The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Adi Shankar – Producer, Writer, Actor

Episode Date: September 25, 2021

Adi Shankar - Producer, Writer, Actor https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3021774/

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a podcast and who knew we were going to make another one thanks for tuning in guys to see the youtube version just go to youtube.com forward 4chesschrisvaz.

Hit that bell notification button. Also go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvaz. You can see my new book there. There's a Goodreads giveaway you can get involved with. It's free. And you can also go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and all that good stuff. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming

out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com.

That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com.

So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. So we've got a most interesting guest from Hollywood on the show with us. He has been involved with, geez, so many different projects. He's been a producer, writer, actor that he's done in his movies. He's 36 years old, and he's become recognized executive producer of the smash hit Netflix original series Castlevania, the writer, director, creator of upcoming Netflix original superhero series, The Guardians of Justice, and creator of upcoming Netflix series Captain Laserhawk in partnership with the video game industry leader Ubisoft. In addition, he is creating adaptions of iconic video games,

Devil May Cry and PUBG, if you're familiar with that. Welcome to the show. How are you, Addy? I am good. Awesome sauce. Okay, thanks for coming. That was quite a bio. That was quite a bio. There's much more. It's extraordinary all the different things you did. But I figured we'd get into meeting you.

My understanding, too, is you're a KISS fan. Is that correct? And you got that from the makeup I rocked? Yeah, somebody who mentioned it. I don't know if it was a wiki or one of the videos that I watched an interview of you on. So is that a no? I'm a fan of the KISS aesthetic. Oh, the KISS aesthetic. The the kiss aesthetic yeah yeah it wasn't like i religiously listened to their music not that i have you know anything

against the music just a different yeah i want to say different generation but it's not like i'm consuming music of my generation anyways i tend to listen to older 80s, fake 80s, 90s kind of music. Okay. Sounds good. Guys, tell Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons to just forget it. Just hang up on them. So, Adi, will you give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs?

Where to look you up? Dot coms, etc. Find me on Instagram. I think that's probably the way to go about it. it's at bootleg universe so bootleg the way one would spell bootleg b-o-o-t-l-e-g and then universe the way one would spell universe i'm not gonna spell universe out loud because there's a good chance i will spell that incorrectly out loud because spelling b is not my my strong suit okay you're not to cancel the spelling bee part of the podcast too yeah just kill that part yeah yeah yeah like the jeopardy

spelling bee i'll be good at jeopardy wheel of fortune i'm not very good at it wheel of fortune okay we'll kill those portions of the show we those are at the end so you also have a big youtube channel as well right under bootleg universe i wouldn't say it's like a big YouTube channel as well, right? Under Bootleg Universe. I wouldn't say it's like a big YouTube channel. It's almost like more of a portfolio. So we've released a few short films. I believe it's seven short films over the course of starting in 2012 was the first one. The short films, which are like satirical takes on brands people are familiar with, James Bond and Spider-Man and the Punisher and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Pokemon.

Those have done well in terms of getting people to watch them and care. Subscriber-based on YouTube, it doesn't feel like a YouTube channel to the extent where I'm vlogging every day and letting you know what I'm eating for breakfast or whether I like Kiss or not and how much of Kenny G's catalog I celebrate. Yeah, it's like a YouTube. There's a YouTube presence. It feels more like a port. There you go. There's a lot of great material on it. There's a lot of interesting stuff. So for those people in the audience that may not know who you are, maybe they've consumed some of your media,

but they've never gotten a chance to get an in-depth thing of you, how would you describe yourself? Because you seem like a jack-of-all-trades, like a renaissance man. You seem to be into everything. What would you describe yourself or describe to people who might go, who is this gentleman? I struggled with that question for such a long time because even just the way you ask, who are you? And then even

if you start reducing who you are into things you've made or things that you've been a part of that got recognition, I'm definitely more than a career. That's one of the things I've been processing over the last several years. I had success at a super young age, in my early 20s. And all of a sudden, as I was growing up, I just defined my entire reality and my sense of self by these things that were successful in the ecosystem and that that became my dad this is a long preamble of saying addie shankar is a more complex well-rounded person than a series of projects that said i i have come to define myself as an artist okay i'm just i'm an artist it's not necessarily even a jack of all trades because it's not really i'm not really a tradesman i think part of being an artist is or really walking the path of an artist is gaining an understanding of the

various tools that you have access to part of the education is a craftsmanship education And the more tools that you gain a craftsman-like education for and with, the more you can cross-pollinate them and create something new. That's a great answer. You segued just beautifully into that whole thing. So give us an idea of how you started in life and how you got to where you are. I believe you grew up in India. Is that correct? Partially. Yeah, I was born in India and lived there for five years. But again, India is a big country. It's so diverse. So even within the construct of India, before I was five, we lived in Calcutta, where I was born, which is in the middle of India.

We lived in Madras, which is the south of India, a completely different culture, a different language, a different language too. When you talk to the south of America, yeah, there's a different accent and there may be customs, but everyone's still speaking English. When you talk to the, when you go to the south of India, like that's a different language, it's Tamil. And then we moved to the north of India, Bombay, Mumbai, that's like the big city. Then we moved to Hong Kong. There was more moving, moving. There was a stint in Singapore.

And it just gets more and more complex and convoluted. I moved to America when I was 16. By myself. So like full time, I've been living in America since I was 16. And that was like a few days before 9-11 that was like did you move to new york when you did were you in new york uh rhode rhode island rhode island so very close yeah very close yeah yeah interesting time we just reflected on that so do you think a lot of going through a lot of the cultural changes and exposures that you did shaped your artistry absolutely definitely gave me a yeah

absolutely gave me that outsider's perspective but this is maybe just my experience the world the more i traveled as a kid and when you're a kid things are a little different because things aren't like stable and static you don't really know what else is going on in the world i didn't know that we weren't living in a virtual reality simulation. Like when I was a little kid, like I had no idea that when I leave the room, does everyone stop moving?

Or like you don't, or at least I asked those questions and I wondered those things constantly. I still wonder those things. But for sure, the moving influenced my point of view. And I feel like the point of view is ultimately what's transmuted and conveyed and i feel like the point of view is ultimately what's transmuted and conveyed and imprinted into the art as an example it's just one example of this i felt like the world was like a sci-fi dystopia like every time i would watch a sci-fi movie even

like an old one like where there was like an an old one, like Logan's Run or something like that. I was like, this is pretty much the world we live in. And that more, maybe I got a deeper and deeper understanding about the more I moved because you see how societies are structured and you see how like different societies have different value systems and those value systems promote different types of people they subjugate other types of people and different societies have different incentive structures and those incentive structures

manifest different modalities that's the best way to say it and yeah would you say that moving around gave you a 3d a top-down look at things at these different things as you move around to different cultures and influences and that's what gave you that ability to look from at them from some kind of outside the box absolutely 100 150 000 and also when you're doing that as a kid right it's not like for my parents it was a different experience because they were from india they existed from india and then there were indian people moving for me i was like i wasn't like a formed being yet it wasn't a formed being with a sense of identity so my identity isn't oh i'm an indian dude from india now moving to hong kong i'm like i'm my identity is like someone who has moved to this place that even as i was moving there was

in a state of transition because it was a british colony being handed over to China and like that. So it wasn't a linear path in terms of like self-definition. Interesting. So when you come to America at 16, what pathway leads you to Hollywood? I really liked professional wrestling. That's why I, one of the reasons i wanted to move to america really there was a movie called the wizard i highly doubt you've heard of this movie it's called the wizard if you're a millennial it's like a classic but it's uh stars fred savage so i saw the wizard and i was like i want to go wherever that movie's set and that happened to be America and,

and professional wrestling. I was like, this is awesome. I want to go to a place where this exists and people like this walk around. Did you want to be a wrestler? Yeah. Oh, wow.

There you go. There you go. So what dissuaded you from finally achieving your dream? Look, I think our dreams are like in flux, right? It wasn't like the only thing that I wanted to do because I graduated college. I went to a school in the suburbs of Chicago called Northwestern, which has a fantastic theater program. I graduated like a quarter early, two quarters early, if I recall.

And I was like, I'm going to go learn something. I'm going to go learn a craft, actually. It was actually supposed to be learning a craft. I didn't define it in those terms. People around me thought I'd gone a little crazy. And I narrowed it down to three things. So again, I'm like 22 at the time. The first was there was a sandwich shop like sandwiches called pita peets

and i was obsessed with these sandwiches i went there every day and i got to know the owner this guy named pete of the like the pita pete the pete and the pita pete there you go and i was like i want to work the sandwich shop and figure out how you make these things so awesome that's one option the second option was like, I want to work at a sandwich shop and figure out how you make these things so awesome. That was one option. The second option was like enroll in some wrestling school. And the third was enroll in improv school. And I ended up going with the improv school because it was the most linear and I knew how to get there.

And the sandwich dude, Pete, sat me down. He's like, dude, you're a smart kid. I'll explain to you in half I knew how to get there. And the sandwich dude, Pete sat me down. He's like, dude, you're a smart kid. I'll explain to you in half an hour. I can do this. You don't need to work it. I'm like, okay. So I took Pete's, you know, secret recipe with me and, and I'm joking. I enrolled in improv school and I was hooked on improv for, yeah. What was the aspect you liked about it?

Entertaining other people? The, what was it that really hooked you on improv and acting you know how i speak i'm guessing you're probably going hey this guy's kind of eloquent you're asking me questions and i'm answering them and i'm not giving you like basic answers i'm going into it right my entire career i i couldn't do that when i was 20 when I was a teenager. I didn't know how to speak to people. Part of it came from just jumping around between these different cultures. And the different cultures have different codes of conduct.

They have different degrees of formality. So in a lot of social interactions, I felt frozen. And I was always in my head about it. And I didn't know how to not be in my head because it's a survival instinct. You're in a new culture. In order to assimilate, you have to adopt a new state of being. It's almost like a different version of yourself to assimilate. Because my whole, the name of the game for me was assimilation. I'm a kid. I want to have friends as well. So I'm going to assimilate.

It made it challenging for me to have conversations with people because in a way I was playing a character all the time and I didn't know how to not play the character and in fact I think that's what drew me to professional wrestling because I saw that these people were playing these larger-than-life characters and I can do that but being myself was very challenging because I didn't know what that meant improv helped me tremendously like with that because really it gets you completely out of your head and you're being authentic. You're finding your authentic voice

through just organically responding and not reading lines from a script. That's amazing. It's interesting how people are shaped and how they go through stuff. That's what I love about people is what makes them what gets them there. So you eventually get to Hollywood. It looks like your IMDb starts around 2010. You start working in projects.

How does that entry point happen? It's random. Honestly, randomly. I think it's random honestly randomly right there's no i think it's random for everybody so it's not there's no great story in my opinion just one thing led to another which led to another which led to another and it didn't feel like success at the time a lot of the time and then you look back and you're like wow it was like involved with a lot of like crazy and awesome stuff and then the world started changing and i saw the writing on the wall and I thought everyone else did.

And I pivoted into more of a digital existence, so to speak. And we did that for a bit and then hooked up with Netflix and that led to a different pivot. And that's the career so far. And so let's talk about some of that. There's a lot of projects you're working on right now. Let's see.

You've got Guardians of the Universe, which is your latest project. Guardians, okay. Of Justice. They gave me Guardians of the Universe. This is from Laurie. My apologies. It could be Guardians of the Universe. That's a better title in a way.

I think she's just retitling your stuff. Your PR agency has decided that they're just going to retitle stuff. As they should. Is there a Guardians of the Universe movie? Maybe she's mixed that up with... I'm just reading here. I'm sorry. There's Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah.

I think Galaxy is bigger than Universe. It is, right? Yeah, I don't know. She's got Guardians of the Universe is the latest project. You've also got, I watched part of your Can series official selection that was dealing with Netflix. Do you want to touch on a few of these different projects that you're working on? Not really. There's a few different things that you also did.

Castlevania and judge dread uh super fiend do you think those are some of your most favorite work that you like to do that you that you liked in your history of work yeah i feel like all of it i need you to hold these. I feel like all of it. The one thing that was a unifying thread for me as I was moving around the world was nerd culture. It was video games, comic books, anime, it was manga.

It was that stuff. And wrestling, it was manga, it was that stuff and wrestling. Sure. Yeah, like you throw wrestling into that too, because it exists. But really, it's like video games, anime, manga, comic books, that kind of stuff. So all the most of the projects that I do, in fact, everything you've listed, it exists within this ecosystem of and again, there's so much competing nomenclature to how to describe it and i don't feel like any of it does it justice right like that used to be called oh it's fanboy stuff or it's nerd stuff or geek stuff which are all like very reductive terminologies to use to to describe something that now dominates popular culture right dangerous movies are not like

just for nerds or ye or whatever the the term is that that is like the movie going experience at this point just what it is right yeah so i think in the aggregate so when i talk about any one project it's a different experience than when I like talk about it all in the aggregate, because it was like, really, for me, a question of being focused on making stuff for this community that I felt like I'm a part of, that I've contributed to me, like I grew up reading comics about robots and robots and superheroes and okay great so now how do we add to the pantheon for that next generation to consume this in a different way so this project that you just mentioned uh guardians of justice which you've renamed or we've now renamed to

renamed to guardians of the universe which is a better title. Way better title. Talk to Netflix right now and we should conference them in and say Guardians of the Universe. But Guardians of Justice, which is in competition at Cannes series next month which is insane. It's crazy that a superhero anything is in Cannes.

So that's... Films of real life or something. Dramas or something. Yeah, dramas about people crying because they lost something yeah actors and lots of makeup i watched a lot of the film and you it meshes so many different things it's there's a real life there's some it's like everything in there it's not you and i think it i think it's more appealing because you don't just sit there and go oh this is that type of film or this is the other type of film, like you were talking about earlier

where it gets crammed into a certain box. And it made it really interesting and watchable. Maybe I'm just ADD or something. I don't know. I don't think you're ADD at all. I think you're actually a very hyper-focused individual. Just even in the way you're leading this conversation, if anything, I'm ADD.

So it takes one to know one. You know what I mean? I'm like, you are not, you are not 80. There was a time I've grown out of it. When you hit 53, it all kind of,

you slow down a bit. I don't know. I don't know if you grow out of 80. It sounds like you weren't into the stuff you were doing before. It was a lot of psychotherapy and drugs and stuff. Yeah. What kind of drugs? It was a Zoloft.

And I think there's a tranquilizer vault at one time, but that was when I was in my twenties. Yeah. I've had my, I think that I had two parents that were ADHD and, and yeah, it caused some issues. They were good people.

Did they like neglect you or did they say hurtful things uh i was probably uh all of the above but at an early age i was checking the door like 16 times a night to make sure i had locked it that sort of thing and oh damn so there's like so you're you were like walking around yeah my brother wouldn't wash his hands till they bleed we were just teenagers but you know we went through some issues. When I started my first companies, I would go through panic attacks two or three times a day and have to sleep. It was interesting. Oh, man.

Do you meditate now? You say no. I do pretty well now. The arc of a life, you can learn a few things about yourself and go, stop doing that. But there's still a little bit of the madman back in there. It's just when I do interviews, I'm all about you. There's a cool device that I was gifted like five years ago. You can get it on Amazon.

And I'm no way affiliated with this device, rather. But it's called a MindSpa, like Mind, how one spells Mind, M-I-N-D, and Spa, the way one spells Spa. And it's pretty nuts because what it does, it's a pair of sunglasses hooked up to like an old school CD player looking device. And it's sunglasses and earphones. And what it does is it synchronizes light and sound in a pattern to get you into alpha and then theta and then delta brainwaves and yeah and it's so if you have like anxiety or some sort of manifestation of anxiety which is like a panic attack or some nervous tick or you can't relax the mind it all just comes with

relaxing the nerves and then reprogramming that way. And it's hard to reprogram unless you have developed a base or you found a base. So this kind of helps you get to that homeostasis. I took a look at that on Amazon real quick. It's pretty cool. So do you find that helps with your ADD? For me, it just helps in general because you're just on every path. I've been on a, let's call it a healing journey. In air quotes, I've been on a healing journey for the last six years at this point. And there's been stages of it. So I wouldn't define myself as someone with ADD or some, something like that. There were

moments though, where I needed to reprogram the inputs and the outputs that had been hardwired into me as a result of like repetitive stress. Do you feel that comes out through your mind's eye and your artwork? And like when I watched that, the Netflix Cans movie that they sent us, there's a lot of different things going on, very fast, very speedy, different scenes, different setups. Do you think that maybe that's a feature of your artistry? Yeah. I feel like you spend time with me.

There's a lot going on. And I feel like now it's more me. There's a lot going on. And I feel like now it's more contained. It's more under control. Like I'm navigating the car, the ship, the plane, versus before it didn't always feel that way. It felt like I was an observer in a tornado of my own doing. But it totally does manifest in the stuff that comes out because there's so much that happens so much there's like a tone and a rhythm and and and whatnot that definitely is a byproduct of I'd say the volume of input I feel like I'm processing in any given moment as an example

I'm actually going to flip my camera I realize it's vertical and you're horizontal there we go as an example of this Chris I couldn't think in live action until pretty recently. And by that, if I was imagining something or remembering something, it played out as a cartoon. And like a very vibrant cartoon. So memories felt like Starburst was being poured down my eyes. Wow. Yeah.

That's not where you're supposed to put the Starburst, but that's an interesting analogy. Yeah. It's supposed to go in your mouth or in your ears. I hear. I don't know. It depends. There's like an only chance of it. Just,

yeah. Yeah. So this has been really amazing and interesting to get insight to you. What do you feel like as an artist, you're always chasing the project. Maybe I'm assuming that you as an artist, you're always chasing the project. I'm assuming that as an artist, you chase the most fulfilling project or maybe what your next project is or that big thing. Do you pursue any of that? Is there something that you feel unfulfilled that you're searching to a body of something that you want to go,

this would be my shining thing that would be the pinnacle? I feel like ultimately I am the project. These things are just manifestations of some form of consciousness at the end of the day like you are the project you are your project your own growth the experiences you amass from any project or venture poem that's got to be the reward i feel like accolades and stuff like that those are all illusionary at the end of the day as gratifying as they can be but chasing those chasing the big win is not really you don't know what a win is and as an example of this right you know who the biggest celebrities were in victoria and england who bare knuckle box Oh. Because it was like the biggest thing ever.

They were like the David Beckham and the Tom Brady. It was bare knuckle boxers. And then all of a sudden, bare knuckle boxing went out of fashion. It was no longer a thing. And today, no one remembers these great bare knuckle boxers because it's not in our as a society right so it's not like everything that's successful that society deems successful in the moment becomes remembered that way generations down the road in fact there's literally there is no correlation there is no correlation like you could be the biggest musician of the 90s and your entire catalog is gone.

Or it could be someone like John Carpenter, who's an amazing filmmaker from the 70s and 80s, also 90s, and still works today. He made such classic movies as Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from New York, Escape from L.A., other thing. And in his time, he wasn't, like, celebrated. But you look at, at least within the film ecosystem, within the film community, how he's viewed retroactively.

He's on a Scorsese, Steven level, which, again, was not his experience at the time. So you don't know. You don't know. And so much of this is out of your control. Not even so. All of it's out of your control, right? Because society and the ecosystems around you shift value systems. They consumer taste change.

What's valued changes. And then all of a sudden, something that was just on the fringe is now the biggest thing ever. And the thing that was the biggest thing ever is completely forgotten. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's, and let me try and make this analogy and I might be swinging here for the fence, but it's, it sounds like you have a really unique perspective to your art and what you do and your art really isn't a representation of you as opposed to you are a

representation of your art. Does that make any sense? Is there vodka in this water? I think there's both. There's definitely vodka in that water. Probably likely, yeah. Don't tell me AA person. No, not.

There you go. Don't tell my sponsor. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Yeah, because sure. For sure. For sure. Okay. Yeah, because a lot of people we've had on the show that are from Hollywood or they're artists, they come out and this is my art. This is me.

But it sounds like you have a really different perspective that's maybe a little more healthy because the artist is really centered on you. And the work doesn't so much represent you as you represent the art. And I don't know i think that's where i was trying to go with that if it makes any sense yeah yeah no it does it does look i think all of this makes sense that's the beauty of it right because you can deconstruct it and look at it in a multitude of ways and i think the beauty ultimately comes down to the fact that there is no one perspective if you could do any project carte blanche netflix hollywood whatever you wanted to do what would be your like dream project do you have a dream project or is there a dude and again this is i say this with complete humility and gratitude and and everything of that ilk um i've already done my dream projects like multitude multiple times over and then there would be like another one and then you'd start that and do that and it's like i'm living my dream

it's almost like uh if this is a giant virtual reality simulation that we're living in like i got the i got the the cartridge with the game genie in it so you know pathways just clear and you get the oh wow i get to interact with work with this person or work with that person and for for me i've realized like my process which is different than you know someone else's process but for my process the dream project isn't necessarily like a brand or a specific story but it's having the creative latitude to execute it in a way that has my identity does that make sense so as an example i don't know like i'm gonna pick a random brand i don't know uh catwoman right so tomorrow there was someone would make a catwoman

uh movie so there's like the corporate version of a Catwoman movie and then there's the kind of more avant-garde version of a Catwoman movie and there's like the version that one would make that only they could make and that may be

super mainstream and it may not be mainstream but you don't know because it's like i don't really work well in art by committee type situations and i feel like most artists are that so i don't think that's unique to me but i've been fortunate enough to to have creative partners and business partners who just are yeah no we like to keep doing it so it sounds like most of your projects are that way and that's the way you like it to where you you have that creative control, and you can do it your way without going, is this going to be commercially viable? And it had to be earned.

So it wasn't like, go back to 2011. That was not the scenario whatsoever. Even a couple years ago, that was not the scenario immediately. But you earn it over time. You do things that are successful, and you learn something from them. And really, you end up learning a lot more from the things that are successful and you learn something from them. And really, you end up learning a lot more from the things that aren't successful, from the things that are misfires, the things that never got off the ground. And you get that hindsight of,

why did it not work? And what role did I play in it not working? Assuming you're not doing the blame game and blaming everyone but yourself. And i think slowly as you amass more and more skill sets and you learn more crafts within the macro craft of filmmaking or animation or whatever it is that you're doing you get that latitude you just get that latitude and also you have the vocabulary at that point right you have the book the vocabulary because they've had the experiences and you can very specifically and precisely enunciate to your partners or the studio or the ride holder what it is that you're trying to do. There you go. There you go. This has been pretty interesting.

What haven't we touched on, Nadi, that you want to either promote or that we should get the audience to know you better? I don't know. Follow me on Instagram. I've been posting a lot of selfies. I've been doing the whole selfie game. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really digging the selfie games.

I didn't think I'd be a selfie person, but I come around. So it's at bootleg universe. One word, bootleg universe on Instagram. Follow me. Check out all my selfies. There you go. There's a lot. It's like, it goes like selfie, news story about me, selfie, video talking about something, selfie, news story about me, selfie.

Not egomaniacal at all. The one thing I noticed in looking at your Instagram and other media was there's a lot of different genres that you encase. Like we talked about the kiss. I think you had the star face that I saw from, I think it was Ace Frehley's. Was it Paul Stanley that was the star face. There's a lot of different scenarios that you're set up in that are, they're from different genres and where you're dressed up

and there's some, I think there's some CGI or whatever you call it, Photoshopping done. What motivates you in that? What are you trying to represent? What are you trying to, what message are you trying to send to the world? About you? I don't think I am trying to send a message

in that regard. This were the nineties or the early 2000s. The media was like hyper controlled, right? I feel like people gravitated or at least from what I saw, people gravitated towards, okay, this is my look. I'm always going to wear this one face paint and wear this one type of leather jacket. And everyone was trying to become like Michael Jackson, iconic for the thriller jacket and some glove or something and then to me that's just exhausting it's just exhausting like i'm like i like

just trying to be myself be authentic i actually have thought about i'm like wow i could literally just do an entire instagram thing of me wearing what you call kiss, which I call ultimate warrior makeup. But yeah, it could just do a whole thing of me wearing kiss makeup and like walking out and just photo after photo of kiss makeup. Would that get boring? I don't know. I don't feel like I exist in that energy field every day. And yeah, it's bad branding in a way. It's bad branding because brands should be focused.

Brands should be focused. But I don't care. I just don't care enough. It's extraordinarily interesting too. It's not boring. It's interesting because it's different. It's not the same thing. You go, oh, this is completely different.

Oh, wow. And you examine it where if you just appear the same way every time, you're just like, well, it's just Batman again or whatever. Yeah. And as you look at the arc of our interview and conversation of you growing up and being subjected to so many different cultures and moving about and having that experience change, you can see that reflected, I think, in your art, in how you do it and deliver it. And then, of course, we're doing the same thing on Instagram with your looks and different variations. You are being you. Yeah.

Yeah. And you're not letting people stick you in a box and you're not sticking yourself in a box. Yeah, for sure. So there you go. There you go. That's awesome.

Anything you want to touch on and give us your.coms as we go out. I don't have any.coms. Just the Instagram. Just follow me on Instagram. There's a Facebook that I use sometimes. But just go follow me on Instagram. And check out all of your new projects.

Of course, there's the Cans Netflix project. And I'll ask the PR agency what name we're naming it. We already decided. We decided. That's where we're going with it. You're going to, no. We've already decided. It's no longer Guardians of Justice. We've decided. Is this the committee? Guardians of the Universe. Okay. Alright. Well. That's what we're going with. You're going to have to. You're the boss. Glory. Yeah, no. So it will be the universe. I don't think this is you.

I think this is actually the universe deciding. It's probably some sort of sign. Yeah. It's some sort of cosmic entity that's bestowing us with ancient wisdom as to... Who knew that email typos could be that powerful? Exactly. Guardians of Justice. It plays... It's going to play at Cannes next month. ancient wisdom as to, but, uh, who knew that email typos could be that powerful.

Exactly. Yeah. Guardians of justice. It plays, uh, it's going to play at can next month, which I think we've already touched and then it'll be out at Netflix at some point. There you go.

Which I cannot say. Cause yeah. And then I'm a work in progress, man. There you go. Keep it up. We'll be excited to see what comes out of you in the future. And the great work has been there.

And I love your perspective on everything. I think that's one of the most engaging things that people are going to get from this interview. They're going to go, wow, this is really cool. So thank you very much for being on our show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you.

And thanks, to my honest, for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, Forge S. Chris Foss. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks, Manish, for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, Forge Has Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Go to Goodreads.com, Forge Has Chris Voss, and see us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all those different places. Thanks for everyone coming by, and we'll see you guys next time. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm

really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO entrepreneurial toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold. But the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com.

On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out or order the book wherever fine books are sold.