalow Studios. It's had 47 names since I've met you. We have a few names. New mind, you got King Jester, what was the other one? Uh there was another name in there for a while. New mind, King Jester, Bungalow. I'm missing one. Well, there's a couple things going on.

SPEAKER_01

There's different signs up there. Is that what you're referring to?

SPEAKER_03

Well, I just once it was never called King Jester.

SPEAKER_01

The comedy the comedy uh company is called King Jesters. The comedy the building was called New Mind. Oh, you're thinking of Human Factor meaning. Human Factory, that's our other company. That's branded, branded content. I started that in New York. That's been that's not here.

SPEAKER_03

It's a lot of shell company. Don't look into it for tax reasons. Don't go digging.

SPEAKER_01

There's some things going on. Um there's some overseas accounts, but no, yeah, it's had a lot of different names. Now Bungalow has always been, Justin has always wanted to call it Bungalow. He renamed it, we branded it a month ago. Now it's Bungalow.

SPEAKER_03

It looks beautiful. All of the new media stuff looks beautiful. The building is a super cool space. We're shooting in the upstairs pod studios. Um there's a there is a podcast set opposite us right now. Like you guys are doing it, I think, the way of the future, where you're just let's pack a bunch of creatives into a space, and then how can we as efficiently as possible use that space to make cool stuff all the time?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And so that's the word that's the best way to put it.

SPEAKER_03

I'm really glad that you guys have been a creative sponge for the Nashville area. People not even know we're in Nashville, but there's just, I don't think there's anything else in the market like this where there's truly this much diversity of stuff getting made. That's all about being creative and a big emphasis on funny. Where it's like, yeah, we can make like commercials or or even pods or whatever, but you guys are like, no, we're trying to do funny. And naturally where the differences come in.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's well said. Thank you. We're gonna bring you to our investor report meeting. Um, I think that um that's all true. I mean, a lot of the shows in here are not comedy, right? So there's music content being made here, and there's all kinds of podcasts that do that touch on different subjects, food or just entertainment at large, or um, you know, just business podcasts in here. But it's like definitely with King Jester, we're trying to bring together as many funny people as possible. The more they live here, the better. Obviously, people come through town and stuff I hear. But yeah, with I would say trying to find a community of like-minded comics and writers that can do all the King Jester stuff and then do all the other things that pay for the the keep the lights on around here. Brand stuff, brand entertainment, branded content. And even today, we're sitting up here downstairs. There's a brand shoot in Studio B. There's a branded show that we're you know launching today in the afternoon. So, like all this stuff, it's like the balance of the funny and the entertainment with all the sort of pay the bill stuff. Yeah, that's kind of how this place worked.

SPEAKER_03

And I just think that's the way you gotta do it because you gotta earn the right to be funny, you gotta earn your art, all right? So you have to be paying the bills or else this lasts for 45 seconds, and then nobody gets to do anything fun. Grateful that you guys are trying to fill a space in content in general where we've had this conversation before after a few drinks at a Christmas party. You guys aren't a $30 million movie, and you're not a video in your car.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_03

That's that's good, right? There is a huge opening in the market where it's like, I don't want this to just be a guy's iPhone. Like those videos are fun, like even sketches, iPhone sketch is fun. Like, I'm trying to think of more iPhone sketch ideas all the time. Sure. Because they're cheap and you can do it at your house. But also, like, there are things that are they need some kind of infrastructure to be correct.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I want that's the debate, right? I mean, that's the debate. Can you can you be? I take your side of it, but that's I think the question is yeah, are we going to a place where like I saw Kevin Nealand on something, and he was like, you know, telling stories about the 70s, and he's like, and today everybody's funny? And he's like, that's just everybody's funny. Everybody has a studio, everybody has their their whole team on their phone, and they just say everybody's funny. He's been in other words, like you go on your phone and everything's you're seeing people in every kitchen across the country doing something next reasonably funny enough that it rose to the top of the your algorithm, right? Yeah. So you know, like is the future small teams like ours doing stuff that's slightly elevated, yep, um, and has a little more whatever you want to call infrastructure production value, you know, uh just cinematic quality, or um is it just is it just the the dam breaks and it's just everybody on their phone from their kitchen and we can't there's no way to suss out any like what do you call it Pareto distribution of anything. It's just uh it's just a madhouse, the inmates want anything so well.

SPEAKER_03

I think that has happened, and I think but that happening is gonna be the impetus for people going, Oh, I'd like something else though, please. I I think you almost have to go full becomes the noise, or yeah, and then you see something that's a little different. And the barrier to entry is so low for that that it's like if everybody's doing that, then nobody's in the space of okay, well, we had to have a meeting to make this. Yeah, like none of the stuff that I'm making was like, and then remember the meeting?

SPEAKER_01

That's what makes it so funny, and that's why there's a higher failure rate at the network level or even at the production level, because the idea has to go from it was funny when we brought it up, it was funny when we talked about it, we wrote it funny, we casted it pretty funny, we shot it funny, everyone was loose enough to actually do it right, and then we found in post all the stuff that was funny back here. Yes, and that process can fall apart, or and it duh has. It has.

SPEAKER_03

Or yeah, but you know, that well, and that's so hard though, because it's kind of the off uh camera conversation we were having. The commitment level to see something from beginning to end now, like you're it's a lot of cost, not just like financial, yes, financial cost, but the time it takes for there's there's little decisions that have to happen at every single point. Yeah, where you know, and then it's like this was not the world's funniest thing, but I just like made a little sketch to promote a show I'm doing this weekend and did thought of it and was like, okay, I shoot like both sides of it, blah blah blah blah blah. And it's like 50,000 views to promote my show, right? And it took two seconds.

SPEAKER_01

It took two seconds, and it was it was all inspired by your brain, and so you knew what was funny about it. You delivered it the way it was meant to be delivered because you had the the gem of whatever it was gonna get.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, at least in one take, yeah, you know, and then cut it together, throw it out there, and then so like how how do you not just do that? Because that's hard.

SPEAKER_01

What it's what it's what you should do, it's what you should do. Everyone should probably do that at a minimum. Right. And then the question is, is there a does TV meet the internet? And if TV if TV meets the internet, how does that happen? And that's what everyone's trying to understand. You saw that that that uh reel I sent you from last week about the series. Yes, oh the oh, the trial reel, or not the trial reel, the Instagram putting out their own episodes or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Episodic, a bunch of people sent me that. I think that's really interesting, but I don't think it's tells us much about how viewers will engage with episodic content. I don't know that it it's they're gonna be.

SPEAKER_03

Lay a little uh context for this if someone's listening.

SPEAKER_01

So Instagram and possibly other platforms are going to release formats where you can organize your content by episodes and by seasons, basically. So and so like Netflix, you go there, you go to season two, episode five. Right now, if if an Instagram channel puts out a show, you don't know where the episode, what's episode two, what's episode four, you're scrolling, you just see a random one. And so for that reason, our social agency and a lot of the brands we're working with and a lot of other places, they want to do episodes that you don't have to have seen the last episode for. Sure. So if it's episode three, it's like say it by the bell. Every week there's gonna be uh funny shenanigans at a high school. Doesn't matter if you haven't seen the last 20 episodes, you'll be able to tune in and watch this one. So what you're seeing with a lot of popular social shows is you're jumping in and you could jump in anywhere. And it will play. And you're right, it plays. With this feature, there's an argument that you start seeing stuff that's a little more sophisticated, a little more narratively interwoven, and is propulsive storytelling, not episodic, where it's like the Sopranos, episode two matters to episode 10.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so does that play on Instagram? Is the place that we go to kind of kill time in between whatever we're doing, a meeting or uh waiting for gas to pump or whatever, is that gonna be sufficient um platform for these uh these stories?

SPEAKER_03

It's hard to predict user behavior like that if people are gonna go, all right, I found this funny. Now let me follow this trail to here, and then start from the beginning and watch a series. Um, like I know just like on TikTok, it's a nightmare. Yeah, it's like the most disorganized thing ever. If you see a thing and it'll be like part one, and then you're like, where's part two? They've done 900 random things, and so you kind of just like get off. You're like, I I really wanted to see part two, forget part two. But I'm now seeing Instagram because you have to be viral to get seen at all, so it deprioritizes like what I always call like nurture content, where it's like my audience is gonna love this, but it's not gonna be like a splash hit and get a million views, but like I would like my people to see it, that it gets like nothing, it gets no distribution. But if you have like a 10-part series and one of them is mega viral, one of them gets like, let's say, three million views of your 10-part series, and all the other nine, if you had just floated them out there, were gonna get like 7,500 views, that would have been a huge flop. But now if you can capture through that one out of the 10 into your pipeline, if even a small percentage now go through and go, Oh, I'd like to see the rest of this. Yeah, those 7,500 view videos now have a lot of merit because you funneled them in. It's gonna need users to get to the point of going, I know how to do this. Yeah, but if that feature takes off, I feel like early adopters of that, it's like being the first person to think of we should make a TV show.

SPEAKER_01

And it's gotta be good. But yeah, that goes without saying it's gotta be something where because well, because there's this trend now as of flooding the space with brand shows, and everybody wants to have a Brooklyn coffee shop or a um Roomies that was built, built was as a financial app, and they made this show, Roomies, that got a lot of press, got a lot of hits, and we're working on a lot of these shows with brand brands now. And it's like there's this idea that if you get the demo right and you kind of structure the branding of it right, you know, it's just gonna start cooking and you're gonna get and it's like you the I still think you need the quality of your favorite TV shows to be all over that, yeah, you know, and so I I don't know. I think uh it's gonna be weird. It feels like a bubble, but it also feels like huge opportunity for a lot of creatives at the same time.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I think it's a cream will rise, like the algorithm doesn't lie, like good stuff does get found, and I feel like that that's one of my big qualms is like people are like, Oh, I hate all the social stuff. I hate it's like it's a meritocracy. Like if the video is working, it's working for a reason. Like you can look at the back end data. It's like, why did 79,000 people share this? Not because it stinks, like there's something about it that's it, creating the engagement.

SPEAKER_01

What have you noticed about your videos that take off the most? What's the quality?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, for for what I'm doing, if you're doing front facing a lot, like I do a ton of the front-facing stuff. That's just relatability. It's people send it because they're like, This is you or this is us. Yeah, and it's um, I mean, it's a little flash in the pan in terms of like comparing it to something like an episodic thing where you're gonna like come back and I love this like the way I love a TV show. Um but you, I mean, it's it's raising the bar, you're elevating to get someone to share something that's like this is an episode.

SPEAKER_02

Totally, it's worth more. It's worth more.

SPEAKER_03

It's worth more, but it's harder to do hard exactly. Because it's not just like, oh, this is a silly observation. Like, 'cause what what really works is like saying something early in a video that someone's like, oh, that's true, but I never thought of that before. And then joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, really funny joke at the end, or like modestly funny joke for the internet standards. Oh, I gotta send this to my husband. Yeah, you're not gonna get that necessarily with we're doing uh that's a question.

SPEAKER_01

That's the question. Because that's that's what you just said is I I think the principal uh um quality of viral content is that you you see something and you say that's about my life. I don't know this person, yeah, but somehow they figured out something about my life that's true. I'm gonna send it to the five or six people that I've already had that conversation with or that know this about me or know me well enough to know how funny and true this really is. I have a theory, and I don't know if I'm right about this, but I don't think we I don't think people on Instagram reels want to be on them. I think that's a really good point. You you sort of have this moment of your day where you're like, oh fuck it. I just have a second here, and then you accidentally start going, and then you're like on another one, and you're constantly in tension with this thing to break away. Yeah. You're constantly like go to the next one. Like, I kind of don't want to stay on this. So you're if you're you're doing that enough, it's a really hostile place to try to capture a viewer because you're saying You're the enemy. You're the enemy. You're you're trying to pull away from it. So the thing that tends to rise to the top is something that's so true you have to stay in and be hooked, or so volatile or crazy, or outside outside the box, or just really spikes your adrenaline or pisses you off.

SPEAKER_03

So short-term psychological phenomenon where you go, I have to finish.

SPEAKER_01

I gotta send this to somebody. As opposed to a show. Right. When my wife's a question, that's what it that's what we're we're doing now. That's this is the debate we're actually having. So there's a big, there's a big contract that we're making this show for, and the debate literally is do we make these episodes with these hooks that are not about the story, yes, that have to do with us, that have to do with resonance, that have to do with gravity, and then you can sort of use that to feed them into a story, or do you tell the story and just hope that even you know, understand you're gonna get a much lower threshold of repeat viewers, but those, like you said, are gonna be the diehards that may that matter a lot more. They're gonna follow the show, get it, get immersed in the character. And I don't know if Instagram or TikTok or even YouTube is a place for character immersion.

SPEAKER_03

Well, like many things, the truth might be in the middle of those. Um yeah, I I think I'm so hopeful that there's a way to make keep TV alive. That's really what it is, is you're gonna keep TV going, right? And not be lowest common denominator on everything, because uh yeah, I it's hard because again, the algorithm is promoting lowest common denominator, especially for that beginning, like that first like six, seven, six, seven seconds of why'd you look at me almost yeah, not even close to being funny. Uh but uh if you get uh past that, if you can break through that very early part of the video and there's some level of buy-in, you can do better stuff. Totally. And if again, if you can get them to take the action to go, I'm gonna find something else. Like I see my Instagram as a business card where I want a viral video, that's the marketing, to get you to my business card where you see everything I do, and then you poke around on my page. Yes, right? So, yeah, some stuff needs to go viral, or you get new stuff. That's why he's such a psychopath, dude. Explain for the viewers.

SPEAKER_02

Explain for the viewers. They orchestrated this so carefully that it's almost scary. But yes, that's true. That's a good way to think of it. It's a business card that brings it in. And and then I got them. And then they're going back to the restaurant for the cheesecake.

SPEAKER_03

Every guest diagnoses me with a different psychological condition. Dude, you know, last year was narcissists.

SPEAKER_02

Who called you narcissists?

SPEAKER_03

Post. Mike Post a lot of this. That was our that's the opening line of the episode.

SPEAKER_00

I want to say I felt that was uncalled for. I'm no bias.

SPEAKER_03

I can make a case for narcissism. Wouldn't it be great?

SPEAKER_02

It wouldn't be a good case. It would fall apart. You would you'd pick it apart, but I can make the case.

SPEAKER_03

Simple modern coffee mugs, they have no association with me or this program. But if you build it, they will come. I'm doing the ad first. I really do like this coffee mug a lot. My wife bought this for me for Father's Day a couple years ago. It's green, it's got this like round top that you pop in and out, and when you close it, it's a non-spill. And then this is just a very satisfying way to drink. I mean, some of the paint and stuff is shipped off, but I mean, I simple modern, and then we'll we'll collab with them for this, and then I'll send them an invoice. You owe me. I think if it's if you build it, they will come.

SPEAKER_01

We did a couple of ads while you were going.

SPEAKER_03

Nice for things that I don't have partnerships with.

SPEAKER_01

I was reading um Portnoy's book on building bar stool, and uh he says that he would uh He would he had his newspaper, he was look he needed ads, but no one would pay for anything. So he'd get he'd put an ad in for like Sally's Steakhouse, you know, and they just whatever, and then he'd go over to like Morton's and be like, hey, Sally's is in there. You want it? Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_02

And they'd be like, shit, Sally's is even though it didn't exist.

SPEAKER_03

That's simple and brilliant. Yeah. I love that. Okay. Well, we just did a couple ads like that. Yeah. And fraud. Okay. All right. Uh this is a pro-fraud program. Um Zach, one of the ways that I think you and I are actually very related and connected is our lives as working fathers. Yes. Um, as you can see, he's already exhausted. He's mid-yon. That's perfect timing. Um I and I don't ever remember how many children you have. Remind me.

SPEAKER_01

It's hard to remember. It's hard to count them all.

SPEAKER_03

It's five kids.

SPEAKER_01

Oh man. A lot of children. We got a lot of kids.

SPEAKER_03

A spontaneous Trump. Um give me the ages. Can you can you knock out the ages for the for the audience?

SPEAKER_01

Um yes. Give me a second. It's every two years. So once you start, you get the so one's gonna be 10 and then it's eight, two, eight, six.

SPEAKER_03

Was that deeply planned, or was that just how it worked out?

SPEAKER_01

Deeply. Uh it was a loose idea that this would happen. Basically, every time we would have another one, my wife. Three Olympics every year. Winter summer. Every winter summer. Um Julia would be like, you know, it's not so bad. We could kind of have one morning, I think. And uh at the beginning, this was sort of a terror, uh terrorizing idea to me um to have such a lot of kids. But she she always thought that it would be good, and I've slowly realized that it's the best. It's great. I I've I um by kid five, you really got your groove.

unknown

Really?

SPEAKER_01

That many kids to get the groove? I loved being a father the whole time, and I loved the kid, but I I was worried to have more. I always was feeling like, oh, this is gonna be hard.

SPEAKER_03

That is my theory. The line of demarcation is kid three, because then there's something about the momentum of the kids.

SPEAKER_01

See, it's it becomes I don't know why, but it becomes easier and more fulfilling. I mean, it was always I always loved it. I never didn't love having kids, but I was very anxious about having more kids until around three, and then I was like, oh, we got to just keep stacking them up. We got it.

SPEAKER_03

What is this? This needs to be studied. I don't know because it's across the boards. If you I I think it's like chicken or the egg. I really do feel like even I can hear subtly the way uh your wife is talking about having more kids. The going around the studio. The the difference between because like for Sarah, she was just the start, she was so sick in pregnancy. Yeah, it's like from week six of pregnancy, it's just like this is a kind of ruthless torture, just like throwing up the whole time. So for both of our kids, the first like memory is like hooray, yeah, okay, and now it's just you're in agony, and then you go into like the hard part of like you're not sleeping, and then you have uh not sleeping, and you have a toddler, and da da da. But something like the the mom is like in a zone where I don't know, it's just like the stars align and they're like they can just keep going.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I will it will say we didn't have to deal with a lot of the the things that I've heard other other uh people had to deal with. So I I know that we've been very lucky in that respect. Um, you know, her pregnancies are are fairly simple and the kids have all been good sleepers and they're mostly girls, which has been which has been a great blessing. This is a real thing. Um but yeah, I don't know. We just got into kind of a groove with it and uh Um it's great. I love it. I love coming home. There's so many of them. It's the US always something going on. It's a lot of I'm high energy per like I like to have a lot of stuff going on. And so it's it's I find it very exciting to do this. To have these uh this kind of army of people waiting to kind of hang out with me is a great it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03

It's cool. You guys are it's like uh a full team, like a full sports team. We got a lot of luck going on. You're actually bigger than some sports teams. Like doubles tennis, you're like, no, we have way more than that.

SPEAKER_01

We got a starting five. Robert is the boy, he's the last one. Excuse me. Um and um, yeah, he doesn't quite know what he's got getting into, but um it's uh full team for sure.

SPEAKER_03

Man, that's wild. Uh which brings us to our first game of the day. Oh no. You might have seen some of these clips. We do a lot of blind rankings. We have a couple different games today, but our first blind ranking, we're gonna do uh top seven dad accomplishments. Oh. So cross history, or is this between you and me? For well, just for you, for how you feel. If it were to happen in your life, one would be the best possible feeling, and seven would be the lowest. First one out the shoot. Building something for your kids that didn't come with instructions. Well, wait, guys, like you buy wood and then all of a sudden at the end of the day, there's a tree house.

SPEAKER_01

I'll do uh I'll put that as high for me as a two. I'll assume there's gonna be something that's gonna be bigger.

SPEAKER_03

I I really And I can't change these, right? No, they're locked in. All right. Nice one out the shoot. Remembering everything at the grocery store. Oh you know when you come home and it's like, did you get cumin? And you're like, bah that I don't know if I've ever done it. But coming home with a 100%.

SPEAKER_01

I love that the premise is established that both of us have, you know, which is uh obviously accurate, strong enough wives that we're going to the grocery store, but it it is true. Strong-minded enough, like, hey, go go get this list taken care of. Um this is fatherhood from both sides. I don't do great in the grocery store. I get very overwhelmed. I'm like the old woman in there who like can't figure out what section to go to. I really feel that way. I don't have good eyesight. I don't know much about the grocery store. I can't read the signs very clearly, and I like I passed the aisle that I need, I come back. I got LASIK, didn't work. Uh yeah, that's a good one. But I don't know if you high value value six.

SPEAKER_03

Six, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fair. Um, all right. Next out the shoot. Hearing your kids say the phrase, that's too expensive. This might need to be context. Good, good. Like the other day, we were uh I forget what we were doing, but we were getting and then my son suggested buying something, and my daughter was the snuffer outer. She goes, That's too expensive.

SPEAKER_01

I was so proud. Well, but you're you're this is a different phenomenon. This is one I see this all the time, and you maybe don't because of the two, but with the five, I get a lot. One of them has found a way to exert authority and uh superiority over another sibling by taking the side of the parents. Ooh, so one of them, yeah, yeah. It's a deep it's a they're they're like, Oh no, Noel. That's too much money. That would be irresponsible to the family. And they look at us like that. Wow.

SPEAKER_03

Well, so that's a more nuanced perspective. Bake that into your ranking.

SPEAKER_01

They uh well, it's great feeling, but I know it's double, there's double motive. Um I'll put that in the middle. I'll go like a nice four for that.

SPEAKER_03

All right. Hayden keeps track of these for us. Um all right. This is a big one.

SPEAKER_01

Good grass. We have good grass, it's naturally good. Um, I like it, you know. Uh I would be bummed personally if it was if it was all brownie and patchy and stuff, but I'm also not like uh, you know, go to depot, get the stuff, treated. You know the crazy lead. No, no. Thank goodness. We'd have to end the pod. Um what's left five?

SPEAKER_00

Uh that's pretty one, three, five, and seven. This is like how you did your kids. That's five.

SPEAKER_01

That's a that's a five.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, that's fair. Uh the inside of your car is clean.

SPEAKER_01

So this would be a point of pride if it was. If it was. It's a terrible condition right now. Um I would say that would be really I would really like that. That would give my brain some clarity, and it just hasn't been the case for so long. So let's say I got three left. I'll go go. Well, I don't know. How many are left?

SPEAKER_00

You got one, three, and seven. One three and seven, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So there's three, three, three options left. Yeah. That's gonna be a good one. I don't know if I want to waste that on a three. What if I put something stupid? Number one. All right, I'll go three. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Um next out the shoot. Your kids request to listen to good music. Yep. Number one. Number one they do.

SPEAKER_01

I've got them, I've got them so dialed in on their songs. Yeah. What are they listening to? They love it. First, they love everything. They're they're very collected, okay. Okay, cultured. Okay. Your kids are probably scrolling Moana soundtrack all day. But it's uh it's my kids love that too. But they got you know, Beatles in there, they got Don McLean, they got they like um um uh night moves by Bob Seeger.

SPEAKER_02

They love that, they love all kinds of things. You've invested time in this.

SPEAKER_01

I've I've cultivated their tastes. They like um, they like you know, 90s song music, they like Google, all they love um Train and they love um One Headlight. That's one of their favorite songs. We've developed a dance to it. They love one headlight. Isn't it great?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, when you can turn on what you want to listen to and they jam along. Yeah, it's the best feeling. It's the best. It takes time. And you know, my like little personal theory is you have to bring them up through the catalog of music, starting from them. So you have to start at Coco Melon. Interesting. And then you do like lullaby sung by Sarah McLaughlin. Then you move your start moving the needle, and before they know it, they're requesting like hey, can you play Freebird dad? Yes, and you're like, we did it, but it you have to cycle your way.

SPEAKER_01

Or deprivation of the stuff that's built to hook them. Everything is so hooky, and my kids love Moana. Like they love all these songs that are built to grab them, they can't get enough. That's a different reaction than the stuff I show them to them. That's almost an involuntary, like, I have to hear this.

SPEAKER_03

This is the same conversation as earlier. Like the white bred garbage entertainment. Or is like, hey, do you have you cultivated a taste to watch The Wire? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know? Have you are you able to handle uh how bizarre by what is OMC?

SPEAKER_03

Okay, well, that means there's only one spot left. This is your lowest spot. Oh, okay. The lowest data accomplishment is having a hot wife. Oh my goodness. What have you done?

SPEAKER_02

What are you kidding me? That's not what I want. I mean, what that's how you did this. You did this on purpose to start rank these things. Rank these things. You don't get to see what you're ranking them against.

SPEAKER_03

I don't it usually go that people don't put something in one.

SPEAKER_01

It's always the last number one that you said something I'm really excited about. I know you didn't have switching out. Um, well, I guess that's seven. Uh it's very important to me. And I'm and I'm very blessed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Well, congratulations. Lovely blind ranking. I think that has got uh some potenti. Uh, which also brings me to the next thing, this pile between us.

SPEAKER_01

Your books are I was wondering if we were gonna touch on this subject at all. Let me make sure the camera reads.

SPEAKER_03

But a pile of books. I read my books by the pile. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, hold it up, hold it up for the camera.

SPEAKER_03

Should we do something where it's like more like this? How does that look, Hayden? Does that look like we're oh it's it's clear as day. I was saying, Zach, hold up in the close-up so we can so Zach has spent how many years writing this book?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I didn't spend years writing it, but it's been years since I wrote it. It's years in a fairly short time span, but I but I wrote it um several years ago. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And it is uh this will be out after, and we'll touch on this at the end. But the the actual release date is what's July 28th. July 28th. Pre-order available right now. Pre-order available right now. I've pre-ordered. Oh thank you. I was one of the first pre-orders, I think. You texted me, say, hey, the book's ready for prayer.

SPEAKER_01

I to uh I sent for quite a number of reminders too.

SPEAKER_03

So if you didn't get one, it means that you bought it. Yeah, that's amazing. That's great. Here, for this section, let's do this. This will look good. This will look dope. Um and then the I'm not a great reader. Okay. Are you a big reader? Yeah. Okay. So when you had the idea of a book, it was natural. When you're writing, you feel like you understand the voice of how a novel is supposed to read. You've got that as part of the sinew of what it is. Because I write so conversationally, because that's how my brain thinks, and then I'll go and read a book like I just read yesteryear. Have you read it?

SPEAKER_01

No.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, it's very good, it's dark, but I'm like, it's like a foreign language to go into book mode.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. But you but you live in book mode. Well, I don't know if I live in it, certainly not now. But um, I started out wanting to do this. So this preceded all the content stuff. First thing was this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I was in my twenties, really in college, I got the idea I wanted to be a writer and novelist. And then um, I had some success in my early 20s and then kind of abandoned it. I actually just wrote like an essay about this that'll come out when the book comes out. Um but yeah, so a very abbreviated story. But I I got an MFA at the new school downtown Manhattan. I was I was interning for a literary agency, and then I had a little job for a publisher and just little stuff around New York. Okay, but you were in and then that little game, and then published some short stories, had done some stuff, wrote a novel in my early 20s, got a very prestigious literary agency to take it on, and they were very excited, and uh, you know, seemed as though it would be this beginning of this career chapter. And then over the course of a long time, over the course of about a year, it's got we got steady rejection letters from all the major publishers that they had sent it to. So it was a Was that this book? No, no, no. That's a book I wrote um when I was 24. Okay. Um and so I'm over the course of a year, maybe a little more, uh enough time where it's just it deflates you enough, you know, this great this is not gonna be happening quickly. I went, I got another job at uh uh uh in DC at a nonprofit, and so now I'm not even living in New York anymore, and I'm still getting these stream of rejection letters, holding out hope that this will work out. I'll quit the job, I'll write this these books, write the next book, whatever. And then my agent's like, well, maybe edit it a little bit and we'll take it to more publishers. Then I take it back for a few months, I edit it some more, make it worse, probably. Okay, and then goes back out to more publishers, more no's, more rejections. And now I'm you know, I'm still at this job. I really don't care for nothing wrong with the job, but I I worked at that point for a series of different nonprofits or different DC research firms or just write writing jobs, really. Yeah, and I didn't like any of them. And now I'm getting towards 26, 27, and uh I get married, we have a baby, and I'm looking at I'm 28, yeah, whatever it is, 27, 28, and I and this book has totally failed to sell now, and I'm writing another book at kind of at nights and weekends on stuff, things that I, you know, I'm getting further away from my talent, I think, during this process. I'm now I'm fighting to just get into this circle to just have this be a career that I can go after.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And um, and then somewhere along the way there, I start seeing I saw one or two brands make videos that were like very funny, that were like really interesting and story-driven videos. And um And you're in New York at this point. Now I'm in DC. No, you're in DC. Now I'm in DC. And and um and something about having a baby, I don't know if you felt this way, but it just it just launches you into like you really have to take charge of whatever you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I was gonna say depression.

SPEAKER_01

No, no, yeah, right. Chronic, chronic crippling, debilitating sleep deprivation. No, it was the opposite feeling for me. It just felt like really something needs to happen here. And you can't just wait for these pla these kind of power brokers in New York to the other. Well, there is an urgency to everything. There's an urgency to everything, yeah. And Jules was working a very good job, but you know, I could tell that eventually she wanted to kind of stay home. And uh, you know, long story short, yeah, I I I found I realized that this narrative sensibility could go into this brand world. And you know, that's it. I see. So you were seeing brands making this is early, very early, but they were making some of them were making really funny videos like short films, Web Series, the Duplos Brothers. This is 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, okay, but the Duplas Brothers, yeah, when was this? 2017, 2018? But the Duplus Brothers. No, it was 2016, 2017. Yeah. The Duplus Brothers had made this uh company just to help brands make very interesting videos. There's the independent filmmakers, you know? I saw that and I was like, what is going on? Like there's something out here happening. It's cool. And so I didn't have any experience with I didn't know anything about cameras, about production, about editing, anything. So I I taught myself editing, I taught myself shooting. I went to local businesses in DC and asked them if I can make a free video for them, basically. And wow. I went to like a brewery and um nail slow or an eyebrow salon, whatever you call that. I sure lash brow lash bar.

SPEAKER_03

A lash bar.

SPEAKER_01

Um, you know, um uh there was like a uh coffee shop, like all these local businesses.

SPEAKER_03

So you just approach businesses to say family.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know how to do this yet. I think I have a good sense of it. I'll make a video that you want that'll be like making your sales case, whatever, some kind of sales video for you, but then I get to make a funny video that I want. And I did that with a bunch of videos, and um none of them went viral or anything, but they all did well enough, and I got to know the businesses and they kind of hired me for some more stuff. Businesses were happy with it. Businesses were happy. Yeah. In most cases, one of them I did terrible, one of my first ones did terrible. And then I found a golf product on Shark Tank that got rejected. They got a no. Their shark tank was like, You guys, you we're not doing it. And I phoned them, we're already in trouble. So I phoned them. I was like, Can I make a video for you guys? I have a funny idea how to do a uh video for you. And they didn't call me back, and I called like three or four times. I had the best video idea, and they finally said yes, and then I made a golf, like uh like drinkers playing golf type video, like guys were bad golfers when bad golfers play golf videos. Okay, and it did not do great, it did okay, but like they were happy about it, and we had a good thing, and then I went to I just kept doing that, and then eventually started getting paid to do them. Yeah, and then I found some people who knew way more about production because I was going out there with a DSLR, a road mic on the camera. Yeah, kind of didn't look good. It was they were funny internet quality videos, but they were, you know, terrible. So the production value was terrible. Sure. So I found some people that really understood production, they saw kind of where I wanted to go. And then we started getting clients, and then through um got back to New York 2018, and then really that's when we started to have success in 2019. Uh then COVID came, set that back a little bit. And then anyway, long story short. So there, so got the whole that that's what the failure of all this literary stuff pushed me toward content brand stuff, which eventually brought us to the comedy in the studio and everything else. But this stuff has always been my first love. I've always read, I've written other novels over the years, okay, and I've had other sort of um yeah, literary uh impulses or whatever, but I I don't um I haven't written or published a book since this one.

SPEAKER_03

What is the audience that's gonna love this book? If you love blank or if you're into this, this is the book for you.

SPEAKER_01

The the patron saint books for this one, for me, just maybe because of the proximity of when I had read them or reread them, were East of Eden by John Steinbeck and The Godfather. Okay. Uh American. And this book is called The Ballad of the Gangster's Daughter, yeah. Yeah. So available now, Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Um, but I think that uh those books were interesting to me because they were they were literary stories, but they had so much going for them plot-wise. They were page turners, they were exciting, they were there was something happening that was sort of um different on every on every in every chapter that created stakes and momentum and propulsive energy in the story. So I really wanted to do a book that had literary depth and had was about people and about families and about stuff that everybody can relate to, but also had that kind of sheen of crime where you were interested in the gangsters and guns aspect of it. What's the uh elevator pitch on this one? Okay, so Serena Magic is the protagonist, um, and it follows her life over five decades. She's part of this big uh English-Irish Bronx family, and they have um they they the father does well enough that he relocates them through his sort of shady business dealings to the affluent suburbs of Connecticut. Okay, and they sort of have this feeling like we've escaped the the worst of it. And over the course of those decades, she loses each of her sisters. She has a big family, and each she has seven sisters, and each one of them dies um in a different way over the course of all seven chapters. So seven sisters, each chapter, a different sister is lost, and you follow that journey with her. Um, and along the way, she sort of has to make the decision at each checkpoint. Do I follow the gifts and the callings of my career, or do I stay loyal to this sort of haunted, broken family and try to figure out how to help them? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And then there's themes of uh there's modern themes in that. What are those? Modern themes of do I stay in the broken cycles of my family or do I elevate everything?

SPEAKER_01

Everybody, uh if you don't have a, you know, a father who's a gangster or um, you know, sisters who are reaping the kind of fallout of this weird family curse, either way, you can relate to I think the idea of the tug between maybe some people that you know you want to be, you want to help in your life and then the callings of your life, right? So there's always these two, these two poles for everybody. I think even if they don't understand uh this exact world, I think they'll relate to some of those themes.

SPEAKER_03

How do I be a dad and make money? And how do I write a book? Yeah, exactly. That's that is modern life. Yeah. I was for a long time trying to find a way to gamify anything literary. I have such an absence of knowledge on literature. I I think I might have dyslexia or something. I can't do you do audiobooks? Oh, yeah, I'll do audiobooks. People do audios, yeah. What's so weird for me? It's like I will do nonfiction almost like ruthlessly can go through nonfiction. I can even read long uh nonfiction. I, for some reason, I think I have a disorder. Yeah. But maybe I literally do. Like I'm I sometimes write words in the wrong order. You know, when you write, I don't know if you do this. Maybe this is my problem. I'll write and then I'll do like the third word and then go back and write the second word.

SPEAKER_01

You certainly don't know how to structure a blind ranking game for the save your life, but put numbers in reverse order, don't tell them the categories. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

So this game is gonna lead us into something that has a little bit more of a literary flair later. But it's gonna be uh, can you finish the movie quote? Oh my goodness. All right. So there's gonna be double points you can earn. So if you get the end of the quote or whatever the missing word is, you get a point for that. But then also, if you give me the movie, I'm gonna give you a bonus point. Bonus point for the movie. Yeah. All right. A perfect score is a 14 because there's seven. So there's seven missing lines with with seven different movies. Uh you'll see the theme of the type of movies we're looking at. I think I'm giving you a good chance they get harder as you go. All right. So the first one, out the shoot. Nobody makes me bleed my own blank. Nobody makes me bleed my own blood. That is correct. Do you know the movie?

unknown

Oh man.

SPEAKER_03

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood. Should I give you the actor that says it? Yeah, give me the actor. Ben Stiller. Doolander. No, it's dodgeball. Oh, damn it. And he gets hit with the ball in the final sequence. I know. It's old. Alright, I got one point. Alright, one point, not bad. Uh I'm in a glass case of blank.

SPEAKER_01

Emotion. Yes. He's on the phone and his dog died. Anchorman. Yes!

SPEAKER_03

That's it. Um two points. Are you keeping track of points for us? Thank you. Alright. The painting was a gift, Blank. I'm taking it with me.

SPEAKER_01

The painting was a gift, Todd. Also, uh, not Will Front of Vince Vaughn Wedding Crash. There we go. Two more points.

SPEAKER_03

Alright. I will see you there, or I will see you.

unknown

Oh, damn it.

SPEAKER_03

I will see you there. I know it. I know it.

SPEAKER_01

I will see you there. Take your time, because we can cut a pause. Oh man, is Michael Sarah? No. No.

SPEAKER_00

Am I allowed to jump in and help him?

SPEAKER_01

Jonah Hill, is it? Well, let me give you the actor that says it. Alright. Paul Rudd. Hold on. No, you're not allowed to jump in. I'm gonna give you one of my points. How many points are you gonna hate you? Paul Rudd. Damn it.

SPEAKER_03

Alright. I'm gonna give you an opportunity for one point. I'm gonna give you the movie to see if you can salvage a point out of this. The movie is one of my all-time favorites. I love you, man.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Doesn't he just go off on the sentence and not really finish it? That's a big theme in that movie. It's I will see you there, or I will see you on another time. On another time.

SPEAKER_01

Alright, I didn't get that one.

SPEAKER_03

So still is it still five points already? Okay. This one's tough. You're my boy, Blank. Blue. Oh, yeah. Okay, two points easy out of the shoot. All right. I didn't know if I needed to give you an intonation to help, but okay, that was no problem at all. Your mom goes to blank. You know, this one. Hayden's dying. Your mom goes to blank. Your mom goes to I don't know. It's your mom goes to college, Napoleon Dynamite. Oh, I never saw it. Oh never saw it, I know. It's weird. Well, it's uh it is sort of a niche like culture. I know. Everyone tell I I every time it comes up, everyone's like, you haven't seen that movie. The final one. Whoever saves one life, saves blank. Schindler's list.

SPEAKER_01

Whoever says one life saves all. You're close. The world entire. Was that Ralph Feinz? I know what's what's his name? Schindler's List, dude. Come on. Schindler's List. Who sees that more than once? I don't know. Well, that's been our list. That's Judson's list. It's Judson's list. You know, Will had a great one the other day. Let me see if you get this one. It's really subtle. I got out.

SPEAKER_03

Is this the and there's a more of a quote to it?

SPEAKER_02

I got out. That's the only line.

SPEAKER_01

And it's and I'll give you the actor too. But uh but uh but I'll say it one more time. So they're they're talking, it's a response to what someone else says. Okay. Someone else says something, and and Jeremy Piven goes, I got out.

SPEAKER_03

Jeremy Piven?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I don't even know who that is. Come on. JM23. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

It's not from Enter.

SPEAKER_02

Remember when Piven was almost attached to that?

SPEAKER_03

I know.

SPEAKER_02

Pivot attached.

SPEAKER_03

Is it from uh Rush Hour?

SPEAKER_01

No. What is it? I'll give you the line before it now. Okay. Didn't we lock you in a dumpster once? Yeah, I got out.

SPEAKER_03

Uh that's from old school. Yeah, old school. Old school. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Jared Big Squad and I got out. We'll just drop that. I was like, what's your favorite line of anything? And he just goes, I got out. I got it right away, dude.

SPEAKER_01

Old school has so many silly little funny, like very subtle moments in it. And and this is what I wonder if we're gonna lose with all these future comedies is like we would my friends and I would watch that movie over and over and over again, and we would pick up on something new every time. And I don't know if people are doing that level of like you have the DVD, you kind of put it in and watch everything over and over. I don't know if that level of scrutiny is happening now. But I remember when Vince Vaughn is doing the speech with the pledges, and he's like telling them all um, you know, about the thing, and some guy raises his hand to ask a question, and Vince Vaughn goes, Yeah, from the guy who probably won't get in. And the guy and the guy starts asking him a question, and the guy goes, I go to school here, and Vince Vaughn's rubbing his son's hair. And the guy goes, I go to school here, and Vince Vaughn goes, Okay.

SPEAKER_02

It's not even a joke. He was just such a dick the way he was listening to it.

SPEAKER_01

And he okay, and that we thought that was the funniest thing, and it was barely even a joke.

SPEAKER_03

It's gold. Yeah, I mean, uh, everything Vaughn does is gold. But yeah, I know. I mean, it's it's so overplayed, like the golden era of comedies. How do we get back to that? What do we do? Uh there's there's gonna have to be some hybrid model that gets the ethos of that back. Yeah, because there's such a craving for it. And if you can tap into whatever that funny thing is, it'll look new, it'll look different. But if you can get that energy back somewhere on any platform, in any medium, yeah, maybe it's right in a book. It's like you gotta find a way to get us back to that because people love it, it's so fun.

SPEAKER_01

People love it, and but here's the thing that I was thinking about like, do we love it, right? But do you think the next generation loves it because, like, even now with great comedians, like, and there could be the most popular comics, they could want, they might want to do something with us because they get to do something scripted and different because they love those movies and they want to do their version of that. I know they really want like that's such a bucket list thing for them. Oh, I want to do my own super bad or my own Boston Paris or whatever. Do you think the guys now who are 22 still they're they're not gonna have the stuff, the memories to fall back on and the stuff that they love?

SPEAKER_03

No, because we lionize the movies and we quote them, and it's part of our cultural. Do you feel that way, Hayden? Backdrop.

SPEAKER_00

No, I definitely have those. Yeah. I mean, like maybe the generation after me, but I think Gen Z still wants to see that stuff.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. But do you have like in your friend group, it's like we always are quoting these movies?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you know, in college, you're smoking and watching Big Lebowski, Hot Rod, Super. All right, it's a family show. Smoke, but yeah, yeah, quoting quoting is like that's I think my generation's safe in that regard, but I think Gin Alpha, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

My kids love movies. They love movies. We just did a movie.

SPEAKER_01

We deprived them of like the crazy adrenaline shit that's like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00

But you guys are you guys are steering them right, though. Think about the parents who just like throw their kid an iPad in like that's the thing.

SPEAKER_03

I think there's a little window generation of people, because I I feel like the millennials have such like attachment and nostalgia with content, just like movies and stuff like that, that you almost like those are the values we're passing on. That's like what we have. Oh, it's true.

SPEAKER_01

Movies are like high art. Yeah. They and it was very recently like not the case. It was like poetry was high art, novels were still somewhat commercial, movies where like popcorn experiences like cheap, like, oh, you're watching a movie, you're wasting your time. Because we like our parents' favorite music, I would say.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. You know, if you're like, oh, I like 70s music.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, good point.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And like, because they were like, this is such good, this is the best stuff of our culture, was this music, and that like such a part of their identity. Yeah. And then I was like, you didn't write it, Dad. He's like, this is so important. Right. Same with us. It's like, you didn't write dodgeball, dad. It's like this is important. Yeah. You need to watch. Pay attention. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Sit up straight. We're watching Dodgeball. But it's weird because even the like when I was growing up, I the box sets of DVDs would come out and I would watch all those. And people thought I was just a serial killer. Like, people were like, why? How could you watch 20 episodes in um you know three days or something? Yeah. They'd be like, what the f like my like my brother's friends remember them playing outside, or my friends would come over and be like, let's go out and like play a game. That would be like, no, I'm watching the show right now. Like, let's watch this. And that was so weird. And then in a few years, it became the binge watch. That term came out, uh-binge watching. And I was doing that. You know, I was doing that. And they were like, now it was socially acceptable to watch multiple episodes. If you watch multiple episodes of a show when I was growing up, you were weird. You were weird. You could have the TV on or whatever, but the idea that you were gonna like do commit hours or something, commit a chunk is fucking insane.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, we do everything binge now, like even like watching sports, like Red Zone, where it's like well seven hours of now no longer commercial free, but it's like there's something in the culture where it's like we just do this like thing, like we'll just go nuts, and everyone's like, There's no attention. And it's like, I don't know what that is. It's like you may, or maybe it's more in the background, right? Where it's like you've got the show on the second screening phenomenon. But if you're watching a good new show that you have to pay attention to, some of them you still have to pay attention.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, now they're apparently they're repeating the plots. Did you see that? I haven't observed this, but I've heard of this.

SPEAKER_00

There's a big thing with Stranger Things that the season that just came out. Yeah, interesting. Like Duffer. I don't know if it was the directors that admitted it, but somebody said that Netflix was pushing them to write. Reset the table every couple pages or whatever, it'd be annoying.

SPEAKER_03

Imagine that those notes.

SPEAKER_04

You're like You're telling me that I have to go into that school and find that bomb because if I don't, then this guy is gonna kill your girl. Oh, let's do it.

SPEAKER_03

Oh man. But like, just just thinking about you know the dynamics that we get into if I write something, you know? Imagine me if you're like, can you re-say that? I will burn this place to the ground.

SPEAKER_02

Have you considered this is a great idea, and I love what you've done with it.

SPEAKER_04

Have you considered not doing this at all? Has that been an idea of yours?

SPEAKER_03

What if you repeated yourself four times in 15 minutes? There's got to be nuance. Um Zach, we've made it to the bonus round. All right. Have you ever seen anything mystical, ghosts, aliens had an encounter in your life? We're getting you on the record. Have I ever seen anything mystical? Some people have seen a ghost, some people have seen an alien, some people had a brother who was abducted by an alien. Have the your guests generally said yes to this question? I don't know, Hayden. What has it been? It's been like 50-50.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I probably split evenly.

SPEAKER_01

Um I have not seen a ghost, and I have not seen anything that I would say I couldn't I couldn't reason your way around. Yeah. Um I don't know. I've had this is crazy. I've had um you should get these questions in advance. People might not agree. Come on. I've had spiritual experiences, but I but um I don't think they go to the level of um, you know, door closed, and you don't know why. Okay. They have it manifested in the physical.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, well well, uh a spiritual sense, an essence, a feeling. Sure. Um I I don't know why that seems more mainstream than I saw Bigfoot once.

SPEAKER_01

But it does. Well, you could have something that happens that is very unlikely that you feel um had some sort of um anchor in some other world like um you know presence. But it doesn't mean that that it's the same as literally looking at a you know goblin or monster or whatever.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, yeah. All right, well that's fun. Mysticism. Uh we've done so much movie, but I ask everyone, movie that changed your life.

SPEAKER_01

Change my life is big term, but um I don't think I think for the first time I saw Casablanca, I felt like I had never seen anything like that. And I and I felt like um, you know, as a as a creative, I feel like it opened up so many possibilities to me that you can have this this that movie is not often discussed as like a genre bender, but it really was one of the original genre bending films. How so you've seen it? Um yeah, but it was late at night, and I don't know. It's about war, it's about romance, it's it's a kind of an action movie. It is an action movie, and it and it's it's a drama, and it's all a bottle episode in this cool cafe, and it's just crazy. And it's got it's got all the kind of nostalgia and heartbreak and and beauty of that time period, but it's also got this like what's gonna happen next epic feeling, and then you got Bogartch as the coolest guy in the world ever walked the face of the earth in this cafe, just having a cigarette and a drink, and it's the um this thing that you can it was the first time I realized how many things you can do with one simple story. I I probably up until then thought, you know, you could have this comedy or a drama or you could have a gun on the table or you whatever, but you could do all of this. It really blew my mind. And then just to have it be such a um just such a beautiful movie with beautiful music and one-liners that were like poetry, it was just crazy.

SPEAKER_03

That's a great one. And and I feel like it changed uh everyone's lives who appreciate cinema because it's such an influence on everything after it. Yeah, and so people who make stuff are influenced by that a lot. Yes, and you can follow the trail back to that. Totally.

SPEAKER_01

You can follow the trail back to a lot of Bogart movies, yeah. Um, and you could follow the the main character energy of all these guys that we have today. Yeah, they're all spiritual descendants of Bogart in some way. Um and um also based on not a not a novel, but a stage play, Casablanca was. And it was made by the studio at a time when they were like, let's just throw something out in the summer, gives them something to kind of get something to choose. Oh, it wasn't a they didn't know they were doing it, smash it from the beginning. No, it was a smash up, but they didn't know what they were making. Yeah, in their minds, they weren't understanding they were doing this epic. They just put the pieces together in a very interesting way, and yeah, Bogar was is crazy. I mean, yeah, it's it was such a great time period for movies. I love that.

SPEAKER_03

Great poll. Um, all right, and this is the final question. If you could give one quality, and we've got a real life dad here, so a young person to you is probably gonna be one of your kids. If you could give your kids one quality, it doesn't have to be one that you possess, but you're just gifting this into them as you get to go through your life with this one quality, you're welcome. You you get it. What would that one quality be?

SPEAKER_01

Because of the time period that we're living in. I mean, there's there's generic answers that I would probably give to this, like you know, like humility or grace or like you know, empathy and all that stuff, but I I would say because of the time period we're living in and being a dad, you want to get you know, kind of shore your kids up for the future, I'm sure you would agree. Um I think the ability to have depth and go deep into a situation and sort of uh like uh stay on something, kind of percolate on something and and um really understand it uh in a way that very few people do. I like that. That's a patience and a focus and an and like a real uh uh laser-like obsessive interest in something, and then you can come out with a new way to talk about it, a new way to see it. That's okay. I think that's gonna be a disappearing uh uh ability. I think that'll be almost vanishing. You know, it will we're all gonna be able to skim very quickly and you know give you quick synopses on things, and now we'll have tools that we'll probably push a button in your glasses and have stuff appear. But to see something anew, and it kind of is a a full circle to our conversation of like what is the what is the quality that makes something really work, it's that little a little bit of depth. It's got a little bit under there that you're like, oh, I didn't realize they had that they they had grounded it quite that way. And that's the quality that we used to get from literature. We used to get you read a Dickens novel, and somewhere in the middle of one of the paragraphs, you could extract something that was so resonating because it was about your life, even though this stranger wrote it, it was somehow about you. And now we've sort of extracted that, put it on you know, these 15-second reels or whatever. So you don't need to read a book to have that feeling. You could get that feeling in a much more commoditized way. But I would give them the ability to generate that feeling, I think is is uh a real superpower.

SPEAKER_03

That's a great quality. That's a really good one. And Hayden, uh back me up on this. Don't you feel like the quality people give will often create a through line for the episode? Yeah, it is spiritual. It's like a theme emerges. A theme emerges, and then you put a button on it where there's you learn something about the guest through the episode, and then invariably, whatever, and I never know what they're gonna pick. And then I'm like, of course that's what you picked.

SPEAKER_00

You know what I mean? That's what we've been talking about the whole time.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's what we've been talking about in some way. I'll do it even more full circle.

SPEAKER_01

I just had a spiritual experience sitting here watching that. No, I'm just kidding. Dude, that's great. We did it. It's been almost funny. It's been almost. Yep. You brought the funny, I brought the almost.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I mean, what's nice about the title is there's zero pressure. Pressure. The whole time people are like, was it funny? I mean, they could have got there at any moment, but they didn't.

SPEAKER_01

Which is exactly on brand. Can we do you can cut this if you want, but can we do 60 seconds of you? Can I get hit you with some stuff? Hit me with some stuff. All right.

SPEAKER_03

Well, and then uh I want to one more time plug the book. Yeah, just as a haven hasn't been go I thought it would be mentioned more. Or depending on when this comes out, order Ballad of the Gangster's Daughter on Amazon is the best place to find it. I thought it would be mentioned more throughout the show.

SPEAKER_01

Um, so um um where do you you have all these little nest eggs set up and you have your kind of business card as you called it, which is your these viral videos that you make that really take off, really reach a lot of people. When I told my wife and her friend, I was like, Oh, I'm working with this guy. They're like, that guy, we see his stuff all the time. That's great. He's hilarious. I'm thinking in the millennial mom community. You need to have three kids. Two kids with one kid right now. Um so what do you feel like you're dry you're driving to with all this stuff? Like you got this stuff, you got you know, sort of the business stuff, you're doing the sketches and everything. What do you feel like you want to do? Do you want this to be culminate in some like great movie one day that you kind of star act writing, or do you feel like you're more digital finding new digital experiments to to kind of sink your teeth into it?

SPEAKER_03

The answer, it's so sad of what the answer is, which is it's all just building a bridge to be able to do the live show. You want to do you want to be in front of an audience to sell doing your stuff. That's that's what is so it's so dark. But why is it dark? Well, because the amount of distance that I am traveling in this direction to go here, the local is to go national to get local. Yes. Um, where it's like a hundred million views to sell four tickets. So uh but but I'm seeing like little shoots up through the concrete. I think it's gonna happen in the right time that it's supposed to happen, right? Because if I've been doing stand-up just under four years, which is not like super long, I think by the time I have short, right? I mean very short. Like people aren't headlining usually at that point. But by the time my online footprint is big enough and has the ability to generate genuine ticket sales, I think my act and my ability will hopefully match and there'll be a sense of I can organically sell tickets, I can organically gain views. But there is another piece of this where it's like I would love to be able to contribute to the world of content, something that is um unique of my experience, whether it's a show or a series or something like that. I do have a lot of creative energy to go that way. Um, but I would want all of it, at least at this point for the next stretch of time, while this is still a thing that people go sit down and watch something live in a room, that is what feels the best for me.

SPEAKER_01

Just because the instant feedback, like comics say that's the best, the best, right? Is just the idea that you're it's all happening right there, there's no buffer, there's no third party.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, I say this, and my my wife gets mad when I say this, but I'm like, I wish I didn't love stand up as much as I do because it's just like the biggest no. Like if just in the world, it's like no. Like, are you funny yet? No. Does anyone want you to be on the show? No. Can you sell tickets? No. Like it's just you have to break through so much. No trial reels. No trial reels are stand up, yeah. And there's just um, there's a lot of funny people out there that are trying to do this, and it takes a million years. And um, the nice thing is it is, I think, a meritocracy, but in that it just means okay, well, start, you know, building your sculpture, chip away at it. Totally, and it'll be, you know, 10, 15, 20, 30 years. You know, Louie's been doing it 40 years. It's crazy. So that is a long walk. Do you feel like you have an hour yet? Uh no, not without doing crowd work. I mean, I can be on stage for an hour and hopefully have a chance of making it entertaining. I've got like 40 minutes of material. And then, you know, I've done stuff where I do 45 and there's some crowd work in there. Or I like doing 30.

SPEAKER_01

Do most comics have your answer where they where they ultimately all the other shit they just want to push to the stage? Yeah. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Stand-ups want to do stand-up. Yeah. The only reason you go to open mics and do all these shows and do all this stuff is because you love stand-up. It's like I don't think I fully appreciated that that was the case.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I guess I did, but I'm so in this storytelling, media writing thing that I'm just so I I when I when I interact with comedians, it's because of another project, right? And so it's like, or the idea of making whatever the office. So it's like hard to hard to hard to realize that that really the glory is the mic and the crowd and the yeah, yeah. It's that's everything.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, um, that's there's no better feeling than writing a joke that you tell in front of a room where everyone's expecting you to be funny, and the and it's so hard, and it still works. Yeah. Even with everyone going, This guy thinks he's funny enough to go do jokes right now. You know, it's not like we're just hanging out being funny and you happen to say something funny. Like, yeah, that's fun to be with your friends and you say something funny, but it's like everyone's sitting there going, Okay, now the funny thing is happening. Yeah. And then you got to be funny in that. Yeah. And then it works. It's got fun. Are you kidding me? Yeah. It's I mean, it's the greatest, it's the greatest feeling.

SPEAKER_01

That's awesome. You chase that. Well, you tend to hit all your uh, you know, goals and checkpoints and uh uh mile markers, so I'm sure you'll hit this one too. Well, there we go, buddy.

SPEAKER_03

I appreciate it. Yep, it's been a really fun conf. I'm glad we did this. Thanks for having me, buddy.

SPEAKER_01

This is great.

SPEAKER_03

He said he was gonna mention. I don't know. Ballad of the gangsters again. You don't have to, please. You don't have to uh buy the book, buy the book so he'll uh get off my case. All right, thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Yep, appreciate it. Thanks, Dave.