It was never my intent to become a writer or be allowed to have the luxury to play Legos with words. I was, first and foremost, a "professional artist" in the Romper Room refuge of the skateboard industry. Then Jeff Tremaine came along in 1992. He'd just taken over the reins of the fledgling Big Brother skateboard magazine as its new "Art/Editorial Director," and encouraged me to start contributing to the magazine in a writing sense. I mean, no one else was really around to help out aside from Earl Parker and Marc McKee, so he had to find someone to help fill the pages.
Up until that point all I'd ever written were letters to friends—a fun, creative diversion to my solitary life on the drawing table. I started out with a few amateurish (read: embarrassing) contributions to the magazine, but was swiftly shouldered with the responsibility of maintaining the "News" section because of my "skate nerd" inclinations. Then, as Earl Parker became increasingly MIA, I took on beefier assignments, my favorite being the travelogue writings that accompanied our various road trips and tours, documenting all the daily inanities and absurdities of our staff. I wasn't much of a drinker then, nor particularly social, so it was easy to sit back, disappear into the background, and take mental notes and photos of what everyone else of considerably bolder stock was doing. Then, every night before bed—as we were all traveling on the cheap and often crowded 6–8 people into a single hotel room [see Exhibit A above], I'd jot everything down to not forget. So, in short, I was simultaneously respected and loathed by both my friends and the skaters who dared travel with us then, because not everyone wanted a scrupulous laundry list of their nightly debaucheries aired in the pages of a magazine. Oh well!
By the time Big Brother was bought by Larry Flynt in 1997, I'd grown a lot more confident in my writing (or as confident as anyone can be holding a full house of insecurities in their head), perhaps overly so, because it was (and still is) too verbose for my own stylistic good.* Regardless, Marc McKee had abdicated the position of Editor and I got sucked up into his void and was suddenly at the helm of a skateboard magazine, or rather a co-pilot, I should say, as I was Tremaine's right-hand man for the next three years. Still, I never felt entirely suited to the position as I just didn't have the strength of personality, character, and charisma that our Managing Editor, Dave Carnie, did in fact have. So I was, quite honestly, relieved to remove myself from the position in 2000—allowing Dave to fully take charge and make his indelible mark on the Big Brother legacy—and tag along with Tremaine and Johnny Knoxville into the unknown on what would become jackass.
It didn't take long to find my niche within the production crew. Besides taking photos and documenting this new journey into even more absurd territory, I was responsible for compiling all the ideas and writing them into "treatments" for the various skits and stunts. These documents were run through the MTV gauntlet, which consisted of Development, Legal, Standards & Practices, and Safety, but I was emboldened by the leadership of Knoxville, Tremaine, and Spike Jonze, and treated the treatments with the exact same silliness and irreverence fostered at Big Brother. So again, nothing ever felt like real work, it was all just a circus of our own devise, and any writing that needed to be done, from DVD/CD box liner notes to cast and crew bios, was dished onto my plate making me the de facto "voice" of jackass—strictly in the written sense, of course, because all I was really doing was springboarding off the plethora of colorful personalities surrounding me.
Things really reached a ridiculous peak, though, when I became an "author" with the published pop-culture poop stain, The Official Jackass the Movie Companion Book, in 2002. Of course this disappeared into obscurity as soon as it rolled off the printing press, but the experience prompted me to finally step-up and really put my heart into a labor of love project chronicling the history of skateboard art with a subsequent Disposable follow-up years later.
In 2007, Dave Carnie and I were briefly reunited to captain the interweb vessel jackassworld.com, but this was a ship doomed before it even left the harbor to set out to sea. It's unfortunate—or maybe it is fortunate?—that no one thought to capture this disaster as it unfolded in reality television form, because it was indeed our very own "Hearts of Darkness" fiasco. However, it did get us up to the third dimension in 2010, whereupon I was somehow able to connive my way into doing yet another book, this one celebrating our "10 Years of Stupid." Maybe you have a copy, maybe you don't—yet again it slipped out like a church pew creeper from MTV Books, but it is without a doubt a damn treat for anyone to discover on a coffee table or toilet tank.
Since that time, I'd taken over all the social media and bloggier aspects of jackass, Dickhouse, and Gorilla Flicks, keeping the spirit and grammar alive along with the ebb and flow of various projects. The jig is finally up, however, so in short—ha! you long-winded motherfucker!—I'll forever be indebted to Tremaine and Knoxville for all the opportunities presented to me over the past two decades. It was the ultimate accidental tourist trip, and I couldn't have found a better dysfunctional family in which to thrive and continue to thwart the realities of adulthood. That said, it's been a distinct honor to serve in what has become an increasingly foreign legion of the absurd, and I look forward to one day being called back up out of the reserves to frolic in further dumb fields of folly should they appear on the horizon. Until then, I leave you with these three simple yet enduring words to live by in a world going more and more madly serious by the day: "Lighten up, Francis." —Sean Cliver
* Consider this concise critical selection by Michael Dirda, wherein he tacks my tics and fawning, slack, vacuous ass to the wall:
"Writers generally hope that their sentences smoothly interlock, and that any reader's eyes pass swiftly down the page without effort. To assist in creating this frictionless continuity, we sometimes turn to words like naturally or phrases like of course, in fact, and that said. These usually appear at the start of a sentence, simultaneously announcing new material while subtly or overtly harking back to earlier content. The occasional use of these locutions to promote continuity is fine, but all too often they merely signal slack writing. In themselves such words don't actually carry any meaning; they are simply syntactic grace notes—and employed too often they grow into verbal tics. As much as possible, cast out these fawning connectives and make your thinking the dynamic that sweeps the reader along. Prefer concision to clutter, the meaningful to the vacuous."
Stop the presses! A phrase that is now as outdated as rollerblades, I suppose, but I bring you great tidings of joy: Dimitry Elyashkevich is having a "grand re-opening" of his photo show at the Door Gallery (next door to the world famous Burgundy Room) in Hollywood, California. So, if you read the review earlier this week (unlikely) then here's a bonus interview with Dimitry on what exactly constitutes a "grand re-opening," as conducted by Rick Kosick, who, incidentally and technically, was Dimitry's boss while the two worked at Big Brother skateboard magazine back in the way back (or at least until Dimitry came up with his own job title: Executive Director of Photography). So come along… and enjoy! —Sean Cliver
Kosick: What made you want to do a photography show?
Dimitry: I’ve got a lot of stuff, and people always bug me about it. I have photos that no one has seen or someone has only seen once. What’s the point of taking a photo if you can’t share it?
Is this your first show?
This is my first show ever.
How many years have you been a photographer?
Well, I got my first camera back in 1989 or something… I think I was 14. I had one before that, but I broke it. I ran with a SLR, tripped, and smashed the camera. Then my cousin’s husband gave me a camera and I started taking pictures of my friends skating. I just followed them around on my 10-speed bike. Then I started skating and put the camera down. I wasn’t good enough to go any further on my board, but it was fun and I liked it so much that I still wanted to be a part of it, so I started shooting photos again.
When did your photography really start to take off for you?
They had a contest at the Brooklyn Banks in 1993. All the pros from LA came out. I didn’t know how it worked back then, so I shot a bunch of photos, printed them at school, and wrote “proof “ on the contact sheet with a Sharpie. I sent it toSlap, TransWorld, and Thrasher. I never heard shit from anyone then a couple months later an article comes out in Thrasherand there’s a photo that I shot of Tim Brauch—rest in peace—doing an inward heel-flip and it’s got Adam Wallacavage’s name on it. I was like, “What the fuck?! I know that’s my photo, I have the negatives.” I thought they scanned the photo and removed the word “proof” in Photoshop. But when I started getting my photos back, if you just rubbed your thumb across it would come right off. So I wrote a two-page letter to Bryce [Kanights], and sure enough, the next issue there was a little paragraph with an apology. I was like, “Damn, I’m the shit!” because I thought they jacked my photos. So that was the moment I realized I could make a living and see the best skateboarding and travel the world on someone else’s dime.
Did you have more fun taking pictures of the skating or the lifestyle that revolves around it?
It’s all one, dude. Skating is a lifestyle. But everyone has seen my skate photos. Everyone has seen the Peter Bici ollie at the World Trade Center… the Joey Alvarez switch heel at the banks. Everyone has seen that shit, but no one has seen these [in the show].
So lets talk about your show.
It opened last Friday. It’s connected to the Burgundy Room in Hollywood, which is a bar. The show is running every day until the end of the month from 8pm–2am. This Friday—because I’m still finding photos—there’s going to be a grand re-opening with at least a hundred more point-and-shoots. All of these photos are just prints that I already have, because I’d already committed to doing a show there and it was a matter of convenience. At first I was trying to figure out what to do and I was picking negatives thinking, “Oh, I’m going to get this printed and this printed… ,” like every other show, which is cool, you know, to see a print that’s big, but that’s expensive. Plus the show was supposed to be up the Friday before it opened, but I just couldn’t figure out what to do. So I was said, “Will, you have to push it.” Poor guy had taken down all of the art from the previous show and had to put it all back up—sorry, Will. I love you. Anyway, so I’m going through the point-and-shoots and I was like, “These are hilarious, they’re already printed, and there’s thousands of them. I can cut this down and put them on the wall with Sharpies hanging next to them and people can leave an Insta-comment.
So what were some of the comments that people left that you really liked?
There were a lot of good ones. Then there was some when people got mean, I would take it down. I’m pretty sure Mike Kassak is responsible for a lot of them. But there was one with Johnny Knoxville in a picture with Avril Lavigne from a time when all of us were in Miami for some MTV awards. Someone wrote, “He was a skater boy, blah blah blah, a skater boy, but oh, he doesn’t skate.” And there was one with Pontius as an old man smoking cigarette. Someone wrote, “Best man at my first wedding, solid dude.”
I had to take down a bunch of other stuff, because the first night it was open I had a spread of—and I’m not going to say his name—but it was like six photos of his dick. Some girls were like, “That’s too much dick,” and I was like, “You know what, you’re right.” So the show keeps changing and evolving.
So why do you keep changing your show?
Because I keep finding new shit. I’m still going through my shit.
But I feel like you’re still adding things during your show.
So what? Am I not allowed to do that? I’m trying to make it the best show possible. There’s more shit. I have ten-times the amount of shit that’s already up on the wall now, so why not? Do you want to see the best shit or what I was just rushing to put up? So it’s up until the end of June. If you don’t what me to do that then I won’t. Rick doesn’t want me to make the show better, everybody! Well, I don’t care. I’m making it better. So everyone come through this Friday for the grand re-opening and it’ll keep changing so you can come by and check it out any night.
Have thought about putting a book together?
For what?
So your friends can buy it.
My friends can go to the show.
But what if they want a nice coffee table book?
Well, they can print the photos and make their own damn book.
Don’t you think it would be cool to have a photography book, though?
Maybe later, but right now, what I really want is to hit up some of these corporate skate companies. This show would be so fun to take around the world to see what skaters in New York think of it, or London, or Brazil, or Australia, and have new mounting boards put up at each show so people can leave comments in their native language. It would be so sick!
So you’re seeing a vision of taking this show around the world to different countries?
Yeah, what up Nike, what up Adidas, what up corporate skate America?
Wouldn’t it be fun to do the show in Russia?
Yeah, everywhere. Tokyo, Russia, everywhere. I would rather do it in Minsk… that’s where I was born. I just went there for the first time since I left when I was 4-and-a-half-years-old. For me it was awesome. Shit was cheap, it was super clean, there were no fat people. There’s a bunch of shit to skate. If a book happens, it happens. I’m not worried about that. Right now, I’m just dealing with point-and-shoot film, but I also have slides. I want to do a show with slides, and then I have digital shit, like all of the Wildboyz shit is digital. Plus, there’s video for years that nobody has seen that’s in the vault because it’s incriminating. It’s endless.
So this is basically “Dimitry’s Last Call”?
What do you mean?
Like how we did in Big Brother magazine, the “Last Call” section, but this is “Dimitry’s Last Call.”
No, they’re art photos, and this is definitely not my last call.
Be it my lowly Wisconsin origins or an unfortunately shallow embankment of brain cells, I'm certainly not above a little journalistic Cheez Whiz. So it's without much care or concern that I make the widely clichéd Warhol-attributed reference, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes," because anyone, really, could have a 15-minute photo show nowadays. Once upon a time, no lie, it used to be a real pain in the ass to be a photographer: dealing with all that pesky film stuff, the inherent frame limitations to a roll, not knowing what the hell you got or if you even got it until all that tedious developing and processing crap... let's just say it wasn't for everyone. Obviously, that's not anywhere near the current case, and it would probably be quite the mind-blowing statistic to know how many photos are taken the whole world over in the period of just one single second. Boom! Even in the act of pondering there went the last of my synapses for the day. One or two more vaguely constructed paragraphs like this and I'll need to shut down and recharge my neural capacitors to deal with tomorrow's daily struggle.
Left to right: Tremaine on what could have been any night in the mid-late ‘90s; Rick Kosick and Chris Pontius, full metal ninja turtles; Kosick and a gold lamé Dave Carnie, post-Russian strip club destruction on the eve of yet another ill-fated Big Brother-sanctioned event.
But there existed a window of time in the '90s, just prior to the digital age of chaos, when the consumer-grade point 'n' shoot film camera reached the apex of its soon-to-be-meteored evolution with the Yashica T4. It was a magical pocket device indeed, and both professional photographers and commoners alike snatched them up at a very affordable price. This was especially so in the world of skateboarding, where it serendipitously coincided with the height of decadence right before the industry's li'l butt pucker was ruptured by the mainstream and all the booby-traps and pitfalls that came along with the unholy coupling (once the term "athletes" was heard and used in all seriousness, it was Crystal Clear with Capital Corporate Cs that the end was nigh and the doomsday clock was two minutes to midnight for the fuck-all-show-it-like-it-is rag that was then Big Brother skateboard magazine). For a few priceless years, though, it wasn't uncommon to see everyone out in the bar with a beer in one hand and a T4 in the other.
Left to right: Mike Crum was a darling of the "Last Call" parade of party photos in Big Brother, all thanks to the omnipresent lens of Dimitry; Scott Johnston, Jeff Tremaine, Dimitry, and Sean Cliver—all cleaned up and ready for the post-Y2K world at a respectable, no-nonsense Chocolate premiere at the DGA theater on Sunset Blvd.
I only embark on such tangents, because the late great photo show of Dimitry Elyashkevich this past weekend at the Door Gallery in Hollywood not only embraced and celebrated this slaphappy snapshot period in skateboarding, but embodied it in spirit as well. If I heard correctly, the show was to open at 9pm, yet by 7:30 that night there was still nothing on the walls?! I walked in at 9pm, at which point the sweat was pouring and the first words—as well as probably the next 20 or 30 or so—to come out of Dimitry's mouth to me were, "NO PHOTOS. NO PHOTOS. SERIOUSLY, NO PHOTOS." Apparently, no one was supposed to take any photos of the photos on display, because there were indeed some that may not have even been run in the pages of Big Brother when they were taken at the time. And that's saying a fuck lot. It's not like anything was that incriminating, but 20 years have since passed and everyone within the swath of Dimitry's lens back then is now a legitimate grown-up with families and respectable jobs—none of which was the responsible case in the ridiculous span of globe-trotting and partying years showcased in his buckshot blast of 4 x 6 prints taped up on the wall with Sharpies hanging beside them for anyone and everyone to add descriptions, word bubbles, and random comments in general. On a hypothetical comfort level scale of 1–10, it's safe to say this one went to 11 (but probably could have gone to 13, knowing what he has in his vaults).
Left to right: The El Rey Theatre, circa 1997, hours before all sorts of shit hit the fan before, during, and after the premiere of the Big Brother video number two; Faces in the crowd of aforementioned premiere.
So yeah. You're not seeing any of the really hot shit photos here; just the few that Dimitry let us take to share a few innocuous looks at the way we were before everything else transpired in life. —Sean Cliver
This last one, of course, is more of an inside joke than anything, but if you happen to be a stickler for skate trash lore then you know at one point in 1993 I found myself on the wrong hand of the legendary Sean Sheffey—and not entirely by my own doing. The truth would have been exposed in the dumb Big Brother documentary on HULU, where in a previous rough cut there was a section talking about the more "physical repercussions" to occur with the magazine staff, the crown jewel of which being my face-palming incident with Sheffey over a caption that had been blamed on me (a situation akin to being sentenced to death for a crime you didn't commit). Anyway, at the end of it all, Tremaine admitted that he was in fact the one who wrote the caption and then stood silently by as I brushed with death, but the segment was cutting room-floored after a note from HULU that it seemed like an unnecessarily negative side street to go down and detracted from the zany chase of the story arc. However, please let the record show for all of Interweb eternity that I was in fact innocent in the matter—case fucking closed. Oh, this photo, incidentally, was taken years after the OG confrontation, maybe 5–6, give or take a drink or two, at one of those great gala DC/Droors holiday affairs of the late ‘90s.
Half the fun of wondering if you swing to and fro on the mentally unstable side of life is to pit yourself in a one-on-one, right brain vs. left brain interview, which I'm about to self-indulge in now. The topic of discussion will, mostly, be about my experiences while working on Johnny Knoxville's newly released flick, Action Point, which, if you haven't already heard it about 369-odd times, is based on the old "less-than-lethal" amusement park, Action Park, once found in Vernon, New Jersey, back when rules were really just suggestions—not the legalese letter of the law they are today.
That said, let us begin.
Sean Cliver: Who are you and what do you do that warranted your involvement on a major motion picture?
Sean Cliver: My name is Sean Cliver. Years ago, 18 to be precise, I started shooting photos on the "set" of jackass during its formative MTV years. We'd all segued into Hollywood out of the pages of Big Brother skateboard magazine, so that's how our initial "crew" began—all of which can be seen in the documentary Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine, but only if you have access to Hulu.
Anyway, the joke was then that we were all now considered to be "professionals," and we even had T-shirts printed up that stated so in lowercase Helvetica Bold. That's how I magically became a Co-Producer/Still Photographer of IMDB acclaim, despite my real profession being that of a lowly skateboard graphic artist. It's a crazy world.
Someone oughta sell tickets.
Sure, I'd buy one.
So go on. Skip the boring history shit and get on with it already.
Okay, so yeah, last year Knoxville contacted me while they were wading into production on the movie and said he wanted me to come down to Cape Town, South Africa to shoot some of the cockamamie stunts he was concocting. I guess he thought I'd done a decent job of catching him in some of his brighter moments on jackass--
Excuse me, but why exactly do you think that is, why you?
Honestly, I don't know… I guess it's because we were all so accustomed to working with one another in crazy scenarios—there's a comfort level in that—and I'd always had a pretty zen attitude about everything. And by zen I mean I just go to a cartoon universe while looking through the lens of my camera and reality goes slip-sliding away. That may actually be clinically diagnosed as a dissociative psychological disorder, but fuck, dude, when you've got throw-up, poo-poo, and pee-pee flying around you, what do you expect?
Alright, settle down. Back to Action Point.
Whatever. So they'd started shooting near the end of March or beginning of April in 2017, but I didn't end up going there until the beginning of May. Actually, my primary assignment on the trip was to shoot all the gallery photos of the cast, as well as groupings of them for possible promotional usage, e.g. movie poster, billboards, and all that crap, but I'm really not that kind of photographer. And I tried telling them so. But [Paramount] promised I'd be in good company and that there'd be a couple representatives from the marketing agency to assist me on the day of the formal photo shoot.
Still, I was nervous as a shithouse mouse, and couldn't wait for that day to be over so I could just kick back and relax on-set, waiting for Knoxville to fling himself off, into, or onto things. Well, other than that and any other scenes being filmed, the majority of my days were also spent hoofing it up and down the mountain to shoot the various park structures and rides from dawn to dusk, because if you know anything about movie posters it's that there's a whole heck of a lot of compositing that goes on in Photoshop. I first learned this on the jackass movie in 2002, when they combined two of my photos for the primary shopping cart image of the cast and then cobbled in all sorts of fancy background explosions and shit for the final poster.
So that was your first official movie poster?
Yeah, which is funny, because way back when I was a starry-eyed Wisconsin teenager, I had grandiose dreams of one day doing a movie poster—I was a big fan of Drew Struzan, who did all the kickass posters back in the '80s, and I loved the artwork on the schlockier, B-grade horror and sci-fi posters you'd find tacked up on the walls of video rental stores—but I'd always envisioned my doing so as an illustrator, you know? Not a photographer.
A friend of mine recently quipped that for an illustrator I have "more movie poster photography than most photographers." Again, crazy world, and I've really just been an accidental tourist stumbling through it all. Good times!
Tell me a bit about the set used for Action Point. Was that a pre-existing park?
No. Fuck no. Not at all. From what I know it was just a bare hillside prior to them coming in and erecting the whole damn thing, which really gave it that extra oomph in the backwoods-slash-jackassy department. Most of it, I believe, was constructed by the South African production company, but Knoxville had our longtime shady prop master JxPx Blackmon and his assistant Scott Manning shipped in to help design, build, and oversee everything for that authentic American feel. You'd be surprised what cultural differences can slip by, even down to the simplest of signage details. But it was pretty crazy to first set foot on the mountain… and that's not even because there were zebras and springbok roaming about the adjacent hillsides.
The other fun thing of note about my arrival was that it coincided with the onset of winter in South Africa. That really threw me for a damn loop, because I'd been told to prepare for 110-degree temperatures. So on my first early morning call time at 6:30am, I found myself in the pitch black, freezing my ass off, because the sun didn't rise until well after 7am, at which time I could still see the frosty exhalation of my breath. Total Southern California ass that I am, I'd only packed shorts and T-shirts for the entire trip, so off to the Cape Town mall I went to spend my per diem on a whole new working winter wardrobe. Fortunately the Rand to USD ratio was on par with Monopoly money.
That's nice, but you do know that we're talking about world currency and the weather now, right? Let's get back to the photos, like how would you describe your shooting style?
My shooting style? The fuck you talking about? I have a Canon Mark III 5d, if that's what you mean, and I have a remedial grasp of apertures, shutter speeds, and ISO—whatever an ISO is? Look, if you really want to tack a name on my "shooting style," I'd best describe it as "click 'n' wish." You know, just hope for the best and let god sort 'em out.
If anyone is actually reading this, they'd probably get the impression you have no idea what you're doing.
Yeah, well, first impressions are everything. Look, can we talk about the penguins instead? I was really stoked to see the jackass penguins waddling about Boulders Beach.
Save it for your Wildboyz fantasies. What was the wackiest thing you watched Knoxville do stunt-wise on Action Point?
Unfortunately I'd missed the power washer, where they blasted him down the water slide, but I got a real good giggle when Paramount gave me a sneak peek of that daily prior to my trip. The catapult—or trebuchet, sorry—was impressive, if only because we'd never managed to build a successful one on jackass and he went through the side of a barn with just a nick and a shave to his scalp. And of course I knew he was going to eat a mouthful of dusty shit on the alpine slide… he had a lot of physics on his side for that one and the whole eyeball-popping aftermath was just a surprise cherry on top.
The one that stood out the most to me was the "branch too far," where he jumped out of a tree and smack-landed on the roof of a shed. I already suspected that was going to be a tough one for him, because it's not like most of the stunts he prefers where things are just happening to him and he doesn't really have a choice in the matter. This one was different in that he alone had to instigate the jump—it's not like anyone pushed him or the branch broke. So commitment-wise that's a pretty big mental hurdle to clear. What was most difficult for me, though—because this is all about me, right?—was not bursting into laughter when he bounced off the roof—and he really did bounce!—because, you know, it's a real movie set and you're not supposed to make any noise, whereas crew laughter was always just another necessary ingredient of the jackass soundtrack. So I really had to rein in that natural impulse and stifle my braying.
Biggest regret?
What, like in life?
No, on the picture, dumbass. We're not here to hear your goddamn life story.
Oh, okay. Well, I guess it would be that by the time I'd arrived, Chris Pontius had already filmed the majority of his Benny the Lifeguard scenes. That was a bummer, because I could listen to Chris improvise lines all the live long day. I did luck out, though, because they had to do a later reshoot on this one particularly sexy scene of his where he finds himself trapped in a newsroom studio. The long and the short of it is that he gets cummed on, so I had the wonderful opportunity to relive that moment in time—again and again and again and again, because to know Chris is to love Chris. He's the undisputed scene-stealer of the movie.
How long were you in Cape Town?
At some point it felt like an eternity, but I was really only there for just over three weeks, whereas a lot of the other actors had been there since March and already created a castaway family of sorts. Luckily I was able to slip in to their circle on the coattails of Knoxville and Pontius, so I had a good time hanging out with all the Shitbirds.
Oh, the one funny thing about Cape Town was that both Knoxville and Pontius texted me soon after my arrival with the warning to not leave the hotel after sundown. It was a great hotel, but it was located on the periphery of a rather sketchy area—mostly because it's a tourist zone and they're easy pickins for ne'er-do-well individuals. I did have a beautiful view of Table Mountain from my hotel room, though, and it spoke volumes to my inner nature nerd.
On the nature tip, where exactly do you find a brown bear in Africa?
The simplest answer is you don't. From what I heard it was a very complex process and something not likely to ever happen again.
That's all I've really got to ask unless you have anything else you'd care to blather on about.
Well, I don't think it entirely came across on the screen, but like three entire days were spent filming the destruction of the park and it was nothing short of unmitigated chaos—and this is coming from someone whose career has mostly revolved around chaotic film sets. The director, Tim Kirkby, would yell action, and it was basically just a fucking free for all with hundreds of extras going total apeshit. The tennis ball-firing tanks were the real wildcard of these scenes, and as a crew member it was exceptionally thrilling, like you were "in the shit" documenting a real life war or rebel political coup. Actually, I don't know why I'm even talking about this, because looking back at my photos even they couldn't convey what it was like being in the middle of all that… I often fantasized that the footage would be quite beautiful if all played out in slow motion and edited to the tune of David Bowie's "Life On Mars."
Okay. Clearly it's time to end this, because I have no idea what you're going on about. I do know you're a shameless self-promoter, though, so you might as well get on with any last whore-ish sentiments you'd like to tack on for anyone left reading this.
Now that you mention it, I do have my hands in a new skateboard company that's about to launch called StrangeLove Skateboards. The timing isn't great, because the website's not entirely ready yet, so consider it a sneak peek of things to come… because they will come, and I don't mean that in an "on-the-hand" way.
(All photos by Sean Cliver—except the photo of Sean Cliver, as that was taken by Donna Stack Cliver; 2017)
Our longtime friend Ed Templeton has yet another photo book in his published quiver: Hairdos of Defiance, a showing of which was recently built around its release at the Roberts Projects gallery in Los Angeles (currently on display through April 21st). Rick Kosick was on the opening scene to document Ed in his natural habitat, whereas I, Sean Cliver, lazily emailed Ed a few silly questions. These are those questions, all graciously answered by Ed, who was most likely sitting at his desk in the nude—or at least that's how I pictured him, and I say that with no regrets whatsoever.
What’s the gist of your new photo book, like give me the infamous artist’s conceptual perspective.
The gist of it is photographs of people with mohawks and other "hairdos of defiance." I'd been shooting kids with mohawks over the years and ramped it up over the last few to the point that if I saw a mohawk that looked interesting I would chase the person down and ask for a portrait. So it's one of my typology collections.
Did you always have the title in mind or were there others you tossed around in the working stages?
It was always going to be Hairdos of Defiance, although I did toss around "Emblems of Non-Conformity" a bit. The title came from an old conversation with Mike Burnett. I thought he coined it, he says it was me, but I think he's just being nice. Ever since that conversation every time I saw a punk hairdo I thought "Hairdo of defiance" in my head.
Do you set about with this grand idea, like, “I’m going to document hairdos!” or do you suddenly look around at everything you’ve amassed and realize, “Holy shit! i’ve got the makings of a book about the hairdos of Huntington!” Please, set the creative stage for me.
You described it perfectly. I suddenly look around at everything I’ve amassed and realize, “Holy shit! I’ve got the makings of a book." There's always the first one or two, then after ten years go by you sort of realize subconsciously that you have in fact been working on a series. That's when I ramped it up and started shooting them more aggressively. But always under the idea it would just be a fun zine.
What’s the most defiant hairdo that you’ve ever sported?
I'm the ultimate wuss when it comes to hairstyles. I've only ever had four styles in my whole life: the little boy bowl cut, the skater bangs, a shaved head, and then slicked-back hair. I tried to grow my hair out once, but couldn't even get it to my shoulders before wimping out. I had a mohawk for a few hours one time when I shaved my head. I think my conservatism with my own hair is what draws me to the kind of people that can sport a hairdo of defiance in public.
Have you considered doing a sequel, you know, something like “Hairdont’s of Compliance”? What does that even mean?
As much fun as that would be, it was hard enough to ask people for their portrait when you had a good reason, i.e., they have a photogenic hairstyle. I couldn't imagine stopping people in the streets with a mullet or some other hair-don't and trying to explain why I want a portrait of them. "Excuse me, sir, your hair is horrendous, may I take a portrait of you so that we can make fun of you later?" Having said that, I have not searched my archive for bad hair… maybe I have enough already!
Once upon a time, tattoos and piercings were considered to be an act of defiance. Now, however, they’ve pretty much become standard operational procedure for people across the board from all mainstream walks of life. So, from your anthropological studies, where do you see the next youthful act of defiance coming from?
I'm not sure in the internet age if anything will be able to make a splash like mohawks, tattoos, and piercings. The "stretched ears" thing came along and was adopted by mainstream copycats immediately. I have asked multiple ear stretchers why they did it and it always boiled to down to "My favorite band does it" or "It looks cool." I think kids need to up the ante and do the bottom lip stretching to the point where they can put a giant plate in there, or the neck rings until they look like a giraffe. Maybe that will shock people.
Wouldn’t it be neat if one day far off in the future you were memorialized as a statue on the Huntington Beach pier with your camera clutched in hand?
Ha! As much as that would be neat, I highly doubt my particular brand of documenting the HB pier is going to gain widespread acceptance by the city. It's already crazy that I did an exhibition at the Huntington Beach Art Center, but I guess you never know what could happen. I could turn into the "HB pier greeter." Have you ever heard of the guy in Laguna Beach who just waved at people driving by on PCH every day for decades? He has a statue. They won't even build a skatepark on the beach, so it's unlikely that they would celebrate a person who looks at HB with a critical eye.
One of the hashtags you frequently use on your Instagram account is #photobookjousting. Have you ever thought of staging a tournament where you stand at one end of a field with your new book in hand while Nan Goldin stands at the opposing end of the field with one of her books in hand and then Deanna blows a trumpet and you and Nan run at each other screaming and start bashing each other with your books? i guess what I’m awkwardly trying to get to is this: who would win in this book bashing duel, you or Nan?
Although she does have a formidable icy stare, I think it goes without saying that I would destroy frail old Nan—no quarter.
If you managed to catch the romcomdocudrama Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine on Hulu then there is absolutely no doubt in the world you were fascinated with one of the staff's most enigmatic characters: Earl Parker. Rick Kosick caught up with him recently at his place in Hollywood and this is a transcript of the ensuing conversation (and that's a fancy ass way of saying interview).
Kosick: What’s been going on with you lately?
Earl: Not really that much.
Why is that?
I do top secret stuff and I can’t talk about it.
You can’t give a little indication was to what you’ve been doing?
No, I can’t tell anybody.
So, what, just like roaming the streets taking photos, being a detective?
Ah, different types of stuff. Actually, I was taking a lot more photos in the past, and I would show them to people in the building and this old lady. I would just show her some pictures of random girls and stuff and this old lady asked me if I was looking for somebody.
How would you describe your photography style?
I haven’t been doing that lately.
Yes you have.
Not with my camera. Just with my phone.
So how would you describe your style of shooting with your iPhone?
I don’t know if there is one. I don’t really have much of a following with that kind of stuff… you would have to talk to somebody else.
Follow Earl, aka Alex, aka Thomas, on Instagram at @sheesh_capeesh.
I think you have a following. People just need to know more about you and what you are doing. Do you consider it to be like abstract or street life?
I guess so. It’s pretty boring and I don’t go many places. It’s just like around LA and stuff.
What other kind of cameras do you have?
I have two rangefinder cameras and a digital camera. I’m kind of losing interest in photography. There are so many cameras available that I just get tired of looking at pictures of them. I’ve been reading about cameras for a long time and I’m happy with what I have. I have everything all figured out, but then people have objections to what I’m into because everybody has a different idea of stuff. If you hang out with people they tell you to buy like a new camera and stuff and it goes on forever and I just don’t really care anymore. I’m just trying to give up on being interested in stuff like that.
With all the photography and writing you’ve done, do you have any heroes or someone you look up to?
Not really. I’m not that interested in America anymore. I want to go to some different countries and experience different types of cultures. I used to go over to Mexico. That’s really fun, but it can be kind of dangerous.
How’s Mexico dangerous?
I don’t think it is, but they say it is on the news. They were having drug wars for a while and people said don’t go there.
If you went to Mexico, what would you see yourself getting into?
I would just probably take pictures, eat tacos, and drink beer. Go to the bars in the afternoon with all the crazy drunks.
Maybe visit a brothel or two?
Ah, maybe, but I don’t go there for that reason. I’ve met people who are into that kind of stuff, but I would mainly go further into Mexico just to get out of places that have McDonalds everywhere. You have to go into central Mexico where it starts to get more exotic with different types of murals on the walls.
What’s the furthest you’ve traveled into Mexico?
I once sold an article to TransWorld publications and jumped on a bus through Texas all the way down the east coast of Mexico to Veracruz. It took two days and then I came up through the middle of the country and stopped at various cities and ended up in Tijuana with 600 dollars and I still had money when I came back. And then one time I didn’t have a place to crash, so I jumped on a bus and went to Calexico, California, which is straight east. You can walk over a bridge into Mexicali, which is the capital of Baja California. Pretty wild. The border towns are kind of sketchy. Groups of frat guys walk by and yell at you.
Have you every gone to Juarez?
I would never go to that place. You’re not supposed to go there. It’s not a nice place. But Cancun has problems too. I sit around and read the news all the time and I hear that people are getting sick at the resorts in Cancun and Cabo San Lucas. Recently there’s something about the beer that is making people sick, which is kind of strange, because the only reason I go there is to get one dollar beers. I don’t know… the more I read the news the less interested I get in traveling. I used to be more into it and then terrorism has been getting really big and I felt like I wasn’t missing as much anymore.
Have you written anything good lately?
No, writing isn’t going very well, but I’m going to start making my own homemade magazine as a solution. If you have to rely on other people it isn’t always that fun.
Do you see yourself as being famous?
I don’t really feel like I live the lifestyle of a famous person. I guess the answer is no. I don’t feel I have a lifestyle of anything.
People know who you are. You’ve contributed to something that’s been recognized.
Well, I just think there should be more of a lifestyle with convertible cars. And they hang out with pretty women and go to movie screenings.
But you see yourself as a creative type.
Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know how rewarding it is.
But you have fun in the process of doing it, right?
It has its moments.
Do you still have an infatuation about Hollywood and what this town has to offer?
Somebody recently said to me that they thought I was fascinated with Hollywood. I guess I kind of am, I live around here because it has cheap rent. But that’s kind of an interesting question… I don’t know how much I’m into that type of stuff. Maybe it would appear that way because of the pictures I take of the Hollywood stars on the Boulevard. I’m sure there are scenesters that are more interested. You would think that’s what it would be—the stuff about the actors in Hollywood, Marilyn Monroe or something—but other people don’t see it that way and have different ideas about what they think of this place. Like some of them don’t care about the Hollywood type stuff. It’s kind of like the people who work at the liquor store down the street don’t seem like they realize their store is in Hollywood.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve come across while walking around the streets of Los Angeles taking photos?
I was walking down Vine Street past the Arclight theatre and there was a small curtain blocking the view from the street, but I was walking next to it and I saw a couple having sex behind the curtain. Yeah, homeless people have sex in the streets. I always hear stories about it.
Do you think people understand your sense of humor or where you’re coming from?
Yeah, that can be a tricky thing with the writing. Like some peoples’ writings have their own style. They can either turn out great and the people love it, or their own particular style they have makes it a less desirable thing where people don’t understand where they’re coming from and they don’t like it. It’s not to say it’s badly written, they just don’t get the idea of it because of the person’s writing style. I’m really tired of all that stuff. I’m just going to start doing it for myself again.
That’s what you should be doing in the first place. I’m doing this interview because I like you and I have history with you. You’re interesting. I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks, because I think you’re cool and I want to share that with people. I think you should do the same with your writing and the pictures you take. That’s from the heart. That’s what matters most. Did you like how the Big Brother documentary turned out?
Yeah, I liked it. I thought it was pretty cool. Some people right afterwards had some thoughts about it, but I don’t really see myself as one of them critic types.
Did you have a lot of people come up and say they saw you in that documentary?
No, I kind of stay home a lot and I don’t really get out as much as I should.
So the building you live in, it’s a historical landmark?
Yeah, it’s been here a hundred years. The Black Dahlia, that girl who had a famous death, lived here for a few months.
Do you see yourself as a free spirited kind of guy?
I used to be more like that, I don’t know as much anymore. I’m kind of integrated with everything now. I’m more into theories and talking to people and listening to what people have to say.
Do you have any closing thoughts?
I’m hoping there isn’t a bad earthquake. I think one is definitely coming. That’s what everybody says. The last big one, the Northridge in 1994, I was out of town so I missed it. And when I came back to LA I saw the devastation from it and it was pretty crazy.
Do you to the YouTubes? If so, be sure to check out Jukka's new show Ultimate Expedition, debuting today on the YouTube Red label (not to be confused with John Lucero's Black Label). But that's just part of what you can read below, where Rick Kosick went into the depths of Dudeson psychology and the worldwide monster it grew into from its Finnish house party origins.
Rick Kosick: So what’s the life of a Dudeson like nowadays?
Jukka: Being 37 and being a Dudeson, you still have the same mentality and attitude you are born with that you do first and think later. Just kidding, but I still live off what always was my passion—to create something new, original, and unique and have fucking fun in life. Never forget that inner kid. I’m 37 and I think I’m the most childish person in my family and I've got a 5- and a 3-year-old.
So you’re always trying to out do your kids?
Jukka: I try to out do my kids and I always tell them that playing is a kid’s most important job. That’s my job, too. Actually, right before I came here, I spent the morning with my kids building a Batmobile out of cardboard boxes. So being a Dudeson there’s two sides to me: I’m going to constantly keep pushing my limits, keep learning new things and skills in life, and keep walking into every situation with the confidence I've always had. You know, I got this, and when I get to the place and I don't, I say, "Oh, I so didn’t have this." Haha... but that’s where humor comes from.
The other thing is, I’m running Rabbit USA here in the US, so we're producing a lot of shows. In Finland, we're the biggest independent production company. We do 15 shows a year. Outside the original and unique Ideas we do, we produce Saturday Night Live, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and Shark Tank Hollywood Game Night. Everything else is something we created and I take those shows and try to sell them here. We-re in post-production for the biggest non-scripted YouTube Red series, a show called Ultimate Expedition that will air in January.
Why did you decide to move to America, is this something you always wanted to do?
I’m from a small town in Finland that only has 500 people. My dad can’t read or write. I’m from a very poor family and I had never traveled before I was seventeen. I had this ambition inside me to do something big… I wanted to inspire people to live their life to the fullest and push their limits, and that’s what drove me to America. First of all, I’ve been traveling back and forth for 15 years now, and I spend more time every time I'm here. I just wanted to make something happen, because Finland isn't big enough for four crazy Dudesons. So I decided to move to the US and spearhead the Dudeson’s brand, running Rabbit USA here. You know, what’s actually scary, is you have a certain status, a successful company, great people working for you, and then leaving that all behind to come to the US and start from scratch and you take your family with you. But it’s worth it.
You were a big fish in a small pond in Finland and now you're in America.
It’s a fucking ocean and I’m not even a shrimp! Even though I have a shrimp—but not anymore. In Finland I had a shrimp, because it was so damn cold. Haha… but I love America. You know why? Every place has a good and bad side, that’s obvious, but I always concentrate on the positive. You come here, the dream still lives on, and it’s so freaking inspiring. Everyday you might meet somebody that can change your life. There are people who are self-made and had their dreams come true. You got Netflix, Google, and everybody in entertainment is out here. What I want to do is to make miracles. I want to preach about positive anarchy, so that the kids will know how to live their life and believe in their dreams. I think that comes from a skateboarding background. Skateboarders are so critical—that’s the biggest thing I got from being a skateboarder. Whatever somebody tells me, I don’t believe it. I challenge it. Until I see it myself, then I'll believe it. There’s so much BS people are trying to shove down your throat.
I always thought skateboarders were more creative, because they've always been on the forefront of fashion and what’s hip in today's culture. It always trickles out from there.
I think so, too. First of all, it’s a lifestyle. You go hang with your friends and you bust balls everyday skating at a mall. You constantly keep trying a trick and pushing your limits. You get hurt, but you get up and go again. That’s the mentality in life, because life will throw you down but you've just got to get up. Sometimes I thought skateboarders were a little too cool for school, but I see why. They don’t take shit. That’s what Iove about it. I had a blessing to grow up with one of the best skateboarders I know, Arto Saari. He was my next-door neighbor when I was thirteen. Later on, he bought a house for his mom across from my house. It was funny, he came over and knocked on my window like seven years ago. He goes, "Hey Jukka, I got a place for my mom across the way." Obviously he had way more skateboarding skills than me, but I was pretty good about falling off the board.
Let’s take a step back. How did the Dudesons get started?
The Dudesons have a similar growth story like jackass. We were a bunch of friends that all met in elementary school, but it’s the same cultural background we had coming from skateboarding and snowboarding that sort of made us film all the stuff were doing. We wanted to film and make something cool, like, "Look, this is what we're doing: we're blowing up mailboxes, we're pulled 80 mph behind a bus on a sled, pulling backside 360 flips on a snowboard, doing something at a ditch on a skateboard." So it’s a combination of all of that craziness and lifestyle. We were like the Power Rangers and needed all four of us to make that magic happen. Jarno filmed and edited all the footage, and every Friday when I was in high school we would throw a house party and get everybody around to show them what we did last week. That was our audience until '97 when we put out our first movie. We did it all ourselves and mailed the VHS tapes to all of the sporting stores, begging them to put it on their shelves, and ended up selling a few of them. Luckily enough, Jarno applied for a job at this small underground cable channel called Moon TV. It doesn’t exist anymore, but at the time he was like, "We've got to make our own show." So he threw out the idea, we sold the show, and it premiered January 2001.
Wow, that’s really cool. And then it snowballed into something bigger?
Yeah, the fun thing is, all these people started reaching out to us. These big producers in Finland said they wanted to produce the show. We were like, "No, we don’t want anybody to touch this," because we all came from that skateboarding background, saying, "No, we don’t take any advice. We're going to do it ourselves, because we know what the young kids want to see." When we first did the show, we thought, "Okay, it won't be the worst show on the network," and all the sudden it was a success on that little cable channel. The second season, Channel 4, the second biggest commercial channel in Finland, reached out to us and said they wanted the second season. From there it snowballed into where we should do something international. We started about the same time as jackass on TV in Finland, and we were like, "Jackass is doing this in English. We can speak good enough English. We should do something worldwide." The funny thing is, nothing was ever sold from Finland outside of Finland before—like nothing international had ever been sold. We were the first show ever to be sold outside of Finland. So we went to the biggest TV market in Europe and walked around with a trailer where I put my balls into a mousetrap. We would walk into Disney and I’m looking at a Mickey Mouse Club trailer playing in the background as I’m showing my trailer to the Disney executives. When they saw me put my balls in a mousetrap with all the aftermath and how much it hurt, right then they said, "We might not be the right home for this, but you should go talk to Viacom and MTV." So we just went around. We didn’t know what we were selling, but we wanted to get something out there. After a year, we sold the first season to Australia and 150 other countries.
How did you meet Jeff Tremaine?
First I meet Steve-O. And we knew Bam, because he loved Finland. We were doing live festivals at the same time, where we had a band playing in the background and I was shooting a shotgun with a bulletproof vest and other big, crazy stunts onstage. Steve-o was on his world tour then and he was coming to Finland, so I got ahold of him through his management. When Steve-O came to Finland to do press, we met up and shot a couple of things. We bonded and really liked each other. We were supposed to do a show the next day, but before doing that Steve-O flew to Sweden to do a show and was bragging about how he swallowed bunch of weed in Holland. The Swedish cops busted him and put him in jail, so the show never happened. We had all the footage we filmed with Steve-O, but I didn’t have any appearance release forms and we really wanted to put this in our new Dudesons movie. So I flew to LA and hit up Steve-O to show him what we wanted to use. He came to the motel I was staying at and he was like, "I love it, but I can’t really call the shots. It’s a Jeff Tremaine question." At the time, Jeff was editing a video for Turbonegro at Hollywood Sound and I had a DVD with me. I was like, "Can we go meet Tremaine?" This is how it felt for me being a 19-year-old little boy from Finland. So I came in and Steve-O introduced me to Jeff. I told him what I do and Jeff is like, "Let's watch the DVD." So I’m trying to make it play, but my DVD is in PAL mode and not NTSE, so it’s not working. Tremaine is standing on his ivory tower saying, "Time is money, boy." Finally I got it working and it’s a seven-minute presentation reel. When it was finished playing, Tremaine was like, "Hell fucking yeah. I love you guys, and go ahead, Steve-O." That’s when we got to use Steve-O in our DVD, and then we met Bam. Ever since then, Tremaine has become a dear family friend. He has definitely been a big inspiration, and it all started by meeting Steve-O. I love Steve-O. We’ve been friends for fourteen years now. I’ve seen him change and how he’s got that burning will to live and evolve as a person.
Now that you’re living in Los Angeles, do you miss seeing your fellow Dudeson brothers?
We all own the company together, so the Dudesons come here all the time. Jarppi just left, and Jarno was here just before that. So the way we look at is, I’m filming the Dudeson vlog for YouTube from my point of view, being the spearhead, and we try to have each guy come here for ten days throughout the year. So we still get to do things together, because it’s obvious we grew up together and can count on each other. There’s definitely a chemistry every time they come here. I do miss them a lot, but thank god I have the pleasure of having them come here as well.
That’s great. And it’s a good thing for them, too, because it’s warm.
Yeah, it’s warm. Palm trees, sunshine. Jarno lived here for a year. He came to help launch all this with me, but he moved back to Finland for family reasons.
So how gnarly is too gnarly? Are there any limits as to how far you will take a stunt?
You know what, it’s tough to judge beforehand… usually that’s a call I make too late. Haha... I don’t give up, I just always want to go at it. And if something is ridiculously stupid and will just kill you, you’re not going to go at it, but you’re going to change it in a way that you can do it. The most important thing is, whatever I’m going to do I believe in myself 100-percent, like "I got this." And rarely do I have it. Also, I think it's more about having a unique perspective or an original idea that you just freaking love, to go out there and do it in real life. Sometimes the funniest bits are the ones that won't end up breaking bones. Some of the things we’ve done, like during Dudesons in America, when Knoxville and Tremaine introduced us to bulls and bull-riding—walking into a bullring on stilts while wearing a red shirt was such a blast. You hear Gary Leffew, the legendary bull rider say, "Release the beast!" and you can see it eyeballing you. You can tell it’s thinking, "I’m going to take you down." Then it swept the stilts right out from underneath me and I fell on the ground. I could see the bull circle, and I’m like, "All right, here it comes." I just jumped a little bit, so he could give a little bump on my butt, but he ends up hammering me. I do a backflip over the bull and end up on my feet. If I didn’t end up landing on my feet, I would have been screwed—the bull would have done a headstand on me.
There are two things I love to do: one is where you need some kind of skills, like this year I set my goals to learn a double backflip and a full twist backflip on a trampoline, and I learned them at Tempest. So I love the things you need some skill, but I love also the fear factor, like on jackass 3D when I did the stunt with Johnny Knoxville where we climbed a huge tree while Jarppi and everyone else were sawing the bottom. We were waiting to fall down with the tree and I’m talking to Knoxville and I'd never seen him so scared. I asked him, "What are you afraid of?" He’s like, "Jukka, I don’t like heights. I like the kind of stunts where it’s not up to you if you screw it up, it’s just luck." So I love to go out of my comfort zone and take that leap of faith to do something crazy.
I also like to do creative builds. We duct taped an inflatable mattress on the side of a van and then I wore double-sided duct tape and I’m jumping on the trampoline waiting for the van to pass. Then I jumped on the mattress on the side of the van to see if it sticks, and it freaking stuck! That’s always crazy. Can we build a trampoline out of Saran Wrap and then jump from the roof onto the trampoline? There are certain times you are fucking scared, but then there’s that whole process of building it and seeing it come together and you're like, "All right, I’ll go for it."
With YouTube as big as it is now and kids creating content, making their own shows, how much can you make from doing this?
It's stupid money. If you’re successful on YouTube it’s ridiculous. First of all, I love YouTube in a way that I can shoot something today and post it tomorrow and everyone around the world will get it and the fans will comment on it. So I think the YouTube viewers are more engaged than anyone else. Plus, you get to see your product come out with a fast turnaround, rather than shooting a movie or a show and have it come out in nine months. Like you get to react to what you do and what people like and what you like. At the same time, so many people are doing it to be pranksters and I fucking hate the pranksters. They're just shocking the world for the sake of shocking and most of the shit is fake. What I love about jackass and how I grew up is let's keep shit real. Some of the YouTube videos aren't like that. I’ve heard people say things like, "Big influencers, why would we even try to do it for real, because fake shit does so much better for us." I was like, "Who said that and who do I punch in the face?" YouTube used to pay a thousand dollars per million views, but they want to become the next Netflix, so they went from paying not per view but minutes watched. So let's say you make a ten-minute video and 80-percent of your audience watches eight minutes of it. You’re going to make two- or three-thousand dollars per million views. So if Jake Paul did 400 million views, that’s almost a million dollars per month. That’s not bad for being a YouTube kid. I would say the rule is like if you get 50 million views a month you get between 50- to a hundred-thousand.
Maybe it’s because I’m older, but I just don’t think these new generation of YouTubers have a tangible quality and come off a little cheesy.
I think so, too. There are a lot of people that have potential, but there are even more people who have no charisma ad are used to talking to their cat. That’s the beauty of you and our upside, the strength in Rabbit USA and The Dudesons, we come from the 20th century of making content. We know how to tell stories from the beginning, middle, and end. We respect working with the crew, but we also understand how you have to do the digital content for the millennial audience, where you have to be intimate and talk directly at them. Whereas TV, you go directly to a lot of people, so how do you put those two things together? That’s the magic of it. I think a lot of these people have grown up with nobody telling them what to do, they just do their thing and found a niche audience and they're not willing to make any comprise. But they don’t even know how to work with a crew. They are very black and white, like TV is dead and YouTube is all there is. But they're also anal and going through the comments, looking at what somebody said negative and deleting. That becomes their whole little hamster wheel of living in that world and they’re not happy. They’re stressing because they have to put out content daily and the worst life they are living. I’m worried about that, all of the sudden, you have to tell a story in two or five minutes and the way you cut the footage in the first six seconds you have to have a cute butt and the next six seconds you have to have a funny face, where we're used to telling stories and giving something time to breathe. So I’m determined to find a way to make this work, and I think we just cracked it with this new YouTube show I did called Ultimate Expedition. I respect TV and the silver screen, and I know if you can reach that level of charisma you can have something successful. You’re set for life. These YouTubers will have an audience for a few years and then go away if they don’t have the charisma to step up to the next level.
So what can we expect to see from you in 2018?
We have a killer show coming out called Ultimate Expedition on YouTube Red. It’s a very organic show, where I take eight celebrities—all from the traditional world to digital influencers—to this mountain that’s 20,000-feet high. Eight people died trying to summit the mountain in the past, and all these celebrities have zero skills in mountain climbing. We got Steve-O, Chuck Liddell, the former UFC champion, Gus Kenworthy, the first openly gay athlete who is competing in the Winter Olympics… all of them trying to climb this mountain from zero to a hundred and every day only gets tougher. You’re so high up everybody is struggling with altitude sickness and running into the danger of getting liquid lungs and evacuated off the mountain. There are crevices and the possibility of avalanches.
This is the biggest non-scripted YouTube Red show they’ve ever done. It’s produced and shot in Peru, in the mountains called Tocllaraju, and I think that combines the filmmaking look. We have Emmy award-winning camera guys, a sound guy that sounded Mount Everest, and a great digital team that are building videos for Steve-O. They made 22 videos just for his channel, like getting choked out by Chuck Liddel to whatever, so he can have his own story. Throughout the ten weeks that each episode is coming out, the cast members are going to be uploading content on their own channels as well, so when you’re watching the show you can learn more about Steve-O and see what else he did during that episode. So it’s like this new ecosystem with the existing fans and the cast members feeding into the show and the show feeding into the cast members and collaborating with each other. It’s the first time YouTube has done something like that and I’m really excited on how the show looks.
I am a Dudeson for life and I believe in positive anarchy, but I also want to be the modern Indiana Jones that takes these people and keeps it real and pushes their limits with my own example. It was none of that Bear Grylls bullshit where he takes Ben Stiller to a jungle on a helicopter for a day and then they go back and stay at a 5-star hotel and then take a helicopter back the next day. On our show, everybody stays at the basecamp at 14,000 feet, struggling with sickness and everyone pooped at the same hole. What’s great about the show, we isolated everyone because there’s no cellphone service. You get away from today's noise and hecticness, you start asking yourself what you really want out of life. It really focuses you. You start asking yourself, "Am I happy?" Steve-O is battling with his addiction. Chuck Liddell, who’s retired from the UFC, needs a mental reset and wants to know what to do next. Then there’s Furious Pete, who had testicular cancer six months earlier and didn’t know if he was going to be alive. Then all of sudden he’s trying to summit a mountain, one of the most beautiful places Mother Earth has to offer. So the show is going to be quite an adventure.
On top of that, I’ll use the Dudeson’s vlog to set an example on how not to forget your inner kid. You can be 37-years-old and running a business, but stay fun! Laugh at yourself. You don’t have to become too serious, but at the same time push your limits. Learn new skills. I want to learn how to fly a plane this year and go diving with sharks. So I’m using my vlog as a vehicle to share the cool shit in life. At the same time, when kids are watching it, hopefully they get inspired and want to do something special with their life. I always say in my vlog, "What’s your Dudeson’s goal for the year. Say it out loud. What’s your dream? Say it out loud. What are you doing this week to get yourself close to your dream? How are you going to surprise yourself today or this week?" When they say, "I want to become a soccer player, or I want to learn how to play the guitar, or I want to put together a heavy metal band, or I want to learn a backflip," when they say that out loud, they are already part of the Dudesons and you're part of the family. You say, "What is a Dudeson?" A Dudeson is a feeling when you achieve something and feel alive—that’s what a Dudeson is.
I’ve been going to the Comedy Store for a couple of years now and it’s seriously my favorite place to go and hangout. You can catch me there just about every Monday and Tuesday night, and it all started because I would go and watch the Roast Battle. There’s something about these comedy shows that can be very captivating, like how these comedians have the ability to connect with the audience via their witty joke writing skills. At times, the energy in the room reminds me of a punk rock concert, but non-violent; or, maybe I’m just attracted to this world because everything I’ve done with my career has been about humor and making people laugh. It seems like a natural fit, right?
As time went on, I slowly started making friends with everyone who works at the Comedy Store. That’s what led me to meeting Tony Hinchcliffe, but our friendship didn’t really start until he moved into my building where I live in Hollywood—what are the chances of that happening? But it did, and I would see him walking around the building and in the courtyard. I would say hello and strike up a conversation—you know, small talk, being a friendly neighbor—but as time passed I'd see him sitting on his patio smoking cigarettes, kicking back, and that’s when we started getting to know each other. I'd walk over and talk to him through his wooden fence on the patio, just like on the TV show Home Improvement. He would always invite me to come see his Kill Tony show, and I eventually accepted his invitation. From the moment I first started going to his show, I instantly liked it. It’s a really funny! So I go just about all the time, and now that we’ve become friends, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for you to learn about Tony Hinchcliffe and his world of pure imagination. —Rick Kosick
Kosick: How did you get started as a comedian, was this something you always dreamed of doing when you where growing up?
Tony: I was always being a class clown, making fun of people—not really being a bully, but making fun just trying to make everyone laugh—and it’s probably from not having a dad growing up. He was around—in fact, I knew he was in the same city as me, he was just with another family. So it probably wired me to want more approval and acceptance from people… to be liked and loved or whatever. So I would always try to make people laugh as far back as I can remember, but I really found out about standup comedy between the 8th grade and my freshman year. Well, I knew about it from watching David Letterman and all of the amazing appearances from people, but between 8th grade and freshman year I saw the movie Man on the Moon. I love Jim Carry and I loved everything he had done up until that point, so when I saw that and the scene in the beginning where Andy is at the Improv and he’s getting fired, I was like, wait… I started putting it together through that movie that you can get paid to perform all the time and get better at performing while getting paid. I still didn’t think it was possible to do or how to become a comedian until I had already been out here in LA. I didn’t know you could just go to an open mic and perform just to get better. We didn’t have open mics where I was from.
When did you actually decide to try doing it?
I was like 21 and living with my brother out here in LA. I had a script and a half sort of written, but wasn't doing anything with it. Then one day at a Starbucks coffee shop I struck up a conversation with this old wizardly-looking man with a gigantic beard and big Afro hair. I told him that I’d written a movie and a half and how I always wanted to do standup comedy. He’s like, "You should do standup comedy." "Yeah," I’m like, "how do you do that?" He said, "You should go to an open mic at the Comedy Store." Turns out that wizardly old man was Shia LaBeouf’s crazy dad. So I’m like, if that’s Shia LaBeouf’s dad and his son went and performed at the Comedy Store like five or six years ago and just signed a five-picture deal with Steven Spielberg… trust me go to the Comedy Store, do it. I had no other guidance or any inspirations, but this wizardly old man sort of jolted my stomach and really made me get to it.
So I did. I started out at the Comedy Store instead of a smaller open mic somewhere. That’s a pretty big deal, because I built my entire foundation out of there and worked my way up for a decade and used that place as the backbone for all the work I do. It all comes right out of there on Sunset Blvd. where he told me to perform. But before I did that, I hyped it up and prepped for months for a single three-minute open mic spot, and when I got up onstage I blanked out. Completely. After all that prep and everything, I ended up saying, "Hello. Yep, I’m Tony Hinchcliffe, and I can’t remember anything I was going to say to you. Um, this is my first time onstage and I’ve been prepping for literally two or three months, sitting at parks, writing and editing stuff for this moment right now, and here I am and I don’t remember any of it." I was getting chuckles and laughs, because everybody had done jokes up until that point and I was completely different. It broke the wall of the entire room, because I was being so honest. I had nothing else. It was either say what was on front of my brain, or don’t talk at all. And so I talked and that’s what came out. The host, Ryan O'Neal, who's hilarious to this day and one of the funniest fucking people, loved it. He goes, "Wow, that was that guy's first time onstage tonight and he did better than everybody else that went up." I was like number 14 out of 16, or something like that. I couldn’t believe it. It was crazy. My brother was there and he was like, "Dude, you fucking did it." We didn’t know how the business worked—or how anything worked—so it was a celebratory type of night, because to me it was the world, crushing the Comedy Store. But I spent every set after that for months trying to get back up to that level of funny again, in the moment, raw and real.
When did you become a doorman at the Comedy Store?
I probably started 3 to 4 months later. At that time there was only one way to get a job at the Comedy Store and that was getting hired by Tommy, the talent coordinator trained by Mitzi Shore to make the lineups and do what she did. He would go to her house every week, get advice and tell her things or whatever for work, and they would talk about stuff. She was very sick at the time, so he would go to her house every week to get advice and tell her things or whatever for work. He was the last link to Mitzi. Tommy hired me, stuck by me, and gave me an incredible chance to expand. He had me start hosting the original room, making fun of comedians after they did three minutes of material, and sometimes throwing in a quick trick to fix their joke or give them a good piece of advice. Three or four years after that, I started my show Kill Tony. Tommy is almost completely responsible for the creation of Kill Tony, because he wanted me to be a host—he saw a host and he was right, because I love the chaos. I love moving pieces around and acknowledging what’s in the moment, which is exactly what happed on that first set.
So did you make a lot of sacrifices to make this work for you? Was it pretty tough?
Oh yeah, very tough. When I started, it was just my brother and I, and he had a really hot girlfriend at the time, so I always remember feeling like the third wheel. I was always just hanging out taking bong rips in the living room. Once I started standup, though, it was a race to get out of there. Two or three months later I moved in with a bunch of comedians… me, Matt Edgar, and Sandy Danto. They each had a bedroom and I was in the living room. We all wanted to pay less rent, because we were just door guys at the Comedy Store, so we moved in another roommate, then another roommate—there were three people in the living room and one in each bedroom. I moved out after six months to move in with a girl, and we lived together for a year in a studio apartment. Then I moved into a studio apartment with two comedians and one of their wives, so I was in a top bunk in a studio apartment with a couple underneath me, and another guy living on the other side of the room. That lasted about six months until I decided, "Fuck this. This is insane. I’m sleeping in a fetal position on a top bunk, and I’m working at the Comedy Store continuously doing spots and it’s all a machine." So I ended up sleeping in the backseat of my car during the summer. I would wake up in the back alleyway at the Comedy Store, because there was nobody there at the time, amd take a shower in the main room. I had everything folded up, saved up a bunch of money from doing that and working continuously until 5 or 6am. It was the craziest summer ever! Don Barris was going until six in the morning in the original room, we were doing a lip sync rock 'n' roll band called the Barris Kennedy Overdrive, which we did continuously for years, but during this time we were at our full phases. The Comedy Store doors would lock and we would play air instruments over the loud speakers and rock out to all of these different songs and Don had all of these tracks. That’s when I learned to improvise and learned comedy Jiu-Jitsu during those late nights. We would go eat food at 6am, get back to the Comedy Store at 7am, fall asleep for four hours in the backseat of my car, then wakeup and start answering phones all day at the Comedy Store. Once 4pm came around, I'd go shower, eat something, and then go work the door and try to do some spots or maybe try and hit an open mic before my spot at the Comedy Store started.
What year was this?
It wasn't that long ago… 2009–2010. I put all my focus, money, and energy into writing and performing, period. If it wasn’t that crazy the night before and I didn’t sleep in late, I would go get a newspaper, bring it back behind the Comedy Store, and start writing monologue jokes, which I've never written before professionally but it created the habit in me of writing, being able to do it when I was uncomfortable. So by the time 2010 came around, I was hosting and writing crazy jokes and making fun of the comedians when they weren’t doing good. When Jeff Ross approached me on the patio after seeing me do all of that, and I told him that I can write roast jokes, that it’s a dream of mine, and I’ve been making fun of people my whole life. He’s like, "Maybe you can help me with something," and we started writing jokes together for the roast of Quentin Tarantino.
So people were starting to recognize you and taking you under their wing?
Yeah, there wasn't that many people; in fact, there’s an interesting thing a lot of those guys that I was living with in the apartment… a lot of them had powerful mentors when they were coming up. This guy's got Jeff Garlin; this guy's got Pauly Shore. Man, I didn't get to open for anybody. To me, I was this white trash kid from an Italian gangster neighborhood in Ohio with a good fight but nobody backing me at all. So to look back and see how that storyline switched… it's incredible. It just goes to show you that sacrifice and keeping your head moving forward, to keep grinding and staying positive and not look at what everybody else has, because if I'd done that back then I would have been done. I would have quit. First it’s Jeff Ross, then it’s Joe Rogan… it’s incredible, I think when you love comedy you have a good eye for who else really loves it and who’s hungry. I think those guys recognized that in me.
Who are some of the people you look up to and influence you?
Quentin Tarantino is probably the reason I even came out here in the first place. Him and Roger Waters, learning from them that art was even a thing. I always listen to music and watch movies, but it was something about the way they were doing it, like, "Wow, I want to be able to do fucking that." Like what is that? They’re both pretty dark, and it’s something to create crazy and different, cool, raw, and real, but to sort of like appease someone’s appetite like they did for me when I was fresh out of high school and depressed and not knowing what to do? The big part of me coming out here to live with my brother was because I was depressed and there’s nothing going on in Ohio. I hated school. I was over it.
Didn’t you get the opportunity to meet Roger Waters in person?
Yeah, I got to see him all star-struck by the person I was hanging out with who took me there. Nobody was talking to Roger Waters, like it’s not a thing. Then some security guy came up to us and said someone would like to speak with you and took us into another fancy green room where I got to tell him, "Thank you. I’m an artist because of you," and he said, "Well, thank you, that’s very nice." It was crazy! Especially after watching this mind-blowing concert. His other two concerts I paid for and I was completely broke. I made a point to see him at the LA Coliseum in the very back at the top. Complete garbage seats. I remember the plane that comes in at the beginning of The Wall was hanging on top of a wire over my head where I was sitting. The time before that was in Cleveland, Ohio, seeing Roger Waters, and all I remember is this giant bar in front of me with a big ledge. It was horrible. A blip on the map and even farther then the time I saw him at the Coliseum. But this last concert, we picked up our tickets and just kept walking to the front. It turns out we were in the row he looks at when he’s zoned in when he’s singing, strumming the shit out of his bass guitar, and I was five rows and slightly to the left when the helicopter flies over and he’s like, "You, and yes you," pointing.
So it was pretty much a biblical experience.
Yes, in my own weird way, but I’ve gotten a lot of those already. By working with Dave Chappelle, working with Jeff Ross, meeting Don Rickles—to me, that’s three generations for roasters, a weird art form up until a couple of years ago.
You’re at the point now where you've been doing the Kill Tony show for a few years and it seems to be going really good. Are you happy to see how the show has grown and how its been cultivating some new legends in the comedy scene?
Yeah, I love it. I’m having the time of my life with it. It’s my most proud thing. With Kill Tony I like to think it’s almost a Tarantino/Roger Waters type of experiment, because I am working with a band of people who are all over the place. They’re all goofy, crazy, and creative, but there are also elements of seriousness throughout the show and elements of really funny stuff. Which reminds me of Tarantino, because his movies are so funny and I don’t think people realize how funny they really are sometimes. They are sort of funnier than some comedies, because the tension is built and then it breaks down and then it’s built and then it breaks down again. That’s something we definitely do on Kill Tony. I love it. Everywhere I go around the world, people are listening and watching it. They will come see me do standup and they come up and talk about Kill Tony after the show on their way out. They'll also mention their favorite characters—Ichabod, Aphrodite, Mystery Dan, or whoever it may be, like Tam Pham. We talk about Pat Regan or Jeremiah Watkins or what’s Joel Burg really like, what does Redban smell like?
I love it. It’s my favorite thing in the world. I think everybody should have one that’s ever listened to the show. One of the craziest things about the show is that it’s so fun every single week. It makes it naturally different than a lot of stuff, and I feel like we're always getting better. So when I see Ryan’s book it reminds me of everything we’ve been through and the expansion and it makes me happy because every single form of art flows through that show. It’s also a podcast and video podcast in 360 VCR. There’s all of these different ways it’s being consumed and that’s all art. The book is special, because it's the oldest school version of art, so we have the spectrum covered. I mean what podcast has a book? It’s literally my favorite thing I’ve ever seen.
It seems like you’re pretty hooked up now. You get to hangout with a lot of cool people, attend a bunch of Hollywood parties, and you get to travel around the country opening for Joe Rogan. Do you feel like you’ve made it or is there still room for growth?
I definitely haven’t made it, or what I would like to do at all. I mean I’m having fun, but this is all just growth. Even Rogan is the same way. To us, our mentalities, everything is just growth to another adventure. We don’t know what’s next. As far as old dreams and everyday, that goes on. I get over my old dreams and I’m ready for what’s next. I feel bad for my friends who are showcasing for the Tonight Show. Who’s watching and why there? What grandma do you want to come to your show in Tuscaloosa that you’re not reaching. Again, going back to Joe Rogan, he’s talking to who he wants and what he wants to talk about. He’s created a special way to communicate to comedy fans and his fans of positive living, happy thoughts, and learning. He’s got his thing. I’m also working on other things as well, and I still have some old dreams knocking off the list.
Do you have any plans for a second Netflix special?
I have plans for a second special, but I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go? I’m not a 100-percent positive on that yet… I might try something crazy with that, but yes, locked and ready to go.
So looking back at everything you’ve done so far, are you happy with what you’ve achieved?
Yeah, I’m happy, but not content. Like it’s fun, but I don’t know… I’m inspired by the guys I’m lucky to work with, so happy, yes. Aware, very much so. Everyday I’m reminded in some way about having my clothes perfectly folded in the trunk of my car. I thought about that earlier today, when I was rearranging some shit, going through some old clothes and getting rid of them. I’m still that guy, but I also know a bunch of cool things I want and still have crazy dreams.
This year, like every other for the past three to be precise, Tremaine locks down a location and rounds us all up from our various corners of the universe for a family-style night of drinks, food, and fun—the pinnacle of fun being a certain "White Elephant" gift exchange game that has only grown and amped up in energy over time. Catch LA was the restaurant of choice, and they wisely provided us with a room and bar all unto our own, thereby minimizing any collateral damage to other patrons of more intimate, eating minds and tolerances. But look at the photos, look at the silly little photos, and have yourself a good one this holiday season!
Please make note how all the photos are nicely composed and well lit, because it's not going to last long. This was still early in the evening, so Barry Smoler and Jen look pretty in black at far left; middlemen Wee-Man and Chris Pontius could be Dasher and Dancer; and Wayne and Shanna Newton came totally correct in their very formal party attire at very far right.
And it just wouldn't be a big time Hollywood night if Tremaine wasn't taking a call, so Sean Cliver and Mae Quijada adapted to the moment in kind at left, while Rick Kosick at right later caught him off the phone and in a shirt bearing his bang-a-gong likeness from jackass the movie!
Once the food hit the table, so did the people. At far left, Shad reflects upon his life choices and the watershed of reasons he doesn't allow people to comment on his Instagram profile, while Guch remains the eternal sage; Joe Oz ran the middle of the table in pitch perfect 1st AD form, while his next door neighbor David Siev made sure all the strings were orchestrated behind the scenes and running smooth, just as he does at the office; and then of course Amanda Adelson had to tell everyone to "Go To 15" via sign language amid an animated Spike Jonze, a bemused Kosick, and a confused Tremaine at far right.
Shanna and Spike eventually managed to coerce Amanda into not doing something unladylike for a photo at far left, while Lucky Pierre's Johnny Knoxville and Sean Cliver went the complete opposite direction. Wee-Man, on the other hand, grabbed the bull by the beef and filled his stomach accordingly at far right.
And so we finally arrive at the "White Elephant" game of thrills, where Dimitry Elyashkevich arguably came up on one of the true premiums of the night, a coveted #MAGA hat, at far left; or, did Shanna score the score of scores in the middle with Spike's original drawing of "Jeff and PJ Forever"? No, it was definitely Tremaine at far right who locked up the prize possession with some cockamamie if not outright disturbing Edward Scissorhands-esque straightjacket fresh off the racks of Hot fucking Topic.
Thanks again to Tremaine and Shanna for throwing down for the night of extended family fun. Thanks also to Kosick, Wee-Man, and Mae for having the presence of mind and wherewithal to take photos amid the revelry!
They always say you can never be too clever, but you can—and annoyingly so. I should know, I do it all the time, but I just can't seem to help myself from routinely tripping over my dick. "So it goes," Kurt Vonnegut would say if he could say, but the point is no one's going to grasp the above not-even-close-to-passingly-funny reference to Finding Nemo, because none of y'all are hip to the abbreviated moniker of our longtime friend Thomas Campbell. Thomas, aka "T-Moe" or "T-Moss," like most of our friends, comes from the world of skateboarding, but perhaps a different skateboarding than the world presently knows—especially with the pursuit now being hailed as a "sport" (bleh) on the slate for the next Summer Olympics (bleh). Sorry, I come from that old world of skateboarding, too, where it once lay ignored on the outer fringes of society and went mostlyhated in whole by everyone—aside from the misfits and creative types that found an island all unto their own to design, that is. Again, times have changed, skateboarding's a hot Thrasher topic now, but there's still a bastion of individuals hellbent on preserving the "visual mythology" of skateboarding as a place to creatively escape the norm and mutter "fuck you" to the world. Thomas is one such defender and he currently has a very Thomas project in the works… —Sean Cliver
So what’s up with this latest project you’re working on?
I have been slowly working on a 16mm skate film called Y.O.D.—Ye Olde Destruction—for almost six years now with a solid grip of shredders, building a bit and skating DIY spots, mostly, but not totally. It's basically a driving movie, where two crews drive around in these two old cars and skate, eventually ending in destruction. Thus, YOD. Gonna try to finish this film by the spring of next year. The list of rippers that will be featured in the film include Evan Smith, Jon Dixon, Jason Adams, Rick McCrank, Max Schaaf, Dennis Busenitz, Caswell Berry, Brent Atchley, Arto Saari, Jason Jessee, Elissa Steamer, Zack Wallin, Ray Barbee, Nick Garcia, Al Partanen, Jeremy Leabres, Jackson Pilz, Zarosh Eggleston, Ben Raemers, Chris Russell, Keegan Sauder, Aron Suski, Roger Mihalko, Taylor Bingaman, Javier Mendizabal, Raven Tershy, Louie Barletta, Barker Barrett, Mark Suciu, and Collin Provost, amongst others.
How have you gone about finding funding for the feature?
I thought up an idea for a grass roots campaign with a lot of amazing visual artists. I asked them to do original art moves on completely unrefined skateboard blanks to raise some funds to get film processed and transferred and get this project completed. Making movies on film is kind of crazy financially in 2017, but the results will be a real treat, I believe. I’m trying to keep this project unsponsored by any companies, so it remains uninhibited in its creative nature and more of a visual gift back to skateboarding. Skateboarding has really given me my creative projection in my life… I pretty much owe everything to it. So this fundraiser is supported by the community and for the community.
What was the basic directive you sent out to all artists and who all responded in kind?
Please help. It was a very free idea. I just wanted my friends to have fun with it, so they really just did what they wanted. Here is a list of the artistic people that lent talented hands to the project: Todd Francis, John Herndon, Evan Hecox, Andy Jenkins, Barry McGee, Simone Shubuck, Richard Colman, Tim Kerr, Neil Blender, Ed Templeton, Cody Hudson, Ron Cameron, Jenny Sharaf, Russ Pope, Sean Cliver, Tod Swank, Chris Reed, Fernando Elvira, Steve Claar, Mat O'Brien, Natas Kaupas, Lori Damiano, Jason Arnold, Jay Howell, Nathaniel Russell, Max Schaaf, Todd Bratrud, Brian Lotti, Geoff McFetridge, Jeff Canham, Jim Houser, and myself. So, to say the least, it takes a village.
How has the response been so far on eBay?
Good… although, a lot of the planks are going for much less than market value. People are scoring. There was an amazing Evan Hecox piece that went for $520 the other day—that's crazy.
How many more sets of art will be rolling out?
There are close to 40 raw, painted, and sculpted blanks. We are dropping six tonight—Monday, December 18—for a five-day auction that will end on this Saturday night. Then we will take a break until after New Year’s and do three more sets of six or seven.
When do you hope to release the film and in what medium?
The film should be done by spring of next year. My plan is to make a limited edition, small, hardcover book with images from the film taken by Brian Gaberman, Arto Saari, Jai Tanju, Joe Brook, and myself—and a download number for the movie inside. After the book comes out, the film will eventually be released free on the Um Yeah Arts Vimeo page for all to enjoy. The band No Age will be making an original soundtrack for the film, and I hope to release a vinyl offering of those recordings also on Um Yeah Arts.
