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If I take too long on the red carpet, I will delay Tom Cruise, which I cannot do. The only exchange I can remember, like, where I can remember what I said to Tom was when Zanth brought up, he was like, oh yeah, have you seen this movie Patan from a few months back with Shara Khan? Tom's like, no, I haven't seen that yet. And I went, Tom, you gotta see Patan.

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And I hope he has checked it out since then.

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Hello, Patrick. Welcome to Half the Picture. How are you doing today, sir? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm doing very well, thank you. I mean, I'm so chuffed that you were gracious enough to come on the show because I've been a fan of yours for probably over 10 years at this point. I mean, we were saying before we started rolling, but obviously I think like a lot of people, my inroad into your work was the What If Wes Anderson directed X-Men, and then from there it just snowballed and snowballed. You know, my love for your work and you as a video essayist, and then your career is just...

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you know, blossomed and flourished and just gone to all these amazing places. So no, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you. Thank you so much. And yeah, it is weird to think that that was over 10 years ago. I was realizing recently that I, because when the Wes Anderson X-Men came out, I...

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The channel was that video did not make any money. The channel was not remotely profitable. It lost money and it didn't actually start, you know, becoming actually like a thing I did professionally until like a little while later. But I was talking to someone recently and realized like, oh, right. I've been now. This has been my full time job this summer. It'll be nine years, which is weird to think about.

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Yeah, but also impressive. I mean, the fact that you've been able to carve this out for coming onto a decade and being able to do this as a full-time job, to me, I mean, I'm only eight months into my YouTube career, very sort of baby steps, and you're over there, you know, like, take these big strides. So it's so impressive to me that you've been able to do that. Thank you. Yeah, it's really something where... It's funny, because I never got into YouTube intending to...

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have a career here. I got into YouTube... I started the channel in 2011. Recently, in my YouTube creator dashboard, I got the horrifying message of YouTube saying, congratulations, your channel is 15 years old, which is weird to think about. But I started it really kind of looking at YouTube the way people would use Vimeo, where I was like, look, this is just like a portfolio. I'm just going to make stuff and put it on here, and the hope is that people...

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might see it and then hire me to make stuff elsewhere. Like, there's no—I'm not trying to make the channel profitable or become, like, an internet personality or anything like that. And, you know, it didn't go as planned, but it's gone okay.

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So it sounds like you started off just obviously trying to get your work out there, but also just doing what you loved and just looking for a platform for it, I guess. Is that fair to say? That was really it. What really kind of led me to do this back in the day, it was like I graduated from college with a degree in cinema studies, which is not the most useful degree. You're never going to see a job posting looking for someone with a degree in cinema studies.

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But it's, you know, the goal was, like, make movies. And, you know, how do you do that? And I kind of—the way that I looked at it was like, okay, I feel like there's two paths. There's the move to L.A., become a P.A., just, like, work on sets and, you know, do kind of, like, menial tasks for years until maybe you might, like, make a connection or someone will, like, read your script or whatever—

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And that's the traditional way. And that, to be clear, has worked out great for plenty of people. But I had realized about myself that if I'm not making something all the time, if I don't have some kind of creative outlet, that I just get really antsy and really anxious and I don't feel good. And I knew that if I did that...

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It just wouldn't... I would not have a good time with it. I would constantly be panicking about, oh no, am I running out of time? Oh no, am I not making progress? But then the other path seemed to me to be like, well, you just make stuff independently, and you hope you can get people to see it. And if nothing else, at least you're making stuff. And so...

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I started the YouTube channel in June 2011, really, when we began it. And it was like weekly short films, like every single week. And, you know, obviously it took years to become successful, to make any money, to even build an audience. It was funny, there would occasionally be a video like the What If Was Anderson directed X-Men that would blow up, do really well.

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but it wouldn't lead to the channel growing. It would be like that one-off video got millions of views, but still we have like 15,000 subscribers. So it would be that kind of thing. And yeah, and it was like frustrating. They kept being like, when will something happen? Because like there would be, like the Wes Anderson X-Men led to, you know, a year of people seeing that and then having these meetings with...

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production companies and producers and starting to like develop projects that were related to, to that. And, uh, and I kept getting excited, like, yeah, it's all happening. And, uh, uh, it, it didn't, it didn't happen. Uh, every single thing fell apart for various reasons. And then I was back at square one and I was like, oh, well, uh, you know, now, now any, any impact that video had has like faded away. And I'm just back where I started and I'm on YouTube, but I don't have any ideas, uh,

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that are as good as a Wes Anderson X-Men.

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Until, of course, along came, you know, like, Werner Herzog's Ant-Man, and then there's a series, and then the rest of the videos kind of blossomed. Well, that's the thing. I made more videos in that series, but we knew going in that, like, none of them were going to be as commercial as, like, the combination of Wes Anderson and X-Men. So the other videos, you know, you look at the view counts on them, and it's like, oh, the X-Men one has, like, millions, and the others have a few hundred thousand. Yeah.

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So, yeah, it was – and I was also – God, I could sit here all day and, you know, reminisce about mistakes I made. But one of the biggest ones – and to be clear, I'm not – like I'm – you know, I made peace with this a long time ago. But it was so foolish to – when the Wes Anderson X-Men came out –

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that if I was smart, I would have immediately had more videos in that series lined up, ready to go, to build momentum and capitalize on that success. And instead, I just didn't do anything for a month. I just kind of chilled out and took meetings. And then when I did make another video, it was completely different. So anyone who came in because of that one would see this new one and be like, that's not the same thing at all. That's not what I wanted. I'm out of here.

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And, yeah, and so I – but I learned the important lessons. And so, you know, like a year and a half later when I made my first video essay, which then, you know, very fortunately kind of like blew up and got a – you know, was seen by a very wide audience. I realized, oh, this worked. I need to immediately make more of these and run with this and build some momentum. And that then turned into the channel –

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making money and building a healthy audience and actually turning into something that worked. So again, it's fine. You make mistakes along the way. You learn a lot of lessons, and then hopefully it eventually works out.

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I'll say. I mean, it definitely did. It seems to me. And a question that I've been asking a lot of the guests on the podcast recently, including our mutual friend, Eddie Hamilton, who we talked about before we rolled. The best. The best. You know, one of the great editors, edited Top Gun Maverick, of course, and Mission Impossible movies from Rogue Nation onwards. I asked him, you know, what makes a good editor? And I've asked that to some of the other guests, some of the actors have had on what makes a good actor. And I wanted to pitch that question to you. But when I was writing it, I realized that like your...

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your discipline your job is so sort of multifaceted it's so like you know it because it could i could phrase it like what makes a good youtuber but also what makes a good sort of filmmaker what makes a good sort of like online creator there's so many different sort of permutations to what you do but i guess to sort of i guess to sort of strip it down to just what makes a good youtuber i mean what what does make a good youtuber in in the vein that you are

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That's a really good question because it's I don't know if I am a good YouTuber. It's funny because I I talk about this with with other friends who are like in this field a lot because I have I have several friends who are usually there are other people like like within the Nebula world where we have like more or less the same day job. We we make videos for the Internet.

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And so when we can commiserate about like analytics and strategy and thumbnails and stuff like that. And I think that always comes up is I watch I might watch less YouTube than any other professional YouTuber.

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I just so I'm I'm always so out of touch with what is going on on the platform or what other people are doing. And I'm kind of in this in this nice little bubble where it's like, well, my I have a loyal audience and my videos consistently perform solidly as much as I'm still stressed about the performance of each new video. Yeah.

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But so I'm not watching a lot of other stuff on YouTube, like trying to get tips or like see what other people are doing. And look, and to be clear, there is wonderful, like terrific stuff being made on YouTube. There are brilliant people who are making stuff.

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I just fundamentally am almost always going to choose to watch a movie instead when I'm sitting down to watch something. I mostly watch YouTube. I have an iPad in my kitchen. And when I'm cooking, I open up either YouTube or Nebula, and I watch a video in the background as I'm cooking. And then as soon as I finish cooking, I hit pause, I close the iPad, and I resume the video next time I have to cook a meal. And so...

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So yeah, so in terms of what makes a good YouTuber, I'm not the person to answer that question because I don't really know, but I will say. Look, YouTube is, while it is its own medium in some ways, it has so much in common with, you know, film and TV. And at the end of the day, we are...

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We are we're doing we're all doing some form of filmmaking. We we are are using like, you know, motion pictures and and cameras and sound and all that to make entertainment in in some way. And and ultimately it's I think what interests me above all else is.

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People having a unique perspective and a unique voice. Because I remember thinking about this in just the film video essay sphere, where there was a period of time, it was around when I had started to make a living doing this. It was around, I feel like, going into 2018. But there was a time when, because my first year...

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Making video essays. Because when I made my first one, it was like a one-off experiment. I never thought – there was no point where I was like, I'm going to become a video essayist. It was like, no, I make videos that are mostly short films, and I'm going to do a video essay as an experiment. And then that one did really well, so I realized I have to make more. But I just used the same general formula.

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Yeah.

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But then what I found was I was just using this format and I was kind of getting bored just doing the same thing. There wasn't a lot of room for creativity in the process. And I was noticing that there were so many channels emerging on YouTube.

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that all kind of looked and sounded the same because we were all just copying the same thing. We all had the same influences. And there was good stuff being made in there, but it was—it could be hard to tell who was—

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Like, who was, like, who really knew what they were talking about? Who had, like, a background? Who had, like, studied film? Either was coming from, like, a filmmaking background or a, like, you know, a film academic background? Or who was, like, a 17-year-old who had bought a good microphone and was copying other stuff but didn't, basically, but did not have a perspective? Yeah.

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And, and so that, and that's when I realized, like, I did not have an interest to have like a voice. And to be clear, a lot of these were kids who I'm sure have at this point, like developed into probably like people with interesting perspectives and voices. But what I realized was, oh, I have to, I've got a perspective, but I don't have, I'm not sure I have a, like,

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a voice in this medium yet, and I need to now make these videos, like, more unique to me. Like, do them in a way that only I can do them. And so, and that, I think, is, like, the channels that I'll watch are people, and again, this applies to artists of any kind, where it's like, oh yeah, is there, what is your perspective and what is your voice? Like, what ideas do you have that you're putting forth through your work

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But then how are you using the tools of the medium to execute that, to deliver these ideas in a way that only you can? What makes these videos exciting and enjoyable to watch? What are you giving me that I'm not going to get anywhere else? And I think that fundamentally is it, if that makes any sense. I feel like I took forever to answer that question.

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No, not at all. It makes perfect sense to me because I guess what you're saying is in some ways a variation of like, yeah, the more personal, the more universal. The fact that you're putting your own perspective and voice and personality into these videos, no matter how that comes off, that's what sets you apart. And I think that's a lesson for all of us, no matter how quirky or strange or different that might make us seem, that's actually what makes you unique.

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And that's, I think, certainly what comes through with your work is the fact that it is you. It's absolutely you. And obviously the team that you've got around you who are great, like, you know, Jay Torpy and the other writers you work with, your friends, and it all comes off. And I think that's absolutely, you know, that's the key, isn't it?

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Thank you. I mean, that's what I think. And it is a thing that's, you know, unique about YouTube because, and again, in a lot of ways, we're making television. It's just that we're making television with far fewer filters than traditional television has where…

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You know, a lot of very successful YouTube channels are a single person doing everything themselves, so it's just purely them. And then even when people, you know, if it's a bigger channel with, like, a bigger team behind it, it's still usually a team that's, like, a fraction the size of what you'd have on TV. And then, of course, there's no, like, studio. There's no executives to go through. And so...

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So yeah, so you're getting a really undiluted version of this person's personality and vision, which it's funny. I'm saying now like, oh, I barely watch any YouTube. And the more I say this, the more I'm like, damn, should I watch more YouTube? Because the way I'm describing it, it sounds amazing.

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Well, you said something interesting in a recent essay about, I think, in fact, it was your most recent essay on the music video, which is the democratization of art and technology has obviously been a fantastic thing. And it's meant that, you know, people like 17 year old kids, like you say, can pick up a camera and a microphone and pursue that elusive career, which I guess has become the career, I guess, for younger people, which is becoming a YouTuber or becoming an internet personality.

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sort of filmmaking set, sort of equipment, same sort of opportunity when like anyone can do it now. What do you think that does to the actual, I guess it's always the value of that? I completely agree. Yeah, it's, I was talking about it there in regards to the medium of the music video, but it, yeah,

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It is this thing where the internet and platforms like YouTube have... Obviously, they've just, like, fundamentally changed, like, almost every aspect of culture. But when it comes to filmmaking, it is this thing where it's, like, there's truly just pros and cons. And I think about this all the time where, like...

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I have the career that I have. I have an audience. I get to—I'm in a very fortunate, lucky position where as much as I'm still not where I would like to be— again, this is a thing that I fell into on the way to trying to get to, like, the actual ultimate dream— I have a lovely job where I kind of make whatever I want.

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And it pays the rent. It is, you know, I work unhealthy hours and I'm tired and stressed out all the time, but I'm also like, but it's because I care about what I'm doing. And making a living doing something that you care about is really kind of like...

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All we can ask for. That's what I've always wanted to do. And so I'm very fortunate there. And I have this opportunity and this career because of the internet. And so it creates these opportunities. It allows independent people without having to go through the gatekeepers to be able to do this.

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It is then tricky because that like so you can get there, you can build an audience. But then to move beyond that, that's where it can be tough, because in a more traditional world when it's like everything has to go through studios or companies or media outlets or whatever, it is it is something where like that always says that.

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Like, if a person is published somewhere, you know, it means like, okay, they have been validated by this publishing company. They, like, people, like, arbiters of taste and quality have decided that this person is worth publishing their book, and therefore it is worth taking seriously.

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And, you know, but in the days where like, and I'm just talking about books, but sure, this works. I when anyone can self publish a book, and there are great self published books, but also anyone can self publish a book. So, you know, it's been democratized. And that means it can be harder to like, you know, tough to find the quality thing there, because it kind of has been devalued a little bit. And like, in terms of filmmaking, you know,

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Yeah, I can say from experience that even though I am doing...

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Filmmaking work. I am using the tools of cinema to do stuff, to create stuff in the same medium that, you know, $200 million movies are. With obviously fewer people and fewer resources, but it's like, it's fundamentally the same stuff. You know, you're shooting, you're writing a script, you're shooting shots, you're, you know, putting those shots together. And it's the same basic thing, but to people in the more traditional medium.

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film and TV industry, they look at YouTube where everything is devalued and everything is democratized as if it is some totally different thing because it is harder to... You can get a lot of views, but it's still harder to get taken seriously as like, oh, this is a quality thing because it's like, who has validated this? Like, what studio has decided to green light this? Who has this passed through? Yeah.

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And so, yeah, and that's where it gets a little, like, tricky and frustrating to me just when trying to move beyond, like, yeah, just beyond YouTube, where everything there is just like, you know, it's like...

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And it's the funny thing where I bring this up in videos all the time, where it's the thing about streaming, where we're streaming when suddenly everything is just dumped into this ocean there together, as opposed to like, oh, it's a movie that you have to go pay money to see in theaters. But now it's just, oh, it's just there alongside a trillion other things. And it does devalue everything when it makes, you know, when it doesn't have to pass through the same space.

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like the same hoops to get made when it doesn't, when you, you don't have to go to any effort to watch it. Yeah. It's again, to, to, yeah, the TLDR version of this is it creates opportunities, but then it can make, but then it does kind of like, you know, devalue everything a little bit. And, and I've got mixed feelings about it, but again, I am very grateful to have the career that I have.

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I hear you. It reminds me in some ways what you said about, I remember when every film of painting initially closed their doors and wrapped up with their last essay. And Tony Zhu was saying in his great essay, A Postmortem, that YouTube was fantastic and the model that they'd built to do video essays and the work that they'd done, which had brought them all that success, was great. But also you could become a bit of a prisoner of it because it was reverse engineered from YouTube's algorithms and the way it works.

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And I guess it's always I hear a bit of that and what you're saying about how YouTube can be is obviously fantastic and the democratization is great, but it can also it has its limits as well as its virtues. It does. Yeah, it's it is really like I feel like, you know, I talked about it in the music videos episode, but there is like there still isn't really like a YouTube to Hollywood pipeline.

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And, like, all the instances where someone has started on YouTube and then managed to make a successful, like, filmmaking career, those all happened because the person or the people involved basically, you know, they took, you know, whatever money they had made on YouTube and then basically, like, independently formed.

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financed, like, an indie film, which is just the classic way that, like, that's the same pipeline that existed in, like, the early 90s. That isn't, like, um... That's the same way that, like, Kevin Smith made Clerks. It's, like, this is not a new pipeline. It's just, like, this is simply, like, YouTube is just how the people made the money that allowed them to finance the movie. And this... It might be changing, but, yeah, but it's, like, yeah, with, like, um...

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You know, with, you know, Tony at Every Turn of a Painting, I'd say this as if I know him personally. I do not. But yeah, but it was something where, you know, I remember when the channel, you know, ended initially. And I, like, I think a lot of people were excited, like, oh, are they going to go, like, make movies now? Yeah.

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And they didn't. And again, I don't know exactly what their ambitions were. I know they made video essays for the Criterion Collection, which is very cool. They did an episode of the David Fincher show Voir, which was basically Netflix being like, what if we spent a lot of money to make video essays for it?

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Uh, and, um, and then they returned to YouTube and, uh, and then also, you know, like released a short film, but like, you know, they come from a filmmaking background and like, that's the perspective that they're coming at it all with. And, uh, and it does seem like the, the infrastructure wasn't really there to like allow them like a, a, a clear jump from, you know, from this place to like, you know, to bigger things. And, uh,

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And yeah, truly, if I ever meet those guys, I would love to talk to them about this. Same. I mean, I've actually I've tried to get on the pod many times. I mean, I'm still still plugging away. But I mean, they because they were so yeah, they were so brilliant. They are so brilliant in their work. And I hear what you're saying about, yeah, that pipeline doesn't exist between YouTube and filmmaking. And I guess in some ways, because I know that you were and still are, I assume, a big fan of the Waverly Films guys, you know, John Watts.

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You know, who I guess were, you talk about the exceptions with filmmakers who have sort of jumped from YouTube to filmmaking. John Watts being, of course, the most famous one, perhaps, of the Spider-Man movies. But as you say, he was doing, that didn't come about because of YouTube. It was almost just alongside YouTube that he was able to do that. Yeah, their stuff, those guys, like, you know, it's funny how, like, some of them are now, like...

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you know, in the like, like the Disney world, because, you know, like Jake Schreier, another Waverly Films guy, you know, he made Thunderbolts and now he's doing X-Men. Christopher, yeah, Christopher Ford co-created Skeleton Crew with John Watts. And but those guys, I was so obsessed with their internet short films, which they were making even before YouTube. Originally, I was watching those on WaverlyFilms.com.

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But with those guys, what really launched their careers wasn't the little funny comedy videos that I was really into. They were doing music videos and commercials at the same time. It's the...

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The thing with TV commercials is it's harder to know who directed what. Because, like, music videos always used to have the little, like, credits boxes in the bottom corner, but commercials don't have that. And so you often don't know who's directing commercials. And that was where it really launched their career. It wasn't, like, the YouTube stuff. It was, like, oh, doing, like, more, like, you know, higher-end commercial work. And so...

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So, yeah, I mean, clearly it worked out really well for those guys. And, yeah, and this is a thing where I'm like, I've got my own things that I'm kind of, you know, like, there's no, you can't, you can't, you only, in this world, you can only plan so much because so much is, comes down to like luck and just like, oh, who's going to watch a thing you made and then reach out to you?

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But, yeah, so in terms of, like, how to get to where I would like to be, I've got, you know, some kind of, like, loose strategies about, like, oh, yeah, where I might, how I might try to get there. But, yeah, I do think sometimes, man, it would be nice to be, like, my age now, but in, like...

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1999 and be able to like, God, what I would give to like make some music videos and commercials, I would still love to do commercials still actually like, you know, those, you know, have still cost real money and can actually like, you know, be more of a direct route to like to Hollywood. Music videos aren't quite going to do that anymore. I just think they're cool.

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Very cool. As is your essay on them. I mean, we've talked around it. I think you've talked a lot about it already. But like, what is the goal then for you in terms of your filmmaking? Because, you know, is it to jump to feature film directing and beyond? Yeah.

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Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's, uh... So, it's really... It's funny. There was, uh... You know... Like I said before, you know, the goal was always direct movies, and then I fell into doing YouTube. And then when I was doing YouTube...

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I feel like I always had some kind of like vague, as I know now, stupid idea where I'm like, oh, what I'll do is I'll work on the channel and then try to like build it to the point where, I don't know, we've got like a million subscribers and it's making more money. And then once this is like a little more self-sustaining or it's like profitable enough where I can take some time off, then I'll take some time off.

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And I'll, you know, go make a like a, you know, like a tiny budget movie and then that'll get places. And then suddenly, you know, you pause and you look back and go, whoa, I've been doing this for like seven years. And and and and and eventually you realize like, oh, unless you have like millions and millions of subscribers that are making like.

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crazy money on YouTube, there's never a moment where you hit a number and suddenly the film industry is like, oh, congratulations, you have 1 million subscribers and now we're going to offer you a deal to make a movie. No, it's still... There's no pipeline. It's still just the same thing where, you know, if you want to... People will only hire you to do what you've already done.

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And so if you want to make movies, you have to go make a movie on your own first. And then maybe people will see it and be like, OK, you've now done it already. So we have evidence that you can do this. We'll now let you do it again. And so, yeah, I just realized that there's no way, like, this isn't going to happen unless I do it myself.

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And so it kind of for me, it went in a funny way where I what is now technically my debut feature film was basically like an inside joke movie that was meant to be a 30 minute short that was just for like our like, you know, the very like niche audience that we have that had already watched like a year and a half's worth of YouTube videos.

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This is our micro-budget movie, Night of the Coconut, which again was never supposed to be a feature. It was just supposed to be our little season finale to our weird experiment in 2020. But what happened there was...

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We made that and it became a 90-minute movie because, you know, it spun out of control because we didn't know what we were doing. But once it was 90 minutes long, Dave Wiskus, the founder of Nebula, who's been one of my good friends and collaborators for years, he was like, oh, we have a movie. Well, we're going to treat this like a real movie. We're going to do a premiere at the IFC Center in New York.

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And we did all this stuff. And then when we released it, it did so well on Nebula. So many people signed up to watch this thing that the Nebula was like, oh, wait, we should make more movies. And so that got that my like dumb little like joke movie. Not to like belittle a movie. I am proud of it in many ways. But that is how Nebula got started.

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like getting into narrative film production and and actively trying to. And this is the thing that we talk about, like daily trying to build the bridge between YouTube and more traditional Hollywood that has not existed.

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And so, yeah, so then after I did Night of the Coconut and they were like, what would you like to do next? I was like, well, I want to make a short film with a with more of a budget so that we can have a crew that's not just me doing everything. And so and that was always my plans, like do do a short, like just learn what it's like to. Yeah.

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to like run a set with, you know, that's not just my high school friends. That is, you know, like a set of trained professionals and a cast that is not just my high school friends, but is, you know, a cast of professional actors who we have cast for this project. And I always do that. I wanted to do that on a short so I could learn on a smaller scale thing where the stakes aren't quite as high. And then after that, then move to a feature.

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So, so yeah, so now, now that this is the ball has gotten rolling and it's still, you know, the videos are the day job that, you know, pays my rent because, you know, New York City rent famously not cheap.

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Um, but yeah, but, but now there is just the, but, but now there's a clearer plan for like, okay, I know where we're aiming for and, and let's like every day, let's try to be moving. Like, even if it's like an incremental like step, let's try to be moving forward toward like, yeah.

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directing things, ideally movies, but, you know, narrative things of some kind for a living. And yeah, so that's, you know, we're getting back to the original plan.

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Yeah. Patrick Willem is a man in his dream, you could say. I mean, what you just said there reminded me a bit of Coppola, you know, Zotrope. I mean, it almost sounds like Nebula, in a way, it reminds me of like, yeah, one of those sort of little independent studios that get set up like Coppola did with Zotrope. And just to get stuff made and get interesting movies made that does not have to go through the studio system. What you were just saying there just reminded me of that approach, you know, which is great.

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Right. Which is fantastic. It is. And I, you know, I'd like to read. I'm not like in charge of finances, but I'd like to think we're being maybe a little bit more responsible with the spending than Francis was doing one from the heart. But but yeah, but it is one of those things where, look, many people have dreamed of like, how can we make stuff?

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without having to, like, jump through all of the hoops of the traditional studio system? And how can we build, like, a place for ourselves where we can, you know, do what we want to do? And obviously, like, you know, with, you know, what we're doing with Nebula, it's going to, like...

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Again, Nebula does not have VC money. It is funded by subscriptions. And so it's not like Nebula is going to be able to drop millions of dollars on films. It's really something like there will obviously be some form of collaboration probably with...

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you know, like, you know, people and organizations within the traditional film industry. And, but yeah, so again, I'm also not in charge of like the larger decisions there. I am, I'm, you know,

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I'm in conversations, but yeah, I'm not the person to ask about exactly what Nebula is doing and what all of its business strategies are, because that's above my pay rate. For sure. But it is fantastic that you've been able to get these things like The Dinner Plan made, and I know other creators as well have been able to do that. I mean, when it comes to what movies you'd like to make in an ideal world, what kind of movies would you like to make ideally?

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Uh, that's a great question. Um, I've, I've, for a long time, I've kind of had this, like, this list of, uh, movies I, like, you know, original movies I would like to make in different tiers, where, cause like, I'm being realistic about this. I'm not, I'm not, you know, there's no way I'm thinking like, oh yeah, I think I'll go right from a short to like, then being like, give me like a $150 million to make a sci-fi epic. Yeah.

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No, it's like I've always had like, oh, so here's my like $10 million movie. And then if that works out, then I've got my $20 million movie. And then if we're going to get greedy, I've got my $50 million movie. It really is something where...

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Um, I, this is such a disappointing answer, but I would love to kind of do everything where, you know, I, not, not that I want to like exactly mimic his career, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I, anyone who knows me knows that I'm like kind of obsessed with Steven Soderbergh.

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And just his ability to... Because he's so obsessed with the process. And he works so fast that he can just jump from one thing to the next so quickly. And everything is a different genre. And being able to be that versatile, I think, is so inspiring. And so it is a thing where I think...

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A lot of the things that I, you know, would really love to do are things that I simply have never been able to, where I'm almost like, God, to make an action movie, to shoot a car chase. It's like, you know, I don't want to have a career doing like, I'm like only a car chase guy, but I'm like, man. But so like, you know.

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I would love to make an action movie. I, I, I'm really like I do. And I would love to make multiple action movies because I do kind of fundamentally think that action is maybe action and, and musicals are maybe the ultimate, uh,

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thing that cinema can do because it is like purely like visual storytelling. It's like, like an action scene does like, again, they were doing it in the silent era. It is just like, it is just the, the, the most foundational aspects of cinema as a medium. And then, and then like musicals, it's like, right. And then, and that's adding, uh,

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sounds to it. And like this, this is the like, you know, this is a thing that the medium can do better than any other medium. And so it's funny, but in terms of like talking about what I'm, I want to make, because there's a project that I directed last year, that is not the kind of thing that I ever would have thought that I would make. And

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It was so there's a project that Nebula made. It was shot last summer. It's called Subliminal. It's kind of a. I'm not sure exactly how we're, you know, we're branding it these days, but basically it's kind of like a set of like short films that are all that all do exist within the same universe. And and this was one. And part of why I was excited about it was.

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I was asked to direct one, and I was kind of assigned one of the films where it was the first time that I would be making something that I had not originated, where I had no involvement in the story being put together. It was just like, hey...

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Would would you please make this one? And this thing is basically a like a it's like a 25 minute like psychological drama entirely set within a car that's just like driving through New York.

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And it's like a one-act play in a car. And so it is all... I've mostly done stuff that's comedic in some way. This is all drama. This is a very small location, so you're limited with what you can do visually. It's so reliant on the performances, so it involves like...

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A collaboration with the actors in a way that I haven't done before. I have no experience directing theater. This is the kind of thing that normally I would just be very nervous about doing. I'm just being like, that's not my thing. I like, yeah, that kind of scares me. I'm not sure that's like, you know, what I'm best suited for.

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And to make a long story short, it went really well, and it turned out very well. And everyone at Nebula is very happy with it. And it was exciting to do that thing that I never would have suggested myself for. And so after that, I'm just like, oh, I feel like this has now kind of, like, opened me up to even, like, potentially making things that I would not have otherwise thought I wanted to. But that said...

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I'm saying all of this while the feature that I am currently developing, that I've been developing for the last year and a half, is a comedy. It is a very fast-paced comedy. So it's more back to the kind of thing that I've done before, but in a new way with new challenges. But yeah, I just... I kind of want to do everything. I want to... I just... I love...

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Not to get, like, you know, too overly sincere about, like, I just love movies, man. But I just, you know, getting this, like, the, I think the, like, the craft of filmmaking is such a, like, a magical, wonderful thing. And I just want to do a lot of it.

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And, and do different things with it. And, and, and just, yeah. And, you know, like, I've been pretty limited so far in what I've been able to do just because of, you know, like, like, like money and resources and that kind of thing. And so...

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And I also don't want to be here and be like, oh, let me just tell you about all of my movie ideas that I've got. I hate talking about ideas that are not at least – where there isn't at least a script. I never want to hear about someone being like, oh, I have an idea for a movie.

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Because everyone's got an idea for a movie. But it's like, until you've at least, like, you know, made some progress on it, at least, like, you know, turned it into writing, it doesn't feel like anything real. And so...

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Yeah. At this point, I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. I should just stop talking. No, it's fantastic, man. It's fantastic. I mean, it reminds me of what you just said there about not talking about movie ideas before they've come to fruition. It reminds me a bit of that superstition I've heard sometimes filmmakers talk about where it's like, I've got an idea, we're talking about doing it, but it's not locked in yet, so I can't say anything. It reminds me a bit of that, what you're saying, that superstition.

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Yeah, that's the thing. It's things, especially like in this industry, things fall apart all the time. You know, like every great, hugely successful director

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has like a list of projects that came very close to happening and then didn't. And then those were things that like often like had scripts and were like almost ready to shoot. And so, and so, yeah, I don't want to be here, especially now when I'm like, I don't have like

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you know, like even the power to get anything made and be here and be like, oh, let me pitch you my upcoming projects. But yeah, you know, in a perfect world, I would make the thing that I'm developing now, which would be a much bigger budget than I have worked with before, but still low as far as movie budgets go. And then would love to go from that to then a slightly higher budget. And I like...

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I love the idea of like what doesn't happen enough anymore is because I will say I do. While I have like a very broad tastes in movies in terms of what I'm interested in making myself, those do lean a little bit more commercial. I think I don't see myself making at least, you know, I say this now. I don't see myself making like, you know,

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really slow, ambiguous, challenging art house movies. That's just not what I lean towards doing myself. And so, yeah, to make...

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You know, a good mainstream studio film, I think, is a real art. I think I would love to do. And something that doesn't happen enough anymore is someone kind of like steadily leveling up with each of their movies. It's...

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You know, what you see so often now is someone makes one indie movie for like $1 million and they get hired to make a $200 million movie where you can, you know, barely see any of their style or their voice there because they kind of get drowned by the machine.

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And that's why even though it only took him a few movies to move up, Ryan Coogler is one who I think did it kind of like the more traditional way, which is where he made an indie movie that was well-received. He made a kind of like mid-budget-ish studio film, like working within Hollywood. And then he went and then had, I guess, enough pull there to kind of have it like –

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Make it more his own and then made like a blockbuster from there. And that kind of thing of like, I like the leveling up. I like the going from like the 5 million to the 10 million to the 30 million, that kind of thing where...

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Because, yeah, like so much of this is just like it's a learning experience and and you just you just have to like it's a matter of like putting in the time and getting better at it and and like learning how to work with new tools.

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Absolutely. And I did want to ask, actually, on that subject, like, which director, because you were saying that not many directors get the opportunity to go for that leveling up process these days. I mean, are there any filmmakers out there, I guess like Ryan Cougar being one, but are there any others that you think have managed to break through and sort of continue that leveling up tradition of going from, like, one budget to another and getting better as they go along? Yeah, well, it's funny. These days, we have so few of the...

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you know, kind of like the journeyman directors that we used to, where, you know, I remember talking about this with a friend who, they were bemoaning the lack of Richard Donners nowadays, where it's like, we just need someone where, like, they're not an auteur, but they can do everything well, and they just make a variety of movies, like that kind of thing. And now, these days, it's like, you know, it's like we have, okay, we've got, like...

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like James Mangold is kind of like the journeyman guy. And, uh, it's like, it's him. And it's like, I don't know. Uh, you know, within like, like the mainstream world is like, you know, I think Matt Reeves kind of did the nice, like, like leveling up. Well, uh, like he, I think he pulled that off. Um, uh,

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Uh, it's actually, James Gray, I think, is a good example of, uh, of one where, you know, he went from, like, you know, kind of, like, just smaller dramas to, like, a little bit bigger. And then, like, one's a period piece, then, like, Lost City of Zed. That's, it's not a blockbuster, but that's, that's bigger and that's more ambitious. And so then when he makes the jump to, like...

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Ad Astra, which is funny because it's like an art house movie that costs like $80 million and was like released by a major studio. But at that point, it's like, oh, yeah, no, this is a movie. This is a like expensive studio film that so feels like one of his movies. And he still talks about how like, you know, there were still things the studio forced him to do on that because like the money involved. But like,

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I don't see him getting lost there. That felt like he had moved up with each film and was ready for something of that scale. And even things where it's like, even though his movies are smaller and more idiosyncratic, it's like...

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Yeah. When like PTA made the jump to like one battle after another, it's like, oh, yeah, this is this is an expensive film that so fundamentally feels like one of his movies with like no compromise because he had just like been working at this for so many years that like when suddenly when he has these like like more resources, he knows what to do with them.

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Absolutely. And in some ways, you could even argue Soderbergh is kind of in that camp. He kind of bridges the camps of like, he's an auteur, but also he has that sort of journeyman versatility that, you know, that is, I guess, part and parcel of the kind of director you're talking about where they can kind of do anything and send their hand to any kind of genre, any kind of story, but make it their own as well. He kind of sort of bridges those camps quite beautifully.

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Yeah, and especially in the 90s, which is kind of this wilderness period for Soderbergh where he comes out the gate so hot. And then he has all of these years where he's talking about it. He's like, I was kind of floundering. I didn't know what to do. But then you get the point when he does out of sight and pulls it all together. And he's like – and he'd been –

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Spent all those years making, and there's an interesting, like, I really like Schizopolis and, and like, like, you know, was it the underneath doesn't totally work, but it's interesting. And you see how like, oh, he would do a better version of a lot of this stuff years later. But he was like learning a lot and working with a lot of really talented people.

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And then he kind of pulls it together and like out of sight is like a phenomenal like mid budget like crime movie released by a studio with movie stars. And then from there, it's like obviously, you know, doing that then allows him to like, you know, make the jump up.

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to like Traffic and Aaron Brockovich, and then those allow him to make the jump up to like, you know, the Oceans movies, and then he can make the jump up. And I think like Che is like the most expensive thing he's ever made. And so, yeah, that is a guy who absolutely just like was, you know,

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like very much was like learning all the time, gaining experiences and, and just like improve, like making one of like improving how he, like, you know, how he did his work. And, and I, you know, and I, I cannot talk about Soderbergh and all this without, of course, just have to briefly mention it because I have to like make sure people never forget about it. We came so close to having a Steven Soderbergh Star Wars movie. And I am, and, and I am never going to give up hope that,

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It could still happen. This will haunt me to my dying day if it doesn't. I'm just like, look, I'm ready to start an insufferable Snyder Cut style campaign for this movie. But that's the thing where I'm just like, look, that's a guy who's made big, successful studio films, but he has never made a movie on that scale. And clearly he has the experience and the skill set. And I want to see what it would be like.

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Absolutely. I mean, it reminds me, that story reminds me of Christopher McQuarrie's pitched Superman project after Fallout, you know, and then the studio just basically said, we're not interested. And it's like, how can you say that when you've got Christopher McQuarrie and Henry Cavill both, you know, apparently with a great idea, you know, and I'm sure they would have been great. I want to know what that idea was so bad. I know, because I've heard him talk about like the first five minutes, no dialogue, but perfectly sets up the whole, his whole take on Superman. Like, okay, I'm in. Yeah, I'm in already. Come on.

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yeah i know i know alas but i do hear what you say about soda big as well i i do completely i i wonder where that guy gets his energy from because i remember like 10 years ago he was saying he was talking about retiring i thought okay you know i'm gonna i'm done and then what unsane comes out is that no i'm back oh and then like it's even his i i loved this is one of my favorite things ever i could talk about this forever um

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So, Soderbergh's un-retirement is the funniest thing in the world to me, because he retired. After Behind the Candelabra, he was like, I am retiring. I'm going to go paint. And he does that for like a year. And do you know what his first project out of retirement was?

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Was it him shooting Majumite 2? Or is that not the top? That was later. That was later? Oh, no. The way he unretired was to make The Nick, the TV series where he directed, shot, and edited 20 hours of television himself.

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It is like it's not just making a movie. It's like he did 20 hours of work. And again, he is like the camera operator and the editor on all of this. There's an incredible article, I think it was in Vulture, that Matt Zoller Sites wrote where he visited the set of The Nick and he's describing watching Soderbergh work.

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And is describing it as, like, basically it's like watching, like, a peak athlete work. Because it is, like, so much of it is him literally, like, sprinting down hallways with the camera himself. And just the, like, the control and efficiency of what he's doing. And then, like, at the end of each day he gets in, because they're shooting in New York and he lives in New York...

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He gets in a van and edits everything he shot that day on his ride home. And then he gets home and he and his wife, like, go see a movie. And it's a thing that's, like, known in New York that, like, people like Cruz love working on Soderbergh projects because they wrap early or on time every day. Wow. Yeah. Which is a feat. But, yeah, seeing the movies he's making, you know, the fact that he can do that is so efficient. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Go back to something that you were saying earlier about how, again, like Eddie Hamilton, like before we started rolling, you were telling me a bit of the story of you going over to Rome, right? And Eddie bringing you over with Macquarie and like you getting to go there. I mean, you've got to tell me that story. I've got to hear that story. What was that like? It was so, okay.

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There's a very, very long version of this story that I will try to condense it a little bit while still hitting all the highlights. So it was this thing. It began with...

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Yeah, it was early 2023. My friend Emma Logsdon, who has worked on the channel for years, is not currently actively working on stuff. Basically, Emma had been my intern in 2019, and then when we became friends, and then just became—would work on the channel, just doing kind of a bunch of stuff. And then eventually, because Emma's been trying to make a career as an editor—

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And I will say shout out again to our friend Eddie. Emma and Eddie got connected. At one point, Eddie just like, you know, was like, hey, can I just we just like chat on the phone and I can give you like career advice. So like Eddie gave Emma this great career advice and Eddie is like the nicest guy in the world.

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And and Emma, you know, had to stop working for me like regularly because they got like actual editing work working on like feature films and stuff like that. So but at the time, Emma pitched me this idea of like, hey, what if to like kind of get the audience engaged and get them given the thing to be excited about? We started a campaign for something that's like kind of silly. Yeah.

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but also somewhat attainable. I feel like sort of inspired by the thing that years ago, the McElroy brothers did trying to like, be like be in like trolls to like cast us in like voice cameos and trolls to or whatever. And, and so we thought about this and I was like, okay,

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I love the Mission Impossible movies. There's a new one coming out this summer. It's way too greedy to be like, oh, I want to be in the movie. Also, the movie's already shot. But I was like, but I would love to attend the premiere, the world premiere. I'm just like, that's all. That's like, and so, and then Emma pitched the title, Mission Impossible, which it was right there.

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And so we started this thing of just like, yeah, I'm just like, look, Paramount Pictures, I would like one ticket. I will cover my own travel to wherever in the world it is, but I would like a ticket. And it was just like a fun running bit through the videos. Yeah.

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Anyway, and I didn't really know what more to do with it. And then it was funny, people on Twitter started this thing where they would just Photoshop me into images from Mission Impossible movies and post those every day so the fans were getting into it. And then one day, I just out of nowhere got a text from Eddie Hamilton.

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We have never interacted before. I didn't think he knew who I was. We have mutual friends, Drew Taylor and Charles Hood from the Like the Fuse podcast, where, you know, like he got my number from them. And he just reached out and was like, hey, Patrick. So, you know, I saw the video, showed it to McHugh. We talked to Paramount. You know, hopefully we'll see you in Rome.

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And then it was this funny thing where I don't hear anything from Paramount. Like this whole time. And then every one of the other checks in is like, hey, so have you heard anything? I'm like, nope. No, I have not heard anything. But you have told me that it's going to happen. And so eventually got to the point where I was like, okay, I'm just going to buy a refundable plane ticket to Rome. And but still, it gets to the point where...

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I think I'm like 48 hours before my flight is going to take off, and I still have not heard anything from Paramount about if I'm in or not. Eventually, I...

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Through some other favors from other people who knew publicists of Paramount, eventually—again, I'm trying to make a long story short—I discover that I was not actually on the list for the Rome premiere, but—

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But through another friend, I was able to get on the list. So I went to Rome. I, you know, I went to the premiere, hung out with Eddie. We just like he, his wife, and I just kind of like walked around Rome hanging out. And so I but then I found out exactly what happened. So what happened was when Eddie and McHugh put in the request like invite Patrick to the premiere,

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The Paramount publicists, I think, looked me up and were like, oh, he's in New York. We'll invite him to the New York premiere. So then I get the invite to the New York premiere, but the New York premiere invite is like a VIP ticket. It is the first and only time in my life I have walked a red carpet.

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Uh, so I'm, like, on, like, Getty images there, like, like, on that red carpet where I... It had... There's a very stressful, surreal experience of being the last person in the group I was there with, uh, to, like, walk across. And the publicist says to me, like, hey, uh, so, uh, you'll have to go kind of quickly because Tom's arriving soon. And so suddenly I'm, like, I have the pressure of, like, if I take too long on the red carpet, I will delay Tom Cruise, which...

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I cannot do. And then I stand out there, you know, like, I don't know what to do with my hands or how to pose or whatever. It's all very surreal. And then they bring us upstairs to just, like, the VIP area. And there's, like, 20 of us there. And I looked everyone up the next day to find out who are these people. And a bunch of them were apparently famous, like, film TikTok people. And then a bunch of them were apparently famous Peloton instructors. Yeah.

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who I'm guessing all had the same agent, and their agent was like, here's an event, go to this. But yeah, a funny collection of people to be with. And I brought my friend, Siddharth Avlaka, who's a great film critic, just as my plus one. And then while we're up there, we're just like, you know, we have like a view, like looking down to like the red carpet, and there's like free champagne and stuff like that. And we're like, oh yeah, I guess we just hang out here until the movie starts. And then...

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Suddenly the elevator doors open like like 20 feet away and just Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie just like get out and then they just like hang out and like talk to everybody, which I did not think was going to happen. I was just like, oh, this is going to be a fun premiere. We get to watch the movie again. I was not mentally prepared for like meeting Tom Cruise.

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And so, yeah, that was a, you know, it was a surreal experience. And especially as we're sitting there like panicking going like, what do we say to Tom? What on earth do you say to this man who you have just been aware of your entire life who has existed solely on screens? And yeah, and you know, I don't know. Have you met Tom? Yeah.

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I've never. No, I've never had the pleasure. Obviously, would love to never had the pleasure. You got to get him on the podcast. Well, tell me how to do it. And I will. You know, I don't know. I don't know. It truly is the thing that everyone says where when you talk to him, he locks on direct eye contact. He is in no rush.

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to get out of that conversation or to go anywhere. He's not looking around for, like, someone else to talk to. He is there, fully engaged in what you're saying as your brain is screaming to you. Tom Cruise is listening to the words coming out of my mouth, and I don't know what I'm saying right now, but I hope it's not stupid because if this man is, like, if I were, like, to be rude, I would, you know, how would I live with myself? And so at the end of it, I don't know, it was, like, maybe, like, two or three minutes, I was like, I think...

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that went okay. I remember almost none of it, clearly, other than being perceived by him. Very surreal. And then it was funny, like, then going over to, like, to Macquarie, who immediately just went, Patrick Willems, there you are. And, because we, I don't know, we'd exchanged, like, some Twitter DMs, and he had, you know, knew about the silly campaign to get me there. And, uh,

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Yeah, very, very different because, you know, McHugh is like a dude. He's like, you know, Tom is so hyper-focused and that's what we love about him. And McHugh is just like, you know, he's just like a nice guy. And to be clear, Tom, extremely nice, but just very different energies.

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So anyway, that is the condensed version of how I met Eddie and how I ended up at two Mission Impossible premieres.

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That's absolutely amazing. I mean, you just said, your memory of what you talked about with Tom slipped a bit, but do you have any recollection of what you guys talked about? Or with McHugh, you know? Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. So the thing that I... Okay, here's what I find so funny about when we talk to Tom. It's like when I talk to him, my only move was I'm going to bring up...

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The few mutual friends we each have, such as Eddie. I was like, oh, you know, Eddie invited me. That's why I'm here. He's the best. But also my friends Drew and Charles, who had the Mission Impossible podcast, who they at that point interviewed Tom multiple times. And so...

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You know, and I think Tom was involved in, like, you know, getting, like, Paramount to, like, to bring them on as, like, the official Mission Impossible podcast. And so I was like, oh, and I've known those guys for years. And so I was like, okay, I will bring up the people that we both know, the only thing we have in common. And what was funny was, so when, you know, we're kind of like, we're like the last to get over to, like, the group to, like, kind of greet Tom and McHugh.

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And we end up kind of like wedged up against like a trash can and we're sitting there being like, we're where we belong. We shouldn't be here. We should just be in the trash. And like Tom's moving through. And at first I'm thinking like, okay, wait, I think Macquarie knows who I am. So if we could talk to him first, then he could introduce us to Tom. And then it's like smoother. We're like, okay.

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no, Tom is coming this way first. It's like, we're going to talk to Tom first. And so we're at a point where he's talking to these women next to us. So he's like two feet away. And he starts to take a photograph with them. And then Tom, as he's like, as they're getting the photo ready, Tom turns and reaches out his hands to Sathanth. And he goes, hi, I'm Tom. And Sathanth goes, hi, I'm Sathanth. And Tom goes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I have to finish taking this photo and then I'll be right with you. And Sazan goes, well, you shook my hand first. And Tom goes, I did. I did?

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That's on me. That's my bad. And then he goes back to take the photo, and we're just like, what the fuck? Are you joking around with Tom Cruise? What is going on? And so Saddam's move, so Saddam is from India, and his topic to talk about with Tom is to bring up how Mission Impossible 2 has turned out to be the most influential movie on Indian action movies in, like, the past 20 years.

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And, uh, and so he brings this up and, uh, and, and, and Tom of course is like, yeah, I love those movies. Like what they're doing India, like with the music and the action. I love it. They're, they're, they're so great. And, uh, Sazanth brought up this, uh, this movie that had come out that year, uh, this Shah Rukh Khan movie called Patan that is so influenced by MI2 and, uh,

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And the only exchange where I can remember what I said to Tom was when Sainz brought up, he was like, oh yeah, have you seen this movie Patan from a few months back with Shah Rukh Khan? Tom's like, no, I haven't seen that yet. And I went, Tom, you gotta see Patan.

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And I hope he has checked it out since then. But yeah, a really wild experience that, again, thank you, Eddie, and thank you, Chris, for...

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You know, for checking out the videos and for inviting me to the premiere. A really, really fun experience. And yeah, very surreal. And again, I don't do this thing regularly. I don't meet a lot of A-list movie stars. I will say it has been funny. The couple movie stars I've met since then...

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have seemed so normal and low stakes in comparison, because after talking to Tom Cruise, everyone else is just like a person. And so it did kind of just like, I guess, just like restabilize my perception of famous people now, where I'm like, oh, right, yeah, anyone else is just easy to talk to. There's no more being starstruck after that.

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I hear that. I hear that. And of course, you know, you have evidence that it happened because you got the photo of Cruz. There's a photo. I remember seeing it when you when it first happened. Yeah. I got a photo where it looks like my brain is on fire as I as I'm like, you know, I'm trying to process what what is going on.

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Yeah, very surreal, but a good day. I did want to ask as well, as we're on the subject of Cruise, do you have a favorite Cruise film or performance, or maybe even free, if you had to do like free? Oh, yeah. Do you have? Absolutely. What are your go-tos? It's funny. So yesterday when I went, actually, I went to, they've re-released both Top Gun movies. And yesterday, some friends and I did a double feature of both of them. So the first one at 1 p.m.,

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got a quick lunch, saw Maverick at 4 p.m. And I don't know if you've seen, do they have, are they doing the re-release over in the UK as well? They are, yeah. In fact, I'm going to try and persuade my girlfriend to go this weekend. She's never seen any of them either.

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mits opkin films so damn well worth it and and you know the the double feature might be harder to persuade her to to do the double feature but uh but what i think well worth it but before each of the movies they're playing this incredible thing where so obviously cruise has the new movie digger coming out uh later this year and this is ostensibly a tray a new trailer for digger

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But it is, it's one of the, it's one of the best things I've seen all year. Like, after we watched the first Top Gun, going back to Maverick, we realized, like, we get to watch the Digger trailer again. Because what it is, it is like a three, it's got to be at least three minutes, just a three-minute montage of,

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of every single movie Cruise has ever been in, right up to, it includes his cameo in Austin Powers and Goldmember. And it's so well edited. It like, you watch this thing and you believe in the power of movies.

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It's so wild. And then the montage, it ends with like a Kittredge line from either, I think probably Final Reckoning, about how like every choice, everything has led to this. And then it goes into like 30 seconds of footage from Digger. And so it presents it as like...

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This man has made the greatest movies in the past 40 years, and now it has all been leading to this moment where he is going to be a crazy old Southern man. And the footage looks incredible, to be clear. But, like, I'm just like, oh, the Austro campaign is starting, right, like, with this. But so watching this montage and just seeing all of these movies, I'm just like, God, look at all these things. I think the best Tom Cruise movie and the best Tom Cruise performance is Jerry Maguire.

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Ooh. And hot take. I mean, not hot take, actually, confession. I've never seen it. That's terrible, isn't it? No, no, no. Isn't that terrible? It is. This means you get to see it for the first time. Thank you. It is. I've seen it many times. I saw it as a kid. I remember my parents rented it when I was, I don't know, like, fucking.

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I think, when it came out. But I saw it in a theater last year. And yeah, it is... Obviously, because elements of it are so iconic, and it is such a kind of like...

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funny, like, sincere... It's like... Yeah, it's a movie that I can totally see people clowning on, or some people just, like, almost being allergic to it. Obviously, it was a huge hit, got, like, Oscar nominations and all that. But that...

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I think is Cameron Crowe's best movie, like far and away. And it's such a... And it's very much... It's great in the way that the best James L. Brooks movies are great, where it has an unconventional structure. It's a comedy and a drama. It's a big mainstream movie that's also really idiosyncratic. But it is also a movie that utilizes everything Cruise does well, better than any movie ever made. Yeah.

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It's a movie that does not make sense with any other actor in that role. It is like, to me, that is like the, like, that is him at the height of his powers, the best representation of what he can do. And it is, I think it's one of the great American movies. And so in terms of, okay, Cruise movies after that, that's where it gets really, really tough because I'm like.

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got a top three. That's the number one, but like, I think, it might be Top Gun Maverick and then maybe Eyes Wide Shut.

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Three very good picks. Three very strong picks. I mean, it is hard, isn't it? Very hard. It is. The body of work is crazy. And even like, you know, like a couple of years ago, I rewatched Rain Man for the first time since I was a kid. And again, another movie that you go into being like, I bet this is like age terribly and stuff like that. I'm like, honestly...

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It's good. It does actually hold up. And honestly, I think like Cruz is the more impressive performance than Hoffman. And just but obviously, you know, at the time, like didn't even like I think like get an Oscar nomination for it. Yeah.

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but yeah it is like but actually in terms of performances i would put interview with a vampire up there in the very very top yeah that's what that's one where he's just absolutely enjoying himself you can tell but also bringing that bringing his craft but also just having fun of it as well i remember first seeing that and going this is you know it just it takes you take me back to the 90s days i mean cruise i love cruise's work all the way up till now but like that 90s period where he's working with great director after great director yeah

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He can do anything and he's doing everything. You know, it's fantastic. That was it. It was, I had this incredible day last summer. It was, I had just, it was, I just wrapped that project all set in a car that I had directed, which was a really, it had been, we shot the whole thing in three days, but it had been like a really intense time leading up to it. And then my reward for getting done with that.

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was last summer, the Museum of the Moving Image, which is one of my favorite places in New York. If you visit New York, you gotta go there. So unfortunately, last year was the year where they had this giant Mission Impossible exhibit, which if you're a fan of those movies, you can be like, oh my God,

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They've got the rabbit's foot. They've got the glasses he's wearing during the Langley break-in. They've got everything. But it's a great museum, and they do these great screenings. And last summer, they had a whole— their summer series was just Cruise. And it was just, like, almost every Cruise movie. And I spent—to reward myself for wrapping that project—

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I spent a day there doing a triple feature of The Firm on 35mm, Interview with the Vampire on 35mm, and then Jerry Maguire. All just a day in the museum. And I was like, this is a perfect day. And that's the thing. It's like, you know, all three of those, you know, made within like a three or four year period.

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Absolutely. I mean, and seeing crews on a big screen hits different. I remember, I don't know if you've, if you're how familiar you are with London, but like, I don't know if you, do you know the Prince Charles, the cinema? I, I, I've never been. It's crazily, I've only ever spent three days in London.

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Really? Yeah. Especially because like with with my mother being from Ireland, we would spend like a month every year in Ireland. And and then we'd usually like maybe, you know, while they're hop over to like, I don't know, like Edinburgh for for a few days or whatever. Somehow in, you know, despite almost annual trips to to Europe, only ever been to England before.

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once for three days that's amazing to me because yeah the prince charles i mean i i'm sure as i'm i'm sure you've you've you've heard of it like its reputation obviously precedes it yeah it's so great for you know seeing all these classic movies on 35 millimeter i mean you have a lot as a lifetime member you've got to go yeah if you ever make it over to london one day but i remember they showed they did a pta season and they and i saw got to see magnolia on 35 mil

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and that was extraordinary i mean that would probably be if i had to pick a favorite cruise performance that that would be mine i mean it's always it's kind of the obvious one because i mean it is such a barnstorming turn it's undeniable though it's that that's the thing it's like i didn't have it on my short list there but i'm like yeah but it's

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I don't know. It's like just the next one outside. It's right up there. It's so great. And also, yeah, I also saw that on 35 here in New York a couple, I think a couple of years ago. I think it was at Nighthawk. And I'm sure Legend is the same, but like we've got, there's just so many good rep theaters here. And so it's like this part of why I can never leave New York where it's like, oh, yeah.

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I can go, like, all my favorite movies are, you know, from, like, you know, the past hundred years are playing all the time. You know, like, you know, I can't, I mean, okay, I can get this in LA and I can get it in London, but, like, where else?

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Totally. They're so important. And, you know, the Prince Charles actually had this, there were talks about it getting shut down, you know, quite recently. And so there was this whole petition, you know, Chris Nolan and Jason Reitman and all these great filmmakers were sort of throwing their hats and saying, come on, we've got to save the Prince Charles. Because, yeah, those places, as you say, those theatres are so important. And you get to see those films on a big screen, you know, it's like nothing else. I mean, yeah, Magnolia will probably be in my top three. I mean, Eyes Wide Shut, Undeniable. I mean, Mission Impossible Fallout.

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I mean, it's just, it's a, I could watch that. It's one of those films where like, you, I could literally stick that on any time, any day and just watch the whole thing from start to finish and have a great time and not get bored. Yeah. It's man. I like that. That's what I was. I was just discussing this with a friend the other day about like, you know, what, what's like, is there a correct ranking of like your top three mission impossibles?

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I realized a few years ago that the first Mission Impossible, I think, will always be my favorite. I'm a really big De Palma guy. Oh, yeah. And so I really love the first one. But then after the first one, it's like, it's Road Nation or Fallout. It's like, those are my top three. But that is just, you know...

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That's my favorite movie series ever. And so, yeah, it's like, look, I can sit here and rank Cruise movies all day. I made a Nebula bonus video a couple of years ago where I ranked every haircut he's had in every movie, which I put a lot of effort into.

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I mean, that's another tough one. I mean, Mission Impossible 2, not the best, but possibly the best hair. That's the thing. It is like, I think I, you know what? I won't spoil it for listeners. Go sign up for Nebula, not to watch films that I've made. Do it to watch my video where I rank Tom Cruise's hairstyles.

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absolutely i mean when we were talking to eddie which again if anyone listening the episode you know at the time of recording this episode's out tomorrow but we talk a lot about fallout and the helicopter chase which i think might be the i said to eddie i think might be the best helicopter action sequence on film i think it is a contender like you know all that stuff you know in cashmere with cruise piloting his own chopper to to do all that it's like what yeah i i knowing that like they you know the moment that that

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ends the trailer where he's like, you know, going toward a truck isn't even in the movie. I'm just like, it's not in the movie that like having so much good material where you can be like, oh, we don't need the part where he almost collides with the truck in a helicopter. I'm like, God, like, show me all the rest of this.

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See, I always thought that maybe that was like a trick shot, like a CGI shot, because they didn't want to show too much of what Cruise was the scene that actually was. Maybe they CGI'd. They probably have a couple of million dollars to do that, but who knows? Maybe it was something that was cut. I think because I would be so obsessive about...

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Listening to all, like, I don't know, 20 hours of interviews Macquarie would do, like, for those movies, like, breaking down every single choice. I know in at least one of those, he was asked about that shot. And apparently there was, like, an extra, like, action beat in the sequence where he, like, goes down to, like, tree level. And they're just, like, it's throwing off the pace that we're just going to take out this section of the scene.

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So, yeah, I do. I don't know how it was, how they shot that. But I do know that there was like that was that was a part of the scene as designed. For sure. Yeah. Because because like Eddie was talking about how that scene, it was like there was 15 hours of helicopter footage and it eventually got down to like one sequence, which is him death dropping into the valley. It got down to 11 seconds and he was just like, I don't understand. Because I did editing at uni. So I was like, how do you how do you do this? Yeah. Yeah.

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Just that good. You're that good. Something else, actually, again, like to jump away. I mean, actually, I could talk about Cruiser View all day, but like Mission Impossible. But something that I've always been interested to ask you is, so one of my favorite essays of yours, one of my personal favorites is your essay about Kiki's Delivery Service.

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and about YouTube burnout, which I think is such a, you know, it's such a great essay. And it's talking about such a prevalent topic. I mean, something that I can relate to even sort of eight months into my YouTube journey. The energy that you need to do this job is, you know, and it's a great job. It's an incredible job and it is a privilege, but it does take energy. And I wanted to ask you about that. You know, when you made that video, that was something that you were struggling, you were dealing with. Is that something that you still deal with? The sort of the problem of YouTube burnout? I, it's funny.

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I say it's funny. Actually, I'm like, I don't think this is funny. No, why did I start the sentence that way? That time in, I think, September 2019, when I made that video, that was the most in all this time that I've really felt burnout. And I think part of what led to it back then was...

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The videos I was making at the time were shorter than they are now, and they came out more frequently. And so part of it was I was coming up with ideas for videos like – I guess – so –

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How to phrase this? Okay, so now I have this master list of video topics, and I usually have them planned out at least a few in advance because the videos take usually – there's about one a month, usually three to four weeks is what they take.

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And so it's very rare for me to have an idea for a video and then immediately make it. Usually these are ideas that I've had for often at least a year or so. And then I finally get around to making them. And but back then in 2019, it was more just like come up with the video for like, like, what's the next one going to be? And just like and it was a lot more spontaneous, but which also led to more of the constant pressure of, oh, I've got to be coming up with ideas. Yeah.

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And I remember what I was experiencing then was trying to think of like, oh, what's what's what am I going to do for next week's video? And then and just hitting a wall being like, I can't think of anything that I can that I'm like motivated to to like research and explore and talk about. And I just like I've truly kind of like lost the will to do it.

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And this thing that I love doing, and it was, I think that video came from around that time. I think that was when my friends who do the podcast Blank Check were covering Miyazaki. And I've just been listening to it, and I think it just simply like, it wasn't even like their Kiki episode. I think it might have been around when they were like,

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Totoro episode was coming out, but somehow I'm just listening to that and kind of like connect these things like, wait...

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Okay, like Miyazaki, Kiki's Delivery Service, that's a top five all-time movie for me. And there had been a point, I guess, as an adult where I'd realize, oh, this is a movie about turning your hobby into your career and getting burnt out and losing your will to do the thing that used to bring you joy. Yeah.

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And I was like, wait a second. This is... That video is exactly how I am feeling right now. And so I think there's something there. And then... And yeah. And I did sort of... To be clear, I did not get better at taking time off. It's still...

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You know, I still, like, work every weekend. I was editing until 1 in the morning last night. To be clear, that's not every night. It's just, like, I'm in, like, crunch mode to, like, get the video done. But, you know, there's the famous expression, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, which I don't find to be true. I think that it really should be do what you love and you will work every day of your life to really unhealthy hours.

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But it is something where, at least with—since the videos take longer now and I know what's coming up further in advance, I can adjust the pace, at least, at which I work in terms of, like, the research and the writing. And the most intense parts are now basically just—

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shooting, where, for instance, like the music videos episode, that was one where because so much of that was shot in different locations, like in different studios, usually I shoot a video in like most of it in a couple days.

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And this was one where it's like, oh, shooting basically for like a week because each day we're shooting a different segment of it in a different location. And that so that gets really intense. And then the home stretch of the edit gets gets intense. But so that means that that like in. In like three weeks, even though there's some work every single day.

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There's only maybe about five really exhausting intense days. While back in 2019, the turnaround was so much quicker and the pressure to figure out, okay, what's the next one going to be, was so much more intense that it was just in general more exhausting. So, again...

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Still could be better about like work-life balance, but I think I think it's I'm better at it than I was seven years ago. I would hope so if I haven't improved in seven years. God, that's a long time. So so, yeah, there's a long answer to to your question.

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Aye. Well, hey, it's a good answer. And it's something that I'm always curious about because, you know, you talk very eloquently and honestly in the essay about how, you know, this job, you know, it takes a lot of time and energy and it impacts your personal life and your friendships and your relationships. And something has to give sometimes. I did want to ask you, like, how, as a YouTuber myself, but to someone who has been doing this for a long time, you know, a veteran, you could say, like, how does it impact your personal life? And what sort of, how do you sort of balance those two things?

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That's a really good question. Yeah, it is something where it's funny. It's weird because I have a job where there is no set schedule for it other than there's deadlines, but it's not a nine to five job.

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And so what I will be, one of the advantages of like living in a major city beyond just getting to see a lot of movies is that, you know, I know a lot of people in the city. I have a lot of friends here. And so, so yeah, there's like, so it is a thing where I have a lot of stuff come up just like, you know, like, you know, grabbing drinks or dinner with friends and that, and that kind of thing. And I, I, I'm,

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I'm bad at saying no to things. And so there were things like, for instance, on the video that I'm finishing up now, I had a week where I had just said yes to everything I'd been invited to. And suddenly I realized, like, oh, this entire week I have gotten nothing done because I have just prioritized my personal life. And just, you know, whether it's like, to be clear, you know, I'm not going to say no to like a wedding that I went to. But there was like there was a wedding and there was like all these things where I realized, like, oh, I'm.

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I am now like five days behind schedule on this video because I just said yes to everything and was trying to have a personal life and not just lock myself away. But now it is thrown off my schedule because, again, like if someone is like, oh, hey, want to grab coffee in the morning? I'm like, sure. I'm technically free at all times. And so, yeah, so it's still...

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Because I do make a point of like, look, I have to still have a personal life. And it's also like, why would I live in New York and not like, you know, see friends and stuff like that? But I feel like everyone who knows me is aware that there are times when it's just like, hey, for these set days...

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I will not be available. It's like, even if it lands on a weekend, it's like, the video has to get done, and it is almost always behind schedule, and so I just have to lock myself away, say no to stuff, and sorry. I'm just truly going to be working 15 hours a day for these set days. And so, yeah, so it's a thing that I think...

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Most of the time it is, you know, it's not really an issue. I'm able to like have like a fairly normal life while doing this stuff. And it's just like, again, like everyone who knows me knows that like I have a wacky job that has a sometimes wacky schedule.

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And, you know, it has like, yeah, it isn't really, I don't think it's really an issue. It's also nice that I, you know, I work with a bunch of my friends where it's not like all of my friends like working full time on it, but it's like...

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You know, almost everyone who works on the channel, you know, whether whether, you know, like Jake Torpy, you know, like writing stuff, you know, Ryan Alva, my editor, Brian Metolius, the composer, other other friends who might, you know, like make appearances in the videos. It's all.

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I like working with my friends. And so it kind of combined, like, it's a way to combine, you know, doing work and having a personal life. It's like my people do podcasts, you know, where it's like, oh, this is just now a structured way to just hang out with my friends regularly.

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For sure. For sure. Yeah, I hear that. And I mean, I'm lucky enough like you, I think I'm lucky enough to work with a team of I've got a team of friends who sort of basically I'm lucky enough to pay me to sort of do this full time as an office job. And but yeah, I hear that about like there are some days where, you know, you have to block out some time. This is crunch time, time to get the video done. And for me, that's like every Friday. We'll be trying to have our episode out every Friday. So it's like a Friday, honey, I'm going to be late for dinner. You know what I mean? It's just that thing. It's just how it goes. But you make it work.

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Yeah, that's basically it. And it is the thing where at the end of the day, my deadlines are mostly self-imposed. And it's the kind of thing where like, I did learn over time where it's like, look,

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At the end of the day, if something is going to come up where it's like, oh, I should go to this... I'm not going to bail on a dinner or whatever with other people because I need to work on a video. It's like, look, at the end of the day, the worst that will happen...

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if I, you know, have to delay the video a day, is that I will get paid one day later than I would have otherwise. It's like, which is, you know, sometimes annoying, because it's also like, you know, I only get paid when I make videos. But yeah, it's not worth, like, you know, damaging my personal life because of a YouTube video. And so...

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So, yeah, it's I will usually prioritize like other people, you know, like like when it really comes down to it. I'm not going to burn bridges or like alienate people in my life because it's like, yeah, Patrick, just just, you know, he needed to stay in and edit, you know, to get even though no one none of the audience cares. Like if the video comes out on like Wednesday or Thursday. Yeah.

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for sure I hear that it reminds me of what PTA said about when he was um I think when he's on Adam Buxton's podcast I don't know if you've heard that episode I haven't no oh it's fantastic it's I'd say it might be the best PTA conversation he's done okay because they just because Adam I don't know if you do you know Adam Buxton the comedian I do it's it's like I I'm I'm not intimately familiar uh with his work because I mean a lot of it is like you know radio and podcasts and stuff like that but I because because he used to work with uh Joe Cornish right

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Yeah, the Adam and Joe show. Yeah. So that was more where I knew him. So yes, I have a general familiarity with Adam Buxton.

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Well, he's fantastic and he does a brilliant podcast and he had PTA on because he, I want to say he directed some of Radiohead's music videos, Adam Buxton did. So that's how he sort of met with PTA and they were talking about this exact thing, I think. And PTA was saying how he had the experience of, I think, in the 90s when he'd made Boogie Nights in Magnolia and he'd spent years making these huge movies and then he got to the end and it was just the DVD. And he was like...

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And it was like a real wake up moment of like, hang on a second. Let me look back at like this year and the relationships that I haven't paid too much attention to because I've been so focused on making this movie. And there's got to be a way to do both. You know, I think he's right. You know, it is it is a balance. And, you know, ultimately, you know, it's the people around you, your friends and family are.

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Not to sound too corny, but it is true, isn't it? It is. Yeah, it's something that I feel like especially what I will remind myself with. And so coming into this year, since the new season of our videos, and my friends that I work with kind of laugh at me because I say similar things every single year. I'm always like...

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guys, I want to figure out a way to make the videos a little bit simpler, and maybe we can make more of them, and maybe make a little bit more money, because if we can make more videos, then we get paid more. But it's a thing where... What I think about is, look, as much as I'm proud of the videos, I don't...

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I don't rewatch old videos that I've made. Like, and these are also, these are, you know, I put a lot of, like, you know, myself into them and make them things that I'm excited about. But, like, this is not like I'm making an original film. This is ultimately, it is a YouTube video essay that is discussing existing work that other people have made. And so...

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In five years, am I really going to remember or even think that much about a video I made that back then? Probably not. And so it's like, you know, why kill yourself for what is ultimately a YouTube video? That's the thing. It's like maybe kill yourself for like a movie you're making that you really – and even there, you're making like the PTA comparison, you know, talking about like Magnolia or whatever. It's like, yeah.

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It is ultimately like a DVD, and this is even a smaller version of that where it's like, oh yeah, it's not even a DVD. It's just a thing on YouTube, and maybe I'm underestimating how much...

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a YouTube video essay could mean to a person in the audience. And like, I'm not really sure, but, but yeah, but this is something where I'm like, look, this is, this is also my job. And, and, you know, you don't need to ruin your life for your job, especially when your job is making videos on the internet that you probably are not going to think about,

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very much at all after you've made them. Because I just kind of move on to the next one and rarely revisit my old work.

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I hear that, yeah. And also because you spent so many hours on editing it. The last thing you want to do is just turn it on again. I'm like that with old projects. I'll start snoring if I look at something that I was working on before. My friends like to kind of antagonize me by if we're at a party, they'll be like, oh, hey, let's put up Patrick's new video on the TV. And even though I know they're joking about it, I'll be like...

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No, don't, don't you dare. There, there is nothing that I hate more than, uh, having to watch something that I've made in a room with other people. Like any times that I've been in, like in a movie theater, uh, for a screening of a thing that I've made, I, I, I want to die the entire time. I, I'm sitting there like, uh, like when we did the premiere for the dinner plan last November and, um.

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I, when the movie was screening, I like slumped down in my seat so far so that the person's head in front of me was blocking most of the screen. And I kind of went into like a fugue state until I tried to tune out the audience's reactions. Because I'm like, I don't want to be thinking about if they are or are not laughing where I think they should be.

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And because if like if I don't hear the reaction that I intended, then I will hate myself. Yeah. And so I'm like I have just like kind of like fully zone out and like disassociate to just not perceive the audience and just kind of like.

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And then hopefully just like it'll all be over. I just I do not because it's like as soon as other people are there and you're watching anything you've made, you also suddenly just notice problems with it that you would never thought of before. And so so, yeah, so like once the thing is done, I like it like I'm happy to talk about it all day, but I don't want to look at it again.

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I think that's a healthy attitude to have. It's like what Bowie said. I always come back to Bowie. Bowie just was a fountain. A smart guy. Yeah, smart guy. Bit of a genius. He wasn't cold about his old work, but he considered it was work done, and he's moving on to the next thing. I think that's the attitude. It's a healthy attitude to have. I think so, yeah. I do think sometimes about how funny it must be to be a musician and be like, oh yeah, I am still constantly playing...

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Music I wrote 30 years ago. And that said, if I made masterpieces 30 years ago, maybe I would be like, yeah, I'll play them all day. But I guess I've never, I have yet to make a piece of work that I feel that way about. So...

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Hey, you know, if it's a movie, like, you know, one day, but, you know, sure, yeah. If it's a feature film, you know, another one, I mean, like, you know, like that plan of leveling up and everything. And yeah, you know, I'm here for it. I mean, it reminds me of like, because I know you were a big Oasis fan, like going to see Oasis live, right? That must've been amazing. And like, you know, they're still playing Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova. It's like, yeah, fair play. They've earned that. That's the thing. Yeah. If I...

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If I wrote Live Forever when I was like, I don't know, like 28 or whatever, I'd be like, yeah, I'll play that every day of my life. Yeah, man, I could talk about the Oasis experience forever. I will say I am so excited for that documentary to come out in September. I'll be there in the IMAX theater seated.

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I hope it's still four hours long like they talked about a cut being I doubt it is I'm sure they got it down to two hours but but yeah that is for bizarre reasons they are one of the things I care about the most in the world.

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It's kind of like you can't explain it. They just crack something in you. They just do it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a thing where after a lot of people pushing me to do it for a long time, I did finally agree to, hey, announcement for any viewers of mine listening to this. At some point this year, I'm going to finally just make a video about Oasis. Yeah.

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And even though I do videos about movies, I'm just like, look, this band is one of the things I am most knowledgeable about that I have thought the most about in my life. And just like, you know, a lot of my viewers are American. So, you know, it can be fun to be like, hey, four Americans who might have wondered, like, what's the deal with? Why do people care so much about this? I'll be like, I think I can explain it. And so I don't have a title for the video. I don't know what the take is other than Patrick Dump's.

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30 years of Oasis thoughts into a video. But yeah, I think I'm going to do it this year. Fantastic. Hey, I can't, as a, you know, as a someone who's obviously British, but obviously for all the Anglophiles in the audience, you know, I'm sure it's going to be fantastic. I mean, it's Oasis. You know, it can't go wrong. Exactly, exactly. So we'll see. But again, it comes down to, because with YouTube, you can never stop thinking about...

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the dreaded titles and thumbnails uh the bane of your existence and so i'm just like yeah i can't make that video until i think of what do i call it tell me about it i mean like i'm i'm starting to find that with like and i think my job is probably simpler than yours in terms of just like titling because obviously you know if i have like say peter capaldi on obviously his name's in the title and then you just you just reel off what you do what you talk about with him but then like how do you make that not sound terribly pedestrian pedestrian

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You know what I mean? It's like, you know, you got to, but then also just be truthful as well. You know, you get truthful to the essence of it, but to the conversation, which, which is an interesting, hopefully an interesting conversation. So, well, yeah, I just wanted to ask, it's like a wrap up question. Like, cause I, cause I, I watched, you know, your most, most recent video last night and which is fantastic. The music video. Thank you so much. Video. And it's the start of a new series. There's a new intro to the show. Like it's a hot, it feels like a new direction in some ways. I mean, what can we expect from the, from

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Uh, so in terms of the new, the new series, uh, it is, so a little bit of explanation where, you know, seasons, series, whatever, when it comes to YouTube is, is not a thing that is traditionally done. Um, it's really, it's a totally arbitrary thing where there's no season schedule or whatever. It's not like we even take big breaks in between seasons. It's just something that I kind of periodically will decide, you know what? Uh, yeah.

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Let's call this the end of a season. And I think I like it happening at the end of the year. You know, I like having a holiday-themed season finale, that kind of thing. But recently, because our most recent season was like two years long, but what was happening there was it was just –

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I, as anyone who knows me has heard me talk about before, I get bored if I repeat myself too much. It's why I make the videos so much more complicated than they need to be, just to give myself a new challenge each time. And the format that we'd had for the previous three years almost...

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I just done it a lot, and I wasn't as excited about it as I had used to be. The format, which is kind of like a mix of late-night talk show and almost like a workplace sitcom with video essays in there, it had just kind of gotten to a point where we had the beats to hit every episode with the intro, and I'm at the desk, and we have other characters and stuff like that. I'm just like...

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I feel like we've done as much with this as we can, and I just want to change it in some way. So we wrapped up the season in December, and then for January, I just took the month off, and I'd be talking with friends. They'd be like, yeah, so what are you planning for the new season? I'm just like, I don't know. Our only idea is...

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to just like drop the format that we had been using. And really what I was kind of realizing is what I wanted to do, what I kind of missed were the videos that we'd been making in 2019 where we didn't have a set format in 2019. The videos were kind of...

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whatever each one needed to be, but we had elements that we could play with when we wanted to. So we had, in 2019, that was, we had characters, characters, as in like real-life friends of mine who would appear as themselves sometimes. There wasn't the obligation to include them in every single episode, but it was just like, oh yeah, when there's a reason for it, like Matt or Jake might come in or Dave the agent and stuff like that. And so...

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We had these things to work with, but there was no pressure to use them every single time. And then I feel like as we were doing the videos, I became more interested in like, oh, what if we did have more of a set format? And then we did that, and I want to go back to it just being a little bit looser. And so it's a thing where in the first...

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three episodes of the season because they come out early on Nebula. And so I'm about to release episode three of the season.

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There have been no other characters but me in these. There haven't really been narrative elements. There have been no references to the, for lack of a better term, lore of our continuity of the channel, which is not us saying that we're ditching that altogether. It's just that...

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We wanted this to be a fresh jumping-on point for new viewers, and so we thought if we stripped it back a little bit, made it... The music video is one especially. It was a very...

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ambitious video in terms of its presentation. So kind of showing that we wanted to kind of show off like, oh, these videos can be, you know, visually very interesting, very cinematic. They will like the style and structure and presentation can change just, you know, episode to episode. And so we kind of wanted to let people know like, oh, these can kind of be anything because

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They won't always be as ambitious as the music videos one because they can't be. I would have a nervous breakdown doing that every single time. But we wanted to ditch the idea of having a set format and expectations for every single episode and instead just be able to do whatever each video felt like it needed each time. And so I'm sure...

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I'm sure some recurring characters will return, you know, at some point in the future. And I just, but like, you know, when it's appropriate, we, we just no longer feel obligated to like have everybody in every episode. I will say it also makes it easier to shoot when we don't have to schedule a bunch of other people, you know, for, for every single one. But so, but that's it. It's like, I think we've got a really fun lineup of topics for the year.

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And again, my goal with the videos always is...

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My number one audience that I'm making these for is myself. Not to be like, I don't care about the audience. I do care about the audience. The audience allows me to keep making these, but I make videos that I would want to watch. And I make them about topics that I'm interested in and that I want to devote a month of my life to.

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And I do them in a way where I find the process engaging to create, you know, what are new visual ideas we can have so I can try things that I haven't done before. And so, yeah, I just I'm, you know, look, if these things are going to, you know, take up.

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seven days of my life every single week. If I'm going to, you know, have, as we have established, a less than healthy work schedule, at least let me be engaged in the work. And so, yes, we just made some adjustments to the videos this season to just make sure that I'm still engaged in the work.

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And so, and that's it. Yeah, and I will say, you mentioned it before, I do want to shout out our new title sequence, which is once again animated by the great Madeline Metolius, who made our last two title sequences going back to 2021. She's always done those. And her husband, Brian Metolius, who is our composer, who is...

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staying at my apartment this week. He's at a Mets game right now. He, of course, did the music for it. I'm really happy with how that looks. And so, hey, if you've listened to all of this and you did not know who I was and are not sick of me yet, yeah, check out the new season of the show. I think it's a great place for new viewers to jump in.

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I'd say. I mean, like I say, based on the quality of the first episode, I mean, I can't wait to see what you've got coming up. You know, it's because it's just fantastic, you know, what you guys put together. Thank you. Brilliant. Well, hey, thanks so much for coming on the show, Patrick. As a fan of yours, you know, who has been for years, this was such a pleasure. And it was just great just to hear you talk to us about your process and about your favorite Cruise films. You know, that was great. All and just me and Cruise and just the whole plethora. It's just been a fantastic trip. So thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Seriously. I had a really great time. Thank you for having me on.

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Hey everyone, thanks so much for listening to my chat with Patrick Willems. Remember to like and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. And check out our YouTube memberships where you can watch the full uncut version of my conversation with Patrick with 20 more minutes of extra chat. Stay tuned for more exciting interviews and guests coming soon on Half the Picture.