(engine revving) My guest today is Casey Neistat. There's something I take from making videos that is so satisfying. So I think that I can find a level of success by just making it about quality. And just like, trying to tell the stories that I wanna tell as best as I can possibly tell them. (upbeat music) Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Today, we're gonna talk about creativity. We're gonna talk about filmmaking, storytelling. We're gonna discuss the unhealthy incentives that are driving media in a perilous direction. And just tons more with the godfather of YouTube himself, the king of vlogging, returning after a seven year respite for his, believe it or not, fourth appearance on the podcast.
I don't think I have to explain who this guy is. If you're here on YouTube, I'm sure you've come across him. But if you are unfamiliar, Casey is one of the biggest and most popular creators on YouTube with over 12.5 million subscribers. It's extremely unsexy. It's extremely uninteresting, and no one wants to hear that it takes time, but it takes time. Patience is really the most undervalued aspect of succeeding in the world of media today. He's best known for the daily vlog that he started back in March of 2015, when he uploaded a brand new video every single day. And while he was at it, really elevated the form with this flare for cinematography, (upbeat music) music,
(gentle music) and editing,
(tools clacking) that had never before been seen.
All matched with this extraordinary skill for storytelling that just captured the fascination of millions of people all over the world. It was a pursuit of interestingness that was just unrelenting. There was nothing I would omit. There was no version of myself that I wouldn't externalize and that fucks you up. In addition to being a friend and an occasional running partner, Casey is also an entrepreneur. He's an Angel investor, a husband, a dad, and he's the director of this new documentary called, "Under The Influence," which chronicles the trajectory of a young YouTube creator, big YouTube creator named David Dobrik, from massive popularity to disgrace. And the ugly broader truths of the creator economy that incentivized this demise. You're just a kid walking around the video camera trying to capture moments of sensationalism or create moments of sensationalism. And if you're on the other side of that and you're like, shit, I'll do anything for fame, well, what does that mean and where can that lead? I always love sitting down with Casey, I really enjoyed this talk, I think you will too.
So please click that subscribe button and enjoy. (gentle music) It's good to see you, man. I'm happy to be doing this. I was reflecting on the first couple times that we did this, it's been so long. I think the first time we did it was like 2014. You've been on three times, I think. But way back, even before, the last time we did it was before you even started the vlog. Yeah, I wanna say like, I've a very vivid recollection of you with your podcasting suitcase.
Right. In my office. And I don't know if it was the first or the second time, but I just remember the conversation being so good and so engaging and much like today, I had some bullshit. We were like 45 minutes in and you're like, I gotta go. No, we were 45 minutes in and you stopped it. And I was like, why are you stopping? You're like, Casey, you said you only have 45 minutes. And I was like, shit. And I had to go to some other parent-teacher conference or some nonsense then to, but so it goes.
Yeah, man. Check this out. Look what I got here. Oh, I know that pen very well. I lose pens like crazy and for some reason, I cannot lose this pen. Wherever I go, it ends up turning up and I still have it. So this pen is one of those four-color pens that has the red, yellow, no, I'm sorry. The red, green, blue, black ink options in the back. And do you know what makes that pen special? No.
Okay, this might be fiction, but I've been telling people this for the better part of the last 15 years. So if it is fiction, I'm just gonna continue preaching it as the word of God. But to the best of my knowledge, that's the last Bic, it's the French company, that's the last pen that Bic still makes in France. I had no idea.
That is not made in China. If you look on the side of that, it's made in France and also, the ones you buy in the store that are half blue and half white, like the plastic case, they have a little ball on the end.
And that one has a little loop on the end that I put a piece of string through. Other end there, Rich, other end, flip it over, bam. Yeah, this little lanyard. Yeah, well, that lanyard had to be tied off. So it was always my intern or my assistant's job every year around Christmas time when I'd ship all my friends and loved one a new pen to tie off those lanyards. And the most important part about those lanyards is that the ends be burned, otherwise, they'll fray. But I entrusted this individual to tie it correctly, which is an eight knot. That's an eight, right? Yeah, and it's burned at the end. And then burn it at the end and then package it up with my letter and ship it off. And then like one year, I was at some friend's house and they're like, I still have your pen and it was frayed.
And I was fuckin' devastated.
(Rich laughs) I felt like such a fuckin' charlatan in that moment. Like this person thinks this pen's cool and I'm looking at it and it's such a half-ass job. You delegated that task. I fired the employee immediately. Did you?
Well, there's no way that happens on accident. That means, I thought I can get away with this because no one's double checking my work. Lesson learned, Rich. (Rich laughs) Hence, this maniacal attention to detail and quality. That is the hallmark of the Casey Neistat experience. (Rich laughs) Well, it's funny that we're doing this because we're doing this now because you're about to Jettison, Los Angeles and head back to New York.
I think during the whole time that you've lived here, we've seen each other, I don't know, three times maybe. So I look forward to you returning to New York where I get to see you and spend more time with you. (Rich laughs) It's funny because also, like I run into you here on accident one or two times.
And in New York City, I've literally ran into you a couple times in accident, we were both running. I don't need to text you or call you. I'm just gonna go run along the path along the Hudson and I'll see him, if I go between 8:00 and 10:00 AM or whatever, it's good chance. Yeah.
And pretty much, with unfailing regularity, that would occur.
Look, you've got like whatever, 10, 12 hours of solid daylight, you know I'm gonna be at a two-hour run. That means you've got like anywhere from a 15 to 25% chance of running into me.
Right. I'll take those odds. Right, so we'll revisit that soon. Right. So you're leaving in like 10 days? Yeah. No, I'm leaving in like 36 hours. Oh, wow. Yeah, the family's leaving after me. So I'm going earlier because I'm driving my truck, which is something that I enjoy immensely. And it's an excuse to like just transport stuff. You know, like fill my truck up with the stuff we couldn't get into the moving trucks. And then the wife and kids are coming, yeah, a few days after. What are you looking forward to the most about getting back- Well it's, I mean, most is, the short answer is work. I really never found my footing when it came to my work in Los Angeles. And I think what I underestimated was how much I drive, how much I depend on New York City for just like, I fucking hate these words, but both, like a creative inspiration and then a motivation.
There's something contagious about that. There's this great Rich Roll quote that I use all the time. That's the truth. I never use this quote to you, Rich, but you did tell this to me. You said, when you step outside in New York City, a story just smacks you in the face. You said that to me when I was about to move here and I did not understand that. And I'm like, what do you mean? You step out anywhere and a story hits you in the face. But I didn't realize how specific that was to New York City for me.
A hundred percent. So there's like a profundity, if that's a word. There's something profound about that in New York. And that's the one thing that I yearn for. Yeah, I remember telling you that. And it's just true. It's something that's endemic and unique to New York City. The energy and the vitality of it. There's stories everywhere and life kind of happens to you when you live in New York. And here, it's very different. You have to seek things out. You have to be much more intentional about what you're doing and it's a different vibe. And I had that sense that you were gonna be challenged moving here in terms of, you know, how you think about and execute on storytelling.
Yeah, look, I think there's something extraordinary to be learned from that. One, it's, and I bring this up to my wife often, like what a wild luxury it is for us to be a married couple in our forties with two little kids and a one grown kid. And just be like, you know what, fuck it. We wanna do it. And packing up and moving 3,000 miles. And then a couple years later being like, you know, this was a good experiment, I'm really glad we did this. And the takeaway is, this isn't where we belong. This isn't where we're gonna find the most happiness for us for our family, so let's do it again and move back. Right, but it served its purpose. I mean, in terms of intentionality, I mean your intention was to come here and hit the brakes anyway, right? And then COVID happened, which exacerbated that, of course.
But I remember you saying like, I'm here to just basically indulge myself, right? Like I'm gonna do the fitness stuff and I'm gonna have fun and I'm just taking my foot off the gas of all work stuff altogether. And you had the luxury to be able to do that, but you really leaned into that. Yeah, absolutely. No question about it. I even made a movie to that effect before I left. And the basic premise of that short video was that, for me, it was impossible to sort of hit that switch to turn off. And it was predicated on this idea of, you know, when I had my son, I was very young and broke, so I didn't have an opportunity to just chill out and make it about family life, I had to work. And if I found myself in that position again, that I would chill out and make it about family and I needed to break away from New York City in order to do that.
So the revisionist history of it is like, absolutely, mission accomplished and I have no doubt that I'll be able to bring some of my chill back to New York. That was my question. 'Cause you've lived on these polarities, but can you blend those and still maintain a modicum of work-life balance? Or are you afraid when you return to New York, you're gonna hit the ground running and fall back into that maniacal pattern? Call me naive and when we do our fifth podcast together, you can literally call me naive, if I'm wrong, but I think I can. And the reason why is, I only ever knew one version of, not just life in New York City, but life.
Like I moved to New York City when I was 19, 20 years old, totally broke and it was a dead sprint. It was a dead sprint and I did find success. And I found sort of financial freedom. I have financial security, a family, all those things I was looking for. But it was after 19 years of fighting. And so then, after 19 years of fighting, I'm still in the city, but I've achieved all these things that I had hoped to achieve, I couldn't just stop. I didn't know what to do. So by forcing myself out of the city coming to Los Angeles, I was able to sort of catch my breath, look around and be like, okay, I get it now. And I think that it's a very different version of me going back to New York and I'll be able to appreciate the city for different reasons and I'll be able to appreciate family life for different reasons. My life is certainly much more set up now to be about being a dad and taking care of my kids and being a husband than it was three years ago when I left New York.
So I do think I'll be able to find that. Your marriage survived the intensity of the vlog period and it also survived the intensity of just basically cohabitating 24/7, right? Like being cooped up.
Yeah. That's a pretty good stress test for- Survive is such a generous word as far as the binary of like, we are not divorced. That is fact.
Right. But there is such a, a marriage is such a rubber band and sometimes, it's really stretched to the edge and sometimes, you've got a lot of slack. And I think, yeah, during the vlog period, working seven days a week, it was at its absolute max you could probably stretch that rubber band and certainly there've been struggles in the last couple years.
Yeah. Like, keeping them home from school is a major- Is there a sense of what the projects are when you return that you're gonna start executing on? Majorly.
Yeah. To give this answer context, but it's like, I started my career somewhat in the traditional media space.
I was making movies that went to film festivals. I was producing feature films that went to film festivals and played in theaters. I had a TV show in HBO. And then with all of that sort of traction in my career, I ultimately got frustrated 'cause I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do. So I ran to YouTube in like 2010, 2012. And I built this, you know, that's when I really found success. And then I took that success and I moved here to LA and I was like, well, let me make another feature film. And I made it another, a feature length documentary the last, it took me three years to make. And if there's one takeaway from this movie that premiered a film festival very well received, it's that I fucking hate it. I hate it. I hate everything about- You hate the traditional mechanisms of- I hate it. I hate the act of creation. I hate the act of distribution. That's not an act. But I hate the means of distribution. I hate all of it. You hate the creation? I hate the creation of feature films.
I don't like that. I don't like that process. I don't like the collaborative process. I don't like working with others. I worked with the most brilliant editors in the world on my doc, they are lovely, who's one of my favorite people. And this is an excuse, I hate all of it. And when I say I hate all of it, I'm looking at a binary and that is like, what the process of creating in that world is, which is I had a really great team and all this. Or just sitting alone in my studio by myself with a laptop and a camera, that I fucking love. I love it. So what's beneath that? What's behind that? Like why is it that you're so frustrated by the collaborative aspect of film making or kind of the shenanigans that come along for the ride with making a movie in the traditional way? It could be the lack of agency.
It could be because I'm able to look at a project that's done collaboratively and be like, wow, if I see weaknesses, I'm able to say they're somebody else's fault. You know, dismiss aspects of my work that I don't think are a hundred percent as somebody else's responsibility. I don't know the answer. And I can tell you, like, I know a number of fine artists that both were completely alone. They sit in their studios by themselves, know music and they paint. And then I know a bunch of fine artists that have, like, I have one artist friend who's a sculptor in New York City. I think he has like 18 or 20 people working for him. And that is where he thrives. And when it comes to filmmaking, I'm that guy who wants to sit alone. I wanna like, my favorite is even like I have, you know, I have a decent sized studio in New York City that requires a second set of hands to help me operate the place and get the lights on and make things work and things like that.
When I'm in my studio, that individual, my studio manager, can't physically be in the studio. Typically, I have a separate space for them to sit all day because that's how much I cherish being alone. I relate to that deeply, but I've had to kind of grow and evolve in order to be able to continue doing this thing that I love. Because, as you know, it was me in a traveling suitcase.
I think, Tyler, my stepson, came with me one time to your studio. Another time, Mathis came, who just graduated high school, by the way, which is crazy. Unbelievable. But in order, and being a total control freak over like every detail of the production and the editing and everything, I would do all of it myself, but it just became untenable. Like I wanted to be able to continue to do this and I had to figure out how to get comfortable letting go of certain things and empowering other people. Like you're here in the studio and you see there's other people here that help me now.
And that's allowed me, it's challenging at times 'cause sometimes it's like, I would do it this way, but I want them to feel like they're contributing meaningfully in a creative way. And I have made peace with that and it allows me to still maintain this love affair with the most important part of it, which is having the conversation so I can continue to do it, 'cause it's 10 years that I've been doing this. So I understand that tension and that conundrum. And I think when you're that, like when you're a personality type like yourself, that's where you get into the problems with burnout because you can't, it's difficult to scale what you're doing if everything, every decision, you're the bottleneck on every iota of the creative process. But that's what being an artist is. If I limit it though to, I hear you. But I think if you limit it to the creative process, meaning that absolute agency that working singularly, that lone wolf thing.
If you limit it only to the creative process, I think it's a very different equation. So that even that artist who sits alone with no music, painting by herself 'cause she doesn't like to work, well, she still has an art dealer. She still has somebody who makes sure that her cellphone bill is paid every month. She still has people who support and enable her career. I still work with brilliant people at WME that I've been with forever that help negotiate brand deals and the sorts of things that keep the lights on. I still wanna have a studio manager to help me keep that studio functional. But when it comes to the creative process, the thing that I love the most, I have no interest in sharing it. I want it to just be me. Yeah, it hearkens to that thing I've heard you say many times, like managers wanna have meetings and creators just want to be left alone to create, right? And on some level, to create something that scales beyond you, you kind of need both.
But if you're tipping heavily towards the creators just wanna create, there's no room or tolerance for meetings and phone calls and emails and all that kind of stuff that comes along for the ride when you achieve some level of success. Yeah, I also think that there's, uniquely, I'm staring at an opportunity that I don't know that I've propitiated in the past, but so much of my reach or whatever the quantifiers are for success on YouTube, so much of that was done at an insane pace when I was doing 365 videos a year for years on end. 800 videos strong day after day after day that I only really understood that cadence. And I haven't really made any videos in the last couple years, I've made a few here and there, but in going back, when I go back rather, I'm definitely not interested or capable or able ever to go back to that cadence of seven days a week.
I'm not interested in having the videos be so sort of self-centered and really just about me, my creative interests, my interests in the sort of themes that I hope to share have expanded a lot. So I think that I can be as, I think that I can find a level of success by just making it about quality and just trying to tell the stories that I wanna tell as best as I can possibly tell them.
And if some days that's a little bullshit story about nothing, great.
Right. In some days, it's about bigger and more existential topics that I lay in bed thinking about every day. That's also fantastic. And is that still in the context of identifying yourself as a YouTuber like this identity? Or have you kind of grown beyond that? Well, what's funny is I think that that identity has evolved so much in the last couple years. Like YouTuber's not really is much of a thing anymore.
Like I think YouTube has really abandoned defining that. YouTube as a company has given up on trying to define that, I think necessarily so. I think that this awful title of influencer has sort of swept up everything. And I think that now to be successful in social media, it's predicated on sort of dominating all the platforms. I don't see myself as falling into that category. In fact, I think, and this sounds so self righteous and obnoxious, but I'll say it gently like, I still see myself as a filmmaker who just really likes to use YouTube as a means of distribution. You know, my wife and I were invited to the Cannes Film Festival three weeks ago. And I've been there a couple times before with movies that I produced. Like my friends, Josh and Benny Safdie, who are big movie directors now. When we were all kids in our early twenties, we made these feature films together, their movies, but I helped them figure out how to get 'em made, which made me the producer and we premiered movies there. But I was there as sort of this broke adolescent, adolescent's not fair, young adult.
And it was quite the experience. And I went back this time as a guest. My wife and I were invited guests of one of the title sponsors. So we were there as like VIPs, we got limo rides to the red carpet. And that kind of we got hair and makeup and shit like that. And we saw a big movie premier in the gigantic thing, like gigantic theater. And when it was over, we were doing the standing ovation, which is required. You always hear about the standing ovations from Cannes. It's not a fucking option. You can't be like, nah, I didn't like it. I'm gonna sit this one out. No, no, no, you fucking stand and you applaud till your hands go numb, that's what you do. Welcome to France.
Was it the Elvis movie? Which movie is it?
We saw a bunch- Yeah, the Elvis movie got like a 12-minute standing ovation.
How about 18 minute, fuck it, call it a two-hour standing ovation. Whatever works for marketing. But as we were participating in that required standing ovation, I turned to Candace and I was like, this is why a lot of people do it. And she's like, what do you mean? And I was like, this is what's important to some people in the creative space. When they think of what success is in this creative world, in the world of Hollywood, it's this, it's like wearing a tuxedo and a gown surrounded by your peers, being applauded, sharing a movie in a theater like this, walking down a red carpet like this, literally physically being celebrated.
And I say that in a condescending way and I don't mean for that to be condescending. I respect that pursuit, I think. But I also know that pursuit is not mine. I fucking hate that. Like I premiered my movie at South by Southwest. Wonderful. Such a supportive crowd. Such a, I fucking hated it. I do not, what I like to do is click upload, close my laptop. Then go running.
Go home. Go for a run. If I check the numbers the next day and they're good, great. If I forget to check the numbers, that's also fine. I don't know that I've ever watched my movies unless I catch my older daughter watching them after I've clicked upload. I like to make and move on. And that just feels good to me.
Like it's purely about the act of creation and being at Cannes, being at that prestigious film fest was such a moment of validation. I was like, this is so, it made it so vivid what I wanna do in a world where like, you know, I think as someone who puts videos on the internet, it does, you feel smaller there. You feel like you don't matter as much there. I always have to be like, oh, I also used to make feature films that I show on HBO. It's like, no, fuck that. That's what my movies on YouTube. You just click play. But that's a healthier sensibility. It is the internal validation of leveraging your creativity to make something and share it with the world. And that in and of itself is its own reward. Anything beyond that is just fluff. Right? It's not the thing, the externalities are not the motivator, right? And if you're chasing validation externally, it's not a great path.
Yeah. I mean, or it is, I don't know. But I just know that, certainly when I was younger, like I'm not gonna sit here. When I was a kid and had no validation was just, I saw myself as sort of a loser. That external validation was everything. But I'm old, I've got kids now. They're great. I don't need praise. Like I wish my wife would smile at me more. But besides that, like I don't need praise. That's good 'cause you're not gonna get it from your kids or your wife. So. My little one tells me I do a good job sometimes when she catches me coming home from my runs. But, good job, daddy. But no, that external-
That'll change. That external validation. It's not interesting to me. So much so that like, I wanna be really careful that that's not why I do it. Like I genuinely, there's something about, you know, Candace, my wife, used to say to me, if I wanna know how you're feeling, I have to watch your fuckin' videos because I'm so inept at sharing emotions in the real world.
But she found that I was good at that in the video. Like there's something I take from making videos that is so satisfying whether I just, last video I made literally was a video. My friend invited me to go surfing with him and his family. And I made him a special video for his nine-year old kid. Yeah. And I sent him a private link and to date, it's been seen by four different ISP addresses. So I think his kids watched it 20 times, but from one address, only four different people have seen this. I'm so psyched about that. I'm so proud of that video. I take such immense like, self satisfied, like I did it. There's a sense of victory in making that video. It took me a couple days to edit it and four people watched it. Yeah, it's sweet though. Sure. But that is as satisfying for me.
So in going back to New York City to bring this full circle, it's like I don't know that I was ever so self-aware when it came to my career. And I'm excited to really lean into that. (upbeat music) Prophets walk among us, as a writer and podcaster for nearly 10 years, I've become more convinced than ever that our world is populated by scores of beautiful and brilliant people who have amazing stories to share.
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Order your copy today only at richroll.com. What is the kind of broader perspective that you've gleaned now that you've put distance between the crazy period when you were vlogging every day? Like when you reflect back on that period of time, does it have a different meaning for you now than it did when you were in the midst of it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's always impossible to grasp when you're there. One, it feels so permanent. It always feels like you're gonna be, you know, going a thousand miles an hour.
But looking back at it, I recognize how extraordinary it was. I also recognize that you really, you kind of get that once and that's it. You'll never duplicate that. You'll never be new again. Like to be the new thing, you only get to do that once. And it was at a, I mean, the timing also was at a period in the evolution of YouTube where you were kind of the right guy at the right place who was elevating that medium beyond anything I'd ever seen before. And it just captured the fascination of so many millions of people. I mean, it was a crazy thing. And just for people who are listening or watching, who don't really know what we're talking about, like Casey made a vlog, a daily 10-minute video every single day, like 800 days in a row, some crazy amount of time, right? Yeah.
Never missed a day.
And each one of these videos was its own kind of work of art. Like this beautifully rendered story with this react structure with incredible cinematography and editing. And you speaking to camera, always imparting some kind of pearl of wisdom or sharing some experience that you had that kind of had meaning, that transcended your own specific personal life that just struck a chord with so many people. And as somebody who kind of tried to dabble in that, I can't imagine how you were able to do that every single day.
I mean, it had to commandeer every facet of your life from the moment you woke up in the morning until you went to bed if you went to bed at all. Yeah, it was every neuron was firing in service of that show. And it was, yeah, and I think like, a pivotal part, no one was helping me. I had no writers, no editors, no cameramen. Like no one helped me on any episode. And when I tried, I brought in my most talented friend who's a much better filmmaker than I am, much better editor than I am and he's brilliant. And his sensibility is just like mine.
And I was like, this is gonna make things so, it made it twice as hard. Are you talking about Dan Mace? Yeah, when I brought in Dan Mace. Phenomenal creator, phenomenal filmmaker, like wildly celebrated, hugely successful filmmaker. And he came in and gave it everything he had and it made things go exactly half the speed. It was twice as much work to have somebody help me. But yeah, it was all consuming. I think that maybe the easiest way to encapsulate it was your eyes are really wide and you're always looking around. So it's like, I'm here with you right now in real life, Rich. But if I was making my video for the day, I'd be like, what is this? Like why am I here? What about this moment is meaningful to me? And how do I share that inside of 20 seconds? How can I make sense of this moment to my audience in my video that goes beyond just saying, I went and recorded a podcast with my friend, Rich. And I would have to answer that question. I would have to come up with something that was compelling that did that.
And once I did that, then this could be a segment. Right, but if you couldn't, then you wouldn't participate. Like every experience that you were having or could potentially have was calibrated only in the context of how it would contribute to that day's video.
Exactly. And that meant friendship.
That's like crazy making to live your life that way. Completely. Friendships, relationships, lunches. Like no meetings, I'm not taking a meeting unless it was, I could make it into a scene in the movies, which was really hard to do. Meetings are not interesting. So most meetings, I would just say no. Or Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted to meet once and my agent called me, he was like, Katzenberg wants to meet with you. And I was like, whoa. I was like, that guy's a huge deal. I was like, you think I can film it? And he is like, no, you can't film it. And I was like, (tongue clicks) tell him I'm busy, I can't do it. And he's like, Casey, you don't.
And I was like, okay, okay, okay, okay. And I remember it like fucked up my day. I was like an hour and 20 minutes at lunch, I'm like drumming my fingers 'cause I'm thinking to myself, this is really gonna step back today's production. But it was always, it was a pursuit of interestingness that was just unrelenting. And I don't think I could do that anywhere outside of New York City. I think having a highly controlled environment made that very easy to do. Having a revolving cast of characters that I knew I could call on made that doable. And it was myriad other factors. But I think we started this off by, you were asking me, what is it like when I think about that now versus- Right, like your perspective on, you know, what it means to you and kind of how it set you up for the career that you wanna have or maybe don't wanna have. I think that the biggest difference was everything was fair game then. And when I say that, I mean like, the depths of my psyche were fair game. Like nothing was off limits.
I say that, obviously, my family was off limits. Like when my children turned, when my oldest daughter turned one, I stopped putting my kids in altogether 'cause she stopped looking like a baby and started to look a little bit distinguishable. So I cut my kids out, which made it challenging. But I mean like, as far as me, there was nothing I would omit. There was no version of myself that I wouldn't externalize and that fucks you up. Like, I did that as I was a 37, 38-year old, fairly well-adjusted, adult man. And I had completely exhausted who I am. It was like, the orange, that was my brain. I squeezed every ounce of juice out of it. And that was really destructive in the long. You start to really get fucked up. And I highlight that I was a well-adjusted man when I did it because you hear so much about creator burnout and YouTubers struggling with mental health and all those issues because I couldn't imagine being an 18, 19-year old girl who found a similar level of success and she felt that obligation.
Right. I have friends of mine who are that age, 24-year old dude who just like put everything he had into his videos and then a year later, he's just toast.
So that was really challenging and it made me really vulnerable in a way that I never wanna do that again. Yeah. I just can't imagine the toil and the toll that that would've taken. But what is interesting to me in reflecting back on it is, at that moment in time, certainly, vlogging wasn't new. There were plenty of people vlogging, but those vlogs were generally like, we go get coffee.
Now, we're walking and we're gonna go have lunch. They were kind of plotting and very kind of episodic in a not great way. And I think what a lot of people talk about when they talk about your vlogs is the music and the cinematography and the editing and the kind of kinetic energy of these things. But really, what I think people miss or don't fully appreciate is the storytelling. Like every story did have this react structure, a very traditional structure. And even if that story was very small, like I need to retrieve my drone or something like that, you would make it interesting through specificity and this economy that you applied to storytelling, to just showing what is meaningful to propel the story forward.
And I think that's what people connected with, even if they weren't aware of it. Like they think it's because you have these fancy drone shots and stuff like that. But really, the engine behind the whole thing was the storytelling. Yeah, and I think also, thank you for saying that. I think that what you just articulated is a much harder thing to define. It's really easy to be like, oh, I love the way you shoot it and your music's so cool. The irony is like you just type Casey music into YouTube, you can just download all the same shit that I use. That's really easy to define. It's really hard to define what you just said, but I think you, that was certainly my pursuit. Like I remember for example like, I had this awesome jacket that I bought that got all fucked up. So I went to a friend of mine and I was like, can I remake this jacket? And he was like, yeah, I'll help you.
And he brought me to Midtown with these leather smiths that exist in New York City. And there's a really easy superficial story there, which is like, oh, I wanted to make a new jacket so my friend brought me to this place and now we're making a new jacket. And like you just scratch at the surface and I stopped there and I'm looking around like, what's interesting about this? And it's like, well, I didn't know this even existed.
And it's like, well, I've lived in New York City for 15 years at this point and I didn't know this existed. I bet you, no one knows this existed. So let's start with that. Let's predicate this story on that. The fact that no one knows that in New York City, behind these closed doors on the fourth floor, this fucked up office building on 38th Street, that there's this like 80-year old guy who manages 20 seamstress and all they do is make handcrafted leather goods in New York City. And let me tell that story. And to me, that was fascinating. And my bet always was that, if it was genuinely interesting to me, there's probably an audience that would also be interested in it in the same way. Yeah, but how often would you have to manufacture some story or did you, like in the practical kind of logistics of all of this, did you map it out like, okay, Thursday I know I'm gonna go see this person.
Saturday, this is gonna do it, you know, I'm gonna do this. Or you're just reacting to the world as it kinda unfolds in front of you? The second I would click upload and that video is live, then and only then could I start to think about the next video. And we're going seven days a week, there's not a lot of fact. So there must have been some days where you're like, shit, I don't have anything. Well, that's when I stopped. It's like people always say how painful it is reading the comments. It's not comments that are painful. Even ones that make fun of you or tell you your videos suck. None of those hurt. The only comments that hurt are the ones that tell the truth.
And I remember towards the end, videos being like, it feels like Casey's just making videos about anything now. And it was like, it was so the truth because I had really exhausted and I don't know if I was exhausted or if I had exhausted, but I was struggling to find those sorts of genuine moments of interestingness. And I was starting to, fake 'em is not fair, but just make things about, make videos about things that were much more superficial, but then apply my formula to it. So it looked the same, it felt the same, but they didn't feel the same. And I knew I was doing that. I think maybe I lied to myself for a little bit, but I knew I was doing that.
Yeah. And that's when I knew it was time to take a break. Right, well, it was intrinsically unsustainable affair to begin with.
Of course. You know?
Of course. Which kind of beggars the larger question about like the creator economy and the kind of incentives that are built into that, that drive people to kind of do things maybe they shouldn't, make bad decisions or burn out and have all of these mental health problems.
And we're seeing that, you've made a documentary on this subject, so, where do you see, like what is the state of the union when it comes to the fuckin' I hate this, the creator economy or the influence, you know, like, as sort of the grandfather of, or somebody who holds some responsibility for birthing this new generation of creators. Like, how do you see that? 'Cause you usually, you have pretty keen observational skills about what's going on, what's going wrong, and how to make it better. Sure, well, I don't know about the latter about how to make it better, but I can tell you from afar, not even from afar, I think I pay pretty close attention. It feels like, and this is a bleak, this is a bleak response, but it feels like influence is much, much more valued than creativity, and that sucks.
And I hope that people take issue with me saying that. I hope that's just me being cynical. But, you know, TikTok, I think is the most amazing, horrifying, both delivery mechanism and creation mechanism, I've ever seen. Brilliant, because I've never ever experienced an interface that is just so easy to find new things. There's no sort of cognitive burden. There's no like spending 20 minutes figuring out what Netflix you wanna watch or scrolling through YouTube to see which thumbnail's the most attractive. No decisions to be made. There's no decisions to be made, if you're not interested, you just flip it and you're onto the next. And that's fucking incredible/terrifying.
And then from a creation perspective, it's fascinating that they've removed all those barriers. They give you special effects that you can do in camera. They give you the camera, which is your phone. They give you amazing soundtracks, which is that I watched this video and I liked it, so I'm just gonna use that audio. And it's like, they've overcome all of those creative barriers. But at the end of the day, I don't know that that has bolstered creativity. I think what it has done is it has made the top of the funnel so much wider than it's ever been. Like if the top of that funnel was super narrow when you and I were really young, when we were in the nineties, when to be a filmmaker, when being an indie filmmaker and getting into a film fest, fucking impossible to do. And then it got a little bit wider and a little bit wider and then YouTube and anybody could now share with the world.
But you still to figure out how to create and make and all that shit. Tiktok's gotten rid of everything. And now, the top of the funnel's wider than it's ever been. But it still feels like the bottom of the funnel, like really amazing stuff that you watch and it means something to you is as small as it's ever been. Everything is ephemera. Yeah.
And on TikTok, it's not even about following people that intrigue you, it's just about reacting to whatever the algorithm decides you might wanna look at.
Sure, so if in the course of a year, I'm making numbers up, but if in the course of the year, you see a hundred things, paintings or hear songs or watch movies or YouTube videos or see a picture or watch a TikTok that affect you, that you don't stop thinking about, we're now seeing a million. But that number of how many affect you, that hasn't move for me. I don't see more brilliant stuff. I just see more stuff. And what concerns me is that that's what's sort of being celebrated is like, now, it's purely about the metrics and not about how you achieve those metrics, and that sucks. I don't know where that goes. I don't know where that goes from here. And I don't know what that means.
Like I had a very, I think eloquent sort of monologue about how the egalitarianization of filmmaking is gonna main, it finally is an art form that everybody has access to. And we're not gonna get to see new perspectives and ideas shared in ways we'd never seen before. Because you don't have to go to NYU film school to make something. And I think that probably is still true, but we're watching it manifest and I'm not seeing new brilliant shit that's like, wow, I didn't see that coming. And that kind of sucks. It does make me wanna go back and purely focus on the creative and see that if I can use my platform which is still big, to find success, that will be very reassuring. But if I make stuff that I still feel like is good and I'm really proud of and nobody watches it, I don't know what that would be, I'd still be psyched. Maybe you still have the satisfaction of- I'll still be psyched, as long as I think I'll still be psyched about it, but it would be telling of where we are right now.
You know, is somebody more likely to try to follow in your footsteps or are they gonna pivot to TikTok where it's just easier to audience capture and create these short little things and jump on trends. To be really cynical. It's like- Or are you gonna make, or are you gonna be the guy or are you gonna be like the guys that made everything everywhere all at once? You know, there is like some incredible filmmaking going on. Dude, have you seen Top Gun? Yeah, it's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable. I haven't stopped, like I'm trying to time it so I can sneak into theaters just to see that third act over and over and over. There's still good shit being made and I'm really excited about that. But there's just not more good shit being made. It's more on the margins and everybody's attention is focused on, you think so? I think so, yeah.
I think so. I mean, look, we've had those amazing years where there's been 20 brilliant movies made, but I think for the most part, there's always been so much garbage and noise. I think the difference now, and I can use journalism as an example of this, and I say this very gently, as to not broach into the like fake news discussion, but I think now we're able to see all news outlets are able to quantify click throughs and how much time people are spending in every given article. And like, if you're running a business, if you own a newspaper, you need those clicks to pay the bills.
Like it's fact, it's fact. So there's going to be this attraction to publishing more of what gets clicks and that kind of sucks.
Yeah. That kind of sucks.
It's not good for a cohesive healthy society. It's not and so like apply that to creativity as well. It's like, it's not the super well-made, brilliant, with the exception of Top Down, which is crushing it in the box office, like it's not always. You know, like, name a year when the highest grossing box office hit was also won best picture. Never happens. Never happens. And now we're sort of seeing that- Maybe "Gone with the Wind." Perhaps, that's really pushing it, pushing it way back.
Yeah.
But now, we're able to see that in such a rapid fire, with such vivid quantification, with such vivid metrics behind it. If you make some shitty prank video that has boobs in the thumbnail and some racy title and it gets clicks, that's where the rewards are and that's what's going to be pursued. That's a little bit antiquated because I don't think people are making content like that anymore, I think it's more sophisticated now. But I think, to be super reductive, it's easier to follow trends, to find success, as long as your metric of success is clicks and views and plays and all of those things which do have financial attachments to all of them than it is to just trying to pursue what is creatively, socially meaningful. Right, and as somebody who's squarely in the Gen X category, I grew up in a time when, you know, if you were to kind of leverage commerce, you were considered a sell out.
And like just you would get trampled, right? And now, that's completely flipped on its head where people are celebrated for that very thing that my generation would malign. Sure, and now, that's the pursuit rather than like, that's the goal. How can I get to that point where I can take advantage of all these fucked up incentives? Yeah, forget about the means, the focus isn't on the means, the focus isn't on making the best music so you can become rich and famous.
The focus is just on how do I become rich and famous? And that's a, we do sound like too old men yelling at the files right now saying that, but I think that social media has shown us that in a more vivid way than any other sort of artistic endeavor, creative endeavor. The path to success, as it's defined there, money and fame has never been more vivid. You've taken efforts to create boundaries between yourself and the internet. Like, didn't you get like a flip phone or something like that? Like I've noticed you've dropped off in terms of posting on Twitter and stuff like that.
I have a new rule with Twitter which is, every time I think of something clever, interesting, funny, insightful to tweet, instead of tweeting it, I just don't. Right. (laughs)
That's my rule. Anytime I go to tweet, I have a new rule, just don't. And happier as a result. Yeah, I mean, look, I have this very idealistic vision, which is like, is there a world where I can just make great work, but divorce myself from the, fame is not the right word, but the fame part, you know, like Quentin Tarantino maybe, one of the best living filmmakers right now. What does he take, like eight years to make a movie? So for like seven years, you don't hear his name. He's not posting on Twitter, he's not like sharing his, he's not making IG stories to show you where he got lunch today.
He's just fucking living his life, man, with no desire to share that. And his movies are great. You know, Spike Jonze, who is one of my favorite creative brains in the universe, he's not out there trying to get clicks or likes and share cute, funny, little things on Twitter so we can, for some external validation or remind the world that he exists, he's just living his life.
And then making these brilliant creative things, whether they're short movies or Jackass 4 or like amazing Apple commercials or feature films or whatever it is that Spike Jonze is up to. And I think that there's a lot of brilliant actors that are similar. You know, I've sat behind Tom Hanks, who's like the greatest ever at the Cannes Film Festival. So cool seeing him in real life. That motherfucker doesn't have Twitter, does he? There's no way. No, he does.
Does he tweet? Yeah, and he signs his tweets, Hanx with an X. Okay. Yeah. I don't know how often he tweets- But he mostly posts pictures of his typewriter.
Right. But he's not out there. He's not fighting to share his life. Brad Pitt doesn't work every day. So people will give him as many hearts as possible on Instagram. And I think that, at least what I take from that, and call me naive and you're probably right, but, I think that it's a demonstration of where these brilliant creatives, where their focus is, and their focus is on what they do great and their craft.
And I think that in social media, there's sort of this weird perversion where it's less about your craft and it's more about marketing yourself, branding yourself. So it's a stupid fuckin' buzzword, but like, that's what it's about. And I had to do that. I don't think I could have succeeded. And maybe I'm making excuses, but I don't think I could have had the success I had if I hadn't done that. But I'm like, I'm older now and I'm much more confident now and is there a world where I can both be successful in this creative space, which is social media, without being that, because that's never been exciting to me. And it's scarier to me now than it's ever been. Well, certainly, you can't create anything timeless unless you have the facility or the skill to meet out distractions.
And you have to be much more deliberate and intentional about making sure that you have the time to invest in your creativity without having to like just be scrolling all the time. It used to be like we were bored. Now boredom is optional and most people opt for mindless scrolling. And it's so addictive that you have to like, you know, you had to go and get a different phone in order to protect yourself, right? Like it's crazy that that's the society that we live in.
Our weak, feeble monkey brains just cannot compete with those algorithms, it is so, and I try to read a book, I can't read a book, read a book or look at TikTok, it's like, there's no competition there. It's like having a bowl of kale or like having a dozen donuts. Like if there's no, your brain wants one thing.
And that's a very hard thing to compete with. And it's funny 'cause you're bringing this up sort of as a, from a consumption perspective. And before, I was sharing purely as a sharing perspective, but the consumption stuff is really scary to me. Like I've quit, I no longer use my flip phone because it is so extraordinarily burdensome. Like there's something satisfying about it, which is like, I saw that a major super movie star whose kids go to school at the same preschool my kid went to school last year, he carried it and he is like one of the most famous people alive.
And it's like you have to be so confident in your own success that you're willing to just say fuck you to everyone to carry a flip phone. 'Cause I couldn't respond to texts. Right.
Most texts I never got, like send me an iMessage while I'm on my flip phone, it's just, go.
(Rich laughs) Even like responding to my wife, I couldn't text back. You don't text back. You have to like wait till you can call 'em then call 'em back. And I hope to get to a place in my life, a place of both confidence and success, I'm not there yet, where I can just literally kinda say fuck off for the whole world except for the four people that have my cell phone and embrace that. But I'm like, I'm not there yet. Like I blew my dad off one too many times where he was like, didn't you get the picture I sent you, buddy? Or like, my kid called me and like I didn't- It's just incompatible to live like the way the society works.
But you could be like, I'm thinking of Paul Sorvino in "Goodfellas," where he wouldn't even get on the phone. Other people would knock on his door and tell him that somebody called and tell him what they said. There's this amazing book written in like 1980 by Paul Fussell called "Class." And it's about social classes, socioeconomic classes. And the highest class is called the X class, which is a class like above and beyond. I might be butchering this. And what they have in common with the lowest class, which are the destitute, is that the richest people in the world never handle money and don't have to deal with phones or anything like that.
And then the destitute have no money to handle and they don't deal with phones or other people or anything like that. So like there is this, the polar ends of the spectrum. You get to that place where you no longer have to be burdened with this stuff. But I'm somewhere right in the middle, and yeah, and it sucked. And it's like, why don't you just delete TikTok? I don't have that level of restraint. I don't have that in me. It's hard, I have the luxury of being older and so TikTok is less alluring to me 'cause I'm sort of aged out of that a little bit. Have you never spent a day on it and had its algorithm figure you out? Don't.
Don't. It'll be like, oh, we got ourselves a slightly older guy here, we got a Gen X-er, okay, let's see what he's into. Cool, let me show you exactly what to show you. Mine's like all news clips and like weird shit and smart stuff. It's amazing and terrifying. As somebody with a tenuous relationship with kind of the fame that you have, it'll be interesting to see what happens when you return to New York where you're so highly recognizable. I mean you're so of appease with New York City, this city, that's your muse. Like everybody will celebrate the fact that you've returned there. And I would imagine in Los Angeles, you can kind of navigate things without too much hassle, but that's gonna kind of go out the window when you go back to New York. Yeah, I mean, yes. But it's weird. It's like, I don't know. I was talking to my older brother, Van, and I was frustrated 'cause we were somewhere and there was too many people near me or something and I was like, I fucking just can't handle being around people.
I was like, I've gotta get back to New York City. And he was like, Casey, it's the biggest city. It's the most densely populated city in the country. And I was like, yeah, but New York City, you're always surrounded by people but you're also completely alone all the time. And-
And you're on the move. Like in New York, someone will honk at you or wave at you. But I've been running with you in New York and in LA and observed what happens when people notice you and want a piece of you. Yeah. It's different, in New York, it's pretty casual. In LA, they wanna just stop you and it turns into like a whole thing that you gotta extricate yourself. Well, it's funny, like my favorite thing in the world is New York City, like if someone recognizes you there, somebody recognizes me there, they just act like they know me.
So Casey, what's up? It's like (tongue clicks) and that's it. That's what I mean. If it's a tourist or someone else, it's like, they have all these requests like, be holding my daughter, feeding her lunch and like, yo, come over here, Tim, come take a picture of my family. And it's like, dude, boundaries. So there's that, but also, yeah, New York's just such a different beast. It's such a like a, there's such an insane level of kind of social Darwinism there where it's like, life in New York City is fucking miserable. It smells like trash, it's so expensive, it's crowded, it's cold, it's concrete. Like life there is not nice and because of that, it makes it hard to have like a chill life there. So if you're willing to deal with all the bullshit that is living in such a harsh place, it means you're one kind of person. And it weeds out, sort of the kinds of normal sane humans that don't wanna deal with that level of difficulty every day.
And that kind of person that you're left with are sort of people that I identify with more so than that kind of chill lifestyle, that laid back lifestyle that, yo, let me get a selfie lifestyle. Right, but you know, you enjoy your surfing. I have this vision that will probably fall apart quickly but I'm going to surf in New York City. Oh, really? Dude, New Jersey has like some of the best waves in the world.
Yeah, yeah. It's just a shorter season. Are you bringing your truck? I'm keeping my truck. You're driving your truck. Right. I'm keeping my truck in New York. I'm keeping all my surfboards and like, so I know some great East Coast surfers. This is part of like bringing a little bit of what I learned here in Southern California about loving and embracing the things in life that you just do for the love of the game.
Bringing those with me back to New York City and I think I can. Right. No surf ranch though. Well I just, you know, you gotta get on a plane to get there from here, so it's just a little bit longer of a flight. Right, right, right. (laughs) Talk a little bit about the documentary. I was hoping to be able to watch it before we talked but I guess it's tied up with sales agents or something like that, I haven't seen it yet. I appreciate you saying that 'cause there's this interview that's online from South by Southwest where it's Christine Vachon and I speaking to a journalist, conversing a fucking out right now. It's a terrible interview. And the reason why is, about one minute into the interview, it was so vivid that the interviewer had not seen the movie but was pretending he had, which is such a dangerous place to be.
And I regret not calling him out. And I remember in that moment, I should call him out right now, but it would've required sort of humiliating him even if I did it in the most gentle way, it would've required humiliating him. And I didn't wanna do that 'cause he was interviewing me on behalf of the festival. But I regret it now, 'cause now it's this video that's like permanently on the internet with this guy who hasn't seen the fucking movie and he's asking me very misguided questions that I'm trying my best to keep him on the rails. But- But there's IndieWire, Rolling Stone. Yeah, there's been a number of reviews from the festival, there's a lot of information out there about it. But the gist of the movie is, it's sort of the story of David Dobrik, who is a wildly successful YouTuber. And we talked about my sort of success in the platform earlier, David eclipsed anything I did as far as viewership, as far as influence, as far as engagement, as far as really like defining a generation.
He did that in a way that was so extraordinary. And I followed him around for two and a half years, capturing his story and capturing what it meant to be a YouTuber, really from an insider's perspective. And in the end, things got really fucked up. This is both in the movie and literally what happened, but David called me, he was like, are you ready for the ending of your movie? And he was referencing a story that was coming out as being published about a girl who was raped by one of the people that was in his videos that he had since cut off and excommunicated himself from.
But it was a very, very shitty story. And the role that his videos played in enabling that to happen, just to be abundantly clear, you know, David's wrongdoing certainly is like bad judgment and a bunch of bad decisions, but the actual physical acts that took place to victimize this young woman were done just by some asshole who, David had a proximity to, but because he was the one with the influence.
Ultimately, like he was held to account for what had transpired by this asshole that he kind of platformed. So it's a nuanced, the controversy itself was nuanced and I think within there, he was, he took the, I think necessarily so, but he took the brunt of it. And it was a downfall in social media, downfall on YouTube that was extraordinary. And to this day, I can't think of a faster, more aggressive fall from grace than the downfall he faced in light of this story coming out. And that was compounded by the other story that came out about his buddy, what's his name, Jeff Wittek, who suffered a brain injury as a result of participating in this stunt where David was operating a crane in a shallow lake and swinging him around and he hit his head.
Yeah, you know, I think the opening line of the movie is me asking, or me reminding David about this question that I had asked him years earlier in filming, which is that, you know, I've identified this pursuit because I myself felt it when I was doing my daily videos, but I've watched it happen over and over and over with a lot of top creators, which is that like sensationalism equals views. And that endless pursuit, you get the views, sensationalism gives you views, some more sensationalism, some more views, and you just keep chasing that tail until something extraordinary happens that's not good. And you think about Logan Paul and what happened to him early in his career, which was just completely torpedoed by his own shitty judgment and it forced him to completely reinvent who he was. And there's a dozen other creators that have reached that sort of global superstardom level that have then sidelined their own careers because they're chasing after something that is dangerous, exploitive, stupid, harmful in something atrocious comes from it and it ends their career.
And that's exactly what happened to him. And I think it's whether, or talking about one of his closest friends being horribly injured, almost killed in pursuit of a stunt or a young woman being victimized in pursuit of a funny scene. It's all part of a much bigger discussion, which is like, where does accountability lie? Certainly, it lies with the creator. And I think David does, I think he does a pretty fair job in the movie of kind of owning that. And you know-
Does he own that? 'cause my sense was that, there is a sort of lack of self-awareness. There's certainly a lack of self-awareness. Really crock the severity of the situation. Absolutely, there is. And I think that those sorts of things take time and without defending him, I think that those sorts of things say, take time. But I do know him and I know his character. He's not an apathetic person. But I think you raise to a place of wanting to defend yourself when things like this happen.
And that can come across as a lack of self awareness or understanding. But you know, there's a back and forth he and I have in the movie where I say like, understanding you didn't know what had transpired that night that this young woman was assaulted. But looking back at it now, you still like, let this guy who had a history of abuse leverage a fame and an influence that you had created to attract these young girls to try to connect with them in a way that was obviously predicated on something sexual.
And I was like, don't you see that that's grossly inappropriate? And he says very honestly, like, I didn't see it then, but of course, I see it now, it's fucking disgusting. And- Yeah, it doesn't have to be intentional, but it's so severely kind of nonchalant about the whole thing.
Absolutely- And you have these powerful incentives that are driving you towards that place of more and more and more, crazier, crazier, crazier. And his whole thing was like, each stunt would be more outrageous than the one prior. I mean, it is qualitatively different in some sense from what you were doing, which is kind of these mini stories every day.
It wasn't about doing extreme things like that would- Well, I mean the only thing like he and I had in common is that we both put videos on YouTube. Yeah.
But, you know, at the end of it all, and I say this without absolving him or any other creative of their wrong, who's had a downfall like he had of their wrongdoing. But you know, he is obviously the story, but I presented him more as a case study. And I think a lot of the more established traditional media reviews of the movie that came out of its premiere in South by Southwest got that very much so. Which is that like- There will be another, this will happen again and again. Sure, but also before he was, you know, before he was canceled, before he had every contract that he had with every brand canceled and before YouTube cut him off and before he faced all these very severe consequences. Before that, he had 7 billion views, 7 billion. That's more views than every Super Bowl since the inception of the Super Bowl until this year combined, 7 billion views.
So 7 billion views saying to him, good job, man. Here's the money, keep going, we wanna see more. Here's the thumbs up, we love you. And the money's crazy.
And the money's crazy. And these are young people.
They're young people. They're zero oversight or regulation. I know you're friends with Steve-O, you know, the obvious analogy is to something like Jackass, they go into those stunts, you know this, they've figured it all out. They have safety protocols and measures in place. Like it's a very different piece. I think Jackass is a very, very good example of how you're supposed to do that, which is Jackass is, every member of Jackass that's on camera is they're under entirely, contractually, consensual terms.
Everyone there knows exactly what they have to gain and what the price is for that. Like it is well defined on Jackass, the lack of power dynamic. There is no power dynamic on Jackass. This is what we're doing, are you part of this or are you not? And if you're part of this, you know what you're signing up for. And I think in the creator space, it's an antithetical to that. No one knows, you're just a kid walking around the video camera trying to capture moments of sensationalism or create moments of sensationalism. And if you're on the other side of that and you're like, shit, I'll do anything for fame, well, what does that mean? And where can that lead? And that can lead to really devastating places. And I think that this is a very challenging discussion to have because it's so nuanced. I think what is very easy is to point to specific outcomes and specific happenstance and say, well, that was fucked up. He's stupid, he should have never done that. You know, Logan should have never walked into that forest in Japan.
And it's like, sure, but what about the day before he did that when he was celebrated for doing very similar shit for years. Right, so it's less about pointing fingers at individuals and more about illuminating these problematic aspects of- With the big asterisk, which is again- As somebody who's benefited tremendously- No, that's not the asterisk. The asterisk is that like, I don't wanna defend these individuals that have done fucked up shit on these platforms.
Like the ownership is theirs. They need to own that in whatever consequences they might face. And that's certainly the case in my documentary is I don't absolve him of any of his wrongdoing or any of his poor judgment. But I think you can have both of these discussions. I think that it's very necessary to examine what happened in this one person's career that led to such turmoil, but also asking why did that happen? Like in what world has that been enabled? I think it's a very fair, much harder question. And I hope that that my documentary is able to sort of elevate that. Yeah, what's interesting, and I say this as somebody who hasn't seen the movie, but my sense is that you got involved in it 'cause you followed him around, you followed David around for a couple years, right? So when you first began that journey, it was more about like, this is the next generation of creators. And I wanna kind of tell the story of what the behind the scenes of this is really like, like how does this actually function and then it became something else entirely.
I loved David, like I still have a tremendous fondness for him, even though this movie is very critical of his actions. So much so that it's, he and I no longer have a friendship because of this movie, but I had a tremendous fondness for him, both personally and professionally. His videos were really funny and I was part of that audience that was able to sort of turn to blind eye to the more questionable moments in the video because you assume what you're seeing is entirely consensual. And I saw in him a superstar before he was successful, I said, this kid's going to fucking explode, and he did. And that was the story that I wanted to tell, my own experience on YouTube was so unbelievably unexpected and overwhelming that I wanted to tell that story. But I needed somebody else to tell it through that was more interesting and better looking than me.
And David was that character, and yeah, look, I spent two hours interviewing his high school teachers. And I went back to his high school in Chicago and met with his tennis coach and I interviewed his parents and I hired a Hungarian translator so I could interview his grandmother in Slovakia. Wow. And none of that's in the movie. That's not the movie at all. The movie's about this one night.
And what that means, because I think that if I was sort of forced to confront an intellectual honesty, which is, what is this movie? And can you tell the story about what his high school years were like without it feeling like you're trying to make him a more empathetic character? When really like this was about this one night. And there were a lot of those very challenging narrative considerations that I had to make as a filmmaker before I could make them as a friend. I think that the latter was irrelevant. The fact that he was my friend became irrelevant if I was gonna have any integrity behind the movie. And the integrity of the movie ultimately required a fracture in the relationship, right? Like, he hasn't spoken to you. I mean, I don't- Has he seen the movie?
Yeah, of course.
He hates it. But I don't think that, at the end of the day, I have to live with myself and integrity is a interesting word because it's like, what about your integrity as a friend to David? And I think that's really hard thing for me to confront, but you know, I come back to this place of like, this was not what I signed up for. He said those words to me and I think it's very fair for me to say those words back. Like, this is not what I signed up for. Meaning, when he agreed to be filmed by you. Yeah.
Yeah. And when I agreed, when I decided to make a movie about him, you know, he's so psyched to make a movie when it's about his tennis coach in Chicago.
And, you know, him selling out huge spaces to give talks to high school kids and college kids. Like that's really fun and exciting. But then it came about something much darker and at the end of the day, I thought all I could do, both for my own sense of responsibility and humanity was do everything I could to let him speak for himself. And speak truth to what happened. And I think I gave him every opportunity in the world to do that. And I did my very best to make that abundantly clear in the movie, I'm not in the movie at all. It's a very traditional documentary. But he seemed like he's still doing his thing. Right? Like what is the state of the union with like his- I cannot speak to that.
Yeah.
I can't speak to that. I wish him the best. I hope he finds a sense of fulfillment. He's young and I think he has a long way to go. And I hope he finds what it is that he's looking for. Right. And what is the deal with the movie? Like I know that you premiered it at South by Southwest. Are you-
I mean we sort of premiered it very successfully at South by Southwest. We had amazing reviews and I thought the reviews were gonna be much darker because typically, like Hollywood hates all things YouTube. And I don't blame them, but the reviews, including from some very, very traditional film reviewers were really, I thought very, certainly positive, but I think very insightful and smart and a lot of people got what I was going for.
And I don't say that in a dismissive way, I just mean that like, I think it's really easy to watch the movie and sort of be just drawn into David's story and forget that there's a bigger underlying narrative. So very positive response. But yeah, we're still trying to figure out distribution and where do you put a movie like this? And obviously, I'm sitting on a unbelievably powerful distribution opportunity, which is my own YouTube channel, but I think I'd rather let the movie die and nobody ever sees it than put it on my YouTube channel. It just does not feel like an appropriate place for an hour and 40 minute documentary for myriad reasons. And I think that probably paramount to those reasons is I think it would really dominate my own identity on YouTube. And I don't, I don't- You want a little bit of distance between you and that work. And look, if it's on a like a Hulu, then I have that distance.
I think people will be able to watch it with clear eyes. And if it's anywhere, people sit down in a theater at a film festival, they're able to watch it with sort of clear eyes. But if you go to my YouTube channel where my audience was built on this backdrop of videos that are all thematically similar and then one of those videos is an hour and 40 minute documentary about a sexual assault, I don't know that that's the context that I'm willing to share this movie with. So TBD, basically. Yeah, just like, you know, sorry. We'll see.
Nobody has to see it. If you see me in the street, ask me, I'll let you watch it on my phone.
All right, you would let me watch it on the phone. I have to go through my distributors to like get them to send you a private link. I mean, I'll just upload to Vimeo and send you a link. I know it's really hard on the flip phone to make that happen. What do you want from me? One thing I always wanted to ask you as somebody who's really insightful and has a very incisive perspective on branding and marketing and kind of how brands hold themselves out to the world.
And how creators kind of navigate the creative space. I'm interested in what you think about like, where I could improve, like what we're doing here? What are we missing to the extent that you have any familiarity of what goes on here? Where is an area that maybe I don't see where I should be putting more focus and time and attention? Short answer is I have no fucking clue. I mean that, longer answer is that Ryan Holiday, who's a tremendous human and brilliant author, he and I have this conversation a lot and it's a much, I'm telling you the advice that I gave him. And I don't want to own any of what he's done, but this is a discussion he and I have been having for five years and maybe some of it is applicable here, which is that, I think Ryan with his stoicism and like the unique focus that has been his career, whether he is doing public speaking or he's publishing one of a dozen books that, half dozen books that he is written now, they all follow similar themes.
And what I said to him, 'cause I've seen him speak publicly and it's so amazing is that, this theme can be shared across other mediums and like, I'll buy your physical book to access those themes that you're able to communicate so well. And I'll listen to your book on Audible 'cause you communicate those themes so well, I'll listen to you on podcast, you communicate those themes so well. And I'll certainly pay to watch you speak in real life. And it's like, what can you do on these other social media platforms to further that? And what he has done, which is really amazing and he's finding wild success with it, is he does these YouTube videos where he talks to camera and it's not like, hey guys, today, here's my morning routine and my hair care products.
It's Ryan being like talking about, yeah, talking about Marcus Aurelius and like how you apply that to life. And it's like, these are sort of the ponderings, is that a word? The things that I pull from his books that I underline that mean so much to me. And now, he's delivering them to me in a medium that actually works better, which is these little clips, still read his books. I just mean it's better than underlining a chapter and trying to find that dog eared page. And that's been really brilliant. And I think, you know, Rich, between like your focus on health and these deeper conversations. And so many other facets of this world that you uniquely represent so well that you could look at those themes and ask yourself like, are there other places where I could express these in different ways while still keeping that message the same? And I don't know what that would be.
Right. No, I think that's- Even your cookbooks.
That's wise. Literally your cookbooks have an absolute parallel to your podcast, they are the same thing. Like so many of your podcasts are about health and veganism and how you're able to do it and drawing energy from what you eat and shit like that. So of cookbook is a very natural extension of that. So thinking in those terms, like what else could you spin out of this amazing thing that you built over the last decade? Yeah, it's definitely worth thinking about. I've noticed that in Ryan, too. And there's a huge uptick in the frequency with which he's posting these clips and these videos.
And part of my own like, this is just confessional. Like, he's so good at talking to camera or like, and I'm like, I can't, I hate talking to cam. Like, the worst part of this podcast is when I have to do the intros and look to camera and I like, write out these little scripts and then I make, I put, I have like a teleprompter thing. And I always feel like, oh, it's so like rigid and like I just wanna be able to relax and just talk. But every time I try to do that, it's like a disaster. No, I get it. He's found something. And again, it might not be right for you. Like that might not be it. But if you draw a line to where you were as far as your audience size and your revenue from this podcast 10 years ago. And you draw that line to where it is now, I know you know, it goes up and to the right and it doesn't always have to grow kind of exponentially.
Meaning that like, you do something really fucking well and the best way to find success is apply patience and consistency to that. And it's giving you everything you've got now. This is my old man advice. 'Cause all I wanna do when I moved back to New York is make really good YouTube video. I don't wanna do any of the other bullshit and to see if I can just find success doing the one thing that I know I'm really good at. Instead of the other bullshit, which is just both distractions, but feels necessary. Maybe it's not, I gotta go. I know. Can we do one more question? What time is it? 1:40? Last thing.
Okay. Just to put a button on it, just real quick. For the creators or the creative people that are watching or listening to this, just leave us with a few words of kind of creative inspiration. I mean, you're known for these aphorisms around like, you're tattooed with do more and work harder and kind of this hustle porn sort of thing.
You've matured a little bit beyond that, but you always have such good counsel when it comes to learning how to harness your creative voice and share it with the world. Sure, I think the thing that I've come to appreciate more than ever is the importance in having patience. I think that there's such a tendency, especially in a world where you're able to count your views in real time. That if it doesn't work today, it's never going to work. And you know, like I talked to Jimmy, MrBeast, about this a lot, and that guy spent whatever, seven years making videos before he had one that broke a thousand views or something extraordinary like that.
And now he's doing a billion views a month. Or my brother, Van, who's the most brilliant mind on all of YouTube and you know, Van had this initial explosion of interests because he and I worked so hard to promote his first videos. And then I explained to him, I was like, look, it's all gonna go away. You're gonna find your baseline, then you're gonna build from there. And he's been consistently uploading for a year, making the best work he can make and now he's really building out what is gonna be a successful long-term career making videos and putting them on the internet.
Yeah, it's been really cool to watch that. It's extremely unsexy. It's extremely uninteresting and no one wants to hear that it takes time, but it takes time. And I think it's something that, especially if you're young and just getting into this, you don't want to invest. But patience is really the most undervalued aspect of succeeding in the world of media today. You have all the agency in the world, you don't need anything from anyone. But if you're not willing to commit the time to it, you're never gonna find that success. A hundred percent, we did it.
And I achieved my goal of getting you to say, I gotta go. I gotta go.
Which I think you've said in every-
I gotta go, I like glanced at my watch like 10 times. I was gonna say before I was like, I'm not gonna say it. I'm not gonna say it. Cool. (gentle music).