Latest / Caught on the Mike... / "Two-Tone Records & a Video Store" with director Taylor Morden (The Last Blockbuster)
Transcript
- 0:03SPEAKER_03: Warning due to some language and subject matter, listener discretion is advised.
- 0:21SPEAKER_00: Columnist Doug Larson one time had a quote that said, Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.
- 0:29SPEAKER_00: After a year like 2020 was, nostalgia was the easiest pathway to the bright light of escapism in a year that had plenty of rough edges.
- 0:40SPEAKER_00: My next guest is a filmmaker that has effortlessly captured the soul of better times after three feature-linked films.
- 0:49SPEAKER_00: Here's to life, the story of the refreshment.
- 0:51SPEAKER_00: Pick it up, Ga in the 90s, and its most recent effort, The Last Blockbuster.
- 0:58SPEAKER_00: Joining me on the podcast today is director-producer Taylor Morton, and we are going to be talking about pop culture greatness.
- 1:07SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, this is caught on the mic.
- 1:13SPEAKER_00: Taylor Morton, thanks for joining the podcast today, my friend.
- 1:17SPEAKER_00: No problem.
- 1:17SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
- 1:19SPEAKER_00: So I gotta ask, just because in doing my research, I saw your name come up a bunch.
- 1:25SPEAKER_00: How many podcasts have you done in the past two months?
- 1:29SPEAKER_01: Oh man, somebody should have kept track.
- 1:31SPEAKER_01: Uh 2050, something in that range.
- 1:36SPEAKER_00: Could that could that possibly be your next documentary?
- 1:39SPEAKER_00: Is 2020 the year of the podcast?
- 1:42SPEAKER_01: Uh no, no thanks.
- 1:45SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna stick to I'm gonna stick to the 90s where I, you know, born and raised.
- 1:50SPEAKER_01: I have no interest in talking about 2020 anytime soon.
- 1:53SPEAKER_00: Me neither, man.
- 1:54SPEAKER_00: I I no, no, no.
- 1:56SPEAKER_00: So before we get rolling, let's uh let's tell our audiences a little bit about who you are.
- 2:01SPEAKER_00: Why don't you introduce yourself and kind of talk about where your background's from?
- 2:04SPEAKER_01: Sure.
- 2:05SPEAKER_01: Uh my name's Taylor and I make independent movies.
- 2:09SPEAKER_01: I used to make independent music, and uh I just uh I'm not good at having a boss, so I just do stuff and I make stuff and I try to put it out in the world, and hopefully people like it and make people smile or laugh or whatever.
- 2:22SPEAKER_01: That's that's my goal.
- 2:23SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
- 2:24SPEAKER_00: So are you still playing music at all?
- 2:26SPEAKER_01: Not really.
- 2:27SPEAKER_01: There's been a few like quarantine recording projects that I've hopped into, but you know, there's no live music, and that's the main reason for me.
- 2:35SPEAKER_01: That was always the main thing was like I don't I don't really care about practicing and making the records.
- 2:40SPEAKER_01: I like playing the shows and connecting with the people, and that was the fun of it.
- 2:45SPEAKER_01: So like I transitioned from playing in original bands to playing like in cover bands where you can just everybody's there to have a good time, they're singing all the words, and you know, it's just a party, and you don't really have to practice because you know, like the last band played was a Weezer tribute band, and I've been playing those same songs for 25 years.
- 3:03SPEAKER_01: We don't really need to practice.
- 3:04SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're not good, but that's not from lack of practice.
- 3:08SPEAKER_01: Um, but no, it's been because of COVID.
- 3:11SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I'll I'll turn on my my MP3 player and crank up my amp and play along with it, but that's the extent of my music these days.
- 3:19SPEAKER_00: What got you into filmmaking?
- 3:21SPEAKER_01: Music.
- 3:22SPEAKER_01: I I played in bands, I've played in bands since the 90s, and um, you know, in the 90s in high school, I was one of those the kid like the David Silver 90210 with the big VHS camcorder on the shoulder, running around filming everybody and trying to get out of like like I'm not gonna do a report on Egypt if I can make a video about Egypt instead.
- 3:43SPEAKER_01: And teachers, it was a small town, small school, and they kind of were like, Yeah, whatever, we don't care.
- 3:49SPEAKER_01: And I was doing that, like editing with two VCRs, you push play on one and record on the other, and then you pause to make a cut, that kind of thing.
- 3:57SPEAKER_01: And then I kind of drifted away from video because of music, because I just I wanted to play in bands, I wanted to go on tour, um, and also I didn't have any money, and video cameras were expensive.
- 4:07SPEAKER_01: I was borrowing that one from my high school, so it was years before I got back into it, but when I did, it was because I got sick of paying other people to make music videos for bands I was in.
- 4:18SPEAKER_01: And so um at a certain point, you know, around 2008, 2009, when cameras got cheaper, um, and you make something that looked good, like with the DSLRs and stuff.
- 4:29SPEAKER_01: Basically, it was just like, well, we just spent 1500 bucks on a music video, and I can get a camera for 1200 bucks that'll look great.
- 4:37SPEAKER_01: So for the next one, and that's kind of how it went.
- 4:40SPEAKER_01: And I started making music videos for bands I was in, and then for other bands, and then you know, that was you kind of reach enough people, and somebody's like, Well, my company needs a commercial, and my friend's wedding needs to be shot, and I, you know, real estate needs, so then I just was found myself making films, making not films, but music videos and commercials and stuff, and that was my job all of a sudden.
- 5:04SPEAKER_01: And before that, I had been a flash animator when Flash was the king of the internet, like those flash infos on websites.
- 5:10SPEAKER_01: So just as that died and video became the internet, basically, I just went with it.
- 5:16SPEAKER_01: And uh then when I moved back to Oregon from the East Coast, I was in DC, um, and I was doing real estate and weddings and a lot of corporate video gigs that was making me decent money.
- 5:30SPEAKER_01: Moved back to Oregon and all of that dried up because I didn't know anybody, I didn't have the connections, and there was nowhere near as much work.
- 5:37SPEAKER_01: So I just figured I've got the cameras, I've got the skill set, maybe I'll try documentary filmmaking.
- 5:42SPEAKER_01: And that was five years and three feature films ago.
- 5:47SPEAKER_00: And I think uh necessity is the mother of invention kind of falls into play here.
- 5:52SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's weird because listening to you, your trajectory is very similar to my own.
- 5:56SPEAKER_00: I played in bands for close to 25 years, and about that same time, about 2008, 2009, I had a digital camcorder and I'm like, oh man, if I could just make my own videos and make my own promotional material.
- 6:08SPEAKER_00: And that was long before YouTube was really a thing.
- 6:11SPEAKER_00: So you're like just just uploading it wherever you can get it, uploaded and sharing it from the great little tools for promote your bands.
- 6:19SPEAKER_00: So let's uh let's talk about those three feature films.
- 6:22SPEAKER_00: Uh tell tell the audience what they are, because we're gonna talk about two of them in particular.
- 6:27SPEAKER_01: Well, the first one where I I was just seeing it was kind of like a proof of concept to myself.
- 6:33SPEAKER_01: Can I make a movie?
- 6:34SPEAKER_01: And also to my wife, who was generous enough, generous enough to let me spend a year making a documentary and not earning any money, uh, living off the savings from shooting weddings.
- 6:44SPEAKER_01: But um that one was about a band called The Refreshments who had a big hit in 1996, a song called Banditos, uh, then went on to do the King of the Hill theme song.
- 6:54SPEAKER_01: And um, I didn't know much about what happened to them after that, and then saw them pop up uh under a different name, playing a show in Virginia somewhere.
- 7:04SPEAKER_01: I went to it and I couldn't believe like there were you know a thousand people in there who knew all the words to all these songs, and I was like, Well, there's something there because I used to love this band, and so I asked them because I figured they were accessible, right?
- 7:17SPEAKER_01: It's a an independent band from 20 years ago.
- 7:20SPEAKER_01: No one else is asking them to make a documentary.
- 7:22SPEAKER_01: I can be I can get in on the ground.
- 7:25SPEAKER_01: Um did that and found out a bunch of cool stories along that way.
- 7:29SPEAKER_01: Put that movie out in 2017, it's called Here's to Life, Story of the Refreshments, and it's it's fun.
- 7:36SPEAKER_01: It really like got me hooked into doing documentaries because you know you got to travel and meet people and like document stuff.
- 7:44SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, a lot of people are more open to talking to you if you're a documentary filmmaker.
- 7:49SPEAKER_01: You know, you can't just call up Alice Cooper and say, Hey, I want to talk about music, but if you're making a documentary about a band he likes, you can't.
- 7:56SPEAKER_01: That's what I like.
- 7:58SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the month that came out, March 2017, uh, was the same month, and I just found this out by looking it up, same month that I first went into the Blockbuster video here in town and asked them if I could start filming.
- 8:11SPEAKER_01: So I had never had any time off between movies that premiered March uh 15th and then March 18th was the first day at Blockbuster.
- 8:20SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
- 8:21SPEAKER_01: Flew back from Phoenix, went to Blockbuster Video, did not know there were any Blockbuster videos left in 2017, but there was one in my town, and so asked them if I could start filming.
- 8:32SPEAKER_01: So that's technically that was the second movie I started was about Blockbuster, but it ended up taking so long that the third movie, the one about ska music, pick it up ska in the 90s, that I was making at the same time because the blockbuster story was unfolding in real time.
- 8:47SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 8:47SPEAKER_01: It went from 12 stores down to one while I was doing that.
- 8:51SPEAKER_01: Um, so I needed something else.
- 8:53SPEAKER_01: I was working on this ska music one, which was that's really the personal story for me because I played in ska bands.
- 8:59SPEAKER_01: I'm a trumpet player.
- 9:01SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 9:02SPEAKER_01: So that was um kind of my opportunity.
- 9:05SPEAKER_01: Basically, I I used this tool where I learned that if you're making a documentary, Alice Cooper will sit down and talk to you about music.
- 9:11SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, that's fine, but I'm not a huge Alice Cooper fan.
- 9:16SPEAKER_01: I am a huge ska fan.
- 9:18SPEAKER_01: And I know all these guys.
- 9:19SPEAKER_01: I used to open for these bands, you know.
- 9:21SPEAKER_01: I I still had Aaron Barrett from Real Big Fish's email in my inbox that I could just write to.
- 9:27SPEAKER_01: So obviously, this is gonna be great.
- 9:29SPEAKER_01: And um, and it was, and I did, and I got to spend two years talking about ska with all of my favorite ska bands, uh, while at the same time talking about movies with a bunch of people that you know I grew up like Kevin Smith watching his movies and stuff.
- 9:45SPEAKER_01: So that's been the last three to four years of my life is just making these documentaries.
- 9:51SPEAKER_01: And the ska one came out in 2019, and we actually got to do some theaters, and this was when the world was the world, and that you know, that was the most fun playing movies in theaters with huge crowds, and we'd have bands play afterwards and do these huge events um and then this year I put out a movie about the world's last remaining blockbuster, and we got to show it at a couple drive-in theaters, but now it's like super ironically, this movie about physical media only exists digitally.
- 10:23SPEAKER_01: It's streaming.
- 10:24SPEAKER_01: So that's that.
- 10:26SPEAKER_00: With the with the exception of the copies, you can rent at the last blockbuster, I'm assuming.
- 10:32SPEAKER_01: Yeah, actually, you can rent or buy.
- 10:34SPEAKER_01: You can um go to their website and order the DVD, and a kid in a blockbuster uniform puts it in a little mailer, mails it to your house, and when you open it, it smells like blockbuster video in there.
- 10:45SPEAKER_01: And they actually they just called me today and said they were selling out of DVDs and we're gonna have to order more.
- 10:50SPEAKER_00: So I believe it.
- 10:51SPEAKER_00: I believe it.
- 10:52SPEAKER_00: We watched the last blockbuster last night, and uh, you know, my wife doesn't like to humor me with my pop culture nonsense sometimes.
- 11:01SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like, come on, come watch this with me.
- 11:03SPEAKER_00: She's like, I want to watch Real Housewives, man.
- 11:06SPEAKER_03: I don't want to but it's funny.
- 11:11SPEAKER_00: I got her, she watched uh The Last Blockbuster with me last night, and she enjoyed it so much that I showed her the trailer for Pick It Up and I I first watched Pick It Up months ago because of a former ska guy.
- 11:24SPEAKER_00: Of course, I gotta watch that.
- 11:25SPEAKER_00: But uh, I think I think she's gonna sit down and watch that one with me this weekend.
- 11:30SPEAKER_00: So props to you, my friend.
- 11:32SPEAKER_00: Props to you, props to you.
- 11:34SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for spreading the good word.
- 11:36SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely, man.
- 11:38SPEAKER_00: It's it's a word worth spreading.
- 11:40SPEAKER_00: So the when you were making pick it up, what was the highlight of putting that documentary together?
- 11:48SPEAKER_01: The highlight for me, it was it's tough because there were so many great experiences, you know, like um just my musical heroes are all in this movie, and a lot of them I'd met before and talked to before and played shows with, shared the stage with.
- 12:06SPEAKER_01: Um, but the one that really got me was um my interactions with Tim Armstrong from Rancid and Operation Ivy.
- 12:14SPEAKER_03: Yes.
- 12:15SPEAKER_01: Um, because he had declined, he didn't want to be interviewed for the movie.
- 12:19SPEAKER_01: Um when I first I kind of ran into him at uh uh an interrupters concert because he was backstage, he's kind of like their dad.
- 12:28SPEAKER_01: And I ran up to him and I'm like, I'm making a movie about Scott, and you you gotta be in it.
- 12:31SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Yeah, think about it, whatever.
- 12:32SPEAKER_01: I'm like, get out of here, kid.
- 12:34SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like this was early in the process.
- 12:36SPEAKER_01: After a while, everybody knew it was happening and it was easier to get in touch with people, but at the beginning, it was like real weird, and so I just went about my life and continued making the movie we were making.
- 12:48SPEAKER_01: And then one day my phone rang, and it was a California number that I didn't know, which when you're making documentaries, that could be literally anybody, right?
- 12:57SPEAKER_01: I've put feelers out to you know, everybody, Tom Cruise, because blockbuster, why not?
- 13:02SPEAKER_01: Could be anybody, and I pick it up and it's like this is Tim, you know, in that Tim Armstrong voice.
- 13:09SPEAKER_01: But then he goes on to say, from Rancid and Operation Ivy.
- 13:13SPEAKER_01: I know, man.
- 13:14SPEAKER_01: I knew at hey.
- 13:16SPEAKER_01: Uh but basically he wanted he asked if he could audition to narrate the movie, but also at the same time, I'm trying to get like, can I get your old Operation Ivy home videos?
- 13:28SPEAKER_01: Like, what for this?
- 13:29SPEAKER_01: What can I do?
- 13:30SPEAKER_01: And um, what we ended up doing was he agreed to to go through photos and stuff with me and narrate the movie, but he wanted me to come to his studio and like hang out, and like he was kind of checking me out like who are you?
- 13:43SPEAKER_01: Are you for real?
- 13:44SPEAKER_01: Are you legit?
- 13:44SPEAKER_01: Do you give a shit about ska music?
- 13:47SPEAKER_01: So the most surreal part of making the whole movie was this week where I went to LA and I'm filming.
- 13:54SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like we got to drive to Orange County and shoot something with the Aquabats or with whoever, and and that's super fun, like that's already worth the trip and super exciting.
- 14:04SPEAKER_01: But then I'm spending my afternoons just hanging out with Tim Armstrong, like we're just chatting, and like he's got his acoustic guitar and he's doing ska covers of Motown songs and explaining to me that every song is better as a ska song.
- 14:18SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm having like a campfire sing along with Tim Armstrong here.
- 14:22SPEAKER_01: No one is around, no one is gonna believe me.
- 14:25SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
- 14:26SPEAKER_01: Um, and then on the last day of those, we spent, I think it was three days just hanging out, you know, eating lunch and shooting the shit about like with this guy who I've looked up to since I was 12 years old.
- 14:38SPEAKER_03: Right.
- 14:38SPEAKER_01: Um, and we're wrapping it up, we're like looking through the photos.
- 14:42SPEAKER_01: I've picked out all the ones of Operation Ivy for the movie that we're gonna use, and he's like, Oh, uh, hey, do you want to you want to meet Flea?
- 14:49SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Flea Flea?
- 14:51SPEAKER_01: He's like, Yeah, yeah, he's inside the studio recording bass right now.
- 14:56SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, what?
- 14:57SPEAKER_01: And so I got to go in and hang out with Flea and Tim Armstrong, and all they want to talk about is ska music and fishbone and how much they all love fishbone.
- 15:09SPEAKER_03: Yep.
- 15:09SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, I was I had that weird tingling feeling of like this, this is one of those moments, right, that you're gonna remember for the rest of your life.
- 15:18SPEAKER_01: And it was just it was as surreal as it sounds, it was just like a magical thing.
- 15:24SPEAKER_00: Well, that's kind of weird.
- 15:26SPEAKER_00: It's it's great that you mentioned fishbone because uh I remember you know being a Nebraska guy going and seeing 311 at a big amplitheater, and fishbone was the opener, and it was one of those things where it was like 311 brought you to the dance, but fishbone brought you the party, you know?
- 15:46SPEAKER_00: And I don't think those guys get their due hardly enough.
- 15:49SPEAKER_00: Hardly enough.
- 15:50SPEAKER_01: No, they don't, and they're not, you know.
- 15:52SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a whole documentary about them too, you should check out that uh tells their story.
- 15:57SPEAKER_01: But they, I mean, to me, they're like one of the most screwed over bands in history.
- 16:02SPEAKER_01: Like they've had huge hits and they you know made a lot of money for a lot of people, and they're still struggling.
- 16:08SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're playing, and it's awesome.
- 16:10SPEAKER_01: They got the original lineup back together in the past couple years, and I've got to see them a couple times, and it's been awesome.
- 16:16SPEAKER_01: They're just killer.
- 16:18SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're as as good as they've ever been, but you know, their story, their kind of trajectory of just like the man fucking over bands, that's yeah.
- 16:28SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's kind of a rinse, quash, repeat story, though.
- 16:32SPEAKER_00: Like as we get to our age, because you and I are of a similar age, we're similar backgrounds, but it sounds like we have similar diversities in our tastes, mentioning flea, mentioning Weezer, and then also talking about ska bands.
- 16:45SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like, yep, these guys are growing up kids of the 90s for sure.
- 16:50SPEAKER_00: But it is kind of getting out of our age, and we're starting to talk to some of these artists in this state of their life and this state of our lives, it it just has happened so many times, so many times.
- 17:02SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it happened in to the refreshments in the my first documentary.
- 17:06SPEAKER_01: They got screwed over early on, and I mean the only reason they don't have that name right now is because they couldn't, because the label, because all this dumb stuff.
- 17:16SPEAKER_01: And it's I think too, because uh the 90s were what the 90s were.
- 17:20SPEAKER_01: It was like that era of the big record labels and the five million dollar advances and the you know million-dollar music videos and CDs, you know, now they're 15 bucks, now they're 18 bucks, and you people were buying them, you know, the music industry was booming, and then you know, when the money stopped rolling in, the first people to stop getting the money were the artists, right?
- 17:44SPEAKER_01: You know, like the labels that survived did fine.
- 17:48SPEAKER_01: They're still making money off the five Taylor Swift songs that still make money, but you know, the bands, unless they switched, like all the ones that went more independent and kind of kept eking it out, they're doing okay.
- 18:01SPEAKER_01: I mean, not now with COVID, it's a nightmare for a touring band, but that's why it's a common story.
- 18:08SPEAKER_00: That's a good point to make because I was gonna ask you in the in the context of bands and selling physical copies, and your most recent documentary, The Last Blockbuster, what are your thoughts on where the physical copy of like just any type of multimedia that we used to collect?
- 18:27SPEAKER_00: Like, is the physical copy dead?
- 18:32SPEAKER_01: Yes and no, and I I really hope not.
- 18:36SPEAKER_01: And I hope that there will always be people like us who appreciate physical media, and there's a whole section in The Last Blockbuster where we just kind of geek out over a VHS tape for a while, and you know, people some of the reviewers think the movie is a little too long and it has too much fluff, and they they point to that scene in particular, and I'm like, no, that's the heart of it, that's the feeling of physical media, that's what we're losing, and that it's tough.
- 19:03SPEAKER_01: I mean, in the music industry, vinyl has had its biggest year ever, right?
- 19:08SPEAKER_01: It's outselling CDs, it's outselling everything.
- 19:11SPEAKER_01: I'm buying vinyl, but I'm buying mostly, you know, goodwill vinyl for a quarter because that's how you get the good collection.
- 19:18SPEAKER_01: Right, absolutely look for the gem.
- 19:20SPEAKER_01: But I also bought the new Less Than Jake album on vinyl because of course I did.
- 19:23SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 19:24SPEAKER_01: Um, but with movies, I think it's gonna be a while.
- 19:28SPEAKER_01: If that happens, if there's a resurgence in physical, like there has been with music, I think it's years and years away.
- 19:33SPEAKER_01: I think we're at the point now where it's gonna disappear.
- 19:36SPEAKER_01: You know, you look at like um DVDs and and Blu-ray.
- 19:41SPEAKER_01: So at Blockbuster they carry mostly DVD because that's what people rent.
- 19:45SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 19:45SPEAKER_01: Not the manager and I, we both love Blu-ray.
- 19:48SPEAKER_01: We only watch Blu-rays, but DVDs are more popular, right?
- 19:52SPEAKER_01: Blockbuster crowds.
- 19:53SPEAKER_01: So it's like 90% DVD, 10% Blu-ray, nothing else.
- 19:57SPEAKER_01: There's no 4K anything, UHD discs.
- 20:02SPEAKER_01: Um, and you look around at the world and it's like DVD was so ubiquitous, right?
- 20:08SPEAKER_01: They were everywhere, so much so that they're in vending machines and they're you can get them in the mail, and you know, every convenience store had DVDs at checkout, 7-Eleven, every place.
- 20:20SPEAKER_01: And then Blu-ray was less popular because streaming had just started to pick up, and so not as many people even had a Blu-ray player, right?
- 20:29SPEAKER_01: So then it didn't catch on as much, and then 4K.
- 20:33SPEAKER_01: I I know I don't know three people who can play a 4K disc on a 4K TV.
- 20:38SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 20:39SPEAKER_01: And I know a lot of people, so that's zero percent of the people I know.
- 20:44SPEAKER_01: Um and and then that's the problem is that the convenience you can't compete with Netflix, with Amazon, with Hulu.
- 20:53SPEAKER_01: When that stuff, I mean, that was 4K first.
- 20:55SPEAKER_01: Before there were discs, you could watch 4K on Netflix, and now that's you know, as it gets more and more, there's never gonna be a physical media 8K disc, but Netflix will stream 8K, right?
- 21:07SPEAKER_01: Right, because as the popularity drops, they just don't make them, it's not cost effective.
- 21:12SPEAKER_01: And the the example that I point to is like think about Target or Walmart.
- 21:19SPEAKER_01: Two years ago, the DVD section was huge, like three aisles, and it was full, all the new releases, mostly Marvel and Star Wars, but stuff people would buy, and they would have like the box set of all the Gremlins movies or the Ninja Turtle movies, and you'd get those.
- 21:34SPEAKER_01: Um, I was in a Target two months ago.
- 21:38SPEAKER_01: It's one aisle, and half of it was action figures.
- 21:41SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
- 21:42SPEAKER_01: And there's no there's nothing.
- 21:45SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 21:45SPEAKER_01: And that's the where most people got their DVDs, you know, Target Best Buy, Walmart.
- 21:52SPEAKER_01: So I think that's to me, that's like the harbinger of of what's to come is like, well, if if Target stops carrying.
- 22:00SPEAKER_01: DVDs, then no one is like we're gonna be a specialty item.
- 22:05SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's up to people like us to like in 20 years bring back the DVDs.
- 22:10SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 22:10SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's uh I I've got a similar anecdote as the the target in my neighborhood, the CDs have all been butt replaced with vinyl now.
- 22:20SPEAKER_00: And I and I'm like, man, I I kind of feel soulless buying this Michael Jackson picture vinyl here, but it's cool.
- 22:29SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 22:30SPEAKER_01: And see, movies don't have that thing.
- 22:32SPEAKER_01: Like for movies, it is the action figure or the poster.
- 22:35SPEAKER_01: Like there isn't a physical media.
- 22:37SPEAKER_01: I just got back into um, not back into for the first time ever, laser discs.
- 22:42SPEAKER_01: Because somebody on Craigslist was hawking.
- 22:44SPEAKER_01: They had a Laserdisc player and what looked like a collection from an old video store.
- 22:48SPEAKER_01: They're all like library labeled.
- 22:50SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 22:50SPEAKER_01: And I had like 50 Laserdiscs and a player for, I don't know, 40 bucks.
- 22:54SPEAKER_01: And so now I'm into Laserdisc.
- 22:56SPEAKER_01: And that's the closest it ever came to like, oh, you could hang that on the wall.
- 23:01SPEAKER_01: That's like a big object that represents a film.
- 23:04SPEAKER_01: And it's it's like as they got smaller, people care less.
- 23:08SPEAKER_01: Same thing with CDs and cassettes.
- 23:10SPEAKER_01: The cassettes are making a comeback, but it's weird.
- 23:12SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 23:13SPEAKER_00: It's one of those things where if you you wonder if the market got oversaturated because the production costs got so small on that physical media.
- 23:24SPEAKER_00: So people took it for granted.
- 23:25SPEAKER_00: Like if you walk into a Walmart and there's a$5 DVD bin and you've got last year's hits in the$5 DVD bin, it's easy to take it for granted.
- 23:34SPEAKER_00: Like, so you can it I I because I use the same type of anecdote to describe what happened to the bubble of the music industry.
- 23:41SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, you can blame the internet all day long, you can blame streaming sites all day long, but realistically, it it's a consumer problem from my point of view at the end of the day.
- 23:52SPEAKER_00: Yeah, supply and demand.
- 23:54SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
- 23:54SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
- 23:55SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 23:55SPEAKER_01: So and as like an indie person, like when I was in indie bands, we couldn't afford to make CDs forever.
- 24:03SPEAKER_01: And then once we could, that was the beginning of the end.
- 24:06SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 24:06SPEAKER_01: Like when everybody who's got a band can burn the CD on their laptop, and then like it stops being a special thing.
- 24:13SPEAKER_01: And that's why I think vinyl has that holdup thing where it's still expensive and hard to make a vinyl record.
- 24:19SPEAKER_01: Always has been.
- 24:20SPEAKER_01: It will never be cheap and easy to make a vinyl record.
- 24:24SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 24:24SPEAKER_01: Where it's like DVDs.
- 24:25SPEAKER_01: Once you could burn DVDs, that was it was over.
- 24:28SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
- 24:29SPEAKER_00: For sure.
- 24:30SPEAKER_00: Everybody's and everybody's recording studio and such is on their laptop now.
- 24:35SPEAKER_00: And it's like, my gosh, I remember playing like gigs for days just to afford studio time, you know?
- 24:42SPEAKER_00: And like everybody borrowing money from their parents.
- 24:44SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, we got to go to the best studio in town.
- 24:47SPEAKER_00: And now it's like super simple.
- 24:49SPEAKER_00: Do it on your own, you know?
- 24:50SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's great for content creators like yourself and myself, right?
- 24:54SPEAKER_00: But but yeah, yeah.
- 24:56SPEAKER_00: So let's uh let's go back to the music part a little bit.
- 24:59SPEAKER_00: So we were we're fellow ska guys.
- 25:02SPEAKER_00: I haven't now, granted, I've played in about every type of band under the sun.
- 25:07SPEAKER_00: So how long were you in a ska band for?
- 25:10SPEAKER_01: I was in ska bands in '98.
- 25:13SPEAKER_01: I played in my first ska band, uh, which was I was a little late to the game, but um, you know, I'm pretty young.
- 25:19SPEAKER_01: I was 17.
- 25:20SPEAKER_01: So I played in my first band.
- 25:22SPEAKER_01: Um and I played in ska bands continually until 2006 or seven.
- 25:32SPEAKER_01: And then I was in a punk band.
- 25:34SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I picked it back up in 2010.
- 25:39SPEAKER_01: I played in a ska band, more of a rock steady throwback, you know, original ska band.
- 25:47SPEAKER_01: Um and I played in that band, and then I started a ska like party cover band that did ska covers and played all the 90s ska songs.
- 25:57SPEAKER_01: And so I did that also all the way up through 2017-ish.
- 26:04SPEAKER_01: So, like this right now is the longest I've been without being in a ska band since 1997.
- 26:11SPEAKER_00: My hat's off to you, sir.
- 26:13SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
- 26:14SPEAKER_00: Like, you not only you not only rode the third wave, but you might have rode the fourth wave, the fifth wave, and the sixth wave, man.
- 26:22SPEAKER_01: And that's why, you know, when I was trying to think about what I should do for my next movie, everybody, all my friends were like, You idiot, make a scalp.
- 26:31SPEAKER_01: It's good, it's your dumb thing that you know that you're into.
- 26:34SPEAKER_01: That and now you make movies, of course.
- 26:36SPEAKER_01: It's so obvious.
- 26:37SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 26:38SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 26:38SPEAKER_00: I when I was watching your movie, and it's actually in the trailer too, that scene where the mad caddies are talking about like basically 1999 when New Metal just surfaced and ska was like at the top.
- 26:52SPEAKER_00: And then, like, I remember it because I was in a ska band around the same time.
- 26:56SPEAKER_00: I remember it being as short as a six-month window.
- 27:00SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, I was out of high school and my first couple of years of college, and you know, we're playing Valentine's dances at all the local high schools doing ska originals and ska covers in February, and then in July, um New Metal's the thing, and like we're getting stuff thrown at us because we're opening up for slipknot in the middle of Iowa.
- 27:24SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 27:24SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and what we did, because that definitely happened out here too.
- 27:30SPEAKER_01: Um, but we uh the bands that I was in, the band I was in right around 2099 that you know it started that switch.
- 27:39SPEAKER_01: What we did is we went overseas, like in Japan, ska was still big.
- 27:43SPEAKER_01: So after like in the early 2000s, we were playing those ska shows here that were terrible, that were tiny.
- 27:51SPEAKER_01: And unless you were opening for real big fish, we were still playing, but there would be nobody, nobody cared.
- 27:57SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 27:57SPEAKER_01: But we were on MTV in Japan.
- 27:59SPEAKER_01: We were touring with the biggest bands and playing the huge festivals because they were a few years behind.
- 28:04SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 28:05SPEAKER_01: We did that all the way up through 2004.
- 28:08SPEAKER_01: We're touring and having a great time.
- 28:10SPEAKER_01: Then we come back home, like we're all in college, so those were our summers, and we come back and be like, oh, everybody here hates Ska.
- 28:17SPEAKER_01: Like people are spitting on us at the punk shows that we're lucky enough to get to open.
- 28:20SPEAKER_01: And we're just like, why the fuck are we still doing this?
- 28:23SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 28:23SPEAKER_01: It's so ridiculous.
- 28:24SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 28:25SPEAKER_00: My little anecdote, and I'll I'll try and keep it brief, is um so Slipknot was an unsigned ban at the time.
- 28:31SPEAKER_00: And I was I was in Southwest Iowa, and they this was literally this was 1998.
- 28:36SPEAKER_00: This was the year that they signed with Roadrunner Records, and their social click kind of ran with my social click.
- 28:43SPEAKER_00: And it was not uncommon to see Slipknot, The Urge, Real Big Fish, and Goldfinger all on the same bill.
- 28:50SPEAKER_00: Not uncommon at all.
- 28:51SPEAKER_00: Like it sounds crazy, like, but if you lived it, it's like, oh, that makes sense, you know.
- 28:57SPEAKER_00: So my band got the opportunity to like we played one of the last Joes right before Slipknot went and recorded their major label debut.
- 29:05SPEAKER_00: And it was at a YMCA.
- 29:08SPEAKER_00: It was at a YMCA amphitheater, right?
- 29:11SPEAKER_00: And like, like I said, just four or five months before, we're playing a Valentine's dance.
- 29:16SPEAKER_00: So I get this bright idea at the Valentine's dance, it's like I'm in a ska band, positive, you know, positive vibes.
- 29:21SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna throw Valentine's with lollipops attached to them out to the crowd.
- 29:25SPEAKER_00: Everybody's gonna love it.
- 29:26SPEAKER_00: So I get the same wise ass idea when we're open up for Slipknot, except I like, ah, let's just do some hard candy.
- 29:33SPEAKER_00: You know how that played out.
- 29:34SPEAKER_00: It was like being in a damn hail storm, and we're we're we're doing a ska cover of Black Sabbaths paranoid with the horns and everything, and I'm just getting a hail of like hard candy thrown at me.
- 29:47SPEAKER_00: I'm still scarred to this day, brother.
- 29:51SPEAKER_00: You have any funny, crazy stories like that?
- 29:54SPEAKER_01: No, I mean that it was like more just scary, yeah.
- 29:59SPEAKER_01: Like angry, angry metal kids and angry punk rock kids.
- 30:03SPEAKER_01: And when I say kids, these were people in their 30s when I'm 18, 19 years old.
- 30:07SPEAKER_01: Um, and people just that hated it.
- 30:10SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember there was a scare, like we legitimately got spit on, and then there was I forget what it was, but there was some disease going around in the town.
- 30:20SPEAKER_01: So we all had to like go get tested for this thing because they had traced it to this show and somebody was spitting on people.
- 30:27SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
- 30:28SPEAKER_01: Well what now we have, I don't know, it was like tuberculosis or something.
- 30:32SPEAKER_00: I mean it was it was some scary thing, and I just remember being like, this is not worth playing in a dumb dopey skull band, but but it was but I kept doing it for 20 years, but it was, but it was though, and and that's it was totally but so like going to an earlier point, like coming off of a year like 2020 and going into a year optimistically like we are with 2021, um, I think that's a great thing about your documentaries, and something that I've really enjoyed with both Pick It Up and with The Last Blockbuster, is it harkens back to a more innocent time, and it feels like we're on the verge of getting back to that to some degree.
- 31:10SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, yeah, it's like my my son, I've got an 11-year-old son, and since he's with been three years old, I've been playing him Goldfinger.
- 31:18SPEAKER_00: He used to, he used to, as a little three-year-old, he used to yell at me from the backseat to play, he was like, play the cheese the bomb song, dad.
- 31:25SPEAKER_00: And it's like, hell yeah, hell yeah, I'm putting that on, you know?
- 31:29SPEAKER_00: So, like, it and you know, some of Goldfinger's more recent works have gotten away from me.
- 31:36SPEAKER_00: And I I actually just fired up Spotify the other day, and I'm like, man, they went back to their ska roots on a lot of their new music, and it sounds yeah, the new S record is is awesome.
- 31:47SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and it sounds so fresh.
- 31:50SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I think, you know, there's a line from Pick It Up where he said, yeah, what was it?
- 31:57SPEAKER_00: He was the former singer of No Doubt that said, uh, the world needs more of that.
- 32:01SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, I think we're there right now, sociopolitically, with dealing with COVID, just society as a whole.
- 32:08SPEAKER_00: So I again, my hats off to you because I I I really think you highlighted something, whether it be intentionally or not, with both movies that that uh I've really enjoyed.
- 32:19SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
- 32:20SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
- 32:21SPEAKER_01: And I I do think it's not unintentional, right?
- 32:24SPEAKER_01: It's um, you know, I I watch a lot of documentaries, and a lot of people make the hard-hitting, you know, starving children, or you know, everybody's racist, and that needs to stop.
- 32:36SPEAKER_01: And I totally agree.
- 32:37SPEAKER_01: And more people should know about starving children, and racism is terrible, and you know, we should all be vegan and recycle and all these things, and that's important, but I'm not making those reasons.
- 32:49SPEAKER_01: That's not from technical.
- 32:50SPEAKER_01: And I'm I I think it's just like maybe I'm just naive, but I think that putting optimism out there and putting like positive vibes out into the world probably comes from playing in ska bands.
- 33:01SPEAKER_01: I'm just like, there's enough darkness, and especially now, where it's it's like I'm really happy that we got to put out the last blockbuster right now because it's like an unabashedly joyful, nostalgic thing where it's just like we all love VHS tapes, and here's 90 minutes about that.
- 33:19SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's it.
- 33:21SPEAKER_01: There's like no right, right, no darkness to it, and we don't need darkness, right?
- 33:26SPEAKER_01: There's enough in real life, right, right.
- 33:28SPEAKER_00: And it's it's very serendipitous that things unfolded the way that they did whenever you made that movie, how it didn't start off as the last blockbuster, but it became the last blockbuster, and it just it underscores so much in that movie in such a good way.
- 33:46SPEAKER_00: And and and Sandy's a joy to watch, you know.
- 33:49SPEAKER_01: It's a joy to know.
- 33:50SPEAKER_01: I love spending time with Sandy.
- 33:52SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 33:53SPEAKER_01: Uh that was just luck.
- 33:55SPEAKER_01: So what's next?
- 33:57SPEAKER_01: I don't really know.
- 33:58SPEAKER_01: You know, I had some had a lot of plans going into 2020.
- 34:02SPEAKER_01: And yeah, like like many people did.
- 34:06SPEAKER_01: Um I've got some scripts I'm working on for some narrative features.
- 34:10SPEAKER_01: I've done a bunch of shorts, but I'm I'm thinking about directing a feature film that has actors in it instead of just all my favorite bands.
- 34:18SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 34:18SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I really don't know because things have gotten so crazy, it's like made me question the whole career path of everything, like what really matters.
- 34:30SPEAKER_01: And and again, I enjoy putting positivity out into the world, and I'll try to keep doing that as long as I can, but I'm not a hundred percent sure I have another four years on a documentary in me anytime soon.
- 34:41SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 34:42SPEAKER_01: Um, that's also the appeal of a scripted narrative film, is like you could shoot that in a month and then edit it in a few months, and then it's done.
- 34:50SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 34:50SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
- 34:52SPEAKER_01: You don't have to wait for Blockbuster to close.
- 34:55SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's the thing, like I really admired, like I in doing research, you know, because I I did my little research to before uh we got to chat, and I can't believe you knocked out three such solid documentaries in really a short period of time.
- 35:12SPEAKER_00: Like that's an undertaking, man.
- 35:14SPEAKER_01: It is, and that's why I think maybe I'm a little burnt out.
- 35:17SPEAKER_01: But the last four years, I've pretty much been working on one or two movies at a time the whole time.
- 35:23SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I've had awesome people helping me out, you know, and I have different partners on different films that keep it manageable because the first movie I really did mostly by myself and instantly learned that that's not a good idea.
- 35:37SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 35:37SPEAKER_01: Like that's some crazy, some crazy nonsense.
- 35:40SPEAKER_01: But even still, I've been, you know, living and breathing ska music and blockbuster video for as long as I can remember now.
- 35:49SPEAKER_01: And I still am, you know, like I run the Facebook pages and the Instagrams and the TikTok now.
- 35:55SPEAKER_01: Like, what even is that?
- 35:56SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
- 35:57SPEAKER_01: But it's like my job to make sure TikTok gets to go see the inside of Blockbuster video once a week so that they don't forget.
- 36:06SPEAKER_01: And that that all comes from playing in bands and being like DIY.
- 36:09SPEAKER_01: And I was always the one in the band who was in charge of selling the merch.
- 36:13SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm gonna run around to everybody and be like, Do you want to buy the CD?
- 36:16SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to tell me to my face that you don't want to buy this CD.
- 36:19SPEAKER_01: And so we sold a lot of CDs.
- 36:21SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
- 36:22SPEAKER_01: And I do that with movies.
- 36:24SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm I'm shipping DVDs out of my garage still to this day.
- 36:27SPEAKER_01: If you buy the Ska dock, I'm the one who puts it in the bubble mailer and ships it out because I don't know any better.
- 36:34SPEAKER_01: Like I've directed three movies now, but I'm still like the only way to earn a living is to physically like print the t-shirt yourself and put it in the box and send it to the people again.
- 36:45SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
- 36:45SPEAKER_00: A byproduct of being a 90s kid.
- 36:48SPEAKER_00: I really do believe that.
- 36:49SPEAKER_00: I really do believe that because I don't think that is a skill set that can be taught.
- 36:54SPEAKER_00: You either have it or you don't, you either have that work ethic or you don't.
- 36:59SPEAKER_00: I because I again, you man, you and I, we we must have been separated sometime in life, maybe estranged brothers or something, man.
- 37:07SPEAKER_00: Because I'm the same way.
- 37:08SPEAKER_00: I was the same way when I played in bands.
- 37:11SPEAKER_00: It's like I'm very hands-on with everything, and it's it's just so you can see something through, you know, because those are those are the fruits of your labor.
- 37:20SPEAKER_01: You get that, like when you were in bands, like you could go, we would drive around, we'd be on tour, and we go to the new town and we get there early, and we print up a bunch of flyers at the Kinkos or whatever, and we just walk up and down the street and hand them to people and be like, Hey, we're playing at eight o'clock.
- 37:34SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 37:35SPEAKER_01: Do you want to um like this is what my band's all about?
- 37:38SPEAKER_01: Here's a flyer.
- 37:39SPEAKER_01: And you'd hand out 200 flyers and you'd see five of those kids at the show, and it's so worth it.
- 37:45SPEAKER_01: That's like I made those people came because I handed them a flyer.
- 37:50SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 37:50SPEAKER_01: And that I think is what stuck with me all these years, where it's like, man, if I can just like make two new friends on Facebook and tell them about these movies I've made, then they're gonna want.
- 38:00SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's why I do all these podcasts.
- 38:01SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 38:02SPEAKER_01: Right?
- 38:02SPEAKER_01: It's like, it's like individual.
- 38:04SPEAKER_01: I want people to watch my movies, but I'm willing to go around and tell them one at a time to their face why they should watch my movies.
- 38:12SPEAKER_01: And that just comes from like being in bands and promoting shows and like, do you want to buy my CD?
- 38:17SPEAKER_01: Or will you come to this show?
- 38:19SPEAKER_01: And it's so different now because it's all the internet, it's all social media, right?
- 38:24SPEAKER_01: And I really, really miss like going to a place and interacting with a human.
- 38:28SPEAKER_01: I mean, that comes through, I think, in all my movies.
- 38:31SPEAKER_01: It's like the live event is the thing.
- 38:34SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 38:34SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm a social person.
- 38:36SPEAKER_01: I like being in a room with 200 people who like the same band that I do.
- 38:40SPEAKER_01: Yes, or a thousand people.
- 38:41SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 38:42SPEAKER_01: That's fun.
- 38:43SPEAKER_01: And then that's the biggest drawback, I think, of 2020.
- 38:46SPEAKER_01: It's like I haven't been to a concert in a year, and that's a huge bummer.
- 38:50unknown: Right.
- 38:51SPEAKER_00: As far as a statement on the work ethic part of it, is you can't ask people to invest in you if they don't see you investing in yourself.
- 39:00SPEAKER_00: Totally.
- 39:00SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'm right there with you.
- 39:02SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm I'm I'm having that itch where I'm like, man, I I dreamt of a day when I could just hang around my house and not be bothered by anybody.
- 39:11SPEAKER_00: And now I'm on the opposite side of the fence.
- 39:14SPEAKER_00: Yeah, be careful what you're doing.
- 39:16SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 39:16SPEAKER_00: Or no, you just might get it.
- 39:17SPEAKER_00: There would be n there's nothing that I want more now than to go eat hot wings with a bunch of my friends while you know something's on TV that I don't care about, and I'll be bitching about that, you know.
- 39:29SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think that's why I don't have a next project lined up, is because I can't imagine, you know, driving to LA to film something is because the world the way it is.
- 39:40SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think once it opens up, I'll be right back there making more stuff.
- 39:43SPEAKER_01: But for now, I'm yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 39:47SPEAKER_00: See, I I I launched this podcast, and and this was kind of to fill in some of the creative blanks that I was just missing in life in general.
- 39:55SPEAKER_00: And I launched this podcast back in September and I started doing my episodes.
- 39:59SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, I can have one or two friends over and we can do this within our bubble.
- 40:04SPEAKER_00: And then and then just recently it occurred to me, am I being socially responsible and am I sending the right message out if I'm doing this person to person versus doing it over something like a Zoom or a Skype or something along those lines?
- 40:18SPEAKER_00: So I get exactly what you're saying.
- 40:20SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we had that same thing, uh, putting a movie out.
- 40:23SPEAKER_01: Um, we had to turn down a lot of theaters that wanted to run it, um, just out of that feeling of like, I can't, my movie can't be the reason somebody gets sick.
- 40:35SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 40:35SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
- 40:36SPEAKER_01: Like, that's not, it's not worth it.
- 40:38SPEAKER_01: There's no amount of, yeah, it'd be really cool to play in a bunch of indie theaters and like, you know, say that we played on a hundred screens or whatever, but if one person gets sick from that, I'll I'll never forgive myself.
- 40:50SPEAKER_01: So we didn't, you know, we're not doing any of that.
- 40:53SPEAKER_01: Like, I people can order it through the mail and digitally, and that's that's just what we have right now.
- 40:59SPEAKER_01: And it's that same thing.
- 41:00SPEAKER_01: Like, even if I know I'm being safe, like I don't want a picture of me on the internet hanging out with people, because then somebody who's maybe less safe might see that and be like, Well, Taylor did it, so I'm gonna hang out with my friends, and then it all just is exponential.
- 41:16SPEAKER_01: So if I can stay home, not go anywhere and not see anybody and just do video calls.
- 41:22SPEAKER_00: Yep, and knowing your influence and knowing your power and just using it for good in the world, you know.
- 41:27SPEAKER_00: And and and that's what you're doing, man.
- 41:29SPEAKER_00: Like with with these, you know, with your movies, brother, you're you're doing it, you're putting good out in the world.
- 41:36SPEAKER_00: Like, I have told everybody that's willing to listen to me.
- 41:39SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you gotta check out, pick it up.
- 41:41SPEAKER_00: You gotta check out pick it up.
- 41:43SPEAKER_00: Because I've been running into old buddies that were like, you know, most of us have long since been out of bands and we're like, yo, remember, remember that less than Jake album, or remember, remember Real Big Fish or this, that, and the other thing.
- 41:56SPEAKER_00: I and I'm like, watch this movie, just watch this movie.
- 41:59SPEAKER_00: You gotta you gotta see it.
- 42:01SPEAKER_01: Back in the olden times before COVID, that was my very favorite part.
- 42:05SPEAKER_01: Um, because we did get to play in theaters with that, and we played in like a hundred different theaters in seven different countries all over the world.
- 42:13SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't able to go to all of them, but I went to as many as I could.
- 42:16SPEAKER_01: And almost every time after the movie played, you would get these people, you know, coming up and talking to me, or just talking to each other and saying, like, you know, oh my God, I haven't seen these people who are in this room in 20 years.
- 42:29SPEAKER_01: Like people who used to be in the ska crowd 20 years ago, they all somehow heard about this movie playing.
- 42:36SPEAKER_01: And so we were able to actually bring people together into a space to, you know, remember the good old days.
- 42:44SPEAKER_01: But also, like, you know, I got to do it with my bands from the 90s.
- 42:47SPEAKER_01: We played a, we did in Eugene, Oregon, we did a screening.
- 42:51SPEAKER_01: Awesome, sold-out screening, but it's my hometown, so I would have hoped so.
- 42:55SPEAKER_01: But then after, uh, three of the ska bands I played in in the 90s did reunion sets.
- 43:01SPEAKER_01: So I had to learn, relearn 48 songs, but for everybody else, it was like one set, you know, 10 songs or whatever.
- 43:08SPEAKER_01: But it was like the greatest night of my life since the 90s because everybody got back together.
- 43:15SPEAKER_01: Like people, and these were people we didn't all disband amicably, you know what I mean?
- 43:20SPEAKER_01: Like bar bands don't always end well.
- 43:23SPEAKER_01: But it's been so long and we're all grown-ups now.
- 43:27SPEAKER_01: And we all just like watch that movie and we had these good vibes, but getting together and rehearsing and like playing this show, and there was a decent, you know, decent crowd for a bar show in Eugene, Oregon.
- 43:41SPEAKER_01: But like those things, and we got to do that for other people.
- 43:44SPEAKER_01: So, like in the Midwest, there was a a show after the screening where it was a band that got back together after 20 years.
- 43:50SPEAKER_01: And like knowing that we got to make that exist for people and give people those feelings, like that's why you make movies, that's why you do anything, you know?
- 43:59SPEAKER_00: Well.
- 44:00SPEAKER_00: The light at the end of the tunnel is those opportunities will be happening again.
- 44:05SPEAKER_00: We just got to get people to be smart.
- 44:08SPEAKER_00: If they have the opportunity to take the vaccine, take the damn vaccine.
- 44:14SPEAKER_00: Let's socially distance, let's do everything we can to bring this back.
- 44:19SPEAKER_00: But most importantly, I think let's keep optimistic.
- 44:23SPEAKER_00: Stay home, right?
- 44:24SPEAKER_01: Watch a movie.
- 44:25SPEAKER_01: Like if you don't have to go somewhere, don't go somewhere.
- 44:27SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 44:28SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 44:28SPEAKER_00: And to my audience, I got a couple of movies I can recommend for you.
- 44:31SPEAKER_00: They're both on Amazon Prime.
- 44:33SPEAKER_00: Actually, all three of them are on Amazon Prime.
- 44:36SPEAKER_00: Yep.
- 44:36SPEAKER_00: Yep.
- 44:36SPEAKER_00: Yep.
- 44:37SPEAKER_00: So uh yeah, absolutely.
- 44:38SPEAKER_00: And I'll be linking those on the Caught on the Mike Facebook page and probably the Instagram page as well.
- 44:44SPEAKER_00: Any closing thoughts, Taylor?
- 44:47SPEAKER_01: Man, I'm sure there's 10 other 90s topics that we could dive through for another hour.
- 44:52SPEAKER_00: I think I think if you and I had our way, we could talk about Cobra Kai, uh Back to the Future, and we could probably be sitting here and have a four-hour long episode of the podcast.
- 45:04SPEAKER_01: Just stop the recording and we'll just keep chatting, all right?
- 45:07SPEAKER_00: I tell you what, let's do this.
- 45:10SPEAKER_00: I um I know we just met.
- 45:12SPEAKER_00: Let's keep in contact because I would love to have some more conversations with you in the future.
- 45:17SPEAKER_01: We're best friends now.
- 45:18SPEAKER_01: That's how this works.
- 45:20SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
- 45:20SPEAKER_01: That's absolutely how it works.
- 45:22SPEAKER_01: That's why I keep doing podcasts.
- 45:24SPEAKER_01: I'm just making friends and I get to hang out and talk about stuff I love with people, and that's the best.
- 45:30SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 45:31SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
- 45:31SPEAKER_00: And that's that's you know, I uh the last episode of my podcast I did with uh former UFC star Houston Alexander, and the thing that we both said is that 2021, the theme of 2021 is reset and collaboration.
- 45:47SPEAKER_00: Nice, like we are resetting the button and we're all gonna be collaborating in 2021.
- 45:52SPEAKER_01: I hope so.
- 45:53SPEAKER_01: I hope so.
- 45:54SPEAKER_01: The closing statement I've been leaning on the most lately is uh you know, Blockbuster.
- 46:01SPEAKER_01: I've been deeply involved in this VHS rental movie world for a few years now, and we keep saying, be kind, rewind, be kind, rewind.
- 46:10SPEAKER_01: It's the sticker, it was on every movie, and I no longer care if you rewind or not.
- 46:17SPEAKER_01: Just be kind.
- 46:18SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
- 46:18SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for doing the podcast, Taylor.
- 46:20SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
- 46:21SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure talking to you, my friend.
- 46:22SPEAKER_00: You got it.
- 46:23SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that could have been any more awesome than what it was.
- 46:27SPEAKER_00: I knew within five minutes I had made a new friend with Taylor Morton.
- 46:32SPEAKER_00: Thank you again for doing the podcast.
- 46:35SPEAKER_00: You can find Here's to Life, the story of the refreshments.
- 46:39SPEAKER_00: Pick it up Scott in the 90s and his latest film, The Last Blockbuster, on Voodoo, iTunes, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Fandango, and most importantly, at Blockbuster Video.
- 46:52SPEAKER_00: Friends, I need your help.
- 46:54SPEAKER_00: I want to grow this podcast for you and everybody else that enjoys listening to it.
- 47:01SPEAKER_00: So, share an episode with your friends.
- 47:04SPEAKER_00: Share some of my social media posts.
- 47:06SPEAKER_00: Let's get the word out about this podcast.
- 47:09SPEAKER_00: And the other thing you can help me with is leave a five-star review on the iTunes Podcast app.
- 47:17SPEAKER_00: Or leave a review on the Caught on the Mic Facebook page.
- 47:21SPEAKER_00: It is very, very, very much appreciated.
- 47:25SPEAKER_00: This has been Caught on the Mic with Michael Clark.
- 47:29SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you.