Rooster Teeth Podcast - I’m Not Calling Han Solo A Liar... - #494

Episode Date: May 29, 2018

Join Burnie Burns and special guests C. Robert Cargill and Brian Brushwood as they discuss the evolution of the internet, film criticism, magic, and more on this week's RT Podcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I have two very special guests here with me today. I have Mr. Brian Brushwood. Hey, scam school and modern rogue. No, you said them both, thank you. That's all I wanted. We're like, say them both, say them both. We'll talk about a second, but I want to talk about it because scam school

being such a huge entity and then pivoting and doing something entirely new is, you know, as you know, are there guests here? See, Robert Cargill. We know each other very well, actually. Yeah. I might have been the one to, so on Twitter, Scott Derrickson said something and I responded to him. And Scott was like, I don't know who you are, but you seem to be followed by

a lot of people. I guess I'll follow you. And I was like, well, if it helps, I think I'm responsible for getting Cargill to quit his day job, which eventually led to a day job, Cargill. Oh, well, I mean, I was a film critic or before I was a professional film critic, I was a video or store clerk. Really? In fact, back in the day, there's a number of things, articles that I've written that,

you know, we're going to talk about this a little later, but there's a lot of articles that I wrote about, you know, oh, I was on the set of this film, and I was at this junket, and I was at this bar, and chatting with so and so actor. And everybody thought that's literally what I was doing for a living, and I would go back home, and I would fly back to Austin and work at a video store. And so for years, I would tell these stories

at the video store, like, would you do this weekend? Oh, well, you know, I was in LA, and I visited the set of this movie, Rules of Attraction, I was shooting, and... visited the set of this movie, Rules of Attraction. I was shooting and, and of course, everybody just thinks you're a liar. They thought it was full of shit. In fact, that was the thing is for years.

Like, people. They thought I was, they're like, yeah, whatever, Cargill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I walked, like a couple of years in, I walked up on one of the employees training a newbie and saying, okay, so look, there's this guy here, his name's Cargill. And he's gonna, at some point you're gonna work with him, he's gonna tell you some crazy story

about some celebrity that he knows and about being out on some adventure and just believe him, because it turns out he hasn't actually lied to us yet. It was a very strange time. I spent five years as a critic while also working in video stores. And now author, writer of Sea of Rust, author of the movie,

or screenwriter for sinister. And then also probably your best known work is you wrote the Doctor Strange movie. Yeah, Marvel's Doctor Strange. Which I gotta talk about the path from going, because I remember how I first met you. Cargill and I have such a weird, sorry, both you gentlemen are from Austin,

which is another reason and two gentlemen that I know from Austin have known for, I've known you for a really long time, Brian. Yeah. And Cargill, we have a really unique situation where I actually had this with my girlfriend Ashley, I'm gonna make it sound weird, but. Oh no, let's get weird, we're on YouTube.

But Cargill and I have this overlapping Venn diagram of friends that's enormous, but we had never met each other before. Not quite. I actually, I don't know if I've ever told you this before, back in your film review days, you were actually the very first person to ever review one of my movies.

The first movie I made in college with Matt was, movie called The Schedule. I'm a curious if you even remember. I do. And I do. And reviewed it for a cool news. You were the independent at that point in time, the independent film reviewer.

Well, I did what we called Indie Indie, which was that was the first gig I got on, was for the first year what I did was literally Harry was literally Harry was Harry knows was literally one of the most powerful people in Hollywood at that time. And he could make or break things right away. He saved two movies from going direct to video just by reviewing them and the studio changed their mind and said, maybe we'll put this pitch black movie and this iron giant movie out in theaters anyway.

I give credit where credit is due. Harry Knowles, I consider him to be the first successful blogger going way back to the old days of the internet. Now, I actually go to the Inacool news website when it was a gray background at a rainbow divider, you know, and I think that was like 1994. 96. 96, okay. 96 is when they started. Yeah, and that was way ahead of the curve that he was doing this. It was just some hardcore movie geek in Austin who was writing and he got a lot of attention.

And through that got a lot of influence. And so what would happen is a bunch of filmmakers who had made films but couldn't get them picked up, couldn't get them into festivals, what have you. Yo, right here. Would just send them to Harry. And Harry would get boxes of this stuff every day. And so I was essentially the clearinghouse for that. He would just call me up and be

curried. You'll come over. I've got another box for you. And I would just pick through all these VHSs and DVDs of these homemade films sometimes, sometimes homemade shot in backyard. Sometimes films with real budgets that just couldn't get noticed. And his rule was only talking about the stuff you like. Like this is not about destroying anyone's career. This is about finding these oddball things and diamonds in the rough. The diamonds in the rough that everyone else is neglecting.

And as a result, I got a bunch of people into film festivals. I kick started a couple of careers. There's two particular filmmakers who were both about to give up when I wrote about their film and- Can you say who they are? Yeah, well, one of them I'm working with now. He's a producer named Daniel Noah.

He worked as a screenwriter for a while, and now he's a producer with Elijah Wood over at SpectraVision. And he's producing a film mine. But so he actually had one of those things where he had made this film called 12. Nobody cared about it, couldn't get anybody to pay attention. He had pretty much given up and all of a sudden his phone starts ringing one morning

and it's ringing off the hook and he finally just crawls out of bed and anxious the phone and he's like, hello, and it's someone from CAA. And it says, hey, I'm looking for Daniel Noah and he's like, well, this is me and he's like, well, we would like to schedule a meeting to see 12 and talk to you about representation. And, and he's like, wait, how did you hear about 12? And he goes, well, we read about an unearned cool news. Didn't you know? And he's like, it's unearned cool news. He's like, Oh,

so we're the first people to get to you. So from that point on, you know, he got, I can almost hear the salivation. Nobody ended up picking up the movie, but people saw the movie, saw his talent and said, we're gonna represent this guy, started getting him gigs, he started doing script work and rewrite work, and then he found out that he really loved producing.

And so he and became friends with Elijah Wood and they started a production company together and they've been producing films and helping distribute films. And so around the same time that this happened, and this is why all of Austin is one big vent diagram. It's the weirdest thing, because you hear about like, you know, in the 1960s, there was a scene around whatever,

and you're like, that's movie talk. That's not how it happens. But I'll be damned if that's not exactly what happened in Austin, because while this was going on, I was performing the asylum street spankers would do an all acoustic blues and jazz show, and then they would take a 15 minute break, and I would get up and escape from a stray jagged eat fire, do stick nails in my eyes, and then I would pass the hat. And it was during that time, I was walking around and passing the hat, and I looked, I was like, holy shit, that's Harry Noles. And then it was there that they are also doing slam poetry that I met and connected with

Ernie Klein, if he came for res with him, Ernie Klein of course, wrote Ready Player One. And between then and there, I guess around the early scam school days, I mean, obviously I've been aware of all the rooster two stuff, but I feel like you and I only started hanging out like what five years ago Yeah, it seems like it. Yeah, but it's one of those things too It's sometimes you can operate even the small town like Austin although I just read That Austin is now the 11th largest city in the nation. That's crazy to me Although we were complaining how long it took us to get across down in traffic It get here well, it was but only because they're doing construction

I live five minutes from the studio and it took me 20 minutes to get across down in traffic. Get here. Well, it was, but only because they're doing construction. I live five minutes from the studio and it took me 20 minutes to get here. No, you're just fucking round about. I'm 51st Street and nobody knows how to use a roundabout. They're all waiting for like four car links to appear so they can get their car in there. So just go. If you're pointing in that direction already, just find a gap and go. It's actually an article we just did on the monorogue.com is nice things America can't have because because we can't handle it.

Yeah. It's funny. What you were just talking about though, I met Ernie Klein doing slam poetry. Like we, I performed this terrible piece and it was, it was so deep nerd for like 1997. And there's only one person in this big audience laughing at it. And that guy comes up afterwards and pass me on the bag as they just didn't get it man, but you did a good job. And then he goes on stage and it's certainly client, fucking blows me off the stage. Like he was, Ernie was the fucking man back in the late 90s early, when it came to slam poetry.

Yeah, his album, Ultraman is air wolf. Like I remember the one piece about how the millennium Falcon is just the dukes of hazard, like a passion with which you would argue geek stuff way before the internet. You know, when there just weren't the, you know, there was no YouTube to, to, to let these rants out. There weren't, it memes did not get passed around. Like at that point, the biggest meme on the internet was that video of the whale exploding. Like that was the one thing we all passed on the 1970s. Yeah.

Like that's the one thing we all emailed to each other. But yeah, it's that in the South Park Christmas card. Yeah, Jesus versus Santa one. Yeah. Yeah. It's that we don't think of those guys being internet guys, but definitely most people found out about South Park via this little postage size, postage standard size video. And of course, that's the whole launching of this entire platform is like that word of mouth, that easy forwarding stuff around. Yeah. But yeah, so Austin was really, it really is that whole Venn diagram thing, because we all kind of were all at the same parties, we all knew each other.

Hell, when we met, we met on an airplane. We met an airplane. In fact, it was a funny book, and I was going to mention this. So I went out to LA for the premiere of Dr. Strange. And the first night I'm out there, I'm on a friend of mine had me over to have me on his podcast, my buddy Joseph Scrimshaw. And I was like, we're gonna go to dinner

and we go to walk and I'm like, I thought they didn't walk in LA, he goes literally around the corner. And I'm like, all right. And then we literally, we walked like 20 feet turn the corner and we're at this really great restaurant because he just literally practically lives on top of it. And then I get up to go to the bar and I'm standing next to Max Landis and we have a lot

of friends in common. So I literally go, Hey, Max, we don't know each other, but we have a lot of friends in common. And he goes, well, I'm Max. He goes, I'm currently goes, Oh, Robert C. Cargill. And I said, well, actually C. Robert Cargill. But, but yeah, he goes, Oh, hey, yeah, you've been sharing love online like hey

And so we ended up chatting and and so that's how I got to meet Max Landis And so that's the first day the last day I get on a plane I sit down and I feel this tap on my shoulder and I turn around And you're sitting there and you go, excuse me, we don't know each other, but we have a lot of friends in common, your Robert C. Cargill, aren't you? I said, I'll do that. I said, well, see Robert Cargill, but yeah, I'm Bernie and I'm like, of course you are, we have all the same friends

and we've just never been in this same room together. And so, but yeah, that was the book end of my big L.A. trip was two different people who I share a lot of the same friends with calling me Robert C. Cargill. Well, in my defense, in the modern era of knowing you, I've always called you just Cargill. Yeah, that's what everyone calls me. And also, we all go back to the old school internet days

when everyone had a fake name, like Mazaworm, which is still the warm one. What is Mazaworm? Oh man. No, no, no, it was literally just fake name. Yeah, like Mazaworm, which is still the warm. What is Mazaworm? Oh, man. No, no, no, it was literally just a name. Some roommates gave me. I was living in a two bedroom apartment with seven other guys. Like this is early Austin, like this is,

it was probably only like 300 bucks a month of rent total. It was 525 right over on Lamar across from Threadgill's. It's now a million dollars a month. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I know it was literally and everybody had the dumbest names. And the worm part just came from, we played a lot of world of darkness, role playing games.

And I would always play a thing called a faux-mour, which are essentially these worm-tainted creatures. And it was just my favorite part of that universe. And so it ended up just one drunk a night turning into some stupid name. And then literally my buddy, one of the guys who lived there, made me my first email at address and and just mass a worm at net at net zero dot com net zero. Free internet forever. Remember that? Assalamu'alaikum, I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt.

And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt.

And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt.

And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. And I'm Matt. over dial up because it would just pre-cash every website it thought you were about to start clicking over to. The beauty of net zero actually was if you actually unplugged your telephone for a second and then plugged it back in, that little thing would have a, that little bar would have a freak out and would not reconnect after so you wouldn't get any more ads and it would save your pen width. What, Bernie, how broke do you have to be to figure that out? You know what I mean? I don't even want to see any ads, I just got to unplug this thing and plug it pen with. Look, Bernie, how broke do you have to be to figure that out? You know what I mean? I don't even wanna see any ads. I just gotta unplug this thing and plug it back in.

But I ended up emailing Harry Nobles my first review with that account and I had made a name. So he's like, oh, well, you're mass-worm now. Mass-worm now. And a year in, I realized, wow, I really should have picked my own name because this is stuck. Only Harry gets uses on name.

That is correct. But what was your first screen name? So my first one, when we started Rooster Teeth, I posted under the name BuzzBee, but that actually came from, that was fairly recent addition. I used that for the site that Jeff and Gus and I worked on together called Drunk Gamers.

I wrote under the name BuzzBee on that. That was my handle. That's what we, everyone had a handle. Handle, yeah, because. Can't see be, man, did you guys ever have CB radios back then? Oh, how old do you want to make this podcast? I never did CB radios, but I did go on BBSs and a lot of BBSs here in Austin,

like just before the internet took off. And on those days, and that was the handle I used for ever, was the handle Balasco. And I've those from my Ultima days when I would play Ultima in middle school, like Ult ultimate four and ultimate five. So I ran a tag BBS, a 2400 bod back in high school.

And that's back when I used the moniker trash can man from the stand. Oh, yeah. And then I graduated because I started reading peer-santhony novels. Don't judge me. And we all, we all read peer-santhony. The incarnations ofortality were amazing. How are those, how are those not a movie yet? But then I went by crotos and then at some point I realized that the last six letters of

Brian Brushwood was a single syllable, Shwood. And I was like, well, I'll just do that. And so I bought it and I never thought Shwood.com would be a joke. Now there's an eyeglass company named Shwood. And I get their email from time to time. And so I pass it along like, hey, this appears to be for you. And then, and I guess some low ranking customer service

person was just like, hey, why do you have Schwod.com? You should just give it to us. Right. I was like, no, no, how about no? All right, that's you because Bernie, my name, that comes from my last name, Burns is a nickname. My name is Michael Burns. But there's a city in Tasmania, spelled the exact same way,

Bernie Tasmania, and I have Bernie.com. I don't have anything up there, she's a for email. And there was a period of time when they were trying to get it from me, but I didn't realize at the time when I registered it that how important it was going to be to have something like that, you know, to where you had this unique identity. And I was like, I've tried to like, I don't know,

but you guys, but I've tried to unwind all those handles and move over to my actual name kind of like you, we were going through at Anecool News, you know. I think, oh, I should use my real freaking name at the beginning. Yeah, what was the epitaph of that? Did like Disney's say? There's these two glasses. Yeah, there they are now, for sure.

Enjoy your free ad, leave my website alone. Yeah, no, it was, it was, it was all about the mystique. Like that was the thing is, Ain't Cool was, there's a lot of brilliance in Ain't Cool. And, and I don't think Harry gets enough credit for it, considering, you know, what he did right with it, which was we were, we were at it at a point where print media was still very, very dominant.

Aneccole news started two years before the first news story that was ever broken on the internet. If the first story to ever really break on the internet was the Clinton scandal and that was in 1998 and that was by the drug store. So the internet was still this new place where nothing Nothing anything could happen and nobody cared and so a lot of us were trying to fight for relevance and we were you know We were being told that You guys didn't matter

You're just web writers, you know, you just write online. Nobody's reading you Print is what matters. And what would end up happening is by the time I would come around at Ain't a Cool, you know, we would write reviews that would get three to five million reads a day. And I was getting, I was a video store clerk, a 25 year old video store clerk being read more than Roger Ebert was in print because not as many people were reading print and print was in decline, but they refused to accept it.

So what? If I'm real quickly, do you know what video story worked at? Don't say if you do. I, let's guess. I'm gonna guess I love video. I would have said, I'm almost certain. The other choice is Vulcan, right? Vulcan was where I was going to go.

I was gonna be with a blockbuster. I know, I've worked at Blockbuster for a while. I worked at I Love Video for a while, and I worked at Hollywood for the longest period of time. Really? You seem like such a Vulcan guy. I would have loved to work at Vulcan, but there was none near where I lived at the time.

These are great independent video stores, not obviously Hollywood or Blackbuster, but I love Video Vulcan. And one of the things I loved about it was the people who worked at the store would leave notes on the cases of all the VHS or DVDs. It's like, like, or make jokes and yeah.

It was great and I love that. Anyway. But so the, what ended up happening was Harry realized that there was something very real in creating reviews that were down to earth, that used swears, that used comedy, and that were these characters reviewing it, that we would attract this younger audience, that we would, that's what we were offering, is we were offering something different than you could get in print.

Why would you read a web movie review over an internet movie review? Well, because the internet movie review is going to drop some F-boms, it's going to make you laugh, and it's going to be told you by a cartoon character. And there was a lot of appeal in that. In fact, that was one of the big things. People talk about the gratuitous errors on Inakool, and the big inside secret was they were intentional. Like we were deliberately not cleaning up our pieces because it felt more real and raw

and down to earth and felt like- You stripped away the pretense. And with that comes a sense of authenticity that resonated with people. Yeah, yeah, people were like, this is a review by somebody I would hang out with, not some stuffy film critic who folds his arms and says no, Independence Day was a terrible movie.

It's like, fuck you, Independence Day, fucking rocked. And we were- I remember there was one approach that Harry had in particular, where he would write about his day. And the context he was giving was, this is where I was in the headspace that I was in when I saw this movie, which is important, you should know about.

Which sounds so self-indulgent and you would think would only ruin the review. But in fact, actually, it only makes it all the more relatable. It was just- Back into the fact that people wanted to see personalities. Like, I think he understood that very early on. Yeah, and the thing is, we didn't even have the word blog yet. Right.

Blog wasn't popularized until about 2003, and that's eight years into seven years into Anec Cool's existence. Like this was, we were experimenting. We were throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick and some of it did not work. Some of it was bad. Some of it was questionable, but, uh, but we were trying it out and seeing what the rules were. And so, and it was crazy how well it worked. Like, we were, it was like working at Rolling Stone in the 60s.

Like, everyone wanted to be on the front page of Inical News. I, I went out to LA again, 25 year old video store clerk, and I'm on the set of a movie. And one of the actors invites me out to a bar that night to have drinks. And I'm sitting in this bar, filled with celebrities who I keep bumping into or keep getting introduced to me. And they know exactly who the fuck I am. Like they're like, oh, you're massive worm, dude, I love your shit. That's great. It's like, it was the weirdest, most surreal thing for this. I was literally just two days before the guy getting yelled at because I wouldn't take a late fee off somebody's account.

And here I am. And like at one point that night, I've got this guy who's literally rubbing elbows with me. Like he's just like, you know, we're that packed in and he keeps bumping me and I turn to look at him. Fuck, he's bumping my arm and it's Vin Diesel. And I knew that he was a reader of the site because we had, he had come out to a couple of events

and he, you know, both, he had two different movies that Harry saved from going direct to video. And so I said, oh, hey Vin, he goes, hey man, I said, hey, I'm mass of worm and he goes, oh dude. And like, he's like, you want a beer? And so I, 25 years old, I'm fucking ringing with Ben Diesel. Like, it was everybody wanted to,

everybody wanted to be cool with Ain't It Cool. Like, if you've ever seen the movie almost famous, that's exactly what it was like. We were all these stupid fucking kids thrown into the deep end of the pool and we had no idea what to do. The fun thing too about In cool news is, I mean, from an industry perspective

of starting like blogging and reviews and kind of democratizing all of that, there's another aspect to it, though too, as a predecessor on the internet, which is the community as well. The community was so hardcore, were the talkbackers, or the-

Oh yeah. It was the- They were, they were, they were, they were, yeah, I would say so. I would agree with that. I mean, they were in hell. They were in hell. And it was, you would get some really brilliant people in there,

but brilliant people also can be brutally skating. Oh, like one of the most brilliant talkbackers of all time had the worst handle of all time. Remember Danny Glover's dick blood? That's a worst. That's not the way the word works. It was crazy. And there was two communities that I would go into on a regular basis back then.

It was that one and I'm curious if you guys also went on this, which was the Viewerscue, oh sure. This WW board that he had. Yeah, you talked about the movie Poop Shooter, the off shoot of that. No, they said like a forum. It was almost like a predecessor to chat these days.

And so many people that I know were on those boards, like back in like 1995, 1996. So you know the story about Cargill and Kevin Smith, right? No. I wake up one morning. I wake up one morning and I had only recently subscribed to Kevin Smith on Twitter. And I come in midstream where he's mentioning mass warm and he's just

like, and like I come in at the last one, it was like, so fuck you, mass warm. Oh yeah. You piece of shit, you'll never create anything in your life. You just sit there judging people like me, each shit. And I was like, it's like, what it is? He wrote the epitaph of the way to put on my, on my gravestone, which is, uh, you might not be the asshole you see in print, mass and worm. Someone out there may even love or tolerate you.

And that is going on the gravestone. It's dying. Kevin's there is a backstory that makes sense, but flash forward to the surreality of 10 years later. And I'm seeing a literally tearing up Kevin Smith high out of his mind, giving a video testimony of me like, Dr. Strange was the greatest shit ever,

whoever wrote this was a genius. And like, I, what? He got high and sawed in 4D. Like, that's how he walked in the movie. And I'm like, yes, that is the win. Yeah, no, he actually, no, the long story short was, I was working for this place. So here, let's, let me that is the win. Yeah, no, he actually, no, the long story short was, I was working for this place.

So here, let's, let me give you a quick little rundown of how Brian fits into all this. So I'm working as a video store clerk, I'm doing that for five years, I'm not getting paid to write online. Like I'm not getting paid for any of those reviews. I was literally just doing it for the cash A and for the fun of writing.

And we were having a beer at the bar and he's like, man, why aren't you doing this professionally? And I said, well, you know, it's, you know, it's hard to make a living doing this. And he's like, look, I'm going to tell you how I did it. And he told me a story about how he and his wife, Bonnie, uh, uh, Bonnie had said, okay, I'm going to give you a year to make this magic thing happen. Yeah, wait, wait, she didn't volunteer that right off the bat. Like I had a pretty good job working at Dell, designing high-end systems and networks whenever sales reps would get in over their head.

You know, I would help out. But I lived for Wednesday nights when I would do magic at the electric lounge, right? And it was only passing the hat, making beer money. But you have that tempting false illusion of, well, maybe someday, maybe someday, I'll give this a try full time or whatever. And then right around the time I was thinking that

I got a raise and it was a big raise and I realized, oh fuck, this is how it happens. Is the money gets too good and you spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been. The raise was obviously a Dell and not at the Wednesday night show. Correct, correct.

But I realized I was like, I can barely walk away from this much money. If it's any more than this, I will never walk away from it. And so as a result of the race, I went to Bonnie. I was like, I don't mind being wrong. I don't mind finding out that it's not in me. What I can't handle is the idea of 20 years from now,

me still wondering if I could have made it. And so I was like, I just want one year. We don't have any student loan debt. Just if you'll keep the lights on for one year, let me get this out of my system. Worst case is a year from now we have 30 grand of debt and we're like every other kid getting out of college, right? And she was like, okay, you got one year.

One year later, I'd still made crap money, but by that point I'd read like 20 books on sales, an entrepreneurship, and business planning, and all that stuff. And I went to her and I was like, I look sales and entrepreneurship and business planning and all that stuff. And I went to her and I was like, look, it's still not great, but I think we can do this. Quit your job and join me. And the two greatest days of my life were the day I hired my wife and the day I fired my

wife. Because it's tough, you know, to be working as a, as a, as a marital team, but that one year that she gave me to figure out whether or not I could make money as a touring magician was, as a, as a marital team, but that one year that she gave me to figure out whether or not I could make money as a touring magician was a lifesaver. And so that, that was the pitch, the hard sell I was putting on Cargill. And he gave me that pitch. And I went home and talked to my wife about it. And she was like, you know, let's think about that.

And she thought about it for a couple of weeks and said, you know what? You're miserable as a video store clerk. You're great as a writer. I believe in you. I'm going to give you a year and I'll work. I'll make the money. You just try to make money doing a film review. And if at the end of one year, you're making a decent amount of money. We'll re-examine it and we'll go on. And so she gave me a year and within five months, I was making twice what I was making as a video store clerk. And from then on, there was no looking back. And so, I made twice that the first year

and three times that the second year. And by the third year, I was making as much as she was. And I was a professional film critic. And then I saw the bottom dropping out of the internet. I saw what was happening. And the way that everything was starting to get gobbled up. Everyone was copying and pasting other people's articles of news. There wasn't, you know, there wasn't that whole, hey, go read this article and then come

back and read our commentary on it, gentlemen's agreement that used to exist in the early days of film criticism. And I was like, oh, there's not going to be a job for me in five years. And so I sat down to write my first book. And so ended up doing that. But while I'm writing that first book, I'm, I'm hooking it at all these different places and working at four different movie review places to, to make that living. And one of them was filmed.com.

And they come to me and they say, hey, Carl, you're, you're our biggest, our biggest Kevin Smith fan here. Why don't you write the fallout about the fallout in aftermath of his whole cop-out debacle where he started screaming at film critics. Oh, it's pretty far along then. This is rare.

Yeah, this is 2010. And for context, Cargill was telling me like, this is a time where it's just like, you know, how many words you want? Yeah, sure, all right. It put it in and not knowing when it's gonna get published or in what context or with what headline.

It's like, you know, Kevin Smith, just give us 500 words on how social media has affected his career. That is exactly what it was. I would do this, I called it my Sunday Night Dump in which every Sunday night I would write five articles for film.com and I would just sit down at about two in the morning and right until dawn

And I would shurn out these five articles that would do that by the way Are you still writing it like in the middle of the night? Oh always always yeah, no I do I do all my best work in the middle of the night when nobody's calling nobody's writing nothing's being updated online If I want to break I take a break at about three three thirty and check out all my friends in the UK who are waking up on Twitter. And that's, but yeah, no, I write in the middle of the night and it just, it stuck with me. So tell me if I've got the right of this, the overall gist of what you wrote for the film.com article was basically, we are seeing the sunsetting of Kevin Smith being known as a director. And we're seeing the beginning of him being something more, and it seems to involve social media, or whatever.

But I don't think Kevin Smith heard or saw any of that because the first line was something along the lines of with this tweet, he ended his career as a director. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, about how social media, which was this brand new thing, we still, you know, Facebook was just becoming popular in the mainstream, Twitter had not become popular in the mainstream, it was still a thing that was used by a bunch of us fringe folks. And he was humiliating himself in public through social media and telling the type of stories that, why would you tell this story in public? Why are you sharing this? And the gist of it was that Kevin Smith's power

of what he did was his voice. And him sharing these hyper, you know, these really tight tone down geek references, essays, things like that. His opinion, his voice was why we watched these films, and now he was saturating the market with his voice, and he was becoming irrelevant. And I said that, you know, if he keeps this up, he is approaching your relevance. And it was like irrelevant, irrelevant. I'll show you who's a relevant internet boy

and he flipped tables. And it was, he spent half an hour, in fact, I'll never forget. Well, that's basically the entire premise of Jay and Simon Bob. But yeah, so Kevin Smith got so furious with me and then chilled out about it. And then he was gonna show red state to 50 bloggers in his home.

And somebody said, hey, you should invite Masa Worm. And he tweeted at me, he goes, ha ha ha. Yeah, no, absolutely. Nothing would show that that's water under the bridge, like having Masa Worm come to my place and watch my new movie.

But I understand why he wouldn't do that so the balls in his court. And I was like, oh, motherfucker. Yeah. And so I pick up the phone and I call her, and I'm like, Harry, you've got to pay to fly me out to do this. This is my Gonzo piece, man. Like I'm like the store, it's not just me writing about

a director, it's me as part of the story. Every journalist always dreams of having that one, like Hunter S. Thompson crazy Gonzo experience. And I'm like, this is it. We got to do this. He's like, yeah, sure. We'll do it. We'll fly out. And so at the end, you know, he does the Q&A and I go up to him and I'm like, hey, man, it's a good to see again. We, you know, I'm mass and worm and he goes, oh, oh, you're one of those people I got into

an argument on the internet with, aren't you? And I said, yeah, I am. He goes, I'm sorry, man. I do that. I'm really sorry. And I'm like, well, can we hug it out? And he's like, I'm sorry. I He goes, I'm sorry, man, I do that. I'm really sorry.

And I'm like, well, can we hug it out? And he's like, of course we can hug it out. So me and Kevin Smith hugged it out. And, and, and then eventually the career happened. And he wrote a very high crying review of my movie. So all is good. I want to hear the path to getting to Dr. Strange from there. But I do want to say I think we need a word for whatever that regret hangover after internet rage happens. Like what is

that like? I feel still in the moment in the moment it makes sense. Right. And afterwards it's always stupid. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, every single time. And it's not I used to think like like oh, that person is drunk, that person is high, that person is tired, but it's like, there have been times, it's three o'clock in the afternoon, and it's like, the spirit comes over me on my, this person needs to know that they're wrong. Yeah, my thing now is, my defense mechanism that I use

is unless I can see their face, and they're, I just assume everyone's 12 years old. This is, they're not defending. Okay, you know what, even if you can't see their face, they're 12, they're all 12, everybody's 12. You know, even if you can't see their face, they're 12. They're all 12. Everybody's 12. It's nice because then you can just be like, ah, everything just goes off your back.

There's a fantastic article by the wonderful writer David Wong at cracked.com called a six-harsh truth that will make you a better person. And it's filled with great advice. But my favorite part is at the very end, he explains the nature of trolling. And when people post nasty comments, he says, they all boil down to the same thing. And then he puts in quotes, stop trying. What you're doing is different than the way I would have done it.

And the attention you're getting is making me uncomfortable with myself. And then once you, once that's the filter through which you read every negative comment, it's like, hey man, that's okay. Here's a hug. Let's hug it out. In the words of mass of worm.

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This would cost you hundreds if you went to the doctor or a pharmacy. It's so much easier to use hymns. Go to forehimns.com slash rooster. That's F-O-R-H-I-M-S dot com slash rooster forehimns dot com slash rooster. All right. What would you do if you had the freedom to be anyone or to go anywhere without limitations? Start your journey and experience for yourself the feeling of total freedom when you game with Alienware.

Alienware is your portal to new worlds where limits don't exist and the only rules are the ones you decide to make. Defy boundaries and start gaming now at alienware.com. Next gen gaming is built with Intel Core i9 processors. Before we get back in the conversation here, Ashley's actually going to join us here in a second. I want to show an RTA, Patrick, do we have that RTA? We had a really an RTA. This is an older one, but I want to show it to you because we've had so many comments

about this RTA, and we decided to finally act on it. But here's one of the old RRGT-danimated adventures. Um, I have seen something explode in real life actually and it was glorious, kind of like movies. Yeah. I don't know if I've ever told the story. My father said his phone on fire once. How? It was a, it was a Sony Ericsson.

Okay. It was so, it was back in the day and he was outside and he was talking on his phone and he got sweaty. My father, the genius, decides I should put it in the microwave to dry it up. What? No, no, no. Possibly thought that.

So I've vividly remembered walking past him and going, oh hey dad, what are you microwave? And before I could get microwaving out of my mouth, our microwave exploded into like this glorious Roman candle and scorched the ceiling of our kitchen. Holy shit! And I was like, what the fuck was that? And he was like, I'm microwave myself though.

And I just remember going, you excuse me! I mean, had he never had a fork in a microwave, anything before? His mind thought, I, and you know, this is when phones had keys still, it wasn't all touch screens. And so, you know, the water got into the keys and he panicked and so I need to dry quickly.

Do you think maybe like a blow dryer? A blow dryer? A bag of rice turning it over on a towel. None of that. He thought, his immediate brain went bone microwave. And he's like, I only put it in for five seconds. It's like, Jesus Christ. All those solutions take time.

Yeah, five seconds. That's awesome. That's awesome. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. PSA, don't put your cell phone in the microwave. I can't believe it. I think to this day, we always make fun of him. It's so great.

It's like a, you're like, oh, well, man, why did you microwave your baby? It's like it was wet. It was wet. It was wet. So that was actually a reference to another discussion that we had where Mika talked about how she was wearing some anime shirt at the time.

And so when the animators for RTA made it, they just made her wearing the some anime shirt. Every time that shirt has appeared in an RTA, the comments have been dominated by people asking us to make a some anime shirt. So the most beautiful anime. The some anime shirt. So for those of you who have asked for it endlessly, first of all, you can get this and we hope you do. But secondly, you can also now shut up and never ask for it ever again. There's your, there's your lovely product and there are, there are free copies of that for the guests, right? Yeah. If you would like a some animation, that'd be great. That would be happy to do. We can put your name on the back, but Robert C. Cargill, right?

C. Cargill. Joining us is Ashley. What's up? Hi, Ashley. Hey, I's it going? Not at all pre-recorded Memorial Day podcast. Yeah, no, we're just thinking about Memorial Day. Everybody. Yeah.

It's time to break out all the flags, shirts, that target. And knock back a few beers and try to figure out what we're celebrating. Yeah, so listen, did you hear how supportive these guys' wives were about their careers in the early days? They were like, they're like, go do it for a year. Don't make any money, who cares?

What do you wanna do? I don't know, something. I wanna be a trapezoid artist. You wanna start up a successful media company? Because that sounds like a lot of fun. That's a good idea. It should do it in 2003, where apparently it's a lot easier.

I've been told now. Like it was literally an open door to anyone. Anyone could show up. And as long as you did something happily interesting, there was an audience because there were so many people online and nobody was generating content. Yeah, but this is also the early days

before distribution had been consolidated and man is at a different place now. Now there really are. So in the world of, I should have bought it either. It was like below home video, which was lousy. You know what I mean? Like if you're moving straight to home video, that was a huge insult.

And Webb was like somewhere below that, but like slightly above porn. So I was literally being read by three to five million people a day and my parents were like, so you're still doing that internet thing, huh? Like it was, it was crazy. Like it's, they didn't take it seriously for years. In 2010, we would do interviews.

This is like, at this point, seven or eight years into us as a company, we would do interviews and most of the interviews ended in the exact same way. They go, oh, it's just one last thing. Do you think, like, one day people will make money doing what you guys are doing? It's like, we just walked you around.

There's 40 people that work here. Still get the question, like, and not just for, you know, I've toured all over the United States. I've performed in every state in the United States. I've been on the tonight show twice. I've toured. I've toured. You been on the night show?

Yeah, I didn't know that. That's really awesome. That's the way, that's like the dark chapter is because what I was doing is I was real time trading my attention for money, which is hamster wheel, right? So it's like, I learned how to e-fire, break bricks over my head, reminds do, do, it's a good stage show.

Peneteller said very nice things when I did Peneteller Fula. His stage show is amazing. Speaking of Venn diagram, he once did his show at my birthday party. I worked at birthday party. I worked here. You're 30th birthday party.

That's right. That's how long we've known each other. You showed up and you're like, it didn't bring a present, but I brought me. But I realized, I'm gonna improvise a present. But during that time, I was getting fully booked. I was on the road 150, 200 days out of the year, performing colleges and universities.

Now, how far was it saying? It was just in the first year you were reaching that level? No, no, no. First year was maybe 20 shows than 40, than 60, then, you know, at some point around 2003, I leveled out, I hit Max Bandwidth and then I was having colleges say, well, what else can you do? And they're like, well, I can come do the show again.

They're like, yeah, we've seen it. You stick the fire in your mouth. It's very nice. You break the break over your head. Exactly. Exactly. And so, but then what I, what I realized is that after the show, this around the time that John Edward was doing

is talking to the dead people, TV show. And everybody would say, well, how does he do that? What's this? And I would find myself doing like an improvisational 30 to 40 minute lecture explaining the tenants of skepticism and stuff to all these folks. It folks, folks. Vux.

You just saw yourself on TV and you're like, oh my God Fucks, I folks. Fucks. Yeah, don't throw it to yourself on TV. And you're like, oh my God, this asshole. I'm so sexy. Yeah. Uh, but I realized like, oh, well, maybe I could give a lecture on college campuses. So I wrote a lecture called Scamsass Quatch in the Supernatural.

And so now I had two shows to do on college campuses. And after about five years of that, I realized I'm still not reaching enough people because if you've, if you've ever worked in, in the live arts or variety entertainment, there are moments where you're performing for 300 people and it's absolute electricity. You're connecting with them and saying something transcended and then they give you a standing ovation or whatever. And then two weeks later, not one person can remember your name and they have to remember that

you were kind of funny. And that, that's part of the reason that I used to do the, the, the guyal crazy spikes is because I just wanted something for them to hold on to that they would remember down the road and then around this time, you know, YouTube 2005 launches up. So in 2006, I start at least cataloging life on the road with Brian Brushwood on the road and then I had the idea of one of the other things that naturally always happened was as soon as the show was over, the student activities board would take me out to eat and they all wanted to learn a trick for themselves. They're like, what can you teach me? And so after doing that a few times, I was like, I think this should be virtualized and you know distributed. So I had the idea for scam school that I took to revision three. And I, at the time,

I thought, this will be a good starter gig. I'll get experience. I'll learn how to talk on camera. It's not going to go anywhere. All internet startups fail. And here we are, uh, 10 years and 500 plus episodes down the road. I missed that. Yeah. I missed that. Revision three started as I was an officially an a video offshoot of dig or was it just Kevin Rose? It was like Kevin Rose and a few other tech TV alums. Got it. Put together.

They were the founders of it. And in the early days, it was pitched as a tech network, basically a rebirth of what was good about tech TV because they got bought by G4. And there's a lot of people who didn't like the gaming direction of G4. They want a more tech-centric stuff. And that's why I pitched scam school as the only show dedicated to social engineering at the bar and on the street.

And so in the early days, you'll notice like for the first four or five years, I never used the M word. I never admitted that what I was doing was teaching magic because oh no, it's a tech network, it's a tech show. I'm teaching you hacking, life hacking, skills hacking. I don't know, those are tech terms. Yeah, exactly, skips.

And then at some point, it became clear like, there's a lot of young magicians learning stuff. And by that point, it had been bought by Discovery Digital and now it's part of Group 9 productions. But the weird part for me is 10 years into this is to hear so many people say, oh yeah, you're the reason I got in a magic because I started watching it in elementary school. And then now I'm on America's Got Talent. I'm like, you're my fuckers.

Wow. It's crazy. Yeah, no, it's so weird. Like I'll talk to young film critics and they'll be like, oh man, when I was in fifth grade, I was reading your reviews and I'm like, those weren't appropriate for a fifth grade. What were you doing? But yeah, no, it's so weird to like how that space

created and inspired so many other people and it just keeps feeding. And it's very weird. Like, that's how I now view these people that I'm a huge fan of, that I grew up with, through that lens of like, oh, you were just somebody just like, hoving it, trying to sell books and I picked up your book and then I became one of your fans

and it inspired me to do this. And guess what, magic has survived in the information age because it seems like growing up watching like David Copperfield and have a special order to make the statue of Liberty disappear. There was no impression that I had that he was going to tell us how he did it. But now, I would imagine that most of them when people see a trick, their first question is,

how'd you do it? And then you said, well, it's magic, I'm not gonna, it's just magic. And they like, no bullshit, you have to tell me, like, people feel like they have to know how things are done. It's just part of our, like, they're gonna do three-hour read on Wikipedia after they see a trick. So, done. It's just part of our, they're gonna do three hour read on Wikipedia after they see a trick.

So, here's an honest answer, and I don't normally say this in public, but I think that knee jerk reaction of, I can't tell you, it's a secret or whatever. I think that is a social construct that magicians say because they haven't put enough thought into coming up with something more clever. And what they don't realize is a side effect of that is it makes you a dick.

And it makes them think you're a dick. Seinfeld had the routine. Every magic routine is the same. Here's a quarter. Now it's gone. You're a jerk. Now it's not. You're still a jerk.

Shows over. Right? That's what everybody thinks of magicians. And that's because of this whole, well, a good magician never reveals his secrets. Whereas how little effort would it take to do something with a little more nuance? Do a trick, and then somebody says, yes, the knee jerk reaction is, how do you do that? What they're really saying is, I am experiencing amazement at this moment. Guide me to more of this experience.

But instead, people respond with defense, and they're like, I'm not going to tell you. So fuck you. And that's why magicians have a bad rep. Whereas how much easier would it be to say, oh, did you enjoy that? And what are they going to say? No, they just asked you how it was done. And they're like, yeah, I enjoyed it. And then you say, would you like to see another? And again, what are they going to say? No. Like, like, it's so much more elegant. And it dodges that question. Now, if the next day or three or four days later, somebody calls me on the phone saying, I think my life has really changed.

As we sold to that car trick, I would really like to know. I can't stop it. You have, you actually have that story. Oh, a number of those stories. Yeah, no, but you have that. You, I don't know if you can share it, but let's throw this out there just in case. Can you tell the story about JJ Abrams?

I was actually hoping it was going to be actually Dr. Strange. No, no, no, no, no, I can tell the story's later, but he does. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Just to wrap up this thought, I feel like magicians would be better served if they learned to more subtly guide people into the next thing and they didn't meet force with force. By saying no, I'll never tell you the secret, you make the secret, the star of the show. And the secret should not be the star of the show, the secret should be the sauce that makes the story so wonderful, right? So separate situation. Man, I know the exact day. It was, it was Father's day. Yeah, Father's day.

Do you know the exact day? For four years, three or four years. It's one of the first awakens was being shot. Yeah, this is the start, this is the beginning of this story. Okay, so we've had on our comedy podcast Night Attack. We've had Greg Grumberg from Heroes and a number of other projects. I'm Felicity. Thank you.

Yes, exactly. A good friend. And if you don't know, he and JJ Abrams have been childhood friends. Yeah, what's the story there? He's in everything. Yeah, they literally grew up together. I mean, it's like, well, if he's a good gig, yeah, right? And so it's so I mean, if I was JJ Abrams, I'd throw grunting and everything. He's amazing. He's fun and funny. So I get a text from a number I don't recognize saying, hey, how did David Blaine make it apparent in orange? I'm like, fuck this.

And then it says, this is grunting. And it says, I'm an England. And then it says, JJ wants to know. And I was like, okay, I'm going to keep talking to my parents. And then the wants to know. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna keep talking to my parents. And then the phone rings, and I answer the phone, it's from the same number. And clearly out of our, Greg Grumberg says, I have a raging shwitty.

And I have to know how he did the trick. I was like, that's what I asked. I was like, well, which trick? He's like David Blaine. What do you think of that? Obviously. He's like Harrison Ford, thought of a card and it was in an orange. And that's what he kicked him out of his house, right?

Yeah. That's funny. That's a funny bit. Oh, yeah. I'm not a huge Dave Blaine family. But here's the backstory that you don't know about that bit. Okay. So I was like, well, I haven't seen it, but if he described the effect, he was like,

yeah, let this guy explain. And then he hands the phone over and he was like, hey, it's JJ. And I was like, shit, I'm talking to JJ Abrams. And JJ is a magician. He knows his stuff on that, right? And so, and so, I get the broad strokes and I'm like, okay, if it looks that clean, if in general,

somebody just thinks of a card and it's in an orange, I don't know how they did it, but the way I would do it is before the cameras were rolling, I would make sure to firmly establish what that card would be, so I would have time to sneak it into an orange, right? And before the trick or during the trick.

I mean, when the camera's rolling, who knows what that means? Right, so, but in the JJ, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He just, Harrison, and now I realize that for all I know, Harrison's in the room as well. Harrison swears, oh, because then the movie, yeah.

He just thinks, thought of a card, and it showed up in an orange. And so, and so I'm just like, I was like, well, let me take a look at it and take a look. And I watch it and magicians have this thought, the two clean principle. Like, there's signal and then there's noise. If it's pure signal, for example,

if I were to ask Cargill to think of a card, and then I were to, and he says, the queen of diamonds that I were to pull back my shirt and you would see tattooed upon my body at Queen of Diamonds, that would be too clean. You would immediately think there's no way that was natural. I have to suspect all this stuff.

But if we added a lot of noise, like if I asked you to grab a deck of cards, you shuffle it, you pull out a card, you could change your mind five times. That adds more noise, but when you pick the queen of hearts and I reveal that it's tattooed on my chest, now all of a sudden it's like,

I have no idea how that's possible, right? Watching the performance, it's like this is too much signal, not enough noise, something definitely, I don't know what, but something happened before the camera rolls, right? And so, it's so sure enough, I call back and JJ, grunny doesn't even answer his own phone. JJ does. He's like, he's like, all right, what is it? I was like, man, it looks to me like something happened before those cameras rolled. And he goes, he goes, yeah, man, that's not what Harrison said. And I'm like, it's not

for me to call Han Solo a liar, but I'm sure that's how he remembers it. Because again, that's another thing. Magicians rely on is the malleability of memory, right? And so Grunny gets the phone super disappointed. He was like, well, thanks for nothing, Shwood. And so I think I say, I say, you know what? I have some friends who worked on the special. Let me, let me find out what I can find out to confirm, but I'm telling you something happened before the thing went. And so I call them and leave a message hours later, hours later. I get a phone call. God, I don't know if anything I'm about to say is true. This is a flight of fancy that very likely is fiction. So imagine a short story that ends like this.

I could tell that part. I need you to if you for legal reasons. I get a phone call from my friend who worked on the show and I say like, weird as day ever, JJ Abrams called me. Harrison Ford wants to know, this is what happens. It looks to me like something happened before the cameras were rolling. Tell me I'm not crazy, because I'd like to think I know a thing or two about magic. And the guy says, well, number one, yes, of course something happened before the cameras

were rolling. I was like, but Harrison Ford said he just thought of a card and it was just in an orange. And he says, yeah, because he was high. Watch it again. And sure enough, sure enough if you watch that clip. He's high. His pupils are larger than his face. He's clearly.

I'm solo, it was Stone Out of his mind. And watch them stone out of his mind. Watch them put the entire trick together where they put all of the cards in all these various places completely forgot that they put the cards in all the places, thought of a card, and holy shit, it's in an orange. I don't know if it's true as far as,

you know what, is, to Mr. Ford's lawyer, I just assume this is fiction. I've always assumed it's fiction, but that's certainly as a satisfying end to the tale. If it weren't true, it sounds like that's a trick for any magician coming up. It's just everybody, the audience, stoned out in my mouth. Are you kidding? That's what a friend of my Justin Wilman did. Exactly.

That on his Comedy Central special. He went with Doug Benson and did magic for high people at a dispensary. It was pretty great. Can I say just a general question about magic? Sure. So is there a part of magic that kind of crosses over with hypnotism of the power of suggestion as well? I mean, there's some tricks where you do them,

but you know there's a chance they might not work out or is every trick, I'm going in, 100% I know it's gonna work. So this is a idea of skepticism and scientific and magic. This is a cross section here. There's something called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, which is you grab your six shooter, you shoot the side of a barn, then you walk over and you paint the target around it. Right. And it's all based on the fact that that that timing wise, nobody knows what you were aiming for. Right. So in that regard, hypnotism certainly is in the same boat. Stage hypnotism, people ask all the time if hypnotism is real.

And my response is yes, it's real, it's also nothing like what you think it is. And the way I explain it is like, if you've ever laughed at a movie or cried at a movie, you have been moved to a physiological reaction by a situation that never happened to characters who never existed. But you allowed yourself to make them real enough

that you felt a real thing, right? I mean, they exist. I mean, they exist. I mean, they exist. Does that count for cringing as well? I think one of the most cringeworthy scenes I've seen in a movie lately was when Dr. Strange's hands go through the fucking dashboard

of his car. That made me like my butthole puckers. How could you do that? Yeah. Oh, oh, I did stuff that didn't show up on screen. Like you just you just have to acknowledge that they don't exist, Ashley. I thought it was cool. I thought it was a cool thing in Infinity War that he had scars all the way up his fingers. That is something we we had a very long discussion about it. It's something I fought for very hard was I felt that in order for Dr. Strange to work,

he never fixes his hands. Like, that was a thing. Like, there was a lot of talk that, oh no, the reward he gets at the end of the movie is he gets his hand back. Hands back and I'm like, no, no. The reward at the end of the movie is he makes the sacrifice to be a hero. And at the same time, we don't get to see disability. And I'm like, no, no, the reward at the end of the movie is he makes the sacrifice to be a hero.

And at the same time, we don't get to see disability in film and seeing it treat, you know, see it really with the hero very often. And see somebody represented who suffers from a disability. And, and it's still one of the most powerful people in the world despite that fact. Yeah. And so I felt that that was really important. And so, yeah, that was the thing was he would any scene where you would see his hands, he would spend an hour and makeup getting the scars put all over his hands, even if they only

appeared for just a second. Like, it was a big thing. And it was, but I think it's an important thing because it implies a weakness behind the scenes, you know, much like a magician projects an aura of authenticity and, and in control, this when really all he's thinking is like, don't like, don't pick a black card, don't pick a black card, don't pick a black card, but you never see that internal dialogue on there. But as far as, as far as, uh, hypnotism, uh, there is clinical hypnotism and then there's stage hypnotism and you'll notice that a stage hypnotist act is basically like an ascending ladder of increasing social pressure.

Right. So, for example, if I were to say, hey, right now, take off your shirt and dance like Lady Gaga, you would think that would be very painful and uncomfortable for me to do. And then you would totally do it. What's heck, how you doing? But, I mean, I'm down. Think of it as like water always goes downhill. This is the same trick I use on any time I get somebody on the phone and I'm trying to do a customer service thing.

I understand like never ask a yes, no question because if they can say no, they'll say no. So instead what you do is you make the easiest solution for them to do the thing you want them to do. And that's what that's the social contract. The more people who show up to a stage, they have no such show, the better the show is. Because the social pressure is so great where if somebody's like halfway through the show,

it's like, well, I already pretended that I was hot or cold or whatever. And it's like, you know, do I really want to suddenly admit that this isn't working? And again, you can talk yourself into a state of mind where you do feel like, or you'll have to remember. It'll be like a half-remembered dream when somebody says you won the lottery and you act out so vividly the reaction

of winning the lottery that later when they say like, oh, where's your lottery ticket? Much like if you dreamed about winning the lottery, you'll have a brief they say like, oh, where's your lottery ticket? Much like if you dreamed about winning the lottery, you'll have a brief flash of like, oh wait, oh no, no, wait, that's right, that was the stage. That wasn't a real thing. There's also that social pressure, but also then the audience also escalates where they start laughing harder and harder, and that's the kind of thing where you do feel an obligation. I think there's an innate performance in each of us, you know, or an innate performer, I should say,

where once you start to get those reactions, you just kind of start to lean into it even more. It also seems like the first part of every hypnosis show is a vetting process of like, let's get rid of these people who clearly aren't going to play along. So there's a second phase too. First is the vetting process where it's like,

you need to make it clear that you're sifting for people who are going to be malleable and cooperative. And you'll also notice a slow shift in language. Early on, they'll very carefully say, let's pretend we're cold. How would you act if you were cold? How would you act if you were tired of blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, how would you act?

Just let your body relax. And when I say sleep, I want you to enter this state again. So now what you've done is you've sort of set up a programming loop where the word sleep equals, let everything go loose. And then at some point you stop saying all that preamble and you just say, sleep. So the visuals you get later on are, and again, because memory is so malleable, you're able, after the fact, you won't remember all the lead up stuff. You'll just remember somebody being halfway through and then saying, sleep, and then they just collapse down.

That's a lot of stuff. you'll just remember somebody being halfway through and then saying sleep and then they just collapse down. That's not so bad. Did you guys see the power suggestion, I think, is incredible to me. There was this big viral thing last week about Yanny or Laurel. Yeah. They played an audio clip and people heard Yanny or they heard Laurel. I'm sure you guys know all about it.

Why do you keep saying Laurel twice? I don't write. Sorry. Well, the better one is the green needle or... So that's what I was gonna bring up was the green needle one, which I think is way more fascinating. I agree, I think that's much, much better. That didn't work for me.

Yeah, it didn't work on her. I heard like green brand thingy. Oh, it's playing one of this. So it was, this is an audio track. It's kind of like the Laurel Yanything, except the difference is you will hear whichever one you want to hear. So you think of it. If you think of it,

I want to hear this one, you then hear it. Well, it works exactly the same way as in the 90s, there was this crazy thing that happened with a Teletubby doll, where you would pull the string and it would go, baddie, baddie, but people heard, bagget, bagget, oh geez. And so they had to pull it off shelves

because the minute some Christian mother heard those words and said that, all of a sudden people were rushing out and buying them because they wanted the bagget, bagget, though. And it was a very weird thing where, when you actually listen to it, it's like, that's not what it's saying at all. Like it doesn't,

Well, that was weird too, because it was this whole conspiracy theory that it was pushing a gay agenda, because the upside down triangle on the New York City and the New York City, I think it's stinky winky. I want to pretend like I don't know who that is. You know the name of all of them, Bernie. I got it, couldn't even.

I just think I just know stinky winky. So we did it. I don't have kids at that time. It's one of them, Pinkie Pie. We did an episode of the Modern Rogue talking about. Why would you use that word if you're pushing a gay agenda? Why would you just slur like that.

It was absolutely ludicrous. It was one of those things where it was one of those first internet things where you could watch the video online and listen to it. And I was like, oh, that's not what it's saying at all. Like this, what is everybody, but everyone was hearing it when you tried to listen to it. So, what this one was, if you think brainstorm,

you hear the word brainstorm, if you think the word green needle, you hear green needle. Which is so amazing because green needle has an extra syllable in there and yet somehow you hear the syllable, the syllable on there. I've heard both Yaddy and Laurel like depending on the time of day it was, I heard something else and I'm like, I actually for a while was searching around to see if there were, if this was a big hoax and there were literally two different files.

I did the same thing. I did the exact same thing. I did that with the dress as well. The internet kept us from healthy. So what is that? The internet kept us from healthy. Oh God, no kidding, right? And we did.

These are all really good examples of what they call priming. We did an episode on back masking on the modern rogue where we played just some random, a random track by a local man named the Dracula's and we played it backwards. And it's like, this is nonsense. Sound that means nothing. He's like, great. Now I want you to hear these lyrics. And he said a bunch of lyrics and then sure enough, once you had that filter that lends through which you watched everything, it was like, yeah, no, I hear it playing his day. That's amazing. Right. Rushwood is the devil. Exactly. The devil. So you use basic verbal or contextual clues, basically, to have the

person who is listening to it, performs some kind of action. You're like planting that seed. What a great time to bring up this episode of the Roosteries podcast is brought to you by Blue Apron. How does free food sound? Great, right? Blue Apron is offering our audience their first three meals free. That's right. Free. When it comes to dinner right? Blue Apron is offering our audience their first three meals free. That's right, free. When it comes to dinner, let Blue Apron take care of the planning and shopping, just do the cooking and eat the great food. Enjoy delicious meals like popcorn chicken

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Blue Apron, a better way to cook. I can't believe we're actually gonna get a blue Apron meal, you and I. Oh, yeah. I keep tracking their menu. It's pretty awesome. So that would actually be a great viral thing for a company do.

You just use it there like this green needle brainstorm thing but with their actual trademark name of some kind. Man, but then you'd have to find something like super controversial to light it up on Reddit that it also sounds like. Oh, I think we're in a crazy story. Just recently, you guys know about this when Clear Pepsi came out.

Oh, this is about tab. story just recently. You guys know about this when clear Pepsi came out. What was this about tab? Yeah, that Coca-Cola, when they were introducing clear Pepsi, Coke decided to put out clear tab at the same time, and eventually poorly marketed it so that it was basically a brand designed to die and drag down clear Pepsi with it. By a power of association. Yeah. Wild.

And that's why it works. Dude, I really want to get an appropriate espionage. It sounds like a lot of fun. You know, you know what was actually I feel did the most damage to Clear Pepsi? Clear Pepsi? Sat noose. Well, yeah, I know what you're going to say. He lives out of the night live.

The game is gravy. Yeah. Like that was, they did this whole gag on clear Pepsi where it was clear gravy and it was the grossest thing you've ever seen in your life. And it literally just, anytime I hear of clear Pepsi after that, it just turned my stomach because I thought of it. I mean, when everything was going clear, right? Exactly.

Because this one, Zima came out and Miller, that was clear as well, right? The SNL bit thing was really just a scathing indictment of, in general, the idea of anything becoming clear is dumb, knock it off. And then that was that so resonated with people. That was the end of Clear Pepsi. I really liked all the clear, pieceies and electronics for a while. That was completely trend.

I, you know what, I, what I really miss is going to gyms and saying, can I get that with clear gravy? And then they go is clear Pepsi, okay? We're sorry. I hate Pepsi. I brought to you by Pepsi. Are you having, were you born in race in Austin? Cargo? No, I was, I was actually, I was born in San Antonio, but I'm a military brat. So I moved around. Okay. And then I moved back to San Antonio when I was 14. And then when I was 19, I fell in love with a girl and I followed her up to Austin when she went to college and

Been here ever since So I know people that have moved great distances for their significant other and they don't like to say that They don't like to mention that they made big moves for love But for me that's one of the most legitimate reasons to make a big change in your life is for love But people feel like oh, it especially if it doesn't work out, that it was like, I didn't want to tell anybody that. Yeah, but if it totally worked out, then, you know, like, I followed that girl up here and I'm still married to her.

Like, we, you know, we just bought a new house together. Like, our life is awesome. Like, of course, I'm willing to say, yeah, I followed her up, she was totally fucking worth it. I think bankrolled you for a year, man. That was pretty dope. Best wife ever, dude. You don't want to say back when you were talking about

you're starting off and then, you know, X amount of months in, you were hitting your financial goals and then doubling that and then tripling that. That's always a really great thing. And those are the, the hitting your financial goals, especially for your career is really important. It helps you never look back. And there's also that thing that people always say of, oh, well, if you're doing something

you love, then you really don't work a day in your life. That's not true at all. I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true. But there is a thing that nobody ever work easier. Yeah, there's somebody that nobody talks about when your hobby becomes your vocation, which is then everything you were normally doing or spending money on in your private life is now just part of your everyday business life.

That I think is a huge fringe benefit for it. Like, everything that I do for my job here, I don't have really anything to spend money on at home because I have video games and comic books and computers and stuff like that. Oh, no, you find things. No, but that's true. You've got a flying thrower. Where's what the work application of a flying company wants? I pre-order.

You buy one from Elon Musk, guys. Here's why. I have learned, in my long life on the internet, don't ever pre-order soft products, like software. Always pre-order soft products, like software, always pre-order hard products. Really how's your vessel? Cut. Well, that was, I got that for Gavin. Why are you, why are you, this is my brush and the podcast,

bring everything back up. Remember me talking about greatest wife ever? This vessel was a cup that I bought for Gavin. We knew it was bullshit. I love crowdfunding. crowdfunding is like, people say raw ambition, and then everybody just kind of dumps money into it. And this was a cup that when you poured a fluid into it,

it would analyze the fluid and tell you what was in it. It sounds like some, it's a truck sugar. Yeah, exactly. And they had this, of course, totally conceptual video that went along with their guys funny campaign. Oh, brilliant video. But, and of course, four years later,

they just shut down and they never made the show. There'scapping. Oh, really? And video. But, and of course, four years later, they just shut down. And I'm sure there's all kinds of legalese and all of those who are always like, you are giving away money. Let's be very clear. And maybe you'll get something. Thank you. Yeah, Kickstarter updated all of their legalese. It's like, we're not responsible for any of this, by the way.

Yeah, they, you can't sue the crowdfunding platforms, but now you can apparently sue the people who have the campaigns. Really? That's a change that has happened over time. that you can't suit the crowdfunding platforms, but now you can apparently sue the people who have the campaign. Really? That's a change that has happened over time. Yeah. That's what. I mean, I'm suddenly rethinking

all kinds of business strategies. I'm going to kickstart a movie that I'm definitely going to make. Well, that's the thing that's like an artistic endeavor. I mean, that is to me the part of crowdfunding is you want to see this thing get made. And then part of that is kind of like a social contract of, guess what? It might not, it might not happen. Even if they meet their financial goal, it might not happen.

You know, and it's interesting because the obligation, theoretically, the obligation is to make the thing that you promise. But back in the 1990s, Mike Robinson, founder of MP3 MP3.com, predicted the rise of the middle-class rock star. He said, digital distribution is going to make it possible for you to make decent money. I don't know all these people. I don't know anyone, apparently. I don't know Jeff and Gus, that's it.

But I think what we're seeing 20 years later is the rise of the middle-class patron, where people, yes, they want the thing to be made, but what they're really doing is they're purchasing that awesome feeling of knowing that I'm supporting independent artists and I'm making something and that when it comes out, I can say I had a hand in doing that. That's my name and the credits and all that stuff. And it used to be, that was the land of, you know, people who are buying museums with their millions of dollars or whatever.

And now, you know, you can do it for a dollar a month on Patreon or what have you. Yeah, it's funny. I like what people are using crowdfunding for. There's a group called Adopt A Chateau, but it's in French because it's in France. And they're going around and crowdfunding for Chateau. Adopt A Chateau. Okay, Oon Chateau.

They're crowdfunding, like getting somebody's dilapidated, castles and chateaus and then crowdfunding them, and the dream is, now you can own a portion of a chateau in France. This is too close. You realize, like, when you time share a chateau, yeah, you have to show up and throw armor, but yeah. It's, I have a thing like that where I actually,

I'm a Scotch drinker, a heavy Scotch drinker at times, and occasionally I buy Lafroy. Oh, oh my. Every bottle of 18-year-old Lafroy comes with a free one foot by one foot plot of land. Is that true? Yeah, it comes with a D-do, one foot by one foot plot of land in Scotland.

You get like 12 of those, you get your seven friends back together at the moment. No, I bought enough scotch that I can pitch a tent somewhere. And be like, get off of my land. The fruiting is brutal, dude. It's, well, as my wife says, it's like drinking liquid band aids. Okay, I had a guy in specs ruin these, these islay scotches. I like that.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Do I know my eye lays, my friend? Yeah, it's, I liked him. I had tried yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait Yes. Out in central Texas. All they did was sell. They were selling some crystals and stuff. Oh, no, they stopped there and they went back from a- That's in the gift shop for people who are getting free weddings, right? So that's where we went. That's where we went.

They do over a thousand weddings, a venue. It's a beautiful venue if you want to go get a free wedding. First thing a wizard tower. But the wizard tower is where the business academy is. That's where they bring in like world class teachers and stuff. And they have started a whiskey Somali-A program. You guys found that fast. That was a press conference.

It is. Nice job, Brian. Amazing. They've got a secret vault behind a library. You pull back some library books and you get inside and there are hundreds of whiskey's and it's a three-day program to become a whiskey Somali-A. And dude is not messing around. Like you have to take a test at the end and be able to identify, like this is definitely the Canadian,

this is definitely the Japanese, this is definitely the Irish you learn, all the background on how all this stuff is made. They have a couple of video series, YouTube.com slash whiskey vault, and their new one is whiskey biscuits. You can find it, but you would love these guys. Oh, man, I got to get you. I'm pretty basic. It's I'll drink Jim Beam and then also drink Lafroy. You know what I mean? It's just, okay,

not that Jim Beam is a Scotch. When you get to experience the tour of Scotland, the Daniel Wittington does. He gets up there with a map of Scotland and the fact that he's pointing to these different areas and he points out that the Pete is, you know, like you are tasting the actual earth of that region. It tastes like Pete Moss. Like, yes, it's amazing. Oh, highly recommended, highly recommended. Yes, see, I'm going to get you. I'm on the 20 year version of that. I just go bottle by bottle and I'm slowly touring the world and it's great. We had a lot of fun. Where did we go? Melbourne was that where we were? We took Ellie, my assistant

out and she was 25 and so we got her a whiskey that was as old as she was. Oh wow. I'm trying to try it. She did not enjoy it at all. It depends. The thing is is that once you get past 21, whiskey's become kind of weird. And sometimes, certainly people, yes, well, they're voting in a hurry. But it's like too true. It like whiskey's that I love, like after 21, they start like going in a direction where it's like, oh, I don't like this, I actually like it younger.

Look, I'm't like people. Look, I'm just saying I can put on his tombstone. I don't put anything in my mouth that's younger than 18. That is what I'm saying. Yeah. It pulls true with people in scotch. Uh, but, but I can't wait to see your tombstone. It's going to be 35.

It's just, it's just a rolling. So one of my boss will love him and he liked it younger. Here lies Robert C. Cargill. Robert C. Cargill. No, we can't. No, we can't. Absolutely. What did C. Ford, what did C. Ford?

Chris. Chris Robert Cargill. I want to go by C. Cargill. Well, I mean, I went to, I went to Judson here in Texas, which is the second large, at the time was the second largest high school in Texas. 3200 kids went to this school, which was a high school. Yeah. There were 1250 freshmen in my freshman year. And so what that meant was the group of misfits and outcasts that you'd have in any school that would be three or four kids strong. There were 30 of us. And so, you know, it was unionized.

Starting dang. What was that? That's the thing. It was weird about it. It was, you know, it was normally you would be something of a social misfit at your high school, being into these certain things. But there were so many of us that we instead got properly socialized while being nerds. And so, but there were four kids in that group named Chris.

And so people would be, you know, my close friends, the people who would take a bullet for me would be like, hey, Chris Cargill, hey, Chris Rogers, hey, Chris McCoy. Like they would just be, hey, Chris, and you hear your full name so often, you just get to the point where you're like, you know, I do just call me Cargill. I'm, I'm, I'm come from a military family

here in the last name, it's fine, just call me Cargill. And it's stuck and I got introduced to my wife that way. I got introduced to all my close friends that way. There's literally three people on the planet who are my parents who call me Chris because they remember meeting me early freshman year. And it just stuck. Same, same, same way I got my name.

Because there's so many bikes. Yeah. And there was a Mike, a Mikey, a Michael, and a Mickey. So they're like, what's your last name? I said Burns, I go, what call you Bernie?? I'm like that'll never stick and here in America I'm gonna hold on here in America. You can be Chris you can be Christopher or you can be really pretentious and go with Tofer And and so that wasn't gonna happen I didn't find out until just a few years ago. I could have been kit and I could have been kit cargill

And I was pretty good. That's that's a Too late hashtag Kit Cargill. And I was pretty good. That's a fucking later name. Hashtag Kit Cargill. I know, dude, there's so much gray in this beard. I think it's too late to lose. No, sir. There are, Kit Cargill.

There actually are a few British people in the author community who jokingly refer to me as Kit. In fact, I was just at a wedding of a writer and he put Kit Cargill at my seat. Never gonna call you any. Wait, Jamie, gentlemen, that works here in our art department. He's a works in our blacksmithing department. Just a lot of different stuff.

But I love that you have a black kid. So you're really lost, and that's why I mentioned it specifically, but his name is Kit Kassani. Did he make the forge? We have a whole custom made forge. He made an item, which I don't know what to do with it. Pretty sure. You should find find something with a forge. It's not a forge rings and then you give them to everyone

so you can control them. Like this is they run a whole series of books about it. You might have heard of them. I want you to know that I just met the last 30 seconds trying to imagine a cooler department than a blacksmith to brag about having and I didn't. Yeah, I know I couldn't be that actual department. They just kind of have the tools there,

but it's in a section of stage two. So like, I'm always pointing to it when we do tours going. And that's where the blacksmithing forges. There's the blacksmithing forge and the only thing cooler than that. Here is the puppy wrangling. Yeah. Where you can go and roll around with puppies before you go on the air.

It's officially ranch. That we have. Puppy ranch. The, but that just, that just sounds like something that would be in Las Vegas and involve prostitution. One of the coolest things with fringe benefit is an I totally took advantage of this was, they're also in that department super obsessive

about sharpening things, sharpening knives. So I brought in some of my knives to have them sharpened. And now they're like, it's like having razor blades with handles in my house is what it'sed. And now they're like, it's like having razor blades with handles in my house is what it's like. It's amazing. Is there a point where you get like a two sharp? It is, because you know what's two sharp?

When you cut yourself and don't feel it. Yeah. That's scary. And then all of a sudden you're just where's all this blood coming from? It's like, oh, I cut my finger at some point. You need to stop cutting yourself. Yeah, I got seven stitches in my finger.

Wait a minute. Are we both in the seven stitches club? Yeah, and I got seven stitches in my finger. Wait a minute. Are we both in the seven stitches club? Yeah, and I got my index finger on my dominant hand. I held a drone away from my kids. I remember this. And I said, I said, hey, Bonnie, turn off this drone because I don't like, like, the kids are getting too close to it. Not realizing that drones, when they get shut off,

go in a landing mode. So as I held it, I watched a lawnmower blades come in and just shop apart my, yeah, if you go to, if you go to Instagram.com slash scam school Brian scroll back to a Christmas eve of last year, it is a gnarly. Why did you just fucking do that, Brian? I saw that. I have that image burned into my head and you know somebody in the backroom is bringing that up any second now. You got 500,000 people are going to see your fuck up finger. The worst part was in the middle of all the chopping of my hand, it knocked some skin in there.

So even after everything healed, like I guess when when skin gets knocked in, where skin does it belong, skin is getting nutrients and it skins like, hey man, I guess I'm supposed to keep growing. I'm skin. And meanwhile, everything on the inside is just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, who the fuck are you? Who let you win? They're like, seal them up, boys. Sorry. It's so, so then I had to get another,

like, I don't know, I'm still doing scar management. I used to worry about having pretty hands of being a magician. I don't worry about that anymore. Well, since you make it, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, I just, oh, oh, I just, oh, I just, screen. Please, please, please, the, oh, there it is. For the love of Christ. Yeah, yeah, you know, the stitching is bad. The hard

part for me was on my finger was when they cleaned it. That was rough. That was a rough time. When I was in the ER, I'm, I'm, of course, of sound mind and I'm saying like, hi, I'm a magician. I'm really worried about the range of motion on my hands and the sensitivity at the end of fingers. If you could just let me know. And then, and the response was like, oh, no, no, no, your tenders are fine. Look. Oh. That was, that was a much. It was so funny that you said that though, because when I went in for Lasik, that's what I said. I said, well, I'm thinking about doing one eye,

and then coming in later and doing another eye, I said because I'm a filmmaker, and my eyes are very important to my work. Dr. Shudd, let me let you know the secret. Eyes are important to everybody's work. It's like you're not special, because you work in film. You know, I need my hands for my magician work.

It's like, well, lots of people need their hands to do their work as it turns out. So, Shay, since you mentioned it, your social media presence, where can we find you guys? Do, at Schwod on Twitter, I'm fairly chatty right there. As a matter of fact, I tell people all the time, like my email box, I still have like 2000 important and unread emails,

and yet I respond to every single tweet. So, that's probably the best way to get a hold of me, but definitely check out the modern rogue at youtube.com slash modern rogue films right here in Austin, Texas. That's right. And hopefully we're in the middle. I don't know. We got a few days to screw up the deal,

but we're trying to buy seven and a half acres so we could build a modern rogue world headquarters. It'll be awesome. And start. You could have your own wizard tower. Yes, that's exactly. That same drone that chopped up my hand went out. And I. Yes, that's exactly that same drone that chopped up my hand went out

and I was like, what's it gonna look like? 30 feet up. Yeah, all right, I could deal with this. So we'll see. Cargo, how about you? You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at MassaWarm and they have to say WYRM. WYRM, it's funny, I remember this for after all these years

because getting our movie reviewed by you was so important to us. And literally like it was important to you and I was a 25 year old video store clerk. Like, yeah, the world is just a weird fucking place, dude. But we spent so much time, I always say the independent film world back then was it was, you would make, spend a year making something and make a movie and then you try to get it independent film festival, which essentially was the process of trying to convince About six people to let you show your movie to about 200 people the gatekeeper And that's how it worked and it's like and you just hope the right one maybe one person out of the 200 who watched it in the theater

That would be the person you changes your life and then while we were in the middle of that process We started putting videos online. They started going everywhere. It's like why would you do this other thing? Let's just do this instead. But I also, we haven't mentioned yet, see of us, you were nominated for Clark Award. One for the Arthur C. Clark Award. Yeah, thank you. Fun fact, first book,

nominated for the Arthur C. Clark Award with the words robot-dong. Oh! Congratulations. Also true. Yes. Yeah, no, it was a very, it was a passion project book. It was one that I pitched for years to people. And they were like, well, what's it about?

It's a post-apocalyptic robot, Western. Dude, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no somebody who loves it. It's great. It's great. The robots won and humans are irrelevant and they're a far back distant memory. I can see it. And it's people fighting over the bones of civilization. And you think of them as people, even though they're all artificially intelligent machines. Right before we went live, I confessed to Cargill that a lot of books don't stick and kind of haunt me, but the world of Sea of Rust definitely definitely does well deserved on the award. Thank you. Thank you. And you have a new book coming out. We are where the nightmares go and other stories by C Robert Cargill. C Robert Cargill. Robert C. You know, fuck around with it. We know, fuck. No, no, no, no, that's the way that's the way

it is. Pretty simple. Just be cargill. That's at this point in your life. You can just go straight to the one Monica. Well, that's what people who know me call me, which is. Pretty simple, just be cargill. At this point, you're like, you can just go straight to the one moniker. Well, that's what people who know me call me, which is what's great, because that's how I can always tell, like, in a business email or something, if I really know someone or not, because they'll be like, oh, Robert, and I'm like, we've never met. I'm going to out you on this cargill confess that that's where the Beyonce joke in, uh, in Dr. Strange came from. That is exactly like, like, like, that's some of his material is, is, is like, who are you? I'm Cargill. I'm like, Oh, like, share Madonna, Cargill. And then that's, that's

how, how do that moment that showed up in the movie? Yeah. All the time. And we were trying to find something for Wong. And, uh, uh, Wong in Marvel comics is just called Wong. He has no last name. And so Scott and I were trying to find something that would really kind of work for him and could be funny because you know, this is these are Marvel movies. They're family movies. They're supposed to be fun.

As much as there's a lot of heavy stuff that goes on, you have to laugh, you have to have a good time. And so we're like, we need something here. And I was like, well, you know, I have this thing that happens to me all the fucking time. And, and I told Scott and he about fell out of his chair. He's like, people really do that to you. I'm like, literally once a week, this happens where someone's like, oh, because you meet people and like, oh, hi, I'm Cargill. Oh, that's interesting. Name Cargill, what? Oh, you're just coming, Cargill. Oh, what? Like share. Oh, what? Like prints and people,

a million sometimes people have referred to me as the artist firmly known as Cargill. Like, and so I thought that was, I thought that might work. And Scott just thought it was so fucking funny that it stuck. And so all the Beyonce stuff, all the stuff and Dr. Strange about that. That's just all about my name. After writing Dr. Strange for the standalone movie, was it weird to see that character written by someone else for Infinity War?

Very, very. Like seeing Dr. Strange wasn't so much seeing Wong because Wong was a very personal character for me. I've always been a big fan of Wong. I'm a big fan of the Dr. Strange comic and I have been since I was a kid. When I was 13, I daydreamed about getting to write a Dr. Strange movie and lived my whole life going, no one's ever going to let me do that. And so when I never thought anyone would make a Dr. Strange movie

period, I didn't either, but you know, they've they tried a couple of times. They had a TV movie. They there was a attempt by Charles Banda make one. He lost the rights renamed it. It's called Dr. Mordred, it's delightfully terrible. But so I get a call from Scott one night and he's like, hey man, you know, there's a company that wants us to make a superhero movie and I'm like, Scott, what superhero are we right for? Honestly, and he goes, Dr. Strange and I'm like, fuck, that's the one. I'm like, all right, I'm in. I'm in. I'll do this. And, but Wong was always a great... So they said Iron Man, you've been like, fuck off.

Well, Iron Man, especially at that point, they had done so much with Iron Man. We weren't right for Iron Man. The type of story that we like to tell wasn't right for that. You know, writers kind of pick a niche and kind of have their thing that they do. Not necessarily genre, but, you, but Scott and I like doing terrifying things. We like dealing with big ideas. We like philosophy. We're both huge philosophy nerds.

And so, certain, if they had called up and said, we want you to do a Batman movie, I'd be like, we're not right for Batman. Like I love Batman, but I mean, the Batman story, I'd want to write is not the type of thing you'd want to do like Spider-man, well, maybe if we played around with Mysterio and made it really creepy. By the way, I was amazed that Mysterio is gonna be potentially the next villain We've been asking for that for 20 years. It's about time

I've been asking not for that, but after them Knocking it out of the park with the Vulture. Yeah, the Vulture was the most cartoonish villain of all the time and all of a sudden, best villain in the history. I am still holding out for a great rendition of mixture, mix of play. Oh, no. Never. So many of those old, like, silver age, gold age villains are just like,

you can't touch them, but apparently, you know, I don't know. Are you looking forward to the batmite movie? Is that what's happening next? Well, I'm always about to weigh about the Joker. It's like, if you can accept the Joker who's basically an evil clown character and everyone is a beloved villain, if you can suspend your disbelief

that this silly jokes to villain, clown character is evil and scary, then you should be able to suspend it for just about anything. Yeah, yeah, but the thing with Wong, what I found going back to that initial question. The thing that I find so fascinating is that what's amazing about Wong is he's what grounds Dr. Strange.

Dr. Strange is this guy who spends all this time in this weird cartoonish world. Like he, he'll just go out and be gone for seven minutes. And really he's been in this dimension for two years. And he comes back with this huge beard. And he's been dealing with nightmarish things in, you know, world's non-uclidean geometry and there's Wong bringing him back and he is the grounding, the thing, grounding this character and bringing him back to humanity and he's his connection. And so I've always been fascinated by this guy so I was like, we have to get him right. And especially since he had such a complicated history

because he started out as a man servant and in an era where, he's marketing back to, oh yeah, he had a Chinese man servant. Oh, that's an acceptable part of storytelling. And now it's really not. And how do you correct that injustice and get the character right at the same time?

And so that was like one of my big focuses. So being able to humanize them with that, that, you know, that long element was a big thing. All right, so I got a question. And you might have to recuse yourself on this car, Gail, because you may know something that I don't. I recuse myself, I've ever. Everybody else may not even know what I'm talking about.

But in an age where they manage to pull off the Avengers where they manage to pull off Infinity War and all this stuff, is it possible that we can see the secret wars to be on there trying to figure out what it means to be a human thing? The first one, right? Well, the first one was the beyond like, like, give me all your heroes to become, you know, go fight But then secret wars too is like I don't know you guys seem cool. Let me try to be a human

So it's so weird. Yeah, I've never I could honestly say I've never heard the word beyond or spoken anywhere near A lot of the stuff the the motivations in infinity, like Thanos, they made them a little more mainstream. They be under, I've heard that they want to try to do secret wars, but I think if they're going to do secret wars, they're going to do the one where they just put everyone together and they'll fight. They really did change the nature of Thanos in Infinity War because originally his motivation was I am in love with death and And I want to get her attention. And so I'm going to kill half the universe.

Yes. And that is. I thought they changed it. Honestly, for an adaptation to a mainstream movie, I thought they did a great job. I think by the end of that movie, there's a lot of people who are sympathetic to Thanos and everything he goes through. He's the only character with an arc. He's the protagonist.

And he's the only one who... Well, because it is his movie, that's the only character with an arc. He's the protagonist. And he's the only one who... Well, because it is his movie, that's the point. I mean, that when you get 38 characters from across 18 different movies, of course you have to, there's not gonna be a lot of character development in there. Anyone who has a complaint about character development in a crossover movie

doesn't know what the fuck a crossover movie is, what the point is, the point is seeing them all together and doing what they do. And so Thanos is the one character that does get really great. So I did have I did have a a for the first time in maybe 30 years. Infinity War was the first movie I saw three times in the same week. The the moat week it came out and I loved it. In the first time, you know, you can't control when you got to go pee and you just sort of do your best guess and you leave and then you come back you're like you have no control over there. Some of us can control that.

Wait, wait, okay. Not if you're drinking compulsively. Like, one, three, three, four, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five,

five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five oh Captain America's on screen, good time to go pee. Like, he does not have one good scene in that entire movie and his shield is garbage and there's no good writing in there. Everything you said was wrong. That's the thing.

I will agree that I wasn't a huge fan of the shield change. The two, two shields, no. I missed his shield. But also he had no good, he felt extraneous and he didn't have any good lines and he's a great character. He'saneous and he didn't have any good lines. And he's a great character. He's the heart of the Avengers

and of the Marvel franchise. I've got to prove you wrong right here. Okay, go for it. I would have proved you wrong right here. That shield is dumb. It's a dumb shield. I am Groot. I am Steve Rogers.

That was a fucking lovely line. You, I win. Okay, no, no, no, I drop. It was so genuine and heartfelt and just very polite. Yeah, it was so it was so a four beard moment was nice to. Yes. Yeah. There's there are great moments. I think the moment between you guys don't understand how satisfying this leak I took though. I mean, it was really it was really good. All right, well, in that sense, yeah, I think the leak was amazing, but fucking Steve Rogers Ross. I will say, though, in any war, going back to what you were saying,

my favorite line of the whole thing is a long line and he doesn't have that many, but it's like right at the beginning. It's a really great scene to beginning when they're in the, am I gonna get this wrong, the sanctum? Yeah, the sanctum sanctum. Yeah. My favorite type of all time that I've dealt with is one time Scott sent me a draft that said

the sanctum sanctum. San Torum the Sanctum centorum. Centorum? And so there's two very different interpretations. That's exactly what happened in my head was I was like, oh, this is where Rick's Antorum hangs out. And that's like, oh, wait, no. There's that other meaning. There's that other meaning. But Long's the line is very weird.

They're coming on the stairs and it just seems like. It almost seems like they're playing with the man's server thing a little bit because it's strange. It's going to go out and get him food and he just says he just says very matter-of-fuck-ly I wouldn't say no to a tuna melt. Yeah, I connected with that line. I'm just somehow it's like I love this character. Also, I love that not spoil anything in if any war, but there's a moment where Wong's like yeah, I'm out and he's just like I'm fucking off. I can't do anything about this so I'm gonna go back and just watch the sanctum, because that's my job.

You might as well have said, have you seen how many characters there are in this movie? There's no room for me. All right, well, thanks guys for coming on the podcast for a Memorial Day. Any big plans for Memorial Day? We did it. We did it. Did you just today? Hey, I got to be on our podcast.

Today, we did a cookout on the modern rogue. Some, we melted a pig's body. Yeah, you seem breaking bad. We wanted to test to see if that's possible. With acid? Or no, acids are more tightly regulated, but it turns out liars pretty regularly acceptable. But also don't use an aluminum pot

because it generates a bunch of hydrogen gas that explodes. I guess people should go see that. Yeah, I mean, it's a thing. Why do you always have to break things? It's a ZA, because we're not smart. People all the time are like, are you up there to paint? People are always like, you guys don't know anything.

They're like, yeah, that's the point. We're trying to figure it out. We're not saying we're experts, we're trying to become experts. And so, It scares me sometimes, because you're the guys that I drink with. Get away.

Here. I feel like at some point, one of you is going to die with your final words being, hey, Carl, you'll watch this. Yeah, you. I'm okay with that. Put that, say, I'll have a much smaller tombstone

next to yours. I'm gonna go live with the world. I'm gonna live, name drop a gap of tabs. But yeah. Put that say I'll have a much smaller tombstone next to yours That's a name drop a gap of paths You're gonna hear hold my hydrogen moment Well, it's funny though. You say that because it's like science channels on the internet You do think when you watch them this person knows everything but scientists are just a bunch of people who don't know Something but they have a good feeling about something so they're gonna give it a shot and try. But unfortunately, all the scientists, they don't have to deal with commentators, they're like, you guys should have watched this other channel.

I'm like, yeah, those guys know what they're doing. Fuck off. I did a clip for my vlog. I'm learning to be a pilot. I'm getting certified as a pilot. And the aviation school, when they find out I was gonna film, they're like, man, if you put anything regarding aviation online,

you're just gonna be like, you're gonna have a bunch of armchair pilots telling you how you got everything wrong, everything that, so I made that whole section of it just silent and just stay away from it. But that's just the nature of the beach. Going all the way back to talkbackers on A&KoolNews. Oh God.

I mean, that's the, we built a PC and of course everybody had their thing that they were like, oh so much cringe. We shot a gun. Ah, so much cringe. Everything shot a gun. So much cringe. You're not supposed to shoot it this way, motherfucker. Like, seriously, you're trying to. It's because I'm going to do it.

I'm going to be like, I'm in a music video. Yeah. All right, Kargo, where can people get the book? And when will they be able to get it? Oh, June 12th is We Are Where The Nightmares Go. And comes out. C of Rust is Out Now, Wherever You Buy Books, in audio or in e ebook or physical book.

And I will be on tour with it. I'm going to be here in Austin, June 11th. Then we're that's not a lot of a tour. That's like, well, that's the beginning. I stopped him in the middle of the disco. No, no, it's not much of a tour. And then I'm going to Boston and I'll be doing a reading with Joe Hill. And then I will be that weekend. I'll be next week and I'll be at Denver, Comic Con. So if you're in Denver, I'll be around all weekend with my podcast and talking movies. And then the week after that, I'm going to be at Synapocalypse in Chicago, where me and

Scott Derrickson will be the co-presidents of the the board of synopocalypse and we'll be showing a lot of very cool movies, some of which I've seen on the circuit this year and lots of really, really great indie horror and action is going to be played there. It's going to be a lot of fun. And then I get to come back home. But yeah, so I'm going to be so you can catch me on the road in any of those cities and and yet. All right. Well, we want to thank our guests massive warm and shwood for joining us here It does sound like a morning radio team massive warm and shwood Special Memorial Day podcast and stick around for the post show if you're a first member

We're actually will be telling me how she's gonna support me for a year financially while I go pursue some dream nice I got that. Bye everybody Do you like apples? Describe the show to a newcomer in a more familiar way. Do you like apples? Alright, example. Together in Trempathos, Characombs, Characombs are free of Diaz of nothing to do with this podcast. Analyze various unsolved and rooster teeth's cryptic podcast, f*** face. Call to action.

Feel free to add something show premise specific but short. Listen to show name on Apple Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. It's face a podcast. Subscribe or know. You do yes?