#312: Joseph Gordon-Levitt — Actor, Filmmaker, and Entrepreneur

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (@hitRECordJoe https://twitter.com/hitRECordJoe) is an actor whose career spans three decades, and ranges from television (3rd Rock from the Sun http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0749SC3WL/offsitoftimfe-20) to arthouse (Mysterious Skin http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002L6M6TY/offsitoftimfe-20, Brick http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000J2DAYM/offsitoftimfe-20) to multiplex (Inception http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0047WJ11G/offsitoftimfe-20, 500 Days of Summer http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002U1F32M/offsitoftimfe-20, Looper http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A9X7X6C/offsitoftimfe-20, Snowden http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B01LWYVHKV/offsitoftimfe-20). He made his feature screenwriting and directorial debut with Don Jon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00GJ0GOVO/offsitoftimfe-20 (Independent Spirit Award nomination, Best First Screenplay). He also founded and directs HITRECORD https://hitrecord.org/, an online community of artists emphasizing collaboration over self-promotion. HITRECORD has evolved into a "community-sourced" production company that publishes books, puts out records, produces videos for brands from LG to the ACLU, and has won an Emmy for its variety show HitRecord on TV https://youtu.be/Fl_wdODKGtM. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic http://foursigmatic.com/timtim. I’ve been drinking this company’s mushroom-infused coffees and elixirs for years, and now I’ve got something new to share: Mushroom Matcha. It’s a green tea designed as a coffee alternative, perfect for those of us trying to cut back on caffeine without losing its associated cognitive boost. And for the curious and disgusted: no, it doesn’t actually taste like mushrooms. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  No, we're just seeing an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, my pretty little Marguerite. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the habits, routines, life lessons, favorite books, and so on that you can use. In this episode, we have a true polymath, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on Twitter and Instagram, at HitRecordJoe, like HitRecord on a video camera, HitRecordJoe, and his site is hitrecord.org. Joe is an actor whose career spans three decades in ranges from television, i.e. Third Rock from the Sun, or I should say EG, to arthouse, mysterious skin, Brick, to multiplex, like Inception, 500 Days of Summer, Snowden. He made his feature screenwriting and directorial debut with Don John, which had an Independent Spirit Award nomination.

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  For Best First Screenplay, he also founded and directs HitRecord, an online community of artists, around 600,000 now, emphasizing collaboration over self-promotion. HitRecord has evolved into a community-sourced production company that publishes books, puts out records, produces videos for brands from LG to the ACLU, and has won an Emmy for its variety show HitRecord on TV. So, without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

• 2:42Tim Ferriss?

  Joe, welcome to the show.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.

• 2:45Tim Ferriss?

  Of course. It's been a while since we last caught up, and I have so many questions, and now I get to ask them in a public forum, so thank you for taking the time.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Well, I'm really excited to be on your show. It's, um, I'm a listener, longtime listener, first-time caller. And, uh, yeah, I'm flattered to be in the company of the people that you talk to on this show, man. It's really cool. Thank you.

• 3:11Tim Ferriss?

  Of course. It's completely my pleasure. And I thought we might start, and of course, where I start is not going to be where we go, since the format of my shows is generally closest to the movie Memento, as I mentioned before we got started. But I reached out to, as I often like to do with guests, a mutual friend to ask a question that I very frequently ask, which is, and I'll tell you the text that I sent, and you'll be able to guess who this is.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm curious.

• 3:39Tim Ferriss?

  Partially because I'm going to say the name. Evan, exclamation point.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:43Tim Ferriss?

  Ben Ages, man. Hope you're great. You know, finally interviewing Joe, and we've had a few chats and one dinner in the last year. Might you be able to suggest any particular topics, questions, or stories that could be fun or interesting to explore?

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Does his answer involve balls?

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  It doesn't, but now we have to talk about balls. So, balls goes on the list, for sure. How could it not? And he gave me a number of different thoughts and recommendations, and then he added, like, 20 minutes later, "And he can breathe fire if you tickle his feet. Have fun." So, I wanted to fact-check that first, because knowing Evan, I'm suspect. So, true or false, can you breathe fire if I tickle your feet?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  That depends on your state of mind.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  That's Evan Goldberg, by the way, for those wondering who Evan is.

• 4:34Tim Ferriss?

  Could you explain for people who are like, who the hell is Evan? Who is Evan and how did you first meet?

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, Evan Goldberg is known for being writing partners with Seth Rogen. And Seth and Evan are like the comedy pair. And they started by writing Superbad together and they wrote it about themselves. In fact, the character names of Superbad, if you go back and watch it again, are Seth and Evan. And I think, I think Michael Sarah is playing Evan, right? And Jonah Hill is playing Seth, if I'm not mistaken. Which is wildly inaccurate to who they are.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  But funny, anyway. And yeah, they're just two really hilarious guys. We did two movies together. The first one was 50/50 and then the second one was called The Night Before. And they're really, really smart dudes. Which is funny because they make, they make humor that probably doesn't get regarded as smart. But as with many things in movies, I find oftentimes the stuff that is considered lowbrow or sort of mainstream or pop is often the most intelligently constructed.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Which applies to them sometimes and not other times.

• 6:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they're very, very, very smart guys. And just to paint a picture for folks, Evan always wears shorts. He does all his meetings standing up, just about, which can cause some anxiety if you don't know why he's standing and don't realize that's what he always does. Or he'll be in like a deep squat, like an Olympic weightlifter, which is a whole.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Well, he says, he always says, sitting is the new smoking.

• 6:31Tim Ferriss?

  And a pro tip for anyone who might bump into these, these folks. If you sit down with them and they're brainstorming, I would advise you not to smoke with them unless you consider yourself.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  A really good smoker.

• 6:45Tim Ferriss?

  A really, really strong smoker.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  I've had that experience on both sides. Cause I've been working with them in phases of my life where I was smoking a lot and phases of my life where I was not smoking a lot. And the first time I met them, um, well, it wasn't the first time we met, but with the first time we really hung out, um, uh, they were asking me to do their movie, um, 50/50. And, uh, I flew up to Vancouver where they were. Time was short for reasons that don't really matter for the story. And they had to cast this role really quickly as happens all the time in show business.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  And, um, so I, I read the script and that night flew up to Vancouver to sit down with Seth and Evan and John Levine, who was directing the movie. And, uh, we had a good talk about the movie and talked about the things that one normally talks about. And then we sort of got to a point where that part of the meeting, you know, came to a natural conclusion. At which point Seth pulled out a joint and we went up to the roof and smoked and then had kind of what felt like the real meeting, even though it was, was not.

• 8:02Tim Ferriss?

  It's like meeting with Chinese bureaucrats, except they're not Chinese and you're using a different substance.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Is that how it goes?

• 8:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, they'll bring out something called Baijo, which is this horrifically strong and unpleasant alcohol. And that's, that's when the real meeting starts.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. Yeah. See, to me, smoking weed and strong alcohol could not be two experiences that are more different from each other. That's not everyone's experience and that, I mean, look, everyone has their, you know, their own, I think, reaction to different substances. And I'm not one of those weed smokers that encourages people to smoke weed because I do think it's different for everyone. But for me, um, at least at certain times in my life.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  It's not brain killing, it's quite the opposite. My brain would kind of leap places that it might not otherwise.

• 8:59Tim Ferriss?

  And those guys, well, I should, I should mention a few things for folks. So number one, if you're going to B C, like you're going into the dragon's den of high potency plant matter. So you really need to have your wits of value. Second, for those people, we won't spend too much time on this, but are interested in what master sommeliers of pot, i.e. Evan and Seth, would recommend, like the pot that they use for creative work, the pot that they use for functions, A, B, C, D, and E. We do talk about it in the podcast that I did with the two of those guys.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 9:35Tim Ferriss?

  You can check it out. The reason I brought him up, aside from the bullets and then the balls that I've put on to my list now that we will get to.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  That's just because, you know, they get paid lots of money to make jokes about balls.

• 9:45Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yes.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  He, he, he, uh, he surmounted my expectation. He exceeded my expectations by making the fire breathing joke. That was much more tasteful than a joke about my balls.

• 9:58Tim Ferriss?

  The first thing he said wasn't a joke at all, and you alluded to it just a moment ago, that I wanted to ask you that. First thing he said, and so I've, I've known Evan for a while. We've had plenty of exchanges. So the very first thing he says is, he's awesome. He saved our movie 50/50. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna edit what he said slightly afterwards, but he said, such and such a person was cast and he had to drop out and Joe replaced him in 24 hours, which is all the time we had before they shut us down and I forever love him for it. So why did you choose to do that movie?

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I should say, the person who had to drop out, it was, you know, it was a family emergency. So there was no bad blood between anybody.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  But, uh...

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, why do I choose? I mean, it's a it's a larger question that I think applies here the same as really any movie. Um, why choose any given movie? I mean, the first thing to say is I'm incredibly lucky to get to choose what role I do or don't take. And it wasn't always that way for many, many years. I started acting when I was six and uh for like a long, long time. Uh, up until actually pretty much just a few years ago. Uh, well, it's more than a few now, isn't it? I'm getting old, but uh, I would just audition and take the part that if I got a part, then that was

• 11:32Speaker 00

  great news and I would do the part that I got. I would win on lots of auditions and and so I I come from the the mentality of it's amazing to get a role. Um, however, um, in recent years, when I've been fortunate enough to be able to kind of pick what I do and don't do, it's sort of uh, the only power you have as an actor in a way is the power to say no. Because once, once you say yes, movies really aren't the actor's medium. And that's really cool and can also be frustrating depending on the context.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  Um, if you're working with a director and other filmmakers who you're on the same page with, it can be incredible to have them there, you know, sort of bringing forth and and uh, kind of refining and presenting the the work that you do. Um, but if you're not on the same page with somebody, it can be really frustrating because. You can try all you want to make the performance what you think it should be. But, you know, ultimately, it's gonna be up to the director. Because what I think often gets overlooked or under-emphasized is just how big a role all the other factors are.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  When you think you're watching an actor give a performance, and you are watching that actor, but you're also watching the work of the editor and, you know, the camera crew. You're listening to the work of the musicians and all, you know, productions, all these other factors that all contribute to the feeling that you get when you watch a performance. And, um, and so what makes me say yes is when I feel good and on the same page with mostly the director. Because it's, should be the director's job to kind of be steering the whole entire ship with all of those elements in the same direction. It's not always just the director.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Sometimes, like in the case of Fifty Fifty with Seth and Evan, there's John Levine, who is very much the director, but also Seth and Evan, who are producing, are, you know, big parts of the collaborative process. And they're, they're very collaborative in general, and that was one of the things I liked about their situation that they create is they, they really let the actors in and it's a very collaborative thing. You can feel like you trust them. They're not, uh, they're not gonna tell you they want one thing and be doing something else or try to trick you into anything. And, you know, that whole, there's, there's a phrase sometimes that gets said. People will say to a director, "Oh, you really got a great performance out of that actor." And, um, I was, feel like...

• 14:31Speaker 00

  That's not really how I would put it. And some directors do sort of try to take the proactive role and be like, it's up to me to get this performance out of you. So I'm gonna use my manipulation or whatever it takes to like force you into feeling what I need you to feel right now. Which to me feels adversarial and in my experience doesn't usually work as well as sort of let's all be on the same team and I'm gonna, you know, where the director is supporting the actor to help the actor do what they need to do. And then presenting all and making sure all the other elements are on the same page

• 15:15Speaker 00

  so that it all comes together in a cohesive way and the audience can feel it.

• 15:21Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned directing and as someone who's never been involved with film, although I've been involved with some unscripted television, which is a totally different animal.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Less different than you might think.

• 15:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I suppose that's true. A lot of unscripted television is exactly scripted, let's be clear. And just for people at home who are, who might watch some reality TV, if you ever see a lot of people standing in a kitchen and there's someone mixing a random thing in a bowl, like they're not actually mixing anything and why are they all standing in the kitchen because there's natural light, like no one in real life does that. So that was planned, but the...

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the difference between unscripted and scripted is if you call the writers, producers, you don't have to pay them as much.

• 16:13Tim Ferriss?

  So I read somewhere that you've talked about the ability to balance a thorough plan with spontaneity being the crux or at the crux of being a good director. And I don't want to misquote you, but...

• 16:30Speaker 00

  I think that's true.

• 16:32Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd love to hear, since you have worn many hats, you are not just an actor, you've done many other things. Could you tell us maybe a story or give an example of directors you've worked well with and things they've done to help you or to help the entire movie?

• 16:56Tim Ferriss?

  Move well. And if there are any particular stories and just what comes to mind for me as someone who really doesn't know much about this at all is I remember someone telling me at one point that instead of saying "action," Clint Eastwood would say, or maybe still says, "Whenever you're ready." That was his lead in. Not to say that makes a big difference, but there are very... And then Robert Rodriguez, living now in Austin, Texas as I do, I've gotten to know. And he'll play music in between takes. He'll actually hire artists to help people learn how to paint while they're on set as a way of...

• 17:33Speaker 00

  I did some painting on Rodriguez's set, yeah.

• 17:34Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, cool. That's right. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I'd be curious to know what directors you've worked with have done from that perspective to help things that you've found memorable. And then also, what you've done when directing other people and how you forged your own style as director?

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Sure. Um, let's see. Well, the first feature film I was ever in was a movie called "A River Runs Through It," which was directed by Robert Redford, who's a great actor turned director. And I was 10. And I remember, this is one of my favorite stories. We were doing a scene where I had to walk up to my dad at his desk and sort of show him something I had written. And we did a few takes and I wasn't hitting my mark.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  A mark is a little piece of tape that they put down on the floor so that when you walk into a room, you hit that mark. And that mark is important for you to hit because they've set up the camera, they've set up all the lights to all look good for the actor to stand in that exact position. And if the actor's standing in a different position, well, it'll look different. And by the way, the cinematographer for "A River Runs Through It" won an Oscar for this movie. And he, the DP, director of photography, which is the same as cinematographer.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  He walked up to me after the second time or whatever that I missed my mark and very nicely asked me to, you know, make sure that I stood on the mark, stood where that green piece of tape was on the floor. And I was nervous. I was 10. And I'd been on plenty of sets before. I'd been working, I think I said, since I was six. But no matter who you are, how long you've been doing it, it doesn't feel good to mess up twice and like have to, you know, get a note like that.

• 19:56Tim Ferriss?

  And you're not the only person on the set, right? I would imagine this is, you have more than, I mean, how many people are around you as you're filming something like this?

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Oh, 100, I'd say. Yeah, around 100.

• 20:12Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  And that's like a standard film crew-ish. And so I, you know, really was staring at that green piece of tape on the floor and knew that when we did the next take, I was definitely going to walk in and stand right exactly on that green piece of tape. And that's what I was focused on. And right before they rolled camera, Redford came up to me and just quietly said in my ear, "I never hit my marks." And that's all he said and he walked away.

• 20:51Speaker 00

  And that was so important because on the one hand, yes, it's, you know, here's this Oscar-winning cinematographer who's set up the shot and, you know, if the actor's not on the mark, the shot won't look the way that he wants it to look. But I think, I think Mr. Redford had, you know, a lot of wisdom there to know that no matter how good the shot looks, if your actor is focused on a green piece of tape on the floor, it's not gonna really be worth watching.

• 21:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's a great story. That is a great story. And I suppose that's, that's also part of the gift that someone like Redford brings to the table is that he has so much experience in the shoes of actor.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, and he was the first actor-director that I had ever worked for, and I really loved that. And that's a perfect example of why, because of just what you're getting at, that he could say with authority, "I never hit my marks," which I'm sure he's exaggerating. I'm sure he does hit his marks. But he just, he needed to, you know, correct my head there for a sec.

• 22:01Tim Ferriss?

  Any other, any other directors come to mind who have, have lent memorable experiences to your, to your memory banks?

• 22:12Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, sure, there's tons. I'm trying to think of, of a really good example. I mean, you know, this might sound like I'm name dropping, but watching Steven Spielberg set up a shot is pretty special. I remember asking him about shot listing. Shot listing is sort of a standard thing that a director does. It's just you write down kind of all the different shots that you want to get for a scene, because in any given scene, you might have, you know, you might want to capture it from three angles, four angles, five angles, depending on how you like to do it. So I asked him, and this is actually in 2011, when

• 22:55Speaker 00

  I was shooting for him in a movie called Lincoln, which was just the year before I got to direct a movie. So I was really thinking about it. I've always, ever since I was young, kind of followed directors and tried to soak up what I can. But at that time, I was really, really thinking about directing soon. And I asked him if he shotlisted. And he showed me in his script, a couple of like tiny little lines that were just...

• 23:30Speaker 00

  No one would have, I mean, a shot list, when I shot my movie, a shot list is like, was a long document with lots of description about all the different shots that we did for every scene. He had like a couple of pencil marks in, in his script because he just, I, I figured that he would be a meticulous shot lister as well because his shots are so well composed. And he, he doesn't really, or at least he didn't on Lincoln.

• 24:02Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that? Yeah, why is that? Why, why, why the difference?

• 24:06Speaker 00

  I think because he's just got such facility that he would prefer, and this gets back to the original point of spontaneity versus planning. He would prefer to watch what the actors do and figure out how he wanted to shoot it based on that, rather than have the actors have to fit into a pre-planned sort of shot list. And that's what he would do. And when we would, we would show up to rehearsal, he wouldn't be thinking about camera yet. Some directors do. He wouldn't.

• 24:43Tim Ferriss?

  Do you think he had, just out of curiosity, if you had to speculate, do you think he had shot lists earlier in his career in the sense that, was he, was he someone who learned the rules and followed the rules for a period of time until he was so expert at following the rules that he realized he could abandon some of them? Or do you think he's operated that way from the beginning? And I, I raise it in part because I recently watched a documentary, and I think it's simply titled Spielberg, about his life. And it's a fantastic HBO documentary. I, I enjoyed it at least. It painted a very human picture of him, including his frailties and weaknesses and failures and how he's contended with them. But do

• 25:28Tim Ferriss?

  you think that he's always operated that way? Or that he later, only having become this virtuoso with confidence, then abandoned the shot list?

• 25:39Speaker 00

  I would guess the former. I can't confirm that, and I never quite asked him that, but I would guess that when he was shooting Jaws, or when he was shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark, that he had some shot lists. That would be my guess.

• 25:52Tim Ferriss?

  Although he was famous for a while for going wildly over budget, so who knows?

• 25:59Speaker 00

  Well, and you know the story about the shark fin. That's sort of a, that's an old known story.

• 26:04Tim Ferriss?

  Why don't you tell the story? Because it's so good.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. For those of you out there who, like my wife, don't know the lore of movies, if you've ever seen Jaws, which is one of the most powerful movies ever, it's about a shark. And you never see the shark, but you see its fin sticking out of the water. And the story goes, and I never asked him about this because I'm sure he's sick of talking about it, but the story goes that they had planned to see the shark a lot in the movie, and they had built this big animatronic shark, and they had, you know.

• 26:43Tim Ferriss?

  Nicknamed Bruce.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  I didn't know that detail. That's funny.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  And it didn't work. They got on set and, like, you know, like anything technical, it fucked up.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Right when you needed it to work.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  And and so his solution was, okay, well, we can't see the shark. Let's just, can we make it work so that we can see its fin sticking out of the water? And if you see the movie, it's so effective. The shark is so much scarier because you never see it. You just see this fin. And it's so ominous and they didn't know that that was gonna happen. That speaks to the point you brought up again. Spontaneity versus pre-planning. That's exactly being a film director. You're on a set.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  Days of production are so expensive, you know, and directing a movie is like a two year process wherein you're actually shooting for like two months of it. But you're spending, I don't know what the actual number is, but some huge percentage of your budget is going into this very small sliver of time. And so you're always on the clock and you've planned everything, but then something else will happen. Either something will fuck up or some new great idea will emerge all of a sudden and it's up to you to decide at that moment on the clock.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Should I stick to the plan or should I go with this new thing that just came up? And the ones who can kind of make that decision well, in my experience, are the best directors.

• 28:33Tim Ferriss?

  So I have, I have a number of follow up questions, but I'll also just mention something that I stuck in my mind from a director, even though I've never been directed per se, as you have. I mentioned Robert Rodriguez and he was in, he's been in the last two of my books, in fact, both Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentorism was on this podcast. That's when I first met him in person was to have him on this podcast. And he said to me at one point, something along the lines of the following, and you've met Robert, so you can imagine him saying this with this gigantic smile on his face because he always seems to have a big gigantic smile on his face.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  He has a lot of fun.

• 29:15Tim Ferriss?

  And he's a big dude, so it's an especially big smile. He's like the Tony Robbins of filmmaking. He's always optimistic. I shouldn't say always, but in my experience with him, he's a very upbeat dude. And he said, you know, I have these young filmmakers come to me all the time and they say, yeah, you know, I ran this project, I was working on this thing, but the lighting didn't work and then the, you know, the grip fucked this thing up and then this and this and this. And he said, the point I always make is like, that's your job is that nothing is going to work.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's well put.

• 29:47Tim Ferriss?

  Like they don't understand that the job description of filmmaker is like, nothing is going to work.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  It's true. Yeah. If everything worked, the director would just be able to show up and say, action and cut, kinda.

• 29:59Tim Ferriss?

  Like, right.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Because you should, like, if everything was done properly, then the actors will have rehearsed and kind of know what they're gonna do and every, you know, everything should be shotlisted and prepared and, I mean, of course, everyone has their own methods, but, um, the truth is that a director does do a lot more than action and cut, and I think it comes back to the same thing that we're, we're talking about is like, because on the day, things always arise that you don't expect and you're really, there has to be one person who's making those decisions because, uh, it would take too long if, if those decisions were made by committee.

• 30:33Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Too expensive, can't afford the delays. And, uh, on, on the Jaws, uh, point, in addition to the fin, for those people who have seen or want to see it, there, there are these open water scenes, which by the way, much, much more complex than Spielberg expected to film. And so the, even the fin wa- was, uh, difficult to use and they didn't want to overuse it, so they came up with on the spot, the idea of using these barrels to track the shark. And, uh, for those of you who want to check it out, you can revisit that, but it was absolutely,

• 31:16Tim Ferriss?

  uh, an example of the improvising that, that you mentioned, the, the ability to improvise. How did you learn to direct? Now, putting, putting aside, if possible, the fact that you'd been directed so much. So you've been absorbing through osmosis perhaps, quite a bit, given your career, but when you knew that on the horizon, you're gonna be directing your own film, and how did you go about learning more about directing, the craft, maybe the technical side, whatever it is that you felt you needed to know? What was your approach to learning how to do that?

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, first of all, I just had the advantage of being on a set a lot and watching a lot of directors on a set.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  So that part kinda came naturally. Um, but there's a lot more to directing than the time on the set. I think the other, one other thing that I came to focus on though, um, was editing.

• 32:16Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Um, cause as an actor, you never get to be in the editing room. You're not really aware of that whole process and it's a huge, huge part of what makes a movie. And, um, I love editing. I remember when I was growing up, I always wanted to edit, but you, you couldn't yet. That wasn't available to consumers yet. Sounds hard to believe now, cause you can, you know, edit video on your phone nowadays. But when I was, you know, first starting to, you know, make fun little videos with my buddies when I was 10 or whatever, and we were using our family video camera, which, you know, weighed more than 50 iPhones all duct taped together.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  Um, uh, editing was sort of a holy grail. Um, because we would try something and be like, oh wait, I wish we could do it again. But you kinda can't do it again unless you can edit. Um, and you kinda could if you set it up. It was a real pain in the ass if you tried to like dub, uh, what you had shot on the video camera onto an old VHS, VCR and, you know, hit the pause button at just the right moment and then find the next thing and dub again. And hopefully the cut was sorta smooth and, but it never was. And, um, anyway, when, when editing finally became something you could just do on a computer at home, uh, I was thrilled.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  And for my 21st birthday, I got myself a new computer and my first copy of Final Cut Pro. And, uh, this is like 2002. And, um,

• 34:06Speaker 00

  I mean, I ended up dropping out of college because I was just so fascinated with sitting there and editing and.

• 34:12Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so just, just.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  Sorry, I skipped ahead.

• 34:14Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no, we're not skipping ahead. We're jumping all over to the right places. So just for people who don't have this context, maybe we should revisit this. So you went from show business, so to speak, back to school and then the, so this was one of the catalyzing events then for leaving school was getting this final cut, bro?

• 34:36Speaker 00

  It was 100% decatalyzing event because I would be sitting there at night and I was supposed to be writing a paper for college and all I wanted to do was edit. And I was like, I think I have to drop out of school. And I did.

• 34:51Tim Ferriss?

  All right. You know, there's, there's no set script for this conversation. So let's, let's talk about that for a second. We can come back to directing because I want to certainly talk more about your own experience with your film.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:05Tim Ferriss?

  But why did you, of all things, why go back to school? Why did you decide, place us in time? Like, where were you? What were you doing when you decided to go back to school? And why? Because a lot of folks are thinking of you, your name, impressive career. Why do that? What was, what was the scene? If you can set us up with a description of where you were in life and how you made that decision?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Uh, well, I mean, I've been acting since I was six years old and was lucky enough to do it pretty consistently throughout my childhood and adolescence.

• 35:44Tim Ferriss?

  Is it true, just as a quick side note, because I've been drinking green tea since we started, so now I have more personality. Is it true that you used to blow out your birthday candles wishing for gigs or something like that? Is, am I making that up? Am I hallucinating? Is that?

• 35:58Speaker 00

  No, that's, that's something in a magazine that's true.

• 36:00Tim Ferriss?

  Great. There's a lot in the magazines that may not be true. Okay, cool. So I didn't mean to interrupt though. So yes, you've been, you'd had this long career already, like starting at age six and.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, well, I'd always wanted to go to college. You know, my, my dad actually dropped out of college, but my mom really spoke very highly of university and, and even got her masters. And.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  I was just always really looking forward to that. I'd always liked school. I was always sort of studious. I liked learning.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  And always frankly, found elementary school, junior high, high school, a little

• 36:51Speaker 00

  lacking in what I was really wanting. And I was hoping that once I got to college, then I would like be in these classes that were just blowing my mind all the time. And so, yeah, and I think also besides, besides the academics,

• 37:09Speaker 00

  I wanted to not know my future. I, I always had.

• 37:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right. I'd never, that makes perfect sense.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  I, I, you know, I was around all my friends who were, you know, some of them were going to college, some of them weren't, but they all were, you know, finishing high school and starting off on life and like figuring out what they wanted to do or what they wanted to be and, I felt like, wait, I shouldn't, I shouldn't just let my six-year-old self make the decision for me of what I'm gonna be for my whole life. I should, I should be also making that decision, not just six-year-old me. And, and so I thought it'd be, it'd be right to quit acting for a while and just go to school and

• 38:01Speaker 00

  that's what I did. And I think is

• 38:05Speaker 00

  one of the, one of the better decisions I've ever made. Both to quit for a while and also to move away from home.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  You know, not everybody

• 38:17Speaker 00

  can afford to move away from home, but luckily I, I was able to and living in a new city, while on the one hand, really challenging, is a huge growth spurt, just for who you are and what you think and what you know and I loved moving away.

• 38:37Tim Ferriss?

  Where, where were you moving from and where did you move to?

• 38:41Speaker 00

  I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, Sherman Oaks, which is a suburb in LA. Although all of LA is sort of a suburb because it doesn't have a center like a conventional city, but, but this is really the suburbs and

• 38:59Speaker 00

  and I moved to New York City, like Manhattan. Columbia University is where I went. And, um, oh, I mean, I still miss New York. I don't live there anymore, but New York City's just incredible. Walking around, you know, in, in LA, you don't walk so much. You mostly drive places. And my favorite thing, still my favorite thing to do in New York is not any particular restaurant or bar or site or anything. It's just walk out your door, wherever you are, and walk.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  And see what you see and see who you see. And I, I get so much inspiration from doing that whenever I go to that city.

• 39:49Tim Ferriss?

  It is an amazing city. Now, you ultimately, as you mentioned not too long ago, found Final Cut and that was the end of school. What did you choose to major in and why? And besides moving away from home, why did you find it to be a valuable experience?

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Well, um, I was about halfway through a bachelor's when I decided to drop out. So choosing a major was looming, but I never actually had to do it. But I was, uh, it would have been a French major because, uh, by that time I was taking my classes in French. Cause I, I frankly, and this isn't any sort of slight Columbia University where I went. I just found myself, I think, underwhelmed in the academic setting.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  I, there were some classes that really interested me, but one thing I really, that really bothered me was, um, you were supposed to read so much that there was no way you could read it thoroughly.

• 40:54Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  And, uh, I felt like, uh, I felt like that's what I had been trying to get away from high school where you're having to like prove to someone that you read something and it's kind of condescending and not, not very enriching. And I thought college was going to be something more than that. But, um, and maybe it would have been if I were using it right, or maybe it would have been if I had stuck around, um, and, uh, you know, declared a major. But, um, but what I really did like was studying in French because then no matter what. I was learning, just sitting in the class and listening to the teacher speak French, or trying to read something in French.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Kind of, no matter what the subject matter, no matter what the paper was supposed to be on, or what the test was, or anything, just the fact that it was in another language meant I was learning. And I had always wanted to speak another language. I felt, I felt sort of inferior for not speaking more than one language. And, and I got to the point where, I mean, I wouldn't say that I'm like a fluent French speaker, like someone who lives there, but, you know, I can have a conversation with someone in French. I can read the newspaper slowly. And, and it really taught me a lot about, even about English, just about, and about language to kind of have more than one in my head.

• 42:15Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you choose French?

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Uh, just, I think mostly because I liked French movies.

• 42:21Tim Ferriss?

  That's a perfectly good reason.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  An aesthetic thing. And my mom studied French, so I'd, I'd always kind of had that in the air, a sort of a Francophilia. And she lived in France for a number of years and, and, you know, spoke about it really romantically. And that's one of my favorite moments in life is like walking through Paris with my mom and her being like, "This is where I worked when I was younger than you are now. And I loved it here." There was a real completion there to getting to do that with her. Nowadays, if, you know, there's probably other languages that'd be much more practical to learn, but, and not just nowadays, back then too.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  But, but yeah, aesthetically, I just always found it really appealing. And I liked it.

• 43:13Tim Ferriss?

  I think with language, not to, not to interject, or add too much of my, my own thoughts here, but languages can-

• 43:22Speaker 00

  I want your thoughts.

• 43:23Tim Ferriss?

  Languages can be very challenging. And I deeply feel that if you, as a native speaker, say of English, want to learn a language, that you should, unless you need to absolutely get a job that requires another language. For instance, if you are a ethnic Indian living in Dubai, and you need to speak English to work in the hospitality industries in some capacity.

• 43:52Tim Ferriss?

  Focus on English. Otherwise, I would suggest you follow your interests. In this case, yours was spurred by exposure to French films because it's going to be, there are going to be challenging times and there are going to be difficulties along the road and you want to have the enthusiasm and the passion that you feel for not just the language but the culture to help you get over those hurdles. And I remember very clearly when I was just starting as an East Asian Studies major in college to take Chinese. I'd been taking Japanese and I just started Chinese and there

• 44:35Tim Ferriss?

  were 60 kids in the class. Within two weeks, there were 12 kids in the class because the pronunciation and so on is so alien and so strenuous, so stressful, I should say more accurately, that it weeds out a lot of people who are, say, just there to develop a toolkit for a prospective career that may or may not even materialize later. It's the people who are obsessed with something really odd, like the I Ching, or obsessed with calligraphy, or some weird at- not-.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  There are amazing Chinese movies.

• 45:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, and there are amazing Chinese movies. This is very, very true. But I don't want to take us down too far, a rabbit hole, on the Chinese and so on. I want to come back to the question of directing, the topic of directing your own movies. You've directed quite a number. You mentioned when you were working with Spielberg, I suppose it was maybe a year later or a year and a half later, you were going to be directing your own film. Which film was that?

• 45:34Speaker 00

  That movie's called Don John.

• 45:36Tim Ferriss?

  So Don John, you, as I understand it, wrote, directed, and starred in. Don John. How did that, what's the creation story? Why did you choose to make this movie, to write, direct, and star in it?

• 45:55Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe you could give just a synopsis of the, not necessarily a synopsis, but a a sentence or two, or three, or four, or five, however many you like, on the, uh, the subject matter.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Well, Don John's, uh, sort of a off take on the old Don Juan story, who's, uh, you know, a mythical womanizer. And it's about a guy who's addicted to pornography. And who, I think, more than just being addicted to pornography, sort of objectifies everything in his life, not only women, but, uh, his friends, his family, his own body, uh, his car, his god. Uh, he treats everything as sort of an object, much the same way as he treats, um, the women that he jerks off to when he's watching porn.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Um, and, uh, and has to sort of have a self-realization about that. And it's sort of a coming-of-age story. A coming-of-age story. And, uh, um, and, uh, why? Why did I want to tell that story?

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Well, it's, it's in many, it's in certain ways, a story about media, which, uh, is something that I've focused on my whole life. And, uh, like I was saying, a story about, um, how people objectify other people. And I guess, without, without trying to sound, uh, like I'm complaining, I have felt kind of objectified myself, um, throughout my life.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Because, uh, of, of being in the media.

• 47:38Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  And, uh, and, and besides that, sort of feeling uncomfortable for me, and there were times in my life when I felt really uncomfortable, I had, I mean, I, I had real anxiety about it when I was younger, and I've, I've gotten more comfortable with it now. But, um, besides that, I also think that, uh, it's not really good for the objectifier either, to, for, for people out there who watch these faces on screens, uh, and, and see them as these, I don't know, almost deified, uh, special.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Entities that are, you know, more important, or more attractive, or, you know, more worthy of celebration than The Watcher. I think that's a really prominent idea in our culture, and one that deserves to be attacked and made fun of. And so that's what the movie's sort of about.

• 48:51Tim Ferriss?

  What was hardest about making that movie? Or getting it distributed, could be anything. What were some of the hardest aspects of that, if any, come to mind?

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, writing's really hard. It's super fun, I love writing, but it's hard. I think partially because it's more of a loner sport.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  At least, that one was for me. I wrote it myself, and I had a great time doing it. But I think probably if you ask what's the hardest part, it's those moments where, you know, I'll be sitting there, having spent who knows how many hours on this over the last X years, trying to make this script something that I think is good, and hearing a voice in my head saying, "This has all been a waste of time. You should probably just stop now." That kind of thing.

• 49:56Tim Ferriss?

  That's kind of the story of my life right there.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  And, because there's no one you can really turn to, to fight that voice. You have to just... In those moments, you just kind of have to ignore it. You know, or if the voice is really getting the better of you, I found, I would just have to be like, "Okay, I'm gonna have to stop for now. I'll come back to this later."

• 50:26Tim Ferriss?

  Were there any books, or resources, or screenplays that you found particularly helpful or motivating in the process of writing this?

• 50:36Speaker 00

  I never read a book about screenwriting. I know they're out there. I've glanced at some. I skimmed through one recently.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  Called Save the Cat, which was, I thought, smart in a lot of ways. But also, with all due respect to the smart guy who wrote it, sort of cynical and off putting in times. And, yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I don't want to say that I don't recommend people read those books, because there are probably some really good, good thoughts in those screenwriting books that sort of talk about conventional structure and the three acts and things like that.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  I've sort of, I guess, got to take, in a way, a shortcut, in a way, a long cut, because I've just been around it and I've read so many scripts over the years. I mean, my mom was reading me scripts before I could read. And...

• 51:42Tim Ferriss?

  It's a good, good advantage.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I have had a certain osmosis, I guess. And, look, I probably learned as much from the bad scripts as from the good scripts. And I've certainly read way more bad scripts than good scripts. And I also have, you know, for me, writing is a lot like acting. When you're, when you're acting, you spend a lot of time with your script. And so, I can, you know, when I'm writing a scene, I'm treating it much like I do when I'm preparing to act in that scene. And then I can read it and be like, mm, no, that doesn't feel good.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  And I've had, you know, so many experiences as an actor where you're sitting there with a scene and being like, I just wish that this line was phrased a little differently. And when you're the writer, you can just rewrite it, which is nice.

• 52:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  And depending on the director you're working with, sometimes you can come in and say, you know, hey, can I say this a little bit differently? And...

• 52:59Speaker 00

  That goes back to what we were saying about a director before. That's, that's exactly one of those moments where a director has to go, huh, we've been sitting with that line that way for all this time and now I have to tell the actor yes or no. Yes, you can change it or no, don't. And there's, you know, ways to approach that. You can, you can always say, let's try it both ways. Or sometimes I found usually the actors were right.

• 53:25Speaker 00

  And the dialogue that I wrote was much improved by the actors in Don John, Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore and, and other ones too, who, who said lines that were ultimately, you know, sometimes subtly different, sometimes quite a bit different than what I wrote. And, and I think really benefited.

• 53:48Tim Ferriss?

  So Joe, you mentioned being objectified, having experienced being objectified. And this, this leads me to want to ask a question about fame in general. Because I have many listeners, many readers, who say are on Instagram or on fill in the blank social networks, Snapchat, whatever it might be. And their very explicit goal is to be as famous as possible, to have as many followers, among other things. There are different indicators that they would use to determine whether they are famous enough or not. But that is a real explicit goal for a lot of folks.

• 54:30Tim Ferriss?

  Could you maybe share what you would say to someone who is currently holding in mind being famous as a goal?

• 54:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  This is something I think about a lot.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  Because I guess I've experienced it to some degree. And.

• 54:53Tim Ferriss?

  Being famous? I would say so.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Well, from what I've seen and experienced,

• 55:02Speaker 00

  fame doesn't necessarily make you happy.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  And I think the assumption on the part of the people you're describing is that if they get a certain amount famous, then they'll be happy.

• 55:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Because that's really what we all want is to be happy.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Depending on how you define the word happiness, but I think that sort of is the definition of happiness in a way is what what we want to be.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  And the people that I know that have

• 55:36Speaker 00

  whatever amount of fame, some of them are happy, some of them are not happy. And the fame isn't what makes them happy.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  You know, what makes somebody happy, I think, is,

• 55:53Speaker 00

  you know, do you have your health? Do you have good people around you? Do you get to do things that you like doing? And and that's where it gets complicated because sometimes having a certain amount of fame does allow you to do the things that you want to do.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  So it's not a simple answer. And.

• 56:14Tim Ferriss?

  And there are trade offs also, right? It's not like you just get the upside when you have a lot of public exposure. I mean, I know even in my tiny fake famous 14 minutes into my 15 minutes of fame capacity, I've had to sell houses before because a crazy person has gotten a hold of the address and shown up,

• 56:39Tim Ferriss?

  certainly without any announcement. And there's been a sort of perceived level of threat associated with that.

• 56:48Tim Ferriss?

  And and that isn't one one hundredth of what you've experienced. So there are sort of commensurate with your degree of fame, very real trade offs.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. There there are real life trade offs like that. Although I would say the.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  The thing that's that's much more impactful isn't um real life invasion of privacy in your physical space, it's more an invasion into your uh mental, to your mental space, into your your own identity. And and I don't think this is just restricted to um being famous, and especially now that the lines have been blurred so much between uh who's famous and who's not famous. It used to be much more clear cut, but nowadays you can be, like you said, on Instagram with a certain number of followers and you can, you know, have,

• 57:45Speaker 00

  fame is much more of a spectrum now. And and I think um it can be really toxic because what, because it's really addictive, I think. Um, and uh, and I think there's a reason for it. I don't I don't think it's like evil or something. Um, you know, if you go back, I like to think of things in terms of um how it evolved. And I like to think of early humans, like, you know, like at the beginning of 2001 or something. Um, and if you go back to early, early human-like creatures out on the savanna trying to survive, it probably

• 58:29Speaker 00

  was an advantage if everyone in your tribe or your pack or whatever you want to call it, knew you. That probably meant that you were more likely to survive and pass on your genes. And so Right. I think there is something biological in us that wants that attention. And uh, and so it's it's not evil if you feel that urge. Um, I think it's pretty natural. But I think that urge now in the context of modern civilization can be can be really addictive and sort of poisonous because what happens is you start

• 59:06Speaker 00

  Seeing yourself through the eyes of others more and more of the time. And you start, and I think social media is really like created a giant leap forward in this direction. And it's the kind of thing that used to be reserved for very famous people who are maybe stalked by paparazzi or whatever, but now everybody's their own paparazzi. And so I feel like I see it a lot where, you know, there's a good word to describe

• 59:48Speaker 00

  it, which I learned recently, which is intrinsic versus extrinsic. If you're intrinsically motivated, it means that your motivation for whatever it might be is kind of coming from within yourself versus being extrinsically motivated is when your motivation's coming from without, from other people, from wanting to do things because of how other people will perceive it. And I think that's a recipe for unhappiness usually. Not absolutely. This isn't a case of black or white, and there's plenty of virtue to wanting to do things that will make other people happy, et cetera.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  But when it really gets that deep inside your head where your whole identity is sort of, becomes a performance, I think that that can be unhealthy. It can really, it can really do a number on your head. And I've seen it. And I've spent my whole life kind of trying to avoid that, sometimes probably over zealously. And I'm sometimes kind of overprotective or overly allergic to the trappings of fame, et cetera.

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  But I'm so, I think, scared of falling down that rabbit hole of becoming overly extrinsically motivated that I really try to stay away. And especially when it comes to art, which, you know, art and fame have a, are sort of odd bedfellows, but.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Because, you know, if you want to be a musician and you want to be an actor, a lot of people, I imagine, the people you're describing who really want to be famous, they want to be famous by becoming actors or becoming musicians or becoming some other kind of artist. And again, it's complicated because on the one hand, it might mean that, oh, well, that's that's means that my my work is resonating with lots of people and that's not necessarily bad. But if you're only doing it for that, I feel like that's kind of hollow. And I personally feel like I can hear it in in like, or see it in in someone's performance. I won't, you know, name any artist in particular, but there are, sometimes I'll see a performance

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  in a movie or like, I'll hear a song and I'll be like, mm, I just feel, I feel like they're, they're performing for their, their, their fame, not, not for them, for themselves, for something that's, that's inside of them.

• 1:02:38Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you're alluding to something that has always impressed me about you and

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  You know what? Sorry, I'm, I want to hear what you're, but I just want to, I want to also add, I think it's important because I just sort of pointed my finger at others. I want to say, I'm not entirely innocent of that at all. I, and that's probably why it scares me also is because I've felt it in myself. There's, it's very seductive and, and, and I'm sure I've been guilty of it in moments or in, in big times or, you know, like I, I've been very guilty of it at times, I'm sure. But I really try to keep an eye on it because, because I, I've, I've kind of, I've seen what it, what it can do to other people and even to, to myself.

• 1:03:22Tim Ferriss?

  Right. I mean, unabated, unarrested, uninterrupted, if you allow that.

• 1:03:28Tim Ferriss?

  That, I'm not gonna say infection, because like you said, there are some very plausible explanations for why we want or crave social acceptance or validation. But if you apply jet fuel and steroids to it in the form of these technological tools that we now have at our disposal, if all you want is your face to be recognized by 200,000 more people on Instagram, or a million and a half more people on Instagram, whatever it might be, it can be very toxic, as you noted. And what I was, what I was leading up to is the observation, and this may be incorrect, but at least in a few cases, it seems to be true, that you've taken very deliberate

• 1:04:09Tim Ferriss?

  breaks from acting, from your, your career in entertainment, let's call it. And that goes back to your break for school, where you didn't want to, in an unquestioning way, continue on a path that you were put on at age six, right? So there was a deliberate pattern interrupt. And then later, you took a bunch of time off when you had kids. And it's, I would imagine that in entertainment, perhaps like in technology and the world

• 1:04:52Tim Ferriss?

  of startups and venture capital and so on, there's a, there has to be, and I want you to poke holes in this if it's not true, but there has to be a, a degree of fear of missing out in the industries that are associated, right? There is a, there must be people who continue to take whatever jobs they can get because they have a fear of becoming irrelevant. That if they step outside of that slipstream, that no one will remember them X number of years or X number of months later. So they, they make compromises. And I'd love to hear, you could talk about any, any number of them, but how have you

• 1:05:36Tim Ferriss?

  decided, what has been the self-talk and the thinking as you decide to take breaks?

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, certainly, you're right. The, the FOMO is real, and it's not just a fear.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  Because I think maybe even more in show business than maybe any other industry in a certain way, it's, it's, you know, who gets a job as an actor is very, very emotionally driven.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  You know, like studios have some metrics and stuff that they look at and they have their math formulas about, you know, what actors are in what movies that make what amounts of money.

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  But compared to, say, what goes on in Silicon Valley, which is really, really data-driven, by the way, only having learned what that even means fairly recently, but, but it's really emotionally driven who gets hired as an actor. And so it's a lot about, you know, quote unquote, heat. And if you stop, you're, yeah, your heat's gonna die down. And it's a real opportunity cost of taking a break. But the two big breaks that you're talking about, one, when I quit acting for a while

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  to go to college, and another, recently, I had kids and took a lot of time off. And I'm still kind of taking up, I'm working a lot less right now than I was before I had kids.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Of course, there's, there's a professional opportunity cost there, but it's, it's a pretty simple comparison. Like, what do I care about more? And I, I don't want to say that, I mean, look, talking about parenting is really, really tough because I have found as, as a parent, because everybody's got their own life, everybody's got a unique scenario, and everybody makes their choices. And those choices are, they're, they're such high stakes choices that I, I feel bad even already just saying what I said, because I don't want to imply that if someone wasn't able to take as much time off as I was, that they were somehow doing it a service to their kids. I don't think that's necessarily true. I, I think that's too reductive and it's not that simple.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  Everybody's got to do, you know, what they've got to do. That said, I, I love having had the chance to

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Work less and spend more time with my kids.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  And I do think it's wonderful that there are some countries in the world that that, you know, afford people maternity leave and even paternity leave. That's a lot less common in the US. And I was just fortunate enough to have have made money in my life where I can afford to do it. And

• 1:08:47Tim Ferriss?

  Have you had people try to talk you out of taking breaks? Or has that not really been something you've you've encountered?

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  You know,

• 1:08:58Tim Ferriss?

  Or you commit to taking a break and then you get a call from a manager, agent, whoever it might be, and they say, I know you're on break, but we've got this one thing and I think it's worth considering. Let's talk about it.

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  That's funny, because what that makes me think of is, so I have a longtime agent named Ward Savala, who

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  he was actually an agent of mine assistant when I quit acting and went to school. And he was the one calling me when I was at school saying like, I know you're going to school, but you might want to consider getting back into acting. And and then once my heat had died all the way down and in my early twenties and I wanted to get back into acting. And by the way, I had been known for being on like a TV comedy and stuff and I didn't want to do that anymore. I wanted to do, you know, sort of dramatic and independent films and stuff. And no one really thought that I could do that. And no one really thought that I was going to have much more of a career. I thought, you know, I think

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  pretty much all of my agents thought, well, you're that kid that was on that show. And that's where it ends. And that's what happens with most kids who are on shows. For better or worse.

• 1:10:13Tim Ferriss?

  What was the show? What was the show in

• 1:10:16Speaker 00

  I was on Third Rock from the Sun from age 13 to 19.

• 1:10:20Tim Ferriss?

  Big show.

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  Thank you. Thank you. And one I'm very proud of and, you know, remember very fondly, but

• 1:10:28Speaker 00

  Warren was the only one, really, who kinda kept calling me and saying like, "I think you could be good at doing the things that you wanna do." And he's still my agent. And he was the one sort of trying to coax me back into acting when I was taking a break for college. But all these years later, when I had kids, he didn't say one thing like that. Because he knows me too well, and we're friends, and he wouldn't. You know, he had nothing but respect for me taking the time off that I did. And, you know, any agents out there listening, take note.

• 1:11:08Tim Ferriss?

  That is proper etiquette.

• 1:11:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, really, really, really well done, I think. And which isn't to say that he didn't tell me about the opportunity costs, because he did. That's his job. But when he would tell me about the opportunity costs, he wouldn't do it in any kind of passive-aggressive way or like, you know, threaten me. He would just be telling me the truth, and that's what's so good about him as an agent. He really just tells me the, you know, his perception of the truth of the business, which is not always kind, but is the most useful information.

• 1:11:41Tim Ferriss?

  When you were at that point, at nineteen, let's just say, and there are many non-believers in your ability to explore these other types of acting and so on, right? And I'm looking at a piece from The Guardian, and feel free to correct this, because there are misquotes everywhere about everyone.

• 1:12:07Tim Ferriss?

  But when you were asked what type of acting you would like to do, you wanted to be in a movie that might play Sundance or something by Quentin Tarantino. And then it comes-

• 1:12:15Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 1:12:16Tim Ferriss?

  And then it comes to- There was a good year, or if not more, being turned away by casting directors. And then the quote I want to explore is this, "There were moments, days even, of listlessness, wallowing in self-rejection and loathing and despair." It closes with, "I also had pretty strong moments of intense optimism." But aside from Warren's belief in you during that period, the one guy who keeps calling, what helped you get through those periods of rejection and self-doubt? Are there any tools in the toolkit, or any particular tips you might give to people

• 1:12:58Tim Ferriss?

  who are going through, or certainly at some point will go through, that type of experience of doubting themselves?

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  That's a great question. Well, the first thing is simply just having good people around you. And I had that, but I think the people who love you no matter what. And I'm lucky to have had that. But beyond that, this goes back to what we were just talking about a minute ago of being intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. I think it's, those are the moments, hey, it's easy to be extrinsically motivated when the world's just giving you a bunch of thumbs ups.

• 1:13:44Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:13:45Speaker 00

  But it's in those moments where you really just, it's just you.

• 1:13:58Tim Ferriss?

  In the darker times, or the moments of rejection, right?

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember.

• 1:14:02Tim Ferriss?

  What, if I may interrupt for a second, what brought up this intrinsic extrinsic motivation recently, or in the last few years? Is that a book that you read that explored that? Was it something else? I believe Grit by Angela Duckworth is a book that explores this in some capacity as it relates to parenting, so how to talk to your kids.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it might have been that. I think I just heard it from my wife, honestly. She might have gotten, if not that book, she might have gotten it from... She's read a fair amount about child development. So, and that is something that we talk about in terms of parenting, wanting the kid to be intrinsically motivated. And when you overstimulate a kid, it can lead to always chasing that, that sort of outside approval, which then leads to when you're adult, then you, if you can't sort of find satisfaction in yourself, you're always going to go looking for it elsewhere.

• 1:15:08Speaker 00

  And that might take shape in any number of forms, whether it's looking for, you know, ending up in a codependent relationship, or an addiction to something, or who knows what, or something much more subtle than that. But I, yeah, I think, I think actually you thought of it, and I think it probably was in terms of child development that I, that I learned those words.

• 1:15:31Tim Ferriss?

  But I did interrupt you. I apologize for interrupting you, then I interrupted you, and now I'm going to segue out of my interruption. So you were talking about having good people around you as

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Tim Ferriss?

  ... structure and, and anything else that might come to mind, because you're saying it's, it's easy to be extrinsically oriented when everyone is giving you high fives and like making it rain with money for great gigs.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  But Yeah.

• 1:15:55Tim Ferriss?

  On the flip side, it's very punishing and painful to be extrinsically motivated when you're on the, the other side.

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  That's, that's just it. I, I remember it was during this same time that I was trying to become an actor again and failing.

• 1:16:15Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  I was just getting rejected a lot. This is right when I started, when like really taking seriously editing and making my own stuff.

• 1:16:30Speaker 00

  Because I I kind of came to realize, all right, I can't I can't just wait around for someone to give me a part. It's too painful. I I have to be able to get the joy that I get through creativity on my own. I can't. And I remember it was around that time, I made a little short film and I submitted it to the Cannes Film Festival. It was in French and I like did it anonymously. I didn't go through my Asian or anything. I wanted you to see what would happen if I just didn't like pull any of the strings or use any of

• 1:17:11Speaker 00

  the connections I had from having worked in show business before. And a short film did not get into the Cannes Film Festival. And I was and I I but I was I was actually surprised because I thought it was really good and and and I thought I kind of thought it would. And and a dear friend of mine who's a filmmaker, Ryan Johnson is his name, who I've been in two of his movies, his first movie, Brick, and then his third movie, Looper. And he he recently just made Star Wars, The Last Jedi. He's a great, great filmmaker, but also a dear friend. And I remember at that time, having just gotten rejected by

• 1:17:56Speaker 00

  the Cannes Film Festival, he recommended that I read Letters to a Young Poet, Reilke, Reiner Reilke, sort of a, I think, a known book. But there's a there's a passage in there all about solitude. And I think it gets a lot of what we've been talking about in terms of being intrinsically motivated, which is so important when especially, I think, if you're going to be an artist, although maybe no matter what you do. And it's all about how you have to just go

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  Into yourself and do your very, very best to let everything outside of that fade away and, and find what's really, really going on in just your own, whatever you want to call it, your own psyche, your own self, your own whatever. And I, I think in terms of the kind of dark moments you're talking about where you're facing that kind of rejection, when the world is telling you, you're not going to do what you want to do, or we don't want you.

• 1:19:18Speaker 00

  What really worked for me was just kind of ignoring that and, and finding, finding motivation to want to keep making things, not for them.

• 1:19:35Tim Ferriss?

  And taking the power into your own hands to do, to create.

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Tim Ferriss?

  Right, start to finish, which I think we're going to spend a lot of time on, we are going to spend quite a bit of time on. And I'm not sure if this is a timing connection, I'd love to ask you. So you mentioned Looper, which I'm looking at your filmography, I believe was 2012.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Yep, shot in 2011, it came out in 2012.

• 1:20:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right. You were a busy, busy, busy boy in 2012.

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:09Tim Ferriss?

  Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush, Looper, Lincoln, lots going on. Now, I was looking at a GQ piece that came out August 2012, and I'm, I've only read this name, so I'm probably going to butcher it. Is it Zoe Deschanel, is that how you say the name?

• 1:20:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, Zoe.

• 1:20:32Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. So Zoe said that when the two of you did 500 Days of Summer together, eight years after first working together, you were lighter and less burdened. She said that you changed a lot. Why do you think she said that? And what contributed to the change?

• 1:20:48Speaker 00

  That's funny. Well.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  I think she's comparing it to Zoe and I have done two movies together. 500 Days of Summer. And then. I guess eight years prior, we did this movie together called Manic. It's a little known, tiny budget. You know, indie drama. Which was really, really heavy. So that might have contributed something to it.

• 1:21:17Tim Ferriss?

  The subject matter, right?

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, we were making a movie about, you know, kids in a psychiatric lockdown facility. But. Yeah, I mean, I think I probably felt like I had something to prove. In when she and I first met, I was 19. And I was, I was up against exactly. That moment that we were just talking about where I wanted to do. A movie that might play at Sundance.

• 1:21:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:21:56Speaker 00

  And. All my agents thought that I was that I should just sign up for another TV comedy for the next five years. And had no belief that I could do anything other than that. And and the casting directors seemed to agree with them. And. Yeah, I was, I was really worried, I guess, and feeling, feeling insecure about that.

• 1:22:23Tim Ferriss?

  When did, when did Hit Record? Enter the picture and can you tell us how it came to be?

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  Exactly the same time.

• 1:22:31Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, all right. So yes, I thought there might be a correlation.

• 1:22:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:36Tim Ferriss?

  Not saying it's causative, not saying it's causal, but. What is Hit Record? And why, why did it, why did it manifest?

• 1:22:47Speaker 00

  Well, it was in the midst of those exact times when I was. Wanting to get jobs. Trying to get jobs, failing to get jobs and feeling like, fuck, I can't. I can't keep waiting around for someone else to let me be creative. I have to be able to do it on my own.

• 1:23:09Speaker 00

  And Hit Record became this little like turn of phrase that I would say to myself in those moments, like a little wordplay about the record button.

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  You know, harkening back to the little videos I would make on the family video camera that had, you know, a red circle with R E C over it. And when you hit record, you you start to do it. And of course, it's sort of a play on a hit record.

• 1:23:42Speaker 00

  And and that was just my little, almost kind of personal mantra or something that I had to be the one to do it. I wanted to push the button. I wasn't going to wait to just be an actor and stand in front of the camera. I wanted, you know, to hit record.

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  And and and the play on hit record is that that hit record is an object, but to hit record is an action, is doing something. Anyway, these are the kinds of things that I would stay up late at night, um, musing about. What what now what has hit record become? What is? Yeah. It's changed a lot since then. Well, uh, I mean, I guess I'll I'll just tell the whole long story, right? That's the beauty of a podcast like yours. We have no rush. Yeah, I'm always I'm always like telling the short version of this story. No, let's do the long version. Yeah.

• 1:24:36Speaker 00

  Well, so

• 1:24:40Speaker 00

  I mentioned earlier that, uh, right around that time I learned to edit. And so I was finally able to kind of start making things on my own, finished things. And this is like 2004 ish. Um, so a little before YouTube. And, um, and I wanted to put the little videos I was starting to make on the internet. And my brother helped me set up a little website called Hit Record.

• 1:25:09Speaker 00

  And, um, you know, we named it after this little mantra that I was saying to myself. And it was nothing. It was just a page of HTML where you could download a couple of quick times of videos I had made. And um, and over the next few years, I would sometimes put a new video on there, things like that. And then we put a message board on there, like one of those old PHP message boards for the techies out there. It looks not too dissimilar from popular message boards nowadays, like Reddit or something, but kind of the ancestor of that.

• 1:25:51Speaker 00

  And anybody could kind of start their own. It was easy if you knew how to do a little code. My brother was a coder. So he helped, he put up this message board and we watched as this little community formed on a message board. Around, at first around these little videos that I was making, but what we noticed that was cool was while some people came and posted on the message board just to like talk to me about what I was doing or what I had made. What a lot of people actually wanted to do was make things together, both with each other and with me. And, and we saw that, when I say we, I mean, my brother and I, and

• 1:26:36Speaker 00

  we're like, that's cool. That's, that's really new. That's unlike anything you could have done prior to this new technology. And it's different than, than just playing videos on the internet, because that's kind of just like TV, except on a different screen. But if people were actually making things together through the screen, now you're really kind of like doing something new. And, and we leaned into that. And at this time, it was nothing but a hobby. We weren't spending any money. We had no intention of making any money. It was just something we were doing for fun. Spent a lot of time on it and had

• 1:27:19Speaker 00

  a lot of fun. But it grew. And, and then I started thinking and talking with friends of mine about how this sort of collaborative process that was happening within this community on this message board. Could is, would there be a way to have that operate on a grander scale? Could we make things that were sort of at a quality level? Could we make like a short film that would get into Sundance? Or could we, could we make music that we could, you know, release as a record? Could we make a book that we published? Or could we even maybe one day like use this methodology to make a TV show?

• 1:28:02Speaker 00

  Or these are the kinds of things we were wondering and we, we set about figuring out how to do it. And we started a company and, um, you know, hired lawyers to figure out the terms of service. Because, you know, for the intellectual property of it and everything. Cause we really wanted to maintain the collaborative spirit of, of people not just sort of submitting a short film and being like, hey, I'm now posting my short film to your website. Will you try to get it into Sundance for me? But instead, having there be a community of people that are working together. And saying like, well, I can do this, or I can do this. And, um, oh, you wrote something? Well, maybe I'll rewrite it or maybe I'll draw something based on what you wrote. Uh, and then maybe someone else will be like, oh, I like your drawing.

• 1:28:47Speaker 00

  Maybe I'll animate your drawing and seeing what can kind of come out of that. And, uh, and it started working and, uh,

• 1:28:59Speaker 00

  and that was in, um, 2010, we launched it. And it's, it's grown a lot since then. We did those things. We, we, we made short films that got into Sundance and we published books and we put out records. And we even, we made a TV show that won an Emmy and, um, we've paid artists, um, a couple million dollars now over the years.

• 1:29:23Speaker 00

  And, uh, the funny thing actually I, uh, what comes to mind, uh, speaking to you is, um, because you, you really come from the world of, of like, uh, you know, entrepreneurship and, and, and business and.

• 1:29:39Speaker 00

  We never treated it that way. I mean, it was always more of an art project, even though it actually, it's become profitable over the last four years. It's paid for itself. I bankrolled it at first and then it started paying for itself. But I remember people years ago, they're like, "How are you gonna build it to scale?" And I'd be like, "Oh, I don't know what that means." So I'm gonna pretend like I don't care.

• 1:30:08Speaker 00

  And it's only now that we've sort of accomplished some of the things that we looked to accomplish. And we're now looking to accomplish even more ambitious things that I've kind of come to realize, oh, you know, if we're gonna do more than just like one TV show at a time, if we're gonna like make lots of things and involve more and more people and really try to set an example for how the internet could be something besides just a showcase, but actually a place where people are productive together.

• 1:30:43Speaker 00

  We need to make this thing work as a business in addition to an art project. And it's something that I'm actually excited about recently. That's sort of what I've been focusing on is figuring out, not how to, you know, I don't want to like change it really, but just how to figure out how to, I guess, arrange it and make it work and so that it can really grow and make it more accessible to more people. That's what we've been focused on recently.

• 1:31:17Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it seems like you're well on your way. I mean, you've had, certainly with the successes on the platform and the collaborative model where you're paying out to various contributors who add their skillsets and so on to given projects. You've attracted the attention of some very big brands who have come to the site for help with creative projects. And I want to, before I keep traveling on that thread, underscore something that you said, which is...

• 1:31:50Tim Ferriss?

  This didn't start off as a business, right? It started off as an art project. Yeah. If even though I can put on the business hat and I can run different prospective projects through a business set of filters, my retrospectively, and this is often the only way that you can see things clearly, hindsight being 2020, but my best business decisions, if someone were to look at the things that have turned out financially to deliver the most value to me personally, and to the world, quite frankly, they did, almost all of them started off with no financial considerations. Yeah.

• 1:32:34Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm not saying that if you need to make rent payments, that that's the best way to figure out how to solve that problem. It isn't. But if you look at the, for instance, even my involvement in tech and startups, it began with me planning out two years of what would be a real world MBA, because I wanted to develop certain skillsets. And I was quite frankly, just fascinated by this new world I knew very little about, that a friend of mine was very deeply involved with. Or the podcast. The podcast began because I was completely burned out after completing this book called The Four Hour Chef, which

• 1:33:15Tim Ferriss?

  was an intense, intense project that should have taken three years. It was crammed into a year and a half. Very proud of the product. I don't think we sacrificed there, but in order not to sacrifice there, just had to kill myself effectively for the entire period of time. And the podcast was something I wanted to experiment with because I enjoyed being on the interviewee side of the table so much on shows like the Joe Rogan Experience and Nerdist and WTF with Marc Maron, that I thought it would be a relaxing

• 1:33:49Tim Ferriss?

  But productive way to decompress. I would be able to focus on getting better at asking questions while simultaneously doing something that was completely different in some respects from writing a book. And no monetization model, no plans to have any type of sponsors, nothing. That's how it started. And I think that the reason, people ask me all the time, they're like, "Do you still want to do the podcast? Are you still having fun?" I'm like, "Yeah, I am actually still having fun." And I think in part, it's because it began with, with that being the sole, one of the sole criterion, really, for continuing it was, "Am I actually enjoying this? I'm going to commit to doing six episodes, and if I hate it, I'm going to stop." And in fact, if it just

• 1:34:34Tim Ferriss?

  bugs me a little bit, I'm going to stop. And lo and behold, I enjoyed it more than I expected, and I kept doing it. So I think that you're in a great position because this platform born out of passion of yours and the others involved in the very early stages was adopted. You've proven out the model in many respects, which by the way, a lot of the best entrepreneurs I know adopt as their path, whether it's Garrett Camp, co-founder of Uber, or others who help get projects to a very, very viable stage before looking for, for instance, any kind of outside funding. You've, I think, checked off the preliminaries in a very organic way that sets

• 1:35:19Tim Ferriss?

  you up potentially now, if you want to create something that is not just self-sustaining, but say, fast-growing, to then bring in partners or outside funding if desired, if that makes sense, to really multiply how large this can become and how quickly it can become that.

• 1:35:42Speaker 00

  Well, that's really, really exciting to hear you say that.

• 1:35:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, I know. I believe that. So, I mean, at this point...

• 1:35:48Speaker 00

  You know what? I wanted to just jump back one second because what you said reminded me of something that I think sort of ties a lot of what we've been talking about together. And that's when I, when I first, first, first started acting, I was young. I was like six.

• 1:36:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Very, very young.

• 1:36:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And...

• 1:36:12Speaker 00

  My mom asked me if I wanted to do it.

• 1:36:19Speaker 00

  I think it's still, you know, I had been singing in a choir and was in some like community theater and having grown up in LA, some of the kids that were in my community theater were going on auditions for commercials and shows and stuff and she asked if I wanted to do that. And I said, yeah. And I always really liked it. But there would be moments sometimes where I'd be like, oh, I don't feel like going on an audition today or whatever. And she would always say, you really don't have to do this. I want to make sure you never feel like you have to. We're only doing this because

• 1:36:58Speaker 00

  you're enjoying it. I can tell that you really enjoy it. But if at any point you don't want to, you should just stop. And she wasn't saying it in any kind of like manipulative way. She, I realized.

• 1:37:12Tim Ferriss?

  It wasn't a wink, wink.

• 1:37:14Speaker 00

  If you want to stop. No. She, I think she really wanted to make sure I had that out. And, and I eventually did take the out later in life.

• 1:37:26Speaker 00

  But it gets back to what you were saying of doing something because you really want to do it. And that's that intrinsic motivation as opposed to extrinsic. If it's really, really something you want to do way down there, there's, there's kind of no substitute for that.

• 1:37:45Tim Ferriss?

  And where, how are you thinking about the next few years of your life and Hit Record and all these things? I mean, you have a family now, certainly in a different place than you were 10 years ago, certainly 15, 20 years ago. Where is Hit Record going? And where are you going? Do you think in the next, in the next few years?

• 1:38:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, look, I love movies and I hope I get to keep working on them and by movies, I mean, whether it's movies or TV or whatever, it's all kind of blending together now. I hope I get to keep doing that my whole life. But it's, what I would really like to do is try to find a way to ultimately. Blend my conventional career in show business with what we're doing on HitRecord. And I think that's still a while away before those two sides will really meld together.

• 1:38:55Speaker 00

  But one does kind of feed the other. Certainly, whenever I have some success, if I'm in a movie that comes out that does well, HitRecord sees a spike in interest, etc. But I really, I love the idea of the media being something different than what it's been. And I think frankly, you know, maybe 10 years ago or so, or even a little more, when kind of what's been called Web 2.0 was starting up, when YouTube emerged and things like

• 1:39:38Speaker 00

  that, I was really optimistic about that. And I think everyone was. This is going to change the media, this is going to democratize media, this is going to, you know, this is going to make it so that the media is no longer about celebrity and narcissism and things like that, it's going to be about, you know, substance and beauty. And that obviously hasn't quite come to pass. I think I was maybe a little over optimistic. And I don't think that HitRecord is necessarily like the antidote, the be-all and end-all. But it is, it's our, and I say our, like, you know, a community now of 600,000 people.

• 1:40:23Speaker 00

  It's our stab at a different way of doing it, where you don't come on and just say, "Hey, world, look at me, look at me, look at me, look what I'm doing, look what I made." It's about like, what can we make together?

• 1:40:40Speaker 00

  And to me, it really feels like that's, that's the promise of, of the internet as a whole is people connecting to be productive together, not just to kind of like be endlessly entertained and fed ads. And I, that's what, you know, I, I hope to try to foster.

• 1:41:04Tim Ferriss?

  I find HitRecord fascinating also. People can check it out, hitrecord.org, if that's the best URL to use, but in part because you can peek under the hood and see how different types of projects are made and the constituent parts and the team that is involved. And I'm looking at the site right now, you have the project development slate, right? You have a, a list of projects that are in concept development, then you have a list of projects that are in advanced development, then you have a list of projects and funded projects. And people can get a better understanding and education about how creative projects

• 1:41:44Tim Ferriss?

  get made from the earliest stages to final product. And it's an opportunity, I'm, I'm asked all the time, what type of company should I start? From say, college seniors? And I taught a lecture in high-tech entrepreneurship, which was oddly enough, an electrical engineering course, even not oddly because of the title, but because I have no electrical engineering background whatsoever. But I took this course, ELE491, with an incredible professor named Professor Shao, Z S C H A U. And I was invited back to talk to students. And I would, I would get asked very often, what type of company should I start? Or even worse, I

• 1:42:27Tim Ferriss?

  hate to say this, but even worse would be, what are the trends right now? And what industry should I go into? I'm like, oh God, that's, that's setting you up for a lot of pain if that's the, if that's the only filter you're using. But it presupposes that people should out of the gate, start their own company. And I'm not saying that they should or should not, but also like, what type of movie should I make? What type of album should I put together?

• 1:42:49Speaker 00

  Same thing happens in movies.

• 1:42:52Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And one of the recommendations that I often make, it's not always the best fit. There are some people, you're just like, okay, this is the next Zuckerberg. You know what? Like, you do not need to spend five years at someone else's company to learn the ropes. But for a lot of folks, maybe it is worthwhile to spend. In the case of startups, a year or two years at a fast-growing startup, so that you see exactly how this puzzle looks when it is put together in the early stages. And to really build an education and skill sets and relationships that will then help you when you decide to start your own thing. And I think that HitRecord is also an opportunity to do that collaboratively.

• 1:43:34Tim Ferriss?

  Where it's like, alright, you think you might want to launch a career as a musician? You think you might want to launch a career as a filmmaker? Well, why not kick the tires by contributing on a product, or a project, rather, in one of those categories before you decide to bet the farm or jump headfirst into one of these things? So I think that it's really a fascinating opportunity to educate yourself and develop skills and relationships simultaneously, even if you are not aiming to start your own project, if that makes sense.

• 1:44:10Speaker 00

  Well, it's funny you say that, because actually, that's one of the things we tell people who just join is, don't start out by starting your own thing. Find someone else's thing that you like and help them and contribute. Because there's lots of people on there, talented people, who've got their own projects going, and they need contributions, whether it's music, or a writing project, or a film project, or a, you know, a design project, there's, you know, we kind of do all kinds of media. But they need those contributions to come in. And that's the best way to start getting involved. If you show up on HitRecord and immediately say, "I'm starting my own project."

• 1:44:55Speaker 00

  It's sort of like walking into, you know, a production company as, you know, the first day on the job entry level and saying like, "Okay, everybody, follow me. I'm going to lead, you know, this whole company in a project now." It might work sometimes, but more often, it's better to, like you say, work on other people's stuff first, get, you know, get your feet wet. And learn how it goes, because... The way things get made on HitRecord is really different than the way things get made in anywhere else in the world, sort of, because it's this open collaborative

• 1:45:37Speaker 00

  process. It's very different than, I mean, there are similarities and differences to, say, a conventional movie set. But on a conventional movie set, not anyone can just stroll on and offer their ideas, throw in their two cents, or, you know, write a scene. Those doors aren't open. Whereas on HitRecord, anybody can. And, you know, then there's the whole process of finding, okay, well, if anybody can come in and try to make stuff, you need people that are going through all the contributions and finding, finding the ones that are the most applicable, that can, that can be useful in the final production. And there's, it's

• 1:46:19Speaker 00

  sort of its own beast, and one I've come to really love. But it takes some getting used to, for sure. And so, I totally agree. Get started by finding someone on there who you admire, you think is, is good at what they do, and see what they're up to, and see if you can help them.

• 1:46:39Tim Ferriss?

  And this applies to so many different domains, also. It makes me think of Y Combinator. And for people who don't know what Y Combinator is, you can think of it as the Harvard meets Navy SEALs of startup incubators. That's, that's one way to think about it. The acceptance rate is exceptionally, exceptionally low. And they start off with very short, actually, I should say they filter, applications first, then the next round is, at least last I checked, this is constantly evolving. And Y Combinator has become incredibly, incredibly powerful. Also, a lot of great essays by one of the co-founders, Paul Graham.

• 1:47:17Speaker 00

  Paul Graham, such a great writer.

• 1:47:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. If people want to look up one of my favorites, I think it's manager's schedule versus maker's schedule, also very helpful for creatives. But one of the questions, and I'll paraphrase, but a paraphrased version of one of the questions that they very commonly ask, or at least did for a long period of time, was, "Tell us about something you've made," or "something that you've, you've made recently." And

• 1:47:42Tim Ferriss?

  That doesn't have to be from blank slate. And just as you noted in your undergraduate experience, some of the classes might have been super compelling, but a lot of them were very abstract and based on rote memorization and not putting the rubber to the road. In my experience, if you want to learn how to do X, go do X. And particularly if there's a way to do it with minimal risk, where you have the opportunity to observe other people who are attempting the same thing. And for some, that might take the form of, say, going to RISD and learning design and having active critiques.

• 1:48:24Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm actually sitting on something called CritBuns, which is literally an ass cheek supporter that was the first real product made by Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb. Ass cheeks need some support. Yeah, CritBuns, there you go. So Joe, please give me my customary 5%. But where I'm going with that is that HitRecord and other environments that allow this type of open collaboration, for instance, I'm an advisor to a company called Automatic, M-A-T-T Automatic. For those who are wondering how that was named, well, the founder's name is Matt Mullenweg. There you go, insider. Automatic, he has his first name in the company name.

• 1:49:06Tim Ferriss?

  But he was one of the, if not considered the lead developer on WordPress. And you can see this type of beautiful collaboration. And you also see, look, in any large community, you're also going to have some strife and the occasional village idiot. That's going to happen. But this incredible dynamic of organic creation that comes out of an open source project like that, I think you can also see on HitRecord, but in some cases, a very visual medium. So in any case, that's just my way. And I don't have any secret equity stake in HitRecord. I just think it's a very, very...

• 1:49:50Tim Ferriss?

  Exciting environment and sandbox in which creatives can experiment. So I

• 1:49:56Speaker 00

  That's cool you to say, man. Thank you.

• 1:49:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so I mean, you're at, you said 600,000 or so people. Let me know when you, when you hit a million and I'll take a short video of me taking a tequila shot and shoot it back over to you. And I want to be respectful of your time. You have so many different things that you can spend your time on. So I really appreciate you taking time to have this conversation, first of all.

• 1:50:20Speaker 00

  Oh, man, my pleasure, sincerely.

• 1:50:22Tim Ferriss?

  And do you have any parting words, requests of the audience? Anything that you'd like to convey or suggest or ask before we, before we wrap up?

• 1:50:36Speaker 00

  You know, the, the last thing that, that I might say, and it, it does connect to a lot of the other things we were saying is just then when you were, when you were talking about how

• 1:50:50Speaker 00

  if you want to do X, go and do X. If you want to learn to do something, if you're considering a career, for example, as a musician or as a writer or an animator, maybe HitRecord might be a cool step. I would, I would just talk about the other side of the coin, which is without any goal at all. If it just feels good to you, maybe you don't want to be a professional artist of any kind.

• 1:51:20Speaker 00

  But I think there's, there's a lot of people out there who have that urge to make stuff. That don't necessarily want to, you know, dedicate their entire life to it.

• 1:51:38Speaker 00

  I think that's equally important. That's sort of a part of creative culture that in a certain way, I feel like we're, we lose track of sometimes in, in this world where, you know, Silicon Valley is, is so excited to say to everybody, "We're democratizing media and entertainment and now anybody can be a superstar." Like, that's cool, but you know, in, in, in older times.

• 1:52:04Speaker 00

  If you wanted to hear music, well, there wasn't a radio and there wasn't a gramophone. If you wanted to hear music, it was gonna be because like your uncle happened to, you know, play an instrument or something. And you would hear music because, not because you were listening to professionals play it or a recording of a professional playing it. You would hear your close people around you, friends, family. That's the, you know, original meaning of folk music. And in fact, it's also the original meaning of pop music. Popular music, popular meaning people, it's people. And I think that's the same, same goes for storytelling or for art of any kind, really.

• 1:52:47Speaker 00

  There's, there's something really beautiful about people who aren't necessarily trying to be the next superstar, but who have that creativity in them and wanna, wanna do stuff with it. I think that's also really important to let out of you. And you don't have to measure it up against, well, but if I put my song on the internet or my story, is it gonna get enough likes? Or is, are they gonna think that I suck? Who fucking cares? Like, that's really not, that's not what's gonna ultimately make you happy. That ties back to the fame question. Like, it's, what's gonna make you happy is if you have that urge to do it.

• 1:53:31Speaker 00

  And that's, that's kind of where Hit Record came from, for me. And that, that's what I hope that it can continue to be for. Most of the people that come aren't necessarily trying to be pros. There are some that are, and oftentimes those are the folks that end up leading. But, but most people are just having a good time making stuff together. And, and I never want Hit Record to lose that. So.

• 1:54:04Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 1:54:04Speaker 00

  For what it's worth.

• 1:54:05Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's worth a lot. And I'm trying to pay more and more attention to what I would do if I couldn't tell anyone or show anyone. What are those things? Or maybe it's limited to two or three friends who come over on Friday nights to have a glass of scotch and just say, hey, what the fuck have you been up to?

• 1:54:26Tim Ferriss?

  All right. What do I show them, right? And that's it. That's the limit of the audience. I'm not doing market testing. And that can lead to some really beautiful places. So I'm spending more time thinking about that myself. So I appreciate the reminder. Where can people say hello if they want to try to say hello on the interwebs? If you're on the socials? If there is anything that you'd like to put out there to the world? If people would like to wave a hand? Or if you can leave it at hitrecord.org? Are there any other places that you would like to mention? Before we put a pin in it?

• 1:55:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you want to make stuff together, HitRecord's that's kind of what it's for. And I am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. So you can check those out, too.

• 1:55:19Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I will link to the real accounts in the show notes. Just so you don't have... Just a fan account. I don't want to have people go through 17 of those. So for people listening, as you know, if you're a long-term listener. But if you're not, let me tell you a little bit about how the show works. We will have links to everything, including hitrecord.org, including the books that were mentioned. Letters to a Young Poet, very powerful book that I recommend to everyone. As a side note, Save the Cat, which I also actually think is one of the... Despite some of the cynicism and sterility of a few aspects of it.

• 1:55:56Speaker 00

  It is good.

• 1:55:57Tim Ferriss?

  A very helpful book as a starting point when thinking of screenwriting. And also calls me on my own bullshit. Meaning, I've been talking about and thinking about screenwriting for so long. To the extent that I have fans who are hassling me about it. And thank you for hassling me about it, everybody out there. So, taking a page from this conversation on if you want to learn it, just do it. I think I have to stop reading books. I have to stop asking people for advice. And just actually sit down and stare at that intimidating blank page.

• 1:56:30Speaker 00

  Write a few shorts first. That's...

• 1:56:32Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly.

• 1:56:33Speaker 00

  That would be my advice.

• 1:56:34Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna get on it. So a few shorts. And Joe, thank you so much again for taking the time. This was a lot of fun.

• 1:56:41Speaker 00

  Thank you, Tim.

• 1:56:42Tim Ferriss?

  And to everybody listening, until next time. Thank you for listening.

• 1:56:48Speaker 00

  Cheers.

• 1:56:50Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:57:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by wordpress.com. I love WordPress. I have used it for so many years. It's my go-to platform for blogging and creating websites. I use wordpress.com for everything, every day. My site, tim.blog is built on it. The websites for my books, including Tools of Titans, Tribe of Mentors, it's all on wordpress.com. And the founder, Matt Mullenweg, one of my close friends, has appeared on this show

• 1:58:17Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:59:01Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:59:44Tim Ferriss?

  So learn more. Take a look. wordpress.com/tim for 15% off a brand new website. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. If you're a longtime listener of the show or brand new to the podcast, my favorite Finnish entrepreneurs who founded this company, of course, I don't know that many Finnish entrepreneurs, but they may be my favorites, have something new that I've been loving. And some of you are familiar with Four Sigmatic. I've used their products for years now. They were introduced to me by an acrobat, of all folks, and they tend to mix different types of medicinal mushrooms into their products. I have recently

• 2:00:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:01:06Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:01:50Tim Ferriss?

  Remember to use the code TIMTIM at checkout to receive your special discount. Again, that's foursigmatic.com/timtim and enter the promo code TIMTIM. Check it out.