Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 75 Mystery Guitar Man - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: June 26, 2015

YouTuber, filmmaker, and musician Joe Penna, known Internet-wide as Mystery Guitar Man, joins Rhett & Link to discuss how he adapted to life in America after emigrating from Brazil, why he gifted his second YouTube channel to his wife and son, and the incredible story of how getting hired by Rhett & Link to direct their ‘T-Shirt War’ video saved him from homelessness in Los Angeles despite the near-catastrophic disaster that occurred after filming that video. Get our newest album, Song Biscuits Vol 1, here: https://goo.gl/bW8I5P 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 Rhett. And I'm Link. Joining us today at the round table of dim lighting is YouTuber, filmmaker, and really good friend of ours, Joe Penna, AKA Mystery Guitar Man. You know Mystery Guitar Man.

We had the pleasure of, we have the pleasure of knowing Joe for many years. We still know him. We have had him. We're still friends. And you know, great guy, amazingly talented, and it was cool to talk to him. Right, so, and just in case you don't know about Joe, he exploded on the internet with his popular

stop motion video back in 2009, Guitar Impossible. Or guitar, as people anywhere but this out say. Guitar? You say guitar. Guitar Impossible. And it's got currently over 15 million views. This kicked off a series of stop motion videos where Joe would play an instrument,

almost anything at all really, soda cans, balloons, kazoos, and he would make a stop motion music video out of it. These videos are literally frame by frame, one note at a time, edited together to create a song. Here's a clip of him playing Mozart with root beer bottles via the magic of editing.. You really gotta watch the videos to fully appreciate them. And then when you do watch them, there's a level of engagement that,

oh, it kind of comes in waves of that's cool, whoa, he did this to make that. And then there's like layers of understanding that lead to layers of appreciation of all the stuff Joe does. And one of the interesting thing we talked about is how that appreciation that really translated into millions and millions of views back in 08, 09, 2010,

isn't necessarily translating into millions and millions of views today. And we get Joe's perspective on that. Yeah, it's an interesting phenomenon. I mean, our appreciation of his work translated into us reaching out to him very early. And we talk about this collaborating on every T-Shirt War video we've done, which we've done too.

Yes, all two of them. So from the get-go, he was instrumental in that video for us. But today, you get to hear, and actually for the first time, we got to hear Joe's side of the story of collaborating. You know, I mean, we had exchanged emails, but we met to work on T-shirt war. And there were a couple of facets to his experience

that blew my mind. Yes. Specifically, a near catastrophic story involving the footage that we never knew about. So he drops a bomb on us. Oh yes he does. In this ear biscuit. But it's okay, because it's many years later,

so we were able to survive it. But he's more than just a stop motion madman. His YouTube channel, currently with 2.8 million subscribers, also features a bunch of short films that he's directed. If you consider short films to be 40 minutes long, I guess technically that's still a short film, but he's doing that kind of thing, making very cinematic short films on his YouTube channel.

So we talked to Joe about those films, including where he's going with all that, what that is working towards and what he's got in store in the future. And of course, we also talked about his backstory, which was super fascinating, including him telling us the really interesting, I'll call it peculiar, I'll just call it that,

technique that he developed to adjust to life in the US having moved as a kid from Brazil. So like I said, we really enjoyed reconnecting with Joe. I know that you're really gonna enjoy our conversation with him too. But first we wanna remind you that you can download our new album, Song Biscuits Volume One, one of X,

X fill in the blank, I don't know how many we're gonna make, but there's one right now. 15 songs, you can get that on iTunes or Amazon. Remember, these are the songs that we wrote in collaboration with other creators based on your suggestions through the Twitters and the Facebook sometimes. Here's a clip from one of our favorite songs on this album,

the 10 Second Rule song featuring Nice Peter. 15 seconds of fame and five seconds for that. Trail makes literally on the trail. Put those rules to shame in 10 seconds. 15 songs, guys. So head over to iTunes and download them.

Thanks for supporting entertainment and for rating and leaving a review on iTunes. Also available on Amazon. All right. And now on to the biscuit. First time I rode in an electric car. I'm trying to remember all the things because we go way back. Way back. But the first

time I rode in a 100% electric car was your car. Oh, yeah. The Tesla Roadster. Do you still have it i don't i sold it uh we moved into uh uh we started renting a place because we were saving up to buy a house okay um and we moved into this place where it was before the law required people to allow electric cars to be in the you know hookups basically so i couldn't charge my car and there were no like places to charge and it was the old tesla so i couldn't just charge car. And there were no places to charge. And it was the old Tesla.

So I couldn't just charge it up in the public chargers either. So it was taking me like two days to charge up my car just out of normal outlets. Oh, so you had to revert. Yeah. So I had to revert back to my ICE and turn a combustion engine. Well, yeah, it's a sad day.

I had to ice it up. Now that you've got a place, are you going to put a charging station and go back? Yeah, because I have solar panels in my roof. Oh, awesome. And it would be super cheap for me to go back to electric. So, yeah, I'm going to wait until the next... So, you have to have a special converter in your garage to properly charge one? If you want to charge it up fast, yeah.

Otherwise, it takes like 48 hours for you to charge it. Oh, really? And that's not worth it. Okay. Just out of normal outlets from the wall. Right. It's like charging up the battery on your phone if you had a thousand phones in your car. But you rode in the car right after me, right, Rhett, that day?

Or did you not get to ride in it? I don't know if I actually got into it. It was at the YouTube space. I think I was just there when you started it up and that just meant getting into it and pressing a button and there was no indication that the car was on and then you just backed up and I was like, the future is here, I don't hear anything.

You know what, that's right. I actually didn't ride in your car either. It's just my memory, it was so impactful that I felt like I was riding in the car. The first time you stood next to an electric car became the first time you rode an electric car. Yeah, I just remember being struck with the same thing. Well, you were standing right beside me.

I've never owned an electric car. It's all in your memory. It's all your fault now. You fabricated all of this. So you also never had a pilot license? Because I remember that too. I was starting to get my pilot license. You bailed on that too? No, I didn't bail on it. Come on, Joe. You had a baby. Don't I remember that too. I was starting to get my pilot license. You bailed on that too?

No, I didn't bail on it. You had a baby. Don't blame everything on the baby. No one at the pilot license place recognized me, so it started becoming very expensive. It's like, oh, mystery, what? It's like $15,000 to get a pilot license here. But you've built up some credits

that you can then go back in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I did a lot of similar stuff, which counts towards your hours. But then once the baby came around, my wife was like, no, you're not allowed to ride a motorcycle or planes anymore.

Oh, yeah. I used to have a dream of- You can't ride in a plane anymore? Or little planes. Little planes, right. I had a dream of going up in a ultralight trike and then my wife gave me the, you have children.

You have children. What would happen. Yeah. And I'm like, wow. I'm like, you can take care of them. You're fine. I've seen you have children, what would happen? Yeah. And I'm like, wow, okay. I'm like, you can take care of them. You're fine. I've seen you. Yeah, so Jonah, how old is he now?

He's nine months. Nine months. So nine months into fatherhood. You should know what it feels like by now. I don't sleep anymore. I wasn't sleeping before. For different reasons, right? Yeah, yeah.

But you've already harnessed the power of exploiting him for the for youtube yes yes absolutely every video cute baby up there at the end vlog now it's not i don't i just don't have to wait around for joe to start talking about subscribing now i got i got i got a good reason you got a reason yes hang around right we did a video with him where I dressed up in a black morph suit and got like

little tiny instruments so basically found the smallest cello that there was and it was about the same size as an upright bass for him you know

and found all these tiny little instruments and then did a video where I'm helping him play along and it was so fun baby band yeah yeah

and his we were talking about that, the look on his face is that I'm having a great time and then I was like, this had to happen over the course of a few days. Unless you just have a baby that has an incredible Personality. Attitude. We do, we got very lucky.

I'm sure he's got a great personality too, but attitude's the right word. If you had tried that video with baby Link, A, it would have never happened. It would have been different for, it would have been funny for a different reason. Every picture of me as a kid, once I was aware pictures of me were being taken

against that Kmart backdrop, every single one for four years. Oh, the laser backgrounds. Oh yeah, I was red-faced in tears. I hated it. And Lando. That's where Lando gets it from. Lando refuses to have his picture taken.

Lando will not take part in any sort of- You'd think I was the paparazzi and he was like John Travolta. No, you couldn't do that video with Lando now. But it would be a great video if you did it, but it would be like, people would think it was abuse. Just a baby crying and not wanting there. So you're telling me Jonah,

that was all like in one shoot session? Three hours. He was happy. Yeah, he was there for three hours. He hates getting his clothes changed, so that was annoying for him. So by the end of it, he was like, I don't want to do this anymore. But was Sarah like behind the camera? Yeah, she was right next to the camera.

For a long time, we still had the audio from the camera. And it was just Sarah going, look at me. Look at me. Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. still had the audio from the camera and it was just sarah going look at me oh yeah you should have had like a reverse on her and not told her this is what it takes and just posted that uh-huh to work with a small child that's a great behind the scenes i was worried that he was gonna be uh scared you know because i'm wearing a black morph suit but he was just like laughing at me and half the time he's just like looking up at me being like what is going on behind me like was your face covered too yeah it was a whole thing that would you know what that would have freaked me out even a normal child would have been freaked

out so you've got something special on your hands we do you have an extraordinary boy and of course you named him jonah so that you could then gift the channel to uh your jp channel that's the only reason yes We'll say that again. We didn't realize this until later, but it's half my name, half her name. We Brangelined our kid. Oh, you know what? And you didn't even know it? We didn't even know it, because my name is Jonathas, and her name is Sarah.

So, Jonathas, Sarah, Jonah. That's a great realization. From now on, you should just say that was intentional. Oh yeah, yeah, it was totally on purpose. And we will, you know, of course it'll be on this podcast. We were gonna name him Brangelina, but my wife ex-named that.

That would've been a little weird. So you're gifting the channel. So now youtube.com slash JP is no longer your second channel. Right. It's his channel and mom's channel. And mom's, yeah. Is that really how it's gonna work?

Really on mom's channel, yeah. But you're basically like putting him to work. I mean like officially. I mean, he's gotta get to it. Right. It's expensive having a baby. He's gotta pay for himself at least. He's gotta pay for that pilot license for you.

Yeah. Well, I mean, with all this baby talk, let's go back to you. Let's do it. As a baby. Me as a baby. You as a baby. Where? Well, you were born.

I was born in Brazil. More specific. In Sao Paulo, in Brazil. Big city. And then we moved out to the suburbs of Sao Paulo. Little, little, little tiny city that I recently went back to visit. And you've got siblings. I think we met your sister.

My sister, yeah, yeah. But she's younger. So you were like the first kid of three. The first kid of three. And then my little brother is in high school now. Okay, and that's the three of you guys. Yeah, that's the three of us. So you're in Brazil.

And what was your dad doing at the time? My dad was an engineer. He was an engineer. My mom was a school teacher and you know he wanted us to to have a uh an education here an american education to learn english you know he was seeing that english was an important thing he spoke enough to get around you know but he's like if if they have a an american college degree they can come back to brazil and make like five times as much money and you know if they speak english that'll be good for them so we moved here um at first to massachusetts and you were how old

i was 11 turning into 12 so yeah a very great time to move and so what do you remember about the move what was your mindset it's cool that i mean that a a big part of the motive was for you and your siblings you know but how did you feel about it i i was i was excited about it you know at first i was like i don't want to move i've got my friends here but then you know i started thinking about my future and it was the very first time as a kid because as a kid you don't think about your future you know the very first time that i'm like oh okay this this makes sense this will be good in the long run it'll hurt a little bit right now i'll have to lose my friends i'll have to like learn english you know i i knew two words welcome and balloon and that was it you know welcome and balloon yeah yeah from a good at

welcoming balloons i was yeah yeah welcome balloons you know but that's that's where i got it from and so how did you uh you know, what was the process of learning English like? So we moved out from that kind of area to closer to my dad's job, which was far away from any Brazilian community. So I didn't know anybody. You know, there was the Spanish kids in school, you know, the Puerto Ricans, a lot of Puerto Ricans in Massachusetts too. But I never fit in with those kind of people or the Americans.

So I tried to assimilate as much as possible. I started, I tried out for the baseball team and baseball isn't a thing that is in Brazil. Like I didn't even know the rules. There were 24 kids. No soccer team? You didn't do that? That would have been the logical choice. Yeah, I know, right? I never played soccer. That's why I got kicked out of Brazil. Really? No, I was never any good at it, no. So, you know, we tried out. There were 24 people, I think,

who tried out for the baseball team and 22 made it. I didn't play baseball that year. You were one of the two. Do you remember the other person? I do. He was really, really large. He was like, I think, over 200 pounds

before high school student. Right. Yeah, which is very big. Right. Yeah, so i try to assimilate as much as possible like i i thought that uh being american man being preppy so i went to like american eagle and i bought a bunch of preppy clothes and i put them on and then i got a couple compliments like oh yeah nice shirt man and then the next day because i got a couple compliments i I wore the same shirt. And then people were like, wait, no, that's the same shirt you were wearing yesterday. I was like, oh, but I washed it.

It was awesome yesterday. That's not cool today, man. It had a big eagle on it yesterday and it still does today. And I was the youngest kid in school because I kept sixth grade. So, you know, double bad for me. Right.

Yeah. In your drama life, you said that you would go to the supermarket and talk. Malls. You would go to the mall and talk to strangers. Random malls. I would drive out to like malls that I would never go back to ever again because I knew that I didn't know anybody there. So, we're talking you're 16 by that time. Yeah, 16, 17.

You're driving around. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you've been around. You've been in the U.S. for five, six years. For a while, yeah. I'm talking you're 16 by that time, if you're driving around. Yeah, 16, 17, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you'd been around, you'd been in the US for five, six years, but you're like, I'm still trying to master this thing. Right, exactly, yeah. Because it made me very shy, not being able to talk to anyone,

not being able to have any, I was kind of like the loner kid, you know, me and like three other guys in school. So like, I haven't been back to any high school reunions or anything like that, because I didn't have friends really. But what was the mall technique the mall technique i would just go back to to any mall that i would never go back to ever again and talk to random strangers and come up to them and shake their hand and say hey uh i'm a very shy person and i would like to to

talk to you up to yes that's that's it to talk to you that's this is so counterintuitive though yeah to to be shy but to be willing to go to a random mall and talk to a stranger because that's something that a lot of normal non-shy non-shy people would have a difficult yeah doing yeah and i figured that that was like the hardest challenge for me and i read somewhere that was like if you if what is it like it was like if you're afraid of spiders, just buy yourself a tarantula. If you're afraid of this and that, I'm afraid of talking to people. I'm just going to go and talk to random strangers. And it's Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts.

A lot of them weren't very kind. It's like, what are you trying to sell me, kid? I don't know. Are you trying to rob me or something? Really? Yeah, I got a lot of that. But every once in a while, I started learning the little you're trying to rob me or something. Really? Yeah, I got a lot of that. But, you know, every once in a while, you know, I started learning the little techniques to talk to people.

So, like, when you approach somebody, you don't approach them head on. You don't say, hey, I'm here to talk to you. You kind of approach them to the side and you ask them a question that is, that has a time of, okay, do you know what time it is? Or something like that. Or like, do you know where I can find the best buyer around here? And then they answer something like that. It's like, you know where I can find the Best Buy around here? And then they answer something like that.

It's like, do you think that Best Buy or Circuit City is better? And then you start turning in towards the person. Oh, we know the answer to that. Yeah. Best Buy went up.

Not at the time. Oh, really? Because I bought this thing over there at Circuit City and I thought that it was okay. Then you start getting into a conversation and you kind of naturally

start getting into it. But you know, it's so weird because you sound like, either like a weird evangelist or a weird, like there would be salesmen who, I mean, back in North Carolina, I would go into the Barnes and Noble and you'd be like, they would hang out in certain places,

certain types of salesmen. And you'd be like, looking at magazines or books at Barnes and Noble and someone would come up and start talking to you and it would, rest assured, out in certain places, certain types of salesmen. And you'd be like in looking at magazines or books and Barnes and Noble and someone will come up and start talking to you and it would, rest assured, it would be a salesman. A pitch or something? It would be a sales pitch.

Like Avon? Yes, really? Amway. It was almost always. I could have been gotten paid for all this? It was almost always the Amway guys. What's Amway? Amway uses, well, they also go by another name,

but it's essentially like, it's a pyramid scheme. You get people- Multi-level marketing. Yeah, it's multi-level marketing, and I think it covers a wide variety of products, but there's always this initial technique that you're in this conversation and you're like, why is this guy talking to me in this way?

Yeah, yeah. But for you it was just because I need to break through my shyness. At first a lot of people were like worried that I was gonna sell them something. People were like, no, really, what do you have to sell them to me? I'm like, no, I just wanted to talk to you

about the movies that are going on. Did it help or did you give up on it? No, it helped. It helped a whole lot. So you like became a master of this. Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't think... I mean, you knew the techniques, like the approaches, the Circuit City banter.

The Circuit City. Oh, yeah. I don't think that I would be married to Sarah today had I not done this. You met her in a mall? I met her at a mall. You just like sidled up to her? It gave me the social skills to be able to talk to people, you know, especially women because I was very, very worried about, especially women because I was very,

very worried about talking to women because I was like, ah, they're going to think that I'm hitting on them or something. Did your parents use the side projection thing?

That's how you... Right, right. Did your parents know you were doing this? Yeah, yeah, they knew. You know, I told them like,

I'm going to go to the mall and, but I don't think that they knew why I was going to the mall. And talk to strangers. And talk to strangers. And talk to strangers. At length.

Do you think they would have, would they have described you as, yeah, Joe's working on his social skills. Would they have known that that's where you were at at the time, or would they have been really surprised to know that this is how you were kind of treating yourself? I don't know. I think they were just glad that I was out of my room. Because there was like a whole summer that I didn't leave.

And I was just on this website, something YouTube. Like the entirety of it, I was just there, you know. It was even before YouTube actually. So I was like, oh, I was in the unitedti.org websites, which was the calculator programming websites. You know, I have like 3000 posts in one of those websites. I was moderator. I wrote a whole operating system for the TI-83 in assembly. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was-

And what does the operating system do? It just, you can flash it so that basically it's like, you know, if you took out like the Fire Phone, the Amazon Fire Phone. It's basically an Android that's switched around to be just Amazon stuff. So I would, like I coded Mario levels and Super Mario Brothers and like a lot of, and I started seeing other kids playing it, you know. So it kind of became like my first experience with viral stuff, you know. You made like a Mario game on a TI-83? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people could download it from that forum?

From the website, yeah, TI Calc, yeah, and things like that. I'm sure that there are at least three guys out there that are like, oh my God, I play that game. So how did you, yeah, because that was the other thing I wanted to kind of crack open is, you know, we know the way that you've approached your YouTube career and it's very technical and mechanical and there's like a-

Methodical. Yeah, there's an engineering programmer sort of scientific approach. So the way that was kind of coming out as a kid was getting into things like this, like programming the calculator. Definitely, yeah. And I wanted to, I mean, I've heard my videos described as surgical, and it's interesting because I was in med school and I was about to get into med school and I was

going to be a surgeon. So, yeah, it's very programming. That would be grad school. So, just to connect the dots from high school. Yeah. I went to pre-med in UMass. Okay. So, you moved to Boston. Yeah. Yeah. I moved to Boston and- And you took your TI-83 calculator. Took it with, I took the 89 at that point, actually. Oh, that's big stuff. Yeah. It's big stuff. Yeah. It does a lot of calculus stuff.

So, four years pre-med. Yeah. I mean, describe. I was in a five-year. It was three years for pre-med and then two years for it to get my master's so that I could start right away. And I was taking a lot of extra classes for that. So I didn't have much time during college, I mean, to be doing YouTube, which is when I got started for me. But I still did it.

I was exhausted and I would still be editing videos and I'm like, why am I doing this? And I realized that- And why did you choose that though? Why did you choose, become a surgeon? Was there a family expectation of like, my dad moved us here so that we could be successful and I feel obligated to do something that's a big job.

Yeah, you hear that doctors and lawyers and those kind of things is what you should be. And yeah, I saw how much my dad sacrificed. Because he used to be an engineer in Brazil. And then when he got here, he would wake up at three o'clock in the morning, deliver newspapers, and then go and work at a pizza place all day, you know, while he was looking for a job.

It was 2001. No, 2000. Yeah, 2001. It was right after the recession because of 9-11 and things like that, you know. So, he couldn't find a job anywhere. And so, you know, it was tough for a really, really long time when we first got here. So, I was like, I gotta do something big. So I figured surgery, surgeons,

surgeons make a lot of money, right? I'll do that. Right, so that's kind of where the ambition, you're an ambitious guy to begin with, but the way it was directed was based on that sort of sense of obligation. Yeah, plus I love biology too. Yeah.

So, and you had, your dad being an engineer, it sounds like you had that mindset, that ability. You had the brains for this thing. I mean, you're making Mario on a calculator. I will, small aside here, I did make a Choose Your Own Adventure, Merle Haggard game on a TI-82. But it had no- Was it like a text one?

It was all text, it had no- It had some graphics. I started with the basic stuff. It had a couple of little graphics. Yeah. You had to rescue Merle Haggard from prison because he was imprisoned at one point. And in my advanced math class,

the only thing I did was work on this game at the end of the year. It was on my calculator and then I transferred it to Lynx. And I had that in college for a long time. T82? Yeah. That's a tough one. And I had that.

The processing power. And I had that game on there and then one of these days, someday, you know, the calculator got lost, but it was no Mario. I don't know, I can't even begin to imagine how you did that. We didn't have, know about that website. You could have uploaded it and it could have gone viral. Probably have as much as Joe's stuff.

There's a lot of demand for Merle Haggard at prison games. Huge, yeah, yeah, T83, Merle Haggard. So the parallel story of, you know, when you're going off to college, from like a social standpoint of you kind of, this mall regimen of kind of adapting to, you know, interpersonal communication. Yeah.

Where were you at that point? Like going off to college, that had to have been a milestone. Yeah, I was a lot better then. I was a commuter to college, so I didn't have, it still was difficult for me. We just didn't have the money for me to live there. And it was close enough. It was 40 minutes away.

So, you know, 40 minutes there, 40 minutes back. But even but even in okay so the i mean you're you created your channel you called it mystery guitar man yeah right off the bat so it's like you guitar glasses right from the start so what went into that there's no there wasn't a pre-med in there there wasn't there was no pre-med guitar man so thankfully so give us the story of the start of the channel and the glasses at the time there were um people who were doing these like lisa nova and little loca who were doing like these kind of um what's it called like characters on youtube you know and i was like okay what could be my thing um and i shot my first like little vlog of me just talking to the camera i think i didn't even put it up and my the iris on my

camera was broken so i had my glasses on i did put that one up yeah i had my glasses on i was like you know glasses mystery you know so i put in mystery uh and that was taken it was so mystery man that was taken uh i looked around there There was a guitar sitting there. I was like, okay, Mystery Guitar. That was taken. Mystery Guitar Man. That was the only thing that was available. It's one of those things. You've got to create your username and then it's, I'm going to do it right now. Process of elimination. It was four

o'clock in the morning when I sent that out because that's when I received the welcome to YouTube email. I kept everything. Including every single time someone subscribed to me, I can search for that. And then that's been your trademark the sunglasses have been your trademark yeah I wish that Oakley would see that but

yeah it's been it kind of became my thing because I did a couple videos without the glasses and people were like no no put the glasses back on like you need to keep them on from like a branding standpoint people just like that people are like they didn't like your eyeballs yeah pretty like your eyeballs are

weird like put put your glasses back but not are you are you just being funny are you being for real no for real i got i got those kind of comments all the time yeah you'll get all types i guess oh yeah yeah and at the time i didn't have the thicker skin that I have nowadays. Because YouTube back then wasn't hidden by anonymity. It was kind of like everyone was like, oh, I love this video. Everyone was super positive. And then you get a couple of the mean ones, and that's all you can focus on. Even though there are a hundred like, oh, that's a great video. There's one that's like, I see the green screen on the top right at one minute and 15 seconds.

It's like, ah, you know, that guy gets you. So you're telling me that you happen to be wearing sunglasses in like a first vlog that you did, but then you decided it wasn't a thing, you just did it. Yeah, it wasn't a thing. But then when you didn't do it, people were like saying mean things about your eyeballs. Yeah, not only that, but not only the mean things,

but like, oh, like your name is Mystery Guitar Man. You should keep the glasses on the whole time, you know? And like, so comments like that, not only just mean things, but also just- But maybe the mean comments kind of reinforce, okay, it's like, well- Right, right. Because the mean comments are the only thing

you can remember really. Yeah, yeah. You focus on the one out of 1,000 or whatever. Exactly. I definitely get that. So it ironically reinforced something that which was good branding advice in some sense. Because it's not, people like things to latch on to.

Plus it's great for me when I'm at VidCon. If I wanna get from A to B, from one panel to the other, I can just remove the glasses and I'm a real life Clark Kent now. You're the opposite. Except the opposite. Yeah, it's amazing. And it also, I mean, it helps,

you're able to monitor yourself constantly with no one knowing. Oh yeah, oh my God. That's so useful. Especially when I've done TV shows where I can just read, literally, I can just tape a little thing to the screen and right now I'm looking at you,

but I could be looking at him and no one would ever know. Yeah, yeah. And so then, okay, how did you begin to make that transition into making the kinds of videos that became your hallmark? Like where did that idea come about? Yeah, yeah. I started learning more about editing, you know.

So I wanted to push editing. At the time, you know, there were a couple people doing like cool editing tricks and After Effects things, you know. And I'm like, I want to get into that, you know. So I started doing videos with clones uh you know you definitely see the seam in the middle because the camera is not it's in autofocus or whatever you know uh and then i said okay what's wrong with this like what why didn't this works and i would search it up and i wouldn't find anything and i was okay i would try three or four different things literally my vlogs would take about an hour to shoot even though they

were about 15 seconds 20 seconds long because i would say a bunch of things i'd go back to the edit and i'd be like i don't know that didn't work and i would say a bunch of other things and then go back to the edit and then i'd get bored and just go and i was like okay i'll just put that in that's fun you know um and yeah so it kind of became a style where like i would shave a frame off of everything and see what that sounded like. So you start learning like, okay, on the S's, as soon as you say that you can cut on the O, you got to let that go a little longer, you know?

You start learning literally like to the frame editing for the vlogs. And then you come out with the guitar impossible. Yeah, yeah. It was... There were a few stop motion things before that. Right. Not as fancy. Like toying with like parking meters. Right, Yeah, yeah. It was a- There were a few stop motion things before that. Right. Not as fancy. Like toying with like parking meters.

Right, right, right. Or things like that. Right, yeah, yeah. But then this, I mean, that was the big one. Did you know, I think this is going to be a big one? I told myself that. Yeah, I was working at an editing house at the time. And I was like, stop motion with people.

Like it's been done here and there's a guy called paul versus uh uh steve or something like i forget what it's called like where they're fighting around in stop motion i was like that's cool but there's no musical element to it you know like i think it'd be cool to do something big and at the time youtube used to handpick videos to go on the front page remember the getting featured was like a big thing did you guys ever get featured by the way yeah on front page i think you guys ever get featured by the way? Yeah. I think you guys a couple of times, right? Yeah.

Technically the first feature for us was called the Unibrow song. Yeah. The Unibrow song. We wanted to feature Rhett's son doing like a rant about a basketball game, Wolfpack versus Tar Heels, but we asked them. Not to do it. To feature something else. That we were trying to do. Yeah. That was really important back in those days oh yeah it was huge because

you know that's the front page of youtube youtube is is appearing everywhere dane cook talked about it on snl and we were like oh my gosh dane cook talked about it in like real this is real were you already in la at that point no i was still in massachusetts okay so you're still in so okay so i want to make sure that we connect the dots was still in Massachusetts. Okay, so you're still in, so, okay, so I want to make sure that we connect the dots between, you know, school and LA.

So you're still in school. Still in school, still in Massachusetts. And then, and working on this really ambitious guitar video. Yeah, and that,

right before that video, I told my dad, can I take a year off of school or six months, I said, six months off of school because I want to try this YouTube thing want to try this

youtube thing out try this video thing out you know and then i got myself a job at making horrific amounts of money uh editing for some guy you know off of craigslist or something but that gave me a lot of experience in in actually switching to final cut from vegas what would your dad say i thought that he was gonna be super mad at me, but he was like, do it for a year. And then you got that job. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, if you don't do it, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life. You know, so

there are things like that in my life. He's a good dad. Yeah. He said there are things like that that I regret in my life that I wish I could have tried. My life would have been different nowadays, you know, so do it. And what were you editing for the dude that you were getting overpaid? Just like he was doing like thousand dollar music videos and things like that you know just like kind of ripping off a lot of artists uh back then um and i could see you know that it was they weren't good shooters that he was using so um i would try my best to

to fix as much of it in in post as possible possible. And to like add a lot of spice to those videos. And then in your spare time, you were hitting YouTube harder and you had this brainchild of an idea. Right, yeah. I'm gonna play Mozart. Yeah, yeah, so I do the video and I- So that was video, you played each individual note

and then you just, you would like play it and wait. Move, play it, play the next, pluck the next string. I had like a giant sheet music in front of me where I'd be like, okay, the C sharp is done, you know, and now the D is done. And you just kept the camera rolling constantly. Mm-hmm. So it was like... It was like 12 hours of video, yeah, on DV tape.

Mm-hmm. 12 hours. Really? 12 hours? 12 hours of video because I would play the same note a couple different positions, a couple different times, you know, yeah. And then you had to develop a catalog even to find every note if you had 12 hours of... No, I did them sequentially.

Well, that helped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then it was just cutting out all the fat. Just cutting out all the fat, exactly, yeah. Smart. And then, you know, timing it out to the song, you know. So I did it at a BPM where it was like two frames is a quarter note, four frames is... There's some math involved here.

Yeah, a lot of math involved. Yeah, which, you know, I had scripts back then for stuff, you know. So I did it all. I finished the video. And I throw in this little snippet at the end where I'm singing Flat of the Concords, you know. It's business time. Just for fun. Because I like doing that.

Throwing out. Something, yeah. Yeah. So then I go to sleep and I put the video up and I'm exhausted because I'm up for so long. And I'm like, oh my gosh. I wake up and it has 150,000 hits. And I'm like, 150,000 people saw this. That's incredible.

While you were sleeping. While I was sleeping. That's like two or three stadiums full of people. I was amazed. So I had to get to work that day. So I get to work and I'm like, look, 100. And by that time, it was like 300 and something. I'm like, look at this.

It's blowing up. This is going to work. And we were walking back from lunch and he points at a homeless guy he goes listen man you stop it with this online crap like you you have to focus on doing real work music videos your boss this is my boss talking yeah he goes you have to do real videos stuff that's gonna go up on mtv and vh1 because this is just a waste of time and i was late, you know? So I was like 10 minutes late. That's why he was giving me the spiel. He's like, you're gonna end up like that guy

if you keep doing this YouTube thing. And then the guy goes, don't listen to him. He's like, you do it. YouTube.com is where it's at. I'm on there right now. And he rolls over and there's a laptop and he's watching your video. 300,000 and more.

Good job, buddy. I love what you did with this one. He was a MySpace star, though. Yeah, so that was when I quit. I finished that day and I was like, you know what? I'm going to do it. That day? Well, no.

I took a couple extra very good paying jobs. Right, okay. But it wasn't that day. But I wanted to quit that day. So it counts. You quit and then what and then i i did another video and then another one and then another one um and then i got picked to do this fiesta movement thing where they give you a car for six months and had you done the

video with toby where it was the two yes you had done that one before that yeah yeah where like he uploaded half of a video and then I uploaded half of a video. You play them at the same time. Yeah, yeah. You hit play on one and then there's a countdown and then you hit play on mine. And then, you know, so like I was playing around and stuff like that. And I had recorded a video and I sent Toby the video and then he, it's Toby, you know, so he was nuts.

He was like jumping all around the screen and he was like coming up to the camera and getting in front of the way. Because it was a guitar duel where it was timed out where if you play both videos yeah you guys are playing back and forth dueling with each other exactly yeah but he's so his performance is a toby performance it was a toby performance and i'm like and i i just look like a zombie next to him you know and i'm like i gotta i gotta re-record my stuff so i kept the audio and i re-recorded all my video where i'm kind of matching his level of enthusiasm you know and people are like oh my god this is awesome so that that kind of

helped me to like kind of be more animated Toby gave you your stage presence yeah yeah Toby's Toby's manic what do you call it like state of being it's funny I think we just call it Toby now oh it's just Toby now? It's funny though, like when you see yourself, like what were the chances that you were going to literally see yourself next to someone and be able to compare? It's like the perfect recipe for innovating and then realizing like, okay, I'm gonna, you know. And so that's like one of your signature things.

That happened a lot, you know, where like I took you guys' songs and put it into my stuff, you know and so that's like one of your signature things that happened a lot you know where like i i took you guys's songs and put it into my stuff you know and like sounding songs you know i i recorded a a country song that ended up in one of my one of my videos that literally i just was singing what you guys were singing you know it was just supposed to be playing out of the radio you know so stuff like that the the Ford Fiesta thing was like, this was a sponsorship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a free car, free insurance, free gas. So, I did, I was like,

I will never have the chance to do this again. So, I'm going to drive all around the country. So, I would tweet out, hey, I'm in Philadelphia. Who's got a room for me? And someone would tweet back, hey, come to me. And I would follow them.

They'd DM me their address. I would show up. Sometimes it'd be creepy. How creepy did it get? I got a little creepy one time, but it's all right. It was just a misguided person. It's okay. I was single. You're the one replying to the tweets. I know, I know, I know. But yeah, so, you know, I would just drive all over the country. It took me about a month to get to LA and I had about 60 bucks left on me. No, it was 160 bucks left on me.

But the plan was to get to LA? To get to LA and to see if I could find an apartment. And I was hoping to have like 800, $900 on me. But, you know, there was a lot of cities in the middle of the country that no one responded to. So I had to find like a travel lodge or whatever like that, you know? Right. So a friend of mine is in Vegas. He's like, hey, I've got two rooms in Vegas.

A friend of mine couldn't show. So I've got an empty room here in Vegas. Do you want to come to Vegas? And I'm like, I'm not a Vegas guy. But I know how to live in LA now. So I go to Vegas and I play poker until I get to $900. What? Yeah.

So you started with $60? I started with $160. $160. Something like that. I forget exactly how much. I've looked up because I have a very bad memory. But I go back to LA and I have literally $ 50 left to me after i pay my i i convinced the lady to not have me pay my security deposit first and last i was like you are one room away from

full occupancy in your building you need to just i promise that i'll be good for it next month you know i i will give you the money and then if not i'll take you to vegas and we can play a little poker right i can play a little i mean that's how i pay for my college books that was your first month's rent that's my first month's rent yeah the nine hundred dollars that you won yeah in poker i had fifty dollars left i was sleeping on the floor i was stealing my neighbor's linksys wi-fi without a password on it i was like i was i set up a little extension cord from the hallway into my bedroom so that i can i can keep editing and things like that and charge up my camera and things. I went to like soup kitchens and...

So, you didn't have an... Your electricity was off. It was off. And you would just use the hall outlet for your laptop. I'd be sitting out there. Where was this apartment? It was... Do you know Chris Thompson?

Yeah. Yeah. It was his like apartment building. be sitting out there where was this apartment it was it do you know chris thompson yeah yeah he uh it was his like apartment building uh he was he was upstairs and i was downstairs the video called looping around you can see yeah okay i was walking around that i think the first time we came we saw you in la it was you were you were in that apartment still you stayed there a while yeah but there was i remember you had electricity i Eventually, I got electricity. It was because, actually, I got an offer from two friends of mine to fly out to North Carolina. It was such a godsend.

You guys have no clue how much that changed my life because I was zero. I was down to negative amounts on my bank account. And we never knew this. The funny thing is, did at the time. I've inferred some of it that like, wow, you know, Joe was, he was broke. Like in other interviews you did. But even I guess now you're kind of clarifying something that we didn't,

did not know until this moment. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was really, really broke. I considered asking you guys for like my bag check fee. You know, I was like, no, but they're doing so much already, you know? Well, and let's give our side of the story.

I remember we were shooting, we were in Coleman, Alabama. We were shooting the Epic and Honest mobile home commercial, which is one of my favorites that we made. It's like in the middle of nowhere, Alabama, but we're staying in Birmingham, which is a nice place. I remember we were in this nice hotel and we were, because our sponsor like put us up there. And I remember we were having the conversation there

and we called you, we got you on the phone by that point, because we had decided to do this t-shirt war thing, which we had a t-shirt sponsor on board and then we came up with the idea, stop motion t-shirts, what we came up with the idea. Yeah, yeah. And once it was a stop motion idea, I was like, this guy Joe, he's like, I'd seen,

everyone had seen Guitar Impossible and then the other stop motion videos and even I was like, this guy does a lot of stop motion. I just feel like we should, you know, he's so committed to YouTube and he's the stop motion guy. I just, I think when we conferred about it, it wasn't about, well, we can also do that. It was like, we should work with the YouTube guy

who's the stop motion guy. And it was an idea for a collaboration, but it wasn't the way collabs work now, which collabs today are based on just shared audience and growing your audience. It was legitimately, let's collaborate with someone who's going to bring the expertise to this idea that we need.

We had no clue how to do stop motion. And also getting Billy Reid involved. Oh yeah, Billy Reid was great. Because. For the drawings. Yeah, because we. We can't draw anything. Yeah, and he was like, well, Billy can draw it, because we had done a few science channel collaborations

with him, or no, before that, even before that. I can't remember how he made. This was the first collaboration with Billy too, but we knew Billy from way back, like him and Justine were like our two YouTube friends through, yeah, being on Revver before YouTube. But yeah, because it was stop motion, it was like, why try to emulate what you do when we could call you up?

So there was like an email exchange and the first phone call was we were in Birmingham. It was like, man, he talks quiet. I can barely hear him, but he's good at stop motion. That's what I said to Rev when we got off the phone. And I had no clue. You know, you were in LA. I was like, yeah, he's also in LA.

Like, this guy's legit, man. He's totally committed. Like, he's killing it. I had no clue that you were like. When you guys called me, I was literally out, like, about to go to, like, a soup kitchen or something like that. Because I was that broke. And I i was like this is a job yes i was i was so quiet because i was trying to stop myself from crying oh dude yes yeah of course yeah we're like because there was a i'm trying to replay it because i remember it's like well yeah you'll have to come out here and i was like well i mean we'll we'll pay for it we have a

sponsor pay all your expenses to come out as soon as you said you have to come out here i'm like oh no i won't be able to afford that and then you said immediately the very next thing was uh we'll pay you i mean there's a sponsor involved you know the the t-shirt people right yeah um and i was like okay good good good you know and and this kind of you know, the t-shirt people, right? Yeah. And I was like, oh, okay, good, good, good, you know? And this kind of, you know, it's pretty epic what ended up happening. You guys come out and we have like basically a couple of days set aside to shoot this thing.

And in that time of trying to- It was right before Thanksgiving, right? Yeah. And we tried to shoot it and we realized that this is going to be more complicated. All the shirts didn't show up. That's what it was. You remember that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we then, we were like, guys, I'm sorry, we flew you both out here and it was like Lillington or that basement studio and we like did test shots. Right before Thanksgiving. And then we just kinda hung out. But my family was there, so you guys like

paid for my Thanksgiving flight home. Because your parents were moving to Clayton, North Carolina, right? Like literally 15 minutes from us. What are the chances? It's so crazy. So then you guys flew back. It was like, oh, we'll fly you back around Christmas.

I'm like, perfect, can you fly back for my birthday too? It really worked out, yeah. We learned, I mean, everybody learned a lot on that, but we learned like, if you don't have all the, everybody learned a lot on that, but we learned like, if you don't have all the props and you're relying on someone to ship them to you, you know, make sure the timing works on that. However, I've got a crazy story about that, that you guys, I don't think I've told you guys.

Do you remember how it took me like an extra, like three or four weeks to get you guys the video? It was because my hard drive crashed. I was, I had two i had two yeah i had two versions of the footage right uh and they were all in these old like western digital drives um and i was like oh these these drives are going out you know i need to to make sure that this is this is good you know and they're giant giant files so i set up an automator thing to automatically move all the files over because one of my backup drive had died.

So I was like, okay, so I'll set up that to move from here to there. And instead of moving it, every single file got deleted. What? Literally every single file. So I opened it up and it's like that red, like the files are gone kind of thing.

And I'm like oh my god it's not like we'll fly out a third time and do that right it was like the shirts again yeah it was like crazy to shoot that it was nuts it was so meticulous it was one of the most meticulous thing and i just turned bright white and i was like how am i gonna tell these guys that i i just lost everything oh my gosh They spent so much money flying us out twice. Like, I messed this up for them. I will never work in this town again. This is the end.

So, that's why the video is you and Sup Ricky. The video is just me being like. You just rotoscoped our faces over it. Yeah, yeah. It's just us going like, oh. It's a reverse shot of me going, that's a great video. Oh my gosh, did you see this? It's perfect. Well, how did you, you obviously recovered the footage. You never even told us. It just took you four weeks to find it. No, so I couldn't afford, like I went to some of those hard drive recovery places, right? And they were like, it's going to be $3,000. And at this point, I'm like, that's what? No.

No. My gosh. Why? So, I started researching on how to do hard drive recovery myself. And I did it. I got all the footage. There were like 20 frames that were missing. No, that weren't missing.

That were like, that had a bunch of weird stuff on the side. So, I rotoscoped all that out. And I had to re-edit the entire video again. And that's why it took me, I think it was extra like two or three weeks. You edited the video twice. Twice, yeah. You edited it all, deleted it.

Yeah, I don't remember being like thinking like, oh, this is overdue or anything. I don't, I mean, we had a really good relationship with that sponsor. So I don't remember ever thinking, man, he's taking a long time. So you covered it very well. I had two hellish weeks trying to recover that footage. And like I had drafted an email that said,

guys, I'm so sorry, like I will pay you back for this. And like I drafted like a little payment plan to pay you guys back. And I was like, yeah. Well, and the funny thing is, is that video ended up doing so much for us. Oh yeah? I mean, yeah.

People who followed our career for a long time know that that was a very pivotal moment in which, I would say it was like the first legitimate viral video. You know, it was like- For you guys? Yeah, it was the first one that was just like- When you search for stop motion, that was the number one video for like a year. Yeah, it's kind of what people knew us for at the time.

Yeah, yeah. You're the t-shirt guys. I mean, to this day, I still have the shirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had the Facebook song and you had the. But yeah, this was. That was big too. This one, that exploded more quickly.

And I swear we came to LA before it was finished. Cause I thought we looked at something or it might have been the next one we shot. It was the McDonald's. It was the McDonald's. That's what it was. Yeah, yeah. And of course, yeah, for us, for all three of us,

it led to the agency for McDonald's and Coke. It was life-changing for me. Then said- They were just gonna copy us. Yeah, we're gonna copy you guys and make a commercial, but the agency guy said. No, these guys are big. We should ask them to do it.

The same thing that you did with me. You know, we just asked this guy to do stop motion. So a lot of the times, that was my very first like national commercial. And that was the first time that I was like, I could be a director. Ours too, yeah, it was like, cause we talked them into,

we wanna shoot it in North Carolina again. We had a bigger studio and like, so we shot that there.urs too, yeah. It's like, because we talked them into, we want to shoot it in North Carolina again. We had a bigger studio and like, so we shot that there. Yeah. So you and Billy came back out and we went through the whole thing. We made sure we had all the t-shirts before we flew you out. You probably made sure to back up the hard drives three times. I had six hard drives that had all this stuff like that too. But yeah, I mean, that was super big.

And I remember by the time T-shirt war came out, we got a big push from Ray William Johnson, who we had never met or talked. We had actually met him, but we didn't know we had met him. I flew up right after we shot T-shirt war. I flew up to him because he paid for me to go there and like help him switch to HD because everything was switching to HD.

And he's very like on the button, you know? So he was like, this guy guy he does good videos online a lot of my early stuff was like you guys you know what he thought which is like okay this guy knows what he's doing I'll just I'll just get him let him do it for me yeah exactly so I'm doing with the home theater guy right now just let him do it so you were Ray William Johnson's YouTube home theater guy. You went to New York and you said, you can shoot in widescreen. You don't have to stretch your 4.3. He was doing some wacky stuff with his webcam.

We upgraded his computer, we upgraded his everything. And at that time, T-shirt war came out. So he gave us a solid. Yeah, so he was like. He was happy to promote you and we were along for the ride after the big favor you gave him. Oh yeah. That was a huge jump Yeah, so he was like- He was happy to promote you and we were along for the ride after the big favor you gave him. Oh yeah.

That was a huge jump too, you know? Right. When he kind of roasted us with that video. Yeah. First time I was publicly called a hipster. I don't even think I knew what a hipster was then. Cause that was his thing back then, right? Until he called me that.

He just made fun of a lot of videos. But he, it was the very first time ever that he was like, this video is so good that i'm having a hard time making fun of it but bear with me i'm gonna try anyways you remember yeah yeah yeah that was the way so then i uh he was like okay so what are we gonna do here should i link to you should i link to them i was like at the time you could hack youtube so that a video would show up on someone else's main page. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

So I told them, this will be 50-50. It'll show up on my page, but the video is on their channel, so they'll get the ad money. I'll get the people checking out my stuff. I got, I had no clue. And I'm sorry, guys. You could have had these. I got 80,000 subscribers in like two days. Yeah.

Yeah. That's fine. It was nuts. It was nuts. I think that's fair. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's nuts, it was nuts. I think that's fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't tell us about that, but you also didn't tell us about

deleting all of the hard drives. But fixing it, so that works out. And then I remember when we were shooting T-shirt War the second time, we were sitting in Copajo waiting for Billy to fly in, and you were like, guys, I've decided I'm gonna start making a video every week. Oh yeah.

And I'm gonna do a schedule, it's gonna be every week. And I remember thinking, you're crazy, man. Yeah, you can't do that. You can't. I did two videos a week for I think two years. Two videos a week. Was it two videos a week? Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then. Because after the week, my channel really started picking up a lot of steam. That started after T-shirt war came, around the same time you kind of executed your plan. Yeah. Two videos a week. Mm-hmm.

That were like- I started with one video a week and then I opted to two. And you blew up. Oh yeah. It worked. It certainly wasn't just T-shirt war. That was something.

That was those 80,000 subscribers and yeah, but. Yeah, but yeah, you're right. I got a million subscribers in something like three months, it was, or three or four months. It was. And what was that time like? I mean, I guess. And we didn't have, as a point of reference,

we didn't have for a while after that. A long time. A long time after that, maybe a year or two more. Well, more than that. We didn't get to a million subscribers until, you know, probably 2013. So you just left us in the dust. Oh yeah, and then you guys left me in the dust after that.

But it was, you signed up for something nuts and you did it for two years. Yeah, what was that time like? Did you turn the power on? You know, what- I turned the power on. I started dating Sarah. You know, I- didn't sleep a lot though i'm sleeping i mean given the amount of time that goes into your videos every single night

was up to three three three thirty four o'clock in the morning there were a couple videos where my vlogs like hang on what's up thank goodness for the glasses you know because my eyes are just super baggy i still to this day where i was exhausted and there were a couple videos where i say it in the vlog guys it's it's nine o'clock in the morning and i've been up for 48 hours as soon as i hit upload on this i'm gonna go sleep for a really long time and then i would wake up you know eight hours later and start reading comments and responding to comments because you can't just put up a video you know you need to move it on to the next one yeah yeah how'd you meet sarah and when did this happen

we there was uh youtube came out with their super secret google nexus phone right and they flew us all up to san francisco she was working for philip defranco at the time it's like his manager um and she you know we met there at google you know because i didn't have any people with me you know it was around the same time actually that we were doing T-shirt war. It was, so that December, I started talking to her and we started dating. And we were like, well, let's never work together. We hear about the horrible things that happen when people work together, right? And we both agreed, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So then she stops working for Phil and she starts thinking about, hey, I think I want to start like doing this managing thing, you know, because at the time I had called CAA, WME, all these agencies and management companies and they're all like, no thanks. Like we're not going to do YouTube, you know? So I was like, ah, there's no manager. She's like, what about if I do it? You know, I'm like, yeah, I think it'd be great for you to do with other people uh yeah so then um it was during the the mcdonald's thing you know i was like i was flying there and i prepped myself i had the six hard drives and i had like the shot list in my head and i was like i gotta like do a really good job and then sony calls me sony's like guys i joe i saw your videos we want you to make 11 videos for us uh and i'm like that's nuts no that's that's We want you to make 11 videos for us.

And I'm like, that's nuts. No, that's crazy. That's 11 videos? Like, they go, no, it's not up on our channel. We want to create like a DVD that ships with our new bloggy cameras that is like a manual, you know, instead of having like a PDF or something, it would be like a fun thing,

like how to shoot cat videos, how to shoot this, how to shoot fun sports videos, you know? So I'm like, okay, cool. So I told Sarah, like, listen, I know we're not supposed to shoot cat videos, how to shoot this, how to shoot fun sports videos, you know? So I'm like, okay, cool. So I told Sarah like, listen, I know we're not supposed to be working together, but if you could just take this one thing, you know, like I can't do this call.

And I think I remember- Negotiate for it. Yeah, just like negotiate. And I'm in the middle of shooting this McDonald's thing. I cannot do this. I mean, this is way more important, you know? And she's like, okay, how much would you break even? I was like, I could do each video

for like a thousand or $2,000. So if you get us like 20 or 30, okay, how much would you break even? I was like, I could do each video for like $1,000 or $2,000. So if you get us like $20,000 or $30,000, like that would be awesome. Like $11,000, you know, $30,000, I could buy a new camera. So she comes back to me. She's like, would you be good with making 13 videos? I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know, for $30,000. I still had the $30,000 in my mind. She goes, no, like I think it's time for you to start your production company. I got for $30,000. I still had the $30,000 in my mind. She goes, no, like, I think it's time for you to start your production company.

I got you $110,000. I'm like, oh, my gosh. So, literally, that, like, area in my life, that time in my life, I bought, like. Big turnaround. Yeah, yeah. I bought a 4K camera. I hired someone for the first time. All that money went really fast, you know, because I poured it all back into doing the YouTube videos

and I bought new editing stuff. And like to this day, I still have some of the stuff from that era, even though it was like five or six years ago, you know. Right. Because, you know, we bought like top of the line stuff and we were able to make more commercials. But she was your manager, so you stopped dating. Listen, you know, we stopped dating and got married

instead yeah that simplifies things and then it wasn't if she's my manager she's taking 15 you might as well go into a joint account let's share this checking yeah so and then shortly after that i mean in 2011 she turns around and found big frame yeah yeah so she well she started the cloud media before that okay and then you know she found a partner they switched the name to big frame and then eventually they sold to dreamworks you know so right so that was that was huge well like 15 million dollar huge yeah something like she didn't she didn't get 15 million dollars but you know that's what the company yeah so you know a lot of the investors got their money back first.

But yeah, we got a good, nice chunk of change for that, which, you know, made us be okay with buying a house here in Los Angeles. Which is not an easy thing to do. Right. Because we're all learning. Yeah. But, okay. Yeah.

And I want to talk about that, how this lines up because, you know. It's the most I've ever talked about money, just so you know. Like every single interview that I've ever done, done like they said do you have any stipulations and you know if it's a tv thing we're like don't talk about money but you know it's like well the sale the sale is public knowledge yeah yeah it's all public knowledge even in terms of like you know the sony gig it's like that's you just we didn't have a point of reference. I think the thing that Sarah brought was just a power of a point of reference. Exactly.

None of us knew how much what we were doing was worth. Oh yeah, yeah. Nobody knew and everyone was undervaluing it. $1,000 brand new. Everybody was undervaluing it. Every single person, yeah. Yeah, I mean, even after that t-shirt war, once we paid you guys and the travel stuff,

we probably made like $2,000 off that video, pocketed. You know, it's like no one knew what to do. Yeah. But, and then really interesting thing has happened. I mean, like that's a major part of your story too, is that, you know, the success that you experienced in kind of moving and trying different things. Yeah.

But, you know, YouTube has changed a whole lot. It has. You know, and it's interesting, when you look at your videos today, you're making videos that are as high or really higher quality than you ever made in 09 and 2010 and 2011. But the audience has changed so much that a video, like your recent videos, like the yarn animation video,

that video would have gotten a few million views three years ago. Rubik's cube animation, how many Rubik's cubes? Like 1,200 different Rubik's cubes, 1,300 almost. How many solutions? Like over a thousand different permutations? I don't know. Hello?

Why am I getting a phone call? Wait, there's a phone in here? That's never happened. So I knew that you were gonna ask that question. I had a phone call? That's never happened. So I knew that you were gonna ask that question. I had a guy call me with all the math. I don't know, I mean, if you do the math on that video, I mean, it's in millions for sure. But there's this principle

that is involved in all your videos, which is I'm going to put a bunch of time and effort and thought and planning and execution into this thing to create this. And half of the enjoyment of your videos is appreciating or trying to appreciate what exactly happened. And that's why T-shirt war ended up working when it did, because if you just show it to somebody

and they don't stop and think, they're just like, it just washes over them. But at the moment that you can see it in somebody's eyes when they're watching that video, when they understand these guys changed T-shirts. Every single time. Over 200 times. Yeah.

When, that's how your videos work. There's a moment where you get it. Right. And then you appreciate it. And three, four years ago on YouTube, that translated into an amazing viral potential. Yeah. Why is that not happening now?

I don't know. I don't know the reason why. I mean, one reason, of course, is because of volume. You know, there's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of really well-produced stuff out there. So it's tougher to like poke through, you know, the massive amounts of people and crazy amounts of hours that are being uploaded. There's also been a younger audience coming in, massive amounts of people and crazy amounts of hours that are being uploaded.

There's also been a younger audience coming in, which are more interested in personalities, you know, so a cult of personality. So I think that that's another thing too. But, you know, for me, you know, I've been asked a lot of times, like, how do you get big on YouTube? Like, how do you do it? You know, it's like if you're asking that question it you won't because you're not doing what you love you know it's and it sounds so cliche and you know you read about it in like

self-help books and things like that but it's so true it's that if you're not putting every single amount of effort that you can into every single video, then at least for me, I'm not getting the enjoyment out of it. So it'll be clear that I won't be getting the enjoyment out of it. Some people are perfectly content with just doing a daily vlog or something like that, and it's fun for them. I just don't get that out of it. But how do you apply, how do you deal with the fact that, okay, an amazing

Rubik's Cube stop motion video that would be a 2 million view video is a 400,000 view video. I mean, how do you interact with that? Yeah. It's just for yourself. I'm not going to say that it's not like, it doesn't affect me at all. You know, of course, you know, it'd be it'd be like oh man you know I just think that you know it's like oh this would have been 2 million

hits 2 or 3 years ago you know when there weren't that many people on the or like when this was brand new oh well next to on to the next thing you know so I would I mean I would still be doing it literally if I would just post it and it didn't even hit 301 plus you know I would still be doing it literally if I would just post it and it didn't even hit 301 plus.

I would still be doing it because for me, what I get out of it is making the actual video. And if I just wanted just to make money off of it and if it was a views or fame kind of thing, I would have stopped a long time ago. You know, I would have gone into production, you know, by, you know, just making videos as a production company, you can make a lot more money than, you know, just doing YouTube, you know, trying to like make YouTube videos sometimes, you know.

But your strategy is shifting. Well, maybe strategy is not the right word. Yeah, my approach. Your approach is shifting. Yeah. Is it independent of performance? And is it just because of where you want to go next? And what is that?

Yeah, it's independent of performance. Well, I won't say it's independent completely of performance. You know, on videos, it made it a good time to shift. Because I've always wanted to get into narrative yeah you know to make movies to make tv shows to make stories you know and and to really i've always been on camera as a necessity because i didn't have money to pay actors you know um so i've i've always wanted to direct a movie and now you know i've slowly been working towards i started with meridian which is my first short film, and then something called Instant Getaway.

And then I was like, let's make an entire reel of a movie, which is 40 minutes. So I made a 40-minute short film. A lot of it was self-funded. 40 minutes is a what? Is a reel of a movie? A reel, yeah, yeah. I haven't heard that, meaning it's not a movie because it's 40 minutes,

but it's not a short film because it's not short. It's technically a short film, yeah. A reel is what they used to use for projections, you know, so like you can fit 40 minutes of a movie into a big reel and then there's like a little flash on the screen and then it switches to the next reel or one stops. But if you can make a reel, you can make a movie. It is the rationale.

You can make a third of a movie, yeah. You know, it's a good practice for me to make a movie. It is the rationale. You can make a third of a movie. Yeah. You know, it's a good practice for me to make a movie. And is it, I saw an interesting comment at the top of it. The question on that one was, are you building a cohesive sci-fi universe? Like between Meridian, Instant Getaway, Beyond. Yeah, yeah. And you were like, you're on to us. Were you being facetious or is it cohesive?

No, it is. Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, there're on to us. Were you being facetious or is it cohesive? No, it is. Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, there's the same company, the same kind of- But characters? Not the same characters. Not the same characters, but- Not the same stories, but there's definitely the same company. Cypher is the same one.

You know, we have so many things hidden and beyond that are for the next thing that we're making. You know, so I want to- So it is a cohesive, it all makes sense together. Yeah, yeah, enough. Where it's like a spinoff almost, you know? So what is the next thing? Well, the next thing is going to be a movie. I'm calling it Redshift.

And that's just a working title. Redshift? Yeah, I haven't told you about this, Link. I am the lead. And it's me driving a stick shift. It all takes place. It's like that movie with, what's his name in it, Yeah, I haven't told you about this, Link. I am the lead. And it's me driving a stick shift. It all takes place. It's like that movie with, what's his name in it,

that all takes place all in the car. Oh, with Tom Hardy. Yeah, Tom Hardy. It's just like that. It's just like Locke, but it's me and it's a stick shift. It's me trying to figure out how to. And he doesn't know how to drive a stick shift car. And I burn the clutch out. Like, the conflict is I burn the clutch out.

So he's got to push the car. Yeah, and I push the car and then that's it. And then there's an explosion. A lot of special effects. Oh, there's a lot of special effects. Yeah, it's mostly special effects. It's actually going to push the car. Yeah, and I push the car and then that's it. And then there's an explosion. A lot of special effects. Oh, there's a lot of special effects. Yeah, it's mostly special effects. It's actually called Rhett Shifts.

Yeah. It's not Rhett Shifts. It's all shot on a green screen too. We're very excited about it. Yeah, yeah. It's the first time that we're talking about it here.

Okay, Red Shift. Oh, that's what it is. Like the Big Bang. Yeah, exactly. And we're going to be shooting up in Detroit. So we're, I think so. Ooh, post-apocalyptic, huh? Yes, it is, yeah. what it is. Like the Big Bang. Yeah, exactly. And we're going to be shooting up in Detroit. So we're- Ooh, post-apocalyptic, huh?

Yes, it is. Yeah. AKA Detroit. AKA Detroit. Exactly. Have you been up there before? I know, but some people are listening to Detroit and they're like rolling their eyes right now. Of course.

We get all the post-apocalyptic movies shot here now. Yeah. I mean, it's incredible up there. I've been doing like some digi-scouting is what I call it. You know, we've paid a couple of photographers to go out and take pictures, but I'm walking around with Google Street View. Yeah. And I didn't know this, but on the top left, you can like switch around.

There's a little slider that says historical views. So, you can go back to like 2009, 2007 when they started doing it with crappier cameras yeah and like you click on 2009 and you know it's beautiful neighborhoods and lush lawns and things like that and then you move on to to nowadays and it's just like trees growing through houses and like totally forgotten and entire neighborhoods that are just giant blades of grass growing and stuff like that. Yeah. It's perfect, perfect for the movie that we're on.

So when do you shoot? I'm hoping to shoot this year before winter. Are you self-funding this too or? No, this one is a lot more expensive. So I'd have to like sell a couple of houses or something. So do you have a partner? Are you getting sponsors? Yeah, yeah. We have a producer that's um and now we're looking for financiers um and we

have two financiers that are interested so so yeah well hopefully we'll be able to announce something soon well keep us posted yeah yeah that's exciting definitely yeah and thanks for giving us this story and uh yeah it was cool to have a part in it. You know, I didn't- You guys have no clue how big of a part you had in my life. It was huge. I'm kind of floored by that. You know, it played a huge part and you played a huge part in our career too.

So it was just, it was a confluence of things. So it's not like- It was a true collaboration. It's certainly not a you're welcome. It's a wow. Well, it was for us too. So that's cool. We just need Billy Reed in that seat. I know, right? It's certainly not a you're welcome, it's a wow, well it was for us too, so. That's great. That's cool.

We just need Billy Reid in that seat over there. I know, right? It'd be like a big reunion. All right, well we could wait, but I don't, we haven't made any phone calls. Or you could just find a spot to do an amazing Mr. Guitar Man signature. All right, cool.

Thanks, man. Thank you. And there you have it, our Ear Biscuit with Joe Penna, AKA Mystery Guitar Man. Let him know how you feel about this Ear Biscuit or just what you think about it, what you think and feel about it. His Twitter is mysteryguitarm, because you couldn't fit Mr. Guitar Man.

Apparently that's too long. Mr. Guitar M or Mr. Guitar M. He might could have fit Mr. Guitar Ma, but that's probably someone else. That's his ma. Let him know. That's his ma's Twitter. Hashtag Ear Biscuits.

And remember, we appreciate your reviews on iTunes. I feel like the title, the tables were turned a little bit in this Ear Biscuit, you know? We were surprised by a number of things, and I just want to just kind of recap those and hear your thoughts, but one, the hard drive story, but two, just, I was, the fact that he was appreciative to us for being instrumental in helping

kind of set him on his career path. Well, we didn't realize. I didn't realize. We didn't know what position he was in at the time that we asked him to do this. We were like, well, this guy moved to LA. I mean, when YouTube moves you to LA, that means you've made it, right?

That was what we thought. And little did we know that he's literally taken power from the outlet in the hallway and in there with nothing but a computer in his apartment. I mean, I don't know if we would have done anything differently if we had known that, but it's just weird that we had no idea that he was struggling and that this was

like a really big opportunity. We were just like, this guy's great at this. We need him in order to make this video good and this would be cool to collaborate. And you know, so I'm flattered that he wanted to tell us, hey, you guys were more instrumental in my career than you even appreciated or knew. And like I said to him, that goes both ways, you know,

a T-shirt war had a tremendous impact on our career as well. I mean, there's people who still come up to us today. It's kind of the trademark video for a lot of people and was for a long time for everybody. Yeah, I remember when we were in LA for something and then some kids who were visiting from Saudi Arabia recognized us and came up to us.

Do you remember that? Yeah. It was, and it was, and they were talking about T-shirt war. And that was just the first international fans that we ever met. Cause you didn't, I mean, even though those people spoke English,

you didn't have to understand English or have any cultural reference in order to appreciate that video. So yeah, thank you, Joe, for doing that for us. Yeah, and certainly there were, his success rests on how great his work is. It's not that we gave him an opportunity, it was just a collaboration.

Well, and thank you for somehow recovering that footage. Oh, man. Which, I do remember now, my memory of that time, it has been years now, my memory of that time is pretty foggy, but I do remember there being a little bit of a delay. We worked with a really, you know, an easygoing sponsor, so they weren't like demanding that it be done.

And I was just like, oh, this must be taking a while. I remember thinking it was taking longer than we anticipated, but it wasn't like there was a deadline. So I don't remember getting panicky or anything. There was a little bit of- But we were asking him about it. Wondering why we're not seeing anything. But he was just like, I'm working on it.

And we weren't, it wasn't- I'm working on recovering that it even exists. Right, and I mean, I'm kind of glad he didn't tell us. What good would it have done? Nothing. Well, we probably would have paid for the recovery fee. I think that's what would have happened. I'm definitely glad he didn't tell us.

Because that would have been all the profit from the video going into recovering the. That's true. But it might would have, how many years were knocked off Joe's life in the panic zone of trying to recover that data? That makes a more epic story. I don't wanna, you can't put a price tag on that.

That's what you should remember when you're going through something difficult is that maybe this will become an epic story on a podcast someday. All right. Does that give you hope, Ear Biscuit? I'm gonna carry that into the next bad thing that happens to me and you know what, you guys do the same.

Maybe you don't have a podcast, but maybe there's something that you have. You have a story. Like a friend. Yeah, just tell your friend. Or someone who can hear your story. Or not, I'm just trying to help you out here. Or just talk to yourself, a lot of people do that.

You could talk to yourself in the mirror. This would be a good story to tell myself when this is over with. All right, we'll be back here and you keep talking to yourself. It's better to have a good story than a good time. Debate that amongst yourselves. We'll talk at you next week.