Danny Jones Podcast - #80 - The Psychedelic Filmmaker Peeling back the Scab on Society | Sean Dunne

Episode Date: March 7, 2021

Sean Dunne is a filmmaker and psychedelic voyager who is responsible for some of the best documentaries on the internet. Some of which include 'American Juggalo',  'Florida Man' &  'Oxyana'. Sean has also done commercials for clients such as Google, Royal Caribbean, Bacardi, Delta and much more. Sean has a very unique perspective when approaching his work and the character studies depicted in his films.  For example, he tells the story of how a late night mushroom trip spawned the idea to create one of his most popular documentaries called 'Florida Man'. He also has his own podcast which is on his VeryApe YouTube channel as well as a radio show called the 'Church of Chill'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're going to start posting each podcast episode that you see on YouTube a week earlier on Patreon. So feel free to join for early access to all episodes. Plus, we're going to start doing bonus podcast episodes every week. So if you want to join Patreon, it's patreon.com slash concrete videos. Next week's episode is already posted there. So feel free to go check it out. Hello, world. Today, my guest is Sean Dunn.

Sean is a filmmaker and psychedelic voyager who is responsible for some of the best documentaries on the internet. Some of which include American Juggalo, Florida Man, and Oxyana. He has also done commercials for clients such as Google, Royal Caribbean, Bacardi, Delta, and much more. Sean has an extremely unique perspective when approaching his work and the character studies that he depicts in his films. For example, he tells the story of how a late night mushroom trip spawned the idea to create Florida man. He also has his very own podcast, which is on his very ape YouTube channel, as well as a radio show called The Church of Chill. That's the hook, folks. I hope you guys enjoy this amazing podcast with Sean Dunn. Sean, for people out there who don't know who you are, give me like a little

like a background into your filmmaking career and, yeah, I don't know. I've been making films for like 12 years. Cast joined me like 10 years ago. We've made like 12, 13 films. We do, to pay the bills, we get sometimes hired to do commercial projects. Yeah. And we usually pour that money into independent film.

And then we started a podcast like six years ago because filmmaking takes a long time and it takes a lot of resources. So I know, along the way, a lot of goddamn adventures. I feel like psychedelics have become a really big, part of our life and our mission and yeah i don't know it's hard it's a hard thing to encapsulate yeah it's a lot right yeah yeah it's a lot and and we don't think about it that much it's like if

anything we're thinking about like what's the next thing we're doing we're so fixated on that so it's cool to get an opportunity to kind of reflect a little bit about the stuff we've done yeah yeah each film leads to the next film you know so yeah you know it started very like simply in a short film and It kind of, you know, when you do a film that's like a little dark, you need to do a film that's a little light. And it's just naturally you always find your balance. Yeah, I found, I tell everybody that comes on here that asks me, asks me, because I have like a similar background to you. These things, these podcasts, they're kind of like their own little mini documentaries minus music and B-roll. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's much easier. Yeah. Minus editing is a big one. It's much easier and it's like you can put out more content and, I don't know, it's just less. It's still documentary. That's what I think of it as. It is. Like that's what keeps my head in this.

And instead of trolling myself like, why aren't you out making a film? I'm like, I'm still making documentaries. But it feels like the podcast is almost like the documentary of our life. It's like a slow burn, long six year process of people getting to know us

through guests and our friends, the people we have on. But I love the podcasting medium. I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, but messing around in the medium is so fucking fun, man. So how did you originally start in like this filmmaking world. Did you start, did you start in high school?

Did you start just like by grabbing a camera? Or were you originally just like more like the director, writer type of? It actually started, it's so fucking weird that you're, that we're in Seminole, Florida, because I went to Seminole high school. It's insane. I graduated class in 99 and my family moved down here from New York in, uh, when I was going into 11th grade. It's funny because in New York I was getting like bees and C's,

regular classes, really not going anywhere. I had nothing going for me. And I moved down here and I was putting all honors classes. I'm like, what the fuck is going on? Teachers were taking a liking to me. And I had this amazing teacher, Miss Cameron, who just took a liking to me and was like, you should work on the morning show that we're going to start next year,

your senior year. And I was like, cool, worked on that. And that was like my first time really even messing with cameras or anything. And I took a liking to it. I think around that time is when Tom Green was coming out and you were seeing him do his thing. And Freddie got fingered? Freddie got fingered. It's my favorite movie of all time.

The Tom Green Show was like hugely influential, I think, to a lot of people at the time. It definitely planted a seed with me of like getting out there. And yeah, after high school, my parents left the area and I was kind of stuck down here on my own going to college. And I was totally becoming a Florida man. I was totally just becoming that kind of guy. And so I spent a lot of time just going out with my friend Joe and we would just troll the streets and find guys to talk to. I just stockpiling interviews, not even trying to make a movie. I didn't even have that

concept in my head yet. But yeah, just a lot of drifting around, getting to know the area, getting to know people, getting to know myself through talking to people and through being an asshole, through like doing pranks to people. Shit, I would never do now. Getting the shit kicked out of. Yeah, yeah, we got the shit kicked out of us on camera. Like just pushing the limits and pushing the boundaries of tastefulness for sure. shit kicked out of you? Outside seminal movie theater, I don't know, we were filming some bullshit in the

parking lot, and some kids walked by, and they said some shit, and we were like, you guys are pussies, and they were 16, we were 19, and they just fucking came over and beat the shit out of us. Oh, no. Yeah, we had it coming. Yeah, we did. We had it coming. We had it coming. It's funny,

we called these guys pussy bitches, and then, like, you could see it on camera. This guy just slowly takes off his watch, chance to his friends and comes over and just knocked out my friend who was holding the camera. The camera just goes, it hits the ground. Chaos ensues. They call, the cops end up over there. And while the cops are there, I'm like, rewinding the tape to where we're calling them pussy bitches and like taping over it and making sure that there's no evidence of that part of the whole fucking thing. Oh my God. Yeah. Just like a lot of stuff like that. And honestly, if I hadn't gotten out of the area,

I probably would have gotten in a lot of trouble. It was like we were really just pushing the boundaries. And it wasn't like cinematic or tasteful. So, yeah, yeah, when I got out of the area here, I went up to, I moved it back up to New York, didn't get any film programs, got a degree in cinema studies. And after school, after school ended, just kind of went out into the world, not with a film degree, no sense of entitlement about making films or anything like that, just super humble. Worked in a deli for a year after college. And one day a dude came into the deli and was like, I think, did I see you around here with a camera one day? I was like, yeah, I don't know. I think myself as a filmmaker, maybe, I don't know.

And he's like, come work for me. And this guy's name was Mark Clark, and he worked for HBO, and he just, like, took me under his wing. Wow. Yeah, I know. It's so fucking generous. I think about moments like that in my life, and it almost, like, gives me anxiety.

I'm like, what the fuck if that guy never walked in the deli that day? Or didn't see me with a camera that day, or for some reason I didn't take him up on that. Because it really led to the, that led to me working at History Channel, and History Channel gave me a ton of opportunities to just go shoot stuff for them and good budgets to go do whatever I wanted. So I was like a 23-year-old kid running around with crews and directing stuff for History Channel. And got enough confidence by the time I was 27 and I made my first film was called The Archive. And it was just a seven-minute short about the world's largest record collection.

Put that on Vimeo at a time where really there was no marketplace for short films. I was like, no one was really just like, I made a film for the internet. Here it is. So I benefited from that. My whole career benefited from not a lot of people doing that at that time. And, you know, that went a little bit viral, got into Sundance. Sundance led to me getting signed for commercial representation, and then that started paying the bills. And we just started a cycle of that.

After that, it was like, let's make a film every year. Let's really make sure we stick to this. Let's fall in love with the process and try to fall back in love with life through the process. Because I feel like if you can fall in love with every part of making art, you'll fall in love with every part of life. You know, not just one part of the process or not just the glory at the end or anything like that, but like every part of it, the pain and everything that comes along with birthing something creative.

Yeah. Did you, so when this guy first came in, he worked for HBO. So you were just a kid in a deli that now works for HBO? No, he was actually, he had a side gig making Jerry Seinfeld's 50th birthday. video. So like, you know, Seinfeld probably gave this guy 100 grand to like, yeah, put together something for all my friends in the Hamptons. So I was working on that in his basement. He was going down to HBO at night and he was a producer there. And I just, I kind of proved myself, I don't even know how. I think I was just think I had the right attitude. I wasn't particularly talented

at anything. I just had the right attitude. I had some initiative. Like I could just see, I was a good producer at the time. I could see a couple heads, a couple steps ahead and be like, oh, that's what I need to do next or whatever just to keep them satisfied. But, but, I could just to keep them satisfied. But once I got the opportunity at History Channel, they basically made me a writer-producer. I had no idea. I was just figuring it out as I went along.

You know, I had no formal training in any of this ever. I think my work benefits from that. And I wouldn't know how to make, like, these paint-by-numbers formulate documentaries you see. I wouldn't even know where to begin with that kind of shit. I'm not interested in watching that, and I don't want to make it. Spend five years of my life making shit like that.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. You're on your website, like some of the commercials, that you've made are insane. Like some of the, some of like the, like just the client, like Royal Caribbean Nest, some like really big time brands. How did you get into doing work for them?

That's just as slowly but surely. It actually really just came from that first film because, um, I don't, I just think it had been a while since somebody, um, I mean, I just made something so perfectly digestible that I didn't realize I was making like a reel for, for myself. Like that first film was just, it was very cinematic. It was well done. It was like a tearjerker and it's seven minutes. So I think that was just right around the time when branded content was getting going.

And I don't know. Luckily, I got some attention. And you get one commercial and that leads to another and it leads to another. But I, God, I feel superstitious even talking about commercials because it's like so random. It's always, though, they saw some film that he did American Juggalo or Florida man and they like want to work with him. And it's like there's a little bit of an allure that happens from just like, following, I think, Sean's passion and just, like, doing what he wants and then, you know, everyone wants to make money, right?

Well, yeah, definitely. I mean, it pays the bills, but it's also, like, I think we get these jobs because we've been so authentic in our filmmaking. And the films are so effective that they're like, can we pay you to do that for our brand? Right. Once I get the job, it's like the uphill battle of all uphill battles. And it's like, it's just like a month of pain trying to make these commercials. They have to pay you a lot because they're going to, they're going to, they're,

basically using your name to legitimize a product. And they're using my skills to make to soften their corporate fucking nastiness. And I'm like, it's just every part of it grosses me out and I don't end up getting final cut on them. So it drives me insane. I don't even

have half my commercials on the website because I'm just like embarrassed about the way they came out. So I don't know. I know what you mean? Yeah, yeah, you know, dude. How often do you do big commercial jobs like that? Once a year. Once a year. You only do one a year. It's not even like that. That's just how often they up. There's just random? Yeah. Do you turn down a lot of them? No, no, no, no. We have. We have. And it's cool. It's cool to turn down a job. But like now we know they're so few and far between. We're like, we're going to take them when they come up. And since we're the production company, we can make a lot more money than when I was just a director for hire. So now Google will come to us and be like, oh, make something for Nest. And they'll give us the whole budget. And we get to hire the whole team, the edit, the whole thing. So it's cool, but it's a fuck, not a little soul crushing.

That's a lot. That's like when Cass has her hands full the most in life because she's managing the job and then how much this is crushing me to even do this. So, yeah. Yeah, it's such a weird thing. But I'm grateful that we get to just do this for a living. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me the story about how you made Florida man and like how did that whole thing start. And I want to say first of all, I'm a huge fan of that. His name's escaping me right now, but the kid who did the cinematography on that. Isaac Bowman. Isaac, yes. Oh, he's incredible.

He does some sick work, man. Yeah, yeah. That's, I mean, we, we found him. He did a music video for Delta Spirit. What was that? Yeah, Delta Spirit. Yeah, Delta Spirit. And I remember my editor sent it to us, and she was like,

this guy shoots in a style that, like, would compliment our work. Our editor, Kathy Gatto, has been working with me since History Channel. She's cut everything we've done. But, yeah, everything he does is, like, low light, dark, natural lighting that he uses is just, It's just so, griping. And you should see how he does it. It's amazing.

He'll do stuff with the camera that, like, even the camera assistants are like, are you sure? I've never cranked the ISO that high. I don't think we should bake this look in, you know? On commercial jobs, too. We've done that on commercial. Where we're, like, we're sitting there with the client. We're like, sign off on this.

This is how we want this to look. And normally they'd be like, we'll do that in post. But, like, we'll force it because me and Isaac really want this to come out a certain way. So we'll bake the look into the camera where they can't even fucking do anything about it. Oh, my God. But, um, Florida man, I feel like, uh, the mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms made us make that film. It was, uh, really?

Yeah. Explain that. Well, I, we had just discovered psychedelics in general and we had just discovered mushrooms after we had made the film Oxiana. We had, um, we had done Tribeca Film Festival. And during Tribeca Film Festival, someone gave us mushrooms. We just threw them in the freezer. I was like, I don't know what these are. I don't know.

I just, I don't know about these things. And we ended up taking them a few months later. And before we took him, I had this idea in my head to make a film called Sinkholes, which would have been Florida, but it would have been like, let's go towards all the weird-ass sinkhole stories in Florida. And talk to Florida men with that as like the Trojan horse of how to even talk to them. Yeah, I loved that idea. So that was just in the back of our head forever.

And we met Isaac. And Isaac comes over to our apartment one night. And it's fucking midnight. And he's like, let's take mushrooms. I'm like, fuck, this is going to be a lump. Night man. All right. We'll take mushrooms, whatever. We take the mushrooms. And he's, we were laughing about something. I was telling him about the idea of sinkholes. And I'm describing sinkholes. And he's like, have you ever seen surveillance cameraman? And I was like, no, what is that? And he's like, we got to pull it up right now. It's this, I don't know. Have you ever seen that? No. Oh, dude. If you like Florida, man, you're going to love it. It's internet gold. It's like, it's, this dude just goes around with a fucking, a camera and just goes up to people. and just starts filming them and they're like what the fuck and he just sticks to the program and just

films them and it's it's very aggressive he talks confrontational barely the only thing he ever says is like calm down it's just a camera it's just a video and people just are freaking out and like he's like there's cameras everywhere it's just a camera whatever so he put out this eight part series of these confrontations and we were just on mushrooms dying laughing I'm like this is art I'm so glad that I'm not the one that made this but this is art like I'm glad somebody went out there and did this because it's fucking hilarious and it's tasteful and it's it's just fucking funny. Is it on YouTube?

No. Yeah, no it is right now. Oh it is? Yeah, one through eight. He's such a we met him in person actually we tracked him down. He is the epitome of an adrenaline junkie. So for him it's not about cinematic artistry. It's about like how far can I go within my comfort zone outside of my comfort zone. He's addicted to adrenaline

and that's one of the ways he gets his adrenaline flowing is like these confrontation. Yeah. Yeah. So it did it. We watched it and it was just like we were laughing our ass off and then we go up on the roof of our building and it's like 630 in the morning and the sun's coming up and I'm just like Florida man we got to make a movie called Florida man and he was just like yes him and Cass are like yes fuck it let's do it you know it's like you're on mushrooms you're like are we going to really do this but like let's do this like it just felt like a message from

the mushroom like go make a movie called Florida man and we did like cast lined it up I don't know like a month or two later we were down here doing our thing And the way we went about making that film was we said, we're going to bring one lens. We're not going with a kit of prime lenses switching on, all this. We're bringing one lens, a 16 millimeter wide lens. We're bringing a sound guy. We're bringing our friend who can do most of the driving a whole bunch of pot.

And we're going to go for 10 days, and we just rented an Airbnb in five different areas. So we'd go to Clearwater for two nights. And then we'd go to Ocala for two nights and Cocoa Beach for two nights. We just went around. Coco Beach, that's got to be a great spot. Coco was one of the most fruitful spots. Clearwater was one of them.

I'm so familiar with this area. I knew exactly where to go. We were on fire when we were here because I was like, I was like, I know the spots here. Coco was amazing. We filmed this guy called Mr. Sexy Coco Beach. Just literally surfed out of the water and was like, what are you guys doing? And she started telling stories. And it was incredible.

But yeah, yeah, the mushroom told us to make that one. And we fucking listened. And it was kind of in contrast to the other film that we were making at the time called Cam Girls about webcam models and that film was you know it was like everything was shot on sticks and it was very cinematic and

you know not precious but a little bit more precious and like we were just craving something loose and fucking fiery It's more conventional yeah yeah and we had just made this film Cam Girls we already had it in the can and then we shot Florida Man so quick and finish the edit they were like we'll put these films out on the same day

so we released two features on the same day Florida man fucking has gotten around. Like I didn't know what people were going to make of it. Because when we were making of it, when we were making it, it came out to 50 minutes. And I was like, this feels right,

but it's not a short. It's not a feature. It's not going to, no one's going to buy this. This won't live on any platforms. This is not going to get into any festivals. It's not that we even try to get into festivals. That ended up being the best part about it was there was like no storyline.

There was no music. It was just, it's just like an organism. It's just a thing. Yeah. It's like a living monument to this lifestyle. Yeah. That like you've lived here your whole life, you know.

Like, and that's how I knew about these guys. Because I'm like, you have to live here to even start to notice these guys. Because you're training yourself to ignore this, this kind of like depressing level of despair that's going on around. And you're living in paradise down here. You don't want to fucking think about that kind of stuff. But if you train your eye to it, you start to notice these people. And there was such wisdom and grace and beauty pouring out of these people. people that I think we're normally would be like holy shit stay away from me so um it it just it helps

it helps it helps it helps it helps like that's so personal in that way it's like when we feel ourselves otherizing we need to go towards that subject figure out how they are us and then bring that to an audience and you know sometimes it's sex workers or drug addicts or florida man or juggalo's or whatever it is we're going towards at the moment. But that's what it feels like our mission is. And Florida Man was just a fun way to do it because, like, I knew these guys and knew how to talk to them. I know that they have these stories on the tip of their tongue, you know?

And so the interactions in that movie, you're basically seeing the entirety of it. There's not a lot of, we cut out a lot of people from the movie, but we didn't cut out a lot of moments from the interactions. So, like, what you see in the movie is probably about how long we hung out with that person. Really? Yeah. Yeah, it was funny. How did you approach them? Like, what did you say to him when you came when you walked up to him? Did you have like some sort of like formula when you went out and film these guys or? They mostly approached us. You know, there's something about. Yeah, we had a big camera crew. Yeah, well, we were a small crew, but a big camera. The boom mic. I'll do it. Yeah. You go to a

7-Eleven parking lot, open up the van door and it's just like, we're going to just be here for three hours. So everyone chill out and our, everyone's smoking cigarettes hanging out. We're getting high. And then it's like when it's time, we just take out that boom. Like it's like raising a flag. And like people just start going, what are you guys doing? And, you know, we just always said we were making a documentary about Florida, about Florida, man.

And, you know, they, uh, no one really asked a lot of questions, man. We ended up like, we'd go up to someone in a public's parking lot of two in the morning and end up in the back of their car going wherever the fuck they're going with them. Like, and I'm like, this is the kind of adventures. Like, this is the kind of life I want to lead. And the fact that cameras are here for. it and we can extend this experience for other people. It was incredible.

So it all came from the mushroom trip, and you came up with the name Florida Man when you were that night. Yeah, basically. It's got to be called Florida Man. That's the name of it. And everything kind of just like went back, went from there. Yeah. It's almost like reverse engineers.

Reverse engineering, yeah. A lot of our movies start like that. I wonder if you can relate with that. It's like, I'll think of a title. I have no idea how we're going to find the subjects or where we're going to film it or whatever. But I'm like, I need to make a documentary called the bowler. and it needs to be about a bowling hustler.

And I don't know where this person is or how they're going to turn up in my life, but I'm putting it out there. I want to make a film called The Bowler. And then next thing you know, someone's like, I met your guy. And so, yeah, it's very much the same thing with Florida, man. It's just people finding us.

And like... It's so funny. It's the perfect name. It literally is the perfect name. I mean, as far as like, if you think of... I know it's not what you're thinking, but like, as far as like, searching something or like the marketing of something to be successful,

that was the perfect name you could have came up with. Yeah, yeah. I mean, because it was, every headline starts with that. Yeah. And if it would have been called sinkholes, like, it probably would have been the same movie, really. Yeah. But maybe it wouldn't have bubbled up. There's something about titles.

Yeah. I know. Well, I see it with your podcast. Like, I look through and I'm like, smart the way you guys title these, like, are fucking. Sometimes we overthink them, though. Yeah. Yeah, we sometimes, it's way too much. Sometimes the ones you don't even think about, it's like, it's all about,

it really the thing that matters is the content more than anything. Yeah. So many people focus, like, really. hard on the titles and like thumbnails and like whatever keywords and all that stuff but like the biggest biggest thing i've taken away is just it's all about the content it's like how how good of a conversation how interesting was that or how much can people relate to it you know yeah yeah i mean we love the nat cox episodes oh yeah it's true everybody loves that too and it's one of those things where and this is a high compliment i was like let me let me just see what these guys are all about i click on i was like i'm

just going to watch five minutes while well i got to go switch the laundry i ended up watching for three hours and I'm like all right they're fucking on to something with this. One incredible storyteller. Oh dude, he's amazing. Yeah. Legendary. It was a total accident too getting him out here. Like I didn't even really want to have him on here. I was tired of like

I was sick. I was doing a lot of like the criminal stuff. Like people who've been in prison for a long time telling their stories is great but I felt like I was going too far down that rabbit hole. I was going to start getting some different shit on here and he emailed me from the halfway house and he was just like, hey, I want to come on your podcast but I'm still on probate. I'm on the halfway house. I'd have to like skip work and come in and uh i was like just let me know when you're out and we'll do it and then one day

i had a guest scheduled to come in and he canceled last minute so i just like shit i need to get somebody in i need to do an interview this week and so i called him i'm like can you get down here in like three hours he's like let me see let me see if i can do it let me call my buddy was a car and he just came it was like just like random like that and i ended up being like wow super successful oh god he killed it so you guys had him on your you guys to interview with him yeah we talked to him yesterday he he he came over at uh like one in the afternoon and left it like nine 10 at night really we had a whole day yeah it was really it was really fucking interesting like as soon as he got there we just we shot the podcast and um then we you know like he wants to talk to us about like

maybe we can figure out how to get some of these stories told like he obviously has a ton of stories and um you know we wanted to hear them all so he hung out and he was so generous and god what a funny day like we're we're sitting there and we're like smoking pot and he's like hold on yeah he's never smoked pot or drank in his life that's crazy we need to get him high somehow we we talked about a mission we talked about that all night after he left we're like man we got to get this guy high i don't know if he'll ever do it but could you imagine what happened if you gave that guy mushrooms oh well that that's the dream that's the dream we'll get there we'll get there when i don't i don't know what would happen i don't know if it would be extremely uncomfortable because he's he says

himself he's like I'm a narcissist and the mushrooms fucking start to tear down those ego structures yeah it's everything he is is that yeah is his uh you know his ability to be so charismatic and articulate that's like his most powerful thing he's got you know what i mean the storytelling yeah yeah yeah and you see that with some people when they smoke pot like like like like my mom's like that she's a fucking whippersnapper and she smokes pot and it's just like and she hates it because she's not in control anymore right you know you see that's like sometimes, but I like that. I like the things that are like humbling me and making my ego go down.

The mushrooms are pretty hardcore, but the mushrooms, I've always been afraid. But all my friends take them and I've always been afraid because I've always been like a super lightweight with weed. Yeah. Like all my friends will eat the same side. Like, even my wife will eat like the, eat these edibles and I can only eat like a quarter of it.

Yeah. And it hits me harder than a big, than the full one hits her. Yeah. So I'm just like a super lightweight. So I'm afraid. I'm afraid to take mushrooms. I was too. I was a micro dose or something.

I literally had to have somebody catch me off guard with them. The way we ended up even taking them was we had them in our freezer after Tribeca Film Festival. We had a meeting with some Amazon executives and we're out and at a bar and they see we're not drinking. They're like, you guys are potheads, aren't you? And we're like, yeah, we don't really drink. And they're like, let's go smoke pot at your house. So we go back with these, it's two Amazon executives. We didn't even know them.

We didn't even know their names. Like we were just like hanging out at our apartment smoking pot. And I'm talking to one of them, this woman's just like saying how she takes mushrooms with Seth Rogan all the time. And like, Seth Rogan loves American juggalo. You should take mushrooms with Seth Rogel. I'm like, I've never taken mushrooms. I'm like, I'm too scared, whatever.

I'm like, we have them, but we're scared. And she's like, you have mushrooms? I'm like, yeah. She's like, let's do them right now. So we're like, fuck it. All right, let's do it. And we did our first mushroom trip. And it was scary.

It was very uncomfortable. And I haven't eaten meat since. All my relationships are better. we meditate every day twice a day you know we have a spiritual life I know that word scares you're full-blown hippies basically yeah because I grew up a punker like I was into like crust punk like I was just like

the furthest thing I made fun of hippies I made fun of the Grateful Dead and like we're so typical we started taking this stuff and like grew my hair out wearing tie dye we're the biggest deadheads you can imagine now so I think it caught me off guard it caught my ego off guard like I didn't have time to be too scared about them or anything. It was just like, oh, you're all of a sudden taking these things. And I was your age.

Fucking changed me. Changed me. And I was like, oh, thank God, man. I was running out of, my ego was kind of backed into a corner, my ways of dealing with the world. I was like, my tools weren't as sharp, you know, like, I was like, I need to bring a, in retrospect, it's easy to say this, but I needed a sense of connectedness to come back over my being, to keep even making these films. So, yeah, the mushrooms coming into my life, which then led to acid, which. which like to DMT, which like to Toad, which like to ayahuasca, daimate medicine, all kinds of shit.

And just coming at your ego from different angles, like just trying to keep it humble. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. I think it's a good practice. For any artists. How often do you do it? Do you like micro, I know a lot of people are doing it every day all day,

like at work, they think it like a little bit, like a microdose. We don't really work. So there's no, like, when we trip, we fucking trip. And I just go, you go hard. Oh, yeah. And I think more people should do that. There's a lot of talk of microdoses these days, but what we always end up saying is like the main problem is people not taking enough like we see

people they'll take one tab of acid and then struggle with their ego the whole time it's like why didn't you take three and just fucking be god for a little bit you know like just do it do the fucking thing be god that's what it's doing is stripping away the layers of that of you that make you think you're you and it's actually fucking a huge relief you feel incredible in the days and months after psychedelics so really oh oh my god especially mushrooms it like if you had any sense of anxiety, depression, whatever, just clouds, just part. I mean, there's studies now that say like pretty much six months of relief following a mushroom journey. Talk about yours that time. You casted a heroic dose of mushrooms, which is five grams.

Heroic. Five grams. Wow. That sounds like a lot. Yeah. It deserves that name, I would say. Oh, yeah, totally. All I can say is, like, I was having panic attacks. I don't have panic attacks anymore. You know, it's like, it really did kind of shift something within me from the inside out where I'm like, oh, it's all good. Like nothing I'm worrying about is worth, like, having a panic attack about. Yeah. It can be pretty simple messages. But you have to, like, feel them, you know? You did five fucking grams.

By herself. Like, that's another part of the heroic dose. You didn't have any people with you. You were just alone. Yeah. I was desperate. I was, like, like, Sean's saying, like, up against a wall, like, freaking out, not understanding what's going on in my life, like, wanting to get a grip.

And, of course, like, my hero's Terence McKenna, so I'm going to listen to him, you know? And I'm glad I did. Do you remember everything pretty vividly? It's so ineffable It's funny because I was out in L.A. We are never more than this far apart from each other And I was going on Adam Carolla's podcast in L.A. So I was like, I'm just going to go do this.

I'll be back in a day. And I go out there and I'm hanging out with Isaac out in L.A. Who shot Florida Man and Camgirls. Yeah. And Cass is calling us like every half hour like, What the fuck is going on? You're not real. You're not real.

And I'm like, yeah, I am. I'll be home tomorrow. I didn't even understand the extent to which she was fucking tripping balls like she was having what are they called like tactile tactile uh hallucinations where your like your phone felt like a spiky ball like that's a level of tripping that's like fuck yeah i was his mom i was jumping timelines i was like greeted by like um i mean i got the like angelic message like it's okay like everything's okay but then you know my mind's trying to make sense and i get into this like paranoid loop of like no it's not okay you're actually like

like maniacal fear come over me. But, you know, so in some ways I had one of the worst trips I've ever had. And so it's interesting to say like, oh, I had this horrible trip. Like I was scared. I was calling Sean. I was all this like fear and paranoia. Existential dread. Existential dread.

But the truth is it lasts like six hours. And then you can like feel and integrate all that fear and take that with you and be like, oh, like, I'm okay. You know, that was a feeling I went through, but I'm really okay. And it's actually, life isn't what I think it is, so let me have fun with life. And it's kind of has allowed me, psychedelics allowed me to be a little more playful with my existence. Because I really did get from that message like, oh, Sean's not real. And then I was like, oh, well, love is real enough for me, you know.

So this might not be real. This might be an illusion. This might be all my sensory perception, playing tricks on me. And I might not actually be where I think. think I am doing what I think I'm doing, but there is something about this experience that is worth holding on to. And it's like, goes simple foundational stuff of like love, you know, it's like so corny, but it's so true. Yeah. I mean, like the first time I smoked DMT, it was so mind-blowing and like, holy fuck, what are these colors? What are these fractals? Where am I right now?

But the eeriest feeling of familiarity where you're like, I've been here before. This seems freaky, but like is this where I was before I was born? Like, or is this where I'm going when I die? And like, that's what I've deduced from a lot of this stuff. We're not the type of people who take a lot of psychedelics and pretend to know anything. Additional, I just feel more comfortable in my being and more comfortable knowing like this is temporary. There's no way to kill or crush consciousness. It just keeps going.

The cycle keeps going. And, yeah, like, it invited in that connectedness that I think I needed to keep making films. and making podcasts and now like i just feel like we're building community now and like we're not filmmakers we're not podcasters those are things we do we're not even community builders we're just we're just hanging out we're doing our thing i'm not looking to wear any masks or identities or labels i'm not like i've had all the validation i could possibly need for filmmaking and and all this shit so i'm like really determined to find out what life's all about you're interested the movie interstellar yeah yeah of course like how you said talked about like love

It's its own, it transcends time and gravity. And that movie, the love is the... I went into the bookshelf. Yeah, you went into the bookshelf. Crazy that you brought that up, because literally that's the only reference that she ever says about that trip is she's like, it felt like I was behind the bookshelf in Interstellar. That's what I was picturing when she was saying that.

Uh-huh. Yeah, that's a heavy one. I mean, in Iowa, I'll take you right there and keep you there for six hours. Like, one way you take it to the shadow realm, and it's like, am I going to make friends with my demons and realize they're not that big of a deal? or am I going to fight them? And, you know, it's all fear of death stuff that starts coming up.

And if, like, these things teach you how to not be scared of death so you can live. And that's what we probably trip like once a month. Yeah. I mean, life is pretty simple when you think of it as, like, breath play. You know, like, really just when you can bring it to the breath and, like, everything else is like, I'm playing a game of running these thoughts. But when you realize, like, what it's all about is, like, following your breath and, like, connecting to that inner piece, the connection, you kind of have.

have a good time even when you're having a bad time because you're like, oh, I'm so stressed, but you can kind of have an outsider perspective on it. You know, so you're not so much as in the stress or in the fear or in the paranoia. You're like, oh, look at me being stressed. It doesn't mean I'm not going to look stressed to Sean, but it's like I have more of a sense of humor about it. Yeah. You take it like life less seriously. Yeah, it's like we're actors in a movie. I'm not going to fucking try to fucking method act this thing and take it too seriously. Like it just gives you that one step removed where you're like oh okay cool this isn't that big of a fucking deal like

what's the biggest difference between mushrooms and DMT or like a shitload of marijuana edibles yeah marijuana edibles scary is the scariest of all could be the scariest of all psychedelics

like really in a way because you don't know when they're going to wear off if you're on a bad marijuana trip from eating too much you don't know when it's going to stop you know like yeah with mushrooms you're like, this can be over in four hours. Like, I know it. I could feel it wearing off.

But yeah, mushrooms and DMT, like I feel like they share a similar molecular structure, but it's totally completely different experiences. When you smoke DMT, you're for three to ten minutes just in a fucking crystal palace of fucking, like, the gates of heaven just open up and you're just there. And it's,

that's what I like about the idea of DMT. It only lasts 10 minutes. We could have done it before this podcast and we'd be talking like this right now. That's cool. I like that. It is. And now they have DMT vape pens. So like you'll go to a concert and you'll smell DMT everywhere.

It's like, Jesus Christ, that's hardcore. Because, I mean, you're, you close your eyes and you're in another dimension. You're being visited by entities. Like, it's some pretty fucking hardcore shit. But I highly recommend smoking DMT. Highly recommend it. When we first took mushrooms, we were like, we're not going to take any more drugs in our life. Mushrooms are great.

Yeah, let's keep to the, natural stuff. We don't need to try acid or anything like that. A year later, we tried acid and we're like, this is our shit. This is, this is the sacrament of our life. It still is. I don't even count marijuana because it's so, it is us. Like we are, I'm made of cannabis. It's fucking coming out of every orifice of me all the time. But acid, ooh, daddy, that is, that's our shit. That's your favorite? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah, totally. And I feel like we, we kind of like being evangelist for it because a lot of other people like to talk about like the natural things and all this and I'm like acid fucking does it's it's it's exactly like what it sounds like

acid it's just like stripping everything down and fuck that you have you have you heard of the kid uh that I forget his name but he does all gas no breaks YouTube channel yeah I've heard he goes around interviews everybody yeah he uh he talked about how when he was a kid he did a lot of mushrooms and took a lot of acid and now he's got like a problem where he sees like permanent uh permanent illusions in his vision everywhere he goes like usually that's like a wave or or a flickering yeah like a flickering or like little spots things floating around so he's like permanently tripping kind of yeah i've heard of stuff like that that's honestly why i'm glad i didn't discover that stuff in my teens or 20s like i'm so glad i waited until my 30s to find any of this

stuff because I think it's too freaky it's like there's some kids that would that can handle that kind of shit I was not that type of person it's kind of nice to build an ego before you strip it down you know yeah yeah interesting yeah yeah totally like have a sense of who you think you are and then that's all when we say ego we're just saying like I'm just saying like an identity of you yeah yeah right just it that's your story of you so yeah keeping that updated and stripping it down and rebuilding it it's threatening though because you You know, if you're stripping your story and realizing you're in a story, you can rewrite the story. And when we're all like little monkeys walking around being like, we can change this story, it's a little threatening to the status quo.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of weird to think about. Like, I'm afraid that it's going to change me and turn me into something else that I'm not, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to do that. That's the biggest fear. That would have been my biggest fear had I had time to even contemplate it. But they came at me in such a way that I was like, oh, okay, I guess I'm doing this. And literally laying on my bathroom floor like on the verge of purging, like,

With messages of just like clean your diet up dude, you know, like you're an adult. Stop eating like a fucking four-year-old like eat plants, motherfucker. Be good to your family, douchebag. And like, I took that shit seriously. I was like, I don't really usually get messages from the great beyond. But and now they're, it's like that portal's open. They're just flowing in all the time. You know, when you learn how to listen, when you learn how to calm it down.

And like Cass is saying, the breath play. Like it sounds like cheesy and woo-woo, but like as a. I did more psychedelic work. I started to understand, like, religion and the religion I came up with better. And it's like, I don't subscribe to any of it, but there's beautiful stuff in there. And, yeah, you know, like, I think all Jesus was saying is like, you are God. I am. You know, we're all the son of God.

You are God and so am I. And really, the word of God is your breath. And you can come back to it at any time. And you listen to your breath, listen to the Word of God. Things will calm down. It really will. Take some deep breaths. inevitably that'll get you out of any kind of mental crisis.

Yeah, I've heard people talk about breathing themselves into a psychedelic state. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the Wimhoff stuff. Yeah. There's methods that, like Wimhoff, you can stay conscious. There's methods where your hands will become like this, holotropic breath, breathwork. That's where you're like aggressively breathing in and out. Yeah.

And yeah, there's other tactics. I mean, you can, there's breathwork to get you into any kind of state. that's some master level shit I feel like psychedelics is like preschool compared to that shit because it's just like a cheat code yeah it's a cheat code it's like I'm gonna take this thing and be God for a while and be the best version of myself for 12 hours like without doing any work really

the work is in integrating it though it's it's like you get a glimpse behind the curtain it's like you get a glimpse at a high watermark of what you could be and for people like us I'm like oh cool oh we're not artists we are the art and we're works in progress and we're just trying to to make this thing more beautiful and we're trying to let beauty radiate and emanate off of us and it's an inside job so just these realizations start to flip the script on everything you were told about life and looking out for yourself and

and you know individualism and all this stuff it just starts to get it's stripped away and your heart's path becomes more clear and I know this sounds far out I know it does but uh you know it's It's how this stuff's affected us. Yeah, I mean, it's like, talk about taking a natural evolution with the filmmaking. Like, the last two films we made were, you know, people tripping. Yeah, what's up with the one with the old lady and her daughter in Joshua Tree on mushrooms? Yeah. That was interesting.

Yeah, yeah. When we discovered this stuff, a few years after we discovered psychedelics, I started thinking, I was like, this would be a fun thing to try to work into our filmmaking. like I don't know how we could do it, but it'd be fun. So again, like I did with the bowler, I just started telling people like, here's what my next project is. It's going to be these people, it's going to be people tripping. If you know anyone, let me know.

And I asked this girl, Ryan Worsley in Seattle, she's a filmmaker. And I was like, ask, ask, if Seattle's a perfect area to do this, ask people around here. Like six months later, she hits me up. She's like, nobody would trip on camera. I asked a bunch of people. But my mom's never tried psychedelics. She wants to try them and she said she'd be down for you to film us. And I was like, yeah, when are we doing it?

So a month later, we're in Joshua Tree, gave them an eighth of mushrooms each. And it was fucking beautiful. It was, you know, the mom's 72 years old. Yeah. Never, she didn't really even have a reference point for psychedelics. And she's like, I just literally have no idea what this is going to be. So we spent the night before with them, just cooking dinner, chilling out, like, explaining what this could be, preparing them for it. And showed up the next day and just shut up.

them tripping for like six, seven hours. And, yeah, that film's called Joshua Tree. And I feel like it's a prototype for stuff we want to, for future projects we want to make. We wanted to see if it was even possible to do this and depict the psychedelic experience in a way that could get you kind of in their mindset. I think we pulled it off. And then we made another one of our friend, Aila, taking two and a half tabs of acid in Woodstock. That one's called Sweet Nothing.

And, yeah, that was the last film we made. It's kind of my proudest film. Sweet Nothing was the most recent one. Yeah. When did you do that one? 2019, 2018. Okay. Yeah, the COVID slowed us down a little bit.

But yeah, she was the chick who, we were making our movie Camgirls. We met all these psychedelic cam girls in Seattle. And we had only tried mushrooms, but they were way into acid. And they turned us onto acid and DMT. And a couple years later, Aela calls us up. And she was just like, I think it's time that you film me take acid. I was like, fuck, yeah, cool. Let's do this.

We just rented a house and what? stock and, you know, pretty easy. We all took acid. I was tripping off camera and we just hung out for a day. And I wanted them to be, I wanted those films to be really visceral. I do not want to feel like the audience is having its handheld through this experience. There's no expert that comes in and says, here's what's going on. And it's just like purely just with her.

And that was a, that was a really fun one. So do you operate the camera when you do this stuff? No. You always get a camera operator and a sound guy. Yeah, that's usually, uh, that's the, the bare minimum. We have operated cameras on some of our things like when it's completely necessary, but

I like the subjects to be distracted with me. Okay. You know, because I can engage them in a way where they're forget about all that shit. So that that's like my main focus is like you get what you give. You don't want them to be focused on the camera and stuff? No, okay. No, I don't even want them to.

Florida man was a little different because we only brought one lens, so we knew the camera's going to be like a character in it because we're going to have to get so close to get close to get close-ups and like it's it's almost going to become a thing where you're you see them reacting. It's great. But yeah, usually we hire sound camera. Cass does everything.

I just ask questions and find subjects. That's the more expensive way of doing it. Yeah. Is it? I always do the camera operating and the talking myself whenever I do that kind of stuff. I do a lot of that kind of stuff. So it's like I just like, yeah, I take the camera with a microphone mounted on it and I just. Oh, wow.

So you did like deck hands and stuff. I was watching those. Those are great. Yeah, just like that. Wow. And the sound came out good. That's why I always get worried about. A lot of times it's shitty, but I fuck with it in post and try to make it usable.

It sounds great. What we watch sounds great. I'm always wondering about people's sound approach because I'm like, that is the one thing. It's like, fuck, man, this looks, this is intimidating. The thing, the, there was like a moment. There was like a film this kid did that was on, went on YouTube year, like probably a little over 10 years ago that, like, got me into wanting to, like, like start creating stuff and putting it out myself. What was that?

It was, I want to say that Isaac worked on it, but maybe I'm totally wrong. But this dude named Saman, Ketchavars or something like that, he made this music video called Love Deluxe, where it's basically, it was the first, like,

POV video I ever saw. And it's basically, uh, he's like following this girl through all these different towns and stuff. Like they're on a beach. And he's like following her through all these different, personalities and like you just have to watch it it's hard to explain but cool i wonder if isaic shot that it was a really cool music video and it was shot on like the first 5d that shot video but I know there was a guy that had to like walk around with a camera strapped to a helmet.

Yeah. And I want to say that he was part of it. I couldn't be wrong. Oh, interesting. I'll have to, like Isaac shot like 300 music videos. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think he was a little upset after Florida man because so many people were trying to get him to do documentary. And he's like, I'm more of a sci-fi guy, you know?

So he just like take it off his website. He's not even a doc guy. And like, we pulled him into that world. And he had a lot of fun with them. We've had a lot of fun together and we're going to work together again. But he's totally like, what the fuck? I'm getting hit up about all this stuff. in that world now.

So he's probably just like full, he's like full on getting hired by like TV networks and stuff doing like, he's like union guy now. Yeah, he does, he shoots a lot of stuff for American horror story, I think, something like that. There's all kinds of shows that he's. It's such a different world when you're, when you're like working for like the established networks doing that kind of stuff versus doing stuff like that you do or like stuff that I do.

That's why he craves, he craves us after enough time away. He's like, all right, what are we doing? No one. DPs are always excited because it's kind of hard to believe, but we're like, we're going to shoot for like four hours. Yeah. And then we're going to call it a day, just hang out, you know, because it's more about. It's the vibe. It's the vibe.

So we have to keep our vibe good so we can put a container around it so that when we're going out, we get what we want. And it's like that's where Sean's kind of different because he doesn't, as a documentary filmmaker, doesn't overshoot. He kind of, if anything, maybe undershoots to make it really easy for Kathy to go in the edit. And also just he gets the pieces he wants and puts something together. Well, I just, I know what, I know what we want going into it. And once I feel like we got it, I'm like, I'm not going to torture my subjects or my crew because of my insecurity about not getting something. Whatever we got is perfect and we're going to make it work. Yeah.

I didn't even know that's not how other people work until, you know, we work with people like Isaac and they start telling us about how other documentaries shoot. And I'm like, holy shit. They're like, oh, they want you to roll 18 hours a day. Whatever you see, just fucking get a shot of it. That's brutal. I can't, I can't work. Like that's too tedious. It's too tedious.

I would already bailed on this medium. Yeah, you need to do it your way. You need to do it. You like, I mean, you clearly did that with Florida man. I mean, you,

like, that was like, uh, it redefined anything like, there was nothing like that before that I know of. I appreciate it. Especially on the internet.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's just like the same way, kind of like podcasting is a new thing. Mm-hmm. Over the last 10 years or whatever, it's kind of taken off now,

but yeah. That is kind of like its own little thing that no one ever, people didn't take that and run with it yeah yeah it's uh well it's some it's like like i don't know it's just it's just raw footage with no music or b-roll yeah yeah i like to i like to tell people um you know they're like wow you didn't use any music or whatever and i'm like watch it again there's a dope soundtrack in there but it's just happening in such a natural way you don't notice it's happening when a bar door swings open and you hear fleetwood mac and we're with a cab driver and he's playing david bowie and we're with these fucking weirdos from cocoa beach and and you

you hear fucking Jeff Rottal in the background. Like there's like little things that we, me and my editor were really getting off on the edit. Like, like, whoa, there's like a secret soundtrack to this thing without being obvious about it. It's there. And like, just like little things kind of bring that to life. So, you mean it was already there or you guys added it?

No, we didn't add it. Okay. We didn't add anything. But like what we discovered in the edit, we were like, well, there's a soundtrack to this movie. And it's so what I would think it would be because I lived down here. And it seems like music got frozen in time in like 1998 down here. here and it's like you know like like god smack like i wouldn't hear that anywhere else you come down here you're thrown on the radio and it's like oh they still like puddle of mud and god smack and like what year

is this man so yeah all that like just like little stuff like that it was such a pleasure to edit that movie it was just like four days you know the way we edited that one it's like it's like i'm i like to think of it like i'm putting together a mixtape when it's something like that because it's all these disparate stories it's all nothing has anything to do with each other so I'm just like, this guy's a song, and then this guy's a song. If I was making a mixtape for you, how would I want, how would I want this to feel? You know, the first thing does, it sets the stage and you want to take it up a notch and you want to ease it out a little bit. So, you know, I'm just kind of thinking of it like, like, kind of like music.

So we just start putting it together and then we watch it down and we say, that guy belongs here, get this guy out of there, watch it down. And like, that movie, I feel like we watched it like five times and we're like, that's the movie. And we literally would just upload it then, you know, just like put this out on the internet. Yeah. No film festivals, nothing like that. Let the people decide. I love the Trump rally one too. That we shot ourselves.

We shot on cell phones. It was funny because he had announced his candidacy and like the media is going crazy. And we knew he was getting all the support, but the cameras were never turning to the audience. So like we knew that this Trump phenomenon was building, but we were like, who are these people? Like now we understand who they are. But at the time when we made that, that was January 26. 16. There wasn't a lot of stuff about them and, uh, or, or a lot of ways to even get down with it. So we thought of this idea. We're like, there's no way we can bring real cameras in there.

Let's shoot on our cell phones. So we put an ad on Craigslist and we're like, if anyone has an iPhone 6S and they want to make 50 bucks show up at this Trump rally, a couple people showed up. We threw them 50 bucks. Cass and I walked around. Another friend of ours, Britt Wargan, who's a photographer, walked around with us. And we just all just like, nobody's intimidated. by that shit. No. Nobody gives a fuck, man. The most, the weirdest, most fucked up racist shit was coming out of people.

Oh, yeah. You know, like, Cass was great on that one. Like, they see her and they're like, I don't know why. They're just, like, disarmed and they're like, whatever, she just got a cell phone. I'll talk to this pretty girl. Yeah, yeah. The fucking shit people were saying. That film was incredible because they knew that they could only fit 2,000 people in there,

but 10,000 people showed up. And so all of a sudden, they just cut it off. So there's all of the sudden. a sudden security has built a wall. All these people are there to cheer on a wall. They're now stuck on the other side of a wall and they're screaming and throwing a hissy fit and fucking claiming illness and like just like just complete meltdown mode. So it was just hilarious to see this crowd go from like cheering on this racist to like completely melting down when they couldn't get in this thing blaming everyone. But they were thinking like Trump will fix this.

Yeah. What tower are you in? Las Vegas. Oh, Vegas. Wow. It was of some shit casino. I was going to guess like Daytona or Orlando. Yeah, it's the same type of people. When we showed up there, I was like, is this an Aerosmith concert? What the fuck is this? I was like, oh, who are these drunk 60-year-old ladies? What the fuck is going on?

You know, like, I had no idea of what his supporters were like or anything. It was super eye-opening. We left there and Cass was like, Trump's going to win. I was like, get the fuck out of here. No way. No way. With what he's saying up there, no way. Insane, right?

Cass is like he's going to win. Yeah. It's amazing how many people feel the same way those old ladies did oh i know man crazy yeah yeah there's a lot of i mean they're all around here there's we're in the middle of it right here oh i know yeah yeah same here half my family lives down here and they are so hardcore into that stuff and like we're not partisans i don't i try to fucking stay out of all that stuff yeah like trump's a piece of shit but so joe biden so welcome that guy promises two thousand dollar checks where's that shit motherfucker i saw the funniest fucking tweet

today uh this dude who does like he's a stand-com comedian and he does like political commentary. I'm sure he's a big, big podcast, Tim Dillon. Oh, dude. The fat gay guy. Big fan. I'm the hugest, hugeest, dude. He's so fucking fucking.

He's the funniest guy out there right now. There was, I don't know if you heard, but the Associated Press, they posted something. They said that Hasbro is now going to start making in 2021, Mr. Potato Head is going to be called Potato Head. He's not going to identify as a Mr. So he, like, quote tweeted it. You know what I mean? So he said, Mr. Potato Head is now non-binary. You still don't have health insurance.

Well, but that's why I love Tim Dillon so much is because he'll, they're trying to divert our attention away from that and he'll divert it right back. Yeah. The bigger audience he gets, the better for all of us because he really does speak for the people and he calls out bullshit. Like, come on. They want us all divided on these oddly nuanced, increasingly, fucking, increasingly detailed lines.

Like, oh, you're different from me. Fuck, fuck all they were a human species. Like, you were going to let them divide us up like this? And it's to make sure that we're not looking up and saying, wait a second, why the fuck do we have masters? No, let's blame each other. No, it's the brown guy. It's the immigrant. It's the back dude.

It's fucking white people. It's what, it's Karen's. Get the fuck out of here with all that fucking stuff. We're all the fucking same. Take enough mushrooms, you'll realize that. Exactly. Smoke pot, you realize that. When you make like some sort of series that makes it easier for people to be comfortable

with the idea of trying mushrooms. Yeah. That's what, I mean, the Joshua tree kind of made it like, okay, I'm watching this lady take mushrooms. Now it's kind of, I feel less scared now. Yeah. Well, that's... I feel like, am I going to be more scared than her?

Right, right. Was she puking, by the way, into that? She thought she was going to. Okay. She held it down, man. Like, for a 72-year-old lady to take an eighth of mushrooms, like, she just had a good fucking time. She just loved it.

Yeah, but that's kind of... She was kind of, like, convulsing, though, at one point. Yeah, I know. I was like, this isn't a good love. Oh, no. She's like, I was like, yeah, that's the come up. That's kind of what it feels like.

Oh, fuck. But honestly, that what you're saying right now is our next project where we want to make a film called the family trip where we're interweaving three families tripping together and make a 70, 80 minute thing that is palatable so you could show your mom and be like, here, check this out. And she might want to do mushrooms. because we've tripped with our parents, we've dosed our parents,

we've done all that stuff at this point. You've got your parents to take mushrooms? Yeah, and acid. And they're Trump supporters? No. Okay. None of our parents are like that. Okay, I thought you said that they were.

No, no. Our aunts and uncles. Just family, just random family. Every single person in our extended families besides our parents are Trump supporters. Just like typical. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So the family trip is hopefully a film we'll be making soon. Right. That sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And well, I mean, it started with, with us tripping with it. Well, with us discovering this stuff and be like, oh my God, everyone needs to know about psychedelics. Like they don't. Yeah. I feel like it's just such a foreign, scary, dark thing for a lot of people, you know, if you don't know anyone who's done it and you don't know, you don't talk to somebody like you. Yeah. A lot of people, I mean, it's not something that you're going to come by very often. Even our parents did not trust any of this stuff. They didn't like when we were just always very honest about with them about what we're. doing it honestly took like five years of them seeing the results of us being more conscious for them to be like fine what is it what are you guys doing i'll do it i'll fucking try it you know both my parents did acid when they were when they were young like teenagers and hadn't touched in 50 years and since then my in the past couple years i've taken mushroom with my dad number of times given them molly that's fucking awesome molly a million times really acid i've given him a candy flip once

we went to a Grateful Dead concert. And it helps him. He struggles with depression. He struggles with suicidal ideation. When someone is, when their ego is taken over and all the negative stories have bundled up, that's what depression is. And all it is misdirected creative potential. And it's just you're putting all your creative potential into reinforcing this negative story.

And the mushrooms or the acid or whatever just comes in, just dissolve that story temporarily. Giving your body, your cells, your muscles, your nervous system a break from that. tension and I think that's why people feel such long-term benefits from it. I've seen it with my dad. Do you ever get scared that like one day you're not going to be as good as you are? Like at your peak, like when you made like the best work you ever made. Do you ever like think like fuck, my mom, I keep getting older. I'm going to get less creative or less good of this. Not not less creative, but it does come into my consciousness every now and then I'd be like, oh, what if American Juggalo was the biggest thing you're ever going to do? Yeah. Like, fuck man. That's a terrifying thought. I was 29 years old.

Like, no, that can't be the fucking peak of my artistic output. So it's honestly what keeps me seeking and trying different things and not nervous to fucking start over, destroy my ego, fucking. It's because I know I'm going to be creative. I know we're going to be thinking of good ideas, whether or not we'll get the opportunities to make films and get them seen on that level again. I don't know, that shit may have sailed.

But like I said before, it's like we had to switch into a mode where we're like, we're the art, we're the works in progress. you know, we're not just artists, we are the art. And you can see us evolve over time and you can see us update our operating systems. And it's kind of what we're trying to bring people in on with our podcast. It's very casual. It's just like, it's just setting space to hang out with us.

Now we have a daily podcast called The Come Up where it's like 15 minutes every morning. And it's me, Cass, and our girlfriend, Mare. And we just do a little like, hey, here's what Monday is all about. Let's get through the day. Here's some wisdom. Here's some quotes. Here's some songs you could check out. That's cool.

Just trying to like, you know, give people a little something. The podcast is, I love the podcast because, I mean, I've said this before, but it's like, it helps me build discipline. It's like the opposite sort of way I'm used to creating stuff to our like, like, like, like coming up with a Florida man. Yeah. I got to do Florida man. Like, I got to make this thing happen.

Just it was the same thing with deck hands for me. Yeah. This is more like, I have to do at least one of these every, every week and post it on Sunday. day and it's like I don't care what it is I got to do something yeah yeah and it's uh have you ever uh heard of a book called the war of art yeah yeah it's a great we talked about like the muse and just sitting down and doing your work and letting it come to you that that really like struck a nerve for me and changed everything for me to where like just like coming and sitting down and doing the work whether it's whether it's good bad whatever it is just do it and then release it into the world

absolutely like and i think that's what it comes down to for us is like we've become very aware of like the carrot that's always dangling in front of us as artists is the muse is like we will chase the muse and we will serve the muse we will very much recognize when the muse has taken human form and that there's a particular energy in our world that is making us shine and you know it it it i think it what it what it does is it you put a new lens on life and you know you're you're less victimized by the circumstances and you're just more like just like waiting for some inspiration, to put some creative wind in yourselves and just kind of looking around for that as opposed to, I don't know, the way that we used to do it would, like you're saying, it's like

we come up with deck hands and then it's going to take a, this is going to be a big long project and it's take this long. The podcast just allows us to keep serving the muse and like just feeding this beast. I don't even know what the fuck it is, but it feels like each, each episode like illuminates another pixel on this board that's like, you know, figuring out what my life looks like. And, you know, trying to soak up wisdom from different and unexpected places. I think that's what I really get off on. And that's what I love about what you did with Matt is. Like, I was like, I know this type.

I know what this guy is. I'll watch him for five minutes. I'll get a sense of it. And I'm like, oh, man, of course he's fucking full of wisdom and charm and all this shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The crazy thing for me about doing this podcast, I realized how stupid I was.

Oh, man. Two, on a weekly basis to realize that. I mean, I still am, but a little bit less. Yeah. I've only done, this is like the hundredth episode. I've done it. Oh, wow. Wow.

You guys have done like three or 400, right? We're up to 230 or something like that on ours. You know, there's been times where we haven't put one out for a month or so, but we've been consistent every week for a couple, two, three years now. And, yeah, it's like, it builds this muscle in you where it's just like, it forces you to do it because with a film it's so easy to be like i'm not feeling it today or this week or this month right cool we'll we'll get back to the family trip when i feel inspired with the podcast it's like i really do hold a fucking gun to my head to do it like our our household is a disaster if we don't do

one of these a week yeah both feel like shit we both feel like some like just wait on us and it's just like it's not a good vibe i think what it's what's done for me is allowed me to take myself less seriously. I'm looking for excuses to take life and myself less seriously. And when you get on a podcast every week and you're just like, cool, I'm just talking shit for an hour and a half, those ideas like, they're not with me anymore. I'm just like, cool, I got them out there. I don't have to dwell on that thought anymore or let it fucking crystallize into my destiny or anything. It's just like, cool, I said that. I don't know. That's who I was then. I'm going to forgive that person, put this out and that's that. And I love that process of just like purging ideas, purging of thoughts.

just like keeping the energy moving. That's what I think of the podcast. It's just like, keep the energy moving. Yeah, definitely. You'll still make films. I'll still make films. But man, the podcast, what a discipline. I recommend everybody do it.

Even if you don't put them out, like, I've interviewed my mom and my dad. I'm like, I'm going to fucking have those the rest of my life. I need those things. Like, I have a really well-shot interview with my dad where he's talking about selling fake acid to the hell's angels.

And fucking, like, insane. fucking criminal wild drug stories and I'm like man I'm gonna have show this to my grandkids that's sick that's amazing yeah yeah like for me when I shot deck hands we shot it it didn't take it's that long took a couple months to shoot like the first two episodes but after we shot it it sat on a hard drive for almost two years two years two years I was afraid of it I was afraid because it was so much yeah I had so much content yeah and I I I I I literally was terrified of the idea of like sitting down and going through all that. I knew it was gold too.

Yeah. Because the first thing we shot was when we, I don't know if you remember, but we went on this guy named Shane's boat. Yeah. And it was like laser lights and fog machine. He had Marilyn Manson music videos playing. So Florida.

And it was like, as soon as we left there, like me and my buddy Luke, we just high-fived like, dude, this is, yeah, we got it. Wow. I can't believe you sat on it for two years after that. Oh. It was terrified. Like just, yeah, it was daunting the idea of trying to edit it into something. Is it because you're the editor?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I did everything. Yeah. I think this is how we're, this is how I'm able to not sit on something for two years is because I've sat in the edit room with Kathy for so long on so many different kinds of projects. And I've heard her complain about what other people dumb on her to where I'm like, I don't want to be that guy.

Like, yo, a, a day's worth of footage is going to be four hours at the most. I'm going to watch it with you, you know. Like, I, I don't want to over. overwhelm her. And we tell young filmmakers that all the time. They'll come to us bragging like, hey, I have, I shot 1,200 hours so far from my next documentary. I'm like, good luck ever fucking getting that thing made. No editor is going to touch that. You're not going to want to fucking touch that. Right. It's going to be like finding a needle in a haystack, you know? So it's like, where did you make the decision making as a filmmaker? Like, as a director, that's the only thing

I'm doing. It's like, I'm just curating. And I can make those, I can make edits in real time. Cool. That's enough with that guy. Let's fucking move on. You know, let's not torture everyone here. Right. And plus it's just like I just want to get out of their life. You know, I don't want to be hanging around. That's a great way to do it. Yeah. I've never thought about it that way. Yeah, just move on, you know. How long have you been shooting the family trip? Have you started shooting it yet? We haven't started shooting it yet. It's something we want to shoot in the next couple months. Cass is going to start working on casting. It basically comes down to that. How do you cast something like that? It's like that's. So it's three families. Yeah. So are we allowed to talk in

depth about it? I mean, absolutely. Okay. Okay. This is how we get things made. Three families who have never taken acid before. Yeah, or mushrooms or ayahuasca. They could smoke toad. I want to do like an older couple doing MDMA together who's maybe been through some shit, maybe lost some family members. You know, like they've seen it and maybe that like a loving perspective on their life could really like blossom over the course of a trip.

I picture that being like, yeah, one of the stories is like kind of sweet and it's an older couple and they're taking MDMA and they're connecting in a way and they're talking about some traumas that they went through and they're saying it from such a forgiving place like to have that weaved in there with you know maybe like three kids and their parents you know who none of them have ever tripped before but they've gone through some tragedy and loss and they take these mushrooms together and they get over it and maybe uh you know like a like a father and son taking acid and just weaving these things i don't i don't even want to get too specific about i say a problem they're working out trauma trauma yeah that's usually that's usually

what it is because like you'll take this stuff and uh like md M.A especially because it's so, you're so lucid. You're more, you're more with it than ever. You are just, but you're operating from the heart. And it's just like, it's the forgiveness drug. So. There's a reason it's been used in couples therapy along the West Coast. There's a reason that they are giving it to veterans.

PTSD, yeah, yeah. Because it's like, you know, when you have a traumatic experience, you kind of store the memory of that experience in your cells and your body. And you kind of have this story about what happens when you take, MDMA you can revisit the experience you had with a more loving mindset so you can kind of reprogram reprogram you know it's neuroplasticity we're very neuroplastic but yeah uh it's it's a beautiful healing thing that has worked wonders for us and that's why i'm like i can't move on from this you know it kind of seems like i'm not a i don't want to say a one trick pony but i to say like oh

psychedelics changed our life and we have to talk about psychedelics all the time it's it is true though because I know how many people are suffering right now, whether it's like trauma or anxiety or despair. Despair or disconnection. And I know that there is something that doesn't just treat that like anxiety, like a Zoloft or whatever it is, but actually goes to the root of it and heals you. And it's like something where you don't have to keep taking mushrooms. Like you could probably do like three mushroom trips, heal something that's like a trigger of yours and then move on with your life. Yeah, it's just that there's not enough money to be made in these things because they're so curative that our system of profits over people is not going to be accepting of it.

When you take this stuff, it's like, this is illegal? Like, I remember my dad had no context for MDMA. We show up at his house. It was my birthday. And we show up to say hi to my parents on my birthday. And my dad's like, I want to kill myself. I'm dumb, done. Like, I can't go on.

He was an anxious, depressed mess and like, we're freaking out. He's been in rehabs. He's been in psych wards. He's been in prison, you know. He's amazing. He's doing great now. But he was just having a really rough go. And I was like, I don't really know what to do or say about this.

We recently discovered this stuff, MDMA. I think you should try it. And he's like, I don't know. I don't know. I was like that. I don't know what else to tell you. This is what I have that I can offer you. And I know it's safe.

He's like, fine. So him and I take it together. And like an hour goes by. and it kicks in and he just comes over to me and he had no context for this and he just said all veterans should have access to this because he's a veteran himself and that was that was his first thought so and and not only like that's what it's being studied for that that that's a big use for this and for my dad to to deduce that with like with no context just he felt it he felt the forgiveness he felt the the trauma kind of dissolve away a little bit I was like man he's a

case study in this right now. Yeah. It's insane that this stuff's illegal. It's insane that people don't have access. I mean, and the other thing we've found and been told is you don't have to be sick to get better. You know, you don't, there is, I mean, the human experience can be kind of traumatic for us. So we have these things that kind of get programmed into us that we do have room to maybe reflect on and adjust course and, um, yeah.

Yeah, my friend, my dad's friend is, uh, going through some, um, some medical shit right now and they prescribed him Vicodin and he's like dependent on the Vicodin now for because he's addicted to it obviously because it's so fucking addictive and he drinks so he mixes it with the alcohol

and he wants he's so dependent on his prescript I'm like dude this guy used to be a big weed smoker I'm like you need to quit smoking weed I'm like why did you quit smoking weed like that seems like the one thing that would be the best for you right now he goes because I get drug tested for the Vicodan if I smoke weed they won't give me the Vicodin anymore Wow.

Oh my God. How ass backwards is that? I know. That's how they keep you on the Vicodin. Because if you smoke weed, you might not need the Vicodin as much. Well, you definitely. I mean, they've seen this in states that legalize marijuana. Like, opioid use goes down 17% in counties where there is a legal dispensary.

Like, that's the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we're going to see. And the funny thing is that of the stuff that they criminalize, it's so obvious why they're doing it. They're trying to criminalize Cratum right now. Like, cratum helps people. It's a plant. It's so innocuous and it helps people get off heroin. They need to demonize it though because it's a very cheap and effective way to get off heroin. And the people that created the opioid epidemic want to be able to control and profit from the solution.

So, you know, and they have the media working for them. So, like, that's why any opportunity we get, we try to speak to this stuff and try to speak to it from a place of, like, you know, we're normal people. We're not drug addicts or anything. We're using this stuff very responsibly. We don't drink. We don't fuck. I've never taken a pill in my life. I've never done cocaine. Nothing like that. Psychedelics. These are experiences that I think are essential. I think, you know, and this is how I'll convince you. Imagine going through your life and never having an orgasm. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's on par. Like I say it's on par with essential human experiences with falling in love and having sex. Psychedelics right up there. And creating art. It's like it's right up there with the essential human experience of me.

making you feel connected in this world, making you feel at home, no matter where you are. Like, it's such a gift. For a person that struggled with anxiety myself and a ton of self-doubt, like the confidence that it's given me to traverse the world in a way as an artist, not doubting myself, not constantly questioning myself. Am I doing enough? Oh, God, did I put enough shit out? Are people paying enough attention to me?

Do I have enough money? Should we get a mortgage? Should we have a kid? This is like none of it is a fucking concern to me because this stuff. giving me a little bit of a perspective and confidence that, you know, I think that no person should go without, no right-minded person should go without. And if we lived in a more advanced, evolved, civilized society, people would have exes. I feel like it would be the type of thing that your dad and his buddies would take you on a camping trip when you're 13 years old and you'd get introduced to cannabis and mushrooms. And like when you're 18, some other people show you what acid's all about.

And you learn these things in a ritualistic way, and it's handed down from the elders. And it's not sneaking around and fucking partying and recreational. It's ceremonial. It's ritualistic. So we're trying to bring some of that stuff back to it. We created a new holiday called Portal Day. January 11th is Portal Day. That's an acid holiday.

Why January 11th? No, no, no, it just sounds good. 1.11. Ooh, I like that. And it's also, it's the perfect amount of time after the holidays where it's like you've had to come down from the holidays. there is that like weird depressing first couple weeks of the year like uh type of feeling and like to have right baked in there fucking like this year it was wednesday a whole like people all over the place this year it was all over the world this was our third year doing it we have to have people in solidarity

with you all over the world and and the point of the holiday is you go in and uh you write down all your fears on a piece of paper with your friends crumple it up put it in a bowl take the acid at 111 and at the end of the night burn your fears It's as simple as that. That's portal day, opening up the portal. That sounds fucking amazing. It's so fun, man.

It's so fun. And, yeah, I mean, like, that's all. We're just, like, trying to decorate our life with cool shit like that. We have this thing called Church of Chill,

and it's just like, it's like all the religions in one, but all we're worshipping is a chill vibe that's available to everyone that I think a lot of people are averse too because we're productivity-driven society.

So we have the Church of Chill and that's a music is the sacrament. If you could normal, to make people more comfortable with psychedelics, you could change the world. Oh, absolutely. And the first attempt at us doing this back in the 60s, it came off to, like, revolutionary. And it scared the fucking shit out of people. And now it seems like, it seems like this stuff is kind of having its day.

Well, we have the information now to have, like, safe trips where you have good set and setting. Like, we've learned from those stakes in the 60s. You know, we've learned. And now you can do your own research. You can go on Arrowhead. You can go to maps. You can ask people. like us. Like, how do I do this?

There's so many podcasts out there about how to do this stuff and how to do it responsibly and where to get it and everything like that. So, yeah, we just want to be a little reminder. Yeah, I mean, I feel I'm optimistic about the future of this kind of stuff and people being more like awake and aware of everything that's going on even like when it comes to the government forcing opioids down your throat. Yeah. Yeah. There's a reason they want you on opioids. There's a reason there's a reason they're not giving us those $2,000 checks or giving us $2,000 checks every month because the desperation and despair breeds consumerism.

And, you know, when they got us cornered like that, we got to work for their slave wages, and we got to buy their bullshit food, and we have to take their bullshit education, and don't question the military-industrial complex, and don't question the prison industrial complex, and stay away from these plants, because they might wake you up.

Stay away from this little piece of paper. It's illegal. Get the fuck out of it. here. How often do you guys take MDMA? That is, I would only keep that to every three or four months. Three or four months? Yeah. Now, is there like a, I heard there's like a hangover effect that where like it sucks up all your, uh, your dopamine or something. It can feel like, and we don't take it with MDMA, unlike acid or some of the other things, minimum

effective dose, like 100 milligrams that on an empty stomach will do you. If you're going 200 milligrams or higher. Minimum is 100? To me, that's the minimum effective dose. And that's really where you want to stay around because I like when you do 200 milligrams 300 you're borrowing from the next week you're and that's going to be a rough week where it's not like you're going to be depressed you're not going to feel anything it's just it's like a void type of feeling of just like what the fuck so we take the minimal effective and we haven't had we haven't really struggled with that we like to give ourselves a lot of spaciousness and like that's what we've tried to afford ourselves is like how do we have spaciousness around these experiences so that we do have the time and space to integrate

them. Yeah. You know, where we don't have a podcast the next day or something like that. We've made that mistake many times. Really canceling. You're like,

MdMA for a podcast? The night before. And we're like, oh, no, we'll be fine. We'll be fine for that. And like the next day, you're just like,

I don't know. It's so worth it, though. It's so worth it. Every time it hits you, you're like, why was I questioning this? What about MDMA during a podcast? We would do that.

We probably have done that. I've been tripping balls on acid on our podcast. I've smoked the empty. I've done ketamine on our podcast. and you know we've played it fast and loose but not a lot of people listen so we can get away with it if we were doing your kind of numbers i'd probably have to be like this isn't real pot no no no yeah yeah what okay what when did you do the what was the name of the opioid

documentary you called xiana oxyana how long ago did you make that one oxyana came out in 2013 we shot it in 2012 um that was basically we had made this film american juggalo and right after it I was like, that achieved, that was like the first thing that we did that really popped off. Juggalo? Yeah, American Juggalo. And we were like, I think that my next thing needs, like I need to, this is my career is starting right now. Like, you can feel it palpably. I'm like, oh, the spotlight's on me.

People care. I could make something bigger and more ambitious. And I didn't know what it was going to be. I knew I was kind of drawn to those stories. But we actually were just on a road trip, me and a friend and a country singer friend of ours Johnny Fritz and he had when he grew up in Virginia and he said we used to fucking take ATV tours we used to hang out in the mountains of West Virginia in this town Oceana we should go there so we just go pulling into Oceana one night on a long road trip and it's this it's this

cold coal mining town in the middle of fucking nowhere in West Virginia it's an hour away from any other town you just really feel like you're driving into the middle of nowhere weaving through these mountains and the lights and you're going into this town and we got there and it was an eerie feeling as soon as we got there i could tell something was like a little kind of how all of america feels right now that's how oceana felt when we first showed up there like maybe i shouldn't be here yeah something's off like i don't know what it is and but we i was like i don't know how to really i don't know let me figure out what's going on and then we saw a juggle well and i was like i know how to talk to juggle i'm at home yeah i went up to this guy and i was like yo what up whoop whoop who and he's

like yeah i made this movie american juggle he's holy shit oh my god you made that What the fuck, yo. And, like, he was excited. So I'm talking to this guy five minutes, and he, like, takes me over the side. And he's like, you want to know the truth about what's going on around here? I'm like, yeah, what is it? He's like, dope. This whole town is full of dope.

That's all it is. He's like, it's so much, there's so much dope here that they call this place Oaxiana. They don't even call it Oceana. Everyone calls it Oaxiana. The cops are in on it, the judges. The fucking everybody's in on everybody's on this shit. And I'm just like, what the fuck? Ten minutes after that, he's shooting up in front of us.

And I was like, all right, this guy. You might be telling the truth. This seems pretty fucked up. And you just look around and you get a sense of the place. You're like, yeah, this is weird. So we hung out for a few days, got to know some more people. And then in the back of my head, I was like, this could be a movie. And I'll come back and I'll make sure it is.

So it came back a couple months later and just went there with my cinematographer, Hillary Speira, me, cast her and a producer, went down there, no cameras, just showing up as people. And we stand out like a fucking sore thumb in West Virginia. And we started picking up hitchhikers. that was the way we made that movie. We just started picking up hitchhikers because there's a ton of them and they would get in the car and we'd start asking them questions.

We'd ask where we were taking them. We were just kind of putting two and two together, getting a sense of the scene. That's how we mainly, we mapped the territory by picking up hitchhikers. And you weren't filming any of those? No, just making friends. So then we went down there a few months later with the cameras. And we were doing a Kickstarter for the film at the time.

This was a mistake. We were running an active Kickstarter. or when we went to make the movie. So the people in the town, especially some of the drug people, knew we were coming down there to make a movie and we were getting threats. Like, don't fucking come down here with your cameras.

We'll blow your head off if you show up in this town with cameras, digging around in the drug scene. So it was like a little bit harrowing going down there. We had to have like two plain closed security officers with us the whole time that were packing heat and like make sure. And they needed to pull their guns a couple times. Really? We were making the movie.

Yeah. Yeah. So we get down there and we just, there was there's no way to plan for a movie like that you're just in a town that has a problem it's like how do you even tell that story so we're just like let's just talk to whoever will talk to us and talk to one addict talk to one dealer they they tell their friend like these people are actually cool it was really cathartic to talk to them it made me feel better to tell my story just one thing led to another and we interviewed a lot of people in that town and um yeah that was that was our first

feature length movie oxyana it's out there on our youtube channel for free so you raise all the money on Kickstarter for it. Yeah. Yeah. We raised a 70 grand for that one. Whoa. Yeah. For in a month.

That's when you could do that. I feel like a lot of stuff that made my career, you couldn't even do now. Like there's so much everyone is doing it. It's just like, I don't even know how the fuck I would get something noticed now. You know, like literally all I used to do was make the thing and put it out. No marketing or promoting or money behind it or anything. He used to a blog and you're like, oh, whoa. Yeah.

You got how many people did it take to raise 70,000? A thousand. One thousand people, 70,000 dollars. Yeah, I think that's, yeah. Maybe less. Yeah. That's insane. I know.

We did it again, too, for Camgirls a year later. Raised more. We raised even more with Camgirls. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was cool. That's a trip.

That's like, that's what I mean when you, I'm like, you have to fall in love with every part of the process. Otherwise, it's going to be fucking torturous. Like, I thought you were just paying for all. of your own pocket. The shorts? Yeah, because they cost four grand.

But that, like the budget for Oxyanna was probably 200 in the end. I pumped a bunch of money into it. Another producer did. We raised that money online, but we paid everyone back. Everyone got their money back.

We never really made money on any of these movies, but we also haven't really lost money. It's kind of a weird thing. Like, it's not really tangible. Like we put out a movie and we get commercial attention. So that seems to be the way the universe pays it back, but all our stuff is free. That's been important to us.

And it's also been important to us to premiere on the internet as opposed to on a network or a film festival or anything like that. I think that's super important to us. Yeah, YouTube's pretty awesome. It's amazing. It's amazing. YouTube is like one of the fucking best things. It's the worst

because they just demonetized your channel for talking about psychedelics. Right. You know. Yeah, there's also a lot of weird wonky shit going on with YouTube in the way they're trying to Have you heard about that law they tried to pass in that last COVID bill with the, it was called Section 230 Communications Decency Act or something like that? No. We heard of that?

No. Basically when like YouTube and Facebook first came out like, I think it was 2006 maybe, somewhere around there. They came out with a law that basically says these platforms are immune to legal action because there's third party people like you and I posting content on there so you can't sue YouTube. Like you can go after the people. that make it, which I think it makes sense. Or else YouTube wouldn't exist probably.

Yeah, they'd be getting sued every day. And there's like, also that part of it's a copyright law to where like if you violate someone's copyright, like if I post Florida man and say this was mine, I'm obviously violating copyright law. YouTube can't be sued for that. I can be sued for that, which is rightfully so. Okay, cool. So I think it makes sense. But Trump was trying to get rid of that. Well, because he hates these platforms.

He hates these platforms. Yeah. It's very personal for him. Yeah. You're like, oh, that doesn't really. I don't know. That doesn't add up and you're like, oh, yeah, these platforms censor you. So it's like, I think it's up in the air right now.

I don't know all the specific details on like the politics of it and how the people that are voting for, the people who aren't voting for it. But I know it's kind of up in the air right now. What's going to happen with that? I don't know what's going to happen. It's kind of scary. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of scary how much power these platforms have to just make or break your life. You know, like, we just were, we woke up one day and we were demonetized.

We were like, okay, nothing we can really do about it. The whole channel? Yeah. What? Yeah, I know. And it's like, fuck, man, Oxiana's about to have a million views. We haven't made a dime off that. We're on unemployment right now because we can't fucking work.

What was the reason they say they demonetized your whole entire channel? Because of what we're talking about. Whoa. They were like, your content is not in line with who we advertise to. Was it just a video, though? Or every video you upload? I don't know. We're guessing they don't really like the tags.

I mean, even American Juggalo is a little. Yeah. fee. Because even Deccance, there's only one episode that's not monetized on that. And that's some fucking gnarly shit that we're doing it.

Why did they demonetize it? Because it was, I think it was the woman who gave birth. The title is the woman who gave birth to her father's son. She talks about getting raped by her dad and having her dad's son.

And like, an ad for dog food comes up during the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, I can kind of understand that a little bit. Yeah. But at least they didn't take the video down. I understand,

okay, don't run ads on it, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, they don't take our videos down, but they just say, You can't make money off him. It's fucked up.

Yeah, that's super fucked up. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, well, I think we'll figure it out. I think it's like, the way to do it is like to kind of have your tentacles spread everywhere. It's like, we might get a commercial, we might get a little money from Patreon, we might get a little money from YouTube. You know, we might get hired to do some other weird shit who fucking knows. Just trying to be adaptable. Yeah.

Yeah, you got to adapt to these fucking times. Did you hear David Chappelle's story, his recent story about HBO and Netflix? Yeah. Like, why do we need you when he was pitching Chappelle show? Yeah, yeah. They worked it out, though. Did they? Yeah, I heard that Chappelle shows back on HBO and Netflix with his approval and everything.

Okay. What a power move, man. He basically puts out an 18-minute video that, like, fucking bullied these huge networks into fucking succumbing to him. It was amazing. That's insane, man, because it's so true. I mean, they're fucking monsters, dude. Oh, yeah, they don't give a shit. Especially when you're a young black dude, you know, however old he was when he was, when he was signed.

those deals like they didn't give a fuck they wanted to take advantage of them that resonated with me when he was talking about that like being a young kid trying to pitch his show and try to you go through the rigmarole of convincing these old men in suits to pay you to make your show well okay let's see if our uh the people that pay us will accept this let's see if it'll fit with our advertisers that's how they determine what's good or what's not yeah i love the idea but that's why i started creating content online is because i i went through the process of trying to create and pitch shows to networks and stuff and I had all a bunch of I had a bunch of packaged content that I just kind of like reformatted for YouTube. Oh, I just started posting it and then making new stuff and well you hacked the system

because like that fucking chasing that like oh I got a meeting with so and so and so and it's like fuck all that. It's the worst. You're going to ask permission to do what you got to do in this life. Right. If you want to make fucking films, don't sit around waiting for someone to fucking sign off on that shit like figure out how to do it like Christ almighty you could make a movie on your fucking iPhone. And like there's there's really no excuse now. So, yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, it's, I see it way too much with, with young filmmakers. It's like, and I get it because I was like that at one point too.

They're like, they're like, they hit me up. Like, hey, can you look at my thing? Can you read my thing? It's just like, you don't fucking need my approval. Right. You don't need anyone's approval. You like this? Fucking go make it.

Make your mistakes. Put them out there. Fucking feel how that feels. Forgive yourself and start making the next thing. That's who you evolve as an artist. But if you're not putting it out there and not getting even that feedback from yourself, that feedback, like you know how it feels different when you watch your edit as opposed to when you're showing it to somebody else? Like it feels completely fucking different. That's how it is when you put a project out.

People start imbuing it with its with their meaning of it and you got to let go and you got to say, fuck man, I might have made mistakes here or there or everywhere in this film. But people are casting meaning onto it now. It's not mine anymore. I got to start making the next one. I'm going to make this one better. This one's going to be a better reflection of who I am and what I see humanity as. That's amazing, man. Yeah.

I don't know. Well, cool. I appreciate you doing this, dude. Yeah, incredible. Great fucking time. Tell everyone who's listening where they can follow you and listen to your podcast and watch all your stuff. YouTube.com slash very ape or very ape. TV.

All our films are there for free. Our podcasts are there. We have a radio show called Church of Chill, and we have to hide that behind a page. well unfortunately because it keeps getting torn down fucking youtube demonetizing you yeah yeah so and spotify and sound cloud everybody came after us at once and uh so yeah patreon dot com slash church of chill uh you can find us there you pay any amount pay one cent and you can get access to our radio show additional podcast and our discord community our discord community is like my fucking favorite really oh my god it's like other like minded homies it's like how the hell are we all finding each other like

just dope psychedelic artists from all over the world finding each other and just communicating all day it's helping me get off other platforms really oh yeah how do you talk to them just with the app yeah yeah yeah it's just like a streaming text and you can get on video if you want or whatever but like we have a couple hundred people on there it's just like it's like active all day and all night and it hooks up to your people that pay on patreon yeah yeah yeah i need to set that up oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i need to figure it out i haven't figured it out Discord's weird. It's hard for me.

Yeah, I know. People were telling us to get a Discord server years ago, and we're like, whatever. And now we have one. I'm like, fuck, I wish we started this year's ago. Yeah, I need to do it. Dope. Yeah.

Yeah, so that's, and we have this morning show called The Come Up. That's every day on our YouTube channel and on Instagram TV. And that's at Very Ape TV. Awesome. I'll link it all below too. Oh, cool. Cool. I appreciate it.

Sean. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you, Cass. Thank you. All right, guys. Seminal hi. Yeah, rock on.