Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 95: Inspiration vs. Plagiarism ft. Rhett & Link | Ear Biscuits Ep. 95

Episode Date: May 22, 2017

Rhett and Link get passionate about the fine line between inspiration and plagiarism, how it happens, and what steps they've taken to avoid it. Listen & subscribe at: Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/29PTWTM Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2oIaAwp Art19: https://art19.com/shows/ear-biscuits SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/earbiscuits Follow This Is Mythical: Facebook: http://facebook.com/ThisIsMythical Instagram: http://instagram.com/ThisIsMythical Twitter: http://twitter.com/ThisIsMythical Other Mythical Channels: Good Mythical Morning: https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink2 Good Mythical MORE: https://youtube.com/user/rhettandlink3 Rhett & Link: https://youtube.com/rhettandlink Credits: Hosted By: Rhett & Link Executive Producer: Stevie Wynne Levine Managing Producer: Cody D'Ambrosio Editor: Meggie Malloy Graphics: Matthew Dwyer Set Design/Construction: Cassie Cobb Content Manager: Becca Canote Logo Design: Carra Sykes To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. This week at the round table of Dem Blighting, it's just your boys. Your boys are back. Your boys are back in town and by your boys I mean, Rhett, that's me, and Link, that's him.

We're gonna be talking to each other. This is a good one. Wait, we're like rappers or something? Yeah. Where it's like, we gotta constantly say our names. Your boys are back, Rhett, Link. Link speaking. Just this week I wanted to do that.

I've been in that kind of mood lately. But this is a good one. I'm excited about this conversation because. I'm a little nervous because I might say the wrong thing. Right, and we'll edit that out. I might get upset. We don't edit stuff out. But we're gonna dip our toe into something

that is potentially controversial, which we don't always do. But basically we're gonna dip our toe into something that is potentially controversial, which we don't always do. But basically we're gonna be talking about plagiarism and inspiration. What is the line between the two and how have we navigated that? In light of some recent events, but also just like it kinda opened up this whole world of,

as we think back on our career, we have all these examples of how we've navigated this space from that perspective. Yeah, and what our priorities are and where do we place that line. In general, I think this is, we're interested in having this conversation about our creativity, our approach to creativity and how it relates to this,

but maybe on other podcasts, we'll hit on other topics and you can let us know, hashtag Ear Biscuits. What from a creative perspective are you interested in hearing from us as one of the many buckets that we can discuss. But before we get into that, we should bring you up to speed on some other things that we've talked about. You got the camera up your butthole and they learned some things about that.

So you were gonna roll that video now. No. But also the tour. Let's bring him up to speed on the tour. Before the camera butt? Not the tour of my anal canal by a doctor, which I will give you more than you wanna know in just a second. incidentally, that is the subtitle of the Tour of Mythicality. Tour of? A Tour of Link's Hanoi Gang.

No it's not, but we might show some footage there. Are you even gonna be there? We don't even. You don't need to be there for that. We don't even know what, actually, here's what we do know about the tour. The tour is, we are bringing the book of Mythicality to life in a big way.

This is not going to bookstores and reading the book. This is doing a stage show in a theater with music and we're putting on a show. We're putting on a show that you wanna see. It's bringing the book to life but it's also doing other things that we wanna do to connect with you in person. And there probably won't be any footage

from Link's colon video. I just thought about that just now, but now the more I think about what that would look like, it just looked like anybody else's colon, really. Go to tourofmythicality.com to find out where we're going and then you know what? You risk seeing that footage. No you don't, I don't have the footage.

I do have pictures, but tourofmythicality.com, we're going across don't, I don't have the footage. I do have pictures but tourmythicality.com, we're going across the US so don't miss it. We're coming to a place near you. Pre-order your tickets now. And if you can't make it to the tour, you can at least get the book at bookmythicality.com available for pre-order right now. So he gave me some medicine in my IV.

Who's he, just a man off the street? A nurse. A janitor? A nurse. Okay aitor? A nurse. Okay, a nurse. So they wheeled me into the, I mean, it's like an operating room, and they just, you know, they put a camera up there,

they search all around. The results were all clear. Did he show it to you before he put it in there? I just gave the most important part and you weren't even listening. I'm fine. I already know you're fine. Okay, I'm fine.

Totally clear. They found nothing. Not even a hint of fine. Okay, I'm fine. Totally clear. They found nothing. Not even a hint of anything. No dookie or nothing? Of course. All that had been cleaned out, you know, because I was drinking that stuff while we were recording that particular podcast.

He had an IV. He said, I'm going to start the medicine. That's the last thing I remember. Next thing I remember, I was back here working. They say don't come back to work. Yeah. But we were working, and I just remember talking to you

and members of the Mythical crew and I remember the look on their face was like, they were kind of smiling and then at some points laughing at what I thought was just normal conversation. It wasn't that you were saying weird things by the time you got back here, it was that you were obviously forgetting that you had just said something.

So we were having a buddy system conversation about songs. I can't remember exactly what it was, but we were trying to lay out a plan for what we were gonna do. And I would say something, and then you would say something back to me. And you would say what I just said like it was your idea. Like you were telling me something for the first time.

Is that anything new? And I was like, that's exactly, I just told you that. Which is incidentally, which is kinda what this whole podcast is about, is about where do ideas come from? Oh. And if you're. They come from me, I think is the point.

For in your mind. In my mind. That day, all the good ideas were coming from you. Oh yeah. But it wasn't even an idea, it was just like the plan. I would be like, so I think we could divide the songs up like this, and then we could do this, and we should be doing this with a Google Doc, and then you'd be like, what if we divided the songs up like this,

and we did this with a Google Doc? And I was like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. After a while, I just... but then like... I thought your voice was my own thoughts. An hour... And then I had to speak them. An hour or two into that, like early afternoon, I could tell that you were basically back to normal. Yeah but all throughout that afternoon I was like,

hold on, I remember eating lunch at Pollo Loco with Hadil, our assistant, because she had to drive me back because, you know, and they say, don't go back to work and have somebody drive you. Well I had somebody drive me but I had her drive me back to work. But we went to Pollo Loco first. I was gonna go to In-N-Out.

Crazy chicken. I remember calling Christy and I'm like, everything's clear, I'm totally good, and I'm going to In-N-Out. She's like, that's gonna be greasy, you don't wanna do that. And I looked up and there was a Pollo Loco. I remember that.

That's not gonna be greasy. Next thing I remember is sitting down and I was asking Hadil questions that I don't know if they were appropriate. Because I don't remember what they were, but I remember I asked her for extra gravy. Gravy, they don't have gravy. I got extra, and I got a whole vat of it.

I was dipping everything in that gravy. Hold on, because they have mashed potatoes in there? Yes, and I'd never ordered mashed potatoes in there, but I had a whole vat of it. I was dipping everything in that gravy. Hold on, because they have mashed potatoes in there? Yes, and I'd never ordered mashed potatoes in there but I had a whole bunch of that. And you got extra gravy. And it was like I was in an alternate dimension where Pollo Loco had vats of gravy and I was asking her questions,

because later I was like, Hadil, did I ask you like some probing questions? Probing, probably the wrong word. I had just been probed, I'm sorry. And she was like, yeah, but it Probing, probably the wrong word. I had just been probed, I'm sorry. And she was like, yeah, but it's okay, I understand. I didn't really answer them. She told you that?

Oh, I gotta talk to her and see what she asked. I don't know what I asked. Well, I'm gonna find out. I'm gonna ask her what you asked her. Yeah. But you're okay. I'm great. We're happy. You know, we're all relieved.

I'm good to go. And you got a good story to tell out of it? Well, I had the story I just great. We're happy, you know. I'm clear. We're all relieved. I'm good to go. And you got a good story to tell out of it? Well I had the story I just told. Yeah, you don't really remember. I don't know how good that was. Yeah, it was okay. It was just fine, right? But let's talk about the recent events

that is the reason that we're doing this podcast and kinda got us thinking about this. Yeah, as of the airing of this episode, I think we're, we're. A couple weeks out of this. We're like a couple of weeks out from this happening, so it's not totally fresh, but it's not something that otherwise we would talk about,

and it's not about airing any dirty laundry, or like venting about anything. To us, talking about and analyzing this thing that happened and that was resolved, and that we're cool with, it's fascinating. It's a fascinating conversation. Again, it's a way into talking about a creative process. So let's get into it.

Here's the highlights. And most of you who watch stuff on our This Is Mythical channel or just watch in general may already know about what happened. But a couple weeks ago, we uploaded to the This Is Mythical channel a video, what was it called, Shake Weight and Paint? Or what was the name, was that the title of the video?

Shake Weight and Paint? And basically it featured Jon, who works for us, who is one of our editors, who makes, he's been making lately a lot of these totally weird edit videos, he's done a lot of stuff with the GMM footage that we just thought is hilarious. Kind of in like the Vic Berger, Tim and Eric style. We don't know who came up with the style originally,

but Tim and Eric are who we know as the first guys that kind of did this bad on purpose, bad editing thing. Yeah and the Vic Berger thing of like zooming in and then doing like edit pans over to other things and like reconstituting footage in a new juxtaposition that makes it bizarre and funny. Him doing that. Like with the Jim Baker bucket stuff

which is some of my favorite stuff, which I talked about in the Mythical Monthly Newsletter was like one of my favorite things on the internet right now. Right so Jon emulates that. And that's on Super Deluxe, so Vic Berger, I think Super Deluxe hired Vic Berger to come and do those. Anyway.

I don't even know if that's a pseudonym. I mean, on Twitter it just says Vic Berger IV or whatever his actual, I mean, it could be made up. Sounds like a pseudonym. It does sound like a pseudonym. I don't know, we'll have to look into that. Maybe we'll get him on Ear Biscuits. Yeah, I'd love to get him here.

We should do that. Vic, we want you. But anyway, so the way this went down is, okay, we'll tell you how the video was conceptualized, but we put this video up, honestly, the two of us had not even seen the video. I saw them editing, I kinda saw John editing it over his shoulder, but a lot of the this is,

we're worrying about a lot of stuff, mostly buddy system right now, and so we're not looking at every single video that's on, we're not previewing every video that's coming out on This is Mythical. We watch the stuff when you see it a lot of times. And what we saw is a lot of people commenting on the video. First of all, a lot of dislikes. And so we're like, hmm, okay.

Whenever we see a lot of dislikes, we're like, okay, what happened? What went wrong? And then we see all these comments that are like, this is a total rip off of Dave and Ross, of Steve Zaragoza's Dave and Ross. And I'm like, uh oh, we know Steve. He's been here, he signed this table. He's a friend, fellow creator.

So we were like, okay, what is this? So we immediately went and looked at Steve's Dave and Ross character and then we see that he, I guess it started on SourceFed Nerd but then it was Nuclear Family. I don't know exactly how it all went down but he had a number, a lot of videos as this character Dave and Ross

which was obviously a parody of Bob Ross which is kind of what our thing was, was a parody of Bob Ross. It was, yeah. But he was doing it in this sort of Tim and Eric, Steve Brule, you know, the Steve Brule character from Tim and Eric, kind of this weird dude, weird edits, VHS things. First of all, incredibly funny.

Like, I loved it. Oh, yeah. I wish I had seen this before. Just because you liked it. Just because it's really, really funny. But then all these people are like, this is obviously a rip off. And now, we did not know,

we've kind of, we've been very clear to the staff here and people who are developing videos that we don't copy people, that we don't do things, we don't take videos and then make them exactly the way somebody else made them, just as a philosophy of mythical entertainment. Which I think will become more clear as we talk about more, there's other case studies that we'll walk you through

in terms of our own experience with this. So we knew that this had to be unintentional, but we wanted to confirm. So we confirmed with everybody who was involved in the development of the video, and what ended up happening was, is the way that our video got planned is, Jon had been doing these weird edits which.

A style in post. Which is a style that has been established by someone else. So he is editing in a style that is very much inspired by somebody else but the specific video concept was, they had made other videos with a shake weight. Like we made a shake weight and bake where Eddie was using a shake weight to bake, and so they wanted to do a shake weight and paint video.

Well, no, they came up with both of those in the same brainstorm session. Right. They said, let's do things with props from Good Mythical Morning, which we had used the shake weight in the sports bra episode. Right. And I was shaking with the Shake Weights.

And they said, all right, well let's use that prop in some other This is Mythical videos. And one of the ideas was to paint. Yeah, one of them was Shake Weight and Bake with Eddie and the other one was Shake Weight and Paint with John. And then that was John's video and John wanted to do that video and so John has been doing those style videos

with these weird edits. That's every video that he's been doing on a Sunday has been in that, and he's done other ones too, has been like that. And of course, we have an obsession with Bob Ross. I wear the t-shirts. So those three things came together. So then he impersonated Bob Ross, but he was painting with a shake weight. And he did some very specific things. He used weird paint names, he was acting super weird, he painted some inappropriate things,

which was a complete coincidence, none of that was scripted, the way that they did it wasn't scripted, but there were these, a number of similarities that if you had just seen Davin and then you saw that, you could come to a reasonable conclusion that we had completely ripped off just seen Davin and then you saw that, you could come to a reasonable conclusion that we had completely ripped off Davin Ross. And Steve's fans felt this way, understandably.

Well, and the whole SourceFed thing happening with the SourceFed being changed because of the whole brouhaha that happened with, I don't even know, I don't know any of the details, I'm not gonna comment on it. Well it's unfortunate timing that SourceFed Nerd as a channel was then rebranded. So it's like, hey guys, totally new people and a totally new name but the same channel

speaking to the same subscribers who are still around. And that doesn't feel good to anybody. And that character, specifically, part of that transition would necessarily mean that any characters that Steve had come up with while he was at SourceFed would be owned by that group so he can't be Davin anymore so it seemed like you could think that we're like, oh, he can't be Davin anymore, let's do this character

that's just like Davin and then we'll take ownership for this idea and move it forward. You could have come to that conclusion if you just didn't think about it. Well, especially if you're a passionate fan of Steve's, who then, who is gonna wanna take up for him and defend him and even go on the offensive

in our comments section, you know, for his sake. And you know, with that kind of recipe, I think fans, you know, it's easy to believe not the best, maybe the worst. It's easier to believe the worst about someone else if you feel like you're offended or you've offended someone that you're a or you've offended someone that you're a big fan of.

It's also very easy, because I've done it myself, to see two things and think, well, I don't think that these four or five things that these videos have in common can be coincidental. What today is gonna be about is how that's actually something that happens all the time, has happened in our careers countless times and we've had to pull the plug on videos,

we've had to completely change ideas when we found out the similarities between what we were doing and what somebody else was doing. And so it's a subject that we're incredibly sensitive to. Like this is, it's kind of one of the hallmarks of the way that we conduct our business as creators is to be very concerned about originality and not copying people.

So. And we're gonna flesh that out. Yeah, but all that to say that we took it seriously when all these people were accusing us of plagiarism. So what we did is we took the video down. And that was not an admission of guilt, that was a we care about this issue so much that in order to avoid even the perception that we would plagiarize,

we're gonna take it down because it's not worth it. It's not worth people believing that about us. We reached out to Steve, Steve's a friend. Yeah, we talked about it. We explained all this to him in an email and then we replied, because he had commented on the video. You know, he was barraged by his fans with,

you gotta say something and he didn't know exactly what to believe about it because we hadn't talked about it. Right. And so we replied to his comment, we set the record straight publicly, we went into much more detail privately just to tell him we would never do that to him because we're friends.

We would never do that to anybody. We don Because we're friends. We would never do that to anybody. We don't do that. We don't do that. As a company policy, we don't do that. So long story short, we're cool with Steve. That's completely been worked out. The video is down. But and you know, we've kind of given our side of the story

which is it was a complete coincidence. It happens and today we're gonna talk about how it's happened multiple times to us we've kind of given our side of the story, which is it was a complete coincidence, it happens, and today we're gonna talk about how it's happened multiple times to us and how we kind of navigate this whole space and what our philosophy and approach is as creators who create a lot of stuff in a space where a lot of people are creating a lot of other stuff. But now we're gonna pause to show some love to our sponsors.

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Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash ear. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash ear. One more time, try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash ear. Over the past few years, Link, every 72 hours, on average, I've heard you say one of the following things. Where are my keys? Where's my wallet?

Usually to yourself. Yeah, but out loud where you can hear it, so maybe you'll help me. Where's my blank, basically? Yeah, I lose. Have you seen my keys? No, I haven't seen your keys, man. It's a big blank, because I lose lots of things,

but have you been hearing that recently? I haven't heard it in weeks. That's right. What have you heard? I have heard this. Mm-hmm. That beautiful tune. That is the glorious sound of me finding the thing I lost.

Either my keys, my wallet, my laptop bag, even my bike. I could put one on my bike. I haven't because... You can put it on anything. Because that is the sound a tile makes when you're looking for your belongings. It is the tiny Bluetooth tracker that makes finding your stuff easy. And I love this thing.

Just open the free tile app on your phone to see your lost item on a map and then you can quickly find your item by making the tile ring just like that and it'll be back in your hands in seconds. I don't typically lose things, but now that I have a tile in my wallet and on my keys, I'm almost having fun losing them on a regular basis just so I can hear that and find them.

Yeah, it's like a fun treasure hunt. I mean, even if you lose your phone, all you gotta do is squeeze the tile itself and it'll make your phone make a noise so you can find it. all you gotta do is squeeze the tile itself, and it'll make your phone make a noise, so you can find it. And you can get yours today at gettile.com slash ear, and save up to 30% per tile on a multi-pack, plus you get free shipping, and because tile makes the perfect gift,

for a limited time, get a free gift box with a multi-pack order. Go to gettile.com slash ear. That's gettile.com slash ear. That's gettile.com slash ear. There are fans of Steve's from that whole situation that I don't think we could have told them anything to convince them that... No, in fact, right now,

they don't believe what we just said. There are people who will listen to what we just said and say, that's BS, you guys are lying. But it's too uncanny, and they can point out very specific things. Tig Notaro came out a couple of weeks ago and said that. More than a couple weeks ago. Yeah, this is. Couple months ago.

There was an issue with a Louis C.K. sketch on SNL about a. Birthday clown. A birthday clown being ordered by a guy, just one guy. So it's like clown showing up for a party but then it's just Louis C.K. sitting on the couch. Now, turns out that Tig has had, I don't know all the facts,

but for a longstanding sketch that went to film festivals and then is a part of like a touring show where it's the same concept. She orders a clown to cheer her up and it's really awkward because it's just one clown. Now the specifics are a little bit different after that but hers has a happy ending. And hers is a short film that has,

that's sort of the heart of the film is that she's lonely and in college. It's like 10 ending. And hers is a short film that has, that's sort of the heart of the film is that she's lonely and in college. It's like 10 minutes. Yeah. But the Louis C.K. thing on SNL was. A three minute sketch. Maybe two and a half minutes, something like that. But I mean there was a big controversy over that

because it was so similar and it was, I think just for a normal viewer, it's just very easy to believe that okay. How can you come up with those two ideas? They ripped that off, how could you come up with that? Now, my point is you could. I mean I don't know exactly what happened. I have nothing to do with any of the situation.

But I know based on our own experience, even if you look at the thing with the Bob Ross thing, it's like, all right, you have an idea, which for us was a shake weight in Bob Ross. And then you end up like making comedic choices, which are very interchangeable or very comparable to choices that another comedian made. Well, another way to say that is if you put With Bob Ross. which are very interchangeable or very comparable to choices that another comedian made. Well another way to say that is if you put.

With Bob Ross. If you put two comedians in an environment and you give them something to riff on, you give them something to parody, and there are two people who are of the same era, in the same culture, and are comedians, a lot of the jokes present themselves. Are gonna, yeah, yeah so. The same kinds of jokes present themselves. Are gonna, yeah, yeah so.

The same kinds of jokes present themselves. When you have that initial idea of. Happens all the time. The initial idea of what if a birthday clown showed up and it was an adult who just ordered them as if they were a stripper. Yeah, just one person. Or just for personal entertainment, leave the stripper part out. It's like, that's just a funny thought. Yeah, just one person. Or just for personal entertainment.

Leave the stripper part out. It's like, that's just a funny thought. Right. Because birthday clowns are funny and comedians like to think about how to subvert that or explore that in a sketch form. And once we first heard about it. Well, no, once you have that idea as a comedian

and then you start pitching ideas in your brain, it's like, it very quickly gets to specific jokes, I think, in terms of like, okay, at what point does the clown realize that he has been ordered by an audience of one, and what would that clown say? Well, turns out. I guess I'm here early. They both said.

They both said. I'm here early. Some of the same specific things. Now when we saw that before we got the other side of the story or the rest of the story, we both were like, okay, this is easily, could be explained as a complete coincidence. Now Tig Notaro came out and stated that a person

who was involved in the development of that sketch on SNL had very clear knowledge of what she had done, had definitely seen it. I don't know the extent, because she didn't call it any names. She was careful not to call it names, at least at the time. I'm not exactly sure, I looked before we started this and I couldn't get an update.

But it turns out that there probably is a creative connection. There's somebody involved in the development of the SNL thing that had clear knowledge of what she had done. And yeah, there was certainly an overlap in creative, in professional spheres. And if that's the case.

Even though the two of them, Louis CK and Tig hadn't talked for a year and a half. Right, and how involved was Louis in that? I mean, I don't know. When you go to host, I don't know. I don't know. It's probably more on the SNL writers than it is Louie. But it's like we're in such a similar circle as Steve.

And I mean YouTube, it's a big place but it's kind of a small place in the same way. It's like we haven't seen him in a long time or talked to him but the videos are floating around. It's so hard to believe that we wouldn't have seen his character, but I hadn't. It's like the guys who conceptualized on our team had not seen it.

Yeah. And so I can very easily, and I think I'm in the minority in feeling this way, believe that the Tig and Louis CK things could have happened 100% independent. Now, even with an overlap, now, when she says, now I know of at least one specific person who this could go through,

then all of a sudden, all right, if there is a specific connection, it's just hard to prove that any of that happened, but I'm saying, whether you can prove it or not, if there was someone who was inspired, maybe they forgot. And then, or, I mean, if they knew, if they forgot, that's unfortunate,

but if they knew about her sketch, and then started pitching it in an SNL environment. That's crossing a line. Yeah, that is definitely crossing a line. Yeah. You can't do that, you can't say, well, we're gonna take this idea, I bet a million people have come up with this idea,

I just know of TIGs, but we're gonna take it and we're gonna make some different choices. Well, it wasn't different enough. Yeah. You know? And that's wrong, but I think, again, it's like, did you know and what did you do with that knowledge? Did you try to steer clear of it or did you

take the best parts and then make different choices? I think that's not gonna work. Right, so in that case, if there was that knowledge, then we think that a line was crossed. I mean, both of them were funny, but. And if you made the thing, I bet it, and she's put it in film festivals and she's toured with it, I think, and all of her fans, she said,

were barraging her with, look at what they did to you. And it's like there's a groundswell of people. It makes it really difficult to not feel taken advantage of and ripped off, you know? Even though it's crazy how these things happen. Well let's talk about a specific example with us and how we were able to catch it before it happened. The Get Off the Phone song?

Yeah, so we have a song that's from a number of years ago called Get Off the Phone, which was actually back when we were doing a lot of sponsored music videos, and this was in partnership with Buick. We've had a lot of sponsors. Yes, we worked with Buick, created a song that was, it was actually anti-texting and, it wasn't even anti-texting and driving,

it was just about people. Being in the moment. Being in the moment. That was their tagline, being in the moment. So we were like. Being in the moment in a Buick.. That was their tagline, being in the moment. So we were like... Being in the moment in a Buick. Well, we want to make fun of people being on their phones. Everyone can relate to that. And you know, we very quickly came up with,

well, what ended up being, Get off the phone now, gonna be okay. But the name of our song before that was Put Your Phone Down. And we had a chorus, which was Put Your Phone Down. It was put the phone down. I think it was Put Your Phone Down. It was put the phone down, we had the melody. I think it was Put Your Phone Down. Put Your Phone Down, just like that.

Put your phone down and then. And we had conceptualized the whole video, right? We hadn't written all of the lyrics but we had conceptualized the jokes. We write songs in different ways but this one was, we had a chorus that was Put Your Phone Down and then we had a few lyrics but we had kinda mapped out where we wanted to go. We knew we wanted a coffee shop scene.

Yeah, we were going into situations where people were on their phones when they should have been in the moment and we were gonna take the phone and destroy it in front of them and that was gonna be funny. Right, so we had a coffee shop scene where somebody was gonna be, instead of ordering,

you know, you've got somebody who's on their phone and they're supposed to be ordering when they get to the front of the line, so we were gonna take that person's phone and put it in coffee. We had a scene where, oh, we actually, no, we had a urinal scene where we were pulling up next to, we were coming up next to somebody and peeing on the side of a dude.

Pulling up. Pulling out right next to a guy. Oh gosh. Flanking a dude who was at a urinal on his phone and we were gonna sing about this associate and take his phone and throw it in the urinal. And then we actually had an idea for a whole like montage scene set to dubstep music where we were gonna be going around

and knocking people's phones out of their hands to dubstep music. Like violently and. Now, you're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you. Somehow, right before we had got. You're not allowed to believe it. We got this far.

To put this into perspective about how coincidences can work creatively, we got that far, we had that much planned, and then one of us was looking up something on the internet. I remember this being a couple of days worth of work for us. Oh, easy. We found a song called Put Your Phone Down. It was a rap and it was by the guy who did

the Whole Foods rap which you can find this song on the Fog and Smog Films channel on YouTube. Put Your Phone Down. It's getting real in the Whole Foods parking lot. We knew about this guy. Yeah. And sometimes it's the Whole Foods parking lot. So that was his thing that went really big

and this was his other song which was after that, Put Your Phone Down. Let me tell you some things that happened in his video. First of all, it was called Put Your Phone Down and that was the name of our song, the exact name of our song. Now we had never, even though we knew about the guy and we knew his other song,

We had never seen the film. We had never seen this song or music video. There was a coffee shop scene in which he was in line with somebody who was waiting, who was on their phone instead of ordering. There was a urinal scene in which he comes up next to a guy who's on the phone at the urinal. And then there was a montage at the end of the music video

where two dubstep music, he was knocking people's phones out of their hands. I'm not making this up. We had those exact same three ideas, including the song title, and we had never seen this dude's video, I swear on title, and we had never seen this dude's video, I swear on my life, we had never seen this video, and we came.

You sound so defensive though. You need to pull back. Because I think people don't believe that this kind of stuff happens, and I'm saying, no, it's happened too many times to us. Oh yeah. You come up with ideas, like, if you're gonna, okay, so if you're gonna do something where you talk about

people being on the phone in annoying places and awkward places, oh, coffee shop, ordering, urinal, I mean these are things that people end up thinking about and then but specifically the dubstep thing, so we completely undid everything. We changed the name of the song to get off the phone. We didn't change the melody. We just changed, we got it.

Well because our melody was ours. Yeah. The song was completely different. And I didn't wanna have to redo that, so we just came up with words that would fit. And we changed the end. Get off the phone now. Why is now?

Why would you say now at the end of that? Because we had to. Right. Because we needed another syllable. Put the phone down is better. Yeah, we had to say now. Like put the phone down, that's what people say. Get off the phone now sucks.

Right, but we had to do it because of this guy. And we were mad, I was mad. And we took those scenes out. Not at him, not at us. We took those scenes out. There's no urinal scene, there's no dubstep montage of us knocking people's phones out. Still very proud of what we did,

but then it took us a couple of days to rework everything. And it didn't matter. It didn't matter how successful his music video was. No. To us at that point, it was just like, first of all, we may see this guy in the Whole Fool's parking lot. No. To us at that point it was just like, first of all we may see this guy in the Whole Fool's parking lot. Yeah.

It's where he hangs out. And it'll get real. It'll get real there. We've actually never met the guy since then, but I don't wanna walk around almost meeting him somewhere and then have to be like yeah, explain it myself. Well but out of principle, if his video had one view, if his video was private and had one view

and I got the password to his Vimeo video from my cousin, it doesn't matter how many people have seen it because out of principle we don't do that. But the thing is is that if your video has been seen by a couple of thousand people at least, which this one was tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, you can't get away with that.

We would have never done the Dave and Ross ripoff if we knew about it because, not only out of principle, but also because we're not stupid, you can't do that kind of thing and get away with it. And I think that's why when Steve's fans came after us that that made me mad because it was like who do you think we are?

You think we would do this on purpose? People don't know. People don't know what we would do. They don't know how we feel about this. That's one of the reasons that we're doing this podcast. I know but that's what, that was the emotional reaction I had. It's just like.

You don't know how we feel about this. You don't know how this is such a precious thing to us. Yeah, we think about it all the time. We've been doing this job for, you know, we've been on YouTube 11 years, you know, and this is something that we've encountered so many times. And at every point. Which we're very sensitive about.

Well, let's stay on the music thing. So, I mean, as musical comedians, I remember the first time we saw Flight of the Conchords, their HBO special. And we had a sinking feeling. And it was like, I felt nauseous, like I wanted to vomit because it was hilarious. It was so good.

It was two guys who had better accents than us, being a lot funnier than we thought, than we could have hoped to have been. And doing a lot better music too. Singing songs and that was the one thing that we were really, put place in our hopes. And then Jermaine's hair and glasses kinda looked like you.

And then. That was just insult to injury right there. So then for years, whenever we would write a song, a lot of our instincts that they nailed, because we have similar musical tastes. I mean, their album was a parody of Seals and Croft's Summer Breeze, which is very specific, and but I knew it because I love Seals and Crofts.

You know, but then all of a sudden now we had to run interference on every melody we chose. Well and specifically what we would do is we would be, if you're playing, you know I'm playing a song on the guitar. Because we didn't wanna be seen as a rip off of them. Yeah, and a lot of, so we. And you can't say, well we just have the same musical taste

and trust me we were doing this and. Well specifically what would happen though is we would be singing and when you wanna get a lot of, you wanna get a lot of jokes into a song, a lot of times you'll start singing like this and start saying some things and then when our voices got kinda low and we got kinda like this

and started moving our heads like this. It would make us laugh. We would realize we're doing this because we're fans of Flight of the Conchords and then we would have to completely go away from that and so I don't know if there's any songs that, I think a lot of our songs moved the complete opposite direction musically because we were so sensitive

about not ever seeming like them. Well we also did. Because that's what people recognized as musical comedy at the time. We did a lot of, I think we leaned more into doing rap music because we were also fans of rap and when you think of rap, you think of a rap battle. And then when you start titling a rap battle

on the internet, you title it, or you title anything on the internet, at least at this point in time, you put epic in it. So therefore, we said let's do an epic rap battle. Yeah, so we made our first epic rap battle, which was just the two of us dressed up, which incidentally, just a weird little thing is that in the Epic Rap Battle song,

I said, look at this turtleneck and a necklace, you'll be wearing this next year, and then a year later, Lonely Island came out with Turtleneck and Chain, which. Was the name of their album. Had nothing to do with what we did. Trust me, they didn't see it. It was a complete coincidence.

And we saw fans telling us, Lonely Island ripped you off. It's like, no. No, they didn't rip Lonely Island ripped you off. It's like no. No they didn't rip us off. We know they didn't rip us off. We know how this works. We made a fashion joke and we're flattered that they thought the same thing was funny

100% independently of that. Because they had come up with that before we did. But specifically, we did the epic rap battle and then literally just a couple of months later, Nice Peter and Epic Lloyd come out with Epic Rap Battles of History. The first one, yeah. The first one was after our Epic Rap Battle.

And we talked, we've had both of them on the show. We had Pete on the show first and we talked to him about it. We had talked to him about it off mic, but on mic, he repeated the story, which was, I knew you guys, because I had met you, but I hadn't seen your epic rap battle. We came up with epic rap battles of history. Again, you're a musical comedian on YouTube,

you're gonna put epic in a title with rap battle. He loved rap, he added a brilliant thing that we didn't, which was historical characters, and he deserves every, they deserve every bit of accolade that they've gotten and I don't know if they drew any comparisons early on or if the fans went after them but then it got so big that thank goodness that our Epic Rap Battle came out first because we would have seemed like, we wouldn't have, we would not have done Epic Rap Battle of Manliness or Epic Rap Battle Nerd versus Geek,

our most viewed video ever, if our first Epic Rap Battle was not released before that because I would have just felt like we couldn't prove, our fans wouldn't have been able to take up for us. And even then, when we did Epic Rap Battle of Manliness, we had Pete and Lloyd make a cameo in it because we wanted to make sure that the viewers would know that the dudes who do Epic Rap Batt of Manliness, we had Pete and Lloyd make a cameo in it because we wanted to make sure that the viewers would know that the dudes

who do Epic Rap Battles of History are cool with the dudes who do Epic Rap Battle of Manliness because technically, the guys who did Epic Rap Battle of Manliness did Epic Rap Battle first. That's us, we did it first. But it's not about who did it first. The whole point of what we're saying is that these things happen independently.

But we're gonna get into talking about things where plenty of examples where there has been inspiration, like the way that we kind of approach this, like we don't ever cross the line into plagiarism, but we are inspired and our work is completely and totally inspired by other people all the time. But these specific examples are more to explain that. There's all kinds of examples from what we've done

where people do things, we do things, seems like people are completely ripping you off and it's not. But they're 100% independent. Independent, it's all coincidence. So here's another example of us not realizing it that we were doing it, that we were creating something that was converging on someone else's property,

intellectual property. I remember we were sitting in that mountain cabin coming up with ideas. Mountain cabin. And we were writing things on a whiteboard and we were talking, you just had this, I'm gonna give you this idea, I don't remember whose idea it was, it was probably mine.

You had recently been probed. We're talking about show and tell. We were like what if kids did show and tell but it was show and yell. And that just made us laugh. And so then we just kept going with that. We were like yeah, let's like give kids things to tell about, but they're talking to a camera,

but they're not talking, they're yelling. Like, it's show and tell with yelling from kids. It's like, that just seems crazy. So then we did it. We were like. And we brought them in and we gave them, we told them to bring some of their toys. So they brought some toys they could legitimately

do show and tell about, show and yell. And we set up this whole thing where we're like, okay, we want the kids to feel like they're talking to the audience directly. We really thought that it was important that the audience member felt like the kids were just staring right into their soul and yelling at them about their favorite teddy bear

or whatever the case may be. That's when we did the whole Errol Morris thing, right? Which we didn't know existed. Ben told us that it existed. Yeah, it was a technique that we thought we invented because we wanted people to look into the camera but we wanted to be able to give them direction so we set up a teleprompter which had, we were being shot,

video of us as the director was being shot and put on a teleprompter in front of a camera filming a kid so that the kid could look straight into the lens but there was the screen in front of them. Would be our faces. Would be our faces so whenever we would give direction like okay Roger, tell me about your teddy bear,

he would look at me and I would like nod my head and like give a response. And we were in a different room. A kid can't look at a camera and give, you know, give a natural response. The kid will look naturally to the person who's talking. So we had to have the person talking in the camera, basically, and we went into a different room.

So we had hours of conversations with Ben about how to pull this off. And he came up with the teleprompter thing and we worked it all out and we were really excited about this technical thing that we invented, which we didn't. And in order to do this thing, Well that's interesting. That was totally original.

Well, because what we're finding is that even in telling the stories, which this isn't even what the story's about, you find out that you independently came up with something. Because Errol Morris, great documentarian, Vernon Florida is a great documentary that you should watch that he made, but he kind of created this technique of interviewing people so people would be looking at the camera and we didn't even realize

that we had independently replicated the technique and done it for these kids. But that's not even what the story's about. And I mean we had to cast all these kids and we had to bring them in and we had our friends bring their kids in and they were all excited about being in a Rhett and Link video and then we're like, we get all this footage. We also gave them, besides them bringing their toys in, we gave them old technology.

Like old phones. Stuff they would not have a clue what it was. Old calculators. Them talking about things they didn't have a clue what it was would be very funny. And hopefully we'd be right't have a clue what it was would be very funny. And hopefully we'd be right that if they were yelling it wouldn't be annoying and that's a big question mark if we were even right about the whole thing.

And while we were in the process, we were in post production, we had filmed these kids for two days straight, like 10 hour days. We were sitting there in the edit bay putting this stuff together and we happened to see that the Fine Brothers, good friends of ours, had released on their, it wasn't even their React channel at the time, it may have just been Fine Brothers

before they came out with their React channel, I can't remember. They had Kids React on their channel, so they did have kids. But specifically they had moved to a place where instead of kids reacting to videos, kids were reacting to things that they were being handed and it was specifically old technology,

like old phones and stuff like that. And we were like, you know what? We have to scrap this entire project. Call the parents, tell them that we're not gonna use the footage, we're sorry, we paid them whatever appearance fee that we had given them but that was it, we own the footage, we still have it but we've never released it because we found out that the Fine Brothers

did something that, it wasn't show and yell. Kids weren't yelling, but the kids were looking and we were like, if we're gonna expand this series and do the things that we wanna do with it and then go into the natural places that we would want to go, it's gonna very quickly become this very, this thing that is comparable to Kids React and we can't do that because we don't do that.

By no means, even if they weren't friends of ours. Right, yeah, yeah. But especially because they were. And you might say, well in hindsight, it's like guys, you were so close to that, you're talking about doing videos with kids, reacting to something you hand them? Well, first of all, we didn't look at it that way,

we didn't realize that at the time, that's how I can say it now, and how I realize a viewer would see it. But it was like, okay, they had kids reacting to videos, period, that was it. They hadn't placed anything in their hand and they didn't have them talking directly to the audience, but again, you know.

No, but they did. That's specifically what I just said. That's what, that's what. When we conceptualized our idea, that didn't exist. Yeah when we conceptualized the idea. We had all the stuff in the can and then they released that and it was just like, what we didn't realize was that a natural expansion of kids reacting to videos

very specifically. Is kids reacting to stuff. Is kids reacting to stuff that you would hand them and then what's the first thing you're gonna hand them? They handed them the same stuff we did because they're smart. Like a Walkman. Producers. Yeah. They handed them the same stuff.

And it's not because they got the idea, we were like they got into our Google Doc or we got into their Google Doc. It's just because once you put people in, it's kinda like when somebody has a concussion. It's like the old story that we've told a million times about Link's concussion in college when he hit his head.

Or the colonoscopy, I guess. So, and I've told the story a million times and I tell the story in detail in our book. Bookofmythicality.com available for pre-order. Don't make it sexy. No, when I sell something I make it sexy because sex sells, man. When I sell something I'ma make it sexy because sex sells, man. When I sell something, I'ma make it sexy.

It's kinda that. So you said. I'ma make it look sexy. Hold on, I'm just coming to, evidently I hurt my left hip, and you said it 100 times that night, which is a very specific phrase, but it was because you were put in the same situation.

You were constantly coming to, and you were trying to figure, and so your brain resets and says the exact same thing. You put a comedian or a producer or somebody who's in the same environment and who's constantly trying to make internet videos that people like, you put them in the same scenario, you tell them

to come up with an idea that riffs on something, they're going to come up with similar things. And that's why we've gotten to a point where now, we don't go through the trouble of bringing a bunch of kids in and filming something. We don't make the video, we don't write the song, we don't come up with a melody. As soon as we have an idea, we go on this Google dive.

And sometimes we get very, and sometimes it's hard to do it because you get super excited about the idea and you wanna develop the idea and you wanna move it along but you gotta stop, you gotta Google it. You gotta see if it's been done before. You gotta see if it's been done before. You gotta see if something's been done that's like it. And then once you see it, you have to make a decision. How are we going, are we gonna scrap this

or are we gonna change this? Like how are we going to react? Which I think GMM is a perfect, it's a perfect, we run stuff through this all the time having over a thousand episodes of GMM, we have to answer this question all the time. Yeah there's so many videos and you know,

and a lot of them, we're not even developing videos but we're developing formats. And then, you know, we're not talking about what other people have done. I do feel like we develop formats on GMM and then they show up in other places. All the time. And it's easy, the knee jerk reaction is to take it

personally or to see it as a rip off. That sometimes that could be the case, sometimes it's not but it's like we can't control what other people do. No. But so again, we're still focusing on what we do and what our approach is, I think is this point. But I mean, there was an example just a few hours ago. We were talking about a GMM episode called Food Court.

You know, we do so much food related stuff and it's like all right, let's develop something with three people, either three guest hosts or the two of us and another person, because food court is a thing in the mall, and a court is a thing where you've got a judge and then you've got two lawyers. That's three people. And as soon as Micah said it, when Micah said food court, I was like, I don't even know the specific idea, but I love it already because I can see exactly where you're going with this. And then we get excited about it,

and about three minutes into this exciting conversation, Eddie says, Tastemade did it. Tastemade did it already. Food court. Here it is. And it's like, you talk about, like, pricking the balloon. Because it's hard to come up with ideas. It's hard to come up with good ideas. I wanted to kill Eddie right then. It was like, why do I want to kill Eddie? Eddie's not only the messenger, thank goodness he's bringing this up. Because we would've gone another 15 minutes. But it's so emotional.

We would've gone another half hour. We would've developed the whole episode. We would've developed the creative, and then he would've found it. But in that moment, you know, you sense that frustration. It's like, don't tell me that. Well, and so, okay, and so this is how we decided to proceed. We bring the videos up, we watch them, and we see that, okay, well, this is actually

a little bit more like our old series, Debaterama, where they were debating the, you know, debating between two foods, and it's also scripted, so it's more of a sketch thing. They haven't done it in a year. Not that it matters how old it is but it's like okay, well we wanna do something. It's not a current in production series

that is direct competitor. But that doesn't really matter because it's out there and like we said, out of principle we don't copy people. But we came up with the idea independently and so we were like, okay. But the only reason I said if it's happening right now is that I might just back away totally. But it's like, okay, this is not an active property.

It seems like it didn't work out for them. Right, because. So let's continue the conversation. Because we have to answer the question. Let's not shut this down yet. Do you shut it down or do you change it and if you change it, how do you change it? So the way that, and we haven't fully developed the idea

but we were like, you know the thing that we really like about this idea is that there are three people. Our idea, not. Our idea. Just to clarify, not what we like about their idea but what we like about our idea that wasn't their idea that they had independently. And what we like about our idea is the fact

that it's three people, something that we can do with a guest, it is food related, which we know that people love food related videos, and we love the idea of two people having to make a case about some kind of food but it would involve people having to eat it. The consequence is the winner of the argument doesn't have to eat, the judge eats it,

and the loser has to eat their own thing. And that was, as far as we can tell, that's... And that's completely different than their idea. Totally different. Their idea is just a debate, there's no eating, it's a sketch, it's scripted, whatever. So we have decided to move forward, we don't know when the idea's gonna be on GMM.

So then I'm like, but we can't call it food court, which is an amazing idea, we can't call it the idea's gonna be on GMM. So then I'm like, but we can't call it Food Court, which is an amazing idea. We can't call it that, so why not Judge Foodie? You know, so it's like, I don't know what we're gonna call it, but that's like the working idea now. And this is fresh, that literally happened right before we came in here, we were having that brainstorming meeting.

And if this comes out on the internet, before we make it, and someone does Judge Foodie, I swear I'm coming after you. Yeah well we have agents for that kind of thing. Do not steal, it would be so ironic. And I know you think it's funny to steal the thing that we talk about in the podcast about not stealing people's stuff, don't you do it.

Yeah. Don't you do it. We actually won't send anybody to kill you. We wouldn't do that either. I just said agent of death it. We actually won't send anybody to kill you. We wouldn't do that either. I just said agent of death because. We'll bring you to us to kill you. Really just kind of just to, I was just being sensational.

I don't think anybody should die because of it. But, I mean, Roy and Guava Juice having tremendous success with doing lots of things that we are akin to things that we do on Good Mythical Morning. And this is a very weird thing how this came down. So it's like we wanna, you know, well there's the bath thing which I'll get to

but then there's the, okay it's like, we wanna do something on fidget toys and then. Well we're literally, we had the whole thing planned. So then we planned the whole thing about what we wanna do, but then we look, we just search fidget toys and we see what's out there. Well it was like, we had planned what we were gonna do and then like two days before we were gonna shoot

our fidget toys episode. Yeah we had ordered and acquired, like we literally had all of our fidget toys. He came out with his fidget toys video, which was kind of a typical Guava Juice video where he's just kind of being crazy with a bunch of fidget toys. On his second channel. And we were like, well, that's kind of what we wereava Juice video where he's just kind of being crazy with a bunch of fidget toys. On his second channel.

And we were like, well, that's kind of what we were gonna do. I mean, of course, totally different style than what Roy does. But similar in a lot of ways in that we're gonna be, what's the Rhett and Link take on fidget toys? So what we decided to do because we had planned the whole thing, we're like, well,

lots of people are talking about fidget toys, they're kinda in the news. We're gonna talk about fidget toys, we're gonna play with fidget toys, we're gonna play with fidget toys, we're gonna play with different fidget toys that he played with and then our angle is gonna be how we think that there's like a poor man's everyday version of a fidget toy.

So like you would hold up something that was a real fidget toy and I would be like, well what about this? Like you had the thing with all the little buttons on it, I held up a universal remote and I was like, I think this is just as good. So that was our comedic angle on it and we moved forward with it.

There was a comedic take but there was also a scientific take which allowed us to title the video Our Fidget Toys Bad For You or whatever we called it. Right. So we wanted to have a legitimate scientific conversation about it because that's what people cared about. Legitimate science is what we're all about, Link.

We wanna have a legitimate conversation about science which may or may not have been accurate. But the bath thing is even more interesting. So back in the day when Roy and Alex were together as the Wasabi Brothers, before they were doing their things independently, they did an ice bath challenge. Now I don't think that they were the first people to do an ice bath challenge and a lot of people

have done ice bath challenges since, but the challenge whole area genre of YouTube is a little bit different because the whole idea of like an ice bucket challenge or the baby food challenge is that, well, it's not everybody's supposed to do it. When you come up with that idea, the expectation is that millions of people will end up doing this idea.

And so we like to get in on those challenge videos but we like to do our little spin on them, right? Well we require that of ourselves. It's not just that we like to do it, it's like we never want to just seem like we're doing, we're jumping on a bandwagon. Right. We always go to great lengths to,

from a production standpoint, a planning standpoint, and a comedy standpoint, do it on our own terms so that it feels different. Yeah so with that one in particular we had like, we talked, again we talked about the science behind it a little bit like what the actual purpose of this was and then we got ridiculous and we sang the Frozen song and then you found the sprite and we did all the sort of the comedic beats that we wanted to do.

But then, not too long after that, we had the idea for us to bathe in cereal during one of our Backup Plan Geico videos when we were at the cereal factory and so we had this giant cereal bowl created. This is the inspiration for the cover of the Book of Mythicality, available at bookofmythicality.com for pre-order.

I'm gonna make it look sexy. So, but that's where that whole thing comes from and so we started taking baths in weird things like the cereal and then ranch dressing and chicken noodle soup. At the same time, Roy had. He's bathing in all types of stuff. Roy and Alex had decided they were gonna do

their own things and so they each have their own channel and now Roy's got Guava Juice. And they both continued to do bath challenges beyond ice and now Roy is bathing in something every week or it seems like I always see him in a different bathtub. He's so clean. And so now it's got this like, well you guys did the ice bath challenge

when you were together, we did it, kind of did our own take on it. Now we're bathing in other stuff but now you're bathing in stuff and you're doing it a whole lot more and now people on YouTube would associate you with weird bathtubs filled with things and so now if you bathe in something, we can't bathe in it

and you're bathing in things all the time, it just, this is the world that we live in. And it's frustrating, like we're not mad at Roy by any means but it's like. He found something that's working and he's doing it. In the strictest definition of frustration, when your plans are thwarted or made more difficult, it's our own creative problem with the parameters

that we put up, it's like all right, maybe we're not gonna get in tubs as much. And we haven't because of that. But maybe we can make a human nacho. No bath there. As long as Roy hadn't done it. Like it matters that much to us that like we have to do things that are different

or we have to do them on our own terms. And even with all that said, we're still going to end up doing things that something falls through the cracks. You know, somebody releases something. A lot of times it happens with Buzzfeed. Well, they will release something between the time that we've planned and shot something

because we shoot things ahead of time at times when we have to based on our schedule. And sometimes we've got something completely edited and ready to go and then Buzzfeed will do something that's so much like what we've come up with that we just have to be like, well we can't, we don't have time to replace that. We've just gotta throw it out there.

And I hate it if it seems like, okay, Buzzfeed much? It's like, you know, those commenters who don't understand how much we care about this and that it was just a coincidence that we both had this idea and it came out within days of each other, but we were on the wrong side of those days. And the thing is is that because there are a lot

of people out there, we're not gonna name specific names, there are a lot of organizations and companies out there and some people who don't approach this in the way that we do and if they see something that works, they just take it and they do it exactly the same way. They may have a slightly different voice but they do videos that are titled in exactly the same way that you've got,

I see this all the time, you've got, Buzzfeed has the Worth It series, so it's like $500 pie versus $5 pie, or whatever the different things are, and then you see that that has become a genre of video that now lots of people do. This amount of thing, this dollar amount versus this dollar amount, and it might be somebody who's like, I'm gonna do a This amount of thing, this dollar amount versus this dollar amount.

And it might be somebody who's like, I'm gonna do a tech version of that. Or I'm gonna do this version of that. Well we're not gonna do that. We don't do that as a principle. It happens accidentally sometimes, but because there are so many people out there who are willing to do it and just see it as,

ah this is how the internet works, you just take inspiration from people. Because that exists, it's natural for us to then be accused of that if we do something that appears that way, it's natural for us to then be accused of that if we do something that appears that way and it's gonna happen because we make so much content. And we're people. We're people, man.

We're not an organization that the accountability kinda gets lost, you know? It's like if people start hating on in comments on an organization that makes videos. Companies can get away with it. Well, even if they don't get away with it, just by the sheer quantity of the work that's coming out, it gets lost in the mix.

But we take it personally. Like the whole. Well because we're people. Yeah but we may not have been involved in the development of that specific video on This is Mythical because this is how we run our business. We can't be involved in every single thing and This Is Mythical is something that we kind of guide

and offer creative direction for but we're not involved in every detail. But when that accusation is levied at us, we take it personally because, well, ultimately we are personally responsible and This Is Mythical is us. I mean, ultimately, Mythical Entertainment is us. And the buck stops with us.

And so that's why we do take it seriously and if all of a sudden people think, oh Rhett and Link are up to that now, huh? Rhett and Link are willing to copy now. That's where they're going. We're just like, no you don't understand. This means a lot to us. And there's many creators that we've talked to,

well, I take that back. I believe that there are many creators out there that we've talked to, well, I take that back. I believe that there are many creators out there and we've talked to a handful of them that we know share our conviction and that they take it very seriously. But the thing that, the place that the conversation goes is that doesn't make it easy. It's a difficult thing.

And when you're pumping out a whole lot of videos, boy it gets difficult. That showing y'all thing blindsided us. And that was a difficult thing to let go of. But I'm so glad we did. I mean it was like, it was our own fault. We should have caught that a lot earlier. I think that's ultimately what we try to do

in terms of our habits. Yeah, and let's talk a little bit about Buddy System because this is happening right now. You got like scripting things, conceptualizing stuff. It's a totally different world but all the same stuff applies. And the risk in doing something like Buddy System is so much greater, right?

Because we're developing season two right now and the creative is pretty much locked into place but we're coming up with specific dialogue and that kind of thing. But we're gonna shoot that and then it's gonna take months to edit, I don't know exactly when it's gonna come out but between right now and the time that Buddy System goes live, Buddy System season two goes live,

any one of the jokes that we come up with in this time frame could be done, somebody could come up with the exact same idea for what our season is or whatever. And we're screwed, you can't reshoot any of that. And then you just have to be like, you know what? Guys, I'm sorry that this joke ended up being the same. That's one thing that we're scripted

because it moves more slowly is really interesting. Yeah, when I look at Flickster, I was looking, I always look on reviews after I watch a movie to see if my opinion's right. Yeah, I just look at them to see what I'm supposed to think about them. If everyone else's opinion is right. And you can go down to upcoming movies

and scroll to what's coming out in the future. You get to a certain point when it's like 2018 and the only thing on there is like Avatar 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. You're like, oh no, we've already planned Avatar 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. You're like, oh no, we've already planned Avatar 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 as well. And it's on, yeah. No, but I scroll all the way to the bottom

and there's a Bureau of Otherworldly Investigation or something, it's B-O-O, I don't know what the third O stands for, but it's Ghostbusters starring Seth Rogen and somebody else. And it was gonna come out the same time as Ghostbusters with Kristen Wiig, around the same time. And then they shelved it for a while. It was like, dang, y'all need to take this thing off

Flixster, because it looks like it's hanging out there forever, and I have no clue what the story is, but I just infer that it's one of those situations where it's like, oh man, we working on our ghost movie. But then it got shelved for like two years because of somebody else's ghostbuster movie. We can't, in our size company, we can't afford that. I think, I think.

If we make something, it's like, oh crap, this is going out, guys, sorry. So our goal, and I think we've succeeded, is to make Buddy System, as we talked about, so outta left field and every choice be the unexpected choice from a foundational level and how it's structured, how episodes work, how the whole series works.

But that doesn't mean that it would, it's an insurance policy against it seeming like we're biting anybody else's ideas. But I don't wanna say, and we've kinda waited a while to get into this, but. Get into it. The honest truth is that we're not saying that we're not inspired by people.

No. And specifically, I think about Buddy System season one, and we were watching, we had been introduced to the Mighty Boosh just a couple of months before we started writing season one of Buddy System. Yeah, because people said that our Sketchtober video, the puzzle where we started singing impromptu. Crimping.

Was crimping, which is what they call the thing that the Mighty Boosh does when they start singing a song like it's an inside joke acapella. And we had never seen the Mighty Boosh. We had never seen him, but we were doing the exact same thing. And people were like, oh, so you, and people didn't say that we were biting them.

People were like, oh, that's cool, you guys are crimping. You guys are doing what the Mighty Boosh does. And we were like, who, so you, and people didn't say that we were biting them. People were like, oh, that's cool, you guys are crimping. You guys are doing what the Mighty Boosh does. And we were like, who's the Mighty Boosh? Then we watched their stuff, which if you have not watched it, it's all available on Amazon and probably other places. It's an incredible British comedy. Two guys, musical comedy.

It's so weird in a wonderful way. We absolutely love it. You should watch it. Do yourself a favor and watch it. We started, well, once we started going down that rabbit hole, we couldn't resist watching the whole thing, like watching it with my boys, because there's a bunch of balls jokes, and I knew they would get that. Balls jokes. Your kids love that.

There's like mirror ball testicles in one scene. Yeah. Old Greg, right? Pretty amazing. Well, no, that's different. That's Swamp Man. I can't remember right now. But then there's the Old Greg scene where he basically. He's a kangaroo type creature. Old Greg has a light that emits from his crotch

in a really amazing way. They're very crotch-centric. But there's a couple of things that happen. I applaud them for that. I didn't even think about this until right now, but you know how the light comes out of my mouth and goes into your mouth during that scene in the second episode of Buddy System, season one?

Yeah. That whole light thing, and I'm in the robe, you know, that permeated into our minds through the whole old Greg thing. Yeah, and then we realized it later, and we were like, because we conceptualized it that the light comes from your mouth into my mouth,

and then it comes out of my crotch and goes into your crotch. Because it was gonna be a big loop of light. It was gonna be a circle. Yeah, but then we were like, you know what? I think we can do of my crotch and goes into your crotch. Because it was gonna be a big loop of light. It was gonna be a circle. Yeah, but then we were like, you know what? I think we can do without the crotch. First of all, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Second of all, it's twice as expensive

from an effect standpoint. If we just go from mouth to mouth, it's half as expensive. And there's a lot of light that comes from crotch and Mighty Boosh, so we shouldn't wear that on our sleeve. I mean, it starts to seem like we're doing something specific. But then, in episode, the episode, the soul searching episode, episode six of season one,

I think it is, there's the scene where I run into your character, Peter, who's a dude that lives out in the wilderness and wears only dirt shorts, dorts, and we have this weird interaction and you only want to dance with me, it's one of my favorite scenes of the whole series, and that guy is heavily inspired, not directly, but now looking back on it,

I know indirectly by Old Greg, because the whole Old Greg scene in The Mighty Boosh, he meets this weird dude who kinda wants to connect with him in a weird way, almost a romantic way, and he's just strange and you can't really explain why he is where he is and why he wants to be who he is. And so we had a similar exchange where you wanted to dance with me and you're trying to find all these ways and your name is Peter and you insist on it being,

no it's Peter, Peter with a D, Peter, not Peter, Peter. And all that is the same kind of humor that they do in The Mighty Boosh. And I don't see that as plagiarism at all, I see that as inspiration. So by no means am I saying that we're not inspired by other people all the time, but it is a little bit of a dangerous thing to be watching something

while you're writing something else, which is interesting, Sturgill Simpson talked about how when he listened to Jason Isbell's album, Southeastern, he listened to the first song and he stopped and he said, "'I'm not gonna listen to any more of this "'because it's so good, I'm gonna be overly influenced by it' and he didn't even listen to Jason's last album

because he's like, he's too good. So they're friends and he hasn't even listened to his albums because he doesn't wanna be influenced by it and he didn't even listen to Jason's last album because he's like, he's too good. So they're friends and he hasn't even listened to his albums because he doesn't wanna be influenced by them. So some people are so protective of that, they wanna be original, that they don't even listen to another artist when they're writing an album. Yeah, I think that's just a byproduct of, I think that's a coincidental benefit

of how limited I am in the stuff that I see. Like I didn't watch it, like you name any movie from the 80s, I never saw it. Right, you weren't allowed around screens. It's kind of, no that's not the reason. It was weirder than that. It was like we didn't go to the video store. You watched game shows.

I watched game shows. I watched game shows. I wasn't interested in watching movies. Your mom would rent all these movies, you'd watch them with her, you'd watch all types of stuff. Yeah. I didn't watch Back to the Future until I was an adult with my kids. Right.

I haven't seen Top Gun, I haven't seen, oh gosh, let's not get going on this. Yeah, we don't even have to do it. But it's an advantage. Like, you know, we were talking to somebody that, I think it was Steve, who's directing Buddy System season two, and he was like, you guys watched a lot of Monty Python, didn't you?

And I was like, well, I'm familiar with it, and I take that as a compliment, but not really. Right. But it's like, and that's the, it's a great thing to like inadvertently stumble on something that people start to think that you were inspired by something great, comedically, when the honest truth in that instance was, nah, we just kinda came up with some stuff.

Well, it cuts both ways because if you're, a lot of writers, they're supposed to, it's prescribed by a lot of writers and filmmakers that you should be watching and ingesting a lot of different things. And one of the ways that that helps is you make sure that you don't replicate exactly. You're not copying anybody,

but you're just being inspired by them. So we actually stand a chance, kinda coming full circle, of accidentally doing exactly the same idea because nothing is actually new. There's no original ideas, everything's a remix. And so we have to rely on other people. You know, we've got, for season two of Buddy System, we actually have some writers that we're working with

as opposed to us just taking the whole first season like we did. And we trust that they're more informed, they've seen more stuff than we have. And they can be like, no, that is, this hasn't happened yet, but no, you can't do that. But speaking of Steve Pink, who's directing the second season, incredible guy,

super excited to work with him, and he's made some incredible films. But in our first meeting with him, he specifically brought up the discreet charmer of the bourgeoisie, this crazy French film from the 70s that we can. Which news flash I had not seen. And I, and having seen a lot of things, I had never even heard of it.

And so. I cannot pronounce or spell bourgeoisie. Yeah, so he had this, he was like, I don't know how this came up but it was like. But no, he was talking about left turn choices. Yeah, and he was talking about the scene where a person comes up to the main character in this movie and they're like, I have a story,

and they begin to tell their story, and then that story becomes this very, I don't know how long it is, but very long scene, and then the story's over and that's it. And we were like, we love that idea. We love that kind of idea. So we were actually doing something similar in an episode of Buddy System.

And I don't wanna give away the details, but we're taking something that you might think would just be a moment. And we're turning it into the entire episode. And we're doing that because of, we didn't even see the movie. He just told us about this concept of taking a story and, so we don't know what the story is,

but the concept. Was inspired, we were inspired by the bold choice. But if we watched the thing and then it's like, and then the specifics of that choice, we're gonna do the same thing, well then that starts to get dicey. And I'm not even gonna watch the movie. Well we've already come up with the whole story

and what happens and it's the most ridiculous thing we've ever come up with by the way. It is. I think. I think it's the dumbest thing we've ever come up with and I'm so proud of it. It's so. Yeah it's gonna be crazy. It's not gonna be easy to shoot.

No, yeah. Cause a lot of us outdoors. I don't know how we're gonna do it. But that, you know what? You know you're in the right place when you look in front of you and the task seems impossible. You're like, oh, we must be doing the right thing. Or you're about to die.

I mean. Right, then you just curse. So, and I think in this instance, well, Steve's seen the movie, we can cross reference with him that we haven't, there's no way we could have made the same choice. No, it's just the same kind of choice. But again, we can cross reference with him that we haven't, there's no way we could've made the same choice. No, it's just the same kind of choice.

But again, we've proven that it is possible, but again, he's seen it and we're gonna ask him. In general, I think, what's our approach in terms of a summary? I think it's, this is an interesting thing because it's like when you get really excited about something and you're conceptualizing it, when it's still very early on, you gotta Google it.

But it's such a, it's so like throwing, what's it called when you throw water on something? Cold water? It's like throwing cold water on a hot and bothered person. Yeah. And I mean hot as in temperature, not like a good looking person. I don't really know what your analogy means.

It's a downer, man. It's like when you're on this. Pulling the rug out from underneath you. When you're on a creative catapult and you've just, foing, you just pull it and you're like, you're flying through the air at a million miles an hour. It's a brick wall.

I can't write it down quick enough. You don't wanna erase a brick wall, so, Google, I wrote, This has been done. Yeah, so you know it's like, cause you wanna like ride the wave of creativity, but then if that wave is ultimately gonna crash into a barren apocalyptic beach.

There's so many parts to this analogy. I'd rather hit a wall in a minute. You're mixing a lot of metaphors, but I love it. Than hit an apocalyptic beach in two days. Yeah, yeah. And we've done it all, brother. And the other side of the coin, which is also an analogy. And the sunburn? Yeah. Don't even get me started. If you hang out on that beach long enough

to get a sunburn, because you're naked? And if you've got a coin and you look at the other side of the coin and the coin is not sunburned, it's a little bit colder because it was under the shade, you'll see the other side of the coin, just trying to run with your analogy here, is that at the same time, we are going to continue to be inspired. Sometimes I'll just go to a magazine stand

and I'll get one of those art magazines that's just got weird design things in it, not because I design anything and I'm not even particularly a visual artist. I'm much more conceptual and let DPs and directors think about the visual side of things. Pick one of those up. You'll pay $30 for that magazine, by the way.

Yeah, it'll be like a quarterly art digest and I'll just look at it just to see what creative people are doing now and how they're thinking about their art and then without fail, that somehow, by osmosis, if I sit down and look at that, goes into me and then impacts whatever we're working on. You have to get that input to get the output that you need.

And that's not plagiarism. I actually think you're onto something when it's like you look for inspiration in a place that doesn't have a lot of overlap in terms of a Venn diagram of what you're creating. So it's not like, all right, we're gonna go to other buddy comedies and look at those movies or television shows to be inspired.

But it's, I'm gonna buy this graphic novel, those movies or television shows to be inspired. But it's, I'm gonna buy this graphic novel, which I talked about in the Mythical Monthly, American Barbarian, which is, it just, it rocked my world creatively. I was like gushing to you about it. And then you gave me the book, the graphic novel and I read it in an afternoon.

And the funny thing is, is I thought it was amazing but you, like the way you described it. I built it up too much for you. You gave me all the spoilers. So you gotta learn to just give me a little bit, whet my appetite. Yeah, I can't do that to you. Because I do it rarely.

Most of the time you get excited about something you give to me but in this instance, I think finding inspiration, maybe we're onto something here. It's like you find inspiration in a sunset. In a sunset. Unless you're a weatherman. Because they're tired of them.

You find, well then you might just be copping the sunset all the time. Oh yeah, it's gotta be something different. You find inspiration in a moving, tear-jerking song unless you're a musician. I don't know, this is a working theory here. You know, you can't find too much inspiration

in something that has a direct overlap. I think when there's a direct overlap, you're looking at it for a couple of reasons and one of them is to make sure that you're not just replicating what somebody's doing. I don't know, it's a fine line and I think we're continuing to navigate it and figure it out as we go, but it's so much different when it comes to something

like long-term, like Buddy System, and then when you come back to this machine of Mythical Entertainment between Good Mythical Morning, Good Mythical More. This is Mythical. So many videos coming out, so much content in an environment where everyone else is doing the same thing, everyone else is tapping into the same stuff.

It becomes increasingly difficult to navigate this landscape in a way that you can actually say we're creating something innovative and original. But that's the challenge. You gotta keep on pushing. Gotta keep pushing it. Gotta keep pushing it, man. Guys, let us know what you think

in terms of your creative process. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. If you enjoy this conversation about this aspect of creativity, I'm sure there's other aspects that maybe we could talk about on subsequent episodes. That's an idea. Let us know, hashtag Ear Biscuits, what on that front maybe you'd like to hear from us.

We're still open to different themes for episodes and in general, just getting your feedback and continuing the conversation. And as always, we appreciate your feedback and continuing the conversation. And as always, we appreciate your feedback about Ear Biscuits. Continue to leave comments at places where comments are, you can leave comments and ratings and places you can leave ratings.

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