EB 323: Our Top 12 Creative Influences

Welcome to “Ear Biscuits,” the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link. And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are talking about our top 12 creative influences. Now we’ve done top 10 episodes where it’s like top 10 favorite films or top 10 favorite whatever. We’ve done top 10. Game show television shows. We’ve had this one on the list of things to do for a while, but I think we’ve both been a little bit intimidated and the process by which I kinda got into this only confirmed my intimidation. So much so that literally 10 minutes ago, I was like, “Dude, we gotta make this 12 because I just feel like I’m selling people short. I don’t know how I feel about the 12. I don’t know how I feel about the order. I just, I feel.” Well, you know what, Rhett? Almost creatively crippled right now. You know what? Hey, let’s take a deep breath and let’s just, let’s shed that. This is just a construct for us to have a conversation about This is good. The people that we believe- Putting me in the right frame of mind. They’ve entered our psyche. They’ve impacted us to various degrees that then it has made its way into the, it’s permeated us to then come out in our own creativity. And yeah, it’s quite an exercise to connect those dots, but let’s just say these are not definitive lists. Let’s also say that I know that I forgot people. Oh yeah, and- But none of them are listening. And part of that’s gonna probably come when you’ve got somebody on your list and I’m like, “Aw dang.” Hopefully we, yeah. We don’t know each other’s list. I’ve got 15 honorable mentions that I’ll mention at the end. We have not- Just in case. Seen each other’s list. We’re gonna alternate starting with 12. I’ll go with 12. And we’re gonna do the traditional method which is, ’cause I’m assuming there’s some crossover, that if a person says, “My number 12 is blankety blank,” and then the other guy’s like, “My number two is blankety blank.” Then you gotta talk about- The person who’s higher goes first in talking about it. Oh. The person who ranks that person higher gets to talk about them first. But they have to talk about them earlier than they were ready to. Right, so it’s a little bit of a compromise. So you have to do something you don’t wanna do. And I’ll say that moreso than other lists, and it’s always been tough, that the actual ranking is much more arbitrary. The ranking could be upside down as far as I’m concerned. Really all the way to the top because how do you measure these things? Yeah, it’s how you evaluate it, which we can get into. I think we’ll get into those specifics as we roll these people out. Yeah, there’s a difference between inspiration and influence too. And so depending on the person, sometimes there’s a direct connection with something that I experienced or learned from a person that then directly impacted something from our career. Other times it’s just kind of the idea of their approach or the way that it made me feel. It’s much more nebulous in general. So it’s kind of all over the place. Agreed. Well, last thing I’ll say- That’s true of creativity. Yeah, well, last thing I’ll say before we break into the list is that this is not an uncommon question in interviews, like who are your biggest creative influences? And I think that we’ve always had this, or I feel like I’ve had this, I don’t wanna speak for you, I’ve had this sense that like, I don’t, like I’m not formally trained in anything. I went to Harnett County public schools. I didn’t do anything creative in training. I went to engineering school. I always get this weird feeling and super high imposter syndrome when you start talking about creative influences because I don’t have a creative background. I’ve just lived and breathed creativity my entire life. And so I don’t know what to say in those situations, but when I really dug down and started going back to the beginning of like, when did you start thinking about creative things? I started realizing that there’s a lot of people who have influenced me. Well, we have influences. But no, and I don’t wanna say like, “Oh, I don’t have influences.” I’m just saying that I get intimidated by the question. And then even when we said we were gonna do 10, I was saying maybe we should do five. And now I’ve talked you into doing 12 and I’ve got 15 honorable mentions. It’s just a weird process. I’m excited to talk about it though. I do not want you to mention your honorable mentions because they may be my list. No, no, no. If you say somebody who’s on my honorable mentions, only at that point, will I be like, “Ah, they made honorable mention.” I’m not gonna say that until to the end. Whenever I would get that question of creative influences, because it’s so hard to nail it down and without a prepared answer or doing the exercise that we’ve only started to do for this episode, I would fall back on, I’m not a student of a lot of the things we do. A lot of what we do is kind of like we are among the group of people that invented it, honestly. So there hasn’t been people in like the world of creatordom, if you could call it, to emulate, that went ahead of us. ‘Cause it didn’t exist ahead of us, so if you look at it that way. And I always thought of that as an asset. It’s like, okay, this sets us up to be more original and more ourselves and people can emulate us if they want to. But really it was, I think part of it was just being intimidated by the work that we started to do. Who wants to start? You wanna start with number 12? Sure. I’m going to start, I put this person at number 12 because I felt like putting them at any number was weird. And if they either had to be at number 12 or number one, then I put them at number 12 because he’s likely to understand. My dad. Okay? So I just started with- Jimmy. My dad as a creative influence. Okay, cool, cool. Now I’ve said this quite a bit about how- I totally get it. My sense of humor is largely informed by the way my dad’s his sense of humor is. And the things that he thinks are funny and the way that he interjects himself into a conversation, the way that he, once he sort of has an audience, the way that he would begin to entertain that audience. I’ve said forever that if I wasn’t a comedian, I would be a professor. Well, that’s what my dad was for his entire life, basically, starting in like 1980. So he had an audience. He had an audience every single day. My observation, because I definitely think he’s also a comedic influence on me. Like I can, even to this day, you’ll make a joke and I’ll be like, “That’s a Jimmy joke.” Oh yeah. And it’s like, if it’s dry and a little… I want, let’s see, how do you describe it? It’s- Dry. Like not derogatory or judgy, but it’s observational. And it might, sometimes it might be kind of like in good spirits making fun of something or somebody. There’s a bit of that. And there’s a confidence in it. There’s a confidence. There’s a confidence in his- There’s a swagger in it. In his humor. He was good in small groups. Like, I mean a classroom is an awkward size if you’re… Like, I’ve never been a standup comedian, but if you are, it’s like, when you’re speaking to a big room or an arena even, when you go bigger, it’s a different thing. But when a room gets too small, it’s like you’re talking to people in like a doctor’s waiting room. It’s like, that’s intimidating. Like for us to be behind a desk on GMM and to know that there’s a million people watching every day, you just kind of get over it. First of all, they’re not there. It’s just a lens. But second of all, that’s different than even my experience now. If I’m in like a hangout and like you’re telling a story, and then all of a sudden, it’s just like- Yeah, I don’t like those. The eight people are listening to your story. That’s a different vibe. It kind of puts you in a different spot. But your dad is good in those situations. He is good, but I think the thing that I’ve really taken from him is that ’cause I’m not very comfortable in those sort of small and medium size groups. Now, I can be, and I can then go into my, but I have to kind of shift from- It’s a mindset. Personal Rhett to Entertainer Rhett. ‘Cause a lot of people might think, “Oh, I bet you, when Rhett and Link are hanging out with their friends, they’re just funny, funny, funny.” It’s not true. It’s just not true. Partly because it’s a profession in some sense, but there’s also a power dynamic that comes with being recognized as the person who’s currently has the power to speak to a crowd. So a professor has that, a comedian has that, they have the microphone. I tend to, that’s where I’m at my best is when I have the power. Not in a negative sense, but when it’s just like, “All right, monkey, dance.” That’s when I do well. But if it’s just like, everybody’s just kind of being personal person in this situation and now are you gonna say something funny? You’re right, my dad is really good at that. He’s good with the quips. He wasn’t as much of a storyteller or there’s all types of genres of funny people. He does have some really funny stories. He’s got some funny stories. Well, I haven’t heard as much of those. It’s more of like the one liners. Someone else is talking and then he’ll lean over and say something to you, like give you a little private commentary. And he also has things like, I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I’ll paraphrase. Like getting on an elevator at like a tourist attraction. Like okay, 15 people get on an elevator to go to the top of the Empire State Building or whatever, right? And so you’re with a bunch of strangers and everybody’s, no one talks, right? So like one minute into an elevator ride, my dad will be like, “So how is everybody doing today?” It’s like, he’ll do something to break the ice when he senses that there’s an awkward situation. But he’s not one of those, some people may do that because they’re friendly and they’re outgoing. He’s doing it because the choice to do it is funny. Oh yeah, definitely. But he is friendly and outgoing, but that’s not why he’s- Yeah, he’s friendly, but the main reason he’s doing it is ’cause doing this now is funny. So as I think about just obviously genetic influences, but also environmental influences in the way that I, and the things that I think are funny is so largely influenced by him genetically and the way that he behaved growing up, that I gotta put him on the list. And it probably makes sense for him to be number one since he’s like 50% of my DNA. But it’s like, I just put him on the list- No, he’s your dad. Just so he’s on the list. He influenced you in a lot of ways. He’s not an entertainer. But like the comedy, it was just, it sprinkles in and it comes out occasionally. Like if one of us is gonna be the one to make the dry quip, it’s absolutely gonna be you and you can trace that to your dad. The one liner and the like your dad didn’t raise an eyebrow, but he kinda, it was that same effect. My number 12, I’m hoping to surprise you with this one with a “Oh yes!” ‘Cause that’s how I felt when I actually thought of this one. Ross McElwee. Ross McElwee is- Oh, you put him on your list? Number five for me. Oh man. I thought you would’ve forgotten him entirely. I got you. Not only is Ross McElwee my number five- You got me. But my rec today comes from Ross McElwee. Okay, well let me help you out with just kinda giving some background on the guy. He’s a documentary filmmaker from the ’80s and on. He was first famous for “Sherman’s March.” The longer title is “Sherman’s March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.” You’re really sealing my thunder. That’s my rec, man. Well, I have to give them context for who this guy is. He also released an autobiographical documentary in 1993 called “Time Indefinite.” So I’ll let you, why did you put him so high? ‘Cause yeah, I could have put him there too. Set the scene. When we watched that first film, “Sherman’s March,” I remember thinking- Well, where were we? Do you remember when in our life we were watching it? It was like right after college. It was, I’m pretty sure it was in context of starting to make our own documentary, “Looking for Ms. Locklear.” I think it was the thing that led us to do it. Definitely. But I don’t think we made the decision to do it and then watch it. We kept referring back to it ’cause we were getting into documentary film. The thing that we like so much that I really connected with so much about this guy is that he made documentaries that were incredibly vulnerable, personally vulnerable. They were really a personal exercise in, it was self exploration and self-discovery through the lens of other people, right? And so- He was the main character in his documentaries. I call it self-insertion. Self-insertion documentary, which is not a great term. Which again is exactly what we did with “Looking for Ms. Locklear” way back in the day. Also think “Supersize Me.” Yeah, the thing that I love so much about it is I’m really drawn towards documentary film where the thing that’s on display is the people first, not a subject or an agenda or a cause. Now I like like political documentaries and I like documentaries that all of a sudden change the way that you think about the environment, I like those. Humanity on display, I totally agree. But it’s about the people and that’s why I, now I didn’t put Errol Morris on my list. He was an honorable mention. I love Errol Morris for the same exact reason, but Ross McElwee is the one that we first connected with. And then the way that he- Well, he’s from North Carolina. Yeah, it was so relatable. There was another film, “Bright Leaves,” which is about his connection to like the, his family’s connection to the tobacco industry in North Carolina. So we had this connection and we definitely were referring to it and were actively inspired by what he did in 1986 and on when we were in 2003 making “Looking for Ms. Locklear.” And not just “Looking for Ms. Locklear,” but I would say the entire “Commercial Kings” series, all of our “I Love Local Commercials.” It was based on that same principle, we just love people and we love people who’ve never been on camera, are not prepared to be on camera. And actually one of the things that I am most sort of creatively restless about over the past 10 years has been the fact that we haven’t been able to get back to that. Yeah, I’ll go one step further than just “Commercial Kings” and say, again, we were making, it was 2003 when we were filming “Looking for Ms. Locklear.” Didn’t come out til 2006. So this is like pre-YouTube, pre-vlogging really taking hold in any meaningful way. So the fact that he was autobiographical, vulnerable, it was putting his story out there, but he was the guy controlling the camera. He would set the camera down. Then he would walk out and he would be in front of it and he would, there would be different scenes that he would set up. We emulated that directly in “Looking for Ms. Locklear.” But this is a, it’s a vlog precursor in a lot of ways. And so it was more artistic. And even though we never, I mean, we were very late and hesitant to vlogging, we had this seed planted from this era in our creativity that gave us an appetite to connect directly with our audience and not just create things for an audience to enjoy separate from us. So that’s why I think he’s so important. But not, I mean, not as important as I thought he was though. Yeah, again, it was, I just put him on, I had to put him somewhere. All right, what’s your 11? My 11 is, maybe this’ll surprise you, C. S. Lewis. Okay. All right, I get it. For you, especially. I’ll keep this one relatively short. So C. S. Lewis, of course, he’s famously known as like a Christian theologian and an author. But the thing that I really connected with him about was “The Chronicles of Narnia,” which not a huge fan of the movies, let me just say that. I’m definitely a “Lord of the Rings” guy when it comes to the movies. And ultimately in adulthood, the books of “Lord of the Rings,” but- It’s crazy that they were like really close friends. They were contemporaries, yeah. J. R. R. Tolkien. I’ve been to the bar where they, I’ve been to the bar next to Oxford where they would hang out. I remember, you told me. So the thing about C. S. Lewis is it’s the first fantasy literature that I ever read. And it’s so approachable. It’s so easy to read it as like a 8, 9, 10 year old. And I consumed “The Chronicles of Narnia” voraciously at like the age of 10 and just fell in love with these stories. I mean, you can read, I mean- It was your Harry Potter ’cause there wasn’t a Harry Potter. You can read them and you can also read them in like a couple of nights. They’re so much shorter. And the thing that I love about “The Chronicles of Narnia” is it starts in the real world, and this is true of much fantasy, but it starts in the real world and then there is a wardrobe that gets you into the fantasy world. And that is a concept that I’ve never been, it just it’s like it went into my soul and connected with me on this cosmic level. And I am so intrigued by any story that follows this convention. We’re starting in the real world and there is a pathway to another place. Any movie that does that and does it well, I’m all in the whole time, right? It’s one of the reasons that I don’t think that my soul connects with- I don’t know why the first thing I thought about was “Being John Malkovich,” but go ahead. But it’s also I like secret rooms and it’s the reason that we put that weird locker in the first season of “Buddy System.” It’s like, “Oh, what if we opened a locker and had a secret bike in there.” I love that convention and love to put it in things, but- Also our novel, “The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek.” I mean you go- Same thing, yeah. You’ve absolutely got that in the creek. And so that way of thinking about the world and way of thinking about- Portals. Taking what is possible or taking what is impossible and bringing it into the possible sort of tangible world is something that it permeates the way that I think about story. And that comes from C. S. Lewis. I mean, that was the first. It was in me already, right? But he’s the one who brought it out and it was like, “Oh, there’s a whole world, there’s a whole life. There’s all these possibilities that exist in this world that you can get through.” And as a kid, many, many times I would be walking through the woods and I would see like a tree that had like a hole in it. And I would be like, “Okay, is that my Narnia?” And I would pray, “God, if this is Narnia, let me in.” Like I wanted to be in it so bad. Pray to God. Yeah. Well, I mean, ’cause that was my way of thinking. You pray to Aslan? And so C. S. Lewis. I don’t wanna say anything else ’cause we got a lot to get through. My number 11. Can I surprise you with this one? Robert Rodriguez. Okay. He was on the list and I knocked him off. Okay. He’s an honorable mission. All right, whatever. It was tough. That was tough. Robert Rodriguez, film director, producer. Early films are “Desperado.” Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. Really good movie. Super cool. “From Dusk till Dawn,” “Spy Kids,” “Sin City.” I mean, he’s even, I hesitate to mention, he directed many episodes of “The Book of Boba Fett.” One episode of “The Mandalorian.” Because of his, like, his Robert Rodriguez take on like with the Western gun slinger vibe, made him a great choice for that. Even though he’s getting a lot of backlash for “The Book of Boba Fett” being kind of tepid. I’m not gonna go there. But back in 1992, his first film called “El Mariachi” was just a homemade Western, but like a gangster Western, like a guy was carrying a guitar case with a… Am I getting this confused with “Desperado”? He had a guitar case- No that’s “Mariachi.” That then he opened it up and it had this, it had a gun in it. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. But we discovered him in the context of Quentin Tarantino, who maybe is on your list, but I actually replaced Tarantino with Robert Rodriguez on my list because he wrote a book in 1995- “Rebel Without a Cause.” Which we read, “Rebel Without a Crew.” “Rebel Without a Crew.” And he basically chronicled making “El Mariachi.” I mean it has this really homemade feel to it. But he shot it on film and he like did it all himself. He did not have a crew. And he like didn’t even have actors. He had these friends and like acquaintances and pulling favors to like make this epic, super cool vibe, violent movie that you could tell he made it himself, but the conception and the creativity involved in it, just it overrode the homemade nature of it. And like, you could definitely tell this guy was a tremendous talent. And given the landscape of entertainment at the time, I believe he got a lot of attention if not won awards at Sundance. I don’t know the details. Yeah, that book was transformational for us. Again, he was on the list and I, yeah. I mean, it was like 1995, 1996. Like we’re in high school. We’re like talking about going to film school. I didn’t read it when it came out, I remember- You don’t think we read it in high school? I remember reading that after college. After college? That’s when I read it. So you may have read it earlier. I read it after. I just remember reading that book and thinking, and first of all, we’ve always been like if we’ve got an idea, we’re gonna find a way to make it happen. And you connect with people who think that same way. And we always felt like outsiders. He scrapped everything together. We weren’t like living in Hollywood. We weren’t doing the traditional thing of like becoming a PA and working your way up and then meeting the director one day, we were just a couple of guys in North Carolina. And then you see this guy who’s writing about just do it, just make it. If you wanna make it happen, make it happen. And there’s a couple of principles in that book that really stuck with me. The one that we repeat time and time again is whenever you’re working on a project and a film is the most applicable one, but after you get the footage, cut the trailer first. Oh yeah, that’s where we got that. Once you’ve cut the footage or once you’ve gathered the footage, cut the trailer first because the trailer gives you this vision that you can look forward to. You create a trailer that has the vibe that you want the film to have. And it gives you this true north to look at because you’re gonna lose heart. It makes it real. Especially if you’re doing it all on your own. I mean, this dude was scoring his own films as well. He was literally doing the score to everything back in the day. So yeah, we did that for “Looking for Ms. Locklear.” And then you also can show that trailer to people and they get excited and it helps you. It’s a way to get financing. Keep going. So yeah, there was a lot to learn there from that book. We took a lot of inspiration, but it was once we were making our documentary, we were filmmakers. We were filmmakers. We entered it in film festivals. We won some awards. Got shown on PBS, man. Got shown on PBS in South Carolina. Hey, I’ll take it. I’ll take that. The under belly of North Carolina. I’ll take a Carolina. Yeah, but we could apply that label to ourselves and we could say we’ve done it and we’re doing it. I mean, we were on Campus Crusade still at the time. We were also that. But it’s like, “Hey, we have a film, so we are filmmakers. We are achieving the dream.” And he gave us a confidence to do that. And you know, Daniel, the Smosh CEO, his previous job was working very closely with Robert. And so maybe we’ll have an opportunity to meet him. We could, I’m sure we could. Sometime in the future. Yeah, he was working at El Rey. Be great to shake his hand. Tell him thank you. Okay, we’ve got 10 more each, but first- Oh, this is- What are we promoting right now, Daniel? I can’t remember. TT2 now and forever. Yeah, okay. We still want people to listen to Trevor’s podcast? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re still talking about Trevor. What if they’re gonna listen to his podcast instead of our podcast? I mean- What if they get hooked on this? I don’t care. And then they don’t have room for two. That’d be fine. That is fine. Yeah, I mean, it’s still a Mythical podcast. You might like Trevor better than us. And if you do, there ain’t nothing wrong with that. That’s a good thing, that’s a good thing. “Trevor Talks Too Much,” check it out. It’s also on YouTube, so you can listen to it with your eyes. “Trevor Talks Too Much.” We need to pick up our pace. Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna move through a couple. Well, I’m gonna move through this one pretty fast. I’ve got some faster ones. Number 10, Dolly Parton. My number 10 is Dolly Parton. Hey, we’re all happy! And we only did this because of Jenna. And Jenna’s in there. No we didn’t, but she might be your number one. I dunno, is she gonna be on your list, Jenna? She’d be my number one. She’s Jenna’s number one. Yeah, and the numbers are arbitrary. So we’re neck and neck here. Go ahead. Okay, so I don’t consider myself a long-time Dolly Parton fan in terms of when I was listening to Merle back in the day, even when I heard that he had written some songs about her, like “Always Wanting You” was supposedly written about her. “Always wanting you, but never having you.” Yeah, he had a big crush on her. I always was when I would hear Dolly Parton song, I would be like, “Oh, that’s a great song.” And I was obviously attracted to her. But it wasn’t actually until “Dolly Parton’s America,” the podcast, was that a Radiolab production? Is that what that was? Yeah. That was probably last year or the year before. And it was, it’s just an incredible podcast. And I began to really understand how much of her story I identified with. Now I don’t come from the mountains of Tennessee, but I come from the plains of North Carolina. Plains. The idea of being someone who, because of where you’re from, there’s not a lot expected of you. And you kinda feel like every time you come into a room, you are bringing that expectation with you. Now she exemplifies that in a huge way because people thought that, “Oh, this is this little country bumpkin.” And she was like, “No, no, no, I’m not just some country bumpkin. I’m an incredible musician. I’m an incredible songwriter. And I’m an incredible businesswoman and I’m gonna have an amusement park and I’m gonna have this place where you can eat while people are on horseback.” And not just that, but she is an incredible humanitarian who has found a way to be very vocal about marginalized people and very inclusive as a personal brand, without alienating, which is very difficult to do. She’s alienated a number of people on the right at this point, just because she’s standing up for marginalized people, but she’s found a way to maintain a very broad audience in a way that is unifying people in what can be a very, is super divisive right now, right? Yeah, and we seek to do that. I mean, to sum it up, it’s a brand ethos built around her true self. I think that’s how I summarize the creative inspiration. Number nine for me is iJustine. Oh wow. Yeah. I have a creator on my list that’s not iJustine. Okay. Of course we’re friends with Justine. We’re not in constant contact, but we’ll go a long time without talking. But she was probably sponsored by Constant Contact at some point. Yeah, that’s true. And so were we. We came up together on the internet, but she was ahead of us. And I think she was tremendously influential in that she embraced cutting edge technology to set herself apart. And we noticed that. It was when this website JustineTV started making it possible for you to live stream. She was one of the first people to say, “I’m gonna live stream my life 24/7.” I don’t know how long she did it, but it was, I mean, it might have, it was at least- It was a year. It was at least weeks. Somewhere between weeks and years. I don’t remember that part. But I remember watching her go about her life as a student of what we were coining the phrase as internetainment. Okay, can this, is this even possible? Is this a good idea? We didn’t know the answer. We found it out by watching her. She didn’t know the answer. She found out by doing it. And she set herself apart. She got that edge by being on the cutting edge. And it was something that we adopted as a strategy. And I think that directly led to us doing the RhettandLinKast Live, so- Pretty definitely. We partnered with Ustream, she was also on Ustream, and we did a live internet broadcast every Thursday night from our basement studio in Lillington. Which is the precursor to GMM. Yeah, that is what became “Good Mythical Morning.” We talk a lot about “Good Morning Chia Lincoln” as being the precursor to “Good Mythical Morning.” But two guys at one desk and one microphone, that was RhettandLinKast. Yeah, absolutely. That’s where it started as a genre for us. And it was live for an hour for an entire year. And those archives live exclusively on the Mythical Society. Weekly. Weekly, if you wanna see them. They’re on the Mythical Society. But that’s where we- We compared notes too. We developed our chops of the conversation that are reflecting in what we’re doing right now, what we do on “Good Mythical Morning” behind the desk every day. And we didn’t have a lot of people to compare notes with at the time, and she was one of the few that was, that we reached out to and talked to and learned a lot from. I’ve got a creator on my list as well, for similar reasons, a little higher up. Number nine for me, Jordan Peele. So it’s interesting, Jordan is a huge influence on two levels. The first is just very simply before he was the Jordan Peele that you know, when he was just the Jordan Peele of Key and Peele, right? Which you also knew. Yeah. It’s arguably just as visible. So I think there’s three aspects that I’ll quickly cover. The first is the fact that just as a sketch comedian, somebody making a sketch that was connecting on the internet in a huge way, both Key and Peele, huge inspirations for us. We could only hope to get to be a fraction as funny as they are in their sketches, and even getting to a fraction of that would be an accomplishment. The second thing of course is what he has accomplished as a filmmaker, which is just bringing comedy and horror together, horror, comedy, and social commentary together in a way that’s not cheesy at all. No one is doing it. People are trying to emulate it. No one has emulated it yet. And when he first did it, it was, I mean, it was just, it floored you. Because it was so good right out of the gate. And it was like, this is- This guy’s been sitting on this the whole time? Which is the third thing. And for me, the most significant thing is the transition from a sketch comedian to a powerhouse filmmaker. And producer. In being in this town for the past 11, going on 12 years, by the time this comes out, I think we’ll have been in LA for 12 years and it’ll be our 12th anniversary here. Being here for 12 years and being someone who is primarily recognized as a YouTube person, a YouTuber, a YouTube sensation, you bring that into every room. You bring that into every meeting. And it’s not a good, it’s not a plus. It’s not a plus in this town to be a YouTube sensation. You come in with a bunch of baggage that then you have to unpack and explain who you aren’t and what you are capable of creatively. And listen, we’ve been able to do so many awesome things and I’m very creatively fulfilled, but a lot of the things that I really want us to be able to do, the fact that we have a YouTube presence is actually, it works for you in getting you in the room, but works against you once you’re in the room. And the fact that- I think it’s true of entertainers in general that like- They put you in boxes. They put you in a box, no matter what that box is, it’s really hard to get out of it. And the fact that he got out of that box in such a decisive- And such an Oscar worthy way- Successful way. Look, again, I mean, that’s not gonna happen with us, okay? I’m just gonna be, I’ll just go ahead and break the news in case you wanna believe that. We’re not gonna just suddenly make a movie that is going to blow the world away and win a bunch of Oscars. I mean, I would hope and that’s what we aspire to, but chances are that’s not gonna happen. But just being able to make that transition in the way that he did is so inspirational, almost intimidatingly inspirational. All right. I could have put him on my list. Number eight, I’ma go back. I think I’m gonna steal your thunder here, ’cause I’m gonna stay in the world of internetainment. And I’m gonna say the vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green. My number eight. Hold on, is this your number eight? It’s my number eight. Okay, my number eight is Hank and John as well. So there we go. Putting them up with Dolly. You go first ’cause I just talked. They’re friends of us, of ours, they know how much we respect them and it’s flattering that they also respect us. Again, with no one to go ahead of any of us, you cling to the people who are holding on for dear life and trying to build an outpost on the frontier of what’s becoming the future of entertainment. And for them to have a similar relationship as brothers. We watched them closely before we knew them. They weren’t in the same room together usually. But they had a connection that was on display that then they very overtly fostered into a community. They named their fans the Nerdfighters, they developed an identity that was bigger than the two of them that they participated in. Like a technical, digital community of forums and interactions through a tool called Ning at the time. We’re like, “We’re just gonna do what they did. We’re gonna create a Ning community.” We’re gonna name, yes. We’re gonna name our fans. We’re gonna let them, we’re gonna empower them to name themselves. But we were gonna suggest Mythical Beasts. Right, and then we’re gonna choose that one together. Yeah, so the Mythical Beasts moniker was a direct emulation of their Nerdfighteria, which then that becomes the name of our company. And so the branding shifting beyond the two of us is something that we got from them. And also how entrepreneurial they are in like starting VidCon and like Hank starting his- There was no endeavor that was off limits. They’re always doing something. And then John and now Hank having this sort of talent wrapped up in being able to write that they’re kind of sitting on as well, and then unleashing that in the world in a really significant way that isn’t, they’re being recognized for their accomplishments, not because they had a YouTube channel, but because they’re genuinely talented at writing. And again, that’s just, that’s inspirational to me as well. Number seven. I feel bad not, I feel bad putting this man on the list in a place that isn’t of preeminence, but Merle Haggard is my number seven. Now I- My number seven is Merle Haggard. Oh really? Yeah, I guess we’re thinking the same thing here. It’s crazy how this ended up happening. And there’s, okay, I’ll let you couch this one because there’s different, this is a tough one. Well, I’ll just be honest with you. There was a point in which Merle was not on the list because when I was thinking about him, I was like- We’re not country music artists. I absolutely love his music, but from his creative influence, what kind of creative influence has he had? Is that how I think about Merle? Or just I think about this guy that just, I love the way he does what he does. But then I started realizing, oh no, like I’ve sung… And we talked about it. We were recently on a ski trip together with our boys. We were coming back down, well, actually, as we were going up there, I think. No, coming back down, we listened to Merle, a playlist that you put together. Which I asked you to share with me and you still haven’t shared it with me, by the way. Yeah, I wanted you to ask me again. But it’s basically the best Merle throughout the years, which we pretty much agree exactly on what that is. And I just don’t, I’m not a guy who makes playlists and so I need you to make them for me so I can then enjoy them. But in listening to that playlist, one of the things you said was this stuff is just, so we listened to this so much because we grew up in a different era. We grew up in a time where you had tapes and it was the tapes that you had that you played. And so it was like building 10 Spotify playlists and never departing from them for like a 10-year period. If you were to do that, you think about the way that music and the person behind that music would seep into your bones. You couldn’t even shuffle it. Yeah. Right. And so the way, first of all, the way that we sing is heavily influenced by Merle. Yeah, the way- The way we think about melody is heavily influenced by Merle Haggard. And so that, and music is a big part of what we do and has been even a bigger part of what we do in the past. So it isn’t that there’s something that Merle has done. This is more of the indirect influence sort of thing. The like you’re around somebody and it seeps into, and you know that it’s influencing the way you go about things. I think I can make it a little more direct. I think that we would pick songs of his and we would dissect them. I think there was like an art appreciation aspect to, we would sit in the car, we would pick it apart and appreciate parts of it. So we never had like art appreciation classes to really understand the value of how art can move you. It just wasn’t an emphasis of ours in high school, but it was something that we found ourselves doing impromptu through his music. And we would marvel at the subject matters that he would choose to, the pictures he would paint. And how we would say things like, “There’s nobody else writing songs like this on the radio.” There was an innovation in our minds. There was a, it was unique. And the choices that he was making, the thing that we talk about a lot is- It was self-expression. Well, in the way that- It was different. In the way that he brought, like when he gets into the late ’70s, early ’80s, which is our favorite era. And just, and I’m also, I’m beginning to say era instead of era, just so you know. Okay, you sound, I guess, smarter. Just because era sounds like you might be saying error, error. Era, okay do it. So era, just so you know. All right. I think it’s like the official New York Times pronunciation. I don’t know. How did Merle say it? Era. No, no he didn’t. So the thing that he was doing at the time is the choices he was making musically with instrumentation, the fact that he was like bringing in this jazz influence outta nowhere and all of a sudden there was a saxophone in country music and no one was doing that kind of thing. It wasn’t like when you listen to music and you’re just like, “I just like the way this makes me feel, and this is just a cool vibe.” It was that, but then it was just like, oh man, this was an exercise in curation when he was making these songs. The way that he brought these specific people together to make this specific sound and you just let… Just the other day when we were listening to that playlist, I was just reminded, I’m like, “No one has done this.” The singularity of his voice. The way he’s done it. And how we could study its development, helped us understand the identity of an artist. You know what, I wanna take an aside in, on the ski trip coming back. I had made that playlist like months earlier and I was just laying in my bed and I was like, “I’m gonna take all of my favorite Merle Haggard songs and I’m gonna make a playlist.” And so without, we know all of his discography so well that like without even listening to him, I could go album by album and just pick the songs that like are just magical. That’s what I called the playlist, Magical Merle. Magical Merle. Oh, that sounds like something we would have written on a cassette. Exactly. In 10th grade. And you know what? I never listened to the playlist. And then when we went skiing- You never listened to that playlist? I never went back and listened to it. And it’s probably been nine months since I made it. And so when we were coming back down, we skiing with the boys and then we were driving back that afternoon. I got in the car and I was like, I thought of the playlist. And I was like, “This will be perfect. I’m gonna start playing this thing.” And I didn’t tell you any of this, but I started playing the, I said, “I made this playlist, this Merle playlist.” And that’s all I said, and I started playing it. And we drove all the way down the mountain. Absolutely beautiful sunset coming from Big Bear on what’s it, the Rim of the World road. You actually, for those of you in California, you don’t come down to the 330 to San Bernardino. You stay on the mountain and go past Lake Arrowhead and stay. It’s called the Rim of the World. And if the sun is setting- It’s crazy. It’s amazing and once the sun sets- It’s like an incredible route. You can see like all of Los Angeles. And then when the light’s in, you know that’s the coastline. And it was so beautiful. And to me, it was the, the boys were on their phones or falling asleep in the back. Exhausted from skiing. And it was a flashback to when we were in high school and we would just sit there in the car, drive around aimlessly, and listen to these Merle mix tapes that we would make for each other. And it was a pristine moment. And at a certain point, we get down the mountain, you fell asleep a little bit, you wake back up, the playlist is still going. We’re like, we’re not really talking that much, but when we were, we were usually talking about the music. About Merle. Which is what we would do. And it had been, I mean, it had been so long since we had done that. It was like, I just remember thinking, “This is perfect. This is a special friendship moment.” And we got back to my house where you had parked and we were gonna part ways, and it was basically the end of the playlist. This is when it got back to like the ’60s stuff. Yeah, stuff that I wasn’t as interested in. So the playlist came to an end, basically. It was perfectly timed for this trip. I didn’t even know it. And at the one point where like you woke up and it was still going and we were talking about it and you said, “Send me this playlist.” But you didn’t. I gotta tell you, I realized at that moment that that is my love language. Making playlists? No, somebody saying unprompted, “Hey, what is this?” And it’s happened a couple other times. They’re like, “What’s this music that you’re playing here?” I was like, “Oh, it’s a playlist I made.” And then a few days later, get a text. “Hey, can you send me that playlist you made?” That is my love language. So you’re a DJ. So yeah, I’m a DJ. I mean like really you missed your calling. You shouldn’t be a hair stylist. You should be a DJ. But the tie to the fact that like, without either one of us talking about what I’m saying right now, like to me that was your way of saying, “Hey, this resonated with me. This means something to me too. This took me back. Send me that playlist.” Yeah, because the Merle discography is so big, I just find myself, there’s like a couple of albums that I’ll bring up on Spotify, and every single playlist that people have made on Spotify sucks because they always put “Okie from Muskogee” as like the first song. There’s two reasons I haven’t sent it to you. People don’t understand Merle Haggard, like 99% of people who like him don’t understand him is my contention. But we do, and it’s something special that we had. That’s right. And that we relived in that moment. So hey, it was a very special moment. It was very special, but it would be even more special if you would just send me the playlist. The reason why I didn’t send it is ’cause I’m thinking about tweaking the order. But the other reason is- Well, you could tweak the order and just keep sharing it with me. It’ll update automatically. Okay, that’s true. I wanted you to ask me again because it made me feel so good when you asked me. I was like- That’s a little selfish. Yeah, it was. That’s a little selfish. All right, I’ll send it to you. And you know what? I will also share it with you. I will tweet it out. So go to my Twitter. It’ll lead you to my Spotify. I’ll tweet it out. And then if it changes over time, it’s ’cause I’m adding, I’m optimizing it. Magical Merle. Number six, right? Yeah. What’s your number six? Number six is Flight of the Concords. Oh, I didn’t think about them. Really? Yes. Okay, this is great. Glad you did. Okay, so if you’re not familiar with Flight of the Concords, I’m sorry, but this is Brett and Jemaine. Jemaine Clement who, lots of people call him Jermaine Clement, but it’s Jemaine Clement, which I guess is a Kiwi name. So these are New Zealanders that are kind of in the, Jemaine has gone on to become an actor that you would recognize from many different movies. You might recognize Bret from “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring” as an elf, but just as a very brief cameo- I mean he won an Oscar for writing the music for the Muppet- The Muppet movie, yeah. So he’s kind of gone into the songwriting thing and I think Jemaine is more doing the acting thing and producing thing. Jemaine is a co-creator of- “What We Do in the Shadows.” So Jemaine was in “What We Do in the Shadows,” and so he’s collaborating with Taika Waititi who didn’t make my list, but is an honorable mention. Ooh yes. I love Taika, but he’s more of a recent influence, and I only know about him through Jemaine, so. And that comedic tone, that Kiwi tone is something that it just blew us away. It just is like nectar into my mouth. But obviously you- I just love it. Yeah, so “What We Do in the Shadows” is probably my favorite television show comedy currently. But the specific thing, so Flight of the Concords is the two-man band that Bret and Jemaine formed probably right around the time that we were coming up and trying to get our comedy going. I specifically remember- Early 2000s. I specifically remember- MySpace? Well, no, I remember being on a trip. Oh. A Campus Crusade for Christ trip that we were going on, like probably 2002, 2003, where we’re traveling around doing our little comedy show that’s really just an evangelism training seminar for Christian students. But we have funny songs that turns out- We had a lot of funny songs. Weren’t nearly as funny as these two guys. Well, and I remember being in a hotel room. Yes, I remember this. Turning on HBO, and all of a sudden there was these two dudes singing. It’s a standup special, but it’s two guys on a stage and they’re singing songs. “Business Time” is probably the first one, which is a song about having married sex and it’s incredible. And I was just immediately like- Married sex. “Oh gosh, these guys are so much funnier than us.” Like I was shot in the gut. Yeah, this has happened so many times in my life where I feel like I’m doing something and then I see somebody who’s actually doing what I’ve think I’m doing. And then I see it happening, I’m like, “Damn it, I’m not doing it. I’m not actually that good at this.” Yes, when we did, we look at each other and almost thought we had to turn it off. We didn’t turn it off. We watched the whole thing and then- I hated them. I loved hating them. We just couldn’t talk, we couldn’t talk about it ’cause they were so good, but it was so, so it wasn’t inspiring, it was challenging. It was infuriating. It was sobering. Yeah, and I would say that every effort that we’ve made in musical comedy over the years has been an effort to emulate them on some level without completely biting what they’re doing, what they did. Oh yeah, every line has a comedic effect. There’s no filler and they each have a character. And so we were students of what they did and this was all before the HBO series came out that was an adaptation of their first album. Yeah, which had like a music video. It’s the reason- It’s obviously influenced “Buddy System” and that there’s music videos- It’s the reason that “Buddy System” has a music video in every single episode. But the thing I’ll say is- We actually went in a, we calculated our comedy songs like as we were an audience on YouTube. As visuals. That, and we specifically talked about how not to be compared to them by doing things differently so we wouldn’t just seem like a hack rip off. Like basically just avoiding like guitar, funky white boy music kind of thing. Or Kiwi accents. Yeah, yeah. I have a recurring dream of meeting one or both of them over the years and it’s like it’s an anxiety dream. Oh yeah. Because you know they don’t know who we are. But the thing is is that when I listen to our music, and again, we don’t do a lot of comedy music anymore. It’s like we can only have, there’s only two of us. And they don’t do it anymore really. I mean, they’re doing it individually, but when I listen to our music, anything that we’ve created, I always find fault with it. And this is any artist I guess. But like I listen to our music and I’m like, “Yeah, well, I’d love to rewrite that right now. Oh, I’d love to make that actually funny.” But I always, and in my mind, I’m never not comparing it to what they did. The moment of discovery of that special with like no point of reference at all. We turned it on. It just was on HBO. Two guys sitting on stools, playing music, doing the exact same thing we were doing. I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s happening here?” It was really surreal. My number six is David Letterman. No. So what number did you put David Letterman? ‘Cause I know you put Letterman on your list. Number one. Oh, I stole your number one. I knew this was gonna happen. I knew he would be on your list and I knew that he wouldn’t be number one. All right, say what you will. I think he’s more of an, I think you watched more Letterman than me in you stayed up later than I did. Well that I still do. And you watched, so you watched more Letterman. Okay, so again, this was a struggle because David Letterman is not an artist in the strict sense, right? He’s a late-night show host, but this for me is kind of embracing- I don’t know, I disagree with what you just said, but go ahead. Well, no, no, I’m saying that I do believe that it’s an art, but what I’m saying is that it’s not a traditional artist category. It’s not a musician. It’s not a filmmaker. It’s not a TV show runner. It’s not a writer. It’s a guy, it’s a personality. But the reason that he’s my number one is because in the same way that my dad sort of serves as this foundational influence as the things that I find funny and the way that I end up being funny naturally is very influenced by the disposition of a guy like David Letterman. I’ve actually come off of that quite a bit in the past probably five or six years, just as people’s tastes in comedy has changed. So the dry, he had a dry delivery and it was kind of a knowing slyness to it. Well, and most people, if you’re younger and your only experience with Letterman is the CBS days, and specifically like the last three to four years- Grumpy Letterman. You would just be like, “This is a angry guy.” This is a guy who’s not happy, who’s kind of mean, doesn’t seem to like anyone, doesn’t seem to like himself. I think that’s how the younger generation responds to it, and if you look at some of the way that I kind of behaved in some of our earlier content, you might come to the same conclusion. It was a calculated thing. I was like this is the role that I’m playing. And as I realized that a lot of people who enjoy internet content are not into that. They don’t want to see somebody, they don’t like meanness and they don’t even really like slyness as much. So I’m a lot more jovial of a guy in terms of my comedy at this point. But if you go back to his earlier stuff. Well, he was kinda like that. He was that way. But the reason he’s my number one- He was smilier and he was silly too. Super silly, and it wasn’t- It was a strange combination. Silly and dry. Yeah, well the reason he’s my number one is because for better or worse, the thing that we are, and I am most known for is being one of the two hosts of “Good Mythical Morning.” Like again, at the end of my life, the thing that will have had the most impact in the entertainment world will be all these episodes of “Good Mythical Morning” that I’ve made. And I approach the way that we think about that show and the way that we embrace both some kind of structure that is presentational, that feels kind of traditional, that feels like a television show in a way that a lot of YouTube content doesn’t feel. That’s a huge part of “Good Mythical Morning’s” consistency, reliability, and sort of point of view. But the other piece of it is this unhinged completely just silliness, just a embrace of silliness to the point that it gets weird. He did a segment called Will It Float and it was just taking an object- Yeah, he did. Putting it in water and then describing if it was floating or not. Yeah, and he incorporated his mom into his content. The reason that we have our parents in our content in that way, he would call his mom and talk to her on the phone. He did these, if you go back and look at the bits, now there’s a really good book about this. Yeah, can you Google the Letterman biography? ‘Cause we read it. We got Stevie to read it. It was like, I mean, it reminded us stuff I had actually never seen, but like the ethos of “Good Mythical Morning” is much more like the early and successful Letterman “Late Show” than it is “Wayne’s World.” I will say that. Oh yeah. “Wayne’s World” not on our list. Oh yeah, yeah. And you kind of fell in more of that Letterman thing. Just tell us when you get the… But for me, I think of you as more of a Letterman type and then I kinda like my comedic sensibility, I don’t know, I don’t know who that is. I think I can see more of Letterman and your dad in you. I actually have a hard time seeing, and I don’t have anybody on my list that’s like that version from me. Don’t say Paul Shaffer. Hey, that was a joke. I knew you wouldn’t say that. Don’t say Don Knotts. I mean, I do think that like Dana Carvey is a type, not just because you look like him, but I think there is a… Is that it? Yeah, Letterman the last guard of- The last giant. Last giant. “The Last Giant of Late Night.” And if I recall, this book is also pretty honest. He’s a complex character. He did a lot of things that he regrets, that obviously I do not endorse everything that he did as a person or even everything that he did comedically. But I watched so much Letterman with Ben Greenwood growing up, Ben Greenwood and I. And Ben Greenwood, again, I guess in some senses Ben should be on the list because Ben was the one that was really into late-night TV. My dad was not into late-night TV. My dad was not into that kind of comedy. He also didn’t stay up that late. But Ben would be like, “We’re gonna watch Johnny Carson.” And he’s like, “Oh, and when we really want something really silly, we’re gonna watch Letterman.” And we watched Letterman on NBC. The dude was sitting there with his curly hair. “The Late Late Show” or whatever it was called. Tennis shoes. And he would just do, watching an adult do such stupid stuff, it’s really made us who we are. And the parallels, yeah, from the book, he was a weatherman and he like had this, and then he moved into being a comedian and a host. He took a circuitous path to entertainment. So just like we did, he had an interesting relationship. Well, he had a relationship with his producer, like they were together for years. And she’s very instrumental in the book too. So it’s like, that’s an interesting thing that there’s like a Stevie as producer kind of thing. But not as a relationship. Not as a relationship though. But like, there were an entire episodes where she would trick him. Like, it would be a joke on Letterman. Like he wouldn’t- He would get mad. Yeah, he would get mad, but it would be live to tape, so. There’s a lot of stories there that were like we related to, and that make that very formative. So I don’t know if I accepted Dana Carvey or not. I know I look like him and there’s a tone, but he’s a character actor, so. I think I’m just talking about the- He never played himself. You’re not gonna like the word zany, right? You don’t like the word zany. But if you’re like, “Okay, this guy or this guy, who’s the zanier one?” Well, it’s like- Well, you know what I’m saying? People are gonna pick you. If there’s the dry and then if the opposite’s wet, it’s like, “Okay, I’m the wet guy, you’re the dry guy.” Yeah, but I don’t know exactly. I’m curious. You can #EarBiscuits, let us both know who else if you’re a student of comedy. I think there’s a big- Beyond just who I look like. There’s a distinction. And who Rhett reminds you of style wise. Again, this is an oversimplification, but the thing that we say quite a bit is that I’m usually funny on purpose and you’re usually funny on accident. Now that’s an oversimplification because a lot of your accidental humor is purposeful. It’s a different mode. You don’t know what’s gonna come outta your mouth. You don’t know exactly what’s gonna happen, but you go into a sort of like a trance-like state. I mean, “Good Mythical Evening” obviously is the perfect example of this. But it’s like- It wasn’t a trance, but yeah. It’s more chaotic. Yeah. It’s chaotic, which is great. And that makes me think of a Martin Short, but I didn’t watch a lot of Martin Short. So it’s not, I’m not actively emulating somebody and I can’t identify them. But actually that’s really good ’cause if you watch “Only Murders in the Building,” which I did, and I enjoyed it. It’s not my favorite, but I enjoyed it. I am the Steve Martin. You are the Martin Short. All day long, without a doubt. If you have to put us into that duo, that’s how it tracks. I think that works. Yeah, I think that works. But we’re still open to others, #EarBiscuits. Sorry to steal your number one. Yeah, that hurts. Just like that playlist. My number, so now we need your number six, no, your number five. My number five, you already stole that as well, Ross McElwee. Okay, my number five is “Seinfeld.” That’s my number two. Oh God. Okay. Yeah, and I’ll just- I’m really interested what your top three are gonna be now. For “Seinfeld,” I just boiled it down to like the relatable observational humor is something that became a cornerstone of how- Anything we write. What we would build to connect on YouTube. But it was instinctual because we were so obsessed with that show. I actually put “Seinfeld” slash Larry David as one thing, right? Yeah, yeah, you got to. ‘Cause Larry David was the one that was really fueling the writing of all that stuff. I mean, obviously “Seinfeld” was very much, it was coming from his standup, which was super observational. “What’s the deal with this?” But bringing it into the real world and into a real conversation, Larry David is a genius at that and obviously he does it, it’s on display in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which I love as well. I think the thing that- He’s the George Costanza character in “Seinfeld.” The thing that it so resonates with me as a writer, right? And that’s why I put them at number two because if I start thinking about, okay, you got these two people in this scene and we need to accomplish this plot wise, but they need to get there in an entertaining way, so they need to be having a conversation about this. Well, the way that Larry David sees conversational humor is it’s the same thing that, it comes from this tendency that’s in both of us, which is, hey, we just hung out with, you were just talking about it on the last podcast. We just hung out with this guy. Let’s talk about that hat. Let’s pick him. Let’s talk about the hat he had on. Look, did you see what he was doing? Did you see what he was doing with his left hand and his nose? Explain that to me. Right, and it’s nothing in “Seinfeld.” There were no jokes. It was not joke oriented. It was conceptual, conversational. And so it very much is how we like to write. And it gets very specific and it gets, it’s like, oh, you typically wouldn’t think that we should be having a conversation about this or this is where the humor should be coming from. It feels like I don’t even know how to articulate it very well. But when I watch and the only way I really watch “Curb Your Enthusiasm” these days is like on TikTok. I hate to say it. Oh, I gotta get in on that. A clip will just come up, whether it’s on the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actual account or just somebody has reposted it. And I’m just like this moment where something happens and I’m just like, “Ah man, this is like, that’s so great.” So that’s your number two? Yeah, you’ve taken my one and my two. What’s your four? Coen brothers. What we were just talking about made me realize that they weren’t on my list, but yeah. The Coen brothers are not on your list? I just forgot. I just forgot. But yeah, it’s that same thing. It’s a different, it’s character driven comedy, which we’ve talked about before is another big part of like what, finding ourselves really loving their comedy and then trying to figure out why and having conversations about it. There’s so much about the Coen brothers I can say. One, they’re a partnership, right? Which is obviously very relatable to us. There’s a creative evolution over the course of their career of them like trying something and you see these like glimmers of it in like “Blood Simple” in which we would like, we kind of went into our like Coen brothers like film study, kind of our version of that. “Let’s go watch ‘Blood Simple’ and make ourselves like it.” Right? And then you get what I think is the, just for me, maybe for you is just quintessential perfect expression of them as filmmakers is “O Brother.” That’s where it gets into this thing that is the humor, the music, the characters. Everything just lines up in a way that they’re, and they basically just hit it out of the park every time now as far as I’m concerned. I mean, there’s a couple, couple times where I’m not quite is into the subject matter, I don’t quite relate as much. We talked about this on the our top 10 films. It’s kind of there’s that overlap there. They’re so aspirational because what they do it, they do so well. And I think, again, underneath everything that we’ve accomplished has always been this desire to make movies. And I still wanna do it, and yes, we have written one. And I just don’t think I’m ever gonna let go of that desire to be a filmmaker, not instead of, or in place of what we do, but in an addition to what we do, because there’s just something about the way that you can bring all this creative energy into a time and place over the course of a couple of hours and you can get it done in a year or whatever from start to finish. There’s just something so attractive about that process. And when I think about how that’s ultimately sort of the white whale for me personally of like that that’s last one I’m always chasing is I wanna make that movie. They are the embodiment of it having been done perfectly. My number four wouldn’t have been on my list, except that like in a recent conversation, I was reminded of them. John Boy & Billy Big Show. Oh wow! I thought about them for a second, and yeah, yeah. Well, because- I didn’t put them on. You know like in high school we were listening to their morning show, still going to this day, but it was, they were a duo that was, they were radio personalities. So it was conversational and you’d be with them for like, for summer, like on the job with my dad like painting houses, we would listen to it in the truck. We’d listen to it while we were painting, I would listen to the whole three or three hours every single weekday. And they’d come back from commercial and say, “All right, we’re gonna call so and so.” And it would be the different, they would have sketches where it was like they were playing different characters, but it’s like you had this keen awareness. Well, I don’t know if I knew at first, but eventually I wised up, I was like- They were playing them. These two guys are beating everybody. These people aren’t calling in. I’d have comedians come in and guess, but they had their own world with, it was like, self-contained that was, and you became a part of it. And like you got to know them as people. And I think that we have this understanding of the audience experience for “Good Mythical Morning” and for this show, because we had that experience with them. That’s why it was so thrilling when they, like I said, they invited us to once we started making those viral videos- We got to be on the show. The commercials, we got to be on the show. And I took my dad there and John Boy took us to his ranch, his like farmhouse. And like, we hung out and stayed the night. I actually got a text from Carl. Carl the cook? Yeah, he went to my old- The guy who made their barbecue sauce? Yeah, he said, “I’ll send y’all some barbecue sauce.” The guy who got drunk and said, “Man, you has anybody ever told you you look like a falcon?” You did, your face looked like a falcon. I couldn’t figure out how to get in touch with him because- Falcon, man. It went to my like Google number and it’s like it couldn’t, but we gotta get in touch with him. I mean the more you talk about it, the more I realize- But all character work and the sketch work. So much of that influenced- And it was audio. It was like what we did as kids. We would do radio shows and it went on tapes. It really influenced a lot of the characters that we created in the early days. The redneck character. The redneck guys. Which had like all different, we had an array of them. And when you talk about just the amount of- Y’all keep them straight up there. Actual exposure to a potential influence. We just, I mean, you that’s what you did. You turned on John Boy and Billy on the way to high school every single day. Yeah, so it’s like we absorbed their sensibilities. And we got to know them as real people too, so you saw both sides of it. All right, I think I’ve wiped you out. No, I have one more. My number three. All right, what’s your number three? I think I know what, I know someone that’s in your top three that is on my honorable mentions, but I’ll let you say it. But my number three is Weird Al. Okay, Weird Al is my number two. Okay, I mean, so you get to talk about him first. I regret when Weird Al came on “Good Mythical Morning” that we didn’t like- Worship him. Worship him. Give him offerings. Give him some like a burn offering. The first cassette tape we both ever owned was Weird Al and I still have mine. I wish I would’ve brought it that day and had him sign it. We should have him back on the show. We should, we should. That was during GMM 22 where it was so hectic that it was like, “Oh, Weird Al’s here? I don’t really have time to process that.” He’s playing his accordion on the show. Yeah, but there’s also like a woman who looks like a stripper. I, like, what? It was a strange episode. What was, I don’t even- It wasn’t all about him and it was a disservice to the great Weird Al, number two creative influence on my list. Because I got engaged with this comedy music and it just like made the most sense. Like I wasn’t even a music fan before that, really. Like I wasn’t, because my older stepsister liked music and I wasn’t gonna like anything she liked. Until Weird Al- Brought you out of music. I was like, she is, I mean, he is so, this is, this just totally makes sense. It was like it was tailor made, tailor made for us. And it’s strange that like I didn’t know on every one of his albums, I didn’t watch his movie. So it wasn’t like I was a super fan, but at such a formative time in our lives when we were like really hitting it off and like making those dumb tapes that we were making. We weren’t writing songs together yet, but it was just like that stuff, it’s foundational in terms of comedy and obviously starting our career as musical comedians for the most part. And one of the first things really apart from some of the things that we did in high school, and then a couple of the videos that we made in college, the first thing that we did together as a comedic duo was comedy music. It was those first couple of Christmas conferences. Oh no, I’m talking about like, you’re down with Halloween, like rewriting the words. Yeah, yeah, that’s true, that’s true. Rewriting the words and getting up on stage at the fall festival. But anytime that we were performing. Yeah, so we did it there, we did it in middle school. But then in college, performing in those Campus Crusade things, it was just like, “All right, we’re gonna get up there and we’re gonna do this funny song about the unibrow or whatever together.” And it was, our voices kind of went into a sort of nasally, Weird Al place that- Kind of nerdy. People talk about a lot of our early stuff sounds very Weird Al-y. And that was, it was because we had listened to so much Weird Al. It was just, it was in our bones. Okay, so that was my number two, that was your- So yeah, so I’ve taken my two, you’ve already taken my two, this Seinfeld Larry David in one and Letterman. Right, so I gotta clean it up. My number three- You have three more? I have two more ’cause Weird Al’s my number two. Oh. My number three I put Questlove. Oh wow. Like I’m a huge fan of Questlove. And just he’s a huge creative inspiration that is a, within the last two years, a addition to my list. Of course, he’s a hip hop icon as a member and drummer for the Roots. He’s a band leader for Fallon, which is the Roots on Fallon. But in terms of like you talk about me wanting to be a DJ and telling that story. Like it’s a product of like me connecting. You’re like looking at me like you’re like shocked or something. No, I’m interested to hear this ’cause I would not have guessed this. Just really identifying like how much I enjoy music on like an appreciation level. Of course with our Merle Haggard obsession, like way back in the day, I remember I went to Heather Wilson’s house and her dad had a magazine. It was a country music heritage magazine. And it like talked about like the best country music albums. And I was like, I remember thinking then, I took the magazine, I still have it. So like back in high school, it was something, I was very passionate about country music as a offshoot of our passion for Merle Haggard. But like I go to 11 when it comes to like the collection mentality and like the pre-Wiki Wiki mentality of understanding everything about country music. And I started to think I could become like a country music museum curator. Like maybe that can be something I’ll do. I remember thinking about it. That’s why I kept that magazine all these years and still have it. And then it was over the pandemic there was like a rekindling of that, which led to like the listening party broadcast that I did with Britton and stuff like that. But it was a result of like me starting to watch Questlove’s broadcasts on Instagram, where he would like do DJ sets and he would start talking about the music that he was playing. And it was like, I mean, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of all these things. I’m not a fan of the Roots. I’ve never listened to the Roots. I’m a fan of him in the way- But they did back us up while we did our get down with Halloween rap on Fallon. Yes we did, which is- But we’ve been backed by the Roots on a performance before. Which was huge. I mean, that was a career and friendship high point for us. But like the fact that he branches out into in middle age, he’s like five years older than us, but he’s using everything from his career to now do, to capitalize and do the things that he’s passionate about. So he’s writing books, he wrote a book about creativity called “Creative Quest,” which I’ve read some of. He executive produces a hip hop documentary on an AMC called “Songs That Shook,” which is amazing. And now he’s nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Film for “Summer of Soul,” which is a, it’s like the black Woodstock, basically, that was never, the footage was never released. And he’s nominated for an Oscar for it and he deserves it. So the way that he’s branching out and engaging everything that up from a career standpoint up to this point, that like he’s leveraging is cool to see. And so it’s very encouraging that like we talk about the things we wanna to do, like you were doing earlier, and it’s, I see a guy like him that’s like a, he’s an elder statesman of music. And he doesn’t just do one thing. He doesn’t just do one thing. He does a lot. So when we think about our legacy and we think about the things that we have yet to do, those are two different things but they interplay. So even if it’s something like us investing in the next generation of creators with our Mythical Creator Accelerator, it’s just another example of, “Hey, we’re gonna pay it forward.” But we’re still here for it. We’re not retiring. We got a lot to do. So yeah. Questlove. And I met him. We met him once. If I’d have known that you felt that way about Questlove when he was playing the drums for us rapping, then I would’ve probably been more nervous. I came to grips with it afterward, I wasn’t as- Okay, it was after. Yeah, ’cause it was more pandemic related. All right, so I just have my number one, which is for both of us. You don’t have any left. Yeah, but I mean, I gotta… You want me to guess who it is? Yeah. Is it Wes Anderson? No, I went in a totally different direction. ‘Cause I was like, he was on my honorable mention, but I was like, Link loves Wes Anderson so much, is gonna put him number one? But I was like, but as your list goes on, I’m like that can’t be. Okay, and this is for both of us. You’re not gonna disagree with this, because again, with everything we’ve talked about. My number one, I’m putting Benny Enzor. Whoa! Yes, baby! Wow. Yeah, okay. I mean, yeah. I mean it just didn’t cross my mind. But now that I I’ve said it- But in reality, yes. It totally makes sense, right? Oh yeah. Okay, maybe you’ve heard his name, maybe you know from the “Book of Mythicality” I was talking about him or all the times we talked about our high school band, the Wax Paper Dogz ending in a Z. It was the ’90s. So Matt Enzor was in our grade. His younger brother John was one year younger, but their dad Benny was, he played the piano at the church that we went to. We always knew him growing up. He was one of the youth leaders and also a dad. A soccer coach. He was a soccer coach when my mom got divorced and me and her moved into our own places, the two of us, it was across the street from the Enzors. Which they still live over there. So it’s like in the small community, he was very present at church, at soccer, in the community. And then at school later on. That’s right, and then he worked, he was like the guy who in charge of the detention. Which I had to go to. At the high school. I had to go to detention and the guy in charge of it was my keyboard player. Yeah, so it’s like Benny Enzor started, through the church he started a cafe for the, like a coffee shop for- Yeah, this is your, this is true. I’m just, I didn’t think about it, but now that you’re putting it all together, yes. ‘Cause I know we didn’t, besides your dad, we didn’t think of it in terms of personal interpersonal relationships. We talked about it in terms of like external celebrity influences. But yeah, he started the Maranatha Cafe coffee shop to have Campbell University students could hang out, and it was a way for the church to have to create a space, a safe space for them to hang out, listen to music. There was an open mic night, which then we as high school students involved in the church, we helped facilitate, move chairs around. We helped renovate the building and decorate it. And Benny was a huge music fan and musician. He’s a great pianist, also played guitar. And huge Allman Brothers fan from like… And so he was a hippie. He kinda, well, he had a hippie vibe, he had longer shaggy hair. He didn’t look like any of our other parents. And he would, he took all of his old records and then we decorated the Maranatha Cafe with all of his records. So it wasn’t Christian music. It was like ’70s albums wall to wall, that became the wallpaper. It was like super cool and it was his baby. Of course it was because of the- Open mic night. The fact that the Maranatha Cafe existed and there was this, yeah, open mic night. Open mic night, that was what gave us the courage or the opportunity, we didn’t need the courage, the opportunity to be like, “Well, of course we’re going to perform at the open mic night.” And that was when Eric Woodruff had a guitar and he could play the guitar. John Enzor had a bass, he was learning bass guitar. But he was learning. He was definitely learning. And of course Eric was learning too, but he was the most proficient at the time. And I remember the first song we ever wrote was about the, ironically, given specifically my deconstruction story, was about creation. And it was basically about how creation proves that God exists. And that it happened in seven days. Yeah, yeah, and it- But the reason why- We made fun of organic soup and spontaneous life, but it was- We had to write Christian. It was horrible. Oh yeah. We had to write Christian songs because to play the open mic night, you did have to play Christian music. It was a Christian cafe. But that’s where Benny comes in because Benny listened to our creation song and was like, “Boys, you know if you’re really serious about playing music, you should probably learn how to play cover songs. Like you should learn how to play other songs that have been written.” And he was also like, “And I’ve got some old songs that I wrote like 20 years ago that you could also play.” And so that was the beginning of us. ‘Cause again, most people who sit down, even if you listen to music a lot, you sit down to write a song, even if you can play a few chords, you don’t understand song structure. You don’t understand like, “Oh, there’s this number of measures in the verse and then there’s a bridge and there’s a chorus.” Like there’s a structure that it follows. If you just start writing, you have no idea. Benny saw that immediately and then was like, “Here’s some songs. Like, hey, can you just look? What if you just played ‘I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone.’ Or “Country Roads.’” By John Denver. And it was, that’s how he learned how to sing. And that’s how I learned how to play the guitar because it’s- But he also said, “And I can also be in the band to help you actually make this into a thing.” To like keep the beat. “I’ll play keyboard, and like if you need a beat, there’ll be a beat on my keyboard.” We didn’t have a drummer yet. Early in the day, right? And we started writing songs. He brought out, yeah, like he had all these songs that he had written in the ’70s, like handwritten, and he like taught him to us. And we sang them. And it was like Allman Brothers meets John Denver sung by two guys who were trying to sound like Hank Williams Jr. Right, it was a train wreck. I think there’s a whole other podcast just about Wax Paper Dogz, but I just wanna say that like we threw ourselves into this band and because there was an adult in the room who we considered, it was like he was a peer. He was John, Matt did our sound and did all the tech stuff. But we were a group of peers and he didn’t elevate himself above us. And we had so much fun. We threw ourselves into it. We committed so wholeheartedly to it. And there’s something about being in a band that really helps you develop creatively. We were making thousands of creative decisions in every time we would get together. And so you start to learn to work with four other people. And you learn how, you learn to trust yourself creatively. And you learn to put yourself out there. ‘Cause what ended up happening is within that first year, we went from an older guy giving us his music and having the drums be on the keyboard to me and you sitting in a room somewhere, writing a song. And we started writing. We would’ve never had the courage to do that without his influence. Yeah, you and I were writing music for the Wax Paper Dogz together, writing music and lyrics. And then the other thing we were doing is we were making them a little funny. Like they all had to be like veiled. Well, some of them were like overt Christian, and some of them were veiled. And some of them started to get funny. And that’s where we- The only surviving recording actually is funny, it’s a little bit funny. It’s a racial reconciliation song. But it has a reference to professional wrestler. Right, so I mean, we can get into all this in more detail later, but for now, just like we did in the “Book of Mythicality,” we’re like giving throwback thanks to Benny because in a lot of ways, I don’t think we would be here. Because as creators, he really fanned that flame and gave us a sense of identity as creative people that translated into what we wore, the music we listened to. By the time we went off to college, we looked, we have fully embraced like the ’90s alternative thing, unlike anybody in our high school and unlike anybody we associated with in college. So it wasn’t just an artistic thing. It was a complete identity. It set up our personalities in some ways of always feeling like we didn’t quite fit, but kind of taking a little bit of pride in that, I think, to be transparent about it. Oh yeah. Yeah, that’s a good one. I think Benny will be, I texted with John not too long ago, so I’ll let him know that Benny gets the shout out in this one. Love you, Benny. Now, okay. We talked, we went ahead and talked ahead of time about one thing. We didn’t give any heads up on who was gonna be on our list. But the thing that we had a conversation about was that if this list was in fact factual, that we would be each other’s number one because- So we can be each other’s zero. So we’ll be each other’s zero. We obviously the most significant creative influence that is embodied in a person in each of our lives is each other because we don’t do any creativity for the most part where we’re not directly consulting with one another and it’s a product of our collective imagination. Yeah, I mean, and I’ll also give a shout out to Stevie. In terms of it’s like she’s become a creative soundboard for us that like we hatch things. And then we always know that there’s like the next phase is getting Stevie’s buy-in and like her applying her filters and first reaction to the next thing we’re hatching. Yeah, Stevie has been- And then obviously shaping creatively everything you see at Mythical that we’re involved in or not. She’s the first filter besides each other for everything we do. I wanna shout out Jessie, my wife, as well. I tend to discuss that- I love that we’re using the term shout out. We’re bringing it back. I wanna give heartbeat props to my wife because I very rarely think about anything creatively that I don’t consult her about. Anything that I write, I give to her when I’m done. And even if I get stuck creatively a lot of times ’cause I do a lot of stuff at home too. I do a lot of writing at home ’cause I don’t have enough time to do it at work. So she’s been a huge influence. And also, go back to the fact that both of our wives were the ones who sort of encouraged us to make a creative thing our profession back in the day, so. Oh, absolutely. But yeah, and I’m saying, so we’ll make each other our zero on the list, which sounds bad but I think it’s good ’cause there’s like, there’s not any, at every single point. I surprised you with the Questlove thing, but basically there’s so much overlap. It’s like 99.9% creative overlap over so many years that like we touch so much that even the things that we don’t touch in the other person’s creative endeavors, the presence will be felt. Well, which is why you’ll probably relate to, I’m just gonna quickly run through the honorable mentions, the ones that were in the initial batch, but then got pushed off. Wes Anderson, Spike Jones, Quentin Tarantino, Rob Reiner, Donald Glover, Errol Morris, as I said, The Lonely Island, Taika Waititi, Robert Rodriguez, the Duplass brothers, Will Smith, and Werner Herzog. Okay, all right. Well let’s wrap this thing up. This has been a long one. So I guess I stole your rec, “Sherman’s March.” But so let’s just make this a double rec, ’cause we mentioned two things that are really good. The first thing is Ross McElwee’s, which it looks like McElwee, M-C-E-L-W-E-E. “Sherman’s March.” Great documentary. I’m sure you can get it on Amazon or whatever. And then that Letterman book, “The Last Giant of Late Night.” I think if you’re in a creative profession and you’re just trying to figure out how to like define yourself creatively, or you’ve got a creative endeavor that you’re currently in the middle of, I think that can be a pretty inspirational book. “David Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night.” All right. It’s been a fun one. Hopefully you’re inspired, your creative juices are flowing. Tell us who your creative influences are, #EarBiscuits. To watch more “Ear Biscuits,” click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits,” click on the playlist to the left. 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