77. The Camera Opens Doors

We start with a chance encounter. A stop to photograph an old Dodge pickup and a chain-net basketball hoop turns into an afternoon inside a stranger's garage, looking at restored Mavericks and pulling vintage car t-shirts out of a rag drawer. From there we get into what a camera actually does when you carry one everywhere: it gives you a reason to stop, talk to people, and end up somewhere you never planned to be. We talk about portraiture, about the woman who cried handing over a Nirvana shirt she'd kept for twenty years, and why one photograph from a whole day spent with someone beats a hundred quick frames.

The second half turns on a prompt about quitting, and we land in different places on it. One of us reads walking away as evolution; the other keeps circling a line from Mad Men about only liking the beginning of things. That pulls us into screenwriting: the years of writing five pages a day in an LA apartment, imposter syndrome in studio meetings, a script that went out wide and didn't sell, and the decision to leave. We get into the difference between working and waiting, killing the small "bad problems" so there's room for the good ones, and whether you make art out of ego or out of a plainer need to communicate. -Ai

Transcript

Golden Afternoon And Loose Banter

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It had been a golden afternoon, and I remember having a familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with somebody else.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Start off the story if if you want, if you unless you have something to come in hop with there. I got nothing. I have a bag. Uh not as much as you have. I'll get a headache. I have a bag, like a shoulder bag that I have on my Depop store that's a raccoon in a similar situation as your hat. Just falling off of a uh just kind of on the limb there. I think it's more balanced. It's not in uh in like the hang-in-there kind of thing. Cat that cat poster, famous cat poster. It's kind of a hang in there kind of. Yeah. How's the depop been?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Been de popping?

SPEAKER_03 0:56

I haven't uh posted on there. I posted a few things this week, but I kind of not de popping as much as well. I had just kind of stockpiled the ton of clothes, and I've been putting so much in the shop and it's been selling that I just wasn't as crazy on Depop. I did put a pair of Levi's jorts up and those sold Lickety Split, which makes me go, I probably didn't didn't charge enough for them. So somebody sniped them. Just gonna snag a lot of jorts from now on. They are hot, brother. They're coming back. Are the jorts? Coming back, they are back amongst the youth. I I have I don't know that I've ever worn a pair of jeans in my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

All I wore for years were jorts and really oversized sneakers. Cutoffs or no, you know, hemmed or whatever. You know what I'm talking about? The hammer pocket? Oh, they went below the knees. Oh buddy. They had the little carpenter pocket or whatever. Yeah. Jorts, big time. Had to wear a belt because obviously you just buy sizes that are like too large and cinch the fuck out of them. Yeah, no, up until like freshman year of high school, I was just rolling my ass in chubby little kid in jorts, and yeah, and like the Adidas slide-ons are the classic. Oh no, low effort. What do you mean, low effort? Faces?

SPEAKER_03 2:31

I'm just gonna slide this. Just need a slide with my socks on. Oh my goodness. On the buzz cut. Yeah. Yeah, low effort is the good. Bless you. Try to stave it off. Um speaking of joints.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

I don't know if I'll ever wear a pair of joints in my life again. I mean, maybe if they were just I want to see that.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Just right in my face.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

God, no. I was gonna go shoulder that move. Because I got nothing. I got nowhere to put it.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Oh, let's see. I got it. Well while you look at this cat I met today. Insane cat, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Oh, you had a good run in today. Really fun cat. Well, let me tell you who I met today. And you can, you know, pontificate a greater story to this episode, but this is uh You ran into Martin Scorsese and

A Photo Stop Becomes Butch Maverick

SPEAKER_03 3:30

the old market. Yes, we hung out today. Well, this is uh, you know, something that uh something that leads to like a real feeling of exhilaration, arguably euphoria for me, but I always have my camera with me, and when I see shit that I like, I stop my truck and I take pictures of it. Today I'm driving down I think 60th Street, heading north. Off to my right, I see this old Dodge Ram pickup in a driveway, and there's like a beat to shit basketball hoop with like a chain net. And I'm like, if there's no greater cliche photo to take right now, it's this one, and I'm like, I gotta do it. So I pull over, park the truck, get the camera out, shoot it from uh north to south, and then go to the other side, and it's horrible light, it's like you know, w two o'clock in the afternoon, but I'm like, I don't care. So then I go to the other side, but my frames I have the 35 millimeter on the Leica, frame's too wide, but I have to go into someone's property to take the photo, so I don't see anybody, so I'm like, I'll just run go up there quick, take the photo, and then get out of there. And as I step on the grass, this you know, an ol older older man is like putting something in his garbage can. He was outside doing something, and I was like, Hey, is this your truck? And he's like, Yeah, do you want to buy it? And I'm like, actually, I just want to take a photo of it. I want to buy it. It's it needs work. But he's like, I'm I'm like, is it okay if I you know go in your lawn here and take the photo? He's like, Yeah, go ahead. So he comes over, I'm taking the photo, and I turn and he has this like really cool hot rod tank top on and jean shorts. So I'm like, that's a you know, and I'm a t-shirt hunter, so I'm like, that's a cool t-shirt. Like, you got you know, more of those? Yeah, he's like, Let me show you. Oh no. So I I literally have had 30 seconds of interaction with this person, and he takes me into his house. We walk through his garage, and he's got a bunch of cool stuff under car covers, and I'm like, oh man. And then before we go in, he's like, I'm like, what what do you got on the car cover? And he's like, that's a like a 69 Camaro RS with a crate engine in it. He pulls the cover off, it's this beautiful green with white racing stripes, pops the hood, shows me the engine, takes me over to like a cabinet, and he's got all these different pictures of his car builds and all that. Starts telling me about these mavericks that he's has redone, souped up, and I'm like, What's your name? And he goes, The well, they call me Butch Maverick. I'm like, like, this can't get any better. And this guy's like in his 80s, you know, kind of slow going, but super sharp with it. So he takes me into uh bedroom and he pulls open a drawer and he starts pulling out all these vintage like hot rod car shirts. Yeah, and I'm like, you know, and I set it up as you know, I'll I'll buy any shirts that you you know you want to sell. So he starts pulling them out, and now he's like going down memory. He's like, Oh, I remember getting this shirt from whatever. He's like, I've never even worn these, and I'm like, Well, would you sell them? Because I got cash, I'll buy them. He's like, Well, I can't sell this one. And of course, it's like the sickest, coolest fucking shirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, And he pulls out another one, sick ass shirt, won't sell it. Third one, he has two of. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, Well, do you want both of them? He's like, No, I'll sell one of them. And I'm like, what do you want for it? He's like, Well, well, you know, when these things were sold back then, it was like $20. He's like, So I want $20. It is like a 1993 car montage shirt.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

You're like, I will definitely make $20 back on this shirt. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

I'm like, all right, I'll do $20. And then he pulls out this shirt, and he's like, I got two of these too. And it's a modern shirt, it's probably 2010s. Anything on the back? Yeah, it's got a bunch of cars. Oh, yeah, that's cool. But it's not worn in, it's still like pretty much brand new. Yeah. Um, so uh so I threw that on there and all that. And so he has a few shirts out, and I think you know, paid like $20, $30 or whatever for them because a couple of the other ones were weren't that that great.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I love the just well, uh, when I bought it, it was twenty dollars. So I wanted twenty dollars. I got I gotta have twenty for it.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

So, you know, we chop it up out in the garage for a little while. He shows me more of his pictures, and I'm like, you gotta have like a rag box out here. Yeah, and by the way, for anybody you ever want to go to an estate sale, a garage sale, on a on a what what what uh me and my friends we call a pick, um hit up the dude's rag box because I have found kick ass shit in the rag box. And for this guy, it wasn't like staining furniture, it was just waxing, getting the wax off a car, and he wants to use as soft a shirt as possible. So he pulls out his rag box, a rag drawer, and it's just like gold in there. Yeah, there's like 1970s single-stitch white t-shirts, uh, and then he's got um a couple like one hot rod shirt from the early 80s. It is like paper thin, single stitch, it is just like the coolest shit. And uh unused? No, I mean like he's used them to wipe off the cars, so you know you can oxy clean them and kind of bleach them in the sun a little bit, and then it'll come clean. Um, then he had this other like underground artist, like kind of like a mad magazine adjacent, but much less known. But all the guys when I showed him at at Lost today, the vintage shop, they were like, dude, this shirt is this shirt is sick. Like they were like, This is the coolest one. And I'm like, I don't even know what this is, I'll have to look it up. But they're like, Well, do it and let me know what you want for it.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

The point being, the big point being chopping it up with Butch, and I, you know, it was kind of in a hurry personally. What did they call him Butch? Butch Maverick. Thank you. Because he has all the souped up mavericks, yeah. And you know, like there was a part of me that was in a hurry getting into the photo because I didn't want to, you know, I had to get a book. I had to load him. I had here we go. So I had to load in all the shit with Josh at the shop and then come here and do the podcast and all that. But I'm like, I gotta hang with Butch. I mean, like, how often do you like does this there's a guy you spoke to for 30 seconds take you in his house, bust out all these killer shirts, show you all this cool shit in his garage. He has like a early 1950s Ford pickup that he completely restored himself, other than painting it.

SPEAKER_04 10:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

And so then he takes me out to the back garage. And he's got he's got lifts in there, he's got two mavericks, he's got a Dodge Dakota pickup.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Were you like out outskirts or no?

SPEAKER_03 10:43

This is like in the middle of town. Gotcha, yeah. And he has like kind of a bigger lot and he added on to his house. He had a CRT inside too. Oh, yeah. But he wouldn't sell it because he like watches TV with the grandkids on it. Yeah, he's like a little CRT. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you could tell in his house he has lots of good stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so I'm like, Butch, I you know, I you you gotta let me take a portrait of you at some point. Like, this is the coolest run-in with you. Uh, I've got my camera here. Like, you don't have to like smile or anything. I just you know, you just got a great look about you. He's like, oh no, no, and he's like, he like was adamant about not doing a portrait. So I was bummed. And most of the spaces that we were in with the Leica, you know, I could jack up the ISO and all that, but I was just worried about too much blur to give him kind of more dock style.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

I could see it too, where he's just like, uh, like, you know, gotta protect a little bit of privacy here.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Yeah, yeah, 100%. This guy's coming in hot wanting to buy stuff, and he wasn't uncomfortable at all. You know, he's he's like, you know, we were talking like we knew each other our whole lives. Uh, and I also said to myself, you know, you're not gonna press on this, but this might not be the last time you see Butch Maverick. Okay. So I spotted like a racing steering wheel hanging from a bike handle that he had hanging from the rafters.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

He's he he he's just dragging you along. He's like, watch this. Yeah, he's like, watch that. You can't give up, you can't give it all up on the first day. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

You gotta leave him want more.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Gotta leave him one more. You're leaving there just like I gotta hang out with Butch again.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

So I'm like, what do you gotta have for that steering wheel, Butch? And he's like, Oh, I gotta get at least 25 for it. I'm like, I'm like, I got 20 bucks left or 40 bucks left, and uh you don't have you might not have change, so would you just take 20 for it? He's like, No, I gotta have 25, I got change in the house. He goes into the house and gets 15 bucks. I'm like, all right, I'll take it. All right, Butch. I'm like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with this racing steering wheel, I'm gonna put it in the shop, it looks cool as shit. Like, whatever. Like mount it to your wall or something in the studio. Yeah, yeah. I'll probably leave it in Josh's shop because I have a few car-related things in there. Yeah. But I just sat there the whole time going, This is why I love having the camera. Yeah, yeah. The doors that it has opened, including you know, the Ted Snow thing from early on in our street photography days, even when it's just a brief encounter with someone where they're not trying to kill you, um is really very memorable. Yeah, very memorable, is really rewarding. I just, you know, I didn't beat myself up about not getting the portrait, but I did, and I was this is not in a disrespectful way. There were a couple moments where he was walking into the garage, and I just used my phone to take a picture of him walking in, and then as I was leaving, I didn't have the Leica turned on because after the no on the portrait, I just kind of closed it up and put it away. Yeah, but I'm like, I gotta get a picture. So I just kind of over my shoulder as he was walking back toward the house, the driveway's big, you know, in the the the back garage, and I just snapped a picture of him walking back toward the house. Yeah, yeah. And I was like on your phone, though. On my phone, yeah. Yeah. And I was like, you know what, that'll be that'll be okay. So I have the couple photos of the truck and the basketball hoop, and I'll probably put a little story together um with a that distant shot of him walking by. Um, but I just sit there and go, this never would have happened without having the camera around, and I see an image that you know strikes me. I stop because a lot of times I'll go, ah fuck it, like you got shit to do, just don't don't get the shot. And I've been ever since I got the Leica, I'm like, no, you have to stop. Yeah, you have this camera for a reason, you're doing this for a reason, you don't need to talk yourself out of it, just park the truck, take the time, get the photo.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Well, we've talked about this before, but like definitely like pre-internet, I feel like this is a very you know, you just start a conversation with a stranger, and then it leads to yada yada yada, you're in the guy's house, you're looking at his cars. Yeah. Like, not maybe not the most common thing in the world, but I definitely feel like it was like, oh yeah, I met this guy and we talked for an hour was a lot less rare pre-internet than it is now. Absolutely. And yeah, it's just like paying attention to what's around you and you know, being open to people and being open to experiences. Yep. It's night and day.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

Well, and I asked him, I was like, I'm like, can I get your ad you know, you I didn't want to get his number, but I'm like, can I get your address, Butch? And you know, if you think of anything else that, you know, clothing or anything that you'd want to part with, you know, he's like, Yeah, take my address, and I'm retired. You come by anytime you want.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Yeah, yeah. It's just super warm. You gotta follow up with him, yeah, yeah. See what else comes. See that portrait. I bet if you went back two or three times. I know, I'd be able to get a portrait. And I'd I'd and man, you would value that portrait. Oh, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Yeah. And I've been taking portraits of, you know, I've mentioned this before, a few portraits of people that I've struck up a conversation with, bought something from them, or somebody on Facebook Marketplace that I bought something from. Um, and I, you know, I want to do that as much as possible. And as soon as I met Butch, I was like, okay, you gotta think about how you're gonna get the portrait, you know. Um, and obviously I'm not so fixated on it that I'm gonna be rude or impolite or makes things make something uncomfortable. Yeah. Uh the situation uncomfortable. But there's a way to do it, yeah, tactfully, though. Yeah. The last one I did, and this is not a big story to this, but there's a woman at a little antique shop uh that has multiple vendors, and I bought a smashing pumpkins and a Nirvana vintage, you know, 90s Nirvana t-shirt uh from her, and she was really emotional about selling the Nirvana t-shirt because she bought it uh, you know, as a teenager. Uh, she thinks at Homer's downtown in the old market in Omaha, and she's letting it go. She's like, it's been sitting in a closet for 15, 20 years. I never wear it, you know, I'm not gonna wear it. Right. And so I'm like, you know, we came, we agreed on a price, and when she handed it to me, she started crying.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just that emotional, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

And I said, Would you be alright to putting it on and I could take some portraits of you with the photo with the shirt on?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Okay, so this is the one that you Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha. And she's like, Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

I didn't realize that was uh and it was just it was just it was such a you know, you know, you obviously I love having the photo, but every time I look at that photo and you know, someone I could show our favorite person. Yeah, yeah. I see I I see what you did here. Yeah. You know, you could show someone like that and be like, you you're sh you know, you make stupid criticisms of the photo, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, yeah. It's obviously well have you seen the photo of this lady, but in New York? Right. When the streets are right.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

You know, there's could be some, you know, and obviously I'm not like an experienced portrait photographer, but what what if what if it was this portrait, but it was I'm just kidding. Yeah, I know. Right. So I'll I'll I just love that I'll have that photo and it will immediately take me back to like the palpable energy you could feel coming from this person of all the meaning behind.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

It just locks in the moment and in your mind completely like which is you know half the point of taking photos in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

And a lot of this is inspired by um a lot of the videos and conversations I've listened to of Alex Soth talking about the portraits as he's gotten with like um Mississippi Project and all the different stuff that he's done, the portrait that we saw at the at the Jost.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

He'll tell the stories of how he gets into these people's houses or like how he kind of it's like the Louis Maul documentary that we talked about a couple episodes ago, where it's just like you get these people at ease and they really open up who they are. Yes, it just shines through. Yeah, there's some people who I mean, like the portrait is akin to like the medium close-up in my mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's certain people like Bergman, like how the fuck does Bergman do that? You watch a Bergman medium close-up and you're just like, This is the best looking medium close-up I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, every one of them. Or yeah, you see like the Louis Mall, just like I know this person. Yep. I've spent 10 years with this person, I feel like, and like you've known them for 12 seconds of screen time. Yeah. And you're just like, Is this my grandma? Like, is this? Yeah, yeah. And that and that's there's an art, a fine art to it.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

And and I I, you know, as much as I love just shooting street or weird buildings or things on the street or whatever where there aren't people around, there is something I really have grown to love about portraiture, port portraiture, and and and and and maybe at some point too, just like having the camera out and ready while I'm being shown around to be able to take photos during that process of meeting someone, uh, you know, and and not just like whipping it out right away uh and starting to rip off photos, but there's something though about like if you spend a day with somebody and you get one photo, yeah, it's so much more special.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Yep. Like I I I go through my portraits a lot and I'm just like, man, yeah, I remember this. I remember this about this day and this about it, and I remember this about the person, and yeah, it's just a it's a really humanizing experience of yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

So I hope to go there again and um meet with Butch and not only possibly you know have an opportunity to buy some more stuff from him, but just to visit with him and learn more about a cool

Portraits That Hold A Whole Story

SPEAKER_03 21:10

life. I mean, the guy did all these different car meetups and competitions and uh shows and um did you ever follow up with that guy you met this was several probably months ago, um the guy who was like estranged from his kids?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Yeah, Daniel.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

Yeah, yeah. I haven't f I've only followed up with him in getting the address for the thrift store that um uh he asked me to make a donation to for the items that he gave me. But I haven't met up with him again. Yeah. Um but he had like the Native American He has some Native American art. He had a kind of a like a like a almost like an exhibit of his uh time in combat in the Vietnam War. He was a fighter pilot. And, you know, different collections and different things that were important to him. It had a very like sort of personal muse personally crafted sort of museum vibe to it. In his it this sounds i it's a finished space, but in his basement, the sublevel of his house, which is again, it's all finished and everything. Yeah. Um but but yeah. This is the Midwest. Everybody's got a basement. I know, yeah. I just want to make sure people don't think because he like this guy took you into his basement. You just I mean like the darkest, murder, murderiest stuff. The zodiac basement. Exactly. The zodiac basement. So uh so uh something I have to train myself to do is as I as I connect with these individuals is to figure out how to take even more photos um with the people that I encounter. There was a really nice woman, um, her name was Luz, and she's from the Philippines, and I bought a camera from her at her garage sale today. And you know, she just was an interesting character and kind of had a uh uh a cool energy about her. And part of me is, you know, and she was a she told me she was a photographer. She's like, Why do you want this camera? And I'm like, Well, I just like, you know, I like to play with them, I sell some of them. Yeah, I like to take photos of my kids, I like to do weird street photography stuff with them, all you know, all kinds of stuff. And she's like, Oh, well, I was a photographer back in the Philippines and I photographed weddings and all this stuff, and she has all these cameras. And I'm like, Well, I'd love to see them. Can I get your number and I'll text you? And she gave me her phone number, and so she's gonna try to get them all together so that I can see what all of her cameras were when she was shooting photos in the Philippines, and gems in there, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Not only that, but well, what's your story?

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Yeah, you know, meet her again and be like, Well, that could be. I mean, I uh it if she brings all of her cameras or you meet up and you go there and she's got them all on a table, like that'd be a great photo of her behind the cameras or yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

Um speaking of cameras, not a big thing, but I slept on checking the estate sale listings and I started I went to an estate sale in Council Bluffs today, no cameras.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Did you get to wait till this morning to get there to like check the so I You said I'm not gonna do this?

SPEAKER_03 24:17

After I went to the first estate sale this morning, I'm like, oh maybe I'll go to another one. Let's see what's close. Yeah. So I start looking through the next closest one, and I'm like, flip, flip. Like, there's a cabinet full of random camera accessories, and there's like six tripods. I'm like, uh-oh. Yeah. Flip to the next one, F5, yeah, in a box, and I'm like, oh crap. Yeah, someone already got it because it was an hour and a half after the estate sale started. So I went down there. It's good though. You're you're like, yeah, just keep yourself distanced, yeah. So I went down there, and not that I need an F5, it would have been more probably something to just try and then sell, especially if there was meat on the bone. But that's a legendary SLR, the F5. Um, and uh sure enough, it was gone. But there were tons of lenses and all this stuff, but they were priced right at retail, so there's no meat on the bone for them. So I ended up scraping through like where they hadn't gone through all the disparate accessories, a battery charger, a lens cap, a little weird Nikon accessory. I started going through all those little bits and pieces because sometimes like a little Nikon viewfinder is worth like $130 and you get it for two bucks. So I put all that stuff together and came away with a couple cameras and a bunch of accessories and stuff. But this guy was um in the Air Force and he was uh um a trained photographer through the military. Oh, gotcha. And then in his you know, post-military life, or maybe even while he was in the military, he did a lot of um national parks and wild landscape and wildlife.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah, and so he had all kinds of how many people like how many great photographers can like learned their craft in military, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

He had like photography books from the military where it teaches you, you know, all the concepts of photography. Sunny 16, you just got out there and so that was really cool. Um, but yeah, I definitely missed out on probably some decent cameras uh by not going to that estate sale first. The first person saved yourself some money. The first person who was in line bought the F5, and I don't know that it came with a lens. I assume it didn't, but he it they charged, they he paid $400 for it.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

You think he flipped it or you think he kept it?

SPEAKER_03 26:38

I don't know. I I don't honestly know how much the F5 goes for. I want to say it's probably in the ballpark of $400 retail, but I could be wrong. Could be there's one uh grainy days, Jason did a video recently on uh F3A or something, uh one of the Nikon cameras, and those are like 900 bucks on eBay. So the F5 could be way up there, yeah. Um, you know, a thousand-ish maybe at the at the at the high end. But um I love my Canon F1, so I don't need uh I don't need any Nikon F cameras other than just to tinker with them for a couple months and then move them on. Get rid of it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

I mean, yeah, if there was considerable profit, then it could be worth it.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

Yeah, and that's you know, always the main motivation for checking out cameras is either finding something that's cool or new or funky or weird or whatever, um, or uh something that you can flip for a profit. Yeah. Because cameras are doing well.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Your cameras are flying off the shelf. Your CRT seem to have picked up a little too crazy, dude.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

I sold another one the other day.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

They're just super hot.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

And well, so I was remember I've had conversations with you where I'm like, oh man, like leaving this thing on worries me. So then I looked up the uh the lifespan of cathode ray. Oh yeah, dude. It's like it's like it's like the like a million hours. Yeah. They I'm like, this thing, I could probably leave this thing on for the rest of my life and it would outlive me.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

100%. I mean, I have a dude, I have a Sony CRT TV from like the early 60s. Yeah. Still works, no problem.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah. So so I ease my ease my mind a little bit about the it's a lot.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

They're there, they will certainly last a lot longer than the backlights on an LED, yeah, on an LED display.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

It's my pride and joy right there. So

Estate Sales Cameras And CRT Obsessions

SPEAKER_01 28:30

it is a beauty. Um, all right. So I'm just gonna read through some of these and let's let me know which one hooks you. So we kind of already did the craft becomes liability. Um, do artists owe audiences accessibility? Um what are you doing when you quit something? So the decision to quit something or to walk away, and I've got a great little card back there that kind of um the audience you imagine while you am while you're making something. That one's interesting. Uh difference between working and waiting. So I've been thinking about this one a lot lately. Um there's a great um he's the uh there's a great David Mammoth quote where he talks about writing, and he's like, writing is just giving yourself space, and you have to give yourself space. He's like, when I get the best writing done, I'm typically in a room and there's a typewriter and a place to sleep. And he's like, I can either write or I can think about writing or I can sleep. And basically just that you have to allow yourself space. And I've been thinking about that a lot lately, especially in the world we live in. Yeah, with all of the like the ideas that you have to get away from distraction, but you know, there's that thing, there's this thing, there's that thing, there's you know, ev everything's a potential distraction. Yes, it's very easy to get distracted. Even that. Hey Matt, what's up? Yeah, everything's a distraction. So that one's interesting. Um what would you make if nobody would ever see it? That one's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then pictures of trucks and basketball hoops. That's what I would do. Like a little kid off to the side. Something like that.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

So I mean, yeah, with those, like to me, any of those kind of catch your the quitting one does.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Yeah. And uh you seem keyed up on the one that you elaborated on, so I'm I I I can even see some connective tissue between the between the two. You want to do just start with those two and see

Quitting And The Love Of Beginnings

SPEAKER_03 30:40

where we go? So I'm gonna do the quitting thing, and it just like it was just just to communicate a quote that pops into my head when I hear that. Remind me of the quote up here, too.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

Mine is probably not as cool and worldly as yours, but it's uh from Mad Men.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Mine's from uh Werner Herzog, so Matthew Weiner, Werner Herzog. I think there's you decided the same person.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

Yeah. There's a line that um God, who says it to him? Oh, it's the the psychologist that is working with Don Draper's agency. And she finds out that on a random weekend that Don took his secretary to Disneyland with him for the kit to help with the kids, because he was in a bind because the person he was gonna have help him couldn't do it or whatever happened. He proposes to his secretary, even though he's like heavily dating this psychiatrist who's working at the agency. And in her frustration with hearing about this, she says, I I can't remember if she says it to him or somebody else, but she says, Um, you or he only likes the beginning of things.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

And so when you say the quit line, yeah, yeah. When you say the quit line, I think about that, especially because that line strikes me sometimes. And and you hear this a lot. There's like with screenwriters, they write the first act of movies. Anyone can write a first act, they write the first act of all these movies, um, and as soon as they get done with the first act, they do the first act of another one, another one, another one. And I think there's something about that line in that show that resonates with me about I I don't know, the sort of kind of a funny term, but like micro quitting. Like I'm still screenwriting, but I'm quitting everything once it gets hard. Uh, and I'm only doing the beginning of things part. Well, that's the fun part.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

It's like any any idiot can write a good first act. I mean, obviously, like it's difficult to write a good verse act, but it's it's always been my favorite.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

Yeah. Yeah, no kidding. It's always been my favorite. It just flows. Yeah. Get to page 28 to 36, and I'm like, all right, now what? Yeah, exactly. I got this good idea for this one over here. Maybe I'll write that.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Well, see, like the the first time that I really realized how good advice it is to be like, I have to know how this ends. Yeah. Was yeah, once you get into like you get into a first act, and you're like, fuck, I have no idea where to go. Right. I have no idea where to go. Yep. So yeah, there's a lot of writers that are like, I won't start the thing until I know how it ends.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Yes. And I I became that way as well, where I'm like, you need to clearly see the ending. And obviously, it might like the the the shading and some of the some of the form of it might change, but you know that fundamentally changes even, like the character, but you gotta you gotta at least know where you're going, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:59

But yeah, that that idea of of him only liking the beginning of things, specifically in the in the context of the women that he is with, whether it's an affair or someone that he's seeing uh outside of his marriage after it falls apart, um, what was just always uh like her ability to just cut cut to the quick of a truth about him. Not the truth, but a truth and a major truth, you know, one of those foundational things about him that could change, yeah, but in his current state, that is that is a big thing. And it certainly relates to me because you know, I I sometimes like, well, look, I've I've been really great at this sort of macro view of making stuff, but it's like acting school, quit acting, screenwriting, quit screenwriting, this quit that. Do this, then quit that. Like you just like you know, this this feeling of like so you you you like the beginning of all we've talked about.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Do you feel like it is quitting, or do you think it's just or is that just like a story you tell yourself after the fact too?

SPEAKER_03 35:14

But uh yeah, I mean I think it's I mean, because you're not I don't know. You could argue it's evolution, like somebody could be like, well, you're just evolving your taste and yeah, and you know, who knows? We'll see. Like if I, you know spent how many years uh going, you know, getting into photography and um getting this camera, you know, spending a lot of money on it and all that, and if a year, two years from now I never touch them again, never make another piece of work, don't put a zine together, don't publish anything, personally, you know, self-publish, don't um sequence anything, don't do a gallery, don't make another YouTube video about it, and I'm off into something else. I think there would be a pretty strong case that like, yeah, you you love the first acting of starting a discipline, and then once it turns the honeymoon's over and it turns into there's there's more friction and more resistance there, more whatever it is, you just bail and start something else. Um I think there there's there's definitely an argument for that. Even when it comes to not making YouTube videos quite as frequently as I was for a while, you know, something like, well, it's more fun to go hunt for you know for vintage stuff, or it's more fun to go shoot street photography than to like sit down and make this video.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Well, the form of the thing evolves too, though. Like YouTube isn't what it was when you were excited about that, too. True. So true, but you know, it's like somebody being like, Oh yeah, I got into theater and then the theater completely changed, and like with the things that I loved about it changed. Yeah. So I had to go find something else.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

But it's interesting, you went a completely different direction than what came to my mind. I know. Because I was thinking, I have a quote up there, and it's like to pull that it's procrastination is for good problems, bad problems should be killed immediately, so you have more time to focus on good problems. That's the quote.

Kill Bad Problems And Make Space

SPEAKER_03 37:26

And so procrastination is a symptom that you're working on something you should be working on.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Like, if if you are working on something like I mean, yeah, tying the two things that we talked about together, like if you're working on something, it's like a piece of writing or something, and you're just sitting around daydreaming about it, that's fine. But if you're, you know, not you know, if you're I don't know, if you have to write a memo or if you have to reply to a couple of emails, like those are bad problems. Yes. Like get those out of the way. Like if those are sitting and causing you to think or waste, you know, what's a typical day? 16 hours, you know, 14 hours of 12 hours maybe of ability to do something. If you're spending all that time just worried and wasting time on some terrible problem like an email or you know, filling out a form, that's probably not a good use of that time.

SPEAKER_03 38:32

Which is you know, a great connection to Mammoth's thing, which is there's a room. Yeah, there's a typewriter, there's a bed.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can these things, these bad problems, there's no you can sleep. Yeah, there's no room for the problem. There's no bad problems, there's no technology, device, phone, bullshit. That's the thing too, is like uh that's the thing that I am afraid of and also just very aware of is there's a lot of bad problems. Everything we do is a bad problem in a lot of ways. Like, I mean, I don't know. You personally, like, what is your like I let's let me go through and just think like what bad problems have I had today? Um like I had to I had to take the car to get it, like kind of just run it through the car wash and gas it up and that kind of thing. That's a that's something I had to do. I've been putting it off for a couple of days. That's a bad problem. It takes up a little bit of mental space because you know you have to do it. Yep. Uh like laundry, you know, a little bit of mental space, you know you have to do it. I had to reply to a thing and call the call those people that I was telling you about. And it's like, you know, you just know you have to do it. Yeah, you know, it's gonna take a little bit of time, might take five minutes, and you've dealt with it, and it's done. Yeah. But it can take up five hours of your time. Yes. And I could be sitting and trying to read, or I can be trying to write, and that's just sitting right here. And I'm thinking about that the whole time. So I I think it's interesting. It's always something that I've I don't know how well I do it, but it's a really interesting way to look at a day-to-day situation. Just like, where are the bad problems that I can just kill? And what are the good problems that are worth well and really sitting back on.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

For me, there's there's usually uh there's usually enough bad problems that I can see that I could spend the whole day just addressing them.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Yeah. It's and the thing about bad problems too is they they replicate very quickly. Sure. There's always gonna be a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 40:36

Well, yeah, you can well I should do this. You see new bad problems. Yeah, and I think it's you know, often for me it's resistance coming in to hijack my brain to avoid doing the hard hard work. Yeah, and versus the easy hard work. Stephen Pressfield. Stephen Pressfield, capital R resistance.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

I think that's a good way to um a good way to describe yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:02

And there's all kinds of stuff there. Like, you know, if I'm like, well, I I you know, uh but the the kind of the differentiator is there's what I could do today, and there's what I should do today. And the bad problems tend to be obviously on occasion there's something like if you're going out of town, you have to do this thing. But it's also that's to me is like, well, you've chosen this thing that you're gonna do, travel somewhere for uh you know, personal, professional reasons, because you're gonna have personal time and professional time down there. But that creates maybe not a bad problem, but a necessary problem.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:43

And so there's almost like, well, I have to set my work aside to accommodate these things that I I have no choice to do. Versus for me, sometimes where I'm like, yeah, so I took all my old CDs out of the wallets and I put them back in the cases, but they're not organized and alphabetized and put away. I should really take care of all that before I sit down and start editing this video or prescripting the next one. Yeah, yeah. Because that's something that like we can't you can't just leave this stuff unfinished.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

Yeah. But it's like is that a good pro is that a bad problem worth killing immediately, though? Yeah. It's like, you know.

SPEAKER_03 42:27

It doesn't, you know, it's once I get in the flow of actually working on the video, I'm not gonna be look over like all those CD stars.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

That's the biggest thing too, is is just it's what is what do people call it like the the 20-minute syndrome or something. Like if you can just do something for 20 minutes, you're gonna be you're not gonna be worried about any of the bullshit. No, at all false. But the heart like your body's gonna do everything, your mind's gonna do everything it can short of killing you. Yep. And sometimes it might try that to escape that 20-minute period. Yep. I've yeah I even notice so with me, like even with reading, if I just sit down and I try to read something, and usually I'll like I'll start with something that's a little easier to you know flow into to just kind of get in that vibe and do 10 minutes. Sometimes if I'm just sitting down and read, and this isn't always, but especially if I'm you know just picking something up and I, you know, I don't know, if I haven't captured the flow of work yet, if I've been doing other stuff and then I'm coming to like, okay, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna do whatever. It almost takes me, yeah, 20 minutes just to have like my brain in a place where it operates effectively on the thing. Not just not talking distraction, but just like competency, like ability for it to be able to process what I need to be doing. Some people can just, I'm gonna do this now, and then they're in it. And I'm like, that's that's a superpower I'd like to have, but a polder. Yeah. What is your experience in that? Is it um are you uh can you just drop in?

SPEAKER_03 44:06

I've had stretches of being really good at that. Yeah. Um long stretches, you know, this certainly was the the a lot of the screenwriting that I did was very disciplined with that. Yeah. Um and then when I really hit my stride with my YouTube channel, I mean, dude, my weeks were just I just was nailing them. Yeah. Scripting, shooting, editing, uploading.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

When was this like early 2020s? Yeah, I would probably say it's so funny because you you're like, I was just nailing my weeks, but I that was the time when you were just like, man, I feel like I'm just it it compounded like it's in a cave all the time.

SPEAKER_03 44:51

Yeah, it it it got to that um where it was too too much of the same, too much repetition, not enough flavor, not enough meeting butch mavericks, not enough sunlight, you know, and I'm like I yeah, how do I still do this, but make it

Discipline In Writing And YouTube Seasons

SPEAKER_03 45:20

about what happens in my life that I'm living versus mining software for cool ideas for video. And we talked about this this before, but I want, you know, that's what I love about Casey Neistat's channel. He is like doing shit all the time, making stuff, out in the world, riding a skateboard, running, random stuff happens, this thing crashes, you know, all this stuff, and he is pulling figuring out how to make something about it, yeah. And that doesn't mean that Casey doesn't have long stretches of time staring at a computer, dealing with emails, whatever bullshit, but you get a sense that there is at least a sort of split between the intensely disciplined, creative, um business, entrepreneurial, whatever pursuits, but then also this like freestyling with life. Yeah. Because like with his jogging or his running, right? It's like every day. It is not, it is, it is just not gonna happen. He does it on Christmas, like he's gonna run. Um and so I still want that, but I just I need more just need more need more moments taking a photograph of a truck and meeting Butch Maverick. I I do I for sure to have that.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

What did it look like when you were in LA? Uh like if that was the other period. Yeah. Did it did it hit the same kind of buzzsaw at the end?

SPEAKER_03 46:48

Or no, well, I mean, the buzzsaw that it hit was we just had it was a just a financial thing.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

So if you could have just continued that lifestyle, like not necessarily made more money, but if it was just like tenable to just continue that lifestyle and not, you know, you're still in the maybe you get an extra bedroom, yeah, and you guys have kids, but you know, it you're in an apartment in LA, would you have done it?

SPEAKER_03 47:15

Or yeah, I think so. But but the thing that with with that time in my life is you're you know, I'm I finished grad school when I was 28 years old and lived in LA for till I was in my early 30s, 31, whatever it was, 32. Your perception of your life at that age makes it easy to spend more time working. Yeah. Uh doing um sitting at the computer. I literally live in the the heart of Los Angeles. And I am sitting at a computer for eight to ten hours a day writing. And obviously, you know, time off in the evening, weekends, you know, uh all that. When I wasn't on long stretches of screenwriting, I was doing my freelance work, which was concert video content editing, and those gigs would often be four to six weeks, but it was seven days a week for 10 to 14 hours a day, and sometimes even more toward the launch of the show. Right. And then I would be back to the apartment, and all of the forces at play, you just finished grad school, you borrowed a bunch of money to go to grad school, you know, your partner is somewhat counting on you to take this huge decision to move to Los Angeles, something she didn't want to do necessarily. Yeah, and so there's a lot riding on you making this work, and so my how I perceived of my life at that age was I got all the time in the world to do fulfilling, interesting, fun life stuff. I've got to buckle down now and focus as much as I can on taking this huge risk and investment and capitalizing on it. And I just I knew enough about myself and my in my poor self-discipline habits from the past, which was wait to the last wait till the last minute and rip it out.

SPEAKER_04 49:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:27

And I was lucky that that helped me get into a a flow or a sort of channeling state with class or a paper or whatever that I could get like a really I could get a B to an A just because of all those forces at play putting me in a state, and I'm like, Well, I can't I don't have a deadline for this screenplay. It's it's all self-imposed, self-manufactured. Yeah. So I basically just said to myself, you have to write five pages of a screenplay every single day when you're not working your freelance work. And I did. Yeah. For years, I would write five pages a day to the point where I would like post on Facebook two pages. Three and a half pages. Yeah, it was just like I'm like, I I I I almost used it as a tool to like an accountability tool. An extra, extra ingredient into the you have to get this done.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

Would you have done it differently looking back now?

SPEAKER_03 50:33

Like what I would have done our finances differently. As far as my discipline with writing, I was full very happy with that. Yeah, yeah. I look back on that as going, this was one of your best moments as far as discipline and focus goes. And you know, are there things I would do differently, like not trying to craft a commercial screenplay to increase your chances of making money and just like telling a story that means something to you, you know, all of that, sure.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Your artistic taste, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:06

But when it comes to waking up, sitting down at the computer and writing five pages, and it wasn't just like, hey, put five pages worth of who gives a shit words into final draft and call it good. It was it had to be meaningful, yeah, yeah. And there were some times legible. There were some times where I'd bang my head against the wall trying to work through a plot issue or a character, you know, uh conflict with another character or whatever. Sometimes I would give myself grace, and it's like you have to write an action sequence here. You know what it is, but the time it's gonna take to like write down every little beat of it, just summarize it and move on to the next harder thing to do. Yeah, like this is tedious to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I know what it is, but go try to figure out the thing that you don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like leaving it. Yeah, they did this, and this is this happened. They fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Um, I do like it when you you listen to some writer directors, and they're just like, Yeah, this this sequence was amazing. What what did this look like when you were writing? And they're like, Um, they fight. Like it literally is. Yeah, they drive. Yep. And it's like, whoa, this sequence is really, really amazing. And it's like, yeah, in the script, this was two words. Right. Yeah. That was it.

SPEAKER_03 52:31

Yeah. I feel like that's what happened with uh one battle. Like, like it was not said about the it was not meant to be as elaborate of a shoot to do the car sequence.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

Well, he said he like uh with the scene in the in the um like uh little Latino Harriet Tubman thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said they just essentially freestyled that sequence um on like in the the time they were shooting it. And then yeah, the car sequence was like she drives, he chases.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Something like that.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

And that was it.

SPEAKER_03 53:09

Well, and the the excitement about that when you're at his level is look, we're gonna get with the right people on the team, yeah, and we're gonna like storyboard this out.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

That's really good advice though for anybody. Um, because you do see a lot of people that get caught up in the weeds of things like that. Like if you're just working on any project and you come to something where you're like, I don't understand, or maybe it's like, oh, I need to do a lot of research for this. This happens. Yeah, this happens, move on. Yep, like whether it's writing, whether it's photography, whether it's yeah, music. I mean, I'm sure I can't speak for making music, but I'm sure you're like, I don't know quite what this needs to be. And it's just like you just play a little filler and move on. Yeah, and sometimes it's like, oh my god, that works, that's perfect, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:55

But I think to sum up all of it, it is that time in screenwriting, the time with YouTube, it was very focused, very disciplined, and I could see the result of that focus and discipline. It was whether it was the the effect of that was what I wanted it to be, whether it was increased revenue, making real headway with screenwriting, getting a manager, getting meetings. Uh, I got read by some agencies, you know, from a cold inquiry, um and getting all the way to the point where, you know, I had a meeting with a a company that had a first look deal with one of the studios, and we developed one of my scripts, and then it kind of culminated in that screenplay going out wide to all the studios for them to buy, and it was in the trades that it was out, and like it was all this cool stuff. Yeah, it was it was awesome. And I'm like, this is what happens when you're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

It's interesting that you didn't keep ripping that.

SPEAKER_03 55:06

Like, well, it it really, you know, and this is this is the hard part is it with when it comes to quitting, is you know, we had to leave Los Angeles, so this all happened with the script going out wide of the studios while I was here in Omaha working full-time as a post-production supervisor.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

This was what 2015, 16 no, earlier than that.

SPEAKER_03 55:29

2013, 2014, 13, 14. Yeah. So and I had written this script on spec, and I got a lot of meetings from it. You know, I flew to LA, I met at twenty, you know, with a higher up at 20th Century Fox. I'm on the lot, I'm driving on all the different lots, had these meetings, and I I was not like the I was not in a good place mentally to have a lot of those meetings because I had severe imposter syndrome. You've talked about it.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

We've talked about that where you're like walking in and you're just like deserved to be here. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:06

I had to take like Xanax because I was so nervous. Um so it was difficult. Yeah. But I sat there and I went, I just spent the last two to three years working on this screenplay for free. Yeah. With a company that's making millions and millions and millions of dollars with all their different movie and script deals. The guy that I'm working with closely on this has sold two or three spec screenplays while I've been working on this one for multiple six figures. And this didn't buy this didn't sell. So I have to start this all over again and go another two to three years to get to this point again to maybe sell something. And I'm just like, I don't know that I can bet our lives on this. And I just did a calculation that made me go. I feel like I'm playing back up to a player on a single A baseball team. I'm 37, I wasn't, but I I I wasn't at the time, but you know, figuratively, I'm I'm like 37 years old still trying to get in the majors. Yeah, yeah. What are the chances of this person getting in the majors at this point in the game?

SPEAKER_01 57:40

And I'm like That's so funny though, because like with especially with something like film related, I feel like yeah, definitely with sports, you're like not gonna get in the majors, but and I get the analogy, you're stretching the analogy, but yeah, yeah, it's your chances almost go up as you continue to make those connections. And for a lot of people, it yeah, but I mean I I like obviously hindsight, it feels like you made the right calculated decision.

SPEAKER_03 58:09

Maybe. I mean, I think I think there isn't there's an there's an element of quitting, you know, like sort of like rationalized quitting.

SPEAKER_01 58:20

It's never it's never super black and white though. Yeah. With like, oh I I oh this per like you can maybe you can project it to be

Choosing Art For Ego Or For Meaning

SPEAKER_01 58:30

pretty black and white, but I mean every situation dictates what the optimal outcome is gonna be optimal. I mean, up that language kind of is defeating in itself, but um, you know, the optimal outcome for you or the best outcome for your situation is always gonna be different.

SPEAKER_02 58:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:52

And sometimes it's just like the time period, right? Like 20, you know, it's what 2013, 2014, 2012. It's like that. You just and like you've talked about when you move to LA like within months, yeah. The entire economy crisis happened.

SPEAKER_03 59:12

Yeah, yeah. My w yeah, Aaron couldn't get work and it was not good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Um like that's not your fault anyway. Sure. Um there's periods where people move to LA and you know, you're 20 years of stability. And it's like, oh man, yeah, we've we've just lived in LA for 15 years, and it's like, yeah, you just have literally you and you pick the worst time and yeah, yeah. The last 40 years to move there, probably.

SPEAKER_03 59:42

I I think too, there's just a you know, with my experience with it all, sort of like there's just a little bit too much of like choosing to be a screenwriter rather than, you know, and I've always been writing, you know, journaling, you know, not a lot of like you know, short stories or novels, you know, I didn't do a lot of that, but I just like I s I s I interpreted a lot of what I saw in the world through stories in my head. And screenwriting was a great way to focus that translation uh uh process into into stories, especially with how much movies played a big role in my uh as a kid. But I felt like it was too chosen. Like I have these feelings and these instincts and these desires, and I'm gonna I'm gonna sort of sort of like consciously choose to focus it through screenwriting, and then when it doesn't work out, like I'm okay with dropping it, versus I think a more serious writer who's like you could argue sort of like born a writer, uh, like that fire is there from a very early age, and they sort of screenwriting finds them versus them just making this conscious choice, and then it's not a choice, it's like a yeah, it's calling or entrapment or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

Yeah. It's funny, I talked about this with a buddy of mine a couple weeks ago, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:23

And so I think a lot of um a lot of what I do between taking photos, making videos, it goes back to the Bruce Springsteen quote from um a much earlier episode, you know, this need to communicate.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

Yeah. Well, though there no, there was like a I forget who it was that I was reading. This was semi-recently. It might have been Calvino, it might have been like Calvino at Book of Essays or something, but it might have been something else. Um but they were talking about this thing of the obligation of writing is almost like first of all, you start to look at it, you're like, oh man, I really the only thing that gets me satisfaction is this thing. Yeah. Writing, photography, music, whatever. And they're like, immediately I'm starting from a huge disadvantage because who makes any fucking money doing that? Yeah. Or like who has any kind of success doing that? Like, so immediately you're like, okay, I'm doing this thing that's probably never gonna go anywhere. Like, first of all, everybody, and maybe this isn't as true as it was in the 70s or whatever, but everybody needs to write is the idea. So it's like, so you've got, you know, what, seven billion humans, four billion literate. I mean, maybe back then it was like four billion humans, two billion literate, whatever. But still, the odds are not in your favor. No. Every one of them writes. No, yes, you know, yeah. No, I just I thought I thought that was interesting. Yeah, it's like not and I mean, obviously, the writer is something that's very sexy culturally, yes, especially in the Western the Western um idea of the writer.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:12

Yep. But and I'm prone to that kind of that sexy that fantasizing where it's like I it's like uh we talked about in the other episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:21

It's just the coolest thing ever being able to do about a story.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:24

And well, uh, and that's like what we talked about The Shining, Jack Torrance. I don't think he was I don't think he actually wanted to be a writer, he just chose writing because he thought it was a tool to get him to this life of drinking and partying and people thinking he's the best. Like he wanted to be revered by people, and the only way he thought about doing that was well, uh you know, I'm I'm gonna be a writer, I'm gonna I'm gonna write the great American novel, and that's gonna be the key that unlocks this lifestyle that I crave with every fiber of my being. Yeah. And I think that's also like people who want to win the lottery, and not everybody, but some people who just like want this windfall of money and success. It's it's it's just a tool that allows for that fantasy to happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:15

Yeah. Well, it's funny the just the picture of like, yeah, you're choosing you have uh, you know, 10 professions on a table and you're like going through and you're like, maybe this one, yeah, maybe this one. Just like, where does this get me? This is where I'm trying to get. And it's like, here's seven professions. It's like, well, I could see this one getting me there, or this one getting me there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:34

And the only time I don't feel like you know, and again, we've talked about this before, like sort of hijacking an art form or a craft for a very vain and egocentric outcome is just purely communicating. Because I'll sit there and go, I want to I have an idea, I have a feeling, I have something I want to communicate, but it it wants to come out in different ways. It might be a photograph. I'm inspired, I see something, and I want to make a photograph or whatever it is. Uh for a lot of times it's uh I want to write an article for my medium. I have this idea, it's a feeling, it's this thing about this part of my life or estate sales or final cut pro, whatever it is, and I want to write, I have it, I see it as an article.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

There's not like you write an article for this, it's just like I want an article.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

Yeah, like this happens to the the form of communication I think this requires is an article. Yeah, but then this one, it feels like it's a video, and that's why I have multiple channels. I'm like, well, this thing I want to communicate doesn't fit with this thing, so I'm gonna create this other one. I'm gonna die on the one channel. No, I think I think there's an there's a strong argument for that, but no, I totally get it. Me continually sort of like thinking of the what the form needs to be for the impulse to communicate keeps changing. Changing.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Well, I mean, maybe, you know. Or I I hate to just we're beating the shit out of this dead writer metaphor kind of thing, but it's like, you know, sometimes you have a writer that writes under four or five pseudonyms until they figure out what they're. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's kind of the symbol.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:15

And it could be. It also just could be like, look, the the industry says once you become Stephen King the horror writer, you can't write anything else. Yeah. And in his early career, he did the pseudonym because, well, I have other stories that aren't horror. Yeah. Well, you can't.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:32

He was a victim of his own. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:34

Well, and I think of the machine. Then he gets big enough. Then he gets big enough and I'll write whatever I want. I'm Stephen Fucking King.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:40

Yeah, yeah, I'll do whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:41

And there is, you know, something very liberating about that kind of fame and power. You then there's like, yeah, whatever you want to do. Like you you rise above the Do you even know what you're doing, Marty? And that's that goes back to what we talked about, I think, watching the the thing, wasn't it? Wasn't it uh what was the comment about someone? Did they say it in the show? Someone saying something about the frame or the I can't remember, but in the it was like some little dumb rule. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it was Ebert. He said the guys email me that the the something in the street wasn't historically accurate.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:17

Yeah, they're talking about eyes wide shut. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, oh yeah, somebody's really upset that they're like, this obviously isn't New York City. And he's like, no shit, it's not New York City.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:28

Yeah, and that's what I mean. Like sometimes people are just like, Well, you're a horror writer, you can't write a romance novel.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:35

Well, I mean, that's that's interesting. I mean, just on a on a film aesthetics, it is really interesting that how how we've come to just expect realism. Yeah. Like neorealists, like the Italian neorealists really pushed it so far in that direction. And then obviously, like the American films in the 70s, it's like they were it's not to forget, we had 70 years of really intricate sets. And that was like being an art director was designing these like beautiful sets. And all the theater that came before film, it's like that was part of the film, you know, kabuki theater or anything like the the set design and the was very much a part of it, or you know, uh you you look at like early 20th century like German films and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:22

So it is just funny, but yeah, no, just getting caught up with stupid little yeah, yeah, just these with that's what I think sometimes people just gravitate toward the framework, the rules, the structure, like because it's easy to grab onto, it's not nebulous, it's not ambiguous. And then what about the say it?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:41

Because I made a I was like, it's um it's like a compensation or something. Yeah, I said something like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:46

It is, absolutely. And then you run into that all the time. Well, you can't you can't bold the headings on your screen on your slug lines on your screenplay. The fuck you can't do that. Right. Why shut up? Yeah, yeah. Who cares? Right. Yeah, yeah. Um so you're always gonna have have those uh those kind of uh battles between

Rules Realism And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_03 1:09:10

different camps, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:12

Um so hopefully that Yeah, we can wrap it. We can wrap it. But I like I do think it's interesting though that you were you we both went in separate directions. Like the quitting? With the quitting, yeah, yeah. I was like immediately went towards like quitting as more of a positive, and you went towards quitting as more of a but i it's funny though, because I've definitely thought a lot about the idea of starting things. It's really easy to start something. Oh, it's so yeah, it's great. So great. Just something new.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:46

Sometimes it's great to just say to talk about a thing you're gonna start, yeah, but then never start it.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:52

Yeah, yeah. I do that all the time. All the time. All the time. Yeah. You and I do that. We're like, oh yeah, I'm gonna do this thing. Yeah. I mean, it's it's like the quintessential get together with the buddy. You either make a list or you talk about some shit you're gonna do. Right. It's like those guys in the sauna a couple few weeks ago. Those fucking guys. Oh man. Unbelievable. Did I tell that story on the podcast? I don't know. I don't know what it was good. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we did. I just I'm in the sauna and these two guys get in. And I mean, it sounded like Tarantino dialogue. It was so obscure. It was like, so that is why we have to do the thing. Because and I'm just like, okay, what's going on here? I'm like trying to read, and I'm just like not reading. I'm reading the same sentence 47 times. Um, yeah, these guys were definitely under the influence of uh a drug we like to call cocaine. Yeah, but it's just a fun time. Wild, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:53

It had been a golden afternoon, and I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer experience.