Sean Dunne, a filmmaker behind Florida Man and Oxiana, details his 12-year career balancing commercial work with independent documentaries on psychedelics and marginalized communities. He recounts filming a viral short about record collections, capturing eccentric locals during a mushroom trip, and documenting his mother's psychedelic experience in Joshua Tree. Dunne critiques corporate gatekeeping after YouTube demonetized his channel due to controversial content, contrasting this with David Chappelle's successful return to major networks. Ultimately, he advocates for normalizing psychedelics as healing tools while exposing systemic failures in both the film industry and government drug policies. [Automatically generated summary]
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Hello, world.
Today, my guest is Sean Dunn.
Sean is a filmmaker and psychedelic voyager who is responsible for some of the best documentaries on the internet, some of which include American Juggalo, Florida Man, and Oxiana.
He has also done commercials for clients such as Google, Royal Caribbean, Bacardi, Delta, and much more.
Sean has an extremely unique perspective when approaching his work and the character studies that he depicts in his films.
For example, he tells the story of how a late night mushroom trip spawned the idea to create Florida Man.
He also has his very own podcast.
Which is on his Very Ape YouTube channel, as well as a radio show called The Church of Chill.
That's the hook, folks.
I hope you guys enjoy this amazing podcast with Sean Dunn.
Sean, for people out there who don't know who you are, give me like a little, like a background into your filmmaking career.
Yeah, I don't know.
I've been making films for like 12 years.
Cass joined me like 10 years ago.
We've made like 12, 13 films.
We do, to pay the bills, we get sometimes hired to do commercial projects.
Yeah.
And we usually pour that money into independent film.
And then we started a podcast like six years ago because filmmaking takes a long time and it takes a lot of resources.
I don't know.
Along the way, a lot of goddamn adventures.
I feel like psychedelics have become a really big part of our life and our mission.
And yeah, I don't know.
It's a hard thing to encapsulate.
Yeah, it's a lot, right?
Yeah, yeah, it's a lot.
And we don't think about it that much.
It's like, if anything, we're thinking about what's the next thing we're doing.
We're so fixated on that.
So it's cool to get an opportunity to kind of reflect a little bit about the stuff we've done.
Yeah.
Each film leads to the next film, you know?
So, you know, it started very simply in a short film and it kind of.
You know, when you do a film that's like a little dark, you need to do a film that's a little light.
And it's just naturally you always find your balance.
Yeah, I found, I tell everybody that comes on here that asks me, because I have like a similar background to you, these things, these podcasts, they're kind of like their own little mini documentaries minus music and B-roll.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's much easier.
Yeah.
Minus editing is a big one.
It's much easier.
And it's like you can put out more content.
And I don't know, it's just less.
It's still documentary.
That's what I think of it as.
It is.
Like that's what keeps my head in this.
And instead of trolling myself, like, why aren't you out making a film?
I'm like, I'm still making documentaries, but it feels like the podcast is almost like the documentary of our life.
It's like a slow burn, long six year process of people getting to know us through guests and our friends, the people we have on.
But I love the podcasting medium.
I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, but messing around in the medium is so fucking fun, man.
So how did you originally start in like this filmmaking world?
Did you start?
Did you start in high school?
Did you start just like by grabbing a camera or were you originally just like more like the director writer type of?
It actually started.
It's so fucking weird that you're that we're in Seminole, Florida because I went to Seminole High School.
It's insane.
I graduated class in 99 and my family moved down here from New York when I was going into 11th grade.
It's funny because in New York I was getting like B's and C's, regular classes, really not going anywhere.
I had nothing going for me.
And I moved down here and I was putting all honors classes.
I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
Teachers were taking a liking to me and We had this amazing teacher, Miss Cameron, who just took a liking to me and was like, You should work on the morning show that we're going to start next year, your senior year.
And I was like, Cool.
Worked on that.
And that was like my first time really even messing with cameras or anything.
And I took a liking to it.
I think around that time is when Tom Green was coming out and you were seeing him do his thing.
And Freddie Got Fingered.
Freddie Got Fingered.
My favorite movie of all time.
The Tom Green show was like hugely influential, I think, to a lot of people at the time.
It definitely planted a seed with me of like getting out there.
And, um, Yeah, after high school, my parents left the area and I was kind of stuck down here on my own going to college.
And I was totally becoming a Florida man.
I was totally just becoming that kind of guy.
And so I spent a lot of time just going out with my friend Joe and we would just troll the streets and find guys to talk to.
And I just was stockpiling interviews, not even trying to make a movie.
I didn't even have that concept in my head yet.
But yeah, just a lot of drifting around, getting to know the area, getting to know people, getting to know myself through talking to people.
Through being an asshole, through like doing pranks to people, shit I would never do now.
But, um, getting the shit kicked out of us.
Yeah, yeah, we got the shit kicked out of us on camera.
Like just pushing the limits and pushing the boundaries of tastefulness for sure.
How did you get the shit kicked out of you?
Outside Seminole Movie Theater, I don't know, we were filming some bullshit in the parking lot and some kids walked by and they said some shit and we were like, you guys are pussies.
And they were 16, we were 19, and they just fucking came over and beat the shit out of us.
Oh, no.
Yeah, we had it coming.
Yeah, yeah, we did.
We had it coming.
We had it coming.
It's funny, like we called these guys pussy bitches and then, like, you could see it on camera.
This guy just slowly takes off his watch, hands it to his friends, and comes over and just knocked out my friend who was holding the camera.
The camera just goes, hits the ground, chaos ensues.
The cops end up over there.
And while the cops are there, I'm rewinding the tape to where we're calling them pussy bitches and taping over it and making sure that there's no evidence of that part of the whole fucking thing.
Oh my God.
Yeah, just like a lot of stuff like that.
And honestly, if I hadn't gotten out of the area, I probably would have gotten in a lot of trouble.
It was like we were really just pushing the boundaries.
And it wasn't like, cinematic or tasteful.
So yeah, yeah.
When I got out of the area here, I went up to, I moved it back up to New York, didn't get any film programs, got a degree in cinema studies.
And after school ended, just kind of went out into the world, not with a film degree, no sense of entitlement about making films or anything like that, just super humble.
Worked in a deli for a year after college.
And one day a dude came into the deli and was like, I think, did I see you around here with a camera one day?
I was like, yeah, I don't know.
I think myself as a filmmaker maybe, I don't know.
And he's like, come work for me.
And this guy's name was Mark Clark and he worked for HBO and he just like took me under his wing.
Wow.
Yeah, I know.
It's so fucking generous.
I think about moments like that in my life and it almost like gives me anxiety.
I'm like, what the fuck if that guy never walked in the deli that day or didn't see me with a camera that day or for some reason I didn't take him up on that?
Because it really led to me working at History Channel and History Channel gave me a ton of opportunities to just go shoot stuff for them.
good budgets to go do whatever I wanted.
So I was like 23 year old kid running around with crews and directing stuff for History Channel and got enough confidence by the time I was 27 and I made my first film was called The Archive and it was just a seven minute short about the world's largest record collection.
Put that on Vimeo at a time where really there was no marketplace for short films.
No one was really just like, I made a film for the internet, here it is.
So I benefited from that.
My whole career benefited from not a lot of people doing that at that time.
And, you know, that went a little bit viral, got into Sundance.
Sundance led to me getting signed for commercial representation, and then that started paying the bills.
And we just started a cycle of that.
After that, it was like, let's make a film every year.
Let's really make sure we stick to this.
Let's fall in love with the process and try to fall back in love with life through the process.
Because I feel like if you can fall in love with every part of making art, you'll fall in love with every part of life.
You know, not just one part of the process or not just the glory at the end or anything like that, but like every part of it, the pain and everything that comes along with birthing something creative.
Yeah, did you.
So?
When this guy first came in, he worked for HBO.
So you, you were just a kid in a deli that now works for HBO.
No, he was actually.
He had a side gig making uh, Jerry Seinfeld's 50th birthday video.
So, like you know, Seinfeld probably gave this guy 100 grand to like yeah, put together something for all my friends in the Hamptons.
So I was working on that in his basement.
He was going down to HBO at night and he was a producer there and I just I kind of proved myself.
I don't even know how I think I was, just I just think I had the right attitude.
I wasn't particularly talented at anything.
I just had the right attitude.
I had some initiative.
Like I could just see, I was a good producer at the time.
I could see a couple steps ahead and be like, oh, that's what I need to do next or whatever, just to keep them satisfied.
But once I got the opportunity at History Channel, they basically made me a writer, producer, and I had no idea.
I was just figuring it out as I went along.
I had no formal training in any of this ever.
I think my work benefits from that.
I wouldn't know how to make these paint by numbers formulaic documentaries.
I wouldn't even know where to begin with that kind of shit.
I'm not interested in watching that, and I don't want to make it.
Spend five years of my life making shit like that.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
On your website.
Like some of the commercials that you've made are insane, like some of the, some of like the like just the client, like Royal Caribbean nest, some like really big time brands.
How did you get into doing work for them?
Uh, that's just a slowly but surely it actually really just came from that first film because um, I don't, I just think it had been a while since somebody um, I mean, I just made something so perfectly digestible that I didn't realize I was making like a reel for for myself.
Like that first film was just, it was very cinematic, it was well done, it was like a tear jerker and it's seven minutes, so I think that was just right around the time when branded content was getting going.
And I don't know.
Luckily, I got some attention.
And you get one commercial and that leads to another and it leads to another.
But I, God, I feel superstitious even talking about commercials because it's like so random.
It's always, though, that they saw some film that he did, American Juggalo or Florida Man, and they like want to work with him.
And it's like there's a little bit of an allure that happens from just like following, I think, Sean's passion and just like doing what he wants.
And then.
Uh, you know, everyone wants to make money, right?
Well, yeah, definitely.
I mean, it pays the bills, but it's also like I think we get these jobs because we've been so authentic in our filmmaking, and the films are so effective that they're like, Can we pay you to do that for our brand?
Right.
Once I get the job, it's like the uphill battle of all uphill battles, and it's like it's just like a month of pain trying to make these commercials.
They have to pay you a lot because they're gonna, they're basically using your name to legitimize a product, and they're using my skills to make.
You know, to soften their corporate fucking nastiness.
And I'm like, it's just every part of it grosses me out, and I don't end up getting final cut on them.
So it drives me insane.
I don't even have half my commercials on the website because I'm just like embarrassed about the way they came out.
So I don't know.
I know what you mean.
Yeah, yeah, you know, dude.
How often do you do big commercial jobs like that?
Once a year.
Once a year?
You only do one a year.
It's not even like that.
That's just how often they come up.
They're just random?
Yeah.
Do you turn down a lot of them?
No.
We have.
We have, and it's cool.
It's cool to turn down a job, but now we know they're so few and far between.
We're going to take them when they come up.
Since we're the production company, we can make a lot more money than when I was just a director for hire.
Now Google will come to us and be like, oh, make something for Nest.
They'll give us the whole budget, and we get to hire the whole team, the edit, the whole thing.
It's cool, but it's not a little soul-crushing.
It's a lot.
That's when Cass has her hands full the most in life because she's managing the job, and then how much this is crushing me to even do this.
So, uh, yeah, yeah, it's such a weird thing, but I'm grateful that we get to just do this for a living.
Yeah, absolutely.
So tell me the story about, about how you made Florida Man and like, how did that whole thing start?
And I want to say, first of all, I'm a huge fan of that.
I forget his name's escaping me right now, but the kid who did the cinematography on that, Isaac Bauman.
Isaac, yes.
Oh, he's incredible.
He does some sick work, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, I mean, we, we found him.
He did a music video for Delta Spirit.
What was that?
Yeah, Delta Spirit.
Yeah, Delta Spirit.
And, uh, I remember my editor sent it to us and she was like, This guy shoots in a style that would complement our work.
Our editor, Kathy Gatto, has been working with me since History Channel.
She's cut everything we've done.
But, yeah.
Everything he does is like low light, dark, natural lighting that he uses.
It's just so crap, man.
And you should see how he does it.
It's amazing.
He'll do stuff with the camera that, like, even the camera assistants are like, are you sure?
I've never cranked the ISO that high.
I don't think we should bake this look in, you know?
On commercial jobs, too.
We've done that on commercials.
Really?
Where we're like, we're sitting there with the client.
We're like, sign off on this.
This is how we want this to look.
And normally they'd be like, we'll do that in post.
But, like, we'll force it because me and Isaac really want this to come out a certain way.
So we'll bake the look into the camera where they can't even fucking do anything about it.
Oh my God.
Florida Man's Florida Man, I feel like the mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms made us make that film.
It was.
Really?
Yeah.
Explain that.
Well, we had just discovered psychedelics in general and we had just discovered mushrooms after we had made the film Oxiana.
We had done Tribeca Film Festival and during Tribeca Film Festival, someone gave us mushrooms.
We just threw them in the freezer.
I was like, I don't know what these are.
I don't know about these things.
And we ended up taking them a few months later.
And before we took them, I had this idea in my head to make a film called Sinkholes, which would have been Florida Man, but it would have been like, let's go towards all the weird-ass sinkhole stories in Florida and talk to Florida men with that as like the Trojan horse of like how to even talk to them.
Yeah, I loved that idea.
So that was just in the back of our head forever.
And we met Isaac.
And Isaac comes over to our apartment one night and it's fucking midnight.
And he's like, let's take mushrooms.
I'm like, fuck, this is going to be a long night, man.
All right, we'll take mushrooms, whatever.
We take the mushrooms.
And he's, we were laughing about something.
I was telling him about the idea of sinkholes and I'm describing sinkholes.
The Mushroom Movie Idea00:15:07
And he's like, have you ever seen surveillance cameraman?
And I was like, no, what is that?
And he's like, we got to pull it up right now.
It's just, I don't know.
Have you ever seen that?
No.
Oh, dude.
If you like Florida, man, you're going to love it.
It's internet gold.
It's like, it's this dude just goes around with a fucking camera and just goes up to people and just starts filming them.
And they're like, what the fuck?
And he just sticks to the program and just.
Films them and it's it's very aggressive and confrontational.
Barely the only thing he ever says is, like calm down, i'm just, it's just a camera, it's just a video.
And people just start freaking out like he's like, there's cameras everywhere, it's just a camera, whatever.
So he put out this eight-part series of these confrontations and we were just on mushrooms dying laughing.
I'm like this is art.
I'm so glad that i'm not the one that made this, but this is art.
Like i'm glad somebody went out there and did this, because it's hilarious and it's tasteful and it's it's, it's just funny.
Is it on youtube?
Uh no yeah no, it is right now.
Oh, it is yeah, one through eight.
He's such a, we met him in person actually, we tracked him down.
He is the epitome of an adrenaline junkie.
So for him, it's not about cinematic artistry.
It's about like, how far can I go within my comfort zone?
He's addicted to adrenaline.
And that's one of the ways he gets his adrenaline flowing is like these confrontations.
Yeah, yeah.
So we watched it and it was just like, we were laughing our ass off.
And then we go up on the roof of our building and it's like 630 in the morning and the sun's coming up.
And I'm just like, Florida man, we got to make a movie called Florida man.
And he was just like, yes.
Him and Cass are like, yes, fuck it, let's do it.
You know, it's like, you're on mushrooms.
You're like, are we going to really do this?
But like, let's do this.
Like, it just felt like a message from the mushroom go make a movie called Florida Man.
And we did.
Like, Cass lined it up.
I don't know, like a month or two later, we were down here doing our thing.
And the way we went about making that film was we said, we're going to bring one lens.
We're not going with a kit of prime lenses, switching on all of this.
And we're bringing one lens, a 16 millimeter wide lens.
We're bringing a sound guy.
We're bringing our friend who can do most of the driving, a whole bunch of pot, and we're going to go for 10 days.
And we just rented an Airbnb in five different areas.
So we'd go to Clearwater for two nights, and then we'd go to Ocala for two nights, and Cocoa Beach for two nights.
We just went around.
Cocoa Beach, that's got to be a great spot.
Cocoa was one of the most fruitful spots.
Clearwater was one of them.
I'm so familiar with this area.
I knew exactly where to go.
We were on fire when we were here because I was like, I know the spots here.
Cocoa was amazing.
We filmed this guy called Mr. Sexy Cocoa Beach.
Just literally surfed out of the water and was like, what are you guys doing?
Started telling stories and it was incredible, uh.
But yeah yeah, the mushroom told us to make that one and we listened and it was.
It was kind of in contrast to the other film that we were making at the time, called cam girls, about webcam models, and that film was um, you know, it was like everything was shot on sticks and it was very cinematic and um, you know, not precious, but but a little bit more precious, and like we were just craving something like loose and fiery.
It's more conventional.
Yeah yeah yeah, and we had just made this film, cam girls, we already had it in the can, And then we shot Florida Man so quick and finished the edit that we're like, we'll put these films out on the same day.
So we released two features on the same day.
And Florida Man fucking has gotten around.
Like, I didn't know what people were going to make of it.
Because when we were making it, it came out to 50 minutes.
And I was like, this feels right, but it's not a short.
It's not a feature.
It's not going to, no one's going to buy this.
This won't live on any platforms.
This is not going to get into any festivals.
It's not that we even try to get into festivals.
But that ended up being the best part about it was there was like no storyline.
There was no music.
It was just.
It's just like an organism.
It's just a thing.
Yeah, it's like a living monument to this lifestyle that you've lived here your whole life.
And that's how I knew about these guys.
Because I'm like, you have to live here to even start to notice these guys.
Because you're training yourself to ignore this kind of depressing level of despair that's going on around.
And you're living in paradise down here.
You don't want to fucking think about that kind of stuff.
But if you train your eye to it, you start to notice these people.
And there was such wisdom and grace and beauty.
pouring out of these people that I think were normally would be like, holy shit, stay away from me.
So it just, it helps us evolve as people.
It helps, like that's, it's so personal in that way.
It's like when we feel ourselves otherizing, we need to go towards that subject, figure out how they are us, and then bring that to an audience.
And, you know, sometimes it's sex workers or drug addicts or Florida man or juggalos or whatever, whatever it is we're going towards at the moment.
But, That's what it feels like our mission is.
And Florida Man was just a fun way to do it because, like, I knew these guys.
I knew how to talk to them.
I know that they have these stories on the tip of their tongue, you know?
And so the interactions in that movie, you're basically seeing the entirety of it.
There's not a lot of, we cut out a lot of people from the movie, but we didn't cut out a lot of moments from the interactions.
So, like, what you see in the movie is probably about how long we hung out with that person.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, it was funny.
How did you approach them?
Like, what did you say to them when you walked up?
To them, did you have like some sort of like formula when you went out and filmed these guys?
Or they mostly approached us, you know, there's something like that.
Yeah, we had a big camera crew, yeah.
Well, we were a small crew, but a big camera.
The boom mic, I'll do it.
Yeah, you go to a 7 Eleven parking lot, open up the van door, and it's just like, we're gonna just be here for three hours.
So everyone chill out, and our everyone's smoking cigarettes, hanging out, we're getting high.
And then it's like, when it's time, we just take out that boom mic, it's like raising a flag, and like, people just start going, What are you guys doing?
And, you know, we just always said we were making a documentary about Florida, about Florida, man.
And, you know, they, uh, no one really asked a lot of questions, man.
We ended up like, we'd go up to someone in a Publix parking lot at two in the morning and end up in the back of their car going wherever the fuck they're going with them.
Like, and I'm like, this is the kind of adventures.
Like, this is the kind of life I want to lead.
And the fact that cameras are here for it and we can extend this experience for other people is incredible.
So it all came from the mushroom trip and you came up with the name Florida man when you were that night.
Yeah.
It was like, it's got to be called Florida man.
That's the name of it.
And everyone, everything kind of just like.
Went back, went from there.
Yeah, it's almost like you reverse engineer.
A lot of our movies start like that.
I wonder if you can relate with that.
It's like i'll think of a title.
I have no idea how we're going to find the subjects or where we're going to film it or whatever, but i'm like I need to make a documentary called the bowler and it needs to be about a bowling hustler and I don't know where this person is or how they're going to turn up in my life, but i'm putting it out there.
I want to make a film called the bowler and then, next thing, you know someone's like.
I met your guy and so yeah, it's very much the same thing with Florida Man.
Just people finding us and like that's so funny, it's the perfect name.
It literally is the perfect name.
I mean as far as like if you think of I know it's not what you're thinking but like, as far as like searching something or like the marketing of something to be successful, that was the perfect name you could have came up with.
Yeah yeah, I mean because it was, because every headline starts with that.
Yeah, and if it would have been called Sinkholes, like it, it probably would have been the same movie really, but it maybe it wouldn't have uh, bubbled up.
There's something about titles, yeah in there, I know I well, I see it with your podcast.
Like I look through and i'm like smart the way you guys title these like our.
Sometimes we overthink them though.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We sometimes way too much.
Sometimes the ones you don't even think about.
It's like, it's all about it.
Really, the thing that matters is the content more than anything.
Yeah.
So many people focus like really hard on the titles and like thumbnails and like whatever keywords and all that stuff.
But like the biggest, the biggest thing I've taken away is just it's all about the content.
It's like how, how good of a conversation, how interesting was that or how much can people relate to it, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, we love the Matt Cox episode.
Oh, yeah.
It's huge.
Everybody loves that.
And it's one of those things where, and this is a high compliment, I was like, Let me just see what these guys are all about.
I click on it.
I was like, I'm just going to watch five minutes while I got to go switch the laundry.
I ended up watching for three hours.
And I'm like, all right, they're fucking on to something.
What an incredible storyteller.
Oh, dude.
He's amazing.
Yeah.
Legendary.
It was a total accident, too, getting him on here.
I didn't even really want to have him on here.
I was tired of it.
I was sick.
I was doing a lot of the criminal stuff, people who've been in prison for a long time telling their stories.
It's great.
But I felt like I was going too far down that rabbit hole.
I was going to start getting some different shit on here.
And he emailed me from the halfway house and he was just like, hey, I want to come on your podcast, but I'm still on probate.
I'm on the halfway house.
I'd have to like skip work and come in.
And I was like, just let me know when you're out and we'll do it.
And then one day I had a guest scheduled to come in and he canceled last minute.
So I just like, shit, I need to get somebody in.
I need to do an interview this week.
And so I called him.
I'm like, can you get down here in like three hours?
He's like, let me see.
Let me see if I can do it.
Let me call my buddy who has a car.
And he just came.
It was like, just like random like that.
And that ended up being like super successful.
Oh, God.
He killed it.
So you guys had him on your interview with him?
Yeah.
We talked to him yesterday.
He, He came over at like one in the afternoon and left at like 9 10 at night.
Really?
We had a whole day.
Yeah.
It was really fucking interesting.
Like, as soon as he got there, we just shot the podcast.
And then, you know, like, he wants to talk to us about like maybe we can figure out how to get some of these stories told.
Like, he obviously has a ton of stories.
And, you know, we wanted to hear them all.
So he hung out and he was so generous.
And, God, what a funny fucking day.
Like, we're sitting there and we're like smoking pot.
And he's like, what?
Hold on.
Yeah.
He's never smoked pot or drank in his life.
That's crazy.
We need to get him high somehow.
We talked about that.
On a mission.
We talked about that all night after he left.
We're like, man, we got to get this guy high.
I don't know if he'll ever do it, but that would be could you imagine what would happen if you gave that guy mushrooms?
Oh, that's the dream.
That's the dream.
We'll get there.
We'll get there.
I don't know what would happen.
I don't know if it would be extremely uncomfortable because he says himself, he's like, I'm a narcissist.
And when the mushrooms fucking start to tear down those ego structures yeah.
It's everything he is, is that yeah.
Is his ability to be so charismatic and articulate, that's like his most powerful thing he's got.
You know what I mean?
The storytelling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you see that with some people when they smoke pot.
Like, my mom's like that.
She's a fucking whippersnapper and she smokes pot and it's just like, and she hates it because she's not in control anymore.
Right.
You know, you see that sometimes.
But I like that.
I like the things that are like humbling me and making my ego go down.
The mushrooms are pretty hardcore.
But the mushrooms, I've always been afraid.
I haven't done it yet.
But all my friends take them and I've always been afraid because I've always been like a super lightweight with weed.
Yeah.
Like all my friends will eat the same size.
Like even my wife will eat these edibles and I can only eat like a quarter of it.
Yeah.
And it hits me harder than a big, than a full one hits her.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm just like a super lightweight.
So I'm afraid.
I'm afraid to take mushrooms.
Yeah.
I was too.
It's a micro dose or something.
I literally had to have somebody catch me off guard with them.
The way we ended up even taking them was we had them in our freezer after Tribeca Film Festival.
We had a meeting with some Amazon executives and we're out and at a bar and they see we're not drinking.
They're like, you guys are potheads, aren't you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We don't really drink.
And they're like, let's go smoke pot at your house.
So we go back with these, it's two Amazon executives.
We didn't even know them.
We didn't even know their names.
Like we were just like hanging out at our apartment smoking pot.
And I'm talking to one of them.
This woman's just like saying how she takes mushrooms with Seth Rogen all the time.
And like, Seth Rogen loves American Juggalo.
You should take mushrooms with Seth Rogen.
I'm like, I've never taken mushrooms.
I'm too scared, whatever.
I'm like, we have them, but we're scared.
And she's like, you have mushrooms?
I'm like, yeah.
She's like, let's do them right now.
So we're like, fuck it.
All right, let's do it.
And we did our first mushroom trip and it was scary.
It was very uncomfortable.
And I haven't eaten meat since.
All my relationships are better.
We meditate every day, twice a day.
We have a spiritual life.
I know that word scares me.
You're full-blown hippies, basically.
Yeah, man.
Because I grew up a punker.
I was into crust punk.
I was just the furthest thing.
I made fun of hippies.
I made fun of the Grateful Dead.
And we're so typical.
We started taking this stuff and grew my hair out, wearing tie-dye.
We're the biggest deadheads you can imagine now.
It caught me off guard.
It caught my ego off guard.
Like, I didn't have time to be too scared about them or anything.
It was just like, oh, you're all of a sudden taking these things.
I was your age.
Fucking changed me.
Changed me.
And I was like, oh, thank God, man.
I was running out of my ego, it was kind of backed into a corner.
My ways of dealing with the world.
I was like, my tools weren't as sharp, you know?
Like, I was like, I need to bring a.
In retrospect, it's easy to say this, but I needed a sense of connectedness to come back over my being to keep even making these films.
So, yeah, the mushrooms coming into my life, which.
Then led to acid, which led to DMT, which led to toad, which led to ayahuasca, daime medicine, all kinds of shit.
And just coming at your ego from different angles, like just trying to keep it humble.
Yeah.
It's good.
I think it's a good practice for any.
How often do you do it?
Do you like micro?
I know a lot of people are doing it every day, all day, like at work.
Yeah.
Like a little bit, like a micro dose.
We don't really work.
So there's no like when we trip, we fucking trip.
And I just go, you go hard.
Yeah.
And I think more people should do that.
There's a lot of talk of micro doses these days, but what we always end up saying is like the main problem is.
People not taking enough.
Like, we see people, they'll take one tab of acid and then struggle with their ego the whole time.
It's like, why didn't you take three and just fucking be God for a little bit?
You know?
Like just do it do the fucking thing be God.
That's what it's doing is stripping away the layers of that of you that make you think you're you and It's actually fucking a huge relief You feel incredible in the days and months after psychedelics.
So really oh, oh my god, but especially mushrooms it like if you had any sense of anxiety depression whatever just the clouds just part I mean there's studies now that say like pretty much six months of relief following a mushroom journey Talk about yours that time you casted a heroic dose of mushrooms, which is five grams heroic.
Yeah five grams Wow, sounds like a lot Yeah, it deserves that name.
I would say.
Oh, yeah, totally.
I all I can say is like I was having panic attacks I don't have panic attacks anymore, you know, it's like it really did kind of shift something within me from the inside out where I'm like, oh, it's all good like nothing I'm worrying about is worth like having a panic attack about Yeah, I mean, it can be pretty simple messages, but you have to like feel them, you know You did five fucking grams by herself like that's another part of the heroic dose You didn't have any people with you.
You were just alone.
Yeah, I was desperate.
I was like like Sean saying like up against a wall like Freaking out, not understanding what's going on in my life, like wanting to get a grip.
And of course, like my hero is Terrence McKenna.
So I'm going to listen to him, you know, and I'm glad I did.
Panic Attacks and Life Shifts00:04:09
Do you remember everything pretty vividly?
It's so ineffable.
It's funny because I was out in LA.
We are never more than this far apart from each other.
And I was going on Adam Carolla's podcast in LA.
So I was like, I'm just going to go do this.
I'll be back in a day.
And I go out there and I'm hanging out with Isaac out in LA, who shot Florida Man and Cam Girls.
Yeah.
And Cass is calling us like every half hour, like.
What the fuck is going on?
You're not real.
You're not real.
And I'm like, yeah, I am.
I'll be home tomorrow.
I didn't even understand the extent to which she was fucking tripping balls.
Like, she was having, what are they called?
Like, tactile hallucinations?
Where your phone felt like a spiky ball.
Like, that's a level of tripping that's like, fuck.
Yeah.
I was his mom.
I was jumping timelines.
I was, like, greeted by, like, I mean, I got the, like, angelic message, like, it's okay.
Like, everything's okay.
But then, you know, my mind's trying to make sense and I get into this like paranoid loop of like no, it's not okay.
You're actually like yeah, like maniacal fear come over me.
But you know, so I in some ways I had one of the worst trips i've ever had, and so it's interesting to say like oh, I had this horrible trip.
Like I was scared.
I was calling Sean, I was all this like fear and paranoia, existential dread, existential dread.
But the truth is it lasts like six hours, and then you can like, feel and integrate all that fear and take that with you and be like Oh, like I'm okay.
You know, that was a feeling I went through, but I'm really okay.
And it's actually life isn't what I think it is.
So let me have fun with life.
And it's kind of has allowed me psychedelics allow me to be a little more playful with my existence because I really did get from that message like, oh, Sean's not real.
And then I was like, oh, well, love is real enough for me.
Yeah.
You know, so this might not be real.
This might be an illusion.
This might be all my sensory perception playing tricks on me.
And I might not actually.
Be where I think I am doing what I think I'm doing.
But there is something about this experience that is worth holding on to and it's like goes simple, foundational stuff of like love.
You know, it's like so corny, but it's so true.
Yeah, I mean, like the first time I smoked DMT it was so mind-blowing and and like holy fuck, what are these colors, what are these fractals?
Where am I right now?
But the eeriest feeling of familiarity, where you're, like I've been here before I.
This seems freaky, but like Is this where I was before I was born?
Like, or is this where I'm going when I die?
And, like, that's what I've deduced from a lot of this stuff.
We're not the type of people who take a lot of psychedelics and pretend to know anything.
Additional, I just feel more comfortable in my being and more comfortable knowing like this is temporary.
There's no way to kill or crush consciousness.
It just keeps going.
The cycle keeps going.
And yeah, it invited in that connectedness that I think I needed to keep making films and making podcasts.
And now I just feel like we're building community now.
And like we're not filmmakers.
We're not podcasters.
Those are things we do.
We're not even community builders.
We're just we're just hanging out.
We're doing our thing.
I'm not looking to wear any masks or identities or labels I'm not I like I've had all the validation I could possibly need for filmmaking and and all this shit So I'm like really determined to find out what life's all about Have you ever seen the movie Interstellar?
Yeah, yeah, of course like how you said talked about like love like it's a it's its own it like transcends time and gravity in that movie the love is the I went into the bookshelf That's crazy that you brought that up because literally that's the only reference that she ever says about that trip is she's like it felt like I was behind the bookshelf in interstellar.
That's what I was picturing when you were saying that.
Yeah, that's a heavy one.
I mean, an ayahuasca will take you right there and keep you there for six hours.
Like one way you take it to the shadow realm and it's like, am I going to make friends with my demons and realize they're not that big of a deal?
Or am I going to fight them?
And, you know, it's all fear of death stuff that starts coming up.
And if, like, these things teach you how to not be scared of death so you can live.
And that's what we probably trip, like, once a month.
Fear of Death and Breath Play00:02:35
Yeah.
I mean, life is pretty simple when you think of it as, like, breath play.
You know, like, Yeah.
Really just when you can bring it to the breath and like everything else is like, I'm playing a game of having running these thoughts.
But when you realize like what it's all about is like following your breath and like connecting to that inner peace, the connection, you kind of have a good time even when you're having a bad time because you're like, oh, I'm so stressed.
But you can kind of have an outsider perspective on it.
You know, so you're not so much as in the stress or in the fear or in the paranoia.
You're like, oh, look at me being stressed.
Doesn't mean I'm not going to look stressed to Sean, but it's like I have more of a sense of humor about it now.
Yeah.
You take it like life less seriously.
Yeah, it's like we're actors in a movie.
I'm not going to fucking try to fucking method act this thing and take it too seriously.
Like it just gives you that one step removed where you're like, oh, okay, cool.
This isn't that big of a fucking deal.
Like what's the biggest difference between mushrooms and DMT or like a shitload of marijuana edibles?
Yeah, marijuana edibles.
Scary is the scariest.
Marijuana edibles could be the scariest of all psychedelics.
Like really?
In a way because you don't know when they're going to wear off.
If you're on a bad marijuana trip from eating too much, you don't know when it's going to stop.
With mushrooms, you're like, this is going to be over in four hours.
I know it.
I could feel it wearing off.
But yeah, mushrooms and DMT, I feel like they share a similar molecular structure, but it's completely different experiences.
When you smoke DMT, you're for three to 10 minutes just in a fucking crystal palace of fucking the gates of heaven just open up and you're just there.
It's that's what I like about the idea of DMT is it only lasts 10 minutes.
We could have done it before this podcast and we'd be talking like this right now.
Like that's cool.
I like that it is and now they have DMT vape pens So like you'll go to a concert and you'll smell DMT everywhere.
It's like Jesus Christ.
That's hardcore because I mean you're you you close your eyes and you're another dimension you're being visited by entities like It's some it's some pretty fucking hardcore shit, but I highly recommend smoking DMT highly recommend it when we first took mushrooms We were like we're not gonna take any more drugs in our life.
Mushrooms are great.
Yeah, let's keep to the natural stuff.
We don't need to try acid or anything like that.
A year later, we tried acid and we're like, this is our shit.
This is the sacrament of our life.
And it still is.
It still is.
I don't even count marijuana because it's so, it is us.
Like we are, I'm made of cannabis.
Filmmaking as Music Creation00:14:10
It's fucking coming out of every orifice of me all the time.
But acid, whoo, daddy, that is, that's our shit.
That's your favorite?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah, totally.
And I feel like we, we kind of like being evangelists for it because a lot of other people like to talk about like the natural things and all this.
And I'm like, Acid fucking does it's it's exactly like what it sounds like acid.
It's just like stripping everything down and Fuck that you know have you have you heard of the kid that I forget his name, but he does that all gas no breaks YouTube channel.
Yeah, I've heard he goes around interviews everybody.
Yeah, he he talked about how when he was a kid, he did a lot of mushrooms and took a lot of acid and now he's got like a problem where he sees like permanent Illusions in his vision everywhere he goes.
Usually it's like a wave or something.
Or a flickering.
Yeah, like a flickering or like little spots, things floating around.
So he's like permanently tripping, kind of.
I've heard of stuff like that.
That's honestly why I'm glad I didn't discover that stuff in my teens or 20s.
Like, I'm so glad I waited until my 30s to find any of this stuff.
Because I think it's too freaky.
It's like there's some kids that can handle that kind of shit.
I was not that type of person.
It's kind of nice to build an ego before you strip it down.
You know?
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
Like, have a sense of who you think you are.
And then that's all, when we say ego, we're just saying, like, I'm just saying, like, an identity.
The story of you.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Just it.
That's your story of you.
So, yeah, keeping that updated and stripping it down and rebuilding it.
It's threatening, though, because, you know, if you're stripping your story and realizing you're in a story, you can rewrite the story.
And when we're all, like, little monkeys walking around being like, we can change this story, it's a little threatening to the status quo.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of weird to think about.
Like, I'm afraid that it's going to change me into turn me into something else that I'm, you know what I mean?
Like, I don't want to.
Do that.
That's the biggest fear.
That would have been my biggest fear had I had time to even contemplate it.
But they came at me in such a way that I was like oh okay, I guess i'm doing this and right, literally laying on my bathroom floor like on the verge of purging, like with messages of just like clean your diet up dude, you know like you're an adult, stop eating.
Like a four-year-old like, eat plants motherfucker, be good to your family, douchebag.
And like I took that seriously.
I was like I don't really usually get messages from the great beyond, but and now they're.
It's like that portal's open, they're just flowing in all the time.
You know, when you learn how to listen, when you learn how to fucking comment down.
And like Cass is saying, the breath play, like it sounds like cheesy and woo-woo, but like as I did more psychedelic work, I started to understand like religion and the religion I came up with better.
And it's like, I don't subscribe to any of it, but there's beautiful stuff in there.
And yeah.
You know, like I think all Jesus was saying is like, you are God.
I am, you know, we're all the son of God.
You are God and so am I.
And really, the word of God is your breath and you can come back to it at any time.
And you listen to your breath, listen to the word of God, things will calm down.
It really will.
Take some deep breaths.
Inevitably, that'll get you out of any kind of mental crisis.
Yeah.
I've heard people talk about breathing themselves into a psychedelic state.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the Wim Hof stuff.
Yeah.
There's methods that are even like Wim Hof, you can stay conscious.
There's methods where your hands will become like this holotropic breath work.
That's where you like aggressively breathe in and out, right?
Yeah.
And yeah, there's other tactics.
I mean, there's breath work to get you into any kind of state.
Like, that's some master level shit.
You know?
I feel like psychedelics is like preschool compared to that shit because it's just like.
It's a cheat code.
Yeah, it's a cheat code.
It's like, I'm going to take this thing and be God for a while and be the best version of myself for 12 hours, like without doing any work really.
Yeah.
The work isn't integrating it though.
It's like you get a glimpse behind the curtain.
It's like you get a glimpse at a high watermark of what you could be.
And for people like us, I'm like, oh, cool.
Oh, we're not artists.
We are the art and we're works in progress.
And we're just trying to make this thing more beautiful.
And we're trying to let beauty.
Radiate and emanate off of us, and it's an inside job.
So, just these realizations start to flip the script on everything you were told about life and looking out for yourself and, you know, individualism and all this stuff.
It just starts to get stripped away, and your heart's path becomes more clear.
I know this sounds far out.
I know it does.
But, you know, it's how this stuff's affected us.
Yeah, I mean, it's like talk about taking a natural evolution with the filmmaking.
Like the last two films we made were, you know, about people tripping.
Yeah, what's it?
What, what, what?
What's up with the one with the old lady and her daughter in Joshua Tree on mushrooms?
Yeah.
That was interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
When we discovered this stuff a few years after we discovered psychedelics, I started thinking, I was like, this would be a fun thing to try to work into our filmmaking.
I don't know how we could do it, but it'd be fun.
So again, like I did with the bowler, I just started telling people, like, here's what my next project is.
It's going to be these people.
It's going to be people tripping.
If you know anyone, let me know.
And I asked this girl, Ryan Worsley in Seattle.
She's a filmmaker.
And I was like, ask, ask, if Seattle's a perfect area to do this, ask people around here.
Like six months later, she hits me up.
She's like, nobody would trip on camera.
I asked a bunch of people, but my mom's never tried psychedelics.
She wants to try them.
And she said she'd be down for you to film us.
And I was like, yeah, when are we doing it?
So a month later, we're in Joshua Tree, gave them an eighth of mushrooms each.
And it was fucking beautiful.
It was, you know, the mom's 72 years old.
Yeah.
Never, she didn't really even have a reference point for psychedelics.
And she's like, I just literally have no idea what this is going to be.
So we spent the night before with them just cooking dinner, chilling out, like explaining what this could be, preparing them for it, and showed up the next day and just shot them tripping for like six, seven hours.
And yeah, that film's called Joshua Tree.
And I feel like it's a prototype for stuff we want to make.
We wanted to see if it was even possible to do this and depict the psychedelic experience in a way that could get you kind of in their mindset.
And I think we pulled it off.
And then we made another one of our friend Ayla.
taking two and a half tabs of acid in Woodstock.
That one's called Sweet Nothing.
And yeah, that was the last film we made.
It's kind of my proudest film.
Sweet Nothing was the most recent one?
Yeah.
When did you do that one?
2019, 2018.
Okay.
Yeah, the COVID slowed us down a little bit.
But yeah, she fucking, she was the chick who, when we were making our movie Cam Girls, we met all these psychedelic cam girls in Seattle.
And we had only tried mushrooms, but they were way into acid and they turned us onto acid and DMT.
A couple years later, Ayla calls us up and she was just like, I think it's time that you film me take acid.
I was like, fuck yeah, cool, let's do this.
We just rented a house in Woodstock and, you know, pretty easy.
We all took acid.
I was tripping off camera and we just hung out for a day.
And I wanted those films to be really visceral.
I do not want to feel like the audience is having its hand held through this experience.
There's no expert that comes in and says, here's what's going on.
It's just like purely just with her.
And that was a.
That was a really fun one.
So, do you operate the camera when you do this stuff?
No.
You always get a camera operator and a sound guy.
Yeah, that's usually the bare minimum.
We have operated cameras on some of our things, like when it's completely necessary, but I like the subjects to be distracted with me.
Okay.
You know, because I can engage them in a way where they forget about all that shit.
So that's like my main focus is like, you get what you give.
You don't want them to be focused on the camera and stuff?
No.
Okay.
No, I don't even want them to.
Florida Man was a little different because we only brought one lens, so we knew the camera was going to be like a character in it because we're going to have to get so close to get close-ups.
And like it's almost going to become a thing where you see them reacting.
It's great.
But yeah, usually we hire sound, camera.
Cass does everything.
I just ask questions and find subjects.
That's the more expensive way of doing it.
Yeah.
Is it?
I always do the camera operating and the talking myself whenever I do that kind of stuff.
I do a lot of that kind of stuff.
So it's like, I just like, yeah, I take the camera with the microphone mounted on it.
Oh, wow.
So you did like deck hands and stuff.
I was watching those.
Those are great.
Yeah, just like that.
Wow.
And the sound came out good.
That's what I always get worried about.
A lot of times it's shitty, but I fuck with it.
And post and try to make it usable.
It sounds great.
What we watch sounds great.
I'm always wondering about people's sound approach because I'm like, that is the one thing.
It's like, fuck, man, this looks, this is intimidating.
The thing, there was like a moment, there was like a film this kid did that went on YouTube probably a little over 10 years ago that got me into wanting to start creating stuff and putting it out myself.
What was that?
I want to say that Isaac worked on it, but maybe I'm totally wrong.
But this dude named Saman Ketchavars or something like that, he made this music video called Love Deluxe, where it's basically, it was the first POV video I ever saw.
And it's basically, he's like following this girl through all these different towns and stuff.
Like they're on a beach, and he's like following her through all these different personalities.
And like, you just have to watch it.
It's hard to explain.
Cool.
I wonder if Isaac shot that.
It was a really cool music video, and it was shot on like the first 5D that shot video.
But I know there was a guy that had to like walk around with a camera strapped to a helmet.
Yeah.
And I want to say that he was part of it.
I could be wrong.
Oh, interesting.
I'll have to, like, Isaac shot like 300 music videos.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I think he was a little upset after Florida Man because so many people were trying to get him to do documentary.
And he's like, I'm more of a sci fi guy, you know?
So he had to like take it off his website.
He's not even a doc guy.
And like, we pulled him into that world.
And he had a lot of fun with it.
And we've had a lot of fun together.
And we're going to work together again.
But he's totally like, what the fuck?
I'm getting hit up about all this stuff in that world now.
So he's probably just like, Full, he's like full on getting hired by like TV networks and stuff.
Doing like he's like a union guy now, yeah.
He he does he shoots a lot of stuff for uh American Horror Story, I think, something like that.
There's all kinds of shows that he's it's such a different world when you're when you're like working for like the established, yeah, networks doing that kind of stuff versus doing stuff like that you do or like stuff that I do.
That's why he craves he craves us after, yeah, after enough time away.
He's like, all right, what are we doing now?
TVs are always excited because they it's kind of hard to believe, but we're like, we're gonna shoot for like.
Four hours, you know, and then we're going to call it a day, just hang out, you know, because it's more about it's the vibe, it's about it's the vibe.
So we have to keep our vibe good so we can put a container around it so that when we're going out, we get what we want.
And it's like that's that's where Sean's kind of different because he doesn't, as a documentary filmmaker, overshoot.
He kind of, if anything, maybe undershoots to make it really easy for Kathy to go in the edit and also just he gets the pieces he wants and puts them in.
Well, I just like I know what I know what we want going into it, and once I feel like we got it, I'm like.
I'm not going to torture my subjects or my crew because of my insecurity about not getting something.
Whatever we got is perfect and we're going to make it work.
Yeah.
I didn't even know that's not how other people work until, you know, we work with people like Isaac and they start telling us about how other documentarians shoot.
And I'm like, holy shit.
They're like, oh, they want you to roll 18 hours a day of whatever you see, just fucking get a shot of it.
It's brutal.
I can't work like that.
It's too tedious.
It's too tedious.
I would already bailed on this medium.
Yeah, you need to do it your way.
You need to do it you like.
I mean, you clearly did that with Florida Man.
I mean, that was like a redefined anything.
There was nothing like that before that I know of.
I appreciate it.
Especially on the internet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fuck.
It's just like the same way kind of like podcasting is a new thing over the last 10 years or whatever.
It's kind of taken off now, but.
Yeah.
That is kind of like its own little thing that no one ever, people didn't take that and run with it.
Yeah, yeah.
It's, well, it's like, I don't know, it's just raw footage with no music or B roll.
Yeah, yeah.
I like to tell people, you know, they're like, wow, you didn't use any music or whatever.
And I'm like, watch it again.
There's a dope soundtrack in there, but it's just happening in such a natural way you don't notice it.
It's happening when a bar door swings open and you hear Fleetwood Mac, and we're with a cab driver and he's playing David Bowie.
And we're with these fucking weirdos from Cocoa Beach and you hear fucking Jethro Tull in the background.
There's like little things that me and my editor were really getting off on in the edit.
Like, whoa, there's like a secret soundtrack to this thing without being obvious about it.
It's there.
And like just like little things kind of bring that to life.
You mean it was already there or you guys added it?
No, we didn't add it.
Okay.
We didn't add anything.
But like what we discovered in the edit, we were like, whoa, there's a soundtrack to this movie.
And it's so what I would think it would be because I lived down here and it seems like music got frozen in time in like 1998 down here.
And it's like, you know, like, like God smack.
Like, I wouldn't hear that anywhere else.
You come down here, you throw it on the radio, and it's like, oh, they still like puddle of mud and God smack.
And like, what year is this, man?
So, yeah, all that, like, just like little stuff like that.
It was such a pleasure to edit that movie.
It was just like four days, you know, the way we edited that one.
It's like, it's like, I like to think of it like I'm putting together a mixtape when it's something like that because it's all these disparate stories.
It's all, nothing has anything to do with each other.
So I'm just like, this guy's a song, and then this guy's a song.
If I was making a mixtape for you, How would I want this to feel?
The first thing, it sets the stage, and you want to take it up a notch, and you want to ease it out a little bit.
So I'm just kind of thinking of it kind of like music.
So we just start putting it together, and then we watch it down, and we say, that guy belongs here, get this guy out of there, watch it down.
And that movie, I feel like we watched it five times, and we're like, that's the movie.
And we literally would just upload it then.
It's just like, put this out on the internet.
No film festivals, nothing like that.
Let the people decide.
I love the Trump rally one too.
Building Walls in Vegas Casinos00:02:24
That we shot ourselves.
That one we shot on cell phones.
It was funny because he had announced his candidacy and the media is going crazy.
And we knew he was getting all the support, but the cameras were never turning to the audience.
So we knew that this Trump phenomenon was building, but we were like, who are these people?
Now we understand who they are.
But at the time when we made that, that was January 2016, there wasn't a lot of stuff about them or a lot of ways to even get down with it.
So we thought of this idea.
We're like, there's no way we can bring real cameras in there.
Let's shoot on our cell phones.
So we put an ad on Craigslist and we're like, if anyone has an iPhone 6S and they want to make 50 bucks, show up at this Trump rally.
A couple people showed up.
We threw them 50 bucks.
Cass and I walked around.
Another friend of ours, Britt Worgan, who's a photographer, walked around with us.
And we just all just like, nobody's intimidated by that shit.
No.
Nobody gives a fuck, man.
The most, the weirdest, most fucked up racist shit was coming out of people.
Oh, yeah.
You know, like Cass was great on that one too.
Like they see her and they're like, I don't know why they're just like disarmed and they're like, whatever.
She just got a cell phone.
I'll talk to this pretty girl.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The fucking shit people were saying.
That film was incredible because they knew that they could only fit 2,000 people in there, but 10,000 people showed up.
And so all of a sudden they just cut it off.
So there's all of a sudden security has built a wall.
All these people are there to cheer on a wall.
They're now stuck on the other side of a wall and they're screaming and throwing a hissy fit and fucking claiming illness and like just like just complete meltdown mode.
So it's just hilarious to see this crowd go from like.
Cheering on this racist to like completely melting down when they couldn't get in this thing, blaming everyone.
But they were thinking, like, Trump will fix this.
Yeah.
What town are you in?
Las Vegas.
It was Vegas.
Wow.
It was some shit casino.
I was going to guess, like, Daytona, Orlando.
Yeah.
It's the same type of people.
When we showed up there, I was like, is this an Aerosmith concert?
What the fuck is this?
I was like, who are all these drunk 60 year old ladies?
What the fuck is going on?
You know, like, I had no idea of what his supporters were like or anything.
It was super eye opening.
We left there, and Cass was like, Trump's going to win.
I was like, get the fuck out of here.
No way.
No way.
With what he's saying up there, no way.
That's insane, right?
Cass is like, he's going to win.
Yeah.
It's amazing how many people feel the same way those old ladies did.
Tripping to Find Good Ideas00:05:01
Oh, I know, man.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There are a lot of, I mean, they're all around here.
We're in the middle of it right here.
Oh, I know.
Half Sean's family.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Same here.
Half of my family lives down here and they are so hardcore into that stuff.
And like, we're not partisans.
I try to fucking stay out of all that stuff.
Yeah.
Like, Trump's a piece of shit.
But so's Joe Biden.
So, welcome.
That guy promised us $2,000 checks.
Where's that shit, motherfucker?
I saw the funniest fucking tweet today.
This dude who does like, he's a stand up comedian and he does like political commentary.
I'm sure he has a big podcast, Tim Dillon.
Oh, Tim Dillon.
The fat gay guy.
The hugest, hugest Tim Dillon fan.
He's so fucking the best.
He's the funniest guy out there right now.
There was, I don't know if you heard, but the Associated Press, they posted something.
They said that Hasbro is now going to start making in 2021, Mr. Potato Head.
He's going to be called Potato Head.
He's not going to identify as a mister.
So he like quote tweeted it.
You know what I mean?
So he said, Mr. Potato Head is now non binary.
You still don't have health insurance.
Well, but that's why I love Tim Dillon so much is because they're trying to divert our attention away from that and he'll divert it right back.
Yeah.
The bigger audience he gets, the better for all of us because he really does speak for the people and he calls out bullshit.
Like, come on.
They want us all divided on these oddly nuanced, increasingly fucking, increasingly detailed lines.
Like, oh, you're different from me.
Fuck all that we're a human species like yeah, you're gonna let them divide us up like this and it's and it's to Make sure that we're not looking up and saying wait a second.
Why the fuck do we have masters?
Yeah, no, let's blame each other.
No, it's the brown guy.
It's the immigrant.
It's the black dude.
It's fucking white people.
It's what it's Karens.
It's get the fuck out of here with all that fucking stuff like we're all the fucking same take enough mushrooms.
You'll realize that exactly smoke pot.
Realize that when you make like a, like a, like some sort of series that makes it easier for people to be comfortable with the idea of trying mushrooms, yeah.
That well, that's that's what I mean.
The Joshua tree kind of made it like, okay, I'm watching this lady take mushrooms now.
It's kind of like I feel less scared now, yeah.
Well, that's like, am I gonna be more scared than her, right?
Right, was she puking by the way into that?
She thought she was going okay, she held it down, man.
Like for a 72 year old lady to take an eighth of mushrooms, like.
She just had a good fucking time.
She just loved it.
Yeah, but that's kind of she was kind of like convulsing, though, at one point.
Yeah, I know.
I was like, this isn't a good look.
I was like, yeah, that's the come-up.
That's kind of what it feels like.
Oh, fuck.
But honestly, what you're saying right now is our next project.
We want to make a film called The Family Trip, where we're interweaving three families tripping together and make a 70, 80-minute thing that is palatable so you could show your mom.
and be like, here, check this out.
And she might want to do mushrooms.
Because we've tripped with our parents.
We've dosed our parents.
We've done all that stuff at this point.
You've got your parents take mushrooms?
Yeah.
And acid.
And they're Trump supporters?
No.
Okay.
None of our parents are like that.
Okay.
I thought you said that they were.
No, no.
Our aunts and uncle.
Just family.
And every single person in our extended families besides our parents are Trump supporters.
They're just like typical.
Yeah.
So the family trip is hopefully a film we'll be making soon.
Right.
That sounds amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And well, I mean, it started with us tripping with it.
Well, with us discovering this stuff and be like, oh my God, everyone needs to know about psychedelics.
Like they don't.
Yeah.
I feel like it's just such a foreign, scary, dark thing for a lot of people.
You know, if you don't know anyone who's done it and you don't know, you don't talk to somebody like you.
Yeah.
A lot of people, I mean, it's not something that you're going to come by very often.
Even our parents did not trust any of this stuff.
They didn't like when we were just always very honest with them about what we were doing.
It honestly took like five years of them seeing.
The results of us being more conscious, for them to be like, fine, what is it?
What are you guys doing?
I'll do it, i'll try it.
And you know both my parents did acid when they were, when they were young, like teenagers, and hadn't touched in 50 years.
And since then my, in the past couple years, i've taken mushroom with my dad a number of times, given him that's awesome, molly a million times really acid.
I've given him a candy flip once we went to a Grateful Dead concert and it helps him.
He struggles with depression.
He struggles with suicidal ideation.
When someone is, when their ego is taken over and all the negative stories have bundled up, that's what depression is.
And it's all it is is misdirected creative potential.
And it's just you're putting all your creative potential into reinforcing this negative story.
And the mushrooms or the acid or whatever just comes in, just dissolve that story temporarily, giving your body, your cells, your muscles, your nervous system a break from that tension.
And I think that's why people feel such long-term benefits from it.
I've seen it with my dad.
Misdirected Creative Potential00:07:46
Do you ever get scared that like one day you're not going to be as good as you are?
Like at your peak, like when you made the best work you ever made, do you ever think like, fuck, I keep getting older, I'm going to get less creative or less good at this?
Not less creative, but it does come into my consciousness every now and then.
I'm going to be like, oh, what if American Juggalo was the biggest thing you're ever going to do?
Yeah.
Like, fuck, man.
That's a terrifying thought.
29 years old.
Like, no, that can't be the fucking peak of my artistic output.
So it's honestly what keeps me seeking and trying different things and not nervous to fucking start over, destroy my ego.
it's because I know I'm going to be creative.
I know we're going to be thinking of good ideas.
Whether or not we'll get the opportunities to make films and get them seen on that level again, I don't know.
That ship may have sailed, but like I said before, it's like we had to switch into a mode where we're like, we're the art, we're the works in progress.
We're not just artists, we are the art.
And you can see us evolve over time and you can see us update our operating systems.
And it's kind of what we're trying to bring people in on with our podcast.
It's very casual, it's just setting space to hang out with us.
Now we have a daily podcast called The Come Up where it's like 15 minutes every morning.
And it's me, Cass, and our girlfriend, Mare.
And we just do a little like, hey, here's what Monday is all about.
Let's get through the day.
Here's some wisdom.
Here's some quotes.
Here's some songs you could check out.
That's cool.
Just trying to like, you know, give people a little something.
The podcast is, I love the podcast because, I mean, I've said this before, but it's like, it helps me build discipline because it's like the opposite sort of way I'm used to creating stuff to our like, like, like coming up with the Florida man.
Like I got to do Florida man.
Like I got to make this thing happen.
Just the same thing with deck hands for me.
Yeah.
This is more like I have to do at least one of these every every week and post it on Sunday.
And it's like, I don't care what it is.
I got to do something.
Yeah.
And it's a have you ever heard of a book called The War of Art?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a great way.
Talks about like the muse and just sitting down and doing your work and letting it come to you.
That that really like, struck a nerve for me and changed everything for me, to where like, just sit, like coming and sitting down and doing the work, whether it's, whether it's good bad, whatever it is just do it and then release it into the world, absolutely like.
And I I think that's what it comes down to for us is like we've become very aware of like, the carrot that's always dangling in front of us as artists is the muse.
It's like we will chase the muse and we will serve the muse.
We will very much recognize when the muse has taken human form and that there's a particular energy in our world that is making us shine and you know uh it it it, I think what it, what it does, is it create, you put a new lens on life And, you know, you're less victimized by the circumstances, and you're just more like waiting for some inspiration to put some creative wind in your sails and just kind of looking around for that.
As opposed to, I don't know, the way that we used to do it would like you're saying, it's like we come up with deck hands, and then it's going to take a big long project and it's going to take this long.
The podcast just allows us to keep serving the muse and like just feeding this, yeah, this beast.
I don't even know what the fuck it is, but it feels like.
Each episode like illuminates another pixel on this board that's like, you know, figuring out what my life looks like and, you know, trying to soak up wisdom from different and unexpected places.
I think that's what I really get off on.
And that's what I love about what you did with Matt is like, I was like, I know this type.
I know what this guy is.
I'll watch him for five minutes.
I'll get a sense of it.
And I'm like, oh, man.
Of course he's fucking full of wisdom and charm and all this shit.
Yeah.
The craziest thing for me about doing this podcast, I realized how stupid I was.
Oh, man.
On a weekly basis, you're too hard.
I mean, I still am, but a little bit less.
I've only done, this is like the 100th episode I've done.
Oh, wow.
Cool.
You guys have done like 300 or 400, right?
We're up to 230 or something like that on ours.
There's been times where we haven't put one out for a month or so, but we've been consistent every week for a couple, two, three years now.
And yeah, it's like it builds this muscle in you where it's just like it forces you to do it.
Because with a film, it's so easy to be like, I'm not feeling it today or this week or this month.
Right.
Cool.
We'll get back to the family trip when I feel inspired.
With the podcast, it's like I really do hold a fucking gun to my head to do it.
Like our household is a disaster if we don't do one of these a week.
We both feel like shit.
We both feel like some like just weighed on us.
And it's just like it's not a good vibe.
I think what it's what it's done for me is allowed me to take myself less seriously.
I'm looking for excuses to take life and myself less seriously.
And when you get on a podcast every week and you're just like cool, I'm just talking shit for an hour and a half.
Those ideas like they're not with me anymore.
I'm just like cool.
I got them out there.
I don't have to dwell on that thought anymore or let it fucking crystallize into my destiny or anything.
It's just like.
Cool, I said that.
I don't know.
That's who I was then.
I'm going to forgive that person, put this out, and that's that.
And I love that process of just like purging ideas, purging of thoughts, just like keeping the energy moving.
That's what I think of the podcast.
It's just like, keep the energy moving.
Just keep it moving.
You know, and you'll still make films.
I'll still make films.
But man, the podcast, what a discipline.
I recommend everybody do it.
Even if you don't put them out, like I've interviewed my mom and my dad.
I'm like, I'm going to fucking have those the rest of my life.
I need those things.
Like, I have a really well shot interview with my dad.
Where he's talking about selling fake acid to the Hells Angels and fucking like insane, fucking criminal, wild drug stories.
And I'm like man, I'm gonna show this to my grandkids.
That's sick, that's amazing.
Yeah yeah, like for me, when I shot Deckhands, we shot it.
It didn't take us that long, took us a couple months to shoot, like the first two episodes.
But after we shot it it sat on a hard drive for almost two years, two years, two years.
I was afraid of it.
I was afraid because it was so much yeah, I had so much content.
Yeah.
And I literally was terrified of the idea of like sitting down and going through all that.
I knew it was gold too.
Yeah.
It was gold.
Yeah.
Because the first thing we shot was when we, I don't know if you remember, but we went on this guy named Shane's boat.
Yeah.
And it was like laser lights and fog machine.
He had Marilyn Manson music videos playing.
So Florida.
And it was like, as soon as we left there, like me and my buddy Luke, we just high-fived like, dude, this is, yeah, we got it.
Wow.
I can't believe you sat on it for two years.
Two years.
Oh.
It was terrifying.
Like, just, yeah, it was daunting the idea of trying to edit it into something.
It was like, is it because you're the editor?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, I did everything.
Yeah.
I think this is how I'm able to not sit on something for two years because I've sat in the edit room with Kathy for so long on so many different kinds of projects.
And I've heard her complain about what other people dump on her to where I'm like, I don't want to be that guy.
Like, yo, a day's worth of footage is going to be four hours at the most.
I'm going to watch it with you.
You know, like, I don't want to overwhelm her.
And we tell young filmmakers that all the time.
They'll come to us bragging like, hey, I shot 1,200 hours so far for my next documentary.
I'm like, good luck ever fucking getting that thing made.
No editor is going to touch that.
You're not going to want to fucking touch that.
It's going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
So it's like, where did you make the decision making as a filmmaker?
As a director, that's the only thing I'm doing.
I'm just curating.
And I can make edits in real time.
Cool, that's enough with that guy.
Let's fucking move on.
Curating Edits Without Mushrooms00:06:17
Let's not torture everyone here.
And plus, it's just like, I just want to get out of their life.
You know, I don't want to be hanging around.
That's a great way to do it.
Yeah, I've never thought about it that way.
Yeah, just move on.
You know, how long have you been shooting the family trip?
Have you started shooting it yet?
We haven't started shooting it yet.
It's something we want to shoot in the next couple months.
Um, Cass is going to start working on casting.
Basically, it comes down to that how do you cast something like that?
It's like that's so, it's three families.
Yeah, so are we allowed to talk in depth about it?
I mean, absolutely.
Okay, okay, okay.
Help us work it out.
This is how we get things made.
Three families who have never taken acid before, yeah, or mushrooms or ayahuasca.
They can smoke toad.
I want to do like an.
Older couple doing MDMA together who's maybe been through some shit, maybe lost some family members.
You know, like they've seen it, and maybe that, like, a loving perspective on their life could really blossom over the course of a trip.
I picture that being like, yeah, one of the stories is like kind of sweet.
And it's an older couple and they're taking MDMA and they're connecting in a way and they're talking about some traumas that they went through and they're saying it from such a forgiving place.
Like to have that weaved in there with, you know, maybe like three kids and their parents, you know, who none of them have ever tripped before, but they've gone through some tragedy and loss and they take these mushrooms together and they get over it.
And maybe, you know, like a father and son taking acid and just weaving these things.
I don't even want to get too specific about it.
It's like a problem they're working out.
Trauma.
Trauma, yeah, that's usually what it is because, like, you'll take this stuff and, uh, like MDMA, especially because it's so lucid, you're more with it than ever.
You are just, but you're operating from the heart, and it's just like it's the forgiveness drug.
So, there's a reason it's been used in couples therapy along the west coast.
Um, there's a reason that they are giving it to veterans, PTSD, yeah, because it's like you know, when you have a traumatic experience, yeah, you kind of store the memory of that experience in your cells and your body.
And you kind of have this story about what happens when you take MDMA, you can revisit the experience you had with a more loving mindset.
So you can kind of reprogram, you know, it's neuroplasticity.
We're very neuroplastic, but it's a beautiful healing thing that has worked wonders for us.
And that's why I'm like, I can't move on from this.
You know, it kind of seems like I'm not a one trick pony, but to say like, oh, psychedelics changed our life and we have to talk about psychedelics all the time, it is true though, because.
I know how many people are suffering right now, whether it's like trauma or anxiety or despair or disconnection.
And I know that there's something that doesn't just treat that like anxiety, like a Zoloft or whatever it is, but actually goes to the root of it and heals you.
And it's like it's something where you don't have to keep taking mushrooms.
Like you could probably do like three mushroom trips, heal something that's like a trigger of yours, and then move on with your life.
Yeah, it's just that there's not enough money to be made in these things because they're so curative.
That our system of of profits over people is not going to be accepting of it.
And when you, when you take this stuff, it's like this is illegal.
Like I remember my dad had no context for Mdma.
We show up at his house it was my birthday and um, we show up to say hi to my parents on my birthday and uh, my dad's like I want to kill myself i'm, i'm done, like I can't, I can't go on.
He was in anxious, depressed mess and like we're freaking out.
He's been in and out of rehabs.
He's been in psych wards, he's been in prison, you know um, He's amazing.
He's doing great now.
But he was just having a really rough go.
And I was like, I don't really know what to do or say about this.
We recently discovered this stuff, MDMA.
I think you should try it.
And he's like, I don't know.
I don't know.
I was like, I don't know what else to tell you.
This is what I have that I can offer you.
And I know it's safe.
He's like, fine.
So him and I take it together.
And like an hour goes by and it kicks in.
And he just comes over to me.
And he had no context for this.
He just said, all veterans should have access to this because he's a veteran himself.
And that was his first thought.
So, and not only that, like, That's what it's being studied for, and that's a big use for this.
And for my dad to deduce that with no context, just he felt it, he felt the forgiveness, he felt the trauma kind of dissolve away a little bit.
I was like, Man, he's a case study in this right now.
Yeah, it's insane that this stuff's illegal, it's insane that people don't have access.
I mean, and the other thing we've found and been told is you don't have to be sick to get better, you know, you don't.
There is, I mean, the human experience can be kind of traumatic for us, so.
We have these things that kind of get programmed into us that we do have room to maybe reflect on and adjust course.
Yeah, my dad's friend is going through some medical shit right now, and they prescribed him Vicodin.
He's like dependent on the Vicodin now because he's addicted to it, obviously, because it's so fucking addictive.
And he drinks, so he mixes it with the alcohol.
And he's so dependent on his prescription.
I'm like, dude, this guy used to be a big weed smoker.
I'm like, you need to quit smoking weed.
I'm like, why'd you quit smoking weed?
Like that seems like the one thing that would be the best for you right now.
He goes, because I get drug tested for the Vicodin.
If I smoke weed, they won't give me the Vicodin anymore.
Wow.
Oh my God.
How ass backwards is that?
I know.
That's how they keep you on the Vicodin.
Because if you smoke weed, you might not need the Vicodin as much.
Well, you definitely do.
I mean, they've seen this in states that legalize marijuana.
Like opioid use goes down 17% in counties where there is a legal dispensary.
Like that's the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we're going to see.
And the funny thing is that.
Of the stuff that they criminalize, it's so obvious why they're doing it.
They're trying to criminalize Kratom right now.
Like, Kratom helps people, it's a plant.
It's so innocuous and it helps people get off heroin.
They need to demonize it, though, because it's a very cheap and effective way to get off heroin.
And the people that created the opioid epidemic want to be able to control and profit from the solution.
So, you know, and they have the media working for them.
So, like, that's why any opportunity we get, we try to speak to this stuff and try to speak to it.
Responsible Psychedelic Use00:03:59
From a place of like, yo, we're normal people, we're not drug addicts or anything we're.
We're using this stuff very responsibly.
We don't drink, we don't.
I've never taken a pill in my life, i've never done cocaine, nothing like that.
Psychedelics uh, these are experiences that I think are essential.
I think you know, and this is how i'll convince you, imagine going through your life and never having an orgasm.
Really, oh yeah oh yeah yeah oh, it's on par, like I.
I say it's.
It's on par with essential human experiences, with falling in love and having sex.
Psychedelics, Right up there and creating art.
It's right up there with the essential human experience of making you feel connected in this world, making you feel at home no matter where you are.
It's such a gift for a person that struggled with anxiety myself and a ton of self doubt.
The confidence that it's given me to traverse the world in a way as an artist, not doubting myself, not constantly questioning myself am I doing enough?
Oh, God, did I put enough shit out?
Are people paying enough attention to me?
Do I have enough money?
Should we get a mortgage?
Should we have a kid?
It's just like none of it is a fucking concern to me because this stuff's given me a little bit of a perspective and confidence that, you know, I think that no person should go without.
No right minded person should go without.
And if we lived in a more advanced, evolved, civilized society, people would have X's.
I feel like it would be the type of thing that your dad and his buddies would take you on a camping trip when you're 13 years old and you'd get introduced to cannabis and mushrooms.
And like when you're 18, Some other people show you what acid's all about.
And you learn these things in a ritualistic way.
And it's handed down from the elders.
And it's not sneaking around and fucking partying and recreational.
It's ceremonial.
It's ritualistic.
So we're trying to bring some of that stuff back to it.
We created a new holiday called Portal Day.
January 11th is Portal Day.
That's an acid holiday.
Why January 11th?
No, no, no.
It just sounds good.
111.
Ooh, I like that.
And it's also, it's the perfect amount of time after the holidays where it's like you've had to come down from the holidays.
There is that like weird depressing.
First couple weeks of the year, like, ugh, type of feeling.
And, like, to have right baked in there, fucking, like, this year it was Wednesday, a whole, like, people all over the place.
This year it was all over the world.
This was our third year doing it.
We have people in solidarity with you all over the world.
And the point of the holiday is you go in and you write down all your fears on a piece of paper with your friends, crumple it up, put it in a bowl, take the acid at 111.
And at the end of the night, burn your fears.
It's as simple as that.
That's Portal Day, opening up the portal.
That sounds fucking amazing.
It's so fun, man.
It's so fun.
And yeah, I mean, that's all.
We're just trying to decorate our life with cool shit like that.
We have this thing called Church of Chill.
And it's, just like, it's like, all the religions in one, but all we're worshiping is a chill vibe that's available to everyone that I think a lot of people are averse to because we're productivity driven society.
So we have the church Of Chill and that's a music, is the sacrament.
If you could normalize to make people more comfortable with psychedelics, you could change the world.
Oh I oh, absolutely.
And and the first attempt at us doing this back in the 60s it came off too like revolutionary and it scared the fucking shit out of people.
And now it seems like it seems like this stuff is kind of having its day.
Well, we have the information now to have like safe trips where you have good set and setting.
Like we've learned from the mistakes in the 60s, you know, we've learned, and now you can do your own research, you can go on Arrowhead, you can go to maps, you can ask people like us like, how do I do this?
There's so many podcasts out there about how to do this stuff and how to do it responsibly and where to get it and everything like that.
So yeah, we just want to be a little reminder.
Yeah, I mean, I feel i'm optimistic about the future of this kind of stuff and people being more like awake and aware of everything that's going on, even like when it comes to the government forcing opioids down your throat.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pitching Shows to Old Men00:15:46
There's a reason they want you on opioids.
There's a reason they're not giving us those $2,000 checks or giving us $2,000 checks every month because the desperation and despair breeds consumerism.
And when they got us cornered like that, we got to work for their slave wages and we got to buy their bullshit food and we have to take their bullshit education and don't question the military industrial complex and don't question the prison industrial complex.
and stay away from these plants because they might wake you up.
Stay away from this little piece of paper.
It's illegal.
Get the fuck out of here.
How often do you guys take MDMA?
I would only keep that to every three or four months.
Three or four months?
Yeah.
Now, I heard there's a hangover effect where it sucks up all your dopamine.
It can feel like, and we don't take it, with MDMA, unlike acid or some of the other things, minimum effective dose, like 100 milligrams on an empty stomach will do you.
If you're going 200 milligrams or higher.
Minimum is 100?
To me, that's the minimum effective dose.
And that's really where you want to stay around because I like when you do 200 milligrams, 300, you're borrowing from the next week.
And that's going to be a rough week where it's not like you're going to be depressed.
You're not going to feel anything.
It's just, it's like a void type of feeling of just like, what the fuck?
So we take the minimal effective and we haven't had, we haven't really struggled with that.
We like to give ourselves a lot of spaciousness.
And like that's what we've tried to afford ourselves is like, how do we have spaciousness around these experiences so that we do have the time and space to integrate them?
Yeah.
You know, where.
We don't have a podcast the next day or something.
We've made that mistake many times.
We're like canceling.
You're like, I should do it.
MDMA for a podcast?
The night before.
And we were like, oh, no, we'll be fine.
We'll be fine for that.
And like the next day, you're just like, I don't know.
It's so worth it, though.
It's so worth it.
Every time it hits you, you're like, why was I questioning this?
This is so.
What about MDMA during a podcast?
We would do that.
We probably have done that.
I've been tripping balls on acid on our podcast.
I've smoked the MT.
I've done ketamine on our podcast.
And, you know, we played it fast and loose.
But not a lot of people listen, so we can get away with it.
If we were doing your kind of numbers, I'd probably have to be like, this isn't real pot, you know, or whatever.
No, no, no.
Yeah, yeah.
What, okay, when did you do the, what was the name of the opioid documentary you called?
Oxiana.
Oxiana.
How long ago did you make that one?
Oxiana came out in 2013.
We shot it in 2012.
That was basically, we had made this film, American Juggalo.
And right after it, I was like, that achieved, that was like the first thing that we did that really popped off.
Juggalo?
Yeah, American Juggalo.
And we were like, I think that my next thing needs, like, I need to, this is my career starting right now.
Like, I can feel it palpably.
I'm like, oh, the spotlight's on me.
People care.
I could make something bigger and more ambitious.
And I didn't know what it was going to be.
I knew I was kind of drawn to those stories, but, um, We actually were just on a road trip, me and a friend and a country singer friend of ours, Johnny Fritz.
And he had, when he grew up in Virginia, and he said, we used to fucking take ATV tours.
We used to hang out in the mountains of West Virginia in this town, Oceania.
We should go there.
So we just go pulling into Oceania one night on a long road trip.
And it's this old coal mining town in the middle of fucking nowhere in West Virginia.
It's an hour away from any other town.
You just, you really feel like you're driving into the middle of nowhere, weaving through these mountains, the lights, and you're going into this town.
We got there and it was an eerie feeling as soon as we got there.
I could tell something was like a little kind of how all of America feels right now.
That's how Oceana felt when we first showed up there.
Like, maybe I shouldn't be here.
Yeah, something's off.
Like, I don't know what it is.
And, but we, I was like, I don't know how to really, I don't know.
Let me figure out what's going on.
And then we saw a juggalo.
And I was like, I know how to talk to juggalo.
Oh, I know.
Yeah.
I went up to this guy and I was like, yo, what up?
Whoop, whoop.
And he's like, yo, what up?
I was like, yeah, I made this movie, American Juggalo.
He's like, holy shit.
Oh my God, you made that.
What the fuck?
Yo.
And then, like, he was excited.
So i'm, I was talking to this guy five minutes and he like takes me over to the side and he's like, you want to know the real, the truth about what's going on around here.
I'm like yeah, what is it?
He's like dope.
This whole town is full of dope.
That's all it is.
He's like it's so much, there's so much dope here that they call this place Oxiana.
They don't even call it Oceana.
Everyone calls it Oxiana.
The cops are in on it, the judges, the fucking everybody's in on, everybody is on this.
And i'm just like what?
The 10 minutes after that he's shooting up in front of us and I was like, all right, this guy, he might be telling the truth.
This seems pretty up.
And you just like look around, you get a sense of the place.
You're like Yeah, this is weird.
So we hung out for a few days, got to know some more people.
And then in the back of my head, I was like, this could be a movie.
And I'll come back and I'll make sure it is.
So it came back a couple months later and just went there with my cinematographer, Hilary Spira, me, Cass, her, and a producer.
Went down there, no cameras, just showing up as people.
And we stand out like a fucking sore thumb in West Virginia.
And we started picking up hitchhikers.
That was the way we made that movie.
We just started picking up hitchhikers because there's a ton of them.
And they would get in the car and we'd start asking them questions.
We'd Ask where we were taking them, who, you know, we were just kind of putting two and two together, getting a sense of the scene.
That's how we mainly mapped the territory by picking up Hitchhiker.
And you weren't filming any of those?
No, just making friends.
So then we went down there a few months later with the cameras, and we were doing a Kickstarter for the film at the time.
This was a mistake.
We were running an active Kickstarter when we went to make the movie.
So the people in the town, especially some of the drug people, knew we were coming down there to make a movie, and we were getting threats like, don't fucking come down here with your cameras.
We'll blow your head off if you show up in this town with cameras digging around the drug scene.
So it was like a little bit harrowing going down there.
We had to have like two plainclothes security officers with us the whole time, like that was packing heat and like make sure.
And they needed to pull their guns a couple times while we were making the movie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we get down there and we just, there was, there's no way to plan for a movie like that.
You're just in a town that has a problem.
It's like, how do you even tell that story?
So we're just like, let's just talk to whoever will talk to us.
And Talk to one addict, talk to one dealer.
They tell their friend, like, these people are actually cool.
It was really cathartic to talk to them.
It made me feel better to tell my story.
Just one thing led to another.
We interviewed a lot of people in that town.
And yeah, that was our first feature-length movie, Oxiana.
It's out there on our YouTube channel for free.
So you raise all the money on Kickstarter for it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We raised $70,000 for that one.
Whoa.
Yeah.
In a month.
That's when you could do that.
I feel like a lot of stuff that made my career, you couldn't even do now.
There's so much everyone is doing.
It's just like, I don't even know how the fuck I would get something noticed now.
Literally all I used to do was make the thing and put it out.
No marketing or promoting or money behind it.
It's just being listened to a blog and you're like, all of a sudden, whoa, look how many views.
How many people did it take to raise $70,000?
A thousand.
1,000 people, $70,000.
No, I think that's.
Maybe less.
That's insane.
I know.
We did it again, too, for Cam Girls a year later.
Raised more.
We raised even more with Cam Girls.
Wow.
That's what I mean when you have to fall in love with every part of the process.
Otherwise, it's going to be.
Fucking torturous, like I thought you were just paying for all this out of your own pocket.
The shorts yeah, because they cost four grand, but that, like the budget for Oxiana, was probably 200.
In the end I I pumped a bunch of money into it.
Another producer did.
We raised that money online, but we paid everyone back.
Everyone got their money back.
We've never really made money on any of these movies, but we're.
We also haven't really lost money it's.
It's kind of a weird thing, like it's it's not really tangible.
Like we put out a movie and we get commercial attention, so that seems to be the way the universe pays it back.
But all our stuff is free.
That's been important to us.
I think, and it's also been important to us to premiere on the internet as opposed to on a network or a film festival or anything like that.
I think that's super important to us.
Yeah, YouTube's pretty awesome.
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
YouTube is like one of the fucking best things.
It's the worst because they just demonetized your channel for talking about psychedelics.
Right.
You know.
Yeah, there's also a lot of weird, wonky shit going on with YouTube and the way they're trying to.
Have you heard about that?
That our law they tried to pass in that last COVID bill.
It was called Section 2. 30 Communications Decency Act, or something like that.
No, you heard of that?
No, basically, when like YouTube and Facebook first came out, like I think it was 2006, maybe somewhere around there, they came out with a law that basically says these platforms are immune to legal action because there's third party people like you and I posting content on there, so you can't sue YouTube.
Oh, like you can go after the people that make it, which I think it makes sense, or else YouTube wouldn't exist, probably.
Yeah, they'd be getting sued right every day, and there's like also those.
Part of it's a copyright law to where like, if you violate someone's copyright, like if I post Florida Man and say this was mine, I'm obviously violating copyright law.
YouTube can't be sued for that.
I can be sued for that, which is rightfully so okay, cool.
So I think it makes sense.
But Trump was trying to get rid of that.
Well, because he hates these, he hates these platforms.
It's very personal for him.
Yeah, that doesn't really.
I don't know, that doesn't add up and you're like, oh yeah, these platforms censor you.
So it's.
It's like I think it's up in the air right now.
I don't know all the specific details on, like the, The politics of it and how, the people that are voting for it, the people who aren't voting for it.
But I know it's kind of up in the air right now.
What's going to happen with that?
I don't know what's going to happen, but it's kind of scary.
Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of scary how much power these platforms have to just make or break your life.
You know, like we just were, we woke up one day and we were demonetized.
We were like, okay, nothing we can really do about it.
The whole channel?
Yeah.
What?
Yeah, I know.
And it's like, fuck, man, Oxyanna's about to have a million views.
We haven't made a dime off that.
We're on unemployment right now because we can't fucking work.
What was the reason they say they demonetized your whole entire channel?
Because of what we're talking about.
Whoa.
They were like, Your content is not in line with who we advertise to.
And like, Was it just a video though?
Or every video you upload?
I don't know.
We're guessing they don't really like the tags.
I mean, even American Juggler is a little iffy.
Because even Deckhands, there's only one episode that's not monetized on that.
And that's some fucking gnarly shit that we're doing.
Why did they demonetize it?
Because it was, I think it was the woman who gave birth.
The title is The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Father's Son.
She talks about getting raped by her dad and having her dad's son.
Yeah, an ad for dog food comes up during that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, I can kind of understand that.
A little bit, yeah, but at least they didn't take the video down.
I understand, okay, don't run ads on it, whatever, yeah, yeah.
They don't take our videos down, but they just say you can't make money off them, it's up, yeah, that's super, yeah.
I don't, I mean, well, I think we'll figure it out.
I think, I think it's like the way to do it is like to kind of have your tentacles spread everywhere, yeah.
We might get a commercial, we might get a little money from Patreon, we might get a little money from YouTube, you know, we might get hired to do some other weird shit.
Who knows?
Just trying to be adaptable, yeah, yeah, you got to adapt to these times.
Did you hear David Chappelle's story, his recent story about HBO and Netflix?
Yeah.
Like, why do we need you when he was pitching Chappelle's show?
Yeah.
Yeah.
They worked it out, though.
Did they?
Yeah.
I heard that Chappelle's show is back on HBO and Netflix with his approval and everything.
Okay.
What a power move, man.
He basically puts out an 18 minute video that, like, fucking bullied these huge networks into fucking succumbing to him.
It was amazing.
That's insane.
Yeah.
Because it's so true.
I mean, they're fucking monsters, dude.
Oh, yeah.
They don't give a shit, especially when you're a young black guy.
Dude.
You know what, however old he was when he was signing those deals like they didn't give a fuck, they wanted to take advantage of him.
That resonated with me when he was talking about that, like being a young kid trying to pitch his show and try to you go through the rigmarole of convincing these old men in suits to pay you to to make your show.
Well okay, let's see if our uh, the people that pay us will accept this.
Let's see if it'll fit with our advertisers.
That's how they determine what's good or what's not.
Yeah, I love the idea.
That's why I started creating content online is because I I, I went through the process of trying to create and pitch shows to networks and stuff and I had a bunch of packaged content that I just kind of reformatted for YouTube.
Oh, and I just started posting it and then making new stuff.
Well, you hacked the system because that fucking chasing that, oh, I got a meeting with so-and-so.
It's like, fuck all that.
It's the worst.
You're going to ask permission to do what you got to do in this life.
If you want to make fucking films, don't sit around waiting for someone to fucking sign off on that shit.
Figure out how to do it.
Christ Almighty, you could make a movie on your fucking iPhone.
There's really no excuse now.
Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it's, I see it way too much with young filmmakers.
It's like, and I get it because I was like that at one point too.
They're like, they're like, they hit me up like, hey, can you look at my thing?
Can you read my thing?
It's just like, you don't fucking need my approval.
You don't need anyone's approval.
You like this?
Fucking go make it.
Make your mistakes, put them out there, fucking feel how that feels, forgive yourself and start making the next thing.
That's how you evolve as an artist.
But if you're not putting it out there and not getting even that feedback from yourself, that feedback, like, you know how it feels different when you watch your edit as opposed to when you're showing it to somebody else, like it feels completely different.
That's how it is.
When you put a project out, people start imbuing it with its with, with their meaning of it, and you got to let go and you got to say, man, I might have made mistakes here, there or everywhere in this film, but people are casting meaning onto it.
Now it's not mine anymore.
I got to start making the next one.
I'm going to make this one better.
This one's going to be a better reflection of who I am and what I see.
Humanity, as you know, that's amazing, man.
Yeah well cool, I appreciate you doing this dude.
Yeah, incredible.
Great fucking time.
Tell everyone who's listening where they can follow you and listen to your podcast and watch all your stuff.
YouTube.com slash veryape or veryape.tv.
All our films are there for free.
Our podcasts are there.
We have a radio show called Church of Chill, and we have to hide that behind a paywall, unfortunately, because it keeps getting torn down.
Fucking YouTube demonetizing you.
Yeah, yeah.
And Spotify and SoundCloud, everybody came after us at once.
So, yeah, patreon.com slash Church of Chill.
You can find us there.
You pay any amount, pay one cent, and you can get access to our radio show, additional podcasts, and our Discord community.
Our Discord community is like, my fucking favorite.
Really?
Oh my God.
It's like other like-minded homies.
It's like, how the hell are we all finding each other?
Like just dope psychedelic artists from all over the world finding each other and just communicating all day.
It's helping me get off other platforms.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
How do you talk to them?
Just with the app?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just like a chat.
And it's like a chat.
Streaming text and you can get on video if you want or whatever.
But like, oh, we have a couple hundred people on there.
It's just like, it's like active all day and all night.
And it hooks up to your people that pay on Patreon?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I need to set that up.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Discord.
I need to figure it out.
I haven't figured it out.
Discord's weird.
It's hard for me.
Yeah, I know.
People were telling us to get a Discord server years ago, and we were like, well, whatever.
And now we have one.
I'm like, fuck, I wish we started this years ago.
I need to do it.
It's dope.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's, and we have this morning show called The Come Up.
That's every day on our YouTube channel and on Instagram TV, and that's at VeryApeTV.