EB 24: Michael Gallagher: How I Got Here (Mar 2014)

this year biscuit is brought to you by Squarespace the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website e is the east eyelet on the end website yes or online portfolio for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase go to squarespace.com and use our offer code R&L that’s our a and DL okay you need a website you need to use Squarespace it’s you know you know the drill it’s they make it easy and listen how much do you think it cost I can say $1,000 a month $8 a month Oh a lot lower than I thought includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year so the only problem I see is not the price that that’s the solution $8 a month the problem is coming up with a domain name so I mean that’s something that that’s not easy but that’s the point everybody has a website and you need to get on this train well the domain name thing is is quite a chore I remember one time we started trying to come up with some way to come up with a website that would point to rhettandlink.com/store whatever like that would ever happen to having a couple of times so we came up with Internet peanut butter calm which I think still works oh yeah it does but that if that’s any indication of how hard it is to come up with a domain name that’s the thing that you’ve got to do don’t delay yeah just go ahead and reserve that but you get to do it for free and then eight dollars a month that’s like a latte and a half depending on the size that you get and where you get the latte from you said are you you’re doing like a conversion and coffee conversion like the charity like this is not a charity like for the cost of a latte and a half you can come you can contribute to the charity if you want to use that voice to get people to sign up for Squarespace I don’t care start a trial with no credit card required you could make a charity website I start building your website today when you decide to sign up for Squarespace charity website com make sure that’s I’m sure that’s take you don’t get their hopes up make sure to use your offer code R and L that’s RA and DL to get tempers off your first purchase and to show your support for ear biscuit I really don’t like it when you talk like that kind of makes me feel uncomfortable it but you want to give to charity yeah I do but I want them to sign up for Squarespace so they can show their support of ear business let’s make another ear biscuit welcome to ear biscuits I’m Rhett and I’m link it’s time for another conversation with someone interesting from the internet this week that person is Michael Gallagher the man behind the YouTube channel totally sketch it’s currently one of the most sought-after directors on YouTube plus he made waves as the first youtuber to score a theatrical release of his debut feature length film smiley we discussed his beginning a directing career at the age of 14 by convincing the actors that he was 30 we also talked about how he finds the edge of what’s acceptable for content on YouTube and how his foam smiley led to death threats for him and his friends and family now it’s interesting because you know the smiley is obviously a horror film and it’s not called the smiley it’s just called this for this film smiley is is a horror film and you come right out until Michael and art talk with him that you have no plans on seeing it because you don’t like horror films yeah the trailer was scary enough to convince me that this is not my cup of tea and I you know I think we’ve established this you know in our previous air biscuit discussion we started that your mom indoctrinated you to appreciate horror films as a shared experience at a young age I mean we talked about the detail I think that might be a little bit of a misconception okay but you I will say that you tried to indoctrinate me my mom likes horror movies because of this her personality type is similar in the in that way and I like him for the same reason she didn’t want my brother didn’t watch him Oh wear this it’s me and her hmm I think he’ll watch a horror movie but yeah so it was just something that it’s the same thing and interestingly enough I usually describe it like a thrill ride you know I like to ride roller coasters at an amusement park you like to ride roller coasters at amusement park there now I’ll tell you the reason I like to ride a roller coaster is because my what is happening to my body is telling my mind that I am going to die my mind believes that there’s no way a human can be thrown in these positions have these g-forces put onto their body without them being an imminent danger right and so Anthony but you know you know what I’m not gonna die maybe somebody died one time on Space Mountain but I’m not gonna die so I get the same exact sensation when I watch a horror movie I think I could be the one being killed now I might be about to die but I know that I’m not really going to so it’s just in the exact same way so I want to know what is the difference III do enjoy rollercoasters I don’t I didn’t know that it was like a fear of death but maybe it is it’s just being scared it’s not that I don’t like being scared it’s just I just think it’s demented and gross and it gets puts nasty thoughts into my mind that all right so that’s what I mean by scary as in like nasty and demented but okay so if right now that door busted open in a black bear well on us a grizzly bear one that could actually do some damage and came in here and all of a sudden we were like oh crap and we ran out this door and then we ran for like 200 yards is this huge bear chased us and then we got up on top of a house and got away from him somehow I’d be like this is awesome exactly right you almost died but you didn’t die I’m the bear was like a demon demon bear and his entrails were hanging out and he was like murdering people and like that just makes it better I mean like a gross way I’d be like oh that bear is gross man but okay now I don’t want to see this bear we also talked on a previous year biscuit about how on my birthday in 2013 that my what I wanted to do for my birthday party was have yeah last October my guy friend come to the studio and watch in this room actually because there’s no windows and it’s kind of soundproof we set up the we set up to every to watch the conjuring which is you know a lot of people consider to be one of the scariest movies of all time definitely the scariest movie I’ve ever seen because I don’t watch a lot of scary movies because you don’t like to watch oh my wife doesn’t like to watch so but you can’t I looked at you while we were watching that and you just you were scared out of your mind so was i it’s not that I’m not scared you seemed like you were having the great time though whether it wasn’t I guess it was a little demented or maybe it got a lot demented but it didn’t get gross it wasn’t good you don’t like gory I don’t like okay so that helped a little bit but for days leading up to it I made up my mind I’m gonna support you and your birthday wish and I’m gonna be here for you and I’m I psyched myself up to everything you’re talking about I’m gonna overcome this I’m gonna have a good time I’m not gonna hate this I’m gonna enjoy it and I did and I actually felt even better because our friend Tony who was also here he was worse off than than I was and in terms of hating these type of movies so his earbuds in well he goes upstairs and he’s like leaving during the movie and stuff like that and he he comes down and he hasn’t put in earbuds he’s borrowed the headphones off of your desk yeah and he’s wearing he’s watching the movie to support you and your desire to have fun in this way on you’re listening the iTunes he’s listening to happy music yeah and in kind of looking at the screen with one eye like if you’re listening to like you know like Beyonce it’s not gonna be that scary while you’re watching this movie but okay with it and that made me feel better but this is so I mean I’m a box he appreciated it because you didn’t Punk out Tony punked out you didn’t Punk out but and I didn’t I agree yeah I don’t and I did have fun I don’t I haven’t seen the Saul series I don’t I don’t care about that kind of stuff yeah you said demented and gross yeah I like the ring I like the conjuring I like these movies that have this psychological thriller like supernatural supernatural supernatural it’s totally crazy freak you out right but this isn’t this is my thing this is what I want to say to you that I think that this is like spicy food in and but you have in this past year or so you know yeah I kind of I kind of get it you’ll eat something spicy but I kind of get why this is good I think that you could we could be like horror movie going buddies you know we could just like hey man let’s go let’s go watch a horror movie just to just to us you gotta learn how to say the word horror horror watch a horror movie and and this could be like a shared experience because I enjoy them so much or maybe we could just get somebody to come in here and threaten us like weakly well it would be a less of a time commitment you know just an actor get an actor with a mask well if it’s a psychological supernatural threat I’m okay with that but if it’s like a adjacent smiley kind of threat like that kind of thing let’s get like a demon-possessed little girl to come in once a week scare the living crap out of us like every Friday at 4 o’clock she’s got those little girls gonna come in we start with you’re gonna float in can we start with a demon-possessed like grown woman and we need to work down to a little girl because the younger they get this crypto Maura carry-all Wow mmm I can’t demon baby is as bad as it gets has that movie been made yeah it was it was that viral it he had a baby devil baby or some like that demon baby okay so that’s what Michael has done he has he is he’s made a movie because I was back in 2012 and you know it’s been out but he’s he’s done this as a youtuber yeah he actually pulled it off he made a horror movie and you know he’s his YouTube channel continues to go strong totally sketch has over 1 million subscribers over 400 million views he also does a lot of other directing for other people at Reggie Watts he directed Reggie Watts reg world video also directed Joey Graceffa dramatic series that came out late last year storytellers among many others and he’s worked with Shane Dawson jenna Marbles to return a Kassem G to name a few but less get into it alright here’s our ear biscuit with Michael Gallagher okay so you just watched wolf of Wall Street so you enjoyed that but I know you’re a fan of Dumb and Dumber are you excited about Dumb and Dumber to I have to say I’m so excited that I am sort of I’m saying I’m not so sure it’s gonna be good cuz I don’t want to get my expectations so skyrocketing high that when I see the film it can’t possibly live up to those expectations because I really want to enjoy the movie well what kind of place is dumb and Dumberer holding your heart I mean is it a special locale in there yeah oh yeah I’ve seen it like probably a hundred times I mean it’s one of those movies that could my parents were really into comedy so growing up they would like all our VHS tapes were comedies you know like Michael Keaton movies okay you know Jim Carrey like the mask Dumb and Dumber Ace Ventura even the sequel Ventura to where he’s in Africa oh yeah it’s incredible he does this whole monopoly guy but it’s and I recommend you check it out if you haven’t seen it but you’re not a Jim Carrey fan you’re a Dumb and Dumber fan about movie I’m but but yeah where do you guys get $10 from where did you research it my mom yeah no minion yeah we have minions we just have time the person who helped us find out that information is listening and we just called her a minion I don’t think that’s gonna go over she’s the one that just took a picture of us she’s lovely yeah she made this really lovely papaya tea she did tastes exactly like so why dumb and Dumberer though specifically I mean it sure it’s a great movie but why latch onto that one I think there’s just something about like joyous like dumb just going to the baseline of being so dumb that I don’t know like everything’s numb like that’s just how reality is there’s something about that level where they’re just everything they’re saying like they don’t even realize that the next thing they’re saying doesn’t make sense to the last thing like they’re constantly contradicting themselves or something so when you’re that dumb it’s just it’s bliss it’s perfect so and no film has ever captured it since I don’t think well you know the interesting thing about Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey too is that I was just looking at an article about the movie and you made this observation Jim Carrey hasn’t aged well Jeff Daniels looks exactly the same like it like I mean he his hair is a little bit different but I’m I think it’s gonna look like like a father and son that’s what I’m worried about I really think it’s gonna come across like a father and son because Jim Carrey’s I think Jeff Daniels has done a little injections or somehow you think it’s maintained the smoothness well whoever as doctors is good yeah right he’s not with like meg Ryan current-day if you’ve seen Mariah who’s she’s got puffy lips yes really they’re marshmallows they’re big but it’s been overdone yeah a little bit but no yeah he looks like a baby he’s a baby I don’t know what a secret is so do you channel any of that inspiration into totally sketch like is there a direct connection there well it’s funny cuz I think it’s it’s not just Dumb and Dumber actually it’s that like the Farrelly Brothers early movies okay I think I really dug I think those movies are I mean some of the best like between you know kingpin Dumb and Dumber and there’s something about Mary it’s like the Holy Trinity those are the best of their comedies I think but I don’t know they just they sort of took what like the Zucker Brothers did like the airplane like that kind of you know sporadic like so many jokes like joke a minute thing and they also gave it heart and they actually cared so by the end of the movie were still paying attention you wanted to know how it ended and there was a little bit of suspense so I think that there’s something about that kind of combination of just you know kind of going for it and then it’s also that sort of inappropriate humor that like we’re crossing the line we’re going into a zone where you know you almost make the audience feel a little uncomfortable for a minute and okay get to the joke I think there’s something about that that was really exciting to me because I like being like I was very young when I saw a lot of these movies that I probably shouldn’t have and so there is something like I think the fear of oh my parents gonna like stop playing the tape or at some point are they gonna say I gotta leave the room or close my eyes or something I’ll be exciting about that why don’t I am with yeah I had to watch it with my parents my think I should be watching this right now right and then it’s like but we’re still watching it so keep it going guys I’m not gonna make eye contact with the parents right now yeah it’s like when you’re watching you know there’s so I saw there’s something about Mary in the theater with my parents and you know I’m 25 now so when that movie came out I was I was less I was like 13 12 13 and it was a little too young for me to see that movie I mean you know there’s I don’t want to say all the things that are in that movie but they’re very lair jealousy and you know we didn’t leave let’s just say that we did not leave the theater I saw the entire film and I saw in the theater where the house was packed and everyone was roaring with laughter like literally the room was shaking it was that like it was one of the few times I’ve seen a movie where everyone is laughing at every joke and it’s just like so loud you’re not even hearing the next line so I think something about that like those early experiences they made me you know understand the power of comedy and it’s interesting because I can I guess I can imagine like a younger kid looking at your channel and maybe having that same kind of experience now say I’m gonna click on this video interactive sex he’s got a hundred million views it must be good hope mom doesn’t walk in yeah they got the butterflies I got their door that they have to keep open their depth at one eye on the door and then they got one eye on the video so they watching with their parents baby on their lap weird hey mom check this out yeah different different strokes for different folks no pun intended so I mean I have to imagine there’s some calculation and kind of working the whole internet video thing in your favor with the sexual subject matter and just kind of flirting with okay what’s gonna be beyond this click kind of a thing for you yeah I think I you know I think when you you kind of push the envelope with sensors and YouTube doesn’t really have like there’s no CEO MPAA or there’s no like real sensor board you just sort have to like it’s sort of the buddy system like this yeah Boy Scout system of we’re gonna put something out here and it might get flagged might not it’s sort of you know communal you never know it’s gonna go down and so I kind of like the idea of toying with that invisible line and sometimes I’ve crossed it for sure and then other times I’ve been right up to it and I think that you know that’s interesting cuz a lot of people you know make things that are very safe and you know and that’s fine but I like you know kind of putting the edge in there so that way you never know what you’re gonna see next there’s no tension to it have you been flagged have you been knocking down yes a million tab no no not a million times I you know I probably have like you know ten flagged videos way to hundreds when your flag 10 out of 200 videos they they’re taken down automatically unless you can prove they should go back up right and so most of them have gotten proven that you should go back up like like what what would be taken down and then you can say well this is how I danced this line give me a specific example well you know it’s it’s weird cuz YouTube isn’t that like not very vocal like I don’t have like a guy at YouTube that I call and he’s my guy you know you know video gets for like YouTube doesn’t call you I don’t get a call know right I just sort of happens like I just see that nobody can watch anymore oh no what’s going on what happened what I do and then so then I have to go and kind of figure it out and I’m like what was the video that got flagged and walked me through with a specific example this is one video called I think it’s like the low-cut shirt I think that’s what I look at shirt you familiar with the the I’ve seen the thumbnail yeah no so that video you know it’s basically about a girl who wears an extremely low-cut shirt out on a dinner date and the guy as being a guy takes a peek at her cleavage and while while he’s down there looking the the sound gets muffled and he’s just sort of like focused in on it and then all of a sudden she says something and she’s like you know Peter did you hear what I just said and he’s like yeah of course and then she pulls out a gun she’s like did you really because now you have to answer and then becomes interactive where he has to guess what she just said and we as an audience have no idea what she just said so it’s a really ridiculous and he got flagged just because I think cuz of the boobage cuz there was a high level of boob boob activity Ben then how did you get it unflagged I didn’t have a YouTube guy well the way things get flagged from my understanding as you know civilian that it’s a certain percentage if it’s a high percentage of people who are watching your video flag it doesn’t matter if it’s you know just like you know your nephew playing on some steps or you know a girl like taking off her clothes doesn’t matter what it is if like enough percentage if I don’t know if it’s 10 percent or 15 percent it’s automated its automated yeah so if if your video just goes out and maybe a few hundred people have seen in her a thousand people have seen it and a high number of them have clicked flag then it could go down but I didn’t come back that’s what happened so I had to email them it took a day or so and then they realized like oh you know you didn’t break any rules and and when it goes up to is it then you have to sign in is because I because I noticed a few of your videos you have to sign in you have to verify your age there’s a few of them that yeah like you can you can still have it up once it’s been flagged but you have to go through like an age gate thing and I don’t think there’s ads on them or anything like that so it’s like a weird part of YouTube where it’s like 18 and older Club like big flashy oh you’re ready brought back up that’s how the sign and thing happens no no so some of them are you got you guys never had a video flag I’m guessing ever actually yes you have we did we we had it’s actually the interesting story because it was the video that I think is partially responsible for our popularity on YouTube initially oh you mean the pornographic one we really see a video of my son a video of my son he was 3 years old at the time he was crying about a NC State UNC game that’s where we’re from North Carolina and my wife and I filmed our son and we put it on our channel he was distraught about the Wolfpack losing to the target yes right and he was just so distraught and it was hilarious but he just so happened to be in his underoos yeah he was just a three-year-old in his like tighty whiteys or whatever and that got flagged well it got taken down twice on my personal channel which I don’t have anymore whoa and then I was like I’m putting this up on our channel if then YouTube contacted us and said contacted you and said we want to feature this video on the homepage because everyone’s talking about it is hilarious but it’s but it’s been taken down so well we didn’t take it down is what she said and so you explained it to him and then you re uploaded it and we may had a conversation should we we should reapplied it to the rhett and Link channel because we were just trying to get started on his personal change foot like we put a watermark at rhettandlink.com/store antigen this thing if YouTube’s gonna feature it so it went from being flagged and taken down to being featured by YouTube who asked to have a foot backup that’s incredible so that just goes to show you the state of YouTube at the time underdog story that’s like an inspiring film right so a slightly different approach but yeah our content is different so we haven’t been we haven’t experienced the flagging gotcha you know we don’t typically shoot kids in their underwear and put it on our shame that’s true good that’s good I appreciate that as an American right thank you but I mean okay so yeah so we’ve worked with some naked Russian man I’ve been supposedly naked but I think that’s a there’s a little bit of a contrast there because if somebody’s gonna be naked in one of our videos there’s a good chance that it’s gonna be one of us you made kind of a decision early on to be to say you know what I’m gonna approach this YouTube thing a little bit differently than everyone else was approaching it you you were going to be the creative force behind it but not necessarily be the face of it right so how did that happen yeah I think I wanted well my initial idea was to do try and do like an SNL type show where it was you know I could just create it and you know like Lorne Michaels comes out every once in a while at SNL you know he’s the guy behind it but you know he’ll do some funny like stuff as himself but he doesn’t really play characters he’s not really an actor and he doesn’t pretend to be either yeah he just likes funny people and you know puts them together and kind of keeps that show going it’s more producer director guy and so I thought oh I could do that on YouTube in a small sort of way I could do one a week to a week you know sketches and you know I could pay for myself and get funny actors and things and and I just always approached everything I did as a writer director producer cuz that’s always what I wanted to do but you know making a feature film it cost so much money and so much time it’s so many people and great script and so there were so many things in the way of blocking for me to make feature films at that time that’s when I started I think I was 19 or 20 or not so I was what yeah yeah it was 20 so well where was the filmmaker spark ignited when did that happen I think what happened was I think at an early age my parents like loved movies love comedies and I got to see them all like that was the communal thing like we’d always you know my parents both worked and so when when we did spend time together at nights weekends and like they were great parents we would watch movies we would go to movies you know we’d see comedy shows like I remember seeing Rodney Dangerfield when I was like 10 years old really like stuff that like whoa like why am I like I knew I was something interesting going on like I knew most kids weren’t doing that because I would like my parents would you know like to go see comedy show like in San Diego we had a lot of good comics come through or okay you know a couple times throughout my youth we went to like Vegas and being a kid in Vegas can’t do anything except at night somehow they got me into like comedy shows or concerts or whatever the cool stuff that it could do so I got to see George Carlin before he died 12 and it’s just like and then I’d go back to school and be like acid George Carlin over the weekend no kid George Carlin was there I was just like this weird kid and then so I actually had older friends and when I had those older friends at a young age I could then talk to them about movies and comics and you know what kind of the things that were interesting to me and they exposed me to more you know funny people and you know like oh you got to listen to this and like oh do you know who Steve Martin is like oh not just from these movies but like go listen there’s little comedy specials and you know read this book and it was just like there’s a lot of that kind of information and education that I got not from school but from just being interested in films and comedy that helped me you know just always be interested so from a various issues I was always kind of I was like this weird only child who was listening to comedy albums and yeah it’s interesting I mean I I mean most everyone’s into some form of entertainment but to have parents really state agent parents who seem to be both passionate about comedy mm-hmm it seems to be very interesting you know those real estates they’re horrible senses fewer I don’t know that of they weren’t like Glengarry Glen Ross real estate agents you know they weren’t like cutthroat bloody you know whatever they were I just don’t have bus bench you know ads they were like never like the nice real estate yeah I think I don’t think that I just don’t think that I’ve ever met a couple like Oh their thing is comedy yeah they’re really into comedy that’s cool and they kind of trained you up into that I mean for you to be able to say you saw the greats who are dead yeah and at the age of like 11 12 that’s that’s pretty cool yeah but that takes kind of a special sensibility from your parents that that must have been kind of a thing for them they were always the audience they were always like the quintessential audience so I don’t know that was so much that they were like they weren’t like comedy snobs they’re not like know this kind of companies better than this kind and I you know I only listen to George Carlin and like I would never like you know whoever you know they like everybody they like Jerry Seinfeld they like Frank Caliendo they like anyone doesn’t make him laugh they’re not snobbish about it no but personality-wise were they were obviously fans of comedy but was your household one where they were cracking jokes and you were cracking jokes a little bit my parents were like the most hilariously unintentional funny people were ever like they would not try but then they would acknowledge how like ridiculous something was I didn’t mean to do that but it was funny yeah well my dad was pretty hilarious he was sorta like like Joe Pesci a little bit like a Joe Pesci Alec Baldwin type you know like you can I was like an East Coast mob guy but he’s not he’s saying it’s like literally no mob connections whatsoever but he like I don’t know all my friends were like is your denim lovely yeah that’s like you wore rings and you know like dark like olive skin and you know hair slicked back and like drove a black like sedan hey you want to buy his house yeah that’s the best I can do yes do want to buy this house trust me I kind of had that vibe and then he was really clumsy yeah that look and then he would like spill something on him he would all here were really nice like suits for real estate and then he was spill something on it and he just curse up a storm and then it’s just my mom which is laughs and then he was just like you know I’m like Marlon Brando meets Columbo that’s what I’m picturing that’s not that it’s not far off yeah that’s pretty much basic Columbo with a stain on his shirt yeah my mom you know she loves comedy and yes she was really funny and you know she actually she told me this recently when I was little you know like they read like you know good night moon and the bernstein bears and like certain normal kid books she also read me joke books like tons joke books like just from a young age I think wasn’t so much for me it was more like she knew she just had to read me something so I go to sleep and so after a while you run out of books she used to start reading jokes and then so it would like amuse her okay so she could like stay up to actually read me something cuz some of those kid books it’s like you know mr. bear goes dude pantry what’s in the paper tray Oh glass of milk yeah right you know familiar with your familiar oh yeah I’ve got a baby you know what’s going but you didn’t want to become a comedian you ended up want to become a filmmaker so how did it was you know you’re watching the film so that was your connection but first I’ve thought I wanted to be a I recently figured out that I wanted to be an entertainer it’s got really what I wanted to be and that’s still what I want to do just directing is sort of the form that I like the most and it’s the one that I’m most comfortable with I think out of all the different ways you can entertain somebody from magic to being a comedian to an actor to you know a novelist anything so the yeah being being a kid I wanted to be an actor at first I thought I did but it was really I wanted to entertain people because I liked the idea of making people laugh and getting reaction like in school I started telling jokes and started like trying to be funny and and all that and you know I had I had a good run as a class clown in a few classes and you know it was you know I always had an entertaining group of friends we’d always like you know we were like into comedy growing up and so it was a lot of that but then I think the directing kind of came in when I realized that being an actor was gonna be such a nightmare because so many other people want to be an actor and that path seems so narrow and so like I didn’t know how to break in and this was this was a young high school yeah at a young age because my parent when I wanted to be an actor my parents were really supportive and actually took me out and like got me some acting classes for like kid actors and like I went on some auditions they’ve enjoyed driving up to LA and I went on 20 auditions or something and so I I did I made a noble effort as a kid to try to be an actor but like doing that process I would read a commercial like I’d read the the sides for a chapstick commercial and the lines for the kid would be like my name’s Billy and I love cherry chapstick because it put it on my lips and mm-hmm good cherry chapstick it’s just like that’s those are the words it’s like I can’t do anything with those words man like there’s nothing like there’s nothing good that I could ever show you what those were and it makes me want chefs to it could mean to be honest with you but it was one of those things where I would literally all like that and I just started realizing like there’s no point in us doing this he’s kind of like yeah I had a group you know I had a chat with my parents and it was just like you know if this is what acting is this like this isn’t what I thought acting is and if this is what acting is I don’t think this is what I want to do like I want to entertain people and so then my parent started talking like well you know you’re saying what someone else wrote like this is what someone else has come up with for their product or for whatever it is you know if you want to just entertain people you should try and figure out ways to you know make make your own stories and make your own dialogue and things and so that started putting in my head of like oh you should make your own stuff yeah how does that start well I think it started with just you know I got a I got my dad’s you know old you know VHS digital camera I think that I think we he had that one and then I had the high eight camera shot high eight and then I got the mini DV that was that was my progression oh yeah and basically it started with making kind of like jackass style videos with my friends where they would you know put them in shopping carts and throw them down a hill and I’d be on rollerblades trying to like film them and catch funny things and then you know some stuff where I would you know it’s like it’s like all the typical little kid movies where you you know have your friends dress up in suits and they wear sunglasses and you have like little orange guns and you’re playing like mobsters and you know someone’s gotta get the briefcase and and save save the lady in the top of your parents house like really ridiculous you know and this is before it YouTube of oh yeah this is you know this is 1990 no I I started MIT started filming things like messing around filming things I think in fourth grade like I think what I’ve learned pretty quick in school was that if I I didn’t have to do the essay I didn’t have to write a long essay or do a book report I could actually just go film a reenactment or make my own movie interpretation so it started as just oh I was making things not thinking of oh I’m a director I’m like just making stuff for school probably a ting at creating and then and actually what the real the real moment that I think I switch to filmmaking and this is sounding probably so boring anyone listening who cares but I basically my parents found out about this thing New York Film Academy which they have them all over the place now they had one in LA at the time they just started less confusing I know it’s basically like a subway have them everywhere okay or McDonald’s but yet so New York Film Academy is basically like a franchise like film school they started in New York and then the next one they brought out was to LA and then now I think they haven’t like Prague and Paris and all kinds of cool places okay but the one in LA was so cool because they had to deal with universals backlot or you could film on like some of their sets like they had like New York Street and they had like the jaws set and you know whatever else that was available at the time western town oh you know and they would let you film there for your project for as a student and it was like oh my god this is incredible you were how old at this time I was 14 I was 14 Wow and I said I got to go to this thing and so I begged my parents and they they let me go for a summer and I did a six-week program there where you shoot we shot 16 millimeter sync sound film oh wow yeah old school old school so in the end there was a choice there because they had acting gram and a film program and it was the choice of which one do I want to go and I realized then if I went into the acting program I would not be able to use the sets and I would be able to make my own thing and who knows if I’ll even get cast in something you know just go there and be doing vocal warm-ups and read and learn how to read monologues and then that’s it and I said no you know I’ll learn directing and if I really want to I’ll cast myself if I really want to and but I ended up not casting myself because I’m not an actor I’m more of like a I could do something funny on camera maybe but it’s more of you know I just more of a guy guy yeah a guy can talk so I mean you know this is an opportunity that a lot of you know not many 14-year olds have you know to get this kind of training to get this kind of support from your parents where did that lead because you know you had four more years of high school I guess and you graduate and then not long after that it’s a couple years you’re hey I’m gonna do this YouTube thing what happened in those ending high school you know did you go to college like what happened in that pathan period yes so yeah what happened is like all throughout high school so I I did the New York Film Academy in between the year a middle school to high school okay in between those years in that summer the six weeks I did this film came and changed my life because I shot you know some 16 millimeter short films I cast sag actors as a 14 year old like I literally like cold called actors and put on a voice at 14 like hi I’m Michael Gallagher from mgg productions how you doing today mister you know st. John yes we have a role for you that we’d love to have you come in for it’ll be Sunday August 5th or whatever it was and so I just like had this like speech that I wrote down and I just did a radio voice and called actors and yeah and got people and I had a crew and we were all like 14 and we made short films these actors show up and they’re like ah kid where’s the director where’s this guy tellem animal am I talking like this I had a lot of that yeah actually I had there’s one actor the first actor I’ve ever hired his guy Billy st. John he’s great he was actually mr. deeds you know that Adam Savage yeah he he was in this like dinner scene where he’s like with all these like fancy New York socialites and he writes for The New Yorker and he’s like you know they make fun of him and then Adam Sandler beats the crap out of him it’s like policie so he had a couple lines that Adams animu so I saw his head shot and I was like I gotta get this guy cuz I just saw mr. deeds ask for tea you know like this is cool thing ever and work with this guy and so I called him up and somehow coaxed him to come out and he was in my short film and we and he thought literally it was until years later cuz I’d cast him and everything and he was like oh my god like I thought you were I thought you were like 30 years old just like a short thin guy but he’s the coolest guy uh and I pretty much put him in everything I ever do but so that period really changed my life and so then when I went back to high school it was like this that I was like hooked it was like crack I just smoked crack I’m hooked hard my teeth are falling out I am making movies like that was what I was gonna do so I was a weird kid where you know when I when we could do a you know a book report on something I’d be like hey can I do my book report on Sid fields book about storytelling and screenwriting and they’d be like sure and then I would read a whole book about screenwriting yeah knowing what you wanted to do and as like a freshman in high school you were to kind of gear your high school experience toward your trajectory as a filmmaker I treat my college yes I tried to treat it as like colleges the most I can’t most I could because I I just I just couldn’t wait I was so antsy how did that create so did you create like a high school opus right no I well you know it was like a ton of short projects it’s really what it was I didn’t make like a feature film through high school that would’ve been cool it was always my dream to do a feature film but I never had I didn’t have the right idea to do a full feature and I couldn’t sit still to really write like a full 90 page film so at that time it was just tons of shorts music videos and then I you know I don’t know I just had this like you know confidence encouraged where I felt like I could get jobs like I have been to film school at the really film camp but I’ve been to film school I you know I know enough about film equipment and either you know DP cuz I at the film school what’s cool is you switch off positions to everybody in your class like going to film school in a way where you get to DP someone else’s project and do sound gaff and you know edit and do everything so you do every position so I had a pretty good understanding everything and so I just applied that to everything I did making short films so then I would submit my short films to film festivals I got in and then I would apply for directing jobs I got some of them like I directed a few commercials a few music videos when I was 15 16 years old I did I did a commercial that was a music video hybrid commercial ad with the Bam sha-na-na who played at Woodstock back in the day well for the PT Cruiser for a local car commercial sound familiar yeah so I was Engle on that it was they had a song called the cat and the PT Cruiser and I did a music video with the band sha na na and I got like a little crappie crane I got paid a few thousand dollars and it’s like you know sixteen and I you know direct-to-home UVI got my friends to boom and do the whole thing and edited on final cut which I had and you know and then I did not know that like nobody told me like oh like what are the specs that you have to go out for for TV like all the specific export information or any of that so I just kind of winged it and just acted like I knew what was going I had no idea and it aired local it aired in San Diego commercial yep that’s you remember seeing it on TV I do it was very exciting and then I remember getting calls from like relatives about it and because I would you know my mom would write exactly make cameos and all of our local commercials did you do that because I didn’t Hitchcock it now yeah I would I should have you’d have more relatives calling it would have been weird for like were you in the back of that PT Cruiser for a second it was really all six year old dudes so if it was like 150 year old boy with a little beard maybe just let the fifteen year old boy be the director was the angle that the entire band can fit into the PT Cruiser because it’s kind like a clown car I we literally had all the bad members in the car of course worse uh yeah no that was there was no angle to the music video it was just like you know I figured out I’d watched enough music but at that point I was like alright all we got to do is film shayana for different locations and put him in different positions I hope I got ya I was so nervous going to that shoot I actually remember because I remember they had like for some reason it was like a really big deal like they had like press because Shauna hadn’t done a music video in like forever they hadn’t done anything in a long time they’d just done like concerts and so they had like press like the head like news anchors and they like people on the set like filming us film the thing and then they did like new segments of it and then wrote articles on it there’s a big deal I remember 15 I were getting to set yeah I took the train up from San Diego to go to LA cuz we did half the video now I have in San Diego and I took the train up and I had my xl2 in my case and then I was with the buddy and I had a you know tripod and literally that’s all we brought to this video cuz we were doing an outdoor shoot and we were like yeah well you know we’ll bounce some light and we’ll figure it out like it was so ghetto I showed there’s all these press people and shot on the PAS here he has a tripod camera so I literally I was like oh yeah this is great guys excuse me for just one moment and then I just went away and I like went to the bathroom and I had to like pep-talk myself as like a 16 year old and then got the courage and threw some water in my face went back out there and said okay let’s do this and then I just started you know putting on director mode kill it killed it boom local TV commercial so that was that like the high school highlight yeah I wore that thing like a trophy I went around not I should have and what from there yeah so it was like a lot of that kind of stuff in high school so then from there I I went to LMU for one semester I went for one semester and at the same you know when I was going to college my parents said you know we’ll help you out for a little bit but you know you’re really on your own here like you got to pay for school you have to pay for your living expenses everything which is you know which is great I actually I think because it made me say I want to become financially independent right now not because I want to but but I actually they very much really have to and what would you decide to study there cuz you didn’t decide to go to like USC film school or something like that oh I applied everywhere but no I did not I didn’t get into a lot of I got into Chapman but I didn’t get into their film school it was very competitive at the time okay so you were trying to get into it tried to get into a film school yeah it submitted to like NYU and USC I think I don’t think I submitted UCLA but yeah I got into San I got into UC Santa Cruz and then I got into LMU and Chapman those are the three colleges I got in because my grades you know they weren’t that great but you know i’d i was really spending so much time doing all this filmmaking stuff that I was so not interested in whatever book report on you know yeah so how did so how does this get to YouTube connect those dots for us so yet to kind of like throw a stone in a pond and skip through a lot of this basically I was one of the first people that was a part of the station you know that YouTube channel station yeah I was a behind-the-scenes person I was I got hired on by those guys to help direct and write and produce so did Danny yeah I got hired by Danny okay and Lisa and Ben who did you know I knew lisanova from the YouTube live I spent time with her there okay so with Tay Zonday flash-forward you know two years or a year and a half once stations over now its maker people are trying to make videos this guy Glasgow Phillips who used to be a writer on South Park that they brought in to help write sketches and funny things just kind of come up with funny stuff he was hanging around and he used like you know someone’s got to do a movie with all these youtubers someone’s got to do something and I was like yeah I know I want to do it we’re just doing shorts I want to do a movie we got to do this thing and so he had had he had this idea of doing a this horror film and using chatroulette at the time it was a big thing I didn’t even know chat where that was around back then yeah it was around I came out and like what 2010-11 Oh cousin ten knows 2010 I think is that what it hit that was like that was the summer I deal okay so build a movie around something like that he was like that would be so cool to do like a you know horror movie like where this killers you know showing up behind people in a chatroulette and it was random so you don’t know who that person is and that sounds like a scary premise like yeah it’s good and so he’s like okay so he went away and just wrote this whole movie and it was just like a it was like a conversation it was very conversational at first and then he came back and he was just like I got your movie script here you go and he just sent me this movie script and it was like oh my god this is amazing and then so I collaborate I started collaborating with them he wrote the first draft and then after that we started Co wrote it together like we started coming up with more specific bits too because I mean he turned the script out and a couple weeks and he was you know he was quite the writer and so then it became this long process of you know developing this project while doing totally sketch and then you know trying to raise money for it and we tried to do the traditional route you know it took to some studios and got formal meetings and had really fancy water and Fleming just lovely and but you know people didn’t want you know at that time they weren’t ready to take a chance and say oh I don’t know if he’s youtubers or you know a big deal I don’t know if they’re gonna translate to a movie and what talent was attached at first I imagined no one no one was touched okay mwah so you were self and while you weren’t you weren’t able to throw around a Shane Dawson or a lisanova of DeFranco or anybody like that wasn’t wasn’t involved early on I just I told them that there I was excited I didn’t want to just attach people and just and get people’s hopes up because that’s the other thing like I really I don’t like to tell people something until it’s real so I’m never gonna say hey I got this great project rhettandlink let’s do this thing and then five years later I’m like we’re gonna get the money he’s gonna have it we’re gonna get you guys back at TV and it’s like no I would never do that I would come to you and say this is real so I like to be that kind of guy so I didn’t really approach people but I had worked like Shane had you know said Michael you don’t want to work with you from doing all the mistaken do so we became friends and so I would direct a lot of videos for his channel and I became a director for a lot of other people’s channel in addition to my own so I was known as like hey if you’re a talent you need a director just call me up and I’ll come and I’ll whip you up a video and so that I kind of got that reputation so I had sort of worked with enough youtubers where I kind of got like okay Shane he’s a great actor like he does this crazy comedy but he can do anything and I got that intention and hearing him talk I knew that he wanted to do more so there were certain people that I was friends with that I was working with that I got the sense that there’s more to them than what they’re just showing on YouTube and that if I have the right opportunity with this film we’re gonna pull the trigger and we’re gonna do something great but how much money did you need to get that was the thing it was like we trying to raise money and just you know sell it and do a studio thing and for you know six months and it wasn’t going well and I was getting so antsy because we were working on the movie and I said you know screw it I’m gonna put in my own money and we’re gonna make this thing and I do not have a lot of money guys so who we got to figure this thing out so we put it together and basically we did this movie for $200,000 so that that’s I was like every penny I had I was like um this is all I’ve saved up is everything everything I made from directing first that’s quite a nest egg for you to have that sitting around that’s yeah and then to be willing to put it all in on this one project with all the chips on read well and and again back to the genre switch to say okay I’m gonna put this nest egg into something that is not kind of what you were raised on and what you had been working on to say okay I’m gonna do this genre film or like how did you make the transition like when you first read that script were you like because I know like for the scripts that the few scripts full features that I’ve read I can read a comedy and I’m like I know when something’s funny we read a drama sometimes anyway I don’t know if this is good or not it’s like I can’t I don’t know if this is dramatic right now right exactly you know because I know comedy so when you read the horror genre know if this is scary yeah I don’t know what kind of music should be for this part I don’t know I think I just because I I was so into filmmaking at that time to me it was like I didn’t matter what genre I just want I was so hungry I got to make a movie like I just it was in my blood I was like I gotta do it and just doing all these shorts you know I love doing shorts but I was just like something I’d always wanted to do it was making a film and so whether it was a horror dramatic movie or you know comedy it didn’t or musical I would have done anything at that moment so this script came along I saw that it could be done on a low enough budget and I loved I actually love horror movies so and and I love him in a way that I’m not like where I’m like yeah I want to see blood and don’t see the chainsaw cut the girl’s head off I’m like not that guy you know there’s some horror fans that’s all they want to see they just wanna see yeah they’re like gore fiends and I’m not you know that’s not me I like you know I like the older stuff like Rosemary’s Baby is shining or you know repulsion like I like all the Roman plants he old horror movies are so scary even the tenant it’s like if you ever watched that it’s the scariest movie ever you let it let’s literally about a man going crazy in an apartment after this woman went crazy there and all of a sudden he’s just like dressing like this woman at the end of the movie he like throwing himself out of window just see your mind melts when you watch that movie it’s like why is this happening so you in a nightmare so you weren’t just a comedy guy and you were so hungry to make a movie that this was gonna happen it was gonna there was no doubt in your mind just kind of like just Shauna not Marshall hey I got the opportunity got the public really yeah exactly like it didn’t matter what it was I’ve sort of I’ve tried to be open to the things that come my way I have this feeling that I couldn’t universe opens up and like sends you something there’s a reason you know and maybe the reason is to say no but for the most part most things that come my way I find out I find it in like I look at it and I say oh like that I know how to do that right maybe if I don’t know how to do that right away I get interested in the idea of that I want to figure this out how can this be done and so you you put the money in put the money and uh you start organizing the production yep yeah I got this producer Michael Warren xur who had done some you know he had done movies in that budget range before and he had knew he knew where we needed to spend the money and where we could get away with not spending the money because most movies you know a good one you spend some bucks on yeah unless you do it really like strip down where it’s found footage you know and it’s just you know you’re HVX and but like I said well film to that to yours typically just to give people a point of reference what the budget would be I’d say three to five million okay yeah that’s what I’ve been told from watching the movie what most people would spend on a movie like that it’s you know three to five million and so it was something that it was you know an exciting challenge and I love a challenge now we I I have not seen the movie oh I have seen the trailer and based on the trailer I ain’t seeing your movie I mean I’m not gonna you know and I’m not gonna apologize for that cuz I know like it is scary movie really Oh fun I like you know thing but I don’t like scary movies I don’t care if you’ve made it called smiley do you happy that scared evidently you spent a majority of the budget on making that mask scary so how did you make this mask I would make the mask well or you kind of tell me how you made it the moment oh it’s not real yeah no it looks scary as all get-out if I tell you enough about the making of it you’ll right I can watch it yeah red boxes yeah no it’s and I hope you’re not offended but not honest my mom hasn’t seen I’m scared no I you know I I totally understand in a way I haven’t seen the movie if you notice but the the mask was something that I don’t know I’m just a sick person I guess but I had this when we were coming with the idea originally it wasn’t like a supernatural creature thing it was more of a guy with a stocking over his face who sort of painted on with like lipstick or a red marker he’d painted on like X’s or a smiley face or something like that and I just didn’t think like oh that’s not a you go see that movie I’m not scared that’s a guy in a stocking yeah right he got a panty on his head you know so I don’t know I don’t know what it was was somewhere in the time where I was developing with class go that I had this vision of like oh well what if it’s like a skinned face and it’s a stitched in smile and the smile looks like an emoticon you know I know some reason that came into my head and then I drew it and I started drawing and I’m showed to people and I did a mock-up in Photoshop and I showed you people and they would freak out and I’m like this is it we got something I knew I was like if I can literally show a photoshopped picture on my phone to someone and have a I’d have him cower in fear and literally shout and scream obscenities in public I knew I was onto something so but it wasn’t made how was it made it was a cover an actual man’s face it was actually the butt of a man took the but we didn’t enough skin as a consultant I said you need to get the butt of a man you don’t remember walking funny I got carry a big wallet now got it even everything yeah because it was just one but one side when she no so no so we hired a you know a special-effects makeup team who did our makeup for the whole movie and you know we did I show them the mock-up that I had and they kind of helped to figure out how the heck to make this thing and what we did was we got the actor who’s gonna play smile he’s got a Michael trimmer who’s a great actor very selfless because he had to wear this mask where you really couldn’t see and you really couldn’t breathe in this thing because the eyes were not lined up with human eyes they were too close and the everything was stitched up so well that you could barely breathe and barely see so he’s running around he’s like Ray Charles like he does not know where he is at any moment we ain’t he’s a talented musician he’s a very talented black musician no he was no he’s a great guy and what we’d have to do is set him up on a path and say okay you got about 50 yards you’re gonna be chasing a girl you got a knife in your hand in action good luck god bless no he was a super sport but we had to mold his face get a mold of his face and then they created this foam this foam latex mask over over his face like they did the molding and they they created this great mass this guy George Costanza and Greg mcdougal they they just did it in their space in the valley George Costanza yeah really yeah I don’t know I care a character could actually have a real life position that’s interesting yeah okay so that it’s one feet to make a movie for $200,000 I’m sorry did I say George could say I meant Steve Costanza oh no I’ve been watching Seinfeld yeah I was like George okay George Costanza so that’s quite an accomplishment making a movie for that budget but then you you accomplish something that very few people who do low-budget movies accomplish you actually got theatrical distribution how did that happen did yes how did that happen basically made the movie put the trailer on the youtubes it because it had mr. Shane Dawson mr. Toby Turner mr. DeStorm power and totally sketch we all talked about it the first week that the trailer when a key is in it right Nikki limo Steve green yeah Jason Horton bree essrig Shana Malcolm I’m leaving out somebody Richard Ryan I can hear my heartbeat yeah Elaine yeah so everybody’s in it and and everybody pushed to it the first week from their YouTube channels they all talked about it or they had a link in their annotations to say hey we’re in a movie check out the trailer and so in the first three days it got a million views got on a home page it just started like it was a snowball effect and once it kind of took off and I remember that it just I took notice then yeah yeah it just kind of kept going it was weird after that first week it literally would get a hundred thousand views a day in a $200 and as you know as an observer it was okay youtubers in a movie okay yeah roll the eyes I know what this is about to be and then I’m then I watched it and it’s like whoa there’s that dude who’s the actor who I recognized on a lot of stuff with the voice and he’s awesome and whoa did you see that I hope that mask is not real a real project but I’m not watching this movie this is for reals and it so it you know so you’re saying you got all these views you got all this buzz Wow million in a week kind of a thing yeah and it but it wasn’t you know that that was just marketing but that the trailer as a product was impressive and still is thank you now yeah I think the I think the internet kind of cocked it’s headed to the side and said what is this thing because there’s all these youtubers in it totally sketches channel who does comedy and there’s real actors in there and is this a parody is this a real movie it seems real but when’s it coming out and it’s just like what just there’s so many questions and what was your what was your answer to those questions at the time what was the point I do silence no I you know at that time we were still we had just shot that we shot the film in 2011 this summer and put that trailer out in November 2011 and just said I knew it was gonna come out next year I thought I was gonna be out by the summer or something but we were still editing we didn’t even have the finished movie yeah and we’re just like let’s put the trailer out and see what happens was worse than gonna happen right the worst thing happens nobody likes it okay we’ll fix it later and it’ll just nobody’ll know but it just kind of took off and then it became this weird sort of urban legend thing that people were wondering what it was and it was getting passed around so it it kind of caught us off guard and it changed our whole perspective because originally I knew the very minimum I could make this movie release it like say on iTunes and you know just kind of put it on a website for five bucks to do a louis c.k kind of thing and just give it to the people and just say here you go here’s a movie I knew that we could just do that and that there would be some people that would want to watch it just because of you know it’s so weird and random there’s you know some people in it that you’d watch on YouTube so I knew at the very minimum I could do that but once this trailer took off we just started getting all this interest from people in Hollywood and so we started doing all these meetings all these big studios when we just had the trailer and we were editing the movie and they were like we want to see this movie we want to distribute this movie we like met with you know paramount and relativity and all these big studios that were very interested and they we were like oh my god would make a good movie better like now the pressures odd like all of a sudden we had this pressure we didn’t realize like oh my god now we gotta make this thing actually good and so during that process we would edit it and put it together and what we’d find is we show to the studios and they really liked it like we had these great meetings and like they had four five screenings at Paramount like they just kept wanting to see it more they got more and more people to come see it each time and the final consensus for them was you know if you you know it’s sort of in the middle between a 20 million dollar movie and like a you know 1 million dollar movie and we don’t release movies that don’t look like 20 million dollar movies and then we just don’t have that in our system and we’re just like oh it’s like but we like it we really like it we see all the potential we see everything but yeah we just don’t have that system set up so it was just like this weird thing where it was like oh that’s flattering but oh you’re not gonna release a movie ok so then we kind of had that experience with a few different studios and then we realize like oh well there’s interest but nobody wants to pull the trigger so let’s just do it the same way that we made the movie where I just funded it where let’s let’s just try and get it in theaters ourselves let’s just do that so we went to AMC directly we don’t want to see theaters and they had this program called AMC independent I still have it where basically they will if they like the movie they’ll distribute it in their theaters for free but you have to bring people you have to bring the you have to pay for the marketing and you have to handle all the stuff deliver the movie but they will give you the theater space and they’ll split the profits of whatever you make in the movie theater for you know and how many screens are we talking about we did 28 20 screens yeah so that was all over the u.s. so okay all over major cities that kind of thing mm-hmm and so we we went in and showed them the movie and they loved it and it was literally like we had all these meetings at all these studios it took months it was just like months of meetings and meetings we did one meeting with AMC they watched the movie the next time and they said how many theaters you guys want and it was literally just like what and they just they were in they were just in on deal they were like we want this we want to put it out so then it was like yeah okay well we wanted out in October 1 October 11 yeah let’s do that and like okay great and then it was like oh my god that’s some four months we have to tell everybody about this movie and so then we did our darndest to do this marketing push to try and get the word out with like no budget to to tell people about this movie which I highly advise to have some money if you’re going to put a movie in theaters to tell people about it because it’s very expensive now and at some point throughout this process I don’t know if this was after the release or during the ramp up to it there was a situation where of a sudden a lot of personal information from people involved in the film including you was put out there online and death threats death threats after ends give us the download on that tell us what happened with that god I’m just reliving it’s like I begin smiling so yes so what happened was is this the type of thing that like you’ve moved on and like oh I’ve got to re-access this this this is a painful part of my life kind of thing no it’s uh yeah I mean because smiley in general was like you know two and a half years of my life like it was such a big part of just it was like birthing this thing yeah like having a two is like being pregnant for two years and then like having been raising like leaving the baby like teaching the baby how to crawl and then kind of abandoning it after that it’s a weird process but no it’s not painful to talk about but basically what happened was in the film we talked about 4chan we talked about the dark side of the internet and some of the people that do bad things cuz you know one of the things that’s it’s in the movies you know this idea that this theme of cyberbullying and we sort of take it to the extreme in the horror movie sense of what happens if some someone is cyber bullied to the nth degree and and so we kind of took some real life things like 4chan and Anonymous and in certain groups and and talked about them and some of the characters in the movie have opinions about these groups and so once the word got out from like some early screenings we did some screens for press I think someone like a blogger or something who was you know it would post on 4chan they got really upset about how we talked about a movie and like explained all the scenes that we talked about online and then for chant like revolted against the movie and did like what they call a raid where they got all our information really attacked at me in my family but they came after the cast accrue me like my my parents my cousins like just you know they like made death threats to my dog it was very what way well in the way that they got my phone number they got my address they would send things they called like non-stop text messages they’d like saying that they’re gonna kill me they’re gonna murder me you know everyone’s gonna die you know that kind of fun stuff it’s like you’ll never see your family again just a lot of that like it’s just basically like 12 year old kids just pranking but they just have a you know more sick sense of humor than say the three of us and you know that I mean you’re familiar enough with the Internet to know that I know their children what it is but at the same time it only takes one exact person to be to act on do you know there’s yep there’s this it’s scary well the at the same time the the shooting that happened in the movie theater was pretty recent at the Dark Knight you know like there was that whole new shooting that happened at Dark Knight Rises screen I think it was thing it was around that day yeah and so there was like I everyone was kind of you know there were like some people out there doing some crazy things and so I was trying to explain to everybody who was getting attacked like these are kids like this is not a big deal like this is in some ways it’s kind of funny but nobody took it funny other than feet I think just cuz I had said it spent so much time on the Internet I kind of had a better idea of what 4chan was and if they’re more about just like you know screwing with people and just like having fun just like they you know in the movie we talked about like I did it for the lulz like doing things for laughs and kind of a sadistic way and that’s what they’re doing they’re just like death giving a death threat to someone is something really casual they do it every day and so I didn’t I wasn’t really really worried for my life but my girlfriend was my parents a family like the Casta crew everybody freaked out and it was it was really a weird thing cuz we had all these plans to do Q&A zand meetups at lots of theaters and and make it a vent you know make this thing like a really come out and see the movie meet with us and hang out and we’ll have a great time but then AMC got word you know worried that someone might die as one of the screenings of smiley which would be terrible and so just kind of you know it was a weird time it happened two weeks right before the movies coming out and this is the time where I’m you know struggling to you know get billboards in Times Square and all these places for like no money like just try to pull favors but in an ironic sense I mean we saw the report on the Today Show you all of a sudden you get a national audience where you can sit down it was Shane and kind of answer some questions about it so I mean no one wants to go through death threats to get to that point but did it end up ultimately raising the profile of the film well it was a bummer because you know like in releasing a film of someone I learned that so much of it comes from your PR company and having a good company that can get you on the right you know having a publicist that can get you on the right talk shows and the right interviews and all that and once this story changed and it became a news story they couldn’t go and get the same kind of entertainment like we couldn’t get Shane on like say Jimmy Kimmel because it was a new store it was too like serious but a mix and match a serious news story with hey come see my movie you know hobnobbing with Jimmy Kimmel it was like a weird messaging thing and they couldn’t do both and so once we started talking about as a news story all of a sudden we couldn’t be you know treated in the same way that like most movies get released where you go on talk shows and do a lot of interviews and all that it was just kind of stilted so it was you know I think it helped in a way cuz it created a mystique of like oh this is a really dangerous movie I just became like you know and this was kind of dark way it’s like it’s like forbidden fruit you know you know but in the same way like we couldn’t really get out there in the traditional way and just you know tell people about the movie cuz like every other movie comes out you get a blitz of publicity you know for weeks the few weeks leading up go see the movie go see the movie go see the movie so hopefully people go see it so that was the you know that was a tricky thing I wish in hindsight that you know maybe 4chan was a little nicer to us right I got out well how did it do you know did you did you make that investment back or oh yeah baby I drove I came here in a helicopter no I you know I made the money back but you know it was a combination wasn’t just the movie you know what it made in the movie theaters I think it was a slow process of you know having come out in different countries and hadn’t come out on Showtime and Redbox and you know Netflix and all these things right you’ve already really you’re one of the first I mean I think it’s pretty awesome to say I’m one of the first guys that came out through YouTube and made a feature film you know it’s it you know now it’s we’ve got camp Takota julian smith earlier this year all near biscuits announced that he was gonna start working on the film i can’t wait for that and i you know and we can’t either and we don’t have any specific things in the works but we aspire to make feature films i think that this is a really exciting time where do you think do you think this is gonna become a thing it’s just like yeah people who come up through YouTube who have an audience they’re gonna start distributing feature films amongst our audience and do you think there’s more to follow oh yeah I would hope so I think you know it’s like it’s just more of a good thing it’s like you know rhett and Link you guys make amazing videos to think that oh you guys would have a rhett and Link movie that sounds incredible you know if I’m a fan of you guys I want to watch your movie I’m pay a million dollars to watch that movie per person per person let’s take a down payment to Nick need three people to watch it and you’re good for life yeah yeah just increase the ticket price ya know so I’m I’m super excited about the prospects of that and you know and it’s weird because you know when the movie when smiley came out I was actually 23 when I made it I was 22 yeah I was 22 years old when I made this movie I thought of it and helped write it when I was 21 so I was so young and I made it and then and then it released the year released when I was 23 but I was turning 24 in December so I’m coming up oh my god you know people get my date wrong or whatever I am so it’s like I was so young when I made that I’m so excited to just like keep making things yeah keep it all going get the train going you know but you know that just takes way longer than a YouTube video that’s the only thing so hopefully we’ll see a ton of them a ton of good interesting movies different movies to like that’s the cool thing about camp Takota so different in a way than what you see from Grace or Hannah Hart or her memory from their channels right well it’s been a pleasure having you we’re looking forward to the next project the next YouTube video in the next feature film thanks guys can’t wait to see your movie [Music] and there it was our ear biscuit with Michael Gallagher of totally sketch and that’s his Twitter handle let him know what you think about his ear biscuit twitter.com slash totally sketch one of the things that really struck me from his story was how obviously starting such a young age getting director gigs at like 14 years old directing commercials and casting actors by cold calling them and using a resonant voice you know where he talks about going into the bathroom and like splash and cold water on his face and saying okay you can you can do this you need to put your game face on and then he comes back out and he just does it you know this there’s a level of confidence required to make it an entertainment that is at times you just have to you have to conjure it or even fake it to say oh yeah I can do this I don’t feel like I can do it but I’m gonna act on the bit of confidence that I have and I’m gonna figure it out and that creates more confidence I’m gonna be the fifteen-year-old kid directing sha-na-na I mean that’s a just that’s a phenomenal story I mean he is a he’s not a dramatic guy you know he doesn’t sensationalize things so I think it can be easy to miss the significance of some of those details of his story that he got started at such an early age he did these things is such a young guy and that’s what translates into being potentially the first youtuber to have a have a theatrically released movie well I think a lot of people me being one of those by the way not knowing you know we’ve met Michael and we were familiar with this work but we didn’t know him too well and I didn’t know him well enough to know the behind the scenes of that was all new information to me like how that got made yeah and I think you know you see the trailer and you’re like okay yes you know some somebody at some movie studio somewhere thought it would be a good idea to put a bunch of youtubers in a movie to kind of get people to go watch it and they got it an actor here an actor there and they put their money behind it I think that’s how I always assumed it came together especially because of the timing of it being 2012 which is still really early in the process of translating a youtuber into something like that but to know that it was just he and another guy his tenacity at every turn even you know his own money right yeah and it’s a note we’re gonna make this happen it’s pretty inspirational get it in theatres after going through all those meetings say you know what I’m just gonna we’re just gonna do this we’re gonna find another way it’s it’s a great story does it make you want to make a horror movie because that’s what I hear that’s what I hear in your voice it makes me want to make a movie I mean we already have that desire but it you know what I’m saying it fuels the fire but not a hormone but no let’s do one with a skin face and you know no no how about just a face on a butt no I mean we can just use my face how’s that okay well that’s if it you know you could say it might be scary in your face we’ll also use your face and it’s not a horror it’s not a horror no it’s an epic adventure yeah unless there’s a music dramatic it’s dramatic it’s dramatic there will be tears shed we will be the two of us we’ll be crying throughout and probably muddy we should be muddy at some point you know what we should do would you just be Lewis and Clark really we got to get a second Julia do they both make it because hopefully not hopefully they both die because no don’t don’t spoil it don’t spoil the movie that we haven’t come up with yet okay I guess you kind of have to spoil it in order for us to come up with it but we’re not gonna share that with you but we are gonna thank you for listening I’m sure if you have ideas for a movie you’ll let us know please with her in Facebook and you know we will read we will just pour over your ideas for what movie we should make and let us know what you think about ear biscuits you know it helps us a lot when you leave a review and a rating on iTunes when you leave us a comment on soundcloud it also helps our show when you support our sponsor Squarespace everything you need to create an exceptional website is right at Squarespace remember for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase go to Squarespace calm and use offer code our and our aandl thanks to Squarespace and thanks to you for taking this biscuit and just munching on it with your ears question mark [Music] [Music]