Why Rhett and Link are Making a TV Show (On Their Own Terms)

26:59Like it's much, you know, the, oh, let's get the person with the internet following to come do this. Right. You know, it's much more normal. Were you guys pursuing these kind of opportunities to like stay in that more traditional world, following the opportunity with Online Nation, or is that just something that came about with Cadillac? We were just pursuing sponsorships, as best I can remember it, you know, just trying to get paid. We did not want to be correspondents. Like, yeah, we were comedians. We wanted to create our own stuff. We didn't want to interview people. But we did it a lot, but only when we got paid.

27:38So that was not the track that we wanted to take. and it was just, yeah, if you, when you go on a red carpet, you know, I think you know instantly if you hate it. Yeah, we do not want to do that kind of thing even now. Like if we get asked to host something or interview people and the idea is to like be funny and ask funny questions to celebrities. It's like, it's the least fun thing for us. I guess too, like I asked that as well because kind of from this period of like 07, 08 up until Commercial Kings in 2011, 2012, where did you guys kind of feel like you stood? Like what was kind of your mindset in that period, especially because I believe, you know, before that's the period right before you end up coming out here permanently.

28:30It was essentially each year getting more people who just wanted us to make a video for a brand and being able to increase the price that we were charging for that and also the number of people seeing what we were doing was increasing. And we just thought, I guess we can do this forever? The idea to write a pilot and have a traditional show, So that never went away. But because it actually started making sense monetarily, because we've never thought too far in advance. That's another thing about us, is we don't have like a five-year plan. We think more like that now, but at the time it was like, hey, these opportunities are rolling in.

29:19We enjoy doing this stuff. We're making a great living. Let's just keep looking for these opportunities. but, you know, and even the Commercial Kings opportunity, another traditional opportunity came directly out of a sponsored series that we did. But do you remember, like we decided to document the process of making the commercial, I'm trying to remember exactly, like, this, we wanted to show how they were made because it was just as entertaining to us as the final product. So we started documenting that, actually, from the beginning. From the beginning, because we knew how we were gonna approach it.

30:10And I think we thought, did we think it would be a good television show? Well, we never, I'm sure we did, because we also made like, the reel for good old boys. Right, this or that. We had all these pitches. We had pitches for reality shows. We would drive up to. Like docu-reality. We drove up to Marilyn and pitched Discovery Channel in person. These are meetings that our agent, or really our manager, who we had gotten through Online Nation was able to secure for us. So we still had these. We were like, we have engineering degrees and we're funny. And he talked us into making pilot presentations.

30:50Yeah, we went up to Discovery in Maryland and pitched a couple of ideas that were, and they liked us, but they weren't looking for us at the time. Yeah, so it was this idea that, okay, we would love for this to work out, we're gonna keep trying to do these traditional, we're gonna continue to pitch people, but we've got a real business model that's building here, with just making essentially commercials for the internet. We made the behind the scenes as episodes on our second channel, which became Good Mythical Morning, I believe. But we never took, we never pitched it to anybody. It was just - We knew it was good content.

31:38I mean, it was so successful that television production companies started approaching us. So ironically, when we kinda, when we didn't try to, when we gave up on those meetings, and our manager actually, is when we started getting those cold call emails. And so then we came out, so we had those meetings, and then we just picked whichever, I mean, MTV and IFC wanted the show, based off of that. And it really takes two, if it was just one of them, I don't think it would've been a show. It's like, it's just another thing. It's just like, oh, they want it, so I guess now I want it. Right. It was all it, you know?

32:20So all of this gamesmanship, and we were excited because it was already a success online, and we had a bidding war, and it was, they ordered the pilot. They didn't guarantee it to air, but we knew how hard it was to get to that point because we've been trying for two three years by that point right and we didn't need it it's when we didn't need it as much off of that i read a press release from 2011 that ifc put out to basically try to explain like hey like try to put it in 2011 terms you know yeah and they said this show is based on the successful web series I love local commercials the term web series sounds very 2011 do you guys ever hear that term thrown around anymore like what even is a web series right yeah people don't even with what we're planning for the fall which is which we call a show versus just kind right on a channel yeah we're not using the term web series it never crossed our minds you're right but And to your point, too, this essentially show or series or whatever you want to call it that you guys were already putting out on YouTube with I Love Loco commercials, it was a hit.

33:49You almost didn't need the TV, you know, the IFCs of the world. But you do make it. Obviously, Red House and Cuban Gynecologist, those videos, like, really took off. Like, plenty of them really took off. IFC ends up canceling the show after the first season. Well, they didn't reorder. They didn't reorder. They didn't cancel it. They aired everything they ordered. Yeah. But what were, you know, after putting out this series and finding a lot of success online and then having it do the first season, which I'm sure there were ups and downs, what were your guys' kind of takeaways after, you know, IFC made that decision?

34:25Well, ironically, you know, we were talking semi-directly to the head of the network. I think we had her email address at the time, Debbie I think was her name, trying to figure out if they were going to order a second season. And Chuck Testa had taken his commercial that we made for season one. The episode had aired. And put it on his YouTube channel and it was absolutely blowing up. It was becoming a meme. And so when that was happening, we were like, oh, this is a shoe-in. And like, of course they're gonna see how potentially the most viral thing that IFC has made this year, the thing that everyone's talking about is this Chuck Testa commercial that we made from this.

35:16But it had - Time Magazine named it like one of the top 10 memes of the year, as if that matters. but you know, it's like, I don't know where it was on the list, and that was coming out at the time they were making the decision. But then what we were told is that they were changing their, they're always changing their philosophy, what they're looking for, whatever. And I don't know what it was at the time and I don't really care. It was more scripted stuff. But what it amounted to is that, okay, so some people in a small room who make this decision about what they want their network to look like, are, they really, they have our fate in their hands.

36:04And it just, you get this, now at the time it wasn't like, we've completely learned our lesson and we should never try to do this again. I'm just saying, looking back, it's so easy to see how asinine it is. Now, some people don't have a choice. their only choice is for their fate to be held in the hands of a very small group of people. But what we didn't realize, because we hadn't done it yet, is that you can build. Is that we had that choice. We had that choice because you can put your fate in the hands of a much larger group of people. You know, as opposed to one room full of people. It's a totally different starting point.

36:46So they forced our hand when they didn't reorder it. And then that's when we started Good Mythical Morning and kind of like a ticking clock of our bank accounts running dry. Yeah, and I know when you guys went on Colin and Samir, you talked about GMM gradually becoming a bigger and bigger part of your focus. Like, it was really just a gradual, like, every couple of months, years, like, add more pieces of the set, add more team members. but particularly in 2013 when YouTube invested in the mythical show he built out the team including Stevie who I know I'm talking to later that kind of team transitioned into really helping build out GMM was there a light bulb moment at that time where again kind of what we're talking about with like a web series right like whatever that means was there a light bulb moment where you just kind of thought like let's just make TV for YouTube no or no no we kept I mean when Whenever we had time, it was always a priority to try to make something a television show or a movie.

37:55That was our original desire. That was our dream as kids to be filmmakers and to tell stories. We were envious of that. That's not what Good Mythical Morning was. So we didn't have the opportunity to do something that was like, had that, what we thought had that level of cultural impact. And we just didn't think, and I don't really think you could at the time, we definitely wouldn't have been capable of it. None of the ideas that we had that would have potentially worked on TV were things that we were capable of making for YouTube. And maybe that there's an imaginary wall that we had put up, because I'm sure or that there was a really lower budget or very low budget idea that we could have come up with that was story based.

38:49But for some reason we were just like, okay, we're gonna make some sketches on YouTube, we're gonna make music videos, we're gonna make Good Mythical Morning. But the idea that we're gonna make a show, besides something that's really low lift, you know, like Good Mythical Morning, we just didn't think that we could make it work with our team and financially and so we were just like if you want if you have a show idea you go to the traditional places because they'll give you the money to make the thing that you want to make and we still had that mentality at the time yeah i think if we had been thinking because you know it's funny because they kind of hold this carrot out and and you know that there's the the potential for well if we keep doing things well and we keep having the right conversations, we keep meeting the right people, eventually somebody will say yes to an idea and maybe we'll be able to move into a place where we can be making the thing, exactly the thing that we wanna make and we have all the resources necessary for it.

39:49Yeah, and we were able to get the, oh, we're having a meeting with Jack Black's company, we're having a meeting with Ben Stiller's company, we're having a meeting with Seth Rogan's company, we're having a meeting with, I mean, you name it, we had a meeting with all of these successful comedians who then had their production company, Adam Sandler. Like, now you never meet any of the people that we just listed. You know, they might walk by. You know, I mean, we even met with

40:28Andy Samberg's company and he was in the next room. It's like, okay, there's Andy, we say hello. But that's it. But we had the meeting, it was like that character. But we did have a meeting with the guy who Tom Cruise's character in Tropic Thunder is based on. Yeah. So you're having all these meetings. That was memorable. And people think, they're like, these guys are successful, you know, we gotta get in on this. We had decent ideas. We had, and we had like well-formulated pitches. in every category, scripted, non-scripted, docu-reality, reality competition. Like, I mean, we had ideas everywhere.

41:13And they're all ideas that I think we would have been capable of making, but I think there's a very large missing piece in all those ideas is that it was difficult for people to sit down and have a meeting with us, look at the things that we had created on the internet, and make a connection with these ideas that we were pitching to them, that they made sense for us. Because in our minds, they came from a completely different place. Again, because the things that we put on the internet came from this combination of what we wanted to do, but what we thought we could do in that space. And then these ideas that we would dream up to pitch to people came from this place of assuming you have unlimited resources.

41:56And I think because the only thing they could see is all the stuff that we had made with the limited resources that we had. They were expecting us to come to them with some sort of idea that felt like it was coming from the same place. And we never made that connection. It just wasn't how we thought about content. And that's why, and first of all, people usually say no in Hollywood. I mean, it's like, you know, probability. You know, statistically, you're gonna get more no's than yes's and most people are gonna get all no's. But I think that the reason none of those ideas really ever made sense to people is because they were so different than any of the stuff that we were showing that we could do.

42:35But then when we got our second book deal, we decided we wanted to write a novel. We said, well, we can tell a story this way. So The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek was conceptualized. I think it was hand in hand with getting, like we wanted to do it and we could get a book deal. to fund it, to like justify us taking the time to do it. And then we wrote the novel to easily transition or apply it as a television series, or a movie if somebody wanted to do that. So we, and then it was a New York Times bestseller, you know, and so it's okay, now we've got this. We've got this fully formed world, we've got book one, we have outlines for book two and book three at a certain point.

43:24and we teamed up with a Hollywood writer who worked on projects that we admired and that fit the tone of the novel. We were really excited about it. And then, so we go around town and we have all these really good pitch meetings. They all read the book or got like an intern to read the book and give them a summary of it before the meeting so they could act like they read it. And it was like really good meetings. and I was like, okay, of these 10, two are gonna want it. Somebody's gonna want it. And we had learned that's all you need. You just need two to want it. And I remember we went in, and we're still having the meetings and we started getting the no's and the passes.

44:06And they always, they had all their reasons. There's just like a million reasons to say no. And we never heard a reason to say yes. But then some people are stringing on us along as maybes. And I remember going to the last pitch meeting with a new company that was just starting called Peacock. You know, it was at that time. It was like, it didn't exist yet. I was like, well, are we willing to settle for this thing, Peacock? We're sitting in the lobby with our Hollywood writer collaborator, and I remember we're about to go into the meeting, and I turned to him and I said, you remember this? I turned to him and I say, well, well, this may be the last time we ever see you.

44:48We'd spent the last three months developing this pitch, working, pouring our heart and soul into this amazing pitch that was an adaptation of the novel. It was all there. And I was like, we may never see or talk to you again. You manifested it, man. You made it not happen. Yeah, and then you know what, I've never seen her talk to him again. I do want to circle back to of course the we're done video because I know you discuss. How do we seem in a video? Like I seem right now? Yeah. Yeah, so it's like the more I think about it, it's just so much fucking wasted time is what it feels like. It wasn't wasted time.

45:30And it's, you know, I think the thing that we've learned is that you have to learn and you have to go for what you want. And I think that's, everything we talked about is what we really wanted that. And then we had to have an experience

45:50that disillusioned us for us to take a different trajectory. And I think that, so. And that wasn't the experience. I shouldn't be as angry as I am. That wasn't the experience, by the way. That wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. That was just one. The straw that wrote the Campbell's back was our show on Food Network. That was in 2022 or was that? Yeah, very recent. Right, because then you finally get what you want and it's not what they wanted. So then it's not actually what you wanted. So it's like, even when you get it, well, it's a docu-reality show where a comedy show about food that they wanted to turn a food show with a little comedy and it was like, okay, now.

46:38Yeah. And so we, you know, our vision, our initial vision for Inside Eats, which originally was called Taste Buds. Taste Buds. We wanted to call it Taste Buds and then it turns out that one of the guys from Impractical Jokers has a... Podcast. And for some reason no one told us that. That's like one of the fundamental things is when you announce a title that they're supposed to have done a search and apparently they didn't think that was important. Anyway. We should capture the energy of this portion of the interview by just like looking totally deflated. You're gonna look like Richard Dreyfuss on Bill Maher's show when he slowly slumped down throughout the interview until just his head was on this part.

47:18It's fascinating. Do it, do it. I'm not gonna do it. But the thing about that process is that we, we had this vision for the show and it was what would like a How To by John Wilson-esque show look like on the Food Network? And the reality is is that it would look like a show that no one watches. Right? I don't know if anybody watches it on HBO but I know that at least it belongs on HBO. But like we love that show and we weren't trying to make that show but we're like our version of something that is about something else other than the thing that you're watching. That's the thing that we love to do.

48:00but that's not what Food Network wants. Food Network wants you to get excited more close ups of food. about the Cheesecake Factory. Yeah. And if the host happened to be a little bit charming and say some quirky stuff, that's great. But it took that experience, which again, very recent, going through that experience and trying to make something that you wanna make but having to make something that somebody else wants to make that you don't wanna make, to be like, listen, throughout all these years. We're too successful for this. I mean, it's just, you have the kitchen. Well, that's the thing, throughout all these years of building this team to make the stuff that we make here on the internet, we had, all the while, with our eyes focused somewhere else, not that we weren't doing our best to make all this mythical content as good as it possibly could be, but we still had this eye, at least one eye, on this prize of you get some traditional show, and then by slowly building this team, we finally got to a place where it's like, oh, well maybe we finally have gotten to a place where we can not make, we can't turn the Lost Causes of Bleak Creek into a movie or into a TV show on our own.

49:07Like that idea requires more money than we have to invest in our own project. But what we're making in the fall is a perfect example of the most ambitious thing that we feel like we can do with the resources that we have. And I can guarantee you it will get made and people will see it. We die. Unless. Or you too. Barring an act of God or medical malpractice, you will see it. You know, here they go. And it'll be what we want it to be. It'll be the best that we can do. It may not be exactly what we want. It's not gonna be a movie and it's not gonna be. It's a web series.

49:58Right. Cause you know, I mean, I remember, just one last thing going back. I remember when we conceptualized, we were like, we're gonna conceptualize a movie. We've hired a full-time development person working in house. We went through two different people, each working for us for a year, their full-time job was a traditional development executive because our agents told us that it was all about relationships and it was about getting your name out there and like being in the rooms. And it's like, you gotta have somebody to do that. So we're like, okay, we're gonna pay somebody to do that. And we're gonna give them an assistant and they're gonna go around town and do this for each for a year.

50:51So that's two years. and we were like, and now we're gonna write this movie and they're gonna take it out there. And now knowing that that's the head space we were in, it was like seeing things like, oh, we're gonna make, we will find a way to get it made. If we have to like go door to door and start raising finances to make this thing ourselves. But then we started hearing, well, you guys can't star in it because you're not, it's not gonna work. Well, we wrote it without us being the leads. So that was in the outline. So then we wrote it with other people, younger actors being the leads instead of us, honestly.

51:31And then once we wrote it, it was like, well, no one's gonna buy this because of other reasons. Even when we tried to jump through all their hoops. It was maddening. What's your role in this? Are you guys going to write and direct? Because it might be, you guys aren't really directors. so you're probably gonna need to get a director. And when you make a movie, the director really wants to kind of be the creative lead. So you guys are kind of just the writers and a writer on a movie is not really in charge of things creatively. And it's kind of weird to be a producer and a writer and have somebody else.

52:04These are the rules. All the rules, our entire lives, we've run up against the rules of the way things are supposed to go and been told that you can't do it the way that you're envisioning doing it, right? Like if you take a look at the show that we're making in the fall, the division of labor of how this show is written and directed and produced is yes, we do have a director, we do have a producer, we do have writers, but we also, every single person that I just mentioned is also kind of doing the other, we're all doing the same thing. We're all, your role might be like Ben, who's been with us for a decade, is the director, but he's also kind of producing and he's also kind of writing.

52:48We're on screen but we're also writing and we're also producing and we're also at times directing but like there's a division of labor to make things work but it's a team that if any sort of traditional outfit showed up and watched the way that we work on set they would be like, I don't really, who's in charge here? Right? You wouldn't immediately understand the way that the system works because it's something that we've cultivated that works for us in the way that we wanna make something. But it doesn't fit a mold that we've ever seen before because we just can't fit in that. We came to the conclusion we don't fit.

53:29We can't operate in that. It's very creator native almost too, just naturally wearing so many hats as you guys have built GMM and then ultimately mythical. right? Like it is natural for you to maybe not be the director, but have some of that creative direction, but also be the writers and also in front of the camera. Right. Yeah. I know you mentioned that aspect of having like one eye, you know, looking, still looking throughout, especially the 2010s and beyond while of course still building up the show and this company. I did think, Link, you had a quote at VidCon 2015, funny enough, that the typical model on YouTube is very personality driven.

54:10At some point though because they have higher creative aspirations or they want longevity they start making stuff that isn't a vlog. You know they develop shows or more repeatable formats and you go on to talk about more creators opening their own studios and creating more story driven stuff. Which kind of brings us to today. Something we talk about in our studio a lot is YouTubers are becoming Hollywood faster than Hollywood is becoming YouTube. Give me the statement again. Just this idea that YouTubers are becoming Hollywood faster than Hollywood is becoming YouTube and especially as you know if you're spinning up production studios right employing dozens if not hundreds people launching multiple properties versus you know Hollywood you bring up Peacock right?

54:55Hollywood's still trying to make streaming profitable you know television on the internet. Netflix is the current leader and you know they focus heavily on thumbnails and and retention as a key stat almost. They're trying to become more like YouTube. But I think I'm more asking this too from just like, what even is Hollywood now as they're trying to become more like YouTube? To me, it's all about the user experience, right? Like it's really the consumer is determining all of this. And so if you're a kid now and you turn your TV on, the steps that you will take to bring something up on Netflix are the same steps that you'll take to bring something up on YouTube.

55:38That's the definitive, to me the fact that the actual experience of the content and the way that you get it, where you access it, and when you watch it, because those have become so homogenous, now it's just about the behind the scenes orienting itself to kind of serve the consumer, right? So there's still a few pieces, there's a number of pieces that sort of have to fall into place before you would say, YouTube is Hollywood and there's not really any distinction between it. Because on the Hollywood side, whether it's a streamer or a network, there's still gatekeepers making decisions about what stuff they're going to make.

56:20And then YouTube is still this user-driven thing. But because the consumer is choosing between these things and not thinking about the source that created them, It's just, you know, it's all being democratized in a really interesting way. We don't, like, we're not the guys to be like, this is exactly what it's gonna happen, and this is how it's gonna resolve itself, and this is, all we've ever done is been like, and especially now, make the best thing that we possibly can make with the resources that we have available and try to connect with as many people as possible. And if you're doing that, then as the people people behind the scenes figure out how they offer this stuff up, we're gonna be at the right place at the right time because we're making the right stuff.

57:09You're talking a lot from like the viewer consumer standpoint. From the creator standpoint, I think what you're describing is happening because, and this is something that we had to learn the hard way that maybe others aren't or can learn from our mistakes or our journey, I'll say, is successful creators connecting with their audience, finding a way to build the bridge themselves to what they want to create that they haven't yet and creating that opportunity themselves. We're called creators. Create your own path and bring your audience along. You know, we had this, like, we described this, like, major dichotomy between what we were doing over here and what we wanted to do over there.

57:58We're never gonna make Rhett and Link's Game of Thrones. You gotta get there and if you're successful and you can reinvest in yourself, then you can build that bridge with your content. I think that's the answer and that's the power that we as creators have. And, you know, just to get a little therapeutic here, we're a little angry, right? we're a little frustrated, but I think that there's nothing wrong with being angry. It's what you do with it. It's what you do with it. So I think what we're doing now is channeling that frustration through lessons learned into, and using that as strength and fodder to fuel what we're gonna do next that we can do.

58:49That's where we're at. Almost looking around, like where are we right now? Is this some YouTube creators who happen to hire a bunch of people? Is this a production studio? Is this an entertainment company, just like the other ones we drove up, you know, past on the way up Burbank? And I ask that too for, you know, you talk about like the creators coming up now. I know you guys are certainly talking with plenty of creators these days. I know you've invested in creators even with the Accelerator program. When you do talk with young creators, what is kind of the path or dream that they describe? What are they thinking about?

59:24How does it maybe differ from when you guys, where you were 20 years ago? My experience is that most of the creators that we talk to, because they've cultivated this job in this environment that changes so quickly, and fighting for connection and maintaining relevance is such a difficult thing to do that I think that they don't think very far ahead. They're like, I've got these videos that I want to make. And we have a lot of conversations with people who, hey, there's like seven simple things that you could implement right now that would make your life a lot easier and would give you the opportunity to have a great opportunity for a personal life in addition to a professional life and to build a brand.

1:00:15That's how we think about it. And that resonates with them because I do think in the back of their minds, they're like, am I still gonna be here a year from now? So it's more about sustainability than crossover. But like, you know, if you're a comedian like Daniel Thrasher, there's still these like bastions of legitimization of a comedian. A Netflix special. Yeah, of a comedian, whether it's starring in an Amazon series, which he's doing. And then you got Jarvis, who is part of shaping the future of commentary as a vertical. And he has his own heroes, like the John Stewarts of the world. But I don't know that it's about crossing over, because it's different.

1:01:05And then with like the Sorry Girls, it's like you got, okay, do they really just wanna have a show on HGTV? I think that they're seeing that they can have a lot more control by building a sustainable brand where the power lies now, where the audience is. But I don't wanna put words in their mouth. I mean, things are, well, it like, I think the way that they would see it at this point is like getting a traditional opportunity like that would be, you would evaluate it not because it, you would evaluate it by how much it would help the existing brand. Like this, will this help build our brand? Having this show on, I mean, and that was the justification for us to say, all right, let's do this Food Network thing.

1:01:51Cause it wasn't just an automatic yes. It was like, okay, you know, we make content that's pretty broad and appeals to a lot of people and we eat a lot of food on the show. like this would be great to bring this audience into our world, not to be like, hey, we're on the Food Network now, we've achieved all our hopes and dreams. Yeah. We just kind of decided it wasn't worth the creative frustrations of, I mean, they didn't want it anymore as we've established, but you know, at the same time, it's like we're not tempted to do that again. So to me, I think it's about, yeah, people aren't, some creators are thinking about a traditional opportunity.

1:02:28they still want to try if they have something that there's really itching to do. But I think most people that we know are just trying to get through the year and continue maintaining the brand and themselves. All right. Thank you for listening to that conversation with Rhett and Link. Hopefully you learned something interesting there about the convergence of YouTube creators and Hollywood. Again, that is part of our coverage in the published paper, volume two. There are limited quantities. If you want to get one for yourself, you can go to presspublish.store.