Braving the Chaos: Andrew Callaghan on Journalism & Life

Andrew Callaghan is a filmmaker, journalist, and cultural anthropologist known for his unique style that redefines journalism. Famous for his projects All Gas No Brakes and Channel 5, Andrew discusses his journey from growing up in Seattle to becoming an influential documentary filmmaker. He talks about grappling with controversy, personal and professional setbacks, and his experiences recording the raw and unfiltered stories of America. With candidness, he reflects on his battle with addiction, the importance of emotional honesty, and how he has navigated public scrutiny and cancellation. Andrew shares insights into his latest film, Dear Kelly, which delves into the personal motivations driving individuals towards conspiracy theories.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Getting canceled heavy.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Yeah, it's one of the worst things ever. I mean,
I mean talk about that was like for you. I
mean it was just terror, bewilderment, confusion, and just I
had the inability to vocalize what was going on. I
actually faked that I had autism and social anxiety and
my first second semester to get permission to live off
campus so that I could move to Bourbon Street itself.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Oh that's a fucking shock came up. You had your
second tired of being sick and tired moment.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Literally, that has to happen. It has to happen. And
just the immune immune effects, dude, just constantly being under
the weather. You don't get sick as much when you
don't party. It's a rarity, and even when you do,
you overcome it. I feel like I was constantly cycling
between seasonal flus and colds, and really it was just
a rock bottom moment. I remember everyone was going around

(00:51):
in the circles doing shares. I remember one share that
I had was like, what are your goals for this week?
I was like, I'm just trying to regain the will
to live, and everyone was like, holy shit, man, you're
serious though. I was one hundred percent serious, and people
came up to me after and they were like, let's
hang out, and my day got a lot better.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Welcome back to the Sino Show.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Today we are joined by a storyteller, right who's redefined
journalism with a style that's raw, unfiltered and deeply human.
You know him as a creator of all Gas No
Breaks in Channel five, where he dives into the heart
of America to capture the most colorful, i'd say so right, chaotic,

(01:37):
not provoking moments. He's a filmmaker, he's a journalist and
a cultural anthropologist.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Wow, you like that. I do love that. Thank you.
Thank you Keith who isn't afraid to ask the questions
others won't. Brother, it's my pleasure. Welcome Manner Kellen of
the show. Welcome brother man. It's great to see you.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
It's an honor to be here in this very special
building on Shell Avenue. You're an inspiration. Thanks for having me, man, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Good to have you. Gosh. Man, let's just start with Seattle.
Let's grown up. Let's do it all right.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
These are the questions I like, because they always want
to start with journalism.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
We're going to get in all the great things, and
we'll get into dear Kelly. Okay, yeah, cares, but your
fucking journey. Guess what's extraordinary, because you're an extraordinary artist.
And I want to talk about a guy who takes
fucking risk, who puts his ass on the fucking line,
who's got his ass handed to him. Yeah, who's making
moves and doing shitty loves.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Right, So, but that just happen overnight. Definitely not right.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
So let's and I know, let's just go about Seattle
growing up a little bit and work our way into
your first little journalist something.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Let's do it, man, all right, Seattle, Seattle, Washington. So
I grew up in Philadelphia technically till I was until
I was nine. Some from my Irish Italian family background,
but honestly, those like core member memories are mostly just
playgrounds and you know, backyard barbecues and stuff. Seattle is
definitely where I like became an adolescent, teenager, adult whatever.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, so growing up there was pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
I grew up in the in the middle of the city,
downtown Capitol Hill, back in the real heyday of Seattle.
So this is right after grunge and right before the
tech takeover. So if you can fathom that you still
have like the cool kind of leftover Kirk Cobain coffeehouse
swag of the nineties before Jeff Bezos came and just
burned it to the ground.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, because Seattle got like three times more expensive in
a four year period, and just the growth of the
tech industry was great for the city's economy, but for
the underground culture of the city, it pretty much just
sent us all across the map. Like Seattle itself, you'd
be kind of hard pressed to find a lot of
Seattle lights.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
In the urban core still.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Really yeah, because a lot of cities that are cool,
like San Francisco, you have a more poor working class
nearby town to go to after it becomes too expensive,
like an SF you can go to Oakland if you
grew up in a nice part of La.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
La is huge.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
There's other places you can move to if you're from
an area like Echo Park that just blows up. In Seattle,
all the suburbs are pretty much rich, so Seattle was
the affordable place. So most people in my generation moved
to the East Bay of San Francisco, New York City,
and I went to New Orleans.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Right, But let's back up a little bit.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
But were you always insanely curious?

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:07):
For sure, man, Like my mom just kind of raised
me that way, always taking me to libraries, and she
would make me talk to people I wouldn't normally talk to.
Like on Thanksgiving we'd give out homeless homeless we wouldn't
give out homeless people. We'd give out cookies and big goods.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
To the homeless people in the subway system.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
So she'd always encourage me to like cross that barrier
and just have more empathy for those who are ordinarily
rejected by society.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
But did I get this right? Buddy?

Speaker 3 (04:31):
And you got you were in class right, and they
gave me an assignment. That's kind of what got you
into journalism.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Like, yeah, pretty much. Well, like before I was a journalist,
I was a rapper. I was like a spiritual miracle
type rapper. Like I would take shrooms and I would
write raps. Some of them didn't make any any sense,
but it was sick. I was like a you know,
like a very woke, philosophical rapper.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
How old were you twelve? Thirteen years old? All right?
So you doing that? Doing that?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
You know it's going okay, but it's you know, not
really picking up too much traction.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, oh yeah, for sure. That was a Philly in me.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I moved to Seattle and I was like, what do
I have if these kids don't like soul full of
hip hop?

Speaker 1 (05:08):
So sorry rapping?

Speaker 2 (05:09):
And then uh yeah, I had this cool ass professor
named Calvin Shaw, and he, you know, I signed up
for his journalism class in my freshman year, and at
that time I didn't have like a huge interest in journalism,
but then I just realized that it was just this
gateway to being on the front row of wherever you
wanted to be at because everywhere you go, people want press,
and if you're the press, you get to just hop
between these different realities at whatever pace you'd like.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Wow, and that led you to going to school, right yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
So I ended up doing like a project about graffiti
up and down the West Coast, like a photo journalism project,
which somehow, because my grandma submitted me to US Congress,
got me the Congressional certificate. I didn't know it existed.
It's got a ninety five percent acceptance rate. So for
all you youngsters out there, if John McCain's dead, now,
but he did sign it, and so I was signed

(05:57):
by John McCain. So I submitted that to Loyal you
know Versity in New Orleans, and they gave me a
full ride.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
So shout out to.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
John McCain, true war hero, true ally of YOURFEEDI photography.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Wow, So I mean New Orleans that, I mean, what
was that?

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Like? That was crazy, going from like a Seattle's kind
of like a hippie environment, like big on like psychedelics
and that kind of stuff. You know, New Orleans is
a drink in town, pirate town, drinking, pirate town. Actually live.
I live next to John Lafeed's Pirate Bar where they
serve those purple called purple drink and one of those
things will knock you on the floor and.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Partying back then, yeah you're here. Of course.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
I actually faked that I had autism and social anxiety
in my first second semester to get permission to live
off campus so that I could move to Bourbon Street itself.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
Oh that's a fucking John came But I love it.
You gotta really you really sold the autism hunt.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
I was easy. I just went.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
I had an appointment with the school counselor and I
just wouldn't look at her, you know, I was like looking,
I was looking at a piece of paper and I
was writing down like I have to live off campus,
and like slid it to her.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
And do you get a kick out of doing shit
like that?

Speaker 2 (06:59):
No?

Speaker 1 (06:59):
I just had to get the hell off a campus.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Why because I was just so trapped by the claustrophobic
environment of dorm living. You know, I wanted to be
since as early as I can remember, I wanted to
be where it was crazy, you know. I wanted to
be near the pulse, near the beating heart of the city,
the French Quarter, and I just, you know, I wanted
to do it.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
And that's when you started your first kind of show, right, yeah,
pretty much what it called the Quarter Confessions.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah you remember taxicab Confessions.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, of course. It was kind of based on that.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
So it was like, you get this real honesty out
of people at a certain hour of the night, and
we would ask people, you know, to share a confession.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
And when inspired you to do that.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
I had a friend down there who kind of gave
me the idea. After a while, I started to feel
kind of morally bad about the show because a lot
of people who'd be featured would really regret being on
the show because.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
They're drunk, they're high.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, or even if they weren't drunk or high, they
were the spirit of New Orleans just possessed them, you know,
and they were like, anything goes you, let the good
times roll. Lebontan relay. I fucked my cousin. It was
just like they text me and be like, bro, can
you please take this down? I'm gonna get fired. And
I was like, you know, this feels like karmically heavy.
What would you do when they'd ask you that I
would take it down?

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
You always, but it still is just you know, people
are loving the video and I'm thinking it's all in
good sport because.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
How old were you then? Twenty? Wow? Yeah? Okay, okay?
And how long did that show last? Six months?

Speaker 2 (08:21):
There's only so many confessions that people have right there
that they're willing to say on camera.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
And where was your next stop after that?

Speaker 2 (08:29):
So there was a company, like a meme company, you know,
memmy like, and they agreed to fund a brainchild of
mine called All Gas, No Breaks, where it was like
supposed to be a hitchhiking based road show. So it
was supposed to be out hitchhike around the country, and
then I would set up cameras in each car and
ask people about, you know, why they picked me up,
what their backstory is. Logistically, that ended up being like

(08:50):
just too difficult. We didn't have the equipment like you
guys do right now. We just didn't have the skill set.
So it ended up being sort of like a quarter
confession's hybrid of a t travel show. So we go
from place to place in the RV and interview people
at different conventions, rallies, stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
What tell me some takeaways from that experience, learning as
a journalism, just growing up and just yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, I mean, for one, it's that if you have
a non judgmental approach.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
You can go anywhere you want. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
I had so many biases, not biases, but ideas about
certain groups like the furries or the flat earthers, you know,
And I was like, I think I know what these
people are about, but I'm going to pretend that I
don't and just see where it takes me.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
Because I think that's you make I mean, people trust you, Yeah,
why do they trust you?

Speaker 1 (09:39):
I don't know. I'm pretty trustworthy.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
I think it's just because like I do this thing
called the toddler nod, or like this it's micro nodding.
I don't know they should write about this because if
you're not too hard, they're like, this guy's is just
trying to sell it too hard, selling it to her.
But if you and if you don't react at all,
they're like, this guy hates me. So you just got
to give them the right amount of a toddler nod
and they'll tell you how they.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
And were you happy with the way that came out?
Were you? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (10:04):
This is interesting because I still felt like in the
early part of All Gas No Breaks, it still leaned
heavily on mockery as the as the primary selling point.
You know, it was a comedic show where we showed
crazy characters, and I always felt like I wanted something more.
I wanted to actually use my platform to shed light
on issues that I care about, or just to tell
more human touching stories. But obviously those are harder to

(10:27):
make because most people, it's easy to make comedy and
document someone super out there. It's harder to tell a
compelling story about a relatable person.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
And how was your head back then? Were you? How
is your self esteem? Were you in a good place?
Were you?

Speaker 2 (10:42):
I mean, that's the thing is, like I always had
pretty high self esteem, especially because when I was when
I was a freshman in college, I went in there
probably weighed like two hundred and twenty pounds. I dropped
like one seventy five. How the paleo diet, do you
know what I mean? And so I went from kind

(11:03):
of being like a sort of like hefty, like muscleless
kid to kind of like a svelt young man in
a pretty short period of time. So that weight loss
for sure transformed by like eighteen to twenty four.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Wow. Okay, so what was the next thing after that?

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Then? After All Gas No Breaks, Yeah, it kind of
just naturally segued into Channel five.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Okay, and tell the listeners about Channel five. Let's get
into that.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Channel five is like a post contractual dispute evolution of
All Gas No Breaks, where instead of being a road show,
it's like a news channel. And now we have correspondents
in different countries that kind of submit footage from New
Zealand to Mexico and you know, Israel and whatnot. And yeah,
it's kind of what we're building. It into is like

(11:48):
an independent global news station, and then was very successful.
It has been had some ups and downs, though, what's
that had some ups and downs?

Speaker 1 (11:56):
But we're back. Let's talk about the ups and downs.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, I mean there's been so I feel like almost
my success journey has been marked even before whatever public controversy,
by just repeated betrayals, contractual issues, just this constant loop
of like things going really well and then all of
a sudden everything falls apart and you have to rebuild.
It happened, It's happened four different times.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
And why do you not quit?

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Because I finally figured out how to make.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
It stop happening? Fuck? Yeah, tell me how well it
was my time with.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
You in places like this, talking to people who had chaotic,
unpredictable lives and were able to figure that figure out
how to create calm, and they were the first step
in doing that, I think, is accepting your role in
the chaos that is around you. A lot of people
want to externalize chaos. All My life is so chaotic.

(12:49):
I'm just everyone around me so crazy. This sounds kind
of cliche, but becoming your inner piece and removing these
reckless based behaviors from your life it kind of makes
things fall into place, and that's kind of what happened
for me. Started entering a monogamous relationship, started treating people
more carefully, stopped doing crazy shit all the time, and boom,
I don't seem to have any major problems anymore.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Interesting, man, good for you.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, let's let's talk about that. I mean, let's just
get into this. I mean, what's the most inspiring story
you've ever done?

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Story? Man?

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Honestly, it hasn't even come out yet, but I remember, Okay,
so this is a spoiler, but we'll reveal it. Do
you remember when I came to a meeting here and
I had those pamphlets that said lost parrot, and I
was trying to help that old guy around here to
find his parrot. That story became an extremely tear jerking inspirational.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Story, did it, really? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Because we ended up getting him a parrot, replacing the
parrot with a carbon copy, and then the protagonist passed away.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
The old guy he died. Oh did he buy it?

Speaker 2 (13:58):
So now this stories is and we were able to
rehome the parrot. Really yeah, So it was just that
to me. It hasn't came out yet, but to me,
that was the most emotionally impactful story because it had
nothing to do with politics, had nothing to do with
capturing the craziness of political mobilizations of the modern times
or anything. It was just like a guy and his
love for a pet.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Has Have you ever been worried that someone's going to
kill you? Yeah? All the time they tried to. I
mean figuratively. Yeah, if that makes sense, Yeah, no, it does,
it does. How do you how do you deal with that?

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Well, if you're not. This is what my life is about.
I've found my purpose, I found my calling and I
will die for this, and I will die doing this.
I don't want to die young, but hmm, it's the
most important thing for me, and it's it is my cause,
this this thing that I'm doing, So it doesn't bother

(14:55):
me because it's gonna I'm gonna do it till I die.
So if someone takes me for on the earth, I mean,
I always like to think that I'm gonna go by
way of assassination when I'm like eighty five. Getting assassinated
when you're eighty five is legendary kind of a move, right,
because you're gonna die soon maybe, And then someone kills you.

(15:15):
It just shows your real badass, you know what I mean. So, like,
imagine you made it eighty five revolutionary years and you're still,
you know, at death's doorstep and you're still knocking shit down.
But yeah, I think somebody will try to kill me.
But it's okay with me.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Why do you do this? What's driving you? Man?

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Well, like I said before, man, just like I love it,
But on a real level, I'm not that good at
other stuff, you know what I'm saying. Like I can't
change a tire. I'm not particularly athletic when it comes
to sports. Uh, I know, I can't math class, failed
it science even in school, every subject I was like shit,
I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Beat the b's and c's. Journalism class A plus is,
you know.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
And I think that's the key to success is not
being a master of none and figuring out, like what
do you actually get at and like honing in on
that particular skill set, being specialized.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
That's why I always tell people.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
And this is your play and you're obviously very good
at it, But tell me what's the scariest moment you've
had filming and interviewing people?

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Because you've had some doozies.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
I'm trying to think because there's like fear. The scariest
thing to me is losing the footage. So the scariest
moment is when I was in Mexico and I paid
those cartel coyotes to traffic me across the Rio Grande,
and I crossed the Rio grand holding the coyotes arm,
you know, and you can feel the undertow, you know,

(16:41):
and it kills a lot of migrants every year. But
I felt like I had to do it just because
I wanted to understand the experience of physically crossing the
Rio grand because millions do it.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
It's important story.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
And when I crossed, border patrol spotted us with infrared
sensors cameras rather, and they sent a border patrol team
to arrest us. The coyotes jump out and the river
swam back toward Mexico. I'm chowing on the embankment of
the river. I got all these guns, you know, drawn,
and the I see the border patrol guy grab the
camera and the cameras rolling during this arrest, and I'm

(17:13):
just praying to God he doesn't know how a camera works,
because you know, any sensible department of Homeland Security officer
would be like, get the memory cards, let's see what's
what happened.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
We need to figure out the truth.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
But he just doesn't understand it, and he just puts
it in the property bag and zip ties it. And
I was like, yes, So when I got out of
the migrant attention facility, he gave me the property bag.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Memory cards were unscathed. Wow, where can people witness that video?
I got It's on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
It's called Border Patrol Arrest, Border Patrol Arrest. But that
was the scariest part to me is I was like, dude,
if they have the footage, then this never happened.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, no shit. How long were you in the detention center?
Seventy two hours? And what did that teach you?

Speaker 2 (17:55):
For one, that there's an illegal immigration problem?

Speaker 1 (17:59):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Like number wise, you know, and I'm in favor of immigration.
I think there should be a path to citizenship even
for undocumented people. But the sheer amount of people you
saw circulating through that place every day, it was like
a something like the size of half of a baseball
stadium being circled out every six hours. And you're like,
oh my god, they're not joking. When they're saying that

(18:22):
the border was open at that point. It also taught
me that, I mean, the immigration crisis isn't just people
coming from Latin America. I mean, there was a guy
in my cell from Nepal seventeen years old, and you
just wonder, like, what is the appeal of the United States?
What message are we sending to the world that makes

(18:43):
folks think it's worth it to travel through sixteen different
countries to come somewhere.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Like Houston, Texas.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
And it was just those crazy experiences and also the
magnitude of the issue. And I'm still in touch with
a lot of people that I met at the micro
and detention facility. Some of them got sent back, some
of them got transferred to US prisons, but most of
them are just in shelters in New York City right now,
you know, hiding from ice.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
But is this correct? Is it?

Speaker 3 (19:13):
You know, most journalists they do the story, they move on,
but you, like, you do the story, but you're still involved.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
You care for people. Yeah, can you walk our audience
through that? I mean, that's what That's one of the
reasons I really love about you, man.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Well, I really care about the people that I'm interviewing, right,
and sometimes I'm compelled to go beyond the role of
a reporter and see how I can help or get
to know them a little bit more. They teach you
in journalism school that you're not supposed to do that, right,
that it goes against journalistic ethics, and you have to
keep this like real hard barrier between yourself and the
person you're talking to. But that's just not a good

(19:46):
way to live your life. I mean, it's kind of
to me that feels exploitative.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
You know.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
It's like I just go to these people who are
suffering and capture them and then move on. You know,
I at least want to try to raise funds for them.
Like when I was in the in San Francisco, we
raised like one hundred grand for a harm reduction facility.
Now that only took one me just linking their GoFundMe.
But if I was working for The New York Times,
that would be illegal because that would position me on

(20:11):
a certain side. And it's this whole idea that journalists
can't take a side on something that's part of the
problem of the media nowadays and why people prefer podcasts
and all this stuff to consume news because they'd rather
know how they're the person presenting facts feels about what's
going on, not just some guy on TV telling you
that he's an unbiased reporter when you know he has
an agenda, and so that's all.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
It's interesting. Man.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Listen, you've experienced it, you've filmed it, you've interviewed it.
Talk about young people in addiction. What you're seeing out.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
There, man, just crippling loneliness, isolation, the housing crisis, unaffordability,
social media creating a compounding loneliness for people who are
struggling to find community. Over prescription by doctors, mass undiagnosed
and untreated mental illness, insanely easy access to firearms for

(21:06):
people who have mental illness, A lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Man.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
I mean, you've been in this game for since decades
before I was alive, So maybe you could speak to
it more. Do you think that now versus like the
late eighties, is it better.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Or worse now?

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Of course, really it's worse, and during the crack era worse.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Really.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, you didn't have the mental health, you didn't have
as many people going crazy, and that he as that
you didn't people people just don't give a fuck, Yeah,
they will shoot you for a fucking bag.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Now people just don't care. It wasn't like that then.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
I wasn't like that. There was craziness and stuff, but
not this kind of mayhem.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
What do you think is causing that fentanyl? Everything you mentioned? Yeah,
people are scared, people are lonely.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Man people don't there's nobody protecting people.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, and not to mention, we still have this hyper
positivity in America. I don't know when it was, when
it was started, but like that is week to talk
about how you're feeling that you have to pick yourself
up by the bootstraps and that like opening up makes
you like less of a man. And it seems like
that is the case with a lot of people who
turn to you know, especially alcoholism.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
So the young people, a lot of young people because
how are you know, twenty seven? Yeah, twenty seven so
I've known you for how long now? Two and a
half years? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Right, right, So a lot of people in their twenties
right now that you mentioned all the things, right, what's
your suggestion? They're struggling and they're scared, they're overwhelmed.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
How do they get help? Where do they go?

Speaker 2 (22:33):
I mean, I would say definitely meetings help, but if
you're intimidated by the share aspect of it, I would
just suggest finding new friends. I mean, it's a classic
thing that people places and things.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
I mean, whenever I started getting my act together, you know,
I wasn't able to part ways with certain friends that
I really love that I knew were doing coke every.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Night, you know.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
But I was like, as soon as I stop hanging
out with them, I kind of stopped doing that though.
So I mean this sounds like I said a little
bit cliche, but seek healthier communities. There's a lot of
good stuff here in LA, but like a lot of
communities have an unhealthy foundation, and those are the ones
that will break you. And you know, like they always say,
you know, remember being in high school buying weed. You

(23:14):
go to a drug dealer's house. They got everything else too.
You know, you got one foot in the door, you
just keep walking down the hallway and next thing you know,
you're stuck. But as far as young people, it's hard
for me to to give the right advice because I've
done so well and in certain in a certain way,
my twenties have been augmented by success to the point

(23:35):
where I feel like I'm losing touch with what it's
like to face true economic.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Hardship, you know, so I don't.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
It's kind of like when they ask celebrities like who
have been famous for fifty years, like what's your advice? Like,
you know, I start to feel I'm feeling a little
bit tapped out. But I'm trying to maybe move back
into the RV at some point to get more connected
with like the younger generation.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
But I've been film is isolated right on.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Man, Well, I think one of the best ways you
can do is keep doing human interest stories about people
that got out of the system, right. That's that's a
value man, because they'll watch that and they'll believe it.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, I've met people in here. You know when when
when they first came, you know, I'm sure you and
me both felt like they're going to stick around here,
and you come back six months later and you're like,
oh my god, like they're still here.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
That's why I do what I do. Yeah, they see
the light go on. That's why I fucking do what
I do.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Definitely, But when did you realize, like, oh fuck, I'm
kind of famous, dude.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
I call it the underwear test. I remember I was
in Seattle one time and I was talking to a
bunch of fans outside. Well. I thought I couldn't tell
if there were fans or not. I could tell they
knew who I was. And I said, all right, I'm
gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna take off my
boxers and put my regular pants back on. I'm gonna
put the underwear on my head, my whole head, Tedy White,
He's like Captain Underpants. And I'm going to see how

(24:53):
they react, because my real friends would be like, what
are you doing? Man? You got fucking underwear on your head.
But what a fan would do is not say anything.
So I go back out there underwear on my head,
and they're like, yo, dope, new look.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
And I was like, I must be famous because and
I'm like what the fuck? They're like sick. I like
how you did that? And they're kind of to the side.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
You flip them around, that's cool, bro thos through the.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Loom or what.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
And I was just like, oh, I got to start
getting around new people.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
What's the benefits of fame and what's been the downfall
for you?

Speaker 2 (25:23):
The benefit is that you can meet other people that
have accomplished a lot of great things, you know, because
there's famous people who are famous for nothing. But a
lot of famous people are extraordinarily talented and that's why
they've been able to achieve fame. They have great business
acumen and great artistic ability. So being able to get
be famous in early twenties and meet like people that
just a couple of years before, I was like listening
to their music.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yes, don't even folks you've met that Eve inspired oh Man.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Shane Gillis is the man like even THEO shout out
the people like that that I grew up. You know,
a lot of rappers have been inspired by to Yeat
meeting people that you're like, they're really have real cold
to personality. You just can't believe you immediatelym You're like,
that's pretty cool. The downside is, of course, the inauthentic

(26:06):
relationships people. I mean, it's a tale as old as time.
I don't want to say fake people, but just those
who don't have your best interest at heart, posturing as
your friend because they want to be near fame because
everyone thinks they want fame. But once you have it, it's
very difficult to manage. But everybody on that path. The

(26:26):
grass is ultimately greener with fame. Fame is the most
horrible thing in the world. I've seen it warp the
minds of some of the realest people I knew. Really,
I see it happen all the time. And the worst
thing it does is, I call it sidekick syndrome, is
how it changes second in command people, kind of like

(26:49):
managers at restaurants. They become the nastiest, the secondary to
the vice president, the person that is just one link
on the chain below the guy they hate. It's this
sort of Caesar and Brutus thing where they want to
be him so bad. And that's why a lot of
my relationships have fallen apart, because I've brought childhood friends
with me and they've kind of been my right hand man, sidekick,

(27:11):
and that that the resentment of not being me and
always feeling like they had to rely on me to
have social status just just rotted their mind from the inside.
It took over them, took them over like a demon. Wow, Yeah,
it happens. You wonder why, you know there's so much
people seem to just ambush each other on a high
level all the time.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
It's because of that who's your dream interview? Dream interview?

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Oh? Man, that's such a good one because dead or alive,
I would say, like Hunter S.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Thompson would be pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
That's why I met Johnny Knoxville and he told me
he knew Hunter S. Thompson really, and I was like, Jesus,
I'm one away, you know what I mean. I'm trying
to think dream interview. It's hard because on one hand, like,
obviously a Donald Trump interview would be like the most successful,
you know, and most interesting to me. Ever, what do
you think who would you like to see me interview? Like?

(28:01):
What do you think is a really good fit? Jack Kerouac,
Jack Kerouac, dead alive.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Kim Jong mun alive?

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, imagine Kim Jong oun interview?

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah? Yeah, and a Peong Yang walk through with that guy.
You know what a interview i'd love to see right
now is Sean Combs. Oh, that would be so good.
He's not doing them though, I don't think No, I don't.
I don't think he's allowed to. I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
I don't think like one hundred and fifty lawyers being
like the.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Real get down with you that would be.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
That would be fascinating, Yeah, or Luigi Mangioni, there's a
lot of people in MDC right now worth interviewing.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah, they're when you when you think of a store,
you think of like, this is something I want to
do for me? Or this do you think about it's
going to gain a lot of followers, is going to
gain success?

Speaker 1 (28:43):
What what goes through your head.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
It's interesting because it's a mix of both. As a journalist,
you have to respond to like breaking news, so you
have to if something's happening, they want to see you
out there to get the real truth. As a documentary filmmaker,
I don't care about any of that stuff, and I
want to pursue things to just make me happy. So
I definitely prefer making documentary films to breaking news. But
when you're doing breaking and when you're covering things in

(29:06):
real time, you kind of have to chase around public
interest whether or not you like, whether you like it
or not. You know, like Trump inauguration, people are going
to be talking about that. I'm a journalist. I got
to stay on top of the news, so I got
to go out there and stand outside in twenty three gold.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
You chase the stories. You got to go where it's hot, right.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Got it's like that's the gig, right, Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
You also have a fucking amazing work ethic. Man, you
were hustling, brother.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
You gotta work ethic.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
What time you get to the gym in the morning, Well, you.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Know, I'm there at six, I'm up and four thirty.
Oh crazy, that's legendary. I couldn't get you on the
early morning schedule. You tried hard. I tried hard. Runs.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
I showed up to one or two of those sunrise runs.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah you did.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
But what so what walk? Walk people through the story?
When things are hot, you have to go somewhere, What
walk the what are you preparing?

Speaker 1 (29:52):
What are you thinking about? Uh?

Speaker 2 (29:54):
It just kind of depends what it is. I'm always
thinking about. I want to get the angle that the
mainstream media is not. So everybody wants to go inside
the Capitol rotunda where you got the President and Jake
Paul and all these people, But what about the guys
standing outside in the cold with Trump hats on, who
can't even get a ticket in the door. Those are
the people that fascinated me. Right, The person that they

(30:15):
wouldn't pick to interview is the one I.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Like to talk to, and somehow you find them. How
the fuck is this your radar? Dude?

Speaker 2 (30:22):
You just have to go to where the news is
at and interview. Look at the guy that they're not
talking to. For example, if I got tickets to a
Hollywood premiere of a big movie like Harry Potter, I'd
be more interested to talking and talking to the person
who waited in a camping chair for two days as
opposed to Daniel Radcliffe, you know, because it's just more fascinating, like,
oh my god, you're outside the capital just because Trump's

(30:42):
in there. You don't even have your phone out. You
just want to be near the energy. Those are the people.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
What maybe this is? You want to talk about the
films you've made?

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah, sure, I've only made two movies. Yeah, I had
the one on HBO, they came out in twenty twenty two,
complete disaster, and then the one this year, Dear Kelly,
which is kind of a spiritual sequel.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Well, why was the first one a disaster because of
the cancelation? Yeah? Yeah, should we start there? Yeah? Probably
it's a good segue. How we came together, Yeah, that
is how we met. That's right, So why don't you
walk the audience through that, because.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, I mean pretty much, you know, you know what
happened behind the scenes. Yeah, we don't want to get
into that too, we don't, but you know, I was
in a position where I took some time off from
the social media, from everything, and I kind of felt lost.
And I was just staying in a tiny apartment over
here in Venice Beach, and I'd committed to, you know,

(31:37):
doing twelve step meetings and alcoholics anonymous. So I went
to a meeting twenty six in Broadway AA meeting and
shout out.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
To Peter Lealic, Peter, I'm over there.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
And Pete comes up to me and he goes, hey, Andrew,
big fan, and he goes, this is not where you
need to be where you needed me. He goes, I'm
gonna take you to a meeting. I'm gonna invite you
into the meeting. Can't tell anybody about this place, yeah,
Lizer the homie.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
So the next day he brings me here. When I
meet you, and I'm not gonna lie. I recognized some
some famous faces around here, and I was like, wait
a second. A lot of people here have beat a
lot of the a lot of controversies before. There's some
fighters up in this building, but you're you're.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
A savvy guy, you're suspicious guy. You're looking around. What
was the buy in for you?

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Because you know.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Just the realness of this place, man, I mean just
you had people here who were willing to open up
about the mistakes they've made and you know, the the
base behaviors that put him at risk without beating themselves up. Mmmm,
you know, and focusing primarily on For me, when I
before I came in here, I had a pretty binary

(32:42):
view of how things unfolded. It was either you're the
good guy or you're the bad guy. And what I
learned in here is there's actually a middle ground between
fucking up and getting fucked over. You can be behaving
recklessly and be taken advantage of without being like, what
the hell, I'm a great guy? What fuck this person?
You know, there's plenty of ways that you can live

(33:03):
that make the situation like what happened with me possible
and sort of being able to have that honesty without
having to hold back and understand through people who had
been through a lot of situations how to move on
in a way that where you're not holding your feet
to the fire every time you look at yourself in
the mirror. That's definitely what I learned from this place.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
But what I mean getting canceled heavy.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, it's one of the worst things ever. I mean, talk,
I mean talk what that was like for you. I
mean it was just terror, bewilderment, confusion, and just I
had the inability to vocalize what was going on because
you know, there was the stuff, and it was like,
are people going to believe me? Especially when the news

(33:52):
is reporting reporting this and I have all these close
collaborators kind of rewriting the past of me. That was
the most difficult part is people rewriting the past of
what kind of person I was before that. I was
in really good standing in all of the communities that
I was a part of in the time leading up
to the cancelation, and that was the most hurtful part.
Not what people were saying, or any lawyers or an involved.

(34:15):
It was the people that I was close to who
were caving under pressure and portraying me publicly as someone
who had always been kind of weird and that they
always had a feeling about.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
That was the worst. Yeah, A lot of your closest
French jump ship.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, but it was also consider the way that I
had been living my life. I was kind of not
only behaving recklessly but also building a glasshouse, and the
people that I was around, A lot of the people
that I was around had a history of you know,
pulling up the ladder and throwing people under the bus
after stuff like this. Not to mention, I was posturing

(34:49):
myself in a very righteous, progressive manner. That made me
very easy target for cancelation because some of these guys,
especially like dudes who don't give a shit, like rappers,
they can't and get canceled by the press. They can
get canceled by the courts, but they can't get canceled
by a Rolling Stone editorial with an anonymous person. So
it's just a I don't know, you know, I just yeah,

(35:12):
this place helped me a lot, buddy.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
So what's the biggest lesson that you just learned about
what you just talked about. What's the biggest lesson you
learned about getting canceled and taking responsibility for your own actions,
not blame the others for your troubles, right, Because you
did that in a really kind of heroic way.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Quite honestly, thank you. Well.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
If you can first accept that the world is not
this great place, you know what I mean, and remove
this whole thing of like the world's great. There's evil
people in the world, and just accept that most people
act out of self interest and realized that you were
also acting out of self interest. You can see that
you can take responsibility for how things unfolded without saying

(35:55):
I'm a piece of shit who did this thing? Huh?
And in that seems that's not a conversation you have
to have with the world. That's a conversation you have
with yourself and the change. You can be around as
many strong people as you want, but you have to
be the first step in the change and say, you
know what, I don't want to live like that, not

(36:16):
just because I don't want to get canceled again, but
I mean, dude, I was living in an RV for
three years, switching cities every four or five days, and
everywhere I would go, the first thing I would try
to do is find somewhere to party, sometimes, find someone
to hook up with. Every That's no way to live
your life, especially when you have a huge platform and

(36:36):
you're a young dude.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
It was only a matter of time until I got
myself imbrilled in that kind of situation, and that's some
might say that's not enough accountability.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
I think it is. Oh yeah, you paid a steep pride. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yeah, I think one of the scariest things for somebody
that's so gifted like you was like, well, I ever
be able to do my gift again?

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, and then walk the audience through, buddy, because it
was magic.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
It was like a real movie moment where you know,
like the singer pictures a guitar for the first time.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, you got back out there.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
I think he went to Arizona and started and You're like,
I'm gonna get the camera going today.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
I said, fuck, yeah, You're gonna get the fucking camera
going today. I told you that. Yeah that morning.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah, holy shit, nem I do remember now it's all
coming back. Yeah yeah, because I was like, you know
QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley, the Horns, guy from the Capitol, right,
he had just gotten out of prison, and uh, this
guy Kelly texted me of dear Kelly. He was like,
hey man, my buddy Jake just got out of prison.

(37:36):
He's there having a welcome home party for him and
in Scottsdale, would you like to come document it?

Speaker 1 (37:42):
You know?

Speaker 2 (37:43):
And at the time, I was like stress. I had
lost like thirty pounds out of a mustache. I was bald.
I was waking up crying every day, drinking twelve Heineken
zero's a day, you know.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
And that's you know, that's a dark place to be.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
I'm drinking Heineken zeros at dive bars just.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
To you know what I mean, just to get back
into the element.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
And yes, I was like, I had no idea how
people were going to receive me when I relaunched, you know.
And it was interesting because so much of the content
from the relaunch, the first six videos San Francisco Streets,
Vegas Tunnels, Jack the Bippers, a lot of these successful documentaries, Connecticut,
Kia Boys, Philly Streets. I filmed all those in a

(38:20):
two month period during hiatus, and so a lot of
the craziest shit that I filmed, including hopping the border.
The reason I was being so crazy in the field
there is because I didn't know if I was going
to come back or not. Oh that's interesting, And I
never really pointed that particular element out.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Wow, yeah, and then when did it click in, like
I'm back, I'm ready to go.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Here we go immediately, oh fuck from the gate.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah, it was just like I posted a video and
it was like one day, one point five million views,
you know, and it was just like Andrew's back, and
I was like, what the hell. I didn't think that
was going to happen. I thought that it was at
least gonna take, you know, and it still took some time.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Still. I would, you know, be out on the.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Streets and people would take a picture of me with
the mean caption, or I'd be out with family out
to eat and people would yell things at me out
of moving cars.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
You know.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
So there was things like that where you have situations
that do bring you back to a high cortisol suicidal
ideation state. However, you know, you remember, you're like, this
is what I do. And also I saw a lot
of copycasts trying to take my place when I was away, and.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
That's when I really came back.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
I felt like Michael Jordan and Kobe I was like,
I've seen all these imitation journalists.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Doing my style.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
When I was in the cancel jail, I was like,
this is not gonna happen cancelationships. I was like, I'm back,
and you know, now, if anything like that ever does
happen again, god forbid, I'll be able to respond in
a more swift way, which is like, I'm not taking
time off. I'm going to keep doing this forever, you know.
And I'm actually just a good person. And so once

(39:53):
I learned to, once I really owned up to the
fact that I don't have anything to hide from except
people's opinions of me. I'm not you know, diddy, you
know what I mean. Like, I'm like, I'm not worried
about something coming out. I'm just living in fear of
people saying negative things about me. But I know those
things aren't true. So I'm just gonna keep working.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
What are you aforid of? I mean people, do you
read your reviews? Yeah? Sometimes?

Speaker 3 (40:22):
And what if they go, why is this fucking guy
making shit? You get some nasty stuff out there?

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:28):
I mean, so how do Where's that hit you in
the heart?

Speaker 1 (40:32):
For sure?

Speaker 2 (40:32):
But you know it gets it's my heart's not cold.
But it's almost like getting canceled is almost like getting
vaccinated by hatred.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
That's do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Because you get such a mass dose of concentrated negativity
at one time that when it hits you in the future,
it doesn't really weaken your mental.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Immune system in the same way. So there used to
be words and phrases.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
That I would read about myself online and I could
just feel that cortisols spike as soon as I saw something.
And now I read something like that and I just say, oh,
they just don't know, and they will one day. There
will be a day where I explain to the world
what I've explained to you in private. However, I'm going
to work my ass off so much that by the

(41:17):
time I do blow the lid off that can of worms,
it'll be received in the proper way, because they're like,
this guy is not telling us this because he wants
to gain good favor after a cancelation. He's already got
it back, and he just wants us to know the
truth of what happened. But I'm just waiting on.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
That, yeah, right on, you know, when it's right, Oh, yeah,
you may.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
And me, I used to say to I, see, you know,
some people think I'm the greatest therapist coach in the world,
and some people think I'm a fucking joke.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
I gotta be right with both. It's right with both.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
And that's how you know you're winning. Right if someone
hates on you, you're doing something right, doing something right,
unless you're like a serial killer.

Speaker 3 (41:57):
But you talk about this new film, he got what's
what's what inspire that?

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Dear Kelly, Dear Kelly, dude? And how do people find
it too? Yeah, okay, how do they find it?

Speaker 2 (42:06):
You can go to www dot Dear kellyfilm dot com
and rent it for five dollars. But yeah, man, that
movie was like a spiritual sequel to the HBO Project
because I felt like with the HBO Project, I wasn't
really able to like kind of accomplish my goal, which
is figure out the underlying motivations outside of politics that
make people susceptible to like big time conspiracies. All this

(42:27):
kind of goes back to the old days for all
gas SnO breaks, when I would go to the flat
Earth conference and you know, flat earthers are out there,
so I'd post a video of a flat earther a
talking and a lot of the top comments would always say,
oh my god, this is my cousin Jeremy. I haven't
seen him since his workplace accident and they took him
off you know, his health insurance, you know, and all
of these or like, this is my dad, he hasn't

(42:48):
been the same since the divorce, or this is my brother,
he had act from football.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
And I started to realize that before a lot of these.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Folks jump down that rabbit hole, they had a traumatic
personal experience that kind of made them see the world
in this nihilistic, self victimizing black and white way. And
so the conspiracy theory movements kind of harvest that outrage
and give them a grander battle to fight outside of
their own And so Kelly kind of symbolized that because
I met him at the White Lives Matter rally carrying

(43:18):
four flags in hand, by himself, approaching four hundred ANTIFA protesters,
one man army, and he took a beating and he
remained on his feet. And so in between screaming about
you know, Kobe Bryant being assassinated by the Clintons and
you know, the Epstein pedophile cabal, he was also talking
about a landlord that he had, or a lender named

(43:39):
Bill Joyner, who apparently, according to him, gave him a
bad loan and seized his house during the financial crisis,
and I realized that the chicken definitely came before the egg.
His initial boogeyman Bill caused him to develop a worldview
and Bill fit pretty comfortably alongside the other evil, demonic
forces of the deep state.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Right wow soon, wow man?

Speaker 3 (44:03):
So what do you when people leave the film? What
do you want them? What do you want them to
go away with?

Speaker 2 (44:09):
I would say if the film could accomplish anything, it
would be to just calm Thanksgiving down for a lot
of American families, you know, because so much. I think
so many people have a family member like Kelly, Which
is why a lot of you know, people relate to
the film is It's been a tough past couple years,
especially after COVID, and I think that simultaneously with economic

(44:32):
cardship has also came a lot of insane misinformation and
its swallowed people's entire personalities up, you know. And I
think that I've got an uncle like Kelly. A lot
of people have parents like that who just something bad happens.
Some of these conspiracy movements come along and all of
a sudden they're believing in reptiles in the moon because
somebody took their health insurance away, and so I just
hope that it helps a lot of progressive types develop

(44:53):
an understanding for how people end up like that and
just encourage more cross political discourse.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
You know, you you.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Have a very savvy kind way of picking subject matters
that are very interesting and not making fun of them.
But you know, I think they're going to be interesting
characters and people want to see them, and some of
them are stunted in their growth.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Is that accurate?

Speaker 2 (45:17):
I'd say so some of them, some of them, especially
in the earlier stage.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
However, Kelly All all VHS footage points to the fact
that he was a normal and stable guy prior to
the foreclosure.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
Yeah, yeah, some so you really see, right, this guy
loses it and something happens for him. Yeah, let's talk.
I mean, that's a really problem, man. That fucking shit
breaks my heart.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Man. You've seen it a lot before.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Yeah, when somebody loses their home and then their kids
and it's a it's a real thing.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
Yeah, you've actually seen that in here, but yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
big time. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
And it's not at they're not drug addicts. Yeah, sometimes
there is thing called bad luck. Yeah, shit, happens the
factory closes. Yeah, they get laid off, they have an accident,
they can't go to work now, and then you know,
what was your biggest takeaway from doing that?

Speaker 2 (46:06):
And I mean personally as a documentary filmmaker, my biggest
takeaway is not to get so emotionally invested in the
outcome of a story to the point where you lose
yourself in it, like without spoilers, like when Kelly went
to rehabilitation and went to rehab, I was so emotionally
invested in how things were going to pan out for
him that I seriously cared about that story more than

(46:27):
my own life at a certain point, because I had
put so much time and effort into it. And I
think that there is something to be said as a
journalist for allowing a little bit of a degree of
separation to the point where you can still take a
breath and step away from your story.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
But with this story, there was none of that. Yeah, Wow,
what's next for you? Man's what are you thinking about
these days? Brother?

Speaker 2 (46:50):
Man?

Speaker 1 (46:50):
There's just so much to do.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
And now that I got this this documentary out the way,
I'm going to step away from political subjects for just
a little bit, you know, you know, I just I
want to have some fun again.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
So what does that mean? I don't know, man, I
want to get in the r V.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
I want to do a series about lost and endangered
languages in the US but less than a thousand speakers,
and the efforts to keep those alive.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
You know, track down cool shit like that.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
You know, that's super cool, not necessarily sad diagnoses of
politically charged Americans.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
It's important. But I've done it for like four years.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
Right, Yeah, so you need a break, you want something different.
We always need something different, right, Yeah? Are you happy
these days?

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Man? Yeah? Sometimes you look good. Brother. Thanks, I appreciate.
What are you doing to take care of yourself?

Speaker 2 (47:35):
A man, I've just been been living, living, giving clean life.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
I mean I'm not totally sober, but I really don't
party like that.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, but but how do you how'd you stop stuff partying? Yeah?
I mean people should know that you were not a
casual partier. No, tell them.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
You want to talk about the Las Vegas h When.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
You said Las Vegas, you can be referring to like
six different vendors.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Well, the last one I think the Yeah, we're there
for a couple of days and yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was not a normal party here.
It's no definitely an abnormal drinker and somebody who would
keep it going when everyone else wanted to go home.
And I remember at the peak, I'd have my morning
drinker friends. My afternoon drinker friends were mostly construction workers.
The happy hour crowd, right, the regular drinker eight pm

(48:23):
woo crowd, and then the two am to six am
after hours crowd. And they all thought that I was
partying for that specific time slot only, but I was
rotating between seven different friend.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Groups of drinkers. And you had your spots, Yeah, I
had my spots.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Man, The drawing room in Los Pheelos is the best
daytime drinking spot for anybody daytime.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah. Yeah. Where where's your two am spot? Two am?
It's called overpass in downtown. It's by the Men's Central Jail,
got it? And where do you do happy hour? Hananos?
Yeah for sure?

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Right, So people go way, Hey, how did you go
from all that craziness to not want to do that?

Speaker 1 (49:03):
What happened? Well?

Speaker 2 (49:05):
I would say the controversy had a lot to do
with it. I mean, when you're realizing that, like you know,
I would I'd go on a bender and things would
fall apart, and I would say, you know what, next time,
I'm just gonna do things a little bit differently. I'm
going to drink tequila instead of jamison. I'm gonna test
the cocaine with fentanyl test strips instead of just getting

(49:26):
it from a random guy. Right, I'm going to do
this and that, and you come up with all these
ways that you feel like you're making progress, but you're
really still.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Doing the same shit.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
And so I think it was just being in here
and hearing how a lot of people who have addictions
speak and realizing that we might have different addictions, but
we're all following the same logical loopholes, where we all
have our ways of rationalizing insane shit.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Oh I'm just a crazy guy, you know.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
And the self mythology of addiction can be romanticized, especially
when you're like I just get a lot of girls
and I love to party. You know, that's a way
of describing what could be sex addiction and drug addition,
you know what I mean. But society will normalizes certain
kinds of addictions and stigmatizes other kinds. So if you
defent and all everyone thinks you're a loser. But if

(50:13):
you're you know, having sex with ten girls a day
and doing an eight ball of coke every five hours,
everyone's like your scarface.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
Right, you know, yeah, no shit.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
And not that I was doing that. I'm not trying
to flex. It's definitely not doing anything close to that.
But you get the point. I'm trying to make logical exercise.
So yeah, I just I mean that situation, and also
just spending a lot of time sober and the clarity
that you achieve over time. You know, a couple of
weeks of not drinking, and just the conversations you're able
to have are so much different. And it's just you

(50:44):
reconnect with that sharpness that you had when you were
a kid. So if you didn't drink a lot as
a kid, where you like were excited to wake up
and you didn't need to bomb yourself with coldbrew after
another drinking to formulate a sentence. And just also I
think society is less accepting of heavy drinking when you're
in your late twenties versus early twenties. I have noticed,
you know, friends start settling down, you know what I mean.

(51:05):
It's like someone's on a two day bender. It's gets
kind of sad as you get closer to thirty and
you're like, damn, man, you're doing that. And having a
girlfriend who's dead sober that was the biggest part.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Oh yeah, that helps coming home even just about.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Three or four beers. I come home and she's pissed. Yeah,
you smell like shit, You smell like cigarettes. You sound
stupid that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Man, But you had your sick and tired of being
sick and tired moment.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Literally, I think that has to happen. It has to happen.
And just the immune immune effects, dude, just constantly being
under the weather. You don't get sick as much when
you don't party. It's a rarity, and even when you do,
you overcome it. I feel like I was constantly cycling
between seasonal flus and colds, and really it was just
a rock bottom moment. And I've been surprised. It surprised

(51:52):
me how I've been able to introduce moderate drinking every
so often, you know, but it works for me, it.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Works for you.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
Yeah, yeah, because you're good.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Where are you at with your higher power these days? Man?

Speaker 2 (52:05):
That's a good question. I probably should put more thought
into it. I mean, I just have, Yeah, my higher power.
I'm not going to lie to you, has been work,
you know, and I I think I was talking to
David Joe about that is the inspiration and he was like,
you're still an addict. You're addicted to working. And I
was like, all right, here's a real thing. So I'm
going to Jamaica with my girlfriend named Jamaica in two

(52:26):
days for two weeks. I'm turning my phone off because
are yeah, not off and I'm no social media apps.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
At least your life.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
What you've learned, getting your ass handed to you, the triumphs, yeah,
getting canceled, being in love, being on a three day run,
making great art?

Speaker 1 (52:46):
What's what do you want to tell folks right now? Man?
What do you want to say to the people, to
the young people.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
I've been thinking about the best message to give them,
and in general, don't be afraid to fail. Don't be
afraid to fail. Set your expectations low and surprise yourself
when you're able to achieve. Don't let your egos stop
you from trying again, and just fail, fail, fail, and

(53:13):
one day something will work for you.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
People don't even.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Know about all the projects that I did that failed?
They say, all gas, no breaks, Channel five. They don't
know about the four other shows or the books and everything.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Everything.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Life is just trials and tribulations, and so much of
today is based upon comparison. And you know, that's why
I've been given interviews to journalists who have like five
YouTube subscribers, because I'm like, you know, and some of
them are better at interviewing than people who work for Variety.
And that's just a fascinating thing. So just don't be
afraid to fail no matter what, and don't let your

(53:46):
ego get in the way. And it's hard with social media.
Sometimes achieving success can seem like such an uphill battle
because you're looking at people who have made huge ways
with millions of subscribers, even people like me, and you think, dude,
could never do that. But you can if you're willing
to put yourself out there and.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Not be afraid to fail. Right right on. It's number one,
Number one? What's number two? Have fun? Blast? Yeah, have
a blast? Right, have fun? Man?

Speaker 2 (54:14):
You know, if you're having a blast, people will pick
up on that and they'll want to have fun with you.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Well, welcome back to show, buddy, Thank you for your time.
I'm really fucking proud of you. I know you're going
to do some extraordinary things. You're a special guy. You're
tapped in. Don't fuck it up.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
I'm not going don't forget where you came from, and
I came from right here, right.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
One other thing that I was always inspired by you
is you learn the artist saying I don't know and
I need help, and you would send flares in real time.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Talk can we just saying on that The importance of
saying I need to help, I'm scared.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Like when I came here, Yeah, I remember everyone was
going around in the circles doing shares. I remember one
share that I had was like, what are your goals
for this week? I was like, I'm just trying to
regain the will to live, and everyone was like, holy.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Shit, man, you're serious.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I was one hundred percent serious. And people came up
to me after and they were like, let's hang out.
And my day got a lot better. But imagine if
I was like, I don't want to share.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Great, Yeah right, I'm doing great. Yeah, everything's good. You
know you got to tell people you're hurting. Oh yeah,
it's a mind reader. And remember that other people can
be hurting too.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
I remember when I was in the worst space coming
here a lot like it was as if every day
I was just holding on for dear life, absolute terror,
and then one day just kind of stopped right. It
wasn't gradual, it wasn't light at the end of the tunnel.
It was just, oh, I feel kind of good today,

(55:38):
and that feeling has stayed since then. You never know
when things will change. You just got to hold on.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Have you experienced that before? The old thing is never
quit before the miracle? You never know. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
You're like, what, like, I feel good now?

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Wow, I can't believe that.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
I thought this would never end right, And just remind
people that too when they're struggling.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
But you've got to have the community.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Got to always have tribe, You gotta have common folks,
and you gotta have somebody.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
That broke out. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
You got to hear the guy goes, I don't know
if I can fucking make it through without fucking jumping
front of this bus.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
Yeah, and somehow he's doing his life.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Now, right, Yeah, And it's that turnaround. You have to
have a lot of fortitude. But community is the basis.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Of that chase the base for that. All right, God
speed buddy, Thank you for your time. I can't wait
to see what you do next.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Yeah, it's an honor. And shout out to my mom
for letting me borrow this Gucci jacket.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Ye, you're not in your Wes Anderson now. Now I
had to come on Crispy because they went to casual
game on Hard. Is that mom brought that She's doing
your wardrobe now? Yeah, she was like, wear this or
shout out well done mom. Yeah, okay, all right.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
The Sales Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People in twenty eighth.
Av Our lead producer is Keith Carlick. Our executive prouser
is Lindsay Hoffman. Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll see you next week.